The Israel-Hamas War in Gaza

On the right: One of the storage facilities for thousands of Kassam rockets fired from Gaza into the city of Sderot since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in August of 2005.

Since Israel decided to put a stop to the terrorist rain of missiles on her towns in the south from the terrorism bad lands of Gaza, conflict has been rippling through the Body of Christ – not just between those in Israel and the Palestinian areas, but also in other parts of the world. We need to be cognizant of the spiritual warfare we all have entered into at the same time as the physical conflict is fiercely engaged in Israel and Gaza. This is not the time to hand the enemy of our souls the advantage.

As a Christian who has heavily invested in listening to the voices of the believing indigenous Body of the LORD in Israel, I can tell you that I am always challenged by people who don’t like how I stand on the issues of Israel. It comes with the territory. However in times of war, like in the past couple of weeks, there is such a rise in conflict between brothers over how different ones view the issues.

There are those with no compassion whatsoever for the plight of Palestinian people – a position that grieves the heart of God. There is also a position that is only superficially informed about the history, nature and dynamics that Israel faces day in and day out, year in and year out from Islamist terrorism avowed to eradicate Jews and Israel from the map.

Of the latter, portions of the Church somehow accept the premise that the humanistic secular media is reporting the truth when it casts Israel as a menacing Goliath against a helpless and cowering Palestinian people.

I realize this is because of spiritual deception, but if those in the Church who held this view would just do the due diligence on the facts you would see and know the truth. It is a truth summed up succinctly in a newspaper editorial today, "Hamas is not a mass national liberation movement of the Palestinian people: It is tiny Islamo-Fascist organization that forcibly took control of a disheartened strip of land and turned it into a nightmare of an Islamic state."

Yesterday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzippe Livni said, "I can understand that sometimes the situation and the pictures that come from Gaza are difficult." But in fighting Hamas in Gaza, she continued, "Israel is doing what the entire free world is doing and needs to do, which is to fight terrorism."

When people magically separate Israel’s need and right to fight terrorism targeting Israeli citizens, from the rest of the world’s right and need to fight the Islamist terrorism targeting our citizens, I call that religious deception and hypocrisy.
I really would like to be more diplomatic about this, but I wonder how that is possible when I see huge demonstrations of anti-Semitism across American cities and the cities of the world churning hatred toward Israel.

Newspapers are not covering the fact that the core makeup of these international demonstrations are organized and fueled by pro-Hamas Arab supporters. Hamas is a terrorist organization for any of you who have been persuaded they are just “Palestinian soldiers” fighting with Israeli soldiers over disputed parcels of land. Hamas is an Islamist terrorist group that says the State of Israel has no right to exist at all.

The fact is that secular humanistic media are making an editorial choice to publish photos that downplay the pro-Hamas makeup of the demonstrators. It is part of the establishing facts on the ground to portray the demonstrations as a mostly non-Middle Eastern protest.

There is longstanding editorial choice behind the broadcast and print media favoring the pictures of Palestinian suffering, but rarely the scenes of Israelis in carnage and suffering.

These pictorial-editorials are not exactly a lie but close enough. If the media does not deliver all the facts then the whole, honest-to-God truth is not revealed. On the contrary, the media has long stacked the deck against public support of Israel. Remember, the press is mostly secular humanistic in its thought processes, ethics and morals. They believe their view is the high ground and the presentation of the conflict between Israel and terrorist groups is the media attempt to set its own agenda in public opinion toward the conflict.

It is not conspiratorial thinking about the evil media. It is simply understanding the power of the humanistic mindset that rules most of the media. Christians have all seen it in operation many times before so why should any Christian accept that the media are conveying the truth about Israel to us?

This is the same Israel that God has said many times over in the Scriptures that He would keep an eternal covenant with. Jeremiah 31:33-36 is not a matter of private interpretation: The promise of God is that the sun and the moon will cease before Israel will cease to be a nation before Him forever.

It is also not a matter of ignoring that the Lord loves the Palestinian people. It surely is the heart of God to bring many Palestinians to salvation, rescuing them from tyranny of abuse they have suffered because of the Islamist agenda of hatred. The opportunity is squelched by the rule of terror groups over the Palestinian people. Even before the war broke out we were getting urgent prayer requests for Christian Arabs threatened with murder in the West Bank and Gaza by terrorists. Thousands of Christian Arabs have fled the country for precisely this persecution by fellow Arabs who are Islamists.

As I pity children brought up in racist enclaves of America, like the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nations, so I deeply pity the Palestinian children. This is a people who have been kept living in squalor for decades by their own leaders because their continued suffering suited the cause of Islamist propaganda.

Millions have been given to benefit and raise the quality of life for the Palestinian people, but it was not just greed in the Palestinian Authority leadership that gobbled it up. It was also the propaganda value of Palestinian suffering in the refugee camps – those inside West Bank and Gaza, as well as those over the neighboring borders. No one allowed the Palestinian people to benefit and live any better because their lives are cheap, traded for the propaganda value of blaming their plight on Israel.

Palestinian lives are cheap – they are raised from the cradle to the grave with indoctrination to embrace suicide ‘martyrdom’ as their greatest value in this life. I saw it myself in the much evidence presented in two 12-week trials of a Hamas fund raising group recently convicted in Dallas for material aid to Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.

Until the terrorist stranglehold is taken off the Palestinian people, they will never be given the opportunity to live a normal, peaceable life. Many people think the gospel only thrives in hardship and persecution, but it is a fact that the Palestinians will never be able to respond to the gospel until the power of Islamist terrorism control is broken off of them.

The desire among Israelis for peace is so strong, but the ability to give peace is impossible when terrorists control the Palestinian population. How can there be peace when Israeli cities around Gaza are being terrorized by thousands of Kassam rockets falling on their schools, their homes, their streets and their playgrounds? This is the cause of the current conflict.

I want to give you the tools to educate yourselves in what is really going on beyond the headlines of CNN or the New York Times, both notoriously unbalanced in presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am asking you to trust that I am a seasoned veteran of the propaganda wars that go on surrounding the conflict and have learned to fact-check and know the reliable sources from the unreliable.
I am asking you to consider the resources that I put in front of you in this weekly Arrows from Zion prayer summary and the special focus issues I do on my IsraelPrayer.com and my blog IsraelWatcher.

I am not a propagandist for Israel but a Christian who knows that God has purpose for the indigenous Body in Israel – the Messianic Jewish and the Palestinian Christian.

This conflict is not about a perverted version of an Israeli Goliath against a little David Palestinian. It is about Islamist hatred of the purposes of God in Yeshua-Jesus in Israel and the whole Middle East. This is where I am putting my stake in the ground. As a person of God, I must rise and stand against that no matter what the eventual and ultimate cost.

Dallas Hamas Supporters Rally with Lies

Since Israel finally took measures to stop the relentless bombing of its citizens by Islamist terror groups in the Gaza Strip, CAIR and other have been rallying protests across the U.S. Some have been pretty ugly, showing the face of unreasoning hatred for Israel that we witnessed in the recent Holy Land Foundation trial.

One brave soul wandered with his video camera into the protest in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to document this footage.


In Dallas we’ve had two protests so far with organizers vowing to come back daily but protesters are on their best behavior, seeing how the Federal Judge Solis has not yet passed sentence on the 5 Hamas fundraisers of the Holy Land Foundation convicted Nov 4th in Dallas. Here is the first protest on 12/30/08

For the protest yesterday, 1/2/09, they began the protest march in front of the Dallas Federal Court House and marched over to the Dallas Morning News, a news source they have been trying to intimidate for years.

What I want to know is why their lying message is getting picked up and communicated to the public without any challenge to the veracity of the statements. Local news are unprepared or unwilling to challenge the baloney these people speak with great conviction. That’s all the public ever sees or hears so they assume it is irrefutable truth. We better quit letting this stuff go thinking that the public will know better. They don’t! All they hear are accusations about Israel “occupying” Gaza or a “humanitarian crisis” and the accurate information is not given. Letters to the editor are great, but reporters challenging claims and giving the balance is greater.

A Correction for example of this opening statement from the Dallas footage:

Eye Witness to the Holy Land Foundation Re-Trial, Week 6

WEEK SIX Report Covering Oct 27-31, 2008
HLF Trial Update & Prayer Points

Saturday, November 1, 2008
The prosecution rests;
the bluster, indignation and contempt begins

One thing that has stood out about the defense cross examination of witnesses in the case against the Holy Land Foundation defendants and that is how little the five defense attorneys had to work with each time they were given the opportunity to challenge witness testimony. When one considers exactly what points the defense attorneys did raise in cross examination there was little substantive challenge of facts.

Instead defense attorneys have done their cross exams with a game face of bluster, indignation and contempt. When Josh Dratel comes to the podium we can be confident we are about to see bluster; Hollander does the indignation; and Moreno’s specialty is the contempt. Theatrics are what you depend on when you have no real defense.

Hopefully the jury has seen enough of this kind of thing to realize that when defense attorneys start making an issue out of things like what the definition of the word “is” is, it is nothing more than a shell game. It is the truth that is being hidden and moved around by sleight of hand techniques to confuse the jury. It is very easy to get drawn into the thinking that these cases are little more than a sporting event where attorneys are the winners and losers. (Remember the O.J. trial?)

Pray that as the defense case is presented, jurors will not be caught up in the theatrics of criminal defense. Pray they will be able to keep focused on real evidence and what is truly reasonable to draw from all they have seen. What is at stake is far greater than a bunch of attorneys who have made it their specialty to defend terrorism in the United States Courts. Pray that the jury does not lose sight of their charge to do justice on the behalf of all of the citizens of the United States.

Over the next week or so, the defense will bring witnesses who like themselves have been content not to dig too deeply into what the Holy Land Foundation was actually funding in the Palestinian territories.

The first such witness was former Congressman (D-TX) and attorney John Bryant, who represented HLF during the 1990’s when a series of Dallas Morning News investigative reports began to unearth ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. One thing from Bryant’s testimony was clear: he took his clients’ word at face value without question. The U.S. government representatives that he tried to approach on behalf of the HLF were not so naïve and rebuffed his efforts to get them to tell him what HLF could do to remove suspicions about their activities.

Last year the defense also called another former government witness, Edward Abington who under the Clinton administration was the US consul general in Jerusalem. After leaving that position Abington became a paid consultant to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. He reportedly received $2.5 million for those services – a fact that leaves little doubt as to where Abington’s sympathies lie.

Apparently it is his former government title that the defense hopes will impress the jury. In my view Abington came off in testimony last year resembling a ‘banty rooster’. He will likely be called to testify again this week and likely that he will stick to his testimony that Hamas is not “Islamist”. Abington will be used to undermine any empathy or trust the jury has for Israel defending itself against terrorism and the Israeli security testimony that has been heard in the trial.

Another potential expert witness for the defense is Dr. Nathan Brown who testified last year primarily seeking to discredit the testimony of the Israel Security Agency counterterrorism attorney “Avi” whose identity was shielded to protect the agent and his family from kidnap and murder plots terrorists have executed as retaliation in the past.

Dr. Brown would have to be far more dazzling than he was last year. The prosecution presented two outstanding terrorism experts with much stronger credentials in the testimony of Dr. Matthew Levitt and Dr. Bruce Hoffman. Dr. Brown is clearly outgunned in his knowledge of terrorism in general and Hamas specifically.

Pray that jurors will have great discernment about those offering viewpoints in this trial. That the truth will ring true and falsehoods be glaring.

Last year the defense only called five witnesses. They maintained that the government did not make a case against their clients. When the prosecution rested on Friday, each of the five defendants’ attorneys filed separate motions to dismiss the case which Judge Solis denied. This year the prosecution brought five witnesses they did not call last year, including former HLF-insider Imam Mohamed Shorbagi. Surely the defense attorneys do not really believe the case against their clients has not been made this year…nevertheless:

Please continue to be in prayer this week for the jurors as they begin to hear all the counter accusations of defense lawyers against the government who will be accused of Islamophobia, witch hunts, invasion of privacy and other conspiracy laced theories designed to take jurors eyes off of the evidence of Hamas terrorism affiliates in our own backyard in Dallas, Texas.

Pray Isaiah 60:18 “Violence (Hamas) will not be heard again in your land…But you will call your walls salvation (Yeshua), and your gates praise (tehillah).”

The defense can say HLF only funded things meant to raise the quality of life for Palestinians but the full array of evidence negates that claim.

One profound example of that are the video clips of kindergarten ceremonies funded by HLF. A 5 or 6 year old forcefully screaming out a hate speech against Jews as part of a presentation for an audience should tell outsiders exactly what kind of brain washing the kindergarten is trying to achieve.

Listening to that jarring expression of hatred from a pre-schooler, I thought about Hitler's rousing hate-filled speeches. I have no idea however, what could possibly have been going through the minds of many spectators whose response to the video clips was smiling and smirking. Pride? God help us. As long as children are born and raised with indoctrination of such intense hatred - encouraged to see suicide mass murder as a lifetime achievement - there will never be peace in the Middle East. This case is about not allowing funding for those kinds of indoctrinations to continue.

Everyone who prays should pray this jury will not succumb to exaggerations of the legal measure they must use to judge this case. It is not how well the defense attorneys can act with bluster, indignation and contempt that matters. They are not the issue and this trial is about far more than the sport of criminal defense.

We must put down a boundary stake in our legal system which cuts off ambiguity in terrorism financing. This is a critical case. Please continue to stand in the gap for justice to prevail.

Articles this week covering the trial by Jason Trahan, Dallas Morning News:

Holy Land prosecutors rest case; defense calls first witness

Holy Land jurors get a sample of Hamas martyr propaganda

Full collection of Trahan’s CRIME blog coverage of the HLF trial: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/archives/holy-land-foundation/

And the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports
Israeli Official Details Zakat Committee Links to Hamas

Nine/Eleven Finding Answers
All the evidence in the HLF retrial presented in a manner that connects the dots. This is more than you ever wanted to know about the evidence, but even if you only skim over it lightly you will be able to begin to see the weight of the evidence that has been presented against the defendants.

Negotiating with Terrorists

The following is a spiritual perspective on the news from one of the leading elder statesmen of the Messianic Jewish movement, Israeli Dr. Daniel Juster. This view is information I wish every Christian knew. This should give intercessors excellent target-acquisition for the times.

The Debate on Negotiating with Terrorists

By Daniel Juster

JERUSALEM/July 2: Last May, a verbal firestorm erupted between President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama. The occasion was President Bush's visit to Israel and his address to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset). The speech was very well received. In spite of his poor approval rating in the States, the President is very popular in Israel. In his speech, the President sharply criticized those who believe that we should negotiate with terrorists; he equated this orientation with appeasement. The Israeli leadership applauded his stand. However, a few days later (much to Israel's embarrassment), the Jerusalem Post revealed that Israel had been negotiating via Egyptian mediation with Hamas for a cease fire.

Senator Obama took issue with Bush; he reacted as if he was the object of the President's criticism. Democrats cried, 'Foul!' countering that the President used a state visit to Israel to play politics and unfairly criticize Senator Obama. They asked John McCain to repudiate what Bush had said. Senator McCain, however, stood with President Bush and said that Senator Obama was naïve in saying that he would negotiate with sponsors of terrorism without preconditions. McCain asked, what would Obama say to convince them that their behavior was wrong and that they should change? Obama's position would undermine the public stand of the United States and European powers not to negotiate with Hamas as long as they do not accept the existence of srael. Negotiations would surely empower Hamas. The President believes that political isolation, economic boycotts and military intervention against terrorists is the right policy.

Senator Obama responded eloquently by stating that negotiation was neither weakness nor appeasement. Reagan negotiated with the Russian communists as did Kennedy, with respect to the Cuba missile crisis. However, Russia was at that time the leader of a communist empire that controlled one third of the world. Kennedy's negotiations with Russia included an ultimatum! I do not think that Obama has this in mind. Obama criticized the President for the predicaments to which the United States is currently exposed: the Iraq war, Iran becoming more of a problem and political and military failure in Afghanistan. He then went on to argue that a significant reason for these problems was the U.S. lack of strong engagement by negotiations. Surely, this topic will be a central part of the campaign in the fall.

Is the Problem Lack of Negotiation?

My view of the situation is at odds with Senator Obama; living in the Middle East has clarified my perspective on the issues. I do not believe that the problem is lack of negotiations. Rather, the issue is primarily an unwillingness to enforce standards. This is an endemic problem among Western powers. In addition, many Westerners do not believe that Islamic radicals really act primarily out of religious convictions; they assume they are motivated by politics as they themselves are. However, these convictions are unshakable. Any negotiated position, cease fire, etc., legitimizes the terrorists, proclaims Western weakness, emboldens Islamic radicals, and is only a temporary lull for the sake of building a more fierce and violent Islamic offense. This view has been confirmed in public by Hamas spokesmen. The religious motivation of Islamic fascism simply will not compromise, split the difference, or embrace long term peace.

I believe there is only one answer to Islamic fascism and that is to defeat it. The reason we have not made progress is not for lack of negotiation. There is plenty of that; a good example is the European carrot and stick diplomacy being attempted with Iran. The real problem is that the carrot is large and the stick is very small. The large carrot is not working, because Iran wants nuclear weapons. So far, the sanctions have been very limited and strong sanctions have been rejected by the U.N. Security Council, largely due to Russian and Chinese pressure.

Recently the Swiss and the Austrians have made significant business deals with Iran for gas production and trade. The United States howled, as did Israel, but to no avail. Iran is able to buy weapons, arm Hamas and Hezbollah and wreck havoc in Lebanon. When Reagan negotiated with the Russians, it was from a place of real strength, because the Soviets were in severe decline. They accepted an agreement that benefited the U. S. in order to save themselves from economic disaster. No such situation exists in Iran today.

Really, the central issue is not of talking or not talking; though I do not think we should lend credibility to terrorists by talks without preconditions. Rather, the issue is standing up to the terrorists and enforcing very strong sanctions. If that does not work, the Western powers should be prepared to use strong military action. Radical Islam despises the weakness of the West. The spread of radical Islam is partly fueled by the perception that they are winning against the weak and fearful West. President Bush's failure to de-fang Iran and Syria is not through lack of negotiation, but because the Western allies are not willing to grasp the nettle and take strong measures. So we talk tough and act weak. The President has not acted according to "cowboy diplomacy." Toughness has not been tried and found wanting. It has not been tried!

The Response of the West

The history of backing down before Islamic radicalism is not pretty and has produced a very dangerous world. President Carter failed to stand up to the terrorists who kidnapped the U.S. embassy staff in Iran. This only served to embolden the radicals. At the time it may have seemed as if they could not truly be players on the world stage but the West's lack of fortitude has allowed a rogue nation to export terrorism across the globe. The Shah's regime had many flaws but is far preferable to the Islamic fascist dictatorship under the Ayatollahs. During the Reagan administration the U.S. failed to act in Lebanon. After the terrorists bombed the U.S. marine barracks and killed over two hundred personnel, defense secretary, Casper Weinberger, unilaterally disobeyed Reagan and refused to convey the order to retaliate. Reagan backed down!

I watched this with grief and dismay. The U.S. should have retaliated and demonstrated to the terrorists that their actions would bring swift and painful consequences. Instead, the U.S. pulled out. Lebanon was meant to be a safe haven for Arab Christians - half of them have now fled the country. It was a truly lovely country but the U.S. did nothing to counter the radical Islamic agenda.

The same lack of resolve moved the U.S. to push for Palestinian elections. The consequences were a disaster, with Hamas being elected. When will the Western politicians learn that absolute democracy is not necessarily just? 51% can vote to destroy the 49%. Political parties that espouse terrorism should be illegal. The Nazi party is illegal in Germany and other parts of Europe. Why did the U.S. force elections on Israel where Hamas could run? How foolish!

How Dangerous is Islamic Fascism?

When Senator Obama says that the threat from Iran and Islamic radicals is less than the former threat posed by the Soviet Union, he is really missing the main issues. The Russians were interested in preserving the world. In addition, they were a disciplined world force with centralized power in Moscow. If Moscow had fired a nuclear missile, there would have been an assured and instant retaliation. The calling card would be clear. This prevented Russia from doing so.

Would Iran send a nuclear missile against Tel Aviv if they acquire the ability? Perhaps, but that would be dangerous for them, since the world would know who was responsible and retaliation would be swift, certain and punitive. But here is the danger: the Islamic radicals are decentralized and fight an asymmetric war of terror. They would be glad to secretly plant a nuclear bomb in New York, Washington or Tel Aviv. A whole city and more could be destroyed. Against whom do we retaliate? Iran could as easily arrange for one of their proxies to put a device off shore from Tel Aviv and set it off, or plant a suitcase bomb in Washington. Terrorist nations would deny involvement. Who do we bomb? Do we bomb Tehran? Do we bomb the Al Qaeda camps? The danger is enormous.

Has President Bush Acted with too much Belligerence?

President Bush has stood up against Islamic terror more than any world leader, but he has had little support from Congress and the Western allies. The issue is not too much bluster, but too much bluffing. The U.S. cannot even get significant military contributions from Europe in the Afghan theater. The radicals know the West is weak. Unless we wake up and realize that we are in World War III, we will soon be in deep, deep trouble. We should heed Islamic terror scholar Steve Emerson on these matters. Emerson explains that the goal is not just to destroy Israel, but to conquer the whole world and establish a global Muslim caliphate. The vilest methods are acceptable. Western nations are mired in relativism and do not act with strength.

Islamic Hatred for Israel is a Source for Hope!

The central focus of Islamic terror and hatred is Israel, all other foci - the U.S., the West and India - are secondary, and yet we have great hope. Why? Because the destiny of Israel is to be a supernatural power to break the back of Islamic terror. This will lead to a great harvest in the Muslim nations of the world. We live in an impossible situation in Israel but in these difficult days, more and more Israelis are finding their Messiah, eshua of Nazareth. This is the situation that the prophets foresaw long ago. Whatever plans men or demons may have they are not taking the One who sits in heaven by surprise. The sure Word of God will prevail - this is our unyielding anchor of hope.