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8/26/2019

In Jordan, It Is Forbidden To Say "Israel"

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Recently, I had the privilege of having breakfast with a missionary who went for a short trip to Jordan.

This is what I heard from him concerning Israel, neighbor of Jordan.

No one is allowed to pronounce the proper noun, “Israel.” Since my friend had some contacts in Israel, he had some things to tell his Arab contacts in Jordan. So in conversation, he replaced the name “Israel” with “the people over the border.”

NOTE: Most of his conversations were with the leaders of the Christian congregation in Jordan. There, too, the ban applied.

MAPS including Israel—Also banned! In Jordan, as with other places in the Middle East, Israel is not on their maps.

They’re playing “Let’s Pretend.”

If they could, it seems like Jordan, like ancient Moab, would seek to have a curse placed on Israel.

QUESTION: Don’t Jordan and Israel have a peace treaty in effect?

ANSWER: Yes…signed in 1994. In Washington D. C. there gathered together President Clinton, King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin of Israel where they signed the “Washington Declaration.” That piece of paper proclaimed that “the state of belligerency between Israel and Jordan has been terminated” and included other nice-sounding words.

Yet…King Hussein continued, in agreement with his people, to make false charges against Israel, accusing the Israelis of killing Arab children en masse. And NOTE this: the Jordan street got no news of the peace agreement through Israeli television, only from Al-Jazeera.

A Recent Word from Jordan
Jordanian Academic Dr. Ahmad Shahrouri, professor at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, spelled out his thinking about the Jewish people—Jordan’s neighbors.

In a television address on July 14, 2019, he said that all the land of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, insisting that the Muslim conflict with the Jews is an existential conflict. He described the Palestinians as that land’s eternal people who have lived there for 7,000 years. He says that just because the Jews passed through that land for what he says was just a 70-year period in ancient history, it gives them no rights whatever to the land.
This is a professor at the University of Jordan, state-supported, the oldest, largest and most prestigious university in Jordan.

Much could be said about the privileges that Palestinians enjoy in Israel, but this one is key: the Arabic language is a required course in all Israeli schools. Many more Palestinian privileges are enumerated in my book: Israel the Chosen.

Dr. Shahrouri blasted the present State of Israel and all Jews in that land by this statement: “It is either us or the Jews in Palestine. When Jews say Jerusalem is theirs, I want to smash their heads.” (MEMRI, July 14, 2019)
To the Muslims of the Middle East, Israel is a cancer in the body of the Arab nation. You see, geographically, Israel is right there in the middle of Muhammed’s body.
The Rejection is so complete that one must not and cannot speak that hated particular proper noun-- I S R A E L .

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The Desired Curse

In the Old Testament story of the ancient Israelites trudging towards the Promised Land (Numbers 22-24), the king of Moab (just east of the Dead Sea) refused permission for the Israelites to use the Moabite road north. Instead, he found a prophet who he hoped would pronounce a curse on the Israelites. The prophet he found was a non-Israelite whom the king was certain would comply—Balaam.
But though Balaam wanted to please the king of Moab, he found he could not. He couldn’t, because the Lord God of Israel, God Almighty, so impressed that old prophet Balaam, and the sight of Israel in such a beautiful and orderly encampment--also so impressive, that it made a curse impossible.
So instead, we have Balaam’s poetically beautiful BLESSING upon Israel which is recorded in Numbers Chapter 24. (The whole story is in Numbers 22-24)
The oracle of Baalam, the son of Beor,
The oracle of the man whose eye is opened,
The oracle of him who hears the words of God,
Who see the vision of the Almighty….
How lovely are your tents, O Jacob,
Your encampments, O Israel!
Like palm groves that stretch afar,
Like gardens beside a river,
Like aloes that the Lord has planted,
Like cedar trees beside the waters…
He crouched, he laid down like a lion
And like a lioness, who will rouse him up?
Blessed are those who bless you,
And cursed are those who curse you.
(Numbers 24:4-9)

And so, the leaders of Jordan would do well to come to terms with the chosen people of the Lord: your curses will not work; your threats are meaningless; and it would be well with you if you would accept those whom God is blessing (though your religion sees the Jews as descendents of pigs and monkeys.

NOTE: The present-day nation of Jordan includes, in its territory, the ancient territory of Moab where the plan to curse Israel was originally hatched. Israel’s history is Israel’s present!

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8/16/2019

Slicing Up the Promised Land

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“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous…And I will give to you and your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:1-2, 8 NRSV)

QUESTION: What disagreement about land is the most publicized in the whole world?

ANSWER: Palestine/Israel.

SOME HISTORY: When planning to pick up and travel to a land that God had promised him, the patriarch Abram decided to take his nephew. He and Sarah had no children, so Lot was picked to inherit the land. Uh-oh. Taking a family relative complicated matters for Abraham.

A DUST-UP: After settling in the land of Canaan, the herdsmen of Lot and the herdsmen of Abraham quarreled about who was getting the best tracts of land for cattle grazing.

Look at that! Very soon after arriving in the Promised Land, fights over the land! Abram had been directed there by the Lord God (Yahweh). He went there in response to the promise…in faith.

But Abram “kept his cool” and let Lot choose which part of the land he wanted. Lot, without trying to be evenhanded, chose the most productive tract. Kind Abram—selfish Lot.

Slice—slice—slice up the Land.

The territory Lot took was not only fertile--it included the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. People. Society. Pleasure. But Lot and family were soon to be forcefully taken out of the city by two angels before disaster struck.

Reflecting the sexual promiscuity of being brought up in Sodom, his two daughters made their father drunk on two successive nights, each of them laying with him and becoming pregnant.

The two sons of those incestuous relations were Moab and Ammon. From them came two idolatrous nations that sought to issue a curse upon Israel. Later, the Israelites yielded to the temptation to worship the gods of Moab and Ammon and indulge in promiscuous sexuality.

This all began with Abram’s choice to take Lot with him to the Land.

And Lot’s choice of the most fertile land and the two exciting cities.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

In the late 19th century, yearning for the land prompted many European Jews to make their dreams come true by boldly heading for Palestine. Two main movements, called alijahs, happened before the conclusion of World War I. Then, by the Providence of God, the British who had been among the conquerors over the Ottoman Empire, set forth the Balfour Declaration which specified that all of Palestine should be the homeland of the Jewish people after nearly two thousand years of being kept out by Gentile empires. The League of Nations ratified this action in “The Palestine Mandate.”

But the British, who were overseeing Palestine, cut it up--not once, but again and again. To please an indolent Arab leader, 80 per cent of the land was handed over by the British to Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, second of three sons of the Sharif of Mecca. That land is now Jordan.

Since then, no Jews have been permitted to own land there. (apartheid)

Then in 1936 the Palestinians made war against the Jewish community. What did the Brits do? You guessed it: to pacify the Arabs, their plan was to slice up the little land yet again into a truly tiny sector—only 5,000 square kilometers for the Jews. The land as set aside for a Jewish homeland under the Palestine Mandate had been 116,700 square kilometers! (1)

But the Arabs refused even this. To them, a treaty was the same as surrender. Today, the Peace Process is almost universally accepted as the way to apportion the Land. Every stage of the modern “Peace Process” is consumed with the issue of who gets what slice of “The Land.”

It is assumed by most observers that Israel will again have to give up land “taken” by the Israel Defense Force during the Six-Day War of 1967 when combined Arab nations vowed to throw the Jews into the sea—land known as “the West Bank,” but is in fact Samaria and Galilee.

Over and over again throughout history, the Land has been divided and apportioned out, most often by those who have no appreciation for its original Giver.

NOTE: Today, the maps of the Middle East, published by the Arabs, completely omit the name of Israel and all references to it. The Land is unnamed or improperly named.

You see, from Abraham’s time to the present, dividing the Promise Land has been a situation for the world to watch.

NOTE: Today, the Jihadists and much of the rest of Middle East Arab Muslims want ALL the land of Israel. Why? Because they lack sufficient land in which to live? Obviously not. They believe that once a land is Allah’s, they have a solemn obligation to keep it, and that it is Allah’s will that they use any means necessary to recover it—lies, theft, murder, war—anything.

QUESTION: What was the condition of the land of Palestine before the Jews began to immigrate there a little over a century ago? ANSWER: Nearly all of it was swampy and barren under Muslim/Ottoman rule.

NOTE: ONCE THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC AND JACOB ASSIGNED THAT LAND TO ISRAEL, IT COULD NEVER PROSPER UNDER ANY OTHER OWNERSHIP.

QUESTION: What slicing plan will come next?
(1) Mitchell Bard, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East Conflict. (Indianapolis: Alpha Books, Macmillan USA, Inc., 1999), 119.

* * * * * * * * * * *

NOTE: For a captivating and more complete account of the Promised Land, see Chapter 4, “The Land” in Everest’s recent book, Israel the Chosen: Her Identity, Land, Enemies, Religion and Messiah.

Israel The Chosen

In Jordan, It Is Forbidden To Say "Israel"

Slicing Up the Promised Land

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