Jordan Valley is Strategic for Israel's Defense!

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

The IDF will remain in the Jordan Valley to defend Israel, regardless of any future Palestinian Authority state, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday during a tour of military posts and bases in the area. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas responded by demanding sovereignty of the area, along with all of Judera and Samaria.

In remarks that may have been a warm-up for his expected new policy statement on PA demands, the Prime Minister told reporters, "Our security border is here on the Jordan and our defense line begins here. If that line is breached they will be able to infiltrate terrorists, rockets and missiles all the way to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Be'er Sheva and throughout the country.

"There is no alternative to the IDF's line of defense. Therefore, in any future situation, and I say in any future arrangement as well, the IDF must stay here, i.e. along the Jordan River. This is the State of Israel's insurance policy. If this was true before the major unrest now shaking the Middle East and the entire region, it is doubly true today. The IDF must remain along the Jordan River."

The Israeli part of the Jordan Valley is a long and narrow strip of land that is bordered by the Jordan River on the east, with Jordan on its other bank, and by a range of hills on the west, running from the Lebanese border in the north to the eastern hills of Samaria and the Judean Hills in the south.

Its sparse population, relatively flat terrain and proximity to Jordan make it strategic territory. Before the 1967 Six Day War, terrorists from Jordan staged hundreds of attacks, hiding in the adjoining hills and caves that Israeli reservists called "the Land of the Chase [after terrorists, ed.]". The IDF would regularly sand the dirt roads along the Jordan River to enable it to trace terrorist tracks, before the area was restored to Israel in the war.

Citing the Muslim uprisings in Arab countries, the Prime Minister said, “We live in a world that is undergoing a very major shake-up. As I have said, the entire region around us is in a state of instability, and is undergoing a political and security earthquake of which we have not seen the end. 

“In this situation, more than ever, we need to ensure that we have solid security foundations upon which to defend the State of Israel." 
Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

IDF Deputy Chief: "Faith in God More Than Tanks"

 

IDF Deputy Chief: Israel's Army Needs Faith In God More Than Tanks

 

Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Naveh said the events currently shaking the Arab world 'were ordained from above' by a guiding hand.

The events currently shaking the Arab world "were ordained from above" by a guiding hand, Israel Defense Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Naveh said on Sunday. Naveh added that the Israeli army needed faith in God now more than its supply of planes and tanks.

Naveh made the statements while accompanying Israel's two chief rabbis, Rabbi Yona Metzger and Rabbi Shlomo Amar, on their visit to the chief military rabbi's office at the Tzrifin base. In remarks during the visit captured by the pro-settler news outlet Arutz 7, Naveh called Israel an island of calm in the storm of the Middle East, turmoil that had not been foreseen by intelligence officials despite their good work.

"But it was ordained from above," he said, "and we don't know where it will lead, but it's clear to us that there is a hand from above."

Naveh said supposedly democratic forces in the Middle East have always been supplanted by negative extremist and religious forces. Addressing the chief rabbis, Naveh called the IDF a Jewish army, an army of believers and an army that from the beginning always "knew how to create the right balance among communities represented in it, all the religions represented in it, but always leading with the power of faith and adherence to mitzvot [religious commandments]."

He said in recent years, the army had become more welcoming to religious soldiers.

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

New IDF Chief of Staff

Please pray for this man as you pray for Israel.
Benny Gantz, Head of the Israeli Defense Forces


Things are getting tense in Israel as her enemies surround her with violence and upheaval. Now, two Iranian war ships have entered the Mediterranean and are docked at Syria. This is a grave situation and we need to pray daily!

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

The Furious Insignificance of Hamas

Palestinian Hamas security officer Abu Abdallah Lafi, displays a part of a navigation system which Hamas alleges were found in the possession of Palestinians collaborating with Israel, during a press conference in Gaza City, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010. Hamas has sentenced a Gaza man to death on suspicion of spying for Israel, the latest step in its secretive campaign to rid the territory of alleged collaborators. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5

These words, written four centuries ago, describe Hamas and life in the Gaza Strip today.
People hear news from the Middle East, and they ask me, “Mosab, what is Hamas doing? Where are they going?” And I tell them that Hamas is doing nothing and going nowhere, because Hamas, for all its zealots and college graduates, is ignorant.
This doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. But the most dangerous thing about Hamas is that it doesn’t know. It doesn’t know it’s going nowhere. It doesn’t know how to build anything more than a little clinic with only one doctor and insufficient medicine, which only gives it a humanitarian face, concealing its true identity.
It doesn’t know how to govern itself, much less a nation. It’s not that its members are uneducated; they’re just ignorant. They have no wisdom or common sense. They are unteachable, unreachable and unimpeachable, because their mind is made up and they will hear nothing except what comes out of their own mouths. Hamas believes it is right and the rest of the world is wrong. That it is righteous and everybody else is bad, because Allah said so.
When I was in the Israeli prison at Megiddo, Hamas behaved like a mini-regime, controlled by thugs and tyrants. The maj’d, its security wing, tortured men until they made up anything, denounced anyone to make the pain stop. And the maj’d were so stupid that they believed the confessions. I read those confessions. They were ridiculous, and virtually all of them were eventually disproved. I remember wondering what it would be like if Hamas ever gained control of the government in Palestine.
I don’t wonder anymore.
Nearly five years ago, they won the elections. When the international community refused to recognize the legitimacy of their victory, a furious Hamas soaked the streets with Fatah blood.
And what have they done with Gaza since then? Nothing. They have built no infrastructure and formed no government departments. They have not advanced Palestinian culture or improved Palestinian society. Prime Minister Ismail Haniya was responsible for the maj’d in prison, and he rules Gaza the same way today.
Everyone is gagged and crippled by fear. For my people in Gaza, Hamas police are like Hitler’s Wafen-SS, Mao’s Red Guard, the Kremlin’s KGB or Ceaucescu’s Securitate. Anyone can be kidnapped and tortured into confessing that they are collaborating with Israel.

In a recent news conference, Abu Abdallah Lafi, a Hamas internal security official, said, “we have arrested many,” including women, who he called “a real danger to the unity of the people and their resistance” against Israel. Hamas spokesman Ehab Al-Ghsain boasted that his people had obtained “serious confessions and uncovered many collaborators who stood behind assassinations of some leaders of resistance and implemented policies of the enemy's intelligence service against our people.”
I promise you that all of these “serious confessions” were obtained by unrestricted torture. And the “collaborators” have absolutely nothing to do with the Shin Bet.
Al-Ghsain told reporters that these collaborators planted bombs at training camps and government offices and helped to coordinate IDF raids and assassinations. But I know from 10 years working in the highest levels of the Shin Bet that this is not how Israeli intelligence operates. Hamas knows nothing of Israel. It does not know how to govern. It does not know how to create or build. It understands nothing about human rights. It knows only how to destroy. Hamas is a colony of hornets in a sack. And Gaza is the sack.
“Nothing is more terrible,” said German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “than ignorance in action.”
To be continued  by Mosab Hassan Yusef

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

IDF Defended for Safeguarding Enemy Civilians

CFI

Finally someone who speaks up for Israel and tells the truth! May he, Col. Richard Kemp, be blessed!

UN Human Rights Council, 12th Special Session Debate on Goldstone Report Geneva, 16 October 2009 Delivered by Col. Richard Kemp See the Video Here Thank you, Mr. President. I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government's Joint Intelligence Committee. Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population. Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents. The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights. The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks. Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes. More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians. Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets. And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Thank you, Mr. President.

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

Serving In The IDF 'For The Sake Of God And Jesus'

Jesus supports the IDF and he wants his believers to be the best soldiers they can be.

That was the message conveyed by members of the local Messianic Jewish community via sacred texts, prayer and talks, to a group of 18-year-olds who took part this week in a premilitary program called Netsor.

"I am a soldier of God," said Boris, an intense redhead accepted to an elite combat unit, who is one of the 28 young men and women who participated in Netsor.

"I will do my best during my service in the IDF to serve God spiritually and physically. Not for the sake of state authorities but for the sake of God and Jesus," added Boris, as we sat in the dining room of a guest house that overlooks Lake Kinneret on Wednesday.

Not far from here, according to Christian tradition, Jesus walked on water, healed the sick and preached. Now, nearly two millennia later, young "believers," as they call themselves, convinced they are walking in Jesus's footsteps, hope to become the next fighter pilots, reconnaissance soldiers, paratroopers, tank commanders and sailors.

Some 150 highly motivated believers will join the IDF this year. Many of them will serve in combat units. Some of them have been through Netsor's week of mental and spiritual preparation offered by the Messianic community. Netsor is a Hebrew word that means "to guard" or "to stand vigilant."

The return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel with the establishment of the State of Israel brought with it a small but growing group of Messianic Jews, numbering today between 10,000 and 15,000. These Christians celebrate their own version of Jewish holidays such as Pessah and Succot and set aside Friday night and Saturday as a day of rest.

But they also believe that Jesus is the messiah and that he is the only path to redemption. Messianic Jews, who distance themselves from the more in-your-face proselytizing tactics of Jews for Jesus, are nevertheless very open about their beliefs, including their conviction that traditional Jewish faith is not sufficient for redemption.

Due to their religious beliefs, Messianic Jews have been subjected over the years to physical attacks and discrimination, including in the IDF.

M., a platoon commander in an elite demolition unit who is one of the founders of Netsor, asked The Jerusalem Post to leave out identifiable personal details of individuals who agreed to be interviewed out of concern that they would be singled out and blackballed by antagonistic elements with connections in the army.

"In the end, we believe that God opens and closes doors," said M. "And if he does not want someone to advance in the IDF it won't happen. But we don't want to make any mistakes that will hurt someone's IDF career."

For Messianic Jews, military service in the IDF is not only a mandatory civil duty, it is a religious obligation. Lacking an exegetical tradition but serious about the sacredness and relevance of the biblical text, "believers" learn this obligation to serve in the army right out of the New Testament.

Romans (13:1-7) warns not to resist political authority, because it is "the ordinance of God."

Colossians (3:22,23) teaches that one must excel as a faithful servant of one's superiors, not for personal aggrandizement but to serve God.

The group's interpretation of these texts, combined with a strong religious faith, transform them into soldiers of God determined to do his will during their stint in the army of the Jewish state.

Other verses, such as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, 5-7), which some Christians interpret as Jesus's support for pacifism, are seen by Messianic Jews as an obligation to love one's enemies while fighting and killing them.

"I hate what Palestinian terrorists do, therefore I will do anything, including kill, if necessary, to stop them," said Tzvi, an educator and counselor at Netsor. "But I do not allow that to prevent me from loving them as human beings."

Many Messianic Jews see their obligation to serve in the IDF as no different from the obligation of other Christians in the US, Britain or even Jordan and Egypt to serve their respective countries.

"If I lived in Jordan I would have the same feelings for the Jordanian army," said Tzvi.

But for some, serving in the IDF has special theological meaning. Yoel, who was an officer in an IDF combat unit, believes the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is part of God's plans.

"The IDF is an instrument in the hands of God because it facilitates his plan," said Yoel. "But I would not call it a holy army or the army of God."

The Netsor program, which began three years ago, has quadrupled the number of students from seven in 2007 to 28 this year.

Yoel, one of Netsor's founders, hopes one day to create a premilitary academy for Messianic Jews modeled after existing academies for religious and secular Israelis.

"We pray that sometime in the future we will succeed in establishing a full-fledged premilitary academy that will offer a one-year program; with God's help."

Someday Israel will trust in the Lord, not in the IDF

Read Isaiah 51 and 55 ~ Someday Israel will trust in the Lord for her deliverance and not in her own strength...



IDF Begins Major Move to the Negev
by Hillel Fendel

A Hercules jet will take off Monday afternoon from central Israel to the new Nevatim Israel Air Force base in the Negev, marking the start of the herculean IDF move to the Negev.

The move marks today's closing of the IAF's main transport base, in Lod, and its replacement in Nevatim. The new base will be formally dedicated later this week in the presence of President Shimon Peres and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi

At the same time, infrastructure work is beginning on the new army city in the Negev, to be called Ir HaBahadim, or City of the Training Bases. Construction was long delayed because of environmental concerns. Defense Minister Ehud Barak is in attendance for a ceremony marking the construction.

The new town is set to be built on an area of 1,065 dunams (263 acres, just over a square kilometer), and and will house the IDF's Armaments School, Logistics Training School, Military Police, and more. Ir HaBahadim will also include an inn for visitors, a shopping mall, a country club and theaters, and is expected to provide a welcome economic boon for the sparsely-populated area - as well as boost for the IDF, technologically and manpower-wise.

The move to the Negev, called "Project IDF Ascent to the Negev," is being termed by security network personnel "one of the largest and most important military projects in the history of the State of Israel." Some 11,000 soldiers, both in the standing army and career officers, will serve on the technological campus of the 4CI Branch - the army's Command, Control, Computers, Communications and Information Branch. Another 9,000 soldiers will serve in other branches there.

Ir HaBahadim (Bahad is an acronym for Bsis Hadrachah, or Training Base) has long been in the planning, and will feature state-of-the-art elements in the training and preparation spheres.