2001 ushers in the 54th year of war in the Middle East. The conflict began in 1947 with European immigrants to Palestine, hostile towards their Islamic countrymen, began a reign of terror against them. Their objective was to ethnically cleanse Palestine ahead of a unilateral declaration of independence.

These terrorists were well organized as they had been terrorizing the British who administered the region under a post World War One agreement. They had several terrorist organization most notably the Irgun and the Stern Gang. They succeeded in driving out nearly all the native Islamic population who have consigned to refugee camps since then in other countries since then.

Since 1947 a constant state of war has existed in the Middle East, occasionally flaring into active fighting. The first such flare-up occurred in 1956 when Israel joined forces with Britain and France in an aggressive war against Egypt over the control of the Suez Canal. International pressure succeeded in forcing Israel to withdraw from Egypt.

In 1967 Israel began a series of provocations towards Syria invading Syrian airspace and attacking its aircraft and massing troops along the border. Confirmed later by then Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, Israeli farmers began cultivating Syrian land as though it were their own in order to draw fire and justify an Israel attack as a defensive measure. In response to this pending attack upon Syria, Egypt mobilized its military and blockaded Israel's port on the Red Sea.

Actually hostilities started with a sneak attack rivaling Pearl Harbor by Israel upon Egypt's air force destroying most of the planes on the ground. Today this war is the infamous Six Day War in which Israel's long developed war plans proved highly successful against its unprepared neighbors.

In the process in an as yet unexplained event, Israel attacked a US Navy ship killing, more properly murdering, 37 Americans. Also unexplained is US President Lyndon Johnson personally prohibiting the US Mediterranean Fleet for protecting the USS Liberty.

One result of the war was to put one million Islamics under the control of Israel's military. The conditions imposed upon these civilians in the West Bank and Gaza were so severe that it lead to the foundation of many organizations to liberate Palestine. Eventually they were united under a single umbrella organization, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, by Yassar Arafat who was head of the Al Fatah group. This is the man and the organization leading the resistance against Israeli oppression today.

Islamics in the Golan Heights faired even worse. Their homes, villages and even some small cities were destroyed and the people force marched out of the Golan further into Syria. The farmers who had provided the pretext for war became the (wealthy) owners of the land.

Confiscation of Islamic property began in the West Bank, Gaza and the Sinai up to the Suez Canal. At first by the military quickly followed the establishment of Israeli colonies for additional European immigrants. While the Sinai was returned to Egypt in return for peace in an agreement brokered by US President Carter, confiscation and colonialization of the West Bank and Gaza continue to this day. Up until January 1, 2001, all but one of the acts of violence were in these areas where confiscation and colonialization have been rampant for three decades.

In 1967 the Islamic refugees from Israel had been living in their concentration camps for two decades. Their lands and property in Israel had been long confiscated. Unlike the confiscation in the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai which have no basis but martial law, those in Israel were conducted under a legal fiction requiring European style land titles in a land which had an Islamic tradition.

As a result of the 1967 war all the foundations of today's conflict had been established, military occupation, property confiscation, and prohibiting the property owners to return. Related to these and if not the most important the most symbolic is in 1967 Israel also captured East Jerusalem.

More properly it is the old city of Jerusalem or the original Jerusalem from Roman times following Hadrian. As Rome completely rebuilt it can not be considered to represent the Jewish Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem today consists of the walled Roman city and expansion over the centuries outside the walls. Over the decades Israel has built colonies east of the walled city which is ultimately plans to annex as part of Israel proper.

Jerusalem had been an Islamic city for 1200 years prior to 1967 save for a century of control by Crusaders. Before that a Roman city for 700 years during which the major religion of the empire changed to Christianity. It became a Roman city when the Emperor Hadrian ordered it completely rebuilt as a Roman city introducing such features as running water and sanitation.

Throughout the New Testament period the city was under direct Roman control with the priests having day to day control over the people. Prior to Rome it was under the control of Alexander the Great and the aftermath of his empire. Before Alexander, Babylon. It is only in the books of the Old Testament where we find mention of a few hundred years of independent control of Jerusalem and those stories are both unlikely and not supported by any source.

For all the symbolism the Jewish nature of the city was completely removed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Under Christianity Jews were again permitted to live within the city and thus it regained a Jewish population. Under Islam the city was divided into sections for each religion with complex rules to assure order and prevent religious strife.

That was shattered with the 1948 war which left Islam in control of the city. It proceeded to deny Israelis access to the city as no peace treaty existed. With Israel capturing it in 1967 it turned the tables permitting access only to those Islamics who were its citizens or under its military control.

In the midst of this symbolism the sides attack each other's faith in the symbol rather than accepting it at face value. While the rest of the world has called for Jerusalem to be an international city controlled by no nation Israel insists upon calling Jerusalem its capital and spreading the story Islamics recently invented an interest in Jerusalem. Islamics return the favor citing the oldest claim regarding the Wailing (for some reason now called Western) Wall is little more than a century old.

Whatever one's opinion of the dispute might be this was used by Israel to incite the current Intifada by sending a political leader with a thousand armed men into the city and proclaiming the Islamic population would never control it. Rioting broke out. Rather than let the rioting run its course Israel went in shooting exacerbating the situation.

In 1973 there was another attempt to redress the wrongs done to Islamics in what is called the Yom Kippur War due to the day it started. This time it was Israel caught by surprise and was losing badly when the Cold War intruded. The US under President Nixon air-lifted supplies to Israel to which the Soviet Union responded with supplies to the Islamic nations. The cease fire had to be negotiated between the Cold War powers so deep was their involvement.

At first Israel refused to honor the cease fire. The Soviet Union threatened to intervene. The US was able to pressure Israel to abide by the terms and the world stepped back from the nuclear brink once again.

While one would expect the Islamic world to have appreciated the US pressure on Israel to honor the cease fire agreement, it focussed rather upon the US military support of Israel which permitted it to turn the tide of battle from a victory for them to a defeat. As a result the Shah of Iran initiated on oil embargo which quadrupled the price of oil and lead to the founding of OPEC by Venezuela.

The economic consequences of that are rarely fully appreciated. Within ten years, inflation had reduced the value of money to one third, two working parents became the norm rather than the exception, and the Savings and Loan crisis came close to rupturing the entire US economy. The US did not fully recover from it until 1990. These past ten years of economic growth have been due to recovering from it not from the end of the Cold War.

The US stood almost alone in supplying Israel. Had Portugal not been the only exception in Europe in allowing US planes to land and refuel, it would not have been possible to support Israel. Yet Europe suffered the economic disruption as the US due to the price of oil increasing by a factor of four. A few years later when US President Carter said he would share US oil with Europe, it was not generosity but his Christian sense of atonement.

All through these years Islamic countries had in place an economic boycott of Israel. As a result their commercial activities with Europe were funneled through Lebanon. By 1980 Lebanon was on the verge of overtaking Israel as the economic power in the eastern Mediterranean. It was time for Israel to act.

Israel's actions found pretext in the actions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The PLO operated out of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan but only Lebanon was an economic threat to Israel. On the pretext of responding to PLO attacks originating from the southern ten miles of Lebanon, it invaded.

In this invasion it drove through to Beirut, far from the area of PLO operations. It wantonly destroyed infrastructure. It heartlessly carpet-bombed Beirut with anti-personnel bomblets. It gave full support to the revolutionary SLA. It forced the opposition to the SLA into concentration camps and then gave the SLA free access to the camps which then slaughtered the opposition. Even Israel found the current priminister, Ariel Sharon "personally and indirectly" responsible for the massacres.

By the time it was over the burgeoning Paris of the Middle East was in political and economic ruins. Syria had to provide troops to maintain order and security. The SLA conducted operations against Lebanon that far surpassed anything the PLO imagined against Israel and with the total military and political support of Israel.

In 2000, after 18 years of military occupation and dozens of infrastructure strikes to prevent Lebanon from becoming a more attractive economic partner to Turkey than itself, Israel finally withdrew. In typical Israeli style it first attempting to ignore its allies for nearly two decades and leave them to their fate in Lebanon. Humanitarian influences in Israel eventually prevailed to permit them entry and eventual citizenship in Israel.

Were it purely war in the furtherance of economic superiority it could be understood in some sense. But while Israel had southern Lebanon under martial law it committed gratuitous violence such as shelling the Qana refugee camp and killing -- again most would call it murder -- 104 children, women and old men. If there was any truth to the Israeli claim armed men were firing from the camp (one of several stories) they missed all of them. The UN report clearly demonstrates Israel's use of anti-personnel munitions against the Islamics and Christians in the camp.

In these 54 years of war and 67 years of imported European violence in the Middle East only one factor has remained constant, Jewish Europeans ended four centuries of peace in Palestine. They have kept the region in violence for nearly seven decades and in a state of war for over five decades. Four centuries ago Europeans of the Christian variety were expelled from Japan for exhibiting exactly the same tendencies.

The problem is clearly Europeans with their post Roman Empire tradition of dominating their neighbors rather than living in peace with them. Egypt has been stable for six thousand years. Europe has not had one half century of stability since the original Roman Empire dissolved. The Eastern Roman Empire continued for nearly a thousand years after the Western Roman Empire collapsed. The stability of the middle east was at one time numbered in centuries save for the European Crusades. European Israel numbers it in years.

There is clearly a culture clash in the Mideast. Europeans who want change often solely for the sake of change and Islamics with a tradition of stability for the sake of stability. Europeans who want ruling and owning as opposed to just ruling.

As a consequence Israel has established an Apartheid nation where even for citizens there are Israeli beaches and Islamic beaches even for Islamic citizens, a segregated nation that was finally outlawed in the civilized world some forty years ago.

Israelis have only been against bigotry when directed towards Israelis. They have openly embraced and promoted racism when directed towards people who are not Israelis. While the statements of Nazi Germany were in code words, the words of Israelis are clear. Israelis are planning a mass extermination of Islamics. Particular extermination of their children has already started.

It is correctly noted that the only nation in the world where execution squads are officially active is in Israel and the territories it has under martial law. Even Chile under Pinochet did not acknowledge their existence. Israel publically takes credit for state sponsored terrorism which is a hanging offense in most of the world.

It is particularly important to keep in mind that in the three months of the Intifada in 2000 all but one attack were in areas under military occupation by Israel. Only that one attack was inside the borders of Israel. While it is always a shame for people to die, Palestinians are dying some nine times faster. If Israel wants its citizens to be safe it should evacuate them to Israel. The Israelis left in harm's war are not in Israel.

The present Intifada called Al-Aqsa is named after the Mosques built in Jerusalem which were captured by Israel in 1967. The proximate cause was Israel sending in one thousand armed men to protect the opposition candidate for Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon in the 5 February 2001 election, to announce the Mosques would never be given to Palestinian control.

On 24 October 2000 the US Government issued a travel advisory warning against travel to Israel or the areas under military occupation.

Immediately rioting broke out. Rather than let it run its course Israel sent in troops who started killing rioters to inflame the situation making it impossible for Arafat to gain control of the situation and avoid these three months of violence. Thus Israel was able to torpedo any hope of agreement with Arafat. On the 2nd of January 2001 the Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, officially tasked his military to prepare for war.

When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in the Summer of 2000 it claimed to but failed to withdraw completely. The Hezbollah which drove Israel out of Lebanon continues to harass Israel over the remaining piece of Lebanon it occupies. Israel has taken to shooting and killing people across that border and threatening more military strikes against the country's infrastructure.

Surrounding countries are drawing a line in the sand against Israel threatening reprisals should Lebanon be attacked. Syria which was forced to deploy troops to Lebanon to establish stability after Israel's major incursion has said it will respond to any attack against Lebanon. Iran has warned it will respond to any attack against any country by Israel.

To understand the import of this consider the Palestinians control less than half of the West Bank and Gaza. The IDF readying for war against some isolated territories it already surrounds militarily is not something to be taken seriously. Israel is clearly preparing to initiate a major war in the region against one or more, perhaps all, of the surrounding nations. The proper time to initiate this war is prior to the 5 February elections so Barak can be re-elected.

In the news we can expect to see additional provocations of the Palestinians by Israel in hopes of provoking one of the surround nations into military action. Israel's assassination squads are but one aspect of it, firing into Lebanon another. What we can be certain Israel will do is this, provoke a response which it will be able to portray as an unprovoked attack upon Israel as it has so many times in the past.

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