Tuesday, April 26, 2011

MOSQUES, MINARETS AND MILITARY TRAINING: What happens in Israel, doesn't stay in Israel

A Guest Column and Call to Prayer from Israel

Have you heard Israel described as the canary in the coal mine? It is a spiritual truth that I have seen repeatedly bear out, especially in terms of the struggle that Israel has been forced to wrestle with against the demonic force of Islamic terrorism.

Western nations thought (and still think!) that Israel's problems with Islamist terrorists is a territorial dispute that doesn't directly concern them. We couldn't have been more wrong. The Islamist-political agenda is the same for Western nations as it is for Israel: Increase until Islamists are able to bring the nation under submission to Islam or the infidels must die. It is only "stealth jihad" until the turning point has arrived in their increase of numbers and power.

In this article, Uzi talks about noticing a multiplication of mosques and minarets only 3 miles from his ministry and home Alfei Menashe. (The heavy concentration of mosques and minarets being built in Palestinian Authority-held Qalquilya is pictured below.)

For every American or European who has been concerned over the raising up of mega-mosques in their nations in areas where there is not Muslim population to support it, this article holds a key to understanding what is going on under the cover of religion.

What happens in Israel, doesn't stay in Israel.
- Donna Diorio


MOSQUES, MINARETS AND MILITARY TRAINING
by By Uzi Lotan of Beit Hallel House of Praise
in Alfei Menashe, Samaria,Israel
April 25th, 2011

On the evening of February 18th, after formally filing the papers for Ukrainian citizenship, Mr. Dirar Abu-Seesi, the 42 year-old Jordanian-born Deputy Engineer for the Gaza Strip's sole electrical plant, was making his way by train to Kiev airport. His intention was a reunion with his brother Youssef, who was residing in the Netherlands. Just outside the city of Poltava, two men, whom Abu-Seesi's family believes were Ukrainian security agents, entered the train and removed Dirar. After that, he disappeared. His Ukrainian wife, Veronica, who was in the Ukraine at the time as well, didn't hear from him for a week. During that period of silence, she summoned the Ukrainian Press and stated that the Israeli Mossad had kidnapped her husband.

In a live interview with YouTube World View and Israel Channel Two News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially admitted that Abu-Seesi is in Israeli custody. Netanyahu added that Abu Seesi is a Hamas activist, and that he has disclosed valuable information. Israeli officials were insinuating earlier that Abu Seesi was involved in weaponry development for the terrorist movement.

On April 4, 2011, Abu Seesi was indicted in a court in Beer Sheba, charged with "membership in a terrorist organization, conspiracy to commit a crime, the production of illegal weaponry, assistance to an illegal organization and various other crimes".

According to the indictment, Abu Seesi was the central developer of the Qassam rocket, among other rockets and anti-tank missiles, and was responsible for upgrading older rockets for Hamas. As the commander of Hamas' Military Academy, he designed, wrote and implemented the curriculum for those attending the Military Academy.

It is this last charge, being the Architect, Founder and Commander of Hamas' Military Academy, which is our focal point this time.


THIS IS MORE THAN JUST A GOOD SPY STORY
The Abu-Seesi story makes more than just a good, old fashioned and exiting classical Spy Story. It gives us insight into another aspect of Islam's dark tactics: everything Evil and Deadly is done in secret. Inside and underneath what we would call "A House of Prayer"!

In the past six months or more, we have started noticing an unprecedented amount of Mosques and Minarets being erected around us: in the six Palestinian-Muslim Villages surrounding Alfei Menashe, as well as in the large Palestinian Authority city next to us - Qalqilyah. It was not only the sheer number that caught our attention, but their proximity to each other. Being amazed by the phenomena, we asked ourselves:

"Hmm... OK, our neighbours are becoming more devout, but why do they need a mosque for every half-a-block of houses??"

The truth is, that somehow, deep down inside, we started feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the whole thing.

Mosques and Minarets in Qalqilyah.
"Skeleton" means in the process of being constructed


In March-April this year, the cat came out of the bag:
we started hearing some of Abu-Seesi's "confessions". We heard more details of his account, as the Hamas' Commander of their Military Academy.

The strategy was/is to build more mosques, compacted together, in every Palestinian city, town and large village. The idea being to establish in and under every mosque, AND BETWEEN THEM, Military Schools, as well as workshops for manufacturing missiles, rockets and other Self Propelled Weaponry, such as RPG's and other Anti-Tank, armour-penetrating rockets!

So, here we have it: they are not necessarily becoming more devout to their God, Allah, but more devout to their Theology and Philosophy of worshiping Death. As the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said over two years ago, during Operation Cast Lead: "We value death as much as Jews and Christians value life".

As a result of Israel's Cast Lead Operation in Gaza, in December 2008, after thousands of Qassam Rockets were fired deliberately on Israeli towns and civilian population, the UN's Human Rights Commission appointed the Goldstone Commission of Inquiry. The commission's mandate was "to investigate Israel's War Crimes during Cast Lead".

We will not go into the injustice of the mandate itself, however, we will mention, that one of the points that the Commission raised was the fact that Israel unlawfully bombarded some mosques in Gaza. Israel proved that not only Mortar Bombs AND Missiles were fired from these mosques, but that they were used as underground Ammunition Factories. As a result they exploded big time, unlike some innocent Houses of Prayer!

And since Hamas "saw that it was good" after the Goldstone Report, they have made it into an improved, well-structured and efficient strategy - everywhere, believing that Israel will never take the risk of bombarding another mosque, because this will add clout to the De-legitimization Campaign against her.

IF IT CAN HAPPEN HERE - IT CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE Guess what? The issue is no longer Israel alone: if Mosques and Minarets, and everything inside, underneath and between them, are used for the purposes of ammunition manufacturing and storing, as well as military training grounds and schools for their troops here, they can do the same everywhere - in every large city. In New York, in Mufreesboro, Tennessee, or in Paris, in London, in Madrid and in Dublin!

Just good, Middle Eastern food for thought: Understanding what is taking place around us, means being in possession of wise, Godly Discernment, and of understanding "the signs of the times" - not only here, in Israel, but everywhere.

THE SOLUTION: PRAYER, PRAYER and MORE PRAYER! For God to give us all - including our Spiritual and Political Leaders - a good measure of discernment, understanding and wisdom. The ability to see things the way they really are, and what their implications and consequences will be.

GOD'S WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT: In this article the word "Minarets" was mentioned several times. It was mentioned in connection to the Muslim Mosques. The minarets are actually Towers. Thank God, He has already provided His own tower - for eternal safety:

"The name of the LORD is a Strong Tower:
the righteous run to it, and they are safe"
(Proverbs 18:10).

So in these turbulent times, let us never forget this wonderful option: He is always there!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

What We Can't Learn from History to Protect Us from the Devils We Face Today

by Donna Diorio
First blogged in a FACEBOOK NOTE on Friday, April 15, 2011 at 1:03pm

Somewhere around the mid-1990's I spent a year studying why the Church failed to be a contending force against the rise and implementation of Nazi Germany. I read a broad array of resource materials, letting the main question I had lead me from book to book and subject to subject.

My question was, if Hitler was a forerunner type of Anti-christ, what mistakes did the Church make that rendered us so impotent to stand against that evil? The one screaming fact of Nazi Germany is that Christian resistance was so rare and so minimal as to be effectively non-existent. How could it be that so many people of faith were sucked into a state of being useless in challenging and impacting the moral condition of their nation.

Of course, the answer everyone gives to the failure to stand up against the rise of Hitler's Nazis is fear. That is not what I found to be true from studying the dynamics at play during that period. The Christians were not as fearful as they were deceived, and they were deceived by a strategy that was executed on every level of German society from theology to the judicial system. It was the way of thinking that caused so many good German Christians not to discern good from evil, and I hate to say it, but we American Christians have some real issues in the same areas that caused the German church to stumble and fail in their hour of testing.

I think many of us have researched Nazi Germany hoping to discover the keys that tripped our spiritual failure there "so it will never happen again." That is generally a good thing, but it can also be a deception if we think it is enough to keep us from our own national spiritual failure.

The number one spiritual lesson that was impressed upon me by the end of this year of study is that we can sift through every shred of documentation of that era and we can take steps to guard ourselves from making those mistakes, but that is not enough. The enemy of our souls is no fool. While we are busy preparing ourselves to avoid the mistakes of Nazi era Christians, the adversary is devising schemes to catch us on the blind side.

The next "Hitler" will rise in a guise that we are not prepared for. His appeal to the masses will be just different enough that all of our study of Nazi Germany did not prepare us to immediately recognize the danger of evil lurking under cover of this leader's stated vision and policy. While it is true that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," as Francis Frangipane wrote in 1989 in his landmark book on spiritual warfare, The Three Battlegrounds, our adversary is "an ancient and extremely treacherous foe."

We do well to take the lessons of Nazi Germany to heart, but we cannot let it end there because the danger will rise from another direction we are not prepared to look in.

Genesis says of the serpent that he is the most cunning of all the beasts God created. We don't want to over-estimate our enemy, nor do we want to under-estimate him either. The truth is, we need to look at the past for patterns, but not expect specific details to remain unchanged.

Hitler rose to power tapping into a strong hunger the German people had for a restoration of order, prosperity and national pride. They were down and they wanted someone to lead the way back up, where they could hold their heads in pride again. They had a strong sense of having been betrayed, the proverbial "knife in the back" was the populist rallying cry that drew Germans to Hitler's vision for putting Germany back on top.

There was a strong victim mentality operating in the German people and Hitler jacked up that sense of German victimization, giving them a scapegoat for the people to hate and blowing the smoke of Aryan superiority to restore their sense of pride.

Now, here is the thing: both the Right and the Left can take those basic essential elements and make a case against each other being the Hitler-esque party on the American political scene. What is required is spiritual discernment to know which is, in fact, working in those patterns and simply accusing the other of what they themselves are doing.

As someone who has followed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for two decades or more, one trend has stood out and that is how frequently Palestinian rhetoric against Israel steals talking points from the Israelis. That's a classic scheme of our spiritual enemy and something to always be on the alert for: Those whose defense is to accuse others of what they themselves are doing.

Even "the Naqba" (Day of Catastrophe), is an attempt to paint the fleeing of Palestinians from the Land in 1948 - after Israel declared itself a state and its neighbors declared an invasion - as the moral equivalent of the Holocaust Jews had just come out of. This is how the enemy works - accusing its victim of the very evil it is attempting to perpetrate on its victim.

We can see this in operation in all the Western nations where radical, political Islam is softening up the natural resistance to radical, political Islam by psychologically beating up Westerners with accusations they are violating the Muslims' religious freedoms.

They have pegged us pretty well, knowing that even Christians who hate terrorism and want to fight it, will back far away from any suggestion of constricting Muslim's religious liberties. Because of our past with Black slavery, the ultimate accusation against any American is that they are racists. But in terns of exploiting Christian sensitivities, any accusation that America is infringing upon religious freedom of Muslim results in too much knee-jerk siding of Christians with the supposed Muslim victims.

That exploitation of Christian sensitives holds true in the communities that are in uproar over major mosques and religious schools being built in them from funding outside of the country and for communities that do not have the Muslim demographic to support such vast building facilities.
It is not an issue whether Muslims should be allowed the freedom to worship, but it is about whether we are going to indiscriminately allow radical political Islamic indoctrination centers to be erected in our communities.


The city council level governments are not lifting a finger to know what form of Islam they are welcoming into their communities and this is critical. We have to wake up to the fact that radical mosques and schools are being planted throughout America with one goal: to raise up a generation to conquer and dominate American society. If that sounds conspiratorial to you, then you just have not opened your eyes enough to see what is happening under our noses.

It is not just the establishment of terrorist cells that is important, but the mainstreaming of radical, political Islam within American society. We are conditioned to be fearful of anything that appears to be restrictions on religious liberties in the United States, but in dealing with the agenda of political Islam, we have to understand that the radical forms of Islam use the religion to subjugate people to oppressive political rule. The end game is not the religion, but the political rule. We have to become discerning enough to know where to draw the line between American national (public!) security issues and true religious freedoms.

This is why the controversy over wearing the burqa and niqba is seen among some Christians as going too far in restriction of Muslim religious liberties. These do not appreciate that those sects that have put women under wraps so fully as the burqa and the niqba are the most radical and dangerous sects of all Islam.
Plain and simple this is the ultimate manifestation of the political Islamist vision - the power of religion to subjugate people under political rule.

These Christians do not understand that if this "religious liberty" is allowed the foothold in our society, it will never quit increasing its hold until it has enslaved the whole society.

These sects don't believe their women belong under wraps, they believe ALL women should be forced to adopt their level of pious modesty. They don't believe in religious freedoms, they believe those who do not voluntarily submit to Islamic rule, they will one day be forced to submit when they have exploited and overtaken our weak-willed, liberal democracies.

The problem is that Westerners cannot imagine being forced into such a place.

Neither could the French, but now they see their permissiveness with these issues in the past several decades has only encouraged the aggressiveness of political Islam to attempt to dominate and conquer their Western societies. Germany and the U.K. have come to similar understandings, but Americans are way behind that learning curve. Those riots in Europe in past years? What we have been hearing on our nightly news is the part Muslims were playing in the 'days of rage' played out on European streets.

Every time I hear someone say, "That couldn't happen here!" I shudder. They have no idea how far down that road we have already traveled.

Even during the Bush administration, the general public was not really prioritizing terrorism and the terrorist network in operation in the United States, as highly as it should. It was not then, and it is not now, "just the economy, stupid."

The public could not prioritize terrorism correctly because generally we have no idea just how threatened we already are in our own homeland, our own states, and our own cities. This is a problem that has been downplayed at every level from government to news reporting and is a problem that has been multiplied under the Obama administration.

How could it not with terrorist defender Eric Holder at the Justice helm and crackpots like James Clapper as director of national intelligence? (Could they have picked a more clueless man to head that outfit?).

Most analysts are now explaining the unexplainable backing of Islamists by the Obama administration/Left as a temporary alliance of those with the same agenda to break down what stands in order to build a new society. The Left has just enough foolhardy hubris not to realize they are crossing the river with a scorpion on their back. The Left is doing all the swimming for the political Islamists, but in the end the Islamist scorpion is going to deliver a fatal sting.

That is IF Christians, as in Nazi Germany, are not discerning and do nothing to stop this unholy alliance. We must take up the prophecy of Daniel 11:32 - "And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits."

The apostle John said something very important, "Little children, it is the last time: and as you have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time."

Instead of fixating on "The" antichrist, we need to understand our battle is ongoing with "many antichrists." Instead of speculating if this one or that one is "The One" we need to just take up our charge as Yeshua said to "occupy" until His return. That word occupy means not giving over our authority to an aggressive, hostile force. We are not to let our nation slip into the abyss of political Islam! We have to rise up and fight and not to be lulled to sleep by the cunning of their ability to manipulative Western sensibilities.

For one thing, the word occupy is "pragmateuomai" where we get the word pragmatic. To be pragmatic is "Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations." To occupy the spiritual territory, we have to look at our world realistically and sensibly.

How can we occupy our nations for the values, ethics and morals of the kingdom of God, when we cannot even look over the landscape and discern where evil is at work in our midst? When we cannot tell the difference between people pursuing their freedom of religion and those who are using religion to pursue an agenda to political domination? Are we Christians as undiscerning as the unbelieving idealists on the Left?


There is an unholy alliance between the radical Left and political Islam. I grew up in the Sixties, and I know that the radicals who desired to overthrow the government then declared that they could not win the revolution from without, but they must be patient and go within to win it. They said, 'We must join the establishment to overthrow the establishment eventually. We must become teachers, government workers - we must go into fields we can impact long term and in a generation we will be in a position to carry out the overthrow we desire.'

Clearly, this is exactly what was done. I saw that in one of the defense lawyers for one of the Holy Land Foundation heads who claimed that the FBI has been spying on her since the 1960's. Apparently the FBI had good reason, because look where she is now - fighting tooth and nail to keep the political Islamist terror network out of jail and free to operate in the United States.

We can see the same manifestation throughout the Erik Holder's Justice Department and in all the critical halls of power in the Obama administration. Glenn Beck has done a marvelous job of uncovering many of the players and the agenda in the Obama administration who are working the old Sixties revolutionary plan to overthrow the American establishment from the inside.

These liberal Leftists see political Islam as their temporary alliance and means to an end. They foolishly believe they are the stronger force, but left unchecked to achieve their goals, political Islam will surely in the end swallow the Leftist Revolution whole. Think how we have seen this play out in Egypt and many other Middle Eastern nations where the governments of lesser evil were allowed and even encouraged by the President of the United States to topple to the greater evil of radical. political Islam. What happened in Egypt quickly will take more time in the United States if we do not rise up and counter what is happening.

One of the ways we have prepared ourselves not to fall for the schemes of antichrist has actually become a detriment to actually standing strong against the real scheme of the enemy against us today.
We are so keyed up to protect OUR religious liberty that we are not distinguishing between true religious liberties and evil religious suppression.

They can call forcing women to wear a burqa a "religious freedom" all they want to, but it is no religious liberty - it is a form of religious oppression. Some Muslim women claim that they want to be fully covered head to toe, but that does not mean those women are not psychologically damaged from religious indoctrination and abuse. Have you heard of Stockholm Syndrome where kidnap victims bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor? Same dynamic here.


If you don't know that it is abuse for women to have to wear coverings where only an eye slat is permissible, then you have a serious issue with discernment! Sorry to be be so blunt but that is just the God's honest truth of the matter. In your wildest dreams, this abusive oppression of women could never be considered a religious liberty, and should never be accepted in Western civilization as legitimate or acceptable public attire.

Head covering is one thing - that could legitimately be a choice of a woman, but the niqab and burqa crosses the line of both abusive oppression, as well as crossing the line of public and national security. The obscuring of the face should not be made acceptable anywhere in Western societies.

Another way we think we are being on guard against the schemes of the antichrist is our over-distrust of modern technology and anti-terrorism measures. There are many Christians who actually opposed the bar code system when it was being initiated in the 1970's. (One good thing about being older is first hand knowledge of how things came about back in the day.) Many Christians were convinced that bar codes were "the mark of the beast."

Then there was opposition to the internet and the world wide web, national ID cards and almost every measure we have taken to try to identify terrorists before they can perform terrorist acts. We are on guard against the schemes the anti-christ might use against us, but it is without discernment whether that is the reality at this time. That is why it's called discernment, we have to judge if a generalization is applicable to the current situation.

We might as well go live in an underground bunker away from the real, modern world if we are going to automatically resist the very things that are being instituted to protect us from real, currently aggressive enemies. In an effort to be a step ahead of the enemy and "not doomed to repeat" the mistakes of the past, we have actually become tone deaf to spiritually distinguish between threats and protection.

We are to be watchful, not just to have our guard up about how Hitler and the SS operated, but to be spiritually discerning what twists and turns the enemy will apply to the rising anti-christs of our generation. If there is anything you need to take away from this commentary it is that the devil is not so stupid as to come at us in exactly the same way he did through Hitler in Germany. There are many important patterns to be aware of in what happened in Nazi Germany, but in the specifics we must be spiritually discerning and expect the unexpected.

I know that there are some who are predicting that our real danger lies in the far right backlash that will take place after we rise up and put down this current overstepping of the Liberal Left revolutionaries. That is a pattern that occurred in the Nazi rise to power, and is prudent for us to keep an eye on. But before we get there, let's face the situation we are currently in.
We must squarely come to grips with the frightening depth of the unholy alliance between the American Left and the radical political Islamists.

This is the battle of the hour and we have to wise up and fight this one squarely before we start worrying about a potential backlash from the Right leading us down the same nationalistic path Hitler led the Germans. Let's first fight the Liberal Totalitarians and Political Islam before we turn our shields toward any overly-conservative backlash.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Israeli TV | Second Look presents “The Jewish Big Brother”

This week we begin with a breakthrough news program report on the illegal alignment against believers in Yeshua/Jesus in Israel. The alliance, reported by the Israeli equivalent of 60 Minutes, is between anti-missionary activists, Yad L’Achim, and the Interior Ministry which has jurisdiction over citizenship issues as well as visas for those who work for church organizations in the country.


Second Look news anchor Karen Newbach, “The Jewish Big Brother” with Noga Eitan Berenstein, the report producer
and segment research by Shuli Shvartz.

So grateful for the hard work of Maoz Ministries staff who provided the translation and added English sub-titles in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.


The following is a recap of the groundbreaking news program – not an exhaustive one but highlights – and includes some follow up comments by Israeli ministries. I am so glad the reporters saw the truth of how ominous the activities of Yad L'Achim are so the public will also have the opportunity to see if they agree with these self-appointed 'defenders' of 'purity' of the Jewish State.

Eddie Santoro, of Zion’s Glory ministry and Ahavat Yeshua congregation which is featured in the Part 2 segment, wrote: “Please pray for Noga, the woman who produced it. She told us she is expecting a backlash from this story. Also pray that those Israelis who heard the program will understand who we are and who are those who are against us, and that there would be a voice raised for justice in the land of Israel.” AMEN!

Please SHARE these important Israeli news videos on the anti-messianic campaign of persecution of the Body of Messiah in Israel. There has never been a more hard-hitting news report as this one that has been shown to the Israeli public. - Donna Diorio

"Opening the program, the Channel One anchor noted that at a recent Yad L’Achim rally, Messianic Jews were declared as dangerous to the Jewish nation as Hitler," Ryan Jones at Israel Today wrote. "Average Israelis may be indifferent at best toward their Jesus-following Jewish brethren, but their distaste for the domineering attitude and behavior of many in the Orthodox Jewish community has resulted in a new phenomenon of average “secular” Israelis coming to the defense of Messianic Jews."

Part 1 The first person featured in this news program as a Yad L’Achim target is not a believer, but an unidentified Israeli musician who sought out a church where she could go to practice on the organ. Yad L’Achim accused the pastor of the Ratisbonne Church in Jerusalem of trying to convert her, which “A” denies as a total fabrication. Because the church personnel in Israel are fearful of losing their visa status from Yad L’Achim accusing them to the Interior Ministry, they withdrew their previous open door policy for her to practice on the organ at the church. “A” received a letter telling her she was being investigated, received threatening phone calls and her parents also received a letter accusing her. She said she felt like she was being watched continually.

“They made me very paranoid. I felt like I was in a thriller-movie or science fiction. I never imagined that someone would follow me. I never imagined that they would prevent me from playing. I can’t believe that I can’t talk with a pastor or that I can’t meet with certain people…I tried to continue on with my life but it was difficult to not to always imagine that someone is watching me.” – “A,” young female musician in Jerusalem


The pastor of Ratisbonne Church was also followed and watched, with someone taking pictures of him. In January he was summoned for a hearing to discuss his possible deportation. He refused to be interviewed for the program out of fear of repercussions.

“Yad Lachim say they don’t give up on any Jewish person and act in a variety of ways to combat what they define as spiritual and demographic threats on the Jewish people,” the news program reports.

Voice of Rabbi Naria of Yad L’Achim: “We get information about people, sometimes through the internet, about ‘missionary’ work and we make sure that this information gets to the Ministry of Interior.”

The news voiceover says, "as a reminder, according to the law in Israel, missionary work is only prohibited when money or a bribe are offered"


Interviewed Ilan Gilon, MKnesset New Movement-Meretz says, “For the past ten days we’ve been trying to find information regarding this man’s case (the Ratisbonne pastor) and we can’t. Myself as a Knesset member can’t get a proper explanation from the Ministry of Interior.”

An administrator of the Interior Ministry is seen on-camera admitting they receive the accusations from Yad L’Achim which they act on.

MK Ilan Gilon comments, “I believe that Yad L’Achim is heavily integrated into the Interior Ministry.”


But Yad L’Achim head, Rabbi Shalom Dov Lipshitz counters, "The government is using democracy in order to not do what it is supposed to do. They need to decide if this is a Jewish country or a democracy. But they don't always go together....they are not friends. Democracy which contradicts the Torah is not a good match."

Jerusalem Institute of Justice attorney Calev Myers, "This whole system of spying and gathering information and bringing it to administrators at the Interior Ministry. They then interrogate people in odd ways and in dark rooms – these are methods which are reminiscent of dark governments. This should not happen in a democratic country."

News Journalist Voice Over: "We are told at the Jerusalem Institute of Justice which represents persecuted religious minorities in Israel due to the connections between Yad L'Achim and the Interior Ministry, they have requested an investigation to find out what is not so Kosher in the connection between these two organizations.

Contacted by Israelprayer today (4/5/11), Calev Myers confirmed that the news report was referring to a February 2010 filing with the Israeli Attorney-General, Yehuda Weinstein, Request to Dismantle the Yad L'Achim Organization. Myers added that the Jerusalem Institute of Justice would be submitting another initiative soon.


Part 2 News anchor Karen Newbach remarks of the musician “A’s” experience, “That story could have been a minor case, a private case, if there wasn’t the link between the Ministry of Interior and Yad L’Achim which gives the information and takes steps against Israeli civilians.”

Asher Intrater of Revive-Israel and Ahavat Yeshua congregation wrote in a follow this week, "While the purpose of the program was certainly not evangelistic, it did contain some clips of the ministry team at Revive Israel, of worship at Ahavat Yeshua congregation, and of Asher teaching about the New Covenant from Jeremiah 31." (B’rit Hadashah: the Torah written on our hearts)

"The main debate,” Intrater rightly notes was the focus for the news journalists, “centered around the issue of democratic rights in Israel versus Jewish religious identity.“

“The program was a major victory concerning religious freedom, but was not able to handle the more complex issues of religious identity. That spiritual battle still awaits us in the future," Intrater wrote in his Revive-Israel prayer letter this week.


Part 2 opened with chilling footage shot by a Maoz Israel photographer at the Yad L’Achim protest in Ashod against the Messianic congregation in Ashdod in February 2011. Giving speeches against Messianic believers, the leaders of the protest made many extreme false accusations against the congregation of 150, equating them with Hitler and Nazis.

In juxtaposition, there were segments of actual Messianic congregational worship services.

Avner and Rachel Boski were featured touching on the religious identity issue, as the news voice over noted of the Boski’s, they “believe that the Messiah has already been here, and that his name is Yeshua. They believe there is no problem believing in him and remaining Jews.”

Also prominently featured in part 2 was the story of a young Messianic Jew, Yarden Eliashiv, who was born blind and of whom the report says, “is in the category of the ‘pure souls’ to whom Yad L’Achim tries to show ‘the way.’

Yad L’Achim picked up Yarden telling her they were taking her on a trip, but not telling her where. She was taken to the Yad L’Achim office in Bnei Brak for someone to talk to her. Yarden said, “I didn’t want to talk, but I was there already, and I was unable to go anywhere by myself.“

Yarden said, “He kept telling me that I was not a Jew. He told me that I was in a cult, that I was doomed, and that God doesn’t like that. That I would be doomed if I continue to be there. God would punish me. It was really difficult for me. I remember that I cried because I didn’t know what to do.”

“I had books of the New Testament in braille, which are very hard to find,” she said. “There aren’t books like those in Israel. You have to bring them from the USA. They came into my room in the place where I used to live then, and without my knowledge they simply took them.”


The anchor of the program says, "This is a large phenomenon and touches on the privacy rights and safety of those who's faith may be different.

Other Israeli Messianics featured in part 2 included Asher Intrater, head of the Revive Israel ministry, and the Jerusalem-area Messianic congregation Ahavat Yeshua. Intrater said it is not right to refer to Messianic Jews as missionaries, at least not without applying the same label to Orthodox groups like Yad L’Achim.

“We are not ashamed of our faith, and will share it with anyone who asks,” said Intrater. “But we don’t pressure or coerce anyone.”

“The truth,” Intrater pointed out, “is that the Orthodox Jews proselytize a hundred times more than we do.”


Pnina Conforti, whose popular Ashdod bakery has been repeatedly targeted by Yad L’Achim was featured. Pnina’s bakery was stripped of its Kashrut certification, even though the Supreme Court ruled in her favor that there is no link between her Messianic faith and the Kosher status of her business.

Pnina says of Rabbi Sheinin, whose vile accusations are heard in segments of the Asdod protest footage, “He said that he’d rather be hang on a tree than give me back my certificate!”

The guest house Yad Hashmonah has been under attack by Yad L’Achim for many years,” the report noted.

Efrat Touboul, Yad Hashmona Guest House reports that Yad L’Achim puts pressure on the Rabbinate that gives the Kosher certificate so that they’ll do as Rabbi Sheinin did, denying the certificate to Yad Hashmonah.

Itai Meiron, Yad Hashmona Guest House, “They try to muddy our name, saying that we are missionaries, that we are dangerous. Actually we are in a continuous state of war, defending ourselves. This is what is happening. Instead of managing a business, in an ongoing way, as any other business, we are in constant conflicts with them.”

The report also covers the fact of the admission to police of confessed murderer Jack Teitel that he worked with Yad L’Achim.

Teitel is the man who attempted to murder of the Ortiz family by planting a bomb at their doorstep near the Purim 2008 holiday. Their 15-year old son Ami, who opened the package, was miraculously spared death by God and continues to marvel all who understood the extent of damage done by the bomb blast.

Rabbi Shalom Dov Lipshitz, Yad L’Achim head: “Some people come from abroad, who are missionaries and they register themselves as Jews. Later on we discover that they aren’t Jews, but they are Messianic Jews. He is not a Jew! He came here and told lies.

The reporter asks, “How do you know?” Lipshitz answers, “We know. We have connections in Israel and abroad.”

JIJ Attorney Calev Myers, “What does it mean to label people as “suspicious of being missionaries?”

"If someone really does something against the law," Calev Myers says, "breaking existing laws concerning 'missionary work,' then this is a case for the police. But a clerk in the Interior Ministry cannot tag citizens denying them their rights based on dubious information."

"There is a very specific procedure," Myers said, "instituted by Mr. Ophir Pines, when he was Minister of Interior. The Interior Ministry is forbidden to receive information from non-governmental, non-formal institutions, and then make decisions base on this information.


Knesset Member Ilan Gilon referring to the Yad L’Achim accusations against the Messianics, "We are talking about fighting sects? He himself (referring to accusations made by the Yad L'Achim head) is a kind of sect, a very dangerous one and we are very concerned and worried that groups like that are the ones operating the formal institutions that govern the State of Israel."

Scene switches to the speech of the Chief Rabbi of Ashdod, Yosef Sheinin in a recent demonstration against the Messianic congregation in Ashdod.

Part 3

Part 3 opens with officials statements from both the Interior Ministy and Yad L’Achim, Rabbi Lipshitz taking the opportunity to say of Messianic Jews: “Hitler’s end goal was to destroy the Jews physically. The Messianic Jews are trying to do the same thing only spiritually. The goal of both of these groups is the same.

Despite the highly inflammatory speeches against Messianic Jews in this report alone, Rabbi Lipshitz disavows they are stirring up violence against Messianics, as the anchor reports Sheinin says that there is no subversion towards violence. This is well known political tactic called Plausible Deniability. (wink, wink; nod, nod)

Anchor Karen Newbach turns immediately then to a revealing debate conducted by between Knesset Members Michael Ben Ari, National Union Party and Nitzan Horowitx, New Movement-Mertz Party.


Right off the bat, Newbach asks religious MK Ben Ari, “Do you think it is acceptable that Yad L’Achim is acting like a private militia?”

“This activity does not exist in a vacuum,” Ben Ari responds. "It comes in response to a world of Christianity. Christianity has set itself a goal to erase Judaism from the world. They cannot survive with Judaism."

Nitzan Horowitz, of the New Movement-Meretz Party said, “I think this needs to be investigated. There is a suspicion of illegal activity and the police need to check these. The problem is that we have a terrible intermingling between the state and religion."

“I get many complaints about harassment all over the country in all places,” Horowitz admitted. “Unfortunately most of the complaints I get are about Jewish orthodox groups. But this is considered acceptable. But these other people who are chased and harassed - I’m not talking about actual missionary work – I’m talking about people that have protests outside their house, and have their property vandalized and graffiti. Their life is simply turned into hell.”

“In Israel,” Horowitz says, “we are supposed to have freedom of religion, but this is not what happens.”

“We are not being threatened by Christianity. If we are to discuss religious persecution in Israel, it’s coming out of our own people.
They sit in this government. And this is the problem when mixing religion with government."


One has to see the debate for themselves. It will not translate without viewing it yourself.

As Ryan Jones at Israel Today noted, “Horovitz and the anchor were openly agitated by the Ben-Ari’s defense of Yad L’Achim’s actions and his insistence that believers in Yeshua pose a threat to the Jewish state by simple virtue of their faith.”

“I receive far more complaints of missionary activity by Orthodox Jewish organizations!” MK Horovitz exclaimed. “They are constantly looking for enemies.”


Donna Diorio for Israelprayer: I would just add that as I viewed the videos again today preparing this recap, once again I was struck at the similar arguments that are presented in the U.S. and Israel debates between the ‘Religious Right” and the “Seculars.” It never ceases to amaze me how the arguments are the same, but the dynamics behind the arguments are totally different.

In Israel, the Religious Right position actually opposes the will of God – which is that every man has the freedom to choose to believe or disbelieve. Most Israel-supporting Christians do not seem to understand how great a difference there is between the religious right concerns in the USA, and those in Israel.

It struck me today that Israel is not only the proverbial “canary in coal mine” regarding radical Islam’s dominion aspirations, but Israel is also the “canary in the coal mine” regarding spiritual issues.

Specifically I mean the line we can cross between honoring freedom of individual choice and forcing our convictions on others. When the Religious Right decides it has the right to force what it considers the will of God upon every man, then the march toward Totalitarianism has begun in earnest.

There is a line we can cross between seeking godly representatives in our governments and godly laws governing our nations, that can tip over into a demonic suppression of God-given freedom of choice.
This is the line that Israel is debating in this news report. It is the line that the Nazi Party crossed and it is also the line that Americans could be deceived into crossing in backlash to the ungodly Liberalism we are battling in our current political tug of war of the last 50 years or so.