An excerpt from Sandra Teplinsky’s book ‘Why Still Care About Israel’. Part I of II.

Last week on Prophecy Today UK we reviewed ‘Why Still Care About Israel’ as part of our ongoing coverage of Israel’s 70^th anniversary. This week, we are pleased to bring you the first of a two-part excerpt from this book (taken from chapter 10), focusing particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please see the base of the page for more information about the author. Reprinted with permission.

 Israeli Statehood and the Arab/Palestinian Plight

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

A true story opens on May 14, 1948, as the Jewish people prepare to declare a state. The air is electric. After two thousand years of exile, the sons and daughters of Jacob have come home. High-pitched excitement circles the globe.

That morning, Israel's founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, pores over maps showing the array of Arab armies poised to attack. The Jews are outnumbered 100 to 1.¹ “I feel like a mourner at a wedding," he writes in his diary.²

In a few hours Ben-Gurion will deliver Israel’s Declaration of Independence. He scribbles down notes for his speech on the only writing material at hand - sheets of toilet paper.^a

At exactly 4:00pm, he steps to the podium in an overcrowded hall in Tel Aviv, before a hushed audience. This is the moment for which millions of Jews have lived and died. As Ben-Gurion reads the Israeli Declaration of Independence, those present cling to his every word. He speaks of Bible history and the Jews’ undying hope to return to their ancestral home. Then with prophetic clarity Ben-Gurion decrees: “By virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people…we hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called the State of Israel…for the fulfillment of the dream of generations—the redemption of Israel.”

At once, cheers and tears resound. Golda Meir, who would later serve as prime minister, cannot stop crying. Her sobs, she explains, are for the many who should have been there, but are no more.³ According to the nation’s chief rabbi, “The dawn of redemption has broken.”⁴

As the Jewish people prepare to declare a state, the air is electric. After two thousand years of exile, the sons and daughters of Jacob have come home. High-pitched excitement circles the globe.

Euphoria erupts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where traffic stops as streets swell with singing and dancing. But the party is soon interrupted. Sirens wail to warn of Egyptian bombers overhead. Joining them are the armies of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, together with militants from throughout the Arab world. All have a common goal: to annihilate the Jewish state in Allah’s name.⁵ The War of Independence has begun. Happy birthday, Israel.

Since 1948, tomes have been written on the history of Israel’s restoration, and the Islamist/Arab/Palestinian resistance against it. Time and space permit us to summarise only basic facts (for more detail, please refer to the notes at www.whystillcareaboutisrael.com). I think you will discover a surprising perspective on today’s conflict emerges when you consider the context from which it arose. You will see that Israel is not so much in a fight for land as for her life - and that changes everything.

Palestinian History: The Back Story

In the first century AD, Israel was renamed Palestine by the Romans who conquered her. This was done in derisive remembrance of the Jews’ former - and extinct - enemy, the Philistines. The Philistines had by then already died out, so despite the similarity in name, they are not related to the Palestinians of today.^b Collectively, Palestinians have no traceable ancient tie to the land of Israel and never identified as a self-governing people group. Like other Arabs in the Middle East, most of their ancestors dwelt as scattered family tribes on lands they often did not personally own. Generally, they coexisted alongside Jews who had, in small numbers, lived in Palestine since biblical times on inherited or legally purchased land.⁶ But periodically, Islamic terror would erupt⁷ and jihadi expropriation of Jewish real estate took place.⁸

From the 1500s up until World War I, the entire Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, a type of Muslim caliphate. No autonomous Arab state was on the map; most Arabs belonged to nomadic tribes wandering all over the Middle East.^c At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Jews also lived in the region under Ottoman rule. According to a census taken in 1882, approximately 25,000 of them lived in Palestine, along with 260,000 Arabs.⁹ As tourists and pilgrims testified, Palestine was by then mostly desolate and depopulated,¹⁰ a far cry from the land of milk and honey it had once been for millions of Jews.

Israel is not so much in a fight for land as for her life - and that changes everything.

By the early 1900s, Palestinian Arab identity was said to be extremely mixed.¹¹ Persons counted as indigenous Palestinian Arabs included ethnic Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudanese, Samaritans, Algerians, Tartars and others.¹² An official British document published in 1920 stated the majority of people living in Palestine were not indigenous Arabs but only Arabic-speaking.¹³

When Zionist pioneers began arriving in the early twentieth century, the number of Arabs immigrating to Palestine also sharply increased. With Jews from the West came new job opportunities, vastly improved medical care and a higher standard of living, all of which attracted their tribal neighbors.¹⁴ Once inside Israel, most Arab immigrants continued living as bedouin, built simple villages or served for decades as tenants on farmlands owned by others. Later, countless more poured in from surrounding countries - not to carry on normal lives but to fight the formation of a Jewish state.¹⁵ Together with the small indigenous Arab population, these individuals and their descendants comprise the Palestinian people of today.

Palestinians are not, as some have rather unkindly said, “an invented people". They are flesh-and-blood human beings created in God’s image, with inherent dignity and worth. Though most of their ancestors came from across the Middle East and even beyond, they did form an identifiable collective by the mid-twentieth century. Palestinians are not the first people group formed by the force of history. They are, however, the only modern group whose creation and self-definition, as one Palestinian journalist writes,¹⁶ rests largely on the planned elimination of another, namely Israel - or as they prefer to call her, “the Zionist entity."

Zionism and the Reestablishment of a Jewish State

Zionism is defined, in a broad secular sense, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Zionist movement contends that the Jewish nation, like every other indigenous people, is entitled to live autonomously in its ancestral homeland. As such, Zionism cannot be viewed as something separate from the Jewish people and nation-state. To be anti-Zionist is akin to being anti-Israel and, to a degree, anti-Jewish.

Zionism is not and has never been entirely secular; a strong religious element has always underlain it.^d Officially launched in 1896, modern-day Zionism involves the return of the Jewish people to their God-given ancestral homeland.^e The name of the movement derives from the Bible, where Zion is used over 150 times. “You will arise and have compassion on Zion; for it is time to show favour to her; the appointed time has come…For the LORD will rebuild Zion and appear in his glory” (Psalm 102:13, 16). Zionism precipitates His Kingdom glory.

Palestinians are not the first people group formed by the force of history. They are, however, the only modern group whose creation and self-definition rests largely on the planned elimination of another, namely Israel.

In rebuilding Zion, Sovereign God has worked through nations and human beings. The modern story starts with World War I, when the Ottoman Turks aligned with Axis nations, and collectively they lost the war. As a result, the Allies dismantled the Ottoman Empire and created Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq for the Arabs and Persians to inhabit.^f In an international agreement known as the San Remo Resolution of 1920, they set Palestine aside for the Jews.^g Great Britain was made responsible for implementing the resolution by unanimous vote of the League of Nations, predecessor organisation to the UN. The League of Nations directive, called the Mandate for Palestine, reserved explicitly for the Jews not just present-day Israel, but all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jordan.¹⁷

The Mandate for Palestine was scarcely issued when Palestinian Arabs began rioting and conducting terror operations in protest of it. The deadly terror had nothing to do with occupation, settlements or allegedly disproportionate military force. From the beginning, Islamic terror had everything to do with opposing the existence of a Jewish state.

In an effort to appease Palestinian Arabs - and although international law forbade such an action^h - Great Britain unilaterally took back 78 percent of the land allotted to the Jews. She then gave it to Palestinian Arabs—specifically to create a Palestinian state. Today that state is known as Jordan. Palestinian Arabs were expected to move to Jordan, and any Jews living in Jordan would relocate to the 22 percent of land remaining from the San Remo and Mandatory allotments. A smaller section of land in the Golan Heights, originally designated for the Jews, was also given away by Britain to Syria. But appeasement did not work - which we would do well to remember. Those who forget history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. The acts we engage in for appeasement today, Britain’s Winston Churchill presciently forewarned, we will have to remedy at far greater cost and remorse tomorrow.¹⁸

Not surprisingly, after Jordan was established, Palestinian rioting and terror killings of Jews persisted.ⁱ An exasperated Great Britain finally turned the political foray over to the UN (when the League of Nations failed to prevent World War II, the UN was formed to replace it). The UN’s charter required that it adopt all laws and resolutions passed by the League of Nations. So when it inherited the Mandate for Palestine, the UN became responsible for creating a Jewish state.

As you can see, plans for the reestablishment of Israel were underway well before the onset of World War II. Israel’s right to exist by international law is not fundamentally based on the Nazi Holocaust, as compelling a cause as that is from a humanitarian point of view. Certainly, the Holocaust demonstrated the need for a Jewish state to protect Jewish lives. But if we believe Israel’s right to exist is rooted in a compassionate response to the Holocaust, when that compassion wears off, so will our belief that Israel has a right to exist. Israel’s fundamental right to exist under international law rests on the recognition of the Jews’ ancestral, sovereign control over identifiable land that, since their forced removal from it, remained sparsely occupied and mostly undeveloped.

Israel’s right to exist by international law is not fundamentally based on the Nazi Holocaust, as compelling a cause as that is from a humanitarian point of view.

Notwithstanding Israel’s historical and legal right to the land, and dismissing international commitments to the Jews, the UN continued with a policy of Arab appeasement. In 1947, it partitioned the remaining 22 percent of the original Mandate for a Jewish homeland into two proposed states: one for Jews and yet another, second state for Palestinian Arabs. The Partition Plan, also called UN Resolution 181, recognized the Jews’ right to sovereign control over a sliver of space amounting to a mere 10 percent of the original British Mandate. It offered the Arabs who lived within Mandate territory a state - in addition to Jordan - consisting of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Zionist pioneers felt it best to accept the UN’s offer. Ten percent of the Promised Land after nearly two thousand years was better than zero. Moreover, they had no political clout or practical means with which to resist whatever the world community told them to do. The Arabs, however, thoroughly rejected the Partition Plan, which legally voided the offer to them. Ninety percent of the land, they insisted, was not enough. They wanted it all - an empire spanning the entire Middle East, leaving no place on earth for the Jews. They mobilised for a war against Israel they felt certain they would win. The world wondered, much as it does today. Will Israel survive?

Israel's Rebirth—Into War

Israel did not want the War of Independence to occur and tried extremely hard to prevent it.¹⁹ When her every effort toward peace was rebuffed, Ben-Gurion extended a final appeal to the Arabs in his Declaration of Independence speech:

We yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions…We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to co-operate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.²⁰

The same invitation had been offered daily for weeks.^j British Mandate authorities who were stationed on the ground testified: “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives…and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.”²¹ Most, however, chose to flee, creating a local refugee crisis that would upend history. A Palestinian priest who watched the events unfold stated, “[The Arabs] fled in spite of the fact the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.”²²

Arab-Nazi Alliance

Why did so many Palestinians run from their homes and livelihoods? An overlooked historical fact is perhaps one of the most pivotal and still fuels the conflict today. An unshakeable Islamic/Arab-Nazi alliance predated World War II, and as a result of it, many Arabs vehemently despised and feared the Jews.

Early in his career, Hitler formed a pact with Jerusalem’s grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The notoriously anti-Semitic mufti held religious and political sway over Muslims throughout Palestine and the larger Middle East. He and Hitler schemed together to annihilate the Jewish people worldwide. The fuehrer would focus on Europe and the extraordinarily influential mufti would target Palestine’s growing Jewish population.²³

An unshakeable Islamic/Arab-Nazi alliance predated World War II, and as a result of it, many Arabs vehemently despised and feared the Jews.

Building on fundamental Islam’s anti-Jewish ideology, Husseini mobilized an Arab militia, which served as a formal Nazi brigade. Supplied with German weaponry, the brigade murdered Palestinian Jews in acts of heinous terror throughout World War II.²⁴ To keep the violence going, Husseini saturated the Middle East with lies about the Zionists via propaganda broadcasts radioed in from Berlin.^k So after the Holocaust ended in Europe, he and other Arab leaders hoped to immediately start another.

Creating a Refugee Crisis

When, to their profound dismay, Israel declared statehood, Palestinian Arabs panicked. An estimated 600,000 to 700,000 fled.^{25 l} Approximately 150,000 to 160,000 chose to remain inside the Jewish state.²⁶ Today, they and their descendants enjoy full democratic rights of Israeli citizenship, including a standard of living much higher than that of their brethren anywhere else in North Africa or the Middle East.

Under the influence of Muslim/Nazi anti-Semitism, the majority of Arabs who left their homes did so because their leaders told them to. Evacuations were ordered to make way for approaching armies that would quickly destroy the Jewish state.^m Arab leaders boasted that lsrael would be “driven into the [Mediterranean] sea" within a few days. Accordingly, the Higher Arab Executive gave Palestinians a choice: Quit and run, or accept Jewish protection and be regarded as a renegade in the Arab world that would imminently take over. The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem ordered its constituency out of their homes, adding “Any opposition to this order…is an obstacle to the holy war…and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.”²⁷

The Arab Legion and Arab Liberation Army directed whole-sale civilian flight form entire villages. Leaders like Iraqi prime minister Nuri Said warned, “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”²⁸ To ensure compliance, some leaders planted rumours of Israeli terror operations and non-existent atrocities.^{29 n} Shortly after the war – which to their deep humiliation they did not win – Arab leaders freely admitted to having created the refugee crisis.^o Mahmoud Abbas,^p who would later serve as president of the PA, confessed:

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.³⁰

Next week: Part II concludes the chapter, looking in more depth at the refugee crisis (including claims of Israeli atrocities) and the attempts at peace settlements since.

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 a-p refer to notes on this page.

1 The Peace Encyclopedia: Palestine, 2002.

2 Charly Wegman, “Friday May 14, 1948: Israel’s Debut”, Agence France Presse-English, 1998; Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 178-79.

3 Golda Meir, My Life (London: Futura Publications, 1989), 186.

4 Mark Lacqueur, “The Struggle for a Jewish State,” The Palestine-Israel Journal.

5 Palestine Post [predecessor to the Jerusalem Post], May 16, 1948.

6 Jewish Virtual Library, “Demography of Palestine & Israel, the West Bank and Gaza”.

7 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 392.

8 Benzion Dinur, “From the Conquest of the Land of Israel by the Arabs to the Crusades”, Israel in the Diaspora, Vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), 27-30, as cited in Netanyahu, A Durable Peace, 27.

9 Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1996), 24, 167.

10 Michael Rydelnik, Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict: What the Head-Lines Haven’t Told You (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2004), 58-59. Israel consisted mostly of swampland, desert and barren wasteland due to the Ottoman policy of denuding forests through the centuries. Peters, From Time Immemorial, 221-68.

11 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 156-7, citing Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 145, 258.

12 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 155-56, citing The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 ed. While some of Peters’ research is disputed, it has also been recently corroborated.

13 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 157.

14 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 223, 396; Shimon Apisdorf, Judaism in a Nutshell: Israel (Pikesville, Md.: Leviathan Press, 2003), 62-64; see generally Walter Lowdermilk, Palestine: Land of Promise (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1944).

15 Netanyahu, A Durable Peace, 84.

16 Ray Hanania, “The Wandering Palestinians”, Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2011.

17 See Howard Grief, The Legal Foundations and Borders of Israel Under International Law (Jerusalem: Mazo Publishers, 2008); Martin Gilbert, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 10-11.

18 As quoted in Peters, From Time Immemorial, 412.

19 Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 21-38.

20 The New Palestine 38, no. 18 (May 18, 1948): 1.

21 British Superintendent of Police Memo, Haifa, April 26, 1948, as quoted in Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 19.

22 Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949.

23 Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, 662-683, referencing Joseph Schechtman, Mufti and the Feuhrer (Loneon: Thomas Yoseloff Publishers, 1965), 139ff., 147-52; Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, 16-20, 30, 62-63.

24 Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, 62-63.

25 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 16; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge, Mass.; Cambridge University Press, 2004), 603-04; Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, 264-272, see also 8-15.

26 See for example Morris, Palestinian Refugee Problem, 588-89; Gilbert, The Arab Israeli Conflict, 57.

27 As reported in Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986, cited in Mitchell G. Bard, “The Palestinian Refugees,” Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013.

28 Myron Kaufman, The Coming Destruction of Israel (New York: American Library, 1970), 26-27, cited in Bard, “The Palestinian Refugees”; Iraqi prime minister Nimr el-Hawari, Sir Am Nakbah (Nazareth, Israel: 1952), as cited in “Refugees Forever?,” International Jerusalem Post, February 21, 2003, special supplement.

29 Karsh, Betrayed, 241-42.

30 Reported in Falastin a-Thaura, March 1973, as cited by Mitchell G. Bard, “The Refugees”. Myths and Facts Online, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013.

Why evangelical Christians support Israel

As whipped-up Palestinian rioters cry out for Jewish blood in their days of rage against ‘occupation’ of their land, we should be praying that these dear people, for whom Christ died, would instead call on the blood of Jesus for their redemption.

This is their only hope – and ours too for that matter. As Israel is tempted to quake in fear of the vicious international hatred being vented against them, may they too cry out for help from Elohim who sent his beloved Son to die as a sacrificial Lamb to atone for the sins of all who put their trust in him. The doorposts daubed in lamb’s blood back in Egypt later became a wooden cross where God himself took the punishment we deserved.

In this battle over war and peace, the hordes of hell are being unleashed against the Anointed One and his people. But the Prince of Peace – not the diplomats or politicians – has the solution.

Christian Support is Vital

As believers the world over celebrate Pentecost (Shavuot) on Sunday, I think it is highly significant that a Jerusalem Post writer has credited evangelical Christians (or Christian Zionists as they are also known among Jews) for the current political breakthrough which has seen President Trump move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the ‘city of the Great King’.

“It is evangelical Christians who are standing with Israel today in ways that Nehemiah could never have dreamed about,” wrote Tuly Weisz on 12 May.¹

In this spiritual battle, the Prince of Peace – not the diplomats or politicians – has the solution.

We’re talking about their influence on the President as well as their love for the Jewish people who gave us Jesus and the Bible including almost the entire New Testament.

Weisz had asked Christian participants of a Jerusalem conference why the embassy move was so important to them. “The answer they gave is that it is foretold in the Bible,” she wrote, citing Old Testament examples of Cyrus and Nehemiah. Meanwhile Israel’s Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett said the move represented a new era in which the international community’s relationship was based on reality and fact, not fantasy and fiction.²

Gentiles and the Gospel

It’s worth noting that those 3,000 who joined the first disciples on the Day of Pentecost in response to Peter’s sermon were Jews and proselytes from all over the known world (Acts 2:5).

An indication of the significant role Gentiles would play in spreading the good news of Israel’s God came with the healing of the centurion’s servant at the start of Jesus’ ministry. The Roman officer had humbly sought the Saviour’s help, only requiring him to “say the word” as he felt unworthy to receive him into his home.

And so the Gospel – to the Jew first (the leper who preceded this incident in Matthew 8) – was now also offered to the Gentile. We hear much about amazing grace, but Jesus was amazed by this man’s faith. The only other time he is recorded as having been amazed was by the lack of faith in his home town (Mark 6:6).

Faithful Gentiles have made an extraordinary mark on the world.

I wonder too if our Lord was also prophesying of a day when faithful Gentiles would make an extraordinary mark on the world.

The beach near Capernaum, where the Roman centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant. Picture by Charles Gardner.In Yorkshire alone in recent centuries (I am biased because I live there) I can immediately think of three men who changed the world through their faith in Jesus – William Wilberforce from Hull, a co-founder of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people who successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery, Barnsley’s Hudson Taylor, to whom millions of Chinese Christians owe their salvation, and Bradford plumber Smith Wigglesworth, who raised 14 people from the dead as he helped to pioneer the modern-day Pentecostal movement which had such a profound impact on 20^th Century Christianity.

The Power of Prayer

In honouring the Jewish people in both word and deed, we are simply building on the foundation laid by the Apostles. But we mustn’t forget the importance of prayer – after all, a ten-day prayer meeting had preceded that great initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit!

In terms of the recognition – and restoration – of Israel, the importance of prayer from men like Rees Howells and his Bible College students at Swansea in Wales cannot be underestimated. They had prayed many long hours at the time of the UN vote in 1947 before victory was secured.

In South Africa, although the government stubbornly refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself, many Christians are on their knees praying for the peace of Jerusalem. Farmer friends from where I grew up have just emailed me, saying: “We are extremely excited with the USA’s ambassadorial move to Jerusalem and continue to pray for this beautiful capital as well as for the region. What a privilege to witness what the prophets were only able to see in visions.”

In honouring the Jewish people in both word and deed, we mustn’t forget the importance of prayer.

Those nations who oppose Jewish aspirations are in for a big shock. For they will come to nothing, as Isaiah predicted long ago (Isa 60:12). Even the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign received a bloody nose with victory for Israel’s entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest despite their efforts.

Eyes on Jerusalem

It is significant of course that the United States should take the lead in recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, just as they had done back in 1948 when President Harry Truman was the first to recognise the new-born state. Apparently he took just eleven minutes to do so, but “later regretted that he waited so long”, according to US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.³

In fact, there will come a time – perhaps in the not-too-distant future – when Jerusalem will become the capital of the world (see Zechariah 14:9, 16).

Israel will soon be blessed with a Royal visit from Prince William, second-in-line to the British throne. But at the Second Coming of Jesus, which is surely also not far off judging by the signs (see Matthew 24, Mark 13 & Luke 21), they will welcome the King of Kings and Lord and Lords (Rev 19:16).

Come, Lord Jesus!

References

1 Time to start crediting the Christians. Jerusalem Post, 12 May 2018.

2 Jerusalem News Network, 16 May 2018, quoting the Washington Post.

3 JNN, 14 May 2018, quoting Arutz-7.

Trump move could provoke Armageddon scenario, but God is in charge

While the West continues to indulge in the most bizarre forms of political correctness,¹ the Middle East is bracing itself for a possible Armageddon scenario involving nuclear weapons.

The decision of President Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as a probable first step towards moving the American Embassy there could well be a catalyst for a battle of the ages.

But it’s nevertheless the right thing to do. For at some stage, difficult decisions have to be made and truth has to be acknowledged.

Are we about to see the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy that God would make Jerusalem “a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling” and “an immovable rock for all the nations” (Zech 12:2f)?

The Stage is Being Set

Iran, meanwhile, is actually trying to provoke such an end-of-world cataclysm by establishing military bases close to Israel’s Syrian border, according to Ryan Mauro, an expert on Shiite religious dogma. Their leaders, he argues, are motivated by a desire to fulfill Shia prophecy of a showdown with the Jewish state that will prompt the coming of the ‘Mahdi’, an Islamic messianic figure.²

Since both Jews and Christians are also looking for their Messiah, the scene is surely being set for an apocalyptic conflagration. And it seems tragically ironic that, with the Western world having largely convinced itself there is no god, a global conflict over spiritual roots threatens us all.

Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital could well be a catalyst for a battle of the ages, but it’s nevertheless the right thing to do.

Though a modern, secular state, Israel’s ancient roots in the Holy Land are undeniably spiritual. According to the Bible, they are specially chosen of God and wouldn’t have existed without him.

Iran has frequently threatened to destroy little Israel, which is why Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman accuses European leaders (representing Britain, France and Germany) of a head-in-the-sand attitude – “exactly like they did before World War II” – in opposing President Trump’s weakening of a nuclear deal hardly guaranteed to protect a highly vulnerable Jewish state.³

Despite threats of Palestinian protests, the Western Wall plaza fills with Jews as usual as Shabbat starts (Friday 12 December).

Ongoing Battle for Truth

At the same time the United Nations, the very body which conferred international legitimacy on Israel 70 years ago (confirming the position taken in 1920 by the San Remo conference), now seems to have fully adopted the Iranian/Palestinian position denying Jewish claims to the land, and in particular Jerusalem – a re-writing of history that has completely deceived media and politicians across the globe. In 1947 there was no Palestinian state, nor even a Palestinian people, but we have been taken in by a propaganda machine just as shocking and efficient as that run by Hitler’s spokesman Josef Goebbels.

Even parts of the Arab world are speaking against this deception. Kuwaiti columnist Abdullah Al-Hadlaq told a TV station: “Like it or not, Israel is an independent and sovereign state…” and those refusing to recognise it are “countries of tyranny and oppression”. He too makes the point that when Israel was established in 1948, there was no state called Palestine. “There is no occupation,” he adds. “There is a people returning to its promised land.”⁴

In this age-old battle for truth, God himself delivered a ‘trump’ card back in 1963 in the form of ancient documents discovered among the ruins of a 2,000-year-old mountaintop fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, where Hebrew University archaeologists were excavating the palace of King Herod. And I was there, atop Masada, just weeks ago. These Dead Sea Scrolls – the first were found just up the coast in 1947 – contained Psalms 81 to 85.

Significantly, Psalm 83 paints a completely up-to-date picture of Israel’s enemies plotting to destroy them “so that Israel’s name is remembered no more” (v4). Also found in the dig were 17 silver shekels dating from around 70 AD and inscribed with the words ‘Shekel of Israel’ and ‘Jerusalem the Holy’.⁵

The idea of Jerusalem being significant for Muslims is described as “nonsense” by Egyptian scholar and novelist Youssef Ziedan. “The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem did not exist back then [when the Koran was written], and the city was not called Al-Quds” he pointed out on television in 2015.⁶

The United Nations, the very body which conferred international legitimacy on Israel 70 years ago, now seems to have adopted the Palestinian position denying Jewish claims to the land.

God’s Greater Plan

As European leaders continue to betray Jews by defending so-called Palestinian rights, they are also turning a blind eye to the horrific plight of Christians in the Middle East while Arabs are killing each other and, in a bid to win Western support for their cause, Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas put on a sham united front, which is meaningless as the latter refuses to disarm.

Far from being united in opposition to Israel, the vast majority of Israel’s Arabs – 73% – feel a sense of belonging in the Jewish state, with 60% saying they are proud to be Israelis, according to a new poll.⁷ In addition, hundreds of Arab Christians volunteer for the Israeli Defense Force each year while there are also many instances of Muslims abandoning their faith following dreams and visions of Christ – I have met one of them.

Competing faiths: the Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on the site of the Jewish Temple. Photo by Charles Gardner.At the risk of over-simplifying the issue, it is not so much a case of Arab versus Jew as God v the devil. The latter desires darkness and destruction for mankind, but God loves both Arab and Jew, along with the rest of us Gentiles. And his plan for us all is “life in all its fullness” (John 10:10).

I enjoyed very warm Muslim-Arab hospitality during my recent tour of Israel, and commend the proprietor of the Samaritan Restaurant in Sebastia, the ancient capital of Samaria, who served the tastiest food I sampled on our travels.

It’s worth saying, too, in view of the anti-Israel stance of many Western churches, that there is huge support from Christians on the question of Jerusalem, with over half a million signatories from 168 countries backing the city as the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish people through the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’.⁸

The Day of the Lord is Near

One effect of today’s skewed Mid-East narrative is that Palestinians get all the media sympathy for the plight of their refugees, warned in 1948 to leave their homes by the surrounding Arab states, who have never since followed up on their responsibilities.

But rare mention is ever made of the 850,000 Jewish refugees forced to leave Arab countries at the same time. Thankfully they have been absorbed successfully into Israeli society, while the Palestinian refugees and their descendants continue to be used as political pawns in an anti-Semitic game of chess.

The devil desires darkness and destruction for mankind, but God loves both Arab and Jew, along with the rest of us Gentiles.

But “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, emphasis added). We are all included in his great plan of redemption. We have Heaven to gain, and Hell to shun, as we put our trust in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. But woe to those who touch the apple of God’s eye (Zech 2:8)!
God will surely vindicate – and compensate – the Jewish people (Isa 54:17; Joel 2:25). “The day of the Lord” is near (Joel 2:1f); the battle of the ages is at the door. Make sure you are ready to meet the One who is coming back to reign.

Notes

1 The Girl Guides are to allow boys ‘identifying’ as girls to shower with girls – Christian Institute.

2 Iran’s Syria bases near Israel have apocalyptic intent. World Net Daily, 23 November 2017.

3 Hoffman, G. Def. minister: 'Europeans putting heads in the sand' on Iran deal. Jerusalem Post, 15 October 2017.

4 Sumner, E. Watch: Kuwaiti writer says Israel is a legitimate state, not an occupier. Jerusalem Post, 22 November 2017.

5 New Dead Sea Scroll Found in Israel; Contains Chapters of Psalms. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 27 November 1963.

6 Palestinians Furious After Saudi Arabia Downplays Importance of Jerusalem. Israel Today, 29 November 2017.

7 Poll: Majority of Israel's Arabs 'Proud' to be Israeli. United with Israel, 23 November 2017.

8 Netanyahu Praises UWI’s Historic Jerusalem Initiative, ‘Unflinching Defense of Truth’. United with Israel, 18 October 2017.

The peace that dare not speak its name: untold story of Arab-Jewish reconciliation.

A shaft of fresh revelation dawned on me after watching the extraordinary YouTube clip featuring former terrorist Mosab Hassan Yousef berating Palestinian delegates at the UN for betraying their own people and fanning the flames of the conflict with Israel.

I can see now that British and other Western media – by censoring what is not on their agenda – are partly responsible for the continuing violence in the Middle East. Let me explain.

Son of Hamas Switches Allegiance

Yousef, son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, switched allegiance to Israel’s Shin Bet security service after witnessing the torture of fellow prisoners by their own (Arab-Muslim) people. He discovered, to his great surprise, that his Israeli interrogators were friendly and caring.

And later, in the midst of working undercover on their behalf, and saving many lives in the process by tipping off police about planned atrocities, he had a ‘Damascus Road’ experience in which met and came to love the Jewish Messiah after taking up an invitation to study the Bible at Jerusalem’s iconic YMCA – the invitation was handed to him outside the famous Damascus Gate, one of the entrances to the walled Old City.

But his life was now in double jeopardy – as if being a spy for Israel wasn’t dangerous enough, he was also forsaking his Islamic faith to follow Jesus. He was eventually forced to flee to America, where he is now courageously campaigning to spread the truth about Israel to a world media all too keen to swallow the ongoing propaganda denying Jewish connection to the territory.

‘Son of Hamas’ Mosab Hassan Yousef switched allegiance to Israel’s security service, and later came to love the Jewish Messiah.

Countering Vicious Lies

And so it was that he found himself as guest speaker for UN Watch¹ as he addressed delegates to the UN Human Rights Council last week.² As the Palestinian Authority delegation reacted with shock and irritation, he accused them of committing human rights abuses against their own people, describing the PA as “the greatest enemy of the Palestinian people”, adding: “If Israel did not exist, you would have no-one to blame.”

Damascus Gate, Jerusalem. See Photo Credits.Before Yousef spoke, country after country spewed attacks against Israel, accusing them of being a genocidal, apartheid state. But Yousef silenced them all when he accused the Palestinian leadership of being hypocrites.

“Where does your legitimacy come from?” he asked them. “The Palestinian people did not elect you and they did not appoint you to represent them. Your accountability is not to your own people. This is evidenced by your own total violation of their human rights. You kidnap Palestinian students from campus and torture them in your jails. You torture your political rivals. The suffering of the Palestinian people is the outcome of your selfish political interests.”³

And they used Israel as a scapegoat, he added.

Only One Peace Process

Yousef has found peace with the Jews, and with all men, through his relationship with Christ, having been reconciled both to God and man through his death on the cross (see Eph 2:14). His best-selling book, Son of Hamas,⁴ is still available in bookstores.

I have written widely about men like him who have come to love and honour the Jews, not through a political peace process involving endless negotiations and compromises, but through what Jesus did for all men as he took their sins and nailed them to the cross, thereby bringing an end to their enmity with one another – especially between Jew and Arab, descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, the sons of Abraham.

Yousef has found peace with the Jews, and with all men, through his relationship with Christ.

After attending a conference at Christ Church, Jerusalem, I wrote all about it in my book, Peace in Jerusalem, and continue to write about this precious subject as it lies at the very heart of the gospel which brings reconciliation between God and man and between Jew and Gentile.

Christ Church, Jerusalem. Photo: Charles Gardner.With my own eyes, I witnessed Jew and Arab embracing one another as they shared communion, representing the body and blood of the Lord who brought them together through his mercy and grace. In doing so, I also witnessed the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “For to us…a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders. And he will be called…Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6).

The Best Story Never Told

As a journalist of more than 40 years, I can spot a good story – and this, I reckoned, was the best story that has never been told: the answer to peace in the Middle East, and indeed the world. Over a two-week period, I offered my daily copy (free) to mainstream (Fleet Street) newspapers in the UK, but didn’t even receive the courtesy of a single reply to my emails.

Nevertheless, the inspiring stories were widely circulated to news outlets on four continents. So that’s why I say that the British media are partly responsible for the lack of progress in the Middle East, which has got considerably more violent since that 2014 gathering.

But it was so refreshing that historian AN Wilson tackled the ridiculous lengths to which political correctness has been taken in last Saturday’s Daily Mail,⁶ describing it as reflecting a “new dark age of intolerance”. Though not claiming to be a believer himself, he spoke up for those Christians who are treated with incredulity for believing, for instance, that abortion and sexual promiscuity are wrong.

Yet it is still very non-PC for our media to take an uncompromising stand on the Christian faith that underpins our nation with thousands of years of history, justice, innovation, education and care. It usually falls to others, these days, to spell out in no uncertain terms the total relevance to our world of the Lord Jesus Christ, who made it absolutely clear that he was not one of many options for guiding us to Heaven’s domain when he said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Notes

1 UN Watch is a Geneva-based NGO whose stated mission is “to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter”.

2 Jerusalem News Network, 29 September 2017, quoting Arutz-7.

3 Watch the full video here.

4 Written with Ron Brackin and published by Tyndale Momentum.

5 Daily Mail, 30 September 2017.

Thanks also to David Soakell of Christian Friends of Israel and South African friend Suzette van Rooyen.

Anti-Semitic ‘bullets’ fly at annual Labour Party conference.

On the day we heard news of the killing of three Israelis by a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank, the UK media was also reporting on anti-Semitic ‘bullets’ being fired at the annual conference of Her Majesty’s official Opposition.

Anti-Israel sentiment has been simmering in Britain’s Labour Party ever since hard-leftist Jeremy Corbyn took over as leader two years ago.

He had earlier promised to deal with it, but little if anything has been done and things got out of hand in Brighton, an otherwise gentle seaside resort designed for rest and refreshment.

One speaker suggested Labour should be free to debate whether the Holocaust had happened.

Amid reports of intimidation of a leading BBC correspondent, activists applauded panellists at a fringe meeting who likened supporters of Israel to Nazis. Delegates even demanded expulsion from the party of the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel – one speaker suggested Labour should be free to debate whether the Holocaust had happened!¹

Clearly, anti-Semitism is still a big problem in Mr Corbyn’s party more than a year after he pledged to get to grips with the issue. Even the chairman of the parliamentary Labour Party, John Cryer, said he had tweets from party members which made his hair stand on end and were “redolent of the 1930s”.²

‘Natural’ Party for Britain’s Jews

All the more shocking is the fact that, until recently, Labour has been the ‘natural’ party for Britain’s 290,000 Jews – but no longer. So what has happened? Well, it was also once the natural party for Methodists and other non-conformist Christians who had emerged from the awakening of biblical truths following the Reformation sparked by Martin Luther 500 years ago.

After all, Labour was founded on the Christian ethics of men like Keir Hardie who were keen to translate the good neighbourliness and social justice taught by the Gospel into the lives of ordinary working people. Indeed, members still pride themselves on being ‘caring’ individuals, which is one reason, no doubt, why minorities such as the Jewish community felt at home among them. But in reality, the heart and passion of their message has been lost in Marxist dogma and ideology, far removed from the freedom from such ‘slavery’ expressed in the Bible.

Mr Corbyn said he wanted a ‘kinder politics’, but instead we have a bunch of bully-boys replicating the behaviour of the Palestinian Authority.

Put simply, God has been thrown out of the party window. At the same conference two years ago, Mr Corbyn said he wanted a ‘kinder politics’,³ but instead we have a bunch of bully-boys replicating the behaviour of the Palestinian Authority brainwashing their children to hate Jews.

Born into the caring world of Christianity, Labour has brought much good to society – most notably through the National Health Service which became the envy of the world – but has made the disastrous mistake of devouring the hand that has fed it (ideologically speaking). Worst of all, Labour has turned on the nation that brought God to the world, specifically through the Bible and the Jewish Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ!

Ridiculously Misinformed

And in berating Zionists as Nazis, they are ridiculously misinformed. For example, Israeli search-and-rescue teams are helping island communities shattered by the recent hurricanes, and their medics are tending to the wounds of those caught up in the Syrian civil war. In fact, dozens of Syrian civilians have written letters of gratitude to Israel and its defence forces. One 27-year-old Syrian woman wrote: “We thought that Israel was our enemy, but we realized that it’s good to us. I want to thank the hospitals in Israel and the Israeli army for all its help to the…Syrian children.”

A 30-year-old married man wrote: “After seven years of revolution in which we have lost lives and blood, there was nowhere for the wounded Syrians to go and receive treatment. I am grateful to the State of Israel for the help it provided to all the wounded people of Syria.”⁴

Was this how Nazis behaved in World War II?

‘What we are seeing is really dangerous…deeply sinister, nasty and quite frightening.’

Conservative MP Andrew Percy, who has also been a target of anti-Semitism, said of the shenanigans in Brighton: “What we are seeing is really dangerous. There is a cult of personality around Jeremy Corbyn that will not allow any questioning of him or his views. It is deeply sinister, nasty and quite frightening.”⁵

Another Tory MP, Sheryll Murray, had swastikas daubed on her General Election posters earlier this year.

These are the antics that remind us of Nazism, not the perfectly reasonable aspirations of Zionists seeking to secure the world’s only refuge for the Jewish people.

Confusing Ideological Alliance

What we are seeing, in fact, is a somewhat confusing ideological alliance been the Marxist-oriented hard left and the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the far-right Islamists who wish to drive Israel into the sea. Whatever you care to call this mish-mash of dogmas, they reflect long discredited, old-style, totalitarian regimes in which no other view is tolerated outside of what is judged to be politically correct.

This lack of tolerance is becoming endemic on our university campuses and is extremely worrying for the future of our democracy, with a vast swathe of young people very nearly sending Jeremy Corbyn – ‘friend’ of Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah – to No. 10 Downing Street.

The God-haters are on the march; they’ve already dismantled the banners of truth and justice that launched the Labour movement.

Is this the kind of Orwellian police state the millennials really want? When will we wake up and smell the coffee?

God Help Us!

The God-haters are on the march; they’ve already dismantled the banners of truth and justice that launched the Labour movement, and decent people across the country sit idly by letting it all happen.

Journalists have joked about the way in which much of our youth have heaped Messiah-like status on Jeremy Corbyn, and even remarked on the fact he has the same initials as Jesus Christ. The trouble is that it’s not funny.

It’s so obvious that we need to restore the place of God in our society. Have we not learnt any lessons from the disastrous experiments of China, the Soviet Union, Venezuela and North Korea? Apparently not, because – in the very English, gentrified surroundings of Brighton, a Soviet-style UK is assembling before our very eyes.

God help us! And I mean, only God can help us!

Notes

1 Daily Mail, 26 September 2017.

2 Ibid.

3 He had urged delegates: “Cut out the personal abuse, cut out the cyber-bullying and especially the misogynistic abuse online and let’s get on with bringing real values back into politics.” BBC News, 29 September 2015.

4 Bridges for Peace, 15 September 2017.

5 Daily Mail, 26 September 2017.