Israel extremely nervous over Russian operations on its Golan border

DEBKAfile Special Report December 2, 2015, 12:45 PM (IDT)

Tags:  Golan,  Israel,  Russian forces in Syria,  Hizballah,  IRGC,  ISIS,

On the outside, Israel is all smiles and full of praise for way the coordination with Moscow is working for averting clashes between its air force and Russian warplanes over Syria. This goodwill was conspicuous in the compliments Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin traded when they met on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit Monday, Nov. 30.

But the first disquieting sign appeared Tuesday, Dec. 1. Senior Russian and Israeli officers were due to meet in Tel Avid to discuss strengthening the cooperation between the two army commands. But no word from Moscow or Jerusalem indicated whether the meeting had taken place.

debkafile’s military sources report that this week, the show of optimism is giving way to an uneasy sensation in the offices of the prime minister, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady. They suspect an ulterior motive behind Russia’s military movements in southern Syria, especially its air strikes against Syrian rebels, just across from Israel’s Golan border.
In particular, Moscow may be giving Hizballah and Iran an umbrella for achieving their longstanding design to displace the Syrian rebels with Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah forces and deploy them along Israel’s Golan border.

This suspicion gained ground when Tuesday, Dec. 1, the day after the Putin-Netanyahu encounter, the combined Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah units expanded their thrust from the southern Syrian town of Deraa to the Golan town of Quneitra, within sight of Israel’s defense positions.

All that day, heavy battles raged over the rebel-held line of hills running from a point just south of Quneitra to the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian border junction. The combined force was supported by Russian air strikes and heavy tanks and artillery, seen for the first time in this war arena.
When the fighting resumed Wednesday, the IDF placed its Golan units on high alert and an extra-vigilant eye was trained on this battle.

The Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah side is gaining a distinct advantage from the deep feud dividing rebel ranks. The Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian Nusra Front forces are tearing into each other with suicide bombers and explosive cars. Tuesday, an ISIS-rigged bomb car blew up at Nusra headquarters near Quneitra (see photo).
But this also means that an Islamic State force has come dangerously close to the Israeli border.

However, even more perils are in store if Bashar Assad’s army backed by Iran, Hizballah and Russia manages to capture the hills opposite the Golan:

1. Two years of unrelenting Israeli military and intelligence efforts to keep Hizballah and Iranian forces away from its Golan border will have gone to naught.
2.  Hizballah will open the door for Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers to set up a command center right up to the Israeli border.
3.  Israel’s steadfast policy and military action to prevent advanced Iranian weapons reaching Hizballah in Lebanon via Syria will be superseded. On the Golan, Hizballah will have gained direct access to any weapons it wants directly from Syria and be able to deploy them at far shorter distances from Israeli targets than from their firing positions in Lebanon.
4.  Vladimir Putin attaches extreme importance to recovering southern Syria from the rebel forces backed by the US and Israel, because he regards the threat to the Assad regime as great from the south as it is from the north or the center.
5.  Israel faces a grave dilemma between keeping up its “honeymoon” with Moscow by giving way on its essential security interests, or taking the bull by the horns and keeping the enemy at bay, whatever the cost to the understanding reached with Putin.
Officials in Jerusalem point out that the threat to Golan peaked just hours after the Russian leader met the prime minister in Paris. Putin is conducting a hands-on policy on Syria and keeps close track of the slightest occurrence on the battlefield. He must have been perfectly aware of the state of play on the Golan when he met Netanyahu, but nonetheless kept it out of their conversation.

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Are Christians Required To Keep The Jewish Sabbath Day? by Geoffrey Grider

The command to observe the Sabbath day was given to Israel EXCLUSIVELY. It was not given to the Gentiles. It was given to Israel as the SIGN of the Mosaic Covenant

"Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations,  for a perpetual covenant." Exodus 31:16 (KJV)

The Reason for the Jewish Sabbath

If God instituted the "Sabbath" before the "Fall of Man," it seems strange that the fact is not recorded in Genesis, and that Adam was not told to observe it. Nowhere in the Book of Genesis do we read of Adam, or any of his descendants, or Noah, or Abraham observing the Sabbath. The only hint we have of a "seven-fold" division of days is found in Genesis 7:4, 10, when seven days of grace were granted before the Flood came, and in Genesis 8:8-12, where a seven day period elapsed between the sending forth of the dove.

The first place we read of the Sabbath is in Exodus 16:23-26, in connection with the gathering of the manna--"Six days ye shall gather it; but on the SEVENTH day, WHICH IS THE SABBATH, in it there shall be none." Here we have the "SEVENTH" day designated as "THE SABBATH." That the "Seventh Day" of the "Creative Week" was a type of the Sabbath is clear from Exodus 20:11--"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the SEVENTH day; wherefore the Lord blessed the SABBATH DAY, and hallowed it." But we have no evidence that the Sabbath was commanded to be observed until after the Exodus, and the reason is clear. God's "Rest Day" was broken by the "Fall of Man," and there could be no "rest" until redemption was brought in, and this was typically brought in by the redemption of the children of Israel from Egypt through the offering of the "Passover Lamb," a type of Christ.

The purpose of their deliverance was that they might find rest in Canaan from the weary toil and slavery of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15). When a few weeks later the "Ten Commandments" were given on Mt. Sinai, the Lord said to Israel, "REMEMBER the Sabbath Day to keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8), the Sabbath Day they were to remember was not the "Seventh Day" on which God rested, but the "Day" that God had appointed as the "Sabbath Day" at the time of the giving of the manna.

The Sabbath Was Given to Israel alone

The command to observe the Sabbath day was given to Israel EXCLUSIVELY. It was not given to the Gentiles. It was given to Israel as the "SIGN" of the "Mosaic Covenant." "Verily My Sabbaths you shall keep: for it is a 'SIGN' between Me and you throughout your generations" (Exodus 31:13; Ezekiel 20:12, 19-21). The Sabbath Day then belongs to the Jews alone and is not binding on the Gentiles (the world), or on the Church (Christians). Nowhere in the Bible do you find God finding fault with any nation or people, except the Jewish nation, for not observing the Sabbath. As a Jewish ordinance it has never been abrogated, changed, or transferred to any other day of the week, or to any other people. It is now in abeyance as foretold in Hosea 2:11 it would be.

It is to be resumed when the Jews are nationally restored to their own land (Isaiah 66:23; Ezekiel 44:24; 46:1-3). If this be true, then the "Sabbath" does not belong to the Church, and is not to be observed by Christians, for the "Sabbath Day" is a part of "THE LAW," and Christians are not under "LAW," but under "GRACE" (Romans 6:14). In his letter to the Galatian Christians Paul reproved them for going back to the "Law," and declared that those who did so were "under the CURSE" (Galatians 3:10). "How turn you again to the 'beggarly elements' (religious ordinances) whereunto you desire again to be in bondage? You observe DAYS (Sabbath and Feast Days), and months, and times, and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain" (Galatians 4:9-11). "Let no man therefore judge you in meats or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the SABBATH" (Colossians 2:16). If Christians are under obligations to keep the "Jewish Sabbath," then they are under the Jewish "Ceremonial Law" and should observe all the ordinances and Feast Days of the Jewish Ritual.

The Christian Church does not replace the Jews or Israel

As an institution of Judaism, the Sabbath, with all the "Feast Days" and other ritualistic ceremonies and offerings of Judaism, ceased to function with the close of the Jewish Dispensation. The JEWISH Sabbath was not changed to the CHRISTIAN Sabbath, any more than "Circumcision" was changed to "Baptism." There is no such thing as the "CHRISTIAN Sabbath." "Sabbath" has to do with LAW, and "Christian" with GRACE, and to join "LAW" and "GRACE" is to unite what God has forever separated. After the Resurrection, Christ and His Disciples never met on the "Sabbath" but on the "FIRST DAY of the week" (John 20:1, 19; Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2).

It is true that they went into the Jewish Synagogues on the Sabbath, but not to worship, but that they might have opportunity to preach the Gospel. The "First Day of the Week" is the day to be observed for rest and worship by the Christian Church. It is prefigured in the Old Testament as the "EIGHTH DAY," or the "DAY AFTER THE SABBATH." "You shall bring a sheaf of the 'FIRST-FRUITS' of your harvest unto the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for  you; on the 'MORROW AFTER THE SABBATH' the priest shall wave it" (Leviticus 23:10-11).

The Church and Israel are separate but equal

What did that "First Fruits" typify? Read 1 Corinthians 15:20--"Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the 'FIRST-FRUITS' of them that slept." When did Christ rise from the dead and become the "FIRST-FRUITS?" Not on the "Sabbath," for He lay dead in the tomb on that day, but on the "FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK," on the "MORROW AFTER THE SABBATH." The fact that the "Birthday" of the Church was at Pentecost, and that fell on the "First Day of the Week," is further proof that the Church should keep the "First Day of the Week" and not the "Seventh" day or "SABBATH." The Jewish Sabbath links man with the "Old Dispensation," the "First Day of the Week" links man with the "New."

"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:" Colossians 2:16 (KJV)

It is claimed that the Roman Catholic Church changed the day of rest from the "Seventh Day" to the "First Day of the Week," but the claim is false, for the Papacy did not exist until a long time after the "First Day of the Week" had become a fixed day for Christian worship. It is a noteworthy fact that the whole of the "Ten Commandments" (Exodus 20:1-17) are reaffirmed in the New Testament, except the "Fourth Commandment" regarding the Sabbath (Romans 13:8-10; Ephesians 6:1-2; James 5:12; 1 John 5:21). Why this omission if the Law of the "Sabbath" is still in force?

It is called the "LORD'S DAY." It belongs to Him. It is not called a "rest day" in the Bible. It is a day that should be filled with worship and service and holy activity. It is not a day to be spent in laziness or pleasure, or the giving of sacred concerts and the discussion of worldly betterment schemes, but a day for the teaching and preaching of the Word of God. © Clarence Larkin 1918

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Who is being delusional?

Reblogged from carolineglick.com

Friday, November 20th, 2015



On Tuesday night Channel 10 broadcast an interview with PLO chief and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in which Abbas admitted publically for the first time that he rejected the peace plan then prime minister Ehud Olmert offered him in 2008.

Olmert’s plan called for Israel to withdraw from the entire Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, and from 93.7 percent of Judea and Samaria. Olmert also offered sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians to compensate for the areas Israel would retain in Judea and Samaria.

Abbas said his rejection was unequivocal. “I didn’t agree. I rejected it out of hand.”

For years, the story of Abbas’s rejection of Olmert’s 2008 offe has been underplayed. Many commentators have insisted Abbas didn’t really reject it, he just failed to respond.

But now the truth is clear. Abbas is not interested either in peace or in Palestinian statehood.

Abbas’s many apologists in the Israeli Left insist that he didn’t reject the plan on its merits. Rather, they argue, Abbas rejected Olmert’s offer because by the time Olmert made it, he was steeped in criminal investigations that forced him to resign from office eight months later.

Hogwash, says former AP reporter Mark Lavie. Following the interview’s broadcast Lavie countered that if Abbas was truly interested in establishing an independent Palestinians state, he wouldn’t have cared about the political fortunes of the Israeli prime minister. He would have taken the offer and run knowing that, as Olmert said, the likelihood that he’d get a similar offer in the next 50 years was nonexistent.

The most notable reaction to Abbas’s admission was the reaction that never came. The Israeli Left had no reaction to his interview.

Abbas is the hero of the Left.

He is their partner. He is their moderate. He is their man of peace. Abbas is the Palestinian leader to whom every leftist politician worth his snuff, from opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to the Meretz Knesset faction make regular pilgrimages to prove their devotion to peace.

Their man in Ramallah received the most radical offer ever to see the light of day. And rather than accept it, he rejected it out of hand and refused to meet with Olmert ever again, and he openly admits it.

The Left’s non-response is not surprising. Abbas’s decision to end all speculation about whether or not he is a man of peace is merely the latest blow reality has cast on their two-state formula.

The Left’s policy of land for peace failed more than 15 years ago when Abbas’s boss Yassir Arafat preferred war to peace and initiated the worst campaign of terror that Israel had ever experienced.

Yet for the last 15 years, the Israeli “peace camp,” has never wavered in its view that despite it all, Israel must rid itself of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Rather it members has grown angrier and angrier at their own people for abandoning them and less and less willing to agree that there is anything – including Israeli statehood itself – that is more important than giving up Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

The Left’s reactionary position was on full display last Thursday at the annual “peace conference,” hosted by the far left Haaretz newspaper.

Last year, the conference’s audience attacked Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett both verbally and physically when he presented his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria. This year it was Tourism Minister Yariv Levin’s turn to be assaulted.

Levin was subjected to constant catcalls from the audience, whose members called him “Goebbels” for arguing that the two-state formula has no chance of bringing peace and that the time has come to consider other options.

But Levin’s claims were simply common sense.

This week the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion published its most recent survey. The results were no surprise. Indeed, they were more or less consistent with historical survey results.

According to the PCPO data, 63 percent of Palestinians oppose holding peace talks with Israel. 58 percent think Mahmoud Abbas, whose term of office ended in 2009, should resign. A majority of Palestinians support a new assault or “intifada” against Israel. 42 percent of Palestinians support the use of terrorism against Israel.

Also this week, ahead of the Jerusalem Post’ Diplomatic Conference held Wednesday, the Post published a new poll of Israeli public opinion. According to the data, 46 percent of Israelis support a policy of separating from the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state. 35 percent of Israelis support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. For Israelis under 45, the numbers are reversed.

Today a majority of Likud Knesset members and all members of the Jewish Home’s Knesset faction oppose Palestinian statehood and support applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria.

Rather than deal with the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis support their two-state model, the Left has decided to ignore both.

The Haaretz conference last week hosted a panel discussing whether the two state paradigm remains viable. In his remarks, Prof. Shlomo Ben Ami, who served as foreign minister in 2000 during the failed Camp David peace summit, explained that given the Israeli and Palestinian publics’ rejection of the two-state formula, (but especially the Israeli rejection of it), the UN Security Council determine Israel’s final borders. In other words, from Ben Ami’s perspective, withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is more important than maintaining Israel’s independence and governing in accordance with the will of the people.

When the panel’s moderator expressed concern that the mass expulsion of Israelis from their communities in Judea and Samaria, which the two-state formula requires would cause a civil war within Israeli society, Ben Ami just shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t delude myself. I never deluded myself that this would be a boy scouts’ trip,” he said.

“You can’t do this through consensus….Consensus is the great enemy of leadership,” he said.

Ben Ami continued, “War unites, peace divides…A leader who wants to make peace will always have a split nation behind him.”

MK Meirav Michaeli, who serves as the Zionist Union’s Knesset faction head said for her part that the greatest obstacle to peace is Israel. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Israel hasn’t had a leader willing to do what it takes to make peace.

In Michaeli’s view, when the Left next forms a government, it will need to adopt – as is opening position in negotiations – the position that Israel shares responsibility for the fate of the so-called “Palestinian refugees.”

Michaeli explained, “Israel needs to be part of a coalition that will find a solution,” for the descendants of the Arabs that left Israel during the 1948-1949 pan-Arab invasion of the infant state of Israel.

Michaeli also insisted that Israel needs to stop demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. Israel should suffice instead with a Palestinian acknowledgment that it does indeed exist.

It goes without saying that there has never been, and there never will be a majority of support in Israel either for Ben Ami’s position or for Michaeli’s position. This is the reason that they prefer to ignore the Israeli people and wait for “the world” to save “the peace” for them.

This brings us to the 46 percent of Israelis who would like to separate from the Palestinians and let them have a state.

The only reason that a plurality of Israelis still supports a policy that has failed continuously for the past fifteen years is because the Israeli Left has blocked all discussion of alternative policies.

Over the past twenty years, the Left has implemented three policy initiatives: the peace process with the PLO from 1993 to 2000, the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. These policies never enjoyed the sustained support of the majority of the public.

To the extent they ever mobilized the temporary support of bare majorities of public, they did so only because the media campaigned continuously on behalf of these initiatives. Not only did key all the mass circulation newspapers and all major broadcast media outlets support these plans, they blocked all debate about them. Opponents were demonized as extremists.

And this brings us to the 35 percent of Israelis who support applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.

It is this virtual blackout on coverage of opposing views that makes the results of the Post’s opinion poll remarkable. In the absence of almost any public discussion of the possibility of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria aside from the self-generated publicity of advocates of the position, more than a third of Israelis overall, and a plurality of young Israelis supports it.

Over the past week, Netanyahu has been asked his opinion of the prospects for unilateral Israeli actions towards the Palestinians three times, once in Washington and twice in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s responses have been enigmatic. But collectively they lend the clear impression that the premier does not support unilateral Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria and at least in principle, does not oppose the sovereignty model.

In his remarks at the Post’s conference Wednesday, Netanyahu said cagily, “There are all sorts of unilateral moves in all sorts of directions. Wait and see. And they are not necessarily in the direction you think.”

Speaking to the Likud’s Knesset faction on Monday Netanyahu clarified his remarks on the subject last week in Washington saying, “I didn’t say unilateral withdrawals. I said unilateral steps. You can imagine what I mean – states are disintegrating and we will protect our interests.”

Sitting next to Ben Ami at the Haaretz conference was the lone non-leftist on the panel. Halachic expert Malka Puterkovsky said that in her view, Israel should apply its sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria. Doing so, she argued, will not risk Israel’s future as a Jewish state.

Both the audience and her fellow panelists reacted to her statements with a the same extreme hostility with which they responded to Bennet and Levin.

When Ben Ami —  the man who thinks it is more important for Israel to expel some one hundred thousand Israelis from their homes than avert a civil war, and prefers borders forced on Israel by the UN to Israeli democracy and independence – was asked his opinion of Puterovsky’s position, he called the notion of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria “delusional.”

We need to take Netanyahu’s coy responses to questions about unilateralism as an invitation to begin a serious public discussion of the option. The public wants this discussion and we need this discussion.

As for how the peace camp will respond, well, there are worse things than aving reactionaries call you “delusional.”
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Read more: http://thelightseed.blogspot.com/#ixzz3sBJGtnVu