License to kill

Ian Fleming, former operative for the British Naval Intelligence, created a fictional British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent named James Bond – known by the code number ‘007.’ Bond’s code number identified him as having been granted a license by Her Majesty’s government to initiate the use of legal force in the pursuit of his intelligence objectives.

According to classic Islamic sources in the Quran and the Hadith, jihad warriors look forward to constant battle and death until they conquer the world for Islam: “The believers . . . fight in his cause, so they kill (others) and are killed” (Sahih al-Bukhari 51:1).  “I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Therefore, strike off their heads and strike off every one of their fingertips . . . Strike terror (into the hearts of) the enemies of Allah and your enemies” (Quran, Surah 8:12, 60).

Classic Islamic teaching considers it a matter of course that mujahidin (jihadi warriors) will, in the pursuit of their Muslim objectives of world conquest, be involved in killing and being killed. This is part of the challenge and romance of jihad.

There is a popular Arabic proverb than throws some needed Middle-Eastern light on current events: “Darabani wa baka, wa sabaqani wa eshtaka” (‘First he hits me. Then he starts to cry. Finally, he runs ahead of me to the judge and sues me’).  The jihadi terrorists of Gaza’s Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have made it their profession to murder, rape, torture and kidnap Jews and Israelis for forty years, targeting civilians (including women and children) with horrendous atrocities. Yet when the IDF or Mossad bring terminal justice to these murderers, the terror groups’ spokesmen ‘cry, run to the judge and try to sue Israel,’

In recent days, two top jihadi masterminds have met their well-deserved demise. Hezbollah’s chief of staff Fuad Shukr was assassinated on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 at 7:40 pm in the Beirut Shi’ite stronghold of Dahiya, in a targeted elimination acknowledged by Israel, Shukr was Hezbollah’s most senior commander, and second in command to arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah. He was directly responsible for the Hezbollah rocket attack on Saturday July 27, which murdered 12 Israeli Arab Druze schoolchildren playing soccer on a football pitch in Majdal Shams at the foothills of Mount Hermon. Shukr had also been deeply involved in the mass murder car bombing of 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers on October 23, 1983 at the US Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut.

On Wednesday July 31, 2024 at approximately 2 am, a bomb concealed two months previously in a diplomatic suite of a high-security Islamic Revolutionary Guards Neshat guesthouse in the affluent suburbs of North Tehran exploded, sending Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas’ Politburo chief) and his bodyguard on their way to a divine encounter. Haniyeh was one of the two top leaders in Hamas, the other being Yahya Sinwar who is holed up in Hamas tunnels somewhere in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza. Haniyeh was in Tehran for the swearing-in of Iran’s newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian. In the guesthouse another master terrorist was housed in a room adjoining Haniyeh’s – Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh. He was unharmed. Iran’s supreme Shi’ite Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (who was staying barely 150 meters away at the time) was also unharmed. Israel has not claimed responsibility for this hit on Haniyeh.

Coming out of the shadows

The Book of Daniel describes a high-level demonic principality casting its dark shadow over Iran. In Daniel’s day this fallen angel was called ‘the Prince of Persia’ (see Daniel 10:13, 20). The Prince of Persia was the nefarious force pulling the strings of Haman’s genocidal heart, attempting to destroy all the Jewish people living in the vast Persian Empire. Today it is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their Supreme Leaders who have stepped up to the plate in a modern attempt to complete that devilish assignment.

Similar to James Bond, the secret agent in the shadows, Iran has mostly refrained from open confrontation with Israel, preferring to exert a gradual chokehold on the Jewish state through proxy terrorist puppets. These include Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Kata’eb Hezbollah in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and other forces in Syria. Israel and Iran have been waging a cat-and-mouse campaign over the years, but as of April 13, 2024 the gloves have come off and the clash is now open.

The October 7 Hamas pogrom into Israel was Iran’s way of communicating to Israel and the United States that Iran would oppose any rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, and was threatening escalation if such moves increased. Israel’s response to the tightening Iranian chokehold involved both a concerted campaign to annihilate Hamas as well as a war of attrition against Lebanese Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel. Over 80,000 Israelis have had to abandon their homes in the North of Israel due to Hezbollah rocket attacks, and 28 Israelis have been murdered by these attacks. America has exerted much pressure on Israel not to respond and remove the Hezbollah threat, at the cost of continuing and increasing Israeli casualties. The resent assassinations of top-level jihadi leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas reveal that the Jewish state is ready for face-to-face confrontation with its mortal enemies – enemies who are not beating around the bush in their clear declarations and actions to destroy Israel. 

Preparing for the clash

Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei announced three days of national mourning on Wednesday July 31, 2024: “The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime martyred our dear guest in our house and made us bereaved . . .  It also prepared the ground for a harsh punishment for itself . . . We consider it our duty to avenge his blood in this bitter and difficult incident that happened in the territory of the Islamic Republic.”

It is assumed that Iran will attack Israel with significant waves of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic rockets in a strike similar to its April 13, 2024 attack – but with greater intensity. It is also assumed that Iran’s proxies and puppets in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon will all join in, believing that they also have a ‘license to kill,’ It should be noted that no country or body has taken responsibility for the assassination of Haniyeh, though it is understood that Haniyeh and Hamas are operating as Iranian agents, and Iran is lashing out in a Middle Eastern attempt to show itself as the ‘strong horse’ and the neighborhood bully.

He hits, he cries, he runs to the lawyer

On the same day as Hamas’ Haniyeh moved on, Iran’s Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saied Iravani asked the United Nations to condemn and punish Israel for eliminating one of the world’s prime terrorist threats:

During a phone call with Iranian diplomats, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres affirmed to the Iranian Foreign Minister that Iran holds the ‘inherent right to self-defense’ in response to violations of its national security and territorial integrity.

Iranian negotiations with the USA regarding how to attack Israel

Prior to Iran’s attacks on American soldiers in Iraq (January 2020) and against Israeli military bases on April 13, 2024, the US coordinated the extent and target locations of Iran’s attacks with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leadership. It is to be assumed that such negotiations are ongoing at this time, probably through Swiss and Qatari mediators, regarding Iran’s soon-coming attack on the Jewish state.

The Iranian strike is about to happen

Now is the best time to begin to pray for Israel.

How should we then pray?

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Restoration and vengeance

Messiah Yeshua’s message blends together two seemingly opposite ingredients – suffering and joy: “Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Yeshua, the Originator and Perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the Throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

YHVH the Avenger

In a similar fashion, YHVH brings together two seemingly opposite ingredients in a major End of Days scenario: He brings restoration to the Jewish people while simultaneously bringing vengeance upon all those who have cursed Israel and shed her blood:

The Bible drives home this message throughout the pages of Scripture: YHVH will avenge the Jewish blood which the anti-Semitic nations of the world have spilled, still are spilling and will spill in days soon-to-come. The God of Jacob will restore the sons and daughters of Isaac by His grace (to the Land and to Himself), while simultaneously judging the nations who unrighteously condemn Israel.

The Valley of Vengeance is also the Valley of Judgment

This divine ‘double whammy’ – restoration for Israel and judgment upon the nations – is, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, God’s ‘slow train coming.’ And that train is picking up speed as it comes rolling down the track. This is not a new improved version of Cat Steven’s ‘Peace Train.’ The Heavenly Locomotive is about to pile into both superpowers and Western pagan democracies, into Middle Eastern nations and jihadi armies. All these nations are about to enter the Valley of Decision and tread the sobering soil of the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

Waving the red flag – a revived anti-Semitism

Nearly 2,000 years ago, Messiah Yeshua spoke about the significance of red skies from a prophetic viewpoint:

What would Yeshua say to us in our day? Are we able to discern the signs of the times? Truly, YHVH is trying to get our attention now. The red banner of anti-Semitism is wildly waving – a sign for all the world to see and take note of. All across America, violent students carrying clenched-fist banners join with ANTIFA anarchists in assaulting Jewish students and citizens, beating up those who wear stars of David, Israeli jewelry or Jewish skullcaps/kippahs. Extreme-left Democrats join with jihadi advocates in cursing those who stand with Israel; they call for genocidal attacks on the very Jews who are resisting genocidal and jihadi attacks. And even dead Jews are being hounded, as Jewish cemeteries in the Western world are being desecrated, their silent tombstones toppled. Dead Jews can’t run. ‘Anti-Israel’ and ‘anti-Zionism’ are the new buzz-words of Jew-hatred. These bloody train tracks are leading the world to a resurrected Auschwitz. These are the signs of the times. Are we discerning them?

Waving the green flag – a jihadi tsunami of Islamist Israel-hatred

Virulent anti-Semitism is being joined on the world stage by a rabid Western support (especially among university and disaffected youth) for jihadi slogans, pro-Hamas dress and anti-Israel street-action demonstrations. Cheered on by an unlikely combination – ex-Pink Floyd’s bassist Roger Waters, media commentators Candace Owens (here, here, here and here) and Tucker Carlson (here, here and here) – the world is witnessing a pseudo-revolutionary ‘uprising’ similar to the August 26-29, 1968  Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago, and the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings. The Hamas mujahidin (jihad warriors) who raped, tortured, kidnapped and committed genocidal murder on Israeli farmers and teenagers on October 7, 2023, are being glorified, morphed by world media into ‘Che Guevara’-type heroes on the campuses of Ivy League American universities. Calls to destroy the state of Israel and to carry out genocide on its Jewish inhabitants have become both commonplace and politically correct in the Western world.

The green banner of world conquest

The vast majority of secular and post-Christian Western demonstrators are stunningly ignorant of the Islamist worldview held by jihadis. It was impossible to come to a peace agreement with Hitler in his day; in the same way, it is impossible to establish a viable deal with those truly committed to jihad.

According to classical jihadi Islam – think Muḥammad, Usāmabin Lādin, the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s mullahs – the world is divided into two basic groups: Dar al-Islam (the House or Territory of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the House of Territory of War) or Dar al-Kufr (The House of Unbelief/ Infidels).

According to classical Islamic scholars, this concept goes back to Muḥammad, who demanded from Persian, Abyssinian, and Byzantine emperors to choose between conversion to Islam and jihadi war. If those leaders bent the knee to Islam, their territory became part of Dar al-Islam (the Islamic Caliphate), and Islamic law (Shari’a) prevailed. The classical jihadi use of the term Dar Al-Harb teaches that all non-Muslim lands should be considered as at war with Islam until they come under the rule of Dar al-Islam.

Most classical scholars of Islam agree that the Quran clearly teaches that the Islamic state is destined to conquer the entire world; therefore, it is not permitted by Allah for Muslims to ratify treaties with Dar al-Kufr – the House of Infidels. A 10-year maximum limit on any such agreement was tolerated in unusual circumstances only. Under classical Islamic doctrine, every Muslim ruler is duty-bound to bring Dar al-Harb (Christians, Jews or pagans) under Islamic sovereignty. In the meantime, a state of war is presumed to exist between Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam,

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the recently deceased doyen of jihadi scholars, issued a ruling in Qatar (where he resided, not far from US CENTCOM’s al-Udeid airbase), defining non-Muslim countries that attack or conquer Muslim territories as Dar al-Harb. Based on his ruling, Israel, the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, etc., are all part of ‘the House of War.’ No treaty is to be signed with them; no such treaty can be considered Islamically ‘kosher.’

These Islamic beliefs may not be trumpeted in the super-glitzy malls of Dubai, but they form the foundations of the what the classical Muslim madrasas teach and propagate in the mosques of the Middle East. They are accurately reflected in the declarations of Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO.

A Charter Member

According to Hamas’ 1988 Charter:

The original Palestinian vow

Here are some selected articles from the 1968 PLO Charter:

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared on May 10, 1994 at a closed-doors speech secretly recorded in a Johannesburg, South Africa mosque: “The permanent state of Israel? No! The permanent state of Palestine! You have to come and to fight and to start the jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your first shrine.”

Get with the (Hezbollah) program!

The goals and strategies of Hezbollah are found in their 1986 documentThe Hizballah Program.’ Here are some selections from the CIA translation of that document:

The unabridged version of the Hezbollah Program adds the following:

In 2006, Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh Nasrallah said: “There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”

On August 2, 2013, Nasrallah spoke on Quds Day in Beirut, saying that Israel was “a cancerous growth that must be eradicated . . . The only solution is to destroy it without giving it the opportunity to surrender . .  The elimination of Israel is not only a Palestinian interest. It is the interest of the entire Muslim world and the entire Arab world.”

 

Thorns – Israel’s unfinished business

The God of Israel warned the Jewish people not to allow mortal enemies to co-exist with Israel in the Promised Land: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from you, then it will come about that those whom you let remain of them will be like thorns in your eyes and like pricks in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live” (Numbers 33:55). YHVH declares that this is a serious matter, one which has long-term geo-political and military consequences. It should be stressed that the same demonic powers which operated through the Canaanites and Philistines have not disappeared and their hatred of the Jewish people has in no way slackened.

Herein lies and intercessory challenge for those who accept that these spiritual realities are still influential and significant.

Waving the flag – black for a capitalist-totalitarian world dictatorship

Spy agencies like the OSS, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, the GCHQ, etc., make use of the intelligence they monitor and mine from the internet superhighway. Edward Snowden and others have shown that such organizations do not always make use of such information in benign ways. Great power in the hands of ungodly men can result in great potential evil, as well as the loss of basic civil liberties and the encroachment of the police state. One man’s good technological discoveries may inadvertently end up also having dangerous ramifications for mankind – and not only good results.

Recent world events have highlighted how computer micro-chips, QR codes, and Central Banking Digital Currencies (here, here and here) are being used to give countries broad new surveillance powers. These in turn are leading to enhanced control of their own civilian populations. This will lead to the deterioration of both financial privacy and economic freedoms (freedom of expression and association); increasing limitations of political expression, shopping and travel; as well as the trimming away of the individual’s freedom to make his or her own health-care decisions. Such massive power will result in dictatorial social developments, similar to what is now seen in modern China or in George Orwell’s classic book ‘1984.’ Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future ranks as one of the greatest 20th century prophetic warnings. Our planet is on the cusp of a totalitarian make-over, and loud whispers straight out of the Book of Revelation are being quietly rehearsed by actors waiting in the wings.

Another 20th century prophet is Hal Lindsey, whose book The Late Great Planet Earth sold more than 28 million copies immediately on being published. Lindsey spoke a powerful message to his generation when he stated that the return of the Jewish people to a regathered State of Israel (according to the promises of the Hebrew prophets) is the most significant event of the 20th century.

The rise of bone-crushing evil in our day is being positively paralleled by YHVH’s restoration of Israel’s sons and daughters of Israel to the entirety of their Promised Land. This amazing Return is materializing before the eyes of the world. Coming prophetic attractions include the soon-coming spiritual resurrection of the Jewish nation, and the imminent return of Messiah Yeshua to establish His Davidic throne in Jerusalem and to rule over the entire planet. 

Whispers and megaphones

It has been in vogue in some circles to focus on the future shaking of the House of Jacob as the main eschatological event coming down the pipeline. While it is biblically true to note that both Jews and Gentiles will be greatly shaken in the Last Days, it is important to remember the words of C.S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures . . .  but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (The Problem of Pain).

Suffering and joy are meshed in the Good News of Messiah Yeshua. God’s simultaneous restoration of the Jewish people and His divine judgment on Israel’s mortal enemies are also part of the Scripture’s End of Days vision. We are standing on the threshold of these mighty events.

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Open your doors, O Lebanon – that fire may destroy your cedars! (Zechariah 11:1) – Part Three

Our previous newsletter (Part One) presented biblical teaching regarding Lebanon; the origin and theological strategies of the Islamist terror organization Hezbollah; and concluded with a survey of its venomous anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli and anti-American perspectives and goals. Part Two unpacked Hezbollah’s role as an Iranian proxy and ‘fifth column’ within Lebanon. Part Three deals with the specifics of Hezbollah’s military threat to Israel; and Israel’s probable military response both to Lebanon and to Hezbollah, the ‘Rasputin’ of the Land of the Cedars.  

The Prince of Persia is still on the move

“So Jacob came close to his father Isaac, and he touched him and said, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau’” (Genesis 27:22). There is a modern Middle Eastern parallel to Jacob’s utterance: In the present war between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, the voice may seem to be the voice of Hezbollah, but the hands are without question the hands of Iran/Persia. Iran’s long-term strategy to destroy Israel (and after that, Saudi Arabia and America) involves:

These are not disconnected ‘whack-a-mole’ wildfires; they are a controlled and deliberately kindled international forest fire planned and triggered by the Ayatollahs in the arsonist jihadi state of Iran

Iran’s geopolitical strategies are rooted in its control over Syrian territory, the crucial land connection to Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, has clearly stated that his organization is completely reliant on Iran for all of its financial expenses and its weapons. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad allowed Iran to transfer arms to Hezbollah. After Assad's death in 2000, his son President Bashar al-Assad approved the increased traffic of Iranian weapons through Syria – including Scud and Fateh-110 surface-to-surface missiles. Today, Iran and Hezbollah have access to Syrian Army facilities and storehouses. Syria is not only a bridge between Iran and Lebanon; it has become the logistical and operational focal point of the Iranian-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ (Arabic, Miḥwar al-Muqāwamah). This axis is an Iranian-led political and military coalition in West Asia and North Africa, including the Iraqi Shiite Islamic Resistance, the Syrian government, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthi terror organization Ansar Allah and Hamas.

Arms deliveries to Hezbollah start out from Iranian military depots and then run through Syria. Civilian and military Iranian flights carrying ordnance fly into Damascus International airport or into Beirut’s Hariri International airport. Civilian-marked trucks transfer these weapons (including advanced rockets, surface-to-surface missiles and anti-aircraft systems) from the Iranian logistics center in Damascus Airport to the Lebanese border, where they are handed over to Hezbollah, and later dispersed throughout Lebanon.

Between 2013 and 2015, Iran attempted to move precision guided missiles via Syria into Lebanon. Most of these efforts were interdicted by the IDF. Between 2016 and 2018 Iran’s strategy shifted: they now attempted to smuggle precision guided missile parts into Lebanon for assembly by Hezbollah – either by land (via Syria), by air (via Damascus to Beirut Airport in Beirut), or by sea (via the Port of Beirut). This program was not rewarded with a high rate of success. In 2019 Iran redirected their efforts, attempting to manufacture such missiles entirely on Lebanese soil, in a number of locations throughout Lebanon.

Lessons from Lebanon 2006

The upcoming war between Hezbollah and Israel is not the first in the Levant’s chequered history. The year 2006 saw major clashes between Lebanon and Israel, with Hezbollah dragging the weakened and spineless state of Lebanon along into its pitched battle with the Jewish state. Most media outlets downplay or even sidestep the fact that Lebanon is a sovereign state which has signed agreements (like UN 1701) requiring it to disarm Hezbollah and move the Iranian proxy away from Israel’s border where it continues to threaten and attack.

At the outbreak of the 2006 hostilities, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora promised to rein in Hezbollah in an effort to stop Israel's offensive. Siniora said that there could be no sovereign state of Lebanon without Hezbollah being disarmed. The former President of Lebanon Amin Gemayel, a longtime critic of Hezbollah, said, “The government is helpless. Hezbollah took a unilateral action, but its repercussions will affect the entire country.” Nevertheless, international law holds the Lebanese government responsible for whatever attacks come against Israel from Lebanese soil. Ehud Barak, former Israeli Chief of Staff, remarked on November 24, 2009: “We will not accept the equation whereby a UN member state is home to a militia in possession of 40,000 rockets but also parliament members and ministers. The Lebanese government is responsible for any clash rather than [just] the Hezbollah, and all of Lebanon's systems will be held accountable.”

The Second Israel-Lebanon War began with a surprise Hezbollah cross-border attack on July 12, 2006, resulting in the murder of five IDF soldiers patrolling the border fence, and the kidnapping of two of their bodies, to be later used as bargaining chips. Israel’s counter-offensive Operation Just Payback/Change of Direction, lasted for 34 days. A thorough analysis of the decision-making steps and strategic issues involved can be read in Benjamin Lambeth’s excellent September 1, 2011 articleBehind Israel’s 2006 War With Hezbollah.’

During the war, Hezbollah fired close to 4,228 rockets into civilian areas of Israel (more than 100 per day). Most of these were 122 mm Katyusha artillery rockets, carrying warheads of up to 33 kg/ 66 lb. Approximately 23% of the rockets hit cities and built-up areas in northern Israel. Cities hit included, Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Bet She’an, Safed, Karmiel, Shaghur, Ma’alot-Tarshiha, Nazareth, Afula, Acre, Haifa, Hadera – as well as smaller towns, kibbutzim, moshavim, Druze and Israeli-Arab villages, and the northern West Bank. Fires caused by Hezbollah rocket attacks destroyed 16,500 acres (67 km2) of forest and grazing fields, which will take 50 to 60 years to rehabilitate, according to the Jewish National Fund.

On July 16, 2006, eight employees of the Israel Railways were killed by direct Hezbollah rocket hits on the Haifa train depot. In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah jihadis fought IDF ground troops from well-fortified positions, often in urban areas, attacking in small, well-armed units. These fighters were highly trained, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, communications equipment, and sometimes with Israeli uniforms and equipment. An Israeli soldier who participated in the war said that Hezbollah fighters were “nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians. They are trained and highly qualified. All of us were kind of surprised.” One million Israelis were instructed to stay near or in their bomb shelters or security rooms, with approximately 250,000 Israeli civilians evacuating the north and relocating to other areas of the country, A total of 44 Israeli civilians and 119 IDF soldiers were killed in this war.

On July 13, 2006, and again on July 15, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombed the Jiyeh power station, 30 km (19 miles) south of Beirut, resulting in the largest-ever oil spill in the Mediterranean Sea. The plant’s damaged storage tanks leaked an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes (more than 4 million gallons) of oil into the eastern Mediterranean. A 10-kilometre-wide (6.2 mi) oil slick covered 170 km (105 statute miles) of coastline, and threatened the coastal areas of Turkey and Cyprus. The Lebanese government estimated it would take 10 years to recover from the damage of the strike. The UN guesstimated the cost for the initial clean-up at $64 million. Large parts of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure were destroyed, including 640 kilometers (400 miles) of roads, 73 bridges, and 31 other targets such as ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, 25 fuel stations, 900 commercial structures, up to 350 schools and two hospitals, and 15,000 homes. Some 130,000 more homes were damaged. Beirut’s Rafik al-Hariri International Airport was bombed and forced to close, but was quickly repaired and came back on line.

Hezbollah used the same tactics of civilian shields in 2006 as Hamas has been using in all it clashes with Israel: the firing of rockets from Gazan or Lebanese civilian areas into Israeli civilian areas – a double war crime. The Qatari Muslim Brotherhood/pro-Hamas station al-Jazeera reported at that time: “Foreign journalists based in Lebanon also reported that the Shia militia chose to fight from civilian areas and had on occasion prevented Lebanese civilians from fleeing conflict-hit areas of south Lebanon. Al-Manar, Hezbollah's satellite channel, also showed footage of Hezbollah firing rockets from civilian areas and produced animated graphics showing how Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli cities from inside villages in southern Lebanon.” Images obtained by the Australian Sunday Herald Sun show that “Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia. The images ... show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-caliber weapons. Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.” Some things never change with jihadi combatants, it seems.

On August 27, 2006, Nasrallah said in an interview with al-Jadeed TV (Lebanon): “If there was even a 1% chance that the July 11 capturing operation would have led to a war like the one that happened, would you have done it? I would say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military, and political reasons.”

Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld stated that Israel's war against Hezbollah was “marked by a long series of failures” but he also noted that Hezbollah was “thrown out of South Lebanon,” and was replaced by “a fairly robust United Nations peacekeeping force” to prevent its return. The Israeli Winograd Commission reported that “Security Council Resolution 1701, and the fact that it was adopted unanimously, were an achievement for Israel.” But both of these ‘achievements’ were quickly reversed within a year or two of the war’s conclusion.

The US Congressional Research Service found that although Hezbollah's military capabilities may have been substantially reduced, its long-term potential as a guerrilla movement appeared to remain intact: “Observers note that Hezbollah's leaders have been able to claim a level of ‘victory’ simply by virtue of not having decisively ‘lost.’”

Military analyst and former IDF Major-General Giora Eiland concluded that, though outgunned and outnumbered, Hezbollah managed to hold off Israel’s advanced armed forces and proved its ability to damage Israel by launching rockets at its territory until the end of the war. He estimates (“Hezbollah planning 'large raids' into Galilee, senior army source says”) that Hezbollah's destructive capabilities have increased in the years after the war and that the group is capable to inflict “far worse damage on the Israeli home front” than in 2006.

British military historian John Keegan states (“Why Israel will go to war again – soon”) that the outcome of the 2006 war was “misreported as an Israeli defeat” due to anti-Israel bias in the international media. He stated that Hezbollah had suffered heavy losses, and that a ceasefire came into effect before Israel could completely dislodge Hezbollah from its positions. He also noted that the casualties sustained by Israel during the war had alarmed the Israeli Government and High Command, because Israel's small population is acutely vulnerable to losses in battle.

Battle inventory

It is assumed that the news media of the world are not freely allowed into Hezbollah’s weapons warehouse to do a full inventory. Yet, it seems that the Israeli Mossad has been able to do just that at Iran’s nuclear archives.

Nevertheless, a combination of Iranian and Hezbollah disclosures combined with intelligence breakthroughs have revealed a basic understanding of what armaments Hezbollah has at its disposal.

Here are seven articles detailing the weaponry in Nasrallah’s hands. These include rockets, rockets with GPS, precision-guided missiles, drones, etc.:

August 10, 2021         https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/hezbollahs-rocket-arsenal/

           

February 21, 2022       https://israel-alma.org/2022/02/21/does-hezbollah-really-have-150000-missiles-and-rockets/

October 19, 2023          https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/precision-missiles-uavs-and-tens-of-thousands-of-fighters-hezbollahs-order-of-battle/

November 15, 2023    https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2023/11/15/hezbollahs-rocket-missile-and-drone-arsenal-is-huge-and-varied/

February 26, 2024       https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2024/02/26/breaking-down-hezbollahs-rocket-strategy-the-short-range-threat/

June 6, 2024                https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/the-scope-of-hezbollahs-weaponry/

June 26, 2024              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_armed_strength

   

For those who want a ‘fast food’ perspective, it is suggested that the link presents helpful graphics and a clear mini-summation: https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/the-scope-of-hezbollahs-weaponry/.

The paragraph quoted below also briefly sums up the available facts:

Apart from these, Hezbollah has networks of tunnels (some probably crossing under the border into Israel, through which ‘Radwancommando teams can move and attack).

Are you ready?

Messiah Yeshua shared some words of wisdom with Israel nearly 2,000 years ago:

Here are six articles reflecting the perspectives of some senior military, strategic and national security analysts, regarding the upcoming possibilities, scenarios and challenges facing Israel in the days soon ahead. They are thought-provoking and are a great impetus for intercession. Their points must be weighed and prayerfully considered. Not everything which is stated in these articles will come to pass. Consider their perspectives prayerfully:

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Ehud Eilam, a highly respected analyst of Israel’s national security. He is a contributor toIsrael Defense. His suggested scenario is an eminently possible one:

Staring down the cobra

According to updated assessments (https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/03/03/hezbollahs-precision-missiles-a-bigger-threat-than-irans-nuclear-program/), Hezbollah currently possesses between 120,000-140,000 short-range rockets (range of 25-28 miles), which cover Israel’s north, including Haifa Bay and Tiberias; several thousand medium-range rockets (range of 56 miles), which can reach the Sharon coastal plain and northern suburbs of Gush Dan; and several hundred long-range rockets and missiles (range of hundreds of miles), including Scud missiles from Syrian military warehouses, capable of hitting targets anywhere in Israel. Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles are dispersed throughout Lebanon. Its short-range rockets are mostly stored in the country’s south, in the area near the Israeli border, to maximize their range. They are hidden in homes in the 230 Shiite villages, ready to be activated at a moment’s notice. It is from here that Hezbollah intends to rain fire on the Galilee, and essentially paralyze it. If the IDF decides to enter these villages on the ground to stop this barrage, it will be met with an array of fortifications and ambushes.”

According to a recent IDF Home Front Command report (https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/hezbollah-and-lebanon-an-in-depth-examination-under-hassan-nasrallah-s-leadership/hezbollah-s-threat-to-the-israeli-home-front/) roughly 1,000-1,500 rockets and missiles will be launched into Israel per day. Thousands of homes will be hit and hundreds of Israeli civilians will be injured or killed. Hundreds of thousands are expected to be evacuated from their homes.

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

Hezbollah has made use of what are called its ‘nature reserves’ – fortified networks of underground tunnels, hidden rocket launchers, and interconnected passages allowing Hezbollah fighters to pop out and destroy IDF ground forces. These are sometimes connected to civilian housing with newly constructed ‘extra’ garages. These challenging threats to Israeli security will need to be met by powerful and neutralizing counter-responses.

On August 8, 2023 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant publicly addressed Hassan Nasrallah while visiting the Har Dov region of Mount Hermon (overlooking Hezbollah forces in South Lebanon): “You have made mistakes in the past, you have paid very heavy prices. If an escalation or conflict develops here, we will return Lebanon to the Stone Age. We will not hesitate to use all our power, and erode every inch of Hezbollah and Lebanon if we have to.” On June 27, 2024 he repeated that same threat while visiting Washington DC: “We do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario. Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict massive damage in Lebanon if a war is launched.” Gallant stressed that Israel’s military is capable of taking Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.”

Standing with the armies of YHVH of armies

As the seconds tick off in Israel and Lebanon, as the populations of both countries face the very real possibility of a massively destructive clash, it is a good time to intensify our prayers for this situation.

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Open your doors, O Lebanon – that fire may destroy your cedars! (Zechariah 11:1) – Part Two

Our previous newsletter (Part One) presented biblical teaching regarding Lebanon; the origin and theological strategies of the Islamist terror organization Hezbollah; and concluded with a survey of its venomous anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli and anti-American perspectives and goals. This newsletter (Part Two) unpacks Hezbollah’s role as an Iranian proxy and ‘fifth column’ within Lebanon. Part Three will deal with the specifics of its military threat to Israel; and Israel’s probable military response to Lebanon and to Hezbollah, the ‘Rasputin’ of the Land of the Cedars. For a more in-depth look at Lebanon’s spiritual history, see: https://davidstent.org/a-day-of-reckoning-for-the-cedars-of-lebanon/

Exporting the Iranian Revolution

On November 2, 1969 Lebanese Army General Emile Bustani signed ‘The Cairo Agreement’ with Yasser Arafat, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman. This agreement surrendered Lebanese sovereignty to the PLO in districts adjacent to Israel, by removing local Palestinians from the control of Lebanon’s Deuxième Bureau and placing them under the authority of the PLO. After 1969, these Palestinian refugee camps became key bases for the Palestinian terror movement. The Agreement gave the right to Lebanese Palestinians “to join the Palestinians revolution through armed struggle” and become a state within a state in Lebanon. Within five years the Lebanese Army became incapable of controlling PLO activity, especially terror attacks on Israel and PLO attacks on Lebanese Christians. In April, 1975, the Lebanese Civil War broke out between the PLO and the Maronite/Phalange Christians. This led to Lebanese President Suleiman Frangieh asking Syria to intervene from the East in May 1976, while in March 1978 and then again in June 1982 Israel invaded from the South – after bloody PLO attacks on Israeli civilians and diplomats.

At that time, Iran was going through turmoil which eventually led to the overthrow of the Shah in January, 1979, and the establishment of a Shiite dictatorship under the control of Ayatollah Khomeini. But before that Islamist revolution, anti-Shah activists from Iran began arriving in Lebanon, and promptly received military training from the PLO.

In the early 1980’s, the long hand of the Islamic regime in Iran reached out toward Lebanon and created Hezbollah – a new organizational framework serving as a tool for spreading the Iranian revolution in Lebanon. Khomeini’s Iran persuaded prominent Lebanese Shiite leaders to abandon Amal, the previous leading Shiite organization in Lebanon, and to join Hezbollah’s ranks. Iran quickly became Hezbollah’s main source of economic, military, and political support. They dispatched 2,500 members of the Revolutionary Guards, who arrived in Lebanon in 1982. Two-thirds of them remained in Lebanon in the following years, solidifying Hezbollah’s power. To the present day, the Revolutionary Guards have been the principal channel connecting Iran’s Islamist revolutionary regime with Lebanese Hizbollah.

On November 5, 1989, the Taif Agreement was signed in Saudi Arabia, enabling Hezbollah to remain armed until ‘Israeli withdrawal’ which happened in 2000. Hezbollah then refused to disarm or withdraw, in violation of the Taif Accords.

The Agreement ‘established a framework’ for a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, scheduled for 1991 – though it only came to pass in 2005. The Agreement was supposed to end the 15 year-long Lebanese Civil War and reassert Lebanese governmental authority over South Lebanon. Rafik al-Hariri (later Lebanon’s Prime Minister) was the major catalyst in getting this agreement off the ground. Sixteen years later, in 2005 al-Hariri was assassinated in Beirut by Hezbollah. Seventeen days after signing the Taif Agreement, Lebanon’s President-elect René Moawad was assassinated in a West Beirut car-bombing near the Raml el-Zareef High School in November 22, 1989 as his motorcade returned from Lebanese Independence. Day ceremonies. Syrian Military Intelligence seems to have been involved here.

Iran-Hezbollah communication is conducted through the al-Quds Force, an elite Revolutionary Guards unit whose purpose is to export the Islamic revolution beyond Iran. This secret branch also guides Hezbollah and Hamas. Hezbollah terrorists and paperwork captured by Israel during the Second Lebanon War reveal that the al-Quds Force established and operated a training network to train Hezbollah members in the use of Iranian-supplied advanced weapons – even in Iran itself. This perspective is summed up in Hassan Nasrallah’s recent February 13, 2024 pronouncement: “The front in southern Lebanon is a front of support, assistance, solidarity, and participation in weakening the Israeli enemy until it reaches the point where it is convinced that it must stop its aggression. This front will only stop when the aggression against Gaza stops within an agreement with the Palestinian resistance.”

Subsidizing the Iranian Revolution

In America, the watchmen on the walls include the CIA and the NSA. The majority of those employed at these two august organizations do not see events through a biblical framework, nor do they have a grid for God’s heart and calling on Israel. Nearly no one understands YHVH’s Last Days vision for the Middle East as laid out in the Hebrew prophets. The viewpoint of Robert Baer, former CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997 (serving in Iraq, Lebanon, Dushanbe, etc.) provides a fair representation of the perspectives that typify the American intelligence community. The movie Syriana starring George Clooney is based on experience Baer gained as a spy:

In another interviews, Baer elaborates:

The fact is that Baer and others in the US intelligence community have a certain sympathy for Iran and Hezbollah. These same perspectives influence both Presidents and State Department officials in their Middle East realpolitik. Quite recently, both POTUS Barak Obama and POTUS Joe Biden released billions of dollars ($71.02 billion according to one investigative reportage) to Iran through deception, money which went straight to Iran’s support of Hezbollah and other terror groups, in a classic case of diplomatic obfuscation and fungibility.

The following quote is from Hassan Mneimneh’s October 29, 2020 articleIran in Lebanon: A Fatal Occupation’:

Encouraging the Iranian Revolution

The current events roiling the Middle East are mostly connected to Iran’s ravenous hunger to once again rule this region. It has carefully crafted a strategy which requires much patience. The strategy of encircling Israel – based on the Arabic term ‘Wahdat al-Saha’at’ (unity of the arenas) – lies behind Iran’s effort to gather its allies and all armed Islamist forces arrayed against Israel under a single Persian umbrella. Today Iran controls a contiguous area of control stretching from Syria’s Quneitra Province adjoining the Golan Heights, through southern Syria and into Iraq, where Tehran dominates the government and controls the Kata’ib Hezbollah Shiite paramilitary jihadi forces, and the Quwwāt al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī or Popular Mobilization Units. Add to this the Houthi jihadi pirates in Yemen, and the picture sharpens in clarity.

Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s gnarled hands may be what the media and the diplomats see, but the voice is the voice of Iran (see Genesis 27:22). The policies taken by Western diplomats which dovetail with Hamas’ war strategies show a criminal lack of understanding in dealing with these jihadi forces and their cunning built up over the centuries. Though it seems that these are simply appeals for humanitarian aid, or mock horror at Hamas/civilian casualties, or the flipping of facts in accusing Israel of cruelty and genocide – these feckless political moves pour fuel on the jihadi fire and encourage the gray eminences of the Iranian Revolution.

One such example is Western diplomatic efforts to strike a deal with Hezbollah, allowing de-escalation of military tensions. Such a deal was signed on August 11, 2006; it is called UN Security Council Resolution 1701. It insisted that Hezbollah withdraw northward 18 miles from the Israeli border to the Litani River, and that it demilitarize. How did that work out? No part of the resolution was ever carried out by Hezbollah, while Israel fulfilled its obligation one-sidedly.

After the October 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom on Israeli civilians living in kibbutzim near Gaza, jihadi groups in southern Lebanon (including Hezbollah and Hamas) have been routinely firing rockets at Israeli cities and on IDF positions on the Israel-Lebanon border. On November 21, 2023, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen warned the UNSC that a regional war was likely if UNSCR 1701 was not fully implemented. On January 8, 2024, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib called for a diplomatic solution to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict through “full implementation” of the Resolution 1701 . . .

Resisting the Iranian Revolution

Those Lebanese who resisted Iran’s salami-slice annexation of Lebanon often paid with their lives for their bravery. Bachir Gemayal, Lebanese Forces Supreme Commander and later President of Lebanon,  was assassinated in Eastern Beirut on September 14, 1982 by a member of the Syrian Nationalist Party. It is conjectured that Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad was party to the planning and execution of Gemayel. Phalange Christian response to the assassination was the massacre of Lebanese Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

On August 13, 2023, Lebanon’s top Christian cleric, Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai spoke guardedly in his Sunday sermon, rebuking Hezbollah as a ‘state within a state,’ an irresponsible actor causing damage to Lebanon: “It is not possible to live on one land with more than one state, more than one legitimate army, more than one authority, and more than one sovereignty.”

On August 13, 2023 Samy Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese opposition al-Kataib Party, said in a al-Hadath TV interview that “the Lebanese state has surrendered to Hezbollah. There is a green light for Hezbollah to transport weapons, also via residential areas. There is a great danger. What if the truck had contained explosives and the incident led to a huge explosion and hundreds of people were killed? We are not prepared to coexist with an armed militia in Lebanon, and this will be followed by practical steps, opposition meetings, and decisions.”

In October 2023 MP Fadi Karam of the Lebanese Forces party on told Radio Free Lebanon: "The decision on war [in Lebanon] is currently in the hands of Iran. [Iran’s principle of] 'the unity of the fronts' means revoking the sovereignty and the independence of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.”

On November 1, 2021, Saudi Arabia banned all imports from Lebanon. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said his country’s disengagement from Lebanon was prompted by “Hezbollah’s continuing dominance of the political scene.” Over that weekend, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain asked the Lebanese ambassadors in their capitals to leave as well. “Lebanon has been captured,” Ali Shihabi, a commentator close to the Saudi government, said about Riyadh’s thinking. “Nothing can be done except cut Lebanon off so its people also see the price of Iranian domination.”

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

Open your doors, O Lebanon – that fire may destroy your cedars! (Zechariah 11:1) – Part One

The world’s media is focusing a fear-filled spotlight on the tinder-box of Lebanon. Those who turn on the nightly news are shown to a ringside seat and where they can gaze at what may well be a coming bloody confrontation. Even some Christian sites are engaging in a measure of prophetic voyeurism about what may happen on the Israel-Lebanon border.  Here are questions currently being raised on TV:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once stated: “Wir lernen aus der Geschichte, dass wir überhaupt nichts lernen” (‘We learn from history, that we mostly learn nothing at all’). Yet some things can be learned from history, from understanding religious motivations, and from mining biblical and military strategic contexts.

“From the River to the Sea”

In Deuteronomy 4:44-46, Moses coaches the Jewish people, recounting to them the entire Mosaic Covenant as they camp in modern Jordan, waiting to invade and conquer Canaan. Moses pronounces to Israel, on the authority of the God of Jacob, that “every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the [Negev] desert to the Lebanon and from the River – the river Euphrates – to the western [Mediterranean] Sea” (Deuteronomy 11:24). According to the God of Jacob, ‘from the River to the Sea’ means the borders of the Promised Land that YHVH gave to the Jewish people – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. No other people has sovereign and divine right to those territories. These territories include Gaza (Joshua 15.47), what is known today as the West Bank (Numbers 34:1-12), northern Jordan (Deuteronomy 3:11-18), a large section of modern Lebanon (Joshua 12:7) and part of modern Syria (Genesis 15:18; Joshua 13:1-5).

Claims by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to Gaza or to the West Bank, and claims by Hezbollah to southern Lebanon – these flagrantly violate YHVH’s word regarding the biblical borders of the Promised Land.  These are the vain imaginings of the nations that Psalm 2:1 mentions, and they run roughshod over God’s prophetic promises to His Jewish people:

In light of the fast-paced events now happening in Israel and the Middle East,  it’s worth remembering that the Bible does not ask the question: “How does Israel fit in with superpower strategies or Islamist jihadi plans?” Rather, the question that the Bible raises is: “How do all these superpowers and Islamist nations fit in to YHVH’s good plans for Israel?”

Psalm 83 notes prophetically that, at the End of Days, Lebanon (Gebal and Tyre) will be actively at war with Israel. Lebanon will join Edom, Ammon and Moab (Jordan and the West Bank), the Ishmaelites and Hagrites (Egyptian Sinai, Saudi Arabia), the Philistines (the region of Gaza), and Assyria (northern Iraq) in an attempt to commit genocide against the Jewish people:

“They make shrewd plans against Your people” (Psalm 83:3)

The present jihadi army in Lebanon is called Hezbollah (in Arabic, Ḥizbu 'llāh; the Party of Allah). It is also known as al-Muqāwamah Al-Islāmīyah fī Lubnān (‘The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon’). Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist jihadi group with two wings – a paramilitary/terrorist Jihad Council and a political party in the Lebanese Parliament known as the ‘Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc.’ The Secretary-General of Hezbollah is Hassan Nasrallah. The group was founded around 1982, toward the close of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). That war was waged primarily between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Christian Maronites. Hezbollah’s administrative center gradually situated itself in south Beirut’s Shiite Dahieh neighborhood. Hezbollah’s training grounds eventually were located in the Bekaa Valley. And South Lebanon became their operational ground, from where attacks were made against Israel and the IDF.

Beirut was once known as ‘the Jewel of the Mediterranean’ or ‘the Paris of the Middle East.’ But the 15 year-long Lebanese Civil War reaped a grisly harvest of over approximately 150,000 dead Lebanese. Sniping, ambushes, kidnappings, car bombs and IEDs – life in Beirut gradually became a nightmare for many. Daily life in Beirut was characterized by cruelty and violence, and Hezbollah flourished and blossomed in that bloody soil.

The most famous/infamous terror operative associated with Hezbollah was Imad Mughniyeh, born in 1962 in the Lebanese village of Tayr Debba, not far from Tyre. He joined Yasser Arafat’s Force 17 special forces as a teenager and fought against Lebanese Christian and Druze forces in the 1970’s and early 1980’s.  After Israel expelled the PLO from Beirut to Tunisia in August 1982, Mughniyeh and four others helped found the Islamic Jihad Organization, a Shiite terror arm of Hezbollah under the tutelage of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley. He was directly involved in or had responsibility for the following terror acts, often working as a team with Mustafa Badreddine. The two men were known professionally as ‘the ghosts of Beirut:’

‘Hajj Radwan’ (Mughniyeh’s professional alias) had his fateful encounter with divine justice on February 12, 2008, at approximately 22:15 hours. This master Hezbollah terrorist was blown up as he approached his Mitsubishi Pajero on a dark Damascus street in the fashionable Kafr Soussa neighborhood, not far from an Iranian school, a Syrian police station and a Syrian Intelligence office.

“They conspire together against Your treasured ones” (Psalm 83:3)

The goals and strategies of Hezbollah are based on their philosophy and principles. These have been clearly stated by the organization from the outset: “These are our objectives and these our enemies.” On February 16, 1986 Sheikh Ibrahim al-Amin publicly read the documentThe Hizballah Program’ at the al-Ouzai mosque in West Beirut. It was simultaneously published in as-Safir, a leading Arabic-language daily newspaper in Beirut. The article was titled ‘The Hizballah Program, an open letter to all the Oppressed in Lebanon and the World.’ An English pamphlet was published in 1987. Here are some selections from the CIA translation of that document:

The unabridged version of the Hezbollah Program includes the following instructive paragraphs:

“The mouth speaks from that which fills the heart” (Matthew 12:34)

Hezbollah’s heart-attitudes (see Genesis 12:3) towards Israel reveal a virulent anti-Semitism rooted in classic Islamist texts.

In July, 1985, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (the spiritual mentor of Hezbollah) stated in an interview: “We believe there is no difference between the United States and Israel; the latter is a mere extension of the former. The United States is ready to fight the whole world to defend Israel's existence and security. The two countries are working in complete harmony.”

According to a video posted on Saudi news channel al-Arabiya, Nasrallah declared in a 1988 speech Hezbollah’s commitment to a worldwide Shiite Islamist Caliphate dictatorship: “Our plan, to which we, as faithful believers, have no alternative, is to establish an Islamic state under the rule of Islam . . . Lebanon should not be an Islamic republic on its own, but rather, part of the Greater Islamic Republic, governed by the Master of Time [the Shiite messianic figure known as the Mahdi], and his rightful deputy, the Jurisprudent Ruler [Persian: Velâyat-e Faqih] Imam [Ayatollah] Khomeini.”

In a 1998 speech marking the Shiite Day of Ashura, Nasrallah’s official website quoted him referring to Israel as “the state of the grandsons of apes and pigs – the Zionist Jews” and described the sons of Jacob as “the murderers of the prophets.”

Speaking at the Shi'ite Day of Ashura flagellation ceremony (tatbir) on April 9, 2000, Hassan Nasrallah declared: “The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities. It is clear that the numbers they talk about are greatly exaggerated. They can speak of fabricated or exaggerated massacres that occurred during the Second World War.”

On May 26, 2000, Nasrallah gave a speech in the Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil, from where the IDF had withdrawn a few days previously. Nasrallah crowed: “Several hundred Hezbollah fighters forced the strongest state in the Middle East to raise the flag of defeat . . . The age in which the Zionists frightened the Lebanese and the Arabs has ended . . . Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons and the most powerful air force in the region – this Israel is weaker than a spider's web.”

On September 4, 2002, Hezbollah-affiliated Ayatollah Fadlallah stated to the British newspaper ‘The Telegraph’: “I was not the one who launched the idea of so-called suicide bombings ... but I have certainly argued in favor of them.”

On September 27, 2002, Nasrallah spoke on al-Manar (Lebanese Hezbollah TV), proclaiming: “Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute . . . I conclude my speech with the slogan that will continue to reverberate on all occasions so that nobody will think that we have weakened. Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America!”

In an October 23, 2002 article in the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, journalist Badih Chayban quoted Nasrallah saying, “Among the signs . . . and signals which guide us, in the Islamic prophecies and not only in the Jewish prophecies, is that this State [of Israel] will be established, and that the Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine, not in order to bring about the anti-Christ (i.e., al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl) and the end of the world, but rather that Allah the Glorified and Most High wants to save you from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place, and there the final and decisive battle will take place.” Nasrallah’s speech is available in Arabic on Hezbollah's website. More recently, the relevant excerpt from the speech, along with Arabic transcription and English translation, have been published online.

In Jeffrey Goldberg’s October 14, 2002 article in ‘The New Yorker’ titled ‘In the Party of God’, Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Mousawi states that the “Jews are a lesion of the forehead of history.”

On February 18 and 19, 2005, Hezbollah-connected TV al-Manar aired Nasrallah’s speech of February 2, where he stated: “Israel is our enemy. This is an aggressive, illegal, and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land. Its destiny is manifested in our motto: ‘Death to Israel!’”

In 2006, Sheikh Nasrallah said: “There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”

On August 2, 2013, Nasrallah spoke on Quds Day in Beirut, saying that Israel was “a cancerous growth that must be eradicated . . . The only solution is to destroy it without giving it the opportunity to surrender . .  The elimination of Israel is not only a Palestinian interest. It is the interest of the entire Muslim world and the entire Arab world.”

On August 14, 2014, Nasrallah gave an interview to the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, stating that: “Israel is an illegitimate entity and it is a threat to the region. It is a constant threat to the whole region. We cannot coexist with this threat. That is why the ultimate goal of the [Arab and Islamic] nation is to end Israel’s existence irrespective of the problems, sensitivities and everything that has happened and could happen between Palestinians and non-Palestinians, Shia and Sunni, Muslims and Christians.”

On November 30, 2009 Nasrallah announced Hezbollah’s new ‘Manifesto’ at a live press conference in Beirut, 24 years after the publishing of its original ‘Hezbollah Program.’ The scholar and Neubauer Research Fellow Benedetta Berti at INSS, explains that “Hizbollah shows complete continuity both regarding its worldview and its strategic goals” in both documents.

“Certainly in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations!” (Ezekiel 36:5)

The prophet Jeremiah spoke forcefully about the divine judgment which will fall on every nation who disparages or dismisses YHVH’s calling on Israel and His love for His own Jewish people:

Hezbollah and Iran are not the first groups to find themselves blacklisted in the Bible. The divine gavel is about to come crashing down in the courthouse of the Most High.

 

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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

 

The elephant and the flea

Sometimes the stout-hearted can learn from history. There are certainly enough examples which might grant wisdom to those who so desire. Indeed, the present superpower machinations and intrigue surrounding the Middle East – with the focus here on jihadi forces versus Israel – have some sobering lessons to impart, for those who have eyes to see.

But to take instruction, one has to clean out one’s ears and polish one’s spectacles. Preconceived ideas of which world powers are the heroes and which are only partly heroic – these perspectives may need to be deposited in the cubicles at the doors of the classroom, in order to more clearly discern what is truly taking place. Under the glare of history’s microscope, heroes sometimes turn out to be anti-heroes, while those who are universally castigated often turn out to be the true champions.

This newsletter examines five such cases:

“America is an elephant - Cyprus is a flea – Greece is a flea”

At one point in the career of the rough-talking Texan who became POTUS, Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed some fiery words to Alexander Matsas, Greece’s Ambassador to Washington. The context was a June 1964 US-Greek disagreement concerning the fate of Cyprus (as quoted in ‘I Should Have Died’ (1977), Philip Deane, pp. 113-114):

On April 21, 1967, a military junta led by three Greek Generals took over Greece in a coup. The CIA was certainly involved in encouraging these leaders, and LBJ’s earlier comments take on a more menacing air in this context.

“There is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus”

In 1974, a fascinating document archived at the US National Security Advisor’s Memoranda of Conversation Collection (situated at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan) throws light on how the United States government views power politics and warlike moves against its own allies. The US at that time related to the Greek military dictatorship as an ally. Yet they also stationed nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey after 1958. Today there are purportedly 90 B61 gravity bombs on site. The US strategic game-plan involved dealing simultaneously with two mortal enemies – Turkey and Greece. Yet ultimately, the American cards were stacked in favor of the Turks.

In Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s discussion with the POTUS Ford, Kissinger stated quite flatly:

“We would have our hands full to keep the Greeks from going to war. The Turks right now are extremely nationalistic. For a few years ago, the Turkish tactics are right – grab what they want and then negotiate on the basis of possession . . . But if the Turks run loose on Cyprus, the Greeks could come unglued. We certainly do not want a war between the two, but if it came to that, Turkey is more important to us . . . There is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus.”

“We can reduce Israel’s size to historic proportions”

The long-term heart and strategy of the US State Department regarding its end-game for Israel is no secret. On December 17, 1975 US Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger met S’adun Hammadi, Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Iraqi Ambassador’s residence on Rue d’Andigne, Paris. In that meeting Kissinger communicated a ‘no-nonsense’ US foreign policy regarding Israel:

This State Department realpolitik position still informs the thinking of American diplomats and politicians today: Israel’s borders must be shrunk in order to weaken its military and political standing in the Middle East, and a Palestinian state needs to be established on land which has been pried away from Israeli control. An awareness of these anti-biblical schemes can help intercessors to pray for leaders and diplomats in the US and elsewhere, for these talking points are part and parcel of British, European and Russian strategies as well.

The betrayal by the West

Adolf Hitler had plans to swallow up Europe piece by piece. One of the largest initial pieces was the Sudetenland – territories in Czechoslovakia to where a significant number of Germans laborers had moved, seeking work and new opportunities. The Führer threatened Continental Europe with war if Sudetenland were not given to him in appeasement.

Chamberlain believed that negotiations with Hitler could avoid a World War. His impression was that Hitler could turn out to be a man of peace. “In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”

To avoid war, France and the United Kingdom permitted Nazi Germany to incorporate the Sudetenland. In meetings at the Munich Conference with Hitler on September 15th (Berchtesgaden, Bavaria), 22nd (Rheinhotel Dreesen, Rüngsdorf, Bad Godesberg) and 29th (the Führerbau, Munich), Chamberlain was manipulated and bullied into finally abandoning England’s Czechoslovak ally to the tender mercies of the Nazi juggernaut. The representatives of Czechoslovakia were not allowed to take part in any negotiations due to Hitler’s refusal to allow their participation, as their homeland was drawn and quartered by Europe’s Great Powers. Up to that point the Czechs had refused to bow to any form of diplomatic surgery, preferring to trust in their small though well-trained army and in their political alliances with France and the Soviet Union.

The Munich Agreement was signed at 01:30 on September 30, 1938 by Hitler, British PM Sir Neville Chamberlain, Italian Fascist PM Benito Mussolini and French PM Édouard Daladier. This Quartet’s meeting was known as the ‘Four-Power Conference.’ It sanctioned the immediate Nazi invasion and annexation of Czech Sudetenland. A few hours after having signed away Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain took a light nap, arose and asked Hitler to sign a peace treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany. Hitler happily agreed. The German High Command’s plot to stop Hitler was shelved, and Europe tumbled slowly into the abyss.

Czech politicians joined the newspapers in regularly using the term The Betrayal by the West (Czech: zrada Západu). All of the Czechoslovak border fortifications (the only viable defense against German invasion) were now in Nazi hands. Poland seized Trans-Olza; Hungary annexed and occupied the remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia. Chamberlain returned to Britain claiming he had established peace in our time. However, within a year of the agreement World War II had started. Czech poet František Halas published a poem with verse about the “ringing bell of betrayal” that occurred at Munich. MP Winston Churchill was said to have declared that “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.” To this day, the terms ‘Munich’, Sudetenland,’ Chamberlain and ‘peace for our time’ convey betrayal and diplomatic duplicity.

After Munich, Hitler no longer had any fear that the West would oppose his genocidal plans. His comments about Chamberlain and Daladier were telling on this point: “I did not think it possible that Czechoslovakia would be virtually served up to me on a plate by her friends.” Even more telling was Hitler’s conclusion: “Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich” (“Unsere Gegner sind kleine Würmchen. Ich sah sie in München”). In March 1939 Hitler invaded and conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia.

On Friday October 5, 2001 Israeli PM Ariel Sharon gave an evening press conference where he said:

In a blunt response on October 6, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said: “The President believes that these remarks are unacceptable. Israel could have no better or stronger friend that the United States and no better friend than President Bush.” Yet the American push to get Israel to retreat from Gaza, the Golan, the West Bank and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem continued full press from that day onward.

A banana republic in the desert

The present US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has been active in communicating State Department wishes and Presidential orders to Israel throughout the past eight months of the Israel-Hamas war. Little is known by most people about Blinken’s political role prior to his current office.

Blinken was functioning as Biden’s principal foreign policy advisor and spokesman for his 2020 presidential campaign. As senior campaign official, he reached out to acting CIA Director Mike Morell on or before October 17, 2020, and triggered him to organize 50 colleagues in the intelligence community to sign a letter “falsely claiming that damning emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop [just] published by The [New York]Post were Russian disinformation.” At 10:53 pm that night, “Blinken emailed Morell a USA Today article” dealing with the same theme. Over the next two days, Morell “gathered signatures from 51 former intelligence officials, including himself and four other former CIA directors, including John Brennan and Leon Panetta.” Morell also testified “that he sent an email telling Nick Shapiro, former chief of staff to Brennan, that the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post.” Morell testified that “he received a call from Steve Ricchetti, chairman of the Biden campaign, to thank him for writing the statement.”

Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Blinken on April 20, 2023, requesting his assistance because they “have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor. This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.”

When asked about Blinken’s role in the disinformation letter sent out by CIA acting Director Morell (according to his sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee), State Department spokesman Vedant Patel refused to answer directly, only stating that “It is not a State Department issue, and I don’t really have a comment on this from the State Department.” Morell was not a State Department employee, and at that time neither was Anthony Blinken.

Since moving to the State Department, Blinken’s statement and policies have raised concerns regarding his strategic perspectives on Israel-related issues.

Fair-weather friends and erratic allies

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, and a board member of Harvard International Review, has published an incisive June 15, 2024 article: “As US Is Being Encircled by Enemies, the US Administration Wants Israel to Surrender to Terrorists.” Here are a few selected quotes:

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

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When the sons of Adam put God on trial

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

Repaying Babylon

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

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

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

The nations of Moses’ day – conquered and conquerors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jephthah the Judge facing the Court of Ammon

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

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

Samuel the Judge rules on Amalek and Agag

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

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

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

 Repaying Babylon for all the evil they have done in Zion
 

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

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey
 
Donations can be sent to:
FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES  

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

 

Pulling a Messianic rabbit out of a Pentecostal hat

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

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

Change you can’t believe in

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

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

In search of the lost date

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Messianic Gentiles or converts to Rabbinic Judaism?
 

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

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

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

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

Pulling a non-kosher rabbit out of a Messianic hat
 

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

Tradition!

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

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

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

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

 

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

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

 

History repeats itself – the ten spies and their bad report

Saul of Tarsus – better known as Paul the Apostle – helps us in knowing how to apply principles in the Hebrew Scriptures to our own lives: “Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they indeed craved them . . . Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall” (1 Corinthians 10:6-12).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual warfare and the evening news

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

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

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

“You shall not give a false report!”

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

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

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

Promises, promises – peace, peace – PLO, PLO

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

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

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

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

Lying like a rug

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

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

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

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

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

They make shrewd plans against Your people

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

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

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

The rise of the anti-Semitic kings

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

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

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

Like mushrooms sprouting after the rain

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

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

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

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

Gaza in Manhattan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why are the peoples plotting in vain?

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

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

He who pays the piper calls the tune

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

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

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

The French-Qatari Connection

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

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

Palestinian terror, American campus riots and the Chinese dragon

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

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

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

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

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES 

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

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

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