The congress of the United States is under great pressure. There is going to be a showdown between Netanyahu and Obama. Member’s congress will have to decide who they will support. There is no way that Obama’s Middle East initiative will become a reality without congress. Most of the GOP will want Obama to fail so they will throw their support behind Netanyahu, but on the other hand, the Democrats will have to decide weather to support their leader and President or to support the Jewish lobbyist who have been bank rolling their campaign for many years. If they support the Jewish lobbyist, than the people might turn against them at the ballot box esp. if the go against a popular president. If I was a betting man, I would put my money on the Democrats going against Obama and going for the money since they have already proven their greediness and lack of integrity. Maybe the democrats will care for the security of this country and seek a Middle East Peace plan and support their President.
Christian Zionist parley: John Hagee - Don't pressure Israel - They are God's Chosen People -
Pastor John Hagee, with U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) standing behind him, at the Christians United for Israel conference in Washington on July 21, 2009 rapped the Obama administration for "putting pressure on the wrong people," referring to Israel. CHRISTIANS UNITED FOR ISRAEL |
WASHINGTON – While criticism of President Obama’s demand for an Israeli settlement freeze has been relatively muted among U.S. Jewish organizations, this week’s Christians United for Israel conference here provided the opportunity for some prominent Jews and Christians to level some public complaints.
Far and away the most forceful came from U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), one of the more hard-line Democrats in Congress. Berkley told the group of Christian Zionists on Tuesday that “to pin the peace process” on the settlement issue “is absolutely foolhardy.”
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
“To publicly dress down the State of Israel is a huge mistake,” she said to a huge ovation from the 4,000 delegates at the group’s fourth annual conference.
CUFI founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee also weighed in when he introduced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appeared via satellite Tuesday to speak to the crowd. Hagee told Netanyahu that “50 million Christians” support “Israel’s sovereign right to grow and develop the settlements of Israel as you see fit and not yield to the pressure of the United States government.” (The prime minister did not address the settlement dispute.)
A few hours after Netanyahu’s speech, Hagee reiterated his criticism of the Obama administration, although he refrained from identifying the president by name.
“America is singling out Israel” in the Middle East, the pastor said. “Despite all of the risks Israel has taken for peace, our government is pressuring Israel to take more risks. Hello Congress, we’re putting pressure on the wrong people here. You want to get tough, get tough with the terrorists, not the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Hagee and his organization have been a source of much debate in recent years. AIPAC and some other Jewish organizations have embraced their efforts to create an Evangelical Christian pro-Israel lobby. But some critics complain that CUFI supporters hold ultra-conservative views on abortion, gay rights and church-state separation, and fear the organization could end up working to oppose Israeli peace moves. (CUFI leaders insist they would never work against the decisions of the elected government.
Top US lawmakers to visit Israel, Palestinians
WASHINGTON — One of President Barack Obama's top congressional critics said Friday he hoped to reassure staunch US ally Israel of unbending US support during a visit to the Middle East next week.
Representative Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in national US politics, said he worried Obama has pressured Israel too much and demanded too little from the Palestinians in return and not done enough to confront Iran.
"We are very concerned about the direction we see this administration heading in as far as the US-Israel relationship," Cantor, his party's number two leader in the House of Representatives, told AFP by telephone.
Cantor will lead a delegation of 25 Republican lawmakers to Israel and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas' Ramallah headquarters for a week-long visit that opens Sunday.
"The purpose of the trip is to introduce to many members of Congress -- 25 of us are going -- to the challenges on the ground in the Middle East, especially those challenges faced by Israel," said the Virginia lawmaker.
The delegation is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel President Shimon Peres, and other senior Israeli officials, as well as top Palestinians in Ramallah.
House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is expected to follow Cantor later in the month-long congressional August recess with a delegation of about 35 Democrats.
Cantor said the Obama administration was wrong to demand Israel stop all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank including annexed east Jerusalem, which has drawn condemnation
"We are very concerned about the attention being given, and focus being placed, on settlements and settlement growth when the real threat is the existential threat that Israel faces from Iran, and the impending nuclearization of Iran," he said.
"We are also concerned about the emphasis on seeking concessions from Israel without a simultaneous effort to get concessions from the Palestinians," said Cantor.
Israel on Iran: Anything it takes to stop nukes
JERUSALEM – Israel hardened its insistence Monday that it would do anything it felt necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, just the ultimatum the United States hoped not to hear as it tried to nudge Iran to the bargaining table.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reassured Israel that the new Obama administration was not naive about Iran's intentions, and that Washington would press for new, tougher sanctions against the Iranians if they balk. He didn't say what those might include.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak used a brief news conference with Gates to insist three times that Israel would not rule out any response — an implied warning that it would consider a pre-emptive strike to thwart Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
"We clearly believe that no option should be removed from the table," Barak said. "This is our policy. We mean it. We recommend to others to take the same position, but we cannot dictate it to anyone."
Pro-Israel Groups Push Back Against Settlements Policy
WASHINGTON - As the clash between the U.S. and Israeli governments over settlements in the occupied territories intensifies, many of Israel's traditionally staunch defenders in Washington have been pushing back, tentatively but with increasing assertiveness, to urge the Barack Obama administration to alleviate its pressure on Israel.
The settlements battle has put these defenders in a delicate position, since Obama remains extremely popular among U.S. Jews, most of whom oppose settlement growth, and since a settlement freeze has been a core U.S. demand for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations.Rather than opposing the administration outright on the settlement issue, therefore, most hawkish commentators and organizations have instead sought to persuade the administration to tone down its demands and seek a compromise - particularly one that would make dealing with Iran's nuclear program a higher priority than an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, and would allow continued construction within settlement blocs close to the Israeli border.
Some hawks have also launched what many see as a concerted media campaign to portray Obama's settlement push as being on the brink of failure, and box the administration into backing down on settlements.
Despite reports to the contrary, however, the administration has so far shown no signs of letting up on the settlement issue, suggesting that the clash between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to come to a head. Already, Netanyahu's refusal to stop a planned building project in East Jerusalem has ratcheted up the intensity of the diplomatic conflict.
"Settlements were a difficult issue to defend, so the conservative establishment in the [U.S. Jewish] community made the argument that the disagreements shouldn't be in public, and there should be pressure on the Arabs to do more," former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, now a fellow at the New American Foundation and the Century Foundation, told IPS.
"Now there will be third component to their pushback, which is Jerusalem, but I do not think this will gain serious traction, nor will it divert the administration from their course," he said.
From the outset of the settlements battle, prominent and traditionally hawkish pro-Israel organizations have walked a fine line in discussing the administration's policy.
To be sure, a few notably hardline groups have given outright expressions of support for the settlers and denunciations of Obama's policy.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), for example, issued a statement saying that "it is utterly racist and anti-Semitic to suggest that Jews cannot build within the borders...of their communities in Judea and Samaria", referring to the West Bank using the terminology of the pro-settler movement.
Similarly, pastor John Hagee, head of the controversial group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), defended on Tuesday "Israel's sovereign right to grow and develop the settlements of Israel as you see fit and not yield to the pressure of the United States government."
But most mainstream Jewish organizations have been wary of appearing out of step with the administration. ZOA was notably excluded from a meeting held Jul. 13 at the White House between Obama and the leaders of major Jewish organizations.
More typical was the statement of David Harris, president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
"To be sure, the settlements are an issue," Harris wrote on the website of the Jerusalem Post, in a piece that was adapted from his remarks to Senate Democrats earlier this week. "But they are not the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. They should be addressed in the context of negotiations, not treated as a sine qua non for talks, as Palestinian leaders are doing now."
Harris also stated that "Israel cannot and will not return to the fragile armistice lines of 1967," suggesting that Israel would have to keep possession of close-in settlement blocs in any final status agreement.
Many of those criticizing Obama's stance on settlements argue that Israel should be permitted to continue building in these blocs to accommodate "natural growth" of their existing populations.
They point to agreements that were allegedly brokered between the governments of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon by Bush's top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams, and in particular to a 2004 letter from Bush to Sharon recognising Israel's right to these settlement blocs.
Abrams himself has argued that Obama should recognize these agreements and desist in his calls for a full settlement freeze throughout the occupied territories.
However, Sharon's former chief of staff Dov Weissglas told The Washington Times on Wednesday that no such agreement was ever finalized because the U.S. and Israel never agreed on where construction would be permitted.
Critics also note that excepting "natural growth" from a settlement freeze has in recent years served as a loophole serving to legitimize all settlement growth, and the Obama administration has accordingly refused to make a natural growth exception.
On Monday, Abrams attracted more controversy when he wrote an article for National Review Online claiming that the U.S. had backed off its demands for a total freeze and was now asking for a compromise that would allow all construction projects underway to be completed.
Abrams also cited unnamed reports that Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, plans to leave the administration at the end of the year.
Mitchell responded by calling reports about his planned retirement "an utter fabrication", reported The Cable, a blog on the website of Foreign Policy magazine.
Other experts similarly dismiss Abrams's claim that the Obama administration is on the verge of accepting a compromise solution.
"We are quite confident that the Obama administration is standing by its demand that Israel's government live up to its commitment to freeze all settlement activity and dismantle illegal outposts in the West Bank," Ori Nir, spokesman for the group Americans for Peace Now (APN), told IPS.
In early July, a senior administration official rebutted similar rumors of an imminent compromise, telling The Washington Post that "we have not changed our position at all...nor has the president authorized any negotiating room".
Besides Abrams, several other hardline supporters of Israel have argued recently that Obama's Israel-Palestine policy is floundering - a trend that some analysts see as a concerted media campaign to shape public perceptions.
"A number of...remarkably similar pieces over the last few days...have seemed geared towards creating the impression that Obama's strong position on Israeli settlements have backfired and put his overall policy in jeopardy," wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East scholar at George Washington University, on the Foreign Policy website.
Lynch dismisses these arguments as "advice from those who aren't worried that [Obama will] fail, they want him to fail...The objective, most likely, is to derail his push towards a two-state solution that they fear might succeed and to embolden those who are uncomfortable with his approach but had been unwilling to challenge a popular President."
It was in part to reassure Jewish community leaders about his push on settlements that Obama held his Jul. 13 meeting with them at the White House. By most accounts, the meeting was a success, with Obama restating his commitment to Israel's security and the attendees offering expressions of support for the administration.
However, tensions have increased once again following Netanyahu's Sunday announcement that a planned Israeli housing development in East Jerusalem will proceed despite U.S. protests, and his defiant proclamation that Israeli sovereignty over a "united Jerusalem...cannot be challenged".
Since all major plans for a two-state solution involve Palestinian control of East Jerusalem as a capital city, Netanyahu's statement posed a direct challenge to the Obama administration's policy, and thrust the settlements debate back into the spotlight.
While the results of the current clash over Jerusalem remain to be seen, some prominent Jewish groups have already lined up with Netanyahu.
On Tuesday, the hawkish and influential Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations issued a statement calling the administration's objections to the proposed building project "disturbing".
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Modern Jews not from Palestine nor of Semitic origin.
Is Modern-Day Israel in Bible Prophecy? Are Modern-day Jews of Abraham Seed?
Millions expect Israel to play a major role in God’s future plan for earth. Could they all be wrong? Is there a conspiracy to deceive God’s people? What is the Biblical evidence concerning modern day Israel?
Many people today consider the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine to be a direct and dramatic fulfillment of Bible prophecy.
Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, a phenomenal best seller of the last few decades, and Jerry Jenkins and Tim Lahaye’s Lift Behind, along with Bishop T.D. Jakes declares that the end of the world will come within the lifetime of the generation that saw the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, hereby applying the words of Jesus: “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” (Matthew 24:34)
Coupled with this fascination with Israel is a novel teaching regarding the return of Jesus, called the “secret rapture.” These books and many other speaks for many today who expect God secretly to take the “church” to heaven prior to the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple on its old site where the sacred Muslim shrine, the Dome of the Rock, now stands. According to this position, after the “church” is “raptured” to heaven, there will be seven years of the worst period of famine, bloodshed, and pestilence ever experienced by man. During this great tribulation the focus will be on God’s dealings with the Jews, who are again given the responsibility for the evangelization of the world.
According to secret-rapture preachers, the battle of Armageddon will climax the end of the seven-year tribulation as the nations of the earth take sides over the future of Israel. When mankind teeters on the brink of incinerating the world, Jesus will return gloriously and save man from self-extinction. At that time Jesus will set up a literal one-thousand-year reign on earth with Jerusalem functioning as the spiritual capital of the world.
Most evangelical periodicals and pulpits teach this view today, and to those who do not know better, it might appear that this prophetic scenario, known as pretribulationism, has been the traditional teaching of the Christian church since New Testament days. Nothing is further from the truth. Be not deceived.. Did the architects of the creation of modern day Israel have any thing to do with the development of the rapture theory? Where did the Rapture theology originate? Is the crisis in the Middle East and the war in the Iraq have anything to do with the erroneous rapture theory?
Is there a master conspiracy at work
According to dispensationalists John Hagee, Jack van Impe, Ken Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, John Walvoord, Grant Jefferies, Tim Lahaye, Benny Hinn, Clarence Larkin, H. Caldwell, TD Jakes and others who teach and preach about the Rapture, Israel has two dispensations, or time periods, in which they functions as God’s special instrument of salvation. Between these two periods of time comes the dispensation of the “church”. The church received a heavenly reward at the time of the rapture, while Israel received an earthly reward at the end of the tribulation.
There is no support in the New Testament for such an erroneous view.
The chief reason why the modern state of Israel has no prophetic significance is that after the Jews as a body rejected Jesus as the Messiah, God gave to the Christian church the special privileges, responsibilities, and prerogatives once assigned to the ancient Jews. No longer were the Jews to be His special people with a prophetic destiny.
Rom.2:28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; vs.29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.
All the promises of a glorious kingdom on earth once given through the Jewish prophets to the Jewish people became void because the Jewish people as a nation did not fulfill the conditions of these prophecies. Failing to receive the glory that could have been Israel’s is probably the saddest story in literature. Placed at the crossroads of the ancient world, God furnished them with every facility for becoming the greatest nation on the earth. God wanted to reward Israel with every physical and spiritual blessing as they put into practice the clear-cut principles that He had graciously taught them through His prophets (Deuteronomy 7, 8, 28).
The Old Testament records the sad story of how the vineyard of Israel produced, not the mature fruit of a Christ-like character, but “wild grapes,” a misinterpretation and perversion of what the God of Israel was really like. “What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” (Isaiah 5:4 RSV).
Even when the Jewish nation was suffering the bitter consequences of disobedience during the Babylonian captivity, God mercifully promised that a restored Israel was possible and that there was yet time to recover its special role as His representative on earth – if it would honor His law and submit to His principles. Even then the Jews could have become, if faithful, the head and not the tail, in matters physical and spiritual; all nations would have looked upon Jerusalem as not only the center of wisdom but also the spiritual capital of the world (see Isaiah 45:14; 60:1 – 11).
When the Jews returned to Palestine after the Babylonian captivity, the promises given to Abraham and expanded through the writings of Moses and other prophets would have been fulfilled; the whole earth would have been alerted for the first advent of Christ, even as the way is being prepared for His second coming today.
Missed Their Last Opportunity.
These Old Testament prophecies that picture Israel dwelling in peace and prosperity, with all nations beating a path to her doors, could have been fulfilled 2000 years ago if they had indeed prepared the world for the first coming of Jesus (see Zechariah 8:14). But instead of fulfilling their greatest assignment they missed their last opportunity, and Jesus their Lord finally had to pronounce with irrevocable judgement: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not Behold your house is forsaken and desolate” (Matthew 23:37, 38 RSV).
Those who regard the establishment of the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of those Old Testament prophecies overlook the fact that these promises were made either prior to their release from Babylonian captivity or during the rebuilding days soon after their return. God would have fulfilled these promises if Israel had been faithful and obedient to the conditions on which the promises were made.
Although God promised a “second chance” to Israel after their failure leading up to the Babylonian captivity, He promised no “third chance” to them after their final rejection when their Lord Himself “came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (John 1:11 RSV)
But God did not give up, even though Israel as a nation had failed Him. Although corporate Israel no longer was to function as God’s special agent, the individual Jews who received and obeyed Jesus Christ would constitute the new organization through which He would now work.
Paul describes this remarkable transition in Romans 9 to 11, where he appeals to individual Jews (such as himself) to respond to God through Jesus, join those Gentiles who have found in Him the solution to their anxious, sinful condition, and together arouse the world to the simple fact that God wants to make an end to sin and its misery by setting up His eternal kingdom composed of those who have found in Jesus the promised Saviour.
Those who preach and teach this erroneous Rapture doctrine are purposely misleading multitudes. This doctrine was created by the Jesuits as an anti-reformation and anti-protestant tool to divert attention away from the Catholic and the Pope whom the reformers had identify as the anti-Christ in Revelation. Those who teach and preach the rapture theory are proxies and agents for the Kabbalists and those who want to establish a New World Order (NWO). The Rapture theory has more to do with politics than theology, more to do with mans involvement in world affairs than Gods involvement, more about Zionism than the people of Zion.
JANUARY 8, 2009…9:15 PM
Does Israel have any right to exist anymore?
Not according to Orthodox Jews! (see below)
Once again, the U.N. passed a resolution urging an “immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire,” and for Israel to withdraw from Gaza after a 14-day air-and-ground offensive. The United States abstained. Noooo… really?
Anyway, don’t hold your breath!
Moments before the resolution was passed, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on areas on the outskirts of Gaza, the main city in the north of the coastal strip. There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli (thugs) officials after the
Security Council vote, but Israel had opposed the idea of a binding resolution. As a matter of fact, to date, Israel had violated over 59 UN resolutions!
When Hitler and the Nazis terrorized Europe, we sent the troops to liberate Europe from the Nazi thugs! And now we have something worse: Zionism. Did we not swear to “NEVER AGAIN” allow a Holocaust to happen?
What a bunch of hypocrites we are!
These new Nazis are worse than the old ones. They have created a bigger Auschwitz in Palestine.
I just watched on ABC World News Tonight how 2 or 3 children who seemed missing, were found at some home after 4 days of searching. They were found next to their mother.. clinging to her… apparently for 4 days! The mother was dead. Killed by the barbaric Nazi regime of IsraHell.
The Thirteenth Tribe – The Real Jewish Heritage
THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
Arthur Koestler
…but that does not alter the fact that the large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European — and thus perhaps mainly of Khazar — origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigur " |
This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry…
The Khazars’ sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain.
In the second part of this book, “The Heritage,” Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced. Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term “anti-Semitism” would become void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler writes, it is based “on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.”
www.soldiersspeakout.com.
Israeli Soldiers Testify: We Used Gazans as Human Shields!
Outcry Against Gaza “War Crimes” Grows: CBS News
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