history repeats itself and Israel must be ready

Submitted by David Meir-Levi (Israel), May 12, 2015 at 03:38

From and Assyriologist-Archaeologist point of view, Dr Pipes' article is very interesting. The current situation as he describes it in the Middle East may be a rather terrifying re-run of something similar that occured during the last millenium BCE, reaching its apogee around 2,500 years ago. Gradual regional desiccation and a creeping salinization of ground-water in the southern end of the Tigris-Euphrates valley , due apparently to the over-exploitation of ground water for irrigation, may have been at cause for the end of the Babylonian empire, the victory of the Persian king Cyrus (of Biblical fame: he's the guy who sent the Jews back to Judea after the Babylonians exiled them to southern Babylonia seven decades earlier), and the decimation of the Babylonian population in that area (now the Basra region of Iraq), resulting in abandoned cities and villages and a population shift northward. This regional desiccation may have been the result of a millennia-long cycle of regional or global warming, excacerbated by "...population growth, short-sighted dictators, distorted economic incentives, and infrastructure-destroying warfare."

The sanization seems to have been the result of over-use of ground water for irrigaton, resulting in the graual entry of brackish or saline water into the regional water table, rendering much (but not all, the Euphrates still flowed) water unpotable for people and animals and deadly for agriculture.

For the present and near future, I agree with Daniel's "..Desperate neighbors might think about ending their futile state of war with the world's hydraulic superpower and instead learning from it." But his suggestion seems a bit optimist .

I think it is more likely that hundreds of millions of desperatly thirsty, and perhaps starving as well (wells run dry, crops fail, livestock dies), Muslims, with Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred and Great-Satan hatred bred into them for centuries, will blame the West, blame America, blame Israel, blame the Jews; and thus flock to their pathological jihadist leaders in even greater numbers enabling even greater Muslim efforts to destroy Islam's enemies, starting with those nearest them.

Israel, awash in water and overflowing "...with brainpower and political maturity," will need to deal with the upheaval of displaced Muslim populations awash in enmity toward all things non-Muslim, and in enmity-on-steroids toward Jews and Israel. With enmity replacing brainpower, and with political maturity largely lacking over Islam's 1,400 years, these hungry and thirsty Muslims are likely to enormously exacebate Israel's precarious security situation and provide even more manpower to the Muslim forces currently aligned against her.

It is not hard to foresee (recall the behavior of Gaza's Arabs in 2005 toward Israeli greenhouses, left whole and functioning, when Israel pulled its 9000 citizens out of the Gaza Strip) Iran's leaders declaring that a nuclear attack on Israel is more than justified. Indeed it is clearly part of Allah's plan for Muslim global victory, and must be carried out at all costs as soon as possible, in order to eradicate the Zionist Entity whose very existence on sacred Muslim soil renders the land accursed and unclean. Hence the water shortages, and hence the need for the assault on Israel, even though such an attack would destroy the very technology that offers salvation.

Armageddon is slouching toward Bethlehem, soon to be born again. I hope Israel is ready.

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