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CHAPTER  4

A LITTLE MORE ?

Some more West Bank, my dear Abbas ?

It is particularly sweet with our new international dressing...

 

News 336,

The Australian November 22, 2004

DW TV November 23, 2004

Often when a visitor calls, the hostess may be heard asking, at some juncture in the repast,
"A little more ?" The visitor perhaps is inclined to taste just that little portion more ?

So is it with Israel. In 1920, the League of Nations incorporated the intent of the Balfour Declaration of Britain, made in 1917, in the new Mandate Provision.

This gave Palestine to the Jews, so that they could have a national homeland, provided only it was done in such a way that there were safeguards for rights of existing 'non-Jewish communities' in that land
(The Penguin Dictionary of MODERN HISTORY, 1789-1945).

A homeland ? a national homeland ? a Jewish national home ?

Without Jerusalem ? That is the continued thrust of the Palestinian desire, for at least part of it; that was the UN DECISION in 1947, in internationalising the city, in its protective way, in its own sense of honour It was thus with unspeakable reliability they countered the League of Nations apportionment which had stood those 27 years. Presumably that had been taken as reliable, and not an ethical calamity, a false promise, a broken covenant by those whom it concerned, but now the tempest of the UN brought it away with a stroke. Stolen ? Most of a nation.

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Robbery is not only at high seas.

Yet it is not the robbery from man which is crucial here,
however much one is filled with loathing for such a breach,
such a defalcation, a national defalcation,
yes an international one,
and when one considers not only dishonesty, but the way Europe treated the Jews
during the regime of Hitler, during the pogroms of Russia, in the time of Louis XIV of France,
in the days of the Roman (Catholic) Inquisition.

That treatment ? It was with obloquy, humiliation, plain theft of goods:
burnings and expulsions, as if morals took leave,
religion became a drunkard
and the name of Christ were there for sheer mockery.
 

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Yet He did not crucify, but WAS crucified; did not legislate for sin, but for its cessation, did not include in loving your neighbour as yourself, the unseen clause, 'unless it be a Jew', or in the case of the Inquisition, we must add, 'unless he be a Christian'.

Lands have been the object of misdirected religious attack, founded on lust,
funded with robbery; lives have been their polluted desire; and now,
it is the LAND God appointed that they seek to crush in their
Road Map maw
(cf. Galloping Events ... Ch. 4, Great Execrations ... Ch. 4).
 

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Man not merely misuses force to his appetite and pleasure, but at times directly contrives to contest the will of the Almighty regarding the disposition of events, property and symbols. It is then that the most horrible manias arise, and in their desperation to produce the kingdom they desire, or with some, even the kingdom of heaven, they breach every principle of pity and truth, mercy and justice.

After all, the Inquisition was not only using unnecessary force
in acting to quell the biblical testimony of Christ,
but the prohibited variety of mere invasive FORCE to any degree. It is enough to murder:
to steal as well is worse. It is enough to desolate bodies; to desolate children left destitute,
this is worse. It is enough to kill; to torture slowly is worse. Here is the very contradiction
of the Cross and the inverted summit, far in the nether world, of divine mercy.
 

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MY KINGDOM, said Christ is NOT of this world; otherwise His servants would fight.
They were NOT to fight to protect Him or His kingdom (John 18:36),
and Peter had to put up his sword rather than protect Him from murder;
yet people using His name dared to murder others when they were not under threat themselves,
even then!
 

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Such is this Roman Catholicism, which is not at all catholic in geography,
being a conception of the bishop of Rome and his adherents
in the most sectarian and divisive sense possible,
who elevate one man who is NOT Christ, NOT sinless, NOT eternal,
into the place of One who is and who expressly forbad such things (Matthew 23:8-10),
saying ONE is your Master, ONE is your Father, and YOU are  brothers.

Brutality and dishonesty have been hall-marks of Europe's treatment of the Jew, and the UN has added treachery and unreliability, this with weakness as when they withdrew their international troops on finding notification that  President Nasser of Egypt wanted to invade Israel; and to all of that, is to be added a  flamboyant, pro-Arab, intense propaganda.

To this is added the endless parade of slanted news reports, which could scarcely be worse, even if Islam owned the  press, except that in some cases, as in that of Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian, you get a sobering change in the direction of truth. Yet if one mentions one, it is because such ones are not often found. If one recalls, it was this Editor who years ago referred to the Palestinians as a catspaw for Arab or Moslem forces outside the land altogether.

If you do not WANT Israel there at all (as the Pan-Islamic Conference in Teheran of 1991 made so clear in their alliance), and if you feel, as Arafat was once reported to think, that Israel can go to hell; and if you want oil without trouble, and peace with large power-blocs without terrorists, so that you want to make Israel, or what is to be left of it, some sort of beggar without defensibility, dependent on international goodwill, the extent of which quality we have just indicated in one prominent index at the level of integrity: then of course the Road Map of the Madrid Quartet is great stuff.

The current US emphasis on looting the US capital (that is, its financial capital - whatever that is, in available terms, since it is in debt to the tune of trillions and is increasing by billions continually), in order to build the Palestinian State, an idea enunciated by President Bush not long after his re-election for his second term  as President, is a good idea in one respect. It might give a lead to others in helping the Palestinian pawns, or whatever else this unfortunate group may be, to be placed where they belong. It would of course put the USA even further into an unreliable situation, where OTHER NATIONS can increasingly dictate to it, through fear or threat or both, in terms of what they might DO with its debt if it does not behave according to their will. That, in turn, puts the world even more into the power of other forces, with less goodwill than the US, and greater terrestrial and dominating ambitions.

That would hasten the anti-Christ; for though America is fallen, fallen, and is increasingly subordinating itself to the mixed religion syndrome, as President Bush has so amply shown*1 at the national level, yet it has sufficient Christians in it to put brakes on some of the cruder forms of religious oppression. Its successor on the dominant sector of the world stage, increasingly Europe, has brake problems there, and has long had them.

Still, for those who would put the Palestinian solution above a free world, this could be a part of the process. It is not one which is worthy of approval, since the cost is too high; but it is one which is at least a lead.

In which direction however ? It would be in the direction of an international company of those who would help the Palestinians to settle in some appropriate place in order to have a homeland; and if it could be done by many nations, without beggaring the US into a false position where its contribution becomes mere talk, and not power, then it has some point. Incidentally, this very day on DW TV, the German news, there has been report of EU battle groups, to be expanded to embrace contingents from many of their constituent nations, which as one German politician put it, will enable the EU to do more than talk, but rather to take action. It progresses!

However, while an appropriate place for such a Palestinian State would obviously be Jordan, which in 1921 received by international treachery, most of Palestine, already donated to Israel, the Palestinians are no longer welcome there as citizens en bloc, since the offer of that kind made in February 1960 was so abused. The Palestinian action to make of Jordan a site for staging assaults on Israel, at length led to civil war in Jordan. Indeed, at that time, Jordan was claiming sole rights of guardianship over Palestinian Arabs, but the preference was for a commando force in Jordan, fedayeen, for incursion and assaults on the Israel which kept only the small fraction of Palestine, after the land grab by Jordan.

It was the lost 1967 war, intended for Israel's destruction with the initiative of Colonel Nasser of Egypt, but turned into what has been called a 'staggering defeat' by Israel, which led to many more Palestinians coming to Jordan, to much increased assault on Israel, and a conflict in which Jordan sought to gain control over the large and embroiling force of Palestinians. The civil war of 1970 resulted, with heavy fighting in northern Jordan, leading to the disestablishment of the fedayeen military bases in 1971.

When we add that Jordanian forces helped the 1973 invasion of Israel, at the hands of Syria and once more of Egypt, while noting the fulfilment of the biblical prophecy that Israel would be a “terror to Egypt" (Isaiah 19:17) in its depiction of the scene of final resolution developing, it is necessary to reflect. Jordan got most of the land promised to Israel; Jordan took explicit responsibility for the Palestinian Arabs, granting citizenship, was used by marauding militants of that group, had civil war and was thus hurt; but it continues to be the ACTUAL place where PALESTINIANS could have MOST of PALESTINE. It went wrong because of anti-Israel thrust. Having most of Palestine, it then sought to get MORE from Israel at war … Surely in this world’s inverted sense of justice, this means that it ought to be given, or Arabs at any rate, yet more of it.

Let us instead be sensible in this matter. If an international body gives Palestine to the Jews, and a later one takes most of it from them and gives it to someone else, and if the someone else rightly took the point that it was there matter, to cover these Palestinians, MOST of the land having come to them, then does this mean that MORE of the little bit of Palestine left to the Jews, by INTERNATIONAL FORCE should be taken from the Jews ? What kind of reasoning, treason to reason itself, is this. If you are robbed of $1000 and have $1500 in your wallet, is the 'answer' to take another $300 from your wallet and give it to the robber ?

Let us be sensible in this matter. If an international body gives Palestine to the Jews, and a later one takes most of it from them and gives it to someone else, and if the someone else rightly took the point that it was their matter, to cover these Palestinians, MOST of the land having come to them: then does this mean that MORE of the little bit of Palestine left to the Jews, by INTERNATIONAL FORCE should be taken from the Jews ? or penalty paid for aggression and restoration of more of what was wrongly taken the next step!

As to the opposite, help what is robbed, by aiding the robbery, and joining forces with it: What kind of reasoning, treason to reason itself, is this. If you are robbed of $1000 and have $1500 in your wallet, is the 'answer' to take another $300 from your wallet and give it to the robber ?

WHEN will the Press begin, the TV coverage commence to divulge, in any substantial measure, that JORDAN ALREADY has most of the land given to Israel, and that MORE of Israel is not needed to make for a just division. In fact, if international law has any justice, ALL of Palestine, including of course the West Bank as it is now so much called, IS for Israel, and ALL given to Jordan belongs to Israel. In view of this, what sort of peace negotiations are going to take further from the soil of the Jew, and give it to the Arabs ?

Is Jordan, who helped invade the residue left to the Jews in 1973, AFTER its civil war, going to be left happily basking in most of Palestine, while Israel loses yet more of it ? Does international defalcation require more of it, and does its lapse require further lapse, lest it forget the world of shadows and come into the light!

Now let us return to the idea of Bush, to spend the 'capital of this nation' on making a new Palestinian State. We have already seen some of the dangers of such specialisation in American money for such a cause, and one could indeed expect Europe after its endless seeming depredations against Jews, to help in any such founding; but this said, we need to consider WHERE this State should be formed.

The idea that it should be in the small residue of Palestine left to Israel is notorious to the point of being comic. The concept that even Jerusalem should be halved to Palestinians and Jews is a caricature of justice, fit only for the desolatory late TV for those in need of humorous solace. Where then could it be formed ? Perhaps in their not so indigent estate, some of the allied nations, already keen to help Palestinians and so often declaring the same, places like Iran and Syria, as well as Jordan, could arrange to bring Palestinians to their own midst, especially that vast majority which is Islamic, for is it not a religious and cultural match ? And is there not even in that case, for the Palestinians,  a CHOICE for individuals, as to which regime is nicest for them ? Is it not time that truth and justice began to play some part ?

It was not only Hitler who robbed the Jews, in the case of millions, not only of land but of life as well. It was not only Romanism which destroyed so many of their bodies, and took so much of their wealth. Russia too has been guilty. The Arab wars are an Islamic phenomenon, adding its religious lust to that of the earlier Rome, for this purpose, and extending subjugation of Jews as one of their submission points. It is notable how these various powers, civil or religious and both, attack the Jews. The Road Map is a new one, in which the USA is being joined by the EU,  Russia and the UN in a new grab for Arabs. It is no better in scope.

Now that Colin Powell, ending his Secretary of State days, is pushing for the new State, the international 'babe', the Palestinian entity inside Israel; and now that the US is summoning its resources for the same purpose, while Tony Blair is seeking the Palestinian resolution along Road Map lines, there are some clear results. That of Palestine called the West Bank, given to Jordan illegally, and lost by it in its assault on Israel in 1967, is being pressured into some kind of reduction of Jewish presence: and while this is the course of the help to the Arabs, the party is on.

Is it not significant that when Israel was threatened as to its post-concentration-camp existence by a group of nations, inveterate and merciless in their extermination program in 1948, Britain not guiltless in handing power to the Arab legion, it was left to wallow and drown; the world looked passively on as far as action was concerned. Now that those who failed to win that war, or their accretions, children or terrorist augmentations, or all of these, have failed, even with the help of many Moslem nations with much wealth, to drive the Jew into the sea, what comes next ? But of course, the so ideal and impartial UN is keen for more of the Jewish land, extracted while murder of the nation failed, to be internationally taken from Israel and donated to the realm and camp of those who have many nations already at their disposal.

If it is the Jew, leave him alone; if it is the Arab, pour capital in, make endless news reviews deep in the heart of Vexas (a new nation, just invented, where vexation of spirit is de rigueur) and let many nations not directly involved, join many nations directly involved, so that many, many nations can force the Jews, and extort more land from them. And yet some find it hard to see how the nations could possibly be at war with God*2, as Revelation indicates is to be the case (Revelation 19:19), as they move in an exercise for spiritual folly and sheer moral witlessness which is to be one of the prodigies of history (cf. Micah 7:15ff.). In that inverted sense, some of the best wine is indeed being kept till last.

The Australian, November 22, 2004, reports that the trip of Colin Powell to Jerusalem was followed in the preceding week by visits from the British and Russian foreign ministers, who as well popped in on the West Bank; and the article writer conceives that this signifies a "new momentum"; adding that Israel "for all its economic and military strength, is seeing its diplomatic backing and even its moral status among European countries ebb away."

The morality of independence, existence and continuation is apparently being lost on some; while the immorality of group pressure on the smallest to help the vast array of contrary powers to gain yet more ... this is somehow buried with it.

So Europe progresses in the same Merchant of Venice role, blowing its nose in the Jewish beard, as the Shakespearean Shylock put it. One would have hoped it had learned better manners. Nor is it alone in this!

The nations are indeed gathering against Israel*2A. It is humorous in a tragic sort of way, to see an international pressure so mounting on Israel, as if the international assaults of 1948, 1967 and 1973 were inadequate, so that now there must be a multinational movement to help the MANY Arab nations with ENORMOUS wealth, to grab more of Israel. Imagine all those nations, sworn against Israel in many cases, NEEDING international help from the USA, from the EU, the UN! How clearly did God fulfil His word in Zechariah 12, when Israel would win in an amazingly disproportionate way!

Now even the USA is being eroded, with the sting of al Qaeda firmly lodged in its national consciousness. Some will remember that bin Laden expressly made the continued help to Israel*3 (namely, that it should exist, for that is the point of the help), the bugbear and dominant stimulus for his 'war'. So it is  being waged, fleas biting the flesh, and rashes helping people to become rash. The world moves to what marks a good part of its final, but not its finest hour before the return of the Lord.

Surely the word of God is fulfilled which specified that all the nations would be assailing Israel.

The first phase is finished, was complete in 1948, when HALF of Jerusalem was taken and half left for Israel, as predicted in Zechariah 14:1-2. The movement is continuing in force. The world may want oil from a contented, fulfilled Islam, from a peaceful, Jew-quashed Middle East, at any moral cost, and may desire to do what Hitler did to the Jews, what the pogroms did, what Louis XIV did, what the Inquisition did;  and this same world may now still more want more of the same in its own mutant way, as far as necessary.

It may not actually institute concentration camps, or have instruments of torture this time, NAMED AS SUCH: but it can talk up the Palestinian desire to get more of Israel, and wage psychological warfare against Israel, and so encourage the wantonry of murder of young and old practised in the intifadeh.
That ? is it not torture when kids are in agony for years because of policy ? Does it not then hurt Jewish children ? Are they in some way as immune as the conscience of many to reality, duped by peace at any price, and morals sold for cultural communion ?

So it continues. We must not however lose sight of the fact that in a secular, humanistic, mystical religious world, hating more and more religious facts but loving the fun of religious fiascos, ignoring the testimony of truth increasingly, and becoming apparently more interested in calming militants than having reality*4, a world where the emphasis is increasingly on international approaches to religion so that they all stop fighting (which has nothing to do with biblical Christianity, its followers having suffered at the hand of both Islamic and Romanist terror over time): there are results.

One of these ? It is that on this paradigm, there is one more reason to make Israel a myth.

Facts sting the crooked conscience; and Israel is a fact, predicted in the whole rich texture of history, after discipline to return, after horror and gross loss of life, to become a nation, after folly to be brought back, after mockery to become strong. Like a splinter in the finger is Israel to many, lovers of opera perhaps, but not of divine work, of words in the air, not work on the ground. Israel is on the ground...

If Israel is to continue as a vibrant nation, then the biblical promise of just that is fulfilled, as it has been for the last 56 years. That upsets the secularist, troubles the humanist, brings anguish to the agnostic, alarm to many an atheist, and becomes one of those things which has increased, is increasing and ought to be decreased, to use that famous British wording of another field. Thus religious renegacy and relativism, subordination to other aims continue apace (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 11, News 122, 132, Tender Times ... Ch. 8), while the Middle East MUST be insoluble because it is averse to the word of God as well as tilted to the point of comedy, to potent Islamic interests, including oil.

If for a little time, there will be a measure of peace (as in I Thessalonians 5), yet it is but for the contrast of the destruction to follow.

Mockery of God, allied to mockery of justice, allied to a long continued assault on the Jew, these things have their come-uppance. It is rather like some senior boys in a Primary School, who grow used to their domination and extortion; but when they go to High School they are most junior. So when God acts, these atrocities against the Jew meet their calamities, and they are most deserved (cf. Isaiah 51:21-23, Micah 7:14ff., Deuteronomy 32:39ff., Ezekiel 38ff., Isaiah 49:24ff., 41:11-12). When it is all over, and when the nations have crawled into their holes (Micah 7), and the Lord has delivered His people, moving their hearts the while to seek Him, then

"the Gentiles shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity:
because they were unfaithful to Me, I hid My face from them.

"I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword.

"According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I have dealt with them, and hidden My face from them.

"Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for My holy name - after they have borne their shame ...

"When I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations,
then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations ..." (colour added).

 This, "after many days ... in the latter years ...", and again, it is a time when there is no more recidivism, when Israel is no more prone to folly (Ezekiel 37:28, 37:23), yes even THAT Israel who went into exile among the nations for folly, and was returned from those nations for the purposes of divine honour and commitment, to fulfil it. Two parties will be caused to know what the Lord is doing, just as in Egypt in the Exodus, when Pharaoh and his company did not know, being dead, but those who were left had reason to know. What then did these parties know ? and will the nations come to know as time moves to its last chapter for the Age ? It is this:  that God means what He says, and putting His hand to a task, does it as He says.

He is not tripped by trivia, curtailed by creation or compromised by the puny expressions of human sagacity and their minimal might. Even when man gets his hands on the forms and formulae of creation, to some extent, as in the hydrogen bomb, he is merely fiddling with the equivalent of levers. His use of them, long foreseen (cf. SMR pp. 790ff.), is not a bargaining chip, but a divine exposure of His own foresight in declaring in advance that such use would be made.

Nor, even in view of this,  is there any ground for a sense of human futility; for the utility of prophecy lies in its vigorous attestation of total divine comprehension of all things, and hence of His power to lead, guide and govern His people wisely and effectively. Are some not His people ? But of course, those who prefer darkness to the light of life, the power of God and the word of His will (John 3:19, 14:6, 8:37ff.).

Thus, just as Israel knew what the word of the Lord was, when He led them through the Red Sea, through the desert (disciplining them the while as needed), to the land promised; so the Gentiles as well as Israel will know when the Lord deals, not this time with some one empire like Egypt, but with the combined nations in their inveterate hostility, and defiant endeavours to control His land by their own means. Indeed, Micah 7:15ff. makes just such a point, and in these verses you see not only that this divine attention to the bullies and blow-hards among the nations is to be a parallel exercise to that of the Lord in the case of a once bullying Egypt, but that they will have superabundant cause to remember the situation they inherit in their belligerent bluster and pompous intent towards His land.

Already as in SMR Ch. 9, we have seen so many of the preliminaries; a few things remain, and wise is he, wise is she who heeds. You know those young dogs or feckless older ones which cannot hold, cannot come to heel, know no way of heeding, for their blood is up, their tails are a tornado, their eyes leap at the things to be found, and they gush and flush in an exuberance which finds restraint intolerable ? Dogs are not alone in this. The nations, reckless, feckless, heedless, will know; they will have reason at last, to know what they ignored reason at first to find out! (cf. The Defining Drama Ch. 10).

Such knowledge is coming, and the arrogance of Europe is to be met (cf. With Heart ... Ch. 10, Great Execrations ... Ch. 4, The Bright Light ... Ch. 2,  *1, Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 4; and consult It Calls ... Ch. 1).

It is important not to follow empires,

whether of vain thought or vicious power, cultivated self-direction or agile autonomy,
skipping birth, the grave and the ground of all things.

It is vital to find God, follow His word,

the alone placarded Gospel of grace, and to know Him (cf. SMR Ch. 1, TMR Ch. 3, Barbs ... 6).

 

Not knowing your Maker, or making him up so that he is to your taste,

it is like using earth for soup and air for steak; yes,

and a mud puddle near a swamp, for your bottled water.

It can be done … yes, it can be; and it is amazingly popular in the spiritual sphere.


 

 

NOTES

*1

See Red Alert Ch. 13.

*2 See Galloping Events ... Ch. 4, Great Execrations ... Ch. 4.

 

*2A See It Bubbles ... Ch. 1.
 

*3 See Lord of Life ... Ch. 8, *1A.

*4 See Things Old and NewEpilogue 10. See also News 195.