Last week, I watched a segment on a Fox News program that featured guests discussing Bible prophecy and the end of the world. One of the featured guests was a Roman Catholic priest and the other the head of a midwestern Baptist seminary.
It was an interesting, albeit short, discussion that opened with the priest noting that people have 'been predicting the end of the world for centuries,' a position that was immediately echoed by the Baptist guest.
The conversation immediately called to mind 2nd Peter 3:3-4:
"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."
But the fact is, they are right. History is replete with folks who have made various predictions about when the Lord is coming back. And obviously, they were wrong, since here we are.
As a side note, before I go on, please do not email me to repeat the allegation that Hal Lindsey also set a date for the Rapture unless you are prepared to cite exactly where and when, and back it up with evidence more tangible than quoting what somebody else said Hal said.
I've heard it all before, but nobody has ever been able to show me where. Hal's works are all still in print. If it was true, you'd think somebody might be able to show me something more than 'so and so said'. Otherwise, your email will end up in my burn-before-reading file.
In the mid-2nd century, a new convert named Montanus claimed to have received special revelations from God that Christ had returned and set up the New Jerusalem in the town of Pepuza in Phrygia.
Montanus set up his own religion, called 'Montanism' that gave credence to ecstactic prophesy and speaking in tongues as both evidence of salvation and proof of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Montanus taught that Christians who fell from grace could not be redeemed, which was in contrast with the orthodox Christian teachings of that period. The prophets of Montanism did not speak as messengers of God: "Thus saith the Lord," but rather described themselves as possessed by God, and spoke as God.
"I am the Father, the Word, and the Paraclete," said Montanus, as recorded by Didymus in his work, 'De Trinitate'. The early Church Father Iraenius denounced Montanism in his work, 'Against Heresies' in the third century.
The heretical work, "the Secret Gospel of Thomas" (upon which the 'Davinci Codes' are loosely based) emerged from Montanism, and, 19 centuries later, it is still with us, as are literal volumes of historical false prophecies of Christ's return.
The 'scoffers' seem to have a point. Catholic scholar, Arnald of Villanova predicted that the Antichrist would appear in 1378. In the 15th century, a group called the Taborites predicted the return of Christ and the destruction of all the world's cities by fire.
A hundred years later, Melchior Hoffman predicted Jesus would return in 1533 and set up his kingdom in Strasbourg.
A Lutheran clergyman named Adam Nachenmoser predicted the Lord would return in 1635. Another movement sprang up about this time that taught the date of the Lord's return would be 1666.
Among the most famous false prophets of the return of Christ is William Miller, who, basing his conclusions on his study of the Book of Daniel, predicted the Lord would return sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.
Miller called his prophecy the beginning of "The Great Awakening." He later revised his prediction to October 22, 1844. Miller and his followers put on their 'Rapture suits' and went to the top of a mountain, prayed, fasted and waited.
When Jesus did not appear, Miller's followers experienced what came to be called "the Great Disappointment". Most of the thousands of followers left the movement.
A few, however, went back to their Bibles to find out why they had been disappointed. A group of the remaining followers concluded that the prophecy predicted not that Jesus would return to earth in 1844, but that investigative judgement in heaven would begin in that year.
Miller recorded his personal disappointment in his memoirs: "Were I to live my life over again, with the same evidence that I then had, to be honest with God and man, I should have to do as I have done. I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment."
Despite Miller's failed prophecies, his followers eventually formed their own religious movement, originally called
'Millerites' and known today as Seventh Day Adventists.
Miller's failed prophecies inspired new prophets to come forward with their own, revised and update calculations. The most prolific among them was Charles Taze Russell. Picking up where Miller left off, Russell's followers, at first known as 'Russellites' (catchy names, eh?) believed that they had discovered 'significant errors' in orthodox Christian teachings.
Russell taught that the Rapture would occur in April, 1878. In 1877, Russell published his teachings under the title, "The Object and Manner of our Lord's Return."
When the Lord failed to return on Russell's timetable, he founded a journal entitled, "Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence" in 1879. In the pages of his journal, Russell continued to set dates for the Lord's return, in 1889, 1891, 1897, 1899 and 1904 and, finally, 1914.
Russell's movement was renamed " the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society " or "Jehovah's Witnesses." It was taken over after Russell's death by Joseph Rutherford, who added 1918 and 1920 to the list of dates for Christ's return and declared the Millennium began in 1925.
In 1974, David Berg set up his own cult, called "The Family" or "Children of God", predicting the end of the world would coincide with the appearance of the comet Kohoutek, later revising it to place the Tribulation at the beginning of 1989 and the return of Christ for 1993.
Edgar Whisenant predicted Christ's return between September 11 and September 13, 1988, in his aptly titled, "88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988". Whisnant based his predictions on the timing of the Jewish Feast of the Trumpets. (Rosh Hashana)
In 1989, Benny Hinn predicted that a 'short man' would appear within 'a few' years and assume the mantle of the antichrist. (Hinn also predicted Castro's death by 1999, the election of a female US president who would 'destroy America' and the destruction of the East Coast by earthquakes in 1999.)
Harold Camping published his book, "1994?" in which he predicted the return of Christ on September 6, 1994. Camping also calculated the return of Christ based on the date of the Jewish Feast of the Trumpets.
Is it any wonder that the world is inundated with 'scoffers?' Most of these predictions, together with their prognosticators, were made by sincere and dedicated scholars who believed that they had 'cracked' some Biblical secret code that had been there all along, but that nobody else except them had discovered.
Their followers were equally sincere and dedicated believers in their prophecies, but they misplaced their faith. Our faith is not to be, as the Scripture says, rooted in WHEN He comes, but rather, in Who is coming.
This is why the Lord says, in clear and unambiguous terms, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but My Father only." (Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32)
It means exactly what it says. No man can calculate the day or the hour because of the damage such false prophecies do to believers when they fail.
Look at the damage already caused by those sincere, well-meaning believers among the false prophets listed above. While some of them were undoubtedly well-meaning, the result has been the loss of uncounted souls for Christ.
Do you doubt me? Have you ever attempted to present evidence of Christ's return in the hope that the evidence will cause somebody to accept the conclusion that God MUST be real and therefore the Bible MUST be true? And, having reached that conclusion, your prospect will recognize his lost condition and trust Jesus?
How MANY times have you then heard someone echo the sentiments expressed in 2nd Peter 3:3? "People have been predicting the end of the world for centuries, but we're still here." It is a fulfillment of prophecy, but it is also evidence of the incalculable damage centuries of false prophecy has been responsible for.
It's been said before, and it didn't happen. What makes this any different?
While no generation in the history of the Church Age has at its disposal more conclusive evidence of the fulfillment of end times prophecy, including the restoration of nations, the alignment of nations in precisely the configuration described by the prophets, the explosion of knowledge, the shifting weather patterns, the restoration of Israel, etc., this evidence is useless as a tool of evangelism if nobody can get past the 'been there, done that' part in order to present it.
Every failed prediction of the Rapture or the return of Christ takes its toll. If just one person is turned off to the promise of salvation as a result of the litany of failed prognosticators of the past -- all of whom were in violation of the clear teachings of the Scriptures -- the loss of that person's soul is an incalculable tragedy, from Heaven's perspective.
The joy Jesus spoke of in heaven when a sinner turns to Christ goes uncelebrated, replaced by the mourning of the angels.
The simple facts are these. No other generation has been blessed with such a preponderance of evidence. No generation in history has ever had so many reasons to accept the predictive nature of Scripture -- and thus, evidence of the Divinity of its Author, than does the generation that witnessed the rebirth of Israel and the unfolding scenario predicted thousands of years ago by the Hebrew prophets.
But if the evidence doesn't get a hearing, it is of no value.
"For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God," writes the Apostle Paul. (1st Corinthians 2:11)
Attempting to divine by human means that which God has deliberately drawn a curtain around is an act of defiance that bears eternal and far-reaching consequences that no man will ever understand this side of heaven. But if we trust Jesus, then we must trust EVERYTHING He taught us.
Discussing His return, Jesus used an analogy that clearly explains the purpose of a secret, incalculable Rapture.
"And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour WHEN YE THINK NOT." (Luke 12:39-40)
As events unfold that fill out the prophetic puzzle for this generation, it is abundantly obvious that the Lord must soon return for His Church.
But as to 'when' -- 'no man knoweth the day or the hour.' The litany of failed attempts has provided much-needed ammunition to the enemy and done the Kingdom a grave disservice. And given the scoffers all the reasons they need to walk away, comfortable in their unbelief.
It is a spiritual tragedy!
08.11.06
Friday, August 11, 2006
Worry About the West — Not Israel
The reactions and media coverage coming out of the West regarding this latest war in the Middle East are as bewildering as they are instructive.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., for example, recently said, "I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel."
Meanwhile, the Western news agency Reuters, responding to scrutiny by bloggers, withdrew wire photos taken by a freelance photographer of a smoky and burning Beirut. Reuters had failed to catch the freelancer's doctoring of the photos to emphasize unduly the damage from Israeli bombs.
And the Associated Press notes that initially reported Lebanese claims of 40 "civilians" killed by Israeli air strikes at Houla, Lebanon, in fact, were mistaken — and that the latest reports have lowered the death toll to one.
In Qana, where the Israeli military had hit an apartment building (and were quickly censured by European statesmen), the number of civilian fatalities reported also kept decreasing as reports were scrutinized. Plus, we have learned that several hours lapsed between the dropping of the bombs and the fatal collapse of the building, raising further questions about the relationship between the bombing and the fatalities that followed. Finally, based on photographs from the scene, the onsite rescue appeared staged for reporters.
These discrepancies suggest we have little idea what actually happened on the ground there — other than that Qana has been a favored missile-launching site against Israel, as a recent deadly aerial assault from there on Haifa attests.
There is a depressing pattern here. The sources for Western erroneous reports and faked pictures always seem to exaggerate the damage to Lebanon — but never to Israel.
Likewise, Western news agencies rarely list a precise number of Hezbollah losses, instead lumping them in with civilian fatalities. Does that mean that someone who launches a missile in Levis and sneakers is not a combatant?
In addition, the history and nature of Hezbollah do not matter to many in the West. Knowingly or not, news outlets continue to spread Hezbollah's propaganda. One wonders if Westerners remember or know that, until Sept. 11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than had any other terrorist organization.
Most ignore as well that Hezbollah precipitated the present crisis by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers, and launching missiles against Israel's cities.
In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Forces use precision bombs to target combatants and try to avoid civilian casualties (though the latter is nearly impossible against an enemy who doesn't wear uniforms and uses non-combatants as "human shields"). In contrast, every random missile launched by Hezbollah is intended to hit a civilian target.
On one side of this conflict is a true democracy that was attacked. On the other are terrorists who hijacked the sovereign government of Lebanon, instituted theocratic rule over a third of the country — and started a war.
Hezbollah, of course, has been enabled in large part thanks to Iranian petro-dollars and intimidation. But the nature of Hezbollah's patrons doesn't seem to matter to many Westerners, either.
Those now calling for "dialogue" with the "major players" ignore that Iran promises to wipe out Israel. The French foreign minister was quick to praise the regional role of theocratic Iran as "stabilizing."
Then there's Hezbollah's other patron, Syria, a country that brutally occupied Lebanon, harbors terrorists and is suspected of being behind the assassination of Lebanese reformist Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
So, what then does matter to so many Westerners about this war?
Our fear, of course. We want to avoid messy complications like stirring up another 9/11 or Madrid bombing, spiking oil prices to over $80 a barrel, or treading on politically incorrect ground by criticizing the "other" of the former Third World.
The Western press — usually so careful to condemn hate speech — is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads.
Still, when this is all over, we should not worry about the survival of Israel. For weeks, pundits have been lecturing how canny and adept Hezbollah has proved — and how a clumsy Israel could only respond by destroying Lebanon's infrastructure. Yet, when the dust settles, the world will learn that Lebanon outside Hezbollah's domain is not destroyed. And, one hopes, those who have suffered in the Hezbollah-controlled south will reexamine their support for a terrorist organization that has brought them — and itself — to near ruin.
Instead far more worrisome is the moral crisis in the West itself. If so many of its politicians, intellectuals and media will not or cannot fathom moral differences in this war, they will hardly be able to see them anywhere else.
Jewish World Review
08.11.2006
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., for example, recently said, "I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel."
Meanwhile, the Western news agency Reuters, responding to scrutiny by bloggers, withdrew wire photos taken by a freelance photographer of a smoky and burning Beirut. Reuters had failed to catch the freelancer's doctoring of the photos to emphasize unduly the damage from Israeli bombs.
And the Associated Press notes that initially reported Lebanese claims of 40 "civilians" killed by Israeli air strikes at Houla, Lebanon, in fact, were mistaken — and that the latest reports have lowered the death toll to one.
In Qana, where the Israeli military had hit an apartment building (and were quickly censured by European statesmen), the number of civilian fatalities reported also kept decreasing as reports were scrutinized. Plus, we have learned that several hours lapsed between the dropping of the bombs and the fatal collapse of the building, raising further questions about the relationship between the bombing and the fatalities that followed. Finally, based on photographs from the scene, the onsite rescue appeared staged for reporters.
These discrepancies suggest we have little idea what actually happened on the ground there — other than that Qana has been a favored missile-launching site against Israel, as a recent deadly aerial assault from there on Haifa attests.
There is a depressing pattern here. The sources for Western erroneous reports and faked pictures always seem to exaggerate the damage to Lebanon — but never to Israel.
Likewise, Western news agencies rarely list a precise number of Hezbollah losses, instead lumping them in with civilian fatalities. Does that mean that someone who launches a missile in Levis and sneakers is not a combatant?
In addition, the history and nature of Hezbollah do not matter to many in the West. Knowingly or not, news outlets continue to spread Hezbollah's propaganda. One wonders if Westerners remember or know that, until Sept. 11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than had any other terrorist organization.
Most ignore as well that Hezbollah precipitated the present crisis by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers, and launching missiles against Israel's cities.
In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Forces use precision bombs to target combatants and try to avoid civilian casualties (though the latter is nearly impossible against an enemy who doesn't wear uniforms and uses non-combatants as "human shields"). In contrast, every random missile launched by Hezbollah is intended to hit a civilian target.
On one side of this conflict is a true democracy that was attacked. On the other are terrorists who hijacked the sovereign government of Lebanon, instituted theocratic rule over a third of the country — and started a war.
Hezbollah, of course, has been enabled in large part thanks to Iranian petro-dollars and intimidation. But the nature of Hezbollah's patrons doesn't seem to matter to many Westerners, either.
Those now calling for "dialogue" with the "major players" ignore that Iran promises to wipe out Israel. The French foreign minister was quick to praise the regional role of theocratic Iran as "stabilizing."
Then there's Hezbollah's other patron, Syria, a country that brutally occupied Lebanon, harbors terrorists and is suspected of being behind the assassination of Lebanese reformist Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
So, what then does matter to so many Westerners about this war?
Our fear, of course. We want to avoid messy complications like stirring up another 9/11 or Madrid bombing, spiking oil prices to over $80 a barrel, or treading on politically incorrect ground by criticizing the "other" of the former Third World.
The Western press — usually so careful to condemn hate speech — is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads.
Still, when this is all over, we should not worry about the survival of Israel. For weeks, pundits have been lecturing how canny and adept Hezbollah has proved — and how a clumsy Israel could only respond by destroying Lebanon's infrastructure. Yet, when the dust settles, the world will learn that Lebanon outside Hezbollah's domain is not destroyed. And, one hopes, those who have suffered in the Hezbollah-controlled south will reexamine their support for a terrorist organization that has brought them — and itself — to near ruin.
Instead far more worrisome is the moral crisis in the West itself. If so many of its politicians, intellectuals and media will not or cannot fathom moral differences in this war, they will hardly be able to see them anywhere else.
Jewish World Review
08.11.2006
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Robertson, Olmert Pray For Victory
Israel's war against Hizbullah in Lebanon is the free world's "struggle for freedom" against Islamic-Fascism, which will soon imperil the security of the same European countries that are now criticizing Israel's war in Lebanon, prominent American Evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson said Wednesday.
"I am here to say I love Israel and that Christian Evangelicals in America stand with Israel in its struggle for freedom against Islamo-fascism, which is directed against Israel and all civilized nations of the world" Robertson said at a Jerusalem press conference during his 96-hour lightning solidarity trip.
He called Israel's four-week battle with the Iranian-backed and Syrian-supported Shi'ite terror group "the front line" for all free-loving people around the world.
"For all of our sake, Israel cannot lose," he added.
The 76-year-old American Evangelical broadcaster, who visited bomb shelters in northern Israel and dodged Katyusha rockets before heading south to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, predicted that European countries would soon face the same threat of Islamic Fundamentalism that Israel was now fighting, adding that he was "dismayed" by the "growing amount of virulent anti-Semitism in Europe."
He heaped praise on the premier, who he prayed with after his security cabinet had just authorized broadening Israel's land offensive in Lebanon, as a "man of courage" and of "indomitable leadership" for his willingness to take on "one of the most serious challenges" Israel has ever faced.
Robertson said he joined hands Wednesday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to pray for victory in Lebanon.
Olmert's 15-minute meeting with Robertson came on an intense day of political activity, and could be seen as implicit recognition of the importance of the Christian right in US politics.
During his brief remarks, Robertson cautioned that while the majority of Americans clearly understand that Israel has been attacked by terrorists in the same way the US was attacked by terrorists, a drawn-out war could see public opinion shifting away from Israel as a result of the press focus on Lebanese civilians casualties of the war.
His unplanned visit comes at a time of burgeoning ties between Israel and the predominantly pro-Israel Evangelical Christian community around the world.
Robertson's war-time solidarity visit - his 17th trip to Israel - was also seen by some as an attempt to smooth over any remaining ill-will for remarks he made last year in which he said that former Prime Minister's Ariel Sharon's stroke was "divine retribution" for having evacuated the Gaza Strip, comments which he later apologized for and retracted amidst fierce criticism.
Many Evangelical Christians saw the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a retreat from a biblical prophecy of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, and similarily view any further Israeli pullout from the West Bank as an anathema.
Separately, Robertson also noted that US Senator's Joe Lieberman's loss in the Democratic primaries Tuesday was like "God's answer" to a Republican strategists' prayers to split the party.
Jerusalem Post
08.10.2006
"I am here to say I love Israel and that Christian Evangelicals in America stand with Israel in its struggle for freedom against Islamo-fascism, which is directed against Israel and all civilized nations of the world" Robertson said at a Jerusalem press conference during his 96-hour lightning solidarity trip.
He called Israel's four-week battle with the Iranian-backed and Syrian-supported Shi'ite terror group "the front line" for all free-loving people around the world.
"For all of our sake, Israel cannot lose," he added.
The 76-year-old American Evangelical broadcaster, who visited bomb shelters in northern Israel and dodged Katyusha rockets before heading south to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, predicted that European countries would soon face the same threat of Islamic Fundamentalism that Israel was now fighting, adding that he was "dismayed" by the "growing amount of virulent anti-Semitism in Europe."
He heaped praise on the premier, who he prayed with after his security cabinet had just authorized broadening Israel's land offensive in Lebanon, as a "man of courage" and of "indomitable leadership" for his willingness to take on "one of the most serious challenges" Israel has ever faced.
Robertson said he joined hands Wednesday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to pray for victory in Lebanon.
Olmert's 15-minute meeting with Robertson came on an intense day of political activity, and could be seen as implicit recognition of the importance of the Christian right in US politics.
During his brief remarks, Robertson cautioned that while the majority of Americans clearly understand that Israel has been attacked by terrorists in the same way the US was attacked by terrorists, a drawn-out war could see public opinion shifting away from Israel as a result of the press focus on Lebanese civilians casualties of the war.
His unplanned visit comes at a time of burgeoning ties between Israel and the predominantly pro-Israel Evangelical Christian community around the world.
Robertson's war-time solidarity visit - his 17th trip to Israel - was also seen by some as an attempt to smooth over any remaining ill-will for remarks he made last year in which he said that former Prime Minister's Ariel Sharon's stroke was "divine retribution" for having evacuated the Gaza Strip, comments which he later apologized for and retracted amidst fierce criticism.
Many Evangelical Christians saw the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a retreat from a biblical prophecy of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, and similarily view any further Israeli pullout from the West Bank as an anathema.
Separately, Robertson also noted that US Senator's Joe Lieberman's loss in the Democratic primaries Tuesday was like "God's answer" to a Republican strategists' prayers to split the party.
Jerusalem Post
08.10.2006
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Advocates of ‘Proportion’ Are Just Unbalanced
"Disproportion" is the concept of the moment. Do you know how to play? Let's say 150 missiles are lobbed at northern Israel from the Lebanese village of Qana and the Israelis respond with missiles of their own that kill 28 people. Whoa, man, that's way "disproportionate."
But let's say you're a northwestern American municipality — Seattle, for example — and you haven't lobbed missiles at anybody, but a Muslim male shows up anyway and shoots six Jewish women, one of whom tries to flee up the stairs, but he spots her, leans over the railing, fires again and kills her. He describes himself as "an American Muslim angry at Israel" and tells 911 dispatchers: ''These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.''
Well, that's apparently entirely "proportionate," so "proportionate" that the event is barely reported in the American media, or (if it is) it's portrayed as some kind of random convenience-store drive-by shooting. Pamela Waechter's killer informed his victims that "I'm only doing this for a statement," but the world couldn't be less interested in his statement, not compared to his lawyer's statement that he's suffering from "bipolar disorder.'' And the local FBI guy, like the Mounties in Toronto a month or so back, took the usual no-jihad-to-see-here line. ''There's nothing to indicate it's terrorism related,'' said Special Assistant Agent-In-Charge David Gomez. In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn't count unless you're officially credentialed.
On the other hand, when a drunk movie star gets pulled over and starts unburdening himself of various theories about "***** Jews," hold the front page! That is so totally "disproportionate" it's the biggest story of the moment. The head of America's most prominent Jewish organization will talk about nothing else for days on end, he and the media too tied up dealing with Mel Gibson's ruminations on "***** Jews" to bother with footling peripheral stories about actual ****** Jews murdered for no other reason than because they're ****** Jews.
On the other other hand, when the leader of Hezb'allah, Hassan Nasrallah, announces that if Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,'' that's not in the least "disproportionate.'' When President Ahmadinejad of Iran visits Malaysia and declares, apropos Lebanon, that "although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," well, that's just a bit of mildly overheated rhetoric prefacing what's otherwise a very helpful outline of a viable peace process: (Stage One) Please don't keep degrading our infrastructure until (Stage Two) we've got the capacity to nuke you.
Right now, Israel's best chance of any decent press would seem to be if Mel Gibson flies in and bawls out his waiter as a "****** Jew.''
What can we deduce from these various acts, proportionate and not so? If you talk to European officials, they'll tell you privately that that Seattle shooting is the way of the future — that every now and then in Seattle or Sydney, Madrid or Manchester, someone will die because they went to a community center, got on the bus, showed up for work . . and a jihadist was there. But they're confident that they can hold it to what the British security services cynically called, at the height of the Northern Ireland ''Troubles,'' ''an acceptable level of violence'' — i.e., it will all be kept ''proportionate.'' Tough for Pam Waechter's friends and family, but there won't be too many of them.
I wonder if they're right to be that complacent. The duke of Wellington, the great British soldier-politician, was born in Ireland, but, upon being described as an Irishman, remarked that a man could be born in a stable but it didn't make him a horse. That's the way many Muslims feel: Just because you're born in the filthy pigsty of the Western world doesn't make you a pig. What proportion of Muslims is hot for jihad? Well, it would be grossly insensitive and disproportionate to inquire. So instead we'll put it down to isolated phenomena like the supposed "bipolar disorder" of Pam Waechter's killer.
In the struggle between America and global Islam, it's the geopolitical bipolar disorder that matters. Clearly, from his own statements about "our people," for Pam Waechter's killer his Muslim identity ultimately transcended his American one. That's what connects him to what's happening in southern Lebanon: a pan-Islamist identity that overrides national citizenship whether in the Pacific Northwest or the Levant. Not for all Muslims, but for enough that things will get mighty "disproportionate" before they're through.
Twenty-eight dead civilians in a village from which 150 Katyusha rockets have been launched against Israel doesn't seem "disproportionate" to me. What's "disproportionate" is the idea that civilian life should be allowed to proceed normally in what is, in fact, a terrorist launching platform.
But, when an army goes to war against a terrorist organization, it's like watching the Red Sox play Andre Agassi: Each side is being held to its own set of rules. When Hezbollah launches rockets into Israeli residential neighborhoods with the intention of killing random civilians, that's fine because, after all, they're terrorists and that's what terrorists do. But when, in the course of trying to resist the terrorists, Israel unintentionally kills civilians, that's an appalling act of savagery.
Speaking at West Point in 2002, President Bush observed: "Deterrence — the promise of massive retaliation against nations — means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." Actually, it's worse than that. In Hezbollahstan, the deaths of its citizens works to its strategic advantage: Dead Israelis are good news but dead Lebanese are even better, at least on the important battlefield of world opinion. The meta-narrative, as they say, is consistent through the media's Hez-one-they-made-earlier coverage, and the recent Supreme Court judgment, and EU-U.N. efforts to play "honest broker" between a sovereign state and a genocidal global terror conglomerate: All these things enhance the status of Islamist terror and thus will lead to more of it, and ever more "disproportionately."
Jewish World Review
08.09.2006
But let's say you're a northwestern American municipality — Seattle, for example — and you haven't lobbed missiles at anybody, but a Muslim male shows up anyway and shoots six Jewish women, one of whom tries to flee up the stairs, but he spots her, leans over the railing, fires again and kills her. He describes himself as "an American Muslim angry at Israel" and tells 911 dispatchers: ''These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.''
Well, that's apparently entirely "proportionate," so "proportionate" that the event is barely reported in the American media, or (if it is) it's portrayed as some kind of random convenience-store drive-by shooting. Pamela Waechter's killer informed his victims that "I'm only doing this for a statement," but the world couldn't be less interested in his statement, not compared to his lawyer's statement that he's suffering from "bipolar disorder.'' And the local FBI guy, like the Mounties in Toronto a month or so back, took the usual no-jihad-to-see-here line. ''There's nothing to indicate it's terrorism related,'' said Special Assistant Agent-In-Charge David Gomez. In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn't count unless you're officially credentialed.
On the other hand, when a drunk movie star gets pulled over and starts unburdening himself of various theories about "***** Jews," hold the front page! That is so totally "disproportionate" it's the biggest story of the moment. The head of America's most prominent Jewish organization will talk about nothing else for days on end, he and the media too tied up dealing with Mel Gibson's ruminations on "***** Jews" to bother with footling peripheral stories about actual ****** Jews murdered for no other reason than because they're ****** Jews.
On the other other hand, when the leader of Hezb'allah, Hassan Nasrallah, announces that if Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,'' that's not in the least "disproportionate.'' When President Ahmadinejad of Iran visits Malaysia and declares, apropos Lebanon, that "although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," well, that's just a bit of mildly overheated rhetoric prefacing what's otherwise a very helpful outline of a viable peace process: (Stage One) Please don't keep degrading our infrastructure until (Stage Two) we've got the capacity to nuke you.
Right now, Israel's best chance of any decent press would seem to be if Mel Gibson flies in and bawls out his waiter as a "****** Jew.''
What can we deduce from these various acts, proportionate and not so? If you talk to European officials, they'll tell you privately that that Seattle shooting is the way of the future — that every now and then in Seattle or Sydney, Madrid or Manchester, someone will die because they went to a community center, got on the bus, showed up for work . . and a jihadist was there. But they're confident that they can hold it to what the British security services cynically called, at the height of the Northern Ireland ''Troubles,'' ''an acceptable level of violence'' — i.e., it will all be kept ''proportionate.'' Tough for Pam Waechter's friends and family, but there won't be too many of them.
I wonder if they're right to be that complacent. The duke of Wellington, the great British soldier-politician, was born in Ireland, but, upon being described as an Irishman, remarked that a man could be born in a stable but it didn't make him a horse. That's the way many Muslims feel: Just because you're born in the filthy pigsty of the Western world doesn't make you a pig. What proportion of Muslims is hot for jihad? Well, it would be grossly insensitive and disproportionate to inquire. So instead we'll put it down to isolated phenomena like the supposed "bipolar disorder" of Pam Waechter's killer.
In the struggle between America and global Islam, it's the geopolitical bipolar disorder that matters. Clearly, from his own statements about "our people," for Pam Waechter's killer his Muslim identity ultimately transcended his American one. That's what connects him to what's happening in southern Lebanon: a pan-Islamist identity that overrides national citizenship whether in the Pacific Northwest or the Levant. Not for all Muslims, but for enough that things will get mighty "disproportionate" before they're through.
Twenty-eight dead civilians in a village from which 150 Katyusha rockets have been launched against Israel doesn't seem "disproportionate" to me. What's "disproportionate" is the idea that civilian life should be allowed to proceed normally in what is, in fact, a terrorist launching platform.
But, when an army goes to war against a terrorist organization, it's like watching the Red Sox play Andre Agassi: Each side is being held to its own set of rules. When Hezbollah launches rockets into Israeli residential neighborhoods with the intention of killing random civilians, that's fine because, after all, they're terrorists and that's what terrorists do. But when, in the course of trying to resist the terrorists, Israel unintentionally kills civilians, that's an appalling act of savagery.
Speaking at West Point in 2002, President Bush observed: "Deterrence — the promise of massive retaliation against nations — means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." Actually, it's worse than that. In Hezbollahstan, the deaths of its citizens works to its strategic advantage: Dead Israelis are good news but dead Lebanese are even better, at least on the important battlefield of world opinion. The meta-narrative, as they say, is consistent through the media's Hez-one-they-made-earlier coverage, and the recent Supreme Court judgment, and EU-U.N. efforts to play "honest broker" between a sovereign state and a genocidal global terror conglomerate: All these things enhance the status of Islamist terror and thus will lead to more of it, and ever more "disproportionately."
Jewish World Review
08.09.2006
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Knowing The Enemy: Hizb'allah
08.08.2006
"My mission was to prevent armored Israeli reinforcements from chasing after the kidnappers," Hussein Ali Suleiman, a Hizb'allah operative captured by the IDF, said when describing his role in the kidnapping last month of reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
Suleiman, 22, was captured several days ago by troops from the Golani Brigade operating in the southern Lebanese village of Ayta A Shayeb. Officers said that the operation was not related to the Hizb'allah operative, who they said, surrendered to the troops after he realized that he was completely surrounded. Suleiman, a high-ranking officer revealed Monday, was part of the 100-man force that participated in the cross-border kidnapping on July 12.
A commander of an anti-tank rocket cell, Suleiman did not cross the border into Israel, but was part of an outer-envelope force that the Hizb'allah deployed to prevent Israeli reinforcements from chasing after the abductors. Suleiman did not provide any new information regarding the condition of the Israeli soldiers being held by the Hizb'allah.
Senior military officials stressed this week however that the IDF was working according to the assumption that both Goldwasser and Regev were still alive and were being held in Lebanon. Last week, Special Forces conducted a raid in Baalbek in the Beka Valley deep in Lebanon following information that the kidnapped soldiers were treated in a hospital in the area.
In a videotaped segment of Suleiman's interrogation released on Monday by Military Intelligence, the Hizb'allah operative revealed how he was recruited into the guerrilla group in 2000 and how he participated in a religious "brainwashing" seminar following which he was sent to Iran for tactical warfare training. He said that he was trained how to use a number of weapons, in the use of explosives and first aid.
The Golani Brigade, Suleiman told his interrogator, was respected by the Hizb'allah and was referred to by the guerrilla group as a "group of soldiers well-trained in warfare and military tactics."
July's cross-border attack was not the first time Suleiman participated in a Hizb'allah attempt to abduct Israeli soldiers. He told his interrogator that he was also part of a guerrilla force that attacked an IDF outpost in the northern village of Rhajar last November. "The main goal was to abduct soldiers," Suleiman said of the failed attempt in Rhajar. "But the secondary goal of striking Israeli outposts was achieved."
Jerusalem Post
"My mission was to prevent armored Israeli reinforcements from chasing after the kidnappers," Hussein Ali Suleiman, a Hizb'allah operative captured by the IDF, said when describing his role in the kidnapping last month of reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
Suleiman, 22, was captured several days ago by troops from the Golani Brigade operating in the southern Lebanese village of Ayta A Shayeb. Officers said that the operation was not related to the Hizb'allah operative, who they said, surrendered to the troops after he realized that he was completely surrounded. Suleiman, a high-ranking officer revealed Monday, was part of the 100-man force that participated in the cross-border kidnapping on July 12.
A commander of an anti-tank rocket cell, Suleiman did not cross the border into Israel, but was part of an outer-envelope force that the Hizb'allah deployed to prevent Israeli reinforcements from chasing after the abductors. Suleiman did not provide any new information regarding the condition of the Israeli soldiers being held by the Hizb'allah.
Senior military officials stressed this week however that the IDF was working according to the assumption that both Goldwasser and Regev were still alive and were being held in Lebanon. Last week, Special Forces conducted a raid in Baalbek in the Beka Valley deep in Lebanon following information that the kidnapped soldiers were treated in a hospital in the area.
In a videotaped segment of Suleiman's interrogation released on Monday by Military Intelligence, the Hizb'allah operative revealed how he was recruited into the guerrilla group in 2000 and how he participated in a religious "brainwashing" seminar following which he was sent to Iran for tactical warfare training. He said that he was trained how to use a number of weapons, in the use of explosives and first aid.
The Golani Brigade, Suleiman told his interrogator, was respected by the Hizb'allah and was referred to by the guerrilla group as a "group of soldiers well-trained in warfare and military tactics."
July's cross-border attack was not the first time Suleiman participated in a Hizb'allah attempt to abduct Israeli soldiers. He told his interrogator that he was also part of a guerrilla force that attacked an IDF outpost in the northern village of Rhajar last November. "The main goal was to abduct soldiers," Suleiman said of the failed attempt in Rhajar. "But the secondary goal of striking Israeli outposts was achieved."
Jerusalem Post
Monday, August 07, 2006
The War Against Israel
Eight Israeli civilians were killed today by Hezbollah which fired 130 rockets at Israel within a ninety-minute period. 130 in 90 minutes! And at such a tiny country! Israel is smaller than Wales. Just imagine if humdreds rockets were fired from Scotland, say, at Wales with a view to wiping Wales off the map and murdering all Welsh people. If only a small number of rockets were fired at Britain day after day, it would be at war.
Can anyone doubt that if Britain was subjected to the kind of bombardment Israel has been enduring, with 100, 150, 200 rockets per day being fired at its towns and cities with the express purpose of wiping it out altogether, Britain’s armed forces would be responding with ferocity to put a stop to it?
Yet in Britain, the rules for the Jewish state are totally different. Israel is under genocidal attack, Ahmadinejad says the way to achieve peace in the Middle East is for Israel to be destroyed, one third of Israel is living in bomb shelters, its defence forces have their hands tied behind their backs because Hezbollah has hidden its rockets among civilians with the monstrous intention that as many of them as possible should be killed in order to turn the west against Israel victims; and yet as Haaretz reports, the Edinburgh Film Festival has barred an Israeli film director from the screening of his own work because ‘it might be in your best interest not to attend the festival this year for your own sake, rather than for ours’,
BBC News Online thinks the most important news of the day is; Lebanon damage ‘holding up’ aid Aid agencies in Lebanon say the severe damage to roads and bridges by Israeli air strikes is having a drastic effect on distribution of badly needed aid. Goods can only be transported in small lorries for fears that larger vehicles will be targeted, they say,
and Tony Blair is under siege from his Labour MPs who are consumed with righteous anger not against Hezbollah which is using the Lebanese as human shields, not against Ahmadinejad for his neo-Hitlerian agenda, but against Israel, their chosen victims, for refusing this time to line up passively to be slaughtered. Thus the Labour party and much of Britain (along with similarly-minded folk elsewhere: the New York Times is on this vile bandwagon, too) respond to genocidal aggression by viciously turning upon its designated victims for having the gall to defend themselves.
If, heaven forbid, this does turn into a second Holocaust, we can now discern the key difference from the first one. This time the Jews will be blamed for their own destruction. And this time, the political left and the media will have blood on their hands. Indeed, they already do. The lies, libels and distortions, the selective reporting and omissions, the egregious double standards, the moral inversion which turns jihadi murderers into resistance fighters and their victims into war criminals.
The willingess to report Hezbollah propaganda as the truth while disparaging Israeli statements as lies (when they are even reported at all), not to mention the ancient canards against the Jews now being blurted out everywhere from California to Canary Wharf – all are not only creating a lethal climate of increasingly hysterical hatred against Israel and the Jews, but are also egging on the terror-puppeteers of the jihad and recruiting yet more to the cause of murdering Jews and waging holy war against the west.
As ever, Mark Steyn lays bare the savage truth:
For centuries, Jews were viewed as sinister wandering rootless cosmopolitan figures of no national allegiance. So they became a conventional sovereign state and now they’re hated for that. The standard defense is that it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israeli policies, but, as Miss Campbell’s letter suggests, what’s being questioned is not Israel’s policies but the right of Israel to have policies, especially on national security.
If, say, some fellows in Mexico had kidnapped California State Troopers and were lobbing rockets randomly into residential areas of San Diego and Los Angeles, even La-La-Land libs would be demanding the US respond. It’s only the Israelis the world wishes to deny the conventional rights of sovereignty.
In other words, it’s the legitimacy of the state that’s at issue. In effect, Israel has become the geopolitical version of the European Jew who’s allowed to operate a store in the town but not to exercise full ownership rights: in the old days, Jews faced property restrictions; now they face sovereignty restrictions.
The old chestnut that to be anti-Israel is not necessarily to be anti-Jew won’t wash. Antisemitism is protean. It changes shape from generation to generation. First, Jews were hated on account of their religion. Then they were hated on account of their (supposed) race. And now they are hated on account of their nation state. Just as the individual Jew was once made the universal scapegoat for the crimes of others, now the collective Jew in the Jewish state is being forced to play the same role.
Israel is the defining moral issue of our time. Appallingly, Britain has put itself on the wrong side. The prejudice that now consumes what passes for public debate simply puts it beyond the moral pale. What is happening now in Britain is shocking beyond words.
Gamla
08.07.2006
Can anyone doubt that if Britain was subjected to the kind of bombardment Israel has been enduring, with 100, 150, 200 rockets per day being fired at its towns and cities with the express purpose of wiping it out altogether, Britain’s armed forces would be responding with ferocity to put a stop to it?
Yet in Britain, the rules for the Jewish state are totally different. Israel is under genocidal attack, Ahmadinejad says the way to achieve peace in the Middle East is for Israel to be destroyed, one third of Israel is living in bomb shelters, its defence forces have their hands tied behind their backs because Hezbollah has hidden its rockets among civilians with the monstrous intention that as many of them as possible should be killed in order to turn the west against Israel victims; and yet as Haaretz reports, the Edinburgh Film Festival has barred an Israeli film director from the screening of his own work because ‘it might be in your best interest not to attend the festival this year for your own sake, rather than for ours’,
BBC News Online thinks the most important news of the day is; Lebanon damage ‘holding up’ aid Aid agencies in Lebanon say the severe damage to roads and bridges by Israeli air strikes is having a drastic effect on distribution of badly needed aid. Goods can only be transported in small lorries for fears that larger vehicles will be targeted, they say,
and Tony Blair is under siege from his Labour MPs who are consumed with righteous anger not against Hezbollah which is using the Lebanese as human shields, not against Ahmadinejad for his neo-Hitlerian agenda, but against Israel, their chosen victims, for refusing this time to line up passively to be slaughtered. Thus the Labour party and much of Britain (along with similarly-minded folk elsewhere: the New York Times is on this vile bandwagon, too) respond to genocidal aggression by viciously turning upon its designated victims for having the gall to defend themselves.
If, heaven forbid, this does turn into a second Holocaust, we can now discern the key difference from the first one. This time the Jews will be blamed for their own destruction. And this time, the political left and the media will have blood on their hands. Indeed, they already do. The lies, libels and distortions, the selective reporting and omissions, the egregious double standards, the moral inversion which turns jihadi murderers into resistance fighters and their victims into war criminals.
The willingess to report Hezbollah propaganda as the truth while disparaging Israeli statements as lies (when they are even reported at all), not to mention the ancient canards against the Jews now being blurted out everywhere from California to Canary Wharf – all are not only creating a lethal climate of increasingly hysterical hatred against Israel and the Jews, but are also egging on the terror-puppeteers of the jihad and recruiting yet more to the cause of murdering Jews and waging holy war against the west.
As ever, Mark Steyn lays bare the savage truth:
For centuries, Jews were viewed as sinister wandering rootless cosmopolitan figures of no national allegiance. So they became a conventional sovereign state and now they’re hated for that. The standard defense is that it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israeli policies, but, as Miss Campbell’s letter suggests, what’s being questioned is not Israel’s policies but the right of Israel to have policies, especially on national security.
If, say, some fellows in Mexico had kidnapped California State Troopers and were lobbing rockets randomly into residential areas of San Diego and Los Angeles, even La-La-Land libs would be demanding the US respond. It’s only the Israelis the world wishes to deny the conventional rights of sovereignty.
In other words, it’s the legitimacy of the state that’s at issue. In effect, Israel has become the geopolitical version of the European Jew who’s allowed to operate a store in the town but not to exercise full ownership rights: in the old days, Jews faced property restrictions; now they face sovereignty restrictions.
The old chestnut that to be anti-Israel is not necessarily to be anti-Jew won’t wash. Antisemitism is protean. It changes shape from generation to generation. First, Jews were hated on account of their religion. Then they were hated on account of their (supposed) race. And now they are hated on account of their nation state. Just as the individual Jew was once made the universal scapegoat for the crimes of others, now the collective Jew in the Jewish state is being forced to play the same role.
Israel is the defining moral issue of our time. Appallingly, Britain has put itself on the wrong side. The prejudice that now consumes what passes for public debate simply puts it beyond the moral pale. What is happening now in Britain is shocking beyond words.
Gamla
08.07.2006
War Crimes
A short historical reminder. This time we won’t say a word about Muslims that butcher Muslims. We got used to it. The Muslims, especially in the eyes of the Left, are the retarded kids of the world. From them there is no need to demand responsibility, morale, international law. They are allowed.
This time we will deal with the West. We won’t head as far as the bombing of Dresden. We’ll go to recent history. It happened in 1999. Just 7 years ago. Milosevic irritated the Free World when he tried to take control of Kosovo. NATO started bombing. Following is an incomplete list of the injuries. Just of civilian ones.
On April 12th – 12 killed in a bombing of a civilian train;
on April 14th – 70 refugees are killed in a “hunt after warriors”. NATO forces admit that they find it hard to estimate the number of casualties;
April 27th – 16 civilians are killed. Two missiles diverted from their course;
April 28th – A stray missile reaches a peaceful neighborhood in Sophia, capital of Bulgaria.
May 1st – 27 killed in a bombing of a bus on a bridge in Belgrade. According to other claims 47 were killed. All of them civilians;
May 6th – 15 civilians are killed in the town of Nis in Yugoslavia;
on May 7th – the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is erroneously bombed. 3 civilians were killed;
May 13th – at least 100 civilians are killed in the village of Korisa. Burnt bodies of kids are presented in the world media. NATO’s spokesman announces that the bombings were against “legitimate military targets”.
May 19th – NATO airplanes are bombing the Belgrade hospital. At least 3 patients end their lives;
May 30th – 11 civilians are killed in the bombing of a bridge. They were on their way to the local market. On the same day the NATO bombers manage to bomb an old age home, causing the death of 20 of its residents; on May 31st another 11 civilians are killed in a bombing.
NATO, by the way, spread leaflets telling the civilians that bridges are about to be bombed. Obviously that didn’t help. Does this reminds something to somebody? There was a general sorrow for hurting innocents, but nobody dreamt of a cease fire. The bombings continued. It took months. Not days or weeks. The determination proved itself. Milosovic was forced to accept the international terms.
We’ve been in this situation before
Let’s continue to November 2004. The Ivory Coast Air Force attacked rebel concentrations. Since when does anybody count black people at all? That’s it, to the bombers’ bad luck 9 French were killed by accident. Soldiers. Not civilians. The French were angry. So angry that they wiped out the entire Ivory Coat Air Force and took control of the country’s airport. And that was only the beginning. When it was the natives’ turn to get angry, the French were sure to enforce order in a very aggressive way, which included killing 27 protesters.
Now let’s go back and discuss the proportions. Milosovic didn’t announce that he intends to destroy all of Europe. The Ivory Coast didn’t announce that its intention is to destroy France. And yet, the reactions of NATO and French were harsh and hard. The Security Council did not call for a cease fire. Au contraire. It was obvious that it’s necessary to get rid of the bad guy in the story. It took a lot of time. In the end he had to bend.
We should be sorry for every innocent that gets hurt. The question is whether somebody has invented a formula in which it’s possible to battle evil without hurting the innocents. In NATO they didn’t find that formula. In France neither. When we get to Israel the rules are being changed. Israel is required to restrain itself. Why? After all Nasrallah is much more dangerous than Milosovic. The Hezbollah is not a guerilla organization.
It’s an organization that possesses long-range missiles. In normal countries the state has an army. In the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah has a state. The Hezbollah controls Lebanon and Iran controls the Hezbollah. And also develops nuclear weapons, and also announces that it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
These are just declarations, the members of the Evil Front will tell us, the stupidity and reconciliation, those signed on various petitions. If we will just turn over the second cheek, Ahmandinejad and Nasrallah will send us flowers.
We’ve been in this situation before. We have the right to prevent it from recurring.
Gamla
08.07.2006
This time we will deal with the West. We won’t head as far as the bombing of Dresden. We’ll go to recent history. It happened in 1999. Just 7 years ago. Milosevic irritated the Free World when he tried to take control of Kosovo. NATO started bombing. Following is an incomplete list of the injuries. Just of civilian ones.
On April 12th – 12 killed in a bombing of a civilian train;
on April 14th – 70 refugees are killed in a “hunt after warriors”. NATO forces admit that they find it hard to estimate the number of casualties;
April 27th – 16 civilians are killed. Two missiles diverted from their course;
April 28th – A stray missile reaches a peaceful neighborhood in Sophia, capital of Bulgaria.
May 1st – 27 killed in a bombing of a bus on a bridge in Belgrade. According to other claims 47 were killed. All of them civilians;
May 6th – 15 civilians are killed in the town of Nis in Yugoslavia;
on May 7th – the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is erroneously bombed. 3 civilians were killed;
May 13th – at least 100 civilians are killed in the village of Korisa. Burnt bodies of kids are presented in the world media. NATO’s spokesman announces that the bombings were against “legitimate military targets”.
May 19th – NATO airplanes are bombing the Belgrade hospital. At least 3 patients end their lives;
May 30th – 11 civilians are killed in the bombing of a bridge. They were on their way to the local market. On the same day the NATO bombers manage to bomb an old age home, causing the death of 20 of its residents; on May 31st another 11 civilians are killed in a bombing.
NATO, by the way, spread leaflets telling the civilians that bridges are about to be bombed. Obviously that didn’t help. Does this reminds something to somebody? There was a general sorrow for hurting innocents, but nobody dreamt of a cease fire. The bombings continued. It took months. Not days or weeks. The determination proved itself. Milosovic was forced to accept the international terms.
We’ve been in this situation before
Let’s continue to November 2004. The Ivory Coast Air Force attacked rebel concentrations. Since when does anybody count black people at all? That’s it, to the bombers’ bad luck 9 French were killed by accident. Soldiers. Not civilians. The French were angry. So angry that they wiped out the entire Ivory Coat Air Force and took control of the country’s airport. And that was only the beginning. When it was the natives’ turn to get angry, the French were sure to enforce order in a very aggressive way, which included killing 27 protesters.
Now let’s go back and discuss the proportions. Milosovic didn’t announce that he intends to destroy all of Europe. The Ivory Coast didn’t announce that its intention is to destroy France. And yet, the reactions of NATO and French were harsh and hard. The Security Council did not call for a cease fire. Au contraire. It was obvious that it’s necessary to get rid of the bad guy in the story. It took a lot of time. In the end he had to bend.
We should be sorry for every innocent that gets hurt. The question is whether somebody has invented a formula in which it’s possible to battle evil without hurting the innocents. In NATO they didn’t find that formula. In France neither. When we get to Israel the rules are being changed. Israel is required to restrain itself. Why? After all Nasrallah is much more dangerous than Milosovic. The Hezbollah is not a guerilla organization.
It’s an organization that possesses long-range missiles. In normal countries the state has an army. In the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah has a state. The Hezbollah controls Lebanon and Iran controls the Hezbollah. And also develops nuclear weapons, and also announces that it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
These are just declarations, the members of the Evil Front will tell us, the stupidity and reconciliation, those signed on various petitions. If we will just turn over the second cheek, Ahmandinejad and Nasrallah will send us flowers.
We’ve been in this situation before. We have the right to prevent it from recurring.
Gamla
08.07.2006
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Israel Is Fighting For Its Existence
There's no doubt Israel is losing the propaganda war. You don't have to be a paid-up peacenik to find some of the pictures coming out of the Middle East distressing. No one with an iota of humanity wants to see the corpses of women and children caught up in the conflict.
But you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist, either, to wonder how many of the male 'civilians' killed by the Israelis are actually Hezb'allah terrorists or whether everything we're being shown from Lebanon is for real.
Islamonazis are sophisticated propagandists and they know they'll find a gullible audience in the civilised world for their carefully-strewn teddy bears, strategically-placed 'Baby Milk Factory' signs (in English) and wailing widows from central casting.
Have you ever noticed how every time a coalition air strike goes astray in Iraq, it always manages to hit a 'wedding party'?
Why is there only ever one child's shoe in the rubble, never a pair? There always seems to be a broken medicine box, too, with a handy red cross - never a red crescent, mind you - on the lid, just in case we haven't got the message.
Credulous CNN correspondents and handwringing BBC reporters fall over themselves to sign up for the Hezbollah guided tour of the ruins.
I use a rough rule of thumb whenever I watch television coverage of the Middle East. Anyone who pronounces Hezbollah as 'Hiz-bull-arrrgh' and Israeli as 'Izza-ra-ay-lee' is almost certainly telling lies.
The bien-pensant buzzword used to describe Israel's bombing is 'disproportionate'. But what's 'proportionate'? Are the thousands of rockets fired at genuine civilian targets in Israel 'proportionate'?
It is only because Israelis are hunkered down in underground shelters built out of necessity and bitter experience, or have fled out of range of Hezbollah's salvoes, that there haven't been piles of bodies on their side of the border.
What would 'world opinion' consider an acceptable death toll before acknowledging Israel's right
to retaliation and self-defence - 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?
Hezb'allah has started a war it knows it can't win in the certain knowledge that there will be civilian casualties. Its stated aim is to kill as many Israelis as possible and if innocent Lebanese get caught in the crossfire, tough.
These fanatics have little or no regard for human life. Their tactic is to hide among civilians; to use terrified women and children as human shields; to deploy school playgrounds as rocket launch sites; hotels and apartment blocks as command centres; homes as weapons dumps; mosques as air-raid shelters.
I've heard reporters referring to Hezb'allah as a 'resistance' movement. They love it, don't they? Just as they insist on calling terrorist murderers 'radicals' or 'militants' - as if there's no difference between Al Qaeda and Aslef train drivers on unofficial strike.
What they never point out is that if Hezbollah didn't exist, there would be nothing to resist. Israel is the Tony Martin of the Middle East, lashing out in fear and frustration after enduring years of provocation.
Just as Tony Martin was abandoned by the police to endure burglary after burglary at his remote farmhouse, so the 'international community' has done nothing to disarm and disband Hezb'allah or prevent it and Hamas repeatedly attacking Israel.
The United Nations hasn't lifted a finger to stop Iran and Syria supporting and supplying a standing terrorist army in Lebanon. There are no sanctions against the barking mad president of Iran when he constantly threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and is hell-bent on obtaining nuclear weapons.
Iran has put Lebanese civilians in the front line of its lunatic war against Israel and the U.S. in particular and Western civilisation in general. So where's the international condemnation?
Hezb'allah is the provisional wing of Iran. Would it be 'proportionate' if Israel attacked the paymasters and ringleaders of Hezb'allah in Tehran?
It may yet come to that. But first Israel has to remove the immediate threat to its security.
The United Nations isn't going to do that. The UN is a busted flush, led by the laughable Kofi Annan - the Chauncey Gardiner of world diplomacy. When it left the U.S.-led coalition to go it alone in Iraq, it sent a clear message to other tyrants and rogue states that they had nothing to fear from the UN.
Listening to 'world opinion' has got Israel nowhere. It was told it should trade land for peace. So it did. It got war. Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon six years ago. Hezbollah boasts that it has spent that time preparing for this fresh assault, building tunnels and bunkers and stockpiling a deadly arsenal of 13,000 weapons, which it is now raining down on Israeli civilians.
There are hourly calls for a ceasefire, but when Tel Aviv suspended bombing for 48 hours the response was a record number of Katyusha rockets fired into Israel in return.
I saw a BBC reporter standing on a hillside trying to convince us that because missiles were still being fired from Lebanon despite three weeks of fighting, it was evidence that Israel's tactics weren't working and it couldn't win.
Hezbollah has spent six years building up its arsenal in preparation for this war. Who said an Israeli victory would only take three weeks?
If there is a ceasefire, Hezb'allah will simply regroup. There's talk of a negotiated settlement, but how do you cut a deal when one side says it will not be satisfied until the other is totally eradicated?
Lasting peace has only ever followed total victory in war. Even if Israel and Hezb'allah/Iran agree to walk away tomorrow, we'll be back here again in a few years.
Then there's the Palestinian question. Again, even though Israel ceded territory in pursuit of peace, terror attacks and kidnappings on Israeli soil have continued.
There's talk about dusting off the old 'road map'. Israel accepts there will have to be a two-state solution, but the only 'road map' of the Middle East its enemies will accept is one without Israel on it at all.
Meanwhile, spare a thought for the Jewish community in Britain. They're as distressed by the carnage as the rest of us and there are divisions over Israel's actions. No one wallows in the death of innocents - except, of course, Hezb'allah and its Iranian puppet-masters.
THIS time of year, there are 15,000 British Jewish teenagers in Israel on the traditional summer rite of passage. And there are 30,000 British passport holders living in Israel.
Although we had wall-to-wall coverage of grumbling British passport holders being evacuated from Beirut, there doesn't seem to have been equal concern about our fellow citizens under bombardment on the other side of the border.
What struck me about the recent pro-Israel demonstration in London was the number of Union flags in the crowd. These are our people.
I didn't notice any Union flags at the Stop The War rally, though there were plenty of 'We Are All Hezb'allah Now' banners. It doesn't seem to dawn on them that if you want to stop the war you've got to stop Hezb'allah.
But what drives most of these 'peace campaigners' is not so much a desire for peace as a hatred of Israel.
Every time something goes off in Iraq we're told it will radicalise young Muslims back in Britain. We hear that Tony Blair's failure to call for an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive has put us at imminent risk of another Islamist homicide attack on our streets.
Despite the Hezbollah war on Israel and the mounting casualties - and the widespread condemnation of Israel in this country - I've yet to hear anyone warn that young British Jews are queueing to blow up themselves and hundreds of others at Brent Cross shopping centre.
I repeat, this war is awful. The civilian deaths are a tragedy.
But there won't be peace in the Middle East until the likes of Iran, Hezb'allah and Hamas recognise Israel's right to exist.
And, I'm afraid, this side of kingdom come, that just ain't gonna happen.
Israel may be losing the propaganda war, but it isn't fighting a propaganda war - it's fighting a real war for its very existence.
Daily Mail
08.05.2006
But you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist, either, to wonder how many of the male 'civilians' killed by the Israelis are actually Hezb'allah terrorists or whether everything we're being shown from Lebanon is for real.
Islamonazis are sophisticated propagandists and they know they'll find a gullible audience in the civilised world for their carefully-strewn teddy bears, strategically-placed 'Baby Milk Factory' signs (in English) and wailing widows from central casting.
Have you ever noticed how every time a coalition air strike goes astray in Iraq, it always manages to hit a 'wedding party'?
Why is there only ever one child's shoe in the rubble, never a pair? There always seems to be a broken medicine box, too, with a handy red cross - never a red crescent, mind you - on the lid, just in case we haven't got the message.
Credulous CNN correspondents and handwringing BBC reporters fall over themselves to sign up for the Hezbollah guided tour of the ruins.
I use a rough rule of thumb whenever I watch television coverage of the Middle East. Anyone who pronounces Hezbollah as 'Hiz-bull-arrrgh' and Israeli as 'Izza-ra-ay-lee' is almost certainly telling lies.
The bien-pensant buzzword used to describe Israel's bombing is 'disproportionate'. But what's 'proportionate'? Are the thousands of rockets fired at genuine civilian targets in Israel 'proportionate'?
It is only because Israelis are hunkered down in underground shelters built out of necessity and bitter experience, or have fled out of range of Hezbollah's salvoes, that there haven't been piles of bodies on their side of the border.
What would 'world opinion' consider an acceptable death toll before acknowledging Israel's right
to retaliation and self-defence - 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?
Hezb'allah has started a war it knows it can't win in the certain knowledge that there will be civilian casualties. Its stated aim is to kill as many Israelis as possible and if innocent Lebanese get caught in the crossfire, tough.
These fanatics have little or no regard for human life. Their tactic is to hide among civilians; to use terrified women and children as human shields; to deploy school playgrounds as rocket launch sites; hotels and apartment blocks as command centres; homes as weapons dumps; mosques as air-raid shelters.
I've heard reporters referring to Hezb'allah as a 'resistance' movement. They love it, don't they? Just as they insist on calling terrorist murderers 'radicals' or 'militants' - as if there's no difference between Al Qaeda and Aslef train drivers on unofficial strike.
What they never point out is that if Hezbollah didn't exist, there would be nothing to resist. Israel is the Tony Martin of the Middle East, lashing out in fear and frustration after enduring years of provocation.
Just as Tony Martin was abandoned by the police to endure burglary after burglary at his remote farmhouse, so the 'international community' has done nothing to disarm and disband Hezb'allah or prevent it and Hamas repeatedly attacking Israel.
The United Nations hasn't lifted a finger to stop Iran and Syria supporting and supplying a standing terrorist army in Lebanon. There are no sanctions against the barking mad president of Iran when he constantly threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and is hell-bent on obtaining nuclear weapons.
Iran has put Lebanese civilians in the front line of its lunatic war against Israel and the U.S. in particular and Western civilisation in general. So where's the international condemnation?
Hezb'allah is the provisional wing of Iran. Would it be 'proportionate' if Israel attacked the paymasters and ringleaders of Hezb'allah in Tehran?
It may yet come to that. But first Israel has to remove the immediate threat to its security.
The United Nations isn't going to do that. The UN is a busted flush, led by the laughable Kofi Annan - the Chauncey Gardiner of world diplomacy. When it left the U.S.-led coalition to go it alone in Iraq, it sent a clear message to other tyrants and rogue states that they had nothing to fear from the UN.
Listening to 'world opinion' has got Israel nowhere. It was told it should trade land for peace. So it did. It got war. Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon six years ago. Hezbollah boasts that it has spent that time preparing for this fresh assault, building tunnels and bunkers and stockpiling a deadly arsenal of 13,000 weapons, which it is now raining down on Israeli civilians.
There are hourly calls for a ceasefire, but when Tel Aviv suspended bombing for 48 hours the response was a record number of Katyusha rockets fired into Israel in return.
I saw a BBC reporter standing on a hillside trying to convince us that because missiles were still being fired from Lebanon despite three weeks of fighting, it was evidence that Israel's tactics weren't working and it couldn't win.
Hezbollah has spent six years building up its arsenal in preparation for this war. Who said an Israeli victory would only take three weeks?
If there is a ceasefire, Hezb'allah will simply regroup. There's talk of a negotiated settlement, but how do you cut a deal when one side says it will not be satisfied until the other is totally eradicated?
Lasting peace has only ever followed total victory in war. Even if Israel and Hezb'allah/Iran agree to walk away tomorrow, we'll be back here again in a few years.
Then there's the Palestinian question. Again, even though Israel ceded territory in pursuit of peace, terror attacks and kidnappings on Israeli soil have continued.
There's talk about dusting off the old 'road map'. Israel accepts there will have to be a two-state solution, but the only 'road map' of the Middle East its enemies will accept is one without Israel on it at all.
Meanwhile, spare a thought for the Jewish community in Britain. They're as distressed by the carnage as the rest of us and there are divisions over Israel's actions. No one wallows in the death of innocents - except, of course, Hezb'allah and its Iranian puppet-masters.
THIS time of year, there are 15,000 British Jewish teenagers in Israel on the traditional summer rite of passage. And there are 30,000 British passport holders living in Israel.
Although we had wall-to-wall coverage of grumbling British passport holders being evacuated from Beirut, there doesn't seem to have been equal concern about our fellow citizens under bombardment on the other side of the border.
What struck me about the recent pro-Israel demonstration in London was the number of Union flags in the crowd. These are our people.
I didn't notice any Union flags at the Stop The War rally, though there were plenty of 'We Are All Hezb'allah Now' banners. It doesn't seem to dawn on them that if you want to stop the war you've got to stop Hezb'allah.
But what drives most of these 'peace campaigners' is not so much a desire for peace as a hatred of Israel.
Every time something goes off in Iraq we're told it will radicalise young Muslims back in Britain. We hear that Tony Blair's failure to call for an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive has put us at imminent risk of another Islamist homicide attack on our streets.
Despite the Hezbollah war on Israel and the mounting casualties - and the widespread condemnation of Israel in this country - I've yet to hear anyone warn that young British Jews are queueing to blow up themselves and hundreds of others at Brent Cross shopping centre.
I repeat, this war is awful. The civilian deaths are a tragedy.
But there won't be peace in the Middle East until the likes of Iran, Hezb'allah and Hamas recognise Israel's right to exist.
And, I'm afraid, this side of kingdom come, that just ain't gonna happen.
Israel may be losing the propaganda war, but it isn't fighting a propaganda war - it's fighting a real war for its very existence.
Daily Mail
08.05.2006
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Galilee Factory Fights Hizb'allah By Staying Open
August 4, 2006
The sirens were going off and the rockets were falling less than a mile away, but Israel Ben Tzur was carrying on a conversation on his cell phone as if he were sitting poolside with an iced tea in his hand.
As founder and CEO of Galilee-based Stepac L.A. Ltd. - an area which is currently a regular target of Hizbullah Katyusha rockets - Ben Tzur has gotten used the piercing sounds and thudding crashes that punctuate the days and nights of residents of Israel's north.
"If you are lucky the sound of these rockets is distant and hollow, yet, sometimes it is like a great and close up thunder sending reverberating shivers down our spine and our nerves," he wrote in an email at the beginning of the war.
But like other companies in the area, the family-run Stepac has succeeded in circumventing the dangers and difficulties of maintaining a business during war time. And in doing so, Ben Tzur and his wife Shosh - the company's VP of Operations and Administration - have proved to be an inspirational model for the company's 68 employees, and for all Israelis.
"We're a manufacturing company that makes innovative medical and food packaging which extends their shelf life - especially of fresh produce," Ben Tzur told ISRAEL21c in a conversation that was occasionally interrupted by the shrill sound of a siren signaling an incoming rocket.
Founded in 1992, Stepac operates throughout the world in the fresh produce supply chain and medical community. Their patented Careright product line services primarily medical, dental and veterinary clinics, providing them with a line of infection control barrier films and sterilization bags, while their Xtend products and services serve the fresh produce industry with advanced humidity packaging.
Hundreds of customers around the world use Stepac's products, like California-based Ocean Mist Farms, which last year began shipping its iceless broccoli with the patented Xtend system. Joe Pezzini, VP of operations for Ocean Mist, told a trade packaging publication that he chose Stepac's technology because of its capabilities in cooling and reducing moisture loss, thus keeping the vegetables fresh.
Located an hour east of Haifa at the Tefen Industrial Park, established by industrialist Stef Wertheimer in the mid-1980s, Stepac is one of 60 companies that employ some 4,000 workers, mixed between Jews, Druze and Arabs.
"We draw on employees from the surrounding communities like Nahariya, Karmiel and Ma'a lot and the Druze villages in the area," said Ben Tzur, who lives in nearby Kfar Vradim.
"At the beginning of the war, we continued working for two or three days. When I arrived at the office I was surprised to see most of StePac staff in the office, even those that were asked specifically to stay at home and out of harms way. We cleaned the bomb shelter and took all steps to ascertain production under adverse conditions with minimum interruptions and damage to StePac business assuming that this conflict was not going to be over within a day or two."
But when the rocket barrages from Lebanon began to intensify, the Ben Tzurs decided to close the plant and provide for their employees' safety.
"We took all our employees and their families down to hotels at the Dead Sea for three days - it was the entire Stepac community," said Ben Tzur.
Upon the group's return to the North, a staff meeting was held along with the families of the workers, and together a decision was made to reopen the plant and begin working on two 12 hour shifts around the clock in order to keep up with customers' orders.
"Our employees made the decision," said Ben Tzur, despite the fact that the factory next to Stepac had suffered a direct hit from a Katyusha.
"We organized it so that only those whose presence was critical at the plant came in to work. Those who handled administrative or technical tasks operated remote from laptops at home or elsewhere. In that manner, we've continued to work supplying our customers with orders in a non-interrupted manner."
"I have to say that we're not the only ones working in this way. In our neighborhood at Tefen, many companies are taking the necessary steps to keep their businesses going."
With no end in sight to the fighting in the area, Ben Tzur said that the company is hunkered down for the long haul, and that they've received strength from an unlikely source - their customers.
We've been receiving non-stop calls of support from customers all over the world - the US, Asia, South America. They're all very concerned for our welfare," he said, as another siren brought the call to an end.
Israel 21st Century
The sirens were going off and the rockets were falling less than a mile away, but Israel Ben Tzur was carrying on a conversation on his cell phone as if he were sitting poolside with an iced tea in his hand.
As founder and CEO of Galilee-based Stepac L.A. Ltd. - an area which is currently a regular target of Hizbullah Katyusha rockets - Ben Tzur has gotten used the piercing sounds and thudding crashes that punctuate the days and nights of residents of Israel's north.
"If you are lucky the sound of these rockets is distant and hollow, yet, sometimes it is like a great and close up thunder sending reverberating shivers down our spine and our nerves," he wrote in an email at the beginning of the war.
But like other companies in the area, the family-run Stepac has succeeded in circumventing the dangers and difficulties of maintaining a business during war time. And in doing so, Ben Tzur and his wife Shosh - the company's VP of Operations and Administration - have proved to be an inspirational model for the company's 68 employees, and for all Israelis.
"We're a manufacturing company that makes innovative medical and food packaging which extends their shelf life - especially of fresh produce," Ben Tzur told ISRAEL21c in a conversation that was occasionally interrupted by the shrill sound of a siren signaling an incoming rocket.
Founded in 1992, Stepac operates throughout the world in the fresh produce supply chain and medical community. Their patented Careright product line services primarily medical, dental and veterinary clinics, providing them with a line of infection control barrier films and sterilization bags, while their Xtend products and services serve the fresh produce industry with advanced humidity packaging.
Hundreds of customers around the world use Stepac's products, like California-based Ocean Mist Farms, which last year began shipping its iceless broccoli with the patented Xtend system. Joe Pezzini, VP of operations for Ocean Mist, told a trade packaging publication that he chose Stepac's technology because of its capabilities in cooling and reducing moisture loss, thus keeping the vegetables fresh.
Located an hour east of Haifa at the Tefen Industrial Park, established by industrialist Stef Wertheimer in the mid-1980s, Stepac is one of 60 companies that employ some 4,000 workers, mixed between Jews, Druze and Arabs.
"We draw on employees from the surrounding communities like Nahariya, Karmiel and Ma'a lot and the Druze villages in the area," said Ben Tzur, who lives in nearby Kfar Vradim.
"At the beginning of the war, we continued working for two or three days. When I arrived at the office I was surprised to see most of StePac staff in the office, even those that were asked specifically to stay at home and out of harms way. We cleaned the bomb shelter and took all steps to ascertain production under adverse conditions with minimum interruptions and damage to StePac business assuming that this conflict was not going to be over within a day or two."
But when the rocket barrages from Lebanon began to intensify, the Ben Tzurs decided to close the plant and provide for their employees' safety.
"We took all our employees and their families down to hotels at the Dead Sea for three days - it was the entire Stepac community," said Ben Tzur.
Upon the group's return to the North, a staff meeting was held along with the families of the workers, and together a decision was made to reopen the plant and begin working on two 12 hour shifts around the clock in order to keep up with customers' orders.
"Our employees made the decision," said Ben Tzur, despite the fact that the factory next to Stepac had suffered a direct hit from a Katyusha.
"We organized it so that only those whose presence was critical at the plant came in to work. Those who handled administrative or technical tasks operated remote from laptops at home or elsewhere. In that manner, we've continued to work supplying our customers with orders in a non-interrupted manner."
"I have to say that we're not the only ones working in this way. In our neighborhood at Tefen, many companies are taking the necessary steps to keep their businesses going."
With no end in sight to the fighting in the area, Ben Tzur said that the company is hunkered down for the long haul, and that they've received strength from an unlikely source - their customers.
We've been receiving non-stop calls of support from customers all over the world - the US, Asia, South America. They're all very concerned for our welfare," he said, as another siren brought the call to an end.
Israel 21st Century
Friday, August 04, 2006
Hold Damascus Syria Responsible - By Daniel Pipes
"There will be an international force [in Lebanon], because all the key players want it," an American official asserted recently. He appears to be right, as even the Israeli government has embraced the plan, announcing it "would agree to consider stationing a battle-tested force composed of soldiers from European Union member states."
The key players might "want it," but such a force will certainly fail, just as it did once before, in 1982-84. That was when American, French, and Italian troops were deployed in Lebanon to buffer Israel from Lebanon's anarchy and terrorism. The "Multinational Force" collapsed back then when Hezbollah attacked MNF soldiers, embassies, and other installations, prompting the MNF's ignominious flight from Lebanon. The same pattern will no doubt recur.
Back then, Americans and others did not regard Hezb'allah as their enemy, and this remains the case today, notwithstanding the war on terror; in a recent Gallup poll, 65% of Americans said their government should not take sides in the current Israel-Hezb'allah fighting. Other, equally bad, ideas to end the anarchy in south Lebanon include:
Deploying the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Lebanese state's official military. Hezbollah is within the government of Lebanon and would veto the LAF controlling the south. Also, Shiites sympathetic to Hezb'allah make up half of the LAF. Finally, the LAF is too amateurish to confront Hezb'allah.
Deploying Syrian forces. Lebanese and Israelis both reject a Syrian occupation of south Lebanon. Deploying Israeli forces. After their experiences occupying Arab-majority lands in 1967 and 1982, Israelis have widely decided against a repetition.
Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried. My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence. (Incidentally, this is in keeping with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1680, adopted May 17, 2006, calling on Syria to undertake "measures against movements of arms into Lebanese territory.")
Here's why: Israeli leaders have long failed to prevent attacks emanating from Lebanon. They stanched cross-border terrorism with other neighbors by making it too painful for their central governments to permit such attacks to continue. But when they made demands of the Lebanese government, they failed to get satisfaction.
In Lebanon – unlike in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria – no strong central government enjoys a monopoly of force. Lebanon's state is permanently weak because its population directs its primary loyalties to one or another of the country's 18 religious-ethnic communities. As a result, militias, guerrillas, and terrorists wield more power than the government.
Israeli governments responded with an array of strategies over the past 40 years. In 1968, Israeli jets pounded Beirut's airport, to no effect. In the 1978 Litani operation, Israeli forces first entered Lebanon on a large scale, without success. In 1982, they seized a major part of the country, which proved untenable. Until 2000, they retained a security zone, but that ended in a sudden unilateral retreat. Evacuating every inch of Lebanese territory in 2000 also failed to prevent attacks.
At this point, the government of Bashar al-Assad should be told immediately to cease provisioning Hezbollah, and that future violence from south Lebanon will meet with what the Wall Street Journal calls an "offer that Syria cannot refuse" – meaning military reprisal. As David Bedein explains in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, "for every target hit by Syria's proxy, Israel will single out Syrian targets for attack." Such targets could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures.
This approach will work because Hezb'allah's stature, strength, and skills depend on Syrian support, both direct and indirect. Given that Syrian territory is the only route by which Iranian aid reaches Hezb'allah, focusing on Damascus has the major side benefit of restricting Iranian influence in the Levant.
This plan has its drawbacks and complications – the recent Syrian-Iranian mutual defense treaty, or its giving Hezb'allah the option to drag Syria into war – but it has a better chance of success, I believe, than any alternative.
Recalling how a similar approach worked in 1998, when the Turkish government successfully pressured Damascus to stop hosting a terrorist leader, the Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar rightly suggests "the time has come to speak Turkish to the Syrians."
August 4, 2006
The key players might "want it," but such a force will certainly fail, just as it did once before, in 1982-84. That was when American, French, and Italian troops were deployed in Lebanon to buffer Israel from Lebanon's anarchy and terrorism. The "Multinational Force" collapsed back then when Hezbollah attacked MNF soldiers, embassies, and other installations, prompting the MNF's ignominious flight from Lebanon. The same pattern will no doubt recur.
Back then, Americans and others did not regard Hezb'allah as their enemy, and this remains the case today, notwithstanding the war on terror; in a recent Gallup poll, 65% of Americans said their government should not take sides in the current Israel-Hezb'allah fighting. Other, equally bad, ideas to end the anarchy in south Lebanon include:
Deploying the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Lebanese state's official military. Hezbollah is within the government of Lebanon and would veto the LAF controlling the south. Also, Shiites sympathetic to Hezb'allah make up half of the LAF. Finally, the LAF is too amateurish to confront Hezb'allah.
Deploying Syrian forces. Lebanese and Israelis both reject a Syrian occupation of south Lebanon. Deploying Israeli forces. After their experiences occupying Arab-majority lands in 1967 and 1982, Israelis have widely decided against a repetition.
Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried. My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence. (Incidentally, this is in keeping with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1680, adopted May 17, 2006, calling on Syria to undertake "measures against movements of arms into Lebanese territory.")
Here's why: Israeli leaders have long failed to prevent attacks emanating from Lebanon. They stanched cross-border terrorism with other neighbors by making it too painful for their central governments to permit such attacks to continue. But when they made demands of the Lebanese government, they failed to get satisfaction.
In Lebanon – unlike in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria – no strong central government enjoys a monopoly of force. Lebanon's state is permanently weak because its population directs its primary loyalties to one or another of the country's 18 religious-ethnic communities. As a result, militias, guerrillas, and terrorists wield more power than the government.
Israeli governments responded with an array of strategies over the past 40 years. In 1968, Israeli jets pounded Beirut's airport, to no effect. In the 1978 Litani operation, Israeli forces first entered Lebanon on a large scale, without success. In 1982, they seized a major part of the country, which proved untenable. Until 2000, they retained a security zone, but that ended in a sudden unilateral retreat. Evacuating every inch of Lebanese territory in 2000 also failed to prevent attacks.
At this point, the government of Bashar al-Assad should be told immediately to cease provisioning Hezbollah, and that future violence from south Lebanon will meet with what the Wall Street Journal calls an "offer that Syria cannot refuse" – meaning military reprisal. As David Bedein explains in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, "for every target hit by Syria's proxy, Israel will single out Syrian targets for attack." Such targets could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures.
This approach will work because Hezb'allah's stature, strength, and skills depend on Syrian support, both direct and indirect. Given that Syrian territory is the only route by which Iranian aid reaches Hezb'allah, focusing on Damascus has the major side benefit of restricting Iranian influence in the Levant.
This plan has its drawbacks and complications – the recent Syrian-Iranian mutual defense treaty, or its giving Hezb'allah the option to drag Syria into war – but it has a better chance of success, I believe, than any alternative.
Recalling how a similar approach worked in 1998, when the Turkish government successfully pressured Damascus to stop hosting a terrorist leader, the Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar rightly suggests "the time has come to speak Turkish to the Syrians."
August 4, 2006
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Stage-Managed Massacre
08.03.2006
“The Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana early Sunday morning did more than kill 57 civilians,” says Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post.
“According to a wide range of commentary in the international media, it inflamed already boiling public opinion in the Arab world against Israel, undermined what little support the United States has among the Lebanese people, and illuminated the continuing inability of Israel and the United States to achieve their goal of decisively weakening Hezballah.”
The Hindustan Times editorialized that “with Qana, one senses that the Israelis’ definition of ‘collateral damage’ has started to bear a striking resemblance to that of the very terrorist organisation that they are keen to destroy.” At a rally outside the State Department building protesting the Qana “massacre” on Monday, Leftist protestors chanted, “Hey, Rice! What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?”; “Israel Out of Lebanon! Ceasefire, Now”; and “Shame! Shame! Shame, on you!” An Australian Muslim in Qana told Australia’s Herald Sun: “I would say a few hundred have died. This isn’t war, it’s genocide.”
Except for one little detail: it is increasingly clear that the Qana “massacre” was a stage-managed Hizb'allah production, designed precisely to enflame international sentiment against Israel and compel the Israelis to accept a ceasefire that would enable the jihad terrorist group to gain some time to recover from the Israeli attacks. Some of the principal evidence for this:
The Israeli bombardment took place about midnight, but the house where the civilians were gathered reportedly did not collapse until 8AM. Said Brigadier General Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force, “It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.”
Indeed, it strains credulity that not only did these Lebanese civilians remain in a house that had been bombed for eight hours, but peacefully went to sleep in it after the bombing – since the victims were all apparently sleeping, despite continuing Israeli air bombardment in the area, when the building collapsed. Eshel suggested that “it could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there” – in other words, Hizballah bombs and/or weapons.
Photos of the rescue operation, which were transmitted all over the world and appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other major newspapers, are extremely suspicious. The blog EU Referendum has done important work scrutinizing the photos, finding numerous anomalies. Most notably, the dating of the various photos suggests that the same bodies were paraded before reporters on different occasions, each time as if they had just been pulled from the rubble.
In a rebuttal to this charge, AP’s David Bauder rather lamely asserts: “web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken.” Responds Richard North of EU Referendum: “Note, however, the use of the word ‘can’. He does not say that the ‘date stamps’ are wrong.” EU Referendum has also uncovered strange anomalies in the photos themselves: some workers are wearing different gear in different photos, yet clearly carrying the same corpse.
Richard North comments about one of these workers: “It stretches belief to breaking point to argue that, on his way to the ambulance, he took off his helmet, his fluorescent waistcoat and his flack jacket just in order to pose for the cameras putting the body in the wagon – especially as we have the body being placed on the ‘guerney’ – which means the scenes are totally inconsistent.”
The very existence of these pictures raises more questions. As Israel Insider puts it: “While Hezb'allah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.”
The Christian Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizb'allah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague:
“We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative.”
According to the German scholar Matthias Küntzel, “the Berlin daily the Tagesspiegel published a letter-to-the-editor from Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a Shiite from the South of Lebanon. Dr. Herzallah reports on how Hezb'allah-terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it. He writes: ‘Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews lose either way: either because the rockets are fired at them or because, if they attack munitions depot, they are condemned by world public opinion on account of the dead civilians.’ Hezbollah, he says, uses the civilian population ‘as a human shield and then when they are dead as propaganda.’”
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, declared that “War is deceit.” Specifically, he taught that lying was permissible in battle.[1] While the doctrines of religious deception (taqiyya and kitman) are most often identified with Shi’ite Islam, and ostensibly rejected by Sunnis, because they were sanctioned by the Prophet, they can still be found in traditions that Sunni Muslims consider reliable, and are practiced among Salafis. Jihadists today have spoken of the usefulness of deceptive practices.
Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that. Qana has already largely accomplished what it was supposed to. It will now take its place beside the Danish cartoons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and all the rest as a useful focal point for Muslim outrage and a magnet for jihad recruitment. The dhimmi Leftist Western press is happy, for it can again show America and Israel as guilty in the world’s site. The mujahedin are happy, for jihad and Sharia will advance still more. The only people who couldn’t possibly be happy with this are the Israelis and others on the front lines of the jihad worldwide.
But who cares about them?
Frontpage
Qana Incident Was Staged By Hizb'allah
The French language publication Libanoscopie, published in Lebanon, is quoting an unnamed Hizballah official confirming that the Qana bombing was a premeditated sham staged by the Hizballah.
The source says that the Hizballah intentionally housed disabled children in the building and placed a missile launcher on the roof to provoke the Israeli Air Force. In the attack scores of civilians were killed, many of them children.
The publication, identified with the “March 14 Forces” – an anti-Syrian Christian group – is quoting the source as saying that this act was made for the purpose of garnering international sympathy and derailing Lebanese Prime Minister Seniora’s seven-point plan, ending with the disarmament of Hizballah.
The publication is quoting the unnamed official as saying that the Hizballah chose Qana because of its significance: “They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up ‘Qana 2.’”
Kfar Qana was the focal point of another such incident where the 1996 “Grapes of Wrath” operation in Lebanon came to a halt after an Israeli bomb mistakenly hit the UN headquarters in Qana which housed civilian refugees.
The IDF’s investigation regarding the incident in Qana is still ongoing, and preliminary results indicate that there was a missile launch spotted in the vicinity of the house, and the Air Force’s mode of operation calls for hitting any object and building within a given radius of that launch.
http://www.israeltoday.co.il
“The Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana early Sunday morning did more than kill 57 civilians,” says Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post.
“According to a wide range of commentary in the international media, it inflamed already boiling public opinion in the Arab world against Israel, undermined what little support the United States has among the Lebanese people, and illuminated the continuing inability of Israel and the United States to achieve their goal of decisively weakening Hezballah.”
The Hindustan Times editorialized that “with Qana, one senses that the Israelis’ definition of ‘collateral damage’ has started to bear a striking resemblance to that of the very terrorist organisation that they are keen to destroy.” At a rally outside the State Department building protesting the Qana “massacre” on Monday, Leftist protestors chanted, “Hey, Rice! What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?”; “Israel Out of Lebanon! Ceasefire, Now”; and “Shame! Shame! Shame, on you!” An Australian Muslim in Qana told Australia’s Herald Sun: “I would say a few hundred have died. This isn’t war, it’s genocide.”
Except for one little detail: it is increasingly clear that the Qana “massacre” was a stage-managed Hizb'allah production, designed precisely to enflame international sentiment against Israel and compel the Israelis to accept a ceasefire that would enable the jihad terrorist group to gain some time to recover from the Israeli attacks. Some of the principal evidence for this:
The Israeli bombardment took place about midnight, but the house where the civilians were gathered reportedly did not collapse until 8AM. Said Brigadier General Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force, “It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.”
Indeed, it strains credulity that not only did these Lebanese civilians remain in a house that had been bombed for eight hours, but peacefully went to sleep in it after the bombing – since the victims were all apparently sleeping, despite continuing Israeli air bombardment in the area, when the building collapsed. Eshel suggested that “it could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there” – in other words, Hizballah bombs and/or weapons.
Photos of the rescue operation, which were transmitted all over the world and appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other major newspapers, are extremely suspicious. The blog EU Referendum has done important work scrutinizing the photos, finding numerous anomalies. Most notably, the dating of the various photos suggests that the same bodies were paraded before reporters on different occasions, each time as if they had just been pulled from the rubble.
In a rebuttal to this charge, AP’s David Bauder rather lamely asserts: “web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken.” Responds Richard North of EU Referendum: “Note, however, the use of the word ‘can’. He does not say that the ‘date stamps’ are wrong.” EU Referendum has also uncovered strange anomalies in the photos themselves: some workers are wearing different gear in different photos, yet clearly carrying the same corpse.
Richard North comments about one of these workers: “It stretches belief to breaking point to argue that, on his way to the ambulance, he took off his helmet, his fluorescent waistcoat and his flack jacket just in order to pose for the cameras putting the body in the wagon – especially as we have the body being placed on the ‘guerney’ – which means the scenes are totally inconsistent.”
The very existence of these pictures raises more questions. As Israel Insider puts it: “While Hezb'allah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.”
The Christian Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizb'allah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague:
“We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative.”
According to the German scholar Matthias Küntzel, “the Berlin daily the Tagesspiegel published a letter-to-the-editor from Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a Shiite from the South of Lebanon. Dr. Herzallah reports on how Hezb'allah-terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it. He writes: ‘Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews lose either way: either because the rockets are fired at them or because, if they attack munitions depot, they are condemned by world public opinion on account of the dead civilians.’ Hezbollah, he says, uses the civilian population ‘as a human shield and then when they are dead as propaganda.’”
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, declared that “War is deceit.” Specifically, he taught that lying was permissible in battle.[1] While the doctrines of religious deception (taqiyya and kitman) are most often identified with Shi’ite Islam, and ostensibly rejected by Sunnis, because they were sanctioned by the Prophet, they can still be found in traditions that Sunni Muslims consider reliable, and are practiced among Salafis. Jihadists today have spoken of the usefulness of deceptive practices.
Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that. Qana has already largely accomplished what it was supposed to. It will now take its place beside the Danish cartoons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and all the rest as a useful focal point for Muslim outrage and a magnet for jihad recruitment. The dhimmi Leftist Western press is happy, for it can again show America and Israel as guilty in the world’s site. The mujahedin are happy, for jihad and Sharia will advance still more. The only people who couldn’t possibly be happy with this are the Israelis and others on the front lines of the jihad worldwide.
But who cares about them?
Frontpage
Qana Incident Was Staged By Hizb'allah
The French language publication Libanoscopie, published in Lebanon, is quoting an unnamed Hizballah official confirming that the Qana bombing was a premeditated sham staged by the Hizballah.
The source says that the Hizballah intentionally housed disabled children in the building and placed a missile launcher on the roof to provoke the Israeli Air Force. In the attack scores of civilians were killed, many of them children.
The publication, identified with the “March 14 Forces” – an anti-Syrian Christian group – is quoting the source as saying that this act was made for the purpose of garnering international sympathy and derailing Lebanese Prime Minister Seniora’s seven-point plan, ending with the disarmament of Hizballah.
The publication is quoting the unnamed official as saying that the Hizballah chose Qana because of its significance: “They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up ‘Qana 2.’”
Kfar Qana was the focal point of another such incident where the 1996 “Grapes of Wrath” operation in Lebanon came to a halt after an Israeli bomb mistakenly hit the UN headquarters in Qana which housed civilian refugees.
The IDF’s investigation regarding the incident in Qana is still ongoing, and preliminary results indicate that there was a missile launch spotted in the vicinity of the house, and the Air Force’s mode of operation calls for hitting any object and building within a given radius of that launch.
http://www.israeltoday.co.il
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Finding Gog - Ikvot ha'Mashiach
Those who labor to understand the nuances of the battle described in Ezekiel 38-39 quickly identify two major puzzles among several minor ones. One is the timing of the battle and the other is the identity of Gog, from Magog. For my view on the battle's timing read End Times Chronology. Suffice it to say here that almost no scholar, certainly none I'm aware of, believes the battle of Ezekiel 38-39 has already taken place. Some believe it will occur just before the beginning of the Tribulation period, while others believe Ezekiel is actually describing the Battle of Armageddon, which would put it at the end of the Great Tribulation. But all place it sometime in our future.
As for Gog and Magog, the first thing to note is that while Magog is listed in Genesis 10, Gog is not. The list of 70 names in Genesis 10 is often called the Table of Nations because each of the men named there was the original ancestor of an ethnic group that grew to become a nation of people. For instance, Magog was the 2nd son of Japeth, one of Noah's three sons, and bore the children who in time became known to the ancient world as the Scythians. They lived in central Asia and are believed to be the forefathers of today's Russians. Over 130 historical references support this view.
So while the Russian people of today are descended from Magog, there is no such biological connection for Gog to either Magog or any other ethnic group. There is an unrelated mention of a man named Gog, a grandson of Reuben, in 1 Chronicles 5:4 but there doesn't seem to be any connection between him and the land of Magog either. Clearly, while Magog refers to the millions of his descendants in today's Russia, Gog remains a single individual.
Some say he's a King or leader, and in a real sense I think that's true but I don't believe he's human. The time spanned by his three appearances in scripture make that impossible.
The first one is in the first verse of Amos 7, but you have to be reading Amos from the Septuigent translation to see it. There he's identified as a king, but of a swarm of locusts. To further shroud him in mystery Proverbs 30:27 states that locusts have no king, and observers of locust swarms seem to agree that no obvious leader directs them, as a queen would direct a hive of bees for example.
(This hint also lends insight to another appearance of locusts, by the way. I’m referring to the one in Revelation 9, where a swarm of locusts comes out of the Abyss to afflict those on Earth who lack the seal of God on their foreheads. These locusts have a king named Abaddon in the Hebrew or Appolyon in the Greek. Here again, the Proverbs passage would indicate that these are of supernatural origin, not ordinary locusts.)
The next time Gog's mentioned is in Ezekiel 38:1, where he is called by name as the leader of a coalition of what are now Moslem nations attacking Israel. His final mention comes from the Book of Revelation where he again leads the people from Magog against the Lord's army at the end of the Millennium (Rev. 20:8). By now these enemies of God have apparently been dispersed throughout the Earth.
Even if you're among those who place the battle from Ezekiel 38 at the end of the Great Tribulation, the span of time between Gog's last two biblical appearances is at least 1000 years, and while I believe that some born in that era will have long life spans, there isn't any indication that natural humans born before the Millennium begins will live to see its end. This is especially true of God's enemies as all surviving unbelievers are removed from Earth at the beginning of our Lord's reign.
So I've come to the conclusion that Gog is a supernatural figure. The Bible clearly states that behind the human seats of government stand supernatural figures manipulating the thoughts and actions of the world's leaders. Many of these figures are in Satan's employ helping in his effort to wrest ownership of Planet Earth from its Creator. Gog is at least the supernatural figure behind the throne of Russia, and perhaps is even Satan's counterpart to the Archangel Michael, Commander of the Lord's armies.
In Daniel 10 Michael is identified as one of the Lord's chief princes who in 536 BC came to Daniel's aid in a supernatural struggle with the Prince of Persia, a nation barely emerging on the world scene having conquered Babylon just three years earlier. At its conclusion Michael told Daniel of a coming battle with the Prince of Greece, a nation that didn't even exist at the time. In Daniel 12:1 we're told he'll protect Israel at the end of the age, and in Rev 12:7 he's seen leading the angelic host in a great battle in heaven when Satan is defeated there and cast down to Earth at the outset of the Great Tribulation.
Michael is clearly a supernatural warrior leaping across the pages of history in defense of the Lord's interests. It makes sense that Satan would have a military commander leading his forces as well, since everything he does seems to mirror the actions of his Creator. With his multiple mentions in Scripture and the long span of time between appearances, Gog could easily be this commander.
Only time will tell if this view is correct. But one of the great advantages of living in our day is that we won't have long to wait till we find out. You can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah. 11-16-03
A Bible Study by Jack Kelley
As for Gog and Magog, the first thing to note is that while Magog is listed in Genesis 10, Gog is not. The list of 70 names in Genesis 10 is often called the Table of Nations because each of the men named there was the original ancestor of an ethnic group that grew to become a nation of people. For instance, Magog was the 2nd son of Japeth, one of Noah's three sons, and bore the children who in time became known to the ancient world as the Scythians. They lived in central Asia and are believed to be the forefathers of today's Russians. Over 130 historical references support this view.
So while the Russian people of today are descended from Magog, there is no such biological connection for Gog to either Magog or any other ethnic group. There is an unrelated mention of a man named Gog, a grandson of Reuben, in 1 Chronicles 5:4 but there doesn't seem to be any connection between him and the land of Magog either. Clearly, while Magog refers to the millions of his descendants in today's Russia, Gog remains a single individual.
Some say he's a King or leader, and in a real sense I think that's true but I don't believe he's human. The time spanned by his three appearances in scripture make that impossible.
The first one is in the first verse of Amos 7, but you have to be reading Amos from the Septuigent translation to see it. There he's identified as a king, but of a swarm of locusts. To further shroud him in mystery Proverbs 30:27 states that locusts have no king, and observers of locust swarms seem to agree that no obvious leader directs them, as a queen would direct a hive of bees for example.
(This hint also lends insight to another appearance of locusts, by the way. I’m referring to the one in Revelation 9, where a swarm of locusts comes out of the Abyss to afflict those on Earth who lack the seal of God on their foreheads. These locusts have a king named Abaddon in the Hebrew or Appolyon in the Greek. Here again, the Proverbs passage would indicate that these are of supernatural origin, not ordinary locusts.)
The next time Gog's mentioned is in Ezekiel 38:1, where he is called by name as the leader of a coalition of what are now Moslem nations attacking Israel. His final mention comes from the Book of Revelation where he again leads the people from Magog against the Lord's army at the end of the Millennium (Rev. 20:8). By now these enemies of God have apparently been dispersed throughout the Earth.
Even if you're among those who place the battle from Ezekiel 38 at the end of the Great Tribulation, the span of time between Gog's last two biblical appearances is at least 1000 years, and while I believe that some born in that era will have long life spans, there isn't any indication that natural humans born before the Millennium begins will live to see its end. This is especially true of God's enemies as all surviving unbelievers are removed from Earth at the beginning of our Lord's reign.
So I've come to the conclusion that Gog is a supernatural figure. The Bible clearly states that behind the human seats of government stand supernatural figures manipulating the thoughts and actions of the world's leaders. Many of these figures are in Satan's employ helping in his effort to wrest ownership of Planet Earth from its Creator. Gog is at least the supernatural figure behind the throne of Russia, and perhaps is even Satan's counterpart to the Archangel Michael, Commander of the Lord's armies.
In Daniel 10 Michael is identified as one of the Lord's chief princes who in 536 BC came to Daniel's aid in a supernatural struggle with the Prince of Persia, a nation barely emerging on the world scene having conquered Babylon just three years earlier. At its conclusion Michael told Daniel of a coming battle with the Prince of Greece, a nation that didn't even exist at the time. In Daniel 12:1 we're told he'll protect Israel at the end of the age, and in Rev 12:7 he's seen leading the angelic host in a great battle in heaven when Satan is defeated there and cast down to Earth at the outset of the Great Tribulation.
Michael is clearly a supernatural warrior leaping across the pages of history in defense of the Lord's interests. It makes sense that Satan would have a military commander leading his forces as well, since everything he does seems to mirror the actions of his Creator. With his multiple mentions in Scripture and the long span of time between appearances, Gog could easily be this commander.
Only time will tell if this view is correct. But one of the great advantages of living in our day is that we won't have long to wait till we find out. You can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah. 11-16-03
A Bible Study by Jack Kelley
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Son's Of Satan Are Mobilizing For The End
'We Will Spring Surprises on Him'
Syrian Government Media Response to the Proposed Multinational Force in Lebanon: We are Armed With What is Needed to Hurt the Enemy and We Will Spring Surprises on Him That Will Complement What the Lebanese Resistance has Done; Israel is a Cat That was Struck by Hizbullah, and Will Soon Be Skinned
Following international efforts to send a multinational force to Lebanon under the aegis of the U.N., the Syrian government press has published several articles expressing fierce opposition to the proposal and threatening to attack Israel and the multinational force.
The following are excerpts:
A Multinational Force Would Be an Occupation That Should Be Met With Resistance
An editorial in the Syrian government daily Al-Ba'th, titled "International Force or New Occupation?" read: "Whoever thinks that the presence of international forces on Lebanese soil is the solution is wrong - since these forces, in the eyes of the resistance fighters and in the nationalist and pan-Arab view, would be occupation forces, like the forces that have occupied Iraq and other places in the world.
"As long as [the international forces] are of this type, it will be necessary for the forces facing Israel in southern Lebanon, the Arab brothers, and those friends in the world who stand alongside the resistance to put up resistance against them and to clash with them, [and this will be done] through various means and methods. Whoever puts his trust in the [idea that] destruction, murder, and even occupation can impose solutions that violate sovereignty and national honor - he is wrong." [1]
In an editorial in the Teshreen daily, Izz Al-Din Darwish wrote: "What is the meaning of an international force? The meaning is the subjugation of Lebanon to Israel's will and placing it before the potential of a renewed civil war. [It would also mean] the removal of the reasons for living in southern Lebanon in which these forces would be stationed - this in light of the reports that are filtering in, according to which Israel is placing a condition that it be the one who will decide who will be allowed to live in the south and who will not. In addition, it is demanding that these international forces [be deployed] in the greater part of the southern territories, to a depth of 30 kilometers.
"These are the international forces that are being proposed by the U.S. and Israel, without any consideration of Lebanon's will and without asking the opinion of the Lebanese, as though Lebanon were public land [belonging] to the Israelis and their plans of aggression. The meaning of this is that the Lebanese will be forced to treat these international forces as occupation forces in their land..."
The Purpose of the Multinational Force is to Wipe Out the Resistance
In an editorial in the Syrian government daily Teshreen, Issam Dari wrote: "[What Israel wants] is to put an end to the mission of the international emergency force [i.e. UNIFIL], so that Lebanon will be deserted up to the Litani, or even beyond that. This is in preparation for the scorched earth policy that Israel is planning to implement under the pretext of wiping out the resistance, and also in preparation for the deployment of international forces that Condoleezza Rice is proposing and which she imposed on the Rome summit.
"This force would occupy southern Lebanon, and it would be assigned the mission of wiping out the Lebanese national resistance, on Israel's behalf. Let us not forget that the current proposal says that the this force would be made up of NATO [forces]!... We hope that someone will understand the danger in what is going on now and will act to prevent [others] from being dragged into the American plot..."
Israel is a Cat That Will Soon Be Skinned
Fuad Sharbaji, former director of Syrian national television, wrote in an article in the Teshreen daily, titled "Hassan Nasrallah and Some Advice to Rice on Skinning the Cat": "...As Syrian Arabs, we stand before Rice and say to the entire world: We will never agree to any force that tries to take away our weapons of honor, and we will not allow Israel to achieve its goals through international forces or NATO forces or multinational forces.
"We in Syria not only stand by the resistance, but we are preparing for any unforeseen circumstance and for any event. We in Syria, with wise rationalism, are armed with honor in order to deal with any aggression, and we are armed with what is needed in order to hurt the enemy and to spring surprises on him that will complement what the Lebanese resistance has done.
"Finally, I propose to Condoleezza Rice that she listen to what Hassan Nasrallah said, and pay attention to Israel's current situation. [Israel] is now the cat that the resistance has struck, and it is likely that it will soon be skinned - and no force, no matter how many nations it includes, will be able to help it."
Memri
08.01.2006
Syrian Government Media Response to the Proposed Multinational Force in Lebanon: We are Armed With What is Needed to Hurt the Enemy and We Will Spring Surprises on Him That Will Complement What the Lebanese Resistance has Done; Israel is a Cat That was Struck by Hizbullah, and Will Soon Be Skinned
Following international efforts to send a multinational force to Lebanon under the aegis of the U.N., the Syrian government press has published several articles expressing fierce opposition to the proposal and threatening to attack Israel and the multinational force.
The following are excerpts:
A Multinational Force Would Be an Occupation That Should Be Met With Resistance
An editorial in the Syrian government daily Al-Ba'th, titled "International Force or New Occupation?" read: "Whoever thinks that the presence of international forces on Lebanese soil is the solution is wrong - since these forces, in the eyes of the resistance fighters and in the nationalist and pan-Arab view, would be occupation forces, like the forces that have occupied Iraq and other places in the world.
"As long as [the international forces] are of this type, it will be necessary for the forces facing Israel in southern Lebanon, the Arab brothers, and those friends in the world who stand alongside the resistance to put up resistance against them and to clash with them, [and this will be done] through various means and methods. Whoever puts his trust in the [idea that] destruction, murder, and even occupation can impose solutions that violate sovereignty and national honor - he is wrong." [1]
In an editorial in the Teshreen daily, Izz Al-Din Darwish wrote: "What is the meaning of an international force? The meaning is the subjugation of Lebanon to Israel's will and placing it before the potential of a renewed civil war. [It would also mean] the removal of the reasons for living in southern Lebanon in which these forces would be stationed - this in light of the reports that are filtering in, according to which Israel is placing a condition that it be the one who will decide who will be allowed to live in the south and who will not. In addition, it is demanding that these international forces [be deployed] in the greater part of the southern territories, to a depth of 30 kilometers.
"These are the international forces that are being proposed by the U.S. and Israel, without any consideration of Lebanon's will and without asking the opinion of the Lebanese, as though Lebanon were public land [belonging] to the Israelis and their plans of aggression. The meaning of this is that the Lebanese will be forced to treat these international forces as occupation forces in their land..."
The Purpose of the Multinational Force is to Wipe Out the Resistance
In an editorial in the Syrian government daily Teshreen, Issam Dari wrote: "[What Israel wants] is to put an end to the mission of the international emergency force [i.e. UNIFIL], so that Lebanon will be deserted up to the Litani, or even beyond that. This is in preparation for the scorched earth policy that Israel is planning to implement under the pretext of wiping out the resistance, and also in preparation for the deployment of international forces that Condoleezza Rice is proposing and which she imposed on the Rome summit.
"This force would occupy southern Lebanon, and it would be assigned the mission of wiping out the Lebanese national resistance, on Israel's behalf. Let us not forget that the current proposal says that the this force would be made up of NATO [forces]!... We hope that someone will understand the danger in what is going on now and will act to prevent [others] from being dragged into the American plot..."
Israel is a Cat That Will Soon Be Skinned
Fuad Sharbaji, former director of Syrian national television, wrote in an article in the Teshreen daily, titled "Hassan Nasrallah and Some Advice to Rice on Skinning the Cat": "...As Syrian Arabs, we stand before Rice and say to the entire world: We will never agree to any force that tries to take away our weapons of honor, and we will not allow Israel to achieve its goals through international forces or NATO forces or multinational forces.
"We in Syria not only stand by the resistance, but we are preparing for any unforeseen circumstance and for any event. We in Syria, with wise rationalism, are armed with honor in order to deal with any aggression, and we are armed with what is needed in order to hurt the enemy and to spring surprises on him that will complement what the Lebanese resistance has done.
"Finally, I propose to Condoleezza Rice that she listen to what Hassan Nasrallah said, and pay attention to Israel's current situation. [Israel] is now the cat that the resistance has struck, and it is likely that it will soon be skinned - and no force, no matter how many nations it includes, will be able to help it."
Memri
08.01.2006
Monday, July 31, 2006
Iranian Assistance To Hizbullah
On July 29, 2006, the London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published a detailed article on assistance extended to Hizbullah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, as reported by a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards officer who had trained Hizbullah naval units.
According to the officer, Hizbullah has a diver unit and a naval commando unit. He further claims that Revolutionary Guards officers assisted Hizbullah in the July 14, 2006 firing of a C802 missile at an Israeli Navy ship, and had also helped Hizbullah construct underground facilities – including command and control rooms – which are being operated by Revolutionary Guards officers along with Hizbullah fighters.
In addition, Iranian news agencies have published a number of reports about groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to aid Hizbullah in its fight against Israel.
The following are excerpts from these reports on Iranian assistance to Hizbullah.
Revolutionary Guards Assistance to Hizbullah
The following are excerpts from the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat report on aid extended to Hizbullah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards:
"Hundreds of Hizbullah fighters currently confronting Israel's military array took part in special training courses at the Revolutionary Guards bases in Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad and Ahvaz. According to a high-ranking [Revolutionary] Guards officer, who trained one of the Hizbullah naval units, Hizbullah has many surprises up its sleeve.
Until now, there has been no direct confrontation between Hizbullah and the Israeli navy, [but] one of the Israeli navy's ships was attacked with C802 missiles with the help of Revolutionary Guards [fighters] stationed in Lebanon. Hizbullah has a divers' unit and a naval commando unit [equipped] with Chinese-made Ho-Dong speedboats, which are capable of dealing [serious] blows to the Israeli navy."
The Iranian officer added that "thanks to the presence of hundreds of Iranian engineers and technicians, as well as North Korean experts brought [into Lebanon] in the guise of [domestic] servants by Iranian diplomats and by the staff at the Iranian representations and offices in Lebanon, Hizbullah has managed to build a 25-kilometer underground [tunnel]. Each opening in this [tunnel] measures 12 to 18 square meters, and has a mobile floor and a semi-mobile ceiling. Each four openings are connected by a passage that allows fighters to pass easily [from one opening] to the other.
"The [Revolutionary] Guards has also built Hizbullah underground storerooms in the Beka' Valley, at a depth of no more than eight meters, which hold huge amounts of missiles and ammunition. In the Beka', there is [also] a central command room operated by four Revolutionary Guards officers and four Hizbullah [fighters]. Each sector has its [own] command and operations room.
"Hizbullah's missile unit includes some 200 technicians and experts trained in Iran. Hizbullah has three missile units, each supervised by a staff of 20."
2,500 Iranian Suicide Fighters Await Khamenei's Order
The following are reports recently published by Iranian news agencies regarding groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to assist Hizbullah in its fight against Israel:
On July 25, 2006, the Iranian Farda news agency quoted a report by the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA), stating that Hizbullah-Iran has recruited some 2,500 suicide fighters who are awaiting an order from Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to set out to Lebanon.
Hizbullah-Iran spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli added that the Hizbullah-Iran Chairman Mohammad Baqr Kharrazi will "soon be stationed in Lebanon in order to support Hizbullah-Lebanon and to express solidarity with the resistance and with the oppressed Lebanese nation, and [also] in order to follow developments [more] closely...
"Some 2,500 people who are fully willing to carry out istishhad [martyrdom] operations have signed up through groups connected to Hizbullah-Iran, so that the list [of martyrs] is now ready, and they await an order from the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei]..."
Enlisting Volunteers Online
On July 26, 2006, the Iranian news agency Alborz announced that volunteers could sign up online for the "Army of the Fighters of Muhammad." The report explained that the Army of the Fighters of Muhammad was recruiting fighters to be sent to Lebanon, and that those interested in signing up could also call a telephone number in Tehran (88938821). According to the report, the minimum age for enlisting is 16.
Two Groups of Martyrdom Fighters Sent To Lebanon
On July 18, 2006, the Alborz news agency reported that "two groups of Iranian martyrdom fighters, who have received guidance and training, have been sent to Lebanon in order to participate in the [war on] its fronts.
"Ali Mohammadi, spokesman of The World Islamic Organization's Headquarters for Commemorating the Shahids (martyrdom fighters), stated: 'These two groups, which include 27 people selected from among 55,000 who signed up, were sent to Lebanon in order to participate in the war front against the Zionist regime... These forces have undergone various forms of training... Their mission is to arrive in Lebanon by any means possible, and to carry out martyrdom operations in the event that Lebanon is occupied by the Zionist regime.'
"The sending of these troops, he noted, was on a completely volunteer basis... These people were sent to Lebanon privately, and they have no organizational connection with Hizbullah... It should be noted that these 27 people have mastery of English and Arabic. They are to remain in Lebanon until further notice...'"
Mehr News Agency: "Two Teams [Have Been] Sent to Syria In Order to Reach The Regions Of Conflict In Lebanon"
According to another report, by the Mehr news agency, on the dispatching of two suicide fighter groups to Lebanon, spokesman Mohammadi said that "two teams, one with 18 people and the other with nine, traveled separately... to Syria, in order to reach the regions of conflict in Lebanon by any means possible..." Mohammadi noted that "all 27 [team members] have mastery of Arabic, and some of them can even speak English... We have no organizational connection with Hizbullah or any other group. These people set out with the aim of helping the Lebanese people, and they are acting independently..."
Memri
According to the officer, Hizbullah has a diver unit and a naval commando unit. He further claims that Revolutionary Guards officers assisted Hizbullah in the July 14, 2006 firing of a C802 missile at an Israeli Navy ship, and had also helped Hizbullah construct underground facilities – including command and control rooms – which are being operated by Revolutionary Guards officers along with Hizbullah fighters.
In addition, Iranian news agencies have published a number of reports about groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to aid Hizbullah in its fight against Israel.
The following are excerpts from these reports on Iranian assistance to Hizbullah.
Revolutionary Guards Assistance to Hizbullah
The following are excerpts from the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat report on aid extended to Hizbullah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards:
"Hundreds of Hizbullah fighters currently confronting Israel's military array took part in special training courses at the Revolutionary Guards bases in Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad and Ahvaz. According to a high-ranking [Revolutionary] Guards officer, who trained one of the Hizbullah naval units, Hizbullah has many surprises up its sleeve.
Until now, there has been no direct confrontation between Hizbullah and the Israeli navy, [but] one of the Israeli navy's ships was attacked with C802 missiles with the help of Revolutionary Guards [fighters] stationed in Lebanon. Hizbullah has a divers' unit and a naval commando unit [equipped] with Chinese-made Ho-Dong speedboats, which are capable of dealing [serious] blows to the Israeli navy."
The Iranian officer added that "thanks to the presence of hundreds of Iranian engineers and technicians, as well as North Korean experts brought [into Lebanon] in the guise of [domestic] servants by Iranian diplomats and by the staff at the Iranian representations and offices in Lebanon, Hizbullah has managed to build a 25-kilometer underground [tunnel]. Each opening in this [tunnel] measures 12 to 18 square meters, and has a mobile floor and a semi-mobile ceiling. Each four openings are connected by a passage that allows fighters to pass easily [from one opening] to the other.
"The [Revolutionary] Guards has also built Hizbullah underground storerooms in the Beka' Valley, at a depth of no more than eight meters, which hold huge amounts of missiles and ammunition. In the Beka', there is [also] a central command room operated by four Revolutionary Guards officers and four Hizbullah [fighters]. Each sector has its [own] command and operations room.
"Hizbullah's missile unit includes some 200 technicians and experts trained in Iran. Hizbullah has three missile units, each supervised by a staff of 20."
2,500 Iranian Suicide Fighters Await Khamenei's Order
The following are reports recently published by Iranian news agencies regarding groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to assist Hizbullah in its fight against Israel:
On July 25, 2006, the Iranian Farda news agency quoted a report by the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA), stating that Hizbullah-Iran has recruited some 2,500 suicide fighters who are awaiting an order from Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to set out to Lebanon.
Hizbullah-Iran spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli added that the Hizbullah-Iran Chairman Mohammad Baqr Kharrazi will "soon be stationed in Lebanon in order to support Hizbullah-Lebanon and to express solidarity with the resistance and with the oppressed Lebanese nation, and [also] in order to follow developments [more] closely...
"Some 2,500 people who are fully willing to carry out istishhad [martyrdom] operations have signed up through groups connected to Hizbullah-Iran, so that the list [of martyrs] is now ready, and they await an order from the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei]..."
Enlisting Volunteers Online
On July 26, 2006, the Iranian news agency Alborz announced that volunteers could sign up online for the "Army of the Fighters of Muhammad." The report explained that the Army of the Fighters of Muhammad was recruiting fighters to be sent to Lebanon, and that those interested in signing up could also call a telephone number in Tehran (88938821). According to the report, the minimum age for enlisting is 16.
Two Groups of Martyrdom Fighters Sent To Lebanon
On July 18, 2006, the Alborz news agency reported that "two groups of Iranian martyrdom fighters, who have received guidance and training, have been sent to Lebanon in order to participate in the [war on] its fronts.
"Ali Mohammadi, spokesman of The World Islamic Organization's Headquarters for Commemorating the Shahids (martyrdom fighters), stated: 'These two groups, which include 27 people selected from among 55,000 who signed up, were sent to Lebanon in order to participate in the war front against the Zionist regime... These forces have undergone various forms of training... Their mission is to arrive in Lebanon by any means possible, and to carry out martyrdom operations in the event that Lebanon is occupied by the Zionist regime.'
"The sending of these troops, he noted, was on a completely volunteer basis... These people were sent to Lebanon privately, and they have no organizational connection with Hizbullah... It should be noted that these 27 people have mastery of English and Arabic. They are to remain in Lebanon until further notice...'"
Mehr News Agency: "Two Teams [Have Been] Sent to Syria In Order to Reach The Regions Of Conflict In Lebanon"
According to another report, by the Mehr news agency, on the dispatching of two suicide fighter groups to Lebanon, spokesman Mohammadi said that "two teams, one with 18 people and the other with nine, traveled separately... to Syria, in order to reach the regions of conflict in Lebanon by any means possible..." Mohammadi noted that "all 27 [team members] have mastery of Arabic, and some of them can even speak English... We have no organizational connection with Hizbullah or any other group. These people set out with the aim of helping the Lebanese people, and they are acting independently..."
Memri
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Ancient Translation of Psalms Found in Irish Bog
Archaeologists in Ireland found an ancient Latin translation of the Psalms of King David last week. Which Psalm the book was open to when preserved in the Irish bog has been a subject of confusion.
The ancient book was discovered in a bog by a construction worker who spotted it while driving the shovel of his backhoe into an area nearby. The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000.
It was initially reported that Latin Vulgate version of the book was opened to Psalm 83, which in the Hebrew Tanach exhorts G-d to “not hold Yourself silent” as the nations plot against Israel – explicitly mentioning Edom, Ishmael and the residents of Philistia and Tyre.
It turns out, however, that the Vulgate uses a different numbering of the chapters than the Hebrew Bible and the chapter that was actually facing outwards was not Psalm 83.
It was then reported that the visible text on the bog book is from the seventh verse of Psalm 82, which reads: "But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler."
Finally, the the Director of Ireland's museum Patrick F. Wallace said in a statement Friday that it was actually Psalm 84 that was exposed. He said that the original announcement had “led to misconceptions about the revealed wording. It is hoped that this clarification will serve comfort to anyone worried by earlier reports of the content of the text.”
The words of Psalm 84 are as follows:
1. For the conductor, on the gittith, of the sons of Korah, a song.
2. How beloved are Your dwelling places, O L-rd of Hosts!
3. My soul yearns, yea, it pines for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh pray fervently to the living G-d.
4. Even a bird found a house and a swallow her nest, where she placed her chicks upon Your altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my G-d.
5. Fortunate are those who stay in Your house; they will continually praise You forever.
6. Fortunate is the man who has strength in You, in whose heart are the highways.
7. Transgressors in the valley of Baka (weeping) make it into a fountain; also with blessings they enwrap [their] Teacher.
8. They go from host to host; he will appear to G-d in Zion.
9. O L-rd, G-d of Hosts, hearken to my prayer; bend Your ear, O G-d of Jacob, forever.
10. See our shield, O G-d, and look at the face of Your anointed.
11. For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand; I chose to sit on the threshold of the house of My G-d rather than dwell in tents of wickedness.
12. For a sun and a shield is the L-rd G-d; the L-rd will give grace and glory; He will not withhold good from those who go with sincerity.
13. O L-rd of Hosts, fortunate is the man who trusts in You.
The Psalm is recited by many Jews at the beginning of the afternoon prayers on a daily basis. The Valley of Weeping can be read as the Bekaa Valley, one of the areas focused upon in Hizbullah attacks since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon six years ago. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has suggested that Israel cede the area to Lebanon, allowing Hizbullah to declare victory.
July 30, 2006
Arutz Sheva
The ancient book was discovered in a bog by a construction worker who spotted it while driving the shovel of his backhoe into an area nearby. The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000.
It was initially reported that Latin Vulgate version of the book was opened to Psalm 83, which in the Hebrew Tanach exhorts G-d to “not hold Yourself silent” as the nations plot against Israel – explicitly mentioning Edom, Ishmael and the residents of Philistia and Tyre.
It turns out, however, that the Vulgate uses a different numbering of the chapters than the Hebrew Bible and the chapter that was actually facing outwards was not Psalm 83.
It was then reported that the visible text on the bog book is from the seventh verse of Psalm 82, which reads: "But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler."
Finally, the the Director of Ireland's museum Patrick F. Wallace said in a statement Friday that it was actually Psalm 84 that was exposed. He said that the original announcement had “led to misconceptions about the revealed wording. It is hoped that this clarification will serve comfort to anyone worried by earlier reports of the content of the text.”
The words of Psalm 84 are as follows:
1. For the conductor, on the gittith, of the sons of Korah, a song.
2. How beloved are Your dwelling places, O L-rd of Hosts!
3. My soul yearns, yea, it pines for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh pray fervently to the living G-d.
4. Even a bird found a house and a swallow her nest, where she placed her chicks upon Your altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my G-d.
5. Fortunate are those who stay in Your house; they will continually praise You forever.
6. Fortunate is the man who has strength in You, in whose heart are the highways.
7. Transgressors in the valley of Baka (weeping) make it into a fountain; also with blessings they enwrap [their] Teacher.
8. They go from host to host; he will appear to G-d in Zion.
9. O L-rd, G-d of Hosts, hearken to my prayer; bend Your ear, O G-d of Jacob, forever.
10. See our shield, O G-d, and look at the face of Your anointed.
11. For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand; I chose to sit on the threshold of the house of My G-d rather than dwell in tents of wickedness.
12. For a sun and a shield is the L-rd G-d; the L-rd will give grace and glory; He will not withhold good from those who go with sincerity.
13. O L-rd of Hosts, fortunate is the man who trusts in You.
The Psalm is recited by many Jews at the beginning of the afternoon prayers on a daily basis. The Valley of Weeping can be read as the Bekaa Valley, one of the areas focused upon in Hizbullah attacks since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon six years ago. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has suggested that Israel cede the area to Lebanon, allowing Hizbullah to declare victory.
July 30, 2006
Arutz Sheva
Saturday, July 29, 2006
What Is Tisha B'Av?
Five misfortunes befell our fathers ... on the ninth of Av. ...
...On the ninth of Av it was decreed that our fathers should not enter the [Promised] Land,
...the Temple was destroyed the first and second time,
...Bethar was captured and the city [Jerusalem] was ploughed up.
-Mishnah Ta'anit 4:6
...Should I weep in the fifth month [Av], separating myself, as I have done these so many years? -Zechariah 7:3
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month ...came Nebuzaradan ... and he burnt the house of the L-RD... -II Kings 25:8-9
In the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month... came Nebuzaradan ... and he burnt the house of the L-RD... - Jeremiah 52:12-13
How then are these dates to be reconciled? On the seventh the heathens entered the Temple and ate therein and desecrated it throughout the seventh and eighth and towards dusk of the ninth they set fire to it and it continued to burn the whole of that day. ... How will the Rabbis then [explain the choice of the 9th as the date]? The beginning of any misfortune [when the fire was set] is of greater moment. -Talmud Ta'anit 29a
Tisha B'Av, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, is a day of mourning to commemorate the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, many of which coincidentally have occurred on the ninth of Av.
Tisha B'Av means "the ninth (day) of Av." It usually occurs during August.
Tisha B'Av primarily commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples, both of which were destroyed on the ninth of Av (the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E.).
Although this holiday is primarily meant to commemorate the destruction of the Temple, it is appropriate to consider on this day the many other tragedies of the Jewish people, many of which occurred on this day, most notably the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.1
Tisha B'Av is the culmination of a three week period of increasing mourning, beginning with the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, which commemorates the first breach in the walls of Jerusalem, before the First Temple was destroyed. During this three week period, weddings and other parties are not permitted, and people refrain from cutting their hair. From the first to the ninth of Av, it is customary to refrain from eating meat or drinking wine (except on the Shabbat) and from wearing new clothing.
The restrictions on Tisha B'Av are similar to those on Yom Kippur: to refrain from eating and drinking (even water); washing, bathing, shaving or wearing cosmetics; wearing leather shoes; engaging in sexual relations; and studying Torah. Work in the ordinary sense of the word [rather than the Shabbat sense] is also restricted. People who are ill need not fast on this day. Many of the traditional mourning practices are observed: people refrain from smiles, laughter and idle conversation, and sit on low stools.
In synagogue, the book of Lamentations is read and mourning prayers are recited. The ark (cabinet where the Torah is kept) is draped in black.
...On the ninth of Av it was decreed that our fathers should not enter the [Promised] Land,
...the Temple was destroyed the first and second time,
...Bethar was captured and the city [Jerusalem] was ploughed up.
-Mishnah Ta'anit 4:6
...Should I weep in the fifth month [Av], separating myself, as I have done these so many years? -Zechariah 7:3
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month ...came Nebuzaradan ... and he burnt the house of the L-RD... -II Kings 25:8-9
In the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month... came Nebuzaradan ... and he burnt the house of the L-RD... - Jeremiah 52:12-13
How then are these dates to be reconciled? On the seventh the heathens entered the Temple and ate therein and desecrated it throughout the seventh and eighth and towards dusk of the ninth they set fire to it and it continued to burn the whole of that day. ... How will the Rabbis then [explain the choice of the 9th as the date]? The beginning of any misfortune [when the fire was set] is of greater moment. -Talmud Ta'anit 29a
Tisha B'Av, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, is a day of mourning to commemorate the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, many of which coincidentally have occurred on the ninth of Av.
Tisha B'Av means "the ninth (day) of Av." It usually occurs during August.
Tisha B'Av primarily commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples, both of which were destroyed on the ninth of Av (the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E.).
Although this holiday is primarily meant to commemorate the destruction of the Temple, it is appropriate to consider on this day the many other tragedies of the Jewish people, many of which occurred on this day, most notably the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.1
Tisha B'Av is the culmination of a three week period of increasing mourning, beginning with the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, which commemorates the first breach in the walls of Jerusalem, before the First Temple was destroyed. During this three week period, weddings and other parties are not permitted, and people refrain from cutting their hair. From the first to the ninth of Av, it is customary to refrain from eating meat or drinking wine (except on the Shabbat) and from wearing new clothing.
The restrictions on Tisha B'Av are similar to those on Yom Kippur: to refrain from eating and drinking (even water); washing, bathing, shaving or wearing cosmetics; wearing leather shoes; engaging in sexual relations; and studying Torah. Work in the ordinary sense of the word [rather than the Shabbat sense] is also restricted. People who are ill need not fast on this day. Many of the traditional mourning practices are observed: people refrain from smiles, laughter and idle conversation, and sit on low stools.
In synagogue, the book of Lamentations is read and mourning prayers are recited. The ark (cabinet where the Torah is kept) is draped in black.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Israeli Scientists Find Code Beyond Genetics in DNA
07.28.2006
In a discovery that may aid scientists in the future in understanding the mechanisms underlying many diseases, a team of Israeli researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science have succeeded, together with colleagues from Northwestern University in Chicago, believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.
The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, the scientists say, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself. The bead-like nucleosomes are strung along the entire chromosome, which is itself folded and packaged to fit into the nucleus. What determines how, when and where a nucleosome will be positioned along the DNA sequence?
According to Dr. Eran Segal and research student Yair Field of the Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Department at Weizmann, the precise location of the nucleosomes along the DNA is known to play an important role in the cell's day to day function, since access to DNA wrapped in a nucleosome is blocked for many proteins, including those responsible for some of life's most basic processes.
Among these barred proteins are factors that initiate DNA replication, transcription (the transfer of genetic information from DNA to RNA) and DNA repair. Thus, the positioning of nucleosomes defines the segments in which these processes can and can't take place. These limitations are considerable: Most of the DNA is packaged into nucleosomes. A single nucleosome contains about 150 genetic bases (the 'letters' that make up a genetic sequence) while the free area between neighboring nucleosomes is only about 20 bases long. It is in these nucleosome-free regions that processes such as transcription can be initiated.
For many years, scientists have been unable to agree whether the placement of nucleosomes in live cells is controlled by the genetic sequence itself. Segal and his colleagues managed to prove that the DNA sequence indeed encodes 'zoning' information on where to place nucleosomes. They also characterized this code and then, using the DNA sequence alone, were able to accurately predict a large number of nucleosome positions in yeast cells.
Segal and his colleagues accomplished this by examining around 200 different nucleosome sites on the DNA and asking whether their sequences have something in common. Mathematical analysis revealed similarities between the nucleosome-bound sequences and eventually uncovered a specific 'code word.' This 'code word' consists of a periodic signal that appears every 10 bases on the sequence. The regular repetition of this signal helps the DNA segment to bend sharply into the spherical shape required to form a nucleosome. To identify this nucleosome positioning code, the research team used probabilistic models to characterize the sequences bound by nucleosomes, and they then developed a computer algorithm to predict the encoded organization of nucleosomes along an entire chromosome.
The nucleosomes frequently move around, letting the DNA float free when a gene has to be transcribed. Given this constant flux, Segal said he was surprised they could predict as many as half of the preferred nucleosome positions. But having broken the code, "We think that for the first time we have a real quantitative handle" on exploring how the nucleosomes and other proteins interact to control the DNA, he told The New York Times.
The other 50 percent of the positions may be determined by competition between the nucleosomes and other proteins, Segal suggested.
The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell.
The team's findings provided insight into another mystery that has long been puzzling molecular biologists: How do cells direct transcription factors to their intended sites on the DNA, as opposed to the many similar, but functionally irrelevant sites along the genomic sequence?
The short binding sites themselves do not contain enough information for the transcription factors to discern between them. The scientists showed that basic information on the functional relevance of a binding site is at least partially encoded in the nucleosome positioning code: The intended sites are found in nucleosome-free segments, thereby allowing them to be accessed by the various transcription factors. In contrast, spurious binding sites with identical structures that could potentially sidetrack transcription factors are conveniently situated in segments that form nucleosomes, and are thus mostly inaccessible.
Since the proteins that form the core of the nucleosome are among the most evolutionarily conserved in nature, the scientists believe the genetic code they identified should also be conserved in many organisms, including humans. Several diseases, such as cancer, are typically accompanied or caused by mutations in the DNA and the way it organizes into chromosomes.
Such mutational processes may be influenced by the relative accessibility of the DNA to various proteins and by the organization of the DNA in the cell nucleus. Therefore, the scientists believe that the nucleosome positioning code they discovered may aid scientists in the future in understanding the mechanisms underlying many diseases.
Israel 21st Century
In a discovery that may aid scientists in the future in understanding the mechanisms underlying many diseases, a team of Israeli researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science have succeeded, together with colleagues from Northwestern University in Chicago, believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.
The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, the scientists say, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself. The bead-like nucleosomes are strung along the entire chromosome, which is itself folded and packaged to fit into the nucleus. What determines how, when and where a nucleosome will be positioned along the DNA sequence?
According to Dr. Eran Segal and research student Yair Field of the Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Department at Weizmann, the precise location of the nucleosomes along the DNA is known to play an important role in the cell's day to day function, since access to DNA wrapped in a nucleosome is blocked for many proteins, including those responsible for some of life's most basic processes.
Among these barred proteins are factors that initiate DNA replication, transcription (the transfer of genetic information from DNA to RNA) and DNA repair. Thus, the positioning of nucleosomes defines the segments in which these processes can and can't take place. These limitations are considerable: Most of the DNA is packaged into nucleosomes. A single nucleosome contains about 150 genetic bases (the 'letters' that make up a genetic sequence) while the free area between neighboring nucleosomes is only about 20 bases long. It is in these nucleosome-free regions that processes such as transcription can be initiated.
For many years, scientists have been unable to agree whether the placement of nucleosomes in live cells is controlled by the genetic sequence itself. Segal and his colleagues managed to prove that the DNA sequence indeed encodes 'zoning' information on where to place nucleosomes. They also characterized this code and then, using the DNA sequence alone, were able to accurately predict a large number of nucleosome positions in yeast cells.
Segal and his colleagues accomplished this by examining around 200 different nucleosome sites on the DNA and asking whether their sequences have something in common. Mathematical analysis revealed similarities between the nucleosome-bound sequences and eventually uncovered a specific 'code word.' This 'code word' consists of a periodic signal that appears every 10 bases on the sequence. The regular repetition of this signal helps the DNA segment to bend sharply into the spherical shape required to form a nucleosome. To identify this nucleosome positioning code, the research team used probabilistic models to characterize the sequences bound by nucleosomes, and they then developed a computer algorithm to predict the encoded organization of nucleosomes along an entire chromosome.
The nucleosomes frequently move around, letting the DNA float free when a gene has to be transcribed. Given this constant flux, Segal said he was surprised they could predict as many as half of the preferred nucleosome positions. But having broken the code, "We think that for the first time we have a real quantitative handle" on exploring how the nucleosomes and other proteins interact to control the DNA, he told The New York Times.
The other 50 percent of the positions may be determined by competition between the nucleosomes and other proteins, Segal suggested.
The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell.
The team's findings provided insight into another mystery that has long been puzzling molecular biologists: How do cells direct transcription factors to their intended sites on the DNA, as opposed to the many similar, but functionally irrelevant sites along the genomic sequence?
The short binding sites themselves do not contain enough information for the transcription factors to discern between them. The scientists showed that basic information on the functional relevance of a binding site is at least partially encoded in the nucleosome positioning code: The intended sites are found in nucleosome-free segments, thereby allowing them to be accessed by the various transcription factors. In contrast, spurious binding sites with identical structures that could potentially sidetrack transcription factors are conveniently situated in segments that form nucleosomes, and are thus mostly inaccessible.
Since the proteins that form the core of the nucleosome are among the most evolutionarily conserved in nature, the scientists believe the genetic code they identified should also be conserved in many organisms, including humans. Several diseases, such as cancer, are typically accompanied or caused by mutations in the DNA and the way it organizes into chromosomes.
Such mutational processes may be influenced by the relative accessibility of the DNA to various proteins and by the organization of the DNA in the cell nucleus. Therefore, the scientists believe that the nucleosome positioning code they discovered may aid scientists in the future in understanding the mechanisms underlying many diseases.
Israel 21st Century
Thursday, July 27, 2006
The Time Shall Come By Jack Kinsella
"And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows." (Matthew 24:5-6)
The verses quoted above were part of Jesus' response to the question, "What will be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world?" (Matthew 24:3)
The Lord's reply to the question is known to Bible scholars as the "Olivet Discourse" because, 1) Jesus was standing 'upon the Mount of Olives' at the time, and; 2) His answer, which is contained in the three Synoptic Gospels, fills the entire chapter. It is one of the most lengthy teaching discourses in the New Testament.
The Olivet Discourse focuses its attention on events that take place DURING THE TRIBULATION, but begins by describing the events that conspire together to bring it about.
The period of wars and rumors of wars has been ongoing now since 1914 with the first truly global war in human history. It was followed by a second global war in 1939, whose conclusion brought about the ultimate 'rumor of war' between the West and the Soviet Empire.
There are two different entities under discussion, 'nations' and 'kingdoms'. The word 'nation' is translated from the Greek word 'ethnos' and describes an ethnic state, like Israel or one of the ethnic states of the Arab world. Or North Korea.
The world translated 'kingdom' 'basileia' means "royal power, kingship, dominion, rule" and it describes a national entity bound together by economic/social interests, rather than ethnic relationships.
America would fit the Biblical understanding of a 'kingdom' in the sense Americans are not bound together by blood or ethnicity, but rather by common social and economic benefits. The same could be applied to the member/states of the EU. Individually, some European countries might be ethnic in origin, but the Common Market exists for economic reasons.
The collapse of the Soviet Union uncorked a new round of ethnic unrest and international conflict, but, as Jesus was careful to note, "the end is not yet."
Ethnic or economic strife have been responsible for all the wars of modern times. The world wars were wars aimed at conquest for economic reasons. Hitler's Nazis sought both ethnic purity and "liebensraum"(living space) for Germany.
Japan's Imperial government set out to conquer Asia to ensure a steady supply of raw materials and to establish ethnic Japanese rule over Greater Asia.
Skeptics might argue that wars, ethnic unrest, even famines, earthquakes and pestilences, all have been part of the human condition since the Fall of Man at the Garden of Eden. (Or since the first amoeba turned into a person . . . for the skeptic who can't bring himself to believe in God, but finds no conflict of faith in a frog turning into a prince).
Note that Jesus said "all these are the beginning of sorrows." The word 'sorrow' first appears in Scripture in Genesis 3:16 when God tells Eve, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." "Sorrow" is translated from the Hebrew "itstsabown" and refers to labor pains.
The Greek word 'odin' translated as 'sorrows' in Matthew 24:8 also refers to labor pains.
Every parent who has ever lived could instantly grasp the meaning of this metaphor -- that is why Jesus chose it. As the birth of a child approaches, the mother begins to experience labor pains, which, having once begun, continue to increase in both frequency and intensity as the moment of birth approaches.
Prospective parents in Jesus' day did exactly what I did with each of my kids -- timed the interval between the contractions. It was a carefully chosen metaphor designed to resonate with all people, of all cultures, in all generations. But, to the generation to whom those signs were addressed, the meaning would be unmistakable.
When one compares the accuracy of the Bible's account of the unknowable future to the ever-changing scientific 'explanations' for the distant past, doubts melt away. The skeptic has multiple explanations for static events that have already happened.
The Bible gives a single explanation for a fluid, changeable series of events predicted to happen thousands of years in the future -- the events that define our present day. Which is more convincing?
Bible prophecy proves Jesus was the Son of God, regardless of the latest scientific, archeological or historical discovery. No matter what else might be offered as 'evidence' to the contrary, there is no other explanation for Bible prophecy. It is our generation's unique miracle.
It proves that He remains in charge of the affairs of men. Scripture records His Promise in all three Gospel accounts, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35. Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33)
"We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:" (2 Peter 1:19)
Bible prophecy is proof positive that God remains on the Throne, that His Word will NOT return to Him void, and that all the chaos and terror of the world notwithstanding, all continues to go according to His plan.
Given the unbeliever's explanation of uncontrolled chaos, Bible prophecy isn't all that depressing, after all. What WOULD be depressing would be to be among the lost, not knowing what this world is coming to, and believing the world is in a state of uncontrolled chaos.
For the believer, Bible prophecy can be pretty encouraging, which is what the Lord intended for the last days' Church all along:
"But these things have I told you, that WHEN THE TIME SHALL COME, ye may remember that I told you of them." (John 16:4)
Excerpted from the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest, Volume 58, Issue 5 ~ July 27, 2006
The verses quoted above were part of Jesus' response to the question, "What will be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world?" (Matthew 24:3)
The Lord's reply to the question is known to Bible scholars as the "Olivet Discourse" because, 1) Jesus was standing 'upon the Mount of Olives' at the time, and; 2) His answer, which is contained in the three Synoptic Gospels, fills the entire chapter. It is one of the most lengthy teaching discourses in the New Testament.
The Olivet Discourse focuses its attention on events that take place DURING THE TRIBULATION, but begins by describing the events that conspire together to bring it about.
The period of wars and rumors of wars has been ongoing now since 1914 with the first truly global war in human history. It was followed by a second global war in 1939, whose conclusion brought about the ultimate 'rumor of war' between the West and the Soviet Empire.
There are two different entities under discussion, 'nations' and 'kingdoms'. The word 'nation' is translated from the Greek word 'ethnos' and describes an ethnic state, like Israel or one of the ethnic states of the Arab world. Or North Korea.
The world translated 'kingdom' 'basileia' means "royal power, kingship, dominion, rule" and it describes a national entity bound together by economic/social interests, rather than ethnic relationships.
America would fit the Biblical understanding of a 'kingdom' in the sense Americans are not bound together by blood or ethnicity, but rather by common social and economic benefits. The same could be applied to the member/states of the EU. Individually, some European countries might be ethnic in origin, but the Common Market exists for economic reasons.
The collapse of the Soviet Union uncorked a new round of ethnic unrest and international conflict, but, as Jesus was careful to note, "the end is not yet."
Ethnic or economic strife have been responsible for all the wars of modern times. The world wars were wars aimed at conquest for economic reasons. Hitler's Nazis sought both ethnic purity and "liebensraum"(living space) for Germany.
Japan's Imperial government set out to conquer Asia to ensure a steady supply of raw materials and to establish ethnic Japanese rule over Greater Asia.
Skeptics might argue that wars, ethnic unrest, even famines, earthquakes and pestilences, all have been part of the human condition since the Fall of Man at the Garden of Eden. (Or since the first amoeba turned into a person . . . for the skeptic who can't bring himself to believe in God, but finds no conflict of faith in a frog turning into a prince).
Note that Jesus said "all these are the beginning of sorrows." The word 'sorrow' first appears in Scripture in Genesis 3:16 when God tells Eve, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." "Sorrow" is translated from the Hebrew "itstsabown" and refers to labor pains.
The Greek word 'odin' translated as 'sorrows' in Matthew 24:8 also refers to labor pains.
Every parent who has ever lived could instantly grasp the meaning of this metaphor -- that is why Jesus chose it. As the birth of a child approaches, the mother begins to experience labor pains, which, having once begun, continue to increase in both frequency and intensity as the moment of birth approaches.
Prospective parents in Jesus' day did exactly what I did with each of my kids -- timed the interval between the contractions. It was a carefully chosen metaphor designed to resonate with all people, of all cultures, in all generations. But, to the generation to whom those signs were addressed, the meaning would be unmistakable.
When one compares the accuracy of the Bible's account of the unknowable future to the ever-changing scientific 'explanations' for the distant past, doubts melt away. The skeptic has multiple explanations for static events that have already happened.
The Bible gives a single explanation for a fluid, changeable series of events predicted to happen thousands of years in the future -- the events that define our present day. Which is more convincing?
Bible prophecy proves Jesus was the Son of God, regardless of the latest scientific, archeological or historical discovery. No matter what else might be offered as 'evidence' to the contrary, there is no other explanation for Bible prophecy. It is our generation's unique miracle.
It proves that He remains in charge of the affairs of men. Scripture records His Promise in all three Gospel accounts, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35. Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33)
"We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:" (2 Peter 1:19)
Bible prophecy is proof positive that God remains on the Throne, that His Word will NOT return to Him void, and that all the chaos and terror of the world notwithstanding, all continues to go according to His plan.
Given the unbeliever's explanation of uncontrolled chaos, Bible prophecy isn't all that depressing, after all. What WOULD be depressing would be to be among the lost, not knowing what this world is coming to, and believing the world is in a state of uncontrolled chaos.
For the believer, Bible prophecy can be pretty encouraging, which is what the Lord intended for the last days' Church all along:
"But these things have I told you, that WHEN THE TIME SHALL COME, ye may remember that I told you of them." (John 16:4)
Excerpted from the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest, Volume 58, Issue 5 ~ July 27, 2006
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