UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST: IF ISRAEL WOULD DO ____________(FILL IN THE BLANK), THERE WOULD BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

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By Carol Rushton

One of the complaints against Israel is that Israel just hasn’t done enough for peace. The argument goes, if Israel would just:

  1. Give up the West Bank (Judea & Samaria)

  2. Give up Jerusalem so the Palestinians can have the city as their capital

  3. Give up the Golan Heights

  4. Allow all the Palestinians that live in tenement camps to “return” to Israel (despite the fact that most of them now have been born in other countries)

  5. Be more flexible (whatever that means)

  6. Be willing to compromise (whatever that means)

  7. Do _________________ (fill in the blank)

then there would be peace in the Middle East.

These excuses – and this is what they are – for the fact that Israel does not have peace with her Arab neighbors are absolutely laughable.

Israel has done more to try to bring peace to the Middle East than any nation in the history of the world. Israel HAS given land for peace. The Jews gave up the Sinai Peninsula in the 1978, their only natural source of oil at the time, to Egypt under the Camp David Accords. Did Israel receive peace in return? No! Egyptians refuse to come to Israel, for business or pleasure. They have business partnerships with Israelis but Israelis must travel to Egypt to initiate and maintain those business relationships. Under former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt repeatedly sided with Israel’s enemies when any type of military conflict erupted between Israel and any country or terrorist group in the region.

The peace with Jordan hasn’t been much better, even though Israel gave up some land on the border between the two countries and also shared water rights, something extremely valuable in the Middle East where water is at a premium. Jordan has also sided with Israel’s enemies on various occasions when it was in their interest to do so, as well as offering their country as a haven for Hamas terrorists. Neither Jordan nor Egypt recognize Israel on their maps.

Under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, Israel gave up areas of Judea and Samaria to the PLO. What did Israel receive in return? Not the peace she was promised but massive terrorist attacks that continue to this day. Bus bombings became common occurrences, murdering hundreds and maiming and injuring thousands. When we heard emergency sirens blasting through Jerusalem city streets, we knew that another terrorist attack had occurred. Israel finally had to give up the idea that there would ever be peace with Arabs living in Judea and Samaria and built a huge wall to keep Arabs in those areas out of the country.

When Israel uprooted Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005 and turned the country over to the Arabs, once again the Jews were promised peace. Once again, Israel received terror in return. The Arabs promised to keep up the farms and gardens that Jews in the settlements had planted and nurtured. Today those same farms and gardens are terrorist training camps. To this day, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists launch missiles and rockets into Israel on a regular basis from hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods, sending Israeli citizens scrambling to rush to underground shelters. This is particularly traumatic for Israeli children. Then Hamas and the PLO cry bloody murder that Israel is killing innocent civilians when Israel has the effrontery to respond to the terrorist attacks by having Israeli fighter jets bomb terrorist targets to stop the rocket attacks into their country!

Terrorists are constantly digging tunnels under the Gazan-Israeli border to smuggle terrorists into Israel to commit more terrorist attacks against Israelis. Since Israel finished building a large wall to try to keep Arab terrorists and weapons from Judea and Samaria out of the main part of the country, Arabs now drive cars into groups of pedestrians on sidewalks to kill and injure as many Jews as possible. If they kill non-Jews in the process, who cares?

Terrorists rioting at the Gaza Strip-Israeli border because the United States has moved the embassy to Jerusalem in recognition of the city being Israel’s capital are sending burning kites and balloons across the border to terrorize Israelis. Israel even dropped leaflets and pamphlets into the Gaza Strip warning the Arabs to stop their rioting and terrorist activities at the border or Israel would no choice but to retaliate. What other countries beside the United States of America and Israel drop leaflets into a region to warn terrorists to leave before they bomb it??!!

Simply based on these facts alone, Israel would be insane if they turned any part of Jerusalem or any more of their land over to the PLO or any other Arab entity.

This includes all the other “reasons” listed above. Israel has gone above and beyond what any other country in the history the world has done in order to bring peace to the region in which she lives. At this point, Israel cannot do any more than what she has already done. Israel has proven to the entire world that she is willing to risk the security of her country and her citizens to reach out to her Arab neighbors time and time again in good faith and with goodwill to have peaceful relations with them. It is now the Arab/Islamic countries’ responsibility to do the same. The ball is in their court.

Israel’s fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, said, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” Sadly, that day has not come yet.

UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST: THE JEWS STOLE ARAB LANDS

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By Carol Rushton

One of the most common charges against the Jews is that over the last 100 years or more, Jews have illegally seized or outright stolen property and lands belonging to Arabs.

When Jews started returning to the Holy Land in the late 1800s and early 1900s, wealthy Jews or Jews who pooled their money bought land from Arab owners for Jewish agricultural settlements, known as either a kibbutz or moshav. At this time and even well past World War II, the land of Israel was known for being dreary and empty with much of it being desert. The lands of Megiddo were a swamp, filled with malaria-infested mosquitos as well as rocks and stones. No one wanted this land, least of all the Arabs. They had had possession of the Holy Land for hundreds of years through the Mamluk and Ottoman Empires and had neglected and ignored it. Only the Jews who loved their ancient lands and wanted to devote themselves to countless years of backbreaking work to reclaim the deserts and swamp lands were interested in it.

In Mark Twain’s book, Innocents Abroad, he described the Holy Land in in the 1800’s, it is relevant to remind the readers the hapless state of the country at that time.

“Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint. . .Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective – distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land . . . a limitless desolation.

“Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists – over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead – about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour’s presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee. . .was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the “desert places” round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour’s voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes . . . Palestine is desolate and unlovely.”

Twain was not the only person to note the poor, dilapidated, deteriorated condition of the region formerly described as the “land of milk and honey” in the Bible. The Israel Group website in an article entitled, “The Myth: Jewish Theft of Arab Land,” quotes several non-Jews whose description echoes Twain’s.

Walter Clay Lowdermilk, soil conservationist, in his 1944 book, Palestine Land of Promise Third Edition: Israel is “a land impoverished by erosion and neglect. . .soils were eroded off the uplands to bedrock over fully one-half the hills; streams across the coastal plains were chocked with erosional debris from the hills to form pestilential marshes infested with dreaded malaria; the fair cities and elaborate works of ancient times were left in doleful ruins.”

Henry Baker Tristram, English clergyman and Bible scholar, in his book, The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in Palestine, published in 1865: “A few years ago, the whole Ghor [the Jordan Valley] was in the hands of the fellahin, and much of it cultivated for corn. Now the whole of it is in the hands of the Bedouin, who eschew all agriculture, except in a few spots cultivated here and there by their slaves; and with the Bedouin come lawlessness. . .the same thing is now going on over the plain of Sharon, where, both in the north and south, land is going out of cultivation, and whole villages rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth. Since the year 1838, no less than 20 villages have been thus erased from the map and the stationary population extirpated.”

Arthur Penryhn Stanley, Dean of Westminster Abbey, wrote in 1853: “In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that whilst for miles and miles there is no appearance of present life or habitation, except the occasional goat herd on the hill side, or gathering of women at the wells. . .the general fact of the ruins of Palestine, whether erect or fallen, remains common to the whole country . . . the impression of age and decay . . .”

Israel Advocacy, www.israeladvocacy.net, confirms that the few Arabs living in the sparsely isolated Holy Land were very poor, not wealthy property owners with vast estates. Arabs who owned large tracts of lands were “absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut” (Israel Advocacy, “Is It True That Israel Stole Palestinian Land?”). The article continues:

The region was severely underpopulated which meant the Jews were able to avoid buying land in areas where Arabs might be displaced, which they did. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, sandy, and most importantly, without tenants. In 1920, David Ben-Gurion (the future prime minister of Israel) expressed his concern about the Arab fellaheen 9peasants), whom he viewed as “the most important asset of the native population . . . under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them . . . Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement should we offer to buy his land at an appropriate price.”

When Jews did purchase land from Arabs, many times the price was greatly inflated. In 1930, John Simpson, a member of the British Parliament, reported back to his country, “They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay” (Israel Advocacy, “Is It True That Israel Stole Palestinian Land?”).

In 1935, the British government authorized the Peel Commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel to find out the causes of riots and violence between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land under the British Mandate. The Peel Commission published their report in 1937, concluding that Arab charges regarding Jewish confiscation of their land were groundless and unsubstantiated. The report said that “much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased. . .there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.” The report also noted that Jewish ownership and development of land “had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities” (Israel Advocacy, “Is It True That Israel Stole Palestinian Land?”).

The Israel Group also quotes further from the Peel Commission report.

“The shortage of land is, we consider, due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population . . . the Jews had made . . . careful enquiry into the matter of landless Arabs and they had discovered only 688 tenants who had been displaced by the land being sold over their heads; and that of these some 400 had found other land. This enquiry related to the period 1920 to 1930 . . . The Arabs would be no better with a larger population than to-day on the same amount of land, unless, they learn to cultivate their land more intensively and unless in addition they can find supplementary employment in the towns. And neither of these two things can be brought about without the assistance of Jewish taxable capacity and Jewish capital.”

Even into the 1940s, Jews were paying exorbitant prices for any land Arabs would sell to them, $1,000 or more for small parcels of inferior, desert areas. To understand this properly, one-acre tracts of very fertile farmland in Iowa in the 1940s sold for about $100. Jordan’s King Abdullah, the grandfather of the current king of Jordan, wrote in My Memoirs Completed, “It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping.”

Today, sales of Arab property to Jews do not occur very often, and if so, it comes with a high price tag for an Arab. If an Arab is discovered to have sold any property to a Jew, death is usually the result, whether he is murdered by a terrorist group or arrested by the PLO-PA, prosecuted, and then executed.

There is a vast difference in the way Jews and Arabs view the land in the Middle East. Dr. Judah Magnes, first president of Hebrew University, explains this difference as quoted by The Israel Group. “For us, the Land was everything, and there was nothing else. For the Arabs, Palestine was only a small portion of the large and numerous countries. Even when the Arabs became a minority in Palestine, they would not be a minority in their territory, which extended from the Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf, and from the Taurus Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.”

Chaim Weizmann, the man whose development of acetone helped Great Britain win World War I and led to the Balfour Declaration, also responded to the charge that Jews had stolen Arabs’ property from them:

“Very often I heard from quite benevolent Arabs. . .you have come to Palestine and you have in your hands the best land in the country. In fact, some of them whom I know said, well, you have really cheated us; we have sold you this and that piece of land very, very cheaply; if we had waited another ten years we could have sold it to you at double or triple the price. . .My answer to them was, gentlemen, you seem to have forgotten that we have made it into good land; we have made it into good land because we have sunk so much effort into it. If you would do the same, your land would be just as good if not better than ours. Do not reproach us for having improved that part of the land which you have sold us because you could do nothing with it.”

THE MISFORTUNE OF BEING COLIN KAEPERNICK

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By Carol Rushton

As we approach the 2018-19 NFL season I am reminded of poor little Colin Kaepernick. He’s sooooooooooooooo mistreated. No football team will hire him because he’s standing – oops, kneeling – for truth, social justice, and the American way, the downtrodden, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. . . .

Oh, wait, I think that’s a poem.

Kaepernick is no stranger to adversity. His mother, a single white teenager at the time of his birth, had to put him up for adoption because his black father abandoned him and his mother before he was born. Kaepernick was adopted by a white couple with two older children.

While this was not an ideal way to start life, Kaepernick’s adopted family must have provided enough love, encouragement, and stability to give him the impetus he needed to become a very good athlete, excelling in football, baseball, and basketball, eventually earning a football scholarship to the University of Nevada. Kaepernick’s baseball skills were so impressive that the Chicago Cubs drafted him in 2009. But Kaepernick wanted to play football, not baseball, so he passed on the opportunity.

Kaepernick is so far the only player in Division I college football to pass for more than 10,000 yards and rush for over 4,000, truly an astonishing feat. Only Tim Tebow has matched him for running for 20 touchdowns and throwing 20 touchdowns in one season. When he was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2011, Kaepernick’s wish to play professional football came true. When he landed the starting quarterback job and lead the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2012, he must have thought he was living the ultimate American dream.

And why not? Just by itself, this is truly an iconic, rags-to-riches American story, the kind of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps story that could only happen in the United States of America. Little boy, born in adverse circumstances, works hard for years, and eventually obtains success, fame, and riches. That’s when the wheels started to come off.

It is amazing that Kaepernick could go from hero to goat in such a short time. In 2015, Kaepernick lost the starting quarterback job and never really regained it. Although he did eventually start some games in 2016, the 49ers lost most of those games.

It was during the 2016 season that Kaepernick decided he would not stand in honor of the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem played before the start of every sporting event in this country. When asked why, Kaepernick replied, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

I can understand Kaepernick expressing this sentiment in 1860 before the Civil War and the repeal of slavery, or in 1960 when blacks and whites had separate schools, water fountains, hotels, and everything else you can think of while suffering under Jim Crow laws. But oppression in 2016?

Kaepernick was not born in the most ideal of circumstances, but he rose above those circumstances to achieve the American dream and make millions of dollars every year doing it, whether he actually got to start in every football game or not. “People of color” are predominant in most American professional sports teams today. In American professional sports leagues, an athlete is hired or not hired based on his or her talent, skill, and ability to perform in that sport, not based on skin color. This is true not only in sports but every other field as far as I know. Everyone has the same opportunities in this country, regardless of the color of your skin. In fact, it is illegal in this country to base a decision to hire someone on skin color. “People of color” are oppressed in the United States? Hardly.

No wonder there was such a backlash from Americans at large to Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem. When other football players throughout the NFL mimicked Kaepernick’s “take a knee” protests, viewership of NFL games during the 2017 season tanked. Most football fans stated they weren’t watching the games anymore because of the national anthem protests.

Kaepernick and those who supported his protests defended him and others by saying that the football players had freedom of speech and forcing them to stand for the national anthem would be taking away their free speech rights. Oh, really?

You do not have free speech at your job. I will give a personal example.

My fulltime job is as a customer service representative for a very large company. My job is to take customer phone calls and help that customer any way I can without violating company policy. For most of the calls I receive, I am “putting out fires,” in other words, trying to fix problems a customer has with his or her order.

I am also very pro-life and a conservative politically. What would happen if I started trying to convince my company’s customers to vote for pro-life legislation or to vote for or against a particular political candidate running for office? I would lose my job very quickly. My job is to help customers with their orders and any problems associated with those orders. It is not to state my political opinions. While I certainly have the freedom to vote for whoever I want and advocate political positions away from my job, I don’t have the freedom to express my political and religious positions to customers while I am working.

How would you feel if every time you called a company or walked into a store to buy something and the employees of that company talked to you about their political opinions or urged you to vote a certain way? Would you appreciate it? Of course not. You’re not in a store to be harassed and harangued by company employees about your religious and political viewpoints or lack thereof. You’re there to buy stuff. If that happened, you wouldn’t shop at that store anymore, would you?

What is the job of a football player? The job of a football player, or any professional athlete, is to win, whether it is winning a game or defeating your competitors. When you step on that football field, your focus is to beat the other team and win the game. Your job is to win enough games so that you and your team can go to the Super Bowl and win football’s highest honor. Your job is not to make political statements on the football field.

This is why so many football fans were disgusted with Kaepernick’s kneeling protests. When people watch a sporting event, whether in the stands or on TV, they want to see their team play and win the game. They do not want to be lectured by football players on the political issues of the day or have a football player’s political and/or religious views shoved down their throats. Because of Kaepernick and others, football fans turned off their TV sets or watched something else instead. Kaepernick made his decision. Football fans made theirs, not surprising considering the circumstances.

There is a cost for every decision you make. Sometimes the cost becomes apparent very quickly. For some decisions, you may not see the results for years. For example, you may decide to eat donuts for breakfast instead of fruit, yogurt, and eggs. No one is holding a gun to your head. You made that decision voluntarily. Over time, if you continue to eat that way, your body will feel the effects of that decision, good or bad.

This also extends to more serious decisions in life: what job to take, how much to spend each month, who to marry or whether to marry at all, political views, religious opinions – these can oftentimes come with very high price tags especially in today’s amoral world. Not everyone is going to approve of every decision you make or everything you espouse. Especially in the realm of politics and religion, depending upon where you live, the price you pay may involve persecution, imprisonment, and even death. Those who live in tyrannical countries like Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and China know the high price of expressing their political and/or religious beliefs. But they have counted the cost and are willing to pay it.

Sports analysts insist that Kaepernick is perfectly capable of performing the role of a backup quarterback on NFL teams that need one. That may be true. But that’s not the issue. Kaepernick has become a distraction. He has decided that his right to express his political beliefs on the football field is more important than winning football games. How can a team properly prepare and focus on defeating an opponent each week when the most important player on their team is more concerned about how much attention he brings to himself for his political views than he is winning football games? I don’t blame NFL coaches for not hiring him. If I were an NFL football coach, I wouldn’t hire him, either, I don’t care how talented he may be.

Jack Brewer played for several NFL teams before he retired after the 2006 season. He recently spoke out about the league’s new rule that all players must stand for the national anthem. “At the end of the day, the players have to realize, the public has to realize, these guys are at work. When I played [for] the National Football League, I was at work. There is no job in America that you can go into and protest your political views in the middle of your job. . .Can you go into your workplace right now and start protesting your political views? No, you’ll get fired” (CNS News, May 29, 2018, “Fmr. NFL Player: There’s No Job Where You Can Protest Your Political Views Without Getting Fired”).

Brewer offered a solution to players who want to express their political views.

I mean, if we want to protest, let’s go to Capitol Hill. We have voices. We have millions of Twitter and social media followers. We could talk about these issues and actually go find real solutions without threatening to leave. . .African American men who have made millions of dollars and been able to go in and change their families, change their communities. Why would you want to hurt that? . .the league has lost 25-30%, ratings are down, money’s being lost, why would you want to kill the golden goose? I don’t get it.

Brewer is right. If Kaepernick feels so passionately about certain political issues, he certainly has the right to devote his time off the field to those causes he thinks are important. But his political views should not be his focus when he steps on to the football field.

(By the way, the San Francisco 49ers did not fire Kaepernick. Kaepernick made the decision to voluntarily opt out of his contract after the 2016 season to become a free agent.)

Kaepernick can sue the NFL for teams not hiring him all he wants. He simply does not want to take responsibility for his actions. He doesn’t want to accept the consequences of his decision to refuse to stand in honor of our national anthem and our flag and the resulting outrage that caused. Instead, he wants to whine and cry like a baby about how unfair it is that he must pay a price for expressing his political viewpoints where they are not wanted or needed. Kaepernick is not a little boy. He’s a man. He’s supposed to be an adult. It’s time he started acting like one.

Christians Have No Religious Freedom in Israel

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by Carol Rushton

Another ridiculous charge made against Israel is that Christians are persecuted in Israel but have complete religious freedom in PLO-PA (Palestinian Authority) controlled areas.

A little research proves this is another outrageous lie.

Christians have lived in the Middle East since the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ almost 2,000 years ago. Their numbers have drastically decreased over the past few decades but that is because of rising Islamic fervor against both Christians and Jews. In response, Christians have had no choice but to leave or face persecution, harassment, torture, and even death simply for being Christians.

The Christian population in the Middle East has been decimated because of the recent rise of ISIS and the group’s indiscriminate murder of Christians in Iraq and Syria, forcing survivors to flee for their lives. The Christian population in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip has also dramatically declined under the control of the PLO and Hamas/Islamic Jihad.

One case in point is Bethlehem. Bethlehem used to be a Christian city. Most Christian tour groups wanted to see the birthplace of Jesus Christ, the Church of the Nativity, and do some shopping at a local shop run by Arab Christians. Bethlehem was well-known for their hand-carved nativity scenes made from olive wood, which was another reason for Christians to stop at the city

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1994, Christians in Bethlehem made up two-thirds of the city’s population according to the Gatestone Institute (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2838/palestinians-christians, Michael Curtis, Gatestone Institute International Policy Council, February 15, 2012, “The Disquieting Treatment of Christians by the Palestinians,” accessed July 16, 2018). Since the PLO takeover of certain areas of Judea and Samaria, threats against Naem Khoury, the mayor of Bethlehem mayor at that time, and his eventual shooting by PLO terrorists caused many Christians to leave the city. Another contributing factor was the seizure of the Church of the Nativity by over150 terrorists in 2002. They held priests and nuns hostage while firing at Israeli soldiers – who refused to shoot back because it was a Christian holy place – and also plundered the church.

Today there are virtually no Christians in Bethlehem. By the late 1990s when I was still living in Israel, some Christian tour groups were already hesitant to visit Bethlehem because it was too dangerous to tour there.

For Christians living in the Gaza Strip under Hamas, the situation hasn’t been any better. In the December 23, 2011 article, “Gaza Christians Long for Days Before Hamas Cancelled Christmas,” The Guardian reported the following:

Of the 1.5 million Palestinians now living in the Gaza Strip, fewer than1,400 are Christian and those who can are leaving . . . There hasn’t been a Christmas tree in Gaza City’s main square since Hamas pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in 2007 and Christmas is no longer a public holiday . . . Karam Qubrsi, 23, and his younger brother Peter 21, are the eldest sons in one of Gaza’s 55 remaining Catholic families. Both wear prominent wood crucifixes . . . It’s a demonstration of faith that has caused [Peter] some trouble.

He describes being stopped in the street by a Hamas official who told him to remove the cross. “I told him it’s not his business and that I wouldn’t,” Peter said. After being threatened with arrest he was eventually let go, but the incident scared him” (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/23/gaza-christians-hamas-cancelled-christmas, accessed July 16, 2018).

Peter was fortunate. His brothers-in-law used to work at the Bible Society Bookstore in Gaza before the bookstore’s manager, Rami Ayyad, was stabbed and shot by Hamas terrorists in 2007. Before his murder, Ayyad had received many death threats and the bookstore had been firebombed six months earlier. After Ayyad’s murder, Peter’s and Karam’s sisters fled the Gaza Strip with their husbands and families. The brothers would love to flee Gaza as well and join their parents in Israel, but Israel has very strict annual immigration quotas from Gaza and right now Peter and Karam cannot leave. According to the article, they have no hope of a future where they are.

Rami Ayyad has not been the only Christian in Gaza to lose his life to terrorists. A church member of a Baptist church in Gaza was also kidnapped and murdered in 2007. Reports have come out of Gaza that Christian graves and cemeteries have been desecrated, a Christian school was the target of arson, and a Catholic church was robbed and holy objects and books were burned. Christians in both the Gaza Strip and the PLO-controlled areas have also reported rapes, tortures, harassments, threats, blackmail (i.e. “protection money”), unjust arrests and imprisonments by these and other terrorist groups operating in the region.

In contrast, Israel is a virtual oasis for Christians living in the Middle East. The Christian population in Israel has increased from 34,000 in 1949 to more than 320,000 as of 2013, making up about 3% to 4% of the total Israeli population. Christians may have to buy their Christmas decorations during Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles when decorations for Israeli succas – little houses – are plentiful, but no one in the Israeli government would dream of threatening Christians’ celebrations of Christmas, Easter, or any other Christian religious holiday.

If someone is born in Israel or has Israeli citizenship, he or she is allowed to participate in every facet of Israeli society, whether Christian, Muslim, or Druze. He or she can vote, can create or become a member of a political party, can hold public office, and can even serve in the Knesset. Some actually serve in the Israel Defense Forces and have held high positions in local police departments. In fact, Arab Christians and Muslims have a higher standard of living in Israel than they do in many Middle Eastern Arab/Islamic countries.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?”

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by Paula Schnittger

Walking through the hall at an evangelical seminary several years ago, my husband heard a young lady talking. He was amazed that her speech contained a variation of the f-word without any hesitation on her part. That stayed with me for years afterward and just the other day, I was reminded of the incident.

What has happened to the content of the speech of Christians? There’s a coarseness that has crept into our everyday lives. Vance Havner, a great evangelist of a bygone era, had a sermon that I heard years ago that was entitled, “Getting Used to the Dark.” There are many things that we as Christians have gotten used to that no longer bother us like they should. From speech to actions to friendships, we have gotten used to the “dark” around us and no longer stand out. Oh, we may not be just like the barhopping, anti-Christian crowd, but we do not stand out in areas that we should. Someone listening to us talk might not have any idea that the Lord God is precious to us because of how we use His name. They may not know that we are convinced that hell is a very real, eternal place of judgment that only God can condemn a person to because of the careless way we use that word.

George Washington, at age 16, wrote out The Rules for Civility and Decent Behavior. Granted, many of the things referred to are not major today but when you look at what was considered “civil” years ago, you realize how far our society has slipped.

Rule # 59 states, “Never express anything unbecoming, nor act against the rules of morality before your inferiors.” People used to think about what they said before they said it and who they said it to. Rule # 108 states, “When you speak of God or His attributes let it be seriously and with reverence.” Do we? Some movies seem to delight in the number of four-letter words they can squeeze into every minute. As we’ve all heard, “garbage in – garbage out.” If you are surrounding yourself with those who speak that way, eventually it will be easy for you to speak that way. There are even websites that will “assist” you to talk “dirty”!  Then there is the whole area of coarseness that relates to “bathroom” talk. Some use vulgar forms of excrement that are spoken in anger would shock earlier generations of Christians.

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”  Do you hear what I hear?  If so, may I challenge you to clean up your speech? It starts with observation and the cure is available through the Holy Spirit! Don’t get used to the dark!

UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST: There has never been a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

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By Carol Rushton

Muslims insist that not only have Jews never lived in Israel but that there has never been a Jewish temple in Jerusalem where the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosques now stand.

This is so simple to refute.

I will list some the archaeological finds and texts – sources outside the biblical record – that prove directly or indirectly the existence of the First and Second Jewish Temples.

  1. A Babylonian cuneiform tablet discovered by German archaeologist Robert Koldewey (1855-1925) in Babylon names the Jewish King Jehoiachin and gives a list of his food rations while in captivity, as well as five of the king’s seven sons. King Jehoiachin was captured by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in one of his invasions of Jerusalem between 606 B.C. and 586 B.C. While not directly confirming the existence of Solomon’s First Temple, it does confirm that there actually was a Jewish King Jehoiachin ruling during this time period in Jerusalem and who was captured and brought to Babylon, verifying the account of this king as stated in II Kings 24 and 25. The entire collection of these tablets is known as ANET 308. Koldewey conducted extensive excavations at Babylon, Iraq from 1899 to 1907 and also discovered other archaeological finds proofing the existence of Babylon’s famed hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Marduk, and the Ishtar Gate.(Sources: LIvius.org and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, britannica.com)

  2. After conquering Jerusalem and razing the Second Temple in 70 A.D., a memorial of the conquest was created in Rome, known as the Arch of Titus and still exists to this day where it was erected at the foot of Palatine Hill in the Forum. The artwork depicts Jewish captives and treasures from the Second Temple, including silver trumpets and a menorah. (Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia, ancient.eu).

  3. The Times of Israel website (www.timesofisrael.com) reported on October 27, 2016 that artifacts offering proof of Solomon’s Temple, Israel’s First Temple. I will quote excerpts from the article, “Archaeologists Spotlight First Solomon’s Temple-Era Artifacts Ever Found on Temple Mount.”

“Israeli archaeologists on Thursday presented new details of what they said were the first tiny artifacts, unearthed in situ on the Temple Mount, ever conclusively dated to the time of the First Temple over 2,600 years ago . . . The artifacts excavated from the mount, detailed in a paper and presentations at a conference at Hebrew University, are said to include olive pits, animal bones and pottery fragments dating to the time of the First Temple, between the 8th and 6th Centuries BCE. Archaeologists have previously found a limited number of artifacts from First-Temple-period Jerusalem, but none of those finds were uncovered atop the mount itself . . .”

      1. Hezekiah’s Tunnel is one ancient site that every tourist can explore. When Jerusalem was under siege by King Sennacherib of Assyria, he had workmen create an underground tunnel so that the city would still have a water supply to help the residents survive. You can read the account in II Kings 18-20.

      2. On June 15 2017, Ha’aretz, an Israeli Hebrew newspaper, reported that an artifact containing the words “House of Yahweh” was found at an archaeological dig at Tel Arad in Israel and is around 2,600 years old (Ha’aretz, June 15, 2017, “Inscription Found on First Temple-era Pottery in Jeursalem”). Even Wikipedia acknowledges that this was probably referring to the Temple in Jerusalem.

      3. Even Wikipedia – hardly a pro-Israel source of information – recognizes “the City of David in Jerusalem” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siloam_tunnel).
      4. It will be surprising to many that even in 1929, Arabs admitted the existence of the Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. “Until recently, Palestinians generally acknowledged that the Beit Hamikdash (Hebrew for The Holy Temple) existed. A 1929 publication, A Brief Guide to the Haram al-Sharif, written by Waqf historian Aref al Aref, declares that the Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s temple is beyond dispute. This too is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt and peace offerings” (Smithsonian.com, April 2011, “What Is Beneath the Temple Mount?”).
      5.  Ha’aretz lists more archaeological finds that confirm biblical history and the existence of the Jewish Temples at https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-the-best-israel-archaeology-stories-of-5776-1.5444228.
      6. The Final Straw: Although the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D., one outer retaining wall was left intact. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Romans viewed the outer wall as “insignificant . . . since it was not part of the Temple itself . . .” This is the wall that Jews pray at today, known as the Western or Wailing Wall. This is clear, irrefutable evidence that the First and Second Jewish Temples are not fairy tales told by Jews to disinherit Muslims but actually existed.

This is but a small sampling of the evidence that the First and Second Jewish Temples existed and they were located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. To believe anything else is a denial of reality.  Isn’t a denial of reality a symptom of insanity?

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

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By Richard Schnittger

To all the people who let this election break up families and friends, let this sink in. I think the last civil conversations we had occurred just days before November 8, 2016. You were confident Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election; you voted for her with glee. I cast my vote for Donald Trump. Then the unimaginable happened. He won.

And you lost your freaking minds.

I knew you would take the loss hard—and personally—since all of you were super jacked-up to elect the first woman president. But I did not imagine you would become totally deranged, attacking anyone who voted for Trump or supported his presidency as a racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, Nazi-sympathizer.

The weirdness started on social media late on Election Night, as it became clear Hillary was going to lose. A few of you actually admitted that you were cradling your sleeping children, weeping, wondering what to tell your kindergartener the next morning about Trump’s victory. It continued over the next several days. Some of you seriously expressed fear about modern-day concentration camps. You would be dragged from your homes and be executed. Your daughters were future victims; your sons were predators-in-waiting. You threatened to leave Facebook because you could no longer enjoy the family photos or vacation posts from people who were once friends, who became literally “Hitlers” to you on November 8,  because they voted for Donald Trump.

The attacks against us Trump voters were so personal, so vicious and so violent that I did not think it could be sustained. I thought maybe you would regain your sanity after some turkey and eggnog. But you did not. You got worse. I went from sad to angry to where I am today: Amused.

As the whole charade you have been suckered into over the last 18 months starts to fall apart—that Trump would not survive his presidency; he would be betrayed by his own staff, family, and/or political party; he would destroy the Republican Party; he would be declared mentally ill and removed from office; he would be handcuffed and dragged out of the White House; he would be impeached by Robert Mueller for “colluding” with Russia, etcetra, etcetra, etcetra. Let me remind you what complete fools you have made of yourselves; not to mention how you’ve been fooled by the media, the Democratic Party, and your new heroes on the #Never Trump Right.

On November 9, you awoke from a self-induced, eight-year-long political coma to find out that White House press secretaries shade the truth and top presidential advisers run political cover for their boss. You were shocked to discover that presidents exaggerate, even lie on occasion. You became interested for the first time about the travel accommodations, office expenses, and lobbyist pals of administration officials. You started counting how many rounds of golf the president played. You suddenly thought it was fine to mock the first lady now that she wasn’t Michelle Obama. Once you removed your pussy hat after attending the Women’s March, you made fun of Kellyanne Conway’s hair, Sarah Sanders’ weight, Melania Trump’s shoes, Hope Hicks and Ivanka Trump. You helped fuel a rumor started by a bottom-feeding author that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was having a affair with President  Trump. You thought it was A-OK that Betsy DeVos was nearly physically assaulted and routinely heckled.

You called Donald Trump’s son Barron a retard.

You glorified a woman who has sex on camera and is a stripper in sleazy bars for a paycheck.  You believed her whore attorney who, at last count, has been on CNN and MSNBC over 100 times. You don’t care that he has lawsuits against him in all 50 states. You don’t care that he owes 6.5 million dollars to the Franchise Tax Board from his employees’ withholding tax or that he owes 10 million to investors in Tully Coffee.  You don’t care that he is going to be disbarred in California.

You have learned all kinds of new things that those of us who didn’t willfully ignore politics for the past eight years already knew. For example, we already knew that illegal immigrants were being deported and families were being separated to the tune of 87,000 children under Obama.

Some of your behavior has been kinda cute. It was endearing to watch you become experts on the Logan Act, the Hatch Act, the Second Amendment, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause. You developed a new crush on Mitt Romney after calling him a “sexist” for having “binders full of women.” You longed for a redux of the presidency of George W. Bush, a man you once wanted imprisoned for war crimes, the same for the warmonger John McCain. You embraced people like Right Wing Bill Kristol and David Frum without knowing anything about their histories of shotgunning the Iraq War.

But your newfound admiration for law enforcement really has been a fascinating transformation. Wasn’t it just last fall that I saw you loudly supporting professional athletes who were protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem? Remember how you “fanboyed” a mediocre quarterback for wearing socks that depicted cops as pigs? You called the intelligence agencies morons with their claim of “weapons of mass destruction” in the Gulf War, but now you sound like paid spokesmen for the Fraternal Order of Police. You insist that any legitimate criticism of the misconduct and possible criminality that occurred at the Justice Department and FBI is an “attack on law enforcement.” While you once opposed the Patriot Act because it might have allowed the federal government to spy on terrorists who were using the local library to learn how to make suitcase bombs, you now fully support the unchecked power of a secret court to look into the phone calls, text messages and emails of an American citizen because he volunteered for the Trump campaign for a few months. I volunteered for the Trump Campaign for over a year. Does the FBI have a file on me and did they wiretap my phone? 

Spying on terrorists, before 2002: Bad. Spying on Carter Page and anyone tied to the Trump campaign: Good.

It’s the highest form of patriotism.

But your daily meltdowns about Trump-Russia election collusion have been the most entertaining to observe. After Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel, you were absolutely convinced it would result in Trump’s arrest and/or impeachment. Some of you insisted that Trump wouldn’t last beyond 2017. You quickly swallowed any chum tossed at you by the Trump-hating media on CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post about who was going down next, or who would flip on the president.

For the past year, I have watched you obsess over a rotating cast of characters: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Carter Page, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Sam Nunberg, and Hope Hicks are just a few of the people you thought would turn on Trump or hasten his political demise. But when those fantasies didn’t come true, you turned to Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels for hope and inspiration. It will always be your low point.

Well, I think it will be. Each time I believe you’ve hit bottom, you come up with a new baseline. Perhaps defending the unprecedented use of federal power to spy on political foes, then lie about it, will be the next nail in your credibility coffin.

The Stock Market hits a record high; you say it’s the result of the Obama administration. The Stock Market drops a thousand points, so now it’s President Trump’s stock market.   You cheer.

Unemployment is at 3.9%. Unemployment is at record lows for Blacks, Hispanics and women. Black home ownership is at an all time high. 3.5 million jobs have been created in 17 months.  Democrat leaders call this “reckless.”

You fear that tariffs will get us into a trade war. Companies are moving back to the United States to employ hundreds of thousands of people. 

Harley Davidson moves part of it’s assembly plant to Taiwan, so you cheer and gloat.  But they are still enlarging their plant in the United States to employ 1,000 new people. 

President Trump says that he is going to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. You say he’s going to get us in a nuclear war. President Trump and Kim sign an agreement for denuclearization. You wish that Kim would have nuked Los Angeles so Trump wouldn’t get credit. 

President Trump calls for the G7 members to pay up what they owe or we are dropping out. You call Trump a bully.  Within days the countries pay 48 billion dollars. 

President Trump visits the Queen of England.  You call Trump rude for walking in front of the Queen. It was the first time a Queen of England has inspected the troops in 75 years.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters called on her supporters to publicly confront and harass members of the Trump administration. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Some on the left would like nothing more than to yank President Trump out of the White House, drag him through the streets of D.C. naked and hang him at the Washington Monument.

The comedy show from the left is not entertaining anymore.

Editor’s Note:  Richard Schnittger is a United States Military Veteran and a Proud Patriot living in Commiefornia

UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST: ISRAEL DOES NOT ALLOW ACCESS TO THE HOLY SITES

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By Carol Rushton

One of the more laughable charges against Israel is that Christians and Muslims are not allowed free access to the holy sites in the Jewish state. In all the almost eight years I lived in Israel the only people who did not have free access to the holy sites were the Jews, who were routinely denied access to the Temple Mount, the Jews’ holiest site in the entire world!

When Muslims captured Jerusalem in 638 A.D., they desecrated the Temple Mount, site of the First and Second Jewish Temples, by building two mosques on the site, the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. By the Middle Ages when the Holy Land was ruled by the successive Islamic caliphates of the Mamluks and Ottomans, Muslims had turned the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Abraham, Sarah, and other Jewish patriarchs are buried, into a mosque and forbade Jews from entering it. They did allow Jews to pray on the fifth step leading up to the cave, eventually changing it to the seventh step. How gracious of them!

After the Jews successfully defended the new State of Israel against the surounding Arab nations, Israel and Jordan signed the 1949 Armistice Agreement. Although Jerusalem was divided, with Israel having control over West Jerusalem and Jordan having control over East Jerusalem, the agreement specified that Israel and Jordan were supposed to work together to ensure that all Israeli residents regardless of religious affiliation had free access to the holy sites in the city. Jordan refused and denied Jews access to the Old City, the Wailing or Western Wall, the Temple Mount, and the Mount of Olives, holy to both Christians and Jews and where an ancient Jewish cemetery is located with thousands of Jewish graves and burial tombs.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Jordan also denied Christians access to certain sites important to their religious faith. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem for 28 years, said, “Israeli Christians were subjected to various restriction during their seasonal pilgrimages to the holy place . . . Only limited numbers were grudgingly permitted to briefly visit the Old city and Bethlehem and Christmas and Easter.” Jordan imposed further restrictions on Christians schools, among them refusing to allow Christians to open new schools, forcing the teaching of the Qur’an in the existing schools, and refusing to allow Christian churches and charities to purchase property in Jerusalem. After the 1967 Six Day War when Israel took possession of East Jerusalem, Israel abolished those restrictions on Christians.

Although the Israeli military had control of East Jerusalem and the Israeli flag flew on the Temple Mount for a brief time, Israeli General Moshe Dayan ordered the flag removed and returned control of the Temple Mount back to the Waqf, the Islamic Religious Authority, who has control of that site to this day.

Today, Jews are banned from praying on the Temple Mount, essentially pretty much banning Jews from the site altogether, because the Muslims who control that area are offended when religious Jews pray on the Temple Mount. Many religious Jews do not wish to go on the Temple Mount because they are afraid they will desecrate the space where the Holy of Holies resided in the first two Temples. Other Jews feel it is imperative to establish some type of Jewish presence on the Temple Mount because it belongs to the Jews. For instance, Gershon Salomon and the Temple Mount Faithful used to try to install a cornerstone on the Temple Mount every year. That effort seems to have ceased for the present.

For years Arabs on the Temple Mount have pelted rocks and other items periodically at Jews and others praying at the Eastern or Wailing Wall below. This was brought to a head on July 14, 2017, when Muslims on top of the Temple Mount shot and killed two Israel policemen below. Israelis were outrage and tried to install metal detectors on the Temple Mount so that anyone who had access to the area would not be free to enter the Temple Mount complex with a weapon. However, the anger of Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East led Israel to abandon that idea.

As far as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron is concerned, now that the Israeli government has control over that area both Muslims and Jews are allowed to enter separate areas of the site and pray. Every once in a while, a Muslim will try to smuggle in a knife and sometimes is successful in stabbing someone.

The only ones who ban others from religious sites are Muslims. For instance, Saudi Arabi to this day will not allow Bibles or churches to exist in their country. Saudi Arabia has banned non-Muslims form entering Mecca and Medina as well as not being allowed any public demonstrations of their religious faith; they can be prosecuted under Saudi law if they do. The same applies to Muslims who want to leave Islam and convert to another faith, something that is considered a crime under Saudi law, punishable by death.

I can personally attest to the fact that the Israeli government does a wonderful job in making sure Christian, Jewish, and Islamic holy sites are open to all as much as possible. The only time I ever had any trouble having access to a holy site was when my father would bring a Christian tour group to Israel, and would visit the Temple Mount. Even if I was wearing a skirt below the knee, the Muslims would sometimes throw a fit and demand that I put on a maxi skirt that went all the way to the ground before they would allow me to enter the area.

Andrew Klavan, with The Daily Wire, haa a novel solution: give the entire Middle East to Israel, thereby securing religious freedom and access to all holy site in the region for all. Check out his entertaining You Tube video at:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEeiDjdUuU.

UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST: ISRAEL ATTACKED ARAB NATIONS WITHOUT CAUSE IN 1967

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By Carol Rushton

The 1967 Six-Day War is one of the most pivotal events in the 20th century. Not only did the Israelis win a stunning victory against overwhelming Arab forces, but they did it in record time – a mere six days, unheard of in modern military history. Israel regained East Jerusalem including the Old City and the Temple Mount, reuniting the city for the first time under Jewish rule in over 2,000 years as well as their ancient biblical lands of Judea and Samaria.

Anti-Semites have been very critical of Israel’s 1967 victory, claiming it is illegitimate because Israeli forces attacked the surrounding Arab countries first and seized territory that rightfully belongs to Arabs.

But is this really what happened?

The Arab League was founded in 1945 ostensibly to promote “Arab unity” but its real purpose was to oppose any formation of a Jewish country in the Middle East, and then calling for Israel’s total annihilation after1948. By 1963, the organization had grown to beyond its original seven founding members of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen to include Algeria, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia.

This date is important because it was in 1963 that the Arab League decided to create a proxy terrorist organization they could use to attack Israel without having to formally go to war against the Jewish state. That organization was the Palestine Liberation Organization, more commonly known as the PLO. Their charter blatantly called for the complete eradication of the State of Israel, as it does to this day.

The PLO was a very effective arm of the Arab League. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians increased from 35 in 1965 to 41 in 1966, and 37 in 1967 before the Six-Day War.

The rhetoric against Israel from the surrounding Arab countries also grew increasingly more bellicose and strident in the 1960s, leading up to the 1967 war. Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser led the charge. Nasser flatly rejected any attempts by Israeli leaders to come to the table and try to reach a peace agreement. Nasser’s response to Foreign Minister Gold Meir’s 1960 entreaty to meet with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to try to hammer out a peace agreement was that Egypt would never recognize Israel.

Nasser’s speech at the United Arab Republic National Assembly on March 26, 1964 is typical of his hostility toward Israel.

“Israel and the imperialism around us which confront us, are two separate things. There have been attempts to separate them, in order to break up the problems and present them in an imaginary light as if the problem of Israel is the problem of the refugees, by the solution of which the problem of Palestine will also be solved and no residue of the problem will remain. The danger of Israel lies in the very existence of Israel as it is in the present and in what she represents.”

In 1965 and 1966, Nasser stepped up his anti-Israel statements. “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.” A few months afterward, Nasser launched another verbal attack. “In other words, we aim at the destruction of the state of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel.”

During this time, Syria increased rocket attacks against Israeli towns and farming communities, known as kibbutzim, from its advantage on the Golan Heights. Although Israeli diplomats repeatedly brought this up in the U.N., their protests fell on deaf ears. A U.N. resolution stating “regret” at the Syrian attacks, amounting to little more than 40 lashes with a wet noodle, was still too much for the Soviet Union, who used their veto power as a Security Council member to kill it. Of course, when Israel tried to defend itself, she faced vicious condemnation by the U.N.

In April 1967, Israel had finally had enough and shot down six Syrian-Soviet MiGs. The Soviets retaliated by telling Syria and Egypt that Israel was beginning a military buildup in preparation for an attack on both countries, which was an outright lie. Syria already had a defense treaty with Egypt and asked for Egyptian aid while Egypt started amassing troops in the Sinai Peninsula near the Israeli border.

To be honest, the Arabs did not need much encouragement to prepare to attack Israel. It is impossible to believe that Egyptian or Syrian intelligence did not refute the Soviet Union’s claims. If Egypt and Syria believed the Soviets, it was because they wanted to believe a lie.

However, unbeknownst to both Syria and Egypt, the Israeli government had already been forewarned of a future united Arab attack. In 1965, King Hassan II of Morocco, at great personal risk to himself, secretly recorded a meeting of the Arab League at the Casablanca Hotel in his country and turned it over to the Israelis. Major General Shlomo Gazit, head of the Research Department of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, could not overstate King Hassan’s help. “These recordings, which were truly an extraordinary intelligence achievement, further showed us that . . . the Arab states were heading toward a conflict that we must prepare for.”

In the months preceding the Six-Day War, Nasser was able to consolidate his aim of a united Arab attack against Israel through several important achievements:

  1. Convincing the U.N. to withdraw their peace-keeping force from the Egyptian-Israeli Sinai border, giving Egypt a clear, unobstructed path to invade Israel’s southern border

  2. Signing a defense pact with Jordan

  3. Imposing a blockade of all shipping to and from Israel by closing the Straits of Tiran, Israel’s only shipping lane to the Red Sea from its port city of Eilat

Nasser escalated the pressure on Israel through almost daily taunts. “The Jews threaten to make war. I reply: Welcome! We are ready for war.” He also stated, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.” Nasser could not seem to resist goading the Israelis at every opportunity. “We will not accept any . . . coexistence with Israel . . . Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel . . . The war with Israel is in effect since 1948.”

After signing the defense pact with Jordan on May 30, 1967, Nasser crowed, “The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel . . . to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations.”

Iraq also joined the Arab coalition, bringing the united Arab forces to a total of about 465,000 troops, over 2,800 tanks, and 800 aircraft surrounding Israel, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

With an Arab invasion imminent, the Israelis had no choice but to launch a pre-emptive attack. If Israel had waited for the Arab forces to attack, the Israeli military would have been overwhelmed. Anything less would have been suicide.

Even though the United States President Lyndon Johnson chickened out and refused to support Israel, taking a very public neutral position, the Israeli cabinet on June 4, 1967, led by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, voted unanimously to give the green light to the Israeli military. On June 7, almost every plane in the Israeli Air Force bombed Egyptian airfields while Egyptian pilots were still eating breakfast, effectively annihilating the Egypt’s entire air force at one brilliant stroke. This was only the beginning. The world’s nations were astonished, just as Nasser had predicted – they were astounded at the breathtaking speed and completeness of tiny Israel’s victory over staggering odds and overpowering enemy forces.

None of this should be a surprise to those who know the Holy Scriptures. Thousands of years ago, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it” (Isaiah 31:5). Ezekiel 37:21-22 is even more direct in prophesying that one day God would restore to the Jews their ancient biblical lands. “Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel . . .”

It was never Israel’s intention to gain the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria in 1967. The Israelis were simply defending themselves against hostile countries that had pledged to wipe them off the face of the earth. Israel has the right to defend herself, as does the United States of America, and she should not have to apologize to any country or international body to exercise that right when it is imperative for her to do so.

THE OBAMAS’ COMMUNIST VISION FOR YOU

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By Carol Rushton

“Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.”

Michelle Obama, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 14, 2008

“This is a great revolution, an entirely new and creative revolution carried out after the seizure of political power by the proletariat. Its aim is to overthrow through struggle the small handful of persons . . . who are in authority who have taken the capitalist road, to sweep away all ghosts and monsters in our society, and to break the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes and foster the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat, with a view to further consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and developing the socialist system.”

Lin Biao, second vice chairman of the Communist Party of China, October 1, 1966

In the early 1960s, China’s dictator Mao Tse Tung had been harshly criticized by Communist Party officials for the millions who died during the disastrous Great Leap Forward. He was paranoid that influential, powerful party members would be able to successfully overthrow him. Mao was so desperate to hold on to power, the only way he could do it was by causing chaos throughout the country, and as a result within the Communist Party, under the guise of the Cultural Revolution.

To initiate the Cultural Revolution, Mao and his closest sycophants encouraged the youth of the country to violently defy authority figures, including their teachers in school, local police forces, and the military. The students were only too happy to oblige, their units eventually becoming known as Red Guards.

Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, travelled around the country to prep young people for the new phase of Communist anarchy. In a speech to students at Peking University on July 28, 1966, Qing reassured them, “When bad people get beaten by good people, they deserve it. When good people get beaten by bad people, the credit goes to the good people. When good people beat good people, it is a misunderstanding that should be cleared up.”

In his great book, The Cultural Revolution, Frank Dikotter details what happened next.

More encouragement came on 13 August, as a mass rally was organized at the Workers’ Stadium. In front of tens of thousands of students, five ordinary citizens who had threatened Red Guards a few weeks earlier were paraded on a stage and denounced as “hooligans.” They were beaten and whipped with belts. Zhou Enlai and Wang Renzhong, presiding over the struggle meeting, made no attempt to stop the violence.

In the following days, a wave of terror spread through the schools of Beijing. At Beijing’s 101st Middle School, a prestigious institution where Mao and other central leaders sent their children, more than 10 teachers were forced to crawl on a path paved with coal cinders until their knees and palms were burned. At the Beijing Sixth Middle School . . . Red Guards wrote “Long Live the Red Terror” on the wall of an interrogation chamber. Later they repainted the slogan with the blood of their victims.

Lin Biao, in charge of the Chinese military, gave a speech a few days later to over a million young people packed into Tiananmen Square for a huge rally in support of the Cultural Revolution. Biao encouraged the enthusiastic crowd to eradicate “all the old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits of the exploiting classes.” He gave a similar speech later that year in October.

China’s youth did not disappoint Mao. They had received their marching orders and were more than willing to comply. Dikotter describes what happened after the Tiananmen Square rally.

A wave of violence engulfed the capital after the rally on Tiananmen Square. At the Beijing Third Girls Middle School, the principal was beaten to death. The dean hanged herself. At another middle school near Beijing Normal University the principal was ordered to stand under the hot sun while Red Guards poured boiling water over him. New depths of horror were plumbed at another middle school, this one attached to the Beijing Teachers’ College, as a biology teacher was knocked to the ground, beaten and dragged by her legs through the front door and down the steps, her head bumping against the concrete. She died after being further tormented for several hours. Then the other teachers, rounded up as so many monsters and demons, were forced to take turns and beat her dead body. At elementary schools, where the students were no older then thirteen, some teachers were made to swallow nails and excrement; others had their heads shaved and were forced to slap each other.

At this point, you might be saying, “What does this have to do with the Obamas?”

During the Obama Administration, there were numerous attacks on police officers around the country, riots and protests against police, and a number of police officer deaths. President Obama started the offensive against the police when Henry “Skip” Gates, a professor at Harvard University, was arrested after local police officers saw him trying to break into a house at night. Professor Gates had been away from his home for some time working on a film project and evidently could not remember how to use the key to the front door of his own house.

Because he was black, Professor Gates felt that the police officers were guilty of racism and that he would not have been arrested had he been white instead of black. “This is what happens to black men in America,” Gates said. President Obama felt he had to weigh in. “I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say . . . the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”

Doesn’t Proverbs 18:13 say, “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him”?

This was only the beginning. After the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, President Obama never waited for the facts of the shootings to be revealed. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the deaths were a result of racism by white police officers against black males. Obama made statements after the shootings like “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” and that Brown’s shooting and death “stains the heart of black children.”

Violent riots broke out in Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown had lived, resulting in millions of dollars in damage and destruction to private property and businesses alike. Violent riots and protests also occurred in Baltimore, Maryland after Freddie Gray, a black man, was arrested and afterward died while in police custody. All six Baltimore police officers prosecuted for Gray’s death were acquitted. Rumors abounded that in both Ferguson and Baltimore the police had been told to stand down and not arrest any of the rioters or try to prevent the massive damage and vandalizing the rioters committed.

The Black Lives Matter group was established as a result of the deaths of these black men. Black Lives Matter organized and sponsored demonstrations and protests around the country, Their members would march and incite violence from the public with chants such as “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon,” clearly a call to kill police officers.

Shootings and assaults on police officers skyrocketed during the rest of the Obama’s presidential term. On November 21, 2016, The Washington Post reported that ambush killings of police officers had reached a ten-year high (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/21/ambush-killings-of-police-officers-has-hit-a-10-year-high/?utm_term=.a709cf292e74). One of the most shocking sniper shootings occurred in Dallas, Texas in 2016 when five police officers were murdered in cold blood protecting protesters at an anti-police demonstration. The situation became so bad that William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, accused Obama of conducting a “war on cops” (Politico, July 8, 2016, “Police Group Director: Obama Caused a ‘War on Cops”).

Johnson continued, “I think [the Obama administration] continued appeasements at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible.”

It is striking that President Obama met with leaders of the Black Lives Matter group at the White House, just as Mao met with leaders of the Red Guards. It is also important to note that police shootings have dramatically plummeted since Donald Trump became president.

So when Barack Obama says he wants to “create a million young Barack Obamas” and Michelle Obama says she wants to create “thousands of mes” a cold shiver should run through the spine of every patriotic American who believes in our Constitution and the rule of law.

(The Guardian, March 25, 2018, “Obama wants to ’create a million young Barack Obamas’”)

(Business Insider, March 2, 2018, “Michelle Obama wants to create ‘thousands of mes’ – and she’s not interested in running for president”)