A Note From Zola
Dear Friends,
Ted Turner has really put his best foot forward. The founder of CNN
has pledged one billion dollars to the United Nations as a philanthropic
gesture and has challenged other billionaires to do the same. Certainly
one cannot criticize such charity (though Turner was quick to point out
he earned the billion in the first nine months of this year!). But we
could only wish that he had a more worthy cause.
An informed businessman, Turner probably knows that much of his
large contribution will be wasted on frivolous projects, corruption, and
the like with the UN, but he evidently has no God to whom to tithe. The
way his network has always criticized Israel, it would be very hard to
believe that he has any biblical understanding, and therefore he gives
his money to whomever he thinks it might do some good. We can only hope
that the funds are well-spent.
In a TV interview, Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman said that he was
mystified as to why people like to read bad news about the Cowboys. He
sounded like an Israeli. Why do we get so excited over bad news about
people who were once our heroes?
There have been some items in the news on which I would like to
comment. Fifty thousand Israeli cars were stolen in 1997, virtually 100
percent by Palestinians. This is the sort of story that doesn't make
CNN or the other networks, but does a great deal to promote hostility
among neighbors. PLO officials have been criticized for driving the
finer stolen cars, and even for ordering them from thieves by make and
color.
A pastor I met recently was appealing to his congregation to do
more regular prayers; he pointed out that God's number is not 911.
The visit of new Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Israel was
a pleasant surprise. I expected her to mouth the usual government line
about how the Israelis were causing the Palestinians to do bad things,
but instead she gave Arafat a clear message. The problem with demanding
that Arafat stop terrorism is that he doesn't want to, and in fact, he
would risk his life if he did so.
The terrorists could just as easily bomb his office or home as they
do any target in Israel, and they need only the slightest justification.
If he opposes their policies, he makes himself a target. Add to that
the fact that they're keeping him in business as some kind of
"statesman" by keeping the pot boiling over there. It is difficult to
make peace when you have an international terrorist as a negotiator, and
those who appointed him must now act surprised. Oh, by the way, U.S.
taxpayers provided Madeleine Albright's entourage with 200 rooms in the
ultra-fancy Laromme Hotel in Jerusalem.
Israel keeps being criticized for applying "collective punishment" on
the Palestinians, but isn't that what ordinary strikers do to the public
every time they stop their services? My own personal hope is that the
Israelis will simply tell Washington that they will not play false
"peace process" any further and that the game is over. Netanyahu has
virtually made that statement, but it was contingent upon "if Arafat
doesn't stop the terrorism." That being hopeless, everybody ought to
just quit, starting with our embarrassing government.
With the campaign-funding situation in Washington, we can only wonder
why such millions had to be raised for a campaign that virtually
couldn't be lost. Does the money really go into buying airtime and
such, or is somebody just pocketing it? Those with an addiction to
money will do absolutely anything to get it, or, in the memorable words
of witness Tamraz before the Thompson Congressional Committee, "There's
nothing wrong with running after money." God's words on the same
subject are these: "For the love of money is the root of all evil...."
(1 Timothy 6:10)
Our new series, Champions of Faith, started airing in September
(19th on INSP, 20th on TBN, and 21st on FAM). We are profiling for you
many of the heroes of faith presented in Hebrews 11. Our mission is to
teach far and wide that "without faith it is impossible to please God,
because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He
rewards those who earnestly seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6)
Shot on location in Israel, this series explores each character, and
teaches a unique aspect of each one's testimony to give us insight and
instruction on the development of faith. Modern-day believers, both
Jewish and Gentile, are interviewed and give witness to a faith that
builds the foundation for not only lives that overcome in spite of
adversity, but overcoming lives. Please see page 10 for our program
descriptions.
Our upcoming Hanukkah/Christmas Tour is the most economical tour of
the year. You still receive all the benefits of luxurious tour buses,
and the same elegant hotels and itinerary as our high-season tours. Our
Basic Tour leaves December 13th and returns on the 22nd, just in time
for Christmas with your family and friends at home. The Grand Tour
continues to December 26th for an extension of sight-seeing in Petra and
Eilat. We will see Mt. Nebo, where the Lord allowed Moses a glimpse of
the Promised Land, then go on to Petra, an ancient city of huge,
rose-red buildings and monuments chiseled out of the very mountains
before the time of Christ.
It truly is one-of-a-kind in the world. We will then continue on to
sunny Eilat, a resort city on the Red Sea where summer lasts throughout
the year. Christmas Day will find us near Bethlehem. The cave where
Jesus was born is in a grove in the Shepherd's Fields (where Ruth and
Boaz met) outside of Bethlehem, away from the noise and hubbub of the
town.
For an unforgettable Christmas, come with us and visit a very
special place where past Christians believed the true manger was
located. We are taking registrations now, so please call our answering
service at 1-800-WONDERS (966-3377) for your travel folder, or call
Cynthia at 214-696-9760.
Your Messenger,
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ARE OUR PRAYERS ANSWERED?
IS THE PEACE PROCESS OVER?
The articles below were all referred to us by different viewers.
While there are still a few misguided voices trying to promote false
peace in Israel, we feel that the writers below are presenting the true
picture. It is impossible to make peace in a land where one side does
not want peace, but simply the destruction of the other side. Many
voices still trumpet the silly phrase "the peace process," but we
suspect that for all practical purposes it is over with, and good
riddance. Read on...
A Lady Puts in a Word for Common Sense
by Wesley Pruden of The Washington Times,
September 12, 1997
Sometimes the shamelessness of how it abuses its friends makes even
Washington retch and gag. Not often, but sometimes.
This may be one of those sometimes. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright got in Yasser Arafat's face (an act of considerable courage for
any woman of dignity and refinement) to tell him, in so many words, what
is obvious to everyone but something few in the West are brave enough to
say:
Terrorists who demonstrate their manly courage by blowing up women
and children are evil, and until you make them behave themselves, decent
people will not make agreements with you.
Mrs. Albright spent two hours Thursday with Mr. Arafat in Ramallah
and told him bluntly that he must dismantle the Islamic Fundamentalist
infrastructure in Gaza and on the West Bank. The president of the
Palestinian Authority has the guns of big enough bore to do the job, but
he's said to be afraid someone will kill him if he tries to impose a
code of honor and decency on his followers. It's less risky to kill
Jews.
Mrs. Albright's spasm of toughness interrupts the usual State
Department indifference to Jew-killing. Warren Christopher, her
predecessor, made 25 trips to the Middle East, shucking and jiving to
various tinpots in the interest of what the spineless noodniks here
insist on calling "the peace process."
There is no peace process, as everyone knows. There's only the
process by which Israel, under pressure from those who say they are
Israel's friends, makes concession after concession, gets an "agreement"
from the Palestinians "in return," and after an indecent interval
someone blows up another bus, or a market, or a school. (Bombing a
school is the heroic Hamas equivalent of the D-Day landing in France;
there are a lot of medals for gallantry to go around, and women and
children don't shoot back.)
Despite Mrs. Albright's outburst, the usual blame-the-Jews experts
are unrelenting in their tolerance of Palestinian deceit and deception:
Mr. Arafat hankers to obtain deeper American involvement in the peace
process. Or, Mrs. Albright won't put the pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu
to give the Palestinians what they want.
Or, the peace process, stinking like rancid cheese left in the sun,
is collapsing and the United States won't do anything about it. These
are mostly the experts of the Chicken Little Institute of Middle Eastern
Peace and Goodness Studies, consistently wrong about everything and with
the record to prove it.
Too bad for the Israelis, but Yasser Arafat understands this very
well and knows how to play the dance music the appeasers in the West
groove to. "I cannot fight terrorism alone," he told Mrs. Albright
Thursday. "I cannot fight regional terrorism alone. I need help in
fighting regional terrorism."
This is from the great terrorist fighter who made a show of publicly
kissing the leader of Hamas, a gesture that the followers of both Mr.
Arafat and Hamas understand very well, even if the spineless men in the
capitals of the West do not.
The eagerness to hold Jews and Arabs to different standards is racist
at heart. There's no confidence in the West that the Palestinians
understand what is meant in the West about honorable agreements
honorably arrived at, or that Arabs have the sense of shame that impels
other men to live up to such honorable agreements honorably arrived at.
This is insulting to every honorable Arab, but how else can the Western
attitude be read? Every parent understands the phenomenon. The decent
child is under constant pressure to give in to his bully of a brother,
no matter how outrageous the little monster may be, all for the sake of
a little peace and quiet in the house.
When a deranged Jew, hallucinating that he is acting in behalf of
God, shoots up a mosque in a cowardly act of hate, the reaction in
Israel is a wave of censure and outrage, contributing to the fall of the
government. When a Palestinian bomb explodes on behalf of God, leaving
tiny arms and legs scattered across a schoolyard in Jerusalem, there is
no outrage in the capitals of the Middle East, no government falls, and
in the squalid Palestinian slums other evil men go about building more
bombs.
Western governments, Washington foremost among them, tolerate this by
listening to excuses and pressuring Israel to make further concessions
to get agreements that Washington knows the Palestinians have no
intention of keeping. This is a coward's game, and an invitation to
continue acts of destructive terror. It won't end until the Israelis,
with the help of real friends, convince the terrorists that they cannot
afford the price, or until, and this is the preferred Hamas formula, all
Jews are dead.
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Battle for Jerusalem Has Begun
by William Safire, a New York Times columnist
This generation's battle for Jerusalem has begun. With two attacks
on Israeli civilians punctuated by the public "kiss of death" bestowed
by Yasser Arafat on a terrorist leader, militant Arabs have shown that
they intend to make Jerusalem their capital at the point of a gun.
No civilized country will tolerate that kind of negotiation under
duress. That is why, on the eve of Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright's first visit to the terror-torn area, Israel has published a
list of 10 obligations , all agreed to by Palestinian authorities , that
must be met before any new agreements can be made.
These range from the imprisonment of ringleaders who equip and
brainwash suicide bombers (this week's temporary detention of a few
dozen volunteer roundupables is a joke) to the cessation of the drumbeat
of incitement to violence by holy warriors in mosques and by Arafat's
controlled media.
These measures to end violence are not new Israeli demands; they are
promises contained in the Oslo accords, reconfirmed only months ago in
the Hebron agreement.
One of the broken commitments: Oslo's interim agreement permitted a
West Bank and Gaza police force of 24,000, with every recruit to be
reviewed by Israel to keep guns from known terrorists.
But today the Palestinians under arms number 35,500, with names of
half kept secret.
This illegal army buildup shreds the Oslo agreement; if this Arab
promise is not kept, what are others worth? "Land for peace" has become
"land for a staging ground for war."
The naive notion that Arab hearts would be won by handing over most
of the West Bank before breaking the news that Jerusalem was not about
to be divided again has been exposed as cruelly self-deceptive. With
every concession of land, Arafat has grown more insistent that Jerusalem
must be his capital.
Most Israelis remember the last time Arabs controlled East Jerusalem.
Jews were driven out and synagogues razed. Israel will not allow that
persecution to happen again.
That is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the face of
Arafat's 10 major broken security promises, has stopped letting Israel
be the salami under the Palestinian knife. Land for peace is still
available, but the West Bank land to be made available to Palestinians
for self-rule requires their agreement to peace in Israel's Jerusalem.
Now we are talking about "final status negotiations." The Peres
win-their-hearts approach, even after giving up most of Hebron, has
flopped; now is the moment for putting all the cards on the table and
making the effort for a comprehensive deal on borders, water,
sovereignty, security restrictions, the works.
Arafat doesn't want this facing of all facts because he knows the
partition of Jerusalem is where most Israelis, hawk and dove, draw the
line. He prefers to get all the concessions he can before he says "no
shared Jerusalem, no peace."
He assumes that the world will pressure Israel then to break up the
city. With his "share" in hand, if Israel dared to seal its national
borders in response to terrorist attack, Arafat could lash back by
making East Jerusalem blissfully Judenrein ["free of Jews" in German as
previously used during the Holocaust] again.
The central issue is and has always been keeping Israel's capital
whole. The map of a workable final deal stares us all in the face: a
Palestinian flag on a majority of the West Bank land and 98 percent of
its people, with road tunnels and overpasses making the new state's
large enclaves contiguous and independent of Israel; sharing of water
and limitation on military; and conduct like civilized neighbors.
Conduct is the key. Albright comes at a good time, with no progress
expected. If Arafat can impose internal order, Palestinians will have
their nation. If not, if he is unwilling or unable to take charge of
his terror troops, then peace will be postponed.
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Conflicts That Can't Be Resolved
by Irving Kristol, (co-editor of The Public Interest and publishes The National Interest)
The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1997
Three more bombs went off in Jerusalem yesterday, killing at least
six people and injuring more than 165. The Islamic terrorist group
Hamas claimed responsibility. Back in Washington, the Clinton
administration uttered the usual platitudes and talked of postponing
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's planned peace mission to the
Middle East next week. But already the administration is pondering ways
to save the "peace process."
Peace processes are proliferating all over the world, along with the
violence that gave birth to them. There is the Middle East peace
process, of course, but peace processes are also at work in the Cyprus
conflict between Greeks and Turks, the Northern Ireland conflict between
Catholics and Protestants, the Korean conflict between Communists and
non-Communists, the Bosnian conflict between just about everyone, and in
many other conflicts around the globe. Nor are they limited to
international conflicts. In the California Legislature a bill has been
proposed authorizing a Peace Process Task Force to oversee truces in
gang warfare.
So many "peace processes" and so little peace! What's going on?
Well, what's going on is the familiar story of a social science
theory being promoted to politicians who find it an attractive and easy
option. The theory in question is "conflict resolution," by now a
venerable department of social psychology with some thousands of
"experts" who are happy to sell their services to foundations,
government agencies or troubled nations. Our State Department is
thoroughly under the sway of this theory, aren't diplomats, by training,
experts at conflict resolution?, and so is the United States Institute
of Peace, whose latest bulletin features a summary of a speech by Joseph
Duffy, director of the U.S. Information Agency.
It reads: "The new information technologies are transforming
international relations, opening up new possibilities for conflict
prevention, management and resolution." Just how these technologies are
to perform this task we are not told, nor is there any hint of why they
do not seem to be working effectively in all those peace processes under
way. But the basic idea of a "peace process" as a most desirable
alternative to violent conflict is very attractive to those enchanted by
the therapeutic approach to all of life's problems. It is equally
attractive to political leaders who perceive it as a way of "doing
something nice" without really doing anything.
Still, it is hard to find a peace process that has accomplished
anything, anywhere. That is because "conflict resolution" is itself a
rather pompous, high-sounding theory with a very skimpy, simple-minded
psychological basis. The axiom of this theory is that harmony among
human beings is more natural than conflict, not original sin here!, and
that if only we can get the parties in conflict to talk to one another,
the level of "mistrust" will decline and mutual understanding increase,
until at some point the conflict itself will subside. It is thinkable
that such an approach to marriage counseling might in some cases be
productive, but its extension to the level of statecraft, or to any
conflict between collective entities, is an extreme case of academic
hubris.
When collective entities clash, it is usually because their interests
are at odds. Mediation may in some instances be helpful. But mediation
and conflict resolution are two different things. Conflict resolution
focuses on the psychological attitudes prevalent within the two
entities, and tries to reform them. Mediation focuses on the interests
at issue, tries to envisage a settlement minimally satisfactory to both
parties, and then aims to persuade them to move to such a settlement. A
crucial difference between mediation and conflict resolution is that the
former has compromise as its limited goal, where the latter has "better
trust and understanding" as its goal, on the assumption that this will
inevitably mark the end of conflict and the advent of pacific harmony.
Mediation played an important role in bringing the recent United
Parcel Service strike to an end. One doubts very much that it resulted
in "better trust and understanding" on either side. But the sphere of
conflict was limited at the outset, UPS did not wish to break the
Teamsters union, and the union had no desire to destroy UPS. A mediator
in such a situation operates within a fairly well-defined realm of
possibilities, and hopes to nudge the contestants toward a realization
of one of these possibilities.
The reason the "peace process" gets nowhere in places like Northern
Ireland and Cyprus is that no mediator can envisage an end situation
satisfactory to both parties. An expert in conflict resolution can
easily and always envisage a radical reformation of feelings, attitudes
and sentiments in the populations involved, so that the problem, as it
were, resolves itself. Unfortunately, he is not in possession of a
therapy to create such a miracle.
The best publicized "peace process," of course, is directed at
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Middle East. In this process,
our State Department plays a crucial but muddled role. It is in part a
cool mediator, in part a fuzzy therapist in conflict resolution. It's
step-by-step approach is justified in terms of "building mutual trust,"
but the nature and direction of these steps strongly suggest that the
department does indeed have an end in view. Unfortunately, it is not an
end ever likely to be acceptable to either Jews or Arabs, which is why
it is best obscured by conflict-resolution rhetoric.
It seems clear to any attentive observer that the "final solution"
the State Department has in mind is that Israel should return to its
1968 borders (perhaps with minor revisions) and the Palestinians should
have their own state on the West Bank. The tip-off came when the
Netanyahu government "leaked" a proposed map of the West Bank, based on
something like a 50-50 partition. It was the first time an Israeli
government ever publicly contemplated such a partition, and a mediator,
playing his traditional role, would have promptly explored whatever
possibilities were inherent in this unprecedented move. There is little
doubt that the terms of any such partition were negotiable. But the
State Department never discussed it with the Israelis. It simply
ignored it as representing a distraction from the "peace process."
But it is extremely doubtful that Israeli public opinion, whatever
Israeli party is in office, will ever accept the State Department's
ideal solution. It would pose too many obvious problems for Israel's
military security. The only reason the Arabs launched their war in 1968
was because Israel's geography, with the middle of the country only 13
miles wide, made it seem so vulnerable. Israelis have no desire to
return too that status quo.
The Arabs would surely be happy to accept the State Department's
goal, but for how long? The Palestinian media, and Palestinian leaders
speaking to their own people in their own media, have given clear
signals that their goals have a further reach: sharp limits on Israeli
immigration, return of an unspecified number of Arab refugees, even the
dismantling of a specifically Jewish state. The State Department is
dismissive of such rhetoric, since it would render hopeless the dream of
an eventual "conflict resolution." But there is plenty of evidence that
the Palestinians are not so dismissive, which is why the State
Department has never asked the Palestinian leaders explicitly to disavow
such an agenda. And neither are the Israelis, listening to this
rhetoric on Arab radio and reading it in Arab newspapers, so
dismissive. How can they be?
The only reason the Mideast "peace process" gathers so much attention
is because of American leverage over Israel, which has produced results.
In fact, these results only reveal the "peace process" to be another
name for an appeasement process, whereby Israel makes concessions and
Arabs simply demand more. But that cannot go on much longer, as Israeli
patience has pretty much reached the end of its tether. The Mideast
"peace process" is fated to end in a stalemate, just like the Northern
Ireland, Cyprus and all the other "peace processes."
Perhaps this will then persuade the State Department that there
really is a difference between the art of diplomatic mediation and the
social science of "conflict resolution." On the other hand, perhaps
not.
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