Saturday, September 12, 2026

Why Israel’s existence is a theological crisis for fundamentalist Islam


Why Israel’s existence is a theological crisis for fundamentalist Islam


Israel presents militant fundamentalist Islam with a problem that no alteration of borders can finally resolve.

Territory can be divided. Security arrangements can be negotiated. Competing national claims can, at least theoretically, be compromised. But Israel represents something larger than territory. It represents the restoration of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancestral land, the revival of Jerusalem as the capital of a Jewish commonwealth, and the reappearance of biblical history in the modern world.

For Islamic movements that understand history as the progressive triumph of Islam, this restoration is not merely a political setback. It is a theological contradiction.

The problem was never simply that Jews lived in the Middle East. Jews lived throughout the Islamic world for centuries. The deeper problem is that Jews have become sovereign. They possess political power, command armies, govern Muslims and exercise authority in Jerusalem. A people formerly subordinated under Muslim rule has established an independent state in territory once governed by successive Islamic empires.

Israel therefore presents a unique theological challenge. Fundamentalist Islamic thought sees in the Jewish state an unbelieving people whose national restoration advances an entirely different account of history.

Fundamentalist movements insist that Islam’s authoritative sources should govern political life and that Islamic claims over land, sovereignty and sacred space cannot be permanently surrendered. These movements speak to a potential constituency numbering in the hundreds of millions.

For all practical purposes, therefore, the conflict cannot be understood without examining the war that Islam believes it is fighting against Israel.

The overturning of the Dhimmi order

Under Islamic rule, Jews were classified as dhimmis. Although the term is commonly translated as “protected people,” that protection existed within a system of legally enforced subordination. Jews were permitted to survive as a religious community on the condition that they accepted Muslim supremacy, paid the jizya (a tax on non-Muslims), and submitted to restrictions that distinguished them from Muslims and marked their inferior position.

The severity of those restrictions varied by ruler and period, but the hierarchy itself remained. Jews could live under Islamic authority; they were not supposed to possess authority over Muslims. They could be tolerated as a subordinate religious community; they were not supposed to become an independent political and military power.

Zionism overturned this order.

The establishment of Israel did not simply bring Jews back into the Middle East. It brought them back as rulers. The former dhimmi became sovereign. Jews commanded armies, governed Muslims, defeated surrounding Islamic powers and ultimately took political control of Jerusalem.

For fundamentalist Islamic thought, this reversal represents more than a military or territorial loss. It is an inversion of the divinely established hierarchy. The problem is not primarily the presence of Jews. The problem is Jewish power: Jews governing themselves, Jews ruling Muslims and Jews exercising sovereignty over territory that had entered the Islamic realm.

Israel is therefore uniquely offensive to this theological order. It does not merely exist outside Islamic authority. Its existence publicly overturns the Islamic order.

The humiliation of repeated defeat also matters. Islam presents itself not merely as one religion among others but as Allah’s final revelation—the true faith destined to prevail. How, then, can a Muslim world of nearly two billion people, possessing enormous territories, armies, wealth and natural resources, repeatedly fail to defeat one small Jewish nation? More fundamentally, how can the possessors of the 'true faith' be defeated by a people whose earlier revelation Islam claims to have superseded?

Israel’s survival therefore becomes a theological accusation. If Islam possesses the final truth and the sanction of Allah, why does Jewish sovereignty survive, strengthen and repeatedly defeat those seeking its destruction? Every Israeli victory deepens the contradiction between the expected triumph of Islam and the observable course of history.

The Jewish state appears to proclaim a different ending to history—one in which Jewish restoration, Jerusalem and the promises of the Hebrew Bible point not toward a restored Caliphate but toward the coming Messianic Kingdom.


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Saudi Arabia tells Trump now is the time for military action


Saudi Arabia tells Trump now is the time for military action as Iran-backed Houthis advance


Saudi Arabia is urging Washington to take direct military action against Iran-backed Houthis, Fox News Digital learned after the terrorist group seized key positions along Yemen’s Bab al-Mandab Strait on Friday.

The dramatic strengthening of Houthi's positioning along the coastline of Yemen is in one of the world's most important shipping choke points — a narrow passage that links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, which has been used as a bypass as the Iran war continues to severely disrupt shipping, especially of oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.

The rapid advance on Friday triggered urgent discussions at the highest levels in Riyadh and Washington, and a source familiar with the matter tells Fox News Digital that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged President Donald Trump to take military action against the Houthis.

The Houthis reached the strategic island of Mayyun, also known as Perim, after Yemeni government forces withdrew and also took the mainland coastal town of Dhubab, four Yemeni government sources told Reuters on Friday.

Fox News Digital independently confirmed key elements of an Axios report with a source familiar with the matter, who said the crown prince spoke with Trump a few times over the past 24 hours about the escalating situation in Yemen.

The U.S. does not want to take direct military action for now, but Trump told bin Salman that Washington would assist Saudi Arabia with intelligence and targeting support, according to the source.

The source also confirmed that U.S. Central Command commander Adm. Brad Cooper traveled to Saudi Arabia for coordination talks.

The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the calls or whether additional U.S. military action is under consideration.

A Saudi official told Fox News Digital on background that the kingdom "will continue to support the internationally recognized government in Yemen in its effort to promote peace, unity and stability across the country and is working closely with its partners, including the United States, to ensure freedom of navigation in the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea."

"The Kingdom will also take every necessary measure to ensure that its own citizens and residents are safe and its borders are secure," the official added.

The convergence raises the prospect of simultaneous pressure on two of the world’s most consequential maritime arteries: Iran disrupting traffic through Hormuz while its Houthi allies strengthen their position around Bab al-Mandab.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the shift reflects Tehran’s effort to recover leverage as pressure around Hormuz changes.

"Trump’s success in pushing back on Iran’s maritime threat in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf has made the regime lose the maritime leverage it had, and now it is looking to double down on the Houthis who have proven to be able to impact Red Sea shipping and the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the past," Ben Taleblu said.

"As Tehran loses leverage in the Strait of Hormuz, it is trying to wield a knife and a handshake at once: diplomacy with Arab states and a knife in the back via the Houthi offensive," he added.

The latest advance follows the Houthis’ capture Thursday of the strategic Red Sea port of Mocha, which was previously held by forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

Former U.S. special envoy for Yemen Timothy Lenderking said Friday that the Houthis had spent the years since the 2022 U.N.-brokered truce rebuilding their military strength and are now exploiting the broader Iran conflict to increase pressure on Saudi Arabia.

Speaking during an on-the-record Middle East Institute virtual briefing, Lenderking said the April 2022 truce largely put Yemen’s civil war on pause but also "did allow the Houthis to regroup, retrain, refit, restock."

Lenderking traced the latest round of escalation in part to Iranian Mahan Air flights into Sanaa earlier this summer, which he said brought personnel and equipment intended to support the Houthi war effort, adding that the personnel were from Iran and were "probably IRGC members."



Iran-backed Houthi rebels struck Saudi Arabia with dozens of ballistic missiles and drones Tuesday, hitting multiple energy targets, including the facilities of the world's largest oil company.

The attacks on Aramco, the state-owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia that produces 10 million barrels of oil per day, threaten to tighten pressure on a second critical oil route as the Middle East war continues to restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Aramco notably supplies roughly 10% of the world's total oil demand. And attacks on its facilities raise the risk of higher oil, shipping and transportation costs that could hit U.S. consumers in coming months — just in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The attacks hit the southern Saudi Arabian cities of Jazan, Najran, Abha and Khamis Mushait, wounding 73 people and sparking fires at energy facilities and utilities that temporarily forced some operations to stop, according to Saudi officials. The Jazan site includes a refinery capable of processing roughly 400,000 barrels of crude per day, according to the Associated Press.

Tuesday's strikes land at a particularly vulnerable moment for global energy markets. With oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz sharply reduced, Saudi Arabia has redirected more crude toward the Red Sea — increasing the importance of the Bab el-Mandeb, where the Houthis have already threatened and attacked Saudi-linked shipping.

The Energy Information Administration estimates that just 4.9 million barrels of oil and petroleum liquids moved through Hormuz per day in the second quarter of 2026, down from 21.6 million barrels per day before the conflict. Before the conflict 20% of the world's oil moved through the consequential waterway.


Traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb, meanwhile, averaged 8.1 million barrels per day during the quarter as Saudi Arabia redirected more crude to bypass Hormuz amid ongoing conflict.

That creates a potentially costly vulnerability: renewed Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure or commercial vessels could put pressure on two crucial oil routes at once, raising the risk of higher crude, shipping and transportation costs that could eventually reach U.S. consumers.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s strikes, saying the group had used "dozens of ballistic missiles and drones" against Aramco facilities, the Jazan industrial zone and a Saudi air base, according to Xinhua.




Live Updates: Saudi pipeline struck by drone launched from Iraq, Israel-Lebanon talks to continue in Washington


Live Updates: Saudi pipeline struck by drone launched from Iraq, Israel-Lebanon talks to continue in Washington
JP

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi has agreed to an Iranian request for a joint investigation into the discovery of drone launch platforms near the Iraqi-Iranian border, the prime minister's office said on Saturday.

The investigation will examine the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the platforms near the border area, the statement said, after it was used to launch attacks on the Saudi Arabia East-West pipeline.

Bahrain says no Hormuz talks with Iran until diplomatic ties resume

ByREUTERS

Bahrain said it will not attend any meeting with Iran to discuss the Strait of Hormuz until diplomatic ties between the two countries are restored, according to state media.

US limits times tankers can sail through Hormuz in response to increased Iranian attacks

ByREUTERS

The US has asked tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz to sail only at specific times to guarantee military protection after Iran stepped up attacks on ships traveling at night, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Washington has been offering air-based defense since May to ships wanting to sail via a route hugging the Omani coast on the strait's southern side. That period during which ships would be protected was cut down to two specific time slots daily around the start of September, the FT reported, citing emails sent by the US naval co-ordination center to maritime advisers.

Aoun claims no negotiations between Israel, Lebanon are in progress - report

ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun reportedly claimed that no negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are currently in progress during a Saturday visit to the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiya, according to Saudi state-owned outlet Al Hadath.

Iraqi military commander dismissed following drone attack on Saudi Arabia originating from Iraq

Iraq's Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi dismissed one of the country's military commanders following a drone attack on a critical Saudi pipeline that originated from Iraqi territory, his office said in an X/Twitter post on Saturday.

"His Excellency (al-Zaidi) ordered the dismissal of the Operations Commander from his position, following confirmation that the attacks targeting the brothers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were launched from one of the sites within the province," the post read.

Go to the full article > >


'Synthetic Biological Intelligence': PLAYING GOD IN A PETRI DISH


PLAYING GOD IN A PETRI DISH: THEY ARE GROWING HUMAN BRAIN CELLS TO RUN COMPUTERS


Human brain cells running computers? The first reports were easy to dismiss because fake news is everywhere. AI-generated stories and images look real and get used to stoke fear with lies. The research now leaves no room for doubt: they are growing living human brain cells and wiring them into computers.

A company in Melbourne takes a few drops of donated human blood, or a scrap of skin. These starting cells are not taken from an aborted baby. In the lab the cells are reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells, the kind that can become almost any tissue. Those stem cells are then steered into becoming neurons, living cells that fire the way brain cells fire. About 800,000 of those neurons are grown on a small silicon plate covered with tiny metal contacts in each unit. A computer signals the living tissue with electricity. The tissue answers with electricity. Software treats that exchange as computation. If the cells do what the operators want, they receive a smooth electrical pattern (They call it a reward). If they miss, they receive noise (They call it punishment). Over hours and days the living culture changes its firing and gets better at the task. That is how it works and it is no longer only a theory.


Australia-based Cortical Labs recently debuted the world’s first biocomputer, priced at $35,000 per unit.

From Pong to Biological Data Centers: The Rapid Progression of Living Neurons

In October 2022 the journal Neuron published the first famous proof. The Melbourne team, working with what they called DishBrain, showed that about 800,000 lab-grown neurons, some human and some from mice, could learn a simple paddle game called Pong when wired to a simulated game world. [1]

The company behind that work is Cortical Labs, founded in Melbourne in 2019. In 2023 TechCrunch reported that the firm had raised money to push the same living cells toward artificial intelligence. [2]

In March 2025 they put a commercial box on the market called the CL1.

Each unit is a small aquarium for brain cells with a computer plugged in. Price: $35,000.

IEEE Spectrum described it as a shoebox-sized biological computer: living human neurons on a chip, kept alive with pumps, food, temperature control, and waste removal for up to about six months. [3]

Each CL1 is one self-contained device. Think of it as a small aquarium for brain cells with a computer plugged into it.


In August 2026 Singapore showed a working prototype cabinet at the National University of Singapore, first about twenty of the boxes, described in the press as millions of living human neurons processing information instead of ordinary computer chips. [9] [10]

The company calls it synthetic biological intelligence. The street name is wetware.

Melbourne is where the commercial product was born, but the same idea is already alive in other countries.

In Vevey, Switzerland, a company called FinalSparkgrows tiny clusters of human brain cells, called organoids, and lets researchers around the world rent time on them through the internet. ScienceAlert described an array of sixteen of those mini-brains wired to electrodes. [11]Nature later surveyed the whole field of computers that run on human brain cells.[12]

In August 2026, a U.S. startup called Parasma said human brain cells could predict the next word in a sentence in controlled tests. That is the same basic job a language model does. A language model is software that runs on computer chips. Tools like ChatGPT and Grok work this way. They learn from text and guess what word should come next. The company’s founder had earlier worked with Cortical Labs on a demo that trained brain cells to play Doom. [13]

THE SPIRITUAL CHARGE: MAN PLAYING GOD

The technical story is only the surface. Underneath it is a rebellion as old as the Garden of Eden with new tools.  The apple is the living brain chip.

From Genesis forward, the human being is not raw material. A person is made in the image of God. Humans are not just meat that computes and is manufactured as a product line. This means that there is a line that humans should not cross.

Transhumanism walks up to that line and calls the crossing progress. It says the body is an outdated operating system. It says aging is a bug. It says that the mind is a pattern you can copy, grow, house in a cabinet, and rent. It says if nature gave us neurons, we are allowed to farm them, wire them, punish them with noise, reward them with pretty signals, and sell the result as a greener computer.

That is not humility. That is priesthood without God. The lab coat becomes the vestment. The incubator becomes the altar. The donor’s blood becomes the offering. And the public is told to be grateful because the new idol uses less electricity than a graphics card.

The Bible’s warning about this spirit of idolatry and pride. The builders of Babel said, “Let us make a name for ourselves.” The serpent’s first sales pitch was, “You will be like God and know good and evil.” Every age finds a new brick. Ours is a living chip.

The Bible teaches that some powers are not ours to take even if we can take them. Ability to do something is not permission. “We can grow brain cells in a dish” does not answer whether living human brain tissue should be treated as a server. That matter is spiritual before it is technical.

If those neurons are only cells, we have still treated the human form as spare parts for industry. Either way the posture is the same. Man appoints himself creator of life.

You do not have to guess at the religion behind this. The most famous popular historian of the tech age has been saying it in print for a decade. Yuval Noah Harari titled a book Homo Deus, Latin for “Man God.” He was not being cute. [17]

“I titled the book Homo Deus because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities, in particular the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.”

That line and others like it are collected here: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/yuval-noah-harari-quotes

“Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.”


“In the twenty-first century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus. So we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with many branches): attaining divinity.”

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Harari said:

“When biotechnology, nanotechnology and the other fruits of science ripen, Homo sapiens will attain divine powers and come full circle back to the biblical Tree of Knowledge. Scientists will upgrade us into gods.”

“In the coming decades, AI and biotechnology will give us godlike abilities to reengineer life, and even to create completely new life-forms. After four billion years of organic life shaped by natural selection, we are about to enter a new era of inorganic life shaped by intelligent design. Our intelligent design is going to be the new driving force of the evolution of life and in using our new divine powers of creation we might make mistakes on a cosmic scale.”

[18]  In 2023 he told India Today, “Homo sapiens are in the process of becoming gods.” [19]

Read those sentences slowly. This is not a preacher putting words in a scientist’s mouth. This is the house intellectual of Davos describing the project in the project’s own language.


Create life. Upgrade the species. Take the apple. Become gods.

Harari also admits the trade. He has written that modernity is a deal: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. That is the spiritual price tag. You get the dish that plays Doom. You lose the idea that a human life is holy.

Transhumanism does not need to kick down church doors. It only needs people to accept that a person is a pattern, that a neuron is a part, and that the highest good is more computation at lower wattage. Once that creed is normal, growing brain tissue in a cabinet stops looking like sacrilege and starts looking like infrastructure.

A Warning Already Being Preached 

Podcaster Ashley Hays makes some good points:

“They built an entity that is utilizing human cells to power and advance the AI layer. Future data centers will now be built utilizing these what they call CL1 biological computing chips being run by human cells. And this is what they call wetware.”

“The beast system will be run by the human nervous system because that’s the goal. Transhumanism. Satan wants to corrupt God’s creation, but also in the process utilize the human nervous system because anything that he creates cannot compare.”

“The end goal is a counterfeit creation. Human beings are the wetware that keep it running.”

That last sentence is the spiritual core. Scripture does not need a computer science degree to recognize the pattern. Genesis 6 and the words of Jesus in Matthew 24 say the last days would look like the days of Noah: not only violence, but a defiling of kinds, a mixing of what God separated.

You do not have to accept every end-times timeline to hear the moral alarm. If the beast system in Revelation 13 is a world order that brands people so they can buy and sell, then the machinery that matters is not only a tattoo or a chip. It is a culture that already treats the human nervous system as infrastructure. First the dish. Then the implant. Then the claim that you cannot live, heal, work, or pay without joining the hybrid.

Ashley’s video description says it clearly: “The system/infrastructure that would support humans being merged with a mark in order to buy or sell is being set up as we speak. Know Jesus NOW.” [20]

The lab paper and the warning are talking about the same bricks. One side calls the bricks synthetic biological intelligence. The other side calls them a counterfeit of the image of God.

Every project of this kind uses the same lullaby to lull us to sleep. It is only a prototype. It is only research. It is only a few hundred thousand cells, and a real brain has 86 billion. Come back when it is serious.

That is how every irreversible thing begins. In vitro fertilization was sold as only for barren couples before it became an industry that freezes, sorts, and discards human embryos by the million and now is selling the human embryos for research. Gene editing was supposed to be therapy for terrible disease before it became about designer children. The internet was a library before it became a surveillance and propaganda machine. The early stage is the stage where the moral question has been ignored.





The Sound of Grace: Rosh Hashanah, The Shofar, And The Search For Divine Assurance


The Sound of Grace: Rosh Hashanah, The Shofar, And The Search For Divine Assurance
Derrall Bellaire 



The piercing sound of a ram’s horn echoing through a concrete underpass in Toronto at the Walk with Israel this past June is not an experience I will soon forget. The crowds of Jews and supporters cheered as they walked. The Shofar blast inspires joy, remembrance, and an intricate, ancient spiritual connection to the Jewish people.

The ram’s horn is not only an ancient symbol of Jewish identity, it was also set to serve as a spiritual alarm clock, given by God to awaken the heart and remind the Jewish people of spiritual truths so often forgotten.

In Leviticus 23, the Feast of Trumpets, one of “God’s appointed times,” was taught to the people as an observance of sabbath rest, a memorial of blowing the trumpets, and a Holy convocation to the Lord. The combination of rest, remembrance, and holy gathering is a powerful observance as the Jewish people prepare for the new year. 

At one of the greatest times of revival in Israel’s history, we see the feast of Rosh Hashanah in action as God calls His people back to Himself and His law. In Nehemiah, we read of the return of the people of Judea to their homeland to rebuild the temple. This action was not only permitted, but also blessed by a pagan king, Artaxerxes of Persia, the world’s most powerful figure. Under the leadership of Nehemiah, many Jewish people returned, the ancient wall was rebuilt, and in the 7th month, the returned people of Israel called upon Ezra and the priests to teach them the long-forgotten book of the law (Nehemiah 8:1-12).

The feast of trumpets, Rosh Hashanah, had been abandoned, and in keeping with human tendency, the people had forgotten their God and the spiritual callings that God had set them apart to fulfill. In Nehemiah 8, we read that the people wept at the realization that they had not only failed to walk in His ways, but had entirely forgotten His Law. 

In Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah not only marks the Jewish New Year, but also a time of reflection and divine judgment for the actions of the past year. Traditional Jewish thought holds that all people are judged on Rosh Hashanah, with their decree sealed shortly after on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. 

Within the context of divine judgment, the sounding of the shofar stands as the primary good deed (mitzvah) of Rosh Hashanah. For traditional Judaism, blowing and listening to the shofar is believed to accrue divine merit, helping secure inscription in the Book of Life. Consequently, this practice bridges traditional ritual with a meaningful opportunity to improve one’s standing before God and invoke divine mercy.

But for the believer, our hope is not in trumpet blowing or a scale of “mitzvot.” On our own strength, our good deeds can never make us right with the Father. The punishment for even one sin is eternal separation from God. Yet, just as the lamb was slain on Passover in the temple, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was slain for us to give us the righteousness that we are incapable of earning. For those who believe in Jesus Christ and walk with Him, your name is written in the Book of Life for salvation—not for the balancing of your works on a scale, but for assurance with unerasable penmanship that we are sealed in Jesus Christ by the blood of the Lamb and His ultimate “mitzvot.”

When we hear the shofar today, let it remind us of the coming Rapture and the victorious return of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. On that day, Zechariah 12:10 says that the Jewish people will “look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son.” 

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