Posted on 07/07/2009 6:55:16 AM PDT by SJackson
The Middle East is a hard place for idealists, especially for the Western liberal variety. My feelings of optimism for the region have been ground down over time like rocks under slow-moving glacial ice.
Last time I visited Israel, at the end of the Gaza war this past January, I met Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh. He sounded no less despondent than the Israelis I spoke to. “Listen,” he said. “We must stop dreaming about the New Middle East and coexistence and harmony and turning this area into Hong Kong and Singapore...I don't see a real peace emerging over here. We should stop talking about it.”
That’s what I hear from almost everyone I speak to over there now, whether they’re Muslims, Christians, Jews, or whatever. Arabs, Israelis, Kurds – most seem to have a dim view of the future. Optimists, for the most part, parachute in for a brief time and leave. I hate it. It depresses me. But that’s how it is.
Some writers and analysts are slightly less gloomy, and I frequently ask them to cheer me up and hope their relative optimism isn’t fantasy. Jeffrey Goldberg’s work at The Atlantic occasionally qualifies as less pessimistic than mine. His outstanding book Prisoners strikes just the right balance between world-weary pessimism and hope. He’s an American Jew weaned on Socialist Zionism who became an idealistic Israeli as a young adult. He sought out friendships with individual Palestinians with whom he could forge his own separate peace, if for no other reason than to prove to himself that peace was possible. It was much harder than he expected. But he managed, with some difficultly, when he worked as an IDF prison guard at Ketziot during the first intifada to kindle a rocky but enduring friendship with his prisoner Rafiq Hijazi.
I spoke with him a few weeks ago in Washington D.C.
Jeffrey Goldberg
MJT: You don’t seem particularly optimistic that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved any time soon, but I notice from reading your work that you seem slightly less pessimistic than me.
Goldberg: (Laughs.)
MJT: My view is pretty bleak and yours is slightly less so. And I’m wondering if you can map a way out that’s realistic.
Goldberg: I think there’s a great opportunity right now for a Sunni-Jewish convergence. The Sunni Arab states and Israel have, for the first time, a common adversary. There’s some promise in that. If the Israelis are smart, they’ll exploit Arab fears of Iran. And if the Arabs are smart, they’ll exploit Israeli fears of Iran. The common fear of Iran might produce some more flexibility on both sides, even flexibility on the part of Saudi Arabia.
MJT: That’s true at the state level, but not at the street level.
Goldberg: That’s true at the state level, yes. The people of the Middle East aren’t the ones who make the decisions. But you need the people ultimately, right?
This is the central question. The settlements aren’t the central question. They’re a tragedy in part because they obscure the central question of this conflict. The only question is: can the world of Arab Islam accept the idea of Jewish national equality? That’s the question, and I don’t know the answer to that.
Naturally, I shade toward pessimism on that question. I’m recalling, among other things, that the Six Day War wasn’t started because of the settlements. If you study the history of the last one hundred years, you’ll see that this is the central animating cause of the conflict. And I don’t see much evidence that Arab Islam can assimilate this idea right now.
On the other hand, actions can create new realities. So I’m not totally immune to the idea that Israeli concessions on certain points can create a positive cycle rather than a negative cycle.
The question of Israel is the question of what happens to all minorities in the Middle East. The Arab Muslim Middle East has 300 million people. It has a very hard time treating Coptic Christians with equality, treating Maronites in Lebanon with equality, treating Southern Sudanese in an equal way, treating Kurds in an equal way, and dealing with Jews – not only in their national expression, but even as minorities within their own countries. There was never a golden era for Jews who lived in Arab countries. It wasn’t as bad as living in Poland, but that’s no great shakes.
MJT: You have talked to Hamas people. Should the Israelis or Americans talk to them?
Goldberg: I don’t know what they’d get out of it.
MJT: What did you get out of it when you did it?
Goldberg: A first-hand understanding of how they think. People in the United States find it hard to understand how people in Hamas and Hezbollah think. It’s alien. It’s alien to us. The feverish racism and conspiracy mongering, the obscurantism, the apocalyptic thinking – we can’t relate to that. Every so often, there’s an eruption of that in a place like Waco, Texas, but we’re not talking about 90 people in a compound. We’re talking about whole societies that are captive to this kind of absurdity.
So it’s very important – and you know this better than almost anyone – to go over there yourself and tape it, get it down on paper, and say “this is what they actually say.”
MJT: It’s shocking to hear.
Goldberg: Of course it’s shocking to hear.
MJT: Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if they really even believe it or if they’re just saying it.
Goldberg: I was in Afghanistan in 1998, a week after the first fatwa to “kill all the Jews and Crusaders” came out. I was with a bunch of Americans. They were making light of it because it seemed so ridiculous. They were making light of it, I suppose, partly as a psychological mechanism to allow us to continue staying in Afghanistan.
MJT: (Laughs.) Yeah.
Goldberg: People also made fun of it because it seemed so ridiculous. But it’s not ridiculous. Just because a belief sounds ridiculous to you doesn’t mean it’s not sincerely held.
MJT: Yeah. I know it.
Goldberg: So I think it’s best to err on the side of taking people at their word. That doesn’t mean you can’t analyze it and break it down on the politics, break it down on the psychology, and break it down on the religion. But take them at their word. I believe Hamas when it says it wants to eradicate Israel. Why shouldn’t I believe them?
MJT: They act as though they’re serious.
Goldberg: Yeah. I understand their world view. I obviously don’t accept it, but I understand it. In their world view, this makes perfect sense. So, why not?
Palestinians, over the years, have proven that they’re willing to sacrifice generations of people to achieve their goal of a Jewish-free Palestine.
Children in Gaza
I understand that. I don’t agree with the goal. It’s extremist and self-defeating and racist and everything else, but I try to put myself in their shoes, and I can understand their arguments.
There’s two stages. One, collect the documentary evidence. That’s why I hung out at Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV station for a couple of days and just listened. There’s nothing insincere about their goals and their desires. I don’t think they’re motivated by poverty. If poverty were the motivation, Zambia would be the world headquarters of terrorism. So why not believe them?
It doesn’t mean that nothing changes. I think it’s true that a moderated Hamas would no longer be Hamas. If you’re a Muslim Brotherhood organization, or if you’re Hezbollah, if you’re an arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and you begin to accept the idea of the presence of Israel in the Middle East, you’re no longer a part of that movement. So I don’t think the organizations are capable of changing, but individuals are capable of changing.
MJT: What percentage of the Palestinian population do you suppose might be flexible enough to change in the way you just described?
Goldberg: I assume it’s fluid like everything else. That’s what I meant when I said that new realities on the ground can shape public opinion.
Graffiti in Tel Aviv, April, 2006
MJT: We have seen some who have changed their views, and there will always be hardliners who won’t until they die.
Goldberg: Look. Another thing people here don’t understand is that it’s a hot region. It’s an emotionally hot region. Israel, too. The amount of yelling in Israel over things that don’t have to be yelled about is extraordinary. Blood runs hot. Maybe it’s the desert. I don’t know. People are governed by their emotions.
In my book, I trace this relationship I had with one particular Palestinian. When things were going relatively well during the peace process, he was against suicide bombing. When things weren’t going well, he was for suicide bombing. This is the reality.
That’s why I think there was a missed opportunity around the time of the Gaza withdrawal. To buttress the Palestinian moderates – moderates being a relative term – maybe Israel should have given them something so they’d have greater sway among the population. My point is that I don’t think we’re dealing with entirely immutable forces.
MJT: I don’t either, but it often looks that way with Hamas.
Goldberg: Yeah. (Sighs.) Do all Palestinians wish for the disappearance of Israel? Probably. But it doesn’t matter what you wish. It matters what you do.
MJT: There is a difference between wishing Israel would just go away and actively working to destroy it.
Goldberg: I have a lot of wishes, too, that I don’t act on.
MJT: A lot of Israelis wish the Palestinians would just go away.
Goldberg: Of course. Why would you want people who hate you around you? That’s fine. It’s all about what you do. And it’s about creating conditions so that people who have negative and violent impulses will be reigned in.
MJT: Here, I think, is the big question: what should be done about Iran’s nuclear weapons? Would it be better to use military action – whether it’s American, Israeli, or both – or learn to live with the Iranian bomb?
Goldberg: I suspect we are going to be learning to live with the Iranian bomb.
MJT: Is that a good idea?
Goldberg: No. It’s terrible. But also striking Iran would be terrible.
This is an interesting question right now, at this moment in history. This might be a place where American interests and Israeli interests diverge somewhat. I think the Iranian nuclear weapons program does pose an existential threat to Israel. It doesn’t pose an existential threat to America. It poses a unique set of terrible challenges for America, but it doesn’t mean our existence here is in peril. So it might not be in America’s best interests right now to strike militarily – for any number of reasons, including the fact that it might not work. And if it does work, it would almost seem to justify, in a way, Iran seeking nuclear weapons. And the program might continue.
The thing we hope for is that Iran moderates itself, that the people of Iran who are more moderate than its leaders figure out a way to moderate this. The problem isn’t whether or not Iran has the bomb, it’s whether or not the mullahs have the bomb.
MJT: Sure.
Goldberg: As I wrote in a New York Times op-ed a few weeks ago, there are two Israeli strategic doctrines in confrontation right now. The first is: never do anything that harms the strategic relationship with the United States of America. The second is: prevent, at all costs, the possibility of a Second Holocaust. What if these two things come into conflict?
I tend to think that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu understands better than almost anyone else the imperative of maintaining a strong strategic relationship with the United States of America. But I also think he’s governed by his understanding of Jewish history.
If you are the de-facto leader of the Jews in a post-Holocaust world, what is the absolute worst thing you could do? Allow the formation of an existential threat to half the world’s remaining Jews. It’s a hard job.
MJT: It is. Sometimes I wonder if there’s an agreement that we’ll never hear about between the U.S. and Israel, that Israel can go ahead and take out Iran’s nuclear weapons and we’ll pretend to be upset about it. Because look: Iran can retaliate against the United States inside Iraq and Afghanistan.
Goldberg: That’s the problem.
MJT: And it’s not in our national interests to provoke that. We have over 100,000 guys in Iraq and Afghanistan who can be retaliated against.
Goldberg: And here’s the thing. Netanyahu doesn’t want to endanger the lives of American soldiers. Not because he’s so great or moral or whatever, but because he knows that’s disastrous.
MJT: It could threaten the entire American project in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Goldberg: Yes. Exactly.
I imagine that if this situation gets more dire, America will say to the Iranians, secretly, in no uncertain terms, that “if you do anything to Israel, we will destroy you.” That just seems prudent to do. “Go ahead and have your dreams and desires, but don’t even think about transferring your nuclear technology to attack Israel in some way, because we will wipe you out.”
MJT: Do you think the U.S. would actually do that?
Goldberg: It depends on the president.
MJT: I can’t see Barack Obama nuking Tehran.
Goldberg: I didn’t say he has to nuke it, I said he has to threaten to nuke it.
MJT: Sure, but the threat has to be credible.
Goldberg: Right. So you make it credible.
MJT: Bush could have done that.
Goldberg: Bring the Iranian ambassador to the Strategic Air Command and show him all the missiles that are pointing at Iran. “This one is going to go here, and this one is going to go there. You’re wiped out. You’re finished. You’re done. You are exterminated.”
Obama doesn’t have to actually do it.
We’re getting into the realm of insanity here, but if Israel is ever attacked with nuclear weapons, I think there would be quite a demand from Americans as a whole to retaliate for it.
MJT: Probably.
Goldberg: It wouldn’t really matter, though, because the Israelis would already be dead.
MJT: They can retaliate themselves anyway. They have nuclear weapons in submarines out in the Mediterranean.
Israeli submarine
Goldberg: And in the Persian Gulf. They’re German subs. History is great that way, isn’t it?
MJT: (Laughs.)
Goldberg: Jews are floating around in the Persian Gulf with nuclear weapons in German subs that are aimed at the new Hitler. If you step away from your personal feelings about it, it’s just fascinating.
MJT: Can you imagine the Israeli relationship with Palestinians evolving that much over the next 50 or 60 years?
Goldberg: If I were a Palestinian right now, I’d just wait. I’d keep the pressure up and not agree to a rump state. I’d just keep up the pressure for another few generations. They might eventually achieve it that way.
MJT: But look at how much things can change in a few generations.
Goldberg: All the leaders are ego maniacs by definition. All of them are soaked in history. Yasser Arafat wanted to be Salah ad-Din. Bibi Netanyahu wants to be Judah Maccabee. There is so much history there to exploit. These people are all measuring themselves against historical role models. And when you’re measuring yourself against a historical role model like Salah ad-Din, you wait, and you keep trying to devise new strategies to make the Jews leave, or to kill enough of them that the survivors leave.
Khaled Meshaal, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
MJT: Waiting is tricky, though. Imagine if Hitler had decided to wait a few generations to go after the Jews. Europe has changed. Hitlerism won’t fly in the Europe of 2009.
Goldberg: Now we’re really getting into the realm of hyper-speculation.
MJT: I wonder, though, if Palestinian society is really capable of evolving the way European society has in the last 60 years.
Goldberg: I don’t know. The argument is that Arab society is somewhat stagnant.
MJT: It is stagnant compared with Europe.
Goldberg: It’s more static. It’s a region of the world that lags on a lot of the usual indicators for success and progress. But hell if I know. The whole idea is just so improbable. But so was the idea that the Jews, after 2,000 years, could reclaim their ancient homeland. There was nothing in history that suggested that would be possible.
And going back to the destruction of Israel – Arabs are misreading history if they believe Israel is a temporary phenomenon. Nothing like this has ever happened in history. A dead tribe came back and seized the land it had, and did so after a devastating tragedy. Jews are also good at waiting, apparently. They’re a small group, but there’s a survival impulse that’s embedded in many Jews, and certainly in the Jews of Israel today. It says: “You want to wait? We’ll wait, too.” Jews were an ancient people already when Mohammad appeared on the Arabian peninsula.
I wonder all the time if two people just like us will be having the same conversation a hundred years from now. “Well, what do you think? Will Israel make it?”
MJT: It’s possible.
Goldberg: Anything’s possible. Anyone who acts like they’ve figured out the entire Middle East doesn’t know anything.
MJT: Yeah. It’s a humbling place.
Goldberg: People who tell you they understand and know the answer? Demagogues. They’re either idiots or demagogues. Nobody can understand this. You can’t apply rationality to it either.
This is why I’m negative about the intentions of Palestinians. If their goal were statehood, they could have had statehood. Therefore, you have to give serious credence to the idea that their goal is not statehood, that it’s more important to rid the Arab world of Jewish nationalism than it is to have a Palestinian state that would improve the lives of individual Palestinians now.
MJT: Lots of them say that explicitly. They aren’t demanding a state in the West Bank and Gaza. They want to liberate all of Palestine, so to speak, “from the river to the sea.”
Goldberg: But just because they want that doesn’t mean it can happen.
MJT: Right. But it’s clear that some of them want the whole thing and won’t accept a state in the West Bank and Gaza. From their point of view, it’s like Israel being offered Tel Aviv and the beach. It isn’t enough.
Goldberg: Ben-Gurion was smart. He took what they offered him and hoped for better. He hoped for Arab mistakes that would allow him to get more territory. The Arabs provided the mistakes, and he took the territory.
Don’t you find this debilitating after a while?
MJT: Yeah.
Goldberg: The reality in Israel is that it’s a fun place, a great place. It’s a vibrant society.
MJT: I like being there.
Tel Aviv, Israel
Goldberg: It’s not all as dreary as this. Maybe this is a story about individualism. The demand of the collective on the Palestinian side is such that it ruins the lives of millions spread over several generations.
MJT: You wrote during the Gaza war that Operation Cast Lead would probably work, but that nothing in the Middle East seems to work for very long. Why do you suppose that is? It seems to be true, but I’m not exactly sure why.
Gaza City several years ago
Goldberg: I don’t know.
MJT: We’ll see progress for a while, but then the progress gets erased.
Goldberg: That’s progress by our definition of progress, by people who understand the world differently.
Gaza City from Sderot, Israel, at the end of Operation Cast Lead
I think there’s a long strategy. And the long strategy of some Arabs is impervious to short term interventions. Short of packing up Palestinians and bussing them to Egypt, the impulse to defeat the Jews will remain there.
The reason American minds can’t really grasp the Middle East is because our minds are trained for concepts that are at variance with the mindset of Middle Eastern fundamentalists – and by that I mean both Muslims and Jews. The importance of today, the importance of pleasure, the importance of compromise, the importance of pragmatism, the relative unimportance of land. We have a house, we sell it, and then we move to another house. We don’t build our houses on top of our fathers’ houses.
As a sort of aside, you see how settlers talk about settlement freezes. There’s a kind of Middle Easterness to it. Part of it is manipulation. “If we aren’t allowed to add to our house, our children will have to move to Tel Aviv.” They’re telling me that it’s a punishment to have to move to Israel? It’s a tiny place. Their kids will be an hour away. Or a half hour.
Maale Adumim settlement, West Bank
Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem, an area considered a "settlement" by the United States government
But there’s also a sincere Middle Easterness to it. According to them, it really is a sin to force their children move a half hour away when they could live right next door or in the same house. It’s as if they have imbibed the Arab love for the place of their father and their father’s father. There are so many concepts we just can’t relate to because we’re Americans. It’s a barrier to understanding.
MJT: It is. Americans also believe there is a solution to every problem.
Goldberg: Yeah. Solutionism is an American religion. That’s the most dangerous one. The other aspects of this are the misunderstandings. We can’t understand why a Palestinian would want his son to become a suicide bomber.
Hamas
It’s because his son is not an individual in the same way Americans are. He’s a valuable instrument in the deliverance of salvation for his people. His desires, dreams, and goals are all selfishness. That’s just Western selfishness. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work these things through for years.
There’s something admirable about Palestinian steadfastness.
MJT: We don’t have that sort of steadfastness.
Goldberg: No, we don’t.
MJT: But our society is better off without it.
Goldberg: Of course, it is! (Laughs.) What are they getting out of it? But our categories of success and failure are not their categories of success and failure.
It leads to the immorality of narcissism, that their collective need is so important that they can kill children with moral impunity. That’s one place it leads. The importance of remaining steadfast to the cause gives them license to do anything. Man, but when you’re licensed to do anything, it gives you power.
When I talk this way, when we think about it this way, I have a hard time seeing a Western-style state flourishing there over the long term in that climate.
MJT: There’s only one that exists. Israel is the only one. None of the Arab states are. We’re over there in Iraq trying to help them build one, but I have my doubts that it’s going to happen. Lebanon is a hybrid. It’s only partly a Western-style state.
What do you think about Lebanon? The 2006 war was a disaster for everybody involved. But what if Hezbollah starts firing rockets again? What should the Israelis do? What would you do if you were prime minister?
Hezbollah fires Katyusha rockets at Israel, July, 2006
Goldberg: If you’re the Israeli prime minister, or the leader of any country, you can’t accept conditions in which your enemy forces the depopulation of a third of your country. It’s not acceptable. It’s national suicide. And while there’s a record of national suicide in Jewish history, I don’t think the current Israeli leadership is going to acquiesce to that. So you do what you have to do.
Is that helpful? No. It will cause a lot of people in London to go demonstrate on behalf of Hezbollah. It will anger the United Nations. But what’s the choice? You’re not a serious country if you allow an enemy to fire rockets at your civilians and cause the depopulation of your territory. If you allow that to happen, you’re ceding sovereignty over whole chunks of your country.
Having Hezbollah in the Lebanese politcal process has some kind of utility in this regard. It knows full well that if it does launch some new adventure against Israel that Israel will retaliate against Lebanon as a whole. That won’t help Hezbollah’s position in Lebanese society.
But I’m not a military strategist. I don’t know how to stop the rockets.
MJT: There has been talk of shooting back at Syria instead of Lebanon. Syria has a return address. It’s a state and is therefore accountable.
Goldberg: This brings up an interesting strategic shift that might be coming in Israeli thinking, which is: forget the proxies. What is Hamas without its weapons suppliers?
MJT: Not much. And the same goes for Hezbollah.
Goldberg: So Israel says to the two states that supply Hamas and Hezbollah: “If you support these proxies, and if Hezbollah fires rockets at Haifa, we’re not going to attack Hezbollah. We’re going to attack Damascus.”
MJT: That’s what I thought they should have done back in 2006.
Goldberg: They can say “You’re the sponsors. So you either stop this or we’re going to destroy your military infrastructure.” Why have a proxy war? What do proxy wars get you other than bad publicity?
MJT: A bunch of dead people.
Goldberg: Were you there during the 2006 war?
MJT: Yeah.
Goldberg: There were a lot of dead bodies from Israeli air strikes, right?
MJT: I didn’t see any dead bodies. I was on the Israeli side of the border.
Goldberg: Right. I’m surprised we didn’t meet. I was there, too, traveling with Noah Pollak.
MJT: I was there with Noah Pollak, too, just on different days.
Goldberg: I was also there with Michael Oren.
MJT: Yep, so was I. On different days. We must have just barely missed each other.
Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, author, historian, and former Israel Defense Forces Spokesman
Goldberg: Hezbollah is a proxy army of Syria and Iran. So why aren’t Israelis fighting back against Syria and Iran?
MJT: That’s what Michael Oren thought, too, after he was no longer working as a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. I talked to him about this during his book tour when he could say what he really believed.
You can’t defeat a guerilla army in six weeks with an air force. It’s absurd.
Goldberg: You can destroy its ability to fight.
MJT: Except the Israelis didn’t.
Goldberg: I mean, you can destroy its ability to fight by denying its weapons supplies.
MJT: Right.
Goldberg: Hezbollah can’t fight Israel without its rockets, right?
MJT: Right. I mean, they could fashion together home-made pieces of crap like Hamas used to. Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets are much more formidable.
Goldberg: I think this is getting better now that Egypt understands the threat of Shia radicalism. And Israel can say “stop this smuggling completely, or we’ll have to do it ourselves on your territory. We won’t attack you, but you’re allowing your territory to be used as a launching pad for people who want to kill our citizens.”
I think the doctrine needs to be rewritten. Every time a rocket comes into Israel from Hamas, Israel should figure out who’s helping Hamas and deal with them.
MJT: But if Iran gets the bomb…
Goldberg: …everything changes.
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The Middle East is a hard place for idealists, especially for the Western liberal variety.
I had trouble getting past the pure nonsense on display in the first sentence. Leftists ignore facts and make up their own versions of reality, generally out of whole cloth. What part of the world could be more in tune with “Western liberal[s...]” therefore, than the Middle East?
The stage is being set for the final wars of the bible Scriptures and I beleive we are in the latter days as the world hates Israel and bible believing Christians as the Word of God has prophecied.
3And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
Zechariah 12
1The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
2Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
3And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
4In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness.
5And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the LORD of hosts their God.
6In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.
7The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah.
8In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD before them.
9And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
10And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
11In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.
12And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart;
13The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart;
14All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.
6And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
Zechariah 13 (King James Version)
Zechariah 13
1In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.
2And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.
3And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.
4And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:
5But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.
6And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
7Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
8And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.
9And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done LORD Jesus.
Zechariah 14
1Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.
2For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
3Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
4And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
5And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.
6And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark:
7But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.
8And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be.
9And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.
10All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin’s gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king’s winepresses.
11And men shall dwell in it, and there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.
12And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
13And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.
14And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great abundance.
15And so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be in these tents, as this plague.
16And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.
17And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.
18And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the LORD will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.
19This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.
20In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; and the pots in the LORD’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar.
21Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the LORD of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD of hosts.
9And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.
Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Please allow me to post an idea from a tag line, I believe.
Islam Is A Cancer - Radiation Is The Answer.
This is what I just finished writing to someone, and here I find an interview transcript that reflects it almost to the very thought.
Here’s what I wrote:
In follow up to your question, I looked all over the ground between my home and Jerusalem, but I saw no green line. I have heard of it, but do not believe in its existence, nor of its relevance to the quest for true peace.
Jews have always been in Hebron, except for 38 brief years in which it was made Judenrein by pogroms incited by the Mufti of Jerusalem, whom the British punished for his acts by naming him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and honored highly, until he incited an uprising in present-day Iraq that nearly lost WW II for England. One of the things the Mufti wanted from Hitler for delivering the Middle East was an extermination camp to the North of Damascus, just like the ones he had toured in Europe while visiting.
If a statute of limitations exists for ancestral claims extinguished through genocidal violence and theft, and that statute of limitations is 37 years, then Jews reasserted their ancestral claims in 1971, 38 years ago, so the statute of limitations cuts both ways. Furthermore, they did it not by in 1967 committing a brutal wholesale slaughter of Arabs corresponding to that perpetrated against Jews in 1929, but by simply coming and building on unoccupied hilltops. A photograph (I’ve seen it, have asked for an e-mail of it from the person who showed it to me, but so far nada) dated as of 1940 of Hebron and its environs shows the hilltops on which Kiryat Arba, Ramat Mamre (where I live) and the Jewish community in Hebron are now built, and they are completely undeveloped. All the buildings and agricultural development are further down the hillsides and in the wadis between the hills.
Jews have always lived in Hebron. Its central shrine is holy to both Jew and Moslem. Under Islamic rule, Jews were forbidden to enter. Under the “occupation,” Jews pray by the tombs of Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and Leah, and Moslems pray by the tombs of Isaac, Rivka, Adam and Chava, and according to their beliefs, of Joseph as well. The tomb in Nablus that was deliberately desecrated and destroyed, they claim was not that of Joseph at all. Several times a year, control of the entire shrine is given by consent of the Moslems to Jews. And several times a year, control is given by the Jews to the Moslems. Often after the holidays in which Moslems have control of the shrine, the Aron Hakodesh in the Jewish synagogue smells of urine. No such desecration of the Mosque part of the shrine has ever been committed.
I’ve been to Chevron several times. The Arab part of the city is divided into two parts: The poor section around the Kasbah, where extended families still live in private compounds and feud with one another. This part smells of donkey manure and poverty. Then on the other side of the hill, there is a bustling downtown full of automobiles in a hurry and ancient mosques. Its population is 144,000, mostly Arab. The Jews live in several compounds, one in Avraham Avinu and its environs, where the slaughter actually took place in 1929. The other that I saw is on the site of the original Hittite mountain fortress town. Excavations have uncovered the original wall, and both carbon dating and artifacts have shown it to be 4,500 years old. There are some trees up there that are hundreds of years old. I’ve seen bullet holes in the caravans where the first Jewish settlers first lived. They are still occupied. But the bullet holes are rarely added to these days, because the IDF took possession of those hilltops from which the Hamas marksmen used to take potshots at anything Jewish. Formerly, they would fire 1,000 rounds a night. Nowadays, there are only about five to six shots fired recorded over a six month period.
But what of the prospect of peace? I understand that you feel very strongly about this, but I feel just as strongly that Hebron and environs are not negotiable, nor will their surrender and evacuation lead to any thing resembling peace. More like “piece,” really. True peace can only be achieved through mutual respect, and Arabs have almost always historically viewed Jews the way southerners formerly saw Negroes. There was formerly a sort of economic symbiosis between Jews and Arabs, and its loss is unfortunate. But it was lost in 1929, not 1948 or 1967. Probably before that, if one can date the first clandestine meeting when a member of the Nazi Party first gave a member of the Moslem Brotherhood a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Furthermore, if the only way this former modus can ever be regained is by Jews meekly resuming the role of Dhimme, it is not worth recovering.
I am not a Zionist. I believe in the Land of Israel, though. And the Jewish People is bound up with the Land of Israel above and beyond anything that the Zionist state accepted as its boundaries in 1948 or thereafter. The recent archaeological discoveries of David’s palace in Jerusalem and Joshua’s altar on Mt. Nebo further confirm this bond.
I do not hate Arabs. I disagree with the Kahana-ites’ call to send them all packing. Even if that weren’t morally reprehensible, there are approximately 30,000 known cases of Jewish teenage girls being kidnapped and forced to marry an Arab man. Their children are Jewish. Many of their grandchildren are Jewish. Also, there are pockets of secret Jews living in Arab villages for centuries, just as there are still pockets of secret Jews living in Spain and Portugal even today. It is not impossible that these make up a sizable number of the Arabs summarily executed as “collaborators,” along with many Arab Christians. To expel all Arabs from the Holy Land would be to lose many Jews forever, and would be a crime against not only humanity, but also ourselves as a people. The Arabs actually need Jews here urgently. They are stuck in a past that never existed, just as the Afrikanders of South Africa were not too long ago stuck in a tragic romance with their forefathers.
The best key to their true heritage lies in the souls of the Jews who’ve lived with them since ancient times (not necessarily harmoniously, but what neighbors are always in harmony?). Joseph was sold to Arab merchants. The Zipim that Sha’ul was using as informants against David were probably related to modern-day Arabs or Bedouins. The Druze and the Bedouins, for that matter, are very friendly towards Jews, whom they hope will protect them from the Arabs. Since the IDF has diminished its presence in Bethlehem, the once thriving Christian community there has been getting systematically extinguished by persecution, extortion and land theft. This is not a return to the Moorish renaissance of tolerance and enlightenment in Medieval Spain. It’s a continuous turn to Fascism Middle-Eastern style, of ethnic and religious “purity” and uniformity that’s only too familiar. Calls for a settlement freeze, evacuations, etc., merely enables this turning to continue unchecked, and will lead to more war, and many many pieces. I must obstruct this “piece process,” and hold out for genuine Shalom (complete peace), which can and should be accomplished in our time, but probably won’t be.
Thank you for your data rich post. It is both a pleasure to write and informative.
I found only one point which completely puzzled me, and I shall present it now: “To expel all Arabs from the Holy Land would be to lose many Jews forever, and would be a crime against not only humanity, but also ourselves as a people.”
Why would not any Jews, such as the Jewish females kidnapped by the Arabs not identify themselves and thus not be deported?
Should they choose a life under Islam, that is their choice.
What Winston Churchill wrote about Islam, in 1899 is as accurate today as then. Anyone who chooses Islam IS the enemy, the Islamic Enemy.
Again, Islam is a cancer - Radiation is the answer.
Ann Coulter had it pegged - “Invade them, convert them, or kill them.”
To expel all Arabs from the Holy Land would be to lose many Jews forever, and would be a crime against not only humanity, but also ourselves as a people.
“Why would not any Jews, such as the Jewish females kidnapped by the Arabs not identify themselves and thus not be deported?
Should they choose a life under Islam, that is their choice.”
Look a little lower on the page, one line to be exact. Jews trapped in Arab society are not free to “choose” their life. They can be shot as a “collaborator”. They can be “honor killed”. Their children can be held over them as blackmail. Some of these captive brides have been found, and rescued. The IDF doesn’t help and doesn’t prevent such things, so you’ve got to assemble a private strike force, even if you do know have contact from the captive. But such rescues are few and far between. Looking out my window, there are miles and miles of small Arab villages dotting the hills. Many of them are nowhere near any Jewish settlement, bus line, or IDF outpost. From an airplane or on a map, Israel looks tiny. But if you measure the actual habitable surfaces here in the mountains, the land is deceptively spacious. And I just live in the small hills around Jerusalem. Galillee has some real mountains, I’ve heard, and it’s easy to become isolated.
In these exchanges, I am in no way apologizing for the behavior of Arabs, but I am somewhat mystified about some of the behavior patterns I read about.
If the Arabs are to be removed from a particular area, such removal would require the presence of the Israeli military. At such time, why could any captive who wanted to return to Israel step forward?
While Muslims are brave while shooting the defenseless, to attempt an “honor killing” in front of an armed Army soldier would not be likely to happen.
All in all, as an American, I tend to believe that what a friend told me is correct.
“The Arab understands best power and vengeance.”
Another thing I can not understand is why anyone would want to live with Arabs? Why not rid the Israel area of them?
I suspect that Arabs will be forced to their “Reformation” as America forced the Mormons to change their religion. Jews have been an ‘example of the Law’ ever since Big Mo rode out of the desert claiming to be a Jewish prophet. HE was told he was neither a Jew nor a prophet, of course.
From then to now, Muslims have been killing Jews. Learn from history and nuke ‘em all.
Do it for your children.
It worked for us, it can work for Israel, but not as long as they delude themselves into believing any possible co-existence can be reached with Muslims.
“In these exchanges, I am in no way apologizing for the behavior of Arabs, but I am somewhat mystified about some of the behavior patterns I read about.
“If the Arabs are to be removed from a particular area, such removal would require the presence of the Israeli military. At such time, why could any captive who wanted to return to Israel step forward?”
The Arabs do not get removed from areas. That’s something that is exclusively reserved for Jewish “settlers”. Captives have come forward, and been rescued. But never by the IDF, which is at the beck and call of the government, which sees only the dark tunnel in front of any light. Such rescues are few and far between, because the opportunities to come forward are also rare, but they do happen.
While Muslims are brave while shooting the defenseless, to attempt an “honor killing” in front of an armed Army soldier would not be likely to happen.”
An armed soldier might just shake the poor woman off his arm and go about his business. Later, her hubby’d show her power and revenge, all right. But rescues do happen, no thanks to the IDF.
Goldberg: I think there's a great opportunity right now for a Sunni-Jewish convergence. The Sunni Arab states and Israel have, for the first time, a common adversary. There's some promise in that. If the Israelis are smart, they'll exploit Arab fears of Iran. And if the Arabs are smart, they'll exploit Israeli fears of Iran. The common fear of Iran might produce some more flexibility on both sides, even flexibility on the part of Saudi Arabia.After Israel does the dirty work, there'll be the usual rioting on the Arab street, and the Egyptian gov't will be overthrown (or at least, Egyptian polity will disintegrate).
Thanks. Great article.
Even Goldberg was better than I expected when Totten straightened him out.
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