1939 Palestinian Flag. What does it look like? Surprised?

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Nov 14, 2014

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This a Larousse French dictionary from 1939. In the appendix it lists all the then current flags of the world in alphabetical order. You’ll notice that for Germany at that time the flag was the Nazi one replete with Zwastika which proves that this was pre-1945 ( before 1945) ! .
Now, alphabetically, look for the Palestinian Flag. YES , there is one. What does it look like? Surprised? Oh, but you thought (Mandate Jewish) Palestine was an Islamic Arab-,Turkish-, Circassian Sovereign State that the bad Jews took over , right?

Confused?
From 1920-1948 a ( class ‘A’ Mandate) State of Palestine existed as per international law but it was, as all of its major institutions, Jewish. Until the 1960s, name “Palestine” resonated as something Jewish to peoples ears. The 4,000 year old Jewish homeland or “Land of Israel” or the “Holy Land” were all synonymous!!
The British as legal Mandatory over the Mandate managed or mismanaged the state partially with Jewish Auxilary until Jews regained official sovereignty in 1948, by declaring independence.
The U.N. did not recreate Israel as some people claim.

Column One: Responding to the slaughter

The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred.

Terror attack scene in Jerusalem . (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

What we are seeing in Jerusalem today is not simply Palestinian terrorism. It is Islamic jihad. No one likes to admit it. The television reporters insist that this is the worst possible scenario because there is no way to placate it.

There is no way to reason with it.

So what else is new? The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder to pretend away the obvious fact that we cannot placate our enemies.

No “provocation” by Jews drove two Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.

No “frustration” with a “lack of progress” in the “peace process,” can motivate people to run over Jewish babies or attempt to assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.

The reason that these terrorists have decided to kill Jews is that they take offense at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They take offense because all their lives they have been taught that Jews should live at their mercy, or die by their sword.

They do so because they believe, as former Jordanian MP Ya’qub Qarash said on Palestinian television last week, that Christians and Muslims should work together to forbid the presence of Jews in “Palestine” and guarantee that “not a single Jew will remain in Jerusalem.”

Our neighbors are taught that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, signed the treaty of Hudaybiyah in 628 as a ploy to buy time during which he would change the balance of power between his army and the Jews of Kuraish. And 10 years later, once his army gained the upper hand, he annihilated the Jews.

Throughout the 130-year history of modern Zionism, Islamic Jew-hatred has been restrained by two forces: the desire of many Arabs to live at peace with their Jewish neighbors; and the ability of Israeli authorities and before them, British authorities, to deter the local Arab Muslims from attacking.

The monopoly on Arab Muslim leadership has always belonged to the intolerant bigots. Support for coexistence has always been the choice of individuals.

Haj Amin el-Husseini’s first act as the founder of the Palestinian Arab identity was to translate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and serialize them in the local press.

During the Arab jihad of 1936-1939, Husseini’s gangs of murderers killed more Arabs than the British did. He targeted those who sought peaceful coexistence with the Jews.

His successor Yasser Arafat followed his example.

During the 1988-1991 Palestinian uprising, the PLO killed more Palestinians than the IDF did. Like Husseini, Arafat targeted Palestinians who worked with Israel.

Since Israel imprudently embraced Arafat and the PLO in 1993 and permitted them to govern the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and exert direct influence and coercive power over the Arabs of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s governing institutions have used all the tools at their disposal to silence those who support peaceful coexistence with Israel, and indoctrinate the general public in Islamic and racial Jew-hatred.

Much has been made of the recent spike in incitement of violence by Palestinian leaders led by Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. But the flames Abbas and his comrades are throwing would not cause such conflagrations if they hadn’t already indoctrinated their audience to desire the destruction of the Jews.

You cannot solicit murder among those who haven’t been taught that committing murder is an act of heroism.

Today Israel must take swift, effective action to stop the slaughter. The damage that has been done to the psyches of the Arabs of Jerusalem and their brethren in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, cannot be repaired in a timeline relevant to the task of preventing the next massacre.

This means that for the time being, on the tactical level, Israel’s only play is strengthening its deterrence.

Israel faces two major constraints in meeting this challenge.

First, the European Union and the Obama administration, as well as the US foreign policy elite, are obsessively committed to a policy of empowering the Palestinians against Israel.

The Spanish parliament’s decision to go ahead with its planned vote to recognize the “State of Palestine,” just hours after the massacre at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood shows that the EU’s dedication to strengthening the Palestinians against Israel is entirely unrelated to events on the ground.

They don’t care who the Palestinians are or what they do. For their own reasons they have made supporting the Palestinians at Israel’s expense their top foreign policy priority.

Similarly, US President Barack Obama couldn’t contain his compulsion to pressure Israel even in his statement condemning the massacre. Even there, Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians equally to restrain themselves.

Obama’s unabated hostility toward Israel was brought to bear on Tuesday afternoon when the State Department restated its rejection of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem and its desire to see the homes of terrorist murderers left intact for the welfare of their terror-supporting families.

On Tuesday, Israel’s social media outlets were filled with angry rebukes of Western media outlets from CNN to MSNBC to CBS, to the BBC. All these networks, and many others, did everything in their power to explain away the synagogue slaughter as just another instance of a cycle of violence. That is, they all sought to frame the discussion in a way that would lead their viewers to the conclusion that the slaughter of praying rabbis was justified.

While appalling, the coverage was not the least surprising. The Western elite media’s devotion to their false narrative of Israeli culpability for all the problems in the region is absolute. Networks would rather wreck their professional reputations than tell the truth.

Together with the EU, the American policy elite and the Obama administration, the media place Israel’s leaders in a bind. Every step they take to defend the country and protect the rights of Jews meets with automatic and libelous condemnation.

The other impediment Israel faces in deterring anti-Jewish violence against its citizenry is its own weakness. Since the inception of the phony peace process, Israel has continuously rewarded the Palestinians for their murderous violence against its citizenry.

From Israel’s transfer of control over all the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria, to its forcible expulsion of its own people from Gaza, to its repeated releases of terrorists from prison, to its continued transfer of hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenues to the PA, Israel has showed the Palestinians at every turn that far from being punished for murdering Jews, they will be rewarded for doing so.

Given the US and European support for the Palestinians, Israeli declarations that there will be no future releases of terrorists have no credibility. If terrorists aren’t killed on the spot, they can assume that they will eventually be released; if not in exchange for an Israeli hostage, Israel will release them in an attempt to placate the White House.

But even with these constraints on its actions, Israel can take steps to deter its hate-filled enemies from attacking.

Since the current campaign of murder is being carried out by terrorists largely acting on their own accord, the measures Israel adopts to stop the attacks should be directed primarily against individual terrorists. As for action against the PA, it needs to be credible, consistent and directed to where it will hurt Palestinian leaders the most: their wallets.

With regard to the individual terrorists, the government has made much of its intention to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it sounds good, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this punitive measure, which is a relic of the British Mandate.

Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.

All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.

If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children’s inheritance of the homes of their fathers’ killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.

Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise.

Just as Israel has repeatedly buckled under US pressure to release terrorists from jail, so it has bowed to US pressure to continue to fund the PA by transferring the tax revenues it collects on goods imported to the PA.

Assuming that the government is too weak to stand up to the Americans, at a minimum it can see that the money is properly used.

To that end, the Knesset should pass a law permitting Israeli terror victims to sue the PA for actual and punitive damages in Israel courts. The sums awarded to the victims should be taken from the tax revenues Israel collects for the PA. The law should apply retroactively to all victims of Palestinian terror carried out since the establishment of the PA in May 1994.

Not only should the law permit Israeli terror victims to sue the PA. It should dictate actions the Justice Ministry must take to assist them in bringing suit.

Israel should also revoke citizenship and residency rights not only from terrorists themselves, but from those who enjoy citizenship and residency rights by dint of their relationship with the terrorists.

Wives who received Israeli residency or citizenship rights though marriage to terrorists should have their rights revoked, as should the children of the terrorists.

Since Tuesday’s massacre, aside from Abbas’s phony condemnation, the Palestinian leadership and public from Fatah to Hamas have been unanimous in their praise for the atrocity.

Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.

If our leaders fail to take these or similar actions, and suffice with complaining about incitement, their condemnations of the murder of Jews will ring as hollow as those sounded by the BBC, Obama and Abbas.


Caroline B. Glick is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.
www.CarolineGlick.com

Blogs Zion's Corner

MainBlogsZalmi Unsdorfer

A Persistence of Savagery

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By Zalmi Unsdorfer

11/21/2014, 1:11 AM

Zalmi Unsdorfer

Zalmi Unsdorfer is a Religious Zionist and Chairman of Likud-Herut UK....

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The cry went up: “Al Aksa is in danger … kill all the Jews wherever you see them!”

And so they came with axes and meat cleavers and hacked the Jews to death.
I speak not of this week, but of August 1929 when 67 Jews were hacked to death in Chevron in response to the same Al Aksa war cry based on the same blood libels of Arabs being killed by Jews.

It seems bizarre that just last week, in Chevron for Shabbat Chayei Sarah, I walked along Rechov Tarpat (1929) talking about that massacre which came so close to repeating itself this week in Jerusalem.

I was walking with Arieh Kiselstein whose father (pictured above with his injured father and sister) was 4 years old when rescued from under a heap of slain Jewish bodies.  At the time of the Chevron massacre, there was only one British policeman in charge of the whole town.  Fortunately this time our own police responded quickly enough to prevent many more deaths.

The lesson is that however much our people have progressed in 85 years – from hapless refugees to citizens of the most powerful and successful state in the region – our enemies have not changed one iota from the bloodthirsty automatons of jihadi incitement they’ve always been.

Before the 1929 massacre, Jews and Arabs had an almost idyllic coexistence in Chevron.  Jewish doctors treated Arab patients and Arab kids babysat for Jewish families in complete trust and harmony. This is the kind of co-existence the current-day Osloists and peaceniks still dream of as part of their Two-State Solution.  But Chevron 1929 was a wake-up call to our people just as shrill as last Tuesday should be.

This was not about Abbas. He is a man of straw.  This is way above his pay-grade.

This is being orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood with dreams of re-creating the Ottoman Empire as a Sharia caliphate with its capital in Jerusalem.

Having been unceremoniously turfed out of Egypt within an inch of reaching ultimate presidential power, the Brotherhood now seeks new relevance in the region and has chosen Jerusalem as its new powerbase.  Its tentacles are everywhere, including the White House which regularly entertains the leaders of its American chapter, known as CAIR; the Council on American Islamic Relations.  And the Brotherhood now has the patronage of Qatar, the world’s new spigot of terror funding and sponsors of Hamas.

In 1929 the Arabs offered the Sephardi community leader Rabbi Slonim a deal: hand over the local yeshiva boys and we will let your families live. The rabbi refused and was shot dead.  In the end 55 of the 67 killed were yeshiva boys.
Just as 1929 was not a massacre of kibbutzniks, Tuesday’s attack was not against a secular target or any ‘symbol of the Zionist occupation’.  And as we all know, Har Nof is hardly an IDF recruitment centre. Think of Mercaz Harav, and the school in Toulouse and you will realize that these were not attacks on Zionism, but on Judaism itself.

The lesson of 1929 was that co-existence is an illusion which will only last as long as the next imam’s cry of Itbah al-Yahud.  We need to separate ourselves from the Arabs and to stop employing them in our stores, restaurants and building sites. There are hordes of peace-loving Filipinos and Eastern Europeans who will be only too pleased to take their places and their jobs in our land of milk and honey without lusting daily for Jewish blood.

Fundamentally Freund: A Palestinian pogrom in Jerusalem

A government’s primary responsibility is to protect its people and ward off threats to their security and well-being. And the PPA has shown once again that it is truly such a threat.

Terror attack scene in Jerusalem . (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

Yesterday morning, two Palestinian Arabs entered the Kehillat Yaakov yeshiva and synagogue complex in Jerusalem and proceeded to slaughter Jewish men at prayer.

Armed with guns, knives and a meat cleaver, our “partners in peace” shot, slashed and stabbed their victims, leaving pools of blood and horror in their wake, before being eliminated by the police.

It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable deed.

This act of Palestinian brutality was so heinous that even Israelis hardened by decades of terror responded with disbelief. Indeed, anyone still thinking of giving the Palestinians a state should take a long, hard look at the disturbing photos of the synagogue slaughter that are circulating online.

In one such picture, a Jewish man lies dead on the synagogue floor, wrapped in his tallit and tefillin and surrounded by blood stains, evoking scenes reminiscent of the days when the Cossacks massacred our people. It is a startling and distressing testimony to the savagery of our foes, to the bestial depths of inhumanity to which the Palestinians are willing to descend in their war against the Jewish state.

After all, what kind of human being wakes up in the morning, grabs a few weapons, and then walks into a house of prayer intent on maiming and murdering innocent people? Guns were not sufficient for these savages. They employed axes and knives, which are far more intimate and bloody weapons, the kind that require physical contact with the victim rather than the less personal act of pulling a trigger.

If it is possible for a person to strip away the Divine image with which he was created, then the Palestinian terrorists who perpetrated this attack have surely succeeded in doing so.

Make no mistake: this was a pogrom, a premeditated orgy of violence that was fuelled by incitement coming from the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas. For weeks, Abbas has been trying to ignite a religious war, instigating Palestinians to “defend” al-Aksa Mosque and use “any means” at their disposal. He repeatedly harped on the religious symbol of the Temple Mount, attempting to stir up primal passions and ancient hatreds.

Is it therefore any surprise that two Palestinians went ahead and attacked a synagogue? Shortly after the incident came to an end, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch went before reporters and sounded like a broken record, repeating the same empty promises he has made after previous attacks, insisting that we will prevail even as he failed to offer any substantive ideas as to how that will happen.

Frankly, I am tired of the meaningless mantras and barren babble of many of our politicians. The time for tough talk is over. Now is the time for tough action, for measures that will change the course of events and punish those behind this evil deed.

For God’s sake, Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, is under attack. Stabbings, stonings, premeditated vehicular attacks, rioting on the Temple Mount and now an assault on a synagogue.

The only way to stop this spiral of violence from spinning further out of control is to go to the source, to the root of the problem.

Simply put, it is time to topple the Palestinian Authority (PA ) and declare to the world once and for all: there will never be a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

Abbas, like his predecessor Yasser Arafat, has used the PA as a springboard to attack Israel in international forums abroad while fomenting anti-Jewish violence here at home. It is the PA that is leading the charge to demonize and delegitimize Israel even as it encourages terrorism against the Jewish state.

Throughout the years, the Palestinians have proven again and again that they do not want peace, are not interested in it and prefer to resort to violence to achieve their aims. How much longer must we tolerate acts of barbarism and terror? For the sake of Israel’s future, we cannot and must not allow a hostile terrorist entity to continue to exist in Judea and Samaria. Ever since it was established in 1994, the PA has been a poisonous thorn in Israel’s side. Rather than bringing peace to the region, it has incessantly promoted violence and bloodshed. The PA long ago outlived any usefulness that some may have hoped it would serve. It should be demolished forthwith and Israel should assert full control over the area.

Will there be a heavy price to pay diplomatically? Certainly. And will it be difficult to implement? Absolutely. But a government’s primary responsibility is to protect its people and ward off threats to their security and well-being. And the Palestinian Authority has shown once again that it is truly such a threat.

So let’s stop appeasing the terrorists and start opposing them. The blood of our brothers, of our fellow Jews, is crying out to us from the Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem, and from all the other sites of Palestinian terrorism over the past two decades. Let us finally heed their cry and prevent further suffering by dismantling the Palestinian terrorist entity once and for all.

Just To Be Clear About It

The Palestinians or should I say the Muslims have been honest about one thing.  They have said repeatedly that their goal is to destroy the nation of Israel and kill every Jew living there.   Every person and every nation who supports them knows this.  Therefore, all who demand a Palestinian State are also demanding the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. 

It wasn't just two Palestinian Muslims who walked into a peaceful prayer service today and began to hack, slash, dismember and shoot people.  Most of the world was there helping them....The UN, the US, Peace Niks, BDS, Gay Pride to name but a few.   The list also includes members of Peace Now,  Yesh Atid, HaTanuah, Balad, Meretz etc. etc.  etc.  

Any and all who in any way support Islam support the destruction of the state of Israel and the massacre  the Jewish people.  

I know much worse will come, and that events like today will not cause so much as a blink of the eye or the slightest shift of hardened hearts.  Indeed many danced for joy today, like the families of these  perversions of humanity.  Most of this world  is hell bent on the destruction of the land and the people of the God of the Jews and the Christians.  But there is something else that some of us know.  That same God, who calls himself the God of Israel, said that as sure as the sun and the moon rise and set, he will see to it that the Jewish people and the nation of Israel live.  We will not be destroyed.

Our God has also promised that those who did this today will be destroyed completely as a people because of their unquenchable hatred and their violence to their brothers, the Jews.

It is written. Amen

Sheer Depravity

As the victims of this morning's massacre at a Jerusalem synagogue are laid to rest, more details emerge of the horrific killing-spree.

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By Ari Soffer

First Publish: 11/18/2014, 6:43 PM

Worshipers were cut down as they prayed

Israeli Government Press Office

As the four victims of this morning's massacre at the Kehillat Bnai Torah Yeshiva Synagogue in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood were laid to rest Tuesday afternoon, Israelis are still in shock at the depravity of the attack on unarmed worshipers as they prayed.
Terrorists Ghassan and Uday Jamal stormed the synagogue early Tuesday morning armed with knives, a meat cleaver and a pistol, inflicting horrific wounds on their victims, which also included eight injured - four of them seriously.
The terrorists were finally killed in a shootout with police.
More and more details are now emerging from eyewitness accounts and photographs from the scene of the slaughter. Israel's government press office has released shocking pictures from the immediate aftermath, showing murdered worshipers still draped in their prayer shawls and wearing tefillin (phylacteries).
Warning - Graphic Images:

Israeli Government Press Office

Israeli Government Press Office

"One of the worshipers came out full of blood, and said: there was a massacre," a witness told IDF Radio. "Police took only 11 minutes to arrive and paramedics arrived five minutes later."
Sarah Abrahams, a horrified resident, described scenes of carnage.
"I was going for a morning walk and passing by on the road above the synagogue," she said.
"Someone told me not to go any closer and that there was something big going on, but I walked down to see.
"There were people running from the synagogue, and a man sitting on the pavement covered in blood, it looked like he has been stabbed," she said.
"The police were already there, and when one of the terrorists emerged from the synagogue they shot him on the steps.
"Two people came out with their faces half missing, looking like they'd been attacked with knives."
As she spoke, medics brought out four bodies one by one, each wrapped in white plastic, and loaded them gently into ambulances.

The face of evil: Terrorists Uday and Ghassan Jamal Channel 10

Grisly images from inside the synagogue showed prayer books and traditional white prayer shawls drenched in blood, and a wide arc of blood splattered across walls and bookshelves.
Fighting back tears, Moshe Eliezer said he had narrowly avoided being at the scene after oversleeping.
"This is a yeshiva community. Ninety percent don't serve in the army. We're not violent," he said.
Even Israeli emergency workers, who are no strangers to the bloody scenes of terrorist attacks, were shocked by the sheer scale and brutality of the slaughter
Moti Bukchi who went inside to help the wounded described scenes of horror.
"The scene inside was harrowing, with a lot of blood," he told AFP.
"Inside the synagogue some people were wounded by gunshots, others had chopped off limbs caused by a meat cleaver," he said.
"We have seen things here for the first time - a man goes in with a meat cleaver and starts to attack people and chop off their limbs? That is something new."
Another emergency worker and local resident, Eli Pollak, described what he saw as "one of the cruelest scenes I have ever witnessed."
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav said what he saw resembled images from the holocaust.
"I don't remember seeing a disaster scene as shocking as this, (the victims) were wrapped in talit (prayer shawls) and tefilin (phylacteries)," he said, describing "puddles, rivers of blood throughout the entire synagogue, siddurim (prayer books) thrown all over the floor - a sight that we only recognize from the Holocaust, from the period of the Holocaust."
"These are Jews who got up early in the morning to pray to the Creator of the World, and in the middle of their prayers - in the middle of a religious act, of an act of faith, not of conflict - were attacked...I do not know what ismore shocking than this."
Meanwhile, Palestinians celebrated the massacre.

Evil: Arabs in Jerusalem wield axes and guns in a macabre ceremony celebrating the attacks Reuters

In Gaza and Bethlehem revelers handed out candies and celebrated with passersby, while in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukhaber, where the two terrorists behind the attack lived, family members gleefully celebrated their "martyrdom."
"We responded with shouts of joy when we received the news about their deaths," Ala'a Abu Jamal said of his cousins Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal to Yedioth Aharonoth. "People here distributed candies to guests who visited us, and there was joy for the martyrs."
The party didn't last long for the Abu Jamal's though; police raided the neighborhood and arrested 12 people, including several family members. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered the demolition of the terrorists' homes, and Interior Minister Gilad Erdan announced he will be expelling the wife of one of the killers from Jerusalem.

MainBlogsTuvia Brodie

The US votes: throw Israel under the bus

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By Tuvia Brodie

11/14/2014, 3:11 PM

Tuvia Brodie

Tuvia Brodie has a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh under the name...

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Democrats and Republicans in America are still taking about recent US elections (November 4, 2014).  As a result of those mid-term elections, Democrats are reeling. Republicans are smiling.

Republicans now control both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The key word here is, ‘control’.

Republican control of Congress doesn’t bode well for the current (Democratic) President. A US President usually has trouble governing when the Party that opposes him has such power.

Therefore, it isn’t a surprise that talk opposing the President’s policies should pop up as soon as elections results were clear. What might surprise some is that much of that talk has used the word, ‘impeachment’.
It’s been only ten days since that election. But we’ve already seen at least ten news stories about ‘impeachment’.
That’s what happens to losers. They get thrown under the proverbial bus—sometimes, by their erstwhile friends.

It’s too early to tell if that ‘bus’ will run over the US president. But those of us who live in Israel know what it’s like to get thrown under a bus by a so-called friend. We know because there’s been another ‘election’. This ‘election’ was about Israel, not the US Congress.

This so-called ‘election’ wasn’t advertised. There were no ballot boxes. There were no announcements. But the results of this ‘election’ are as real as those US elections.

Israel lost. It’s now been thrown under the bus.

This ‘election’ is the choice the current White House administration has made for its Middle East foreign policy. The White House has elected to support terror over democracy.

We are reminded of this ‘election’ by a comment Jonathan S. Tobin has just made about Hamas (“Wealthy Terrorists Don’t Need Foreign Aid”, Commentary, November 13, 2014). It seems that Hamas is the world’s second richest terrorist organization, second only to ISIS (what we call, ‘The Islamic State’) (“Forbes Israel: ISIS is World's Richest Terrorist Organisation in History”, International Business Times, November 12, 2014).

ISIS has perhaps $2 billion in assets. Hamas has $1 billion. By contrast, the Taliban rank fifth. They have a paltry $400 million. Al Qaeda seems downright poor. It has only $150 million.

Remember AL Qaeda and the Taliban? America went to war against them. American spilt its blood fighting them.

They’re pikers compared to Hamas.

Now, the wealth spread between Hamas and Al Qaeda/Taliban is going to get bigger—much bigger.  You see, the international community has just committed to donate $5.4 billion to Hamas (Tobin, ibid).

The last time the world gave money to Hamas was to rebuild Gaza after the November 2012 war that Hamas had started with Israel. Hamas used much of that money to rearm--and to build massive terror tunnels for the next war with Israel, which just ended in August, 2014.

Now, Hamas will receive even more money to ‘rebuild’.  It’s going to get $5.4 billion.

Hamas has already announced that it isn’t done with its tunnels--which, you may note, have only one use: to cross into Israel in order to kill and kidnap Jews. Hamas needs money to rebuild what Israel has just destroyed.
Hamas will receive $5.4 billion.

According to this report (International Business Times, ibid), terror groups fund their operations from theft, drugs and extortion. ISIS’s main source of revenue comes from oil stolen from captured oil-fields in Iraq and Syria. It earns perhaps $3 million a day from this oil.

Hamas earns its revenue from ‘Gaza’. The report says that “the group's takeover of Gaza in 2007 was the point when it entered ‘the big league’” (ibid).
This means that Hamas doesn’t run Gaza as a state, community or civil municipality for the benefit of its population. It runs Gaza as a criminal enterprise. It uses the proceeds of that enterprise to wage terror war against Israel. Now, it will have an opportunity to fund its terror plans by carving cash from the newly donated $5.4 billion.

Read the Hamas Charter. The Hamas raison d’etra is not to help Gazans. Its Charter states that its purpose is to destroy the Jewish state. It declares that there is no political solution to the ‘Palestinian question’. The only solution is Jihad—holy war against the Jews in Israel.

In writing about the $5.4 billion commitment to Gaza, Tobin observes that “the most curious thing about this exercise in international philanthropy was that no one thought to ask Hamas to pay for at least some of the damage they caused by igniting a bloody war” (ibid).

He needn’t have been so curious. The nations have already answered that question: they have already voted to support terror over democracy. We saw that in the 50-day war just past—when the greatest leader (Barack Obama) of the greatest nation (America) openly sided with Hamas against Israel.
Last week, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a New York audience that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilians casualties” in Gaza (see Jonathan Tobin, “Dempsey debunks US attacks on Israel”, Commentary, November 7, 2014). This is an extraordinary statement, given how the US behaved during that war.
During this war, the US cast its vote for terror. It led a stampede against Israel. It accused Israel of killing ‘too many’ civilians. It told the world that Israel was killing civilians in an 'overly disproportionate' manner (ibid).

Those American anti-Israel accusations didn’t go unnoticed.

The UN, for example, took notice. It called for a war crimes investigation of Israel.

Meanwhile, the criminal, brutal and cynical Hamas ruthlessly used civilians as human shields (a war crime). Hamas did this publicly. It boasted about doing it. Yet the US was at the front of the ‘Israel is killing Gazans’ attack.
That didn’t go unnoticed.

Hamas and Fatah certainly noticed. As a result of that US support, they bring their war to destroy the Jewish state right into the heart of Jerusalem, the nation’s capital. They bring their war directly to the heart of Zion, the Temple Mount.

The US continues to support them against Israel.

The US has voted. Like the rest of the world, it will throw Israel under the bus.

Our Hope and Our Faith Part 1

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Our Hope and Our Faith Part 1

1 Peter 1:20-21, “He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

For all of this century and the better part of last century there has been an unabashed, enthusiastic, and merciless assault on the Christ, the singularity of Him, the nature of Him, the uniqueness of Him, and the divinity of Him.

From without and from within the church, wherever you turn nowadays there is someone somewhere eager to besmirch the name Jesus, to minimize His importance in our redemption, to lower Him to nothing more than a nice guy who said quaint things that made a lot of sense, but nowhere near the only begotten Son of God through whom we come to believe and have life everlasting.

Men today are no longer servants of Christ, they are spiritual people, with spiritual awareness, and spiritual sensitivity, who are open to the possibility of there being many paths to God, and even to their being many gods in what we, as open minded global citizens, have come to term Zion, paradise, heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana, Arcadia, Elysium, bliss, or the Promised Land, depending on your flavor of spirituality and the doctrine you’ve formulated all by your lonesome regarding the afterlife.

Each god gets a patch of real estate wherein they entertain their most loyal of servants, and rather than hold true to the Biblical edict that there is but one God and one heaven, we’re teaching people that it’s more like the United States of Paradise than one singular place.

If the devil is fighting this hard at trying to accomplish something for so long, in this case minimizing the need for Jesus, our first and most important questions must be, why?

The devil is not your friend. He is not trying to expand your thinking, he is not trying to make you a better individual, nor is he attempting to make you more tolerant and all-embracing for your spiritual betterment. So why is he trying so hard to do away with Jesus?

Because he knows the truth of what Peter asserts, a truth much of the church seems to have chosen to ignore, the very true reality that it is through Christ that we come to believe in God.

Without Jesus, there is no path to God. Without Jesus, there is no way, there is no truth, and subsequently there is no life.  

The enemy has one purpose, and that is to keep as many of God’s creation out of the place Jesus went to prepare for those who believe. He will do all that is in his power to do, he will lie, cajole, misrepresent, obfuscate, omit, and pull every underhanded trick you could possibly imagine and twice as many that you likely couldn’t, to derail you from the path, and compromise you in some manner or fashion.

To believe that the enemy is giving advice to Christians out of the goodness of his heart and because he is such a magnanimous fellow, is as funny and simultaneously impossible as one political party giving sage advice to the other as to how they could better win elections.

People who shoot themselves in the foot are not long for this world, and the enemy’s been around long enough to know better.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Our Hope and Our Faith Part 2

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Our Hope and Our Faith Part 2

While the enemy is doing his utmost to minimize Jesus, not to be outdone, by and large the spiritual leaders of the day, regardless of denominational affiliation, are themselves busy tearing down the household of faith brick by brick. One of the most useful and effective tools these men have in their arsenal as pertains to their pursuit of making the house of God wholly unrecognizable, is the notion of cultural relevancy.

Think back on it, and you will be surprised how many times you’ve heard preachers insist that the church has to be culturally relevant in order to reach the world.

If it were not so tragic, the notion of cultural relevancy would be downright funny. It is absurd on its face to think that in order to pull someone out of the muck you must first do a summersault into the muck, and backstroke alongside those in the mire in order to relate, and be relevant in their worldview.

Maybe it’s my translation of the Bible, perhaps I missed it somewhere along the way, but having read the gospels pretty regularly for the last quarter of a century or so, I have yet to find any passage wherein Jesus insisted we must be culturally relevant.

He didn’t say, ‘go into all the world and be culturally relevant,’ He said, ‘go and preach the Gospel!’

The problem with cultural relevance is that culture is always trying to push the envelope. The culture of yesteryear is not the culture of today, and sadly, the culture of tomorrow will look very little like the present culture. A small stud in the ear becomes a gauge (if you haven’t seen these things they are downright scary, it’s where people actually stretch out their ear skin until it just flaps there) then two gauges, a nose ring, an eyebrow ring, tattoo sleeves, face tattoos, branding, cutting, and whatever else culture seems as hip, and relevant. I’m waiting for the first guy just to peel off his face like a grape, and see the trend take off like gangbusters.

Pretty soon, unless you’re a transgender taking the pulpit in full drag, while having a lesbian parishioner carrying your gender neutral child whom you plan on naming Quince, well, you’re just an old fuddy-duddy who refuses to change with the times, and embrace the new culture.

I’ve been keeping track of the culturally relevant churches throughout this once great nation, and one thing is demonstrably undeniable: the more culturally relevant a church becomes, the less spiritually relevant it is!

In the end what we end up doing is offering the same kind of worldliness as the world offers, only at a 10% cost of one’s yearly income. If there is no difference between the house of God and the children of darkness except that I perpetually sow seeds in the hopes of reaping a financial harvest, why not cut out the middle man and just buy lotto tickets with that money?

While we’re on the topic, we give because our hearts compel us to give, we give because we want to meet a need, or feed a hungry individual, or clothe a naked one, or care for an orphan, or help spread the gospel, but not because Jesus will send me a check for 1000% of my invested capital at the end of first quarter.

Jesus didn’t die so that we would be culturally relevant. Jesus died that through Him and His shed blood we might be saved, believe in God, and have our faith and hope anchored in Him.

So what’s the point of today’s post? The point is a simple one. If you are in a church striving to be more culturally relevant than scripturally sound, you are wasting your time and your energy, and sooner rather than later the things that will become accepted practice within its walls will make your gag reflex kick in like nobody’s business.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Into the Fray: On the cusp of carnage? by Martin Sherman

11/13/2014 22:11

A perfect storm is brewing for Israel. After years of counterproductive concessions, if the Jews wish to preserve their sovereignty, what is required is ruthless resolve, not reticent restraint.

Border Police officers patrol Temple Mount. (photo credit:REUTERS)

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. – Winston Churchill, in first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, May 13, 1940

A military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state... Nor does this reflect a historical trauma...To lose a single war is to lose everything...
– Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, in Foreign Affairs, October 1976

This is not an article for those of weak stomach. It is not for those who wish to be reassured that, in the end, things will be “okay.” It offers no glimmer of optimism, nor any comforting prospect of some happy ending.

Indeed, if the Jews are to preserve their political sovereignty, all it bodes for the foreseeable future is one of Churchillian “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

A perfect storm brewing

A perfect storm is brewing for Israel. On virtually every front, ominous clouds are gathering, and should the menacing maelstroms they portend hit together, it is far from certain that the Jewish state will survive the destructiveness of their combined impact.

Since I began writing this Into the Fray series in mid- 2011, I have warned repeatedly of the perils of the government’s policy of counterproductive compromises and concessions. I cautioned that this “cavalcade of capitulation” will elicit nothing from our adversaries other than demands for more – and more far-reaching – concessions, as indeed it has.

In my column of December 2, 2011, I wrote: “By adopting a policy of continually trying to avoid confrontations in which it can prevail, Israel may eventually find itself forced to engage in a confrontation in which it cannot.”

Precisely such a perilous predicament is now beginning to develop before our eyes.

Across every border Israel shares with its Arab neighbors, within its own borders, and far removed from them, a formidable range of threats – from damaging economic sanctions and international isolation, through murderous terrorist attacks, jihadi insurgency and domestic insurrection, to the specter of weapons of mass destruction and a nuclear Iran – is coalescing with disturbing speed into a multi-faceted menace that jeopardizes the survival of the Jewish nation-state to a degree arguably unprecedented since its inception.

Misreading the battlefield

Successive governments have consistently misread the battlefield, and misled by the seductive deception of political correctness, they have embraced misguided policy principles, wildly at odds with the dictates of political realities.

To understand this rather harsh condemnation, it is first necessary to realize that, in principle, there exist two archetypal and antithetical contexts of conflict – in the first of which a policy of compromise and concession may well be appropriate, and another, in which such a course is disastrously inappropriate.

In the first of such contexts, one’s adversary interprets any concession as a genuine conciliatory initiative, and feels obliged to respond with a counter-concession. In this context, the process will move toward some amicable resolution of the conflict by a series of concessions and counter-concessions.

In the alternate conflictual context, however, one’s adversary does not interpret concessionary initiatives as conciliatory gestures, made in good faith, but as an indication of vulnerability and weakness, made under duress, portending defeat.

Such initiatives will not elicit any reciprocal conciliatory gesture, but rather demands for further concessions.

If one concedes to the demands, instead of enjoying a convergent process that leads toward peaceable resolution of differences, a divergent process will lead either to capitulation or to large-scale violence. In other words, once one side realizes that its adversary is acting in bad faith and can only be restrained by force; or the other side realizes it has extracted all the concessions it can by non-coercive means – meaning that further gains could only be won by force – problems worsen for the party seeking bilateral satisfaction.

‘... if you will not fight when victory is sure’

If one happens to be in a situation that approximates the second context, but adopts a policy suited for the first, disaster is inevitable.

Sadly, for more than two decades, this is precisely what Israeli governments – with varying degrees of myopic zeal and/or reluctant resignation – have done. Unless robust and resolute remedial measures are undertaken without delay, such disaster is inevitable.

There can be little doubt that the Arab-Israeli conflict resembles the second context far more closely than the first. After all, every gut-wrenching concession Israel has made since the early 1990s has failed to produce any conciliatory response from its Arab adversaries. All it finds is greater intransigence and more obdurate insistence on further appeasement.

Because of excessive restraint and inadequate resolve, Israel is inexorably descending into an abysmal position, depicted with forceful eloquence by Winston Churchill, in the sober caveat he articulated in the first volume of his epic series on World War II, aptly titled The Gathering Storm.

He warned: “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

‘... physical extinction and political elimination...’

Although many will wish to deny it, this is the situation that could well emerge for the Jews of Israel if the policy of ruinous restraint continues. If they forfeit national sovereignty, now under unprecedented international assault, while they may not become “slaves,” Israelis could well be relegated to infidel dhimmi status in their own homeland.

Israel’s past military and economic successes have been so stunning that they have obscured the true precariousness of Jewish political independence in the region.

For those who have been lulled into a false sense of complacency by highly visible signs of strength and vigor – such as mushrooming high-rises and modernistic freeways – the somber assessment of the inherent asymmetry of the conflict and the fragility of Jewish national existence made by Yigal Allon in the prestigious publication Foreign Affairs should be a salutary reminder.

Considered by many the epitome of moderate statesmanship, Allon cautioned: “... a military defeat of Israel would mean the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state. ... the Arab states can permit themselves a series of military defeats while Israel cannot afford to lose a single war. Nor does this reflect a [finite, hence bearable] historical trauma in any sense.

To lose a single war is to lose everything....”

Ruinous results of restraint & retreat

The bitter fruits of Israeli restraint, retreat and reticence abound in every direction and on every front.

In some cases they are close to full ripeness, in others, to less so – so far. In some cases disaster is close at hand, in others it has been avoided – or rather, delayed – more by propitious good fortune than by prudent good judgment.

In the north, the IDF’s unilateral flight, ordered by Ehud Barak in 2000, delivered South Lebanon – and abandoned Israel’s mainly Christian allies – to Hezbollah, which transformed it into a formidable arsenal of rockets that rained death and destruction on millions of Israelis for five long weeks this summer. The hesitant mismanagement of the 2006 Second Lebanese war by Ehud Olmert’s government allowed the outnumbered and out-gunned Hezbollah to claim – not implausibly – strategic victory over (or at least, non-defeat by) the IDF.

The abysmal UN Security Council Resolution 1701, ushered in by the hopelessly inept Tzipi Livni, then-foreign minister, allowed the region to become an even more menacing arsenal, bristling with tens of thousands of even more deadly missiles – and attack tunnels reportedly being excavated under the border.

It was only by the grace of God – or good fortune, depending on one’s proclivities – that, during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza earlier this year, Hezbollah was preoccupied with the civil war in Syria. Consequently, it could not open up a second front and bring the full weight of this arsenal (and those tunnels) to bear on Israel, which could have overwhelmed the protective capacity of the Iron Dome defense system.

Concessions more dangerous than ever

It would be foolhardy indeed to assume that this fortuitous circumstance is likely to reoccur in any future engagement. In fact, only 10 days after the end of Protective Edge, the IDF announced that it was “making plans and training” for “a very violent war” against Hezbollah, which, according to informed sources, had “now accumulated three years of battlefield experience, greater military capabilities and considerable confidence.”

Slightly to the east, the breathtaking barbarity of the Syrian civil war rages on, bringing the daunting prospect of a common border with Islamic State and/or al-Qaida affiliates, and underscoring how imbecilic it would have been to relinquish the Golan to the murderous Assad regime, in the forlorn hope of trading land-for-peace.

Along Israel’s eastern border, with the ascendancy of Islamist elements in Jordan, the Hashemite monarchy is looking increasingly wobbly. This tenuous situation is exacerbated by the hordes of refugees (reportedly over 600,000) fleeing the brutality in Syria, presumably infiltrated by Islamist agitators, who are placing unbearable strains on Jordan’s social and economic resources, and undermining the stability of the regime. With the possibility of the monarchy being replaced by radical Muslim elements, or even remaining as a puppet regime controlled by them, the notion of territorial concessions in Judea-Samaria, which adjoins the kingdom to the West, becomes even more dangerously delusional than before.

Vast stretch of Islamist-controlled land

Even if some flimsy deal were struck with the largely irrelevant and unrepresentative Mahmoud Abbas, the responsible assumption must be that he would be replaced, post haste, by more extremist forces such as Hamas (as per the Gaza precedent) – or worse.

Israel would be faced with the perilous prospect of a vast, unbroken stretch of Islamist-controlled territory, from the eastern approaches of Greater Tel Aviv to Jordan’s current border with Iraq, and beyond – into areas under the iron rule of Islamic State.

In Sinai as well, the outlook is bleak, with the peninsula falling under the sway of jihadist elements which the Egyptian army is finding increasingly difficult to curb.

One of the most dangerous militant groups active in Sinai, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State, a link likely to afford it more money, weapons and recruits to fight the government in Cairo.

All this savagery will inevitably press on Israel’s long southern border stretching from Gaza to the Red Sea. If rocket attacks on Eilat continue, tourism to the city will cease and it will lose its principal source of income, without which its very existence is in grave doubt.

On the cusp of carnage?

As daunting as the preceding catalogue of dangers is, it is hardly an exhaustive list of the perils facing the Jewish state today. Not a word has been mentioned about the possibility of a third intifada on the part of the Palestinians in Judea-Samaria or a renewed conflagration in Gaza. Perhaps the gravest threat of all is the prospect of insurrection and revolt by the Arab citizens of Israel – if they sense weakness and vacillation on the part of the Jews.

This threat will materialize unless the Arabs are convinced the Jews will not brook any challenge – from within Israel’s borders or from without – to their national sovereignty and political independence.

After years of counterproductive concessions and compromise, it is unlikely that the situation is still retrievable by consensual means, and remedial measures will require coercive action on a wide scale.

What is called for today is not a repetition of reticent restraint, but the demonstration of ruthless resolve.

Unless the Jews convey the unequivocal message that any such challenge to their sovereignty will be met with overwhelming lethal force, they will increasingly be the victims of such force at the hands of their Arab adversaries.

Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

What They Didn't Tell You About Dahlia

Blogger

Sherri Mandell Sherri Mandell is co-director of the Koby Mandell Foundation which runs programs for bereaved families in Israel.

Funny how none of the articles about the murder of Dahlia Lemkus who was stabbed near Alon Shvut last night speak about Dahlia or her family, how no reporter had the curiosity to find out about her. She was killed in the afternoon so the reporters had all evening to question their contacts in Tekoa.

Instead, they practice a kind of obscurantism, restricting our knowledge of the victim. (Curious that the word obscurantism is derived from a dispute between intellectuals and the German monks who wanted to burn Jewish books, like the Talmud, in the 16th century to obscure Jewish culture and learning.) In the New York Times, the reporter tells you about the terrorist who is from Hebron, how he was in an Israeli jail for five years for a firebombing. The reporter quotes his Facebook page: “I’ll be a thorn in the gullet of the Zionist project to Judaize Jerusalem.” We learn nothing about 26 year old Dahlia, who was just getting started in life after finishing college, studying occupational therapy so that she could have a job where she could help people who were sick or infirm or disabled to live in a fuller way.

They don’t tell you how she loved to bake with her mother, the two of them bringing rich, luscious cakes to parties and the way she spoke English with an accent — but not a Hebrew accent — a South African accent because her parents made aliyah from there thirty years ago. They don’t tell you how she went to synagogue every Sabbath and smiled at the people in her row before she prayed. And they don’t tell you how she had to hitchhike to get to her job working with children in Kiryat Gat or that she was the main volunteer at Yad Sarah in Tekoa which lends medical equipment like wheelchairs to those who are sick or injured. They don’t tell you how she liked to help brides look beautiful by doing their makeup for them before their weddings.

They don’t care that Dahlia’s father Nachum drives the ambulance in Tekoa. Day and night he is called on to make the drive to Jerusalem, and that Dahlia’s mother cares tenderly for the elderly.

You will never learn from the articles that, when a neighbor had to go to the hospital with a sick child, Dahlia stayed with the other young children all night and insisted that they not pay her. The articles would never tell you that she was the one who cooked the food for her brother Haggai’s bar mitzvah a month ago, fried fish, salad and pancakes.

No, they don’t want you to know what a kind, giving, loving young woman she was on the cusp of her adult life, looking towards marriage and creating her own family.

 

Instead the newspapers show a photo of the terrorist and tell us that the Palestinian leadership says that it is normal and natural to run over a young woman and then stab her to death so that her blood runs like a red cape into the street. Normal and natural. An act of resistance. When the Palestinian leadership calls for their people to take a knife and find Jews to murder, and calls it natural and normal, we have entered the realm of unadulterated evil. Dahlia embodied its opposite and that fact shouldn’t be obscured from the world.

The Antichrist and the Muslim Mahdi (Part 2)

by Dr. Michael Youssef 

Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2014 at 09:29AM

In my last article, I explained the Judeo-Christian understanding of the Antichrist, and that he will somehow be intertwined with Israel, and more specifically, Jerusalem.
Because Islam borrowed a great deal from Judaism and Christianity, it is not surprising that they too have a figure with a messianic complex—the Mahdi, or the Guided One.
Muslims see the Mahdi as a savior who will lead a global revolution and establish a worldwide Islamic empire. The Mahdi will rule the earth as the final Caliph of Islam (a caliph is both a political ruler and a spiritual representative of Allah on earth).
Muslims revere Jesus (whom they call Isa) as the Masih or Messiah. In Islamic eschatology, the Mahdi will arrive at the same time that Isa returns. Isa will descend to earth in Syria, east of Damascus, dressed in yellow robes, and will assist the Mahdi, who will rule over the earth for seven years (or, in some Islamic traditions, nine or nineteen years). At the end of the Mahdi’s rule, there will be a Day of Judgment for the entire human race.
The parallels between the biblical Antichrist and the Mahdi of Islam are chilling. Both are associated with the End Times and the Judgment. Both possess political, military, and religious power, and head up a one-world religion. The Mahdi will force all non-Muslim people to convert to Islam. Like the Antichrist, the Mahdi will establish Jerusalem as his capital, from which he will rule the earth. Islamic scholars Muhammad ibn Izzat and Muhammad Arif write:

The Mahdi will be victorious and eradicate those pigs and dogs and the idols of this time so that there will once more be a caliphate based on prophethood as the hadith states. . . . Jerusalem will be the location of the rightly guided caliphate and the center of Islamic rule, which will be headed by Imam al-Mahdi. . . . That will abolish the leadership of the Jews . . . and put an end to the domination of the Satan who spit evil into people and cause corruption in the earth, making them slaves of false idols and ruling the world by laws other than the Sharia [Islamic law] of the Lord of the worlds.^[i]

Though Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, they deny that Jesus is the Son of God. Jews and Christians are, to Muslim fundamentalists, “pigs and dogs” who must either convert to Islam or be eliminated. Bible prophecy makes it clear that the Antichrist will target Jews and Christians for destruction, just as Islamic prophecy states that the Mahdi will wage war against Jews and Christians. Those who oppose the Antichrist’s worldwide religion will be executed.
Muslim scholar Imam Muhammad Baqir states clearly how the Mahdi will establish his one-world religion: “There must be bloodshed and jihad to establish Imam Mahdi’s rule.” And Ayatollah Ibrahim al Amini of the Religious Learning Center in Qom, agrees: “The Mahdi will offer the religion of Islam to the Jews and Christians; if they accept it, they will be spared, otherwise they will be killed.”^[ii]
Daniel tells us (and Jesus affirms in the Olivet Discourse) that the Antichrist will establish “the abomination that causes desolation” in the temple in Jerusalem. The apostle Paul adds that the Antichrist “will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Since the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., as Jesus predicted, this has led some (not all Christians) to suggest that the Jewish temple must be rebuilt on the Temple Mount before the Antichrist can be revealed to the world.
Yet the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque stand on the Temple Mount today. One of the Islamic Hadiths (traditions) records that their Prophet Muhammad said, “[Armies carrying] black flags will come from Khurasan [Iran and Afghanistan], no power will be able to stop them and they will finally reach Eela [the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem] where they will erect their flags.” In Islamic tradition, black banners symbolize violent conquest, and Muslims await the Mahdi’s conquest of Jerusalem, when he establishes his reign from the temple site.
Daniel 9:27 tells us the Antichrist will establish a seven-year covenant with Israel—but he will break the covenant after three and a half years, defiling the temple with “an abomination that causes desolation.” The Hadiths of Islam also speak of a seven-year covenant that the Mahdi makes with Israel: “The Prophet said: There will be four peace agreements between you and the Romans. The fourth will be mediated through a person who will be from the progeny of Hadrat Aaron [Honorable Aaron, the brother of Moses] and will be upheld for seven years.”^[iii]
There can be no doubt: Muslims are preparing to accept the Mahdi as their leader—and the Mahdi is indistinguishable from the world leader we know as the Antichrist.
I bring all of this to your attention so we can have a knowledgeable perspective when viewing current events unfolding in the Middle East.
But Christians should not fear.
Regardless of whether the Antichrist comes in this generation or a hundred years from now, those who have placed their faith in God’s Messiah, Jesus the Christ, fear no one nor even death. Their eternity is secure in the one who is the only one to defeat death and rise from the grave.

Don't Fall Away; Stand Up!

We live in an age of powerful intimidation by evil; a twisted age of limitless support for the perverted, the base and the wicked, but zero tolerance for anything that is innocent, good or Godly. 

Let one word of support be set forth for God, Christ or the Jews and one is met with a blaze of fury; a hatred deep, hot and hellish that will not rest until the speaker is destroyed; preferably as painfully as possible. 

In the face of such evil, those who love their own lives first, last and most,  will compromise, bow, submit, shut up and fall away from the kingdom of God and be eternally lost.

Oh, but dear ones.  Is it not a time to lay down our lives for the one who laid his life down for us?  God grant that with courage you and I   will stand with the assurance of three lads in old Babylon, who understood this principal.  They did not bow, they did not compromise and they said, "We don't need to be careful about what we say.  We declare boldly that we serve our God.   He can deliver us from you if he wants, but if He doesn't,  He is God still and we will not bow to you or your idol."

May we understand in our day what another son of God knew when he faced the evil of his day and said, "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Op-Ed: Behind the Attempt to Assassinate Yehuda Glick

Why did Islamists target Yehuda Glick? And what does it tell us about Israeli Arab plans for Israel and Jerusalem?

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Published: Thursday, October 30, 2014 9:55 AM

Dr. Mordechai Kedar

Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at...

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The plan for the attempted assassination of Yehuda Glick is just one phase of the long term struggle for Jerusalem between an Islam that sees itself as the true religion on the one hand, and the very existence of Judaism (and Christianity) - false religions in Islamic eyes - on the other.

In its own eyes, Islam came into the world not in order to stand alongside Judaism and Christianity, but to supplant them, and empty them of substance, assets and founding figures so that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Jesus and John are all Muslims in Islamic discourse. The Temple Mount has turned into a mosque, and several hundred churches (in Ramle, Damascus, Istanbul, Spain and more) were changed into mosques by Muslim conquerors.

In the view of radical Islamists, several setbacks occurred during the twentieth century: in 1948 the Jews, using military might and aided by the Christians (British) conquered the holy land of Palestine and in1967 they won Jerusalem, and we know the next step, they claim - they will build their temple and Judaism will again become a viable religion. That poses a theological danger to radical Islamists whose raison d'être is the destruction of Judaism (and Christianity). Therefore, the radical Islamist struggle for Jerusalem in general and the Temple Mount in particular is a theological one more than it is a political, nationalist or territorial struggle. He who does not - or will not - understand this, is hiding his head in the sand.

That is what lies behind the intention to eliminate Yehuda Glick, whose actions embody the Jewish yearning to return to the land, to Jerusalem and to the Temple Mount and to renew Jewish hegemony over the temple site. The rising Islamic flag is another factor, with Islamist radicals seeing a blessed outcome for their labors in the success of IS in Syria and Iraq. And on social networks. The concept of an Islamic caliphate is reverberating in the air, creating a tense atmosphere that might bring to fruition Islamic dreams of destroying all threats, defeating all enemies and achieving the ultimate goal - global Islamic hegemony.j
In 2011, Tel Aviv University published a collection of articles, edited by Drs. Arik Rudnitsky and Eli Reches, titled "Muslim Minorities in non-Muslim-Majority Countries: The Islamic Movement in Israel as a test case". I wrote an article titled "The Islamic Movement's Vision of the Future" which was included in the book. This is the last paragraph of that article:

"The real goal, one that the movement does not bother to hide, is the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Israel whose capital is Jerusalem. I have heard this said several times by the Movement's leaders. They even write it without compunction: Their true goal is to establish an Islamic state on the ruins of Jewish, Zionist Israel and make Al Quds El Sharif its capital. This opinion is based on statements made to me by the leaders of the movement, is heard mainly in their speeches, in songs composed by [Islamic Movement leader] Sheikh Raed [Salah] and from acts performed at their rallies. We are talking about a visible and very obvious general atmosphere, starting with the Sheikh and going on to the words of the movement's other leaders."
After the article was published, several colleagues turned to me claiming that my assertion had no basis because the pronouncements of the leaders of the Islamic Movement are simply mantras that do not express their real intentions. I claimed, then as now, that the Jewish people must not try to interpret the words of their enemies, but must accept them as they are, unamended. There was a period when we did not take the threats of our enemies seriously - the result was a horrific Holocaust.

Two weeks ago, in the midst of this very October, the leaders of the Arab Israeli sector demonstrated in Jerusalem. Taking part in this protest were – among others – Sheikh Raed's deputy, Sheikh Kamel al-Khatib and the head of the northern branch of the Islamic State, in addition to Balad MK's Hanin Zouabi and Basel Ghattas. This is Sheikh Kamel al-Khatib's speech to the crowd, for all to hear.

(Note: the parentheses are my explanations)

"The (Arab) nation is in a bad state, due to what is happening in the Arab homeland and the counter-revolutions against the 'Arab Spring' being carried out by the enemies of the nations (mainly Egypt's Sisi, Israel's ally, who deposed the Muslim Brotherhood). This situation requires that steadfast people (rise up and) say: We are here, against the (Zionist) den of iniquity whose occupants occupy the stage in the entire Arab homeland. In the center of this thieving den of iniquity, we stress our right to stand strong and patient, attached to the land right here in Jerusalem. I repeat: Jerusalem is not only the capital of a Palestinian state, but the capital of a righteous (reference to the first four Caliphs, called "the righteous") Islamic Caliphate, soon to arrive, Inshallah."
Al-Khatib's words fell on fertile soil, for after all, we have heard these words about the Islamic Caliphates from two other important sources. One is the Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen in Egypt, especially Sheikh Safwat Higazi, who shouted in the ears of the Cairo masses at the beginning of the 2012 presidential election campaign that Mohammed Morsi, if elected, would bring about the unification of the Arab nations and establish the Islamic Caliphate whose capital is not Mecca, not Cairo, but Jerusalem. He described this as a dream, of course, but expected Morsi to make the dream come true.

In early July 2013, General al-Sisi awakened Egypt from that dream, got rid of Morsi and his friends, throwing them into jail, the grave or out of Egypt.
The second source that talks about the Islamic Caliphate Kingdom and attempts to bring its arrival is "Islamic State", the group some of us still call by its previous name, "Daesh" (ISIS). Its head calls himself Caliph and his state the Caliphate State. Is this the fulfillment of the Muslim Brotherhood dreamers, Higazi and al-Khatib? I cannot say, but despite differences in the behavior of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State, there are too many similarities of ideology and aspirations between them and the classic Caliphate Kingdom, the one that began in the seventh century with Mohammed, and Israel's Islamic Movement headed by Kamal al-Khatib and Sheikh Raed Salah.

The Hebrew Israeli media barely mentioned al-Khatib's speech. Oudeh Basharat attacked him in Haaretz (27.10.14): " Are we going to establish a modesty patrol that will punish women who do not wear burqas? Will we have a network of spies who will keep track of citizens' intimate lives, and eventually stone women who do not adhere to their moral strictures? Is there going to be a marketplace for female slaves who will be sold to the highest bidder? Are we going to witness the beheading of nonbelievers in the town square? These are not exaggerations – this is what is happening right now wherever the Caliphate regime has taken over, right on the other side of the fence."

A major storm broke in Israel's Arab media as a result of al-Khatib's words, because the fact is that based on the victims of the Caliphate Kingdom in Syria and Iraq such a state's first and foremost victims would be "heretical" Israeli Arabs: Christian, Druze, Ahmadis. Balad party MK, Basel Ghattas, who is Christian, took part in the Jerusalem event, stood near al-Khatib, but did not react. Later, when the storm broke, Ghattas released the following statement: "Exclusionary (that is, of members of other religions) talk of Jerusalem as capital of the Islamic Caliphate weakens the unity of ranks necessary these days in order to resist Israeli plans. Instead of Jerusalem being a subject of Palestinian and Arab consensus, it becomes a place of division and religious conflict – something we really do not need." Others accused al-Khatib of kidnapping the Palestinian national struggle and turning it into a Muslim religious struggle.
Al-Khatib was shocked by the negative reactions aroused by his words among Arab Israelis, and released the following statement: "I understand that some people have only a superficial understanding of history, because the concept of an Islamic Caliphate is not part of IS or any other organizations. This concept comes from an early period in Islamic history that will return in the future. In the past, the Islamic Caliphate arose after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, may Allah pray for him and grant him peace, and the Muslim Caliphs in the Caliphate were Umar ibn al-Khattab, Uthman ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib, may they rest in peace. (He forgot the first caliph, Abu Bakr).

"We, as Muslims, believe in the future of Islam no matter what is happening, and an Islamic state will return once again and Jerusalem will be its capital.  This is expressed in our confidence that the Israeli occupation will disappear, this is not just a hope or supplication on our part, but the words of the Prophet, who said that one day Jerusalem will be the location of the Islamic Caliphate. Those who thought I was talking about Islamic State (IS) – and I am speaking from the heart of Jerusalem and the Al Aksa Mosque – sadly, are saying this because of their superficiality and ignorance in understanding history, which led them to connect my words with what is happening in Iraq and Syria and the organization called IS."

Al-Khatib continued: "There is no connection between what I said and what is happening there (in Syria and Iraq) and our clear position as the Islamic Movement about the actions of this organization is public knowledge... the real terrorists in this world are those who lead the 'Anti-terrorist Alliance': America is the prime terrorist that killed ten thousand (maybe he means ten million?) Indians, the terrorist that wiped out two major Japanese cities with atom bombs. The real terrorist is Netanyahu and his government who destroyed 40,000 homes in Gaza and murdered 2,200 of its citizens. The real terrorist in this world is Bashar Assad who has murdered 300,000 Syrian citizens because they demanded liberty and has now turned into a partner in the global alliance against terrorism.  The real terrorist is Abed Al Fattah el Sisi (note the missing word, 'President') who killed more than 4,000 Egyptians in five hours and is now a member of the global alliance against terrorism."

It is quite possible that Kamal al-Khatib is convinced that the historic Islamic State about which he speaks is not like the Islamic State that arose last year in Syria and Iraq. The problem with what he is saying is that the Islamic history books, written by Muslims, recorded the Caliphate Kingdom of the seventh century and the way its rulers dealt with conquered people and their armies – and these are uncannily similar to what is happening today in Syria and Iraq.
Can it be that it is Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib who does not understand history?