Archive for August, 2009
Obama bulldozing Israel’s future
Aug 14th
By Victor Sharpe
The American Thinker
President Obama is demonstrating an alarming hostility toward the Jewish state and has gone out of his way to describe Israeli homes in Judea and Samaria and in parts of Jerusalem, as “illegitimate.”
The British government and the European Union are equally determined to deny legitimacy to Israeli construction of homes and schools in the biblical and ancestral Jewish homeland. They do so while actively encouraging with financial and diplomatic means the enormous unchecked building activity of Arab construction in and around Jerusalem and throughout Judea and Samaria. Indeed, many of these new Arab homes are luxurious villas financed with Saudi money, contrasting starkly with the humble homes in which most Israelis live.
President Obama, along with the State Department, Britain and the EU are clearly engaged in de-legitimizing existing Jewish owned properties as well as new construction. This policy has been highlighted by the grotesque outpouring of hostility towards the recent removal of Arab squatters from Jewish owned homes in Jerusalem. The homes in question had been purchased decades ago by their Jewish residents who had subsequently been dispossessed of them by the Jordanian Arab occupiers after the 1948 Arab-Israel War.
I was visiting England and watching BBC television news as it reported on the removal of the Arab squatters. The BBC’s spin was so biased against Israel — no surprise there — that it almost seemed as if the reporter was in a parallel universe.
After many years of going through the Israeli court system and repeatedly serving notice on the Arab culprits to vacate the premises, the police finally took action. In Britain, squatters are given short shrift by society and the police, but if the miscreants happen to be Arabs in Jerusalem then the BBC displays an altogether different set of values.
Of course the BBC and most of the international mainstream media ignored the Jewish ownership of the properties in question. Such facts would complicate an otherwise delicious story of ‘wicked Israelis’ evicting ‘innocent’ Arabs. It would also be an inconvenient truth to refer to the legal title owned by the dispossessed Jews.
After illegally annexing the West Bank (recognized by only two countries, Britain and Pakistan) the Jordanian occupiers of east Jerusalem held the Jewish owned homes under a government entity known as the, “Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property.” This in itself clearly implied that the Jordanians considered the Jewish occupants as enemies. This was also an implicit admission that these homes were Jewish owned. Again the BBC predictably ignored that vital fact.
I spoke to several Brits after the BBC had aired the news report and all believed the story as it had been spun. They were completely unaware that the Arab squatters were in the homes illegally. One problem in Britain is that there is no Talk Radio as there is here in the United States. Thus, most folks have little recourse to verifying the truth or otherwise of BBC broadcasts.
It was only after Israel defeated its Arab enemies in the defensive June, 1967 Six-Day War that the lands and properties earlier stolen from the Jews by the Arab aggressors had the opportunity, at last, of being returned to their rightful owners. Much of this land was purchased in the 19th century when Jerusalem was a remote and impoverished provincial town of the Ottoman Empire with a population of less than 40,000.
According to the eminent British historian, Sir Martin Gilbert, in his book, Jerusalem Illustrated History Atlas, the estimated population of Jerusalem in 1845 as evidenced by Dr. Schultze, the Prussian Consul, comprised 7,120 Jews, 5,000 Muslims and 3,390 Christians. Sir Martin adds that by 1889 the population of Jerusalem had risen to 39,175 of whom Jews totaled 25,000, Christians 7,175 and Muslims 7,000.
There are scores of Jewish properties, illegally occupied by Arabs, scattered throughout areas of east Jerusalem. They have remained in legal limbo because of international pressures against successive Israeli governments. This has led to endless delays in the return of the land and properties to their rightful owners. Sadly, the Obama Administration and the State Department are at the forefront of this continuing pressure.
It is too soon to know whether President Obama will shed his anti-Israel animus. It is, perhaps, too soon to learn if he is even aware of the earlier positions of American Administrations and the Congress with respect to the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1955. That bill underlined previous American understandings that “Jerusalem should remain undivided.
While the Obama Administration is busy bulldozing through policies inimical to the American way of life, buoyed by an impregnable Democrat voting majority, it is also reaching out to enemies of America, such as Syria and Iran, while betraying and discomfiting loyal allies of the United States.
Its negative attitude toward Israel, its most loyal ally in the Middle East, is but one example of a deeply alarming policy shift. Others include the reluctance to support openly the mostly young protestors in Iran who bravely took to the streets to vent their outrage at the stolen election by Ahmadinijad and the mullahs. Obama remained disturbingly quiet while the protestors were brutally beaten in the streets of Tehran.
However, our same president felt it necessary to voice his support to the ousted leftwing President Zelaya of Honduras who had attempted to illegally run for another term of office and who was poised to trash the Honduran constitution in the same way Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has done in his country.
Obama now has his own Afghanistan War, which according to Stephen Tanner, the author of Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War with the Taliban, has proven to be a part of the world no foreign power has ever conquered.
Such disturbing policy shifts by this president may yet come to haunt the security of the United States for decades to come.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
How to Receive God’s Blessing
Aug 1st
By Jim Hutchens
A benediction is “the invocation of blessing, especially at the end of a worship service; to bless or speak well of.” (The American Heritage Dictionary). The most familiar benediction/blessing of both Jews and Christians is found in Numbers 6:24-26.
“The LORD bless you and keep you;
The LORD make His face to shine upon you,
And be gracious to you,
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.”
It is familiar because we hear it pronounced repeatedly by rabbis, pastors, and religious leaders. The question is – does it really work? Is a person or a group actually blessed when this benediction is pronounced over them? Does one in fact experience God’s favor and grace after receiving this benediction? Is it effective? Or is it just what religious people say? Do things seem about the same as before the blessing was pronounced? Who can really say? How can we be sure one way or the other?
One way to be sure blessing will be forthcoming is if the words are actually pronounced accurately the way God said they should be pronounced. First, however, let’s look at the context of this blessing which God gave to Moses and how it relates to Christians.
Numbers 6:22 says, “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them…’” Then the actual “The LORD bless you” benediction is given. The question immediately arises – Is this only for Israel or are Christians now included?
The Apostle Paul gives an outright, unequivocal answer, “If you are Christ’s (belong to Messiah), then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). Paul had already declared in Romans 11:11 ff. that followers of Jesus have been “grafted in” to the Olive Tree of the Israel of God. So we may say with Scriptural authority – the blessing of Numbers 6 is to be pronounced on believers in Jesus.
Now we must consider one of the great tragedies of the Judeo-Christian experience which is – the Name of God is neither spoken nor written correctly in our English Bibles. Here is what God told Moses at the Burning Bush, “…thus you shall say to the children of Israel, the LORD … this is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations” (Genesis 3:15). In other words, God said, “Moses, here is what you are to say. I am telling you what My Name is. Here is my name and it is to be my name forever.” So, what’s the problem? What’s the great tragedy?
The tragedy is that we have NOT used the very name God said to use. We have pronounced God’s name “LORD” or “The LORD.” That is not his name. That is a title one of many titles used of our God. However, His name is Yahweh. No one would ever know God’s real name from English translations of the Bible. Whenever you see LORD, all in capital letters (and you only see it in the Old Testament), that is the English translation of the Hebrew word Yahweh. Yahweh is his name and LORD is his title. And God further instructs in Numbers 6:27, “So shall they put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”
In other words, to be assured of the blessing of God, it is absolutely essential that the name of Yahweh be placed on those who are being blessed. Some have translated LORD as Jehovah. But there is a general consensus among Bible scholars and interpreters today that the actual name of the God of Israel is Yahweh. So why then don’t we use the name God gave for his people to call him? Good question.
Long ago, rabbis and sages of Judaism determined that Yahweh should not be used out of fear that the 3rd commandment might be broken, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” However, the scholars who compiled The Encyclopedia Judaica state, “the true pronunciation of the name YHWH was never lost. Several early Greek writers of the Christian Church testify that the name was pronounced ‘Yahweh’” (Vol.6, p.80). However, out of misguided reverence, Rabbinic Judaism has replaced the name Yahweh with Adonai (Lord, without capital letters) or HaShem, “The Name.” Unfortunately, in a desire to reverence the name of Yahweh, the people who would otherwise be blessed, have been cut off from the power and blessing that God promises, when his Name is properly invoked to bless his people.
Sadly, this tragedy of not using the name of Yahweh has been perpetuated by much of Christianity, as seen in the English translations of the Bible. Many pronouncements of the benedictions and blessings of Numbers 6 have gone unrealized because the name of Yahweh has not been invoked to bring about the blessing.
Recognizing the difficult times in which we live, and knowing it will get worse before Messiah comes, it is imperative that we call on God for His blessing in the Name which He determined we should use the name of Yahweh. Let us pray then;
“Yahweh bless you and keep you;
Yahweh make His face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you,
Yahweh lift up His countenance upon you,
and give you peace.”
When we pray this way when we put the name of Yahweh on those we are praying for – we have the sure and certain promise that His blessing is on the way!
Jim Hutchens is President of The Jerusalem Connection, International and editor of The Jerusalem Connection Report.
The Golan’s Biblical and Post-Biblical History
Aug 1st
By Victor Sharpe
Before the Tribes of Israel would cross the River Jordan and enter the Promised Land, the first among them had taken possession of territory east of the Jordan. These tribes were the half tribe of Manasseh, Gad and Reuben who received the kingdom of the Amorites, Bashan, and Gilead.
Biblical Bashan incorporates today’s Golan Heights. Gilead is the fertile land, which lies in what is today the north eastern area of the Kingdom of Jordan: “ … a little balm, and a little honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds” (Gen 43:11.)
It was Canaan, west of the Jordan, (including today’s so called West Bank) which would pose the formidable challenge to Joshua bin Nun, the general leading the Israelite tribes. So it was that Moses, the Lawgiver, spoke to the children of Gad and Reuben thus:
“Shall your brethren go to war, and shall you sit here?” (Numbers 32:6) The leaders of the two tribes replied that they would indeed send their combat men west into Canaan and fight alongside their brethren while their families would remain behind.
“We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle and cities for our little ones. But we ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance.” (Numbers 32: 16-18)
The story of reconstituted Israel and its people is mirrored in the biblical story of those ancient ancestors. The young men and women of modern Israel have gone again and again from their homes, be they villages, towns or cities, to the borders and established communities there in times of danger and peril, just like those young men did from the biblical tribes of Gad and Reuben.
The Jewish pioneers of today in Judea and Samaria – the biblical heartland – are no different. But the world has chosen to demonize them as “obstacles to peace” and an impediment to the creation of a fraudulent Arab state to be called Palestine; a state that has never existed in all of recorded history; certainly not as a sovereign independent Arab state.
The pioneers are now called “settlers” and their homes and farms derisively called “settlements.” It matters not to the infernal chorus that sings the international siren song of hate and ignorance that these pioneers are returned to their ancestral homesteads and seek to take up their ploughshares to sow, to plant and re-possess their homeland.
But the purpose of this article is to learn about the biblical and post biblical history of the Jewish descendants of Gad, Reuben and Manasseh.
The Bashan region, now known as the Golan Heights, is a part of the biblical territory promised to the Patriarch Abraham and the people of Israel for an everlasting covenant – the Covenant of the Parts – recounted in Genesis 15. The city of Bashan was a refuge city (Deut, 4:43).
During the biblical period of the Jewish Kings, a battle high on the Golan took place between King Ahab and the army of Aram. A Jewish victory occurred at the present site of Kibbutz Afik, which lies a few miles east of the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee.
After the end of the Babylonian Exile, and during the Second Temple Period, Jews returned to their homes on the Golan. Subsequently the returnees were attacked by gentiles and Judah Maccabee brought his forces up to the Heights to defend them.
At the conclusion of the Hasmonean Period, King Alexander Yannai finally re-conquered the Golan and Jews returned yet again. They rebuilt communities in central Golan including the major cities of Banias and Susita, which formed part of the defense of the Golan.
Their residents fought heroically against the Roman legions during the Great Revolt of 135 AD, known also as the Second Uprising. It was led by the charismatic Shimeon Bar Kokhba, known as the “Son of a Star” and a folk hero as great as Arthur or Ulysses. Some 10,000 residents of Gamla alone perished fighting against Rome.
Second century Jewish coins were found on the Golan after its liberation during the last days of the June, 1967 Six Day War. These ancient coins were inscribed with the words, “For the Redemption of Holy Jerusalem.”
In the succeeding period of the Talmudic Period, Jewish communities flourished and expanded. Archaeologists have found the remains of 34 synagogues on the Golan. Jewish life on the Golan largely ended after the defeat of the Byzantine army and the region descended into a long period of neglect when it fell under occupation by Arabs carrying the new banner of Islam.
But Jewish life returned yet again in the latter years of the 19th century when members of the Bnei Yehuda society from Safed purchased land on the Golan. In 1891, Baron Rothschild purchased around 18,000 acres in what is present day Ramat Magshimim.
The Jewish pioneers of the First Aliyah (immigration) began to farm land they had purchased in the Horan region until the Turkish Ottoman occupiers evicted them in 1898. Their land was then seized, and in 1923 the entire Golan was given away by Britain to the French Mandate over Syria and Lebanon.
Zionist leaders had earlier demanded the Golan be included within the new Jewish National Home because of its immense historical roots in biblical and post-biblical Jewish history. But Jewish liberation of the ancestral land was not possible until Israel was forced to fight for its very survival during the Six Day War.
Those of us who have visited Upper Galilee and the Golan cannot but be struck by the strategic value to Israel of control of the Heights. The Golan’s steep escarpment rises some 1,700 feet and overlooks Israel’s fertile Hula Valley and the beautiful harp shaped lake called Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee.)
The Golan is only 60 miles from Haifa and, before the June, 1967 Six Day War, it was used exclusively by hostile occupying Syrian forces as an artillery site from which to bombard Israeli farmers in the valley below and fishermen on Lake Kinneret. The slopes of Mount Hermon, the highest point in the region, are the present eyes and ears of Israel.
The Golan Heights were officially annexed to Israel in 1980. But it was Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who first offered to give the Heights away in 1994.
Since then, Israelis have winced at the wrenching offers made by subsequent Israeli governments and politicians who declared publicly their desire to give the entire Heights to the Syrians in return for a delusional peace. The overwhelming majority of Israelis were and are adamantly opposed to any such suggestion.
Not so long ago the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group suggested that a way out for the United States from the Iraqi imbroglio would be for Israel to give the Golan Heights away to Syria.
This, it was believed by the ISG, would bring Syria into responsible nationhood and wean her away from support of the “insurgents” attacking Iraqi and U.S assets. Of course this was before the successes of the “Surge” instituted by General Petraus made such a suggestion moot.
U.S. President Bureiq Hussein Obama is now beginning diplomatic relations with Syria again as a way, he believes, of distancing the Arab dictatorship from its alliance with Iran. This is yet another delusional act by the current U.S. President, but Obama’s carrot to the Syrian dictator will, inevitably, be the Golan Heights. Brutal pressure will no doubt be applied upon Israel to give away yet more of its biblical patrimony.
But what would pressure upon Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights mean? Bringing down the Israeli radar stations on the Hermon Massif to the valley floor below would seriously degrade any warning of future hostile Syrian attacks.
It would further hamper Israel’s ability to prevent attacks upon it by Syrian forces and by Hezbollah, now returned to even greater strength by Syria and Iran after the recent two wars in southern Lebanon.
Israelis have been ill served by too many of their leaders. The fact that any Israeli politician or military leader would even contemplate throwing away both ancestral and strategic territory is a recurring blight the Jewish state can ill afford.
And to put any trust in an Arab nation, especially the Iranian backed Syrian regime, is truly mind boggling. Besides which, it would be a betrayal of those first Jewish ancestors on the Golan who long ago “built sheepfolds for their cattle and cities for their little ones.”
Copyright © Victor Sharpe 2009. Victor Sharpe writes about Jewish history and the Islamist-Israel conflict. He is also the author of POLITICIDE – The attempted murder of the Jewish state. Available from publisher (www.lulu.com).