The Rembis Report And Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CXX

I had fully intended to write a diatribe complaining about the price of eggs this week, however, they are remarkably affordable. Many homes and vehicles should receive a proper dousing of whites and yolks this coming Devils’ Night. I will get back to my series If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It next week. Right now I am focused on another demonic plague.

The strife of Palestinians and Israelis brought to them by Hamas terrorists.

You must have seen the news by now. It is a horribly wretched situation. Children have been beheaded, burned, and filled with bullets. Entire families were slaughtered. Survivors report that assailants laughed as they killed. There was no mercy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed photos of massacre victims to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. A ghostly sheen fell over his face. You could see terror in Blinken’s eyes. He was shaken as he had never been.

There is only so much to be said about such depravity. But if you ask your former president Donald Trump about it, he will give you his objective opinion like a commentator at a sporting event, giving credit to Hamas for the surprise attack and calling (Lebanese-based) Hezbollah militants “vicious, and . . . smart.”

But he is a moron. So, forget about him, for now. His opinion does not matter. Too bad that so many people think it does.

It is clear that this attack is a terrible thing. As the leading headline of every news outlet in the world, if you turned on a TV, or looked at current events on your phone, for as little as two minutes this week, you should know enough about what happened not to be stupid about it. Just don’t count on self-absorbed politicians to take the time to understand what is going on and be able to effectively communicate with any real knowledge. Ron DeSantis denied that babies were decapitated and expressed concerns about news coming from Al Jazeera because they are “funded by a lot of these Middle East governments,” showing his mistrust of the Arab world.

FACT CHECK: Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government. Qatar is a single country. Al Jazeera is one of the largest and most respected news organizations in the world. Some viewers find their reporting on Qatar to be less critical than it could be. They don’t bite the hand that feeds them, but they do get the stories, and report the facts. You can trust Al Jazeera. They have boots on the ground, speak the language of the region, and provide up to the minute coverage 24/7.

If you want to know how this conflict unfolded, why it happened, and what is happening now, the following link is all you need.

Yes, this is news, but it is not new. This region has been at war for a thousand years. The bad actors come and go, but the stage remains the same.

What does anyone want with it? Why can’t the people who live there just be left alone to live in peace? What is so great about Palestine?

Palestine is a treasure of farmland. I refer to this region as Palestine for simplicity, as it was first called 2,500 years ago. Now it is better known as Israel, with Gaza (Palestinian territory) to the west, and the West Bank (more Palestinian territory) to the east, which is named for being on the west side of the Jordan river, across from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Up north, you have Lebanon and Syria, and to the south, Egypt. The borders have been redrawn over and over, and looking at too many maps can make your head spin, so, for now, let’s just call it Palestine, like it was to begin with.

I will simplify this as much as I can, following the timeline of Jerusalem (in the center of Palestine) from long ago to the modern era.

There is archaeological evidence of humanity in Jerusalem from about 6,000 years ago. Seems that it was a happening place way back then. Things really got hopping about 2,000 years later, when Jerusalem gets noticed by the Egyptians and they start writing about it in ancient texts and what would later become the Bible. By 1,000 BCE Jerusalem was all the rage. It became the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. It was such a cool place that people started fighting over it.

King David’s forces invaded and captured Jerusalem, named it the City of David, and deemed that territory the United Kingdom of Israel. For the next 1,000 years, it was attacked, raided, and taken over by Egyptians, Arabs, Philistines, and Ethiopians. Then Israelites got it back, lost it to the Assyrians, Egyptians took over again, Babylonians rose up and stole it, then Persians, then Babylonians again, followed by Alexander the Great and the Macedonians, then the Maccabees, and finally, during the time of Christ, the Romans got in there and governed for the next 600 years. The whole region would have been a mess for realtors, if there were any, you know, with title searches and all.

Christianity gained traction in Palestine and spread throughout Europe and other parts of the middle east. Sporadic skirmishes transpired in Jerusalem between different religious sects. Christians discovered the True Cross and started building churches. Jews had temples, but worshipped in secret. Muslims had mosques. Other than a couple of fights here and there, Jerusalem had found some peaceful times in the 630’s, when everybody seemed to get on the same page and decided to worship freely. That did not last long. In the 1000’s, some Muslims decided to destroy Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, so the Greek Orthodox Church decided to take a foothold in the region. Turks and Sunni Muslims were not getting along and in 1077 there was another massacre.

The fighting never stopped. In 1095, Pope Urban II decided that a holy war was necessary to cleanse the region and bring everybody to Jesus and started the first of the Crusades, which lasted for 200 years.

He called on Christians to march down there and take control of the region. Some came from as far as France and England, 3,000 miles away. They came by the thousands. On foot, on horseback, on boats, carrying every weapon of destruction they could to drive the Muslims out. Along the way, they killed thousands of Jews whenever they came across them. Better safe than sorry in the name of Christ, right?

They got the message and went to war with whatever information they had. But who knows what they actually heard? There were no newspapers or radios. No objective reporters offering coverage and telling anybody what the deal really was. Everybody just listened to their spiritual leaders and elders and did what they were told. Even without telephones, the telephone game had to come into play. It is likely that there was a bunch of miscommunication about what the problems truly were and the only solution anybody had to solve anything was total annihilation.

Nobody bothered to ask “What would Jesus do?”

There had to be Jews and Muslims and Christians who had no interest in war, too. People who were killed for no other reason than who they were. They would have been shocked, suddenly having to defend themselves against marauding hordes, who slaughtered enough people to create rivers of blood.

According to archeologist and professor of history Shimon Gibson at UNC Charlotte, "For three days, or perhaps even a week, the crusaders perpetrated every single atrocity under the sun - rape, pillage, murder. The chroniclers talk about 'rivers of blood' running in the streets of the city, and it may not be an exaggeration. Terrible crimes were committed, and a lot of people died, Christians included. Local Christians were considered just as heretical as the Muslims and the Jews. They turned Jerusalem into a ghost town."

In some of my own research I read accounts of warriors stepping through ankle-deep pools of blood for miles with bodies everywhere. It was a true bloodbath. Every 20-25 years or so, a newly indoctrinated generation of Christians came to Palestine, and Jews and Muslims defended themselves. All the while, and in later years, Jews and Muslims fought amongst themselves, instead of working together. It was all for nothing. Millions of people died for nothing.

I got interested in the Crusades when it started popping up in my genealogical research. My family tree reveals that 34 generations ago, I had a grandfather named Odo II of Blois. He was born in 983 and died on November 15, 1037. Many records from that era keep specific records on the date and cause of death, but birthdays, not so much. Notable personalities of those times were kept track of. Odo II died in a battle fighting against Emperor Conrad II the Salic. It is not stated that Conrad killed him directly, but his forces did.

Grandpa Odo died about 150 miles east of Paris. Oh, well. At least he found time to raise some kids. One was my 33rd generation grandfather Gilbert of Venables, the first baron of Kinderton. Gilbert went north on the Norman Conquest of England with William the Conqueror (who started the bloodline of the British monarchy we know today) came back to tell about it, and died of old age when he was about 69 years old. I don’t know how many people he killed, if any, but his brother - my uncle Theobald III - was another self-styled warrior. He engaged in skirmishes with other gang leaders, which is really all they were. A guy with a couple dozen followers could call himself a king with an army. He could try, anyway. After all, that is how all monarchies begin; they are simple pyramid schemes.

Theobald ran into trouble when he met up with Geoffrey II, Count of Anjou, who seemingly had him outnumbered and outwitted. Uncle Theo was taken prisoner and bought his freedom by giving up the entire county of Touraine, France. Obviously, the land was not worth dying over, so he went on his way and lived to the ripe old age of 77. Good for him. He had five kids.

The oldest one, my uncle Stephen Henry, also became a warrior and participated in the first Crusades. He died in Ramla, Palestine in 1102 at the age of 57. He was executed, which means he was probably decapitated. But he went there to kill people, anyway, so - you reap what you sow.

Stephen Henry left behind a wife with twelve children. Most were adults when he didn’t come home from the crusade. But 10 year old, Stephen (another uncle) would go on to become King of England by warring with his cousins and killing them off.

What for? Nobody has ever heard of most of these guys before and they wouldn’t be remembered now if I wasn’t looking them up. All that murder - for nothing.

Unless they were defending themselves, they were doing it for God. Even though everybody heard the same story of the same Ten Commandments, lots of them sure came away with different interpretations. Maybe the message was garbled by some lousy storytellers who mixed it up. Word of mouth gets that way sometimes.

Palestine is currently undergoing an epic raid as Israeli forces seek to destroy Hamas militants. The trouble they have in this task is that Hamas is not a traditional army. They are using kidnapped people as human shields. They are hiding in vast networks of tunnels hundred of miles long beneath Gaza. They have an arsenal of simple weaponry, and lots of ammunition. They are also committed. They are fighting for Allah (God).

At least, that is what they think. However they got the message to be brainwashed into becoming savage monsters, they are there to die. Every single one is a freedom fighter who expects glory in death. This is why Israel is focused on the total eradication of Hamas. Hamas fighters have been molded into a primitive being with one objective - to kill until they die. Like a machine. In essence, their minds have been reduced to a level of reasoning that is impossible to negotiate with or reform. Just like you can’t argue with a reptile. The only thing it knows is how to eat.

For this reason, eradication of Hamas is the right move. Jail would be a waste of resources and a future bargaining chip for some other terrorists. They must be eliminated.

However, it is also important to realize that Hamas fighters are pawns. They did not act on their own accord. They are not there to win. They are there to strike a blow and die. Just like every other warrior before them, this was somebody else’s agenda. They got a warped message about why they were put on Earth and they believed it. As military analyst Sean Bell points out, the culprit is probably Iran. There is a lot of evidence to support this theory.

To be clear, it is the government of Iran, not the citizens of Iran. Most Iranians are lovely people who are proud of their culture and heritage. They are not at all interested in war and many are outspoken in defiance of the Iranian regime.

The roots of the Iranian government’s modern hatred goes back to the 1970s when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called Israel a Zionist regime occupying Palestine. The nation of Israel was created in 1948 upon independence from British rule and recognized as a Jewish state by the United Nations the following year. Israel is the mainstay of Jewish culture in the middle east. Everywhere else is predominantly Muslim.

In 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of illegally carrying on with a secret uranium enrichment program to build nuclear weapons. He showed evidence of his findings in an 18 minute presentation broadcast on live television saying that Iran must not be allowed nuclear weapons.

Once he called them out he never let up. A week later Netanyahu said, "They're at war with us," and said Iran's goal is to "annihilate" Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace with his neighbors in Iran. After making those accusations against the government, he followed up with this video, offering an olive branch to the citizens of Iran, to help them solve their water problems. Maybe he is hoping they will somehow topple their own government from within. Whether or not anyone took his advice is unknown.

He has been shouting this message for five years, saying that Iran has never stopped producing nuclear weapons.

In addition to that, Iran backs Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, who seem to be waiting in the wings for their cue. It took years to train Hamas and for them to evolve into what they are now. So we have to wonder, what is next?

Is there a nuclear weapon hidden in Gaza? As Israel invades today with plans to flatten the northern half of the city, if there were a single weapon of mass destruction hidden there, it would be a clever trap to strike Israeli forces.

Around the world we are hearing calls of support for those who have been killed and displaced. Shouts of “I Stand With Israel” are as common as “I Stand With Palestine.”

Not everyone takes the time to understand the complexity of the issue, so they just cheer for the team they identify most with. They forget that the majority of those affected are just children. The median age of Palestinians is 19 years old. As their elders are killed, they lose guidance, and as they are pushed away from the only homes they know and understand, they become nomads.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has no concern for them. He blasted a Sky news reporter for asking about what would happen to Palestinians in the wake of Israeli military response. Yesterday, he told CNN’s Erin Burnett that anybody who wanted to offer Palestinians aid would not be stopped, but “they are not my problem” and that he had no interest in helping his enemy.

This is the heart of the problem. Branding children as enemies makes them so. Turning people away, who are not militants, who have done nothing wrong, who just wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time through no fault of their own, and became refugees, if they are treated poorly, it will ensure that they will become enemies. If they are not taken care of and taught not to hate, guess what, they will hate whoever put them into their situation and in ten and twenty years, it will perpetuate a new generation of monsters, just like in the Crusades.

Jesus said “You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. ' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:38-39). But these are not Christians, and Christians are not all they are cracked up to be. It is a complex world.

So, I don’t stand with Israel, nor do I stand with Palestine, and I do not judge as a Christian. I stand with the refugees. Regardless of what they were taught to believe, they are the victims who need help. They need safety and assistance, but not from those who would exploit them.

If a refugee can make it to my doorstep, I would let them in, not kill them for being in my driveway. I don’t know how else I can help, except to show them that there is a better way of life. I don’t blame anyone for running away from Palestine. Sticking around will accomplish nothing, because in all likelihood, war in the Holy Land will never end.

How peaceful would the world be if we could prove the nonexistence of God?

Thanks for reading.

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.