Uniting Jews and Gentiles in Support of Israel

Uniting Jews and Gentiles in Support of Israel

By Donna (Jollay) Martin October 12, 2015  Breaking Israel News

I originally began writing this article while in Jerusalem, overlooking the Old City and Mount Zion. I was blessed to celebrate Sukkot in Israel, which Christians calls the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the seven Feast of the Lord which are sourced in several places in Scripture.

In Leviticus 25, a Feast of Great Celebration is described, a celebration not just for the Jewish people, but as I am learning more and more, God-designed for the entire world.

Sukkot is one of the three pilgrimage Feasts of the Lord, where the entire nation of Israel is called to physically come together in one location to celebrate and worship God.  The Hebrews have incredibly faithfully preserved this in various forms and to various degrees for more than 3,500 years. Sukkot is miraculously being kept today in Jerusalem, as God has returned them to the Land after more than 2,000 years just as He foretold throughout the Bible!

Zechariah 14:16 even foretells of a day when ALL of the nations will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles!  This is a Feast of gathering together in unity to celebrate and worship God, and it is for the entire world.

I find it very interesting that after spending several weeks to write this article, I am no only realizing that God had rich purpose even in that delay.  In synagogues all over the world and even in Israel, rabbis share of God’s dream and desire for the entire world to embrace Him and of His Word, knitting us all together in unity through it.

On that point, it is so much more significant to be writing this article from Israel just as the Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT) installed a new Director of Christian Affairs for North America.  A big MAZEL TOV to Rev. Jaime Lynn Fusco, who embodies bringing together Jew and Gentiles in unity of Israel!

It is fascinating that when I asked Jaime Lynn how she became interested in Israel she described growing up in a Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood and how she was always so curious about the Sukkahs that would spring up all around during the time of Sukkot.  It was this very Feast that God used to stir her heart with wonder about His people that led to her love affair with them and the Land of Israel – so how appropriate to be writing this at such a time as this.

When I asked how old she was when she developed a heart for Israel and her people, I was so astonished when she replied:

“The first memory I have, I was probably around 7 year old – I was going to Catholic school in Brooklyn New York – during communion, after you go up to receive, you then go back to the pew and kneel and pray – I would pray for the Jewish people, the Christian people and the Muslim people – I have no idea where it came from….”

And, paraphrasing a little more of what Jaime Lynn then shared:  “I was never taught that. I did grow up in a Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood, but never heard of Muslims and we didn’t talk about them.  My parents were born again Christians, my Grandmother and Father did read the Bible to me so I was very familiar with the land and people, but was never taught to pray for them, even though I did regularly.”

“From age 19-27, I had my own company helping mom and pop shops, as well as large companies migrate to the internet. At the core of me I am a writer and have been writing since a very early age. Since the company was doing well I created an op-ed website and started writing political articles to combat the lies that were being published through the news– I was a blogger before bloggers existed….”

“About 4 years into this, 9/11 happened and I was glued to CSPAN watching the 9/11 commission investigations. As I watched I wrote articles and was able to get them out on the web before others could. I had tens of thousands of repeat visitors from all over the world following my articles.”

She went on to share from her heart, “One thing that really helped me to understand Israel and ancient Israel was 9/11 – losing family members and friends in a terrorist attack. Before this we would say, ‘a suicide bomber is a homicide bomber,’ I thought I understood, but to experience it first hand when it happened here in NY it really took it to a whole different dimension in understanding and identifying with Israel in what they have gone through and endured for so long.”

9/11 was the instrument that catapulted Jaime Lynn to do everything she could to shine the light of truth and to stand for Israel. Jaime Lynn was very active, teaching people on how to get involved with their communities and local governments and hosting Israel events and solidarity rallies, always from a positive Godly perspective.  “Something I always say, ‘Israel is the Apple of G-d’s Eye and NY is the apple in His Hand,’ that is the Plumb line for my ministry.”

In 2003, she began to transition into full time ministry, teaching in churches, hosting Bible studies and working for multiple ministries, including Billy Graham. “As I came into a much more personal relationship with the LORD in my late twenties, things just started clicking specifically as it relates to Eretz Israel. At that time I had a young aunt who developed 4th stage cancer, I was the primary person taking care of her and I really had to lean on my faith. That year Christmas and Hanukkah aligned and I knew there was something there, it was not just a coincidence, I knew it meant something more. This became the turning point that thrust me into studying the Feasts and times and seasons of the Lord more closely. After that Christmas ALL of the Feasts started aligning! That’s how the LORD really grew my connection with my Hebraic Roots and is how The Wings of Destiny Ministry began.”

Jaime Lynn started writing regularly about the Feasts and the Hebrew calendar; she still writes a monthly newsletter and teaches with continuing revelation, connecting scripture with the time we are in today.

In 2006 she joined Robert Stearns’ Eagles’ Wings organization that for many years has strongly supported Israel and her people.  After being on staff for a short while Robert asked her to start sending out the God’s Calendar teachings on the Feast’s to the staff of about 45 at that time. During the 5 years there she spearheaded a Rosh Chodesh women’s ministry within the organization, as well as, taught seminars at their conferences.

It was with Eagles’ Wings that she got to actually visit Israel for the first time in 2008 – “every molecule of your being is transformed – It was just like in Jerry Maguire when Tom Cruise says to Renee Zellweger – ‘you complete me.’  I fully understand this myself, and so will you if you come to The Land of the Bible.”

“It’s not just a Historical place, we are watching The Bible continue to unfold before our very eyes as Scripture Foretold in so many places like in Isaiah 35, where you can physically see the desert blooming. There are so many Amazing discoveries every day proving the Bible and The Significance of The Book and The People of The Book – so even if you’ve been there before there is so much more to see and experience every day!”

Israel is safe, the safety and well-being of its citizens and visitors is of utmost importance to them and I can also attest to that – as Jaime Lynn says “the only way to understand that is to go and see for yourself.”

So, earlier this year when she was offered the position by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism to become the Director of Christian Affairs, North America she enthusiastically accepted.  “I get to do what I love – I couldn’t have thought of a better position to be in – I feel like the position was made for me.”  And, after getting to meet Jaime Lynn and hear her story, which has even so much more to it, I agree completely.

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Map of Israel Today. I love the map!

Love For His People blog Editor's note: I love the map!!
Steve Martin, Founder, Love For His People

Israeli Ministry of Tourism map annexes over 60% of the West Bank

Jonathan Cook on November 2, 2012 

Is Israel preparing to annex Area C, as a growing number of analysts have recently been speculating?

(Photo: Jonathan Cook)

This week, on a visit to the Israel’s tourism bureau in Nazareth, I came across an official brochure, “Your Next Vacation: Israel”, that suggests the answer. The brochure is supplied to travel agents around the world as well as to hundreds of thousands of tourists who arrive in Israel each year.

Inside is a map, produced by the Ministry of Tourism, that shows both Israel and the occupied territories. Helpfully, it incorporates Israel’s interpretation of the territorial demarcations created by the Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s.

Oslo divided the West Bank into three parts temporarily – for a period of five years – while Israel and the Palestinians were supposed to negotiate a final-status agreement that, it was widely assumed, would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

(Photo: Jonathan Cook)

Area A, the smallest part of the West Bank and restricted chiefly to the main Palestinian cities, was placed under the full control of the newly created Palestinian Authority.

Area B, mainly covering the areas around the cities, was under the shared control of the PA and Israel, with Israel taking charge of security matters and the Palestinians responsible for civil affairs.

Today, Areas A and B together cover about 39 per cent of the West Bank.

But by far the largest portion of the West Bank, Area C, was handed over to Israel’s full control. It was assumed by most observers that this land, 61 per cent of the West Bank, would eventually become the territorial bulk of a future Palestinian state.

Over the past two decades, however, Israel has used its hold over Area C – and the lack of an agreement, due to its own intransigence – to entrench and expand the settlements there.

There are now nearly 350,000 Jewish settlers living in more than 250 settlements and outposts dotted all over Area C (a further 200,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem). These settlers, backed by Israeli soldiers and a network of civilian and military bureaucrats, have created a reign of terror that has gradually encouraged Palestinians in Area C to migrate to the cities, still nominally under Palestinian Authority control.

There were once hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Area C, most making their living from agriculture. Today, some estimates put that number below 100,000, but the population is certainly no higher than 150,000. Of these, most live in extreme poverty and insecurity:

• their homes are liable to be demolished at any moment;
• they can access water expensively and intermittently from water-trucks only;
• their livelihoods as farming communities are under constant threat from water shortages, land confiscations and the walls and fences Israel constantly erects to divide up their holdings;
• and their physical safety is threatened by attacks from ever-more fanatical settlers living nearby.

Further, what the Oslo Accords assumed would be Israel’s temporary control of Area C has become effectively permanent – part of what the Israeli Supreme Court recently acknowledged as Israel’s “prolonged occupation” of the West Bank.

What all this means is that the debate about whether Israel is going to annex Area C is largely academic. The annexation has already taken place, just not formally. The advantage of this discreet method of annexation – what Israeli general Moshe Dayan once termed “creeping annexation” – is that Israel is under no pressure to confer citizenship on the few Palestinians remaining in Area C.

(Photo: Jonathan Cook)

The brochure map provides a helpful illustration of Israeli thinking. It was created by the Tourism Ministry in 2007, before the current right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu came to power on a platform of tearing up the Oslo Accords. That was the period of Ehud Olmert’s government, which was supposedly committed to reaching an agreement with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution.

The map offers a clear indication of how even Israel’s supposed peace-makers envisage the Palestinians’ future.

The map fails to delineate any territory identifiable as the West Bank, referring to it instead as the Biblical kingdoms of Judea and Samaria. That is also the way Israeli textbooks have presented the West Bank to generations of Israeli schoolchildren: as a single territorial unit of Greater Israel, ruled over by Israel. The Green Line was erased on Hebrew maps from the moment the occupation began.

But the tourism map has been drafted not for a domestic audience but for a foreign one.

What is most surprising is that the map acknowledges the Oslo Accords, but only in part. It marks out Areas A and B, designating them in pink and yellow respectively.

But where is Area C on the map? According to the map’s legend, there is no Area C. It has disappeared. It is not designated and it is shown on the map in the same colours used for “Israel proper”.

When Israeli officials ask tourists at the country’s international airport or at the borders if they are intending to cross into the occupied territories, it appears that they are not actually referring to most of the West Bank – Area C.

The map give us an acute insight into how even the peace camp envisions the rosiest imaginable future: Palestinians corralled into a tiny pseudo-state on about 9 per cent of historic Palestine, split between two cages, the West Bank and Gaza, and denied a capital in East Jerusalem. This is the picture Israel implicitly presents to millions of tourists.

In the view of more hardline Israelis, of course, there are worse scenarios – though, we may conclude, the Tourism Ministry is not ready just yet to publicise them.

Source: Israeli Ministry of Tourism map

Love For His People Blog Editor's Note: I love the map!! 

Steve Martin, Founder, Love For His People