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.

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 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 20th century) Nazi roots

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

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

Nazi AS                                   Christian, old pagan, neo-pagan 19th 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 20th 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.”

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.”

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Caiaphas, Kissinger and the CIA

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:

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:

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:

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:

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 48th 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:

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:

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

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

The Congress makes the following findings:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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 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?

 

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

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.

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 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.

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:

How should we then pray?

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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. 

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:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:’

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:

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?

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.

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:

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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”

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.

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:

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:

“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:

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?

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).

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.

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:

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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:

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

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.

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:

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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   

A snare, a trap and thorns in your eyes

The psalmist describes the threats of his enemies in this way: “They surrounded me like bees” (Psalm 118:12). The buzzing threats of Israel’s enemies come not only from terror gangs in Gaza (Hamas, Islamic Jihad), Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Iran (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – in Persian, ‘Pasdaran’ or Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enqelâb-e Eslâmī ; ‘Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution’). Threats also come from a certain number of Arabs in the West Bank (often called ‘Palestinians’) and from some Arab Israelis.

In May 2021, Hamas fired thousands of rockets from Gazan civilian areas into Israeli civilian areas in what Israel called ‘Operation Guardian of the Walls.’ Within a day. thousands of Israeli Arab citizens (out of a total number of 2,065.000 Arab Israelis, that number being 21% of Israel’s total population or 9.73 million) rose up in open revolt, rioting against the state of Israel. Israel’s Central District Fire Station later released sobering statistics: in little more than a week, Arab Israeli rioters set on fire 10 synagogues and 112 Israeli Jewish residences, looted 386 Jewish homes and damaged 673 others, and set 849 Jewish-owned cars on fire. The main streets in mixed Arab-Jewish towns like Lod, Jaffa, Haifa and Akko became battlefields. There were 5,018 recorded instances of Jews being stoned. Three Jews were murdered and more than 600 were hurt. Over 300 Israeli police officers were injured in the over 500 riots which broke out in over 90 locations throughout the country. This was Israel’s worst occurrence of internal violence up to that point. These Arab citizens of Israel, aflame with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish passions, brought ‘the Palestinian struggle’ into the Israeli heartland.

The Arab Revolt – then and now

Between 1919 and 1939 violent Arab riots spread across the emerging Jewish state. These Islamic pogroms shook the Hebrew farms, villages and cities of the Promised Land, then under the British Palestine Mandate. Marauding Islamist gangs (the ideological predecessors of the modern terror groups PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad) savagely beat, raped and murdered hundreds of Jews throughout the Holy Land. Israel’s War of Independence (1947-48) was a continuation of that clash. Reflecting classical Islamic teachings and perspectives. the leaders of the Arab forces strongly opposed the return of the Jewish people to their biblically promised homeland –  in the same way as Saudi King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud spelled out in his 1943 letter to U.S. President Roosevelt:

But long before Arab jihadis conquered the Land of Israel in the 630’s A.D., the Hebrew seer Ezekiel prophesied in the 600’s B.C. that YHVH would bring His Jewish people back to their own homeland in the Last Days:

Dr. Benny Morris, one of Israel’s outstanding historians, comments in his ‘1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War’ (Yale, 2008):

The struggle between Jews determined to return to their Promised Land, and Arabs opposed to that return, has lasted for over a century – from 1919 to the present day. A significant number of Arab Israelis see themselves as part of the Palestinian people; they view the Jews as foreign colonists and occupiers in Palestine;  and they believe that Israel is only a temporary phenomenon, and that the Palestinians will in the end ‘liberate’ this land and destroy the Jewish people.  As the Hamas Charter states with great precision:

The May 2021 riots show that there is a significant portion of Israel’s Arab citizens who seek to reverse the Arab defeat in 1948 and to ‘liberate Palestine’ at Israel’s expense. Tens of thousands of Arab citizens of Israel have not come to terms with Israel’s permanency but instead seek to follow the example of the Islamist terror gangs from the 1930’s.

Finger on the pulse

Haifa University Professor of Sociology Sammy Smooha has published research after the May 2021 riots, revealing that 77.1 per cent of Israeli Arabs view Zionism as a colonial and racist movement, and demand that Israel be replaced with a binational State and not be defined as a Jewish one; 70.5 per cent of Israeli Arabs demand the right of return of Palestinian refugees, a move that would quickly turn Israeli Jews into a minority within their own country.

IDF Brigadier-General (reserves) Yossi Kuperwasser, in his article ‘Israel’s Arabs Rioted in May 2021. What Did We Learn and What Does the Future Hold,’ concludes:

Military historian and security expert Dr. Yagil Henkin has expressed fears that during the next round of fighting, Israeli Arabs may block major Israeli highways and seek to prevent troop movements to the front. IDF Major-General (res.) Gershon Hacohen warns that Arab criminal gangs in Israel (which largely kept out of the events of May 2021), will point their guns at Jews in the future.

In his article ‘The May 2021 Riots and Their Implications,’ Dr. Doron Matza, a Research Associate at the BESA Center, and former senior in the Israeli intelligence system, prophetically states: “A change in the intensity of the conflict with Hamas could also negatively affect Jewish-Arab relations within Israel and make it difficult to return to the equilibrium that existed before the May riots.”

In his article ‘Beware the Israeli-Arab violent riots of the future,’ Jerusalem Post reporter David Weinberg comments that “the IDF has marked Jewish-Arab clashes as a strategic scenario of concern which impacts its battle plans. In other words, aside from the expectation that thousands of rockets, missiles, and drones will be launched at Israeli cities from Lebanon, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in a next war with Hezbollah and/or Hamas, Israel now must worry that major traffic arteries could be impeded in places where Israeli Arabs extremists are out rioting. The IDF must prepare for a situation in which Military Police will have to keep roads open so that combat forces can reach the front; so that Home Front Command and medical forces can reach places where missiles fall; and so that the Israel Police can reach affected cities to prevent the looting of homes of people who will be evacuating.”

In his article ‘Arab insurgency must be a wake-up call,’ Avraham Shalev quotes Bulus Nahas, an Arab city council member from the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Akko: “We will go out again . . . We believe that all evil is rooted in the [Israeli] Occupation . . . If the matter is related to the Palestinian people, of which we are a part, we will go out.”

Israeli attorney Russell Shalev warns in his article ‘Israel’s Homegrown Intifada’: “Unless there is a willingness to openly acknowledge and confront the growth of a large and hostile Arab fifth column, Israel will remain vulnerable to subversion and threats carried out by its citizens during wartime. The growing radicalization of Israel’s Arab citizens and their willingness to openly side with Israel’s enemies during wartime threatens any hope of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs and poses an acute threat to Israeli security.”

‘This is only a test’

In May 2022, the IDF launched what was up to that point its largest exercise in its history, ‘Chariots of Fire.’ The IDF said the drill would implement lessons learned from the 2021 Operation Guardian of the Walls, which saw heavy rioting along highways and inside Israeli cities. The IDF Home Front Command practiced dealing with massive riots in Israeli cities and along main roads while under virtual heavy enemy fire. Eight IDF battalions along with Israel Police practiced keeping main arteries open in order to allow military convoys to pass from southern to northern Israel. The drill included protecting military convoys from possible rioters. This would allow traffic to continue including “vehicles and trucks traveling to reinforce Iron Dome batteries.”

In July 2022 the Israeli State Ombudsman released a report finding that Israel’s security services had failed to see unrest coming, to prepare for the violence and to respond and deploy adequately in light of this. If these failures have happened in the past, it seems that prayer is deeply needed for the immediate future.

Jihad is Islamic

Several Islamic scholars have responded to Hamas’ October 7 pogrom involving slaughter, mass rape, torture and kidnapping of Israelis (including babies) by issuing Islamic legal opinions (fatwas) encouraging these jihad warriors to expand their activities.

On October 23, 2023, the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office submitted an indictment to the city's district court against Mustafa Jamal, an Islamic cleric of a mosque in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. According to the indictment, a few days after the war began, on October 12 Jamal called on hundreds of people in the mosque to join the jihad against Israel. As a result, violent riots developed in that neighborhood with dozens of people throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and shooting fireworks at Israeli security forces in the vicinity, at the Hadassah Mount Scopus hospital just over the hill, at travelers on adjoining roads and at a local gas station.

Are we ready for a return to 1948?

Shalev states: “Unless there is a willingness to openly acknowledge and confront the growth of a large and hostile Arab fifth column, Israel will remain vulnerable to subversion and threats carried out by its citizens during wartime. The growing radicalization of Israel’s Arab citizens and their willingness to openly side with Israel’s enemies during wartime threatens any hope of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs and poses an acute threat to Israeli security.”

Certainly there are clear and present dangers – imminent threats – rockets and missiles and terror attacks from Gaza and from Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Yet a stealth threat which is largely unappreciated outside of Israel but which is definitely a main concern for the IDF and Israel’s security services, involves the potential for widespread rioting in Israel and the West Bank – instigated by underground Hamas jihadis. The recent huge upsurge of Arab-on-Arab shootings and murder within Israel, could quickly morph into concentrated fire against Jewish Israelis across the nation.

The God of Israel promises to burn up all of the ‘thorns and briars’ that Moses and Joshua warned about in a single day: “Therefore, . . .  under the glory [of YHVH, the God of armies] a fire will be kindled like a burning flame. And the Light of Israel will become a fire and Israel’s Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day” (Isaiah 10:15-19)

How should we then pray?

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

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   

A day of reckoning for the cedars of Lebanon

The prophet Isaiah speaks of a final day of judgment when “people will go into caves of the rocks and into holes in the ground away from the terror of YHVH and the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to terrify the earth” (Isaiah 2:18-19). The two specific countries that Isaiah focuses on in that prophecy are Lebanon and Bashan (modern Syria): “For YHVH of armies will have a day of reckoning against everyone who is arrogant and haughty, and against everyone who is lifted up – that he may be brought low. And it will be against all the cedars of Lebanon that are lofty and lifted up, against all the oaks of Bashan – against all the lofty mountains, against all the hills that are lifted up” (Isaiah 2:12-14).

Modern military strategists discuss nine main challenges that are confronting Israel – threats that may pop up one at a time on the battlefield or quite possibly as a confederation of enemies. They are: Hamas (Gaza), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Gaza), Hezbollah (Lebanon), Arab riots (within Israel and in the West Bank), Syria, Shi’ite militias in Iraq, Iran, the Houthis (Yemen) and conceivably Turkey (Türkiye). This list of enemies reminds us of the battle rosters of Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38:4-6. Though perhaps not the final fulfilment of those passages, present developments show that such prophetic events are not far away.

Previous newsletters have examined the history and theology of both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This newsletter will focus on Hezbollah, the third enemy in the above-mentioned list. The newsletter after this one will consider the dangers posed by an ‘Arab Revolt’ on Israeli streets from ‘Palestinian’ Arabs in Israel and the West Bank.

Canaan, Phoenicia and Israel

Moses tells us that “the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham and Japheth. The sons of Ham were Cush (Ethiopia), Mizrayim (Egypt), Put (Libya), and Canaan . . . Canaan fathered Sidon, his firstborn; Heth; the Jebusite; the Amorite; the Girgashite; the Hivite. .  . The territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon going toward . . . as far as Gaza; and going toward Sodom and Gomorrah . . .” (Genesis 10:6-20).

The biblical Canaanites were not Semites (descendants of Shem) but Hamites (descendants of Ham). About 2,300 B.C. the ancient Egyptians called the Canaanites ‘the sand-dwellers in Asia’ and by 800 B.C. they were known by the Greeks as ‘Phoenicians.’ These early inhabitants of Lebanon were sometimes poetically compared to the majestic cedars growing in the mountainous regions: “You who live in Lebanon, nested in the cedars . . .” (Jeremiah 22:23).

The God of Jacob warned the Jewish people about the Canaanites and their corrupting spiritual influence in Exodus 23:31-33: “I will set your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates River. For I will hand over the inhabitants of the land to you, and you will drive them out from you. You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live in your land, otherwise they will make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it is certain to be a snare to you.”

Lebanon under the jihadi crescent

The armies of Mohammad, the mujahidin (jihadi warriors) burst out of the Arabian desert to conquer Lebanon between 632-639 A.D. And apart from a brief Crusader interlude (1095-1302 A.D.) Muslim rule continued in Lebanon until the French Mandate in 1918. Lebanon’s borders were ratified in the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920, and the country’s independence was declared in 1943.

In 1956 Lebanon’s population was 54% Christian and 44% Muslim. In 2020 the CIA estimated that the population was 67.8% Muslim and 32% Christian.  This trend of Christian decline and Muslim growth is commonplace through the Middle East. Lebanon’s Islamic population is today sub-divided between 31.9% Sunni Muslims and 31.2 % Shia/Shi’ite Muslims. To put these numbers in perspective, Sunni Muslims make up 85% of the Muslim world, while Shia Muslims make up less than 15%. 

According to Arab geographer Al-Maqdisi’s description which goes back to 966-985 A.D., already Shi’ites were a majority in Lebanese Tyre and Tripoli. For a helpful understanding of the history of the Sunni-Shi’ite divide and its modern ramifications, see: https://www.cfr.org/article/sunni-shia-divide.

Due to the rocky and bloody relationships between the various religious streams in Lebanon, in 1943 a National Pact was established, setting up a government based on ‘multi-confessionalism’ – where high-ranking political offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups. The President must always be a Maronite Christian; the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim; the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi’a Muslim; the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament members of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith.

Lebanon has seen significant sectarian strife over the past century. One horrific example was the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) witnessed over 120,000 casualties. Over the years Lebanese Presidents and Prime Ministers have been assassinated by Syrian agents or by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s Godfather

The Iranian decision to establish Hezbollah was taken after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran in February 1979. His Council of the Islamic Revolution (Šūrā-ye enqelāb-e eslāmī) decided that the time had come to export the Shi’ite revolution to the Arab world and to found Islamic movements based on Iranian Islamic ideology. Khomeini appointed Ayatollah Ali Akhbar Montazeri to establish an extensive network which would support ‘Islamic liberation movements’ – Hezbollah Hijaz in Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah in Bahrain, Hezbollah in Kuwait and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In August 1981 Ali Akhbar Mohtashamipur, a close ally of Khomeini, was dispatched to Syria as the Iranian ambassador. One of his assignments was to found a new Shi’ite movement in Lebanon as an alternative to the Shi’ite movement Amal. The Amal movement was founded in 1974 by two Iranians, Musa al-Sadr and Dr. Mostafa Chamran. But Iran now saw Amal as a secular movement, because it refused to recognize Khomeini’s concept of Velâyat-e Faqih (the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) – total loyalty to Khomeini and to his Iran-led Shi’ite revolution.

Working from the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Mohtashamipur established Hezbollah and set up its Shura Council (‘the Council of Lebanon’) – essentially the Hezbollah leadership. Mohtashamipur was involved in supervising Hezbollah’s suicide bomb attacks against the American Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, the American and French contingents of the MNF in October 1983 and the American Embassy annex in September 1984. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) and Syrian military intelligence were co-planners in these terror attacks. Mohtashamipur was also instrumental in the 1988 Hezbollah torture and killing of Lt. Col. William R. Higgins , the American Chief of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization’s (UNTSO) observer group, as well as overseeing a USD $10 million payment to arrange the December 1988 bombing of Pan AM Flight 103.

An extensive history of the shadow war between Israel and Hezbollah can be found in this excellent article by Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira ‘Inside the Struggle Between Israel and Hezbollah.’ Hezbollah’s ideology is clearly laid out in the following article: ‘Hizballah’s Ideology: Main Points and Practical Implementation.’ The following article exposes how over the past decade Hezbollah and Hamas have developed a closer working relationship.

At present, the official Lebanese government has next to no control over Hezbollah, which is an Iranian-planted terror group created to destroy the Jewish state.

The CIA’s take on Hezbollah and Israel

Robert Baer, former CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997 (where he served in Iraq and Lebanon, etc.), does not see things through a biblical framework. He has no grid for God’s heart and calling on Israel, nor does he understand the Last Days vision found in the Hebrew prophets. Nevertheless, some of his perspectives are worth noting.

Baer’s stunning lack of awareness about the spiritual aspects of jihad, his dismissal of classical Islamist teachings on jihad, and his ignorance about the Bible’s perspective regarding the Jewish people – all reveal that some of those responsible for guarding the chicken coop seem to have forgotten how to recognize foxes.

Hezbollah’s endgame

POTUS Biden recently stated that he was coming to Israel to ask some hard questions – including what is Israel’s endgame in dealing with Hamas. Later on, when asked if he supported a ‘hostages-for-ceasefire’ deal, the President stated: “We should get the…we should have a ceasefire…not a ceasefire, we should have those hostages released, and then we can talk.” It seems that the U.S. Administration has an endgame which does not includes Israel’s clearly stated endgame goals – the total elimination of Hamas in Gaza, down to its last member.

And what are Hezbollah’s endgame goals? IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen warned in the Hebrew press that Hezbollah is basing its war plans on three key pillars: First, Hezbollah plans to hit Israel’s civilian front and military bases with barrages of up to 150,000 rockets. The second tactic is a dense defensive posture aimed at producing a heavy casualty toll among IDF strike forces. Thirdly, Hezbollah plans to carry out wide-scale commando operations targeting civilians and IDF posts across the entire border.

Hamas’ endgame goals? They are extremely clear and not open to negotiated settlement. The Hamas Charter states:

Senior Hamas official Ali Baraka said in an October 8, 2023 interview that aired on Russia Today TV: “In order to keep the [October 7] attack secret and successful, the different factions and our allies did not know the zero hour. But after half an hour, all the Palestinian resistance factions were contacted as were our allies in Hezbollah and Iran. The Turks were also notified . . . 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.” Hamas and Hezbollah have expressed the hope that other countries will join in the attack on Israel if the IDF goes after Hamas in Gaza.

Iran’s endgame

Earlier on Sunday October 22, 2023, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha and stated: “If the attacks of the Zionist regime against civilians and the defenseless people of Gaza persist, no one can guarantee that the situation will be under control and the scope of the fighting won’t expand.” “If the measures aimed at immediately stopping the Israeli attacks that are killing children in the Gaza Strip end in a deadlock, it is highly probable that many other fronts will be opened. This option is not ruled out and this is becoming increasingly more probable,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

Iran is trying to ‘play chicken’ with Israel and with the U.S.A., hoping that these two countries will blink – or perhaps that the U.S. will put pressure on Israel to postpone or call off its military operation into Gaza aimed at eliminating the jihadi evil forces that raped, tortured, kidnapped and massacred over 1,400 Jewish babies, children, pregnant women, pensioners and just plain Israeli civilians.

Hezbollah has been sending scores of commando teams to fire Russian anti-tank guided missiles at IDF soldiers and tanks, at Israeli citizens and kibbutzim. Mortars and rockets have been fired for many days now from Lebanon into Israeli cities, villages and farms on the border with Lebanon.

Though officially war has not been declared, all Israelis understand that we are at war with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran.

How should we then pray?

As tanks begin to roll, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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   

Hezekiah’s peace and security

Hezekiah was a descendant of King David, and he was a good king:

Hezekiah witnessed an amazing national deliverance from Assyria, where 185,000 enemy soldiers were struck dead by the Angel of YHVH (2 Kings 19:35). He was also supernaturally healed from a mortal illness, and lived fifteen years longer than had originally been prophesied by Isaiah (2 Kings 19:1-11). Yet in those fifteen years, boasting of his riches to Babylonian envoys (in violation of Deuteronomy 17:15-17), Hezekiah catalyzed God’s judgment of exile on his kingdom and his people:

Hezekiah’s response makes one’s blood run cold. “So the judgment will fall on my kids, but at least I’ll be ok!” he sighed with relief.  “There will be peace and security in my day!” This perspective, also held by sundry politicians, military strategists and intelligence chiefs, assumes that as long as ‘the tuna doesn’t hit the fan during my time in office,’ all will be well.

Who must respond to terror?

Heads of state and talking heads have been making pompous declarations on news media about the right and wrong way that Israel should respond to Hamas jihadi terror. They lecture and browbeat Israeli officials, trying to trip them up about supposed humanitarian considerations – but for the most part avoid discussing the grievous acts of war that Hamas inflicted on innocent Jewish civilians. But it needs to be clearly stated: if Hamas had only massacred one kibbutz, or had only kidnapped two Israelis, that would still have been an act of war – a casus belli.  It is Israel’s international right and moral obligation to respond to such terrorism with deadly force to perpetrators, planners and providers of shelter. Those who are attacked have the God-given duty to remove all threats. This was the case after 9/11 in dealing with jihadi terrorists hiding out in Tora Bora, Afghanistan or on ṭarīq al-mawt (the Highway of Death) between Kuwait City and Saddam Hussein’s Basra. It was the case after Hitler invaded Sudetenland, Poland and France at the onset of WWII, shipping millions of Jews to murder sites in Eastern Europe. And it is Israel’s task now to do what must be done, and to do it quickly, in Gaza.

The world has a short memory. As Andy Warhol once said, even earth-shaking media events only get “fifteen minutes of fame.” The gasps of many who saw snippets of the demonized cruelty of Hamas atrocities, have quickly morphed into accusations that Israel invented these events. Today the IDF showed journalists footage taken by Hamas jihadis of ghastly atrocities proudly filmed and broadcast in real-time during the massacres on Israeli kibbutzim, as well as clear instructions given to these Hamas terrorist to kill everyone they saw, to behead victims, to cut off their legs, and even to rape corpses.

What is nearly beyond belief is that large demonstrations around the world have gathered to curse Jews, to call for them to be gassed outside Sydney’s iconic opera house, to cheer on Hamas. We are living in a twilight zone similar to the rise of Nazi Germany, and enemies of the Jewish people are sprouting up like mushrooms after the rain. A Cornell University professor say he was “exhilarated and energized” by Hamas’ October 7 massacre. Pro-Hamas marchers in Warsaw carried signs reading “Keep the world clean” with a picture of a Star of David on a garbage can, or ‘Armia Izraelska to są terroryści’ (‘The Israeli army are terrorists’). “I am here because I believe that killing innocent people is simply wrong,” Ola, a participant in yesterday’s protest in Warsaw, told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. “I do not support Hamas, but Israel’s actions are equally inhumane. And I always stand on the side of the weaker.”

Seducing the West with their suffering

There is a popular Arabic proverb than throws some needed Middle-Eastern light on current events: “Darabani wa baka, wa sabaqani wa eshtaka” (‘First he hits me. Then he starts to cry. Finally, he runs ahead of me to the judge and sues me’). This dynamic has been perfected by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist terror group controlling Gaza. Its name in Arabic is Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya – ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement.’ Hamas fired rockets against civilian centers in Israel (which is a war crime) from the middle of civilian Palestinian centers in Gaza (another war crime). It stores rocket launchers in Gazan homes and U.N. schools, in mosques and beside hospitals. Its main GHQ is located under Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex and central hospital in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has used Gaza’s Palestinians as human shields in order to block any IDF attempt to remove these threats. Any civilian casualties would automatically be blamed on Israel by Hamas in lockstep with the world’s media.

In the riveting 1998 thriller ‘The Siege’ starring Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Tony Shalhoub and Annette Bening (as the CIA agent Elise Kraft), Elise comments about the Palestinians: “My father used to say Palestinians seduce you with their suffering.”  This seduction dynamic is on full view on the nightly news, as Hamas atrocities morph into virtual blood-libels against the IDF.

“Hamas terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacre of southern Israeli towns received precise instructions to make deadly chemical weapons to use on civilians, President Isaac Herzog confirmed in an October 22, 2023 interview with Sky News . . . The IDF found a USB key on the body of one Hamas terrorist containing a PDF of al-Qaeda material which included instructions to behead babies and guides on how to take hostages and create improvised ‘cyanide dispersion devices’”

The prince of Persia is on the move

The prophet Daniel was informed by the angel Gabriel in Daniel 10:13-20 that a high-level demonic prince – the prince of Persia – was engaged in face-to-face combat with the Archangel Michael, the protector of the Jewish people. The great End of Days battle known popularly as the War of Gog and Magog describes Persia/Iran as one of the Last Days invaders of Israel:

The participants in this battle are listed – a confederation of Arab, Islamic and Turkic nations: Persia (Iran), Cush (Sudan/Ethiopia), Put (Libya), Magog (formerly the ancient Scythian homeland north and northeast of the Black Sea, presently in southern Russia between Crimea and Muslim Azerbaijan), Meshech and Tubal (both in modern Turkey), Gomer and Beth Togarmah (both are ancient names for Turkic areas on the Black Sea, possibly extending up to Ukraine). As well, Sheba (modern Yemen) and Dedan (modern Saudi Arabia) take a lively commercial interest in the proceedings.

On Monday October 23, 2023, Iranian Admiral Ali Fadavi (also Deputy Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, spoke to students at the University of Tehran where he was asked about the possibility of practical action against Israel: “Some of you young people consider practical action to be a direct missile to Haifa. Of course, if it is necessary, this will be done, and it will be done without hesitation . . . The Resistance Front’s shocks against the Zionist regime will continue until this cancerous tumor is eradicated from the world map . . . Another shockwave is on the way, if Israel does not end atrocities in Gaza,” he said.

In the country known today as Turkey/Türkiye (but known as Meshech and Tubal in Ezekiel’s day), Hamas has their forward HQ for terrorist planning under the warm tutelage and financial support of the government. The head of Hamas’ Politburo Ismail Haniyeh, was asked to leave Istanbul and Turkey for a short while after footage circulated on social media showing him and other Hamas members prostrating themselves on the ground in a ‘prayer of gratitude’ while watching news of the Hamas massacre on television. Haniyeh splits his time between Qatar and Turkey. Turkey’s leaders were annoyed by remarks that Saleh al-Arouri, Haniyeh’s deputy, made to Al Jazeera, bragging that Hamas had captured enough Israeli soldiers to force Israel to free all Palestinian prisoners in its jails.  Ankara is unwilling to publicly appear as if it is still protecting Hamas after the group’s killing of Israeli civilians.

How should we then pray?

As tanks begin to roll, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Sunday School meets the Middle East

Many Christians were raised going to Sunday School, hearing Bible stories of Abraham and his camels, or David and his sheep. An other-worldly glow surrounded these tales; hymns and Christmas pageants retold these old, old stories.

These stories, which seemed to happen “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” actually took place in the Middle East – mostly in the Land of Israel. It was Jews who wrote these stories down on ancient parchments, and most of these histories dealt with the tribes of Israel. But many believers in Yeshua have not managed to ‘connect the dots’ – to realize that the Hebrew people in the Bible are the same people whom God has brought to their homeland. The Jewish people are still being confronted by the same murderous enemies mentioned in the Psalms and the Prophets and, like King David and Joshua, we are forced to lift modern swords in our defense. This newsletter will examine some of the spiritual roots of jihad; the teachings in Muslim writings defining jihadi activities; and the recent activities in Gaza which accurately reflect those teachings.

‘Give me that old-time religion’

Much of the following information can be found in the book ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East – A Messianic Perspective’, available at www.davidstent.org.

Muḥammad’s own instructions to jihad warriors are found in the Quran and the Hadith (a body of traditions and sayings of Muḥammad which is a major source of Islamic religious law). Allah is described as commanding:

The Dictionary of Islam (Thomas Patrick Hughes, p. 243) mentions four central actions in jihad. These involve not only warfare and subjugation, but the use of terror as a necessary psychological weapon to intimidate and crush all opposition:

‘Kill and be killed’

Mujahidin (jihad warriors) are to show no mercy in battle: “Those who follow Muḥammad are merciless to the unbelievers but kind to each other” (Quran, Surah 48:29). Jihad warriors are not to become friends with Jews and Christians: “They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be [all] alike. Therefore, take not from among them friends until they flee [their homes] in Allah’s cause. But if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper” (Quran, Surah 4:89).

Jihad warriors look forward to constant battle and death until they conquer the world for Islam: “The believers . . . fight in his cause, so they kill (others) and are killed” (Sahih al-Bukhari 51:1). “Make war on them until idolatry does not exist any longer and Allah’s religion reigns universally” (Quran, Surah 8:39).

Eighty percent of the spoils of war (including women and children) are booty for the jihadi warrior. “And know that whatever thing you gain, a fifth of it is for Allah and for the apostle” (Quran, Surah 8:41), “and the remainder is for you” (Mishkat 2:412). “Jihad is therefore the best source of all acquisitions” (Mishkat 2:406).

Jihad privileges extended to raping women captives. “In the actual war-field in the midst of hostilities, according to some jurists, some concessions were sometimes given to soldiers for recreation. Captive virgin girls in war were once made lawful for the soldiers for copulation” (Mishkat 2:440).

Muḥammad also permitted the slaughter of innocents. “So narrated as-Sa’b bin Jaththama, ‘The prophet passed by me at a place called al-Abwa or Waddan, and was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The prophet replied, “They are from them” [ed. Muḥammad is saying that the women and children are also pagans like their husbands / fathers, so it is permissible to kill them] (Sahih Bukhari, 4.52.256).

Hamas has posted videos on October 7 of live raping of Israeli captives on kibbutzim and in Gaza. It’s time to wake up to these hideous events. The wars of Islam are here again, and the Jewish state of Israel is on the frontline of that battle.

Violating the image of God

A 23-year-old Arab living in Shu’afat, a northern suburb of Jerusalem, posted video clips on social media in the past week supporting and identifying with Hamas’ horrific activities against Jewish citizens near Gaza. He proclaimed, “Allah, count them and kill them and do not leave any of them alive!” His declaration mirrors the above-mentioned Surah 8.

Dr. Chen Kugel, the head of Abu Kabir (Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv), explained in horrified sorrow some of what Hamas terrorists achieved in their mass terror, murder and rape in the kibbutzim and moshavim adjoining Gaza from 06:30 am to 10:00 pm on October 7, 2023 – based on examination and autopsies of the Jewish victims’ mutilated and burnt bodies.

The age range of the victims spanned form 3 months to 90 years old. Many bodies, including babies, were without heads. Kugel affirmed that they had been decapitated, though he admitted that it was difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as whether the heads were “cut off by knife or blown off by RPG.” Charred hands held by metal wires showed that some victims were bound and then burned alive. “Two spinal cords – one belonging to an adult, one to someone young – a parent and a child bound together by metal wires in a final embrace before being set alight. Many were burned alive in their homes . . . We know they were burned alive because there is soot in their trachea, their throats – meaning there were still breathing when set on fire.” A father’s body was found with his eyes gouged out, lying in front of his children who had been shot.

These deeds, and many more too difficult to describe here, were also part and parcel of the original jihad wars 1,400 years ago, and are being repeated again in our day – not only in some far away village in Syria, but within immediate driving distance of downtown Tel Aviv.

King David, the man after God’s own heart, the anointed psalmist of Israel, shares with us his God-given strategies for dealing with demonically energized evil people like the Hamas jihadis:

Iran is alive and well and living in Lebanon

In 2006 Israel was pressured to draw back from successfully defeating Iran-armed and equipped proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Immediately the Shi’ite jihadi terror leaders Hassan Nasrallah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards began to replenish Hezbollah’s stocks of GPS-guided rockets with the aid of $1 billion USD in Iranian funds – in violation of the ceasefire’s UN Security Council Resolution 1701 calling for the total disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon. 

Today, even though the war against Hamas is taking up the major headlines, it may be that the upcoming battle in the North of Israel with Hezbollah will be the most important.

“According to updated assessments, Hezbollah currently possesses between 120,000-140,000 short-range rockets (range of 25-28 miles), which cover Israel's north, including Haifa Bay and Tiberias; several thousand medium-range rockets (range of 56 miles), which can reach the Sharon coastal plain and northern suburbs of Gush Dan; and several hundred long-range rockets and missiles (range of hundreds of miles), including Scud missiles from Syrian military warehouses, capable of hitting targets anywhere in Israel. Hezbollah's rockets and missiles are dispersed throughout Lebanon. Its short-range rockets are mostly stored in the country's south, in the area near the Israeli border, to maximize their range. They are hidden in homes in the 230 Shiite villages, ready to be activated at a moment's notice. It is from here that Hezbollah intends to rain fire on the Galilee, and essentially paralyze it. If the IDF decides to enter these villages on the ground to stop this barrage, it will be met with an array of fortifications and ambushes.”

According to a recent IDF Home Front Command report, roughly 1,000-1,500 rockets and missiles will be launched into Israel per day. Thousands of homes will be hit and hundreds of Israeli civilians will be injured or killed. Hundreds of thousands are expected to be evacuated from their homes.

The majority of Hezbollah's rockets, however, are ‘dumb’ rockets. One cannot control where they hit, and a large number of rockets need to be launched to inflict real damage. On the other hand, a key Hezbollah precision-guided missile is the M-600 (‘Tishrin’) of Syrian manufacture. Its range is 250 kilometers (155 miles); it carries a half-ton warhead and is accurate to dozens of yards from the target. Such missiles can strike IDF HQ (the Kirya) in Tel Aviv. Hezbollah’s goal in war would be to hit strategic facilities (power, electricity and water-pumping stations), air force and army bases, government buildings in Jerusalem, etc. The IDF would hit similar structures in Lebanon, as well as national sewage systems, bringing that country “back to the Stone Age” as has been repeatedly warned by top Israeli brass.

Dr. Ehud Eilam, an Israeli national security analyst, states that Hezbollah has up to 150,000 rockets and missiles that can reach every spot in Israel. The Israeli Iron Dome system can only intercept a portion of enemy rockets and missiles due to the expected vast numbers which will be fired. If Israel then will need to engage Hezbollah, a pre-emptive strike followed by a massive air, land, and sea offensive will result, aimed at gaining a quick and decisive victory.

The Arabic term ‘Wahdat al-Saha’at’ (unity of the arenas) lies behind Iran’s effort to gather its allies and all armed Islamist forces arrayed against Israel under a single Persian umbrella. Today Iran controls a contiguous area of control stretching from Syria’s Quneitra Province adjoining the Golan Heights, through southern Syria and into Iraq. where Tehran dominates the government, and where its Shia militias – the Hashd al-Sha’abi, or Popular Mobilization Units – have freedom of action. Recent reports described Iran-controlled militias in Syria’s Deir al Zur province moving westward toward the border with Israel. Were Lebanese Hezbollah to initiate war, there is a good chance that Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq would join in, along with the direct involvement of Iranian personnel.

This is one of the reasons why U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin stated yesterday: “I have also activated the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery as well as additional Patriot battalions to locations throughout the region to increase force protection for U.S. forces. Finally, I have placed an additional number of forces on prepare-to-deploy orders as part of prudent contingency planning, to increase their readiness and ability to quickly respond as required.  I will continue to assess our force posture requirements in the region and consider deploying additional capabilities as necessary.”

In that light, the IDF Spokesman’s call to the Israeli public one week ago (which was later walked back as ‘publicized in error’) to stock up on water, food, cash and batteries is a sobering wake-up call.

How should we then pray?

As tanks begin to roll, here are some bullet points to be praying about:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

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