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LEARNING TO DANCE IN THE RAIN
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I love the rain. It took me a year or two living in this arid land of Israel, on the edge of the great Saharan-Arabian Desert, to learn to truly love rain. Now when I look out the window and see rain falling, and hear my neighbor calling for joy from his window, I will go out to revel in the rain. Rain is joy, it washes the land and the trees and the air, and gives life to every living thing. Every drop that falls is precious. But sometimes you can have too much of a good thing....
On the 25th of October, at 3AM, here in Israel we set our clocks back to winter time. As if on cue, just an hour or two later, summer fled away and winter came with a bang. The skies opened their treasuries and poured out a deluge of rain over the whole land. After 8 months of 'nary a drop' suddenly we had more rain than we could deal with. On the coastal plain streets turned to raging torrents a meter deep sweeping away cars, garbage bins and everything else in their path. Hundreds of shops and homes were flooded and strong winds and lightning brought down many trees and power lines leaving thousands of homes without electricity for days. After four days without power, some people were just rejoicing in getting their power back, when 'wham' another storm hit causing more damage. Miraculously only two people died, one when a wall collapsed on top of him, but many had to be rescued from flooded cars and homes. 66 mm ( nearly 3 inches) of rain fell in half an hour in Ranaana. In Kfar Saba hailstones the size of tennis balls punched holes straight through car windscreens.
For more dramatic photos and footage go to http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4717976,00.html
Wednesday 28th October in Central Israel
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| Ranaana's main street http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4717497,00.html |
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| Ranaana http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4717497,00.html |
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Flooding in Herziliya http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4717497,00.html
Here in Jerusalem we got off fairly lightly with just a good wetting rain and a few gusts of wind. This last Friday though I happened to be driving to my congregation in the center of town and the skies opened briefly. Very quickly the streets turned to rivers, manholes burst open and emitted fountains shooting a meter high into the air and stairways became beautiful waterfalls. It was all over in few minutes but it was a reminder that even here, on our mountaintop, rain can bring destruction as well as new life.
Yesterday I was emailing a friend who is a tour guide at the reconstruction of Moses' Tabernacle at Timna Park, near Eilat (some of you may have visited this enterprise and it is a very popular tourist destination). She filmed a flash flood that swept through the Park and the Tabernacle doing much damage. It gives you some idea of the power of flash floods in the desert.
This week has been a bit less dramatic but we did have a nasty sandstorm on Wednesday which put the air pollution index some 70 times above normal but it only lasted a day before some nice heavy winter rains washed the sky clear again.
The arrival of winter in Israel always comes as a bit of a shock even though we anticipate it anxiously. After around 8 months of continuously hot, dry weather the arrival of the first rains always seems to catch us out. It is funny seeing us all struggling through knee deep streams on the streets in our summer sandals and T-shirts soaked through to the skin. It takes us a while to make the adjustment to having to wear shoes, or even rubber boots, sweaters, and raincoats, and to carry about our battered umbrellas. You forget from year to year just how inconvenient and even unpleasant rain can be, but somehow after a short time, we rearrange our closets, dust off our heaters, and get on with the new reality of cold, wet weather.
It seems that God has equipped us humans with an amazing capacity to adapt and cope with change and adversity. About two months ago, we Jerusalemites were faced with a drastic change in our living conditions. Violence has spiraled with rioting in various parts of the city, cars ramming into groups of people at bus stops and intersections, and random knife attacks. At first we were in a state of shock and fear, but we are now growing used to the new status quo. When the rains come you get out your rubber boots and umbrellas, make the adjustment, and get on with life. With violence now a daily part of our life, we likewise find ways to cope with the new reality. Although most of us feel a degree of fear and anxiety, we mostly manage to put it into the back of our consciousness and concentrate on other things. We may carry a loaded gun or a can of pepper spray, avoid the trouble spots and watch carefully the people around us on the street, but somehow we get on with life.
Of course there are also some do not manage to conquer their fear, and they hide themselves away. Shops are reporting a drastic drop in business, restaurants are empty and some tourists are cancelling their trips. This is of course affecting our economy quite seriously. However last night a friend and I braved the cold, wet weather and went to a popular gathering place for a meal. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the restaurants there were quite full and a number of people, wrapped up in coats and scarves, were enjoying the free, live entertainment in the courtyard. There is a belief here held by many people that even though there are dangers in going out to these sorts of places, we must do so, because if we don't we are giving the enemy victory over us. Israelis, known to be a 'stiff-necked' people, have a stubborn determination to 'make life' in spite of all.
The frequency of terror attacks in Jerusalem seems to have diminished slightly over the last two weeks, probably because of the intense level of surveillance, the watchfulness of the general public, the fact that many are armed, and the presence of 4000 police on the streets. All these measures make it much more difficult to carry out a successful attack, and quite a few would-be terrorists have been neutralized before they managed to kill anyone. The terror activity consequently seems to have moved more towards the outlying areas, especially around Hebron, and along route 60 north of Ramallah. These areas have borne the brunt of most of the attacks lately. In recent days the nature of the attacks has also changed with several shooting incidents carried out by operatives of identified terror organizations. This is a worrying development as these organization have access to guns and the equipment and know-how to make bombs.
A day in the life of Israel
We are still experiencing 4-5 attacks per day somewhere around the country. Here, for example, is an excerpt from todays Ynetnews:
A car attack wounded four pedestrians at Tapuah junction in the West Bank on Sunday morning. Two people in their 20s were wounded moderately and seriously while a pregnant woman was lightly injured. A woman suffered light-to-moderate wounds. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4722381,00.html Behind all this the incitement of Palestinian propaganda continues. On Sunday the 25th of October, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, when asked during a TV interview if he accepts that the Jewish Temple existed on the Temple Mount said " the Aksa Mosque was an Islamic mosque since the world was created", and added that "It was never anything other than a mosque", thus claiming that there never was a Jewish temple on the site. http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Grand-mufti-There-was-never-a-Jewish-Temple-on-Temple-Mount-430131 This rewriting of history is curious in that until 1948 (when the Jewish State of Israel was founded) their own Wakf handbooks clearly stated that the "that the Dome of the Rock is situated on the indisputable and universally accepted site of Solomon’s Temple”. Last week Benjamin Netanya created a stir, when in a speech to the World Zionist Congress, he claimed that at a meeting between the then-Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and Hitler in November 1941 it was the Mufti who suggested the 'final solution' of extermination of the Jews to Hitler, who at the time wanted to 'merely' expel the Jews from Europe. Netanyahu claimed that al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine].’” According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked what he should do with them, to which the mufti replied, “Burn them.”
There is currently much debate as to whether this conversation went exactly as Netanyahu claimed or not, and the fact remains that Hitler's program of extermination had already begun before this meeting, nevertheless there is no doubt that the influence of the Mufti and other Middle Eastern leaders greatly encouraged Hitler and supported his efforts.
Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, a historian and scholar at the Middle East Forum, has studied this relationship in depth, and had this to say:
But there is much evidence to support Netanyahu’s underlying claim that the grand mufti had a substantial (and for a non-European, unparalleled) influence on the genocide that unfolded in Nazi-occupied Europe and that was planned for the Middle East as well.
After years of inciting violence against Jews as Jerusalem’s grand mufti (notably in 1920, 1929 and 1936), claiming “al-Aksa is in danger,” Husseini found an ally in Hitler’s Berlin during the 1930s. Husseini and many other Arabs of his day saw themselves as a defeated and humiliated people, much like the Germans after World War I. Nazi ideology therefore resonated deeply in the Arab world. In 1933, Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, was serialized in Arab newspapers and became a best-seller. The Germans encouraged the mufti’s activities, even providing funds and weapons for the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt led by Husseini. The mufti had a steady link to the Nazi security service from 1937 on. That year, Husseini called on all Muslims to rid their lands of Jews and drafted a Nazi-Islamist pact encouraging the spread of Nazi ideology, and boycotts of Jewish goods, among other provisions. In 1941, he instigated the al-Farhud pogrom in Iraq. Above all, the mufti called for the Axis powers to stop any Jewish influx into the Middle East. On November 28, 1941, the mufti met with Hitler and the two appeared to come to an understanding that Jews would be killed rather than deported, an option hitherto still under consideration. Although Nazi mass shootings of European Jews began soon after the June 1941 invasion of Soviet Russia, plans for their comprehensive extermination came after this first Hitler-Husseini meeting. At that time the Germans expected the Middle East to become the next theater of war and were therefore averse to disrupting their Arab-Islamist alliance by flooding the region with Jewish refugees. Adolf Eichmann and his subordinates frequently briefed Husseini, who now lived in comfort in Germany, on the ongoing genocide, as if to reassure him that Hitler had not changed his mind. Husseini met six times with Eichmann, who testified in Jerusalem years later about the mufti’s fierce opposition to the mass transfer of Jews to Palestine. SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler met Husseini in mid-1943 and told him that three million Jews had been liquidated so far. Eichmann’s aide Dieter Wisliceny testified at the Nuremberg trials, “The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry ... He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz.” Husseini certainly believed his encouragement of Hitler and others to destroy the Jews of Europe was decisive in their decision to do so. He wrote in his memoirs that “world Jewry wanted to bring the Eastern European Jews to Palestine ... Germany agreed to this ... [w]e were able to foil this effort.” The mufti further explained, “This caused the Jews to put ugly blame on me for being responsible for the liquidation of 400,000 Jews who were then not able to travel to Palestine,” referencing the known number of Hungarian Jews, half of whom perished. “The Jews demanded to try me in Nuremberg as a war criminal.” Indeed, he put photocopies of those letters in his memoirs. Beyond this, the mufti’s role in recruiting and indoctrinating Muslim SS troops in the Balkans and Soviet Asia makes him responsible for still more victims.
The debate over the veracity of Netanyahu's stated facts is somewhat missing the point of his remarks, which were intended to demonstrate that the lies, incitement, disinformation and violence directed against the Jewish people today is nothing new. The parallels between today's anti-Israel propaganda, the incitement and the willingness of the people of the world to believe these lies, and the events and atmosphere leading up to the Holocaust are ominously similar. I suspect the Holocaust of WWII was just a practice-run for the great battle yet to come, the battle when Jerusalem will become the 'cup of drunkenness' spoken of in Zechariah 12:
“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. 3 And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.
The stage is being set for the great battle for Jerusalem when all the nations of the world will rise up against her.
In fact the enmity between Palestinians and Israelis does not derive from the settlements or the occupation following the 1967 war, or even the establishment of the Jewish State. It goes back long before that. I believe this can be traced back centuries and even millennia right back to the original conflict between Cain and Abel. In fact this is the subject of a book I am currently writing. Here is an excerpt from the second chapter:
After Adam and Eve were cast out of
the Garden of Eden, Eve gave birth to two sons, Cain the elder and his brother
Abel. Abel grew up and became a keeper of sheep and Cain was a farmer, a tiller
of the ground. In due course, they brought offerings to the LORD. Cain brought
an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel brought of the first-born of
his flock, and we are told that God respected the offering of Abel, but not
that of Cain. Understandably perhaps, Cain felt rejected and angry, but God
came to him saying, “Why are you angry?
And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but
you should rule over it” (Genesis 4: 6-7).
In these
words lies a fundamental principle, which underlies all God’s dealings with man
and which underpins all of human history. Cain brought an unacceptable offering
to the Lord. He had not done well, and his offering had been rejected by God. At
first glance it seems that Cain had been treated unfairly by God. How was Cain
to know what would constitute an acceptable offering? It is not totally clear
in the Scripture, but some say that Cain should have known. In Genesis 3:21 we
read that after Adam and Eve had sinned and become aware of their nakedness,
God had killed some animals and made them tunics of skin. This is the first
time that we see in Scripture the necessity of the shedding of blood for the
covering of the results of sin. This happened before Cain was born but he would
surely have known about it. Perhaps therefore he should have understood that
the shedding of blood was required. Be that as it may, there can be no argument
that Cain chose to do things ‘his way’ and not God’s way, whether knowingly or
not.
From the
passage quoted above it seems to me that Cain’s incorrect sacrifice was not
counted as sin at that point, and God gave him an opportunity to correct his
mistake. Cain still had the choice whether or not to let sin enter into his life.
He could have simply brought to God the acceptable sacrifice and found full
acceptance. However he chose otherwise. He allowed jealousy and anger to rule
over him, and this ultimately led to the murder of his innocent brother.
Even after
this terrible act, God gave Cain one last chance to repent, when He spoke with
him saying, “Where is your brother Abel?”, but Cain refused to take
responsibility for what he had done and lied to God (Genesis 4:9-10) thereby increasing
the trespass even more. Consequently God cursed him saying, “So now you are
cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s
blood from your hand”. The word, ארור,
here translated as ‘cursed’ implies that the very nature of something has
changed. It also carries a sense of finality. There will be no more chances.
Now Cain has so hardened his heart against God he will no longer listen to Him,
nor even to his own conscience. Interestingly enough, if we continue reading in
Genesis 4 we see that one of Cain’s descendants, Lamech, was also a murderer
and even presumed to claim the ‘mark of Cain’ to protect him from vengeance
‘seventy seventy-fold’ (Genesis 4:23-24). If we harden our hearts against God
there is a tendency to slide ever deeper into sin and this tendency is very
often passed on down the generations.
Incidentally,
we are told that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord (Genesis
4:16). This passage does not say that God cast him out from His presence. God
had merely told Cain that he would be cursed from the ground, which would no
longer yield its strength to him and he would become a fugitive and a vagabond
on the earth. Yet Cain exaggerated the situation, and added his own
interpretation, saying “I shall be hidden from your Face… and
it will happen to me that anyone who finds me will kill me”. His anger and
his sense of rejection caused him to perceive his punishment as being worse
than God intended, and this just fueled his indignation and intensified his
anger. It was this that drove him out from the presence of God. Thus it was
Cain who rejected God, not the other way around.
Cain went out
from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod to the east of Eden
(Genesis 4:16). Where was the land of Nod? We are told it was east of Eden and some
believe it to have been the Arabian Peninsula. The land of Nod may not have
been an actual place since this phrase could also be translated as the land of
wandering, an allusion to the type of life Cain and his descendents would
experience as fugitives and vagabonds.
As we
continue to read through the historical books of the Old Testament we see this
pattern, repeated again and again. Every individual and every nation faces
exactly the same choice, then as it is today. Will we do it God’s way, or rebel
and go our own way? Will we choose obedience or rebellion, love or murder? Will
we accept God or reject him? Will we cooperate with him towards redemption or
will we fight against him?
This is what
I have called the Cain Principle and it underlies all of human history, from
the time of the Fall until now. We can see it at work on many levels, but
especially we can see it as it relates to the chosen line of the Messiah. The
Enemy, Satan, works through mankind trying to bring to naught God’s redemption
plan. If he, Satan, can arouse our jealousy and anger towards God’s chosen, he
can lead us to murder. This is the root of the ancient enmity, towards God’s
chosen, both Israel and the saints in Yeshua (Jesus).
Throughout all of recorded history the nations surrounding Israel walked in hatred against her, attacking her again and again. This enmity was driven by jealousy and fear which gives rise to hatred and finally murder. This I believe is the true root off all anti-Semitism in all nations and individuals who do not stand with Israel as God's chosen people. God has chosen the stiff-necked people of Israel to be the bearers of the historical record, the promises of God and his law, which we call the Word of God. Two thousand years ago they also gave birth to the incarnate Word, Yeshua (Jesus), the Messiah of Israel. This is God's way. Are you willing to accept it? Or will you fight against it? Is your nation willing to accept it or will they stand in opposition? Are you with God or against Him?
BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and the European Union
This coming week, on the 11th of November (Ironically - Armistice Day!) the EU is expected to announce new measures requiring member countries to re-label all goods made outside 'Israel's internationally recognized borders', that is within the "Occupied Territories" or the West Bank.
The EU ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, told Israel Television last Tuesday that in the EU goods made in the Territories can no longer be designated 'Made in Israel', but labels must say that the product is made in a settlement in the West Bank. Such a move resonates in Israeli hearts with memories of similar labeling of Jewish goods in Germany before the Holocaust.
Although the EU is disassociating this move from the BDS movement it is clearly intended to promote the boycotting of goods made in the Settlements, and ultimately encouraging the boycotting of all Israeli goods worldwide. Great Britain, Belgium and Denmark have already instituted similar labeling guidelines. The EU has already removed goods made in the Settlements from the duty-free status awarded to other Israeli-made goods according to a free-trade agreement with Israel.
Such moves will not seriously affect the Israeli economy as a whole since such goods represent less than 1% of exports, but it will seriously affect the economy of the Palestinians themselves. At least 20,000 Palestinians are employed by settlement-run factories and even more are involved in the construction and service of the settlements themselves. The Palestinian factory workers earn on average about 4000 shekels a month and are entitled to all the benefits of an Israeli worker - health care, pension plans and holiday pay. This compares to the average income of other Palestinians in the West Bank which is about 1000 shekels a month, with no additional benefits. It is hard to see how destroying these jobs will benefit the Palestinians and promote peace.
Are you, followers of the LORD God of Israel, willing to stand for Israel, and God's redemption plan, in your countries? Are you willing to speak out against the BDS and other expressions of anti-Semitism? I believe that now is the time we all need to be willing to 'stand and be counted'. Things are coming to a climax. God will judge all those who oppose him, nations and individuals alike, and that time may well be soon. According to the prophecy of Zechariah quoted above all the nations who come against Jerusalem will be destroyed. This is the warning for our days. Pray for your nations that they may be found on the 'right' side, and for yourselves also.
It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem
Zechariah 12: 9
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