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DW TV has reported that Schröder in his leading role in Germany, has made it clear that there is need for more EU involvement in the peace-war processes that currently stand astride Afghanistan and Co. (with Middle Eastern extensions, spurs and sites), and that this is the way to have due say in the eventual residues, results and dispositions of things.

This is as it should be, for a Europe destined for power, prophetically!
 
 

Meanwhile, Sharon has given his ultimatum to the PLO, as noted in News 182, our last chapter. Now Benjamin Netanyahu, a man with powers of speech, has advised that he applauds the determination, resolution and persistent pursuit of terrorism on the part of the USA. THIS, he says, is the way to do it. One must, then be businesslike. The US is doing this, so what is the problem ?

This appears to be twofold from this spokesman, and former Israeli PM. First, there is criticism of Israel, and worse, effort to have her 'tone down' her response to the mere multiplied murders of citizens, such as a Cabinet Minister. This, however,  is not the way, the approved manner, according to the USA exemplification, for handling that phenomenon. Terrorism needs radical surgery.

The second 'problem' ? It is this. The USA, he avers, is guilty of hypocrisy in speaking thus to Israel. Is it not pursuing the culprits with a zeal, a passion, a purpose, a determination, a cohesion, a concert of carefully organised assaults and progressive plans, not rash perhaps, but quite radical in intention ? This seems to be the drift of the ex-PM of Israel’s charge of hypocrisy, in the context. Is Israel, certainly with the addition of the subtraction of a Cabinet Minister to consider, and contemplate ? and still, in any case, in principle to engage in endless colloquies, dispassionate plans with those often enough declaring that the occupation of its CAPITAL CITY is their intention, or of the land, or Israel's removal, or subjugation, whether at the word of one, or at the declaration of  groups of Israel-exit advocates ? Is Israel then to do this year by year, solemn- faced, while being defaced ? Its cities are to be bombed, its people harassed, its citizens indiscriminately shrapnelled, its police maligned, its defensive forces constantly on alert to defend its people,
from enemies within, while many of these are in alliance, open and declared, with hostile foreign powers ? Is it to undertake such a response with the tuition of mentor USA, itself doing the PRECISE opposite ?

It is not our intention to do more than to try to understand the charge of hypocrisy. That is Netanyahu's term. Inconsistency however appears beyond the reach of any argument. Is there a foreign power trying to oppress the liberty, democracy, due rule by elected officials in the USA/Israel ? Is one to make a multinational appeal for action, and the other to have a multinational appeal for inaction ?

Is there a number of people within one's country seeking by dynamite, dynamism and activism to subdue one's plans, programs and principles, and take over part of one's capital, in Israel/USA ? And is it that in Washington/Jerusalem this has occurred with clear and barefaced force ? Will one find this intolerable entirely, and advise the other to find it tolerable and suitable for negotiation and ‘settlement’ in terms of making a donation of a large section of the capital ?^*1

Is there a body of people of organised character, possessed of arms and money, with international connections and many channels of operations and cash flow, which is seeking to DISRUPT one's country, subdue one's land, so that it will do what it wants, change its policies, in order to avoid still further 'punishment', relating to Israel/USA ?

In each case, the answer is yes.

Is there therefore a series of principles about national integrity, that it should not cowering in the face of violent thuggery within, and evil eyes without, compromised or surrendered by those seeking to determine what is right in ways other than by foreign and internally rebellious might ? If so, do they apply to the USA and not to Israel ? Has either nation never fought a war for the acquisition of territory ? Do both nations offer to their citizens (without being in any way involved in talking of perfection, but of substantial trend), substantial liberties and aid in distress ? Do both consider that they have a place in the world for such principles, procedures, plans and ways, and that those who wish to decimate them, ruin these plans, dictate by killing a few thousand people here and there, are out of order, should not be permitted to luxuriate in any world of any sort of reasonable order, to say no more ?

If so, why such diversity of response, as that recommended on the one hand, and done on the other, by the USA with special concern for Israel ? Neither nation is RUN by Christian principles, but both are concerned with democracy. Why such a gulf therefore ?
We could go further. Let us ask another question.

Are both nations a residue of a horrendous World War II or any other war, in which not far from one half of the nation was destroyed by a dictator, so that their suffering far outweighed that of the other participants in that conflict ?
Here the answer for the first time must be NO! USA took nowhere near this beating in World War II, and has suffered in no way comparably to the Jewish people, whose internationally defined, but never implemented homeland, was to be Palestine BY GIFT! Was the USA appointed by international convention to receive the USA ? Again, the answer must be no!

Are we then not in order in ascribing a certain degree of inconsistency to the USA when it tells Israel to do precisely what it is not itself doing, when faced with a challenge in so many points so parallel to that faced by Israel, that it would be amusing, if it were not so tragic that mirth must flee!
 

When it is the USA which for years past now, has been requesting Israel to do, what Israel has in large measure been doing in those murderous times of internal destruction from foreign foes in alliance with others within, who abuse their citizenship and insist on undemocratic means of furthering their cause, even horrendously inhuman kinds of violence, practised now on the Jewish residue who have made their land great, despite all this and their often small numbers,  in vast contrast to what the Moslem inhabitants did before they came: then the case grows darker.

If the USA has for years counselled and constrained in various ways, so that Israel has with this push been the more inclined to pacify its opponents, accept their destructions, make minor incursions very often in reply, and when beyond all measure harassed from some foreign country, made strikes, and then returned to base; and if Israel has for years past been often most restrained in response to terrorism, open and unabashed, then the case is the graver. When these disruptive heroics of blood flow have been further tarnished with wild religious challenges backed by force, then this is an odious scenario indeed, for the multiply invaded nation.

Not only is the USA  counselling now what it is not doing; it has for long been counselling what has not worked, and is unlikely to work in Israel, and advocating what by the USA's own action, seems foreign to its own concepts of safety, propriety, law and righteousness! Not only so, as one of the chief allies of Israel, in times now long past, its equivocal actions both in recent years and currently, to say no more, undermine what has been helped, and tend to betray what has been propounded.

If Israel is to experience one more 'friend' whose friendship requires a new definition of the term, with Britain itself earlier likewise marvellous in help, then horrendous in betrayal, it may indeed remind one of Judas. How the wheel turns! Nevertheless, that was one man; this is a nation.
 
 

IF ANY NATION turns from its gospel privileges, as Paul so vigorously reminds us in Romans 11; if the Gentiles act with vaunting self-possession, pleased with their replacement of Israel as a God-praising nation, or nations, and nevertheless, eroded, proceed without faith, there is nothing select about Israel's fall. The Gentiles can expect JUST THE SAME!

It is a thing most wonderful to be a friend of God (Acts 2:23, John 15:10,14, I John 1:7ff., Hebrews 11:6); but if a people act with self-seeking substitutes for faith, and demean the name of God, what then ? He is merciful but not manipulable! It is time to seek the Lord.

• If the appalling US prayer meeting with presidential attendance^*2, in which Islam and Christianity, as well as other 'faiths' were participants, is a sign of faith, it is certainly in no way related to Biblical faith, except in the mathematical sense, that it is its negation! (II Cor. 6:14, cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7).

As one who would wish both nations well, if only they would follow the path of righteousness divinely prescribed and attested, one cannot pretend that this situation is good. Such conduct does not please God and is forbidden in the Bible. In fact, for both, it is one here: Israel nationally rejects Jesus Christ in name explicitly; while USA in its current co-ordination with Islam, speaking presidentially as we have seen in earlier news, of Muslim teaching as 'good', and praying jointly, is compromising Christ so massively that one has to turn with some effort to find an equally appalling example of infidelity from Israel of old. With SOME effort ... but alas, the cases are sufficiently numerous, if disastrous to that smaller people.

One thinks of Ahaz, not only  sending home specifications for an idolatrous altar, from Syria a defeated people, but also temporising in the matter of even accepting the direct offer of divine deliverance, and being duly rebuked for it (II Kings 15:7-1, II Chronicles 28:23, Isaiah 7). Yes he even had the idolatrous altar, the thing on which he offered as at other times on the other altar to God:  duly made by a priest in Israel! Yes that is certainly co-ordinate with these contemporary things. It comes close to insubordinate spiritual synthesis, as if God were a product for man to make. Alas, man, made by God, must answer to Him, and to His word!

It is not what you think you are doing which tends to speak the last word: it is what you are doing. If you do not understand, this is relevant if you have no opportunity to understand, but when II Corinthians 6:14 exists and its teaching known, excuse does not. It is not however our intention to seek to estimate guilt, but to exhibit the peril of these proceedings, the inconsistency of the USA, and the fact that BOTH Israel and the USA at the NATIONAL levels, are in the greatest clash with the divine commandments. It will not help either nation to talk about what it means, when it ignores what God says. It is NOT what God means when HE speaks, that you should reject the Christ, or join Him with others, as if God were multipliable (Colossians 3:17).

Meanwhile in the USA, we learn of a brisk trade in mini-parachutes, so that people upwards of the 10th floor in buildings, might be able to jump out of windows with opportunity of survival. Alas, though technology can help reduce a problem, it does not remove its cause.

This, it is not as some Arabs and indeed, Hussein by recent report, would wish to suggest. DO harm and expect to GET it, is his essential message.

In fact, the ‘harm’ is NOT that the USA in times past helped Israel not to be swallowed up by force oriented religious extremists (such as Nasser's Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria in 1948), desiring the nation’s immediate demise, or to push it into the sea, as the clamour has been. Nor is it that the US seeks restraint on the part of those who would like to do to Israel, what Saddam Hussein DID to Kuwait: take it over! Yet let us use Hussein reported nostrum about harm. Apparently then Iraq was not doing anybody any harm, in this invasion, or in the shocking damage to the Persian Gulf which followed, with vast fires burning. Let us emphasise it:  the new line of Hussein, as attested in a surprising interchange with a computer Web party in the USA, is this: DO not harm if you do not wish to SUFFER any harm! He wants no harm ? does he then do none …

Indeed, if this were applied, then Hussein would have to undo the invasion of Kuwait, undo the repeated declaration of war as still continuing since 1948 against Israel, made in the early nineties at the time of the Gulf war, remove its missiles sent to Israel, stop oppressing those whom he has killed from time to time because they wish another regime, and instead allow an election, undo what he has done heartlessly to the Kurds, and allow people to seek the Lord freely; for if there is any great harm even very great, it is interfering with the opportunities of people to find God. For this purpose, they do not need military help, and may proceed without being directed by some Army figure who wants to use guns and force, violence and direction as if he were God, or as if none other need exercise a free thought about the matter, but he and his junta, his rulers, his regime and his understanding.

No, this certainly does not ring true. But it is not so far out of step with what is being said in some Arab circles, such as that in Lebanon, suggesting that if the USA does not want people to hate it, it should change its policies. Indeed, it rather closely resembles it.

HOW then would they like the US to change its policies. There are many it might with advantage change, as we see in this very article; but there is one which it would not wisely change in the desired direction!

Of course, Israel was high on the agenda in the wise advice offered to the US about policy change in order to reduce or remove hatred. Bin Laden’s words,cited in Ch. 8, Lord of Life, End-note 1, make it clear just WHAT change is in mind. As to Israel, the US  should dump it. In fact, the US is growing much nearer to this already, in its exceedingly inconsistent suggestions and urgings of years past now, in the Clinton era especially. Its exhortations often were not least, in terms of assault on the nation,  to take it and hand over territory to terrorists, almost as if the verbal similarity were a suggested path for the due end of the conflict.

Doubtless if it pursued this path still further, and left Israel as we saw in ‘babes in the wood’ (Ch. 5 above) , then there would be not mere lack of hatred, but positive acclaim! So goes the world, which loves the odious and prefers the immoral.
 
 

But trade ? Ah yes! IN SHANGHAI the topic is hot. The APEC meeting is looking at the issue. Trade helps peoples to grow richer, declares Bush. It is a good thing and ought to be increased, and the freer, perhaps, the better. What however of things that are not trade ? Like the failure of that valiant little island, Taiwan to be included at all in the APEC meeting!

Is China, being bigger, therefore better ? Is its ruthless suppression of liberty, its endless exposures by people such as the twice imprisoned  Harry Wu, who spoke to the US Senate, and the attestations of many unregistered churches, its assault on Falun Gong, its tirades against spiritual liberty which seems almost an obsessively construed enemy of the national directorate:  is all this to be ignored ?

Is it GOOD because trade is involved ? Is it irrelevant that such things lurk like drab shadows in the vile and violent background ? Is it SO GOOD that preferred nation status is given for TRADE, and the humanity 'question' is simply ignored, as if thousands of US citizens should be interred for believing and practising the Bible ? Does it not really matter ? Is principle not so important as
trade ?

Are the terms of trade now to be redefined, as the best deal a nation can get for its assorted products, in terms of exchangeable world products, when moral issues are anaesthetised for the sake of clear thought ? Are there to be terms FOR trade ? But these would be just an example, without the jargon, of the terms of trade.

You can trade more if you accept these terms!

This is another element which would be better terminated, since moral failure in the face of trade advantage has various names, none of which appeal.

It might however be put that it is no business HOW things are made, when one is trading. They might be made by children whose futures are ruined by harsh conditions, and who are stolen from parents for just such a purpose, as is reported for some, but what of it! It is the price that matters.
Such is this philosophy. It is unsavoury.

It is true that if one traded only with perfect nations, one would not trade. Equally, if one did not relate, one might influence the less. Thus, if one saw a thug attacking an elderly lady, one might argue that it would be better to speak politely and carefully to him, so that in due process, he might feel the impact of one's more civilised spirit, and review his operations on the old lady. In the meantime, of course, she dies or suffers other outcomes of onset.

Again, if one shut one's eyes to it, and forget about it, it could be urged that what the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve about. One could then engage in trade with the thug, relative to the 'goods' he had in his possession for trade.

It is possible. It is not plausible and it is not good. It is co-operation with cruelty.

There are imperfections which stop short of such dealings. Where there is SYSTEMATIC and governmentally sanctioned evil, which is cruel, inhuman and heartless, continued and not revoked despite repeated protest, then there is participation in the fruits, or there is not. Participation is with some rigour to be excluded where knowledge is present, and morality rules.
 
 

So does the world trip merrily to its end. Things develop in many directions.

The fourth Empire of Daniel, following Babylon, Media-Persia and Macedonia's Alexandrian Empire, is Rome. It has had its strength and brokenness, both as predicted. It has had its outreaches from Portugal, Spain, France, to some extent, Germany, Holland, Britain, the last in a vast formally Protestant thrust. However Churchill really did begin to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, despite his apparent distaste for it (that is, such presiding, not the Empire...) , and it is gone with the rest. Europe embraces them all, one and all. The European Union continues with sails set. It wants more involvement, as we saw at the outset of this coverage. But of course! The wind is blowing.

The US is becoming far more internationally minded, and Bush was actually delighted to acknowledge NATO warplanes coming to continental USA to help protect it, and has expressly indicated that the USA will work more and more closely with the UN! The lines are being reeled in, international thought, security, programs, survival and anti-terror making them come near to storm warning. It is when the other features of degraded religion and false faiths are brought into the predicted picture, with Jerusalem's return to the Jews as prescribed, that we realise that it is already a gale warning.

The departure from the faith is growing too^*3 .  It is growing back to the times when it was odd, or rather so, to be a Christian. Oh you can join with Islam in prayer, with the pope, or with dogs barking in 'tongue' nights and so on! You can ignore the purity of God as propounded in commandments to this end! You can do all this and even have a grand old time attacking Bible believers under various misconceptions and misconstructions, so useful in manipulating people (cf.  The Biblical Workman, Appendix 3, Light of Dawn Ch.  2 ).

Of course you can.

As it says in Ecclesiastes on a more general, but parallel topic (11:9-10):

• "Rejoice, O young man, in your youth,

And let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth;
Walk in the ways of your heart,
And in the sight of your eyes;
But know that for all these
God will bring you into judgment.
Therefore remove sorrow from your heart,
And put away evil from your flesh,
For childhood and youth are vanity."

Again, in Proverbs 1, we hear this:

"Wisdom calls aloud outside;
She raises her voice in the open squares.
She cries out in the chief concourses,
At the openings of the gates in the city
She speaks her words:
 

'How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
For scorners delight in their scorning,
And fools hate knowledge.
Turn at my rebuke;
Surely I will pour out my spirit on you;
I will make my words known to you.
Because I have called and you refused,
I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded,
Because you disdained all my counsel,
And would have none of my rebuke,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when your terror comes,
When your terror comes like a storm,
And your destruction comes like a whirlwind,
When distress and anguish come upon you.

'Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;
They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge
And did not choose the fear of the Lord,
They would have none of my counsel
And despised my every rebuke.

'Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way,
And be filled to the full with their own fancies.
For the turning away of the simple will slay them,
And the complacency of fools will destroy them;
But whoever listens to me will dwell safely,
And will be secure, without fear of evil.' ”

Meanwhile Israel is occupying certain West Bank towns. It is NOT, they asseverate, to re-occupy. It is an operation to reduce the power to attack, of restraint.

One can only contrast the action of the USA.

It is time for the world to understand Israel's situation. It was never USA or Britain, as in the Balfour Declaration, which was the final supporter of this divinely disciplined people, on its return from the chastisement it has endured. It was the Lord, even He against whom the nation rebelled (just as prophesied in Deuteronomy 32),  with just those results.

God always has, has had and will have it in hand. It with HIM that they will deal,  who forsake and rake her, now that she is divinely returned.  As likewise predicted^*4, Jerusalem will, as it has done in precise accord with prophecy (Zech. 12), be a heavy stone for those who want to compromise her place in Israel. The Lord will act when the time is come - as in Deuteronomy 32, Micah 7, Isaiah 59, Zephaniah 2, Isaiah 66, Ezekiel 36-39. We have considered these things before - as in Lord of Life Ch. 5, The Biblical Workman Chs.  1 and 3, SMR Ch. 9.

As a view grows nearer, however, it is often good to consider it again!

When it happens, it will be quite a consideration (cf. Isaiah 66. Zechariah 14). The things which fail in the word of God are zero. With Him, mercy may delay, but He does not dally.
 
 

*1 Is Washington being negotiated with Mexico, or Britain, or Spain ?

*2
See Lord of Life  Chs.  4,  8 with Ch. 3 and Ch. 5 above.

*3
See for example:

SMR Ch. 8, pp. 684-706,Acme,  Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch.  9 , Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch.  3 (the soporific self, and the unity glide, under the sedation of sin), News, Facts and Forecasts 13, 14, Repent or Perish Ch.  5 , It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Chs.  11,  5,  4,  With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 11,  Things Old and New Ch. 10 and Epilogue

*4  SMR Ch. 9, Appendix A.