Islam

January 13, 2022 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

The United Nations Against My People!

In 1920, only a couple of years after World War One, the League of Nations, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, was founded following the Paris Peace Conference. It operated for 26 years to keep the peace between nations and promote unity. As is delineated in its covenant: “The High Contracting parties, to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.”

At its peak, the League of Nations had 58 members/countries. At the onset of World War Two, it was clear that the League had failed its purpose and remained inactive throughout the war and was completely dissolved in 1946, soon to be replaced by the United Nations headquartered in New York. Within a year of its inception, the United Nations voted for the partitioning of British Mandate Palestine on November 29, 1947. Within eleven minutes of Israel declaring its independence on May 14, 1948, President Truman was the first world leader to congratulate David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the newly formed country. Even though not all countries voted in favor of the partitioning of British Mandate Palestine, those were the good years of the United Nations. How quickly did things change!

One factor that we shouldn’t ignore is that several of the current countries represented at the United Nations (193 today from 51 at its foundation) are antagonistic towards the Jewish State and the Jewish people – and those nations have become very influential in the drafting and passing of UN resolutions over the years. Looking at 2021 only, we inevitably notice an incredible bias against Israel with an unjustifiable imbalance in the number of resolutions passed against the Jewish State. Seriously, if aliens would land on earth and look at the records of the United Nations resolutions for the past several decades, those aliens, concluding Israel to be the worst country on the planet, would solely be basing that assumption on those resolutions passed to serve an agenda – the demonization of the State of Israel!

According to UNWatch, 14 resolutions were passed against Israel (population 9.5 MM) in 2021, while five were passed against the rest of the world (population 7.9B), which shows the bias against Israel! Israel represents only .012% of the world population. There was three times more resolution against a country the size of New Jersey than against the rest of the entire world. This happened during the 76th session of the UN General Assembly for 2021-2022.

The five countries against whom resolutions were passed for human rights violations were–and rightfully so–Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, and Crimea. What about China, Russia, Sudan and so many more countries that abuse human rights, kill their own and rule with an iron fist? What about the Palestinian Hamas leadership, for that matter? They use their own civilians as human shields, and nobody says anything. It would be one thing if the resolutions against Israel were justified. We could argue that Israel’s foul play has led the UN to pass justified resolutions against the Jewish state, but that would be if Israel were guilty of foul play. Let’s consider some of these resolutions:

November 2021: Senegal and Yemen drafted a resolution titled “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine”. In it, paragraph after paragraph, under the umbrella of the General Assembly, Israel was demonized. It was requested that Israel’s borders be brought back to pre-1967, which has become known as the “Auschwitz borders”, leaving Israel indefensible with only a nine-mile width at its narrowest point. It also asked for “The realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent State“. This demand for the self-determination of the Palestinian people in their independent state would be honorable if the Palestinians were a real people group, but they are not. There is no question that Palestinians are real people and that from 1948 on they have been dealt with unfairly, but not by Israel. The people called “Palestinians” today descend from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and other neighboring countries that exist around Israel. Most of these people were not allowed back into their countries of origin after Israel became a state. They were forced – by their respective governments – to stay in Israel and become “refugees” so that the “Palestinian narrative” could have a leg to stand on. Seventy years later, not only the narrative has a leg to stand on, but it has kicked the truth out of the equation altogether. Israel has become the “unlawful occupier” of a country created out of thin air. Incidentally, there is only one short line on page two of the resolution as follows,“Condemning the firing of rockets against Israeli civilian area“. The rest of the five pages are all anti-Israel rhetoric.

December 2, 2021: UN erases all Jewish connections to the Jewish most holy site at the location of the Temple Mount/Western Wall. The UN declared: “the Council called, for the exercise of restraint, refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric and upholding unchanged the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif – in word and in practice, as well as for full respect for international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as may be applicable in Jerusalem“. The Haram al-Sharif is the Muslim name for the Temple Mount, but it is historically, biblically and archeologically well documented that it has been the site of the first Temple and subsequent ones since King Solomon who reigned from 970-931 BCE in the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

These are just two of the fourteen resolutions against Israel for 2021. If we were to go back a few years, we would see that the UN bias is very consistent. In 2017, the UN passed 20 resolutions against Israel and only 3 against the rest of the world. In 2018 21/6, in 2019, 18/7 and in 2020, 17/7. They all ignore entirely the terrorist actions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah. So, this is wrong on at least two levels. First, the accusations made against Israel are based on lies and a fabricated antisemitic narrative. Second, much of the real issues are ignored or whitewashed. There has never been so much antagonism against one country in the entire history of mankind. One has to wonder what the driving force behind all this is. From a human perspective, it is impossible to comprehend such hatred against Israel and the Jewish people. It is not until we look at this through a biblical lens that we understand that this is not a political battle, a geographical disagreement or even economic strife. No, it is 100% a spiritual battle between Satan and Israel.

God’s program recognizes the existence and activities of Satan as well as the existence and covenantal relationship that Israel has with her God. Satan is jealous and power-hungry and he hates what God loves. The United Nations has long departed from their original noble cause of world peace. Many within the organization are being manipulated by Satan to believe that the victim has become the perpetrator, and in turn, they present these lies as facts to the masses. The United Nations’ charter implies they are to unite all people in peace. Certainly, they are united – but mostly against my Jewish people!

July 30, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Appeasement is a Time Bomb Sitting on a Powder Keg!

Sir Winston Churchill once said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” This was most likely a reference to Sir Neville Chamberlain who had naively thought that he could appease Adolf Hitler. History proved Chamberlain wrong. It became one of the most common cases of failed appeasement. On September 30, 1938, when the “Munich Pact” was signed by France, Great Britain, Italy and Germany, Germany was pretty much “given” Czechoslovakia for peace purposes. In other words, within months of the start of WWII, as Hitler had already become a force to be reckoned with, he was “appeased” with Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went home, proud of his group’s achievement, and telling all that, as a result of it, they had achieved “peace in our time”. The rest is history and, suffice it to say, Mr. Chamberlain and the Allies were proven wrong about fifty million times over.

Fast forward to today, and there should really be no dialogue with those who want to replace and/or eliminate Western civilization. Appeasement is one of the greatest weaknesses of the postmodern West and will very likely become part of its demise. It is born out of a desire to remain within the acceptable boundaries of political correctness. Unfortunately, both political correctness and appeasement are seen by our enemies for what they are: weaknesses and wide-open doors to get inside our democracies and destroy them slowly from within.

When it comes to end-times anti-Semitism, appeasing the enemies of Israel and the Jews will only be done by agreeing with them and further participating in their destructive agenda. The principal recipient of the “blessing” of appeasement is the main protagonist on the scene of end-times anti-Semitism. On one side, radical Islamic ideology pervades many aspects of our daily lives and dictates what must be done next. Liberalism, on the other side, also promotes appeasement at the high cost of denigrating, ostracizing and now even killing Jewish people. Radical Islamic ideology is behind the reshaping of Europe, the United States and, of course, most of the Middle East and Asia. It has slowly infiltrated large corporations, government agencies, schools and universities and even financial institutions over the last 50 years to reshape the West in what can be called “the stealth jihad.” So, appeasement with Islam in any radical shape it might be, is a sure loss for the West.

Appeasement shows weakness and even desperation, which is exactly what we are seeing all over the world when it comes to not offending Muslims. We can have no mention of Jesus in American public schools, no wearing of kippot (Jewish skull cap) in French public schools; yet, we even take down crosses in some public places because they offend Muslims. In one case, there appeared to be so many crosses in a Catholic (that’s right, Catholic!) University that a complaint was filed claiming Muslim students were uncomfortable praying there. This is a Catholic school, for goodness’ sake. What do you expect? Why can’t they just use a different room to pray? This hatred against the Christian cross is growing all over the world and especially in Europe. Muslims have a great aversion to the cross, so everyone else must bend and take them down or cover them. I would understand if we tried to erect crosses in Muslim countries like Iran, Afghanistan, or even Saudi Arabia, but in Western Europe? Seriously?

Why appease Muslims and erase the symbol of Christianity in what used to be Christian countries? If anything, the cross is even more offensive to Jewish people because of all the carnages and persecutions done in its name against my people for the last 2,000 years (Crusades, Inquisition, Pogroms, Holocaust, etc.), but you don’t see Jewish people anywhere suing for being offended by the cross or protesting its public display. Jewish people simply walk away or do not enter into a building with a cross, end of story!

Any type of appeasement is simply an act of postponement. In the name of tolerance, political correctness, multiculturalism or even out of fear, appeasement is a time bomb connected to a powder keg, sitting under Western civilization. Appeasement should make us very upset and cause us to speak against it, but it shouldn’t lead us to hate the people who attempt appeasement. In other words, it is necessary for us all to speak up against those who try to negotiate with terrorists, murderers and haters, whether with individual people or with whole countries. The danger is that in the process of our disagreement with appeasers, we can easily sway towards hatred of those they are trying to appease, simply to prove to them that they are playing with fire and eventually will get burned. In recent history, we have moved towards pointing the finger at the enemy, whether it be ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram, Hezbollah or others. Without caution, we can find ourselves just a few steps away from racism.

It works the same for any other groups like BLM or Antifa. Violence, looting, racial slurs and destructive acts cannot be condoned by anyone for any reason. Appeasement, as good as it looks to the outside world, is a one-way street that is taken when negotiations are not an option and those appeasing appear to be a danger. It is akin to rewarding a guilty party for acts of treachery, abuse or even destruction. Appeasement is cowardice in action, and it is a clear sign of a lack of integrity!

May 21, 2021 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Is the stage being set for the prophecy of Zechariah 12:3 ?

Having been a follower of Yeshua for 37 years, I have often heard or even said that we are in the last days. To be sure, even 1st-century believers thought they were in the last days, and each day that passes puts us closer to the end of God’s program for mankind on this side of eternity. So, when people hear that we are in the last days, many of them, suffering from some sort of eschatological fatigue, roll their eyes and move on. Are those of us claiming that it is 11:59 at the eleventh hour just sensationalists? Are we overreacting and redirecting our focus on the less important at the expense of what matters in life? Frankly, it all depends on what our focus is being redirected to.

I have always been a very literal, context-driven student of God’s Word. If God left us the Bible as His message to us on how to live and what to look forward to, we can look at it from different cultural vantage points, but we must agree that it contains the same truth for all mankind. We might not like some of the statements that the Bible makes, but that doesn’t give us the authority to declare that they are not the truth. When we survey God’s counsel, we are bound to find many prophecies fulfilled and more yet to be fulfilled. We must resist “newspaper exegesis”, but we need to honestly look at the news through a Biblical lens if we want to know where we are on God’s timeline of human history.

Much of that timeline revolves around Israel as God has promised to never forsake Israel or allow for its destruction (Jeremiah 31:35-37). At a time when rockets are raining down on Israel by the hundreds, from a human perspective, the situation looks very bleak. While casualties are inevitable on both sides, God isn’t caught by surprise by the present conflict, and neither should those of us who take His word seriously. Satan’s demise clock is ticking quickly, and he is desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Satan finds, in most of the world, a plethora of willing executioners for his antisemitic agenda. Truth has long ceased to matter. Fact-checks are politically or socially motivated.

If someone believes that they are contributing to social justice, multiculturalism and tolerance, they immediately feel like they are making a difference to improve the world we live in; even if it is at the expense of someone else, and in this case, as is too often the case, at the expense of Israel and the Jewish people.

Not long after the tragedy of the Hyper Cacher Supermarket on the east side of Paris in 2015, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a piece in The Atlantic that still resonates in my head. In it, he made a sobering statement that I was really hoping was inaccurate, but as it turns out, he might have been spot on. He wrote, ” The Shoah served for a while as a sort of inoculation against the return of overt Jew-hatred—but the effects of the inoculation, it is becoming clear, are wearing off. What was once impermissible is again imaginable. Memories of 6 million Jewish dead fade, and guilt becomes burdensome….Israel is coming to be understood not as a small country in a difficult spot whose leaders, especially lately, have been making shortsighted and potentially disastrous decisions, but as a source of cosmological evil—the Jew of nations.”

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What Goldberg saw six years ago, was the erosion of Europe’s compassion towards the Jewish people. I have long been a believer that what happens in Europe, and even particularly in France, is a good indication of what is coming to America. The barometer of the new antisemitism in Europe sets the temperature for what is coming to America. Since 1948–when Israel was reborn as a modern nation–antisemitism, which was localized mostly to Greater Europe, became a global virus. The tiny Jewish state gave anti-Semites a justification for a Jew-hatred that has now spread over the four corners of the world. The irrational conclusion has been that if Israel is guilty, by proxy, all Jews are as well. This could lead to the whole world hating the Jews…but wait, isn’t there a prophecy in the Bible about that?

The prophet Zechariah wrote, “Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah. On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.” (Zechariah 12:2-3). Mind you, this is a reference to the Campaign of Armageddon, and we are not there since this will be taking place during the final stretch of the Great Tribulation (Revelation 16:16, 19:19). Yet, we cannot afford to put our heads in the sand and ignore the signs of the times. None of this final chapter of mankind, hinging around Israel is going to happen in a vacuum, but rather, it will be progressive AND exponential. I believe that we are well on the way to that final Biblical curtain call, as the pressure is mounting against Jews worldwide. In the last week:

In a recent conversation with the Pope, Turkish president Erdogan declared, “All of humanity should be united against Israel.” I wonder if he had any idea of how Biblical he was when he made that outrageous statement?
Pro-Palestinian crowds gathered in Los Angeles and attacked Jewish diners as a result of the current conflict between Hamas and Israel.
Pro-Palestinian crowds rallied in Westwood, CA demanding that Israel stop the airstrikes over the Gaza Strip. They didn’t ask for a ceasefire or for an end to the conflict, but just for Israel to stop defending itself.
In New York, Jewish people were attacked by pro-Palestinian passing cars who threw fireworks at them, screaming “F…ing Zionists”. One Jewish person was burned.
In Germany, people marched on the streets shouting “free Palestine for the Jordan to the sea” which is a euphemism for getting rid of all the Jews.
In London, a group of cars drove through a Jewish neighborhood screaming, “F… the Jews, rape their daughters.“
In Washington D.C., protesters gathered outside the Israeli Embassy and shouted “Free, Free Palestine” and declared that Israel had no right to exist.

As of this writing, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. It is uncertain if that ceasefire will hold, but what is sure is that the hatred for Israel and the Jewish people seems to continue to grow on a global scale, preparing the way for an all-out war against the Jews. The Bible is clear, at some point, all the nations of the world will gather against Jerusalem, but that doesn’t mean that all people will follow suit. It is time for all Christians and people of goodwill to unite in rebellion against the real oppressor. For the last several decades, under the leadership of the new antisemitism, the Jews became the perpetrators, something that they never have been. Now is the time to reset our moral GPS because nobody in his right mind will find any moral equivalence between a country that uses weapons to defend its civilians and a group of people who uses civilians to hide their weapons.

Maybe the days of Zechariah 12:3 are closer than we think?

April 26, 2021 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Do Jewish Lives Matter only in Theory?

If 2020 was the year of Covid-19, it was also the year of the US race riots. The tragic death of George Floyd is still having ripple effects in America, and the motto “Black Lives Matter” continues to be seen and heard across the land. It is not my intention to debate the various ways that this motto has been used, suffice it to say that there exists a certain amount of racial inequality in America that needs to be addressed if we desire to move towards solving it. Being a Bible believer and modern-day follower of Yeshua the Messiah, I believe that “All Lives Matter” to God and should matter to us as well.

The African American community has been at the forefront of the news for the past year; and while much remains to be accomplished, voices are heard and opinions are formed and even altered for the better. It’s all good, but unfortunately, it is not equally good for all people. I am devastated by the recent news out of France regarding the trial of a man who murdered an innocent Jewish woman. All seems to indicate that in France–and possibly other countries–Jewish lives do not matter. Let me elaborate.

On April 4, 2017, 65-year-old Sarah Halimi, a retired doctor, was tortured by her neighbor Kobili Traoré, and then thrown to her death from the window of her third-floor apartment. Traoré committed this murder while reciting verses from the Qur’an and calling Sarah Halimi a “dirty Jew”. Upon throwing her through the window, Traoré shouted in Arabic that he had succeeded in killing an evil spirit or “killed the Satan”.

When questioned, Traoré declared that he felt “persecuted”, and after realizing that he was high on marijuana, the French justice system decided that he would not stand trial. That decision basically sent the message that anyone’s voluntary drug consumption exonerates them from any responsibility. Traoré was officially acquitted in April 2021 and is literally getting away with murder, while the global media is – for the most part – completely ignoring this story.
France continues to be a very secular country and authorities don’t like to report acts of antisemitism. This doesn’t stop people from reporting them, but since not much gets done to remediate the problem, many of these acts remain unreported at worst or wrongly reported at best.

It is also shameful that much of the media in France and in the USA decide to remain silent on the fact that Traoré will walk free after killing a Jewish woman. Islamic antisemitism is a very touchy subject in France. They only started to report the news after the decision to let Traoré walk free and when the Jewish community started to protest in large numbers. It looks like a reaction to a protest that couldn’t be ignored rather than honest reporting about a murder that went unpunished. Within a few days of the acquittal, a police officer in the city of Rambouillet near Paris was stabbed to death by a Tunisian man. The news in France, Europe and the United States were all over it within hours. The death of that police officer was a tragedy indeed, leaving a father and two children behind. Its reporting was necessary, but when I compare the two events and how one was ignored, I cannot help but think that there is a double standard being applied here. What a shame!

Traoré’s exoneration sets an extremely dangerous legal precedent in France and the rest of the world. French President Emmanuel Macron said that the Jewish community has his full support. What did he mean by that? Were these empty words to save face? It is not the first time that Jewish people have been killed in France in recent years. What about the multiple stabbing of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in 2018, left to die in her burning apartment? Of course, we all remember the kosher supermarket carnage of January 2015 when four Jewish shoppers were murdered. That was six years ago! The site of the tragedy–just a stone’s throw from the house I grew up in– continues to see flowers and photos brought in memory of the victims, that’s very thoughtful, but you cannot fight terrorism and antisemitism with flowers, photos and poems.

Before that, there was the 2012 Toulouse massacre, when Mohammed Merah entered a Jewish day school and killed three students and a rabbi in cold blood. What about 2006, when Ilan Halimi (no relation to Sarah Halimi), was tortured, burned over most of his body and then thrown beside railroad tracks to die? Not to mention the killing of Jewish people that occurred in other parts of the world such as the Pittsburgh synagogue and the San Diego attack of recent years.

Back to the Sarah Halimi case. The man who killed her didn’t just kill her. He insulted her, killed her and then threw her out her apartment window. This shows much more than killing for whatever motive, it shows violent, uncontrollable hatred. We are told that because he was high on cannabis, he was not acting rationally because of being in some sort of altered state. The problem I have with that is that whenever someone is under the influence of any mind-altering substance, it doesn’t just alter their behavior, it may also enhance the tendencies that lie dormant within them. Whatever control that person may have while sober may not be controlled while under the influence. To say that Kolibi Traoré cannot be held guilty of murder because of cannabis in his system is wrong, but to decide to not even go on with a trial is adding insult to injury. Even if murder is off the table–and it shouldn’t be–manslaughter would be the absolute minimum charge. Doesn’t that endanger Jewish lives elsewhere once someone is seen to be not responsible for their actions because of a drug or alcohol?

I can promise you that if the victim(s) had been from the Muslim faith, the case would have not been swept under the rug. If the victim was a Muslim thrown out the window by a Jew, the Imams would be all over the case and the news would have exploded with the details shouting “Islamophobia” from the social networks’ rooftops. For Jewish victims…Not so much! Let me reiterate that all lives matter: Jewish, Muslim, Christian or atheists, but why is this case of murder ignored and the perpetrator exonerated of any responsibility? What a slap in the face of the Jewish community, and not just in France. This will probably be seen as a go-ahead for violence against Jews elsewhere.

It would appear that the lives of Jewish people are not worth much. Incidentally, France is a country where people will get one year in prison if they throw their dog out the window. So, is the life of a dog worth more than the life of a Jewish person? It would appear so!

This can only encourage antisemites to perpetrate more crimes against Jews as they see that their actions if noticed AND if reported properly, might not even garner any punishment. Justice is usually served, but maybe not for Jews, after all. At least not for the foreseeable future in France. This is despicable and very scary for the Jewish community of France. That community already doesn’t report all antisemitic acts because very little if anything gets done when they do. Sometimes Jews even get accused of playing “the victim card” or calling any disagreement with the Jewish community “antisemitism.” There might have been some abuse in that area, but throwing a Jewish woman through her third-floor window screaming “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed the Satan” is antisemitism without a doubt. So, do Jewish lives matter? Well, it certainly looks like they don’t in France.

In every situation, there are always going to be the perpetrators, the victims and the bystanders. In the case of Sarah Halimi (the victim) and Kolibi Traoré (the perpetrator), inevitably, there are some bystanders. People who are not Jewish, people who fear Islamic extremism’s repercussions and people guilty of “soft antisemitism” who wouldn’t kill Jewish people, but certainly don’t care if someone else does.
If you don’t see the beginning wave of a repeat of history in Europe, you are not really paying attention. The last time a Jewish life was worth nothing, we let an evil man and his cohorts decimate six million Jews in the most horrific, systematic way possible.

The never-ending scapegoating of the Jews and bloody massacres against them will not stop until Messiah brings peace to the world. That day will come soon at the Second Coming of Yeshua of Nazareth. Some people say that since we cannot stop evil, we should just pray for God to intervene, and He might very soon. After all, if Hitler had not committed suicide, who knows how many more Jews would have perished at the hand of the Nazis. It is believed that Germany would have acquired the atomic bomb within six months after he died. Imagine the damage inflicted if that would have taken place.

So, yes God is absolutely in control, but He works through people. Not because He needs our help to fulfill His program, but because He wants to give us opportunities to bless and be blessed. Don’t be a bystander, be a lending hand, be a helper, be a blesser and be blessed as you do your part in reassuring the Jewish community that Jewish lives do matter! In the meantime, don’t be surprised if French Jews start making Aliyah in droves again. After all, didn’t France just throw them under the bus?

In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old.
(Isaiah 63:9)

April 16, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

A New US Assistant Secretary of State with Ties to Hamas…What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

The Arab-Israeli conflict was not born yesterday. Although hope appeared during the last US administration, this conflict will most likely continue for the foreseeable future. Without positioning ourselves anywhere on the political spectrum, it is not difficult to notice the progress that was made during the Trump administration. Again, this is not meant to be an apology for Donald Trump’s policies, but simply an acknowledgment of some of his accomplishments regarding the Middle East. Many previous presidents spoke of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (the historical and biblical capital of Israel), only Trump did it. He defunded the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency and received a lot of criticism, but it turned out he was right. After a year-long investigation, his administration decided that the settlements in the West Bank were not illegal and started to describe the area as Judea and Samaria instead of the West Bank or the “Occupied Territories”. Then you have the Abraham Accords that historically paved the way for normalization between Israel and some of her Arab neighbors (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan). Seemingly, more would have followed suit; but we are now under a new administration.

To be sure, President Trump openly declared his love for Israel and the Jewish people, so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone; but many before him also spoke great words about the Jewish State and the right to the Land, and yet, accomplished little. We could say that even the friendliest previous administrations settled for some sort of status quo regarding Israel and the Middle East. I am reminded of the foundational passage of Scripture found in Genesis 12:1-3, where God promises to Abram (later to become Abraham) great blessings, a specific piece of land and a myriad of descendants as numerous as the stars. In that passage, in what could be called “God’s foreign policy as it pertains to Israel”, we read: “And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse.” It might be helpful to notice that God didn’t give mankind three choices as to how they interact with Israel and the Jewish people. We either bless or we curse. Nowhere in the Bible are we ever told that we can remain uninvolved or indifferent when it comes to the Jewish people. We either bless or we curse. There is no sitting on the fence out of ignorance, or even worse…by choice!

Unfortunately, it can get more destructive. Apathy is never a good move, but hypocrisy is much worse. We now are under a new administration claiming that the safety of Israel is a priority, but is it really?

For starters, the current administration wants to reset the US-Palestinian relations. In a recent memo, it was stated, “the Biden administration will seek to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees”. So, it looks like we are back to the pre-1967 borders agenda. This would bring Israel’s borders back to the 1949 armistice lines and make the country extremely vulnerable to attacks on several points; not to mention that it would reduce the area given by God to the Jewish people in Genesis 15:18-21 even further. Additionally, radical Islamists, Hamas and other enemies of Israel have clearly indicated that the pre-1967 borders are still not enough. These borders would only lead to further attacks and invasions by the Palestinians.

Even though the current US administration vows that they seek Israel’s safety, they have shown no interest in dealing with the Middle East as a priority and have made Hady Amr the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israel and Palestinian Affairs. He is the highest US ranking official for Middle East affairs, but the question is, “Does he have the credentials for such a task?”

• Hady Amr is a practicing Muslim: This isn’t an issue in and of itself, as freedom of religion is part of our constitution (rightfully so), but might not be the best choice for the person officially representing the US government in the Middle East.

• Hady Amr wrote that He was inspired by the Palestinian Intifada: The Intifada (meaning “uprising”), was organized unrest from Palestinians against Israel, based on the false premise that Israel is an occupier and colonizer and trying to push Palestinians out of their own ancestral land. There is no archeological, geographical or historical basis for such a claim.

• Hady Amr has repeatedly called for dealing with Hamas: Hamas is a terrorist organization with a charter calling for the complete destruction of Israel.

• Hady Amr has been instrumental in resuming US funding to the PA: One of the first items on his agenda has been to restore US funding to the Palestinian authority. US taxpayers are now forced to fund terrorism again.

• Hady Amr has strong ties to Qatar: He lived and worked there for years, establishing a branch of the Brookings Institute. Qatar is notorious for funding terrorism and supporting Hamas and having ties with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

• Hady Amr has accused Israel of murdering innocent children: He wrote: “Arabs will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.”

• Hady Amr has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing: He continues to promote the false narrative that Israel has taken over Palestinian land and committed ethnic cleansing, when in fact, there are more Arabs in Israel today than there were prior to 1948.

I can definitely see credentials in that list, but I am not sure they are the credentials needed for an unbiased approach to the Middle East crisis. It looks to me like the current administration is determined to undo all that the previous administration achieved. President Trump will be remembered as the single American President who did the most for Israel and the Jewish people. He was Genesis 12:3 in action on many fronts. He blessed Israel!

While it is still too early to know all that President Biden will do in the Middle East, by gathering a team of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian staff members, one can only imagine what the future might hold in terms of Arab-Israeli conflict resolution.

There are things to consider when the US appoints a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israel and Palestinian Affairs:

• Consider the weight of the 1917 Balfour Declaration: The very brief letter written by Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild set the international stage for the birth of modern Israel. It read as follows: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

• The San Remo Conference validated the Balfour Declaration: After World War II, allied forces met in San Remo, Italy, to divide land conquered in the Middle East. They decided to include the decision made in the Balfour Declaration in their statement as follows: “The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

• The League of Nations included the Balfour Declaration in their 1922 mandate for Palestine: While Great Britain didn’t have the right to intervene in the future borders of Israel, the Balfour Declaration gained credence when the League of Nations incorporated it in their mandate for Palestine in 1922.

• The United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine in 1947: Fifty years after Theodor Herzl spoke of it in 1897, the ancestral land for the Jewish people was reborn as a modern nation. The signatories included President Harry Truman who was a close friend of Chaim Weizmann (Israel’s first President).

• The Bible makes the best case for the existence of Israel: While this should be the topic of another article, the Bible is replete with passages promoting and defending the Land of Israel as belonging to the Jewish people by divine decree (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:18-21, Isaiah 14:1, 27:13, 43:5-7, 60:21; Ezekiel 37; Jeremiah 31:35-37; Hebrews 11:8-9.) The biblical case for the land is very strong

• Modern Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East: Contrary to the false narrative being pushed by academia, the media and the current US administration, modern Israel is a haven of peace for Arabs in the public sector, private sector and is represented in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).

All we need is some balance in the way our new administration interacts with Israel and Palestine. I don’t see any of that coming from the man who doesn’t have a problem dealing with Hamas and even looking to make a deal with them. I still rest in the fact that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is on our side; and He is definitely a Zionist in the purest sense of the term!

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