Palestinians

Missiles Fired at Jerusalem

Friday was a potentially game-changing day for Israel. For the first time since 1970, Iranian-made missiles were fired at Jerusalem from terrorists in Gaza.

Joel C. Rosenberg just posted to his blog:

Friday was a potentially game-changing day for Israel. For the first time since 1970, Iranian-made missiles were fired at Jerusalem from terrorists in Gaza. Missiles were also fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv. Air raid sirens were blaring in both cities this evening, rattling residents because of their exceedingly rare nature. As I write this late Friday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Security Cabinet have been meeting for several hours behind closed doors. One decision has been made for certain: Israel is now calling up 75,000 reserve soldiers, not the 30,000 that were just approved on Thursday.

The big question now: Will the Palestinian terrorists’ attacks on Jerusalem, Israel’s political and religious capital — and Tel Aviv, its largest population center and its commercial capital — trigger an IDF ground invasion of Gaza?

Israel is certainly moving rapidly to prepare for such a possibility.

Israel At War Day 3: Is ground war coming?

I just remembered asking: What do Israel’s enemies make of the result?

Maybe there’s no connection between that and this.

Update at 2:20 pm Pacific: BREAKING: Israeli officials tell nation to prepare for 7 weeks of war:

Home Front Command asks local authorities to prepare for seven-week fighting period […] The Home Front Command sharpened instructions for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and southern residents and, accordingly, communities located in a range of between 40-75 kilometers from the Gaza Strip must enter nearby, protected spaces the moment blasts or sirens are heard. If there is no protected space in the vicinity, residents should enter the nearest structure or stairwell. In light of the long-range rockets fired over the past few days, these instructions apply to all communities within a 75-kilometer range and not only in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

Israel, Hamas, and the “Gates of Hell”

Joel C. Rosenberg reports from Israel: We urgently need Christians around the world to pray for peace. The situation here is rapidly going from bad to worse.

First, from the Times of Israel:

The Israeli Air Force on Wednesday launched a series of airstrikes in Gaza City, killing Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’s armed wing — the equivalent of an army’s chief of staff — and his son, Mohammed al-Homs. Palestinian sources put the death toll at up to nine by evening.

[…]

Hamas’s armed wing warned that in assassinating Jabari, Israel “had opened the gates of hell on itself.”

Next, from a blog post by Joel C. Rosenberg: Read it all

“Will You Stand With the Terrorists?”

Ladies and gentlemen, today’s blunt speech to the United Nations by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

I have no illusion that it made or will make a difference.

May God keep the Jews, Abraham’s children of the promise.

And may He also bless the Arabs, Abraham’s children of the flesh.*

May He bless us all, Jew and Gentile alike.

Personally.

Undeserving though we all are.

And may we each find peace and hope in that son of Abraham, Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

Amen.

* “Arabs are Abraham’s children of the flesh” — is that a true statement?

Did President Obama Say That About Israel?

What did President Obama really say?

Some of what President Obama had to say today regarding Israel is extremely alarming (though hardly surprising) to me.

But my quibble in this post is with what is being reported about part of what he said.

Did he really call for “Israel’s return to pre-1967 borders” as the headline states above?

I didn’t listen to the speech, so I’ll stick my neck out and quote the President from the story headlined above:

“We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

That seems to me to say something different than what the headline says.

What say you?

Jew

It is very difficult to hate babies.

It takes a special person.

[…]

But the human being does have to learn to hate children and babies, and to regard the torture and murder of them as morally desirable acts. It takes years of work to undo normal protective human attitudes toward children.

That is precisely what the Nazis did and what significant parts of the Muslim world have done to the word “Jew.”

[…]

Yet, when Pakistan was yanked from India and established as a Muslim state at the very same time Israel was established, that act engendered 12.5 million Muslim refugees and about a million dead Muslims (and similar numbers of Hindu refugees and deaths). Why then doesn’t “Hindu” equal “Jew” in the Muslim lexicon of hate?

Here are some answers in brief:

You can read the full article here: The Other Tsunami.

Know this, though: Matters will get worse. Much worse. And it will seem even more normal. And nothing by which to get unduly exercised. As has abortion. Which also takes “a special person” to perform, accept, tolerate, and/or ignore.

The Fogel Family
The Fogel Family

Christians, don’t forget this: Americans, Arabs, Hindus, Japanese, Jews — we all need Jesus to the exact same degree.

Whose Is Jerusalem?

I have a bias.

Is it wrong to be biased?

Well, here’s part of the story referenced in the title:

The demolition of an east Jerusalem hotel to make way for Jewish homes in a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood is sparking concerns from Europe to Egypt, which suggests a new intifada could break out as a result.

The Shepherd Hotel project will bring only 20 Jewish homes to Sheikh Jarrah, but it is at the forefront of a broader, intensely controversial Jewish campaign to establish a foothold in Arab neighborhoods circling the heart of Jerusalem.

Proponents see the efforts as a way to secure Jews’ rightful claims to the city as their “undivided and eternal capital.” Opponents, including much of the international community, say such efforts will preclude the possibility of creating a Palestinian state with a capital in east Jerusalem, thus rendering the two-state solution null and void.

“If current trends are not stopped as a matter of urgency, the prospect of east Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state becomes increasingly unlikely and unworkable,” wrote 25 consuls-general from European Union member states in Jerusalem in a new confidential report obtained by the Independent. “This, in turn, seriously endangers the chances of a sustainable peace on the basis of two states, with Jerusalem as their future capital.”

[…]

After the 1967 war and its annexation of east Jerusalem, Israel took possession of the hotel under its absentee property laws, which apply to buildings whose owners are absent or considered members of an enemy state.

Source: Shrewd development deal likely to preclude possibility of creating Palestinian state

Regarding Jerusalem and the “West Bank” (How much more time must pass before it becomes the “East Bank”?!) and the 1967 war, surely there’s a parallel to this not-so-long-ago perspective in American domestic politics:

“Elections have consequences.”

“I won.”

But I don’t expect anything I say to make a difference, so I’ll just not say more.

I’ll just quote somebody else, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

Above all, love God!