Ten Tribes Studies (13 August, 2014, 17 Av, 5774)
 
Contents:
1. Clifford Riley: Fir Bolg versus Milesians May Explain Dichotomy in Irish Attitudes
2. Proverbs 20: 10-12 Sensitivity
3. An Under-appreciated Hero of Joseph:Â How Richard Nixon Helped Save Israel
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1. Clifford Riley: Fir Bolg versus Milesians May Explain Dichotomy in Irish Attitudes
Dear Yair,
Within her letter Michelle Bowie is correct to point out that the conflict between those of Southern Ireland (the Milesian Gaels) and those of Northern Ireland (the various Fir Bolg tribes) has being going on for a long time. Long before the time of Christ.
However the reasons behind is one of a number of sensitive areas within Irish history. Areas which aren't really mentioned because of the reasons why.
Simply put, there are number of accounts within the Annals and physical evidence to support claims of human sacrifices occurring in pre-Christian Ireland. We know from the Annals and from the Brehon (Judge) Laws that the Milesian Gaels exercised the death penalty against those who carried out such rituals. However, the location given within the annals and where the physical evidence has been found, all occur in places which didn't come under control of the Milesian Gaels until the 6th AD, but at the time were under Fir Bolg rule.
Yours Cliff
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2. Proverbs 20: 10-12 Sensitivity
Proverbs 20:Â
10 Diverse weights and diverse measures
  are both alike an abomination to the Lord.
We should not be prejudiced against others.
We should also be fair.
As grown-ups we have probably learned to live with occasional injustices and being discriminated against from time to time.
This is life. We ourselves may well make mistakes in such matters without realizing it.
Children however are much more sensitive in these matters.
Educators and parents should be especially careful to treat all their charges equally.
It may be impossible to be equally good to them all. Nevertheless, at the least try not to punish or rebuke one more than another when they are both culpable.
On top of that by trying to be good and likeable in general our other shortcomings may be overlooked.
11 Even children make themselves known by their acts,
  by whether what they do is pure and right.
There is much truth in this.
Parents especially should be allowed as much leeway as possible in deciding how to raise their children.
The parent might recognize in their offspring tendencies that they have in themselves and that outsiders overlook.
One would think that this is obvious but it is not.
12 The hearing ear and the seeing eye,
  the Lord has made them both
God sees and hears everything.
HE also gave us the ability to see and hear.
We should be sensitive towards our surroundings.
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3. An Under-appreciated Hero of Joseph:Â How Richard Nixon Helped Save Israel
EXCLUSIVE: How Richard Nixon Helped Save Israel by Roger Stone (EXCERPT)
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/11/exclusive-how-richard-nixon-helped-save-israel-excerpt/
August 11, 2014
Extracts:
Below is an exclusive excerpt where Stone writes of President Nixon's support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, despite much opposition from both his Cabinet and Congress.
At 6 a.m. on Saturday October 6, 1973 White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig woke up President Nixon at his home in California with news that Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel.
It became clear in the hours after the attack that the Arabs had surprised Israeli forces and the Israeli state faced the greatest threat to its survival since the original war of independence three decades earlier. Along the border with Syria, along the so-called Golan Heights, 180 Israeli tanks faced 1,400 Syrian tanks supplied by the Soviet Union; likewise Egypt crossed the Suez with 80,000 soldiers facing little Israeli opposition.
In the days following the Yom Kippur attacks Israel suffered a number of setbacks, and Washington became increasingly concerned. Nixon alone concluded that the US must step in to back Israel against Arab forces whose primary military supplier was the Soviet Union, the 1973 war became more than just necessary to save the Jewish state, it became a struggle between the world's preeminent Super Powers. Kissinger opposed the US action.
It is one of history's great ironies that Nixon's proposed airlift played an integral role in the salvation of the Jewish state, as in the years since the release of the Watergate Tapes it has become one of the established facts of the Nixon mythos that the president was a raving anti-Semite. The tapes continue to damn Nixon, who maintained a cognitive dissonance when it came to several prominent Jewish members of his senior staff-Kissinger, White House counsel Leonard Garment, and speechwriter William Safire as well as economist Herb Stein.
In one rant from 1971, Nixon railed against the Jews who in his estimation were both 'all over the government' and disloyal, he told Haldeman that the Jews needed to be controlled by placing someone at the top 'who is not Jewish.' Incredible, given the position in which he would find himself in two short years, Nixon would argue to Haldeman that, 'most Jews are disloyal,' and 'generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you.' Â In another exchange, just months before the 1973 war, Nixon rants to Kissinger about American Jews and what he saw as their selfish view of foreign policy.
Yet, Nixon would play a pivotal role in protecting the Jewish state, as Nixon recognized that the defeat of Israel was unthinkable for US interests. Nixon went to Congress to request authorization for emergency aid for Israel despite the Gulf States announcing a price increase of seventy percent in the wake of the Arab assault. After Nixon went to Congress for authorization, the Gulf States responded vigorously, announcing a total boycott of the United States, causing the oil shock of 1973.
The Gulf States' retaliation simply served to further entrench the opposition of many who had fought to slow or halt the shipment of weapons to the Israelis (the former being represented by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Kissinger, the latter being represented by Secretary of Defense Schlesinger). Nixon hit the roof when he learned that Kissinger was delaying the airlift because of a concern that it would offend the Russians. Despite the opposition of his national security and foreign policy brain trust, Nixon ordered the airlift, saying, 'We are going to get blamed just as much for three planes as for three hundred,' and later in exasperation at the slow start of US support, said 'Use every [plane] we have - everything that will fly.'
Finally, after several days of internal politicking amongst the upper echelons of the Administration, Nixon got his airlift: 'Operation Nickel Grass.' Over the course of the airlift 567 missions were flown, delivering over 22,000 tons of supplies, and an additional 90,000 tons were delivered to Israel by sea. Later in her life, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir would admit that upon hearing of the airlift during a cabinet meeting, she began to cry.
Nixon's loyalty drove him to save a US ally from the threat of utter destruction despite the real risk of economic crisis, and political cost to himself. To borrow the phrase from the Kennedy clan, Nixon's decision to aid Israel was a true 'profile in courage.'