The Myth of Palestine

"Before the establishment of anti-Semitic terrorist Arab groups like the PLO, the Palestinian Arabs had never had a single symbol of nationhood: no flag, no passport, no anthem and most importantly, no country." The Berean Call, March 17, 2008

How close has the United States come to God's divine judgment? This close when we read the Lord's caveat issued to the ancient Hebrew patriarch Abraham concerning those who would oppress the Jews, his chosen people: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Genesis 12:3)

Or, consider this curse that the Lord revealed to the ancient prophet Ezekiel concerning those nations that would seize the land that he gave to the Jews and to no one else: "In my burning zeal I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, for with glee and with malice in their hearts they made my land their own possession so that they might plunder its pastureland." (Ezekiel 36:5) 

Who was ancient Edom that the Lord spoke against, and who were Edom's descendants? Ancient Edom was part of what is now modern Jordan, and the Edomites were the descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob and the son of Isaac who renounced his right as Isaac's firstborn son and brought a curse upon himself and his descendants.

The Edomites were the ancestors of many modern Arabs and the spiritual ancestors of Islam. Though Esau was Isaac's firstborn son that entitled him to his father's blessing and inheritance, he treated his firstborn status with contempt and willingly gave up that right to his younger brother Jacob. Needless to say, Jacob and Esau became bitter enemies with Esau insanely jealous at having lost his blessing to his brother. 

Through Jacob came the Jews, the nation of Israel and ultimately the Jewish Messiah Jesus Christ who brought salvation to the entire world through his death on Calvary's cross. Through Esau came many of the ancient and now modern Arab nations that have persecuted Israel and the Jewish people throughout history. And through Esau came Muhammad, the founder of Islam, a religion that seeks to set up a global caliphate by converting the entire world to Islam.

Today's Muslims can rightly claim Abraham as their ancestor because they can also trace their lineage back to Ishmael who was Abraham's firstborn son. And yet, just as Isaac's second son Jacob received God's blessing instead of Esau, so too did Isaac, the second son of Abraham receive the Lord's blessing instead of Ishmael. 

Isaac received God's blessing because he was born of God's promise to Abraham (Genesis 17:19) while Ishmael was born of Abraham's own free will. Though Esau was in line to receive God's blessing as Isaac's firstborn son, he rebelled and forfeited that right which was then bestowed upon Jacob. 

Though Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn son, he wasn't the son that God promised to Abraham and his wife Sarah; he was the illegitimate product of a liaison between Abraham and his Egyptian maidservant Hagar. Ironically, it was Sarah who encouraged Abraham to father a son with Hagar because she feared that she was too old to conceive the son that the Lord had promised them.

Like Esau and Jacob, Ishmael and Isaac didn't get along, which became a foreshadow of history between Jews and Arabs. Eventually, through Sarah's encouragement, Abraham sent Hagar and her son Ishmael away because Ishmael was mocking and incorrigible toward Isaac and Sarah. 

However, the Lord promised to bless Ishmael (Genesis 21:17) and his descendants multiplied and spread across the ancient Middle East. In fact, Ishmael's descendants played an important role in the history of the ancient Jews when they purchased Jacob's son Joseph from his own brothers for 20 shekels of silver and took him to Egypt where Joseph later gained great prominence and power.

But how does all this factor into today's monumental struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? And how does this factor into the resurgence of global anti-Semitism and Israel's growing isolation in the world? Israel is increasingly called an apartheid state that allegedly commits terrorism and mass murder against innocent Palestinians. 

In fact, Israel's alleged treatment of the Palestinians is regularly equated with Hitler's Nazi Germany in the 1930's, an extremely serious allegation if that's true. And tragically, ageless canards such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that allege a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, are now being taken seriously in many colleges and universities rather than by the racists and ignoramuses who used to peddle such hate propaganda. 

Many western colleges and universities have become extremely hostile to Jewish and Christian students who support Israel, and the Palestinian Kaffiyeh, the headscarf made famous by PLO founder Yasser Arafat, has become a popular symbol of rebellion and uprising on college and university campuses.

Tragically, many college and university students have become propaganda dupes for the Arab-Islamic world's contempt and hatred for the Jews and Israel. Ignorant of the most basic and contemporary world history, many students and their enablers in the global media actively call for the destruction of Israel. It was Vladimir Lenin, (1870-1924) considered the father of the Russian Revolution who famously coined the term "useful idiots" to describe gullible and ignorant people who could be used by the state to achieve its goals and objectives. 

Today's gullible and ignorant academia from students to faculty, to their willing propagandists in the media have become the "useful idiots" of the Arab-Islamic world and their stooge-front groups such as CAIR. (Council on American-Islamic Relations) CAIR is popularly promoted as a civil-rights organization that defends American Muslims against perceived bigotry. In reality, CAIR has become the proverbial Trojan Horse that seeks to undermine America's Judeo-Christian heritage and replace it with Islam and ultimately replace the U.S. Constitution with Sharia Law.

The Arab-Islamic world claims that Israel illegally occupies land that the Jewish nation allegedly stole from the Palestinians in 1948 when the United Nations declared Israel a sovereign nation again after nearly 1,900 years. The Arab world claims that the land belongs to the Palestinians who have allegedly lived in that land for over 3,000 years. 

In fact, there never ever was an indigenous nation, tribe or people called Palestinians. The very name of that land was given by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 130 A.D. after he put down the Bar Kochba uprising. Incensed at the Jews for attempting to rebel against the Roman authorities in Israel, Hadrian renamed the land Syria Palestina after the ancient Philistines who were a maritime nation that lived along the coast of the ancient Mediterranean Sea. 

The ancient Philistines were a light-skinned, non-Semitic tribe unrelated to Arabs, Egyptians or any of the descendants of Ishmael or Esau. And yet, modern Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" wrongfully claim the Philistines as their ancestors.

For example, PLO founder and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat was an Egyptian who was born in Cairo Egypt. And yet he successfully reinvented himself as an oppressed Palestinian and sold that lie to a gullible and willing world media. 

Arafat claimed that the nation of Israel illegally occupied land that had belonged to the Palestinians for 3,000 years. In fact, not only did no such indigenous people or nation ever exist, but that until 1948 when Israel was reincorporated once again as a sovereign nation, no Arab living in what is now Israel wanted to be known as a Palestinian. And the reason for the Arab world's revulsion at the term Palestinian was simple; before 1948 Palestinians were considered Jews.

However, after the United Nations voted to reestablish Israel as a sovereign world nation on May 15, 1948, the reemergence of the Jewish nation came to be considered the Yawm an-Nakbah or the day of catastrophe in the Arab-Islamic world. 

Israel's hostile Islamic neighbors immediately declared war on the tiny Jewish nation and ordered Arabs living in that land to evacuate so that the invading Arab armies could march into Israel and destroy her. Instead, with God's blessing, Israel trounced the invaders and the Arabs that fled the land lost their homes and became refugees after they were refused asylum by neighboring Arab nations.

In fact, the nation of Jordan that had been designated by the British Mandate as a homeland for Arabs that desired to leave Israel after her incorporation in 1948, refused to admit the refugees. Instead, squalid refugee camps were set up throughout the Arab world in such places as Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to house the homeless Arabs. 

Ironically, the refugees would've retained their homes within Israel had they refused to leave for the ill-fated 1948 invasion. Instead, they became human pawns in the Arab-Islamic world's relentless propaganda campaign to win sympathy from a gullible and ignorant world that embraced the lie of Israeli occupation of "Palestine."

And so history was not only revised by the Arab-Islamic world in its attempt to cast Israel and the Jews as villains that stole land from an innocent nation, but history was also erased. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is the mouthpiece and puppet for Iran's religious ruling class known as the Mullahs, claims that the Jews invented the Holocaust to gain sympathy from the world and influence the United Nations to award the land of Palestine to Israel. 

The Holocaust is not only a grim historical fact, but it also resulted in the extermination of four million non-Jewish Europeans who perished in Hitler's concentration camps. To deny the Holocaust isn't merely an obscene insult to the six million Jews who died in Hitler's hell, but it also impugns the memories of millions of others who perished in that nightmarish period as well. And yet a growing segment of the world, including part of Christendom, has embraced Arab-Islamic propaganda that teaches that the Jews fabricated the Holocaust.

But why do the Jews continue to be mocked, maligned and persecuted throughout the world just as their ancestors suffered for centuries? What is it about the Jews that so angers the world that many are motivated to seek their destruction?  Even many who identify themselves as Christians--who should know better--have sided with Israel's worst enemies in calling for the destruction of Israel and the persecution of Jews. 

Major denominations such as the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and the Episcopalian Church have denounced Israel as an apartheid state and have threatened to boycott and divest from companies that do business with Israel. What a tragic irony that churches that owe their very existence to the Jews would turn their backs on God's chosen people to side with Israel's sworn enemies.

But there's historical, biblical precedence for the growing anti-Semitism and isolation of Israel in the world today. Throughout the ancient times, God repeatedly warned the Jews through his prophets to stop ignoring his laws and treating his commandments with contempt. 

For example, the ancient Hebrew prophet Hosea recorded these words of the Lord concerning Israel's rebellion during the eighth century B.C.: "But Israel has rejected what is good; an enemy will pursue him. They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval. With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction." (Hosea 8:3-4) 

Or, listen to the Lord's rebuke recorded by the prophet Amos who also lived during the eighth century B.C.: "They (Jews) sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name. They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines." (Amos 2:6-8)

But it was an ancient king named Manasseh who so angered the Lord by his rebellion against God and his laws that finally brought a curse upon Israel. The son of Hezekiah who was one of Judah's most righteous kings, Manasseh restored the shrines in Israel to the pagan gods that his father had destroyed during his reign in the eighth century B.C. 

And Manasseh also instituted many of the pagan religious practices that Hezekiah had abolished. That prompted this curse from the Lord that the ancient prophet Jeremiah recorded: "I will send four kinds of destroyers against them," declares the Lord, "the sword to kill and the dogs to drag away and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh son of Hezekiah king of Judah did in Jerusalem." (Jeremiah 15:3-4)

The Lord's curse against Israel took effect in 586 B.C. with Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar ransacked the Jewish Temple, carting off much of its gold, silver and property to Babylon, and his armies took thousands of Jews into captivity as well. 

Though the Jews were finally allowed to return to Jerusalem 140 years later under Persian king Cyrus, Nebuchadnezzar's invasion in the sixth century B.C. began an ageless curse against the Jews by forcibly removing them from their homeland and scattering them across the world. 

But what was just as significant about Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Jerusalem was that it began the age of gentile control and domination of that city that God had given to the Jews. Israel would not gain complete control of that city again until 1967 when the Jews trounced the invading Arab armies and drove them out of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War.

Much of the world, under the influence and control of Satan, called "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4) and "the prince of this world" (John 12:31) has relentlessly condemned the Jewish nation for calling Jerusalem her own, even though that city was given to the Jews by God and to no one else. In fact, the United States continues to refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital city and instead has its embassy in the city of Tel Aviv. 

And many other world nations also refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital as well as the Roman Catholic Church that believes that she has replaced the Jews as God's chosen people and therefore, Jerusalem should belong to her.

What's truly tragic is that even though Muslims claim Jerusalem as one of Islam's holiest cities, that city is never mentioned even once in the Koran. However, in order to stir up hatred against the Jews, Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (1921-1948) and a close ally of Adolf Hitler, fabricated the story that Islam's founding prophet Muhammad rode off into heaven on his horse from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. 

That fable was intended stir up the Arabs and world opinion against the growing Jewish population in Jerusalem that el-Husseini feared would seek to destroy the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and replace it with a new Jewish Temple. 

Ultimately, a new Jewish Temple will be constructed upon that site, but it will be under the absolute, supreme authority of a powerful world leader the Bible identifies as the Antichrist. No other man would be able to accomplish that without triggering a bloody, violent war that would result in millions of casualties.

But how critical is it for the United States to continue to support Israel and refuse to acquiesce to the opinion of anti-Semitic world nations that desire to see Israel vanish from the face of the earth? It is this critical; remember Hurricane Katrina that devastated the city of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast in 2005? 

That came just days after the Bush Administration had coerced Israel into surrendering Gaza to the Palestinians, who promptly converted that area into a launching pad for rocket attacks against Israel. Katrina became God's divine judgment against America for forcing Israel to hand over land to her sworn enemies. Since 1948, America has been blessed by God as the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth, and much of that blessing has come from her support of Israel.

But that support is waning and if and when America abandons Israel to coddle favor and approval from the world, the United States will be finished forever as a superpower. President Barack Obama has already stated that if he is reelected to a second term, he will work toward establishing Palestine as a sovereign nation, a tragic move that would not only jeopardize Israel's existence but doom America. 

And tragically, Obama continues to enjoy the unwavering support of many American Jews who are either ignorant of Israel's standing with God or who simply don't care. Either way, many Jews remain spiritually blind to Israel's significance and in rebellion against their Messiah Jesus Christ who will one day return to rescue Israel from a world that seeks her destruction.

Pay close attention to God's word recorded by the Psalmist: "If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways, how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes!" (Psalm 81:13-14)