Quartet for Five Hands
“And Esav took Machalat the daughter of Yishmael…He went to Yishmael and said to him, ‘let us join together, I and you and we will rule the whole world.”
The focus of modern geopolitics gives credence to written Torah and commentary by old masters. The focus is the dismemberment of Israel – Ya’akov – cutting the Jewish people off from their holiest places and heartland. If the powers truly seek peace and prosperity this is irrational but “they are drunk, and not with wine.” Moreover, their madness, sold by the media that chants it into ‘fact’ cloaks an otherwise obvious anomaly: the Quartet is not a foursome but has five players, albeit the fifth is partly disguised, “the better to eat you with, my dear…”
What is the Quartet? The media has taught us: America, the European Union, Russia and the “United Nations,” united only in their hatred of, 1) Israel and 2) America by which they expect to be fed and primed with cash. The United Nations as an entity is a useful fiction, a hash of mostly artificial states created by European colonialism that gives a cosmopolitan and “humanitarian” veneer to the agendas of the original powers and their local dependencies. Some of these dependencies, like Iran, achieve more some local autonomy by becoming vectors of competition between the powers which suits the malthusian games of the latter: they don’t like people. As Alice Bailey wrote, “death is a cure.” The chaos of the so-called “war on terror” is geared to make it so.
Note that the children of Ishmael have a subordinate role in the Quartet, via the UN, Esau’s creation and useful fiction to help destroy its own distinct nations the better to rule all the people of the world, to have no restraints on its power as the Biblical Esau had no restraint on his passions. As Ishmael says to him in the Midrash, “I can’t believe your words because you are unstable” (c.f. Baba Kama); it is the cunning of Esau, and his relentless hatred of Jacob, and anything that stands in the way of the “sword” by which he lives (Genesis 27:40) that enables him to use the children of Ishmael as his cutting edge and it is their foolish wildness that lets them be so used (16:12).
It should be noted that “America” is a vague term that can mean American citizens, its government or those, in and out of government that direct American policy. Regarding the nature and goals of “the Quartet” we understand the power and policy elites, juntas and oligarchies that direct the affairs of each of the four named players.
The main point is that “the Quartet” includes ALL the nations of the world gathered against Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:2, 12); in pursuing their own power and prestige they fulfill the words of the prophets as was anticipated: it’s an old story. “Against Your nation they plot, they take counsel saying, ‘Come, let us cut them off from nationhood so Israel’s name will not be remembered anymore…they take counsel unanimously, the tents of Edom and Ishmael…” (Psalm 83: 4-7).
Torah states that “Esau, he is Edom” and that Edom is “the wicked kingdom,” Rome, the “fourth beast coming up out of the west… exceedingly terrifying, awesome and strong, devouring, trampling and crushing …” and that its prissy mouth will “speak haughty words and he will plan to change the seasons and the law” (Daniel 7:7-28).
This is what the cult of Rome did to the Torah and to the seasons, to the structure of creation, and the world has been reeling ever since. Today it is reeling like a drunk and enraged bull that the oligarchs keep lancing, or like a slave they keep whipping.
The “special envoy of the Quartet” is former Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair. In May 2008, having recently announced his conversion to Catholicism and resigning from his post, Mr. Blair held press conferences to declare that he was stepping up in the world to head “Faith Foundation” headquartered in “Abraham House” in London [1]. He said that he would work for “peace in the world” especially among the descendants of Abraham presumably by means that complement his special work as envoy for the Quartet.
So Europe and its satellite powers, America and Russia (that have been whittled down to parity with Europe by their own elites, filled with world state proponents) have, in addition to their contrived official fiction of international legitimacy, the UN, a far more ancient institution that bears the word “universal” in its own name, the Catholic, that is, the “universal” church which, like a “small horn speaking haughty words” remains hidden behind the geographic behemoths that serve its ends. “One hand washes the other” as they say. The Quartet is a Quintet.
Surely some people in the mainstream media recognize this situation but they are paid not to notice and above all, not to say if they do. This after all is the postmodern age when fictions or “narratives” are held to have equally artificial or “virtual” validity; “when nothing is but what is not” and “lying is a universal principle”; this means in effect that those with more power will impose their narrative on those with less, — unless there is in fact “a divinity that shapes our ends…” [2]
As regards the identification of the West as Edom – Rome, note that those provinces of the ancient Empire bordering the Atlantic, as the Empire began to break up and divided itself into military regions were known as the West and its military ruler as the “King of the West,” one of the last of whom was Constantine whose schemes and ambitions play a great part in this saga.
Many commentators note that it is Esav that will attack, or lead the attack upon Israel in the end of days, “you and all your cohorts and the many nations with you” [3]. “Before the final redemption, the children of Edom who are in the lands to the West of Rome and Italy will conquer Jerusalem and all the land of Israel, and they will also destroy Egypt and kill many souls there” [4]. This, he wrote, “will bring the Ishmaelites from the east and north who will attack the notzrim over Jerusalem.” Is the Quintet following a script with its “present fears less than [its] horrible imaginings” as it follows, as if sleep-walking the “fantastical” path to the murder it has devised? Its arrogance may be that ultimate arrogance of believing that it can re-write providence and put itself in the place of the Creator. This is the pagan Greek stance, intellectual arrogance and pride; and the more general pagan idea of fusing god and man, for example in Pharaoh.
The Quintet’s mouths also pontificate about oppression, justice, equality and peace: “they speak loftily about oppression; from on high do they speak. Arrogance cloaks their eyes like fat, like a giantess about their necks; violence wraps their hips with fat.” They intend to subvert, indeed since 1920 they have worked ceaselessly to abort, then subvert then reverse the return of Israel to its land, defying the divine promise and providence itself. “They set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue struts on earth.” As the Jewish people are dragged from their homes in the south, north and in Hebron, settlement and resting place of the patriarchs, “His people return here and waters are sucked out by them” in bitterness (psalm 73: 6-10 passim). And the following verses, among many others make clear why they intend to deny the Temple Mount to the Jewish people.
The sages also wrote nearly two millennia ago that the “son of David [Moshiach] will not come until Persia falls to the kingdom of Edom…Ben David will not come until the evil empire of Rome spreads out over the whole world and seizes Jerusalem for nine months” [5]. The Zohar relates a similar view that has startling relevance to our days, again as if the power elites were following a script: “in the last days, Edom will attack Ishmael, Ishmael will run to Persia and Persia will attack the entire world.”
One should bear in mind that the machinations of the West, Esau-Edom are driving this process as much as its technology transfers and armaments. As a practical matter, the modern “West” including Russia could stop jihadist actions and desires in a manner of days; they do not do so because inflaming it is useful to their rulers. It also is encoded in the ancient Midrash on Genesis 27-41-28:9 quoted at the head of this essay. Ishmael has no genuine argument with Jacob about the Promised Land or, indeed, about the Middle East as it is called today. Abraham gave Ishmael and his other children from Keturah gifts and sent them away to the East, into central and eastern Asia (Genesis 25:5-6). To Isaac he gave all that he had truly, — the covenants of the land, exile, slavery, brit and so on.
As for Esav, he sold his birthright because like a Shakespearean villain, he could not control his appetites, not for idolatrous foreign women (see Proverbs on the “strange woman”) although they were a spiritual torment to his parents, nor for food, not even long enough for it to be poured into a bowl to cool. And having spurned his birthright and sold it, he lied repeatedly that he was “robbed” of it; as for causing his parents distress with his Canaanite wives for years, of that he remained oblivious till he saw Jacob sent to Aram for a wife. Then he yearned for his father to die so he could murder Jacob while escaping his father’s curse for doing so. Rather than put aside his wives, he put his desire to murder Jacob and “rule the whole world” first. And so he went to Ishmael proposing a double murder of brothers. Ishmael asked “Why and how” since Torah teaches that he repented of his hatred of Isaac and joined him in burying Abraham. So Esav lies again, claiming that Ishmael had not received any gifts from Abraham. “It is permissible for you to kill your brother Yitzhak…and I also will kill my brother and afterward we will inherit the entire world.”[6]
Ah, ‘the honor of thieves,’ and how long will Ishmael continue to let itself be duped into this vicious game by Edom only to find, after all the emoluments and pc favors it receives that it will be stabbed in the back?
As Ishmael answers Esav in the Midrash, “I can’t believe your words because you are not stable. Then immediately, ‘Esav took Machalat daughter of Ishmael as a wife for himself’” (Genesis 28:6-9).
Other commentaries discuss that Ishmael actually will conquer more and more of Edom, the West until the people of the West repent for what Esav has done, and has caused to be done to Jacob for so many millennia. “And it shall come to pass that those who are left from all the nations that had invaded Jerusalem will come up every year to worship the King, Hashem, Master of Hosts” (Zechariah 14:16). And if they continue the imperialism of false names, of changing the seasons and the law it will be just more terror and more of the murderous schemes of Edom; the world will not achieve its balance or its beauty.
In the end, all of the ideologies and ‘isms’ do not matter to Esav and his kind: power over other people is their joy, power, status and the cold arrogance that goes with it. In this way it is not difficult for Rome, Moscow, London, Berlin, DC, Beijing and Riyadh to “take counsel all together,” to shake hands and make a deal: humans lose; history dies.
Whether one considers geopolitics or the tragic take-down of America, it is clear that humanity is being put through terrible times. With Edom’s client regime dragging Jews from their homes in Hebron, the machinations of Esav, including Shari’a finance laws in the West, and the foolish, a-historical hatred of Ishmael for Jacob it is clear that it is a mad tyranny that is at play; peace and prosperity require the settlement of Israel; for those who won’t take it from Scriptures it has been demonstrated repeatedly in history how to heal the land and make it bloom. It will again when the Quintet folds its hand and holds it out in genuine friendship; getting off its pedestal in modesty and fairness, yashar keit.
1. The Foundation wants “to support the faith communities, predominantly built around churches and mosques”; that says it all www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/ see also Blair’s speech to launch this imperial initiative for global synthesis and forgetting http://tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/2008/05/tony-blairs-speech-to-launch-t.html Jerry Adams of the I.R.A. has worked extensively with the PLO-Fatah and this past year preceded Mr. Blair as an ‘emissary’ to the region. Note that recently it has been revealed that two leading figures in the IRA were British agents, and IRA torturer was in the Royal Marines Esau’s games…
2. Shakespeare, Macbeth 1.3.137-42; Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925), chapter 9, “In the Cathedral”; Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.2.10
3. Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel, 1809-79) on Ezekiel 32 and 38;
4. Rav Don Yitzhak Abarbanel (1437-1508), leader of Spanish Jewry and of the main body of Jews driven from Spain in 1492 by Queen Isabella, namesake of the infamous Izavel (“Jezebel”) of Tanakh.
5. Ben Yoma 10a; thanks to my scholarly friend in Jerusalem.
6. Midrash and Baba Kama 92, the aggada [narrative story]; 7. For a discussion of the commentaries on the rise of Ishmael, empowered by Edom, at the end of history see Rabbi Yechiel Weizman, The Ishmaelite Exile (Feldeheim, Jerusalem 2006).
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