December 2001 Personal Letter

Dear Friends,

Last night I watched an interesting interview on FOX News. I can highly recommend that network, by the way, in place of CNN. Some networks are almost worthless in their coverage of our current war. Some are even partisans with the enemy. When, for example, is Peter Jennings going to receive his anthrax letter?

The FOX interview concerned Sen. Joseph Biden’s worries that every day that we bomb in Afghanistan, we further spoil our relationship with the Muslim world. This astonishing comment caused much-decorated war hero Col. David Hackworth to shake his head sadly and say, “They [the politicians] just don’t understand war.”

We at this ministry have said that since September 11. If we continue to PR our way through this terrible situation, we will lose the war, and that’s all there is to that. Our government seems bewildered by the strength and tenacity of the least of our enemies (bin Laden and the Taliban), and our leaders’ talk, like Biden’s, seems to be about some other country in some smaller war.

In my view, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister of Israel, most clearly sees the errors of our ways and instructs us eloquently, at least when it comes to the most important nation prophetically — Israel. I have never before quoted an article in full in this personal letter, but the following piece by Netanyahu (who was invited to appear on FOX but not on CNN) should be read by all.

This Is Israel’s Fight Too
By Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal

The principle could not have been more clearly articulated. President Bush, addressing the American people last month, promised that his administration would make no distinction between terrorists and the regimes that harbor them. “From this day forward,” the president boldly declared, “any nation that continues to support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was equally emphatic about the need to hold states accountable for sheltering terrorists when he issued an unambiguous warning to the Taliban regime: “Surrender the terrorists or surrender power.”

But while the principle was clear, its application was not. First, there were calls to include Iran and Syria in the coalition against terror. Since the Khomeini revolution in 1979, Iran has served as an ideological beachhead for militant Islam and has sponsored international terrorism. Syria, for its part, has long been the headquarters of a dozen terrorist organizations with a global reach, affording them political and diplomatic support and allowing Syrian-controlled Lebanon to serve as a training ground. To even consider putting these two nations into a coalition against terror undermines the moral clarity that is needed to win a war against evil.

The treatment of Israel, a nation that has been fighting terror since the day it was born, by much of the free world has been equally shortsighted. It is one (arguable) thing to leave the only democracy in the region on the sidelines of the antiterror coalition so as not to offend Arab and Islamic sensibilities. It is another to try to exculpate the Palestinian terrorists attacking Israel or try to force Israel to make concessions to them.

Some policy makers even tried to differentiate between Palestinian terror and other terror, erroneously defining terrorism in terms of the underlying grievance of its perpetrators rather than the means employed to address those grievances.

Since terrorism, the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in order to achieve political goals, was not clearly defined at the outset, the term has become utterly malleable. Just as the Soviets used words such as “justice” and “freedom” to condemn the West during the Cold War, today’s terrorists denounce American and Israeli “terrorism.” The spokesman of the Palestinian Authority even had the audacity to liken Israel’s antiterrorist incursions into Palestinian-controlled Ramallah to the terrorism that struck New York, not to mention his ghoulish comparison of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Osama bin Laden.

Unfortunately, amidst this moral obfuscation, an Israel that continues to face the unprecedented terrorist onslaught that Yasser Arafat unleashed last year is expected to abide by a different set of principles than those so clearly formulated in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack.

After an Israeli cabinet minister was assassinated in a hotel in Jerusalem, a reprehensible moral equivalency that equates terrorists with their victims was taken to a new level when some diplomats had the temerity to compare the assassination with Israel’s targeted killing of the masterminds of Palestinian terrorism. Imagine the outrage that would follow if someone suggested that the assassination of an American cabinet secretary would be morally equivalent to the targeted killing of one of the masterminds of al Qaeda terrorism.

Yasser Arafat is perhaps the only leader in the world who is both directly responsible for terror and whose regime also harbors terrorists. The Fatah and Tanzim forces that are directly accountable to him have committed over 50% of the terrorist acts against Israelis over the past year. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose suicide bombings have killed and wounded hundreds of Israeli civilians since the peace process began, operate with impunity in Palestinian-controlled areas.

But rather than unequivocally supporting Israel in its battle against a terrorist regime, many voices in the free world have called on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Far from “calming tensions” in the region, such concessions will only embolden terrorists by sending the message that terrorism pays. Talk of a Palestinian state at a time when Arafat uses the media under his control to call for Israel’s destruction is rewarding Arafat’s decision to achieve through terror what he could not achieve through negotiations.

President Bush is a strong friend of Israel. Surely his administration understands that the goal of the war on terrorism must be to destroy terrorist regimes, not create them. I am convinced that if the principles the president has articulated in fighting this war against evil are adhered to, the war against terrorism will be won.

The government of Israel must deliver the same message to Arafat that the free world has conveyed to the Taliban: Surrender terrorism or surrender power. What is required of the Palestinian Authority is not merely extraditing the specific terrorists who shot Rehavam Zeevi and crushing the organization that sent them, but also rooting out the entire terrorist infrastructure that operates within its territory.

I have nothing to add to Netanyahu’s comments. To those who wonder why much of our emphases are on Israel at a time when the U.S. is under attack, the fact is that it is the focus not only of our ministry, but virtually of all End Times prophecy. In almost every issue, I remind readers of Genesis 12:3, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

I honestly believe that no one in the world but the U.S. government truly believes that Arafat wants peace with Israel, or ever did. Since we have the home addresses of all of the Islamic terrorists (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc.), why are we chasing them in the distant mountains of Afghanistan?

Anthrax, my Passover Haggadah tells me, is expressed in the fifth of the ten plagues upon Egypt. The Hebrew term dehvehr is translated as “cattle diseases,” and refers to something very like what we are experiencing now.

I wonder if, in view of the September 11th suicidal terrorist pilots, the Egyptians find it a bit easier to believe that one of their pilots, in 1999, purposely ditched Egypt Air 990 into the ocean in order to kill the hundred Americans aboard.

This a time for prayer if there ever was one in this nation. Not only does it seem like the Antichrist is right around the corner, but for the moment we have been knocked to our knees. Incidentally, Pastor T. D. Jakes of the Potter’s House Church in Dallas, Texas, said, “On my knees is my war position!”

The year’s end is coming and that is the time we depend, of course, on the level of gifts to sustain us and help us plan the following year. I don’t want to take a lot of space to explain this, but certainly the upcoming year is the most important our ministry has ever undertaken. And unfortunately, it’s a time when we lack a certain amount of donations due to smaller Israel tours (the folks who attended our tours learned how competent and truthful we were about the Holy Land and many times that resulted in significant ministry donations that we will lack in 2002). I would appreciate it if, when you are on your knees, you could ask the Lord what He would have you do for this ministry. Whatever He tells you is always perfectly agreeable with us. And thank you.

I really want to encourage you to join us on one of our tours to the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, FL. This is a wonderful Biblical theme park, and many have benefited from the teaching as we visit these “ancient” sites. Our next tour will be after Christmas on December 28–30. This last tour of the year would make a great adventure for the entire family, with kids out of school and welcome with their parents in our large hotel suites.

Our March tour to Israel and Greece, tentatively planned for March 9–31, may likely be one of our best pilgrimages ever. Besides our usual visit to the Holy Land, we’re adding an additional tour of mainland Greece to include teaching at the same Biblical sites where Paul and the first-century Christians ministered. Call Tony at (214) 696-9760 for tour details. You may have heard that we’re offering free to those who register for this Israel tour by the end of the year $100 of teaching materials when they travel with us in March. I really want you to come with me and discover the beauty and wonder of the Chosen People and the Promised Land!

Your prayers are appreciated at this time and I give thanks for your support. As always, I ask that you pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Your Messenger,

P.S. As I pointed out in our November newsletter, the situation in Israel seems to be lightening up, despite what the media tell you. It’s in Arafat’s best interest to ease back on creating problems and become a good coalition partner. We will study the situation carefully as the March tour approaches, but at this point, I can sincerely recommend it. If absolutely necessary, we will do the portion in Greece only. But in any case, we will certainly be going.