Saul and Herod – sic transit gloria mundi

An ancient Latin proverb – Sic transit gloria mundi – can be translated as follows: ‘So does worldly glory pass away.’ Two kings – Saul and Herod – were greatly lauded in their time, yet they were ultimately remembered for less than godly actions.

“Saul, a young and handsome man, and there was not a more handsome man than he among the sons of Israel. From his shoulders and up he was taller than any of the people!” (1 Samuel 9:2)

The Sages say: “One who has not seen Herod’s [Temple] building has never seen a beautiful building in his life” (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 4a)

Both kings were known for diplomatic doublespeak and backstabbing. These transgressions are as old as Adam’s sins, and it is a fact that kings and generals have engaged in these sordid deeds for thousands of years. In our day, presidents and diplomats do the same. What wisdom can be gained from the Bible on this matter?

When a king becomes an enemy

David son of Jesse was a humble youth, a shepherd by trade. Yet divine providence transformed him into Saul’s worship leader and armor bearer (1 Samuel 16). He was the teenaged Hebrew hero who cut off Goliath’s head (1 Samuel 17). Though King Saul initially loved David greatly (1 Samuel 16:21), his heart became fearful, suspicious and finally murderously angry toward the son of Jesse. Saul morphed into David’s mortal enemy (1 Samuel 18:8-16, 29). But outwardly, Saul concealed his deadly intentions toward David, praising and honoring him in public while planning his destruction (see 1 Samuel 18:11, 21-25; 19:29-11, 15). When Michal (David’s wife) felt that her own life was in danger due to her father’s threats, she lied to King Saul, taking her father’s narrative and upending it. In front of her father Saul, she falsely accusing her husband David of wanting to put her to death.

Saul’s subsequent strategy was to have David arrested at the public New Moon celebration (1 Samuel 20:24-33). David’s presence at the feast was assumed, as it would been accepted governmental protocol (1 Samuel 20:5). King Saul was planning to turn this party occasion into a ‘mafioso hit’ against his ‘enemy.’ But thanks be to God, Davis had his own ‘inside sources’ in Saul’s court – none other than Jonathan, Saul’s son. Forewarned is forearmed: Saul’s diplomatic doublespeak and backstabbing came to naught, and David escaped from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 124:7)

“We have come to worship Him”

Deceptive plots and betrayal were very much part of the Christmas story in Matthew 2:

Now after Yeshua was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him . . . Then Herod secretly called for the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him” . . . Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of YHVH appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to kill Him” . . . Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent men and killed all the boys who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi.

Matthew presents us with dramatic inside-information in his portrayal of the arrival of the magi. On one hand, the magi wanted “to come and worship Him.” On the other hand, Herod crafted his diplomatic doublespeak in exactly the same terms: “Report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.”

Herod the Great made use of diplomatic deception and HUMINT (human intelligence sources) to further his murderous designs – but the God of Jacob thwarted him at every step.

Isaiah’s words reveal the principle here: “Utzu etza v’tufar; dabru davar v’lo yakum, ki IMMANUEL [im anu El]!” – “Take counsel together, but it shall come to naught. Speak out the plot, but it shall not stand! For God is with us!” (Isaiah 8:10).

The American writer Isaac Goldberg once said, “Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way” (in ‘The Reflex,’ October 1927). Joseph Stalin put it succinctly: “A diplomat’s words must contradict his deeds – otherwise what sort of a diplomat is he? Words are one thing – deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron” (Joseph Stalin, ‘Elections in Petersburg,’ 1913).

It is commonplace for kings and presidents, secretaries of state and of defense, to declare as truth, the opposite of what is really happening. World leaders are old hands at turning truth on its head, at ‘calling white black’ – all in pursuit of their geopolitical goals. In the boxing ring of today’s Middle East, one should not be surprised to see such superpower manipulations and distortions in abundance

Collapsing the pillars

Prior to Barak Obama’s presidency, America’s traditional Middle Eastern security architecture was built on two main geographical pillars – the oil-rich Arab states in the Arabian Gulf (primarily Saudi Arabia), and the eastern Mediterranean allies of Egypt and Israel. During his first term in office, POTUS Obama took concrete steps to pull down the first of those two pillars.

On June 4, 2009 Obama gave a speech (titled ‘A New Beginning’) in the Main Reception Hall of Cairo University, hosted by the doyen of Islamic universities al-Azhar. Ten members of Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, (the Muslim Brotherhood or Society of Muslim Brothers – an Islamist underground organization dedicated to re-establishing the Islamic Caliphate world empire and shari’a law through jihadi revolution, who were also mortal enemies of Egypt’s then-President Mubarak) were specially invited to the gathering by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, at President Obama’s request.

Within two years of this speech, the White House had withdrawn its support for President Mubarak – a move which in turn injected steroids into the Arab Spring riots throughout the Islamic world. The State Department warmly congratulated and helped to usher in Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt – a group in league with the terror group Hamas. The first pillar of the traditional US security order which was struck was the country of Egypt.

In his Cairo speech, Obama apologized for past American mistakes, and promised to listen to and consult with Islamic leaders rather than issue edicts. “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone,” he stated. The POTUS suggested to no longer focus on disagreements and conflicts but to move toward cooperation on common goals, based on “mutual respect and interest.” He stated that it was his administration’s goal to engage in direct dialogue with Iran on issues other than nuclear ones, and said that America was now bringing a willingness “to move forward without preconditions” – without Iran suspending its nuclear program. Obama made no mention whatsoever of sanctions or military options against Iran, and publicly recognized Iran’s right to civilian nuclear capabilities. The POTUS spoke of the need for all nations of the Middle East to join the nonproliferation treaty – a very clear deal-breaker for Israel.

Obama’s second term focused on strengthening (‘re-aligning’) US relationships with the Islamic Republic of Iran while weakening partnerships with Saudi Arabia and Israel. A nuclear deal was signed – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – legalizing the jihadi nuclear weapons program. The second pillar of the traditional US security order which was struck concerned the weakening of Saudi Arabia and the strengthening of a fast-developing nuclear Iran.

The second stage of weakening the traditional US security order’s first pillar involves weakening Israel. This came about on Friday December 23, 2016, when the US State Department abstained on a Security Council vote, allowing the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334. This resolution described the heartland of Israel as “Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.” The resolution defined Israel’s settlement activity as constituting a “flagrant violation” of international law and that it has “no legal validity.” It declared that Israel is in violation of international law when it controls Solomon’s and David’s Jerusalem, or Abraham’s tomb in Hebron, and many other historic Jewish holy sites. It defined the Jewish return to portions of the Promised Land as illegal – the very areas where the Patriarchs shepherded their sheep as Palestinian land. It passed in a 14–0 vote: four members with United Nations Security Council veto power (China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom) voted for the resolution, while the United States abstained. This anti-Israel resolution passed as a result of US State Department collusion.

Grinding the foundations to powder

When Donald Trump became POTUS, he reversed Obama’s ‘realignment’ and restored America’s traditional security framework. Trump’s first foreign trip was to Saudi Arabia. He backed Egyptian President a-Sisi’s overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government, and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. He acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, and large areas of the West Bank. He unveiled the Abraham Accords – agreements normalizing relationships between Israel and the United Arab Republic/Bahrain under an American umbrella. This agreement sidelined the traditional Palestinian role as spoilers and deal-breakers, as well as marginalized their zealous Iranian sponsor.

But when POTUS Joe Biden stepped into the Oval Office, he immediately began to dismantle POTUS Trump’s policies, restoring the Obama faction’s goal (see the staff list appointed by Obama involved in pushing forward these items) of undoing the traditional US framework in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, the Biden administration put the Palestinians (Hamas and PLO/PA) back at the center of their Middle Eastern strategies. This is the context into which Iran stepped on October 7, 2023, having planned and then supervised the Hamas jihadi atrocities carried out on Israeli civilian kibbutzim next to Gaza. These horrors froze any movement toward increasing cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, while shaking the Jewish state to its core.

The insightful American investigative reporter and Middle East specialist, Lee Smith, draws some sober cutting-edge conclusions:

Team Biden’s moves “are best understood in the context of a revolutionary program of domestic initiatives that aim to reconstitute American society on a new basis, and which in turn require the outright rejection of the country’s history and culture, its existing social arrangements, and constitutional order. The current regime has weaponized the security state . . . Its political and cultural manifesto is a program for remaking America, whether through social pressure, or censorship, or bureaucratic fiat, or threats of violence, or actual violence. Among other devices to transform America, the Biden administration has opened the border to at least 7 million illegal aliens (and counting), many from places in the Middle East where Hamas is revered . . . It’s not the traditional U.S.-led order in the Middle East that the revisionist faction, Obama’s faction, is most determined to dismantle but rather the existing order in the U.S. And it’s not Israel that it’s most keen to grind into dust, but America. For the party that Obama remade in his image to triumph at home, the Palestinians must win.”

Bankers, Nazis and Billionaires

During WWII, the cream of American, British and German industries, companies and banks were deeply involved in supporting and enabling the Nazi death machine. These sobering facts are unknown to the majority of today’s citizens in the West. The leaders in question and their followers have never come clean about being both accessories to murder and enablers of genocide against the Jewish people. Three books shed light on these demonically energized schemes:

The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People (by John Loftus & Mark Aarons)

Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican’s Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets (by Mark Aarons & John Loftus)

Trading with the Enemy: An exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949 (by Charles Higham)

Similar genocidal strategies exist in our day, concealed in diplomatic doublespeak and aimed at backstabbing America’s allies in the Middle East – most importantly the Jewish people. Significant Western leaders are cooperating with and strengthening jihadi anti-Israel organizations while simultaneously declaring that they are aiding Israel in fighting against Islamist terror. Once again, history seems to be repeating itself.

Former Israeli National Security Council director General (Res.) Giora Eiland commented (in a Hebrew interview) on May 1, 2024 that “the day is coming when the connection between the White House and the Islamist organizations will become common knowledge.”

The Big Lie – proclaiming falsehoods as truth

The German term ‘große Lüge’ (the big lie) refers to a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth when used primarily as a political propaganda technique. Adolf Hitler used the term in his 1925 book ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My struggle’) to describe how ordinary people could be induced to believe a colossal lie, based on the fact that they would find it hard to believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” The OSS (pre-cursor to the CIA) drew up a psychological profile of Hitler during WWII and discussed how he used ‘the big lie’ dynamic: “His primary rules were . . . people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

In Mein Kampf, volume I, chapter ten, Hitler stated his principle – “that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.:

How is world media presenting the Hamas-Israel war? A careful examination reveals that the talking points used by CNN, NBC, ABC, SKY NEWS, BBC, etc., come straight from the Hamas propaganda playbook – the jihadi ‘big lie.’

Hamas has turned truth on its head as part of its manipulation of world media. This is a deliberate military strategy, one which is unfortunately being parroted by POTUS Biden, his State Department and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ‘große Lüge’ did not only work for Hitler and Goebbels; it is working for jihadi Hamas and those with whom it partners. Here are some examples:

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists committed atrocities and genocidal murder on unarmed Israeli babies, children, teenagers, women and senior citizens. But within a week, world media began to claim that it is the Israeli Defense Forces which are the ones guilty of genocide. This brings to memory the black humor joke, where the arsonist accuses the fireman of starting fires.

Hamas screams out its anti-Semitic calls for slaughter of the Jews, both in demonstrations in Gaza and across the world. Within a few days, American universities (heavily funded by Hamas’ main bankroller Qatar) echo these murder-chants, while also accusing Jews and Evangelicals of Islamophobia. Anti-Jewish riots break out across America and across the world. But within a day or two, President Biden responds to these violent anti-Jewish riots by proclaiming that he is against anti-Semitism AND Islamophobia AND attacks on Muslims and Arabs – even though the riots, physical attacks and calls for slaughter are directed only against American Jews.

In every clash between Hamas and Israel over the years, it has been patently obvious that Hamas grossly inflates the number of its casualties; denies that its jihadi fighters are killed, instead describing all casualties as innocent women and children. Hamas conceals the fact that Gazans are killed in significant numbers by misfired Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets in Gaza. In the past two weeks, casualty figures of Gazans were downgraded by thousands. Even though Hamas trumpets its desire to wage jihad and to die in that battle, it simultaneously curries world sympathy by appealing to its own inflated casualty statistics – even though it was the party that started this war on October 7. POTUS Biden and other world leaders blithely quote Hamas casualty figures as gospel truth, accusing Israel of genocide and of deliberately targeting Gazan civilians. Western media and politicians are doing their job so well as agents of Hamas, that many jihadis could actually ‘take the night off’ and retire to their six-star luxury hotels in Doha, Qatar.

Hamas slaughtered over 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped approximately 250 others on October 7, 2023, subjecting them to rape, torture, starvation and sub-human imprisonment. But within a week, while refusing to release any hostages, the Hamas propaganda machine began to bang the drum to the world’s media, crying that it is actually the Gazans who are suffering from hunger. World media (including POTUS Biden) began to hammer this point incessantly, sidestepping the Israeli hostages still suffering torture, rape and starvation. World media and the POTUS continue to yell at Israel, insisting that they feed the starving Gazans. But there is no food shortage in Gaza, though Hamas does confiscate all humanitarian aid entering the area and then sells it at inflated prices to locals, most of who support Hamas’ terror activities and participate in them. Hamas’ behavior is typical in the Middle East, as a famous Arabic proverb reveals: “Darabani wa baka, wa sabaqani wa eshtaka” (“First he hits me. Then he starts to cry. Finally he runs ahead of me to the judge and sues me”).

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, yet the world media continues to insinuate that the Gazans are innocents who have been unjustly attacked, and that Hamas is only responding to and resisting evil Israeli attacks.

World media, the US State Department, the UN and EU etc., declare that Gaza belongs to Palestinian Arabs and not to the Jewish people. This is a satanic counterfeit of Joshua 15:20-47, where YHVH promises Gaza as the tribal inheritance of Judah.

“Many times they have attacked me from my youth up,” let Israel say. “Many times they have attacked me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowmen plowed upon my back; they lengthened their furrows. YHVH is righteous! He has cut up the ropes of the wicked. May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward! May they be like grass upon the housetops which withers before it grows up – with which the harvester does not fill his hand, or the binder of sheaves his arms. Nor do those who pass by say, “The blessing of YHVH be upon you; We bless you in the name of YHVH!” (Psalm 129).

Bullying King David

As the pace of events speed up in the world, they are also speeding up in the Middle East. A recent detailed article by Dr. Guy Millière, Professor at the University of Paris, titled ‘The Betrayal of Israel by the US Administration is Almost Complete,’ is worth the read. Fourteen separate examples of recent adversarial actions by the US administration are listed in this article.

Negotiating with Hitler

Western powers (led by the US State Department) are pushing strongly for negotiations between Israel and the jihadi terror group Hamas. At no time after 9/11 did the US negotiate with Osama bin Laden or with al Qa’eda. Instead of forcing Israel to negotiate with Hitler – or his spiritual descendants Hamas and Islamic Jihad – the US and other Western countries should be resolutely backing Israel’s efforts to remove these jihadi terror groups from the soil of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. These are the geographical regions which the Bible declares to be the Jewish people’s promised inheritance, and their inheritance alone.

Watch out! YHVH’s got a gun!

YHVH is the God of Joshua. Moses declares that “YHVH is a warrior! YHVH is His name!” (Exodus 15:3). And Yeshua is not only the Messiah; He is also the Righteous Warrior: “And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse – and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war!” (Revelation 19:11).

When the nations of the world come up against the God of Jacob, there is a power encounter – a clash. The battle is joined, and it involves both spiritual and physical warfare. And that war usually revolves around the Jewish people and their land, though the nations are mostly blind to YHVH’s perspectives:

“Therefore all who devour you will be devoured, and all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity. And those who plunder you will become plunder, and all who plunder you I will turn into plunder. For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds, declares YHVH, because they have called you an outcast, saying: ‘It is Zion; no one cares for her’” (Jeremiah 30:16-17)

In our modern secular world, many find it hard to grasp that the God of Joshua is watching over His Jewish nation. Military strategists compare their own country’s munitions and platforms to those of the enemy, but they rarely take into consideration YHVH’s active involvement in protecting the people of Israel. Here are four biblical principles that can enlighten our considerations:

God declares to Abraham: “Indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore. And your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies!” (Genesis 22:17)

Moses declares to Israel: “Instead, you will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword; five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand” (Leviticus 26:7)

Then it came about when the ark set out that Moses said, “Rise up, YHVH! And may Your enemies be scattered, and those who hate You flee from Your presence” (Numbers 10:35)

Moses prophesied over Jacob: “Blessed are you, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by YHVH, the Shield of your help, and He who is the Sword of your majesty! So your enemies will cringe before you, and you will trample on their high places” (Deuteronomy 33:29)

The Hebrew Scriptures teach us that God trains the Jewish people how to destroy our enemies, and then He accompanies us as we go out to battle against our foes:

King David declares: “Blessed be YHVH, my Rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle” (Psalm 144:1)

“When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses, chariots, and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them. For YHVH your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you!” (Deuteronomy 20:1)

He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped Himself with zeal as a cloak – according to their deeds, so will He repay: wrath to His adversaries, retribution to His enemies . . . To the coastlands He will deal retribution. A Redeemer will come to Zion, declares YHVH (Isaiah 59 :16-20)

This amazing spiritual and biblical dynamic is lost on most of modern superpowers’ brilliant military and diplomatic minds. Instead, the opposite is assumed to be true: it’s not that God gives His strategic orders to Israel, but that the White House gives orders to Israel. Based on recent news reports, the US State Department insists that the Jewish state needs an OK from the White House before it is allowed to join battle against its mortal enemies. The US State Department has declared time and again in recent days that the IDF needs American permission to finish off Hamas. The State Department, the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff tell Israel that all aspects of the Jewish state’s battle plans and maneuvers against its enemies need to be micro-managed by Washington, the ‘responsible adult’ in this dynamic. Like a high-school student facing a detention, Israel needs to humbly and obediently sign on the dotted line of the detention slip which has been handed to it.

America’s perspectives are heavily influenced by the upcoming US elections. The Democrats desperately need to win the Arab and Islamic vote in key states like Michigan. As a result, they are bending over backwards to make decisions which will not offend Islamist sensitivities at home or in the Middle East. The result is a US foreign policy crazily careening in ways that are harmful and destructive both to Israel’s short-term victory and long-term survival.

How should we then pray?

Pray for clarity of understanding and revelation to be given to the world about how superpowers are shaping Middle East events to the detriment of Israel and their own countries

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 129 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, many of these hostages are dead; Hamas is holding on to the corpses of Israeli citizens in cold storage to be used by them as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Free digital downloads of ISRAEL THE KEY TO WORLD REVIVAL in Español, Italiano and Polski

It is our privilege to make our book ISRAEL THE KEY TO WORLD REVIVAL available as a free digital download in Spanish, Italian and Polish versions at https://davidstent.org/product/israel-the-key-to-world-revival/.

Spain has a population of nearly 49 million, while native Spanish speakers total 480 million

Italy has a population of nearly 59 million, while native Italian speakers total 67 million

Poland has a population of 40 million

We want the biblical and foundational teachings of this book to get into many hands and to transform many people’s understanding about God’s heart and strategies for the Jewish people. This is all the more important as Israel and the Jewish people are moving into center-place in the minds and hearts of the nations – though the focus is often poisonous and anti-Jewish.

At this moment, we are not traveling extensively in these countries, teaching these principles and letting people know about this book in person. We want this book to open the hearts of a lot of people – believers in Yeshua and those who are not yet there.

As a Jewish man whose grandparents grew up in Poland, I feel a special desire to bless that country – even with all its checkered history toward the sons and daughters of Israel. Perhaps this book will leave a blessing in the cities, towns and villages of that nation.

These translations were brought to fruition through the prayers and gifts of many. We hope to make translations of this book available in Russian and Hebrew as God grants favor and ability. If you would like to help make this project a reality, feel free to help though prayer and giving.

Blessings to you as the days get darker and the Light gets closer!

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

Shootout at the Orient Bazaar – Part Four of Four

Parts One and Two of our previous newsletters dealt with the Iranian cruise missile/rocket attacks on Israel – context, background and battle details. Part Three presented the perspectives and goals of each nation involved in the mix. This newsletter, Part Four, focuses on the Jewish state’s strategic alliances with unreliable nations – in biblical days and in our own time.

Broken reeds

God decided to place His Jewish people in the middle of the Via Maris – the ‘Way of the Sea’ – the superhighway of the ancient world. Set like a jewel between the superpowers of Egypt and Assyria/Babylon, the Davidic kings found themselves pressured into making covenants – alliances – with empires which did not always have the Jewish people’s best interests at heart.

The Hebrew Scriptures show us YHVH’s take on this dynamic: when alliances are made between the Jewish people and any other nation – even if those nations are superpowers – without Israel hearing directly from God as to what action He wants them to take, the results for the sons and daughters of Jacob will be deception, shame, emptiness, physical damage and great shaking:

Now it came about when all the kings who were beyond the Jordan, in the hill country, the lowland, and on all the coast of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard about it, that they met together with one purpose, to fight with Joshua and with Israel (Joshua 9:1-2) . . . The inhabitants of Gibeon also heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, but they on their part acted craftily . . . And they went to Joshua at the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a far country; now then, make a covenant with us . . . So the men of Israel took some of their provisions, and did not ask for the counsel of the Lord. And Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live . . . Then Joshua called for them and spoke to them, saying, “Why have you deceived us?” (Joshua 9:3-4, 6, 14-15, 22)

“Now behold, you have relied on the support of this broken reed, on Egypt; on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. That is how Pharaoh king of Egypt is to all who rely on him” (2 Kings 18:21; also Isaiah 36:6)

“Woe to the rebellious children, declares YHVH, who execute a plan, but not Mine, and make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin – who proceed down to Egypt without consulting Me, to take refuge in the safety of Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore the safety of Pharaoh will be your shame” (Isaiah 30:1-3)

“Even Egypt, whose help is vain and empty” (Isaiah 30:7)

“Then all the inhabitants of Egypt will know that I am YHVH, because they have been only a staff made of reed to the House of Israel. When they took hold of you with the hand, you broke and tore all their hands. And when they leaned on you, you broke and made all their hips shake” (Ezekiel 29:6-7)

Broken promises

This biblical principle – that alliances or covenants between Israel and other nations (made without seeking God on the matter) will bring a curse – this dynamic applies to all nations. America plays a decisive role today as THE world superpower. Therefore, the historical examples presented here concern the US – Israel relationship.

In the 1956 Suez Crisis, Britain, France and Israel fought as allies against Egypt, who had nationalized the Suez Canal. The military battle was amazingly successful for the allies. But both the USSR and the US had other strategic plans: the weakening and crushing of the allies’ rule in the Middle East, and their being replaced by Russian or American influence. The USSR and the US forced the three allies to stand down and withdraw. Russia threatened to use nuclear weapons against Israel, while the Eisenhower Administration threatened economic sanctions on Israel. The UN passed Resolution 997, calling for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal.

Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion conceded to withdraw, but requested several assurances from the US before Israel moved forward: that the Straits of Tiran wouldn’t be blockaded again; that Israeli ships would have access to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Israeli port at Eilat; that the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) in Sinai couldn’t be withdrawn just due to the sole demand of the Egyptians.

On February 11, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower offered Israel a State Department text known as an ‘aide-memoire’, stating that “no nation has the right forcibly to prevent free and innocent passage in the Gulf [of Suez] and through the Straits [of Tiran, leading to Eilat] giving access thereto. The United States is prepared to exercise the right of free and innocent passage and to join with others to secure general recognition of this right.”

This memorandum explicitly states that blocking the Straits is unacceptable, and implies that the US would be willing to use military means to back up its words – and would treat the closure of the Straits as an act of war. In a letter to Ben-Gurion following the aide-memoire, Eisenhower wrote that Israel “will have no cause to regret” its decision to withdraw. Ben-Gurion conveyed to Eisenhower that he “saw freedom of navigation in the Straits and Gulf of Aqaba as more or less assured.”

However, in May 1967, Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran (the Gulf of Aqaba) to Israeli shipping, thereby cutting off Israel’s only supply route with Asia and stopping the flow of oil from its main supplier, Iran. President Nasser also forced the UN Emergency Force to withdraw from the region, and massed his troops for an Egypt-Syria-Jordan military offensive.

On May 17, 1967, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Avraham Harman, received an assurance from United States Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow that the Jewish state “did not stand alone” . . . However, in language very similar to that of April 13-14, 2024, Rostow asked that Israel consult with Washington before taking any military steps . . . Rostow added that a preemptive strike by Israel at this stage would be “a very serious mistake.”

That was then and now it is today

When on May 23, 1967, Ambassador Eban pointed out to France’s President Charles De Gaulle that the closing of the Straits of Tiran constituted a casus belli (a legal cause for declaring war), De Gaulle rejected the notion. Eban pointed out to De Gaulle that in 1956 France had promised that it would recognize Israel’s right to fight if Egypt imposed a blockade, De Gaulle responded nonchalantly that “1967 is not 1957.” The high principle of freedom of navigation in the Gulf of Aqaba that the French advocated in 1957 evaporated in 1967. Three days later, the United States also reneged on its 1957 commitments.

On May 26, 1967, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban presented proof of Egypt’s violations to President Lyndon B. Johnson. At stake, Eban stated, was not only the possibility of war between Egypt and Israel, but also the credibility of American commitments. LBJ responded, claiming that the memorandum in question had not been ratified by the US Senate, and that there was no present congressional support for military intervention. Johnson already had his hands full at home and abroad. America was bogged down in Vietnam with casualties mounting and an anti-war movement growing. Simmering racial tensions had exploded into violent riots across the US. LBJ’s approval ratings were at 40% and sinking. The last thing Johnson needed was a Middle East war. He wryly commented “I’m a tall Texan, but without Congress, I’m a short President . . . It ain’t worth a solitary dime.” This unreliability of US government guarantees to Israel was the catalyst which jump-started the 1967 Six Day War.

Eban recalls that he “was staggered by his Oval Office meeting, which he thought underscored LBJ’s impotence, paralysis, and defeatism.”

According to a Memorandum to the President, June 5 (Johnson Library, Appointment File, June 1967, Middle East Crisis): “At the Department of State press briefing at noon on June 5, 1967, a reporter asked Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey if he would reaffirm that the U.S. position was neutral. McCloskey replied: ‘Indeed, I would: I would be more than happy to. We have tried to steer an even-handed course through this. Our position is neutral in thought, word, and deed.’”

In a stormy meeting at IDF headquarters on Friday, June 2, 1967, IDF Intelligence Chief Aharon Yariv stated: “The United States does not intend to act seriously to open the naval blockade by force nor does it intend to take far-reaching steps to solve the conflict between Israel and Egypt.” IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin then spoke, stating that “no one other than we ourselves can relieve us of the military and diplomatic stranglehold that is tightening around us.”

This history drives home the point that fateful decisions regarding Israel’s defense and survival cannot be given into another nation’s hands.

In a private conversation at the UN, America’s UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg approached his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Rafael, reminding him that “you stand alone and have to know the consequences,” but then adding a personal note: “I understand that if you have to act alone, you will know how to act.”

Broken covenant

As Dr. Alan Dowty of Notre Dame University points out: “The effectiveness of a guarantee depends upon the willingness of the guarantor to react to a threat, and upon his ability to react with sufficient force. Fear of disrupting US relations with Arab states was a factor in the 1967 US decision not to force open the Red Sea Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. The effectiveness of a commitment depends on the underlying interests and capabilities of the guarantor (not the guaranteed!). Guarantees are not unambiguous blessings.”

On December 5, 1994, Britain, the US and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russia was now prohibited from using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, except in self-defense. Ukraine was required to give up its nuclear arsenal, the 3rd largest in the world. Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea and Donbas in eastern Ukraine and its 2022 further invasions and massive destruction of Ukraine, attest to the mirage-like significance of US and British guarantees – which also were not ratified by the US Senate.

In 1954, President Eisenhower signed a Mutual Defense Treaty. But in 1979, President Carter unilaterally annulled that treaty with the support of Congress, acknowledging the ‘one China position’ and declaring that “Taiwan is part of China.” The US Supreme Court refrained from action, declaring the matter “non-justiciable.” The defense treaty with Taiwan would be substituted with the 1979 non-diplomatic and militarily non-committal congressional Taiwan Relations Act.

US defense pacts are not iron clad.

Desert storms and alliances

Moshe Arens, former Israeli Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs, penned his excellent autobiography about his time in government during the First Gulf War (also known as Operation Desert Shield or Desert Storm). An aeronautical engineer, researcher (graduate of MIT) and diplomat, Arens carefully documented the blow-by-blow details of the US-Israel alliance during that time. His book is titled ‘Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis between the U.S. and Israel.’

His inner-sanctum explanations are shocking. The book’s focus deals with one aspect of US Gulf War policy: Israel was ordered not to retaliate against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s SCUD missile attacks on Israeli citizens, but needed to rely ‘with perfect faith’ on the US for an appropriate response. Again, there are present parallels (e.g., April 13-15, 2024) to these ‘orders’ as shown in our last newsletter. Here are seven examples of perfidious actions from Arens’ book which show how Israel was pressured to fall in line with American commands and to ‘sign on the dotted line:’

On January 10, 1991 (p. 171), then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney promised Israel that the full destruction of Western Iraqi SCUDS was a US military priority. Yet in the six weeks of war, not even one mobile SCUD launcher was taken out.

On January 11, 1991 (p. 139) Cheney strongly emphasized the importance of Israel staying out of the conflict, and not to retaliate against Iraq even if Israel’s civilians or military were to be hit. Then-Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Mohammed Bassiouni (later exposed to be an Egyptian spy) conveyed a message (p. 131) from President Mubarak that Israel had nothing to fear from Saddam Hussein.

On January 13, 1991 (p. 174) then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger insisted that Israel not retaliate for the coming SCUD attacks, stating that he was completely confident of the American ability to totally eliminate any missile threat.

On January 18, 1991 (p.178) at 2 am, SCUD rockets began to fall on Tel Aviv. Secretary of State James Baker III immediately telephoned the-Minister of Defense Moshe Arens, expressed outrage over Iraqi attack, and pointedly emphasized that President Bush hoped that Israel would restrain itself “so as not to endanger the coalition.”

On January 19, 1991 (p. 184) President Bush called PM Shamir and demanded that Israel not carry out any retaliatory plans against Iraqi SCUD launchers.

On January 20, 1991 (p. 187) then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger stressed that Israel needed to refrain from attacking Iraqi SCUD launchers if it wanted to maintain a correct relationship with the US: “There’s great appreciation for the restraint you have shown. You have a lot of money in the bank in Washington. Don’t waste it!”

On September 12, 1992 (p. 247) President Bush called a press conference to counter a pro-Israel AIPAC meeting at Capitol Hill. He stated at that press conference that “just months ago, American men and women in uniform risked their lives to defend Israelis in the face of Iraqi SCUD missiles,” though the truth is that no SCUD launchers were attacked or taken out during the entire six weeks of the war. Just after that press conference, certain officials in Washington, speaking privately, “described the presidential attack as a ‘bombshell’ and a ‘declaration of war.’”

The unappetizing reality portrayed in these interactions reveals that Israel’s allies are sometimes determined to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Menachem Begin once said: “There is no guarantee that can guarantee a guarantee.”

Dylan’s Neighborhood Bully – not supposed to fight back

In one of Bob Dylan’s most scorching songs, ‘Neighborhood Bully,’ he describes the exact treatment that Israel faces on a daily basis:

The neighborhood bully – he just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
Not supposed to fight back, to have thick skin
Supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in

When the Jewish state is attacked by jihadi monsters – whether Muslim Brotherhood terrorists like Hamas, or Shi’ite terrorists like Hezbollah, Iraqi Hezbollah, pro-Iranian Syrians, Iran or the Houthis – Israelis are lectured and threatened by the world: “Do not retaliate!” When we pursue our enemies, we are brought before world bodies to be condemned and threatened, embargoed and made to stand trial. Within less than one week of the savage atrocities of Hamas on October 7, 2023 (exceedingly violent, murders, rapes, tortures and kidnappings), much of the world’s sentiment turned against us. Some began to deny or belittle the savagery of the attacks, or even that they had ever occurred. Others quickly began to accuse the Jewish people of war crimes and genocide – while giving Hamas a clean bill of health, This past week across the globe, student demonstrators are calling for genocide against the Jews, while accusing Israel of committing genocide!

So a question needs to be asked to those nations and demonstrators who tell us not to retaliate:

Do you tell us not to retaliate because you are pacifists by nature, and see the Sermon of the Mount as the guideline of your lives?
Do you tell us not to retaliate because you are afraid that WWIII will be triggered, and you are trying to avoid that scenario?
Do you tell us not to retaliate because you truly care for the welfare of the Jewish people, and you have their best interests at heart?

The God of Jacob is looking for people from all across the planet who have Ruth’s heart for the Jewish people, who are willing to swear a covenant of love and loyalty to them as the first-born nation of YHVH.

Then she said, “Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said, “Do not plead with me to leave you or to turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you sleep, I will sleep. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me, and worse, if anything but death separates me from you.” When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her about it.

How should we then pray?

Pray for revelation to be given to the human race about how seriously God views covenant – to Him and to His Jewish people

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 129 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, at least 35 of these hostages (conservatively speaking) are the corpses of Israeli citizens, held in cold storage by Hamas as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Shootout at the Orient Bazaar – Part Three of Four

Parts One and Two of our last two newsletters deal with the Iranian cruise missile/rocket attacks on Israel – context, background and battle details.. This newsletter (Part Three) presents the perspectives and goals of each nation involved in the mix. Part Four will deal with a wake-up call to Israel, with a focus on the Jewish state’s strategic alliances with unreliable nations – in biblical days and in our own time.

Iran’s perspective

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Chief Commander Hossein Salami recently stated that Iran now feels free to directly strike at Israel from the territory of Iran itself, in response to whatever Iran considers an Israeli attack on Iranian interests: “We have decided to create a new equation [with Israel] . . . From now on, any assault by [Israel] on our people, property, or interests will be met with a counterattack originating from within the Islamic Republic of Iran . . . Operation ‘True Promise’ [the April 13-14 missile/rocket/drone attack] is a distinguished and clear example of this new equation.”

Senior Iranian political and military officials (Senior Advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Akbar Velayati, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major-General Mohammad Bagheri, and IRGC Commander Major-General Hossein Salami) declare that, from their perspective, the October 7 Hamas jihadi attack on Israeli citizens demonstrates Israel’s military weakness.

Michael Keays, Senior US Foreign Service Officer, US Department of State, notes that “perceptions of US and Israeli weakness played a role” in Hamas’ attacks on Israel. “The relationship between the Biden Administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been strained” and “various voting districts in the US are now increasingly critical of Israel . . . Iran also stands to benefit from sabotaging the growing rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that was being built on the success of the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and three Arab states: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco.” Iran’s long-term strategic plans involve the establishment of a ‘Shi’ite Crescent’ – an Islamist dictatorship/caliphate which would crush Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as well as destroy Israel.

Hamas’ perspective

Hamas’s perspective regarding Israel is clearly spelled out in its covenant, which calls for the total destruction of the Jewish state without compromise; no recognition of Israel; and the eschatological murder of the entire Jewish nation. “The very identity of Hamas is enshrined in opposition and violent hostility to Israel,” says a senior official in the American Foreign Service.

Sheikh Hassan Yousef, co-founder of Hamas (and father of ‘The Green Prince’), was interviewed while in Israeli prisons. He explained to intelligence reporters Avi Issacharoff [of ‘Fauda’ fame] and Amos Harel that one of Hamas’s goals in its pursuit of the Jewish state’s ultimate destruction is to foment and enhance internecine Israeli strife. Yousef told these reporters that Hamas exploits visible Israeli weaknesses: the calls of the Israeli Left for a complete withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip; the movements encouraging IDF soldiers and reservists to refuse to serve in those territories or to do reserve duty altogether; the well-oiled anti-government protest movement – commandeered by formerly prominent figures – promoting the demonization of the powers-that-be in Jerusalem.

Hamas and its Iranian patron are paying close attention to what they perceive as Israel’s imminent implosion. Together they are exerting much effort to catalyze deep divisions in the Jewish state. Jerusalem Post writer Ruthie Blum concludes that those who rabidly vilify Prime Minister “Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee MK Simcha Rothman [are contributing] to the sense on the part of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic that Israel won’t make it much past its upcoming 75th birthday.”

Matti Steinberg, former adviser to several heads of Shin Bet (Israeli FBI), points out that “someone like [Hamas Gaza Chief Yahya] Sinwar understands the Israelis very well. The leaders of Hamas have basically understood the divisions in the country, and therefore its weaknesses, perfectly well.”

In the months leading up to the Hamas massacres of October 7, the Commander of the Israel Air Force, General Tomer Bar, told his forces in July, 2023 to stay “vigilant and prepared . . . It is possible that at a time like this, [Hamas] will try to test the frontiers, our cohesion and our alertness.”

US State Department Spokesperson, Matthew Miller said on April 22, 2024, that Hamas only wants a hostage agreement which will involve a total Israeli surrender, leaving Hamas free to rebuild and attack Israel again: “Hamas has signaled that they don’t want an agreement. And the ball is very much in their court, and if they really had the interests of the Palestinian people at heart, as they claim that they do, then they would accept this agreement.” Their strategy mirrors that of the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu, in his 500’s BC ‘The Art of War’: “Instill fear into the heart of your enemy and they’ll hand victory over to you.”

Saudi Arabia’s perspective

A member of the Saudi royal family who is also an official government spokesman, has given an anonymous interview to the Israeli KAN network, blaming Iran for being behind the war in Gaza, and specifically the October 7th attack – all this in order to hobble normalization agreements between Israel and Saudi Arabia: “Iran is a country that sponsors terrorism, and it should have been stopped a long time ago.”

Russia’s perspective

Russia’s long-term goals have focused on establishing naval bases in the Mediterranean. Tim Marshall in his Prisoners of Geography explains: “From the Grand Principality of Muscovy through Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin, every Russian leader has been confronted by the same problem: ports still freeze and the North European Plain is flat …This lack of a warm-water port with direct access to the oceans has always been Russia’s Achilles heel, as strategically important to it as the North European Plain. Russia is at a geographical disadvantage, saved from being a much weaker power only because of its oil and gas. No wonder, in his will of 1725, Peter the Great advised his descendants to ‘approach as near as possible to Constantinople and India. Whoever governs there will be the true sovereign of the world. Consequently, excite continual wars, not only in Turkey, but in Persia … Penetrate as far as the Persian [Arabian] Gulf, advance as far as India.’” Russia has three main ports open to world trade: St. Petersburg (often ice-bound); Vladivostok (ice-locked for several months each year, and accessing only the Pacific); Sevastopol in Crimea on the Black Sea, under Ukrainian rule until recently).

According to KGB documents in the Mitrokhin archives (smuggled out of Russia and now stored in Cambridge, England), the KGB and Politburo heads saw the Zionist and Jewish movements as a clear and present danger to world peace and to the integrity of the Soviet empire – “a danger which is only second to the main enemy, the United States.” “Moscow Center was obsessed with the ‘Zionist subversion’ against the Soviet Union,” notes Professor Christopher Andrew, historian of the British intelligence community. In the Summer of 1982, Vladimir Kryuchkov (later appointed head of the KGB) issued a “work plan for fighting Zionism” stressed that “Zionism is the main threat to the USSR and to the Soviet bloc.”

This is the strategic background and context behind Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzia’s comments to the Security Council on April 14, 2024. Defending Iran’s missile and rocket attack on Israel, Nebenzia darkly hinted that “what happened on the night of April 14 did not happen in a vacuum.”

International Atomic Energy Agency’s perspective

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, when asked about the possibility of an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, answered: “We are always concerned about this possibility.” He urged that Israel exercise “extreme restraint.”

US perspective

US officials were “frustrated” by Israel’s decision not to inform them about the purported Israeli April 1, 2024 Damascus strike which took out Iran’s terror mastermind Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi. US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said on Sunday, April 7, 2024 on ABC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that there has been a “growing degree of frustration that we’ve had with the way these operations are being [executed].” The Biden administration asked Israel to update and consult with the United States before any Israeli response to a potential Iranian attack, senior American and Israeli officials said, according to the Wall Street Journal – in part to protect US forces in the region.

The US continues to re-iterate its 75-year-old State Department strategy at every available opportunity – the dividing of the Jewish Promised Land into a ‘two state solution’ – a Palestinian state run by jihadis and ‘ex-terrorists’, and a Jewish state run by Israel. This ‘two state solution’ strategy makes its way into nearly every administration statement and declaration – regardless of the open and unchanging Palestinian link to terrorist leadership and strategies.

The US is the primary super-power in the Middle East, and it is playing a Machiavellian game, bolstering Shi’ite Iran while counterbalancing with funneling support to Sunni Saudi Arabia (Iran’s arch enemy). America supports Israel with state-of-the-art munitions while placing its main Middle Eastern airbase and CENTCOM connections in Qatar – the main world supporter of jihadi terrorism, including Hamas. America channels billions (in POTUS Obama’s terms of office as well as in POTUS Biden’s) to Iran, which the IRCG then uses to attack Israel though arming Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi terror regime. Superpower diplomacy makes for strange bedfellows. “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be this way!” (James 3:10).

The international community speaks with one voice – Israel must not retaliate or escalate

The world’s immediate response to the Iranian drone/cruise/ballistic missile attack on Israel – the largest such attack in world history – was to warn Israel and threaten the Jewish state that it must not retaliate or attack Iran.

On April 7, 2024, UK Foreign Minister David Cameron wrote in The Sunday Times. “Our backing is not unconditional.” Then on April 15, 2024, Cameron told LBC Radio, that “We’re asking [Israel] as their friends to think . . . – the best way to deescalate the situation is not to attack back.”

On April 15, 2024, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, “All sides must show restraint.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris will try to “convince Israel that we must not respond by escalating.” “We are all worried about a possible escalation,” Macron told BFM TV and RMC radio. “We will do all we can to avoid things flaring up, escalating.”

On April 15, 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared in Brussels: “For us, it is important that this moment is now also used for further de-escalation and that Israel ... does not respond with a massive attack of its own.”

On April 17, 2024 Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said: “The risks are enormous . . . The situation is too dangerous. The chances of regional explosion are real, and that has got to stop. We’ve got to make sure there’s no further escalation”

On April 15, 2024. Russia’s Kremlin Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We are extremely concerned about the escalation of tension in the region. We call on all countries in the region to exercise restraint. Further escalation is in no one's interests. Therefore, of course, we are in favor of seeing all disagreements settled only politically and diplomatically.”

On April 14, 2024, The People’s Republic of China Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “China expresses deep concern over the current escalation and calls on relevant parties to exercise calm and restraint to prevent further escalations.”

On April 14, 2024, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said: “We are seriously concerned at the escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran which threatens the peace and security in the region. We call for immediate de-escalation, exercise of restraint, stepping back from violence and return to the path of diplomacy.”

On April 14, 2024, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded the UN Security Council that acts of reprisal involving the use of force are barred under international law: “The Middle East is on the brink. The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict. Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate. Now is the time for maximum restraint.” (See Bob Dylan’s son-in-law Peter Himmelman’s YouTube video ‘Maximum Restraint’).

On April 14, 2024, US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told NBC’s Meet the Press “We don’t want to see this escalate. We’re not looking for a wider war with Iran.”

On April 14, 2024, an unnamed White House official conveyed to news platform AXIOS that POTUS Biden spoke with PM Netanyahu, stating that that Israel should see Iran’s failure to cause major damage to Israel as a “win,” and that U.S. won’t join an Israeli attack on Iran. “You got a win. Take the win,” Biden told Netanyahu, according to the official. The official said that when Biden told Netanyahu that the U.S. will not participate in any offensive operations against Iran and will not support such operations, Netanyahu said he understood. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke on Saturday with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant and asked that Israel notify the U.S. ahead of any response against Iran, a senior Israeli official said.”

On April 18, 2024, the Qatari newspaper The New Arab reported that a senior Egyptian official revealed that “Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu managed to obtain American approval for a military operation in Rafah, in exchange for [Israel] refraining from carrying out a wide military operation against Iran in response to its recent attack.”

In an April 14, 2024 article appearing in the Jewish News Syndicate, three Middle East specialists comment:

“By leaking Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu in this way, the leaker has increased both the likelihood and importance of an Israeli response – given the dynamics that led Tehran to calculate it could launch this attack without consequence in the first place,” wrote Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Can you imagine 100 ballistic missiles being fired on the United States and your closest ally calling to say, no need to retaliate, you should feel really secure right now?” he added. “Now imagine our country was the size of New Jersey. And we were fighting a seven-front war of survival.”

NGO Monitor founder Gerald Steinberg adds: “No, Joe Biden. The Iranian regime’s failure to do major damage with 350 missiles is not a ‘win’ – 9 million Israelis spent the night being terrorized. The regime must pay a major price so that this will not be repeated. And better – showing them the door.”

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, wrote that Biden’s response, “spinning an unprecedented attack by Iran on Israel,” is “akin to telling the victim of a bully – he didn’t make impact, so deescalate. With this message that the US won’t support an Israeli counterattack on Iran, Biden is signaling that his ‘don’t’ to Tehran didn’t mean anything,”

Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett succinctly addressed this issue on his tweet of April 14, 2024:

“This wasn’t designed merely as ‘bells and whistles’ with no damage. When you shoot 350 flying objects timed to hit Israel at the same moment, when you use three fundamentally different weapon types – cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and UAVs, you’re looking to penetrate Israel’s defenses and kill Israelis. The US administration is telling us: ‘This is a victory; you’ve already won by thwarting the missiles. No need for any further action!’ No, it’s NOT a victory. Yes, it’s a remarkable success of Israel’s air defense systems, but it’s not a victory. When a bully tries to hit you 350 times and only succeeds seven times, you’ve NOT won. You don’t win wars just by intercepting your enemy’s hits, nor do you deter it. Your enemy will just try harder with more and better weapons and methods next time. How DO you deter? By exacting a deeply painful price.”

As pointed out in our recent newsletter, Iran’s rocket/drone attack on Israel on the night of April 13-14, 2024 was coordinated with the following American authorities: US State Department, US Intelligence, US Joint Chiefs and the POTUS. Immediately after that attack – the largest of its kind in world history – the US POTUS and State Department demand from Israel that the Jewish state not respond, while the US Secretary of Defense demands that Israel run any even potential Israeli responses by the US for approval or tweaking. Iran has succeeded in moving the Middle Eastern goalposts in a significant way.

The Middle East is a very dangerous jungle. Whoever is attacked and does not respond, is written off as a collapsing power. The necessity for fearful deterrence is a matter of survival in this part of the world. The majority of the nations on this planet either do not understand this Middle Eastern dynamic or do not care.

One final analytical comment from Lawrence Kadish at the Gatestone Institute on April 17, 2024:

“We need to appreciate that Iran and its puppets appear to view the White House as apparently dedicated – like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace for our time’ in 1938 – to a policy of diplomatic ‘conflict resolution’ appeasement, which undoubtedly will not work any better now than it did then. ‘Talking’ and ‘meetings’ just enable the adversary to buy time to strengthen its military – in this instance, that means Iran finalizing its nuclear weapons. America’s adversaries – such as Communist China, Russia and Iran and North Korea – seem to believe that Western democracies are in a historic retreat and that the time is ripe for their own ascendancy through violence, intimidation, and with third party proxies to do their bidding. History reminds us time and again that the only effective defense against the forces of darkness is strong, determined leadership – along with a strong modernized military – like US President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, ‘Star Wars.’ It not only deterred Russian aggression but brought down the Soviet Empire.”

World perspective - WWIII

WWII exploded onto the European battlefields as a result of certain pivotal decisions. These include: the permission which the Allies granted to Germany to re-arm as long as they attacked Russia; the Anschluss and annexation of Austria on March 12-13, 1938; the Munich Pact of September 30, 1938 handing over Sudetenland (parts of Czechoslovakia) to Hitler; the seizure of Bohemia and Moravia on March 15,1939. Despite breaking the Munich Pact almost immediately, Hitler did not face a military response from the Allies.

The parallels to that Hitlerian epoch – as well as the horrendous rise of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli attacks on US campuses over the past two weeks – underscore that we are living in earth-shaking days.

Today the world is facing the onset of three major theaters of Word War: Russia, Iran and China. The following articles are instructive and illuminating:

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/china-russia-and-iran-are-reviving-the-age-of-empires/

https://globaltaiwan.org/2023/12/the-axis-of-disorder-how-russia-iran-and-china-want-to-remake-the-world/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/appeasements-ghosts/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870285 – ‘The Ghost of Munich: America's Appeasement Complex’

How should we then pray?

Pray for the Holy One of Israel to foil the nations’ Machiavellian strategies and for joint-plots for Middle East mischief and murder to be exposed and neutralized

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 129 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, at least 35 of these hostages (conservatively speaking) are the corpses of Israeli citizens, held in cold storage by Hamas as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Shootout at the Orient Bazaar – Part Two of Four

At approximately 05:00 hours on Friday April 19, 2024, IAF drones attacked a radar base in Isfahan, Iran (75 miles/120 km south of Nantaz, Iran’s main nuclear site; and 274 miles/442 km. south of Tehran). This is a developing story, and it may end up being covered in a possible fourth newsletter.

Our first of three newsletters dealt with Iranian background, strategic planning militarily and diplomatically, and unsettling historical parallels going back to 2020. Part Two delves into battle details – the blow-by-blow description of the Iranian attack, as well as the amazing counter-offensive by Israel and her allies against the massive barrage of Iranian drones, ballistic rockets and cruise missiles – with a 99% successful destruction rate. Part Three will present what American and Israeli strategic perspectives are about the situation, and what their realpolitik goals are for the future. Part Four (projected) will deal with issues surrounding Israel’s current military response on Iranian/Syrian military/strategic sites.

“I love it when a plan comes together” – Hannibal Smith, ‘The A-Team’

Part One of this three-part newsletter reveals from open-source material that Iran’s attack of April 13-14, 2024 on Israel had been discussed, pre-planned and finessed with America’s State Department, intelligence and military leaders prior to the first shots being fired. This joint planning and execution involving both countries’ top leadership had a precedent – the Iran-US coordinated ballistic missile attack on American troops stationed at Ayn al-Asad Airbase in Iraq on January 8, 2020.

Between April 4-11, 2024, the US top leadership was drawing up plans in consultation with Iran, contacting allies (though Israel seems to have relegated to the bottom of the list) and pre-positioning intelligence and military assets in preparation. Israel was made aware of the coming strike approximately three days before April 13. CENTCOM Commander General Michael E. Kurilla touched down in Israel on April 11 to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. The subject of their meetings: “rising regional challenges as a result of Iranian aggression via proxies.”

According to American sources, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates shared intelligence with the United States (and through the USA, to Israel) that helped facilitate the successful interception of many Iranian missiles and drones. Jordan also informed the United States that Jordan would assist in intercepting Iranian airborne armaments.

Post-Sabbath onslaught

Just before the start of the Iranian attack, extensive disruptions in GPS systems kicked in throughout Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

On Saturday evening, April 13, 2024, at approximately 23:30 Israel Daylight Time (IDT), IAF (Israel Air Force) F-15 and F-16 fighter jets took to the skies in pre-planned formations, awaiting whatever Iran would send into their killing zone. At this time also, Iran and Yemen launched their attack on Israel, named Operation True Promise (Persian: وعده صادق: va’de-ye sādeq), with the code name Ya Rasul Allah (یارسول‌الله(ص)).

At 00:30 IDT, Israel’s airspace was closed to international and domestic flights. Ramon Airport also was closed to traffic. A short time before that, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon announced the temporary closure of their airspace. Later on, Jordan publicly denied that it has closed its airspace.

At 01:32 IDT, two Iraqi security sources said that dozens of drones had been spotted flying from Iran toward Israel over Iraqi airspace.

Between 01:42 and 02:00 IDT, the following attacks took place:

Iran fired between 110-130 ballistic missiles at Israel. These included the Shahab-3 and the Emad models.

Iran fired 185 military attack drones in three waves: a combination of the drone models Shahed 136 and Shahed 238 jet drone.

Yemen fired approximately 36 cruise missiles at Israel (the models Paveh-351 and Soumar).

Within a few seconds of the firings, air-raid sirens were sounded throughout the country of Israel, including in the Beer Sheva and Negev regions, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, etc. At the same time, Hezbollah launched from Lebanon about 25 rockets aimed at bases in the Golan Heights.

The following map shows the approximate flight patterns of Iranian and Yemeni attack aircraft:

War in the heavenlies

The IDF states that 25 of the 30 to 36 cruise missiles fired by Yemen were shot down by Israeli jets outside the borders of Israel, and that all the rest of the cruise missiles (5-11 in number) were similarly intercepted, but by other air forces.

According to the Wall Street Journal, roughly 50% of the 110-130 Iranian ballistic missiles either failed to launch or crashed before reaching their target. But what happened to the 50% that were able to make their way toward Israel (55 to 65 in number)?

The IDF launched interceptors at the ballistic missiles which were approaching Israel by way of the Syrian Golan Heights, attempting to shoot them out of the skies. Syria’s army attempted to block these IAF interceptors, in a vain effort to help the Iranian drones and missiles to reach their targets in Israel.

What exactly were these ballistic missiles targeting? Based partially on Iranian information shared with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and the US during the previous week, the target estimates were as follows: a military base on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights; the Nevatim and the Ramon Airbases (both in the Negev); and quite possibly the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center (KAMAG) near Dimona.

Operating in the Yemeni theater, USAF forces wiped out a ballistic missile on its launcher vehicle and seven drones on the ground before the Houthis were able to be fire them.

A source close to the Iraqi government told The National that dozens of the weapons (ballistic missiles and drones) were intercepted by USAF in the skies above Baghdad, in Najaf (160 km south of Baghdad), in Western Iraq and in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Northern Iraq. Wreckage of a drone was later found in an open area in the Najaf Governate.

US anti-missile systems at USAF Ayn al-Asad Airbase (shades of January 2020!) in Iraq’s western Anbar province played a key role. At least one Iranian ballistic missile was shot down by a Patriot battery in the Kurdish northern region, landing in the Soran district outside of the regional capital Erbil, 400 kilometers away.

CENTCOM (US Central Command) said on Monday April 15, 2024, that its aircraft “successfully engaged and destroyed” more than 80 attack drones and at least six ballistic missiles. The operation was supported by US European Command destroyers, which deployed the AEGIS missile defense system to shoot down at least three Iranian ballistic missiles.

Shooting down the Prince of Persia

A stratified multi-air defense system combination of Israeli, American, Jordanian, British and French jet fighters (equipped with cannons, air-to-air rockets like the Sidewinder, the Python 3/4/5, etc.) were able to destroy most of the Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, As well, the IAF Arrow 2 and David’s Sling anti-missile system were in use, contributing their ‘Star Wars’ technology to the battle.

US warplanes and British RAF Typhoon jets shot down drones over the Iraq-Syria border, as UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has confirmed. Jordan also intercepted dozens of drones in its airspace, on the east side of the Jordan Valley and near the Jordanian-Syrian border. Jordanian jets downed dozens of Iranian drones flying across northern and central Jordan heading to Israel. Jordan allowed the U.S. to use its airspace to shoot down incoming Iranian threats. An Israeli military official said late on Monday April 15, that Jordan also allowed IDF jets to intercept Iranian missiles and drones over its territory, during Sunday’s attack on Israel.

Saudi Arabia assisted Israel and the United States during the Iranian attack on Israel, by providing, along with the UAE, “intelligence that contributed to an overwhelmingly successful defensive response.” That report added that the Saudis stopped short of allowing the U.S. to operate from Saudi airspace.

All of the drones fired at Israel as well as all of the cruise missiles were intercepted outside Israel’s borders, as well the approximately 40 out of 60 remaining Iranian ballistic missiles.

Following the attack, Jordan and Egypt declared a state of emergency. Security sources in Jordan declared that “Jordan is ready to intercept any Iranian drone that penetrates its airspace.”

Slipping through the cracks

IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in his Operational Update of April 14, 2024 that “99% of the threats launched towards Israeli territory were intercepted – a very significant strategic achievement.” When a more comprehensive analysis will be completed, making use of all relevant technical and video information, those numbers may shrink a bit – but they are still an impressive benchmark.

One matter that has not been spotlighted, however, concerns the unsettling fact that approximately 20 Iranian missiles were not stopped by jet fighters or by anti-missile platforms. These 20 ballistic missiles hit the ground in Israel. Approximately 50% of the 130 ballistic missiles were aimed by Iran specifically at IAF bases – that would be approximately 65 out of the total of 130. After 50% of these 130 did not launch or exploded before reaching their targets, that left approximately 65 ballistic missiles (out of the original 130) tearing through the atmosphere towards Israel. So nearly one-third of the Iranian ballistic missiles which made it through the allies’ ‘obstacle course’ – these missiles landed on the soil of the Jewish state.

Here is a partial listing of five of these impact sites:

Eight ballistic missile impacts were recorded on cell phone video, hitting the Nevatim Airbase between Arad and Beersheva

Five ballistic missiles hit the Ramon Airbase (Iran says 7) south of Beersheva

One ballistic missile hit at Julis base in the northern Negev.

One ballistic missile hit a road leading up to a military base on Mount Hermon, Golan area.

One ballistic missile landed in the Dead Sea

At the Nevatim Airbase, the missiles caused slight damage. A small crater was created beside a small building where one missile landed; an empty airplane hangar was slightly damaged; and possibly a Hercules C-130 transport plane sustained minor damage.

“Prepare plans by consultation, and make war by wise guidance” (Proverbs 20:18)

There is a military term known as BDA – Battle Damage Assessment. This is the attempt to figure out what damage has happened to one’s military forces as a result of recent clashes. For Israel to do proper BDA, some questions should be asked:

Though Israel is considered to be top-of-the-line in technology and weapons development, it is clear that the combined powers of Israel, US, UK, France, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were not enough to present hermetic protection from Iran’s ballistic missiles. This could have cataclysmic repercussions were Iran to get hold of a nuclear weapon – whether a home-made one, or one to be found at spot prices on the open market – perhaps from North Korea or Pakistan. How can Israel be pro-active here?

Present anti-missile systems throughout the world are still considered highly ineffective when dealing with hypersonic ballistic missiles – that is, those missiles which can reach a speed of at least Mach 5 (or five times the speed of sound). Many hypersonic ballistic missiles even go faster than that, reaching Mach 10 or even Mach 20 – that is, moving at a speed of over one kilometer per second. Yet most of these systems base their mathematics and physics on arcing vertical trajectories (where the missile drops out of the skies). Modern cutting-edge cruise and hypersonic ballistic missile ‘Star Wars’ technologies must deal not only with trajectories involving ascent and descent, but also with movement on a horizontal dimension. This is too great a challenge for most of the modern cutting-edge systems. Israel’s world-renowned ‘Iron Dome’ platform was built to take out rockets that have a regular trajectory; they cannot take out hypersonic cruise missiles or Russian KORNETs (man-portable anti-tank guided missiles), both of which can travel horizontally. Amos Yadlin, a former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate notes that “Arrow 3 and Arrow 4 are suitable for intercepting hypersonic missiles only up to a certain speed. If Iran has operational missiles beyond this speed, which is doubtful, Israel will be required to respond in a different way — pre-emptive strikes mainly.” What can Israel do to successfully develop such a counter-weapon – one which not only looks good on paper?

Since the Iranian attack was agreed upon and the processed at the highest levels in the US State Department, the POTUS and the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it would not be surprising to find some trickery in the immediate vicinity. In a Hebrew interview between IDF Military historian Dr. Uri Milstein and physicist and defense industry rocket and missile specialist Dr. Moti Shefer, Shefer points out that Israel is totally unprepared for an all-out hypersonic ballistic and cruise missile attack from Iran. He noted that the physical evidence available to Israeli scientists from the 20 Iranian ballistic missiles which landed on Israeli soil without exploding, reveals that none of these ballistic missiles were touched or damaged by any Israeli or American counter-measures. Their fuselages were intact. As well, the amount of explosives in each warhead was not the average amount Iranians put in (between 450-500 kg.) but a paltry 20 kg. Nir Dvori, military correspondent for Israel TV Channel 2, in a live broadcast at the site of a missile landing, said that the Iranian ballistic missiles were like “empty shells” (due to the absence of fuselage damage and the miniscule nature of explosives in the warheads). His comments were quickly removed from subsequent rebroadcasts. Dr. Shefer states that this missile attack was actually an Iranian military exercise: to see if they could succeed in getting their missiles to enter Israeli military airspace, to hit a specific target, but not to cause many casualties or great damage. This is a clear warning to the powers-that-be in Israel: “We can do this again; we can certainly fire hypersonic missiles equipped with a full payload; you don’t have the present anti-missile capabilities to stop us.” What can Israel do to counter super-power machinations and get ourselves ready for the next round, for it is surely coming?

Dr. Yigal Carmon comments in his research, saying much the same thing:

“America coordinated the attack with Iran so that no one will be physically injured or killed. This was thanks to the highly skilled American, Israeli, British, and Jordanian air defenses. This coordination with Iran that guarantees no casualties, no injuries, was made over Israel’s head. Israel’s air force, like those of the U.S., UK, and Jordan, did a great job. They had full information about the missiles that were coming. Israel got the information from the Americans, who got the information about the what, where, and when of the air strikes from the Iranians, enabling an unfathomable 99 percent missile defense rate. The Israeli air force and air defense, together with the others, did their best, but Israel’s deterrence was lost . . . Indeed, no one was hurt, but Israel’s deterrence was struck down by the U.S.’s pre-coordination with Iran. Israel’s deterrence was sold out to save Iran’s deterrence. To retrieve it would be a painful process because, as the Iranians are threatening, the next attack will not be pre-coordinated. The worst for Israel would be to believe that the results of this night are all that Iran can achieve. They can do far more.”

“They make shrewd plans against Your people, and conspire together against Your treasured ones” (Psalm 83:3)

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow, a columnist for the Gatestone Institute, and a brilliant and insightful writer. Here is a précis of his conclusions on this matter in his April 16, 2024 article titled ‘This Was Not the Actual Iranian Attack:’

This was not the actual Iranian attack. This was the ‘attack’ prearranged for show between Iran and the Biden administration through backchannels. It’s an attack that allows Iran to show off that it can reach Israel . . . while not inflicting any real damage. Iran did burn up some resources doing this, but apart from the morale boost of doing it, it set out to test U.S. and Israeli defenses. And the defenses did what they were supposed to. However, had Iran actually been trying to launch a serious attack, it would have used its Hezbollah, Houthi, Iraqi and whatever is left of its Hamas proxies to saturate local air defenses.

Hamas’s October 7 attack, planned by an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general who was killed in an alleged Israeli strike in Damascus on April 1, carefully analyzed Israel’s border and air defenses, its infrastructure, and command and control, in search of weaknesses to exploit. And did so effectively. That is what a serious direct Iranian attack would have done. And this was not it. So what will Iran do next?

Iran is not currently ready for a regional war and prefers to use its proxies to do its dirty work until that day comes. October 7 was an example of that, as are the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and the Iraqi Shi’ite attacks on a U.S. base in Jordan that killed three servicemembers. But Iran will do things beyond this light show, which was largely meant to reassure the Biden administration that its ‘diplomatic tools’ have successfully solved the problem. That’s an illusion that Iran has used to allow it to build up its nuclear weapons program, to sow dragon’s teeth around the region and to cut off international shipping at will.

The Iranian regime knows that America could destroy it. It also learned under Obama that its greatest defense is convincing D.C. elites that diplomacy will successfully deescalate any conflicts with the regime. By starting a crisis and then allowing itself to be talked into standing down a little bit, before beginning the cycle again, Iran has been able to expand its sphere of influence without paying a price. It will strike more seriously, but it will do so in a way that will allow it to go on manipulating its diplomatic collaborators in D.C. and building power in the region.

Iran is known in the Middle East as a chess master, exercising deception, subterfuge and patience. This is how they are building their nuclear program, while twisting superpower leaders around their little pinky. The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran are even more cunning than Iraqi Saddam Hussein (known as ‘the Butcher of Baghdad’ – Arabic: al Jazaar al-Baghdadi – ألجزار ألبغدادي‎) ever was.

It is good to remember that the God of Jacob has the last word: “YHVH nullifies the plan of nations. He frustrates the plans of peoples” (Psalm 33:10).

How should we then pray?

Pray for Iran’s Machiavellian strategies and for joint-plots for Middle East mischief and murder to be exposed and neutralized

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 129 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, at least 35 of these hostages are corpses of Israeli citizens, held in cold storage by Hamas as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Shootout at the Orient Bazaar – Part One of Four

The Iranian bombardment of Israel on April 13-14, 2024 is only the second time in modern Israel’s brief history that the Jewish state was attacked by rocket fire from a non-adjacent country – Saddam Hussein’s SCUD barrages in January-February 1991 were the first of such attacks. This is a significant event with geopolitical ramifications. On Sunday April 14, 2024, Israel’s U.N. envoy, Gilad Erdan, told the Security Council regarding Iran’s assault on the Jewish state with over 300 rockets, missiles and drones: “This attack crossed every red line.”

We will be sending out three newsletters on this subject. Part One deals with Iranian background, strategic planning militarily and diplomatically, and unsettling historical parallels going back to 2020. Part Two will delve into battle details – the blow-by-blow description of the Iranian attack, as well as the amazing counter-offensive by Israel and her allies of the massive barrage of Iranian drones, ballistic rockets and cruise missiles – with a 99% successful destruction rate. Part Three will present what American and Israeli strategic perspectives are about the situation, and what their realpolitik goals are for the future.

Instant news in the age of sifting sands

“But as for you, Daniel, keep these words secret and seal up the book until the end of time; many will roam about, and knowledge will increase” (Daniel 12:4).

We live in the age of information explosion. Fiber-optic cables stream the entire body of available information at 70% of the speed of light from data centers in Iceland to the screen of your home computer, laptop or cellphone. The blow-by-blow recounting of battles, or dark superpower intrigues – these happenings (which years ago took months or decades to come to public knowledge) are now brought into your living room at the click of a mouse. The recent Iranian missile, rocket and drone attack on Israel (April 13-14, 2024) is an example of this digital dynamic.

In George Orwell’s magnum opus 1984, wars were constantly raging between the three superpowers Oceania. Eurasia and Eastasia. Shifts in geopolitical alliances meant that the news needed to be re-written, expressing new loyalties, ‘new facts,’ and new political positions. Previously published news items needed to be immediately edited – newspaper columns needed to be retyped, and new photos needed to be glued over old ones. Orwell’s dystopian science-fiction is present reality. A current example touches on this weekend’s military clash. There is a significant measure of behind-the-scenes intrigue which has to be unpacked – in order to grasp what has just happened and what is yet to come.

The assassination of the jihadi General

On April 1, 2024, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force commander in Syria and Lebanon Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi was killed near the Iranian Embassy in Damascus in what is assumed to be a targeted Israel Air Force assassination. Two other top jihadi generals and four IRGC officials (all terrorist masterminds) were also eliminated in the strike. The question begs to be answered: why was he targeted, and what was he doing in a building next to the Iranian Embassy?

The answer was provided by official Iranian authorities two days later, on April 3, 2024. The Iranian Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces (headed by Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as father-in-law to Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei) published a notice of mourning and appreciation for General Zahedi: “The strategic role of the martyr Zahedi . . . in the planning and execution of ‘al-Aqsa Flood’ [Tufan al-Aqsa, طوفان الأقصىed – the Arabic name for the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023] is part of the great pride that will transform the quiet efforts of the great commander into the eternal history of the struggle against the occupation by the Zionist regime.”

This statement was essentially an official admission of Iran’s involvement in both the planning and the execution of the October 7 Hamas jihadi terror attack on Israeli civilians bordering Gaza.

Assuming the likelihood of Israel’s responsibility in helping Zahedi to move on from his terror activities and to come face to face with his Maker, the motive for the Iranian general’s elimination is obvious: Zahedi planned and oversaw the murder of over 1,500 Israelis on October 7 – atrocities planned down to the last detail, including mass rapes, torture, horrific murders and kidnappings. The God of Israel gives His perspective on the judgment coming to such a man: “Rejoice, you nations, with His people! For He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will return vengeance on His adversaries, and will atone for His land and His people” (Deuteronomy 32:43).

Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani declared to the Security Council on Sunday, April 14, 2024 that “Iran’s operation was entirely in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense. This concluded action was necessary and proportionate.” This is diplomatic double-speak since, in matter of fact, it was not the Embassy which was hit. The building targeted was located outside the fenced compound of the Embassy. The targets in that annex were arch-terrorists, deadly enemies of the Jewish state and of the Sunni world.

The irony is dry: the world’s main exporter of terrorism stands on an international platform at a world forum, appealing to the principle of ‘inherent right to self-defense’ when its state-sponsored terrorist generals are taken out. And the world media offers no ethical pushback or analysis of Iran’s claims in this regard. It should be mentioned that Iran was not the only nation that fired ballistic missile/drone/cruise missiles at Israel. Syria, Iraq and Houthi Yemen, as well as Lebanon all joined in. Were these countries also “acting in self-defense”?

Iran’s prophetic vision

Iranian war strategy did not begin the day after the Damascus hit. Their Shi’ite Islamic jihadi goals are broader than a focus just on Israel. Fatah Revolutionary Council (PLO) member Muwaffaq Matar writes in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “The ultimate goal of the [IRGC’s] so-called ‘Qods Force’ is to take over [Amman], the capital of the Hashemite Jordanian Kingdom, invade the East Bank of the Jordan and eliminate the Palestinian national enterprise” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 2, 2024).

Iran’s goals involve a total take-over of the Middle East and its transformation into a Shi’ite caliphate/dictatorship. This would include overrunning Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt.

Recent confirmation of these plans comes from an April 1, 2024 Telegram post of an Iraqi Kata’ib Hezbollah (pro-Iranian) militia official, revealing Shi’ite operative plans to establish a Jordanian militia with 12,000 armed members that would act in Jordan against Israel, subordinate to Iranian commands.

In our December 2018 newsletter https://davidstent.org/three-red-cherries-and-a-one-armed-bandit/ the following quotes put meat on the bones here:

Over 2,500 years ago ancient Persia (modern Iran) marched its 500,000 strong army up to the shores of the Mediterranean and invaded Greece. The modern dream of Iran’s ayatollahs and its Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps is to conquer the world for its Shi’ite version of Islamist jihad. Its initial goal is an Iranian-controlled superhighway – a Shi’ite (or Shi’a) Crescent stretching from Iran through Iraq, into Syria and Lebanon.

According to Dr. Azeem Ibrahim (Ph.D. Cambridge, International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Adjunct Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College), “Iran now dominates, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, and may also end up doing so in Yemen. It is successfully extending the ‘Shiite crescent.’”

In January 2016, a confidant of Saudi Crown PrinceMohammad bin Salmanclaimed (in desert hyperbole which is not far off the mark) that the Arab world is being confronted not by a Shi’a Crescent (a sliver of moon) but “by a Shia full moon.”

Iran telegraphs its punches

Iran’s jihadi leaders were not going to let the April 1, 2024 assassination of Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi go unanswered. Iran began preparations for their attack on Israel, and their labors were intensively covered in world media. At the same time, behind-the-scenes communications with the United States were also going on. Iran passed a message through Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan (for it to be conveyed to Washington) concerning the targets and goals of its upcoming attack on Israel. An anonymous Turkish diplomatic source stated: “Iran informed us in advance of what would happen.” A Turkish security source said that CIA chief William Burns had spoken to Ibrahim Kalin, head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, over the Eid al-Fitr holidays (April 9-12) and asked Turkey to act as a mediator between Iran and the USA.

On April 4, Fidan and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met in Brussels on the sidelines of a NATO meeting. On April 11, 2024, U.S. Department of State Spokesman Matthew Miller noted that “Secretary Blinken has been engaged in diplomacy over the past 24 hours through a series of calls to foreign counterparts, including Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan . . . [Blinken] talked to the Turkish Foreign Minister last night [April 10].” During that conversation, Fidan conveyed to Blinken Iran’s message. On April 14, 2024 U.S. Department of State Spokesman Matthew Miller said: “Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan . . . Secretary Blinken thanked Foreign Minister Fidan for his ongoing engagement to prevent further escalation in the region.” According to the Arab news source al-Monitor , “Turkish officials revealed over the weekend that [prior to April 13] Turkey served as a mediator in the escalation, channeling Tehran’s and Washington’s expectations to each other.”

In the exchange of messages between America’s Blinken and Turkey’s Fidan on April 10, the anonymous Turkish diplomatic source explains: “Iran informed us in advance of what would happen. Possible developments also came up during the meeting with Blinken, and they (the U.S.) conveyed to Iran through us that this reaction must be within certain limits. In response, Iran said the reaction would be a response to Israel’s attack on its embassy in Damascus and that it would not go beyond this.

A senior Biden administration official stated on Sunday April 14, 2024, that the US had “a series of direct communications through the Swiss channel” (Swiss intermediaries) both before and after Iran’s mass drone and missiles attack against Israel. That senior US official stated that Iran communicated through the Swiss channel: “We received a message from the Iranians as this was ongoing, through the Swiss. This was basically suggesting that they were finished after this, but it was still an ongoing attack.” Mohammad Bagheri, the Iranian armed forces’ chief of staff, told Iranian state television that “we sent a message to America through the Swiss embassy.”

Iraqi, Jordanian and Qatari officials added that Iran provided them with early warning of the attack, as well as various details concerning targets. An Iraqi security official and a government security advisor said that “Iran had used diplomatic channels to inform Baghdad about the attack at least three days before it happened.” The Iraqi government, said the security official, “clearly understood from the Iranian officials that the US military in Iraq was also aware of the attack in advance.” A senior Jordanian official said that Iran had summoned Arab envoys in Tehran on Wednesday April 10, 2024 to inform them about the coming attack. Asked if Iran had also given details about the targets and kinds of weapons to be used, the Jordanian official did not respond directly but indicated that this was the case.

It is jolting to see that the US State Department, the POTUS, the US intelligence community and military – all were involved in negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its upcoming attack on American ally Israel – the extent of the attack, the weapons to be used, and the projected casualties. As is the case in such circumstances (see the case of Jonathan Pollard, where the US concealed intelligence information from Israel regarding Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare program targeting the Jewish state, and denied its existence to its ally Israel), the US did not seriously block or threaten Iran over the projected attack, but manipulated the situation for its own Middle Eastern strategic goals.

April 13-14 2024 – a Star Wars clash without casualties

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday that Iran gave neighboring countries and Israel’s ally the United States 72 hours’ notice before it launched the strikes and that these attacks would avoid civilian casualties. A senior official in US President Joe Biden’s administration denied the Iranian statement, saying that Washington did not get 72 hours notice in advance. “That is absolutely not true,” the official said. “They did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of . . . ‘these will be the targets, so evacuate them.’ They were clearly intending to destroy and to cause casualties . . . [in a] highly destructive [attack].” U.S. defense officials have characterized the Iranian attack on the ‘high end’ of what was anticipated, and deny reports that Tehran had given three days’ notice of the attack: “The intent was clearly to cause significant damage and death.”

The only person wounded in Israel by the Iranian rocket attacks was a 7-year-old Bedouin girl, Amina Hassouna of the al-Fura Bedouin community between Beersheva and Arad, She was struck while lying in her bed, and was severely injured by shrapnel from an intercepted ballistic missile.

In light of Iran’s public declaration that it avoided causing Israeli civilian casualties, it is worth remembering a sobering event in Iranian history. Two days before Iran’s rocket and missile attacks, on April 11, 2024, the Argentinian Federal Court of Criminal Cassation ruled that Iran and Hezbollah had committed crimes against humanity and are responsible for the bombing murders (300 tons of explosives) of 85 Jews on July 18, 1994 at the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and the suicide bombing of the Israeli Embassy on March 17, 1992 (29 murdered, 242 injured), both in Buenos Aires. The court said on that the AMIA bombing “was organized, planned, financed, and executed under the direction of the authorities of the Islamic State of Iran within the framework of Islamic jihad and with the main intervention of the political and military organization – Hezbollah.”

In light of Iran’s recent UN Security Council declaration that its rocket attacks against Israel were “entirely in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense” of its Embassy in Damascus, how would the IRCG explain their terror bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires?

January 3, 2020 – The American Reaper over Baghdad skies

On January 3, 2020, just after midnight, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone had been loitering in the airspace above Baghdad International Airport, waiting for an Airbus A320 Cham Wings plane from Damascus International Airport. On board was Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Quds Force) chief Qasem Soleimani (known as ‘the Shadow Commander’) and other Iranian military figures. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces) was waiting on the tarmac to welcome him.

According to Saudi-based Arab News, a USAF Air Combat Command drone that attacked Soleimani’s convoy had been launched from CENTCOM US-operated Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, remotely controlled by operators at the Creech Air Force Base in Clark County, Nevada. Iran’s Air Force stated that Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait also participated, According to Ahmed al-Asadi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament, drones also took-off from the Iraqi military airbase of Ayn al-Assad and returned directly to the Ayn al-Assad base after carrying out the assassination.

At 00:47 hours Baghdad time, as the jihadi entourage was driving away toward downtown Baghdad in a Toyota Avalon and a Hyundai Starex, the Reaper launched several missiles, striking the convoy on an access road. The two cars were engulfed in flames, and ten people departed from this life.

According to veteran Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari, the taking down of this Iranian mass murderer was “the most important assassination from the Jewish point of view since the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Final Solution, in Prague in 1942 … This man was the brains and the engine of the Iranian machine that is trying to wrap the Middle East in the arms of an octopus … He was the head of the octopus in this regard.”

January 4, 2020 – Initial Iranian response to Soleimani’s assassination

An Iranian government spokesman said the country’s top security body would hold an extraordinary meeting shortly to discuss the “criminal act of attack.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that “harsh revenge” is waiting. On January 4, 2020 POTUS Donald Trump warned Tehran that any retaliation for the assassination would result in the U.S. targeting 52 Iranian significant sites. The 52 sites were reported to represent the 52 American hostages held during the Iran hostage crisis.

The deep scar inflicted by this January 2020 American assassination of Iran’s top jihadi general has left echoes which still reverberate to this day, in 2023-24. Here is an example: on December 27, 2023, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Ramazan Sharif said that the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023 devastating attack on Israel was in revenge for the 2020 American assassination of IRGC Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani.

Shortly after Soleimani’s death was confirmed (January 4-5, 2020), US intelligence agencies reported that Iranian ballistic missile regiments had moved to heightened readiness. Iran was about to initiate an attack on US troops stationed at the Ain al-Assad in Iraq.

Iran and the USA coordinate the January 2020 attack against US troops in Iraq

In a January 8, 2020 Iran Wire report, an unnamed Iranian diplomat had revealed that Iran decided to launch a missile attack against US troops after several days of discussion by the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, and was “deliberately aimed at military bases and infrastructure and not personnel.” Some IRGC officers had insisted that Iran’s vengeance against the U.S. must be restrained “because killing Americans will cause an all-out war, which will cause massive destruction in Iran and might even bring down the regime.” Iran’s foreign minister at the time, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that the Iranian regime coordinated with America about these attacks by informing America ahead of time. Iran informed Iraq of its plans to launch missiles at the U.S. bases, with the intention that Iraq would then inform the US – so that precautions would be taken to prevent loss of life. Iraqi PM Adel Abdul Mahdi concurred that his government had been warned by Iran of the coming attack. The PM’s advisor told Reuters that Iran had notified Iraq, another Arab country and one European country (probably Switzerland) of the coming attack on US troops.

POTUS Donald Trump substantiated these events on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, February 4, 2024:

“Do you know, we hit them [Iran] very hard [Soleimani’s assassination] for something that they did, and they had to hit back. They feel they have to do that and I understand that. Do you know, they called me to tell me ‘We’re going to hit a certain location but we’re not gonna hit it, it’s gonna be outside of the perimeter’ . . . They let us know. And we had 16 missiles that went off . . . And we knew they weren’t going to hit. And now I reveal it . . . So they aimed those missiles and they said, ‘Please don’t attack us! We’re not going to hit you.’ That was respect, we had respect.”

In Yigal Carmon and M. Reiter’s excellent November 10, 2021 MEMRI article ‘Iran’s January 2020 Strikes on U.S. Ayn al-Asad Airbase’, they inform us:

“USAF unit commanders at Ayn Al-Asad described the day of the attack on a U.S. Air Force website. Lt. Col. Staci Coleman, who was the Commander of the 443rd Air Expeditionary Squadron, and members of her squadron testified that they had been briefed about an impending Iranian ballistic missile attack almost six hours before the attack. Captain Wesley Florez, the Executive Officer of the 1st Expeditionary Rescue Group, said that he had received information about the attack early the previous afternoon. According to reports by Iraqi soldiers at Ayn Al-Asad, U.S. forces started preparing for the missile attack and evacuating the base approximately eight hours before it took place.

Team Sergeant Karla Maldonado and Staff Sergeant Shane Rehbein, who were Air Traffic Controllers with the 442nd Air Expeditionary Squadron at al-Taqqadum Air Base, which is less than 100 miles away from Ayn Al-Asad, reported that a few hours before the attack on Ayn Al-Asad, they had landed 28 helicopters that evacuated from "nearby bases" to Al-Taqqadum. The report does not specify the location from which these helicopters evacuated. At approximately 4:00 AM, less than two hours after the missile barrage on Ayn Al-Asad was over, the evacuated helicopters began leaving Al-Taqqadum.

The American forces at Ayn Al-Asad airbase apparently had enough advance warning to evacuate 1,000 soldiers and 50 aircraft, and U.S. Army Major Alan Johnson, an intelligence officer who was present at Ayn Al-Asad airbase, said that the intelligence reports even included information that the Iranian ballistic missiles were being fueled.”

On January 8, 2020, Iranian forces launched ballistic missiles at US troops stationed at the Ayn al-Asad Airbase and at an airbase near Erbil, both in Iraq. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared that the strikes were part of their retaliation for the killing of Soleimani. No Iraqi or American casualties were initially reported, though the later Pentagon confirmed that several dozen servicemen had been injured to varying degrees of severity. According to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the country’s state-run news outlet, Iran fired tens of ground-to-ground missiles at the base in two waves, about an hour apart. A military spokesman for U.S. CENTCOM said a total of 15 missiles were fired: ten hit the Ayn al-Asad airbase, one hit the Erbil base, and four missiles failed. The attack left gaping craters in the ground, but caused no known US casualties.

In the hours after the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted: “Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched. We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”

CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie added on February 28, 2021: “We had a plan to retaliate if Americans died.”

Iran and the USA coordinated the April 2024 attack against Israel

Since time immemorial military strategy has involved confusing enemy decision makers by misrepresenting, obscuring or distorting troop strengths, intentions and positions. This tactic of warfare is called battlefield deception. From the Trojan Horse to Operation Bodyguard (the Normandy Invasion; https://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/future03/future03c.htm), advantage on the battlefield can be gained by lulling one’s enemy into a disastrous lack of preparedness. Israel’s Mossad has as its motto King Solomon’s proverb circa 960 B.C.: “For by stratagems (ed. strategic deceptions) shall you wage war.” (Prov.24:6). The classic Chinese military strategician Sun Tzu (circa 350 B.C.) said, “All warfare is based on deception.”

The recent clash between Iran and Israel appears to have many elements of deception surrounding this fog of war. Some of this will be looked at in greater detail in Part Two of this newsletter. But at this moment, it can be said that there is a burning trail of breadcrumbs available open-site, which reveals sobering parallels between Iran and America’s documented collusion in 2020, and Iran and America’s documented collusion in April 2024.

Yigal Carmon, former IDF military intelligence AMAN expert, is the founder of MEMRI – the Middle East Media Research Institute. His organization presents source documents from the Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds, casting needful light on the dark corners of jihadi realities, including Palestinian doublespeak. As well, MEMRI provides up-to-the-minute access to current Muslim and Arab perspectives. Carmon has pointed out (in Hebrew and in English) that the present developments mirror the events of 2020. Other voices raising the warning include Kenneth Timmerman, Daniel Greenfield, Melanie Phillips, et al.

Carmon’s take on current events is that Iran initially planned its attack on Israel with the intention of minimizing significant damage, as it did vis-à-vis the US four years ago. Carmon asserts that a similar scenario unfolded recently: Iran notified Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey about an imminent attack within three days. These countries then shared the information with the Americans, who subsequently warned Israel. Carmon noted, “When Hamas attacks, there are casualties. When Iran attacks, there are no casualties.” Regarding an incident in the south where a girl was injured, Carmon explains that it resulted from falling interceptor debris, not a direct missile hit, causing only minor damage to the airbase. “Is it possible, under the influence of delusions of grandeur, to explain this as the result of Iranian weakness or idiocy? To do so, one would need to be very naive,” he notes.

The world’s focus on the amazing air war victory that Israel experienced may actually be the result of another sleight-of-hand joint effort between Iran and the US to distract all concerned as they each pursue their own geopolitical goals, their own ‘dog in this fight.’ The facts on the ground and in the air which will remove some spin from how the amazingly fought battle is being presented by most of the world’s media, will be unpacked in Part Two of this three-part newsletter.

How should we then pray?

Pray for Iran’s Machiavellian strategies and plots for Middle East mischief and murder to be exposed and neutralized

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 129 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, at least 35 of these hostages are corpses of Israeli citizens, held in cold storage by Hamas as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Why are the peoples plotting in vain?

The rebellion and restlessness of the nations (Psalm 2:1) crash like ocean waves (Psalm 65:7) on the shores of this planet. But YHVH rules the waves: “Do you not fear Me? declares YHVH. Do you not tremble in My presence? For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea – an eternal limit, and it will not cross over it. Though the waves toss, they cannot prevail. Though they roar, they will not cross over it” (Jeremiah 5:22).

The nations are gathering with evil intent, planning to humiliate and violate the Daughter of Zion. But the God of Jacob proclaims that the Day of Vengeance is fast approaching: “For the Day of YHVH is near for all the nations. Just as you have done, it will be done to you. Your dealings will return on your own head!” (Obadiah 1:15).

We are living between the ‘here’ and the ‘not yet’ – between today’s careening events and the coming Day of Messiah’s wrath. With that sober destiny in mind, Yeshua challenges us to consider and to discern. “The Pharisees and Sadducees came up and, putting Yeshua to the test, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven. But He replied to them, ‘When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.” And in the morning, “There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.” You know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but are you unable to discern the signs of the times?’” (Matthew 16:1-3)

One of the strongest indicators of God’s coming day of vengeance for Zion (Isaiah 34:8) is the menacing rise of malice-filled nations who hate the Jewish people and impede their restoration to the Promised Land: “And now many nations have been assembled against you who say, ‘Let her be defiled, and let our eyes gloat over Zion!’” (Micah 4:11). Before our very eyes this anti-Semitic hatred is spreading like wildfire across the face of the globe. No country is immune to its toxic influence.

In Ezekiel 38:4 YHVH inserts hooks into the jaws of the nations and draws them down to Israel for a battle royal. Those kings of the earth have designs on the Promised Land – to divide and conquer. But instead, they will receive divine judgment on the mountains of Israel.

Today’s superpowers focus obsessively on the land promised by YHVH to His Jewish people – and that includes Gaza, Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Jerusalem. Their arrogant boastings fill the halls of the UN, falsely declaring that the land of Israel does not belong to the Jewish people but to the murderous descendants of jihadi invaders. God’s hooks are in their jaws, and this is the divine bait that God has placed in His prophetic mousetrap.

Look, you blind, so that you may see! (Isaiah 42:18)

Many presidents, diplomats and spies consider themselves authorities on the Middle East, but the truth is 180 degrees in the opposite direction. A peculiar blindness affects most nations regarding the Middle East. Many Israelis are also tone-deaf regarding the clear and present dangers in our Arabic-speaking neighborhood. A short list of these stumbling blocks may help us in praying for the peoples involved.

Most Westerners are unaware of the cultures, sensibilities and sensitivities of the Islamic and Arab world. They do not understand Arab perspectives or how classical Islam sees the world in general, or the Western world in particular. Most of them interpret Middle Eastern events through secular sunglasses. This is true not only for the common man, but also for Christian and Jewish theologians, for Western intelligence agencies, government officials and diplomats. For those who would want to broaden their understanding, a good place to begin is David Pryce-Jones’ penetrating book ‘The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs’ (1989, Harper & Row).

Another area of severe Western blindness involves foundational ignorance of Biblical realities. Yet it is these spiritual matters which hold the keys to unlocking the doors of perception regarding Middle Eastern dynamics, history, paradigms and its prophetic future.

A third area of blindness is the lack of awareness of (or even refusal to accept) God’s irrevocable calling on and gifts to the Jewish people. Included here would be such pillars as the blessing and cursing dynamics of Genesis 12:3, and the sober spiritual dangers of jihad.

A fourth area of blindness involves flat-out anti-Semitism – the endemic anti-Jewish dynamics now rampant in the US State Department, the CIA, the NSA, etc. (as well as European varieties of the same).

Specific examples of Israeli blindness include the following:

Seeing the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Accords and the Abraham Accords as giant steps forward to Middle East peace – similar to how WWI was once seen in the West as ‘the war to end all wars.’

Israeli leaders in government, intelligence and the military still believe that jihadi terrorists will eventually ‘change their spots’ and accept the material benefits of peace with Israel.

These leaders believe that, even if the jihadi armies of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Authority are all truly terrorists, Israel should choose one of the ‘lesser evils’ among them and work together with that party.

Israeli leaders understand that there is no love lost between Palestinians and Jews. Nevertheless they ardently believe that Israelis needs a peace agreement – even a shaky one, and even if the price is dangerous to Israel’s survival.

These operating principles shape much of what is transpiring in Middle Eastern current events – diplomatically, militarily and in the intelligence world.

Anti-Semitism – the foundation of Western intelligence organizations

Those Americans who love Israel – whether Evangelical Christians, Jews of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or liberal stripe, or simply secular US citizens – have a quiet respect for plucky Israel, her courage and heroism in battle, her tenacity in the face of many deadly challenges, her sufferings in the Holocaust.

But other Americans are opposed to Zion. Secular isolationists and anti-Semitic professors, self-hating Jews and jihadi Islamists, oil barons and most State Department honchos, CIA movers and shakers – there are significant and influential layers of American society solidly positioned against the land and people of Israel. At the upper echelons of US politics, business and intelligence, powerful people are ensconced – pressuring and persuading, weakening and destroying the apple of God’s eye. Anti-Semitism has been hard-wired into the roots of the US intelligence community and the US State Department. Its poison influences current positions trumpeted from the Rose Garden, the Congress and the main stream media. What is knowable about these roots and this history?

The foundations of U.S. intelligence go back to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), formed June 13, 1942 and dissolved September 20, 1945. OSS evolved into the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) on September 18, 1947, and eventually was overshadowed by its vastly larger big brother the National Security Agency (NSA), established on November 4, 1952. The OSS. The CIA and the NSA have done masterful work in protecting the security and survival of the USA, countering Communist attempts to undermine America and the West, etc. Yet its adversarial role vis-à-vis the Jewish state must be evaluated based on biblical principles.

The Agency (aka CIA) was at its heart an ‘old boys’ network’ of Ivy League university graduates. They were the ones who recruited and vetted new officers for these fledgling agencies. Liberal Protestant religious affiliations (Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.) were just about a requirement for a job. Most of these men were thoroughly pickled in old-school anti-Semitic prejudices and attitudes. ‘America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East’ by Hugh Wilford (2017) notes that the CIA’s Middle East division was headed by ‘Arabists’ – men like Kermit ‘Kim’ Roosevelt (grandson of POTUS Theodore Roosevelt); Kim’s cousin, Archie Roosevelt (a Middle East scholar and Chief of Beirut Station); and Miles Copeland (a covert American intelligence operator since WWII). The agency’s Arabists were the intellectual, and often biological, descendants of American missionaries in Arab lands. They believed that a century of American missionary activity had paved the way for a Pax Americana in the region – if only the recalcitrant Israelis could be sidelined. These officials were fiercely anti-Zionist, convinced that American support for Israel was a strategic blunder of the first order. Wilford states that these founders believed “in the overriding importance of American-Arab, and Christian-Muslim, relations.”

The CIA would become known for engineering the destruction of nationalist governments (Kim Roosevelt engineered the coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953); shoring up pro-western autocracies in the oil-rich Gulf States; and (at a much lower level of priority) tending to the growing American-Israeli alliance. By November 1947, the Agency’s operational Middle East policy was based on three foundational realpolitik concerns:

The Arab world has an overwhelming hostility to a Jewish state, and to Western support for the Jews. US diplomacy must placate this hostility.

Any threats to the Arab world’s oil production must be neutralized.

Soviet penetration of the Middle East must be blocked, and efforts must be made to bring Arab nations onboard the American ‘ship of influence.’

Reflecting on these organizational anti-Semitic foundations, one former CIA operative explained: “You shouldn't be surprised [at the CIA’s covert war with the Jewish state]. It's [simply a matter of] pure hypocrisy. In public, Israel is our ally. What the public doesn't know is that all Western nations have covert policies to side with the Arabs. It keeps the intelligence community busy” (see John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews (How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People); p. 510).

CIA anti-Semitic fronts created to weaken support for Israel

In 1949 Kim Roosevelt formed the anti-Israel group ‘Holy Land Christian Committee,’ ostensibly to assist Christians in Israel. Anti-Zionist Jews were invited on to the Board, as well as Allen Dulles, a former State Department and OSS official and future director of the CIA. This organization was directed by CIA employee William A. Eddy, a former US minister plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and consultant to Aramco. Bronson Clark of the (Quaker) ‘American Friends Service Committee,’ then doing refugee relief work in Gaza, notes: “This body, composed entirely of pro-Arab, anti-Zionist elements, was not to be an operating agency but was to serve as a publicity front for the operating agencies . . . This meeting represents another move in a series of moves which, like an iceberg, show only one-quarter on the surface what goes on, while three-quarters of the maneuverings are hidden.”

In 1951, the CIA secretly funded the creation of an ostensibly private outfit of US citizens dedicated to citizen diplomacy, called the ‘American Friends of the Middle East’ (AFME). This group propagated rabidly pro-Arab and anti-Zionist views – perspectives that shaped the CIA in its early years. Roosevelt used his role at the CIA to ensure the organization’s funding the group through the CIA and Aramco. This CIA front sought to weaken support for the Jewish state in the U.S. Though anti-Israelis often aim fire at ‘the Israel Lobby,’ they grow surprisingly mum about ‘the anti-Israel Lobby’ fronts established by the CIA.

A recent Hollywood movie crystallizes the realities of these roots in two brief lines. In the movie ‘The Good Shepherd,’ Joe Pesci plays a Mafia boss named Joseph Palmi – a fictionalized version of either Sam Giancana (from the Chicago Outfit) or Santo Trafficante Jr., a Mafia boss in Florida. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson (who is going under the pseudonym ‘Mister Carlson’ for this meeting). Wilson’s character is based on the CIA’s Chief of Counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton). Palmi and ‘Carlson’ have been discussing Mafia and CIA involvement in the upcoming Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, and then move on to discuss philosophical perspectives on how the CIA looks at ethnic minorities in America.

Joseph Palmi : “Let me ask you something. We Italians, we got our families, and we got the church. The Irish – they have the homeland. The Jews – their tradition. Even the n—g-rs, they got their music. What about you people, Mister Carlson? What do you have?”

Edward Wilson: “The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

Purge out the leaven from among you (1 Corinthians 5:7)

The Apostle Paul uses the Feast of Passover to draw a pastoral principle for the Jewish and Gentile believers in Greek Corinth. He exhorts them to purge out or remove sinful behaviors in their lives, which he likens to leaven. The Pesach matzah is a leaven-free bread, and quickly rising leaven was sometimes understood by Jews in Paul’s day to be symbolic of sin.

In the same way as Jewish houses search for and remove even the tiniest crumbs of yeasted bread just before Passover, the diplomatic and intelligence corps of the US (and many other countries too) need to do some serious confessing, repenting and renouncing regarding the foundational sins of anti-Jewish hatred which have wrapped their gnarled roots around the secret world of America’s leaders and strategists.

How should we then pray?

Pray for the God of Jacob to grant breakthrough revelation and repentance to America’s (and other countries’) leaders regarding the refuge of anti-Semitic lies that they have embraced

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 133 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Some of these hostages that Hamas is holding include at least 35 corpses of Israeli citizens, being held in cold storage as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Enemy at the gates

The Jewish people were born for warfare, even as YHVH promised to Abraham: “Indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore. And your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies! And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:17-18). The prophetess Deborah agrees, describing her people’s history as one birthed in combat: “Then war was in the gates!” (Judges 5:8).

Israel’s arch-enemy – the seemingly invincible super-power Assyria – received a prophetic word about coming war – the gates of its capitol city Nineveh would be overrun by Babylonian hordes: “The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies. Fire consumes your gate bars!” (Nahum 3:13).

The Bible sadly foresaw that the Jewish people would not be immune to enemy invasions: “The kings of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the inhabitants of the world, that the adversary and the enemy would enter the gates of Jerusalem” (Lamentations 4:12). In addition, Ezekiel prophesied that Babylon would crash through the gates of Zion, and that many Jewish soldiers would die in its defense: “Many fall at all [Jerusalem’s] gates!” (Ezekiel 21:15).

The sons of Jacob have a history full of enemies assaulting the gates of Zion. Just recently, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that “we are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven different arenas: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, [ed., the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. We have already responded and acted in six of these areas, and I say here in the most clear way: anyone who acts against us is a potential target. There is no immunity for anyone.”

The entire nation of Israel is today on war footing. But the enemy is not only at the gates. There are enemies inside the gates as well. What happens when the cartoon character Pogo’s words come true: “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”?

The Persian snake’s teeth

The drums of war are beating today in Iran. One of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ top generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi (Deputy Chief of Operations and a virulent active enemy of Israel) was taken out in a pinpoint air attack on Monday April 1, 2024 along with six other top Iranian jihadi terror masterminds. These individuals “were all responsible, in different capacities, for relations with Iranian-affiliated groups, particularly Hamas and Hezbollah.” The April 1, 2024 attack is being attributed to Israel, though the Jewish state has remained silent.

A building next to the Iranian Consulate in Damascus was the target. In the past, Iran has openly targeted foreign consulates in Tehran, including the consular compounds of the USA (November 4, 1979), the UK (November 29, 2011) and Saudi Arabia (January 2, 2016). In this latest unattributed attack in Damascus, the Iranian consulate was actually not attacked, but rather an adjoining building was targeted which was hosting terrorists in the employ of the Iranian government.

Though Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack, Iran is nevertheless issuing harshly-worded threats to target Israel. This Persian response is known in the Middle East as brinksmanship – playing ‘chicken’ with loaded weapons. Zahedi was one of the main planners of jihadi attacks against Israel by Hamas (including October 7), by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iraq, by Syria and by Yemeni Houthis. He was particularly close to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, says Clive Jones, a specialist in Israel and the Middle East at Durham University in the UK. Zahedi was under US sanctions, accused of supplying Hezbollah with Iranian missiles.

Over the past few days, many Israelis have been descending in waves on supermarkets and ATMs, stocking up on provisions in case Iranian or Lebanese or Houthi or Iraqi or Syrian missiles and rockets begin to land on Israeli infrastructure in the next little while. This would be a good time to pray for protection for Israel, and for strategic and divine military and diplomatic wisdom for her leaders.

“For Iran, it’s a loss comparable to that of Qasem Soleimani, the former commander-in-chief of the Quds Force, killed by an American drone in 2020,” states Shahin Modarres, Iran specialist at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) in Verona, Italy.

There is some measure of a déjà vu here. Modarres is recalling a similar but even more significant strike – the previous assassination of Zahedi’s boss, Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone strike near Baghdad International Airport at 00:47 am. Major-General Soleimani was the architect of all of Iran's foreign policies in the Middle East. He was described by US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as “Iran’s master terrorist.” On 25 August 2019, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, “Israel is acting to strike the head of the Iranian snake and uproot its teeth . . . Iran is the head of the snake and Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, is the snake's teeth.”

Settling scores at the carpet bazaar

According to official Iranian sources, the January 2020 US strike on Qasem Soleimani took out a total of ten terrorists. These included four Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers (Brigadier General Hossein Pourjafari, Colonel Shahroud Mozafarinia, Major Hadi Taremi and Captain Vahid Zamanian) and five Iraqi members of the Iraqi jihadi Popular Mobilization Forces (including deputy chairmanAbu Mahdi al-Muhandis, chief of protocol and public relations Muhammed Reza al-Jaberi. Mohammad al-Shibani, Hassan Abdul Hadi and Heydar Ali). At that time, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened “severe revenge for the criminals who bloodied their foul hands with [Soleimani's] blood,” and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that “the US act of international terrorism, targeting and assassinating General Soleimani . . . is extremely dangerous and a foolish escalation.”

In January 2020, US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft informed the UN Security Council that this American act was one of self-defense, while senior State Department officials compared this assassination to Operation Vengeance in World War II, when American pilots shot down the plane carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

Iran is known as a country which can wait patiently as it seeks revenge and victory. This applies to its nuclear weapons program as well as to its settling scores with America or Israel.

On Wednesday December 27, 2023, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Ramazan Sharif declared that Hamas’ October 7, 2023 jihadi rape, torture, murder and kidnapping of thousands of Israeli citizens was an Iranian-guided revenge attack for the 2020 assassination of IRGC Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike. According to the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency, Sharif said: “The Al-Aqsa Storm [Hamas’ Arabic name for the October 7 jihadi pogrom] was one of the retaliations of the Axis of Resistance [ed.: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemeni Houthis] against the Zionists for the martyrdom of Qasem Soleimani.”

Kidnapping the families of the kidnapped

A storm has been brewing in Israel. Two recent newsletters give helpful background: March 28, 2023 (‘In a wilderness of mirrors’) and July 4, 2023 (‘The wisdom of Ahithophel’). A concerted attempt at overthrowing the current Israeli government is in progress, led by former Israeli military and political figures. We regret to say that these efforts are being openly supported by the U.S. State Department (see recent newsletters of November 2, 2023 (‘You don’t have too many friends here, buddy’) and March 20, 2024 (‘Shaking a fist at the Daughter of Zion’).

The Kaplan street riots (named for the Tel Aviv intersection where their faithful demonstrators gather) became progressively more violent throughout the Summer of 2023. These demonstrations were strategically planned, organized and funded by some former Israeli Prime Ministers, former Generals, and families connected to both Israeli intelligence agencies and opposition parties. All this background is a matter of public record and open source (referenced in the above newsletters). The demonstration leaders first focused on supposed ‘popular opposition’ to judicial reform. But after October 7, they quickly morphed their emphases into two strident demands from the government:

Restore the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas at any price

Force the present Israeli government coalition to resign immediately, thus allowing left-wing parties to step into the political vacuum, setting up statecraft more in line with American demands. This would lead to a unilateral IDF withdrawal from Gaza, leaving Hamas intact to fight another day – another déjà vu recalling PM Ariel Sharon’s disastrous disengagement from Gaza in 2005, which led to the current 19 year long war with Hamas.

The Kaplan demonstrators and rioters have made their end game clear: “All problems can be immediately solved if we simply throw PM Bibi Netanyahu out of office, by fair means or foul.”

Over the past month the spokespersons for these violent demonstrations/riots have upped the ante, blaming the current government for Hamas’ terror pogroms. Over the past week they have physically attacked the Israeli security forces guarding the Prime Minister’s residence, and have also attempted a brutal attack on the PM himself – led by a violent torch-bearing mob (conjuring images of pogroms, the KKK and Nazi Berlin).

Many Israelis are horrified at the violent and anarchistic tactics of these anti-government spokesmen. They are appalled that the Kaplan protest leaders are claiming that its strategies represent the majority of Israelis and especially the families of the hostages. A significant amount of Israelis and hostage families are not blaming not the government for jihadi atrocities – they blame Hamas and its supporters. These grass-roots people have been organizing and making their own voices heard above the din of the anti-Bibi riots. They are declaring to the Kaplan demonstrators: “You will not burn down our country!”

Unfortunately there are powers in the American administration who are cultivating leaders of the Kaplan movement, offering advice and finances to them in their efforts to bring about a coup d’état in Israel. For those who are new to this aspect of super-power politics, here are three 20^th century examples of similar American-guided coups:

June 27, 1995 – CIA-guided coup d'état overthrowing Emir Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani and setting Qatari Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani on the throne

September 11, 1973 – CIA-guided coup d'état overthrowing Chilean President Salvador Allende and replacing him with a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet

November 1-2, 1963 – CIA-approved South Vietnamese coup d'état overthrowing President Ngô Đình Diệm and replacing him with General Dương Văn Minh

August 19, 1953 (28 Mordad) – CIA-guided coup d'état overthrowing Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and setting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne

Burning down the storehouses

Events from 2,000 years ago shine ancient light on some modern Jewish events. The Babylonian Talmud TB Gittin 56a, describes Jerusalem of 68-70 A.D. just before its destruction, when the Romans were besieging the city and various Jewish political-religious parties were fighting amongst each other:

Rome sent Vespasian Caesar against the Jews. He came and laid siege to Jerusalem for three years. There were at that time in Jerusalem these three wealthy people: Nakdimon [i.e., Nicodemus] ben Gurion, ben Kalba Savua, and ben Tzitzit HaKesat . . . These three wealthy men had between them enough commodities to sustain the besieged [populace] for twenty-one years. There were certain Zealots among the people of Jerusalem . . . In order to force the residents of the city to engage in battle, the Zealots arose and burned down these storehouses of wheat and barley, and there was a general famine.

Josephus Flavius, an eyewitness of these events, notes:

And this Yehohanan of Gush Halav [John of Giscala] . . . set on fire those houses that were full of grain, and of all other provisions. The same thing was done by Shimon bar Giora – as if they had on purpose done it to serve the Romans, by destroying what the city had laid up against the siege, and by thus cutting off the nerves of their own power. Accordingly it so came to pass . . . that almost all that grain was burnt, which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years.

As the crushing power of Rome bulldozed its way to the gates of Zion, the warriors of Jerusalem were in the throes of civil war. Judea was divided; all the Romans needed to do was conquer.

Modern Israelis make use of a phrase from that day – lisrof et ha’asamim [‘to burn down the warehouses’] – to describe how hatred and the desire for vengeance can bring great damage to any people. This ancient term is being used by many today to draw a sober parallel between modern social unrest in Israel and the events which led to the Destruction of the Second Temple on Tisha b’Av in 70 A.D. – while Hamas is waging jihad on the Jewish state, strengthened by its terrorist comrades in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Iraq, Iran and Yemen.

To add fuel to the fire, on Thursday April 4, 2024 the US State Department and POTUS Biden threatened an arms embargo on Israel unless the IDF immediately retreats from Gaza – something which would defeat the whole strategic aim of this war – for it would allow Hamas to both survive and thrive. And all the while, Qatar’s Muslim Brotherhood TV network Al Jazeera crows with delight, continually broadcasting video clips of Israeli Kaplan demonstrators blocking freeways or attacking Israeli police and security defending the Knesset and the Prime Minister’s residence.

How should we then pray?

Pray for the God of Jacob to grant breakthrough revelation and repentance to His Jewish people regarding Satan’s plans for division, civil war and destruction

Pray for the plots of coup d'état to be exposed and neutralized, whatever the sources

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 134 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Some of these 134 that Hamas is also holding include at least 35 corpses of Israeli citizens, being held in cold storage as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

Enduring the insults of the nations (Ezekiel 34:29)

God said it: a day is coming when Israel will no longer have to endure the insults of the nations. In Ezekiel 35:12, 36:6-7,15 YHVH defines what those insults are: false and unjust claims by the sons of Edom and the surrounding Arab countries concerning the Promised Land – specifically, their attempts to occupy Israel and to steal it away from God’s true heirs, the Jewish people.

Today these insults are politically institutionalized at the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the European Union. As far as the United States goes, its position has gone through a see-saw of policy changes, depending on who controls the House of Representatives. Sometimes American policies have stood with Israel; at other times the US State Department has allowed harmful legislation at the UN to be ratified without US objection.

But YHVH’s perspectives on Israel-related matters do not fluctuate, for they are based on His covenant faithfulness to the Jewish people: “For I, YHVH, do not change! Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed!” (Malachi 3:6). “For the gifts and the calling of God [given to Israel] are irrevocable!” (Romans 11:29).

We live in the days when the nations are obsessed with blocking the prophetic restoration of the Jewish people to their homeland – whether it be Gaza or Jerusalem, Hebron or Ramallah, Nablus or the Golan. The God of Israel is issuing a divine wake-up call, and those who have ears to hear are tracking. The entire planet is being weighed in the balances regarding its heart toward Israel. It is being measured by the standard of God’s word regarding its actions vis-à-vis the Jewish people, and has been found lacking God’s heart perspectives in its arrogant treatment of Jacob and his land.

Biblical history shows us that ancient superpowers like Babylon and Persia could quickly turn from blessing Israel to cursing the Jewish people. The Purim story in the Book of Esther is one such example. Could not such events happen again in our day? The only protection against this trap is a firm foundation based on a rock-solid biblical understanding of Israel’s calling and destiny, as well as a unswerving commitment to honor God by honoring His people. Genesis 12:3 tell us that the one who mocks or despises the Jewish people, the one who treats them as of little consequence, the one who says that God is finished with them – these are the exact shades of meaning in the Hebrew verb used here meqalelecha – these people and nations will be cursed by God.

Prophetic vision – seeing things through the apple of God’s eye

Corrie ten Boom, the brave Netherlands believer whose family sheltered Jews from the Nazis, describes an event in Occupied Haarlem during World War II. She and her father Casper were returning from a walk, and “found the Grote Markt cordoned off by a double ring of police and soldiers. A truck was parked in front of the fish mart; into the back were climbing (Jewish) men, women, and children, all wearing the yellow star.” Corrie cried out in horror. Then “she saw that her father was looking at the soldiers now forming into ranks to march away. ‘I pity the poor Germans, Corrie. They have touched the apple of God’s eye’” (The Hiding Place, page 64).

Casper ten Boom was echoing the words of Zechariah regarding God’s judgment over Babylon, “This is what YHVH of armies says, He sent Me for the purpose of glory against the Gentiles who plunder you all. For the one who lays his hand on you lays his hand on the apple of His eye. For I will wave My hand against them, and they will become plunder for their slaves. And you all will know that YHVH of armies has sent Me” (Zechariah 2:8-9).

The nation which raises its hand against the Jewish people – whether in the open or hidden from sight, whether through using terror or supporting terror or not confronting terror – YHVH of armies promises an assured judgment.

“Now YHVH saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede. Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. According to their deeds, so He will repay – wrath to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies. To the coast lands He will make recompense…For He will come like a rushing stream which the wind of YHVH drives. A Redeemer will come to Zion” (Isaiah 59:15-20)

In the last volume of C.S. Lewis’ science-fiction Perelandra trilogy, evil men are described as breaking down God’s ordained walls of protection. As a result, divine judgment is about to descend on them. Satan’s rebellious strategies (from the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 to the present) are termed by Lewis as ‘that hideous strength’ (that is also the name of Lewis’ book). In chapter 13, the hero Ransom declares, “The Hideous Strength holds all this Earth in its fist . . . Their own strength has betrayed them. They have . . . pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads.”

The UN, UNESCO, UNRWA, advocates of Replacement Theology and BDS (anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) and all those who work for and call for Israel’s weakening and destruction – certainly, these people’s actions should be opposed. At the same time, these people are to be pitied, for they are calling down the fiery judgment of Deep Heaven upon themselves.

Moses describes a similar dynamic in Exodus 15:7,11 where the judgment of Deep Heaven descends onto the heads of God’s enemies: “In the greatness of Your majesty You overthrow Your adversaries. You send out Your fury; it consumes them like stubble . . . Who is like You, YHVH, among the gods? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

The insults of the nations – the Holocaust

Zechariah says that the God of Jacob sees the nations through the lens called ‘Israel,’ the apple of God’s eye. But from YHVH’s perspective, the nations for the most part just don’t get it; they don’t resonate with His heart, and they don’t understand that the Jewish people are a priority in the plan of God. He declares to Israel: “For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds, declares YHVH, because they have called you an outcast, saying: ‘It is Zion; no one cares for her’” (Jeremiah 30:17).

During WWII, when the survival of the Jewish nation was being threatened by Hitler and his Third Reich, the nations of the world for the most part turned their eyes and hearts away from rescuing or protecting the sons and daughters of Zion.

In Canada, immigration policies were boldly anti-Semitic, as detailed in ‘None is Too Many.’ This classic book (readable for free here) details Canadian cold-hearted complicity in the Holocaust as well as in anti-Jewish immigration policies between 1933 and 1948. Top officials spearheading these policies included Director of the Government of Canada’s Immigration Branch Frederick Blair, who had the full support of Canadian PM William Lyon Mackenzie King and High Commissioner to Britain Vincent Massey in these matters. Blair’s office allowed fewer than 5,000 Jews into Canada (1933-39), in comparison to over 200,000 allowed into the United States, and 20,000 into Mexico. “That record is arguably the worst of all possible refugee-receiving states,” wrote Abella and Troper, the authors of ‘None is Too Many.’ Blair’s anti-Semitic immigration policies “sealed the fate of thousands of European Jews who would have escaped death had Canada not turned them away.”

In the USA, Arthur D. Morse’s book While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy details how the US State Department (including Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long) consistently delayed, obstructed or opposed efforts to save Jews from the Nazis in Europe, or to admit them as refugees into the United States. One example involved President Roosevelt’s delaying action of five months in pro-actively responding to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., report originally titled ‘Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews.’

In Britain, PM Neville Chamberlain’s government carried out the policies of its White Paper of 1939, forbidding shelter in Mandatory Palestine for Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi-occupied Europe. This led to even greater Jewish death tolls in Hitler’s death camps. Former PM David Lloyd-George called this White Paper “an act of perfidy.”

It is less than 80 years since these events occurred, and the anti-Semitic roots wrapped around these governments and their leaders which catalyzed them, have for the most part not been decisively dealt with. Today’s diplomatic representatives from the above-listed countries continue to advocate measures quite similar in spirit to their predecessors, when it comes to matters concerning the Jewish people and their land.

The insults of the nations – Islamic moves to destroy Israel

The concerted effort of most Islamic and Arabic-speaking countries to destroy the Jewish state is well documented. The malignant influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its metastasizing tentacles (like Hamas, al Qa’eda, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, Houthis, etc.) are defined by God in Ezekiel 35:12, 36:6-7,15 as insults against YHVH and against His Jewish people – Islamist and Arab false claims concerning the Promised Land – their attempts to occupy Israel and to steal it away from God’s true heirs, the Jewish people.

Western powers are on record as supporting Islamist terror groups with training, funding, diplomatic muscle and weaponry. Three books (of many) detail these schemes:

John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews (How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People)

Moshe Arens, Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis between the U.S. and Israel (a former Israel Defense Minister)

Bruce Brill, Deceit of an Ally (a memoir of Yom Kippur treachery)

Recent Israeli intelligence interrogations of Hamas Nukhba terrorists involved in the jihadi October 7 attacks from Gaza on Israeli citizens, have revealed that Hamas planned even greater destruction in Israel – plans which were thwarted by desperate last-minute IDF countermeasures. The plans involved jihadi attacks on Kiryat Gat, the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, and the IAF airbase in Hatzerim; the nuclear research facility at Dimona and several points in Tel Aviv, where a mass slaughter of civilians was planned. “There is no doubt that if Hamas had carried out Phase Two, the trauma and disaster would have been doubled . . . [Hamas leader] Sinwar believed that if the news channels reported that he had attacked in Tel Aviv and Dimona, Hezbollah in the north and the other terrorist organizations in Judea and Samaria would also have attacked. It's a demonic plan that, had it succeeded, the reality would have been many times worse.”

The current swelling of murderous rage against Israel and the popular identification among many Middle Eastern Arabs and Muslims with Hamas was on full display in Amman Jordan this past week. On March 27, 10,000 protestors approached the Israeli Embassy, chanting: “O cowardly Arab governments! On behalf of the voiceless, we too stand with Gaza. We are besieged . . . Let the voice rise from Amman. We are part of the flood. Let every traitor and collaborator hear it. With Hamas for liberation!” On March 28, the Amman protestors carried Palestinian flags and chanted: "They said Hamas is terrorist. All of Jordan is Hamas!” Placards were carried declaring “Amman-Gaza – one destiny!” while posters depicted Hamas’ chief spokesman, Abu Obaida. On March 29, the demonstrators shouted out their support of Hamas’ Gazan second-in-command terror chief: “Muhammad Deif, O Chief of Staff . . . We want to shake the Zionist entity!” At the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the same chants were heard on March 28: “Raise a sword against a sword! We are the people of Muhammad Deif! Blessings for [Yahya] Sinwar [Hamas’ top jihadi commander]!”

These dynamics are alive and well in the Middle East, even if Jordan is considered a US ally and a peace-partner with Israel. Peace is not breaking out in Gaza; the Arabic-speaking populations of the region are fiery supporters of Hamas-led jihad. And American, European, Russian and Chines support of Hamas and their fellow travelers clearly reveal that insults of the nations are PC across the globe at this point. YHVH is watching, and the God of Jacob is writing everything down in His books:

“Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:11-13)

The insults of the nations – cooperating with the enemies of Israel

The famous American baseball player Yogi Berra one spoke a memorable quote: “It’s déjà vue all over again!” A recent event at the UN accurately reflects this same dynamic. Here is some historical background and context:

“On December 23, 2016, the United Nations announced the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlements east of the 1949 armistice line, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (including the Old City with its ancient Jewish Quarter). Passage of this resolution became possible only because of the deliberate refusal of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., to exercise their veto power. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that in refusing to veto the resolution, the Obama administration was simply conforming to long-standing American policy in favor of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by means of the so-called ‘two state solution,’ a policy that has also included his country’s condemnation of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank”

This Resolution 2334 of December 23, 2016 actually violated previous US-sponsored UN Resolution 242 of November 24, 1967, which recognized Israel’s right to retain and settle in territories it had retaken in June 1967. The Obama administration’s behind-the-scenes muscling though of Resolution 2334 unfortunately established a UN precedent: the world’s highest diplomatic authority condemned a Jewish presence in ancient Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount and at the Western Wall. By enabling Resolution 2334, US President Obama violated one of the major operative principles of the Oslo Accords, adopting the PLO/Palestinian Authority’s policy of trying to impose a solution on Israel from the outside.

This tactic (of working behind the scenes to pass UN resolutions harmful to Israel) was harshly condemned by the Jewish state, though the passage of this Resolution was met by loud applause in the packed Security Council chamber (see Psalm 2:1-3). At that time, a senior Israeli official noted:

“The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory . . . President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN . . . All the signs show that this was a [diplomatic] hit by Obama against Netanyahu and the settlements”

But POTUS Obama’s abandonment of Israel was not a first for the American State Department. Former US Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford all permitted the UN General Assembly and/or the Security Council to adopt resolutions critical of the Jewish state. POTUS Ronald Reagan saw 21 anti-Israel measures ratified through the UN during his terms of office. POTUS George H.W. Bush allowed nine, POTUS Bill Clinton three and POTUS George W. Bush six. In November 1981 the Reagan administration voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution condemning Israel’s air strikes on the OSIRAK Iraqi nuclear reactor. Not standing up for Israel seems to be a bi-partisan trend at times.

It is worth remembering that, a decade later on October 28, 1991, US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney praised and thanked Israel for that same OSIRAK attack: “Let me tonight in front of this group thank my good friend David Ivry [IAF Chief] for the action Israel took in 1981 with respect to the [Osirak] reactor . . . There were many times during the course of the build-up in the Gulf and the subsequent conflict that I gave thanks for the bold and dramatic action that had been taken [by Israel] some ten years before.”

The insults of the nations – recent cooperation with the enemies of Israel

On March 25, 2024 the exact same scenario (a repeat of December 23, 2016’s Resolution 2334) took place at the UN Security Council, with the US refusing to veto Resolution 2728. This resolution was drawn up by Russia and China, pressuring Israel to accept an unconditional ceasefire – one which would preserve a Hamas terrorist stronghold in Gaza and leave Israeli hostages imprisoned in Hamas’ cruel hands. In another moment of déjà vu, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby echoed former Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2016 fig-leaf avowal: “Our vote does not – and I repeat that – does not represent a shift in our policy.”

As British commentator Melanie Phillips noted: “So both the US and UK are now aligned with the west’s foes Russia and China against Israel, the sole defender of the west in the Middle East.”

Former Director of the CIA and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added his criticism of the Biden administration’s UN abstention:

“Hamas, when they saw the abstention, were thrilled. The Chinese Communist Party? Happier than heck. The Russians? Happier than heck. The Iranians? Absolutely beyond themselves, thrilled that the United States of America refused to stand up for its ally. I think that’s so telling. That’s very risky, for every American, when you see the United States walk away from its long-term strategic ally and friend in the Middle East.”

Hamas has refused many times so far to acquiesce to the release of Israeli hostages, as per its recent announcement:

“The Hamas movement informed the mediators a short time ago that it maintains its position which it presented on 14.3 according to which the occupation's answer [to the deal proposal] does not meet [Hamas’] basic demands of our people and the resistance and they are: A comprehensive ceasefire, a withdrawal from the Strip, the return of the displaced to their homes and a real prisoner exchange deal. The movement emphasizes once again that Netanyahu and his extreme government bear full responsibility for the failure of the negotiation efforts and for placing obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement until now.”

The US has smoothed the way for a Hamas victory on this point, and for a defeat to its ally Israel – all in one fell swoop. This ‘good news’ was immediately greeted by 12 new rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad against Israel, and by over 100 rocket attacks form Lebanese Hezbollah against northern Israel. A victory meeting was held in Tehran between Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhala, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Haniyeh crowed at the meeting that the US abstention at the UN “indicates the unprecedented political isolation experienced by the Israeli occupation.”

The prophetic acts of YHVH

The Bible describes something which theologians call ‘prophetic acts.’ These are physical acts initiated by a prophet which symbolizes and herald a new action on the part of the God of Israel. The physical act is a prophetic declaration that something has just happened in God’s plan; something has changed on earth,’ and something new is about to be manifested. Here are four such biblical examples:

The ten plagues
“For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and fatally strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the human firstborn to animals; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments – I am YHVH” (Exodus 12:12)

Samuel’ cloak torn by Saul

But Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you; for you have rejected the word of YHVH, and YHVH has rejected you from being king over Israel.” Then Samuel turned to go, but Saul grasped the edge of his robe, and it tore off. So Samuel said to him, “YHVH has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor, who is better than you” (1 Samuel 15:26-28)

Ahijah’s new cloak

Then Jeroboam the son of Nebat . . . rebelled against the king . . . And it came about at that time, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him on the road. Now Ahijah had clothed himself with a new cloak; and both of them were alone in the field. Then Ahijah took hold of the new cloak which was on him and tore it into twelve pieces. And he said to Jeroboam, “Take for yourself ten pieces; for this is what YHVH, the God of Israel says: ‘Behold, I am going to tear the kingdom away from the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes (but he shall have one tribe, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel’” (1 Kings 11:26-32)

Joash’s arrows and Elisha

When Elisha became sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel came down to him, and wept over him and said, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows.” So he took a bow and arrows. Then Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Lay your hand on the bow.” And he laid his hand on it, then Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands. And he said, “Open the window toward the east,” and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot!” So he shot. And he said, “YHVH’s arrow of victory, and the arrow of victory over Aram! For you will defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have put an end to them.” Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground,” and he struck it three times and stopped. Then the man of God became angry at him and said, “You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you put an end to it. But now you shall strike Aram only three times” (2 Kings 13:14-19)

The wondrous works of God on Planet Earth did not cease in Elisha’s day. God still speaks to Israel and to the nations through prophetic acts. I remember back in 1991 how Saddam Hussein’s forces were defeated and when that defeat was announced in Israel – on the Feast of Purim. As Israelis took off their gas masks that day and put on their celebratory Purim masks, this prophetic symbolism spoke to the hearts of many in that country. And in our day, God seems again to be speaking to the world – the world that He beholds through Israel the apple of His eye.

Broken bridges in Baltimore

The US abstention at the UN occurred on Monday, March 25, 2024. One day later, on Tuesday March 26, just before 01:30 am, the 984-feet long Singapore-flagged container vessel the MV DALI lost power, began drifting, and quickly smashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. This bridge, a main commercial artery for America, collapsed in a matter of seconds. That bridge (which opened in March 1977 after five years of construction and cost an estimated $110 million), is named after the poet Francis Scott Key who in 1814 wrote the lyrics for America’s national anthem ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ In 1931 an Act of Congress signed by POTUS Herbert Hoover adopted Key’s song as the American national anthem more than a century after its first publication.

Many commentators were quick to see dramatic symbolism in this tragedy, but few of them have the prophetic software to recognize any connection here vis-à-vis God’s perspectives on America and Israel.

The continuing downgrade in interactions between the present US administration on the State of Israel is very much in the news, and is the substance of many op-eds and social media programs. As former Israeli Foreign Minister remarked in the name he chose for his above-mentioned book Broken Covenant, could it be that this broken bridge is God’s way of pointing to His perspective regarding America’s stance vis-à-vis Israel? Is YHVH speaking to America, and especially to intercessors in the US and worldwide, that the spurning and abandoning of Israel is not something that YHVH the Warrior (see Exodus 15:3) takes lightly?

Speaking of a Singapore connection, it is instructive to note that on Sunday March 25, 2024, Singapore’s Minister of Home Affairs, K. Shanmugan, ordered the country’s Foreign Ministry to insist that the Israeli Embassy remove a post on their official Facebook page which Singapore’s authorities deemed offensive. The Israeli post stated: “Israel is mentioned 43 times in the Quran. On the other hand, Palestine is not mentioned even once . . . Each and every archeological evidence – maps, documents, coins – link the land of Israel to the Jewish people as the indigenous people of the land.” This documented fact was deemed dangerous and unacceptable:

Minister Shanmugam stated “that post on the Israeli embassy's social media page is completely unacceptable. I was very upset when I was told about it. The post is wrong at many levels. It is insensitive and inappropriate. It carries the risk of undermining our safety, security, and harmony in Singapore . . . Posts like these can… inflame tensions and can put the Jewish community here at risk. The anger from the post can potentially spill over into the physical realm,” he added.

Shanmugam added: “This post is an astonishing attempt to rewrite history. The writer of the post should look at UN resolutions, see if Israel’s actions in the past few decades have been consistent with international law before trying to rewrite history.” He added that the post had “selectively [pointed] to religious texts” to make a political point and it was “even worse” that the post made use of the Koran for this purpose: “Often embassies say and put out post statements which we may disagree with but we generally don’t intervene because they represent sovereign countries which have autonomy but where it affects the safety and security of people in Singapore, the peace and harmony that we enjoy, we do and we will intervene,” he said.

Earlier on Monday, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan similarly addressed the Israeli embassy’s post, stating: “It is highly inappropriate to refer to sacred texts to make political points. We have made this clear to the embassy which has taken the post down.”

Outlasting Babylon

There is a popular Hebrew expression: “We survived Pharaoh. This current challenge we will also survive!” The Jewish nation, by God’s grace and protective love, has weathered the fierce storms of the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the jihadi armies of Muhammad, the Crusaders, the pogroms of Ukraine’s Chmielnicki and Tsarist Russia, Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ and Stalin’s Yevsektsiya. Today we are weathering the storms of jihadi terrorism, its comrades and supporters across the globe. “For I, YHVH, do not change! Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed!” (Malachi 3:6).

How should we then pray?

Pray for the leaders of your nation and church to receive divine revelation and repentance regarding what God defines as ‘insults against Israel the people and Israel the land'

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 134 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Part of these 134 that Hamas is also holding onto includes at least 35 corpses of Israeli citizens, held as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org

There’s a Man goin’ ‘round takin’ names

YHVH has a long memory. He remembers His friends and makes note of His enemies:

But Zion said, “YHVH has abandoned me, and Adonai has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you! Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands! Your walls are continually before Me! (Isaiah 49:14-16).

God’s long memory also extends to those nations who attempt to weaken or destroy the Jewish people. He swears on His own holy Name to take vengeance on Israel’s enemies:

“And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Then YHVH said to Moses, ‘Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’ And Moses built an altar and named it YHVH is My Banner; and he said, ‘Because YAH has sworn [literally, with His own hand placed on His divine throne], YHVH will have war against Amalek from generation to generation’” (Exodus 17:13-16).

The Feast of Esther (also known as Purim) lays out this divine game-plan. Persia, then the world’s chief super-power, was influenced by Haman (a deep-state actor) to wreak havoc and genocide against the Jewish people. Yet the God of Jacob (whose name is never even mentioned in the Scroll of Esther) moves silently behind the scenes, morphing anti-Jewish conspiracy into Jewish victory:

“YHVH nullifies the plan of nations. He frustrates the plans of peoples. The plan of YHVH stands forever – the plans of His heart from generation to generation. Blessed is the nation whose God is YHVH, the people He has chosen for His own inheritance” (Psalm 33:10-12).

This international principle (that haters of Israel will be hoisted on the gallows they have built against Israel) is how the Bible fleshes out Genesis 12:3 (i.e., those who disdain Israel will be cursed by YHVH’s own hand)”

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a person sows, this he will also reap!” (Galatians 6:7).

The prophetic principle of Persian Purim

Haman pulled the strings controlling King Ahasuerus, taking a full Persian calendar year to choose the most astrologically suitable date for destroying the entire Jewish nation living under the control of the Persian Empire. With deadly calm, similar to how the Nazis planned the Final Solution at Wannsee on January 20, 1942, Haman set his genocidal plan into motion:

“In the first month, which is the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, Pur (that is, the ‘lot’) was cast before Haman from day to day and from month to month, until the twelfth month, that is the month Adar. Then Haman said . . . ‘There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of all other people and they do not comply with the king’s laws. So it is not in the king’s interest to let them remain. If it is pleasing to the king, let it be decreed that they be eliminated’” (Esther 3:7-9).

The response of the God of Jacob was not long in coming. He granted favor to Queen Esther, brought Mordechai into the King’s council, and gave carte blanche to the nation of Israel to defeat their anti-Semitic enemies:

Now in the twelfth month (that is, the month Adar), on the thirteenth day, when the king’s command and edict were to be put into effect, on the day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, it turned out to the contrary so that the Jews themselves gained mastery over those who hated them. The Jews assembled in their cities throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus to attack those who sought to harm them; and no one could stand against them, because the dread of them had fallen on all the peoples . . . So the Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying; and they did as they pleased to those who hated them. At the citadel in Susa the Jews killed and eliminated five hundred men, and they killed . . . the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Jews’ enemy . . . So the king commanded that it was to be done so, . . . and [the bodies of] Haman’s ten sons were hanged [on the public gallows]. The Jews who were in Susa assembled also on the fourteenth day of the month Adar and killed three hundred men in Susa . . . Now the rest of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces assembled, to defend their lives and rid themselves of their enemies, and to kill 75,000 of those who hated them . . . This was done on the thirteenth day of the month Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested and made it a day of feasting and rejoicing. But the Jews who were in Susa assembled on the thirteenth and the fourteenth of the same month, and they rested on the fifteenth day and made it a day of feasting and rejoicing . . . Then Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, obliging them to celebrate the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same month, annually, because on those days the Jews rid themselves of their enemies, and it was a month which was turned for them from grief into joy, and from mourning into a holiday . . . Therefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. And because of the instructions in this letter, both what they had seen in this regard and what had happened to them, the Jews established and made a custom for themselves, their descendants, and for all those who allied themselves with them, so that they would not fail to celebrate these two days according to their regulation and according to their appointed time annually. So these days were to be remembered and celebrated throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and these days of Purim were not to be neglected by the Jews, or their memory fade from their descendants (Esther 9:1-28)

God established the Feast of Purim as a day for Jews to remember and celebrate for the rest of Jewish history. God’s response to Haman’s planned genocide – even though at that time no Jews had yet been slaughtered – was the annihilation of 75,800 citizens of the Persian Empire. What would the God of Israel’s response be to the Gazan pogroms of October 7 – Hamas’ planned genocide of the Jewish people? And which side would you be on in such a clash – on the side of Haman/Hamas or on the side of those Persians who supported the Jewish people (as it says in Esther 9:27: “The Jews established and made a custom for themselves, their descendants, and for all those who allied themselves with them”)? God remembers and takes note.

Johnny Cash said it well in one of the last songs he penned, titled ‘When the Man comes around’:

“There’s a man goin’ round takin’ names, and He decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won’t be treated all the same.

There’ll be a golden ladder reachin’ down when the Man comes around.

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still. Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.

Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still. Listen to the words long written down when the Man comes around.”

(American IV: The Man Comes Around; May 24, 2002; John Cash; BMG Rights Management)

In every generation

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

The modern State of Israel has enemies, and some allies who sometimes act like enemies. See Melanie Phillips’ sizzling article ‘The American Betrayal of Israel’ for more. Each time enemies of the Jewish state gathered to attack Israel, declaring that they would wipe her out à la Psalm 83:2-5:

For behold, Your enemies make an uproar, and those who hate You have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Your people and conspire together against Your treasured ones. They have said, “Come, and let’s wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.” For they have conspired together with one mind; They make a covenant against You.

It has happened so many times that, as a result of enemy attacks against Jerusalem, the situation plays out with the Jewish state decisively vanquishing their enemies – massive losses for enemy forces in both ordnance and fatalities; Israel becoming stronger on the geo-political playing field, etc. Here are a few examples:

the Sinai Campaign in October 1956 against Egypt, where a combined army of Israeli, British and French troops conquered Sinai from Nasser’s forces

the 1967 Six Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, where the entire Sinai, West Bank, Jerusalem and most of the Golan were returned to Israel

the 1973 Yom Kippur War, where IDF troops encircled the entire Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai and moved to within 62 miles of Cairo and 18 miles from Damascus

the 1982 Operation Grapes of Wrath against PLO and Lebanese forces, resulting in the expulsion of Yasser Arafat and the PLO from Beirut

the 2023-2024 war with Hamas, resulting in the IDF re-occupying nearly all of the Gaza Strip, destroying 75% of Hamas tunnel networks and jihadi operatives, as well as eliminating two of Hamas’ top commanders.

In 1956 and 1973, it was American pressure which held Israel back from decisively defeating Arab armies. It remains to be seen what the American role will accomplish in the current conflict. Current US administration and State Department moves at the moment do not look good for those who seek the good of Jerusalem. For further historical context, see:

Bruce Brill, Deceit of an Ally (a memoir of Yom Kippur treachery)
John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews (How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People)

As a weakened America staggers across the international stage, surrounding ‘hyena’ nations who see the US as a big brother – like Canada, France, Netherlands and the UK – have been emboldened to circle the Jewish state, looking for just that right moment to lunge at the throat of the Daughter of Zion.

“Now these things happened . . . as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall!” (1 Corinthians 10:11-12)

“Sing praises to YHVH, who dwells in Zion! Declare His deeds among the peoples! For He who requires blood remembers them; He does not forget the cry of the needy. Be gracious to me, YHVH! See my oppression from those who hate me, You who lift me up from the gates of death” (Psalm 9:11-13)

Happy Purim!

How should we then pray?

Pray for the protection and deliverance of the Jewish people and their state from all Haman-like enemies

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 136 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO. At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Hamas is also holding onto many corpses as bargaining chips

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

Pray that Israel’s leadership be granted justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects, and for minimal loss of life for Israel’s defense forces and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

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) through: www.davidstent.org