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Thursday, March 27, 2014

Is It Man's Power Ruling the World ?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                           

                                                           Israel's IDF soldier from Ethiopia

The world is divided into power groupings.  There's the Middle East with the Arabs in contention with each other.  Power struggles there have been going on forever since the dawn of time.  Europe has been a seat of power struggles; England and France, Germany, Russia and eastern Europe.  There was Ireland's religious war between the Catholics and the Presbyterians.  The United States rose to be the most powerful after WWII, but like all powers, has slipped.  The Orient is vying for power with China in the lead. North Korea is vying with South Korea.  Japan was top dog not long ago.  Viet Nam was the scene of a very long war involving many countries.   What it takes to be powerful is money, population numbers and a powerful leader.                                                                    
                                                Moshe Dayan, 1967

The Middle East power struggles have always been happening.  King David's Empire of Israel goes back to 1010 BCE to 970 BCE.  They were overrun by the Assyrians in 721 BCE and then the Babylonians in 597 and 586 BCE.  Finally they lost Jerusalem in 70 CE to the Roman Empire.  Other powerhouses  were the Sabaeans and the Nabataeans, the Byzanatines and the Sasanids, the Umayyad Dynasty and the Abbasid Empire.   Then the Crusaders entered the competition from the West.  Finally there was the Ottoman Empire ruling for 400 years.  Mohammad had been born in 570 and died in 632 bringing an army of men demanding converts to Islam.  They had power and swept over much of the world.

Lee Smith wrote in "The Strong Horse, Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations in 2010 of all this power.  He concluded that the Arab world works from clashing with each other, not that anger and disorder is caused by the clash of civilizations between East and West.  Look at Iran and Iraq's war, for example.  Right now Iran and Saudi Arabia are at odds; two powers in competition-Sunni and Shi'a.
Power struggles right now are centered in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians.  The two Palestinian terror groups, Fatah, the new name for the PLO, and Hamas are having another power struggle of their own going on at the same time.  Fatah has gleaned much money from all the other Arab leaders in the Middle East and they control the official Palestinian authority power.  That money has not gone to the general community at large, but to individuals, for they have not been able to pay their utility bills to Israel who has been supplying them with such things as electricity, etc.
                                                                         
 It's now been found out that there are 1,700 millionaires or more among the Hamas terrorists living in "Horribly oppressed and besieged Gaza."  You can call them "welfare" millionaires.  This comes to us from no other than Abbas himself of Fatah.  He's telling the public that Hamas is corrupt and doesn't represent the Palestinian people.  For once he maybe telling the truth.  He and the rest of the Fatah faction were in Gaza also but were thrown out when Hamas got the power through elections demanded by Obama, and of course these elections may not have been very truthful.  How much it resembles other places like Russia in an election where people are forced to vote one way or risk their life is the question.  Sometimes I've even wondered about our elections in the USA!   Abbas explained that Hamas imposes steep taxes on its citizens for goods entering from Egypt and Israel, and that this money finds its way into Hamas officials' pockets.

And of course we know that the tunnels some poor slaves are digging for Hamas allow entrance of rockets, mortars and missiles that are to be fired against Israel, another donation, no doubt of encouraging anti-Semitic countries.  If they're short of the actual ammunition, they make them  with materials they sneak in through those tunnels.  That's why they love flotillas.  They may be able to get in weapons to use against Israel that way, too.   They don't really have a need for other things because they're being supplied by Israel daily.  .

Abbas must be feeling slighted.  Even Arafat was a millionaire many times over.  His PLO group didn't get all the money donated, either.  Money from both groups have come in through foreign aid, black marketeering and corruption.  Abbas has a son who lost his monopoly on imported cigarettes when Hamas took over Gaza.  "Abbas said that 800 millionaires and 1,600 near-millionaires control the tunnels at the expense of both Egyptian and Palestinian national interests."    So now we know that tunnels have created over 1,000 millionaires.  Gaza also has huge construction industry, luxury hotels and all the other amenities of a nice city.
I wonder if they have to pay the dissidents who are anti-Israel activists claiming aloud that Gaza is a concentration camp.  They don't know about the 5-star hotels there.  I've seen many a time the beautiful outdoor shuks with all the fruits and veggies that look like those  in Israel, Italy and even the USA who are into such things today.  I've seen all the Israeli trucks driving with daily with supplies.  They're not hurting, except from their own leaders as usual.

    At the eve of the "final solution" to the "Jewish Problem," the Mufti and Adolf Hitler                                                                 confer in Berlin, November 21, 1941.
Ruth R. Wisse wrote in Jews and Power in 2007 about the Jews who lost all their power in 70 CE and have been powerless for almost 2,000 years.  "They have been exiled, landless, stateless, abused and slaughtered -6 million of them.  She explains how a "creative remnant of Jews managed to survive despite being dependent on anti-Semitic countries they lived in and then were exiled out of so many times.  Their powerlessness often had to turn into appeasement and accommodation while relying on the hope of a divine justice".  She wonders if we have matured enough since we were altered by an accustomed and venerable Jewish psychology.  Michael Oren wrote of her book that "we are in a deep political and moral confusion and that her book is a cogent call for clarity."  .She covers the Jewish world from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords.  She offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power.  Religious Jews thought that upholding the covenant with G-d was a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe and that Jews could pursue their religious mission on a moral plain to be the light for the world and to show people how to live ethically and morally.  We were actually politically weak which increased our vulnerability to be scapegoated and the violence from power-seeking nations have cast Jews as perpetual targets.

  I opened to page 161 and read:  "The special ingredient of Palestinian nationalism that really does set it apart from, say, Jordanian nationalism, or that of Syria or Egypt, is its basis in antagonism to Israel and its usurpation of Jewish symbols, history and identity."  She goes on to say that for Palestinians, their important date of the calendar to commemorate is May 14, 1948, the day of Israel's founding.  On this date they have borrowed the Jewish history of the destruction of the Temple and  the mass murder of the Jews of Europe in the Holocaust to make this date their nakba, their Palestine's endless Holocaust to play on their emotions.   They go on and on about it.
                                                                         
                                     IDF on the way to the front in one of the wars

The Jews of Israel were finally in their own land again, not thinking of power of ancient days, but of survival.  They could only think for 15 minutes and were attacked by all the Arabs of the Middle East in the War of Independence which really started on 29 November 1947 when the partition of their land was announced and the Arabs refused and their anger ignited.  Armistice Agreements were signed in 1949.  Israel had won.  They had their power back!  They were tested again in the Sinai War that lasted from 29 October until 5 November 1956.  They were tested again in the Six Day War from 5 to 11 June 1967 where they knew they had their power back because the odds were so against them, and they inadvertently regained lost land from 1948 back in their power again just by defending themselves with fervor, for each time they know it's win or die.Jews have nowhere to run.  They faced more testing of their power in The War of Attrition
 that lasted from 1968 until the cease-fire on 7-8 August 1970, and then again in the War of 1973. More testing came on Israel's most holy day, the day all Jews can be found in a synagogue, Yom Kippur, asking forgiveness while fasting.  It was October 6, 1973  and this Yom Kippur War  lasted until a cease fire was called on October 22nd.  In this war Syria alone lost 4,000 men, 1,100 tanks and 168 planes.

In 1982 Palestinians had been attacking from the north in Lebanon and Syria and finally Israel went up, led by General Sharon, with Lebanon's Christian militia to stop the shooters.  The Christians took the lead and slaughtered the Palestinian terrorists on their own accord, but Sharon had to take the blame, but he insisted he had no idea of what they were going to do when they said they could put a stop to it and wanted the honor.  I think this taught Israel not to count on others to do their work.  At other times when the UN force was there to protect Israel, they left the minute the Arab leader asked them.

Tiny Israel is sitting on only 8,000 square miles and has just 7.7 or 8 million people now of which 1.7 million are Arabs.  It's the smallest state with the smallest population and has power. It's up against 22 Arab nations that are nearby while 48 Muslim majority countries are always siding with them and ready to help against Israel.

 Israel  has a powerful army, and powerful intelligence.  Jews in the world make up only 1/4 of 1% of the world population.  Jews have won 40 times more than expected for Nobel prizes from 1901 to 1990 by winning 160 of  the 89 years.  They are 1st or 2nd in being the highest start up nation in businesses.  Israel helps their friends in all matters that they may know more about and can help; in agriculture and defense.  They produce ideas such as inventions in medicine.  I could go on and on. They may be small but offer much to the world.   They do this when everyone is against them, so suffer from physical as well a psychological abuse from the world.  Israel does not get its power from oil like their Arab neighbors.  It's had to use their brains to have power. I can say that most of Israel, at least, still is dependent on the feeling that G-d is with them if they follow G-d's expectations.  All religions lay  money down on betting that the mashiah is on THEIR side at the end of times.  Who will have the power then?  All?  None?  One?
                         
Resource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/palestinian-authority-1700-hamas-millionaires-in-gaza/#.UzPWebCqoHw.facebook
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3621090,00.html
Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem
Middle East-Past & Present by Yahya Armajani and Thomas M. Ricks, textbook in PSU.
http://judaism.about.com/od/americanjewry/a/accomplishments.htm

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