Israel

May 18, 2021 | Deception, Prophecy

Israel – The ‘Miracle Birth’

Most Bible believing Christians and for that matter many others as well, have heard of the supposed miraculous birth of the nation state of Israel in the middle east in 1948. A prophetic verse from the book of Isaiah is claimed as one of the supporting Scripture passages which seemingly foretells the birthing of a nation in one day:

Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.

Isaiah 66:8

Most believers are fully persuaded by many church pastors/preachers that the establishment of the state of Israel as a sovereign homeland for the Jewish people is the fulfillment of this Bible prophecy and was realised through the miraculous work of our Heavenly Father.

Christians are further encouraged to support Israel, both financially through tithes and also through moral support including prayer offerings. A verse from the book of Genesis is often quoted to motivate and encourage this support from Christian communities:

romGenesis 12:3

The Christian Church has established a huge group of believers who ‘stand with Israel’ with unwavering devotion. With the recent outbreak of violence between Israel and the Palestinians many Christians have openly declared their support for Israel on many social media platforms using the phrase ‘I stand with Israel’.

It is however not just Christian congregations that believe this prophecy to apply to the state of Israel. Many Jewish leaders and Rabbis have been sharing this Bible Prophecy ever since the establishment of Israel and possibly even long before 1948. They are fully convinced that Isaiah 66 is a reference to the Jewish people and their return to their own land as a soveriegn nation and a united people. I say ‘many’ Jewish leaders because there is also a large community of traditional Jewish Bible scholars and Rabbis who are not in support of the establishment of Israel as a nation state. They are in fact very outspoken against such a state arguing that the Jewish people are still living as a dispersed people, under the judgement of the Most High. They claim that the time has not arrived for their return to a land of their own.

I won’t elaborate on this fact any further in this post as it is already covered in detail in my previous post entitled ‘Christian Zionism Part 1’ .

Below is an extract from a speech given by the late Rabbi Sacks from the website ‘Aish.com’ and a further statement form ‘One for Israel’. These two statements will provide evidence from a Jewish perspective in support of the nation state of Israel.

CAN A NATION BE BORN IN A DAY?

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

God has brought His people home and promised to one day give them peace. No people need it more. No people have earned it more.

The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain delivered this speech in London on Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh Iyar, 5762, (April, 13, 2002). Its relevance still rings loud and clear.

The return to Zion didn’t begin in 1938; it is as old as the words of Isaiah. Jews did not voluntarily leave Israel. They were driven out by other powers: first Babylon, then Rome, then by the Crusaders. Whenever they could, they returned, even in the dangerous days of the Middle Ages, as did Judah Halevi, as did Nachmanides, as did the family of Maimonides until they were forced to leave for Egypt. Jews never renounced their right to the land, and never once, in all the centuries, stopped praying for the day they would return. Long before the Holocaust, the Balfour Declaration in 1917 gave expression to that right. And yet there can be no doubt that what led the United Nations, in 1947, to vote for a Jewish state, was the knowledge that after the greatest crime of man against mankind, Jews needed a home in the sense defined by the poet Robert Frost as the place where, ‘when you have to go there, they have to let you in.’

It was a simple acknowledgement, tragically overdue, that Jews, too, have rights, among them the most basic right of all: to live, to exist, to be able to walk the streets, go on a bus, have a meal in a restaurant, go into a shop, without the fear that someone will attack you, injure you, murder you, because you are what and who you are. No people was denied that right for longer than the Jewish people. And without that right, there are no others. And after the Holocaust, the nations of the world finally recognized that this meant that the Jewish people needed a home, a place where they could defend themselves, and not rely on the goodwill of others; because when they needed it, in 1938, it was not there.

source: https://www.aish.com/h/iid/48906257.html

CAN A NATION BE BORN IN A DAY?

MIRACLE BIRTH

The British began to remove their troops towards the end of April 1948. On May 14 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, announced the formation of the new state of Israel. He said,

“The Nazi Holocaust, which engulfed millions of Jews in Europe, proved anew the urgency of the reestablishment of the Jewish State, which would solve the problem of Jewish homelessness by opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the Jewish people to equality in the family of nations.”

Ben Gurion saw the horrors of the Holocaust as paving the way to the birth of a Jewish State, and he was not alone in making such a suggestion. Would the miracle of the recreation of Israel ever have happened without such an atrocity on a scale that we can still barely comprehend? These questions are impossible for earth-bound humanity to answer, but again, we see the closely bound bitter and sweet, almost too close for comfort.

And what was a day of astonishing joy for the Jewish people was also a day of sorrow and anguish for the Arabs who suddenly no longer owned the land they had been living in for generations. Again, joy and pain uncomfortably closely together. Whilst we can rejoice in God’s fulfilled promises and a new start for Israel, we also know that this day is not an easy one for all of her inhabitants. God still cares deeply for all the peoples of this area and seeks to give them their blessing, hope and salvation. Whilst many Arab Christians will struggle with celebrating this day, there are numbers of Arab believers who truly rejoice in God’s physical restoration of Israel, and seek her spiritual restoration promised in the scripture. This too, is a miracle, and the handiwork of an awesome God.

For God had determined that he would regather his people and plant them back in the land he had chosen for them. And he promised that it would happen in one day flat:

“Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day, or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children. Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the LORD. “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God. “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice greatly with her, all you who mourn over her.” (Isaiah 66:8-10)

The Amplified Bible notes about this verse give this comment:

“Never in the history of the world had such a thing happened before–but God keeps His word. As definitely foretold here and in Ezekiel 37:21, 22, Israel became a recognized nation, actually “born in one day.”

After being away from their homeland for almost 2,000 years, the Jews were given a national homeland in Palestine by the Balfour Declaration in November, 1917. In 1922, the League of Nations gave Great Britain the mandate over Palestine. On May 14, 1948, Great Britain withdrew her mandate, and immediately Israel was declared a sovereign state, and her growth and importance among nations became astonishing.”

source: https://www.oneforisrael.org/holidays/can-a-nation-be-born-in-a-day/

Miracle or Misinterpretation?

The question that I would like to put to you here is whether or not the state of Israel is really the fulfilment of Isaiah 66 or if this prophecy has somehow been misinterpreted. My personal belief is that the prophecy from Isaiah pertaining to the birthing of a nation has nothing to do with the state of Israel at all. In fact I hold a very different view and understanding as to what and who ‘Israel’ is – from a New Testament perspective anyway.

In this regard I would like to provide you with some material to watch which provides the historical background for the establisment of the state of Israel in the middle east. You will learn from this documentary, included at the end of this post, that it was a devious and underhanded betrayal of the Arab people by the British during the first world war that ultimately led to the British governement offering their support to the Zionist movement and their subsequent occupation of Palestine. It was the signing of the Balfour Declaration that intiated the further occupation of Palestine by many other Jewish people than those historically residing in the region at the time.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government (by Lord Balfour) in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.

Balfour Declaration
United Kingdom [1917]

Balfour Declaration, (November 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community. Though the precise meaning of the correspondence has been disputed, its statements were generally contradictory to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a secret convention between Britain and France) and the Ḥusayn-McMahon correspondence (an exchange of letters between the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, then emir of Mecca), which in turn contradicted one another (seePalestine, World War I and after).

The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The document, however, said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization.

The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the side of the Allied powers against the Central Powers during World War I (1914–18). They hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial possessions in India.

The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the principal Allied powers and was included in the British mandate over Palestine, formally approved by the newly created League of Nations on July 24, 1922. In May 1939 the British government altered its policy in a White Paper recommending a limit of 75,000 further immigrants and an end to immigration by 1944, unless the resident Palestinian Arabs of the region consented to further immigration. Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favouring the Arabs. This point was made moot by the outbreak of World War II (1939–45) and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration

You will see from the article included below, ‘The Significance of The Balfour Declaration‘ from the Jewish Press, that this ‘Balfour Declaration’ was instrumental in the establishmnet of Israel as a soverieign homeland for the Jewish people.

The Significance Of The Balfour Declaration

Thursday, November 2, marks the centenary of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, pursuant to which Arthur James Balfour (1848 – 1930), in his capacity as British foreign secretary, wrote to Lord Walter Rothschild, president of the British Zionist Federation, the following famous and historic lines:

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“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.”

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Many years ago, while conducting research at the British Library in London, I was privileged not only to see the original Declaration but also to make an official copy of it, which is shown here. I constantly strive in my Collecting Jewish History articles to share the thrill I experience when channeling the great men who live on through the ink and paper of their written words, and I trust readers will appreciate what an exhilarating moment it was for me to touch the living history represented by this uniquely important document.

The Balfour Declaration was important because it roused the Zionist movement into political and diplomatic action; ultimately formed the basis for the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate; and, perhaps most important, lent legitimacy to Zionism on the world stage. Given Herzl’s failure to earn a commitment from the Ottoman Empire or any European government, the Declaration, despite its somewhat equivocal language, also constituted the first real step toward Zionism’s goal of establishing a home for the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael secured under public law.

The Maccabean, an American Zionist newspaper, called it “the Jewish Magna Carta.” Rav Kook said, “I want to bless the British nation for having extended such honorable aid to the people of the Torah.” Abba Eban viewed it as “the decisive diplomatic victory of the Jewish people in modern history.”

And President Truman wrote in his Memoirs that he had carefully read the Balfour Declaration and familiarized himself with Jewish history. (See my Jewish Press column from July 7 of this year, “The Traveling Salesman Who Saved Israel,” which featured an original letter from Truman in which he declares that “I remain particularly gratified by the role I was fortunate to play in the birth of Israel as, in the immortal words of the Balfour Declaration, a national home for the Jewish people.”)

The critical importance of the Balfour Declaration to Jewish leaders may perhaps best be seen in a letter from Chaim Weizmann, whom many historians credit as the prime mover in influencing British leaders. (When the Israel Postal Authority marked the 50th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in 1967, it issued a stamp with Balfour’s portrait – and another of Weizmann.)

In the October 10, 1949 correspondence shown here, Weizmann, as Israel’s first president, writes to Yosef Sprinzak, speaker of the Knesset, and recommends establishing the date of the Balfour Declaration as a national holiday for all time:

I have the most pleasant duty to propose to the Knesset that it should designate the day of the Balfour Declaration as a national holiday.

The important task that Lord Balfour fulfilled in consolidating the necessary instruments to realize our status as a nation – the essence of our national existence obligates us to remember and to commemorate those who were benevolent to us, and this should never be erased from our hearts.

The British government’s motivation for issuing the Balfour Declaration is highly disputed. The essence of the theory promoted by anti-Zionists is that Britain’s intention was far from altruistic and that the Declaration proved to be one of the greatest international relations blunders of all time.

First, according to this thesis, Britain regarded the Declaration as establishing a lawful basis for a British protectorate over Palestine. In fact, when the Balfour Declaration was formally approved at the San Remo conference (April 1920), the delegates recommended the creation of the British Mandate, which was later ratified by the League of Nations in the San Remo treaty (1922).

Second, the British believed the Declaration would engender support for their war efforts from the millions of Russian Jews and from American Jewry.

The truth, however, is that – as one recent commentator cogently put it – the Balfour Declaration was not “a British imperial grab” but, rather, “the outcome of a carefully constructed consensus of the leading democracies of the day” and “one of the first instances of [effective and successful] public diplomacy.”

In any case, there is no doubt Balfour himself genuinely supported the Jewish cause. Though his motivation is subject to conjecture, his interest began when Herzl negotiated with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, and Lord Landsowne, Britain’s foreign secretary, regarding Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael(1902 – 1903), and his interest in Zionism was revived through a meeting with Weizmann (1906). Balfour also spoke out against the persecution of the Jews – “the treatment of the [Jewish] race has been a disgrace to Christendom” – and saw the establishment of a Jewish state as a historic act of amends: “a great nation without a home is not right.”

At a rally at Albert Hall on Monday, July 12, 1920 – a public demonstration chaired by Lord Rothschild and attended by some 12,000 Jews – Balfour made it undisputedly clear that Eretz Yisraelwas designated exclusively for the benefit of the Jewish people for the eventual establishment of an independent Jewish state. Declaring in his address that “we will make Palestine as Jewish as England is English,” he said:

So far as the Arabs are concerned – a great, and interesting, and an attractive race – I hope they will remember that while this assembly and all Jews that it represents through the world desire under the aegis of Great Britain to establish this home for the Jewish people, the Great Powers, and among all the Great Powers most especially Great Britain, has freed them, the Arab race, from the tyranny of their brutal conqueror, who had kept them under his heel for these many centuries…. and I hope that, remembering all that, they will not grudge that small niche – for it is no more geographically, whatever it may be historically – that small niche in what are now Arab territories being given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated from it – but surely have a title to develop on their own lines in the land of their forefathers, which ought to appeal to the sympathy of the Arab people as it, I am convinced, appeals to the great mass of my own Christian fellow-countrymen.

Shown here is the program issued by the English Zionist Federation for the Albert Hall rally, which contains a photo of Herzl with his famous line “And if you will it, it is no dream;” photos and quotes from Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow; a map of Eretz Yisrael “showing Jewish colonies;” and the “Hatikvah” (all four stanzas) in Hebrew and English.

Besides Balfour, Weizmann, and Sokolow, the list of speakers included Chief Rabbi Dr. J.H. Hertz, Lord Robert Cecil, Major Ormsby-Gore, Dr. Max Nordau, M.M. Usishkin, and James de Rothschild. The following resolution was adopted:

That this Meeting, representing Anglo-Jewry, held at the Royal Albert Hall, on the 26th Tamuz, 5680 – 12th July, 1920 – expresses heartfelt joy at the decision of the Supreme Council to incorporate the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Peace with Turkey, and at the acceptance by Great Britain of the Mandate for Palestine as the Jewish National Home . . . and pledges the Jews of this country to spare no effort and no sacrifice for the rebuilding of Palestine as the Jewish National Home, in collaboration with the inhabitants of the country.

One of the proximate results of the Balfour Declaration was an influx of Jewish immigrants, primarily from Eastern Europe, which only served to exacerbate Arab opposition to the Declaration. In particular, Balfour’s visit to Eretz Yisrael in 1925 to attend the Hebrew University dedication ceremony, at which he delivered the opening address, aroused a storm of Arab protest. Balfour was, of course, enthusiastically welcomed by the Jews.

Shown here is a very rare invitation to the Wednesday, April 1, 1925 celebration of the opening of Hebrew University on Mount Scopus.

Many cards and associated memorabilia were created to mark the enactment of the Balfour Declaration. Shown here is a beautiful example from my collection, a hand-decorated card made on the second anniversary of the Declaration, at the center of which is a Magen David and two Israeli flags, over which is written “A new light shall shine on Zion” and under which is written “in commemoration of the declaration of Minister Balfour given on November 2, 1917.”

In the frame are beautiful verses from Shir Hama’alot, the psalm recited after Shabbat and festival meals, regarding the return of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael.

Finally, for Torah-true Zionists, the legacy of the Balfour Declaration may perhaps be best expressed by Rav Yitzchak Meir Levin, a founder of the Agudat Yisrael movement in Poland who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence and joined Ben-Gurion’s provisional government as minister of welfare. In the Rosh Chodesh Kislev 1932 correspondence (he also dates it by using the Daf Yomi page, 32 Rosh Hashanah), shown below, Rav Levin writes to the editorial board of Hahod in Jerusalem that although the issuance of the Balfour Declaration was clearly a gift from God, it will come to naught unless the Jews return to the Torah and to faith in Hashem:

…author Mr. R. B. publicized in his lead article several matters that I said to him during a private conversation held at the Seashore Hotel…. I hereby undertake to correct and transmit these matters, all according to my recollection. I said to him, among other things: Absolutely, the Balfour Declaration was a hint from “the Supervision from on High” to remember our Holy Land, but it would seem that those involved in the building [of the land] did not understand this hint, [to wit:] to return with full repentance to the Torah and to the faith and to build the Holy Land upon these principles…. I stated this idea with these or similar words, and this idea I hold always, and at all times.

source: https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/the-significance-of-the-balfour-declaration/2017/11/01/

Video:

Independent Jewish Voices

100 Years After Balfour

100 Years After Balfour is a new talking heads film made by Independent Jewish Voices. The film spells out the troubling legacy of the Balfour Declaration, challenging the notion that this year’s centenary is cause for celebration, given the grave consequences of the document for Palestinians above all. The film goes on to explain how the decisions of the British government in 1917 are linked to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, its fifty year occupation of the West Bank since 1967, and today’s political gridlock. 100 Years After Balfour features seven experts and activists: Professor Avi Shlaim, Professor Jacqueline Rose, Rabbi Howard Cooper, Professor Brian Klug, Antony Lerman, Barnaby Raine and Miri Weingarten.

Please watch the documentary below (How Britain started the Arab-Israeli Conflict) and decide whether you believe that our Heavenly Father endorsed this type of devious and corrupt behaviour to ultimately displace the Palestinian/Arab people from their land.

Am I against the Jewish people having their own land and self determination? Absolutely not.

What I am opposed to is the political ‘Zionist’ agenda with regards to the establishment of Israel in 1948 and their subsequent oppression/aggression towards the Palestian people. Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing.

—- My personal interest in this subject matter is one of determining accurate Biblical interpretation and Biblical prophecy. I am certainly not antisemitic.—-

I stand with all Bible believing Jewish people and see them as my lost brothers. I say ‘lost’ due to the fact that they reject the Messianic Gospel and the New Testamant. You may be surprised to find that many of these ‘religious’ Jews also reject the Zionist Sate of Israel (see my six part post series on ‘Christian Zionism for full disclosure – link below) .

I must also however, make it very clear that I do not condone the aggressive Hamas attacks on Israel either. I believe that the Almighty Father will bring about justice in His time and according to His ways. Vengeance and judgement belong to Him only.

What I can not support however, is the treatment and persecution of other human beings in the way that the Palestinian people are being treated. It is my understanding that the land was supposed to be occupied peacefully by both groups of people i.e. Jew and Palestinian. That is how I understand the Balfour Declaration.

Have a look at the illustration below and see how the Jewish occupation of the territory has grown over the decades since 1946 – just prior to the formalisation of the independent state of Israel in 1948.

The Palestinians are clearly being forced out of the region.

Below is an extract from chapter 2 of a book entitled:

The Hidden History of Zionism

Ralph Schoenman (1988)

This study presents a forceful challenge to the conventional understanding of Zionism and the state of Israel: the notion that it is “a land without a people for a peoplle without a land”, the myth of Israeli democracy and the perception of the Zionists as the moral representatives of hte victims of hte Holocaust. Schoenman documents the series of massares enacted under the banner of Zionism to drive out the Palestinians. The author concludes by articulating his own formula for a just society in the future – a democratic and secular Palestine where rights flow from citizenship rather than ethnic or religious identity. Ralph Schenman was Executive Director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation during which time he conducted negotiations with numerous heads of state to secure the release of political prisoners. He has also directed many campaigning groups such as the Committee of 100, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran and the Committee in Defence of the Palestinian and Lebanese Peoples. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-History-Zionism-Ralph-Schoenman/dp/0929675010)

(http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/)

Chapter 2
Zionist Objectives

The Iron Wall
The tension between the claim that the land was empty and the demand that the “non-existent” inhabitants be ruthlessly subjugated was less acute when Zionists discussed strategy among themselves. The reality of what was necessary to colonize Palestine took precedence over propaganda.

One of the ideological forbears of Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, is known as the founder of “Revisionist Zionism”, the Zionist current which had little patience with the liberal and socialist facade employed by the “labor” Zionists. [Revisionist Zionism is represented today by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.]

In 1923 Jabotinsky wrote The Iron Wall, which could be called a benchmark essay for the entire Zionist movement. He set forth bluntly the essential premises of Zionism which had, indeed, been laid out before, if not as eloquently, by Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann and others. Jabotinsky’s reasoning has been cited and reflected in subsequent Zionist advocacy – from nominal “left” to so-called “right”. He wrote as follows:

There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. All well-meaning people, with the exception of those blind from birth, understood long ago the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some general understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization of a country took place with the agreement of the native population. Such an event has never occurred.

The natives will always struggle obstinately against the colonists – and it is all the same whether they are cultured or uncultured. The comrades in arms of [Hernan] Cortez or [Francisco] Pizarro conducted themselves like brigands. The Redskins fought with uncompromising fervor against both evil and good-hearted colonizers. The natives struggled because any kind of colonization anywhere at anytime is inadmissible to any native people.

Any native people view their country as their national home, of which they will be complete masters. They will never voluntarily allow a new master. So it is for the Arabs. Compromisers among us try to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked with hidden formulations of our basic goals. I flatly refuse to accept this view of the Palestinian Arabs.

They have the precise psychology that we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope.

It matters not what kind of words we use to explain our colonization. Colonization has its own integral and inescapable meaning understood by every Jew and by every Arab. Colonization has only one goal. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible. It has been necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs and the same condition exists now.

Even an agreement with non-Palestinians represents the same kind of fantasy. In order for Arab nationalists of Baghdad and Mecca and Damascus to agree to pay so serious a price they would have to refuse to maintain the Arab character of Palestine.

We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.

Whether through the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate, external force is a necessity for establishing in the country conditions of rule and defense through which the local population, regardless of what it wishes, will be deprived of the possibility of impeding our colonization, administratively or physically. Force must play its role – with strength and without indulgence. In this, there are no meaningful differences between our militarists and our vegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets; the other an Iron Wall of English bayonets.

To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, ’absolutely untrue.’ This is our ethic. There is no other ethic. As long as there is the faintest spark of hope for the Arabs to impede us, they will not sell these hopes – not for any sweet words nor for any tasty morsel, because this is not a rabble but a people, a living people. And no people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions, except when there is no hope left, until we have removed every opening visible in the Iron Wall. [27]

The Metaphor of Iron
The theme and imagery of coercive iron and steel evoked by Vladimir Jabotinsky was to be taken up by the nascent national socialist movement in Germany, even as Jabotinsky had, in turn, been inspired by Benito Mussolini. The mystical invocation of iron will in the service of martial and chauvinist conquest united Zionist, colonial and fascist ideologues. It sought its legitimacy in legends of a conquering past.

Cecil B. de Mille’s Samson and Delilah was more than a Hollywood biblical romance about the perfidy of woman and the virtue of manly strength. It carried, as well, the authoritarian values of the novel from which it was adopted, Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Samson, which trumpeted the necessity of brute force if the Israelites were to conquer the Philistines.

“Shall I give our people a message from you?” Samson thought for a while, and then said slowly: “The first word is iron. They must get iron. They must give everything they have for iron – their silver and wheat, oil and wine and flocks, even their wives and daughters. All for iron! There is nothing in the world more valuable than iron.” [28]
Jabotinsky, the siren of “an iron wall through which the local population can not break through” and of “the iron law of every colonizing movement … armed force”, found his call echoed in major Zionist forays against victim peoples in the decades to come.

Israel’s current Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Rabin, launched the 1967 war as Chief of Staff with “Iron Will”. As Prime Minister in 1975 and 1976 he declared the policy of Hayad Barzel, the “Iron Hand”, in the West Bank. Over 300,000 Palestinians were to pass through Israeli prisons under conditions of sustained and institutionalized torture exposed by the Sunday Times of London and denounced by Amnesty International.

His successor as Chief of Staff, Raphael Eitan, imposed the “Iron Arm” – Zro’aa Barzel – on the West Bank, and assassination was added to the repressive arsenal. On July 17, 1982, the Israeli cabinet met to prepare what the London Sunday Times would term “this carefully pre-planned military operation to purge the camps, called Moah Barzel or ‘Iron Brain’”. The camps were Sabra and Shatila and the operation “was familiar to Sharon and Begin, part of Sharon’s larger plan discussed by the Israeli cabinet”. [29]

When Yitzhak Rabin, who had supported the Revisionist Likud in Lebanon during the war, became Shimon Peres’ Minister of Defense in the current “national unity” government, he launched in Lebanon and the West Bank the policy of Egrouf Barzel, the “Iron Fist”. It is the “Iron Fist” which Rabin again cited as the basis for his policy of allout repression and collective punishment during the 1987-1988 Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza.

It’s interesting to recall, as well, that Jabotinsky located his colonial impulse in the doctrine of the purity of blood. Jabotinsky spelled this out in his Letter on Autonomy:

It is impossible for a man to become assimilated with people whose blood is different than his own. In order to become assimilated, he must change his body, he must become one of them, in blood. There can be no assimilation. We shall never allow such things as mixed marriage because the preservation of national integrity is impossible except by means of racial purity and for that purpose we shall have this territory where our people will constitute the racially pure inhabitants.
This theme was further elaborated by Jabotinsky:

The source of national feeling … lies in a man’s blood …in his racio-physico type and in that alone. …A man’s spiritual outlook is primarily determined by his physical structure. For that reason we do not believe in spiritual assimilation. It is inconceivable, from the physical point of view, that a Jew born to a family of pure Jewish blood can become adapted to the spiritual outlook of a German or a Frenchman. He may be wholly imbued with that German fluid, but the nucleus of his spiritual structure will always remain Jewish. [30]
The adoption of chauvinist doctrines of racial purity and the logic of the blood were not confined to Jabotinsky or to the revisionists. The liberal philosopher, Martin Buber, located his Zionism equally within the framework of European racist doctrine:

The deepest layers of our being are determined by blood; our innermost thinking and our will are colored by it. [31]

source: http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/ch02.htm

As mentioned earlier in this post, it is not my belief that the state of Israel is the fulfilment of Bible Prophecy (Isaiah 66).

I am currently in the process of finalising a booklet detailing my understanding of who New Testament ‘Israel’ is and how this group aligns with both Bible patterns and prophecy. I will link it in here when it is complete.

Please do not read this post in isolation either. I have additional detail on this subject matter in my other posts:

The Star of David: https://www.unleavenedbread.co.za/the-star-of-david/

Christian Zionism (a six part series): https://www.unleavenedbread.co.za/christian-zionsim-part1/

Part2; Part 3; Part4; Part5; Part6

Documentary video:

How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict | History Documentary

The bitter struggle between Arab and Jew for control of the Holy Land has caused untold suffering in the Middle East for generations. It is often claimed that the crisis originated with Jewish emigration to Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel. Yet the roots of the conflict are to be found much earlier – in British double-dealing during the First World War. This is a story of intrigue among rival empires; of misguided strategies; and of how conflicting promises to Arab and Jew created a legacy of bloodshed which determined the fate of the Middle East.