No Peace in Paris - Charles Gardner ISRAEL TODAY

No Peace in Paris

Friday, January 13, 2017 |  Charles Gardner  ISRAEL TODAY

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Peace Process

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a problem that is going to disappear with a wave of a magic wand weaved by the world’s politicians. It’s an age-old dilemma that has spiritual roots, and a spiritual solution.

Representatives of 70 nations will descend on Paris on Sunday for a global conference to promote a “two-state solution” as the way to lasting peace in the Middle East. It’s a ‘peace’ they plan to impose on Israel, who will not even be there! And the fear among Jews is that whatever is agreed in France will be used as the basis for a UN Security Council resolution that would permanently divide Israel and create an Islamic Palestinian state.

But the nations are merely engaging in another distraction – a denial of reality – that does not begin to address the issue. Just three weeks ago the UN passed a resolution declaring that Israel is illegally ‘occupying’ much of the land to which it is historically, and biblically, entitled – including the Temple Mount, Western Wall and the Old City itself (every inch of east Jerusalem, in fact) which has been part of Judaism for thousands of years. And Britain, to its shame, voted for this!

In rewriting history and making a mockery of justice and fairness, the United Nations has become a sick joke as it brazenly continues to back the Palestinian narrative that would drive Israel into the sea. Their spokesmen have been quoted over and again saying that they only want such a state as a launch pad for ridding the region of Jews altogether.[1]

The response to the truck-ramming attack in Jerusalem which killed four Israeli Defence Force soldiers[2] says it all. Arab Palestinians took to the streets and social media to celebrate and, in Gaza, the ruling Hamas terrorist group praised the attack as a “natural response to the Israeli occupier’s crimes”. People in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority-controlled ‘West Bank’ were seen festively handing out sweets to mark the occasion.

According to the PA, the murder of Israeli youths is sanctioned by Islam! The official PA daily said the killer “died as a Shahid” (that is, a martyr for Allah). And the Authority will now reward the terrorist’s wife with a lifetime monthly allowance of £627 ($760 or 2,900 shekels). And this in a territory led by Mahmoud Abbas – a so-called ‘moderate’.

No, the problem is not the settlements, or Jewish communities, built on disputed land claimed by the Palestinians. The root of this enduring conflict is anti-Semitism, currently in the shape of Islamic fundamentalism. Actually, Israel is entitled under international law to Judea and Samaria (currently known as the West Bank) courtesy of the San Remo Conference of 1922 in the aftermath of World War I. In fact it was around this time that a ‘two-state solution’ was first tried when, with the stroke of a pen, the British Government handed over a major portion of the territory originally earmarked for Israel to the Arabs – the country now known as Jordan. So why is there a need for further division?

The Paris Conference, like the recent UN resolution, could well make things worse for Israel and render peace even less likely by encouraging terror groups to believe they have the backing of world powers.

This would be a profound tragedy, however, especially for the nations involved. There will undoubtedly be further battles for Israel, but in the end they hold the ‘trump’ card – and I am not referring to the incoming U.S. President.

Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, will return to his beloved land – and the nations who scattered his people and divided up his land will be put on trial. But the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem will be restored. (See Joel 3.1f)

Jesus will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and will be king over the whole earth. (Zechariah 14.1–9)

Come, Lord Jesus!

---

1. For this and other information in this article, I am indebted to David Soakell’s January 12 2017 newsletter, Watching Over Zion, produced weekly for Christian Friends of Israel, as well as to official PA TV, January 8 2017.  ↩
2. This included three young women aged 20–22, one of whom, Yael Yekutiel, was a Facebook friend of my CFI colleague David Soakell, who described the 20-year-old officer as “full of light and life” who “seemed to love everyone and everyone loved her.” David himself narrowly missed being a victim of a suicide bomb back in 2002.  ↩

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This Video Epitomizes the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Thursday, August 04, 2016 | Israel Today Staff

This Video Epitomizes the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Thursday, August 04, 2016 |  Israel Today Staff

Israelis, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (see below), were horrified by a video clip posted to the Internet showing a Palestinian father trying to get his 4-year-old son to attack an Israeli soldier in hopes that the soldier would respond with violence and thereby bolster claims that Israelis are violent racists.

Instead, the soldier responded with kindness, and the oblivious toddler instead threw stones into the nearby field.

The exchange epitomized perfectly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most Israelis just want peace, while far too many Palestinians have been brainwashed into believing the Jews are enemies that must be violently confronted.

The words of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir have never rung so true:

“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

Watch here: Palestinian Child

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Should Jesus Unite Mortal Enemies? - Tsvi Sadan ISRAEL TODAY

Should Jesus Unite Mortal Enemies?

Monday, February 15, 2016 |  Tsvi Sadan  ISRAEL TODAY

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Messianic Jews

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taking a toll on Messianic Jews and Arab Christians who, in principle, are supposed to follow Jesus' command to love one's enemy. 

The tension between Messianic Jews and Evangelical Palestinians has grown ever deeper with the appearance of the Christ at the Checkpoint conferences that promote a brand of Replacement Theology in which "Palestine" replaces Israel. 

Most Messianic Jews have boycotted these conferences for their blatant hate toward Israel, and for their aggressive theological efforts to delegitimize the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

Some Messianic Jews, however, think that no matter what the circumstances, conflict between Messianic Jews and Evangelical Palestinians is intolerable and unacceptable. 

In an effort to resolve this conflict, a group of Messianic Jews and Evangelical Palestinians, most of whom are organizers of and participants in the caustic Christ at the Checkpoint conferences, met last month in Larnaca, Cyprus.

A press release published on the website of the very same people who organize, draft and propagate the "Palestine is Israel" agenda, outlines the way in which people who hold diametrically-opposed theological positions can still live up to Jesus' command to love your enemy. 

The document proposes some practical steps aimed at expressing the unity that should exist between the two groups.

The document asserts that unity is possible on the basis of common ethical values: "...our unity in the Messiah must uphold ethical standards of life that are worthy of our calling." In order to live up to this standard the document calls for “a generous theological stance, which makes room for and respects the conscientious convictions of others that they sincerely derive from their reading of Scripture.” 

In other words, those drafting this document believe that sincerity alone if enough to validate irreconcilable interpretations of the same sacred text. Sincerity and goodwill supersede truth.

The document goes on to state that "we recognize that we hold very different theological positions regarding the land," yet "deplore those ways of speaking and acting that are incompatible with obedience to our Lord." 

Simply put, in this version of Christian righteousness, a Palestinian "brother" can maintain that "the establishment of the State of Israel as a catastrophe" and still be able to live in peace with Messianic Jews. Similarly, a Messianic Jew is expected to embrace those who are calling for his demise.

This conclusion is possible, but only if the Messianic Jews in question fail to see themselves as part of greater Israel, in which case they can tolerate the notion that Israel's rebirth was a catastrophe. 

If, however, Messianic Jews do see themselves as an integral part of Israel, this document is yet further evidence of a disturbing phenomenon wherein Jews in increasing numbers are embracing the destructive narrative of their enemies. Only in this case they are doing so in the name of Jesus.

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ISRAEL TODAY: VIDEO: The Truth of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Messianic Jewish IDF soldier Hananya Naftali

VIDEO: The Truth of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Friday, January 15, 2016 |  Israel Today Staff

This video was made by Messianic Jewish IDF soldier Hananya Naftali to address the relentless lies presented by the mainstream media in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As Naftali notes, he is a soldier often stationed in “Palestinian” areas, and has the opportunity to see the truth first-hand. And it is very different than the picture painted by CNN, the BBC and the like.

Naftali also points out that most Israelis don’t want war, Israeli mothers don’t want to send their children to the military, Israelis want to live in peace, but are forced to live a far different life.

Watch here: Israel Today video

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When Obama hosts Netanyahu, it won’t be pleasant, but it might be productive - THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

When Obama hosts Netanyahu, it won’t be pleasant, but it might be productive

Op-ed: The Iran deal is done. The peace process is a nonstarter. Which means there might be less than usual to argue about when the two leaders hold their first meeting after a year of bitter disconnect

BY DAVID HOROVITZ October 29, 2015,THE TIMES OF ISRAEL


David Horovitz 

David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. 

He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The …[More]

On November 9, US President Barack Obama will host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House for the first time in more than a year. They’ll probably — though not certainly — put on a professional, perhaps even a friendly show. Leaders of two closely allied states. Shared interests and values. Unshakable partnership. You know the script.

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And the stuff about an enduring, vital relationship between the two countries is absolutely true.

But the Obama-Netanyahu personal relationship has long since fractured beyond the point of no return. The events of the past year plunged it to new lows. Netanyahu is convinced that Obama sealed a dreadful deal with Iran — entrenching an evil regime, giving it the hard cash to wreak havoc and leaving Israel horribly exposed — and has made no secret of his dismay. Obama was left absolutely seething by Netanyahu’s failed public effort to turn members of his own party against him on his key foreign policy objective, notably in that March speech to Congress. 

Netanyahu thinks Obama gives Mahmoud Abbas a free pass, even when the Palestinian leader is inciting terrorism. Obama is convinced that Netanyahu’s backing for settlement expansion is central to the failure of peace efforts. Netanyahu thinks Obama doesn’t “get” the ruthless Middle East. Obama made his displeasure with Netanyahu known when he took the prime minister to task for his election day assertion that Arab voters were streaming to the polls.

We could go on. Hopefully, for the interests of both of their countries, the two leaders themselves won’t want to.

November 9 will likely mark the day when Netanyahu implicitly acknowledges defeat by finally engaging with the administration on the practical implications of the Iran deal

The visit to Washington this week of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (himself hardly a figure beloved to the Obama administration) seems to symbolize a return to closer cooperation. The new chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, was in Israel last week — less than a month after taking office. Obama and Netanyahu will never put the past behind them, but the White House meeting will likely mark a renewed effort to see out the final year-plus of the Obama presidency in less discordant tones.

Helping that cause is the fact that, in the two key areas where they have so frequently clashed, matters have reached a stage where their scope for sniping at each other would appear to have been much reduced: The Iran deal is done. And any realistic notion of a Palestinian deal is done too for the foreseeable future.

On Iran, therefore, they could choose to batter away some more at each other on whether there was a better alternative, and on what constitutes acceptable conduct when an embattled nation lobbies against a core policy of a superpower ally. But, more likely, November 9 will mark the day when Netanyahu implicitly acknowledges defeat by finally engaging with the administration on the practical implications of the deal. 

If so, the two leaders and their teams can then get down to work coordinating their positions on countering the threats posed by an emboldened and soon-to-be wealthier Iran, and on the appropriate responses to possible Iranian violations of the deal. The latter is an issue on which Israel could have played more of a role in recent months, had it not been opposing the deal so insistently and thus staying out of the loop.

In similar cooperative vein, it’s likely that the two leaders will announce that they’re now hard at work on a new long-term agreement for US defense assistance to Israel. The current 10-year framework, which provided for over $30 billion in US military aid, expires in 2018. Behind the scenes, the respective teams will be assessing potential threats to Israel over the next decade, and Israel will be finalizing a “shopping list” that ensures its qualitative military edge is maintained — something to which this and previous US administrations have long been committed. 

Israel has already contracted for more than 30 F-35 multirole fighter planes; it may ultimately want 50, or even 75. Missile defense systems are funded from a separate budget, and the US is well aware of the imperative to maintain and improve the Iron Dome and the Arrow systems, and to deploy David’s Sling, to ensure Israel can counter threats from neighboring Gaza, south Lebanon and Syria, as well as from an Iran that is relentlessly developing its ballistic missile systems. The increasing involvement of Iran and Russia across Israel’s northern border raises new challenges on which Israel and the US largely see eye-to-eye.

A new Obama-led bid to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the limited time he has left in office, is a non-starter

As for the Palestinians — while nobody should underestimate Secretary of State John Kerry’s readiness to invest considerable effort in dragging the parties back to the table, in even the least propitious circumstances — the president has likely had more than his fill. There is little chance of the two sides agreeing on terms for a resumption of talks and even less chance of any such talks making headway, and the president is well aware of this.

At a press conference on October 16, Obama reiterated his long-held conviction that the only way Israel would be secure, and the Palestinians would meet their aspirations, was via a two-state solution. But “it’s going to be up to the parties” to achieve that, “and we stand ready to assist,” he said — which was tantamount to spelling out that he is not about to launch a new peace effort.

Netanyahu will presumably rejoice at not being pressured for concessions to enable new negotiations. Obama would doubtless want to tell him that such rejoicing is short-sighted, but the fact is that a new Obama-led bid to solve the conflict, in the limited time he has left in office, is a nonstarter. The president has no shortage of other challenges, domestic and foreign. He can more effectively devote his attentions elsewhere.

They’ll disagree. It was ever thus.

Nonetheless, the two leaders will need to discuss how to prevent a further deterioration on the ground — how to thwart further terrorism; how to tackle incitement more effectively; how to deal with the fracturing PA and its weakening leader; how to safeguard Israeli-Jordanian relations; and how to retain some credibility for a two-state solution that Netanyahu and Abbas both continue to insist that they seek.

Obama would want Netanyahu to halt settlement building, to give the PA more authority in Area C of the West Bank, and to try to utilize the Arab Peace Initiative to warm ties with other Arab governments and possibly defang anti-Israel efforts by the PA at the UN. The prime minister will be reluctant; the president will warn against deepening the sense of hopelessness on both sides and highlight the dangers exposed by the terrorism and the violence of recent weeks. The prime minister will blame Abbas; the president will ask him to be constructive.

They’ll disagree. It was ever thus.

But they’ll have met. A year’s personal disconnect will be over. They’ll have recommitted to tolerating each other for the good of their countries for another 15 months.

Still, for Netanyahu, the end of Obama’s second term can’t come soon enough. And for Obama, not having to host Netanyahu will be a post-presidential pleasure.

How Lies are Fueling Conflict - ISRAEL TODAY

How Lies are Fueling Conflict

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 |  Aviel Schneider  ISRAEL TODAY

"In Islam, it is common to spread lies about one’s enemy in order to create new ‘truths’ within one’s own religion,"

Israeli Arab academic tells Israel Today.

The full article appears in the October 2015 issue of Israel Today Magazine.

CLICK HERE to read it all

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Did Netanyahu Bury the Two-State Solution?

Wednesday, October 01, 2014 |  Ryan Jones  ISRAEL TODAY

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Some Israeli politicians see in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stirring speech before the UN General Assembly the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In his speech, Netanyahu made clear that the current “template” for peace has failed, and that Israel is not prepared to repeat the mistakes of the Lebanon and Gaza withdrawals in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”).

The Israeli leader strongly urged that Western peace brokers first facilitate stronger ties between the Jewish state and its more moderate Arab neighbors as a necessary first step toward eventual rapprochement with the Palestinians.

As far as Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely was concerned, Netanyahu had effectively stated there would never be a Palestinian state on Israel’s biblical heartland.

Netanyahu’s speech “informed the world that the two-state solution is dead,” Hotovely told Arutz Sheva Radio. “He spoke about the Middle East, about Cairo and Saudi Arabia and in essence hinted at other solutions rather than dividing the country. He alluded to the concepts of confederation.”

While Netanyahu did make reference to “territorial compromise,” he very conspicuously avoided the phrases “Palestinian state” or “two states for two peoples.”

In an interview with NPR, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads Israel’s peace negotiations and supports the two-state solution, suggested that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ intransigent speech days earlier had facilitated Netanyahu’s new position and all but killed the peace process.

Last Friday when he mounted the same podium at the UN General Assembly, Abbas essentially labeled Israel as his enemy and gave virtually no hope that peace talks based on mutual goodwill would restart any time soon.

“Instead of following the path of negotiations which would have enabled the creation of a Palestinian state, Abbas is now going to spend years on his [unilateral] demand for the UN to set a date for statehood,” said Livni. “Abbas should have opted for the American framework document which would have led him to a Palestinian state.”

Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said he was unsurprised by Abbas’ belligerence, insisting that the current Palestinian leader had transformed into “a more serious enemy” than his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

“[Abbas’] ideology is stronger and [he] negates the existence of a Jewish state and the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own,” Steinitz told a conference at Bar-Ilan University. “For [Abbas], there is no Jewish people. He is only willing to recognize the Jewish religion.”

Still, there were some holdouts for “land-for-peace,” even if it meant Israel tread that path alone.

During a panel discussion on Channel 2 News, Opposition and Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog was asked to explain exactly what he expects of Netanyahu in his (Herzog’s) repeated demands that the prime minister continue to advance the peace process.

Herzog acknowledged that all previous surrender of land had only resulted in more terrorism, but nevertheless insisted that Netanyahu announce additional withdrawals backed by “iron clad guarantees.”

He failed to elaborate, or to address the fact that the 2005 Gaza pullout was supposedly backed by “iron clad guarantees” that failed to prevent Hamas’ violent takeover or subsequent assaults on southern Israel.

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