Before continuing the testimony of the trip, I feel an urgency to pass on to you some information. Last week a French couple that has been coming to the Tuesday evening meetings, asked me if I would take them up north to view the damage that was done during the war. A few days later we traveled, with another couple, to northern Israel. On the way we stopped at an (Israeli) Arab gas station. We were all aghast at what they were watching on television. It was an anti Israel program aired on an Arab station, which showed the supposed crimes that the Israeli/American military has been committing in many Arab countries. The main emphasis was on the death of women and children. I turned to look at the young Muslim woman standing behind the counter, watching us, the hatred in her eyes towards us was hauntingly evident.
The further we drove north the more we felt as though a dark cloud had descended upon our country. When we arrived in Nahariya, a city on the coast that was hit by more than 800 Katyusha and Kassam rockets, we were invited to the Mayor’s office where we heard stories of miracles that had taken place, but which, sadly, were not acknowledged as such. We were given a map to areas of the city that were hit the hardest. One family took us into their twice-hit home. The upper stories were completely ruined; the roof was gone and the house severely damaged. Only seven houses took direct hits but over a thousand sustained damage. However, in spite of all those rockets no one was killed. We left that city and drove all along the northern border. It was sad to see that many of the beautiful forests sustained damage from fires set off by the missiles coming in from Lebanon.
When Rimona and I returned from our overseas trip, not surprisingly, we found that the mood in the country was not the same as when we left. The general consensus here is that Israel lost this war. We never did get back our kidnapped soldiers, but what is more disconcerting is that it was only during the war that Israel discovered miles and miles of underground tunnels several stories deep where the Hizbullah terrorists had been building bombs, storing rockets and engaging the Israeli army. Israel’s famous intelligence service apparently was not aware of this, up until this latest campaign. Now I know why our son said that the fighting in Lebanon was like fighting ghosts. The Hizbullah could just pop up out of the ground, shoot their missiles and go back underground without being detected. One main entrance to a network of tunnels was built within 200 meters of a UNIFIL outpost. It is amazing that this could be done right under our noses, as well.
When Israel pulled out (or fled) Lebanon six years back, it was noted that Hizbullah, Syria and Hamas immediately began to make plans for the next phases of the Jihad against Israel. One of those strategies was to dig underground. We have already seen the effects of this tactic in the Gaza Strip, whose terrorists were constantly baffling Israel by sudden pop up attacks through tunnels that were miles-long. Should have it been any surprise when it was discovered that Hizbullah has done the same thing in southern Lebanon? My question is, therefore, how many have or are being dug in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), to be used in their future war effort? It is already known that there are terrorist cells even in our own Israeli Arab cities.
As we have seen in the Torah, war is not a blessing but a curse. Since our defeat in Lebanon, there is much being uncovered in the upper echelons of our government and other central agencies and services. Pride, arrogance (especially in the military) and corruption are rampant here. Are these leaders (heads) just showing the face of the nation (the body) itself? Pride comes before the fall (ref. Proverbs 16:18). Are Islam and its sword a warning from the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? “The curse causeless does not alight” (ref. Proverbs 26:2).
In a professional soccer game, this past week, a European coach branded Israel’s national team as representatives of a nation of “murders and killers”. We know that he was referring to the war on terror, but we also took note that we have murdered more unborn babies in this country than the number of Jews who have perished in the Holocaust. Two weeks ago Rimona was sitting in the waiting room of a clinic, when a mother of three children, and obviously pregnant with the fourth, was talking to a friend about “wanting to get rid of it” (her own words). Rimona spoke to her in no uncertain terms, saying that abortion was murder. The woman’s response was, “I know, yet it is my choice for my own reasons.”
As the redeemed of YHVH, where do we stand today in relationship to what is happening in this land? This scripture comes to mind:
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). But what if we do not?
Seek for the peace of Jerusalem,
Ephraim
The further we drove north the more we felt as though a dark cloud had descended upon our country. When we arrived in Nahariya, a city on the coast that was hit by more than 800 Katyusha and Kassam rockets, we were invited to the Mayor’s office where we heard stories of miracles that had taken place, but which, sadly, were not acknowledged as such. We were given a map to areas of the city that were hit the hardest. One family took us into their twice-hit home. The upper stories were completely ruined; the roof was gone and the house severely damaged. Only seven houses took direct hits but over a thousand sustained damage. However, in spite of all those rockets no one was killed. We left that city and drove all along the northern border. It was sad to see that many of the beautiful forests sustained damage from fires set off by the missiles coming in from Lebanon.
When Rimona and I returned from our overseas trip, not surprisingly, we found that the mood in the country was not the same as when we left. The general consensus here is that Israel lost this war. We never did get back our kidnapped soldiers, but what is more disconcerting is that it was only during the war that Israel discovered miles and miles of underground tunnels several stories deep where the Hizbullah terrorists had been building bombs, storing rockets and engaging the Israeli army. Israel’s famous intelligence service apparently was not aware of this, up until this latest campaign. Now I know why our son said that the fighting in Lebanon was like fighting ghosts. The Hizbullah could just pop up out of the ground, shoot their missiles and go back underground without being detected. One main entrance to a network of tunnels was built within 200 meters of a UNIFIL outpost. It is amazing that this could be done right under our noses, as well.
When Israel pulled out (or fled) Lebanon six years back, it was noted that Hizbullah, Syria and Hamas immediately began to make plans for the next phases of the Jihad against Israel. One of those strategies was to dig underground. We have already seen the effects of this tactic in the Gaza Strip, whose terrorists were constantly baffling Israel by sudden pop up attacks through tunnels that were miles-long. Should have it been any surprise when it was discovered that Hizbullah has done the same thing in southern Lebanon? My question is, therefore, how many have or are being dug in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), to be used in their future war effort? It is already known that there are terrorist cells even in our own Israeli Arab cities.
As we have seen in the Torah, war is not a blessing but a curse. Since our defeat in Lebanon, there is much being uncovered in the upper echelons of our government and other central agencies and services. Pride, arrogance (especially in the military) and corruption are rampant here. Are these leaders (heads) just showing the face of the nation (the body) itself? Pride comes before the fall (ref. Proverbs 16:18). Are Islam and its sword a warning from the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? “The curse causeless does not alight” (ref. Proverbs 26:2).
In a professional soccer game, this past week, a European coach branded Israel’s national team as representatives of a nation of “murders and killers”. We know that he was referring to the war on terror, but we also took note that we have murdered more unborn babies in this country than the number of Jews who have perished in the Holocaust. Two weeks ago Rimona was sitting in the waiting room of a clinic, when a mother of three children, and obviously pregnant with the fourth, was talking to a friend about “wanting to get rid of it” (her own words). Rimona spoke to her in no uncertain terms, saying that abortion was murder. The woman’s response was, “I know, yet it is my choice for my own reasons.”
As the redeemed of YHVH, where do we stand today in relationship to what is happening in this land? This scripture comes to mind:
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). But what if we do not?
Seek for the peace of Jerusalem,
Ephraim
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