When the sons of Adam put God on trial

The spinner of the Narnia tales, British author C.S. Lewis once said:

Repaying Babylon

The modern world has a primitive understanding of the God of Jacob. Instead of acknowledging divine justice, today’s humanity treats evil murderers with kid gloves, while scoffing at Him who gave us the covenants. Yet even now, YHVH leaves a trail of Scriptural breadcrumbs for us, detailing how what He thinks about Israel’s enemies, and how His vengeance will soon erupt against them.

This divine viewpoint and these God-breathed values are rejected on a daily basis by the UN, the EU, the UK and the US, And it is no wonder: that is because, by and large, the world rejects both the Author of the Bible and His perspectives:  The Prophet put it succinctly: “To the Teaching [Torah] and to the Testimony! If they do not speak in accordance with this word, it is because they have no dawn!” (Isaiah 8:20).

Over the past eight months, the world’s media and street demonstrators have justified Hamas’ atrocities (its rape, torture, murder and kidnapping of the children of Israel) while throwing an accusatory spotlight against the IDF for its defensive actions (its attempts to free its hostages, stop rocket fire against its citizens, and destroy the jihadi armies attempting to burn and crush the Jewish state from all sides). As man puts YHVH and His Jewish people ‘in the dock’ – on trial, whether at the International Court of Justice at The Hague or at the United Nations in New York – the Bible puts the entire planet on notice: the curses of Genesis 12:3 are already descending on superpower and micro-state alike. This is YHVH’s prophesied response to the nations’ cold and cruel heart attitudes to both the Jewish people and their state.

The nations of Moses’ day – conquered and conquerors

The nations of the Middle East in Moses’ day were used to the reality that invading nations would conquer other peoples. The conquered nations then faded off the pages of history. YHVH Himself explained this realpolitik to Moses: the God of Jacob gave certain nations the command to conquer, dispossess and destroy other nations who were to be judged for their sins (see Genesis 15:16; Leviticus 18:24-28). In Deuteronomy 2, YHVH lists five nations which were to be conquered, dispossessed and destroyed at His divine command. Five other nations would do the invading, the conquering and the destroying.

This YHVH may not be a ‘politically correct’ God, but He is the One whom we serve:

Moses and Joshua, the commanders of Israel’s armies – on trial before the World Court?

The writer of the Book of Deuteronomy tells us: “Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom YHVH knew face to face, for all the signs and wonders which YHVH sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants, and all his land – and for all the mighty power and all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).

Moses’ commission to Joshua was to destroy all the nations living in Canaan and to dispossess them. One of the last things Moses ever said to all the people of Israel was the following: “I am 120 years old today; I am no longer able to go out and come in, and YHVH has told me, ‘You shall not cross this Jordan.’ It is YHVH your God who is going to cross ahead of you. He Himself will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them! Joshua is the one who is going to cross ahead of you, just as YHVH has spoken” (Deuteronomy 31:2-3).

Moses passed this divine commission on to Joshua, who carried it out faithfully, as the Scriptures bear witness: “So Joshua struck all the land, the Hill Country and the Negev and the Shephelah [Lowland] and the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as YHVH, the God of Israel, had commanded” (Joshua 10:40).

The only exception was the case of the inhabitants of Gibeon. The Gibeonites, a Hivite tribe living just north of Jerusalem (see Joshua 9:1-2,7), craftily deceived Joshua and his armies, pretending that they were ‘from a very distant country’ (see Joshua 9:9): “So they answered Joshua and said, ‘Since your servants were fully informed that YHVH your God had commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you, we feared greatly for our lives because of you, and did this thing’” (Joshua 9 :24).

How does God describe Moses, his commission and his leading of the armies of Israel against Egypt and the desert tribes? “Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom YHVH knew face to face, for all the signs and wonders which YHVH sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants, and all his land – and for all the mighty power and all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel!” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).

Jephthah the Judge facing the Court of Ammon

The Palestinian desire to destroy the Jewish people and their state is not a new dynamic. Over 3,300 years ago the Ammonites of modern Jordan joined battle against the Jewish people, attempting to conquer, destroy and dispossess the Jewish people from formerly Amorite (and not Ammonite) lands. In their pre-combat negotiations with Jephthah the Judge, they claimed that the Jewish people had occupied territories which should rightly belong to the Ammonites. Jephthah’s envoys explained in semitic ‘diplomatese’ that these Ammonite assertions were actually ‘fake news,’ and that Israel had never conquered territories given by YHVH to the Ammonite (who were in fact distant relatives to the sons of Israel through Abraham’s nephew Lot). Jephthah’s diplomats rehearse recent 300-year-old Middle Eastern history to clarify this point:

The king of the Ammonites refused to accept the historical facts of the situation (like the Palestinians also refuse to do), and went to war against Israel. The battle was decisively won by the Jewish people, for YHVH had handed the Ammonites over to the sons of Jacob: “So Jephthah crossed over to the sons of Ammon to fight against them. And YHVH handed them over to him. He inflicted a very great defeat on them from Aro’er to the entrance of Minnit, twenty cities, and as far as Abel Kramim. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel” (Judges 11:32-33).

Samuel the Judge rules on Amalek and Agag

Balaam of Mesopotamia had prophesied by the Holy Spirit in Moses’ day that “Amalek was the first of the nations, but his end shall be destruction” (Numbers 24:20).  Balaam also prophesied about Judah’s coming Messiah, proclaiming that he would be even greater than King Agag of the ruling dynasty of Amalek:

Four hundred years later, an Amalekite King also named Agag (probably a dynastic descendant of the Agag mentioned in Numbers 24) is spotlighted by the God of Israel. King Saul was given his first assignment in the days of Samuel the Judge, and the task was a similar one to those given to Moses, Joshua and Jephthah. Saul was to totally conquer, destroy and dispossess both the nation of Amalek and its king Agag. But the Bible reveals that Saul failed to carry out YHVH’s prophesied judgments – judgments which reflected God’s international guidelines as per Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse:”

The God whom we serve, the God of Moses, Joshua, Jephthah and Samuel, is deadly serious about His justice coming to pass, and about bringing vengeance on those who harm the Jewish people. He sometimes waits patiently for the right time for His judgments to be carried out, as in the Days of Noah, or regarding the generation in the desert, or the years between the crucifixion and the destruction of the Second Temple. The microscope with which we consider rapidly moving present-day events needs to have a biblical view of time here – a marathon-man perspective.

 Repaying Babylon for all the evil they have done in Zion
 

We live in a day which mocks divine retribution and foams at the mouth with murderous hatred whenever the Jewish state makes war against its destroyers. World media shapes people’s thought and attitudes, shaping anti-Semitism and anti-Israel movements. These satanic minefields are even now exploding across the earth. Let us be on guard: YHVH’s vengeance against all nations who raise their hand to harm Israel is soon coming.

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:
FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA
 
Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

 

Pulling a Messianic rabbit out of a Pentecostal hat

Tonight marks the onset of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost (a Greek word meaning ‘fiftieth’). The original Hebrew name for the holiday is Shavuot (‘weeks’), referring to the seven-week counting period between Passover and Pentecost – seven weeks of seven days each, culminating in the celebration of the holiday on the fiftieth day (Leviticus 23:15-21). 
 

Hebrew harvest time
 
The first agricultural harvest of the biblical New Year (which occurs at Passover time, according to Exodus 12:1-2) is the barley harvest (see Exodus 9:31; Ruth 1:22). The Book of Ruth takes place close to Passover time, during the barley harvest.
 
The next harvest comes soon after, and it is the wheat harvest (see Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). The Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost celebrates the wheat harvest, as these above passages explain. Fifty days separate between these two harvests.
 
The Festival of Shavuot is also called the ‘Feast of the Reaping’ in Exodus 23:16, where we are told to celebrate “the reaping of the first fruits of your labors which you have sown in the field” (also see Numbers 28:2).
 
Shavuot is an agricultural festival in the Bible. The declaration of thanksgiving in Deuteronomy 16:1-11 was proclaimed by Jewish farmers (probably on Shavuot) when they brought their first fruits offering to the House of YHVH in Jerusalem.
 
Moses established that all Jewish men needed to come up to Jerusalem three times a year, to appear before YHVH’s presence with offerings (Exodus 23:14-17; 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16). This feast was one of the shalosh regalim (sholesh regolim in Yiddish) – the three pilgrim feasts.

Change you can’t believe in

The Five Books of Moses present exact and clear days when to celebrate feasts. Here are some examples:

But when it comes to the date when the Mosaic Covenant was given, the God of Israel does not give an exact calendar date for the event, nor does He command the Jewish people that they should celebrate that event as a Feast or on a certain day.

In search of the lost date

The Scriptures do not give an exact date for the Giving of the Mosaic Covenant. That event happened somewhere within a two-month period, but the Bible does not specify when (Exodus 19:1, 16; 24:4, 16; 34:28; 40:17). It’s a little like Christmas: December 24/25 was chosen not because of a specific date given in the Gospel records, but because of pre-existing pagan Roman traditions. People tend to like dates and, when the Bible is silent about such things, folks tend to choose dates anyway – ‘everyone does what’s right in his own eyes’ (see Judges 21:25).

In the Books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, God communicates a threefold emphasis of keeping the Feast of Shavuot:

In all these passages, the Bible is utterly silent about a date for the Giving of the Mosaic Covenant, or about any connection between the Feast of Shavuot and the Giving of the Mosaic Torah.

Here is the timeline given in the Bible of the events which transpired between the first Passover in Egypt and the Giving of the Decalogue in the Sinai Desert. This biblical timeline shows that it is impossible to make dogmatic declarations regarding the Giving of the Torah as happening on the same day as the Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost.

Jumping Jubilee!
 
Over one hundred years before the birth of Yeshua, Jewish scribes translated the Bible from Hebrew into Greek. Their translation is known as the ‘Septuagint’ (a Greek word meaning ‘the seventy’ – referring to the traditional number of seventy scribes who did the translation work). The Septuagint uses the Greek word Pentēkostē when translating Leviticus 25:10, to refer to ‘the fiftieth’ – in this case, the 50th year of Jubilee. In Yeshua’s day, Jews would call the Feast ‘Shavuot’ when speaking Hebrew,  or Pentēkostē (Pentecost in modern English) when speaking Greek.
 
Paul the Apostle marked his personal calendar, taking note of Shavuot/Pentecost. He wanted to come up to Jerusalem in time to celebrate the Day of Shavuot/Pentecost (Acts 20:16). His apostolic faith was recognizably Jewish as well (Acts 21:24; 28:17).

When I studied Second Temple Jewish History at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, my professor Dr. Menahem Stern (the top world scholar of that discipline) pointed out how Acts 2:9-11 was an excellent description of the extent of the Jewish Diaspora in those days – the countries to which Israel had been exiled and still remained in Exile:
 

Shavuot meant that Jews from all over the world would come up to Jerusalem to honor YHVH’s commandment. Though a few proselytes (Gentile converts to Judaism) also came up, it was Jews from across the Roman world – from Arabia to Asia, from Egypt to Elam – who all got together for a national Thanksgiving Day celebration in Jerusalem. This happened every year – Jewish people celebrating a Jewish feast in a Jewish city.
 

The message of Messianic Pentecost
 
Shimon (better known today as Simon Peter) is filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, as are his spiritual comrades. Flames danced like togues of fire on their heads, and they all begin to speak in unlearned languages – the languages of the countries of their Exile (Acts 2:6-8). The good news of Messiah Yeshua and His resurrection is being proclaimed in the very heart of Jerusalem!
 
Peter said that these amazing manifestations were a reflection of Joel’s Last Days prophecies. Earthquakes, world-shaking signs and the outpouring of the Ruach HaKodesh would characterize these Last Days. In the same way, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 was a down payment, a promise that all these events will one day come to pass, and that all the Jewish people will be filled with the Spirit of YHVH.
 
Eight years later, the Good News of Messiah Yeshua was still only being preached to Jewish people. But three breakthrough events occurred in Acts 8-10: Philip was led by the Spirit to share the Message with an Ethiopian eunuch; Saul was miraculously brought into the Kingdom; and Peter was brought up to Caesarea to share his Jewish message with the family of the Roman centurion of the Italian Cohort. That whole Roman family repented, came into the kingdom, and spoke in tongues – but as Gentiles who had never converted to Judaism.
 

Messianic Gentiles or converts to Rabbinic Judaism?
 

This business of allowing Gentiles to have access to Jewish New Covenant blessings and to have equal fellowship with the God of Israel alongside Jews (Paul’s gospel) – this was shocking to the majority of Pharisees as well as to the other streams of Judaism. Most Jewish religious leaders feared that this new upstart Messianic movement, by allowing Gentiles in, would overwhelm rabbinic Judaism’s role as ‘watchman on the Mosaic walls.’
 
Whereas Messianic Jews such as Paul declared that Gentile followers of Yeshua could now be fellow heirs of the same Messianic body and fellow-citizens with the Jewish saints (Ephesian 2:19-3:6) without converting to Judaism or being circumcised, the rabbis countered that Shavuot would now have a different meaning and emphasis: the hero of Shavuot would actually be a heroine. Ruth was now moved from the Barley Harvest time (as per the Book of Ruth) to the Shavuot wheat harvest season. The rabbis turned their spotlight on Ruth, tweaking the narrative and morphing her into a convert to Rabbinic Judaism.

Rabbinic pushback – the New Covenant is not new; it’s simply a refurbished Mosaic Covenant
 
The rabbis had an even more serious objection to apostolic Messianic teaching. Though Paul’s lifestyle was Mosaic in practice (see Acts 28:17) as was the pattern of all Messianic Jews at that time (see Acts 22:3; 23:6; 26:1-7), Paul taught that one of the main purposes of the Mosaic covenant teachings (Torah in Hebrew means ‘teaching’) was to lead the Jewish people to Messiah Yeshua. Paul adds that when the Jewish people come to Messiah Yeshua, they are no longer under the guardianship of the Mosaic covenant. Paul uses the Greek term paidagogos, which referred to a bodyguard who would take the child from his home through the Greek streets, protecting him and bringing him safely to the Greek school. Paul calls the Mosaic covenant a paidagogos (often translated ‘a tutor’) which would lead Israel to Messiah and His New Covenant:

The Rabbis understood that Paul was interpreting the Hebrew of Jeremiah 31:31-34 literally, to mean that the New Covenant was ‘not like’ the Mosaic covenant. Their counter-reaction involved closing down open discussion of Jeremiah 31, insisting that Jeremiah must have only meant ‘a renewed covenant.’ But this rabbinic decision violated the peshat, the clear exegetical meaning of Jeremiah 31:32, “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the Land of Egypt.” Jeremiah was clearly prophesying: the New Covenant was a Jewish covenant, and that the New Covenant was not like the Mosaic covenant.

 
So the rabbis, like Mary Poppins, reached into their magic carpet bag and pulled out a newly morphed date on the Jewish calendar – they proclaimed that, from now on and based on their own authority, the Feast of Shavuot actually occurred on the same day that the Mosaic Covenant was given. From now on, Shavuot would be morphed into a holiday celebrating the Mosaic Torah and not the Inauguration of the New Covenant. The Rabbis would now champion the Giving of the Law, and the New Covenant Messianic movement’s main message would be undercut.
 

Pulling a non-kosher rabbit out of a Messianic hat
 

Most Messianic leaders and teachers have been taught by both the Jewish community’s leaders and by their own Messianic leaders and teachers, that the rabbinic perspectives on Shavuot and the rabbinic perspectives on the Mosaic covenant are the only kosher story in town. I have dear Messianic friends and leaders who deny that the New Covenant is actually a New Covenant. Instead, they teach that it is simply a new and improved Mosaic Covenant.
 
I have dear Messianic friends who believe, as the rabbis teach, that Shavuot is when the Mosaic covenant was given and that Ruth is the poster child for friendly Gentiles – and that Gentiles who are friendly to Jewish things should convert to rabbinic Judaism.
 
It is my conviction that these dear friends err (see Matthew 22:29) not knowing what the Scriptures say (or don’t say, in this case!). They seem to be unaware of both Jewish and rabbinic history – and also unaware of the early clashes between Messianic apostolic teaching and rabbinic opposition to the Messianic message on these points.
 

Tradition!

My dear friend now with the Lord, Dr. Louis Goldberg (former Professor of Jewish Studies at Moody Bible Institute; www.messianicjewish.net/products/fire-on-the-mountain-past-renewals-present-revivals-and-the-coming-return-of-israel-by-dr-louis-goldberg), often taught what has been explained above: that the rabbinic connecting of Shavuot/Pentecost to the Giving of the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai is not based on biblical foundations, but on rabbinic desire to shift focus away from the amazing Messianic events of Acts 2.

The accepted Rabbinic perspective refuses to accept an Acts 2 connection with Shavuot/Pentecost, since that would involve accepting the inauguration of a New Covenant – one which would include Gentiles in the Jewish Body of Messiah through faith in Yeshua alone. Instead, rabbinic Judaism tried to weld the inauguration of the Mosaic covenant into a pre-existing Shavuot/Pentecost. Rather than accepting Gentile salvation as coming about through faith in the Jewish Messiah Yeshua, rabbinic commentators now made the Book of Ruth do double duty: Ruth herself would now be presented as a convert to rabbinic Judaism, and Shavuot would be highlighted as the day of the Giving of the Sinaitic Covenant.

Let’s remember that YHVH never established a biblical feast commemorating the Giving of the Mosaic Covenant. There is not even a clear date in the Scriptures as to when that blessed event happened. The rabbinic plastic surgery done of Shavuot/Pentecost (morphing it into a feast celebrating the Mosaic Covenant) occurred at least 1,600 years after Moses, and perhaps a century or two after Acts 2.

In light of all of the above biblical and historical information, could it be that the emphasis on Shavuot/Pentecost as a ‘Mosaic Covenant Day’ is actually a distraction? Could it be that this rabbinic tradition is in fact undercutting what YHVH is trying to teach us through the Holy Scriptures, and de-emphasizing what the God of Jacob would like us to understand?

 

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:
 
FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 
BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA
 
Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

 

History repeats itself – the ten spies and their bad report

Saul of Tarsus – better known as Paul the Apostle – helps us in knowing how to apply principles in the Hebrew Scriptures to our own lives: “Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they indeed craved them . . . Now these things happened to them 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 10:6-12).

A burningly relevant example for us is found in the story of the Twelve Spies found in the Book of Numbers:

The bad report of The Ten – rebellion against God and fear of the enemy

YHVH the God of Israel commanded Moses to send out twelve spies – one for each tribe – on a special operation. They were to spy out the Promised Land in preparation for Israel’s invasion and settlement of that entire land. YHVH had commanded Moses and the Jewish people to conquer and remove all who were temporarily occupying that land – Canaanites, Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites Amorites, etc. The spies started their journey from beside the present Egyptian border just south of Gaza (the wilderness of Zin – see Numbers 20:1; 27:14; 33:36; 34:3-4; Joshua 15:1-3) and moved east, all the way to the Salt Sea (today called ‘the Dead Sea’). They then headed straight north, passing the Lake of Galilee and Mount Hermon (see Joshua 13:5; Judges 3:3; 1 Chronicles 13:5) up to Levo Hamat (near Baalbek in present-day Syria) on the Orontes River (1 Kings 8:65; 2 Kings 14:25). The biblical borders of the Promised Land include this section of modern Syria, as well as segments of present-day Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Ezekiel 48:1 notes that Levo Hamat will also be part of the millennial borders of the Messianic Jewish kingdom.

The spies came back with glowing reports about the fruitfulness of the land (‘an exceedingly good land’), as well as accurate information on the enemies’ military installations and infantry which the armies of YHVH (see 1 Samuel 17:26) would soon confront. This first part of their report was helpful and based on good intelligence; it was not ‘fake news.’ But ten of the twelve spies added another perspective – their own personal opinion that the God of Israel lacked wisdom and military sense in sending the Jewish people in to conquer and possess the Promised Land.

Caleb and Joshua (the two good spies) declared that God’s calling and assignment was realistically attainable – that the ten Canaanite tribes (see Genesis 15:19-20) were bereft of YHVH’s protection, and that, instead, YHVH was with the people of Israel, and that the God of Jacob would bring His promises to pass regarding the Jewish homeland. But the other ten spies reported ‘the news’ differently: the Canaanite tribes were too strong – the Israelites would never be able to defeat them – indeed, the Canaanites “are a people of great stature.” The ten spies’ bad report declared that the Jewish people “are like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we are in the {Canaanite’s] sight.” The Ten added that the Land of Canaan would only bring a curse on the Israelites: “This is a land that devours its inhabitants!”

What was the effect of this bad report on the Jewish people? The entire nation cried out and wept. Then they grumbled against their leaders Moses and Aaron. They declared that it would have been better for all Israel to have remained slaves in Egypt or even to die in the desert rather than to follow Moses and Aaron. They ‘prophesied’ that the Canaanites would murder them all and kidnap their wives and children, if they foolishly held onto YHVH’s promise of trying to claim and hold onto the Promised Land. They then held a public rally and proclaimed that Israel needed to choose a new leader – in modern terminology, they called for new elections.

Spiritual warfare and the evening news

As it was in the days of Joshua, so it is in our day. Messages of unbelief – that the Israeli armed forces will not be able to defeat the enemy (in this case the Islamist savages, rapists, murderers and kidnappers known as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority’s al-Aqsa Brigades) – flow like a polluted river from US spokesmen and American talking heads like Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, his deputy, POTUS Joe Biden, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. On the Israeli side, there are also ‘ten spies’ who bring similar evil reports of unbelief. These include political enemies of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition (some of these ‘spies’ possess intelligence, military and political credentials). These ‘Ten’ resolutely declare that Israel cannot defeat Hamas. They warn that Israel’s decision to enter Rafah in southwestern Gaza will only bring a defeat for Israel. They repeatedly proclaim that the PM is crazy and that new elections are immediately needed. They insist that Israel’s PM cannot be trusted in matters of security. Like Korah, Datan, Aviram and On (along with “250 leaders of the congregation chosen in the assembly, men of renown”), they repeated announce to Israel’s leadership “You have gone far enough!” (Numbers 16:1-3).

One of Israel’s top intelligence journalists and strategic affairs correspondents is Yossi Melman. On July 20, 2023 he wrote an analysis in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “A Military Coup Is Underway in Israel – and It’s Completely Justified:”

Top British journalist Melanie Phillips states that “we owe Ha’aretz a debt of gratitude for tearing aside at least one of the veils of obfuscation to call this crisis out for what it is – a military coup.”

“You shall not give a false report!”

The spreading of false or evil reports is nothing new. In the Book of Exodus, the God of Israel warns His people to stay far away from mass movements which, knowingly or unwittingly, pervert justice and stir up evil: “You shall not give a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked person to be a malicious witness. You shall not follow the crowd in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to join together with a crowd in order to pervert justice” (Exodus 23:1-2).

Another variation of this dynamic occurred in the days of Nehemiah, when he struggled to counteract evil reports brought by false prophets. The evil goals in this case were to strike fear into the hearts of Israel’s returning pioneers and cause them to abandon the struggle for national restoration, both spiritual and physical:

Today, many of the bearers of false prophecy are seated at the news desks of mainstream TV media, both in Israel and around the world. And many of the bearers of malicious witness are the writers of op-ed columns found in the most respected prize-winning newspapers which present ‘all the news that’s fit to print.’ We must all be cautious and careful when drinking from the wells of anti-Israel and anti-Christian news media. The best gold is never found on the surface of the earth!

Promises, promises – peace, peace – PLO, PLO

Over 2,600 years ago the prophet Ezekiel spoke of YHVH’s wrath against “the prophets of Israel who prophesy to Jerusalem, and who see a vision of peace for her when there is no peace” (Ezekiel 13:16). The God of Jacob soberly warned those leaders: “It is definitely because they have misled My people by saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace. And when anyone builds a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash. So tell those who plaster it over with whitewash, that it will fall” (Ezekiel 13:10-11).

Just before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple at the hands of Babylon, Jeremiah repeated the same prophetic warning with tears: “They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ But there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).

Today, false declarations of peace and false roadmaps to peace abound. They are sprayed across the screens of our TV screens by the spokesmen and spokeswomen of superpowers without the slightest hint of accountability. These false news items and evil reports soon crumble before our very eyes:

Repeated evidence of Hamas theft of humanitarian aid has piled up since Blinken’s and Biden’s bold declarations: here (December 11, 2023), here (February 3, 2024), here (February 17, 2024), here (March 19, 2024), here (April 22, 2024), here (May 3, 2024), here (May 3, 2024) and here (May 30, 2024). Yet no action has been taken by the strongest superpower on earth – only the empty echoes of false peace murmur across the sands of Gaza.

Lying like a rug

The main talking points of politicians, diplomats and Hamas have all been converging over the past eight months. From their declarations, white is black and black is white:

A world-renowned military expert shares some wisdom here regarding Israel’s military track record and civilian casualties. Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander of UK military forces in Afghanistan (leading Operation Fingal in Afghanistan from July to November 2003), Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia. He served with NATO and the UN, and participated in the Gulf War in Iraq. He is a consultant on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee, where he wrote the British forces doctrine on dealing with suicide bombings. Colonel Kemp recently addressed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, stating that “no army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel.”

As the nations of the world champ impatiently at the bit to overthrow Israel’s present government and to set up another one more responsive to American diktats, the baying of the hounds gets closer. Mighty nations are calling for portions of the land promised by YHVH to Jacob’s children, to be divided among Ishmael’s and Esau’s descendants. This is in gross violation of Genesis 25:6, 18; 27:29; 36:6-9. 43; Deuteronomy 2andJoshua 24:4). YHVH surely promises judgment on those nations who set their hand to divide the land of Israel (Joel 3:2)

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

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

They make shrewd plans against Your people

Once a year in the month of May, Israel commemorates its fallen soldiers. Called Yom HaZikaron in Hebrew, its official name in English is the Memorial Day for Israel’s Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Hostile Acts. Most Israelis attend a ceremony during that day, standing to attention for two minutes while air raid sirens wail, commemorating the sober sacrifice of those who died defending the Jewish state. As the nation mourns, Psalm 83 is usually read aloud. This psalm of Asaph recounts how Middle Eastern enemies have sought our annihilation for over 3,000 years. The Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad are new names for ancient foes. The names of Edom. Ammon and Moab (Jordan and the West Bank), the Ishmaelites and Hagrites (Egyptian Sinai, Saudi Arabia), Philistines (the region of Gaza), Gebal and Tyre (Lebanon), Assyria (northern Iraq) – all of those countries right now have Israel in their sights, as jihadi terrorists roam the desert sands with visions of murder, torture, rape and kidnap dancing in their heads.

These Middle Eastern enemies, like their fellow-travelers (the rioting students on Western campuses), are wise in their own eyes and see themselves as cunning in their conspiracies. Their cries “to wipe Israel out as a nation, so that its name will be no longer be remembered” have been modernized – morphed – into “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Jew-free.” The God of Jacob notes that, in attacking the Jewish people and the Jewish state, they are also conspiring together against YHVH the Warrior God (see Exodus 15:3). And the Psalmist calls on the Power of Deep Heaven to “terrify them with Your storm, and fill their faces with dishonor:”

Deal with them as with Midian, as with Sisera and Jabin at the river of Kishon, who were destroyed at En Dor, who became like dung for the ground. Make their nobles like Orev and Ze’ev, and all their leaders like Zebah and Zalmunna, who said, “Let’s possess for ourselves the pastures of God.”  My God, make them like the whirling dust, like chaff before the wind. Like fire that burns the forest, and like a flame that sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with Your heavy gale, and terrify them with Your storm. Fill their faces with dishonor, so that they will seek Your name, YHVH.
May they be ashamed and dismayed forever, and may they be humiliated and perish, so that they will know that You alone, whose name is YHVH, are the Most-High over all the earth. (Psalm 83:9-18)

The rise of the anti-Semitic kings

The Hebrew Bible grants insight into the motivations of anti-Semitic and genocidal leaders. The infamous Haman passionately desired that every knee bow to him, but Mordecai’s stalwart Jewish refusal drove Haman crazy with murderous hatred: “When Haman saw that Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage to him, Haman was filled with rage. But he considered it beneath his dignity to kill Mordecai alone, for they had told him who the people of Mordecai were. So Haman sought to annihilate all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, who were found throughout the kingdom of Ahasuerus” (Esther 3:5-6).

To be ‘Anti-Jew’ at its spiritual root is also to be ‘anti-Christ.’ That was King David’s perspective in the Second Psalm: “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers conspire together against YHVH and against His Anointed” (Psalm 2:2). YHVH answers them: “But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain!” (Psalm 2:6). Today’s explosion of anti-Semitism – of anti-Jewish expressions, actions and political machinations – dovetails with the murderous rise of Islamist anti-Jewish-state attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Now is not the time to be gazing in the mirror with narcissistic fascination, as the enemies of the God of Jacob are raging against His chosen people. “They said in their heart, ‘Let’s completely subdue them.’ They have burned all the meeting places of God in the land” (Psalm 74:8). The anti-Semitic nations of the world are targeting the Jewish people for destruction – the nation that YHVH call ‘His turtledove:’ “Remember this, YHVH, that the enemy has taunted You, and a foolish people has treated Your name disrespectfully. Do not give the soul of Your turtledove to the wild animal! Do not forget the life of Your afflicted forever! Consider the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the places of violence!” (Psalm 74:18-20).

Like mushrooms sprouting after the rain

The blood of Israeli victims of Hamas rape, murder and terror was shed on the earth of Israel’s Western Negev on October 7, 2023. Yet barely 24 hours later, anti-Israel demonstrators gathered across the United States – before the blood of the victims had congealed on the ground. These speakers and marchers celebrated the jihadi massacres, crowing that all Israelis are legitimate military targets; that Palestinians have the right to kill Israelis “by any means necessary;” that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are only “freedom fighters;” and that these jihadi atrocities were part of a righteous process of “decolonialization.”

At the end of October 2023, Shai Davidai, Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia University’s (CU) Business School, publicly expressed his perspectives and feelings about the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. Almost immediately he and his wife Yardenne were attacked by CU staff and students, were shunned and subjected to emailed anti-Jewish attacks and graphics reminiscent of the Nazi publication Der Stürmer. Then, on February 14, 2024, he wrote an article in Tablet magazine about the intense anti-Semitic responses at Columbia. He noted as background that he was a liberal, leftist Israeli, but that these attacks were not directed at his politics but at his identity as a Jew.

On Monday, April 22, 2024 Assistant Professor Davidai was barred from entering the grounds of the university by the administration, though he was a teaching professor in good standing.  CU deactivated Davidai’s Columbia ID card, preventing him from accessing the main campus.  In an email sent that morning, CU Chief Operating Officer Cass Holloway told Davidai that “to maintain the safety of the Columbia community” and “because of the obvious risk to the safety of students and other members of our community,” he would not be permitted to enter the campus where pro-Hamas and anti-Israeli demonstrators were illegally gathered for violent demonstrations which had lasted for six days at that point. Davidai had advertised that there would be a “peaceful sit in at Columbia’s declared ‘Liberation Zone’” on X/Twitter for Monday morning aimed at “paving a safe space for Jewish & Zionist students on campus & standing up against terrorism.” Columbia decided to continue permitting Hamas-affiliated students to occupy the campus and not to arrest them, but at the same time to forbid Jews defending against anti-Semitism and against anti-Zionism from accessing University property.

Professor Davidai tweeted later that day: “Earlier today @ Columbia University refused to let me onto campus. Why? Because they cannot protect my safety as a Jewish professor. This is 1938.” Davidai later added:

Gaza in Manhattan

At 04:00 on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 on the East Butler Lawn at Columbia University in Manhattan, approximately 70 protestors hoisted banners reading ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ and ‘Liberated Zone’ (an antifa anarchist term more common to West Coast violent riots) and proceeded to set up tents. ‘Revolutionary’ activities were offered to participants, including a ‘teach-in’ and a film screening.

On that same Wednesday night, demonstrators were filmed calling for Hamas to “kill another [IDF] soldier now.”

Then, on Friday night, April 19, 2024, demonstrators chanted (also filmed on video): “[Izz ad-Din] al-Qassam [Brigades – Hamas jihadi terror group], make us proud, take another soldier out,” and “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground. Go Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too.”

On Saturday night, April 20, 2024, a leader of the Palestine Solidarity Working Group proclaimed: “Let it be known that it was the al-Aqsa Flood [October 7 jihadi pogrom by Hamas on Israeli kibbutzim] that put the global intifada back on the table again. And it is the sacrificial spirit of the Palestinian freedom fighters that will guide every struggle on every corner of the earth to victory. How far are we willing to go in losing all of the trappings of a respectable life, the material spoils that we have been taught to value as individuals? Remember that militancy breeds Resistance. Thousands upon thousands of students around the world have been moved to rebel because of your militancy!”

Also, on Saturday night April 20, 2024, a pro-Hamas demonstrator stood in front of a group a Jewish students who were singing ‘Hatikvah’ (Israel’s national anthem) while waving US and Israeli flags. This pro-Hamas demonstrator carried a sign (with an arrow pointing at the Jews present) with the words written on that sign, “Al-Qasam’s next targets.” ‘Izz ad-Din al-Qassam’ is the full name of the Hamas jihadi terrorist organization who raped and murdered Israelis on October 7, 2023.

Noah Miller, a Jewish CU student, spoke by Zoom from his parents’ house in Houston: “[The protesters] got what they wanted. The campus is ‘Judenrein’  [Nazi word meaning ‘Jew-free’] now. It’s occupied territory. It’s so funny they call it a ‘de-occupation’, or ‘liberated zone’, but Jews are not allowed.”

Between April 21-24, 2024, videos taken inside the CU encampment have shown students chanting “Zionists not allowed here” and “Go back to Poland,” accompanied by calls for “10,000 October 7ths” (the date of Hamas’ mass rape-slaughter-kidnapping of Israelis). A CU student who would only use her first name out of concern for her own personal safety, Sabrina, said this: “There are students wearing yellow vests with their keffiyehs, and if they see someone engaging with someone outside the encampment, they pull them away and say, ‘You’re not allowed to talk to them.’ They say things like, ‘Kill all the Jews,’ and, ‘We want one Arab state.’ What people don’t realize is the campus has become a hotbed for radical antisemitism. It’s like the Hitler Youth. They say things like, ‘A Zionist has entered the camp.’ They view us as an entity that can be eradicated. I feel a lot more scared now than I was after October 7.”

An Instagram video taken April 23, 2024 at CU shows a poster of terror-chief Secretary-General Ahmad Sa’adat of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the Marxist-Leninist PLO/PFLP is designated as a terror organization by the US, the EU and Canada) in the background, while anti-Israel activists sing, “Oh Hamas, our beloved, strike, strike Tel Aviv.” Flags and activists of this terror organization have appeared at various campus take-overs in the past few weeks, including in Evanston, Illinois; at the speaker’s stage at Pittsburgh‘s University of Pennsylvania; at Rutger’s University, New Jersey; University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Yale; MIT; NYU, etc. The PFLP is well-known for outrages such as the 2014 attack on a Jerusalem synagogue (where attackers armed with meat cleavers killed four rabbis, three of them Israeli Americans); participation in the October 7 Hamas massacres, etc. For a more comprehensive timeline and description of their terrorist attacks, see: https://www.gov.il/en/pages/background-on-the-pflp-17-oct-2001.

On May 7, 2024, Eyal Yakoby, a senior studying Political Science at U of Penn, took to social media, testifying that he was an eyewitness to local protesters at the U of Penn chanting “We don’t want no Zionists here”; “Kill the Zionists;” “Zios get f****d”; “Hitler Youth,” and “Hitler’s children.”

Two weeks before Columbia University exploded in anti-Israel pro-Hamas rioting, Charlotte Kates (international coordinator of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – which advocates the releasing of jailed PFLP terrorists, and often shares PFLP terror communiques) and her husband Khaled Barakat (a senior member of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine/PFLP) presented a two-hour tirade to Columbia University’s hardest-core anti-Israel activists  – members of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Group (CUADG). The seminar was titled ‘Resistance 101‘ – a revealing name, as the Arabic term for Hamas is Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya, translated into English as ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement.’

Kates stated at that meeting: “There is nothing wrong with being a fighter in Hamas” and “These are the people who are on the front lines defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.” She praised Hamas’ October 7 terror massacre for showing “the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism.” Her husband, a senior PFLP terrorist, lauded airplane hijackings as “one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance has engaged in.” Kates’ comments were made just off-campus from Columbia University, at a meeting of the Columbia University student group CUADG, a recognized bona fide student organization. One month later, that same group would spearhead the student putsch,

In addition to Kates and Barakat, the Sunday event featured Within Our Lifetime founder Nerdeen Kiswani, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Instagram removed Within Our Lifetime’s account in February 2024 and Meta did the same in March 2024, after Kiswani used it to endorse Hamas’ jihadi attack on Israel, and to advocate for “whatever means necessary it takes” to topple Israel. The three speakers at the Columbia-related conference routinely praised Hamas and Hezbollah, advocated for armed resistance against Israel, and encouraged attendees to “be of service … to the resistance movements that are on the front lines fighting Zionism.”

‘Resistance 101’ was originally scheduled to take place at Columbia’s Barnard College, the university’s all-female undergraduate school. The Columbia University Apartheid Divest Group (CUADG) student organizers said they were forced to “change rooms” at the last moment after a Ph.D. student lodged a complaint to the university. The organizers added that the change was “part of a long line of Columbia’s long line of repression.” The event was moved to Columbia’s Q House, an “LGBTQ+ special interest community at Columbia University”. A CUADG internal email, addressed to “comrades,” stated that “this location change is due to Columbia University continuing to repress Palestinian students and the allies of the Palestinian struggle for liberation on campus.”

A few minutes after her wedding, anti-Israeli Within Our Lifetime (WOL) leader Nerdeen Kiswani headed straight over to the pro-Hamas/anti-Israel ‘liberated zone’ of Columbia campus and entered the supposedly locked down campus without a Columbia student ID. She was filmed stirring up her revolutionary followers with a fiery message, as per this tweet (also posted by Students for Justice in Palestine Columbia on YouTube). Another video posted by Palestinian Youth Movement NYC shows the demonstrators chanting, “Zionism will fall, brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel will fall” and declared “US imperialists, number one terrorists.” Uptown 4 Palestine published videos of these on-site activists proclaiming in Arabic: “From the water to the water (a reference to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea), Palestine is Arab!”

Why are the peoples plotting in vain?

A tremendous amount of organizational planning and financing went into the recent outbreak of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Nazi-like demonstrations on American college campuses. Within a week of the Columbia outbreak, at least 43 states witnessed anti-Israeli and pro-Hamas demonstrations, and the partial take-overs of 261 campuses. Over 90 university student organizations voted to ‘cut ties’ with Israel.

In his thoroughly researched May 6, 2024 article ‘The People Setting America on Fire: An investigation into the witches’ brew of billionaires, Islamists, and leftists behind the campus protests’, Park MacDougald cuts to the chase:

He who pays the piper calls the tune

This ‘spontaneous movement’ which reached 45 states and over 260 campuses in less than one week relied heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic party. Take the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement, Columbia University. According to reporting in the New York Post, the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement – the Columbia encampment – was basically by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL).  JVP Action have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), and $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. SJP is an outgrowth of the Islamist networks dissolved during the U.S. government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) for doing fundraising for Hamas. SJP in turn is a subsidiary of an organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).

The Tides Foundation, the grant-making arm of Tides Nexus, is one of largest progressive dark-money networks in the country, controlling upward of a billion in assets. Its list of major donors is an all-star cast of left-wing billionaires and foundations, including Soros, Peter Buffett and his NoVo Foundation, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the New Venture Fund, controlled by another Democratic dark-money powerhouse, Eric Kessler’s Arabella Advisors (also here and here). A prominent leader in WOL (Abdullah Akl) is connected to MPower Change, led by Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour (also here and here). This group is under the financial sponsorship of NEO Philanthropy which, along with its sister NEO Philanthropy Action Fund, have received more than $37 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2021, as well as substantial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation (here and here), and the Tides Foundation (here, here and here).

More detail is available at the following links: Park MacDougald’s excellent May 6, 2024 article ‘The People Setting America on Fire: An investigation into the witches’ brew of billionaires, Islamists, and leftists behind the campus protests’; at Isabel Vincent’s April 26, 2024 article in the New York Post: ‘George Soros is paying student radicals who are fueling nationwide explosion of Israel-hating protests’; and at https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/who-are-primary-groups-behind-us-anti-israel-rallies.

The French-Qatari Connection

Gene Hackman acted in the classic film ‘The French Connection.’ The plot involved a pair of NYPD detectives who stumbled onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles. Smuggling of a different kind has been going on in America, and it involves Qatar, the main supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas’ spiritual godparents) and the main propagator of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda in America,

Egyptian-American scholar and analyst Raymond Ibrahim notes that Qatar routinely spends USD $405 million annually to support activities at six American universities that also maintain branches in Doha, Qatar's capital. Since 2007 Qatar has given or contracted more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools, including Ivy Leagues such as Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University, and Stanford University, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Qatar has also doled out more than $243 million on lobbying efforts in the United States since 2015, with more than $16 million spent in 2023 alone. “The money, experts and lawmakers say, has enabled Qatar to have outsized influence in American politics and academia, efforts they say have mainstreamed anti-Israel propaganda and silenced criticism about Doha’s longstanding ties to Hamas, the Iranian regime, and other terror groups.” Hamas’s “three top leaders alone are worth a staggering total of $11 billion and enjoy a life of luxury in the sanctuary of the emirate of Qatar,” according to the New York Post.

Palestinian terror, American campus riots and the Chinese dragon

The Communist-ruled People’s Republic of China (CCP – Chinese Communist Party) is deeply involved in supporting and guiding both anti-Israel protests in the US, and anti-US government civil disturbances. China’s commitment to Marxist-Leninist world revolution has not slackened, and it moves quickly and strategically as it plays chess against the world. The Rutgers University-based Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released a report on Monday, May 13, 2024, throwing a spotlight on China’s involvement in three areas: anti-Israel activities, US campus unrest and the catalyzing of anti-government social unrest in America: “The NCRI finds that the increase in direct action, targeting infrastructure and public places, is in part driven by organizations connected to CCP foreign influence effort. While nominally focusing on Israel, the current protests can be better understood as a well-funded initiative driving a revolutionary, anti-government and anti-capitalist agenda, with the leading organizations serving as versatile tools for foreign entities hostile to the US.”

On April 24, 2024, the US Congress’ Committee on Ways and Means sent a letter to the IRS expressing “growing concern surrounding the influence of America’s foreign adversaries, including the Chinese Communist Party (‘CCP’), on U.S.-based tax-exempt organizations . . .  Look no further than the activities of tech mogul Roy Singham who owns and operates a complex network of American-based, tax-exempt nonprofits that, according to The New York Times, ‘defends China and pushes its propaganda’ . . .  These political activities include those believed or intended to influence Americans about the political or public interests, policies, or relations of a foreign government . . .  Such connections to suspicious activity involving tax-exempt organizations and propaganda do not end there. The People’s Forum, another 501(c)(3) organization funded by Mr. Singham, was recently at the center of a series of massive antisemitic events in the wake of the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. These events, which featured protestors brandishing antisemitic images and antisemitic chants like, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” were only a few in a series of hateful, propaganda fueled events supported by The People’s Forum.” The Committee on Ways and Means published a hearing chock-full of facts, laying out the historical connections between Hamas and such organizations as the Holy Land Foundation, Islamic Association for Palestine, Kind Hearts for Charitable Development, and American Muslims for Palestine.

In Michael Starr’s insightful article in the Jerusalem Post on May 15, 2024, ‘China-linked network funding key anti-Israel protest groups in US – report’, he reveals that “three convenors of the ‘Shut it Down For Palestine’ coalition, Answer Coalition, The People's Forum, and the International Peoples' Assembly are linked by a complicated web of financial, personal, personnel, and ideological ties to CCP associates Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans, according to NCRI.” An August 5, 2023, New York Times  investigation described Singham as a known “socialist benefactor of far-left causes” and tracked the funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Singham-linked groups engaging in pro-China progressive advocacy. The Free Press in November claimed that the Forum received 20 million dollars from 2017 and 2022 from Singham funneled through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund. The People's Forum, which has been involved in major protest actions in New York City, such as the May 15. 2024 Nakba Day Manhattan Bridge closure and the April 15, 2024 economic blockades, admitted in a 2021 social media post that “Marxist comrade” Singham funded the organization. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin at the time praised Singham for his support of the Forum.

This same information revealing Chinese infiltration and manipulation of Americans in order to turn the populace against the Jewish people, the Jewish state and even against America itself, is not new, as the following articles from 2023 and 2024 show:

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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,

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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.

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:

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).

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.

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:

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:

 

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.:

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:

“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:

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:

 

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:

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.

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) 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/.

       

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:

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.”

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.

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:’

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:

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:

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.

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to: FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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:

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to: FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) 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.

“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:

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.

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

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:

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

“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:’

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?

 

 

 

 

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:

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.

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.”

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:

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:

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.”

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.

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to: FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

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

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