The Mufti of Jerusalem and Adolf Hitler, Part 1

  Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu created a lot of controversy and news recently by claiming that Hitler merely wanted to deport Jews from Europe, but that the Mufti of Jerusalem, in Palestine, at the time, was the originator of the “final solution”. The Mufti, seeing the Jews coming to Israel in large numbers, and he didn’t want the Jews in Palestine, so he suggested to Hitler to burn the Jews instead.

 

 

Even German Chancellor of Germany – Merkel challenged this and said the Holocaust was wholly the responsibility of the German Nazi-dictatorship at the time and he have also been vehemently denied by any scholar with knowledge of this horrible period. So after a short time he had to admit that it was Hitler and his entourage of Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann that were the main instigators that caused the Holocaust.

But who were the Mufti and why would Netanyahu bring him up ? Was it a cause of confusion about lack of knowledge about history and the mufti, or maybe a public relations campaign against Palestine, in a time of increasing tension in Israel and fear in the civilian population because of repeated killings and injuries over a long time, by terrorists stabbing random people or driving them over with cars.

The news coverage about this have been low in a time with massacres in Paris and California, and the treat to Europe and USA posed by ISIS, and a massive wave of refugees from Syria. This time however there were at least frantic reactions by news agencies the Israeli Prime-Minister appearing to question the guilt of Hitler in the Holocaust, and instead some obscure Palestinian figure from the past. There were a lot of follow up news about the Mufti, and thus a lot of knowledge about the role of him in the Holocaust.

 

    The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (1897– 4 July 1974) was a Palestinian Arab nationalist, anti-Zionist and Muslim leader in Mutasarrifate, the former municipality of Jerusalem, that included today’s Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Palestine

. He were a member of the most esteemed families of Jerusalem, who trace their origins to the grandson of Muhammad. He achived later the highly important recognition as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Among other things he made Middle-East Muslim countries collect gold for the roof of the Dome of the Rock.

He studied Turkish and French and Islamic law, among other things in many different schools.

With the outbreak of WWI in 1914, he took part in the Axis power, as an artillery officer, assigned to be stationed in and around the city of Izmir. He was then sick and on leave for 3 months, when the British conquered Jerusalem. He fought on the British side and they completed their conquest of Ottoman-controlled Palestine and Syria by 1918. He assisted the British, and joined the military administration in Jerusalem and Damascus, for the Arab Revolt. The English recruiting officer, Captain C. D. Brunton, found al-Husseini, with whom he cooperated, “very pro-British”.

This were however from the British side an example of psychological warfare to gain support to defeat the Turks both by assistance from Jews and Arabs, for example by dropping pamphlets with propaganda to the Arabs from airplanes, where there were given grand promises of freedom and prosperity by British rule. The same types of promises were given to Jews. Where the goal seemed to be colonial.

After the Ottoman Empire Collapsed, the Turks were limited to Anatolia, their heartland. The Remaining Middle-East, the French and the British sliced up into partitions of the former Empire. Lebanon (a Christian country then) and Syria went to France, and Palestine and Jordan, and Mesopotamia with the almost limited supply of oil, to the UK. Palestine became a mandate of the United Kingdom from 1920–1948, or commonly known as Mandatory Palestine. The rest of the former Ottoman Empire were divided into different nations and kingdoms, that still remain in most of the Middle-East. For example Mesopotamia became Iraq. The Suez Canal were also vital for the British Empire at the time, along with the fuel to make quick voyages, and most of all, to avoid the long trip around Africa to get to their Crown Jewel – India. so also Egypt had not yet become a sovereign kingdom, but were controlled by the British troops.

Mandatory Palestine

Before WW1 things were different, Jerusalem were firmly in the hands of the 4th Caliphate, but still then, the “sick man of Europe” – the Ottoman Empire – that had gradually lost more and more control, with the Western Industrial Revolution, and increasingly superior Weapon-Capability,  and also with Arab Nationalism. Arab Newspapers now appeared uncensored and became gradually more and more an effective tool to nourish deepening a Nationalistic and anti-Zionist feelings in the Arab population.

Jews had been present, along with Christian and Arabs, as Ottoman citizens for centuries, but began to immigrate in large numbers to Palestine, specially in waves during Russian Pogroms, bringing along the Zionist idea of it’s founder Theodor Herzl, that Jews would never be safe as long as they didn’t have their own state, something that both had been proven right in the past and would be proven beyond comprehension in the years ahead.

The Russian Jew were often Communists and Socialists and also founded militia to protect the land – and their model of communes with people working together for the welfare of everyone actually worked, with their kibbutzim. Jews became aware of the deepening anti-Zionist and Nationalist Arab hostility to the steady growth of immigration, on the other hand Jewish Politicians negotiated with the Ottoman Rulers, for example by referring to the European expertise and economic benefits this would bring. They were seeking to develop a proto-state with Jews began buying up large areas of land from absentee land-owner that were happy to sell at prices high above market-value,  with villages and kibbutzim seeking to connect and concentrate their position on the map, something that later became influential in the map for the partition plan for Palestine, with the N on the top, with Jewish settlements, that was planned to become such an connected state.

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However, before this became reality however, and after the War, al-Husseini, became heavily involved in in the anti-Zionist, Arab Nationalism against the Jewish Immigrants.

There had been skirmishes for a long time, but during the annual Nabi Musa procession in Jerusalem in April 1920, violent rioting broke out in protest at the implementation of the Balfour Declaration which supported the establishment in Palestine of a homeland for the Jewish people, that did great damage both on Jewish lives and property.

al-Husseini  was sentenced in absentia to 10-years imprisonment by a military court, since he had fled to Syria. There he advocated the ideology of the Greater Syria until late 1920.  Greater Syria were to bet he entire Levant, with Palestine understood as a southern province of an Arab state, whose capital was to be established in Damascus. Greater Syria was to include territory of the then occupied Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Authority and Israel. And specially Pan-Arabism, with the focus on Jerusalem and Palestine, a specifically Palestinian ideology, centered on Jerusalem, which sought to block Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.

When there were declared a general Amnesty for those who had taken part in the riot in Jerusalem in 1920, he took part in politics in Palestine, where he lost an election for becoming mufti. However in 1922 he was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council and demanded to become Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

The Supreme Muslim Council  and its head al-Husseini, who regarded himself as guardian of one of the three holy sites of Islam, launched an campaign in Muslim countries to gather funds to restore and improve the Haram ash-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) or Temple Mount, and particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the shrine Dome of the Rock (which houses the holiest site in Judaism). He accused the Jews that wanted access to the Western Wall of planning to take possession of the Western Wall and build a Temple over the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Something Jews are still considered to be conspiring to want to do. It’s difficult to know when the mufti became an ardent anti-Semite, but this period of his life seem a fair guess.

He was ceaselessly involved in political activities and many Pan-Arabic riots until WW2 broke out.

As to Palestine, so too in Germany many Jews fled from Russian Pogroms, these rootless people with their strange customs thought Cultural Germany must had been a safe place.

After loosing WW1, veterans made the “backstab” be hated, that is the resistance from the homefront against the continuation of that horrible war, with terrible shortages in all goods by the British naval blockade. An Austrian of the German Side at the front  began crying with the loss, and temporarily lost his eye sight in a shocks from gas and trauma from the defeat, would – like the mufti – gradually become far more and more anti-Semitic, being groomed by such groups as “the Thule Society” using Nordic National Romanticism as to a lost, greater time, when the Aryan were super-men, but now, with social-Darwinism, evolution made clear that we held life in potential bad humans, not attributing to society and would gradually become less pure Aryan, by thoughts like this from social-Darwinism arrived also Eugenics in many countries, and practiced it widely with, make those that seemed not fit enough, sterile.

This “backstab” were a deep one, and the organizers behind it were often socialists (and defeated by a group of veterans coming back from the war, organizing against them) and the Bolsheviks in Russia had many Jewish leaders, so there were being created an extreme hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks in much of the population, but the opposite were also true in a influx of both a fervor to Revolution, and Jews fleeing from massacres into Cultured Germany.  Also a forgery from Russia, translated, called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion about how Jews gradually planned to take over the world, had a catastrophic effect in creating antisemitism. There were a fear of Communism that created extremism on both sides, left and right, but most of all gradually the right-wing would win and to the horror of the world it was this Austrian front-soldier having seen industrial mass-death and dealt with it bravery that gave him the Iron Cross, as a fanatic supporter of the carnage, just as long it gave German victory, and as long as the Untermensch where rooted away from Germany . Enough is said about ww2 and Nazi-Germany, that most should know enough.

This will be the end of part 1, number 2 will be shorter and with more media, and go less into the backstory of the Mufti, but right into his Nazi-activities and it’s spread into the Middle-East.

Cartoons, Freedom of Speech, Muhammad and the Holocaust

WARNING: BEFORE READING THIS POST: IT CONTAINS CARTOONS WITH RIDICULE OF THE HOLOCAUST AND HOLOCAUST-DENIAL, SOME VERY GRAPHIC. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

HOWEVER, IT CONTAIN NO CARTOONS TO INSULT THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD, AS TO NOT INSULT ANY POTENTIAL MUSLIM READER, BUT ONLY HISTORICAL PICTURES MADE BY MUSLIMS.

 

Early Islamic artwork with Prophet Muhammad, covered with a veil to hide the face (to prevent idolatry)  on the night journey.

This personal denial of my freedom to speech (to not show pictures of Muhammad-cartoons), I have done simply  to not “pour gasoline” at an conflict that is already so vicious that it cause the death of humans every day in such as gruesome way, that we have to go back to the Middle-Ages to even begin to compare it. I want this blog to remain as neutral and objective as possible, not taking sides, but presenting facts as best I can.

I have also chosen to do this deliberately and perhaps provocative, to show the contradiction in the deep conflict of morals and cultural values, where it is considered by most Muslims to be an indescribable and blasphemous wrongdoing to draw mocking depictions of Muhammad, while mass-murdering civilians as a revenge is considered completely legitimate, by Muslim Terrorists.

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Iran chose to arrange a cartoon competition about the Holocaust, as a answer to the Western insistence that news and satire in whatever form is considered part of the freedom of speech, and a cornerstone of Democracy, something that can’t be bargained with. This was done to test the boundaries of the west and free speech.

The choice of the Holocaust however, as an answer to an alleged insult against Muhammad, didn’t seem to make much sense. Why not a cartoon contest against Democracy, Christianity or something else that might seem bigoted when compared to the west and free speech. There would be plenty to find.Most recently “Operation Iraqi Freedom” with the US coming with “democracy and liberty”, but really just had their own interests in mind and made a chaos that perhaps will last generations, as a result.

Here are just some examples of the cartoons of International Holocaust Cartoon Contest

(Click pictures to enlarge)

From the top to bottom, many classic anti-Semitic concept, such as Jews wanting to take over the world, is controlling money, media. That Europe gave Palestine to the Jews because of the Holocaust, that the Holocaust didn’t happen, and the Jews are using this Holocaust-hoax and anti-Semitic complaints  to get away with everything and the whole world is being tricked by them. Elaborate conspiracy theories where Jews are behind horrible things in the world, even taking part in the ISIS massacre in Paris.  All of it is also very similar to Neo-Nazi and Nazi propaganda. Those that want to see more of this can click the link above the pictures.

The winner of the contest were  Abdellah Derkaoui:

Here the point seem to be Israel using this Holocaust(-hoax) as an for the infamous wall (that is mostly fence), and now not just defending borders, but threatening the Dome of the Rock. It’s a common belief that the Jews will tear down the Dome on the Rock and the Al-Aqusa Mosque and build a temple (conspiracies also say there were never any templettttttttttttttttt

Also the western world didn’t have any reaction comparable to Muslims at all, but it rather angered Jews in Israel, specially those that had been part of the Holocaust themselves, after 6 million Jews, where 1 million were children, had perished barely a generation ago, in the hand of the Nazi-Regime of Germany, and Iran and several many in Middle-Eastern countries denies that the Holocaust ever happened, despite overwhelming historic data, in both written form, alive Nazi-members and Jewish holocaust survivors, in pictures and on film. However the Jews, like the rest of the Democratic culture in the West didn’t react as the Muslims did.

This is an obvious clash of civilizations, between the Judaeo-Christian West and the Muslim East.

It began however with an innocent and respectful wish for an Danish Author to write a children’s book, explaining the Muslim faith to children of the multi-cultural society in Denmark, called “Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv” (The Qur’an and the Life of Prophet Muhammad).

However, unlike other children’s books about religion or other topics, it’s normal to use drawings and pictures to illustrate the book and make it more interesting for the children, like Jesus in bible stories for Children. This proved to be a challenge, so the newspaper Jyllands Posten picked up on the story and had a contest to see if anyone dared to make illustrations of Muhammad, and several cartoonists did submit cartoons that were posted in Jyllands Posten.

HERE’S THE ORIGINAL 1-PAGE IN THE NEWSPAPER (WARNING TO MUSLIMS THAT DON’T WANT TO SEE IT)

Among many peaceful imagines, and some silly mocking the leader of the magazine, the most inflammatory image was probably the drawing by Kurt Westergaard with a bearded man with an bomb in his turban, with “There’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet” written on the bomb.

Westergaard have to live in protection until today.

When this news began to spread in the Middle-East, there were also added a picture that was completely unrelated to the news-page in Jyllands Posten, something used by by two imams living in Denmark enraged by the news, and spread it in visits to the Middle-East as “evidence” that people in Denmark were an extremely anti-Islamic people, and helped spread the unrest and often violent demonstrations.

The picture were in reality from France, during the La Pourcailhade (Festival of the Pig),a pig festival held each year in August in the town of Trie-sur-Baïse, in south-western France. It was first held in 1975 and is organised by La Confrérie du Cochon or the Brotherhood of the Pig. The festival involves displays, pig races, eating contests and other competitions.

The forgery spread to the Islamic world had written “Her er det rigtige billede af Muhammed” (This is the picture of Muhammad). Obviously it must have been made by the two imams themselves, thus calling the Prophet of Islam a pig, to draw attention to the far less inflammatory pictures in the news. It doesn’t look much like an news article to me.

From “the festival of the pig”, held each year in France, with a person taking part in the “pig squealing contest”, to try to sound like young and old pigs.

This can perhaps be compared to the massacre in Deir Yassin, by Israeli forces, that were reported on the Arab news as far more horrible then it was. The witnesses, some alive today saw homes where the soldiers threw in grenades at men shooting from windows, and several men were shot outside the village, before being stopped by other, religious Jews. But on the Radio they said things like children being slaughtered and pregnant women raped, something that scared the Arabs that it caused the exodus of almost half of Palestinians, that never was allowed to return.

In the same way, this extra “Danish” insult, most certainly made the protests become more violent by Imams telling in mosques about the Frenchman with the plastic pig nose, as something the Danes had done as a clear insult.

“Danebrog”, the Danish Flag being burnt in Muslim demonstration.

The comparison with Deir Yassin is that since the demonstrations went so out of control, instead of the political debate it had started with, because ordinary Danish didn’t know much about Islam. Then, because the demonstrations seemed widely out of proportions and totally non-understandable  Europe. So Arabs in general was more seen at as dangerous extremists, and in order for the democratic culture with it’s free speech to overcome this religious fanaticism, the amount of cartoons mocking Islam virtually exploded.

This started a circle, like a wheel, that have been going on until today, with increasing intensity. There’s been burning of Korans, wars with bombing of mosques, and now the top republican leader in the election for the new President of America is saying the country and mosques will be closed if he become president, after the Paris massacre, followed by another massacre against the cartoon-magazine Charlie Hebdo, then the California massacre.

“Those that scream loudest get heard” we say in my country, meaning that attention is given to the most extreme, because of those that have fanned the steadily growing conflict. For example attention given to Islamist Extremist, instead of the 99.99% probably sitting at home, and Politicians that promise the most Machiavellian measures against the extremists. So groups like ISIS is rampant in the Middle-East by now, because of this turning wheel, and most countries from the West is providing Jet-planes and bombs. Muslims have also been divided in violent attacks against each other.

And all this started because of a friendly Danish author that wanted his children and because of the Muslims in his children’s school-class, wanted to make a book that explained Islam better.

Image of and unveiled  Prophet Muhammad sold on the streets of Iran in the 1990’s.

Spread of The World Religions

  An animated video from Business Insider about the spread of the 5 world religions, from 5,000 years ago to today.

I want to go through the film with further description, to understand religion, from ancient times, until today and especially the 3 monotheistic religions, with the main points in their development.

Before Hinduism Shamanism and Animism were dominant in the world, and idea that the world around was inherently spiritual in the nature and people an integral part of it, as well as Ancestor Reverence. For example in Canaan, in one of the first agricultural areas, where wheat was cultivated and grounded to flour to bake a type of bread, communities had a custom of burying the heads of the elders under the middle of the floor in the huts.

Romanian religion philosopher Mircea Eliade believed that in all parts of the world shamanism had developed similar rituals and concepts independently, where the sea and and other geological formations separated them from each other for thousands of years. A shaman was usually an important member of the tribe who through trance had contact with the spirit world, to use medicine, lead rituals ad perform soul journeys to find lost pets. The trance was induced by psychotropic drugs or steadily beating of a drum. This form of early religion believed in different gods and even monotheism, was prevalent in shamanism forward to Europe – mainly Portugal, Spain, England and France – colonized America and changed the religion to Christianity – mostly Catholic in South-America and various denominations of Protestantism, many of witch view on Christianity made them persecuted in the old world – like the Amish – and found a place for themselves in the New World. Also after Christians and most other religions have tried to supress the native religions, often forcibly “convertes” natives, Shamanism lasted as a religion until today, especially in various indigenous communities.

Mircea Eliade also did not use the term homo sapiens = wise man, but Homo Religiosus=religious man, something that might make sense if we look at the world.

Depiction of Siberian Shaman in traditional outfit.

Archaeological finds have revealed graves with grave goods 100,000 years back in time, which seem to refer to a belief of a world after this, where the deceased could bring the grave goods to this new spirit world. Neanderthal Graves going back as far as 120.000 years, bear witness of the same. So religion outside the “5 official world religions” have not only been around to 5000BC, but at least 20 times as long.

Even in a recent discovery, in the Cradle of Humanity, South-Africa, in the Rising Star Cave, there’s been found massive numbers of fossilized hominid remains, with the only logical explanation that they were carried in there by other hominids and not by animals, since no predator has been known to hunt only for hominids and in all other such caves there’s been bones of mostly other animals, and a few cases of hominids. In addition there’s no signs that such a number could reach such a spot by some natural accident. So it could be an example unheard of earlier, with “abstract thoughts” such as religion have gone 2 million years back into prehistory.

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Hinduism and polytheism spread not only from the Indus civilization to become the dominant religion in India until today, with their 330 million gods, but also westward polytheism was spread all through the Fertile Crescent, with Sumeria first in Mesopotamia, up the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, south along the Jordan River in the Levant, to Lower- and Upper Egypt and south along the Nile. In Canaan they venerated such gods as Baal, El and Astarte, with animal sacrifice and other offerings, like grain. There the Phoenicians and Canaanites also started sacrificing children, a well talked about historic even, where by Roman times prominent sources, the Phoenician city of Cartage where said to practice children sacrifice to Moloch. Something that have been confirmed in archaeology.

The Fertile Crescent (also known as the Cradle of Civilization)

Into this world came Abraham, who is known as the forefather of the 3 monotheistic world religions. He was told by God to go to from Ur, one of the first cities in the world, between the Euphrates and Tigris, in the south of today’s Iraq – to Canaan, with his flock and clan. There he was tested by God to see if he would sacrifice his only son, but was given a ram to sacrifice instead when he passed the test. Abraham and the sacrifice and the ram, have resonance in Christianity as a reference to God letting his son be a sacrifice for the world, and in Judaism first, and then in Islam this place of sacrifice are known as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is called so, because inside, in the middle of it, is the rock said to be the outcrop Abraham and Isac was at, in addition King David placed the tabernacle here, and Solomon built the Temple there and placed the Arch of the Covenant from the tabernacle there – Containing the 10 commandments written by God, the blooming rod of Arron and manna in a jar – all part of the Exodus from Egypt that in turn created the land of Israel. The Temple was then destroyed and rebuilt one more time, then utterly destroyed by Titus the general of Roman emperor Caligula 70AD, only decades after Jesus was crucified.

 

The Siege of Jerusalem 70AD by Francesco Hayez

Christendom were based on Judaism, but shorty dropped many laws not considered relevant anymore, such as those according to temple-laws and sacrifice, even food-prohibitions left, and included thus everyone instead of just Jews, with a message that anyone could be saved by believing in the teachings of Jesus of a free entry into heaven, even to the slaves that half of Rome consisted of, and thus manage to spread quickly within the Roman Empire and beyond, until the faith became the state-religion in Rome by Emperor Constantine, in this new Rome called Constantinople, a strategic location that would make it stay Rome for another 1000 years, in the form of the Christian Byzantine Empire, after the western, original Rome got sacked by barbarians.

The Jews themselves spread through the whole of the world, without roots for almost 2000 years.

The Spread of Christianity, before Islam.

After this centuries passed, the Byzantine Empire, with the reach of Christianity, spread further then the original empire had been at the height of it’s power.

Then Islam spread like a fire from the Arabian Peninsula, in the cities Mecca and Medina, where the revelations of the prophet Muhammad were the main force behind this new movement in world history.

When the Muslims came to Jerusalem, they found a Byzantine, Christian city, with the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where they eventually built the Al-Aqusa mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the rubbish dump that the old temple had been reduced to, and connected this with the night-journey Muhammad took when he was flying from Mecca to Jerusalem and taken up into heaven.

This is really the time where the clash of civilizations started. The today’s “War of Terror” should really be called, just like the last 1400-years, a war between Christianity and Islam, that is still going on today.

The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the 4 caliphates following the death of the prophet Muhammad, that took the whole southern part of the Byzantine Empire and Ostrogoth Spain.

The Reach of the Umayyad Caliphate at its greatest extent, between the 6th and 7th Century AD

The Islamic caliphate from Al-Andalus (Today’s Spain) were pushed back from invading further into Europe, in The Battle of Tours (Also called the Battle of Pointers) in France by Charles Martel 10 October 732.

 

The Battle of Tours 10 October 732

After the Battle of Tours started the Reconqnista, a war about Spain that lasted centuries but for the first time, in a rare time of reconciliation between Christians, Jews and Muslims living in this period , there developed a combined wisdom and science that started the Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, by the rediscovery of the original Greek classics, Arabic Maths, Astrology and Medicine.

Forces of Muhammed IX, Nasrid Sultan of Granada, at the Battle of La Higueruela, 1431

The Reconquista seems to be officially over the marriage between Isabella I of Castille and Prince Ferdinand, the younger son of John II of Navarre. Castille and Navarre joined together and at the same time as both the Moors and the Jews got the choice of conversion or exile, the unique culture between the 3 monotheistic religions ended. Under Isabella I the Spanish Inquisition began, that went much further then the Inquisition by the Church, was state-sponsored and were specially cruel towards Jews that often made a quick conversion by baptism, but in reality continued their own faith – these were doomed to torture and horrible deaths. On the other hand Age of Exploration began and European preeminence in ship-building, specially from Portugal, brought eventually all the main naval powers to America, where Christianity would become the main religion, with Catholicism in South-America and Protestantism of all variants in North-America

The Crusades, as mentioned, is considered an especially savage war. Endorsed by Pope Urban II, as a Holy War. In the 1st Crusade, The Siege of Jerusalem, 1096-1099, were in a desperate situation, with possible reinforcements on the way to defend Jerusalem from the Muslim side, had the choice to die in the siege from want of thirst and food, or to conquer the city. A fleet with reinforcements from Genova that supplied timber for siege weapons, saved the crusaders. When finally inside the attackers committed such heinous acts of violence, both against Muslims and Jews, that it’s been said that they rode with blood up to their bridles. It’s also said that the corpses were so many that nobody buried them, so the stench of death hung over Jerusalem for a long time after, in this “Holy War”.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon – or more commonly known as The Knights Templar used the Dome of the Rock (believing it was the temple of Solomon) as a base, hence their name as “Templar’s”, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque were believed to be the stables where Solomon once had his war-chariots and thus used as stables.

Needless to say, when Saladin first reconquered Jerusalem, he ordered massive amounts of rosewater used to cleanse these two among the most holy places in Islam.

The Siege of Jerusalem during the 1st Crusade 1096-1099

However the clash between these two religions went both ways, just like the atrocities did, such as the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of both the landmass of the Byzantine Empire – and in the end the Byzantine capital of Constantinople itself (Today’s Turkish Istanbul) with the worlds largest church. The Ottomans continued to grow in size and power, took Greece and continued north into Europe.

The Ottoman Empire at it’s height.

In the end they got defeated by the heavily strained Holy Roman Empire that in the end they got reinforcements from the King of Poland, at the gates of Vienna 11. September 1683 , then the gradual fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire continued for centuries and became known as the “sick man of Europe”, until Turks were pressured into Anatolia by the loss in WW1 and the rest were partitioned up into French and British slices. By then, there were no more Caliphate to threaten Europe, until now, in these days, where the extremist Islamic group IS have declared a new Caliphate, and terrorist-activities have had an deep impact on the 15 first years of the Millennium.

 

The Battle of Vienna 11.September 1683

Jews had been inspired by Theodor Herzl’s Zionism from the start of the 20th century – the idea that the Jews needed a homeland from where they could live and defend themselves and although there were suggestions of a state in such places as Uganda, for the Jews there could really be no other place then the nation they once had to leave. After almost two thousand years Jews had been a foreign group on other peoples soil, with their own, strange religion and customs. They had been put in Ghettos and through the Spanish Inquisition. With the spread of the idea of Zionism came waves of immigrants fleeing from Russian Pogroms, into the Palestinian part of The Ottoman Empire. There were systematic work on how to buy areas from absentee landlords that gladly sold above price and to shape settlements into clusters (the famous N-shape) that later could form the basic of a nation. This beginning infrastructure of a state was what Jewish survivors from the Holocaust (that had proved Herzl’s idea beyond any comprehension), fled into, tragically often to have ships filled with survivors from Nazi-Germany’s Holocaust turned back, because of British troops trying to manage the bureaucracy from London with limits on 50,000 immigrants each year. Something that met hard resistance from Jewish underground organizations, causing for example the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where the British had their Headquarters. With the UN majority vote for the partition of Palestine, and the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion and recognition of the declaration both from USA and USSR became a nation in one day.

However neither the Arabs already living in Palestine for countless generations under the Ottoman Empire and earlier, nor the Arab countries surrounding the new Israel, wanted any Jewish state. So when the Israelis for the first time in two millennia were dancing in the streets to celebrate the almost miraculous birth of the rebirth of the lost nation, attacks against the fledgling state began almost instantly with an invasion from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Irregulars and foreign volunteers such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli were at first virtually without weapons, but a last minute deal with Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia secured them another almost miraculous ability to not only defeat the enemy forces, but also to expand the territory enormously and again they had the Temple Mount in their possession. But what to do with the Arab refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and by then ancient Temple Mount is a question that is huge importance to the world as a whole today.

A Reconstruction of the Temple on Temple Mount, During King Herod 0BC

 

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When Buddha was born in India, Buddhism spread gradually not mostly into India although it contained elements of Hinduism, such as an ascetic life, meditation, enlightenment and reincarnation – but throughout East and South Asia in general it had an enormous growth, possibly because of China already had a belief built up by sages like Confucius and Laozǐ, and that the transition thus was easier. Because Buddha taught that the gods were not essential to attain nirvana, and thoughts of, or believing in gods was also not needed for enlightenment. Yet there is religious elements in it, for example with the demon named Mara keeping people in locked in ignorance of the enlightenment, in a wheel of life, that repeats itself for each reincarnation, forever. There’s also veneration of large statues of Buddha in South-Asia and with Shamanistic elements in for example Tibet, but Buddha said in his teaching that he was no god, but merely a human, and his enlightenment was gained by the following of the noble truths by understanding the suffering. That we humans have our own inherent salvation. As he said: “Look, you are Buddha”, and we just have to wake up to this, by teaching and meditation. So many consider Buddhism to not really be a religion, since it is Atheistic the same time. At the same time, it’s not always easy to define religion, since it inhabits so many conceptions of life and death.

Mara, and the wheel of life, and the illusions of human life through it.

The Caspian Sea – Oil and War

Daniel Yergin wrote about in “The Prize” that during WW2 Hitler was desperate to get control of Baku, the rich, oil-producing region in the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, to fuel his  war-machinery.

Fortunately for the world he never took Stalingrad (today Volgograd), just north of Baku, because of the huge Russian sacrifice of 1-2 million soldiers From the Red Army in Stalingrad, and 20 million civilians and military units in total to repel Nazi progress in Soviet and drive them back to Berlin.

Also fortunately for the world was the defeat of General Rommel by the Allies during Operation Crusader in North Africa. Despite that Rommel was a brilliant general, he walked out of fuel in Egypt, on the way to the Caucasus in from the south in an apparent pincer movement to try to take Soviet on two fronts in Stalingrad.

Ironically, the fact that he repeatedly called Berlin to hear where and when and what oil-tanker came with fuel deliveries, which ensured that England and decrypt’s from the Enigma codes, could calculate exactly which ship it was, where it was in the Mediterranean, to bomb it. Thus the fresh troops overcame Rommel and gained control over the Middle East again, and from then on could focus on the invasion of Europe itself.

Another irony was when Nazi Germany, near the end of the 2nd World War, had produced history’s first jet aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me 262, a groundbreaking design, but which ultimately had to be dragged to the end of the runway by  draught animals in lack of oil.

In Japan they had a desperate national program, where they spent one hundred thousand pine roots to produce enough fuel for only one of kamikaze planes they flew into American warships in the Pacific. This type of attack was very successful for a while, did great damage to the US fleet, and they did not need to fill the tanks for any return-trip back to Japan. So, as with the Germans, the lack of fuel made their war-efforts grind to a halt. General Tojo, the prime minister of Japan, shot himself when US forces came to fetch him, they sent an ambulance to bring him to justice as a war criminal, but here too there were problems to obtain an ambulance that had gasoline.

After the war the US stood alone in the world, unlike Europe, Russia and Japan – that had cities that were reduced to bombed-out ruins. They had their own sources of oil at that time. They had a tremendous growth in the economy, low unemployment, a huge export capacity, and they had enough fuel for all this and more. Russia also built slowly up again and also gained nuclear weapons, making it the second superpower. They also had fuel, in Baku where young a Joseph Stalin had been actively revolutionary, probably against “imperialists” such as the Nobel brothers.

First during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 – between Egypt, Syria and expeditionary forces from most Arab countries, from Morocco to Iraq, against Israel. Because of massive American arms shipments, the Arabs decided to use the “oil weapon” and boycotted countries that supported Israel and increased the price of oil by 70%, thus they started the first oil crisis which ensured that the West woke up and saw that the luxury in which they lived, was created from oil to create energy that fueled the post-war booming economic growth, and how dependent the West had become on oil from the Middle East.

Here in Norway there was rationing of fuel, with a ban on driving of cars on weekends and after 19:00 every weekday. From this period originates the famous picture of the people’s King Olav V, in plain clothes, as a paying passengers on the Holmenkollbanen tram, during a car-free weekend.

Cars, lorries, bulldozers, container ships and and oil-tankers use oil for fuel, all plastic are made from oil, and we use plastic for almost all of everyday objects. The “green revolution” in the ’50s found that the crops could be multiplied with pesticides (oil) and fertilizer (gas) and the use of agricultural machines, plowing, planting, spraying and fertilizing and harvest, all are using oil as well as the transportation of foods to the market are depending on oil. That way today it takes 10 calories of energy of fossil fuels to produce one calorie in terms of food. Otherwise in world history, this has obviously been impossible and they had to make sure to cultivate a crop which gave more calories nutrients than were used in the effort to plow, sow and reap, to avoid starvation.

After this first oil crisis, the oil became expensive enough that it paid to begin with exploration and construction of platforms in the North Sea, first in England, then in Norway. Japan was also a world-leading exporter of its fuel-friendly vehicles, as a result of this major shock, of realizing just how dependent the world is on hydrocarbon fuels. USA created a gigantic reservoir with oil. Eventually, however,  producers of oil became scattered throughout the world, although the most oil-rich areas of the world remain placed in the Middle East, they could not use its “oil weapon” anymore.

The Middle East were and still is the most important region in terms of oil reserves. In 1998, Dick Cheney, the then chief of the oil services firm Halliburton wrote “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian“. When he changed jobs to Vice President of the United States, he was responsible for the new “Energy Task Force”, which in a court case in 2003, using a “Freedom of Information Act”, to gain access to documents from the government. The few documents that were finally released to the public, showed maps of Iraq, with detailed information about oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, oil and gas projects and foreign interests in contracts for access to this region that have one of the world’s largest oil reserves in easy to extract crude oil (unlike the tar-sands of Canada). The documents, showed in the same way Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates its oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals with extensive information on major projects in oil and gas production in each country, for example. regarding the projects’ costs, capacity, which oil company drove them etc.

There were clear plans for invasion and hydrocarbons before September 11th 2001, which already had increased the general suspicion that the United States didn’t invade Iraq in the form of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”  to spread democracy, but because of the oil, while using Orwellian doublespeak like “liberation” and “freedom”.

It’s worth noticing that the Guinness World Records documented the biggest protests against war in world history in both the US and most of all in Europe, where several millions went to the streets to show their dislike of USA, polls showed that some 80% saw USA as the biggest treat to the world, and not Iraq.

They took place before the US went into Iraq, where they guarded all the oil facilities, while Iraq gradually went into chaos in the lack of paid police, first with the a sack of Baghdad, comparable only to the Mongol siege of Baghdad in 1258, torture and massacres, like in Fallujah, leaving behind in the end ruins and a dysfunctional Iraqi army force, trained by the United States before they pulled out the last troops in the middle of a night. Thus creating a vacuum where the new prime minster asked for weapons, but never got enough until ISIS (headed by a former prisoner of Baghdad’s prison Abu-Graib where the well known pictures of torture took place) overcame quickly the army, and got large quantities of American weapons in Mosul creating the present chaos between Sunni and Shia, Muslims and Christians, Yezidisi, and against the West.

The border to Kurdistan won’t fall easily, like Israel, the Peshmerga got the most heavily trained troops in the middle east and modestly armed, in addition to American jets and drones bombing. The capital Erbil is modern and filled by multinational oil companies and the price of oil has fallen about 50%. So ultimately the US won the war, fulfilling their primary goal: Oil.

“The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1998)” is one of the major works of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former the United States National Security Advisor during 1977－1981, under Carter. Brzezinski sets out to formulate a Eurasian geostrategy for the United States. In particular, he writes, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger should emerge capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America’s global pre-eminence. There have been plans for a for the Caspian Sea for a long time, with it’s oil, the most massive quantities of gas on the planet, “in addition to gold” as Brzezinski mentioned.

This will be a war that will last a lifetime Dick Cheney said, and recently an American General said that if “boots on the ground” is put on the ground to defeat ISIS and stabilize the region, it would take a very long time. Special forces from most of USA and NATO is currently on the ground, and fighting along the jet strikes.

All the plans have been on the table for decades for the Neo-Conservative team with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest from the old Team B from the CIA, that is always proposing more weapons and domination of the world.

Iraq is down, so is Libya, Syria, and also Iran (with the worlds seceond largest oil-reserve) is completely encircled, with US bases in the Emirates, Kuwait and in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan etc. in addition to a strained alliance with Pakistan. Since the 90s it has been the in international media, talk about Iran and its nuclear program and that nation as a possible major threat for world peace. If the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes,as they say, or just a cover-up to buy time for development of nuclear missiles as Benjamin Netanyahu said in Israel

There’s actually been concrete plans to submit an air raid,that was averted, experience from earlier when the Israeli Airforce acted on their own, bombing Saddam’s nuclear facility, In addition massive training missions for a conflict involving bombing Iranian nuclear facilities with bunker busters. The latter option is the not unrealistic and probably won’t have the amount of protests as with the Bush’s assertion of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,  support of terrorism and a danger to the world, (even when Iraq was about the only nation in the region that did not have either chemical, biological or nuclear capabilities). Also Iranian President Ahmadinejad remains the only member of the UN that has threatened to delete another member of Earth’s surface. So the veil between war and peace are fragile.

The practical question for the United States and thus the West, is pipeline. In Afghanistan the Taliban got the options with the waiting Unocal pipline at their northern border, of either “covering them in a a blanket of gold or in bombs” to let the pipeline pass through their country. They already have pipeline to Turkey, that bypasses the Russian system into Europe.

President Obama has recently been in contact with Iran and made ​​a  “historic agreement ” . The real quest however is perhaps whether this is to ” take them in the act ,” since the world’s population probably will be suspicious of a US that once again say that war is necessary because of Iran’s weapons of mass destruction . China has major interests in Iran and also in the Caspian, but with the latter China have limited options to cover immense distances through mountains and endless steps to transport the gas into the east-coast industrial area. So anyway , it looks like a conflict , as long as Iran does not give in , let go of the nuclear program and provide land to build the pipeline , which is hardly likely to agree on with their Arch-enemy USA and Israel that get foreign aid, billions each year.

The Caspian is the last major area of hydrocarbon energy – something that the West cannot live without to survive, and the two other major millitary forces With just a glance on the map on the top, it’s clear that the fastest way to build a pipeline is directly south, through Iran, ending in the Persian Gulf. So my prediction for the future is a dark one, with oil and war.

     The Excising Russian Pipelines into Europe, and new, American                 ones  In the bottom of the map, both present ones and planned.