HEAR MY PRAYER
Hear my prayer, O Lord,
And let my cry come to You.
2 Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my trouble;
Incline Your ear to me;
In the day that I call, answer me speedily.
And let my cry come to You.
2 Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my trouble;
Incline Your ear to me;
In the day that I call, answer me speedily.
3 For my days are consumed like smoke,
And my bones are burned like a hearth...
And my bones are burned like a hearth...
8 My enemies reproach me all day long;...
12 But You, O Lord, shall endure forever,
And the remembrance of Your name to all generations.
13 You will arise and have mercy on Zion;
For the time to favor her,
Yes, the set time, has come.
14 For Your servants take pleasure in her stones,
And show favor to her dust.
15 So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord,
And all the kings of the earth Your glory.
16 For the Lord shall build up Zion;
He shall appear in His glory.
17 He shall regard the prayer of the destitute,
And shall not despise their prayer...
And the remembrance of Your name to all generations.
13 You will arise and have mercy on Zion;
For the time to favor her,
Yes, the set time, has come.
14 For Your servants take pleasure in her stones,
And show favor to her dust.
15 So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord,
And all the kings of the earth Your glory.
16 For the Lord shall build up Zion;
He shall appear in His glory.
17 He shall regard the prayer of the destitute,
And shall not despise their prayer...
Psalm 102
A deceptive quiet lies over Jerusalem and the whole of Israel at this time, as during the day we tend to hide indoors to escape the summer heat ,or relax at the pool, coming out only in the delightful cool of the evening to stroll, make barbecues with our friends and drink coffee at the cafes. The children are on vacation and many families have gone abroad to visit family or just escape the pressures of life in Israel.
 |
| How to keep cool in Jerusalem in summer http://www.jerusalemfoundation.org/media/87403/Jerusalem-Summer-Fun-in-Teddy-Park_500x375.jpg |
Yet the quiet is an illusion. This week it has been 'business as usual' in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel. On Wednesday a 22 year old Palestinian woman attempted to kill an IDF soldier by stabbing him in the back at a military post in the West Bank. The soldier was taken to hospital with light-to-moderate wounds (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4680288,00.html).
At 2 AM on Thursday morning residents of the Ashkelon region scrambled out of bed, grabbed the kids and the dog, and fled to their 'safe rooms' as the code red sirens sounded warning of an incoming medium-range missile fired from the Gaza Strip. Fortunately it landed in an open field causing no damage or injuries. Later that same morning the Israeli Air Force bombed an infrastructure site in Gaza in retaliation. One passerby was lightly injured. This is just the latest of a number of such attacks in recent weeks. There were six such incidents in the month of June alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2015 . In addition, on Friday the 3rd of July, three rockets were fired from the Sinai and two landed in Israel near Eilat, causing no damage or injuries. An Islamic State affiliated group claimed responsibility. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/isil-affiliate-sinai-claims-rocket-attack-israel-150703192810233.html These rocket attacks are not primarily designed to antagonize Israel, but to destabilize the Egyptian regime in the Sinai and the Hamas regime in Gaza, and to promote the power and ideology of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS). Already by last November polls in Gaza showed that some 24% of the population supports the Islamic State either totally or 'to some extent'. http://unitedwithisrael.org/poll-palestinians-greatest-supporters-of-isis-in-middle-east-2/?ios_app=true
This week we also learned of two Israelis being held in Gaza. One, a young man of Ethiopian descent, Avera Mengistu, 28, climbed over the fence and entered the Gaza Strip via the adjacent Zikim Beach shortly after the ceasefire with Hamas in September last year. Mengistu is known to the authorities as suffering from psychological issues and is possibly mentally challenged. He may have been drinking when he crossed into Gaza. Whatever the truth he was captured and questioned by Hamas who claim they released him once they ascertained that he was not a soldier. His current whereabouts is unknown, but Israeli officials believe that Hamas is holding him and a second missing Israeli citizen, an unnamed Bedouin Arab, who for unknown reasons also crossed into Gaza. The fear is that these two prisoners, along with the bodies of two soldiers captured during Operation Cast Lead last year, will be used by Hamas to attempt to broker another prisoner exchange, something Israel has already said it will not countenance.
 |
| A photo of Mengistu from his facebook page http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.663653 |
The big news this week of course is the Iran deal. After 20 months of negotiations the P5+1 group of nations ( the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany) and Iran have come to an agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aimed at scaling down Iran's nuclear capability and easing economic sanctions against it.
 |
| The Negotiating Team http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains-11 |
Iran has three uranium mines and the ore from these must be enriched before it can be used. Natural uranium consists of two isotopes U-235 and U-238. Only U-235 can be used for fueling power stations or for making nuclear warheads or bombs. Natural uranium is only about 0.711% U-235. For fuel purposes the uranium must be enriched so that it is about 3-4% U-235, and for a warhead or bomb it must be enriched to 90%. Enrichment is done by feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into centrifuges and spinning it so that the heavier U-238 sinks to the bottom and the lighter U-235 rises. It can then be separated out. There are currently two enrichment facilities operating, the main one at Natanz and another at Fordo.
 |
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33521655 |
With this background let us look more closely at the JCPOA deal. There are 8 main points:
- At present Iran has 19,500 centrifuges at their main enrichment facility at Natanz. Under the new agreement only 5060 of these, will be allowed to operate over the next 10 years, and these will all be first-generation centrifuges, which can only produce low-enriched uranium suitable for fueling power stations and for medical, agricultural, industrial and scientific purposes.
- At the second enrichment facility, at Fordo, all enrichment will cease and no enriched uranium will be produced for at least 15 years. The facility will be turned into a physics research center.
- Iran's current stockpile of low-enriched uranium (which could potentially be spun into weapons-grade material) must be reduced 98%, from 9,000 kg to 300 kg for the next 15 years.
- The heavy-water reactor at Arak will be redesigned and its original core, which would have produced significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, will be removed and destroyed. No other heavy-water reactor will be built for 15 years.
- Inspectors from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) will be able to inspect any facility, declared or otherwise, as long as it is deemed to be “suspicious”.
- If Iran refuses access to a military site, a joint commission made up of representatives of the parties to the agreement will quickly rule on whether it must open the facility up. If it still refuses, Iran would then be in violation of the agreement and might face the re-imposition of sanctions.
- The IAEA will also have access to every part of Iran’s nuclear supply chain to ensure that nothing is being channeled to a clandestine facility. Such powers for the IAEA, which will remain in place indefinitely, are more sweeping than those it had under the normal safeguard agreements that had previously applied to Iran under the NPT.
- Iran will address the IAEA’s concerns about what it calls the Possible Military Dimensions of its nuclear program.
Is this a 'good deal'? Will it hold? Will the deal be ratified and implemented by all nations concerned? Can Iran be trusted, given its past track record and continued threats against Israel and the USA? Is the IAEA really able to monitor what Iran is doing in its large, mountainous country? Does the world have the will to re-impose sanctions should Iran fail to keep its word? What will happen after the 10 - 15 years are up? These are all questions that only time will tell and history will judge.
Perhaps the Deal will buy us a little time, if it can be implemented and enforced ( and that is a big 'if'). But then what? At the end of the 10 year period Iran will have a legitimate right under international law to reactivate its centrifuges and rebuild its enriched uranium stockpiles. They already boast that they can have as many as 190,000 centrifuges up and running within weeks and, in the same time frame, quickly produce nuclear warheads to load onto the missiles they are continuing to buy from Russia and are producing themselves on a large scale, missiles capable of reaching targets in the Middle East, Europe and even the USA. The Deal does not address Iran's conventional weapon development and proliferation. Nor does it address the risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Other Middle Eastern states are already saying that if Iran is allowed to produce nuclear weapons they too must do so.
Furthermore, even with the current sanctions imposed against it ,Iran is managing to fund, train and arm many terror organizations including the Taliban in Pakistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Islamic Jihad in Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere, and the Houthis currently overrunning Yemen. The US State department considers Iran the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism, and former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice described it as " the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism". http://www.cfr.org/iran/state-sponsors-iran/p9362 . Under the Deal, Iran will receive at least $US100 billion when sanctions are lifted. Even if it does not channel this money directly into terrorist organizations, an economically stronger Iran will be able to pour even more money into funding terrorism, which is directed at destroying the US and Western influence worldwide (the 'Big Satan') and Israel (the "Little Satan) . The Deal does not address this issue in any way. No wonder the Iranian delegate to the P5+1 negotiations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, went home with a smile on his faces (more a Freudian slip than a typo!). And Kerry prayed....
 |
| http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03249/kerry-zarif_3249914b.jpg |
And a worried Netanyahu prayed too....
 |
| http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2015/04/05/netanyahu-iran.JPG |
So what can we do? What is our responsibility in all of these things as believers in the Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus)? In my last post I wrote of our responsibility as a 'kingdom of priests'. What is the role of a priest? There are many functions and I will write more about that another time, but one of the main functions is as an intercessor - a 'go-between' between God and the people. First and foremost we must pray about all these things. God is working out his redemption plan and we need to be working alongside and with Him. This begs the question, "How must we pray?" It is hard to know sometimes, but we can always pray in the Spirit with sighs deeper than words, and allow the Holy Spirit in us to interpret these cries. And God hears our cries. They are effective and they matter. By our prayers we participate in the working out of the redemption of the world. As I quoted from Psalm 102 verse 17 above,
We are often 'destitute' as we pray, in that we do not have the understanding to know how to pray, nor the power to change anything ourselves, but the LORD will not despise our prayers . They are a pleasing incense rising to the Him (Revelation 5:8). He will work it all out and one day, perhaps not so very far in the future, we will see all the nations bowing down to Him - Iran, Israel, the USA and every nation of the Earth.He shall regard the prayer of the destitute,And shall not despise their prayer...
Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him.
Even so, Amen.
Revelation 1: 17
