Fall-Out From The Arab Spring

Hal Lindsey has an interesting take on the 'Arab Spring' which is worth reading, as it updates the situation in the Middle East. 

Every year, an organization called Open Doors publishes its "World Watch." It includes a list of the fifty countries in the world guilty of the worst persecution of Christians. This year, North Korea and Somalia topped the list. Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan rounded out the top five.

That means that the United States is heavily involved with three of the five worst offenders in the world. Further, Libya was placed in the category of "Extreme Persecution" and Egypt received a "Severe Persecution" rating. The U.S. helped the rebels overthrow the government in Libya and the Administration helped bring Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. 

Before the "Arab Spring" uprising, Syria was known for its religious tolerance (not its political tolerance). Though President Bashar al-Assad has plenty of blood on his hands, the violence toward Christians in Syria is not being perpetrated by the government. The killing and torturing of Christians is primarily the work of the Syrian rebels -- the U.S.-supported Syrian rebels. It's almost incomprehensible to me that the side supported by the United States in the Syrian civil war is the one murdering and pillaging Christians. 

Likewise, in Egypt the severe persecution and attacks on the ancient Coptic Christian population is the work of Muslim factions in the country and encouraged by the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Middle East and Islam expert Raymond Ibrahim made a startling observation: "Whenever the U.S. intervenes in an Islamic nation, Islamists come to power... (and) Christian minorities suffer 'extreme persecution.'" 

The "Arab Spring" has turned out to be one of the great disasters of human history, yet there seems to be no accountability. The U.S. pours billions of dollars into these countries or into the opposition forces, yet seems to have no influence with them or refuses to use it on behalf of any persecuted Christians. 

Why do we empower forces hostile to Christianity when those forces are also inevitably hostile to all things western, especially the United States? As a nation, we are destroying ourselves -- and allowing the destruction of millions of others -- with the notion that Christianity and Islam are essentially the same. 

Not only is this idea false, it's deadly. 

Just as alarming as America's unwitting support of Christian persecution around the world is the immediate prospect of that same persecution coming to the one nation that all the world describes as "Christian." But, then, it's hardly surprising to see the rise of corruption when the best influence to the contrary -- the Bible -- is being discarded as if it were a deadly infection. 

Recently, New York's governor Andrew Cuomo told a radio interviewer that "extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay... have no place in the state of New York." New York's new mayor quickly seconded that motion, "...100 percent." 

Cuomo later tried to walk that statement back by saying that he meant the extremists had no place in New York politics. But two of the three issues he mentioned are moral issues, not political ones. If you're a conservative and/or a Christian living in New York, you're probably starting to feel a little unappreciated about now. 

But don't be distressed if you are pro-traditional marriage, pro-life, and even pro-Jesus, because the hatred you're beginning to feel from the world is not directed at you. It's a hatred of Jesus Christ. In fact, Jesus Himself warned that this would happen in these last days. He said, "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you ... because you are not of this world... therefore the world hates you ... If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." (John 15:18-20) 

American Christians are surely headed toward dark days of persecution. I believe this will start as a general dismissal of our claims (which are the claims of Christ) by the society at large. We are already beginning to feel the discomfort that comes with the ridiculing of what we believe by academia, the media, and big government. It will then move through marginalization to recrimination to discrimination to ostracization to criminalization. Once Christian behavior and thought are "criminalized," Christianity can then be effectively and finally removed from the society by the removal of Christians from that society. 

You don't think that can happen? It's already happening to our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. 

You don't think that can happen in America? The process has been at full throttle for at least a generation. And this week, I'll give you a few examples of how, right here in the good old USA, Christians are increasingly not welcome in school, in the military, in the media, in business, in government, and even in public. 

Of course, there is no way I can even begin to scratch the surface of what's happening here in "Christian" America in one half-hour program, but I believe you will be stunned when you begin to consider how rapidly major changes are happening. Changes thought impossible just a few decades ago. Changes that were foretold by the ancient Bible prophets. 

Bullying Tactics Against Israel Fuel Terrorism

US Secretary of State John Kerry freely used scare tactics, such as a fresh Palestinian “intifada,’ international boycotts and isolation, to cow Israel into signing on the dotted line when the framework accord he has drawn up is submitted to Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
At the Munich Security Conference Saturday, Feb. 1, “Mr. Interim agreement,” as he is known in diplomatic circles for his partial deals on Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s chemical arsenal, Kerry snapped back at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s claim to have brought Israel a period of relative calm, by calling it “an illusion.”

Clearly, this was just a mild foretaste of the coercive tactics in store for Israel when the time comes round to approve a final accord with the Palestinians.

“Boycotts of Israel are amoral and unjustified and will not achieve their aims,” said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Sunday, Feb. 2: "First of all, they cause the Palestinians to become entrenched behind their intransigent positions and push peace farther away, and secondly, no pressure will cause me to give way on Israel’s vital interests, first and foremost the security of its citizens."

The aftermath of a former framework accord, which actually got signed by both sides in Oslo, vividly illustrated the recurring cycle of one peace process after another breaking down under escalating Palestinian terrorist violence followed by expanded Jewish settlement.

In accordance with the Declaration of Principles on Interim (Palestinian) Self-Government signed in Oslo in 1993, Israel dissolved its military government in Palestinian areas in 1995 and turned over the seven main cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron – and virtually all the West Bank’s 1.4 million Palestinians - to Palestinian jurisdiction.

Yet terrorist attacks never abated and, in 2000, the year Israel offered Yasser Arafat independence in the Gaza Strip and 92 percent of the West Bank with east Jerusalem its capital, the Palestinian leader declared open war on the Jewish state with his “Al Aqsa Intifada” and years of death and destruction by suicide bombings and burnt buses.

So the charge of “occupation” does not exactly stand up even to the most cursory scrutiny – especially when the West Bank came under Israeli control in the first place as as the result of a defensive war fought and won against multiple Arab armies.

In the electrically charged Middle East climate, Kerry’s threats quickly became self-fulfilling prophecies.
His warning in Munich Saturday of an international boycott was followed the next day by news of Sweden’s Nordea Bank and Denmark’s Danske Bank, the largest banks in their respective countries, serving together over 16 million customers, actually blacklisting one of Israel’s three biggest banks, Bank Hapoalim, for maintaining branches “across the Green Line.”

The other two, Leumi and Mizrahi-Tefahot, faced the “demand” to “immediately make public their operations in the West Bank” – as though they were kept secret and owed Scandinavia an accounting.
However, pushing the button for the escalation of Palestinian terrorism and thespread of boycott action by pro-Palestinian financial and academic institutions was in line...with US-EU tactics for building up a volume of international and Israeli public high enough to scare Netanyahu into bowing to American dictates.