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Patricia Goldstone<\/h1>\n
author, playwright, journalist<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_module=”320″][et_pb_fullwidth_menu menu_id=”3″ menu_style=”centered” fullwidth_menu=”off” active_link_color=”#df9f1f” menu_icon_color=”#df9f1f” disabled_on=”off|off|off” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” menu_text_color=”#ffffff” menu_font_size=”18px” background_color=”#265986″ background_layout=”dark” active_link_color__hover_enabled=”on|hover” active_link_color__hover=”#ffffff”][\/et_pb_fullwidth_menu][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ specialty=”on” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ specialty_columns=”3″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_row_inner _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column_inner saved_specialty_column_type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Page header” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”Georgia||on||||||” header_text_color=”#265986″ header_font_size=”36px” border_radii=”on|2px|2px|2px|2px” border_color_all=”#0C71C3″ border_width_bottom=”1px” border_color_bottom=”rgba(0,0,0,0.3)”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] Aaron Aaronsohn<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n On May 15, 1919, Aaron Aaronsohn vanished without a trace. He was not only a remarkable Jew but probably one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century \u2014 a world-renowned scientist, a diplomat and a spy whose daring exploits enabled British General Edmund Allenby to capture Jerusalem, a turning point in WWI generally attributed to T.E. Lawrence.<\/p>\n Allenby himself wrote that Aaron\u2019s death deprived him \u201cof a valued friend and of a staff officer impossible to replace. His death is a loss to the British Empire and to Zionism, but the work he has done can never die.\u201d Aaron\u2019s years of solitary geological explorations resulted in finding the ancient \u2018Way of the Wells\u2019 where water could be located underground in artesian and other sources. This sped up Allenby\u2019s plans significantly because, previously, water was being carried by rail from Egypt.<\/p>\n Brigadier Walter Gribbon said that Aaron was responsible for saving the life of 30,000 British troops, while William Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech, the British liaison officer to the Zionist Commission in Palestine, wrote that Aaron and his siblings were \u201cthe most valuable nucleus of our intelligence service in Palestine during the War. Nothing\u2026 will repay the work they have done and what they have suffered for us.\u201d<\/p>\n I first ran across a mention of Aaron Aaronsohn and his beautiful and courageous sister Sarah, who may have been the only woman Lawrence ever loved, when I was researching a book on water and conflict in the Middle East. It was only a small mention but it drew my attention because he seemed to be such an enormous figure. I was struck by the silence around him. Far ahead of his time, he foresaw that water, not oil, would one day become the most important commodity in the Middle East.<\/p>\n Aaron\u2019s most important accomplishment was far more controversial than spying. He compiled a plan for Palestine\u2019s national borders that included all the headwaters of the Jordan River.<\/p>\n Sarah Aaronsohn<\/p><\/div>\n He believed passionately that there could be no viable long-term future for the new country without a partnership between Arabs and Jews. Water-sharing, he believed, was the best basis for such a partnership and his plan could have prevented decades of conflict to come. But he paid for his devotion to the new nation with his life \u2013 and with decades of oblivion instead.<\/p>\n Uncovering the mystery of Aaron Aaronsohn is to understand why Israel and Syria still cannot agree on the Golan Heights, how their disagreement led to war with Iraq in 2003, and how the only comprehensive Middle East peace solution to date \u2013 a pipeline which would bring water from Turkey to Saudi Arabia \u2013 bears a striking similarity to Aaronsohn\u2019s most visionary imaginings.<\/p>\n In the new paperback edition of Aaronsohn\u2019s Maps<\/a><\/em>, I follow what has become somewhat misleadingly known as the Peace Pipeline and concomitant efforts to detach Syria from the \u201cShi\u2019ite Crescent\u201d of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas into the 2011 Syrian civil war. I uncover a nightmarish flip side to Aaronsohn\u2019s dream of developing water to build peace \u2013 the weaponization of water by ISIS as a means of first subduing and then controlling the Middle East. I note the curious coincidence that ISIS tacticians appear to have made an extensive study of the Peace Pipeline and have targeted rivers, canals, sewers, and desalization plants on the premise that whoever controls increasingly scarce water supplies in the region \u2013 where the longest and most severe drought in fifty eyars is considered a major factor in Syria\u2019s political destabilization\u2014will control the outcome of the conflicts in both Syria and Iraq. I note another coincidence which, more curiously still, brings Aaronsohn\u2019s Maps<\/em> into the confusion of funding streams for terrorism that Mark Lombardi was exploring at the time of his death: In 2015, the London trial of a Swedish man accused of terrorism in Syria collapsed after it became clear that British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.<\/p>\n -Patricia Goldstone<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”11px”]<\/p>\n Footnote:<\/strong> In 1915, together with his brother Alexander and sister Sarah, among others, he founded the Jewish spy organization Nili, which gathered intelligence for the British in their fight against the Turks in Palestine.<\/p>\n In 1919, while advising on boundaries at the Paris Peace Conference, Aaron died in a suspicious plane crash over the English Channel on May 15 of that year.<\/p>\n Note: His name is frequently misspelled \u2018Aaronson\u2019 and \u2018Aronsohn\u2019; Aaronsohn is the correct spelling.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#265986″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/INTERLOCK-cover-sidebar.jpg” alt=”Interlock” title_text=”Interlock” url=”https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/interlock\/” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”flip” animation_direction=”right” box_shadow_style=”preset3″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/maps-new-sidebar.jpg” alt=”Aaronsohn’s Maps” title_text=”Aaronsohn’s Maps” url=”https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/aaronsohns-maps\/” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”flip” animation_direction=”right” box_shadow_style=”preset3″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tourism-book-sidebar.jpg” alt=”Making the World Safe for Tourism” title_text=”Making the World Safe for Tourism” url=”https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/buy-books\/” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”flip” animation_direction=”right” box_shadow_style=”preset3″][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Footer” _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#265986″ custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_module=”118″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#FFFFFF”]\u00a92021 Patricia Goldstone ~ Designed by Mesa Multimedia<\/a>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patricia Goldstone author, playwright, journalistPatricia Goldstone author, playwright, journalistAaron Aaronsohn On May 15, 1919, Aaron Aaronsohn vanished without a trace. He was not only a remarkable Jew but probably one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century \u2014 a world-renowned scientist, a diplomat and a spy whose daring exploits enabled British General Edmund […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-template-blank.php","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349,"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions\/349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Aaron Aaronsohn<\/em><\/h1>\n
![\"Aaron](\"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/aaron_aaronsohn.jpg\")
![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/patriciagoldstone.com\/author-playwright-journalist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/sarah_aaronsohn.jpg\")
Born in 1876 in F\u0103lticeni, Romania (some sources list his birthplace as Bac\u0103u, Romania), Aaron Aaronsohn emigrated with his family to Palestine when he was six years old. After studying agriculture in Grignon, France, he made his name as a botanist and agronomist, discovering triticum dicocoides, wild Emmer wheat, which he believed to be the mother of modern wheat.<\/p>\nBooks<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n