Israel’s relations with Turkey are ruined, the Palestinians plan to seek UN recognition for their own state, the embassy in Cairo was stormed: Jerusalem is under massive pressure. Even hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting to sound conciliatory.
Is Jerusalem softening its hard-line stance? After weeks of confrontation with friend and foe alike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose unusually conciliatory words in thanking the Egyptian government for its help during the storm by Egyptian protesters on the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
If Netanyahu is now backing down, it is because the situation is very serious. The Israelis are no strangers to crisis, but they will remember the last few weeks for a long time. Rarely has the Jewish state suffered so many setbacks and blows:
* On Sept. 1, pro-Palestinian activists in London interrupted a performance by the Israeli Symphony Orchestra so vehemently that the BBC had to break off its broadcast of the concert for the first time in its history.
* On Sept. 6, it became known that former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates had described Netanyahu as “ungrateful” in a meeting of the National Security Council. By refusing to acknowledge Israel’s growing isolation, Netanyahu was endangering his country, Gates said.
* The dispute between Turkey and Israel over Israel’s refusal to apologize for the deaths of nine Turkish activists in a 2010 Israeli raid on a Turkish boat carrying aid for Gaza culminated when Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, cancelled its military cooperation with Jerusalem and announced it would provide military protection for Turkish ships heading to Gaza in the future.
* The Palestinian leadership has vowed to seek full United Nations membership for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank at the UN General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20.
* Thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, tore a hole in the surrounding wall, stormed part of the building and held six Israelis under siege for hours.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a long-time opponent of Netanyahu, is leading calls for a change in policy. According to Haaretz, Barak told fellow cabinet ministers that if Israel fails to try to move the peace process forward, it will be seen as obstructionist by its friends in the West.
-www.spiegel.de,12 September 2011
Contrary to many reports, Israel never had and apparently never will have allies, although some nations have halfheartedly confessed to be friends, but only temporarily and due to political opportunity.
Why no allies? The answer is found in Numbers 23:9, “For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” We do well to keep biblical facts unpolluted from politically motivated statements. Israel is destined to be alone because the Bible says that salvation will come out of Zion. Jesus confirms, “Salvation is of the Jews.” These simple facts are the real reason for Israel’s isolation, and not the political maneuvering whether to the left or the right.
Israel will experience a temporary end to their isolation when the words of the Lord are fulfilled, “I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive” (John 5:43). That will be the time when the world will be united under the auspices of Antichrist. Then, in the midst of the seven-year tribulation, “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7). That is Israel’s hope, the guarantee of the prophetic Word, “He shall be saved out of it.”
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