Making the Caliphate great again

The world is witnessing the rise of radical jihadi Islamic nations and terrorist groups – Iran, Yemenite Houthis, Iraqi Kata’eb Hezbollah, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas – as well as al Qa’eda, Islamic State and ‘Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’ (‘Organization for the Liberation of the Levant’; abbreviated HTS) in Syria, Iraq and Africa. Recent events like the New Year’s Eve ISIS terror attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans are drawing increased international attention to something called ‘the Islamist Caliphate.’ What is that movement? What is its history? What are its tactics today and what will it look like tomorrow? Is this coming Caliphate a threat to the inhabitants of the world – whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu or secular? The next newsletters will present some answers to these questions.

Counterfeiting David’s kingdom

The covenant given by YHVH through Moses lays down the law: any prophet purporting to represent the God of Israel must not violate or pervert the clear teaching of the Mosaic Teaching (the English meaning of the Hebrew word ‘Torah’): “But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods – that prophet shall die” (Deuteronomy 18:20). 

Isaiah affirmed that same principle: “When they say to you, ‘Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter’ – should a people not consult their God? Should they consult the dead in behalf of the living? To the [Mosaic] Teaching and to the [Scriptures which are a witness-]testimony! If they do not speak in accordance with this word, it is because they have no dawn” (Isaiah 8:19-20). Paul added an ‘Amen!’ to this in his own day : “For if one comes and preaches another Yeshua whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, this you tolerate [all too] well! (2 Corinthians 11:4).

The Bible tells us that God of Jacob established an everlasting covenant with both David son of Jesse and with his physical descendants. This family dynasty would reign over both the Jewish people and all of mankind forever (according to 2 Samuel 7:11-17; Psalm 89:3-4, 19-37;  Isaiah 9:7; Isaiah 55:3; Hosea 3:5; Ezekiel 34:23-24; Jeremiah 30:9; Ezekiel 37:24-25; Luke 1:33). When a person describing himself as a prophet comes

then it should come as no surprise that this is a false prophet who will also end up denying the continuing validity of the Davidic Covenant, offering a counterfeit covenant in its place. The Quran’s spiritual foundations stand in direct opposition to what the Biblical Scriptures declare on these matters.

A false governmental structure

At the very beginning of Muḥammad’s revelation-based ministry, a spirit spoke to Muḥammad  and informed him: “And when your lord [allah] said to the angels, ‘I am about to place my caliph (viceroy/regent/succession of rulers) in the earth’” (Quran, Surah 2, al-Baqarah [‘The Cow]’, verse 30). The Arabic phrase “Inni jaa’ilun fil ardi khalifatan,” uses the word ‘khalifa’ (خليفة) coming from the root KH.L.F. (which means ‘to come in succession’ or ‘to replace instead of’). This concept – a link of successive (though not necessarily family-connected) rulers – is called ‘al khilafa’ (الخلافة) in Arabic – hence the English derivative ‘caliphate.’  The caliphate is actually a spiritual counterfeit of God’s Davidic dynastic pattern.

Islamic Replacement Theology

Christianity is not the only world religion that has within it theological currents espousing Replacement Theology. The Samaritans did so in their day (see John 4:19-20), substituting Mount Gerizim for Mount Zion, and substituting the peoples exiled by Assyria (from Babylon, Cuthah,  Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim; see 2 Kings 17:23-26) for the Jewish people. Islam followed in the footsteps of these two predecessors. Consider some of these Muslim ‘replacements’:

Quranic Replacement Theology changes and re-names the royal title of Jesse’s son David, replacing the Hebrew word meleḵ (Hebrew for king; the equivalent Arabic word is ‘mālik) with the Arabic word ‘khalifa.’  The Arabic word mālik is not used for David in the Quran, since that word would convey the idea of a Jewish king ruling over a Jewish physical kingdom in a Jewish land. Instead, King David is called a ‘khalifa,’ a vice-regent or temporary legate representing ‘allah’, Muḥammad’s family deity: “O Da’ud [Arabic for David]! We have placed you as a khalifa (caliph or vice-regent) on the earth. So judge between men with justice and follow not vain desires, lest it should lead you astray from the path of allah” (Quran, Sūrat Ṣād 38:26).

Non-kosher roots, jihadi shoots

Muḥammad ibn Abdullah was born in Mecca, Arabia c. 570 A.D. His father was Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, whose own father (leader of the Quraysh tribe) was also named Abdullah.

Muḥammad was eventually employed by Khadija, a wealthy businesswoman and a successful merchant in the camel-caravan trade business. At the age of 25 (in 595 A.D.) he later married her. At the age of 40, in 610 A.D., Muḥammad received a visitation from a spirit (what the Bible would classify as a fallen angel; see Galatians 4:8-9; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; 1 John 4:1-3) who called himself ‘Jibril’ (Arabic for ‘Gabriel’). This spirit (or ‘jinn,’ from which comes the English word ‘genie’) commanded Muḥammad to read aloud words written on a ‘spiritual cloth.’ When Muḥammad confessed that he was illiterate and could not read, the spirit choked him twice, nearly to the point of death.

Other revelations eventually came through ‘Jibril,’ including one where the spirit announced to him that the demonic spirit named ‘allah’ was the only true God. That declaration came disguised as ‘monotheism,’ but it actually was ‘mono-demonism’ – the worship of an Arabian demon who was masquerading as ‘the One True God.’ Muḥammad was then told by ‘Jibril’ that he had been chosen to be ‘the true messenger of allah.’ According to Islamic tradition, his wife Khadija was the first family member to believe that revelation. Other family members followed in accepting Muḥammad’s revelations and calling, including his ten-year-old cousin (and later, son-in-law) Ali ibn Abi Talib, his close friend Abu Bakr who also happened to be one of Muḥammad’s fathers-in-law, and his temporarily-adopted son Zayd ibn Ḥāritha al-Kalbī.

From the outset, Muḥammad commanded his followers to fight ‘unbelievers’ – those who refused to submit to the ‘Jibrilian revelations.’ Fighting, conquering, converting and enslaving these populations would be the method of expanding Islam’s earthly dominion. Muḥammad’s actions and personal example are seen by Muslims everywhere as embodying the true Islamic path. In the Quran, Surat at-Tawbah 9:29, it states: “Fight those who believe not in allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what allah and his messenger [Muḥammad] have forbidden, nor embrace the [Quranic] religion of truth, [even if they are] of the People of the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya tax [a penalty punishment forced on all conquered peoples] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”  During the last nine years of his life, Mohammad is “recorded as having participated in at least twenty-seven [jihad] campaigns and deputized some fifty-nine others – an average of no fewer than nine campaigns annually.”  Violent conquest through jihad was Muḥammad’s example; obedient followers of Muḥammad were to imitate him even as he imitated allah’s wishes.

Cosa Nostra and the Caliphate

Muḥammad’s revelatory journey started at midnight in 610 A.D.  It took place in a cave on Mount Hira, close to Mecca. That night-encounter with ‘Jibril’ is called ‘Laylat al-Qadr,’ or ‘Night of Power’ in Arabic. The entirety of Muḥammad’s Islamic movement rested squarely on his role as mediator and interpreter of ‘Jibrilian revelation,’ and as a military leader and governor of his troops and followers. When he died, the questions of succession of Muḥammad’s power and authority – spiritual, military and governmental – were immediately subject to great disagreement, dispute and division among his rough band of sword-wielding jihadi conquerors.

On March 16, 632 A.D. some of Muḥammad’s long-time companions (aṣ-ṣaḥāba) and followers had heard him designate his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor (‘khalifa’ or caliph) three months before Muḥammad died. This occurred at a place called ‘Ghadīr Khumm’ (Arabic, ‘the pool in the Khumm Valley’), an Arabian oasis strategically located between Mecca, Medina, Egypt and Iraq. Other Islamic texts also quote Muḥammad as deliberately and repeatedly investing spiritual authority of succession on his immediate family/household, those called the ‘Ahl al-Bayt’ (Arabic for ‘the people of the House/Dynasty’). 

However, on the day Muḥammad died, June 8, 632 A.D., a group of Muḥammad’s followers from Medina (called ‘al-Anṣār’ – the ‘helpers’ or ‘victorious ones’) brought together a private ‘Mafia-style’ meeting at the Saqīfah (the communal courtyard or meeting-place) of the Banu Sā’ida clan, in order to appoint Islam’s first successor-leader (or caliph). But not by accident, this gathering had not invited some significant potential participants:

These former Meccans were known as the ‘Muhajirun’ (al-muhājirūn, ‘the ones who had moved away’ from Mecca to follow Muḥammad – from the Arabic root ‘hijra’).

Various contemporary Islamic narratives explained that the Medina-based ‘Anṣār Group’ was gathering in order to appoint a caliph – a sovereign Muslim leader – among themselves. But this caliph would not be physically descended from Muḥammad’s family, if the ‘Anṣār Group’ got its way. The ‘Anṣār Group’ intentionally excluded the Muhajirun from the meeting – this meant that Muḥammad’s choice, Ali, as well as other members of Muḥammad’s family, were simply not invited to the fateful gathering.  The conspirators of Medina assumed that, with such a move, Muḥammad’s Meccans would return to Mecca and that Medina would become the capital city of the new Islamic movement – but now under the full control of the ‘Anṣār Family.’

According to early Islamic historians, ʿUmar and Abu Bakr were already meeting at the house of Abū ʿUbayda, (a top Muslim general and political ally), deeply engaged in their own plans to form an alliance led by neither Ali nor the Anṣār. According to Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq (died 767 A.D.), an anonymous messenger burst into their gathering and dramatically declared, “If you want to have command of the people, then take it before [the Anṣār’s] action becomes serious!”  ʿUmar then realized that, at the Saqifah meeting, “[the Anṣār] intended to cut us off from our [Qurayshi] root and to usurp the rule from us.” The plot had thickened.

ʿUmar rushed to the Saqifah meeting, taking Abu Bakr and Abū ʿUbayda with him.  He warned the gathered ‘Anṣār Cosa Nostra’ that the vast majority of Arab Muslims would not recognize the caliphate rule of anyone outside of Muḥammad’s Quraysh tribe. These three Muhajirun – ʿUmar, Abu Bakr and Abū ʿUbayda – were about to pull off an astounding political coup, removing both ‘the Medina Gang’ and ‘the Ali Family’ from the runnings for ‘First Islamic Caliph’ – all in one fell swoop.  ʿUmar then immediately pressed for an oath of allegiance (a bay’ah) to be sworn to Abu Bakr as the new caliph. He had grave and understandable concerns that, in an open shūrā consultation/vote, the Anṣār Group might vote for Ali as caliph. ʿUmar grabbed Abu Bakr’s hand, swearing allegiance to him as the new caliph. Others immediately followed ʿUmar’s example.

However, just after that vote, a violent struggle broke out between ʿUmar and Abū ʿUbayda, indicating that the choice of Abu Bakr was not necessarily a cut-and-dried matter. Partisan emotions were running rather high at that meeting. Ali ibn Abi Talib (Muḥammad’s own choice for caliph) refused to recognize ʿUmar’s sleight-of-hand transferring of caliphate authority to Abu Bakr. It was only six months later that Ali resentfully reconciled himself to Abu Bakr and performed a bay’ah – a public pledge of allegiance. Abu Bakr quickly adopted the title ‘Khalīfaṫ Rasūl allāh’ (خَلِيفةُ رَسُولِ اللهِ; ‘successor/caliph of allah’s messenger’). 

By advocating for and nominating ʿAbd allāh ibn ʾAbī Quḥāfa (commonly known as ʾAbū Bakr) as caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (one of Muḥammad’s fathers-in-law) had disregarded and dismissed Muḥammad’s choosing of Ali (who was Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law).   Of course, Abu Bakr (who consented willingly to the whole stratagem) was also part of the ‘inner circle’ of Muḥammad’s closest companions; Abu Bakr was also one of Muḥammad’s fathers-in-law. These were truly ‘succession wars’ in the ‘Mafia Family’ of Muḥammad’s first followers. Well did the God of Israel describe this Ishmaelic dynamic: “His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him – and he will live in defiance of all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12).

Abu Bakr held the office of being Muḥammad’s first successor or ‘khalifa’ (the First Caliph) for a period of two years, two months and 14 days, until he died of illness on August 23, 634 A.D.

Nothing succeeds like successors

The Caliphate quickly morphed into the organized governmental system of Islam under the rule of what were later called ‘the first four Caliphs’:

This entire period would later be called ‘The Rashidun/Rāšidūn Caliphate’ (in Arabic: al-Khilāfah ar-Rāšidah) or ‘The rightly-guided successors/Caliphs’ (al-Khulafaa ar-Rashidun) by Sunni Muslims. Shia Muslims, however, refused to recognize the validity of this basically Sunni Caliphate; they saw the whole thing as a putsch by enemies of Muḥammad’s immediate family – voraciously ambitious dictators who had rejected Muḥammad’s chosen successor/caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, from ruling over them.

A fifth Caliph briefly took the leadership of the Caliphate after Ali’s assassination – Ali’s son al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī. Ḥasan was popularly acknowledged (though only briefly) as the fifth Caliph in Kufa (modern Iraq) on January 28, 661 A.D.  He then shifted the Caliphate’s capital from Medina to Kufa. But barely six months later in August 661 A.D., having been wounded in an assassination attempt, he was forced to abdicate in favor of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, a general of Umayyad tribal origins who ended up seizing the Caliphate and a establishing a new dynasty – the Umayyad Caliphate. In early Spring 658 A.D., Muʿāwiya triumphantly entered Damascus, the ‘pearl of Islam,’ and was hailed as ‘ʾAmīr al-Muʾminīn’ (‘Commander of the believers’ – a greeting reserved only for Caliphs).

In April-May 658 A.D. Mu’awiya received the bay’ah (Islamic oath of allegiance) from Islamic leaders in Syria, completing his Caliph-validation process.  He and Ḥasan (Muḥammad’s grandson and his personal choice for the office) signed a peace treaty at that time, promising that the caliphate authority would return to Ḥasan after Mu’awiya’s death and that, in case anything ‘unexpected’ should happen to Ḥasan, his brother Ḥusayn would receive the caliphate. Mu’awiya’s Umayyad Caliphate then moved the capital city to Damascus (661-744 A.D.). Eighty-three years later the Umayyads moved the capital city to Harran in modern Turkey (744-750 A.D.).  But neither Ḥasan nor Ḥusayn would ever live to see that day.

The Battle of Karbala – the fateful split in Islam

The last attempt of Ali ibn Abi Talib’s family to reclaim the leadership of the Caliphate – the promise originally spoken over them by Muḥammad – occurred after the death of the First Umayyad Caliph Muʿāwiya in April 680 A.D. Over the years, Muʿāwiya had publicly revoked his ‘peace treaty’ with Ḥasan in many different ways, finally appointing his son Yazid (post-676 A.D.) to be the Second Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate – the first hereditary succession to the caliphate in Islamic history.   

Waiting in the wings, however, was Ḥasan ibn Ali’s younger brother – al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī. According to the now-violated treaty between his brother Ḥasan and Muʿāwiya, Ḥusayn should probably have stood an excellent chance at becoming Caliph at that time, for popular mood was swinging in his favor. But Yazid would not countenance such an outcome. Ḥusayn stubbornly refused to bend the knee to what he considered were Umayyad usurpers, and he would not swear an oath of allegiance to Yazid between the period of April and October 680 A.D. This would have allowed a smooth transition for the realization of Yazid’s imperial dreams.  On October 10 680 A.D. the Umayyad governor of Basra in modern Iraq, ʿUbayd allāh ibn Ziyād, blocked Ḥusayn’s approach to the former Caliphate capital city of Kufa with an anti-Ḥusayn army of 4,000 soldiers. In the ensuing Battle at Karbala, Ḥusayn and his retinue of 72 soldiers were slain, and his family was taken prisoner. Ḥusayn’s severed head was sent to Yazid as a trophy, along with all surviving prisoners. Only three years later, in 683 A.D., did Caliph Yazid released the surviving members of Ḥusayn’s family from prison.

The massacre of Muḥammad’s grandson and most of his family shocked the wider Muslim community. Prior to the Battle of Karbala, the Muslim community truly was divided into two political factions, but a distinct religious stream (with distinct theological doctrines and specific set of rituals) had not yet developed among the followers of Ali. Karbala morphed this pro-Ali political stream into a crystallized religious group – the ‘Party of Ali’ (Shīʿat ʿAlī) – the Shi’ites. 

At present, Shi’ites total 10-15% of all Muslims.  They see themselves as carrying the banner of those who resist oppression – whether by Sunni Ottomans, by British Christians, by Sunni ‘puppet monarchies’ in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, by the Syrian and Iraqi socialist/communist Baath movements, by the Sunni jihadi movements of al Qaeda, Islamic State/Da’esh/ISIS and HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham), by the US military, and especially by the continued existence and victories of the Jewish state of Israel.

The Caliphate moves to Baghdad

The Muslim Caliphate would now undergo a third metamorphosis. The Rashidun (the First Caliphate) were the original embodiment of Muḥammad’s world Islamic government, located first in Medina, Arabia and then in Kufa, Iraq. The Umayyad Dynasty (Second Caliphate) located their capital first in Damascus, Syria and then in Harran, Turkey.  The Third Caliphate was established after a successful revolt against the 14th and last Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate – Marwān ibn Muḥammad ibn Marwān.  That revolt was led by al-Saffāḥ (Arabic for ‘the blood shedder’), whose full name was Abū al-ʿAbbās ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī.  Al-ʿAbbās was a Hashemite descendant of Muḥammad’s uncle ‘Abbas ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib – thus a potential candidate for becoming a caliph. Along with his two outstanding generals – the Persian (non-Arab) Abu Muslim and the Khorasani (Iran-based Arab) Qahtaba ibn Shabib al-Ta’i – al-ʿAbbās decisively defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of the Zab on January 25, 750 A.D. The last Umayyad Caliph Marwan II escaped to Egypt, where he was caught and killed on August 6, 750 A.D. The remainder of his family was eliminated, except for one male descendent. Abū al-ʿAbbās then became the First Caliph of the Third Caliphate – the Abbasid Caliphate.

Abū al-ʿAbbās’ successor-caliph was the Caliph al-Manṣūr – his full Arabic name was Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Manṣūr. This second Abbasid Caliph (who ruled for 22 years – 754-775 A.D.) decided in 762 A.D. to establish a new capital city on the Tigris River (the biblical Hiddekel; see Genesis 2:14) which was barely 85 kilometres/55 miles north of ancient Babylon. The city was first called ‘Madīnat as-Salām’ (‘the City of Peace’) or ‘The Round City,’ but the name was soon changed to ‘Baghdad.’

Under the Fifth Abbasid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, Baghdad and the Third Caliphate came into what is called ‘The Islamic Golden Age’ – the height of Islamic scientific, economic and cultural flourishing. This zenith is reflected in the many tales from the ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ that were set in that location. Baghdad was a center of Islamic civilization, second only to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Its ‘House of Wisdom’ (Bayt al-Ḥikmah) – also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad – was one of the world’s largest public libraries and collections of rare books and manuscripts. These included Arabic translations of many of the Greek and Latin philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, theologians and historians. Western scholars would re-discover these scrolls, and these Arabic manuscripts later help to catalyze Europe’s Renaissance. Several world-class academic institutions in that city garnered Baghdad’s reputation as being the international ‘Center of Learning.’

During the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, four different Caliphs were assassinated either by family or by professional rivals. In total, more than ten Caliphs were assassinated, if one combines both Sunni and Shiite rulers.  Fault lines in the make-up of the Caliphs and their Caliphates led to a gradual disintegration of their empires. The wealthy Umayyads in their day tended to be less zealous and more secular than Islam’s initial caliphs, the Rashidun. Popular disappointment with corrupt Umayyad leadership in the Second Caliphate caused many non-Arab Muslim converts (the mawali, who were treated as second-class citizens throughout the empire) and many Shi’ites to yearn for a return to the glory and power of the original First Caliphate’s leaders. Most of these mawali hailed from Persia (modern Iran), and the Abbasid caliphs ended up shifting their power centers and cultural emphases to more Eastern locations and expressions. This dynamic fusion of Arabian and Persian culture weakened the Caliphate’s original foundations. Originally, Islam had been a monolithic and unified force – religiously and socially, linguistically and culturally, militarily and politically.  But in Abbasid times higher level diplomats were often foreigners, leaving local Arab tribes out of the equation in terms of political and diplomatic influence.  The Caliphate’s centralized structures began to disintegrate as cultural divisions grew. The fracturing of the Islamic empire into smaller independent kingdoms led to military weakness in the face of cruel invaders from the East. For many different reasons – most importantly a counterfeit spiritual foundation – Baghdad, like Daniel’s ancient Babylon, had been “weighed in the balances and found wanting” (see Daniel 5:1-30; 1 Samuel 2:6-9; Psalm 113:6-8; Luke 1:51-55).

Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols under Hülegü Khan in January-February 1258. It was then conquered by the Islamic forces of Turkic-Mongol Tamerlane/Timur in 1401. A century later Baghdad was occupied by the Persian/Iranian  Shah Ismāʿīl I of the Safavid dynasty in October 1508. Three years after that in 1534, Baghdad was overrun by the armies of Turkish Sultan Süleyman I the Magnificent (of the Ottoman Caliphate). The city became part of the Ottoman Empire, remaining under Anatolian control until the end of World War I. 

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In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
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Staging ground for Gog and Magog

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

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

All in the family tree – Meshech and Tubal

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

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

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

The Land of King Solomon’s horses

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

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

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

All in the family tree of Flavius Josephus

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

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

Who’s who in Turkey

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

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

   

The Campaign of Gog of the land of Magog

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

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

The remote sides of the North

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

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

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

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

God is in charge of the charge

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

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

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

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

How shall we then pray?

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Dividing the baby – Part Three of Three

This is part three of a three-part newsletter.

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

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

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

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

The Syrian invasion of Irbid area, Jordan in September 1970

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

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

The enemy of my enemy

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

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

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

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

Falling into the wrong hands

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

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

Flight into danger

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

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

How shall we then pray?

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Dividing the baby – Part Two of Three

This is part two of a three-part newsletter.

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

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

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

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

Can a leopard change its spots?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He who pays the piper calls the tune

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

The proof of the pudding

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

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

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

How shall we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Dividing the baby – Part One of Three

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

Dividing the Middle East

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The City of Jasmine and her two skulls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Islam and socialism first kissed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How shall we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part Four of Four

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

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

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

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

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

Beating swords into ploughshares at a time of war

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

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

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

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

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

“Potentially severe” outcomes on the battlefield

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

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

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

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

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

The Hamas invasion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When in doubt, read the directions

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

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

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

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

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

How should we then pray?  

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part Three of Four

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

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

Chariots at the Walls of Jericho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How should we then pray?

                                                              

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part Two of Four

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

When guard dogs forget how to bark

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

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

A Day but no Atonement

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

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

Not learning from history but repeating it

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

How should we then pray?                                                              

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Sons of the Pioneers – Part One of Four

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

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

“I never asked to be a pioneer!”

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

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

Treachery, deceit and conspiracy

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

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

When a watchmen becomes corrupt

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

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

When a hero becomes arrogant

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

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

For deeper back ground, see the following newsletters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How should we then pray?                                                    

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Restless and plotting – Part Two

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

What was true in the time of King David – the anointed ruler of the nation of Israel – is true in our day as well: the machinations and conspiracies of the superpowers of this earth always end up focusing on the Jewish people, their land and their destiny. This fixated and twisted dynamic could be called the world’s ‘Magnificent Obsession.’

In the same way as YHVH chose the children of Jacob to be His irrevocable priority people, so the prince of darkness has chosen the Jewish people – but for totally opposite purposes. Satan has chosen the Israeli nation to be the particular focus of his murderous madness and heinous hatred. How is this playing out in our day?

The rest of the News

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has spoken out with great clarity about the current U.S. Administration’s behind-the-scenes machinations involved in this latest cease-fire deal between Israel and Lebanon. “The Biden administration has spent the last four years pathologically obsessed with undermining Israel and boosting Iran.” Cruz stated that he is deeply disturbed by reports that:

The U.S. Administration has frozen shipments of munitions already paid for by Israel, in a stealth embargo intended to twist Israel’s arms to cave in to a cease-fire while Hezbollah is undefeated and still firing rockets, drones and missiles at Israel. A total of 139 D9 Caterpillar bulldozers (necessary to dislodge Hamas jihadi terrorist embedded in homes, schools and mosques) “are awaiting export approval.” These machines “aren’t only operationally effective against terror tunnels and in urban areas, but also help save soldiers’ lives.” Also on ‘unofficial U.S. embargo’ are heavy bunker-buster bombs. See ‘Arms embargoes on Israel since 2023’ for more information. The current U.S. Administration recently rejected the IDF’s request for 15 Apache attack helicopters, putting bureaucratic obstacles in the way which “will delay the signing of the agreement by about ten months.”

UK Colonel Richard Kemp adds:

       

Kemp’s warning has gold-plated historical credentials, and it is worth going back in time to see how such an event played out. On Friday December 23, 2016, just before the onset of the Sabbath and the Feast of Hanukkah, a rushed vote was taken at the United Nations Security Council on Resolution 2334. The U.S. abstained from its habitual pro-Israel veto, allowing for an expedited passage of the motion. It passed 14-0 with the one American abstention. Israel had been warning about such a political ambush for many months.  Prime Minister Netanyahu had been cautioning that a lame-duck American President (Barak Obama) with a chip on his shoulder against Israel might manipulate the passage of an anti-Israel UN Resolution. This would be a scenario similar to how the balrog acted in J.R.R. Tolkien’s  Lord of the Rings. Though defeated and pushed into the abyss by Gandalf, at the last second the balrog struck out with his bullwhip and snared Gandalf’s ankle, bringing him down into the same dark pit.

Whereas UN Resolution 242 (passed on November 22, 1967 and referring to potential Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in the June 1967 Six-Day War)) did not specify borders and regions, Egypt’s December 2016 draft of Resolution 2334 did. This would be a radical and ground-breaking change. The UN would determine by itself the depth of Israel’s withdrawal. Jerusalem pleaded with the Obama Administration to exercise its veto power on this one. When that appeal was greeted with deaf ears, Israel contacted President-elect Trump’s people. Trump, seeing the danger and the huge lack of wisdom in the State Department’s approach, contacted Egypt, who agreed to withdraw the Resolution.

But now a secret contingency plan swung into action. New Zealand (backed up by Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela) submitted the Resolution within hours of Egypt’s reversal. The Resolution was voted on and ratified within half a day. The passing of this Resolution 2334 on December 23, 2016 fundamentally changes the whole peace process, profoundly altering previously signed agreements achieved through American mediatorship (like the Oslo Accords).

When a legally binding Resolution insists that Israel withdraw from specific territories, then as far as Israel is concerned, there is no more point in further negotiations with the Palestinians. Such a Resolution predicates that an Israeli withdrawal from specific territories must happen in any case. This sleight-of-hand process is actually an illegal fait-accompli. It is a political mugging of Israel. The Jewish state will now find it difficult – if not impossible – to trust prior agreements brokered by America.

The U.S. State Department vociferously insisted at that time that it had nothing to do with Resolution 2334. Yet the truth is quite different. For deep background and the sordid intrigue involved here, see ‘The kings of the earth are taking their positions’ (Boskey newsletter, December 28, 2016). The Apostle Paul says that “it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret” (Ephesians 5:12). Yeshua added, “Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops” (Luke 12:3). In this case, shadows are still being cast by superpowers on the viability of Jewish control over the Jewish homeland.

Obsessed with locking in the results of jihad

As soon as this last ‘cease-fire’ was announced, the leaders of the U.S., France, the UK, etc., immediately began to demand an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, leaving the path clear to a regrouping of jihadi terror groups and a re-establishing of their dark domain:

The nations are rushing headlong into the judgment prophesied by Joel (3:1-2) and Zechariah (14:1-4). These passages speak of God’s coming divine sentence against the nations who partition the Land of Israel, dividing Jerusalem and handing over sacred soil to our enemies from Edom (see Ezekiel 25:12-14; 36:1-7).

 

Unfortunately, even in modern Israel, some in the military and intelligence communities who have been appointed to be watchmen and gatekeepers, have failed to recognize the Islamist threat – and the threats of superpowers whose ambivalent support also comes with a hidden price-tag – malevolent strategies to shrink and weaken the Jewish state.

The jihadi armies of Mohammed – the mujāhidīn – conquered the Land of Israel in 638 A.D., turning it into an Islamic slave-province. Muslim theology teaches that any land conquered by jihadi armies remains Islamic territory in perpetuity. This means that the Islamic world will never accept a Jewish state or even Jewish control over part of such a state. For Muslim ayatollahs, imams and sheikhs, the jihadi conquests and subsequent ramifications of these conquests can never be reversed. Yet the God of Israel, in an extremely ‘politically incorrect’ move, is restoring His chosen people to their chosen land through Hebrew pioneering and conquest. In this struggle, the nations have taken the side of the mujāhidīn. Stay tuned as jihad gets reversed!

How should we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Restless and plotting – Part One

What was true in the time of King David – the anointed ruler of the nation of Israel – is true in our day as well: the machinations and conspiracies of the superpowers of this earth always end up focusing on the Jewish people, their land and their destiny. This fixated and twisted dynamic could be called the world’s ‘Magnificent Obsession.’

In the same way as YHVH chose the children of Jacob to be His irrevocable priority people, so the prince of darkness has chosen the Jewish people – but for totally opposite purposes. Satan has chosen the Israeli nation to be the particular focus of his murderous madness and heinous hatred. How is this playing out in our day?

Jihadi warfare

Every Muslim who ‘signs on the dotted line’ – the classic Islamist texts of Quran and Hadith (Islamic legal tradition) – is spiritually bound to obey the words of Mohammed regarding the obligation of jihad – described as ‘the sixth pillar of Islam.’ It refers to military attack on Christians, Jews and Hindus until these groups are either vanquished, forced to convert to Islam, or destroyed by the mujāhidīn (jihad warriors).

Blinded denial of jihadi warfare

The secular and post-Christian West is like unto a deer trapped in the headlights of an onrushing jihadi train – bent on ignoring the clear and present danger speeding toward them. They are intent on persuading themselves that:

In a hard-hitting article “Hating Jews for Allah” (Jerusalem Report, February 9, 2015), Tibor Krausz points out:

 

It’s hard for some to believe, but this deadly blindness also dominates the thinking of the majority of Israel’s military, intelligence and judicial top brass.

The green seven-headed Iranian jihadi dragon

The Arabic term ‘Wahdat al-Saha’at’ (unity of the arenas) lies behind the jihadi terror state of Iran’s effort to gather its allies and all armed Islamist forces arrayed against Israel under a single Persian umbrella. Psalm 83 sketches most of those countries for us – a prophetic roster indeed:

Apart from the Yemeni Houthis who are not mentioned in Psalm 83, six of the nations currently involved in this present jihadi attack on Israel are described in this passage: Gaza, West Bank. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

Woke violence

To hate Israel is to hate the God of Israel, as Asaph the worship-leader and Isaiah the prophet clearly declare:

The mass anti-Israel and anti-Jewish neo-Nazi demonstrations rocking both Europe and American college campuses in recent months are funded by Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Qatar. They have been fostered over years through pre-positioning – the establishing of Chairs of Islamist and Arab thought and culture in top universities; in the seeding of both continents with Islamist organizations and illegal immigrants who have set up grass-roots jihadi networks (consider the 9/11 Hamburg cell). For the past few years, these sleeper cells have catalyzed woke leaders to organize supposedly ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations calling for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and for the establishment of a judenrein (Nazi term for ‘Jew-free’) Islamist terror state called ‘Palestine.’ One day after October 7, 2023, when Hamas had led horrific rapes, murders, tortures and kidnappings of Israeli children, teens, pensioners and adults, this neo-Nazi Islamist network was prepared, and they swung into gear, organizing massive demonstrations throughout Europe and America, calling for an Islamist Palestine ‘free from the River to the Sea’ – or, to speak plainly and without artifice – free of Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.

The short-term crescendo of these demonstrations was seen in the pogrom attack on 3,000 Israeli soccer/football fans on October 7 and 8, 2024 in Amsterdam. This was quickly followed by a decision at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, issuing arrests for Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defense Minister on the false accusation of war crimes and genocide – something that woke demonstrators have been baying for over the past few years.

Weaponized lawfare

Israel is no stranger to international hatred and scorn. The Mesopotamian Balaam spoke a prophetic word over Israel, summing up this dynamic: “How am I to put a curse on him upon whom God has not put a curse? And how am I to curse him whom YHVH has not cursed? For I see him from the top of the rocks, and I look at him from the hills: Behold, a people who dwells apart, and is not considered to be [just another nation] living among the nations!” (Numbers 23:8-9). The God of Israel adds a divine footnote here in Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who dishonors you I will curse” (ESV).

The United Nations proves the prophetic truth of Balaam’s declaration on a daily basis. Since 1948, there have been 226 Security Council resolutions related to Israel. The US directly condemned Israel in six resolutions and abstained on 19. The UN’s fixation over Israel can be demonstrated by considering one year out of many – the year 2022, where the General Assembly approved 15 anti-Israel resolution, versus 13 resolutions criticizing all other nations. Between 2015 and 2022 the General Assembly adopted 140 anti-Israel resolutions, as compared to 68 resolutions against all other countries. Here is the read-out for 2024: https://unwatch.org/2024-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/. Indisputable proof of UN anti-Israel bias is freely available for those who are interested. This ancient hatred is quite at home on the banks of NYC’s East River, and has stretched it muscles there from the time of the inception of the State of Israel up to the present day.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established on July 1, 2002, after the Rome Statute of the ICC was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on July 17, 1998 as the court’s charter and governing document. As of October 2024 there are 125 ICC member states, 25 signatories who have not ratified the Rome Statute, and 41 states which have neither signed nor become parties to the Rome Statute. Four signatory states – Israel in 2002, the United States on May 6, 2002, Sudan on August 26, 2008, and Russia on November 30, 2016 – have informed the UN Secretary General that they no longer intend to become states parties and, as such, have no legal obligations arising from their signing of the Statute

  

Under the Rome Statute, the ICC can only investigate and prosecute ‘four core international crimes’ (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression) in situations where sovereign states are “unable” or “unwilling” to do so themselves. Even so, the jurisdiction of the court is stated as only being complementary to jurisdictions of domestic courts. The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes only if they are committed in the territory of a state party (which Israel is not) or if they are committed by a national of a state party. An exception to this rule is that the ICC may also have jurisdiction over crimes if its jurisdiction is authorized by the United Nations Security Council. Based on this last point, the nations of the world can conspire with the ICC in invalidating and overthrowing the first of the two points stated above.

Changing the judge’s horses in mid-stream

According to the ICC’s founding mandate, Israel cannot be investigated or prosecuted for three simple reasons: one: Israel has a functioning judicial system and has a solid track record of investigating itself; two, the jurisdiction of Israeli domestic courts takes priority over the ICC; three: since the UN does not recognize Israeli control over Gaza, the ‘crimes’ in question were not committed in the territory of a state party.

However, in a published opinion in August 2014, the ICC Prosecutor said that, as a result of Palestine’s new status being granted to it unilaterally by the ICC, Palestine was qualified to join the Rome Statute. In December 2014, the assembly of state parties of the ICC recognized Palestine as a ‘State’ without prejudice to any legal or other decisions taken by the court or any other organization. Palestine (a state that does not exist on the ground) acceded to the Rome Statute on January 2, 2015, and was recognized as a State party by the ICC on April 1, 2015. The fictional State of Palestine could now catalyze international legal suits against the Jewish state of Israel, in what is known as ‘lawfare’ – using judicial means to further destructive military purposes.

This scenario was very much on Israel’s mind when it originally refused to become a partner to the Rome Statute in 2002. It declared at that time in a written and appended note:

Subsequent UN history has proved the validity of Israel’s sober concerns a thousand times over.  The UN and the ICC are functioning as abusive bullies, stirring up international judgment and cursing of Israel (remember Genesis 12:3) even though Israel is not subject to the ICC’s authority or a party to their treaties. To add insult to injury, Israel has been highly exemplary in its prosecution of war against jihadis – who happen to also be enemies of the West. Hamas and its chief bankroller Qatar, on the other hand, have never come before the gnarled legal arm of the ICC.

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

A further bump in the road concerns the ICC chief prosecutor of nine years, Karim Khan, who is facing allegations of sexual nonconsensual behavior and coercion against a female aide over a period of 12 months. These matters raise concerns about conflicts of interest, as well as the independence and ethical foundation of both the inquiry and the inquirer.

An Arab media outlet bankrolled by Qatar, the Middle East Eye, does not mince words in describing the international end-game here – turning Israel into a pariah state, subject to the blows of international bullies: “In the long run, and in a more meaningful way, the ICC warrants cut Israel off from the international community in a very sharp way . . . The American reaction . . .  cannot change the basic reality: Israel is swiftly becoming a pariah state.  This isolation and de-legitimization of Israel can have practical and immediate effects such as encouraging military and other sanctions on Israel.” See also ‘ICC decision may mean European arms embargo on Israel’ (Globes, November 21, 2024).

Peace, peace – and there is no peace

The newspapers and cable TV stations of the world, as Isaiah says, “are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the small dust on the scales . . .  All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless” (Isaiah 40:15-17). While mainstream media (MSM) trumpet a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, the truth is far more interesting and less encouraging.

Lebanese Hezbollah began unilaterally shooting anti-tank weapons, rockets, drones and missiles into Israel on October 8, 2023. On that day Hezbollah declared that they were joining Hamas in jihad against Israel. Their targets were kibbutzim, moshavim and farms, towns and cities, civilian houses and shopping centers. An occasional army base was also targeted.  But it should be remembered that there is some context here: Hezbollah has waged an Iran-sponsored war against Israel since 1982 – a total of 32 years. Iran’s Shi’ite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been the bankroller, trainer and arms supplier this entire time. At the beginning of the 32 year long war Hezbollah attacked U.S. Marine bases and Embassies, French paratrooper bases and Israeli military HQs in Lebanon, kidnapping and torturing U.S. diplomats and intelligence chiefs to death. But at this juncture, Hezbollah’s attacks are officially directed only against Israel.

The recent ‘cease-fire’ agreement between Israel and Lebanon, initialed and the spotlighted by world media, was actually not signed by Hezbollah; indeed, that organization is only mentioned once and in passing in the document’s Understanding #2: “From 04:00 hours (IST/EET), November 27, 2024 forward, the Government of Lebanon will prevent Hezbollah and all other armed groups in the territory of Lebanon from carrying out any operations against Israel.”

American diplomat Amos Hochstein has been functioned as POTUS Biden’s Special Envoy in this situation. He has declared that the current cessation of firing is actually a done deal: “We’re not going to stop; it’s not a temporary effort. It’s an enduring mechanism!” In this he echoed the words of POTUS Joe Biden: “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities!” But Israel’s perspective here is decidedly different. Prime Minister Netanyahu explained that this deal is not a peace treaty but is only a fragile cease-fire; it expires after 60 days; and Israel will immediately join battle again if Hezbollah violates this pending accord.  The gaps between diplomatic doublespeak and behind-the-scenes negotiations are significant.

Israeli Channel 12 TV announced that US Special Envoy Hochstein made clear to Israel that there would be no deal if France were not a member of the international oversight body. Israel in turn insisted that France take back its threat to arrest Netanyahu if he set foot in France, based on the ICC warrants, and tone down its virulently anti-Israel words and actions.

Back in 2016, at the conclusion of the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shi’ite jihadi terror group also did not sign UN Security Council’s Resolution 1701. This Hezbollah sidestep led to the long-burning fuse which exploded on October 8, 2023 – one day after Hamas’ atrocities against Israel. The same side-stepping scenario is occurring again, this time with U.S. and French blessing.

Yet, in spite of the diplomatic fudging and linguistic fog hanging over this process, POTUS Biden announced at the White House: “Today, after many weeks of tireless diplomacy, Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot declared: “Force must give way to dialogue and negotiation. This has now been achieved in Lebanon.”

In other recent news, the United Nations refused to renew the contract of Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Under-Secretary-General and U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, due to her determination that Israel’s actions in Gaza could not be defined as ‘genocide.’ According to Nderitu, the term “genocide” encapsulates the Holocaust, the genocide perpetrated by the Hutus on the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian attacks on Bosnian Muslims, and the killings being carried out in Sudan. But Nderitu has stated, according to the Wall Street Journal, that “as a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify.”

How should we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: https://davidstent.org/

Snowflakes and Santa Claus

In 1636 Harvard University was founded as a school to train Christian ministers. In 1646 the University adopted “Rules and precepts that are observed in the college.” Here are some of those foundational points:

The motto of the University adopted in 1692 was ‘Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae’ (Latin for ‘Truth for Christ and the Church’). But as Harvard University increasingly abandoned Evangelical theology and embraced German Liberalism, its motto morphed into what is in use today – simply the word ‘VERITAS’ (Latin for ‘Truth’).

Neither Christ nor the Truth

Since then, Harvard has become a bastion of anti-Christian teaching; it has lost its once-legendary Ivy League backbone for defending Biblical truth. A recent October 2024 lecture at Harvard by anti-Hamas speaker Mosab Hassan Yousef (son of one of Hamas’ founders) was only granted official permission to go forward if a University-authored statement was read out, informing the audience that pro-Hamas protestors would be allowed up to ten minutes to disrupt the event before being removed. The statement noted that it would allow pro-Hamas demonstrators access to the public pulpit, because “speech is privileged in the University community.” At Harvard, so it seems, free speech for jihadis trumps the unimpeded right of God’s watchmen to call out a warning.

On the Harvard campus, just one day after Donald J. Trump’s presidential re-election victory on November 5, 2024, many anti-Trump students and faculty found themselves spiraling into depression:

Can snowflakes endure a marathon?

According to the Pew Research Center report of August 9, 2024, about six out of every ten American (62%) say that a major problem in the U.S. today is “people being too easily offended by things others say.” A February 2, 2017 article in USA TODAY describes such easily offended people as ‘snowflakes’ – a term referring to “young people who take offense [at] political comments.” The USA TODAY article says that this term can refer to people who are “as weak and vulnerable as a speck of snow.”

In an early morning tweet the day after the elections, Elon Musk made a thoughtful observation regarding Democratic shock at a Republican victory: “For anyone, whether in America or other countries, who finds this result shocking, they should reconsider where they get their information. This trend was obvious in X for months, but almost all the legacy mainstream media pushed a completely false reality. They lied to you.’

Harvard snowflakes may get easily rattled by the presence of anti-Hamas and pro-Israel lecturers on sacred campus property; they may spin into deep depression from the careful exercise of the democratic process in America (even if it brings a Big Orange Man to the White House). But the truth is that there are actually real threats coming down the track for the Western world. Recent violent jihadi attacks in the Netherlands on Israeli soccer fans (on the night of November 7-8, 2024) present another strong wake-up call to a narcissistic generation – one that, even though it calls itself woke, it has actually fallen deep asleep.

Santa Claus is coming to town

Amsterdam has always been a magnet for tourists, offering picturesque canals, beautiful old buildings, cream cakes and well-prepared cuisine. For those who love the Christmas season, Santa Claus’ origins are often connected to this city.  Santa is known in the Netherlands as Sint Nicolaas or Sinterklaas. In medieval times, the Feast Day in his honor was usually the occasion of mass public drunkenness. Though the origins of the red-suited white-bearded figure were originally from Greece, Santa has taken on a distinct Dutch hue over the years. Dutch settlers in Manhattan brought Mr. Claus’ toy-giving traditions over to New York City, and from America they have spread worldwide.

Another old tradition started not far from Greece, and it too has spread worldwide. Its founder also had a beard, though its color is a matter of dispute. That founder was Mohammed, and the tradition he started in the Hejaz region of Arabia is called ‘Islamic jihad.’ Based on the classic Islamist texts of the Quran and the Hadith, the zealous adherents of the tradition of jihad (jihad warriors or mujāhidīn) have spread their message from Mecca to Manhattan, and from Alexandria to Ankara – even to Amsterdam.

Time line of anti-Israel activities

The past few days have seen intensive pogrom-like attacks on over 3,000 Israelis in Amsterdam. Here is a time-line and explanation of those events.

Statements of world leaders

U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, wrote that she was “horrified by the attacks tonight in Amsterdam, which are terribly reminiscent of a classic pogrom.”

Danny Danon, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote that “we are receiving very disturbing reports of extreme violence against Israelis and Jews on the streets of Holland. There is a pogrom currently taking place in Europe in 2024.”

The King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, told the President of Israel Isaac Herzog on November 8, 2024: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.”

The Israeli Embassy in The Hague stated: “Horrific scenes from Amsterdam last night, echoing Europe’s darkest history. Hundreds of fans of Israel’s Maccabi TLV were ambushed and brutally attacked in Amsterdam last night after the match against Ajax. Mobs chanted anti-Israel slogans and proudly shared videos of their violent acts on social media – kicking, beating, even running over Israeli citizens. On the eve of Kristallnacht [November 8-9, 1938] – when Jews in Nazi Germany faced brutal attacks – it is horrifying to witness antisemitic violence on the streets of Europe once again.”

Geert Wilders, Dutch politician representing the largest party in the government, the Party for Freedom (PVV), tweeted: “A pogrom in the streets of #Amsterdam. We have become the Gaza of Europe. Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews. I will NOT accept that. NEVER. The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens. Never again.”

Wilders added: “Looks like a Jew hunt in the streets of Amsterdam. Arrest and deport the multicultural scum that attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters in our streets. Ashamed that this can happen in The Netherlands. Totally unacceptable.”

What happened in Amsterdam?

On the evening of Thursday, November 7, 2024, Muslim gangs of Turkish and Moroccan origin began attacks which quickly intensified into pogroms. Their target was the 3,000 Israeli fans of soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv who had come to enjoy the November 7 UEFA Europa League soccer match between the Maccabi team and the local Amsterdam team Ajax at Amsterdam’s Johan Cruyff Arena.

Crowds of Middle Eastern Turks and Moroccans were waiting outside the Arena for Israeli fans to come out after the game, prepared for a large-scale pogrom.  Groups of Arabs dressed in black gathered in pre-arranged clusters of 5 to 10 in alleys and key exits from various train stations, especially around Amsterdam’s main Dam Square and also the streets near hotels where Israelis were staying. The gangs had precise intelligence where to wait and, as soon as they spotted Israelis, they attacked them in many locations across the city with bats, knives and other weapons, yelling “Free Palestine.” A 30 year-old Israeli Maccabi fan, who had recently finished four months of reserve duty in Gaza, stated: “We were ambushed.”

Israeli fans ran to hide in hotels, restaurants and businesses near the Arena.  Video footage on social media shows fans being beaten, kicked, chased with knives, punched, run over by vehicles. One video shows a man been kicked to the ground, while he yells at them “I’m not Jewish.” An Israeli fan told a journalist how a group of Arabs ran over to him, pulling out knives. He declared, “The police here abandoned us. Every fourth person walking the street is a Muslim who has come to attack Jews.”

In the middle of the pogrom, one Israeli fan called his friend’s cell phone to check up on him; “A voice in Arabic answered,” he said. Another Israeli interviewed said: “We experience the very thing they told us in school would never happen [to Jews] again.” Arab crowds threw fireworks into hotels where Israelis were hiding. Israelis at the scene said that Amsterdam police left Maccabi fans unaccompanied after they exited the Johan Cruyff Arena, and provided no escort for them at all, from the moment they boarded the trains to their hotels.

Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema described the terror attacks as ‘hit and run.’ She added that Arab men on scooters were driving around the city, searching for Israelis to attack. One 24 year-old Israeli fan, Adi Reuben, told the BBC:

At least 62 rioters were arrested that night, Dutch police said, and at least five people were taken to hospital with injuries.

Former Harvard student Shabbos Kestenbaum posted a tweet dripping with dry sarcasm, which was accompanied by videos of Islamist violence: “I am deeply thankful that the Muslim refugees hunting for Jews with knives tonight in Amsterdam are only anti-Zionists and not in any way motivated by Jew-hate.”

I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out a warning

The Israeli Ministry of Diaspora and Battle Against Antisemitism (MDBAA) has been sending security intelligence briefs to Dutch authorities regarding Palestinian violence planned against Jewish and Israeli targets since 2022. These warnings culminated in the MDBAA issuing three hot warnings at 1900 hours on November 7, 2024 to Dutch authorities about upcoming attacks in Amsterdam planned by pro-Hamas groups targeting the Israel football club members and their fans, against locations popular among Israelis.

These warnings had been passed on, first to SHABAK (Israeli FBI) and to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, who then passed them on to the local security forces of Holland – the party responsible for the soccer fans safety. The MDBAA noted that, on Wednesday night November 7, 2024, at 2100 they received an update that the Israeli soldier under threat was informed of the danger and was able to take precautionary measures. Also, the Israeli security contacts were informed by local Amsterdam police that they had received these updates and was responding accordingly.

Israeli Ministry of Diaspora and Battle Against Antisemitism released a statement on November 8, 2024 that, to their regret, the local Dutch forces failed in their task to defend the Israeli citizens soccer fans, and that by 0230 am Israeli time on November 8, 2024, events on the ground in Amsterdam got totally out of hand.  Despite clear warnings from Israeli security intelligence, it turns out that the Dutch authorities reportedly ignored the warnings, allowing violent acts to proceed and later attempted to blame Israeli soccer fans for “provocative behavior.”

The Diaspora Affairs Ministry further stated on the morning of November 8, 2024: “As of 3:30 a.m., we have transmitted additional information from the networks which are assisting the security forces in compiling an up-to-date picture of the situation.”

Keeping up with the Joneses

There is an assertion that many Israelis respond with when asked about whether or not another Holocaust will ever happen again to the Jewish people. That declaration is: “Never again!” We Israelis for the most part believe (and hope) that our people will be able to live a normal life; will be able to fit in to the family of nations and live in peace and prosperity; will have our children grow up without the threat of terrorism and murderous neighbors. We hope and pray for the blessing of God on the work of our hands.

Holland in times past was perhaps the most friendly country of all to the Jewish people, and Amsterdam was one of the Jewish people’s favorite watering holes. But now it has become a city known for murderous pogroms. The country of Corrie ten Boom has morphed into a haven for jihadi monsters. The God of Jacob is calling His Jewish people home. According to the promise of the ‘Dry Bones Vision’ in Ezekiel 37:1-14,  YHVH will fill us – the whole people of Israel – with His Spirit and transform us into “a mighty army, much much” (original Hebrew wording). This vision needs to be fixed before our eyes, and be the substance and focus of our prayers!

How should we then pray?

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

The Lord humbles, He also exalts – He removes kings and appoints kings

The past few days have seen agony and ecstasy in both America and Israel. In America, Republican Donald J. Trump (previously the 45th POTUS) won the 60th quadrennial U.S. Presidential election, becoming the 47th President of the United States (312 Electoral College votes, and nearly 73 million of the popular vote). Incumbent Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris was defeated in this same election (226 Electoral College votes, and just over 68 million of the popular vote).

In Israel Yoav Gallant, former Commander of Israel’s Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13, equivalent to the US Navy Seals) in the 1990’s, and Minister of Defense (2022-2024), was informed on November 5, 2024 that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “decided to end the defense minister’s tenure.” These changes have made some people very happy, and other people very sad.

Some careful observers have noted occasional parallels between political events in Israel and those in America. Similar events are often simultaneously mirrored in both countries: both countries have electorates sharply divided on both sides of the political spectrum; the media of both countries see their elections in intense and sometimes apocalyptic terms; and the majority of the mainstream media (MSM) in both countries are virulently opposed to the candidates representing the conservative wing.

Horses and thinkers

An Englishman circa 1175 A.D. once spoke a proverb, recorded in ‘Old English Homilies’: “Hwa is thet mei hors wettrien the him self nule drinken.” In modern English it is usually stated: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” This proverb needs to be tweaked only slightly for it to have special reference to today’s generation: “You can teach a person to read or even to watch the news, but that is not the same as teaching that person how to think, how to weigh matters or how to discern truth.”

Edward Bernays, born in 1891 to a Viennese Jewish family, was an American pioneer in the field of propaganda (which he renamed ‘public relations’). In his influential book Propaganda (published in 1928), Bernays sums it up:

The Nazi Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, wrote in his diary “The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it.”

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1952 defined ‘dezinformatsiya’  [Russian for ‘disinformation’] as the dissemination of “false information with the intention to deceive public opinion.” 

We are facing a generation that has been nursed on propaganda – falsely called ‘News’ – that is being pumped out 24/7 on TV, on websites and in newspapers. People get their talking points, their opinions, their political judgments and their worldviews by what they watch on TV, read on their computer screen or glance at in newspaper headlines.

The growing realization (both in Israel and in America) that many politicians, governmental leaders, security and intelligence forces, medical professionals and corporate autocrats are not to be automatically trusted (or even trusted at all), is no longer considered a marginal or paranoid expression of ‘conspiracy theories.’ The world is dealing with a reality at the doorstep which seems prophetically close to George Orwell’s dystopic vision in ‘1984’ and Aldous Huxley’s drug-induced paradise in ‘Brave New World’.

In Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler stated, “The function of propaganda is . . . not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth . . . [but] to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”

Drinking from the poison chalice

Most media organs in Israel (and probably in America too) are run by oligarchs and business tycoons. They attempt to influence political decisions in ways which will be advantageous to their own economic interests. Each major Israeli political party is financed and guided by the goals of these tycoons. These same oligarchs control media perspectives regarding both their favorites and their enemies – et voilà: ‘news’ morphs into propaganda. As US legal authority Alan Dershowitz notes: “These media companies will seek to influence the political discourse that affects their bottom line, as they simultaneously report on it.” For the past 15 years, 95% of Israel’s media has been spewing out hate-filled anti-Netanyahu propaganda, leveling seditious gossip, false accusations and championing legal attacks – each of these withering away and being annulled over time.

For those who are not tracking about this poisonous history – whether through lack of Hebrew language ability, lack of acquaintance with the Hebrew media, or due to an unwillingness to believe anything positive about Bibi based on a vindictive attitude toward Israel’s most repeatedly elected Prime minister – they are at a loss in dealing with how Israeli and world media are portraying the firing of Yoav Gallant. Many of these people have drunk the Kool-Aid – they have gulped down the ‘yellow journalism’ attacks against Prime Minister Netanyahu. They are unaware that these attacks are being leveled by the same anti-Bibi enemies who have blackballed him over the past two decades.  They do not understand that Israel’s media mafia are simply using the firing of Gallant as another tool in their arsenal of PR weapons in order to remove Bibi from serving as Israel’s Prime Minister.

It is necessary to unpack the factual background regarding Gallant’s dismissal. The following are some significant and pertinent keys.

A Cabinet Minister is legally required to carry out cabinet decisions

A cabinet minister is an official of an elected government who has been appointed to carry out the will of that government. If he fundamentally disagrees with the will of the government as expressed in its policies, he can try to effect change in cabinet decisions but, if that does not work, he needs to resign. However, if that cabinet minister stays on and attempts to undermine government positions and actions, he is acting as a ‘fifth column’ and needs to be fired. PM Netanyahu’s November 5, 2024 statement gives needed background this:

Gallant’s leaks from the high-security cabinet discussions were many, have been extensively noted in the press, and also contributed to his firing. Here are a such few examples:

Cabinet Ministers cannot publicly oppose cabinet decisions

Throughout his term of office, Gallant contradicted government and cabinet decisions in public statements, leaked private statements and initiated actions. This was true in concerning his decisions and pronouncements about Justice Ministry matters (here and here). At that time, this led to Gallant being fired by Bibi on March 26, 2023, though the move was later rescinded due to street riots.  His public opposition to government policies also touched on management of the military campaign, the hostage deal, the ceasefire deal, and the Philadelphia Corridor proposal.

Gallant frequently met with the heads of organizations subject to the Prime Minister without the Prime Minister’s presence or consent, in an attempt to influence or countermand government policies. The Prime Minister’s Office dismissed Gallant’s behavior in these cases as “extremely puzzling,” maintaining that “one compass” exists for the war – the goals set by the cabinet.

The IDF top brass is required to carry out cabinet decisions

It may come as a surprise to some non-Israelis, but at times the IDF’s top brass has been known to ignore, side-step or even disobey cabinet decisions. Former Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon was known to do so, and Gallant during his tenure has also acted as political rival and fierce critic of war policies while at same time functioning as a rubber stamp for the military and security establishment’s views – even when the Prime Minister and the cabinet have clearly stated the government’s war aims. Gallant occasionally declared that the government’s aims were neither achievable nor realistic. Gallant opposed opening up the Lebanese front, and publicly pushed for an agreement with Hezbollah – even though it turns out that Hezbollah has long been planning a major invasion of northern Israel à la October 7, 2023, and that their arsenals of drones, rockets, missiles and anti-tank shoulder-fired missiles were overflowing and ready for a deep attack on the Jewish state.

Former Minister of Defense and highly decorated soldier Ehud Barak has been calling for civil revolt and blood in the streets; a refusal by IDF soldiers to serve in the reserves; and a call for violent overthrow of PM Netanyahu’s government. Former Chiefs of Staff Eizenkot, Barak and Gallant all shied away from speaking against or taking legal steps against an anarchistic and revolutionary movement known as ‘Brothers in Arms,’ even as this group called for riots and civil disobedience.  The IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Col. Herzi HaLevi warned the PM not to go through with an already approved cabinet decision regarding judicial reform, lest the refusal of some of these soldiers would spread and affect the IDF’s battle readiness. The IDF top brass was telling the government to back down in the face of revolt, rather than enforcing Israeli law here. In June 2024, in a ‘Twilight Zone’ moment, the ‘Brothers [and Sisters] in Arms’ received the ‘Presidential Award for Volunteerism’ from the President of the State of Israel, Isaac Herzog.

A Cabinet Minister cannot publicly side with a foreign government against his own cabinet’s decisions and policies

Throughout the 2023-24 war between Israel (on the one side) and Hamas, Hezbollah, Kata’eb Hezbollah in Iraq, the Houthis in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Corps (on the other), the American President Biden, the U.S. State Department and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all pressured and threatened the Israeli government many times concerning military strategies and objectives. The US warned Israel to stand down about an overwhelming popularly supported IDF incursion into Gaza, into Khan Younis, into Shifa Hospital, into Jabaliya, into Rafiah, into Lebanon, into bombing Hamas HQ in southern Beirut (Dahieh), etc. The U.S. tried to bully Israel into accepting pro-Hamas ceasefire conditions, and into establishing a jihadi government over Gaza and The West Bank composed of Hamas and PLO terrorists. The U.S. tried to force Israel to retreat from defensive military lines which could block Hamas’ re-entry into the rest of Gaza (the Philadelphia and Kissufim Corridors), etc.

In many of these cases, Defense Minister Gallant demanded that PM Netanyahu obey American diktats, even publicly opposing the PM and the cabinet’s absolute majority after the decision had been ratified.  Gallant  castigated Netanyahu in a leak he made public, declaring that Bibi was letting Israel slide toward long-term military rule in Gaza – a choice that Gallant said would be disastrous. Gallant opposed going ahead with the assassination of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah without US approval – and that approval would never have been forthcoming, as JCOS head Lloyd Austin revealed.  Gallant repeatedly challenged Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas to free the remaining hostages in Gaza – even though Hamas refused to negotiate anything less than total IDF surrender and withdrawal, in exchange for only some of the hostages (including dead ones as part of the deal). Gallant’s words: “We need to make painful compromises.”

The lack of popularity among average Israelis for Gallants’ spoiler role was seen in a July 4, 2024 Israeli poll which saw Gallant as the main danger to coalition unity.

Gallant’s opposition to Cabinet decisions were supported and praised by the Opposition

After Gallant’s removal from office on November 5, 2024 by PM Netanyahu, the four heads of the Israeli Opposition – Yair Golan, Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz and Avigdor Liberman (all who are either leftist or center-left) – issued a press release affirming that they stand with Yoav Gallant in his opposition to the government. This public demonstration of support for Gallant by anti-government forces indicates that Bibi’s decision to remove the Minister was based on real political substance. The Likud party issued a statement in response to this above press release, reminding readers that “two months ago, Gantz stated that Gallant must resign.”

Gallant publicly mocked his leaders’ strategies and decisions

On Monday, August 12, 2024, Defense Minister Gallant mocked PM Netanyahu’s promises of “absolute victory” in the ongoing war, calling them “gibberish.”  On Monday, September 9, 2024, Gallant declared that “Hamas as a military formation no longer exists . . .  Israel should achieve an agreement…”  Gallant advocated handing Gaza and the West Bank over to a Hamas/PLO consortium. His declaration that the IDF has achieved their goals in Gaza was soon echoed by an anonymous IDF commander on the northern front with Lebanon, who dittoed the same perspective about Lebanon. Meanwhile, rockets, drones and missiles continue to kill and terrorize Israelis in the north, while IDF soldiers are still clashing with Hamas in the south and suffering fatalities.

According to leaked accounts, Gallant said at one point in a government security cabinet meeting that “the Prime Minister can indeed make all the decisions, and he can also decide to kill all the hostages,” provoking rebukes from other ministers. 

US pressure on Israeli government actions and internal politics

Back in 2012, POTUS Barak Obama exerted extreme pressure on Israel in order to get the IAF to cancel their intended strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Foreseeing similar pressures, in October 2024, PM Netanyahu cancelled Gallant’s trip to the U.S. – Gallant could no longer be trusted to represent his own government in negotiations with Uncle Sam.

Occasional articles in Israeli and U.S. media note that there is continued CIA and State Department pressure on the Israeli political and military scene to have Netanyahu’s government removed – whether by street riot, by political machinations, or by anti-government media leaks. There are ambitious and hungry former Israeli leaders who look longingly toward America, in hopes of returning to power – or at least in hopes of destroying their arch-nemesis.

Gallant publicly took credit for military decisions which he opposed

Most of the achievements Gallant took credit for in his Tuesday, November 5, 2024 speech, focus on the same decisions he opposed during his term of office, and which military actions Bibi pushed and promoted.

The Stockholm Syndrome (D.C. version) and its influence on Israeli leaders

Some influential Israeli politicians, intelligence mavens, military generals and judicial authorities are afraid. They are not trembling over jihadi rockets, missiles and drones. They are wilting over the possibility that a Dutch building – the Peace Palace situated in the Hague, Netherlands – will be the next and greatest threat to the Jewish state. In The Hague, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations lives and moves and has its judicial being. It is the International Court of Justice (ICJ). These Israelis are worried about ‘lawfare’ – the possibility that the nations of the world will boycott the Jewish state and declare it a pariah among the nations. They are worried that Israeli leaders, military personnel, diplomats and perhaps even Israeli rock musicians may be arrested and imprisoned by a United Nations-led anti-Jewish conspiracy. The worldwide rise of anti-Jewish riots in the light of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 pogroms has only attenuated these fears.

Every Israeli General, every Israel head of Intelligence, every Israeli politician – they all consider the ICJ’s gnarled fingers before they make any moves, be they military, judicial or diplomatic. The fear of ‘progressive’ lawfare – control and revenge by the anti-Zionist nations of the world – is paramount among many Israeli leaders.

We have written previous newsletters about the Stockholm Syndrome – how victims of terror sometimes become defenders and enablers of terrorists.

With regard to Gallant and others in Israeli leadership, perhaps a new term should be invented: the ‘Stockholm-DC Syndrome.’ The idea here would be “Don’t get Uncle Sam angry – at any cost! Even at the cost of Israel’s security!” This dynamic is all too real, and is something worth adding to intercessory prayer-lists.

How should we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

The weight of Babylon

On Friday November 1, 2024, twelve USAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress long-range bombers took off from North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base. Their flightpath would take them to the State of Qatar (Dawlat Qaṭar) on the Arabian Gulf. Just after 02:00 hours on Saturday morning November 2, 2024, the aerial convoy landing at al-Udeid Air Base, the U.S.’s biggest airbase in the Middle East, and host to the forward HQ of U.S. Armed Forces Central Command (CENTCOM). The American bombers taxied and then parked, only a few miles’ drive from the world administrative HQ of Hamas – whose main financier is also Qatar.  Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and nowhere is this more true than in the Byzantine mosaic known as the Arabic-speaking Middle East.

Just across the Gulf from Qatar lies the modern Republic of Iraq (Jumhūriyyat al-ʿIrāq) – modern home to two ancient biblical empires: in the north of the country, Assyria; and in the center and south, Babylon. Babylon plays one of the most powerful roles of any nation in the prophetic Scriptures.

The original inhabitants of Babylon (modern Iraq) were Hamitic, not Semitic. Their forefather was Nimrod, a personal name meaning ‘Let us rebel.’ Nimrod was the founder of the city called ‘Babel.’  When ‘Nimrod’ was later transliterated into Greek, it became ‘Babylon,’ and that is the name used today.

By the rivers of Babylon, Jamaica

The famous reggae rock star, Bob Marley, proclaimed in his song ‘Exodus:’ “We know where we’re going, We know where we’re from, We leaving Babylon, We goin to our Father’s Land.” For Bob and his band (the Wailers), as well as for the whole Replacement Theology movement known as ‘Rastafaris,’ Babylon represents the corrupt world system, both physical and spiritual. It is especially a symbol of white European Christian colonialist and imperialist power which Rastafarians see as having oppressed Blacks over the centuries. Rastas believe that they are the original ancient Israelites spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. For Rastas, Jesus was not Jewish: he was a Black African; they see the ‘white Jesus’ as a false god. According to ‘kosher’ Rastafarian theology, ‘Zion’ is actually a reference to Ethiopian Africa, ‘the ancestral homeland of all Black people.’ The crowning of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1930 is considered a defining messianic moment for the movement, who view this Ethiopian king as a direct descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-American political leader, was the creator of ‘Pan-Africanism’ or the ‘Back to Africa’ movement, out of which were born the reggae-related Rastafaris. Garvey drew narrative themes from the Bible, re-interpreting them along the way. He was the one responsible for morphing biblical Babylon into a new (actually racist) definition: white Christianity.

What is the biblical view of Babylon, and what can be said about its spiritual dimensions? Let’s look back to the world-famous story of the ‘writing on the wall’ – the inscription written by a disembodied hand on the wall of King Belshazzar’s palace in Babylon (see Daniel 5) in 539 B.C.. Daniel the prophet spoke those words out as: “Menē, Menē, Tekēl, Upharsin.” The divinely inspired interpretation was also given to him: ‘Menē’ – God has carefully numbered the kingdom of Babylon and decided to put an end to it. ‘Tekēl’ – King Belshazzar himself has been weighed on the scales and found deficient by the God of Jacob. ‘Perēs’ – Belshazzar’s kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians. What was it that God ‘found deficient’ in Belshazzar’s kingdom? The Scriptures give us detailed answers.

The sins of Babylon on which the God of Jacob focused

Isaiah and Jeremiah speak directly about the sins for which YHVH judged Babylon. Most of these evils revolve around their treatment of the Jewish people and their land, although other sins listed are more international in scope.

Here are some scripture portions which also develop this theme:

When Babylon meets the Jewish threshing sledge of YHVH

The God of Jacob proclaims a special role to the people of Israel in Babylon’s coming judgment, as the prophets declare:

The power behind the throne

The Scriptures tell us that a spirit lies behind the superpower of Babylon – an energized demonic power like unto the Prince of Persia in Daniel 10:13-20. “Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of YHVH, intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine. Therefore the nations are going insane”  (Jeremiah 51:7).  This theme is repeated a handful of times in the Book of Revelation, and the Rastafaris borrowed and distorted this theme as they developed their Replacement Theology use of term ‘Babylon.’ Here is how John the Revelator describes ‘the power behind the throne’ – the spiritual root of Babylon:

The operating spirit behind Babylon branches out into various areas of sin, not limited to anti-Semitism: idolatry; the worship of materialism and luxurious narcissism; sexual immorality and prostitution; spiritual uncleanness and abominations;  the buying and selling of men’s and women’s souls.

In light of the above . . .

Blinksmanship

There is a word for when two opposing forces, whether military or political, get close to the edge in their conflict – brinksmanship. Part of that dynamic sometimes involves ‘blinksmanship’ – who blinks first. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been targeting Israel since 1982, and slowly constructing a constricting belt of fire with nations opposed to Israel’s existence. The jihadi terrorist juntas of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and Kata’eb Hezbollah in Iraq (ancient Babylon) – all are being armed, financially supported and given military strategic help in order to destroy the Jewish state. Iran’s firing the largest drone strike in history against Israel on April 13, 2024, and the largest ballistic missile attack in world history against Israel on October 1, 2024, were clear signals that its Shi’ite jihadi plans for genocide against the Jews would do Haman proud. In response, IAF jets attacked over 20 military sites in Iran on October 26, 2024, connected to rocket, missile and drone development; rocket fuel; anti-aircraft batteries, etc.

IRGC chief Hossein Salami warned Israel on Thursday, October 24, 2024: “You cannot win this conflict. We will destroy you.” On Monday, October 28, 2024 Khamenei ordered Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to prepare to strike Israel.  Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of IRGC, declared on Thursday, October 31, 2024, that retaliation was inevitable. “Iran’s response to the Zionist aggression is definite. We have never left an aggression unanswered in 40 years. We are capable of destroying all that the Zionists possess with one operation.” In a video released Saturday, November 2, 2024, on Iranian state media, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared: “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing against Iran. the Iranian people and the Axis of Resistance.” General Mohammad Ali Naini, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesman, also stated on Saturday that Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

When all else fails, try bringing in Babylon

Iran’s threats to attack Israel again have raised awareness and preparedness in Israel. Two unidentified Israeli intelligence sources suggest the strong possibility that Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory soon by transferring a large number of drones and ballistic missiles into the territory of what was once Ancient Babylon – possibly before the US presidential election on November 5, 2024. Unnamed officials apparently tell the outlet that satellites have monitored Tehran doing just that.

Such an attack from pro-Iran militias in Iraq could be an attempt by Tehran to lower the risk of another Israeli attack on Iranian strategic targets. Tehran’s proxy groups Hamas, Hezbollah (both Lebanese and Iraqi) as well as Yemenite Houthis might join in such an invasion. In a Saturday, November 2, 2024 interview in the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, Haidar al-Lami, a member of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba’s politburo – a pro-Iranian jihadi terrorist militia based in Iraq, stated that his organization was “fully coordinated with Iran to organize the timing and location of this response . . . The Islamic Republic has the right to target the Zionist entity from anywhere within Iraq.”

The U.S. has passed messages to Iran over the past few days via Swiss intermediaries: “We told the Iranians: We won’t be able to hold Israel back, and we won’t be able to make sure that the next attack will be calibrated and targeted as the previous one,” an unnamed US official was quoted as saying.

How should we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Gold rings, pig’s snouts and election year promises

“As a ring of gold in a pig’s snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). Solomon’s words have special application in an American election year, when the marketing of image is a major preoccupation.

Solomon’s firstborn son Rehoboam “abandoned the Teaching [Torah] of YHVH” at the age of 42, just after he was crowned Davidic king. “But he did evil because he did not set his heart to seek YHVH” (see 2 Chronicles 12:1-14). Immediately before his turning away from the God of David his grandfather, he had gone up to Shechem (modern Nablus) for his national coronation (see 1 Kings 12:1-20). It was ‘an election year,’ so to speak, and Rehoboam consulted to different groups of ‘election advisors:’

It is usual to make grandiose promises preceding an election – vows which are later not usually carried out. In the words of a famous French luxury perfume commercial of bygone days, “Promise her anything, but give her Arpège!” At this significant crossroads in Jewish history, Rehoboam ignored that public relations principle to his own detriment. The fallout was civil war among the people of Israel, and a rejection of the Davidic dynasty’ rule by the overwhelming majority of the sons of Jacob – a rebellion which has lasted up to our day.

Ballot days are here again

On November 5, 2024 the United States of America will hold their once-every-four-years national election. Candidates are again making promises, and it seems that the country feels more divided than at any period since the 1861 American Civil War. Bob Dylan’s 1983 description of the penultimate politician in his sizzling ‘Man of Peace’ seems even more relevant than ever:

           Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music

Dining at the diplomatic delicatessen

YHVH declared that King Solomon was the wisest ruler ever to walk this planet:

Solomon cautions followers of the God of Jacob to exercise extreme discernment when engaging in diplomatic discussions with world rulers: “When you sit down to dine with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a person of great appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for it is deceptive food” (Proverbs 23:1-3). He adds a graphic note of caution, using earthy language: “Do not eat the bread of a selfish person or desire his delicacies. For as he thinks within himself, so he is. He says to you, ‘Eat and drink!’ but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten and waste your compliments” (Proverbs 23:6-8).

At this moment, much diplomatic pressure – political thumbscrews applied against Israel’s leaders –  continues to come from the POTUS and from U.S. State Department diplomats who have clear goals in mind. In light of the razor-thin margins among the American electorate between Democrats and Republicans, there is a concerted effort to garner votes by appealing to ‘woke’ and leftist voters – making promises and hinting at policy changes which would be more user-friendly to Israel’s enemies than to Israel herself. This has manifested itself in the many orders of “Don’t!” given by the POTUS to the Jewish state – rebukes and threats aimed at forcing Israel to pull back from decisively defeating jihadi terror (whether it be Sunni Hamas in Gaza and PLO in the West Bank, or Shi’ite Hezbollah in Lebanon and Revolutionary Guards Corps [IRGC] in Iran). The list of ‘don’t’s'  has included warnings to the IDF not to enter Gaza; not to enter Khan Yunis; not to enter Shifa Hospital in Gaza; not to enter Rafah; not to enter Jabaliya; not to enter Lebanon; not to bomb Hezbollah HQ in Dahieh, Beirut; not to respond to Iranian missile, rocket and drone attacks on Israeli civilians, etc. Yet is each case, Israel’s insistence on pursuing their own military goals has let to significant IDF victories on the battlefield as well as the decisive elimination of top jihadi commanders.

In the words of journalist and analyst Eitan Fischberger on April 15, 2024: “Turns out that simply saying ‘don’t’ is not an effective deterrent against genocidal regimes hellbent on the destruction of Israel.” And as Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon added on April 19, 2024: “Israel Is Right to Reject Biden’s Bad Advice.”

Who is picking up the tab?

In recent days, on April 13, 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran fired 221 drones, over 30 cruise missiles, and over 110 ballistic missiles at Israel. Over nine million Israelis huddled in bomb shelters during this largest drone strike in history. On October 1, 2024, the IRGC fired approximately 200 ballistic missiles at the the Jewish state – the largest ballistic missile attack in world history. On October 19, 2024, three Hezbollah drones headed out to attack Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Caesarea home. Two were shot down before reaching their target, and one hit the home. The PM and his wife were absent from home at that time.

POTUS Biden’s heavy-handed instructions to Israel’s Prime Minister after the first April 13, 2024 Iranian attack were clear: “You got a win. Take the win,” Biden told Bibi on April 14, adding that the US would not participate in any offensive operations against Iran. Biden’s definition of ‘a win’ was that no Israeli citizens were injured or killed in that first Iranian missile attack.

The POTUS’ initial ‘orders’ to Israel show that the U.S. Administration has a hierarchy of ‘more important’ strategic concerns here; they center on both the upcoming American elections and U.S. Middle East ‘imperial realpolitik.’ Whereas the prophet Elisha on his deathbed encouraged King Joash to strike the ground forcefully in a prophetic action as a sign of his resolve to wipe out Israel’s Syrian/Aramean enemies, the king of Israel half-heartedly hit Elisha’s arrows against the floor only three times – with the prophetic result being that Israel would not decisively vanquish her enemies (see 2 Kings 13:14-19). These examples of fighting spirit and battlefield resolve are important lessons to be learned from this prophetic history. 

GI Joe meets Jihad Jane

The basic blockage here – U.S. inability to size up the enemy in this battle – is a result of America’s secular and non-Biblical worldview, one that fails to grasp the viral danger of international jihad. This Islamist terror war of conquest, murder and enslavement of non-Muslims – is a decisive spiritual and dynamic factor in the clash of civilizations. And the West is still hesitant to call a spade a spade, to recognize the spiritual aspect of this struggle.

Genesis 12:3 is another decisive matter here: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.” The theological cursing of Israel and the Jewish state which is part of classic Islamist texts has brought an elephant into the room that few Westerners have the courage or backbone to name and confront.

Messiah Yeshua’s teaching on spiritual dynamics regarding the demonic world certainly applies to formerly Christian nations who have lost their vision and resolve regarding spiritual threats to the gospel. A clean but spiritually empty room is ‘an accident waiting to happen:’

The pressures that America and the West are applying to Israel are actually bringing curses down on those countries. They are pushing the Jewish state into a corner and forcing it to fight the forces of jihad with one arm tied behind its back. It is time for believers to get back up on the walls and intercede for Israel’s protection, salvation and victory in the present and coming battles.

American political forces on both sides of the aisle seem to have many illusions regarding how to ‘solve’ the problems in the Middle East. Threatening Israel and setting a cut-off date for the conclusion of present conflicts is one such example. But jihadi strategies are not susceptible to American date-setting. Only iron-clad resolve and steely commitments to opposing Islamist encroachment are the language that jihadi armies understand.

The famous King Théoden, seventeenth King of Rohan in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ narrative, declared as he rallied his troops before the Battle of the Pelennor Fields: “Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Spear shall be shaken, shield shall be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now! Ride now to Gondor!” His rousing challenge stands us in good stead in our day

If at first you don’t succeed

In a scene reminiscent of Psalm 2:1-3, a power-delegation from the U.S. has arrived in Israel today, attempting to sew up a ‘peace treaty’ – or more likely a threadbare ceasefire – between Lebanon and Israel, just in time to squeeze under the finish-line rope of the November 5 U.S. elections. There are trying to breath new life into the diplomatic corpse of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 (August 6, 2006). This Resolution was supposed achieve the following:

It needs to be noted that Lebanon in this Resolution is not considered the main protagonist facing Israel. In this Resolution Lebanon is understood to be a mostly powerless puppet of Hezbollah, which in turn is recognized as a proxy jihadi army of Iran. To solve Lebanon’s problem, Iran’s gnarled talons and Hezbollah’s terror junta still need to be removed from Lebanese soil. Resolution 1701 does not achieve those goals. Another U.N. Resolution (1559) was ratified on September 2, 2004, requiring Hezbollah to totally disarm and for Lebanon to exercise complete sovereignty over its own territory. Neither of these two Resolutions has ever been carried out. Instead, the result has been:

Neither the U.N., France, UNIFIL or the U.S. has stepped in to guarantee these resolutions over the past 20 years. Why, it should be asked, would these nations stand up and be counted now? Only Israel’s recent intensive bombings and ground invasion have moved events in the direction that these failed U.N. Resolutions called for. Western Powers are primarily interested in removing Israel from Lebanon and from blocking its rather successful ground and air operations aimed at neutralizing and eradicating Hezbollah. The West does not want to put boots on the ground to guarantee Israel’s survival and security. They would rather fob off that responsibility at the U.N. and the Lebanese Army, both of which have proven themselves to be utterly incapable of carrying out such a task. Those who are wise will pray accordingly for this complex situation.

The pressure of world media

A few days ago, Israeli Main Stream Media (MSM) leaked a news item: an anonymous military source in Israel’s Northern Command declared that the IDF’s military goals have now been achieved in southern Lebanon and that the IDF can now retreat to Israel’s recognized international border with Lebanon. At the same time, CNN has broadly hinted that PM Netanyahu is ignoring these ‘new realities’ and that CNN truly knows that the IDF Chief has a better grasp of these realities than does the Israeli government. Would the Head of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff ever make such public declarations against a standing POTUS? Such declarations would be considered treasonous. Yet in Israel, business goes on, with loud American support being echoed for the Israeli COS’s declarations. Warm op-ed pieces are suddenly appearing in Israeli media, insisting (with no sense of irony) – that Israel’s government “must learn how to take the win.” – a phrase POTUS Biden used on April 14, 2024 in his vain attempt to prevent Israel from striking down its jihadi enemies.

What defies the imagination here is that, at the same time as these leaks are circulating on MSM, Hezbollah is murdering Israeli farmers and civilians, and destroying buildings in Arab and Jewish communities across the Galilee. The vast majority of Israelis are astounded by the criminally irresponsible hubris in this ‘fake news.’ A survey which appeared October 29, 2024 in the newspaper Israel HaYom asked its readers the question: “Does Israel need to push for a Lebanese ceasefire?” The answers were as follows: Yes 348; No 2,100.

Hubris (or chutzpah in Hebrew and Yiddish) has certainly been demonstrated in times past by former Israeli Chiefs of Staff, Generals and Prime Ministers, concerning retreats from Gaza and Lebanon. Two such examples are:

Ehud Barak and his disastrous retreat from Lebanon in May 2000:

Ariel Sharon and his disastrous retreat/disengagement from Gaza in August 2005:

In light of the intelligence and IDF disaster that swirled around the recent Hamas pogroms of October 7, 2023, many Israelis are hesitant to believe bold declarations by Israeli generals that all is well, and that everything has been taken care of. Trust is in very short supply at this moment.

The nightly news in Israel offers amply proof that military goals in Lebanon and in Gaza have not yet been achieved in fullness. The daily announcements of IDF casualties and funerals are sober reminders that MSM is not accurately reflecting Israeli realties on the ground. Over the past week, 56 Israeli children lost their fathers in clashes with jihadi terrorists.

Israeli media spin owes much of its impetus to some ambitious Israeli politicians who ‘just want to be king,’ as well as to some in the current U.S. Administration who are bean-counters for the coming American elections.

How should we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

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