by Esther Korson
As I stated in the first part of this “God in the News” blog, there were a number of issues raised in that report that needed further clarification. Interestingly enough, there was another incident of “God in the News” today—and not only that, one relevant to all that I was planning to talk about in the second and third parts of this “God in the News” blog!
Today’s “God in the News” item was reported by the Jerusalem Post under the heading “Kerry has declared war on God, say hard-line rabbis. Warn of divine punishment”. The article continues, “A group of rabbis wrote in an open letter to U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he had declared war against God through his current mediation efforts between Israel and the Palestinian negotiators, and said he must cease such activity to avoid divine punishment. The letter was sent by the ‘Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel’, founded by Rabbi Sholom Dov Wolpo, who also founded the ‘Our Land of Israel Party’ as an activist group to oppose political accords with the Palestinians involving territorial concessions.‘Your incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abba’s terrorist gang, amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the Universe! For G-d awarded the entire Land of Israel to our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in order that they bequeath it, as an everlasting inheritance, to their descendants, the Jewish people, until the end of time,’ the letter reads. The rabbis argue that Kerry’s plan endangers Israeli Jews by bringing them within close range of potential rocket and missile fire from the West Bank should it be ceded by Israel to the Palestinians.
‘If you continue on this destructive path, you will ensure your everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people,’ continued the rabbis…”
So let’s begin with the very basic issue of whose land this really is—ours or the Palestinians? The Lord in the Bible makes some pretty unequivocal statements, such as, in Genesis 15:18: “In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river Euphrates…” Again in Genesis 17:8: “And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God…” (See also, among others, Genesis 12:7; 13:15; 26:3; 28:13; Isaiah 60:21, Jeremiah 32:41). When Joshua actually captured the land, God not only confirmed His promises to them as recorded in Joshua 21: 43-45; it also shows that God truly and in reality fulfills all of His promises. “So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. The Lord gave them rest all around, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers. And not a man of all their enemies stood against them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.”
So what about the Palestinian claims to our nation? The Lord states, in Genesis 17:20. “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year…” The Lord God of Israel also kept His promise to the sons of Ishmael, and there are 22 oil rich Arab nations to prove it! The Arab descendents of Ishmael control 99.9% of the Middle East. Israel represents only one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. (Show map of comparison between Israel & Arab nations).
The Biblical land promised to the Jewish people by God was already divided in 1948, with the nation of Jordan—actually part of our Biblical heritage—given by the UN Partition plan to the Arabs, and the remainder to the Jewish people.(Show map comparing modern day Israel with Biblically promised Israel). Can you even imagine that such a tiny space can be divided again?
But dealing directly with Palestinian claims that the entire land belongs exclusively to them, I’d like to point out that in reality there is no such thing as a “Palestinian people”. I just read an article by free-lance journalist Victor Sharpe entitled “Op-Ed—The Counterfeit Arabs” where he sums it up succinctly! He says correctly, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people; there is no such thing as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists….In all of recorded history, there has never been an independent, sovereign Palestinian state!”
The majority of the people who now call themselves Palestinians were simply Arabs from neighboring lands who arrived especially during the time of the British Mandate for economic reasons. All of them have their origin somewhere else in the Arab world!
What about their claim that they are the descendents of the ancient Canaanites? Wow, that’s a little spooky, since the Canaanites disappeared in the 8th century BC! What about their claim that they are descendents of the Philistines? Interestingly enough, the word means “invaders”! They also lived here a while back, having finally been defeated by King David, and shortly thereafter disappeared from history. As Sharpe explained, “You will search in vain for Palestinian Arab coinage or Palestinian Arab archeological artifacts specifically related to any Arab king or ancient leader. But what you will find are coins, pottery, ancient scrolls, all providing conclusive, empirical and millennial evidence of Jewish civilization dotting the land known correctly as Israel—not Palestine…The present day so-called ‘Palestinians’ are an Arab people sharing an overwhelming Moslem culture, ethnicity and language identical to their fellow Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa with few if any distinctions…”
In the final portion of this blog, I’m going to deal with the Scriptural basis for the modern State of Israel and the Biblical promises that we are not to be uprooted again; and the many reasons why the Palestinian Authority—referred to by the rabbis as ‘Abba’s terrorist gang’—cannot in any way be considered a partner for peace. So—please stay tuned once again!
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