Sunday, September 25, 2011

Matt 24 Watch, 138: Some poisonous roots of Middle East bitterness

As those who followed my remarks over the last week or so -- 

cf. here: 01, 2, 3, 4, 5 in light of a short Flash presentation here, timeline here, a synopsis here [cf. here for a view by a Messianic Jewish onlooker and here for audio of Hal Lindsey's astonishing Sept 23, 2011 report], and references here, here, here, here and here (also here) with here, here, here, here and here (cf. here, from p. 21 on) -- 

. . . will know, I am now openly of the view that:
. . . as of Mr Abbas' ill advised diplomatic gambit of Friday last that (absent a miracle; and, let us pray . . . ) we are now on a road to blood and ashes. 
Rivers of blood, and cities worth of ashes.

Why?

What poisonous roots of bitterness are driving such utter folly that so predictably -- absent a miracle -- will end in blood?

Part of it is obvious, as we can remind ourselves, yet again, of the Hamas [the Palestinian Arab faction that rules Gaza, which is a branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood] covenant, article 7, and how it ends with a citation of Mohammed's infamous Gharqad tree hadith:
. . . The Islamic Resistance [= HAMAS, an Arabic acronym]  Movement aspires to implement Allah's promise, whatever time that may take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until the Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them), until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: Oh Muslim! Oh Abdullah! [= servant/slave of Allah, a common Muslim name], there is a Jew behind me, come on and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
This is of course, blatant racialist hatred, of cousin for estranged cousin, like the similar, all too commonly heard reference to Jews as descendants of Apes and Pigs.

Such hate predictably leads to blood.

But, there is more. As John Hinderaker of Powerline notes:
Palestinian rejectionism is the fundamental barrier to peace. Let’s cite just one piece of evidence from the inexhaustible stock with which the Palestinians provide us on almost a daily basis. This is from Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, on May 27, 2011:
The Zionists must acknowledge publicly, in front of the world, that the Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land, upon whose ruins arose the colonialist settler Zionist plan that settles and expels, represented by the Israeli apartheid state. That which occurred two thousand years ago (i.e., the Jewish/Israeli presence in the land), assuming that it is true, represents in the book of history nothing more than invention and falsification and a coarse and crude form of colonialism.
We can safely take it that this is taken as "gospel" truth by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs, and that this is what drives much of the feeling in the West that Israel's very existence is dubious.

Yet, it can be easily shown that this is an obvious tissue of poisonous falsehoods. Turnabout, false accusation propaganda based on big lies, in fact. But, when such poisonous lies are repeated endlessly in a loud drumbeat, they often drown out the common-sense corrections that would expose them; and in the polarised atmosphere thereby created, lies are often perceived as truths that justify even desperate measures. Perhaps, that is why it is reported that statistical surveys show that an overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs approve of suicidal terrorist bombings of Israeli civilians. (I have seen numbers as high as 78%.)

Let us therefore take these vicious lies apart, step by step:
The Zionists must acknowledge publicly, in front of the world, that the Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land . . . That which occurred two thousand years ago (i.e., the Jewish/Israeli presence in the land), assuming that it is true, represents in the book of history nothing more than invention and falsification
  1 --> As Mr Netanyahu pointed out before the UN, the very name, Jew, means one from the region of Judaea; in turn a Latinised form of the name Judah, i.e. the land is named after the leading Southern Tribe of the Israelite nation which derives from one of Jacob's twelve sons, 3800 or so years ago.

2 --> Jewish presence in the land as a native and settled population can be archaeologically documented to 3,000+ years ago -- the time of David and Solomon, and we have no serious reason (apart from selective hyperskepticism) to doubt the traditions that go back another 1,000 years. Here is just one case, that shows the existence of an Ethical Monotheistic Israelite kingdom worshipping The Lord, c. 1,000 BC:

Khirbet Qeiyafa, Israel, Jan 7, 2010: 
Paleo Hebrew inscription c. 1,000 BC

English translation of the deciphered
[Hebrew] text, per Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa:

1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow]
/ Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant
 / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the
hands of the king [i.e. David or Solomon].
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort
the stranger.
3 --> The Babylonian exile is also archaeologically documented [down to rations for a captive king], as is the resettled population in the time up to the days of Christ. For just one key example, the Dead Sea Scrolls are from this era and show the deep rootedness of Jewish faith, culture and people in the land.

4 --> That first exile is also the root-cause of the Jewish global dispersion; which we can read about as incidental reference after reference, in a source as easily accessible as the New Testament. (Just read the Acts, which are well known on a century of archaeological investigations, to be quite sound as history.)

5 --> Of course in the aftermath of the three uprisings of the Jews against their Roman overlords between 66 and 135 AD [Judaea, Alexandria/Cyrenica and even Mesopotamia, and Judaea again], Jews were in large part exiled from the land. But as soon as they could thereafter, they came trickling back in, and Jews (though often oppressed) were never completely uprooted from the land.

6 --> So, there is nothing to "assume" about the historic Jewish presence in the land. It is a fact, one only denied by those who would usurp the patent legitimacy of the Jewish claim to be rooted in the soil of Eretz Israel. A denial that, sadly, we can see from the Gharqad Tree hadith, is plainly linked to genocidal intent.

7 --> So, since this is the more or less official voice of the Palestinian Authority speaking, it is the Palestinian Authority that "must acknowledge publicly, in front of the world" the patent and irrefutable truth about the history of the Land.
the Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land, upon whose ruins arose the colonialist settler Zionist plan that settles and expels, represented by the Israeli apartheid state
8 --> This is a poisonous turnabout of the truth, especially the willfully libellous abuse of the term "apartheid." First, the dominant Arab presence in the Land traces to the Arab-Islamic conquest from 635 AD or so. So, while Palestinian Arabs and others who have settled in intervening years -- Ciracassians, Greeks, Iranians [The World Headquarters of the Bahai Faith is in Haifa, Israel, not Iran] and many others -- have some legitimate claims to being of the land, their presence in no way can erase the history we have briefly reviewed.

9 --> Similarly, as Ms Rose and I have surveyed elsewhere:
By the late 1800’s, the geographic region of Western/Cis-Jordanian Palestine was largely ruinate land. From the 1893 Ottoman Census and Vital Cuinet’s independent 1896 Geographical work, Syrie, it also had a relatively light population: ~ 92,000 “Arabs” (including significant numbers of non-Arab Muslims and Christians[23]) in the ~ 8,000 sq. mi. areas that became modern Israel.[24] The rest of Cis-Jordanian Palestine had another 300 – 400,000 “Arabs.” At this time, there were also ~ 60,000 Jews in the area West of the Jordan[25]; who had their own established communities and had recovered Hebrew as their mother-tongue.


The resulting overall situation, circa 1902, has been summed up by Sir William Ramsay, a main founder of the disciplines of Biblical Archaeology and Geography [and an independent, highly qualified witness writing some 20 years after resettlement and rebuilding had begun, seven years before the founding of Tel Aviv, now the largest city in Israel, on coastal sand dunes]:
The scenery, more especially in the central and southern regions, is . . . devoid of the rich beauty of high cultivation and productiveness. The hills as a rule are bald, bare and featureless. The terraces by which in happier times the soil was supported on the slopes have almost everywhere been destroyed, and the soil has been washed down into the hollows, where it impedes the outflow of the waters and produces marshes [NB: malarial]. Thus the land is desolate and unattractive. In general the slopes and hillsides are a wilderness of stones and rocks, where a few scanty shrubs can barely find a hold, and the glens a wilderness of marsh, with a scanty rim of cultivable land above the level of the bare rocks, just sufficient to grow food for the miserable and scanty population. [The Education of Christ. New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing: 1981 (orig. c. 1902), p. 78. Explanatory note on Malaria and italics added.]
This sad spectacle had been created by centuries of misrule, debt- and disease- ridden tenant farming operated by absentee landowners, and a resulting largely landless and migrant peasantry preyed upon by their overlords and semi-nomadic bandits from the deserts to the East.


The transformation to the land we now see was in the main due to the Zionist resettlement from the 1870’s on, whereby Jews bought land that often had largely been dismissed as useless (at highly inflated prices) from the wealthy absentee Effendi landowners -- then restored it to agricultural production. In the process, they injected large quantities of capital and skill, thus creating employment opportunities that attracted waves of Jewish, Arab and other immigrants from the region and globally. This process was then accelerated by the post World War I collapse of the defeated Ottoman Empire; which led to the creation of the League of Nations Mandate Palestine[26] (i.e. the British Mandate), which was intended to promote Jewish immigration without prejudice to the existing Arab population. [Cf. Peters, 2002, pp. 137 – 359.]


Associated with this League Mandate[27], Dr Chaim Weizmann [later, first President of Israel] and Emir Feisal Hussein of the Hejaz (S.W. Arabia) had negotiated a Versailles Treaty side agreement[28] to promote mutually supportive Jewish and Arab nations that would help modernize and develop the region. However, in the Hejaz, the al Husseinis were defeated by the Saudi family; and in Palestine, the aggressive, violently anti-Jewish policy of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem prevailed. So, by 1926 – 29, Abdullah Hussein had been settled as ruler of the eastern ¾’s of the Mandate in Transjordan (a 38,000 sq, mi. region; from which Jews were banned) and Feisal as King of Iraq. Sadly, violence also swept the land, leading to the massacres of the ancient Jewish populations of Jerusalem and Hebron.


Consequently, over the next twenty years, Jewish immigration was significantly hampered [in the teeth of the rising anti-Semitic tide of Hitler’s Germany] and unofficial Arab immigration was a strongly material demographic trend in the now truncated Mandate Palestine. [Cf. Peters, pp. 196 – 412.[29]] As one result, the Middle East was deprived of the talent and treasure of many of the Jews who subsequently perished in the Nazi death camps. Then also, when the British surrendered the Mandate in the late 1940’s, Transjordan became the nation of Jordan [briefly, “Palestine”] in 1946 and the UN in 1947 proposed a partition of the cis-Jordanian region into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem and environs being an International city.


The Jews accepted, and the Arab League rejected the UN vote; declaring intent to annihilate the Jews. Thus, within 24 hours of Israel’s independence on May 14, 1948, the 600,000 Israeli Jews faced invasion from five Arab armies, some of them much better equipped than the Haganah, the Jewish part-time militia. However, contrary to the expectations of many, Israel survived. As a result of the conflict, there was an exchange of refugee populations: 400 – 600,000 Arabs [under a unique criterion that 2 years of settlement in Palestine qualified one as a refugee], and 620,000 Jews from Arab lands who were resettled in Israel.[30] [An additional 200,000 oriental Jews settled elsewhere in the world.]


The Jewish refugees were welcomed and absorbed by Israel, becoming the largest single sector of the population today. However, the Arab refugees in the main were not similarly accepted by the Arab countries [with the major exception of Jordan], and provided the nucleus for today’s Palestinian refugee population. Three major wars, terrorism and two uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza (and the two Gulf Wars) have dominated the subsequent history . . .
10 --> It is a major wave of investment and resettlement in the face of all odds, driven precisely by love of longed-for homeland in the teeth of all economic and financial good sense, that created the prosperous and fruitful land we know today out of denuded hills, swampy malarial marshes and desertified, ruinate land.

11 --> This investment and settlement then attracted waves of further settlers, Jews who heard that the land was open for return from exile, and Arabs and others seeking economic opportunity.

12 --> Nor is this mere, easily brushed aside speculation; it is a matter of documented, state-paper fact that Feisal Hussein [later, King of Iraq], a leader of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans under Lawrence of Arabia, in signing the January 1919 London Versailles treaty side agreement between the emergent Jewish and Arab nations [please, pause and read], sought to build mutually supportive nations out of the lands liberated from the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, he asked for the Jews to help with surveys to help identify Arab development prospects.

13 --> So, at most, we have two competing national settlements of a land where both parties have plainly legitimate claims. The reasonable thing to have done, if they could not live together in a common polity, would have been to come to a compromise. That is exactly what happened in 1946 - 48, and the UN partition should have worked, if both sides had been willing.

14 --> That would have averted BOTH populations of Middle East refugees arising from the conflict that we instead had, the Arab one we all hear about regularly, and the LARGER Jewish one that was resolved by the common-sense solution: resettlement in Israel. But, the Arab League and the Palestinian Arabs resorted to war, breathing threats of massacre of the Jews [who had just lost 6 millions to the Nazis . . . ] and inviting Arab residents to leave the intended zone of apocalyptic slaughter -- echoes of the Gharqad Tree hadith are palpable! -- for a little while until the Jews were wiped out or exiled. Of course, the Jews, against all odds, prevailed and won their independence at a stiff price in blood.

15 --> Then, on an openly declared intent to create a running sore and cause for wars against he Jews, the Arabs refused to allow a general resettlement of the Arab refugees. This has now been brought to an absurd situation where the Palestinian Arab state's ambassador to Lebanon has declared that the refugees from not only the 132 countries around the world, but also those in the West Bank etc. -- 45% of the population, will not be permitted to become citizens of the Palestinian Arab state they envision.

16 --> So, we are obviously back to the Gharqad tree hadith attitude: murderous, genocidal hatred to be sustained until mass murder can be carried out. Thus, we come tothe last two key lies:


the Jews have no connection to the Palestinian Arab land, upon whose ruins arose the colonialist settler Zionist plan that settles and expels, represented by the Israeli apartheid state. That which occurred two thousand years ago (i.e., the Jewish/Israeli presence in the land), assuming that it is true, represents in the book of history nothing more than invention and falsification and a coarse and crude form of colonialism.
17 --> If you did not know the truth, you would not realise from this assertion that the 20% of Israeli Citizens who are Arabs, have full rights [a better condition than ANY other Arab population in the Middle East], and have sat in the parliament, in the Cabinet and on the Supreme Court. Only, they are not subject to conscription into the army, except for the Druze and the Ciracassians, who volunteered to be conscripted. Many Bedouin also serve on a voluntary basis in the Israeli army, border police etc.

18 --> Under Apartheid, Black South Africans could not vote, and faced many restrictions of rights by law. This abuse of the term "apartheid" is a gross and wicked fabrication and a willful distortion of what happened in both South Africa and Israel. Those who knowingly use it should be ashamed of themselves, and those taken in by it should do their homework before tossing around incendiary false accusations.

19 --> Yes, Arabs in Israel and the territories often do face police and military restrictions, connected to the terrorism campaigns of suicide bombings and the like. Yes, to prevent attacks, a fence was built along the Gaza border and along the West Bank border, with walls in sections where sniper shootings were a persistent problem. But, whose fault is that? 

20 --> As for the notion that he Israeli, Jewish presence in the Land is a colonialist enterprise, let us for the moment accept the genetically proved false assertion that the Ashkenazi Jews are not "real" Jews. Then, their claim to legitimacy in the land is that of settled immigrants who have invested a century of treasure and lives into building it up. Such "settlers" should be WELCOMED, not hated and murdered.

21 --> And that is before we look at the actual genetic evidence, which is consistent with populations of Jewish men settling in areas of exile, marrying local women, and then forming an essentially closed community; to the point where certain genetic defects are a problem. The Ashkenazi are Jews, and what is more the genetic evidence points to their being close relatives of the Arabs, and perhaps even closer relatives of the Kurds. Who last, just happen to be in the right place to be in significant part descended from the exiles of the Northern ten Tribes.

22 --> Going beyond that, we have to face the implication of 870,000 exiles from lands all over the Middle East, some from populations that were 2,600 years old. Of these 600,000 were resettled in Israel as irreconcilable refugees.

23 --> So, even granting that there were a similar number of Palestinian Arab refugees, that exchange of refugees immediately and irrefutably establishes the legitimacy of Israel as a land of resettlement of refugees.

24 --> Mr Abbas knows all of this, or should and could easily know all of this. What is his response? As Ynet news summarises:
On Friday afternoon, Abbas said he was adamant about not recognizing Israel as the Jewish state.

"They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state," Abbas said in a meeting with some 200 senior representatives of the Palestinian community in the US, shortly before taking the podium and delivering a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. 
25 --> In short, intransigence, in the teeth of easily accessible facts, and accompanied by the sort of turnabout false accusations above.
____________

 That sort of venom has predictable, bloody consequences.


The only way I know of to avert such, would be for a critical mass of leading voices in the world to correct the falsehood, and call Mr Abbas et al to account and apologise then make amends, diplomatically and culturally.

That way, we might have a basis for building a real peace, instead of using the Oslo process as simply a stage to what seems to have been the true, hidden agenda all along: destruction of Israel, and massacre or exile of its population. As had been attempted in 1948 and in 1967.

Which is exactly what kept being whispered in corners and as has occasionally leaked out into the public, for those of us who were paying attention.

Absent this, the only other means I can tell for averting rivers of blood would be for the US to station a significant number of troops in the key places in Israel on a permanent basis, and announce that an attack on Israel and/or these troops would be taken as an attack on the USA, to be retaliated against, with full and prompt force.

Just as, what has kept the peace in Korea for sixty years.

Neither is at all remotely likely to happen. Sadly.

The likely outcome is highly predictable: rivers of blood and cities burned to ashes. END
________

F/N, Sept 26: The Australian reports that  Iran may be six months from a nuclear weapon, i.e. the clock on the bomb is now ticking:
IRAN may be just six months away from developing a nuclear bomb, despite international attempts to thwart the program through sanctions and cyber attacks.


Two years after an underground installation in the city of Qmo was revealed in a joint press conference by US President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former British prime minister Gordon Brown, Iran has significantly advanced its uranium enrichment program at the site . . . .

"We believe if Iran broke out now they could have a bomb in six months," said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who runs the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "They've done this right in front of our faces."

Iran has ignored four sets of UN Security Council resolutions since 2006 calling on it to cease enriching uranium. With the world's attention diverted by the Arab Spring, Tehran has pressed ahead, overcoming delays caused by Stuxnet, a mysterious computer worm that made centrifuges malfunction.

Greg Jones, a defence analyst at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre, calculates that Iran could now produce a bomb within 62 days . . . [more]

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