At times, complicated issues are most clearly understood in simple terms. Speaking before the Knesset in 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured, in two brief sentences, that which lies at the heart of the ongoing, centuries-old Arab-Israeli conflict: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.”
Indeed, how does one peacefully co-exist with those whose singular obsession is that one should not exist at all? Can a Jewish people who simply wish to live in peace ever do so while surrounded by those who view them as, in the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “a cancerous tumor” – “the most detested people in all humanity” whose very nation must be “wiped out from the map?”
But according to the burgeoning worldwide Islamic caliphate, it’s not just Israel, the “Little Satan,” that must face annihilation. So too must America, the “Big Satan,” be destroyed: “And God willing, with the force of God behind it,” Ahmadinejad once promised, “we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”
A nuclear-armed Iran is perhaps months away. It is folly most grave to believe that this Islamic regime – a regime which holds that there can be no greater honor than to destroy both Israel and America via nuclear suicide bombings – won’t deploy such weaponry at the earliest possible opportunity.
Yet today’s anti-Semitic axis-of-the-willfully-blind – the liberal intelligentsia, rank-and-file “progressives” and that elusive creature; the “moderate Muslim” – inexplicably, if not unwittingly, rally behind the principal Islamic cause: Death to the infidels (Quran 9.5).
“Free occupied Palestine!” they drone, while either disregarding the long history of deadly Arab aggression in the region, or laboring under obtuse ignorance of it.
By “occupied Palestine,” of course, Arabs and Arab sympathizers reference that portion of Israel achieved as spoils of her defensive “Six Day War.” In June of 1967, the tiny Jewish nation devastated the armies of neighboring Syria, Jordan and Egypt as the warring nations characteristically made ready to “wipe Israel from the map.”
By seizing the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, Israel had gained a defensive stronghold in the region crucial to her very survival. Still, many of these territories remained very much occupied – and do to this day – by thousands of Arabs who now fall under Israeli governance.
Therein lies the struggle.
So, in truth, Israel no more occupies this fictional “Palestine” than do Californians “occupy” Sacramento.
Yet imagine the Mexican government launching dozens of rockets each day, for years, into Los Angeles neighborhoods, intentionally targeting innocent American citizens.
Or visualize a Mexican suicide bomber with full government authority strolling into a crowded Toys “R” Us in suburban Bakersfield, ripping himself and dozens of women and children to shreds.
Picture, if you will, a quiet, unassuming woman cleverly disguised as an expectant mother boarding a San Francisco trolley and blowing it up along with scores of innocent passengers.
Do you not think the international community would forcefully condemn such horrific acts of terror? Do you not think America would respond with that level of force necessary to eliminate the threat? Would she not have an absolute right – indeed an absolute duty to do so?
Of course she would.
Yet, despite a recent fragile cease-fire which Hamas violated within hours, this is exactly what peace-loving Israelis face each day. This is their reality.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – with Iran’s full economic and military backing – have been attacking innocent Israeli citizens in this very fashion for years, recently ramping up such attacks.
The only wonder is that Israel has shown such remarkable restraint in her response.
But respond she has.
“Iran has turned Gaza into an outpost of their nation,” Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. recently told a group of Christian leaders in a special briefing convened by Liberty Counsel. “More than 5.5 million of our citizens are now under threat of missile attack, and over 1,300 missiles have been fired at us since we took action against Hamas.”
To be sure, no reasonable, peace-loving person should have any sympathy whatsoever for the Iranian government, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority – all guilty of serial war crimes.
Indeed, we all mourn the tragic loss of innocent Arab life in Gaza and anywhere else it occurs. So do the Israeli people. So does the Israeli government.
That’s what separates the good from the evil.
Yet it is the Arab authorities who bathe in the blood of innocents. Responsibility for these deaths rests solely at the feet of those wicked men who intentionally shield themselves behind their own women and children – who deliberately place military launch sites and terrorist headquarters next to mosques, homes, playgrounds and the like.
They attack innocent Israelis and then shamelessly cower behind these human shields – their own people – as their intended victims answer back with pinpoint strikes against terrorists and military personnel.
It is purposeful. It is propaganda. And it works.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said: “Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”
But alas, their hate burns hot.
Like wild dogs, the Arab nations remain willing to eat their own young if it serves their evil ends.
And like wild dogs they encircle Israel, the Mountain Gazelle, intending to devour her.
"One of the recurring themes of the last days, as foretold by the Hebrew prophets and confirmed by the Book of Revelation, is the international isolation of Israel. From a Bavarian court to the U.S, State Department, South Africa to Charlotte, North Carolina, we are seeing evidence of this in this weeks headlines. (Well, actually, that's not exactly true. We don't read about Israel's growing isolation in the headlines because the Mainstream Media refuses to report it.)"
Hal Lindsy
Well, the DNC just wrapped, folks, and it looks like the Prince of Darkness has finally found his political party: the God-booing Democrats!
Booing God? Who the heck boos God? I’ll tell you who: Satan, his principalities and powers, devil worshippers and DNC delegates, that’s who.
Look, I get Democrats raising hell over a picture of George W. Bush, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s hairdo, or a video of Rosie speed drinking gallon jugs of chocolate milk … but God? Really?
Hey, media: You can say what you will about Republicans and their foibles, but you’ll never have audio or video of them, en masse, telling God to blank off. Wow.
I believe that three-minute display of divine disdain might have Chick-fil-A’ed the Dems come this November. I know if I were Romney I would run commercial loops of that sound bite over and over and over and over again. Back and forth. Back and forth. God handed Mitt a nugget that the greatest writers in Hollywood couldn’t script. Flog it, Mitt. Flog it.
One of the many funny things about the DNC’s Cirque du Freak last week was when queried about why God was removed from their party’s platform and Jerusalem scrubbed as the capital of Israel, Dick Durbin and other dipsticks said it was no big whoop, that the Dems are down with Yahweh and that Republicans were grasping at straws.
This, of course, satiated the lamestream media and sounded totally peachy until the delegates voted on whether or not the big man upstairs was welcome back to the big scam downstairs, and God got a resounding “screw off” from Obama’s backers.
If you haven’t seen the video clip of over two-thirds of the Democratic delegates shouting down the God vote and Villaraigosa’s teleprompted skewing of the delegates’ overwhelming decision to dis God, you must watch it here after you finish my awesome column.
Obama thought he could bamboozle the U.S. and remedy the national outcry against his party’s platform by having a faux vote reinstating Jesus and Jerusalem to his group’s ticket. The only thing he did not figure on was his multitudinous freak patrol shouting that notion down.
Please facebook, email and tweet this column to your Christian and Jewish buddies who’re still gaga over Obama despite his haggard record and ask them what they think about their party’s open hostility toward God and Israel.
Check out my latest video, Obama: “If Your Life Sucks, It's a Conservative's Fault!”
We all know about the shocking, Democratic waffling on the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s (undivided) capital in the current party platform. But there’s another important issue that no one seems to be talking about: If Jerusalem is really Israel’s capital, why haven’t we moved our embassy there?
To be sure, this is not the first time that Jerusalem has been at the center of controversy. Twenty-five hundred years ago, when the returning Jewish exiles were attempting to rebuild the city, their opponents sent a letter of warning to the king of Persia. (At that time, Judah was a province of Persia). “Be it known to the king,” the letter stated, “that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. Now be it known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired.” (Ezra 4:12-13)
They even urged the king “that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers. You will find in the book of the records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from of old. That was why this city was laid waste.” (Ezra 4:15)
How interesting that more than two-and-a-half millennia ago, Jerusalem had a bad reputation (at least to its enemies). It was already branded “rebellious and wicked,” a hotbed of sedition, and a bane to rulers and nations.
The warning even went one step further: “We make known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province Beyond the River” (Ezra 4:16) In other words, once the Jews rebuild Jerusalem, you will lose the entire province of Judah in Trans Euphrates.
Five hundred years later, Jesus himself referred to Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Matthew 23:37) And the ancient prophet Zechariah predicted that at the end of the age, “all the nations of the earth will gather against it.” (Zechariah 12:3)
But as fascinating as these texts are, given the current controversy about the status of Jerusalem, they do not answer the question I have raised: From a political perspective (as opposed to a biblical perspective), why haven’t we moved our embassy to Jerusalem? If we truly recognize it as the undivided capital of Israel, as affirmed now in both party platforms, why haven’t we relocated our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
Considering the fact that Jews have been saying, “Next year in Jerusalem” for the last 20 centuries, it’s no surprise that Jerusalem was declared Israel’s capital in 1950. And the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, “passed by overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the House and Senate,” states that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.”
We have now passed the 13th anniversary of that Congressional deadline, and yet our embassy remains in Tel Aviv (along with the embassies of virtually all other countries that recognize the State of Israel). How has this happened? As noted on the United with Israel website, “since the congressional act allows the President to implement a waiver at six-month intervals, that’s exactly what has happened every six months since 1995.”
But why? Why pass the Jerusalem Embassy Act – note that word “Embassy” – in such overwhelming, bipartisan fashion and then not move the embassy? Even Ron Paul, not known as a staunch supporter of Israel, once said, “If Israel wants their capital to be Jerusalem, then the United States should honor that. How would we like it if some other nation said, ‘We decided to recognize New York City as your capital instead, so we will build our embassy there’?”
In 2008, candidate Obama declared that any agreement with the Palestinians “must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state with secure, recognized, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”
In July, candidate Romney declared, “A nation has the capacity to choose its own capital city, and Jerusalem is Israel's capital. I think it’s long been the policy to ultimately have our embassy in the nation's capital of Jerusalem.” And now, both party platforms reaffirm Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
So why not move the embassy? Mr. Obama (or Mr. Romney), will you do it? If not, why not?
Does it sound like a two-thirds majority of the Democrats wanted God back in the DNC platform?
Does it sound like a two-thirds majority of the Democrats wanted Jerusalem as Capitol of Israel back in the DNC platform?
Responding to Democrats adding back the language on God and Jerusalem, Charles Krauthammer says Democrats are acting like they don’t know how it was ever removed. But Krauthammer says words don’t just walk off the page, that it was intentionally done as a reflection of Obama’s distancing himself from Israel. He also makes the point that given that the rule didn’t really pass, it’s a reflection of how strong the anti-Israel sentiment actually is in the Democratic Party.
Krauthammer adds that this is very troubling for the pro-Israel community, especially considering they didn’t reinstate the language on isolating Hamas, the 1967 borders and Right of Return.
At times, complicated issues are most clearly understood in simple terms. Speaking before the Knesset in 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured, in two brief sentences, that which lies at the heart of the ongoing, centuries-old Arab-Israeli conflict: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.”
