When world leaders play poker

Does a Spring Send Out Fresh and Bitter Water from the Same Opening?

Avner Boskey

January 27, 2026

Some of us believe that our leaders are either all good or all bad. In modern politics, it seems that ‘the enemy’ is always found ‘on the other side of the political aisle.’ We crown the leaders ‘on our side’ with golden crowns, but throw tomatoes and rocks at our political opponents. Yet James 3:8-10 reminds us that all human beings, politicians included, have a very challenging problem: “No one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things should not be this way.” These radical problems beset both the Left and the Right, and everyone in between.

Even in Bible days, some leaders (even those who led mini-revivals) fell quite short of God’s character. Examples include Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:12-19), Josiah (2 Kings 35:20-24), and David (2 Samuel 11). A superpower leader like Nebuchadnezzar may have had divine secrets revealed to him (Daniel 2:28), yet he was still punished with temporary insanity due to his own pride and braggadocio (Daniel 4).

Today we often honor political or religious leaders blindly, having no sense of what God is about to do in the near future. We excuse narcissism and deceit, and tolerate boasting and arrogance, declaring that our inerrant leaders can do no wrong. But when we sell God short on His standards, we end up tolerating things that YHVH would never tolerate. Such dynamics are alive and well not only in the preserve of politics; they are also par for the course in the religious world, among some self-appointed apostles and prophets – men and women who may know little of the Word of God, and who don’t often clearly hear His voice. Little children (said the Apostle John in 1 John 5:21), guard your hearts from these types of idols!

YHVH promises that a day is coming when He will give to the Jewish people shepherds after His own heart, and when He will feed Israel with knowledge and understanding (see Jeremiah 3:15). Those who love the God of Israel and His Word, need to keep that end-game scenario front and center. We need to take these words of God to heart and to soul – to tie them as a sign on our hands and as frontlets on our foreheads (see Deuteronomy 11:18). If He will do this for the Jewish people, imagine how much He will also do for the nations of the earth!

Theological malignancies and counterfeit Christians

The media of the Western world occasionally shines its garish spotlight on some ‘Christian’ podcasters whose poisoned perspectives about Israel and the Jewish people are 100% counterfeit. Their viewpoints are infected at the very root with Replacement Theology.

On the opposite side of the woke aisle, a grotesque Marxist anti-Zionism has welded itself to fascist anti-Semitism and genocidal jihadi-jingoism, spewing out a river of hatred against the Jewish people. What is desperately needed here? A spiritual return to the biblical roots of Western Judeo-Christian philosophy and civilization, and a recovery of biblical keys and scriptural spectacles. First and foremost, a renewed revelation of the Jewish word of God and its continuing stress on YHVH’s priority love for the sons and daughters of Jacob.

How superpowers think

The past two hundred years present many historical examples of how superpowers reason – what motivates them, what issues they focus on and what values they ignore. The Middle East has watched as a stream of superpowers like the UK, the US and the USSR have waded in to claim oil, strategic territory and arms markets – from Algeria to Arabia, and from India to Iran. The focus of these empires has been financial, involving control of colonized markets and free access to their waterways.

Spiritual and biblical issues have not been the prime motivators for these empires, though some evangelicals have attempted to draw attention to spiritual perspectives. Christian in name, these superpowers have looked at the Middle East as a significant key – not to world revival but to imperial profits. Modern apostate and pseudo-Christian perspectives like those of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have sapped biblical motivations from a fading evangelical world, running roughshod over God’s heart, God’s perspectives and God’s plans for the restoration of His Jewish people to their Jewish homeland. Spiritual apostasy has clouded the vision of the West, while an oily film has blinded clear Christian thinking about loving and defending Zion. Who is willing today to publicly stand with Jacob when the room of political discourse is overflowing with Nazis and jihadis?

Playing international poker with the Promised Land

The Book of Joshua 15:20,47 declares that the inheritance of the tribe of the sons of Judah includes Ashdod, Gaza and its towns and villages, “as far as the Brook of Egypt and the Great [Mediterranean] Sea.” The territory of Gaza is part of the Promised Land which God bequeathed to the Jewish people for eternity. It is part of the irrevocable gifts and calling of Israel, according to Romans 11:28-29. Whether the real estate is located in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria or Gaza, none of it has been handed over by YHVH to any other nation to own or manage. No other country – not the Edomites of Jordan and Ramallah, not the Hittites of the former caliphate of Turkey (see Joshua 1:4), not the sons of Ham in today’s Arab Republic of Egypt (see Psalm 105:23) nor the United States of America – no one can step in to claim that the God of Jacob has given them the right to oversee Gaza or determine its fate. Unfortunately, what is currently happening as POTUS Trump’s 20-point plan (the ‘Board of Peace’) gets off the ground, flies in the face of God’s biblically-expressed intentions.

Israel’s doyen of military reporters Ron Ben -Yishai notes on January 26, 2026:

“Whether we like it or not, we must acknowledge a basic fact: US President Donald Trump not only dominates Israel’s national security agenda, he is now dictating to the government in Jerusalem the steps it is expected to take on critical security and diplomatic issues. This is done with full awareness that many of these moves place Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in severe domestic political difficulty within his Cabinet and coalition, and even threaten the government’s survival.”

On Saturday, January 17, 2026 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly objected to certain aspects of Trump’s plan – America’s insistence that Turkey and Qatar (both prime supporters of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood jihadi terror groups) will be an integral part of the Gaza Executive Board, and have a decisive say in determining the future of Gaza. Israel’s government responded by announcing that “the composition of the Gaza Executive Board, which is subordinate to the Board of Peace, was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy.”

A high-ranking State Department official anonymously responded to Israel’s publicly aired disagreement that same day on the Axios outlet, lashing out at PM Netanyahu:

“This is our show, not his show. We managed to do things in Gaza in recent months nobody thought was possible, and we are going to continue moving. If he wants us to deal with Gaza, it will have to be our way. We worked over him. Let him focus on Iran and let us deal with Gaza. We are not going to argue with him. He will do his politics and we will keep moving forward with our plan. He can’t really go against us . . . We are doing him a favor.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Chairman of the Religious Zionist Party (HaTzionut HaDatit or National Union-Tkuma), posted on X later that Saturday night, January 17, 2026:

“The original sin is the prime minister's unwillingness to take responsibility for Gaza, to establish military rule there, to encourage immigration and settlement, and thereby to ensure Israel's security for many years. This refusal gave birth to the need for bizarre contraptions to manage civilian life in Gaza that are neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority. But even under this assumption, there must be red lines: The countries that breathed life into Hamas cannot be the ones to replace it. Those that support it and continue to host it even now will not gain a foothold in Gaza. Period. Our brave warriors did not risk their lives in an immense national mobilization just to swap one beast of burden for another. We will insist on realizing the war's central objective – the destruction of Hamas and the removal of the threat emanating from Gaza toward the State of Israel and its citizens.”

Violating the borders of Israel on behalf of Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Hamas

Just recently. the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey unilaterally decided to open the physical gates between Egypt and the Hamas-controlled areas of Gaza. This has undercut one of the main goals of Israel’s recent war – to remove the jihadi terror group Hamas’ claws from controlling Gaza. The US announced this decision during the signing ceremony for POTUS Trump’s Board of Peace conference in Davos, Switzerland, according to an unnamed Arab diplomat and an unnamed US official who spoke off the record on Friday January 23, 2026. Friday’s anonymous comments from both the unnamed US official and the anonymous Arab diplomat gloated publicly that this re-opening was “imposed” on Israel – without the Jewish state’s agreement.

The diplomats said that those countries mediating the Gaza ceasefire — the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey — all recognized that Israel wasn’t going to agree on its own to reopen the border gate between Egypt and Gaza. So these mediators decided (without Israel’s agreement) to publicly announce Rafah’s unilateral reopening this week during the signing ceremony for the Board of Peace ceremonies in Davos. The crossing between Egypt and Gaza is to be operated by officers from the European Union Border Assistance Mission, along with uniformed members of the Palestinian Authority’s mukhabarat (intelligence service).

The high-ranking though unnamed US State Department official emphasized: “This is our show, not [Israel’s] show . . . We are going to continue moving . . . We are not going to argue with [Netanyahu] . . . and we will keep moving forward with our plan. He can’t really go against us.”

Not only has the US given significant authority over what happens in Gaza to Turkey and Qatar – who happen to also be Hamas’ main bankrollers and weapons suppliers. The US State Department is controlling, enabling and facilitating jihadi involvement in that process. The same American hands that are helping to arm Israel, sending bombers and fighter planes to neutralize Iranian moves, are also aiding in re-establishing Hamas and the PLO as a mortal jihadi threat to the Jewish state. Sweet and bitter waters are indeed flowing from the same spring, and Western nations are once again playing international poker, with the jackpot being the divvying-up of the Land of Israel.

Ignoring Turkish and Qatari wickedness as long as a healthy profit can be made

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

The ideology behind the 9/11 attacks against America comes straight from the brains of the Muslim Brotherhood – MB founder Hassan al-Banna and MB chief ideologue Sayyid Qutb. In 2005, a former Kuwaiti Minister of Information, Dr. Ahmad al-Rabi', wrote in the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper: “The beginnings of all the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology . . . All those who worked with bin Laden and al-Qaeda went out under the mandate of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

On November 24, 2025 POTUS Trump passed Executive Order EO 14362 – “Designation of Certain Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” This Presidential Document does not actually designate the entire Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a terrorist organization, but only certain chapters or sub-divisions (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan) of this worldwide jihadi organization – leaving the vast majority of that terror organization still ‘kosher’ in the eyes of the US State Department.

Trump’s Executive Order comes after an Act sponsored by Texas Senator Ted Cruz on July 16, 2025 “Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act”. Cruz's Act (which he had previously attempted to pass in 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021) which was a more comprehensive Act, totally banning the Muslim Brotherhood (text here).

In some countries, the entire Muslim Brotherhood organization (and not just three sub-groups) has already been labeled and outlawed as a terrorist organization. These steps have been taken by Florida and Texas, as well as by Austria, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Kazakhstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

The countries of Turkey and Qatar are the two main bankrollers and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), both in the past and in the present as well. Over the years they have also sponsored terror groups like the Taliban, al-Qa’eda, al-Nusra, and the HTS (currently morphed into the party of Syria’s President al-Julani).

Qatar is not only the main bank-roller of Hamas and HTS; it is also home to the US Army’s CENTCOM (Central Command) and the location of al-Udeid (the largest USAF airbase outside of America). Qatar is seen as a significant ally of the USA, and it has recently donated a Boeing 747 for POTUS Trump’s use. Qatar is connected by deep economic ties to Trump’s family. For decades, Qatar has used the Brotherhood as a means to project influence across the Middle East, even providing Hamas with its headquarters and funding.

Turkey (or as it now calls itself ‘Türkiye’) is also intensively involved with MB and Hamas, creating and supporting resilient networks which directly oppose US counterterrorism priorities. Türkiye is both a NATO ally and a patron of Islamist networks. It plays both sides of the field.

The US has actively included Türkiye and Qatar (two Brotherhood‑linked governments) on Trump's ‘Board of Peace’, and also has insisted that they receive a seat at the table which oversees Israel’s security and borders. The instigators of 9/11 are America’s honored guests at a ceremony where the Promised Land is being divided.

Turkey, Armenia and Hitler

As the Ottoman Empire began its slow slide into disintegration, a Turkish revolutionary group rose up between 1889 and 1926 – the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; in Turkish, İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti). Their foremost faction was the ‘Young Turks’ (Jön Türkler). In the Spring of 1914 the CUP caused at least 300,000 Greeks to flee across the Aegean Sea to Greece. The stated goal here was to achieve Türk Yurdu – the Turkification of Anatolia and the transformation of the Ottoman Empire into a homogeneous Turkish nation-state. Between 1914 and 1918 the Ottoman Empire under the CUP was also involved in the massacre and deportation of over one million Armenians.

At the orders of Ottoman Young Turk leader Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven onward by Turkish paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape, torture, crucifixion and massacres. Armenian survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive from the original 1.2 million. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and absorbed into Muslim households at that time.

The Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turkish nation enabled the creation of an ethnonationalist state, the modern Republic of Turkey. The Turkish government today justifies the deportation and genocide of these Armenians as a legitimate action, and Turkey refuses to classify it as genocide. As of 2025, at least 34 countries have recognized the massacre of Armenians as genocide.

On August 22, 1939 (23 years after the Armenian genocide) Nazi leader Adolf Hitler addressed his chief Wehrmacht military commanders at his Obersalzberg home, a week before Germany invaded Poland. Within a day or two, American journalist Louis P. Lochner was handed the verbatim German text of Hitler’s speech, most probably by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of Abwehr (German Intelligence). Lochner contacted an American diplomat, but that man refused to pass on the text of Hitler’s briefing to Washington. British diplomat George Ogilvie-Forbes, however, transmitted the document to Whitehall on August 25, 1939.

Hitler’s comments revealed sobering conclusions: a Western world which had been prepared to ignore Turkey’s mass-murder and to condone the genocidal destruction of the Armenians in 1914, would no doubt not get too concerned about other upcoming mass murders – like those of the Polish nation or the Jewish people:

“Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command . . . that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” [in German, ‚Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?‘]

Iraq, ISIS and Syria

The Western world has for the most part a short attention span. Few remember Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare attack on Iraqi Kurdish civilians in the residential areas of Halabja on March 16, 1988. A mixture of mustard gas and nerve gas (Tabun, Sarin and VX) was dropped on civilian Kurds there, the largest chemical weapons attack on civilians in human history. At least 5,000 people were killed, and up to 10,000 were injured. At first, the US government and its intelligence agencies suggested that Kurdish civilians had not been deliberately targeted, and attempted to place responsibility for the attack on Iran. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued a briefing paper concluding that Iraq shouldn’t be taken to task for the chemical warfare attacks: “We believe it better to maintain a dialogue with others if we want to influence their actions. Punitive measures such as unilateral sanctions would not be effective in changing Iraq’s behavior over chemical weapons, and would damage British interests to no avail.”

The shifting sands of the Middle East have recently served to conceal another atrocity – the genocidal acts of Da’esh (ISIS/ ISIL/ the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ad-Dawla al-Islāmiyya fī l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām]). This is the jihadi terrorist army which swept across Iraq and Syria from 1994 to the present. This organization committed war crimes against humanity, including systematic genocidal rape and sexual violence against males and females; mass killings of prisoners of war, murders of Christians, Yazidis, Shabaks, Turkmens and other Sunnis and their burial in mass graves; summary executions and decapitations; public floggings and politically motivated assassinations; human sacrifices; sexual enslavement and trafficking of over 6,800 Yazidi women and children; forced conversion to Islam of thousands of Yazidi boys and their subsequent forced drafting into ISIS jihadi terror gangs etc.

A minimum of 25,645 Iraqis were murdered by ISIS between 2014 and 2016. Over 400,000 Yazidis were forced to flee to Turkey and to Iraqi Kurdistan barely ten years ago; 55,000 Yazidis fled to the nearby Sinjar Mountains, where many died (like the Armenians in the 1910’s) from dehydration and starvation. ISIS is still alive and well in Syria (here and here), Iraq, Turkey (here and here) and the Sinai Peninsula. Has the human race undergone any deep moral changes since the Armenian genocide?

Recent events in Syria (see my December 12, 2024 newsletter https://davidstent.org/dividing-the-baby-part-two-of-three/) include the rise of a new Islamist leader who used to head Syrian al-Qa’eda and ISIS. Abu Mohammad al-Julani was once listed by the US State Department as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist,’ with a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. In 2018 al-Julani announced on CNN that his jihadi goal is to overthrow Syria. Now he has become the darling of the West, fêted by the leaders of the US, France, UK and the European Union. On June 30, 2025 POTUS Trump revoked all sanctions against Syria as part of this new international acceptance of al-Julani (Executive Order 14312). The Syrian mutation of ‘Bin Laden’ has now been christened ‘a peace-maker’ by the cataract-beset leaders of the West.

But the Syrian leopard has not changed his spots, and has proved himself to be “an adept player of geopolitical chess.” Since his ‘ascension to the throne,’ he has directed his ISIS and al-Qa’eda compatriots to carry out massacres of Syria’s Alawites (minimum 1,500 in March 2025; here, here and here), Christians, Druze (here, here and here) and Kurds (here, here, here and here) – while the West blinks anxiously and averts its eyes at the over 3,400 casualties (3,666 in another official report).

The recent videotaped slaughter of Alawites and Druze, showing al-Julani’s bearded jihadi warriors slitting Alawite and Druze throats while chanting the Islamic takbir (allāhu ʾakbar – the Islamist declaration of Allah’s supremacy); the videotaped torture, rape and murder of women from all these these communities (even as late as mid-January 2026); the abandonment by the West of former allies who fought al Qa’eda and ISIS and sacrificed many casualties on the battlefield, to bloodthirsty jihadis – all these events have created a huge sense of betrayal in the Middle East about Western allies in general and American allies in particular.

Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, explains on his January 26, 2026 podcast:

“In the past week, the new Syrian regime, which is dominated by ex and current Jihadists, have assaulted the entire Kurdish community in Syria, displaced the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] – a group that has been our ally for more than a decade in detaining 9,000 ISIS terrorists – booted them out, and attacked Christian communities . . . Turkey is basically playing a hostage role over Europe, because they’re the ones that threaten to unleash hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe, unless Europe pays them a hostage fee and basically kowtows to their policies. . . We're on the cusp of a major problem, a military problem in the Middle East because of the new Syrian regime pretending to be moderate . . . They are basically a jihadist regime that has embarked on massacres, major massacres, against the Kurdish community, against the Christian community, against the Druze community, and against the Yazidis. This problem is not going away, and I think we have allowed Turkey to basically empower this new regime to the point where 19,000 civilians have been killed in the last year alone.”

Iranian genocide

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been waging war with the West – specifically against America and Israel (though Saudi Arabia is not far from being a top priority as well) – since its bloody inception in the Shi’ite Iranian Revolution (January 6 1978 to February 11 1979). Some veterans of the CIA (like Robert Baer, author of ‘The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower’) argue that America must become Iran’s stalwart ally and turn a cold shoulder to Israel. So far, it seems that the current US Administration does not fully line up on Baer’s side of the line of scrimmage.

The nation of Iran is at this point under the iron Islamist boot of a cruel and violent Shi’ite tyranny. The Muslim despots of Tehran and Qom believe that they are on the cutting edge of worldwide Islamist revolution – one which will lead to an international Shi’ite dictatorship. Anyone, even if it be their own citizens, who opposes those goals is considered expendable. In the past three weeks over 36,500 Iranian citizens (and possibly upwards of 60,000 – see here and here) have been murdered by Shi’ite security forces in just two days, January 8-9, 2026, and in just one geographical area alone – the historic bazaar in Rasht, Iran. Over 300,000 other Iranians have been wounded by government thugs, many blinded for life by close shotgun fire. A similar number of Iranian civilians have been dragged out of hospital beds and shot to death, dispatched by a bullet to the forehead. A genocidal massacre is occurring in Persia, and the whole world is watching. Will this evil empire be taken down before it destroys its own people and overwhelms the Middle East?

Hitler’s sobering comment in August 1939 – “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” – has cutting significance for us today, as the wolves Turkey, Syria and Iran gather around their prey, drooling in anticipation. Christians, Jews, some streams of Muslims – they are the current target. And the Western world is next in line.

Appeasement versus victory

At present, most Western leaders have adopted a response toward jihadi forces which could be classified as 'appeasement.' Rather than exhibiting strength and determination which presses through to a forceful victory, Western diplomats have pleaded for ‘process’ and crisis-management, of the 'need' to work toward a temporary holding pattern, of suggesting that violent jihadis choose the path of disarmament instead of ‘the path of jihad.’ Winston Churchill’s famous dictum of January 20, 1940, given on the BBC when he was First Lord of the British Admiralty, is worth remembering: “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured!”

How shall we then pray?

Pray for divine wisdom and courage be given to world leaders as they confront their mortal enemies who are intent on the physical and spiritual destruction of the West

Pray for divine strategies to be granted to the leaders of Israel and the US as they face off against jihadi Islam, especially its Iranian manifestation, in the coming weeks

Pray for the protection of the Iranian people from their evil leaders and their evil ways

Pray for the Holy Spirit to touch many Iranians at this time of great trial and need, and to reveal Messiah Yeshua as their salvation and deliverance