So the good guys always wear white hats, and the bad guys black hats, right?

As some of you may know I'm an avid follower of current events and fancy myself as a fairly decent (amateur) historian.  Contrary to many of my contemporaries, I don't see things as just black or white, all good or all bad.   Very few things in life fall into those nice, neat pigeon holes.  Life just isn't that simple.

Case in point: Israel.  I admire what they've had to go through just to survive as a nation, and what they've accomplished in their short history.  They certainly aren't a lilly white faultless society, but compared to any of their neighbors IMO they look pretty damn good, and they deserve our support. Many here, however, seem to think otherwise, that Israel is the big bad bully from whom we should withhold our support, while the Palestinians and other Mid East nations are always the oppressed.  That's much too black and white for me. 

 

Look at what Israel has done:  They've taken a barren, some would even call it worthless, piece of crap real estate and made it bloom.  Israel has become an international powerhouse in agricultural research and technology.

While fresh water has always been in critically short supply in much of the arid Mid East, Israel has developed and built new, ultra-efficient state-of-the-art desalination plants.  They will soon be water self-sufficient and are in a position to export their technology to others in similarly dry environs.

Israel is a R&D leader in medical technology.  Much of the technology we take for granted here today originated in Israel.  Considering their small size (8.522 million people:  6.4 million Jewish, 1.8 million Arab, and .322 million "other"), their achievements in the field of medicine are impressive.

Tel Aviv is a modern cosmopolitan city....

...and their rural agricultural collectives (kibbutz) are generally modern and efficient.

Compare any of this to what their neighbors offer their citizens.  "Well, yes, Israel is modern and progressive because they receive Billions of $$$ in aid every year."  True, but so do most of the other nations in the region.  In reality the other Mid East countries collectively receive much more US aid than does Israel.  So what do they do with theirs?

According to Time magazine in 2014, Yasser Arafat before his death controlled a personal fortune of $3 Billion dollars, money that was sent to the Palestinian people by the West, but was embezzled by the PLO leader. While it's difficult to pull off such a Grand Heist in a democracy, it's a fairly easy thing for dictators to skim off as much as they want, whenever they want.

Look at Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc....their educational institutions, their medical technology, their agriculture, the overall "quality of life" they deliver to their citizens.  A few of the Petro-Elites do well, but everyone else is living in essentially third world conditions.  They had many, many centuries to develop and they did virtually nothing.  Israel has blossomed in just the past 68 years since their independence.

"But the Jews stole much of their land from the Arabs."  Yes, the early Zionists bought some of their land, but later simply ran some Arab owners off theirs.  That was wrong, but how is that any different from the way virtually every other country in the world, including the United States, developed? (Hello....Native Americans?)  I'm hearing the pot calling the kettle black.  It was unjust to be sure, but so is much of life.  At some point in history we have to just accept reality.

And then we come to the military balance of power in the region.

(These are Merkova IV tanks, developed and built completely in Israel.)

To this day Israel's neighbors still hold a numerical military advantage over them in men and equipment.  

Israel has to be smarter and tougher because their neighbors (except Egypt and Jordan) have vowed to wipe them off the face of the earth.  They are in a state of perpetual war, literally, against Israel.  Israel has made no such threats against them.

In fact, while Israel is believed to possess 100 or more nuclear weapons, and have since the 1970's (?), they have never once threatened to nuke their neighbors.  They don't even admit they have nukes (the world's worst kept secret).   

Military trivia:  Israel requires women to serve 2 years in the military (3 years for men), and 51% of all Israeli military officers are women.  Seems like a fairly equal society to me.

circa 1967 Six Days War

Those Israeli tanks and aircraft are not American made.

 

"Israel wouldn't even exist if the US hadn't recognized and armed them back in 1948."  Not true at all.  The US recognized the state of Israel only after the United Nations had already voted for a separate Jewish state in Palestine.  And the arms Israel used to fend off Arab attacks from all sides the instant they raised their flag were not provided by the US, but were arms mainly of British and French origin that the Jews had hastily scavenged.

A historical fact:  When Israel joined with England and France to invade Egypt in 1956 after Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the Suez canal (until then a British property), President Eisenhower backed the three countries down and sided with Egypt.  It was only after the Arab Mid East countries cast their lot with the USSR at the height of the Cold War that the US saw Israel as a tool to block Soviet expansion in the region and began to arm them.  

And even then it wasn't all US give/Israel take.  Many of the weapons we have protecting us today were joint ventures between the US ($$$) and Israel (technology).

So the Israelis are all good, and the Arabs are all bad, right?  Hardly!  For the life of me I don't understand why Israel insists on building new settlements in the occupied West Bank.  Isn't there anywhere else they could build them?  And the stranglehold/embargo they have around Gaza seems IMO to be unnecessarily harsh.  

I believe the Jews deserve their own homeland, and so do the Palestinians.  But I also understand that will only happen when the Palestinians drop their demand for Israel's annihilation.  While Israeli Arabs (yes, there are Israeli Arabs) have constitutional rights, I'm sure there is still plenty of inequality that exists.  Much of the criticism of Israel is no doubt for just cause.

For the record, I'm not Jewish, only have a couple of Jewish friends, and have no vested interest in Israel in any way.  I just feel they are by-and-large doing a great service for their people and are preserving a delicate balance of power in the region, something their neighbors can't say.  Whenever I hear a politician say we ought to back away from Israel and then heap praise on Israel's poor oppressed neighbors, I can't help but think how ignorant they are of the facts.

These are my opinions.  If my facts are somewhere in error please correct me and provide documentation. I'm not too big to admit my mistakes.  

Just always remember, there is a lot of gray in a black and white world.

S  

The linchpin of 20th Century history

Here's another Paul Harvey-ish "The Rest of The Story" (stay with me here):

Those of us who stayed awake in history class already know the story of how this meek looking Serb...

 ...Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the heir to the Austo-Hungarian throne, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia 100 years ago in Sarajevo. 

 The last photo taken of Ferdinand and Sophia before they were killed moments later.

This led to war between Austro-Hungary and Serbia, which also brought in Germany, England, France, Russia, the US, The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and others to what we know today as...

...World War I.

Because of Russia's disastrous showing under the corrupt Czar Nicholas his people revolted, eventually leading to the rise of....

...Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks/Communists.

After The Great War the victorious Allies put in place very harsh terms on the vanquished which brought great misery to average Germans, eventually leading to the rise of....

...Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party and World War II.

The new Post War League of Nations gave administration of the Mid East to France and Britain, who set up the boundaries of many of the present day countries there.

The newspapers still remind us every day how well THAT worked out! 

And of course Lenin's legacy brought us the Cold War...

 ...which lasted until the end of 1991.

All things considered, it was a pretty crappy century.

Now for The Rest Of The Story:  How exactly did Princip come to assassinate the Archduke and his wife?  He had fashioned a crude bomb which he dropped from a bridge onto the Archduke's automobile, but it bounced off the car's folded-back canvas top and exploded without causing injury to the Royals. 

To avoid capture Princip ducked into a nearby business to hide.  The Archduke insisted on completing his ceremonial rounds in Sarajevo so he set out again, but his driver MADE A WRONG TURN which took them right by the shop where Princip was hiding.

Seeing his opportunity, Princip came out and fired 2 shots at Ferdinand and Sophia, killing them both.  Many would argue that that wrong turn set off the chain of events that defined the 20th Century.

Without that wrong turn there might not have been an assassination, WWI, Lenin's revolution, Hitler's WWII, the Cold War, or the current Mid East debacle. 

It goes to show the tiniest things can have the most profound effects on history.

S

Would you buy a used car from this man?

His official title might read, "Vladimir Putin, President of Russia", but his job description is much less grandiose.  He's a thug, the most powerful thug in a country run by thugs.  And he's a liar, someone utterly without morals.  

Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted, ever.  Whatever words come out of his mouth are uttered only to serve his interests, period.  He will die with an unrepentant Communist-era KGB mind set. 

If you'll look back at my blog post of February 20th I predicted that the unrest in Ukraine would not end well.  Putin absolutely will NOT let the Ukraine slip from his virtual control, and let's not kid ourselves, that's exactly what he had before former Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted.  Putin sneezed, "Yank-man" caught the cold.

Now Putin has flat-out invaded the Crimean peninsula, a region of southern Ukraine where Russia still maintains a naval base.  Russian forces quietly strolled out of that base and took over the region's airports, then began airlifting in an estimated 6,000 additional troops. And if he wants to take a bigger bite out of Ukraine, there's nothing stopping him.

This from a "world leader" who not long ago warned the West that they must, MUST respect the sovereignty of sleaze-states such as Iran and Syria, regardless of how evil they might be.  No exceptions!  ROFLMAO!

And there isn't a damn thing we....the US, the EU, or NATO....can do about it.  The West no longer has any real deterrent options left open to them. 

"But....but....we have all these planes and tanks and ships and NUCLEAR WEAPONS for God's sake!"  Yes, but those are no longer deterrents.

To "deter" someone from doing something you must have THE MEANS to stop them and THE WILL to use it.  As mentioned, we have the means, but we will absolutely NOT use it.  

And Vladimir Putin knows it.  No modern democracy can will compete toe-to-toe with a dictator on ruthlessness.  It's just no longer part of our national DNA.

"There will be consequences for Russia's invasion," Washington says.  How so?  American businesses are conducting lucrative trade with Russia and aren't going to give it up.  (Money talks, and all that, you know.)  

Meaningful economic sanctions are out of the question.  A pin prick here and there maybe, but Putin will just laugh those off.  We have our hands full militarily just trying to smoke out a few nasty heathens in Afghanistan.  

And to make matters worse, energy-poor Europe needs Russian natural gas. A simple twist of a few pipeline valves and Europe will be freezing before nightfall.  Europe is in no position to do anything punitive.

Europe and America might bluster, but that's all for domestic consumption.  Practically speaking, Putin knows we're toothless. 

"Then that august body, The United Nations, will step up and exert world pressure on Russia, right?" Once again, ROFLMAO! 

You are witnessing the opening salvo of Cold War 2.0, and so far the home team isn't doing so good.

S

PS:  And please don't point fingers at one political party or another or any single president and say "it's all their fault."  This situation has been festering for decades.