For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him; There! A people dwelling alone, not reckoning itself among the nations.

Numbers 23:9

Hamas TV: We love death more than you love life. Israelis: the price will be high, Sons of Zion... All of Palestine is ours. There is nothing here for you but death.

A Look Back, A Look Ahead

Israel has been at war with Hamas in Gaza. It was not an "operation" it was war. This was not a war that was wanted by Israel nor started by Israel but it is a war that must be won by Israel. Israel has captured many Hamas terrorists and destroyed many of the tunnels dug under the border that come up very close to the communities on the Israeli side of the line. We have also captured many of Hamas's battle plans. We now know that Hamas was planning a mega attack at Rosh HaShanna, the Biblical Feast of Trumpets and traditionally the Jewish New Year. The plan was diabolical: Hundreds of Hamas terrorists, dressed in Israeli army uniforms would come up out of the tunnels to massacre and kidnap as many Israelis as they could. This war has (hopefully) destroyed Hamas's ability to carry out that plan.

The first cease fire proposal by Egypt would have brought things back to the cease fire that ended the fighting in 2012. Obviously that was a very bad agreement since it has allowed Hamas to build a tunnel city under the surface of Gaza and increase their rocket supply to about 10,000. Now their long range rockets can reach Haifa which puts most of Israel in their range.

After Hamas rejected that cease fire, US Secretary of State John Kerry invited himself to the region and put forth a new proposal with Turkey and Qatar that leaned heavily to Hamas's demands and ignored Israel security. This proposal was rejected by Israel (and Egypt and even the Palestinian Authority too), as totally unacceptable. That in itself is quite remarkable, that Israel, Egypt and the PA are all in agreement that Kerry's proposal was very bad. Of course Egypt and the PA have more liberty to tell the Americans what they really believe and they have. Israel did too but Israel was rebuked by the Americans for really speaking the truth.

While the people of the USA still strongly support Israel and the U.S. Congress also supports Israel, it is more obvious than ever before that the administration of Barak Hussein Obama is not really a friend of Israel. Am I going overboard with this statement? Maybe but that is clearly the way it looks from here. Qatar has been bankrolling the Hamas war machine and has no relationship with Israel. Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan is an open anti Semite and has called Israel a Nazi state with an army that has surpassed the brutality of the Nazis. How can these open enemies of Israel in any way be considered "honest brokers" who can mediate between the warring parties. Obama has often stated that his best friend in the Middle East is Erdogan of Turkey. If his best friend is a virulent anti Semite what does that say about Obama?

The following is the transcript of a phone conversation between Netanyahu and Obama. Both the American and Israeli Governments have denied that this is a true rendition of the conversation but a number of credible Israeli journalists have said it is a true report. Even if it is a true report the Governments would have to deny it to keep diplomatic face.

Israel's Channel 1 published a Hebrew transcript of a portion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama's telephone conversation Sunday 28 July, in which Obama is insistent that Israel unilaterally halt all military activities in the Gaza Strip.

The following is an English translation of the Hebrew account of the talk given in the report (from The Times of Israel website):

Barack Obama:

I demand that Israel agrees to an immediate, unilateral ceasefire and halt all offensive activities, in particular airstrikes.

Benjamin Netanyahu:

And what will Israel receive in exchange for a ceasefire?

BO:

I believe that Hamas will cease its rocket fire - silence will be met with silence.

BN:

Hamas broke all five previous ceasefires. It's a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

BO:

I repeat and expect Israel to stop all its military activities unilaterally. The pictures of destruction in Gaza distance the world from Israel's position.

BN:

Kerry's proposal was completely unrealistic and gives Hamas military and diplomatic advantages.

BO:

Within a week of the end of Israel's military activities, Qatar and Turkey will begin negotiations with Hamas based on the 2012 understandings, including Israel's commitment to removing the siege and restrictions on Gaza.

BN:

Qatar and Turkey are the biggest supporters of Hamas. It's impossible to rely on them to be fair mediators.

BO:

I trust Qatar and Turkey. Israel is not in the position that it can choose its mediators.

BN:

I protest because Hamas can continue to launch rockets and use tunnels for terror attacks -

BO:

(interrupting Netanyahu) The ball's in Israel's court, and it must end all its military activities.

The hypocrisy of the Americans is obscene. The USA has killed many more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen with their drone strikes than Israel has in this war. Remember too that Gaza is on our border and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen are thousands of kilometers from the border of the USA. I will address the casualty lists later.

To be fair to Obama, when the 6th cease fire was again broken by Hamas with an attack on an IDF force that was dealing with one of the tunnels Obama did openly blame Hamas. (Personally I think he had no choice since that cease fire had been brokered by his Secretary of State Kerry under his direct orders.) That attack involved a suicide bomber that killed 2 IDF soldiers and it was thought that they had kidnapped a third. Officially the third soldier has been declared "killed in battle, burial place unknown." We assume that the terrorists did take part of his body but not all of it.

Up until this point while speaking out of one side of their mouths Obama, Kerry and many of the world leaders have said "Israel has a right to defend itself" and from the other side of their mouth they have done their best to blame Israel for the many Palestinian deaths and actually to try and rescue Hamas from a defeat on the battleground.

The European Union and most European leaders have actually been worse. The EU barely mentions Hamas atrocities but never loses an opportunity to place blame on Israel. Last week the U.N. Human Rights Council (a misnomer if there ever was one) voted to open an investigation of Israel's war crimes in the current war. The seven members of the EU (Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy Romania), who are on the council voted as a block to abstain. The only nation voting against was the USA. I think I am correct in saying that Europe is morally bankrupt. As of today, Britain is "reviewing" its arms sales to Israel and Spain has stopped their sales. As the amount of arms that Israel buys from them it is very small, it is just a cowardly move to appease their Muslim population.

The reports I am getting from the USA and around Europe are that the media is almost totally blaming Israel for the conflict and the high Palestinian body count. Moreover they are treating Kerry as the great mediator and blaming Israel for the cease fire failures too. There is a demonic perversity to this clear gross distortion of reality in the service of the spirit of anti-Semitism.

Surely we have come into that time of the last days spoken of in scripture:

And with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12

The "facts" alone are deceptive. Yes the "body count" on the Palestinian side is much higher than Israeli casualties and many Palestinian women and children have died. That is the bare fact and if we stop there we are bound to come to a wrong conclusion. While we grieve for all the innocent who die on both sides we need to understand the reason for the high Palestinian and low Israeli casualties.

Israel has poured millions (with much financial help from the USA) into developing Iron Dome, an anti-rocket system that has kept Israeli civilian casualties very, very low. If we did not have Iron Dome we would have had a higher casualty rate than in Gaza. Because we have protected ourselves the world expects us to just suffer under these air raids. What hypocrisy! What nation would just sit still and allow rockets to terrorize their citizens! While Israel has spent millions to protect its people, Hamas has spent millions to build a tunnel city to kill Israelis. People around the world are bemoaning the poverty in Gaza. Is there great poverty there? Yes, but if the millions spent on the tunnels would have been spent on improving the average Gaza person's life, it would tell a different story.

General Officer Commanding Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman said last week. "With the amount of cement Hamas used to build these tunnels, it could have built two hospitals, 20 clinics, 20 schools, and 100 kindergartens,"

The tunnels also cost between 500 Million - 1 Billion US Dollars!

We also need to keep in mind that the people of Gaza voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in the last election. For those who voted for this demonized group, their protestations of innocence cannot be considered genuine. They need to acknowledge responsibility for the situation they find themselves in.

The IDF is acting in a way that no other army in history has ever acted. Before attacking we have made phone calls, SMS's, leaflets and other means to warn the residents of neighborhoods we are about to attack, to leave and flee to a safer area that we have suggested. This kind of warning puts our own soldiers at greater risk. It does not take a military genius to understand that a surprise attack gives the attacker great advantage. When we warn the civilian population that we are coming we are alerting the terrorists too and they can and do lay ambushes and booby traps to kill our soldiers.

Hamas on the other hand not only tells their people to stay put, they forcibly prevent them from fleeing to a safer place. Why are we attacking civilian neighborhoods? Because that is where the Hamas terrorists are. That is where their rockets are. That is where their tunnel entrances are. That is where they are fighting from - people's houses, schools, mosques and even hospitals.

Terror tunnel entrances are often built on the ground floor of someone's home or between a mosque and a school. The U.N. itself has in the past week found Hamas rockets stored in three U.N. schools and then handed them back to Hamas. On Wednesday 30 July, 3 Israeli soldiers were killed trying to investigate a tunnel opening in a U.N. health clinic. The U.N. health clinic was booby trapped and the building collapsed on them killing them and wounding another 15 soldiers. The day before as IDF troops were investigating a single street of 28 buildings, 19 were found to be booby-trapped. While it is assumed that all the destruction in Gaza is from Israeli bombs and shells, Hamas terrorists have used more than a thousand IEDs so far, destroying thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Geneva Conventions on War, a combatant fighting from a civilian neighborhood turns that neighborhood into a legitimate battlefield. Anyone with a little bit of common sense and certainly anyone with combat experience should know that tank and artillery guns are not sniper rifles. While accuracy has improved immensely they are not 100% on the center of the target. And "collateral damage" happens in every war zone.

In WW II, when Dresden was fire bombed and destroyed that was a clear attack on a civilian population. When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with atomic bombs, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians it was justified in that all these attacks helped to end the war. Why are other countries allowed to fight this way but Israel is forced to fight with (at least) one hand tied behind its back. While we are fighting a vicious enemy we continue to supply the people of Gaza with electricity, food, water and medicine. This is unheard of in the history of warfare and yet we are branded the aggressor and a war criminal by many.

In truth, the high body count in Gaza is another weapon in Hamas's arsenal. While I have no doubt that many are mourning in Gaza, that does not include the Hamas leadership who are hiding underground, out of harm's way and using the death of women and children that they have put in harm's way to demonize Israel.

How is it that we have never seen Hamas fighters amongst the casualties? Actually why don't we even see the fighters on any of the pictures coming out of the strip? Why do we only see dead women and children? Most of those killed in Gaza have been young men of fighting age, not women, children or old people. Why does the world accept Hamas's casualty figures without question? According to the IDF, more than half of the dead are Hamas fighters.

Why aren't the various news outlets around the world explaining the whole story? Why are political leaders speaking out of both sides of their mouths at the same time - one side says "Israel has a right to defend itself" and the other side "calls on Israel to unilaterally stop fighting Hamas.

Why can the U.N. call Israel's response to a Hamas attack next to a U.N. refugee center a war crime and say nothing about the Hamas cell in the alley that Israel was trying to hit? We have had reports from maybe 2 international journalists that rockets were fired into Israel from behind Shifa Hospital in Gaza, (under which the Hamas leadership is hiding) and that some of the attacks on U.N. facilities were actually Hamas rockets that misfired. We know that journalists in Gaza are forbidden to tell the whole story under threat of injury and even death. We are grateful that there are 2 courageous journalists who are willing to speak the truth.

Why has this war generated Security Council meetings, demonstrations and much political noise when the 180,000 dead in Syria are ignored? Yesterday a small city in Iraq asked for U.N. and Kurdish protection from the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) and said that 25 children had starved to death that day. How many of you ever even heard of this?

With the demonstrations we have seen all over the world the mask of the "new" anti-Semitism as anti-Israel has finally come off and now it is obvious that these demonstrators hate Jews. It is pure and simple anti-Semitism.

As we come to the 70th year after the end of WWII and the intentional slaughter of more than 6 million people for the simple reason that they were Jews, hatred of the Jews is once again blooming as an evil, poisonous flower.

This world ruler of Anti-Semitism is once again prowling the earth and being welcomed almost everywhere he goes, especially in Europe, the largest Jewish graveyard in the world.

Anti-Semitism will likely be the passion that will unite the world in the last days, the spark that will plunge the world into a murderous and blood-thirsty darkness that will only end with the return of the Lord. After all, all the nations will not come up against Jerusalem because they love us. (Zechariah 14:2)

Though it often seems (to use an American expression) that we are "banging our heads against the wall," we are called to bear witness of truth.

Today, August 5th, we have the beginning of a 72 hour cease fire that will open the way perhaps to a negotiation to end this battle. I say the battle because as long as Hamas or any other Islamist terrorist group rules in Gaza there will not be peace. Some Israelis are hoping for 5 years of quiet and some are just expecting 5 hours before Hamas breaks the cease fire once again. All Israeli ground forces have left Gaza and the 32 terrorist tunnels into Israel have been destroyed.

The clear majority of Israelis wanted Israel to overthrow Hamas and take over Gaza. At this point the political leadership has not been willing to do that. While militarily Israel could conquer Gaza, (one Israeli General said it would only take 10 days), the cost in IDF lives would be very high. The goals of the operation have been met, though they are really minimalist goals: destroy the terror tunnels that lead into Israel and severely degrade Hamas's ability to rocket Israel. In other words, quiet. Not victory, not a defeated Hamas, but quiet.

Could Israel have defied the world and retaken Gaza? I don't know. It is clear that all the other bloodshed in the world does not stir people like the death of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis - no matter that it is all justified. It is clear that neither the Americans nor the Europeans are really willing to stand up to Putin, nor to China's aggressive moves, but Israel can be bullied.

While during the fighting P.M. Netanyahu has had 80%+ approval rating and support the cease fire may cost him his job. It will depend very much on what the final cease fire agreement says.

Almost all of Hamas's demands will put Israel at continuing risk. Keep in mind that under world pressure Israel allowed cement into Gaza - supposedly to build, schools, homes etc., and instead it was used to build tunnels to kill Israelis. The blockade of Gaza cannot just be lifted without putting Israel in great danger.

The Israeli Government has called for the rebuilding of Gaza and it's demilitarization at the same time. It is hard to see Hamas agreeing to this. While I too wanted Israel to "finish the job," and I don't think it is done, yet I don't see any other politician who would do a better job than Netanyahu at this time.

Pray for:

• The Lord's will to be done concerning this cease fire and if it holds, the negotiations for a "permanent" cease fire.
• The unity of the People of Israel that has been evident during the war to remain high.
• The P.M. and the security cabinet to have the courage to not bow to the pressures of the nations to put Israel's security at greater risk.
• The truths of this war to be exposed.
• Israeli scientist to quickly come up with a way to detect the building of these tunnels.
• The Jews especially of Europe to see what is happening there and set their faces toward Israel and come home.

Pray against:

• Palestinian attempts to bring war crime charges against Israel at the ICC (International Criminal Court) in The Hague.
• The one sided investigation of Israeli "war crimes" at the U.N. Human Rights Council.
• The rearming of Gaza and the rebuilding of their tunnels.

At the same time that the Lord is releasing deceiving spirits into the world, He is restoring Israel and bringing His Word, spoken thousands of years ago to pass in our day.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

Jeremiah 29:11-14

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

Numbers 6:24-26

Eliyahu Ben-Haim, Jerusalem
5 August, 2014