Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was in the Middle East recently to, among other things, organize the Abu Dhabi Stake and the Bahrain District out of the Manama Bahrain Stake.
Latter-day Saints in the area has tripled, from 900 when the first stake was formed 28 years ago to 2,700 today, a division was needed. The original Arabian Peninsula Stake was organized by Elder Boyd K. Packer, now President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Why didn’t I know there was a stake in the middle of the Middle East? I mean, do you know were Abu Dhabi is? Again, courtesy of the CIA:
When I say middle of the Middle East, I mean right in the middle:
Walter Russell Mead says it was Palestine and that all the bruhah about his Israel/Middle East speech is overblown or downright wrong. I agree. He writes:
On substantive grounds, it is hard to see what Obama’s critics have in mind. The US position is and has always been that the 1967 borders are the starting point for negotiations. UN Security Council Resolution 242, the basis for all negotiations on this question since it was passed in 1967, makes that very plain — although that resolution does not demand an Israeli withdrawal from all of the territory it conquered in the war. President Bush never deviated from this position; neither has President Obama. Israeli prime ministers including Likud prime ministers like Ehud Olmert have accepted this for years. This is standard diplospeak boilerplate. It is a non-statement, a platitude, even a bromide.
His post comes with a nifty little map of the controversy, courtesy of the CIA:
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