The Bible is why Israel exists and there never will be peace in Palestine

    I told an amiga the other day that the Bible is why Israel exists and there never will be peace in Palestine. 

    More particularly, the Bible’s Old Testament, in which it is said God promised the Israelites land in Palestine.

    From Got Questions, Biblical Answers:

There is probably no more disputed real estate on earth than the land of Israel. Even calling it “Israel” will raise objections from some quarters. The Jewish people lay claim to the land because they first held possession of it millennia ago and because God directly gave them the land, as recorded in the Bible.

In Genesis 12:7, God promises Abram, who had just arrived in Canaan, “To your offspring I will give this land.” Later, in Genesis 15:18, God expands on that unconditional promise: “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates” (NASB). Then, in Genesis 17:8, God reiterates the promise to Abraham, adding that the land gift is irrevocable: “The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you.” God later repeats the promise to Abraham’s son Isaac (Genesis 26:3–4) and Isaac’s son Jacob (Genesis 28:13), whose name God later changed to Israel.

In the Abrahamic Covenant, then, God laid out the extent of the land that would belong to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—a territory including all of Canaan and stretching from Egypt to modern-day Iraq. Several centuries later, when it came time for the Israelites actually take possession of the Promised Land, God again spoke of a vast area “from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including all the land of the Hittites” (Joshua 1:4, NLT).

    The Old Testament is taken from the Jewish Scriptures.

    In the first chapter, or book, of The Old Testament, known as Genesis, God promises Abraham a son, whose seed will become a great nation. Abraham is very old and his wife Sarah is barren. Sarah tells Abraham to lie with her slave Hagar and produce the promised child. Abraham does that and Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. Sarah then becomes with child and she gives birth to Isaac. God then tells Abraham to take Isaac up on a hill and sacrifice him to God. Abraham takes Issac up on a hill and is about to kill Issac with a knife and an angel of the Lord stays Abraham’s hand. Sarah comes to regret Ishmael and she tells Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness and let the wild animals have them. Abraham does not want to do that, and God tells Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness and they will be looked after and Ishmael’s seed will become a great nation and that will cause Isaac’s seed trouble. 

    From Issac descended Moses and Jesus, and from Ishmael descended Mohammed. Judaism and Christendom say Issac was the child God promised to Abraham. Islam’s bible, which I grew up calling the Koran, has the same story, except Ishmael is the child God promised to Abraham, and Islam is the one true religion and has a sacred duty to God to prove it.

    The Old Testament is why Israel was created after World War II, after the surviving Jewish refugees in Eastern and Western Europe were not offered safe harbor by any nation in Europe, nor by Great Britain, America, nor by any other country. 

    There is another reason why America has always sided with Israel. The New Testament says Jesus was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Palestine, taught and was crucified in Jerusalem by the Roman government at the behest of the Jewish religious leaders, and Palestine is Christendom’s Holy Land, and Israel’s  karma requires it defend Christendom’s Holy Land, and in Bible America that translates into the American government giving Israel whatever it needs to do that. 

    There is something else in play. 

    After the 9/11 attack in New York City, Bible America wanted every Muslim in the Middle East dead, and they wanted Israel to fight Islam with the money and arms Israel received from the American government.

    All the while, Israel kept nibbling and taking more and more land in Palestine, and making Islam madder and madder at America for enabling Israel to exist.

    Three nights before 9/11, Archangel Michael asked me in my sleep if I would make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity? I woke up wondering what that was about and made the prayer.

    About a week after 9/11, as I walked out of a U.S. Post Office, Michael told me: “America needs to get out of the Middle East altogether and let Israel and Islam work it out or fight it out, and in that way learn, which, if either, are God’s chosen people.

    Instead, America started two protracted unwinnable land wars  in Afghanistan and Iraq, although Iraq had zero to do with 9/11. A relatively small number of Islamic militants multiplied exponentially, and their common enemy was The Great Satan, America.

    I think it was in 2002 that I read online an open letter to America from Osama bin Laden, in which he told Americans that he launched the 9/11 attack because his country Saudi Arabia had allowed the infidel America-led coalition to liberate Kuwait stage in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s most holy land. Osama  told Americans that their president was easy to bait and they needed to get a new president.

    On October 7, 2023, which was my 80th birthday, Hamas's military strategist Yahya Sinwar baited Israel, and thus America, to become viewed like Nazi Germany. President Biden defended Israel’s response to the October raid, and he kept giving Israel money, weapons and munitions. 

    I repeatedly wrote at my blogs that Sinwar didn’t care what happened to the civilian population in Gaza, because the more dead and maimed Gaza civilians, the worse Israel and America looked to the world. I wrote that many times at the widely read Substack Newsletter of the Australian Caitlin Johnstone, and that I wondered why Caitlin was not coming down hard on Hamas, too, and I wondered if she was on Hamas payroll?

    The Australian government banned this blogspot and The Redneck Mystic Lawyer for President podcast in Australia, even though I also kept saying at Caitlin's Substack that President Joe Biden should be prosecuted, along with Hamas and Israel’s political and military leaders, for war crimes against Gaza civilians.

    To see just how insane it is in Israel, and just how easy it is for Sinwar and Hamas to yank Israel around, and thus yank Joe Biden, Donald Trump and America around, read the chilling June 20, 2024 CNN article below, and then read the chilling October 18, 2011 CNN article below that. 

    In a perfect world, or if you wish, in God’s Courtroom, Israel’s leaders, Joe Biden, Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas leaders are prosecuted for war crimes together.

He saved the life of Hamas’s leader. Then they murdered his nephew

By Sophie Tanno and Tal Alroy, CNN

 5 minute read 
Updated 2:02 PM EDT, Thu June 20, 2024

CNN — 

Hamas’s surprise October 7 attacks stunned Israel. But not everyone was caught unaware. When he learned the news, Dr. Yuval Bitton says he felt it was coming – and knew immediately who was behind it.

“I know the person who planned and conceived and initiated this criminal attack,” Bitton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “I have known him since 1996 – not only him but the entire Hamas leadership in Gaza – and it was clear to me that this is what they were planning.”

Bitton spent years working as a dentist in Israel’s Nafha Prison. It was there he met “the person” – Yahya Sinwar, a Hamas militant convicted of murder who would go on to become the group’s leader in Gaza – saying he saved his life by helping diagnose a brain tumor.

Bitton says he spent hundreds of hours conversing with Sinwar, providing him with rare insight into the mind of the top Hamas official.

But his actions have left him tormented. Bitton blames Sinwar for the murder of his nephew, who was killed after Hamas militants raided his home on October 7.

In 2004, Sinwar had come to the prison’s clinic complaining of neck pain and losing his balance.

“When he explained to me what was happening to him, I diagnosed it as a stroke, and together with the general practitioner, we decided to take him to the hospital,” Bitton said.

“He arrived at the hospital, the diagnosis was that he had an abscess in the brain and he was operated on that day, thus saving his life because if it had exploded, he would have died.”

Sinwar was appointed leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2017. Born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza in 1962, to a family displaced during the Arab-Israeli war, he joined Hamas in the late 1980s. In 1989, he was sentenced to four life sentences in Israel for the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers.

After being freed in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap, he returned to Gaza where he began his rise in the militant organization, becoming notorious for the violent treatment he would dole out on suspected collaborators. 

 

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several – making him one of the key targets of its war in Gaza.

The attack was the deadliest assault in Israel’s history. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and also took some 250 people hostage into Gaza.

Following his recovery, Sinwar told Bitton that he owed him his life – a sentiment he repeated when he was released in the 2011 prisoner swap, which saw Sinwar and more than 1,000 other Palestinians freed for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

“He also told me that on the day he was released in [Gilad] Shalit’s deal in 2011, that he owed me his life, and one day he will repay it.”

But years later that connection meant nothing.

“And as you understand, he made up for it on October 7 in that he was also directly responsible for the murder of my nephew in Kibbutz Nir Oz,” said Bitton.

Nir Oz was one of several kibbutzim that bore the brunt of Hamas’ attack on October 7, with many residents murdered or taken hostage.

Bitton said his nephew, Tamir, was “seriously injured” trying to fight off the attackers.

“There were only five of them, they didn’t really stand a chance, and he was kidnapped while he was still seriously injured, unconscious, and died after a few hours in Gaza.”

A close connection

Bitton – who later joined Israeli intelligence – came to know Sinwar well during his time in prison, spending “hundreds of hours” talking to him.

Sinwar, Bitton says, believes Jewish people have “no place” on “Muslim lands.”

Bitton therefore saw it as “only a matter of time and timing that they [Hamas] will act against us and try to expel us from the place where we live.”

Despite eight months of Israeli fighting in Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, Sinwar remains at large, and thought to be sheltering somewhere in the territory.

The remains of Bitton's nephew's home in Nir Oz, after it was targeted by Hamas militants. Yuval Bitton

Asked for his assessment of Sinwar’s mindset, Bitton says the Hamas leader is mainly concerned with staying in power.

He believes Sinwar would be “willing to sacrifice even 100,000 Palestinians in order to ensure the survival of his rule.”

“He is willing to pay with the lives of militants, Hamas members, civilians. He doesn’t care.”

Israel’s plan for ‘tactical pause’ for aid raises questions and deepens rifts. Here’s what we know

With this in mind, Bitton believes that Israel made a mistake by not creating an alternative to Hamas’s rule, which could have undermined Sinwar’s power.

Bitton says that Sinwar still “feels he is in a powerful position.”

“He is running the negotiations while still operating from within Gaza, and still controls the areas from which the IDF evacuates, he also controls the humanitarian aid, and therefore he feels strong and won’t sign an agreement to release the hostages unless the IDF withdraws from Gaza and the fighting ends.”

Sinwar spent his more than two decades in prison studying his enemy, including learning Hebrew.

It is a lesson Israel should have taken too, says Bitton, who believes the government and intelligence service “did not know and learn Hamas well enough.”

“Our attitude towards Hamas was arrogant. We dismissed Hamas. And Hamas said everything it intended to do, but we didn’t want to listen.”

Why Israelis believe one soldier is worth 1,000 Palestinian prisoners

Peter Wilkinson, CNN
 7 minute read 
Updated 10:05 AM EDT, Tue October 18, 2011

Gilad Shalit back in Israel
05:01 - Source: CNN
 — 
Israel is freeing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis, in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by Hamas in 2006. How and why has the controversial deal come about?

Why is Shalit considered important enough by the Israelis to be exchanged for so many Palestinian prisoners?

Militants captured the young sergeant in June 2006 after tunneling into the Jewish state and attacking an Israeli army outpost. Israel immediately launched a military incursion into Gaza to rescue Shalit, then 19, but failed to free him. 

As the Israeli attacks continued, the Palestinians death toll steadily grew – hundreds killed, many militants, but also, according to Palestinian sources, innocent men women and children. 

Shalit’s captors, affiliated with the Islamic Hamas government, demanded a prisoner swap, but the Israeli government said no – at least in public.

Until Tuesday, when Shalit was freed and returned to Israel, he was held incommunicado by Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Efforts to free him became a rallying cry for thousands of Israelis who urged the government to secure his release. Shalit’s supporters feared that if a deal was not reached, his fate could have become similar to that of Israeli Air Force Navigator Ron Arad, who crashed his warplane in Lebanon 25 years ago. He was captured by a local Shiite Amal militia and later handed over to Hezbollah, Shiite militants strongly influenced by Iran and now in de facto control of Lebanon.

Despite reported attempts to negotiate his return, Israel failed to free Arad and the trail went cold. Over the years he became a symbol of the failure of successive Israeli governments to strike a deal that would bring him back alive. In June 2008 Hezbollah announced Arad was dead. 

Who are the Palestinians being freed by Israel?

Israel Monday announced it would release 1,027 prisoners and it identified the first 477 to be freed Tuesday. The group includes two prominent female prisoners: Ahlam Tamimi, serving life terms for being an accomplice in the 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizza restaurant that killed 15 people; and Amneh Muna, who plotted the killing of a 16-year-old Israeli boy in 2001 and received a life sentence. Twenty-five other women will also be freed.

The most notable name not on the list is that of jailed Palestinian lawmaker Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for murder and other charges related to his role in planning attacks on Israelis during the second Intifada.

He had been considered by many Palestinians the most important prisoner who might have been released in exchange for Shalit.

How is the handover taking place?

The first swap took place Tuesday, with a second stage scheduled for later this year. Israel freed 477 Palestinian inmates from Israeli jails shortly before Shalit was released, the first group of a batch of more than 1,000 Palestinians being swapped for Shalit’s freedom.

Freed prisoners praised Egypt’s role as a mediator in interviews on Palestinian television after they were released.

Some are being sent to the West Bank and others to Gaza, while just under half are being sent abroad. A handful are going to homes in Jerusalem, elsewhere in Israel or to Jordan.

Once freed, they will be under various restrictions on a case-by-case basis: Some will not be allowed to leave the country, while others will have restrictions on their movement or be required to report their whereabouts to local police according to Justice Ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen.

Hamas later handed Shalit over to Egyptian security forces, and he later crossed into Israel. Egyptian television showed a short clip of Shalit walking unaided with an escort of about half a dozen people soon after his release was announced. He looked thin and dazed, wearing a dark baseball cap and collared shirt.

Shalit will undergo medical tests and debriefing at an air force base, the Israeli military said. Once that is complete, he will be flown to his home at Mitzpe Hila, north of Haifa.

Why is this happening now?

Speaking to his Cabinet this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that with so much change sweeping the region, he did not know whether a better deal for Shalit was possible, and warned that he didn’t act during this window of opportunity, it could close indefinitely.

It represented a vast change in outlook and rhetoric for the combative prime minister, who seems to have calculated that a softer approach was the more politically expedient road to follow.

Whether it was the prospect of going down in history as the Israeli leader who missed the chance to free Shalit, the calculation of larger geopolitical changes in the region, or a mere reflection of public sentiment, Netanyahu has chosen a path that has taken him away from much of what he has spent decades preaching.

The Hamas rulers of Gaza also felt pressure to make the deal now. The rival Palestinian Authority that governs parts of the West Bank is enjoying increased popularity following its recent United Nations bid for recognition of an independent state and a large scale prisoner release was seen by many in Hamas as a way of seizing back the political initiative. Hamas is also contemplating moving its headquarters out of Damascus and concluding the Shalit deal would make it easier to negotiate a possible relocation to Cairo with the post-Mubarak Egyptian government.

What is the reaction in Israel and the Palestinian territories?

The deal to free Shalit was backed by a commanding Israeli Cabinet majority of 26-3 and enjoys wide support from the Israeli public, but there was extensive debate about whether so many Palestinian prisoners should be freed.

Families of victims of terror, as well as some members of the Israeli government, have expressed fierce opposition to the deal. One minister who voted against the agreement called it “a great victory for terrorism,” and there are fears that the release of convicted murderers will lead to further attacks on Israeli civilians – a fear that, critics say, is borne out by statistics. According to the Israeli association of terror victims, Almagor, 180 Israelis have lost their lives to terrorists freed in previous deals since 2000.

For Palestinians the issue of prisoners in Israeli prisons cuts deep. For several decades human rights groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have spent time in Israeli prisons for a wide range of alleged crimes. In many cases Palestinians face incarceration without any formal charges, and children under the age of 18 are frequently detained for offenses like rock-throwing. Most Palestinians see these inmates and those convicted of violent crimes against Israeli citizens as political prisoners detained within the course of an ongoing liberation struggle.

Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza welcomed the prospect of so many prisoners being released but there are reservations about the conditions requiring many of them to be exiled from their homeland.

One Palestinian in Ramallah told CNN, “If I was a prisoner and I am released, I need to go to my family, my country, to my city. Why send me to Turkey or Venezuela whatever – why?”

How will this affect the peace process?

Israelis are equally split on whether “the release of terrorists” will harm Israeli security, with 50% saying Yes and 48% saying No – a statistical deadlock given the margin of error for the number of people polled.

One expert, Ronald W. Zweig, the Taub Professor of Israel Studies at New York University, said the deal showed that both sides had made concessions. “And that is a sign of hope.”

“Pessimists will point to the dangers of rewarding terror – both the terror of those released from jail and the act of kidnapping Israelis to have future terrorists released. Cynics will ask if Israel’s willingness to conclude the deal was not an attempt to punish (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud) Abbas for pushing ahead with his policies in the U.N., despite Israeli and American opposition,” Zweig wrote in a recent commentary for CNN. 

“But there are other considerations which give grounds for optimism. Any movement in the stalled peace process might be enough to get the wheels of this heavy cart out of the rut in which it is trapped. It appears that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a role in the final deal, perhaps indicating a return of Turkey to constructive dealing with Israel. And the fact that Israel and Hamas have talked – albeit indirectly – is a welcome development. Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza might have had more positive long-term effect had this channel of communication been used then.

“Even more significant, the release of these prisoners removes a major obstacle from any future peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.”

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com