Israel Today
What are the current prospects for peace?
Words of wisdom from S.H. Kellogg’s 1899 The Book of Leviticus, sum up events in today’s societies. He was discussing what theologians call the Holiness Law in Leviticus 18-20. “The church needs to come back to the full recognition of the principles which underlie the Levitical code; especially…that marriage and the family are not merely civil arrangements but divine institutions; so that God has not left it to the caprice of a majority to settle what shall be lawful in these matters”
Kellogg continues: God says that “…holiness is the moral [goal] of government and of life; and He will find ways to enforce His will in this … All history witnesses that moral corruption and relaxed legislation, especially in matters affecting the relations of the sexes, brings in their train sure retribution, not in Hades, but here on Earth. Let us not miss the lesson by imagining that this law was for Israel, but not for other peoples.” The opposite is affirmed in Leviticus 20:23-24, where we see “that God visited his heavy judgments” on the Canaanites who did the things forbidden in His holiness law, and the land spit (sic) them out! Modern democracies must rethink “their pro-gressive repudiation of the law of God in many social questions, and heed this solemn warning. For, despite the unbelief of multitudes, the Holy One still governs the world, and it is certain He will never abdicate his throne of righteousness to submit any of His laws to the sanction of a popular vote.”
Let’s take care how we view democracy. The majority chose against God’s will most of the time in scriptures. Yeshua returns as a King who will rule with no elections, referendums, or in line with what the majority wants. God does know what is best for us. We were also warned about our days: “But, beloved, remember the words which the apostles of our Lord, Messiah Yeshua, spoke to you, saying that there will be mockers in the last time, who will walk after their own ungodly lusts.” (Jude 1:17-18).
There is also another, deeper reason for today’s chaos
The world has changed drastically since 2020 began, as intense turmoil with increasing frequency stalks the world. Covd-19 and riots in Western cities join an already impressive list of deadly earthquakes, floods, droughts, volcanoes and locust invasions in the Middle East, Asia and other regions. The UN is warning of millions of deaths from famines in areas hit by both locusts and Covid-19. The icing on this chaos is global economic instability.
Yet many nations and international organizations claim that Israel’s “annexation” of more of its God-promised land will end all chances of peace between Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab world, and also destroy “world-peace”!
God confronts these arguments, showing that the nations’ rage against Israel is the cause of this chaos. “Come near, nations, to hear; heed all people …YHWH’s indignation is on all nations, and His fury on their armies! He has utterly destroyed them, giving them to the slaughter…Heaven’s host shall be dissolved, and heaven itself shall roll up as a scroll … For My sword shall … come down on Idumea [aka, Edom, a spiritual root of Islam (see Ezek. 35)], on the people of My curse for judgment… For it is the day of YHWH’s vengeance, the year of His recompense for the controversy over Zion.” (from Isa. 34:1-8)
Today, the Islamic spirit, embodied as Idumea/Edom in these verses, has joined with the spirit of anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism, using political correctness and intimidation, focusing nations on Israel as the world’s main problem.
Yet history teaches when Israel is used as a scapegoat it ends in disaster for the nations.
Only believers who do not see the Tanach, the Old Testament, as still God’s Word today, would view what we just wrote as un-biblical. But for us who know that the Tanach, the only Bible Yeshua and the early believers had, is God’s Word He defends and fulfills (Isa. 55:11; Jer. 1:12), it really does depend on how the nations deal with Israel. [See “Why God judges the nations” https://www.ifi.org.il/en/teachings/why-god-judges-nations].
The extension of Israeli sovereignty
In Israel’s situation, the world misuses the word “annexation”. International law defines annexation as seizing land that belongs to someone else. Yet the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley were liberated from the Islamic Ottoman Empire in WW I and then dedicated by the Allies and the League of Nations to be a Jewish National Homeland. As Israel extends its sovereignty over land given to it by God and the international community, a better term is “reunification”!
UK columnist Melanie Phillips says many people view the key for the establishment of the State of Israel was 1917’s Balfour Declaration, as “the British government committed itself to work for establishment of a Jewish home” in “Palestine”. Yet a more vital event has been ignored: the San Remo resolution of April 26, 1920, as “Britain, France, Italy, and Japan turned the Balfour Declaration into an internationally binding treaty…with Britain being given the mandate to facilitate Jewish immigration there.”
Soon after San Remo Britain took about 75% of Palestine and created Transjordan, yet what remained for the Jewish nation is unacknowledged by Israel’s enemies, intentionally ignoring an internationally binding resolution. “For in that resolution lie the roots of Jewish legitimacy, not just in Israel but also in the disputed territories.” The area deeded included all of pre-’67 Israel, and all of Judea and Samaria. This “legal right” of Jews to settle all land west of the Jordan River “has never been abrogated.”
During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, part of this area “was captured by the Jordanians.” Yet as international lawyer E. Kontorovitch noted, “When Israel eventually recovered this land” in the ’67 Six-Day War, the world “pretended that its own earlier guarantees didn’t exist.” Instead of affirming “the legal, moral and historical right of the Jewish people to live in Judea and Samaria,” the nations said that the areas which were “ethnically cleansed of Jews” by Jordan in ’48 must “remain Jew-free zones.” So discounting San Remo is essential to “perpetrate the lie that the Jews” seized Palestinian Arab lands. (“Israel overcomes virus of political, moral collapse,” M. Phillips, Israel Hayom Op-ed, 24 Apr. 2020)
A memo from Netanyahu to his Likud party Knesset members had ‘talking points’ to help them justify his plan to extend Israeli sovereignty to these areas: “Relinquishing these territories would not only constitute a historic injustice; such a move would create an immediate existential threat to the Jewish state since Judea and Samaria border central Israeli cities.”
He also emphasized the Jewish people’s right to this land. “The territories are steeped in Jewish history, dotted with Jewish archaeological sites” and are an integral part of “the Jewish homeland and Jewish identity.” Jews have lived in these areas for centuries, where their forefathers walked, “Jewish kings ruled and biblical figures prophesied.” It is from the kingdom of Judah, where the very term “Jew” originates. (“Netanyahu memo: Evacuating settlements would pose ‘immediate existential threat’,” TOI, 21 June 2020).
As for concerns that Trump’s plan leaves 70% for a possible Palestinian State, Maj. Gen. (res.) G. Hacohen turned to history. When Ben-Gurion agreed to the Peel Commission’s partition plan in 1937, Ben-Gurion said, “The Jewish state offered to us now…is not the goal of Zionism,” but will “serve as a decisive step on the path to fulfilling the great Zionist dream.”
Hacohen: “Despite the risks, application of Israeli sovereignty is indeed a historic opportunity. We must implement it with the mindset of being part of an endless process of redeeming the people and the land.” (“It is vital to control the roads,” G. Hacohen, Israel Hayom Op-ed, 5 June 2020).
Israel possessing its possessions (Obadiah 1:17, 19-20)
In April, JP’s Tovah Lazaroff wrote that the Israeli Right views “the return of Jews to the biblical heartland,” for nationalistic, historic, and religious reasons as having very “little to do with international relations,” or the “occupation,” or even Palestinian statehood. “Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is about the literal Zionist realization of a 2,000-year-old dream of returning to ‘the land’, that has been a part of the national consciousness since the Jews were exiled by the Romans.” That was completed in 135 A.D., when Jews were exiled not only from Jerusalem, but the rest of the land as well, the Romans re-naming it ‘Palestina’.
This dream includes all historical and biblical sites: Hebron where Abraham purchased land for a burial site for Sarah, Beit El where Jacob dreamed of angels and a ladder, and Shiloh where the Ark of the Covenant stayed for a longer period of time than anywhere else in Israel. Based on this conservative Israelis resent links “between territorial concessions and peace,” even in the Trump plan. They want lawful sovereignty now.
Yet hope of US support for sovereignty was “mission impossible” under Obama, who “disavowed any Israeli territorial rights over pre-67 lines,” unless both Israelis and Palestinians agreed. Trump broke with Obama, and “over 50-years of US policy,” ditching the “land for peace” idol, and offering a way “for Israel to apply sovereignty to over 30%” of the disputed areas before negotiations with the Palestinians even begin. He also affirmed Israel’s “historic right” to these lands, a point not “acknowledged by past US administrations” or any other nation.
So when US Secretary of State M. Pompeo recently said that “annexation” is “an Israeli decision,” it was a shock. Lazaroff: “An Israeli decision, akin to elections or court decisions or any other action a sovereign nation may exercise within its territory?” Up to now, the opposite has been true, as any Israeli actions in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, have “been the subject of countless UN Resolutions.” Even today, Israel is being threatened by the International Criminal Court, while most nations condemn “Israeli settlement activity,” and NGOs launch protests against all Israeli moves. “If ever there was a territory” that the world “has had a stake in,” it is Israel’s biblical heartland! (“Can West Bank annexation be solely an Israeli affair?” T. Lazaroff, JP Analysis, 26 Apr. 2020).
US lawyer Stephan Flatow dealt with one oft-heard argument against Israel’s reunification. “The world will be angry.” Yet the world “condemned the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, and reunification of Jerusalem. No reasonable person believes Israel should make policy decisions based on fear of the world’s reaction.” (“The headline screamed: 50 Jewish Organizations Oppose Annexation!” S. Flatow, Arutz 7, 30 June 2020)
Reports of Arab reaction are mixed
Theologically, fundamentalist Muslims view all the land of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River as wakf, ‘Allah owned’, territory. So this reaction of a Hamas cleric was expected. “Israeli annexation of parts of Judea and Samaria would constitute a crime against the will of Allah.” Also, the Jews are “the most corrupt of Allah’s creatures,” and Allah’s will is for them to suffer “humiliation, misery and wrath.” He ended by quoting the Quran: “Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them away from wherever they drove you away.” (“Hamas MP says Israeli annexation ‘violates Allah’s will’,” Israel Hayom, 11 May 2020).
Yet today’s Middle East has changed. “Officially, moderate Arab states allied with the US including Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia opposed Israel’s sovereignty plan,” and some Arab leaders issued condemnations of it and warnings against it. Yet behind closed doors, some of these same Arab leaders either reconciled themselves to it, or even support it. Jordanian leaders openly protested the plan, and threatened to cancel their peace treaty with Israel, but a senior Jordanian official said, “The King will permit the annexation to go through,” because he “prefers to see Israeli army forces on his western border, rather than Palestinian or international forces.”
A senior Saudi diplomat and confidant of Crown Prince bin Salman said some Arab states quietly endorse Israel’s sovereignty plan. Officially, they oppose anything hurting the creation of a Palestine, yet Palestinians must know that “the Arab world has gone through great changes since the ‘Three No’s’,” of the August ‘67 Arab League summit in Khartoum, when Arab nations vowed “no peace with Israel”, “no recognition of Israel”, “no negotiations with Israel”. He added, “Israel’s existence and recognition are already a fact.” A senior Egyptian security official said the war between Arab states and Iran, and their “partnership with Israel against Tehran outweighs Palestinian” concerns. (“Senior Saudi, Jordanian officials say moderate Arab states back Israel’s sovereignty plan,” Arutz 7, 27 May 2020.)
The real hindrance to peace
Israeli Arab Khaled Abu Toameh exposes the real blockage to peace. As mentioned, to Muslims, Jews have no right to any land which was once under Islam, which includes all modern Israel.
In June the Association of Palestine Scholars met in Gaza with Islamic judges, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Wakf, Religious Affairs senior officials, and academics. A post-meeting statement revealed that it is not the “annexation” – it is Israel’s existence! To Koranic Muslim, “Israel has no right to sovereignty over Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nazareth, Tiberias, Jerusalem or any other part of Israel… [All] of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river,” is wakf territory. (“Palestinians: Is it really about ‘Annexation'”? K. Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, 25 June 2020).
Harry Markham agrees as Islamic doctrine views the Jewish State as “an affront to Islam.” Under Islam Jews are dhimmis – second class citizens. While not all Muslims hold these beliefs, still these ideas are held by a significant number.
Islam has its own two-house theology. Dar al Islam, the house of Islam, is area it has conquered, and “dominates religiously, socially, and politically…” This idea birthed a “non-negotiable theological maxim” – once a land is Allah’s, it is always Allah’s.
Modern Israel, the Jewish state, is part of Dar al Harb, the house of war. Muslims must do all it takes, including jihad, holy war, to bring “this former Islamic province back” under Muslim rule. “This is not a political duty, but a religious one.”
Hamas’ 1988 Charter says, “The land of Palestine is an Islamic Wakf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part… In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”
Since the battle over this land has “a deeply rooted theological conviction,” there is no political solution. (“The peace process will have to wait,” H. Markham, Israel Hayom Op-ed, 19 Apr. 2020).