By Stan Goodenough
Nov 22, 2005
Israelis are once again being roiled in turmoil, upheaval, and uncertainty after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suddenly decided this week to abandon his party and form a new one with which to try to secure a third term in office.
If the panicky findings published by political pollsters 24 hours after Sharon left the Likud turn out to be accurate, the prime minister may walk away with the early elections that now look set to take place sometime next March.
And should he win, ?The Bulldozer? will have pulled off a brilliant hijacking of the Israeli political system ? first using his own party to attain to the premiership, then tearing holes in that party?s platform and, as it began to flounder, leaping off and dealing it a final, possibly mortal blow by denouncing it as ?a waste of time? and taking away a chunk of the funds the Likud needs to seek re-election.
Sharon is expected to use his victory to forge ahead towards the achievement of his self-proclaimed mission ? overseeing the drawing up of Israel?s final borders through a process that will involve the uprooting of tens of thousands more Jews from the biblical heartland of Israel, and the surrender, forever, of that land to the Arabs.
He jumped ship after obtaining advice from his sons Gilad and Omri, both of whom have been investigated ? and the latter recently indicted ? on charges of corruption relating to illegally raising funds for their father?s earlier campaign.
In exchange for promises of political favors from their master, 15 Knesset members, including a number of Sharon?s ministers, rallied to his new party.
And despite the fact that son Omri had, in a plea bargain to reduce his corruption sentence, undertaken just days before to leave the political arena for good, Sharon signed him on as a member of the new party in order to ensure that he will be eligible for a third of the Likud?s legally entitled election funding.
In a sentence, Sharon?s behavior as prime minister has only added substance to the findings by Business Data Israel earlier this year that the Jewish state leads the West in government corruption.
All this comes a week to the day after Sharon allowed himself to be bulldozed by visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into further endangering Israel?s security by relinquishing control of the Gaza-Egypt border to the Arabs and their European friends.
The results of that move are predictable and will mirror the outcome of all Israel?s concessions to US demands: increased violence against Israel that will see more Jewish blood spilled and more Jewish lives lost.
And all the while, the threat to Israel?s existence grows.
As if this were not enough, Israeli Ministry of Tourism officials have just announced a plan to turn Tel Aviv into the international destination of choice for homosexuals from around the world [Ed. Note - Replacing Katrina-engulfed New Orleans, perhaps?]. If their initiative takes off, planeloads of perverts will soon be welcomed to the Jewish state, here to be milked for their money and encouraged to parade their abominable lifestyles on the beaches and streets of the Mediterranean metropolis.
In the words of one Israeli official commenting on the news about the Gaza-Egypt border crossing, Israel has reached ?rock bottom.?
Or as this writer thought upon hearing of plans to further soil the increasingly decadent Tel Aviv, and then trying to swallow the bitter pill of Sharon?s seemingly unstoppable momentum: ?How much lower can this nation sink? Where will we go from here??
The course we are set on now sees a truncated, indefensible, increasingly immoral and godless Israel lying alongside a hate-filled Palestinian state, surrounded on every side by those committed to the Jews ultimate destruction.
As a Bible-believer who yearns to see Israel move towards and embrace her glorious, God-ordained destiny to be a light to the nations, I am sometimes tempted to surrender to gloomy and pessimistic fears for her future.
Of additional concern is the possibility of some of Israel?s Christian friends growing disillusioned with this nation, washing their hands of her and becoming prey themselves to the myriad anti-Israel forces that prowl the planet.
We must be encouraged. As dark and desperate as the days have become ? and I believe we may need to be ready for darker, even more difficult ones ? there is something we must always remember:
There is a God. He is alive. He is the God of Israel. And He is holy.
Israel is His nation ? the only one He calls His own. The Land of Israel is His land, the only Land upon which He has placed His name.
The Jews? return to their land, their reconstitution as a nation and that nation?s preservation through six wars, decades of unending terrorism and massive global efforts to declare her ?illegitimate? ? all this has taken place under the eye and according to the purposes of our, almighty, God.
He calls us to love this nation, to stand with her, to support her in the face of her international isolation, and to comfort her as her enemies deal her blow after painful blow.
We will not bless everything Israel does. As we do with family and friends whom we love, we will express our concern, dismay and even anger when Israel goes wrong.
But we will never abandon her or turn against her. For to turn against Israel is to turn against God.
As much as He loves Israel, her restoration and preservation is not primarily for her own sake, but for the sake of His great name.
He is committed to her redemption, to seeing it through, to seeing it completed.
And just as He sat enthroned at the flood, when the natural order appeared lost beneath a turmoil of mud and rain and water-borne destruction, He sits enthroned today.
We should neither despair for Israel?s future nor should we abandon our hope in her Hope.
Our God, Israel?s God, is either all mighty, or He is not mighty at all.
There is no God like YHVH.