By Stan Goodenough
Jun 02, 2004
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Wednesday that he is determined to eradicate the Jewish presence from the Gaza Strip by the end of next year.
The Israeli leader said that although he does not have a majority in his government to pass such a decision today, he will ensure that majority is in place by the time the cabinet meets to vote on his Gaza-first retreat initiative in four days' time.
"The plan would be approved on Sunday," he declared, according to The Jerusalem Post .
The paper suggested that Sharon is willing to make the kind of move traditionally practiced by the region's "democratically elected" Arab presidents, and fire those ministers who oppose him, replacing them with yes-men before calling the vote.
If realized, Sharon's plan would mean that less than 40 years after the LORD God of Israel gave His people their miraculous Six Day War victory and brought the Gaza Strip under their control, enabling Jews to once again settle in and bring new life to that land, the country's leadership will try to reverse what He has done.
Under the approving eye of the international community, and as cries of praise descend to Allah from minarets around the world, Jewish soldiers and policemen will uproot thousands of settled Jewish families from their homes and forcefully relocate them to "Israel proper."
While Israeli security and intelligence officials -- apparently for political reasons -- insist that such a withdrawal will reduce terrorism against Israel and strengthen the Jewish state, the past 11 years have shown that Israel's surrender of land to the Palestinian Arabs always and only increases their violence against it.
Repeatedly since 1993, Jerusalem has signed agreements with the "Palestinians" according to which Israel has given them control of more and more land in exchange for the Arabs' same, repeated but never kept, promises to end terrorism and incitement to hatred against the Jews.
Not only for these Arabs, but for all the gentile nations of the world, Israel's submission to their land-for-"peace" demands have communicated the clear message that the world's designation of Israel's historic homeland as "occupied Arab lands" is the correct one; that Israel's claim to those lands has been fraudulent and unjust.
Starting with its withdrawals from Gaza and Jericho in 1993, then from Ramallah, Kalkilya, Shechem, Bethlehem and Hebron, Israel's governments may have wanted to send the world the message that they are sincere in their quest for peace. What the nations have heard, however, are Israel's repeated confessions of its wrongdoing, and its acknowledgement of the righteousness of the international community's demands.
Furthermore, by not only permitting, but actually helping to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza, (and later, as the Sharon plan, supported by the United States, envisages, from parts of Judea and Samaria), Israel would be lending active support to the establishment of racist, anti-Jewish areas that the world has decided will be the judenrein State of Palestine.
As Sharon pushes ahead, the questions loom ever larger:will he succeed in passing this perverse plan? And, more importantly, if his conveniently modified cabinet agrees to it, will the plan be carried out?
Let it be recorded that for this writer and lover of Israel the answer is a clear and unambiguous, "No!"
Three thousand plus years ago, just a few hundred miles from where I live, Moses reminded God that He had made a promise and a commitment to the Israelites, that He had not brought them out of Egypt just to destroy them in the wilderness. When God was furious with them for their unfaithfulness, Moses pleaded with Him to think about His reputation, which He had so effectively established in the eyes of the Egyptians.
And when He later wanted to do away with them because of their lack of faith to claim the land He had promised them, Moses reminded Him that the nations in that land, who were already afraid of the approaching Israelites' God after hearing of His great and mighty works, would lose their healthy new fear of the Almighty.
So too, as Israel bends and succumbs to the pressure of the world to reverse its restoration to its land, we Christian Zionists remind God today that He has not gathered the Jews back from all the nations among which He scattered them only to see them driven out of their Promised Land once more.
According to His word, He has brought them back and planted them in their land in an act of divine favor, and according to His unchanging plan, never to uproot them again.
For why, as the psalmist says, should those nations who so ferociously and adamantly oppose God's purposes for Israel, say of the re-constituted Jewish nation, "Where, now, is their God?"
As they soon shall discover, Israel's God sits enthroned in the heavens. And He is laughing them to scorn. He will have His way, and when He does, His dearly beloved Israel, and the entire world, will know that He is God.