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”.” 

Exploited idealism and deliberate deception.

Editorial introduction: In the first of two articles, David Longworth looks back over a year of the ‘March of Return’ at the Gaza border.

According to Enas Fares Ghannam,¹ it all started in 2011. A Facebook post expressed the dream of a 33-year-old man in Gaza named Ahmed Abu Ratima. Gazing at a tree on the other side of the barbed fence that separates the Strip from Israel, Abu Ratima had thought, “Why can’t I go and sit under that tree just for a while, like a free bird?” The post asked (rather impractically) what could happen if 200,000 Palestinians headed peacefully to cross the border.

As the Arab Spring swept the region, Abu Ratima and his friends issued a statement entitled ‘The Palestinian Refugees Revolution’, calling all Palestinian refugees to gather peacefully at the nearest point by the Israeli border to call for their ‘rights’. At the time, they were considered crazy. But in 2018, Abu Ratima and his friends found encouragement.

In early 2018, Gazan journalist Muthana al-Najjar, whose family originally hailed from Salama (near Jaffa), pitched a tent near the border. He stayed for over a month, while others began planting olive tree seedlings in the area. But these idealised aspirations were soon taken over by the Hamas authorities.

Public preparations for a mass protest started to appear in February. On the 6^th, Hamas official Isma'il Radwan said that the activity would begin on 30 March and would reach its peak on 15 May, ‘Nakhba Day’.² He stressed that this activity "should take place without clashes [with Israel] in order to protect the young people...The plan of action focused on organizing a march of hundreds of thousands towards the border in order to pressure the occupation."³

Idealism Exploited

On 22 February 2018, the ominous image on the right was posted on Facebook:⁴

The UN symbol and the ‘194’ refer to UN Resolution 194 (of December 1948), which resolved that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date” (my emphasis), the so-called ‘Right of Return’. When the resolution was passed it was envisaging those who had just become refugees, not the millions of later generations.

The key evokes memories of those who left having locked their homes and retained their keys: another powerful symbol of ‘Right to Return’. However, notice that the key is held in a red clenched fist, a not-so-subtle suggestion of aggression.

Note also that the area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean is entirely covered by the colours of the Palestinian flag. This image therefore denies not only the territories agreed under the Oslo Accords, but also UN Resolution 181, of 29 November 1947, which agreed the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.

By 28 February 2018 the Great Return March Facebook page featured a much clearer emphasis on violence, as the left-hand picture illustrates (the text reads, ‘We will strike the Guard Fence’, i.e. the international border security fence).⁵ 

Incitement from the Beginning

At the March’s official start on Friday 30 March, an inflammatory Islamic sermon was preached and broadcast on Hamas’s al-Aqsa TV:

We are very near our blessed land, which is being trampled by those descendants of apes and pigs. We are here to embrace the blessed land with our hearts and our eyes, which is being trampled by those accursed descendants of apes and pigs, the remnants of the brutal, savage, and barbaric colonialism, which continues to drain our resources…⁶

So much for the idealist peaceful origins! By 6 April, three Palestinians penetrated the border and planted two improvised explosive devices.⁷

Worse rhetoric was to follow. Two weeks later, at the March venue, Gaza scholar Khaled Hany Morshid, said:

Khaled Morshid, speaking at the March venue. Video initially released on social media, 14 April 2018. Image from MEMRI, used with permission.…when the Jews of the Qurayza tribe violated their treaty with the Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet Muhammad exterminated them…The best way to describe the record of the Prophet's treatment of the Jews is one of violence and force…This is what all the Muslims should know. The relation between us and them is one of eternal enmity. The Jews will never stop this enmity unless the sword of Jihad for the sake of Allah is brandished, and they are made an example of, as was done by the Prophet Muhammad…I call upon every Muslim: Do not stand idly by and let those Jews spread corruption upon the land. Carry out glorious deeds against them!⁸

Social media posts called Palestinians to clash with Israelis after breaching the fence and entering their communities. 'Emad 'Aql, of Gaza, tweeted, "Sderot is only 700 meters east of [the Palestinian town of] Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. The headquarters of the Israeli army is there, and houses about 800 pigs. It can be reached in two minutes on motorcycles or in five-eight minutes at a brisk run…Murder, slaughter, burn and never show them any mercy."⁹

The left-hand image was posted with the following text: "Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, east of Rafah, is only 300 meters from the border. It has turkey pens, a football field and a pool, it houses only 15 families. Pounce on them with knives."¹⁰

Deliberate Deception

By May, things were literally hotting up. Thousands of tyres were burned to create smokescreens for those attacking the fence, while mirrors were used to blind IDF soldiers. Meanwhile, Western media were decrying the injuries caused to ‘peaceful protestors’ by Israel’s defensive actions.

On 13 May, the day before the originally-planned climax of the March, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar a co-founder and senior member of Hamas, was interviewed on al-Jazeera TV, Qatar. Questioned about Hamas adopting Fatah’s ‘peaceful resistance’ policy, he replied,

This is a clear terminological deception…This is not peaceful resistance…when we talk about 'peaceful resistance’, we are deceiving the public. This is a peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies, and enjoying tremendous popular support…This deception does not fool the Palestinian public.¹¹

On 16 May, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was interviewed for the same channel, saying,

I must emphasize a great strategic goal accomplished on May 14. Our people in Gaza recorded, for the whole world to see, their testimony over the transfer of the United States embassy to Jerusalem and the declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of the occupation entity. On behalf of the Arab Palestinian people and all the Arab and Islamic peoples, our people in Gaza have rejected that decision and that move, by this great activity and by recording its testimony for the sake of history, and by signing this testimony with the blood of the martyrs – our people sacrificed sixty martyrs on May 14, as well as three thousand wounded…Many of them took off their military uniforms and put their weapons aside…¹²

Here we can clearly see the shameless use of ‘martyrdom’ as a motivating factor when inciting aggression against Israel. Sinwar openly admits to satisfaction in the gruesome outcome. Moreover, he also admits that many protestors weren’t ordinary civilians!

The involvement of militants was confirmed in more detail in a broadcast on Baladna TV, Gaza, on the same day, by a member of the Palestinian National Council:

50 of the martyrs were from Hamas, and the other 12 were regular people…What did Hamas gain? 50 martyrs...I am giving you an official figure. 50 of the martyrs in the recent battle were from Hamas. Before that, at least 50% of the martyrs were from Hamas.¹³

Other Tactics

In addition to the above, in the last year tactics have included hand grenades, stones and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) being hurled across the border. Snipers have been in action. Hundreds of rockets and mortars have been deployed.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, by mid-October almost 3,300 acres of forest and 4,000 acres of farmland had been destroyed by incendiaries carried by kites and balloons from Gaza.¹⁴ In the forest nature reserves, thousands of animals perished and conservation work was set back by decades. Earlier, as the wheat harvest was imminent, the loss of crops by farmers was estimated at £1.4 million. On one kibbutz alone, some 320 acres of irrigation equipment was also destroyed. In addition, honey farms, avocado and jojoba orchards were devastated.¹⁵

Sometimes explosives were carried similarly, such as those attached to gaily-decorated helium balloons which landed close to a kindergarten in late December.

Another tactic has been deception by false news reports and the posting of staged video clips on social media. Of one such incident on 4 May, IDF video footage shows a group of Palestinians rushing away a seemingly-injured man on a stretcher; then, after smoke and bushes provide some screening, the man clearly rolls off the stretcher, gets up and walks away!¹⁶ Also in May, the death by tear gas of 8-month-old baby Layla Ghandour was widely reported. By 26 June it emerged that the father is a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who admitted that his daughter died from a prior condition and that he had been paid $8,000 by Hamas to lie.

Sadly, the damage of these ‘news’ items is done by their high initial impact, with later revisions mattering little.

Conclusions

Whatever the original intentions of the March of Return, it has clearly turned into an ugly, deceitful battle, on the ground and in the media. Next week we will ask where things are now, in 2019, and put the Palestinian ‘cause’ in greater context.

Meanwhile, watchfulness, discernment and prayer remain essential weapons for Christians in the battle for truth.

Part 1 of 2. 

References

1 Ghannam, EF. Despite Israel’s threats of violence, Gaza protesters have peaceful dream. Mondweiss, 29 March 2018.

2 ‘Nakba’ means ‘catastrophe’, originally used by Arabs to refer to the 1920 partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Informally used by groups of Palestinian Arabs to refer to their displacement during the establishment of Israel by 14 May 1948. Later adopted by the PLO, Nakba Day was inaugurated by Yasser Arafat in 1998.

3 Palinfo.com, 6 February 2018. Obtained from MEMRI.

4 Picture obtained from the official GRM Facebook page by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Originally posted as the GRM Facebook page profile picture on 22 February 2018 (the profile picture has since been modified slightly, but the original image can also be seen in other photos on social media, such as this one).

5 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue preparing a mass march to the Israeli border ('the great return march'), planned for Land Day, March 30, 2018. Meir Amit, 8 March 2018. Picture obtained from the official GRM Facebook page, February 28, 2018.

6 Gaza Friday Sermon: Our Blessed Land Is Being Trampled by the Accursed Descendants of Apes and Pigs - Scenes from Gaza "Return March". Sermon transcript, MEMRI, Clip no. 6500, 30 March 2018.

7 Gross, JA. IDF: Palestinians who breached fence planted explosives. Times of Israel, 8 April 2018.

8 Gaza Scholar Khaled Hany Morshid Calls to Brandish the Sword of Jihad, Fight the Jews - Scenes from Gaza "Return March". MEMRI, Clip no. 6537, 14 April 2018.

9 Twitter.com/imad_aql, May 13, 2018, reported via MEMRI.

10 Picture obtained from Facebook, 14 May 2018. Translation by MEMRI.

11 Senior Hamas Official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar on Gaza Protests: This Is Not Peaceful Resistance, It Is Supported by Our Weapons. MEMRI, Clip No. 6573, 13 May 2018.

12 Hamas Leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar: Our People Took Off Their Military Uniforms and Joined the Marches… MEMRI, Clip No. 6576, 16 May 2018.

13 Hamas Political Bureau Member Salah Al-Bardawil: 50 of the Martyrs Killed in Gaza were from Hamas, 12 Regular People. MEMRI transcript, Clip No. 6575, 16 May 2018.

14 Thousands of acres of forest land have been destroyed in 6 months of Gaza arson balloons. JTA, 10 October 2018.

15 Zikri, AB. We Flew a Drone Over the Fires Raging Around Gaza. This Is What We Saw. Haaretz, 26 June 2018.

16 Zitun, Y. WATCH: Hamas fakes injuries, uses children in Gaza border protests. Ynet News, 5 May 2018.

Britain has a choice ahead.

I have been looking at things we published in Prophecy Today back in 2016, prior to the Referendum and the vote to leave the European Union. Amongst the many comments and articles about the EU and about Britain, its heritage and present social and spiritual condition, we also published what we believed to be an authentic prophecy given by David Noakes.

Although we left readers to assess whether or not they believed this to be a genuine word from God, we clearly felt that there was the truth in it, or we would not have published it. We therefore believe it is right to revisit it at this crucial time in the nation’s history.

We now face the appalling prospect of a second referendum, which is being continually pushed by the BBC in all their news bulletins and interviews - or another general election, in which there is a strong possibility of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.

Let’s review the situation. Theresa May has rightly won the respect even of her strongest opponents, however grudgingly, for her resilience and persistence in the past two years of hard bargaining with the officials of the European Union, succeeding in agreeing a deal with them which has now been presented to the British Parliament and will be voted upon in the near future.

The deal itself is vastly complex and is set out in 500 pages of legal language that makes it difficult to summarise and assess. It sets out the financial settlement with Brussels for allowing the UK to leave the EU; the establishment of a transition period, giving businesses and individuals time to adjust; and it establishes the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU at the end of the Brexit period. 

We now face the appalling prospect of a second referendum, which is being continually pushed by the BBC in all their news bulletins and interviews.

The Irish Question

The most controversial part of the deal is the agreement over the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, to ensure that Britain cannot gain a competitive advantage over the rest of the EU.

Anti-Brexit protesters in Westminster. See Photo Credits.

There is agreement between the two sides to make every endeavour to secure a satisfactory agreement during the transition period. But if no agreement is reached, a temporary backstop would come into effect whereby all EU rules and regulations would apply keeping Northern Ireland effectively within the European Union – a situation that could only be resolved by joint agreement. In other words, Northern Ireland could only be joined up to the rest of the UK with the permission of the EU! This of course is quite intolerable to the DUP and to all Brits who uphold the Union of the United Kingdom!

What a strange quirk of history that the Irish question, which has bugged the English since the time of Oliver Cromwell, should be the main stumbling block to our agreement in getting out of the European Union! It has long been a joke among Westminster politicians that if they ever discovered the answer to the Irish question, the Irish would change the question! They have done just that now. It is no longer a question of whether or not there should be a border, but how the border should operate.

But we cannot blame the Irish for the problems of the European Union, which conflict much more deeply with the foundational values of our democratic civilisation. For centuries these ‘British’ values have been founded upon biblical principles of truth, integrity, faithfulness, righteousness, liberty and freedom of expression. It is because these values were being threatened by the European Union and its unelected cabal of Eurocrats, dedicated to secular humanist philosophies and the principle of ‘ever-closer union’, that many people in Britain voted to leave.

What a strange quirk of history that the Irish question, which has bugged the English since the time of Oliver Cromwell, should be the main stumbling block to our agreement in getting out of the European Union!

Revisiting Prophecy

So, what is God saying to Britain today in the face of the utter chaos in our House of Commons, where every MP has a different point of view and there is no shared vision? We hardly need to remind our readers that where there is no vision, the people perish! (Prov 29:18) or, to use the Living Bible’s translation – “Where there is ignorance of God, the people run wild.”

Our greatest problem in Britain today – and the reason for this absence of vision - is the lack of understanding of even the basics of biblical truth. It is now a whole generation ago that we ceased to teach schoolchildren the basics of the Bible. This is why this present generation is suffering so much from knife crime, guns and gangs in our cities. And this is why there is such a vast amount of mental disorders, depression and suicide among young people – and adults.

A whole generation has been raised without any understanding of basic truth. Now they are even being told that they can choose their own gender – the one fixed point of reference that they have in their childhood! Indeed, we are a nation thoroughly deserving of judgment! We are certainly on the road to ruin unless there is a fundamental change in social policy, currently driving the nation to disaster.

We need to read again the central paragraph of the prophecy given to David Noakes in November 2015 (published in April 2016):

Rather than rely on Me and my faithfulness to you, you chose, for worldly purposes, to join yourself to an institution [the European Union] which has denied my Name and refused to acknowledge Me in its councils. My fierce anger is upon that institution on account of its rebellion, its defiant rejection of me and its hardness of heart towards my ancient people Israel.

I warn you now that the European institution will not repent, even though I bring disaster and destruction upon it. I urge you, O Britain still beloved by Me for the sake of your godly forefathers, come out of her, so that you may not be caught up in that same destruction, for I am even now arising in judgment to bring to nothing what she has sought to achieve. If you will separate yourself from her declared rejection of God, I will have mercy upon you and restore my hand of protection; and I will use you once again to bring light to many lost in the darkness which is now steadily increasing.¹

Our greatest problem in Britain today – and the reason for this absence of vision - is the lack of understanding of even the basics of biblical truth.

Choice Ahead

The choice facing the British nation today is a choice between re-asserting our independence as a sovereign state and (crucially) putting our trust back in God for the future, or being driven onto the rocks of destruction through social chaos and violence. This will inevitably follow if the secular humanists continue to get their way – particularly if they succeed in forcing the nation to hold a second referendum.

It does not really matter whether we leave the EU with Mrs May’s deal or with no deal. If we put our trust in the Lord, blessings and prosperity are guaranteed for the future of the nation. The one thing to be avoided at all costs, is a second referendum. The prayers of all Christians should be directed to this end.

References

1 Read the full prophecy here.

‘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.

Britain and the West succumbs to brainwashing on an unprecedented scale

We are currently witnessing a worldwide battle of the ages between truth and lies. And in recent days much of this has been focused on Israel – specifically at a conference in Jerusalem called GAFCON and on the northern borders of the Gaza Strip.

At the Global Anglican Future Conference, attended by nearly 2,000 Anglican leaders from around the world, a British evangelist warned of the Holy Spirit departing from the traditional Anglican Church if it continued to despise the authority of Scripture.

Rico Tice was giving an interview at the third such convocation of this body since its inception ten years ago for the purpose of maintaining the truth of the Gospel in the face of growing apostasy, including support for same-sex relationships.

Another Battle

Not many miles away, on the borders of Gaza, another battle for truth is being waged as the media is largely determined to spew out lies and propaganda in support of the Palestinian narrative.

It was reported that Israeli soldiers had killed a baby caught up in the riots over the alleged right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. But it later emerged that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had paid a Gazan family to lie about eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour dying from tear gas inhalation rather than from a pre-existing medical condition.¹

The Global Anglican Future Conference was set up ten years ago to maintain the truth of the Gospel in the face of growing apostasy.

Readers may well wonder how Palestinians, or anyone else, can get away with so much deceit. But as Israel Today journalist Ryan Jones puts it, “many, if not most, Palestinians have no problem telling bald-faced lies in order to smear Israel and advance their own nationalist agenda. This is because Muslims are permitted to lie to ‘infidels’ in service to Islamic causes, a concept known as taqiyya”.²

The Prophet Isaiah spoke of such wickedness when he wrote: “…Justice is driven back and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey” (Isa 59:14f).

Heading Towards a Sterile World

What a shoddy business. And the same people who are so ready to condemn Israel for defending her right to exist are engaged in the wicked brainwashing of Western nations on an unprecedented scale into believing that same-sex relationships are perfectly normal.

LGBTQ+ supporters in Australia.Nazi Germany’s lies about the Jews led to the systematic murder of six million people. With few exceptions, the German people blithely accepted the doctrine that Jews were a cause of all their economic and other problems, partly due to the intimidating nature of rule under the Third Reich. It was a doctrine, much like today’s new teaching on sexual ethics, that brooked no dissent, with the result that those who objected often paid with their lives.

Today, going along with the gay agenda is seen by most as the only way to maintain respectability and acceptance in social circles. This is why, in Australia, where they held a referendum on the issue, same-sex won the day. But if all those who voted for it practised what they preached, that great southern continent would soon become extinct!

The 1930s propaganda of Josef Goebbels seeped through the German national consciousness, almost without a whimper of opposition, just as the same-sex issue has done in Britain and the West where the general populace is bombarded with stories and images on national television and elsewhere glamourising, justifying and sanctioning homosexual behaviour.

Same-sex propaganda has seeped through British national consciousness, as the general populace has been bombarded with stories and images glamourising, justifying and sanctioning homosexual behaviour.

And even our church leaders have succumbed to it, undermining the authority of God’s word in the cause of breaking down boundaries of decency and propriety that have underpinned our civilisation for centuries. We are fast heading for a sterile world where the traditional family is a thing of the past and where the future holds little hope.

Hopefully the world will soon wake up in shock at the devastation it has caused, and no-one will be able to say they didn’t know what was going on.

A Different Religion

At GAFCON, meanwhile, Rico Tice, a gifted evangelist on the staff of All Souls, Langham Place, and co-author of the much-acclaimed Christianity Explored course, revealed he had resigned from the Archbishops’ Evangelism Task Group because it meant having to submit to the authority of a Bishop – Rt Rev Paul Bayes of Liverpool – who validates same-sex.

“It’s a different religion”, he said, adding: “I think it’s a great wickedness to tell people who are on the road to destruction that they are not.”³

He went on: “There is no power in evangelism unless you’re submitted to Scripture.” And he suggested that God would remove his power from the institutional Church, as he did in the days of John Wesley, if there was no repentance.

He admitted that the problem had been compounded by Christians who have changed their position for emotional reasons because family members had turned gay.

The Truth Brings Freedom and Peace

Meanwhile the Archbishop of Uganda has threatened to boycott future meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stanley Ntangali said:

Unless godly order is restored in the Anglican Communion, we shall not attend other meetings invited by Canterbury…The church of Uganda is an evangelical church, and we obey Christ and the authority of the Bible, and the apostolic faith. So we have no apology for the stand we have made and will continue to proclaim the gospel of Christ to the nations, uncompromisingly.⁴

The conference has written a Letter to the Churches challenging the Archbishop of Canterbury to speak the truth about the Gospel and human sexuality clearly and publicly and to discipline those within the Anglican Communion who have abandoned it.

In a similar way, lies about Gaza stir up trouble and strife in the Middle East which could erupt into a major war. Lies destroy society whereas truth brings freedom and peace, both among families and the wider world. Spreading lies about human sexuality could well cause as much, if not more, damage to the world at large than the tendency for Arabs to be economical with the truth.

Lies destroy society whereas truth brings freedom and peace, both among families and the wider world.

Appeasement Will Not Succeed

Prince William, on his tour of Israel, will hopefully have learnt from his visit to the Holocaust Museum that the anti-Semitism displayed by Palestinian Authority politicians has all the hallmarks of another attempt at genocide. After all, that is the oft-stated aim of Israel’s opponents.

The Prince’s great-grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, took sides in a previous conflict by hiding Jews who would otherwise have been murdered by the Nazis. Will the British Foreign Office allow him to take sides when Jews, now living in their own land, are equally threatened?

He says he wants peace – most of us do – but Neville Chamberlain’s experience should be a lesson to us all.

Notes

1 Jerusalem News Network, 22 June 2018, quoting Ynet News.

2 A Nation Reborn, Charles Gardner (Christian Publications International), p93.

3 Christian Concern, 19 June 2018. Click here to watch the full interview.

4 Ibid.

Our second excerpt from Sandra Teplinsky's ‘Why Still Care About Israel?’

Palestinian Injustice

A sad reality is that the War of Independence was not fought without collateral damage to both Palestinian and Jewish civilians. For the sake of perspective, no war can be fought without collateral damage - and in this instance, there would not have been a war if the Arabs had not insisted on starting one. Nevertheless, some Arab families and villages were wrongly expelled or inexcusably overrun by Jewish soldiers.^q In at least one such raid at Deir Yassin, genuinely innocent victims were massacred.³¹ Upon learning of the sordid event, Israel denounced it and sought to compensate the victims.^r

The Palestinian narrative claims that since 1948, Israel has stolen or destroyed over four hundred Arab villages. This figure, based on a recently created map of dubious veracity, cannot be objectively verified. Israeli historians point out that many Arab families who were forced to leave their homes did not actually own the lands or homes they left. Some were long-term renters - for generations - of lands sold legally, but without their knowledge, to the Jews.^s

Moreover - and without diminishing the loss some Arabs have suffered - a large Palestinian state (Jordan) existed just across the border. Those who might be displaced were expected to seek refuge there, just as 800,000 Jewish refugees were forced to leave their homes and wealth behind and relocate to Israel.^t (More on this momentarily.)

No war can be fought without collateral damage - and in 1948, there would not have been a war if the Arabs had not insisted on starting one.

Lacking objective documentation of their plight, Palestinians have amassed global sympathies through a narrative that inverts history.^u Many share tragic personal tales - that prove either unverifiable or outrageously embellished.^v Their stories tend either to romanticize Arab tribal-village life or misrepresent it as a bustling society.^w Sadly, some of these accounts are presented by Christians as honest-to-God facts. Their pitiable tales tug at the heartstrings of any hearer. It’s their personal story, we reason. How can it not be true - and how can we not be deeply moved? Emotions are stirred, then inflamed - against Israel. Gradually, hearts are hardened against the Jewish people and what God is doing with them today.

Jesus loves and died for the Palestinian people: He does not want us to disparage them. We must compassionately acknowledge their suffering and seek a right response to it. But even genuine suffering must be viewed in context to rightly ascertain truth and transform realities justly.

Palestinian - and Jewish - Refugees

Palestinians were not the only refugees to result from the War of Independence. According to official UN figures, over 800,000 Jewish refugees were forced to flee homes and lands in North Africa and the Middle East where they had lived for generations.³² Unlike some Palestinians, they were in no sense “voluntary refugees”. Jews were expelled, stripped of citizenship or both in retaliation for Israel’s declaration of statehood. Arab nations have persistently refused to compensate these refugees for their confiscated properties, valued today at billions of dollars.³³

Meanwhile, during the War of Independence, unincorporated areas proposed by the Partition Plan for a second Palestinian Arab state were illegally annexed and occupied - not by Israel but by Jordan and Egypt. Jordan seized Judea and Samaria, including East Jerusalem, while Egypt staked claim to Gaza.

Now, the Arabs’ publicly stated goal for the war had been to liberate Palestine. But neither Jordan nor Egypt ever gave the territories they annexed back to the Palestinians to liberate them. Instead, the latter were compelled - by their own brethren - to stay put indefinitely in refugee camp limbo.^x Why? you may ask. They would not talk about it; let me explain.

Lacking objective documentation of their plight, Palestinians have amassed global sympathies through a narrative that inverts history.

Israel began offering, as early as 1949, to negotiate for the refugees’ return - and full repatriation - back into the Jewish state. But no Arab leader was willing to negotiate with the Jews. Transacting with Israel, they said, would involve an implicit recognition of her existence. This they had vowed never to do.³⁴ Further, by refusing either to negotiate for the refugees’ return or to absorb them themselves, they could continue the war against Israel in the political realm.^y This they had vowed never to cease doing.

Children in Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza. See Photo Credits.In 1949 the UN established a relief fund (United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA) to provide for the refugees’ basic needs. Soon thereafter, UNRWA acceded to Arab demands to grant refugee status - for the first time in history - not only to those who fled but to their descendants, indefinitely. This redefinition of “refugee” guaranteed the Palestinian population would dramatically increase over time.³⁵ By 2013, of an estimated Palestinian population of five million, only 30,000 - or approximately half of 1 percent - actually ever left a home in Israel.³⁶

Meanwhile, many billions of dollars have been given to Palestinians by Israel and other nations to provide for their “basic needs”.^z At this writing, UNRWA remains the largest employer in the West Bank, with thousands of Palestinians on its payroll and, according to some, padding the personal fortunes of Palestinian leaders.³⁷

Former UNRWA director Ralph Galloway concluded early on:

The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore…as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.³⁸

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly noted:

The consistent refusal of Arab leaders to solve this problem is particularly tragic because it would have been so easy to do…That the fifty million Arabs In 1948 could not absorb 650,000 Arab refugees - and have not finished the job even after half a century, and even after the fantastic multiplication of their oil wealth - is an indication of [how] the Arabs have manipulated the refugee issue to create reasons for world censure of Israel.³⁹

Of the situation an Arab American journalist comments:

What are the real roots of this [Palestiman-Israeli] conflict?...That Palestinians want a homeland and Muslims want control over sites they consider holy?...These two demands are nothing more than strategic deceptions. propaganda ploys. They are nothing more than phony excuses and rationalizations for the terrorism and murdering of Jews. The real goal of those making these demands is the destruction of the State of Israel.⁴⁰

Israel began offering, as early as 1949, to negotiate for the refugees’ return - and full repatriation - back into the Jewish state. But no Arab leader was willing to negotiate.

Palestinian Statehood and the Phased Plan

In 1964, Yasser Arafat assumed leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terror group with the stated purpose to liberate all of Palestine. It was not, however, created to liberate the West Bank and Gaza; this was never the “Palestine” to which it referred. Recall that in 1964, Gaza still belonged to Egypt and the West Bank was governed by Jordan. Since 1964 the Palestinian agenda has been to liberate a Palestine that includes, by definition, every square inch of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River - that is, all of Israel.^{41 aa}

Shortly after the PLO published its goals, Israel fought for her life in the Six Day War of 1967. To the world’s surprise, she defensively acquired Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan. Then, in 1973, Egypt and Syria launched another unprovoked attack, the Yom Kippur War. Again Israel prevailed. As a result of these mounting Arab defeats, the PLO announced its “Phased Plan” the following year. The Phased Plan has never been revoked and still represents Islamist/Arab/Palestinian strategy today.

The Phased Plan refers to the slightly revised goal of liberating Palestine not all at once, but in stages. Phase One is the establishment of an independent, combatant national authority consisting of Gaza and the West Bank. This was to a large degree accomplished by developing the PLO into the PA and by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Phase Two is the reconfiguration of Gaza and the West Bank into launching pads for provoking an all-out regional war, in which Israel is wiped off the map.⁴²

This is to be accomplished by military operations, lawfare diplomacy, cyberattack or any combination thereof.

On the Occupation

When Israel pushed back her attackers in the Six Day War and gained Gaza and the West Bank, she acquired land that had been originally allotted to her in 1920. By 1967, however, the areas were inhabited by over a million Jew-hating Palestinians and angry insurgents.⁴³ Israel had no desire to “rule over” them.⁴⁴

The Six Day War ended with UN Security Council Resolution 242, a truce that purposefully did not define borders. Resolution 242 authorized Israel to remain in possession of newly acquired territories until peace was established and final borders secured. It was meticulously and explicitly worded so that Israel would not be forced to withdraw from all the newly acquired territories, back to the boundary lines from which she had just been attacked.⁴⁵

When Israel pushed back her attackers in the Six Day War and gained Gaza and the West Bank, she acquired land that had been originally allotted to her in 1920.

Those boundaries, the 1949 armistice lines ending the War of Independence, were never meant to be permanent. Nor were they intended to substitute for negotiations to determine final borders. In less than twenty years, the lines had proved indefensible,^{46 bb} leaving the middle and most populous section of the country only nine miles wide. With Palestinians having shown themselves unwilling or unable to make peace, some Israeli leaders have termed the 1949 lines “Auschwitz Borders”, referring to a notorious Nazi death camp. Nevertheless, by 2011 the international community would euphemistically call them “pre-1967 borders” and urge Israel to retreat to them - with no enforceable guarantee of peace in return.

After the Six Day War, Egypt and Jordan eventually signed peace treaties with Israel. These nations refused, however, to take back either Gaza or the West Bank. Reclaiming these territories would have betrayed the pan-Arab plan, notoriously reaffirmed after the war,⁴⁷ to leave in place a local population to help destroy Israel. As a result, Gaza and the West Bank remained in a state of perpetual war with Israel, ruled by the increasingly militant PLO. That being the case, Israel was authorized by international law to administratively govern the territories, with quasi-military powers of enforcement, until peace could be achieved. The administration of law and order in a hostile, enemy population in such circumstances is called an occupation.

Some Israelis say, however, that they have not occupied any of these areas because the land rightfully belongs to them under customary international law. Customary international law refers to the body of international law and policy that Western nations have traditionally practiced and followed.

In either case, Israel’s quasi-military administration known as the “occupation” is not illegal. The term “illegal occupation” is a pejorative mischaracterization, intended to conjure up images of oppression and abuse. Admittedly, Israel has not always acted fairly or justly during the difficult course of governing people dedicated to her demise. But to brand her lawful jurisdiction “illegal” or “oppressive” obscures the reality that if Palestinians sincerely accepted Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, the war and the occupation would be history. Allow me to explain.

Peace Negotiations

In 1993, the PLO morphed into the Palestinian Authority under an agreement called the Oslo Accords. At that time Palestinians gained the right to negotiate peace with Israel for themselves.^cc Sadly, rather than pursue a peaceful coexistence alongside Israel, history records how they proliferated terror instead.

Nevertheless, in 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians full sovereignty over 95 percent of the disputed territories, including East Jerusalem, with secured geographic contiguity. There was virtually nothing left for the Jews to give away. But the Palestinians said no. Offering no counterproposal to the offer, they literally walked out on negotiations⁴⁸ and immediately launched a violent intifada (“uprising”) of deadly terror lasting several years.^dd US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who was present, said the Palestinians’ main objection was the insertion of one critical clause in the agreement: “This is the end of the conflict."^{49 ee} The Palestinians could not end the conflict with anything less than ending Israel.^ff

In 1993, the Palestinians gained the right to negotiate peace with Israel for themselves – but rather than pursue this, they proliferated terror instead.

Yasser Arafat, who signed the Oslo Accords and walked out on the offer of a sovereign state, said (in Arabic): “I do not consider the [Oslo] agreement any more than the agreement which was signed by our prophet Muhammad and the Qurayish.”⁵⁰ Arafat referred to an agreement that established the right, called hudna, for Muslims to fake peace when they are weak so they can wait for better timing to fight when they are strong.^gg Thus an Arab saying goes like this: “When your enemy is strong, kiss his hand and pray that it will be broken one day.”⁵¹

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres signs the Oslo Accords outside the White House, alongside PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. See Photo Credits.Faisal Husseini, a moderate Palestinian leader, compared the whole peace process to a proverbial “Trojan horse”.⁵² From the Arab perspective, it had been designed to fool Israel into letting the Palestinians arm themselves in order to destroy it. Said Husseini, “If you are asking me as a pan-Arab nationalist what are the Palestinian borders according to the higher strategy, I will immediately reply, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”⁵³

Perhaps that would explain why, in 2008, when Israel offered Palestinians 93 percent of the territory they desired - including 98 percent of the West Bank - they again said no.⁵⁴ And why, in 2009, PA leaders said they would resume negotiations on the pre-condition that Israel stop all settlement construction - but still refused to talk when Israel complied with their demand. After that, with one perceived betrayal following another, Israelis were not so willing to believe Palestinians were sincere about peace.^hh

In 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to restart peace talks and pleaded at the UN with PA President Abbas to meet face-to-face, without preconditions. Abbas refused, demanding that Israel first agree to an expanded list of preconditions.ⁱⁱ Under the Oslo Accords and other agreements, however, these preconditions were in fact supposed to be the subject of the negotiations. By agreeing to all the preconditions first, there would be very little left to negotiate. So Netanyahu replied with one precondition of his own. He demanded that Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. If the PA would agree to the one precondition, Israel would agree to their whole list of them. But the Palestinians refused.^jj

In 2012, Palestinians sidestepped negotiations, and thus breached the Oslo Accords, by seeking to forge a path for statehood in the UN. At the same time, they launched a war from Gaza and a terror wave in the West Bank. In 2013, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon commented on the situation:

This is our history: Every time a proposal was raised to partition the land, the other side started a war. Every time we expressed willingness to give up territory, terror rose to new heights.⁵⁵

In 2012, Palestinians sidestepped negotiations, breaching the Oslo Accords, by seeking to forge a path for statehood in the UN.

Palestinians often say they resort to terror because Israeli proposals do not offer them a universal “right of return”. Israelis reply this is because Palestinians are unwilling to limit the “right” to refugees who personally left Israel; they insist on extending it to every Palestinian in Gaza, the West Bank or anywhere else in the world. Therefore, when Israel has expressed willingness to give them land, Palestinians have sometimes agreed to recognize a country named Israel - but never as a Jewish state.^kk The difference is critical. If Palestinians acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, they relinquish a strategy for turning it into a Palestinian/Islamist one by flooding it with millions of Arabs “returning” there.^ll

The right of return has remained, at this writing, uncompromisable - even though “homeland” is only a few miles away, and even though Palestinians would finally be getting a second sovereign state. From Israel’s perspective, granting several million Muslims, many of whom are murderously militant, permission to immigrate and repopulate the country is tantamount to committing national suicide.

Israeli Settlements

In 2012, the PA began claiming that Israeli settlements were the main reason for the failure of the peace process. In fact, settlements represent only 1.6 percent of the disputed territories,⁵⁶ and 70 percent of settlers live in suburbs adjacent to major Israeli cities, not deep inside the West Bank.⁵⁷ Settlements do not disrupt Palestinian geographic contiguity. Despite public opinion to the contrary, settlements officially authorized by the Israeli government are not illegal under standards of customary international law.^mm To be sure, settlements have been built on lands whose ownership is disputed. But in this dispute, Israel actually possesses the best claim to lawful - if not politically feasible or practical - ownership.ⁿⁿ

Recall that when Israel acquired the West Bank, no state or political entity held legal title to it. The last rightful owner of the land had been Israel, and historically, a Jewish presence has been maintained in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years. After World War I, Britain obtained the land and, through international agreements, returned recognized legal title to the Jews. When the UN offered the land to Palestinian Arabs in 1947, it wrongfully tried to take that title away. But the Palestinians rejected the offer, thereby rendering it null and void.

Years later, Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank, but Israel defensively - and therefore, legally - acquired it from Jordan in the Six Day War. Under international law, the land has been technically “disputed” since 1967.^oo In the future, international bodies may decide to rule on the legality of the territories and settlements built on them. Given the nations’ collective stance toward Israel, it would likely take an act of God for a ruling in her favor to result. Which of course we cannot rule out.

In this dispute, Israel actually possesses the best claim to lawful - if not politically feasible or practical – ownership of the ‘disputed’ territories.

Meanwhile, Israel’s settlement policies are not necessarily perfect. Growing numbers of extremist settlers (and Palestinians) have turned violent, and the violence must be stopped. Some Israelis have tried to stake claim to biblical lands by erecting self-declared, unauthorized outposts. Usually these are dismantled by Israel within a short time. Jewish settlement construction has resulted in genuine hardship for some Bedouin and other Arabs, not always handled properly by Israeli courts.^pp But these proportionately few unfair cases do not make all the settlements illegal. Nor do they provide a reason to suspend peace negotiations, if the parties sincerely desire peace.

Future Palestine

Repeatedly, Israel has demonstrated her willingness and even desire to accept Palestine as a new sovereign state. But as this book goes to print, Palestinians still insist (in Arabic) their state must stretch from the “river to the sea” and encompass all of Israel.⁵⁸ Surveys consistently reveal that a solid majority of Israelis would agree to live alongside a peaceful Palestinian state. (The operative word is peaceful.) But similar surveys consistently show the majority of Palestinians say they would never accept peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state.^qq In 2011, 66 percent of West Bank Palestinians said that while they would accept a two-state solution as a “first step”, they wanted to eventually replace Israel with a single Palestinian state.⁵⁹ In 2012, 88 percent of all Palestinians preferred a strategy of terror, or another intifada, over diplomacy to achieve it.⁶⁰ In 2013, similar polls yielded similar results.⁶¹

As you can see, the root of the Palestinian plight is well hidden beneath the surface tension exposed to public view. Deep-seated realities that will not change unless faced forthrightly are disguised and distorted. I do not minimize the genuine suffering, frustration and injustice that affects some Palestinians. But, fundamentally, these conditions are not the cause of Arab and Islamist enmity toward Israel; they are the result of it. Moreover, injustices have repeatedly come about at the hands of Arab, not Israeli, leaders betraying their own people. That the world faults Israel - and threatens her survival - for a Palestinian plight that is Islamist/Arab generated, is highly unjust.

God wants transformational justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. But justice must be pursued and attained His way - according to righteousness based on truth - however His enemies try to obscure it. He wants us to “test and approve what [his] Will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12:2) as He restores His ancient covenant people. Toward them we must “not be arrogant, but tremble" (Romans 11:20).

About the author: Sandra Teplinsky is a Messianic Jew who lives in Jerusalem and teaches about Israel. With her husband, Sandra runs a ministry called Light of Zion. Find out more about the book 'Why Still Care About Israel?' on its website.

References

Letters q-qq can be found on this page.

31 Bard, “The Refugees”, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013; Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 122

32 Auguste Lindt, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “Report of the UNREF Executive Committee, Fourth Session”, Geneva, January 29 to February 4, 1957; Dr. E. Jahn, Office of the UN High Commissioner, “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Document No.7/2/3," Libya, July 6, 1967, as cited in Alan Baker, ed., Israel's Rights as a Nation-State in International Diplomacy (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and World Jewish Congress, 2011), 50.

33 “Refugees Forever? Issues in the Palestinian-lsraeli Conflict," International Jerusalem Post, February 21, 2003, special supplement; Bard, “The Refugees."

34 Terence Prittie. “Middle East Refugees,” in Michael Curtis, Joseph Neyer, Chaim Waxman, and Allen Pollack, ed., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), 66—67.

35 Daniel Pipes, “Peculiar Proliferation of Palestinian Refugees,” Washington Times, February 20, 2012.

36 Donna Cassata, “Defining a Palestinian Refugee,” Associated Press. May 31, 2012.

37 Jonathan Shanzer. “Chronic Kleptocracy: Corruption within the Palestinian Political Establishment,” Hearing before House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressional Testimony, July 10, 2012.

38 As cited by Prittie, “Middle East Refugees," 71, emphasis mine.

39 Netanyahu, A Durable Peace, 155.

40 Joseph Farah, speech given at Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania, July 3, 2003.

41 See for example Palestinian Media Watch, “PA Depicts a World Without Israel,” 2011; “Mashaal: We Will Never Give Up Any of Palestine,” International Jerusalem Post, December 14-20, 2011.

42 “Political Plan of the PLO Council," June 8, 1974.

43 Jewish Virtual Library, “Demography of Palestine & Israel, the West Bank & Gaza."

44 See for example Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York. Ballantine Books, 2002), 306-27.

45 Jewish Virtual Library, “The Meaning of Resolution 142"; Dore Gold, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West and the Future of the Holy City (Washington D.C.: Regnery, Inc, 2007), 172-74; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Disputed Territories-Forgotten Facts About the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” February 1, 2003.

46 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Israel's Critical Security Requirements for Defensible Borders (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs).

47 The Arabs' Khartoun Resolutions of 1967 solidified the notorious “Three No’s”: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Jewish Virtual Library, “The Khartoun Resolutions.”

48 Benny Morris, “Camp David and After: An Exchange (Interview with Ehud Barak),” New York Review of Books 49, no. 10, June 13, 2002.

49 Ambassador Dennis Ross, in a Fox News interview, as reported by David Kupelian, “The Real Reason Arafat Rejected a Palestinian State,” Whistleblower 12, no. 3 (March 2003): 7.

50 Speech by Arafat in Johannesburg, May 10, 1994 (while Oslo was in effect), as cited in Daniel Pipes, “Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad in Diplomacy,” Middle East Quarterly, September 1999.

51 Kupelian, “The Real Reason,” 8-9; Pipes, “Lessons.”

52 “Faysal al-Husseni in His Last Interview,” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 236, July 6, 2001.

53 lbid.

54 Reuters and Aluf Benn, “PA Rejects Olmert‘s Offer,” Haaretz, August 12, 2008.

55 Mazal Mualem, “New Defense Minister No Threat to Netanyahu’s Policies,” Al-Monitor, March 13, 2013.

56 See Michelle Whiteman, “To the Media, Building Settlements in Israel’s a Crime,” Huffington Post, December 26, 2012; and Mitchell G. Bard, “The Settlements,” Myths and Facts Online, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013.

57 Bard, “The Settlements.”

58 “Jerusalem-on-the-Line,” Jerusalem News Network, Prayer Letter, April 3, 2013, quoting Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal’s speech in Arabic at a rally in Gaza City, March 30, 2013.

59 United Press International, “Poll: Arabs Reject Two-State Solution," July 26, 2011.

60 Elhanan Miller,“88 Percent of Palestinians Believe Armed Struggle Is the Best Way," Times of Israel, December 16, 2012.

61 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, “Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No. 47," press release, April 1, 2013.

Our leaders have a veil over their eyes.

Up to 50,000 people attempted to break through the border between Gaza and Israel this week according to press reports. Their use of smoke and mirrors, petrol bombs, incendiary kites and other weapons must have been a terrifying experience for the tiny detachment of Israeli part-time soldiers guarding the border to protect Israeli citizens from slaughter.

But far from giving a factual picture of events, the BBC, The Guardian and others¹ poured out their anti-Semitic invective against Israel.

The BBC had been preparing for this event for a long time and sent some of their senior reporters to give maximum cover to criticise Israel. In the event there was no breakthrough and no massacre.

Though each life lost is a heart-rending matter, it is to the credit of those defending the border that relatively few died, and most casualties were known terrorists. Hamas called off the protest the next day after Egyptian intervention; but not before they achieved their objective of getting anti-Israel propaganda into the Western media and calling for a UN enquiry - even at the expense of lives of their own people.

The Creation of the Gazan Refugees

The whole Gaza issue is tragic, both for the people who live there and for Israel. But it has been deliberately created as the front line in the drive to destroy Israel. The Palestinians themselves are despised by the Arab nations. Before they were brought together in the 1960s, there never was a Palestinian nation.

Historically, before the Jewish resettlement began in the early 20^th Century, Palestine was a largely barren land. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1900, there were less than 100 trees in the whole of Palestine with a sparse population of nomadic Arabs living in tents, whose goats ate every bit of vegetation. The absentee land-owning Arabs were only too willing to sell land to the Jews in those days.

The whole Gaza issue is tragic, but it has been deliberately created as the front line in the drive to destroy Israel.

When the state of Israel was created in 1948 the neighbouring states of Jordan, Egypt and Syria combined their armies, ordered any non-Jewish residents to leave their homes and go to two newly created refugee camps at Jericho and Gaza so that their forces could clear the land and drive the Jews into the Mediterranean. What they now call their ‘catastrophe’ was the failure of their armies to defeat the tiny group of Holocaust survivors who, in successive conflicts, went on to retake Jerusalem and to clear the whole land of foreign fighters.

With 70 years and a high birthrate the dreadful conditions in Gaza have been created by the Arab nations, who could easily have solved the situation by taking in the Palestinians. But even the small groups who succeeded in crossing the River Jordan and settling in Jordan and Syria were never accepted and today live in separate enclaves, denied citizenship. This is the measure of hypocrisy among the Arab nations who simply use the West Bank and Gaza situations for political purposes – in their drive to destroy Israel.

Leaders Without Knowledge

The Gaza issue was debated in the House of Commons this week with the usual mixture of anti-Israel and friendly comments. I was particularly disappointed to hear Alistair Burt, Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East, whom I’ve counted among my friends for the past 25 years, making a politically-correct bland statement.

The UN Security Council has strongly condemned Israel's activity at the Gaza border. See Photo Credits.As a Bible-believing evangelical brother I was hoping that he would put some backbone into the Foreign Office and declare that the time has come for Britain to implement the policy it advocated 100 years ago in the Balfour Declaration and move the British Embassy up to Jerusalem, alongside that of the USA.

But postmodernism, with its Darwinian and Marxist roots, has not only driven radical change to the social and personal values of the nation, but has spread a veil over the eyes of the leaders of both Church and state, so that they are unable to perceive the truth. They are like the leaders whom the Prophet Isaiah referred to as ‘blind watchmen’ who “all lack knowledge” (Isa 56:10). They cannot see the big picture because they do not understand the purposes of God and what is happening in the world today.

Postmodernism has spread a veil over the eyes of the leaders of both Church and state, so they are unable to perceive the truth.

Our leaders are part of a generation of biblical eunuchs: they have no understanding of the ways of God because they have turned their backs upon the word of God. For years we have been living upon the spiritual capital of our 19^th Century Victorian Bible-believing forefathers; but it is not enough to support us today, as the world moves onto the cusp of the most incredible period of turmoil since the creation of the world. There is a desperate need for people to hear the word of God before it is too late.

Coming Judgment

In the spring of 1986 there was a gathering of men and women with prophetic insight who met in Israel for a time of prayer and seeking God, to understand what is happening in the world today. One day I was standing alone with Lance Lambert on the top of Mt Carmel looking up at a remarkable sight I’d never seen before, of a complete rainbow encircling the sun; although Lance said it’s not unusual in Israel. We both received words which we shared with others in the evening meeting.

I was led to the prophecy in Haggai 2:6:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: in a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord Almighty.

I said that the USSR, the mighty communist empire that appeared all-powerful in 1986, would very soon collapse. Three weeks later the Chernobyl nuclear power station blew up which began the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

That same evening Lance Lambert gave one of the most remarkable prophecies of our time. He said:

It will not be long before there will come upon the world a time of unparalleled upheaval and turmoil. Do not fear for it is I the Lord who am shaking all things. I began this shaking with the First World War and I greatly increased it through the Second World War. Since 1973 I have given it an even greater impetus. In the last stage, I plan to complete it with the shaking of the universe itself, with signs in the sun and moon and stars. But before that point is reached, I will judge the nations, and the time is near.

It will not only be by war and civil war, by anarchy and terrorism, and by monetary collapses that I will judge the nations, but also by natural disasters: by earthquakes, by shortages and famines, and by old and new plague diseases. I will also judge them by giving them over to their own ways, to lawlessness, to loveless selfishness, to delusion and to believing a lie, to false religion and an apostate church, even to a Christianity without me.

Our leaders are part of a generation of biblical eunuchs: they have no understanding of the ways of God because they have turned their backs upon the word of God.

Need for the Word of God

This next stage in the history of the world has now been reached. Most of the nations of the world are conspiring to hate Israel, as foretold in the word of God: “Come, they say, let us destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more” (Ps 83:4).

The Prophet Zechariah received a revelation that the day would come when the focus of the world would be upon Jerusalem. He said:

This is the word of the Lord concerning Israel…I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure [rupture] themselves.

Never has there been a greater need for biblical truth to be brought into the affairs of the nations than today, with the nations armed with weapons capable of destroying the world and driven by a spirit of hatred and destruction.

Jeremiah foresaw the fall of the mighty Babylonian Empire and that Babylon would become “a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals” (Jer 51:37), as it is today. So, in our lifetime, unless the nations of the world study the word of God and bring their policies in line with his truth, they will create a catastrophe that will engulf the world.

The great question is: – Will the Bible-believing faithful remnant in the Western nations break their silence and declare the word of the Lord to bring life and light to this generation, and hope for our children and grandchildren?

Notes

1 For further information on this, we recommend UK Media Watch, a watchdog seeking to hold the British media to account for their biased treatment of Israel.

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.

What Britain’s treatment of the ‘Empire Windrush generation’ says about our society.

I have fought against prejudice and injustice throughout my adult life and I really thought that in Britain we were, in recent years, seeing the back of it.

But I have been shocked at the stories coming to light in the past week of the treatment of some of those who came over from the Caribbean in the early days of the migration after the Second World War. I lived and worked among them in West London in the 1950s and in Tottenham in the 1960s.

I found the first generation of migrants to be extremely friendly, hard-working and trustworthy people and I had a great love and respect for them. Some of them are still my friends today. Many times I was shocked and angry at the treatment some of them received in London. I used to feel ashamed when I saw the street corner newspaper shops with their adverts for rooms or flats to let with the inevitable caveat, “No coloured, No pets, No Irish”.

The Windrush Generation

The early migrants from the Caribbean faced an enormous amount of prejudice, but they bore it with great patience and humility that won the admiration of those who took the trouble to get to know any of them on a personal basis. They played a vital part in the re-building of Britain after the Blitz, both physically and in terms of its economy which was booming in those days, but there was a shortage of manpower as so many men had been lost during the war.

Many hundreds of worker migrants came to my church in West London in the days before and after the Notting Hill riots of 1958. They not only brought fresh culture and enthusiasm into the fellowship but they also enriched our worship with their singing. We had a quartet that sang beautiful four-part harmony and they took part a number of times in broadcasts from the church.

The large number of migrants coming to my church, however, attracted opposition from the National Front who picketed the church and then attacked my house, throwing white paint over the front door and painting abusive words (‘NIGGER LOVER’) on the pavement outside the house. This atrocity backfired against them as it attracted a huge amount of local support as well as publicity in the press.

Left: Commonwealth Sunday Service 1962, High Cross Church Tottenham. Right: Workmen turning over the paving stones outside the church house, Tottenham, August 1962.

A Prejudiced System

I was a member of the Home Office-sponsored ‘Commonwealth Immigrants Committee’ and I saw at first hand the prejudice in the system that the migrants faced. It was strong in the 1960s because the Home Office was involved in framing the Immigration and Race Relations Acts.

Both the Labour and Conservative parties supported the immigration controls which sent a message to the public that there must be something wrong with these people because their numbers had to be limited. That prejudice continued for decades and became increasingly hostile in the run-up to the 2016 Referendum.

The early Caribbean migrants faced an enormous amount of prejudice, but they bore it with great patience and humility.

Evidence of Discrimination

This past week has seen the 50^th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of blood’ speech that attracted massive publicity and revealed to the world the level of racial prejudice in Britain. The speech shocked many people and was denounced in Parliament by Powell’s own party, but evidence at the time showed that Powell was expressing the views of millions of ordinary people in Britain such as the London dockers who exercised a ban on black workers.

There was plenty of evidence of discrimination in employment, such as black bus conductors being permitted but not black drivers, and it was many years before the first black inspector of buses was appointed by London Transport. There were lots of surveys of prejudice in Britain and many activists calling for social change, but cultural attitudes change slowly.

Heart-Searching Needed

In Britain we don’t like to admit it but we have lots of prejudices: like between north and south – northerners don’t like southerners and Londoners think that civilisation ends at Watford - or over regional accents. And of course, Scots stereotypically don’t like Sassenachs and would like to be independent of the English - while the English have historically not been too keen on foreigners of any origin (hence Brexit can’t come too soon!)!

But our treatment of the ‘Empire Windrush’ generation whose landing passes and other documents were destroyed by the Home Office has really been unforgivable. It is amazing that it has taken so long to come before Parliament and it is only because of media publicity that apologies have been tumbling out of the Government.

Men and women who have lived in Britain for more than 50 years and greatly contributed to this nation have been issued with deportation orders or even locked up in detention centres. Surely this is more than just an administrative error! It means we have never really valued many of those who have come to Britain from the Commonwealth.

In Britain we don’t like to admit it but we have lots of prejudices.

Acknowledging Past Injustice

Our mistreatment of people from the Caribbean islands goes back at least 200 years to the days of slavery under British colonial rule. This legacy of slavery has never been finally expunged from our social attitudes and culture, as we remarked just two weeks ago on Prophecy Today UK.

It is the legacy of slavery that the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation (MJR) is working to overcome. MJR’s Chairman sees this legacy as fuelling knife crime on our city streets (see his article, also in this week’s issue). Why is it that more young men of Caribbean origin are in British prisons than in our universities?

The Bible says “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honours God” (Prov 14:31). It is surely time to take a hard look at our inner cities to see how we can improve life for those who are often stuck in ghettos of poverty, lacking hope and opportunity. This is not a call for compassion - it is a call for justice and righteousness, because “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Prov 14:34).

More analysis on this issue can be found in ‘Free at Last: The Tottenham Riots and the Legacy of Slavery' (Hill, C, 2014, Wilberforce publications Ltd, London), particularly pp72-74.

After being treated like dogs ourselves, my wife and I can empathise with our West Indian friends

The scandal of bungling Home Office bureaucracy involving Britain’s West Indian community comes just months after my wife and I were subjected to the humiliation of being refused re-entry to the UK because I had no visa in my South African passport.

Our experience clearly mirrors something of what the so-called Windrush generation are suffering, with threats of deportation amid a general immigration crackdown that has apparently misfired and hit many soft targets.

In our case, it meant we could not board our El Al flight to London from Tel Aviv in Israel. It left us in a great dilemma, with possibly nowhere to go (beside expensive hotels).

Vast Labyrinth of Bureaucracy

Apart from three months on a South African newspaper, I have worked my entire career in this country, paying tax all that time and I even now draw a state pension for my troubles. I also own property (fully paid off) and have lived in Britain for 47 years! As an embassy official admitted to me, the Home Office could easily have made a quick check to verify my credentials. But they deliberately chose instead to make life difficult for me.

Fortunately, we trusted the Lord and he enabled us to cope; in fact, in the end we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we basked in his goodness (even on the beach).

My wife and I were subjected to the humiliation of being refused re-entry to the UK. The Home Office could have helped, but deliberately made life difficult.

I realised that it was part of a new clampdown on immigration designed to persuade the general public that they were seriously doing something about it. But as Home Secretary Amber Rudd has been forced to admit, the vast labyrinth of bureaucracy diverts focus from the individual.

Because of our dilemma, we were forced to stay an extra 11 days in Israel until neighbours were able to mail my old cancelled passports (duly stamped with indefinite leave to stay here) to Beit Immanuel, the CMJ (Church’s Ministry among the Jewish people) guesthouse kind enough to take us in.

Working All Things for Good

A view of Tel Aviv from Jaffa (biblical Joppa) where we spent our enforced extra stay in Israel. Photo: Charles Gardner

Yes, the Lord blessed us mightily in the end, but it was a scary experience and it did cross my mind that I might well be deported to South Africa, and thus be separated from my beloved (British) wife and family.

It was only thanks to our MP, Dame Rosie Winterton (Labour, Doncaster Central), that we managed to get back at all without having to go through the laborious process of applying for a visa (in Tel Aviv) which we were told could take up to six weeks.

The British Embassy there were not much help, apart from offering us use of a computer and phone for a few brief hours. A minder initially treated us like dogs as he tried to shoo us away. We made a number of calls to the Home Office, but were passed from pillar to post as we went round in circles.

I do hope our lovely West Indian friends get the justice they deserve in this appalling situation which shows how little we care about people these days; to Government departments, they are just numbers on a computer register.

In fact, I pray they will experience – as we did – the truth of the Bible promise that “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).

The Lord Our Vindicator

During some of our more trying moments as ‘banned’ citizens, I vowed to send the bill for extra expenses incurred to the Home Office, but when I had calmed down and turned my attention back to higher realms, I felt the Lord assuring me that he would both vindicate and compensate us.

When we did finally return home, I discovered that my bank balance was as healthy as it was when we left. God had abundantly provided for us, and met all our needs.

This appalling situation shows how little we care about people these days.

As to vindication, reference the dilemma now faced by the West Indian community. That says it all! Like them, I was a victim of political correctness gone mad.

The case of Sarah O’Connor (Daily Mail, 17 April 2018) is similar in some ways to mine. On recently losing her job, she was denied benefits because she did not have a valid British passport. Like me, she had never got around to applying for one – in her case because she hasn’t left the country in 50-plus years of living here. In my case, I have travelled successfully on a passport issued by my fatherland, of which I am still proud.

As a touching footnote, my half-Jewish grandmother came out to England from Jamaica in 1919; I guess marrying a British officer qualified her for citizenship. So I too have roots in the Caribbean – I used to listen to endless tales of waving palms and beautiful beaches, and of the terrible earthquake my family survived in 1907.

I suppose, compared to that, 11 extra days in sunny Israel was no great hardship!