Palestinian Arab Refugees Killed and Injured in Attacks

 

The Yarmouk Refugee Camp, part of the sprawling Yarmouk general neighborhood, has suffered from attacks during the past week resulting in at least twenty civilians killed and numerous more injured. The attacks were claimed to be addressing the presumed existing jihadists allied with the Islamic State according to reports from “i-24 News Agency” yesterday. The camp serves approximately some two-thousand-five-hundred families who have withstood the consistent attacks. Still, there has been no United Nations emergency meeting over these attacks despite the tragic loss of life and the silence from out of the European Union is also surprising. The European Union and United Nations are often the first to decry the situation when a Palestinian refugee camp is struck by military actions and civilian lives are lost.

 

On another front, there are still reports of injuries having been inflicted on protesters along the Israel Gaza border. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrested two armed Palestinians crossing into Israel from southern Gaza Strip illegally earlier this week on April 24, 2018. Further, the death toll from the violent protests on the Gaza Israel border has reached forty as a Gazan died of their wounds also on April 24, 2018. Also, the remains of a Gazan engineer who was killed in Malaysia on Saturday arrived in the Gaza Strip for burial on April 24, 2018. Once again, the United States blocked passage of a call for the Security Council to set up an impartial investigation into the Israeli actions in the Gaza protests and for full explanation for the numerous deaths and injuries suffered by the Gazans, especially considering there have been minimal injuries and no fatalities on the Israeli side. The evidence of disproportional force must be investigated, Hamas leaders have demanded.

 

These two sets of situations appear to be similar in serious violence and disproportional force used against Palestinian Arabs yet they are treated so completely differently. The first situation where twenty civilians were killed in what was a week of heavy bombing and shelling after the possible chemical attack in nearby Douma on April 11, 2018 take place around Damascus (see map below) and not within Israel thus is of no interest to the international community. The second set of stories concern Gaza which is where the world’s interest is laser focused because there may be opportunities to depict Israel as a monstrous state using disproportional force. Never mind that the attacks in Syria largely affected innocent civilians as the ISIS and other forces left the area and the attacks were largely done to deny the return of these anti-Assad forces, and there was no interest in the use of helicopters dropping bombs on what remains of the Yarmouk refugee camp nor the chemical weapons use in Douma outside of NATO, who used cruise missiles to strike at Syrian and Iranian storehouses and facilities which were utilized in the chemical attack. As long as al-Assad uses simply conventional weapons the world does not care how many of his own people he murders and as long as al-Assad is murdering Arabs and not Alawites, he does not care either nor do Russia and Iran or the United Nations and the Europeans.

 

Map of Damascus Area Showing Douma and Yarmouk

 

But where Israel is utilizing soldiers who are targeting only those attempting to destroy the border fence between Israel and the Hamas ruled enclave of Gaza and, as reported, took two potential terrorists who crossed illegally into custody rather than shoot them and possibly kill them and uses water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets using live ammunition only when a direct threat is posed, each time Israel responds to such a direct threat, even if the individual shot is wounded and not killed, Israel is immediately discussed by the European Union and the Security Council of the United Nations for using disproportional force. There were a couple of slip-ups by media reporters caught in live microphones or during interviews actually asking during the last Gaza War in 2014, why don’t we see more dead Israelis, as if unless an equal number of dead and injured is required of Israel otherwise Israel is guilty of some criminal act. The fact that even in the current Hamas threat coming from out of Gaza, where Gazans are the Hamas weapon of choice, Israel is doing what she has always done, attempt to minimize casualties both for Israel and for Gaza. We can hear some out there asking how can we even try to say such a thing? Let us elucidate.

 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a revamping of an older conflict which the Israelis had to be transmogrified from Israel as the weaker half of the Arab-Israeli conflict where half a billion Arabs were united against six million Jews to six million Jews against the poor, unarmed, oppressed Palestinians. The media loved this new framing of the story and adapted immediately. This provided them a way of describing the victory of the IDF in 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War as Israel as the all-powerful IDF against rag-tag Palestinian security forces. Now Israel could be the mean and horrible force and the Arabs were now the distressed and unfortunate victims of those horrible Israelis. To take the next step, we will need to take some steps at looking into the views of the post-modern world. Post-modernism claims that religion no longer has a place in our lives, because there is no Supreme Being as all is defined by science, or soon will be if we just wait a short while. Militarism is evil and any use of force must be questioned and condemned. Racism and colonialism are the past sins that must be atoned and any signs of it remaining in our world must be destroyed unless being performed by people who are viewed as struggling and power deprived during the past, especially if they can be viewed as having suffered from former racism and colonialism. The next ignominious sin is white-privilege. Lastly, there is a need for our liberal and enlightened societies to find some group which can be singled out and who allow us to feel better about our society by pointing our finger at this group and finding all the potential shortcomings in that group and thus they are the actual problem and we are innocent.

 

Unfortunately for Israel, but she has been chosen to represent that militarist, religious, racist, colonial, oppressive nation which also can be portrayed as having gained from white-privilege and thus the people are unenlightened and must be shamed and carry the full blame for not having entered the great new age of post-modernist society and being so backward and thus revolting. But why Israel, because Israel is the Jew amongst the nations and has been painted through media reporting to be guilty of all the foibles that western society claims to have moved beyond in their enlightenment, except for supporters of President Trump, Israel, the Second Amendment and Republicans who live amongst the enlightened, though in pockets of flyover country. Fortunately, the media is run and populated mostly by those enlightened people of the center such as the supporters of enlightened politics, economic equality, social progressive rationalism, post-modernism, and all the rest of the centrist positions found in the New Yorker Magazine which defines our centrist beliefs as leftist beliefs are the new center. Israel is the familiar target of the enlightened of society as well as of the Islamic society. In both cases, the Jew was the reason for all failures, problems, disease, war, evil, curses and anything else where blame was required to be assigned. In Christian Europe the Jew was the obvious other who was different and often separate and to the Capitalist the Jew was Communist and to the Communist the Jew was the Fascist and to the Fascist the Jew was the Capitalist and in all things the Jew was the one group which did not fit in the rest of society. In Islam, the Jew was a Dhimmi and the chosen hated one and thus the first group to whom one applied blame. For both Islam and Christianity, the Jew was the weak minority who was largely incapable of defending themselves and easy to place blame and either be victim of a pogrom designed to chase them from town or to murder them if caught before they could flee. When disease, crop failure or any other ill befell the community, the Jews were blamed and were made to pay the price.

 

The world has not become so much more sophisticated, it has simply transferred the blame from the Jew to the Jewish State. The sad part of this situation is that the Jews in the Diaspora are largely found to be politically on the left, what the left defines as the center, and as such, they accept without question that Israel really is as evil and to blame as their fellow leftists claim. Israel is seen as the Western, developed, white country and the Palestinians are the people of color who are poor, weak, unfortunate victims of the Israelis. What is ignored conveniently are the Jews who come from the same MENA* nation states as are called the Arab world. These Jews were chased from their homes under threat of death and often running from pogroms almost always being required to leave their wealth and property behind for which they never received reparations. The Jews who left Europe after World War II for Israel also had lost everything and this was the start of the country of Israel which today is treated as if it came from privilege and financial supremacy, not from modest means and initially socialist collectives known as Kibbutzim and was agrarian economy for the first fifteen to twenty years and from there became the modern and powerful nation far more recently than believed. The fact that Israel has gone from basically a socialist society and has become more capitalist over time until now Israel is unabashedly capitalist. This, to the developed world which has been sliding towards socialism, especially when the leftist parties are in power, is simply one of the worst sins any people can commit.

 

MENA Nations

 

Israel is seen as everything that the developed Western nations are embarrassed over and thus is treated as a pariah amongst the nations. Israel also is held to a different standard than other nations. This is made obvious by our first two paragraphs where al-Assad can murder his people without anyone lifting their voice in complaint, while Israel shoots at people attempting to force their way across the border and cause damage and possibly killing Israelis and the world comes to a screeching halt demanding Israel fall on her own sword. The entirety is an onion whose unpeeling would take more time and pages than anyone would care to read. The truth is that Israel is not the evil pariah that the media paints her for being. She takes measures to preserve even the lives of her enemies to such an extent that a report researched and filed by more military leaders of impressive qualifications states, “Hamas’s strategic concept rests in large part on a deliberate unlawful tactic of embedding its military operations deep within the urban civilian infrastructure of Gaza and drawing the IDF into that territory’s urban centers. Hamas thus exploits the advantages of fighting on pre-prepared urban terrain in addition to exploiting the constraints brought about by the IDF’s strict adherence to the Law of Armed Conflict. Fighting in urban terrain is one of the most complex, dangerous and challenging operations of war.” Additionally, the group concluded, “Israel adheres to the accepted norms and rules that make up the Law of Armed Conflict, including rules embodied in conventions to which Israel is not party, where these form part of customary international law.” We will rest on their expertise and content that as Jews, Israel is in a position which we Jews completely and totally are familiar, understand and feel complete contempt for those asserting such views which we realize is just their own contempt with themselves being projected upon the other, and as Jews we have been the world’s most convenient other throughout history.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

* MENA = Middle East and North Africa

 

Israel, Judea, Samaria, and World Idiocy

 

For the unenlightened, that is not an insult, it simply means those who have yet to be informed, yes, we try to inform the untold, that is part of our mission statement. Now, where were we? Oh yea, Judea and Samaria are Jewish lands from the ages starting with King David and King Solomon and were originally an integral part of what was declared the State of Israel on the morning of May 15, 1948 under a declaration by the United Nations despite the objections of the nations of the Arab League and their allies. But that did not deter them from attempting to make a small adjustment to the United Nations declaration and simply genocidally vanquish the nascent state of Israel murdering every last person they found. To this end they gathered forces from seven Arab nations, an untold number of militias, various military officers from various armies from World War II who fought for European nations and the Mufti of Jerusalem demanded that Arabs take refuge beyond the Jordan River, in Lebanon or behind the Egyptian military aligned in Israel’s southern border. The Arabs who remained within Israel fell into two groups, the first was Arabs who truly desired to remain in Israel and live in peace and be a constructive element in Israel’s future, and those who were interested in attacking the Jews fighting to retain their nation from behind. The Israelis had a good idea who were the friendly Arabs and when those whose loyalties were in doubt proved by the action of a large numbers of their population to be a fifth element, that was when the Israelis out of necessity drove many of the questionable Arabs out before their troops after being ambushed a number of times by some of these communities striking from behind. This was behind the initial refugee crisis where those who left their homes were forced into camps as were those pressed out for Israel due to their allying with the invading Arab armies. Further, in the wars which began on May 15, 1948 and ended in an armistice in 1949 resulted in Israel losing parts of Judea and Samaria to Jordan and the Gaza to Egypt. Jordan attempted to annex their gained lands so they changed the name to West Bank and the world, except for Britain and Pakistan, refused to recognize the annexation. It was after the 1967 Six Day War that Israel liberated these very same lands but the deceit had already started with the 1964 founding of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) demanding that an Arab state replace all of Israel. That demand is no different today; it just is demanding it from within Israel instead of in an occupied area.

 

So, let us frame the actual demands as they stand with added notes about the world at large. Israel has reached peace accords with two of her former invaders after a series of wars which though initiated by Arab powers that they either were unable to eliminate Israel but wrested control over some Israeli lands in the process of attempting to eradicate Israel and her non-Muslim populations, as in the 1948-9 war or have lost any advantage gained by attacking without provocation and then having the occupied areas returned to Israel control and even losing additional lands as in 1967 and again in 1973. Israel returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula for a cold peace with often cooperation on security matters which are to both parties’ favor with Egypt. Egypt agreed, nay, insisted on Israel retaining her lands which Egypt had occupied between 1948 and 1967, the area known as Gaza. Jordan subsequently made her peace with Israel surrendering back to rightful Israeli control of the areas of Judea and Samaria as well as Eastern Jerusalem making, once again, the Jordan River the boundary between the two nations as it had been on that fateful morning of May 15, 1948 when Jordanian, Iraqi and Saudi Arabian forces stormed across the Israeli border racing to reach the sea and take control of the port cities. These invading forces were aided by Arab militias under orders from Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the same Hajj Amin al-Husayni who spent the entirety of World War II in Nazi controlled lands raising all-Muslim forces which terrorized and plundered the areas Jewish and Serbian Christian populations with the blessings of the Nazis. Further, he was reputed with having advised at the Wannsee Conference where the ‘Final Solution’ was drafted and the Holocaust was placed in motion. Some reports claim that the Mufti demanded the Germans not simply exile the Jews onto the British Mandate lands in the Middle East thus taxing British and French forces in the area to take care of the refugees but instead exterminate European Jews and once in control of the Middle East and North Africa continue the extermination in those areas as well. These were the forces assailing the nascent state of Israel on her very first day of existence and before she had even gathered any formal military and where some Jews fought the invaders with stones having no arms other than slings. A swift Arab victory and the erasure of Israel appeared imminent but that was a short lived image of the situation.

 

 

Soon their efforts were blunted before they could reach their goals and finally fought to a standstill setting the Armistice Green Line as the new reality where Jordan remained in control until early June of 1967 when Jordan joined Egypt and Syria in the attack the Jordanians had been sold was going well by Egypt and Syria despite their losing on both fronts. That act despite Israeli warnings caused the loss of her occupied lands. On the Syrian front in 1967 Israel gained control of the Golan Heights, which the Syrians had used for snipers to randomly shoot Israelis walking to and from schools, tilling their lands, harvesting crops, driving on roads and other serious provocations known and the like. Israel had annexed the Golan Heights after gaining control of them from Syria during the Six Day War of June 1967. When considering the actions and the presence on occasions of terror groups aligned with al-Qaeda such as the al-Nusra and also forces attached to Islamic State with the occasional artillery or mortar round landing within the Israeli border to show for such volatile situations, Israel has adopted a policy of returning fire upon the offending source as computed by Iron Dome or similar tracking utilities. The Israeli decision to annex these vital hilltops has proven invaluable with the turmoil currently playing out on the border with Syria which is showing no sign of mitigation of the grievances and the introduction of Iranian, Russian and Hezballah forces backing Bashir al-Assad’s claim to the lands he ruled some five years ago when his intransigence on demands for rights and representative governance were refused and the largely peaceful protesters turned upon with regime forces which ignited this strife which has claimed upwards of five million lives with a large percentage being civilians and tens of millions of refugees made homeless who are now making their way across Turkey, Greece or even Italy and on into Europe. That pretty much encapsulates much of the actions over the past sixty-eight years.

 

So, the current situation is easily summed-up; Israel has made peace with three of the four nations bordering her and the fourth is in no shape currently to make any decisions about their mutual border. As discussed, Israel having annexed the Golan Heights is well within her rights according to all International Law as once Israel had returned any sections, let alone all; of the Sinai Peninsula she had fulfilled her obligations for returning lands, not all of the lands, nor the lands, nor any other absolute amount of lands. Israel was also to retain lands necessary for her continued security which was aimed at the time as the Golan Heights and the area of Judea and Samaria west of the Jordan River and many anticipated Israel retaining half of the Sinai Peninsula to the central mountains but Israel surrendered all of the Sinai. Once the peace treaties had been reached with Jordan and Egypt by which all the occupied Israeli lands of Gaza, Judea and Samaria had all claims vanquished it appeared that things in the Middle East between the Arabs and the Jews were settled. That was not to be the case as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which was formed in 1964, a full three years before the Six Day War of June of 1967, for the expressed purpose of threatening all of Israel with a challenge claiming the Arabs residing in Israel were actually an ancient culture which had their lands stolen by the Jews in the 1948-9 War and that the Israelis were evil, despicable European invaders and were intent on colonizing the entirety of the Middle East and beyond forming a greater Israel and subjugating the Arab Peoples, the indigenous Arab peoples with a nine-thousand year history going back to the time before. The Arab Palestinians, with generous assistance from the KGB, established these claims against all of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea except for the area under Arab controlled by Jordan and Egypt as these, Gaza, and parts of Judea and Samaria (referred to by Jordan as the West Bank) leaving the Jewish controlled areas as their target to form a new twenty-second Arab state. After Jordan and Egypt had relinquished their claims to any Israeli lands the PLO simply included those areas as their lost homelands which had to be returned to them completely cleansed of the Jews. They would claim that the Europeans must allow their Jews to return home ignoring the known fact that the entirety of the Arab and Muslim worlds attempted to cleanse themselves of their Jews and a vast number of them settled in Israel. There had been no mention of these Jews being returned or accepted as originating from the Arab lands all despite passports being held by these former refugees. There was a reason for the difference between the Arab refugees who are still languishing in refugee camps not included but rather kept separate from their brothers and sisters, all too often literally, while the Jewish refugees were taken in, given immediate citizenship and allowed full rights and became productive members of Israeli society. Their inclusion has been so complete that today it is difficult to tell children from the two groups of Jewish refugees apart as the great number of marriages across the societal lines, an occurrence nearly impossible in Arab society as there has been a stigma put upon the Arab refugees such that no Arab nation desires to include them into their society at large. This insane mistreatment goes so far that it even has led to a large refugee camp attached to Gaza City, an area controlled by Hamas since the 2007 coup, with the refugees camps surrounded with Concertina Wire with that being largely the only apparent difference as the refugees are housed in apartments almost identical to the apartments where the Gazans reside including many of the members of the Hamas ruling terror groups as well as other terror groups permitted to operate from within Gaza such as Islamic Jihad (they are almost co-rulers in the area), al Qaeda and even Islamic State. Hamas permits these terror entities to operate within the area it controls even to the point of permitting refugees to leave the camps in order to carry out terrorist acts against Israel. There are additional refugee camps near Ramallah in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Mahmoud Abbas and again there is little to differentiate the refugee Arab Palestinians from the free Arab Palestinians and even their surnames sound disturbingly similar. One can only wonder what could drive a people so far as to literally imprison their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends into refugee camps and then refuse to permit them work or any gainful activities outside their camps. Further, the vast majority of these ‘refugees’ are under the age of forty years of age, many under eighteen and have resided within the camps their entire lives. The UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) has taken on the job of tracking any refugee who have gotten from the camps and made a life for themselves in elsewhere, some as far flung as Los Angeles. The truth is according to the United Nations and UNRWA, once a family is designated as Palestinian refugee, then their generations inherit that honor and even in cases of cross marriage, an Arab Palestinian refugee and any other Arab be they Iraqi, Egyptian, Saudi or any other nationality, their children additionally become refugees. There were refugee camps in Syria one of which, the Yarmouk Refugee Camp, was heavily shelled and bombed by Bashir al-Assad once it was learned that some of its refugees had escaped and joined with one of the Islamist groups fighting Assad which made the entire camp a legal target in their now five year old war. The Yarmouk Camp was thoroughly destroyed and many of its former residents now have the unique privilege of being double refugees; they are now Syrian war refugees and Arab Palestinian refugees.

 

The only solution which makes sense since the complete destruction of stable governance throughout much of the Arab lands with Egypt narrowly escaping a plunge into the darkness which is Islamist Theocratic dictatorial rule with the Sunni version of Shia Iran with Muslim Brotherhood Imams sitting with absolute power and the power resting with the Muslim Brotherhood supported by Al-Azhar University was return to military rule until a proper governance was established. There was a price to pay for this salvation and that was a return to the strongman backed by the military and chosen by the military with the present president being the former Chief of Staff General of the Army Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. President Sisi did win an election and the test of whether democratic rule has finally come to Egypt or if they have fallen back under military dictatorship will be realized when the next elections are held and if they have beyond just the trappings of fair democratic elections or are actually verifiably honest democratic elections. Currently it is far too early to tell. Jordan has remained above the fray quite possibly because of the actions of one of the leaders in causing the fighting in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State. When the Islamic State downed a Jordanian fighter and captured the pilot, First Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh, they could have simply held him or ransomed him or amazed the world and returned him unharmed to Jordan. Instead they very publically for all to watch burned him alive and as he was fully engulfed in flames in a video posted by the Islamic State to the Internet as if it were an enlistment poster for the group. This barbaric act and the rage shared by the people of Jordan and their King may have served to deepen their trust in his honest leadership and saved Jordan from any crumbling before the anarchic forces swallowing the Middle East from Iraq to Monaco. This leaves Israel still facing a potential situation that should the Islamic State gain sufficient power they might decide that Jordan was ripe for the taking and as a result be right on Israel’s doorstep. Should there be either a Palestinian authority Fatah led government or a hybrid Hamas-Islamic Jihad government, either would necessarily fall before the Islamic State with Hamas likely simply merging while Fatah would likely flee into Israel seeking asylum as they would be no match against Islamic State and the leadership would fear facing a horrific death if captured by the Islamic State Islamist fanatics. It is exactly because of the turmoil, confusion, violence and instability of the entirety of the Middle East that Israel must establish the most defendable borders possible against ground attack such as from Islamic State or ground supported by air attack coming from Lebanon as the Syrian war may decide that involving Israel would actually alter the inevitable breakup of the former nation of Syria. That makes it imperative that Israel end the games and simply declare the Oslo Accords in all of its mutated and contorted forms dead from this day forth. Those not connected to violence or terrorism will be permitted to remain but the higher officials will need to find a new home most likely in Europe who appeared to love them and support their hatreds of Israel. Europe is in the state of taking in all the Islamic refugees they are capable, or almost as many as offered, so a few hundred more should not even be noticed except for the media swarm asking pointed questions such as are they planning on a return, will they take their complaints to the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, be assisting one of the various terrorist armies in order to gain favor when they face the Israelis without even a single aircraft, or the ever ubiquitous where are you going from here? I can picture Abbas as he responds to the media as pictured below, and wouldn’t it be the best answer he could ever give.

 

 

 

Any way one slices it, the Arabs have more than sufficient time, offers and Israeli concessions that if they have refused everything up until now, then it may as well be, “Hasta la vista, baby!” Oh, and whatever they say, “I’ll (we’ll) be back” would be the most unadvisable as such would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Warnings Right on Target

 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is not only right on target, but voicing warnings just in time and, if anything, not quite broad enough in his warnings by leaving out the United States. Still, the warnings by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks will fall on deaf ears except for those looking to fashion a strawman to destroy and ridicule by taking excerpts of his speech recently given at a conference in Herzliya where the most quoted line has been, “Jews have been faced with a choice: live in Europe and criticize Israel or be silent – or leave Europe.” These words likely were close to the warnings given by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the middle of the 1930s to his fellow Jews in Eastern Europe where he too warned that Jews should, “vacate Europe before Europe vacates you.” The first and foremost thing Jews must learn in this the Twenty-First Century as per the Gregorian Calendar and not to be compared to the Hebrew Calendar which is in year 5775, is that anti-Semitism has again morphed into yet another form, anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. Just as everything else has taken on new paradigms far more rapidly and continue to change, react, amend, adjust or simply seek a new name once the older names have been successfully attacked or revealed for the venomous toxin that it actually is, traditional anti-Semitism has taken repeatedly new avenues of assault on the Jews and Israel which all failed until they found the message which fits like Cinderella’s foot into the glass slipper but resembles more Cinderella’s wicked step sisters.

 

Anti-Semitism has a new face which has shapeshifted more times in the last twenty or so years than any other period of its horrific history. Perhaps a quick trip through the former faces of anti-Semitism from what has become its traditional and accepted definition on through its face changes and alterations will serve to set the direction of the various forms of anti-Semitism today and its most dangerous facets we face today. Throughout most of history anti-Semitism had one familiar face we could easily understand and which was sufficient to define anti-Semitism for over two-thousand years. So attached have the Jews and their surrounding society come to this simple definition, and sold on its validity, that they have allowed that mantle to be stolen by the Arab Palestinians in their war to eradicate Israel, as well as the remaining Jews worldwide. The traditional face of anti-Semitism, and the most recognizable form, has become the sole definition much of the world is willing to recognize. In ancient Egypt the original forms of anti-Semitism were forged through the centuries of oppressions. Back then it was simple, the Jews were the hated other who, because of their growing numbers, could from within the society cause its downfall so it was best to enslave them and thus gain complete control over them. This was the earliest face of anti-Semitism and a face we need remember, the face of the outsider whose great strength through numbers and potential, if not actual, military abilities if used against the Egyptians might assist an enemy to overwhelm and destroy Egypt. The face of the Jews, or Hebrews, Israelites, was that of a threat and thus anti-Semitism took the face of military might which potentially could upset any balance of power. This face lasted for close to a thousand years and was only put to sleep by the Roman Empire. There too the Jews were a military threat which might destroy the might of Rome from within as was proven by the near and actual success the Jews had had in their revolts against Roman rule which had thrown off the Roman yoke once and had almost a second time which had to be stopped, thus the Romans diffused their strength simply by dispersing the Jews to the far corners of the Roman Empire for two reasons; first to weaken the numbers of Jews in any one group blunting their military might and second to destroy their identity such that the Jew would fade into history eventually becoming just one additional insignificant set of tribes which history had swallowed.

 

The Roman dispersion led to the next face of anti-Semitism, the hatred of the other, the minority which acted oddly and had strange customs which they practiced almost in secretive meetings or in their homes always wary of prying eyes and always still the threat posed by the other in the larger society’s midst. This was the face of anti-Semitism in the entirety of Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea which became the Ottoman Empire starting with the fall of Constantinople in May of 1453 thus bringing the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire. Anti-Semitism then became split taking two very similar but definitively separate paths which would lead to the faux division in Judaism between the Ashkenazi Jews of Christian Europe and the Sephardim Jews who originated mostly in Spain under the rule of the Muslims who called the areas Andalusia, a name still used by Muslims adding it to Israel in order to blunt the valid claims of anti-Semitism when listing lands which must be returned to Islamic rule as they were once under Islam and thus must always remain under Islam. The Sephardim often was used to describe any Jew residing within Islamic lands and even including the Mizrahi Jews, Jews who resided in the Middle East never having lived in Europe, often depicted as the Ottoman Empire as it had taken the title of Caliphate despite their not ruling over all of the Arabian Peninsula nor over Persia (Iran) or the rest of the non-Arab Islamic lands reaching from Afghanistan to the Philippines. Despite the two largely separated Jewish entities, their treatments were very much the same under Christian and Islamic Rule. Both faced persecutions which forced them to pick their most cherished items, place them on a cart and, if among the fortunate, hook the cart to a draft animal (anything from a horse to a mule to even a cow) or taking the straps on oneself and leave trudging along until having put distance between themselves and the raging hordes finding some new and hopefully easier life starting anew. Under both the Jew faced limited or no recourse legally, was considered a second class (Dhimmi) citizen if permitted citizenship at all, was subjected to mistreatment and having items stolen often during the various pogroms, purifications, inquisitions, and forced conversions upon pain of death. Oddly, when life was near impossible under the Christians the Jews under Islam usually fared well and during times of great persecution and forced conversions under Islam making life unbearable or worse in the Islamic world, the Jews under Christianity had a better life. This imbalance has led to numerous false comparisons used to claim the Jews lived any better or worse life under the Muslims or the Christians.

 

This dichotomy continued until the Ottoman Empire, or what remained of it and had not been turned into a French, British or Italian colony, joining the losing side of World War I. World War I was a vital event in history as it was the war of Empires where the German Empire, Austria-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire allied and became known as the Central Powers, while the British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire, the Japanese and the Italians who were joined subsequently by the United States who formed the Entente Powers. The Jews were caught on both sides of this war and armies fighting along the trench warfare in Europe or the war across the shifting sands and barren terrain of the Middle East, the fighting often contained Jews on both sides shooting towards each other. The fact that the Jews did not band together to form a separate entity and fight on whichever side they chose and instead remained loyal to the nations or empire in which they lived put to lie a common claim leveled against Jews throughout history of being a threat and unfaithful citizen more dedicated to their Jewishness than to the parent nation in which they resided and thus untrustworthy and a threat yet these same hypocrites gave the Jews no credit subsequently either in World War II or after the forming of Israel and its War of Independence across the Islamic or Christian worlds. After World War I and partially due to the recognition of the past mistreatment of the Jews virtually in every corner of the globe, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour acting on his earlier November 2, 1917 letter to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, stating the need for the formation of a home for the Jews as their Zionist Movement was demanding since the formation of the First Zionist Congress was established in 1897 had begun to work on the dream of Theodor Herzl, who chaired this Congress, for the return of the Jews to Eretz Yisroel, their ancient homelands that the Balfour Declaration was made in 1917 and was subsequently included word-for-word in the Sèvres peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, the Mandate for Palestine and the San Remo Conference which itself was accepted by the Allied powers who incorporated the San Remo document into the Versailles Treaty as well as being adopted unanimously by the League of Nations which led to its inclusion in the United Nations Charter under Article 80 as well as the San Remo Conference being one of the stipulations of the Anglo-American Treaty of 1924 stipulating the United States support for the Balfour Declaration formalizing their acceptance and support for a Jewish State to be formed and the British Mandate as the vehicle for that formation. Finally in Mid-May of 1948 that Jewish State was formed. What was surprising is that many of the world leaders who originally and even today supported this movement and the State of Israel it begat did so because they believed in the Bible and that the Jews had been promised through a covenant with Hashem to receive the lands and that it was a holy act to assist in furthering the goal of establishing Israel. It made little difference that for the large part the Zionist movement was a secular movement, they supported it because of religious beliefs.

 

One might have thought that the formation of Israel and their subsequent surviving the assault by seven Arab Armies would have cemented the inviolable Jewish State and thus lead to better treatment of the Jews who remain outside of Israel in the Diaspora, but that was not the case. There had been numerous cases in Europe in the aftermath of World War II and despite the revealing of the horrific deprivations of the Holocaust and the subjugation and attempted genocidal removal of Jews, Roma, the mentally infirm, political opponents, Christians who spoke against the Nazis and anybody else considered unnecessary or inferior as the Holocaust was the result of the application of the theory of Eugenics taken to its most extreme. Eugenics was a theory which stated that the human race could be perfected through proper breeding and the elimination of those unable to provide for their own needs including the mentally infirm, the physically handicapped, Jews, non-Caucasians, political enemies, deviants of all kinds and anybody else deemed a danger to the perfection of society. These situations which were mostly ignored or covered up came out of an uncomfortable situations which arose as a result of the extermination of the Jews and others considered unfit to be included in the future of the world by the Nazis. When some survivors returned to their home towns they often found that there was another family living in what had been their house, operating their shops and that their place in their home town had been erased and then replaced. In some instances upon the return of the Jews to their towns and cities they were rounded up and disposed of rather than deal with the situation. These cases solved what was an embarrassing situation by turning it into a horrific situation and then simply disposed of the damning evidence and life returned to normal as if nothing had transpired. Some Jews were fortunate enough to have heard of these events and thus either started their life over from scratch or attempted to go to the lands under the British Mandate and be a part of the formation of the Jewish State. This caused them to run into another problem. The British were refusing to permit any mass emigration from war-torn Europe by Jews into the British Mandate lands as they had made an agreement with the Arabs that they would take all steps to assure the Jews not only never were permitted sufficient numbers for a majority but that they would remain an insufficient minority unable to make their Jewish state thus allowing the Arabs to not suffer the humiliation a Jewish State in the middle of the Arab world would cause. This was simply another form of anti-Semitism and possibly the first real effort to by policy commit oneself to applying an anti-Zionist agenda and in the open by the very people charged with facilitating the formation of the State of Israel. Eventually Israel was formed, the British left, the Jews poured into the land and today Israel is a shining example of what can be accomplished with effort and determination even in a state of constant threat of warfare and under the brutal and persistent assault by terrorists and proxy state actors financed and even trained by Iran amongst others.

 

Moving to the present, let us look to the latest transmogrification of anti-Semitism giving it a face almost unrecognizable from the traditional forms of anti-Semitism from throughout History. This all boils down to the Arab and Islamic desires to eliminate Israel using human rights and Palestinian suffering despite the majority of that suffering being self-imposed and not about their reforming their lost homeland. The Arab Palestinians have taken the slant as being the injured peoples whose lands were stolen by colonialists who now practice abject racism so severe as to deserve the title of Apartheid and are always just mere moments away from engaging in ethnic cleansing and genocide on a massive scale rivalling that of the Nazis, who they claim the Jews most resemble, while robbing the poor, unfortunate and helpless ‘Palestinians’ who are suffering vile oppressive policies which have caused a humanitarian crisis where their people are on the verge of suffering the worst human rights indignities and violations in the history of mankind, even worse and more of a threat than the Jews have ever known or suffered. The Arab efforts to destroy the Jewish State of Israel did not begin in 1948 with the invasion of the nascent Israel immediately after their declaring statehood, no, not at all, we should have been so lucky. Their murderous efforts to murder the Jewish State began even before the San Remo Conference was held and before there was even a British Mandate set in place to form the Jewish State. It began with the onset of Theodore Herzl and his declaration defining the idea of Zionism and the return of the Jews from everywhere in the world to their ancient homelands. The first pogroms began in 1920 and have continued at varying levels ever since. This has truly become the case in modern times as many of the Arab riots are actually scheduled for certain days of the week or hours of the day or where directed to riot that will gain coverage by the media arranged often by European leftist organizers. European organizers, instigators, activists, antagonists and a thesaurus full of other descriptors all meaning European anti-Semites who have learned the best way to fight the Jews is to destroy Israel and the assimilated Jews in the Western World will intermarry and die off and take Judaism with them. This is the secret which almost everybody involved in the ‘Peace Process’ are completely aware of on the side opposing the existence of Israel under the guise of supporting the Palestinian desire for the establishment of their own homeland. They are also aware that the Arabs who make up the so-called Palestinians are actually Iraqis, Syrian, Saudis, Jordanians, Sudanese, Yemenites, Lebanese, Turkish and Egyptians just like Yasser Arafat, the presumed first Palestinian which says a lot all by itself.

 

The best kept secret is the secret kept in plain sight which anybody is able to discover with minimal effort which lies there unspoken because nobody actually cares about the truth when the story is so much more enticing when the lies are the sacred beliefs. The fact is that Yasser Arafat could have had his state instead of the Oslo Accords. He knew if he had asked for what are now Area A, Area B both in Judea and Samaria, and Gaza; but it has never been about a Palestinian State, it is about the existence of the Jewish State, Israel. It gets awful repetitive but until the truth becomes part of the discussion the only thing we are guaranteed are more needless sufferings and deaths. The Arabs were first offered a state beside Israel when Israel was formed with the Arabs receiving half the land and the best of the lands with almost two-thirds of the Jewish lands being the Negev Desert, a story we covered back in September 18, 2011 with an article titled “The Real Truth About the 1967 Borders, Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab League” complete with a map and a short article compared to current writings. That was the partition plan which was unacceptable to the Arabs because the Jews got land as well instead of being permitted to live as Dhimmi second class serfs under their Arab masters. Arafat was offered what even United States President William Jefferson Clinton thought was what Arafat desired in Paris and Arafat walked out after shoving the papers sketching out the deal across the table and declared them unacceptable storming out to his waiting and engine running and driver holding its door open car. The reason President Clinton was so mistakenly sure the deal being offered was what Arafat wanted was simple, it was exactly what Arafat had demanded in private conference the day before and that President Clinton charmed Israeli Prime Minister Barak into giving Arafat everything President Clinton had believed Arafat desired when he had asked Arafat what would it take. Yasser Arafat could have saved the world so much wasted talent and efforts if he had simply come out and done the one thing he appeared to be incapable of doing, told the truth that the only thing he would accept was to sit in Jerusalem and view the corpse of the murdered state of Israel which then could do whatever it desired as long as it did not include Jews having self-rule even in an apartment building, let alone a nation of their own.

 

Yasser Arafat is gone and his protégé and second in command has taken the lead. Think of him as what he is, Arafat in a suit with a big smile that I feel is more of an evil grimace. That is about all that has changed along with the Cayman Island and Swiss bank account numbers where Abbas has stashed his likely billions of dollars, or maybe Euros. There is the construction company that Abbas is favorable to which is run by his three sons. They seem to get tons of contracts to build things which are paid for lavishly but ground is never broken, let alone two bricks laid one upon the other. Graft begins in the family, right? Abbas smiles because he knows his game of deceit will never be taken apart and the truth dragged from his tortured lips, as telling the truth would surely set his soul on fire as it would be a first which it likely be unable to handle. He lies to the west claiming he wants peace with Israel all the time defining peace for Israel as a final peace for Israel and every Jew within. He lies to the Arab Palestinians when he claims that he will get them their longed for victory over the Jews and they will be given the riches of Tel Aviv and the treasures the Jews are hoarding and keeping from them and that it is the Jews who have stolen their funding for building better schools, hospitals and roads. He never tells them about all the moneys he has stolen and the food and clothing and housing and infrastructure and a better and healthier life for all that his graft he and his ruling unelected cabal have stolen right out of their mouths. He lies to the Arab nations when he calls for their support and funding to help the unfortunate Palestinians in the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza which begs another question, why are there Arab Palestinians kept in refugee camps in the areas under Arab Palestinian autonomy? We all witnessed the concern the Arab Palestinian leadership has for their fellow Arab Palestinians when they did absolutely nothing, not a single word of protest, not one demand for the world to step in a save them, not a single offer to take them into the Arab Palestinian areas, not even the whisper of a care when the Arab Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp was overrun by ISIS and they were slaughtering Arab Palestinians because they did not consider the Arab Palestinians to be the right kind of Muslims. Of course it did not help that the Arab Palestinians supported Bashir al-Assad at the start of the Syrian catastrophe.

 

But Abbas and cabal need not worry as their secrets and lies are safe as they are the same secrets and lies the Europeans tell themselves. Abbas and too many in Europe believe the world should be rid of the Jew but as the better people they claim they only have problems with Israel. The Europeans want their Jews gone and they want them permanently dealt with and the Arab Palestinians are the perfect choice to support to achieve that goal. Europe can only hide their discontent for so long before the glossy cover of civility begins to tear and the raging beast of Jew hatred escapes into full view and then they quickly patch together their armor of correctness and claim no harm no foul, but there is harm and they know that as they perpetrate it at every turn, and the new anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism or anti-Israel politics. Daniel Bernard in 2001 while attending a party in a posh London event as French Ambassador to the United Kingdom was heard to state,

“All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?”

Then there was the conversation between Sarkozy and Obama during the G-20 conference in Cannes in 2011 where the following was overheard through an open microphone, if I remember correctly,

French President Sarkozy said: “Netanyahu, I can’t stand him. He’s a liar.”
United States President Obama snapped back, “You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day.”

These are just snippets of items overheard when the individuals believed they were amongst like-minded people and thus safe or alone and not realizing they were able to be heard and thus spoke freely. These little examples from amongst the elite and presumed cultured leaders of European society and these are their exact feelings according to themselves without any varnish or taint by anybody else. If this is how the leadership of Europe feels towards the Jewish nation, how can they be trusted to safeguard the Jews within their borders when they likely have little to no desire to do more than put on a show and curse the necessity to protect those peoples. Just as Ze’ev Jabotinsky before warned, “vacate Europe before Europe vacates you,” Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks warned, “Jews have been faced with a choice: live in Europe and criticize Israel or be silent – or leave Europe.”

 

Beyond the Cusp