October 2000 Author Unknown Let's start at the beginning. There are a billion Muslims in the world and about 13 million Jews. That tends to make the Muslims bullies and the Jews cautious. The Muslims as a cultural trait seem to regard violence as an appropriate response to anything they deem against their interests/wishes. The Jews as a cultural trait abhor violence and prefer to reach compromise conclusions through negotiation. The Muslims are sitting on the majority of the world's currently accessible oil supplies in dozens of nations in the Middle East and around the world. The Jews are sitting of a postage stamp piece of land which has significance only for them as their only country and refuge, and as the seat of their ancient country and capital, Jerusalem. Arab Muslims seem to think that they ought to have Israel, too, mostly it seems because the Jews have it rather than for any other reason. When the Jews didn't have it, it was an Arab backwater, unremarked upon in Arab literature or theology and largely ignored-including Jerusalem. Seven years ago, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres made a strategic mistake of incalculable proportions. They decided, without the consent of the people of Israel, to initiate negotiations with their Arab tormentors and antagonists, the Palestinians, in the hope that the Jewish cultural trait of talking things out with one's adversaries would ultimately triumph over the Arab/Muslim cultural trait of killing those with whom they disagree. This process, which has been given the apparently ineradicable title of "peace process" despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, has consisted largely of Israeli concessions, spurred by a combination of American pressure and Arab intransigence so that today, the parties have reached a juncture which no one seven years ago would have ever dreamed possible - Jerusalem itself, the heart and soul of Judaism, the place towards which Jews worldwide have turned to pray for thousands of years, the symbol and the reality of the Jewish people and the place where the sacred Temples of the Jews were built-on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem - is now on the bargaining table as if it were just another piece of territory to be haggled over. How did it get this far? How did something which no Jew would ever have considered even discussing become the center of the continuing dispute between the Arabs and the Jews? How did a place for which the Arabs cared not a whit when they controlled it suddenly become so "sacred" to them? The answers are pretty straightforward, although you won't read them in the mainstream press or hear them from television and radio commentators who buy each day's burst of Arab propaganda as if it were carved in stone and ineligible for examination and criticism. On the Arab side of this question is the simple equation - if the Jews want it and it's important to them, then we want it and it's more important to us. Never mind the facts such as that when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem until 1967 no Arab ever thought to make it significant or endow it with any special importance or move an Arab capital there. All they did was systematically destroy every Jewish synagogue and memorial there, using tombstones for latrines and to pave roads. When the Jews recaptured East Jerusalem during the 1967 war, a war of aggression by the Arabs against the Jews during which Israel begged Jordan not to join in, promising that Israel wouldn't attack Jordan (the Jordanians ignored the Israeli pleas and wound up losing East Jerusalem to the Jews, who then reunited their ancient capital and gained access to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall of the old Temple), they incredibly and magnanimously allowed the Muslim Waqf to retain religious control of the Temple Mount, where the Muslims had built a Mosque on the remains of the Jewish Temple, a Muslim characteristic designed to erase the remains of conquered or subjugated others. This magnanimity, another example of the Jewish cultural inclination to compromise rather than to fight, allowed the Muslims to retain a foothold in the old city of Jerusalem and, over the years, to enhance and expand their efforts both at control and at refusing Jews access to the Temple Mount which is, in fact, the holiest place in the world for Jews, rather than the Western Wall which many commentators seems to focus on out of ignorance and because the Jews have done a terrible job of making their own case to world public opinion (not to mention that, given the Arab/Muslim reserves of oil and the world's general disinclination to treat Jews as they themselves would like to be treated, it probably doesn't matter what the Jews might say or how strong the facts are in their favor). So now we come to the recent Arab violence in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. As is reported below: "One top Israeli intelligence officer told me painfully: 'The policy of the present government is the source of the riots. 'Yasser Arafat and his people heard from the Israeli government that for the first time they were willing to share control of Temple Mount - so now they won't accept any more Israeli visitors to it, as had been the custom in the past.' " You will hear form the media that the cause of the Arab violence was a visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon, one of Israel's great generals and war heroes and the current head of the Likud Party there. In fact, the cause of the Arab violence is not that at all. Sharon's visit is simply a convenient excuse to continue a process which has been ongoing ever since the first Oslo accord seven years ago and even before that - what the Arabs themselves termed the phased plan for the destruction of Israel. Having tried unsuccessfully during many decades and numerous wars to defeat and destroy Israel, the Arabs decided in the 1980s to use a different approach. They would engage Israel in "peace" dialogues, during which they would extract from Israel ongoing territorial and other concessions which would, over time, so weaken and demoralize Israel that it would eventually reach a point at which it was unable to defend itself either physically or spiritually and the final phase of this long term plan could then be executed - the destruction of the entire state and the Jewish people there. And sure enough, given the Jewish cultural instinct to negotiate rather than to fight, the Jews have played right into the Arab's plan and have made not only territorial but also spiritual and emotional concessions in the vain hope that at some point the Arabs would say, as the Jews would have had they been on the other side, OK, that's fair. We'll take what you offer and get on with the business of building our own lives and futures, living side by side with you in peace and friendship. Unfortunately, the Arabs never intended any such conclusion. And they have never really made any secret of what their ultimate goal is; only the western media and the politicians, and some hapless Jews of Israel and elsewhere, so desperate for peace and reconciliation, have bought into the "peace process" myth in the hope that the Arabs would, in the end, behave as the Jews would and declare an end to the conflict. But now we get to the core of the dispute and what we find is that the Arabs aren't even willing to allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount, let alone pray there. The Jewish cultural trait of compromise and understanding for the other side's views and needs is not only not reciprocated, it is spat upon and laughed at by the Arabs. The Jewish instinct to compromise in search of reconciliation is seen by the Arabs/Muslims as ongoing evidence of the success of their phased plan and of the continuing degradation and destruction of the Jews' willingness and ability to defend their interests, just as they, the Arabs, had planned years ago. Will it end here? Of course not. Because the Arabs have never agreed to or even suggested that they would permit Israel to continue as a Jewish state. What they want, and they say this clearly, is for Israel to commit national suicide, ceasing to exist as a Jewish country. Only then will they be satisfied, as they create still another Arab/Muslim nation, despotic in nature and hostile and anti-western/American in its orientation. And meanwhile, the Jews, pressed by the western nations, especially by the American President, and desperate for closure and an end to war and killing, continue to search for a formula which will satisfy the Arabs and bring an end to the killing of their children. But the Arabs exalt in dying in the fight against the Jews and continue true to their cultural trait of violence. Ariel Sharon didn't cause the Arab riots and violence these last few days. The Arabs did. They're the ones who rioted. They're the ones who picked up and threw the stones and fired the rifles at their Jewish neighbors. They're the ones who announced that Jews weren't welcome on the Temple Mount and that they would fight and die to enforce that restriction. This is just a continuation of a process and a technique which one would think the west and the Israelis would have caught onto a long time ago. But somehow they haven't and they keep acting in the belief that there must be a formula which will bring an end to the Arab hatred and enmity for the Jews. And of course, there is: if all the Jews leave and Israel ceases to exist. One of these days they'll wake up and realize they've been wrong. The real questions are, will it be too late and will they admit they were wrong, or will they blame "right wingers" like Ariel Sharon for spoiling their plans for peace and bringing the next war? They'll ignore the fact that the next war will be initiated by the Arabs, as have all the conflicts and killings all these years since 1948 and the re-creation of the State of Israel. Those of you who understand what's really happening have an enormous obligation - to explain it to others as often and as clearly as you can. Because eventually that may be the difference between the continued existence of the State of Israel and its extinguishment once again - the understanding and the support which will flow from that, of the true nature of what has been happening in the Middle East and why the violence is just part of the Arab's ultimate plan for the phased destruction of Israel. Spread the word, please!!!!!!!