Problems In The Levant;
Palestine, Israel, et al
By Andrew Meblin, copyright November 27, 2023
THE PROBLEM
When it comes to compassion for refugees Abdel Fatah al-Sisi just might be worse than former President Donald John Trump. As more than a million of his fellow Arabs flee the wrath of the Israeli military, al-Sisi, the president of Egypt is adamant that only a trickle of refugees can pass through the border wall with Gaza. Does that sound familiar to complaints about former President Trump?
Just for comparison, the number of people crossing into the United States over our southern border in the last 12 months is equal to or greater than the entire population of Gaza. As many of you know, I support controlled immigration, but unlike al-Sisi, I am not in any position of power with which I can implement policy. The US needs more legal immigrants, and we need less illegal immigration. People seeking to enter the country should be vetted to keep out criminals – we have enough of those already – however, legal immigration should be increased.
But this is not about migration into the United States; rather it is about that situation in The Levant that is threatening to ignite a far greater conflict. We know the Israelis are a bit intolerant of threats to their sovereignty, as expounded upon in a previous newsletter, About Jews and Israel. The essence of that was Jews had been surviving for centuries by not resisting superior force, and then Hitler attempted to exterminate them. The ones who survived by escaping into the forests of Eastern Europe, or who outlasted the death camps were genetically predisposed to resisting oppression. Those are the ones who passed on their DNA to the current population of Israel. Instead of natural selection, it was Nazi-selection that made Israel what it is today. Furthermore, after surviving the dreadful years of 1936 to 1945, few Jews wanted to place their lives in the hands of other countries’ governments.
Most Americans were thoroughly shocked and revolted by the images or descriptions of the recent attacks on Israelis near Gaza. Though some military bases were targeted, the brunt of the onslaught was directed toward civilians on kibbutzim (communal farms). Civilians are not normally considered to be valid military targets, but there is really nothing valid about the Hamas “militants” who shot grandmothers, sliced open the womb and removed a living mother’s baby and then shot it. Nothing valid about men who decapitate infants or burn them alive. Nothing valid about “soldiers” who drag a young woman in blood soaked pants about by her hair. All of this was featured on video recorded by the “militants.”
Some people have argued that the majority of Gaza Palestinians do not condone the actions of Hamas in Israel. Remember the PLO – the Palestinian Liberation Organization? Yasser Arafat’s PLO grew a more militant “wing” named Al Fatah. Fatah controls the West Bank, and used to govern Gaza, but was voted out. According to some polls, a slim majority supports Hamas, though some polling tells us that Fatah is the preferred organization. The newspaper The Hill says both organizations are totalitarian entities that torture opponents. Neither Fatah nor Hamas have held elections in many years. Conversely, Hamas’ “candidate” Ismail Haniyeh is preferred over Fatah’s Mahmoud Abas percent to 38 percent, so we truly don’t know if the average Palestinian supports the slaughter of Israeli civilians or not.
The Israeli Defense Forces strongly advised Gazans to vacate the northern part of the Strip, but Hamas was said to be prohibiting that migration, until it could use its civilian population as a human shield as both fled south. Egypt’s government is opposed to allowing Palestinians into the Sinai. Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon are all Arab nations with Muslim majorities. Can’t Palestinians ‘be welcomed in those states and allowed to prosper’? We live in a post-truth world now, so it is anyone’s guess as to what the actual situation in Gaza might be. But what about Hamas?
Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya - Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement – was formed in 1987 by Muslim Brotherhood cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian residing in Egypt. The Hamas Covenant is explicit in its call for the control of Israel/Palestine/The Levant by Arab Muslims who adhere strictly to the Quran. The roll of women is to produce men and guide and educate them in the proper ways of Islam.
From Article Eighteen of the Covenant, “Woman in the home of the fighting family, whether she is a mother or a sister, plays the most important role in looking after the family, rearing the children and imbuing them with moral values and thoughts derived from Islam.”
The charter describes the enemies of Mohammed as having seduced modern women into straying from Islam, and specifically calls out the Freemasons and Rotary Clubs among others as engaging in seditious activities against the Islamic state.
One man in my circle of friends dismisses this as mere rhetoric, preferring to believe there is a two-state solution, meaning that Israel should surrender some of the land it took after four Arab countries invaded in in 1967. He thinks that Israel will find peace and an end to the resistance if it makes adjustments to the borders. This will require the relocation of perhaps a million or more people. But will Iran approve?
“Iran?” you ask.
Iranians are not Arabs, but most are Muslim, and the government of Iran hates Israel. Some have said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard consulted with and trained Hamas killers, and gave final approval to the attack on Israel. The purpose, people guess, was to disrupt the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Why would the invasion of a handful of Israeli kibbutzim affect that? Because Israel’s response was sure to be publicized worldwide, causing an immediate pause in the normalization effort.
It worked. Influencers, politically and journalistic, urged Israel to operate with restraint. Others called for a “ceasefire,” but, as Jack Armstrong pointed out, there was a ceasefire in place on October 6th, and then Hamas soldiers broke through the border barriers to rape, torture, kidnap, and kill civilians. Now a ceasefire is supposed to go back into affect?
The rhetoric from American college campuses implies that our next generation of leaders wants to “decolonize” the world of European influence. The enthusiasm with which Progressives embrace the cause of ultra-conservative Muslims is puzzling. Imagine a Pride parade in Teheran, in a country where gays are put to death. Do they think trans-rights exist in Gaza? Ask yourself, why such a seemingly blind embrasure of a culture of intolerance by the supposed defenders of tolerance?
THE HISTORY
Before The Great War (sometimes called World War One), Jewish leaders in Europe began urging the recreation of a homeland for Jews. After 2000 years of one-and-off oppression and torment at the hands of European tyrants and their gentile citizens, the Zionist movement advocated for a homeland in the land where Judaism had originated. Jews began populating the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, in many cases living side by side with Arab farmers and herders.
Then, nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and alliances dragged Europeans and others into war, and British diplomats over-extended themselves. The Asia Minor Agreement, the McMahon-Huessein Correspondence, and The Balfour Declaration were three foreign policy positions in conflict with each other.
The Balfour Declaration stated (1917), “The four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
Anti-Zionists will point out that these beliefs and desires were expressed to Walter Rothschild, for release to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. As in the past, Jews of Europe had amassed some wealth, and during times of war, governments are wont to borrow to pay for munitions and more. Whether Britain was succumbing to a Jewish conspiracy, or merely engaged in a fight to the death with Germany and Austria-Hungary, is a question pondered only by a few.
After The Great War, in which Ottoman Empire had sided with Germany, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French president Georges Clemenceau divided up the territories of the Ottoman Empire. This had been planned during the war in the Asia Minor Agreement between France and Britain, and agreed to by Russia. Thus, three colonial powers took the lands of another colonial power and governed them. The French snatched Lebanon, Syria, southeastern Turkey, and northern Iraq, Britain kept control of Jordan, Kuwait, southern Iraq, Kuwait, and Israel, and the Russians grabbed Istanbul, and Armenia.
When the Asia Minor Agreement, also called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, after the men who had crafted it, was made public by the Bolsheviks in 1917, British foreign officers were embarrassed, but Arabs, who had sided with the British in fighting against the Turks, felt extremely betrayed. T. E. Lawrence (AKA Lawrence of Arabia) had rallied the various Arab groups to fight in exchange for an Arab national home, Greater Syria. This marked a major shift in Arab-British relations. Beginning in 1923, Israel was known as Mandatory Palestine, after a mandate or obligation of the Brits to govern the region.
Years of neglect by the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire had left the region somewhat backwards, by the standards of the 1920’s. In the years after the first war there came an increase in Jewish migration from Europe. Jews began regroup in the Levant and some local Arabs in Mandatory Palestine resisted Jewish immigration, with violence and theft. Jews fought back. At least three factions of pro-Zionists arose; The Haganah, commissioned only to act in self-defense of Jewish settlements and in cooperation with British authorities; the Irgun, an underground army of sorts who engaged in unprovoked violence against anti-Zionist Arabs; and the LEHI (Fighters for Freedom of Israel) also known as the Stern Group engaged in assassination of British leaders who opposed Zionism or sided with Arabic leaders.
With the establishment of Israel, the Irgun and LEHI groups faded in importance and were disavowed by Israeli leadership, though the leader of Irgun, Menachem Begin attained positions of great power in Israel. The existence of Irgun and LEHI are considered a black-mark on the history of Israel. Some people, perhaps, view the more violent groups as Americans do the Sons of Liberty, and the Minutemen of the War of Independence, but others see them as an equivalent to ISIS. Indeed, ISIS or ISIL as it is now known, has expressed as a goal the elimination of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced in the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq, “this blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy.”
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