February 1998 Personal Letter

Dear Friends,

I learned a shocking fact from CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), whose releases we have long run in the Levitt Letter. It seems that Israel, a country the size of a large U.S. city (about 4.7 million), receives coverage from 400 reporters from various regions. This astronomical figure places Israel fourth in the world as far as getting the media’s attention. Only Washington, D.C., London, and Bonn, Germany have more foreign correspondents covering their affairs. Since 95% of the media is biased against Israel, for reasons of petro-dollars, anti-Semitism and just plain entertainment value, Israel has been defamed on a steady basis as no other nation in the world today.

It is no wonder then that the Lord said, “Ye shall be hated of all nations” (Matt. 24:9). It seems that “all nations” are overly informed about the Holy Land. That is to say, for a country of five million people, Israel is getting far more coverage than is justified, and that coverage, like almost all media coverage, tends to be simplistic and critical in nature. After all, we do not hear about comparably sized countries like Cuba or Kuwait on as steady a basis as we do the Holy Land. Since the media primarily covers geopolitical events, there is no logical reason for this emphasis on Israel.

An example of this negative, cynical coverage was the recent resignation of Cabinet member David Levy, which caused the New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, and dozens of other papers to run front page stories saying that the Israeli government was going to fall. That was a laugh and had to be corrected 24 hours later when Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government won a budget vote very nicely without the help of Levy’s political influence. It was never pointed out that David Levy has resigned eight times before. It has also not been pointed out that Netanyahu’s 61 to 59 majority in Parliament is the same as Rabin and Peres had before him, and that this is not an unusual legislative situation in Israel. It doesn’t mean that every vote will be close. As in the American Congress, members often cross party lines. It seems almost elementary to point these things out, but the public is simply misinformed by the media.

Meanwhile, the violence in Israel is emphasized unmercifully, while in other countries it is actually far worse. In Algeria, 412 people were killed in one week, and 1,000 in ten days at year’s end. Algeria’s grand total is 80,000 killed since the 1991 election. These atrocities, committed by Islamic terrorists, beg a comparison to the situation in Israel, which suffered 240 casualties during the same period. It seems that people hurt or killed in Israel make far more dramatic news than ten times or a hundred times or a thousand times the same number of people killed elsewhere.

The Iranian “president” spoke recently in reference to the United States, and our press and government were so happy that he didn’t actually call us “The Great Satan,” although he referred to us as something very close to that. Israel was described as a terrorist dictatorship. (Is that the pot calling the kettle black?) Our government is regarding this absurd, primitive harangue as an “opening” in our relations with Iran. I think the only relations we should have with states like Iran and Iraq, which are building weapons of mass destruction while we wring our hands, are relations expressed with airplanes and missiles. This was the ultimatum given by President Kennedy in regard to the Soviet buildup in Cuba, and the Russian weapons were dismantled immediately. We have armies and we have weapons. What else are they for?

The American entertainment news has not been very encouraging of late, either. Jerry Seinfeld, a comedic TV actor, has turned down a salary of five million dollars a week to do a thirty-minute program, while the homeless starve. David Brinkley has become a “spokesman” for the company that sponsored his program for many years, and he is now accused of selling out. Who is the harlot? Rahab of Jericho, who told the Israelis, “I know that the Lord hath given you the land” (Joshua 2:9), or Brinkley, whose loyalty is for sale? Such personalities as Bruce Willis, Dennis Rodman and Larry Flynt were featured in a New York Times expose’ of big time Las Vegas gambling. The various celebrities throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars to combat their boredom, while children still die by tens of thousands per day in the Third World for lack of one-dollar shots or fifty-cent meals. Truly our world is taking the shape of what the Lord described in His Olivet discourse: “And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another… And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24:10–12).

When I flew to New York for the start of our Christmas Tour, I learned that American Airlines no longer provides ear plugs for folks in business class. Instead, a little note tells passengers to request these from the flight attendant (who laughed and said, “We’ve been out of those for a month”). Well, please know that when you travel to Israel with us, every passenger — business, economy, or other — receives a kit with ear plugs, an inflatable neck pillow, and an eye mask to make the flight nearly as comfortable as the one we will enjoy when the Lord takes us to Israel in the Second Coming. Along with all of that, on our next tour you will get the incomparable experience of seeing the Holy Land in the spring. You will see the green hillsides of the Galilee and flowers blooming in the fields where our Lord once walked. Our Grand Tour passengers will get to trace Paul’s travels as they visit Athens, with its Acropolis and Mars Hill, and Corinth, as well as a Mediterranean cruise to the islands of Mykonos, Patmos, Rhodes, and the city of Ephesus. This is the only time in 1998 that we will visit Greece, so check your schedule and come with us. Our Grand Tour will be May 20 – June 2. Our Deluxe Israel Tour, will include the major biblical sites in Israel, and will be May 24 – June 3. Call our answering service at 1-800-WONDERS (966-3377) or write us today for a free travel brochure.

We are in post-production for our new series, Covenants of God, which will begin shortly. In the meantime, we are airing the interviews from Jerusalem that Zola obtained on our Christmas Tour. If you missed the interview with former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, we will air it again later. As usual, all of our programs are available on videotape. Since post-production is the most expensive phase of our television effort, I truly hope you will send up a prayer about providing help for us at this time. Finances become very strained during these post-production periods. Thanks, God bless you, and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Your Messenger,