Prophecy Update - 3/19/02
America, Israel and Europe -
Cheney Pushes Arafat and Saddam into Same Corner DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis 19 March:
When US Vice President Richard Cheney began his whirlwind Middle East tour, only one regional leader was under US ultimatum. When he left, on Tuesday, March 19, there were two: Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Neither is expected to surrender.
DEBKAfile’s US and Israeli sources report that, as Cheney headed for his broadcast joint news conference with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, US envoy Anthony Zinni sped to Ramallah. He was instructed to give Arafat due warning: Take a week to toe the US line - or face the consequences.
The US line is embodied in the Tenet work plan, which both the Palestinians andIsrael formally accepted last year after its formulation by CIA director George Tenet. Its acceptance bound the Palestinian side to cease all acts of war and terror, to disband Palestinian terrorist organizations–his own Fatah-Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, as well as the Hamas, Jihad Islami and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and arrest their terror activists. Arafat is also required to round up all illicit weapons, including explosives, mortars and rockets, sever his ties with fellow-terrorist bodies overseas, such as the Hizballah, and the terror and intelligence groups sponsored by Iraq and Iran, and staunch the outpouring of anti-American and anti-Israeli hate propaganda over their media.
These steps would destroy the political, military and intelligence power bases on which Arafat’s regime stands. Giving him a week for the project is therefore unrealistic. However, if Anthony Zinni, who will be watching over his shoulder, reports to the US president and vice president that a serious start has been made, there will be rewards. Cheney is willing to return to the Middle East especially to meet the Palestinian leader and confer with him on steps for developing the US-Palestinian relationship and talk about the passage from Tenet to the Mitchell peace plan and the creation of a Palestinian state.
Arafat will also be allowed to travel to the Arab League summit opening in Beirut on March 28.
DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources explain that following the American script may be beyond Arafat, because it would entail tearing down the elaborate edifice he built up over many years for his Intifada against Israel. He would also have to write off what he regards as substantial gains in the 18 months of struggle. Should he decide nonetheless to cross that river, his external operational mainstays, the Hizballah, Iraq and Iran, would not let him walk away.
But for the first time, Arafat has been given an American deadline – and a tight one at that. Defiance will bring him into a frontal clash with a determinedly anti-terror Bush administration. Even giving in with good grace may not bring him much more than a helping hand from Washington to step down off the world stage and end a forty-year career of almost uninterrupted terror with dignity. Cheney broke new ground in yet a second key respect: He was presented by most world media as facing heavy inter-Arab and European insistence on action by the Bush team on the Palestinian issue, as their price for supporting America’s war on Iraq. Had the US leader given in, Arafat would have cheered and the Iraqi campaign receded into an uncertain future.
However, the vice president turned this equation round; he hitched the Arafat-Palestinian problem to the Iraqi issue. This put Saddam on the spot. Now, if Arafat meets America’s truce demands, Iraq stands to lose its forward line of defense against a US offensive and the option of opening a second front to ease US pressure. In Cheney’s hands, the two ultimatums tacitly merged into one.
Sharon responded to Cheney’s tactic by sacrificing one of his most precious precepts, the refusal to enter into political negotiations under fire. Accordingly, on Tuesday, March 19, Israel’s extended security cabinet endorsed the unilateral acceptance of the Tenet ceasefire blueprint and undertook to apply the Mitchell plan thereafter. This was deemed a fitting quid pro quo for the American stratagem that pushed Arafat into sharing a corner with Saddam Hussein.
Like Arafat, Syrian president Bashar Assad, was cold-shouldered by the US vice president, who skipped Damascus in his tour. Assad will not have missed the ultimatum dealt out to Arafat, and will understand that he too has been put on notice by Washington to abandon his ties with the Hizballah and Baghdad, or else.
Israel Today - March 19, 2002 - 6 Nisan, 5762
Israel withdrew its forces from Palestinian-ruled areas in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip today, clearing the way for direct talks on a cease-fire. Tanks and troops rumbled out of Bethlehem and the northern Gaza Strip under the cover of darkness. Palestinian police replaced Israeli forces to prevent shooting, according to agreements reached between security chiefs from both sides.
However, the pullout did not prevent further Palestinian attacks. In a pre-dawn raid, two Palestinian terrorists infiltrated an army training area in the Jordan Valley, killing an Israeli officer and wounding three soldiers. The gunmen were shot and killed in a firefight with Israeli troops, the army said. The terrorists, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and with explosives strapped to their bodies, opened fire at short range on a group of soldiers conducting exercises around 1:30 a.m. Reinforcements arrived quickly and killed the assailants. In Gaza, the army said Israeli troops killed two Palestinian gunmen trying to plant a roadside bomb near the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
The Israeli pullout coincided with a brief visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney, who said today that he`s prepared to meet with Yasser Arafat—if he makes “100 percent effort...to stop the violence and the terror.” "I told the Prime Minister that I would be ready to meet with Chairman Arafat in the period ahead at a site in the region to be determined," Cheney said at a joint news conference with Ariel Sharon. If Cheney meets Arafat, he would be the highest-level Bush administration official to do so. President Bush has boycotted Arafat because of his support for terrorism.
Sharon said he backed Cheney`s decision. "We will support and back any American decision when it will come to phase B or any other phase in that struggle against terror," he said. Sharon said he would lift a travel ban on Arafat and allow him to go abroad, if he abides by the cease-fire plan.
Palestinian officials welcomed Cheney`s announcement as a positive step in the right direction. But earlier, they expressed disappointment that Cheney did not meet with Arafat or other Palestinian officials during his 24-hour visit here. "I don`t understand why this American administration and the vice president are trying so hard just to be one-sided, and to listen to one side at the expense of the other side," said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has again blasted Israel, this time in a letter to Prime Minister Sharon. Annan said Israel was using methods that suggested "the fighting has come to resemble all-out conventional warfare.” Israel is fully entitled to defend itself against terror,” Annan wrote, “but this right does not discharge it of its obligation to respect the fundamental principles and rules of international law."
Thatcher Recommends Abandoning EU, Thinks UK Should Join NAFTA -- by Jack Kinsella
Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described the European Union as 'perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era' and UK participation in it as 'a political error of historic magnitude'.
Britain's Iron Lady's assessment was recorded in a new book, "Statecraft" that argues Britain's future would be better served by membership in NAFTA than it would following the course being charted in Brussels.
Mrs. Thatcher stopped short of demanding the UK pull out completely, but said it was 'worth considering'. "It is frequently said to be unthinkable that Britain should leave the European Union," she wrote. "But the avoidance of thought about this is a poor substitute for judgment."
Margaret Thatcher is not a lone voice of dissent in the UK. British conservatives have never been particularly comfortable with the idea of tying their future to that of the Continent.
Although they have much in common, there is much that divides them. One look at the disparity between British and European support for America’s war on terror establishes that.
It has been often noted that America plays little, if any role in end-time prophecy. Similarly, while Russia and China are easily identified by geographically and historically and Israel and a number of Muslim states are named specifically, Britain is as difficult to identify as America is as we move into the Tribulation period.
Daniel 2 records that Daniel was summoned to interpret a dream that troubled King Nebuchadnezzar. The king’s dream was of an image with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver and legs of iron. The legs of iron had feet and toes of 'iron mixed with miry clay' [Dan 2:41].
Interpreted, the image was of four world empires, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. Rome is represented by two legs. Shortly before the empire collapsed, Rome divided into two. The western empire ruled from Rome, and the eastern empire ruled from Constantinople [Istanbul in modern Turkey].
The ten toes on the Roman legs have long been interpreted as representing ten end times’ political divisions, or 'kingdoms' in the revived, democratic [partly strong, partly weak 2:42] Roman Empire. Those ten toes correspond perfectly to the ten core states of the modern EU.
This end times’ empire was represented to Daniel as a beast with ten horns. Daniel wrote, "I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things." [Daniel 7:7]
That eleventh horn, the antichrist, will remove three kings from his revived Roman council.
The Scandinavian states joined the EU gingerly, and has never been completely at ease there. Scandinavia was not part of ancient Rome. And England, while once the Roman province of Britannia, is torn between membership in the EU and the English speaking West.
It is also worthy of note that England, Northern Ireland and Scotland share a single membership in the EU as the United Kingdom.
A Word of Caution
One can play numbers games to try and make the current EU fit into ten nations, adding some, subtracting three and so forth until you get to ten. But guessing dilutes your witness. We have a more sure word of prophecy. And that’s what is being demonstrated here.
Five hundred years before Rome was born, Daniel outlined in detail both Rome's fall and its revival in the last days. It would exist at the same time a reborn Israel would be fighting for its national survival.
Today, that revived Rome is beginning to thin itself out as peripheral states look to their own best interests.
There is a process beginning here, as the blurry outline of Daniel's Rome begins to come slowly into focus. This process of elimination, national realignment and shifting loyalties will continue according to the blueprint model given by Scripture.
Getting caught up in trying to make the EU fit Daniel's vision of Rome turns an amazing demonstration of God’s sovereignty over space and time into a parlor trick. It is enough to know what God said would happen, and to let events speak for themselves.
Bible prophecy is aligning itself accordingly, without any help from us. How it will get from here to there is irrelevant, really, but getting caught up in speculation [usually wrong] weakens our witness of the facts.
Not the least of which is this. Twenty-five hundred years ago, a Hebrew slave in Babylon outlined in detail the events unfolding before our eyes. They will continue to unfold as prophesied, we needn’t jump the gun, trying to make things fit before the time.
The final form of Daniel's Rome is not yet, but it is close. But only fifty years ago, Europe was rubble. Ten years ago, it was a 'vision'.
Today the EU is a super-state with a common currency, federal government and a rapidly maturing anti-American and anti-Christian bias. The stage is set for the little horn.
The time is upon us. We needn't rush the process. It's moving quickly enough already.
America, Israel and Europe -- by Mordechai Nisan
Under the leadership of France, the European Union continues its campaign on behalf of the Palestinians and against Israel.
In early February this year, the EU foreign ministers, meeting in Spain, called for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, which would be endorsed by Israel and accepted without delay as a member-state of the United Nations.
At the same time, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine took a political swipe at the United States for what he considered Washington's one-sided support of Israel that implements, said Vedrine, Sharon's repression of the Palestinians. Europe, flooded with Muslims and desperate to escape Arab terrorism, pursues the path of appeasement.
Then, in late February, the Europeans renewed their scheme to impose customs duties on Israeli imports manufactured in the territories across the 1967 Green Line borders. Considering Jewish settlements illegal, the Europeans did not want to support their economic sustenance even though Israel and the EU are committed to a free-trade agreement.
Having swallowed the propagandistic sop that Jewish residence in the Hebrew homeland is alien occupation of Palestinian lands, the Europeans backed Jewish expulsion as the key to peacemaking.
The call for a Palestinian state, a European political refrain since the 1980s, is designed to destroy over 150 Israeli communities that support a Jewish population of approximately 200,000 people in the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, and the Katif zone in the Gaza area.
With Palestinian terrorism wiping the streets of 'little Israel' in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Hadera, Afula, Beersheva and Nahariya with Jewish blood, the Europeans propose to likewise end Jewish life in the territories.
On Feb. 26, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, where Israel prevented his free movement since the assassination of government minister Rehavam Zeevi in December.
Solana came to burn incense on the Palestinian altar and tell his friend that the EU recommends European and American observers to monitor the transformation of the deteriorated security situation into one that will launch a political process of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.
Solana and Arafat also discussed the new Saudi initiative of Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from all the territories.
This Arab diplomatic duplicity of promising little and ultimately giving nothing, together with incessant Palestinian terrorism, form the central axis of the Muslim war against Israel.
Jews and Europe
The role of Europe in sanctifying and sustaining the Palestinian assault is historically juxtaposed against Israel's own connection with the continent of Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid and London.
It is worth reflecting on why Israel, soon after its political founding in 1948, rushed into the arms of Europe, seeking diplomatic recognition and perhaps strategic alliances.
The Israelis displayed no sense of history at all. Six million Jews had been murdered just a few years earlier by Germans and their continental collaborators.
European soil is drenched with the blood of Jews in its thousand-year assault by massacres, pogroms and inquisitions on the helpless and defenseless Jews.
England expelled the Jews and France burned the Talmud. Italy invented the ghetto and Russia fabricated blood libels to crush and liquidate innocent Jews.
The tale of Jewish life in Europe is central to the collapse of humanism and morality in the Christian lands of enlightenment, literature, culture and learning.
But Europe's dogged pursuit of the Jews did not end north of the Mediterranean, for it crossed the waterway into the Middle East in joining in the Muslim war against the Jews.
The European-Arab alliance against Israel has known, among other examples, the French arms embargo of the 1960s, European compliance with Egypt and Syria in the 1973 war, the Venice Declaration recognizing the Palestinians' right to self-determination in 1980, and imperious declarations in the 1990s such as that nefarious statement by French President Chirac in Ramallah in October 1996, that "a Palestinian state is not a danger to anyone." Presumably, not to France.
Europe Funds Barbarism
The intifada al-Aqsa that exploded in October 2000 handed the Europeans an opportunity to portray barbarism as a national liberation struggle. By early 2002, about 300 Israeli Jews had been killed in roadside attacks and suicide-bombing explosions on buses and street corners and in other public places.
Palestinian urban terrorism knew no bounds or limits. All Jews were ready targets, unsuspecting and unarmed. The Arabs exploited Israel's open society, and it has been open season on the Jews.
Meanwhile, the Europeans assumed the role of financial patron for the Palestinian war against Israel. Since Oslo in particular, EU monies have filled Arafat's corrupt coffers.
While snotty Belgium assumed the legal role of judging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's part in the Sabra and Shatilla events of September 1982, Germany provided funds to Palestinian NGOs to promote a civil society.
But the Arafatian cult of personality and the role of intra-Palestinian violence served to set the parameters of injustice within the hoary realm of the Palestinian political hell in the terrorist statelet.
Europe's Shameful Behavior
Overall, the present (and continuous) European political bludgeoning of Israel places Europe in a particularly ignoble international light. The Sept. 11 terrorism spree struck the United States, not Europe; and the Europeans, while watching the resolute Bush administration take action and plan more actions, have hardly sided with their Atlantic superpower and NATO ally.
The Europeans prefer to cringe at the foot of defiant Islam, as they did during the Istanbul conference promoting Muslim-European dialogue, rather than affirm the conscience of civilization.
The imbalance in American-European relations is striking in the light of Islamic terror.
When European countries needed assistance from afar, the United States sent its army across the ocean in 1917. Again, in the Second World War, America stood by the allied forces of Britain and France against Nazism and fascism. Gen. Eisenhower made possible De Gaulle's triumphant entry into Paris in 1944.
The United States demonstrated its active solidarity in the name of freedom for a Europe threatened and victimized by aggression and enslavement. America has displayed gallantry and principle in standing up for friends in a way that by comparison exposes Europe's shameful behavior since Sept. 11.
Western Europe owes its post-World War II survival to the United States, which contained Soviet and Communist expansionism that could have swallowed up Bonn, Rome and Paris. But sadly, Washington cannot rely upon the Europeans to stand by their great American protector.
U.S. And Israel Fight Alone
Europe is not only a continent gushing with anti-Jewish sentiments and anti-Israeli policies; anti-Semitism, we learn, is part of polite conversation in European political salons. The destruction of Jewish properties and physical attacks upon Jews are a popular Muslim pastime in republican France.
But Europe is also an ungrateful ally to the most decent and courageous world power in history – the United States of America. As European sycophants succumb to the Arabs, by slovenly denying a clash of civilizations, and woo the Muslims by conniving with their genocidal plans against Israel, the United States continues to marshal its public opinion and military forces to continue the war against terrorism and its state supporters.
The United States will have to go it alone, like Israel, though they can join together. For when all is said and done, these two countries, technologically and militarily sophisticated as they blessedly are, have truly captured the high ground of morality and justice among the jungle of nations.
The flow of history points toward not only the moral collapse and cowardice of Europe, but also the attempted arrogation of world hegemony by the Arab and Muslim forces. It need not turn out that way, except for the myopic and selfish European approach, which will in the short and long run prove both shameful and suicidal.
America, we hope, will survive the domestic prey emanating from hateful Muslim groups; and Israel, we pray, will recover its political sanity with the dissipation of the Oslo delusion.
For the moment, the battle must be pursued, and nothing less than a clear victory should be acceptable to George Bush and Ariel Sharon. Let it be clear to all that decisively devastating the enemies, not appeasing them, is the only way to assure survival.
America, not Europe, made the world safe from Nazism and Communism. It is now obliged to make the world safe from Islam.
Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, proposed burning the synagogues of innocent Jews, not a very civilized proposition. The Muslims destroyed churches and denied their construction, even in Egypt today, and arrogated Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron for Islamization.
But over the long run of history, anything less than razing the mosques to the ground and silencing the muezzin prayer callers may not prove adequate to assure a safe and civilized world for decent-minded, freedom-loving people anywhere.
Mordechai Nisan teaches and writes on the Middle East. He may be reached at mnisan@roth.hul.huji.ac.il.
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