A big focus of our work here at Blessed Buy Israel is strengthening Israel as the Jewish State. Forces like the United Nations, European Union, and ICJ want to tear Israel apart, weaken its Jewish identity, and eventually exterminate it, establishing in its place a terrorist state. Internal enemies like Hamas and the PA engage in despicable terrorism, slaughtering innocents as part of their antisemitic agenda. Just last Friday, terrorists murdered seven Israelis, and injured more outside a synagogue near Jerusalem. May the memories of those beautiful people murdered be for a blessing. Be in prayer for the families and friends of the victims, and for Israel's leaders to respond wisely and effectively.
This past year Israel has witnessed a sharp uptick in terrorism, bolstered by a number of factors. Until last month, the terrorists faced relatively weak pushback from a left-wing Israeli government that was eager to make concessions with the biblical heartland. Now, a right-wing government lead by Benjamin Netanyahu faces the challenge of opposing a terrorist movement that is taking advantage of social media glamorization and the support of aggressive factions vying for power in the Palestinian Authority. The jostling for control has increased as longtime president and dictator of the Palestinian Authority 87 year old Mahmoud Abbas faces significant health challenges.
Amid the turmoil, it is clear that a weak response to terror, and lack of resolve on the status of Judea and Samaria only serve to allow the terrorists to raise their hideous faces again and again.
What has changed and what is the vision of the new government?
A big positive development is the appointment of Betzalel Smotrich to oversee the government's civil administration of Judea and Samaria. He will be overseeing the body Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) which is "responsible for approving construction and handling other bureaucratic matters in Area C of Judea and Samaria." Smotrich, who lives in Samaria, is one of the leading fighters for Israeli Sovereignty over all of its land. He will be working closely with the Defense Ministry, which until now, oversaw much of the policy on the ground in Judea and Samaria. It's a step in the right direction, as Israel needs clear direction in applying Israeli law to Jewish settlements, a streamlined approval process for approving new construction, and opposition to dangerous and illegal Palestinian building.
The Defense Ministry is, no doubt, in better hands under Likud's Yoav Gallant than under former minister left-wing Benny Gantz. An unambiguous policy on the status of Judea and Samaria has yet to be seen though, and is not going to materialize overnight. At least the man at the top is no longer an unabashed supporter of a "two-state solution."
When it comes to internal security, Israel has as its Public Security Minister a man who is committed to responding in strength to Israel's enemies. Despite slanders and condemnation, and a history of controversy, Itamar Ben-Gvir says what most everyone else is afraid to say out loud. Things such as showing no sympathy to terrorists, and cracking down firmly on the widespread violence that plagues Israel's cities. He brings a needed element of commitment to Israel's security sphere.
Big Issue: Proposed Judicial Reforms
A major flash-point in Israel right now are major judicial reforms that the Netanyahu government is seeking to pass. For the past 25 years, Israel's Supreme Court has massively expanded its power, without many of the checks and balances other democracies have in place to prevent abuse of power. As it relates to Judea and Samaria, the Supreme Court has entertained many anti-Israel NGO's in its chamber and ordered the destruction of numerous Jewish communities in the heartland.
Since last month, weekly rallies have been held—mainly in Tel Aviv—protesting the proposed reforms. Last week, the crowds numbered upwards of 100,000 people. It would seem, given the fact that even radical left-wing opposition leader Yair Lapid has spoken of the need for reform, that the majority of the protestors don't even know what they're protesting. Even hours after rockets from Gaza rained on Israel, protestors met, angry over the actions of what the media continues to describe as a far-right, racist government.
Israel's most right-wing government ever?
It's true that this may be Israel's most right-wing government ever, but the overblown accusations that it spells the end of democracy and the Jewish State could not be further from the truth. Those involved in building a future in Israel, who don't compromise on one inch of God-given land, see clearly the potential of this government to right historical wrongs; they recognize the opportunity to return the national focus to issues like Israeli sovereignty and Bible-based education, that only serve to strengthen Israel against her enemies.
It feels like we're in a new season of hope and change. Israel's needs prayer and support to confront the numerous challenges it faces. The battle for unity and sovereignty, the Iran threat, terrorism, and needed reforms are just a few of the things Israelis are dealing with right now. As always, lovers of Israel have a clear calling to be engaged! Here's a short list to help remind you to stay involved: Visit Israel, buy Israeli products, pray for peace and share the truth about what is happening!
Let us know in the comments specific ways you stay engaged in the fight for the beautiful, miraculous nation of Israel!
8 comments
I buy from you people. I listen to & support The Israel Guys ( Christian Zionists). I listened to patriotic audiobooks such as: “Angels in the Sky” by Robert Gandt, “Menachem Begin” by Daniel Gordis, “Israel” by Daniel Gordis, “Raid on the Sun” by Roger Claire, “Six Days of War” by Michael B Oren, and “Sledgehammer” by David Friedman. And I get my Israel news from Arutz7.
I pray for Israel nearly everyday. I will pray for success in the areas needed stated above. I love your people and I love our God. Thank you for the update.
I am with you 100% and have been defending Israel for many years in a mostly hostile national and international media.
In particular, my efforts are in fighting for the long overdue redemption of Yehuda and Shomron as the Jewish Biblical heartland and its inclusion throughout every centimeter of its territory within the reconstituted Jewish state of Israel.
Further, I call in all my articles and Op-Ed’s for the only ‘Two-State solution’ that is acceptable, i.e Palestine east of the River Jordan and Israel west of te Jordan river. In other words, Jordan is Palestine.
Please see my recent Op-Ed in Arutz Sheva as below.
Thank you and Kol Hakavod for all you do for our beloved Israel and its heartland in Judea and Samaria.
Victor Sharpe
Israel National News Opeds
They murder and so we must build.
Military responses to Arab violence are effective up to a point. A more devastating response is filling Judea and Samaria with Jews. Op-ed.
Victor Sharpe
Feb 3, 2023, 9:37 AM (GMT+2)
Victor Sharpe
Feb 3, 2023, 9:37 AM (GMT+2)
In an earlier incarnation as Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu wanted to hear the world, or at least the allegedly civilized Western world, condemn in emphatic words the barbaric slaughter of an entire Jewish family – the Fogels.
They were slaughtered by the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians on a Friday night, even their infant’s throat was slit. But the Prime Minister needn’t have bothered because the world, apart from a few individuals, ignored the crime and, perhaps, always will – as Caroline Glick suggested in her article at the time, Our World: Three Jewish Children.
Most of the world only wants one thing, and that is that the Jews first leave Judea and Samaria (which the nations all call by its Arab name, the ‘West Bank’), then leave the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, and finally what’s left of the rest of Israel. Only then, this morally compromised world believes, will there be nirvana, peace in our time, and a new golden age of harmony and brotherly love: Yes, and cows have wings!
No. The world, especially Europe, is proceeding at an ever-rapid pace towards appeasement of the Muslim world, acceptance of Sharia law, and abasement as dhimmis towards triumphant Islam.
Unless very soon, very, very soon, they come to their senses and physically remove the Muslim threat, they will become dhimmis in their own lands and will have no one to blame but themselves – and the Israel-Palestinian conflict will have had absolutely nothing to do with it: So much for “peace in our time.” Instead, a 7th century pestilence will arrive.
The same threat that already is plaguing the West laps at the very gates of the Jewish villages and towns (do not cal them ‘settlements’ – let us stop using that self-abasing term) that grace the hills and valleys of Jewish Judea and Samaria.
The pestilence came to the Jewish village of Itamar in the form of Muslim beasts from a nearby Arab settlement who slaughtered with long knives a young Rabbi, his wife and three children, including a baby.
The horror of this bestial act riveted the Jewish state, but it left most of the world indifferent. Hence the sad pointlessness of Netanyahu’s demand that the world utters strong words condemning the atrocity.
In January 2005, I wrote a chapter in the first volume of my four-volume work, Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state. It was titled, “The ultimate answer to Arab terror.”
I had hoped that my suggestion in that chapter would have borne fruit, but it was not to be. So let me suggest, again, what I had posited those eighteen long years ago – a period since in which thousands more Jews have perished or been horribly maimed in Judea and Samaria and throughout all of Israel.
In that same period, some 8,000 Jewish souls in Gaza were violently deported from their homes and farms by a foolish Israeli leader who believed that his action would bring, “peace in our time.” Oh, how the angels in heaven must have wept at such foolishness.
I had pointed out that the Greek playwright of the 5th century BCE, Euripides, once penned the words “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, first they make mad.” I continued. Many may wonder are the words of Euripides coming true for the leaders of the reconstituted Jewish state. Was Prime Minister Sharon acting rationally in his implacable desire to drive his fellow Jews out of their homes and farms in Gaza and northern Samaria?
Well, we now know that Ariel Sharon may have had other motives or may have believed that the answer to Palestinian Arab terror was simply to retreat from ancestral Jewish land (yes, Gaza is ancestral Jewish land) and call it ‘disengagement’ using a perverse euphemism.
I asked two rhetorical questions: “Does the government not understand that seeing Israeli police forcing out Jews and handing their land to Arabs encourages the Palestinian Arabs to perpetrate yet more acts of terror?
“Is it not yet plain to even the far Left within Israel that the Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, want not just the so-called disputed territories, but all of Israel down to the last downtown city block in Tel Aviv?”
Well eighteen years have passed and today the Jewish pioneers and residents in Judea and Samaria witness Jewish homes torn down while hundreds of illegal Arab structures financed by the European Union cover the same landscape.
I had a good friend who alas is no longer with us. He always ended his letters with these words under his signature: Remember Shalhevet Pass. You too remember, I hope, this Jewish infant who was shot to death by an Arab sniper while in her stroller in Hebron.
Remember too in 1979, Smadar Kaiser, her husband Danny, and their two small daughters, four-year-old Einat and two-year-old Yael, who were awakened in their northern Israel apartment at midnight by gunfire and exploding grenades.
To quote Andrew MacCarthy in a National Review Online article, Why They Celebrate Murdering Children:
“Muslim terrorists broke into their home and while Smadar hid with Yael in the dark, suffocating crawl space, the terrorists grabbed Danny and Einat and marched them down to a nearby beach. There, one of them shot Danny in front of his daughter so that his death would be the last sight she’d ever see.
“Then the ruthless ringleader, Lebanese-born Samir Kuntar, used the butt of his rifle to bash in the four-year-olds skull against a rock. Hours later, upon finally being “rescued” from the crawl space, two-year-old Yael, too, was dead – accidentally smothered by her petrified mother in the effort to keep her quiet as the jihadists searched for more Jews to kill.”
Eighteen years then of futility in the face of Arab knives, bullets, bombs, missiles and venomous diplomatic warfare has availed Israel naught. The answer to aggression from the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians is to act in ways that make it so painful to them that they will come to realize that their violence and bloodlust becomes horribly counter-productive.
By that, I don’t mean inflicting upon them higher and higher body counts. That does not faze them at all, for they welcome death as shaheeds and relish the 72 virgins allegedly awaiting them in paradise. Military responses to Arab violence are effective, but only up to a point.
No there is in addition a far, far more devastating response that Israel must employ regardless of the howls of rage that will undoubtedly emanate from the Biden administration, the corrupt UN and the ever-hypocritical international corridors of power. It is a simple and purely Zionistic response.
A principled Israeli government must make an irrevocable decision to respond to Palestinian Arab murders of Israelis by creating and restoring Jewish villages and towns throughout Judea, Samaria and the Golan. Every time Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, ad-nauseum, murder or harm any Jewish man, woman, or child a new Jewish village will be built and named in eternal memory of that Jewish victim of Arab hate and evil.
And when the world rages that Jews are “building new settlements,” the Israeli, Jewish and Zionist answer must be made by articulate and attractive Israeli spokespersons who understand the cultures of the nations to whom they are speaking.
These ambassadors of Israel must make an undeniable case for why, in response to Arab barbarism and crimes against humanity, Biblical and ancestral Jewish villages are being created or restored: Jewish love of life in the face of Muslim love of death.
This must be official and non-negotiable Israeli policy. Only then, perhaps, will Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies in the so-called Palestinian Authority see where their hate and aggression are leading them. Possess and redeem the Covenanted land; that is both a Biblical and a Zionist injunction.
There is one other ple that I have been making for so long, but which has fallen on stony ground. Jews and non-Jews who
support Israel must stop using the self-defeating and pejorative term, “settlements” and “settlers” to describe Jewish communities throughout Judea and Samaria.
Dignify them, instead, by calling them villages and towns, for ‘settlements and settlers" in the English language (the lingua franca of the world) denotes a colonialist intrusion by an alien people into another people’s land. Are Jews, of all people, aliens in their own ancestral and millennial Biblical heartland?
Why are Arab communities automatically called villages and towns while Jewish communities are degraded with the demeaning term ’settlements."
Bibi Netanyahu is again Israel’s prime minister. Will he finally end the pestilence of the so-called Palestinian Authority and build throughout Yesha? Please help end this self-destructive foolishness.
So let me end with these words from Ben-Gurion:
“No Jew is at liberty to surrender the right of the Jewish Nation and the Land of Israel to exist. No Jewish body is sanctioned to do so. Even all the Jews alive today have no authority to yield any piece of land whatsoever. This right is reserved to the Jewish People throughout the generations. This right cannot be forfeited under any circumstances.
“Even if at some given time there will be those who declare that they are relinquishing this right, they have neither the power nor the authority to negate it for future generations. The Jewish Nation is neither obligated by nor responsible for any such waiver. Our right to this land, in its entirety, is enduring and eternal. And until the coming of the Redemption, we shall never yield this historic right.”
David Ben-Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel, speech to the 21st Zionist Congress, Basel 1937.
Victor Sharpe is a prolific freelance writer, author of seven books including the acclaimed four volume work titled, Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
Great article. Thank you for keeping us informed and speaking truth. I’m an American who loves Israel and her people.
The LORD commands us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, so I pray everyday.
I’m very happy for Israel, that a right leaning government is in charge now. Judea and Samaria are part of the land of Israel. Look at your Bible. I pray for Israel every day. You are His chosen people in His land.
I have visited Israel, pray every day for Israel and support Israel businesses when I can.
I grew up in Israel till the age of 11, my parent took me to America, and I was devastated for years. I am an Israeli in my heart and Soul, I am so proud of this Strong government doing the right thing for Israel, no more appeasing our enemies, they hated us anyway. Stay Stong Giborim. AM ISRAEL CHAI. AMEN
In order for me to widen out in support for Israel what I do is gather with holy scripture readers. As a JW witness I first try to keep up with reading and understanding how what is written In The past applies to present day. As an “outsider” in the US I am realizing there is Judah and their is Israel. Who is Israel ?and are their leaders still in opposition to Judah as in the days of Jeroboam? I would like to join the many who have visited Israel not as a political spectator but as one that can firmly say I have visited the places the patriarchs walked, seen the landscape that Jesus wept over before it was destroyed by the Romans and confirm my faith so that I may include Israel in my prayers as the world shifts to a conclusion of something and a beginning of another. I would like to visit places like Dimona and the Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee.I love how Israel had kibbutz’s and how they are avid campers and nature lovers. I hear it said that Israel is beautiful and I hope it will one day be conflict free and truly be a place we’re the sovereign lord can be glorified as he cannot tell a lie only the story from beginning to end.
So currently the way I support Israel is by reading the holy scriptures, occasionally comparing what I read to online Jewish text, talking about what I learned to listening ears and looking at travel documentaries by the people that visit. It makes Israel more real to me than it has been in the past where I was aware of the the people , aware of a holocaust, but never really made a personal connection until I started taking studying with a group seriously as I begin to see that the history spills out all the way here to the west. Understanding who people are and the beginnings of conflicts the best way to begin to resolve conflicts with people willing to make peace. It’s a truly complex story about brothers, family, proselytes, kings, it involves loyalty, faith,agreements, trade, security…………………..I would like to support Israel by witnessing why the true God loves it so much to cause it to become what it will become.
Have a great day and peace