Deception, dissimulation and destruction

“The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever!” This is the first statement that 120 British theologians came up with in their Long Parliament as part of ‘The Westminster Shorter Catechism.’ Many Christian children in the Western world memorized this confession as part of their church confirmation service.

According to the Hadith (Sahih al–Bukhari 1:25), the highest calling a Muslim can engage in is armed jihad: “Muḥammad once was asked: ‘What is the best deed for the Muslim next to believing in Allah and his messenger?’ His answer was: ‘To participate in jihad in Allah’s cause.’”

Biblical and Islamic traditions thus present two markedly different understandings of what is the highest value and the calling of the human race.

In order to understand the jihadi perspective and how hatred of the Jews, the Jewish state and the West is so integral to that, one must unpack the religious worldview – the matrix – that embraces and influences Qur’an-believing Muslims

9/11 is nearly 1,400 years old

Osama bin Laden clarified jihad – this highest of all Muslim callings – in his letter responding to a group of prominent Muslims just after 9/11. He states that unchanging core convictions undergird and justify jihadi terrorism in both Qur’an and Hadith.

“As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: ‘We [Muslims] renounce you [non – Muslims]. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us – until you believe in Allah alone’ [Qur'an Surah 60:4]. So, there is an enmity [which we have], evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility – that is, [this] battle – ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if [the infidel’s] blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., if he is a dhimmi, a protected minority], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time gets extinguished from the [Muslim] heart, this is great apostasy! . . . Such then is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel [kāfir] and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred – directed from the Muslim to the infidel – is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.”

Nearly 1,400 years previous, in 634 A.D., a pre-battle conversation took place between Persian General Rostam Farrokhzad and Rabi’ bin Amir (the envoy of Muslim commander Sa’d ibn Abī Waqqas), recorded in ‘The History of a-Tabari, Vol. 12.’ Bin Amir lays out his military and religious goals for the coming clash in a manner strikingly similar to bin Laden, rooting them in fundamental Islamic doctrine:

“Allah has sent us and brought us here so that we may free those who desire from servitude to earthly rulers and make them servants of Allah, that we may change their poverty into wealth and free them from the tyranny and chaos of [false] religions and bring them to the justice of Islam. He has sent us to bring his religion to all his creatures and call them to Islam. Whoever accepts it from us will be safe, and we shall leave him alone; but whoever refuses, we shall fight until we fulfill the promise of Allah.”

Qur’anic Muslims see jihad as a religious duty, a universal missionary obligation to convert everyone to Islam – either by persuasion or by force. Expansionist jihad for them is an altruistic endeavor – to bring Allah’s rule to a world living in bondage. Islamic dictatorship under Shari’a [Islamic law] rule is seen as a supreme good for both Muslims and non–Muslims. The Qur’an and Hadith also encourage violent behavior while doing jihad (see Qur’an 8:60 and 47:4) – similar to Hamas terrorist actions on October 7, 2023 – rape, kidnapping, murder and torture (see my book at https://davidstent.org/books/ for more details: ‘Jews, Arabs & the Middle East – A Messianic Perspective’).

‘We hate you until you change’

Westerners find it hard to comprehend why hatred for non–Muslims is considered ‘kosher’ by most Islamic religious authorities. Since many Westerners have been influenced by a Marxist perspective of history, the consensus jumps to the assumption that Islamic hatred is a by-product of economic deprivation, of poverty. Then again, others opine: perhaps it was something the West did – dismantling Turkey’s Caliphate in WWI; conquering Muslim nations from Casablanca to Baghdad; creating the sinful evils of Hollywood, McDonald’s, Madonna or the Beatles . . . But the unpalatable truth (one that upsets the secular ‘woke’ apple-cart) is that Muslim hatred of Jews, of Christians and of the West flows directly from Islam’s source documents:

“Let believers [Muslims] not take infidels [non–Muslims] for friends and allies in place of believers. Whoever does so will have nothing to hope for from Allah” (Qur’an 3:28 (also see 2:173; 2:185; 4:29; 16:106; 22:78; 40:28)

“O believers! Take neither Jews nor Christians for friends and allies – for they are friends and allies of one another. Whoever does so will be counted as one of them. Surely Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people” (Qur’an 5:51)

“We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us – until you believe in Allah alone” (Qur’an 60:4)

In a recent article titled “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You,” the Islamic State (ISIS) gives six reasons why Qur’an-obedient Muslims hate Christians::

“We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah – whether you realize it or not – by making partners for Him in worship. You blaspheme against Him, claiming that He has a son [Messiah]. You fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices. It is for this reason that we were commanded to openly declare our hatred for you and our enmity towards you. There has already been for you an excellent example in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people, ‘Indeed, we are disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than Allah. We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone’ (al–Mumtahanah 4 [i.e., Qur’an 60:4]). Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you, your disbelief is the primary reason we fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizyah (i.e., slave poll-tax) – for those afforded this option [the dhimmi or ‘People of the Book’] – and living in humiliation under the rule of the Muslims” [as per Qur’an 9:29].

In this ISIS document, reasons #5 and #6 mention ‘grievances’ against Western foreign policies – only to quickly clarify:

“What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list . . . The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.”

One of the main sources of jihadi hatred, violence and murder stems from the fact Muslims can’t accept the reality that Jews, Christians and secular people don’t want to become Muslims. This has engendered a spiritual unease which casts a shadow on Islam’s truth-claims: if Islam’s revelation is the last and final revelation and if Mohammed is the greatest prophet, how can it be that this fact is not accepted by the nations? It is interesting to note that the Islamic shout ‘allahu akbar’ (often yelled out during jihadi terror attacks) technically means ‘Allah is greater’ – greater than Jewish or Christian perspectives. A competitive one-upmanship lies at the root of this jihadi shout.

Muslims are supposed to do dawah – to do outreach and social welfare to non-Muslims – in order to bring them into the community of Islam. But when the world spurns Islamic advances, what springs up in the hot Middle Eastern soil is a combination of fear, control and murderous hatred. The dynamic is like that of David’s son Amnon who tried to seduce his step-sister Tamar. When spurned, he ended up violently raping her and throwing her out of the palace: “Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred. Indeed, the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her” (2 Samuel 13:15).

‘This declaration is for foreign consumption’

Back in 2002 Bin Laden sent a different letter out, this time to non-Muslim Americans. That communication focused on the presentation Western-friendly talking points and the airing of social-justice grievances. The reasoning behind these two different letters is instructive:

Qur’an-obedient jihadi Muslims understand 100% that the fundamental motive for jihad is essentially Islamic duty.

Al-Qa’eda, Hamas, the PLO/PA and the Islamic Republic of Iran have a shorter-term goal as well: they want to neutralize the West in stages. If they can get the West to stop supporting Israel, then the mujāhidīn (jihad warriors) can focus on destroying Israel before moving on to ‘cleansing’ Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria of what they consider ‘compromised Islam.’ Then they can move on to absorbing England, France, German, Russia and the United States into their long-awaited world-wide Islamist Caliphate.

By framing ‘grievances’ to Western audiences in secular political terms, these jihadi armies are hinting that, if the West withdraws support from Israel, terrorism will cease in the West and peace will come to the Middle East. This is deceptive rhetoric, giving the false impression that Islam can be tamed and controlled. Unfortunately, this propagandistic spin has been accepted at face value by many so-called ‘experts,’ including CIA thinkers, US State Department diplomats and White House leaders.

Yet when speaking to the Muslim world, jihadi terror groups like al-Qa’eda and Hamas speak plainly – in Israel we say “they are speaking in Arabic” – and boldly state their top priority – a zealous commitment to jihad as presented in Islamic holy texts. Their view of the Last Days is an Islamic one: they look forward to a full destruction of the Jewish people, to the crushing and enslavement of Christians, and to the murder of all secularists and pagans who refuse to bend the knee to Allah.

The Western-tailored ‘grievances and reasons’ disseminated to the world’s media outlets are meant to distract ‘the infidel.’ They are tailor-made to ‘divide and conquer.’ This is an Islamic tactic known as taqiyya – the pursuit of jihadi goals through deception or dissimulation. Much of how the world media covers the Hamas-Israel war reveals that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, etc. have carried out a highly successful taqiyya media manipulation campaign which is leading many superpowers by the nose, fundamentally deceived by these dissimulating schemes.

‘This declaration is for internal consumption’

For decades Yasser Arafat and the various streams of the PLO have declared their commitment to peace and reconciliation with Israel – when addressing Western English-speaking audiences. Yet when addressing Arabic-speakers, these same PLO leaders preach jihad and hatred for Israel. One outstanding example of many, is the May 10, 1994 closed-doors speech that Arafat gave at a Johannesburg, South Africa mosque (which was secretly recorded). Everything Arafat said in Arabic that day was a basic breach of PLO legal commitments under the Oslo Accords:

“This has to be understood by everybody. The permanent state of Israel? No! The permanent state of Palestine! You have to come and to fight and to start the Jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your first shrine . . . This [Oslo] agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and the Quraysh, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce . . . We are in need of you as Moslems, as warriors of Jihad [in Arabic, mujāhidīn].”

Abbas Zaki, former PLO Ambassador to Lebanon and a member of Fatah's Central Committee, is a stellar example of a PLO leader whose many statements in Arabic reveal that the PLO is duplicitous (using taqiyya) regarding its commitments to the peace agreements that it has signed with Israel:

Arabic interview on Lebanese NBN TV, April 9th 2008: “We believe wholeheartedly that the Right of Return is guaranteed by our will, by our weapons, and by our faith. The P.L.O. . . . has not changed its platform even one iota . . . The P.L.O. proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine.”

Arabic interview on ANB TV, May 7, 2009: “With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made – just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.”

Arabic interview on Qatar’s al-Jazeera network, September 23, 2011: “When we say that the settlement should be based upon these [1967] borders, President [Abbas] understands, we understand, and everybody knows that the greater goal cannot be accomplished in one go. If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, evacuates the 650,000 settlers and dismantles the wall – what will become of Israel? It will come to an end . . . If one says that one wants to wipe Israel out, . . . c’mon, it's too difficult! It’s not [acceptable] policy to say so. Don’t say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself.”

Arabic interview on Palestinian Authority TV, March 12, 2014: “Those Israelis have no religion and no principles. They are nothing but advanced tools for evil. They talk about the Holocaust and so on. So why are they doing this to us? Therefore, in my view, Allah will gather them so that we can kill them. Every killer is bound to be killed. There is no other option.”

Arabic interview on Hezbollah Iranian-connected Lebanese Mayadeen TV, October 14, 2023: “After October 7, there has been a Palestinian revival. We thank the [Hamas] Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades for making these preparations. Once they set out, they know how to finish the job, without relinquishing our goals . . . The skulls of all the Jews and Americans in the region will be crushed . . . I am pleased with [Hamas Politburo member] Osama Hamdan. We are friends. We understand each other. Victory has been promised to us. The ruse (in Arabic, khid’ah) by Hamas, how it prepared [for the attack], and how it accomplished this victory – I believe that people will emulate this. It may happen [in the West Bank]. If they [the Israelis] want to slaughter the entire Palestinian people, they [the Israelis] will be the ones slaughtered.” Osama Hamdan, Hamas Politburo member chimes in, “We are prepared to repeat this hoax [Arabic, ‘heela’ meaning hoax or deception] and this attack in the West Bank, hand in hand with you.”

Lying like a rug in the Middle East

The sobering lesson from these examples is that jihadi declarations and ‘facts’ cannot be accepted as truthful. Lying and deception are baked into the public pronouncements of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc., because. As Mohammed declared, “war is deceit” (in Arabic, am-harb khid’ah). Hamas press releases regarding the number of casualties (as well as how many were women, children, etc.), the number of wounded Gazans, how many hostages there are, where they are, and how they died or were murdered – all of these figures are considered part of jihadi propaganda campaigns. From an Islamist perspective, what is happening cannot be described as ‘war and peace,’ but ‘war and deceit.’

Raymond Ibrahim, a widely published expert on the Middle East and Islam, draws a line in the sand here:

When it comes to the connection between Islam and violence against non-Muslims, one fact must be embraced: the majority of those in positions of leadership and authority in the West are either liars or fools, or both . . . Thus, the real battle revolves around getting the West to see reality – a battle which involves rooting out the liars and fools from government, media, education, and other positions of influence – an admittedly herculean task, considering that the lie is now the narrative and truth is evil.

Taqiyya – by way of deception

The Arabic word taqiyya is related to the Arabic concept for ‘piety,’ Its root meaning is ‘to protect’ or ‘to guard against.’ The Qur’an advocate for taqiyya in Surah 3:28 and Surah 16:106, where the context deals self-preservation from persecution or murder. The late Dr. Sami Makaram, a Druze Islamic Studies professor at the American University in Beirut, was the world authority on taqiyya and the author of the only academic book exclusively devoted to it, states in his ‘At-Taqiyya fi’l-Islam’ (‘Dissimulation in Islam’) that “taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream . . . Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”

The Islamic pedigree of this teaching is ancient:

In the Hadith (Bukhari vol 5 #369): “The rasūl [Arabic for Mohammed the messenger] said ‘Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin al-Ashraf?’ Thereupon Maslama got up saying, ‘O Allah’s messenger! Would you like that I kill him?’ The prophet said, ‘Yes.’ Maslama said, ‘Then allow me to lie’ [to deceive Ka’b]. The prophet said, ‘You may say it.’

In the ‘Book of Jihad’ (Riyad as-Salihin 1352; Book 11, Hadith 68), Mohammed authorizes the use of deception in the furtherance of jihad: “The Prophet said, ‘War is deception.’”

In the Hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari 6623, Book 83, Hadith 3), Mohammed declares: “By Allah, and Allah willing, if I ever take an oath and later find something else that is better than that, then I do what is better and expiate my oath.”

Years ago, I was privileged to hear a series of lectures given by an American missionary to Muslims. He took great pains to explain that, while lying is a cause for shame in the West, that is not the case for taqiyya in Islam. For Muslims, he clarified, taqiyya (or lying to infidels in order to advance and protect Islam) is both a virtue and a duty. There is shame, however, in being caught in a lie. This basic understanding of accepted Islamic behavior is essential for anyone who wants to make sense of jihadi strategies, whether they be Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc.

Taqiyya forever as a weapon of war

Commenting on Qur’an 3:28, Ibn Kathir, a highly regarded authority on the Qur’an, writes in defense of taqiyya, “Whoever at any time or place fears … evil [from non-Muslims] may protect himself through outward show.” He then quotes the Hadith al-Bukhari where Mohammed’s close companion Abu ad-Darda said, “We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.” That same passage quotes al-Hasan, “Doing taqiyya is acceptable until the Day of Judgment.”

Honored Islamic scholars have stated unequivocally that deceit is integral to the waging of war:

Ibn al-'Arabi declares that “in the Hadith [sayings and actions of Muhammad], practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than the need for courage.”

Ibn al-Munir writes, “War is deceit, i.e., the most complete and perfect war waged by a holy warrior is a war of deception, not confrontation, due to the latter's inherent danger, and the fact that one can attain victory through treachery without harm [to oneself].”

Ibn Hajar counsels Muslims “to take great caution in war, while [publicly] lamenting and mourning in order to dupe the infidels.”

The Qur'an describes Allah in various places (Surahs 3:54, 8:30, 10:21) as the best makar, that is, the best deceiver or schemer. The Arabic word used here is ‘ماكر’ (‘maakir’), comes from the root m-k-r. The cognate word ‘makr’ meaning deception. In the Qur’an (Surah 3:54), referring to those who opposed Jesus/Isa, it says, “Then they schemed [against the Messiah], and Allah countered their schemes by schemes of His own. Allah is the best of schemers.”

It is not surprising that those who follow a god with these moral characteristics, will themselves end up resembling the object of their worship.

Taqiyya in Gaza

In an Arabic interview on October 8, 2023 on Russia Today TV, Senior Hamas official and Head of Hamas Foreign Relations Ali Baraka boasted openly about how Hamas used taqiyya to deceive the Israeli military and security services:

“The zero hour was kept completely secret. A limited number of Hamas leaders knew it. The number of people who knew about the attack and its timing could be counted on one hand . . . In the past couple of years, Hamas has adopted a ‘rational’ approach. It did not go into any war, and did not join the Islamic Jihad in its recent battle.” Interviewer: ”But all this was part of Hamas’s strategy in preparing for this attack.” Baraka: ”Of course. We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza], and has abandoned the resistance altogether. All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack . . . In order to keep the attack secret and successful, the different factions and our allies did not know the zero hour . . . The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs. The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be martyred for the sake of Allah, defending his land . . . We have been preparing for this for two years . . . Our allies are those that support us with weapons and money. First and foremost, it is Iran that is giving us money and weapons. There is also Hezbollah, and the Arab and Islamic people who are standing by us. There are countries that support us politically. Even Russia sympathizes with us.”

The Islamist strategy of taqiyya is not only used by Hamas in Gaza. It is used throughout the world, including in the US, Canada and Europe.

On the morning of March 22, 2012, Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old French-Algerian – also known as ‘the Toulouse gunman’ – shouted out something to the RAID elite French anti-terror unit before he jumped out of his Toulouse apartment window and was neutralized. “It’s not the money, it’s the deception that’s critical!” he yelled. Merah’s ‘last will and testament’ may have seemed enigmatic to the uninformed, but it was chock-full of meaning for counterterrorism experts. Merah was referring to the role of ‘taqiyya’ in his ability to remain a ‘sleeper agent’ as an Islamic form of religious dissimulation as an act of jihadi deception. One of the best-known jihadi taqiyya sleepers was the al-Qa’eda ‘Hamburg cell’, the infamous group of jihadis who carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks, led by Mohamed Atta.

Taqiyya is “a radicalized version of concealment,” said French anti-terrorism judge Marc Trévidic in an interview with FRANCE 24. Intelligence agencies have been aware of the taqiyya dynamic since the mid-1990s, when al-Qa’eda began to advocate this technique among recruits plotting attacks on Western targets. “These people who took the path of taqiyya were called ‘sleepers.’ This is when we began to discover that after their passage through the jihadist training camps in Afghanistan, the recruits were sent home and directed to make a show of their ordinary, integrated lives - sometimes even masquerading as unbelievers,” said Trévidic.

A divine right to deceive?

Raymond Ibrahim contributes two sober suggestions to this discussion:

“Whereas it may be more appropriate to talk of ‘war and peace’ as natural corollaries in a Western context, when discussing Islam, it is more accurate to talk of ‘war and deceit.’ For, from an Islamic point of view, times of peace – that is, whenever Islam is significantly weaker than its infidel rivals – are times of feigned peace and pretense, in a word, taqiyya.”

Questions can be raised “about Saudi Arabia's recent initiatives for ‘dialogue.’ Saudi Arabia closely follows sharia. For instance, the Saudi government will not allow the construction of churches or synagogues on its land; Bibles are banned and burned. Christians engaged in any kind of missionary activity are arrested, tortured, and sometimes killed. Muslim converts to Christianity can be put to death in the kingdom. Despite such limitations on religious freedom, the Saudis have been pushing for more dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims.”

“At the most recent inter-faith conference in Madrid in July 2008, King Abdullah asserted: ‘Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance, a message that calls for constructive dialogue among followers of all religions.’ Days later, it was revealed that Saudi children's textbooks still call Christians and Jews ‘infidels,’ ‘hated enemies’ and ‘pigs and swine.’ A multiple-choice test in a book for fourth-graders asks: ‘Who is a 'true' Muslim?’ The correct answer is not the man who prays and fasts, but rather: ‘A man who worships God alone, loves the believers and hates the infidels.’ These infidels are the same people the Saudis want dialogue with. This raises the question of whether, when Saudis call for dialogue, they are merely following Mohammad’s companion Abu Darda’s advice: ‘Let us smile to the face of some people while our hearts curse them’?”

“There is also a philosophical – more particularly, epistemological – problem with taqiyya. Anyone who truly believes that no less an authority than God justifies and, through his prophet's example, sometimes even encourages deception, will not experience any ethical qualms or dilemmas about lying. This is especially true if the human mind is indeed a tabula rasa shaped by environment and education. Deception becomes second nature . . . ‘Radical’ Muslims who closely observe sharia law, which splits the world into two perpetually warring halves, will always have a ‘divinely sanctioned’ right to deceive, until ‘all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to Allah’ (Qur’an, Surah 8:39).”

How should we then pray?

Pray for jihadi deception, dissimulation and lying to be exposed and expelled from the councils and deliberations the world’s leaders

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for Israel’s leadership at all levels in destroying the Hamas threat

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza can finally be shattered

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 238 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas. Four of those kidnapped have been murdered by Hamas while in captivity, their bodies discovered in buildings adjoining al – Shifa Hospital in Gaza City

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

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BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

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

Telling the truth in the Middle East

“In war, truth is the first casualty,” said the Greek playwright Aeschylus. For the jihadi terror organization Hamas, it seems that truth is actually one of its first targets. The tsunami of disinformation, lies, propaganda and denials that is rushing out of the mouths of Hamas spokesmen and leaders catches many Westerners off-guard. But those who have followed Hamas’ bloodied trail of falsehood, atrocities and massacres over the years, none of this is surprising.

This newsletter examines some of the more outstanding deceptions that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have engaged in over the last month.

Prophecies are not always bright and cheery

In 1 Kings 22 the Davidic king Jehoshaphat found himself manipulated into a military alliance with Ahab king of Israel against the king of Aram (modern Syria). Ahab was a wicked king (1 Kings 21:25). He and his Sidonian (Lebanese) wife Jezebel spread Baal worship (which included human sacrifice) throughout the land of Israel (1 Kings 18:19) and spilled much blood of YHVH’s prophets and servants (2 Kings 9:7).

Before setting out to war on the Golan Heights, Jehoshaphat felt uneasy and wanted prophetic confirmation from the God of Jacob. Ahab assembled 400 prophets in his court who officially were followers of YHVH, and this prophetic guild gave the kings a uniformly positive answer: “Go up, for YHVH will hand it over to the king!” But Jehoshaphat was still uncomfortable: “Is there no longer a [true] prophet of YHVH here, that we may inquire of him?” And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is still one man by whom we may inquire of YHVH, but I hate him, because he does not prophesy anything good regarding me, but only bad. He is Micaiah the son of Imlah.”

Micaiah was summoned to the royal court post haste, but on his way there he warned Ahab’s courtiers, “As YHVH lives, whatever YHVH says to me, I shall speak it.” When Ahab demanded a prophetic word from him, he said, “Go up and succeed, for YHVH will hand it over to the king!” Evidently Micaiah spoke these words with heavy sarcasm, for Ahab then said to him, “How many times must I make you swear that you will tell me nothing but the truth in the name of YHVH?” Then Micaiah said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd. And YHVH said, ‘These people have no master. Each of them is to return to his house in peace.’” Then the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy anything good regarding me, but only bad?” (see 1 Kings 22:1-28).

Video is truer than fiction

When Hamas jihadi terrorists broke into neighboring Israeli kibbutzim and towns on the early morning of October 7, 2023, they recorded their mass rapes, tortures, murders and kidnappings on GoPro helmet cameras, streaming the atrocities live in real-time. We do not advise anyone to watch these jihadi snuff videos on social media. For those who are not aware of the horrors Hamas carried out, here is a link to one journalist’s description of those events, after he had watched Hamas video footage made available to journalists by the Israeli Press Office. The descriptions are shocking and graphic, describing the demonic activities engaged in by Hamas. And here is another article dealing with how Israel’s Forensic Pathology Center verifies the identities of Israeli human remains after bodies have been mutilated and burned alive by Hamas jihadi terrorists.

Yet, even with these graphic videos circulating freely on social media, Hamas quickly began to deny that these terror events had actually happened. Hamas issued a blanket denial – the 1,200 murder victims were not actually civilians – they were really IDF soldiers. There were no beheadings of women, men and babies; no mass rapes; no burning of living families to death while tied together; etc. Here are four examples of many, where Hamas flatly denies what can be clearly seen on Hamas video footage:

Hamas Deputy Politburo leader Moussa Abu Marzouk told the BBC in a TV interview (also aired in Saudi Arabia) that “women, children and civilians were exempt” from Hamas’ attacks. Marzouk claimed that Mohamed el-Deif, the leader of Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades jihadi wing, had ordered his men to spare civilians: “El-Deif clearly told his fighters ‘Don’t kill a woman, don’t kill a child and don’t kill an old man,’” Marzouk added that only IDF reservist soldiers “were targeted,” and that only “conscripts or soldiers” were killed; women, children and civilians were “exempt,” he said.

Marzouk’s claims, says the BBC, “are in stark contrast to the wealth of evidence of Hamas men shooting unarmed adults and children . . . A huge body of evidence has been gathered which documents the range of bloody acts committed by Hamas in Israel on 7 October. BBC journalists went to the scene of the attacks in their immediate aftermath and saw the bodies of civilians who had been killed. We have also verified CCTV footage which captured shootings by Hamas. Separately, footage from Hamas body cameras has been shown to the BBC and other journalists by the Israeli government. Other international news organizations have also pieced together, and verified, evidence of what happened on the day.”

Dr Basem Naim, Head of Political and International Relations in Hamas, stated on Sky News (short video or longer video): “ No one can confirm any of this news . . . We didn’t kill any civilians . . . They are not civilians! You and the Israeli propaganda are defining; they are not civilians . . . I cannot confirm this Israeli propaganda . . . No, we don’t have killed any civilians . . . We have to redefine what it means ‘civilian.’ . . . The hostages will be treated in a human way, in a proper way . . . We might lose some of these hostages because of the Israeli attacks and bombardment . . 100% I can guarantee that these hostages [will be safe from harm by Hamas] . . . Atrocities? This is your assessment. Who accepted your assessment that these are atrocities? El-Deif said to treat hostages in a proper, dignified way.”

In a CNN interview, Naim stated: “We firmly deny these allegations as we reject this media bias, and we call on media to abide by the journalistic code of ethics.” He said that Hamas “firmly” denied involvement in the killing and beheading of infants, and said that allegations were “unethically and unprofessionally adopted by western media outlets.” Naim said that the October 7, 2023 murderous assault was a “defensive operation . . . The operation targeted only the Israeli military bases and compounds . . . There were clear instructions from the top commanders of al-Qassam Brigades to avoid targeting civilians or killing them.” Naim promised that the Israeli hostages would be treated “in accordance with our religious values and the rules of international humanitarian law.” However, Naim said, “we are really worried that since the Israeli aggression is everywhere in Gaza, they might be the victims of the Israeli army bombardment just like our people.”

Hamas senior Politburo member Izzat al-Rishq spoke on CNN on Wednesday October 11, 2023 that reports “spread lies about our Palestinian people and the resistance claiming that members of the Palestinian resistance beheaded children and attacked women with no evidence to support such claims and lies . . . We strongly condemn the fabricated and baseless allegations promoted by the occupation in an attempt to cover up for the massacres, crimes and genocide committed [by Israel] in Gaza.”

The Palestinian Authority accuses Israeli helicopters of bombing an Israel music festival

In official statement released worldwide to foreign ministries and the UN on Sunday November 18, 2023, the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry claimed that Israeli helicopters arrived at the Nova Music Festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7 and bombed Israeli civilians, causing the deaths of at least 350 participants. The Palestinian Authority denied in that statement that Hamas terrorists carried out the massacre at the music festival, even though there were many GoPro video clips taken by Hamas jihadis of their slaughtering of the Jewish festival attendees. The PA stated that Israel then used ‘fake news of a massacre’ “to justify its aggression against Gaza.” Hamas released a statement as well, saying that an “Israeli fighter jet” bombed the area near the Gaza border, leading to the deaths of hundreds.

According to the Israel Police, the first Israeli helicopter reached the festival compound only at 11:12 a.m., hours after the massacre had begun.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Abbas’ words, saying, “Today, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah said something utterly preposterous. It denied that it was Hamas that carried out the horrible massacre at the nature festival near Gaza. It actually accused Israel of carrying out that massacre. This is a complete reversal of truth. Abbas, who in the past has denied the existence of the Holocaust, today is denying the existence of the Hamas massacre and that’s unacceptable.”

US puts the Palestinian Authority in a headlock

A US National Security Council spokesman said that the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ public statement denying Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians at the Nova music festival and blaming Israel instead, “does not respect the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the terrible terrorist attack carried out by Hamas in October 7. We understand that the Palestinian Authority removed it from their website, and we are glad that the Palestinian Authority has since clarified that this is not their official position.” Actually, the PA did not publish a public announcement correcting the false claims, but simply removed the false statement from its official website. Individuals who heard the phone call between the PA and the US discussing the matter noted that the American side was raising his voice a lot.

America has papered over another mini-crisis, but does the US understand exactly who the Palestinian leadership is and what they really believe?

Israeli hostages, Gazan hospitals

Hamas has vociferously declared that it is not using Gazan hospitals for military purposes; that it is not hiding hostages, its own soldiers or weapons at hospitals; that it has no underground military infrastructure under Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital:

Izzat al-Rishq, Hamas Politburo member, denied allegations that the group was using the al-Shifa hospital as a shield for its underground military infrastructure, and said the claims are “baseless” and have “no basis in truth.” He added that “these lies represent a prelude to a new massacre against our people.”

Hamas Politburo member Osama Hamdan dismissed Israeli information about Hamas operations at al-Shifa and other hospitals in Gaza as “lies,” and condemned US support for them as “silly and stupid.” At a Beirut news conference Hamdan stated: “This is the truth that the occupation is lying about, just as they lied about the [music] festival.”

Hamdan claimed no command or control rooms or one of the abductees had been found in the hospital. He claimed, “the forced evacuation of the hospital and its transformation into a military camp was the height of moral and human degradation, a war crime and a crime against humanity” (Palinfo, November 18, 2023; al-Jazeera TV YouTube channel, November 18, 2023).

Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader, rejected the Israeli claims about Shifa as “false and misleading propaganda . . . The occupying forces have no evidence to prove it. We have never used civilians as human shields because it goes against our religion, morality and principles.”

Turkey is one of Hamas’ main supporters; many operations are planned there and much money is funneled through that country. Turkey’s Anadolu Agency published headlines stating “No sign of hostages at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital.”

The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, in an acid-tongued op-ed, states: “We have to remember that there is no independent scrutiny inside the hospital; journalists cannot move freely into Gaza, and any who are reporting from the site are working under the aegis of the Israeli military. The evidence Israel has produced, so far, I do not believe to be convincing . . . So, for Israel it's crucial to prove that it had no choice other than to use methods that killed thousands of civilians, so that its allies will continue to shield it from international pressure for a ceasefire.”

In the past two days the IDF released surveillance camera footage from al-Shifa Hospital, showing Hamas terrorists bringing two hostages (a Nepali and a Thai who were both abducted from Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023) into al-Shifa Hospital at 10:55 a.m. – four hours after Hamas’ attack on Israel had begun. Hamas terrorists are seen fully armed, and the hospital’s doctors are fully cooperating with the jihadis. Two Hamas terrorists are manhandling the Thai hostage through the hospital wards. Stolen IDF vehicles and Hamas pickup trucks used for the attacks and kidnappings are seen in al-Shifa’s courtyards. Al-Shifa was a pre-planned stop for the terrorists, and the first stop for some (or many) of the Israeli hostages.

The dead bodies of two kidnapped Israelis were found next to al-Shifa hospital, both of them murdered. So far three hostages have been identified as having being murdered by Hamas, with videos released by Hamas of the victims.

Hamas has been lying and deceiving in nearly everything it has said about the October 7, 2023 massacre and the days following. Hamas is guilty of war crimes (which include murders of all kinds, mass rape, torture, kidnapping, and wanton destruction of homes, farms and kibbutzim). Hamas is falsifying Gazan casualty statistics. Hamas is guilty of a double war-crime – firing deadly rockets from Gazan civilian areas and firing into Israeli civilian areas).

How should we then pray?

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for Israel’s leadership at all levels in destroying the Hamas threat

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza can finally be shattered

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 238 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas. Three of those kidnapped have been murdered by Hamas while in captivity, their bodies discovered in buildings adjoining al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

The rage of the nations, the hooks of God

King David prophesied that in the Last Days, international leaders of this rebellious planet will unite together to oppose the God of Israel, the Messiah of Israel and the Davidic Kingdom:

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot empty things? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers conspire together against YHVH and against His Messiah, saying, “Let’s tear their shackles apart and throw their ropes away from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs; YHVH scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury (Psalm 2:1-5)

Psalm 83 was written down by Asaph – a royal prophet (1 Chronicles 25:1-3), a seer (2 Chronicles 29:30), a worship leader (1 Chronicles 16:7-8, 37-38) and a percussionist (1 Chronicles 16:5). He took up David’s theme and expanded it, prophesying that the nations of the Middle East would form a conspiracy, a military union, with a dual purpose – to form a covenant against the God of Israel, and to totally destroy the Jewish people through genocide:

For behold, Your enemies make an uproar, and those who hate You have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Your people, and conspire together against Your treasured ones. They have said, “Come, and let’s wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.” For they have conspired together with one mind; They make a covenant against You (Psalm 83:2-5)

The shuddering jolt that this planet is now feeling, heralds the arrival of these prophetic days.

Hamas and Israel – two equal narratives? Two equal atrocities?

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, recently visited Kibbutz Be’eri – where at least 85 of the 1,200 people were murdered on October 7, 2023, and from where about 30 of the more than 240 were kidnapped. With the blood of the Jewish victims still staining the ground, the Spanish-born Borrell stated: “Israel must be defended, but one horror does not justify another: innocent [Palestinian Gazan] civilians, including thousands of children, have died in recent weeks.”

Borrell is not disclosing an important context – something that is common knowledge to all the world media – the fact that Hamas does not allow free press and independent reporting in Gaza. Therefore, the casualty figures it feeds foreign media are have been and continue to be greatly exaggerated. EU representative Borrell’s talking points slavishly follow the diktats of Hamas’s proven propaganda campaign. Here’s how it all works out on the ground in real time:

Hamas initiates hostilities by firing rockets against Israeli civilians, while hiding its launchers, terror squads and weapons behind a Gazan civilian shield

Hamas then accuses Israel of war crimes when the IDF attacks those launchers, terror squads and weapons – even as the IDF tries to avoid civilian casualties where at all possible

The world media, the UN, the EU and Western media accuse Israel of war crimes, using Hamas’ false and propagandistic casualty figures

Borrell compared Hamas’ slaughtering of Israeli citizens to the IDF’s pinpoint targeting of terrorist jihadi sources of fire. This is not only a grossly inaccurate comparison; it is morally reprehensible and innately evil. To make a moral equivalence between an arsonist and a fireman is criminally malevolent.

The Bible presents us with a measuring rod in Judges 11:12-33 which helps to clarify such diplomatic dishonesty. The people of Ammon had been terrorizing and murdering Jewish people who had settled in formerly Amorite (not Ammonite) territories. Jephthah the Judge sent envoys to Ammon to see if a peaceful solution was possible: “What conflict do you and I have, that you have come to me to fight against my land?” The Ammonites responded with a falsified narrative, accusing Israel of stealing Ammonite land: “It is because Israel took my land when they came up from Egypt, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok and the Jordan. So return them peaceably now.” Jephthah vehemently denied these Ammonite lies, recounted the actual biblical history and then declared: “So I have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me. May YHVH, the Judge, judge today between the sons of Israel and the sons of Ammon!” But the king of the sons of Ammon disregarded the message which Jephthah sent him . . . 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 Avel Kramim. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel.”

Using Jephthah’s same Bible-based approach, the historical account in the Book of Joshua shows that the God of Jacob gave the whole area of Gaza to Judah as part of their tribal inheritance: “This is the inheritance of the tribe of the sons of Judah according to their families . . . Ashdod, its towns and its villages; Gaza, its towns and its villages, as far as the Brook (Hebrew, nahal) of Egypt and the Great Sea, even its coastline” (Joshua 15:20, 47). Jihadi invading armies led by Amr ibn al-As conquered Gaza around 638 A.D.. That was when Arabs entered the Land of Israel. The original kosher occupants of the Land of Israel, according to the God of Israel, are the Jewish people – not the Arabs.

From the biblical perspective, the Islamic conquerors who claimed Gaza and the entire land of Israel through jihadi conquest have never invalidated and cannot invalidate the Jewish people’s God-given ownership of those lands. “For the gifts and the calling of God [on the Jewish people] are irrevocable” says Paul in Romans 11:29. Even as the Ammonites claimed land that was not theirs, so the Gazans and the Palestinians are claiming land (by virtue of jihad) that is not theirs. God is making this issue an international point of contention, and will soon judge all the nations who refuse to recognize God’s irrevocable gift of the land to the sons and daughters of Jacob (see Joel 3:1-2; Zechariah 14:1-3).

How to support terrorists while lecturing Israel about not getting mad

EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell, in his brief visit to the scene of Hamas’ slaughter mass rape, torture and kidnapping of Israeli babies, children, teenagers, fathers, mothers and pensioners, rebuked Israel for any anger they might feel at these atrocities, and warned them not to mete out justice on Gazan terrorists: “I understand your fears and your pain. I understand your rage. But let me ask you not to let yourself be consumed by rage. I think that is what the best friends of Israel can tell you, because what makes the difference between a civilized society and a terrorist group is the respect for human life.” Borrell is raising the threat of a blood libel against Israel; he is claiming that Israel’s destruction of terrorists, their weapons, their rocket launchers and HQs, is morally equivalent to Hamas’ atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians.

A glance at Borrell’s background is helpful here: he helped to draft the European Constitution that eventually led to the Treaty of Lisbon, and at that time opposed the inclusion of the term “Christian heritage” to describe Europe’s spiritual history.

The God of Jacob’s perspective on these matters is markedly different from that of the European Union. YHVH is angry at the nations’ casual and cavalier attitudes toward the Jewish people and their welfare, and He vows to respond with burning anger, with vengeance and fire against those who do not care for Zion, or who show more care for Hamas than for Zion:

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

Now YHVH saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no one, and was amazed that there was not one to intercede. Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped Himself with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, so will He repay: wrath to His adversaries, retribution to His enemies; to the coastlands He will deal retribution. (Isaiah 59:15-18)

Behold, the name of YHVH comes from a remote place. His anger is burning and dense with smoke. His lips are filled with indignation, and His tongue is like a consuming fire. His breath is like an overflowing river, which reaches to the neck, to shake the nations back and forth in a sieve, and to put in the jaws of the peoples the bridle which leads astray. You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, and gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, to go to the mountain of YHVH, to the Rock of Israel. And YHVH will cause His voice of authority to be heard, and the descending of His arm to be seen in fierce anger, and in the flame of a consuming fire in cloudburst, downpour, and hailstones. For at the voice of YHVH Assyria will be terrified, when He strikes with the rod. And every blow of the rod of punishment, which YHVH will lay on him, will be with the music of tambourines and lyres. And in battles, brandishing weapons, He will fight them. For Tophet has long been ready, Indeed, it has been prepared for the king. He has made it deep and large, a pyre of fire with plenty of wood. The breath of YHVH, like a torrent of brimstone, sets it afire. (Isaiah 30:27-33)

In all their distress He was distressed, and the angel of His presence saved them. In His love and in His mercy, He redeemed them, and He lifted them and carried them all the days of old (Isaiah 63:9)

At the annual IISS Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, Josep Borrell stated: “Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer. So, who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that – the Palestinian Authority.” As pointed out in our November 12, 2023 newsletter, the Palestinian Authority is itself a terror group which subsidizes terrorists. It has Muslim Brotherhood and Nazi origins. Its leader denies the Holocaust. The PA/PLO is shot through and through with corruption, etc.

Borrell is supporting a terrorist organization and advocating giving power to Palestinian terrorists, while rebuking Israel and telling us not to get overly upset about Hamas’ jihadi atrocities.

How to shrink Israel while strengthening Israel’s enemies

On December 17, 1975 then Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger met S’adun Hammadi, Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Iraqi Ambassador’s residence on Rue d’Andigne, Paris. In that meeting Kissinger volunteered, “We can’t negotiate about the existence of Israel but we can reduce its size to historical proportions … So, I think in ten to fifteen years, Israel will be like Lebanon, struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab world” (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB107/iraq04.pdf). This State Department realpolitik position still guides the thinking of many American politicians and presidents today.

On November 18, 2023 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank on Saturday and repeated calls for dividing the land of Israel – a two-state solution. “We don't want any new settlements in the West Bank.”

This same goal is being incessantly repeated by most world leaders today, a sobering foreshadow of Joel 3:1-2 and Zechariah 14:1-3.

The IDF is striving with all its might to eradicate Hamas – both the terrorists and their infrastructure – from Gaza. It is grueling work. At the same time, the Islamic world and their Western sympathizers are turning the screws, put as much pressure as they can to stop Israel in its tracks – so that Hamas can live to fight and slaughter Jews another day. Hamas has stored food, medical supplies and gasoline to keep its organization going for some time. There are no shortages in this department – provided that Hamas stops stealing UN oil and allows ordinary Gazans access to their warehouses.

World pressure is now on Israel to open up the spigot so that Hamas can more easily resupply its forces from replenished jihadi stockrooms. These dynamics have been filmed and broadcast to the world, though ignored by much of the world’s media cartels. But the world is strangely silent regarding Israel’s insistent demand – first let all the hostages go free, and then humanitarian aid can be allowed. But the hostages do not seem to be the highest priority for the EU, the UN or the USA; the world is attempting to snatch that Ace of Spades from Israel’s hands, and instead is strengthening the hands of Israel’s enemies. Imagine if during 1944 in WWII, the League of Nations insisted on sending humanitarian aid convoys to Berlin or Tokyo before an unconditional surrender was achieved. WWII would still be going on.

Two thought-provoking questions:

Why is the West stubbornly trying to define this war – not as a jihadi threat that needs to be totally taken down, before it spreads and metastasizes in the West – but as a Gazan humanitarian aid crisis? Since these are tried and true Hamas talking points and strategies, why is the West being led by the nose on this one, one more time?

Why is it that no Muslim country is offering solutions which will get rid of Hamas and free Palestinians from Hamas’ jihadi terror rule? Why is no Arab country offering to open their doors and take in Palestinian refugees? Why does it seem that these Muslim countries are willing (as Abba Eban once quipped) “to fight to the last Palestinian” and not offer concrete help?

Ammon and Edom – mocking Jewish walls and Jewish armies

In Nehemiah’s day, an Ammonite leader who lived in what is today central Jordan, mocked Jewish efforts to restore their defenses and their homeland: “Now Tobiah (in Hebrew, Tuvya) the Ammonite was near him, and he said, ‘Even what they are building – if a fox were to jump on it, it would break their stone wall down!’” (Nehemiah 4:3). Tobiah’s mockery of Nehemiah’s construction work activated the cursing aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant (see Genesis 12:3), directed against those who mock or denigrate the Jewish people. Tobiah thus brought God’s judgment upon the people and country of Ammon.

In Ezekiel’s day, a prophetic word was given to the Edomites (ancient dwellers in what is today southern Jordan, who are today called ‘Palestinians’) foreseeing that these descendants of Esau would mock the Jewish people’s connection to the Jewish homeland, and would plunder the Land of Israel, claiming it for themselves:

Therefore, mountains of Israel, hear the word of Adonai YHVH. This is what Adonai YHVH says to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, to the desolate ruins and to the abandoned cities which have become plunder and an object of ridicule to the rest of the nations which are all around – Therefore Adonai YHVH says this: “Certainly in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, who appropriated My land for themselves as a possession with wholehearted joy and with contempt of soul, in order to make its pastureland plunder.” (Ezekiel 36:4-5)

Today in the country of Jordan, similar dynamics of mocking and cursing are occurring, just as they occurred in Bible days. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, rather than sadly admitting that Hamas has slaughtered Israeli citizens and has taken innocent Jews hostage, sharply stated instead that “Israel is taking 2.3 million Palestinians hostage.”

Safadi mocks the IDF’s ability to achieve its war goals, and doubts that Israel’s army can achieve anything – just like Tobiah doubted that Nehemiah’s wall could keep out even a fox:

“Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas. There’s a lot of military people here, I just don't understand how this objective can be realized . . . Nothing justifies the war in Gaza, and it does not bring security to Israel. Hamas is an ideology, and ideas cannot be eliminated with weapons. Hamas and ISIS cannot be placed in the same category.”

Brett McGurk, the White House’s National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, also spoke at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, where he laid out the U.S.A.’s non-negotiables: “No forced displacement [of Palestinians from Gaza]; no reoccupation [of Gaza by the Israelis, regardless of God’s promise in Joshua 15]; no reduction in ]Gazan] territory [by Israel]; no threats to Israel [by Hamas]; no besiegement [of Gaza by Israel].” Once again, the US State Department has put itself at loggerheads with the God of Jacob over the dividing up of the Land of Israel.

For those who appreciate history, it is worth recalling some facts that reveal most of the above statements as hypocritical diplomatic posturing:

Between 1948 and 1967, the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, never establishing a Palestinian state, but instead annexing those territories to Jordan

The Palestinian PLO tried to overthrow Jordan’s King Hussein in September 1970 and then assassinated his Prime Minister Wasfi Tal in November 1971

King Hussein went to war against the PLO and their ideology, eliminating their philosophical hold in Jordan with royal weapons. In those clashes nearly 4,000 PLO were killed, and 20,000 Palestinians fled to Lebanon, jump-starting the Lebanese Civil War where over 100,000 were killed in clashes. Based on King Hussein’s personal example, Safadi’s declarations are incorrect: terrorist ideas and terrorists themselves can be eliminated with weapons.

Palestinians in Jordan (approximately 60% of the population) are kept on a short leash by the King’s mukhabarat secret services (who fear Palestinian revolution). King Abdullah II is not himself a Palestinian, and is seen by many Palestinians as a Western puppet

The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn) is a major threat to Jordan’s king, plotting overthrow of the kingdom barely beneath the surface. They see the King as a heretical Muslim,

Though Foreign Minister Safadi opines that Hamas and ISIS cannot be placed in the same category, facts on the ground speak otherwise: Hamas’ terror tactics on October 7, 2023 were exactly those of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, while ISIS manuals and flags were found on the dead bodies of Hamas terrorists. Not every diplomatic declaration accurately reflects the truth.

“Since you [O Edom] have had everlasting hatred and have turned over the sons of Israel to the power of the sword at the time of their disaster, at the time of the punishment of the end, therefore as I live, declares Adonai YHVH, I will certainly doom you to bloodshed, and bloodshed will pursue you” (Ezekiel 35:5-6)

God’s hooks in the jaws of the nations

Ezekiel prophesies about a Last Days war in the Middle East when the God of Jacob will put hooks into the jaws of Middle Eastern nations and, like a fisherman hauling in a huge catch, will draw those nations down to Israel for their judgement and destruction. From a jihadi perspective, Israel’s existence and its military victories over neighboring countries and jihadi terror groups are reason enough to invade and attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

“I will turn you around and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them magnificently dressed, a great contingent with shield and buckler, all of them wielding swords; Persia [Iran], Cush [Sudan/Ethiopia], and Put [Libya] with them, all of them with buckler and helmet; Gomer with all its troops; Beth-Togarmah [these two are ancient names for Turkic areas on the Black Sea, possibly extending up to Ukraine] from the remote parts of the north with all its troops – many peoples with you” (Ezekiel 38:4-6)

The White House’s National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East insists that a Palestinian state has a crucial place in any possible diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia: “In this case, what was true before Oct. 7 is even truer now. That central issue must be addressed. And as Hamas is degraded, we are determined to help address it.” The hooks are already in place.

How should we then pray?

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for Israel’s leadership at all levels in confronting the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran threat

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza can finally be shattered

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the physical rescue of the 238 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas. Three of those kidnapped have been murdered by Hamas while in captivity, their bodies discovered in buildings adjoining al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

All who plunder Zion will become plunder

Sometimes today’s news helps us to understand ancient Bible prophecies in a clearer light. As we consider the massacre, rape, torture and kidnapping of Jewish people on October 7, 2023 by Hamas jihadi terrorists, we remember similar atrocities in the days of Jeremiah and the writers of the Psalms. The Psalmist called upon the God of Jacob to remember what Babylon and the Edomites had done, when they murdered the babies of Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon’s Temple in 587-586 B.C.:

Remember, YHVH, against the sons of Edom did on the day when Jerusalem [was conquered] – those who said, “Tear it down, tear it down to its foundation!” Daughter of Babylon, destined for destruction, blessed will be one who repays you with the retribution according to what you have done to us.” (Psalm 137:7-8)

YHVH gives a word of comfort and encouragement to the Jewish people through the prophet Jeremiah, as He prophesied five curses against the Babylonian murderers of Zion:

“Draw up your battle lines against Babylon on every side, all of you who bend the bow. Shoot at her, do not spare your arrows, for she has sinned against YHVH. Raise your battle cry against her on every side! . . . Her towers have fallen, her walls have been torn down. For this is the vengeance of YHVH: Take vengeance on her! As she has done to others, so do to her!” (Jeremiah 50:14-15)

“But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes,” declares YHVH (Jeremiah 51:24)

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

“May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon,” the inhabitant of Zion will say; And, “May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea,” Jerusalem will say. Therefore, this is what YHVH says: “Behold, I am going to plead your case and take vengeance for you” (Jeremiah 51:35-36)

“Indeed, Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel” (Jeremiah 51:49)

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) just voted (by 145 to 7) on November 1, 2023 to declare that Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (the land promised by YHVH to the children of Jacob in Jeremiah 31:4-6) is illegal: “. . . condemning settlement activities by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, as violations of international humanitarian law, relevant United Nations resolutions . . . as actions in defiance of the calls by the international community to cease all settlement activities.” The UNGA, should it choose to vote on the legality of Jeremiah’s prophecies, would also declare that the prophetic promises in the Hebrew prophets to the Jewish people are similarly illegal. But the God of Jacob declares in Jeremiah 30:16-17 that any group which participates in the plunder of Zion will itself be plundered and devoured by God’s hand.

God is removing all the restraints on the evil hearts of world leaders and their nations who are bent on making choices which are leading them to an eternity separated from the God of Jacob. Their pursuit of doing harm to the Jewish people will determine their eternal destiny.

There is a cost to devouring Jacob

The world’s media do not see world events through the eyes of the Bible. They do not comprehend what demonic anti-Semitism actually is when seen through God’s eyes. Here are five scriptures that reflect the heart and mind of God about this subject, and what His plans are for those who curse the Jewish people:

And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who demeans (or dishonors or denigrates or treats as of no importance – these are all aspects of the Hebrew verb qalal) you I will curse (Genesis 12:3a)

In all their affliction He too was afflicted (Isaiah 63:9)

For this is what YHVH or armies says: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that have plundered you – for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8)

Israel was holy to YHVH, the first of His harvest. All who ate of it became guilty; evil came upon them, declares YHVH (Jeremiah 2:3)

Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not know You, and on the families who do not call upon Your name! For they have devoured Jacob; they have devoured him and consumed him, and have laid waste his settlement (Jeremiah 10:25)

Medieval anti-Semitism – blood libels and killers of children

Catholic priest Edward Flannery’s classic “The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism,” shows how pagan Greek and Roman empires believed in arrogance that the people of Israel were a primitive nation: Didn’t they worship an invisible God? Didn’t they refuse to bow down before Hellenism, a superior culture? Didn’t they keep themselves separate and distinct from all other nations? The Fathers of the early Church gave a ‘kosher seal of approval’ to this Jew-hatred.

The Patristic Fathers also drew on pagan anti-Jewish legends which accused Jews of sacrificing Gentiles, eating their flesh and drinking their blood. Over the centuries anti-Jewish legends sprung up, spinning false tales of Jews kidnapping Gentile children, sacrificing them and then using their blood to make Passover matzahs. In Britain, anti-Jewish blood libels about murdered Gentile children like William of Norwich, and Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln grew like weeds, falsely ascribing their deaths to Jewish hands – resulting in deadly anti-Semitic pogroms against English Jews. Legends like these are still alive and well, enthusiastically propagated on Syrian and Egyptian TV in the Muslim world.

Every time Hamas initiates terror attacks on Israel, their own jihadi media personnel pull out the time-tested blood libels, accusing Jews once again of being enemies of mankind, cruel murderers of defenseless women and children.

Hamas media reporters hijacked the narrative within a few days of October 7, 2023. On that date demonized jihadis performed bestial rapes, tortures and murders on babies and children in front of their parents. But thanks to Hamas spinmeisters, suddenly those atrocities are all forgotten; up to half a million march in London cheering on these Islamist murderers while calling for the genocidal annihilation of the Jewish people and their state. Hamas plays the all-too-willing main stream media, controlling the narrative like a puppet-master and pumping out electronic blood libels to a watching world.

Here is a brief explanation of the real ‘facts on the ground’ – a corrective to jihadi-generated lies concerning the war-related events in Gaza and Israel right now:

Hamas have fired over 10,000 rockets from Gazan civilian areas onto Jewish civilian areas (a double war crime). In order for the IDF and IAF to take out these rocket launchers, the squads which fire them, and jihadi weapons, the Israeli army must fire at areas where Hamas is using Gazan civilians as human shields. This deliberate Hamas strategy is looking to obtain news footage of bleeding Gazans, hoping to make Israel look like the aggressor and Hamas to look like the victim.

The IDF has developed specific strategies to avoid Gazan civilian casualties – including air-dropping leaflets warning Gazans of coming attack areas; giving advance warning those who live in buildings where Hamas has HQs, weapons armories and rocket launchers, strongly advising people to vacate those buildings before they are destroyed, etc.

Hamas controls all media reports coming out of Gaza, often killing reporters who question Hamas perspectives and statistics regarding fatalities and wounded.

Hamas statistics do not indicate how many fatalities are Hamas terrorists. They present all fatalities as unarmed citizens, women and children. They deny the existence of their HQs as having been deliberately positioned under major Gazan hospitals. Only after the war will accurate numbers be ascertained. In previous conflicts, over 80% of all fatalities were Hamas jihadis.

Over 1,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets have misfired in this war, landing in Gaza and killing Gazans. These verified facts are nowhere to be found in reportage by the world media, since Hamas does not permit free reporting. One recent example was a Hamas media report that ‘an IDF rocket hit al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza’ (where Hamas has its GHQ). It was later verified that it was a Hamas rocket which misfired.

Over 10,000 Hamas rockets have been fired at Israeli civilians. If these had not been intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome anti-rocket system, many Israelis would have been murdered. Israel is trying not to hit Gazan civilians, but Hamas is trying to hit Israeli civilians. The news media does not report these truths.

Here is a May 13, 2018 prophetic quote from a former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp:

“Hamas has followed this strategy many times in the past, firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities and constructing under the border sophisticated attack tunnels from which fighters would storm into the heart of Jewish communities and carry out mass murder and abduction. Thousands of Palestinians have died, including human shields that are so central to Hamas's strategy, as the IDF has been compelled to forcefully defend its people. The world has often reacted with horror and outrage, blaming Israel for the bloodshed provoked by Hamas – just as intended.”

Modern PC blood-libels

A recent example of a modern blood libel (stating that Jews are in the habit of murdering children) is found in the recent statement of French President Emmanuel Macron, in a BBC interview at the Élysée Palace in Paris. He accused Israel of bombing babies without justification, and ordered Israel to stop: “De facto - today, civilians are bombed - de facto. These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed. So, there is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So, we do urge Israel to stop.” World headlines focused on Macron’s phrase, “Israel must stop killing women and children in Gaza.”

PM Netanyahu’s response was to the point:

“The responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas-ISIS and not with Israel. It must be remembered that Israel entered the war due to that terrorist organization’s brutal murder of hundreds of Israelis and holding hostage more than 200 Israelis. While Israel does everything in its power to avoid harming civilians and urges them to leave the battle areas, Hamas-ISIS is doing all it can to prevent them from moving to safe areas and uses them as human shields. Hamas-ISIS is cruelly holding our people hostage - women, children, the elderly - and thus committing a crime against humanity. Hamas-ISIS is using schools, mosques and hospitals as terrorist command centers. The crimes being committed today by Hamas-ISIS in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York and all over the world. The leaders of the world should be condemning Hamas-ISIS, not Israel.”

After a huge outcry among fair-minded French citizens, France’s President Macron eventually called Israeli President Isaac Herzog and, according to Herzog’s office, made it clear that he “does not and did not intend to accuse Israel of intentionally harming innocent civilians in the campaign against the terrorist organization Hamas.” This diplomatic ‘walk-back’ does not erase Macron’s on-the-record blood-libel against the Jewish state.

Canadian comments

Not to be outdone, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added some comments on Tuesday at the inauguration of a billion-dollar E-One Moli lithium-ion battery cell production plant in Maple Ridge, British Columbia.:

“The human tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza is heart-wrenching, especially the suffering we see in and around the al-Shifa Hospital. I have been clear that the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules. All innocent life is equal in worth, Israeli and Palestinian. I urge the government of Israel to exercise maximum restraint. The world is watching on TV and social media. We’re hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who have lost their parents. The world is witnessing this killing of women, of children, of babies. This has to stop.”

This blood libel accused Israel of deliberately killing women, children and babies. Again, these are all Hamas talking points, but now and once again, they are coming out of the mouth of a Western leader.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu responded on Twitter within two hours to Trudeau’s charges:

“It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust. While Israel is doing everything to keep civilians out of harm’s way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way. Israel provides civilians in Gaza humanitarian corridors and safe zones; Hamas prevents them from leaving at gunpoint. It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime – targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians. The forces of civilization must back Israel in defeating Hamas barbarism.”

From sea to sea

Canada’s national motto is in Latin: “Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos orbis terrarium” (Latin Vulgate Psalm 71:8). The English version is in Psalm 72:8: “May he also rule from sea to sea, and from the [Euphrates] River to the ends of the earth.” This prophetic prayer was written by King Solomon, and talks of the coming day when Messiah Yeshua will rule over the entire planet from a Jewish Jerusalem. In that day the Jewish people will be fully regathered in the land “between the River and the Sea.” In that day their enemies will be totally crushed.

The Canadian Christians who chose this motto knew that Canada is situated between two oceans – the Atlantic and the Pacific. These Christians were believers in Replacement Theology: in their understanding, Psalm 72 could just as easily apply to Canada as to Israel. Yet God’s prophetic word is clear. The two bodies of water are the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the people who will live there, according to the unchanging promise of YHVH, the God of Jacob.

Hear the word of YHVH, you nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away, and say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and He will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock. For YHVH has ransomed Jacob and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he. They will come and shout for joy on the height of Zion, and they will be radiant over the bounty of YHVH . . . and they will never languish again!” (Jeremiah 31:10-12)

Sea to sea without seeing clearly

The chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” has been heard at pro-Hamas demonstrations across the planet. This anti-Jewish chant also has counterfeit spiritual connections with Psalm 72:8. Since the 1960s, this phrase has been used by the terrorist leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Iran and their sympathizers (including student activists on college campuses). It is a call-to-arms for the establishment of a State of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – thereby erasing the State of Israel and its people. Hamas calls for Israel’s destruction in its Charter and it was in pursuit of those goals that it broke out of Gaza on October 7, 2023 to attack Israeli civilians, murdering, raping, torturing over 1,200 people and kidnapping over 240 people in the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Hamas spiritual leader and Sheikh Ahmed Yasin; al Majallah (London) March 31, 2002: “We declare very clearly that Palestine from al Naqurah to Rafah and from [the River] Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea is the land of Palestine.”

Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh; Al-Aqsa Television, December 14, 2011: “The principles [of Hamas] are definitive and non-negotiable: Palestine means Palestine in its entirety, from the River to the Sea. There will be no concession of a single inch of the land of Palestine.”

Hamas’s Politburo Chief Khaled Meshal; al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies & Consultations, Beirut, November 28-29, 2012: “Palestine, from its river to its sea, from its north to its south, is the land of the Palestinians; their homeland, and their legitimate right. We will not relinquish an inch or any part of it -for any reason or under any circumstances and pressures.”

Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi; November 11, 2023: “The only solution for this conflict is the resistance continuing against the Israeli oppression until the establishment of the Palestinian state from the river to the sea”

In the past few days, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer announced that chants supporting Hamas, including calls like “from the river to the sea,” will become a criminal offense in Austria.

Lecturing Israel on how to fight its wars

Hamas’ General Head Quarters is situated underneath Gaza’s main al-Shifa Hospital. Israel has communicated this information to the world each time Hamas has attacked Israel. But the IDF has never militarily confronted this problem head-on. This time something different is happening. The IDF has surrounded al-Shifa hospital (and two adjoining ones, al-Rantisi and al-Nasser). Israel Navy Seals have broken in to one of the hospitals and found large supplies of explosive and weapons, as well as clothing and baby bottles belonging to Israeli hostages. Motorcycles which were used to kidnap hostages were stored in the basement of al-Rantisi Hospital, adjoining al-Shifa. The strategic planning and valor shown by the IDF in capturing these hospitals without causing casualties to those who were actually patients (and not Hamas terrorists hiding out), and possibly freeing any hostages still captive takes great courageous and is worthy of high commendation. But the US Administration’s comments about this heroic operation are shocking in their obtuseness:

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated on Sunday on the CBS News program ‘Face the Nation’ regarding the IDF’s operation to free Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, “The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire. And we’ve had active consultations with the Israel Defense Forces on this . . . The bottom line is that we do not want to see firefights in hospitals.”

President Biden stated: “I have not been reluctant in expressing my concerns about what's going on and it's my hope and expectation that it will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital . . . So, I remain somewhat hopeful but the hospital must be protected.”

These tone-deaf comments could actually strengthen the hand of the jihadi forces in this situation, and totally support the PR goals of Hamas.

One last example, this time regarding Lebanon. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah jihadi terrorist group has been firing anti-tank missiles, mortars and RPGs at Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers who are in farms and towns on the Israeli side of the confrontation line. Over 21 Israelis have been wounded, one seriously. Ten Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed by Hezbollah fire. The IDF has only been responding to fire and not taking pre-emptive initiative (as per American requests), taking out those Lebanese rocket squads and launch pads from where fire was directed by Hezbollah against Israel.

Yet this past week US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “expressed concern” to Israel's Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, regarding Israel’s involvement with Lebanon, according to a report by US news outlet Axios, citing three US and Israeli sources who were briefed on the call. These sources claim that “Austin's message to Gallant reflected growing anxiety in the White House that Israeli military action in Lebanon is exacerbating tensions along the border, which could lead to a regional war.” Anonymous sources stated that some members of the Administration are worried that Israel is trying to “provoke” Hezbollah, which could in turn “create a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon” which could drag the US and other regional actors, like Iran, into the conflict. Other unnamed US Administration officials outlined steps to Israel on how to reduce civilian casualties, including by “using smaller bombs against Hamas,” according to the New York Times.

A British military expert notes: “While political leaders such as Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak have so far consistently resisted calls for Israel to cease fire, they constantly say that Israel must observe the laws of war and minimize civilian casualties. They know that is exactly what the IDF is doing, and their words amount to posturing to appease elements of their electorates that oppose support for Israel. They should know better than to provide cover for Hamas and its supporters in this way.”

What do the specialists say about Israel’s bombings?

Even superpowers do not win every war. Decisive victory has evaded America’s top brass in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Lebanon. Yet France, Britain, America and Canada have no problem telling Israel how to defeat the very enemies that those superpowers have not managed to defeat. Perhaps some humility would be in order when such advice is given.

A world-renowned military expert does have some wisdom to share here regarding Israel’s military track record and civilian casualties. Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander of British 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.

Col. 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.”

In his address to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Geneva, October 16, 2009 concerning the 2006 war between Israel and Hamas, Colonel Kemp stated:

“Based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population. Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents. The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights. The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks. Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes. More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.”

"In my opinion the actions taken by the IDF were necessary to defend the people of Israel from the ongoing, intensive and lethal attacks by Hamas and other groups in Gaza. It is the inalienable duty of every government to use its armed forces to protect its citizens and its terrain from external attack . . . As the Gaza Strip is effectively a separate state, outside of Israeli control, these actions amounted to an attack by a foreign country against Israeli territory. In these circumstances I know of no other realistic and effective means of suppressing an aggressor’s missile fire than the methods used by the IDF, namely precision air and artillery strikes against the command-and-control structures, the fighters and the munitions of Hamas and the other groups in Gaza. Nor have I heard any other military expert from any country propose a viable alternative means of defense against such aggressions … In conclusion, in my opinion the IDF took exceptional measures to adhere to the Laws of Armed Conflict and to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. During the conflict many politicians, UN leaders, human rights groups and NGOs called on the Israelis to take greater action to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. Yet none of them suggested any additional ways of doing this. I conclude that this was because Israel was taking all feasible steps. I believe Israel to be world leaders in actions to minimize civilian casualties; and this is borne out by the efforts made by the US Army, the most sophisticated and powerful in the world, to learn from the IDF on this issue."

A recent article by Col. Kemp points to military dynamics and strategic lessons that the world needs to learn from Israel’s fighting example:

“Too often Western nations, despite earlier rejection, condemnation and sometimes hostility, have eventually been obliged to follow the lead Israel was first forced to take to protect its people. American and European responses to jihadist attacks on their own territory, especially after 9/11, is an example of that. We are at present living through another example: the Iranian nuclear threat. Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned that Tehran's nuclear program not only represents grave danger to their own country but to the entire region and to the world. As in its response to Munich, Israel is conducting a covert campaign to stop it, including by targeted assassinations. Meanwhile the US and European countries are appeasing the mullahs in Tehran, just as they did with Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s, and are on the verge of striking a deal that will pave the path to an Iranian nuclear capability. This time, ignoring Israeli warnings will have even more dire and far-reaching consequences.”

A recent report by five retired US generals, (including Major General Mike Jones, Former Chief of Staff U.S. Central Command) determined that Israel’s efforts during the 2014 war with Hamas to minimize Gazan civilian casualties were “virtually unprecedented.” The report, commissioned by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and titled ‘2014 Gaza War Assessment: The New Face of Conflict.’ says that Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties “adhered to or exceeded the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) . . . in a virtually unprecedented effort to avoid inflicting civilian casualties, even when doing so would have been lawfully permitted.” Regarding Hamas, the report stated that it “not only violated LOAC [laws of armed conflict] but also expertly enlisted and perverted its principals in an attempt to delegitimize Israel’s actions.”

How should we then pray?

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for Israel’s leadership at all levels in confronting the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran threat

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza can finally be shattered

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the physical rescue of the 238 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas. One kidnapped IDF soldier Noa Marciano was brutally murdered by Hamas while in captivity

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

The Elephant and the Nazi

A small town in Germany

In 1968 John Le Carré published his fifth novel, A Small Town in Germany. In that story, Alan Turner (a British Foreign Office official/spy working for MI6) is sent to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting (long-term temporary employee at the British Embassy), who is suspected of being a Communist agent. It turns out that Harting is a war crimes investigator hot on the trail of Klaus Karfeld, an anti-British industrialist and politician who had been a Nazi administrator of a laboratory that had poisoned 31 Jews. Le Carré based the foundation of his plot on the fact that many Nazis were living secretly and with a concealed identity all over East and West Germany (often in leading political and diplomatic roles), and there were many who were guilty of serious anti-Semitic war crimes. Le Carré penned the original draft of his book in Vienna, where famed Nazi-hunter Dr. Simon Wiesenthal helped him with background research about real hidden Nazis.

The elephant with the murderous red eyes

Years ago, when Rachel and I were ministering in Germany, I had a dream. In this dream, I found myself standing in the kitchen of an old German house, probably built in the 1300-1500’s. There was a slit-like opening on the kitchen wall, and staring out at me from that slit were a pair of beady red eyes – the eyes of a murderous elephant. There was great danger in those eyes. All of a sudden, the elephant dropped through the floor and out of my sight – as if descending an elevator shaft – into hidden foundations deep below the house. I needed to immediately find out where he had gone. I carefully approached the ancient wooden door of the house which led to the street. I opened it very slowly – not wanted to attract the attention of the deadly elephant, wherever he might be. The small street outside the house, was picturesque – beautifully cobbled, and overhung with half-timbered house with plastered walls, each one painted in different colors – yellow, rose, beige, light green, etc.

As I looked to the left, down the street, I saw a large medieval cobbled square with a statue or fountain in the middle of the courtyard. All of a sudden, a bright-red elephant with those same murderous blood-red eyes rose silently out from the medieval courtyard and floated soundless over the cobblestones. I realized that, in the spirit, I was invisible to him as long as I did not make a noise or otherwise attract attention. I instantly knew (the way one knows things in dreams) that this threatening elephant was a demonic spirit of anti-Semitism, which had buried itself deep in the spiritual foundations of Europe. He was now able to operate with subterfuge, without being noticed – stealthily going about doing his work of deceiving Europeans – and waiting to activate the nations for an attack on the Jewish people at the opportune time.

The Hamas pogrom on October 7, 2023 unleashed with it a red wave of murderous anti-Semitism across the face of the globe. These jihadi sparks have set off an explosive charge of Jew-hatred that threatens to surpass the intensity of what happened during rise of Hitler in the 1930’s. In Hitler’s day, Nazis believed in the rightness of their Jew-hating policies. In our day, there are many who believe in the ‘rightness’ of their hatred for the Jewish people and the Jewish state. This is a clear example of mass psychosis, this time manifesting itself with an anti-Semitic obsession.

Anti-Semitism ‘Marx the spot’

As a young child born to Communist parents, I became acquainted with the writings of Red revolutionaries at a young age. The first sentence of Karl Marx’s ‘The Communist Manifesto’ (originally published in German in 1848) was etched in my memory for years: “Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa – das Gespenst des Kommunismus” (‘A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism”).

The events of the past month which have swept across the planet in major European, British, Australian and North American cities – mass demonstrations calling for the destruction of Israel, the slaughter of Jewish people, and violent support for jihadi terrorist slaughter, mass rape, torture and kidnapping carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood-founded Hamas – have been accompanied by an apocalyptic rise in anti-Semitic speech, rallies and physical attacks on both Jewish individuals, Jewish schools and community centers, yeshivas (rabbinic seminaries), etc.

The events we are now witnessing remind us of Nazi riots in Germany, pogroms in Ukraine, Poland and Moldova – all of these which were precursors of the Nazi murder machine. A specter is haunting Europe, indeed! It is ‘das Gespenst des Antisemitismus,’ ‘das Gespenst des Judenhass’ (‘the specter of anti-Semitism, the specter of Jew-hatred’). And its evil weeds are spreading like wildfire across the planet.

The morphing of anti-Semitism

The murderous Jew-hatred that nursed Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023 has roots both ancient and modern. Here are five markers of anti-Semitism (AS) which have developed down through the ages.

Pagan/Christian AS Egyptian, Samaritan, Greek and Roman roots

Islamic AS Christian, Ishmaelite, Edomite and (in the 20^th century) Nazi roots

Communist AS Christian and neo-pagan 19^th century conspiracy roots

(i.e., the forgery - the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion)

Nazi AS Christian, old pagan, neo-pagan 19^th century conspiracy roots

Woke AS having elements of all of the above

Nazi anti-Semitic beliefs have had a significant influence on the jihadi Islamist movements of the 20^th century (e.g., PLO/PA, Hamas, Egyptian/Islamic Jihad, al Qa’eda, etc.). These influences will be looked at now.

The Nazi, the Mufti and jihad

Hamas (in Arabic, Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya; the Islamic Resistance Movement) is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood (Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin). Its 1988 Charter proclaims clearly that “the Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers.” The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Ismailia, Egypt in the year 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, a schoolteacher who admired Adolf Hitler's hatred of the Jews. Al-Banna wrote often to Hitler, expressing his admiration for the dictator and his desire to collaborate with the Nazi Party.

In March 1938 Hitler received the envoy of Saudi Arabian King Ibn Saud at his Berghof chalet. Hitler stated to the envoy that one of the three reasons why Nazi Germany was interested in working with the Arabs was “because we were jointly fighting the Jews.” Hitler then declared that he himself would not rest until the last Jew had left Germany. The Saudi envoy observed that the Prophet Mohammed . . . “had acted the same way. He had driven the Jews out of Arabia.”

Adolf Hitler met with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, on November 28, 1941 at the Reich Chancellery (Reichskanzlei) in Berlin. Here are some selected statements of Hitler to al-Husseini: “Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests . . . It presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews . . . Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power . . . (The Führer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe” (Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Series D, Vol XIII, London, 1964, p. 881).

Al-Husseini’s hatred of Judaism and the Jews drew him to Nazism and to Hitler and Himmler like a magnet. All three shared a common ideological passion: Jew-hatred’ (Judenhass). Al-Husseini brought his hatred of the Jews and Judaism with him when he came to Berlin in 1941, and he brought those same hatreds – now fused with the additional element of Nazism – back to the Middle East after World War II (see Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 by Matthias Küntzel; translated by Colin Meade).

The Nazis clung to a paranoid conspiracy theory that ‘international Jewry’ was plotting to destroy Germany. Muslims like al-Husseini morphed that into an international Jewish plot to destroy Islamic society. Thus, in order to remove this supposed threat, the radical Islamist cannot merely humiliate the Jew; he must annihilate him. But jihadi Jew-hatred did not originate with Hitler; the Muslims inherited it directly from the classic Islamic religious texts. Mein Kampf’s anti-Semitism had now been successfully grafted onto the pre-existing anti-Semitism of the Quran. These two hatreds had become intertwined.

Radio Days in Berlin

On December 18, 1942, the ‘Islamic Central Institute’ (Islamische Zentral-Institut) was inaugurated in Berlin, with Haj Amin al-Husseini as chief radio announcer and speaker. Al-Husseini attacked the Jews on his December 23, 1942 broadcast, declaring that the Quran judged the Jews “to be the most irreconcilable enemies of the Muslims” and that Israel would “always be a subversive element on the earth.” Whereas Nazi propaganda in Germany basically informed their domestic audiences that the Reich was “exterminating” and “annihilating” the Jews of Europe, the radio broadcasts in Arabic urged Muslims to take matters into their own hands and “kill the Jews” as fulfillment of both Arab national interests and the demands of their own religion.

One of the principal founders the Syrian Ba’ath Party (Arab Socialist Resurrection Party) in 1947, Zaki al-Arsuzi, stated that Fascism and Nazism had greatly influenced Ba’athist ideology, while another Ba’ath Party leader, Sami al-Jundi, wrote: “We were racialists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought . . . We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf.” Today, in the Palestinian Authority capital of Ramallah, Hitler’s Mein Kampf is # 6 on the Palestinian best-seller list.

On September 11, 2001, the 9/11 al-Qa’eda murderers denounced Jews, the United States, and Israel. For those analysts who were aware of recent Islamic history, it was clear that Bin Laden was repeating the anti-Semitic ideology and propaganda of the Nazi regime which had been welded to the anti-Jewish hatred of Husseini and the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s and 1940’s.

In our day we hear the same Nazi-Brotherhood poisonous synthesis slithering from the mouths of spokesmen from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hamas’s Charter draws on Nazism’s antisemitic conspiracy theories, blaming Jews and Zionists for the two World Wars. Any intelligent reader of that Charter will immediately recognize the now-familiar Nazi-Islamist ideological fusion.

In their ground-breaking book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz note, “While the Nazi ideology collapsed in 1945 and virtually vanished from German and European life, the radical Arab nationalist and Islamist ideologies flourished thereafter [in the Middle East] . . . Organizational links to the Axis-era past continue to the present day. The West Bank is ruled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, created by Arafat (al-Husseini’s heir and a former Muslim Brotherhood activist).” Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a deeply antisemitic branch of the Muslim Brotherhood “whose worldview is indistinguishable from that of al-Husseini and the Brotherhood in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Anti-Semitic radical forces deeply influenced by the Nazis continue to dominate Palestinian politics.

The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen, is a major propagator of Nazi-inspired propaganda. In his 1982 doctoral dissertation ‘The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945’ awarded by the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies, he repeated the Nazi claim that a Jewish ‘declaration of war’ on Germany caused the Holocaust. In Abbas’ own words in that dissertation, he wrote: “The Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.” The Zionists, Abbas asserted, were the Third Reich’s “basic partner in crime.” Abbas also claimed that the figure of six million dead has been exaggerated for political gain, and suggests one million as a more reasonable estimate.

In his 1984 book based on his dissertation, Abbas claimed that the Zionist movement and its leaders were ‘fundamental partners’ of the Nazis and equally responsible for the Holocaust. In 2018, Abbas stated that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves: “These people were fought because of their social function related to money, usury . . . From Hitler’s point of view, they were sabotaging, and therefore he hated them.”

In 2010, the late Professor Robert Wistrich, Erich Neuberger Professor of European Jewish Historyand Head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published ‘A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad.’ Wistrich’s thesis is that first the Nazis, and then the Soviets (with their campaigns of anti-Zionism), had shifted the global center of gravity of anti-Semitism from Europe to the Muslim Middle East and especially to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Hamas awaits the great massacre

An interview with Hamas MP and cleric Yunis al-Astal was aired on al-Aqsa TV on May 11, 2011, where he declared: “The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang . . . In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.”

In this blood-chilling pronouncement, it can be clearly seen how Nazi plans for Jewish genocide continue to dovetail with Muslim Brotherhood jihadi terror to bring forth a modern genocidal expression of anti-Semitism – one which multitudes across the globe seem to be passionately embracing.

How should we then pray?

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for Israel’s leadership at all levels regarding the Hamas-PLO-PA-Nazi threat

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas can finally be removed from its cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the physical rescue of the 239 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Caiaphas, Kissinger and the CIA

Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a Sanhedrin meeting, and they were saying, “What are we doing in regard to the fact that this man is performing many signs? If we let Him go on like this, all the people will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take over both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was High Priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, nor are you taking into account that it is in your best interest that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish instead” (John 11:47-50).

This meeting described in the Gospel of John was called by the Sanhedrin to manage the ‘crisis situation’ of Messiah Yeshua’s growing popularity. The Chief Priests were the main diplomatic connection between the occupying Roman power and the Jewish people and, like most politicians, one of their primary interests was to preserve their own office and their hold on power. Yeshua was definitely not their choice to be Israel’s Messiah. Caiaphas’ counsel that evening was based on what is called ‘Realpolitik’ (a German term meaning ‘practical, actual or realistic politics’): better that Yeshua die than that the priestly power structure lose control and that, as a result, the Romans potentially crush the Jewish people.

Such Realpolitik political philosophy guides nearly every national strategic think-tank today. Here are some of its main points:

deciding on diplomatic or political policies based on considerations of given circumstances and factors, instead of following ideology or moral-ethical premises

“To bring down the walls of Jericho, the Realpolitiker knows the simple pickaxe is more useful than the mightiest trumpet” (August Ludwig von Rochau; ‘Grundsätze der Realpolitik, angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustände Deutschlands’ [‘Practical Politics: an Application of its Principles to the Situation of the German States’], 1853).

the exercise of policies that are considered ‘political realism.’ Policies are based on the pursuit, possession and application of power

Realpolitik is the opposite of having strong moral or ideological foundations. It does not follow a biblical set of rules. Realpolitik is oriented toward achieving specific goals, limited only by ‘how to get things done.’ It usually involves compromising on ideological principles.

Did the God of Jacob instruct Jewish kings to follow realpolitik?

Moses lays out clear guidelines to the Jewish people as to how Jewish kings are to rule, and what is to be the foundational basis for their diplomatic and political policies:

“When you enter the land which YHVH your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will appoint a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’ you shall in fact appoint a king over you whom YHVH your God chooses. One from among your countrymen you shall appoint as king over yourselves. You may not put a foreigner over yourselves, anyone who is not your countryman. In any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since YHVH has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. Now it shall come about, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Teaching (Hebrew, Torah) on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear YHVH his God, by carefully following all the words of this Teaching (i.e., the Mosaic Covenant) and these statutes, so that his heart will not be haughty toward his countrymen, and that he will not turn away from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may live long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel” (Deuteronomy 17:14-20)

The ideal leader (in God’s sight) is a man who weighs matters, makes his decisions and implements them based on the word of God – the Scriptures. His heart must not be influenced by pursuit of power or wealth. Based on these guidelines, there are few godly leaders today across this planet.

Musical chairs in Gaza

The White House is clarifying the immediate U.S. endgame regarding the crowning of a new Arab leader to replace Hamas as the new potentate in Gaza: they are throwing their weight behind the Palestinian Authority:

“There needs to be a Palestinian Authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state” (POTUS Biden)

“At some point, what would make the most sense is for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday October 31, 2023

Most thoughtful observers clearly understand that Hamas is no longer (and has never been) a suitable candidate. It’s a jihadi terrorist organization guilty of horrendous war crimes, responsible for the mass rape, torture, kidnapping and slaughter of over 1,400 babies, young children, teenagers, young adults, and pensioners on October 7, 2023. But since the Palestinian Authority is being pushed forward by the U.S. Administration, some helpful questions should be asked:

What is the Palestinian Authority (PA)?

Are they also involved in terrorist activities?

What’s the historical connection between the PA/PLO and the U.S.A.?

Why is America pushing for the PA/PLO to become the new dictatorship in Gaza?

The PLO – founded in Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem

On May 28, 1964 King Hussein of Jordan convened a Palestinian National Council in Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem, telling the 400 delegates: “The hearts of millions of Arabs yearn for the recovery of the plundered fatherland…there is no value and no meaning in Arabs living without Palestine” (Jerusalem Post, May 29, 1964). Committees were established to draft military and political plans for the conquering of Israel. It was at that conference that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established. A PLO Charter was drawn up in 1964, and was later updated in July 1968. Here are some selected articles from the 1968 PLO Charter:

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it.

Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution.

Article 14: The destiny of the Arab nation, and indeed Arab existence itself, depend upon the destiny of the Palestine cause.

Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.

Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal.

Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

Article 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world . . . The liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East.

Article 30: Fighters and carriers of arms in the war of liberation are the nucleus of the popular army which will be the protective force for the gains of the Palestinian Arab people.

The PLO’s largest faction was led by Yasser Arafat, who joined in 1968, becoming PLO Executive Committee Chairman. The Arabic name for PLO is Fatḥ or al-Fatah, a word meaning victory, breakthrough, opening or conquest. Fatḥ is an acronym using the inverted letters (i.e., spelled backwards) letters (HTF instead of FTH) of the Arabic name for the organization ‘Palestinian National Liberation Movement’ (Ḥarakat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭanī l-Filasṭīnī). In Islam, Fatḥ reminds Muslims of Fatḥ al-Shām – the ‘conquering of the Levant,’ including Jerusalem – the jihadi conquest of Syria, Jordan and Israel in the time immediately after Mohammed’s death.

The 48^th sura (chapter) of the Quran is named Al-Fatḥ, and it describes in detail the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. The Hudaybiyyah agreement (a ten-year pact established between Mohammad with the Arabian tribe of Quraysh) was broken by Mohammad after two years, when his jihadi forces – having re-armed during the peace pact – subjugated the Quraysh tribe and moved on to conquer Mecca. Arafat cited this Islamic precedent a number of times when he signed the Oslo Accords with the Jewish state, as justification for his supposed recognizing of Israel and renouncing of terrorist activities. The following quote from the newspaper al-Quds, May 10, 1998 illustrates Arafat’s strategy:

Question: “Do you feel sometimes that you made a mistake in agreeing to Oslo?”

Arafat: “No – no! Allah's messenger Mohammad accepted the al-Hudaybiyyah peace treaty and Salah a-Din accepted the peace agreement with Richard the Lion-Hearted”
(N.B.: Salah a-Din was the Muslim leader who, after a cease-fire, declared a jihad against the Crusaders and captured Jerusalem)

Can a leopard change his spots? (Jeremiah 13:23)

In 1993, following the Oslo Accords, the PLO/al Fatah assumed leadership of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), known today as the Palestinian Authority (PA). In other words, the PA is another term for the PLO.

The PLO/PA has publicly declared in two world forums that it has renounced terror:

“As for terrorism, I announced it yesterday in no uncertain terms, and yet, I repeat for the record that we totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism” (Geneva, December 14, 1988; Yasser Arafat, Press Conference Statement)

“The PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators” (Letter from Yasser Arafat to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; September 9, 1993)

Yet Arafat and the PLO and the Palestinian Authority continue to engage in terrorism, making them guilty of a basic breach of the Oslo Accords.

For a list and description of terror attacks carried out both by the PLO and also by Palestinian Authority forces (both before and after their signing of agreements to renounce terrorism), see the following articles:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinian-terrorism

https://www.conservapedia.com/Palestine_Liberation_Organization

Two especially brazen PLO/PA terror attacks which were foiled while in progress are:

May 30, 1990 – Zikim Beach south of Tel Aviv – two PLO terror squads on Zodiac boats on way to attack Israeli beachgoers

January 3, 2002 – The ‘MV Karine A,’ a Palestinian freighter carrying 50 tons of Iranian-supplied weapons, including Katyusha rockets, anti-tank missiles and high explosives, was boarded by IDF naval commandos. The head of the Palestinian Authority’s procurement department Adel Awadallah al-Mughrabi had purchased this 4,000-ton freighter in Lebanon with $400,000 provided by Fuad Shobaki, a Brigadier-General in the Palestinian Authority military. Shobaki was Arafat's closest financial advisor. Two Palestinian Authority police officials, Fathi Razam and Omar Akawi, supervised the purchase. The background intelligence which became available showed that the PLO/PA was caught rend-handed – creating a host of problems for the U.S. State Department and its long-concealed policy of under-the-table cooperation with the PLO.

On February 13, 2002 the U.S. 107^th Congress passed Bill H.R. 3743, which stated, inter alia:

The Congress makes the following findings:

Yasser Arafat, in a letter sent to then Israeli Prime Minister Rabin on September 9, 1993, stated that the PLO “renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations, and discipline violators.”

During the last 18 months of the ‘Intifada’ hundreds of Israelis have been killed in numerous terrorist attacks committed by terrorists belonging to Palestinian extremist organizations.

The Department of State report of April 2001 on Palestinian compliance with the Oslo Accords details the involvement of the PLO's Fatah faction and Tanzim militant units in terrorism and violent incitement, stating “Elements of Fatah, a PLO faction, and members of the PA's [Palestinian Authority’s] security forces instigated and directly participated in anti-Israel violence. . .”

According to the Israeli Government, more than 70 percent of terrorist attacks in Israel have been committed by the Fatah, Tanzim and its military brigades, and by Force 17, Yasser Arafat's Presidential Guard.

The PLO recently attempted to smuggle more than 50 tons of arms from Iran into PLO-controlled territory.

President Bush said “Ordering up weapons that were intercepted on a boat headed for that part of the world is not part of fighting terror [. . .] That's enhancing terror.”

The Congress finds that the PLO is in violation of the Oslo Accords under which the organization made a commitment to abandon and renounce terrorism.

In a February 2015 civil case, a US federal court found both the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable for the death and injuries of US citizens in a number of terrorist attacks in Israel from 2001 to 2004. Unfortunately, on August 31, 2016, the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan dismissed the lawsuit – but not because the PLO/PA had not overseen the terror acts – they had indeed been neck-deep involved in terror acts. The Court of Appeals threw out the decision on the grounds that US federal courts lacked overseas jurisdiction on civil cases.

The leopard has not changed his spots.

A PLO/PA jihadi fighting under another name

The original members of the PLO have split into various groups and streams, though still remaining part of the PLO. These groups include the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command. These groups are openly involved in terrorism, but are still members in good standing of the PLO. The Palestinian Authority also makes no secret of its own financing of Palestinian terrorism.

One terror group (which is officially part of the Palestinian Authority) is the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. This organization remains actively involved in jihadi terror attacks. Here are links to their activities:

On December 18, 2003, al-Fatah asked the leaders of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to join the Fatah Council, recognizing it officially as part of the Fatah organization. The Fatah organization, we remember, is the largest contingent of the Palestinian Authority.

In June 2004, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei said the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunmen are entitled to play a role in the Palestinian future: “We have clearly declared that the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are part of Fatah,” Qurei said in an interview with the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. “We are committed to them and Fatah bears full responsibility for the group.” PM Qurei added that his top priority would be to safeguard the security of these gunmen who are wanted by Israel. He said they would be integrated into Fatah's institutions and would be paid salaries.

The following two articles show how the Palestinian Authority promotes, honors and glorifies Hamas and al-Aqsa terrorists, and how Hamas and Fatah compete in boasting who is murdering more Jewish Israelis:

https://www.ft.dk/samling/20111/almdel/URU/bilag/29/1036818.pdf

https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2021/05/hamas-and-fatah-compete-by-shedding-jewish-blood/

In the days immediately after the October 7, 2023 Hamas jihadi terror pogrom which massacred, raped, tortured and kidnapped thousands of Israeli citizens, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades released declarations and videos trumpeting that Fatah/al-Aqsa also participated in those Hamas attacks:

https://palwatch.org/page/34720Fatah brags it took part in October 7 slaughter

https://palwatch.org/page/34685Fatah applauds Hamas murderers and rapists: “A source of pride, heroism, and honor”

https://palwatch.org/page/34635 Fatah: “Strike the sons of apes of pigs . . . Slaughter everyone who is Israeli”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/378593 “Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade: We're fighting alongside Hamas”

In light of the abovementioned facts, the recent statements by President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken – when they speak of the ‘logic and viability’ of having the Palestinian Authority/PLO/al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades be put in charge of running Gaza (with US State Department approval) – are revealed to be dangerously duplicitous.

U.S. policy seems bent of replacing one terrorist government with another:

“There needs to be a Palestinian Authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state”

“At some point, what would make the most sense is for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza,” Blinken told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday October 31, 2023

Dancing with the devil

Many are not aware that the U.S. intelligence community has had backdoor connections and a significant working relationship with the PLO since 1969, at the height of its involvement in Middle East and world terrorism.

In November 1969, CIA case officer Robert Ames entered the Strand Café in Rue Hamra, West Beirut to meet Ali Hassan Salameh, a 27-year-old Palestinian confidant of Yasser Arafat. Salameh was a member of PLO/Fatah’s Revolutionary Council and Revolutionary Security Apparatus, which he developed into Force 17 (Arafat’s personal security force and counterintelligence unit).

Ali Hassan Salameh’s father was Ḥasan Salāmah, a commander in the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) against the British Mandate forces and the local Jewish population. Some interesting history here: In 1941 Salāmah fled with the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and Fawzi al-Qawuqji to Nazi Germany where he served as the Mufti’s senior aide. In October 1944 he parachuted from a Nazi Luftwaffe Heinkel into Wadi Qelt in the Judean Desert along with three German Templar commandos. Their weaponry included explosives, submachine guns, dynamite, radio equipment and poison intended to destroy Tel Aviv’s drinking water. In January 1945 he commanded forty Waffen S.S. 13th Handžar (’Knife’) Bosnian Muslim Nazi troops, whose numbers eventually swelled to 500. In 1948 Salāmah commanded the Palestinian Holy War Army (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas) along with Abdul Qadir al-Husseini. He was killed fighting Israeli Irgun forces at Rosh Ha’ayin in June 1948.

Ḥasan Salāmah’s son Ali Hassan Salameh was raised to champion his father’s cause – the annihilation of the Jewish state. In his youth he spent time in Germany and Lebanon, and in 1968 he received training from Egyptian military intelligence. After his 1969 Beirut meeting, Salameh was given the CIA operative crypt (cryptonym or codename) MJS/TRUST2. Ali Hassan was not a paid agent under CIA control, but was an intelligence asset – an all-important ‘back channel’ between the U.S. government and Arafat. Robert Ames told Salameh at their meeting, “Arafat has friends in high places and so does his cause.” He told Salameh that President Richard Nixon himself had authorized Ames to “explore the possibility of contact between the USA and the PLO.” Ames said he was acting on the authority of the American National Security Council. The message to Arafat was: “You Arabs claim your views are not heard in Washington. Here is your chance. The President of the United States is listening.”

By January 1970 the Head of the CIA (DCI) Richard Helms was encouraging Ames to pursue the Agency’s connections with the PLO, and within a few months he informed Kissinger and Nixon of these backdoor channels. The average perspective of CIA agents at that time can be summed up in two quotes from Salameh’s CIA connection, Robert Ames:

In the spring of 1972, Ames was writing, “Although I do not agree with all of them [terror activities], I can sympathize with his organization’s feeling that they must carry them out.”

When asked about the Christians in Lebanon, Ames claimed they wanted to create “their own state, protected by the US, just like Israel. We don’t need another Israel in the area.”

In September 1970 the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s King Hussein was nearly overthrown by the PLO. The king’s army waged pitched battles with the PLO, and in the end expelled them from Jordan to Lebanon. Arafat’s PLO created a new ‘anonymous’ terrorist wing called ‘Black September,’ headed up by Amin al-Hindi (later intelligence chief of the Palestinian Authority), Mohammad Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud) – one of the founders of al-Fatah and the mastermind of the 1972 Munich massacre, and Salah Mesbah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) – deputy chief and head of intelligence for the PLO and the second most senior official of Fatah after Yasser Arafat. Ali Hassan Salameh was a key operative in Black September. Here is an article presenting the CIA perspective during that period, written by 30-year veteran Bruce Riedel. Here is a video from Sam Wyman, former senior CIA Operations Officer, remembering Salameh’s relationship with the CIA.

In the 1970s, Salameh was the liaison with the German terrorist organization Baader-Meinhof Group (co-perpetrators of the Entebbe hijacking). As a backdoor channel between the U.S. and the P.L.O., Salameh furnished senior American diplomats, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with tips about assassination plots planned by other radical Palestinian terrorist groups. He is also said to have supplied similar information to security organizations in West Germany, Italy and Japan ‘to demonstrate that Al Fatah was no longer a terrorist organization’ – though the documented truth shows the exact opposite.

Murder most foul

In late February 1973, the U.S. National Security Agency listening-post in Cyprus picked up radio traffic between PLO Chairman Arafat, al-Fatah’s co-founder Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) and others signaling that a PLO terror operation was about to be conducted in Khartoum, Sudan. A ‘flash’ message of warning was immediately sent out, but a State Department watch officer unaccountably downgraded the message for routine transmission.

In the early evening of March 1, eight Black September Organization terrorists seized the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum during a diplomatic reception. The terrorists took U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission George C. Moore, the Belgian and Jordanian Chargés d'affaires and the Saudi Ambassador hostage. The PLO terrorists demanded the release of a Black September leader held in Jordan, several members of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang held in Germany, etc. When the terrorists’ demands were not be met, coded instructions were sent by Abu Iyad (Arafat’s closest Fatah associate in the PLO) and re-confirmed by PLO Chairman Arafat himself on a separate coded transmission, directing them to murder Noel, Moore, and Eid. At 9:00 P.M. that very night, the Black September operatives marched Noel, Moore, and Eid to the Embassy basement and murdered them with forty rounds from Kalashnikov weapons, fired from the feet to the head in order to inflict maximum suffering on the victims.

An intelligence brief co-prepared by the U.S. State department and the CIA states: “The Black September Organization (BSO) is a cover term for Fatah's terrorist operations executed by Fatah's intelligence organization . . . Fatah funds, facilities, and personnel are used in these operations . . . For all intents and purposes no significant distinction now can be made between the BSO and Fatah . . . Fatah leader Yasser Arafat has now been described in recent intelligence as having given approval to the Khartoum operation prior to its inception.”

“From the first moment of the deadly operation, which took place in Khartoum on March 1, 1973, the U.S. State Department possessed direct evidence of Arafat's responsibility, yet neither the State Department nor any other government agency made public its knowledge. Indeed, as recently as the summer of 2002, the State Department denied that such evidence existed.” Only in June 2006, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, did the State Department’s Office of the Historian post an official summary based on CIA and NSA signals intelligence intercepted communications. It clearly stated: “The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat.”

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s memoirs observe a total news blackout regarding Arafat's responsibility for the Khartoum operation. No mention is made there of Arafat, Fatah, or the PLO. For 33 years, seven successive American administrations covered up Arafat’s murder of American diplomats while placing the PLO/PA at the center of U.S. Middle East policy. “In contravention of U.S. law, the State Department has been denying that Fatah, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority are terrorist organizations, and has been actively funding them with U.S. taxpayer dollars.”

Why the silence?

America’s response to Khartoum was twofold: first, conceal at all costs the PLO’s murderous involvement; and second, pay off the PLO with operational immunity, provided that Arafat would not attack Americans. This allowed the U.S.A. to ‘build a new order in the Middle East,’ based on a PLO/PA terrorist foundation.

In September 1973, six months after Khartoum, CIA case officer Ames sent Salameh a message, using a simple code for the CIA, the PLO and Israel: “My company is still interested in getting together with Ali's company. The southern company [Israel] has investigated. I've seen a lot of their files, and they know about our contacts.” In the Fall of 1973 and early 1974, Kissinger authorized the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Vernon Walters to attend the first meetings between an American diplomat and the PLO. Walters reported in secret diplomatic cable to Kissinger: “I said I would ask him no questions about Khartoum.”

Kissinger obliquely refers to these goals in his memoir’s report of the U.S.–PLO encounter: “Walters’s meeting achieved its immediate purpose: to gain time and to prevent radical assaults on the early peace process. After it, attacks on Americans – at least by Arafat’s faction of the PLO – ceased.” A joke making the rounds at Beirut CIA Station was, “It pays to live in the same building as American diplomats because the PLO security is so good.” One CIA individual who was present at Walters’ meeting said this: “Arafat and his Fatah wing of the PLO would seek to halt international terrorist operations outside Israel, with the understanding that Arafat couldn't be held responsible for the actions of every Palestinian. In exchange, the United States said it was prepared to recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”

This policy understanding baldly stated that, as long as the PLO continued to murder Jews (but only in Israel), the U.S. would help the PLO establish its own terror state on the West Bank.

Given the fact that Arafat's right-hand man (Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen) is the current President of the Palestinian Authority, these matters are essential to grasp what is happening behind the scenes. Former NSA analyst Jim Welsh (the man who had intercepted Arafat’s order to kill the U.S. Ambassador in Sudan) commented in a 2003 interview: “There are limits to which foreign policy issues should require a man to lower himself. Shaking the hand of a murderer of a U.S. Ambassador is such a case. Any peace based upon that hand is a delusion.”

During the Kissinger years, CIA cable traffic issuing out of the Beirut Embassy indicated that they thought that Arafat could help stabilize Lebanon: “There seems to me no, repeat, no way around the central role which Yasser Arafat can and will play in determining the future state of security here . . . Arafat is a major key to stability and security in Lebanon.”

In 1976, the CIA Director George H.W. Bush, sent an official invitation to Salameh, via Ames, to visit Langley – which visit took place in January 1977 – four years after PLO’s Black September had massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. CIA case officer Ames arranged for the Agency to bring Salameh and his mistress, a former Miss Universe, on an all-expense-paid honeymoon tour of Disneyland, New Orleans and Hawaii.

After Salameh’s death, the head of the CIA station in Beirut, Frank Anderson, wrote Salameh’s son a condolence letter, stating, “Today, I lost a friend whom I respected more than other men. I promise to honor your father’s memory – and to stand ready to be your friend.” Former CIA Beirut Station Chief William Buckley (who was later tortured to death by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards) stated that “Salameh played a large part in winning the hearts and minds of the U.S. for the PLO” (‘Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad;’ Gordon Thomas).

Investigative journalist Lee Smith comments: “The Americans weren’t stupid or naive. When Arafat sent Salameh to meet with them, he was telling them who he was, his methods, and his goals. When the Americans agreed to meet with Salameh, they essentially signed off on Arafat. Terrorism, from their perspective, wasn’t in itself an insurmountable obstacle. After all, Washington was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with another nuclear superpower. Compared to a nuclear exchange wiping out large American, Soviet, and European population centers, Arab terrorism was small potatoes.”

But Washington overlooked Arafat’s terror in order to win (so it perceived) at the bigger game – the Cold War. Kissinger was more concerned about Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf’s vast energy resources. Frustrating and blocking Soviet influence was the key to controlling that arena. The PLO could help America achieve her realpolitik goals.

And how did the Jewish state view this covenant between America and the PLO? A WikiLeaks cable from January 15, 1976 quotes from a meeting between America’s Ambassador to Israel and then Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres: Peres “again confirmed Israel’s refusal to deal with PLO or accept a Palestinian state on the West Bank. He repeated [the] usual litany that bringing the PLO into the negotiations would relieve an immediate pain but would create longer range problems, and posed [a] rhetorical question, ‘Why introduce a tragedy just for good public relations?’”

Cutting a deal with the Palestinian Godfather

Two recent articles (2016 and 2018) reveal that the U.S.A. was not the only country that cut secret deals with the PLO/PA, saying “Leave our citizens alone and you will have our protection and immunity while you kill Jews!”

In March 2016, Carlos the Jackal, the Marxist guerrilla who became a symbol of Cold War anti-imperialism, stated that he was able to move freely through Switzerland in the 1970s because of a ‘non-aggression pact’ between the Swiss government and the PLO. He told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that PLO terrorists knew that they would not be arrested in Switzerland as long as they refrained for terror activities in that country. He told the paper it had been common knowledge among PLO militants that they would not be arrested in Switzerland, on condition was that they refrained from making trouble. “Of course, we stuck to that,” he said.

A similar deal was exposed in 2008 by former Italian President Francesco Cossigo, who stated that PM Aldo Moro had concluded a PLO-Italy pact. Yasser Arafat noted in his own diaries (released by Israel in 2018) that a deal had been reached where the PLO would not carry out on attacks in Italy, and in exchange Palestinian terrorists from the PLO, PFLP and other factions could have free movement throughout the country. “Italy is a Palestinian shore of the Mediterranean,” Arafat wrote.

The policies of the U.S.A., Switzerland and Italy gave free reign to the PLO/PA to murder Jews in Israel and elsewhere, as long as they left those three countries alone.

Learning nothing from history?

Realpolitik is the gasoline in the internal combustion engine of most Western democracies. As intelligence reporter David Ignatius concludes, “the collection of intelligence can't really be separated from America's larger role in the world. That doesn't mean sympathizing with the terrorists or endorsing their demands. But to win a war, you need allies.”

The German philosopher Georg Hegel once said: “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

This newsletter has exposed the continuing essentially terrorist nature of both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority; of America’s cooperation with the PLO/PA even as it continued (and continues) to do terrorist attacks on Jews and Israelis; of the ear-piercing danger of U.S. pressure on Israel to hand over a jihadi Hamas-controlled terror organization in Gaza to a PLO/Palestinian Authority terror organization in Gaza and the West Bank.

How should we then pray?

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for Israel’s leadership at all levels regarding the Hamas-PLO-PA threat

Pray for clarity, moral courage, discernment and strategies for the U.S. government at all levels regarding its decades-long partnership with PLO/PA terrorist goals and strategies – that America might finally break free from deception and compromise and stand with God’s heart and purposes for the Jewish people and their state

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas can finally be removed from its cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for the physical rescue of the 239 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Bethlehem and Benjamin

A horrifying story in the Book of Judges chapters 19-20 has application to recent events on planet earth – the October 7, 2023 terrorist massacre from Gaza.

Sodom revisited

Judges 19-20 describes a Levite from the tribal allotment of Ephraim whose concubine (originally from Bethlehem) was brutally raped and murdered in Gibeah of Benjamin. There are striking parallels in this story to the attempted rape of the two angels and Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19).

The bestial violence of the rape-murder of this one Jewish woman shocked all of Israel, who declared, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day!” (Judges 19:30).

Shielding the murderers

The entire army of the Jewish people (400,000 strong) was mustered to deal decisively with the evildoers. The sentence was death.

Then the tribes of Israel sent men through the entire tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What is this wickedness that has taken place among you? Now then, turn over the men, the worthless men who are in Gibeah, so that we may put them to death and remove this wickedness from Israel.” But the sons of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the sons of Israel. Instead, the sons of Benjamin gathered from the cities to Gibeah, to go out to battle against the sons of Israel (Judges 20:12-14)

The leaders of Israel inquired of God, “Who shall go up first for us to battle against the sons of Benjamin?” Then YHVH said, “Judah shall go up first” (Judges 20:18). The battle was severe, and many soldiers from the eleven tribes were killed fighting Benjamin. On the third day of combat, Israelite special forces laid an ambush and were able to crush Benjamin in battle. “And YHVH struck Benjamin before Israel, so that the sons of Israel destroyed 25,100 men of Benjamin that day, all who drew the sword . . . The men of Israel then turned back against the sons of Benjamin and struck them with the edge of the sword, both the entire city with the cattle and all that they found. They also set on fire all the cities which they found” (Judges 20:35, 48).

There are some very sobering principles here:

The God of Israel and the nation of Israel viewed the rape and murder of one Jewish woman as a crime worthy of death

The God of Israel and the nation of Israel considered that Benjamin’s shielding of the criminals made that whole tribe worthy of death

The God of Israel led the nation of Israel into battle, to bring destruction to entire cities and to all the possessions of the tribe of Benjamin

The armies of Israel treated the tribe of Benjamin in the same way that God treated the whole world in the Days of Noah; in the same way as God treated Sodom and Gomorrah in the time of Abraham; in the same way as God treated Jericho in the days of Joshua.

These biblical principles have great relevance to the current situation with Hamas and Gaza, where terrorist jihadis carried out a mass slaughter of whole families (on kibbutzim) and of teenagers and young adults (at a music festival); where Hamas tortured parents to death in front of their children; where they carried out mass rapes of Israelis of all ages and then murdered their victims; where they dismembered, decapitated, tortured and slaughtered babies and young children in their own homes and kindergartens – often burning them alive. And these horrendous events were filmed on GoPro cameras attached to Hamas helmets, and beamed live to the world in real time on social media.

The Scriptures give us perspectives and principles as to how to respond to these atrocities.

Standing with Hamas has a cost

There are marches happening across the globe where participants are cheering Hamas on, calling for genocide against the Jewish people and for the destruction of the Jewish state. Anti-Semitic attacks have increased beyond belief over the past month. Today at 13:00 a 30-year-old Jewish woman in Lyon, France was stabbed repeatedly in her stomach at the door of her apartment, and a large black swastika was spray-painted on her door.

Those who stand with Hamas, who carry out the deeds of Hamas and refuse to condemn Hamas, will face the same divine judgment as Hamas will face. Judges 19-20 explains those biblical principles with painstaking clarity, Psalm 83:1-18 sums up YHVH’s thought and heart toward these enemies of God and of the Jewish people:

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 Most High over all the earth!

How should we then pray?

As IDF tanks are rolling in Gaza, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

Pray for victory for the IDF as they dismantle Hamas HQs, tunnels, mines, commando teams wherever they are located – even beside mosques and schools or under major hospitals

Pray for clarity of strategy, purpose and resolve for Israel to achieve the total and unconditional surrender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and their total removal from Gaza

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas can finally be removed from its cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for God’s strategies and leading regarding how to deal with Hezbollah, and for the God of Jacob to hold back regional war if possible, involving Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the Yemenite Houthis and other superpowers

Pray for revelation and clarity to be imparted by the God of Israel to the world political and intelligence community who have not yet understood what jihad is all about and are fogged as to how to deal with it decisively

Pray for the physical rescue of the at least 242 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Sodom, Jericho and Babylon

“God is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9)

Then YHVH saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. So YHVH was sorry that He had made mankind on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. Then YHVH said, “I will wipe out mankind whom I have created from the face of the land; mankind, and animals as well, and crawling things, and the birds of the sky. For I am sorry that I have made them” (Genesis 6:5-7)

There is no resurrection without crucifixion and death, and there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood (see Hebrews 9:22 and Leviticus 17:11). God does not want anyone to perish, but He is also a God of justice – and He is deeply grieved in His heart by the sin and wickedness of mankind.

The Days of Noah were wicked days. God looked down and saw that evil had gone beyond the point of no return – “Every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” God’s wonderful creation was indelibly marred, and had become wicked to the core. God regretted having made mankind. All of creation was now defiled by the sins of the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. The Divine Judge issued His sober ruling: “I will wipe out mankind . . . and animals as well, and crawling things, and the birds of the sky . . . from the face of the earth.” God’s perspectives on sin and its pervasive and perverting effects are different and more intense than what most of humanity thinks. But, in the end, His perspectives are the ones that carry the day.

All humanity is standing on the edge of a cliff, perilously close to a repeat of the judgment that fell on the world in the Days of Noah.

Before Abraham came on the scene

Moses conveys to the Jewish people YHVH’s perspectives regarding the spiritual condition of nations of the Middle East – even before Abram was born:

“Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these things the nations which I am driving out from you have become defiled.For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has vomited out its inhabitants.But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments, and you shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native, nor the stranger who resides among you(for the people of the land who were there before you did all these abominations, and the land has become defiled),so that the land will not vomit you out should you defile it, as it has vomited out the nation which was there before you” (Leviticus 18:24-28)

The Hebrew root ‘tameh’ (טְמָא) refers to becoming unclean or defiled – either through sexual sin (like adultery), the worship of anything other than the God of Jacob (like idolatry), or contact with materials that are unclean (like bloodshed or murder). Here are three biblical examples of such defilement where the context is Jewish sin in the land. The sins of the Amorites is mentioned in passing above in Leviticus 18. The horrific sins of modern Hamas terrorists include sexual sin (rape of babies, children, teenagers, mothers), worship of an idol from the Saudi Peninsula (one of the 360 desert spirits found in Mecca), and the shedding of innocent blood through murdering and torturing innocent Israeli families.

Then the word of YHVH came to me, saying, “Son of man, when the house of Israel was living on their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds . . . because they had defiled it with their idols (Ezekiel 36:16-18)

I brought you into the fruitful land to eat its fruit and its good things. But you came and defiled My land, and you made My inheritance an abomination (Jeremiah 2:7-8)

God says, “If a husband divorces his wife and she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife, will he return to her again? Would that land not be completely defiled? . . . You have sat for them by the roads like an Arab in the desert, and you have defiled a land” (Jeremiah 3:1-2)

At an early stage of his sojourn in the Promised Land, “Abram the Hebrew . . . was residing by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshkol and brother of Aner. And they were allies with Abram” (Genesis 14:13). Initially, Abram had warm relationships with an Amorite family.

Yet, when YHVH cut the Abrahamic Covenant with Abram, He prophesied to him that the national defilement of the Amorites would cause them to be thrown out of the Land of Canaan. That land would be transformed into the eternal possession of the Jewish people – the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:

And God said to Abram: “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.” (Genesis 15:13, 15-16)

On that day YHVH made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates – the land of . . . the Amorite, the Canaanite . . . ” (Genesis 18:18-21)

Now the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked

Sodom first appears in the Bible as a Canaanite town: “The territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon going toward Gerar, as far as Gaza, and going toward Sodom and Gomorrah” (Genesis 10:19). Moses adds some background spiritual details – the people of Sodom had a reputation for being exceedingly evil: “Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled in the cities of the vicinity of the Jordan, and moved his tents as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked sinners against YHVH” (Genesis 13:12-13).

God in His mercy sent two angels to warn Lot – he needed to flee from Sodom’s coming destruction:

“Whom else do you have here? A son-in-law and your sons and daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place; for we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before YHVH that YHVH has sent us to destroy it.” So, Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, “Up, get out of this place, for YHVH is destroying the city.” But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be joking. When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.” But he hesitated (Genesis 19:12-16).

When God’s judgment fell on the two evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was not only the people living there who were burned up by divine brimstone and fire. Even the surrounding plain was destroyed, and also the adjoining areas, as well as all that grew on the ground. The entire region was burned to the ground, and Moses tells us that the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace:

Then YHVH rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from YHVH out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the surrounding area, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Now Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before YHVH. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the surrounding area. And behold, he saw the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace (Genesis 19:24-28|)

The iniquity of the Canaanites

The night before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, YHVH visited Abraham (along with two angels) where He had announced the glad tidings that Sarah, Abraham’s own true wife, would have a covenant son (who would be named Isaac) within the year. After the angels departed from Abraham’s tents, YHVH remained and continued the conversation with him:

“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed? . . . The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now and see whether they have done entirely as the outcry, which has come to Me indicates; and if not, I will know” (Genesis 18:16-21).

Abraham’s immediate appeal to God was to exercise accuracy in judgment. In our modern world we might call this ‘Abraham’s appeal for a divine proportionate response:’

Abraham was still standing before YHVH. Abraham approached and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous people within the city. Will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” So YHVH said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the entire place on their account.” And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to YHVH, although I am only dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the entire city because of five?” And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” And he spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.” Then he said, “Oh may YHVH not be angry, and I shall speak. Suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to YHVH. Suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.” Then he said, “Oh may YHVH not be angry, and I shall speak only this once. Suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham YHVH departed, and Abraham returned to his place (Genesis 18:22-33).

The angels then moved down in the direction of the Dead Sea to visit Sodom and to gather on-site intelligence for YHVH. What the angels discovered proved incontrovertibly that Sodom’s evil had gone beyond the point of no return. The angels encountered Sodomites – “all the people from every quarter, both young and old” – who attempted to gang-rape Lot’s visitors and to destroy his house and family:

Before they lay down, the men of the city – the men of Sodom – surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter. And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.” But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. Now look, I have two daughters who have not had relations with any man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do not do anything to these men, because they have come under the shelter of my roof.” But they said, “Get out of the way!” They also said, “This one came in as a foreigner, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them!” So, they pressed hard against Lot and moved forward to break the door. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, from the small to the great, so that they became weary of trying to find the doorway (Genesis 19:4-11)

God’s justice would fall on Sodom and Gomorrah. There were not even ten righteous Sodomites to be found in the city – all were evil accomplices in great wickedness. Sodom would end up being paved like a parking lot by the fiery hand of God. The only ones who escaped through a humanitarian corridor were Lot and his immediate family. That was God’s proportionate response. So here is a question for us all: how well do we know this God of the Bible whom we serve? Do we comprehend who He is and why He did what He did at Sodom or with Noah? Or do we shy away from considering these matter, and just say that those days were primitive days – whereas in our day no great evils are happening?

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, held for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example of what is coming for the ungodly; and if He rescued righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the perverted conduct of unscrupulous people (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from a trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment (2 Peter 2:4-9)

YHVH fit the battle of Jericho

Many Bible believers have some difficulty reading the Book of Joshua. They ask, how is it that the God of mercy and compassion, the Savior who leads us as a Shepherd, could command Joshua to raze Jericho to the ground? The Hebrew verb used in Joshua 6:18 is cherem (חֵ֫רֶם) and it means dedicating or appointing something to utter destruction.

It came about when Joshua was by Jericho, he raised his eyes and . . . behold, a Man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” He said, “No; rather I have come now as Commander of the army of YHVH.” And Joshua fell on his face to the ground, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my Lord to say to His servant?” . . . But YHVH said to Joshua, “See, I have handed Jericho over to you, with its king and the valiant warriors. And you shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days. Also, seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight ahead” . . . And at the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For YHVH has given you the city. But the city shall be designated for destruction, it and everything that is in it belongs to YHVH” . . . They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, sheep, and donkey, with the edge of the sword . . . Then Joshua made them take an oath at that time, saying, “Cursed before YHVH is the man who rises up and builds this city Jericho; with the loss of his firstborn, he will lay its foundation, and with the loss of his youngest son he will set up its gates (Joshua 5:13-6:5, 16-21, 26)

The person who gave Joshua this command is called the ‘Commander of the army of YHVH.’ In Joshua 6:2 He is called ‘YHVH.’ These are one and the same Person – Messiah Yeshua. It is Messiah Himself who gives Joshua the exact order of battle, and prophesies that the Israelites’ shout would supernaturally bring down the walls of Jericho. It is Messiah who commands Israel to put this first-of-all-conquered cities ‘under the ban’ – it would be dedicated to total destruction (see Leviticus 27:28-29 and Deuteronomy 13:16-17). Dr. Gleason Archer notes in his A Survey of Old Testament Introduction: “In view of the corrupting influence of the Canaanite religion, especially with its religious prostitution . . . and infant sacrifice, it was impossible for pure faith and worship to be maintained in Israel except by the complete elimination of the Canaanites themselves” (see Revelation 18:20-21).

A modern generation might suggest that YHVH’s decisions were politically incorrect, and should be subject to challenge or censure by the U.N. Perhaps then the Commander of YHVH’s armies might buckle and recant, if He were subject to superpower pressure? But truth be told, moral and biblical decisions of such magnitude stand their ground in the face of secular relativism, Islamic anti-biblicism or Replacement Theology allegorizing.

Who is the strong horse today – Muhammad or YHVH and His people Israel?

The Hebrew Scriptures declares that “YHVH is a warrior! YHVH is His name!” (see Exodus 15:3). His actual name is important to the whole story: in Exodus 3:15, the God of Jacob tells Moses: “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘YHVH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is the name for all generations to use to call upon Me.’”

The Hebrew Scriptures proclaim that YHVH is the only God; there is no other Savior (see Isaiah 45:20-23).

The Psalmist declares that “YHVH is great, and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but YHVH made the heavens” (Psalm 96:4-5).

Paul teaches that the worship of any so-called deity whose name is name is not YHVH or Messiah Yeshua, is actually the worship of a demon (1 Corinthians 8:4-6 and 1 Corinthians 10:20). The Hebrew Bible clearly states that God’s name is a Hebrew one and not an Arabic one. It certainly is not the name of a tribal deity once worshipped by Mohammed’s family in Mecca in a public chapel along with 359 other spirits.

In the Middle East, history has proved time and again that Israel must respond with overwhelming force and destructive power to Sodom-like provocations.

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar, senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse and mass media, Islamic groups and Israeli Arabs. An expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, his take on these developments is worth reading: “Given Islam’s pervasive entrenchment in Palestinian society (and for that matter in all Middle Eastern societies) – even Yasser Arafat and most of the PLO’s founding generation were Muslim Brotherhood members in their young age – the acceptance of Israel’s existence by Muslims communities, both within Israel and abroad, will only be feasible upon their realization of the Jewish state’s overwhelming strength and invincibility. Only a powerful, well organized, highly determined and militarily invincible Israel can stand a chance of surviving in its violent and merciless neighborhood.”

This can be described as ‘the strong horse’ principle. In mid-November 2001, Osama Bin Laden spoke to a room of supporters, discussing the 9/11 terrorist attacks: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse. This is [the] only goal . . . following the doctrine of Muhammad.” Bin Laden saw Islam as the strong horse, and Christian America as the weak horse.

Investigative reporter Lee Smith based the name of his book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations on Osama bin Laden’s above-mentioned quote. In this work, Smith states that strength or “violence is central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East, and that Arab politics is driven by the ‘strong horse’ principle.” “Bin Ladenism is not drawn from the extremist fringe but represents the political and social norm [of the Arabic-speaking Middle East].”

Agreeing with Dr. Kedar’s appraisal, Daniel Pipes (Director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University) applies Bin Laden’s ‘strong horse’ principle to Israel’s role in the Middle East. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the United States and the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s Cold War rivalry with Iran’s bloc. Pipes outlines the policies of non-Arab actors in the Arab world – unless they are forceful and show true staying power, they lose. “Being nice – say, withdrawing unilaterally from southern Lebanon and Gaza – leads to inevitable failure. More broadly, when the U.S. government flinches, others (e.g., the Iranian leadership) have an opportunity to ‘force their own order on the region.’ Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese Druze leader, has half-seriously suggested that Washington [should] ‘send car bombs to Damascus’ to get its message across and signal its understanding of Arab ways.” Pipes concludes that Lee Smith’s ‘strong horse’ paradigm helps us to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism and warfare. Pipes acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as extremely crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.

The vengeance of YHVH

Some believers have been taught that vengeance is an ungodly thing. Believers are supposed to only turn the other cheek and suffer. There is no question that sometimes suffering is an integral part of faith, even as Yeshua suffered. At the same time, the Scriptures bring more balance to the equation, showing that YHVH takes vengeance on the enemies of Israel, and that the Jewish people are to call out to God, asking Him to take His vengeance on the Jewish people’s foes:

Raise your battle cry against [Babylon] on every side! She has given herself up, her towers have fallen. Her walls have been torn down. For this is the vengeance of YHVH! Take vengeance on her! As she has done to others, so do to her (Jeremiah 50:15)

“But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes,” declares YHVH. (Jeremiah 51:24)

“May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon,” the inhabitant of Zion will say; And, “May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea,” Jerusalem will say. Therefore, this is what YHVH says: “Behold, I am going to plead your case and take vengeance for you. And I will dry up her sea and make her fountain dry” (Jeremiah 51:35-36)

Indeed, Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel, as the slain of all the earth have also fallen for Babylon (Jeremiah 51:49)

And I will inflict My vengeance on Edom by the hand of My people Israel. Therefore, they will act in Edom in accordance with My anger and My wrath. So they will know My vengeance, declares the Lord YHVH (Ezekiel 25:14)

The battles going on in Gaza between the Israel Defense Forces and the jihadi terrorists known as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, pit the forces of darkness, terror, violence and deception against YHVH, the God of the armies of Israel, as King David declares: “But David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a saber, but I come to you in the name of YHVH of armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied!’” (1 Samuel 17:45).

How should we then pray?

As IDF tanks are rolling in Gaza, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

Pray for victory for the IDF as they dismantle Hamas HQs, tunnels, mines, commando teams wherever they are located – even beside mosques and schools or under major hospitals

Pray for clarity of strategy, purpose and resolve for Israel to achieve the total and unconditional surrender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and their total removal from Gaza

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas can finally be removed from its cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for God’s strategies and leading regarding how to deal with Hezbollah, and for the God of Jacob to hold back regional war if possible, involving Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the Yemenite Houthis and other superpowers

Pray for revelation and clarity to be imparted by the God of Israel to the world political and intelligence community who have not yet understood what jihad is all about and are fogged as to how to deal with it decisively

Pray for the physical rescue of the at least 242 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

“You don’t have too many friends here, buddy”

Now it came about in the days of Ahaz . . . that . . . the king of Aram and . . . the king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it . . . Ahaz’ heart and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake from the wind. Then YHVH said to Isaiah, “Go out now to meet Ahaz . . . and say to him, ‘Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted . . . [But] if you will not believe, you certainly shall not last’” (Isaiah 7:1-7).

The history of the Jewish people is that of a small people living in a small land, surrounded by superpowers – juggernauts who were often less than friendly.

YHVH did not make you His beloved nor choose you because you were greater in number than any of the peoples, since you were the fewest of all peoples, but because YHVH loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, YHVH brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)

Our calling as a nation was (and remains) to love the God of Jacob with all our heart and soul, and to obey His word:

“And now, Israel, what does YHVH your God require of you, but to fear YHVH your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep YHVH’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good? (Deuteronomy 10:11-13; see also Romans 11:29)

This national calling, if followed by the Jewish people and by all the superpowers of the world, would make for a healthier planet. But when neither Israel nor the nations love the God of Jacob with all our heart and soul, bad stuff happens. The Hebrew prophet Jeremiah makes this graphically clear:

“Israel is a scattered flock; the lions have driven them away. The first one who devoured him was the king of Assyria, and this last one who has gnawed his bones is Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon” (Jeremiah 50:17).

“Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone – Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon” (Bob Dylan, Neighborhood Bully)

Many people in the modern era have failed to draw biblical conclusions regarding how modern superpowers operate. Some feel that the messages preached by the Hebrew prophets only applied to ancient Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece – but surely modern France, Britain and America are a totally different ball game? These enlightened Christian superpowers would surely not make the same mistakes as Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar or Ahasuerus, would they! But that would be a faulty conclusion, one that brings with it earth-shaking negative consequences:

For YHVH of armies says this: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that plunder you, for the one who touches you, touches the apple of His eye” (Zechariah 2:8)

“Therefore, all who devour you will be devoured, and all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity. And those who plunder you will become plunder, and all who plunder you I will turn into plunder. For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds, declares YHVH – because they have called you an outcast, saying: ‘It is Zion; no one cares for her.’ This is what YHVH says: Behold, I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob and have compassion on his dwellings. And the city will be rebuilt on its ruins, and the palace will stand on its rightful place” (Jeremiah 30:16-18)

Many of those who believe what the Bible teaches, understand that the Hamas jihadis and their national backers in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran are only seconds away from the fires of judgment (see 2 Peter 2:4-9). We would base that conclusion on Hamas’ horrific demonized slaughter, torture, rape and kidnapping of innocent Israelis.

But what happens if YHVH (who is also the God of these slaughtered Jewish people) decides to cast His net farther out, and haul in a hell-bound catch made up of those who publicly cheer for Hamas, and who also call for Jewish genocide? What if the God of the Jews decides to throw His net out even wider, and fill His net of judgment with the superpower leaders and activist politicians whose geopolitical strategies in the past have allowed Hamas to survive the IDF’s attacks so that they can rise from out of their jihadi tunnels once again, to continue the jihadi slaughter of the Jewish people?

Now YHVH saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice [for Zion]. And He saw that there was no one, and was amazed that there was not one to intercede. Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped Himself with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, so will He repay – wrath to His adversaries, retribution to His enemies! To the coastlands He will deal retribution! (Isaiah 59:15-18)

Morphing the news

One of the most strategic issues facing Israel at this point in the war, is superpower pressure (which would include the UN, the EU, Russia, China, the U.S.A, and assorted Middle Eastern nations) attempting to force Israel into a ceasefire before Hamas is decisively crushed. Some of these bodies are attempting to get the superpowers to boycott and sanction Israel, to force an arms embargo against the IDF and thus prevent them from resupplying. Hamas is pulling all available strings to spin the world media narrative, morphing world perception into re-interpreting the war as an attack on ‘a victimized Palestinian people now being ruthlessly slaughtered by a cruel and bloodthirsty IDF.’ Those – even evangelicals – who post pictures in line with Hamas’ talking points are actually virtue-signaling, unwittingly pushing the Hamas narrative at the expense and survival of the Jewish people.

What follows is an unpacking of some superpower pressures on Israel in the not-so-distant past. These examples reveal that it is of vital importance to be praying for your country’s leaders as well as the leaders of the Jewish nation – that God’s heart and strategies will be held to and carried out.

Diplomatic and public pressure – starting in Gaza but ending in Jerusalem

On November 5, 1956 Soviet Premier Bulganin and President Khrushchev threatened Israel with nuclear attack if it did not withdraw from the Sinai. Not to be outdone, the Republican administration of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban that if Israel did not withdraw, all U.S. military and civilian aid to Israel would be cut off, the tax-exempt status of all American organizations that provided aid to Israel would be removed, and that the United States would not oppose the expulsion of Israel from the UN (see ‘The Iron Wall,’ Avi Shlaim, 2000, p.181).

According to a recent article “U.S. had emergency plan for attacking Israel in 1967” (Amir Oren, Ha’aretz), the Joint Chiefs of Staff had established a battle plan to stop Israel from expanding westward into Sinai or eastward into the West Bank (also not to allow Arab forces to cross the armistice lines of 1948-49). Strike Command (STRICOM – then headed by General Theodore John Conway; the Command was annulled in 1971) was asked in Cable No. 5886 (May 20, 1967) by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to refresh emergency plans for US military intervention in an Arab-Israeli war. The Six Day War began and ended so suddenly that U.S. contingency plans could not be carried out.

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh notes that when Secretary of State James A. Baker III was being sworn in (1989), one Republican White House aide joked that every Secretary of State left that office hating Israel. Baker reportedly replied, “What if one started that way?” Just before Baker became Secretary of State, he took a TIME magazine journalist on a turkey hunt. There he said, “The trick is in getting (wild turkeys) where you want them, on your terms. Then you control the situation, not them. You have the options. Pull the trigger or don’t. It doesn’t matter once you’ve got them where you want them. The important thing is knowing that it’s in your hands, that you can do whatever you determine is in your interest to do.” When asked if he was referring to turkeys, Baker said “No,” flashing a brief, fleeting smile. “I mean Israel . . . ”

In his recent autobiography Bibi: My Story, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu recounts how U.S. President Bill Clinton had called to congratulate him on his June 1996 election victory. “Bibi, I’ve got to hand it to you,” he chuckled. “We did everything we could to bring you down, but you beat us fair and square.” Netanyahu explains: “He wasn’t telling me something I didn’t know, but here was the president of the United States admitting without batting an eyelash to a brazen intervention in another country’s elections. Clinton’s frankness was refreshingly politically incorrect.”

Just before (and also during) the traumatic disengagement process of August 2005, Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it crystal clear that Israel’s borders must shrink – beginning with Gaza. “Because the real point about Gaza is not to stop with Gaza. The President has been clear, we’ve been clear with the Israelis that it cannot be Gaza only” (Shannon, Ireland, June 17, 2005) “We must all focus on the disengagement as our best chance to reenergize the roadmap . . . Because we’ve said many times that this is not Gaza only; this is the first step on a process that is outlined. The roadmap says how we get to final status, it says how we get to a Palestinian state” (Ramallah, West Bank, June 18, 2005).

Speaking in Ramallah on October 15 2007 Secretary of State Rice said: “Frankly, it’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state” . . . “A two-state solution is “absolutely essential for the future, not just of Palestinians and Israelis but also for the Middle East and indeed for American interests.” One day before Rice’s statement, on October 14 2007 Israeli Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai had met with the Secretary of State in Jerusalem. He told her that the status of Jerusalem must be taken off the agenda of the Annapolis conference. According to Yishai’s office, Rice responded that “the time has come to deal with issues that we were afraid to touch for many years.” (JP Oct 15 2007 p.9 “As Rice arrives …”).

In this light, the latest comments by Pope Francis on Italian TV RAI line up with the U.S.A., the EU, and others: “The war in the Holy Land scares me . . . The only solution to the conflict is two states for two peoples” (see Joel 3:1-2).

What Gaza has become – a battleship for Hamas aimed at the heart of Israel – is a direct result of U.S. and international pressure on Israel’s leaders.

During his 2008 primary, Barak Obama told Jewish leaders in Cleveland: “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community, that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.” Obama was pushing for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank), and its replacement by Yasser Arafat’s PLO/PA pro-terror organization. His goals were the opposite of Israel’s ruling coalition led by Netanyahu. Obama was advocating for the platform of the Israeli political wing which had recently lost the elections.

He was advocating for Palestinian control over the West Bank, an area where, according to latest surveys, 66% of the Palestinian public does not believe that Israel as a Jewish state will survive to 2048; 66% are in favor of forming local armed terror groups opposed to the PA; 58% of its Arab inhabitants would vote Hamas into office, and where 58% support “armed confrontations and intifada” against Israel. Creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank (which is UN, EU, US, Egyptian and Saudi policy) would mean turning that region into another Iran-supported jihad base against the Jewish state – as Gaza is today. That would be the result of current Western pressure. The fruit of these pressures is manifestly visible in the events of October 7 – the Gaza Envelope jihadi pogroms of Hamas against Israeli kibbutzim and farms.

At the start of the Obama administration in 2009, as Netanyahu was facing pressure to endorse a two-state solution and resume negotiations with the Palestinians, Biden told Netanyahu he would serve as his backchannel ally. “You don’t have too many friends here, buddy. I’m the one friend you do have,” Biden told Netanyahu during a meeting at the official vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

In private White House discussions between PM Netanyahu and POTUS in 2009, Obama told Bibi: “I expect you to immediately freeze all construction in the areas beyond the 1967 borders. Not one brick!” Bibi responded, “Barack, half of Jerusalem’s residents live beyond those lines. That alone includes almost two hundred thousand people. Do you expect us to stop building in neighborhoods like Gilo? These are integral parts of Jerusalem, like Georgetown is part of Washington.” “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Obama. “Not one brick, anywhere. Gilo, too.” As the two prepared to leave the Oval Office, Obama told him: “You know, people often underestimate me. But I come from Chicago, where I had to deal with tough opponents.” Netanyahu said that Obama’s words gave the clear message that Bibi was being treated “as a minor thug in the neighborhood.”

On October 28, 2014, noted journalist Jeffrey Goldberg quoted “a senior Obama administration official” as calling Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a ‘chickensh*t’ (slang for ‘worthless coward’): “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars . The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states . . . The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon. He’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.” A second official leaked that it is now “too late” for Netanyahu to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying that “a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic” meant that Netanyahu “ultimately . . . couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger” with regards to launching a possible preemptive strike to forestall Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Goldberg concluded his column with a series of threats from the Obama administration to Israel: first, that the administration will allow Palestinian actions at the UN that will “isolate Israel from the international community,” and second, the administration will “make explicit” America’s vision of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement – a vision diametrically opposed from Netanyahu’s vision. Thoughtful critiques of these leaks are found here and here.

In May 2021, President Biden pressed the Israeli leader to swiftly agree to a ceasefire to end the May 2021 Gaza war: “Bibi, I gotta tell you, I’m coming under a lot of pressure back here . . . This is not Scoop Jackson’s Democratic Party . . . I’m getting squeezed here to put an end to this as soon as possible.” Reference here is oblique, but nevertheless referring to Congresswomen Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley (known as ‘The Squad’) – the spearhead of an anti-Israel group among American Democrats. That year, eight Democrats voted against funding for the replenishment of Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome defense system, and 16 Democrats opposed a Resolution condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. A recent Pew Research survey showed that 53% of Americans who identify themselves as Democrats hold a negative view of Israel.

Present pressures

The U.S. Administration is on record as opposing Israeli control of Gaza, yet has no clear endgame as to how Hamas can be removed from Gaza. The strategic ambivalence here is astounding. The pressure being brought to bear on Israel to bring forward its own endgame is breathtakingly hypocritical..

The U.S. has stated that now is not the time for negotiations between Hamas and Israel, but that can come later on.

On October 24, 2023 US President Joe Biden hinted that he could support a Gaza ceasefire if Hamas released all the hostages it seized from southern Israel on October 7. During a White House event, a reporter asked him, “Is the United States supporting a hostage for a ceasefire deal?” Biden responded, “We should have a ceasefire.” He then corrected himself: “Not a cease fire. We should have the hostages released and then we should talk,” Biden said.

On October 30, 2023, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby stated, “We do not believe that a ceasefire is the right answer right now . . . We do not support a ceasefire at this time.”

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on October 30, 2023 that “People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas. That is not possible.”

But Israel has clearly stated that there will be no ceasefire with Hamas – either they unconditionally surrender or they are destroyed:

Netanyahu stated unequivocally, also on October 30, 2023:

“I want to make clear Israel’s position regarding a ceasefire. Just as the United States would not agree to a ceasefire after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas. After the horrific attacks of October 7, calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen . . . Israel will stand against the forces of barbarism until victory. I hope and pray that civilized nations everywhere will back this fight. Israel’s fight is your fight because if Hamas and Iran’s axis of evil win, you will be their next target. That’s why Israel’s victory will be your victory. But make no mistake, regardless of who stands with Israel, Israel will fight until this battle is won, and Israel will prevail”

Quoting a verse from the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, Netanyahu told the crowd, “There is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war – a war for a common future. Today we draw a line between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism. It is a time for everyone to decide where they stand”

Clinton revisited?

A new article in Politico reveals two senior U.S. administration officials discussed with POTUS Biden the likelihood that Bibi Netanyahu has limited time left in office. Whether or not this is true, a leak of this nature calls to mind Bill Clinton’s candid disclosure that the U.S. administration is quite comfortable exerting behind-the-scenes pressure to appoint and demote national leaders – whether in Iran in 1953 or in Israel of 1996 and 2023. POTUS Biden has conveyed that sentiment to Netanyahu in a recent conversation, according to anonymous administration sources, suggesting (perhaps in ‘Godfather’-like tones) that he should think about lessons he would share with his eventual successor. Politco notes that the POTUS and his foreign policy team are trying “to work with, and diplomatically steer, the Israeli leader.”

In Biden’s October 2023 trip to Israel, he urged Netanyahu not to widen the war (i.e., not to do a military incursion into Gaza’s Hamastan) and to prioritize a two-state solution (i.e., re-establish the pro-terror Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which would quickly collapse into a Hamas jumping-off point into Israel). This last point was publicly stated on November 1, 2023 by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee: “At some point, what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza.” This statement marks the first time the Biden administration has publicly declared its desire for the PA to return to the Gaza Strip, after coyly hinting about this idea to regional partners since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

Politico states that “Biden aides already are engaging an array of other Israeli politicians — some in power, some not — on the war effort. According to the two senior administration officials as well as the current and former U.S. official, those talks have also provided a way to gauge the thinking of various Israelis who might take the helm of the country. While Biden administration officials have offered public declarations of solidarity with the Israeli government during the current crisis, aides are also trying to get ahead of what Netanyahu’s downfall could mean for the future Israeli-U.S. relationship . . . Netanyahu hasn’t been a favorite of the Biden team. His increasingly hardline positions over the years have upset Biden aides who still support creating a Palestinian state. With an eye toward the future, U.S. officials are talking to Benny Gantz, a member of the current unity government; Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister; and Yair Lapid, an opposition leader and former prime minister, among other Israeli figures, the former official said.”

“Even the best-case scenario for Israel in this war would not likely keep Netanyahu in power,” said Hagar Chemali, a former National Security Council and Treasury Department official in the Obama administration. “I still believe Netanyahu is on his way out because Israelis are already publicly questioning whether he is really the right person, not just to win this specific battle against Hamas, but the broader war for a peaceful and secure Israel.” Bibi has been elected and re-elected as PM; he has served longer than any other Prime Minister, even longer than Ben-Gurion. Yet U.S. State Department officials, speaking anonymously, seem to have greater insight and discernment about what Israelis think, than do Israelis themselves.

The term ‘banana republic’ was first found in print in 1904, describing Central America social and political realities. This term can be a pejorative word used to describe a servile oligarchy that aids and supports a stronger power (or superpower) for various forms of kickback. America’s realpolitik toward Central American banana-producing countries has often been characterized with this term.

History shows us that, when Israel attempts to reclaim its God-promised land and its biblical borders, or when the Jewish state’s IDF attempts to decisively crush its enemies, it is then that various superpowers step in to reign in Israel from achieving those goals. It may have been Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons in 1956 and 1973, or American orders to Israel to stand down or retreat in 1991, 2006 and 2021. In 2021 POTUS Biden made many calls to PM Netanyahu during May’s Operation Guardian of the Walls. During their fourth phone call, on May 19, 2021, Biden was unhappy that Israel was insisting on completing the administering of a death-blow to Hamas. “Hey, man, we are out of runway here. It’s over!” said Biden. Times of Israel reports: “Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire two days later. The longtime Likud leader was replaced one month later by a short-lived unity government headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.”

How should we then pray?

As IDF tanks are rolling in Gaza, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

Pray for victory for the IDF as they dismantle Hamas HQs, tunnels, mines, commando teams wherever they are located – even beside mosques and schools or under major hospitals

Pray for clarity of strategy, purpose and resolve for Israel to achieve the total and unconditional surrender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and their total removal from Gaza

Pray for Israel’s leaders to withstand international pressure so that Hamas can finally be removed from its cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for God’s strategies and leading regarding how to deal with Hezbollah, and for the God of Jacob to hold back regional war if possible, involving Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the Yemenite Houthis and other superpowers

Pray for revelation and clarity to be imparted by the God of Israel to the world political and intelligence community who have not yet understood what jihad is all about and are fogged as to how to deal with it decisively

Pray for the physical rescue of the at least 242 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

The harvest of the dragon’s seed

One of the most powerful prophetic visions in the Book of Revelation is found in chapter 12 – the great sign in heaven:

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was pregnant and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven crowns. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and hurled them to the earth (Revelation 12:1-4a)

The Jewish people have suffered much anti-Semitism throughout history. The origins of Judenfeind (hatred of the Jewish people) are satanic, and this demonic core must be confronted directly in order to correctly grasp what is happening across the planet today.

Joseph’s dream interpreted by Yeshua

John’s apocalyptic vision in Revelation 12 is part of “the Revelation of Messiah Yeshua, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place” (Revelation 1:1). Chapter twelve focuses on Israel’s calling, the birth of the Jewish Messiah, and the origins of anti-Semitism as a central issue in spiritual warfare.

John receives two powerful heavenly signs in this vision. The first sign is based on Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37:9-11, where the same symbols of sun, moon and twelve stars are found:

Then (Joseph) had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

Jacob prophetically interpreted his son Joseph’s dream to mean that these heavenly bodies represent the Jewish people. The sun represents Jacob the Patriarch; the moon represents the Matriarch; and the twelve stars represent their twelve sons, from whom all the people of Israel are descended. Jacob the Patriarch’s interpretation of Joseph’s dream is the biblical guideline for a kosher interpretation of John’s vision in Revelation 12.

The Jewish Seed – Messiah Yeshua

The second sign in the Revelation 12:4b-6 vision describes the Jewish people, pregnant with a special Seed and about to give birth to a special Child.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth, he might devour her Child. And she gave birth to a Son, a male, who is going to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her Child was caught up to God and to His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness (Revelation 12:4b-6)

This prophetic concept hearkens back to Genesis 3:15, where it was prophesied that a deliverer known as “the Seed of the woman” would crush the head of the serpent. John immediately sees a horrific vision rising up in front of him: it is the great red dragon, who in 12:9 is described as “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” Revelation 12 unwraps in prophetic technicolor the great promise given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: The Jewish people will give birth to the Promised Seed – Messiah Yeshua.

The dragon is snarling at the birthstool, waiting to devour the baby even as his head begins to crown. Miraculously the Jewish people give birth to a healthy male Child in spite of the dragon’s destructive presence. This baby is described as the one “who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (see Psalm 2, a Messianic psalm which looks past the crowning of King David to the coronation of David’s Greater Son the Messiah).

The anti-Semitic dragon and his murderous seed

John’s prophetic vision now morphs into something beyond Joseph’s dream. John is taken into heaven (like Daniel the prophet) and is given a ringside seat from YHVH’s perspective:

And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they did not prevail, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Revelation 12:7-9).

The Archangel Michael (see Jude 1:9) and his band of angelic warriors are in hand-to-hand combat, fighting Satan and his orc-like minions. In Daniel 10:21 the Archangel Michael is described as the angelic prince whose assigned portfolio is the Jewish people. At the End of Days, Daniel 12:1 informs us: “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise!” The biblical perspective is clear: Michael is a high angel, an Archangel, one of the chief angelic princes. He is the princely protector of the Jewish people. Whenever Michael’s name appears, the safety and calling of the Jewish people are under attack. Michael, the Archangel who holds the Jewish portfolio, battles Satan over Israel-related events.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Messiah have come, for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before our God – day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. For this reason, rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time” (Revelation 12:10-12).

When Michael revokes Satan’s access to the very presence of God (Revelation 12:8-9), spiritual warfare will jump to another level. Total warfare will break out on earth. The enemy will attack the most strategic of all targets with great fury, knowing that his campaign will only triumph by a decisive blow. At the same time an angel proclaims that the kingdom of God has just taken a powerful step forward. God’s royal standards are now firmly planted in the soil and His unfurled banners flap powerfully in the wind. John hears a loud voice reminding him that in the coming conflict believers on earth will defeat Satan, but at a high cost. The weapons in the hands of the saints at that time will be the charismatic power of the blood of Messiah, the evangelistic testimony of the gospel, and the spiritual power released through the blood of the martyrs. Both the cross and the resurrection power of Yeshua will be clearly seen in all the world, through the miracles and the martyrdom of Yeshua’s followers.

And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child (Revelation 12:13).

Satan and his hordes hit the ground running. They immediately begin to carpet bomb the quadrant where it will hurt most. Withering fire is trained on the Jewish people, directed at the woman who gave birth to the male child. Satan has activated his own ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’ for the last time. Anti-Semitism has always been a central plank in hell’s platform. It is one of Lucifer’s major mandates. The enemy knows that the Jewish people are God’s key to many end-time events – life from the dead, the times of refreshing, the return of Messiah Yeshua and the restoration of all things. Satan’s persecution of the apple of God’s eye reveals his desire to deal a death-blow to God Most High Himself, to frustrate His plans, to violate His priorities and to rob His glory. To annihilate the Jewish people is to destroy the linchpin of God’s prophetic plan, to hijack the nuclear core of Yeshua’s kingdom.

It comes as no surprise that modern anti-Semitic movements are satanically influenced. The neo-Nazi skinhead, the anti-Semitic Militiaman or ‘Christian Identity’ preacher, the Iranian Hezbollah terrorist, the Islamic Jihad or Hamas jihadis, the black-jacketed Russian-speaking thugs in Dagestan – each one’s hatred of the Jewish people is fueled by the same hellish source. Unless these people turn from their rebellious ways and kiss the feet of the King of Zion, they will one day feel the cold metal of God’s iron scepter on their backs.

Paint it black

Satan’s hatred of the Jewish people is as old as YHVH’s choosing of the Jewish people. What God chooses to love, the dragon has chosen to hate. Anti-Semitism has mutated over the centuries since its serpent-birthed inception, and it will continue to increase in malignancy until the whole world ‘turns into Hamas’ – embraces a no-holds-barred murderous hatred of Jacob’s seed. The rocketing rise of anti-Jewish violence across the globe is a wake-up call, a portent of coming pogroms , a harbinger of hatred careening down the path. We are watching as even some evangelical believers who were once good friends and advocates for the Jewish people, have morphed into apologists for Hamas and propagandists for those attacking the Jewish people and their state.

“Watch out that the light in you is not darkness” (Luke 11:35)

“Therefore, stay alert! For you do not know when the Master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning – so that He does not come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say to you I say to all: ‘Stay alert!’” (Mark 13:35-37)

Classic satanic poison - pagan

The history of anti-Semitism is long, bloody and chequered. Two foundational books are: the 1965 classic ‘The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism’ by Catholic priest Edward H. Flannery; and Dr. Michael L. Brown’s helpful ‘Our Hands Are Stained With Blood: The Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish people.’

Classic pagan anti-Semitism goes back to Greek and Latin pagan philosophers and historians, who looked down upon the Jews as a primitive people and mocked their obedience to the God of Jacob and the Bible. In 1974 Dr. Menahem Stern of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, compiled the classic book of sources ‘Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism.’ According to these ancients, the Jews mutilated themselves with barbaric practices like circumcision; hated Gentiles and kept themselves apart from them; engaged in strange and suspicious rituals, including ritualistic murder and the consuming of blood; were bearers of disease and participators in bizarre sexual practices. Flannery points out that these same charges were soon made by pagan Romans against early Christians and that, in time, Byzantine Christians began to make these same charges against the Jewish people.

Classic satanic poison - Christian

Early Christian theologians like the Samaritan Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine of Hippo, John Chrysostom preached race-hatred against the Jewish people. These poisonous words foundationally affected the Christian Church and its theology, even up to the present time:

Origen (ca. 185-254 AD), one of the Greek Fathers of the Church, remarked that the Jews would never come back to Israel because they had killed God: “They will never be restored to their former condition. For they committed a crime of the most unhallowed kind, in conspiring against the Savior of the human race.”

Saint John Chrysostom (ca. 344-407 AD), Patriarch of Constantinople (398-404 AD) stated: “The Jews are most miserable of all men… lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits…inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil… Debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat. They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one another…They have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, for they murder their offspring and immolate them to the devil…They are impure and impious . . . [Their Synagogue] is a theater…a house of prostitution…a den of thieves…a repair of wild beasts…an abyss of perdition…the domicile of the devil…Indeed Jews worship the devil… their rites are criminal and impure… their religion is a disease . . . [Because the Jews’ assassinated Christ there, is] no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon . . . [The destruction of Jerusalem] was done by the wrath of God and His absolute abandon of you . . . [Jews will live] under the yoke of servitude without end . . . He who can never love Christ enough will never have done fighting against those [Jews] who hate Him . . . Flee, then, their assemblies, flee their houses, and far from venerating the synagogue because of the book it contains, hold it in hatred and aversion for the same reason . . . I hate the synagogue precisely because it has the law and the prophets . . . I hate the Jews also because they have the law”

Classic satanic poison - Islamic

Classical Islam believes in the absolute necessity of military jihad – a total defeat of all Jews, Christians and pagan secularists. According to the Islamic Hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari 1:25), the highest calling a Muslim can engage in is armed jihad: “Muḥammad once was asked: ‘What is the best deed for the Muslim next to believing in Allah and his messenger?’ His answer was: ‘To participate in jihad in Allah’s cause.’”

The classical Islamist vision for Israel is clearly enunciated by three contemporary Muslim leaders – leaders of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah:

“Make no mistake. There will be no peace as long as there is a Zionist-Jewish state. Our holy goal is to liberate all of Palestine, and if the Jews do not go, they will die. All of Palestine is Islamic land – every inch” (Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and former leader of Hamas)

“Our dear Imam (Khomeini) ordered that the occupying regime in Jerusalem be wiped off the face of the earth. This was a very wise statement. The issue of Palestine is not one which we could compromise on… This would mean the defeat of the Islamic world” (former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ahmadinejad, ‘The World Without Zionism conference,’ October 26, 2005).

“We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you” (Husayn Abbas al-Mousawi, former head of Lebanese Hezbollah).

Classic satanic poison – Nineteenth century conspiracies

During the 1800’s new forms of anti-Semitism arose. They focused on supposed secret Jewish societies which (so they said) control the world, all banks and national economies, the spread of all non-Christian worldviews, all media and movie companies, etc. Their teachings focused on a supposed Jewish occult secret society called ‘the Illuminati’ who, according to this satanic perspective, created both capitalism and communism in order to enslave all Gentiles. Another similar branch declared that the Jewish Rothschild family secretly controls the world’s economic system, raises kings and destroys governments, starts wars and ends wars.

These ideas crystallized in a forgery by Pavel Krushevan, an ultra-nationalist and stridently anti-Semitic journalist active in the Black Hundreds and in the Kishinev pogrom. In 1903 he published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Saint Petersburg. This booklet was a clumsy fabrication, with approximately 160 passages plagiarized from a French original that never mentioned Jews. The Protocols ostensibly reports discussions among a secret group of Jewish elders, regarding plans to subvert Christian civilization and erect a world-wide Zionist state. According to the book’s worldview, the rise of liberalism has provided Jews with the tools to destroy Christian institutions – the nobility, the church, the sanctity of marriage. Their plan is to take control of the world as revenge against Christianity. The text focuses on supposed Jewish control of banking, media and elections. It is stated that a new world order will be seized by this cunning elite, who have purportedly schemed throughout the ages, planning to enslave humankind until the end of time. According to the authors of this anti-Semitic propaganda, the attempts to modernize Russia in the late 1800’s were actually a Jewish plot to control the world. Eventually the Protocols were used to blame Jews for the Russian Revolution. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate once said, “If ever a piece of writing could produce mass hatred, it is this one . . . This book is about lies and slander.” This book is readily available in Islamic countries, and is advertised as factual at Islamic bookstores in the U.S.A.

Classic satanic poison – Red, Black and Green modern versions

In my book ‘Israel the Key To World Revival,’ chapter ten (titled ‘In All Their Afflictions: Anti-Semitism and the Tears of God’) discusses issues of modern anti-Semitism. One sub-heading is titled ‘The Colors of Modern Anti-Semitism: Red, Black and Green.’ The twentieth century has witnessed a cresting of anti-Semitic activity unparalleled in all of history. Virulent new strains of anti-Semitism have appeared in our day.

The Communist strain can be called red anti-Semitism. Goals included to destroy Jewish culture, language and national identity

The fascist/Nazi variety can be described as black anti-Semitism. Goals were basically total genocidal destruction of the Jewish people

Green anti-Semitism refers to fundamentalist Islam’s anti-Israel strain. Goals are basically destruction of the Jewish homeland and its people.

What we are seeing in the U.S.A., Europe and Turkey in past few weeks after Hamas’ jihadi mass slaughter-rape-torture-kidnapping, is violent crowds screaming “Gas the Jews! “F*** the Jews!”; defending and encouraging Hamas’ terrorist actions; calling for the boycotting, crushing and destruction of the Jewish state; beating up Jews in the area. These groups have blended twenty centuries of Jew-hatred together, mixing pagan, Christian, Islamic, European racist, communist and fascist elements into a new anti-Semitic pandemic virus which is spreading rapidly across the face of the globe.

Classic satanic poison – pogroms in Russia again?

On October 29, 2023 a Pobeda Airlines flight from Tel Aviv landed at 19:17 at Makhachkala Airport in the Republic of Dagestan, situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. Approximately 50 passengers were on board – mostly women and children – including a child in a wheelchair, connected to a ventilator. In the Russian article ‘Horror in Makhachkala: passengers from Tel Aviv speak about their experience,’ the journalist Daria Gershberg describes that modern-day Russian pogrom-attack:

The passengers were put on a bus and taken to the terminal for passport control. But a raging crowd [of Muslims, calling themselves ‘Defenders of Gaza Children’] had already burst into the airport. “We had already gone through passport control, and then they burst in,” recalls A. “We ran back to the bus” and climbed inside. The driver drove down the runway, with the Islamic crowd chasing it, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” In a passenger’s video, children are crying in the bus. Passengers shout to the driver to close the doors. “The bus drove along the runway, then turned into a field. And there the crowd caught up with us. They had Palestinian flags. They started breaking windows. The fragments hit me and my son,” said A. “They broke into the bus, I showed my Russian passport, they checked that I didn’t have [Israeli] citizenship.” There were a lot of people, they surrounded the bus, beat it, and shook it.” A video was sent to the Detaly media group showing the attackers demanding that people get off the bus. One of the rioters shouted at the passengers: “What are you doing to Palestine, you f******!” The passengers shouted in response that they are Russians.

“We thought it was all over. We took out Russian passports and shouted: ‘We are Russians, we are Russians!’ We told them: ‘There are no Israelis on the flight here!’ They looked at our passports, but still continued to storm the bus. It was a mad crowd that couldn’t be stopped. Then we finally broke out [from that crowd]. The driver stepped on the gas. We drove across the field again. They ran and caught up. They were shooting” . . . The bus arrived at the airport complex again. Airport employees hid passengers with Israeli citizenship in a technical room in one of the buildings. Most, if not all, also had Russian passports, which saved their lives on the bus . . . There were still many rioters around. They searched the premises, trying to find Jews. Passengers, including women and sick children, hid in the room for several hours until the Russian Guard forces arrived one hour later. A helicopter was dispatched to evacuate the passengers . . . The raging crowd, which the security forces had pushed behind the fence, saw that women and children were being taken away and began to try to break through to them. The security forces opened fire in the air. People were put into a helicopter to the sound of machine gun fire. According to A., some of the rioters managed to break through to the helicopter, and they clung to the landing gear . . . Upon arrival at the base, the passengers’ mobile phones were taken away so that they would not expose what happened anywhere.

What many of us remember from Fiddler on the Roof – the Hollywood-sanitized pogrom at Tevye’s daughter’s wedding – these dynamics are real and very much alive in the Middle East, in parts of Russia and Turkey, and on the streets of Brooklyn, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Marseilles, Berlin, Istanbul and Makhachkala, Dagestan. When Hamas slaughtered over 1,400 Israelis, they released an evil spiritual wind over the entire planet. There is no putting this anti-Semitic genie back into its Middle Eastern bottle. We are in a new season.

One of the newest mutations of anti-Semitism is anti-Zionist anti-Semitism. This new cancer is highly popular among younger demonstrators, joining anti-globalization, anti-White privilege, anti-Colonialist streams to unadulterated support for jihadi Hamas.

How should we then pray?

As IDF tanks are rolling in Gaza, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

Pray for victory for the IDF as they dismantle Hamas HQs, tunnels, mines, commando teams wherever they are located – even beside mosques and schools or under major hospitals

Pray for clarity of strategy, purpose and resolve for Israel to achieve the total and unconditional surrender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and their total removal from Gaza

Pray for the leaders of your nation to receive a revelation of God as the Captain of the armies of Israel (see 1 Samuel 17:45): “But David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a saber, but I come to you in the name of YHVH of armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.’”

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray for God’s strategies and leading regarding how to deal with Hezbollah, and for the God of Jacob to hold back regional war if possible, involving Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the Yemenite Houthis and other superpowers

Pray for revelation and clarity to be imparted by the God of Israel to the world intelligence community who have not yet understood what jihad is all about and are fogged as to how to deal with it decisively

Pray for the physical rescue of the at least 240 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas

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

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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