A. Biblical Borders

According to the Hebrew Bible the Land of Israel is the region which G-D promised to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and to the descendants of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. After G-D changed Jacob’s name to “Israel” (Genesis 32:28) the promised land became known as the “Land of Israel”, in Hebrew (Eretz Yisrael).

When the Lord made the covenant with Abram, he said: “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” (Genesis 15:18). In this passage of scripture the Lord defined the northern and southern borders of Israel, long before the nation of Israel came into existence. From the river of Egypt in the south to the great river Euphrates in the north would include all of modern day Lebanon and three-fourths of modern day Syria.

When the Lord spoke to Moses about the Promised Land in (Numbers 34:1-15), he specifically laid out the southern, western, northern and eastern borders of the Land. Thus the promised borders of Israel run from the wilderness on the east side of the Jordan river to the uttermost sea (Red Sea) on the west side of the Sinai: and from the Euphrates river in the north, to the river of Egypt in the south.

Finally, in (Ezekiel 47:13-20), we read about the borders of the Land in which the twelve tribes of Israel will live during the final redemption, at the end of days. The borders of the land described by the text in Ezekiel include the northern border of modern Lebanon, eastwards (the way of Hethlon) to Tz’dad and Hatzar-Einon in modern Syria. On the side of the Negev toward the south it will be from Tamar (Ein Gedi) on the western shore of the Dead Sea to Meribah Kadesh (Kadesh Barnea). The west side will be the Mediterranean Sea. The territory defined by these borders is divided into twelve lots for each of the twelve tribes.

B. Historical Borders

Under King David, Israel expanded greatly, controlling a number of weaker client states like Philistia, Moab, Edom, Ammon, with a number of Aramaean city-states (Aram-Zobah and Aram-Damascus) becoming vassal states; the imperial border stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Desert, from the Red Sea to the Euphrates River. According to the biblical account, the empire had a large land area.

However, few archaeological remains of the Kingdom of David and Solomon have been uncovered to date that would accord with the huge conquests described in the Bible. The divided Kingdoms of Judah and Israel came into existence during the 8th century BC. While Israel encompassed the north of the country, including Samaria and the Galilee as far as Dan, Judah was restricted to a comparatively small area around Jerusalem, with a northern boundary near Mitzpah and a southern one around Hebron, probably not projecting effective rule as far as Beersheva. 

C. 1948 Borders

The biblical concept of Eretz Israel was the basis of its re-establishment as a state in the modern era. During two millennia of exile and with an almost continuous small Jewish presence in that ancestral Biblical land, the area was seen as a land of destiny, and always with hope for some form of redemption and return. It was seen as a national home and refuge, that this land was always seen as central to Jewish life.

This idea however saw little success, until the British accepted ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Britain’s job was to implement the Balfour Declaration, but the British government had made conflicting promises to both the Jews and the Arabs, promising each their own autonomous area.

Following Arab revolts between 1936 - 1939, Britain issued the White Paper, essentially reneging on the principles set forth in the Mandate as well as the Balfour Declaration. Severe restrictions were placed on Jewish immigration, as well as on Jewish land-owning rights. During the years of World War II, the small quota was quickly reached, and Jews were denied entry to Palestine.

After World War II, the United Nations (the former League of Nations), adopted the Partition Plan, essentially dividing Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem under international control. This led to Britain ending its mandate and Israel declaring its independence in May of 1948.

On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, declared the creation of the State of Israel, in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Both superpower leaders, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, immediately recognized the new state. Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war and invaded the next day. Saudi-Arabia and Sudan also sent forces.

The war was fought along the entire border of the country: against Lebanon and Syria in the north; Iraq and Transjordan - renamed Jordan during the war - in the east; Egypt, assisted by contingents from the Sudan - in the south; and Palestinians and volunteers from Arab countries in the interior of the country.

The Arab war to destroy Israel failed. Indeed, because of their aggression, the Arabs wound up with less territory than they would have had if they had accepted partition. When Israel declared statehood in 1948, it didn’t declare borders — but in 1949, it agreed with each of its neighbors on ceasefire lines that also defined what is today called the West Bank and Gaza.

The borders have changed from time to time with developments in Israel’s military and diplomatic situation. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt on the southwest.

The border with Egypt was demarcated in 1906 between Britain and the Ottoman Empire. The borders with Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are based on those drawn up by the United Kingdom and France in anticipation of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War and the carve up of the Ottoman Empire between them. They are referred to as the 1923 borders, being those of Mandate Palestine, which were settled in 1923.

Israel’s borders with Egypt and Jordan have been formally recognized as part of the peace treaties with those countries, and with Lebanon as part of the 1949 Armistice Agreement.

D. 1967 Borders

After a period of high tension between Israel and its neighbors, Israel found out that Egypt prepared an attack. Egypt had massed approximately 100,000 of its troops in the Sinai, Syria and Jordan had also sent troops to their borders. On June 5^th, 1967, Israel launched strikes pre-emptive surprise air-strikes of a defensive nature against the Arab forces. The Six-Day War involved three distinct battlefronts, tied together by a shared desire on the part of the surrounding Arab states to eliminate Israel. The outcome was a swift and decisive Israeli victory. Israel took effective control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

After the war the Sinai was returned to Egypt. As a matter of fact, Israel returned 90% of the territories it gained lawfully in the six-day war in 1967. No other nation in the world has ever relinquished territories acquired from an aggressor in an act of self-defense. But Israel fulfilled its part in UN resolution 242 adopted on November 22, 1967, as the cornerstone for what it called “a just and lasting peace” that recognizes Israel’s need for “secure and recognized boundaries.” This resolution became the foundation for all peace negotiations until today.

The Muslim Brotherhood organized an Islamic revolt in Egypt, forcing President Mubarak to resign.

The media portrayed it as a struggle for democracy and human rights disaster, leaving out much of what goes on behind the scenes. We should have learned the lesson how Islamic groups have already taken over in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza by democratic means.

Even though the Muslim Brotherhood was forbidden to operate in Egypt, it emerged, according to Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman as the most organized opposition movement.

The Egyptian president responded to calls from his US counterpart Barack Obama that he step down saying, “you don’t understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now.” – Mubarak was a dictator who kept the radical Muslims under control. He also warned that the Muslim Brotherhood would take power in Egypt if he were to resign now. – This is exactly what happened today, on Saturday, February 5^th.

The West has the mistaken tendency to underestimate the hostility of the Muslim Brotherhood. But President Obama seems to think they are the solution to the problem. “The White House appears to be leaving Hosni Mubarak, an ally for three decades and lynchpin of Mideast stability, twisting slowly in the wind,” writes David Horowitz of the Freedom Center.

Wednesday, Feb. 2nd, President Barack Obama delivered an ultimatum to Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman and the army and security chiefs: Mubarak must be removed or else US aid to Egypt will be cut off. 

The Muslim Brotherhood has always made Islamic world domination one of its ultimate goals. It also opposed Egypt’s 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel. Muslim Brotherhood leaders have systematically called for “re-conquest” of “Islamic territories” from Andalusia (southern Spain) to Sicily and the Balkans.

Many Western analysts agree that the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas are one and the same. One leading Brotherhood cleric has said: “Kill Jews – to the very last one.”  A Brotherhood takeover of Egypt would only strengthen Hamas in Gaza. Another Brotherhood leader told an Arab language newspaper Monday that Egyptians “should prepare for war against Israel.”

The White House probably still doesn’t realize the extent of the catastrophe into which it has pushed the Middle East. None of us know what the final outcome will be in Egypt, Jordan Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon and later Saudi Arabia.  The only thing we know is that they all want to destroy Israel and kill the Jews.  – It is a very old war that started with Isaac and Ishmael way back in the Bible and still rages on to this day.

Israel witnessed in horror how quickly the White House abandons its’ allies. Obama has once again shown his hand in protecting Islam at the expense of Israel’s survival in every way he possibly can. He quickly turned on an old friend to the US in favor of the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood getting into power in Egypt. 

Netanyahu charged that Iran is looking forward to Egypt becoming “another Gaza, run by radical forces that oppose everything that the democratic world stands for.”  Now Israel must prepare for an Islamic terror state rising from Egypt’s ashes, because a Muslim Brotherhood takeover could lead to the imposition of Shariah law and dramatic changes in Egypt’s relationship to its neighbors.

Will Iran use its influence on the Muslim Brotherhood to steer Egypt away from its peace treaty with Israel and into the camp of Muslim radicals? If so, this coming war has the very distinct possibility of nukes being used and dragging the rest of the world into war as well. 

For the last few days we have been hearing about riots in the streets of Cairo threatening to oust President Hosni Mubarak from his 30 year reign as dictator of Egypt. 

The media makes us think this is a good thing because it’s all about fighting for democracy, however  the facts in Cairo are quite different.  The revolution started on Friday, encouraged by the Imams in the mosques. The protest for survival, that they can no longer afford the price of food and there are no jobs, has been put together with the Islamic propaganda they have listened to all their lives.

What the West needs to understand is that the ultimate goal of Islam is Muslim Imperialism. Muslims want to conquer the world for Islam to usher in a Caliphate—that is, a supreme totalitarian Islamic government that would forcibly impose Sharia law on everyone. So in a way, WWIII has already begun, but most people don’t know it.

Mubarak’s position is weak at best and his only option to stay in power is to begin shooting protesters dead in the street like they did in Iran. - The man who wants to replace him is the former head of I.A.E.A Mohamed ElBaradei who shielded the Iranian nuclear weapons programs for years. 

Looking over his shoulder is the Muslim Brotherhood connected to the Wahabi out of Saudi Arabia who supplied the terrorist for 9/11. He is seen as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt.

What is the Muslim Brotherhood? The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Al-Ikhwan) is the world’s oldest and largest Islamic political group. It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the Islamic scholar and Sufi schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna. - The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the“sole reference point for the life of a Muslim family, individual, community and state”.

The Brotherhood quickly gained many followers throughout North Africa and the Middle East and influenced the development of Muslim groups in other regions. It became politicized after 1938, rejecting Westernization, modernization, and secularization. Suppressed in Egypt after a 1954 assassination attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser, it operated clandestinely in the 1960s and ’70s. Beginning in the late 1980s, it experienced an upsurge; though its candidates were often listed under other parties, Brotherhood candidates competed in legislative elections in Egypt and Jordan. As a means of circumventing the ban, supporters run for office as Independents. -Other groups with different names, such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbullah, are today all part of it.

The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, and members have been arrested for their participation in it. - But Reuter’s News reported just today that 34 of its members, including seven members of the leadership, walked out of prison on Sunday after relatives of prisoners overcame the guards, a Brotherhood official said. The relatives stormed the prison in Wadi el-Natroun, 80 miles northwest of Cairo, and set free several thousand of the inmates, Brotherhood office manager Mohamed Osama told Reuters.

Emboldened by these demonstrations, other surrounding Islamic countries are following suit. Tunisia, Albania, Jordan, Yemen, - just to name a few.

Will the Muslim Brotherhood succeed to gain control? Will fanatical Islam end up ruling Egypt? At the time I am writing this, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei is calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down.

Whatever happens in Egypt, it will surely affect Israel and the entire West.

According to the Roman calendar we have just started the year 2011. The Romans counted the years starting from the date of the birth of Jesus. The Jewish calendar starts the year in September. It counts the number of years since creation, calculated by adding up the ages of people in the Bible back to the time of creation, which happened 5771 years ago.

All throughout the Jewish Bible, from Genesis to Malachi, hundreds of specific scriptures declare that G-D gave the ancient land of Canaan to the Jewish people, as their Promised Land to enjoy forever, with Jerusalem as their sacred capital.

The understanding of this covenant to Abraham is vital. The important point to realize is that this covenant is unconditional, that is, G-D never breaks a promise and will therefore not break this promise that He made to Abraham so long ago. - Even though sin and disobedience caused a temporary loss of this covenant blessing (2000 years), the covenant itself never got cancelled.

Prophet Isaiah predicted the rebirth of Israel with these words: “Who ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Is a country born in one day? Is a nation brought forth all at once? For as soon as Tzyion went into labor, she brought forth her children” - (Isaiah 66:8). Remarkably, when the British mandate over Palestine, authorized by the League of Nations, ended at midnight on May 15, 1948, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, declared publicly that Israel was once again a nation and now took its rightful place on the stage of world history.

Without doubt, the rebirth of the nation of Israel on May 15, 1948, is one of the most extraordinary of all the prophecies in the ancient Scriptures. During the last century, millions of Jews from more than seventy nations, often at great personal cost, have undertaken the arduous journey toward the fulfillment of the age-old Passover dream: “Next year in Jerusalem”.

Some people object; it can’t be the current State of Israel, because it is a secular government. – While the return to the Land today is a physical and political event, the Scripture makes it abundantly clear that the physical re-gathering and restoration of Israel is only a prelude to ultimate spiritual restoration. (Ezekiel 36:25-27)

Others say that the Land was stolen from the Palestinians and should be returned to them. - There never was a Palestinian state governed by Arab Palestinians in the history of civilization nor a nation referred to as “Palestine”. After the 1967 Six-Day War, when the Jordanians lost the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] and Gaza, Jordanian soldiers became “Palestinians” - basically over night. Even the so-called leader of these “Palestinian” people, Yasser Arafat, was an Egyptian! In short, these Arab “Palestinians” are a manufactured people…a people with no history and no authenticity… whose sole purpose for existence is to destroy the Jewish State! The very notion of a “Palestinian Arab nation” having ancient attachments to the Holy Land going back to time immemorial is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon the world! – I don’t know if it was Lenin or Hitler who formed the philosophy that if you told a big enough lie and you repeated it often enough, the people would begin to believe it as truth. We’re seeing exactly that strategy at work in the world today. In fact, the conflict that most threatens world peace is built on an enormous lie.

So, what will happen next? The Bible says there will be a battle over Jerusalem. There is also a prophecy about Damascus going up in flames. There is the promise of the Messiah and the Temple being re-built.

Don’t wait for your newspaper if you can read tomorrow’s headlines ahead of time. I encourage you to read these Scriptures if you want to understand where we are in God’s prophetic timetable.

Look to the nation of Israel as G-D’s promise for His Land and His people will be fulfilled.

The blame-game starts early on, - with Adam and Eve. They begin their lives in the Garden of Eden. There, G-D provides for all their needs, in return for which He imposes some commandments. One of them was not to eat from the tree of good and evil.

So now appears the Devil in form of a serpent. He talks Eve into trying the fruit from the forbidden tree.  You know the story. She eats of the tree’s fruit and gives a fruit to Adam, who eats it as well.

Soon after that, G-D calls out to them and asks Adam if he ate from the forbidden fruit.

Now we encounter the age-old problem; the inability of most people to acknowledge their guilt forthrightly but, instead, to “scapegoat” someone or something else. Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.

There is no group in the world that has been the target of as many twisted and ludicrous accusations as the Jews.

Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus. The fact that the Temple high priest was an appointee of the Romans, put there to protect Roman interests, was ignored. The crucifixion was not a Jewish, but a Roman punishment, reserved exclusively for those guilty of crimes against the empire, in accordance with Roman (not Jewish) laws. The actual reason for the execution was the fact that Jesus talked of his kingdom (against Caesar).

Tens of millions of European Christians once believed – and tens of millions of Muslims believe today – that Jews kidnap and slaughter non-Jewish children before Passover to use their blood for baking matzo.

Vast numbers of Europeans believed that Jews caused the Plague.

Much of France believed that the near-bankruptcy brought on by its failure to build the Panama Canal was caused by the Jews.

The great majority of Arabs and tens of millions of Muslims believe that the Jews (i.e., Israel) are responsible for the poverty, tyranny, absence of freedom and brutality that pervade the Arab world.

Lately, Jews have even been blamed for shark attacks in Egypt.

There is a very simple explanation to this question. The Jewish people are physical proof of the existence of G-d. The nations hate G-D. Because they hate G-D, they also hate his word, the Torah, and his people, the Jews. After all, there is nothing quite so upsetting to the post-modern ear, as to hear of a universal standard of truth or a “chosen people.” It is this very fact which causes so many to hate the Jews. In this modern age of computers and cell phones we tend to forget and deny the concept of Creation. People have begun to believe that they are the creators and able to control what happens in the world. Even among the Jewish People there are those who prefer not to think about G-D. The very idea of a Jewish State - especially one located in the ancient Land of Israel - forces even atheists to take notice.

Jews remind the sinful world of G-D’s rule, and of His laws. People today hate these ideas. Thus we see that anti-Semitism, at its heart, is anti-God and anti-Torah.

However, there’s only so long we can get away with putting the blame on someone else. Eventually, G-D himself will force the nations of world to face the consequences of their behavior.

During an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, September 2010, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed “Zionists” for fostering hostility between the United States and Iran. Muslims generally also accuse the Zionist regime of conducting terrorist activities in the US and around the world, while blaming the Muslims for it.

Too many people in this world have turned on Israel and Zionism with a vengeance.

Palestinians and their supporters have cleverly hijacked the definition of Zionism, and equated it with terrorism. Israel-bashing has become great sport, and even though words may not kill, they create increased confusion among uninformed Westerners.

So what exactly is Zionism? Who is a Zionist?

Zion (????) is a term that most often refers to Jerusalem and - by extension - the Biblical Land of Israel. The name Zion appears 154 times in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), texts dating back almost three millennia. It referred to a specific mountain near Jerusalem (Mount Zion), on which stood a Jebusite fortress of the same name that was conquered by David and was named the City of David. The term Zion came therefore to designate the area of Jerusalem where the fortress stood, and later became a metonym for Solomon’s Temple. Zion was eventually used as a name for the city of Jerusalem, the land of Judah, and the people of Israel as a whole.

It is hard to tell the story of Zionism without going back to “lech lecha,” Abraham’s charge in Genesis to “go forth” to a new land, the land of Israel. Every time the Jews were forced to leave the Land, they started yearning to return to their beloved city, Jerusalem. You find some examples in the book of Psalms, which have been frequently recited and even remembered in song lyrics. That’s why the Palestinians didn’t want Boney M. to sing “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, ye-eah, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” (Psalms 137:1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm1g8FFRArc. The aspiration of returning to their homeland was held by Jews exiled to Babylon some 2,500 years ago - a hope which subsequently became a reality.

Zionism is therefore nothing else than the yearning of the Jewish people to return to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. The yearning to return to Zion (biblical term for both the Land of Israel and Jerusalem) has been the cornerstone of Jewish religious life since the Jewish exile from the land two thousand years ago, and is embedded in Jewish prayer, ritual, literature and culture.

The modern term “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum. Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in response to the violent persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism in Western Europe. It is the Jewish national movement of rebirth and renewal in the land of Israel - the historical birthplace of the Jewish people. Modern Zionism fused the ancient Jewish biblical and historical ties to the ancestral homeland with the modern concept of nationalism into a vision of establishing a modern Jewish state in the land of Israel.

The founder of the modern Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, dreamed in his visionary 1896 book “The Jewish State,” of the Jewish state as a liberal model for the world. “We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die,” Herzl wrote. “The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.” In this passage, Herzl articulated the essential Zionist message that still holds true, and that echoes in the liberal nationalism of most Western nation states – that only through self-determination can utopian ideals be achieved, that a community first must unite and protect itself before it can become a force for good.

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Zionism is based on the long connection between the Jewish people and its land, a link which began almost 4,000 years ago when Abraham settled in Canaan, later known as the Land of Israel. It was there that their spiritual identity was shaped. In Israel they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

There never was another state claiming Jerusalem as its capital. It is to the ancient homeland that Jews from all over the world still return to. Israel is not just another country. It is destined to become the fulfillment of Biblical destiny. Those with eyes to see can see that this is already beginning. The Jewish People have begun to return home from all over the world. The only peace process that will work is when Israel decides to become a nation that stands alone with her G-d.

“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by G-d Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”– Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

Zionism is not a political movement, it’s not a terrorist organization; -  it’s a move of G-D among his people!

 

The Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported last week that the US is negotiating the future borders of the Palestinian state with Israel. One option is reportedly that Israel would lease land in East Jerusalem from the Palestinian State for 6-9 years. - The initiative comes from Mr. Obama’s office in Washington D.C.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office refused to confirm or deny the reports.

Why would America float the idea that Israel should lease the land from the Palestinian Arabs?  - Obviously because the men and women elected to govern that nation believe that East Jerusalem really belongs to the Palestinian Arabs.

Maybe someone should take the courage to stand up and tell Obama and the rest of the world that the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem is not to give and not to sell and not to get.

Obama is of course trying to set a trap for Israel. If the Netanyahu government rejects this demand outright, the other side will charge that the Israelis are not interested in making peace. If Israel agrees to the idea of leasing that part of Jerusalem, it would be acknowledging that it didn’t own it.

Obama forgets that the gift of this Land to Abraham and his descendants was based on an unconditional covenant from G-D himself. (Gen.17:7-8) That makes the Almighty the land owner. He passed it on to Abraham and Isaac as inheritance. The Land was not given to the descendants of Ishmael, but rather to the descendants of Isaac!

This week’s Torah portion (Toldot) tells the story of Esau and Jacob, and how Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew.

In ancient times, the birthright was a very important and sacred thing. It belonged to the firstborn. The family name and titles were passed along to the eldest son. He would also receive a chief portion of the inheritance. -  Esau’s birthright represented not only the inheritance of Isaac’s wealth, but also the inheritance of the land of Israel. On top of that it also passed on spiritual leadership.

Jerusalem has always belonged to Israel. It was never the capital of another country. A Palestinian state never even existed.

Hashem tells us in (Zech.8:7): “I will save my people from lands east and west; I will bring them back, and they will live in Jerusalem. They will be my people, and I will be their G-D, with faithfulness and justice.”

A birthright simply should never be sold or leased to another party, especially not to an enemy.

During my first visit to Israel I was told that Jerusalem was a holy city for three major religions, 1.Judaism, 2.Christianity and 3.Islam. Today, everybody mentions this as a fact.

But as I started to investigate the different religions, I studied the Tanach, the Christian Bible and the Koran, and discovered the following.

1. In the Jewish Bible, Jerusalem has many names: Salem (Shalem), Moriah, Jebuse (Yevuse), Jerusalem (Yerushalayim), and Zion (Tziyon). The most common term for the city, Yerushalayim, is mentioned 349 times in the Jewish Bible, while Tziyon is mentioned an additional 108 times.

The earliest mention of the site is Genesis 4:18, when Abraham interacts with Malchizedek, King of Shalem. In Genesis 22:1-19, the story of the Binding of Isaac (not Ishmael!) also takes place on “Mount Moriah” the site of the present-day Temple Mount. This area is located beneath the platform on which the Moslem Shrine, the Dome of the Rock, now stands.

When David was anointed King of Israel (c. 1000 BC), and subsequently united the tribes of Israel, he captured the city — which he perceived as an ideal site for the capital of his new kingdom. Then, with the King and the Ark of the Covenant in residence in the city, Jerusalem was transformed into both the political capital and the religious center of Israel. King David’s son and successor, Solomon, consolidated Jerusalem’s eternal religious significance for all Jews by building the First Temple.

2. The Christian connection starts during 1.Century, when the Romans ruled over that area. The Christian Bible tells us that Jesus came to Jerusalem with his Jewish parents when he was twelve and visited the Temple. Of the Biblical writers, Luke, reports the visit of Jesus at the age of 12. The book of John records that Jesus restored a blind man’s eyesight at the pool of Shiloah. The Shiloah pool is the end of the Shiloah channel that was dug to bring water from the Gihon spring to a reservoir inside the city walls. When you hike through Hezekiah’s tunnel, this is where you’ll end up – by the Shiloah pool. Jerusalem is therefore important to Christians; however, since Jesus was a Jew, it is still a Jewish connection.

3. What about the Islamic claim? Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran, not even once. So what is the story?

Sura 17 in the Koran, tells us that Mohammed flew, in a dream, on a horse, from the sacred mosque to the farthest mosque. Muslims claim it today to be the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. That would make Mohammed’s alleged overnight trip covering 1,000 miles from Mecca to Jerusalem, a trip to heaven, and a return to Mecca by morning.

Mohammed died in 632 of the Common Era. At the time of his death there was no mosque built in Jerusalem! The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. That’s about 80 years after Mohammed died.

Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the “Sacred Mosque,” and the mosque in Medina as the “Furthest Mosque.”

So much for the Islamic claim on Jerusalem as one of their holy places. Goebbels said once that “If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed.” The Islamic claim is a lie, that’s all it is.

There is only one legitimate claim to Jerusalem as their city, and that’s the Jewish claim. I think even Jesus would agree with that. J

In 622 AD, Muhammad left Mecca for the city of Medina, where he established a paramilitary organization that would spread his influence throughout Arabia.

According to the Hadith, the recorded sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, the prophet explains that Jihad is a holy war in Allah’s cause. What is Allah’s cause? To bring all unbelievers under the submission of Islam, because Islam is not just a religion, it is a way of life.

Islam spread far from its birthplace in the modern nation of Saudi Arabia.  By AD 1095, Muslims ventured into European lands. They came through Africa into Spain and marched from Turkey all the way to the gates of Vienna. Look it up in a history book, if you are not familiar with the crusades and Europe’s struggle push the Muslims back at that time.

Has anything changed since then? No, - the same battle is still raging world-wide. Only the methods have become modernized. No longer on horseback with a wielding sword, today’s Muslim Jihad warriors use cars, airplanes and bombs!

Forward history to the 1920s, when a young Egyptian named Hassan al-Banna formed a group called the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolph Hitler. In the 1930s, al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood became a secret arm of Nazi intelligence. Islam had much in common with the Nazi doctrines. The Muslims hated Jews; they hated democracy; and they hated the Western culture. It therefore became the official policy of the Third Reich to secretly develop the Muslim Brotherhood as an army inside Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood began to expand its influence during World War II. They even had a Palestinian section headed by the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the Muslim Brotherhood representative for Palestine. He even went to Germany and helped recruit an international SS division of Arab Nazis.

At the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood was wanted for war crimes. Their German intelligence handlers were captured in Cairo. The whole net was rolled up by the British Secret Service. But guess what happened?

Instead of prosecuting the Nazis — the Muslim Brotherhood — the British government hired them. They brought all the fugitive Nazi war criminals of Arab and Muslim descent into Egypt, and for three years they were trained on a special mission. The British Secret Service wanted to use the fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood to strike down the infant state of Israel in 1948! Only a few people in the Mossad know this, but many of the members of the Arab Armies and terrorist groups that tried to strangle the infant State of Israel were the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood. - Britain was not alone. The French intelligence service cooperated by releasing the Grand Mufti and smuggling him to Egypt, so all of the Arab Nazis came together.

But the Egyptians became nervous. Nasser ordered the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt or to be imprisoned.

Now the story gets even better; during the 1950’s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. When they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood like Azzam, became the teachers in the Madrasas, the religious schools where they taught Islamic Nazism.

So the Muslim Brotherhood became this poison that spread throughout the Middle East and around the world.

There are many flavors and branches, but they all have the same goal in common. What’s the goal? Remember Allah’s cause? Do you want to know the names of the different groups?

Muslim Brotherhood:           

• Hamas     (Militant Palestinians)
• Fatah       (Moderate Palestinians)
• Hezbulla   (Party of God)
• Al Quaeda (Military Base)

• Taliban (Students of Islamic Knowledge)     

Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, said: “We are all parts of the same body… We all should fight against the mutual enemy.” That’s how Jihad is fought on a global level.

Do you see the connection now?

Last week, Hezbollah’s television station, Al Manar TV, reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hoped to find time during his visit to Lebanon to throw a rock at Israel. He thought that could be the ultimate photo-op for him, the president of Iran making a symbolic gesture, throwing a stone towards the Zionist entity.

Wow, what a childish thing to do! - When children behave naughtily or mischievously, we say they get up to monkey business or are ‘monkeying around’.

During a live broadcast of a popular childrens’ TV show in Iran, about two years ago, one young girl surprised viewers when she told them that her father called her stuffed monkey ‘Ahmadinejad’. During a telephone call that took place on the show ‘Uncle Fornaj’, one of the most highly-watched shows in Iran, the show’s host asked a young female caller if she was good girl who obeyed her parents. “I’m a good girl and that’s why my father bought me a doll,” the girl responded, explaining that the doll was stuffed monkey. “My father calls it Ahmadinejad,” she said in response to the host’s follow-up question.

That made me think of Santino, the rock-throwing chimpanzee, at the Furuvik Zoo in the city of Stockholm, in Sweden. He used to calmly collect stones and fashion concrete discs before visitors arrived for the daily zoo visits. The chimp would then hurl the rocks across a moat toward onlookers.

Scientists were baffled that the chimp’s stone throwing at Zoo visitors seemed to be ‘premeditated’. They decided to stake out the enclosure to get a better idea of the chimp’s behavior. That’s when they discovered that, on five consecutive days, before the zoo opened, the chimpanzee gathered stones from the water and placed them in caches.

The chimpanzee was observed to gently knock on the concrete rocks, from time to time delivering harder blows to break off the detached surface section in discoidal pieces. These manufactured ‘missiles’ were often transported to the caches at the shoreline. - Later on each of these days, these stones were used as ammunition.