IS THE CHOICE ABBAS OR THE ABYSS
Is the choice Abbas or the abyss? - By Jonathan Tobin
Strategy on Palestinians a mockery of president's stands on democracy and terror
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In any descent into folly, there is a tipping point. Before that happens, there's a chance to reverse course and avert disaster. But after the crucial moment arrives, failure is inevitable, and the only question is just how badly things will actually turn out.
No, I'm not talking about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, its hurricane recovery efforts or the fallout from the Valerie Plame leak case. Rather, the really bad mistake Washington is about to commit is one that has generated no outrage from the press or worries about declining poll numbers.
Ironically, it was at Bush's meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week — an event that provided a respite from bad press — at which the greatest administration blunder of the month occurred: Bush gave Abbas the green light to allow Hamas terrorists to keep their arms and run in next January's Palestinian elections.
Not only does this contradict Bush's own challenge to the world that it must choose between terror and democracy; it also gives the lie to the administration's position on what is acceptable in the efforts to establish a government in Iraq.
TERROR AND POLITICS DON'T MIX
Some of the administration's defenders will claim that excluding Hamas or any other Islamist movement would undermine democracy.
But nothing could be further from the truth. A political party in a democracy does not need an army, let alone a terrorist wing.
Excluding armed gangs from the status of genuine democratic parties is simple common sense. How, we must ask Bush, can an election be considered fair when the contending parties can intimidate voters and the media at will?
Of course, would it be fair to exclude Hamas while including Fatah, which has its own "armed wing" — the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade — that murdered three Israeli teenagers in cold blood the day before the Washington meeting?
But to even ask such questions is to ponder issues that the administration is unwilling to face. The Bush team's approach to the Israel-Arab conflict has boiled down to a simple prayer that somehow Mahmoud Abbas can transform Palestinian politics and culture from one of terrorism and war to one of peace.
Needless to say, they're simply dreaming.
But rather than merely excoriate the administration and its cheerleaders in the press on the issue (often the same group that is screaming for Bush's head on every other topic), it would be more useful to ask why they're doing it, and what can possibly be done to rectify the situation.
What has made Abbas Bush's man in Ramallah?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that with the war in Iraq still hanging in the balance, the need to keep the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians calm has trumped the administration's ability to distinguish between fact and fiction about Abbas. Bush's team has apparently concluded that it must prop up Abbas no matter what he does — or doesn't do — to preserve any chance of peace. Since they see the choice as being between Abbas and the abyss, they choose the former.
In Bush's defense, it must be admitted that the Israeli government has come perilously close at times to the same position. Since it feels it must have someone on the other side to talk to, even if peace is impossible, the conclusion has been better Abbas than anyone else.
But here in the United States, this realpolitik approach has been transformed into a genuine cheering section for Abbas among the foreign-policy elite. It makes sense that those whose careers were sunk by belief in the Oslo disaster would say this, but what in heaven's name are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her boss, who presumably are free of the Oslo infection, doing?
The answer is that they're slowly being sucked into the same pattern that characterized American policy during the Oslo era. So convinced was the Clinton administration of the need to preserve Yasser Arafat as a peace partner that they preferred to deceive themselves and others in order to avoid facing the truth about him. The same is going on now with Abbas, whose meeting with Bush last week had all the earmarks of Clinton's endless romancing of Arafat.
True, Abbas plays his role as would-be peacemaker much better than his former chief. He dresses properly, and adopts the right tone of conciliation when called upon to do so.
But when he uses his Rose Garden photo op to push for the release of blood-stained terrorists — whom he had the chutzpah to call "prisoners of freedom" — it is clear that it's still the terror chiefs who call the shots, not any would-be democrats.
Abbas is, after all, a veteran bureaucrat of Palestinian terror. That would not be crucial if he had genuinely changed his — and his government's — position, but he hasn't.
No matter how much American and European money he gets (and haven't we all seen that movie before?), Abbas can no more ask Hamas to give up killing Jews than he could ask his own followers to do so. Nor can he possibly end the incitement to violence and hatred of Israel that is routine within the official Palestinian media without undermining his own legitimacy.
So much for the virtues of "moderation."
The Bush administration is right to say democracy should apply to everyone, including the Arabs. But if Palestinian politics is predicated on terrorism, then we have to ask what value is democratic competition between armed gangs?
And that's the box that the increasingly hapless administration is about to find itself in.
Having stiffed Ariel Sharon on Hamas and signaled Abbas that he's under no pressure to disarm, Bush is heading toward a moment when he'll be forced to make a hopeless choice between two equally unacceptable alternatives: Once the Palestinian electorate speaks, Bush will have to recognize a Fatah-Hamas coalition government and thereby giving the lie to its anti-terror strategy. Or he can tell the Palestinians at that point that relations with terrorists are impossible and undermine his otherwise exemplary Middle East democracy project.
PAYING FOR FOLLY
Either way, the stage will be set for a renewed intifada, whenever the Palestinians decide that violence will again gain them more than talk. One can hope that then Bush will react properly and again back Israel, but by then it will be too late to avert the damage. Israel will pay for this folly in blood. The United States will pay in damaged credibility that will hurt the war effort in Iraq.
Bush could have laid it on the line to Abbas about Hamas and his own killers. But the belief that this particular Palestinian is indispensable appears to have overcome any sense of danger.
The tipping point is fast approaching. But it appears that few in the administration realize that they have already struck a devil's bargain with Abbas.
__________________________________________________________________
"All of Them With Shield and Helmet" - Prophecy - Signs
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor - www.omegaletter.com
Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed international criticism of his call for Israel's annihilation, saying, "They [Israelis] are cheeky humans and they think that the entire world should obey them. They destroy Palestinian families and expect nobody to object to them," Ahmadinejad said, asserting his comments "are the exact words of the Iranian people".
It was the first time since early in the days of the Islamic Revolution that such a high-ranking Iranian official has openly called for the destruction of Israel.
Ahmadinejad made his comments during Iran's annual hatefest called 'Jerusalem Day.' Iran's 'Jerusalem Day' is a carnival-like event during which one can express his hatred for the Jews, burn a few flags and meet with jihadist recruiters looking for suicide bombing candidates.
Protestors in Tehran and other Iranian cities burned Israeli flags and held banners displaying anti-Israeli slogans including "Death to Israel, Death to America".
Ahmadinejad also said "anyone who signs a treaty which recognizes the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world", and warned Muslim leaders who recognize Israel that they "face the wrath of their own people".
Noted David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post, " The man was standing at a podium bearing a large poster blaring the title of the gathering, in English: 'The world without Zionism'. He was stating, calmly and confidently, that such a world was indeed entirely within reach... This week, in the boldest language imaginable, Ahmadinejad made plain that, where Israel is concerned, a nuclear Iran under his watch would be anything but benign."
Yediot Aharonot said in an editorial; "What is worrying, other than the minor issue that one day we might all turn into dust because of a nervous Iranian missile, is that 60 years after the Holocaust a leader of a state again openly threatens to destroy the Jews."
Haaretz also heard echoes of the Holocaust in Ahmadinejad's speech, writing; "The open call to destroy the state of Israel highlights the comparison with another leader who was elected by his people in 1933 [Adolf Hitler], whose agenda included an open call to destroy the Jewish people."
Israel immediately called for an emergency session of the UN security council.
"We have decided to open a broad diplomatic offensive," said Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom.
Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is also demanding that Iran to be expelled from the UN. "A country that calls for the destruction of another people cannot be a member of the UN," he said.
Kofi Annan, in what, for him, was an unusually harsh public condemnation, expressed his "dismay" yesterday at Mr Ahmadinejad's remarks and warned Tehran that all UN members had agreed to "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity ... of any state".
One wonders. Even Israel?
The Russian Interfax News Agency reported today that, while the Russians condemned Ahmadinejad's comments as having 'provided added grounds for sending the dispute over Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council,' it plans no change in Moscow's nuclear policy vis a vis the Islamic republic.
"Our position regarding Iran has not changed," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Interfax during a visit to Jordan.
So, in a nutshell, we have the government of Iran promising to wipe Israel from the face of the earth and the government of Russia pledging to continue its efforts to provide Tehran with the nuclear means to do so.
Although it is a mortal sin under the UN Charter for one nation to advocate the destruction of another, particularly for ethnic reasons, the most forceful adjective that Kofi Annan could come up with to describe the UN's official position was 'dismay'.
The stage is not only set, but the current situation reads like a dress rehearsal for the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophesied 'Gog-Magog' invasion of Ezekiel 38-39.
To summarize the prophecy, the prophet Ezekiel, writing during the Babylonian Captivity (606-536 BC) foretold the formation of an alliance in the 'latter years' that would launch a sneak attack/invasion of Israel.
Ezekiel identified the leader of this alliance as "Gog and Magog" whom many scholars more credentialed than I have identified as comprising modern Russia and some of the various 'Stans'.
Gog's chief lieutenant is identified as 'Persia', the traditional historical name for modern Iran. Persia is joined by Ethiopia and Libya, (modern North Africa) together with much of the Middle Eastern Muslim world.
"After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them." (Ezekiel 38:8)
The identity of the invasion target could not be more clear. 'Brought back from the sword, gathered out of many people against the mountains of Israel, which have always been waste' -- this can only refer to modern Israel. No previous historical incarnation of Israel meets Ezekiel's specifications.
Although Russia is the titular head of the invasion force, Persia is the catalyst. Ezekiel says Russia's participation is reluctant at best; Ezekiel says God will "put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth," (38:4) when " at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought." (Ezekiel 38:10)
And what is the United Nations doing during all this time?
Incredibly, Ezekiel not only identifies them as being dominated by the Western nations; "the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof" but he says their response amounts to little more than a weak diplomatic protest.
"Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?" (38:13)
Russia and Persia are currently joined at the hip by their joint nuclear project, the schizophrenic nature of which puts Moscow at odds with the rest of the world.
There is little doubt that a nuclear Iran would make good on Ahmadinejad's threat with only minimal provocation. Moscow simultaneously condemns Iran for making it while supply it with the means to make the threat good.
And, while the Western world might express 'dismay' at a Moscow-led sneak invasion, it is unlikely that it will risk nuclear war with the Russians over Israel.
Washington might, but the Europeans certainly wouldn't, leaving only Israel's never-confirmed nuclear arsenal between Jerusalem and the barrier mountains separating it from the West Bank.
Ezekiel, writing from his historical vantage point two thousand years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, gave this description of the battlefield:
"And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone." (38:22)
Now, let's leave Ezekiel aside for a moment and pretend we are prophets writing from our vantage point in history, trying to predict three years hence.
Israeli intelligence determines Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad's call for wiping Israel from the map is now a practical possibility.
Since the US is currently involved in operations with Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, it is up to Israel to take out Iran's nuclear facilities or live under the threat of instant annihilation at the whims of guys like Ahmadinejad.
With no other choice, Israel launches its strike, taking out much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, together with the thousands of Russian contractors, scientists, security personnel and administrators stationed there.
Iran, furious at being deprived of its nuclear ambitions, turns to the wounded Russians and together, they launch a surprise retaliatory invasion of the Jewish state.
Neither Europe nor the UN are prepared to stand against nuclear Moscow, particularly in light of Russian casualties inflicted by Israel in an attack that meets the definition of an act of war under international law.
Such an attack would provide all the excuse necessary for the rest of the Arab world to declare war on Israel and join in on the invasion.
That scenario puts the invading army on the mountains of Israel. It leaves Israel with the choice between its own annihilation and use of nuclear weapons to destroy the invaders.
Sound about right?
The above scenario is not only possible, it is probable, given that Iran will not give up its nuclear ambitions and Israel can not allow Iran to achieve them.
And it is an exact match to Ezekiel's prophecy, right down to the various members of the various alliances and their various positions relative to Israel as they exist in this fifth year of the 21st century.
The only differences are that my scenario is an educated guess based on conditions as they exist today, and I could be wrong about the exact order and detail.
Ezekiel wrote from Babylon, one hundred and fifty years after the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Sargon the Assyrian and two thousand five hundred years before a sovereign nation called 'Israel' would again be numbered among the nations of the world.
"Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure." (Isaiah 46-8:10)
__________________________________________________________________
Strategy on Palestinians a mockery of president's stands on democracy and terror
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In any descent into folly, there is a tipping point. Before that happens, there's a chance to reverse course and avert disaster. But after the crucial moment arrives, failure is inevitable, and the only question is just how badly things will actually turn out.
No, I'm not talking about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, its hurricane recovery efforts or the fallout from the Valerie Plame leak case. Rather, the really bad mistake Washington is about to commit is one that has generated no outrage from the press or worries about declining poll numbers.
Ironically, it was at Bush's meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week — an event that provided a respite from bad press — at which the greatest administration blunder of the month occurred: Bush gave Abbas the green light to allow Hamas terrorists to keep their arms and run in next January's Palestinian elections.
Not only does this contradict Bush's own challenge to the world that it must choose between terror and democracy; it also gives the lie to the administration's position on what is acceptable in the efforts to establish a government in Iraq.
TERROR AND POLITICS DON'T MIX
Some of the administration's defenders will claim that excluding Hamas or any other Islamist movement would undermine democracy.
But nothing could be further from the truth. A political party in a democracy does not need an army, let alone a terrorist wing.
Excluding armed gangs from the status of genuine democratic parties is simple common sense. How, we must ask Bush, can an election be considered fair when the contending parties can intimidate voters and the media at will?
Of course, would it be fair to exclude Hamas while including Fatah, which has its own "armed wing" — the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade — that murdered three Israeli teenagers in cold blood the day before the Washington meeting?
But to even ask such questions is to ponder issues that the administration is unwilling to face. The Bush team's approach to the Israel-Arab conflict has boiled down to a simple prayer that somehow Mahmoud Abbas can transform Palestinian politics and culture from one of terrorism and war to one of peace.
Needless to say, they're simply dreaming.
But rather than merely excoriate the administration and its cheerleaders in the press on the issue (often the same group that is screaming for Bush's head on every other topic), it would be more useful to ask why they're doing it, and what can possibly be done to rectify the situation.
What has made Abbas Bush's man in Ramallah?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that with the war in Iraq still hanging in the balance, the need to keep the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians calm has trumped the administration's ability to distinguish between fact and fiction about Abbas. Bush's team has apparently concluded that it must prop up Abbas no matter what he does — or doesn't do — to preserve any chance of peace. Since they see the choice as being between Abbas and the abyss, they choose the former.
In Bush's defense, it must be admitted that the Israeli government has come perilously close at times to the same position. Since it feels it must have someone on the other side to talk to, even if peace is impossible, the conclusion has been better Abbas than anyone else.
But here in the United States, this realpolitik approach has been transformed into a genuine cheering section for Abbas among the foreign-policy elite. It makes sense that those whose careers were sunk by belief in the Oslo disaster would say this, but what in heaven's name are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her boss, who presumably are free of the Oslo infection, doing?
The answer is that they're slowly being sucked into the same pattern that characterized American policy during the Oslo era. So convinced was the Clinton administration of the need to preserve Yasser Arafat as a peace partner that they preferred to deceive themselves and others in order to avoid facing the truth about him. The same is going on now with Abbas, whose meeting with Bush last week had all the earmarks of Clinton's endless romancing of Arafat.
True, Abbas plays his role as would-be peacemaker much better than his former chief. He dresses properly, and adopts the right tone of conciliation when called upon to do so.
But when he uses his Rose Garden photo op to push for the release of blood-stained terrorists — whom he had the chutzpah to call "prisoners of freedom" — it is clear that it's still the terror chiefs who call the shots, not any would-be democrats.
Abbas is, after all, a veteran bureaucrat of Palestinian terror. That would not be crucial if he had genuinely changed his — and his government's — position, but he hasn't.
No matter how much American and European money he gets (and haven't we all seen that movie before?), Abbas can no more ask Hamas to give up killing Jews than he could ask his own followers to do so. Nor can he possibly end the incitement to violence and hatred of Israel that is routine within the official Palestinian media without undermining his own legitimacy.
So much for the virtues of "moderation."
The Bush administration is right to say democracy should apply to everyone, including the Arabs. But if Palestinian politics is predicated on terrorism, then we have to ask what value is democratic competition between armed gangs?
And that's the box that the increasingly hapless administration is about to find itself in.
Having stiffed Ariel Sharon on Hamas and signaled Abbas that he's under no pressure to disarm, Bush is heading toward a moment when he'll be forced to make a hopeless choice between two equally unacceptable alternatives: Once the Palestinian electorate speaks, Bush will have to recognize a Fatah-Hamas coalition government and thereby giving the lie to its anti-terror strategy. Or he can tell the Palestinians at that point that relations with terrorists are impossible and undermine his otherwise exemplary Middle East democracy project.
PAYING FOR FOLLY
Either way, the stage will be set for a renewed intifada, whenever the Palestinians decide that violence will again gain them more than talk. One can hope that then Bush will react properly and again back Israel, but by then it will be too late to avert the damage. Israel will pay for this folly in blood. The United States will pay in damaged credibility that will hurt the war effort in Iraq.
Bush could have laid it on the line to Abbas about Hamas and his own killers. But the belief that this particular Palestinian is indispensable appears to have overcome any sense of danger.
The tipping point is fast approaching. But it appears that few in the administration realize that they have already struck a devil's bargain with Abbas.
__________________________________________________________________
"All of Them With Shield and Helmet" - Prophecy - Signs
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor - www.omegaletter.com
Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed international criticism of his call for Israel's annihilation, saying, "They [Israelis] are cheeky humans and they think that the entire world should obey them. They destroy Palestinian families and expect nobody to object to them," Ahmadinejad said, asserting his comments "are the exact words of the Iranian people".
It was the first time since early in the days of the Islamic Revolution that such a high-ranking Iranian official has openly called for the destruction of Israel.
Ahmadinejad made his comments during Iran's annual hatefest called 'Jerusalem Day.' Iran's 'Jerusalem Day' is a carnival-like event during which one can express his hatred for the Jews, burn a few flags and meet with jihadist recruiters looking for suicide bombing candidates.
Protestors in Tehran and other Iranian cities burned Israeli flags and held banners displaying anti-Israeli slogans including "Death to Israel, Death to America".
Ahmadinejad also said "anyone who signs a treaty which recognizes the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world", and warned Muslim leaders who recognize Israel that they "face the wrath of their own people".
Noted David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post, " The man was standing at a podium bearing a large poster blaring the title of the gathering, in English: 'The world without Zionism'. He was stating, calmly and confidently, that such a world was indeed entirely within reach... This week, in the boldest language imaginable, Ahmadinejad made plain that, where Israel is concerned, a nuclear Iran under his watch would be anything but benign."
Yediot Aharonot said in an editorial; "What is worrying, other than the minor issue that one day we might all turn into dust because of a nervous Iranian missile, is that 60 years after the Holocaust a leader of a state again openly threatens to destroy the Jews."
Haaretz also heard echoes of the Holocaust in Ahmadinejad's speech, writing; "The open call to destroy the state of Israel highlights the comparison with another leader who was elected by his people in 1933 [Adolf Hitler], whose agenda included an open call to destroy the Jewish people."
Israel immediately called for an emergency session of the UN security council.
"We have decided to open a broad diplomatic offensive," said Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom.
Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is also demanding that Iran to be expelled from the UN. "A country that calls for the destruction of another people cannot be a member of the UN," he said.
Kofi Annan, in what, for him, was an unusually harsh public condemnation, expressed his "dismay" yesterday at Mr Ahmadinejad's remarks and warned Tehran that all UN members had agreed to "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity ... of any state".
One wonders. Even Israel?
The Russian Interfax News Agency reported today that, while the Russians condemned Ahmadinejad's comments as having 'provided added grounds for sending the dispute over Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council,' it plans no change in Moscow's nuclear policy vis a vis the Islamic republic.
"Our position regarding Iran has not changed," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Interfax during a visit to Jordan.
So, in a nutshell, we have the government of Iran promising to wipe Israel from the face of the earth and the government of Russia pledging to continue its efforts to provide Tehran with the nuclear means to do so.
Although it is a mortal sin under the UN Charter for one nation to advocate the destruction of another, particularly for ethnic reasons, the most forceful adjective that Kofi Annan could come up with to describe the UN's official position was 'dismay'.
The stage is not only set, but the current situation reads like a dress rehearsal for the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophesied 'Gog-Magog' invasion of Ezekiel 38-39.
To summarize the prophecy, the prophet Ezekiel, writing during the Babylonian Captivity (606-536 BC) foretold the formation of an alliance in the 'latter years' that would launch a sneak attack/invasion of Israel.
Ezekiel identified the leader of this alliance as "Gog and Magog" whom many scholars more credentialed than I have identified as comprising modern Russia and some of the various 'Stans'.
Gog's chief lieutenant is identified as 'Persia', the traditional historical name for modern Iran. Persia is joined by Ethiopia and Libya, (modern North Africa) together with much of the Middle Eastern Muslim world.
"After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them." (Ezekiel 38:8)
The identity of the invasion target could not be more clear. 'Brought back from the sword, gathered out of many people against the mountains of Israel, which have always been waste' -- this can only refer to modern Israel. No previous historical incarnation of Israel meets Ezekiel's specifications.
Although Russia is the titular head of the invasion force, Persia is the catalyst. Ezekiel says Russia's participation is reluctant at best; Ezekiel says God will "put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth," (38:4) when " at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought." (Ezekiel 38:10)
And what is the United Nations doing during all this time?
Incredibly, Ezekiel not only identifies them as being dominated by the Western nations; "the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof" but he says their response amounts to little more than a weak diplomatic protest.
"Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?" (38:13)
Russia and Persia are currently joined at the hip by their joint nuclear project, the schizophrenic nature of which puts Moscow at odds with the rest of the world.
There is little doubt that a nuclear Iran would make good on Ahmadinejad's threat with only minimal provocation. Moscow simultaneously condemns Iran for making it while supply it with the means to make the threat good.
And, while the Western world might express 'dismay' at a Moscow-led sneak invasion, it is unlikely that it will risk nuclear war with the Russians over Israel.
Washington might, but the Europeans certainly wouldn't, leaving only Israel's never-confirmed nuclear arsenal between Jerusalem and the barrier mountains separating it from the West Bank.
Ezekiel, writing from his historical vantage point two thousand years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, gave this description of the battlefield:
"And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone." (38:22)
Now, let's leave Ezekiel aside for a moment and pretend we are prophets writing from our vantage point in history, trying to predict three years hence.
Israeli intelligence determines Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad's call for wiping Israel from the map is now a practical possibility.
Since the US is currently involved in operations with Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, it is up to Israel to take out Iran's nuclear facilities or live under the threat of instant annihilation at the whims of guys like Ahmadinejad.
With no other choice, Israel launches its strike, taking out much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, together with the thousands of Russian contractors, scientists, security personnel and administrators stationed there.
Iran, furious at being deprived of its nuclear ambitions, turns to the wounded Russians and together, they launch a surprise retaliatory invasion of the Jewish state.
Neither Europe nor the UN are prepared to stand against nuclear Moscow, particularly in light of Russian casualties inflicted by Israel in an attack that meets the definition of an act of war under international law.
Such an attack would provide all the excuse necessary for the rest of the Arab world to declare war on Israel and join in on the invasion.
That scenario puts the invading army on the mountains of Israel. It leaves Israel with the choice between its own annihilation and use of nuclear weapons to destroy the invaders.
Sound about right?
The above scenario is not only possible, it is probable, given that Iran will not give up its nuclear ambitions and Israel can not allow Iran to achieve them.
And it is an exact match to Ezekiel's prophecy, right down to the various members of the various alliances and their various positions relative to Israel as they exist in this fifth year of the 21st century.
The only differences are that my scenario is an educated guess based on conditions as they exist today, and I could be wrong about the exact order and detail.
Ezekiel wrote from Babylon, one hundred and fifty years after the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Sargon the Assyrian and two thousand five hundred years before a sovereign nation called 'Israel' would again be numbered among the nations of the world.
"Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure." (Isaiah 46-8:10)
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