Playing poker with Hitler

Why is Israel giving in to a hostage exchange with jihadi murderers? Wasn’t the IDF winning the war against these Islamist terrorists? What’s going on?

God bless the child

On May 9 1941 Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia Records’ Studio A at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York to record what would become perhaps her most classic song, ‘God Bless The Child.’  The song was born out of frustration and a family argument, and it was co-written with Jewish songwriter Arthur Herzog, Jr. Here is one memorable line from that hit: “Rich relations give crusts of bread and such – You can help yourself, but don’t take too much.”

The wry observations that Billie and Arthur made here have pertinent relevance to what is going on in Israel.

We’ll help you for a price – so just don’t take too much!

The determination of world powers to shrink the borders of the Jewish state (expressed so laconically by Kissinger in 1975) and to establish a terrorist jihadi state in the heartland of the Land promised by the God of Israel to Jacob’s children, is the nuclear core which has powered US realpolitik for the past 75 years:

The tightening of American diplomatic thumbscrews on Israeli fingers over the years has caused nearly two handfuls of Israeli Prime Ministers to cry ‘Uncle’ to Uncle Sam, forcing them under superpower duress to consent to the dividing up of the Land of Israel: Begin, Rabin, Peres, Barak, Sharon, Olmert, Bennett/Lapid, and Bibi. This dangerously flawed U.S. State Department conception has led to strategically suicidal withdrawals from the Sinai (the Camp David Accords), the West Bank (the Oslo Accords), Gaza (Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement) and the latest pressures by both the Biden and incoming Trump administrations to ram through an Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal – leaving Hamas still the master of Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority jihadi terror group being granted a new lease on life under the protection of the US ‘Godfather.’

A Jekyll-and-Hyde relationship exists between Israel and the USA. On one hand, America makes state-of-the-art military weaponry available to Israel (which the Jewish state pays for, directly to the American arms industry). On the other hand, the US State Department and POTUS rudely rebuke and threaten Israel’s Prime Minister, government and military forces, treating Israel like a problem child who needs to be spanked and sent up to his room without supper. This usually happens when Israel is well on the way to decisively defeating its enemies. Recent events highlight these dynamics on steroids. They show that for America, Israel is not their priority concern in the Middle East. Thus, the US treats the Jewish state in a schizophrenic and Machiavellian fashion, strengthening the Jewish state’s enemies while simultaneously allowing munitions to flow to Israel.

 

The government of Israel finds itself in nearly total dependence on US arms, whether it be tank and artillery shells, bunker-buster bombs or F-35 stealth fighter jets.  American displeasure has tremendous influence over IDF policies and battle strategies. This has been seen in how the Israeli government has swallowed hard many times and obeyed US diktats regarding how it is prosecuting its war on Hamas, specifically on such issues as:

The combined political and military carrot-and-stick approach by successive US administrations has decisively influenced the IDF top brass, resulting in them making policy decisions which avoid eliminating Hamas, and which shrink the IDF’s available inventory, IDF reserves training times, and length of regular military service.  As a result, the IDF has become less than fully prepared to wage and win war on seven fronts simultaneously. On top of that, the US Secretaries of State and Defense have joined with the POTUS in micro-managing Israel’s present prosecution of the war, rebuking the IDF publicly and even threatening the Jewish state with embargoes and diplomatic censure when the IDF does not respond quickly enough to American ‘suggestions.’ 

In the words of one of Bob Dylan’s lesser-known songs ‘Medicine Sunday’:

Israeli political analyst Carolyn Glick sums up how the US Administration’s bear hug has affected Israel’s successful prosecution of the current war:

A divided American heart leads to a divided Jewish state

The Hamas-Israel deal did not descend from the clouds on angels’ wings. It was forced through by incoming POTUS Donald Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff on January 16 2025.

Witkoff, a longtime friend and golfing buddy of Trump, is a billionaire real-estate executive from New York City. Nancy Okail, an Egyptian American human rights activist (sentenced to jail in absentia by Egyptian court), thinks that Trump’s pick of property mogul Steve Witkoff as Middle East envoy was the “most interesting decision,” indicating as it did that the incoming president sees the region “as one giant real estate deal.”

Witkoff’s intricate connection with the Middle Eastern country of Qatar goes back to November 2013, when his Witkoff Group acquired the 610-room Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan for approximately $654 million. Due to various DOJ-connected problems, Witkoff ended up selling the property to the Qatar Investment Authority (the country’s sovereign wealth fund) for $623 million in August 2023. Journalist Caroline Glick shed light on the role of Steve Witkoff and his business ties to Hamas-supporting Qatar. “They have an enormous amount of money that they use to buy influence in the West, and especially in Donald Trump’s circle. And one of those people is Steven Witkoff”, Glick said.

 

At Qatar’s May 15 2024 Economic Forum, Witkoff praised Qatar, calling it “really impressive,” adding, “this is solid government.”

 

Witkoff has expressed similar admiration for the UAE’s pro-business agenda. In December 2024, he took the stage at Bitcoin MENA, a cryptocurrency conference in Abu Dhabi. Witkoff and Trump’s sons are cofounders of World Liberty Financial (WLF), a crypto-platform with investments from TRON (blockchain crypto-platform). There seems to be a small fly in the financial ointment here: Israeli authorities say that Hamas and other groups designated as terrorist organizations have used Tron’s low-cost, high-speed network for illicit financing. Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing froze numerous Tron wallets since July 2021, linking many to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups. Crypto seizures announced by the Israeli security services since 2021 have frequently singled out Tron’s use by militants, including Hamas whose 2023 attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and triggered the Gaza war. The US Treasury Department also seized Tron wallets allegedly connected to terrorism financing after the 2023 attack on Israel.

It bears mentioning that Jared Kushner (POTUS Trump’s son-in-law) was instrumental in negotiating the Abraham Accords in 2020. Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners has received more than $2 billion in investments from Saudi Arabi after Kushner left the White House in 2020.  Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is an investor in Affinity. In May 2018 Kushner Companies received a bailout of its flagship New York building (666 Fifth Avenue) by Brookfield Properties, a publicly traded company headquartered in Canada, one of whose major investors in the Qatar Investment Authority. On December 20 2024 Affinity Partners raised an additional $1.5 billion from the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi-based asset manager Lunate. Wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates and a Qatari entity (both unnamed) also have each invested over $200 million apiece in Affinity.

In November 2024, Jewish Insider noted that Witkoff’s previous financial dealings with Qatar, a country that has sought to influence him through its lobbying efforts, have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Ben Baird, the director of advocacy for the Middle East Forum, commented on Witkoff’s appointment: “One can’t help but wonder if there aren’t some geopolitics at play here. It’s not a sure bet how people like Witkoff are going to enact policies.”

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani credited Witkoff on Wednesday January 15 2025, in a speech announcing the Hamas-Israel deal.

Dr Daniel Pipes notes in the Middle East Forum that the present deal releases many hundreds of jihadi murderers who have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. “It nearly assures continued Hamas rule in Gaza. It boosts Islamist morale worldwide. It humiliates the West’s foremost Middle Eastern ally.”

Jihad is not just a philosophy

In ‘Neighborhood Bully’, Bob Dylan’s masterpiece about the Jewish people and the Jewish state, he wryly notes: “There's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back and a license to kill him is given out to every maniac – He's the neighborhood bully!”  Hamas’ Charter declares: “The Platform of The Islamic Resistance Movement [Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya]: Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.”

The Gazan enemy attacking the Jewish state is Hamas – a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Islamically committed to Israel’s total destruction. Western secular leaders for the most part have absolutely no idea who Hamas is, and what its end-game strategy is – or what the God of Jacob says about who Israel is in His eyes, and what His end-game strategy is for them. In the rare case where some might faintly grasp these issues, most of them don’t care enough about the Jewish people for it to make any difference in their political and diplomatic decisions.

Jeremiah’s prophetic declaration rings down the corridors of time. His summation of God’s heart and coming judgments on the nations who deal casually or cruelly with Israel are crystal-clear:

Yahya Sinwar’s less famous brother

On June 25 2006 a squad of Hamas terrorists attacked an IDF Merkava Mark III tank near Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing. Their RPG fire killed two of the tank crew, badly wounded the third, and the fourth, Corporal Gilad Shalit, was captured and taken back into Gaza. Shalit was held prisoner in Gaza for 1,934 days before being liberated in a hostage-for-terrorist deal. In the first stage, Shalit was transferred to Egypt and then to Israel. At the same time Israel released 477 prisoners. Two months later, Israel released another 550 prisoners.  Lists of prominent Hamas prisoners released can be found here and here.

Over 190 Israelis were murdered by these terrorists. A 2011 Israeli poll reported that, at the time, 79% of Israelis surveyed supported the exchange, while 14% opposed it. One of the Hamas prisoners release was Yahya Sinwar, who later took over leadership in Hamas, and orchestrated the October 7, 2023 jihadi massacres – resulting in the death of 1,180 Israelis (797 civilians and 383 IDF soldiers); as well as 3,400 wounded and 251 Israelis taken captive. Sinwar’s brother Mohammed (commander of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade) was one of the masterminds behind the October 7 pogrom. Mohammed Sinwar is currently the one leading the hostage-terrorist deal negotiations.

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar presented data to the ministers in the Israeli government’s security cabinet on Friday January 17 2025, stating that “82% of those released in the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011 returned to terrorism,” and that 15% of them carried out attacks themselves after their release in the deal, or planned the attacks.

The deal which was brokered mandates the release of over 1,000 prisoners (most who are Hamas-connected). A partial Hebrew list of 734 of these terrorists is available here, an a very short list in English is available here.

Releasing the kraken

There is an old Norwegian word kraken or krakjen, which in turn comes from the Old Norse krókr (literally, ‘hook’ or ‘hooked’). This probably refers to primitive grapnel anchors shaped like hooks, which grab onto earth at the bottom of a lake or shallow body of water. In Norwegian sailor folklore, the kraken (also known as horven) is a legendary sea monster said to appear in the sea between Norway and Iceland.

Modern literary use of the word kraken includes: John Wyndham’s novel The Kraken Wakes (1953), the Kraken of Marvel Comics, the 1981 film Clash of the Titans and the 2010 remake. A kraken was also featured in two of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. There is also a professional hockey team known as the Seattle Kraken.  To ‘release the kraken’ in colloquial speech means ‘to release a great destructive force.’

Many in the Western world have chosen to castigate Israel and champion Hamas in this latest terrorist-catalyzed war. As a result, a ‘kraken of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel’ has been released across the face of the globe. Shocking though it is, even feminists and civil-rights activists have championed mass rapes of Israeli teens and women, and the murder of children and Holocaust survivors by Hamas jihadis. The moral philosophies of these people – who delight in describing themselves by the epithet ‘woke’ – have melted down into ethical idiocy and quasi-Nazi endorsements. The advocacy of Islamist anti-Semitism by these people is releasing divine judgment on their nations. This is resulting in a super-fast slide downhill into moral and spiritual darkness (as per Romans 1:18-32). As the English Standard Version accurately translates the Hebrew of Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse!”

 

 

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/

The morphing of the Caliphate

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1917-1918 meant the downfall of the world’s only Muslim superpower. It also meant the collapse of Islam’s caliphate. Muhammad’s armies had been decisively crushed, and the body of the Muslim juggernaut was left headless on the battlefield. What would happen now?

No longer a Turkish Caliphate

Ḥusayn bin ‘Alī was a 37th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad, coming from the Banū Hāshim clan (an offshoot of the Quraysh tribe). Though born in Constantinople, his family was from Mecca, and he grew up in Arabia. On November 1 1908 he was appointed Sharif and Emir of Mecca by the Ottoman/Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Less than eight years later, on June 10 1916 he proclaimed himself leader of the Great Arab Revolt and began a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Four months after that, in October 1916 his own son Abdullah declared his father Ḥusayn to be “sovereign of the Arab nation. Then all those present arose and proclaimed him ‘Malik al-Arab’, King of the Arabs.”  According to US State Department sources, a formal ceremony recognizing Emir Ḥusayn as “king of the Hedjaz” then occurred in Mecca on November 6 1916.  Those American sources added a note that King Ḥusayn was hoping to re-establish the Caliphate: that “a request for the recognition of an Arab caliphate was also advanced; and it is not to be doubted that, even in these early years of the war, Hussein was inspired by dreams of future imperial rank and caliphal dignity.”

Emir/King Ḥusayn (also spelled ‘Hussein’) was not running blind: he was relying on Britain’s secret diplomatic promise going back to November 1 1914. This had been communicated to him from then Consul-General of Egypt Herbert Lord Kitchener.   Britain promised to “guarantee the independence, rights and privileges of the Sharifate against all foreign external aggression, in particular that of the Ottomans.”  At that time, both Britain and America were generous in promising things to King Ḥusayn that were more flattery than reality, in their attempt to assuage ‘medieval dignity.’ Britain even sent British Army officer T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’; renowned archeologist and Arabist) to help Ḥusayn in military, diplomatic and intelligence preparations.  As a bonus, Ḥusayn’s sons Faisal and Abdullah were appointed in 1921 as puppet-rulers of the British Crown – Faisal to Iraq (August 23 1921 – September 8 1933) and Abdullah to Transjordan (as Emir April 11 1921-May 25 1946; then as King, May 25 1946-July 20 1951). Iraq and Transjordan were two new colony-nations, created by Whitehall within the Sykes-Picot framework – part of the United Kingdom’s colonialist strategy for the Middle East.

But a deeper problem was brewing in Araby. In 1916 the new King Ḥusayn had also declared himself ‘Malik bilad al-Arab’ (‘King of all Arab lands’).  Arabian warrior Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman al-Saud (ibn Saud), a Bedouin not descended from Muhammad’s bloodline, already had his ambitious eyes set on seizing the Meccan prize. Bad blood existed between these two leaders – the Hashemite and the Saudi – and it would end up bringing disaster to the Hashemite Ḥusayn and to his dynasty. 

A short-lived Arab Caliphate

King Ḥusayn was proclaimed as the new Sharifian/Arab Caliph on March 10 1924, one week after Turkey’s new Grand National Assembly abolished the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3 1924.  For much of the Arab world, this announcement of a new Arab Caliph was seen as a fleeting consolation, the culmination of a long struggle to reclaim the caliphate from Ottoman hands. On that very day, King Ḥusayn visited the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, situated on the Temple Mount, to discuss the matter with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini (a personal friend of Hitler and the Nazi High Command, and an advocate of the Holocaust). A document of allegiance to the Caliphate of Hussein bin Ali was then issued, stating:

That same month, in March 1924, King Ḥusayn published in Amman a public bay’ah or oath of allegiance sworn to himself as new ruler by the Muslims of Jerusalem and Amman:

King Ḥusayn received support for his becoming Caliph from the second-to-previous Ottoman/Turkish Caliph, Mehmed VI Vahideddin, according to an article published on March 18 1924 in the British newspaper ‘The Times’: “Vahideddin, who is in the Italian city of San Remo, has sent a telegram to King Hussein and announced that he recognizes Hussein as Caliph.”

But Caliph Ḥusayn would only get to rule as caliph for a short 20 months. He was forcibly removed from that office on December 23 1925, when Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi armies (known as ‘Ikhwān man Aṭāʿa allāh’ – ‘the Brotherhood of those who obey allah’) conquered what is now known as the Western Province of Saudi Arabia (the Hejaz). Ḥusayn abdicated and fled to Amman, Transjordan. But Saudi pressure on the British resulted in Ḥusayn soon being exiled to British-controlled Cyprus. Just over five years later, when Ḥusayn became gravely ill, the British allowed him to return to Amman. He died on June 4 1931. As a sharif of Mecca, Ḥusayn would traditionally have been buried in Mecca, but Ibn Saud would not permit that, so Ḥusayn was buried in the al-Arghuniyya Madrasa on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On the window above his tomb is written the following Arabic inscription, acknowledging his brief status as caliph: (‘This is the tomb of the Commander of the believers’; ‘Haḏa qabru ʾamīri ʾal-mūˈminīna ʾal-Ḥusayn bnu ʿAlī’). On January 8 1926, the leading figures in Mecca, Medina and Jeddah proclaimed Ibn Saud as King of Hejaz; the bay’ah ceremony was held in the Great Mosque of Mecca. The non-Hashemite and non-Sayyid clan known as the House of Saud has ruled Mecca and Medina since that time – as kings but not as caliphs.

After both the Turkish abolition of the Ottoman caliphate and the Saudi non-Hashemite conquest of Mecca,  a few Islamic attempts were initiated to consider how the Caliphate could be revived.  In 1926 the ‘Pan-Islamic Congress for the Caliphate’ was convened in Cairo (text available in Russian) to discuss the revival of the caliphate. But most Muslim countries did not participate, and no action was taken to implement the summit’s resolutions. Various scholars in attendance promoted conflicting claims by the competing Arab sovereigns to the title of ‘caliph’. But, as Marvin Kramer states in ‘The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World,’ “All such efforts were foiled by internal rivalries or the intervention of the European powers.”

A renewed vision for the re-establishment of the Caliphate

Most Westerners didn’t pay too much attention to the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate or how this was affecting the Muslim world. Western secularists tended to belittle Christianity and any constructive role it could play in guiding their culture and civilization. Certainly, they assumed, Islam was similarly not relevant for the Middle East. Hilaire Belloc, French writer and historian, notes, “Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them.”

But Islamic self-understanding of their own history is significantly different. The Muslim world had watched over centuries as their empires – whether Abbasid, Persian, Fatimid, Indian Mughal or Ottoman – declined in power, honor and influence. Back in the medieval period, Islamic philosopher-scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) adamantly insisted that Islam’s weakenings and defeats were due to Muslim adoption of Western culture, ideas and practices. The modern Salafi movement agreed, believing that these former empires lost their greatness because they had fallen away from ‘authentic Islam.’ Only a return to strict (‘salafi’) interpretation of Islamic shari’a law and a restoration of caliphate government would make Islam great again, was their perspective.

The Salafi movement believes that the first three generations of leaders after Muhammad – the ‘salaf’ – exemplify the purest form of Islam. The writings and traditions of these ‘al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ’ or ‘pious predecessors’ are to be given authoritative precedence over later Islamic traditions.  This of course means that Muhammad’s geopolitical goal – jihadi conquest of the world – is to be carried out in the same way as Muhammad himself pursued it.

With the departure of the last Caliph Abdulmejid II from Ottoman Turkey in 1923,  a new wave of Islamist thinkers came on the scene. They blended a vision for Muslim renewal with a drive for the restoration of the caliphate. And they saw in Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings a Sheikh, a Muslim leader, who could lead Islam back to power, greatness and world domination through jihad – Muslim holy war. Most Islamist jihadi movements of the last 100 years (including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Syria’s new HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa/Abu Muhammad al-Julani) look to Ibn Taymiyya for inspiration and legal authority. Islamic scholars like Yahya Michot have noted that Ibn Taymiyya “has thus become a sort of forefather of al-Qaeda.”

Egypt – the Brotherhood presents strategic keys

The Muslim Brotherhood (‘Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin’ or ‘Society of Muslim Brothers’) was founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Sheikh Hassan al-Banna (October 14, 1906-February 12, 1949) in March 1927 at Ismailia, Egypt. He was the son of an Islamic teacher who was both an imam and a muezzin (Islamic cantor).

Al-Banna’s memories of his first stay in Cairo as a student in his early twenties is revealing. He was living close to the al-Azhar al-Sharif – the oldest and most respected of Islamic institutions. Yet in Cairo’s adjacent Azbakiyya Quarter, al-Banna saw music and dance, coffeehouses and gambling, drinking, drugs and prostitution – all of which deeply pained him: “I saw that the social life of the beloved Egyptian nation was oscillating between its dear and precious Islam . . .  and this violent Western aggression, armed and equipped with all the deadly material weapons of money, status, outward appearance, indulgence, power and the means of propaganda.”

Al-Banna learned of the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, while he was still a student. This event influenced him greatly: al-Banna viewed the collapse of the Caliphate as a “calamity.” He later called these events a “declaration of war against all shapes of Islam.” He attacked “the [falsely] reassuring promises and binding treaties drawn up by the Allies with the mightiest potentate of the Peninsula, King Husayn, stating that they would help him achieve the independence of the Arabs and support the authority of the Arab Caliphate.”  What was needed, al-Banna concluded and asserted, was a restoration of the Caliphate: “The outcome of these steps will be, without a doubt, consolidation and a resurrection of the Islamic empire as a unified state embracing the scattered peoples of the Islamic world, raising the banner of Islam and bearing its message.”

The vision of the Muslim Brotherhood as per al-Banna: the formation of an Islamic state governed by shari’a and a return to a society modelled after that of Muhammad and his first followers. According to al-Banna, Egypt’s many problems could only be solved by a return to a society modelled after the example of Muhammad and his followers.  As far as the role of jihad in this equation, al-Banna warned his readers against the “widespread belief among many Muslims” that ‘jihad of the heart’ (‘jihad bil qalb/nafs’) was greater (‘al-jihad al-akbar’) and more important than ‘jihad of the sword’ (‘jihad bis saif’). He called on Muslims to prepare for military jihad against colonial powers and against their puppet-regimes:

Jihad is central to Muslim Brotherhood ideology.  In his booklet entitled “Jihad”, al-Banna clearly defines jihad as violent warfare against non-Muslims to establish Islam as dominant across the entire world: “Jihad is an obligation from allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and fighters in His way a splendid one.  Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward.”  Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.

The purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood was and remains: to restore Islam to the global power and dominance over Christendom that it had wielded for more than a thousand years; and, to return Islam to its divine destiny. To the Brotherhood, the ultimate goal of human civilization is the unification of all regimes under the banner of the Caliphate – the universal Islamic state. According to al-Banna, the Caliphate must govern all lands that were at one time under the control of Muslims.  He states:

Once that is accomplished, the Caliphate is to be expanded to cover the entire globe, erasing national boundaries under the flag of Islam. 

World domination – the Caliphate and jihad

Al-Banna was zealous in his stated vision and goals: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” 

The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto is: “allah ghayatuna. Al-rasūl za‘imuna. Al-Qur’an dusturuna. Al-jihād sabīluna. Al-mawt fi sabīl allah asma amanina. allah akbar, allah akbar.” (“allah is our goal. The rasul [Islamic messenger – i.e., Muhammad] is our leader. The Quran is our Constitution. Jihad [military struggle] is our way. Death on the path of allah [in jihad] is our supreme aspiration.  allah is great! allah is great!”)

After the British departed from Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood proclaimed that it could not compromise with modern secular Arab societies or military dictatorships. In the eyes of the Brotherhood’s leadership, Egypt, Algeria and even Saudi Arabia were less than purely Islamic. Most Arab and Islamic states are evil and need to be overthrown. Only strict Islamic shari’a rule and the re-establishment of the Caliphate is ultimately acceptable.

During the 1930’s and 1940’s the Muslim Brotherhood had links with the Nazis. Much of the contact went through Haj Amin al-Husseini, SS Reichsleiter Heinrich Himmler’s man in Jerusalem. The Brotherhood first established a cell in Gaza, and in May 1946 set up a Jerusalem cell in the Sheikh Jarrakh neighborhood. Yasser Arafat joined the Egyptian Brotherhood in in 1952.  Brotherhood members in East Jerusalem established a shadow organization in 1953 called Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (‘Party of Islamic Liberation’) which today is another worldwide terror organization. In the late 1970’s Brotherhood members established ‘Egyptian Islamic Jihad’ (Al-Jihad al-Islami; also called ‘the Islamic Jihad’ or ‘the Jihad Group’) led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, and ‘Jamaat al-Islamiyya’ or ‘al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya’ (‘The Islamic Group’) led by the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Rahman served a life sentence in Florence Colorado for his role in overseeing the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, as well as for plans to bomb NY tunnels and bridges and FBI and UN headquarters. These organizations’ goals have been to overthrow the Egyptian Government, to replace it with a Caliphate Islamic state, and to attack American and Israeli interests.

By 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood claimed half a million adherents. The primary state backers of the Muslim Brotherhood at present are Qatar and Turkey. As of 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist organization by the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Muslim Brotherhood has presented the ideological model for almost all modern Sunni Islamic terrorist groups. In his October 22 2003 discussions concerning Hamas, al-Qaeda and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Richard Clarke – former U.S. National Security Council chief counterterrorism adviser – told a Senate committee: “The common link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood – all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers.”

An internal Muslim Brotherhood memorandum, released during the terror-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial in July 2007 shows that the Brotherhood’s jihad adopts more subtle and longer range approaches in the West. A memo of May 22, 1991 states: “The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi was a world-respected spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who had been deeply influenced by al-Banna. After meeting him at his school in Tanta, Egypt when al-Banna lectured, al-Qaradawi wrote of the lasting impact of this encounter, describing al Banna as “brilliantly radiating, as if his words were revelation or live coals from the light of prophecy.” Al-Qaradawi had this to say regarding the Jewish people:

This short look at historical developments since the Ottoman abolition of the Caliphate reveals a blending of two separate but related points: an activist vision for the re-establishment of the Caliphate; and activist vision and preparation for Islamist jihad terror.

 

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/

The Caliphate on the Orient Express

The Islamic world of the early 1900’s was shaken to the core. The superpowers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany had burst out of the West with huge advancements in weapons, science and engineering, leaving Muslim countries in the Arabian dust. British war ships and trading ships plied the waters of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, turning primitive Arabic-speaking principalities into Crown Colonies and Protectorates. Crisp British-uniformed brigades marched into Muslim marketplaces and souqs to the wail of Scottish bagpipes, manifesting imperial power among poverty-stricken dictatorships whose livelihood had up to that point consisted of date farming, dhow-based fishing industries, and diving for pearls. The imminent downfall of the Ottoman caliphate would be “the proof of the pudding” for some Arab thinkers and philosophers: something had drastically failed in the Islamic world.

Blood in the streets

Bob Dylan once said, “There’s a battle outside and it is raging. It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls . . . As the present now will later be past. The order is rapidly fading, for the times they are a-changin’” (‘The times, they are a changin’’; © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music).  Rivers of blood accompanied the dawn of the 20th century, both in Europe and the Caucasus. The revolutionary rise of subject nations desiring to be free – and the corresponding crushing of these movements with great cruelty – let to millions being murdered, raped and exiled during this time. These included:

The conquest of Caliphate Constantinople

WWI was drawing to an end in the Middle East. On October 30 1918 British Admiral Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe and Ottoman Minister of Maritime Affairs Hüseyin Rauf Orbay signed the Armistice of Mudros on board HMS Agamemnon in Moudros harbor on the Greek island of Lemnos, bringing combat in that theater to an end. French troops entered Istanbul/Constantinople on November 12 1918, with British troops following on November 13, and an Italian battalion entering on February 7 1919. This was the first time since 1453 (the Fall of Constantinople) that the keys to that city had changed hands – from Islamic to Christian.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed June 28 1919 in the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, and ratified by the defeated forces of Germany. On August 10 1920 the Treaty of Sèvres was signed (but not ratified) between the Principal Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire. Had this treaty been ratified, large parts of Ottoman territory would have been partitioned and handed over to France, the UK, Greece and Italy. However, the treaty aroused great hostility among various streams of Turkish leadership, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This led to both the Turkish War of Independence (May 19 1919–October 11 1922)  and the Turkish National Movement (June 22 1919–October 29 1923). These in turn led to the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate on November 1 1922, the declaration of the Republic of Turkey on October 29 1923, and the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3 1924.

The divvying-up of the Ottoman Empire had been foreseen and planned in the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement (ratified May 9-16 1916). In the event of an Allied victory, the Ottoman Empire would be divided as follows:

As a result of Turkish military opposition to the crushing terms of the Treaty of Sèvres , the Western Allies stepped back from pushing that agreement, and replaced it with the Treaty of Lausanne. Lausanne was ratified between August 23 1923 and July 16 1924, and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 24 1923. The Treaty established the following:

In this treaty Lausanne granted immunity to Turkish Ottoman soldiers and military leaders for crimes they committed between 1914 and 1922 against the Armenians and the Greeks. In doing this, Lausanne established the legal right of state governments to expel large parts of their citizens on the grounds of ‘otherness’. Some seeds from this malevolent weed would sprout with a vengeance less than twenty years later during Hitler’s Holocaust.

Caliph on the Orient Express

 

The defeat of Caliphate forces on the battlefield and the conquering of the Caliphate’s capital city of Constantinople/Istanbul were events which echoed deeply in the soul of the Islamic world. For many, it would mark the zenith of the Infidel West’s domination of Islam. Many years later Osama bin Laden would reflect this perspective less than 30 days after 9/11 in his videotaped address on October 7, 2001:

Professor Bernard Lewis (deceased), formerly Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, noted in his article ‘The Revolt of Islam’:

 

At the end of the Turkish War of Independence, the Ottoman Empire became defunct. The Turkish National Movement’s Grand National Assembly took over the government of the new Republic. They then voted to take two drastic measures: one, to separate the caliphate from the sultanate into two separate offices; and two, and to abolish the Ottoman Sultanate – which act they legislated on November 1 1922.  On November 19 1922, Crown Prince Abdülmecid II was elected Caliph (the 28th and last Ottoman caliph) by the Turkish National Assembly. Abdulmejid chose to use the ceremonial title Halîfe-i Müslimîn (‘Caliph of the Muslims’) to describe his status, instead of the more traditional Emîrü’l-Mü’minîn (‘Amīr al-Muʾminīn’; Commander of the believers).

But the position had been stripped of any authority, and Abdulmejid’s purely ceremonial reign would be short-lived – sixteen months in toto. When Abdulmejid was declared caliph, Kemal refused to allow the traditional Ottoman sword ceremony to take place, bluntly declaring: “The Caliph has no power or position except as a nominal figurehead”  In response to Abdulmejid’s petition for an increase in his allowance, Kemal wrote: “Your office, the Caliphate, is nothing more than a historic relic. It has no justification for existence. It is a piece of impertinence that you should dare write to any of my secretaries! 

Abdulmejid II served as caliph under the authority of the newly founded Turkish Republic until March 3 1924, when the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and President of the Turkish Republic (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) constitutionally abolished the caliphate and ordered Abdulmejid into exile.  The ex-caliph and his family entourage (and 725 Kg of personal luggage) left the Dolmabahçe Palace at 05:00 the next morning, before boarding the ‘Simplon Express’ (also called ‘The Orient Express’) from the Çatalca Train Station, bound for Switzerland. Abdulmejid stayed at the Grand Alpine Hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva. He later moved to Nice on the French Riviera in October 1924, and finally to Paris, where he dedicated his time to painting, playing the piano, and collecting butterflies. He passed away on August 23 1944 of a heart attack, which date coincided with the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation. The Turkish government did not permit him to be interred in Turkey, so his remains were preserved at the Grand Mosque of Paris for ten years. His body was eventually transferred to Medina, Saudi Arabia where he was subsequently buried. 

The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, died at his San Remo, Liguria, Italy exile on May 16 1926 and was buried at the Sulaymaniyya Takiyya mosque complex in Damascus,  Today the royal family of these previous sultans and caliphs is known as the Osmanoğlu family.

In March 1924, Muhammad al-Jizawi, Rector of Cairo‘s prestigious al-Azhar University, in direct response to the collapse of the Caliphate, issued a statement calling for a possible pan-Islamic conference to elect a new Caliph:

The abolition and exile of the last Ottoman Caliph did not mean that the hopes and vision of a reborn Caliphate had died. The 20th century would see this hope become a major motivator and stimulus to a reborn jihadi movement that would shake both the Middle East and the Western world to its foundations.

 

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/

The collapse of the Caliphate

The Islamic Caliphate has played a significant role in history past, as well as in our day. It still has a role to play in the prophetic future. In a 1948 speech to the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill once said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It has also been said that “a text without a context is a pretext.” It is our hope that this newsletter will contribute to a deeper understanding of the historical context of the Muslim Caliphate, and how these matters are connected to fast-paced present and future developments in the Middle East.

The Caliphate was birthed in Arabia, though it later moved its capital to Syria, Iraq and Egypt. After 900 years it set up shop in what is today called Turkey – in the geographical belt which Ezekiel once called ‘the Land of Magog.’ Over the centuries, Islam’s leadership morphed from a Caliphate based on Muḥammad’s bloodline to a power consortium of Machiavellian generals-autocrats. What changed when the Caliphate sank its roots down into Turkish soil? And how will present and future developments in Turkey affect the Middle East – indeed, even the whole world?

The original Turks

Anatolia is an ancient Hellenistic name for Turkey, coming from the Greek word verb ἀνατέλλω – ‘I rise up.’ It is meant to recall the rising of the sun in the East. For Greeks, the morning sunrise broke every day from the direction of Turkish Anatolia.

At the beginning of recorded history Anatolia was called ‘the Land of Hatti.’ A non-Semitic and non-European people known as the Hattians lived there circa 2,000 B.C. Their capital city was Hattusa (near modern Boğazkale, Turkey).

About 1650 B.C. the Hittite people (see Genesis 15:20; 23:10; Exodus 3:8; Numbers 13:29; Deuteronomy 7:1; Joshua 1:4; Judges 1:26; 2 Samuel 11:3; 1 Kings 10:29; 11:1; 2 Kings 7:6; etc.) moved from the Black Sea area into north-central Anatolia/Turkey, establishing at least three sub-kingdoms.  The Hittites called themselves the ‘Neša’ or the ‘Kaneš.’ Their Hittite Empire reached its peak between 1400 and 1200 B.C., at times clashing with the New Kingdom of Egypt, the Middle Assyrian Empire and the Mitanni Empire.  The ‘Treaty of Kadesh’ between the Hittite King Hattušiliš III and the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II (1259 B.C.) fixed the boundaries between these two empires as being in southern Canaan. The Bible tells us that, in Solomon’s day, the Hittites had solid mercantile connections with Israel, much of it involving the trade in horses (2 Chronicles 1:17). 

In 1160 B.C. Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser I defeated the Anatolian Mushki in Turkish Phrygia (probably the ‘Meshech’ of Ezekiel 38:2). The Mushki lived not far from another southern Anatolian people – the Tabal (mentioned also in Ezekiel 38:2 as the Tubal).

Another group of settler-conquerors moved into Turkey nearly 1,000 years later; these were the Galatians, a Celtic people whose origins are subject to much discussion. The Galatians came from the following regions: France (‘the Gauls’ and the ‘La Tène culture’); Germany (the ‘Hallstatt culture’); Ireland (as in the ‘Gaelic’ language); Thrace, the Balkans and Hungary. Thracian Gauls invaded the Balkans in 279 B.C., later moving into the Turkish provinces of Ankara and Eskişehir,. They gave that region the name ‘Galatia.’ Paul the Apostle’s Letter to the Galatians was addressed to Messianic Jews and Gentiles living in that area. In his ‘Antiquities of the Jews,’ Josephus connects the Galatians to another people-group from Ezekiel 38:6, Gomer: “For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians (Galls), but were then called ‘Gomerites.’” 

Mongol and Turks

The leaders of Islam were a combination of warriors and religious authorities known as ‘the Caliphs’. Their successive administrations were known as ‘the Caliphate.’ That imperial organization morphed in stages from Rashidun to Umayyad and Abbasid manifestations. As this happened, the Caliphates mutated from being world conquerors to turning into shadows of their former ‘glory’. The cruel Arab desert warriors who (in the seventh century A.D.) ran roughshod over the Middle East and Europe, had at that time given those populations a ‘take it or leave it’ choice between decapitation, enslavement and full submission to Muḥammad’s ‘Jibrilian revelations.’ But by 1300 A.D. these Caliphs and their Caliphates ended up being more on the receiving end – bulldozed by Mongol invaders from the East who were descendants of Genghis Khan.

The origins of Mongol-inhabited regions goes back to the khanates – Turkic, Mongol and Tatar-ruled tribal states populated by nomadic wanderers and invaders.  The first connection between Mongols and Anatolia/Turkey was in the days of the Il-Khan khanate, established by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hülegü Khan, between 1256 and 1335 A.D. At its zenith, the core territory of this khanate included Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran, as well as parts of Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Dagestan and Pakistan. This khanate empire controlled Anatolia/Turkey for one hundred years, slowly disintegrating by 1353 A.D.

The next conquerors of Anatolia/Turkey were Muslim nomadic tribes of Oghuz Turks, ‘Oghuz’ being a common Turkic word for ‘tribe.’  This Turkic tribal confederacy had founded the Oghuz Yabgu State back in 766 A.D., between the coasts of the Caspian and Aral Seas. The Oghuz nomads moved back and forth in the pastureland steppes between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and  China. 

Seljuk (Selçuk) (who died in 1007 A.D.) was an Oghuz Turk warlord living in Central Asia and leader of a tribe later called ‘the Seljuks.’ About 985 A.D. Seljuk separated from the bulk of the Oghuz Turks and converted to Islam. During that same time period, Islamic writers began to call the Oghuzis ‘Muslim Turkmens.’ By the 1100’s A.D. that name stuck with the Byzantines as well.

Seljuk’s grandsons Chaghri Beg and Tughril I led Muslim armies which invaded Persia/Iran in the 1000’s A.D., establishing their administrative center in the province of Khorasan (modern Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan).  These battles included the Battle of Nisa Plains near Ashgabat in modern Turkmenistan (June 1035 A.D.), and the Battle of Dandanaqan near the city of Merv in modern Turkmenistan (May 23 1040 A.D.) 

Another grandson of Seljuk, Ibrahim Inal, defeated the 50,000 strong Byzantine-Georgian armies at the Battle of Kapetron on September 10 1048, bringing back (so it was reported) 100,000 captives as slaves, as well as a vast booty on the backs of 10,000 camels.  The Seljuk army  (under Tughril I) moved on to conquer Baghdad, the weakened seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, in 1055. Alp Arslan, Seljuk’s great-grandson, defeated Armenia and Georgia at the Battle of Akhalkalaki in 1066 A.D., and on August 26, 1071 vanquished the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in Muş Province, East Anatolia, Turkey, capturing the Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes. This breakthrough battle sealed the future of Anatolia, which would now undergo the dual processes of Turkification and Islamization.

Osman the Great

The last and most famous group of warrior-wanderers to settle in Anatolia were also of Oghuz Turk ethnic background. They were led by Osman I (ʿOsmān Ġāzī) son of Ertuğrul, whose dynasty-name was later Westernized to ‘Othman’ or ‘Ottoman’.  Both Osman (who died in 1324 A.D.) and the Seljuks were Oghuz Turks, but from different tribes. The majority of today’s residents of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan are descendants of these Oghuz Turks, and the languages they speak all belong to the Oghuz group of the Turkic language family.

At their zenith the Seljuks had established various sub-sultanates in Anatolia, one of which was the Sultanate of Rum (1077-1308 A.D.). Rum’s eventual disintegration left in its wake many smaller beyliks (Turkic sub-principalities or petty kingdoms). One of these was the Beylik of Osman or the Osmanoğlu (from the Kayi branch of Oghuz Turks). Its capital was Söğüt, in modern Bilecik Province, Turkey.

Osman’s principality gradually absorbed other beyliks under its command, like the Karasi and the Karaman. Later, the Ottoman Sultans Mehmed I, Murad II and Selim I annexed the beyliks of Ramadan and Dulkadir. The result ended up being the creation of an Islamic superpower – the Ottoman Empire – led by the Ottoman Dynasty (in Turkish, Osmanlı Hanedanı).

On May 29 1453 the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II (1432-1481) led his Ottoman armies in the conquest and pillaging of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. This strategic victory enabled the Ottoman Turks to wrest control over all major land routes between Asia and Europe, as well as to solidify their domination of the Mediterranean Sea.

On the third day after the fall of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II entered the pillaged Hagia Sophia cathedral. This church building was originally called ‘Μεγάλη Ἐκκλησία; Megálē Ekklēsíā; ‘the Great Church’) and had been consecrated on February 15 360 A.D. by Emperor Constantius II, the son of Emperor Constantine the Great.  Mehmed approached the church altar, knocked it over and trampled on it. At that point he ordered one of the ulama (Islamic scholars) who was also a muezzin (Islamic cantor) to ascend the pulpit and proclaim the shahādah (the Islamic confession) and lead the ‘Adhan’ – the communal call to prayer which is part of the Ṣalāh al-Jumuʿa (the Muslim congregational prayer service). Mehmed pronounced the khutbah, the Islamic traditional address preceding the sermon.  Hagia Sophia was then converted into a mosque.

The name of the city ‘Constantinople’ was changed at that time to ‘Ḳosṭanṭīnīye’ in Turkish, ‘al-Qusṭanṭinīyya’ in Arabic, and ‘Istanbul’ in colloquial Turkish. This Turkish word came from the Medieval Arab/Armenian ‘Stamboul’ – a shortening of  the Greek original ‘kon-STAN-tino-POLis’. The letter ‘P’ is usually morphed into a ‘B’ in Arabic and Turkish by reverse assimilation (e.g., ‘Panyas’ becomes ‘Banyas’, etc.), while Turkish grammar also requires the addition of a specific  -i- or -ı- prefix before an s + consonant, since Turkish syllables cannot begin with more than one consonant (e.g.: Smyrna > İzmir) The result was the Turkish word ‘Istanbul’ (in Turkish, I̋s-tán-bul) to replace ‘Constantinople.’

The jihadi crushing of Byzantine Christianity

But the Conqueror of Constantinople (who was also the desecrator of Hagia Sophia cathedral) Sultan/Caliph Mehmed II, invented another word for the city, based on an Islamic word-play. He named the city ‘Islambol’ (اسلامبول) – meaning ‘full of Islam’ or ‘abundance of Islam.’  This stressed Islam’s crushing of Byzantine Christianity, and the new role the city was to play as the capital of the Ottoman Caliphate. In the 1600’s A.D., the Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi  noted that ‘Islambol’ was the common Turkish name of the town, and the word ‘Islambol’ was minted on coinage from 1730 during the reign of Sultan Mahmud I, and on coinage from 1774 during the reign of Sultan/Caliph Mustafa III.

 

A severed head claimed to be that of Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos was nailed to a column, while the Sultan, standing in front of the severed head, proclaimed in a public speech:

The vast majority of Constantinople’s Christians – over 50,000 – were enslaved, and more than 4,000 were immediately murdered. Thousands of women were raped. In those days these actions were considered standard behavior on the part of jihadi warriors, and such behavior has again been demonstrated in all its satanic cruelty by Hamas in its October 7 2023 murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of the civilians and farmers – pensioners, babies, children and civilians – residents of Israeli kibbutzim and towns just across the security line from Gaza.

When does a Sultan get to be a Caliph?

As the Ottoman Dynasty developed, the Ottoman capital was moved: from Söğüt to Bursa in 1326; to Edirne/Adrianople in 1363; and finally to Constantinople/Istanbul in 1453.  During this time period, various sultans began to use the term ‘Caliph’ to describe their rulers. This included:

Though Ottoman sultans now used the title ‘Caliph’ to describe themselves, other Islamic jurists were of the opinion that the Caliphate came to an end with the death of the last Abbasid Caliph al-Musta’sim during the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. Within a short time, however, the entire Sunni Muslim world would accept Ottoman Caliphate authority and priority.

How does a Sultan get to be a Caliph?

During the reign of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520), huge conquests were made by the Ottoman Empire. By 1510 A.D. Selim I had occupied Iran, Azerbaijan, southern Dagestan, Mesopotamia/Iraq, Armenia, Khorasan and Eastern Anatolia/Turkey.  By 1517 he had defeated and annexed the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, Syria, Israel, Tihamah (the Red Sea Coast from Aqaba to Bab el Mandeb), and the Hejaz/Saudi Arabia (including Mecca and Medina). Selim then took upon himself the Islamic title ‘Ḫādimü'l Ḥaremeyn aš -Šarīfayn’ (‘The Servant/Custodian of The Two Noble Sanctuaries’).

The actual physical possession of Mecca and Medina by the Ottoman Dynasty led to the perception among many Muslims that the Ottoman claim to be the leaders of the Islamic world was a reasonable one. Did they not control Mecca and Media? Were they not one of the strongest empires in the world? The Ottomans realized that defining themselves as a Caliphate would have a number of benefits: it would hold their empire together; it would lend an Islamic ‘kosher seal of approval’ to their dynasty; it would strengthen the Sultan’s authority politically and militarily.

The decision had been made. On June 2 1517 Selim I brought the last Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil III to Constantinople/Istanbul as a prisoner. According to a later tradition, at that point al-Mutawakkil transferred the caliphate authority to Sultan Selim I in a ceremony. Whether or not this actually transpired, soon afterwards Ottoman sultans started using a new title ‘Halife-i Uzma’ (‘Great Caliph’) in official documents. Defenders of the new Ottoman Caliphate argued at the time that the Ottomans could justly claim to be caliphs, since they combined in themselves the “principle of the maintenance of faith with justice, command of the good and prohibition of evil, and general leadership.”  

The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was in all respects the chief capstone of a hierarchical system. He had absolute authority in political, military, judicial, social, and religious capacities. He was was seen as responsible only to allah and to Islamic shari’a law. Two of the Arabic titles that Sultans began to use were ‘Caliph of the face of the earth’ (Ḫalife-i rū-yi zemīn; خلیفه روی زمین ) and ‘shadow of allah on Earth’ (ẓıll allāh fī'l-ʿalem; ظل الله في العالم). Any legal decree he issued was called a firman or fermān. The Sultan-Caliph was considered the supreme military commander of the realm and possessed the official title to all land in the Ottoman Empire.

After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II (1432-1481), Ottoman sultans began to describe themselves as ‘successors’ (i.e., caliphs) of the Roman Empire, as seen in their occasional use of the titles ‘kayser-i Rûm’ (‘Caesar of Rome’), ‘fasiliyus’ (from Latin ‘basileus’ or king), ‘Emperor of the Romans’ (‘padişah-i Rûm’) and ‘Emperor of Constantinople’ (‘padişah-i Kostantiniye’).

A state-of-the-art tradition was then developed for newly enthroned Ottoman rulers. Rather than having their top followers swear an Islamic bay’ah or oath of allegiance to the incoming Caliph, a novel ritual – an ‘Ottoman equivalent’ of European coronation ceremonies – was created using one of the nine ‘traditional swords’ of Muhammad. In this case ‘Ma’thur al-Fijar’ (Turkish: Osman'ın Kılıcı, or the ‘Sword of Osman’ which is now stored in Istanbul’s Topkapi Museum) was used. That ceremony was deemed essential for validating the enthronement of each new Caliph. The Ottoman jurist Ebussuud Efendi called both Suleiman I ‘the Magnificent’ (1520-1566) and his son Selim II (1566-1574) “caliphs to the apostle of the lord of the worlds” – a claim to Muhammed-based succession and authority for the Ottoman Caliph.  The use of a sword in these ceremonies was highly symbolic, showing that the Ottoman Caliph was being inducted into a leadership role that was first and foremost that of a warrior.

A Caliphate sealed in blood

The Ottoman Caliphate continued Muhammad’s ancient Islamic tradition of violent jihad against ‘unbelievers’ and against those who crossed swords with appointed leadership or approved teachings. This included murderous attacks on Shi’ites, Alevis and Alawites – all of them civilians living in the Caliphate.

In 1514 Selim I attacked Persian Shi’ite Shah Isma’il I’s kingdom to counter Shi’ism seeping into Ottoman territories. On his march to face Ismā’il at the Battle of Chaldiran in northwestern Persia/Iran, Selim’s forces rounded up and executed all the Shi’ites/Alevis they could find on the way and beheaded most of them – up to 40,000 in total – as enemies of the state. The massacre was the largest in Ottoman history up to the end of the 19th century. In the Turkish historical record ‘Selimşâh-name’, the following is recounted:

In 1517 Selim I obtained an Islamic religious ruling (a fatwa) permitting jihad against ‘infidel’ Alawites.  According to contemporaneous historical sources: “Sultan Selim I summoned some Sunnite religious men and obtained from them a fatwa to fight the ‘infidel Alawis’. It is estimated that 9,400 Shiite men assembled in Aleppo. All were maliciously murdered by the order of the Ottoman Sultan on the sanction of the Sunnite religious leader.”

There were many other mass murders instigated by the Turkish Caliphate against religious and ethnic minorities over the centuries, but limitations of space prevent further discussion here. It should be mentioned that toward the end of the Ottoman Caliphate, between 1915 and 1923, over 2 million Christian Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians were cruelly murdered in genocidal attacks in Eastern Turkey and Azerbaijan, carried out for the most part by Ottoman forces.

‘The sick man of Europe’

In September 1833 Tsar Nicholas I of Russia was having a discussion with Klemens von Metternich, Prince and Chancellor of the Austrian Empire in Mnichovo Hradiště (Münchengrätz), then Austria-Hungary. Nicholas described the Ottoman Empire/Turkey as “the sick man of Europe,” referring to the economic, social and military decline of the Caliphate in terms of the balance of power in Europe.

Whereas at one time in European history, the thought of Muslim invasion caused national leaders to shake in their boots (consider the Siege of Vienna in 1529, and the Battle of Vienna in 1683), things had changed by the 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji (Küçük Kaynarca).  In that treaty the Ottoman Empire ceded territory and religious rights to the Russian Empire. For the first time in Ottoman history, a foreign power assumed a measure of direct responsibility for the fate and welfare of the Ottoman Empire’s Orthodox Christian subjects.

A rising tide of nationalism (especially in the Balkans), numerous revolts and wars of independence, repeated mini-invasions by Russia, France and Britain into Russian-controlled territories, and significant economic shakings – all of these contributed to a shrinking of Ottoman borders and a growing disdain for the influence of the Turkish Caliphate among world powers.

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/

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. 

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/

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/

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