They who forget history are destined to repeat it. World empires have come to an untimely end based on their response to God's central focus, the nation of Israel. Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and Great Britain have, in varying degrees, suffered for their failure to respond positively to God's focus in the times in which they ruled.
An internet site took a poll of President Obama's approval ratings. As a Christian, we are mandated to pray for our president (and I do), however, that must not be confused with a critical eye to important government policies which grate against our consciences.
Having lived over 20 years in the Middle East, foreign policy is A#1 to me.
Obama's snubbing of Israel's Army Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, to the point that he packed it up and left the USA early, then the arm twisting of Bibi Netanyahu over Iran's nuclear program, topped off by pressure (residual from the last administration) from our Secretary of State to get used to the idea of a 'contiguous Palestinian State' say to me: Three strikes and you're out!
We need to pay careful attention to the upcoming June 4 address to the Muslim world from Cairo University. To be sure, 1.4 billion Muslims will be paying close attention. The choice of Cairo in and of itself is questionable since Hosseini Mubarak is serving his 5th six-year term in office. His administration has strong-armed, arrested, beaten and all but exiled his political opponents.
The Brookings Institute posted an astute analysis of the event that is well worth reading. http://is.gd/JtF8
One of their points well made is that of poor governance in many Muslim-majority countries. In an era of globalization, many of these governments have been unable to deliver economic growth or provide basic services to their citizens. A recent Brookings Index of Weak States categorized 40 of the world’s 48 Muslim-majority states as either “failed states” (2), “critically weak states” (8), “weak states” (11), or “states to watch” (19). The World Bank, in its ratings of governance performance (where countries are given a governance score ranging from -2.5 to +2.5), gave 38 of the 48 negative scores. This is the cause of much of the anger and frustration that extremists groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban have capitalized upon.
This Islamic blame-game is a no-win dead end. Historically, economic distress has been the earthquake that has made the wall of the city shake. Major change has ridden on the wake of economic disaster before. What will Obama be able to say that can turn the tide of militant Islam and make them our friends without castigating Israel over the Palestinian issue? Little I doubt.
Since Carol and my salvation during the Jesus People Revival of the 1970s, the mandate to connect the modern Church with Israel has been top priority for us. The task is not only living the life of our Messiah amongst the people of God when we lived in the nation of Israel, but exposing the Church to her unique place in the commonwealth of God’s Israel. That job has taken us around the world, from South Africa to Japan, Wales to Mexico City, Brazil to Europe, Russia to the Holocaust camps of Poland and Germany, and so many more places where God has shown Himself still Sovereign Lord of the “Beautiful Land”—a euphemism for Israel.
When Israel gained sovereignty over her stolen capital city of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, the ripples of that heavenly victory touched every shore of every nation in the world: God reached out and herded masses into the Kingdom of Heaven in such great joy that the movement has taken its place in world history as one of the greatest outpourings of HIS Spirit of all time. Surely it is not hard to connect the dots.
Our ministry is on-going, the mandate still in effect, and the doors still open for us to portray Israel in the glorious light that we know her from over 20 years of on-site experience. The level of interest is not waning, but growing exponentially. What was a trickle of interest after the ‘67 War has become like Niagara Falls. To the furthest reaches of the globe, believing followers of a Jewish Messiah have heard His voice and responded.
To realize that even hermetically sealed empires like China have not only heard His call to action, but have made plans to become involved, even to the detriment of their own security and comfort, is humbling. Should we do less?
We live in unprecedented times. The beautiful message of Israel and our grafted place in the olive tree and Commonwealth has a dark and sinister counterpoint. That being the Evil One’s determination to destroy and discredit her. Turning nations against Israel is his top priority and we must stand against it at all costs. We, believers, constitute a nation within many nations, unified with purposes deeply embedded in God’s end-time plan - and may I say, with great reward.
However, the Genesis 12:3 blessing for those who bless Israel is no longer enough. Building on that foundation, we now support for the safety and security of our own existence against the spreading virus of militant Islamofacism. Israel suffered being the guinea pig, and now the world shares the malice of God’s enemies, just as in times of old: Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, Jonah and more. I say, “We owe!”
Pentecost, known as Shavuot in Hebrew is yet commemorated in Israel. Pilgrims come from all over the world to visit the remaining vestige of the Jewish Temple, the Western Wall prayer plaza. Ruth is read all night until the sun rises. A truly beautiful time in Eretz Israel. The Land of Israel.
Ron's Note: Obama is headed to Cairo in June '09 to detail a hard-sell peace program which is merely a take off on other peace plans that have failed. This one is spiced with Obama's new rude muscle. Do it or else is the message. No more fooling around, Obama wants a Noble Peace Prize and he means it! I have interjected comments in italics.
Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem | May 22, 2009 Article from: The Australian
US President Barack Obama is expected to outline a far-reaching proposal for a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement in Cairo next month that will flesh out the Saudi-initiated Arab Peace Plan proposed in 2002 in a way that makes it more palatable to Jerusalem but also requires the Jewish state to make major concessions.
Under the Obama proposal, Palestinian refugees would not be permitted to return to Israel, but they would be permitted to return to the Palestinian state that would arise on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those who continue to reside in Arab countries where they have been largely confined to refugee camps for 60 years would be given citizenship of those countries, ending their refugee status.
What will the 900,000 Jews who were driven from Islamic nations, having to leave their belongings behind between 1948 and 1953, be offered? Any remuneration? I doubt it will even be mentioned. That number is contrasted with the 400,000 claimed by Arafat to have fled Israel at the command of Jordan, Egypt, and Syria so they could obliterate Israel.
On the critical question of Jerusalem, Mr Obama will support the Arab demand that Palestinians be permitted to establish their capital in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the Six Day War in 1967. However, the walled Old City at the heart of Jerusalem, where the principal holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are located, would become an international enclave and fly the UN flag.
Can we talk about the U.N.'s terrifying history in the Middle East: gunrunning using diplomatic immunity from Jordan and Lebanon; Arafat using the basement of the UN building in Southern Lebanon in 1982 as a terrorist training center and explosives repository; UN involvement in kidnapping IDF soldiers in both Lebanon and Gaza. What a great choice Obama!
The Palestinian state would be demilitarised, maintaining a significant police force to keep order but not an army that might pose a security threat to Israel.
Tell that to Hamas. However, this is good news because Hamas will tell Obama where to take his peace plan.
The pre-Six Day War borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories would be modified, but only by mutually agreed territorial exchanges, not unilateral annexation.
Condi Rice has been to Israel half a dozen times to bang the pulpit shouting "Contigious Palestinian State." That means the West Bank would be connected to Gaza by a land bridge, dividing Israel into north and south for the first time since Solomon's sons. What could we possibly be thinking?
The proposal was reported by the prestigious Arab-language newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, which is published in London. The paper said the plan would be unveiled by Mr Obama when he gives his much-touted address to the Muslim world in Cairo next month.
According to the newspaper, Mr Obama's plan was drawn up in consultation with Jordan's King Abdullah, who was the first Arab leader to be invited by the President to Washington. The two had first met in Amman last year during Mr Obama's tour of the Middle East as part of his presidential campaign.
After returning from Washington three weeks ago, the king spoke to other Arab leaders in the region, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a rapid shuttle.
Abbas, just this week told Palestinian Youth that he rejects the idea of recognizing Israel. He will never recognize Israel!
He then gave an interview to The Times of London in which he said Israel was in a position to win recognition from all 57 Muslim countries if it came to terms with the Palestinians.
He said that a peace deal to be brokered by the Americans would be the most comprehensive since the Madrid peace conference in 1991. To sweeten the deal, Israel would be offered immediate benefits such as entry visas to all Arab countries and the right of El Al, Israel's national carrier, to overfly Arab territory.
Oh my, Israelis have just been frothing to enter enemy territory, be spat upon, decapitated, tarred and feathered, and subjected to horrors not unlike Jewish treatment in the dark ages of Europe. Such a great gift.
Acceptance of Israel by all Arab states would, the thinking goes, give Israel the confidence to make concessions to the Palestinians, something more difficult to do when it faces a sea of hostile faces around it.
If Obama can pull this off, let's go ahead and give him his Noble Peace Prize. This tops all other overtures that could gain him his historical limelight.
Should Israel choose, however, to procrastinate instead of accepting a two-state solution, it would be likely to find itself at war within 12 to 18 months, the king said.
There you have it. The noose. If you should choose not to accept this deal, we have cooked up for you a little war. And, since I've (Abdullah of Jordan) warned Obama about this, how could he protest when we do it?
Israeli officials said yesterday that the details of the Obama plan outlined in Al Quds Al Arabi had not been given to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he met Mr Obama on Monday.
Hey, I thought we were dedicated to the safety of Israel? I guess not.
But they did not deny the report's plausibility. It is a measure of the new relationship between Washington and Jerusalem since Mr Obama assumed office that such a far-reaching plan would be run by an Arab leader before it was shared with an Israeli leader.
No less noteworthy is Mr Obama's decision to visit Cairo on his first presidential trip to the Middle East, without visiting adjacent Israel.
Mr Obama has put more distance between himself and Israel than previous US leaders. But his moves are perceived in Israel as understandable - many would even say praiseworthy - attempts to restore US credibility in the Arab world.
Let the praises begin. He has already been deified by numerous photographers and artists.
A US administration acceptable to the Arab world has a far greater chance of using its good offices to bring about peace in the region.
Mr Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4 will be a major address to the entire Muslim world, and will not focus exclusively on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It will aim to rebuild US relations with the Muslim world that were knocked askew following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Mr. Obama, we can't wait. You've jumped in over your head and may have added the straw that broke the camel's back.
Ron's Note: Obama is headed to Cairo in June '09 to detail a hard-sell peace program which is merely a take off on other peace plans that have failed. This one is spiced with Obama's new rude muscle. Do it or else is the message. No more fooling around, Obama wants a Noble Peace Prize and he means it! I have interjected comments in italics.
Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem | May 22, 2009 Article from: The Australian
US President Barack Obama is expected to outline a far-reaching proposal for a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement in Cairo next month that will flesh out the Saudi-initiated Arab Peace Plan proposed in 2002 in a way that makes it more palatable to Jerusalem but also requires the Jewish state to make major concessions.
Under the Obama proposal, Palestinian refugees would not be permitted to return to Israel, but they would be permitted to return to the Palestinian state that would arise on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those who continue to reside in Arab countries where they have been largely confined to refugee camps for 60 years would be given citizenship of those countries, ending their refugee status.
What will the 900,000 Jews who were driven from Islamic nations, having to leave their belongings behind between 1948 and 1953, be offered? Any remuneration? I doubt it will even be mentioned. That number is contrasted with the 400,000 claimed by Arafat to have fled Israel at the command of Jordan, Egypt, and Syria so they could obliterate Israel.
On the critical question of Jerusalem, Mr Obama will support the Arab demand that Palestinians be permitted to establish their capital in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the Six Day War in 1967. However, the walled Old City at the heart of Jerusalem, where the principal holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are located, would become an international enclave and fly the UN flag.
Can we talk about the U.N.'s terrifying history in the Middle East: gunrunning using diplomatic immunity from Jordan and Lebanon; Arafat using the basement of the UN building in Southern Lebanon in 1982 as a terrorist training center and explosives repository; UN involvement in kidnapping IDF soldiers in both Lebanon and Gaza. What a great choice Obama!
The Palestinian state would be demilitarised, maintaining a significant police force to keep order but not an army that might pose a security threat to Israel.
Tell that to Hamas. However, this is good news because Hamas will tell Obama where to take his peace plan.
The pre-Six Day War borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories would be modified, but only by mutually agreed territorial exchanges, not unilateral annexation.
Condi Rice has been to Israel half a dozen times to bang the pulpit shouting "Contigious Palestinian State." That means the West Bank would be connected to Gaza by a land bridge, dividing Israel into north and south for the first time since Solomon's sons. What could we possibly be thinking?
The proposal was reported by the prestigious Arab-language newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, which is published in London. The paper said the plan would be unveiled by Mr Obama when he gives his much-touted address to the Muslim world in Cairo next month.
According to the newspaper, Mr Obama's plan was drawn up in consultation with Jordan's King Abdullah, who was the first Arab leader to be invited by the President to Washington. The two had first met in Amman last year during Mr Obama's tour of the Middle East as part of his presidential campaign.
After returning from Washington three weeks ago, the king spoke to other Arab leaders in the region, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a rapid shuttle.
Abbas, just this week told Palestinian Youth that he rejects the idea of recognizing Israel. He will never recognize Israel!
He then gave an interview to The Times of London in which he said Israel was in a position to win recognition from all 57 Muslim countries if it came to terms with the Palestinians.
He said that a peace deal to be brokered by the Americans would be the most comprehensive since the Madrid peace conference in 1991. To sweeten the deal, Israel would be offered immediate benefits such as entry visas to all Arab countries and the right of El Al, Israel's national carrier, to overfly Arab territory.
Oh my, Israelis have just been frothing to enter enemy territory, be spat upon, decapitated, tarred and feathered, and subjected to horrors not unlike Jewish treatment in the dark ages of Europe. Such a great gift.
Acceptance of Israel by all Arab states would, the thinking goes, give Israel the confidence to make concessions to the Palestinians, something more difficult to do when it faces a sea of hostile faces around it.
If Obama can pull this off, let's go ahead and give him his Noble Peace Prize. This tops all other overtures that could gain him his historical limelight.
Should Israel choose, however, to procrastinate instead of accepting a two-state solution, it would be likely to find itself at war within 12 to 18 months, the king said.
There you have it. The noose. If you should choose not to accept this deal, we have cooked up for you a little war. And, since I've (Abdullah of Jordan) warned Obama about this, how could he protest when we do it?
Israeli officials said yesterday that the details of the Obama plan outlined in Al Quds Al Arabi had not been given to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he met Mr Obama on Monday.
Hey, I thought we were dedicated to the safety of Israel? I guess not.
But they did not deny the report's plausibility. It is a measure of the new relationship between Washington and Jerusalem since Mr Obama assumed office that such a far-reaching plan would be run by an Arab leader before it was shared with an Israeli leader.
No less noteworthy is Mr Obama's decision to visit Cairo on his first presidential trip to the Middle East, without visiting adjacent Israel.
Mr Obama has put more distance between himself and Israel than previous US leaders. But his moves are perceived in Israel as understandable - many would even say praiseworthy - attempts to restore US credibility in the Arab world.
Let the praises begin. He has already been deified by numerous photographers and artists.
A US administration acceptable to the Arab world has a far greater chance of using its good offices to bring about peace in the region.
Mr Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4 will be a major address to the entire Muslim world, and will not focus exclusively on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It will aim to rebuild US relations with the Muslim world that were knocked askew following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Mr. Obama, we can't wait. You've jumped in over your head and may have added the straw that broke the camel's back.
Obama's quote from today's meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu is the death knoll for the Palestinian State.
"The Palestinians are going to have to do a better job of providing the security Israel needs to accept a two-state solution," Obama said. "The other Arab states have to be more supportive and be bolder in seeking potential normalization with Israel," adding that "I will deliver that message to" Mubarak and Abbas next week. http://digg.com/u13b7j
In an embarrassingly condescending statement Obama expressed confidence in Netanyahu's "political skills as well as his historic vision." The experience of Netanyahu casts a giant shadow over Obama's 'Johnny-come-lately' spot in the world political limelight.
This thinking will have the Arab states laughing through their teeth at America's lack of political savvy in foreign policy matters. Years of diplomacy have been sacrificed to "Change We Can Believe In." The Arabs are happy at the developments, and like the Israeli statesman Abba Eban said, "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Now, knowing that the USA has backed up to square-one, they will forge ahead full speed with their self-defeating agenda.
Good show Obama. You have just chiseled in stone (a tombstone) the epitaph of the Palestinian State.
Editor's Note: This article is not for everyone. The graphic material here is difficult to process. The information is important for those trying to understand Israel's strong stand against her enemies. I am warning, but hoping that the right people will read, process, and put their feelings into action on behalf of a beleaguered nation with few friends in the world. I have pushed this article to the back burner for 9 years. However, my January journey to study at the International Shool for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem changed my mind. Ignoring horror assures its return. Edmund Burke, a British Statesman said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing." (cont'd).
After posting Sarit Hadad's haunting song, Sh'ma Israel Elohai, on my Facebook site, replies told me people were sensing the spirit behind the song. Some cried when listening, most were very moved. I posted a note telling that the song was written after two Israeli soldiers were brutally 'lynched' in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2000. The dictionary explanation for lynch is lost in the Middle East. There, the term is used for what will be described below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ0KAtGsoLU
It was disturbing to me that news media from the West only briefly covered the incident. The inhumane brutality of the killings should have incited a worldwide outcry. Certainly the United Nations should have gotten involved. They did not, and the real story faded from the news . . . but not from the hearts and minds of Israelis and Jewish people who knew what really happened.
The horrors of the Holocaust came boiling back to the surface, only this time in the Jewish homeland, where security and safety should reign. The dark presence of evil had manifested itself again. It was the kind of evil seen by soldiers who liberated the death factories of Hitlers SS. It was unexplainable hatred from deep inside the realm of evil. In 1945, liberators stood in horror, paralyzed by the sights around them. Some of them, though war hardened, vomiting involuntarily—the body's attempt to expel that which cannot be processed—the rude reality that projecting niceness upon others because you cannot imagine such wickedness does not work.
Media that as a rule is pro-Palestinian responded, but much like the reality-denying German press as Hitler's death machine really got rolling. Italy responded as such:
A representative of Italian Television apologized to the Palestinian Authority for screening the video of the lynching of the two Israeli soldiers - his press card was suspended by Israel for issuing the following apology. Riccardo Christiano, Italian TV's representative in Israel wrote to the PA:
"To my dear friends in Palestine, we bless you, and feel that we must clarify that the photos of the events in Ramallah were taken by a private Italian station, and not by official Italian TV. We emphasize to you that we respect the proper journalistic work guidelines with the Palestinian Authority. Be sure that we would never do something like that."
The two Israeli soldiers entered Ramallah by mistake, and were detained by the Palestinian police. After they were brought to the police station in central Ramallah, a crowd of between 1,000 and 2,000 Arabs broke into the building, overcame the police, and murderously beat and killed the Israelis. Some of the Palestinian police took part in the lynch.
The body of one of the Israelis was dragged around the city chained to a car. Television pictures show Arabs in the window of the station, alternately beating and stabbing someone inside and gleefully making a V sign out the window.
The soldiers were viciously beaten all over their bodies. Military officials who handled the bodies told news media that they were "deliberately tortured and abused... The bodies were mutilated and torn to pieces. There was great difficulty in recognizing them..."
The two soldiers heads were split open and the mob tore their brains out. Literally hundreds of hate drunken members of the Islamic mob that day took turns beating the soldier's bodies beyond recognition.
Hayman Zaben and Aziz Salha (the man displaying his bloody hands out the window), are two of the ringleaders who were arrested for the lynching. However, the shocking story is that of terrorist Nasser Abu Hamiyad. He had been released from an Israeli prison as a good-will gesture in the context of the Oslo Accords and then took part in the Ramallah lynch. The West pressures Israel into handing over such prisoners on a regular basis, returning animals loose back into society to repeat their crimes.
Two years later Hamiyad also organized an attack on Jerusalem’s northern most neighborhood of Neve Yaakov, murdering a female police officer and wounding 10. On March 5, 2002, he orchestrated an attack on the Seafood Market in Tel Aviv, murdering Israelis Eliyahu Dahan and Yossi Havi, and wounding 31. This Western pressure is the "New anti-Semitism." The dictate to restrain yourself, when your neighbors are commiting atrocities against your population.
The growing numbers of Israel positive activists will make a difference in their respective nations. The majority of staunch supporters of Israel happen to be evangelical Christians who know the pain they have suffered and have said, "Enough!" We will not stand by quietly and let Israel stand alone.
(cont'd)I will post the photos (extremely graphic) for which the warning at the top of this post applies. You may view the photos on my web site with a password.
I lived in the Middle East for over 20 years working as a freelance journalist. I am concerned about current political trends that may lead the West away from a position of cautious self-preservation.
