Israel is one of the most free and most prosperous countries in the world. Not only is Israel a booming economy and a wellspring of innovation, it is the only democracy in the Middle East. So why is it so controversial to support the Jewish state? Stephen Harper, the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, lays out several fundamental truths about America’s most critical ally. Donate today to PragerU! http://l.prageru.com/2eB2p0h
kirjoittanut tri Jay Rawlings
Shalom kallisarvoiset ystävät ja yhteistyökumppanit!
Varhain viime lauantaina kännykkäni alkoi piipata. Tiesin välittömästi mistä kyse. Meridel ja minä aloimme rukoilla ja esirukoilla.
Kännykässäni on sovellus nimeltä ”Red Alert” eli punainen, siis kiireellinen ja tärkeä hälytys. Se hälyttää aina, kun Israeliin osuu raketteja. Hätäpiippauksia tuli yksi toisensa jälkeen lähes tauotta. Maan eteläosaan osui satamäärin hengenvaarallisia, räjähteillä lastattuja raketteja Gazasta. Kännykkäni pärisi hätäpiippauksia tuntikausia.
Tähän aamuun mennessä, toukokuun 6. päivään, yhteensä 700 rakettia on iskeytynyt asutusalueille Askeloniin, Asdodiin, Siderotiin, Beersebaan ja moniin muihin asutuskeskuksiin. Vain 12 km meistä etelään, Beit Shemeshiin osui niinikään. Hävitys, tuho on rikollismaista. Israelilaisista 150 on haavoittunut, osa hengenvaarallisesti, ja 4 henkilöä on kuollut. Pommisuojista turvaa etsineistä ihmisistä 1,5 miljoonaa on traumatisoitunut vakavasti.
Israelin hävittäjät vastasivat ja tuhosivat Hamasin rakettien ampumatukikohtia. Siinä yhteydessä kuoli 23 terroristia ja toimijaa. Surullista kyllä, sivuvaikutuksena vahinkoa koitui muillekin ihmisille, sillä terroristit piileskelevät palestiinalaisten ja heidän kotiensa, sairaaloidensa, lastentarhojensa ja koulujensa suojissa. He toimivat tällä tavalla, jotta uutisissa Israel esitetään julmana hyökkääjänä. Päinvastainen on totta.
Rukoilettehan kanssamme, että tämä hulluus loppuu ja Gazan tilanteeseen saadaan pysyvä ratkaisu. Useimmat palestinalaiskansalaiset haluavat sieltä pois. Vaan heitä heidän omat Hamas-johtajansa pitävätä siellä (pantti)vankeina. Samaan aikaan Israel toimittaa heille sähköä, vettä, polttoainetta, ruokaa ja lääkkeitä, siis Israelin vannoutuneille vihollisille. Maailman lehdistö ei koskaan raportoi näistä tosiasioista.
Jumalan sana on ainut lohtumme.
”Te saatte kuulla sodan ääniä ja sanomia sodista, mutta älkää pelästykö. Näin täytyy tapahtua, mutta se ei vielä ole loppu.” Matteus 24:6
”Mene, kansani, kammioihisi ja sulje ovet jälkeesi. Pysy piilossa hetken aikaa, kunnes viha on mennyt ohi,” Jesaja 26:20
”Armahda minua, Jumala, armahda minua, sillä sinuun sieluni turvautuu. Minä turvaudun sinun siipiesi suojaan, kunnes onnettomuudet ovat menneet ohi.” Psalmi 57:2
”Jumala on meidän turvamme ja väkevyytemme, varma apumme hädän hetkellä.” Psalmi 46:2”Ei hän pelkää pahaa sanomaa. Hänen sydämensä on vahva, hän turvaa Herraan.” Psalmi 112: 7”… ja teidän elämänne on Kristuksen kanssa kätkettynä Jumalassa.” Kirje kolossalaisille 3:3”Tämän olen puhunut teille, että teillä olisi minussa rauha. Maailmassa teillä on ahdistus, mutta olkaa rohkeat: minä olen voittanut maailman.”
Johannes 16:33
Kiitos rukouksista nuorimman poikamme Danielin puolesta. Kymmenen päivää sitten hän joutui äkisti puhevaikeuksien vuoksi sairaalaan; samaan paikkaan, missä minulle suoritettiin avosydänleikkaus. Sairaalassa hänelle tehtiin useita kokeita, mm. tietokonetomografia ja magneettikuvaus sekä otettiin selkäydinneste- ja verikokeita. Hänellä arveltiin olevan tulehdus
aivoissa. Syytä ei tiedetä. Nyt Daniel on kotona saamassa tulehdusestolääkitystä ja rukousta. Näemme paranemisen edistyvän joka päivä, mutta hän joutuu vielä sairaalaan kuukauden kuluttua toiseen magneettikuvaukseen ja Israelin taitavimpiin kuuluvan neurologin vastaanotolle.
Kiitos rukouksista. Me olemme edustajanne tässä maassa ja pyydämme apua kanssaihmisiltä tällaisella hetkellä.
Written by Dr. Jay Rawlings
Shalom Dear Friends and Partners,
Early last Saturday morning my phone started beeping. I instantly knew what it was. Meridel and I started to pray and intercede.
I have an App on my phone called “Red Alert” and it sounds an alarm whenever Israel is being hit by rockets. It kept ringing and hardly stopped. Continuously the southern part of the nation was hit by hundreds and hundreds of deadly explosive-laden missiles from Gaza. My phone alarm sounded for hours.
This morning , May 6th, the current total is 700 rockets that struck the population areas of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sderot, Beer Sheva, and many other population centers even reaching to Beit Shemesh just 12 km south of us. The destruction and carnage is criminal. There have been 150 Israeli citizens injured, some critically while leaving 4 dead and 1.5 million people severely traumatized seeking refuge in their bomb shelters.
Israeli jets responded taking out scores of Hamas rocket launch sites killing 23 terrorists and operatives. Sadly some collateral damage occurred because the terrorists hide right in the middle of Palestinian, homes, hospitals, kindergartens and schools. They do this on purpose so that the news portrays the Israelis as the cruel aggressors. The opposite is true.
Please join us in prayer for this madness to stop and that a permanent solution will be found in Gaza. Most of the Palestinian citizens there want out. However, they are held as captives by their own Hamas leaders. Meanwhile Israel supplies, electricity, water, fuel, food and medicines to them, Israel’s sworn enemies. The world press never reports these facts.
The Word of God is our only comfort.
You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Matthew 24:6
Go, my people, enter your rooms (shelters) and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. Isaiah 26:20,21
Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. Psalm 57:1
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1
They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Psalm 112:7Your life is hidden with the Messiah in God. Colossians 3:3
‘I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ John 16:33
Thank you for praying for our youngest son Daniel. Ten days ago he was suddenly admitted with speech difficulties, to the hospital where I had my open heart surgery, They gave him many tests including one CT scan and 2 MRI’s as well as a spinal fluid tap and blood tests. They decided that he had an inflammation of the brain. The cause was unknown. He is now home on anti-inflammatory medicine and prayer. We see an improvement every day. But he must go back to the hospital in one month for another MRI exam and a consultation with one of the leading neurologists in Israel. Thank you for your prayers.
We are your feet on the ground here, reaching out to our fellow citizens at such a time as this.
We are asking all of our friends and Prayer Warrior partners to please put out immediate prayer for Jay and Meridel Rawling’s youngest son Daniel.
He is currently in hospital in Jerusalem. He has an inflammation in the brain, which is affecting his speech. Jay and Meridel are at his side. The neurologists are currently performing investigative procedures.
We are all so grateful for the immediate, and professional quality of response from the medical staff at the hospital.
Please, Pray! You may address any messages to this email address: jvistas@gmail.com
All messages will be printed and given to Jay and Meridel to read to Daniel.
May God bring Daniel complete healing!
With Love and Thanks,
The Rawlings / Jerusalem Vistas Family
Dear and Precious Friends and Partners,
As I was praying about writing this letter to you this month, I felt the “Still Small Voice” say to me, “Tell them about your early days in Israel.” I wasn’t sure how far to go back, but then this verse came to me in my Bible reading,
And now, friends, we ask you to honor those leaders who work so hard for you, who have been given the responsibility of urging and guiding you along in your obedience. Overwhelm them with appreciation and love!
1 Thessalonians 5:12 MSG
That’s it! I want to overwhelm you with appreciation and love – today. I want to honor, many of you leaders, pastors and evangelists, both men and women around the world, who have worked so hard and given so royally to help Meridel and myself and our team to educate a large worldwide audience about God’s faithfulness to His Word and keeping power concerning His covenants to Israel.
When we came to Israel as a family in 1969, we had no idea what we were going to do. All we knew was that our marching orders, way back 50 years ago, were twofold, First, Meridel heard the Lord say to her, “If you love me? Then love My people.
Secondly, the Lord gave me a scripture from Jeremiah 50:2a which says, in the MSG Bible,
“Get the word out to the nations! Preach it! Go public with this, broadcast it far and wide:
Back then, five decades ago, we were a young married couple with one son, David, nine months old. We had no clue how to be obedient to and to fulfill these clear and quite simple instructions. We felt like Meridel’s pioneering forefathers when they came to Canada from Switzerland, England, and Ireland in the 1800s. Likewise, my grandparents came to Canada in the early 1900s, very poor, uneducated, with a few clothes on their backs. They arrived from England, Scotland, and France. They too were pioneers!
Like countless thousands and thousands of thousands, they faced the cold, foreboding Canadian winters. A vast uninhabited wilderness lay before them. This scenario of settlers seeking a better life also happened in America, Australia, South Africa, and South America to name a few places.
We too felt like we were pioneers in Israel. We discovered, that our first task was to pray! Then to listen for His instructions and act upon them in obedience.
In 1969, Israel was a lot different than it is today. Following Israel’s miraculous victory in the 1967 Six Day War, there was a sense of euphoria in the nation. But this, however, would be short-lived, as by 1973 the Yom Kippur War, severely hurt Israel. In the beginning, Syrian and Egyptian tanks devastated the IDF or Israel Defence Forces in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights. Initially, this war, which the Arabs started on the Holiest Day of the Jewish year, caused huge losses in personnel and equipment. It was also a case of nuclear brinkmanship between the USA and the USSR. The current situation today is quite similar in that Syria involves Russia, Iran, Turkey against Israel and the USA.
Back then in the late 1970s, our first prayer meetings were held out in the woods where we could sing and praise God without calling attention to ourselves. Month by month a small group of us would turn up for these meetings. Our children played around us as we interceded and petitioned Heaven’s Gate.
At that time, I would estimate that there were about 25 to 50 Jewish believers in Yeshua in all of Israel. Slowly the numbers began to increase. The relations between the Arab believers and Jewish believers in Yeshua began to blossom. Miracles started to happen in spite of strong persecution by the ultra-Orthodox religious Jews. Thank God for the bravery, grit, and perseverance of the early believers, Arab and Jew, and internationals alike.
Today, there are about 20 to 25,000 Messianic believers and an equal number of Evangelical Arabs. This coupled with many vibrant congregations, Bible Schools, Pro-Life works, prayer groups plus services to the poorest of the poor in Israel today, represent His hands at work. Over the years I have made several promotional documentaries on the vibrancy of the Gospel work going on in Israel today. Thank God for these miracles.
In obedience to the Lord, we continue to send our regular TV and Internet reports on interesting prophetic subjects happening in Israel today. We have also started a pioneering work in Greece. In fact, our son Josh and I are there as I write this letter to you. Again it is pondering work for the Lord.
( I now know what the Apostle Paul must have felt like when writing in this part of the world, it’s a bit lonely)
We send our love and appreciation to you for your support to our ongoing, “pioneering works for the Lord.” May you be overwhelmed with love and appreciation, – TODAY
In His service,
Jay, Meridel, sons, and team.
Ori Ansbacher, aged 19, was a gentle Jewish soul who volunteered with disadvantaged kids of all faiths. On Feb. 7th, 2019, while walking alone in the forest near Jerusalem, she was raped, stabbed multiple times and decapitated.
Arafat Irfayia: Ori’s murderer, a proud Palestinian from Hebron smirks, “I wanted to return to an Israeli jail. “Now officially a Hero of the Resistance, according to the Palestinian Authority, he will receive $3,700 US. salary monthly for life (paid by UK & EU taxpayers). He will likely spend at most 10 years in a comfortable Israeli jail and will also enjoy the honor of having schools and roads named after him.
Here in Israel, we feel that justice has been turned upon its head. This despicable murderer is no doubt the victim of the P.A.’s educational system of hatred of Israel; brainwashing their children and youth to believe the highest honor is to murder an Israeli.
Former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, since the Oslo Accords in 1982 was ‘Inspector’ on behalf of Israel for anti-semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric perpetrated in Palestinian school books. Recently he confessed to never having looked between the covers of their school books. My question is, AT WHAT PRICE? We have a generation of adult Palestinians who believe the highest good is to murder Israelis. It was Plato who said:
“The most important quest in life is who gets to teach the children and what they teach them?” How true. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
Iran is on the move, celebrating 40 years as the Islamic Republic. They boast of their strong presence in Lebanon and Turkey to fight the terrorism of Israel. They work to assure the world that they have never attacked any nation.FACT: Iran installed enough long-range missiles in Lebanon to attack Israel day and night for three weeks non-stop. One must use critical thinking in reading any ‘so-called’ news.
Photo: Eutoday.net news
– Why are so many grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?
– Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in Western Europe?
To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators. False.
The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans: by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.
If the French government had not deported more Jews than their German occupiers asked for, to the death; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.
In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti- Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout Western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one. “Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We don’t hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We are left-wing, so we can’t be anti-Semites.”Nonsense. The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire to Karl Marx, to Lavrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today’s hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.
The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red – victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin. “But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites?” Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite. He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. And he thinks it’s “rational” to burn down synagogues. Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!
“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, “and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”
No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime? Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups. Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt? Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan… The West Bank and Gaza were an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967 when Egypt and Jordan were the occupying powers. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? (3,000) I don’t remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns — because there weren’t any.”
When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians. Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.
The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews. Even England, which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe from seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine… And Ireland, which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric. The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.
Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew-hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the State of Israel.
None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, much less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups including the Palestinians.
Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their for-bearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbors.
As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents’ Europe were covered with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine.” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine,” by which is meant Israel.
Who do these western European bigots think they’re fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents’ old biases. Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.