Syrian Refugees Begin Massing on Israel's Border - Israel Today

Syrian Refugees Begin Massing on Israel's Border

Wednesday, June 27, 2018 |  Israel Today Staff

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Syrian civilians fleeing a fresh military offensive by their own government and its Russian allies have begun massing on the border of Israel's Golan Heights.

They say that being as close as possible to Israeli forces is the safest place to be, presumably because Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Russia are wary of drawing Israel further into the country's bloody civil war.

The Assad regime is feeling confident of late after managing to regain control over most of Damascus and its suburbs, with the help of the Russians.

Now, Assad wants to end the official rebellion (which is largely unrelated to fight against ISIS and other jihadist groups) by retaking the last major rebel stronghold, the Daraa region of southwestern Syria.

The Daraa region borders both Jordan and Israel. It is through Daraa that well over half a million Syrians have crossed the border to find refuge in Jordan. But, the Hashemite Kingdom has now said "no more."

Jordan this week officially closed its border to additional Syrian refugees. It was the worst possible timing for the residents of Daraa, as regime and Russia warplanes began indiscriminately bombing everything in sight in preparation for a major military push into the region.

Waseem Kiwan, a resident of Daraa city, told the AP that the Russians are bombing everything, including hospitals and UN facilities. As a result, many of these Syrians now feel that the "safest place is the border with Israel because the regime and Russian airplanes cannot strike the area near the Israeli border," said Kiwan.

Another observer, Qalaat Al Mudiq, posted photos and videos of the fighting in Daraa, as well as the migration of Syrians toward Israel, to his Twitter profile:

Qalaat Al Mudiq@QalaatAlMudiq

25 Jun

Replying to @QalaatAlMudiq

S. #Syria: Central Op. Room announces one T-72 destroyed with another #TOW strike on Busra Harir front. Pictures show a Colonel & a Rebel cmdr of mortar battalion killed in that region. pic.twitter.com/9ZS88NAXc4

Qalaat Al Mudiq@QalaatAlMudiq

S. #Syria: civilians displaced due to Assad & #Russia|n bombardment amassing near border with #Golan. http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=32.953368&lon=35.899887&z=11&m … pic.twitter.com/AGnDtCUNNl

10:49 AM - Jun 25, 2018

• 16
• 25 people are talking about this

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This is a rather remarkable development, considering that most Syrians were raised believing the Israelis to be bloodthirsty and merciless enemies.

Clearly, a great many people no longer believe such lies, as previously evidenced by the flood of wounded Syrians seeking medical treatment in Israel.

PHOTO: Despite being officially at war, the Quneitra border crossing has seen Israel grant entry to thousands of Syrians seeking medical treatment. Will the Jewish state now open its gates to a much larger number of Syrian refugees? (Flash90)

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It’s Happening AGAIN: More Syrian Refugees Convert After Seeing Jesus in a Dream - CBN News

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It’s Happening AGAIN: More Syrian Refugees Convert After Seeing Jesus in a Dream

CBN News 03-08-2017

Syrian refugee Abu Radwan was born into a Muslim family, but after reportedly seeing Jesus appear to him in a dream, everything changed.

It was a year and a half ago that Radwan, who is now in Beirut, Lebanon, with his wife and two children, converted to Christianity — an event that unfolded just months after the purported dream.

“Of course it was a difficult decision. I was born into a Muslim family,” he recently said of his conversion, noting that his family fled Syria after the civil war began. “I started going to the church. I believed that Jesus was coming to help us, to save us.”

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Radwan’s story isn’t unique, as there are likely many other Syrian refugees who have converted from Islam to Christianity, though the move doesn’t come without profound risk. In fact, Radwan said he was recently stabbed while coming out of church, saying the culprits were Syrians from his tribe who disagreed with his conversion decision; he risks his life if he ever returns to Syria.

Still, Radwan doesn’t have any regrets, saying he was relieved when Bishop George Saliba baptized him after his conversion.

“If I die, now, here in front of the church, I will die in peace,” he told PRI.org.

Saliba said he has baptized at least 100 Muslim refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war, though, as The Christian Post noted, additional reports on the ground point to many other conversions.

As Faithwire noted back in November, an Iranian Christian pastor claimed at the time that there’s a stunning revival underway in his country, where he says the number of Christian adherents has increased from 100,000 in 1994 to 3 million today. Some claim that Jesus has been appearing in dreams and that those visions have helped spark the conversions.

“Right now, you can see the results of the holy spirit,” Pastor Rahman Salehsafari told CBN News of the situation today in Iran. “You can see what the holy spirit is doing with people.”

And, on a separate note, the pastor of a British church said in December that at least two Muslim refugees have converted to Christianity after purportedly having dreams about Jesus — dreams they say led them to attend a Christian church.

(H/T: PRI.org)

What Do We Already Know About the Syrian Refugees? - CHRISTIAN FREEDOM INTERNATIONAL

(Reuters photo)

What Do We Already Know About the Syrian Refugees?

2/20/2017 CHRISTIAN FREEDOM INTERNATIONAL

What do we know about the religious and political beliefs of refugees and asylum seekers who have entered the United States these past eight years?

The U.S. takes more than twice as many refugees as all countries from the rest of the industrialized world combined. But for leftist activists, the number of refugees entering the U.S. is never enough and our borders should be open for all.

However, these same activists seem to only care about the resettlement of Muslim refugees and rarely, if ever, speak out for persecuted minority Christian refugees. Why?

The previous administration admitted more Muslim refugees to the U.S. than any time in our history. A closer examination of this reveals startling evidence that the motivation to resettle Muslim refugees is not based on humanitarian concern. Rather, the reasons may be political.

According to a report by Pew Research (July 22, 2016), when it comes to political and social views, Muslims are far more likely to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party (70 percent) than the Republican Party (11 percent) and to say they prefer a bigger government providing more services (68 percent) over a smaller government providing fewer services (21 percent).

In other words, Muslim refugees, when they become eligible to vote, overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party and remain on public assistance. Christians, on the other hand, are more likely to vote with the Republican Party and become self-sufficient. Tragically, this could be one of the major reasons persecuted minority Christians were basically ignored these past eight years.

Refugee resettlement should be based on persecution and threat of death, not on politics.

"There is strong evidence that many Muslims hold views that clash with Western norms," says CFI President Jim Jacobson.

• In the United Kingdom police recorded more than 11,000 "honor" crimes between 2010 and 2014. A British think tank counted 18 honor killings in that country from 2010 to 2014.
• A 2013 survey sponsored by Pew Research Center found that 99 percent of Muslims in Afghanistan and 91 percent of Iraqi Muslims favored making Sharia law the official law of their countries.
• A 2011 Pew survey found that 40 percent of Pakistani Muslims believed it is often or sometimes justified to kill a woman engaged in premarital sex or adultery in order to protect the family's honor.

Of the 10,000 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. over the past 12 months, less than .5 percent were persecuted minority Christians.

Christians Freedom International supports President Trump's executive order on immigration and is calling for the privatization of the refugee resettlement program. Christian Freedom International is an interdenominational human rights organization for religious liberty, helping persecuted Christians and their communities world-wide, including emergency and disaster relief, Bible distribution, medical assistance, food, water, clothing, tools, schools, habitat improvement, aid to the disabled, education, pastor and child sponsorship, advocacy, refugee & asylum case-work, vocational training, resettlement assistance and self-help initiatives.

Christian Freedom International has assisted in the resettlement of Karen Christian refugees from Burma and assisted Christian asylum seekers from around the world. CFI operates a housing facility to assist persecuted Christian refugees' transition to self-sufficiency.

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What does the Bible really say about taking in Syrian Refugees? Herman Cain

Published by: Dan Calabrese on Monday January 30th, 2017

What does the Bible really say about taking in Syrian Refugees?
Herman Cain Jan. 30, 2017

Not what the left, the media and quite a few Christians would have you think.

It's always problematic when you look to the mainstream media and other left-wingers for an understanding of what Scripture says. To listen to them, you'd think Jesus was concerned with little more than sending checks to the poor, installing solar panels on roofs and surrendering to any and all foreign enemies.

That's why it's been easy for those who only crack a Bible when they're looking for something to justify an agenda to claim that "Christian compassion" demands we take in Syrian refugees without regard for the potential threat of ISIS terrorists who slip in among the crowd.

Is that what the Bible actually says? Of course not, and David French does a nice job of getting the conversation started over at National Review:

Indeed, Scripture draws a clear line between the responsibility of the individual and the role of the state. Individuals are to forswear vengeance, leaving justice to earthly rulers as God’s “agents of wrath” who bring “punishment on the wrongdoer.” The state has an affirmative responsibility to protect its citizens, even to the point of bringing a sense of “terror” to those “who do wrong.” There is no contradiction between personally welcoming the “strangers” among us while our leaders endeavor to protect us from a genocidal terrorist force that uses refugee status as a shield and disguise to perpetrate brutal attacks against innocent civilians.

This is not to say that Scripture creates a paradigm of compassionate individuals and heartless governments. Throughout the Bible, entire nations — not just individuals — are condemned for injustice, including unjust treatment of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. But to say that the only way to meet that standard is to open our doors to migrants when we know our enemy intends to plant terrorists within their ranks is once again to read far too much into Scripture.
 

French is quoting Romans 13, which lays out clear lines of responsibility for governments - particularly the imperative to protect the innocent from wrongdoers. Now that might seem to contradict Luke 10, in which Jesus teaches the importance of being a neighbor to someone in need, even if that someone comes from an enemy camp.

But there is actually no contradiction. As liberals often do, they take directives aimed at individuals in the Bible and try to make them the responsibility of the state. More than that, they insist that the only way the directive can be fulfilled is in the manner they prefer.

What was extraordinary about the actions of the Samaritan in Jesus' parable is that Samaritans and Jews typically would not associate with each other, yet in this case the Samaritan who found the Jew beaten alongside the road picked him up, tended to his wounds and brought him to an inn - where he instructed the innkeeper to look after him and even paid the bill. And yes, that is absolutely the sort of love and compassion to which we are called as Christians, even when we're talking about someone we typically regard as an enemy.

But it's important to recognize a couple of things. First, the Samaritan did not take the man into his own home. He paid the bill, but he did not in any way put himself at risk of harm from the man. Even more importantly, the Samaritan made a free choice of his own will to help the man.

What the left wants to do in the case of the Syrian refugees is use the power of the state to force an entire nation to welcome people into their midst without any effort to ensure that members of ISIS with evil intentions were filtered out. That's not compassion. That's national suicide. And if you think God wants nations to commit suicide, just skim through the Old Testament and consider the many instructions He gave to Israelite kings to attack foreign armies - even killing and plundering those they conquered. When it came to warfare, God instructed the kings of Israel to be pretty ruthless in dealing with their enemies.

The Syrian refugee situation is a tricky conundrum because there surely are many among the group who have no evil intentions and genuninely need help. America should want to help. But there are ways to do that without risking our own security. It would make more sense for them to be resettled in majority Muslim countries anyway, and we can do a lot of things to support that process.

But the responsibility of government is to protect its people from harm, and the government is well aware of the fact that previous terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by people who slipped in as refugees or asylum-seekers. Knowing full well that this one of the enemy's tactics, and doing absolutely nothing to prevent them from succeeding at it, is not "Christian compassion." It's a dereliction of duty.

We can help and we should. But not by putting ourselves in jeopardy. If individuals are called by the Lord to take a risk and help a potentially dangerous person, then those individuals should trust the Lord. But for the leaders of our nation to decide that we all have to take that risk is neither scriptural nor moral. It's just plain wrong.

Watching Turkey (Day 1) - Joel Richardson on the Jim Bakker Show

Watch here: Watching Turkey (Day 1) - Joel Richardson on the Jim Bakker Show

Joel Richardson
Jim Bakker Show 2016 | Show# 3048 | Aired on August 3, 2016


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Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog - As Jordan’s King warns of “civil war” inside Islam & says Jordan has reached “the boiling point.”

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

As Jordan’s King warns of “civil war” inside Islam & says Jordan has reached “the boiling point.” President Obama finally makes time to meet with him. Here’s the latest. by joelcrosenberg (Jerusalem, Israel) -- For months now, Jordan's King Abdullah II has been urgently warning Western leaders in blunt and stark language that the tidal wave of Syrian refugees into his country and the barbaric violence of the Islamic State poses a clear and present danger to his kingdom. He needs significantly more military and financial assistance than he is currently getting, and he needs it quickly. ISIS is engaged in “a third world war” against the West and moderate Sunni Arab governments like his own, says the 54 year old monarch. Jordan has reached “the boiling point,” he adds. “Jordanians are suffering….and sooner or later I think the dam is going to burst.” “We need the rest of the world to work with us,” the King insists. “This is why I say it [must be] Muslims, Christians, Jews, other religions, all of us fighting this global fight together. It is a war inside of Islam, it is our civil war, but we cannot do it by ourselves.” The King has taken his message to U.S. and European reporters, news anchors and conferences of world leaders. So far, he hasn't seen much response. And the stakes couldn't be higher. Jordan has welcomed in more than 1.3 million Syrian refugees. Its spending a quarter of its annual budget on people who aren't Jordanian citizens. They are at the breaking point. Yet last year, the international community provided only about 35% of the financial aid they had promised to the Hashemite Kingdom. What's more, thus far the U.S. and international military effort against ISIS has been half-hearted. Today, the influence of ISIS is steadily growing. Its leaders are emboldened. And they are looking to hit new targets, like Jordan. Adding insult to injury, in January -- as readers of this column will recall -- President Obama said he was too busy to meet when the King went to Washington on official business. In the end, the President carved out five minutes for the West's most faithful Sunni Arab ally. That was shameful. Fortunately, the President made more time for Jordan's King last week -- finally. The two leaders met at the White House on Wednesday for an extended discussion of the current state of the fight against the Islamic State, the state of the Syrian civil war, the enormous financial pressures Jordan is facing, and other critical regional issues. The meeting seemed to go well. The President praised the monarch as "one of our most stalwart allies in the world" and rightly noted that "Jordan is a country that punches above its weight when it comes to the fight against ISIL."  The King, in return, graciously thanked the President, Congress and the American people for their generous military and financial aid to his kingdom. "We are so grateful for the support that you've shown me and our people, our country," he said. "Truly, no country other than the United States has given us so much support -- whether it’s to the economy so that we can take the challenge of refugees to our country, but also to the military and security so that we can defend our borders, but also secure our people." "I’m actually leaving Washington very optimistic about the level of support from the United States," the King added. I'm glad the meeting happened. I'm glad the President has increased U.S. aid to Jordan in recent years. But I am not as optimistic as the king about the future. I believe Jordan is in grave danger from ISIS terrorism -- including chemical attacks -- and from the mass of Syrian refugees who I fear could be incited to launch an uprising in the hopes of trying to topple the kingdom. Thus, I believe the U.S. should be doing far more to help our Jordanian friends. We need to pull out all the stops in our campaign to defeat ISIS, starting with liberating Mosul and all of northern Iraq from the ISIS scourge. At the same time we should be pressing our European allies and the rich Sunni Arab states to provide more financial aid to Jordan. And we should be working far more closely to build a strong alliance between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states not just against ISIS but against the threat of a nuclear Iran, as well. ----------------------- Remarks by President Obama and His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan After Bilateral Meeting (official White House transcript) Video of comments by President Obama and King Abdullah (New York Times) King holds summit meeting with Obama (Jordan Times) Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations (Congressional Research Service) Jordan Struggles Under a Wave of Syrian Refugees (New York Times) Jordanian Security and Prosperity: An Essential Aspect of Israeli Policy (The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies) ————————– Order The First Hostage today — the new political thriller about ISIS plotting a chemical weapons attack against Israel, Jordan and the United States — is available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats. ——————- Subscribe (free) to the RSS feed (click here) and receive every new posting on this blog directly via email. Order THE THIRD TARGET today , the first in this new series — now out in paperback — the New York Times best-selling novel about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria and plotting genocidal attacks. Make an investment in The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net), our non-profit organization to help Christians care for Syrian refugees, educate and mobilize Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, care for the poor and needy in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) with food and other humanitarian relief, care for Holocaust survivors, and strengthen the Church in the epicenter. Read our latest Donor Report, and make a tax deductible, secure, on-line contribution before the end of the year. Follow on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg joelcrosenberg | March 2, 2016 at 12:37 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-4lr