A new group of young Palestinians from divergent political streams has formed in the West Bank with the stated goal of bringing about a third intifada.
The impetus for the group developed against the background of the recent flare-ups between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces, which have become commonplace throughout the West Bank since a UN General Assembly decision in November that granted non-member observer state status to “Palestine.”
Youngsters who identify themselves with the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organizations have joined forced with supporters of Fatah, according to a video uploaded to the Internet Friday, in order to fight against Israel.
“This is the beginning of the third Palestinian intifada, which erupts from the heart of Hebron and spreads to all of Palestine,” they said.
The group stated specific demands and objectives, including the removal of all IDF barriers in the West Bank, the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian land, the cessation of what the group calls the “Israeli offensive” against the citizens of Hebron, the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues — which has been held up by the Israeli government since the UN vote — and the opening of crossings to Gaza.
On Friday, a group of Palestinian youths from divergent political streams formed the “National Unity Brigades,” which said it was already fighting a third intifada, or uprising.
The impetus for the group developed against the background of recent flare-ups between Palestinians and Israeli security forces, which have ramped up throughout the West Bank since last month’s mini-war with Gaza.
Hebron played a central role in the past week’s unrest, which saw theshooting of a Palestinian teenager by a border policewoman when he threatened a soldier with a gun — later found to be fake — and supporters of Hamas marching in the streets.
The Palestinians engaged Israel in two bloody intifadas, first in the late 1980s and early 1990s and then a decade later. Israeli officials have feared a third intifada could break out in the West Bank, though military officials say they have control of the situation in the territory.
Some 3,000 Palestinian protesters marched from the city hall of the West Bank city of Hebron toward an Israeli checkpoint on Friday, as part of demonstrations throughout the territories marking the 25th anniversary of the Hamas terrorist organization.
IDF and Border Police forces stationed near the checkpoint, which guards the city’s Jewish neighborhoods, fired tear gas canisters to disperse the protesters after they began throwing rocks at one of the Jewish-owned homes.
In several other areas of the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrators attacked Israeli targets.
In Qalandiya, north of Jerusalem, and in the village of Bil’in, known for its weekly protests against the security barrier, Palestinians threw stones at Israeli security forces.
In Kufr Qaddoum, dozens of protesters threw stones and set tires alight.
And near Ma’aleh Shomron, a West Bank settlement about 10 kilometers east of Kfar Saba, and outside Ramallah, Israeli vehicles were pelted with rocks.
Some 10,000 Hamas supporters marched from Al-Nasr Mosque to Martyrs’ Square in downtown Nablus following afternoon prayers, where a mass rally was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the movement’s establishment.
Meanwhile, in the south:
“It gives us the sense that the Egyptians want to attack Israel,” claims International Assessment and Strategy Center Senior Fellow Richard Fisher, on an arms deal that will send North Korean Scud missile parts through China to Egypt.
According to a story in the Washington Free Beacon, U.S. intelligence officials learned that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un – in violation of United Nations sanctions – is sending Scud missile parts to Egypt.
“Intelligence reports from mid-November were circulated to senior officials in the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies,” the report said. “The shipment would be the first by the North Korean regime to the new Egyptian regime headed by Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president.”
A former Defense Department analyst who asks not to be named, however, says that North Korea has supplied Scud missile parts to Egypt for several years and that China has been a conduit for several yearsFisher sees Egypt’s acquisition of the parts as a sign that Egypt is revving up its missile capability. If so, Fisher believes this is bad news for Israel.
“The deal makes sense if they want to attack Israel,” Fisher said. “Missiles are more able to make it through Israel’s air defense system.”
At the same time, Fisher says this arms deal is good for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government.
“Missiles can be controlled by a small number of troops in Egypt,” Fisher explained. “This means that despite Morsi’s political problems at home, the missiles could also be controlled by troops that are loyal to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government.”
The United States and Germany are sending Patriot missiles and troops to the Turkish border, a warning to Syria’s besieged President Bashar al-Assad.
The surface-to-air interceptors would be “dealing with threats that come out of Syria,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Threats would include Syrian strikes inside Turkey and fighting between the government and rebels that extends into Turkey.
Errant Syrian artillery shells struck the Turkish border town of Akcakale and killed five Turkish civilians in October.
“We can’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether that pisses off Syria,” said Panetta after signing the order Friday. He spoke after arriving Friday at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base, a U.S. Air Force installation about 80 miles from Syria’s border.
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This may be the most germane commentary written thus far and it is most definitely worth reading in full:
I’m praying for the Lord to comfort and heal all those traumatized by what happened in Newtown. But as I do I can’t help but think about the trendlines and the dark trajectory our nation is on. It’s not just “the economy, stupid.” We are, in many respects, in a moral and spiritual freefall in our country, and we are paying a terrible price.
The demons of violence and lawlessness are the loose all across America — in Newtown, Connecticut….in Aurora, Colorado….in Oak Creek, Wisconsin….just as they were in Littleton, Colorado and at Virginia Tech in years gone by. But why? How is it possible that violent crime in the United States has surged by more than 460 percent since 1960?
The answer is as painful as it is simple: the further we turn away from God in our nation — the further we drive Him out of our society, our of our schools and courts, and out of our media and out of our homes, or the more we give mere lip service to religion, the more men are ”holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Timothy 3:5) — the worse things are getting. Consider just the cultural war against Jesus and Christmas that has been waged just in the last few days:
- Fox News headline: “Holiday message: Atheists dub Jesus a ‘myth’ on Times Square billboard”
- CNN column, “Have yourself a merry atheist Christmas“
- AP article about the “War on Christmas”
- Fox News story about a rapper singing about a “Gangbanger Jesus”
- KTVA-TV (Alaska) story: “Atheists Wage War on Christmas in Anchorage: Anti-religion signs on People Mover buses”
- Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart wages war on Christmas and mocks those who thinks he’s wrong [caution: obscene language]
The Lord God Almighty is a gentleman. He won’t force us to accept His great love and many blessings. If a nation tells Him to leave, He will leave. But what are we reaping as a result of a society that increasingly ignores God and hates or dismisses Jesus Christ? We are witnessing a horrifying explosion of murder. We are witnessing a gruesome crime wave unprecedented in American history. And there appears to be no end in sight. In recent years, we’ve seen brutal mass murders in high schools, on college campuses, and in small towns all across America (a recent FBI report says the murder rate soared 18.3% in small towns in America last year alone).
The Hebrew prophet Nahum once wrote about the city of Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrian empire, “Woe to the bloody city….many slain, a mass of corpses, and countless dead bodies — they stumble over the dead bodies….your shepherds are sleeping.” (Nahum 3:1, 3, 18) The people of Ninevah had once repented and turned to the living God of the Bible during the days when the prophet Jonah warned them of coming judgment, and God had saved and blessed them. That generation of Ninevites had listened and turned from their sins towards the Lord. But 150 years or so later, a different generation of Ninevites refused to listen to the Word of God. They refused to repent. Their godlessness turned to terrible, wrenching, horrific violence. Their shepherds were sleeping. They weren’t telling people to turn back to the Lord before it was too late. The shepherds didn’t understand, or didn’t care. They didn’t feed the sheep the Word of God. They didn’t lead the sheep to follow the Lord. They didn’t protect the sheep from evil. So the judgment of God came and they were all tragically unprepared. The city of Ninevah was destroyed by God in 612 B.C.
What is the future of America? Is America in a “Jonah” moment, or a “Nahum” moment? Will we hear the word of the Lord that we have strayed far from the teachings of the Bible and allowed our land to become polluted with abortions and pornography and violence and wickedness of all kinds? Will we admit how far we are from God’s plan and purpose for our lives? Will we confess that our hearts are far from Jesus Christ and plead with the Lord for His mercy and grace and forgiveness? Will we fast and pray and earnestly seek God’s face, and implore Christ to give us a Third Great Awakening? Or will we ignore the word of the Lord and continue in our sins and watch our nation continue to decline, or even implode?
There is a point of no return — a point at which God removes His hand of grace and mercy and turns to the judgment of America. If we don’t repent for our sins, we are going to face that judgment…perhaps sooner than we think. As I note in Implosion: Can America Recover From Its Economic & Spiritual Challenges In Time?, “Alarm bells are going off all around us. Lights on the dashboard are flashing, Warning! Warning! Yet America is sleeping through the alarms, blind to the warning lights. And tragically, for the most part, the Church — God’s chosen instrument to bless individuals, families, communities, and nations — is asleep as well. I shudder to imagine where we are heading if we don’t wake up soon, plead for the Lord’s forgiveness, and ask Him to use us to love our neighbors and revitalize our country.” [Listen to a podcast of the "Implosion Radio Special"]
Where are you today? Have you received Christ as your Savior and Lord? Are you absolutely certain that if you were to die today that you would spend eternity in heaven with the Lord? Are you leaning on Christ’s everlasting arms for complete forgiveness for your sins, for hope, for peace, for comfort, for wisdom and direction in this life, and in the life to come? If not, let this be the day of salvation for you.
They refuse to accept thatthe laws of man, no matter how restrictive, do absolutely nothing to recalibrate our moral and spiritual compass. They are not only shouting in the wrong direction, but from a wrong direction.
Meanwhile, the more introspective and spiritually grounded among us will instead fall to our knees and cry out, “why have we allowed this to happen?” But those hearing our cries will fail to understand that we are not blaming our system of laws, but our own acquiescence and failure to honestly confront our unquestioning acceptance of evil. We realize that we cannot fix spiritual problems and repair moral deficits with the legislation of man. We will never be successful in fixing spiritual problems with political solutions. Yet few have the courage, insight or willingness to address this very foundation of our existence as a people and a nation.
By permitting the perversion of our core spirituality from a new age ideology that has replaced or redefined our spiritual values, the blood of innocents are on our hands as well. By our own acquiescence to moral and spiritual perversity cleverly packaged as tolerance, we have embraced the very evil that is embodied within tolerance. In that form, tolerance itself becomes evil, and we become enraged at the mere symptoms of a great spiritual problem rather that the problem itself.
Meanwhile, the more introspective and spiritually grounded among us will instead fall to our knees and cry out, “why have we allowed this to happen?” But those hearing our cries will fail to understand that we are not blaming our system of laws, but our own acquiescence and failure to honestly confront our unquestioning acceptance of evil. We realize that we cannot fix spiritual problems and repair moral deficits with the legislation of man. We will never be successful in fixing spiritual problems with political solutions. Yet few have the courage, insight or willingness to address this very foundation of our existence as a people and a nation.
By permitting the perversion of our core spirituality from a new age ideology that has replaced or redefined our spiritual values, the blood of innocents are on our hands as well. By our own acquiescence to moral and spiritual perversity cleverly packaged as tolerance, we have embraced the very evil that is embodied within tolerance. In that form, tolerance itself becomes evil, and we become enraged at the mere symptoms of a great spiritual problem rather that the problem itself.
What should we expect from a nation of men and women who for years and even generations have demanded and subsequently celebrated the successful eviction of God from our lives, our national institutions and country as a whole? All of this is the name of tolerance, of equality, of the perversity of equal rights at the behest of our elected leaders and their spiritually bankrupt appointees and minions. Also included are the “big-box,” all inclusive Christian leaders who have drunk from the cup containing a devil’s brew of a tainted tincture of secular coexistence with evil. Have we not considered the ramifications of the redefinition of spirituality and morality, of good and evil, rather than its reinforcement?
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