December 11, 2010
Dear Pastors:
On Monday Evening at a reception in Anaheim, California, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon was asked the following question by a Jew:
"We have here [at the reception] Ministers of the Christian Community, and yet the Message from Israel all the time is "We cannot be for it [Christian Community’s message and methods,] [certainly not]supporting it. What can be done, not only from the [Israeli] Government, but also from the people of Israel, to have a more unified, unitorm, consistent message sent from Israel?" [The questioner is a friend of mine, a Jew, who wants the Israeli government to show more support for the Solidarity of the Christian Community with the Jews in Israel.]
Moshe Ya’alon answered thusly:
"Its quite difficult to get one message from the state of Israel [laughter.]
"You know that we say, when we have two Jews, we have six in a box [laughter.]
"It is a challenge for the people who live in Israel. It is a challenge for all ‘western-like-minded-people.’ I believe that ‘western-like-minded-people’ are ready to be deluded, to be deceived, to be mis-led. This is my observation.
"A phenomena — like minded people, the United States, in Europe — part of it is what I call "Solution-ism!" They know what the solution is. There are those who believe that, for any problem, "We have the solution!" They say, "Enrich the world."
"Human beings should be more modest. We don’t have solutions. In political issues, in medicines, in mathematics, IT IS UP TO GOD! We should be more modest.
"A second phenomena is ----In the era of instant food, we want "food now" as well as "Peace Now!"
"We should be patient. We should follow our values. We should follow our compass, our interests.
"But, since we are in a hurry, we try to make "concessions," we try to "Peace-make" — all for what?
"You cannot defeat Jihadist-type-ideologies by concessions and peace-making. We have to defeat them.
"A third Phenomena —"If it doesn’t work," we blame ourselves [referring to self-blame of the Jews,] Its OK to blame ourselves — In Israel, we blame the Prime Minister, and....replace him." [Laughter.]
"But, generally speaking, Israel is blamed by its Western Allies. You [the Israelis] have to give up. You [the Israelis] have to go to further concessions. All the problems of the world are because of the "Israeli-Palestinian" problems! Is it the case?
"And, our allies want to sacrifice Israel in order to appease our enemies. They want to sacrifice Israel. The enemies are not just the enemies of Israel. THEY ARE THE ENEMIES OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION. [Much applause!]
"So, yes, because of this — there is an [unintelligible] discourse in Israel. It is part of the darkness. All of this strategy is part of the "darkness." We have got to follow a strategy which is based on our faith.
"Mankind cannot be manipulated by possible enemies. We must follow the strategy which is based on our faith." [Applause!]
I thought you might get a blessing out of this answer. I have typed it hoping that I have gotten all his answers correctly.
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Monday, December 13, 2010
Letter to Pastors
December 11, 2010
Dear Pastors:
These lines were started to you from Phoenix, Arizona, as I’m flying Southwest on my way back to OKC, having been in LA visiting there with Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon and preaching in three churches of Pastors, who so graciously allowed me to preach about Yedidim of Israel’s connection with present day Jews in Israel.
Those churches were Montecito Baptist, Dr. Ezekiel Salazar, Dr. David Murphrey, Gethsemane Baptist and Dr. Joe Esposito, Pacific Baptist. These three Churches were so kind and gracious to me, it would fail, space wise, for me to be able, in this short email, to mention all their many kindnesses, and that on such short notice, after we were apprised of the Vice Prime Minister’s visit to LA.
The Bride of my Youth, and "Grandpa-in-a-Dress" as Melissa, Tom’s Wife, calls their youngest daughter, Esther, picked me up at the Airport. We went to Cracker Barrel to eat then came on home, and at our house in Piedmont, I am finishing what I started in Phoenix.
Monday evening at the reception in Anaheim, where we met for the first time Retired Major General Shimon Erem, the General asked the assembled folks if they had heard about the Le’ Chambon? Then he told us how, right after WWII, as a 24 year old veteran of The Jewish Brigade, who had fought on the Allies side under the British, he was in charge of smuggling Holocaust survivors into the Holy Land, then called Palestine.
Better known rescuers of Jews in WWII include Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who led the effort that saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. Another rescuer, Oscar Schindler, saved over 1,000 Polish Jews from their deaths.
Shimon told us how he had met Pastor Andre’ Trocme! André Trocme led the rescue effort in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, which hid and protected 5,000 Jews.
Dr. Jack Trieber’s church hosted a luncheon at the Marriott LAX for Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon Tuesday noon. Moshe is a soul stirring speaker as he addresses Israeli’s need of "friends" [yedidim] among the Christian Community particularly at this time. Both Moshe and General Erem spoke at that Tuesday luncheon.
Shimon quoted Eph 2:14 to us on Monday, telling about meeting that "Jew-Hider", Pastor Andre’ Trocme, who hid so many thousands of Jews during WWII from the Nazis and stated how that Pastor had quoted that verse to him as his reason for hiding the Jews. Eph 2:14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; General Shimon said Pastor Andre said, "You and I are one." Shimon, at age 88, is still "most impressive."
At one time, when a much young IDF Officer, Shimon commanded Present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Let me digress, if you would be so kind, with a tad of history concerning the French, whom, as a culture, I must confess that I don’t have much regard for, but, one of their sub-cultures, the Huguenots, I really respect. Normandy Veteran Bill Lair, who fought in the 32nd Armored Regt. from June 7, 1944, to the end of the War, says, "The thing I remember most about the French, was, they were always looking for a German to surrender to!"
The Huguenots were "truly Born Again" Christians in France, called, in their alignment with Reformer John Calvin, Protestants. The origin of the word "Huguenot" is uncertain. It is conjectured to be a corruption of eidgenossen, confederates; eid, or oath, and genoss, consort!
Viewed to this day by the majority of the French nation as a great king, Louis XIV transformed France into the leading military power in Europe. Louis XIV (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as the Sun King (French: le Roi Soleil), was King of France and of Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, and is the longest documented reign of any European monarch
Yet the Huguenots take a very different view of his reign. He was, the Huguenots will tell you, a vain and power-obsessed man, one who systematically suppressed all existing checks and balances to his rule. Believe you me, it is the opinion of this author that we presently have a President who will, if he can, also, do away with existing checks and balances on his "power" hold on America.
After the death of the queen, Louis XIV came under the influence of his mistress, Madame de Maintenon. Though she had been born a Protestant (she was in fact a granddaughter of the most famous Huguenot poet, Agrippa d’Aubigné), de Maintenon had since embraced the most intolerant strain of Catholicism.
Under her influence, and in accordance with his own distrust for all forms of independent behavior, Louis decided that there should be "only one religion in the kingdom." A gradual tightening of the rules, with the Huguenots being the ones "tightened upon," ensued, which slowly escalated into full-blown persecution and terror.
Persecution, of course, is something with which Europe’s Christian monarchs had vast experience----and not least because they had spent the previous six centuries in a most "Haman-Hitler-like-way" honing their skills on the Jews. It should come as no surprise, then, that the measures taken in France against the Huguenots were directly inspired by European anti-Semitic measures used in the past.
Huguenots were forbidden to express their religious beliefs in public by singing Psalms, and compelled to pay respects to Catholic processions; they were gradually excluded from more and more professions, such as law, tax collection, accountancy, and even watchmaking. This was the exact way in which Hitler began, in 1933, to exclude Jews from such professions.
Access to courts was restricted, even forbidden in certain areas. Worst of all, however, the conversion of Protestant children to Catholicism was actively encouraged- indeed, the age from which these conversions were considered valid was gradually lowered to just seven years old.
Moreover, a "converted" child was then taken away from his parents, who were forced to pay a Catholic institution to raise him. Documents show that government officials and courts were positively enthusiastic in implementing these laws and in devising new and ever crueler torments.
On account of the increasing persecution, some French Protestants began to leave the country.
Most, however, fell victim to an illusion, that has often plagued the Jews in their long history of galut, or exile: The Huguenots refused to admit that their Catholic neighbors, with whom they lived, worked, ate, and conversed daily, were in fact plotting to eliminate them. They instead preferred to believe the false reassurances of the courts that, for instance, the destruction of Protestant churches was merely the regrettable, yet necessary, application of the edict, and "not in any way destined to inconvenience the believers." And so they stayed.
The Huguenots, should, of course, have learned from the fate of Europe’s Jews. Limiting access to courts and prohibiting religious celebrations; barring the way to influential professions; extorting religious conversions-all these measures had often preceded the full-fledged slaughter or forced exile of the Jews. And, Brethren, all that was done under the "guise" of Christianity.
Most Huguenots, however, could not believe that they were about to experience the same fate. Their thoughts were, that they, after all, were as "French" as their persecutors. They could not lay claim, as could the Jews, to be members of a separate nation, nor did they yearn after a Jerusalem. And so Protestantism and Catholicism, lived side by side in peace.
In 1685, Louis’ gradual tightening of the screw came to its inevitable conclusion. The king---to near-unanimous applause from the greatest minds in France----revoked the Edict of Nantes, and with it all those freedoms that his grandfather had allowed Huguenots to enjoy.
All Protestant religious services were banned, and their churches-which they called, not coincidentally, "Temples"-were destroyed.
Preachers were enjoined to convert or leave France. Believers were in an even more impossible situation, having been forbidden to practice their religion yet at the same time forbidden to leave.
A large number did leave, however, probably upwards of two hundred thousand Protestants, most of them members of the social elite: Those who enjoyed protections, could bribe officials, or had business ties abroad that could be used as a pretext to cross the border.
Those who stayed behind, then, were those who could not leave: The poor, the weak, the ones who lacked social connections. Already beset with hardship, their lives were about to become immeasurably worse----decades of brutal persecution were on the way.
Children of that culture will tell you that they remember hearing, as youngsters, stories that had been passed down for almost three centuries about how the king’s loutish soldiers---the Dragons---would occupy a village and garrison the most brutal beasts of the regiment in Huguenot homes.
The Dragons frequently brutalized young and old, raping Huguenot girls and women, and coaxed or beating small children into "conversions," which resulted in their being carted off to Catholic institutions.
Able-bodied men were arrested at the whim of Dragon Officers and NCO’s and forced to serve in the king’s galleys, where they were treated no better than slaves.
All this, however, ceased immediately for those who accepted the benevolent authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, the dragonnades were highly effective in this regard: Once comprising more than 10 percent of the French population, Protestants gradually decreased to what I think is their current level of only 1 to 2 percent.
But just as persecutions of the Jews always ended in a regrouping of survivors and a defiant shout of "Am Israel Chai" ("The people of Israel lives"), Christian life, too, regrouped and carried on, although often away from the public eye.
In the cities of the North, for example, the destruction of their temples led to a life of secrecy and dissimulation, not dissimilar to the case of the Spanish Marranos. Thus did these Born Again Christians lead an openly Catholic life, but privately educated their children in the ways of their true religion, meeting secretly at one another’s homes to conduct religious services. This tradition of "family services," complete with private harmoniums, continued long after the persecutions ended, well into the twentieth century.
In the mountainous region of the Cévennes in southern France, the Christians took valiant measures in response to Catholic torment. Inspired by the story of Judah Maccabee, the leader of the Jewish revolt against the Greeks in the first century B.C.E., the Camisards, or Christian peasants, took up arms against the king’s armies and retreated to hideouts in remote places.
There, they held large religious services called "assemblies in the desert." To these southern Huguenots---for whom the study of the Jewish and Christian Bibles was often the only education they ever received---it was natural to understand their own fate through the eyes of ancient Jewish history.
Calling themselves "the people of the desert," they preached about the corruption of Babylon (Louis’ France) and Joshua’s victories.
The libels that were used to justify anti-Protestantism were also often inspired by old anti-Semitic canards. Whereas Jews were accused of murdering Christian children, Protestants were said to abide by a religious obligation to kill their own children if they expressed interest in conversion to Catholicism.
Now, lets fast forward to the days just after WWI, and we find Adolph Hitler in the Weimar Republic, which the Weimar Constitution made it ripe for such a monster as Hitler to later scrap its entire bill of rights and rule by decree. In that post-WWI time frame, Hitler started working his way to the top as an orator, whose speeches were nothing more than "a string of slogans," one of which being "change."
It is very difficult to understand his effectiveness when one listens today to recordings of Hitler’s radio speeches. His voice is shrill, hysterical, and coarse. His speeches are those "repetitive-strings-of-slogans." His physical appearance was very unimpressive. Pictures show him as short and flabby, and that little toothbrush mustache is ridiculous. And, he wasn’t the most "intelligent" of leaders, having only an average IQ.
However, the "thing" [look that word up in a good concordance, and just see how many "things" there are in Scriptures] against those, whom Daniel 11:15 calls "His Chosen people" in the run up to events of the Great Tribulation period when "Anti-Christ" achieves power under the guise of "peace" and "deceit"— but, the "thing" that solidified the Germans with Hitler was their collective "Anti-Semetic" feelings!
Because of what I write about our "obamessiah" Jews ask me if I think Obama is "Anti-Christ." And I will answer, "Definitely not!" Daniel 11:37 and 38 teaches "he" is a Jew, for therein you find two phrases, "the God of his fathers," and "a god whom his fathers knew not" definitively proving Anti Christ is a Jew.
Daniel 11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
Now, lets come forward to the year 1930, after Hitler had begun to grasp power in Germany, in September of that year, a hundred-odd members of the Nazi party had just been elected to the German legislature—the Reichstag—and they had shown up for the first session wearing their brown uniforms shouting, "Deutschland erwache! Jude verrecke!" The simple meaning of those words were "Germany Awake! Jew perish!"
Hitler did not make his 1,000 year reign. He took absolute power in 1933. He and his Nazis lost power in 1945. They only were in power 12 years, the length of time most of us spend in grade school and high school. But, in that period of time, Hitler’s efforts to make Europe "Judenrein" cost the lives of about 30 million Europeans, with another 30 million dying elsewhere in WWII.
Among the myriad slaughtered were the Jews. Six million of them. Two out of every three Jews in Europe before WWII lost their lives. One-Third of the World’s Jews. But, each was a living soul, a man, a woman, or a child. Each had a name. Each suffered his or her own death. They were, and are, the Apple of God’s own dear eye. They are and were "His Chosen people!"
Historians now call Hitler’s extermination of the Jews "the Holocaust." The word "holocaust" derives from the word "olah" in the Hebrew Bible. It had the religious meaning of a burnt sacrifice. In the language of our Christian Old Testament the word became "holokauston." The definition is that of "an offering wholly consumed by fire." In our day it has acquired the secular meaning of a general disaster.
But, what Hitler did, and what the Germans went after so fanatically, was the addition of another meaning to the dictionary definition: "a complete or thorough sacrifice or destruction, especially by fire, as of large numbers of human beings." [The Hebrew noun the Israelis use for it is Shoa. In Yiddish the word is Khurbn.]
Throughout their history, my Brethren, "His Chosen people" have been massacred by this tyrant or that one. What a privilege it is, like the Huguenot pastor in Le Chambon-sur-lignon, France, Andre’Trocme’, to stand with God’s Chosen People, the Everlastingly Covenanted People.
For a moment, then, let us look at Pastor Andre’ and his dear wife Magda. André and Magda were married in 1926. In 1938, Pastor Trocmé and the Reverend Edouard Theis founded the Collège Lycée International Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France. Its initial purpose was to prepare local country youngsters to enter the university. When the Jewish refugees arrived, it also took in many Jewish young people wishing to continue their secondary education.
When France fell to Nazi Germany, the mission to resist the Nazis became increasingly important. Believing in the same ideas as former Pastor Charles Guillon, André and Magda Trocmé became very involved in a wide network organizing the rescue of Jews fleeing the deportation efforts of the Nazi implementation of their Final Solution.
Following the establishment of the Vichy France regime during the occupation, Trocmé and other area ministers serving other parishes encouraged their congregations to shelter "the people of the Bible". Trocmé was a catalyst whose efforts led to Le Chambon and surrounding villages becoming a unique haven in Nazi-occupied France.
Trocmé and his church members helped their town develop ways of resisting the dominant evil they faced. Together they established first one, and then a number of "safe houses" where Jewish and other refugees seeking to escape the Nazis could hide. These houses received contributions from the Quakers, the Salvation Army, the American Congregational Church, the pacifist movement Fellowship of Reconciliation, Jewish and Christian ecumenical groups, the French Protestant student organization CIMADE and the Swiss Help to Children in order to house and buy food supplies for the fleeing refugees.
Many refugees were helped to escape to Switzerland following an underground railroad network.
With the help of many dedicated people, families were located who were willing to accommodate Jewish refugees; members of the community reported to the railroad station to gather the arriving refugees, and the town's schools were prepared for the increased enrollment of new children, often under false names. Many village families and numerous farm families also took in children whose parents had been shipped to concentration camps in Germany.
Pastor Trocmé refused to accept the definitions of those in power. "We do not know what a Jew is. We only know men," he said when asked by the Vichy authorities to produce a list of the Jews in the town.
Between 1940 and 1944 when World War II ended in Europe, it is estimated that over 5,000 Jewish refugees including many children were saved by the one small village of Le Chambon and the communities on the surrounding plateau because the people refused to give in to what they considered to be the illegitimate legal, military, and police power of the Nazis.
These activities eventually came to the attention of the anti-Jewish Vichy regime. Authorities and "security agents" were sent to perform searches within the town, most of which were unsuccessful.
One tragic arrest by the Gestapo led to the death of several young Jewish young men in deportation camps. Their house director Daniel Trocmé, André's second cousin, refused to let the children put in his care go away without him; he was then also arrested and later died in the camp of Maidanek.
When Georges Lamirand, a minister in the Vichy government, made an official visit to Le Chambon on August 15, 1942, Trocmé expressed his opinions to him. Days later, the Vichy gendarmes were sent into the town to locate "illegal" aliens. Amidst rumors that Trocmé was soon to be arrested, he urged his parishioners to "do the will of God, not of men".
He also spoke of the Biblical passage [Deuteronomy 19:2-10], which speaks of the entitlement of the persecuted to shelter, IN THE CITIES OF REFUGE. The gendarmes were unsuccessful, and eventually left the town.
Lets look at Deut 19:2 Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.
3 Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither.
4 And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past;
{Now, Brethren, I am not a "corrector" of the King James Bible. However, in the Hebrew, which has a tad more meaning than does our English vocabulary, the meaning here is very expressive, when tied into the "three parts" of verse 3, for it means " from yesterday the third day," which to ole JAV, is the Resurrection ground of My Messiah’s COMING UP OUT OF THE GRAVE!}
5 As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live:
6 Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.
7 Wherefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt separate three cities for thee.
8 And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers;
9 If thou shalt keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the LORD thy God, and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three:
10 That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.
God Almighty said, in Genesis 9:6 "Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed," as in the case of pre-meditated murder. But, in the case of manslaughter, God gave to them selected cities as CITIES OF REFUGE. Therefore, Pastor Trocme’ used this passage as "grounds" for the Huguenots showing "succor" to the Everlastingly Covenanted People.
In February 1943, Trocmé was arrested along with The Reverend Edouard Theis and the public school headmaster Roger Darcissac. Sent to Saint-Paul d’Eyjeaux, an internment camp near Limoges, they were released after four weeks and pressed to sign a commitment to obey all government orders.
Trocmé and Theis refused and were nevertheless released. They went underground where Trocmé was still able to keep the rescue and sanctuary efforts running smoothly with the help of many friends and collaborators.
In January 1971, the Holocaust memorial center in Israel, Yad Vashem, recognized André as Righteous Among the Nations. In July 1986, Magda Trocmé was also recognized. Several years later, Yad Vashem honored the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the neighboring communities with an engraved stele erected in its memorial park. It was the first time Yad Vashem honored a whole community.
Today, the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon have become a symbol of the rescue of Jews in France during WWII.
I wish my brethren, that you could have been there last Monday evening to see, and feel, the passion that this ole 88 year old Jew, Retired Major General Shimon Erem, spoke with in recalling his meeting with [as the Jews call him,] "the Righteous Gentile" Pastor Andre’ Trocme’!
Unfortunately, the relationship between the Huguenots and Jews has cooled in the past forty years. To be sure, among many believers, identification with Jewish suffering is an almost reflexive action.
Regrettably, however, the leadership of the Reformed Church, the Huguenots’ official body, has of late adopted a more distant tone towards the State of Israel. Were you to read Israeli Ambassador to America Michael Oren’s book, POWER, FANTASY & FAITH, you would see that the Presbyterians and Methodists were leaders of the "Restoration" movement in 1825 in America, but sad to say, like the present day Huguenots, they "divest" funds from businesses doing business with Israel.
This surprising estrangement can be partly explained by the Huguenots’ recent acceptance into the French establishment. As Catholic hatred waned to "residual" levels, some Protestants, especially the socially elite, may have felt that echoing the majority’s prejudices was a legitimate price to pay for that acceptance.
Thus have several Protestant leaders, such as left-wing politician Pierre Joxe, joined in the Israel bashing.
Part of the new coldness towards Israel can also be explained by the opposite phenomenon in Huguenot history: That is, not by a break with Huguenot traditions, but rather by an ill-informed feeling of continuity. Until recently, the victim status enjoyed by the [so-called] Palestinians led some French Protestants to look past their theological roots to the idea of a compulsory "solidarity with the victim."
Thus did they transfer onto the Palestinians what they interpreted as a historical sympathy for the underdog, who is viewed, according to the discourse of modernity, as somehow more "pure" than the stronger party.
John Calvin, of course, would have laughed at the idea that anyone, powerful or not, could be considered pure. Moreover, in Israel’s comparatively decent behavior towards its enemies, the Reformer would likely have seen yet one more proof that God shows his love for the Jews by giving them the strength to overcome, to a large degree, the deep corruption that is the lot of all humans. But then, in one of history’s greatest ironies, Calvin was dropped long ago from the list of required reading in French Protestant circles.
This ignorance, in fact, has led to the most preposterous of public stances among many Protestants today. The intellectual Jean Baub
érot, who as a young man was a member of the Jewish-Christian Friendship Association, changed his tack after the 1967 war and published a hastily written condemnation of Israel.
For a while, some Protestants also identified with the situation of Muslim minorities in Europe, which reminded them of their own past. During the latest Intifada, for instance, the Reformed Church sent two "special representatives" to live for several months in the Palestinian territories and report back on their experiences. The first representative, Pastor Gilbert Charbonnier, spent six months in Ramallah and managed to see only "oppression"-apparently, he was blind to the joyful demonstrations in the street whenever Jews were murdered. Far too embarrassing for the Church, he was replaced by the youthful and well-meaning Carola Cameran, who returned only with pat appeals for peace and is not, thankfully, encumbered by the same ideological judgments.
I know some folks up in Illinois, who has a relative in Minnesota, a Born Again Christian, who has made over 100 trips to Israel, however, going every time to Ramallah and taking up the "so-called" Palestinian’s side in the "Israeli-Palestinian" question, as it is called.
As the seriousness of militant Islam’s threat to the West has become clearer, more and more Protestants are returning to their philo-Semitic roots. For example, Jeanne-H
élène Kaltenbach, an intellectual who spent most of her life engaging with Muslim leaders, even co-writing with her husband a book heralding the coming of a moderate, civilized Islam, changed her views after September 11; one year to the day after that event, she published a damning indictment of France’s appeasement towards radical Islam’s agenda.
Even Baub
érot, though not yet really a Zionist, has expressed his regret for the excessive tone of his 1971 book. And there is reason to believe that even more Protestants will soon see the light: Not even these last few, overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian decades can succeed in changing the Huguenot Protestant’s deepest mindset. They are, after all, the ones who suffered at the hands of the dragonnades, and the ones whose ancestors refused to relent under pressure from the greatest king on earth; surely, they owe it to their brave ancestors to live up to their example.
French Huguenots-or, at least, those of them who know their own history-are linked with the Jewish people by too many bonds of culture, history, and religious beliefs to betray that old alliance.
The world is now experiencing a new wave of Jew hatred, with many Muslims hoping openly for a new Holocaust and most Europeans all too willing to let one happen. The most tenacious, vilest, and oldest of hatreds is reaching a new high. In such dark and troubled times, may the God of Israel give us the strength to proclaim our everlasting gratitude to the Jews. May he give us the grace, which we do not deserve, of sharing their torments today and their victory tomorrow.
For victorious they will be, as Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon "intoned" the other evening, and the next morning, in Southern California. He, like some others, have read "the last Chapter" of the BOOK! PRAISE THE LORD!
We are putting two DVD’s together to make available to churches for showing in your Watch Night or New Years Services. It would be quite touching and fitting for your to show these at this time, with events happening as they presently are, and the Jews needing Friends as much today as they did before, during, and after, World War Two!
If you would like these DVD’s write me at preacherjav@gmail.com, and we shall mail them to you.
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Dear Pastors:
These lines were started to you from Phoenix, Arizona, as I’m flying Southwest on my way back to OKC, having been in LA visiting there with Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon and preaching in three churches of Pastors, who so graciously allowed me to preach about Yedidim of Israel’s connection with present day Jews in Israel.
Those churches were Montecito Baptist, Dr. Ezekiel Salazar, Dr. David Murphrey, Gethsemane Baptist and Dr. Joe Esposito, Pacific Baptist. These three Churches were so kind and gracious to me, it would fail, space wise, for me to be able, in this short email, to mention all their many kindnesses, and that on such short notice, after we were apprised of the Vice Prime Minister’s visit to LA.
The Bride of my Youth, and "Grandpa-in-a-Dress" as Melissa, Tom’s Wife, calls their youngest daughter, Esther, picked me up at the Airport. We went to Cracker Barrel to eat then came on home, and at our house in Piedmont, I am finishing what I started in Phoenix.
Monday evening at the reception in Anaheim, where we met for the first time Retired Major General Shimon Erem, the General asked the assembled folks if they had heard about the Le’ Chambon? Then he told us how, right after WWII, as a 24 year old veteran of The Jewish Brigade, who had fought on the Allies side under the British, he was in charge of smuggling Holocaust survivors into the Holy Land, then called Palestine.
Better known rescuers of Jews in WWII include Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who led the effort that saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. Another rescuer, Oscar Schindler, saved over 1,000 Polish Jews from their deaths.
Shimon told us how he had met Pastor Andre’ Trocme! André Trocme led the rescue effort in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, which hid and protected 5,000 Jews.
Dr. Jack Trieber’s church hosted a luncheon at the Marriott LAX for Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon Tuesday noon. Moshe is a soul stirring speaker as he addresses Israeli’s need of "friends" [yedidim] among the Christian Community particularly at this time. Both Moshe and General Erem spoke at that Tuesday luncheon.
Shimon quoted Eph 2:14 to us on Monday, telling about meeting that "Jew-Hider", Pastor Andre’ Trocme, who hid so many thousands of Jews during WWII from the Nazis and stated how that Pastor had quoted that verse to him as his reason for hiding the Jews. Eph 2:14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; General Shimon said Pastor Andre said, "You and I are one." Shimon, at age 88, is still "most impressive."
At one time, when a much young IDF Officer, Shimon commanded Present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Let me digress, if you would be so kind, with a tad of history concerning the French, whom, as a culture, I must confess that I don’t have much regard for, but, one of their sub-cultures, the Huguenots, I really respect. Normandy Veteran Bill Lair, who fought in the 32nd Armored Regt. from June 7, 1944, to the end of the War, says, "The thing I remember most about the French, was, they were always looking for a German to surrender to!"
The Huguenots were "truly Born Again" Christians in France, called, in their alignment with Reformer John Calvin, Protestants. The origin of the word "Huguenot" is uncertain. It is conjectured to be a corruption of eidgenossen, confederates; eid, or oath, and genoss, consort!
Viewed to this day by the majority of the French nation as a great king, Louis XIV transformed France into the leading military power in Europe. Louis XIV (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as the Sun King (French: le Roi Soleil), was King of France and of Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, and is the longest documented reign of any European monarch
Yet the Huguenots take a very different view of his reign. He was, the Huguenots will tell you, a vain and power-obsessed man, one who systematically suppressed all existing checks and balances to his rule. Believe you me, it is the opinion of this author that we presently have a President who will, if he can, also, do away with existing checks and balances on his "power" hold on America.
After the death of the queen, Louis XIV came under the influence of his mistress, Madame de Maintenon. Though she had been born a Protestant (she was in fact a granddaughter of the most famous Huguenot poet, Agrippa d’Aubigné), de Maintenon had since embraced the most intolerant strain of Catholicism.
Under her influence, and in accordance with his own distrust for all forms of independent behavior, Louis decided that there should be "only one religion in the kingdom." A gradual tightening of the rules, with the Huguenots being the ones "tightened upon," ensued, which slowly escalated into full-blown persecution and terror.
Persecution, of course, is something with which Europe’s Christian monarchs had vast experience----and not least because they had spent the previous six centuries in a most "Haman-Hitler-like-way" honing their skills on the Jews. It should come as no surprise, then, that the measures taken in France against the Huguenots were directly inspired by European anti-Semitic measures used in the past.
Huguenots were forbidden to express their religious beliefs in public by singing Psalms, and compelled to pay respects to Catholic processions; they were gradually excluded from more and more professions, such as law, tax collection, accountancy, and even watchmaking. This was the exact way in which Hitler began, in 1933, to exclude Jews from such professions.
Access to courts was restricted, even forbidden in certain areas. Worst of all, however, the conversion of Protestant children to Catholicism was actively encouraged- indeed, the age from which these conversions were considered valid was gradually lowered to just seven years old.
Moreover, a "converted" child was then taken away from his parents, who were forced to pay a Catholic institution to raise him. Documents show that government officials and courts were positively enthusiastic in implementing these laws and in devising new and ever crueler torments.
On account of the increasing persecution, some French Protestants began to leave the country.
Most, however, fell victim to an illusion, that has often plagued the Jews in their long history of galut, or exile: The Huguenots refused to admit that their Catholic neighbors, with whom they lived, worked, ate, and conversed daily, were in fact plotting to eliminate them. They instead preferred to believe the false reassurances of the courts that, for instance, the destruction of Protestant churches was merely the regrettable, yet necessary, application of the edict, and "not in any way destined to inconvenience the believers." And so they stayed.
The Huguenots, should, of course, have learned from the fate of Europe’s Jews. Limiting access to courts and prohibiting religious celebrations; barring the way to influential professions; extorting religious conversions-all these measures had often preceded the full-fledged slaughter or forced exile of the Jews. And, Brethren, all that was done under the "guise" of Christianity.
Most Huguenots, however, could not believe that they were about to experience the same fate. Their thoughts were, that they, after all, were as "French" as their persecutors. They could not lay claim, as could the Jews, to be members of a separate nation, nor did they yearn after a Jerusalem. And so Protestantism and Catholicism, lived side by side in peace.
In 1685, Louis’ gradual tightening of the screw came to its inevitable conclusion. The king---to near-unanimous applause from the greatest minds in France----revoked the Edict of Nantes, and with it all those freedoms that his grandfather had allowed Huguenots to enjoy.
All Protestant religious services were banned, and their churches-which they called, not coincidentally, "Temples"-were destroyed.
Preachers were enjoined to convert or leave France. Believers were in an even more impossible situation, having been forbidden to practice their religion yet at the same time forbidden to leave.
A large number did leave, however, probably upwards of two hundred thousand Protestants, most of them members of the social elite: Those who enjoyed protections, could bribe officials, or had business ties abroad that could be used as a pretext to cross the border.
Those who stayed behind, then, were those who could not leave: The poor, the weak, the ones who lacked social connections. Already beset with hardship, their lives were about to become immeasurably worse----decades of brutal persecution were on the way.
Children of that culture will tell you that they remember hearing, as youngsters, stories that had been passed down for almost three centuries about how the king’s loutish soldiers---the Dragons---would occupy a village and garrison the most brutal beasts of the regiment in Huguenot homes.
The Dragons frequently brutalized young and old, raping Huguenot girls and women, and coaxed or beating small children into "conversions," which resulted in their being carted off to Catholic institutions.
Able-bodied men were arrested at the whim of Dragon Officers and NCO’s and forced to serve in the king’s galleys, where they were treated no better than slaves.
All this, however, ceased immediately for those who accepted the benevolent authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, the dragonnades were highly effective in this regard: Once comprising more than 10 percent of the French population, Protestants gradually decreased to what I think is their current level of only 1 to 2 percent.
But just as persecutions of the Jews always ended in a regrouping of survivors and a defiant shout of "Am Israel Chai" ("The people of Israel lives"), Christian life, too, regrouped and carried on, although often away from the public eye.
In the cities of the North, for example, the destruction of their temples led to a life of secrecy and dissimulation, not dissimilar to the case of the Spanish Marranos. Thus did these Born Again Christians lead an openly Catholic life, but privately educated their children in the ways of their true religion, meeting secretly at one another’s homes to conduct religious services. This tradition of "family services," complete with private harmoniums, continued long after the persecutions ended, well into the twentieth century.
In the mountainous region of the Cévennes in southern France, the Christians took valiant measures in response to Catholic torment. Inspired by the story of Judah Maccabee, the leader of the Jewish revolt against the Greeks in the first century B.C.E., the Camisards, or Christian peasants, took up arms against the king’s armies and retreated to hideouts in remote places.
There, they held large religious services called "assemblies in the desert." To these southern Huguenots---for whom the study of the Jewish and Christian Bibles was often the only education they ever received---it was natural to understand their own fate through the eyes of ancient Jewish history.
Calling themselves "the people of the desert," they preached about the corruption of Babylon (Louis’ France) and Joshua’s victories.
The libels that were used to justify anti-Protestantism were also often inspired by old anti-Semitic canards. Whereas Jews were accused of murdering Christian children, Protestants were said to abide by a religious obligation to kill their own children if they expressed interest in conversion to Catholicism.
Now, lets fast forward to the days just after WWI, and we find Adolph Hitler in the Weimar Republic, which the Weimar Constitution made it ripe for such a monster as Hitler to later scrap its entire bill of rights and rule by decree. In that post-WWI time frame, Hitler started working his way to the top as an orator, whose speeches were nothing more than "a string of slogans," one of which being "change."
It is very difficult to understand his effectiveness when one listens today to recordings of Hitler’s radio speeches. His voice is shrill, hysterical, and coarse. His speeches are those "repetitive-strings-of-slogans." His physical appearance was very unimpressive. Pictures show him as short and flabby, and that little toothbrush mustache is ridiculous. And, he wasn’t the most "intelligent" of leaders, having only an average IQ.
However, the "thing" [look that word up in a good concordance, and just see how many "things" there are in Scriptures] against those, whom Daniel 11:15 calls "His Chosen people" in the run up to events of the Great Tribulation period when "Anti-Christ" achieves power under the guise of "peace" and "deceit"— but, the "thing" that solidified the Germans with Hitler was their collective "Anti-Semetic" feelings!
Because of what I write about our "obamessiah" Jews ask me if I think Obama is "Anti-Christ." And I will answer, "Definitely not!" Daniel 11:37 and 38 teaches "he" is a Jew, for therein you find two phrases, "the God of his fathers," and "a god whom his fathers knew not" definitively proving Anti Christ is a Jew.
Daniel 11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
Now, lets come forward to the year 1930, after Hitler had begun to grasp power in Germany, in September of that year, a hundred-odd members of the Nazi party had just been elected to the German legislature—the Reichstag—and they had shown up for the first session wearing their brown uniforms shouting, "Deutschland erwache! Jude verrecke!" The simple meaning of those words were "Germany Awake! Jew perish!"
Hitler did not make his 1,000 year reign. He took absolute power in 1933. He and his Nazis lost power in 1945. They only were in power 12 years, the length of time most of us spend in grade school and high school. But, in that period of time, Hitler’s efforts to make Europe "Judenrein" cost the lives of about 30 million Europeans, with another 30 million dying elsewhere in WWII.
Among the myriad slaughtered were the Jews. Six million of them. Two out of every three Jews in Europe before WWII lost their lives. One-Third of the World’s Jews. But, each was a living soul, a man, a woman, or a child. Each had a name. Each suffered his or her own death. They were, and are, the Apple of God’s own dear eye. They are and were "His Chosen people!"
Historians now call Hitler’s extermination of the Jews "the Holocaust." The word "holocaust" derives from the word "olah" in the Hebrew Bible. It had the religious meaning of a burnt sacrifice. In the language of our Christian Old Testament the word became "holokauston." The definition is that of "an offering wholly consumed by fire." In our day it has acquired the secular meaning of a general disaster.
But, what Hitler did, and what the Germans went after so fanatically, was the addition of another meaning to the dictionary definition: "a complete or thorough sacrifice or destruction, especially by fire, as of large numbers of human beings." [The Hebrew noun the Israelis use for it is Shoa. In Yiddish the word is Khurbn.]
Throughout their history, my Brethren, "His Chosen people" have been massacred by this tyrant or that one. What a privilege it is, like the Huguenot pastor in Le Chambon-sur-lignon, France, Andre’Trocme’, to stand with God’s Chosen People, the Everlastingly Covenanted People.
For a moment, then, let us look at Pastor Andre’ and his dear wife Magda. André and Magda were married in 1926. In 1938, Pastor Trocmé and the Reverend Edouard Theis founded the Collège Lycée International Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France. Its initial purpose was to prepare local country youngsters to enter the university. When the Jewish refugees arrived, it also took in many Jewish young people wishing to continue their secondary education.
When France fell to Nazi Germany, the mission to resist the Nazis became increasingly important. Believing in the same ideas as former Pastor Charles Guillon, André and Magda Trocmé became very involved in a wide network organizing the rescue of Jews fleeing the deportation efforts of the Nazi implementation of their Final Solution.
Following the establishment of the Vichy France regime during the occupation, Trocmé and other area ministers serving other parishes encouraged their congregations to shelter "the people of the Bible". Trocmé was a catalyst whose efforts led to Le Chambon and surrounding villages becoming a unique haven in Nazi-occupied France.
Trocmé and his church members helped their town develop ways of resisting the dominant evil they faced. Together they established first one, and then a number of "safe houses" where Jewish and other refugees seeking to escape the Nazis could hide. These houses received contributions from the Quakers, the Salvation Army, the American Congregational Church, the pacifist movement Fellowship of Reconciliation, Jewish and Christian ecumenical groups, the French Protestant student organization CIMADE and the Swiss Help to Children in order to house and buy food supplies for the fleeing refugees.
Many refugees were helped to escape to Switzerland following an underground railroad network.
With the help of many dedicated people, families were located who were willing to accommodate Jewish refugees; members of the community reported to the railroad station to gather the arriving refugees, and the town's schools were prepared for the increased enrollment of new children, often under false names. Many village families and numerous farm families also took in children whose parents had been shipped to concentration camps in Germany.
Pastor Trocmé refused to accept the definitions of those in power. "We do not know what a Jew is. We only know men," he said when asked by the Vichy authorities to produce a list of the Jews in the town.
Between 1940 and 1944 when World War II ended in Europe, it is estimated that over 5,000 Jewish refugees including many children were saved by the one small village of Le Chambon and the communities on the surrounding plateau because the people refused to give in to what they considered to be the illegitimate legal, military, and police power of the Nazis.
These activities eventually came to the attention of the anti-Jewish Vichy regime. Authorities and "security agents" were sent to perform searches within the town, most of which were unsuccessful.
One tragic arrest by the Gestapo led to the death of several young Jewish young men in deportation camps. Their house director Daniel Trocmé, André's second cousin, refused to let the children put in his care go away without him; he was then also arrested and later died in the camp of Maidanek.
When Georges Lamirand, a minister in the Vichy government, made an official visit to Le Chambon on August 15, 1942, Trocmé expressed his opinions to him. Days later, the Vichy gendarmes were sent into the town to locate "illegal" aliens. Amidst rumors that Trocmé was soon to be arrested, he urged his parishioners to "do the will of God, not of men".
He also spoke of the Biblical passage [Deuteronomy 19:2-10], which speaks of the entitlement of the persecuted to shelter, IN THE CITIES OF REFUGE. The gendarmes were unsuccessful, and eventually left the town.
Lets look at Deut 19:2 Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.
3 Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither.
4 And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past;
{Now, Brethren, I am not a "corrector" of the King James Bible. However, in the Hebrew, which has a tad more meaning than does our English vocabulary, the meaning here is very expressive, when tied into the "three parts" of verse 3, for it means " from yesterday the third day," which to ole JAV, is the Resurrection ground of My Messiah’s COMING UP OUT OF THE GRAVE!}
5 As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live:
6 Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.
7 Wherefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt separate three cities for thee.
8 And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers;
9 If thou shalt keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the LORD thy God, and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three:
10 That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.
God Almighty said, in Genesis 9:6 "Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed," as in the case of pre-meditated murder. But, in the case of manslaughter, God gave to them selected cities as CITIES OF REFUGE. Therefore, Pastor Trocme’ used this passage as "grounds" for the Huguenots showing "succor" to the Everlastingly Covenanted People.
In February 1943, Trocmé was arrested along with The Reverend Edouard Theis and the public school headmaster Roger Darcissac. Sent to Saint-Paul d’Eyjeaux, an internment camp near Limoges, they were released after four weeks and pressed to sign a commitment to obey all government orders.
Trocmé and Theis refused and were nevertheless released. They went underground where Trocmé was still able to keep the rescue and sanctuary efforts running smoothly with the help of many friends and collaborators.
In January 1971, the Holocaust memorial center in Israel, Yad Vashem, recognized André as Righteous Among the Nations. In July 1986, Magda Trocmé was also recognized. Several years later, Yad Vashem honored the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the neighboring communities with an engraved stele erected in its memorial park. It was the first time Yad Vashem honored a whole community.
Today, the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon have become a symbol of the rescue of Jews in France during WWII.
I wish my brethren, that you could have been there last Monday evening to see, and feel, the passion that this ole 88 year old Jew, Retired Major General Shimon Erem, spoke with in recalling his meeting with [as the Jews call him,] "the Righteous Gentile" Pastor Andre’ Trocme’!
Unfortunately, the relationship between the Huguenots and Jews has cooled in the past forty years. To be sure, among many believers, identification with Jewish suffering is an almost reflexive action.
Regrettably, however, the leadership of the Reformed Church, the Huguenots’ official body, has of late adopted a more distant tone towards the State of Israel. Were you to read Israeli Ambassador to America Michael Oren’s book, POWER, FANTASY & FAITH, you would see that the Presbyterians and Methodists were leaders of the "Restoration" movement in 1825 in America, but sad to say, like the present day Huguenots, they "divest" funds from businesses doing business with Israel.
This surprising estrangement can be partly explained by the Huguenots’ recent acceptance into the French establishment. As Catholic hatred waned to "residual" levels, some Protestants, especially the socially elite, may have felt that echoing the majority’s prejudices was a legitimate price to pay for that acceptance.
Thus have several Protestant leaders, such as left-wing politician Pierre Joxe, joined in the Israel bashing.
Part of the new coldness towards Israel can also be explained by the opposite phenomenon in Huguenot history: That is, not by a break with Huguenot traditions, but rather by an ill-informed feeling of continuity. Until recently, the victim status enjoyed by the [so-called] Palestinians led some French Protestants to look past their theological roots to the idea of a compulsory "solidarity with the victim."
Thus did they transfer onto the Palestinians what they interpreted as a historical sympathy for the underdog, who is viewed, according to the discourse of modernity, as somehow more "pure" than the stronger party.
John Calvin, of course, would have laughed at the idea that anyone, powerful or not, could be considered pure. Moreover, in Israel’s comparatively decent behavior towards its enemies, the Reformer would likely have seen yet one more proof that God shows his love for the Jews by giving them the strength to overcome, to a large degree, the deep corruption that is the lot of all humans. But then, in one of history’s greatest ironies, Calvin was dropped long ago from the list of required reading in French Protestant circles.
This ignorance, in fact, has led to the most preposterous of public stances among many Protestants today. The intellectual Jean Baub
érot, who as a young man was a member of the Jewish-Christian Friendship Association, changed his tack after the 1967 war and published a hastily written condemnation of Israel.
For a while, some Protestants also identified with the situation of Muslim minorities in Europe, which reminded them of their own past. During the latest Intifada, for instance, the Reformed Church sent two "special representatives" to live for several months in the Palestinian territories and report back on their experiences. The first representative, Pastor Gilbert Charbonnier, spent six months in Ramallah and managed to see only "oppression"-apparently, he was blind to the joyful demonstrations in the street whenever Jews were murdered. Far too embarrassing for the Church, he was replaced by the youthful and well-meaning Carola Cameran, who returned only with pat appeals for peace and is not, thankfully, encumbered by the same ideological judgments.
I know some folks up in Illinois, who has a relative in Minnesota, a Born Again Christian, who has made over 100 trips to Israel, however, going every time to Ramallah and taking up the "so-called" Palestinian’s side in the "Israeli-Palestinian" question, as it is called.
As the seriousness of militant Islam’s threat to the West has become clearer, more and more Protestants are returning to their philo-Semitic roots. For example, Jeanne-H
élène Kaltenbach, an intellectual who spent most of her life engaging with Muslim leaders, even co-writing with her husband a book heralding the coming of a moderate, civilized Islam, changed her views after September 11; one year to the day after that event, she published a damning indictment of France’s appeasement towards radical Islam’s agenda.
Even Baub
érot, though not yet really a Zionist, has expressed his regret for the excessive tone of his 1971 book. And there is reason to believe that even more Protestants will soon see the light: Not even these last few, overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian decades can succeed in changing the Huguenot Protestant’s deepest mindset. They are, after all, the ones who suffered at the hands of the dragonnades, and the ones whose ancestors refused to relent under pressure from the greatest king on earth; surely, they owe it to their brave ancestors to live up to their example.
French Huguenots-or, at least, those of them who know their own history-are linked with the Jewish people by too many bonds of culture, history, and religious beliefs to betray that old alliance.
The world is now experiencing a new wave of Jew hatred, with many Muslims hoping openly for a new Holocaust and most Europeans all too willing to let one happen. The most tenacious, vilest, and oldest of hatreds is reaching a new high. In such dark and troubled times, may the God of Israel give us the strength to proclaim our everlasting gratitude to the Jews. May he give us the grace, which we do not deserve, of sharing their torments today and their victory tomorrow.
For victorious they will be, as Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon "intoned" the other evening, and the next morning, in Southern California. He, like some others, have read "the last Chapter" of the BOOK! PRAISE THE LORD!
We are putting two DVD’s together to make available to churches for showing in your Watch Night or New Years Services. It would be quite touching and fitting for your to show these at this time, with events happening as they presently are, and the Jews needing Friends as much today as they did before, during, and after, World War Two!
If you would like these DVD’s write me at preacherjav@gmail.com, and we shall mail them to you.
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Friday, December 10, 2010
Letter to Pastors
December 10, 2010
Dear Pastors:
These lines are being written to you from California as I prepare for my return trip to OKC from having been out here because of the visit of Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon to Southern California.
I wanted to give you "part" of an interview Moshe did some months ago before he had become Vice Prime Minister, dealing with the Iranian-Ishmaelite-Hezbollah-Hamas-Terrorist War, then we shall look at some current news about Russia!
First, part of that Interview:
REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Moshe Yaalon:
I [became] the Chief-of-Staff of the IDF in July 2002. [I had progressed] from the level of soldier to section commander, platoon leader, company commander, [battalion] commander, and so forth. In the past year I spent part of the time in Israel and nine months in Washington as a Distinguished Military Fellow in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I came back and I have joined the Shalem Center as a Distinguished Fellow to deal with strategy in all fields, in security as well as governing and education and also the things which I consider very important for the security and for the future of the State of Israel. Here I am. Interviewer:
What have you learned most from the soldiers you worked with? Moshe Yaalon:
There are many things I learned as a soldier and as a commander but basically I would say that for Israel, the only natural resource that we have is the people, human resources. We are lacking land in Israel. Without oil, gold, or other natural resources we have succeeded in developing a very prosperous economy. We enjoy the state of the art in science and technology and this is the case of the military. When it comes to the military we enjoy the combination of the state of the art in technology and more importantly, of very good soldiers and officers with a very good spirit, highly motivated, highly educated, committed, [and] devoted to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel. This is our main advantage when it comes to war, either the conventional type [of] warfare like we faced in the past, in the Six Day War, in the Yom Kippur War, and this is the case when we had to fight Palestinian terrorism. Interviewer:
What do you believe is going to happen in the near future with Hezbollah and Israel?
Moshe Yaalon:
In the end Hezbollah was defeated in the battlefield and suffered many casualties, hundreds of casualties. Most of the medium- and long-range rockets have been destroyed.
Their facilities, headquarters, command posts, economic facilities in Lebanon have been destroyed. We are talking about over 4,000 Hezbollah targets [that] have been hit by the Israeli air force and the ground force and they have to recover, and probably they will try to recover and to be rearmed by Syria and Iran. As long as they are not rearmed successfully, I believe we will not provoke aggression. And now it is up to the international community as well as the Lebanese government to implement the resolution. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 calls [for] the disarmament of Hezbollah. This is the challenge for the near future: not to allow Hezbollah to be rearmed but to be disarmed, and of course not to allow the Iranian Revolutionary Guard presence in Lebanon like the Syrian presence. Actually Bashar Assad was forced by the Lebanese to pull out his troops from Lebanon without even a single shot. Now it’s up to the Lebanese to decide whether they want to suffer from this kind of phenomenon. Hezbollah is a state within a state provoking these kind of attacks and paying the price like the Lebanese paid in the last war from this provocation, and this is a challenge for the near future. We should understand that Israel fought the war against Hezbollah but Hezbollah is the proxy. This is the situation in the Gaza Strip too. We fought against Hamas. We are fighting even today against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terrorists in the Gaza Strip, but today they are supported by Syria and Iran. And actually, Iran is the mastermind of those attacks; Syria is the facilitator.
Syria and Iran supplied the weapons to Hezbollah and to the jihadists in Iraq.
To my mind—this is my observation—this is part of World War III—World War III, which is the war between the radical Islamists, which we should call them, [and] the West. That is what we’re facing today and this war is not just against the State of Israel. This war is against the West. Actually Ahmadinejad is leading today the camp of radical Islam and although he doesn’t share all the views with al-Qa’ida and the Muslim Brotherhood, they share the same views [on] defeat[ing] the Western cultures, and the way [they want] to do that based on their beliefs, based on their strategy: Israel should be wiped off the map because Israel is a state of "infidels," as they call it, like the United States—but we are only the "Minor Satan," the United States is the "Big Satan"—and both countries should be destroyed.
Unfortunately, to my mind, the West is sleeping and especially in Europe not even talking about the United Nations’ behavior in the last conflict. Sponsors like Iran and Syria challenge the international world order and they deny accountability. Syria and Iran supplied the rockets to Hezbollah. They encouraged and pushed Hezbollah to attack Israel—as well as [encouraging] Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately the international community and especially the United Nations prefers to ignore the international world order and to allow them to get away without paying a price for being war regimes.
This war is not just against Israel. This war is against the West.
When it comes to the rules of war, we keep to our moral values based on the international order. We try to do our utmost to avoid civilian casualties—what we call collateral damage—when we have to defend ourselves and to hit the Hezbollah rockets. But when Hezbollah positions its rockets in family houses, it’s a unique phenomenon that [the] Israel Defense Forces had to deal with. There are family houses in the Lebanese villages: houses with living rooms, kitchens, children’s rooms—and in the additional room is a rocket launcher. We had to hit it, and unfortunately even the secretary-general of the United Nations preferred to condemn us for hitting civilian houses, instead of criticizing and condemning Hezbollah and its sponsors for violating all the rules of war, of keeping the international order. The world should wake up by all means, not just regarding the rules of war. I’m talking about the fact that Iran is on the way to acquir[ing] military nuclear capabilities, violating all the understandings and international agreements, and without paying a price.
How can Israel and other nations deal with the growing problem of Syria and Iran?
Moshe Yaalon:
The outcome of the last conflict in Lebanon should be first of all political and economic sanctions imposed on Syria and Iran. We have hard evidence that both of them supplied the weapons to Hezbollah, as well as supplying the weapons and allowing the mujahideen (jihadists) to open up a front against the coalition troops [in Iraq]. U.S. troops and British troops and others are killed by Iranians, Iranian weaponry systems, and Iranian explosives, and mujahideen [were] allowed by Bashar Assad to be deployed in Iraq. It’s a pity that the international community did not agree and is not unified to come out with a resolution to impose sanctions. Without using political and economic sanctions, in the end we’ll face the military option either against Syria or against Iran; and it’s clear otherwise we are ready to surrender to this kind of behavior, this kind of policy to defeat the West.
Then, the News from Russia:
US diplomats were astonished to hear a new tune from their Russian interlocutors when they met privately in advance of the world power negotiations with Iran which opened in Geneva Monday, Dec. 6.
For five years, Moscow had persisted in denying there was any proof that Iran was running a secret military nuclear program or that the ayatollahs were surreptitiously building the infrastructure for the manufacture of nuclear bombs and warheads. The Kremlin always insisted Iran lacked long-range ballistic missiles and had no plans for producing any projectiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Even in July, when they were persuaded by the US to vote for international sanctions, it was only for the sake of a quid pro quo. Moscow extracted from Washington an undertaking not to interfere with the inauguration on Aug. 28 of the nuclear reactor Russia had installed at Bushehr in southern Iran as well as a guarantee to prevent any interference by Israel.
The Obama administration was required further to obtain a direct commitment from Israel guaranteeing the reactor immunity from attack.
Moscow's reward for this self-restraint was a pledge to hold back S-300 missile interceptors from Tehran and Damascus, notwithstanding a signed contract for its supply to guard Iran's nuclear sites from missile or air attack.
Even when the horse-trading was at its most intense, the Russians refused to credit the mounting layers of intelligence in American and Israeli hands attesting to Iran's burgeoning arms and missile programs.
But then, in early November, the Russians suddenly changed their tune. Washington and Moscow sources report that a surprising new message came through their diplomatic channels, notably in Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's off-the-record video conferences with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Russians were now saying that they had come to the conclusion that nothing could stop a big country like Iran - with a population of 70 million and rich oil and gas resources and the high technological ability to run nuclear reactors, uranium enrichment processing and produce nuclear fuel rods – from acquiring a nuclear bomb. Once it had decided on this course, it was bound to succeed.
This surprise flip flop finally brought Moscow around to the conclusion, reached long ago by Washington, Paris, Berlin and Jerusalem, that Iran was well on the way to its goal of a nuclear weapon or warhead.
Our military sources add that, even so, Moscow still refuses to believe Iran is capable of producing a ballistic missile sophisticated enough to carry a nuclear warhead. Its experts insist that Iranian missile production has never managed to get past Scud technology, a reference to the World War II Russian surface missile of that name.
Trust us, say the Russians to the Americans: We designed the Scuds and we spent decades upgrading them before moving on to more advanced weaponry. So no one can pick up faster on the weaknesses betrayed by a military machine which is not up to mastering any missile technology beyond the outdated Scuds.
The Russian experts recently confirmed this diagnosis with the discovery that the missiles Iran used to boost its first miniature spacecraft Safir (Messenger) 1 and 2 and Kavoshgar (Explorer) 1 in 2008 and 2009, consisted of three stages, the first two of which were old Scuds.
Having changed its mind about Iran's nuclear motives, the Kremlin was suddenly ready to turn the screw in earnest when it became clear that UN, US and European sanctions lacked the punch for curbing Iran's drive for a bomb.
According to our sources, the Russians offered to work with the Americans on a penalty painful and costly enough to daunt Iran from going all the way to a bomb. The Iranians must be convinced, they explained, that their potential strategic benefit from joining the world's nuclear club was not worth having their economy go into meltdown.
At first, Russian diplomats refused to explain what they were talking about. In the third week of November, they unveiled a plan which consisted very simply and brutally of an international naval and air blockade against Iran to choke off its oil and gas exports to world markets.
The plan's success depended on three key steps:
The blockade must be watertight and impossible for Iran's friends, including China, Venezuela, Syria and Turkey, to breach.
Washington and Moscow must cooperate in steps to avert a global energy crisis.
The two powers must guarantee a steady fuel supply to countries dependent on Iranian oil like Japan and major importers like China in case of shortages on the international market.
The Americans could hardly believe their ears when they heard this proposal. The Russians had fought tooth and nail against any proposed embargo - even a partial one - on selling Iran oil products and especially refined oil.
They had also been up in arms against any damage to Iran's energy industry, financially or otherwise. Now, all of the sudden, Moscow was proposing the ultimate punishment, more radical than any US President Barack Obama had ever contemplated
After Moscow's cat was out of the bag, the White House put a team to work on the motives underlying the Kremlin's radical change of face. It was instructed to explore three alternative hypotheses:
One
, the Kremlin had truly come to believe in Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb and felt compelled to protect its military and energy interests by cutting down the potential threat a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Russia and the Central Asian nations which Moscow regards as it strategic hinterland.
Two
, The rise of Chinese influence and its expanded investments in Iran's energy industry are the cause of deep concern to the Russians and they will go a long way to thwart it.
Three
, Iran is only second to Russia as the world's top holder of gas reserves (971 trillion cubic feet -Tcf compared with Russia's 1,680 Tcf). Moscow may suspect the Obama administration of opting for diplomacy – not just to curb Iran's nuclear aspirations but as the long way round toward hauling US-Iranian relations back to level they attained between the 1950s and mid-1970s, when American influence reigned supreme in Tehran. The Russians fear America also aims at eventually challenging Russia's primacy as the sole natural gas supplier for Central and West Europe by supporting the projected Nabucco gas pipeline from Erzurum in Turkey to Baumgarten an der March in Austria and so diversifying gas suppliers and delivery routes to Europe.
Iranian intelligence proved itself on the mark in the way Tehran responded to the first round of its resumed negotiations with six world powers ((US, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany) which ended in Geneva on Tuesday, Dec. 7. It came typically in the form of an ultimatum for round two to proceed, spelled out by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "If you come to the negotiations by cancelling all the nasty things and wrong decisions you have adopted – lift resolutions, sanctions and some other restrictions that you have created, then the talks will definitely be fruitful."
Moscow sensed in this warning a challenge: For the negotiations to continue, the Russian blockade proposal ("other restrictions") must be scrapped along with sanctions. The Russians got their first taste of the tough bargaining tactics Tehran routinely employs against the United States.
Before going forward, the Obama administration must determine which of the three hypotheses about the motives behind Moscow's volte face is the correct one – genuine concern about a nuclear-armed Iran or a tactical move to preserve its oil and gas empire.
All this news, Moshe Ya’alon’s Interview, his opinions about Iran and its Terrorist Proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., — and this most recent News from Russia, who figures in heavily in the Bible Equations of the Coming Battle of Armageddon tells us all that the coming of our MESSIAH, JESUS, OR AS THE JEWS CALL HIM, JESHUA, my SAVIOUR, whom General Shimon Erem quoted from Eph 2:14 [For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;] this past Monday evening, HE is certainly coming soon.
Jim Vineyard
Yedidim of Israel
Dear Pastors:
These lines are being written to you from California as I prepare for my return trip to OKC from having been out here because of the visit of Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon to Southern California.
I wanted to give you "part" of an interview Moshe did some months ago before he had become Vice Prime Minister, dealing with the Iranian-Ishmaelite-Hezbollah-Hamas-Terrorist War, then we shall look at some current news about Russia!
First, part of that Interview:
REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Moshe Yaalon:
I [became] the Chief-of-Staff of the IDF in July 2002. [I had progressed] from the level of soldier to section commander, platoon leader, company commander, [battalion] commander, and so forth. In the past year I spent part of the time in Israel and nine months in Washington as a Distinguished Military Fellow in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I came back and I have joined the Shalem Center as a Distinguished Fellow to deal with strategy in all fields, in security as well as governing and education and also the things which I consider very important for the security and for the future of the State of Israel. Here I am. Interviewer:
What have you learned most from the soldiers you worked with? Moshe Yaalon:
There are many things I learned as a soldier and as a commander but basically I would say that for Israel, the only natural resource that we have is the people, human resources. We are lacking land in Israel. Without oil, gold, or other natural resources we have succeeded in developing a very prosperous economy. We enjoy the state of the art in science and technology and this is the case of the military. When it comes to the military we enjoy the combination of the state of the art in technology and more importantly, of very good soldiers and officers with a very good spirit, highly motivated, highly educated, committed, [and] devoted to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel. This is our main advantage when it comes to war, either the conventional type [of] warfare like we faced in the past, in the Six Day War, in the Yom Kippur War, and this is the case when we had to fight Palestinian terrorism. Interviewer:
What do you believe is going to happen in the near future with Hezbollah and Israel?
Moshe Yaalon:
In the end Hezbollah was defeated in the battlefield and suffered many casualties, hundreds of casualties. Most of the medium- and long-range rockets have been destroyed.
Their facilities, headquarters, command posts, economic facilities in Lebanon have been destroyed. We are talking about over 4,000 Hezbollah targets [that] have been hit by the Israeli air force and the ground force and they have to recover, and probably they will try to recover and to be rearmed by Syria and Iran. As long as they are not rearmed successfully, I believe we will not provoke aggression. And now it is up to the international community as well as the Lebanese government to implement the resolution. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 calls [for] the disarmament of Hezbollah. This is the challenge for the near future: not to allow Hezbollah to be rearmed but to be disarmed, and of course not to allow the Iranian Revolutionary Guard presence in Lebanon like the Syrian presence. Actually Bashar Assad was forced by the Lebanese to pull out his troops from Lebanon without even a single shot. Now it’s up to the Lebanese to decide whether they want to suffer from this kind of phenomenon. Hezbollah is a state within a state provoking these kind of attacks and paying the price like the Lebanese paid in the last war from this provocation, and this is a challenge for the near future. We should understand that Israel fought the war against Hezbollah but Hezbollah is the proxy. This is the situation in the Gaza Strip too. We fought against Hamas. We are fighting even today against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terrorists in the Gaza Strip, but today they are supported by Syria and Iran. And actually, Iran is the mastermind of those attacks; Syria is the facilitator.
Syria and Iran supplied the weapons to Hezbollah and to the jihadists in Iraq.
To my mind—this is my observation—this is part of World War III—World War III, which is the war between the radical Islamists, which we should call them, [and] the West. That is what we’re facing today and this war is not just against the State of Israel. This war is against the West. Actually Ahmadinejad is leading today the camp of radical Islam and although he doesn’t share all the views with al-Qa’ida and the Muslim Brotherhood, they share the same views [on] defeat[ing] the Western cultures, and the way [they want] to do that based on their beliefs, based on their strategy: Israel should be wiped off the map because Israel is a state of "infidels," as they call it, like the United States—but we are only the "Minor Satan," the United States is the "Big Satan"—and both countries should be destroyed.
Unfortunately, to my mind, the West is sleeping and especially in Europe not even talking about the United Nations’ behavior in the last conflict. Sponsors like Iran and Syria challenge the international world order and they deny accountability. Syria and Iran supplied the rockets to Hezbollah. They encouraged and pushed Hezbollah to attack Israel—as well as [encouraging] Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately the international community and especially the United Nations prefers to ignore the international world order and to allow them to get away without paying a price for being war regimes.
This war is not just against Israel. This war is against the West.
When it comes to the rules of war, we keep to our moral values based on the international order. We try to do our utmost to avoid civilian casualties—what we call collateral damage—when we have to defend ourselves and to hit the Hezbollah rockets. But when Hezbollah positions its rockets in family houses, it’s a unique phenomenon that [the] Israel Defense Forces had to deal with. There are family houses in the Lebanese villages: houses with living rooms, kitchens, children’s rooms—and in the additional room is a rocket launcher. We had to hit it, and unfortunately even the secretary-general of the United Nations preferred to condemn us for hitting civilian houses, instead of criticizing and condemning Hezbollah and its sponsors for violating all the rules of war, of keeping the international order. The world should wake up by all means, not just regarding the rules of war. I’m talking about the fact that Iran is on the way to acquir[ing] military nuclear capabilities, violating all the understandings and international agreements, and without paying a price.
How can Israel and other nations deal with the growing problem of Syria and Iran?
Moshe Yaalon:
The outcome of the last conflict in Lebanon should be first of all political and economic sanctions imposed on Syria and Iran. We have hard evidence that both of them supplied the weapons to Hezbollah, as well as supplying the weapons and allowing the mujahideen (jihadists) to open up a front against the coalition troops [in Iraq]. U.S. troops and British troops and others are killed by Iranians, Iranian weaponry systems, and Iranian explosives, and mujahideen [were] allowed by Bashar Assad to be deployed in Iraq. It’s a pity that the international community did not agree and is not unified to come out with a resolution to impose sanctions. Without using political and economic sanctions, in the end we’ll face the military option either against Syria or against Iran; and it’s clear otherwise we are ready to surrender to this kind of behavior, this kind of policy to defeat the West.
Then, the News from Russia:
US diplomats were astonished to hear a new tune from their Russian interlocutors when they met privately in advance of the world power negotiations with Iran which opened in Geneva Monday, Dec. 6.
For five years, Moscow had persisted in denying there was any proof that Iran was running a secret military nuclear program or that the ayatollahs were surreptitiously building the infrastructure for the manufacture of nuclear bombs and warheads. The Kremlin always insisted Iran lacked long-range ballistic missiles and had no plans for producing any projectiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Even in July, when they were persuaded by the US to vote for international sanctions, it was only for the sake of a quid pro quo. Moscow extracted from Washington an undertaking not to interfere with the inauguration on Aug. 28 of the nuclear reactor Russia had installed at Bushehr in southern Iran as well as a guarantee to prevent any interference by Israel.
The Obama administration was required further to obtain a direct commitment from Israel guaranteeing the reactor immunity from attack.
Moscow's reward for this self-restraint was a pledge to hold back S-300 missile interceptors from Tehran and Damascus, notwithstanding a signed contract for its supply to guard Iran's nuclear sites from missile or air attack.
Even when the horse-trading was at its most intense, the Russians refused to credit the mounting layers of intelligence in American and Israeli hands attesting to Iran's burgeoning arms and missile programs.
But then, in early November, the Russians suddenly changed their tune. Washington and Moscow sources report that a surprising new message came through their diplomatic channels, notably in Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's off-the-record video conferences with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Russians were now saying that they had come to the conclusion that nothing could stop a big country like Iran - with a population of 70 million and rich oil and gas resources and the high technological ability to run nuclear reactors, uranium enrichment processing and produce nuclear fuel rods – from acquiring a nuclear bomb. Once it had decided on this course, it was bound to succeed.
This surprise flip flop finally brought Moscow around to the conclusion, reached long ago by Washington, Paris, Berlin and Jerusalem, that Iran was well on the way to its goal of a nuclear weapon or warhead.
Our military sources add that, even so, Moscow still refuses to believe Iran is capable of producing a ballistic missile sophisticated enough to carry a nuclear warhead. Its experts insist that Iranian missile production has never managed to get past Scud technology, a reference to the World War II Russian surface missile of that name.
Trust us, say the Russians to the Americans: We designed the Scuds and we spent decades upgrading them before moving on to more advanced weaponry. So no one can pick up faster on the weaknesses betrayed by a military machine which is not up to mastering any missile technology beyond the outdated Scuds.
The Russian experts recently confirmed this diagnosis with the discovery that the missiles Iran used to boost its first miniature spacecraft Safir (Messenger) 1 and 2 and Kavoshgar (Explorer) 1 in 2008 and 2009, consisted of three stages, the first two of which were old Scuds.
Having changed its mind about Iran's nuclear motives, the Kremlin was suddenly ready to turn the screw in earnest when it became clear that UN, US and European sanctions lacked the punch for curbing Iran's drive for a bomb.
According to our sources, the Russians offered to work with the Americans on a penalty painful and costly enough to daunt Iran from going all the way to a bomb. The Iranians must be convinced, they explained, that their potential strategic benefit from joining the world's nuclear club was not worth having their economy go into meltdown.
At first, Russian diplomats refused to explain what they were talking about. In the third week of November, they unveiled a plan which consisted very simply and brutally of an international naval and air blockade against Iran to choke off its oil and gas exports to world markets.
The plan's success depended on three key steps:
The blockade must be watertight and impossible for Iran's friends, including China, Venezuela, Syria and Turkey, to breach.
Washington and Moscow must cooperate in steps to avert a global energy crisis.
The two powers must guarantee a steady fuel supply to countries dependent on Iranian oil like Japan and major importers like China in case of shortages on the international market.
The Americans could hardly believe their ears when they heard this proposal. The Russians had fought tooth and nail against any proposed embargo - even a partial one - on selling Iran oil products and especially refined oil.
They had also been up in arms against any damage to Iran's energy industry, financially or otherwise. Now, all of the sudden, Moscow was proposing the ultimate punishment, more radical than any US President Barack Obama had ever contemplated
After Moscow's cat was out of the bag, the White House put a team to work on the motives underlying the Kremlin's radical change of face. It was instructed to explore three alternative hypotheses:
One
, the Kremlin had truly come to believe in Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb and felt compelled to protect its military and energy interests by cutting down the potential threat a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Russia and the Central Asian nations which Moscow regards as it strategic hinterland.
Two
, The rise of Chinese influence and its expanded investments in Iran's energy industry are the cause of deep concern to the Russians and they will go a long way to thwart it.
Three
, Iran is only second to Russia as the world's top holder of gas reserves (971 trillion cubic feet -Tcf compared with Russia's 1,680 Tcf). Moscow may suspect the Obama administration of opting for diplomacy – not just to curb Iran's nuclear aspirations but as the long way round toward hauling US-Iranian relations back to level they attained between the 1950s and mid-1970s, when American influence reigned supreme in Tehran. The Russians fear America also aims at eventually challenging Russia's primacy as the sole natural gas supplier for Central and West Europe by supporting the projected Nabucco gas pipeline from Erzurum in Turkey to Baumgarten an der March in Austria and so diversifying gas suppliers and delivery routes to Europe.
Iranian intelligence proved itself on the mark in the way Tehran responded to the first round of its resumed negotiations with six world powers ((US, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany) which ended in Geneva on Tuesday, Dec. 7. It came typically in the form of an ultimatum for round two to proceed, spelled out by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "If you come to the negotiations by cancelling all the nasty things and wrong decisions you have adopted – lift resolutions, sanctions and some other restrictions that you have created, then the talks will definitely be fruitful."
Moscow sensed in this warning a challenge: For the negotiations to continue, the Russian blockade proposal ("other restrictions") must be scrapped along with sanctions. The Russians got their first taste of the tough bargaining tactics Tehran routinely employs against the United States.
Before going forward, the Obama administration must determine which of the three hypotheses about the motives behind Moscow's volte face is the correct one – genuine concern about a nuclear-armed Iran or a tactical move to preserve its oil and gas empire.
All this news, Moshe Ya’alon’s Interview, his opinions about Iran and its Terrorist Proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., — and this most recent News from Russia, who figures in heavily in the Bible Equations of the Coming Battle of Armageddon tells us all that the coming of our MESSIAH, JESUS, OR AS THE JEWS CALL HIM, JESHUA, my SAVIOUR, whom General Shimon Erem quoted from Eph 2:14 [For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;] this past Monday evening, HE is certainly coming soon.
Jim Vineyard
Yedidim of Israel
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Letter to Pastors
December 8, 2010
Dear Pastors:
The last three or four days have been "man killers" on an old man with bad health who doesn’t sleep much at night. But, PRAISE THE LORD, what a blessing it was to see my good friend and "brother" (as he calls me) the Vice Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon. He was right on target at the reception before the services on Monday evening, and then in the services, and again, with the Independent Baptist Pastors at the Luncheon on Tuesday.
And, what a blessing it was to get to meet and get to know Major General (retired) Shimon Erem. Pastor Jim Taliferro of McKinney, Texas as the General "What do you know about Mr. Netanyahu." The General answered by saying, "Bibi was in my unit and under my command when we ambushed X number of Syrians on such and such a date." So, General Erem at one time commanded the man who is now the Prime Minister of Israel.
Our problem, my Brethren, is that we do not take seriously our "mandate" from the Lord to, as Bible Believers, first, to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, and then to, secondly, collectively use our voices as "information disseminators" for the cause of the Everlastingly Covenanted People and the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED LAND which "belongs only to the JEWS." ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS.
Pull out your Bible and look at Joel 3:2, "I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land." (The word "parted" means "divided" and the word "plead" means Judge.) The United States of America is going to fall under the Judgment of God Almighty unless the "Righteous" (You and I who have experienced the miracle of the New Birth) lift our voices up to stop the "land for peace" nonsense which has gone on in so many Presidential Administrations, all the way from Johnson, through Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and now the "obamessiah."
Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, and previously given away Gaza and the Shomron, all 5 areas, belong to the Jews.
Eze. 35:1, "Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it,
3 And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. [Always, in the Holy bible Mt. Seir refers to the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Ishmaelites, the Esauites!]
4 I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.
5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:
6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.
7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.
8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.
9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
(Now, be very careful that you see what these Ishmaelites said!)
10 Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there:
Now, look over in the next chapter to verse 5. Eze. 36:5, "Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed (notice this carefully) my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey.
The Ishmaelites have been presumptuous to believe that "HIS LAND" could be turned into "their possession" with the joy of all their heart and despiteful minds! And, from the time of the creation of the "so-called" Palestinian people back yonder in the 1964, this is what they have been doing!
And, we as American Christians have sat upon our backsides believing that "everything is going to be well," "believing that all this will sort out O.K." not doing anything, not lifting up our voices in protest, to our President, to our duly elected US Congresspersons, our US Senators, and today we find ourselves under a "Muslim President."
Therefore, my friend, after having preached this morning to the Student Body of Pacific Baptist College, while waiting in a few minutes to leave, where I shall be preaching tonight to the good people of Gethsemane Baptist Church, I humbly beseech you to do something about lifting up your voices in protest to those elected to represent you in our National Government Bodies!
Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions and Nuclear Works are still a "threat" to the free people of the entire world, the JEWS BEING UNDER existential threat initially, but, then, we in the west also under threat from the same.
Iran continues to stir the pot in all those Middle East Conflicts - Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper (the West Bank, being, in my opinion, a part of Israel however!)
We simply must cause our voices to be heard regarding all this. YES, it may be in the eternal plan of ALMIGHTY GOD to come down the pike at us, as it is now coming! However, we don’t know that!
Therefore, WE MUST LIFT UP OUR COLLECTIVE voices and let our politicians know that AMERICA CANNOT PROSPER doing the wrong type things concerning the nation of Israel.
If American Christians continue to "keep our voices silent," if we allow our elected officials to continue to give away "Everlasting Covenanted land," which is a type of persecution of the Jews, WHAT ARE WE DOING? I shall tell you! We are DIGGING OUR OWN GRAVES!
Every time you find a person blessing and helping a Jew in ancient times — take for example — what happened at Jericho— the city was destroyed, but the scarlet woman with all her household was saved, and why? Because she gave succor and protection to the spies of Israel!
Go yonder to the land of Egypt, which some of you like to start tours to the Holy Land, where, for 400 years, the Jews were ground down by cruel, heartless, conscienceless taskmasters. Go and look upon those splendid rows of Pyramids and the Sphinx, as I have done.
I don’t know if it's still there, but yonder in Central Park, New York, there used to be that "obelisk" that was taken from the ancient city of Memphis, a few miles out of present Cairo, Egypt — and look at that obelisk with those hieroglyphics on the four sides.
That obelisk tells we Born Again Americans that the people who persecuted the Jew, that their glory is buried in the sands of the banks of the Nile, while THE JEW LIVES ON!
Come with me to the Ruins of Babylon, where your Muslim tour companies try to get you to start your tours to Israel, where they dug up the cuneiform records, where they have excavated the history of old Nebuchadnezzar—what does it mean—that this people—this government—this empire—those that took the Everlasting Covenanted People into captivity and stole their golden and silver vessels from God’s Temple and rank out of them as they held them in their blasphemous hands at the midnight hour—THAT NATION WENT DOWN INTO DEFEAT and their city was so utterly destroyed that it is a place for bats and owls and for satyrs to dance.
And yet, the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE, the JEW, he lives on!
Go yonder with me on some moonlight night and look through the open windows of the old Coliseum at Rome, see the half broken walls, and listen to those strange voices from the dead past—WHAT DOES IT MEAN—Rome, that mighty power that oppressed and persecuted the JEWS, ROME WENT DOWN IN DEFEAT.
And yet, the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE, the JEW, he lives on!
Call to mind the conquerors of that EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED LAND—Where are they? Thotmes, Nebuchadnezzar, Sennacherib, Cambyses, Alexander, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Titus, Hadrian, Omar, Saladin, Tamerland, Napoleon—ALL GONE—government and empires — gone— BUT THE JEW remains the same unchangeable race that he was when GOD GAVE THE COVENANT to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David.
Go to the land of Russia—the land of night, mystery and bloodshed! For 300 years the Romanoff Dynasty persecuted the Jews and sent them into cold Siberia to die as "vermin" in exile. Who knows how many JEWS perished in those years of Romanoff persecution. Those years when Evangelist D.L. Moody, Evangelist William Blackstone, and Presbyterian Businessman Homer Spafford, were trying to get the Romanoff’s and Europe to let the Jews be "restored" to "their Land" in Palestine.
From 1917, when the Bolsheviks took over that country, until 1941, 15 to 16 million people perished, many, too, again, Jews. That land, where, from 1941 to 1945 over 30 million people perished, millions of that number being JEWS.
Let me tell you what has happened to that country. GOD ALMIGHTY SAID, "I WILL CURSE HIM THAT CURSETH THEE [to Abraham.]" That's what happened to that Country.
The very same thing, my brethren, can happen to this country, if we who are truly Born again by accepting SHILOH, IMMANUEL, JESHUA, the LORD, the SAVIOUR, as our PERSONAL SAVIOUR, do not lift our voices up in collective protest to our nationally elected officials.
We cannot continue to let this travesty of injustice to the JEWS to continue by believing that since we are AMERICANS, we can give away some of the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED LAND.
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
PS If I’ve been a bit too tough on you, my wife would say, "He forgot to take his medicine!"
Dear Pastors:
The last three or four days have been "man killers" on an old man with bad health who doesn’t sleep much at night. But, PRAISE THE LORD, what a blessing it was to see my good friend and "brother" (as he calls me) the Vice Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon. He was right on target at the reception before the services on Monday evening, and then in the services, and again, with the Independent Baptist Pastors at the Luncheon on Tuesday.
And, what a blessing it was to get to meet and get to know Major General (retired) Shimon Erem. Pastor Jim Taliferro of McKinney, Texas as the General "What do you know about Mr. Netanyahu." The General answered by saying, "Bibi was in my unit and under my command when we ambushed X number of Syrians on such and such a date." So, General Erem at one time commanded the man who is now the Prime Minister of Israel.
Our problem, my Brethren, is that we do not take seriously our "mandate" from the Lord to, as Bible Believers, first, to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, and then to, secondly, collectively use our voices as "information disseminators" for the cause of the Everlastingly Covenanted People and the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED LAND which "belongs only to the JEWS." ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS.
Pull out your Bible and look at Joel 3:2, "I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land." (The word "parted" means "divided" and the word "plead" means Judge.) The United States of America is going to fall under the Judgment of God Almighty unless the "Righteous" (You and I who have experienced the miracle of the New Birth) lift our voices up to stop the "land for peace" nonsense which has gone on in so many Presidential Administrations, all the way from Johnson, through Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and now the "obamessiah."
Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, and previously given away Gaza and the Shomron, all 5 areas, belong to the Jews.
Eze. 35:1, "Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it,
3 And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. [Always, in the Holy bible Mt. Seir refers to the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Ishmaelites, the Esauites!]
4 I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.
5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:
6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.
7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.
8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.
9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
(Now, be very careful that you see what these Ishmaelites said!)
10 Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there:
Now, look over in the next chapter to verse 5. Eze. 36:5, "Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed (notice this carefully) my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey.
The Ishmaelites have been presumptuous to believe that "HIS LAND" could be turned into "their possession" with the joy of all their heart and despiteful minds! And, from the time of the creation of the "so-called" Palestinian people back yonder in the 1964, this is what they have been doing!
And, we as American Christians have sat upon our backsides believing that "everything is going to be well," "believing that all this will sort out O.K." not doing anything, not lifting up our voices in protest, to our President, to our duly elected US Congresspersons, our US Senators, and today we find ourselves under a "Muslim President."
Therefore, my friend, after having preached this morning to the Student Body of Pacific Baptist College, while waiting in a few minutes to leave, where I shall be preaching tonight to the good people of Gethsemane Baptist Church, I humbly beseech you to do something about lifting up your voices in protest to those elected to represent you in our National Government Bodies!
Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions and Nuclear Works are still a "threat" to the free people of the entire world, the JEWS BEING UNDER existential threat initially, but, then, we in the west also under threat from the same.
Iran continues to stir the pot in all those Middle East Conflicts - Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper (the West Bank, being, in my opinion, a part of Israel however!)
We simply must cause our voices to be heard regarding all this. YES, it may be in the eternal plan of ALMIGHTY GOD to come down the pike at us, as it is now coming! However, we don’t know that!
Therefore, WE MUST LIFT UP OUR COLLECTIVE voices and let our politicians know that AMERICA CANNOT PROSPER doing the wrong type things concerning the nation of Israel.
If American Christians continue to "keep our voices silent," if we allow our elected officials to continue to give away "Everlasting Covenanted land," which is a type of persecution of the Jews, WHAT ARE WE DOING? I shall tell you! We are DIGGING OUR OWN GRAVES!
Every time you find a person blessing and helping a Jew in ancient times — take for example — what happened at Jericho— the city was destroyed, but the scarlet woman with all her household was saved, and why? Because she gave succor and protection to the spies of Israel!
Go yonder to the land of Egypt, which some of you like to start tours to the Holy Land, where, for 400 years, the Jews were ground down by cruel, heartless, conscienceless taskmasters. Go and look upon those splendid rows of Pyramids and the Sphinx, as I have done.
I don’t know if it's still there, but yonder in Central Park, New York, there used to be that "obelisk" that was taken from the ancient city of Memphis, a few miles out of present Cairo, Egypt — and look at that obelisk with those hieroglyphics on the four sides.
That obelisk tells we Born Again Americans that the people who persecuted the Jew, that their glory is buried in the sands of the banks of the Nile, while THE JEW LIVES ON!
Come with me to the Ruins of Babylon, where your Muslim tour companies try to get you to start your tours to Israel, where they dug up the cuneiform records, where they have excavated the history of old Nebuchadnezzar—what does it mean—that this people—this government—this empire—those that took the Everlasting Covenanted People into captivity and stole their golden and silver vessels from God’s Temple and rank out of them as they held them in their blasphemous hands at the midnight hour—THAT NATION WENT DOWN INTO DEFEAT and their city was so utterly destroyed that it is a place for bats and owls and for satyrs to dance.
And yet, the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE, the JEW, he lives on!
Go yonder with me on some moonlight night and look through the open windows of the old Coliseum at Rome, see the half broken walls, and listen to those strange voices from the dead past—WHAT DOES IT MEAN—Rome, that mighty power that oppressed and persecuted the JEWS, ROME WENT DOWN IN DEFEAT.
And yet, the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE, the JEW, he lives on!
Call to mind the conquerors of that EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED LAND—Where are they? Thotmes, Nebuchadnezzar, Sennacherib, Cambyses, Alexander, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Titus, Hadrian, Omar, Saladin, Tamerland, Napoleon—ALL GONE—government and empires — gone— BUT THE JEW remains the same unchangeable race that he was when GOD GAVE THE COVENANT to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David.
Go to the land of Russia—the land of night, mystery and bloodshed! For 300 years the Romanoff Dynasty persecuted the Jews and sent them into cold Siberia to die as "vermin" in exile. Who knows how many JEWS perished in those years of Romanoff persecution. Those years when Evangelist D.L. Moody, Evangelist William Blackstone, and Presbyterian Businessman Homer Spafford, were trying to get the Romanoff’s and Europe to let the Jews be "restored" to "their Land" in Palestine.
From 1917, when the Bolsheviks took over that country, until 1941, 15 to 16 million people perished, many, too, again, Jews. That land, where, from 1941 to 1945 over 30 million people perished, millions of that number being JEWS.
Let me tell you what has happened to that country. GOD ALMIGHTY SAID, "I WILL CURSE HIM THAT CURSETH THEE [to Abraham.]" That's what happened to that Country.
The very same thing, my brethren, can happen to this country, if we who are truly Born again by accepting SHILOH, IMMANUEL, JESHUA, the LORD, the SAVIOUR, as our PERSONAL SAVIOUR, do not lift our voices up in collective protest to our nationally elected officials.
We cannot continue to let this travesty of injustice to the JEWS to continue by believing that since we are AMERICANS, we can give away some of the EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED LAND.
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
PS If I’ve been a bit too tough on you, my wife would say, "He forgot to take his medicine!"
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Letter to Pastors
December 5, 2010
Dear Pastors:
From Southern California [Ontario] this ole man writes to you this Sunday morning. In a few hours Dr. Ezekiel Salazar will have someone pick me up and I will speak in his English Church at 9 AM, and then in his Spanish Church at 11:30 AM and again in the evening service to a "COMBINED SERVICE." Brother Salazar moved Montecito Baptist Church from LA 7 years ago, and, in Ontario, is doing the very same thing he did in LA. Zeek is being mightily used of the Lord.
Tomorrow evening, the Lord willing, I shall go to an interdenominational church somewhere in Anaheim to meet Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon at a reception prior to his speaking in that church tomorrow evening. Then, Tuesday, I have the privilege of being part of a Pastor’s Luncheon [Independent Baptist] hosting Boogie in a Hotel in LA.
Yesterday afternoon, one of Brother Salazar’s Associates, John, had picked me up to take me out for a combined lunch and supper. We were sitting in the restaurant awaiting our orders to come and John was asking me questions about American History and the History of the Jews. He teaches history in Brother Salazar’s school.
I pulled out my I-phone to google up the exact names of a couple of books and realized that I had missed a call from G.M., an IDF officer, whom I shall just refer to with his initials. You may remember that GM was commanding the Reshef Battalion [Paladin 155s] near Kiryat Shemona on August 4, 2010, when Major General Udi Adam sent his aide to get me as he wanted to meet me. We drove to the Reshef Battalion location.
When I rode up in the Major General’s Humvee and stepped out of it, the Executive officer of the Reshef Battalion, a Captain Ephraim, thought "that ole bald headed man is SOMEBODY." Now, to be truthful, I know that I am a nobody, and the more that I realize that, then the more that I see the LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS using me. I told John yesterday, "If someone thinks you are somebody, you must just take that to your heart, and never to your head, for, if it goes there, your britches will get too big for you."
Ephraim told me that Major GM and Udi [Major General Adam] would not be there for a couple of hours, and asked what I would like to do in the interim. So I said, "I would like to shoot a couple of rounds in your next mission at Hizballah." Ephrain retorted, "We can’t do that. Its against regulations." My comeback was, "Let this aide call the General, and let's get that squared away. I didn’t come over here, not to get my licks in on Hizballah." "Oh," Ephraim exclaimed, "We won’t bother the General."
I then told him to give me their best gun crew, for I didn’t want to shoot with turkeys. He introduced me then to a Gun Commander named David, then a Sgt. David is now a Lt. in the IDF. David and his gun crew showed me what I would have to do to stay alive while they were shooting the first 6 rounds. The barrel of that Paladin ejects 39 inches back into the Canon. It shoots a 97.4 lb projectile.
Well, they got a mission, and up into that Canon this ole man hopped. [You preachers say, "Brother Vineyard, you are crazy." Thats what GM thought when he laid eyes on me a couple of hours later. Katyusha rockets are falling hither and yon, and that ole bald headed preacher was right there amongst all that when he did not have to be.] It was 98 degrees outside, and I suppose every time that Canon shot, the temperature inside rose about 3 degrees. Time the mission of 10 rounds was over, I was about to have a Heart Attack.
David’s gun crew shot 6 rounds. They gave me the lanyard and # 7 was my practice round. # 8 was the round I’d marked "To Hizballah from Jim Vineyard." The Jewish Canoncokers got a real buzz out of me writing on one of their rounds. Then, they shot rounds 9 and 10. I had to get out of the Canon as soon as they stopped for I was in trouble physically. I sat on a pop cooler and poured a liter of cold water over my head as I drank another liter of cold water.
After I had recovered, Ephraim asked, "What would you like to do now?" I asked, "How long has it been since your Machine Gunners have practiced." He replied, "Too long." I told him, "Get them together, and lets go over to that bluff over there and I shall teach them something about shooting the Fabrique Nationale .308 Machine Gun." They were rounded up by a Lt. And we went over to this bluff, and I showed those Gunners and Assistant Gunners some tips of the trade of the "ole guys."
When we came back from shooting the Machine Guns, Ephraim tells me, "The General is to be interviewed here at out gun position by two Israeli TV crews and he doesn’t want them seeing you. He would like to have you to stay behind GM’s Armored Personnel Carrier while the interview is going on, and when the TV crews leave, he wants you to come and meet him.
David’s gun crew had asked me not to say anything to their commander about shooting their cannon at Hizballah. I had agreed not to say anything.
So, when the TV crews leave, or at least we thought they had, they motioned me out to meet Major General Udi Adam. I did. He thanked me profusely for feeding his soldiers. He then asked, "Have you done anything else interesting today." I had forgotten my promise to Sgt. David’s gun crew, as I was very tired and not thinking.
So, I says, "Yes General, I did. See that cannon down there, [and I pointed at David’s gun.] I crawled in that sapsucker and pulled the lanyard twice, shooting two rounds at Hizballah." GM’s throat was jumping up and down. General Adam looks very seriously at me. Then, he grabs me, pats me on the back and says something like, "As the British say, good show ole chap."
Pulling that lanyard twice and sending those two 97.4 lb rounds at Hizballah has opened up a lot of doors for this ole man relative to the Israeli Defense Forces.
In early 2008 I was over in Israel and GM and his wife, a Medical Doctor, asked if it would be inappropriate, them being Jews, to ask we Christians to pray that she could get pregnant and have a baby boy. I told them "Absolutely not. We will pray for you to have a baby." I have a picture of GM holding that newborn baby, which I took while I was over there during Operation Cast Lead, their Dec. ‘08 - Jan. ‘09 War against Hamas in Gaza.
We saw GM and his wife back in June while we were there with the Givati Family Celebration in honor of their 197 KIA’s, helping those families adjust to the loss of their sons in combat against the Ishmaelites.
She asked me to pray that they would have a baby girl. So, she had asked GM to call me and tell me the news that she is now pregnant and they will find out in January whether it is a girl or boy.
And GM told me that he had been promoted to being a Brigade Commander a few days ago from being a Battalion Commander.
We talked about the February Football trip. I told him I was going to discuss that trip with Boogie either tomorrow night or Tuesday. [Some time ago GM and his wife had asked what the affectionate name was, which my family called me when I was a wee small lad. I had told them, "Jimbo."] So, GM says, "You don’t have to bother Boogie about that. Tell him GM will take care of all the details for you."
GM having been Yoav Golant’s aid, and Yoav going from being Southern Division Commander to being Chief of Staff come January 1st, I am sure Boogie will remember GM. It’s a small world when God allows you to be a blessing to the Jews.
Preachers, there are only two choices. There is not a third. You state, "The Jews had their chance. It’s the Church age now." You show your ignorance of the Bible by going there. You need read, and heed, Romans 9, 10, 11, which if you just will rightly divide the Word of Truth, it will square you away in those areas.
The LORD WILLING, tomorrow night I will get to see my friend, Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon, and his very sharp PA, Anat Tal. I sure am looking forward to that visit.
I remains, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Dear Pastors:
From Southern California [Ontario] this ole man writes to you this Sunday morning. In a few hours Dr. Ezekiel Salazar will have someone pick me up and I will speak in his English Church at 9 AM, and then in his Spanish Church at 11:30 AM and again in the evening service to a "COMBINED SERVICE." Brother Salazar moved Montecito Baptist Church from LA 7 years ago, and, in Ontario, is doing the very same thing he did in LA. Zeek is being mightily used of the Lord.
Tomorrow evening, the Lord willing, I shall go to an interdenominational church somewhere in Anaheim to meet Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon at a reception prior to his speaking in that church tomorrow evening. Then, Tuesday, I have the privilege of being part of a Pastor’s Luncheon [Independent Baptist] hosting Boogie in a Hotel in LA.
Yesterday afternoon, one of Brother Salazar’s Associates, John, had picked me up to take me out for a combined lunch and supper. We were sitting in the restaurant awaiting our orders to come and John was asking me questions about American History and the History of the Jews. He teaches history in Brother Salazar’s school.
I pulled out my I-phone to google up the exact names of a couple of books and realized that I had missed a call from G.M., an IDF officer, whom I shall just refer to with his initials. You may remember that GM was commanding the Reshef Battalion [Paladin 155s] near Kiryat Shemona on August 4, 2010, when Major General Udi Adam sent his aide to get me as he wanted to meet me. We drove to the Reshef Battalion location.
When I rode up in the Major General’s Humvee and stepped out of it, the Executive officer of the Reshef Battalion, a Captain Ephraim, thought "that ole bald headed man is SOMEBODY." Now, to be truthful, I know that I am a nobody, and the more that I realize that, then the more that I see the LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS using me. I told John yesterday, "If someone thinks you are somebody, you must just take that to your heart, and never to your head, for, if it goes there, your britches will get too big for you."
Ephraim told me that Major GM and Udi [Major General Adam] would not be there for a couple of hours, and asked what I would like to do in the interim. So I said, "I would like to shoot a couple of rounds in your next mission at Hizballah." Ephrain retorted, "We can’t do that. Its against regulations." My comeback was, "Let this aide call the General, and let's get that squared away. I didn’t come over here, not to get my licks in on Hizballah." "Oh," Ephraim exclaimed, "We won’t bother the General."
I then told him to give me their best gun crew, for I didn’t want to shoot with turkeys. He introduced me then to a Gun Commander named David, then a Sgt. David is now a Lt. in the IDF. David and his gun crew showed me what I would have to do to stay alive while they were shooting the first 6 rounds. The barrel of that Paladin ejects 39 inches back into the Canon. It shoots a 97.4 lb projectile.
Well, they got a mission, and up into that Canon this ole man hopped. [You preachers say, "Brother Vineyard, you are crazy." Thats what GM thought when he laid eyes on me a couple of hours later. Katyusha rockets are falling hither and yon, and that ole bald headed preacher was right there amongst all that when he did not have to be.] It was 98 degrees outside, and I suppose every time that Canon shot, the temperature inside rose about 3 degrees. Time the mission of 10 rounds was over, I was about to have a Heart Attack.
David’s gun crew shot 6 rounds. They gave me the lanyard and # 7 was my practice round. # 8 was the round I’d marked "To Hizballah from Jim Vineyard." The Jewish Canoncokers got a real buzz out of me writing on one of their rounds. Then, they shot rounds 9 and 10. I had to get out of the Canon as soon as they stopped for I was in trouble physically. I sat on a pop cooler and poured a liter of cold water over my head as I drank another liter of cold water.
After I had recovered, Ephraim asked, "What would you like to do now?" I asked, "How long has it been since your Machine Gunners have practiced." He replied, "Too long." I told him, "Get them together, and lets go over to that bluff over there and I shall teach them something about shooting the Fabrique Nationale .308 Machine Gun." They were rounded up by a Lt. And we went over to this bluff, and I showed those Gunners and Assistant Gunners some tips of the trade of the "ole guys."
When we came back from shooting the Machine Guns, Ephraim tells me, "The General is to be interviewed here at out gun position by two Israeli TV crews and he doesn’t want them seeing you. He would like to have you to stay behind GM’s Armored Personnel Carrier while the interview is going on, and when the TV crews leave, he wants you to come and meet him.
David’s gun crew had asked me not to say anything to their commander about shooting their cannon at Hizballah. I had agreed not to say anything.
So, when the TV crews leave, or at least we thought they had, they motioned me out to meet Major General Udi Adam. I did. He thanked me profusely for feeding his soldiers. He then asked, "Have you done anything else interesting today." I had forgotten my promise to Sgt. David’s gun crew, as I was very tired and not thinking.
So, I says, "Yes General, I did. See that cannon down there, [and I pointed at David’s gun.] I crawled in that sapsucker and pulled the lanyard twice, shooting two rounds at Hizballah." GM’s throat was jumping up and down. General Adam looks very seriously at me. Then, he grabs me, pats me on the back and says something like, "As the British say, good show ole chap."
Pulling that lanyard twice and sending those two 97.4 lb rounds at Hizballah has opened up a lot of doors for this ole man relative to the Israeli Defense Forces.
In early 2008 I was over in Israel and GM and his wife, a Medical Doctor, asked if it would be inappropriate, them being Jews, to ask we Christians to pray that she could get pregnant and have a baby boy. I told them "Absolutely not. We will pray for you to have a baby." I have a picture of GM holding that newborn baby, which I took while I was over there during Operation Cast Lead, their Dec. ‘08 - Jan. ‘09 War against Hamas in Gaza.
We saw GM and his wife back in June while we were there with the Givati Family Celebration in honor of their 197 KIA’s, helping those families adjust to the loss of their sons in combat against the Ishmaelites.
She asked me to pray that they would have a baby girl. So, she had asked GM to call me and tell me the news that she is now pregnant and they will find out in January whether it is a girl or boy.
And GM told me that he had been promoted to being a Brigade Commander a few days ago from being a Battalion Commander.
We talked about the February Football trip. I told him I was going to discuss that trip with Boogie either tomorrow night or Tuesday. [Some time ago GM and his wife had asked what the affectionate name was, which my family called me when I was a wee small lad. I had told them, "Jimbo."] So, GM says, "You don’t have to bother Boogie about that. Tell him GM will take care of all the details for you."
GM having been Yoav Golant’s aid, and Yoav going from being Southern Division Commander to being Chief of Staff come January 1st, I am sure Boogie will remember GM. It’s a small world when God allows you to be a blessing to the Jews.
Preachers, there are only two choices. There is not a third. You state, "The Jews had their chance. It’s the Church age now." You show your ignorance of the Bible by going there. You need read, and heed, Romans 9, 10, 11, which if you just will rightly divide the Word of Truth, it will square you away in those areas.
The LORD WILLING, tomorrow night I will get to see my friend, Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon, and his very sharp PA, Anat Tal. I sure am looking forward to that visit.
I remains, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Letter to Pastors
December 4, 2010
Dear Pastors:
After looking at Israel and its revamping of the Mossad, lets now focus on Iran, as a result of what Israel is doing!
On Wednesday, December 1, Tehran directly accused Washington of responsibility for the attacks Monday, Nov. 29, in the heart of Tehran on two of its top nuclear scientists, Prof. Majid Shahriari, who was killed, and Prof. Freydoun Abbasi, who was critically injured.
Since then, the heads of Iran's government, military and intelligence have been meeting non-stop to determine how America is to be punished.
According to one proposal, rather than hitting out at a US Middle East target or Israel, the more effective reprisal would be to simply finish building a nuclear bomb forthwith.
Iranian sources report that this option had at least at three advocates at the high-powered conference, Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander Gen. Ali Jafary, Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Suleimany, and Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi.
They objected to a military response on three grounds:
1. It would not stop the covert war the US and Israel are waging with mounting intensity in the last three months, of which more details in this article, and might even spur it on.
2. The IRGC and Al Qods have their hands full engineering Hizballah's takeover of Beirut and other strategic areas of Lebanon, an operation that would represent part of Iran's punishment for the assassination of its scientists.
3. They are certain Iran can build up its first stock of 19.5 percent enriched uranium in no more than 8 to 10 weeks – enough for a short leap to weapons-grade material and the manufacture of its first nuclear weapon. Our intelligence sources quote all three as maintaining that this achievement would be fitting punishment for the attack on the two scientists.
The marathon meetings continue as I prepare to fly to California!
Tehran sees US covert-psychological war entering second round!
The Director of Iran's Atomic Energy Commission, Ali Akbar Salehi, was given the job of holding the United States responsible for the attacks.
He will represent his government at the resumed nuclear negotiations with the Six Powers on Dec. 6. Using the opportunity of Shahriari's funeral, he accused the West of carrying out the assassination to bring Iran to heel ahead of those talks.
"These wicked people wanted to show their hideous side which demonstrates their carrot and stick policy in the run-up to the new nuclear talks," he said.
Tehran has clearly taken the attacks on the two scientists as an ultimatum from Washington: If you behave rationally i.e. according to the American – or, as Salehi put it "the Western" – dictate, your nuclear scientists will be safe and the strength massed around your shores - the USS Truman, the USS Lincoln and the French Charles de Gaulle and their strike forces – will withdraw.
But persist in irrational conduct and you will endure more possible assassinations, harsher sanctions and irreparable harm at the hands of "Western" agents already at large in your country.
Tehran believes it is undergoing the second round of a disastrous United States covert intelligence campaign, Iranian sources report.
Stuxnet marches on the heels of the Shehab-3 store's destruction!
It began on September 22 with a bomb attack on an Iranian military parade in the northwestern Iranian city of Mahabad, which killed at least 12 soldiers and wounded 70.
Then, on October 7, gunmen shot at Iranian security forces near Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan. At least 5 Iranians died in that attack.
The next day, on October 8, the Baluchi Liberation Front Jundallah claimed to have snatched Amir Hossein Shirani from his place of work at one of Iran's secret nuclear facilities in Isfahan and transferred him to the group's headquarters in Baluchistan.
This week, Sunday, November 28, the day before the two scientists were hit in Tehran, Shirani appeared on the Saudi television station Al Arabiya with a full report on Iran's plans to produce nuclear weapons.
The top officials closeted behind closed doors in Tehran see that appearance as a connecting link between the two rounds of clandestine assaults and evidence of an elaborate, large-scale covert organization at work inside the country.
They believe that only a major intelligence power like the American CIA commands the unlimited manpower and financial resources for a campaign on this scale.
Add to this the mysterious explosions occurring on Oct. 12 at the Revolutionary Guards' biggest and most secret missile store at Khorramabad in southwestern Iran, destroying a major part of their Shihab 3 ballistic missile stock.
To this day, Iranian investigators have not discovered how it happened and postulate the cause as being a missile released by an American or Israeli drone.
Since that episode was not followed by any more such attacks, the Iranians decided to grit their teeth and shut up.
Now, the Iranians say, "Washington has gone too far!"
But then, two weeks later, in early November, the Stuxnet virus was on the march again and managed to disable a large number of centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Friday, Nov. 26, a passenger who boarded a Damascus-bound Air Iran flight at Tehran tried to hijack the plane.
That incident too was initially blacked out by Iranian authorities.
It later emerged that Iranian marshals aboard the plane subdued the attacker in a struggle.
Intelligence Minister Moslehi tied the incident to spy networks and claimed the hijacker admitted he wanted to direct the flight to "occupied Palestine."
Then came WikiLeaks and its disclosures of US diplomats reports that Iran was held in fear and loathing by Arab rulers.
Then came the deaths of the two scientists, the last straw in what Tehran perceives to be a well-laid American covert, cyber and psychological war.
As far as Iran's rulers are concerned, Washington has gone too far, Iranian sources report, and they are resolved to exact punishment and draw the line against any further hostile acts.
Retaliation may come in the form of a direct attack on an American Middle East target or on Israel – or both.
Wednesday, Dec. 1, the Kuwaiti Al-Rai newspaper quoted an Iranian source as reporting that Hizballah has finished its preparations for war with Israel: its weapons stores are full and underground tunnels dug for catching Israeli troops unawares.
Other military sources confirm this report.
Hizballah's war preparations are known to have been going on for two months.
On the other hand, it may be a red herring to distract attention from Iran's plans to strike somewhere else.
Obama administration officials say that Julian Assange, 39, editor-in-chief of the WikiLeaks organization, must be hunted down and prosecuted - or at least restraints clamped down on the website providing front-page fodder worldwide.
But US Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged Monday, November 29, the day after the site began dumping 250,000 US diplomatic cables, that although the US believes crimes have been committed, the investigation is complicated by the fact that key individuals are outside the US and its legal jurisdiction.
So Assange, an Australian, whose whereabouts are unknown, may get away with never standing trial in America – depending on Washington's determination to go after him.
Interpol has issued a Red Notice requesting information about his whereabouts, and the Swedish police want him on two rape charges against which he has appealed claiming they are an attempt to damage his credibility.
But he may yet defy the long arm of American justice, like the ex-CIA whistleblower, Philip Burnett Franklin Agee, nearly half a century before him.
Agee was the object of a relentless agency pursuit in the 1960s after he started telling the world that his Roman Catholic conscience had compelled him to reveal what he had seen during his service, especially in Mexico and Greece.
In 1975, while in London, where he was lionized by the Left, he managed to publish his book "Inside the Company." It was eventually translated into 27 languages.
In 1978 and 1979, Agee published a two-volume work: "Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe" and "Dirty Work: The CIA in Africa," which blew the covers of 2,000 CIA personnel.
His US passport was revoked in 1979. After obtaining citizenship in Germany and in various South American and Central American countries under pro-Communist regimes, Agee finally settled in Cuba, where he died in 2008.
The CIA never managed to lay hands on him.
Now, we see that Diplomacy has lost its cachet and diplomats no longer make policy!
The damage the former CIA insider caused US intelligence and its worldwide reputation was inestimably greater than the harm the outsider Assange has caused as a rogue element on the loose.
While avidly sensationalized by the media across the world, with high-profile editorial production teams picking out the juicy bits, WikiLeaks' third release of classified US files was by and large shrugged off by political, diplomatic and intelligence insiders as containing very little new material, although it gained weight by being sourced directly to official US documents.
The horrified protestations by some distinguished officials and academic scholars that international diplomacy will never be the same fell pretty flat too.
For years now, since top leaders have been able to communicate directly through hot lines and jet diplomacy, diplomats have lost their cachet as behind-the-scenes policy-makers and holders of state secrets.
In the 21st century, even foreign ministers have dropped down their government's power chains. Less than a handful of distinguished officials, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, and, more recently, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, are exceptions that prove the rule.
The post of British Foreign Secretary currently held by William Hague is a special case by virtue of his responsibility for the British spy agency MI6. Its every operation is subject to his personal approval and signature.
Without this prerogative, the British foreign secretary' would hold no more than a junior position in policy-making like his counterparts in Berlin, Paris, Rome and Jerusalem.
But, in Iran, we see that Ahmadinejad is leery of leaks' credibility!
Today's diplomats find themselves reduced to two functions as gatherers of information or bureaucrats.
In their first capacity they may be borderline spies, although at some point in their past careers they may have been the real article.
Their assignment by US Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton to collect the credit card numbers, email addresses and fax numbers of political and military personalities in the countries where they serve does not make them full-blown spies. It only attests to the decline of their calling without demonstrating their intelligence skills.
As bureaucrats, their work is largely confined to technicalities.
That is precisely the point. The fact that the diplomatic files tossed to the media, though refreshingly blunt and entertaining, are small beer insofar as they determine US administration policies, is the feature which intelligence circles from Moscow to Caracas, and Beijing find the most intriguing.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predictably pointed to the disclosures as "worthless" and an American attempt to harm its enemies rather than itself.
The leaked calls from Arab leaders to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities he dismissed as "mischief" and a "Satanic plot" which would have no impact on his country's "friendly" relations with regional states.
Ahmadinejad denied they were leaks at all, insisting they were deliberately orchestrated by the US government for "political" reasons and "psychological warfare" – meaning that Julian Assange was working for Washington.
The trove is geared to vilifying Iran. Who by?
While Ahmadinejad in shooting the Islamic Republic's propaganda line goes too far as usual, ME sources gathered from political and intelligence circles in Asia and Europe at least four questions common to most about the flood of revelations still incoming – unless it is assumed that Assange tossed into cyberspace every file that came to hand without checking its content or making selections:
1. How did Iran come to be the party injured most by the WikiLeaks documents - and not the US?
If the earth shook anywhere this week it was in Persian Gulf and Middle East capitals, where Arab rulers' extreme antipathy for Iran and its revolutionary Shiite regime was displayed for all the world to see.
Saudi King Abdullah was documented as urging the US to carry out a preemptive strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called Iran the overriding threat to its own and the region's security.
He warned that if Tehran acquired a nuclear weapon, Egypt would have no choice but to follow suit.
Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thaniof Qatar, regarded as Tehran's closest ally and diplomatic partner after Syrian President Bashar Assad, sang a different tune in private: He is quoted as asking the commanders of the big US Al Udeid Air Base, the largest outside America, how he could seize Iran's Persian Gulf oil and gas fields straight after an US strike against the Islamic Republic.
According to the WikiLeaks files, Washington pays no rent for the base and had 60 percent of the cost of improvements covered by the Emir, but has not obtained his permission to use the facility for "kinetic operations" against Iran.
Cutting Iran down to size - from Mid East superpower to regional menace!
Much of the trove depicts Iran in quite different colors from its self-image as a rising Middle East superpower, but rather as the menace perceived by the Arab world, one which is uniting the region's majority Sunni Muslims against its Shiites.
On the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, Iran has the failure of its revolutionary religious and political ideology to take root in the Sunni world shoved down its throat.
2. Even though the WikiLeaks cables record Ahmadinejad as saying confidentially: 'We managed to beat the Americans in Iraq, but the last battle between us (and the Americans) will take place on Iranian soil," they intimate that an attack on Iran faces a single obstacle, namely the United States.
Both President George W. Bush and Barack Obama have gone to extreme lengths to hold Israel back from an attack and fended off collective Arab pressure for an American offensive to destroy Iran's nuclear program.
Another question asked in Beijing, Moscow, Berlin and also Tehran, is why the Wikileaks release began Sunday, November 28, just one week before the start of the resumption of world power nuclear talks with Tehran.
The Russians, Chinese, Germans and Iranians are asking themselves if the timing wasn't meant to intimate to Iran that it faces two hard choices: Either knuckle under to the international limitation on uranium enrichment to a harmless measure of purity and freeze its military nuclear program, or Washington will remove the restraints holding Israel back from striking Iran and be more receptive to Arab demands for an American attack.
Leaks don't put the Saudis off their drive for attack on Iran!
The Saudis also showed some skepticism about WikiLeaks credibility in the longish story they ran in the semi-official Arab News of Tuesday, Nov. 30 on the changeover of directors of Israel's external spy agency under the caption: Mossad insider succeeds embattled spy agency chief.
Saudi experts were astonished to find this report when never before had any Saudi publication published a word about military or intelligence appointments in Israel.
However, to show they were not embarrassed or put off by the WikiLeaks disclosure of their demand of the US to attack Iran, Saudi rulers chose to indicate that, notwithstanding Washington's refusal, they still favored intelligence cooperation with Israel for setting up such an attack.
They ran this unusual item as a signal to the incoming Mossad Director Tamir Pardo that, as far as Riyadh was concerned, things must go on as before.
It fits into the background of the ongoing intelligence cooperation established in more than a year of meetings, mostly in the Jordanian capital of Amman, between the outgoing Mossad Director Meir Dagan and Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, revealed largely as a result of past disclosures.
No discreditable American secrets betrayed!
3. Once again, timing raises questions. For instance, was it just coincidence that the publication occurred on the second night of Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri's visit to Tehran as he was about to be received by Iranian leader supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Monday, November 29)?
That meeting fatefully sealed Hariri's surrender to Tehran's demand for the Lebanese national army to acquiesce to "cooperation" with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps.
One of the US diplomatic cables released that day cited the Lebanese prime minister as being in favor of an attack on Iran. Tuesday, when he arrived in Paris from Tehran to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy, he made haste to issue a muddled and feeble denial of this leak, finding himself boxed into becoming the first statesman in the world to comment on the classified material swamping the media.
4. And a final question piquing the curiosity of all the intelligence analysts poring through the mountains of US cables: How can it be that in the hundreds of files so far examined not a single one betrays any significant military, intelligence or political secrets or anything really discreditable about the Americans or the governments covered in US diplomatic correspondence with Washington?
No one seriously believe that such omissions are fortuitous.
Now, preachers, all that is food for thought as we look for the COMING of MESSIAH, the one some of my Jewish friends call YESHUA. The Lord Willing, we shall be able to befriend some of our Hebrew friends from the Israeli Government this upcoming week in California. I wish you could be there with us to meet my friend, who says I "am like his big brother."
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Dear Pastors:
After looking at Israel and its revamping of the Mossad, lets now focus on Iran, as a result of what Israel is doing!
On Wednesday, December 1, Tehran directly accused Washington of responsibility for the attacks Monday, Nov. 29, in the heart of Tehran on two of its top nuclear scientists, Prof. Majid Shahriari, who was killed, and Prof. Freydoun Abbasi, who was critically injured.
Since then, the heads of Iran's government, military and intelligence have been meeting non-stop to determine how America is to be punished.
According to one proposal, rather than hitting out at a US Middle East target or Israel, the more effective reprisal would be to simply finish building a nuclear bomb forthwith.
Iranian sources report that this option had at least at three advocates at the high-powered conference, Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander Gen. Ali Jafary, Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Suleimany, and Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi.
They objected to a military response on three grounds:
1. It would not stop the covert war the US and Israel are waging with mounting intensity in the last three months, of which more details in this article, and might even spur it on.
2. The IRGC and Al Qods have their hands full engineering Hizballah's takeover of Beirut and other strategic areas of Lebanon, an operation that would represent part of Iran's punishment for the assassination of its scientists.
3. They are certain Iran can build up its first stock of 19.5 percent enriched uranium in no more than 8 to 10 weeks – enough for a short leap to weapons-grade material and the manufacture of its first nuclear weapon. Our intelligence sources quote all three as maintaining that this achievement would be fitting punishment for the attack on the two scientists.
The marathon meetings continue as I prepare to fly to California!
Tehran sees US covert-psychological war entering second round!
The Director of Iran's Atomic Energy Commission, Ali Akbar Salehi, was given the job of holding the United States responsible for the attacks.
He will represent his government at the resumed nuclear negotiations with the Six Powers on Dec. 6. Using the opportunity of Shahriari's funeral, he accused the West of carrying out the assassination to bring Iran to heel ahead of those talks.
"These wicked people wanted to show their hideous side which demonstrates their carrot and stick policy in the run-up to the new nuclear talks," he said.
Tehran has clearly taken the attacks on the two scientists as an ultimatum from Washington: If you behave rationally i.e. according to the American – or, as Salehi put it "the Western" – dictate, your nuclear scientists will be safe and the strength massed around your shores - the USS Truman, the USS Lincoln and the French Charles de Gaulle and their strike forces – will withdraw.
But persist in irrational conduct and you will endure more possible assassinations, harsher sanctions and irreparable harm at the hands of "Western" agents already at large in your country.
Tehran believes it is undergoing the second round of a disastrous United States covert intelligence campaign, Iranian sources report.
Stuxnet marches on the heels of the Shehab-3 store's destruction!
It began on September 22 with a bomb attack on an Iranian military parade in the northwestern Iranian city of Mahabad, which killed at least 12 soldiers and wounded 70.
Then, on October 7, gunmen shot at Iranian security forces near Sanandaj in Iranian Kurdistan. At least 5 Iranians died in that attack.
The next day, on October 8, the Baluchi Liberation Front Jundallah claimed to have snatched Amir Hossein Shirani from his place of work at one of Iran's secret nuclear facilities in Isfahan and transferred him to the group's headquarters in Baluchistan.
This week, Sunday, November 28, the day before the two scientists were hit in Tehran, Shirani appeared on the Saudi television station Al Arabiya with a full report on Iran's plans to produce nuclear weapons.
The top officials closeted behind closed doors in Tehran see that appearance as a connecting link between the two rounds of clandestine assaults and evidence of an elaborate, large-scale covert organization at work inside the country.
They believe that only a major intelligence power like the American CIA commands the unlimited manpower and financial resources for a campaign on this scale.
Add to this the mysterious explosions occurring on Oct. 12 at the Revolutionary Guards' biggest and most secret missile store at Khorramabad in southwestern Iran, destroying a major part of their Shihab 3 ballistic missile stock.
To this day, Iranian investigators have not discovered how it happened and postulate the cause as being a missile released by an American or Israeli drone.
Since that episode was not followed by any more such attacks, the Iranians decided to grit their teeth and shut up.
Now, the Iranians say, "Washington has gone too far!"
But then, two weeks later, in early November, the Stuxnet virus was on the march again and managed to disable a large number of centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Friday, Nov. 26, a passenger who boarded a Damascus-bound Air Iran flight at Tehran tried to hijack the plane.
That incident too was initially blacked out by Iranian authorities.
It later emerged that Iranian marshals aboard the plane subdued the attacker in a struggle.
Intelligence Minister Moslehi tied the incident to spy networks and claimed the hijacker admitted he wanted to direct the flight to "occupied Palestine."
Then came WikiLeaks and its disclosures of US diplomats reports that Iran was held in fear and loathing by Arab rulers.
Then came the deaths of the two scientists, the last straw in what Tehran perceives to be a well-laid American covert, cyber and psychological war.
As far as Iran's rulers are concerned, Washington has gone too far, Iranian sources report, and they are resolved to exact punishment and draw the line against any further hostile acts.
Retaliation may come in the form of a direct attack on an American Middle East target or on Israel – or both.
Wednesday, Dec. 1, the Kuwaiti Al-Rai newspaper quoted an Iranian source as reporting that Hizballah has finished its preparations for war with Israel: its weapons stores are full and underground tunnels dug for catching Israeli troops unawares.
Other military sources confirm this report.
Hizballah's war preparations are known to have been going on for two months.
On the other hand, it may be a red herring to distract attention from Iran's plans to strike somewhere else.
Obama administration officials say that Julian Assange, 39, editor-in-chief of the WikiLeaks organization, must be hunted down and prosecuted - or at least restraints clamped down on the website providing front-page fodder worldwide.
But US Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged Monday, November 29, the day after the site began dumping 250,000 US diplomatic cables, that although the US believes crimes have been committed, the investigation is complicated by the fact that key individuals are outside the US and its legal jurisdiction.
So Assange, an Australian, whose whereabouts are unknown, may get away with never standing trial in America – depending on Washington's determination to go after him.
Interpol has issued a Red Notice requesting information about his whereabouts, and the Swedish police want him on two rape charges against which he has appealed claiming they are an attempt to damage his credibility.
But he may yet defy the long arm of American justice, like the ex-CIA whistleblower, Philip Burnett Franklin Agee, nearly half a century before him.
Agee was the object of a relentless agency pursuit in the 1960s after he started telling the world that his Roman Catholic conscience had compelled him to reveal what he had seen during his service, especially in Mexico and Greece.
In 1975, while in London, where he was lionized by the Left, he managed to publish his book "Inside the Company." It was eventually translated into 27 languages.
In 1978 and 1979, Agee published a two-volume work: "Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe" and "Dirty Work: The CIA in Africa," which blew the covers of 2,000 CIA personnel.
His US passport was revoked in 1979. After obtaining citizenship in Germany and in various South American and Central American countries under pro-Communist regimes, Agee finally settled in Cuba, where he died in 2008.
The CIA never managed to lay hands on him.
Now, we see that Diplomacy has lost its cachet and diplomats no longer make policy!
The damage the former CIA insider caused US intelligence and its worldwide reputation was inestimably greater than the harm the outsider Assange has caused as a rogue element on the loose.
While avidly sensationalized by the media across the world, with high-profile editorial production teams picking out the juicy bits, WikiLeaks' third release of classified US files was by and large shrugged off by political, diplomatic and intelligence insiders as containing very little new material, although it gained weight by being sourced directly to official US documents.
The horrified protestations by some distinguished officials and academic scholars that international diplomacy will never be the same fell pretty flat too.
For years now, since top leaders have been able to communicate directly through hot lines and jet diplomacy, diplomats have lost their cachet as behind-the-scenes policy-makers and holders of state secrets.
In the 21st century, even foreign ministers have dropped down their government's power chains. Less than a handful of distinguished officials, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, and, more recently, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, are exceptions that prove the rule.
The post of British Foreign Secretary currently held by William Hague is a special case by virtue of his responsibility for the British spy agency MI6. Its every operation is subject to his personal approval and signature.
Without this prerogative, the British foreign secretary' would hold no more than a junior position in policy-making like his counterparts in Berlin, Paris, Rome and Jerusalem.
But, in Iran, we see that Ahmadinejad is leery of leaks' credibility!
Today's diplomats find themselves reduced to two functions as gatherers of information or bureaucrats.
In their first capacity they may be borderline spies, although at some point in their past careers they may have been the real article.
Their assignment by US Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton to collect the credit card numbers, email addresses and fax numbers of political and military personalities in the countries where they serve does not make them full-blown spies. It only attests to the decline of their calling without demonstrating their intelligence skills.
As bureaucrats, their work is largely confined to technicalities.
That is precisely the point. The fact that the diplomatic files tossed to the media, though refreshingly blunt and entertaining, are small beer insofar as they determine US administration policies, is the feature which intelligence circles from Moscow to Caracas, and Beijing find the most intriguing.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predictably pointed to the disclosures as "worthless" and an American attempt to harm its enemies rather than itself.
The leaked calls from Arab leaders to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities he dismissed as "mischief" and a "Satanic plot" which would have no impact on his country's "friendly" relations with regional states.
Ahmadinejad denied they were leaks at all, insisting they were deliberately orchestrated by the US government for "political" reasons and "psychological warfare" – meaning that Julian Assange was working for Washington.
The trove is geared to vilifying Iran. Who by?
While Ahmadinejad in shooting the Islamic Republic's propaganda line goes too far as usual, ME sources gathered from political and intelligence circles in Asia and Europe at least four questions common to most about the flood of revelations still incoming – unless it is assumed that Assange tossed into cyberspace every file that came to hand without checking its content or making selections:
1. How did Iran come to be the party injured most by the WikiLeaks documents - and not the US?
If the earth shook anywhere this week it was in Persian Gulf and Middle East capitals, where Arab rulers' extreme antipathy for Iran and its revolutionary Shiite regime was displayed for all the world to see.
Saudi King Abdullah was documented as urging the US to carry out a preemptive strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called Iran the overriding threat to its own and the region's security.
He warned that if Tehran acquired a nuclear weapon, Egypt would have no choice but to follow suit.
Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thaniof Qatar, regarded as Tehran's closest ally and diplomatic partner after Syrian President Bashar Assad, sang a different tune in private: He is quoted as asking the commanders of the big US Al Udeid Air Base, the largest outside America, how he could seize Iran's Persian Gulf oil and gas fields straight after an US strike against the Islamic Republic.
According to the WikiLeaks files, Washington pays no rent for the base and had 60 percent of the cost of improvements covered by the Emir, but has not obtained his permission to use the facility for "kinetic operations" against Iran.
Cutting Iran down to size - from Mid East superpower to regional menace!
Much of the trove depicts Iran in quite different colors from its self-image as a rising Middle East superpower, but rather as the menace perceived by the Arab world, one which is uniting the region's majority Sunni Muslims against its Shiites.
On the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, Iran has the failure of its revolutionary religious and political ideology to take root in the Sunni world shoved down its throat.
2. Even though the WikiLeaks cables record Ahmadinejad as saying confidentially: 'We managed to beat the Americans in Iraq, but the last battle between us (and the Americans) will take place on Iranian soil," they intimate that an attack on Iran faces a single obstacle, namely the United States.
Both President George W. Bush and Barack Obama have gone to extreme lengths to hold Israel back from an attack and fended off collective Arab pressure for an American offensive to destroy Iran's nuclear program.
Another question asked in Beijing, Moscow, Berlin and also Tehran, is why the Wikileaks release began Sunday, November 28, just one week before the start of the resumption of world power nuclear talks with Tehran.
The Russians, Chinese, Germans and Iranians are asking themselves if the timing wasn't meant to intimate to Iran that it faces two hard choices: Either knuckle under to the international limitation on uranium enrichment to a harmless measure of purity and freeze its military nuclear program, or Washington will remove the restraints holding Israel back from striking Iran and be more receptive to Arab demands for an American attack.
Leaks don't put the Saudis off their drive for attack on Iran!
The Saudis also showed some skepticism about WikiLeaks credibility in the longish story they ran in the semi-official Arab News of Tuesday, Nov. 30 on the changeover of directors of Israel's external spy agency under the caption: Mossad insider succeeds embattled spy agency chief.
Saudi experts were astonished to find this report when never before had any Saudi publication published a word about military or intelligence appointments in Israel.
However, to show they were not embarrassed or put off by the WikiLeaks disclosure of their demand of the US to attack Iran, Saudi rulers chose to indicate that, notwithstanding Washington's refusal, they still favored intelligence cooperation with Israel for setting up such an attack.
They ran this unusual item as a signal to the incoming Mossad Director Tamir Pardo that, as far as Riyadh was concerned, things must go on as before.
It fits into the background of the ongoing intelligence cooperation established in more than a year of meetings, mostly in the Jordanian capital of Amman, between the outgoing Mossad Director Meir Dagan and Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, revealed largely as a result of past disclosures.
No discreditable American secrets betrayed!
3. Once again, timing raises questions. For instance, was it just coincidence that the publication occurred on the second night of Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri's visit to Tehran as he was about to be received by Iranian leader supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Monday, November 29)?
That meeting fatefully sealed Hariri's surrender to Tehran's demand for the Lebanese national army to acquiesce to "cooperation" with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps.
One of the US diplomatic cables released that day cited the Lebanese prime minister as being in favor of an attack on Iran. Tuesday, when he arrived in Paris from Tehran to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy, he made haste to issue a muddled and feeble denial of this leak, finding himself boxed into becoming the first statesman in the world to comment on the classified material swamping the media.
4. And a final question piquing the curiosity of all the intelligence analysts poring through the mountains of US cables: How can it be that in the hundreds of files so far examined not a single one betrays any significant military, intelligence or political secrets or anything really discreditable about the Americans or the governments covered in US diplomatic correspondence with Washington?
No one seriously believe that such omissions are fortuitous.
Now, preachers, all that is food for thought as we look for the COMING of MESSIAH, the one some of my Jewish friends call YESHUA. The Lord Willing, we shall be able to befriend some of our Hebrew friends from the Israeli Government this upcoming week in California. I wish you could be there with us to meet my friend, who says I "am like his big brother."
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Friday, December 3, 2010
Letter to Pastors
December 3, 2010
Dear Pastors:
I am preparing to leave for California, where I shall be able to see our son John, his wife Dawn, and their two boys, Brad and Zach. Dawn’s Dad, Dr. Max Price is there working with Jim Crall in Dr. Stewart McBirney’s Church in Glendale, California, and so will be able to see him too.
I am preaching all day Sunday for Dr. Ezekiel Salazar in the LA area and then will be with Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon, my friend, on Monday night, Tuesday noon, and Tuesday night. David Sloan and his mother will be there with us.
From the Middle East I have gathered the below and thought you’d find it interesting.
First, his week's appointment of Tamir Pardo, 57, as Director of Mossad, Israel's external espionage service, coupled with Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi's assumption of the post of Director of Israeli military intelligence- IMI has put in place two important pieces of the sweeping reform which Israel's intelligence-espionage-clandestine system is quietly undergoing.
Israel's three cloak-and-dagger agencies are in the process of being reoriented on operations rather than intelligence-gathering and analysis, intelligence sources report.
Furthermore, the Mossad is to be recognized as the senior clandestine agency tasked with covert operations, including those conducted by Israel Defense Forces-IDF combat units.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are directing this radical rearrangement of the national military and intelligence order, conducting the system's first shakeup since the 2006 Hizballah-Israel war.
In the summer of that year, the Israeli armored columns advancing into southern Lebanon up to the northern banks of the Litani River were unable to smash Hizballah's military strength.
To redress the imbalance, IDF commandos struck deep behind enemy lines twice.
The first raid on August 2, 2006 aimed at seizing Hizballah command centers around the ancient city of Baalbek, about 130 Km (80 miles) north of Israel, and knock them over.
It failed because Hizballah, forewarned by the sound of the helicopter engines ferrying the Israeli troops in, were given enough time to evacuate.
Four days later, on August 5, 2006, Israeli commandos raided the Mediterranean port town of Tyre, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Israel, killing 27 Hizballah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives, including senior commanders. [You may remember that this ole man was able to feed 2 or 3 of these guys on August 6, that evening, near Nahariya. MK Arieh Eldad said "JAV could stop the war to feed the hungry soldiers."
But, on that second time, the commandos took their lesson from the first raid and approached their target noiselessly by sea under cover of dark.
Tamir Pardo picked as covert operations master-planner!Both these operations behind Hizballah lines were supervised by Tamir Pardo, then head of the Mossad's operations branch.
It was the first time that a Mossad officer had ever been given command of an IDF special operations unit for a covert mission inside enemy territory.
This method was not applied in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, because of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's objections.
That campaign too like the Lebanon war ended unresolved and without a clear victory for either side.
But, intelligence sources report that Olmert's successor as prime minister recalled those two raids in Lebanon.
He and the defense minister carefully studied the transformation of the American Central Intelligence Agency and its revised methods of operation in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan into a fighting force for covert warfare under a civilian DCI as supreme commander, currently Leon Panetta.
They also took to heart US objections to using the IDF for attacking Iran's nuclear facilities.
All these factors combined to make Netanyahu, Barak and national military and intelligence chiefs realize that a drastic overhaul had become necessary for the Mossad, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet domestic security agency and a sweeping redistribution of their tasks.
This process would have a profound impact on the IDF as well.
Four major changes are in the making therefore, according to intelligence and military sources:
Intel chiefs relieved of policy briefing, strategic analyses!1. From now on, all heads of military and intelligence organizations will be required to have background experience in field combat operations on the tactical or strategic level to qualify for appointment.
This proviso will apply to the Chief of Staff, Mossad Director, Military Intelligence Chief and Shin Bet Director.
All of them will need to be proven "field animals" – in military parlance, rather than specialists in political analysis and military strategy as heretofore.
Netanyahu and his advisers no longer want to hear intelligence and military officers offering opinions and judgments in the realms of decision-making and statecraft.
This ruling will apply to the sort of briefings to cabinet and other closed forums heard recently, in which the Mossad and IMI Directors informed policy-makers the time was right for negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Assad, in one case, and the need to retrieve ties with Ankara at all costs and ignore Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan's implacable hostility - in another.
From now on, elected policy-makers alone will be responsible for diplomacy and strategic planning and judgments.
All they want to hear from the generals and spymasters is recommendations on such matters as covert operations for halting Iran's nuclear progress and the flow of North Korean rockets to Iran, and from Iran and Syria to Hizballah.
In the event of war, they will first demand plans for Mossad and IMI special operations behind enemy lines for sabotage, and only in their wake, dispatch the armored and armored infantry columns to breach them.
To enforce homeland security, special Shin Bet commando units will be deployed deep inside Palestinian territory and Israeli Arab population centers while the IDF commando units are fighting on the front.
Only field combat experts need apply for top jobs!
These directions are strongly blazed by the latest military and intelligence appointments.
Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, a field operations tactician of the first rank with little interest in politics and policy-making has just been appointed Israel's next Chief of Staff after Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi.
Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, even more of a "field animal" has been chosen as his deputy. His strengths lie in his ability to focus totally on preparing the armed forces for war and skills in setting up surgical field operations.
Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the new Military Intelligence chief is another field operations man who hails from the Paratroops Brigade's special commando unit and command off the Gaza front.
Kochavi has no previous experience in the intelligence trade. While managing the IMI Corps' several departments, he is expected to concentrate on expanding undercover combat units and enhancing their operational capabilities, for which he is amply qualified.
Tamir Pardo will perform similar functions in the Mossad.
Netanyahu has not yet selected the next Shin Bet Director to follow Yuval Diskin, who retires after three decades of clandestine activity and management.
Intelligence sources report that all three candidates are insiders of the organization who came up through the ranks and are active field operations men.
2. Of the three services, the Mossad faces the most radical change in its character, structure and methods of operation.
The drawing-up of strategic assessment studies, developing policy guidelines and generating ties with governments which have no formal relations with Israel will be transferred to the National Security Council headed now by Dr. Uzi Arad, a former Mossad officer himself.
Mossad and its chief promoted to command of all covert operations!While the Mossad's glory days of running networks in the US, Russia, China and Europe recede into the distant past, it emerges from its traditional chrysalis as Israel's primary covert military force, whose intelligence-gathering duties are limited to operational needs.
3. ME intelligence sources report that, after obtaining the defense minister's acquiescence, the prime minister has assigned Tamir Pardo additional high office as head of the Committee of Israeli Intelligence Directors, a body still in formation.
This position is equivalent to America's Director of National Intelligence-DNI and places him at the top of the national intelligence pyramid.
In this role and as architect of the Mossad's reshaping into the national covert special combat force, he rises in rank as the equal of IDF Chief of Staff.
4. This wholesale reform will no doubt be reflected in the national defense budget, Israel's largest, and necessitate a fundamental redistribution of appropriations between the military and intelligence.
Military sources predict the transfer of large slices of the cake from the military to the clandestine agencies arising from shifts in manpower and combat and logistical resources.
It will have to be decided, for example, whether the new covert combat force is to be equipped with autonomous air, naval and logistical arms or draw on IDF support in these fields.
It may also be decided to furnish the intelligence force with a UAV arm like the CIA.
After looking at Israel today, tomorrow, I shall write you how these events have taken hold over in Iran.
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Dear Pastors:
I am preparing to leave for California, where I shall be able to see our son John, his wife Dawn, and their two boys, Brad and Zach. Dawn’s Dad, Dr. Max Price is there working with Jim Crall in Dr. Stewart McBirney’s Church in Glendale, California, and so will be able to see him too.
I am preaching all day Sunday for Dr. Ezekiel Salazar in the LA area and then will be with Vice Prime Minister Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon, my friend, on Monday night, Tuesday noon, and Tuesday night. David Sloan and his mother will be there with us.
From the Middle East I have gathered the below and thought you’d find it interesting.
First, his week's appointment of Tamir Pardo, 57, as Director of Mossad, Israel's external espionage service, coupled with Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi's assumption of the post of Director of Israeli military intelligence- IMI has put in place two important pieces of the sweeping reform which Israel's intelligence-espionage-clandestine system is quietly undergoing.
Israel's three cloak-and-dagger agencies are in the process of being reoriented on operations rather than intelligence-gathering and analysis, intelligence sources report.
Furthermore, the Mossad is to be recognized as the senior clandestine agency tasked with covert operations, including those conducted by Israel Defense Forces-IDF combat units.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are directing this radical rearrangement of the national military and intelligence order, conducting the system's first shakeup since the 2006 Hizballah-Israel war.
In the summer of that year, the Israeli armored columns advancing into southern Lebanon up to the northern banks of the Litani River were unable to smash Hizballah's military strength.
To redress the imbalance, IDF commandos struck deep behind enemy lines twice.
The first raid on August 2, 2006 aimed at seizing Hizballah command centers around the ancient city of Baalbek, about 130 Km (80 miles) north of Israel, and knock them over.
It failed because Hizballah, forewarned by the sound of the helicopter engines ferrying the Israeli troops in, were given enough time to evacuate.
Four days later, on August 5, 2006, Israeli commandos raided the Mediterranean port town of Tyre, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Israel, killing 27 Hizballah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives, including senior commanders. [You may remember that this ole man was able to feed 2 or 3 of these guys on August 6, that evening, near Nahariya. MK Arieh Eldad said "JAV could stop the war to feed the hungry soldiers."
But, on that second time, the commandos took their lesson from the first raid and approached their target noiselessly by sea under cover of dark.
Tamir Pardo picked as covert operations master-planner!Both these operations behind Hizballah lines were supervised by Tamir Pardo, then head of the Mossad's operations branch.
It was the first time that a Mossad officer had ever been given command of an IDF special operations unit for a covert mission inside enemy territory.
This method was not applied in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, because of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's objections.
That campaign too like the Lebanon war ended unresolved and without a clear victory for either side.
But, intelligence sources report that Olmert's successor as prime minister recalled those two raids in Lebanon.
He and the defense minister carefully studied the transformation of the American Central Intelligence Agency and its revised methods of operation in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan into a fighting force for covert warfare under a civilian DCI as supreme commander, currently Leon Panetta.
They also took to heart US objections to using the IDF for attacking Iran's nuclear facilities.
All these factors combined to make Netanyahu, Barak and national military and intelligence chiefs realize that a drastic overhaul had become necessary for the Mossad, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet domestic security agency and a sweeping redistribution of their tasks.
This process would have a profound impact on the IDF as well.
Four major changes are in the making therefore, according to intelligence and military sources:
Intel chiefs relieved of policy briefing, strategic analyses!1. From now on, all heads of military and intelligence organizations will be required to have background experience in field combat operations on the tactical or strategic level to qualify for appointment.
This proviso will apply to the Chief of Staff, Mossad Director, Military Intelligence Chief and Shin Bet Director.
All of them will need to be proven "field animals" – in military parlance, rather than specialists in political analysis and military strategy as heretofore.
Netanyahu and his advisers no longer want to hear intelligence and military officers offering opinions and judgments in the realms of decision-making and statecraft.
This ruling will apply to the sort of briefings to cabinet and other closed forums heard recently, in which the Mossad and IMI Directors informed policy-makers the time was right for negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Assad, in one case, and the need to retrieve ties with Ankara at all costs and ignore Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan's implacable hostility - in another.
From now on, elected policy-makers alone will be responsible for diplomacy and strategic planning and judgments.
All they want to hear from the generals and spymasters is recommendations on such matters as covert operations for halting Iran's nuclear progress and the flow of North Korean rockets to Iran, and from Iran and Syria to Hizballah.
In the event of war, they will first demand plans for Mossad and IMI special operations behind enemy lines for sabotage, and only in their wake, dispatch the armored and armored infantry columns to breach them.
To enforce homeland security, special Shin Bet commando units will be deployed deep inside Palestinian territory and Israeli Arab population centers while the IDF commando units are fighting on the front.
Only field combat experts need apply for top jobs!
These directions are strongly blazed by the latest military and intelligence appointments.
Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, a field operations tactician of the first rank with little interest in politics and policy-making has just been appointed Israel's next Chief of Staff after Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi.
Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, even more of a "field animal" has been chosen as his deputy. His strengths lie in his ability to focus totally on preparing the armed forces for war and skills in setting up surgical field operations.
Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the new Military Intelligence chief is another field operations man who hails from the Paratroops Brigade's special commando unit and command off the Gaza front.
Kochavi has no previous experience in the intelligence trade. While managing the IMI Corps' several departments, he is expected to concentrate on expanding undercover combat units and enhancing their operational capabilities, for which he is amply qualified.
Tamir Pardo will perform similar functions in the Mossad.
Netanyahu has not yet selected the next Shin Bet Director to follow Yuval Diskin, who retires after three decades of clandestine activity and management.
Intelligence sources report that all three candidates are insiders of the organization who came up through the ranks and are active field operations men.
2. Of the three services, the Mossad faces the most radical change in its character, structure and methods of operation.
The drawing-up of strategic assessment studies, developing policy guidelines and generating ties with governments which have no formal relations with Israel will be transferred to the National Security Council headed now by Dr. Uzi Arad, a former Mossad officer himself.
Mossad and its chief promoted to command of all covert operations!While the Mossad's glory days of running networks in the US, Russia, China and Europe recede into the distant past, it emerges from its traditional chrysalis as Israel's primary covert military force, whose intelligence-gathering duties are limited to operational needs.
3. ME intelligence sources report that, after obtaining the defense minister's acquiescence, the prime minister has assigned Tamir Pardo additional high office as head of the Committee of Israeli Intelligence Directors, a body still in formation.
This position is equivalent to America's Director of National Intelligence-DNI and places him at the top of the national intelligence pyramid.
In this role and as architect of the Mossad's reshaping into the national covert special combat force, he rises in rank as the equal of IDF Chief of Staff.
4. This wholesale reform will no doubt be reflected in the national defense budget, Israel's largest, and necessitate a fundamental redistribution of appropriations between the military and intelligence.
Military sources predict the transfer of large slices of the cake from the military to the clandestine agencies arising from shifts in manpower and combat and logistical resources.
It will have to be decided, for example, whether the new covert combat force is to be equipped with autonomous air, naval and logistical arms or draw on IDF support in these fields.
It may also be decided to furnish the intelligence force with a UAV arm like the CIA.
After looking at Israel today, tomorrow, I shall write you how these events have taken hold over in Iran.
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Monday, November 22, 2010
Letter to Pastors
November 22, 2010
Dear Pastors:
I am at home this Monday morning rejoicing on this THANKSGIVING WEEK for the Goodness of the Lord and all the many things we as Christian people have to be thankful for. Mrs. V. and were privileged to read the Old Testament Minor Prophet Nahum this morning.
Nahum 1:7 was especially precious to she and I this morning. Na 1:7 The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. [The LORD is our strong hold: the LORD is our strength!] Mrs. V. has put the words of Nahum 1:7 to music, and it was a blessing to ask her to sing it, and hear it sung.
Nahum was the seventh of the minor prophets, and of him, little is known, except from the Title of the book, "The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite [1:1]!"
Nahum’s prophetic ministry occurred between the conquest of No-Amon [Thebes] in Egypt [3:8,] regarded by him as a past event and which occurred in 661 B.C. under Ashurbanipal, and the destruction of Nineveh in 612 B.C. Nahum confines himself to one theme, by and large, The destruction of Nineveh, "The Bloody City"[3:1].
Nahum’s preview of Nineveh’s destruction [chaps 2 & 3] previsions the crash of the Assyrian Empire. In 612 B.C. Cyaxares the Mede, in league with Nabopolassar of Babylon commenced the siege of Nineveh. The terrifying aspect of Ninneveh’s fall is depicted as a just recompense of the powerful and cruel city. Nahum was a seventh-century prophet who lived at the same time as Zephaniah, Habakkuk and Jeremiah. In the destruction of Nineveh, Nahum sees the punishment of the horrible cruelty of the Assyrian world power.
Now, I am going somewhere, as I look back to Nahum’s prophecy of Nineveh’s destruction, and then look at current events as they are coming down the pike yonder in the Middle East, with the coming of Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, certainly being just around the corner.
I would like to thank all of you that wrote Mr. Netanyahu as a consequence of my email to him, about not extending the "building freeze" commitment to D.C., as reports now, both from Washington and Jerusalem are, that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and the Obama administration never did manage during his trip to Washington earlier this month to forge a deal for a second 90-day Israeli moratorium on West Bank construction, in return for three billion dollars-worth of 20 F-35 stealth planes.
Praise the Lord! I believe the combined voices of Truly Born Again Christians and Jews, raised in a hubbub to Mr. Netanyahu kept "this building freeze" from being extended.
The only accords reached during his marathon meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Nov. 11, applied to American diplomatic and political support and guarantees, our sources report.
Netanyahu's presentation of their terms to the cabinet meeting Sunday, Nov, 14, was therefore misleading.
According to that briefing, Washington tacitly agreed to omit Jerusalem from the West Bank moratorium and promised 20 warplanes, in addition to the 20 already purchased, to be supplied gratis.
Washington sources stress that Clinton made no such commitments on behalf of the administration.
The prime minister apparently hoped to swing a majority of his cabinet behind the 90-day moratorium in return for those far-reaching US benefits and hoped to persuade Washington to be more generous after the freeze was in the bag.
As things stand now, the prime minister finds himself in a predicament.
Reluctant to embarrass him, US administration officials are making no comment.
But some of Israel's senior ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, a former Chief of Staff, demanded that Netanyahu produce a written document from the White House confirming the putative deal.
For you California Preachers who will be meeting with Mr. Ya’alon two weeks from tomorrow, you need remember to thank "Boogie" for his demand to Mr. Netanyahu for a "written document" from the White House, as certainly, Boogie agrees with you and I that "we cannot trust this White Hosue" in matters pertaining to the Nation of Israel.
The Prime Minister has been hedging all week saying the document is in negotiation with Clinton.
It is now obvious that no American document will be coming.
Even if it is, sources say it will not be much use to Netanyahu because it will cover Jerusalem as part of the construction freeze as well as the West Bank.
This situation prompted David Hale, Deputy U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to advise the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whom he visited in Ramallah Wednesday, to pay no attention to published reports of a US-Israel deal contracted by Netanyahu because it did not exist.
Now, with Nineveh in mind, let us switch gears to one of the most "powerful nations" in the Middle East, and certainly, with regards to women and innocents, "one of the most cruel," Saudi Arabia!
When the octogenarian Saudi King Abdullah, head of the world's largest producer and exporter of petroleum liquids, suffers ill health, many world centers feel the chill and start worrying about the impact of a succession race on the monarchy's stability.
On November 13, the Saudi press carried an official Royal Court bulletin stating that King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz had back problems and was under doctors' orders to rest up as part of the treatment for a slipped disc.
The bulletin stressed its publication was in line with the policy of transparency the king had introduced. Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, 75, was named as official in charge of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which began this week with more than three million pilgrims and new, modern amenities.
Nothing was said about him standing in for the king in other areas, although it was widely reported in Riyadh this past year that Nayef was frontrunner in the race for the role of crown prince.
Sources therein note that even in modern Western societies, a government head rarely informs the public of a back complaint – all the more so in Saudi Arabia's secretive political culture.
This information may be gossiped about in court circles or go round the bazaars.
Normally, even if it were reported in the West, a comment from the royal court would be unthinkable.
For nine years, King Fahd lay at death's door, incapacitated by a severe stroke and unable to perform his royal functions.
Yet the Saudi media faithfully reported on his "activities" as though nothing was amiss and never hinted at his real condition even after it was an open secret.
Therefore, from my read here in Oklahoma, Middle East experts on Saudi Arabia believe the surprise medical bulletin means one of two things are happening: Either the 87-year old king decided to put to rest rumors of a far graver illness by officially disclosing a non-life-threatening ailment, or he is sending a broad hint to senior princes of his own generation that it was time to come clean about their deteriorating health and start moving sideways.
A "side show" is the fact that now Thousands of princes are scrambling as the ageing rulers [plural] fall ill!
Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, 86, for instance, has been fighting cancer for years and spends more time outside the kingdom undergoing surgery and other treatment than performing his duties as defense minister at home.
Last month, Sultan's son, Prince Khaled bin Sultan tried to refute the impression of his father's declining condition by telling everyone he was in good health.
The Saudi media painted a rosy picture of the dying prince by describing his schedule as packed with appointments with Arab leaders.
As for Abdullah, even if all he suffers from is a slipped disc, he has admitted he needs a long period of rest from his labors at the helm of the kingdom's governing administration.
The poor state of his health was confirmed Wednesday, Nov. 17, by the elevation of his son Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah to membership of the Council of Ministers and promotion to Commander of the Saudi National Guard, part of Abdullah's holdings from when he was Crown Prince.
Even if they were hale and hearty, the advanced ages of both the king and defense minister, who is also the next in line to the succession, are enough to stir disquiet within the royal family and spotlight the race for the next slots in the hierarchy.
Number 2 is more or less accounted for.
More than a year ago, Prince Nayef was appointed Second Deputy to the Prime Minister, Saudi code for next Crown Prince and one step from the throne after Abdullah and Sultan breathe their last.
But thousands of princes are agog in anticipation of the fast-approaching battles over who comes next in the line of succession to the throne.
This question came into sharp focus with the unforeseen return home on Oct. 15 after a long absence of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Director of the National Security Council and Ambassador to the US for twenty-two years.
And from my read, it is plain that Prince Bandar staking his claim to top post! All intrigue, but that is what you have in these type "Mohammedan" societies!
The grand reception staged for his return was seen as a show of strength by the Sudairi branch of the royal house to which Bandar belongs.
It was attended exclusively by the sons of the senior princes of that branch, Nayef, Sultan and the late king Fahd, excepting only one outsider, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, Director of General Intelligence, who is a very close confidante of King Abdullah.
However, none of the king's sons or those of the Sudairi's rivals, the branch headed by Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal and his brother Prince Turki al Faisal, were present.
So what brought Bandar home after an absence of two years?
According to Mid East's sources, seeing the ruling hierarchy showing cracks and the atmosphere in Riyadh growing electric with rivalry, he decided to step into the forefront of the race for one of the top positions in the realm.
Bandar feels his proven foreign policy talents and special gift for secret diplomacy are unappreciated and unutilized.
The powers of the National Security Council which he heads have never been clearly marked out and the body has been marginalized in recent years.
The post of foreign minister or director of general intelligence would, on the other hand, suit him to the ground and give him a seat on the councils shaping the kingdom's strategic and external policies.
This aspiration was hinted at in a report by the Saudi newsletter Al-Ilaf published in London which reported Bandar's return last Sunday as signifying the return of the hawks to the center of action in Riyadh.
Saudi experts hesitate to characterize Bandar as a hawk in the kingdom's foreign affairs.
By their statements and actions, the two Faisal sons, Foreign Minister Saud, 69, and his younger brother, 65, are far more hawkish when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, refusing to have any truck with Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved.
All that, I think, Pastors, shows this this "Palestinian-Israeli" conflict will be part and parcel of the events leading up to the coming of our Shiloh-Immanuel-Yeshua!
But the Al-Ilaf story does serve as a bellwether for Bandar's ambition.
History show that the fiefdom tradition keeps top posts in the family!
The door to General Intelligence is closed for now.
The king is all the way behind its director, Prince Muqrin and shows no inclination to replace him.
The foreign ministry is another matter.
Prince Saud, who has served in that position since the death of his father King Faisal in 1975, suffers from Parkinson's disease.
For years, he was said to be ready to retire.
In some quarters, his brother Turki's resignation three years ago as Ambassador to the US after less than two years was accounted for by his hopes of replacing his brother.
But nothing came of it and the post of foreign minister has become the object of princely infighting.
This does not mean that Bandar can hope to snare the job. His chances are rated slim by Saudi sources because of the ruling Saudi hierarchy's rigid structure.
For two decades, it has been governed by the principle of fiefdom, or internal dynasties.
Ageing princes who have served as cabinet ministers for 30 years or more are now grooming their sons to succeed them.
The Saudi National Guard is part of King Abdullah's holdings from when he was crown prince. Wednesday, Nov. 17, he handed its command to his son, Prince Mutaib.
In doing so, he confirmed his own indisposition and also sent a clear message to Defense Minister Sultan to stop messing about and follow suit by making his son Prince Khaled bin Sultan commander of Saudi Arabia's armed forces - or even minister of defense.
Interior Minister Nayef likewise reserves his portfolio for his son and acting deputy, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, who, too, will take over when the time comes.
History of these Saudis teaches that yes, faces may change - or even shake up the gerontocracy ruling Riyadh, but the Kingdom will go on!
The Faisal clan does not strictly follow this feudal tradition.
The foreign minister's post is customarily the preserve of King Faisal's offspring, so it is very likely that if Saud steps down or is raised to Crown Prince notwithstanding his illness, he will make sure to keep it in the family.
His full brother Turki is the strongest contender for the job, although he may be challenged by their half-brother from another mother, Prince Khalid al-Faisal.
He is about three years older than Turki. The Saudi kingdom may be young (founded by Abdul-Aziz bin Saud in 1932) but it has quickly grown into a political gerontocracy where seniority is an asset.
So Khalid's age is no bar to high office. His other qualifications for the top diplomatic post in the kingdom are his service as Governor of Asir Province for than 20 years and as Governor of Mecca since 2007, a post with plenty of political and media exposure.
It is not known if he wants to be foreign minister.
In the past month, Khalid has been described, mainly in the United States, as likely to emerge as a future king.
Saudi experts rule this prospect out as unfounded because it would entail an almost revolutionary break with the kingdom's deeply entrenched rules of succession, a break radical enough to bring the entire monarchical edifice to collapse.
For now, therefore, the power struggle over the order of succession between the Sudairi clan, headed by Princes Sultan and Nayef and their sons, and the rival branches headed by Abdullah and the Faisal sons, is unresolved.
It may therefore be presumed that the prescription formulated by King Faisal in the 1970s, which has kept the many-branched royal family in balance until now, will continue to prevail. If it does, the Sudairi Nayef will eventually be crowned king and his Crown Prince will come from one of the rival clans headed by King Abdullah and the Faisal brothers. Age and birth will continue to take precedence.
But the change coming to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may not be as controlled as expected.
Now, Pastors, just as sure as Nahum’s prevision brought about the destruction of the Kingdom of Nineveh, Zechariah 12:3 tells me that Jerusalem will be the burdensome stone for all these Kingdoms that burden themselves with it! Zec 12:3 And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
And, after he comes, [Zech. 14:4 states that] MESSIAH will stand with his feet on that Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
Zec 12:10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
11 In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.
Zec 13:1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. In our Hymnal, hymn # 222 is "There is A Fountain Filled With Blood" which just happens to be this ole warrior-preachers "favorite" of all, and was written by the hymnwriter because of Zec 13:1.
And, yes, I know, my brethren, the Jews do not believe the MESSIAH to be whom you and I believe him to be.
BUT, at this time, THEY TIME OF ZECHARIAH'S PROPHECY FULFILLMENT, they shall see him, and they shall recognize him FOR WHOM HE IS.
I tell my Jewish friends: only one of us is right, the other is wrong! I am confident to stand with THE HOLY WORD OF THE LIVING GOD, which is their Torah, the Old Testament, that MESSIAH is whom MESSIAH says HE is by the OLD TESTAMENT.
Regardless, regardless, regardless, All the Nations of the Earth were blessed because of Faithful Abraham, Ha-yedid, the only man in all the Holy Bible to be called THE FRIEND OF GOD!
And, there is only 2 "choices" given by the Holy Bible concerning the Jews! We either "bless" them or we "curse" them. There is not a third choice.
JOIN ME IN CALIFORNIA BY BEING A BLESSING TO THE JEWS AT THIS "LESSONS WE LEARNED FROM PEARL HARBOR" EVENT.
SEE YOU IN L.A!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Dear Pastors:
I am at home this Monday morning rejoicing on this THANKSGIVING WEEK for the Goodness of the Lord and all the many things we as Christian people have to be thankful for. Mrs. V. and were privileged to read the Old Testament Minor Prophet Nahum this morning.
Nahum 1:7 was especially precious to she and I this morning. Na 1:7 The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. [The LORD is our strong hold: the LORD is our strength!] Mrs. V. has put the words of Nahum 1:7 to music, and it was a blessing to ask her to sing it, and hear it sung.
Nahum was the seventh of the minor prophets, and of him, little is known, except from the Title of the book, "The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite [1:1]!"
Nahum’s prophetic ministry occurred between the conquest of No-Amon [Thebes] in Egypt [3:8,] regarded by him as a past event and which occurred in 661 B.C. under Ashurbanipal, and the destruction of Nineveh in 612 B.C. Nahum confines himself to one theme, by and large, The destruction of Nineveh, "The Bloody City"[3:1].
Nahum’s preview of Nineveh’s destruction [chaps 2 & 3] previsions the crash of the Assyrian Empire. In 612 B.C. Cyaxares the Mede, in league with Nabopolassar of Babylon commenced the siege of Nineveh. The terrifying aspect of Ninneveh’s fall is depicted as a just recompense of the powerful and cruel city. Nahum was a seventh-century prophet who lived at the same time as Zephaniah, Habakkuk and Jeremiah. In the destruction of Nineveh, Nahum sees the punishment of the horrible cruelty of the Assyrian world power.
Now, I am going somewhere, as I look back to Nahum’s prophecy of Nineveh’s destruction, and then look at current events as they are coming down the pike yonder in the Middle East, with the coming of Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, certainly being just around the corner.
I would like to thank all of you that wrote Mr. Netanyahu as a consequence of my email to him, about not extending the "building freeze" commitment to D.C., as reports now, both from Washington and Jerusalem are, that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and the Obama administration never did manage during his trip to Washington earlier this month to forge a deal for a second 90-day Israeli moratorium on West Bank construction, in return for three billion dollars-worth of 20 F-35 stealth planes.
Praise the Lord! I believe the combined voices of Truly Born Again Christians and Jews, raised in a hubbub to Mr. Netanyahu kept "this building freeze" from being extended.
The only accords reached during his marathon meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Nov. 11, applied to American diplomatic and political support and guarantees, our sources report.
Netanyahu's presentation of their terms to the cabinet meeting Sunday, Nov, 14, was therefore misleading.
According to that briefing, Washington tacitly agreed to omit Jerusalem from the West Bank moratorium and promised 20 warplanes, in addition to the 20 already purchased, to be supplied gratis.
Washington sources stress that Clinton made no such commitments on behalf of the administration.
The prime minister apparently hoped to swing a majority of his cabinet behind the 90-day moratorium in return for those far-reaching US benefits and hoped to persuade Washington to be more generous after the freeze was in the bag.
As things stand now, the prime minister finds himself in a predicament.
Reluctant to embarrass him, US administration officials are making no comment.
But some of Israel's senior ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, a former Chief of Staff, demanded that Netanyahu produce a written document from the White House confirming the putative deal.
For you California Preachers who will be meeting with Mr. Ya’alon two weeks from tomorrow, you need remember to thank "Boogie" for his demand to Mr. Netanyahu for a "written document" from the White House, as certainly, Boogie agrees with you and I that "we cannot trust this White Hosue" in matters pertaining to the Nation of Israel.
The Prime Minister has been hedging all week saying the document is in negotiation with Clinton.
It is now obvious that no American document will be coming.
Even if it is, sources say it will not be much use to Netanyahu because it will cover Jerusalem as part of the construction freeze as well as the West Bank.
This situation prompted David Hale, Deputy U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to advise the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whom he visited in Ramallah Wednesday, to pay no attention to published reports of a US-Israel deal contracted by Netanyahu because it did not exist.
Now, with Nineveh in mind, let us switch gears to one of the most "powerful nations" in the Middle East, and certainly, with regards to women and innocents, "one of the most cruel," Saudi Arabia!
When the octogenarian Saudi King Abdullah, head of the world's largest producer and exporter of petroleum liquids, suffers ill health, many world centers feel the chill and start worrying about the impact of a succession race on the monarchy's stability.
On November 13, the Saudi press carried an official Royal Court bulletin stating that King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz had back problems and was under doctors' orders to rest up as part of the treatment for a slipped disc.
The bulletin stressed its publication was in line with the policy of transparency the king had introduced. Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, 75, was named as official in charge of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which began this week with more than three million pilgrims and new, modern amenities.
Nothing was said about him standing in for the king in other areas, although it was widely reported in Riyadh this past year that Nayef was frontrunner in the race for the role of crown prince.
Sources therein note that even in modern Western societies, a government head rarely informs the public of a back complaint – all the more so in Saudi Arabia's secretive political culture.
This information may be gossiped about in court circles or go round the bazaars.
Normally, even if it were reported in the West, a comment from the royal court would be unthinkable.
For nine years, King Fahd lay at death's door, incapacitated by a severe stroke and unable to perform his royal functions.
Yet the Saudi media faithfully reported on his "activities" as though nothing was amiss and never hinted at his real condition even after it was an open secret.
Therefore, from my read here in Oklahoma, Middle East experts on Saudi Arabia believe the surprise medical bulletin means one of two things are happening: Either the 87-year old king decided to put to rest rumors of a far graver illness by officially disclosing a non-life-threatening ailment, or he is sending a broad hint to senior princes of his own generation that it was time to come clean about their deteriorating health and start moving sideways.
A "side show" is the fact that now Thousands of princes are scrambling as the ageing rulers [plural] fall ill!
Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, 86, for instance, has been fighting cancer for years and spends more time outside the kingdom undergoing surgery and other treatment than performing his duties as defense minister at home.
Last month, Sultan's son, Prince Khaled bin Sultan tried to refute the impression of his father's declining condition by telling everyone he was in good health.
The Saudi media painted a rosy picture of the dying prince by describing his schedule as packed with appointments with Arab leaders.
As for Abdullah, even if all he suffers from is a slipped disc, he has admitted he needs a long period of rest from his labors at the helm of the kingdom's governing administration.
The poor state of his health was confirmed Wednesday, Nov. 17, by the elevation of his son Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah to membership of the Council of Ministers and promotion to Commander of the Saudi National Guard, part of Abdullah's holdings from when he was Crown Prince.
Even if they were hale and hearty, the advanced ages of both the king and defense minister, who is also the next in line to the succession, are enough to stir disquiet within the royal family and spotlight the race for the next slots in the hierarchy.
Number 2 is more or less accounted for.
More than a year ago, Prince Nayef was appointed Second Deputy to the Prime Minister, Saudi code for next Crown Prince and one step from the throne after Abdullah and Sultan breathe their last.
But thousands of princes are agog in anticipation of the fast-approaching battles over who comes next in the line of succession to the throne.
This question came into sharp focus with the unforeseen return home on Oct. 15 after a long absence of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Director of the National Security Council and Ambassador to the US for twenty-two years.
And from my read, it is plain that Prince Bandar staking his claim to top post! All intrigue, but that is what you have in these type "Mohammedan" societies!
The grand reception staged for his return was seen as a show of strength by the Sudairi branch of the royal house to which Bandar belongs.
It was attended exclusively by the sons of the senior princes of that branch, Nayef, Sultan and the late king Fahd, excepting only one outsider, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, Director of General Intelligence, who is a very close confidante of King Abdullah.
However, none of the king's sons or those of the Sudairi's rivals, the branch headed by Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal and his brother Prince Turki al Faisal, were present.
So what brought Bandar home after an absence of two years?
According to Mid East's sources, seeing the ruling hierarchy showing cracks and the atmosphere in Riyadh growing electric with rivalry, he decided to step into the forefront of the race for one of the top positions in the realm.
Bandar feels his proven foreign policy talents and special gift for secret diplomacy are unappreciated and unutilized.
The powers of the National Security Council which he heads have never been clearly marked out and the body has been marginalized in recent years.
The post of foreign minister or director of general intelligence would, on the other hand, suit him to the ground and give him a seat on the councils shaping the kingdom's strategic and external policies.
This aspiration was hinted at in a report by the Saudi newsletter Al-Ilaf published in London which reported Bandar's return last Sunday as signifying the return of the hawks to the center of action in Riyadh.
Saudi experts hesitate to characterize Bandar as a hawk in the kingdom's foreign affairs.
By their statements and actions, the two Faisal sons, Foreign Minister Saud, 69, and his younger brother, 65, are far more hawkish when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, refusing to have any truck with Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved.
All that, I think, Pastors, shows this this "Palestinian-Israeli" conflict will be part and parcel of the events leading up to the coming of our Shiloh-Immanuel-Yeshua!
But the Al-Ilaf story does serve as a bellwether for Bandar's ambition.
History show that the fiefdom tradition keeps top posts in the family!
The door to General Intelligence is closed for now.
The king is all the way behind its director, Prince Muqrin and shows no inclination to replace him.
The foreign ministry is another matter.
Prince Saud, who has served in that position since the death of his father King Faisal in 1975, suffers from Parkinson's disease.
For years, he was said to be ready to retire.
In some quarters, his brother Turki's resignation three years ago as Ambassador to the US after less than two years was accounted for by his hopes of replacing his brother.
But nothing came of it and the post of foreign minister has become the object of princely infighting.
This does not mean that Bandar can hope to snare the job. His chances are rated slim by Saudi sources because of the ruling Saudi hierarchy's rigid structure.
For two decades, it has been governed by the principle of fiefdom, or internal dynasties.
Ageing princes who have served as cabinet ministers for 30 years or more are now grooming their sons to succeed them.
The Saudi National Guard is part of King Abdullah's holdings from when he was crown prince. Wednesday, Nov. 17, he handed its command to his son, Prince Mutaib.
In doing so, he confirmed his own indisposition and also sent a clear message to Defense Minister Sultan to stop messing about and follow suit by making his son Prince Khaled bin Sultan commander of Saudi Arabia's armed forces - or even minister of defense.
Interior Minister Nayef likewise reserves his portfolio for his son and acting deputy, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, who, too, will take over when the time comes.
History of these Saudis teaches that yes, faces may change - or even shake up the gerontocracy ruling Riyadh, but the Kingdom will go on!
The Faisal clan does not strictly follow this feudal tradition.
The foreign minister's post is customarily the preserve of King Faisal's offspring, so it is very likely that if Saud steps down or is raised to Crown Prince notwithstanding his illness, he will make sure to keep it in the family.
His full brother Turki is the strongest contender for the job, although he may be challenged by their half-brother from another mother, Prince Khalid al-Faisal.
He is about three years older than Turki. The Saudi kingdom may be young (founded by Abdul-Aziz bin Saud in 1932) but it has quickly grown into a political gerontocracy where seniority is an asset.
So Khalid's age is no bar to high office. His other qualifications for the top diplomatic post in the kingdom are his service as Governor of Asir Province for than 20 years and as Governor of Mecca since 2007, a post with plenty of political and media exposure.
It is not known if he wants to be foreign minister.
In the past month, Khalid has been described, mainly in the United States, as likely to emerge as a future king.
Saudi experts rule this prospect out as unfounded because it would entail an almost revolutionary break with the kingdom's deeply entrenched rules of succession, a break radical enough to bring the entire monarchical edifice to collapse.
For now, therefore, the power struggle over the order of succession between the Sudairi clan, headed by Princes Sultan and Nayef and their sons, and the rival branches headed by Abdullah and the Faisal sons, is unresolved.
It may therefore be presumed that the prescription formulated by King Faisal in the 1970s, which has kept the many-branched royal family in balance until now, will continue to prevail. If it does, the Sudairi Nayef will eventually be crowned king and his Crown Prince will come from one of the rival clans headed by King Abdullah and the Faisal brothers. Age and birth will continue to take precedence.
But the change coming to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may not be as controlled as expected.
Now, Pastors, just as sure as Nahum’s prevision brought about the destruction of the Kingdom of Nineveh, Zechariah 12:3 tells me that Jerusalem will be the burdensome stone for all these Kingdoms that burden themselves with it! Zec 12:3 And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
And, after he comes, [Zech. 14:4 states that] MESSIAH will stand with his feet on that Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
Zec 12:10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
11 In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.
Zec 13:1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. In our Hymnal, hymn # 222 is "There is A Fountain Filled With Blood" which just happens to be this ole warrior-preachers "favorite" of all, and was written by the hymnwriter because of Zec 13:1.
And, yes, I know, my brethren, the Jews do not believe the MESSIAH to be whom you and I believe him to be.
BUT, at this time, THEY TIME OF ZECHARIAH'S PROPHECY FULFILLMENT, they shall see him, and they shall recognize him FOR WHOM HE IS.
I tell my Jewish friends: only one of us is right, the other is wrong! I am confident to stand with THE HOLY WORD OF THE LIVING GOD, which is their Torah, the Old Testament, that MESSIAH is whom MESSIAH says HE is by the OLD TESTAMENT.
Regardless, regardless, regardless, All the Nations of the Earth were blessed because of Faithful Abraham, Ha-yedid, the only man in all the Holy Bible to be called THE FRIEND OF GOD!
And, there is only 2 "choices" given by the Holy Bible concerning the Jews! We either "bless" them or we "curse" them. There is not a third choice.
JOIN ME IN CALIFORNIA BY BEING A BLESSING TO THE JEWS AT THIS "LESSONS WE LEARNED FROM PEARL HARBOR" EVENT.
SEE YOU IN L.A!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
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