In every generation they rise up to destroy us

Hamas’ Ramadan war has bled over into Pentecost (Sunday evening May 16), the Jewish feast known as Shavuot/Feast of Weeks in Deuteronomy 16:10: “Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to YHVH your God.” This is the third time Hamas has initiated rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population during a Ramadan season, considered in classical Islamic sources to be an auspicious time for jihad.

Hamas’ zealous Islamist religious convictions focus primarily on the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, as its Charter makes crystal clear:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas) draws its guidelines from Islam” (Article #1)
“The Platform of The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas): Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors”

It’s not surprising that Jewish holidays often center around attempts to destroy the Jewish people. That’s “nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The famous Hebrew Passover song “V’hi she’amda” graphically charts this historical flow. “For not only has one nation risen up to annihilate us, but actually in every generation they rise up to destroy us. But the Holy One blessed be He, rescues us from out of their hand!” The Jewish nation may be paranoid, but even paranoid people can have real enemies.

Though the Abraham Accords give the impression that peace is breaking out in the Middle East, anti-Jewish roots still run deep in the Islamic world. A clear example: the previous ruler of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (died in 2004) held aggressively anti-Israel views and funded international think-tanks to spread those views, which included Holocaust denial. The coronavirus of anti-Semitism is lurking just under the surface all across the Middle East, hovering below the glass-topped oak tables at Islamic conferences like the World Islamic Conference (Saudi) or the International Islamic Unity Conference (Iran). How do these roots influence not only Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but also Israeli Arabs?

Not only one nation

To get a solid grasp on developments among Israeli Arabs, one has to look deeper than TV breaking news or the New York Times. Even the occasional voice coming out of Israel’s Messianic Jewish or Israeli Arab community may not always be reflecting concrete realities on the ground.

One of the reasons this is important is because of the recent Arab-Islamic riots throughout Israel involving arson, robbery, blocking and stoning of national highways, lynching and murder have pushed these matters to front and center in Israeli discussions. Talking-head responses in the Arab community have included the following expressions:

denial that Arabs are rioting
justification for such behavior, blaming it on Israel’s supposed moral failures
tit-for-tat arguments, saying that Arabs are simply responding to ‘initial’ Jewish terror
a call for all rioting (Jewish and then Arab) to stop

In the past week 112 Jewish homes were torched, 386 Jewish homes were looted. One Arab home in Jaffa’s Ajami district was attacked with a Molotov firebomb and a 12 year old Arab boy was badly burned. Israeli police traced the DNA on the glass bottle to an Arab rioter who mistook the Arab house for a Jewish house. Here is an incomplete list of violent activities over the past week, all perpetrated by Israeli Arabs:

Lod- Monday May 10, Israeli Arabs burn the synagogue in Lod, not far from Ben Gurion airport
Lod – Tuesday May 11, Yigal Yehoshua, age 56, lynched by being beaten with bricks in Lod by Israeli Arabs, dies Monday May 17
Laqiya – Tuesday May 11, Israeli Arab Bedouin attempt to lynch inhabitants of 4 Jewish cars on Route 6
Akko/Acre – Tuesday May 11, Israeli Arab arson destroys two boutique tourist spots, the Arabesque Hotel and Uri Buri fish restaurant
Akko/Acre – Tuesday May 11, 84 year old famous Israeli leader in Israel’s space program in critical condition as a result of the hotel arson
Akko/Acre – Wednesday May 12, 30 year old Jewish man in critical condition after being attacked by Israeli Arab mob with rods at Egged Square
Hura – May 12 Wednesday, Israeli Arab Bedouin rioters set fire to community police HQ in the Negev
Rahat – May 12 Wednesday, Israeli Arab Bedouin throw stones and burn tires along routes 310 and 264.
Kafr Kassem – Thursday May 13, two police cars set on fire in Israeli Arab town
Jaffa – Thursday May 13, Leon Shranin, a 19 year old soldier, seriously beaten by Israeli Arabs, suffering from a skull fracture and a cerebral hemorrhage
Lod – Thursday May 13, Jewish man on way to synagogue prayers stabbed beside mosque by Israeli Arab
Umm al-Fahm – Thursday May 13, Jewish family attacked by Arab rioters after accidentally entering Israeli Arab town
Umm al-Fahm – Thursday May 13, Israeli policeman injured by live fire by Israeli Arabs, Molotovs also thrown at Police station
Haifa – Thursday May 13, bus stoned, one woman passenger injured
Kiryat Motzkin – Thursday May 13, Arab resident called on Arab protestors to target Jewish vehicles and shops in Akko
Tamra – Thursday May 13, Israeli Arab medic saves the life of a 50 year old Jewish man stabbed in neck in Israeli Arab town
Akko/Acre – Friday May 14, Jewish-Arab Theater Center torched by Israeli Arabs
Other riots of Israeli Arabs include the following towns: Baqa al-Gharbiyye, Fureidis, Jisr az-Zarqa, Nahf (near Carmiel),
Riots also occurred in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of a-Tur, Bet Hanina, Sheikh Jarrah, Shuafat, Silwan.

The specifically Islamist nature of these attacks needs to be considered. Synagogues and yeshivas were burned to the ground. Torah scrolls and Jewish prayer books were vandalized. Over one hundred Jewish-owned cars were torched. Jewish passengers were pulled out of cars and lynched. The cries of the Israeli Arab mobs were typically jihadi and murderous: “With blood, with spirit we will redeem you al-Aqsa!” and “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud” (‘Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews! The army of Muhammad is returning!’ – a classic Islamist battle cry used when attacking Jews or Israelis).

These attacks cannot be explained by Marxist political theory – the main motivations here are not economic or social. They are classically jihadi. They are a spiritual continuation of the Islamist jihadi campaigns waged by Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Muslim Brotherhood against Jews and their restoration in 1920-21, 1929, 1936, 1948, etc. As Professor Efraim Karsh of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies notes in his fresh article ‘Israel's Arabs versus Israel’ of May 14, 2021, “The ongoing explosion of violence by Israel’s Arabs against their Jewish compatriots is not an act of social protest as is wrongly claimed by many commentators but an internal uprising in support of an external enemy – a corollary of decades of steady nationalist and religious radicalization, especially since the September of the Oslo ‘peace process’ in September 1993.”

How did Israeli Arabs get to this point?

In the State of Israel, Jewish and Arab believers in Yeshua make up a very small percentage of the overall population. Out of nine million Israeli citizens, Jewish believers may be 0.3% and Arab believers 0.2% of the total Israeli population. Our relationships with each other are important in the eyes of the Lord, and the love we express to each other is a significant joy and testimony. But for a clearer and realistic view of general relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel, we need stronger and longer-range spectacles. Jews and Arabs who care about what is happening need to consider the past, present and future of these two groups.

In May 1948, when five Arab armies broke into the fledgling Jewish state, claiming it for their own, there were approximately 750,000 Arabs residing in the area. Nearly 600,000 of these Arabs fled (the ‘Palestinian refugees’), either to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordanian-controlled territories. Approximately 160,000 Arabs remained in the Jewish State of Israel and became Israeli citizens – 13.6% of the total population. By 2019 these Israeli Arabs had become 1.9 million – 21% of the total population, a nearly twelvefold increase.

Regarding the explosive growth of Islam in Israel: In 1988 there were 80 mosques in Israel, but by 2003 that number had grown to 363. That is an increase of nearly four and a half times. Yet during that period the Arab population increased only one and a half times. This reveals a growing Islamization of Israel’s Arab population. By 2020 Muslims were 85% of Israel’s Arab population. The future seems to be heading even more in that direction.

Perspectives from scholars and spooks

Israeli scholar and doyen of the ‘New Historians’ in Israel Benny Morris gives his perspective:

“I don’t see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want” . . . [Morris] said that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian ‘fifth column’, once the Arabs had attacked the infant state, and that the number executed or massacred – some 800 – was “peanuts” compared with the massacres in Bosnia in the 1990s. He even added: “The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified.”

Yuval Diskin, former Director of SHABAK, Israel’s General Security Services, noted in a 2006 internal document that that Israel's Arab population “is a genuine long-range danger to the Jewish character and very existence of the State of Israel.” In 2004 then-GSS Director Avi Dichter had told the Israeli cabinet that the Arab population in East Jerusalem “represents today the largest reservoir for terror attacks within the Green Line.”

In an article titled ‘Israel’s Domestic Enemy’, Daniel Pipes (President of the Middle East Forum) speaks bluntly:

After nearly sixty years on the sidelines, Israel's third and final enemy may be joining the battle . . . Foreign states are Israel's enemy no. 1 . . . External Palestinians [ed. terrorists and Hamas] are enemy no. 2 . . . The Muslim citizens of Israel, usually known in English as Israeli Arabs, constitute enemy no. 3. (But I focus on Muslims, not Arabs, because Arabic-speaking Christians and Druze are generally less hostile) . . . Their blatantly celebrating Israel's worst enemies evidences this, as does growing Muslim-on-Jewish violence within Israel.

In 2000, a poll published by the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot showed that 66% of surveyed Israeli Arabs would support the Palestinians in any confrontation with Israel, while only 13 percent would support their own country.

Ra’am, the political wing of the Southern Islamic Movement, is an organization inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood (as are Hamas and al Qa’eda). Updated and reviewed at a 2019 conference in Nazareth chaired by Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, the Southern Islamic Movement’s charter takes Islamist and jihadi positions:

“The State of Israel was born of the racist, occupying Zionist project; iniquitous Western and British imperialism; and the debasement and feebleness of the Arab and Islamic [nations]. We do not absolve ourselves, the Palestinian people, of our responsibility and our failure to confront this project . . . We all are [functioning] one hand until the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and in noble Jerusalem – when the expelled and displaced return to their homes and to their homeland.”

Ra’am has been seriously negotiating with all major Zionist parties in the current round of elections. There is a warning for Israel in this potential rapprochement, considering what has happened to the formerly Christian-controlled country of Lebanon. The incorporation of many Palestinian Muslims post-1970 led to Maronite Christians becoming too small a proportion of the country’s population to rule it.

Karsh challenges us to think carefully about these matters:

Israeli Arabs are an avowedly non- or anti-assimilationist minority with the mentality of a majority. Far from seeking to adapt themselves to the norms and habits of the majority, now more than ever they regard themselves as unlawfully dominated by an alien invader who must be supplanted. Their rejection of their minority status has not diminished but has intensified with the rise in their economic and political fortunes, and so has their opposition to the Jewish state per se.

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar, senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups, and Israeli Arabs, and is an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. His dry conclusion is:

Given Islam’s pervasive entrenchment in Palestinian society (and for that matter in all Middle Eastern societies) – even Yasser Arafat and most of the PLO’s founding generation were Muslim Brotherhood members in their young age – the acceptance of Israel’s existence by Muslims communities, both within Israel and abroad, will only be feasible upon their realization of the Jewish state’s overwhelming strength and invincibility. Only a powerful, well organized, highly determined and militarily invincible Israel can stand a chance of surviving in its violent and merciless neighborhood.

Are all Israeli Arabs opposed to the Jewish state?

The answer to this question is simple: no. Though the Islamization and radicalization of Israeli Arabs is a clear and present danger, there are some Arabs and Druze (since 1948) who long ago made the decision to loyally stand with the Jewish state. Today three Arab communities serve in the IDF – Druze, Circassians and Bedouin. Aramean Christians do not see themselves as Arabs, and they too are very Israel-positive. Pipes’ perspective is that approximately 20% of Israeli Arabs could be considered positive to Israel and Israelis. Some Palestinians are also very positive to Israel, though secretly, as their being exposed could cost them their lives.

In a recent article (December 2017) titled ‘Citizenship, Identity and Political Participation: Measuring the Attitudes of the Arab Citizens in Israel’ (Arik Rudnitzky & Itamar Radai; Moshe Dayan Center for Middle-Eastern and African Studies), the authors state that “most Arab citizens (60%) relate positively to Israeli citizenship and to current living conditions in Israel. In contrast, a considerable portion - at rates ranging from one-quarter to one-third of the respondents (by varying demographic categories) - holds very critical views on these matters.”

Those Israeli Arabs who are loyal to the State of Israel, who stand with the Jewish people, who (like Ruth 1:16-17) see their own destiny bound up with the destiny of the sons and daughters of Jacob – these are amazing people and worthy of great honor. The Scriptures give us a striking paradigm of what it means to stand with the Jewish people when many of the neighbors are violently opposed to the restoration of Israel. Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite is commended in the Song of Deborah for her courage and accurate hand in dispatching the enemies of Israel, who are also the enemies of YHVH (see Psalm 83:1-5)

Most blessed of women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. Most blessed is she of women in the tent. He asked for water, she gave him milk. In a magnificent bowl she brought him curds. She reached out her hand for the tent peg, and her right hand for the workmen’s hammer. Then she struck Sisera, she smashed his head, and she shattered and pierced his temple. Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay. Between her feet he bowed, he fell. Where he bowed, there he fell dead. Out of the window she looked and wailed, the mother of Sisera through the lattice. “Why does his chariot delay in coming? Why do the hoof beats of his chariots delay?” Her wise princesses would answer her. Indeed she repeats her words to herself, “Are they not finding, are they not dividing the spoils? A concubine, two concubines for every warrior! To Sisera a spoil of dyed cloth, a spoil of dyed cloth embroidered – dyed cloth of double embroidery on the neck of the plunderer?” May all Your enemies perish in this way, YHVH! But may those who love Him be like the rising of the sun in its might.” And the land was at rest for forty years. (Judges 5:24-31)

Did some Israeli Jews also engage in violence?

The answer to this question is sadly – also yes. A few small groups whose political worldview is similar to that of Rabbi Meir Kahane and outright fascist thuggery activated their supporters through social media, and went out to look for violent clash and confrontation with Islamist jihadis. They did this primarily in three locations:

Beside Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate on Thursday April 22, hundreds of far-right Jewish activists, many affiliated with the Jewish supremacist Lehava movement, marched while calling out “Death to Arabs.” There were many injuries but no fatalities.
Orthodox Jewish settler social media posts stated that 30 Jewish youths from Yitzhar in Samaria, West Bank traveled to Lod on Tuesday night and engaged in clashes with Arab rioters. Video footage also showed Jewish rioters throwing stones at Arab cars in Ramle. One Israeli Arab was fatally shot in the violent demonstration.
In the neighborhood of Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, affiliated Jewish thugs violently destroyed an Arab-owned ice-cream parlor and then lynched and nearly murdered an Israeli Arab taxi-driver. Four Jews were arrested while chanting “death to Arabs” and “may your village burn.”

These violent images shocked many in Israel, who are not used to seeing Jews engaging in such street violence. Over the next week Israeli television broadcast commercials showing Jews and Arabs as fellow-workers, neighbors and friends. But it must be said that there was no proportionality in the violence. The above numbers clearly show that. The riots were basically Islamist and the lynchings were basically done by Israeli Arabs. There was also some Jewish violent kickback from a few extreme Jewish groups.

Postscript – Why did Hamas go to war now?

Hamas’s track record is to win elections, and then to not allow any more elections. In Gaza 2006 the PLO lost to Hamas in the elections. Hamas’ rise led to immediate torturing, kneecapping and throwing PLO representatives off the roofs of high buildings. Hamas was hoping to do the same in the upcoming West Bank elections (recently canceled by PLO on April 29, 2021). Their plans to take over the West Bank were knocked off track by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas’ response was to initiate violence in Jerusalem and to fire rockets at Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Aviv and Beersheva, thus triggering jihad. Hamas’ hope is to come out of this episode with a shining reputation among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, eclipsing the PLO and clearly to be recognized as the frontline jihadi defender of Jerusalem and the real leader of the Palestinian people worldwide. To state it clearly – this war is not the result of previous events in Sheikh Jarrah or on the Temple Mount/al Aqsa; it is Hamas’ power play to seize the reigns of Palestinian jihad, and to crush the existence of Israel, the Jewish state – which according to Islamist perspective has no right to exist and must be vanquished by the armies of Muhammad.

How should we then pray?

Pray for the defeat of Islamist terror forces (see 2 Kings 6:8-14)
Pray for protection for Israel’s citizens still facing jihadi terror rocket attacks
Pray for minimal injuries and loss of life for Gazan civilians trapped under Hamas’ iron hand
Pray for strategic and political wisdom for Israel’s leadership in every area
Pray for the raising up of the Ezekiel 37 prophetic army among the Jewish people

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Watchman on the Walls – War in the Middle East

The name that the Israel Defense Forces has given for this current round of fighting with jihadi terror group Hamas is ‘Shomer Hachomot’ – ‘watchman on the walls.’ The term is based on Isaiah 62:6-7: “On your walls, Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen. All day and all night they will never keep silent. You who profess YHVH, take no rest for yourselves – and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem an object of praise on the earth.” Through this choice of name for the military operation, the promised Messianic and irrevocable calling on Israel (Romans 11:28-29) has found its way into world headlines.

Some intercessory prayer movements refer to this verse, but I am not sure if people understand that God is referring to a real people here – the Jewish people; to a real place – the Jewish state and its Jewish capital city Jerusalem; and to the God of the Hebrews who like to call Himself ‘YHVH the Lord of the armies of Israel’? (1 Samuel 17:26; 2 Samuel 7:26; Jeremiah 32:14-15; 50:18).

King David and his watchman’s sword

King David had a finely tuned awareness of who the God of Israel is, and he expressed quite forcefully in his confrontation with Goliath:

So the Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine also said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the wild animals.” But David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a saber, but I come to you in the name of YHVH of armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day YHVH will hand you over to me, and I will strike you and remove your head from you. Then I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that this entire assembly may know that YHVH does not save by sword or by spear; for the battle is YHVH’s, and He will hand you over to us!” (1 Samuel 17:43-47)

All this may come as a shock to some followers of Messiah Yeshua as they grapple with the nature of the God of Jacob. CNN may whitewash evil terrorists by referring to them by the euphemism ‘militants,’ but let’s cut to the chase: the God of Israel is a God both militant and military. Here is how King David describes YHVH in Psalm 110:

YHVH says to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” YHVH will stretch out Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.” Your people will volunteer freely on the day of Your power . . . YHVH is at Your right hand. He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations. He will fill them with corpses. He will shatter the chief men over a broad country. He will drink from the brook by the wayside. Therefore He will lift up His head.

As the Jewish people confront their mortal enemies on the battlefield of the Promised Land, we would do well to remember how YHVH the God of the Bible views these conflicts. David says “I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and I did not turn back until they were consumed” (Psalm 18:37). The psalmist declares that YHVH will fight for David and for his people: “The enemy will not deceive him, nor will the son of wickedness afflict him. But I will crush his adversaries before him, and strike those who hate him” (Psalm 89:22-23). The God of Israel takes these matters very seriously. It’s getting to be the time for us to do so as well.

Aiming rockets at Washington D.C., JFK and LA

The current battle between Hamas and Israel is not a generic battle. It is not a war between Arabs and Jews per se, for Israel has peace treaties with Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain and Morocco. The clash is between the Jewish state and Hamas, a jihadi terror offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas follows an Islamist perspective which sees destroying Israel as a religious duty and privilege, no matter the cost. Hamas began this round of armed conflict by firing seven long-range rockets toward purely civilian areas to the immediate west of Jerusalem. One of these fell across the valley from the Muslim village of Abu Gosh. Later targets in the following days included Ben Gurion International Airport and Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city.

To understand the significance of these targets in comparable terms, these rocket attacks would be like jihadi terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Muslim Brotherhood offshoot al Qa’eda simultaneously attacking America’s capital city Washington D.C., the JFK Airport and Los Angeles in one fell swoop. The nature of these attacks reveals the life-and-death struggle going on here. Hamas has to date fired over 2,000 rockets solely at Israeli civilians, and all have been fired from houses of Gaza’s exclusively residential areas.

God’s military advice to Israel

The writer of Proverbs gives solid military guidance to Jewish kings: “Establish your battle plans by consultation, and with cunning stratagems [wise guidance] make war” (Proverbs 21:18; also Proverbs 24:6). The Hebrew word for ‘cunning stratagems’ is tachbulah (תַּחְבֻּלָה) and it refers to the rope (hevel) used by the captain of a ship to steer the sail or the rudder.

In Joshua 8, the God of Jacob commands Joshua to engage in subterfuge and ambush. This was His divine military strategy:

Now YHVH said to Joshua, “Do not fear or be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you. Arise, go up to Ai. See, I have handed over to you the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. You shall do to Ai and its king just as you did to Jericho and its king. You shall take only its spoils and its cattle as plunder for yourselves. Set an ambush for the city behind it.” So Joshua rose up with all the people of war to go up to Ai. And Joshua chose thirty thousand men, valiant warriors, and sent them out at night. He commanded them, saying, “See, you are going to ambush the city from behind it. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out to meet us as they did the first time, we will flee before them. They will come out after us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing before us just as they did the first time.’ So we will flee before them. Then you shall rise from your ambush and take possession of the city, for YHVH your God will hand it over to you. Then it will be when you have seized the city, that you shall set the city on fire. You shall do it in accordance with the word of YHVH. See, I have commanded you.”

On Thursday night May 13, the IDF used a similar strategy. In every battle with Hamas so far, there has been a similarity of rolling tactics. Hamas opened up hostilities by firing rockets first at the Jewish villages and towns close to Gaza, and then exponentially increased its rocket fire to Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheva and finally to Tel Aviv and beyond. Israel responded by some aerial bombing, and then a ground invasion. But over the past few years IDF strategists have been working on new plans involving both subterfuge and ambush.

Late Thursday night the IDF spokesman distributed a press release which could have been read two different ways. World media concluded that the press release was signaling that Israel was getting ready for a massive ground invasion. Never ones to miss a scoop, they immediately broadcast that an IDF ground invasion was underway. When Hamas military command heard this, they rushed their commando squads to the border in order to confront the projected invasion. But the generals and colonels did what they always do at that point – they ran for their underground bunkers and rat’s nest network of Viet Cong-like tunnels. This was the IDF’s hoped-for result. Over 160 IAF warplanes moved into position over the underground bunkers, armed with JDAM bunker-buster bombs. Simultaneously, crushing fire was directed at the underground Hamas command bunkers by Israeli Merkava tanks, IDF self-propelled howitzers, and Israeli Navy artillery. Though in all previous battles Hamas’ underground network had proved to be unassailable, now the IDF was able to degrade these tunnels with pinpoint precision and move much of the Hamas high command on to other spheres. The military doctrine of ‘shock and awe’ had once again proved its value.

No weapon formed against you

God’s promise to the sons of Jacob is so very encouraging: “You will be far from oppression, for you will not fear, and from terror, for it will not come near you . . . Whoever attacks you will fall because of you . . . No weapon that is formed against you will succeed, and you will condemn every tongue that accuses you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of YHVH, and their vindication is from Me, declares YHVH” (Isaiah 54:14-17).

Two sobering illustrations of this point:

Some Hamas rockets targeted at Israeli civilians fell short and destroyed Gazan electric power lines, leading to severe power outages for 250,000 Gazans.
Terrorists destroyed key elements of the water system for 5,000 Jewish residents of the South Hebron Hills region. That resulted in water being cut off to the Israeli Bedouin town of Kuseife (population 22,000), some who had been stoning Israeli cars and destroying highway lighting only a few hours before.

At this point Israeli Military Intelligence believes that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have 60 days of rockets left in their storerooms – approximately 12,000 units. Chances are that this war will not go on for 60 more days, due to Great Power pressure. But the jihadi goal is to keep firing to the very end, even as Gaza’s infrastructure and economy are being blown into a million pieces. “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make,” declared Lord Maximus Farquaad in the movie Shrek. It could just as well have been a verbatim quote from Hamas’ Chief of Staff in this war, directed to each and every Gazan. The aged, the women, the children and many of the wage-earners in Gaza are trapped by their Islamist overlords. They have not voted for this war – or for anything, since the last elections were in 2006, and since then Gaza has been ruled by Hamas’ shari’a-compliant Islamist dictatorship. Tonight many Gazans in the northern part of the Strip are heading southward to find refuge in UNRWA schools. They never volunteered to Hamas, asking to be human shields while jihadi commanders hide under their houses and businesses.

A God’s-eye history of war

In the Book of Judges, Jephthah attempts to bring a ceasefire between Israel and Ammon. When Ammon claims Israel’s land, Jephthah goes into the history of the conflict and, when Ammon refuses to listen, he calls on the God of the armies of Israel to bring severe military defeat upon the sons of Ammon:

So Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the sons of Ammon, saying, “What conflict do you and I have, that you have come to me to fight against my land?” And the king of the sons of Ammon said to the messengers of Jephthah, “It is because Israel took my land when they came up from Egypt, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok and the Jordan. So return them peaceably now.” But Jephthah sent messengers once again to the king of the sons of Ammon, and they said to him, “This is what Jephthah says: ‘Israel did not take the land of Moab nor the land of the sons of Ammon. For when they came up from Egypt, and Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh . . . So I have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me. May YHVH, the Judge, judge today between the sons of Israel and the sons of Ammon’” (Judges 11:12-16, 27).

When Jewish people and Gentile friends of Israel today insists that the God of Israel has never handed over the Promised Land to jihadi terrorists, and when those modern ‘sons of Ammon’ spurn God’s word and attack His people, this is not simply a situation that calls for “immediate de-escalation and cessation of hostilities,” as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded today. Guterres added that he was doing this “out of respect for the spirit of Eid” (the final feast of Ramadan, Eid al-Adha). To many Muslims this feast is a happy family time, similar in some ways to Western Christmas. But then again, why would Hamas choose to attack Israel on ‘Christmas’ and then complain that Israel is fighting back?

An ancient Arabic proverb explains, “He hit me and howled, then rushed first to cry foul!” This proverb helps us to understand Hamas’ worldview and behavior, as they attack the people of the Lion of Judah while insisting that we have no right to fight back and decisively crush our enemies.

How should we then pray?

Pray for the defeat of Islamist terror forces (see2 Kings 6:8-14)
Pray for protection for Israel’s citizens who are facing jihadi terror rocket attacks
Pray for minimal injuries and loss of life for Gazan civilians trapped under Hamas’ iron hand
Pray for strategic and political wisdom for Israel’s leadership in every area
Pray for the raising up of the Ezekiel 37 prophetic army among the Jewish people

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Thorns, hippies and bones

Jihadi Islam is a reality. It has clear goals and strategies, and today these are exploding in Gaza and throughout Arab communities in Israel. The co-operative efforts of Shi’ite and Sunni terrorists – Iran, Muslim Brotherhood terrorists Hamas, and Lebanese Hezbollah – are rippling their shock waves across the Middle East. The past 48 hours have witnessed over 1,200 Islamist rockets launched from pads situated smack in the middle of Gaza’s 2 million Muslim civilians (a war crime). These lethal weapons are being fired directly against Israel’s Jewish and Arab civilians (this is also a war crime). See our last newsletter (‘The flames of jihad on the Temple Mount’) for the historical and religious origins of this jihadi strategy.

God, do not remain quiet! Do not be silent and, God, do not be still!

For behold, Your enemies make an uproar and those who hate You have exalted themselves.

They make shrewd plans against Your people, and conspire together against Your treasured ones.

They have said, “Come, and let’s wipe them out as a nation,

so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.”

For they have conspired together with one mind; they make a covenant against You:

Edom, the Ishmaelites . . . Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek, Philistia . . . Tyre, Assyria . . . Lot

(Psalm 83:1-9)

But, true to form, media commentators and diplomatic go-getters are acting like Mahatma Ghandi, who believed that Hitler’s heart could be unlocked and tamed by peaceful pronouncements and non-violent ahimsa. He gave his appraisal of the Holocaust: “But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs . . . It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.”

Today’s social media is buzzing with declarations of naïve ex-hippies and ‘progressives’ proclaiming that ‘no side is right in this conflict,’ or that Israel’s Prime Minister ‘and his gang’ are the ones seeding the violence, or that it’s simply a matter of lives being lost on both sides (establishing a moral equivalence between jihadi terrorists and those blocking their evil deeds), Diplomats pontificate that “an immediate de-escalation” is needed and it is essential “for all sides to avoid any unilateral actions.” The willful blindness of the New York Times in ignoring the Jewish Holocaust as it was happening, or the computerized complicity of IBM in facilitating Hitler’s death machine in Auschwitz, tell us that we should not be overly surprised when world media and politicians act as cheerleaders for Israel’s mortal enemies.

Those who utter these ‘noble’ declarations most probably see themselves as purveyors of peace (a la Psalm 34:14). But they are painting the Hamas arsonist and the Israeli firefighter as simply two sides of the same coin. That would be like drawing a moral equivalence between Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. Such arguments are not only morally obscene; they are evil. The third century Tiberias Rabbi Shim’on ben Laqish once said, “He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.” In a battle between jihadi terrorists and the Jewish people, humanistic pseudo-compassion and false moral equivalence is not what is required.

Certainly all suffering in war is tragic, and we are called to pray that all people lead peaceful lives (1 Timothy 2:2). At the same time there are wicked people who plan and execute slaughter of innocents, and it is a moral virtue to remove their ability to do harm. Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (400’s A.D.) once said, “Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum” (‘Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war’). The state of peace is often best preserved by a readiness to make war, when necessary. That is what is going on now.

Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, the recognized master of military strategists, stated a point worth remembering in his magnum opus Vom Kriege (‘On War’): “Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed. War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst” (Book I, Chapter 1, Section 3, Paragraph 1). Middle Eastern war is not simply another game in the World Cup series or the Stanley Cup season. It is deadly serious stuff.

Hamas is not cute

Hamas is the main Gazan Islamist terror group shooting rockets at Arabs and Jews in Israel, as well as stirring up violent riots throughout the land. The Arabic word Hamas can mean zeal, enthusiasm, fire, ardor, fervor or fanaticism. Used as an Arabic acronym HaMaS is the short form of Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya – ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement’. Sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam is considered the spiritual founder and historic leader of Hamas. He ended his life in a bomb attack in 1989 in Peshawar, Pakistan. Osama bin Laden was his star pupil.

Hamas is committed and zealous, a model Islamist jihadi terror organization. Its Charter lays out with great clarity its total commitment to its platform – the physical destruction of Israel, the Jewish state. Here are a few Articles which clarify their goals:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas) draws its guidelines from Islam” (Article #1).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin)…the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era” (Article #2).
“The Platform of The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas): Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.
“Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief (ed. this is also the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood)” (Article #8 – The Slogan of the Hamas).
“The current Zionist invasion had been preceded by a Crusader invasion from the West; and another one, the Tatars, from the East. And exactly as the Muslims had faced those invasions and planned their removal and defeat, they are able to face the Zionist invasion and defeat it” (Article #35).

There is no balanced way of negotiating or living peaceably with such an organization. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan or ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not compromise on their essentials. We are not about to enter into forty years of quiet with Hamas: “So Midian was subdued before the sons of Israel, and they did not lift up their heads anymore. And the land was undisturbed for forty years in the days of Gideon” (Judges 8:28). Peace-making with a ravenous jihadi monster is simply not a reality.

Arik Sharon’s disastrous decision – and those who supported him

In 2004-2005 former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally pulled all Jews and the IDF out of Gaza. He promised that if Hamas fired even one rocket into Israel, the IDF would move back in and deal decisively with the problem. Sharon’s position was supported by most left-of-center Israelis. Even one or two Israeli Messianic Jewish leaders declared that there was real prophetic wisdom in Sharon’s strategy. In the end, tens of thousands of rockets have since been fired into the Jewish state – and are still being fired as this is written. Arik Sharon breathed life into a jihadi giant named Hamas, and we are still paying the price for his damaging decisions. Part of the reason that Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli Right have continued to win significant majorities is because many Israelis are convinced that there will be no peace with Gaza as long as Hamas is in charge.

As you pray for Israel, please stand in for us in identificational repentance for these reckless decisions and their blowback.

The reason for the season

It is not an accident that this war has broken out during the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. Whereas in the West, this Muslim holiday is seen as a colorful and traditional occasion for blessing, fasting and feasting, in classical Islam Ramadan is much connected to jihad and to all-out battle against Jews, pagans and Christians.

Ramadan as a month of war is strikingly clear in Islamic history. Muhammad waged his first jihad, known as the Battle of Badr, on 17 Ramadan (13 March 624 AD). This battle laid the foundation of the Islamic State and was the most important of all Islamic battles. Eight years later Muhammad conquered Mecca during the month of Ramadan, thereby claiming Islam's most holy site, the Kaaba. On 19 Ramadan (January, 661 A.D.), Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali was assassinated at a mosque in Kufa, Iraq. The Battle of (the Horns of) Hattin was fought during Ramadan (July 4, 1187) between Salah al-Din al-Ayoubi's Muslims and the forces of the Crusaders, a symbol of Arab and Muslim historical victory. The Battle of Ain Jalut on 25 Ramadan (September 3, 1260) saw the Islamic Mamluks halt the pagan Mongols. Egypt attacked Israel on 10 Ramadan, 1973 (the Yom Kippur War/October War/Ramadan War/Ramadan Harb/Operation Badr).

Hamas is well aware of its religious heritage. It instigated a war with Israel during Ramadan 2014, reveling in its symbolism to fellow Muslims. See the article ‘Hamas’ Ramadan War’ with its by-line question, “Did Hamas planned to start the round of fighting in Gaza specifically in the month of Ramadan?”

On June 7, 2016, during the month of Ramadan and the day before a terror attack in Tel Aviv killed four and wounded several others, Hamas's military wing, the ‘Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, published an article on its website Alqassam.ps encouraging jihad and martyrdom during that week, the month of Ramadan. Hamas underscored in ‘Ramadan - The Month of Jihad, Fighting and Victory over the Enemies,’ that Ramadan has always been the time of Islam’s greatest victories. Allah commands Muslims to wage jihad, the very pinnacle of Islam.

“Ramadan is the month of jihad, fighting, and fasting. Therefore, after the jihad fighter dedicates himself to the study of Islam by day he sets forth to defend his homeland, Palestine, by night. This month has seen the actualization of exceptional Islamic victories . . . The blessed month of Ramadan is the month of jihad, and saw the two most important battles in the life of the Prophet. The first is the great Battle of Badr, which was the divine proof by means of which Allah distinguished truth from lie, and which led to Muslim honor and steadfastness. The second is the Conquest of Mecca, by virtue of which the first renunciation of Islam was defeated, the banners of paganism in the holy city [of Mecca] fell, and Islam became invincible throughout in the Arabian Peninsula.”

The current Hamas War is actually the third one that Hamas has initiated during the Ramadan season, heavy with jihadi undertones and history.

New rocketman strategies

Hamas has been stymied by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile systems. They have come up with two improvised methods to bypass the system’s effectiveness. One is to swarm the system by shooting a wave of 15 or more rockets in a sudden burst. Some rockets manage to make it through as a result.

A second invention involves the development of a rocket that does not fly in an arc, but travels in a straight line of fire. The Iron Dome cannot intercept such a rocket. However, this type of rocket requires a flat terrain, a clear view of the target, and a relatively short distance to travel before the effects of gravity kick in. Two Israeli have been killed in the past few days by this straight-flying rocket.

Thorns – Israel’s unfinished business

The God of Israel warned the Jewish people not to allow mortal enemies to co-exist with Israel in the Promised Land: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from you, then it will come about that those whom you let remain of them will be like thorns in your eyes and like pricks in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live” (Numbers 33:55). YHVH saw this as a serious matter with long-term geo-political and military consequences. It should be stressed that the same demonic powers which operated through the Canaanites and Philistines have not disappeared and their hatred of the Jewish people has in no way slackened.

This is an intercessory challenge for those who accept these spiritual realities as still influential and significant.

Curses and bones

Genesis 12:3 prophesies a curse on individuals and nations who try to harm the apple of God’s eye (see also Zechariah 2:8). Hamas and Islamic Jihad definitely fit that definition.

King David treasured his thirty mighty men, his Hebrew Special Operations Forces (2 Samuel 23:8-39; 1 Chronicles 11:1-47). David saw no contradiction between fighting the Lord’s battles and praising YHVH who trained his fingers to fight (Psalm 144:1; 149:5-9).

There is definitely a pacifist and anti-militaristic tradition among some in Protestant and Anabaptist streams. At the same time it is worth remembering that one of God’s main goals in restoring the dry bones of Jewish people back to the Land of Israel is to fill them with His Holy Spirit and to transform them into “a mighty army, much much” (the literal Hebrew of Ezekiel 37:9-10). Those who believe the prophetic word need to start incorporating what it says into our prayers and strategizing.

Our prayers for Israel should not be stepping backwards but forwards. We should not be praying for peace at this time but for the resounding defeat of YHVH’s enemies (see Psalm 83). In Steven Spielberg’s cinematographic masterpiece ‘Hook’ the enemy warns Peter Pan that, unless he decides to decisively fight Captain Hook, Peter’s children and children’s children will be harassed and even perhaps taken out by the Captain in years to come. YHVH the God of the armies of Israel states that same principle simply and in another context: “Because YHVH has sworn, YHVH will have war against Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16).

How should we then pray?

Pray for the defeat of Islamist terror forces, for the disabling of their weapons systems, the frustration of their intelligence and communications (see2 Kings 6:8-14)
Pray for protection for Israel’s citizens who are facing jihadi terror rocket attacks
Pray for minimal injuries and loss of life for Gazan civilians trapped under Hamas’ iron hand
Pray for strategic and political wisdom for Israel’s leadership in every area
Pray for the raising up of the Ezekiel 37 prophetic army among the Jewish people

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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The flames of jihad on the Temple Mount

World media are filling their screens and blogs with violence – pictures of explosions and fire on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount; videos clips of Israeli SWAT teams pushing back rioters who are assaulting the police with Molotov gasoline bombs, rocks, fireworks, boulders and clubs. World power diplomats are calling on Israel to exercise maximum restraint, and cluck their tongues in disapproval at Israel’s ‘disruption of peaceful Muslim worship.’ These events may be on the news, but they are not new. The following is a brief reminder of history and context regarding riots on the Temple Mount.

The origin of connections between the Temple Mount and Islamic tradition

Muhammad actually never set foot on the soil of the Promised Land, dying in Medina in 632 AD. Sixty years after his death in 691-692 AD the now-golden Dome of the Rock was constructed in Jerusalem, while the black-domed al-Aqsa mosque was completed in 701 AD. In later years an Islamist tradition developed that in the year 620 AD Muhammad rode a mythical horse named al-Buraq, taking his legendary ‘night journey and ascension’ (in Arabic al-’Isrā’ wal-Mi‘rāj) to the ‘distant masjid or mosque’ (in Arabic al-Masjidi ‘l-’Aqṣá); Quran 17:1, Surat al-Isrā’). But in 620 AD Islamist jihadi forces had not yet invaded any country, including Israel. Jihadi battles were happening only in what is today called Saudi Arabia. In 633 AD Syria was invaded, and only in 638 A.D. was Israel conquered by jihadi armies. The al-Aqsa mosque never existed in Muhammad’s day. What it represents is a form of Islamist Replacement Theology spin, where Islamic people and purported Islamic events were artificially injected into Jewish sites, replacing them with a false Islamist identity. The Islamist attempt to destroy and invalidate Jewish connections to the Temple Mount is at the heart of this age-old conflict. It is Replacement Theology on steroids, backed up by jihadi invasion, conquest and oppression.

Napoleon versus the British Mandate

Napoleon Bonaparte declared on April 20, 1799:

“Rightful [Jewish] heirs of Palestine! The great nation [France] . . . calls on you . . . to take over that which has been conquered and, with that nation’s support, to remain master of it against all comers . . . Hasten! Now is the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the population of the universe which had been shamefully withheld from you for thousands of years, your political existence as a nation among the nations, and the unlimited natural right to worship in accordance with your faith, publicly and most probably forever!”

Yet when England occupied those territories, it had a distinctly different vision. Article 13 of the League of Nations Mandatory Charter given to Britain in 1922 denied the United Kingdom’s right to interfere with the Temple Mount site or with the administration of ‘purely Muslim holy places:’ “Nothing in this mandate shall be construed as conferring upon the Mandatory authority to interfere with the fabric or the management of purely Moslem sacred shrines, the immunities of which are guaranteed.’ The King’s Order-in-Council issued by the government authorities of Mandatory Palestine in 1934 also confirmed the Ottoman religious status quo. Jews were forbidden from accessing the Temple Mount, which was now considered by Christians to be an exclusively Muslim holy place.

The Mountain which had been conquered by jihad and made Judenrein by the sword of Islam was now having its anti-Jewish ‘Islamist Replacement Theology status’ validated by Britain, the fast-fading heir to a Christian and Protestant empire. A British Christian writer expressed his anger at Britain’s realpolitik submissiveness to Islam in 1922: “To permit a false religion to hold sway in ‘the city of the Lord’ (Matt. 5:35), or any other portion of the Holy Land, would be to thwart and countermine God’s set purpose, and be altogether contrary to His plans regarding the earth and man upon it” (Frank G. Jannaway, Palestine and the World; London: Maranatha Press, 1922; pages 232-233).

The Grand Mufti al-Husseini and the al-Aqsa pogroms

Starting in the 1920’s and continuing up to the present Islamist leaders have falsely charged that there is a national Jewish goal of seizing the Temple Mount and rebuilding a Jewish Temple there.

Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the main instigators of the April 1920 Nebi Musa riots outside of Jerusalem, virulently renouncing the 1917 Balfour Declaration (which was favorable to the establishment of a Jewish national home). Six Jews were murdered and 216 Jews injured (of them 18 critically) in that riot by Arab mobs. About 300 Jews were evacuated from the Old City of Jerusalem at that time. Al-Husseini was charged by the British with inciting Jerusalem’s Arab crowds and was sentenced in absentia to 10-years imprisonment by a military court. He fled to Syria after the riots, but was welcomed back by the British and appointed as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.

A 1922 Arabic leaflet penned by Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al-Muzaffar entitled Public Call to the Muslim People from your Brethren, the Muslims of Jerusalem and the Rest of Palestine: “The Zionist body which is trying to create a Jewish kingdom in Palestine, dreams of taking from us the al-Aqsa Mosque, built upon the ruins of Solomon’s temple, and of reconstructing their temple…” (An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Architecture and the Palestine Conflict, by Daniel Bertand Monk, Duke University Press, 2002, page 83).

On Yom Kippur, September 1928, ten armed thugs dispatched by Islamist leadership attack Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, shouting “Death to the Jewish dogs!” and “Strike, strike!”

In September-October 1928 al-Husseini began to distribute leaflets throughout Mandatory Palestine and the Arab world claimed that the Jews were planning to take over the al-Aqsa Mosque. The leaflet stated that the British Mandatory Government was “responsible for any consequences of any measures which the Moslems may adopt for the purpose of defending the holy Buraq themselves in the event of the failure of the Government.” The Moslem Supreme Council stated in a memorandum, “Having realized by bitter experience the unlimited greedy aspirations of the Jews in this respect, Moslems believe that the Jews’ aim is to take possession of the Mosque of al-Aqsa gradually on the pretense that it is the Temple.” and it advised the Jews “to stop this hostile propaganda which will naturally engender a parallel action in the whole Moslem world, the responsibility for which will rest with the Jews.”

On Thursday August 15 1929, a commemoration of the Jewish Fast of the Ninth of Av occurred at the Wailing Wall. On Friday August 16 (the Islamic day of prayer), the mawlid (Arabic for the birth) or mawsin an-nabi (Arabic for ‘the feast of the prophet’) – that is, the birth of Muhammad – was celebrated on the esplanade of the Temple Mount, As the crowd came down from the Mount, they attacked the Jewish prayer area, burning prayer books, Torah scroll arks and cupboards, and destroying paper prayer notes left in the cracks of the Wall. Rioting quickly spread to the Jewish commercial area of town.

On Friday August 23, 1929 thousands of Arab villagers who had been incited by bloodthirsty preaching in local mosques streamed into Jerusalem from the surrounding countryside to pray on the Temple Mount, many armed with sticks and knives. For five days violent Muslim mobs attacked Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Motza, Jaffa, Haifa and Safed. Approximately 135 Jews were murdered and 340 wounded during that period.

On Saturday August 24, 1929 Arab mobs attacked the ancient Jewish Quarter of Hebron killing and raping men, women and children and looting Jewish property. Over 65 Jews were killed and 58 were wounded. Many of the victims were mutilated, others were tortured. Most of the 116 Arab fatalities and 232 wounded throughout the British Mandate during those five days were as a result of military confrontation with British security forces.

In all the above cases the Muslim population had been stirred up by false rumors that the Jews were attempting to seize the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.

The British Shaw Commission of Enquiry concluded, “The outbreak in Jerusalem on the 23rd of August was from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews for which no excuse in the form of earlier murders by Jews has been established . . . The fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not occurred or would not have been little more than a local riot, is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews” (Report of the Commission on the disturbances of August 1929, Command paper 3530; Shaw Commission report; 1930).

Husseini, Hamas, Hitler and Hassan

Haj Amin Al-Husseini later spearheaded the Arab Revolt (1936-39) which led to the death of over 300 Jews and the destruction of many Jewish farms and orchards.

Al-Husseini co-operated with three forces which have played a strong role in genocidal attacks against the Jewish people:

Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood)
Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (founder of the anti-Zionist and anti-British Black Hand [al-Kaff al-Aswad], and spiritual doyen of Hamas
Adolf Hitler (whom he met on November 28, 1941 where they collaborated on planning a Holocaust of all Jews in the Promised Land)

In close cooperation with Adolf Eichmann and an Einsatzkommando (Special Operations force and mobile killing squad) under the control of SS Obersturmbannführer Walther Rauff, the Mufti Al-Husseini planned to build crematoriums for the Jews in the Dothan Valley of Samaria. The testimony of Faiz Bay Idrisi, a senior Arab officer in the British Mandatory police, stated, “I remember what was said in police circles and among supporters of the Mufti in those months . . . Haj Amin al-Husseini’s master plan was to establish in the Dothan Valley, close to Shechem, giant crematoriums like Auschwitz, into which would be brought the Jews of Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and even North Africa, in order to slaughter them with the methods of the S.S. who operated in the death camps in Europe.”

When Muhammad’s descendent occupied al-Aqsa

Jordan’s King AbdullahI bin Al-Hussein was a 38^th generation direct descendant of Muhammad through the House of Hashim [Hashemite]. As conqueror of the Temple Mount in May 1948, he oversaw the following:

the exile of all Jews from Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem
the settling of Arabs in their place
the demolishing and destruction of fifty-eight synagogues in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City
the systematic destruction of 38,000 ancient Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives
the transformation of the Old City of Jerusalem into a Judenrein city (a Nazi term meaning ‘cleansed of Jews’)
the transformation of the Western Wall into an exclusively Islamic holy site.

For more information see Jerusalem Divided: the Armistice Regime, 1947-1967, by Raphael Israeli, Psychology Press, 2002, page 24.

What happened in June 1967?

On June 7, 1967 the Israel Defense Forces captured the Old City of Jerusalem. After nearly 2,000 years the Temple Mount was once again in Jewish hands. On June 17, 1967 then-Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan met Islamic religious authorities on the Temple Mount. It was decided to permit the Jordanian Awqaf (waqf) Ministry to continue to administer the site. Jews and Christians were given the right to visit the Temple Mount provided that they respected Muslims’ religious sensibilities, but they were not allowed to pray there. Only the Western Wall was to be recognized as the Jewish place of prayer. Muslim were in charge of ‘religious sovereignty’ on the Temple Mount, while ‘overall sovereignty’ became Israel’s. Israel would be responsible for security around the perimeter of the site, while the Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem Waqf would be responsible for events within the compound. Today, the Jerusalem Waqf controls the Temple Mount, schools, orphanages, Islamic libraries and museums, mosques, the Shari’a courts as well as many residential and commercial properties in greater Jerusalem.

‘Al Aqsa is in danger!’ October 1990

In early October 1990 a small Jewish extremist religious group (the ‘Temple Mount Faithful’) stated that they were going to lay a cornerstone for a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On 8 October 1990, mosque loudspeakers in the Kidron Valley and on the Mount of Olives proclaimed that “al-Aqsa was in danger.” The immediate result was an Islamic riot where 17-20 Palestinians were killed and over 100 others injured (after they attacked Israeli Border Police on the Temple Mount).

According to the Israeli Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events on Temple Mount on 8 October 1990, “The members of the Waqf knew that the High Court had refused the Temple Mount Faithful petition to lay the cornerstone of the Third Temple, and did not respond to requests by Israel Police officers on the morning of the incident to calm the crowd. This, even after the police informed the Waqf that they would also prevent the Temple Mount Faithful, and anyone else, from visiting the area, though such visits are allowed by law… The incident itself began when, suddenly, violent and threatening calls were sounded over the loudspeakers “Allahu Akbar” [Allah is Greater], “Jihad” [Holy War], “Itbah al-Yahud” [Slaughter the Jews]). Immediately afterwards, enormous amounts of rocks, construction materials and metal objects were thrown at Israeli policemen who were present at the site. Many in the incited, rioting mob threw stones and metal objects from a very short range, and some even wielded knives. The actions of the rioters, and certainly the inciters, constituted a threat to the lives of the police, the thousands of worshippers at the Western Wall and to themselves. This was a serious criminal offense committed by masses who were incited by preachers over loudspeakers, and this is what led to the tragic chain of events . . . Nineteen policemen were injured as well as nine Western Wall worshippers. According to Police statistics, 20 people were killed and 52 injured on the Temple Mount.”

“A new Israeli temple in the place of al Aqsa mosque” – September 1996

On September 24, 1996 a new archeological exhibit called ‘the Rabbinic tunnel’ was opened to both the Israeli public and international tourists. It was the culmination of nearly 30 years of archeological excavations outside of the Temple Mount’s external buttress walls. A tunnel was dug outside of these supporting walls which had been constructed by Herod the Great in order to expand the workable surface of the Temple Mount. The tunnel and the retaining walls were not part of any Temple at any period in history.

Even though the tunnel was more than two football fields away from the al-Aqsa mosque and totally outside the Islamic precincts, the head of the PLO Yasser Arafat declared that the opening of the tunnel was a “big crime against our religious and holy places.” Palestinian Authority spokesman Sa’eb Erekat declared, “Well, the thing is … it was the Israelis who announced that they will open this tunnel in order to build … a new temple now in the place of the Al-Aqsa Mosque” (CNN, September 29, 1996).

On September 24, 1996 Voice of Palestine radio urged listeners to “move immediately and effectively to face this serious criminal scheme. We appeal to them all to shoulder their religious and national responsibilities in these serious circumstances and to confront these painful incidents and tragic dangers facing holy Jerusalem” (Voice of Palestine radio from Jericho monitored by BBC, September 24, 1996, 1050 GMT).

On September 25, the Palestinian Authority and Arafat’s Fatah faction brought busloads of Bir Zeit University students to attack Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint outside Ramallah. Molotov cocktails and rocks were thrown at the IDF who initially repulsed them with rubber bullets and tear gas. Whereas at other times PA police had previously prevented crowds from approaching Israeli checkpoints, this time they stood aside. As the rioting spiraled out of control, PA police joined in, firing on Israeli soldiers.

In a speech in Gaza at that time, Arafat invoked Islamic references to war, reminding the crowd that “to the believers who fight for Allah, kill and are killed, heaven is promised” (quoted in The New York Times, Oct. 4, 1996).

In three days of violence 14 Israeli soldiers and 44 Palestinians were killed. The violence had been stirred up by the Palestinian Authority. It spread a poisonously false charge that al-Aqsa was under attack. It created out-of-control violent attacks by Palestinian Arabs on Israeli troops and civilians. This was a repeat of the Islamist violence against Jews which had exploded in 1920, 1928-29, 1936 and 1990.

The rose of Sharon and the rise of Sharon – September 2000

On September 28, 2000, then-opposition leader of Israel Ariel Sharon visited the al-Aqsa compound accompanied by a large number of armed security guards. After Sharon left, a violent Palestinian demonstration erupted with people throwing stones and other projectiles at Israeli riot police. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd, injuring 24 people. On September 29, 2000, Israel deployed 2,000 riot police to the mosque. After Friday prayers Muslims hurled stones at the police and at Jewish worshippers gathered at the Western Wall. The police then stormed the compound, firing both rubber bullets and live ammunition at the rioting Palestinians (4 killed and 200 wounded).

Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reported on September 19, 2002, that the rioting and the official reason behind it were planned and fabricated in advance by the Palestinian leadership:

Imad Faluji, the PA Communications Minister, admitted on October 11, 2001, that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon’s ‘provocation.’ He said: “Whoever thinks that the intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon’s visit to Al-Aksa Mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations . . .”

More than a year later, on the first anniversary of the intifada, West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti gave an interview on October 22, 2001 to the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat in which he admitted that he had played a direct role in igniting the intifada. He said: “I knew that . . . when Sharon reached al-Aksa Mosque, this was the most appropriate moment for the outbreak of the intifada . . . The night prior to Sharon’s visit, I participated in a panel on a local television station and I seized the opportunity to call on the public to go to al-Aksa Mosque in the morning . . . We tried to create clashes without success because of the differences of opinion that emerged with others in al-Aksa compound at the time . . . After Sharon left, I remained for two hours in the presence of other people, we discussed the manner of response and how it was possible to react in all the cities and not just in Jerusalem. We contacted all [the Palestinian] factions” (How the war began, Khaled Abu Toameh, September 19, 2002)

Close to 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed in these clashes, which lasted five years.

Once again, the 2000 AD Islamist violence was deliberately triggered against Jews. The fig leaf was a supposed Jewish attack on al-Aqsa mosque, but the real reasons were more sinister and had to do with another goal – jihadi destruction of the Jewish people’s state.

To view how Islamists perceive these events, watch Al Jazeera’s program.

The Ramadan riots – July 2017

On July 14, 2017 three Islamist terrorists attacked and murdered two Arab Israeli policemen at the conclusion of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. Within a very short time their terrorist attack was being justified in Islamic circles (surprise, surprise) as a noble response to a ‘Jewish attack on the sanctity of al-Aqsa mosque.’ This false charge exploded like fireworks on a haystack, spreading like wildfire throughout the world’s media outlets. British commentator Melanie Phillips has written an excellent commentary on this dynamic – Incitement, lies and the strange eclipse of the Dome of the Rock.

Note the declarations of the most prominent Islamist leaders at the time of these riots, and how they echo the bloodthirsty cries of Haj Amin al-Husseini and his comrades:

Mahmoud Al-Habbash, PA chief shari'a justice and religious affairs advisor to ‘Abbas,: “Responsibility for the Al-Aqsa mosque is the exclusive right of the Palestinians, and Israeli intervention in the affairs of Al-Aqsa constitutes aggression against the Muslims' religious and political rights”

The Fatah Revolutionary Council “calls for holding demonstrations headed toward Jerusalem from the adjacent cities, villages, and refugee camps, and extends congratulations, commendation, and pride to our people in Jerusalem who guard Al-Aqsa mosque like the apple of their eye”

PLO executive committee member and Jerusalem Affairs department head Ahmad Qurei warned “The government of Israel and its executive branches are continuing to harm the Al-Aqsa mosque, pilfer its contents, and forcibly lay their hands on the mosque's entire noble compound”

Fatah Revolutionary Council member and spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmeh emphasized: "The Fatah movement will never allow the Israeli plan for emptying the Al-Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem's Old City of its original inhabitants, the Palestinian people, to pass . . . Jerusalem and its centerpiece, Al-Aqsa mosque, represent a red line in the fullest and deepest sense of the words, and that there will be no peace and stability unless Jerusalem is restored to its Palestinian owners."

Hamas political bureau head Isma’il Haniya said: “Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem are a red line . . . The occupation's plots will be carried out over our dead bodies”

Sheikh Raed Alah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic movement in Israel, wrote: "As long as Al-Aqsa mosque is occupied, it is in constant danger. This danger will pass only if the Israeli occupation is removed. This means that the Israeli occupation is the source of the danger threatening Al-Aqsa mosque . . . and the attacks against it will intensify as long as it [remains] occupied . . ."

Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars and a prominent religious leader for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel, tweeted: “Standing at the battlefront and at the head of the jihad in the land of prophecies and the place where the Prophet arrived in the Night Journey [i.e. Al-Aqsa] will continue until Allah alone declares victory and fulfills his promise.” “The existence of the Zionists is alien, oppressive, aggressive, and criminal. It is inconceivable for it to persist. It is undoubtedly [destined for] perdition”

Those who love Israel and believe in God’s divine hand accomplishing her restoration in our day – need to be aware of these dark machinations on the part of those who oversee the waqf of al-Aqsa and those who stir up violence among Palestinian and Muslims worldwide.

The current round of Ramadan riots – May 2021

When Ramadan began in late April 2021, Israeli police put up anti-riot barriers beside Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, preventing young Arabs from gathering in the evenings. At the same time, violent videos were being posted on TikTok of Muslims attacking religious Jews in Jerusalem. Simultaneously, an Israeli court decision from 1973 evicting Arab squatters from property (originally Jewish owned in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrach area) was finally about to be actualized. On April 22, a far-right Jewish group clashed with Muslims in front of the Damascus Gate, with some wounded on each side.

The Hamas terror organization in Gaza declared that Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque were being threatened, and avowed that the “gates of hell” (an Arabic euphemism for ‘total war’) would be opened. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Lebanon’s Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah simultaneously began banging warm drums and threatening hostilities. Jerusalem Post reporter Seth Frantzman explains: “The statements by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are not isolated. They occurred as a coordinated message . . . preparing the ground for further violence . . . This is also a Hamas ploy for power in Jerusalem, a city it has had a foothold in but in where it has had difficulty raising its head. It is a Hamas ploy for power in the West Bank after the Palestinian Authority postponed elections. It is also a way for Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas to appear relevant. They also want to drive a wedge between Israel and its new peace partners in the Gulf, knowing that the violence in Jerusalem will pressure Bahrain, the UAE and others to make statements . . . The bubbling crisis could now affect Israeli relations with the Gulf and may also spark the interest of Washington and Europe.”

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Spokesman Abdel-Latif Al-Qanua stated that Israeli actions “represent an escalation of aggression against our people, a flagrant breach of their legitimate rights, and a blatant violation of the freedom of worship . . . The continuation of these racist measures, vandalism in Al-Aqsa Mosque, restrictions on our people, and the pursuit of worshipers will result in a massive uprising against the occupier and its racist plans that target Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Israeli politician Mansour Abbas (RA’AM party) condemned Israeli security forces, using language eerily similar to the words of Haj Amin al-Husseini: “I wholeheartedly condemn the violent assault on the holiness of the al-Aqsa mosque and the worshippers. Al-Aqsa mosque is for us a red line. Muslim control over the Temple Mount and the mosque is total/exclusive” he tweeted.

Attacks by mostly young Muslims against Israeli Police and IDF Border Patrol triggered riot-control measures and resulted in some wounded. When rioters attacked Police from within the al-Aqsa mosque, Israeli security forces entered the mosque and arrested rioters. Busloads of rioters on their way to Jerusalem were prevented from entering the city.

The rocket’s red glare

Over the past 27 hours, Islamist rockets have been fired from Gaza against Israeli kibbutzim and cities. They have either been intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket network or have fallen in uninhabited areas. Some mortars have also been fired at Israeli targets.

Israel has long planned specific military exercises in the coming week focusing on simultaneous enemy attacks from Gaza and Lebanon. The exercise is appropriately named ‘Chariots of Fire’ (see 2 Kings 6:17; 13:14).

How should we then pray?

Pray for the frustrating and ceasing of Islamist rocket fire, and for divine wisdom for IDF strategic leadership
Pray for those who disseminate lies and violence about the Temple Mount – that they would receive a revelation of their sinful deeds and the gift of repentance which leads to everlasting life
Pray for diplomats to receive gifts of truth and courage to become forces for good and not for evil
Pray specifically for Arabic-speaking believers in Yeshua across the Islamic world to receive God’s perspective on these issues, as well as bravery to declare these truths clearly and unapologetically
Pray for Israelis to receive a revelation about what is actually happening on the Temple Mount, as well as an anointing of courage to explain to others what is happening
Pray for world leaders to receive a spirit of revelation and repentance about these matters, that they might come into alignment with God’s word and heart (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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