Think About Where You Put the Jews Before Backing Palestinians

 

Backing the presented plight of the Palestinian Arabs, people need to think about a few other points as well. First, you have to understand that the Arab Palestinians, backed by the oil wealth of the Gulf States, present a propaganda front backed by now approaching billions of dollars in the past two decades plus. People ask why Israel does not answer and present her side. Well, first, Israel does not have the wealth required to equal the propaganda aired against her. Israel is required to remain on close to war footing at all times with the threats on her every border and this takes much of the money which could be used to counter the propaganda, but then there might not be an Israel to save. Further, all one need do is look at a map showing the Arab world and Israel and we will even provide that map below. That will also tell you something about the propaganda that Israel threatens the Arab world. That will also put in doubt the claim that the Jews are using Israel to destroy the Islamic World. There are almost, if not, two-billion Muslims in the world while the total number of Jews is approaching fifteen-million. That is approximately one-hundred-twenty Muslims per Jew on planet Earth. Another item is that both the League of Nations and the United Nations gave their blessings after the Arab League refused to any compromise on their position, which is the Jews must be ruled by the Muslims because the Quran instructs that the Jews are a lesser people to the superior Muslims, to the original promise made under the San Remo Conference that Israel was to be bordered on the east by the Jordan River. The initial idea was that the Jewish State would have occupied all of what is Israel and Jordan but the British insisted that they promised the sons of King Faisal their own kingdoms, these were Iraq and Jordan, so they divided the British Mandate evenly between the Jews and the Arabs, Jordan received 78% of the British Mandate, the lands east of the Jordan River, and the Jews received 22% represented by the lands west of the Jordan River. When the Arabs claim that all they desire is their 22% which most Western World sources interpret to mean Gaza and West Bank (Shomron or Judea and Samaria), when in actuality they mean the 22% of the British Mandate which is not Jordan, they mean all of Israel. The reason that Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas have refused every peace offer has been because they provide for there to be a Jewish State, an Israel, and not the Arabs doing as they please with the Jews. That is the reality.

 

Israel and the Arab World

 

The Arabs do not hide their desire and intents. They have often called for the death of every Jewish Israeli. Hamas has in their charter a call to murder every Jew. Their intent is to complete what Hitler started. One need remember that the Arab Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini spent the Second World War working for and with the Nazis, sat with Hitler, met with most of the Nazis who at the Wannsee Conference decided on the Final Solution and demanded of the Nazis that they assist the Arabs with their Jew problem once they had conquered the Middle East and North Africa, with the assistance of the Arabs who the Mufti was recruiting to fight with the Nazis. This is the same Mufti Amin al-Husseini who in the first weeks of May, 1948 ordered that every Arab leave Israel and come to the safety of Jordan, Syria, Egypt or Lebanon so that the soon to be gloriously victorious Arab armies could simply invade the Zionist entity and kill every person they encountered without having to worry about killing fellow Arabs. This tells a thinking person two things. First is that it is very difficult to tell Arabs from Jews. Sure, there are some people where one would think it obvious, but you might be surprised. Second, is that most of the Palestinian Arab refugees from the 1948 Arab war attempting to annihilate Israel upon the morning of her birth left of their own free will and were not forcefully evicted from their homes and villages. When the Arab armies failed and peace, or at least an end to the active fighting, finally came over a year and half later, the Arab nations took these very same refugees which they had caused and enclosed them in camps which originally were tent cities with armed guards surrounding them with barbed wire as the Arab leaders realized that these unfortunate brothers and sisters could be used as a weapon against Israel. If nothing else, they could be used as soldiers to put at the front of any army at their next invasion, which did come in 1967 and worked out even worse than their first attempt. These are realities and truths seldom spoken of as they are called lies. Here is a link to a one-hour informative examination of the Arab Palestinian Refugee problem which does not leave either Israel or the Arab world as without some of the blame and is worth watching at least once.

 

The reality in the Arab world is that the Palestinian Arabs, be they refugees or living under the Palestinian Authority in parts of the Shomron or under Hamas in Gaza, are seen as lower Arabs less worthy than the rest of the Arab world. Their sole use is to wield as a bludgeon against Israel. Most of the protesters one will see at the so-called pro-Palestinian protests are more against Israel and Jews than they are pro Palestinian. This can be realized when one listens to many of their slogans which are often more about destroying Israel or killing the Jews in Israel than about concern for the Palestinians. This is made obvious simply by looking at a map and realizing exactly what their chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free,” which means the eradication of Israel. That is the bottom line of their reason for Palestinians, to destroy Israel. Many at these protests have no real idea what Israel is or why the Jews would even desire to live surrounded by Arabs who wish them dead. The truth is that Israel existed and was attempted to be destroyed and the Jews along with it by numerous peoples throughout history. We have a prayer included in the Passover Seder where it states that in every generation there will be those who wish to eradicate us, it says rise against us, but there is little difference when one looks at history. The following empires of history have sought to eradicate the Jewish People, Ancient Egypt, Philistine, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Caliphate, Ottoman, Spain, Nazi, Soviet Union, Arab World and currently the one saying it the loudest is Iran. This list pretty much covers the history of the Hebrews who would become the Judeans from which the name Jew originates. But this region is our ancestral homeland and the only peoples who were here before the Hebrews arrived at the end of the Exodus from Egypt were the Canaanites, a people who have disappeared in history. The closest that any people came to successfully destroying the Jewish People, before the Nazis almost wiped out European Jews, were the Romans. The Romans fought three wars against only two peoples and treated both identically after defeating them for the third time; these were the Carthaginians and the Judean (Jews). In both cases they changed the name of the region, in the case of the Judean they named it with the Roman name for the Philistines and attaching it to their province of Syria naming, it Syria Palaestina. It is from this name that the British and much of the world named the area which now comprises Jordan and Israel as Palestine, which was the name of a region of the Ottoman Empire and was never an actual nation. The Romans took both the Judean (Jews) and the Carthaginians and dispersed them throughout their empire and beyond as the Roman means of eradicating bothersome peoples. This brought the end for the Carthaginians, unless anyone has found one lately, but somehow the Jews survived, and their secret was simple, the Torah was the glue which kept us a people.

 

These are some of the realities of the situation and they deserve to be considered carefully before choosing which side to support, if either side. Supporting the Arabs would present the following problem, a very real and serious problem when one considers how nation after nation, including President Roosevelt and the United States, closed their borders to the Jews, and the British closed off allowing Jews to come to what would become Israel, during World War II. About the only nations who accepted Jews in some numbers were the Philippines, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Shanghai, and, oddly enough, Japan; but none of these nations put much of a dent in the murder machine which was Nazi Germany as they took in a few thousand or tens of thousands leaving millions with nowhere to turn. Italy protected some Jews in their regions of conquest and Japan refused the Nazi demand that they turn the Jews in Japan over to them. All told, and this is a generous estimate, perhaps one-million Jews escaped by fleeing from the Nazi death machine. Jack Engelhard wrote of his family’s escape from Europe and eventual arrival in Canada in his best selling book, Escape from Mt. Moriah. We will simply say that their escape was not exactly a straight affair of going to Canada; it was an adventure with its share of perils. The reality is through the well financed propaganda against Israel and the lack of knowledge of history, let alone ancient history, and the Bible becoming unread by most youths, many people have forgotten or were never aware that the Jews come from exactly the location it now holds. The Map below shows the routes of Joshua and the Israelites took to establish their lands and on the right is the original home of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. In the map on the right in the top right is the city of Damascus, the current capital of Syria as well as many of the cities which are today parts of Israel along the coast and throughout the tribal lands. This was the reason that the early Zionists refused the offer to grant them the Island of Madagascar simply because Madagascar is not our homeland; Israel is where we originate and where we desired to return. Torah and the Old Testament along with the numerous commentaries all promised we would return and build the Third Temple which is also called the final Temple. But if the Jews are to be stripped of their homeland, what will the world do with probably seven-million Jews. Can anybody tell me a nation which would even accept half that number? If World War II is any example, then we know the answer, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, but millions left to the mercies of the Arabs who have sworn to kill every last Jew that they are able. Even once they would have Israel, their raging desire to eliminate the Jews from the world would continue as it is commanded in the Quran, as from Sahih Muslim Book 41 Hadith 6985 stating, “Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (Peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” Whatever this tree is, the Gharqad tree, we should start planting groves of them.

 

Israel Through the Ages Joshua Enters to the Twelve Tribes

 

Below, we decided to place a couple of videos of anti-Israel protests gone somewhat wrong. The first falls askance when they decide to take their protest into the diamond district of New York. What follows is remarkable. The second is quite different as the anti-Israel protest is disrupted, this time by a single young Jew armed with chutzpah and an Israeli flag. It is strange the reaction in both cases and especially when confronted by a sole sixteen-year-old young man with conviction and totally fearless. One they are overwhelmed by numbers and the second they are overwhelmed by courage, what a contrast.

 

 

The obvious truth is should the Arabs ever destroy Israel, then the Jews remaining there on those final days will be slaughtered. The Palestinian Arabs and numerous Arab spokespeople have all made this evidently clear. It is a staple of the diet used to stoke protesters in the Western World, use to mollify the masses in Arab countries as well as Iran, and a staple in the Palestinian vision of their eventual return which will be over the bodies of every Israeli, by which they mean Jew though some include all Israelis with very few exceptions which would include many Arab Israelis. The obvious alternative is for the Jews to flee. Some show their lack of knowledge when they simply claim that the Jews can all return to the country they originally came from. Well, the throngs who came after the Holocaust had no nation to take them, the Jews expelled from the Arab world cannot return to Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen or the many other Islamic nations which were their families’ homes in some cases for close to two-thousand-years and most of the rest for many hundreds of years, and the Jews from the Soviet Union would not likely be welcomed in Russia, same with the Ukraine and numerous European nations would be unsuitable and that leaves Canada, the United States, Central and South America and the Far East which is not exactly a place where Jews have resided in great numbers. In all honesty, within a couple of decades we doubt that the United States would even consider allowing a large number of Jews to make a new life there and the same with much of Europe. Perhaps the Jews could all climb onto a large interstellar spacecraft and head for Planet Israel. Perhaps it is actually out there.

 

Planet Israel

 

Israel is the home of the Jewish People and has been for approaching four-thousand years. Granted we were kicked out and dispersed throughout the world. We survived and we came back to claim the land which was stolen from us. The world knows that the Arabs were and are not native to the area of Israel. They originated in the Arabian Peninsula, broke out in the early Seventh Century, and spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa and into Europe from both the east and west before finally meeting a limit to what they would conquer. We saw above that Israel is not exactly threatening the Arab world or spreading and becoming a threat to all Islam. The Jews are a small minority of the world populations, approximately 0.2%, and we are not demanding a large tract of land, just our own little corner which does not even have oil. Is the world so anti-Semitic that it refuses to permit the Jews a refuge to call their own where they can simply assist nations which have had catastrophes, be they natural or man-made, invent things and share them with the world as we have done since our founding, find cures for cancer and other debilitating or fatal diseases and, most of all, study Torah and worship Hashem having a little peace at long last. Apparently, that appears to be too much to ask of this world.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Jews Are no Different than We Have Ever Been

 

The anti-hate groups get all flustered over Islamophobia but could not care less about other religious groups being targeted and slaughtered all over the world. The anti-hate groups get all up in arms over sensitivity for Blacks and immigrants of all kinds but could not care less about the oldest immigrants whose reason for being far from their homelands dates back to the Roman Empire efforts to destroy them by spreading then throughout their empire and beyond. The anti-hate groups claim to be concerned about anti-Semitism but when the opportunity arises when they can speak up, silence. They talk about Israel being the oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs ignoring the facts which tell of their being ruled by their own kind. In Gaza, where there is no Israeli presence, they chose to have Hamas as their government and dedicated their entire economy not for their own well-being, but for the destruction of Israel and the murdering of Jews. In the Shomron (West Bank) they are ruled by the Palestinian Authority under its dictator Mahmoud Abbas who robs the people of the unequaled aid the Palestinians receive from the world (see graph below). The world is obsessed with the BDS Movement which is actually just the internationalizing of the Arab boycott of Israel. The entire idea to employ the rest of the world was begun by Yasser Arafat and continued by Mahmoud Abbas with ample assistance from the United Nations.

 

Graph of Aid Money to Palestinian Territories and other needful locations

 

The tropes against Israel specifically and Jews in general have a long history from both Christian Europe and Islamic Middle East and North Africa (MENA). These are all familiar such as the Jews have all the money and they are all wealthy, one claim we can definitely prove false. Another is that the Jews control all the governments, are responsible for all the wars including the Arab against Arab wars, that they control the media and all sorts of other exaggerated to the point of ridiculous claims. How, you tell us, can a group which is a mere 0.2% of the world population garner so much power when half the world’s people have never ever met a single Jew? Marches which are organized and populated by the all-so-liberated-left such as the Women’s March or the Chicago Dyke March have decided that the Jews who love Israel or even simply wish to display the Star of David cannot join their march because the Jews are oppressing the Palestinian Arabs which they do not rule nor do they have any control beyond providing them free electricity, natural gas and other utilities. All one need is to look for the groups supporting the BDS Movement including Jewish groups as leftist Jews are more Leftist than Jewish. And these are but the tip of the iceberg. Across Europe and throughout the rest of the industrialized developed world anti-Semitism is rising at ever increasing rates with it approaching levels previously only witnessed in third world nations and even to the level of some of the more mildly anti-Semitic Muslim world. Jews are leaving Europe with a fairly significant number making Aliyah and coming home to Israel, as reported in this article with concludes echoing that the number of languages, particularly European, one find spoken in large numbers in the main Israeli cities is unavoidable to anyone paying even the slightest attention.

 

The increasing anti-Semitism is due to a new breed of anti-Semites who originate on the far left of the political spectrum, the ones claiming to be so sensitive, inclusive and understanding. The main problem with most of these individuals is two-fold, first they know next to nothing about Judaism and its laws and mostly benign philosophy which includes ruling out proselytizing while second they know absolutely nothing about the settlements after World War I which set up the establishing of the Jewish State which was incorporated into the United Nations Charter in Article 80 and that the Arab world approved of this at that time settling for their getting over 99% of the lands which constitute the MENA nations and the Jews receiving less than 1%, a one percent which has now become too much for these same nations. The sickening part is what occurs regularly in the General Assembly, Human Rights Council and the various other United Nations agencies and their near universal repulsion and vindictiveness against the nation of Israel. The treatment of Israel is worthy of a nation which does not belong and is not supposedly protected as a member nation of the United Nations. The only reason that Israel is not universally condemned regularly by the Security Council is largely due to the threat of the United States using their veto to prevent such injustices. When the United States removes this obstacle, we fully expect that there will soon thereafter come a vote to evict Israel from the United Nations and claiming that Israel is no longer a nation of which any of the world supports or believes has a reason or the right to exist. Fortunately, this will not bring an end to the Jewish State, but it will free Israel from any restrictions of what the world thinks or demands, as they will have proven their animosity from which they speak making all their concerns superfluous. That will be the validating reason for Israel to finally simply do what is best for Israel and allow the world to meet with great urgency and condemn her from the United Nations. After you have set a nation adrift claiming it undeserving of a life raft constructed from universal laws and mutual concerns and respect, how can you then expect the same body making demands of said nation threatening to claim they are terrible, did not the expulsion already not make that evidently clear? Israel will finally be free to turn a deaf ear to the caterwauling coming from Turtle Bay (UN).

 

The world is inexorably sliding ever closer to having no Jews left who have not returned home to Israel. Will there still be people who by birth are considered Jews? Probably so. Allow us to elaborate on this theme. Despite what Hollywood claimed or what the main story-line of history claims, when the Hebrews left Egypt with Moses, not all the Hebrews, the people who would become Israelites leading eventually to Judean which became simply Jews, a mere twenty percent of those considered to be the children of Jacob left the ‘comfort’ of their situation in Egypt. The vast majority remained in servitude in Egypt which validates that they were not excessively mistreated if one looks beyond killing of every first-born male child. But wait, there’s more. When Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians, he declared that the Judeans, we were on our way to being Jews, which included the tribe of Judah and Benyamin as well as their priesthood of Kohanim and Levites, again a mere twenty percent left and the other eighty percent decided to live in the extreme comfort of the Persians. It was this eighty percent which Haman desired to murder where the intervention by Queen Esther prevented, that led to our celebration of Purim. The twenty percent who returned to Israel built the Second Temple and resumed following Torah while paying a tribute to Persia for their protection. So, one would expect that we should expect that merely twenty percent of the world’s Jews would return to Israel ending this Diaspora. The reality is that we are rapidly closing in on having half of world Jewry already residing in Israel and have even found numerous of the lost Ten Tribes from the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom where they dispersed the Israelites and until recently they had been largely unheard from. These tribes returning is another sign that the redemption is coming, but approaching soon according to Hashem is not the same as soon for you or me.

 

So, once again, Israel finds herself surrounded by nations all desiring her destruction. After the Exodus from Egypt, Israel sat between the Egyptian Empire and the Hittite Empire. The Egyptian threat remained on her southern border through time and is still there today, it is just a very different Egypt with virtually no link to ancient Egypt except for the great structures which have survived the ravages of time. The Hittites were replaced by the Assyrians, who conquered the northern ten tribes, who were replaced by the Babylonians, who conquered Judea, who were replaced by the Greeks who were themselves conquered, swallowed whole, by the Roman Empire who attempted to destroy the Judeans after their third revolt against Rome, one of which successfully freed them of Rome for a brief period and then way too many Roman Legions settled that issue, and Rome dispersed the Judeans throughout their empire and some were sent beyond the borders of Rome with the intent of completely destroying them erasing them from history, just as they had the Carthaginians. Met anyone from Carthage lately, we neither. The rest of Jewish history is a litany of ill treatment, persecution, exploitation, and systematic eradication, genocide, whether in Christian Europe or, as mentioned above, Islamic empires of the MENA nations. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, German Empire and Austria-Hungarian Empire by the Allied Powers of World War I, there was a drive to return lands to their ancestral indigenous peoples. There were a few peoples who were left out of these plans such as the Berbers and the Kurds amongst others. The Jews made claim to the region which was our ancestral homelands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and the region east of the Jordan River where the tribes of Reuben, Gad and East Manasseh were located (see map below). The British pressed an agreement where the Zionist Congress relented the claim to lands east of the Jordan River in exchange for the worthless guarantee by the British, the League of Nations, and the Mandate System that the remainder of the lands, those west of the Jordan River, would remain completely under the authority and control of the Jewish State and this would be protected including restraining outside immigration. We have all seen how well that worked out and that the ramification should not even be an issue beyond where to place the Arab Palestinians so they can make a new life outside of the lands promised the Jews. The problem came when the world awoke and thought, what have we done, we allowed the Jews to return home which makes everything we believe problematic. Ever since, the world has done everything except invasion by forces from every continent (even including Antarctica).

 

Twelve Tribes of Israel and the Original Borders for Israel

 

We foresee a time where Israel will have as few friends as a red-haired, freckled stepchild and even fewer willing to ally with her. This will soon thereafter lead to the point where during some great cataclysmic world war; an agreement will be reached to settle the differences between the two sides for a period of time while they all attack the single nation which had not taken either side, Israel. So, for a while the entire world, with the exception of Israel, will be involved in a war more destructive than any previous war and after much of the earth has been all but destroyed, and large segments of the world’s population incinerated in the conflagration, the nations will decide that they wish to end the conflict, but neither side will be willing to take the blame for the destruction and both will claim the other side provoked or actually started the war. Then their representatives at their presumed peace talks will hit on a great idea; let’s blame the Jews, Israel. They must have been responsible, as they remain untouched by all of the destruction. They did it so they could sit on the sidelines and rule the world after all was over. It is like the two children each wanting the other to try the new cereal on a commercial when they decide to give it to their younger brother, Mikie, because he hates everything.

 

This is the conflict spoken of in all too many prophesies, and we do not have to tell you what the end results will be, you already know them as well as we or you really need to read your holy books and learn something they did not teach you at that high-priced college which filled your head with meaningless mush. Sure, you know all the microaggressions and recognize every trigger word. You can find the safe space on your campus, and for those who have graduated, you have found a place where you can hide at work and use it as your new safe space. Other people have realized that there really are no safe spaces in the real world and a smaller number have found ways to cope while even fewer simply grew beyond the need for safe spaces. You also understand intersectionality, a subject we covered here, here and here, and some may have found that you ran afoul of this repulsive and divisive concept. If you ever attempted to join a protest and you also wished to display the Star of David, you found yourself on the wrong end of intersectionality because the Star of David indicates two things that those good people who obey all the restrictions and narrow their views to match what they are told, namely Israel, the world’s most accused transgressor of all that is intersectionality proper, and Judaism which means the Jews, they who are the one-percent of the one-percent making them double-white and thus completely unacceptable under the rules of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the glue which binds together BLM with anti-fa, with the Women’s March, with LBGTQ, with The Council On America-Islamic Relations (CAIR), with elements of Colored People (NAACP, with Gun Sense In America and so many more and recently even the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan; something which is so very unfortunate but also defining. The definition given for intersectionality which we found is; intersectionality is the interplay between any kinds of discrimination, whether it’s based on gender, race, age, class, socioeconomic status, physical or mental ability, gender or sexual identity, religion, or ethnicity. Well, that is true except for Israel and anything too Jewish, though there was a single exception in the list, namely, National Council of Jewish Women, which is a group so far left that their idea for the practice of Judaism officially coincides directly with the platforms of the Democrats and the Social Democrats, as we are sure there are many well-meaning members who actually practice Judaism as it is in Torah, though we suspect that some do have a small amount of discomfort following Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory specifically and that they are allied with CAIR through intersectionality. The fact that there are Jews such as Bernie Sanders who actively work against the state of Israel because of their politics is beyond understanding to us. Those Jews who, mistakenly in our minds, believe that Israel should not exist and the Jews are to wait for the Messiach to come and do everything for them, found the nation of Israel and magically transport them there and make the world all love them, that is great and they are risking being left out of a great miracle. Even these Jews, when a small number of them go so far as to work for the destruction of Israel, such as Neturei Karta, then you have crossed a line which is unforgivable. But we try to bury such disturbing events as their hugging the Supreme Leader of Iran because he is working to destroy Israel and pray for the day they will be made aware of their sins against Hashem by condemning their fellow Jews, their brothers and sisters, as being Jewish is a religion, a nation, a people and a family. When the Messiach arrives and they are ‘magically’ flown on El Al to Eretz Yisroel, then we will all be a relatively happy family and all will be forgiven, or so we pray. In the meantime and for the foreseeable future, Israel is as she has always been, under siege with threats almost everywhere we look and the Jews are being chased from place to place with nowhere else to turn and soon all the surviving Jews will have returned home, and then the remainder of prophesy will be primed to occur.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

If Israel Was a Normative Nation

 

If Israel was a normative nation, then the fact that the percentage of citizens who were Jews would simply be an anomaly. If Israel was a normative nation, she would not worry about what was the right thing to do. If Israel was a normative nation, her actions would be completely based on what served her interests. If Israel was a normative nation, other nations and groups would fear the potential retribution she is capable of loosing on any threat. If Israel was a normative nation, other nations would fear her nuclear and other military capabilities. If Israel was a normative nation, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would have been wiped from Gaza a long time ago. If Israel was a normative nation, the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, the PLO and their security forces would have been sent packing to whatever nations would permit their exile and the Arabs would have been given the opportunity to reside as resident aliens provided they accept Israeli law and renounce terrorism. If Israel was a normative nation, none of the Arabs remaining within her borders would even give the slightest thought of entertaining any acts against Israel. If Israel was a normative nation, the world would not dare push as far as they currently push as they would know it would not alter how she acts. If Israel was a normative nation, her new northern border would be the Litani River or further north after making a deal with Russian President Putin to divide Lebanon between the two nations and pushing Hezballah into extinction. If Israel was a normative nation, so many things would so completely different. But Israel is not a normative nation and things are so different because she is so different.

 

Israel is many things, but normative is not even a possibility. The Children of Israel (Children of Jacob who was also referred to as Israel by HaShem) were the original nation beginning with Abraham passing Isaac and then with Jacob from whom we became the twelve tribes. Then we spent our formative years in Egypt in forced labor, like the majority of Egyptians whose laborers performed forced labor. Then Moses lifted us from the drudgery of forced labor and started the Children of Israel (Jacob) on the most formative journey in history, and it is recorded closely in Torah. The initial lesson we received after the Ten Plagues, which did not affect the area where the Children of Israel lived in Goshen, was being pinned to the Red Sea with the might of the Egyptian Army about to close and descend upon them. Next came HaShem parting the Red Sea, the Children of Israel crossing and the Egyptian Army following only to be drowned when the parting was released, showing the greatness of the power of HaShem. Now the Children of Israel camped at Mount Sinai, where they were to receive the Law, Torah’s Commandments, all six-hundred-thirteen Commandments. Initially, as the tale is told, HaShem came amongst the Children of Israel to allow them to individually hear His laws directly, the entirety of the people died and HaShem was required to revive them. This was attempted again the next day with the hope that after having experienced HaShem, being present would make a difference, but the result was identical. This resulted in having Moses receive the Law and then teach them after receiving them directly from HaShem, as only Moses was able to stand in the presence of HaShem. One would expect that such an experience would also have a lasting effect. These laws received at Mount Sinai were also one of the bases for the morality and systems of governance with its emphasis on the respect for human life and the proper treatment of the stranger and the fact that the community is responsible for even the most vulnerable amongst us which were referred to as the orphan and the widow. For almost another twelve-hundred-years, the Children of Israel lived under Torah and the mitzvahs and commandments finding themselves often falling well short of the expectations.

 

The Children of Israel resided in the area close to the lands they currently reside. The main differences are the northern border used to be the Litani River and some of the tribes lived on the eastern bank of the Jordan River (see map below). The problem was the Children of Israel were internal and external difficulties and challenges. The first was the splitting of the tribes with the northern ten tribes splitting taking the name of Israel and the southern two tribes taking the name of the larger and more dominant tribe, Judah. The northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrians and assimilated and became lost to history and the southern tribes were conquered by the Babylonians. The Judeans returned as a province of Persia, built the Second Temple, and then fell to Greece and eventually Rome who then dispersed the Judeans, now referred to as Jews as Judeans was too difficult for the Romans to say, but despite all the troubles, the Jews remained a separate group. The one thought which held all Jews together was the simple faith and knowledge that the day would come when they would be returned to their ancestral lands. As in all things, there are Jews who argue over when and under what conditions we are to return to our ancestral homeland. The one thing we all agreed upon was where that land was and that the capital would be Jerusalem. So, it really is no wonder that Israel is not a normative nation.

 

 

So, now we live in the age where almost half of the world’s Jews live in their ancient homelands and passing that halfway point is probably less than a decade away. The world can now honestly say that the ancient Kingdom of Israel has been reestablished. Israel has returned and her ancient language of Hebrew has become the first language to return to use after being a dead language used solely in prayers. That is but one of countless miracles which have come about supporting the nations of Israel which is obviously not normative. This little nation of Israel has been facing a constant threat from the neighbors surrounding her and well beyond her border all claiming that she is an interloper and a trespasser who deserves to be destroyed in order to set the world to rights. What makes things worse is that it appears that many nations, groups and international organizations such as the United Nations and its tentacle agencies all agree that if only Israel were destroyed, then all would be right with the world. Any normative nation facing such threats would be very belligerent and overly sensitive to threats lashing out with all their military might to defeat any and all potential enemies. Any normative nation if forced into a war for their survival and find that miraculously they had prevailed and gained lands five or even ten fold their original size would simply retain ever square-millimeter claiming rightfully that all the lands were required to give additional depth for her ability to properly defend herself. Any normative nation would be permitted such remittance from the people who had attacked and thus after the Six Day War, the new Israeli borders would have been the Golan Heights, Jordan River and the Suez Canal with Israel retaining the Sinai Peninsula. But that was not to be permitted for Israel, as she is not a normative nation. Piece by piece, Israel was required to return lands which could have permitted her to better defend her people and survive in a hostile neighborhood and there are pressures to return every millimeter that continues through today. Some nations clearly state with great volume and determination that Israel must not be permitted independence at all and must be completely eradicated, yet the world condemns Israel for not accommodating these enemies.

 

 

But Israel is not a normative nation and as such she has been known in times of great distress in her history to have bent and bent and bent until it appeared she would break, but instead of breaking, Israel would snap and then become a very normative nation striking out at those who wished her harm with a ferocity of unexpected vehemence. That is one historic trait which the modern world has yet to witness, and it would be horrific should such become unavoidable. Israel is not a normative nation and probably wishes to avoid such a response as much if not more so than do those who would bear the brunt of such violence. What has been a great mistaken judgement by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and those supporting their current rioting and incendiary attacks using kites and balloons to burn almost a thousand acres, if not more by now, and their attempting to breach the border with promises of tearing out our hearts and eating our livers, and all sorts of threats depicting the ways they intend to wipe us from the world as we do not deserve to live on this their lands is that we will never defend ourselves. That is really a mistaken thought. The people of Israel are growing exasperated with these antics and the stressful conditions these threats produce. Do not believe that this is true only of the Israelis residing within the range of these attacks because not only is Israel not a normative nation, Israelis are not a normative people because we are all the Children of Israel, the Children of Jacob, we are all family and those who are threatened are actually our bothers and sisters and their families. This makes their children our nieces and nephews and we care deeply for our family members, enough to demand that our government begin to act like a normative nation and respond in like kind to these violences. As ours is a democratically chosen governance, the ruling coalition is not capable of forever ignoring the desire of the people for the Gaza threat to be eliminated with every amount of malice which can be delivered. Eventually, even if we really were saints, there is a point where provocations require a response and that response is almost always an overreaction. The measure of how much of an overreaction is often directly proportional to the amount of time restraint has been the practice. The Israeli public has been showing restraint for at least twenty-five years, and possibly seventy years, or someplace in between, and that reticence will not continue for much longer. We may have the patience of saints, but we are not saints, we are men and women who worry and care about our brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and every other member of our family and that worry will drive our reacting, nay, overreacting. All we can warn our neighbors in Gaza, continue to push Israel until acting becomes necessary at your own risk, and it is your risk.

 

Beyond the Cusp