Former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann recently gave a talk where, based on Biblical scholarship, she declared unequivocally that the land of Israel was given to the Jewish people thousands of years ago by Almighty God. She stated (and this writer unequivocally agrees with her) that the Oslo Accords promising a so-called “two-state solution” between the Arabs in the region and Israel was arbitrary and unacceptable. Further, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a serious mistake in 2005 when he turned Gaza over to the Arabs, and removed 10,000 Jewish Israelis from Gaza, plus the dead Jews’ bodies which were exhumed and removed.
Hamas’s hatred and much of the Arab/Islamic hatred of Jews has a long history. In order to understand how we got to the present point, we must ask: How and when did the modern state of Israel become established? The Ottoman Empire had been broken up by the Allies after WWI because Islam (the Ottoman Empire) and the caliphate which ruled that empire (based in present-day Turkey) had tried to gain hegemonic power over Europe by allying with Germany and Austria-Hungary in WWI, but failed…again.
After the war, the caliphate in Constantinople with control over the Islamic countries of the Middle East was dissolved, and many different Arab states were created.
Woodrow Wilson at the end of WWI introduced the idea of giving sovereignty to national groups that had long been denied a proper voice within their nation states in Europe prior to WWI. In Europe this led to the creation of Czechoslovakia whereby Czechs and Slovaks, previously under Austrian and Hungarian rule, became independent. Yugoslavia was a new state for Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and Poland, which before the war had been partitioned, regained independence. Further, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia became independent of Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian empire became two different nation states.
Although the formation of nation states out of the former Ottoman Empire was not in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, it provided a model which expressed the thinking of the Allies in their treatment of the former Ottoman Empire. However, ethnicity was not the only factor in creating various states out of the former Ottoman hegemony. Other identity markers came into play including religious affiliation and tribal identities. It was a considerably more complex process than the creation of new European states. There was the usual Middle East “mixture of happenstance, prevarication, betrayal, [and armed struggle].”
The Balfour Declaration made by the United Kingdom after WWI promised the Zionists an extensive piece of land for their desired Jewish homeland, although much of that promised land was eventually given over to Jordan. Nevertheless, the promise of a Jewish return had been made, but the British at the same time promised that they would not go ahead with the establishment of a Jewish state without first consulting the Arabs. Again, let it be stated that the end of WWI saw the radical reorganization both of the entire Ottoman Empire and of Europe instigated by Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which stressed the importance of respect for longstanding national identities within the boundaries of the defeated nations.
Jewish settlers continued to arrive in the area now known as Israel during the years after WWI, and this migration was intensified because of the persecution of Jews in Germany and continued anti-Semitism in Russia and other areas of Eastern Europe. There was intense resistance to a Jewish state in the Middle East, and Europe — never very Jew friendly — was somewhat blasé.
Yet, the Jewish people worshipping in their synagogues throughout the world — to which places they had travelled over centuries after the Romans crushed them in the Holy Land — continuously expressed through prayer their love for the homeland that Almighty God had promised them going back to the time of Abraham. Their prayers and studies all maintained a continuous reference to their homeland. The faith of the Jewish people that their former homeland was their eternal homeland was emerging as the answer to 1,900 years of prayer and fasting.
On May14, 1948, God in His mercy restored Israel when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. At that very time, because the British mandate was ending and the establishment of Israel was clearly on the table, there was ongoing fighting between Arabs and Jews in the area. This restoration against a backdrop of centuries of contempt for Jews and decades of post-WWI indifference and open hostility is a clear message of Divine intervention in the creation of the modern state of Israel. It was not just a series of historical “coincidences.” They were promised this land almost 4,000 years ago, had lost it approximately 1,900 years ago, but the Lord who is ever faithful kept His promise.
Israel has been attacked by its Arab enemies six times since its reinstatement in 1948 including this latest multi-front attack by Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has won all these wars, yet has been pressured not to completely take out the governments that had attacked them. The Western allies of Israel have kow-towed to the Arab world — to the oil interests — to prevent Israel from taking down the governments that tried to destroy them.
Now Hamas, unlike the other Middle East losers that have had the gall to attack Israel over and over again, is not willing to finalize a deal that will give Israel a reprieve from Hamas’s terrorist violence. Nevertheless, under the anointing of Almighty God who has restored the land to the Jewish people, Israel is once again about to re-affirm the promise made to Abraham a little less than 4,000 years ago.
God said to Abraham, “‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12: 1–3)
The Israelis are about to take full control of Gaza which they so foolishly gave away to the Arabs living 20 years ago. This re-establishment of control is another expression of the Lord fulfilling that long ago promise stated in Genesis.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.