HIGH PRAISE FOR QUEEN

High praise for the late Queen has come from the UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who said: “Her affection for the Jewish people ran deep, and her respect for our values was palpable.

By Charles Gardner

“I recall how, on one occasion, she showed me and my wife items of Jewish interest and value in her private collection at Windsor Castle, including a Torah scroll rescued from Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust.”

Tribute from British Jews

The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, expressed the Jewish community’s sense of loss in a letter to the King: “Each week synagogues around the country recite a prayer for the royal family. This Sabbath will mark the first occasion where we will offer prayers for you as ‘Our Sovereign Lord King Charles’ and ask ‘the Supreme King of Kings in his mercy to preserve the King in life, guard him and deliver him from all trouble and sorrow.’

“This prayer is always heartfelt, but will be especially so tomorrow, as the nation reels from this tragic blow.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews was founded in 1760 to honour King George III on the passing of his grandfather, George II.

LIZ TRUSS PLEDGES TO HELP ISRAEL

New British Prime Minister Liz Truss promised (before her election) that local councils would no longer be permitted to engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policies against Israel. She also pledged to ‘review’ moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

UK-Israel transport deal

The UK has signed a landmark agreement with Israel’s transport ministry that will see engineers from London’s Crossrail project advise them on their new £33 billion underground train system.

The “memorandum of understanding” confirmed that Crossrail International will provide consulting services for the new Tel Aviv metro that will see the construction of three underground lines, 90 miles of track and 109 stations.

‘Purbeck Schindler’ statue unveiled

A bronze statue has been unveiled in the seaside town of Swanage of a British war hero compared with Oskar Schindler for his efforts to save hundreds of children destined for Nazi concentration camps.

Schoolteacher Trevor Chadwick, dubbed the ‘Purbeck Schindler’ as he hails from the Purbeck region of Dorset, helped Sir Nicholas Winton rescue 669 youngsters from Czechoslovakia ahead of World War II. Mr Chadwick died in 1979 but his brave actions were not revealed until the 1990s.

Palestinian ‘child abuse’

Messianic leader Chuck Cohen has referred to the indoctrination of Palestinian children with Jew-hatred as “nationwide child abuse”, adding that since it is aimed at Israelis, the world chooses to remain deaf, dumb and blind to it.

“Yet the hatred is so deeply embedded in their minds and hearts that only a born-again experience in Messiah Yeshua will bring them freedom and peace.”

Meanwhile Middle East Arab Bassam Tawil, referring to the anti-Jewish incitement contained in Palestinian school textbooks, said: “This is precisely the rhetoric that encourages schoolchildren to carry out terrorist attacks against Jews.

“Poison is being injected into their hearts and minds, making murderers of the next generation, amid pressure for Israel to revive the two-state solution ‘farce’.”(Sword magazine, July/Aug 2022)

Syrian prefers Israeli rule

After listing the hardships under the rule of dictator Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian refugee is quoted as saying: “I envy the Syrians who live on the conquered Golan Heights (that part of the region under Israeli sovereignty).”

He wonders why Israel didn’t conquer the entire country which, he said, the regime had destroyed.

Such voices are often heard among Arabs, though not as publicly as this man. Israel Today’s Aviel Schneider writes: “I can’t tell you how many times Palestinians have told us that they thank and praise Allah for allowing them to live under Israeli rule…”

No regret over Munich massacre

On a visit to Berlin, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas expressed no regret for the deadly attack by Palestinian terrorists against Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics half-a-century ago, countering that Israel had committed “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians over the years.

Eleven Israeli athletes and a German police officer died after members of the Black September group took hostages at the Olympic Village on 5 September, 1972. At the time of the attack, the group was linked to Abbas’ Fatah party.

At the 2022 European Championships, held in the same city, the Israeli marathon team struck gold, with its fastest runner Marhu Teferi just missing out as individual winner

Olivia’s Jewish heritage

Musical phenomenon Olivia Newton-John, who died in August, aged 73, was granddaughter to hugely influential German-born Jew Max Born, who immigrated to England after his position as physicist at Gottingen University was personally terminated by Adolf Hitler.

He became a Cambridge professor and later, at the University of Edinburgh, nine of his students went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. He himself won the Nobel Prize in 1954 and is known as one of the parents of Quantum Mechanics.

Olivia found enormous success as a singer-actress and will forever be remembered for her role in the blockbuster movie ‘Grease’. Born in the UK but brought up in Australia, she also recorded a beautiful Christian album called “Grace and Gratitude”.

Imam’s friendship with Jews

An imam known for his conciliatory views of Judaism and Christianity aroused fierce controversy in Saudi Arabia when he was chosen to deliver the main address during the hajj pilgrimage in one of Mecca’s most important mosques. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally chose Sheikh Dr Mohammad al-Issa, overcoming the objections of senior clerics who did not want to honour a man whom they feel is too friendly to Jews.

Israel is chosen – Arab pastor

Shmuel Aweida, an Arab pastor of a Messianic congregation of Jews and Arabs in Haifa, challenged: “If you have a problem, as many do, with the fact that Israel was chosen, or the fact that in his sovereign will God singled out the Jewish people from among all the peoples of the earth, you are welcome to express your complaints to the one who chose them!

“The idea that God is finished with the Jewish people – aka ‘replacement theology’, is not anti-Israel. It is anti-god.

“For it calls into question the sovereign choice of the Creator of heaven and earth. Of course, this does not mean that God was biased or unduly prejudiced when he chose Israel. Right from the beginning, when God chose Abraham, he was looking towards the salvation of the entire world.”

Poland’s $1.3 trillion reparations claim

Poland’s top politician Jaroslaw Kaczynski said his government will seek the equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country. Leader of the Law and Justice Party, he announced the huge claim at the release of a long-awaited report on the cost to the country of Nazi occupation, and said Germany could afford to pay the bill.

ISRAELS’S MUSLIM MAJOR

Ella Waweya, promoted to the rank of major in the Israel Defence Force, is a Muslim woman living in the Middle East’s only true democracy, enjoying all the freedom and opportunity Israel has to offer.

Sadly, in Afghanistan, the very opposite is true. With the Taliban taking control of the country, women will once again be denied the freedom and equality they crave, instead finding themselves trapped behind the burqa or the four walls of their own home.

• A contributing reporter to the New York Times has been exposed for blatant anti-Semitism after revealing I am in favour of killing [the Jews] and burning them like Hitler did”.
• Entry to Mecca is forbidden to all non-Muslims. That is the law in apartheid Saudi Arabia. But when Jewish journalist Gil Tamari managed to enter the city pretending to be a Muslim, all hell broke loose and the Saudi citizen who helped him enter was arrested by the authorities.
• After Gazan Palestinians claimed that an IDF strike killed several children, it turned out the tragedy was the result of a misfired attack by Islamic Jihad. Over 1,000 rockets were fired at Israel within 48 hours.

Facebook’s parent company is under fire for an Artificial Intelligence chat-box that spews anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Yet another election, threats from abroad and at home – it’s back to normal life in Israel

By Robin Benson

Our late and much-missed Queen had been increasingly clear about her faith and trust in Yeshua/Jesus, especially in her annual Christmas Day broadcasts. Yet one major disappointment, during all her 70 years of unstinting service to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, is that she never made a state visit to the land of the Messiah’s birth, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and eventual return.

Let us hope that King Charles III will be allowed by the anti-Israel Arabists, whose policies infest our nation’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office like a debilitating virus, to rectify that major oversight of his beloved mother’s long reign with a proper state visit.

Israeli elections

Meanwhile, in Israel, after the short conflict with Iranian-backed and controlled Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the Gaza Strip in August, life has returned to some level of ‘normality’ – Israeli-style…

The Queen never made a state visit to the land of the Messiah’s birth, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension and eventual return

Campaigning is again underway for Israel’s next general election on 1 November, its fifth in three years. All indicators point to former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, gaining the largest number of seats in the next Knesset. But it is also certain that he and his party will not have enough members in the Knesset to form a stable government, necessitating a coalition.

Another major challenge for ‘Bibi’ is that, having metaphorically stabbed so many of his potential political allies in the back over the last couple of decades, almost none of these smaller party leaders will work with Likud while he remains its leader.

Fomenting hatred

Israel’s ‘normality’ also means living with concerns that a third Intifada (uprising) is brewing among increasingly radicalised Palestinian Arabs in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, which much of the world erroneously labels the “illegally occupied West Bank”.

Israel’s security services now acknowledge that Hamas, PIJ, and other smaller Islamist terror groups have essentially taken over control from the totally corrupt and politically bankrupt Palestinian Authority in many of Judea and Samaria’s towns and cities.

These terror groups are using every available means to foment hatred of Israel and Jews among the Arab population, especially the young, who are increasingly disenchanted with their PLO/PA leaders. Already this has meant that the IDF (Israel Defence Force) and other security agencies are more actively involved in thwarting the daily threats emanating from Judea and Samaria.

Existential menace

The other ‘normality’ which Israel currently endures is the existential menace coming from the Iranian regime; the mullahs in Tehran are still pursuing their objective of obtaining nuclear weapons.

In fact, the latest monitoring report from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), published on 7 September this year, admits that Iran has already passed the “nuclear threshold”, and has enough enriched uranium to produce at least one nuclear explosive device!

To anyone with any common sense, this surely begs the questions: Why are these endless negotiations going on in Vienna between the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) and the Iranian regime? And what is the point of a resurrected nuclear deal to slow Iran’s nuclear ambitions, when this rogue nation has already passed the point of no return with all things nuclear?

Cold comfort

Some in Israel may take cold comfort from recent but unconfirmed reports from Washington DC that a final agreement on this “new nuclear deal” may have been put on the back burner until after the USA’s mid-term elections in November. Nevertheless, the Biden administration – what many have termed “Obama Mark 3” – appears absolutely determined to pursue this agreement at all costs, although Iran has already breached it before it is finalised. It will not stop Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb capacity and the agreement will release literally billions of dollars into the hands of the world’s major terrorism-facilitating regime!

In light of all this, Israel’s current transition government leaders – who have quite limited powers and authority – have made it abundantly clear to the P5+1 negotiators (especially to the White House), as well as the Iranian regime, that Israel will not stand by and allow its greatest existential human enemy to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

This is what passes for ‘normality’ in Israel and its neighbourhood. But none of this has taken the God of Israel by surprise. In human time and space, as well as behind the scenes, he is working out his ultimate plan and purpose. May we all be found on his side of history as this continues to unfold in front of our eyes.

Robin Benson has reported on current events in Israel for many years. He appears regularly on Revelation TV’s ‘Politics Today’ and ‘Middle East Report’