The Israeli Air Force this week shot down a Hezbollah drone off the coast of Haifa. Added to the drama was the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s helicopter (in the north to visit a Druze village) had to put down when the drone was discovered.
The most interesting feature of the Hezbolla drone strike, though, is the realization that terrorists have a global reach. A drone means an escalation of technology and innovation. And when one considers that the Europeans now believe Hezbollah was behind a 2012 bombing in Bulgaria, we can see that Israel deals with a dizzying array of security issues each second of each day.
From a Jerusalem Post report:
“The Bulgarian probe led to renewed calls for the European Union to join the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in classifying Hezbollah as a terrorist group. According to various insider accounts, some EU countries including Germany and France are reluctant to take this step because it may harm their relations with Lebanon, where Hezbollah is part of the government.”
This reluctance from too many at the leadership to stand up to terrorists presents a very troubling outlook. The Israelis seem almost unruffled by it all, even as they deal with drone and terrorist strikes, and a hostile American government.
John Kerry has asked Israel to release terrorist prisoners, and Barack Obama’s empty “promise” to deal with Syria should Bashar Assad use chemical weapons—he called the bluff—has left a new threat on Israel’s northern border.
As we’ve said before in this space, the Iranian threat will be neutralized in some way, and we look for something unusual. Bottom line: Israel will win and Iran will lose.
A perhaps greater concern is the entrance of accelerated technology (drones) to invade a very tiny country. Certainly, Hezbollah’s missile arsenals are also troublesome. Not to mention the fellows on the southern border.
I remember a friend told me 20 years ago that Hosni Mubarak would one day break the treaty with Israel and invade. That was obviously a failed prediction, as Mubarak’s own comforts and ultimate survival were more important than bringing a new caliphate to Jerusalem.
However, the Muslim Brotherhood will have no such restrictions and will surely at some point seek to do battle with the Israelis once again. The old, old struggle with Egypt is still a reality for Israel.
There are other threats that drone on, as well. This week (April 22), on her blog, Lynne Hybels recommended a new book by Dale Hanson Bourke, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, that will no doubt be another leftist view of said conflict. As I’ve said for some time, I consider the propaganda war over Israel, raging in the American Church, to be a very serious threat not only to Israel, but to her supporters.
At the upcoming Catalyst conference in Dallas, among the speakers will be Mark Driscoll and Lynne Hybels. Although Driscoll usually doesn’t address the Israel issue (but is Reformed theology tells me where he lands on it), he recently blogged about the critics of Rick Warren, even calling discernment ministries “extremist.”
That kind of outrageous, hateful, and unacceptable language I mention because it is representative of the tone used to defame and marginalize Bible-believing Christians, many of whom love and defend Israel.
This is the culture being cultivated at Catalyst, a mainstream evangelical leadership think-tank and network. There are leftist views of Israel within this kind of community that is identical to the Europeans who can’t muster up the moral courage to recognize Hezbollah for what it is.
Israel’s enemies drone on.
April 22, 2013
Unraveling
Well, in the wake of the Boston jihad, it seems we are all locked-in to a period of extreme danger. Societal structure is coming apart faster than a Bill Clinton intern story.
Which brings me to a background story that explains much of what we are experiencing today.
When tiny Israel defended herself in June, 1967, a newspaper editorial put it this way:
“If that [moderation from the radicalized Arab states] happens the way could be cleared for a political settlement that eventually could bring peace to the Middle East and a greater measure of security for the world.”
We were naïve then, too.
Few can argue that the jihadists’ top two targets are the Jewish state and her friend, the U.S. Whether jihadists are motivated by political power or religious fervor, the fact remains that when a cold-blooded killer looks at a child he’s about to blow up, we are faced with an existential threat the likes of which the world has rarely if ever known.
And the media spin and Muslim apologists have kicked in to high gear. We will hear a lot in the coming weeks about the “why” along with soul-searching as we try to “understand” why Muslims hate us. As Frank Gaffney said recently (I’m paraphrasing), if so many rank-and-file Muslims don’t support terrorism…where are they? The silence is deafening, and the jihadists are also helped immeasurably by dupes in the West.
I am struck by the fact that two Southern Baptist presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were among the worst offenders in refusing to see Islam for what it is. They threw Israel under the bus and endangered the rest of us in the process. Clinton knew what Yasser Arafat was (serial killer/mass murderer) yet invited him to the White House 13 times and empowered the PLO.
Before the Boy from Hope, though, we had the Man from Plains. In his odious 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, the mendacious Carter makes the following startling statement:
“The PLO was out of diplomatic bounds for me, still officially classified by the United States as a terrorist organization. Despite this restraint, I sought through unofficial channels to induce Arafat to accept the key U.N. resolutions so that the PLO could join in peace efforts, but he refused.”
A page later, Carter—astoundingly—discusses the threats to Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who determined for pragmatic reasons to engage the Israelis in peace negotiations:
“High officials in Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, and the PLO called for Sadat’s assassination.”
You see, don’t you?
Carter’s new best friend Arafat was trying to kill the only Muslim leader in the world willing to sit down with the Israelis. And Carter hugged Arafat until the day he died.
Does this strike anyone as outrageous? Do you see how dangerous Carter’s worldview was and is? He still thinks Israel is the bad guy and his personal dislike of Jews is almost unfathomable, given his Christian upbringing.
However…
For some time, I’ve been investigating at the leadership level the worldview regarding both Israel and the Arab world. I can say unequivocally that American evangelical leadership is mainstreaming some of the world’s most dangerous people.
Almost as an aside, I can assure you that the vast majority of the “New Evangelicals” do not remotely have a biblical view of Israel and the Jews. That is a key element in the unfolding drama.
No sooner had the child-killer from Boston been nabbed by authorities than evangelical leaders began a social media campaign to advocate for Islam. Kirsten Powers, a FOX news analyst and friend to Millennial evangelical leaders (like Jonathan Merritt) tweeted this week:
“Just b/c the bombing suspects were Muslim, that doesn’t make it ‘terrorism’ any more than a crazy abortion clinic bomber is a terrorist.’”
As a matter of fact, Kirsten, yes it does.
I want you to think about this, in light of what Powers’ tweet stated: the bombing suspects are Muslim, and they committed an act of terror. This makes it terrorism.
What we have here is a dangerous debate of the obvious. In the world inhabited by Kirsten Powers, if I say, “The sky is blue,” she might respond that no, it isn’t blue and in fact, we can’t be sure that’s the sky.
This mindset, in the context of the global jihad war, is problematic.
And when you couple this with the fact that evangelical leadership is being flooded with leftist thinkers, I must settle on warning those who have ears to hear.
While authorities were combing Boston for a jihadist child killer, Bob Roberts Jr. tweeted the following:
“Google MUSLIMS CONDEMN BOSTON BOMBINGS – 15 pages & counting – couldn’t be more clear than that”
That was followed by:
“You are building an impression of what a Jesus follower is to Arabs, Muslims, immigrants right now - be driven by his love & not your fear”
Now, not surprisingly, Ed Stetzer (lead pastor of Grace Church in Hendersonville, TN, and President of the SBC’s LifeWay Research) tweeted:
“Saddened by anti-Muslim hate spewed by some self-identified Xians online. Jesus told us NOT to respond like the world.”
A friend of Roberts is John Esposito, professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. This particular Middle East studies program, like most, is funded by the Saudis. Esposito will be a headline speaker at Roberts’ Global Faith Forum in November. If you care to check out the lineup of speakers Roberts has invited (www.globalfaithforum.com), prepare to be scared.
But then, of course, Roberts and his friend Stetzer claim that many of us are motivated by fear, right?
When one considers that a dangerously myopic view about jihad now lies at the very heart of evangelicalism in America, one can see how many gains the jihadists have made. For example, Roberts touts that “Muslims condemn” bombings. Yet he seems clueless that the Koran (and the Muslim Brotherhood uses this tactic, along with an insidious plan to “build bridges” through interfaith dialogue, wishing only to capture new converts) actively encourages Muslims to lie when it serves a tactical purpose.
It might interest you to know, too, that both Roberts and Stetzer (along with Rick Warren) have blocked me from their Twitter accounts. I suppose because I ask questions they don’t want to answer. So much for tolerance from these tie-dyed peaceniks. I’ve discovered that they are very friendly to anyone who isn’t a conservative Christian who questions their various initiatives.
Now, one more thing that is relevant to this discussion.
Growing up in the SBC, I assumed the denomination was largely “pro Israel.” Certainly, even now, there are many local congregations and pastors who are just that, genuinely.
However, the gatekeepers at all levels of the (still) largest Protestant denomination are not that.
For example, a trip to any LifeWay Christian bookstore reveals a diverse stew of authors and themes. From a map of “Palestine in the time of Jesus” (even though “Palestine” didn’t exist in the first century), to books by change agents like Margaret Feinberg and, yes, Jimmy Carter, you can be crystal clear that a genuine, biblical (and otherwise) understanding of Israel will be missing.
(By the way, after I reported this story, which appeared on the Catalyst website, the Feinberg piece disappeared. Perhaps it is still there, but the website has undergone a facelift.)
The thing is, the radicalized Arab states are not going to become moderate. Yet our leftist thinkers in the Evangelical world—who have already permanently hijacked the movement—think accommodation can be made with Muslims. They also think the Arab-Israeli conflict is Israel’s fault.
Before we leave this topic, I also need to alert you to the sad news that the Assemblies of God also has this same strain of Israelphobia, coupled with a disturbing form of leftist ideology that would make a 60s prof at Berkeley clap and blush.
A few days ago, Jeff Walton of the Institute on Religion & Democracy (www.ird.org) broke a huge story, detailing remarks by Dr. Paul Alexander (out-going president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies) at a meeting at Seattle Pacific University.
I will be reporting much more on that story in the coming weeks.
Suffice to say that if our current religious leaders are taking left turns this extreme, it remains for the rank-and-file to educate themselves and resolve to tough-it-out in a shifting religious-culture climate.
I urge readers to avail themselves of the following information and button-up as the Church unravels.
19 April. Two Chechen brothers from Dagestan, members of a Wahhabi cell funded by Saudi al Qaeda, were identified as the terrorists who detonated two bombs at the Boston Marathon last Monday and carried out a bombing-shooting spree at the MIT campus in Watertown outside Boston, Friday, April 19, in which a police officer was killed. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhav Tsarnaev, 19, escaped in a hijacked a SUV. The police gave chase and as the terrorist the older terrorist was hit by police bullets and died in custody. His brother, “the white-capped suspect” is hunted by the police.
20 April. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev won the dubious distinction of being the first terrorist operatives to import al Qaeda terror to the United States through a route outside the Middle East – the Caucasus. DEBKAfile: The pair were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which have spread across the Russian Caucasian, with the help of certain Saudi financial institutions. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went secretly over to the radical Islamist networks. This provides the answer to the big questions buzzing about the Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev since they carried out the twin Boston Marathon bombings Monday, April 15, leaving three dead, 180 injured and a police officer killed at MIT.
The two brothers by their movements were obviously trained and whoever trained them trained others. So the pair clearly did not act alone.
21 April: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s Middle East trip was supposed to present the $10 billion US arms sales to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a signal for deterring a nuclear Iran. The Boston bombings shifted the onus of his trip to Syria and al Qaeda.
22 April. While US and Israeli defense chiefs discussed a long-range $10bn American weapons package Monday, April 22, two heavily armed Hizballah combat brigades, numbering 1,000 men each, were fighting Bashar Assad’s battles around Qusayr 35 kilometers south of Homs. As Israel’s defense minister Moshe Yaalon vowed action against the transfer of sophisticated weapons to Hizballah, those brigades were collecting their arms directly from Syrian military arsenals and Iranian and Russian airlifts.
Meanwhile, air corridors opened up over Jordan presage potential US, Jordanian and Israeli activity against Syria.
23 April Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz warned Monday, April 22, that the Bashar Assad’s fall would not end the Syrian bloodbath but drag the country even further into tribal and ethnic warfare on the scale of Afghanistan two decades ago. Iran and Hizballah are deeply implicated in this calamity. Strangely enough, Russia backs them. 
23 April. Red lines have been flattened by Iran’s rapid progress toward a nuclear weapon and by Bashar Assad’s mockery, backed by Tehran, of US President Barack Obama’s warning that “proof of chemical weapons use would be a game changer.” By these revelations, two Israeli ex-intelligence chiefs Tuesday, April 23 underlined Israel-US differences on when to strike a nuclear Iran.
24 April. Tamerlan Tsarnaev established links with al Qaeda’s Caucasian networks for terrorist attacks in America, starting with the Boston bombings. In 2011, Russian intelligence notified the FBI that he was on their watch list and offered the most promising treasure trove of intelligence about the Tsarnaev brothers’ terrorist associations.
25 April. Israeli Navy ships are out searching for the debris in the Mediterranean after Israel Air Force F-16 warplanes downed a Hizballah drone Thursday 8 kilometers at sea opposite Haifa. The Israeli army spokesman said the UAV was tracked continuously as it flew past the southern Lebanese coast from Sidon and continued south. DEBKAfile: This was just a step in Hizballah’s plan to force the Syrian war’s spillover into Israel after Lebanon and Jordan. It follows shooting incidents against Israeli locations on the Golan.
