Staging ground for Gog and Magog

As wars and rumors of war shake the planet, we are bombarded with battle statistics and facts about roiling riots. Yet at the same time we find it hard to grasp what really is going on. We know more but we understand less. Are there any keys to making sense of fast-moving developments and catastrophic changes? Here are two helpful keys:

With these two cardinal points in mind, let’s look at some bracing Middle East developments. Turkey is in the news. What does the Bible say about that country – its historical roots, its crucial economic role during the time of David and Solomon, and its upcoming destiny in the prophetic scriptures?

All in the family tree – Meshech and Tubal

Some of these tribes and people mentioned in the first book of the Bible will be remembered in the future, as they take their part in the prophetic fulfilment of the Messianic kingdom: “And I will put a sign among them and send survivors from them to the nations: Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech, Tubal, and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have neither heard of My fame nor seen My glory. And they will declare My glory among the nations” (Isaiah 66:19).

All in the family tree – Meshech, Tubal and Bet Togarmah

In Ezekiel 27:1-15 the prophet Ezekiel refers to some of these nations when he takes up a mournful dirge over the Lebanese mercantile giant, the Phoenician port of Tyre.  Luxury goods and their points of origin are described in his prophetic song as being traded on the docks and open-air markets of Lebanon’s Tyre:

The Land of King Solomon’s horses

Turkey played a significant economic role during the reign of King Solomon.  The Turkish province of Kue (also Khuwe or Khwe or Cilicia) was situated on an important trade route, connecting Turkey and Syria to Babylonia. Kue/Cilicia became a Roman province in 103 B.C., and was governed by Cicero the Roman orator in 51 B.C.  Shaul (Paul) the Apostle was born in Kue/Cilicia, known to many today as Tarsus.

Kue was famous in Solomon’s day as a source for high-quality horses. King Solomon established an import-export business of these horses, purchasing them from Turkey and Egypt, as the Chronicler recounts:

As Moses wrote down the words of Sefer Devarim, the Scroll of Deuteronomy, he cautioned the coming Jewish kings not to get caught up in the materialism of possessions – not to make the ownership of magnificent steeds into something idolatrous: “[The king] is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since YHVH has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way’” (Deuteronomy 17:16). Solomon son of David did not cleave to this commandment, nor follow the principles laid down in the next verse: “And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself” (Deuteronomy 17:17). Would that our spiritual, political and military leaders submit themselves to God’s guidelines in our day as well.

All in the family tree of Flavius Josephus

Joseph ben Matityahu (better known as Flavius Josephus) was a Jewish general who fought against Rome’s Vespasian Caesar in the ‘Great Revolt’ (66 A.D. and following). In his magnum opus Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus explains where the tribal lands of Genesis 10 were then located, including Gomer (the Cimmerians), Magog, Meshech and Togarmah, in his Book I, Chapter 6. These peoples all hailed either from Anatolian Turkey near Cappadocia, or from the Scythian southern coast of the Black Sea (between Ukraine, Armenia. Georgia and Media/Iran).

These Scythians were part of the varied ethnic groups who were nomads, originally inhabiting the steppes of modern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Uyghuristan, Mongolia, Russia, and Ukraine. They moved westward and southward, settling around the Black Sea in what is today Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine.

Who’s who in Turkey

Based on archeological finds, epigraphic evidence and historical documents, here are the locations of the five nations listed in Ezekiel 38:2, 6:

These nations formed a belt or swath across the Turkish regions of western and central Asia. They can be located in our day with a high degree of probability in the following modern countries: 

   

The Campaign of Gog of the land of Magog

Ezekiel the prophet speaks of a Last Days war, commonly called ‘the War of Gog and Magog.’ The actual Hebrew wording in Ezekiel 38:2 says more literally “Set your face toward Gog – the Land of Magog – the prince, the head of Meshech and Tubal, and prophecy against him.” Gog is located in the Land of Magog, the region known as the Land of the Scythians. That region finds its epicenter in the lands of Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine.

The background and context of this Scripture uncover an important point: the strategic and military roots of this sobering war will be based in a geographical area that runs eastward from Turkey through to the ‘Stans’ (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) and up to southern Russia and Ukraine. The major unrest taking place in our day in both Syria and Turkey are a prophetic call to intercessors across the globe – to focus in on God’s heart and strategies for these countries, their leaders and also for Israel, the apple of God’s eye!

The remote sides of the North

YHVH the God of Israel prophesies to ‘Gog from the Land of Magog’ and tells him:

The Hebrew phrase ‘the north’ can have various shades of meaning. It can mean ‘directly north of Jerusalem.’ But it can also mean ‘north and east’ of Jerusalem – as in Ezekiel 26:7, where Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon comes against Tyre of Lebanon – both sites are north of Jerusalem, though Babylon is quite to the east as well. In Isaiah 41:25, Cyrus is referred to as coming from the North; he came from Persia/Iran (which is to the east of Jerusalem), but in order to arrive in the land of the Jews, he had to march northward – up into Aram/Syria – from which point he then headed south to Jerusalem. In Jeremiah 1:14 and 10:22, the destructive evil of Babylon would come “out of the north.” In Jeremiah 16:15, YHVH will bring “the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He has banished them.” 

So Ezekiel’s prophesy indicates that the army of Gog will come against Israel, arriving from the north – through Syria, through Turkey, and perhaps even through Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine.

Ezekiel also declares that Sheba and Dedan (the descendants of Keturah through Jokshan, tribes presently found in Saudi Arabia) will be part of the military force invading Israel with intent to pillage, in the days of the War of Gog and Magog:

God is in charge of the charge

In Ezekiel 38 YHVH reveals one aspect of His multifaceted ways in dealing with the nations; the prophet declares that God’s Last Days’ judgments will fall on that consortium of nations who trouble the nation and land of Israel:

Yet God is sovereignly pro-active in this whole process, leading these troublers of Israel into judgment:

God is not absent from this process nor is He unaware of what is happening. Au contraire – He is much involved!

The key phrases in this divine scenario are found in verse three, “ I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army,” as well as in verse eight, “After many days you will be summoned; in the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from the sword.”  When the set time comes for God to trigger His plans for judgment on the Israel-hating nations, He activates His hooks, lances them into the jaws of His enemies, and pulls those nations down into the Middle East to trouble the people of Israel – the apple of His eye. Even the greatest super-power will be caught by the hooks of God, whether he was expecting it or not. Unauthorized and anti-biblical pressure on Israel, according to the Scriptures, brings both God’s wrath (Jeremiah 30:16) and God’s curse (Genesis 12:3) on anti-Semites everywhere.

How shall we then pray?

 

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Dividing the baby – Part Three of Three

This is part three of a three-part newsletter.

In one of the most significant Middle East military clashes in recent history, Israel destroyed the lion’s share of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army, air force, navy, weapons storehouses, air defenses, chemical warfare warehouses and laboratories. How did this happen? What are the strategic results, and what military and diplomatic blowback is likely in the short-range? Does the Last Days vision of the Hebrew prophets help us to better understand these events?  

“Trees that’ve stood for a thousand years suddenly will fall”

Bob Dylan’s 1983 song ‘Man of Peace‘ speaks of a time coming when primeval towers come crashing down to the ground like cedars of Lebanon in a hurricane. On Sunday morning December 8 2024, ‘Operation Arrow of Bashan’ kicked into high gear. ‘Bashan’ is one of the biblical names of the Golan region (see Joshua 20:8). The Israeli Air Force (IAF) initiated massive attacks in Syria, destroying anti-aircraft batteries and the majority of that country’s defensive and offensive weaponry. This stunning operation brings to mind previous military interactions in the region. In each one of these battles, Syria was a virulent enemy of Israel, bent on the destruction of the Jewish state:

The Six Day War surprise IAF attack (‘Operation Focus‘) on Syria and Egypt in June 1967

The Syrian invasion of Irbid area, Jordan in September 1970

The pre-emptive Syrian attack on Israel on Yom Kippur 1973

The battle royal between the Syrian Air Force (SAF) and the Israel Air Force (IAF) in August 1982 above Lake Qaraoun, Beqaa Valley, Lebanon

The enemy of my enemy

The December 2024 10-day military blitz spearheaded by the chameleon-like Islamist ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (‘Organization for the Liberation of the Levant’; abbreviated HTS) – a jihadi terror group which has its roots in al Qa’eda, the Islamic State, and ‘al Nusra Front’/’Jabhat al-Nusra’ (‘Support Front for the Conquest’) – has surprised many in the world.  As the army of bearded jihadis swarmed across Syria, cities fell one after the other until the pearl, Damascus, dropped into their lap like an over-ripe fig. One of the side-effects of this ‘green wave’ was that the majority of Assad’s faithful – including the lion’s share of the Syrian Army – fled their positions, abandoning tanks, fighter jets, anti-aircraft batteries, warehouse crammed with missiles, rockets, artillery, chemical warfare, etc., and ran for the hills.

Two ramifications of this mass military exodus: one, a huge amount of ‘kit,’ weapons of war, were now lying unguarded across the whole of Syria, ripe for the taking. And two, no one was minding the store: whereas Syria has had one of the thickest AA (anti-aircraft) battery systems in the world (making life difficult for IAF pilots), now the skies were unguarded. IAF military strategists watched the opportunity begin to open up, and feverishly developed plans to obliterate Syrian AA batteries as first priority. That began on Sunday morning December 8 2024 when the first of over 500 sorties were launched by the IAF, firing over 1,800 weapons (bombs, rockets and missiles). A senior Israeli security source described it as the “largest air operation carried out by its air force in its history.”

The IAF first conducted over 500 strikes in 48 hours, 350 of which targeted anti-aircraft batteries, military airfields (Mezzeh-Damascus, Qamishli, Suwayda region, Homs, Tartus, and Palmyra), weapons production sites, 27 fighter jets, 24 attack helicopters, 12 cruise missile launchers and drones. Then it focused on weapons storage facilities in Nawa and Daraa, chemical weapons stockpiles (mustard gas and VX gas) and production centers in Barzeh, 44 radar and electronic warfare batteries, Russian missile vehicles, 400 Russian Scud and Iranian Raad missiles and their launchers.  In these strikes between 70 and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons were destroyed. Syrian intelligence and customs HQs in Damascus were also destroyed. Combined attacks by IAF and the Israeli Navy destroyed the entire Syrian naval fleet (15 in total) in Latakia and adjoining Minet el-Beida Bay. Between 85-90% of Syria’s AA missiles and systems were destroyed, including the SA-22 Pantsir and SA-17 Buk systems. All Sukhoi Su-22 and Su-24 fighter jets were obliterated. 100% of Syria’s explosive drones were destroyed.

The large Syrian army, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers deployed throughout the country, barely resisted the invaders, withdrawing as the rebels advanced, and then stripping off their uniforms. Some soldiers fled to their homes, other to Shi’ite areas of Lebanon or Iraq. Syria was now awash with unguarded weaponry, as was the case in post-Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and in post-Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Top quality Russian and Iranian equipment, including laboratories for the development and manufacture of chemical weapons (the CERS Center) – these were now a clear and present danger to Syria’s neighbor to the south, Israel. This link exposes something of the width and breadth of the various chemical weapons sites hit by the IAF in the past few days.

Falling into the wrong hands

In the past few days the IDF seized strategic positions in the Golan Heights and on the highest peak of Mount Hermon which had been abandoned by Syrian troops. ‘Operation Bashan Arrow’ intends to create a sterile defense zone by neutralizing potential threats from jihadi threats in Syria.  Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli said in a statement that “the bottom line is that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh.”

On Tuesday, 10 December 2024 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the Kirya (Israel’s Pentagon) in Tel Aviv: “We have no intention of interfering in Syria's internal affairs; however, we do intend to do what is necessary for our security. As such, I approved the Air Force bombing of strategic military capabilities left by the Syrian military so that they will not fall into the hands of the jihadists. This is similar to what the British Air Force did when it bombed the fleet of the Vichy regime [in WWII], which was cooperating with the Nazis, so that it would not fall into the Nazis' hands. We want to have relations with the new regime in Syria but if this regime allows Iran to re-establish itself in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons, or weapons of any kind, to Hezbollah, or attacks us – we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price. What happened to the previous regime will also happen to this one.”

Flight into danger

Lebanese Hezbollah has been severely weakened and their military might has been deeply degraded. Syrian Assad’s army is scattered to the winds, and their formidable anti-aircraft wall of fire has been obliterated.  The flight path from Israel to Iran is wide open. Only Iraq, with a much less developed air defense system, lies in between. For a long time the U.S. has been bolstering the Islamic Republic of Iran and their Revolutionary Guards Corps – including a significant financial river of support aimed their way. POTUS Obama blocked Israel’s attempts to destroy or even downgrade the nuclear bomb project so previous to Iran’s imams.

For those who remember recent history (August 2013), POTUS Obama had set some red lines for President Assad regarding the production, buildup and use of chemical weapons – which red lines Syria blithely ignored, and Obama did not react. Now, in December 2024, in a 48-hour period the IAF bombed Assad’s chemical warfare storehouses and labs to smithereens. Could it be that Israel will have the resolve and the courage to remove the Shi’ite nuclear threat from all the nations in the Middle East in short order? There are moves in the incoming U.S. administration to consider new strategies to bring a breakthrough to the current nuclear logjam in the West.

How shall we then pray?

 

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Dividing the baby – Part Two of Three

This is part two of a three-part newsletter.

Syria is in the throes of upheaval. Will this birth something good, or are we beholding a new explosion of jihadi attacks? Who are the main players here? What are their strategies, their short and long-term goals? How can the Scriptures help us to understand and be redemptively pro-active in our response? 

“Like a roaring lion is a wicked ruler over a poor people” (Proverbs 28:15)

Father and son, Hafez and Bashar al-Assad – successive Presidents of Syria – were a mini-dynasty ruling Damascus with an iron hand for 54 years. The name ‘Assad’ in Arabic means ‘lion’ and, like the proverbial Middle Eastern lion, the Assad family has torn the flesh of their Syrian people most cruelly for over half a century years. Examples include:

The cruelty manifested in Syria, both by the Assads and later by Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and al Qa’eda, speak of the God of Jacob’s prophetic word over both Ishmael (whose descendants lived in the Saudi Arabian region) and the people he would influence throughout the Middle East, from Egypt through to Iraq/Assyria:

Can a leopard change its spots?

“Syria’s Ba’ath party announced Wednesday December 11 [2024] it was suspending work indefinitely,” reports Agence France Presse from Paris. It is truly the end of an era.

The regions of Syria and Iraq have been struck by Islamist jihadi ‘earthquakes’ over the past 40 or so years, as colonialist country borders drawn up by Western powers began to collapse one after the other (along with their kings and dictators). ‘Islam is the solution!’ was the chant brought to the table starting in the mid-1920’s by jihadi revolutionaries, theologians and activists like Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Sayyid Qutb (whose writings inspired al Qa’eda) and Abdullah Azzam (the founder of al Qa’eda and Osama bin Laden’s teacher). These Islamist leaders called for jihad against the Jewish people, the destruction of the state of Israel and of the ‘Christian’ West.  Their teachings and radical jihadi militarism birthed the terrorist movements which convulse the world today.

Sometimes these jihadi movements went through severe splits, as personalities and strategies clashed.  In the same way as Leonid Trotsky and Joseph Stalin clashed over the politically correct order of Communist revolution (Was it first ‘world revolution’ or ‘first a true communist state in Russia’), so Sunni jihadi leaders clashed over whether or not apostate and less zealous jihadi leaders (including Shiite movements, which are seen as heretical by Sunni jihadis) needed to be crushed before Israel should be totally eliminated. So a split developed between al Qa’eda and Islamic State (Da’esh/ ISIL/ ISIS) regarding jihad priorities and focus on destroying Iran and Shi’ite Islam.

This split is an important key to understanding why the Syrian ‘rebels’ (Islamic State, al Qa’eda, etc.) are murderously opposed to Shi’ite Iran; opposed to the Iranian-supported pro-Assad Alawites (for their religious expressions are considered to be vile and heretical by Islamic State); and even opposed to Hamas (whose Islamist credentials are disparaged by the extremely zealous Islamic State). The splits between these groups have crystallized even more during the Syrian Civil War (ongoing since 2011). For anyone who wants to make sense of the jihadi cacophony going on in today’s Syria, here is a helpful list of the armed factions involved in that war.

Syria and Iraq’s jihadi terror groups have split into at least 15 different sects, and many of these have spent much time and energy fighting others on this list. Here is a list of twelve of these divided jihadi organizations:

The jihadi group which has taken over much of Syria (and whose leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani gave a victory speech in the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 8 2024) is an amalgam of previous jihadi Syrian groups – most notably the ‘al Nusra Front’/’Jabhat al-Nusra’ (‘Support Front for the Conquest’) which was at one time an official branch of al Qa’eda. Over the years this group again changed its name once more to ‘Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’ (‘Front for the Conquest of the Levant’) and finally to ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (‘Organization for the Liberation of the Levant’; abbreviated HTS).

Because of these name changes, and the political jockeying that has gone on behind the scenes as associations with al Qa’eda or Islamic State did not always prove helpful in getting Western support and armaments, many in the West are confused and are getting deceived as to whether or not these groups have abandoned jihadi activities. The quiet and deliberate smooth-talking spokesman for HTS is Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the ‘nom de guerre’ of the Syrian jihadi terrorist who heads up the present organization as its ‘Emir’ (‘prince,’ ‘chief,’ ‘ruler’ or ‘commander’ in Arabic). Al Julani’s father lived on the Golan Heights many years ago, and the patronym ‘Julani’ indicates that the person in question has lived on the Golan. Al Julani’s birth name is Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, and he was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1982.

In May 2013 the US State Department listed al-Julani as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist,’ and four years later announced a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. On September 28 2014 al-Julani released an audio tape, declaring that he would fight the “United States and its allies” and urged his fighters not to accept any help from the West in their battles. In 2018 he announced on CNN that his jihadi goal is to overthrow Syria,  In recent years however, he has attempted to sell a more moderate view of himself, suggesting he has no desire to wage war against Western nations.

On Sunday, December 8 2024, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Daniel Shapiro told the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain, that “the United States will continue to maintain its presence in eastern Syria and will take measures necessary to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State.” Speaking hours after Syrian rebels ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (HTS) announced they had toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime, “Shapiro called on all parties to protect civilians, particularly minorities, and respect international norms.”

Shapira’s comments reveal a staggering diplomatic blindness, because the Islamic State has resurged. They are ruling in Damascus, and they do not respect international norms – they only respect Shari’a norms.

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you as well can do good who are accustomed to doing evil” (Jeremiah 13:23)

He who pays the piper calls the tune

Al-Julani’s and HTS’s commitments to world jihad, to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, to the implementation of Sharia Islamic law (think beheadings, stoning and public whippings for adultery, amputations for theft, slavery, enslaving of all non-Muslims, no equality of civil rights for Christians) – these are part and parcel of their Islamist worldview. Al-Julani’s commitment (and that of his ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ - HTS) to radical Islam is unshakeable – like that of the Taliban in Afghanistan or that of the government of Qatar who hosts Hamas and subsidizes ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (HTS) – even while hosting U.S. CENTCOM and the Fifth Fleet, and throwing a world-wide party for FIFA at the 2022 World Cup football matches).

For those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, al-Julani’s dissimulation and deception regarding their classical Islamist agenda is visible to all. ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (HTS) is heavily supported by Turkey, which is also a bone fide member of NATO.  A few brief years ago, when ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (HTS) was still know by its former name the ‘al Nusra Front’/‘Jabhat al-Nusra,’ Qatar was an active funder of its terror activities. In 2015 the British newspaper ‘The Independent’ reported that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were “focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah . . .  a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that [included] Jabhat al-Nusra” (found in the article ‘Turkey and Saudi Arabia alarm the West by backing Islamist extremists the Americans had bombed in Syria).

The Emir of Qatar publicly admitted, in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour (‘Qatar’s Emir: We don’t fund terrorists’), that he doesn't always see eye to eye with American terrorist designations: “I know that in America and some countries they look at some movements as terrorist movements . . . But there are differences. There are differences that some countries and some people that any group which comes from Islamic background are terrorists. And we don't accept that. It would be a ‘big mistake’ to consider every Islamic movement to be ‘extremists.’”

In October 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told students at the Harvard Kennedy School: “The Turks … the Saudis, the Emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war – what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and . . .  thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

In 2015, The Independent reported that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were "focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that [included] Jabhat al-Nusra.”

 

The Consortium Against Terror Finance (CATF) suggests that the U.S. turned a blind eye to Qatar’s funding of al-Nusra because al-Nusra was one of the only groups threatening both ISIS and Syria’s Assad (‘Funding Al Nusra Through Ransom: Qatar and the Myth of “Humanitarian Principle”’).

The proof of the pudding

Live television feeds over the past week have shown how HTS  jihadi terrorists have been indiscriminately beating and shooting Druze, Kurdish and Shi’ite soldiers who have surrendered to the Sunni forces. They have burned the tomb of former President Hafez al-Assad, and hanged his nephew Suleiman Hilal al-Assad in Latakia. The behavior of HTS soldiers is totally in line with how Islamic State operatives attacked, tortured, beheaded and kidnapped Yazidis in Iraq and Christians in Syria and Egypt/Libya during the Syrian Civil War of 2011-15. The proof of HTS ‘s practical affiliation with the deeds of Islamic State is seen in how they are manifesting the same cruel behavior.

On December 8 2024, ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (HTS) Islamist soldiers stood outside the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and shouted to the cameramen:

The bloodthirsty roaring of HTS gunmen in Damascus accurately reflects both their burning desire and their military goals: this jihadi army will not rest, will not stop, until they have conquered the Jewish state and seized the Jewish Temple Mount, breaking Jewish control over the capital of the Jewish people. Then after Jerusalem, they intend to conquer Mecca and Saudi Arabia from the hands of those Muslims who they consider weak in their religious convictions and practice. The forces of Islamic State are gathering at the northern borders of Israel, hoping to crush Christians, moderate Muslims and all Jews. This situation is definitely a Middle Eastern call to prayer!

How shall we then pray?

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Dividing the baby – Part One of Three

The wisdom of Solomon was like a prophetic word (see 1 Corinthians 14:24-25), revealing the secrets of men’s hearts. The God of Jacob uses the Middle East to to divide people’s hearts: “I, YHVH, search the heart; I test the mind!” (Jeremiah 17:10). Western empires have also used the Middle East as a surgery ward over the last two centuries, dividing lands and then sewing territories together – creating countries out of thin air. Many of the nations created in this way have become ticking time-bombs in our day.

Dividing the Middle East

The Sykes-Picot Agreement, ratified May 23 1916. is a good example of this: Britain and France, at the close of WWI, were becoming the new colonial masters of the Near East. One of their major concerns was to avoid clashes between the two superpowers by clarifying spheres of influence and control in their new colonial possessions. Sitting down at a table in France, they divided up the territories soon to be conquered into parcels of land and regions of political control. Yet both Britain and France were sorely ignorant of the ethnic, tribal and religious dynamics of these new colonies. They certainly had no interest in preserving the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire – but these newly carved-up colonialist creations would need more than diplomatic crazy glue to hold them together. the creation of these new countries (like Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) at the hands of Britain and France has shaped much of subsequent Middle Eastern and world history. And today the whole world is dealing with the fallout of these hasty decisions.

Today, the borders established by Western imperial forces are giving way to more ancient identities. The results here are ethnic warfare and spreading violence. Over the last six decades, 23 conflicts have exploded throughout the Middle East, resulting in more than one million casualties. The artificially-created countries glued together in the Middle East are turning out to have a rather tenuous shelf-life. This is reflected in a comment made by the Jewish-Iraqi historian Elie Kedourie, who labeled Iraq as a ‘make-believe kingdom.’ The failure and blowback of Western colonizing policies among the nations of the Middle East can be seen in how Europe and the U.S. handled Syria’s Bashar Assad regime over the last two decades. Their blunders led to an intensification of the Syrian civil war, with the resulting wave of more than four million refugees crashing down on the shores of Europe. In the end, the Western-style secular nationalism has not overridden ethnic, tribal and religious identities, nor has it brought peace to the Middle East. As the national poet of Scotland Robert Burns once said, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” (‘The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry’).

Here are some demographic fault-lines to consider: Iraq’s establishment gave dominance to the Sunni Muslim minority, while weakening the Shi’ite Muslim majority (50%) and denying national aspirations to the Kurds (25%). Syria was constructed in a way which weakened both the Sunni majority and the Druze minority, but strengthened the Alawi miniscule remnant. Lebanon was birthed giving preference to its Christian majority, while marginalizing its smaller Sunni, Druze and Shi’ite segments. The Gulf States were molded give preeminence to Sunni leaders, while assigning an inferior role to Shi’ites.

Each of these countries’ size and borders was intended by Britain and France to ‘hold down the fort,’ to divide and conquer,’ and to guarantee long-term Western control and strategic interests.  Yet these precipitate decisions pressed the countdown button on what would end up being a ticking time-bomb in each state – geopolitical IEDs that would explode in the second half of the 20th century and well into our day as well. The boundaries drawn up just over 100 years ago by Western powers are disintegrating before our very eyes, and the appearance of the entire region is morphing beyond recognition.

Today, perhaps the most significant challenge in the new Middle East is the Islamist movement – a stream opposed to pan-Arab nationalism in general, and to local nationalism in particular. The Muslim dream revolves around a revived Islamic ‘Ummah’ (transnational Islamic nation) to be governed according to ‘Sharī'ah’ (Islamic law).  The Islamist world vision is for the Caliphate (Muslim dictatorship) to rule over all Moslems and to take possession of the entire world. Islamism adamantly rejects Western culture, perceiving it to be a spiritually impure threat capable of adulterating Moslem culture and dominating Islamic territory and resources.

“The head of Aram is Damascus” (Isaiah 7:8)

In the days of Abraham, the country where Damascus was situated was called ‘Aram,’ and the people living there were called ‘the Arameans of Damascus’ (see 2 Samuel 8:5-13). These Arameans were descendants – not of Abraham but of Shem. Shem had given birth to many children – one was Aram, and one of Aram’s brothers was Arpachshad (from whom Abraham was descended; see Genesis 10:21-23).

The Hebrew Scriptures describe Aram as a mortal enemy of Israel. Here are some of passages which flesh this out: 2 Samuel 8:5-13; 2 Samuel 10:17-19; 1 Kings 20:27-29; 2 Kings 6:8-24; 2 Kings 13:2-6; 2 Kings 13:16-19; 2 Kings 24:1-3; 2 Chronicles 24:23-25; 2 Chronicles 28:4-6; Isaiah 7:1-3; Isaiah 9:11-13.

In biblical days the country was known as Aram, Aram Damascus, or Aram Naharaim. The Greeks took the Semitic name ‘Aššūr’ or ‘Ashur’ (from the Hebrew word for Assyria), and derived two Greek words from it – Σύριοι (Sýrioi) or Σύροι (Sýroi) – which we use today to describe ‘the country of Syria.’  To sum up: the present name of Syria is a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew word, referring to a non-Abrahamic but nevertheless Semitic people.

The City of Jasmine and her two skulls

Damascus is the largest city in Syria, the oldest continually inhabited capital city in the world, and the former center of the Islamic world. In modern Arabic it is called ‘Dimašq’ (‘Dimashq’) or ‘aš-Šām’ (‘as-Sham’). It is also dubbed, poetically, the ‘City of Jasmine’ (‘Madīnat al-Yāsmīn’), though the Damask Rose may be the more famous flower associated with this city.  The patterned Chinese silks sold through the ages in Damascus, at the Western end of the Silk Road, took on the city’s name and are still called ‘Damask silk,’

Aram-Damascus clashed with the Kingdom of Israel on and off for centuries, under the rule of the Aramean kings Ben-Hadad I (880-841 B.C.; 1 Kings 15:17-19), Hazael (2 Kings 8:8-10) and Ben-Hadad II (2 Kings 13:24-25). In 64 B.C. the Roman general Pompey occupied Damascus, eventually incorporating it into the ten-city league known in the New Covenant Scriptures as the ‘Decapolis’.

After the death of Muḥammad in 632 A.D. his jihadi armies began to conquer what was then called ‘Syria Palaestina’ (which they accomplished by 641 A.D.). The Rashidun Caliph Abu Bakr gave a new name to the new conquest – Bilad aš-Šām (or Bilad as-Sham)  – the Arabic word for ‘The Region on the Left Side.’ The original jihadi army which exploded across the Meccan desert had lived in the Hejaz (or western Arabia). When they looked eastward toward the rising sun, they would have located Syria on their left – while al-Yaman (Yemen; ‘the region on the right hand’) would have been on their right. This same geographical way of locating ‘The Left’ is also found in Genesis 14:15: “Then [Abraham] divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is to the left [north] of Damascus.”

Bilad as-Sham was organized by Abu Bakr into four sub-divisions or ajnad (singular, jund: the Arabic-Persian word for ‘military colony’ or ‘administrative district’ or ‘province’):

The modern English word used today for Bilad as-Sham is ‘the Levant’, coming from the French ‘levant’ (‘rising’), referring to the rising of the sun in the east. It includes the countries of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel, as well as the modern Turkish regions of Hatay, Gaziantep, and Diyarbakir.  The Islamist group which has just conquered the lion’s share of Syria calls itself ‘Hayʼat Taḥrīr aš-Šām’ (‘Hayat Tahrir as-Sham’; ‘Organization for the Liberation of as-Sham/the Levant’; acronym HTS).

A Christian tradition from the 500’s A.D.  states that the head of John the Baptist is buried in a crypt-like box under the former Byzantine cathedral, which was destroyed by Muslim conqueror al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, and rebuilt by him as the ‘Great Mosque of Damascus’ (‘The Umayyad Mosque’; ‘al-Jāmiʿ al-Umawī’). Another skull, purported to be that of Mohammed’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali, is traditionally buried there as well (one of the seven traditional sites where his skull might be located).

On October 3 1918 the forces of the Arab Revolt led by Hashemite Faisal I bin al-Hussein bin Ali al-Hashemi also entered Damascus, where he was temporarily proclaimed King of Syria under French administration. Later, on August 23 1921 he was proclaimed King of Iraq under British administration. During his reign, Faisal I attempted to create an Arab state modeled on the 600’s A.D. Islamic Bilad as-Sham which would include, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestine Mandate, Kuwait and parts of Turkey.

Damascus has an estimated population of 2.7 million. Most are Sunni Arabs, with Kurds, Alawites and Twelver Shi’ites being minorities, along with 10-15% Orthodox Eastern Christians. Damascus is the headquarters of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, and the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. A small Druze minority exists, but the once thriving Jewish community (since Roman times) has utterly vanished.

When Islam and socialism first kissed

The 54-year dynastic rule of the al-Assad family in Syria (which ended on December 8 2024) had is origins and foundations in an Arab socialist and revolutionary military government called the ‘Ba’ath movement’ – ‘Hiẓb al-Ba’th al-‘Arabī al-Ishtirākī’  (‘The Party of Arab Socialist Resurrection’). The ideology envisioned a vanguard of socialist revolutionaries who would establish a one-party state in various Arabic-speaking countries, based on the principles of secularism, Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism and Arab socialism. Ba’ath leaders included former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein and former presidents of Syria Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad.

In 1963 a Syrian coup d’état occurred, led by Alawite military officers, after which Syria was ruled by the Ba’ath Party as a totalitarian state for the next 61 years. After that coup, Hafez al-Assad purged the Syrian Armed Forces, replacing 90% of its officer corps with Alawites.  Another coup d’état in February 1966 led to the overthrow and exile of the Ba’ath movement’s founders. In 1970 General Hafez al-Assad overthrew President Salah Jadid in another coup d’état, named the ‘Corrective Revolution.’ The new doctrine of Assad’s revolution placed emphasis on defeating Israel, and strengthening Syria’s military with Soviet support. Assad’s dynasty continued for 54 years up to December 2024, when his Ba’ath regime collapsed.

Though Assad was an Alawite (a religious stream considered heretical and non-Muslim by traditional Islam), he began to posture himself as a Sunni (and therefore ‘authentic’) Muslim. Because the Syrian Constitution allowed only Muslims to become president, Assad presented himself as a pious Muslim. In order to gain support from the ulamah – the ruling Islamic scholars, he prayed in Sunni mosques, even though he was an Alawite. In the early 1970’s, Assad was verified as an ‘authentic Muslim’ by the Sunni Mufti of Damascus and made the Hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca – a journey permitted only to ‘kosher’ Muslims. In his speeches, he often used classical Islamic terms such as ‘jihad’ (struggle) and ‘shahada’ (martyrdom) when referring to his war against Israel.

Nazi officers were given asylum by Assad after WWII: Nazi war-criminal Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s right hand man, and a key participant in the Final Solution, lived under government protection in Syria under the alias ‘Dr. Georg Fischer.’ He assisted Syrian rulers for over 30 years, serving as an instructor on torture techniques, combating internal dissent, and purging Syria's Jewish community. 

In 1976 Sunni groups – including the Muslim Brotherhood (from which sprang the PLO, Hamas, al Qa’eda, al Nusra and HTS) – led an armed uprising against the Assad government. In order to eliminate the small Muslim Brotherhood group hiding in the Syrian city of Hama, Assad send his brother General Rifaat al-Assad to destroy the entire city.  Rifaat sealed off the entire city; all electricity and food supplies were halted. Syrian military shelled and bombed the city; tanks demolished most of the Old City; hydrogen cyanide was used by troops against the civilian population. Diesel fuel was pumped into underground tunnels and then ignited. Rifaat stated that 38,000 Syrians will killed, while the Syrian Human Rights Committee puts the number at 40,000. Over 15,000 residents have never been located, and 100,000 were expelled from Hama. Mass torture and rape were reported as being commonplace.

Syrian civilian protests against Ba’athist rule in March 2011 during the Arab Spring riots led to the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. Forces rebelling against Assad received military support from Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates fought against the Syrian Army.  Assad’s forces, on the other hand, received support from Iran and Russia. The regional capitals of Raqqa and Idlib were captured by the rebels, but Iran and Russia intervened militarily, crushing rebel gains. In 2014, Da’esh or the Islamic State fought and defeated both rebels and the Syrian government in many areas, seizing large parts of Eastern Syria and Western Iraq. In October 2014 the U.S. led an international coalition – the Combined Joint Task Force, in Operation Inherent Resolve, with the aim of degrading and destroying the Islamic State group. The coalition ended its combat mission in Iraq in December 2021.

In November 2024, a major rebel offensive was spearheaded by the jihadi and Salafi HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham; see above) in tandem with the Syrian National Army (supported by Turkey, Qatar, Azerbaijan). They fought against and defeated Syrian government forces bolstered by Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Hezbollah.  The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Free Army (both U.S. supported) launched their own offensives against Assad’s armies in Deir ez-Zour and Tadmor respectively, participating in the battle for Damascus. On December 8 2024, Damascus was taken, with Syria’s Prime Minister Mohammed Jalali officially handing over the reins of power to the rebel armies.

How shall we then pray?

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part Four of Four

This is the fourth part of a four-part newsletter.

Fifty years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas jihadi terrorist invaded from Gaza on October 7, 2023, murdering, raping, burning and kidnapping Israeli kibbutz members and farmers. For many Israelis, Hamas’ choice of that date had significant and deeper meaning, and those historical parallels are troubling. Our fourth newsletter in this four-part series looks at a some of the October 2023 events, in parallel to similar events which occurred during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War (as described in Part Two of our newsletter), and draws some conclusions.

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous” (Albert Einstein)

On October 7 2023 Israel suffered both a surprise military attack and an intelligence failure of stunning proportions, unparalleled since its near-defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. 

Hamas’s leaders chose to start this war on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War – the last time Israel was caught sleeping. They know their history. Both wars began with a surprise attack on a Jewish holy day. In 1973 it was on Yom Kippur. In 2023 it was on Simchat Torah, a Jewish festival rejoicing over the giving of the Mosaic Covenant. Unlike the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, where the vast majority of casualties and prisoners of war were military personnel, in this attack over 800 civilians and over 350 IDF soldiers were killed. Over 250 were taken hostage – including women, children, and the elderly – to unimaginable terror-prisons in Gaza.

Beating swords into ploughshares at a time of war

Raphael Hayon, a civilian intelligence monitor of Hamas transmissions, has for years been monitoring jihadi radio communications and then alerting Israeli authorities on his findings. In the past he had prevented and thwarted many Hamas terror attacks through his diligence. In 2022-23 Raphael had identified thousands of transmissions proving with certainty the existence of Hamas training before the attack, including breaching into Israel, massacring and taking hostages. He alerted and informed IDF and senior security officials in real time, begging for them to listen and act. His warnings could have prevented the attacks if these officials had just listened. But months before October 7 2023, his surveillance license was revoked and equipment was seized by Israel’s Ministry of Communications after senior security officials grew short-tempered at his warnings. Raphael was informed that this order to shut him down “came from above.” Then, on October 7, Raphael lost 37 friends in the massacres.

In the years just prior to October 7, the IDF began to cut down the permissible sizes of all kibbutz security teams (Hebrew, kitot konenut) close to Gaza, viewing them as increasingly unnecessary in light of new technological and engineering measures that supposedly ensured the defense of the border. These security teams were even seen as a nuisance by some IDF officers. In Summer 2022, the IDF imposed new restrictions upon kibbutz members who wanted to keep their weapons in their homes. The army requiring the installation of heavy wall-lockers embedded in concrete to prevent thefts. A kibbutz member at one of these kibbutzim who is a close friend, told me that they actually had had no incidents of weapons theft on their kibbutz. Such thefts occurred mostly at army bases. The weapons possessed by kibbutznikim had neither long-range scopes nor night-vision equipment. Nevertheless, at Kibbutz Nahal Oz nearly all long weapons (rifles and sub-machine guns) were confiscated by June 2023 and stored in locked emergency-access armories (nishkiyot) – a decision carried out by local ravshatzim (rakaz bitachon shotef tzva’i; military security coordinators).

Caroline Glick’s article of December 22, 2023, ‘Rising from the ruins of a generation of Israeli doctrine’ points out how Ehud Barak’s doctrine of a smaller, smarter IDF was ultimately destructive,  leading to the disaster of October 7 2023. Defanging the IDF, in retrospect, was not the smartest idea in a venomous Middle East:

Benny Gantz, who once served as Minister of Defense (2020-22) and Chief of General Staff (2011-15), spoke warmly of the ‘small and smart’ doctrine: “The purpose of [these changes] was to create a smaller yet deadlier army, capable of confronting non-state adversaries in complex environments and on multiple fronts . . . The ability to be a smaller yet deadlier military depends primarily on the ability to obtain accurate intelligence, process and analyze it effectively, and transfer it to the combat forces in real time.” (‘The Transformation of the Israel Defense Forces’; Avi Jager, Naval War College Review; International Institute for Counter-Terrorism; Volume 74, Number 2, Spring 2021).

The above-mentioned article from 2021 speaks prophetically about what Israel is experiencing in its current war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen:

“Potentially severe” outcomes on the battlefield

Israeli and international military commentators all agree that the IDF was surprised and unprepared – not battle-ready – for the Hamas invasion on October 7 2023. This can be seen by its response (or lack of response) in the following areas on that day. The IDF:

The IDF’s initial response to Hamas’ invasion gave the impression that Israel had no actionable intelligence, no planes, no APCs, no more than 600 hundred of soldiers available – and only one helicopter – for nearly the whole first day, while kibbutz residents were raped, tortured, burned alive, slaughtered and kidnapped.

Three huge missile-detecting balloons (‘zeppelins’ in Hebrew) which normally hover above the Strip were disabled and needing repair on the morning of Saturday October 7.  The balloon at Kibbutz Nahal OZ offered a deep view into Gaza, and was intended to be operational 24/7. “The balloon in Nahal Oz didn’t work and no-one was stressed. They were told it would be fixed on Sunday,” said Mr. Ben Shitrit.

According to Alon Davidi, the Mayor of Sderot (a town in the Negev near Gaza) who was interviewed on Channel 14 on December 1, 2024 and who saw the SMS instructions referred to with his own eyes, SHABAK operatives were sent texted orders from SHABAK HQ on October 7 in the morning telling them to stay home. This was also the testimony of the father of SHABAK operative Michael ben Moshe’s father, available for viewing on the above-referenced link.

At 05:30 am on the morning of October 7 2023 (one hour before the Hamas invasion began), members of the IDF Golani infantry brigades were preparing to do a jeep patrol along the Israeli side of the fence  something done before dawn every morning. But suddenly they were instructed by their superiors to delay the patrol and stand down, because of a hot threat of anti-tank missiles, three of them told the BBC. “There was a warning. It was forbidden to go up the route next to the fence,” one recalls. Golani soldier, 21-year-old Shimon Malka, said such a warning was unusual but not unheard of, so they gave it little thought. As a result, there were no IDF Golani soldiers present on that road when Hamas Nukhba terrorists broke through one hour later.

The Hamas invasion

For at least a year prior to October 7 2023, Hamas spies were on the job: Gazan workers were sent into in Israel as day laborers to spy on kibbutzim, developing a huge bank of intelligence details which were then used to facilitate Hamas’ rape and slaughter of those same Israelis. These details were found in the intelligence manuals of Hamas terrorists killed by IDF forces on October 7.  They contained intricate battle plans, including detailed maps of military bases and civilian towns, extensive lists of weaponry and equipment used by each of the IDF and kibbutz units, and checklists for killing and capturing men, women and children. Instructions were given to kill hostages if they proved too much trouble. One document included a list of phrases transliterated from Arabic to Hebrew, including “Take your pants off,” “We will kill the hostages,” and “How do you use the weapon?” Another pamphlet stated: “Your [Jewish] enemy is a disease which has no cure other than to cut out their livers and their hearts.”

The Hamas terrorists would come in three waves. The first well-armed wave struck at 29 points along the border, neutralizing observation towers using drones, and then penetrating into Israel on motorbikes.

‘Operation 402’ was the military name for the Hamas attack order against Kibbutz Nahal Oz that left 15 residents dead and eight kidnapped. Next to the kibbutz was the Nahal OZ IDF base. Hamas’ attack on the base began with rocket fire, quickly followed by drone strikes, and then invasion by 70 Nukhba fighters coming from four directions, with many more Gazan joining in as the morning went on. There were instructions taken from Hamas’ invasion manual: “The mobilized and reduced platoon from the third company in the fourth battalion will attack Nahal Oz kibbutz. It will cause as many casualties as possible, take hostages, and position itself inside the kibbutz – until further instructions are received.” Section 3 of the plan includes a table detailing the time in which members of the third company are supposed to complete the route from the Gazan city of Shuja’iyya to the kibbutz. “Distance of the advance route between the exit point and the target – 3,050 metres. Average speed of the group's advance towards the target – 65 km (40 m) per hour. Travel time to reach the target from when the order is received – 2:08 minutes.”

According to the battle order, the raiding force on Nahal Oz included 27 terrorists. The force would advance towards the target on 14 off-road motorcycles, moving in two columns. An additional motorcycle, on which the commander and driver would ride, would be positioned in the middle of the convoy. The order even specified the name of the commander’s driver – Bilal Abu Kanuna. The navigators who led the force were also mentioned by name. A man named Mohammed Hamto was described as a ‘media photographer.’ The manual stated that “photos will be taken using head cameras and phones, in addition to the presence of a media photographer” so that Hamas could live-broadcast the atrocities it was committing to the world.

Hamas’ Shuja’iyya battalion infiltrated Nahal Oz quickly. By 7:00 am, terrorist fire was reported inside the kibbutz. According to IDF estimates, approximately 100 terrorists entered the kibbutz. Only after six and a half hours would the first IDF forces arrive at the kibbutz gate to clear it of terrorists. At the moment of invasion, only two members of the kibbutz emergency response team had long guns. The rest of the weapons were stored in the kibbutz’s armory four months earlier.

Shortly before 08:00 am an Israeli drone, the Hermes 450 (also known as the Zik), arrived, but it had difficulty distinguishing between Israeli soldiers and Hamas terrorists, according to the IDF account.

At about 09:00 am, IDF Sayeret Golani headed to the IDF base’s dining room where the IDF tatzpitaniyot (tower-based observers) had told them most of the Hamas gunmen were located. More than three hours after the attack had begun, at 09:45 am, an IDF helicopter fired into the base 12 times in an attempt to strike the Nukhba terrorists.

Only at 11:00 am did the IDF MAGLAN recon unit receive an order to make their way to Nahal Oz, encountering many Hamas ambushes set on the way. According to the kibbutz emergency response team member Meyerowitz, MAGLAN arrived in Nahal Oz only after 1:30 PM. “At 1:30 PM, we received a message on the radio that forces were arriving.” In the following two days, the army continued to eliminate terrorists in the kibbutz area and repel infiltration attempts by additional terrorists. MAGLAN and Sayeret Givati were later joined by a force from Golani's 13th Battalion, and starting from the afternoon of October 8, this combined force of about 100 fighters began to systematically go through all the kibbutz houses, clearing them of terrorists. Only on the evening of October 9, two and a half days after the start of the attack, did these Israeli special forces fighters leave the kibbutz.

Amazing exploits of Golani bravery and courage as they retook another kibbutz, Nir Am, can be viewed at: https://www.710360.kan.org.il/en/nir-am/nir-am. Seventy Golani soldiers fell in these first three days of battle here.

Hamas terrorists penetrated beyond the first line of contact (IDF bases and rapid-response kibbutz units) and crossed into the second line – border communities. Terrorists with semi-automatic sub-machine guns attacked Israeli police stations in Sderot and Ofakim. Approximately 54 police were killed in those clashes.  After an hour or so, other units of paratroops and commandos arrived at these towns, including the LOTAR, Duvdevan and YASAM (police) counter-terror units, Shayetet 13 (Navy Seals), Shaldag and Sayeret Matkal (Israel’s Delta Force).  

Just after 07:00 am, Hamas jihadis attacked at the Nova music festival, ferociously raping and murdering 364 young people in attendance and wounding hundreds. The massacre at the festival was the largest terror attack in Israel’s history, and the worst Israeli civilian massacre ever. Forty young people attending the festival were taken hostage by Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.  Four of these hostages were later rescued; 5 were released; 13 bodies were recovered; 18 are still being held in exceedingly cruel conditions in Hamas tunnels in Gaza.

At Kibbutz Be’eri, the largest in the Eshkol Regional Council abutting Gaza, 132 out of 1,071 were murdered that day by Hamas terrorists.

At 9:00 am, a 14-member team from the elite IDF Shaldag unit, was quickly overwhelmed and retreated back to Kibbutz Be’eri’s entrance. At 1:00 pm a squad of Shaldag soldiers returned, accompanied by a Sayeret Matkal unit.  At 2:00 pm, a team of Hamas terrorists surrounded the rapid-response team, and the pilot of a fighter helicopter informed the team that he didn’t have permission to fire inside the kibbutz. Only at 6:30 pm, IDF troops finally arrived at the kibbutz medical clinic, where there were only two survivors.  Avital, one of those two, explained: “Five hundred IDF soldiers were outside [the kibbutz], organized, with dogs, with equipment, weapons, and armored vehicles; they were standing outside and not a single one of them is doing anything. I remember shouting at them from the stretcher, ‘They’re slaughtering us! Go in! Save us!’ and none of them looked at me, none of them said anything. They kept repeating, ‘The field isn’t sterile, the field isn’t sterile!’” [i.e., they were saying that there may still be some terrorists roaming freely on the kibbutz grounds].

When in doubt, read the directions

Henry Kissinger once commented, “Sadat, in fact, paralyzed his opponents with their own preconceptions.”

Israel’s most serious underlying problem in this war deals with false preconceptions about Islam and Hamas: Israel’s intelligence, political and military mavens ignored Hamas’ foundational Islamist beliefs – that Israel is an illegitimate entity whose very existence must be extinguished and its citizens killed. The unappetizing reality is that it is the primacy of Islamist and jihadi ideology which carries the day – for Hamas, for the vast majority of Gazans, for Arabs living in the West Bank, and for many Arabs in Israel as well. Israel’s leadership did not show proper analysis of the Islamist and jihadi nature of Hamas, believing instead that Hamas could be bought off through economic benefits. Hamas willingly played along with Israel, distracting and deceiving the Jewish state’s leaders into what Martin Sherman of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies describes as “a hallucinatory pipe dream.”

This deception was as addictive as heroin to Israeli and American diplomats:

Hamas’ commitment to jihad is more important to them than their own pressing economic needs. At a 2017 meeting between Yahya Sinwar (Hamas’s then leader) and Gazan students, Sinwar vowed that Hamas would only disarm when “Satan enters paradise” and that “there’s not one minute of the day or night when we aren’t building up our military might.” He stated openly: “The discussion is not about recognizing Israel but about wiping it out.” For Hamas, Islamist jihadi ideology trumps economics. But the secular leaders of SHABAK, AMAN and the IDF did not have room in their worldview for recognizing the intractable enmity that motivates much of the Arab populations in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and even in Israel proper.

Here is a closing comment from Moshe Ya’alon – formerly commander of Sayeret Matkal, OC of AMAN, Chief of General Staff and Minister of Defense. In the past he was a watchman concerning the long-term threat of radical jihadi Islam.

How should we then pray?  

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part Three of Four

This is the third part of a four-part newsletter.

Fifty years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas jihadi terrorist invaded from Gaza on October 7, 2023, murdering, raping, burning and kidnapping Israeli citizens – kibbutz members and farmers, children and pensioners. For many Israelis, Hamas’ choice of that date had significant and deeper meaning, and those historical parallels are troubling. Our third newsletter in this four-part series looks at a some of the October 2023 events, in parallel to similar events which occurred during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War (as described in our Part Two of our newsletter).

Chariots at the Walls of Jericho

Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah (حركة المقاومة الإسلامية ; Arabic for ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement’) is known world-wide by its acronym HAMAS (حماس; Arabic for ‘zeal’, ‘strength’ or ‘bravery’). This Sunni jihadi movement makes war according to the principles laid down in its December 1987 Charter. Here are some excerpts:

Hamas’ long-range strategy is twofold: the total destruction of the state of Israel and its Jewish population; and its transformation into an Islamist ‘caliphate’ dictatorship and a jihadi base. Hamas’ terror activities have progressed from individual kidnappings/murders of IDF soldiers to mass suicide bombings of civilians (like the 2002 Passover Seder massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya). The October 7 2023 mass attack on Israeli kibbutzim, farms and towns was an attenuated ‘jump into hyperspace’ for the terrorist group, revealing how their jihadi reach has accelerated over the years.

Hamas’ plans in the years before the October 7 attacks (documents discovered in January 2024 in Khan Yunis by IDF Special Forces operating in Gaza) involved blowing up the 70-story Moshe Aviv Tower and the Azrieli Mall complex (both of which are near a large shopping complex and train station) in central Tel Aviv. Electronic records and papers recovered from Hamas command centers in Gaza included a 59-page document and a 36-slide presentation. More than 17,000 photographs were found, from satellite images to drone photographs and social media postings. These included Israeli airbase diagrams and flight patterns of commercial aircraft. An accompanying Arabic text said: “If this tower is destroyed in one way or another, an unprecedented crisis will occur for the enemy, similar to the crisis of the World Trade Center towers in New York.” Hamas plans included using a three-man horse-drawn chariot to transport explosives all the way to the Azrieli Towers on existing train tracks. A letter was found there, written by Hamas head Yahya Sinwar in 2021, appealing to several senior Iranian officials for financial and military support and promising that, with Iran's help, the terror group would be able to destroy Israel within two years. 

But even more solemn was a ‘smoking gun’ intelligence document, code-named ‘Homot Yericho’ (Hebrew for ‘The Walls of Jericho’) by AMAN (Israeli Military Intelligence). This document came into Israeli hands (according to unauthorized intelligence leaks through Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman) before May 2022 – one full year before the October 2023 Hamas massacre-pogrom and six months before the January 2024 discoveries mentioned above. In May 2022 the document was briefed to AMAN officers and the IDF Southern Command. In July 2022, the AMAN officer for the Gaza Division gave a briefing on the document to senior IDF leaders titled ‘The Mass Invasion Plan of Hamas.’ The presentation laid out down to the exact details what would be Hamas’ order of battle on October 7 2023 and stated: “This invasion constitutes the gravest threat that IDF forces are facing in the defense” of Israel.

“Surprise them through the gate” (Quran, Surah al-Ma’idah 23)

Hamas titled this 40 page document “Surprise them through the gate!” – a Quranic quote originally spoken by two high-ranking military leaders in Mohammed’s entourage:

Hamas applied this Quranic quote to their invasion strategy – a concerted attack by over 3,000 jihadi terrorists through impromptu crossing points along the Israeli security fence bordering Gaza. The document intimated that the attack would take place on a Jewish holiday or on the Sabbath, and that Hamas would drop explosives from drones and paragliders (as well as concentrated sniper fire) to knock out security cameras and communications towers before attacking 22 kibbutzim and other farms, as well as military bases. This would come simultaneously with a heavy and extended barrage of Qassam rockets.  Terrorists would blow holes in the fences with explosives, and bulldozers would rip through the IDF’s 20 foot high (six metres) double-fence barrier at approximately 30 points along the 65 km (40-mile) border. Goals also included hitting military bases in Rehovot and Beersheva. The attempts to reach Rehovot and Beersheva were thwarted by the extreme bravery of Israeli special ops police unit YAMAM near the Yad Mordechai junction.

In the year prior to the October 7 attack, Hamas exercised excellent OPSEC (operational security), thwarting many Israeli attempts to monitor Hamas terror developments. All jihadi communications were hand-carried by Hamas couriers, and contact between units were highly compartmentalized. Israeli SIGINT was mostly blind to war preparations, much of this due to Hamas’ tradecraft and use of underground tunnels which thwarted real-time VISINT (visual intelligence)

Sergeant ‘V,’ a non-commissioned officer in AMAN Unit 8200, gave a burning warning on September 19 2023 in an e-mail to the intelligence director of IDF’s Gaza Division and other senior intelligence officers. She prefaced it with a quote from an apocalyptic Hebrew prophet: “Then the word of YHVH came to me, saying . . . When I bring armed attackers upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among themselves and appoint him for them as a lookout, and he sees the army coming upon the land, and he sounds the shofar and warns the people,  and whoever hears the sound of the shofar and does not take heed, and the army comes and takes him, his blood will be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the shofar and did not take heed” (Ezekiel 33:1-5). Here is her conclusion:

A senior AMAN officer (with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel; in Hebrew ‘Sgan Aluf’) responded to Sergeant V’s warnings with the terse comment: “It sounds imaginary to me.” The scornful epithets “aspirational” and “totally imaginative” were also added as a withering critique of Sergeant V’s warnings. Sergeant ‘V’ estimated that Hamas had a target of taking 200-250 Israeli hostages; the actual number of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 was 251.

Two months before the surprise attack, an AMAN agent in Gaza reported back to Israel, with a ‘very high’ reliability level, that Hamas was planning “a major move in the week after Yom Kippur.” Senior AMAN officials remarked: “Focusing on one specific piece of news or another does not reflect the intelligence picture at the time.” They added: “If this really nears implementation, we’ll receive additional intelligence.” This bothersome report was buried, and it was not passed up the chain of command.

Ronen Bar, the head of SHABAK (Israel’s internal security agency) said in a post-October 7 internal memo to service personnel and their families: “Despite a series of actions we carried out, unfortunately, we were unable to generate a sufficient warning that would allow the attack to be thwarted. As the one who heads the organization, the responsibility for this is mine.” On April 22, 2024, Major-General (in Hebrew ‘Aluf’) Aharon Haliva who was head of AMAN,  handed in a resignation letter, stating: “The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with.”

“Who have eyes to see but do not see” (Jeremiah 5:21)

Like the ‘konseptzia’ (conceptual) blindness in October 1973 (as described in Part Two of our newsletter), much of AMAN’s leadership (and that includes the IDF as well, since AMAN is a sub-division of the IDF) misinterpreted and disregarded the huge amount of solid intelligence about Hamas coming its way. This involved the areas of HUMINT (human intelligence), VISINT (visual intelligence), IMINT (image, balloon and satellite intelligence), and OSINT (open-source intelligence) over an extended period of time. Here is a very partial list of examples:

All along the border with Gaza stand IDF watchtowers, where female surveillance soldiers watch over Israel’s security. They are called tatzpitanaiyot in Hebrew. In the weeks before October 7, they reported near-daily drilling by uniformed Hamas top commando unit – the Nukhba (‘elite’ in Arabic) Force. They reported Hamas practicing attacks on models of kibbutz residences, military observation posts, and a replica of an IDF Merkava tank. The tatzpitanaiyot reported that Hamas drones were flying daily along the fence, and that the drone paths demonstrated advance knowledge of camera locations. These hidden cameras had been previously installed by the IDF, using Israeli Arab workers who unfortunately had passed on specific high-security information about camera locations to Hamas. Most IDF surveillance soldiers reported an increase in suspicious activity. Former tatzpetanit Roni Lifshitz spoke of regular patrols of vehicles full of Hamas fighters driving around for months before October 7, which would stop to watch posts on the other side of the fence – “talking, pointing at the cameras and the fence, taking pictures.” Roni identified them by their uniforms as being from Hamas’ elite Nukhba Force – the leading attack force on October 7. A BBC article of interviews with tatzpitanaiyot quoted from a unit WhatsApp group from the base adjacent to Kibbutz Nahal Oz. One wrote: “What, there is another event?” She was immediately answered by her friend’s voice message: “Girl, where’ve you been? We’ve had one every day for the past two weeks!”

The tatzpitanaiyot reports were validated by signals intelligence (SIGINT). In July 2023, a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in Unit 8200, AMAN’s SIGINT and cyber warfare unit, reported that multiple Nukhba battalions were conducting twice-weekly drills, with the apparent objective being planned – to seize kibbutzim across the border. Her assessment was sober: “This is a plan designed to start a war . . . They are training, with large forces, for a big event. This is preparation for the real thing.” Their warnings were not taking seriously, nor were they passed up the chain of command. Indeed, the tatzpitanaiyot were threatened with punishment, including jail time, by their superior officers if they persisted in their warnings.

Nearly two years before all this, in 2021-22 AMAN decided to downgrade its SIGINT coverage of Gaza, reducing personnel and pausing collection of intelligence overnight and on weekends. AMAN’s SIGINT Unit 8200 stopped intercepting communications from Hamas walkie-talkies “because they saw it as a waste of effort.” On October 7 2023 dead Hamas attackers were found with these same walkie-talkies, which they had used to coordinate the assault.

On October 3 2023, less than four days before Hamas’ jihadi onslaught, AMAN Unit 8200 gave a 90-minute briefing to visiting AMAN head Aharon Haliva but failed to mention any of the intelligence warnings from the tatzpitanaiyot.

Just 6 hours before the October 7 attack started, close to midnight on Oct. 6, SHABAK picked up electronic signals that hundreds of Hamas Nukhba members were activating Israeli SIM cards for their cell phones. In a highly secret operation, it seems that SHABAK had managed to plant those SIM cards on a HAMAS contact some time before, in the hopes of striking an intelligence ‘gold mine.’ According to senior former officials in SHABAK’s Southern Division, “Nukhba members told us during their [pre-October 7] interrogations, that when there’s a drill that includes the activation of SIM cards, they receive instructions to go to a mosque. They go to the mosque without their personal phones, then descend into the tunnel to stock up, so they have no signal for several hours or even days. From that moment, they can’t report what’s happening – whether it’s a drill or a real attack – and therefore, our working assumption was that once the SIM cards are activated, we must be on high alert.” For SHABAK, therefore, the activation of the SIM cards was “a clear sign of war, even without any additional suspicious signs.”

But SHABAK was still uncertain, due to other recent similar scenarios which had turned out to be false alarms.  Some SHABAK personnel declared that this was only a Hamas preparation for a limited infiltration attack. SHABAK’s working assumption up to that point was that the SIMs were intended for a much more limited scenario: an infiltration of a few small squads, maybe 10-20 terrorists, at two or three points along the fence.

After hearing of the SIM card activations, SHABAK head Ronen Bar rushed to his Tel Aviv HQ in Ramat HaSharon, near Park HaYarkon.

At 2:58 am on October 7, SHABAK sent an alert to AMAN, the Mossad, and the Israeli police, mentioning the activation of the SIM cards: “So far, we have no information on the nature of the activity. However, it should be noted that these are unusual activities, and given other suspicious signs, it could indicate an offensive action by Hamas.” At 03:21 am, the deputy head of AMAN called up Aharon Haliva (head of AMAN) and informed him of SHABAK’s alert, which was not definitive in nature. Haliva then asked to receive further updates in the morning.

On October 7 between 03:30 and 04:00 am, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Col. Matan Feldman called IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi with an intelligence warning.  Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi notes: “If the Chief of Staff gets up at night, it’s because we’re on the brink of an abyss. You don’t wake the COS for nothing.”

On that call were IDF Major General Southern Command Yaron Finkelman and Head of Operations Directorate Major General Oded Basyuk, as well as someone unnamed from SHABAK. No AMAN representative was on the call. Unit 8200 was out of contact at a time of extreme crisis. Because Hamas members had activated Israeli SIM cards during previous exercises which were not real attacks, it was assessed at that meeting that Hamas was merely conducting another exercise. It was decided to revisit the issue later that morning (October 7) but not to change the security posture at the border in the meantime. According to an unnamed source, none of the top army brass on that call were familiar with the ‘Walls of Jericho’ presentation or with the warnings of ‘Sergeant V,’ the NCO from Unit 8200. Both of those documents had warned of the likelihood of a full-scale Hamas invasion. Prime Minister Netanyahu was not updated about this call. His military secretary Maj. Gen. Avi Gil was only updated at 06:15 am that morning, and he called the Prime Minister only at 06:29 am, when the attack had already commenced.

Between 04:00 and 4:30 a.m., Ronen Bar (the head of SHABAK) held a situation assessment at the organization's headquarters in Tel Aviv, attended by the heads of the various divisions. At this stage, SHABAK’s assumption was changing: they now tentatively concluded was that Hamas activities in Gaza were probably offensive, but that the jihadi invasion was expected to take place in the near future, not immediately. At around 04:00 am Bar had decided to call up SHABAK’s ‘Task Force Tequila’ team – a fast-response ‘any eventuality’ and ‘last resort’ special operations unit composed of SHABAK elite operators and the crack YAMAM unit (‘Centralized Special Police Unit’ or ‘National Counter-Terrorism Unit’) of Israel’s Border Police. The name ‘Tequila’ had been chosen for this unit, as a tongue-in-cheek reference for quick shots and rapid, significant effect. Several Tequila team members were killed fighting Hamas that morning.

At approximately 04:00 am, Nukhba terrorists were instructed to go to mosques for morning prayers. There they received precise order to report to their invasion points as of 06:00 am.

At 04:30 am IDF Operations Director Basyuk chaired a meeting to carry out army measures in accordance with COS Halevi’s guidelines. One combat helicopter and three UAVs with reconnaissance (but not offensive) capabilities were put on standby.

At 06:29 am, a massive rocket and missile barrage was unleashed from Gaza onto sleeping Israel. Simultaneously, 3,000 Gazan terrorists (and thousands of other Gazans who joined in for the pogrom) began to storm the IDF fence. Standing between them and thousands of Israeli civilians were 600 IDF soldiers and 12 Merkava tanks.

How should we then pray?

                                                              

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part Two of Four

This is the second part of a four-part newsletter.

When guard dogs forget how to bark

Isaiah noted that in his day, the majority of the prophetic voices had fallen strangely silent. Court seers were speaking soothing and pseudo-redemptive visions, but were not addressing the spiritual state of their listeners and of the apocalyptic judgments barreling down the Middle Eastern highway to the Jewish people. Assyria was in the middle of ripping the Ten Tribes away from Samaria – an event which began Israel’s long Exile among the nations. Babylon was preparing to do the same to Jerusalem’s remaining Two Tribes.

Today in modern Israel, the Jewish people have witnessed similar dynamics – voices warning of coming trials which were ignored by some in authority. Two recent examples will be considered: the Yom Kippur War; and an event which occurred 50 years and one day after the Yom Kippur War – the October 7 2023 Hamas pogrom atrocities bursting out of Gaza.

A Day but no Atonement

The October 1973 Yom Kippur War is nicknamed ‘hameḥdal’ by Israelis – ‘the colossal blunder’ – an act of omission or neglect that leads to great harm. The bewilderment on the faces of IDF troops overwhelmed by Egyptian invaders at the Suez Canal’s Bar-Lev Line said it all: How could this have happened? Didn’t we soundly defeat Egypt in June 1967’s Six-Day War? Weren’t our generals and our intelligence chiefs on top of developments and prepared to provide the necessary warnings for any and all challenges?

The answers to these questions are complex and multifaceted. Here is the short list:

Not learning from history but repeating it

Fifty years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas jihadi terrorist invaded from Gaza on October 7, 2023, murdering, raping, burning and kidnapping Israeli kibbutz members and farmers. This day of atrocities also happened to fall on the birthday of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. For many Israelis, Hamas’ choice of that date had deeper meaning, and those historical parallels were troubling. Our third newsletter in this series will look at a partial list of October 2023 events, as well as at the parallels to similar events from the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.

How should we then pray?                                                              

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part One of Four

YHVH whispered to Moses in Numbers 27:12-13 that he would soon be gathered to his people (see Genesis 25:8). But before Moses’ final trip up the mountain, the God of Abraham gave him some last orders – one of them concerned a crushing military blow, a payback due to the people of Midian for having seduced Israel into idolatry and adultery (see Numbers 25:1-18). The Hebrew phrase that God uses in Numbers 31:5 – ‘armed for war’ (חֲלוּצֵ֥י צָבָֽא; ‘chalutzei tzava’) – describes Jewish soldiers fully equipped in battle gear. It comes from the root ‘chalatz’ or loins. The biblical phrase ‘to gird up one’s loins’ has a similar meaning in Job 38:3.

The modern Hebrew word for ‘pioneer’ (חָלוּץ, ‘chalutz’) is based on this same root.  One of the IDF’s infantry brigades – the NAHAL (נח"ל, noar chalutzi v’lochem; ‘pioneering and fighting youth’) – is an acronym based on this same root.  This brigade originally combined paramilitary service with pioneering – the establishment of agricultural farms and settlements in dangerous areas on Israel’s peripheries. A total of 108 kibbutzim were established by NAHAL in the last century. But today the Nahal Brigade is no longer a pioneering brigade; it has taken its place as one of the IDF’s main infantry brigades.

“I never asked to be a pioneer!”

Someone has said that “the sons of pioneers never asked to be pioneers.” This proverb is true. Consider the case of Israel’s kibbutz movement. The original generations of Israel’s founding fathers drained swamps, removed rocks and established tower-and-stockade kibbutzim. But by the next generation, and certainly with the arrival of their grandchildren, a significant number of post-army kibbutz members abandoned the kibbutzim, moving on to either Israel’s bigger cities or to other countries. The socialist vision (based on the Hebrew prophets’ dream of the scattered exiles’ return to Zion) did not always get successfully transmitted to the next generation.

In our day, some ‘sons of the pioneers’ have been corrupted, and some have turned into traitors. In the words of Bob Dylan, “When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?” The Jewish people, state and army all have a divine calling (see Romans 11:28-29) which, in our day, is more important than ever. The revival and redemption of the whole world hinges on Israel turning to YHVH in repentance for cleansing and new life, and passionately embracing that divine calling (see Romans 11:12-15).

Treachery, deceit and conspiracy

As we consider how some modern sons of the original pioneers have been corrupted, we remember that such dynamics are not new. The Bible tells of kings, generals and prophets whose destinies were undermined by the treason, deceit, conspiracy or lies of their opponents and competitors. Examples include Prince Absalom son of King David (2 Samuel 15:12), King Zimri (1 Kings 16:8-20), King Joram (2 Kings 9:22-24), Queen Athaliah (2 Kings 11:12-14), King Joash (2 Kings 12:20-21), King Amaziah (2 Kings 14:17-19), King Ahaz (Isaiah 7:1-9), etc. Jealousy and ambition, desire for control and for reputation – all these have led in Bible days to rebellions. civil war and riots in the street. British-American author under the pseudonym Taylor Caldwell penned a speech which has sobering relevance to the present political machinations in Israel:

Treason, says a Wikipedia entry, is “the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one’s native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.”  These are warnings that some leaders in Israel would do well to hear and heed. The following are examples of relevant and recent behavior in Israeli intelligence, military and political spheres.

When a watchmen becomes corrupt

The vast majority of Israelis put a lot of trust in their intelligence and security services, as did most Americans prior to the Vietnam War and 9/11. Yet something happened on April 12, 1984, that shook the average Israeli’s confidence. Just after 7:30 pm on April 12, 1984, four terrorists affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took over an Israeli Egged bus (number #300) traveling from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon, severely injuring one passenger and taking the 34 passengers hostage. The bus was eventually stopped by IDF troops near Deir el-Balah in Gaza, who shot out the tires and disabled the vehicle. A team from Sayeret Matkal (Israel’s Delta Force) was quickly ferried to the site, where IDF Chief of Staff (Ramatkal) Moshe Levi, Defense Minister Moshe Arens and SHABAK (Israel Security Agency) Director Avraham Shalom gathered in consultation – surrounded by many hangers-on from the Israeli media . The terrorists demanded the release of 500 Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails. The next morning, at around 0700 on April 13, Sayeret Matkal stormed the bus, killing two of the four terrorists as well as a 19-year-old female IDF soldier caught in the crossfire. As the operation began to wind down, two SHABAK agents took the two surviving terrorists by mini-bus in the direction of a holding and interrogation center. But on the way, the SHABAK Director called them and told them to “hit them again and finish them.”

Press releases based on comments by Israeli officials then present reported that all four terrorists had been killed in the firefight. But one news photographer had snapped a hasty picture revealing that two of the terrorists had been apprehended alive. The SHABAK Director Avraham Shalom had lied to the press. Shalom later falsely accused the top-ranking IDF general on site, Itzhak Mordechai, of having ordered the killing of the terrorists, and also attempted to blame Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir and Defense Minister Moshe Arens for giving orders to carry out the killings. But after a lengthy trial with much press coverage, Mordechai was exonerated. Shalom and the two SHABAK agents involved in this incident were subsequently pardoned by Prime Minister Shimon Peres. It was whispered that the SHABAK director had threatened to publicly expose other such security events related to terrorist interdictions if he were to stand trial. This almost successful conspiracy to cover-up and to frame an Israeli general for the acts that Shalom himself had ordered are considered to this day one of the low points of moral and legal corruption in Israel’s short modern history. In this affair, Israel’s head SHABAK watchman was involved in corrupt decisions and was revealed to be untrustworthy in this affair. This was an earthquake for many Israelis, and raised ethical questions which are reverberating anew in our day. Unfortunately, such things happen in intelligence agencies and in politics and, as the Watergate Affair revealed in the U.S.A., they can happen in any country and to any people.

When a hero becomes arrogant

Israel’s top two Special Operations Forces units are Sayeret Matkal (equivalent to Delta Force) and Shayetet 13 (equivalent to US. Navy Seals). These units are respected as among the best in the world’s special operations forces and have highly classified identities and missions. Veterans of  Sayeret Matkal (abbreviated as SM) have become IDF Generals, Knesset members, Chiefs of Staff, Prime Ministers, Defense Ministers, SHABAK and MOSSAD directors. SM has a mythical reputation in Israel, and veterans are treated with high honor. ‘The Unit’ (as it is called in Hebrew) has a track-record of “pulling off high-risk, high-yield feats in defiance of convention and caution.” Ehud Barak is probably the most notable example of this: He became Israel’s most decorated soldier; he led stunningly daring raids to Beirut; was IDF Chief of Staff, head of Military Intelligence, and later Israel’s 10th Prime Minister. 

At the same time, there has been an ongoing historic rivalry between Barak (who was raised as a prodigy in the socialist Labor Party) and Netanyahu (who was the son of a world-respected Jewish historian affiliated with the more conservative Likud Party). In 1999, Barak defeated Netanyahu in the elections and become PM for a little more than a year. But in subsequent elections, he was defeated by Netanyahu (who at one time had been a sergeant under his direct command) time and again. This is something which seems to have have caused a poisonous root of bitterness to spring up within Barak’s heart over time.

For deeper back ground, see the following newsletters:

February 22, 2023:     https://davidstent.org/establish-justice-in-the-gate-amos-515/

July 4, 2023:               https://davidstent.org/the-wisdom-of-ahithophel/

July 26, 2023:             https://davidstent.org/following-after-the-crowd/

January 21, 2024:       https://davidstent.org/the-caesarea-syndrome/

Over the past decades, Barak has spearheaded a vitriolic campaign to bring down PM Netanyahu, no matter what the cost to the nation. This has involved ‘lawfare’ (using the courts as a weapon to attack and remove Netanyahu from office); stirring up public sentiment with repeated and lurid charges of fascism, treason and incarnate evil against Netanyahu; spearheading civil unrest and massive quasi-violent demonstrations attempting to block Netanyahu’s governance and remove him from office (the ‘Kaplan riots’);  calling for soldiers and pilots to go AWOL in efforts to bring down the government; and, since October 7, 2023, hijacking the cause of those Israelis kidnapped by Hamas and transforming that movement by catalyzing it into further attacks on Netanyahu, focusing on strident calls for new elections. In pursuit of these goals, Barak has been quoted often in Israeli and world media, threatening blood in the streets and civil war, as well as calling for a revolt against the PM, etc.

A Hebrew Zoom clip from July 23, 2020 (an excerpt with English sub-titles available here) is of a private meeting Barak held with retired Israel Air Force pilots and navigators (‘Forum 555’) including Shikma Bressler and Moshe Redman, present leaders of the 2023 ‘Kaplan’ protest demonstrations. In that meeting Ehud Barak stated that a civil uprising is needed, but it must be presented to the public as an uprising “for the sake of democracy,” rather than an attempt to unseat Netanyahu. Barak discusses strategies for a civilian revolt, including the use of slogans, civil disobedience, and both general and ultimate goals of the protest movement. He stated that he would raise the necessary funds to cover all logistics for the project, including flags, banners and PA systems. He continued, stating that the more there are streets clashes with the government, the stronger would the opposition’s resistance become. This would inevitably lead to the government needing to use force against the demonstrators, which would again bolster the protest movement. In Barak’s own words, when an army shoots into a crowd, the government is bound to fall. Barak also declared on that Zoom clip a snippet of revealing information about his own self-awareness: “Objectively speaking, I am the most suitable person in the state to take control of the steering wheel.”  Former POTUS Calvin Coolidge issues a warning here: “When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.”

On July 20, 2023, Yossi Melman, one of Israel’s top intelligence journalists, wrote an analysis in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, reflecting and supporting Barak’s perspective: “A Military Coup Is Underway in Israel – and It’s Completely Justified”:

Barak’s hatred for Netanyahu and his zeal to lead a putsch against Israel’s ruling Prime Minister has catalyzed widening divisions among Israelis.  The political opposition here has mobilized these divisions, creating a hate campaign against Netanyahu, against his Likud party and all conservative voters, against religious Jews who believe in the coming of Messiah. These events should move us to pray for a divine change of heart for many in this very troubling situation.

How should we then pray?                                                    

 

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: https://davidstent.org/

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