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Processed PeaceLast Sunday's two bomb blasts in Israel, which killed 25 people and wounded 77, produced the usual shock and outrage among those in Israel and the West who still have faith that terrorists and fanatics don't mean what they say and don't say what they mean. For those keeping score, the latest terrorist attacks bring to 80 the number killed in suicide bombings by the extremist Hamas and Islamic Jihad since the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin "made peace" with the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993. The total dead from all terrorist attacks since that agreement is at least 150. This isn't a peace process. It is processed peace, which, like processed cheese, can look like the real thing but is full of ingredients that may not contribute to the health of those who swallow it. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has devised a brilliant strategy for achieving in negotiations what he and Arab leaders have been unable to achieve on the battlefield — the wholesale destruction of Israel. Arafat repeatedly states his intentions to friendly audiences and in private gatherings of sympathetic diplomats and liberal peace groups. While his remarks are reported in Middle East press outlets, most Western publications ignore them, and most Western diplomats make apologies for him. On January 30, Arafat is reported to have told a closed meeting of Arab ambassadors in Stockholm that he expects to see the collapse of Israel and that the establishment of a Palestinian state is imminent. Arafat's remarks were first reported by a Norwegian newspaper and later confirmed by Israel's most respected military correspondent, Ze'ev Schiff in the Ha'aretz newspaper. According to notes taken by one of the attendees, Arafat said, "The PLO will now concentrate on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have 6 to 7 million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem." Arafat plans his own "right of return" strategy in which Muslims will be brought from outside the Palestinian state in order to overwhelm the Jewish population. Arafat reportedly said, "We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews." This is not the first time Arafat has revealed his true intentions, but who in the West believes him? The Clinton administration and Israel's Labor government are pulling the wool over their own eyes. They are being played for suckers by Arafat, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who see Israel's repeated "land-for-peace" concessions as evidence of weakness. A Feb. 23 editorial in the Jerusalem Post asserts that Israeli government officials "on the highest level have agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza and Judea-Samaria (the West Bank), with a connecting extraterritorial corridor, and have acknowledged the right of this state to 'bring us as many Arab refugees' from neighboring countries as it wishes." According to the newspaper, the plan also calls for dividing Jerusalem into Arab and Israeli sectors — with Arab suburbs and neighboring villages incorporated into the Arab area. The new boldness of Arafat and his terrorist friends follows an agreement between the PLO and Hamas in which Hamas will continue to fight Israel, attacking everywhere except in the Palestinian-controlled area known as Zone A to avoid embarrassing the Palestinian authority. Not only has Israel conceded land and plans to relinquish even more with no evidence that peace is any closer, but it also has released known terrorists who have pledged to destroy the Jewish state and who are committed to the unrepealed Palestinian Covenant, which calls for Israel's total eradication. "We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem," Arafat is said to have told the Arab diplomats in Stockholm. After the terrorist incidents last weekend, commentator Moshe Zak wrote in the Jerusalem Post that it is "a commonly entertained delusion that conducting talks with Arafat and his cronies can somehow cause Palestinian terrorism to go away. Palestinian terror cannot be uprooted by any gesture, act or plan of reconciliation." In light of the deeds that followed Arafat's words in Stockholm, there is every reason to believe that in this case the Palestinian leader is telling the truth.
As if to prove Thomas right, there was yet another bombing in Tel Aviv a
few days after this column ran.
To Whom Does Jerusalem Belong?The Jews say it belongs to Israel. It was the political capital and Temple worship center of the ancient Commonwealth for over 1,000 years, has been the spiritual home of the Jewish people ever since, and is understood to be the future capital of the Messiah. The Arabs say it belongs to Islam. It is the third most sacred place to Moslem believers, next to Mecca and Medina. The city was under Moslem control from the seventh century until World War I, with the one-century exception during the Crusades. The Papacy says it belongs to Christendom. Jerusalem is sacred to Christians because of both Old and New Testament associations, and is the site of the death and resurrection of Christ. The holy sites are of great concern, of which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is supreme. The United Nations says it belongs to the world. Jerusalem is revered by the world's three great monotheistic religions, and is critical as a hot spot that could well endanger world peace. Therefore, the U.N. wants to "internationalize" the city, so that no one ethnic or religious group would have control.
Jerusalem Under Israel and JordanWhat should the attitude be among those of us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are evangelicals? Our conviction is that all of the Land of Israel, including Jerusalem, belongs to the Jewish people by divine decree, and we should recognize their rights of ownership. During the last three decades, in which most of the Land has been under Israeli control, evangelical Christians have had full and free access to just about all of the country. Christian tourists have been welcome, and there has been no problem seeing all of the marvelous biblical sites. The holy places of all religions are kept sacrosanct, and Jews, Moslems and Christians may visit these places and rest assured that no important site will be desecrated. Such could not be said when the country in general, and Jerusalem in particular, was under Moslem control. My wife and I were in Jerusalem in 1965, on a tour with Dr. Charles Feinberg. This, of course, was before the Six-Day War in 1967, and Jerusalem was part of the Kingdom of Jordan, and ruled by King Hussein. East and West Jerusalem were separated by a jagged zone called "no man's land." The Mandelbaum Gate was the only way anyone could get from one side to the other. It was like Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. As a practical matter, no civilians could pass from Israel into Jordan, and about the only civilians who could pass from Jordan to Israel were foreign tourists. Once Christians got into Jordan, they could visit most of the New Testament holy places, but getting to Jordan was a serious problem, and the problem was created by the unwillingness of Jordan to cooperate with Israel. As the Jordanians would not allow tourists to go from Israel into Jordan, we had to go to Jordan first, via Egypt, and then go into Israel through the Mandelbaum Gate. When Jerusalem was divided, it was difficult for pilgrims to visit the many important biblical sites.
The Western Wall Under Moslem ControlThe entire Old City in 1965 was in Jordan, along with most of the biblical sites. This included the Dome of the Rock, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. One of the places we wanted to visit was the Western Wall, sometimes called the Wailing Wall. Those who are familiar with the Wall as it is today, with its spacious plaza and daily crowds of people who come to worship and pray, can scarcely imagine what it was like in 1965. In actuality, it was a slum. The Arab houses were built up to within about ten feet of the Wall, and the space between was like an alley. Really, it was worse than that, because all around were the odors of a latrine. The Western Wall, closed in as a dank alleyway, was deserted then. No Jews were praying at this most sacred of sites to Judaism. No young boys were performing their Bar Mitzvah rites of reading the Torah, with all their admiring family rejoicing at the Wall. It was deserted when Jordan had control of the Old City. No Jews were allowed at the Western Wall for about 20 years.
Transformation of Jerusalem Under Jewish ControlWhat a difference when Israel recaptured the Old City in 1967. Within months, the old slum was cleared away from the Wall, a grand plaza was established, and hundreds to thousands of people began gathering there daily to pray and worship the God of Abraham and Moses. Once Jerusalem was reunited under Jewish control, the Moslems had free and total access to the Dome of the Rock, the Al Aksa Mosque, and all their holy places throughout the Land. Christians also, including evangelicals, have had complete and unfettered access to all the important places in Israel, including the Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden Tomb, the Mount of Olives, and all the Sea of Galilee. One shudders to think of what might happen if Jerusalem were again to be taken out of the hands of the Jewish people, even if it were placed under the U.N. or the Papacy, much less the P.L.O. Both evangelical Christians and Jews could well find themselves having much-reduced access to the scriptural sites. Furthermore, God never gave legal title of Jerusalem to Moslems or Christians or the United Nations. He gave the legal right to Jerusalem to Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. What right do we have to try to nullify this grant to Israel from the Lord?
The Push to Remove Jerusalem from Israeli Control
Our conviction, therefore, is that both the scriptural mandates and the interests
of Jews and evangelical Christians (and peace-loving Arabs, for that matter) are
best served by Jerusalem remaining in the hands of Israel until the Lord returns.
Already, for years, our U.S. government under two administrations and the U.N.
have applied pressure on Israel to surrender strategic territory to Moslem
interests. In spite of the strong reservations of many Jews and evangelical
Christians, it appears that our various governments may well try to remove
Jerusalem from Israeli control. This is very regrettable, and we should resist such
efforts wherever possible. Nevertheless, as the Bible teaches that Jerusalem will
be a cup of trembling and a burdensome stone for all the nations in the End
Times
(Zech. 12:2-3),
we should not be surprised.
Dear Friends, I was in New Orleans for a speaking engagement recently and I saw an interesting chart of statistics. It seems that in Jerusalem from January 1 to March 3 there were 45 people murdered, and this, of course, included the awful bombings by the Palestinians. (I know it's politically correct to say "by Hamas," but the members of Hamas, after all, are Palestinians.) That certainly was the worst year in the history of modern Jerusalem, but New Orleans, the chart stated, had 63 murders during that time. The point of the chart, of course, was to emphasize how bad things are in New Orleans, but it did get me to thinking about how benign things really are in Israel. Let me provide some more statistics. In the period of 1969-1995, Ireland (a country that can be compared to Israel as having internal strife and terrorism problems) had 3,161 killed. New York City had about 50,000 people murdered (a rate of around 2,000 per year). Washington, D.C., comparable in size to Jerusalem, during that time had 7,502 murders. In Israel, murders committed through terrorism or other crimes would number less than 500 during that time span. Israel is by far the safest of any of these places, but Israel gets more publicity about violence than any of them. This entire "peace process," which is decimating the country and leading to war, is unnecessary to begin with. Were you convinced by the recent conference on terrorism, where the big shots of umpteen nations gathered in a gorgeous resort city on the Red Sea? That conference was designed to shore up Yasser Arafat, and if you believe in the conference then you'll believe in Arafat — that he's a wonderful peacemaker who is simply stymied at the moment by unruly elements he has difficulty controlling. The nation of Syria, home base to virtually all of the terrorism groups that were discussed at the conference, was not available for the meeting. We will continue sending our Secretary of State, and perhaps even our President, to beg Syria's dictator to condescend to make some deal for "peace." Jordan was "shocked" by the bombings in Israel. "We are a democracy," they exclaimed, wringing their hands over the disasters perpetrated by their fellow Palestinians. The King and Queen of Jordan, however, have been heavily criticized by their subjects for attending the funeral of Rabin. And speaking of funerals, at the one for the "Engineer," the bomber who destroyed so many lives, a 21-gun salute was fired (per Arafat's order) as though he were a military hero. How much heroism does it take to simply be the designer of a bomb that some loony is going to use to blow up himself and everyone around him? We are not saluting the bombers who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City — a bombing, by the way, which killed more people in one blast than have died in all the bombings in modern Israel's history. Well, I could go on and on, of course, and I realize that I have on this subject, but today nothing is more important than prophecy, and in the field of prophecy no land is more important than Israel. If we are right-thinking Bible readers, we will watch very carefully what is going on with God's country, and we will draw from our observations conclusions about the end of the age. In the meantime, as you read this I will be packing to take our Spring Tour to Greece and Israel. I expect to have a safe and secure time, as usual. The Palestinians have never targeted tourists, which would not serve their interests. The bombings are not haphazard, but aimed where they will hurt Israel the most. So Americans, in effect, have a "free pass." I encourage you to make your pilgrimage in this lifetime. It's really something to see, and as I have often said before, I sleep perfectly in Jerusalem. In reality, our buses go nowhere near the target zones, and they are private tourist buses on which only our people can ride. They do not stop and take on or discharge other passengers. Our tour remains insulated from the native population other than when we choose to debark. Although it is too late for you to go with us this spring, you can be considering our Fall Festival Tour, which is scheduled so that it encompasses the high holy days of the Day of Atonement and the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles. The 10-day Israel tour will depart on September 18 and return on September 27, and will include the major biblical sites. The Grand Tour will run from September 18 to October 1, and will include those same sites, plus an additional excursion into Jordan to see Mount Nebo and the ancient city of Petra before heading down to the south of Israel to spend two overnights in Eilat, a beautiful resort city on the shore of the Red Sea. Please call our answering service at 1-800-WONDERS (966-3377) or Cynthia at 214-690-1876 for a free brochure. Our film crew will be travelling along with our Spring Tour this April and making a series of programs so that those of you who are unable to come with us to Israel can enjoy a video tour at home. It will be the closest thing to actually touring with us. We will give you more details in later issues of this newsletter.
Your messenger,
The following article appeared in a March 21, 1996 release by CAMERA (the
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America). Andrea Levin is their
president.
The recent, unprecedented terrorism in Israel that took 61 lives and maimed hundreds topped the news briefly and disappeared, but not before exposing an array of journalistic abuses that recur in coverage of atrocities against Israelis. Chief among them is the pervasive obfuscating of the nature and ferocity of the hatred that propels the killers. Reports on Hamas' Jerusalem bus bombings, the first of which was timed to commemorate the anniversary of the Hebron massacre of 29 Arabs by Baruch Goldstein on February 25, 1994, are instructive. Not only was the reporting a fraction of that devoted to the Hebron events, the coverage of the bombings was devoid of reference to the hatred systematically inculcated in its followers by Hamas. ABC's Peter Jennings had, for example, unhesitatingly identified Goldstein as "An Israeli with a history of hating Palestinians," and the network's correspondent Dean Reynolds had ascribed an "Arab-hating style" to rabbis linked with Goldstein. But the slaughter of 61 Israelis by Hamas and Islamic Jihad was not once portrayed as the manifestation of Jew-hatred, whether as an attribute of the twisted mind of the individual suicide bomber or as a guiding feature of an entire movement. Nor, in the same vein, has ABC ever reported to its millions of viewers on the crude, anti-Semitic charter of Hamas which spells out the aims of the group. The document attributes every earthly evil to the Jews — world wars, revolutions, disease, exploitation — and calls for the eradication of all Jewish presence in "Palestine." But ABC was not alone in its telling circumlocutions. In the aftermath of the bombings, the New York Times managed to produce a 4,000-word, front-page story on Hamas by John Kifner entitled "Alms and Arms: Tactics in a Holy War" that detailed the ethos and functioning of the organization, but omitted any mention of the centrality of violent anti-Semitism as enshrined in its charter, taught to its children and proclaimed from its mosques. Again, comparison of the Times' coverage elsewhere is noteworthy. Kifner displayed no reticence about asserting in a November, 1995, news report that some of Israel's religious right are imbued with a "hatred of Arabs." Times reporters David Shipler and Clyde Haberman have in the past also expounded, whether accurately or not, on themes of Jewish animosity toward Arabs. There has never been, however, the same readiness — and direct language employed — in identifying hatred as a prominent, driving force within Hamas and other Arab entities that assault Israel. The media have virtually ignored the smoldering anti-Semitism in the Arab world generally, a hatred promoted by Arab governments as well as by militant Islamic groups and unmoderated even in the recent era of negotiations and agreements. Against this background of wider media silence, the failure in the wake of the recent atrocities to examine candidly the ideology of Hamas is particularly notable. As coverage of the bombings moved beyond the first days' scenes of carnage and the tableaux of funerals to Israeli efforts at rounding up potential terrorists and deterring further attacks, the familiar shift to hectoring Israel ensued. Thus CBS's Bob Simon, in a report on March 6 on Palestinian Authority police raids against Islamic institutions, wisecracked that "They played the role of Israelis of yesteryear, and played it to perfection. . . ." Palestinians are shown kicking in doors and, in Simon's words, "scrounging for evidence of complicity with the Hamas bombing campaign." Simon then takes viewers to the scene of an Arab family moving possessions out of a house about to be sealed. A young Palestinian woman with a child in her lap cries out asking where she will live. "Certainly not in the orphanage," Simon intones, "The Israelis closed that down too. . . ." Simon deserves additional recognition for perverse inversions. Even at the moment of Israel's terrifying encounter with death in the streets of Tel Aviv, the reporter did not flag — he made the event into one of Israeli bloodlust. Israelis "are demanding blood, and Peres will have to produce it," he declared. On March 12th ABC's Bill Redeker filed a story from the Gaza beachfront where he reported that Israeli border closures enacted in response to the bombings had even restricted access to the sea, idling 5,000 fishermen. A baker was also interviewed complaining he could not get needed flour from Israel to make bread. The final stop was a cancer ward in Gaza's Shifa Hospital where a brown-eyed child said, "They are hurting us. Why do they allow us to suffer?" At no point did Redeker advise his audience that Gaza has become a storehouse and training base for terrorism, with arms and explosives sometimes brought in by sea, or that Yasser Arafat abetted all this. No mention was made of Arafat's diversion of funds to create competing armed militias, instead of to improve cancer treatment for children or to address small business needs. The onus, instead, was on Israel for the plight of the civilian population. Redeker observed that, "For now most of the anger remains directed at the Israelis, not Yasser Arafat. On the Gaza waterfront one fisherman says maybe we should have another uprising." Among the most questionable follow-up stories to the first Jerusalem bombing was CNN reporter Jerrold Kessel's visit to the hospital bedside of a Palestinian injured in the attack. Kessel says, "Sunday's Jerusalem bus bomb not only killed over 20 Israelis, it also brought agony to a Palestinian family." Viewers might be forgiven for asking why, after an unprecedented assault on Israelis, the only human interest story on the victims was one about an admittedly unfortunate, but accidental Arab casualty. When Kessel went on to report that neighbors of the Arab patient believe "We must do to the Israelis what they have done to us," he did not take the opportunity to explain that Israelis have never blown up a Palestinian bus. A rare and timely story by the Washington Post's David Hoffman gave a context to the calamities individual Israelis have suffered in the wave of atrocities. He interviewed young survivors of 1994's terror attack on a bus in Afula, in northern Israel. Some are physically scarred and all have been affected emotionally. Hoffman writes that, "Forty people were injured in Afula, and more than 560 have suffered injuries in the subsequent attacks. But beyond the carnage, grief and tragedy of each bomb is a story of lasting suffering, not only for victims but for their families, friends and society. Each attack has left concentric circles of pain and anger engraved on those who were touched by it. . . ."
In a small nation where so many have been touched in the struggle to survive, it
is all the more striking that so few journalists have provided their audiences the
quiet perspective of Hoffman's piece.
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Copyright © 1996 by Zola Levitt Ministries, Inc., a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. All rights reserved. Brief passages may be quoted in reviews or other article. For all other use, please get our written approval.
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