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Israel – The Scheme of the Return

This is, in our time, the story of the return from galuth (exile) of the Jewish people to the
land of their ancestors, which in 1948 was to become the State of Israel. On 14th May of that
year, in the Tel Aviv Museum, a deeply moved Ben-Gurion proclaimed the Independence of
Israel. “Eretz Yisrael (he said) was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here, their spiritual,
religious, and political identity was shaped. Here, they first attained to statehood, created
cultural values of a national and a universal significance, and gave the world the eternal
book of books…” Sixty years later festivities were organised in Israel and abroad to celebrate
that event. Because there is a spiritual dimension involved, it seems good to look at it in gre-
ater perspective. This is something that should not go unnoticed. It calls for our attention!
Like Pope John XXIII said: “We realise now that many, many centuries of blindness have
dimmed our eyes, so that we no longer see the beauty of thy chosen People and no longer re-
cognise in their faces the features of our first-born brother.” (Catholic Herald, May 14 1965)

THE SCHEME OF THE RETURN

1840 - Start of the Messianic Age, announced by Rabbi Judah Hai

Alkalai. The beginning also of a public and political debate in
England for the RETURN. Eruption of the blood libel,
an ancient accusation, known as the Damascus Affair.
1840 + (2x11) = 1862 - Public announcements by both Kalischer and Hess for the
RETURN.
1840 + (3x11) = 1873 - Beginning antisemitism new style, fuelled by the Founder’s
Scam, that was to become the prime motivator for the RETURN.
1917 – (2x10) = 1897 - The Zionist Congress: the first Jewish National Assembly since
the nation had lost its independence and the first tangible sign
of the renaissance of the Jewish people.
1840 + (7x11) = 1917 - End of Ottoman subjugation and issuing of the Balfour
Declaration, establishing the right to the RETURN.
1840 + (9x11) = 1939 - Violation of the pledge by means of the White Paper. Also the
start of World War II. The antisemite monster broke out.
1917 + (3x10) = 1947 - Announcement of end British Mandate. (Jerusalem divided)
1917 + (5x10) = 1967 - End of subjugation: the whole of Jerusalem annexed.
1917 + (7x10) = 1987 - Start of the Palestinian uprising (Intifada).
1917 + (8x10) = 1997 - Commemoration of 3,000 years Jerusalem.
1917 + (8x11) = 2005 - Start of the implementation of the so-called Road Map.
1840+(15x11) = 2005 - The road map to peace did not exist, but was in truth a
sell-out of Eretz Israel by its own leaders, leading to
the tragic expulsion of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip:
a new marker of antisemitism.

This scheme helps to place the events related to the “Return of God’s People to the land of their
Fathers” in their proper context. I like to point out that it was only discovered after the story had
been written down; then, the relations in the timetable became a kind of self-evident revelation.
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1 - Allenby had the waters of the Nile flow to Jerusalem

In the Moslem year 1335 the Turks were driven out of Jerusalem, that is in our year 1917,
by General Edmund Allenby. During the autumn of 1917 Allenby, who was the Comman-
der-in-Chief of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force captured Gaza and Bersheeba and
on the feast of Chanukah, thus on 11th December he quietly walked into Jerusalem, having
taken the town without any bloodshed or destruction. A great miracle happened there! -
Nes Gadol Haya Sham (1). In their boast that the sword of Islam should hold sway over the
land, the Turks used to say: “When the water of the Nile flows into Palestine, then will a
prophet of the Lord come and drive us out of the land”, meaning 'never'. Indeed, Allenby
had the water of the Nile flow to Jerusalem via a pipeline to provide for his troops. Not
only so, but the leader who drove the Turks out, was known throughout Palestine as
“Allah-en-Nebi”, Arabic for prophet of God.

General Allenby entering the Holy City of Jerusalem in 1917 (middle and right)

Previously, there has been an attempt to make Jerusalem Jewish again, which is mentioned
in the Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia (ca. 345-410). Rufinus writes that “Cyrillus,
the bishop of Jerusalem, having carefully weighed what was contained in Daniel’s pro-
phecy about the times on the one hand, and what the Lord had foretold in the Gospels on
the other, insisted that the Jews would never be able to put a stone upon a stone (in attemp-
ting) to rebuild the Temple.” Cyrillus was no doubt also referring to Daniel 12:11 in con-
junction with Luke 21:23: “From the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the
abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1290 days. Blessed is he who waits, and
comes to 1335 days.” The significance of 1290 days (read 1290 years) is not so clear, but
1335 is very remarkable, because it was in the Moslem year 1335 that the Turks were
driven out of Jerusalem, that is in our year 1917, by General Edmund Allenby. If the Mos-
lem year 1335 from Daniel 12:11 equals our year 1917, when Jerusalem was liberated, then
the Moslem year 1290 (mentioned in the beginning of Daniel’s prophecy) is our year 1873.
I like to mention in passing that 33 solar years minus 4,5 days equal 34 lunar years.

2 - The preliminary events

What happened in 1873? This was a year characterised by strong emotions as measured by
the stock market crashes in various countries and the concomitant onset of economic de-
pression, only to be surpassed by the great depression of 1929. In Germany, the public held
the liberal capitalists and Jewish bankers and entrepreneurs responsible for it (der Gründer-
schwindel: capital swindle or founders’ scam). An argument can be made that this year
marks the modest beginnings of a structured twofold movement: a religiously motivated
Zionism with its anti-pole of secular Zionism. In fact, both were driven by the antisemitism
of the day. Religiously motivated Zionism was not new, but the latter kind of Zionism was
almost unheard of before, and though insignificant in 1873, it was to become the leading
force.

As early as 1870 the religiously motivated Zionism had its agricultural school in Palestine:
the Mikveh Israel (Hope of Israel), founded on the sole initiative of Rabbi Zevi Kalischer.
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Kalischer was the anti-pole of Moses Hess, whose proposed Jewish nation was to be a
Marxist paradise. Hess invented ‘religion is the opium of the people’, the slogan that found
its way into the 1848 Communist Manifesto. The year to remember is 1862, when both,
unaware of each other’s existence, published exhortations for the need of a homeland. In
1864 Kalischer organized the “Central Committee for Settlement in Eretz-Israel” in Berlin.
At that stage it was more of a symbolic gesture, but nonetheless a beginning. He advocated,
against much opposition from rabbis in both Europe and Palestine, that the redemption of
Zion would have to begin with action on the part of the Jewish people and then, step by
step, the messianic miracle would follow suit. The old kind of antisemitism will have con-
tributed to the desire of the religious Jew to come back Home, but it was foremost a reli-
gious conviction he entertained that vibrated on the same emotional plane as his longing for
the return of the Messiah, both events projected in some distant future.

Another precursor of Zionism was Moses Montefiore (1784-1885). He was moved by the
dismal conditions of his fellow men in Poland, Russia, Rumania and Damascus; he tireless-
ly fought to alleviate their plight in the places where they were staying. But he had higher
ideals. Between 1827 and 1875 he made seven journeys to Palestine and he is credited with
the start of ‘Jerusalem New Town’ in 1855, planned to harbour the Jews who were living in
overcrowded and ghastly unsanitary quarters within the walled confines of the Old Town,
who constituted the majority of the population. They then numbered 15,500 souls. Cesar
Famin called them “the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insul-
ted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only on the scanty alms transmitted
by their European brethren”. Still and all they constituted a good half of its population,
being far in excess of the sedentary Moslems. The countryside at this juncture offered a
picture of gloom and doom.

The ‘Jerusalem New Town’ venture was regarded by Montefiore, but not by his co-religio-
nists, as the first step towards the colonisation of Palestine. Because of the constant harass-
ment from Moslem citizens and the Bedouin bandits, who roamed the plains, the Jerusalem
New Town only became a permanent settlement in 1869. These various developments re-
mained hesitant and it is certainly true that without the Russian Pogroms, starting in 1881,
and the Nazi persecution much later, many would not have been convinced of the vital
necessity of a National Home, and this includes the adherents of both forms of Zionism.

3 - A people without a territory is like a man without a shadow

The repeated warnings, by word and in writing, by the prophetic figure Rabbi Judah Hai
Alkalai (1798-1878) that misfortune would befall his people if they did not prepare for a
return to the ancient Homeland, had vanished into thin air. Supporting his ideas and argu-
ments with ample quotations from Jewish religious literature, Alkalai asserted that the final
supernatural redemption to be brought about by the Messiah must be preceded by the
physical return of the Jews to Zion, and …that now in 1840 and finally, after seventeen
hundred years wanderings, the time had come! Indeed, then and since then misfortune
befell his people. Precisely in 1840, the Damascus Affair broke out with an ugly blood libel
that upset the whole Jewish commonwealth. It was in 1882, following the first Pogroms in
Russia, that the idea of re-establishment was again put into writing by the physician Leon
Pinsker from Odessa in his famous pamphlet “Auto-Emancipation”. He sounded his call in
the words of Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”, and continued:
«« The Jews must emancipate themselves. We must re-establish ourselves as a living
nation. For long the Jews have lacked the desire to become a nation as a sick man
lacks appetite, but the desire must be created. Without it they will remain a ghost
people, ghosts of a dead nation walking alive among the living. The Jew is the eternal
foreigner. Other foreigners always have a country somewhere that claims their patri-
otism. Only the Jews have not, and without it they remain aliens everywhere. What a
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contemptible role for a people that once had its Maccabeans! There is no use complai-
ning of antisemitism; it will go on as long as the Jew remains a ghost and an alien.
There is something unnatural about a people without a territory just as there is about a
man without a shadow. »»

4 - Persecution gave critical momentum to the return Home

In Cecil Roth’s book “A Short History of the Jewish People” the inception of modern
antisemitism is traced back to 1873 (2), the year of the financial debacle for which the Jews
were held responsible. In that year the groundwork for the antisemitism new style was laid
by the influential political thinker Heinrich von Treitschke, who coined the phrase spread
again and again by the news media: ‘the Jews are our misfortune’. The official start of Zio-
nism was in 1897 with the first Zionist Congress on August 29th at Basel, convened by the
insistent and unceasing efforts of Theodor Herzl, whose adage was: “Wenn Ihr wollt, ist es
kain Märchen”, or: If you will it, it’s no legend. In his September 3rd diary entry he makes
the famous statement: “In Basel I founded the Jewish State”. After reporting the 1894
Dreyfus affair as a journalist, Herzl turned to Zionism as the solution to the growing hatred
against his kin. This infamous affair concerned a French artillery captain who, because of
his Jewish affiliation, was falsely charged with delivering defence secrets to the Germans.
At the official humiliation ceremony of Dreyfus, the mobs cried out: “Death to Dreyfus
and death to the Jews”. As a witness, this particularly struck Herzl, and this he was never
to forget

It was, again, persecution that gave critical momentum to the movement, now forty years
old. I mean 1933. In a perverted scheme hatched between the Third Reich and Jewish Pa-
lestine many Jews came to settle in Palestine in the 1930s. They established the strong
foundations of modern Israel, which until then had not occurred in such a way in terms of
people, organisation, reclamation of fields and the settlement of towns.

Edwin Black comments on this episode on the back flap of his book “The Transfer Agree-
ment” (Brookline Books, USA - 1999):
«« The Transfer Agreement is the stunning, compassionate account of the ‘deal with
the devil’ that saved 60,000 Jews from the Holocaust. The deal was made in despe-
ration in 1933 between the Jewish leadership in Palestine and the Third Reich. The
terms: that the Jewish-led boycott of German goods would cease in return for the
transfer of German Jews to the Holy Land. Eventually one-tenth of Germany’s Jews
were saved, thus helping to form the seedbed of modern Israel.
(And he writes on page 379-80:) After World War II, when hundreds of thousands
of Jews from a dozen different nations wandered through Europe, stateless and
displaced, each Jew a remnant of a family, a town or a ghetto, all ravaged survivors
without homes and without lives to return to, after the Holocaust, when the moment of
the ingathering of the exiles was at hand, Israel was ready. A nation was waiting.
Fifteen years earlier, it hadn’t existed. Fifteen years earlier few could have visua-
lized what was to come, what was to be. But a small group of men did. They foresaw
it all. That’s why nothing would stop them; no force was too great to overcome. These
men were the creators of Israel. And in order to do so, each had to touch his hand to
the most controversial undertaking in Jewish history - the Transfer Agreement. It
made a state. Was it madness, or was it genius? »»

5 – A new state is born

In April 1920, in the small Italian town of San Remo, Britain and France divided the
Middle East into mandates while the American ambassador read his newspaper in the gar-
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den. Britain obtained Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. The French acquired Syria. Part of
the English Mandate, ratified by the principal Allied Powers, and thus gaining the status of
an international treaty, contained the Balfour Declaration, so named after British Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour, that announced the support for the Jewish people for the esta-
blishment of a national home in Palestine without prejudice to the rights of the non-Jewish
settlements. This presentation of facts gives the impression that the formation of Israel was
the self-evident consequence of England’s withdrawal from Palestine, but such was not the
case. It was an act of courage when Ben Gurion, who was to become the first Prime Minis-
ter of the new State of Israel, announced the birth of the nation in May 1948.

When, during the course of 1917, the Balfour Declaration was drafted, there was quite
some opposition from Jewish circles in Britain, in particular by Edwin Montagu, who from
his post in the War Cabinet, did not stop the Declaration altogether, but at least so managed
to blur its wording as to leave unclear what its drafters had in mind. In those days the high
society Jews still regarded Zionism as a mad delusion of “an army of beggars and cranks”.
A re-created homeland seemed to them, not the fulfilment of a dream, but the undermining
of their hard-won citizenship in Western countries. There were some notable exceptions,
like ‘Natty’, a good acquaintance of Balfour, in full the first Lord Nathan Rothschild who
not so incidentally was the grandson of the brother-in-law and business partner of Moses
Montefiore (the other Rothschilds were assimilationists). And there was of course Herbert
Samuel who was to become the first High Commissioner for Palestine; he was also the first
Jew ever to sit in an English government, in the Asquith cabinet. (3)

The controversy at the time of drafting facilitated the repudiation of the Declaration in May
1939 by the so-called White Paper. By then the reaction of the Jewish community was
different. Reacting immediately, the Jewish Agency, which was the political body that
represented the Jews vis-a-vis the Mandate government, declared that the White Paper was
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a denial by the British government of the right of the Jewish people to rebuild their Natio-
nal Home in their ancestral country, a breach of faith, a surrender to Arab nationalism.
During the war the saying went: “We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war and
we will fight the war as if there is no White Paper”. Winston Churchill, who returned to the
scene in December 1939, had to deal with the political constellation of the time and al-
though not unsympathetic to the Jewish cause, he could do little to redress the cause. He
was one of the first to cordially congratulate Chaim Weizmann on the foundation of the
New State, asserting “what a fine moment it is for an old Zionist like me!” Churchill’s
Testimony before the Peel Commission clearly and unmistakenly shows his support for the
Jewish right of settlement in Palestine.

This stands in sharp contrast to the approach of the British government in general, particu-
larly so after Churchill’s dismissal as head of government after the war. The 1937 Peel
Commission in England, who had studied the Jewish problem, adviced to partition the land
of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. This principle, not the proposal itself, was voted for
by the United Nations, a mere five months before the birth of the new state. However, Eng-
land’s elite, amongst whom Jews, did not feel obliged to hand over the Mandate in an
orderly fashion. Covertly they continued to obstruct the plan. No means was left untouched
to prevent a peaceful coexistence between Jew and Arab. They sowed winds of hate, and
storms were reaped. People kind to Britannia have commented that it was to safeguard the
interests of their Empire and though there is some truth in it, without a vicious antisemitism
they could and would have acted differently.

6 - 1840 marks the start of the preparation for the Messianic Age
How did it come about, one might ask, that the Balfour Declaration was initially met with
Jewish incomprehension and refusal? Because it fitted with the ‘Christian Vision’ of the
Restoration of the Jewish people in the Holy Land. Its solemn vow can nonetheless be situ-
ated in 1840. Coincidentally the same year, Jewish year 5600, earmarked the preparation
for the candle lighting of the Messianic Age, according to Rabbi Judah Hai Alkalai. In his
view this meant that at that particular year of the ‘galuth’ (exile), the land of Israel had
become promised land again. He was right, but it also meant that the prophecy of Isaiah
29:18 was being fulfilled: “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the
eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness”, which annulled the pro-
phecy of verse 10, taken up by Paul in his letter to the Romans (11:8): “God has poured on
them a spirit of deep sleep, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear,
to this very day.” How marvellous are the ways of the Lord, for on August 17th 1840, under
the impetus of Lord Ashly (later to become Lord Shaftesbury), a public debate started “to
plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers which (it was stated also) became a
serious political consideration”. Ashly was moved by a religious fervour of the purest
kind; let it be understood, the fervour and zeal of an Anglican Christian who took the Bi-
blical truths as eternal truths. He believed the time had come for the Restoration of God’s
ancient people as he used to call them. He stood by no means alone.

Remarkably, the Restoration also meant, in his view and that of a number of important
persons, a mass conversion of the Jews to the Christian faith, to be brought about by mis-
sionary work. The most important of all gospel societies was the “London Society for Pro-
moting Christianity among the Jews” (now the Church’s Ministry Among the Jewish Peo-
ple or CMJ). Commonly called the Jews’ Society, it was founded in 1809 (for which the
idea came up maybe in 1807, or in 1840 minus 33 years). It was under the patronage of no
less a person than the Duke of Kent, brother of the King and the father of Queen Victoria.
The endeavours in that direction failed in the beginning, except for a few isolated cases. In
the long run more results could be felt, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
when translations of the New Testament into Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino were made avai-
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lable. Estimates of how many Jews in total accepted the Yeshua as their Messiah cannot be
trusted. Anyhow, at the time of the Balfour Declaration the vision to bring back God’s
people ‘home’ had become solidly fixed in the British mind.

This is the raison d’être of the Balfour Declaration. It was the doing of England against
opposition of all sorts, also from the Roman Catholic Church, which was only too happy
with her position of the chosen one ‘instead of Israel’ and did not see why suddenly that
would have to change now…

7 - Peace is the one thing that lacks…

We have noticed that Palestine was administered since 1920 under a mandate from the
League of Nations. Then, in 1947, notice was given that she would abandon the mandate,
to be brought into effect the year following, the year also of the establishment of the State
of Israel, which however would have a divided Jerusalem of which one part belonged to
Israel. Now it happened in 1967, under a completely different setting than fifty years ear-
lier, that the Temple Mount was taken during the Six Day War, being a fulfilment of the
prophecy of Luke 21:23: “Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the
Gentiles are fulfilled.” First by the Romans, then the Moslems, then the British and finally
it was subdued by the Jordanians. (see also article “Jerusalem belongs to Jews”)

Since that fateful date in June 1967, peace is the one thing that lacks, not least because of
Israel’s autocratic rule in the annexed regions. They had to pay a heavy toll in the 1973
Yom Kippur war, when ten thousand of the flower of the nation had to give their lives,
which has to be added to the three thousand deaths during previous confrontations. This
was quite different from the 769 deaths during the Six Day War. The chain of events is
eloquently exposed in Bernard Avishai’s book from 1985: “The Tragedy of Zionism”. It is
not insignificant that the Arab Intifada (uprising) began on 9th December 1987, the one-
generation term of the British deliverance of Jerusalem from the Turks, thus after 70 years,
as well as 40 years after the end of the Mandate. (4)

Until the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jews living in the Arab states were tole-
rated, albeit much discriminated against. During the war, Hitler wanted to know the num-
ber of Jews living in Morocco, then about 255,000, upon which the king replied: “We only
have Moroccans, no Jews in this country.” Yet after the establishment of the State of Isra-
el, they had to leave Morocco after which 13,000 were left behind. Their protection had fi-
nished. How to explain this drastic change, which exemplifies the general attitude in the
Arab world? The orientalist professor Hans Jansen analyzed the problem magisterially in
an interview that appeared in the Dutch newspaper “Trouw” on December 16th 2006. The
following analysis he made explains the full-blooded reaction of the Arab countries and
their refusal to grant Israel’s right to existence:
«« The realisation of the Zionist project, regarded as utopian by the majority of Jews
in Europe before the Second World War, enabled the Jews in the whole of the Middle
East to leave well behind them their ‘dhimmi-status’ – as legally protected but second-
class citizens – and to assert their independence. The Arab Moslems, a proud people
always wanting to dominate, were deeply shocked at this development, simply and
solely because of the fact that the protected minority of Jews in the Middle East
refused to accept any longer their status under the patronising, semi-considerate, semi-
tolerant attitude of their masters. The Moslems accused the Jews of no longer being
prepared to know their place within the Islamic world. The unexpected metamorphosis
from the contemptible, powerless, humiliated and subjected Jew into a Zionist who
gained military victories and was thus seen as a threat to Moslem society caused a
theological, sociological, economic and political break with the ages-old tradition of
Islam. And that was intolerable. This image of the Zionist Jew is fed on a daily basis
 -8-

with feelings of deep indignation and anger regarding the theft, the plundering, the
occupation of the Arabs’ Holy Land – Palestine – by Israel. The metamorphosis from
Jew to Zionist is experienced in the Arab world – right up to today – as an unending
provocation and a scandal, since it throws doubt on the superiority of Islam. The roles
have been reversed: after The Moslems in the Middle East had ruled over powerless
and humiliated Jews for more than twelve-and-a-half centuries, now the Jews they
typify as ‘powerless and contemptible’ rule over the Moslems – certainly in the occu-
pied territories but in fact throughout the whole of the Middle East. Moslems are deep-
ly shocked in their religious convictions. They become frustrated and traumatised. »»

The start of the Intifada in 1987 falls outside the multiple of 33. See the following table,
which shows that there were outbursts of antisemitism in increments above the year 1840
of 3x11 years (or 1x33), of 9x11 (or 3x33) and finally 15x11 (or 5x33), which brings us to
the years 1873, 1939 and 2005. The start of the Intifada, which falls outside it, is not to be
considered an outbreak of antisemitism, but rather as a spontaneous uprising against an
oppressor. In the course of time the conflict escalated and the manner of retaliation on the
Arab side, in an orchestration of hatred, was horrible and transgressed all human dignity,
but the cause of the Intifada ‘at that point in time’ should not be termed antisemitism. This
was not staged. The immediate occasion was a deadly accident in the Gaza Strip involving
an Israeli truck. The uprising came as a complete surprise for the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (later: the Palestinian Authority), located in Tunis at the time, and accor-
dingly it took them some time to take up the reins.

8 - The Gaza Strip withdrawal

In the year 2005 the expulsion started of all the Jewish inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. On
August 13 the Gush Katif region, located within the Gaza Strip, was closed to non-resi-
dents, in keeping with Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan under the motto “land for
peace”, which he also called the “Road Map”. Most settlers did not voluntarily leave their
homes or even pack in preparation for the eviction. On August 15th the week-long forcible
and traumatic evacuation of the Gush Katif settlements began. The forces deployed were
not Nazi soldiers, but consisted of the nation’s own sons and daughters in military dress. In
essence, many residents returned to pack the contents of their homes and then the Israeli
government began the destruction of all residential buildings. On September 12th the Israeli
 -9-

army withdrew from the seventeen settlements up to the “Green Line”. All public buildings
– schools, libraries, community centres, as well as industrial buildings, factories and green-
houses which could not be taken apart – were left intact. On that day, thousands of
overjoyed Palestinians, with the approval of Palestinian Authority officials and police, took
part in ransacking, vandalism, and destruction of the synagogues and some other buildings.
The final result of Prime Minister Sharon’s policy was anything but peace. It has brought a
chain of misery on Israel and in particular on the brave people of Gush Katif.

In order to analyse the situation – understanding it is another matter – we need to go back

to the Oslo Agreements of 1993. These were based on the principle of “land for peace”.
Israel was to transfer power over Palestinian areas to the inhabitants, who were under Ara-
fat’s leadership. His troops were even provided with weapons by Israel so that they could
enforce day-to-day authority. In exchange Arafat promised to rein in the violence. The
terrorist organisations were to be combated and in the end dismantled in order to make
clear to the people that peace with Israel was the new outlook for the future. Arafat did not
even take the trouble to keep his promises, interpreting Israel’s approach as a sign of weak-
ness that should be exploited. The turnaround to peace – as we saw in the case of Nelson
Mandela – failed to happen. Instead, Arafat and the parties allied to him such as the Al
Aqsa brigade simply turned up the terror. The number of victims of suicide attacks in the
five years following Oslo was greater than in the previous fifteen years. Instead of educa-
tion for peace, a government-sponsored hate campaign was launched, a campaign that
 - 10 -

penetrated every part of Palestinian society, right down to the infant schools. This produced
an unimaginably hateful society in which a youth sports event was named after a terrorist
whose heroic deed had been to shoot dead an Israeli baby, where children’s TV showed
Mickey Mouse calling for violent acts against Jews and where summer camps were trans-
formed into centres for brainwashing in the name of terror. All of this was aided and abet-
ted by the lunatic policies of Sharon and his supporter, Shimon Peres, who later (2007) was
to become the ninth President of Israel.

Jew and the original Jewish colonists were mainly socialists and communists. In God’s
people the choices are always difficult and the consequences always dramatic. Being cho-
sen also has its disadvantages! The culmination of the betrayal by their elected leaders was
the eviction of the inhabitants from Gush Katif, when the best of the people were banished
to some kind of cardboard refugee camp (see www.katifund.org/English). Since then and
elsewhere in the country more evictions have followed and plans have been drawn up to
grant even more land to Arabs, whereby there is even mention of an enclave in the middle
of the country. The existential problems afflicting Israel, that tiny strip of land on the Medi-
terranean, have only increased since the Gush Katif disaster. More shootings, a war in Le-
banon and added tension along the border with Syria. Blood goes on flowing and a per-
spective on peace is turned into despair. The Road Map has turned out to be an illusion and
the plan of withdrawal a sickening sales pitch. For that reason alone the eviction of the
inhabitants of Gush Katif earns its place in the timetable of the restoration of God’s Chosen
People – to be precise, 5 x 33 years since the start of the Messianic Era. The clock goes on
ticking, as it has done for more than 165 years… Which ‘also’ means that peace and justice
have come closer.
Hubert Luns
[Published in “De Brandende Lamp” 2nd quarter 2008 – No. 114]

Notes
(1) A popular Chanukah game is spinning the dreidel, a four-sided cylindrical figure that
spins like a top. On each side, a Hebrew letter is written: Nun, Gimmmel, Hay, Shin, which
makes the acronym: “Nes Gadol Haya Sham” (a great miracle happened there).
The connection taken from Daniel’s prophecy between Moslem year 1335 and AD 1917
was first published by a certain H. Grattan Guinness and spouse in a book published in
1886: “Light for the Last days: a study in chronological prophecy” (p. 253 - 1917 ed.). After
1917 this was further elaborated by a Royal Air Force mechanic called J. M. Stears.

(2) Antisemitism is a modern term that conveys the impression that only the Jews are
Semites, but other peoples are part of the Semitic stock, like the Arabs. The word anti-Se-
mite was introduced by Wilhelm Marr to replace the German Judenhass (Jew-hatred) with
a term that would sound less vulgar. Although the word anti-Semite is etymologically incor-
rect, everyone understands what is meant by it. Before 1873 antisemitism focused on Je-
wish concepts of God. Modern antisemitism focuses on the Jews’ peoplehood and nation-
hood. In fact, quite a few Jew-haters today even deny that they are antisemites under the
vile argument that they are anti-Zionists.

(3) There were persistent rumours, denied by Samuel himself, that the initiative for what
was to become the Balfour Declaration came from him. These rumours were based on a
memorandum he wrote on the issue in 1915, which Herbert Asquith found quite distasteful.
The Balfour Declaration was not an easy thing. It was the result of a confluence of develop-
ments. It was Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, who attracted Balfour’s in-
terest to the exigency of the cause during a momentous discussion they had in 1906. Lloyd
George, of course, was also an important factor in the development of the scheme. Already
in the Asquith cabinet he had been a staunch supporter of Samuel’s memorandum with
which he was involved from the beginning. The memo was called “The Future of Palestine”,
outlining the prospects of an independent Jewish State that could harbour three to four
 - 11 -

million European Jews. Only after Lloyd George headed the War Cabinet in December
1916, after having ousted Asquith, and in which Balfour became Foreign Secretary, the go-
vernment began to seriously consider a public statement of policy on Palestine and opened
official talks with the interested parties.
My father’s mother was Belgian. Her mother’s mother was Jewish and related to Lord
Samuel. Lord Samuel’s son called my father ‘nephew’, but only once my father had been
made Minister of Foreign Affairs!

(4) In the view of the writer, 70 years is the length of a generation – in the present era. Is
not the age that people currently live to, after all, round about 70 years? So 1987 was the
one-generation term after 1917. I would also like to point to the prophecy contained in Lk.
21:29-32, which may have relevance here and in which some see the sprouting of the fig
tree as the official declaration of Israel’s statehood. This is, of course, speculation. As is
often the case, prophecies only come into their own after their fulfilment, like a piece of
music in which the various melodies are spread here and there, awaiting the composer to
put them in order; in our case this latter is the divine composer, who puts the various
prophecies in the correct order.