Apparently a lot.
While walking around town, I noticed a small sign in Hebrew and English that announced the neighborhood of “Even Yisrael,” which translates to the Rock of Israel. The sign notes that the neighborhood was set up in 1875 and was the sixth community to be built outside of the Old City during the time of the “Yishuv Hayashan”, the Old Settlement. Using my ancient math skills, I concluded that the Even Yisrael neighborhood predates the modern state of Israel by 73 years. It was set up in West Jerusalem under the auspices of the Ottoman-appointed Arab mayor of Jerusalem. The area never fell under Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967.
So, let’s do a thought experiment. A bunch of Jews, mostly religious, set up a kosher neighborhood in the new part of Jerusalem during Ottoman rule. That same neighborhood remained Jewish and thriving during nearly 30 years of the British Mandate. From there, it became a part of Israel, as did all of western Jerusalem outside of the Old City. The city was reunited in 1967 and, as they say, the rest is history. If CNN were to interview leaders from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran and ask point-blank: if Muslims took over “Palestine”, would you leave the Even Yisrael neighborhood to the Jews? It was never Arab, or certainly not since 1873, when Jews purchased the land where the neighborhood stands today. The dictator Erdogan would ostensibly have a better claim on the neighborhood, as it was a part of the Ottoman Empire before it fell under British rule after World War I. But the leaders of the Islamic terror front would claim even Yisrael as their own, just because, you know, and reasons. Jews have legally lived there under three different governmental bodies. And this gives the game away.
The Muslims, whether it be Islamic Hamas or Marxist PFLP or the irreligious Fatah, all wish to kill Jews and destroy Israel. This has nothing to do with a unicorn-level mythology of “Palestine”, a country that never existed except in the minds of brutal Arab leaders and the people they brainwashed. Jews bought and developed lands, prior to taking and holding the same and more in defensive wars. The Arabs who live between “the river and the sea” are primarily the descendants of those who came to the region because the Jews were developing the land and there were jobs to be found. Many in Gaza have the name “al-Masri”, which translates from the Arabic to “the Egyptian”. My in-laws, whose parents came from Yemen, spoke perfect Arabic as they grew up with Arabs and interacted with them at the market, in business, and when construction was in order. The goal of the present Muslim program is to erase Israel and kill Jews. The now-dead leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, praised Israel as it concentrated Jews in one place and thus made it easier to kill them.
And speaking of Lebanon, Tucker Carlson had to throw his clueless take into the world. Carlson, if he went to a tennis match, would not move his head to watch the ball but would rather look only in one direction and at one player. Hezbollah, like Hamas, has stated categorically and frequently that its mission is to destroy the state of Israel and kill Jews. Let’s not forget the hundreds of Americans the group killed. But Carlson claimed that Israel was recklessly bombing Lebanon and attacking Christians. The reality, if Carlson could swivel his head and look to Israel in the south, is that Hezbollah has been attacking Israeli towns since the 7th of October, 2023. Israel is responding to a provocation, and she is not bombing Beirut for no reason. Shiites and more specifically Hezbollah have a lot of assets and resources in Dahiyeh (pronounced: Dach’ya), a southern neighborhood of the city. Destroying buildings and killing Hezbollah leaders in this area have reaped huge benefits for Israel. It was there that Nasrallah and many other leaders met their deaths. Destroying buildings there and in Shiite towns in south Lebanon makes Hezbollah’s job much harder, as its people are furious that they are losing their houses—just like the irate folks in Gaza. Hezbollah had every opportunity to sit this war out or not renew its violence in March of this year. But they dance to Tehran’s fiddle, and they keep attacking Israeli towns and IDF soldiers. Everything that Hezbollah and Lebanon have gotten has been deserved. Terrorists are hiding in Christian towns in the south; they are no longer safe there.
Carlson’s condition matches that of Kentucky's fourth district Rep. Thomas Massie (R, Leaving Soon). He has now taken upon himself the mantle of Israel’s unintentional attack on the USS Liberty. There are numerous cases of accidental attacks, including a Kuwaiti pilot who recently downed three American F-15s. But Massie can only concentrate on the Liberty, though this field has been plowed over and over again. The ship was told three times by Washington to move. Israel was assured that the US had no ships in the war area. Israel realized the mistake and worked to treat the wounded. She apologized and paid damages. We are still waiting after more than 20 years for the Palestinian Authority to pay for their attacking us in a 2002 suicide bombing. Will Massie put that topic on his Congressional list of things to do? Of course not. Jews would benefit! No thanks.
When one has Jew hatred at the center of his existence, all reality and truth fly out the window. A kosher Jewish neighborhood really belongs to Arabs for some unknown reasons. Hezbollah is really no biggie, and Israel is attacking Lebanon to kill Christians and take more land—those greedy Jews. In all of history, there apparently has been only one case of accidental attack—those Jews on the USS Liberty. The reality is that in every war, friendlies have attacked their own forces, oftentimes with the loss of life and/or serious injuries. Trump Derangement Syndrome? Ha. I hate Jews, all reality, history, and truth are out the window so that I can get to my conclusion and then work backwards to prove why I hate Jews.
When my father passed away a couple of years ago, and it came time to choose things to take home, the process was more helter-skelter than thoughtful and organized. Pictures, books, documents, mementos, take that one, leave those two, grab this one, forget about those, etc. I took a number of old German-Hebrew books. One has my great-grandfather’s signature on the inner cover. One book literally fell on my head last week. I used Google Translate’s picture feature to translate from German to English. It is an 1815 German-Jewish cookbook. I did a little bit of research and learned something interesting. It was actually written by a non-Jew. As Baden had, around 1806, begun to allow Jews to join more aspects of general society, this author wrote this book for two groups. The first was the Jews: your dietary laws allow you to enjoy many of the dishes that we German gentiles enjoy. The other target audience was the latter: you see, these Jews can live like us and are not so different, at least as far as food goes. The goal was to integrate the Jews; today, the goal of many on the left/Muslim nexus is to marginalize the Jews. Go back to Poland! Go back to Israel! Leave Israel to the Palestinians! Do you hear anyone warbling about a “two-state solution” on the left anymore? It’s all end of Israel talk in “intifada revolution” code, and while we’re at it, let’s take care of the local Jews. That 200-year-old book had many recipes; today’s crowd wants to make the Jews the main course.