The number of dead is fast-approaching 5000, if it has not already reached that number. Five thousand. What does that number mean? My nuclear family is just five people. I sometimes, as we all do, have those dark thoughts where I wonder how I would feel if one of my direct family members passes away. The permanence of that pain and that damage is something I can immediately feel even in imagination. The idea of my mother not being with me is already painful enough that it can bring me to an absolute standstill. Even while she waits for me at home. I do not want to imagine that world and do not want the pain of the days that will follow and the emptiness of the future that I may live without her. It’s normal to feel this way, of course, and very human. And the inevitable will occur, whether it is me or anyone else. We will all return to God.

Think of that one person. Think of just one. Think of the immeasurable pain. Sit in that pain. Live, for a moment, the days of grief and the confusion and the psychological damage and life-changing outlook and perspective. Does it take you 3 days to grieve? 40? Will the pain never leave you? Now imagine that pain. Again. And again. And again. For the same person, maybe a child, maybe a parent, maybe a sibling. Five. Thousand. Times. It is the equivalent of someone you love dying every day for thirteen years and six months. Thirteen years of pain and suffering because someone you loved was suddenly gone. And you didn’t even have the opportunity to say goodbye. It is the sort of image and life-experience that truly makes you wonder where humanity went wrong and, honestly, why are we going through this? There is so much that is wrong with the world but why are we living through days like these? How is it possible that humanity cannot learn anything from its past? How is it that all the systems we supposedly put in place to govern the world and stop it from committing catastrophic violations of “human rights” have failed?

The Media Manufactures Consent

It has become abundantly clear today that the media is not interested in reporting the truth. I sincerely am beginning to doubt anything that I have read that was supposedly dubbed as, “independent journalism.” These days prove to me more than any other that these news organizations exist to manufacture consent, best described in detail in the book of the same name. The news organizations have owners, the owners seek to make a profit, the profit is generated through advertising revenue, and the product that is ultimately sold is the audience.

One thing that confused me about this model was that I thought, for a long time, that the real person the media should serve is the viewer! Because the viewer is the one that will keep tuning in. They’re tuning in to hear the truth. They want the best possible service provided by these news organizations. And while this hopeful side of me has maintained this thought for a very long time, it has become abundantly clear to me today that they do not serve me, they serve their owners. And that the only choice that I have is to decide which owner of which news organization will likely represent me best. And that even then, I must be cynical.

But why is this the position that the news organization wants us to believe? Why do they insist, against every fact that comes their way, that the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys are the bad guys? The facts are impossible to ignore!

Following the horrors of World War 2, there was a diaspora of Jews that spread all around the world. Now, for some reason, people seem to think that the Jews run the world. They come up with weird names like the Rothschilds and say that they pull all the strings. They make nonsensical and easily debunked claims about how the Jews run the world and so, it becomes easy for officials and news outlets to say that the Jews, in fact, do not run the world because the idea is simply preposterous given the lack of evidence to support the ridiculous claims. 

However, The Jews that moved to New York, following World War 2, actually were very smart. They were looking out for themselves and knew that they had to win the favor of the American government to ensure that they would not be persecuted again. Because, historically, Jews were always persecuted, abused, killed, and displaced. The Roman Empire was very happy to completely disenfranchise and abuse the Jews and kick them out of their holiest lands and sites and just generally make their lives miserable. So, when those same Jews found themselves in the United States, they acted fast. They established a zionist lobby that promoted the idea of Jewish Zionism, an unpopular and unorthodox movement among the Jews at the time, by the way, and would use this lobby to represent the Jewish mind and opinion to the United States government. They knew that they needed to be an attractive group and that they needed to find a way to align their values with the American values. They basically had to become friends, shake hands with them, do business with them, and prove their worth. And so they worked and donated and put in the effort and met with constituents and explained who they were and what their aspirations were. There was even a time around when Israel was established when American Jews knew they should not show support for the fledgling state, fearing the American backlash at the violence in Palestine before  and during 1948. This position changed as they realized that America, in fact, saw value in this new state.

They would donate to key political figures on both America’s left and America’s right to ensure that the government would vote, if not in the Jews’ favor, in a manner that would not harm them. This lobby eventually morphed into another lobby, AIPAC, that dropped the word zionism but it strangely became even more brazen and more zionistic over time. Why? Because America itself at the time saw Israel as a key strategic ally in controlling the Arab Region. In fact, I think there was a sort of political feedback loop. America supports Israel so AIPAC supports Israel, which donates to candidates that continue to support Israel and that support grows and grows among more and more politicians until you basically have a singular opinion across the entire political stage.

Personally, I do not think that sane minds in the United States would consider Israel to still be an essential representative of American interests. If anything, America’s wars in the 2000s and 2010s against the cruel militias across the Arab Region prove to me that Israel only complicated already complex alliances and conflicts and added an unnecessary amount of confusion to the mix. Like the Israelis, Americans, Turks, Iranians, and Saudis were all fighting against ISIL. What a cocktail. So then why do they still support Israel so unconditionally? The lobby. The friendships and relationships and business interests. To me, this is the only explanation grounded in reality. There is a little bit of religious fundamentalism in there on the American side as well but I’m not really in the mood to make that point right now and I do think America’s done a lot of anti-religious things so I don’t think it’s a truly deciding factor.

When an elected Congress unanimously votes to support the Israelis, while other more permanent government officials/workers suggest mutiny, they are not voting because of their beliefs and values. They are voting because of their relationships and donations. The lobbying has been so incredibly effective that not only is the US voting unanimously, but the media also cannot, under any circumstances displease their owners. Jewish people do very well in the United States financially and they have contributed greatly towards the advancements of various industries (Just take a look at your favorite film’s credits). They even hold executive positions in many of them. This accumulated wealth and status is utilized so well that the political spectrum no longer allows for any kind of dissenting voices. And you can bet top dollar that this applies to the news organizations as well. No one wants to be against them. They simply can’t. They’ve been given too much money, have had too many conversations, and are put into power through these very donations. It would be career suicide to go against them. And the news organizations would simply stop being allowed into the press rooms. And so, here we are. The media, which is always looking for the most official sources, receives a bad stream of “official” information from politicians and states that cannot afford to give any other opinion. It’s just too risky.

So now we reach a point where the media we are consuming is effectively propaganda. And while not all propaganda is bad, propaganda during times of war is definitely very dangerous. Just ask the Jews.

Just as an aside:

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories as they are normally presented. I believe that the real conspiracies are just a product of human relationships. I like my brother so I’ll help him before my friend who I will help before a stranger. I receive money from a client, so I will make that client happy. I receive love from this person so this person will be the one I love and the hill I die on. And so on and so forth. There’s no conspiracy in the way we read online here. There’s just a clear preference that is built through relationships and mutual benefit. This idea is at the core of every human institution, transaction, and relationship on the planet. The human element is so often ignored in favor of the abstract. The abstract being the dollar value. It does not take money to build a road. It takes people and machinery and materials. Those are what the dollar value represents. But people forget that. People forget that money is just a representation of resources; A representation of the market at large and the value being added to it through labor. They focus on the impressive numbers. You have billions of dollars! You can do anything! Even a billionaire is restricted by the reality of finite resources. And even a supposedly powerful nation like Israel is limited in resources like land, food, number of people, and even.. the bravery of its people.

No Great Empire Goes Down Without a Fight

We are living through a changing world order. Anyone that thinks that the American Empire will be the ruling force in the world in a decade is delusional. During the downfall of a great empire, there is great uncertainty in who the emerging power will be and an effort by all nations to realign themselves with the new power while still clinging onto the old ruler of the world, likely to not get nuked into oblivion. The interesting thing, though, is that historically we’ve never been ruled by a single power. The Arabs, Romans, Persians, and Asians traded land through conquest over the course of thousands of years before the Roman Empire took the sum of Persian, Arab, and Egyptian technology, improved on it, and receded and morphed, through the British, French, Spaniards, and later Americans, into the modern world order of nation states. Literally anything can happen over the coming decades and there is no reason to think that things will simply go back to normal following all this strange behavior of mobilizing large weapons of precise destruction, armies, and tension around a conflict in a small part of the Cradle of Civilization.

I’ve seen a lot of talk online about why some nations don’t just declare unwavering support for the Palestinian cause and take some decisive action. The real reason in my mind so far is that the world is literally transforming around us and the last three decades have not been kind to anyone that didn’t toe the party line. No one knows what will happen next and what the price of any action will be when there are clear, real, scary, and sobering potential consequences to those actions appearing around every corner. It’s also difficult to act without having a clear plan. We are over seventy-five years removed from any kind of solution that can be imposed. The damage is far too great.

Some people are calling yet again for a two-state solution. I personally think that that is a very idealistic solution that shows little understanding of the reality on the ground that there are first-class citizens, second-class Arab citizens, Palestinian citizens governed by two different organizations, and a very difficult internal political climate. The people somehow live together while also living apart in a pattern that is not all too clear on the ground as it might be from the sky. It is muddled and difficult to understand and there are surprising business relationships and methods for living normally during times of relative calm. It is a mess. And it will likely not survive a solution that further divides the people that live there. I honestly doubt that that is the correct solution. But what do I know.

Something to Think About

When the Muslim army decimated the combined forces of the Romans and Persians in battle-after-battle and marched on Al Quds (Jerusalem), the Roman ruler of the city at the time, Sophronius, met the terrifying army under the command of Amr Ibn Al ‘As (and Khalid Ibn Al Waleed) and agreed to surrender the city only to the ruler of this new emerging Arab Empire, Omar Ibn Al Khattab. Omar was of course not there. The reason he agreed to surrender was that there was literally no one left to defend them, so strong was the army that stood before him.

Since Omar was Khalid Ibn Al Waleed’s cousin, they figured they could just let Khalid pose as the ruler of the new secular Arabia and receive the city but one of the Romans realized that this was in fact Khalid (likely because of his scars) and they furiously returned to Al Quds, awaiting the arrival of Omar. The army I guess was just left outside to wait.

In the ancient world, it was common for conquerors to seize a city, plunder its wealth and gold, rape the women, and generally indiscriminately kill the politicians and ruling class of the former power that held a city. It was just the way wars were fought and won.

When Omar finally arrived, he was leading a camel with a man resting on it with an army behind him. Sophronius, the ruler of Al Quds, came to meet the army on his cushioned chair carried and fanned by several servants. He asked which one of them was Omar and it turned out that Omar was the one leading the camel. Dressed like a common man, Omar would introduce himself as the Arab Caliph and requested that he would enter Al Quds with Sophronius while they discussed the terms. Sophronius learned that the man sitting on the camel was a servant that was allowed to rest on the camel that was guided by his leader. They were taking turns and it was just his turn to rest. These displays of humble character eventually led Sophronius to join Omar on the ground as they both walked through the streets of Al Quds.

Omar’s terms were very simple: All the Roman bureaucrats were to leave and any belongings that they could carry, they could take. They could not use carts or wagons. There would be no plundering, no killing, and no raping. Shocked, Sophronius asked why and Omar simply replied that it was just not the way they were. They simply did not do that. The Romans of course wholeheartedly accepted the generous terms of surrender.

As they walked, Omar asked to see the Temple Mount, explaining that it was a place of very significant importance to all religions, certain that the Christians had taken great care of it for the Jewish people. They did not. The Temple Mount, that today holds the Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock once held a temple that held the remains of Solomon, a significant place of worship for the Jews. It was destroyed by the Romans and the Jews were either killed or displaced from the Jewish Quarter, leaving the Jews outside the city walls. It likely didn’t help that the Jews were aligned with the Persians at the time but they cannot be blamed since the Romans persecuted them so fiercely. Anyway, Sophronius explained that the Romans were using the Temple Mount as a waste disposal area, effectively a garbage dump.

“Show me…”

Aghast at what he was seeing, Omar buckled to the ground and began removing the garbage strewn around. Shocked seeing their leader on his knees removing trash, the Muslim Arab army quickly began removing the garbage with Omar. Omar proclaimed that he would not rule a Quds without the Jews as the city was very holy to the Jews. He ordered one of his men, a Jewish-to-Islam convert, to find 80 Jewish families and to bring them to Al Quds to establish a Jewish presence and to reinvigorate the Jewish Quarter of the city.

During this day, Sophronius was interested in hearing about Islam, believing that a new prosperous age was being ushered in by what he could only see were humane and beautiful values, and asked Omar to pray alongside him in the Church. Omar refused saying anywhere he prayed would be transformed by his men into a mosque. So they prayed in a little enclave together side-by-side opposite the Church’s entrance and sure enough, the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Mosque today is directly opposite of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites in all of Christianity. 

That is how the Arabs conquered Al Quds.