The Line Starts At The Right

Power talks, and so does wealth and influence. Wealth and power engender influence. Those who are in possession of an element that everyone would like to have a part of, have power. When they sell parts of that precious element they attain wealth as well. And with that comes respect, deserved or otherwise. In the world of energy-possessing fossil fuel deposits enriching the countries endowed with such natural resources, wealth accumulates, respect ensues, power arises.

Within that world, if there is a national entity that presents as an irritant; political, social, religious to the aggregate nations surrounding it, endowments of brilliant intellectualism, scholarship, scientific invention, technological innovation, cultural and artistic achievements rank far down in the deserving-of-respect category. For it is the vast pools of energy resources fuelling the economy of oil-rich nations that bring other nations to them, cap in hand.

The scientific advances, technological innovations, medical breakthroughs, scholarship attainment, brilliant artistic creations can be shared, enriching the larger world and ennobling the creators of new knowledge by default, but not by design. The Nobel Commission can choose to recognize scientific, mathematical, physics, astronomical and medical advances by awarding significance through a laureate.

But the world flocks to the door-sill of oil-producing nations, eager to pay for the privilege of enabling their travel, communication and commercial interests fuelled by dwindling energy sources. That in their acquisition further enrich the source of the extraction and refinement and distribution of liquid gold. With that huge wealth, respect and power, the ability to degrade, isolate, slander and delegitimize the possessor of knowledge.

Israel is that fount of intelligence and innovation, technological advancement and scientific brilliance, a testament to which are the numbers of Nobel prizes given to Jewish scientists out of proportion to the number of Jews in the world. OPEC, the oil cartels of the world, which has formed its cabal of Israel-exclusion, has the ear of the world, influencing by their numbers and their allied detestation of Jews, Israel's lonely pariah-state existence within the United Nations.

Known world oil reserves are not infinite. Those that have been pumped out of the ground for decades are slowly draining themselves out of existence. With their eventual lack of the resource, they will also be drained of continued riches and an ebbing influence. Tiny Israel has recently discovered immense oil and gas reserves within its geographical territory.

The countries unwilling to do business with Israel as a result of propaganda, political pressure and social slander will find themselves at a crossroad. One way leads to a diminishing supply of the energy source they require to continue to grow their national economies. The other way leads to a new source of energy, one they had become accustomed to slurring and demeaning.

The disdain of the oil-producing states represented by sheiks and monarchs and tyrannical theocracies as oil tycoons, for those who required their oil, paid handsomely for it, enabling the funding of religious institutes dedicated to furthering devout and violent fundamentalism which led to the fuelling of Islamist fundamentalism through the exploitation of Western need and greed.

All of which endangered the West because it became the target of the jihadists, and which at the same time comprised a dire threat to the existence of Israel. It will be instructive to witness how events begin to unfold as the scales of need and development begin to mesh.