Newsletter Vol. 55

Am Yisrael Chai

The Jewish people are trained in survival. Thousands of years have made a mark on how Jews cope with tragedies, genocide, and unrelenting oppression. I remember well the first Gulf war, when all of Israel was laughing at the stories that surfaced of what happened when the first Iraqi Scud missile plunged into Israel. It was a drama, yet oh so hilarious!

We were laughing at ourselves, utterly determined to carry on life as normal as possible. We humorized the situation, with our comedians replaying our funniest follies under stress. All citizens, great and small, had to carry a gasmask at all times. The containers were brown military cardboard boxes. To reduce the masks’ fearful implication Israelis began to develop gasmask “fashion” by altering the appearance of the box with all sorts of art and craft. When shouldering it it looked more like a fashionable handbag than a mask to protect against possible biological or chemical warfare.

The need to frequently seek shelter in our sealed rooms Israelis turned into a “family event” with special foods, clothing, games, TV and entertainment. The scud missiles were meant to make us tremble with fear and kowtow before the “might” of the Arab world. Instead the whole country fused into one big family, everyone selflessly supporting his neighbor. Israel turned “stereo” as everyone had their radio and TV set on the same channel. Our streets emptied of traffic became a temporary playground for the children who used them as racetracks for their skates and bicycles. Families drew closer, friends deepened their relationship, and old friends renewed contacts

The Iraqi scud missiles turned our people, so divided over nationalistic, religious and political views, into “Am echad” – i.e. one united people, overnight.

Now we see the same thing again, with additional “survival techniques”. Our people in the north are spending most of their time in underground shelters even though insufficiently prepared for a situation such as the present. Israelis from all over the country (and Jews from abroad) are banding together to buy fans, air conditioners, TV sets and radios, even digital games for the children, and deliver these items to the people sweltering during this unrelenting heatwave in underground shelters. Foods, beverages, mattresses, lamps and flashlights are being provided. Many children are brought into the center of the country for summer camp fun provided by volunteers, to keep them safe and relieve their fears.

I work out at the University’s sports center in Beer-Sheva; there, too, you can observe Israelis carrying on as normal a life as possible. We work out, swim, play cards or backgammon, sit together and talk, share a picnic, and watch our children enjoying summer camp fun.

Between news of new rocket attacks and IDF retaliatory actions, pleasant music plays over the loudspeaker. Young couples still get married as planned, even if it is in a shelter, and babies are still being born with mothers beaming with happiness.

Jews Celebrate Life

Even for believers in Yeshua, this is hard to bear but we are comforted and encouraged in Him. Most of our people cannot as yet draw on this comfort. And even those of strong faith in G-d cannot wholly escape the affliction and suffering imposed upon our nation.

Therefore, what our enemies mean for evil we take and try to turn it into something good. This is the deep-down core of our people, which surfaces especially during times of trouble. Once again our comedians are poking fun at the whole situation to alleviate the fear and make the pain of loss less crushing. It helps minimize the stress if one can laugh at oneself and take this existence-threatening situation with humor. It helps both believers and unbelievers to overcome and pick up where we left off when the first rockets fell. Some have defiantly opened their shops again, others their cafes and restaurants, saying with this, “we shall not be overcome by your hatred, by you wanting to wipe us off the map. We are here to stay. Get used to it!”

Israelis celebrate life. Even at the many funerals of young soldiers in their late teens and early 20’s, sons robbed of their lives, it is G-d and life and not fear and death that is being honored. Hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people turn up at these funerals, supporting the grieving and mourning families, comforting them with their presence and show of unity and compassion. There is not an Israeli, religious or secular, who cannot identify and empathize with those who suffer the loss of a loved one.

I have never seen anything like this anywhere, except in the States at the time of the terror attack in Oklahoma City and the horrific one in New York, when hyjacked planes flew into the twin towers of the WTC. Suddenly people turned selfless, thinking only how to help others. Ordinary folks turned into courageous heroes. The whole nation of 50 states fused together into one by this terrible tragedy.

I realized more than ever before how much our 2 countries – one so huge and the other so small – are alike, with our citizens having come from every corner of the earth. America’s citizens are diversified by race and creed, yet form one viable, strong nation, determined to uphold her precious legacy of freedom, although she has termites who try to undermine her from within. But attacked from without she suddenly turns into one determined, unified nation of one consensus. And she stands up and fights back and does not kowtow.

Israel’s citizens are from every people, nation, tribe and tongue as well, but mostly of one race and creed, although Christians, Muslims and Druze number among our citizens. While in times of relative peace Israelis tend to argue over anything and everything and can be infamously rude toward each other, Israel is, above all, a strong nation.

We too have little foxes trying to undermine our very fabric of Jewish nationhood and heritage: self-hating Jews and Jew-hating Arabs who betray our nation at the blink of an eye. But the people as a whole form a viable, strong nation as well, determined to stay put, to build, to increase, to prosper and raise happy children for a good future. Because of their desire and yearning for peace Israelis have clung in hope to promises they deep-down knew would not be kept, and have allowed themselves to be duped into agreements which would never be kept by the so-called peace partner. We even let the American administration under George W. Bush inflict upon us a most terrible trauma – that of the disengagement from Gush Kativ and from northern Shomron (Samaria)² – in the hope for peace.

But this present war Israel is forced to fight ^Y is proving it again: we are still one nation, unified, determined to cling to our covenanted land never to be plucked up again. We insist on life, we insist on our right to exist as a sovereign, viable people, and are once again one big family where every member is there for the other.

My prayer is that these 2 nations, so similar but so different in size, may finally become true and faithful friends and allies. It is in America’s interest to stand with Israel and not with an Islamized Arab world, even as both nations are the most effective witness of G-d’s salvation. While we have seen a weakening of America’s main-stream Christianity, G-d is raising up a strong, uncompromising remnant out of Laodicea.

G-d is also raising up sons into His Kingdom from among Jews worldwide, but especially in Israel. In days not far off He will send them out to every people, nation, tribe and tongue from whence they had returned to Israel to proclaim the Good News of His Salvation and Kingdom. Only THEN shall the end come.

May the believers of these 2 nations shine together as bright beacons in this ever increasing darkness; and may their similarities draw them together for a blessing to each other and to all the earth.

The enemy of G-d and Israel calls America the “big Satan” and Israel the “little Satan”. So you know where we as nations must stand – with G-d and His Kingdom! Amen and Amen!

Yours in Yeshua,

The images of the next page (page 5) are prophetic, as they illustrate the tribulation that shall come upon the whole inhabited earth, a time so terrible as has never been since the beginning of creation and shall never be again³.

The last page (page 6) features a proposed speech for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the nations, penned by Israeli journalist Ben Caspit. It would be a first for an Israeli Prime Minister to muster the courage to say such words which – hallelujah! – are right after my own heart. It is high time that Israel’s leaders stand up and say, “It is enough! So far and not further!” I hope and pray that Olmert will accept and deliver this speech and not weaken but stand firm. In addiditon, may he call off his plan of unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.

G-d is good! He hears and answers our prayers! Read Isaiah 41:8-16, and Micah 4:11-13, and understand that this is one of G-d’s purposes for Israel – to be a threshing instrument in His hands with which He threshes the nations and beats in pieces many peoples. That’s what He did the first time when He brought Israel into the promised Land; and He will do it again after He has regathered the whole nation into the Land. Although the nations may regard the Jew being as a “worm”, our Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel Who will help us! PTL!

Faces of Opposing Worlds

These are Israeli Soldiers Mr. Kofi Anan

We do not hate the people who call themselves “Palestinians”. What we hate is the lawlessness of terrorists, their violence, cruelty and utter disregard of life, whether that of Israelis or of their own people. We hate the lies of their leaders, their desire to “wipe us off the map” and take our country for themselves. But we do not hate the people — such as the world hates Jews.

Let these pictures speak to you, for it reflects the majority of Israelis.

Israel – We Will Not Capitulate

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of Israel , am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon .

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel . I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of

Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

And you – just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction – those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.

Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.

The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak’s peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don’t remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya? What can you do – that’s the way we are. We don’t wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.

We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy’s children – we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.

An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake – we won’t go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don’t recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq . Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans – and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya . And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population – then you also kept silent. What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don’t?

In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don’t, you may regret it later, when it’s too late.

– Ehud Olmert
_________________

May PM Ehud Olmert have the backbone as a SOVEREIGN Jewish leader of the SOVEREIGN State of Israel to deliver this speech before the assembled United Nations! If he will not, I will – if G-d will make room for me! Let it be so, in Yeshua’s Name. Amen and amen!

P.P.S. Well, by now – November 2007 – we KNOW PM Olmert has no backbone! He makes his and Israel’s back like the ground and like the street for President Bush, “Condy” Rice, Mahmoud Abbas and the “Quartet” Ministers to walk over. But G-d will take from Israel the cup of staggering and make the nations drink it.