by Vic on May.31, 2009, under End Times
The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 15 Issue: 4 – Monday, May 04, 2009
Jack Kinsella – www.omegaletter.com
YE Are My Witnesses. . .
Tomorrow Israeli President Shimon Peres will meet with President Barack Hussein Obama. Over the next four days, he will also hold meetings with Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon.
The purpose of his trip is to find out if Israel is on its own when it comes to dealing with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That’s not the way that Israel is framing it officially, of course. Officially, Peres is here to ’emphasize the urgency’ of the Iranian nuclear program and to express the Netanyahu administration’s commitment to the peace process.
You know, we’ve been using the phrase ‘peace process’ for more than fifteen years — it is sometimes helpful to revisit phrases like that to see if they still apply.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary actually uses the ‘peace process’ to illustrate the word’s primary meaning:
“1) a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end : ie., military operations could jeopardize the peace process.
In order for there to be a peace ‘process’, then, there must be a series of actions and steps taken that lead to peace.
This is less a point than it is an observation. If the term ‘peace process’ is to have any meaning at all, then it cannot apply to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israel wants peace on any terms that ensure its’ survival. The Palestinian side wants to use peace as a means to destroy the Jewish State. That isn’t an opinion. It has been the stated intention of the Palestinian Authority since shortly after it was created.
Arafat first referred to the Oslo ‘process’ as a ‘Quriyash Treaty’ in early 1994. Mohammed entered into a treaty with the Quriyash that he had no intention of keeping.
For Mohammed, it was a strategic decision to buy time to regroup and build his forces up so he could defeat the Quriyash and capture Mecca.
When he captured Mecca, it is said he personally beheaded some 800 Quriyash leaders, including those foolish enough to make a treaty with him.
The peace ‘process’ is now openly referred to as a ‘hudna’ — which specifically refers to a Quriyash-like agreement that allows one side to rearm and regroup before resuming the conflict. This is the ‘process’ that the Obama administration is committed to.
The process is called “land for peace” but the goal is to use whatever land is acquired as a staging area for a war of annihilation against Israel. It is a euphemism that, in the end, still calls for Israel’s destruction, but Israel is desperate for whatever peace it can get.
Peace today and war tomorrow is better than war today and war tomorrow, even if that makes it necessary to define ‘peace’ as the temporary absence of military action.
Obama’s advisers’ recommendation of a “more pragmatic approach” to the rejectionist rulers of Gaza, the Palestinian Hamas, is just one of the worries Israel has concerning the new administration. It is not even the biggest one.
Former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said out loud at the AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) what the Israeli government has so far only said to itself behind closed doors.
“They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we’ve ever seen,” Gingrich said of the Obama administration.
“There’s almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world,” he told the Jerusalem Post just before he delivered his address.
He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement on Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”
Instead, Newt said, the US should be sending the message to Israel that “we are for the survival of Israel” and that “we are not going to tolerate Iran getting nuclear weapons.”
Obama’s administration has focused its attention on restarting the peace ‘process’ while expressing its desire to engage Iran. Given that Iran has dedicated itself to Israel’s destruction for the past thirty years, the only way to ‘engage’ Iran is to appear to favor the Palestinian side as the ‘process’ moves forward.
Israel can’t afford to allow that to happen.
Assessment:
A joint survey commissioned by Bar-Ilan University and the Anti-Defamation League seems to suggest that Israel really won’t let it happen, either.
A whopping two-thirds of the country said they would support a strike against Iran if diplomatic and economic efforts don’t shut down its uranium enrichment process.
And 75% of those who support military action against Iran say they would support it even if it meant going up against the Obama administration. The poll found that those who believe America would come to Israel’s aid in the event of a serious crisis has slipped four percentage points since 2007.
And while we’re examining Israeli attitudes, the poll asked why respondents thought that Israel and America were close allies.
Fully 49% believe that is it due to strategic interests, compared with 15% who believe the two nations have shared values. What that means is that fully half of Israeli Jews believe that, if America’s strategic interests were to change, so would its support of Israel.
Only fifteen percent of Israelis trust the American people to do the right thing because it is the right thing. And while 72% of Israelis have a positive view of the US, the US is Israel’s only major ally and one of only a handful of nations who support its right to exist.
It isn’t the seventy-two percent who view the US positively that is significant — it is the twenty-eight percent that don’t.
The poll found that 63 percent of those questioned believe Israel will suffer from Obama’s declared intention to reconcile with the Muslim and Arab worlds.
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Golda Meir famously noted that “the Arabs can fight, and lose, and return to fight another day. Israel can only lose once.” In the event of a nuclear conflict, Israel cannot even afford to win.
A study compiled for the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has already wargamed an all-out nuclear war between Iran and Israel. In the CSIS estimate, Israel would ‘win’ in the sense that it would survive the conflict. CSIS estimates that such a war would last about three weeks and would kill between 16 and 28 million Iranians and between 200 and 800 thousand Israelis.
The reason for the lopsided death toll is that Israel has more than 200 nuclear warheads and has air, land and sea launch capabilities.
The wargame also took into consideration what would happen if Syria were to join the battle using its massive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. CSIS estimates that would kill another 800 thousand Israelis, but that Damascus would be ‘obliterated’ and Syria could suffer as many as 18 million casualties.
Given certain conditions, Israel could potentially survive such a nuclear scenario, the study found. Iran, on the other hand, would be completely and utterly obliterated. “Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of term, though Israeli recovery is theoretically possible in population and economic terms,” wrote Anthony Cordesman, who compiled this study entitled “Iran, Israel, and Nuclear War”.
The CSIS wargame scenario contains some echoes of Bible prophecy. The Gog-Magog Invasion of Israel, for example. Ezekiel presents the invaders as primarily members of the Islamic alliance under Iran — Russia is drawn in reluctantly, but Ezekiel does not specify how.
“And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet.”
What if the shields and helmets and horses and horsemen are all literal, rather than symbolic? The EMP pulse generated by a nuclear war would make Ezekiel’s description of the weaponry involved a scientific reality. It is entirely possible that such an EMP blast could affect parts of Russia, both predicating the invasion and dictating what kind of weapons would be available for use.
As for Syria, Isaiah speaks of the burden of Damascus, the world’s oldest, continuously inhabited city. “Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. Isaiah 17:1) Since Damascus has never been destroyed, this remains a yet future prophecy. It sounds as if CSIS used Isaiah as a template for its wargame scenario.
“The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. . . ” (Isaiah 17:13-14a)
Admittedly, I am speculating as to the details — I don’t know if the CSIS scenario will play out as they war gamed it or not. But I am confident that the Bible’s scenario will play out as written.
The Bible’s scenario pictures the Gog-Magog invasion force as some kind of post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” force invading Israel on horseback. Maybe it is symbolic. Maybe it is literal. But the nations named are all poised on the edge of non-conventional war with Israel.
I don’t know if Damascus will attack Israel with its unconventional missile arsenal or not. But in the event that Israel believed it was about to be attacked by biological and chemical weapons, Damascus would most certainly cease to exist, either in retaliation for such an attack, or as a preemptive strike to prevent such an attack. Remember, Israel can only lose once.
But despite all the things we don’t know, there is one thing in all this that that the proves we can know.
The Bible is true.
Isaiah says that eventually, Syria will push Israel too far and Damascus will vanish overnight from the face of the earth exactly as CSIS’ wargame scenario suggests.
Whether the weaponry is literal or symbolic, Ezekiel’s scenario brings together the same anti-Israel alliances now in the process of development.
Whether or not Israel suffers the devastating casualties predicted by CSIS or whether she is able to deflect Iran’s incoming missiles, both CSIS and the Bible agree that Israel will survive.
“Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is His Name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.” (Jeremiah 31:35-36)
Jeremiah says as long as the sun rises and the moon affects the tides of the seas (how did Jeremiah know about the moon’s gravitational affect on the oceans tidal properties, anyway?) Israel will continue to exist before the Lord.
The point is not CSIS or the possible details of a possible war that may possibly break out within the next few months. Maybe it will take place when, where and how I am speculating it will, maybe it won’t.
The point is that I am looking from my informed perspective, while linked electronically to what amounts to the sum total of accumulated human knowledge (the internet) and projecting a few months into the foreseeable future and I still don’t KNOW. I can only speculate.
The Bible’s prophets didn’t speculate, they KNEW. They weren’t linked to the internet, they were linked with Almighty God. They weren’t projecting a few months into the foreseeable future, they were looking thousands of years into the future, into a world that they couldn’t even imagine existing.
Here’s what the Bible’s prophets knew thousands of years ago. They knew Iran and Syria would eventually attack Israel.
They knew Damascus would be destroyed and Iran cast back into the Stone Age. They knew that Israel would survive.
More than that, they knew that there would BE an Israel in the last days so this scenario could move forward. Even though in their world, Israel had long since ceased to exist.
This is a great place to revisit the purpose of Bible prophecy for the last days. For those who have only the daily news to inform them, this world is a terrifying place filled with terrifying people who have terrifying intentions.
Nothing seems to make an discernible sense: Why would the world hate Israel? Why wouldn’t the world hate the sponsors of terror? What would prompt Iran or Syria to risk national suicide in order to wipe out a tiny country that presents no threat to them, rather than make peace? What comes next? Are we all going to die in a sudden, nuclear, instant of time? Do we HAVE a future?
But for those who understand Bible prophecy, what appears to be chaos and mayhem is actually evidence of Divine Sovereignty and Providential provision.
Prophecy is God’s Signature, His seal of authenticity, the evidence both that He is, and that He is intimately involved in human existence and well-being. The Lord hurls out His challenge to the soothsayers and false religionists, none of whom are foolish enough to take it up.
“Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth. . . I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are My witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.” (Isaiah 43:9, 11)
“Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure: (Isaiah 46:9-10)
If you don’t know these things, then this is a scary time to be alive. On the other hand, if you do, it is truly a blessing beyond measure. We are the generation of whom all the prophets wrote. We are eyewitnesses to the awesome power of God.
“therefore ye are My witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.”
Awesome.
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