Monthly Archives: October 2021

October 25, 2021 SnyderTalk—The Day Yasser Arafat Left Israel for the Last Time: A True Story

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“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55: 6-7

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The Day Yasser Arafat Left Israel for the Last Time: A True Story

This happened on October 29, 2004. A group of us from the United States were invited to participate in the 2004 Herzliya Conference. The conference was held in December 2004, but there was a planning session in October 2004. We were in Israel for both.

Our group was helping to think through ways to encourage more Israeli citizens to live in the Negev. Israel’s major population centers are cities like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. They are very congested, but the Negev and the Arava are sparsely populated. That’s an important topic, but it is not the focus of this SnyderTalk editorial.

When the planning session in Herzliya ended, our group drove to Jerusalem to spend the night with some friends. They had a small apartment with a very large patio. There were not enough bedrooms for everyone, and the weather that day had been beautiful. I volunteered to sleep outside on the patio.

The weather in Jerusalem in October is wonderful. Typically, the days are sunny, and the humidity is low. Daytime temperatures tend to be pleasant, mid- to upper-70s, and nighttime temperatures are great for sleeping outside, mid-60s. But there can be a problem at night.

Jerusalem’s elevation is about 2,500 feet. As the crow flies, the Mediterranean Sea is about 32 miles west of Jerusalem. Of course, the Mediterranean Sea is at sea level.  As the crow flies, the Dead Sea is about 10 miles east of Jerusalem. Its elevation is about 1,450 feet below sea level. Throughout the night in October, low-lying spotty clouds from the Mediterranean move east across Israel toward the Arava. When those clouds reach Jerusalem, the city is literally in the clouds intermittently. Jerusalem averages just 1 rainy day during the month of October, so at most I expected a sporadic light mist as the clouds rolled through accompanied by occasional gusty winds.

On October 29, 2004, things were fine until about 1:00 AM. That’s when the first group of clouds started moving through. I was asleep on the patio, but when the clouds engulfed me, I woke up. It’s hard to sleep in a mist even if it’s light. In less than a minute, the clouds were gone, and I went back to sleep. I don’t know how long it was before the next group of clouds came through, but it wasn’t too long. That’s the way it was for the rest of the night. Every time a group of clouds came through, I woke up briefly.

Between 1:00 and 5:00, I must have been awakened at least 4 or 5 times as the clouds passed through. At 5:00 AM on the dot, the Muslim call to prayer blasted out from loudspeakers on every mosque in Jerusalem. That was the last straw.

I said, “Yahweh, why do You allow them to get away with this? Jerusalem is Your city, Your holy city. You can stop them if You want to. Rowan and I are leaving for the airport at 7:00. Before we leave Israel, I want You to do something that shows me You have everything under control.”

That’s not how I typically pray. My normal prayers are more reverential than that, but I had lost my temper. Immediately after I finished praying, another group of clouds came through. This time, things were different. It started raining hard, and the wind was very strong. It was not a rain storm. As far as I could tell, the rain fell only on the patio where I was sleeping. I don’t think it touched the building next door.

After that drenching, there was no way that I could go back to sleep. I went into the apartment soaking wet and closed the door behind me. After I dried off, I laid down on the sofa.

At 7:00 AM, the sky was perfectly clear. A sherut picked up Rowan and me and drove us to Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv. Sheruts are shared vans that run back and forth between Jerusalem and Ben Gurion 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They pick you up wherever you are in Jerusalem. You don’t have to go anywhere to catch one. You call the day before and book the trip. Sheruts are comfortable, and the ride costs a lot less than a taxi.

As our sherut was turning off Highway 1 into the airport, the driver turned on the PA system. It was a radio broadcast in Hebrew. I couldn’t understand what was being said, but most of the people on the sherut with us were Israelis. They understood and started cheering.

I leaned over and asked the guy across the isle from me what had happened. He said, “Yasser Arafat is very sick. He left Israel this morning on his way to a hospital in Paris. There is a good chance he will never return.”

In October 2004, Israel was experiencing the Second Intifada, a.k.a., the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Yasser Arafat was responsible for it:

  • In July 2000, President Bill Clinton arranged a Camp David summit with himself, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. During the summit, Barak made stunning concessions to Arafat including offering to give up sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem. It was more than anyone expected, including Arafat. Even so, Arafat refused to sign a peace deal.
  • After the summit, President Clinton blamed Arafat publicly for the summit’s failure. In the Arab world, shaming someone publicly is a no-no. Saving face is a huge deal to Arabs.
  • Arafat was infuriated and determined to get even. He waited for a good pretext to launch an intifada. Ariel Sharon gave him the excuse he needed about 2 months later when he visited the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000. That very day, Arafat initiated the Al-Aqsa Intifada. It ended on February 8, 2005. For almost 4½ years, Palestinians engaged in suicide bombings, rock throwing, random gunfire, and rocket attacks. About 1,000 Israelis were killed during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

The people on the sherut with us on October 29, 2004 were not heartless. They were cheering the fact that the mastermind behind the ongoing Al-Aqsa Intifada was leaving their country probably for the last time.

Arafat died in Paris less than 2 weeks later, on November 11, 2004. The Al-Aqsa Intifada ended about 3 months after Arafat died.

All the way home, I kept thinking, Yahweh really does have everything under control. Several years later, I told Rowan about my prayer on the patio that morning.

No matter how bad things appear to be, keep this in mind: Yahweh really does have everything under control.

It’s easy to understand why people who know Yahweh love Him so much. It’s because He loves us unconditionally.

You can’t beat unconditional love.

Switching Gears Slightly

David Jeremiah is pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California. He delivered a 2-part series on Jerusalem this week. Take a listen:

Below is a video of the Wohl Museum in the Old City of Jerusalem. I hope you will watch it. If you visit Jerusalem, I hope you will visit the Wohl Museum. It’s in the Jewish Quarter near Hurva Synagogue. The museum has been expanded since I took this video. Most of what you see in the video will be replayed in the future. I will have more to say about that in the days ahead, but I’ll give you a hint by quoting Solomon:

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1: 9)

At 7:30 in the video above, the figurine of a large-breasted woman that you see is an Asherah idol. It was discovered during archeological excavations inside a priest’s dwelling. He was an ultra-Orthodox Jew. You can bet that he never expected his household idol to be seen by anyone. Simply having it in his possession was forbidden.

There is a very high probability that the person who lived in that house was a member of the Sanhedrin and that he participated in the Messiah’s trial before the Sanhedrin the night before He was crucified. I’m saying this to make the point that the religious leaders in Jerusalem at the time of the Messiah were corrupt to the core. The Messiah told them that to their faces many times, and they wanted to kill Him for it.

Caiaphas held the Messiah’s trial before the Sanhedrin in his house in the middle of the night. That was illegal according to Halacha, a.k.a., the Oral Law and the traditions of the Jews.

The trial should have been held in the Temple complex, and anyone who wanted to attend the trial should have been allowed to attend. Trials were held during the day in the Temple area so that people could attend. Caiaphas wanted to try the Messiah at night when most people were in bed asleep, because the Messiah had a large and growing following among ordinary Jews. Many of them were in Jerusalem for Passover. Caiaphas feared that they would riot if he conducted the trial publicly during the day according to Halacha.

The next time ordinary Jews saw the Messiah, He was a prisoner being held by Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea. They wouldn’t riot in front of him and his troops, because Pilate would have ordered Roman soldiers to quash it without giving it a second thought.

The Jewish religious leaders (all of them ultra-Orthodox Jews) were the only people who felt threatened by the Messiah. Ordinary Jews loved Him because of the things He did and said. He healed the sick, raised the dead, cleansed lepers, cast out demons, gave sight to the blind, made lame people walk, and fed the hungry by the thousands. He performed those miracles publicly for people to see in order to prove to them that He was who He claimed to be, Yahweh incarnate.

Ordinary Jews who witnessed those miracles knew that they were not fake miracles, because they knew personally the people who were beneficiaries of the Messiah’s mighty work. The day before He was arrested, a large crowd of those people ushered the Messiah to the Temple complex screaming, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of Yahweh! Blessed is the King of Israel!” (John 12: 13)

Caiaphas was smart enough to be afraid of them. They would have rioted if he had tried the Messiah during the day in the Temple complex according to Halacha.

Read Matthew 23 and see what the Messiah said about the Jewish religious leaders during His day. They had no response, because what He said was true. In John 8, He told them, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8: 44)

In the end, the truth will be told about everything and everyone. People who are proud of their ability to lie, cheat, and steal and keep others from seeing what they are doing are deluded. In due course, they will be exposed for what they are.

“For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought to light.” (Matthew 4: 22)

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Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delivered that speech on December 16, 2004 at the Herzliya Conference. Immediately following his speech, a group of us gathered for dinner with the prime minister.

About 8 months later in August 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. The Israeli people had grown weary protecting Israeli settlers in Gaza, and they wanted to withdraw. Prime Minister Sharon was responding to that pressure along with pressure from President George W. Bush to withdraw from Gaza.

On January 6, 2006, Prime Minister Sharon suffered an hemorrhagic stroke. He remained alive in a coma until January 11, 2014, and then he died.

Following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinian Authority (a.k.a., the PLO) took control of Gaza and the Rafah land crossing to Egypt. Below is a brief summary of what happened next:

In January 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian Parliamentary election (although it did not win the presidential election in 2005). Following the election, the International Quartet (United States, Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union) declared that in order for the then Hamas-run Palestinian government to continue to receive foreign aid, it must recognize the State of Israel, end terrorist activities, and adhere to all previous agreements. Hamas rejected these terms, and international aid was halted.

After a brief attempt at a unity government under Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the conflict between the Hamas and Fatah (the secular nationalist Palestinian movement headed by President Mahmud Abbas and Hamas’ political rival) escalated and violence erupted throughout Gaza and the West Bank. In the Battle of Gaza in 2007, Hamas forcibly took over the Gaza Strip, which it has ruled as the de facto authority in the decade since.

Source: Short History of Hamas in Gaza.

Since 2005, Hamas has become a puppet regime in Gaza that answers to Iran. Below is a list of “operations” (a.k.a., wars) conducted by the Israeli government in its fight to protect Israeli citizens from a belligerent Hamas:

I think Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza was the second worst decision ever made by a Prime Minister of Israel. The only decision worse than that was the decision made by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol during the 1967 Six Day War not to take complete control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem after Israel had regained control of Yahweh’s holy city. Eshkol decided to leave day-to-day control of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Waqf under Jordanian custodianship. That decision has resulted in never-ending and ever-escalating problems that continue to this day.

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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”

John 10: 14-18

See “His Name is Yahweh”.