SYRIA AND EGYPT: MORE DANGEROUS FOR ISRAEL THAN IRAN?
SYRIA AND EGYPT – MORE DANGEROUS FOR ISRAEL THAN IRAN?
“Israel knows that if it declares war on Syria, such a war will reach its cities as well. Israel is sowing an atmosphere of war in the region. Once they threaten Gaza, once southern Lebanon, then Iran and now Syria. We are saying to them, ‘Stop playing the role of villain in the region.’ Syria does not rule out the possibility of an Israeli attack, as that entity lives on aggressiveness. If Israel touches southern Lebanon or Syria, this will turn into an all-out war.” – Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, February 3, 2010
In light of this most recent threat from the Syrian Foreign Minister, we thought it would be good to circulate the article written in January this year by Jan Willem van der Hoeven:
Peace, real peace comes through victory, not through endless negotiations.
Had England or the Allied Forces taken seriously Adolf Hitler’s peace initiative when he sent his deputy, Rudolf Hess to Britain – no peace would have come to the European continent. To attain a true peace you have to win a war.
Britain, thank God, understood what few in today’s Israel understand.
This is the theme that which is repeated over and over again in the very Book the Jewish people were a channel for giving to the world; yet they themselves are so woefully ignorant of this lesson.
Here is one such passage:
And Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and some arrows.” So he took himself a bow and some arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” So he put his hand on it, and Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands.And he said, “Open the east window”; and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot”; and he shot. And he said, “The arrow of the LORD’s deliverance and the arrow of deliverance from Syria; for you must strike the Syrians at Aphek till you have destroyed them.”Then he said, “Take the arrows”; so he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground”; so he struck three times, and stopped.And the man of God was angry with him, and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck Syria till you had destroyed it! But now you will strike Syria only three times.” (2 Kings 13:15-19)
While Christians are taught, in relation to personal life, to turn the other cheek and to pray for their enemies, the same Scriptures they hold dear also teach that ‘government does not bear the sword in vain,’ and under God Himself every honorable government has the national duty to defend and protect, in the best possible way, the citizens entrusted to their care. This of course is also true in relation to the government of Israel, surrounded on all sides – as it is today – by fierce and deadly enemies intent on her final destruction.
In the former building of Yad Vashem, commemorating the victims of the dreadful Holocaust of the Jewish people, who perished under the Nazis often with the willful compliance of many of the virulent anti-Semites in the countries in which they perpetrated their monstrous act, a photograph was exhibited of the cordial meeting in Berlin between the Fuhrer and the then leader of the Palestinian people: the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini of Jerusalem. For those who have the willingness to see and comprehend – this picture says it all.
A deep, deep hatred for the Jewish people existed in the Muslim Palestinian leadership long years before the Jews had their independent state. It is not for nothing that Muslim children often reveal what they have learned and believe from their superiors to be their ultimate aim and fervent desire, when during wars with Israel they sing: “First we will kill the Saturday people (= the Jews), and then we will kill the Sunday people (= the Christians).”
To varying degrees, each Muslim-controlled nation shares this dream and desire – NOT a dream, like that nurtured by so many, many Israelis, for a peaceful coexistence with their former enemies, but a dream wherein the Muslim Middle East will one day be free of the cancerous growth called Israel. That is the goal for which most of the Muslim nations, if not all, have been striving and still strive today!
Every honest observer and student of history can learn this disturbing reality from what follows. Though many may, at first, be unwilling to come to grips with it – there is after all not so much difference between what the Nazis wanted – the excising of the Jewish cancer in their midst – and what the majority of today’s ferocious enemies of Israel aspire to: the dissolution of the hated Jewish state in their Muslim midst!
The origins of this present hatred amazingly lay in Egypt, the very nation with which Israel has made a kind of peace; a shaky peace, because even President Anwar Al Sadat tried his utmost include a clause during the drawing up of the Camp David Accords which, even as he signed a kind of peace treaty, would give Egypt the right to again go to war against Israel if Israel attacked any other Arab states with which Egypt was in league.
Seeing through Sadat’s very clever ruse, Menachem Begin threw up his hands and exclaimed that in that case he, as prime minister of Israel, would be signing not a treaty of peace, but of war, giving Egypt by his very signature the right to make war again on the Jewish state when Egypt perceived it its brotherly, Islamic duty to come again to the aid of Israel’s other enemies when they were threatened by Israel.
What this means is that Sadat’s peace plan was, in reality, a cleverly calculated sham, which the majority of often-gullible Israeli politicians and people were quick to ignore or deny.
Two Israelis who did have the courage and intellectual honesty to see through this wrote as follows.
Sadat also rejected Article 6, section 5 of the November 11, 1978 American draft treaty according to which “The parties undertake to fulfill in good faith their obligations under the treaty … independently of any instrument external to the treaty.” This provision would have given the treaty precedence not only over the West Bank/Gaza issue (on which Sadat wanted the exchange of ambassadors to depend), but also over any agreement which Egypt has with other Arab states. It nullified in effect, Egypt’s log-standing membership in the united Arab front of aggression against Israel. Thus, in rejecting Article 6, section 5 of the draft treaty, Sadat was simply looking for a legal loophole to “justify” breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel at his convenience, while continuing to pursue his strategy of conquest. The final “peace” treaty leaves this matter comfortably ambiguous. (Indeed, hardly was the ink dry on the treaty when, in April 1979, Egyptian Prime Minister Mustapha Khalil declared: “If Syria goes to war to liberate the Golan, this could be considered a defensive war and the joint Arab Defense Pact [sic] could be invoked.” (Sadat’s Strategy by Paul Eidelberg, Dawn Publishing Company, Quebec, Canada, 1979. pp 20-21)
And if this was not enough, on December 4, 1948, Sadat’s Deputy Prime Minister, Fahri Makram Abid , declared that “the treaty with Israel is not the end but only a frame for realizing the aims of the Arabs … In the future we shall demand of Israel to relinquish its Zionist goals … to abolish its ‘law of return’ … to abandon the idea of its historical rights to the land of Israel and … to stop the immigration of Jews to Israel.” To demand this of Israel is to call for its termination as a sovereign state. (Ibid. pp 86-87)
Shmuel Katz, a close advisor and confidant of Menachem Begin who was present at the peace talks in Washington, related this episode of duplicity:
In Jerusalem he [President Jimmy Carter] was received gloomily. The atmosphere of crisis clouded all the courses at the State dinner given in his honor. Begin, in his speech there, again announced that the situation in the negotiations was critical. He was outspoken. “It is impossible to demand of us that we sign a peace treaty which from the outset gives legitimacy to whoever violates it.” The next morning it became known that the government of Israel had proved that it was definitely possible “to demand of Israel that it sign a peace treaty that from the outset gives legitimacy to whoever violates it.” Begin had again capitulated.
The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt includes an Appendix (described as “Agreed Minutes”,) which provides an interpretation to paragraph 5 of Article 6 of the Peace Treaty. It reads:
“It is agreed by the Parties that there is no assertion that this Treaty prevails over other Treaties or agreements or that other Treaties or agreements prevail over this Treaty. The foregoing is not to be construed as contravening the provisions of Article VI (5) of the Treaty, which reads as follows:
‘Subject to Article 103 of the United Nations Charter, in the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Parties under the present Treaty and any of their obligations, the obligations of this treaty will be binding and implemented.'”
The first part of the interpretative article nullifies the priority status of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. It accords Egypt license to go to war with Israel together with an Arab country or several Arab countries whenever convenient to her or to them. …
With the introduction of Clause 6 in the “agreed minutes” Egypt’s future war against Israel will be represented as honoring a commitment whose legality Israel itself had recognized. (The Hollow Peace by Shmuel Katz, Published by Dvir Co. Ltd. and The Jerusalem Post, 1981, pp 298, 299, emphasis in the original.)
For many today, the above-mentioned facts may be brushed aside as nothing more than interesting footnotes of modern Middle Eastern history. If true, however, then with the ever-growing radicalization of ISLAM as we have recently seen in Turkey, Egypt may as yet pose a serious and singular threat to Israel.
Certainly, then, Egypt may also soon turn into a warring enemy that Israel will have to face.
Let us not forget that Egypt already initiated two major wars against Israel: The Six Day War under Gamal Abdul Nasser, and the Yom Kippur War under the devious Anwar Al Sadat. On top of that, Egypt has been – and is increasingly again -the breeding ground for the worst kind of Islamic fundamentalists who gave rise to some of Israel’s most vociferous and dangerous enemies.
This is how authors David Dalin and John Rothmann describe this phenomenon in their book “Icon of Evil.”
As the convener and president of the World Islamic Congress, Haj Amin al-Husseini was now increasingly recognized as the preeminent voice of radical Islam and a new and powerful force on the world political scene. … Many future leaders of radical Islam, such as Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Al Sadat, began their political careers as young activists in the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1930s. Youssef Nada, chairman of Al Taqwa Bank, joined the Muslim Brotherhood during World War II, when he was recruited along with others in the Muslim Brotherhood by German military intelligence agents supervised by the mufti for espionage against the British colonial government in Egypt. Yasser Arafat became active in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 1950s.
The Muslim Brotherhood had been founded in Cairo by al-Husseini’s ideological soul-mate, Hassan al-Banna, a young Egyptian schoolteacher…
The Muslim Brotherhood, a forerunner of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda, was established as a pan-Islamic movement that believed in the virtue of a one-world Islamic utopia and the use of terrorism, when necessary, to achieve its goal. From the brotherhood’s inception, jihad (holy war) became one of its central tenets. Members of the brotherhood emphasized the honor and reverence given to those who sacrifice their lives as jihadist martyrs in the name of Islam, proclaiming, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the name of Allah is our highest hope.” …
The rise of radical Islam, and the evolution of its political and religious worldview, drew further inspiration from the writings of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most influential theoretician, Sayyid Qutb …
…Qutb had a profound ideological influence on the emerging radical Islamic movement, including its principle leaders – ranging from al-Husseini and al-Banna in the 1930s to Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Osama bin Laden in later decades – and its principle terrorist organizations – Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda. Together, al-Husseini, al-Banna, and Qutb constituted the founding fathers of radical Islam as we know it today. …
Another protégé of the mufti, and for many years one of his most trusted allies and loyal political supporters, was future Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat. Sadat, like his close fried and associate Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he succeeded as president of Egypt, had begin his political career in the mid-1930s as a teenage activist with the Muslim Brotherhood. It was through his early political activity with the brotherhood that Sadat (like Nasser) had first met al-Husseini. Both Sadat and Nasser boasted a long history of pro-Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitic speeches. In his autobiography, In Search of Identity, Sadat candidly admitted that he was inspired by Hitler’s Germany. Like his friend Nasser, Sadat was recruited by the mufti to engage in espionage activity on behalf of the Third Reich. During World War II, Sadat had worked for the mufti as a spy for Nazi Germany in British-occupied Egypt. He later served a term in prison for his role in these pro-German activities. Sadat’s attitude did not change after World War II. In 1953, while serving as a close associate and political confidant of al-Husseini, Sadat published a letter in the Egyptian weekly Al-Mussawar, addressed posthumously to Hitler, in which he expressed sorrow over the defeat of the Third Reich and hailed Hitler as the “immortal leader of Germany.” (Icon of Evil – Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann; Random House, New York, 2008. pp 35, 36, 37, 38, 87)
Should Egypt, therefore, again make war with little Israel one day, after all the wars, bloodshed and duplicity against Israel Egypt has already been responsible for, God’s judgment and response will be swift and devastating.
That Egypt is specifically singled out in this serious way in the prophetic Scriptures proves this very point!
Look! You are trusting in the staff of this broken reed, Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. (Isaiah 36:6)
“Egypt shall be a desolation,
And Edom a desolate wilderness,
Because of violence against the people of Judah,
For they have shed innocent blood in their land.
But Judah shall abide forever,
And Jerusalem from generation to generation.
For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted;
For the LORD dwells in Zion.” (Joel 3:19-21)
In that day Egypt will be like women, and will be afraid and fear because of the waving of the hand of the LORD of hosts, which He waves over it. And the land of Judah will be a terror to Egypt; everyone who makes mention of it will be afraid in himself, because of the counsel of the LORD of hosts which He has determined against it. (Isaiah 19: 16,17)
This is not to say that God’s Word ignores the other nations which have – in the past and up to this very day – caused so much suffering to the Jewish nation, like Edom (Saudi Arabia) mentioned here, and Syria as well as others. But the very nation of Egypt, which has been trumpeted as a moderate and champion of peace, God shows to be not all that trustworthy.
It is my prayer that Israel’s leaders may heed these words.
In exchange for: All the loss of Sinai with its strategic depth – crucial in the event of renewed war with Egypt, – the loss of Israel’s oil fields, the self-destruction of Israeli settlements – a very bad precedent – and the loss of so much more – Israel got a temporary peace that can be broken, as Anwar Sadat clearly foresaw, at any time that may suit Egypt’s Islamic Arab strategic interests.
There is an additional reason why Egypt – and this without any Israelis realizing it – has become a snare: Egypt’s insistence on a 100 percent withdrawal from Sinai and the dismantling of Israel’s outposts – Yamit etc. The consequence: a judenrein solution and a 100 percent withdrawal for any peace efforts can and will now be the norm and demand of Arab states. For why should Syria (which in any case aspires to become Greater Syria, inclusive of all of Lebanon and “Palestine,”) wish to settle for anything less than “moderate” and “peacemaking” Egypt, as she is touted as being by Israel and the world?
I still remember how Israel was pressured by Egypt to give back the last meters of sand near Taba; and how on re-entering this last piece of “their” Sinai the Egyptians were shouting: “Today Taba, tomorrow Jerusalem!” There was not even a hint of any thankfulness or willingness to co-exist with the Jewish State of Israel.
God has seen this also, and though His people in their fervent and sometimes blind pursuit of peace have been willing to swallow all these sufferings, setbacks and humiliations, not so God. He indeed has registered all these injustices in His books, and His answer will come as surely as He has said it will.
Therefore, if Anwar Al Sadat, an open and fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler, an early student and activist in Egypt’s fanatical Muslim Brotherhood, and a student of the German military genius Carl von Clausewitz – could become the inspiring hope for peace to the majority in Israel, then to the Israeli elite and leadership, any deception is possible.
Arafat, a pathological liar – as even Ariel Sharon called him – an arch-murderer and terrorist, taught in his young years by the evil, totally pro-Nazi Icon, Jerusalem Mufti Amin al-Husseini, became also a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace (as had Sadat,) all because of the arrogant – “we know better” – and often gullible Israeli leaders’ blind pursuit of peace.
Two intifadas, numerous terrorist attacks in his name, and all the broken promises for a true peace – all this caused a slight doubt to enter at least some Israelis regarding their self-touted peace partner Arafat, but NOT for long!
After Arafat’s death, the world and Israel quickly ran after a new hope for ‘peace.’ Abu Mazen, the one who stood at Arafat’s side during all his murderous exploits, was co-initiator of the massacre of Israeli Olympic Athletes in Munich and is an ardent Holocaust-denier: he is now Israel’s and the world’s hope for peace, even as he is kept in the unsure saddle of his Palestinian leadership by the Israeli government and army, while he remains totally beholden to all the anti-Israel ISLAMIC feelings of most of his Muslim surroundings.
If Sadat was murdered by these same evil forces, so will Abu Mazen be, even if, under pressure of the West and Israel’s blind leadership, he would get “his Palestinian state” from Israel.
He, already old, may either go the way of Sadat or die a natural death, and more radical Hamas-like persons will thankfully receive the just-created Palestinian state for the purpose for which is has always been intended: as a base and springboard towards Israel’s final destruction. As even Yitzhak Rabin once remarked: “A Palestinian state will be built on the ruins of the State of Israel.”
But Israel’s willingness to travel this road of deception under constant pressure of the world, though much wounded and still shaken, is more or less intact. Not only do they see the totally untrustworthy Abu Mazen still as a hope for peace, ridiculous as this may seem, but Bashar el-Assad the fervent supporter of all terrorist actions against Israel – be it via Iran’s Hezbollah or Khaled Mashaal’s Hamas – is still being thought of by some absolutely foolish people as the man that can be pushed or cajoled into a certain peace deal with Israel. As for a starter – and this every Israeli should know by now – receiving all of the Golan must be a given before Assad is even willing to talk to the Israelis.
So here we go – after Anwar Sadat comes Arafat, after Arafat, Abu Mazen, and after Abu Mazen, Assad of Syria. Every one of them of course wants all of “their” lost territory, so that then the now nearly totally Islamized world will gladly finish off what is then left of Israel!
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN ZIONIST CENTER
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