Obeying God’s Unusual Leadings

Will Britain stand?

Last Saturday, 11 May, two marches of quite different natures processed through central London.

One was a Palestine solidarity protest marking what Muslims worldwide call the ‘Nakba’ (the catastrophe), or the formal re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

The march attracted mainstream press attention and some 3,000 protestors, led by Palestinian activist and former convict Ahed Tamimi who proclaimed the genocidal slogan of Hamas and Hezbollah: “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” (i.e. Israel must be destroyed).

The other march, which attracted nearly 5,000 supporters but received no mainstream press coverage, was the March for Life. Standing up on behalf of the plight of unborn children, hundreds of thousands of whom lose their lives silently in the UK each year, the march celebrated and proclaimed the sanctity of human life.

Opposing Worldviews

Seeing these marches take place virtually side by side reminded me just how divided our country has become. Every month, all sorts of protests take place in our capital, each one claiming a just and righteous cause. Both the above marches purport to stand for justice on behalf of the oppressed. However, they are undergirded by vastly opposing worldviews.

The pro-life movement is rooted in a biblical worldview, in which human life - from conception - is divinely given, in the image of God, and innately deserving of dignified treatment. While not all within the pro-life movement are believers, the movement is grounded in an understanding that life and death are sacred matters, in which humans must defer to an authority and set of moral standards higher than their own. And so, the pro-life movement champions a culture of respect, non-violence and life.

The March for Life attracted nearly 5,000 supporters but received no mainstream press attention.

Palestine Solidarity March, 11 May 2019. See Photo Credits.By contrast, Palestinianism is rooted in a rejection of the God of the Bible: specifically, his choice of land and people, denying the covenant heritage of the Jews (and its basis in historical and legal fact). It leads people to believe gross distortions and slanders about Israel, regurgitate age-old anti-Semitic tropes and side with terrorist groups who seek to murder innocent Jewish civilians. The result, directly or indirectly, is the championing of a culture of violence and death.

The issues of Israel and unborn life, though seemingly unrelated, are two of the most defining battles of our time. Both are, I believe, particularly close to God’s heart. Both are also modern spiritual litmus tests: telling indicators of the spiritual condition of our nation before God. With this in view, pondering Saturday’s marches I was reminded of Jesus’ sobering words that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25; Matt 12:25).

A Nation at War

This coming week, Britain goes to the polls again for an election which many are calling a ‘second referendum’ on our membership of the EU. Current projections indicate that because the Remain vote will be split across several different parties, Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party will make considerable gains by mopping up the Leave vote, at the particular expense of the Tories. But this does not change the fact that the country is still split roughly 50/50 over Brexit.

Brexit has divided families, neighbours, co-workers and friends. As we have written elsewhere on Prophecy Today UK, these divisions are far more than superficial political disagreements. They are symptoms of an underlying spiritual battle raging for the soul of the nation.

Brexit did not create these divisions; it merely exposed them, albeit starkly and painfully. For this reason, those who hope that a political resolution (deal or no deal) will make everything ‘go back to normal’ are sadly mistaken.

Britain has apparently become a nation of polarised outrage, shouting about a plethora of issues electronically, on the street and at the ballot box. But whether Brexit, Israel, abortion, climate change, President Trump, feminism, LGBTQ+ pride or any number of other causes, follow them to their roots and you will find one single, simple battle over God and his truth, revealed in Scripture.

True Unity

A generation of rebellion against the biblical beliefs and values that once united our nation means that Britain’s social and moral fabric is now rife with division and discordance. While our political and religious establishment call for unity and bridge-building, we must stand back and ask whether unity is possible, or even desirable, in this context.

True unity is a blessing of the Holy Spirit for obedience to the Lord. God will not bless a nation that rejects him. But Britain is a house divided, not knowing whom she really serves. Any man-made unity foisted upon this spiritual backdrop will necessarily be a poor imitation of the real thing; at best a charade, at worst a forcibly-imposed regime.

Britain has become a nation of polarised outrage on a plethora of issues – but follow each to their root and you will find one battle over God and his truth.

The only real answer to our problems is repentance and a return to the Gospel. Thankfully, God desires to use the present division and instability to draw people back to himself. He wants people to come to an understanding that something has gone very wrong in Britain: we are broken, in so many ways, and in need of a Saviour. He wants us to “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27). As Christians, are we being faithful in praying and working for this end?

A Hope and a Future

Credit: March for Life UK

I am thrilled by the growing strength of the pro-life movement in this country (and in the USA). But, while protests and goodly debate are vital, these alone will not win the day, because “our battle is not against flesh and blood” (Eph 6:12). As the Brexit polls indicate, Britain as a whole is still split right down the middle: not just politically, but spiritually.

Things cannot remain this way forever: they will tip one way or the other, unless the Lord intervenes in a more drastic and immediate way. Similarly, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted Mark 3:25 to the Illinois Republican State Convention, warning that America could not remain divided over slavery forever. He said: “I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”¹

When it comes to both Israel and abortion, I hope very much that we will see a turning of the tide, with hearts and minds changed nation-wide and righteous decisions at the very top. But the ultimate hope for Britain, including on these issues, remains the Gospel, accompanied by much prayer. That is the only thing that will unite our beleaguered nation and give her a hope and a future.

References

1 'House Divided' speech, Springfield, Illinois, 16 June 1858. Read the full transcript here.

Part II: Aftermath and prospect.

Western media coverage of the March of Return peaked in May 2018, but the protests have continued. To date, almost a year later, over 180 lives have been lost and thousands of rioters are still gathering at the border.

The tragedy has played out well beyond the original plan, with much damage done to Palestinians as well as to Israel’s civilians, environment and international reputation. Senior Israeli officers and ministers have summarised the events as a military win but a big PR loss for Israel. This week, the UN has chosen to blame the IDF for its handling of the situation, accusing Israel of possible ‘war crimes’.¹

That said, Hamas has not realised its ultimate goal of storming through the fence and on into Israel, flooding it with 1.9 million ‘returning refugees’. In January, Israel announced the start of a massive upgrade of the border fence, the above-ground part of which will be 6 metres high and equipped with ‘smart’ technology. The new fence will likely minimise violent attempts to break through, but also draw international criticism and be held up as another symbol of Israeli ‘apartheid’.

One Battle, Many Fronts

In recent months, military and intelligence resources in Israel have been split between the ongoing violence at the Gaza border and the discovery of sophisticated tunnel systems beneath Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. One suspects co-ordination by Iran, a major backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah, as the tunnels were constructed partly while the Gaza spectacle was drawing the IDF’s attention.

NBC reports the tunnels’ connection to Hezbollah fighters “coming home from the war winding down in Syria, where they helped prop up President Bashar al-Assad as he battled rebels trying to unseat him. Fears are running high that as the battle-hardened militants return to an estimated arsenal of 100,000 rockets and missiles, they will intensify their focus on their original foe: Israel.”²

Back in Gaza, violent Islamist incitement has only continued. As 2018 was drawing to a close, Khaled Meshal (former Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau) stated on al-Jazeera TV (Qatar):

A country cannot be liberated and rights cannot be restored without resistance. It is not possible. Without resistance, the occupation cannot be defeated or forced to retreat. Every means of power must be put to use…

Today we are being called and preparing to force Israel to retreat from Jerusalem and from the West Bank. Allah willing, this is on the way to its retreat from all of Palestine…The West Bank spans over 5,600 square kilometres, and has mountains and valleys. I'm from there, I know the landscape. It has everything necessary for guerrilla warfare. Why are we not preparing for that?3

To date, almost a year after the March started, thousands of rioters are still gathering at the border and the tragedy has played out well beyond the original plan.

Anti-Semitic rhetoric in Gaza is encouraged by Islamic clerics around the world. On 29 December, on al-Watan TV (Turkey), Egyptian cleric Sameh Al-Juba proclaimed:

Allah forbids you to deal justly and kindly with…those who fight us because of religion and who drive us out of our homes, like what is happening in Palestine…Those must not be treated kindly or justly. Jihad is the only way to deal with those people. It is blood for blood, and attack for attack. [The Quran says:] "Whoever attacks you, attack him in the same way." This gives ample justification for the men of the resistance and the mujahideen in Palestine to retaliate twofold against this occupying enemy, until our countries are purified.⁴

Struggling for Support

Gazans protest against Abbas, 24 February 2019. Mohammed Talatene/DPA/PA ImagesBut, underneath the threats of genocide, the Palestinian cause is struggling. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank, is ageing and ill. Most Palestinians want his resignation, yet no successor is apparent. The longer this remains the case, the more likely his eventual retirement or demise is to trigger internal instability.⁵

Relations between the West Bank and Gaza – culturally very different enclaves – remain at an impasse, with successive reconciliation attempts falling through. At the end of January, Abbas, with the backing of Egypt, announced increased sanctions against Gaza which will restrict imports, prevent money transfers and reduce openings of the Rafah crossing into Egypt.⁶

The economic pressures are also enormous. The cutting of substantial funding from the USA and Australia has coincided with international backers like Qatar, Turkey and Iran being increasingly distracted by their own issues.⁷ The Arab world is fractured and re-structuring - and leading Sunni states including Egypt and Saudi Arabia are drawing closer to Israel. Meanwhile, in a spat over his rewarding of terrorists and their families, Abbas has refused to accept further tax payments collected on his behalf by Israel, which represent the PA’s most important source of income.⁸

All this, sadly, is likely to mean more violence in the short-medium term, but whether Palestinian leaders manage to deflect it successfully towards Israel, rather than themselves, remains to be seen. Dr Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, a pro-Palestinian political expert from Lebanon, predicts escalation, whichever way things go.⁹ He also predicts a growing role for diaspora Palestinians to champion the cause abroad, even while things collapse at home.

Indeed, since ‘Palestine’ is the ‘cause celebre’ of the Western left-wing, we can assume that whatever happens in the Middle East, in Europe and North America the encouragement of anti-Semitic attitudes and behaviour (e.g. the chanting of genocidal anti-Semitic slogans at such events as the British Labour Party Conference¹⁰) will continue. In the West, the PR war for Israel’s right to exist continues unabated and relatively undisturbed by on-the-ground Middle East politics.

This is because Palestinian aggression is but one manifestation of a global war on Israel, driven by an underlying hatred of the God of the Bible, whose faithfulness to his own promises is proclaimed to the world by the modern re-establishment of the Jewish people in their historic homeland.

Underneath the threats of genocide, the Palestinian cause is struggling.

Remembering Ordinary Palestinians

The victims in all this are not only the Jews, however, but also ordinary Palestinians, especially in Gaza. Though many (not all) continue to support Islamist aggression against Israel, it would seem that the majority know no better – understandably, given the systematic anti-Jewish indoctrination they receive from birth.

98% of the Gazan population are Muslim, living under the sway of imams, with only about 1,200 Christians and no Jews amongst them. There is no free press and disagreement with Hamas results in imprisonment and torture. How can they hear the Gospel, let alone understand Jewish perspectives?

They remain ignorant of God’s promise in Genesis 12:3 to Abraham, whom they revere as patriarch, prophet and ‘Friend of Allah’. That promise is repeated to Jacob in Isaac’s blessing (Gen 27:29), in a variant form to the nation of Israel under Moses (Ex 23:22) and through Balaam (Num 24:9). It promises that God himself is against those who fight against the Jewish people: ‘I will curse them that curse you’.

So far as the Gospel is concerned, the Christian TV channel SAT7 broadcasts in Arabic across the region, but its effects in Gaza are not publicly known. There is no doubt that the Holy Spirit is active in the Muslim world, not only through social media and satellite TV but through dreams and visions that are bringing many to Christ.

Our best prayers for the Palestinians should be that the Lord himself will open their eyes to his truth and bring them into real freedom – something the March of Return, even in its most idealistic form, could never have offered.

Part 2 of 2. Click here to read Part 1.

References

1. UN disgraces itself; accuses Israel of “war crimes”, ignores Hamas terror at Gaza border. CUFI, 28 February 2019.

2. Bruton, FB and Goldman, P. Discovery of Hezbollah 'attack tunnels' rattles a northern Israeli town. NBC, 27 January 2019.

3. Former Hamas Leader Khaled Mashal Calls for West Bank "Guerrilla Warfare," States: "I Resist, Therefore I Am". MEMRI, Clip No. 6891, 12 December 2018.

4. Egyptian Cleric Sameh Al-Juba on Muslim Brotherhood TV: The Jews Are Treacherous and Should Not Be Dealt with Kindly or Justly. MEMRI, Clip No. 6945, 29 December 2018.

5. According to some commentators, this instability may have already begun.

6. WATCH: Hatred of Israel not enough to unite Fatah and Hamas. World Israel News, 30 January 2019.

7. Qatar is also showing signs of impatience with Hamas, refusing to pay Gaza’s electricity bill beyond April because key infrastructural investments have not been made. While Qatari cash is still coming into the Strip, attempts are apparently being made to route this into humanitarian needs rather than giving it straight to Hamas. Read more here and here.

8. Israel freezes funds to PA after Abbas refuses to stop payments to terrorists. CUFI, 22 February 2019.

9. Saleh, MM. Political Analysis: The 2019 Forecasts for the Palestine Issue. Al-Zaytouna Cenre, 28 January 2019.

10. According to the Jewish Chronicle, at the Labour Party’s Annual Conference on 26 September, “it seemed there were more Palestinian flags being waved than at a Hamas rally in Gaza, or at the opening session of the Palestinian Parliament at Ramallah. The vote by party members to debate Palestine was the fourth most popular after housing, schools, and justice for the Windrush generation. The subject of “Palestine” gained more votes (188,000) than Brexit and the National Health Service. The chanting by Labour activists included the Hamas and Islamic Jihad slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free”.” 

Women’s March anti-Semitism should be a wake-up call.

Two weeks ago I wrote about how American Jews fail to see left-wing anti-Semitism for the true threat that it is, not least because they have not had a problem comparable to the anti-Semitism crisis in the British Labour Party to wake them up to reality.

Perhaps I spoke too soon, for an anti-Semitism crisis of sorts is definitely brewing on the left in America. Remember the Women’s March, the annual national marches in the US (and now elsewhere) ostensibly championing women’s rights, but also hosting all sorts of other left-wing causes? Well, this week, March founder Teresa Shook called upon its current leaders to resign, citing their fostering of anti-Semitism.

Shook’s concern was the close association of these leaders (who include Palestinian American Linda Sarsour) with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, infamous for his vociferous anti-Semitism as well as anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and racism against white people. Last month, Farrakhan dared to declare “I am not anti-Semitic, I am anti-termite”. He has previously described Hitler as a “very great man”.¹

So far there has been an official apology from the Women’s March to Jewish and LGBTQ+ members, but there has not yet been any clear condemnation of Farrakhan or obvious disassociation with him. Celebrities are beginning to withdraw their support from the March, a human rights award has been stripped from it and people are starting to ask: why is it so hard for the March leaders to denounce this abhorrent man?²

General Bemusement

The willingness of left-wing activists to associate with radical Islamists in the first place seems utterly contradictory, but prescient commentators have seen it coming.³ Anti-Semitism (or attitudes that tend that way) is part of the common ground between these apparently disparate factions.

People are starting to ask: why is it so hard for the March leaders to denounce the abhorrent Louis Farrakhan?

Many left-wingers fail to grasp this and are left scratching their heads, trying to understand how on earth their ‘progressive’, ‘tolerant’, ‘liberal’ politics is suddenly found housing anti-Semitic comments and behaviours. Like much of the Labour-supporting left in Britain, they just can’t get their heads around it: ‘how has it come to this?’ they ask. Some write it all off as a terrible mistake, an anomaly, or even a conspiracy (as the Women’s March founders did in their initial response to Ms Shook’s comments, accusing her of trying to ‘fracture’ the movement). Their critics call it hypocrisy, but are no closer to understanding it.⁴

The more astute recognise that though the ‘progressive’ left and Islamists seem worlds apart, they actually have some things in common, which explains their otherwise bizarre tendency to cross-pollinate. This can plunge concerned leftists into an existential crisis, as with many Jewish Labour MPs and supporters in Britain.

In Pursuit of Godless Utopia

As usual, Melanie Phillips is ahead of most in understanding this strange situation. She argues that Islam and the ‘progressive’ left, just like fascism and communism, are utopian in outlook: each in their own way seeking to bring about the perfect world, each believing themselves to be the noblest of causes. This means that each are also totalitarian: “Because their end product is a state of perfection, nothing can be allowed to stand in [the] way”.⁵

Ultimately, they are each, she goes on to argue, about building heaven on earth without reference to the God of the Bible: they are belief systems that hinge on rejecting him. That is where they begin to find common ground with each other.

For Christians, understanding all this from a spiritual perspective is quite simple. Every political, philosophical or religious movement that rejects God and his ways becomes the domain of “the prince of the air”, no matter how well-intentioned their beginnings. Promising freedom, love and unity, they cannot deliver these things, which are only found in God. Instead, they deliver tyranny, aggressive hatred and division.

The more astute recognise that though the ‘progressive’ left and Islamists seem worlds apart, they actually have some things in common, which explains their otherwise bizarre tendency to cross-pollinate.

They also tend towards a rejection of everything on earth that points to God, whether his created order, his word, his land or all those who are bound in covenant to him, who testify to his existence and truth. And so, sown into the heart of each and every movement of this kind is the intrinsic possibility of both anti-Semitism and Christian persecution.

These tendencies work out differently depending on the movement in question, whether far-right fascism, fundamentalist Islam, or ‘progressive’ secular humanism and its identity politics, included in which is the (frighteningly intellectual-sounding) ‘intersectional feminism’ that underlies the Women’s March.⁶

No Surprises Here

The Women's March leaders, who have been called on to step down. See Photo Credits.

As I wrote last year, instead of protesting real gender injustice, the Women’s March seeks only to protest and destroy biblical notions of womanhood, family and sexuality. Pro-life women are hounded and ousted. Anti-establishment anarchy and vulgarity are abiding themes, part-funded as it is by hard-left anarchist billionaire George Soros. While likely containing well-meaning individuals, the movement broadly represents a wholesale rebellion against Judeo-Christian values.

In this context, it should really be no surprise that anti-Semitic people and attitudes are welcomed within its ranks, particularly under the guise of ‘legitimate’ criticism of Israel (click here for a list of the kinds of anti-Semitic groups that have joined hands under the Women’s March umbrella). It may not seem on obvious concern for a gender-focused campaign, but the attraction is a common focus on perceived ‘injustice’ and ‘oppression’, underneath which is shared anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian, revolutionary sentiment.

Ms Shook asserts that the current leaders have “steered the movement away from its true course”. I beg to differ. This is not a case of a perfectly useful political campaign being maliciously hijacked by a few bad eggs. It’s about root ideological issues pervading the entire movement.

The Women’s March joins hands with anti-Semitic people and groups because of a common focus on perceived ‘injustice’ and ‘oppression’, underneath which is shared anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian sentiment.

It should also, therefore, be no surprise when Women’s March figure-heads are found befriending people like Louis Farrakhan. It’s not just Farrakhan: remember also that the 2017 March was co-organised by a convicted Palestinian terrorist (since deported) and a former Communist Party leader who is also a long-time supporter of the violent Black Panther movement. Again, join the dots and you will find a shared ideological revolt against Western civilisation and its founding association with Scripture.⁷

That is why it is so hard for the Women’s March leaders to denounce Farrakhan. At root, they are in agreement with him, or on their way to being so. It’s also why it’s so hard for Jeremy Corbyn to denounce Labour anti-Semitism: at root, he agrees with it. These hard-leftists are not odd-balls that accidentally found their way into the left-wing: they are simply being consistent in their ideological commitment, following it through to its logical conclusion.

That is why the anti-Semitism crisis in the Women’s March is a shot across the bows for American Jews: it says something about the likely future destination of the entire US left. The question is, will they have eyes to see?

References

1 Firscht, N. The Women’s March and the anti-Semitism blindspot. Spiked, 22 November 2018.

2 Singal, J. Why Won’t Women’s March Leaders Denounce Louis Farrakhan’s Anti-Semitism? Intelligencer, 7 March 2018. Left-wing associations with Farrakhan didn’t start with the Women’s March – Obama notoriously fraternised with the Islamist leader back in 2005.

3 I recommend Melanie Phillips’ The World Turned Upside-Down (2010, Encounter Books), particularly chapters 11 and 12.

4 E.g. see note 1.

5 The World Turned Upside-Down, see note 3, pp219-220.

6 Intersectional feminism is a fairly recent move within the feminist movement to take into account other layers of identity that women experience in addition to their gender, including race, sexuality, class, etc. It is an attempt to understand people as multi-faceted, each with a unique experience of power relationships in the world (i.e. each one can claim to be oppressed in their own way/in compound ways). What this translates to practically is the uniting of the feminist movement with other left-wing causes to jointly condemn ‘oppression’.

7 The alliance between the radical left and Islam may be temporarily convenient for both parties, but ultimately Islam has no respect for secular identity politics and its various victim groups. Once dominant, it would undoubtedly crush both feminism and the LGBTQ+ movement.

‘Land for peace’ deal continues to reap bitter harvest

With Israel now on a war footing after Gaza-based terrorists rain down more rockets on the Jewish state, we can anticipate yet more bloodshed in the ongoing conflict.

It appears that patience in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has finally run out, with ferocious rioting on its southern border showing no sign of abating and a rocket destroying a home in the city of Beersheva. Now, residents from southern Israeli communities are taking to the streets to protest what they perceive as government failure to deal with the situation.¹

It is four years since the ‘Protective Edge’ engagement which severely blunted Hamas’ firepower. Now I hear that tanks are moving into position to launch a fresh attack on the terrorists, who have been firing rockets into Israel on a regular basis ever since the latter’s reluctant 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

That was when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caved in to international pressure by agreeing to pull out as part of a ‘land for peace’ deal. And what peace did it bring? It only served to embolden Israel’s enemies all the more. They took advantage of what Arabs would generally perceive as weakness (i.e. negotiated compromise) by using the Palestinian-led enclave as a launch-pad for missiles to destroy Israel – or ‘wipe it off the map’, as their slogan goes.

Returning Refugees?

For several years following the 2014 war, the IDF kept a relatively low profile in a bid to contain the conflict while the Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted many rockets bound for Sderot and other southern Israeli towns. But back in spring this year, a new tactic was devised in the shape of the so-called ‘March of Return’, in which rioters have descended en masse on the border fence demanding ‘re-entry’ as refugees allegedly forced out of the country.

Their status as ‘refugees’, backed by the United Nations, is entirely bogus and based on the claim of descending from the 700,000 Arabs who were panicked into leaving Israel in 1948 by the surrounding Arab nations. Instead of Arabs and Jews living together and sharing the land as intended in the Balfour Declaration, these 700,000 left at the orders of Jordan, Egypt and Syria, who promised they would be able to return once the new-born Jewish state had been defeated – which they fully expected.

For several years following the 2014 war, the IDF kept a relatively low profile in a bid to contain the conflict – until spring of this year and the so-called ‘March of Return’.

Of course, that never happened. Since then, though Israel’s enemies could easily have absorbed these refugees into their combined vast territories, they have been cynically used as pawns in a sick political game designed to make Israel look like an uncaring bully. And yet a similar number of Jews, who had really been forced to leave Arab states at the same time, were quickly absorbed into the Jewish state with no fuss or bother.

Meanwhile generations of descendants of these unfortunate Arabs would subsequently claim not only to inherit refugee status – uniquely in the world – but also Palestinian nationality, though no such state or people existed in 1948. If anything, it was a case of stolen identity as it was the region’s Jews who were known as Palestinians at the time of the British Mandate.

The UN had in the meantime set up a body to look after the needs of these Arab ‘refugees’ (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – UNRWA) at the cost of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in America and elsewhere. Thankfully, President Trump has the measure of this bogus body and has begun to cut US funding.

Terrorists Smell Blood

See Photo Credits.

Every Friday for the past seven months, when Jewish people are getting ready for their weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) day of rest, thousands of Gaza-based Palestinians have answered calls from terror group Hamas to put their lives on the line with violent protests. Tactics have included throwing Molotov cocktails, flying burning kites and balloons packed with explosives, and from time to time causing further mayhem by blasting holes in the fence and charging into Israeli territory uninvited.

Then they wonder why they get shot at by soldiers called to protect their citizens from waves of terror which have left many dead and caused considerable damage to crops and property. Hamas claims it as a ‘peaceful protest’ but this is yet another lie because the rioters are hired.

They smell blood – and the opportunity for ‘martyrdom’, or suicide. This is what has been drummed into them – through school education and the media – much as British children are brainwashed by LGBTQ+ propaganda. Israeli soldiers, by contrast, are taught to value life, based upon the Bible which teaches that life is sacred. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is among the Ten Commandments, the basic laws by which they live and conduct the nation’s affairs.

While Israeli soldiers have been taught to value life, Hamas’s ‘martyrs’ are brainwashed to value bloodshed and suicide.

Calling Evil Good

Brutality and dishonesty is a defining portrait of many of Israel’s enemies. Saudi Arabia, though currently an unofficial ally of the Jewish state due to their common enemy Iran, also fits this description, as you will no doubt have noticed from the shocking assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Though Khashoggi was himself ‘no angel’, being an Islamist sympathiser and fervently anti-Israel, the tangled web of deceit being weaved by the Saudi authorities desperately trying to cover their tracks is as farcical as it is tragic. Yet our political left-wingers would rather focus on the supposed injustices committed by tiny Israel while dissenters in neighbouring states face summary execution.

There are at least 30,000 political prisoners in Saudi, where torture chambers abound and where beheadings as well as crucifixions take place.² And yet we ingratiate ourselves with them. The Crown Prince, now under fire over the Khashoggi scandal was given the red carpet treatment in Britain earlier this year.

Mindful of all the injustices we are seeing, particularly in the Middle East, my wife and I were encouraged on our recent train journey to London to see Bible Society posters on the stations quoting the words of Isaiah: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isa 5:20).

References

1 World Israel News, 29 October 2018.

2 Daily Mail, 22 October 2018.

Just how peaceful is the ‘March of Return’?

After our overview last week of the Gaza border protests, which Hamas claims will climax this coming week, David Longworth takes an in-depth look at Palestinian rhetoric, asking whether we can trust the Western media’s assertion that the protests are ‘peaceful’. N.B. Some of the information in this article might be distressing.

The American news agency Bloomberg, reporting on the ‘Great Return March’ activities promoted by Hamas on Friday 6 April, carried the following comment: “…protesters sought to thwart Israeli snipers by burning mounds of tires and using mirrors to reflect the sun’s rays into soldiers’ eyes, as some pelted soldiers with rocks and firebombs. The Israeli army said it used water cannons to put out fires, a giant fan to dispel the tire smoke and live rounds against people who tried to breach the fence.”¹

The irony of this literal illustration of the deception being largely swallowed whole by the Western media seemed lost upon the writers of the article. Smoke and mirrors indeed!

Spontaneous?

There is little in the demonstrations that is spontaneous. Hamas, the organisation that governs Gaza, organises protestors and provides transport to the fence area. Yet its website maintains the camouflage of spontaneous and peaceful protest; for example:

The Zionist entity is gearing up to confront the mass participation and expansion of the Great March of Return amidst internal Israeli conflict on techniques needed to quell this peaceful form of resistance, which is capable of gaining worldwide support…

The Zionist occupation terrorised and threatened the peaceful protesters of the Great March of Return and conveyed a message that it isn’t concerned about the popular achievements on the ground…²

Compare this with a recording made of a conversation in which the Arab owner of a Gaza transportation company is heard telling an Israeli administrator about Hamas: "They came in, arrested us and pressed charges. They told me they wanted to lock me up and brought in other drivers. They said they wanted to impound my buses. What was I supposed to do?"³

Behind the various activities is a web of Islamist incitement and deceit which is rarely, if ever, commented upon by Western media.

For Justice?

Behind the various activities is a web of Islamist incitement and deceit which is rarely, if ever, commented upon by Western media. The so-called ‘Great Return March’ began on Friday 30 March 2018. Yet as early as 27 January a Friday sermon in Gaza by Imam Musa Abu Jleidan, posted on the internet, included this:

The Great Return March, which is the national and Islamic consensus, is a form of Jihad. It does not eliminate the need for Jihad by the sword, by missiles or by rockets. They go hand in hand. It has caused harm to our enemies and today they are in a state of distress.

Allah said to us about the Jews, ‘Whenever they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it. They slay the prophets and people who command justice. They are the philosophers of terrorism and crime, people of treachery and deceit, who slayed the prophets of Allah. It is an honour for us here on this blessed land to have been chosen by Allah to fight them and to strike fear in them.⁴

It seems no coincidence that on the very same Friday in Saudi Arabia, a prominent imam proclaimed in his sermon, “These are the Jews. Allah cursed them, was angry with them, and turned them into apes and pigs. He would keep sending to them until the Day of Resurrection those who would lay upon them a cruel torment. They instigate strife among Muslims, and the Muslims will continue to confront them until Judgment Day.”

The sermon ended with Islamist invocations:

Imam: Oh Allah, hasten their annihilation.

Congregation: Amen.

Imam: Oh Allah, count them one by one, and kill them down to the very last one.

Congregation: Amen.

Imam: Do not spare a single one of them.

Congregation: Amen.⁵

Such anti-Semitism is endemic to the situation in Gaza, 99% of whose population is primarily Sunni Muslim.

Peaceful Intentions?

How ‘peaceful’, then, are the intentions behind the organised protests? A leader of the Al-Sawarka Bedouin tribe preached a sermon broadcast on Gaza’s Al-Aqsa TV on 29 March, in which he asserted, forcefully:

This is a message to the whole world: The Palestinian people shall never relinquish the Right of Return. The Palestinian people shall liberate its land with blood, with martyrs, with women, and with children. We shall never relinquish our land, the land of our fathers and of our forefathers. We shall return with all our might.

We shall return as liberators, with our heads held high, and carrying the banner of 'There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger…This siege must be shattered with all our might – with our bodies, our lives, our hands, and our bare chests. We shall come and take down that fence with the fingernails of our children, Allah willing.⁶

The irony of the use of smoke and mirrors is largely lost on the Western media.

If that might be dismissed as mere religious rhetoric, here’s what Yahya Sinwar, the Prime Minister of Gaza said on Al-Jazeera TV, on Friday 30 March: “Let them wait for our big push. We will take down the border and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”⁷

He was also reported by Britain’s Labour Friends of Israel as adopting a particularly blood-curdling tone. They quoted him as saying “The March of Return will continue…until we remove this transient border” and vowing that the people of Gaza will “eat the livers of those besieging” them.⁸

On 5 April Iyad Abu Funun, a Hamas cleric and TV host, said on Al-Aqsa TV, “If our generation today makes a decision – and indeed, we are making this decision, and all our people’s generations need to make this decision…Our hijra [emigration/flight] must come to an end. We have a right to our land, and we must return to it. We must return to it – above ground, underground, by means of demonstrations, bombs, weapons, explosives, explosive belts…We must return to our land…”.⁹

Mohammed Talatene/DPA/PA ImagesAnimated footage followed these words, showing Palestinian men attacking Israeli towns in the West Bank with rifles, missiles, and hand-grenades, torching homes and leaving the land barren and in flames.

Non-Violent Behaviour?

One may then ask, what about peaceful behaviour? On 28 April members of a ‘Tyre-Burning Unit’ proclaimed:

Martyrs in the millions are marching to Jerusalem! Martyrs in the millions are marching to Jerusalem! Martyrs in the millions are marching to Jerusalem! Allah Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!...We, in the tire-burning unit – this important unit in Gaza – say to all those who conspire against the Palestinian people: we are steadfast, we persevere, and we are ready to sacrifice our lives…Let despicable Trump hear the voice of the mujahideen: What is our loftiest aspiration? To die for the sake of Allah!¹⁰

Gazans readying a weaponised balloon. NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images.Photos taken of Palestinians within the Gaza boundary clearly show determined efforts to cause injury and damage. Very large catapults have been used to propel rocks and improvised explosive devices against the IDF.

Large kites have been used with devastating effect to carry flaming fuel-soaked material into Israel’s nature reserves and cereal fields. YNet News reported on 24 April that “Four kites affixed with burning objects were flown from Gaza at a wheat field in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council on Monday. While there were no casualties, the consequent fire caused immense damage, torching an estimated 100 dunam (equal to 1,000 square meters) of wheat…Other Gaza perimeter farmers echoed his opinion, estimating the damage caused by the incendiary kites to reach the thousands of shekels, with torched chickpea and wheat fields in their wake."¹¹

Then on 2 May hundreds of dunams of lovely grasslands and woodlands of the Be’eri Forest were left badly charred. Ten firefighter teams were battling the weather conditions for hours as well as the blaze, due to a sharav currently gripping the country – a hot, dry desert wind that combines super-high temperatures with low humidity and strong easterly winds, all of which is a recipe for increasing any kind of wildfire.¹²

Photos taken of Palestinians within the Gaza boundary clearly show determined efforts to cause injury and damage.

And an IDF video shows masked Gazans chanting, “Allah willing, the Jews’ hearts will burn. We will not stop until the Jews leave our land and, Allah willing, we return to it.”¹³

There can be no doubt that Islam and its inherent deception lie at the heart of Palestinian political and military action, especially in Gaza. We must not be fooled. If recent events are anything to go by, it seems that the need for watchful prayer has never been greater.

References

1 Palestinians clash with Israeli troops along Gaza border. Bloomberg, 6 April 2018.

2 Great March of Return...An option feared by the occupation. Hamas, 5 May 2018.

3 COGAT reveals Hamas threats against bus company owners. YNet News, 5 April 2018.

4 Translations from Arabic by the Middle Eastern Monitoring and Research Institute (MEMRI). Taken from here.

5 MEMRI TV, 28 January 2018.

6 MEMRI TV, 29 March 2018.

7 Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar - We Will Tear Out Their Hearts - April 6, 2018. Youtube.

8 Clashes at the Gaza border leave sixteen Palestinians dead. Labour Friends of Israel, 4 April 2018.

9 MEMRI TV, 5 April 2018.

10 MEMRI, 28 April 2018.

11 Continuing kite threat puts Israeli farmers on edge. YNet News, 24 April 2018.

12 WATCH: Be’eri Forest Fire Started by Gaza Terror Kites. Jewish Press, 2 May 2018.

13 PEACEFUL PROTEST? ‘The Jews’ Hearts Will Burn,’ Threaten Gaza Rioters. United With Israel, 7 May 2018.

The Gaza border protests enter their sixth week.

For several weeks now, thousands of Palestinians have lined up along the Gaza border fence in protest. Stones and Molotov cocktails have been flung, burning tyres have been rolled and attempts have been made to breach the barrier. The IDF has responded with crowd dispersals, rubber bullets and occasionally live fire, with 40 deaths so far.

But the promised break-through and subsequent flooding of Israel with millions of Gazans has not yet materialised – and events in Syria and elsewhere have gradually drawn the eye of the media away.

The so-called ‘March of Return’ began in late March, with protests planned to continue up to Israel’s 70^th anniversary in May, when a new ‘intifada’ may be launched. This article puts some facts about the protests into historical context, and then reflects a little on their biblical significance.

Some History

The recent history of the Palestinian war on Israel is composed of sporadic attacks on Israeli citizens (stabbings, kidnappings, suicide bombings), interspersed with escalations of violence known as ‘intifadas’.

Both the First Intifada (1987-1993) and the Second (2000-2005) ended with Israeli agreements to compromise – first with the 1993 Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority (PA) and agreed a phased Israeli withdrawal from the so-called ‘Palestinian territories’, and secondly with Israel’s agreement to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. The border fence was constructed in 1994 as part of the Oslo negotiations, to provide a security barrier limiting the movement of people and arms. It quickly became a hot spot for clashes.

The promised break-through and subsequent flooding of Israel with millions of Gazans has not yet materialised.

Since the relinquishment of Gaza and its wresting from the PA by terrorist group Hamas in 2007, the Strip has become a base for rocket attacks and tunnel warfare. But successful Israeli combating of these strategies has meant that Hamas is now resorting to higher-profile tactics, namely, people power.

Since 2007, the situation in Gaza under Hamas rule has deteriorated to the point, many say, of imminent infrastructural collapse. Relations between Hamas and the PA in the West Bank are extremely poor, and it is likely that the current protests represent a desperate, last-ditch attempt to draw global support.

Six Weeks of Violence

The ‘March of Return’ was timed to begin on what the Palestinians call ‘Land Day’, the anniversary of Israeli-Arab clashes over land in 1976 (it was also the start of Passover) and run until so-called ‘Nakba Day’ (‘Catastrophe Day’), or Israel’s independence day, with spikes each Friday.

Hamas has spent more than $10 million organising the protests, laying on free transport, meals and tented accommodation to encourage attendance. There are questions over how many of the protestors are peaceful¹ as well as how many have come voluntarily.²

Firebomb kites have been causing extensive fires in Israeli farmland. See Photo Credits.

The IDF has repeatedly warned that those getting close to the fence and trying to break through will be fired upon, seeing this as a major attempt to storm Israel and attack civilians.³ Of the 40 killed so far, at least 32 had known terrorist connections – 80% of the fatalities. All those injured and families of the deceased receive financial rewards from Hamas.

Though many have been quick to label this a massacre of peaceful innocents, photos and videos from the border tell a very different story: Palestinians throwing rocks and fire-bombs, burning tyres, planting explosives, employing automatic fire and using children as human shields.⁴

Hamas promised 100,000 on Land Day, but only about 30,000 came. The four Fridays since have seen a much lower turnout – about 10,000 each time – and reports this Friday suggest even less, around 7,000. The threat is that a million will come for Nakba Day, but this estimate is likely also over-hopeful. But what they’ve lacked in attendance, protestors have made up for in creativity, including dramatic faking of injuries to get media attention,⁵ use of literal ‘smoke and mirrors’⁶ and, latterly, kites manned with pipe bombs and marked with swastikas, reportedly in honour of Hitler’s birthday.

Though many have been quick to label this a massacre of peaceful innocents, photos and videos from the border tell a very different story.

Despite all of this, left-wing media in the West have had a field day at Israel’s expense. To them, the Palestinians can do no wrong – they are the ultimate victim group, driven to violence by the aggression of Israel. This means that Palestinian terror is excused or ignored while Israeli defensive reactions are chastised with claims of brutality.

Why?

Through all the drama, the ‘March of Return’ - by Hamas’s own admission - has several goals. One is to provoke Israel to war. Another is to pressure the Israeli Government to the point of collapse.

In the latter respect Hamas has won some PR points. Painting the protests as peaceful makes any kind of forceful response immediately look disproportionate. Indeed, if the fence were to be breached, as has happened before, it would lead to a diplomatic crisis for Israel, forced to fire on civilians marching ostensibly for freedom. However, an internal Israeli collapse remains highly improbable.

A more realistic goal is to engage the IDF in a war of attrition that will detract resources and attention from its northern border, where the threat of war from an Iran-backed Hezbollah is very real and imminent. In fact, Iran’s relationship with Hamas in Gaza suggests co-operation towards this end.⁷

Hamas’s least realistic goal is to break down the borders and march en masse into Israel, flooding it with millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees. Claiming the Land remains a fundamental part of Palestinian mindsets, which conceive of it as theirs by divine right, which is why Hamas rhetoric over the last few weeks has consistently used the phrase “right to return”.

However, the unrealistic nature of this goal is not the point – it reflects something ideological, and spiritual, which is important to understand.

The Right to Return?

The claim to a ‘right to return’ hinges on the argument that Palestinians, as the indigenous people of the area, were cruelly and unfairly forced to flee their homes in 1948 when Israel was created. Factually, of course, this is hotly disputed.

The refugee crisis in Gaza was indeed created in 1948, at Israel’s birth. However, contrary to popularly accepted propaganda, this was not due to Palestinians being forced off ‘their land’ by ‘settler-colonialist’ Jews. Nor was it due to any kind of ethnic cleansing on behalf of the Israeli authorities.

The claim to a ‘right to return’ reflects something ideological and spiritual which is important to understand.

The very claim that Palestinians were somehow a coherent people in 1948 and represented the indigenous population of Israel is bogus.⁸ But that aside, the majority of Palestinians who fled in 1948, ending up in refugee camps in Arab-controlled territories, did so because they were fleeing the coming war on Israel, which the surrounding Arab countries were sure would be won in a matter of days. Many residents were deliberately evacuated by Arab leaders. Israeli authorities made efforts to persuade people to stay – but with little success.⁹

Even PA leader Mahmoud Abbas admitted that the refugee problem was a crisis of the Arabs’ own making:

The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.¹⁰

Against all odds, Israel won the 1948 war, with Egypt left occupying the Gaza Strip.¹¹ Since, it has become in the strategic interest of Palestinian leaders to keep their people languishing, to garner international support for their cause and to stir up anger and desperation among ordinary Palestinians. This hypocrisy is written from an insider perspective in testimonies such as ‘Son of Hamas’, by Hamas ‘prince’ Mosab Hassan Yousef.

Do the Facts Matter?

Of course, factual arguments aren’t as important as ideology when it comes to the Palestinian cause. Although a large part of their international appeal rests on people thinking otherwise, the ‘right to return’ does not actually refer to a few thousand refugees reclaiming small parcels of land here and there across Israel that they once used to call home.

Neither is Hamas today’s version of the US civil rights movement - those who imply otherwise are imposing Western logic onto an Islamic issue.

The ‘right to return’ is actually a broader reference to the pan-Arabic re-claiming of the whole Land of Israel – by whatever means necessary - until Israel as a state ceases to exist and its Jews (and Christians) have either been eradicated or subjugated to Islam. This has less to do, then, with specific Palestinian lived experience and more to do with general Islamic enmity towards Jews and the religious imperative to ‘liberate’ the Land from Judaism/Christianity and for Islam, “from the river to the sea” as Hamas loves to put it. According to the Palestinians, the Land is ‘waqf land’ – land eternally belonging to Islam and only temporarily ‘occupied’ by Jews.¹²

The ‘right to return’ has less to do with specific Palestinian lived experience and more to do with general Islamic enmity towards Jews and the religious imperative to ‘liberate’ the Land for Islam.

In short, the ‘March of Return’ is about the obliteration of Israel. It’s a literal walking out of anti-Zionism – the belief that the Jewish state has no right to exist and that Jews have no claim to the Land.

Of course such an obliteration is not only based on lies, it is also practically impossible, as the Bible makes clear that Israel has been resettled permanently in the Land – never to be uprooted again (Amos 9:15).

Bible Lens

Whilst of course Israelis don’t get everything right and few yet know their Messiah, it is indisputable that God has set them back in their Land, re-gathering them from around the world in fulfilment of his word, and protecting them miraculously from incessant onslaughts ever since.

It is also indisputable that the Palestinians, dreadfully abused by their own leaders and indoctrinated to hate Jews, are fundamentally setting themselves against God. Though each are loved by the Lord, and he sees the complexities of their individual predicaments, the sum of their activism represents and channels demonic hatred of God’s covenant people and covenant Land. The Bible makes it clear that ultimately this is completely futile (e.g. Ps 2) and worse – brings a curse (Gen 12:3).

Scripture does not clearly predict this current protest (really just the latest manifestation of a very long-running campaign), but it does foresee various attempts to make war on the Jewish state.

As successive storm-clouds gather and burst in the Middle East, it is not difficult to see that the Palestinians are aligning themselves with those Arab nations, such as Iran, that actively plan to wipe Israel off the map. Again, the scriptures make clear the end of those who come against Israel in this way: shame and perishing, becoming like the “whirling dust” (Ps 83:13).

The Bible foretells that the nations of the world will one day gather to make war against Israel (Zech 12). Undoubtedly, the Palestinian ‘cause’, complex though it may be, has done a huge amount to spread anti-Israel hatred around the world, and to deceive many into believing that Israel’s very existence is illegitimate. Thus, however far away we are from the coming global war on the Jewish state, these protests are helping to lay its foundations in people’s hearts, today.

However far away we are from the coming global war on the Jewish state, these protests are helping to lay its foundations in people’s hearts, today.

Watchmen on the Walls

In keeping track of this unfolding drama, it’s important that we do not become passive onlookers, for there is much we can do.

We can use the opportunity to avail ourselves of the facts and disseminate and defend the truth, engaging people in conversation and challenging wrong assumptions and bias.¹³ There are many resources and books available to this end, with more being reviewed on Prophecy Today UK in coming weeks.

We can make sure that we ourselves have built up our own understandings of the conflict from the bedrock of Scripture, more than from media reports. What we see in the flesh is symptomatic of an invisible spiritual battle that the secular media cannot comprehend.

And, not least, we can pray: that Britain will choose her side in this conflict wisely, that God will work to protect his people and Land in ways that bring great glory to his name, and that he will have a huge harvest amidst all the chaos – including from among the Palestinian people.

Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth. (Psalm 83:16-18, NKJV, emphasis added)

References

1 Snapshots from Gazan media outlets are illuminating in this respect: see here.

2 E.g. see here.

3 Read this article for a helpful analysis from an Israeli strategic viewpoint.

4 A case is currently before the International Criminal Court to prosecute Hamas in this respect.

5 The unofficial term for this is ‘Pallywood’. E.g. see these rehearsals and this page under ‘Myth: Israel is shooting people in the back or while they are running away.’

6 Mirrors to blind IDF soldiers and huge piles of tyres set ablaze to create a smokescreen covering attempts to storm the fence. The resulting tyre shortage in Gaza was blamed on Israel.

7 See here.

8 Most Arabs living in Palestine before 1948 were immigrants from surrounding countries. Zionist pioneers brought prosperity in the 20^th Century, attracting more in-migration. The uniting of these into a coherent ‘Palestinian’ people group happened in the mid-20^th Century, chiefly out of opposition to the new Jewish state.

9 Those who did stay enjoy full citizenship rights today and a much higher standard of living than in surrounding countries.

10 Falastin a-Thaura, March 1973. Quoted here. There was unavoidable collateral damage during the 1948 war and some inexcusable instances of Jewish aggression. However, Israel denounced these latter events and sought to compensate victims. For more on this issue, we recommend this page as well as Sandra Teplinsky’s book, ‘Why Still Care About Israel?’ (2013, Chosen Books).

11 Read a brief history of the Strip here.

12 See here (Article Eleven) and here.

13 CUFI are currently encouraging people to email the Foreign Secretary, urging him to condemn Hamas’s behaviour.

It’s time to pray, not play the blame game.

As Londoners are left reeling with shock at a succession of terrible tragedies, angry residents and pundits inevitably start looking for someone to blame.

When children fight in the playground and someone gets hurt, it’s always someone else’s fault. But there is a sense in which we are all to blame – for we have, as a nation, turned our backs on truth, honesty and integrity in favour of the brave new world’s ‘anything goes’ mantra - as long as it feels right. How do we measure truth when it is so subjective? If it’s not found in the Bible, where do we look for it?

Truth Has Stumbled

After discarding our Christian heritage and throwing out God’s laws, it’s not surprising there are so many different versions of truth portrayed by today’s media.

The BBC, for example, has shown a propensity in recent times for turning terrorists into victims – particularly when reporting on violence in Israel. Thus, last Friday (16 June), when a 23-year-old Israeli policewoman was stabbed to death and four others injured in a Jerusalem attack which also involved shooting, the BBC tweeted: “Three Palestinians killed after deadly stabbing in Jerusalem” – a shamefully misleading headline focusing attention on the attackers as if they were the victims.¹

How do we measure truth if it is subjective? If it’s not found in the Bible, where do we look for it?

The Prophet Isaiah wrote of how, when we have turned our backs on God, “truth has stumbled in the streets; honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found” (Isa 59:13-15).

Perverse Claims

At the rally following London’s Al Quds² march, the Iranian-inspired day calling for the destruction of Israel, one speaker perversely blamed the tragic West London fire on ‘Zionists’. “Some of the biggest supporters of the Conservative Party are Zionists”, he ranted. “They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell [the tower block].”³

As blogger Richard Millett asked: “How in 2017 is a terror organisation like Hezbollah, with a rifle emblazoned on its flag, allowed to parade through London? Is the British Jewish community so ill-considered, so small that we are so easily sacrificed? Would the authorities allow Al Qaeda or ISIS parades?”

The marchers have exploited a loophole in the law against flying the flags of proscribed organisations like Hezbollah by claiming that they are supporting its political (rather than military) wing even though they both use the same flag and support the same cause, which is the total destruction of the Jewish state, as their chants – “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – clearly indicate.⁴

Whatever happened to the law against ‘hate speech’?

After discarding our Christian heritage, it’s not surprising there are so many different versions of truth portrayed by today’s media.

Convened by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a British Muslim organisation with close ties to the Iranian regime, the march took place despite a petition calling for its ban signed by over 20,000 people which stated: “After the terrible recent terrorist events in Manchester and London, this display of extremism has no place on the streets of the UK”.

In the light of such a brazen demonstration of hatred, a backlash from unhinged members of society is hardly surprising, as in the tragic events outside the Finsbury Park mosque which left one dead and a number injured when a 47-year-old man ploughed into them with a van.

Unfortunately, this attack is being cynically used by jihadists as a call to war. But neither Britons as a whole, nor Christians in particular, have any quarrel with Muslims. We share their grief – Christians are suffering all over the world for their faith – and we reach out to them with the love of Jesus. They are our friends, not our enemies. And Jesus has told us to love even those, like jihadists, who wish us harm!

Hope Rises

But I see hope on three specific fronts, starting with the example of Christians in South Africa, to whom I have already referred on this site. Faced with corruption and violence in their nation, they came together in a farmer’s field to pray on 22 April; not just the faithful few, but a massive gathering of 1.7 million – more than the population of Birmingham, Britain’s second city. Many had travelled the length and breadth of that big country to plead God’s mercy on their troubles.

Isn’t it time British Christians got together to do something similar? Is our situation not desperate enough, with violence becoming endemic and truth turned on its head?

Isn’t it time British Christians got together to plead God’s mercy? Is our situation not desperate enough?

Secondly, not far from Birmingham, I visited a friend in prison whose Christian faith shines out so brightly that he is effectively working as a chaplain to many of his fellow inmates. He knows from his experience in the outside world how it is often difficult to get people to talk about or share their faith, even in churches. But now he struggles to shut people up as they all want to share the goodness of God, especially during Bible classes and chapel services packed with men praising the Lord in full voice. And another friend tells of a prison in the South-West where men, “feeling completely abandoned by society, are so ready to hear the Gospel”.

Many years ago I was told of a prophecy that revival in Britain would start in the prisons!

Thirdly, I have been profoundly moved by the response of churches in the Grenfell Tower area of London, scene of the tragic fire where an estimated 79 people perished and hundreds more were made homeless.

Churches such as the Tabernacle Christian Centre have opened their doors to victims and have been providing refuge, shelter and the wonderful truth of the Gospel ever since.

Sally Richardson, a friend of mine who visited them, remarks elsewhere in this issue of Prophecy Today, “Grenfell Tower has burned, but let’s pray that a candle will burn in North Kensington that will never be put out. May the surviving victims find Jesus to be their tower of refuge and strength (Proverbs 18:10)”.

References

1 Roberts, C. BBC apologizes for headline incitement. Arutz-7, 18 June 2016.

2 Al Quds means ‘Jerusalem’.

3 Cohen, B. Hezbollah Flags Fly at ‘Al Quds Day’ March in London as Islamist Agitators Blame Grenfell Tower Tragedy on ‘Zionists’. The Algemeiner, 18 June 2017.

4 Hezbollah flags fly in London on a Sunday afternoon anti-Israel march. World Israel News, 18 June 2017.

The new wave of feminism is nothing to do with love, life or liberation.

On Wednesday of next week (8 March), it will be International Women’s Day.

Coinciding with this, some 673 protest marches are being planned in cities around the world – 35 countries have expressed interest so far – and a ‘general strike’ is being called, that women everywhere might express their resentment about inequality by walking out of their jobs and onto the street, placards held high. It’s being called ‘A Day Without a Woman’.

This strike and the marches are the latest in an apparent ‘new wave’ of feminist activism since Trump took the US presidency – though actually it started before this and elsewhere, with protests against gender violence in Argentina and a mass revolt in Poland against a proposed abortion ban.

But, as with the many other increasingly militant manifestations of liberal protest, this new wave of feminist demonstration deserves some closer analysis.

Boycotting What?

So, what is Wednesday’s march all about?

Last month, several prominent female academics and activists introduced ‘A Day Without a Woman’ in The Guardian, as “a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions.”¹

The article presents a stirring call to women to stand up against wage inequalities, job insecurity and male violence. It seems attractive at first – indeed, for many decades the feminist movement has been inviting, even for Christian women. It is hard to argue against recognising the contribution that women make to national economies, or the need to protest against domestic violence.

A new wave of increasingly militant feminist activism is beginning.

However, there is more to it than this. Further down the manifesto, the group ally themselves with a “new, more expansive feminist movement” that not only protests the usual inequalities, but also radically pushes the LGBT agenda and rails against “xenophobic immigration policies”.²

The National Review criticises the planned demonstrations as representing “a standard, vague list of clichéd left-wing hobbyhorses, not a principled protest engaging current policy problems.”³

So what is really going on – and why are these protests being described as more ‘militant’⁴ than ever before?

Behind the Scenes

Co-organisers of Wednesday’s march (the US variant) include Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a convicted Palestinian terrorist who spent 10 years in prison for her part in two bombings of Israeli students, and Angela Davis, former leader of the Communist Party USA and long-time supporter of the violent Black Panther movement. This kind of leadership alone suggests that more is going on here than merely a groundswell of popular concern for the welfare of women.

Despite this, the campaign is being presented in a very positive, accessible light. The website is pleasant to look at (with more than a hint of pink in the colour scheme – surely not!) and encourages women to join a movement happening “In the same spirit of love and liberation that inspired the Women's March” of January.⁵

The problem with this statement is that it’s simply not true; news coverage of the January march made it clear that it was far from loving and liberating – from Madonna’s virulent and vulgar speech to the hate and rejection directed at pro-life women trying to join the proceedings. In fact, it rapidly became clear that only one brand of feminism is welcome in this new ‘movement’: that which accepts ultra-left-wing attitudes towards life and liberty.

There is more going on here than merely a groundswell of popular concern for the welfare of women.

It should come as no surprise, then, that one quarter of the feminist groups that took part in the January march owe some $90 million in funding to ultra-left-wing billionaire George Soros.⁶ Soros, a former Clinton supporter, is well-known for using his fortune to fund groups around the world that promote (among other things) abortion, the destruction of biblical gender roles and relations, and the globalist vision of broken-down national borders, too often by seeding anarchic protests.

Selective Campaigning

Women's march in Washington, January 2017. See Photo Credits.So, despite appearances, these protests are not just popping out of the ground spontaneously, but represent some deeper and more insidious agendas. Meanwhile, back on the surface, the fact that these agendas fail to translate into genuine concern for women is drawing accusations of hypocrisy.

For instance, commentators are lamenting that thousands of women are somehow being mobilised to shout about perceived gender inequalities in the Western world (where women have more freedoms and opportunities than anywhere else on earth) whilst completely ignoring situations of far worse oppression elsewhere (e.g. much of the Middle East, where women are prohibited from walking unaccompanied down a street, for example).

Instead, critics are suggesting, the feminism currently taking to our streets seeks to stir up anger amongst thousands of normal and well-meaning citizens, against vague and easily warped ideas of ‘oppression’, whilst turning a blind eye to genuine issues of real inequality.

In other words, it seems more concerned with fomenting anarchy than with solving real problems.

LGBT Agenda

As such, these marches and protests are not the place to go if you’re looking for a constructive definition of femininity or womanhood. In fact, the entire movement fails to offer a concrete, helpful vision for what being a woman actually means – largely because it isn’t concerned with that.

The Guardian manifesto pitches the movement as “anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-heterosexist and anti-neoliberal”⁷ – but this long list of ‘antis’ revealingly leaves out any ‘fors’. The entire movement is negative and destructive - and as such, risks leaving women feeling confused about what they are actually fighting for.

However, a key part of what the campaign is really for is hidden in the term ‘anti-heterosexist’, above. Rather than being about the welfare of all women, regardless of sexual orientation, this campaign is more about pushing LGBT ‘rights’ and challenging heterosexual norms, in the guise of protest against ‘gender oppression’.

The campaign is less about the welfare of all women and more about pushing LGBT rights.

The manifesto deliberately pitches the purposes of Wednesday’s strike and marches as “to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle”.⁸

This positions the whole movement as part of the much bigger sexual revolution that has been going on since the 1960s, seeking to ‘liberate’ people from the perceived ‘shackles’ of heteronormativity - that is, the established, biblical norms of heterosexual family life. In other words, it is simply the latest manifestation of revolt against the boundaries set by God, in direct rebellion against our Creator.

Don’t be fooled by the use of Donald Trump as a focus for anger and protest on Wednesday. This is not one bit about Trump – it’s about God.

Ugly Anarchy

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I believe this entire movement is actually satanic in origin, because it involves such clear and orchestrated rebellion against biblical principles. Personally, I am delighted that God made me female – but I am equally passionate about promoting his vision for womanhood (and all that this entails, including femininity, sexuality, marriage, motherhood), not the morally relative vision of postmodern feminism, which is already a long way down a very slippery slope.

Whilst thousands of women are being mobilised by vague talk of ‘inequality’ and ‘injustice’, inspired to march by a confusing mixture of causes, by its fruits shall this new movement be known. Nobody is being ‘liberated’ by the protests, which are increasingly angry, vulgar and violent. They seem to be more of a Trojan horse for anti-establishment anarchy than for genuine democratic protest – the enemy thrashing his tail, as we noted last week.

But the word says “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!” (Isa 5:20-21).

The latest 'feminist' protests are a Trojan horse for anti-establishment anarchy, not genuine democratic protest.

What Can We Do?

It’s time for Christians everywhere – men and women – to turn to the word and ask God to open our eyes afresh to a positive, scriptural definition of femininity and womanhood (and masculinity and manhood!). It is this biblical vision alone that can offer a living, breathing, soul-quenching alternative to modern feminism.

If you were considering joining the strike on Wednesday (apparently 15 cities and towns in the UK will host a march of some kind), I would urge you to abstain – and perhaps instead to consider hosting some kind of alternative event in the near future, to help others near you explore the Lord’s vision for the two genders.

Let’s also respond to the ‘new wave’ of feminism with a ‘new wave’ of prayer. Today happens to be the Women’s World Day of Prayer, and women (and men) all around the world will be gathering to hold a special service celebrating God’s creation of women and thanking him for his blessings.

Why not use this as a reminder to pray over Wednesday’s marches: that they will fail to foment violence, and actually cause disillusionment amongst women, prompting them to question what they are getting involved with and the kind of vision for gender, sexuality, life and liberty that it promotes. Pray that God will turn the enemy’s plans for good.

References

1 Alcoff, LM, Arruzza, C, Bhattacharya, T et al. Women of America: we're going on strike. Join us so Trump will see our power. The Guardian, 6 February 2017.

2 Ibid.

3 Wilhelm, H. The embarrassing confusion of the 'women's strike'. The National Review, 22 February 2017.

4 See note 1.

5 Women's March website.

6 Soros gave $90m to feminist anti-Trump protest groups. Liberty Headlines, 17 January 2017.

7 See note 1.

8 See note 1.