[The Buzz Cut is a recurring VIP column at RedState in which Buzz relates his personal experiences serving our nation in uniform and his observations about the state of our union and our world. Buzz has worked at all levels of our military and government, including the White House. This is the third in a four-part series where we look at exactly what’s going on in Israel, Gaza, Iran, and the surrounding region from someone who’s spent much of his adult life serving there.]
In this series, we’re exposing the truth and the reality of the evil that prevails in the Middle East from someone who lived it for decades as a U.S. Air Force pilot and one who has seen it up close and personally. I’ve served in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, and Pakistan. I will provide you the absolutes (and some handy talking points) about today’s conflict, exploring the foundations of the State of Israel, the true nature of the region referred to as “Palestine,” the reality of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the ultimate nexus of evil that is Iran. We’ll explore the complicity of the American Left, their anti-Semitism, their underwriting of terror globally, and the probability of a bloody slog in a probable upcoming ground incursion into Gaza by Israel’s Defense Force.
Today, we’re looking at the history of the region known as Palestine.
To listen to our Democrat politicians, corporate media, campus radicals, and Hollywood vessels, Palestinians have lived from the beginning of history in Palestine. According to these useful idiots, Palestine was a bucolic land of cultivated fields, flowers, butterflies, and children playing. Then, the Zionists and the British stole this “birthright land,” exiled the people, created an apartheid state, and began an ethnic cleansing campaign of terror that has burned unabashedly ever since.
In reality, there has never been a Palestinian state. Never. The term “Palestine” was a general name for the area and actually derives from the Philistines, who originated in the East Mediterranean and invaded the region during the 11th and 12th centuries B.C. It’s a region in the Middle East that is, ironically, more directly tied to the ancestors of the Jews and current-day Israel. In all, the nations that have occupied the region over the years have included the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Empire, the Hasmonean State, the Roman Empire, the Sassanids Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Umayyad and Fatimid Empires, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Ayubid Empire, the Islamic State of Mamluks of Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, and now, Israel.
What’s missing? Yep, a Palestine. None of these were ever a Palestinian State. There’s never been people known as “Palestinians” nor has there ever been a birthright nation to call home.
In fact, there weren’t even “Palestinians” until the 1960s when, after the Arab defeat in the Six Day War of 1967, the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia (with help from the Soviet Union’s KGB under the tutelage of the PLO) decided to wage a war on Israel. The Arab nations realized they could not defeat the Jewish state through conventional military methods on the battlefield. So, they resorted to a strategy of terror. The narrative became that Israel was a racist, warmongering state illegally occupying the territory that Muhammed had deemed Arabic land. It was then, and only then, that the concept of Palestinian “self-determination” was created. This fake news birthed a war of terror that remains unabated to this day and is clearly playing out with the horrific displays of evil in Israel and the kibbutzim along the border with Gaza.
Nineteen-seventy-nine in the Middle East was a seminal touchstone that accelerated the growth of corrupt governments, leaders, and terror organizations. That year, alone, Iran expelled the Western-friendly Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini assumed power. Immediately, Iranian forces stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 66 American diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Just days after that act of war on the U.S. Embassy, Islamic fundamentalists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam. The leader of the insurgency called for a return to pure Islam and denounced modernization. Saudi Arabia acquiesced to the Wahhabi concessions and Iran’s Khomeini blamed the U.S. for the mosque takeover, further inflaming the Muslim world.
Also, in 1979, the trifecta, Saddam Hussein began his murderous reign in Iraq. He would ultimately assassinate over two million of his own countrymen.
These three events, occurring almost simultaneously, propelled the Arab region, and Israel’s neighbors, into a full-blown, long war of terror against the West. Khomeini’s ascendency in Iran directly led to the founding, funding, and operational control of two deadly terror groups—Hezbollah and Hamas—dedicated to killing Jews and Americans.
In the next chapter of this series, we’ll explore the foundations and depravity of Hezbollah, Hamas, and their connections to the American Left, Democrat politicians, media, and academia. We'll also explore Iran’s involvement as the man behind the curtain.
