Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Page Index
- In Defense of Zionism
- The Sunni-Shiite Divide Explained In 100 Seconds — video
- Israel’s fight for its very existence
- The Middle East Problem — in a nutshell — video
- How Four Israeli Fighter Pilots Stopped A Massive Arab Invasion In 1948
- Egypt Demands Compensation for 10 Plagues
- That Jew Died For You–video
- San Remo Mandate: Israel’s Magna Carta–video
- Exposing Christian Palestinianism Documentary – video Trailer
- Dutch Christians Build Mega-Menorah
In Defense of Zionism
Friday, August 8th, 2014
The often reviled ideology that gave rise to Israel has been an astonishing historical success.
By Michael B. Oren — The Wall Street Journal
Aug. 1, 2014
Aug. 1, 2014
A Jewish State: See some key moments in the history of Zionism and Israel / Robert Capa/ICP/Magnum Photos (see pictures below).
They come from every corner of the country—investment bankers, farmers, computer geeks, jazz drummers, botany professors, car mechanics—leaving their jobs and their families. They put on uniforms that are invariably too tight or too baggy, sign out their gear and guns. Then, scrambling onto military vehicles, 70,000 reservists—women and men—join the young conscripts of what is proportionally the world’s largest citizen army. They all know that some of them will return maimed or not at all. And yet, without hesitation or (for the most part) complaint, proudly responding to the call-up, Israelis stand ready to defend their nation. They risk their lives for an idea.
The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Though founded less than 150 years ago, the Zionist movement sprung from a 4,000-year-long bond between the Jewish people and its historic homeland, an attachment sustained throughout 20 centuries of exile. This is why Zionism achieved its goals and remains relevant and rigorous today. It is why citizens of Israel—the state that Zionism created—willingly take up arms. They believe their idea is worth fighting for.
Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. “All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!” declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark. “Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Zionists are not under any circumstances,” warned a sign in the window of a Belgian cafe. A Jewish demonstrator in Iceland was accosted and told, “You Zionist pig, I’m going to behead you.”
In certain academic and media circles, Zionism is synonymous with colonialism and imperialism. Critics on the radical right and left have likened it to racism or, worse, Nazism. And that is in the West. In the Middle East, Zionism is the ultimate abomination—the product of a Holocaust that many in the region deny ever happened while maintaining nevertheless that the Zionists deserved it.
What is it about Zionism that elicits such loathing? After all, the longing of a dispersed people for a state of their own cannot possibly be so repugnant, especially after that people endured centuries of massacres and expulsions, culminating in history’s largest mass murder. Perhaps revulsion toward Zionism stems from its unusual blend of national identity, religion and loyalty to a land. Japan offers the closest parallel, but despite its rapacious past, Japanese nationalism doesn’t evoke the abhorrence aroused by Zionism.
Clearly anti-Semitism, of both the European and Muslim varieties, plays a role. Cabals, money grubbing, plots to take over the world and murder babies—all the libels historically leveled at Jews are regularly hurled at Zionists. And like the anti-Semitic capitalists who saw all Jews as communists and the communists who painted capitalism as inherently Jewish, the opponents of Zionism portray it as the abominable Other.
But not all of Zionism’s critics are bigoted, and not a few of them are Jewish. For a growing number of progressive Jews, Zionism is too militantly nationalist, while for many ultra-Orthodox Jews, the movement is insufficiently pious—even heretical. How can an idea so universally reviled retain its legitimacy, much less lay claim to success?
The answer is simple: Zionism worked. The chances were infinitesimal that a scattered national group could be assembled from some 70 countries into a sliver-sized territory shorn of resources and rich in adversaries and somehow survive, much less prosper. The odds that those immigrants would forge a national identity capable of producing a vibrant literature, pace-setting arts and six of the world’s leading universities approximated zero.
Elsewhere in the world, indigenous languages are dying out, forests are being decimated, and the populations of industrialized nations are plummeting. Yet Zionism revived the Hebrew language, which is now more widely spoken than Danish and Finnish and will soon surpass Swedish. Zionist organizations planted hundreds of forests, enabling the land of Israel to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the end of the 19th. And the family values that Zionism fostered have produced the fastest natural growth rate in the modernized world and history’s largest Jewish community. The average secular couple in Israel has at least three children, each a reaffirmation of confidence in Zionism’s future.
Indeed, by just about any international criteria, Israel is not only successful but flourishing. The population is annually rated among the happiest, healthiest and most educated in the world. Life expectancy in Israel, reflecting its superb universal health-care system, significantly exceeds America’s and that of most European countries. Unemployment is low, the economy robust. A global leader in innovation, Israel is home to R&D centers of some 300 high-tech companies, including Apple, Intel and Motorola. The beaches are teeming, the rock music is awesome, and the food is off the Zagat charts.
The democratic ideals integral to Zionist thought have withstood pressures that have precipitated coups and revolutions in numerous other nations. Today, Israel is one of the few states—along with Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.—that has never known a second of nondemocratic governance.
These accomplishments would be sufficiently astonishing if attained in North America or Northern Europe. But Zionism has prospered in the supremely inhospitable—indeed, lethal—environment of the Middle East. Two hours’ drive east of the bustling nightclubs of Tel Aviv—less than the distance between New York and Philadelphia—is Jordan, home to more than a half million refugees from Syria’s civil war. Traveling north from Tel Aviv for four hours would bring that driver to war-ravaged Damascus or, heading east, to the carnage in western Iraq. Turning south, in the time it takes to reach San Francisco from Los Angeles, the traveler would find himself in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
In a region reeling with ethnic strife and religious bloodshed, Zionism has engendered a multiethnic, multiracial and religiously diverse society. Arabs serve in the Israel Defense Forces, in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. While Christian communities of the Middle East are steadily eradicated, Israel’s continues to grow. Israeli Arab Christians are, in fact, on average better educated and more affluent than Israeli Jews.
In view of these monumental achievements, one might think that Zionism would be admired rather than deplored. But Zionism stands accused of thwarting the national aspirations of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants, of oppressing and dispossessing them.
Never mind that the Jews were natives of the land—its Arabic place names reveal Hebrew palimpsests—millennia before the Palestinians or the rise of Palestinian nationalism. Never mind that in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, the Palestinians received offers to divide the land and rejected them, usually with violence. And never mind that the majority of Zionism’s adherents today still stand ready to share their patrimony in return for recognition of Jewish statehood and peace.
The response to date has been, at best, a refusal to remain at the negotiating table or, at worst, war. But Israelis refuse to relinquish the hope of resuming negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. To live in peace and security with our Palestinian neighbors remains the Zionist dream.
Still, for all of its triumphs, its resilience and openness to peace, Zionism fell short of some of its original goals. The agrarian, egalitarian society created by Zionist pioneers has been replaced by a dynamic, largely capitalist economy with yawning gaps between rich and poor. Mostly secular at its inception, Zionism has also spawned a rapidly expanding religious sector, some elements of which eschew the Jewish state.
About a fifth of Israel’s population is non-Jewish, and though some communities (such as the Druse) are intensely patriotic and often serve in the army, others are much less so, and some even call for Israel’s dissolution. And there is the issue of Judea and Samaria—what most of the world calls the West Bank—an area twice used to launch wars of national destruction against Israel but which, since its capture in 1967, has proved painfully divisive.
Many Zionists insist that these territories represent the cradle of Jewish civilization and must, by right, be settled. But others warn that continued rule over the West Bank’s Palestinian population erodes Israel’s moral foundation and will eventually force it to choose between being Jewish and remaining democratic.
Yet the most searing of Zionism’s unfulfilled visions was that of a state in which Jews could be free from the fear of annihilation. The army imagined by Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s founding father, marched in parades and saluted flag-waving crowds. The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, with no time for marching, much less saluting, has remained in active combat mode since its founding in 1948. With the exception of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological forbear of today’s Likud Party, none of Zionism’s early thinkers anticipated circumstances in which Jews would be permanently at arms. Few envisaged a state that would face multiple existential threats on a daily basis just because it is Jewish.
Confronted with such monumental threats, Israelis might be expected to flee abroad and prospective immigrants discouraged. But Israel has one of the lower emigration rates among developed countries while Jews continue to make aliyah—literally, in Hebrew, “to ascend”—to Israel. Surveys show that Israelis remain stubbornly optimistic about their country’s future. And Jews keep on arriving, especially from Europe, where their security is swiftly eroding. Last week, thousands of Parisians went on an anti-Semitic rant, looting Jewish shops and attempting to ransack synagogues.
American Jews face no comparable threat, and yet numbers of them continue to make aliyah. They come not in search of refuge but to take up the Zionist challenge—to be, as the Israeli national anthem pledges, “a free people in our land, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem.” American Jews have held every high office, from prime minister to Supreme Court chief justice to head of Israel’s equivalent of the Fed, and are disproportionately prominent in Israel’s civil society.
Hundreds of young Americans serve as “Lone Soldiers,” without families in the country, and volunteer for front-line combat units. One of them, Max Steinberg from Los Angeles, fell in the first days of the current Gaza fighting. His funeral, on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, was attended by 30,000 people, most of them strangers, who came out of respect for this intrepid and selfless Zionist.
I also paid my respects to Max, whose Zionist journey was much like mine. After working on a kibbutz—a communal farm—I made aliyah and trained as a paratrooper. I participated in several wars, and my children have served as well, sometimes in battle. Our family has taken shelter from Iraqi Scuds and Hamas M-75s, and a suicide bomber killed one of our closest relatives.
Despite these trials, my Zionist life has been immensely fulfilling. And the reason wasn’t Zionism’s successes—not the Nobel Prizes gleaned by Israeli scholars, not the Israeli cures for chronic diseases or the breakthroughs in alternative energy. The reason—paradoxically, perhaps—was Zionism’s failures.
Failure is the price of sovereignty. Statehood means making hard and often agonizing choices—whether to attack Hamas in Palestinian neighborhoods, for example, or to suffer rocket strikes on our own territory. It requires reconciling our desire to be enlightened with our longing to remain alive. Most onerously, sovereignty involves assuming responsibility. Zionism, in my definition, means Jewish responsibility. It means taking responsibility for our infrastructure, our defense, our society and the soul of our state. It is easy to claim responsibility for victories; setbacks are far harder to embrace.
But that is precisely the lure of Zionism. Growing up in America, I felt grateful to be born in a time when Jews could assume sovereign responsibilities. Statehood is messy, but I regarded that mess as a blessing denied to my forefathers for 2,000 years. I still feel privileged today, even as Israel grapples with circumstances that are at once perilous, painful and unjust. Fighting terrorists who shoot at us from behind their own children, our children in uniform continue to be killed and wounded while much of the world brands them as war criminals.
Zionism, nevertheless, will prevail. Deriving its energy from a people that refuses to disappear and its ethos from historically tested ideas, the Zionist project will thrive. We will be vilified, we will find ourselves increasingly alone, but we will defend the homes that Zionism inspired us to build.
The Israeli media have just reported the call-up of an additional 16,000 reservists. Even as I write, they too are mobilizing for active duty—aware of the dangers, grateful for the honor and ready to bear responsibility.
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Mr. Oren was Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013. He holds the chair in international diplomacy at IDC Herzliya in Israel and is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. His books include “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.”
The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, looks out over the Rhine River from the balcony of the hotel in Basel, Switzerland, where he stayed during the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Israeli historian and former diplomat Michael B. Oren defines Zionism as ‘the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel.’
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, mops his forehead just before he stands up to read out Israel’s Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv, on May 14, 1948. Ben Gurion, a Polish immigrant, was Israel’s founding father, leading the Jewish state through the 1948-49 War of Independence and the 1956 Suez War.
Israelis hoist their new flag at a ceremony in 1948.
One distinctive Israeli innovation was the kibbutz, a collectivist or socialist agricultural community. Here, kibbutz members celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover in the Beit Shean Valley in 1967.
After the Six-Day War ended on June 10, 1967, Israel had taken control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Here, Israelis guard the Western Wall—a remnant of the Second Temple and the holiest site in Judaism—in the Old City of Jerusalem on June 16, 1967.
In October 1973, future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon helped turn the tide of the fourth Arab-Israeli war after a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria, eventually encircling the Egyptian Third Army. Mr. Sharon (right), recovering from a head injury, stands with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan on the western side of the Suez Canal.
As President Jimmy Carter applauds, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat embrace in the East Room of the White House after the signing of a ‘Framework for Peace’ in the Middle East, on Sept. 17, 1978. Mr. Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977 led to the U.S.-brokered Camp David accords in 1978, followed by Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab state the following year.
In 1987, a Palestinian uprising erupted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, jolting many Israelis into revisiting the question of whether the Jewish state could indefinitely control those areas. A Palestinian teenager, armed with a slingshot and using marbles for ammunition, takes aim at Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Nablus, Jan. 14, 1988.
As President Bill Clinton smiles, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shake hands on the White House lawn, on Sept. 13, 1993. After months of secret negotiations in Norway, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators produced the Oslo accords, a land-for-peace deal that established the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza, began an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, and called for talks on the conflict’s core issues—including Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements, and Jerusalem—after a five-year interim period.
Israelis enjoy the Mediterranean Sea air in Tel Aviv, on Aug. 29, 2013. Author Michael B. Oren writes that in today’s Israel, ‘The beaches are teeming, the rock music is awesome, and the food is off the Zagat charts.’
An Israeli 155 mm artillery piece is fired into the Gaza Strip from a base in southern Israel, on July 31, 2014. Since 2008, Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas have fought three bitter conflicts.
The Sunni-Shiite Divide Explained In 100 Seconds — video
Tuesday, July 29th, 2014
ZeroHedge.com
The battle between Islam’s two major branches began over 1,400 years ago when the Islamic prophet Mohammed died and the two sides clashed over who should succeed him. This centuries-old ‘war’ is once again threatening the stability of Iraq, the whole Middle East, and thus the world.The Washington Post‘s senior national security correspondent Karen DeYoung explains in 100 seconds just how we got here.
Israel’s fight for its very existence
Monday, July 28th, 2014
By Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist
Every Hamas rocket is an act of war
Mohammed Saber / EPA
Israel fought its first war, in 1948, against five Arab nations — Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan — as well as the Palestinians. In the prediction of the fairly new CIA, the outcome was never in doubt: “Without substantial outside aid in terms of manpower and material, they (the Jews) will be able to hold out no longer than two years.” It has now been 66 years, but I fear that sooner or later, the CIA’s conclusion could turn out to be right.
It does not seem that way at the moment. The five Arab armies of 1948 are now down to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This is a struggle whose end cannot be in doubt. The Israelis will degrade Hamas’s military capabilities — its rocket-launching sites and its tunnels — and end for a time its ability to attack Israel. Every rocket, no matter how primitive and wobbly, is an act of war.
Since 1948, nation after nation has retired to the sidelines. Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel. Saudi Arabia, which stayed out of the first war, has little desire for any subsequent one. Lebanon has been battered too often by Israel to still have a taste for war.
Iraq is coming apart at the seams and can fight no one. Syria, too, is a chaotic mess, no longer really a nation and now more of a geographic designation. With the exception of Hezbollah and Hamas, no one much wants to fight. Happy days should be here . . . again.
But they are not. In my estimation, Israel now fights not just to clear out the tunnels and rid Gaza of its rockets but for its very existence. This war that Israel will of course win has seen its once-hapless enemy, Hamas, launch hundreds of rockets a day, some of them landing in the Tel Aviv area, a few going as far as Haifa. The Iron Dome anti-missile system has reportedly done wonders, but the law of averages insists that a rocket will get through and Tel Aviv will be hit — and then hit again.
The nations that once went to war vowing to push Israel into the sea are unstable, rickety creations. They are under siege not from Israel but from their own religious zealots. Whatever emerges is going to be either less accepting of Israel or maniacally intent on annihilating it. In time, Israel could be surrounded by states that would make Hamas seem the soul of moderation.
There is a sad metronomic rhythm to Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel wins every time, but every war is incrementally existential. Israelis are increasingly looking over their shoulder. About 60% of them either have or wish they had a second passport (often from an ancestral European country), and a large number of them — maybe as many as 500,000 — already live in the United States. The wayward Hamas rocket, so idiotically trivialized by Israel’s critics, doesn’t have to kill anyone to take a toll. People will seek safety as surely as water seeks its own level.
Hamas thinks it is winning the current war — which is why it rejected the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire proposal. Not a single major Hamas leader has been killed. Sooner or later. an intermediary will insist on a peace agreement. That intermediary should be Secretary of State Kerry. He must demand no more tunnels and no more rockets. Hamas can stay in Gaza, and Israel seems willing to ease its blockade. But both goods and funds have to be used to benefit the Palestinian people — not to build (or import) rockets or resume the tunneling.
A deal is there to be made — but the U.S. has to either make it or determine its outcome. The effort cannot be left to countries that are hostile to Israel — Turkey and Qatar come to mind — or the Middle East will once again wind up with a peace that is just a prelude to more war.
Israel is the legal creation of the United Nations. It has an absolute right not merely to exist but to do so safe from rockets or incursions by tunneling terrorists. In 1948, Harry Truman swiftly recognized Israel. America took the lead. It is time for it to do so again.
The Middle East Problem — in a nutshell — video
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014
PragerUniversity.com
The Middle East conflict is framed as one of the most complex problems in the world. But, in reality, it’s very simple. Israelis want to live in peace and are willing to accept a neighboring Palestinian state. And most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist. As Dennis Prager explains, this is really all you need to know. In 5 minutes, understand how Israel was founded, and how, since that auspicious day in 1948, its neighbors have tried to destroy it, again and again.
Editor’s Note: All Prager’s information in the following video is accurate EXCEPT for the map (at 1:01) of the UN’s proposed Jewish – Arab/Muslim division. The original 1947 map divided the region called Palestine by giving Jordan (called Transjordan at the time) to the Arabs/Muslims, and all the area on Prager’s map (i.e., the land west of the Jordan River) to the Jews. The original map looked like this:
How Four Israeli Fighter Pilots Stopped A Massive Arab Invasion In 1948
Friday, May 16th, 2014
By Corey Adwar
Soldiers inspect one of the Israeli Air Force’s new fighter planes purchased from Czechoslovakia in 1948.
Steven Pressfield’s new book The Lion’s Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War contains a remarkable account of the Israeli Air Force’s first-ever mission in 1948, in which four planes succeeded against overwhelming odds to stop a massive Egyptian army in its tracks.
When Israel became an independent nation on May 14, 1948, the armies of four Arab neighbors — Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq — immediately invaded the new country to prevent its creation.
The Israelis were desperate to defend themselves, but they lacked many modern weapons and had no aircraft to protect troops, Pressfield wrote. Meanwhile, western nations including the U.S. and Britain were enforcing a ban on arms shipments to Israel.
Basing his book on dozens of interviews with various individuals who experienced Israel’s early wars, Pressfield wrote the chapters from the perspectives of veterans who survived combat, telling the story in their voices.
Lou Lenart
Israel Defense Forces
Lou Lenart
Lou Lenart
Knowing a massive Arab invasion was imminent, American Lou Lenart helped recruit foreign war veterans (like he was) to fly for Israel. Czechoslovakia was one of the only countries willing to sell aircraft to Israel, because it was a Soviet bloc nation desperate for American dollars.
Just two days before the Arab nations invaded, Lenart and a handful of recruits rushed to Czechoslovakia to train on that country’s version of a German Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane — ironically, the type flown by the Nazis during World War II. Lenart, who had served as a U.S. Marine fighter pilot against the Japanese, was not impressed with the Czech aircraft:
This plane was the worst piece of crap I have ever flown. It was not even an airplane. It was put together by the Czechs from mismatched parts left behind by the Nazis. The airframe was that of an Me-109 but the propeller and engine came out of a Heinkel bomber. You can’t make a plane that way. But it was all we could get, so we took it.
The first time Lenart took off in the aircraft, he almost crashed into the sea. He compared the plane’s engine to a farm tractor motor inside a Lamborghini. He even feared that poor synchronization of the machine guns would cause him to shoot his own propeller off.
Ezer Weizman, one of the four pilots who stopped the Egyptians, is shown here in 1948 with his aircraft.
As the pilots hurriedly trained in Czechoslovakia, the Arab countries began their invasion with tanks and aircraft, gaining ground rapidly. Pressfield wrote this in Lenart’s voice:
Every night we got bulletins from Israel. The Arab Legion with tanks and artillery was attacking near Jerusalem. Syrian forces had crossed the Jordan [River]. The Egyptian Army, with Spitfires, tanks, and artillery, was advancing up the coast road toward Tel Aviv. There’s a kibbutz [communal settlement] on the frontier called Yad Mordechai. Three Egyptian battalions were attacking a force of 140. Even the kibbutz women fought in the trenches, firing World War I Enfields. They held out for five days before the Egyptians stormed the place and captured it.
To make matters worse, two of the six planes Israel purchased were destroyed in an accident on the way to the Middle East. By the time the remaining four planes were ready for their first mission, Arabs forces were on the verge of capturing Israel’s two biggest cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Pressfield wrote.
Another of the four pilots, Modi Alon, shown in the center in sunglasses next to Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1948.
Outnumbered Israeli troops managed to destroy a section of a bridge 17 miles from Tel Aviv, momentarily halting a massive Egyptian army from capturing the city. On the new Israeli Air Force’s first-ever mission May 29 1948, Lenart and three other pilots — Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman, and Eddie Cohen — took off in a desperate effort to bomb and strafe the Egyptians before they could repair the bridge.
“There is no making light of this moment,” wrote Pressfield in Lenart’s voice. “Behind us is Israel, the Jewish people hanging on by a thread. Ahead of us is the enemy, advancing to destroy everything we love.”
The four pilots alone faced 6,000 Egyptian troops — consisting of seven infantry battalions, six hundred vehicles, and formidable antiaircraft weapons, according to Pressfield. Lenart, the only pilot with combat experience in a fighter plane, led the mission.
Here is Pressfield’s incredible account of what Lenart experienced next, written in Lenart’s perspective:
We attack. The guns malfunction; the bomb releases balk. I look right and left and see nobody. Antiaircraft fire is ferocious. Six thousand Egyptians are putting up everything they’ve got. Eddie Cohen, a wonderful, brave pilot from South Africa, must have run into too much of it. His plane doesn’t come back. I manage to put one 70-kilogram bomb onto a concentration of trucks and troops in the town square of Ishdud. Modi and Ezer do what they can. It’s a mess. We straggle back, having inflicted minimal damage.
But the shock to the Egyptians is overwhelming. To be attacked from the air by four Messerschmitt 109s with the Star of David on the side!
The bold strike left the Egyptian forces dumbfounded and vulnerable. That night, Jewish ground troops took advantage of the situation by attacking the Egyptians’ flank. Pressfield continues the account from Lenart’s perspective:
The Egyptians are thrown into disorder. Israeli intelligence intercepts this dispatch from the brigade commander to Cairo: “We were heavily attacked by enemy aircraft and we are scattering.”
The Egyptian Army deflected to the east, to link with other Arab forces besieging Jerusalem.
Tel Aviv was saved, and so was the nation.
Sometime later I got a chance to speak with several Egyptian officers who were there that day. They said that the soldiers in the column were certain that these four planes, our piece-of-crap Messerschmitts, were just the tip of the spear, that the Jews had hundreds more, poised to attack and destroy them all.
Today Israelis call the bridge where the attack took place “Ad Halom,” meaning “Until Here” in Hebrew, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Egypt Demands Compensation for 10 Plagues
Friday, April 18th, 2014
IsraelToday.com
“We demand that the State of Israel pay compensation for the ten plagues that our forefathers in Egypt suffered thousands of years ago as a result of the curses of the Jewish forefathers.” So wrote prominent Egyptian columnist Ahmad Al-Gamal shortly before the Jewish Passover, causing a great stir.
“What is written in the Torah is that Pharaoh discriminated against the children of Israel. What have we to do with it? We therefore need not suffer!” exclaimed Al-Gamal, drawing a clear difference between the Egyptian kingdom of the Pharaohs and Islamic Egypt of today. Note that Islam accepts the biblical narrative as historical evidence.
The columnist suggested that the government in Cairo press charges against Israel: “The Jews caused the land to be stricken with locusts and all agriculture destroyed, turned the Nile red with blood so that one could drink its waters, sent darkness, frogs, and killed the firstborn.”
Al-Gamal continued: “During 40 years of wandering in the desert, the Children of Israel enjoyed our goods, which they stole before abandoning us.” He also recommended that Egypt bring charges against France, Great Britain, and Turkey for those nations’ historical conquests of Egypt.
The Egyptian column was picked up by the Israeli press, especially religious news outlets, which readily acknowledged all that Al-Gamal wrote as historical fact.
Some Israeli columnists retorted that Egypt need first compensate Israel for keeping the Jewish forefathers as slaves and for killing all male Jewish babies in the generation prior to the Exodus.
That Jew Died For You–video
Thursday, April 17th, 2014
As the Church rediscovers its Jewish roots, it must also confront its history.
Visit the website to make comments there and to see personal stories and other background material.
Jews for Jesus explains why the organization made this film:
Below are the key points we wanted to get across in the film as well as a more expanded explanation.
Jesus has often been wrongly associated with the perpetrators of the Holocaust. In reality, He is to be identified with those who were the victims. As a Jew, if He were in Europe at the time, Jesus may well have suffered the same fate of the six million who perished in the concentration camps.
Jewish teaching promotes the idea that the death of Jews in the Holocaust accomplished kiddush ha Shem, the sanctification of God’s name. How much more then, the Bible tells us, Jesus’ death was intended by God for kiddush ha am, the sanctification of the people. Through Him we can be made right with God. (See Hebrews 13:12)
San Remo Mandate: Israel’s Magna Carta–video
Tuesday, April 1st, 2014
San Remo’s Mandate: Israel’s ‘Magna Carta’ – CBN.com
Chris Mitchell’s CBN News report following the 90th anniversary of The San Remo Mandate
Chris Mitchell’s CBN News report following the 90th anniversary of The San Remo Mandate
(Originally uploaded on Jul 9, 2010, following the 90th anniversary of the San Remo signing on April 25, 1920.)
The 1920 San Remo resolution answered a fundamental issue that still plagues the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks today: whether Israel has a right to the land. The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)
The 1920 San Remo resolution answered a fundamental issue that still plagues the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks today: whether Israel has a right to the land. The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)
Exposing Christian Palestinianism Documentary – video Trailer
Monday, March 17th, 2014
Published on Feb 17, 2014
Lighthouse Trails Publishing
Lighthouse Trails Publishing
Click here to order this DVD.
Controversy about the existence of the Nation of Israel has been intensifying not only within the Arab world but within Christianity also. A political-religious campaign is gaining worldwide acceptance as church leaders, denominations, charities, missions, and humanitarian groups are uniting with Muslims and other world religions against Israel. 2,500 years ago, Zechariah the Hebrew Prophet foretold, “Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone for all people: and, all the people of the earth shall be gathered together against it.” (Zech. 12:2-3)
In an aggressive worldwide anti-Israel-Jewish movement, an infectious anti-Semitism is growing within contemporary Christianity, termed Christian Palestinianism. In these 3 powerful programs (approx. 35 mins each) fast moving, graphic footage illustrates the eye-opening informative EXCLUSIVE FEATURE of Wide Is The Gate: The Emerging New Christianity, exposing the rising tide of beguiling apostasy gripping today’s Church in regard to modern Israel.
Dutch Christians Build Mega-Menorah
Wednesday, November 27th, 2013
Hanukkah 2013 begins in the evening of Wednesday, November 27 and ends in the evening ofThursday, December 5.
Raising the Hanukkiah in Netherlands
By Cnaan Liphshiz / JTA.org
BERLIKUM, Netherlands (JTA) — In a windswept parking lot near the North Sea shore, Klaas Zijlstra stands motionless as he admires his latest creation.
It’s the first time he is testing the 36-foot menorah he has spent weeks designing and building in the shape of a Star of David in his metal workshop in the northern tip of the Netherlands. Despite strong winds, the menorah holds, thanks in no small part to its 6-ton base.
This isn’t just any mega-menorah. For one thing, it may be the largest in all of Europe. For another, it’s the handiwork of a Protestant metal contractor, paid for by Christian Zionists, and meant to be a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people.
Oh, and it’s kosher for use on Hanukkah, too.
“It’s exactly like the rabbi wanted,” Zijlstra said.
The rabbi is Binyomin Jacobs of Chabad, who helped Zijlstra and a group called Christians for Israel design the nine-branch candelabrum so it could be used for the eight-day holiday.
On Wednesday evening, Hanukkah’s first night, Jacobs intends to mount a crane and light the first candle in front of hundreds of Christians and Jews during a public ceremony in Nijkerk, not far from Amsterdam.
Though commonplace in the United States and even in Russia, public Hanukkah events are a recent and revolutionary development in the Netherlands. Here they signify the growing self-confidence and openness of a Jewish community whose near annihilation in the Holocaust left a deeply entrenched tendency to keep a low profile.
“Twenty years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible,” said Arjen Lont, the Christian Zionist businessman who donated $40,000 to build and transport the menorah. “It requires a lot of openness.”
Lont says the purpose of the giant menorah, which can be used either with electric bulbs or oil lamps, is to send a message.
Hanukkah menorah in place
“After unspeakable suffering, the horrors of the Holocaust and most recently the attacks on Israel, Jews may feel they are alone,” Lont said. “This is our way of saying you are not alone, we are behind you.”
The first public Hanukkah lighting ceremony in the country was organized in 1989 in Buitenveldert, near Amsterdam, by the wife of a Chabad rabbi, according to Bart Wallet, a historian of Dutch Jewry at the University of Amsterdam.
Today, such events are held annually in 19 municipalities, from the northern city of Leeuwarden, near Berlikum, to the southern border city of Maastricht, according to Jacobs.
Jacobs says public menorah lightings in the country signify the Jewish community’s confidence in asserting its place in Dutch society.
“Nowadays it’s also saying we are here, we are also a part of the fabric of religious communities and society,” he said.
Dutch Jewish reticence toward public displays of faith dates back at least to the 19th century, according to Wallet, when Dutch rabbis decreed that no Jewish rituals should be held in the public domain. At the time, Dutch Jews were keen on integrating into a democratic society as equal citizens, and they considered it counterproductive to showcase religious customs that set them apart from their compatriots.
The tendency was greatly reinforced after the Holocaust, when three-quarters of Holland’s population of 140,000 Jews perished — a higher percentage than anywhere else in occupied Western Europe. Today, about 40,000 Jews live in the Netherlands.
Wallet says things began to change in the 1970s, when Dutch Jews began displaying greater activism around anti-Semitism and Israel.
Even today, however, many Dutch Jews retain a sense of reticence when it comes to public displays of religion.
“There’s nothing wrong with these Hanukkah events, but to me they don’t seem familiar,” said Jaap Hartog, chairman of the umbrella group of Dutch Jewry, called the Dutch Israelite Religious Community, or NIK. “To me, Hanukkah is more a holiday that you celebrate at home with your family. The public candle lightings are more of an American thing.
“On a personal level, I’m not too keen on participating.”
Initially, Chabad rabbis organized candle-lighting ceremonies as part of their efforts to reach lapsed Jews, but today the menorah lightings are not organized exclusively by Chabad. Nathan Bouscher, a Jewish activist who is not himself religious, has co-organized candle lightings at the Dam, Amsterdam’s best-known square.
“It’s a way to build bridges between Jews and the non-Jewish environment, but also within the community and between Dutch-born Jews and the thousands of Israelis who live here and the tourists from Israel,” Bouscher said.
Back at Zijlstra’s metal workshop, his menorah is attracting attention from neighbors. During the test run last week, a few of them stopped by to admire his handiwork and congratulate him.
One elderly man, Henk van Jaarsveld, looked up at the menorah with tears in his eyes. A self-described Messianic Jew, he showed off his Hebrew skills by reading the holiday greeting in Dutch and Hebrew that Christians for Israel had attached to the menorah’s base.
Next year, Christians for Israel says it wants to place the menorah in front of the European Parliament in Brussels to protest legislative proposals that seek to restrict Jewish rights such as circumcising male infants.
“On Hanukkah, the Jewish people remember their rebellion against the Greeks because the Greeks limited the Jews’ freedom of worship,” said Roger van Oordt, director of Christians for Israel’s Dutch branch. “We want to place this menorah there as a warning against repeating that history.”
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