Israel Badly Needs To Face Reality

There's a name for trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different result, thanks to Albert Einstein. It's called insanity.And sadly, we're once again witnessing the Israeli government doing just that.

Anyone who still thinks there's any life in the so called 'peace process' and the so-called 'two state solution' is playing this game and wearing blinders.

First, this nonsense has been tried several times with absolutely no success. This was what Oslo was supposed to be all about, remember? And remember how it turned out, with a terrorist squat in Judea and Samaria and one in Gaza? Exactly. 

If we look at the facts, there have been several times when the Arabs who refer to themselves as 'Palestinians' have been offered peace deals...at one time, three different Israeli left wing prime ministers offered the Palestinian Authority ninety-five, and then ninety-six percent of the “occupied” territories. And the 'Palestinians; refused, just as they're refusing now. I wonder why....wait, of course it's an easy one to figure out...this is what they really want:

Why yes! What they want isn't peace. They want no Israel to exist at all. How hard is that to figure out? OK, it's obvious They never intended at all to live in peace with the Jews. After all, they have never kept a single part of any agreement they've signed and have actively promoted terrorism in their mosques, media and schools.  Abbas habitually refers to imprisoned terrorists as 'holy martyrs' for deliberately targeting and killing Jews and Palestinian media actually encourages this...and then of course there's the money you get whether your killed or just thrown in jail, $500 and up depending on how many Jews you killed. It's a nice income by Palestinian standards.

Oslo, of course was a product of Bill Clinton, who had Arafat to the White House more than any other foreign leader.Since Labor leader Yizhak Rabin owed President Clinton for some clandestine aid in getting him elected Prime Minister, Oslo was a done deal, a terrorist enemy right next door to Israel that resulted in zero peace and a lot of dead and maimed Jews.

And guess what? Nothing, I mean nothing has changed. It wasn't so long ago that PLO leader Jibril Rajoub said openly that "If we had a nuclear weapon I'd use it on Israel tomorrow."  This is the same terrorist who the Israelis actually gave medical care to. They also gave Medical care to Abbas and to his wife. Can you imagine doing this for  someone who hates you with all his heart and wants to exterminate you?

And we haven't even mentioned Hamas yet. My point is simply this...the Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians' have no interest in peace with Israel. We can accept that as a given, simply because it's be proven numerous times.

The latest manifestation of this fairy tale about peace is known as 'The Deal Of The Century' presented by the Trump administration. And as much as I respect President Trump, it's at least a viable attempt. But it won't ever work since its just another attempt to get the PLO to accept something they will never accept and don't want.

And frankly, as written, it's not really that good a deal for Israel. Let's look at why, shall we?

First of all,Israel is being asked to give up something it owns anyway.

The land in question is Judea and Samaria, AKA The 'West Bank' although it's only that if you're looking at it from Jordan. After WWI, the UK was given a Mandate by the League of Nations to administer all of what was then the former Turkish province known as Palestine. Originally, all of this was supposed to be the Jewish State. A couple of years later, The Brits asked the League for permission to divide the area, the reason being that they wanted a kingdom for one of the Sharif of Mecca's sons, Abdullah. He wanted Syria but so did the French, so what he got was 78% of 'Palestine' as the Arab State, Jordan which consisted of everything east of the Jordan River.  The Jews were to get the other 22%, everything west of the Jordan River for the Jewish state. This division was agreed on and signed on to by the Brits, The Jews, the Arabs and the League in 1922 in a treaty called the San Remo Accords.

The Brits saw to it that the Arabs got their state very quickly. And then proceeded to do everything they could to stop the Jews from establishing theirs in numerous ways. They deliberately limited Jewish migration to what became Israel while allowing unlimited Arab migration. This came to a head when the Brits chose to violate the San Remo accords and stopped all Jewish migration . In 1939, Britain anti-Semitic Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain issued an order not to let any Jews into Palestine at all... at a time when thousands of Jewish refugees from Germany and other countries who had fled to France and other countries had nowhere else to go.

Not content with that,  after WWII, when Labour's Clem Atlee took over, he made the decision to not allow Jews into Palestine. The Brits  even had their own concentration camp on Cyprus for any survivors of the Holocaust they caught trying to get in, and in some cases, they even sent Jews back to the very same camps in Europe they had been  imprisoned in.

In 1948, when Israel declared its independence  the UN recognized it, although  Britain didn't. The UN also made the San Remo Accords part of its charter, in Article 80...which has never been  removed or repealed.

So under international law, Everything west of the Jordan River belongs to Israel. They have no need to bargain about it or make any exchange that will only result in more terrorist violence.

 Israel lost this land for 19 years  because in 1948,  Brit PM Clem Atlee armed the surrounding Arab armies to the teeth, even though they were openly promising a second Holocaust three years after Auschwitz was liberated. Not only that, but he sent British officers to command the Jordanian Arab Legion under Colonel John Glubb, a known anti-semite. It was these officers who oversaw the ethnic cleansing of every Jew in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem as well as the destruction of many Jewish shrines and synagogues. While the UN never recognized THAT illegal occupation, they never did anything about it either.

To add insult to injury, the areas Israel is going to be allowed to regain officially involve established Israeli communities already existing  for years. You know, what the UN and EU like to refer to as 'settlements.'

In fact, most of this area was promised to Israel as part of GW Bush's 'Road Map' in exchange for giving up Gaza. These are the same commitments Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton swore didn't exist even though  they were referred to in a Bush speech and in the agreement itself. Arik Sharon, who made the agreement with GW Bush was in a coma at that point, and of course Bushie Boy kept his mouth shut.

Not only that, but the EU is threatening Israel with sanctions if they make these areas an official part of Israel. And the US is still thinking it over, whether Israel gets even this much.Some deal hmm? And here's the cherry on top. Israel has to give the PLO 4 years to decide if they'll abide by any part of this, And during those 4 years Israel is not allowed to build anything in areas they've lived in for years!

Some sovereignty!

And here's the real loser......some of the land the 'Palestinians' and the PLO would retain based on this 'deal' are within easy shooting distance of some of these Jewish communities. These attackson Jewish communities are even actually happening now in Judea and Samaria.

Second, Israel is being asked to give any 'Palestinians' living in these areas Israeli citizenship.

True there aren't that many of them, but would Trump and the US give citizenship automatically to people who had been brain washed to hate America for three generations? People who may conceivably have blood on their hands? People who in many cases have citizenship in a country that has a 'treaty' which is basically a cease fire and which still is extremely hostile to America? That's exactly the situation between Israel and Jordan. There have been numerous instances when 'Palestinians' given work permits in Israel have committed terrorism.

Third, the map lines as now drawn simply give the 'Palestinians' a closer range to shoot from. Several of the Israeli communities we're talking about would be easy targets.

And finally, Fourth,the object here, 'peace' between Israel and the PLO is a non-starter. They're not interested in peace and they never have been. It's that simple. And both the Trump Administration and Israel's current government are fooling themselves if they think this means peace with the PLO and Hamas.

Allow me to present a way to actually achieve peace that will definitely work and end this once and for all.

And the irony of it is that it could have been done years ago.

In the Six Day War, Jordan attacked Israel. The IDF pushed the Jordanian troops back across the river. At that time, they could easily have sent the 'Palestinians' who all had Jordanian citizenship back across the Jordan River as well, and this entire mess would have been avoided. However, Israel's Labor government made a mess of things. They made the mistake of thinking these Arabs would be able to live in peace with them, and it turned out to be a huge mistake.

The Israelis built virtually the entire infrastructure in Judea and Samaria....the power grid, the water systems, schools, houses, roads, sewage, irrigation,hospitals, even a university. Their reward of course was that first Intifada. They definitely should have seen that coming.

The way to finally solve this problem is to do what should have been down back in 1967. Simply move the Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians' across the river, perhaps with cash settlements for people who can actually prove they purchased and own property. This  is certainly more than the Arabs gave the almost one million Jews they ethnically cleansed from the Arab world after 1948. They plundered them for everything they had and these Jews left with the clothes on their backs. 

Jordan of course would not like this but there's not much they could do about it, especially since they have already agreed to abandon all claim to Judea and Samaria. Jordan's  midget King Abdullah would also be upset because many of these  people tend to cause problems where ever they go...Iraq, Kuwait,Lebanon, Egypt and yes, Jordan, which Arafat almost took over in 1970's Black September.

Odd, isn't it? All refugees are supposedly taken care of by UNHCR(also known as the UN Refugee Agency) except one...the almost 1 million penniless Jews ethnically cleansed by the Arab world in1948.Most of them ended up living in tent cities in Israel.  They never received a dime except from Jewish charities. President Trump, to his credit, mentioned this in his peace plan, although without actually suggesting any, kind of payback by the countries involved in stealing well over a billion and a half dollars US in property, homes, businesses, bank accounts and personal property according to the most conservative estimates.

Oh, but wait, there's another group the UNHCR doesn't handle They're handled by one of the UN's biggest and well funded sections,  UNRWA which is solely devoted to the care and welfare of these alleged 'Palestinian' refugees many who left willingly under orders from the Arab States attacking Israel and their leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Except these refugees were never refugees at all! In 1954, the Jordanian Parliament gave Jordanian citizenship to all of them including the ones in the UNRWA facilities. And even UNRWA's first American Chief Executive to the US Congress admitted that since they didn't bother checking, many of these 'refugees might never have lived in 'Palestine' at all, but were given food, lodging etc anyway. And unlike any other group of refugees, the train just keeps on rolling.

These people supposedly 'fled ' from Israel 72 years ago but the UN makes sure their refugee status is hereditary! No other group of refugees gets this kind of gravy train. Could it be because they picked the right enemies, the Jews?

I have to give President Trump credit for finally ending US funding of UNRWA. Among other things, UNRWA's schools teach 'Palestinian' kids to hate Jews and that terrorism against Jews is a holy act that will make them 'holy martyrs' as Abbas calls them.  UNRWA has even been caught hiding terrorists and arms in their schools, Mosques and other buildings. 

In short, Jordan is the Arab 'Palestinian' State and the Jordan River the logical and legal boundary between that and Israel. It's time Israel realized  this, instead of wasting time with so called peace plans that have never and will never work.

It's time Israel faced reality.

Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Examiner, American Thinker, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Clear Politics, The Times Of Israel, Breitbart.Com, Yediot and other publications

Jordan's Parliament Offers A Prayer In Honor Of Jerusalem Murderers

 

Jordan supposedly has a peace agreement with Israel, just like the one the groupies of the Two State Solution want Israel and 'Palestine' to have. Here's a great look at the reality of what that means.

The Elder of Ziyon has the story..Jordan's Parliament (mainly composed of Arabs whom identify  themselves as Palestinians) not only didn't condemn yesterday's horrendous murders, they actually honored the killers by reciting a Muslim prayer in chambers in their honor:

 On Wednesday, Jordan's parliament offered a prayer in honor of the spirit of Ghassan Abu Jamal and Uday Abu Jamal - the terrorists who slaughtered five people. The prayer was held as the House of representatives session opened.

MP Khalil Attieh requested his fellow representatives to recite the Fatiha for the "spirit of the heroes."

The Fatiha is the first chapter of the Koran, recited on important occasions.

Attieh further declared that the murders were a "natural reaction to the occupation crimes against the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinians.  In addition, MP Mohammed Al-Qatathh of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the assembly condemning the "Zionist attack on Jerusalem and its people" in the wake of "the heroic operation" on the synagogue in Har Nof.

Yes, 'heroic'..murdering four unarmed elderly rabbis at prayer and a Druze traffic cop without any protective gear who tried to stop them with a gun and meat cleavers.

You can tell a lot about a people by what they honor and whom they make heroes out of.

The Jordanian minister of media affairs issued a vague statement on the attack, saying that the government of Jordan "condemns the targeting of civilians, and denounce all acts of violence and terrorism against civilians, no matter who or why it is done.".

As you see, they weren't condemning it at all in their parliament. They were celebrating the deed and the perpetrators.Since America is so tight with Jordan, perhaps someone should ask Jen Psaki about that.

This is exactly the kind of faux 'peace' Israel could expect...except in the case of Hamas/Fatah, it would be 'Palestine' itself murdering Jews, not just applauding someone else doing it.

Underage Daughters of Syrian Refugees Forced into Prostitution

 

Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon are being 'helped' by their Arab brothers in a particularly horrendous fashion. As in Egypt, the new capitol for Arab sex tourism, young, often underage girls are the prey:

Um Majed sets down small cups of hot Turkish coffee to ease the tension. Nezar is a Syrian refugee and looking for a husband for her daughter. She lists the girl’s qualities.

“She is tall and pretty,” she tells Um Majed. “She finished the seventh grade.”

“There is one available. He is Saudi,” Um Majed answers.

This is what Nezar wants to hear. Saudis, flush with petrodollars, will pay well. She has high hopes for this Saudi.

So does Um Majed who will earn a $287 fee if the two sides agree to the match.

Um Majed, 28, is also a Syrian refugee, a former housewife from Homs. Um Majed isn’t her actual name but a respectable Arab moniker meaning ‘mother of Majed,’ her young son. She doesn’t want her full name published because of her shame about what she does for a living: procuring brides, some as young as 12, for men as old as 70 from all over the Middle East in exchange for money.[...]

“My daughter is willing to sacrifice herself for her family,” Nezar says. “If the war had not happened I would not marry my daughter to a Saudi. But the Syrians here are poor and have no money.”

Nezar’s daughter is 17. The Saudi groom is 70.

And it's a buyer's market. There's a surplus of desperate Syrian refugees with young daughrers to sell, and some grooms offering as little as $100 cash for a bride.

The age of consent in Jordan is 18, but there's no shortage of religious clerics who will marry underage girls for a fee. A number of Um Majed's clients simply want a temporary 'marriage', which sharia allows. It can last a few days, weeks or months, after which there's a 'divorce' and the girl is returned to her parents, sometimes to be sold over and over again in what amounts to religiously sanctified prostitution.

“One of my brides has been married three, four times,” Um Majed says. “She is 15.”

“I have 10 families looking for grooms,” she says. “Their girls are between 12 and 21. The grooms are always in their 40s, 50s, or 70s. They want beautiful girls, the younger the better.”

“The Saudis usually ask for 12-year-olds.”

Another Mistake In The Making - U.S. Training Islamist Syrian Rebels In Jordan

The German publication Der Spiegel has reported that American military advisers are training Syrian Islamist rebels in Jordan.

As I revealed previously, the U.S. has had boots on the ground for some time in Jordan. And our new Secretary of State John Kerry has already admitted that the U.S. was going to be providing what was described as 'non-lethal aid' and $60 million is cash to the rebels.

But as Der Spiegel revealed, we're also providing weapons training - while the Saudis and Qatar are supplying the weapons...which I guarantee you are mainly purchased or given to them by the Obama Administration.

Some 200 men have already received such training over the past three months and there are plans in the future to provide training for a total 1,200 members of the "Free Syrian Army" in two camps in the south and the east of the country.

Britain's Guardian newspaper also reported that U.S. trainers were assisting Syrian rebels in Jordan. British and French instructors were also participating in the U.S.-led effort, the Guardian said on Saturday, citing Jordanian security sources.

Jordanian intelligence services are involved in the program, which aims to build around a dozen units totaling some 10,000 fighters to the exclusion of radical Islamists, Spiegel reported.

The silliest assumption is that this is going to 'exclude radical Islamists' no matter what anyone says.The Free Syrian Army, the main rebel group is dominated by these Islamists. So is the the Syrian National Council(SNC) and the Obama's new group of 'moderates', the Syrian Opposition Coalition,(SOC)and the associated Joint Military Council.What we are doing here, just as we did in Egypt and Libya is arming and training a Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist army.There will be no exclusion of 'radical Islamists'. Trust me on that.

And even if the fighters we're arming and training weren't hard line Sunni Islamists (a wild stretch of the imagination)only somebody as clueless as Secretary of State Kerry would believe that they aren't going to take their weapons and training knowledge back home to Syria with them to train and arm others.

If they happen to win out over Assad, what exactly does the Obama Administration think is going to happen to that chemical weapons stockpile the Assad regime has on hand? Does anyone think the victorious rebels are going to just hand it over peacefully? Does anyone in Washington actually think an Islamist Syria is going to be our 'ally', any more than Islamist Egypt is? AT best, we may be able to buy a little cooperation in certain matters for a limited time before it all backfires on us.

Even worse, a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Syria is going to be a major threat to the current U.S. client state of Jordan. The Islamists are already well entrenched, there is a tribal factor involved and the Obama Administration, knowingly or unknowingly is setting the stage for an Islamist caliphate stretching from Libya to Syria, some Muslim Brotherhood sounder Hasan al-Banna only dreamed about in the 1920's.

The Obama Administration is handing it to them on a silver platter...and paying for the party as well.

This is beyond folly.

The Next Islamist Domino - Jordan

 

Jordan and King Abdullah appear to be next on the Islamist hit list. And the Obama administration seems to be sending signals that it tacitly approves.

Jordan has been at a tipping point for quite some time, partly because it's a U.S client state (which doesn't sit well with a significant part of its population whom consider King Abdullah an American tool) and partly because of its peculiar history and tribal aspect.

There have been protests with Muslim Brotherhood participation for two years now, but the most recent outbursts were large riots across the Kingdom that spread across the Kingdom and called openly for King Abdullah's ouster. In spite of brutal suppression by the King's security police and numerous arrests, the unrest, referred to as the "The November Intifada" is only growing.

Adding to the turmoil were remarks on November 19th by Deputy State Department Spokesman Mark Toner, who stated at a press conference that there was "thirst for change" in Jordan and that the Jordanian people had "economic, political concerns," as well as "aspirations." Needless to say, this sent a clear signal to King Abdullah's foes and to America's remaining allies in the region that just like Egypt's Mubarak, the Obama Administration is willing to cut Abdullah loose in favor of an Islamist regime.

The unrest was ostensibly over an end to government subsidies that have led to increases in fuel prices and other staples,but it's been festering for quite some time. Here are the two main factors involved.

Jordan, like the other Arab nations of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria without oil wealth had been keeping things quiet by subsidizing the price of food staples and cooking oil. The skyrocketing prices of these items on the world market combined with the rising economies of countries like India and China have made this an impossible solution to continue. Where it used to be Indians and Chinese who suffered when food prices rose dramatically, now it's the Arabs without oil wealth who are at the bottom of the chain because of their dysfunctional economies, and it's no coincidence that with the exception of Bahrain and Libya where there were tribal issues involved, all of the Arab Spring revolts have been in countries without oil wealth. It's also worth noting that in the only the two countries with oil resources that experienced Arab Spring unrest, the Bahrain revolt failed miserably, and that the one in Libya only succeeded because of extensive U.S. assistance.

To cut it down to one a short paragraph, no matter what you're hearing from the usual suspects, the Arab Spring isn't about a hankering for democracy. It's about the price of goods and food.And the Islamists are capitalizing on this (with the help of an Islamist-friendly American administration) by telling the Arab Street that all it's going to take to fix things is a return to hard line Islamism and sharia.

The second factor is similar to the one operating in Syria, longtime rule by a privileged minority caste. In Syria, it's the Shia Alawites ruling over a predominantly Sunni population. In Jordan, it's Bedouins ruling over Palestinians, or Qurayshi Arabs, to give them their proper name.

Here's a little history.

Back in 1923, Britain decided to solve the Palestine question of fulfilling their League of Nations Mandate to create a Jewish state in Palestine by partitioning the territory. They set 79% of it aside as the Arab part of Palestine, everything east of the Jordan River, and removed those Jews who had settled in that area. Everything west of the Jordan was supposed to be the Jewish State, as set down in the San Remo Agreement in 1924 between Britain and the League that modified the terms of the original mandate.




The British then attempted to kill two birds with one stone by placing the present king's grandfather, also named Abdullah on the throne as Jordan's ruler. This original King Abdullah was a Bedouin, the son of the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca Hussein, a British client. His Jordanian subjects, however, were Quraysh or town Arabs, an entirely different group who today identify themselves as Palestinians.

Thus, what was supposed to have become the Arab Palestinian state became a place where almost 80% of the residents were saddled with what amounted to an imported foreign aristocracy that quickly took charge of the leading positions in the military and government and reserved these positions for themselves.

This has manifested itself over the years in the assassination of the original King Abdullah in 1951 on the orders of Palestinian leader Haj-Amin al Husseini and in Yasser Arafat and the PLO's attempt to overthrow Abdullah's successor, King Hussein in 1970. That attempt was ruthlessly suppressed by King Hussein's Bedouin troops in his Arab legion, but tension and divisions between Jordan's Bedouin ruling class and their Palestinian subjects has remained.Even today, the Hashemite Bedouin monarchy is trying its best to even the odds by arbitrarily depriving Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship who have held it for years.

The $1 billion in direct U.S. aid King Abdullah receives helps,but it's not enough by itself to bridge the financial gap, and has only served to demonize the regime to the Muslim Brotherhood and many of the Palestinians. Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups in neighboring Syria up the ante.

While the Muslim Brotherhood does not have full control of the Jordanian opposition to King Abdullah, (Palestinians, especially those in refugee camps are a significant factor), the Muslim Brotherhood and its salafist allies are the only group that is well financed and organized enough to win any future elections and take control of a new Jordanian regime if the King falls.

And the pressure on King Abdullah's regime will be especially intense if the Islamist dominated Syrian resistance successfully overthrows the Assad regime and puts most of Syria in the hands of the Islamists, something the Obama Administration is working towards diligently.

The future?

If this goes as I foresee and King Abdullah's regime is overthrown, it will almost certainly be replaced by an Islamist, Muslim Brotherhood led regime similar to Egypt's, with the full connivance and backing of the Obama Administration.

The current Arab occupied parts of Judea and Samaria will likely merge with Jordan, since they will almost certainly be under Hamas rule in the near future and there's no deal Israel can offer the Palestinians the Palestinians would accept that doesn't severely compromise Israel's security . The U.S. will have lost yet another ally in the region. No matter how much 'daylight' President Obama wishes to create between Israel and America to appeal to his new Islamist friends, congress is not likely to go along with it completely and the Islamist regimes themselves are not pro-American in the least.

Whatever loyalty they have will be dependent on how much baksheesh in the form of aid America is willing to cough up, and even that is not likely to suffice for long barring a complete break with Israel.Don't be surprised if Egypt and an Islamist Syria once again becomes a Russian clients.

Israel will almost certainly steer a much more independent course and find new allies as their massive oil and gas finds come online next year, most likely China.The downgrading of the US-Israel alliance by the Obama Administration will be seen as a major foreign policy error in the future, since it will also send a message to the Saudis and the GCE countries that America is an unreliable ally. Since President Obama remains hostile to domestic energy creation from oil, coal and gas, expect oil prices to go up and take the prices of food and goods along with them.

The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan may survive de jure a bit longer, but they're essentially history. Israel has a worthless piece of paper, the Arabs have the land, and in Jordan's case, the land and the water. So there's no real need to pretend anymore.

The Middle East will devolve back to pre '67 status, with Israel surrounded by hostile Muslim states. The only difference is that instead of secular, quasi-Marxist leaders, the leaders will be hard line Islamists.

The creation of an Islamist Caliphate in the Arab world  was something Hassan al-Banna, who created the Muslim brotherhood in the 1920's only dreamed about.The Obama Administration has made considerable progress in making that dream a reality.

Obama's Next Mideast War? Ground Troops In Jordan

 

The U.S. now has boots on the ground in Jordan.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that 'about 150' U.S. special forces troops were now deployed in Jordan to monitor the situation in neighboring Syria and to train the Jordanian military.

"We have a group of our forces there, working to help them build a headquarters and to ensure that we make the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so we can deal with all of the possible consequences," he said.

"We've also been working with them to try to develop their own military and operational capabilities in the event of any contingency there."

There's a great deal left unsaid in those two paragraphs.

Part of the reason our troops are there is to monitor what's going on with Syria's chemical and biological weapons, which the Assad regime might attempt to move or deploy, as Panetta acknowledged. However, if those weapons were to be moved, it would likely be in the other direction, towards Assad's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

While the Obama Administration pointedly refuses to name any red lines when it comes to Iran, President Obama has been quite vocal that any attempt to move or use biological or chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be crossing a "red line" and would prompt a swift U.S. military response.

But that's only part of the story.

Jordan is a U.S. client state, and King Abdullah, the Hashemite monarch of the country is literally sitting on a powder keg.

Back in 1923, when Britain partitioned the Palestine Mandate and set 79% of it aside as the Arab part of Palestine, they attempted to kill two birds with one stone by placing the present king's grandfather, also named Abdullah on the throne as Jordan's ruler. This original King Abdullah was a Bedouin, son of the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca Hussein. His Jordanian subjects, however, were Quraysh or town Arabs, an entirely different group.

Thus, what was supposed to have become the Arab Palestinian state became a place where 75% of the residents were saddled with what amounted to an imported foreign aristocracy that quickly took charge of the leading positions in the military and government and reserved these positions for themselves.

This has manifested itself over the years in the assassination of the original King Abdullah in 1951 on the orders of Palestinian leader Haj-Amin al Husseini and in Yasser Arafat and the PLO's attempt to overthrow Abdullah's successor, King Hussein in 1970. That attempt was brutally suppressed by King Hussein's Bedouin troops in his Arab legion, but tension between Jordan's Bedouin ruling class and their Palestinain subjects has remained.

This situation has been exacerbated by the increased presence of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda affiliated groups, who would like nothing better than to overthrow the present King Abdullah,who they see as a U.S. tool. Muslim Brotherhood groups now operating just over the border in Syria ups the ante.

The other contingencies Panetta mentions almost certainly include training the Jordanians in counter-insurgency techniques and increasing intel and surveillance not only within Jordan but on the Syrian border in an effort to help preserve King Abdullah and the status quo.

That job will get increasingly more difficult once the Muslim Brotherhood group Hamas takes over the Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West bank)as the Fatah Old Guard who now rule these areas fades away and retires to live on the aid money they have squirreled away in Europe and the Emirates.

Will Saudi Arabia Be The Next to Fall In The Arab Spring?

Commentary's Michael Rubin examines the question:

After the Tunisian protesters sent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, dictator for almost a quarter century, packing, the Central Intelligence Agency famously predicted the Arab revolt would not spread. Almost two years later, dictators have fallen in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and a fifth appears on the ropes in Syria. Despite what regional experts and Arab autocrats hoped, the desire for freedom and liberty is contagious. So when Bashar al-Assad’s tenure ends with a bullet in his head or a broomstick in his bottom, what will be the next domino to fall?

There is no shortage of dissatisfaction across the Arab world. Just ask the Bahrainis. Tension is also high in Kuwait. Most Jordanians are seething at King Abdullah II and especially at the high-spending Queen Rania. But the next dynasty to fall may very well be the Saudi monarchy.

Saudi Arabia is an artificial state, cobbled together in the 1920s and 1930s by military force. Oil wealth has both helped paper over differences and promote a radical and intolerant reinterpretation of Islam. Still, regional identities remain, sectarianism is increasing, and the gap between rich and poor has bred resentment toward the ruling family whose grip on power will slip as octogenarians succeed octogenarians and factional rivalries percolate.

Human rights groups and journalists tend to focus on Bahrain. There certainly are myriad problems in that Arab island nation, but the focus is disproportionate, determined more by access than by degree of repression. While the Bahraini government uses rubber bullets, the Saudis prefer live ammunition, especially when the protesters are Shi’ites in the oil-rich Eastern Province.

While I have no love for the House of Saud, there are a few things that bear mentioning, in my opinion.And they're crucial.

First, all of the states cited above, with the exception of Libya had no oil wealth. And that's a crucial element. Because the key word in understanding the Arab Spring is not 'democracy' but food.

World food prices and the cost of basic staples have skyrocketed, and as I've mentioned before, whereas it used to be Indians and Chinese who bore the brunt of the suffering in these situations, those economies have developed. Now it is the Arabs and their dysfunctional kleptocracies who are the low man on the food chain, so to speak.

Countries with oil wealth and relatively small populations can curb this by keeping prices artificially low with subsidies, and the Saudis, among other countries have done so.Those without oil wealth,like Egypt, Syria and Tunisia were unable to do so.

Libya was different because of two important elements Michael doesn't mention..tribalism and overt western intervention.

The Libyan rebellion against Khaddaffi was very much a product of tribalism, with the rebels being concentrated in the east, Benghazi and Cyrenaica. And there's no doubt Khaddaffi would have defeated the rebels if not for western interference.

The EU nations got involved for one reason. Initially, when the rebellion began, the rebels made a great deal of progress, and the Europeans, particularly Britain and France whom had multibillion oil contracts to protect promptly dumped Khaddaffi and signed new oil deals with the rebels. When Khaddaffi recovered and sent the rebels fleeing towards Benghazi, those all important oil contract were going to be worthless unless something was done. So the Europeans went to rescue the rebels and those oil contracts and later turned it into a NATO mission.

President Obama, of course, joined in for his own reasons. Yes, ironically, this really was a War for Oil.

Tribalism figures in most of the other potential flashpoints he mentioned. Syria is essentially a conflict between Muslim Brotherhood Sunni rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the Alawite Assad regime backed by Iran and Hezbollah. If Assad falls, ( and it's by no means certain) it will be because of overt intervention by the Obama Administration in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The tensions in Bahrain features a Sunni monarchy and upper class versus a Shi'ite majority, with tensions sparked by Shi'ite Iran. But it's worth noting that when Iran fomented unrest last year among Bahrain's Shi'ites, the Saudis and the GCC countries reacted promptly and forcefully to back the ruling Al-Khalifa royal family with troops and armor, and used their navies to block Iranian ships from aiding the rebels. Iran backed down, and while a certain amount of unrest still exists, it's largely contained. Bahrain's oil wealth will keep prices down, and because of a huge American base there, western intervention isn't going to happen.

In Saudi Arabia, the situation is reversed. The Shi'ite underclass is a minority largely situated in the eastern part of the Kingdom, and not only do I doubt they  have the numbers to really wage a revolt, but based on how Iran backed down on Bahrain last year I doubt the mullahs are going to make much of a fight of it in Saudi Arabia...unless they openly invade, which would likely bring America into it. Plus the Saudis also have the oil wealth to keep food prices down and the possibility of western intervention on the side of the Shi'ite rebels is nil.

Which brings me to my own favorite candidate for the next Arab Spring revolt - Jordan.

Everything's in place there...tribalism, no oil wealth, a stagnant economy, and historical grievance.

Unlike the other conflicts, this tribal divide isn't between Sunni and Shi'ite, but between Bedouin and Palestinian.

In 1924, when the British created Jordan, the original idea was to partition the Palestine Mandate so that the Arabs would get the 80 per cent of the Mandate east of the Jordan River and the Jews would get the 20 per cent west of the Jordan. That arrangement was codified by the League of Nations in the 1924 San Remo Agreement. But the Brits pulled something at the last minute that pretty much changed things. They put one of the Bedouin Hashemite Sherif Hussein bin Ali's sons Abdullah ( the present King's grandfather) in as King, along with a minority faction of his fellow Hashemite Bedouins that proceeded to rule the country as an upper class over the non-Bedouin Arabs, the Palestinians, if you want to refer to them by that term.

Foisting what was essentially a foreign monarchy on the Palestinian Arabs didn't sit well with them, and Abdullah was later murdered by the Palestinians in 1951 on the orders of the pro Nazi Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Later, in 1970, Yasser Arafat and the PLO attempted and failed to overthrow Abdullah's son, King Hussein, resulting in the killing and expulsion of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in 1970, an event Palestinians refer to as Black September.

At present, Jordan is composed of a large majority of Palestinian Arabs and a minority of Bedouin, including King Abdullah II. He's personally unpopular because of economic unrest, for being an American ally, for preserving a peace treaty with Israel, and for arbitrarily taking Jordanian citizenship away from Palestinians residing in Jordan who have held it for years.

The opposition to King Hussein is largely composed of the Muslim Brotherhood, and with the Brotherhood now established in Egypt and Gaza and increasing its influence right next door in the Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA The West Bank), my personal bet would be that the next victim of the Arab Spring wouldn't be Saudi Arabia, but Jordan.

In fact,I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Jordan eventually become the actual Palestinian Arab state - which after all , was what it was supposed to be all along.

Proud 'Palestinians' Mahmoud Abbas And Most Of The Fatah Leadership Are Jordanian Citizens!

Some people in the past have criticized me because I continue to consider the 'Palestinians' a made up nationality and insist that Jordan is the actual Arab 'Palestinian' state.

They're not taking into account that Jordan as 'Palestine' was the intention of the British partition of the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as codified in international law by the San Remo Agreement.The majority of Jordan's population then were 'Palestinian' - Quraysh Arabs, who were town dwellers as opposed to the Bedouin, who were desert dwellers. 80% of the Palestine Mandate was given to Abdullah, the present King's grandfather who established a minority Bedouin Hashemite monarchy over the 'Palestinians' that continues to this day. Presently, even given the inevitable intermarriage, the split is roughly 75% 'Palestinian' and about 25% Bedouin, with many of the Bedouin Hashemite loyalists installed in key positions in government and the army.

Moreover, in 1967 when Israel took over Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) after Jordan attacked them, every Arab there was a Jordanian citizen and remained one according to Jordan's own laws until the mid 1990's.

The laws were changed because the minority Bedouin Hashemite monarchy has always feared that someday the majority of non-Bedouins would try to take over. That almost happened once before during 'Black September' back in 1970 when Yasser Arafat tried to take over the country and the Jordanian Arab Legion killed and expelled thousands of 'Palestinians'.

As I've reported before, the Bedouin minority has upped the ante on 'de-Palestinizing' Jordan by arbitrarily taking away Jordanian citizenship from thousands of people who identify themselves as 'Palestinians' and have held Jordanian citizenship for decades.

Ah, but that's for the little people.

After Mahmoud Abbas' little screed at the UN, some people applauded what they saw as his brave championship of 'Palestinian' nationhood. Who would have imagined that Mahmoud Abbas and most of the Fatah leadership have applied for and been granted Jordanian citizenship for themselves and their families? You see, according to the October 9th 2011 Jerusalem Post reporting on an article in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, a significant number of PA leaders and their families are now full Jordanian citizens:

Atef Tarawneh, deputy speaker of the Jordanian parliament, denounced the decision to revoke the citizenship of thousands of Jordanians of Palestinian origin.

Tarawneh said that the decision was “harmful” to national unity and the constitution in Jordan.

He added that he recently met with King Abdullah II and warned him against the repercussions of revoking the citizenships. He said that the decision has harmed investment in the kingdom because dozens of Jordanian-Palestinian businessmen living abroad were afraid to return home out of fear that the authorities would confiscate their passports.

According to the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, a significant number of PA leaders are registered as full Jordanian citizens.

The paper pointed out that the leaders applied for Jordanian citizenship at a time when they were urging the Jordanian authorities to stop giving Palestinians Jordanian citizenship, in order to “consolidate their Palestinian identity.” The Jordanian government had justified its decision to strip Palestinians of their citizenship by using the same argument.

However, the Jordanians have long seen the Palestinian majority in the kingdom as a demographic threat.

The decision to rescind the citizenship of tens of thousands of Palestinians is seen in the context of this fear.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi quoted sources in Amman as saying that Abbas and his entire family carry Jordanian passports.

Other PA leaders who carry Jordanian passports include former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei, Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh and Fatah’s Muhammad Dahlan.

The paper did not say when the Palestinian officials were given Jordanian citizenship. PA spokesmen in Ramallah refused to comment on the report.

A Fatah official, however, said that he was not surprised to hear that Palestinian leaders were carrying Jordanian passports. He said he believed most of the PA leaders had applied for and received Jordanian passports in the past 15 years.

Tarawneh, by the way is of 'Palestinian' origin.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi also reported that it was the PA leaders who had asked for Jordanian citizenship, and not the Jordanians who had offered it.

Who would have ever guessed that I and the Fatah leadership would agree on something? Jordan is the 'Palestinian' state and the nonsense going on at the UN is simply an attempted land grab by the 'Palestinians' in an attempt to complete St. Arafat's mission of pushing the Jews into the sea bit by bit and grab a more strategic location to launch the final jihad.

(h/t Carl)

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What Does Peace Mean Anyway?

Peace is said to be a high priority, no matter whom you talk to.People crave it and pray for it, and rightly so.

This is a much more important issue, I think, than most of us realize, especially in these days when people use terms like 'The Long War' and 'the peace process' .Yet few of us, especially in the West actually stop to think of what we really mean by peace, and what you can't define clearly is frequently illusory.

The Bible provides one definition, with the prophet Isaiah talking of a time of peace so profound that men will not only transform the arms of battle into implements of peace but cease to study the arts and strategy of war.

That's obviously an unrealized ideal in the immediate future.

Islam is much more direct about the matter. Westerners are confused when Muslims say that Islam means peace (actually, it comes from the Arabic aslama, which means submission). To Muslims, who divide the world into dar Islam, the part of the world where Islam rules and the non-Muslim world, referred to as dar harb ( literally the house of war), peace is much simpler. It's a condition where the entire world is dar Islam, exactly what Mohammed ordered his followers to strive for right before his death in 632 CE, according to the Hadiths.

If some Muslims talk of peace when they actually mean a time of dar Islam, it's understandable that something gets lost in translation - sometimes deliberately so.

So, is peace then simply an absence of war and conflict? It ain't necessarily so.

After the signing of the Versailles Treaty that ended WWI in 1918, France's Commanding General Ferdinand Foch said in an amazingly prescient remark, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."

What Marshall Foch understood was that while Germany had been bled white and the home front was collapsing, the German Army had not been decisively defeated. He guessed that the German military establishment and their political allies would use that fact to inflame revanchist sentiment as a springboard to a new war as soon as possible, and realized that the Versailles Treaty would last only as long as the allies maintained military superiority over Germany and occupied a strategic part of the German homeland.

The first fifteen years of the armistice between the World Wars could be said to fit this definition of an absence of war and conflict, but beneath the surface the conflict seethed, and as Foch predicted, the German Army continued to claim it had been 'stabbed in the back by traitors at home', a refrain that was echoed by the Nazis, the Stahlhelm and other groups who favored abrogating the Versailles treaty. The army continued to enjoy prestige in Germany and became almost a state within a state,drilling and training men in secret in a de facto violation of Versailles.

When the political climate was right and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, the violations became even more blatant, German rearmament increased and three years later Hitler sent the army into the strategic Saar and the Rhineland and ended the allied occupation. Outright war came only a few short years after.

The Middle East is currently witnessing a similar example of the ending of an 'armistice' that arose from similar circumstances. In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in a war of annihilation that was essentially a continuation of the Six Day War in 1967.

Unlike the 1967 war, Egypt and Syria caused considerable Israeli casualties and advanced before they were ultimately thrown back with heavy losses. Israel General Arik Sharon made military history by ignoring his orders and crossing the Suez Canal behind the Egyptians in a brilliant maneuver, trapping the main Egyptian Third Army in an iron ring.Rather than destroy the 3rd Army as a fighting force and go on to  a decisive victory, as Sharon advocated,Israeli PM Golda Meir and the Labor government in power at the time followed American and UN direction to seek a ceasefire and avoid an Arab 'humiliation'. General Sharon was ordered to release the Third Army almost intact back to Egyptian lines.

Meanwhile,on the Syrian front Israeli Brigadier General Rafael "Raful" Eitan (Z"l) led a division that stopped the Syrians at Nafekh, threw back the Syrian forces and advanced to within striking distance of Damascus.General Eitan became an IDF legend in that campaign when he rallied his exhausted troops by personally picking up a bazooka, taking out two Syrian tanks and turning the Syrian advance into a retreat

It's interesting to contrast the two results. In Syria, there was never any talk of peace with Israel, but there was comparatively little overt hostility either, except through proxies like Hezbollah. With the IDF only a short hop from Damascus, the Syrians have had ample motivation to avoid outright war with Israel ever since. That motivation would disappear,of course, if the Israelis ever returned the Golan to Syria.

In Egypt, there was a similar situation analogous in many ways to what occurred with Germany after WWI.Even though Egypt's forces were defeated, their armies were not defeated decisively,to the point that the Egyptian regime was able to propagandize to their own people that they had not lost the 1973 war at all, that they had in fact won.

In that context, the Camp David Accords, by which Egypt obtained the Sinai was seen as an accommodation and even a capitulation from Israel by Egyptians, and it had the additional benefit of removing Israeli forces from striking distance of the Suez Canal and Cairo.In war, after all, it is the victors who gain territory and concessions.

In consequence, what has occurred between Egypt and Israel was not peace but an armistice, as Marshall Foch would have put it.The two countries signed and kept a formal peace treaty (largely subsidized by US baksheesh to Egypt of over a billion dollars per year) but demonization of Israel and Jews never stopped in Egypt's mosques, schools and media.The Mubarak regime kept the arrangement, but was never unwilling to use the Egyptian hatred for Jews and Israel to its own advantage.

The US trained and equipped Egyptian Army has been rebuilt and has always performed its war games exercises from the standpoint of fighting Israel as its main foe on its Eastern borders, and indeed the Egyptian Army's weaponry and deployment makes no sense otherwise.

With the fall of the Mubarak regime, the key points of the armistice - diplomatic relations, trade and the demilitarization of the Sinai - have all been or are likely to be  suspended by Egypt as the country reverts to its overt hostility towards Israel, and if outright war is unlikely simply because Egypt cannot afford it financially or in terms of stability right now, it certainly will not be 'peace' and Egypt will almost certainly be siding with Israel's enemies Hamas and by extension Syria and Iran as the Muslim Brotherhood takes over more political power.

Let's examine, in contrast an instance of real and lasting peace, the one between the victorious Allies and Japan and Germany after WWII.

The allies made a point of insisting on an unconditional surrender in both cases, and refused several offers of an attractive armistice from the Nazis, who attempted to split the allies by offering a separate peace to the Western allies so that they could devote all of their efforts to throwing back the Soviets.

At the end of the war there was no question either among Japan and Germany's armed forces or their people that they had been decisively defeated. Both countries had been devastated, suffered severe shortages of food, housing, medical supplies and fuel and were forced to accede to military occupation in order to avoid being totally destroyed.The fascist ideology that had ruled both nations was discredited and destroyed, unlike what happened to Germany in WWI.

Both countries lost significant territory - the Germans lost Alsace-Lorraine to France and a huge swath of territory to Poland and the Japanese lost the Kuril Islands, Saipan and the oil rich and strategic territory of Sakhalin.

To put it in perhaps a more modern context, both countries suffered major real and concrete costs for launching and losing a war of aggression, both were forced to absorb and resettle a significant number of their nationals as refugees in their remaining territory and there was never any question at all of ephemera like 'land for peace.'

As a consequence, the populations of Germany and Japan both came to the realization that their respective countries had come perilously close to ceasing to exist, and made a collective decision that their survival lay in real peace, an end to aggression, the pursuit of prosperity and western-style democracy.

Real peace, is after all, a collective agreement to live and let live. Only when two peoples mutually decide to make that a heartfelt goal can it exist, and without that basic realization all the schemes and negotiations, all the promises of land for peace, territory swaps, redrawn borders and the like are just a prelude to another round of conflict.

Or to put it in even simpler terms, real peace comes when the cost has been so great for the aggressor that resorting to hostilities again for anything other than an existential threat is almost unthinkable.


Because, in the end, real peace is the fruit of decisive victory. That's a lesson of history that could stand to be revisited today.

- Selah -

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Clashes In Egypt Turn Violent

As you know, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak announced yesterday that he would not seek another term as president, would spend the rest of his term working on a peaceful transition of power and would step down in September.

As I predicted, that wasn't going to satisfy the opposition, who want him out now, regardless. The army had ordered protesters to return home today, but they have pretty much been ignored.

As a consequence, there have been reports of numerous violent clashes between pro-Mubarak and opposition forces, and even the media has not been immune. CNN's Anderson Cooper was apparently attacked by a mob and punched out for no apparent reason other than being a ferenghi, an experience that may modify his views a bit on the glories of Islamic culture and civilization. ( via memeorandum)

Speaking of media, a number of commentators on the scene are reporting that a lot of the protesters hate America and hate Jews. Who woulda thunk it, hmm?

Apparently the army let the chaos go on a bit too long. At this point, they would have to shoot a few people to restore order. Since I doubt they're going to do that, it also means that (a) the army is going to have to horsetrade with the opposition and the Muslim Brotherhood to include them in a new government and (b) Mubarak will be leaving much faster than he planned.

I'd be surprised if Mubarak lasts out the week.

In Jordan, the story is similar, although as I mentioned before there's a significant tribal element involved. The powerful Muslim Brotherhood opposition has refused to accept King Abdullah's new prime minister and is demanding his ouster. Apparently he's too pro-US and supports continuing the peace treaty with Israel, so I'm sure Abdullah is weighing getting rid of him to keep the peace and may likely put a new government in place of the Muslim Brotherhood's liking.

Israel may very well be looking at a scenario in the near future where it is surrounded by Iranian proxies and allies.

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Anti-Government Protests Spread To Jordan

Members of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jordan's largest opposition party have joined what al-Jazeera calls 'trade unions and leftist organizations' in widespread anti-government protests across Jordan.

That alliance between the Left and the Islamists is a key one, as both favor an end to western-style free market capitalism.

Jordan is similar to Egypt in having no oil to buy off a compliant population with subsidies, in being a US client state, in having a strong Islamist movement and in having a population beset by economic turmoil.

The key difference is one of tribalism.

When the British drew a line in the sand in 1923 and established the Kingdom of Jordan, it was intended to be the division between the Arab part of Palestine and the Jewish state the British had agreed to establish in Palestine under the League of Nations Mandate and later, the San Remo Agreement.

The majority of Jordan's population were 'Palestinian' - Quraysh Arabs, who were town dwellers as opposed to the Bedouin, who were desert dwellers. King Faisal, leader of the Bedouin Hashemite tribe had aided Britain in a minor way in fighting the Arab's former Ottoman rulers during WWI, and the British rewarded King Faisal's sons with thrones.

Iraq, made up of various pieces of Mesopotamia went to Ali. Jordan, comprising 80% of Palestine was given to Abdullah, the present King's grandfather who established a minority Bedouin Hashemite monarchy over the 'Palestinians' that continues to this day. Presently, even given the inevitable intermarriage, the split is roughly 75% 'Palestinian' and about 25% Bedouin, with many of the Bedouin Hashemite loyalists in key positions in government and the army.

In effect, a number of 'Palestinians' have always felt, with some justification, that they had a foreign monarchy imposed on them. This situation blew up once before, in 1970 when Yasser Arafat attempted to use the PLO to take over the country.
It failed, because the Israelis intervened at US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's request and mobilized their armor to counteract Syria's attempt to send troops into Jordan to aid the PLO. That left King Hussein free to use his army on the 'Palestinians' in a period known to the 'Palestinians' as Black September, when thousands of Palestinians were killed outright by King Hussein's Arab Legion and the PLO and Arafat were driven across the borders through Syria and into Lebanon.

Even today, the Hashemite Bedouin monarchy is trying its best to even the odds by arbitrarily depriving Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship who have held it for years.


So the current protests not only have an anti-US and Islamist element but a tribal one as well.

It remains to be seen if the protests are going to reach the level they have in Egypt.

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