Tom Lennie reviews ‘Welsh Awakenings: The Story of God's Work in Wales’ (video production 2023)

As we remember Rees Howells, we toast the courage of Welsh Christians

Christian love for Israel displayed on Welsh heights

Beautiful feet have once again ascended the mountains of Wales to announce good news for the people of Israel.

For the fourth year running, the North Wales-based Fathers House Sabbath Congregation has incorporated a strong message about Christian support for Israel with a great deal of fun, at the same time bringing extra meaning to the Prophet Isaiah’s statement: "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news…who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’" (Isa 52:7).

Wonderful Display of Advocacy

Christians from Holland joined believers from the Shotton, Deeside, congregation as they ran or walked 8km across the lovely Clwydian range carrying Israeli flags and dressed in Run for Israel t-shirts. The event was followed by a barbecue at a nearby mountain orchard.

Fathers House pastor Mike Fryer explained: “This mountain range draws over three quarters of a million walkers a year from all over the world and the wonderful display of Christian advocacy for Israel was seen by tourists who had come to visit.

“There was of course the odd anti-Semitic comment but the majority of tourists thanked the participants for such fun-loving and passionate support for Israel. Israeli flags and directional signs with Israeli insignia, displayed throughout the area, were left undamaged – re-enforcing the understanding among leaders of the event that anti-Semitism is a minority view in Wales for whom Israel is generally seen as a respected nation.”

Mike’s statement is borne out by a colleague of mine who tours churches around the UK teaching on God’s purposes for the Jews and finds the people of Wales particularly knowledgeable and responsive.

9^th Av

In another show of support for Israel, Christians are taking part this weekend in an initiative called the Nations’ 9^th Av – a date on the Hebrew calendar associated with many tragedies and thus used as a traditional day of Jewish mourning (falling in 2019 on this weekend, 11 August).

Followers of Jesus are using it as an opportunity to confess and pray through the atrocities committed against the Jewish people in the name of Christianity over the past 2,000 years.

Find out more at https://9-av.com/. 

Divine deliverance during World War II.

Continuing our ‘Book of Remembrance’ looking back on God’s faithfulness to Britain through the ages, this week we dwell on instances of divine intervention in our nation during times of conflict and threat.

Alongside David Longworth’s article on the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, it is also important to remember God’s intervention in World War II, not a century ago – a topic on which we often reflect on Prophecy Today, not least because it laid the groundwork for the re-establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 – the most important prophetic fulfilment of our times.

For example, both Dr Clifford Hill and David Longworth have discussed the miracles which allowed the safe rescue of British troops from Dunkirk in 1940, after the King called the nation to prayer and repentance. Thousands assembled outside packed churches to intercede for the Lord’s help, with thanksgiving and rejoicing in the aftermath also turning into intercession for deliverance in what became known as the Battle of Britain. You can read these articles here:

• The Miracle of Dunkirk (Dr Clifford Hill)
  
• Dunkirk: Divine Deliverance (David Longworth)
  

We have also been alerted recently to a leaflet featuring testimonies about God’s intervention from six of the most senior figures of the War. The Wartime Miracles leaflet is currently being circulated around UK churches by the Strengthen the Faithful team as part of a campaign “to give true Christians hope, encouragement and reassurance, which is so greatly needed in these unsettling and frightening times.”¹

Elsewhere on Prophecy Today, David Longworth has written about the lesser known Allied victory at El-Alamein (Egypt) in 1942, also preceded by a national day of prayer, which marked a turning point in the war and prevented the Nazi genocide of Jews in both Egypt and Palestine. You can read David’s article here:

• The Battles of El Alamein: Prayer and the Sovereignty of God
  

Finally, of course, these and many other points of divine intervention in the war were accompanied by faithful intercession from British Christians, especially at the Bible College in Wales, where students were led in fervent prayer by Rees Howells. This spiritual warfare has been mentioned many times on Prophecy Today, but we recommend particularly the following article by Dr Clifford Denton about how the Swansea intercessors supported the re-birthing of Israel:

• Israel Re-Born: the Fruit of Prayer
  

May God be praised as we give thanks for his marvellous action on our behalf in times past – and may we be inspired to give ourselves afresh to prayer for our otherwise helpless nation. The Lord has not finished with Britain yet!

Notes

1 Free paper copies of this leaflet can be obtained by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., stating ‘Wartime Miracles’ in the subject line.

Times of refreshment: a look at historic revivals in Britain.

Passion for the Gospel must be our motive in spiritual warfare.

My recent visit to the birthplace of the Welsh Revival has prompted me to add a third reflection on that great movement – with particular reference to the ministry of Rees Howells, whose biography I have recently rediscovered; a veritable treasure half-hidden on our bookshelves.¹

Rees was a product of the 1904 revival whose influence spread across the globe, but is perhaps best remembered for the intercessions he led during World War II which, in the opinion of many, probably did more for Allied victory than any amount of military firepower.

But when Rees and his Bible College students fought the great battles of the war on their knees, it wasn’t just for our freedom. Their prime motivation was to clear obstacles to the preaching of the Gospel, because Hitler’s regime blocked the path to fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission.

Not only was the Nazis’ atheistic ideology the very antithesis of Christianity, but the upheaval of ongoing war would continue to distract people everywhere from a consideration of their soul’s destiny.

Clear Scriptural Goal

And because the Swansea college’s chief concern was for the Gospel, they were also greatly burdened for the Jewish people, who were under threat of genocide. After all, the gospel is “to the Jew first…” (Rom 1:16). And if the Jews were destroyed, they could never be restored to their ancient land as the prophets had predicted, and Jesus could not return, for the Bible clearly states that the Jews must be back in the Holy Land before this happens (see Zech 12-14).

Rees and his students fought the great battles of the war on their knees – not just for our freedom, but to clear obstacles to the preaching of the Gospel.

The college company, however, knew what must take place (it is so important that Christians are familiar with scriptural prophecy) and thus had confidence to pray for victory as the Holy Spirit led them.

Their prayers during the Battle of Britain, for example, were informed by a very clear scriptural goal: “Every creature is to hear the gospel; Palestine is to be regained by the Jews; and the Saviour is to return.”²

An illustration of the influence of the Welsh Revival on the United Kingdom is among exhibits at the Moriah Chapel, the church where it all began in October 1904. Photo: Linda GardnerLaying Their Lives Down

Time and again the German forces were on the point of winning crucial battles when, quite inexplicably, the tide suddenly turned – and the only reasonable explanation was that God must have intervened miraculously in response to prayer.

These Bible students were laying down their lives as much as those young men at the front. From the time of Dunkirk, through the rest of the war years, the entire college (about 100 strong) prayed every evening from 7 o’clock to midnight, with only a brief interval for supper, in addition to an hour-long prayer meeting every morning, and very often at midday.

Passionate Young People

I have already mentioned how the Welsh Revival was ignited (humanly speaking) by passionate young people determined for God to come down and use them as his instruments.

Tragically, few of the UK’s young generation have even heard the Gospel, but among the few are outstanding men and women whom God has already touched, and the mantle is falling on them to usher in a new era of radical Christianity, filling the vacuum created by the hopeless, lifeless and meaningless ideologies of secular-humanism.

Will they be up for the task? Remember Gideon, who only needed 300 men to defeat the enemy, and young David – the anointed ancestor of Messiah Jesus – who required just a single well-aimed stone to slay an intimidating giant. I have met, come to know and even work with some passionate young people who are up for the fight.

These Bible students were laying down their lives as much as those young men at the front.

Just as the 1939-45 battles were fought chiefly by young men, so must the spiritual warfare for our nation be fought in the main by millennials.

If we are to pray for nations, we must first have the kind of passion for individual souls that Rees possessed in bucket-loads; he would fast and pray for a tramp, or drunkard, or village trouble-maker until he had gained victory – however long it took. He also learned to walk by faith for every move he made, refusing to make his financial needs known, trusting God for every penny. In the case of the Bible College, he began with just two shillings and saw God send him £125,000 (the equivalent of millions in today’s money) over the next 14 years.

In 1915 he and his wife Elizabeth went out to Africa as missionaries and witnessed marvellous revivals, accompanied by extraordinary healings, blazing a trail for a future student, Reinhard Bonnke, who would see millions drawn into the kingdom through his huge rallies across the continent.

Even the Queen of Swaziland came to faith. Rees reported: “I told her that God had one Son, and he gave him to die for us; and we had one son, and had left him to tell the people of Africa about God. She was very much affected by hearing that my wife and I loved her people more than we loved our own son.”³

The Bible says: “Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37). It’s that sort of commitment to which we are called.

Same Battles Today

Some of the issues that burdened the intercessors at Swansea are very similar to those we are faced with today. Anti-Semitism is once again raising its ugly head all over the planet, though no longer led by Nazis but by an unholy alliance between the hard left and fanatical Islamists. Are we going to let these tyrannical groups complete what Hitler failed ultimately to achieve – the destruction of the Jewish race and of civilisation as we know it?

Those wartime intercessors prayed Israel back into their own land, where they would be safe. But now the 70-year-old Jewish state is surrounded by implacable enemies bent on their annihilation. And even in Britain their future is threatened as a potential Prime Minister is apparently unable to deal with anti-Jewish sentiment in his party.

If we are to pray for nations, we must first have a burning passion for individual souls.

How can we forget? We hold Holocaust Memorials every year so successive generations will learn from history, but it cuts no ice with God-haters. The reason they despise the Jews is because they reject the God who has chosen them as the apple of his eye. He is, after all, the God of Israel, whom we Christians also worship. He wrote the Law on how to live – summed up in the Ten Commandments – at Mt Sinai. But the brave new world has replaced it with an ideology that makes our genes responsible for bad behaviour.

We are no longer categorised as either male or female, but there are now some 70 other ways to identify our gender – all of which makes Alice in Wonderland sound positively sane. No wonder we are faced with a shattering breakdown of family life along with a vicious attack on the sanctity of life and sexual morality.

But the word of God teaches that we are born sinners whose natural tendency to rebel needs dealing with. This was achieved by Jesus on the Cross, where he took the full punishment for our sins, paying for it with his blood. God’s own precious Son chose to die in our place so that we would not perish, but inherit eternal life.

The devil tries every trick to prevent us from acknowledging our deep need of life, love, hope and peace which can only be found at the Cross.

Sharpening Our Vision

When, as a Church and nation, we recover a passion for the Gospel as the only means of mending our broken society and restoring truth and righteousness to our once great country, then I’m sure revival will follow.

Most Western Christians have only a blurred vision of what the Gospel stands for, but our focus must be sharpened to the point where we are prepared to lay our lives on the altar for its truth, and for the freedom to proclaim it on our streets, in our prisons, in our churches, and in our schools and universities.

With such a sharpened vision, we will also gain a fresh understanding of God’s great end-time purpose for the Jews and be better prepared for the return of our Lord to this troubled world. Come, Lord Jesus!

Notes

1 I am indebted to Rees Howells, Intercessor by Norman Grubb (published by Lutterworth Press) for much of the background to this article.

2 Quoting the prayer journal entry for 14 September, 1940.

3 Samuel was brought up by Rees’s uncle and aunt, and later succeeded his father as Bible College Director.

And we uncover its close connection with love for Israel.

Amid great expectancy of a renewed outpouring of the Spirit in the land of revivals, my wife and I were profoundly blessed and stirred by a recent visit to Wales.

We sat in the Moriah Chapel at Loughor, near Swansea, where the famous Welsh Revival broke out on 31 October 1904, and had a real taste of those momentous times as we were guided around the premises by a man whose uncle was a close friend of Evan Roberts, the human instrument used by God as the spark of that great movement.

I also noted the significance of the chapel’s name, as it was Mt Moriah where Abraham was prepared to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice and where, close by, Jesus died for the sins of the world at Calvary.

And this was not the only connection with Israel – more of which later.

Recalling the total surrender of those young men (the initial outpouring effectively started with a youth meeting), one of our group prayed “Bend us, Lord!” as she echoed the heartfelt cry of the revival’s 25-year-old leader for God to break their resistance to the Holy Spirit’s power.

It was an awesome moment as we became aware of the great need of our nation (in the UK as a whole) for restoration and reformation. Then we sang ‘Here is love, vast as the ocean’, one of the revival’s key hymns – first in Welsh, then in English.

People of Spiritual Stature and Faith

Our visit there was part of a weekend conference of the UK Fellowship of Full Gospel Churches, an international network of ministers dedicated to proclaiming Christ in all his fullness.

The event was hosted at the Bible College of Wales, which has itself been mightily used in world mission and was a product of the 1904/5 revival. We enjoyed glorious worship in the same room where legendary intercessor Rees Howells and his students prayed through to victory for Britain and the allies during World War II and later for Israel’s recognition at the United Nations.

One of our group prayed “Bend us, Lord!”, echoing the heartfelt cry of the 1904 revival’s 25-year-old leader Evan Roberts for God to break their resistance to the Holy Spirit’s power.

Participants had flown in from throughout the United States as well as from Holland, while others came from across the south of England and Wales – we were the lone visitors from the north.

Although a relatively small gathering with no more than 50 taking part, most of them were men and women of great spiritual stature and faith – at least one had met with US Presidents while others had walked with the likes of Billy Graham and had witnessed God’s miraculous guidance over many years.

Dick Funnell, from New Orleans, shared his extraordinary journey of how God had led him to come and live on the west coast of Wales where he and his Guatemalan wife Gladys now have keys to a small chapel where they have been praying daily for the past 13 years, convinced that revival is on its way.

As we prayed and lifted our hands in worship, we were aware of the crucial part played by Howells and his students who interceded day and night for a nation facing disaster at the time of Dunkirk. Their God-ordained prayers brought us back from the brink of destruction. They also prayed through to victory at the UN for Israel’s recognition in November 1947, having also made provision for Jewish children escaping the Nazi net.

100,000 New Births

A love for Israel was due not only to a proper understanding of the Bible, but also to the part the Jewish people had played in the founder’s conversion. Howells actually committed his life to Christ in America, where he had gone to seek his fortune, and it had come about through a Jewish evangelist, Maurice Reuben, who had paid a huge price for following Jesus, being disowned by his wealthy family and denied his part-ownership of a Pittsburgh store.

Maurice himself had found the Lord through the witness of a man he had asked – because he always seemed cheerful – if he had been ‘born happy’, to which the man had replied that his happiness only dated from his ‘second birth’.

Rees, who was the same age as Evan Roberts, returned to Wales to help with the revival.

Following a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit, he lived a radical life of faith as he reached out to drunkards and tramps – cutting down his meals in order to identify with them. And he took on formidable challenges such as praying for – and witnessing to – a village untouched by the revival and healing for sick people doctors had written off.

During the 1904 Welsh revival, an estimated 100,000 people were swept into the Kingdom over a four-month period.

Evan, meanwhile, was unschooled as, when his father was injured down the mine, he took his place, aged 11, in order to provide an income for his family.

Later, feeling called to pastoral ministry, he left home to acquire the necessary academic qualifications but before long had a deep experience of the Holy Spirit after hearing a speaker from the Welsh equivalent of the Keswick Convention.

Evan Roberts. Photo: Linda Gardner.He returned to his home village and asked if he could hold a youth meeting to which 16 youngsters turned up. Revival broke out, and services lasted virtually through the night. Miners coming off their shift would join the queues for the chapels; as soon as one was filled they’d tramp off to find the next. Lights would be burning through the night as tens of thousands throughout the principality were convicted of sin by the presence of God and the preaching of the Gospel. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 were swept into the Kingdom over a four-month period as people couldn’t get enough of being in God’s presence.

Impacts Beyond Asking or Imagining

It wasn’t the first time Wales had seen revival – Howell Harris and others had led a similar movement in the late 18^th Century, and even John Wesley had preached at Loughor in those days. Another revival broke out in 1859 – also touching many other parts of the world.

In fact, it was in the midst of the earlier movement that a hugely significant event took place that was to lead to the foundation of the Bible Society through which the word of God was translated into hundreds of languages and distributed throughout the world.

The event in question was a 26-mile walk over the mountains of North Wales by 15-year-old Mary Jones in order to purchase a copy of the Welsh Bible for which she had saved up for six years. Her extraordinary feat awakened the need for God’s word to become available to everyone in their mother tongue.

One of the effects of the 1904 awakening of dynamic Christianity was that the police and magistrates had nothing to do except help control the crowds queuing up for the Gospel meetings.

What was happening in Wales galvanised the prayers of American saints in California, leading directly to the Azusa Street revival of 1906.

The revival spread across the globe, even touching Asia and St Petersburg in Russia, and it inspired others praying for a similar move in their own localities. This was particularly the case in California, where news of what was happening in Wales galvanised the prayers of American saints and led directly to the Azusa Street, Los Angeles, revival of 1906, the beginnings of the modern-day Pentecostal movement, with a similar outpouring taking place in Sunderland, England, in 1907, led by Church of England vicar Alexander Boddy who had earlier come to witness the work of Evan Roberts in Wales.

The revival produced outstanding leaders including George and Stephen Jeffries and, of course, Rees Howells who went on to found his world-changing Bible College in 1928. One student, a young German called Reinhard Bonnke, graduated in 1960 and subsequently won millions of people to the Lord through his huge missions across Africa and other parts of the world.

A young Billy Graham also visited the Loughor chapel back in 1946 when he is understood to have had a profound experience of the Holy Spirit. Millions the world over benefited from that!

Part II next week.

Notes

Additional material sourced from Rees Howells, Intercessor by Norman Grubb, published by Lutterworth Press.

Christians are running to declare their support for Jews.

Welsh Christians are taking to the mountains for which their country is famous to declare their support for embattled Israel and British-based Jews.

Led by former Israeli Defence Force commander Matan Dansker, members and supporters of the Fathers House Sabbath Congregation in Shotton, Deeside, will participate in an 8km run along the beautiful Clwydian Range in North Wales with persecuted Christians also in mind.

Fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news” (Isa 52:7), it follows a similar event last year and will be part of a weekend of activities from 3-5 August at which Mr Dansker, who fought in Gaza, will speak about what is happening in the Jewish state.

Congregational leader Michael Fryer is determined to respond to the rising hatred of Jews in the UK, where the official opposition Labour Party has adopted a watered-down definition of anti-Semitism.

He said: “This is of great concern to us all, so we are highlighting the issues faced by the Jewish community here along with the anti-Israel rhetoric – and an Israeli flag will again be flown at the highest point on the mountain.”

He adds: “Christians are also facing unprecedented persecution in many Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries with mass slaughter and rape being reported in Nigeria. At the same time, the basic tenets of our Judeo-Christian faith are being eroded even here in the UK where Christians are being prosecuted for refusing to comply with immoral practices.

“Fathers House stands shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish community in the UK and we support a number of charitable programmes in Israel. We also support pastors and orphanages in India and Myanmar [Burma] and will hear from those directly involved with these initiatives during this gathering. We will also have a video link with an orphanage in Myanmar during which our children will share with their counterparts in song and drama.”

For more information, see www.fathershouse.wales – details of the run’s location will be given out on request to those wishing to take part, whether running or walking.

Photos of last year's run. Left: runners celebrate their achievement. Right: cheerleaders encourage competitors.

The behind-the-scenes intercession that helped change history.

The year is 1879. A boy is born, the sixth of 11 children, to a mining family in the village of Brynammon in South Wales. This was Rees Howells who, from this humble background, was to become one of those privileged people whom the Lord raised up in a personal way and to whom was given great responsibility.

It is a story that would not have been generally known but for the determination of Norman Grubb, a friend from World Evangelisation Crusade (WEC), to record it in the book Rees Howells Intercessor.

There are risks involved in making a hidden work public. Just as Gideon’s ephod became an object of idolatry in the days of the Judges, after the mighty victory of God over the Midianites, so we must not look too much to the man and not enough to God. Yet, in this year of the celebration of 70 years of Israel being reborn, perhaps the greatest sign of the times, it is good to revisit the testimony of prayer that accompanied the work of God to bring this miracle about.

Learning Humility

Rees Howells was a humble man, broken by the Lord for his own purposes. He faced simple challenges in his early days - challenges as simple as breaking convention and not wearing a cap on an outdoor walk, through to bringing tramps into his home, so that Rees could be a God-pleaser and not a man-pleaser.

Later his experiences on the mission fields and during the time of 1904 Welsh revival showed him the mighty working of God. He learned how to live by faith in all things.

As we celebrate 70 years of Israel re-born, it is good to revisit the testimony of prayer that accompanied the work of God to bring this about.

All this gradually prepared him to establish a small Bible college in Swansea in the days leading up to the Second World War, when the Lord provided all he needed despite the great financial recession of the times. It was a work of God and it would be a close walk with God through the troubled times of the coming war and thereafter.

The Bible College of Wales. See Photo Credits.The College was a training ground for young missionaries and also a base for intercessory prayer, where a small staff held regular meetings as a second war with Germany seemed to be approaching. It is not widely known that Rees Howells made a mistake of judgment at the time. He believed that God would not let the dictators wage war.

God allowed him to believe this and even speak ‘prophetically’ through a book that he published denouncing the dictators and proclaiming what turned out to be a false prophecy. I mention this so we can retain a good balance, seeing what then followed as being more of God than of man. Rees Howells must have gone through those war years even more broken and humbled, after this mistake of judgment.

The War Years

When war did break out, every campaign of the Allies was followed in prayer and victories first proclaimed through prophetic intercessory prayer were then realised in the physical victories. Norman Grubb’s book majors on those war years and the intercessory prayers that arose in a unique way throughout the war. It is worth reading again at this time.

I am glad to have had the privilege of joining the ministry of the Bible College of Wales in its later years, when Rees Howells’ son was the Director. A remnant of the intercessory team of the war years still survived, especially Dr Kingsley Priddy, who had been a right-hand man to Rees Howells and who became a father in prayer to me. I had the privilege of personal discussions to supplement what can be found in Norman Grubbs’ book.

Rees Howells was a humble man, broken by the Lord for his own purposes.

Especial and relevant insights relate to the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Samuel Howells told me how his father once came out of his prayer room and, ashen faced, announced that God had asked him to take responsibility in prayer for the Jews in the death camps. While the war was raging, and Britain was fighting for its own survival, few people at the time understood that satan through Hitler had a central objective of destroying the Jews.

Rees Howells knew how deep this call to prayer would take him, but he said to his son, in faltering voice, that he had accepted the commission. So began the intercessory ministry that was indeed a major part of the war – the spiritual war also raging at the time.

These are hard things to understand and we know how the Holocaust (HaShoah, as it is known to Jews) has impacted the Jewish world, not just during the war years but right through to our day. This event has challenged both Jewish and Christian theology.

Interceding for Israel

The prayers continued after the Second World War was over, and as the news that the Jews might regain their homeland became known. Kingsley Priddy told me how the college was brought to prayer at the time when the United Nations were voting for the partition of Palestine. They saw, in vision, angels surrounding the UN building and they proclaimed victory in faith even before the vote was taken, which despite Britain’s abstention was passed so that Israel would once more be reborn as a nation in their own land.

It is important to mention the path of prayer to this event, which we now, both Christians and Jews, celebrate 70 years later. God calls us into partnership in prayer, not that we should exalt ourselves but that we might know, prophetically, that this was his work. It is not as a result of a political manoeuvre that Israel is back in the Land: it was an act of God.

God calls us into partnership in prayer, not that we should exalt ourselves but that we might know, prophetically, that this was his work.

For the Jews it was at tremendous cost, and we are still trying to understand this. For those who prayed it was a deeply tiring work. Samuel Howells pointed out to me that his father was a robust man but that he died relatively young - his life being foreshortened through those years of intense intercessory prayer.

Our Calling

The Jewish world should know that it was a task given to Christians to pray for the prophetic fulfilment of their return to the Land, and for Christians to know their ongoing responsibility in prayer. God is still working out his prophetic purposes, which will result finally in the return of our Jewish Messiah Yeshua HaMashiach.

God is preparing the way for the Jews’ return to him - the return to the Land being a significant but not final step in this process. He is calling for a refinement of all his people according to Paul’s metaphor of the One New Man.

The day for intercessory prayer - our prophetic partnership with God - continues today. The call is as deep as it always was and the cost is also to be weighed in obeying the call, but call there is. Let us listen and obey as did those who went before us.

Peace was promised for pull-out – but it never came!

As thousands of Palestinian rioters take part in demonstrations against Israel on the border with Gaza, media attention is rarely focused on the Jewish victims of violence living nearby.

The so-called March of Return, during which protestors have hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers trying to safeguard their citizens, is about claiming the right of return for refugees (and their descendants) supposedly driven out of Israel at the birth of the modern state 70 years ago.

Quite apart from the fallaciousness of their claim, which I shall explain, the whole scenario of Hamas-led Gaza erupting in turmoil is a terrible betrayal by Arabs and all those who have supported their aspirations.

Land Exchanged for Rocket Fire

The nations who encouraged former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw from the enclave in 2005 in a “land for peace” exchange have blood on their hands.

For there is no peace for those Jewish residents who live within easy rocket-fire of Gaza, as a North Wales photographic exhibition called The Hope graphically illustrates.¹

Having witnessed mortar and rocket attacks while visiting the area as a child, student photographer Grace Fryer visited the Jewish communities of Sderot and Kfar Aza, located just over a mile from Gaza, to record the suffering of children whose daily lives are shattered by the sound of sirens giving them just seconds to find shelter. A number have been killed while others have been traumatised and unable to live normal lives.

Those who encouraged Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in a “land for peace” exchange have blood on their hands - for Jewish residents within easy rocket-fire of the enclave have no peace.

Grace tells the story of 17-year-old Ella Abukasis, who died while protecting her younger brother from shrapnel, and her exhibition includes photographs from the children’s centre her father Yonatan founded in her memory as well as shrapnel from a Kassam rocket recovered after a similar attack.²

“The Israeli communities around Gaza are not only subject to the constant fear of rocket attacks, but also face the reality that terrorists are tunnelling under their homes with the sole intention of taking hostages and killing civilians,” Grace points out.

Grace Fryer with one of her evocative photographs depicting the suffering of Jewish children in Sderot.“There are also times when the rocket fire becomes so extreme that Israel has to enter Gaza to protect her citizens.”

Just imagine if you were living in Kent and were subject to a never-ending barrage of missiles being launched from across the channel. You would no doubt expect your Government to do something about it. Yet Israel is almost always cast as the aggressor when they strike back at the Hamas terrorists causing all this mayhem.

Daily Stress and Fear

When Israel took back control of Gaza from Egypt in 1967, the communities around Sderot built good relationships with the Arabs in Gaza. Jews would sell their fruit and vegetables on the beaches of Gaza while Arab mechanics would repair Jewish cars.

But Yasser Arafat put an end to that when he initiated an intifada (uprising) in 2000. Under his direction, terrorists began attacking Jewish communities in Gush Katif, in the Gaza strip, which is what ultimately led to Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal five years later. With a population of just 8,000, this community produced over 12% of Israel’s dairy and horticultural products.

“The agreement was that if this community gave all their property and business to the Arabs of Gaza, their leaders would stop the terror attacks on Israeli communities”, Grace explained.

“Many in Gush Katif, who were themselves children of refugees from 1948, were forced to leave their homes to live in temporary accommodation in Israel; and they did so in ‘The Hope’ that there would be peace – but it never came!

“Breaking their promise, Gaza-based Arab terrorists began using the very land which had been left vacant for them to fire rockets and mortars into Sderot and the surrounding areas.”

Israel is almost always cast as the aggressor when they strike back at the Hamas terrorists causing all this mayhem.

It’s a terrible and frightening scenario, as you can well imagine, for children playing in school playgrounds, or visiting outdoor markets, stores and synagogues. Nowhere seemed safe, and pain is etched on the faces of those who have never known peace.

Not surprisingly, living with this constant danger takes a huge toll on these communities, leading to family break-up and illness caused by stress and anxiety. And yet none of these difficulties is recognised by the UN, individual governments or human rights organisations.

Web of Deceit

As for the fallacy of the ‘March of Return’, to which I also referred last week , the refugee situation affecting the Palestinian people is a crisis of their own making. It was self-inflicted.

Some 800,000 of them heeded the warning of the surrounding states bent on Israel’s destruction in 1948 to flee their homes, promising their swift return alongside the victorious Arab armies. Israeli leaders, meanwhile, had tried their best to persuade them to stay, but to no avail – hence creating a totally unnecessary humanitarian crisis conveniently used as an excuse to blame Israel for almost everything wrong with the world.

What’s more, there were at least as many genuine Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries at the same time. And Israel successfully integrated every one of them. The surrounding states, however, still refuse to take responsibility for the welfare of those they persuaded to leave Israel.

As Walter Scott put it, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

Notes

1 The month-long exhibition, opened on 12 April, is being held at the Theatre Clywd Education Gallery, Mold, North Wales.

2 Leaflet promoting The Hope photographic exhibition – see www.fathershouse.wales