“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: may they prosper who love you.” Psalm 122: 6
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Damien McElroy—Gaza explained: Why Israel and Palestinians are in constant conflict over Gaza:
Why is Gaza such a contested territory?
Since the foundation of Israel in 1948, Gaza has been a densely populated area dominated by so-called refugee camps. These are conurbations mainly occupied by families originally displaced from towns and villages in other parts of the Holy Land. Until the 1967 war Egypt was the custodian of the Gaza Strip while the Kingdom of Jordan controlled the West Bank. After the Six Day war when the Egyptians were beaten back from the Sinai, Gaza was formally occupied by Israel. But since Israel withdrew from its positions in Gaza in 2005 there have been three major operations designed to stop attacks on the Jewish state from the Palestinian territory. Cumulatively more than 3,000 people have died in these conflicts, which lasted three weeks in 2008-09 and eight days in 2012 and now 24 days.
If Israel withdrew from Gaza, why is there still fighting?
One formal answer lies in the fact that under international law Israel continues to bear the responsibilities of an occupying power. Israel maintains control of most of Gaza’s borders and coastal territory. Although there is a border post at Rafah with Egypt, Gaza’s goods and utilities are mainly imported from Israel under strict conditions designed to ensure that no contraband material or goods with a military purpose slips through the net. These restrictive measures make importing and exporting from Gaza very difficult. Hamas, the dominant political movement in Gaza, has demanded that the Israeli “seige” on Gaza trade is ended. But its goals go far beyond this basic demand. Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel. It regards Israel as occupying Palestinian land and claims to resist this occupation by waging rocket attacks from Gaza. Ending these indiscriminate acts of terror is the goal of the current military operation by Israel’s defence force.
How does this backdrop affect conditions in Gaza?
Gaza is a tiny place totalling just 146 square miles, about the same size as Greater Glasgow. Its population of 1.8 million makes Gaza one of the top 40 most densely populated places on the planet. Without any industry to speak of and a demographic overwhelmingly dominated by youth, it offers few opportunities for its residents. The median age in Gaza is 18. The violence and insistence on confrontation with Israel permeates the population. Hamas exerts a strong grip on the population, having expelled officials loyal to Fatah the dominant Palestinian faction that controls the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority.
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SnyderTalk Comment: Most people know little or nothing about what is taking place in and around Israel. The evening news and newspapers provide snapshots with gruesome images that titillate people’s imaginations, but the mass media in general publishes virtually nothing until problems become festering sores. Even then, they only touch the surface and completely ignore the underlying reality. Rarely do they provide detailed background information that is required to present a balanced report.
Worst of all, few journalists ever mention Yahweh. In most of their minds, He doesn’t exist, but His existence is not dependent on their believing in Him. One day, everyone will know that there is a God and that His Name is Yahweh. Until that day comes, nonbelievers will go on leading their lives as if there is no God. When He arrives on the scene and the game is over, they will finally and begrudgingly accept the truth, but it will be too late. They will be doomed for all eternity. That, too, is not dependent on their believing.
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Noah Beck: Israel’s disproportionate decency— When observers describe or denounce Israeli military actions as, “disproportionate,” they glibly assume sweeping legal conclusions without sufficient proof or analysis. But the evidence shows that Israel has acted with disproportionate decency while Hamas has committed war crimes. Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket and missile attacks – which now total about 3,500 in the last month – target primarily Israeli civilians. The effects of Hamas’ attacks have been serious (contrary to what most media reports suggest): a) increasing premature births, b) shutting down Israel’s biggest airport, blocking 90 percent of incoming and outgoing passengers, c) forcing about 8 million people to live on the edge 24/7, fearing that if their missile defense system or scramble to shelters falters, they could die, d) constant interruptions throughout the day and night, with as little as ten seconds to find shelter, e) billions of dollars in economic damage.
SnyderTalk Comment: So why is Obama so angry with Israel? Here are some possibilities:
1. He doesn’t like Benyamin Netanyahu, and as we are learning, Netanyahu doesn’t like him.
2. He resents it when people don’t salute smartly when he commands no matter how idiotic he is.
3. He doesn’t understand the situation.
4. He knows what’s happening, but he doesn’t care.
5. He prefers his Muslim Brothers to Jewish people and Israel.
6. He resents the fact that Israel issues routinely intrude on his golf outings and vacations.
Charles Moore: The West Is Ignoring the Practitioners of “Disproportionate” Violence—If you walk by St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, you see a replica of the security wall that guards Israel against the West Bank, erected in protest against it. Mightn’t you expect a Christian church to cry out more loudly against Boko Haram, which burns Christian girls in churches in Nigeria, or ISIS, which believes that the only good Christian is an ex-Christian or a dead one? The British Government has some sense of the relationship between a man who fires a rocket in Gaza, a man who slaughters a Christian in Iraq, an imam who preaches hate online from the safety of Qatar, a Muslim “charity” that is actually raising money for politics and conflict, and an Islamist school governor or teacher in Birmingham, Bradford or Luton who is trying to bring up British children to detest their own country. Hamas is a child of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood are huge disseminators of the poisonous global message of which hatred of Israel is a lead-indicator.
Alan Johnson: Hamas Manipulated and Intimidated the Media in Gaza. Why Was That Kept from Us?—The Foreign Press Association (FPA) has issued an astonishing protest about “blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox” intimidation of journalists in Gaza by Hamas. “Foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories.” This amounted to “denying readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.” Hamas has a long record of shutting down news bureaus, arresting reporters and cameramen, confiscating equipment and beating journalists. Journalists from India, America, Norway, Italy, Spain, Australia, Canada and elsewhere are complaining.
Yossi Levy: The International Media’s Hypocrisy—In the summer of 1999 more than 2,000 civilians were killed by NATO air forces which bombed cities and villages in the former Yugoslavia. Unintentionally, hospitals, schools, libraries, and even a train over a bridge were bombed, even though Serbia had not launched a single missile towards any NATO capital city. The media in the countries involved in the military operation did not start their daily broadcasting with updates on the number of civilian dead; they did not even send camera crews. It is the same today with regard to the women and children killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have been killed in massive numbers over the past decade, the tragic victims of Western air forces bombing terrorist targets in both countries. Nobody bothers to count how many innocents have been victims of Western pilots in the last decade. Western media know full well that in war, innocent people do unfortunately die. But when it comes to the war between Israel and Hamas, the tragic victims dominate practically every news outlet. Meanwhile, innocents are dying in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, and Kenya, usually on a vaster scale than in Gaza, but the media is uninterested in those people. Israel didn’t kill them, so the world doesn’t care.
Paul Monk: The Harsh Realities Behind the Death of Innocents in Gaza—When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it offered the Fatah leaders a deal: make your peace with us and we will help you develop Gaza into a thriving commercial hub. Infrastructure was left in place and investment offered. What happened? Fatah was ousted by Hamas in a brutal coup, the Israeli offer was spurned, the infrastructure torn up because it was Jewish, and the metal from torn-up pipes was used to make rockets to fire into Israel. In the wake of World War II, the UN proposed a two-state settlement in Palestine that would have given the Arabs a more than equitable share of the territory. The Jewish leadership accepted the offer. The Arab leaders flatly rejected it. They then launched a three-pronged attack on the nascent state of Israel, to destroy it in its cradle. The Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank are deemed refugees because half a million Arabs fled their homes during the Arab war against Israel in 1948. Yet in the years after 1948, some 600,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands and their property confiscated. None of them, nor any of their descendants, is considered a refugee now; nor do they claim a right of return and they have certainly not been compensated for their property.
Gerald M. Steinberg: The Fallacies of Western Peace-Making in Gaza—The fallacy of “mirror imaging” is the assumption that the terrorists and their supporters are just like us. Mirror imaging involves Westerners projecting their own experiences, cultural frameworks and perceptions onto other societies around the world. In a speech in Jerusalem last March, President Obama noted that some Palestinians seek the same bright futures for their children as Israelis want for theirs. But many do not. The evidence clearly shows that a large number of Palestinians teach their children to hate and prepare them for “martyrdom.” The mirror imaging fallacy assumes that if the people of Gaza were able to thrive economically, they would act to protect their investments and adopt middle class values, like Americans and Europeans. Yet the massive economic aid to Gaza was funneled off into terror tunnels and rockets to attack Israel, and not to develop jobs and economic growth. The values, culture and collective goals of Hamas are very far removed from those of modern Western liberal societies. Mirror imaging and projecting Western cultural values onto the leaders of jihadist terror groups are dead ends.
Sam Sokol: Sharansky predicts ‘beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe’— Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky has joined a growing chorus of high-profile figures in casting doubt on the viability of European Jewry in an article in The Jewish Chronicle. Writing in the UK’s oldest Jewish newspaper, Sharansky said that he believed that “we are seeing the beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe.” While Sharansky’s comments came partially as a response to the rising wave of anti-Semitism crashing over the continent since the start of Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, the former Soviet refusenik also pointed to a number of long-term trends which he said militated against a continuing Jewish presence in Europe.
Ezequiel Doiny: The Muslim Colonists: Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict— The Yazidi in Iraq and the Christian Copts in Egypt are not “occupiers” or “settlers;” neither are the Jews in Israel. They are both victims of a common enemy that seems to want a Middle East free of non-Muslims. The current Palestinian narrative is that all Muslims in Palestine are natives and all Jews are settlers. This narrative is false. There has been a small but almost continuous Jewish presence in Palestine since the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome two thousand years ago, and, as we will see, most of the Muslims living in Palestine when the state of Israel was declared in 1948 were Muslim colonists from other parts of the Ottoman Empire who had been resettled and living in Palestine for fewer than 60 years. There are two important historical events usually overlooked in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
SnyderTalk Comment: A Middle East free of non-Muslims? Try a world free of non-Muslims.
Dan Murphy: Are the US, France, and UK lining up to support the ‘terrorist’ PKK in Iraq?— Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been in the thick of the battle in Iraqi Kurdistan against the so-called Islamic State – the Al Qaeda offshoot that now holds significant chunks of territory in northern Iraq and in Syria. The PKK is a separatist group that has long fought the Turkish government in an effort to carve out an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. PKK members have long lived in a refugee camp in Makhmour, a town in Iraqi Kurdistan that earlier this month was the front line in a battle to prevent an IS advance on Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital. Sharp fighting, aided by US airstrikes, managed to stem the IS advance, at least for now. And in recent weeks US military advisers have been in Baghdad and Erbil, trying to coordinate efforts by the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Kurds peshmerga fighters to craft a joint strategy for taking on IS. France has promised to send weapons to Iraq’s peshmerga and the UK is also moving to arm the Iraqi Kurds.
Zvi Magen and Olena Bagno-Moldavsky: Ukraine and Operation Protective Edge:Two Sides to Russia’s Foreign Policy Coin— Throughout Operation Protective Edge, Russia, in an unusual display of restraint, barely related to the conflict. Moscow’s few comments were carefully weighed, creating the impression that Russia embarked on a mission to promote its image as an unbiased mediator. At the same time, Russia tried cautiously to offer its services to both sides, publicly as well as in private conversations with Israeli and Hamas representatives. Against the background of Russia’s efforts during the Gaza campaign to maintain its image as an impartial player, Russia’s approach to Israel stands out: Russia has maintained a low profile toward Israel. Russia’s new policy is uncharacteristically restrained, diverging from its usual practice, whereby the tone most often taken, even when objectivity is attempted, leaves little doubt that Israel is perceived as the underlying cause of the problems. Under these circumstances and given past experience, Russia’s conduct cannot be construed as anything but supportive of Israel.
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Iran says ‘little chance’ of reaching nuclear deal with West by November
Iran and the bomb: The future of negotiations
Netanyahu suggests pinning ISIS against Iran
Left-wing protesters to stage Tel Aviv rally, say won’t be intimidated by far-rightists
‘Israel’s FBI’ names new chief months after scandal drove old commander from post
Report: Germany spied on John Kerry, Hillary Clinton
Hamas says latest proposals for long-term truce, ‘unacceptable’
Activists protest to stop Israeli ship from docking in US, Canada
Ukrainian teens spend summer in Israel
Hezbollah leader Nasrallah sees Islamic State as growing ‘monster’
SnyderTalk Comment: You can’t make up stuff like this. It’s a perfect example of one maniac calling the other one a fanatic. Hezbollah (Shi’ite) is identical to ISIS (Sunni) with one major difference. They come from different versions of Islam, and they are both crazy.
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Israel Welcomes EU’s Call on Gaza Groups to Disarm
If You Like ISIS, You’ll Love Hamas.
Hamas Has Grossly Humiliated World Media in Gaza
Islamic Jihad Weighing Long Ceasefire Without Deal
Six Arrested as IDF Preps for Day of Rage
Elkin: It’s Okay to Say ‘No’ to Obama
State Department: Stopping Missiles ‘Not Unusual’
Watch: Israelis ‘Infiltrate’ UK ‘Israel-Free’ City
Clashes in Cairo as Morsi Supporters Riot
Hamas: We Deported Journalists Who Filmed Rockets
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Nasrallah: Syria war prepared us for next round with Israel
Hamas admits intimidating foreign press who reported wrong ‘message’
Worse than Hamas? Gaza’s other terror groups
Day 40: Egypt warns there will be no more truce proposals
Hamas threatens war of attrition if terms not met
Schumer calls for Schabas’s removal, winning Jewish praise
Analysis: Israel weighing how to deal with UN war probe
Jewish Chronicle responds to outcry over Gaza ad
Anti-Semitic flyer left for LA Jewish store owner
French Jew assaulted in Marseille over Gaza
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Don’t set a double standard for Israel on norms of war
Iran’s Favorite Palestinian Terrorists
Hamas’ 19 Violations of the Rules of War
EU Warns Putin of More Sanctions as Ukraine Crisis Grows
EU Seeks to Squeeze Iraq’s Islamists as Ukraine Festers
US/Israel Relations at Low Ebb: Hellfire Missile Supplies Halted
Survey: 74 Percent of French Don’t Take Sides in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Entire Family of Dead Palestinians Found to be Alive
Extremists reportedly massacre Yazidis as airstrikes hit near Iraq’s largest dam
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SnyderTalk Comment: CNN is only partially responsible for Israel’s “bad rep” because many ignorant people don’t watch CNN. They watch ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and Fox, and they listen to NPR. They read American Thinker, PJ Media, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Ignorance is rampant and inexcusable.
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Genesis 25: 12-18
12 Now these are the records of the generations of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s maid, bore to Abraham; 13 and these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael, and Kedar and Adbeel and Mibsam 14 and Mishma and Dumah and Massa, 15 Hadad and Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. 16 These are the sons of Ishmael and these are their names, by their villages, and by their camps; twelve princes according to their tribes. 17 These are the years of the life of Ishmael, one hundred and thirty-seven years; and he breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people. 18 They settled from Havilah to Shur which is east of Egypt as one goes toward Assyria; he settled in defiance of all his relatives.
SnyderTalk Comment: Havilah to Shur is a swath of land between the Gulf of Aqaba (the northeast extension of the Red Sea) and the Persian Gulf. Read His Name is Yahweh.
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His Name is Yahweh explains why the Name of God, Yahweh, is so important. It’s available in eBook format and in paperback. It’s also available for free in PDF format.
- God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This [Yahweh] is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3: 15)
- “Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
- “Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘Yahweh our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23: 5-6)
- Yeshua said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” (John 8: 58)
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Blessings in the Book of Revelation is a book that you need to read, especially now. There are blessings throughout the Scriptures but Revelation is the only book in the Bible actually containing a specific blessing for reading it. It’s repeated twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. This is the reason that I believe Revelation should be the first step toward studying biblical prophecy. Though not easy to do, Revelation can be broken down and understood by anyone, not just the academic elite. So, Revelation’s blessings are for everyone. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
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Other Books by Neil Snyder
- Stand! is a suspense novel that exposes the lies, corruption, and greed underlying the theory that man-made CO2 emissions are responsible for global warming. Professor Wes Carlyle and Karen Sterling, his research collaborator, carefully scan the audience for their would-be attacker—a member of the enviro-gestapo who has been following them for days. Wes spots his man in the back of the room leaning against the wall. Suddenly, another man in the audience steps forward and moves toward Karen at a menacing pace. With a vicious stroke, he swings a billy club at her head. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
- What Will You Do with the Rest of Your Life? deals with a question that every Christian has to consider: what should I do with my life? Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
- Falsely Accused is a true story about a young woman who was accused of committing a double homicide. It’s about a travesty of justice, and it reveals Yahweh intervening in the life of a believer to rescue her from danger in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Everyone will enjoy the book, but young people in particular need to read it because the mistakes made that led to the problem could have been avoided. They were the kinds of mistakes that young people are prone to make. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
