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How Dare You Infer We Spread Our Faith by the Sword! We Spread it by Intimidation, Threats, Kidnappings, Bullets, Suicide Bombers, Beheadings, and Rockets!

Supplement to Previous Pacification Blog Issued last Night!

September 17, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The following article from DEBKAfile is issued as a Supplement to the Blog I issued before I retired on Saturday night.

Begin DEBKAfile Report

The Pope is Sorry. Muslims Terrorists Are Not

DEBKA Special Report

September 16, 2006, 3:08 PM (GMT+02:00)

A firestorm of Muslim rage was ignited by a lecture on the theme of Faith and Reason that Pope Benedict XVI gave at Regensburg University in Germany Tuesday, Sept 12.

The fury that beset the Muslim world recalls the tempest which greeted the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper earlier this year.

The government in Ankara said his safety could not be guaranteed during his visit in November, during which the pope had hoped to improve relations between Christians and Muslims. Turkey’s Catholic bishops will meet next Monday to discuss the visit.

Benedict quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel II as saying in a learned debate with a Persian cleric in 1391: “”Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new (DEBKAfile: a hint to the proposition that the Koran was a copy of earlier Christian and Jewish writings), and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” (a denigration of jihad).

The pope did not say if he subscribed to this view. Speaking as a professor of theology to Catholic scholars, he referred back

to the 615-year old text to illustrate his main theme that spreading faith through violence is unreasonable.

“Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and reason properly.

On the same day as the pontiff made his point on Faith and Reason in Bavaria, in Damascus Islamist terrorists attacked the US embassy.

World Muslim authorities like Sheikh Tantawi, head of al Azhar Mosque in Cairo, and Sheikh Qardawi the television preacher who does not endorse suicide attacks except when they target Israelis and Jews, demanded that Benedict retract his words and apologize.

Muhammad Aqef, leader of the Muslim Bro

therhood which has many millions of adherents, warned the pontiff that he had aroused the anger of the entire Muslim world.

In Turkey, a member of the ruling party Ali Bardakoglu said that that sort of talk against Muslims had produced the Crusades.

DEBKAfile’s Islamic observers comment that the threat of Muslim anger exploding into violence is becoming an increasingly powerful deterrent to any religious controversy that touches on the Muslim faith – especially in the West – because Western Christians, moderate Muslims and the Jewish world continue to distinguish between international Islamic terrorist groups and Muslims at large.

While the majority of Muslims do not subscribe to al Qaeda’s violent methods, neither do they actively oppose them. As for Palestinian violence against Israel, that is universally condoned.

Much of Western society as well as many Muslims and Israelis prefer to forget that suicidal terrorism as a political and religious instrument was the gift Yasser Arafat bequeathed to contemporary Islam; and it was enthusiastically embraced by al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

This ability to disremember the root of

a world problem extends to non-recognition of the deepening integration of the Palestinian and al Qaeda jihad movements. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was a Jordanian Palestinian, as were some of his commanders; a Palestinian Hamas mentor hosted and instructed shoe bomber Richard Reid in Gaza before his failed attempt to blow up a US airliner in 2000.

Many of al Qaeda’s most active cells are planted in Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Nonetheless, many Western policymakers place “the Middle East conflict’ in a box of its own, separate from the global war on terror or the clash of religi

ons and civilizations.

Because these policymakers have only very limited control over developments in the campaign against terror or the religious elements thereof, their pious hopes and efforts to appease angry Muslims keep on blowing up in their faces. The current crisis can be traced back to Khomeini’s death warrant (fatwa) for the writer Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses.

It culminated now in the explosion of fury against the pope. But any suggestion that Islam is linked to the ideology of terror or violence evokes immediate outrage.

Oddly enough, no outrage was forthcoming when the leader of Israeli Arab Muslims, Sheikh Raad Salah promised a gathering of 50,000 Israeli Arabs, Friday night Sept.

15 that “very shortly the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem

would be eclipsed and the city (Israel’s historic and national capital), will become the capital of the “world Islamic caliphate.”

His audience eagerly thundered: “With fire and blood we will liberate al Aqsa!”

No one demanded of the sheik any apology although by a strange coincidence he parroted one of al Qaeda’s central goals and injunctions and the justification for its terrorist campaign against the American, British and French “crusaders” and “the Jews,” namely, the establishment of a caliphate for world rule from its center in Jerusalem.

Where are the demonstrations and effigies protesting the explicit threat to the Jewish state and its capital? This double standard for legitimate and illegitimate Islamic conduct ruled the thinking of much of the world before Pope Benedict dropped his clanger – and will be there after it is forgotten.

End DEBKAfile Report

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No Sweat! Pacification is the Order of the Day.

September 17, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

What Next? Now Islam is after the Pope for a quote from the Koran and a comment on it. First, they blast the freedom of the press by their violent reaction to European cartoons, and now they blast freedom

of religious expression by the Pope.

Europe is running scared, both in the political and religious arena. So there will be a deep apology issued to the highly offended Muslims, who have a long and bloody history of spreading their faith by the sword, and everything will almost return to normal. Of course, there won’t be an apology for threatening the Pope’s life by a suicide bomber attack.

It is acceptable to intimidate the Pope and European officials, but don’t dare insinuate we should try to intimidate the hunters of infidel heads once in a while. At this stage of the game the primary tool and weapon of terrorists is intimidation of the masses by the acts of a few, which has always historically been the major ploy of terrorist guerilla warfare. It is like a growing, spreading cancer in a population of non-cancerous cells that eventually become cancerous themselves, but by intimidation rather than infection in the case of Islamic terrorism.

This constant attack by the Arab press on any comments or cartoons coming out of Europe is intimidating the continent, particularly where large percentages of the population are Muslim. The rest of the general population is learning to give in to a minority, much as did the general German population to the much smaller Nazi Party by intimidation.

As a consequence of this intimidation, when a major war does break out in the Middle East, I expect most of the European nations to be pro-Arab or neutral. And when the final single battle of Armageddon closes this age of the Gentiles, I expect the European, Eurasian, African, and Asian nations, along with Russia and China, to gather with the Arabs to attempt to finish off Israel, and thereby end what Hitler called the great Jewish Problem.

The following article from the Jerusalem Post is typical of the Islamic technique of conquering by intimidation. It is tragic that this is likely to do just that in time across Europe.

Continental Europe is like a cur dog with its tail tucked between

its legs and I have watched a dramatic shift from pro-Israel to pro-Arab over the last 50 years.

I would not be the least surprised to see God as the only one on Israel’s side after the next war breaks out in the Middle East.

Zechariah 14:1-3 – Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. [2] For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity,

and the residue of

the people shall not be cut off from the city. [3] Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

Mujahideen’s Army threatens Pope with Suicide Attack

George Conger and JPost Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST

September 16, 2006

As security was beefed up around Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday night, the Mujahideen’s Army movement in Iraq threatened to carry out a suicide attack against the Pope in revenge for his comments about Islam and jihad.

On a website used by rebel movements in Iraq, a message posted by the Mujahideen’s Army said members of the organization would “smash the crosses in the house of the dog from Rome.”

European religious and political leaders have backed the Pope in the wake of the Muslim protests over his academic lecture at Regensburg University Tuesday, saying the pope’s words had been misinterpreted.

“Rather than criticizing Islam, the pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence,” Fr. Samir K. Samir, SJ one of the Vatican’s leading experts on Islam wrote in the Catholic newspaper Asia News.

The pope’s academic lecture “was trying to show how Western society-including the Church-has become secularized by removing from the concept of Reason its spiritual dimension and origins which are in God,” Fr. Samir stated.

While European Muslims were quick to attack the pope’s words, the continent’s political leaders declined to follow.

“Whoever criticizes the pope misunderstood the aim of his speech,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with the German newspaper, Bild.

“It was an invitation to dialogue between religions,” she said on Friday. Benedict “expressly spoke in favor of this dialogue, which is something I also support and consider urgent and necessary.” “What Benedict XVI emphasized was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion,” Merkel noted.

This is a “storm in a tea cup” the former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey told The Jerusalem Post. “Anything Pope Benedict says should be weighed carefully. He is not given to slight or idle remarks,” he added, dismissing Muslim charges the Pope had “rubbished” Islam.

“If he quoted something said 600 years ago, we should not assume that this represents the Pope’s beliefs about Islam today,” he said.

Lord Carey, who chairs the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East has long been active in Christian-Muslim dialogue, and in 2002 signed an accord in Alexandria with the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel calling for an end to violence, suicide bombings and a resumption of the peace process in the Middle East.

“Muslims, as well as Christians, must learn to enter into dialogue without crying ‘foul’,” Lord Carey said. “We live in perilous times, and we must not only separate religion from violence but also not give religious legitimacy to violence in any shape or form.” Italian European parliament vice president Mario Mauro condemned as “monstrous” the manipulation of the pope’s remarks by Islamic leaders which he claimed were used to “hit out at Christians and the West.”

The controversy was evidence of the “gravity of the danger we are facing” he told the ANSA press agency on September 15, and urged Europeans to “defend reason” against the onslaught of “Islamist-Nazi ideology that permeates fundamentalist thought.”

The Western press was divided over the pope’s remarks. The New York Times editorialized on Saturday that the pope must give a “deep and persuasive” apology for his remarks as “the world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly,” it said.

However, the Guardian commented that the pope was “innocent of the charges of stirring up hatred against Islam being made against him.”

“It is difficult to believe that those making the claims,” the Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent, Stephen Bates, noted, “can possibly have read the remarks in full or in their proper context.” Muslim concerns were “exaggerated and misplaced,” Fr. Samir, a professor at the Universit Saint Joseph in Beirut, the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, and the Centre de Th ologie S vres in Paris, wrote.

“Initial reactions in the Muslim world show that the Pope was misunderstood,” he said, and some “comments made by Western Muslims were superficial and fed the circus-like criticism” of “emotional outbursts in response to hearsay.”

Benedict’s quote from the Koran, “There is no compulsion in religion,” (Sura 2,256), w as offered in the context of

a medieval dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian Muslim.

“The Holy Father chose this text because it contained a ‘key sentence’ in which the Emperor criticizes the Muslim for Islam’s violence as exemplified by the command to spread the faith by the sword,” Fr. Samir said.

However, the argument being proffered by the pope was that “anyone who engages in violence ceases being a believer; anyone, Christian or Muslim, who goes along with violence goes against Reason and God, who is the source of Reason,” he stated.

“Sadly, some people cannot avoid seeing the conflict between the West and Islam except in political terms.

Since the Pope is a Westerner, it must logically follow that he is ‘against’ us. And having failed to understand what the pope says, all that they can say is that he criticized jihad and for this reason he certainly ‘must’ be an enemy,” Fr. Samir said.

The tragedy in this controversy, Fr.

Samir suggested was that “only by listening to the Pope’s suggestions, and those of a few Muslim intellectuals, can Islam’s chances for renewal become real.”

“It is high time that Islam deal with modernity; not to be swallowed up by it, but rather to take what good it has to offer and improve on it,” he said.

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Yankee Go Home and Clear Our Way for a Future Jihad!

U.S. Iraqi Pullout will clear Supply and attack Linkage along Israel’s Northern and Southwestern Borders.

When “Foreign Occupiers” Leave Iraq, the Weapons Path will be Wide Open to the Mediterranean waters from Iran via Iraq to Damascus to Lebanon to Sinai and Gaza.

September 16, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Begin Article 1 from DEBKAfile

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Al Qaeda appears to be preparing a large-scale terrorist attack on Israeli and UNIFIL forces in South Lebanon

September 14, 2006, 11:37 PM (GMT+02:00)

According to some Western and Lebanese intelligence sources, al Qaeda has named veteran Abu Rush al-Miqati, 56, an old Middle East hand, to organize the attack. Lebanese interior minister Ahmad Fatfat reports 13 al Qaeda cells are operating in Lebanon and are being mustered for the attack.

The Italian defense minister Arturo Parisi, who visited Italian forces at Ras a Maroun in South Lebanon, reminded them that al Qaeda’s Ayman Zawahiri this week stated that UNIFIL forces in Lebanon faced attack as “enemies of Islam.” Parisi said

he was not surprised by al Qaeda’s message and warned the soldiers their mission could be “long, risky, costly and difficult.” But we are here, he said, to defend the security of Israel and strengthen Lebanon’s ability to control its territory.

“We know the terrorists are not on our side.” Italy has agreed to send up to 3,000 soldiers to Lebanon, making it the biggest contributor to the UN`s force there. Over a thousand Italians are already deployed.

All UN troops in South Lebanon are on terrorist alert.

French sources report that a new message was posted on Islamist websites by Deputy al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, calling on a militant Algerian Islamist group to target France. In a taped recording Zawahiri called on the Algerian GSPC group to become “a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders”. He also urged the GSPC – the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat – to sow fear “in the hearts of the traitors and the apostate sons of France” and to crush the “pillars of the Crusader alliance”. Prime minister Dominique de Villepain advises treating this warning with the greatest seriousness. France must prepare for the worst, he said.

Begin Article 2 from DEBKAfile

“Once the occupiers are out, many of Iraq`s problems will be resolved,” Iran’s Ali Khamenei tells visiting Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki Wednesday

September 13, 2006, 9:15 PM (GMT+02:00)

He attributed part of Iraq’s problems to “foreign occupiers” and “the performance of the former tyrant regime” for another. Iran considers it its duty to extend practical assitance to the Iraqi people and government, including backing Iraq’s recovery of its sovereingty.

In Baghad , car bombs killed 22 people in Baghdad Wednesday and police found 60 bodies bound, tortured and shot – most in Sunni districts but some also in Shiite districts neighborhoods of the capital.

Begin Article 3 from Jerusalem Post

IDF: Egypt not stopping Smuggling

Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST

September 14, 2006

While Egypt is making efforts to stop the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip, at least one ton

of explosives is being conveyed across the Sinai border Gaza each month, a high-ranking IDF officer revealed on Thursday.

Following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza last year, Egypt deployed 750 border policemen along the border with Gaza in agreement with Israel. The force, the officer said, has proven to be “ineffective” in stopping the smuggling into Gaza despite the Egyptian government’s interest and readiness to assist Israel in preventing the terror buildup in the Palestinian territory.

Besides being a breeding ground for Islamic extremists, the Sinai desert was also a main conduit for high-grade explosives, grenades and anti-tank missiles that were being transferred into Gaza, the officer revealed.

The source of the weaponry, the officer said, was from various countries, including Iran and Egypt’ s

southern neighbor Sudan.

“The smuggling must be thwarted before it reaches Sinai,” the officer said. “There are loads of explosives in the desert.

Some is transferred to Gaza and some is used for the attacks against targets in the Sinai.”

The officer further revealed that Palestinian terrorists have traveled to Iran for terror training following which they returned to the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, he said, were also trying to import and in some cases manufacture advanced homemade anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. He said Hizbullah had representatives stationed in the Gaza Strip.

“They want to import or develop on their own new weapons that they don’t have,” the officer said. “Our job is to try to stop them from succeeding.”

Meanwhile Thursday, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed for publication that in a joint operation with the IDF last month it arrested an operative of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza who revealed the location of a terror tunnel being dug under the Karni cargo crossing into Gaza.

Majad Kambaz, 29, of Gaza was arrested last month for alleged involvement in terror activity against Israel.

Kambaz revealed to his interrogators the exact location of the tunnel that was being dug under the security fence and the Karni crossing.

The terrorists planned to plant a large amount of explosives inside the tunnel and under the offices of the Israeli administration station at Karni that is in charge of the transfer of goods to the Palestinian population in Gaza.

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Islam is getting ready for Conventional War – Israel is Not!

September 14, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

After reading Special Prophecy Update Number 135B, September 1, 2003, which immediately follows, please read the three excerpts from recent news articles following 135B. Israel and the world are desperate to stop Iran from getting a nuclear warh

ead for its Shihab missile series, but they should be more concerned about

Iran supplying sophisticated conventional weapons to Syria, Hizbollah, Hamas, and other t errori

st groups to knock out Israeli tanks and planes. Israel and most of the free world keeps on preparing primarily for a great nuclear war, not a conventional war, which is a big mistake. Israel and the United States both have a mindset that, based on wars with Arab nations in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and the last two incursions into Lebanon, they can easily defeat the Arabs in a conventional war. If such a war broke out in 2006 and 2007 I would wholeheartedly agree. But at some point in time, between 2008 and 2012, as Iran pumps more and more high tech weaponry designed to shoot from the shoulder and destroy aircraft and tanks into Lebanon and Syria, I believe the pendulum will swing to the Arabs in preparedness, and Israel will be the loser in the conventional war that follows.

Since this century began I have watched the leaders of Israel turn from the possibility of a conventional ground war to a strategic air war over a wide section of the Middle East. I believe this is a serious tactical error. In many previous Blogs and Prophecy Updates, I have described in detail how I believe the movements of the armies, involved in the coming conflict, will juxtaposition throughout the initial attack, such that it will drive Israel into the Negev Wilderness

SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 135B

September 1, 2003

Bye! Bye! Conventional Merkava 4’s and 5’s

I was rather surprised by some armor decisions made recently by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now the Treasury Minister in Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet. He believes Israel faces two threats – The Palestinian terrorist groups, and the weapons of mass destruction that are being developed by Arab states in the Middle East, notably headed by Iran. Of course, both of these are real threats, but I do not agree with his statement that followed. He does not believe the threat of an invasion by Arab states against Israel on the ground is a feasible reality and, because of this, favors the decommissioning of old war systems, like the Merkava tanks, at an accelerated rate. Netanyahu attributes great importance to the strategic view, which would provide answers to the Iranian nuclear threat and to other state’s weapons of mass destruction. He favors the continuation of the security fence to its completion, but desires to see the discontinuation of Merkava tank production. If Israel does follow this program, believing they are secure from an outside ground attack at the present, then once they finally get the Palestinians fenced in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it will give them a sense of “peace and safety” as regards their being overrun from the north. Scripture indicates it will happen. Without the conventional old war systems, such as the Merkava 3 and the new Merkava 4 tanks, Israel would be much more vulnerable to a conventional attack like the one launched against them from Syria in the 1973 Yom Kipper War. The deterrent to non-conventional weapons, now being developed by the Arab states, lies in the Negev wilderness in the form of nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads on the hundreds of Jericho missiles found there. The mass destruction weapons possessed by Israel in the Negev are more than a sufficient deterrent to cause

the Arab states not to launch

theirs against Israel. When Israel truly believes it has attained peace and safety, then a conventional war attack will be launched against it from the north.

I Thessalonians 5:3,4 – For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

[4] But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Begin Excerpt from Khaleej Times Onlign

Hezbollah’s New Battle — Rebuild in order to Survive

(AFP) Khaleej Times Online – Middle East News

14 September 2006

BEIRUT – Hezbollah is engaged in a new battle one month after the end of the war with Israel as it tries to quickly launch rebuilding efforts in Lebanon in a bid to maintain its power base.

Members of the Shia militant group have especially been active in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold repeatedly pounded by Israel during the 34-day conflict that ended August 14.

No sooner had the Israeli shelling stopped than militants of the group began clearing the rubble and handing out cash to residents to help them find temporary housing pending the rebuilding of the area.

A total 18,000 homes were destroyed or damaged in the suburbs, heavily populated by the Shia community and home to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

“Our aim today is to be able to repair the harm inflicted by Israel,” said Moustafa Dirani, a member of Hezbollah’s political council.

Dirani was captured by Israeli soldiers in 1994 and spent 10 years in prison before being released as part of a prisoner swap that included the remains of Israeli soldiers and retired Israeli colonel Elhanan Tennenbaum.

“Hezbollah is close to the people, we are a party that cannot but stand with the people” he added.

But the challenge today for Hezbollah, which has built its reputation on its ability to move ahead of the government in meeting the needs of the country’s Shia community — traditionally the poorest — is to once again deliver on its promises.

That would enable the group, which is engaged in a power struggle with the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, to maintain its power base within the Shia community that represents about 40 percent of the country’s population of 3.5 million.

“The government wants to rob the people, not to help them,” said Ghassan Darwish, head of Hezbollah’s rebuilding campaign in the Beirut suburbs. “Government officials drop by, check out what we’re doing, congratulate us and then leave.”

He added Hezbollah was focussing on quickly rebuilding the suburbs in order to give hope to the local population.

In the meantime, each family whose home has been destroyed has been handed 12,000 dollars in crisp 100-dollar bills that many suspect came from Iran, Hezbollah’s backer. Those whose homes were damaged are given less.

The charm offensive seems to be paying off, at least for now, with most local residents still declaring loyalty to the group.

“I lost my house but I hold Israel rather than Hezbollah responsible because it launched this war just to recover two soldiers,” said Marwan Azzi, as he pocketed his cash compensation. He was referring to Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 which sparked the month-long war with Israel.

Not everyone in the Shia community, however, is as supportive of Hezbollah.

“It’s true that Hezbollah is doling out money,” said Isaaf Saleh, 65, who pocketed 8,000 dollars in compensation. “But when I look at this disaster, I tell myself that the people are the losers in this war and no one has the right to put us through this for political ends.”

Begin Ha’aretz Article

New “Mini-Iran” Emerging in Southern Lebanon

Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff

Ha’aretz News Service

August 18, 2006

While for the first time in 30 years the Lebanese Army deployed south of the Litani River on Thursday, the army has no plans to drive Hizballah out of the south or to confront it.

Lebanon’s president and commander in chief of the army, Emile Lahoud, made it clear on Wednesday that Hizballah would not be disarmed, not even in the area south of the Litani River. Hizballah men may not carry their arms openly, but they could rebuild their bunkers and fill them up with rockets in preparation for the next confrontation with Israel.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed a week ago, is already on the path to becoming meaningless. While the Americans are declaring that the new forces in southern Lebanon will not allow Hizballah to resume their positions along the border, Nasrallah’s forces are patrolling without hindrance in the villages of southern Lebanon, recording Israel Defense Forces activities, and giving interviews, while armed, to Arab television stations.

Israel is not ready for a Broad Ground War!

September 14, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Begin Excerpt from Haaretz Article

Wanted: A New Combat Doctrine

September 3, 2006

By Reuven Pedatzur

Does the Israel Defense Forces’ combat doctrine and structure have to change following the lessons of the Lebanon war? That question should be foremost in the minds of the army’s senior command, irrespective of the need to probe the senior officers’ management of the war. It would be a mistake to focus only on the army’s operational failures, which were indeed grave, while ignoring the basic military thinking formulated in recent years – on whose basis the IDF went to war in Lebanon.

The main problem is that the IDF is facing a broad spectrum of threats, from the strategic Iranian threat on one side to the threat of guerrillas and terror on the other. In recent years it built the force with an emphasis only on the strategic threat.

While the air force grew and acquired long-range operational capability, the ground forces degenerated, focusing on combating Palestinian terror. Reservists in the ground forces had not trained for a long time, and the assumption was that in any case the chances of a broad ground war were very low.

To a large extent, this is reminiscent of the concept the IDF developed between 1967 and 1973. The senior command believed then that the air force, which essentially defeated the Arab armies as the Six-Day War began, could answer almost single-handedly any threat from Egypt and Syria. The result was the neglect of the ground forces, along with the characteristic arrogance that disregarded the enemy’s military capabilities.

End Excerpt from Haaretz Article

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Separation of Religion & State – Possible with Christianity – Impossible with Conservative Islam

September 14, 2006

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Luke 20:19-26 – And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him; and they feared the people: for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them. [20] And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor. [21] And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly: [22] Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no? [23] But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? [24] Shew me a penny.

Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s. [25] And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s. [26] And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.

When one seeks the solution to a situation or event problem by process of analyzing

the root cause, there is always the hope that a single major reason can be found that is the underlying fly in the ointment blocking the solution to the problem. There are normally several factors that pop up in solving a problem, but in some cases there is one major problem that must be addressed before any solution can ever be attained.

In the case of Islam versus Christianity there is one insurmountable reason that a militarily strong Islam and a militarily strong Christianity cannot exist on the same planet for very long without a major war. It is a very simple one – Conservative Islamic rule cannot have the separation of religion and state on a continuous basis, but Christianity can, and does.

I am a strong supporter of separation

of church and state, which does not exist in conservative Islam. In a conservative Islamic State the Law of the Koran becomes the Law of the State.

The Law of the Koran is the spirit of antichrist.

When it becomes the Law of the State, that state is controlled by the spirit of antichrist.

Begin Excerpt from Jerusalem Post Article

The Battle of Britain and Our Battle

Jonathan Ariel, THE JERUSALEM POST

September 12, 2006

This September 15, Great Britain will commemorate one of its proudest moments, the 66th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. This is a day that should be remembered and honored not just by the citizens of Britain, but by every inhabitant of this planet who cherishes liberty and freedom.

TODAY THE West is in a similar mind-set to that of France and Britain after WWI.

The horrors of that war generated within Western democracies a profound revulsion of the very idea of war.

This led to the policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany.

Following its victory in the Cold War, and the demise of the USSR, the conventional wisdom was that war, as far as the West was concerned, had become a thing of the past and that economics, not politics, would dominate international diplomacy and geopolitics.

Unfortunately large parts of the Arab-Islamic world have not accepted that conventional wisdom. To them the defeat of the Soviet Union was not an opportunity to end war, but one to make war on the West.

Certain Western liberal intellectual circles have proven themselves capable of coming up with a seemingly limitless supply of specious reasons to explain, understand and even justify this visceral hatred of the West by large parts of the Arab-Islamic world.

Ultimately the reason is very simple: resentment of the ascent of the West.

slam so far has proven congenitally incapable of doing what Christianity has done – allowing the evolution of a society in which the political and religious establishments are independent of one another.

It is this evolution that facilitated and expedited the ascent of the West, by enabling the development of a political system based on democracy, freedom of thought and speech, and religious and cultural pluralism. These then spurred the major technological, scientific, economic and social advancements that empowered the West and have enabled it to dominate the globe politically and economically for the past 200 years.

THE ISLAMIC world has had ample opportunity to adopt the values that were instrumental in the West’s ascent, but its political and religious establishments have chosen not to. The reason is very clear: They would rather wield total power over a failed society than share power with other groups in a successful one.

To facilitate this they have abused their oil wealth.

Instead of using it to promote and develop their societies, they have impoverished them. Petrodollars that could have been spent on creating first-class educational systems have instead been used to create and maintain security apparatuses whose sole purpose is to ensure the absolute rule of a corrupt elite by repressing any sign of dissent.

These same political and religious leaders have constantly aided and abetted the most reactionary elements within their religious establishments, which in return have channeled popular frustrations generated by the regimes’ failures outwards, against the “infidel West.”

The Islamic world has, for the most part, been willing to buy this, preferring to blame the West for conspiring against it rather than take responsibility for its spectacular failures.

IS THIS perhaps beginning to sound familiar

? It should, for all one has to do is replace “Muslim” with “German” and “the West” with “Jews” in order to generate a feeling of d j vu.

For several years the West preferred to ignore the threat posed by Nazi Germany until it was almost too late. In 1940 Britain found itself locked in a life or death struggle with Nazi Germany, outmanned and outgunned. Fortunately it found the required reserves of will power to persevere, and ultimately prevail.

Today we face a similar threat, that of Islamo-fascism. This threat is no less serious than that posed by the Nazis, since it also is founded on an ideology totally incompatible with the core Western values of democracy and freedom.

Just as there was ultimately no possibility to compromise with Nazi Germany, so there can be no possibility of compromising and coexisting with Islamo-fascism.

Unlike Britain in 1940, this time Western democracy has entered the battle from a position of relative strength, with all the means needed to prevail. Unfortunately we, or at least much of our political and cultural leadership, seems to be lacking the will to do so. Rather than accept the unpalatable reality that we are faced by an enemy threatened by our values and willing to destroy us in order

to eradicate them, there are far too many among us who insist on turning a blind eye toward it.

Just as the democracies deluded themselves into thinking they could coexist with the Nazis, and maintained a policy based on appeasement and compromise, there are unfortunately influential forces within our societies who would rather compromise and appease than face facts and confront.

Churchill’s words to Britain and the free world – “It’s time to brace ourselves for the coming battle” – uttered after the fall of France, are unfortunately as apt today as they were in the summer of 1940.

However no less important is to fully appreciate the magnitude of what is at stake. The words of Lincoln do this best, because the ultimate targets of the forces of fascism are the very core, idea and values on which “government of the people, for the people, and by the people” is based.

The writer is a former editor-in-chief of Ma’ariv International.

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