Orthodox Jews during Succot at the Wailing Wall

 

The BibleSearchers Reflections

Reflections on the Time of the End

By Robert Mock MD

robertmock@biblesearchers.com

www.BibleSearchers.com

 

Gleanings on Global News at the

Time of the End

October-November, 2004 Special Edition Issue

 

 

Israel and the Middle East

 

What is the role for Israel in the time of the end?  Did not the Eternal One of Israel give Israel the duty to protect the oracles of the Lord, the joy of the Shabbat (Sabbath), the festivals of the Lord and the presence of His only Begotten Son?  Was it not the great rabbinic student of Gamaliel who wrote,

 

Romans 9:3-4 – “For I could even pray to be outcast from Christ myself for the sake of my brothers, my natural kinsfolk.  They are Israelites; they were made God’s sons; theirs is the splendour of the divine presence, theirs the covenants, the law, the temple worship, and the promise, Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them, in natural descent, sprang the Messiah.  May God, supreme above all, be blessed for ever! Amen.” (NEB)

 

The first and primary role of the chosen ones of Israel was to teach the inhabitants of this earth that there is a God of Israel who is the Creator and ruler of the Universe.  The second role for the children of Israel was to teach the world that the God of Israel is a personal God and that all men had a right and a privilege to connect with the Divine in a special and personal relationship with Him.  Think about it. At the time that the children of Israel were taken to Sinai and given the Torah, all the inhabitants of the world were pagan and believed that the gods in the other dimensions were to be worshipped in the animals and idols of stone?  Were not the gods of the Egyptians idolized in the forms of the sacred cat, the calf, the ibis and the crocodile?  Yet there at Sinai, the children of Israel were taught how to worship and follow a living Elohim (God) that was above all these other gods.  He was known as the Hidden One of Israel, the Ein Sof.  Yet at the same time He was a personal Elohim (God) who was going to make Himself known to these slaves of Egypt and give them the privilege to be a sacred nation for all ages.

 

Three thousand years later, over half of the populations of the world believe in the monotheistic God of Israel.  Between the Moslems, Christians and Jews, the most powerful and vibrant half of the world trace their religious heritage to the God who came down to Sinai and gave His Torah to His people.   

 

Yes, The Lord of hosts did state that Israel was to be an eternal nation.  The nation of Israel was to be something unique that had never before been seen and never again would be replicated.  Israel would continue to exist as a ‘holy nation’ and be the ‘apple of God’s eye’ in spite of the fact that she rebelled from her Elohim (God) and would be exiled from God’s Holy Land.  Israel would continue to be an eternal nation even in spite of the fact that she did not have the continuous trappings thought to be necessary to be a nation: a recent national history, a language and a national homeland.  Then in the early 1800’s and peaking in the 1840’s, at the very time of the Great Awakening in America when the Protestant denominations came to a self-realization that the messiah would literally return and began to preach, “The hour of God’s judgment is come”.  Little did they realize how true that proclamation was and that they were truly identifying that the time of the end was opening its initial pangs of birth over 160 years (40 x 4 years) ago.  Little did the Advent followers realize but that the last great messianic revival of the Jewish people was about to begin at the same time as the Advent messianic revival.  As the Jewish historian, Paul Johnson wrote:

 

Paul Johnson – “The Jewish sense of injustice was never allowed to sleep.  Just as, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jewish antennae everywhere were ever alert to pick up murmurs of a messiah, so in the nineteenth century an act of injustice to Jews anywhere stirred emotions in the Jewish urban centres.  There were now hundreds of Jewish newspapers which related these outrages, and virtually all Jews could read.   Among the secularized intelligentsia, there was no longer any disposition to attribute the suffering of the race (of Jews) to sins, ancient or modern.  The Damascus blood libel of 1840 was an important milestone in the radicalization of the Jews.”  (Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Harper Perennial, 1987, pg 357)

 

The Damascus blood libel of 1840 is the same libel that is vetted out by the Moslem mullahs today against the Jewish people.  Lord Palmerston of England was no doubt one of the earliest of the Zionists who, influenced by his step-father-in-law, Lord Shaftsbury, believed that the return of the Jews to Jerusalem would hasten the Second Coming of Jesus. Between the years 1827 and 1839, through the efforts of the British and Lord Palmerston the real beginning of the return of the Jews to the Promise Land began.  The population of the Jews in Jerusalem rose from 550 to 5,500 and in all of Palestine topped over 10,000 in this era. (Johnson, pg 321) 

 

In February, 1840, a Capuchin friar along with his servant was murdered in Damascus. A world-wide swell of the anti-Semitic blood libel of the Middle Ages arose as the charges were made that the two men had been killed by the Jews who needed their blood in the preparation of the Passover.  Not forsaking the irrationality of the libel itself that orthodox Jews were the one people of all people who do not touch blood upon fear of contamination, eat blood or use blood in any of their religious beliefs or rituals.  A pogrom was started by the Turkish governor and the French consul under the righteous indignation of needing to protect the Christian population near Damascus.  A Jewish barber, Solomon Negrin, was charged and confessed and before it was over, sixty three Jewish children were seized as hostages until their mothers would confess as to where the blood of the friar was hidden.  Many Jews were killed, arrested or converted to Islam. (Johnson, pg 322)

 

But it was not just the beginning of the birth pangs for the coming of the messiah but it was also the beginning of the prophetic oracles of Ezekiel the prophet when he was ordered by the Lord of hosts to prophecy to the mountains of Israel:

 

Ezekiel 36: 6,7-9 (parts) – Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains, the hills, the rivers and the valleys….I have raise My hand in an oath that surely the nations that are around you shall bear their own shame.  But you, O mountains of Israel, you shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people Israel, for they are about to come.  For indeed I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown.”

 

Notice that the Prophet Ezekiel was to proclaim the oath of the God of Israel, not to the people but to the ‘Land’.  Before the Eternal One of Israel would even call His people and redeem them back to the Land of Israel, He proclaimed to the “mountains, hills, the rivers and valleys”, “shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit.”  The greatest environmental enigma of all time was about to be portrayed by the God of Israel.  When the children of Israel were cast out of their land and scattered to Babylon or to the nations of the earth by the Romans, the Land of Israel became a virtual wasteland.  As the early Jewish people returned to the Land of Israel, the ‘Land’ became the virtual biological paradise.  Then Lord of Israel asked the prophet Ezekiel to prophesy to the House of Israel. 

 

Ezekiel 36:22- - “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus say the Lord God; ‘I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My Holy Names’ sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.  And I will sanctify My Great Name, which has been profaned among the nations….For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land.  Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; …I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you…I will put My spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and you will keep My judgments and do them.  Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people and I will be your God.”

 

The northern tribes were cast out and scattered to the winds of the world.  As the personal life portrayed out in prophetic drama in the life of Hosea the prophet, he was to marry a harlot for his wife who was called Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim.  This marriage would be a drama of the relationship between the Eternal One of Israel and his unfaithful wife, the Nation of Israel.  Gomer would bear Hosea a son called Jezreel as a prophecy of the judgments upon the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel. Their second child would be a daughter called Lo-Ruhamah which meant that the God of Israel would “not have pity or mercy”.  Then their third a final child a boy would be called Lo-Ammi, was given this name because the Lord of host would declare, you are “not my people”.  

 

But that was not the end of the story.  This prophetic drama continued.  Though the Lord of hosts cast the Nation of Israel (the harlot Gomer) away from His sight, He promised that the children of Gomer and Hosea would be redeemed and the brothers and sisters of Judah would one day be restored and the whole House of Judah would one day live together in their Promised Land.

 

Hosea 2:1 – “Say to your brethren, “Ammi” (“You are My people”) and to your sisters, “Ruhamah” (“My mercy is shown”) 

 

Yes, the God of Israel did withdraw Himself from the House of Israel.  They would no longer be recognized as the chosen people of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  They would loose their own identity yet was it not the primary mission for the first coming of the Moschiach of Israel, Yahshua ben Yosef to seek out the “lost sheep of the House of Israel?”   Nowhere in the scriptures does the Lord of hosts present a pathway of exile and destruction to His own people without showing them that there is also pathway of redemption and restoration.  This pathway was assured because it was secured by the oath of raising the mighty hand of the Lord.  The pathway of redemption and restoration was also assured because it was to be done to honor God’s Holy Name. 

 

But at the time of the end did not the Lord of host promise in the visions and oracles revealed to Yohannes (John the prophet) that a pure genetic remnant would be taken as the first fruits of those that pass through the great tribulation. Oh yes, everyone wants to be a part of the 144,000 that stand on the sea of glass before the throne of God, yet the specificity of the Lord of hosts in His holy writ is so detailed and so meticulous that we must not loose sight of the fact that if He says something and gives the details, He will do it.  If we take the Word of the Lord literally, the 144,000 are pure genetic descendants of the literal tribes of Israel. 

 

Revelation 7:1-4 (parts) – “After these things (the sixth Great Seal)…I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God….And I heard the number of those who were sealed.  One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed.”

 

Does not the Omniscient One of Israel have the ability to select 12,000 of each of the chosen tribes to be represented before His throne in heaven?  Of course He does and He will.  Even more so, whether you live in India, Greece, Egypt, Australia or American, or whether you are a Moslem, Hindu, Catholic or Protestant, you may be one of the lost descendants of the ancient Nation of Israel. 

 

Of course, you don’t have the full knowledge of who are the full genetic descendants of the tribe of Reuben or Manasseh or Issachar, but the Lord of host does.  He has already given us the genetic pattern in the recent genetic identity of the Cohanims (priests) of Israel.  Today, a DNA buccal sample can be taken from the sides of the mouth and submitted for genetic Y-DNA sampling.  They type the characteristic DNA pattern that is transmitted from father to son through multiple generations.  If you have a common ancestor to another direct male descendant than your DNA pattern should be an exact match.  This all came about using the genetic studies of the priest of cohanims of Israel who today now can be determined by modern genetic science. 

 

Let me give you a personal example.  I am an amateur genealogist who has had the privilege to trace my personal ancestry back to Adam in three different genealogical lines.  One of these lineages is through Joseph of Arimathea who is now known to be the genetic brother of Heli, the father of the maiden Mariam who was the mother of Yahshua HaMoschiach (Jesus the Messiah).  This lineage is recorded on the Gospel of Luke through Nathan the son of King David.

 

The second lineage is traced back to the daughter of the last king of Judah, King Zedekiah, whose name was Tamar Tephi.  She was given in custody to the Prophet Jeremiah and was eventually taken into exile to Egypt as family in exile and wards of the Pharaoh of Egypt.  Tamar Tephi according to the illustrious lineages of the ancient Irish and found in the lineage of Elizabeth II, Queen of England, is traced to Heremon ben Milesius, who married Tamar Tephi and journeyed first to Crete, Spain and then up to Ireland to become the first king and queen of the Irish royal monarchy.  The lineage of King Zedekiah is traced to Solomon son of King David of the United Monarchy of Israel.

 

The third lineage is traced also through the same Irish royal lineage but this time through the Scythian lineage of Heremon son of Milesius to the House of Japheth, the son of Noah. 

 

Of all the lineages of my family, the most problematic is my paternal ancestral lineages through the House of Mocks.  Today we have a Mock group of genealogists who are quite skilled in tracing the roots of our ancestral records. Yet my great great grandfather Mock did not wish to leave ties nor a documented legacy of his family or ancestry.  All the census and family records have defied tracing exactly who was my ancestral fourth great grandfather Mock.  What is known is that he is one of three Peter Mocks who lived in the eastern seaboard of America in the late 18^th and early 19^th century.

 

All three of these Mock lineages are known and well document to living male descendants today.  With the modern use of DNA typing and cross-matching with the three known lineages, I was able to cross-match with the proper Peter Mock as my paternal ancestor through the exact cross-match with one of his descendants.  The story does not end there.  One of these three Peter Mock, all of whom came from roots in Austria and Germany, is Y-DNA typed to the genetic type of the cohanims or priests of Israel.  What are the implications?  At least one of these Mock families as descendants of a Peter Mock is of the House of Levi and eligible to be priests of Israel.  This lineage is not my lineage but the implications are profound.  We truly do not know who we are or whether we are of the lost House of Israel.  Yet we must have the comfort that the Lord of host, the Creator of the vast archive of knowledge that has been discovered since the genetic code of man has finally been completed, does known the genetic ancestry of every one of us.  If He can know the number of hairs on my head, He truly knows my ancestral fathers and whether they are of the House if Israel (Ten Lost Tribes) or the House of Judah. 

 

Is this important for the salvation of the human race?  Absolutely not!  We are all son and daughters of the Eternal One of Israel either by natural birth or by adoption.  A descendant of the Hebrews can be spiritually lost and not redeemable by rejecting His God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  If any Israelite, known prophetically as Ephraimites or Josephites, is walking in the light of HaShem, the God of the Jewish people, he will also eventually believe in the atonement, messiahship of that tzaddik or righteous One who was sent by His Father and our God to live among men.

 

We must consider the fact that the descendants of Abraham who believe in the God of Abraham consist of the most powerful, vigorous and potent religious and political national entities in the world today; the Jewish people, the western Christian world (Europe and North and South America) and the Islamic nations of the world. The drama of the nations is not between the pagans and the worshippers of Yahweh, but between the descendants of the House of Abraham.  The conflicts played out on the world geo-political scene today are the unresolved conflicts between the House of Ishmael (the Moslem world) and the House of Isaac (the Christian and the Jewish worlds) and the unresolved conflicts between the House of Esau (Edomite Jews like Herod the Great, America and Europe who are part of the ancient Roman Empire known to the 1^st century Jews as Edomites) who are not believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the House of Jacob (the orthodox Jews, lost Israelites in all nations of the world and Christians and Moslems) who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Salvation is not depended upon who we are but upon Whom we believe.

 

Let us remind ourselves that today the recent celebration of Succot or the Feast of Tabernacles is not done by Jews alone but a large segment of the Christian community are exploring and learning the shadow pictures and typology to the messiah, the historical meaning of the festivals to the Lord.  Within the Festivals, they are finding rich meanings to an understanding of the life and ministry of Yahshua ben Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph) who lived and taught among halachah observant, Shabbat celebrating, temple worshipping, festival observing, kashrut (clean meats) observing Jews in the 1^st century Judea.  Not only that but the prophetic picture that is revealed in the festivals concerning the second coming as the Moschiach ben David, the Messiah son of David gives new insight to the future era of the messiah and the picture of His coming as told by the prophets of old by the Torah observant Jews and the Hebrew Nazarenes who were the followers of Jesus during and after His death and resurrection. 

Pitching Tents in the Holy City –September, 2004

The Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the "Feast of Booths," recounts the time the Israelites set up tents in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.

 

CBN.com -- Every year, despite bomb threats and the tense political atmosphere, thousands of evangelical Christians from more than100 nations come to Israel to celebrate “Sukkot,” or the Feast of Tabernacles. This biblical holiday, also called the “Feast of Booths” is still observed in Israel thousands of years since God commanded Moses and the Jews to “Live in booths for seven days…so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 23: 42, 43). Sukkot is also a harvest festival called the “Feast of the Ingathering,” a time to rejoice before God and give thanks for the freshly gathered Autumn harvest. Traditionally, it is also a time to pray for rain.

 

During the Sukkot, which runs this year from September 29 to October 6, the Jews build “booths” or “sukkas,” also called “tabernacles” or dwellings, in their private balconies, front lawns, parks, restaurants, and public plazas. These are makeshift tents with roofs made of palm fronds and leafy tree branches, with walls made of bamboo matting, straw, cloth, and other flimsy material. They are meant to look like the collapsible tents the Israelites lived in when they encamped in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. Inside, sukkas are hung with pomegranates, pears, ears of corn, and other fruits of the harvest.

 

Both secular and religious Jews eat meals and sleep occasionally in the sukkah. Within this tabernacle, there are no distinctions between the rich and the poor, the prominent and the ordinary. Jews, whatever their status in life, remember that their forefathers were once wanderers in the desert, redeemed from slavery, completely dependent on God for food, water, and safe passage into Israel. Here Jews also thank God for blessing their farms and crops and the labors of their hands.

For evangelical Christians, who believe in God’s Kingdom to come, it is a vivid reminder that life on earth is impermanent, a journey to the ultimate Promised Land. There, God will once again “tabernacle,” or dwell, among men as Immanuel, "God with us."

 

“It’s a reminder not to accumulate too many possessions in this life, to travel light. We don’t really belong here. We’re headed for a better place,” remarks German pilgrim Erika Loeffler, who has come to Israel for the Feast of Tabernacles more than seven times in past years. Christians also consider their participation in the Sukkot a prophetic gesture, a time to pray and stand with God’s purposes for Israel, the Jews, and the nations at the end of the age…

 

Christians here believe that the Jewish feasts in the Old Testament have all been fulfilled in the New Testament age with the coming of Jesus Christ, except for one: the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of the Passover is fulfilled in Christ, the Passover Lamb, who brought deliverance from the slavery of sin. The sacrifice of His life on Calvary to redeem men fulfills Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The Feast of Pentecost, or "Shavuot," was fulfilled when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2). It was on the “last and greatest day” of the Feast of Tabernacles that Jesus Christ cried out, saying: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.' But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive” (John 7: 37-39).

 

According to the book of Ezekiel, the Feast of Tabernacles will still be celebrated and truly fulfilled at a future time. The prophet Ezekiel describes a last great war, with all the nations fighting against Jerusalem. Then the Messiah, the God of Israel, will return to Jerusalem. He will defend the city, judge the nations, and establish peace. Ezekiel says, “The Lord will be King over the whole earth.” Then “the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles” (Zechariah 14: 9, 16).  Christians here say that is why the Feast of Tabernacles is also the Feast of the Ingathering because it foreshadows the final harvest, the last ingathering of people from every tribe and nation who will come and dwell with God in this ultimate “Promised Land.”   “We’re here as first fruits of this harvest," says Peralta, "and to pray that Jesus Christ will come soon to Jerusalem to tabernacle with us as Immanuel, God with us. Then there will be world peace because He will take world government upon His shoulders as the Prince of Peace. It will happen here in Israel and nowhere else.”

 

In the face of Intifada, suicide bombings, and wrangling over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the “wall” or “security fence,” in this land of conflict and bloodshed, Christians here pray and hold on to the shining hope of Israel.

It is best understood in the words of Isaiah:

 

“Now it will come about in the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as chief among the mountains, and it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. And many peoples will come and say, ‘Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us concerning His ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He will judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples; and they will hammer their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation. And never again will they learn war" (Isaiah 2: 2-4).

 

According to the traditions of the Jews, the final days before the messiah will not come until half of the Jewish people are observant Jews and half of the world Jewish population will be living in aliyah or living within the Land of Israel.  The trends of anti-Semitism around the world and particularly in Europe have led of recent to an international call to Jews to return to the Land of Israel and make it their permanent home.  These calls have not been reflected in any massive increase in immigration but the swelling of the tides of anti-Semitism and fear of security in the Land outside their ancestral homeland may change that in the near future.

 

13 m. Jews worldwide - 40% of them in Israel – September 14, 2004

Jerusalem (Jerusalem Post) - On the eve of the Jewish new year, there are 13 million Jews living worldwide, including 5.2 million in Israel.   According to Jewish Agency figures, 5.6 million are living in North America, 1.2 million in Europe, 413,000 in the former Soviet Union, 401,000 in South America, 84,000 in Africa, 107,000 in Australia and New Zealand, and 19,000 in Asia.

 

Meanwhile, Israel's 5.2 million Jews make up 81 percent of the country's 6.8 million people, according to a Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) census published Tuesday.  Israel is also home to 287,000 "others" not registered as Jews (included in the CBS percentage calculation of Jews), and 1.3 million Arabs. Arabs comprise 19% of the population.  The figures do not include the 189,000 foreign workers counted at the end of 2003, CBS noted. According to the report, Israel's population rose by 1.6% or 110,000 people in 5764 (2003-2004), after a 1.8% rise in 5763. About 145,000 babies were born during the year, about 6,000 more than in 5763. During the year 5764, about 22,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel, with half from the former Soviet Union, 15% from Ethiopia, and 9% from France. In 5763, there were 27,000 new immigrants.

 

Tourism increased by 23% in 2003, a reversal of a slump that begins with the outbreak of Palestinian violence in 2000. Most visitors came from the United States, the bureau said. During 2003, the Arab minority had a growth rate of 3%, compared to 1.4% among the Jewish majority, the statistics bureau said. That created a disparity under which the median age in the Jewish population is 30.4, while the Arab median is 19.7. The average Israeli household has 3.13 people, while the average Arab household has five.  Among the Jewish population, women outnumbered men by a ratio of 1,000 to 966 during 2003. The gap widened with age, and at age 75, there were just 670 men per thousand women.

 

The men may catch up in the future, though. There were 105.6 baby boys born for every 100 baby girls during 2003. The average age of a woman having her first child was 25.8. Some 6% of Jewish babies born during 2003 were born to single mothers, compared to 45% in Denmark and 40% in Great Britain.  Seventy-two percent of Israeli households have at least one person in the workforce, and another 15% are pensioners. Among Israelis, 57.2% of households have two people working, while 34.1% of Arab households do. A searchable database of CBS statistics, on topics ranging from health and environment to business and transportation, is available in Hebrew on the organization's Web site, www.cbs.org.il. (Article)

 

Understand fully that the present State of Israel is a secular state controlled by people who call themselves Zionists but whom many have no personal regard for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The myth that has perplexed many spiritually inclined Christians is why so many Jewish people act so non-spiritual and non-Jewish. 

 

The emancipation of the Jewish people during the messianic revival of Shabbatai Zevi and the emancipation of the modern Jews in the secular states of America and Europe saw many Jews begin to lead a life that was non-Torah believing, non-religious and in many ways anti-Jewish in their thinking and outlook of life. 

 

What we have today in the Nation of Israel is a socialistic state that was built upon the communistic backgrounds of many of the founders of early Zionism.  What is proposed below is that Israel does need a constitution that blends the norms of modern social states such as a “bill of human rights”.  These issues and state’s rights would include the “right to equality, the banning of any form of discrimination, freedom of religion and freedom from religion.” At the same time this constitution would reflect the uniqueness of the Jewish society and the special needs of the religious-social norms of Jewish social structure such as marriage and divorce issues, the laws of kashrut (clean meats) in public restaurants, Shabbat (Sabbath) observance where all business and institutions are closed on the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath and other religious laws which have not a precedent of governance in other national constitutions. 

 

Is the Jewish State becoming a theocracy?  No!  The interesting fact is they are exploring the ideas that may eventually constitute a Theocratic State of Israel. Understand fully, theocracy is not democracy. Theocracy is looking upon the Lord your God in a national consciousness and letting Him guide the affairs of your political and social state.  As Christians we are so critical of the ancient kings of Israel and Judah who refused to follow the “words of the Lord” as given to them from the prophetic voices within their realms.  Let us not be so judgmental.  It is hard enough to follow the word of the Lord and let Him live and guide us in our personal lives. Can you imagine the challenge of doing this as a national consciousness of millions of citizens?

 

Experts put final touches on Israel's proposed constitution – October 10, 2004

Israel (Haaretz) - No one expressed the traditional religious approach to the idea of a constitution in Israel better than former Shas leader Aryeh Deri. "Even if the constitution includes the Ten Commandments, we will oppose it," he said, expressing the fear that the constitution's normative superiority could provide the Supreme Court with the possibility of changing the religious status quo. The next few weeks will reveal whether the ultra-Orthodox camp has indeed made a great leap forward from this position, to the point of being potential partners to the attempt to institute a constitution in Israel.

The constitution was formulated by a public council consisting of 70 public figures including MKs from across the political spectrum and members of the institute. Now they are putting the finishing touches to it. "We are working behind the scenes now vis-a-vis the leaders of the various sectors," says institute president Prof. Arik Carmon. "We wish not only to get their agreement but also their comments. From the psychological point of view, when you get this type of text, it takes time to comprehend that this is a compromise. A religious person, for example, must understand that what he is reading is the result of huge concessions on the part of liberals."

The essence of the compromise between the religious and secular, which made possible agreement on legal arrangements on religious and state issues, is as follows. On the one hand, the religious representatives will agree to the inclusion of a "bill of human rights" in the constitution, such as those found in liberal constitutions in Western countries, including the right to equality, the banning of any form of discrimination, freedom of religion and freedom from religion. On the other hand, the secular representatives will agree to a list of "core religious issues" that are "free of the constitution" - that is, issues which it will be explicitly stated that the court has no jurisdiction to deal with, even if they affect constitutional principles.

The "core religious issues" are: legislation relating to joining a religion, belonging to one or leaving, it; laws that determine the authority of religious tribunals (including, of course, rabbinical courts), marriage and divorce and personal status; the way in which the Jewish character of the Shabbat is portrayed in public; and the keeping of kashrut in public institutions.

"We are excluding a limited but important number of issues from the purview of the constitution," says Prof. Yedidya Stern of the institute. "All the other subjects - such as the laws banning the sale of pork, relating to Tisha Be'Av, matza, civil burial and many others - will be open to review by the High Court of Justice. Our major achievement is that we have contained the differences of opinion between religious and secular. On the core issues, we will continue to argue in the Knesset and in court but the constitution will cover all the others. We are motivated by the desire to contain the friction between religion and state."

The ultra-Orthodox representatives, however, are not yet ready to declare support for the formula. "There are still some unresolved issues," says United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni. He says that if the religious status quo is not upset, he believes the Torah Sages will not object. "We have agreed to go along with a constitution but we have not yet agreed on the model," he adds.

Avraham Ravitz, also of UTJ, says: "We have no intention of turning this into a theocracy. It will be a secular state, but Jewish. I told the people at the institute [that] if you put across this point, you will have an easy time with me." He believes the Torah Sages will give the go-ahead in such a case, or at least will refrain from opposition.

The constitution will be accompanied by several subsidiary laws, which will be affected by the political dynamic and will not be static like the constitution. One of these will deal with the status quo on Shabbat. The sides are currently working on a (not yet final) formula that would ban commerce, industry and services on Shabbat, including the closure of out-of-town shopping malls. In return, it will make possible the holding of cultural events, entertainment and sport, and will allow public transportation, "less frequently than during the week."

As for legal jurisdiction over issues in the constitution, this will be in the hands of the Supreme Court alone.  (Entire Article)

 

The Return of the Great Sanhedrin

 

On the banks of the Sea of Galilee resides one of four holy cities of the Judaism, Teveria known as the resort town of Tiberias.  Hosting a population of over 36,000 about ten years ago, this modern town is known from antiquity for its hot springs and was where Herod Antipas built hot spring baths named in the memory of Emperor Tiberius in 20 CE.  Soon after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish scholars settled here along the placid coastline of Lake Kinneret.  Here the highest rabbinical court, the Sanhedrin met when it moved from Yavneh.  It was here that parts of the Mishna was written and the Jerusalem Talmud, a body of commentaries on Jewish civil and religious law was compiled and edited in between the 3^rd and the 5^th centuries CE.   

 

The next news note is powerful.  For centuries the rabbis have been awaiting the day when the Jewish Sanhedrin will return and guide the spiritual life of the Jewish people.  On October 13, 2004, a unique and prophetic ceremony took place in the city of Tiberius, for possibly only the second time in 1,600 years; the inauguration of the highest Jewish-legal tribunal in the Land of Israel.  In the days of Yahshua (Jesus), the Sanhedrin convened in the Chamber of Unhewn Stones near to the Holy Place of Herod’s Temple.  It was there that the Sanhedrin with its 71 sages convened in court since its beginning about 425 C.E.  An ordination for the next 71 Sages of Israel was conducted according to the legal specification left by Maimonides. 

 

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were both members of the Great Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem as ‘Elders of Israel” during the era of the ministry of the Jewish rabbi, Yahshua ben Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph).  About forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the Chamber of Hewn Stones was significantly damaged and the Great Sanhedrin had to move its court to a different and less auspicious location. 

 

Shabbat 15a - “Forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin was banished (from the Chamber of Hewn Stones in the Temple) and sat in the trading Station (in the Temple to the east of the former Chamber)”

 

Did the great earthquake at the time of the Passion of Yahshua HaMoschiach (Jesus the Messiah) cause the damage of the Chamber of Hewn Stones and force the Sanhedrin, who had now excommunicated Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus from its august membership to relocate? 

The last attempt to reconvene the Sanhedrin was in the Jewish city of Tzfat (Safed) when the rabbinic sage Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488-1575), the author of the Jewish Law code, Shulhan Arukh, was ordained.  The Sanhedrin was never fully convened due to oppositional voices of other leading rabbis. 

 

The Tomb of Rabbi Yosef Karo

 

This current attempt to convene the Sanhedrin has been several months in the planning.  According to Rabbi Yeshai Ba’avad of Beit El, seventy one rabbis "from across the spectrum received the special ordination in accordance with Maimonides' rulings."  These rabbis come from the entire spectrum of Jewish thought; the Hereidi, religious-Zionist, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Hassidic and the modern sages of Judaism like Rabbi Yoel Schwartz and Rabbi Adin Shteinzaltz. 

 

The Sanhedrin will begin to meet monthly and decree on special rulings that are central to the Jewish law and the Jewish faith.  What we are seeing is the Jewish people reinstalling the “Seat of Moses” and taking direct responsibility over the fate and faith of Judaism. 

 

According to Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who is currently the director of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem he stated, "Whether this will be the actual Sanhedrin that we await, is a question of time - just like the establishment of the State; we rejoiced in it, but we are still awaiting something much more ideal. It's a process. Today's ceremony is really the continuation of the renewal of the Ordination process in Israel, which we marked several months ago. Our Talmudic Sages describe the ten stages of exile of the Sanhedrin from Jerusalem to other locations, until it ended in Tiberias. This is the place where it was foretold that it would be renewed, and from here it will be relocated to Jerusalem." 

 

The return of the Sanhedrin is a signal that the final days are upon us. 

 

The Jewish Sanhedrin convened in Teveria – October 15, 2004

Darka Shel Torah - On Wednesday a special ceremony was held in Teveria to celebrate the convening of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was disbanded when the Jews were sent into exile and previous attempts to reconvene it have failed. This body the "Jewish Supreme Court" which has 71 members was planned in secret for over a year with rabbis receiving the special ordination necessary to serve on the court. The 71 chosen to participate come from across the wide spectrum of Judaism today and plans to meet.  This is a significant development both in Jewish law and a major watershed event in the final redemption of the Jewish people.

 

Tiberias on the coastline of the Sea of Galilee – Virtual Israel Experience

 

Tradition holds that the Sanhedrin will be reconvened before the coming of the messiah and this court is necessary for many practices including sanctifying the new moon. It is a major step and a sign that Jews are finally "taking their destiny in their hands" to actively BRING the redemption. This parallels the recent trend of visiting the Temple mount and discussion of actively rebuilding the Temple and reinstating sacrifices.

 

The Sanhedrin does not have the support of several leading rabbis and it is questionable whether or not it will be accepted by the majority of the Jewish people. It however is significant in that it will open a wave of discussion about the necessity of a  Sanhedrin, what is halachially required to create one, who is eligible to serve, and will put those who oppose this move on the defensive to explain themselves. May it be G-d's will that the step of reinstating the Sanhedrin will be a catalyst for the coming of the messiah and the final redemption?

 

Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue defaced by graffiti – September 26, 2004

The Lekarev Report - Late Friday night after the Yom Kippur Kol Neidre services, vandals defaced the walls of Jerusalem's Great Synagogue with spray-painted slogans such as, "The intifada will win - Sharon is a murderer," "for the sin that you sinned before the Palestinians in occupation; murder," and the "State is a terror organization." Due to the holiness of the day, nothing could be done to remove the offensive expressions until after Yom Kippur.

 

Great Synagogue vice president Zali Jaffe, speaking from the pulpit denounced the perpetrators and said that they did not have the courage of their own convictions as they had carried out their foul deed at a time of night when no-one was around to stop them. In a separate incident not far away, vandals spray- painted other graffiti against the prime minister, finance minister and the president at the Gaza Street intersection in Rehavia.

(Reported in The Lekarev Report)

 

Sharon and the Gaza Disengagement

 

As has been discussed on many prior newsletters, the progression of the plan to pull any presence of Israelite settlers from the Gaza Strip continues to move forward.  Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lost the vote on a referendum by his own party, the Likud, yet he adamantly pushes on.  In spite of progressive pressure to hold a national referendum on the disengagement plan, Sharon stated to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, "I have yet to hear any disengagement opponent announce that if there is a referendum and the disengagement wins a majority, he will accept it and withdraw his opposition," he said. "A referendum will moderate only the moderate right. It will not change the potential for violence among the extreme right ... because the opposition to disengagement on the extreme right is not due to the democratic process, but to conceding parts of the Land of Israel."

 

More and more, the politics of Israel revolves around whether the citizens of Israel will allow any more dialogue on the role of giving up land for the hope of peace.  What is most puzzling in all this national dialogue is the adamant and persistent push by Sharon to push against all odds that the disengagement must continue.  It appears that he is playing to the tune of a different drummer and that drummer is not he, nor the people of his nation but a higher and more powerful broker in the politics of the Middle East. Is Sharon controlled by the Bush Administration?  Is Sharon controlled by power brokers of international polity who want to gain total control of the world’s economic, political and religious institutions? 

 

The anti-disengagement movement continues to grow.  On October 14, 2004 Rabbi Avraham Shapira, the former chief rabbi who is very engaged with the religious Zionist sector in the settlers movement issued a statement in an interview with “Be’Sheva” that that God-fearing soldiers in the IDF and other security forces should notify their commanding officers that they would refuse to evacuate the settlers in Gaza.  This refusal would be on the same order as refusing to violate the sanctity of the Jewish Sabbath or to eat non-Kosher meat. 

 

Quickly Torah observant IDF soldiers are beginning to take side.  The central issue is, does the rule of the civil and secular law, even in a democratic country where the majority rules, override the commands of Torah.  These are huge issues.  The Nation of Israel is seriously divided and out of that division will come a remnant who will determine that the fate of their nation must  be on the side of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

 

To Obey or not to Obey? – October 18, 2004

Lekarev Report - Yesterday, dozens of rabbis affiliated with the Right identified with Rabbi Avraham Shapira's call on religious soldiers to refuse to evacuate settlements and published a letter declaring "Eretz Israel is a holy land and thus it is forbidden to hand it over to non- Jews."  Anticipating such a scenario, IDF commanders had already been issued clear guidelines to encourage discussions with soldiers on the army's role in a democracy and in the evacuation of settlers, an IDF officer told The Jerusalem Post. "For some time now officers have held discussions with soldiers regarding the planned disengagement and obviously have addressed the issue of refusing to follow orders," the officer said. The idea is to allow soldiers to express their opinions in an open forum, he said.

 

Former Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira

 

Meanwhile, a group of Torah observant IDF officers and soldiers sent a letter to the Chief of Staff Lt.Gen. Moshe Ya'alon opposing the rabbis' calls. The signatories expressed their intention to obey orders to evacuate settlements even though many of them oppose the disengagement plan. As first reported on Channel 10, one of the initiators of the letter, Yair Urbach, told The Jerusalem Post that in recent days he received many calls from religious soldiers expressing their support and willingness to sign the petition. "We've built up something during the past 50 years and we must protect the army at all costs... We oppose calls to disobey orders... this is a democratic country and the majority decides," he said. According to Urbach the majority of soldiers who signed the letter oppose the disengagement plan. The letter sent to Ya'alon stated: "We are young religious soldiers and officers, in the regular army and reserves, yeshiva and pre-military yeshiva graduates, who want to emphasize... if the government of Israel decides to evacuate settlements, we will carry out the orders with pain and sorrow. But it is clear to us that we must carry out the orders... We oppose refusal, we also oppose the dangerous attempts by borderline groups to threaten and harm the soldiers, fighters, and commanders in the IDF who carry out the orders..." the letter said. (Reported in Lekarev Report)

Rivlin: Sharon is under 'Evil counsel' – October 18, 2004

Jerusalem Post - Israel is quickly handing over all of its strategic assets and is on a path to disaster, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said Tuesday. "Last year I heard the prime minister explain why it is unwise to leave the Gaza Strip. Evil counselors, counselors of Ahitophel, changed Ariel Sharon's mind," Rivlin, who is said to be well versed in Jewish history said.

"His plan to defend Ashkelon and Israel's south has come to nothing," Rivlin added.

Ahithophel was a man greatly renowned for his keen perception and intelligence among the Jews, but hanged himself after falling out with King David over disputed counsel.

"All the security considerations, the defense of Israel and the settlements have all vanished in the fervor of disengagement. After Gaza will follow the Jordan Valley, the Golan and Jerusalem," Rivlin said.

 

Rivlin and Sharon were close political allies and friends until Sharon's announcement of the disengagement plan. Rivlin has been trying to persuade the prime minister to abandon the disengagement plan.  "Whoever like me last year listened to Ariel Sharon, one of the most brilliant strategists of Israel's security, talk about how it is forbidden to leave the Gaza Strip, is now standing in utter amazement and shock. With my own ears I head him say how vital the presence of military forces in the Gaza Strip is for Ashkelon's defense, and to guard against the Strip's metamorphosis into a mini-terror state from which Kassams, mortars and Katyusha rockets will rain down on us," Rivlin said.  (Read Entire Article)

Mayor Weiss: Land of Israel is not ours to vote on – October 18, 2004

Lekarev Report - Daniella Weiss, the orthodox woman Mayor of the Shomron city of Kedumim and one of the most veteran settlement leaders in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, says that we must object to any form of referendum. "We have learned from our rabbis that there is no such thing as a referendum on the Land of Israel. Even Yitzchak Tabankin, one of the leaders of the Labor Movement, once said, that in order to decide any question of giving away parts of the Land of Israel is to convene all the Jews of all previous generations; those who already died and those who are not yet born. It is inconceivable to think that something that belongs to a nation should be put up for public vote."

 

Asked if a referendum might be merely a means to achieve the ends of securing the Land of Israel for the People of Israel, Weiss replied, "I believe that if the foundation is solid, then the results will be positive, and we will not need to utilize various methods and the like. Our starting point must be that every piece of the Land of Israel is sacred just as is every letter of the Torah, and just as we would never give up on a letter of the Torah, we will never give up on a piece of the Land - and if we take this approach, I believe with perfect faith that everything will be influenced by this truth. If we do the right thing, then the results will be the right ones. For decades, we have taught our youth that it is inconceivable to think of giving away a single piece of the Land. This is a question that must not even be asked; the question itself is a desecration."  (Reported in Lekarev Report)

The last time we saw this type of shift in the political vision of a national leader of Israel was just prior to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  It has been stated by Jewish historians that just before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that he was returning the orthodoxy and Torah and retracting on his political ambitions to trade the land of Israel for peace.  That is what makes the next article even more alarming when Rabbi Yossi Dayan, a former member of the outlawed Kach party announced that he would be hosting a secret ceremony to cast a Kabalistic curse upon the Prime Minister called the Pulsa Denura.  A resident of the Kiryat Arba settlement, Dayan claimed he would perform the ritual if asked by the rabbis of Israel. The last time this curse had been placed was just before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.  Was Prime Minister Yitzhak murdered by an anarchists or a fervent orthodox Jewish settler?  The evidence is rather compelling that he was murdered by his own intelligence services that opposed his return as a believer of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

 

Israel  Withdrawal Symptoms – October 4, 2004

MSNBC - The closer Israel gets to withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, the more worried leaders of the country's domestic Shabak security service are becoming. The possibility that a right-wing extremist will try to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, or another political figure supporting the PM's plan, has become a paramount concern. While many of Israel's 220,000 settlers are campaigning peacefully to block the withdrawal, scheduled for next summer, Shabak chief Avi Dichter says a few hard-liners are preparing to take the law into their own hands if they get the nod from their rabbis. "The mainstream rabbis in the settlements wouldn't think of it," says a senior security official involved in protecting VIPs. "But you have religious leaders on the edges who are talking about it."

 

One rabbi in particular—Yosef Dayan from the West Bank settlement of Psagot—has commanded much of Shabak's attention. Weeks before a young radical assassinated Yitzhak Rabin nine years ago, Dayan and other rabbis put a death curse known as "Pulsa Denura"—which security officials view as a green light for assassins—on the Israeli leader during a ceremony outside of Rabin's home. Last week, Dayan told NEWSWEEK that any measure would be justified in order to stop Sharon's evacuation of 8,000 settlers. "If I am requested by the rabbis to do so, I will issue the Pulsa Denura," he said.

 

Death threats are becoming increasingly common for other prominent Israeli officials, like the head of Sharon's "disengagement authority," Yonatan Bassi. Bassi is the functionary actually plotting the evacuation of settlers from Gaza, organizing the mechanics of dismantling communities and compensating residents. And like most Israelis in Gaza, he's a religious Jew, which makes his betrayal even worse than Sharon's in the eyes of the settlers. At his kibbutz, some members have criticized Bassi for taking the job and considered blocking his salary from the communal kitty. And some hard-liners have compared Bassi's team to Europe's Judenrat—the Jewish councils appointed to carry out Nazi orders. "In the Holocaust there were also bureaucrats who dealt entirely with technical matters," said Amnon Shapira, the leader of Israel's religious kibbutz movement, in an interview with a local paper. "Does that make what they did less sinful?" For his part, Bassi says he gets threats every day via e-mail and fax. "The worst was when someone phoned my daughter and threatened to kill her children," he says. In a country where threats are rarely empty, it's no surprise Shabak's concerns are rapidly growing. (Article)

It was in November 16, 1995 the Jerusalem Report, in an article obviously written before Rabin's death, Peter Hirschberg wrote the following article:

 

“YITZHAK RABIN DOES NOT have long to live. The angels have their orders.  Suffering and death await the prime minister, or so say the kabbalists who have cursed him with the pulsa denura - Aramaic for "lashes of fire" - for his "heretical" policies. "He's inciting against Judaism," says the Jerusalem rabbi who, clad in tefillin, read out the most terrifying of curses in the tradition of Jewish mysticism - opposite Rabin's residence on the eve of Yom Kippur. "And on him, Yitzhak son of Rosa, known as Rabin," the Aramaic text stated, "we have permission... to demand from the angels of destruction that they take a sword to this wicked man... to kill him ... for handing over the Land of Israel to our enemies, the sons of Ishmael."

The rabbi, who won't have his name published but identifies himself as a member of the far-right Kach movement, says the curse generally works within 30 days. That put the expiry date - for Rabin or the curse - in early November.  For Jewish mystics of both North African and East European descent, curses taken from the tradition of "practical Kabbalah" are heavy weaponry - not to be used every day, but certainly available in wars, religious struggles and even political battles. Not only the ultra-Orthodox but many traditional-leaning Israelis regard them with the utmost seriousness.

Curses like the one against Rabin, explains sociologist Menachem Friedman, an expert on the ultra-Orthodox, are ways for the powerless to deal with impotence. "Magic," explains Friedman, "isn't used by the regime or the group in power. It's used by the powerless. When they do abracadabra ceremonies it shows that they're terrified. Magic gives them a sense of power."

Invoking the pulsa denura is a perilous undertaking, for if the ceremony is not performed in a strictly prescribed fashion, it can strike the conjurers themselves.   Before Rabin, the last person so cursed was Saddam Hussein. One day during the 1991 Gulf War, as Scuds rained down on Israel, a minyan of fasting kabbalists gathered at the tomb of the prophet Samuel just outside Jerusalem. There they entered a dark cave, where one of the holy men placed a copper tray on a rock and lit the 24 black candles he'd placed on it. As the mystics circled the candles, they chanted the curse seven times, calling on the angels not merely to visit death upon "Saddam the son of Sabha," but to ensure that his wife was given to another man. That done, small lead balls and pieces of earthenware were thrown on the candles and the shofar was sounded. "The black candles," explains Yediot Aharonot journalist Amos Nevo, who documented the ceremony, "symbolize the person being cursed. When they're put out, it's as if the person's soul is being extinguished." Lead, he says, is for the ammunition in the war against the cursed one, earthenware symbolizes death, and the shofar opens the skies so the curse will be heard.” (Article)

 

Whereas Sharon appears to be marching to the tune of George Bush and his image of peace in the Middle East, by the time of the November election of the new president of the United States the equation may totally change. George Bush has been the most pro-Israel president that has ever sat in the Oval Office.  Even though the Bush State Department is more Palestinian oriented and continues to exert intense pressure in the politics of Israel, the arrival of the John Kerry to the presidency would send the politics of the Middle East spinning into equations unknown at the present.  With the support of Bush gone, Prime Minister Sharon, that tough general who once was the darling of the settlers, will no longer have a national mandate, no longer have a supporting party and may no longer be able to control his own political destiny. 

 

Lapid warns Right against incitement to civil war – September 9, 2004

Jerusalem Post - The recent statements by right wing rabbis and settler leaders calling for the use of force to resist the evacuation of settlements are "a threat to Israel's democracy, the well-being of the state and the rule of law," Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid said Friday.  "It is unacceptable for people, using the excuse of love for the motherland and religious edicts, to incite to civil war," Lapid said. Lapid warned that the legal establishment would not sit quietly while members of the Right call on soldiers to resist orders to evacuate settlements, nor would the courts allow incitement to advance to the levels of actual threats on the integrity of the state. "These comments are a basis for mutiny and a threat of violence against the security forces. If they [the Right] rebel, and if they incite, they will be brought to justice like any and all criminals," Lapid said. "Demonstrations are allowed, and a peaceful campaign of resistance is allowed, but incitement to violence and violence are forbidden, and it is forbidden to bring about a civil war," Lapid said.  "From the things I have heard recently from rabbis and the extreme Right, I am worried about a civil war, and am warning that the comments we have heard in recent days will have very serious consequences," Lapid added.

 

Dozens of prominent right-wing hardliners published a petition Thursday calling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza Strip disengagement plan a "crime against humanity" and urged security forces to refuse settlement evacuation orders.  "Police officers and IDF soldiers should listen to their personal conscience and the voice of the national conscience," and should refuse to participate in the removal of settlements according to the withdrawal plan. "I can understand the anger of those for whom the settlements are very close to their hearts, but this anger has to find expression within the framework of the rules of democracy and within the laws of the state," Lapid said. Lapid added that he would not instruct Attorney General Menahem Mazuz as to how to deal with those inciting to violence, because "the A-G is independent and he can decide for himself if and how to proceed."

 

MK Matan Vilnai (Labor) on Friday called the petition "a threat of civil war," and urged an emergency meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to discuss the issue. (Read Entire Lengthy Article on a Critical Crisis in Israel that may soon be Imported to America)

 

For those with an eye towards the progression of a One World Government, the arrival of John Kerry to the presidency of America will be another step in the Biblical vision of the time of the end.  Talking with numerous international business consultants as they are moving throughout the European nations have to a unanimous voice stated that all the leaders of the nations of continental Europe are eagerly awaiting the arrival of John Kerry as the global leader for America.  The thrust towards internationalism will be swift.  The European vision and the American vision for peace through out the world will synchronize and a pathway for a world vision for the future of Israel will be complete. 

 

Foreign Ministry warns Israel, Europe on collision course – October 13, 2004

CNN WorldNews - A secret report prepared by the Foreign Ministry warns that Israel's global standing could deteriorate in the coming decade and could even resemble the pariah status of apartheid South Africa. According to the document, which was written in August by the ministry's Center for Political Research, Israel and Europe will find themselves on a collision course that will cause serious economic and diplomatic damage to Israel.  Israel could become increasingly isolated in the coming years if Europe becomes more influential, the Foreign Ministry report says. "In extreme circumstances, this could put Israel on a collision course with the European Union. Such a collision course holds the risk of Israel losing international legitimacy and could lead to its isolation, in the manner of South Africa," according to the document.

"The EU could sharpen its expectation that Israel will comply with international norms ... and honor the authority of the United Nations and its agencies - an issue that has the potential of leading to friction," the analysts wrote.  The document says the EU is pushing to become a major global player in the next decade, and that as a result, the United States, Israel's main ally, could lose international influence.

In light of ongoing European criticism of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a more powerful Europe could weaken Israel's position.  The paper also examines various scenarios for the development of Israel's relationship with Europe and Russia.  Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has repeatedly warned that Israel has to work to strengthen ties with Europe, which also accuses of pro-Palestinian bias, and has expressed concerns over a growing wave of anti-Semitism in parts of Europe. The report says a new form of anti-Semitism is developing in Europe, one which denies Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign Jewish state.

EU officials in Brussels said that while the EU and Israel have sound relations in the areas of trade and scientific research, they have very definite differences of opinion over Middle East peacemaking. They also said the EU is seeking more of a say. "Regarding the Middle East peace process and our relations with Israel and the Palestinians, there is no doubt that the role of the EU has increased," said Christina Gallach, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"We have had difficult moments [with Israel] when we responded to things like the West Bank wall and now what is happening in Gaza," Gallach said, referring to the separation fence in the West Bank and the ongoing major military offensive in northern Gaza. Europe fiercely objects to the route of the fence, and EU foreign ministers called this week for the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw from the northern Strip. Gallach said the Israeli government wants to broaden the relationship with Europe, without giving the EU a bigger role in resolving the conflict.  "The situation is not easy but we have a lot of investment, especially in Europe, that is important to all of us," Foreign Ministry director-general Ron Prushor told Army Radio on Wednesday.  "When it comes to our economy, which is geared towards developing markets, we are talking about a scope of trade totaling $22 billion." (Article)

 

The Israeli war on terror turned a new dimension with the assassination of the supreme commander of Hamas’  terror and suicide operations against Israel, the shadowy and elusive Ezz-Eldin Sheikh al-Khalil.  The IDF under Prime Minister Sharon is expanding its reach no longer to the Gaza Strip and the West bank but now to the capitals of the Arab states and even Iran where the terrorists and their operations are harbored.  The surgical operation against the top Hamas operative in Lebanon occurred at his Syrian home in the Zahraa district in Damascus.  It was now a warning that Damascus will be vulnerable to precision assault for either sponsoring terrorists against Israel or providing logistical bases for them. 

 

The shuttling of the aging President Hosni Mubarak between Arafat’s office and Assad in Damascus gives the appearance that he is supporting Sharon’s disengagement plan in Gaza.  In these negotiations, President Assad presented a new Assad Plan: a ceasefire upon all terror groups under his protection in return for American support for the return of the Golan Heights, invitation by George Bush to the White House and Israel to be sidelined from all discussions and negotiations until the signing of a Peace Accord. 

 

The Bush White House returned the communiqué with two independent tests:  immediate cessation of all Sunni insurgent support in Iraq and to pull all Damascus hegemony over the land of Lebanon.  Quickly the power struggle began.  Sharon sent a warning shot to Damascus but only after Arafat preempted him by punishing the Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip with precision attacks on their homes in Gush Katif with mortar shells, bombings in Jerusalem’s French Hill, and Qassam missile attacks in towns of the western Negev.  A new round of escalating terror has now begun.

 

Sharon Strikes Blow for His Disengagement Plan in Damascus – September 27, 2004

Debka  - Before deporting him to Lebanon in 1991, the late Yitzhak Rabin called Ezz-Eldin Sheikh al-Khalil “the snake’s head,” singling him out as the terror master who raised and handled Hamas’ most accomplished terror operatives, Adnan al Hool and Mohammed Deif. Yasser Arafat used to claim in the early days of the current Palestinian confrontation with Israel that it was not he who pulled the strings of terror but Sheikh al-Khalil from Jordan.

 

Ezz-Eldin Sheikh al-Khalil, Hamas supreme operations chief, assassinated in Damascus

 

Until Sunday, September 25, few Israelis had heard of him as, lacking political ambitions, he kept to the shadows of anonymity and stealth. For two years, the snake’s head wielded authority as supreme commander of Hamas’s terrorist and suicide operations against Israel, outranked only by Khalid Mashal. Al Khalil preferred to issue his orders on the move rather than out of the Damascus command center, traveling around restlessly between Sanaa, Aden, Tehran Abu Dhabi and Khartoum, and occasionally Cairo. The intelligence for locating and waylaying this slippery target must therefore have been of superior quality. Al Khalil was tracked as he left his home in the largely Palestinian Zahraa district of Damascus by watchers who knew which of his three cars he would step into and the number of his mobile phone. By answering the phone when it rang, he gave the signal to detonate the explosives already planted in his car.

 

Syrian president Bashar Assad was left red-faced in more ways than one. According to official leaks in Damascus in the past week, he had expelled all Hamas commanders from his capital and closed their command centers and disconnected their telephones. So how come al-Khalil was caught outside his home in Damascus? And how was an alien entity able to operate under the noses of Syrian intelligence in a Syrian city where terrorists had always been safe?

Saturday September 25, a few hours before the assassination, DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that a Pentagon official invited a group of Arab correspondents for a briefing. He advised not to swallow Syrian tales of talks in progress with the US administration and the Assad regime’s willingness to expel Hamas from Damascus and turn over a new leaf on its stance on terrorism in Iraq and Israel. These tales were unfounded, he stressed. The United States is standing by and waiting to see if Syria stands up to the test of deeds instead of words.

The short hours from the Pentagon briefing until Sunday morning served for the setting up of the first targeted assassination of a Palestinian terrorist leader in Damascus.

For Israel, the timing was apt, politically, operationally and strategically, considering its rationale.

(Read Entire Article)

 

It is a known fact in terror politics that one of the hardest areas to penetrate in the expose of evil in the past history of modern terrorists is the resistance of American governmental agencies to not allow the full truth to be revealed.  Yasser Arafat is known to be the most notorious terrorist in all-time modern history.  What hinders the full revelation is the suspicion that it will open the Pandora box on the implication of American leaders in their operational links with the past history of modern terrorists today.  It is becoming more known that Osama bin Laden was an ally of the Americans and trained by the CIA during the Russian Afghanistan War in the 70’s.  What is little known is that Osama bin Laden as he was fronting for the Americans was abandoned by his CIA allies and was almost killed by the Russians.  In this bloody fight, he lost several of his family members and began the seeds of his hatred towards American, whom he now calls the “Great Satan”. 

 

In the following account, James J. Welsh, the NSA Palestinian analyst has for years been investigating this unresolved murder of two American diplomats that has been linked to Yasser Arafat and the Black September organization that was part of the Fatah faction of the PLO.  Yet the FBI has under the guise of cooperation have now confiscated all of Welsh’s files, tapes and documents.

 

Israel's unexpected victory over terrorism – September 20, 2004 - How Sharon beat the intifada — and what the United States can learn

Jerusalem World Review - The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had planned on offering the usual complaints when he visited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week. There was the stalled road map, Israel's security fence, and the recently announced expansion of West Bank settlements close to the Green Line. But, before he arrived in Jerusalem, something happened that changed Lavrov's agenda: the massacre of Russian children by Chechen Islamist terrorists. And so, when he met Sharon on September 6, the main topic of discussion was what advice and assistance Israel could offer Russia in the fight against terrorism. 

 

Ironically, Israel had just buried 16 people — many of them Russian immigrants — after the simultaneous suicide bombings of two buses in the southern city of Beersheba. According to Hamas, those attacks were retaliation for the assassination, five months earlier, of its spiritual and political leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Yet the fact that it took Hamas almost half a year — and dozens of failed attempts — to make good on its threat to inflict immediate and massive punishment proves just how successful Israel's war against terrorism has been. 

 

During those same six months, the Israeli army destroyed most of what remained of Hamas's organization in the West Bank and a substantial part of its infrastructure in Gaza. Just last week, Israeli gunships rocketed a Hamas training camp in Gaza, killing 15 operatives. Hamas leaders, who once routinely led rallies and gave interviews to the media, don't dare show their faces in public anymore. Even their names are kept secret. Hardly a night passes without the arrest of a wanted terrorist. Hamas's ranks have become so depleted that the organization is now recruiting teenagers: At the Gaza border, Israeli forces recently broke up a Hamas cell made up of 16-year-olds. 

 

Meanwhile, life inside Israel has returned to near normalcy. The economy, which was shrinking in 2001, is now growing at around 4 percent per year. Even the tourists are back: Jerusalem's premier King David Hotel, which a few years ago was almost empty, recently reached full occupancy. All summer, Israel seemed to be celebrating itself, with music and film festivals and a nightly crafts fair in Jerusalem that brought crowds back to its once-deserted downtown. Everyone knows a terrorist attack can happen at any time. Still, Israeli society no longer lives in anticipation of an attack. The Beersheba bombing, which once would have seemed to Israelis part of an endless and unwinnable war, is now perceived as an aberration. Terror that no longer paralyzes is no longer terror…

 

The price Israel has paid for its victory has been sobering. Arafat may be a pariah, but Israel is becoming one, too. Increasingly, the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty is under attack. Former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, for example, has called Israel's creation a "mistake." In Europe, an implicit "red-green-black" coalition of radical leftists, Islamists, and old-fashioned fascists has revived violent anti-Semitism. Along with the desecration of Jewish cemeteries by neo-Nazis and the assaults on Jews by Arab youth, some European left-wingers now sense a sympathetic climate in which to publicly indulge their anti-Semitism. In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Greek composer and left-wing activist Mikis Theodorakis denounced "the Jews" for their dominance of banks, U.S. foreign policy, and even the world's leading orchestras, adding that the Jews were "at the root of evil." In the Arab world, a culture of denial that repudiates the most basic facts of Jewish history — from the existence of the Jerusalem Temple to the existence of the gas chambers — has become mainstream in intellectual discourse and the media. Government TV stations in Egypt and Syria have produced dramatizations based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Boycotts of Israel are multiplying: The nonaligned states recently voted to bar "settlers" — including Israelis who live in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem — from their borders. Among young Israelis across the political spectrum, there's growing doubt about the country's future and widespread talk of emigration.  In its victories and its defeats, Israel is a test case of what happens to a democracy forced to confront nonstop terrorism…

 

No country has been subjected to more relentless terrorism than Israel; nor has any country been subjected to greater scrutiny or vilification. Though the terrorist war was launched by the official Palestinian leadership — and polls have consistently shown a Palestinian majority in support of suicide attacks — Israel considers itself at war with only the perpetrators of terrorism, not with the Palestinian people. Israel has not resorted to the indiscriminate bombings, mass expulsions, blockades of food and fuel that modern states have frequently adopted in wartime. Despite intense fighting, no city in the West Bank or Gaza remotely resembles Dresden in 1945, Hanoi in 1972, or Grozny today. In contrast to Palestinian terrorists, whose goal is to kill the maximum number of Israeli civilians, Israeli soldiers have risked their lives to minimize civilian Palestinian casualties, searching out terrorists in house-to-house fighting rather than calling in artillery.

 

According to the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, an Israeli think tank, over half of Palestinians killed in the last four years have been combatants, while nearly three-quarters of Israelis killed have been civilians. Yet another lesson Israel offers the world is that one can defeat terrorists without annihilating the society that hosts them. Though abuses against civilians have occurred — over 600 are now being investigated by the IDF and many more have obviously gone unreported — Israel proves that a war against terrorism can be fought while preserving basic democratic principles. Still, much of the world has branded Sharon a war criminal. In waging war against terrorists, then, especially those who enlist children and pregnant women, one must be prepared to endure some measure of international censure and isolation…(Finish the Thoughtful Article as Israel Reevaluated her War of Terror)

 

FBI won't return files in Arafat murder case – September 27, 2004 - Hope for new probe in embassy killings turns to fears of new official cover-up
Joe Farad’s G2 Bulletin, Washington (WorldNetDaily) – The FBI is refusing to return the files of a former National Security Agency whistleblower who agreed to help agents launch a new investigation into the involvement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the 31-year-old murders of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan.

As WorldNetDaily reported earlier this month, two agents from FBI headquarters in Washington, Bill McDermott and Kathleen Reed, flew to Oregon this summer to interview James J. Welsh, the Nyssa’s Palestinian analyst at the time of the 1973 terrorist murders of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, diplomat Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. The three were taken captive by the Black September terrorist organization, part of Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Welsh has said he intercepted a transmission from Arafat involving an imminent operation in Khartoum, and charges the NSA has had tapes of Arafat ordering the executions, a story first reported by WND in 2001. After Welsh retired from the NSA, he made his personal mission to see that justice was done….

 

Welsh says he detailed for the agents the communication he intercepted from Arafat, and how within minutes, the director of the NSA was notified and a decision was made to send a rare "FLASH" message – the highest priority – to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum via the State Department warning of a possible attack. But Welsh recalled the message didn't reach the embassy in time. Somewhere between the NSA and the State Department, someone decided the warning was too vague, and the alert was downgraded in urgency. The next day, the Black September operation took place, and after 26 hours of intense negotiations – the gunmen demanded the freeing from Jordan of many Palestinians, including Abu Daoud, a leader of the Black September Organization; the release of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy's assassin, from jail in California; and the liberation of "Palestinian women in prison in Israel" – the two U.S. diplomats were murdered.

 

According to Welsh and others, Arafat personally sent an order of execution to the terrorists via radio broadcast: "Why are you waiting? The people's blood in the Cold River cries for vengeance." "Cold River" was reportedly the code word for executing the captives. Supposed NSA recordings of that call have disappeared. Arafat reportedly then ordered the eight gunmen to surrender peacefully to the Sudanese authorities. Two were released for "lack of evidence." Later, in June 1973, the other six were found guilty of murdering the diplomats. They were sentenced to life imprisonment, but released 24 hours later to the PLO…

 

"No one wants to touch this thing," Welsh said at the time. "It's a hot potato. No one wants to be responsible for derailing the Mideast peace process."   After Arafat turned down at Camp David an Israeli offer of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and the eastern section of Jerusalem, and instead launched an intifada against the Jewish state, the domestic and international tide of public opinion has turned against the PLO ruler, and Welsh says the U.S. is "finally interested in making the truth about this man known." (Read on about the American’s and Agencies involved in the cover-up of Arafat’s fateful past)

Diary of 18 year old Dutch Holocaust Victim Made Public – October 21, 2004

Lekarev Report - The previously unknown diary of 18-year-old Helga Deen, who was murdered along with her family by the Nazis at the Sobibor death camp in 1943, has been loaned to the Tilburg Regional Archive in the Netherlands. In her diary, Helga describes her experiences, feelings and surroundings at the Dutch Vught concentration camp in the month before she and her family were transported to Sobibor. 15,000 Jews were held in the Vught concentration camp between January 1943 and September 1944. Over 1,000 Jewish children imprisoned at Vught were killed at Sobibor, Poland.

 

The Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), the Tilburg archivist, as well as other Dutch researchers have called the diary "remarkable" and "exceptional." In her last letter in the collection loaned to the Tilburg archives, Helga Deen writes, "What we have experienced these months is indescribable and for someone who has not experienced it, unimaginable." (Reported in Lekarev Report)

 

 

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