Dr. Herbert Hillel Goldberg
This heading from Psalm 115:9 is a challenge. In the same series of Hallel Psalms of Praise we read, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes” (118:9).
Where our friends stand was proven again on December 29, 2012, when the United Nations, dominated by Arab states, decided to upgrade “Palestine” by granting non-member observer state status to the Palestinian Author-
ity (PA). Out of 193 member states, 138 were in favor of the resolution, only nine opposed, and 41 abstained. Among the 41 abstainers, more might have favored recognition. That the decision violated the “Declaration of Principles” of the Oslo Accords of 1993 between Israel and the Arabs of Israel meant nothing. But since when do Muslim nations hold to their agreements? This demonstrates where Israel finds itself today. I am reminded of the statement by New York City’s former mayor Ed Koch, who said the United Nations is a “cesspool of anti-Semitism.” Perhaps it is now time for Israel, even as a “voice in the wilderness,” to distance itself from this assemblage of hypocrites.
Shockingly, the European Union has joined in: When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would permit the construction of 3,000 new homes in Jerusalem and its suburbs in Judea, several European nations considered “friends” of Israel were so outraged they summoned Israel’s ambassadors to articulate their stern opposition. Can we imagine Britain, France, Germany or the USA asking anyone about building in London, Paris, Berlin or Washington?
And here’s the clincher: When, during this time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas (the head of Fatah) and Khaled Mashaal (Hamas terror-organization chief) declared their claim to every centimeter of land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, and that the Jewish state had no right to exist, there wasn’t even a murmur of protest by the nations. Such silence by our “friends” is nothing less than being stabbed in the back!
Irrespective of the protests of Israel, the world wants to invent a new neighboring state on ancient Jewish soil. So this will bring peace? It defies all logic. And will the Americans, Europeans or whoever nurture and finance such a state?
The utopian fantasy of the last 20 years, that two states should live side by side in peace on the 20 percent of land still left to Israel, has neither historical, legal, nor economic proofs to show it is feasible.
1. Palestine is a false name for the approximate 42,470 sq. mi. (110,000 sq. km.) which, according to the decision of the League of Nations in 1920, should have been Israel again. The name derives from the conquering Roman Emperor Hadrian, who wanted to wipe out Israel and Judea in the second century and renamed the region thusly. It means Philistine-land and, illogically, is an anachronism referring to a neighboring people that had become extinct centuries earlier.
By similarly illogical arrogation by the British Mandatory power, which administered the region from 1918 after WWI, an artificial Palestinian state of (Trans-)Jordan was formed on 80 percent of the land. The remaining 20 percent, including Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and Gaza, were indeed to be given to the Jewish people, but the British delayed doing so until after the Holocaust.
Now the Jewish people have returned home to their over 3,000-year-old territory, in which some Jews have been living all along. The historical connection to their ancestral land is not just biblically grounded, rather also confirmed by international law. One cannot found another state on the same land and expect peace to result. The entire time only the Jews treated Jerusalem as the capital city of their homeland.
2. Palestinians also don’t exist. Still, this was the name given to the Jews (!) who lived here under British occupation, and even to Jews living in other lands (I heard it in Poland during my childhood). It was incorporated into a Jewish hospital’s name, a newspaper (The Palestine Post, which eventually became The Jerusalem Post). The Arabs who lived here, who for the most part were immigrants from neighboring Arab nations, rejected the term “Palestinian” as Zionist in origin.
Only since 1967 did Arabs begin calling themselves Palestinians and bluffed the world into believing they are descendants of the Philistines. They were and are Arabs, have no language of their own, no religion of their own, no unique, distinguishing characteristics different from those of where they originated. Indeed, many of their relatives continue to live in these disparate lands. They fulfill none of the necessary qualities of a unique nation, are, in fact, a fabricated, imaginary people.
3. Recognition. No two peoples can thrive and prosper side by side in peace without mutual recognition. Hamas, which rules in Gaza now, states in a key paragraph of its charter that it will never recognize Israel and has as its goal the total destruction of Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is occupying parts of Judea and Samaria as the PA, has similarly often stated it will never recognize Israel.
So how can anyone imagine a peaceful coexistence? Recall what happened when Israel abandoned the ancient Israeli Gaza Strip in 2005, which Israel had rebuilt in recent decades, to the Arabs for the sake of a yearned-for peace. The response was years of shelling by rockets and grenades smuggled in or manufactured in Gaza. The reason for this is a lie all the world should recognize as such: Israel occupies “Arab land.” The tables were turned. That among other sites, Israel’s holiest place, the Temple Mount, is occupied by Islam, no one bothers to mention.
4. Recognition of an additional artificial state? How does the world envision such a thing? What exactly is expected of Israel? An already-existing “Palestinian state,” Jordan, has been recognized by Israel. Mutual recognition has taken place. Two-thirds of Jordan’s residents are “Palestinian” Arabs living on land including parts of ancient Israel, and the rest, including King Abdullah Hussein, are Beduins. But to agree to an additional, self-made concoction, which is being promoted unjustly even by the European Union, the United States and (naturally!) the United Nations? Israel is to give up even more land? Moreover, it is supposed to do so without negotiations–that is, regardless of Israel’s position. The only “negotiations” the other side wants are such where Israel must already agree to all demands in advance, thus rendering any Israeli demands superfluous.
One could also ask why Israel would negotiate with a man like Abbas, who has dodged all previous possibilities to negotiate and even denies the Holocaust, who essentially calls Jews liars?
5. Which borders does the world want? Again and again, we hear the quaint formula, “according to the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Those cease-fire lines go straight through Israel’s heartland. Further, the UN Partition Plan of 1947 (Resolution 181) never achieved legal force, was not ratified. In fact, all the Arab states rejected it, even the Arab leaders living in the “Palestinian” (i.e. Israeli) areas. Why? Because it would have required them to recognize Israel, regardless how small its area–and that was counter to the ideology of their political religion of world conquest. According to the statutes of the United Nations, the General Assembly can only make recommendations; it is the Security Council alone that can make legally binding decisions. It never came to such a decision, however, because the Arab states decided to settle matters themselves by initiating a war of aggression in May 1948 to destroy the one-day-old state of Israel, to drive the Jews into the sea. Thereby, what would have been an extremely unjust Partition Plan for Israel became moot. Resolution 181 no longer exists and it would be absurd to resurrect a stillbirth after 65 years.
Is a new state needed on exactly the Israeli remainder of land when the Arabs themselves own 650 times as much land as the Jews? We know, however, that the adversary of God imitates Him and wants to instill doubts in mankind. For example, when Moses performed miracles with his rod before Pharaoh, “Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their incantations” (Ex. 7:8-13, 22; 8:6-7, 18-19). But because God interceded and His people were victorious, Bible readers today can believe in His Word. The enemy wants to dispute Bible prophecy the moment it is uttered. Israel must decide, “Now therefore, if you will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for all the earth is Mine” (19:5). And surely every Christian knows, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Sadly, the corrupt United Nations, with its “politically correct” sense of justice, and wallowing in anti-Israel resolutions, has no room for biblical guidelines.
6. What will be enough for them? In the PA, children are taught that all Palestine belongs to them. In their schoolbooks and maps, Israeli cities are renamed as Arab cities. Even the PA flag has a map outline that includes the entire region once called Palestine erroneously–and Israel is missing altogether. In the Arabic language, the leaders speak of the eventual liberation of all Palestine and the expulsion of the Jews. The ultimate goal is to be completely rid of the Jews, Judenfrei.
For the sake of peace, nearly every Israeli prime minister since June 1967 has been prepared to give the Palestinian Arabs almost all the land it liberated during the Six-Day War. Indeed, with the return of the Sinai to Egypt, Israel gave away 90 percent of the land it had captured. The Arabs were never satisfied, wanted every last grain of sand, everything that was built up by Israel.
By comparison, I wonder if Swedish citizens would be in agreement if the increasingly Muslim residents of Malmö were to declare their city the “Caliphate of Malmöstan,” or if Germans would accept it if the overwhelmingly Muslim locals in Berlin-Kreuzberg (“Cross Hill”) were to demand that their Islamized neighborhood be appropriated for themselves as “Crescentberg.” In this manner, these new immigrants form a state within a state. And what would the United Nations or the European Union say?
A further transparent brazenness: Should the Palestinian Arabs really receive a second artificial Palestinian state on Israeli soil, they plan to resettle the imaginary 4.5 million “refugees” (only in their case does the United Nations count even the fourth generation as refugees), not in their new Palestinian state, but in the diminished remainder of Israel. With the Arabs’ high birth rate, it would be the end of a Jewish state demographically and democratically. It is an old strategy to destroy the Jewish state.
7. What does God say? Who should come home to the land? Of many Bible references, I’ll cite just a few. “But now thus says the Lord that created you, O Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are Mine….For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour….[T]herefore will I give men for you, and people for your life. Fear not, for
I am with you: I will bring your seed from the east, and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: Bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth” (Isai. 43:1-6). “Therefore say, Thus says the Lord God; I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel” (Ezek. 11:17).
Where should they go to? “Israel and Judah, says the Lord: and I will return them to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it” (Jer. 30:3). “And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up Mine hand to give it to your fathers” (Ezek. 20:42).
Where are the borders? “And there is hope in your end, says the Lord, that your children shall come again to their own borders” (Jer. 31:17 [16]).
That Israel with six million Jews is today the largest Jewish community in the world is truly a living testimony of the truth of the prophecies for every Bible reader. The remainder of the Jews will also come home soon and will need every bit of available housing space.
May the land given to Israel as an eternal inheritance for stewardship be given away? Most assuredly not! “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine, for you are sojourners and residents with Me” (Lev. 25:23).
Where does God stand concerning those who took land away from Israel, who are still taking it, or are causing it to be taken? He will gather all the nations in the Valley of Jehoshaphat and settle accounts with them “concerning My people and My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted My land” (Joel 4:2 [3:2]). This was and remains His judgment: “Therefore thus says the Lord God; Surely in the fire of My jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Edom [Jordan today], who have arrogated My land to their possession with the joy of all their heart, with contempt of soul, because of [Israel’s] expulsion in scorn….Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My fury, because you [the mountains] have borne the shame of the nations” (Ezek. 36:5-6).
“But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit for My people Israel; for they are at hand to come. For behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and you shall be tilled and sown. And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be built. And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and you shall know that I am the Lord. And I will cause men to walk upon you, even my people Israel; and they shall possess you, and you shall be their inheritance, and you shall no more be bereaved of them….Neither will I allow men to hear in you the derision of the heathen any more, neither shall you bear the shame of the people any more, neither shall you cause your nations to fall any more, says the Lord God” (36:8-15).
This fulfillment is taking place in our days and should cause us to say AMEN!