President Trump was well on his way to achieving peace in the Middle East until the 2020 elections. Anyone with any amount of common sense can see our country, and much of the world is now embroiled in chaos and instability
"What can men do against such reckless hate?" --Théoden King - Lord of the Rings
Making sense of the region known as Palestine is like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. There is much disinformation, propaganda, and distraction happening all at once. We (the Stand Up America US Foundation) have been following this for many years, so we can give you the benefit of what we know with as little hodge-podge as possible.
The Jews arrived in the region in about 1300 BC. They occupied the holy land on and off for thousands of years. On and off because, from time to time, they would be conquered. The Jews lost their land to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BC and to Babylon in 586 BC. They went back home in 538 BC, when Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians. Thus began the period of the second temple.
The Romans conquered the region in 64 BC. Between 66 and 136 AD, it was known as the Jewish-Roman Wars. After this long period of war with Rome, the Jews once again lost their kingdom. The Romans renamed the region Palestine after the great enemy of the Jews, the Philistines, as an insult. They went through expulsion, displacement, forced conversion, and forced migration. But some Jews always remained.
Some of the Biblical patriarchs are: Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, King David, King Solomon, and Jesus. Not all are listed, of course. From Adam to Abraham, it was about 2,008 years. From the death of Abraham to the birth of Moses, it was approximately 245 years. From the death of Moses to the crucifixion of Jesus, it was about 1,560 years.
After about 600 AD, when Islam appeared, there were many years of war between Christian and Islamic interests, with many changes of hands in the Holy Land (Crusaders, Saladin, etc.). The Arabization of Palestine began around the 9th century. The Palestinian region was never a major holy site for Islam. Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, is their holy place. The Ottoman Empire (Islamic) conquered the area in 1517. Mark Twain visited the land in 1867 and wrote that it was mostly deserted, with Arabs and Jews sprinkled about.
The fact that the Arabs never demanded a homeland is crucial to remember. It was neither their desire nor their possession to have a government in Palestine. They were never the native inhabitants of the region, despite widespread misinformation. There are no artifacts or historical records that document an Arab permanent presence or a people group called the Palestinians, despite an abundance of archeological evidence supporting a more than 3,000-year-old Jewish presence. It is worth noting that Palestinian Arabs are taught from birth that Jews were never native to the Palestine area but are alien to the land, pushing Arabs out. Another noteworthy but inconvenient fact is that Jews were expelled from Arab lands in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-20th century.
The British conquered it in 1917, after the Ottoman Empire dissolved as a result of being on the wrong side of World War 1. During this period, Jews started to come back to Israel due to European persecution. The British, through their Balfour Declaration in 1917, resolved to eventually give the Jews a homeland. The Jewish migration back to Israel caused violence among the Arabs. In 1937, the British, in an effort to stop the violence, proposed partitioning the land into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Arabs rejected it even though it was three times the size of the Jewish partition. In 1947, the UN proposed a different plan. The Arabs rejected that as well, which led to Israel declaring itself an independent state in 1948.
Five Arab nations then invaded Israel. Most Palestinian Arabs left Palestine to fight with their Arab brethren against the Jews. When Israel won, the Israelis refused to take back the Palestinian invaders, now considering them enemies of Israel. The five Arab states refused to take them in as well, preferring to leave them as refugees for propaganda purposes, to show the world how callous Israel is. Even now, the Arab states do not want the Gaza refugees.
The Palestinians have said they have "the right of return" to Israel. Israeli officials say, "No." In addition to once being an enemy, taking in the Palestinians and their descendants would mean allowing over 5 million Arabs into their country in addition to the 2 million that are already living there. The Jews would then be outnumbered, and their continued existence would be in grave doubt.
The name Hamas means Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas was founded in 1987 as a spin-off of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a favorite group of Barack Obama but openly denounced by the UK. Obama even invited them to the White House. Hamas gained notoriety for their constant campaigns of suicide bombings and violent attacks on Israelis. Their revised charter (2017) calls for the destruction of Israel. The document calls the whole of Israeli land Arab land and rejects any call for compromise or peace. The 2017 document says “resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws."
People who feel empathy for the Palestinian Arabs don't know who they are. We need to understand that these people have nothing else on their collective minds but killing Jews and Zionists. Some pro-Palestinian protests show signs that say, "Hitler was right." What is it about them to defend?
The Gaza Strip is a strip of land in the southwest corner of what was once Palestine. Palestinian Arabs fled to Egypt-controlled Gaza after the 1948 War, where they remained until the 1967 War, when Israel took over from Egypt. For about ten years, the Palestinians in Gaza were under the Palestinian Authority with limited self-rule, according to the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel and the PLO. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza and destroyed Jewish settlements. A year later, Hamas took control after winning the Gaza elections against the PLO. They haven't had any elections since. Israel maintains control of the airspace and Mediterranean Sea and continues a blockade, along with Egypt, of the territory.
It is important to note that Hamas maintains Gaza not as a city for its citizens but as a giant military compound with homes, schools, and hospitals, along with the people in them, as shields. Homes also house bomb-making facilities, guns, and ammunition, with children usually near by. Hospitals house military equipment as well and are active staging areas for attacks. Even their military command centers are housed beneath hospitals, schools, and the like. The entirety of Gaza is a loaded gun aimed at Israel.
Hamas spends the billions of dollars being collected from Qatar via the UN, Iran, and from donors around the world, including the USA. Like most terrorist groups, Hamas has had to develop diversified sources of income. They maintain a presence in South America, participating in drug, people, and arms trafficking, as well as money laundering. The money of any significance is not spent on schools, food, or medical equipment but on tunnels to move troops and materiel, the manufacture of rocket-propelled grenades, bombs, guns, ammunition, rockets, and all sorts of military equipment. Besides tunnels, ambulances are used to move troops on the surface so they are not a target. And, of course, their arrangement has made Hamas leaders very rich.
While Gazan citizens live in wretched poverty, Hamas leaders live a lavish lifestyle in Qatar. The three top leaders of Hamas are worth in excess of 11 billion dollars.
Dealing with Hamas is frustrating because they want civilian casualties. They work at getting their own people killed or wounded as a tool of propaganda. I have seen videos of killed or wounded Palestinians, men, women, and children, always in view of news cameras. I saw one 'casualty' being moved on a gurney with a sheet over him, apparently dead, but he fell off, jumped back on, and quickly covered himself.
What makes Hamas and many other Muslim groups so dangerous? Muslims don't care as much as we do about this life. When you don't care about death, you certainly don't care about life. And that, they would say, is their strength and our weakness. This is reason enough to be very suspicious of multiculturalism. The West has suffered and continues to suffer greatly from it. It doesn't work.
Protests from pro-Hamas groups, through an education system rife with leftist ideology, are often violent, while pro-Israel demonstrations are peaceful.
Will there ever be peace between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel? No, as long as Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other anti-Israel group supported by Iran or anyone else is in charge or has any influence. They must be destroyed. They will not accept any compromise or peace deal. They have said it and written it down in blood.
President Trump was well on his way to achieving peace in the Middle East until the 2020 elections. Anyone with any amount of common sense can see our country, and much of the world is now embroiled in chaos and instability, as dangerous as it ever has been. Why? ... totally piss poor leadership in Washington, D.C., where the world used to look up to for strength and positive direction.
Read next: America and Western Civilization Must Return to Our Roots
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Ray DiLorenzo is a career pilot having retired after 22 years as a contract fire pilot with the California Department of Forestry (Cal-Fire). He is presently affiliated with Stand Up America US Foundation founded by Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely (Ret).
