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:

Religious Persecution: Coming to a town near you!

According to an article in Israeli religious newspaper Arutz Sheva, "US State Department Accuses Yad L'Achim", there is "no significance on practical level" to the U.S. State Department's annual International Religious Freedom Report citing them for abuses.

Yad L'Achim's Joel Rebibo is quoted saying, "We've been asked to come to America and set up shop there, to help American Jews fight missionaries.... We're concerned that if the State Department has us down as troublemakers, they might get in the way of allowing us to set up operations there."


For the fifth time since 1999 the 2007 International Religious Freedom Report issued by the US State Department has cited abuses by Israel's Yad L'Achim, an anti-"missionary" group.

The organization targets any person or group which they consider "missionaries" including Messianic Believers, Christians who support Messianic Believers, and organizations or individuals who support Messianic Believers in sharing their faith. Yad L'Achim raises most of the funding for its activities in the United States, and based on its successes in Israel, plans to expand its activities to the States.

The "anti-missionary" organization conducts a relentless campaign to harass, terrorize and assault believers of Yeshua/Jesus in Israel through various acts such as: blacklisting believers from employment opportunities, intimidating believers and their children by phone, posting flyers and advertising against believers, preaching hate and inciting violence against believers, vandalizing believers' properties, vandalizing ministries' properties, disturbing believers' meetings, and placing pressure on politicians against believers.

Yad L'Achim has deep roots within the law making and political infrastructure of Israel, leaving little recourse for justice to the victims of the organization's religious persecution. Attempted murder, arson and other terroristic activities against Messianic Jewish and Christian ministries languish in lackluster investigations. Cases filed in the courts against them are pushed to the back burner on judicial dockets.

In one case, the court ordered the believers who have the pictures of Yad L'Achim members who committed acts of violence against them to find out who these people are on their own with limited time.

In the case of the bombing of Ami Ortiz, the police did not move the investigation forward until international pressure was brought to bear months after the murder attempt. Even so, the case is moving at a snail's pace and police report "no progress" in the case.

Police also do not follow up on behalf of the believers to defend them from the on-going victimization and violence.

In an appeal this article is based on from David and Leah Ortiz of Ariel, Israel, they write:

"We feel it's important for believers to contact the US State Department or your country's American embassy to enforce actions based on their findings. This is needed in order to halt most of Yad L'Achim's funding which comes from the US. "

The State Department 2007 International Religious Freedom Report is at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90212.htm

Contact the State Department at
http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php?p_sid=TlnC

Also, you can view two parts to a video on the persecution of believers in Arad, Israel:
PART I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EII5Km3jN3U
PART II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J7iqMO4EaQ

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.