Showing posts with label Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. Show all posts

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Almost Armageddon: Why the Six-Day War Was a Prophetic Milestone - CBN News Chris Mitchell with Joel Rosenberg

Joel Rosenberg and Chris Mitchell in Jerusalem

Almost Armageddon: Why the Six-Day War Was a Prophetic Milestone

05-09-2017
CBN News Chris Mitchell

JERUSALEM, Israel – The 1967 Six-Day War pitted a relatively young Israel against five established Arab armies. One of the world's superpowers also came dangerously close to entering the war, which led to fears of a potential Armageddon.

June 5, 1967. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a cable to President Lyndon Johnson informing him the war had begun.
"Israel's existence and integrity have been endangered," he wrote, adding a request: "Prevent the Soviet Union from exploiting and enlarging the conflict … [at Israel's] greatest hour of danger."
In Our Hands: The Battle for Jerusalem. Get Tickets

"What most people don't realize is that the actor that was perhaps the most dangerous, but operating sort of behind the scenes, was the Soviet Union," Middle East expert Joel Rosenberg told CBN News.
While Israel faced the combined might of Arab countries, it was the Soviet Union casting a giant shadow over the war.

"Now June 5, 1967, the morning Eshkol orders Israeli bombers into action and they're successful, Soviet Premier Kosygin dials the hotline right into the White House and demands to talk to President Johnson," Rosenberg continued. "Now the hotline was rarely used except in the most extreme crisis. And the message that Kosygin sent heavily implied that if the United States didn't force Israel back down, that the Soviets were going to take direct military action. And this took the conflict to an entirely different level." 

President Johnson had told Eshkol the U.S. might cut off political and military assistance to Israel in case of a preemptive strike.
"So the Israeli leadership was already taking a huge risk that Johnson would keep his word. Once the Soviets got involved, a dynamic changed. Suddenly the Johnson White House saw the conflict not simply in terms of Israeli Egyptian-Syrian terms but in U.S.-Soviet terms," Rosenberg explained.

That led Johnson to send the Sixth Fleet steaming toward Israel as a show of support.
Rosenberg believes the fact that the Soviets never got involved was part of the Six-Day War miracle.
"I think it's one of the untold stories – or rarely told stories – of God's protection of Israel is the fact that the Soviets seemed to come so close that they were threatening at the to the Americans, to the Israelis directly,"  he said. "They were promising their Arab allies that they would do more, and they were actually moving military forces closer and closer to Israel."

Rosenberg also sees the war as a prophetic milestone.

Golan Heights Farmland, Photo CBN News
"The Bible does say that Jerusalem will come back under Jewish control and it happened in June 1967. The Bible does say that Judea and Samaria – what the world calls the West Bank – will be in Jewish hands," he said. "It's part of the biblical heartland and God says He will restore the land and restore people to the land. And I think you also see God giving this land back to the Jewish people  not because we deserve it but because God had promised it."

The Six-Day War became a turning point for Jewish immigration to the land of Israel.
"Throughout the Old Testament, God says that He is going to draw the Jewish people back to the land. But what is interesting is at that moment when Mordecai Gur, the Israeli general, said on the radio, 'The Temple Mount is in our hands.' When that was broadcast, not just through Israel but worldwide, it electrified Jewish communities all over the planet."
"The level of aliyah – Jews leaving their exile countries and coming back to the land of their forefathers – skyrocketed in the years ahead," Rosenberg said.
"In fact famously we know that Natan Sharansky, the hero of the Soviet Refusniks – you know Jews were refused being allowed to leave for such a long time – Natan Sharansky, who is now the head of the Jewish Agency in charge of helping Jews come back to Israel, said that when – he didn't even identify himself as a Jew in 1967 – but when he heard that radio broadcast that Mordecai Gur had said, 'The Temple Mount is in our hands,' something lit up in him. It's like a frequency had turned on inside of him. 'I'm Jewish. This is important. I need to think about helping my Jewish brothers and sisters get back to the land of our forefathers.'"

New Immigrants Welcomed at Ben Gurion International Airport, Photo CBN News

Although Israel survived one of its darkest moments, Rosenberg says it still faces threats from the north, backed by a familiar interloper.
"I see that the Russians are very actively moving into this region," he continued. "They have made Iran their primary ally. They are selling the most advanced weaponry, including the most advanced anti-aircraft missiles. They're selling nuclear technology to Iran, the worst terror state in the region. And now they are working hand in glove with Iran to prop up [President] Bashar al-Assad, who has slaughtered some 500,000 people in Syria. So you now have Russian forces, Iranian forces helping Syrian forces just a few miles north of Israel."
Fifty years since the battle for Jerusalem took place, Rosenberg says Israel and its capital remain on the front lines.

"Jerusalem was reunited 50 years ago, but the battle for Jerusalem remains. It's a political battle. It's an economic battle, with people trying to isolate Israel politically around the world," he said. "People are trying to boycott, divest and sanction Israel in part because Israel has Jerusalem.  
"Jerusalem is the flash point. Jerusalem is the epicenter. You know for 4,000 years people have wanted this city and they have fought hard to get it. And so, the fact that Israel controls it today is biblical, it's prophetic, but it's also complicated and we need to be praying for the peace of Jerusalem and praying for Israel to be secure," he concluded.

Watch video interview here: Chris Mitchel and Joel Rosenberg
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Sunday, June 5, 2016

Jerusalem: Unified by an Act of God - Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

Six day war. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, Gen. Rehavam Zeevi (R) And Gen. Narkis in the old city of Jerusalem.  (Ilan Bruner, GPO, 07/06/1967)

Jerusalem: Unified by an Act of God

“Thus saith Hashem: I return unto Tzion and will dwell in the midst of Yerushalayim; and Yerushalayim shall be called the city of truth; and the mountain of Hashem of hosts the holy mountain.” Zechariah 8:3 (The Israel Bible™)
The 1967 Six Day War is usually described as a series of swift and daring battles that decisively saved Israel from overwhelming enemies. But some historians claim that the incredible victory in Jerusalem which will be celebrated Sunday on Israel’s Jerusalem Day, was won almost by accident, against the expressed desire of the Israeli high command. Others see the unlikely victory as coming from a higher authority, as the clearest expression of the will of God.
In contrast to the highly detailed plans for Operation Focus, the precision airstrikes that wiped out the entire Egyptian air force in the first hours of the remarkably short war, there was no plan or intention to capture Jerusalem at the outset of the pre-emptive war. In his book The Battle for Jerusalem, historian and journalist Abraham Rabinovich describes how Jerusalem was absolutely not an objective at the outset. The Israeli government had political objectives in mind and Jerusalem was seen as a liability with no strategic worth.
Chief Military Rabbi Shlomo Goren at the Western Wall in 1967 shortly after the liberation of Jerusalem. (Photo: Wiki Commons)
Chief Military Rabbi Shlomo Goren at the Western Wall in 1967 shortly after the liberation of Jerusalem. (Photo: Wiki Commons)
Jordan held East Jerusalem before the war. Despite the spiritual significance of the city, the Israeli government and military high command decided to ignore Jerusalem as being too costly an objective. They went to great lengths to avoid opening up an additional front against Jordan. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent a message to King Hussein of Jordan saying that Israel would not attack Jordan if Jordan did not attack first. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the commander of the Jordanian sector, General Uzi Narkiss, to avoid a confrontation with Jordan so that Israeli forces could be concentrated on the battle against Egypt.
Jordan was also reluctant to engage Israel, but extraordinary circumstances dragged them into battle. Jordan had a pact with Egypt that required Jordan to turn over over command of its troops to Egyptian general, Abdel-Moneim Riad. Riad used his command to coax Israel into a confrontation in order to divert Israeli forces from overwhelmed Egyptian troops on the southern front. Toward the same end, Egyptian radio falsely reported that the Jordanian army was about to attack Mount Scopus, a small enclave of 120 IDF soldiers positioned one mile behind Jordanian lines overlooking the Temple Mount.
In response to the threat, a battalion of reserve soldiers was ordered into position. They fought a fierce battle in Ammunition Hill, a fortified Jordanian military post in the northern part of Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem and the western slope of Mount Scopus. After a trench battle that brought combatants face-to-face, Israel had a toehold within sight of the Temple Mount. Other IDF units moved forward to the walls of the Old City but the Israeli cabinet ordered them to stand down.
The Israeli government wanted to use their astounding military gains to negotiate an advantageous cease-fire with Jordan and trade East Jerusalem in an agreement. Jordan refused to negotiate. Egypt misled Jordan into believing that Arab forces were winning the war in the Sinai – a war they had already lost. Jordan believed that Israel was in a precarious position and any gains the Jews had made would be easily won back in the following days.
The Israeli government decided to move forward to improve their bargaining position, but they did not intend to capture the city. It was seen by some as a political liability that would focus international ire on the small Jewish state.
The next day, the cabinet gave the order to move forward with the intention of stopping the troops before they conquered the entire city. However, most of the Jordanian troops inside the Old City had already fled the previous night and resistance was light. Before the government officials could call them back, IDF troops had conquered the city Jews had been praying towards for thousands of years. Just one hour after the Israeli cabinet authorized an attack on the Old City, the paratroop brigade commander entered the Lion’s Gate at the head of his troops.
Israeli paratroopers visiting the Western Wall after the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967.
Israeli paratroopers visiting the Western Wall after the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967.
“Israel had concluded, almost as an afterthought, that the return to ancient Jerusalem was a dictate of history that the reborn Jewish state could not ignore,” Rabinovich wrote in the Jewish Chronicle.
Some attribute the victory to a higher authority than the dictates of history. Commander Rafael “Raful” Eytan, who led the paratroopers of the 35th Brigade into the holy city, was not a religious man, but even he was affected by the event. “Apparently someone in heaven was watching over us,” he said after the war. “Every unintended action they took and every unintended action we took always turned to our advantage.”
Rabbi Dov Begon, head of Yeshiva Machon Meir, was a foot soldier during the battle for Jerusalem in 1967. He described his experience to Breaking Israel News.
“It was clearly a case of divine will, hitoruta d’la’ila (awakening from above). The entire war came at us against our will, but the battle for Jerusalem even more so. Everyone who fought in the war saw this,” Rabbi Begon said. “From the outset, the war moved forward so fast, not like a normal war that moves along slowly, according to the plans of generals. There were plans, but the battle ran ahead of that. After 2,000 years of longing, it took three days. Before we knew it, we were on the Temple Mount, feeling like we were dreaming.”
When Hashem brought back those that returned to Tzion, we were like unto them that dream.Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; then said they among the nations: “Hashem hath done great things with these.” (Psalms 126:1-2)