Tonight we have our friend Ronnie Cohen from
Israel.
Ronnie's part, or has been part for many
years, of the Israeli military.
And he's also a tour guide with the
group, Sammy Smudge's group that we work with
when we go on our tours to Israel.
And he's just a great friend and he's
got some good things to share with us
tonight.
So let's welcome Ronnie Cohen.
Let me start.
Okay, am I on?
Wait a second.
Mayday, mayday, alright.
Do I need this as well?
No, okay.
Wow, I'm not really used to speaking in
front of people.
That's basically what I do.
Like Pastor Brian mentioned, I'm a tour guide
in Israel.
I'm not in the military anymore, but I'm
an American.
I grew up in the holy land in
New York City.
And then I made that odyssey to the
Catskills?
No, to Israel.
And I've been living there now for about
28 years.
At first I thought I was just a
victim of circumstance because certain things and events
which happened in my life led me to
the Lord, led me to Israel.
And trust me, I'm the last person in
the world that anyone would have thought of
ever stepping foot in Israel, picking up the
book and becoming a believer.
So I believe I have the best of
two worlds.
Not just a Jew, but also a believer
in Christ.
But it was a hard road to get
there.
Obviously everyone has their own story.
I'm not going to start giving you my
testimony, but I'm a Vietnam veteran.
And when I was discharged at the ripe
old age of 19 and a half, I
traveled a bit until I finally came to
Israel.
I believe at the time that I landed
there by coincidence because I had no place
to go, and I got stuck in a
snowstorm in Istanbul.
I volunteered my services on a kibbutz, and
the rest is history.
I remained in Israel.
That was in February of 1974.
I served two years in the regular army.
I did 22 years in the reserves.
Nothing any special.
I just fought in two wars and 11
military engagements.
Was it 12?
I can't remember.
But I don't do the reserve duty anymore
because for some particular reason every year that
I continue doing reserve duty, the tank kept
getting higher and higher whenever I jumped off.
They keep changing the tanks.
So they decided to let me out of
my military service.
But I've been blessed in the sense that
I started to do something which I never
thought I'd ever do in my life.
I don't like to call it guiding.
It's almost like a ministry like teaching.
There's one particular book that became a real
important part of my life.
That's this.
This is a guidebook, by the way.
It's a guidebook.
It really is.
Those of you who have never been to
Israel before, there must be a few of
you here.
I'm not here to promote a tour to
Israel, okay?
No, serious.
That's not why I'm here.
You're all going to go at one point
or another.
It's just a matter of time when you
get there.
But you're all going to be there at
one time.
So actually the reason why I'm here, because
I want to talk a little bit about
current events.
We went through a very horrendous time the
last couple of months.
The United States has finally tasted the wrath
of terrorism, which is a terrible thing to
taste.
Maybe it will give you a little bit
of an idea of what many of us
go through nearly, not daily, but it's become
almost part of our lives.
If you think about it, the last time
anything a foreigner ever did on American soil
was way back in 1812, right?
The War of 1812, the British burnt down
Washington.
That's the last time on American soil anybody
ever did anything.
I'm not talking about Hawaii, because that was
just not mainland, but I'm talking on mainland.
Something happened to the American people after September
11th.
At first, when I heard about what happened
when I was in Israel, obviously to me
it was quite shocking.
I didn't think that anything like that would
ever happen in the United States.
And if you think about the numbers, more
people died in that hour than of all
the terrorism that ever happened in the world
up until then.
Just in one stroke, many lives were just
changed forever.
And I'm not talking about the 3,000
lives that were lost.
I'm talking about millions of people who suffered
because of what happened on September 11th, whether
it be a relative or a friend.
People will never be the same again.
But one thing I should tell you, what
I've learned through the years by witnessing terrorism
up front, is that it's not the act
of terrorism which is important to the terrorist.
It's the aftermath.
Terrorism is terror.
It's fear.
And I was a little bit annoyed, actually,
for the first month or so, watching the
media and everything that was going on in
the United States.
First of all, you have certain media organizations
like CNN.
I'm not going to get into that right
now.
Obviously, they have to tell you the news.
They can sort of warp it around a
little bit and tell you half-truths and
everything.
But I think the main reason why I'm
here today is because I want to give
you a better, broader picture of what's really
going on.
The American people were intimidated as a result
of September 11th.
But what's good is that after a few
months, all of you came back.
At first, people were afraid.
People were fearful.
And obviously, I believe the word fear is
just a substitute or, let's just say, you're
missing something when you're afraid.
What's that word that you're looking for?
Faith.
When you have faith, you don't have fear.
Now, some people have come up to me
and said to me, whoa, you're a Vietnam
veteran, you're a decorator, and you served in
the Israeli army and all that.
You must be brave.
You must be fearless.
No, fearlessness is stupidity.
Correct?
I mean, anybody who rushes a machine gun,
that's got to be out of his mind.
That's not bravery.
He's nuts.
I'll tell you what bravery is, though.
Bravery is faith, or bravery is going on
and coping with fear and in the face
of fear.
That's bravery.
All right?
Being willing to go on in the face
of fear is bravery.
And that's exactly what happened to the American
people.
You guys bounced back.
But Israel, in the first couple of months,
although we really had nothing to do with
all of this, obviously everything focuses down to
the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Correct?
And for some reason, the Israeli government, or
at least the people, that's what I hear
in the streets, we felt that our backs
were against the wall and everybody started to
abandon us.
Believe it or not, on paper, tourism looked
really good before September 11th.
Then all of a sudden, everything stopped.
I think it wasn't the fear of coming
to Israel.
I think it was the fear of leaving
your homes and getting on a plane.
That's what happened.
So at first, Israel felt a little bit
aghast, thinking, Wow, you know, I remember all
those years when those flocks of Christians just
came here and you couldn't even find a
parking spot for a bus at any of
the sites in Israel.
Now all of a sudden, it's a ghost
town.
What happened?
What did we do?
Who's the blame for all of this?
Well, I truly believe that all this is
coming back.
And I believe that this book is going
to give us the answers.
Because this book here doesn't just tell us
about what happened then, but it's also telling
us what's happening in the present and what's
going to happen in the future.
I truly believe this.
The big argument right now is, whose land
is this?
How come you guys are fighting over just
a small little strip of land?
Who does it really belong to?
Who's got the deed to it?
Well, I say, not unless somebody who's a
Canaanite comes up and says, It's my land,
I think it's ours.
Are you clapping for the Canaanites or for
me?
You know, and you have certain organizations like
the United Nations and other world organizations would
say, Well, you know, we need to negotiate.
And I say, Well, you know, there's not
really a lot of negotiation.
Because we've got a land deed.
Okay, what exactly is your land deed?
Once again.
So I'll prove that.
Well, if I was ever invited to the
United Nations, this is what I would say.
Okay, if you want to follow with me,
you can.
I need my glasses.
I really don't need it, but it makes
it look cool.
All right.
You know what?
Whose land is this anyway, to tell you
the truth?
You know what?
If you open up the book of Genesis.
Genesis chapter 12.
Get out of your country from your family
and from your father's house to a land
that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation.
I will bless you and make your name
great.
And you shall be a blessing, and I
will bless those who bless you, and I
will curse him who curses you.
And in you, all of the families of
the earth shall be blessed.
Well, then the United Nations will probably say
to me, well, that doesn't really mean anything,
does that?
It's just, okay, how about this?
All right, you can still continue with me
right now in the book of Genesis.
I'm now in chapter 15.
Okay, let's say verse 17, around there.
To your descendants I have given this land
from the river of Egypt to the great
river, the Euphrates.
Well, that's very general, they say to me
at the United Nations.
Can it be more precise?
Okay.
Let's just hang out in Genesis for a
while.
We'll go to chapter 13, verse 14.
Lift your eyes now and look from the
place where you are, northward, southward, eastward, and
westward, for all the land which you see
I give to you and your descendants forever.
Can't argue that, can you?
Well, there's still somebody in the Security Council
that does.
By the way, the Syrians were voted into
the Security Council this year.
So my last verse I would say to
them, and this is my clincher.
I am now in the book of Deuteronomy,
chapter 32.
Verse 49.
Go up to this mountain of the Abarim,
Mount Nebo, which is in the land of
Moab, across from Jericho.
View the land of Canaan, which I give
to the children of Israel as a possession.
Signed, sealed, and delivered.
This is my deed to the land of
Israel right here.
Okay, but how did this all start?
Well, let's go back and do a little
bit of a history lesson.
Is that okay with you guys?
A little history?
All right.
The Jewish people have been in the land
of Israel for quite a long time.
Let's go back to the time of Abraham.
We're talking nearly 4,000 years.
3,000 years ago, Jerusalem becomes the undivided
capital of the kingdom.
Under King David, correct?
For 1,000 years, it reigns as the
capital of the Jewish people.
Until finally the Romans show up, 2,000
years ago, August 12th.
I think it was a Wednesday.
They destroy the temple.
They destroy Jerusalem.
And that is the end of Jewish rule
in the Holy Land for 1,900 years.
For the next 1,900 years, although there's
always a Jewish population there, we are ruled
and overseen by foreigners.
We're just tolerated in our own homeland for
1,900 years.
Now, it doesn't mean that the Romans killed
everybody that was there or that they carted
off everybody into the Diaspora and dispersed us
amongst the nations.
We've always been there.
At certain periods of time, we're also the
majority of the people, but we're now ruled
by foreigners for 1,900 years.
Most of the Jewish population that remained in
the land of Israel were there basically for
spiritual or for religious reasons, not really nationalistic
until the end of the 19th century.
Sometime around 1880, 1885, Theodor Herzl has a
vision.
He is the founder of what's now called
modern Zionism.
Now, again, there's another organization in the world
that calls Zionism or sort of compares it
to Nazism or fascism.
That's the United Nations, by the way.
What is Zionism?
It means coming back to Zion to rebuild
Zion.
So now we had a movement of Zionists.
These were pioneers from Europe or Russia who
came back to the Holy Land to rebuild
it, to rejuvenate it, to clear the swamps,
to turn the deserts into the Garden of
Eden, which they did.
That's modern Zionism.
I want to read something else to you.
I've been doing my homework.
Okay, you guys can follow me right now
again.
Turn to the book of Isaiah, chapter 11,
verse 11.
It shall come to pass in that day
that the Lord shall set his hand again
the second time to recover the remnant of
his people who are left.
Now I'm going to skip a little bit.
He will set up a banner for the
nations, and it will assemble the outcasts of
Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.
Coming back to Zion to rebuild the land,
very important.
So the Jews are now returning.
It's the turn of the century.
We have pioneers rebuilding the land.
Now the First World War breaks out.
The British arrive.
They steer up nationalism amongst the Arab tribes.
You guys understand something, that in the Middle
East up until then, there were no Arab
countries.
It was just one big Arab bloc with
certain chieftains or sheiks in different areas.
You've seen the movie with Lawrence of Arabia,
right?
They start to steer up nationalism amongst the
Arab tribes.
Help us fight the Turks or the Germans,
and we'll give you the Middle East.
Well, the First World War is over, and
the British and the French say, Nah, they
split up the Middle East amongst themselves.
And that is a time where they start
to put boundaries around certain areas which are
dispersed now in the Middle East.
Now I just want to show you a
little map over here, if you don't mind.
Could this be dimmed down a little bit
here?
Is it possible?
More, more, more, more, more.
Okay, can everybody see this map?
Can you guys see it back there?
No.
Trust me, there's a map here.
Okay, can you guys sort of see it?
Yeah?
How is it?
It's getting better, right?
All right, look here.
This is the map of Israel as it
is right now.
Can you see something over there?
It's that small.
Really.
Okay, here's the map of Israel showing you
the borders of what the land is right
now.
We're bordered on the west by the Mediterranean,
minus south by Egypt, our longest border over
here to the east, Jordan, our friendly neighbors
to the north, Syria, and Lebanon.
This is the land of Israel right now.
It's quite small.
It's less than 11,000 square miles, about
the size of New Jersey.
Just to give you an idea of the
comparison, take a look at this.
Where's Israel?
There we go.
Look here.
If you can see that, here's California.
160,000 square miles.
Here's Israel.
Less than 11,000.
That's the size in comparison.
Wait, it gets better.
So here we are in the Middle East.
By the way, if you listen to CNN
very, very closely, it gives the impression of
Jewish history beginning like this.
There was a Holocaust.
The dispersed Jews had no place to go
after the concentration camps.
They all got on boats and they took
over the Arabs' land in Palestine.
Correct?
That's what it makes it sound like.
But if you think about it, it was
the Jewish population that was in the Middle
East before the Arabs arrived.
Correct?
Well, take a look at the Middle East
as it is today.
Can you see this?
Look here.
All of this over here is the Arab
world.
There's Israel.
Today, Israel has a population of about 6
million, which about, I'd say, 4.9 million
are Jews, and this also counts the Israeli
taxi drivers in L.A. Now, remember, I
was at the First World War with you
guys, right?
First World War.
The British defeat the Turks.
They split up the Middle East amongst themselves
and the French.
At this time, still, there were no Arab
countries.
Now, the area known as Palestine never had
any boundaries on it.
It was never a country with a government.
It was always ruled by somebody.
Does anybody have any idea where the name
Palestine comes from?
In the year 135 A.D., Hadrian, who
is now emperor of Rome, has a second
war against Israel.
Okay, they demolished the city once again.
They tear down the walls.
They turn the city into a pagan city,
changing its name, Aelia Capitolina.
And to erase all existence of Jewish fact
to the land, they changed the name of
Judea to Palestina, taking the name of an
ancient seagoing people who used to live along
the coast, who were called the Philistines.
So that's where the name Palestine comes from.
All right, so here we go.
Everything is nice and order.
You know how the British put things in
order and everything?
This is the boundaries now which they put
around the area which they call Palestine.
Looks kind of awkward, doesn't it?
You notice there's this big corridor going now
towards the east?
Makes sense because now the British find another
source of fuel in the Middle East, especially
in the area of Iraq, which is called?
Oil, olive oil, right.
Anyway, the oil fields are over here in
British mandate Iraq, and this corridor was an
area where the oil pipeline would go all
the way to the port city of Haifa.
The French, of course, got this whole area
up here in the north, which is known
as Lebanon, Syria, and this area now is
called Palestine.
By the way, 1917, the Balfour Declaration in
England states that Palestine is the Jewish homeland,
and as far as they're concerned, Palestine was
both sides of the Jordan River, as you
can see right over here.
But what happened was in the 1920s, the
Arab population didn't like the idea of this
influx of Jews now coming back to Israel.
Riots break out, and being that the British
did not want to step on the toes
of the Arab population because they had all
the oil, they declared that no Jews were
allowed to build any settlements or live on
the eastern shores of the Jordan River.
So therefore, they split now Palestine.
Jews can only live over here, but Arabs
can live on both sides.
If by any chance you're ever blessed by
having Bibi Netanyahu come here, he belongs to
the revisionist party.
As far as he's concerned, when he takes
a look at this map, he calls everything
over here the occupied east bank.
Because as far as he's concerned, he goes
by the Balfour Declaration, meaning that Palestine is
the Jewish homeland, both banks of the Jordan
River.
But then, once again, we see that the
whole area known as Palestine is still in
British hands.
Is it getting complicated?
Alright, it's going to get worse in a
minute.
Up until then, you know that the Jewish
societies always had their own governments.
You know, the Jews always took care of
themselves.
Doesn't make a difference who ruled them.
They always had their own sort of community,
and they took care of their own, I
don't know, social needs, if you would.
Those of you who have been to Israel
before, you notice all those brand new forests
that are now standing everywhere, all those millions
of trees that have been planted.
All those trees were not planted since the
beginning of the birth of the State of
Israel.
They were planted even beforehand.
And if you ever go to like a
real kosher delicatessen or a bakery, sometimes you
may have noticed that right next to the
cash register was this little blue tin box,
and on it it said JNF.
JNF literally means the Jewish National Fund.
All that loose change and all those pennies
that you may have put inside that tin
box were used for planting trees in the
Land of Israel.
Okay, 1947 comes about.
It's after the Second World War.
The British government is totally devastated economically.
Why?
Because they're on the brunt of the fighting,
correct?
The Second World War, the British were involved
for six years.
The Americans were really only involved for three
and a half.
We went into the war at the end
of 1941, and the war was already finished
by the beginning of the summer of 1945.
But economically, the British government was falling apart.
They say that the sun never sets in
the British Empire.
It's setting all over the place.
India is now becoming independent.
Pakistan is independent.
All the West Indies and African colonies are
becoming independent.
And now they find themselves in a quagmire
in Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews.
They want to try and sort of bail
out gracefully.
November 29, 1947, the newly formed United Nations
declares a partition plan, which means that all
land in Palestine which has a very large
Jewish population will now be a Jewish state,
and all land which has a very heavy
Arab population will be an Arab state.
It doesn't name borders, and it doesn't name
countries.
It doesn't say Israel or Palestine.
It says an Arab state and a Jewish
state.
Right away, all the Arab nations which now
became independent are totally against all of this.
The British now have a grace period from
November 47 to May 48.
They're gradually leaving.
The day that they leave, on May 15,
1948, the Jews declare independence.
That afternoon, they're attacked by seven Arab nations.
Now, the Israeli army was not even an
army.
It was sort of a conglomerate, if you
would, of different underground organizations like the Haganah
and the Palmach.
They now become under one name, the IDF,
Israeli Defense Forces.
And in seven months of fighting, they managed
to defeat seven Arab nations.
Are they good fighters?
Are they good shots?
Was it lucky?
I think it's the grace of God.
In any event, in 1949, this is now
the armistice lines in the land of Israel.
Everything that's yellow over here is Israeli territory.
Everything that's over here is now Arab territory.
As you can see, Lebanon becomes independent.
Syria becomes independent.
Transjordan now becomes Jordan.
Now, what about this area over here, this
bulge, which everyone's talking about today, called West
Bank, okay?
Samaria and Judea.
This should have been part of the Arab
entity, correct?
Well, it was.
Jordan annexed everything on the West Bank.
It became Jordan.
Shouldn't it have become Palestine at the time?
So how come the PLO was not formed
against the Jordanians?
Why against the Israelis?
We weren't occupying their land.
The Jordanians were.
But it's okay.
It's within the Arab fold, so let's not
make a big stink about it.
Two countries in the world recognize the annexation
of the West Bank to Jordan.
Not even the United Nations and not even
Arab countries.
Two nations in the world recognize the annexation
of the West Bank to Jordan.
Great Britain and Pakistan.
That's it.
By the way, in 1965, the PLO was
formed.
Why is it formed and why is it
centered towards the Israelis if we're not occupying
their land?
The Gaza Strip is now swallowed up by
the Egyptians.
Over here, you can see in the north,
the Syrians have control of the whole northeastern
shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Those of you who have been to the
Sea of Galilee before and have been on
one of those wooden boats sailing across, you
couldn't do that pre-'67.
Why?
You'd be target practice for the Syrians before
their first cup of coffee.
Okay, so this was the map of Israel
for 19 years.
Jerusalem, look at that.
You had to drive through a corridor to
get to Jerusalem, surrounded on two sides by
Jordanian territory.
And once you got to the city itself,
it was divided.
The Jews were expelled from the walls of
the ancient city, never to set foot in
it again.
All the holy sites were not accessible to
the Jewish population.
It was a city divided.
Barbed wire and mines divided the city for
19 years.
And this was the situation.
Look at the width of Israel right over
here by the coast.
Nine miles wide.
That's it.
And that's how the people lived for 19
years.
Well, now we come into Scripture, how things
are going to change a little bit.
In late May of 1967, the Arabs decide,
you know what, we've had enough of these
Jews.
Let's finally throw them into the sea.
They start to mass their troops.
The Egyptians move into the Sinai, which now
has a buffer zone of U.N. troops.
They tell them to leave, so they leave.
King Hussein now places all his artillery on
top of the Mount of Olives in East
Jerusalem.
And the Egyptians now mine and block the
Straits of Tehran, which is the access for
the Jews from the Red Sea to go
to the Far East.
It's eminent that war is going to happen
at any time.
Israel has a population of 3 million back
in 1967.
In numbers, there's no way possible they can
defeat nine Arab nations.
Impossible.
So on June 5th, 1967, the Israelis take
it upon themselves to make a preemptive attack.
They fly into Egypt.
They destroy 75% of the Egyptian Air
Force on the ground.
By this time, Abdel Nasser, the President of
Egypt, sends a message to the young King
Hussein, Praise be to Allah.
We just destroyed 80% of the Israeli
Air Force in the air.
And our tanks are on their way through
Beersheba.
They'll be in Jerusalem tomorrow morning.
King Hussein takes the bait and commits himself.
He sends in his Air Force to northern
Tel Aviv and Netanya.
They bomb the cities.
All his artillery opens up all over western
Jerusalem.
The Israelis do not retaliate for 12 hours.
They send a message to King Hussein, We
have nothing against you.
Stop firing at us.
But he had already committed himself.
On the Golan Heights, all the Israeli kibbutzes
down by the Sea of Galilee under gunfire.
The war had begun.
How many days was the six-day war?
Well, let me show you a map of
Israel on the seventh day.
That's my apartment right over there.
Okay.
So, as you can see, what happened was,
the Israelis pushed the Jordanian forces across the
Jordan River.
They pushed the Syrians right off the cliffs
of the Golan Heights, 15 miles eastward.
And they chased the Egyptians across the Suez
Canal.
This is what Israel looked like on the
seventh day of the six-day war.
They must have been good shots.
They must have had a tough army.
Or maybe it was the grace of God.
Who knows?
Okay.
But, you know what?
The Israeli government approaches the Arabs and they
say to them, Listen.
We didn't fight a war to take land.
We fought a defensive war.
Let's try and have peace.
I'll tell you what we'll do.
We'll exchange land for peace.
Whoa, deja vu.
Right?
We'll exchange land for peace.
But the Arabs way back then in 67
and 68 said, Listen.
We're never going to talk to the Israeli
or the Zionist entity ever.
And that's it.
Settlements now spring up in the areas of
Samaria and Judea.
If you think about it, Tel Aviv and
Haifa are not mentioned in biblical texts.
Okay.
They're not biblical cities.
But the Bible belt of Israel is Samaria
and Judea.
People go there and start to build settlements,
not as an embarrassment to the world, because
they want to restate and rename all their
cities next to all the ancient sites.
Today there's a modern site next to the
ancient site of Shiloh, Beit El, Shechem, all
these places which are mentioned in scripture.
It was a devastating defeat for the Arab
forces.
For six years they had to live with
this total defeat.
It was terrible.
They lost a lot of face in all
of this.
So now they coordinate once again.
They get together all the Arab armies, and
they practice daily for six years for one
major assault against Israel to get back the
land and to finally push them back into
the sea like they tried to do back
in 1948 and 56 and 67.
Okay.
The Israeli Secret Service.
You ever hear of them?
The Mossad?
Okay.
The Israeli Secret Service way back in 1973
in early October, not just know the day
of this Arab invasion, they know what time
it's going to begin.
But the prime minister at the time, Golda
Meir, does not want to make the same
mistake as the Israelis did back in 67.
Because we threw the first punch in 67,
the whole world blamed us for the war.
She said, you know what?
Let the Arabs throw the first punch.
We'll annihilate them and whip them like we
did back in 67.
It's good for public relations because this way
the world will know that we didn't start
the war, they did, and we took care
of business.
This was the biggest mistake that she ever
made in her life, and she took this
to the grave with her.
I'm sorry to say.
Because by not alerting all of the armed
forces on the Day of Atonement, on the
day when all of the Israelis were in
the synagogues on Yom Kippur, all of the
Arab armies attacked Israel.
And by not putting everybody on full alert,
the Israelis lost in the first 48 hours
of fighting 900 killed.
That is the cream of Israeli youth was
lost in two days.
The Libyans, the Sudanese, and the Egyptians make
an assault now across the Suez Canal with
150,000 troops.
They're willing to lose 50,000 in the
crossing.
Little did they know that the only thing
stopping them in the whole Sinai Peninsula is
12 outposts manned by reservists up here on
the Golan Heights.
120 Israeli tanks are on top of the
Golan Heights.
All of a sudden the Judean, Saudi, Iraqi,
Syrian, all these four armies attack now across
the Golan Heights with 2,000 armored cars
and tanks and 2,000 artillery pieces firing
simultaneously.
The only thing to stop them is 145
Israeli tanks.
They moved up units over here.
One part has 120, one part has 30.
Within 48 hours the Syrian tanks are in
view of the Sea of Galilee.
That's how quickly they moved.
Six tanks are left on the Golan Heights
in 48 hours of fighting.
Six.
Now again, those of you that have been
to Israel before, see I'm not promoting a
tour, those of you who have been to
Israel before, if you've been on top of
the Golan Heights, perhaps myself or other guides
who are on your buses would have pointed
out on a spot on the Golan called
the Valley of Tears because that's exactly what
happened there.
Six lone Israeli tanks with skeleton crews, hardly
any ammo, no gas, take up positions on
a hillside and they watched the whole Iraqi
army coming across the valley.
150 tanks with banners on the turrets and
loudspeakers playing marching music like they're going on
parade.
Iraqis, go figure.
Okay.
So, the Israeli tanks knock off the first
tank, they knock off the last tank, creating
a bottleneck.
The Iraqis can't turn around.
Within an hour and a half they knock
out 77 tanks.
You heard the story of Tzvika?
Can you mention that name, Tzvika?
This guy was a reserve officer who was
on vacation in Kathmandu when the war broke
out.
He flies all the way back to Israel,
gets into a tank, all his units wiped
out except for his tank.
He's the only tank that's stopping the Syrian
army from going down to the Sea of
Galilee.
He goes on one hill, shoots at a
Syrian tank, changes the radio frequency, goes down
the hill, comes up another hill, changes the
frequency on the radio, shoots at another tank.
The Syrians think they're surrounded, they head for
the hills.
Now I got a better story for you
right over here.
The Egyptian forces are now moving across the
Sinai.
Who's the Prime Minister of Israel today?
Ariel Sharon.
Well, Ariel Sharon was known for his toughness
as being a paratrooper.
But during the Yom Kippur War, he was
a reserve general in the armor unit.
He's on the Suez Canal.
The general staff said to him, Listen, Sharon,
stay right where you are, hold the line,
and don't do anything until we tell you
something.
What's that?
Turns off the radio.
He tells everybody else in his brigade, Turn
the radios off, you don't need them.
And what does he do?
Well, he's not really disobeying orders, because he
couldn't hear the orders.
He crosses the Suez Canal.
He's now on kilometer 101 outside of Cairo.
That's Ariel Sharon.
Ceasefire comes about once again.
Another defeat to the Arab forces.
Again, the Israelis must be really good shots,
or it must have been their lucky day,
or perhaps maybe it was the grace of
God.
As a result of the Yom Kippur War,
we have a peace treaty now with Egypt.
Sadat makes a very famous trip to Jerusalem.
Menachem Begin is now the prime minister of
Israel.
He arrives in Ben Gurion Airport in 1977.
The red carpet is out.
All the parliament members and all the dignitaries
in Israel are all lined up, about 150
people.
You had to see this on TV.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
Sadat comes down from his jet.
The trumpets are playing.
The band is playing.
The prime minister is there.
He walks right past the prime minister.
He walks right past the president of Israel.
He walks all the way down the line
until he comes up to one of the
lower dignitaries in the Israeli parliament, Ariel Sharon.
He walks right up to him and he
hands out his hand.
He goes, finally, I caught up to you.
So, we have a peace treaty now with
Egypt.
Later on, of course, we have a peace
treaty with Jordan.
If by chance, during negotiations right now, Samaria
and Judea is given back, this is what
the map of Israel looked like once again.
Can you see that?
Look here.
Jerusalem is a split city.
By the way, you have no idea how
close this would have been just a year
and a half ago.
While Barack was still prime minister and before
all the disturbances began, do you know that
the Palestinians were this close of getting a
Palestinian state recognized by the state of Israel
with 95% of the West Bank?
Clinton and Barack were actually contemplating splitting Jerusalem.
Do you remember that?
This would have been the map of Israel
once again.
The width of Israel over here, nine miles,
Jerusalem, a divided city once again.
And, of course, the Bible Belt, I call
this the Bible Belt, will now become 100
% PLO.
So, what's exactly happening today?
Arafat has this problem.
It's called a personality problem.
First of all, his pants can't hold a
crease.
He doesn't understand that.
We have a problem with Arafat.
He doesn't necessarily want to go down in
history as being a politician.
I mean, he did receive the Nobel Peace
Prize, right?
He does not want to go down as
a politician.
He wants to go down as a freedom
fighter.
So, therefore, although he nearly got everything that
he wanted from Barack, and today everything would
have been really hunky-dory, correct?
If they would have gotten back the West
Bank, would they have been happy with that?
Anybody ever get a chance to see what
the map of Palestine is?
It's not Samaria and Judea.
It's the map of Israel.
But, in any event, he would have gotten
back at least part of what he wanted.
But the problem is, he didn't want to
be known as a politician.
He wanted to be known as a freedom
fighter.
So, therefore, last year, September, he started his
Antifada Al-Aqsa, which means the disturbances concerning
the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, because he
wanted to go down as a freedom fighter.
He wanted to fight his war of independence.
And things are not working out very well.
Too many people have died, more on the
Palestinian side, which is a shame, because the
people have no idea what's going on.
They're hurting so bad, the Arab population right
now.
They're being run by a group of people,
which is sort of like a family in
a mafia.
You know, all the monies that come into
this particular organization to build an infrastructure, if
you would, for the Palestinian people.
You know, the European community in many countries
pump in millions of dollars to the Palestinian
cause, which is fine.
They need it.
Electricity, gas, hospitals, schools, roads.
But where does all that money go?
Well, first of all, a lot of that
money went to Jericho.
You know, Jericho is a run-down city.
There are two refugee camps.
They could do with a hospital there.
So Arafat obviously takes the money and he
builds a casino!
That's right.
There's a casino today in Jericho.
And also, recently, as you know, he took
about $60 million of that money and he
purchased a ship with arms on it.
Now, the funny thing was, in the media,
especially American media, which is also very perturbing,
that we get messages from the State Department.
Well, we don't know exactly where that ship
came from.
How can you be so sure that it
was really for the Palestinians or going to
Gaza?
Prove it!
The captain got on TV and said, Hi,
I'm PLO and it's my ship and we're
going to Gaza.
Right?
Did you see that guy?
You see him?
He walked on like this and said, I'm
a freedom fighter.
Well, okay, now you're in jail.
So we have a bit of a problem
right now.
Understand something.
This is very, very important.
A lot of times what you see in
the news are truths and half-truths.
Okay?
Sensationalism sells.
Correct?
That's how you make money for your newsmen.
If something is not happening, you create something
or you show file film on TV to
make it look like there's something going on.
Trust me when I tell you that there
isn't a war going on in Israel right
now.
We're far away from Afghanistan.
And like I mentioned to other people before,
people say, Well, how can we go to
Israel?
They're bombing Afghanistan.
Well, if the ex-camos attack Seattle, you're
not going to go to Orlando?
You know?
It's that far away.
I mean, it's like really far away.
I'd be lying to you if I said
that we don't have problems.
But if you look at it objectively, make
believe that you're a reporter from the Soviet
Union way back in the Cold War, back
in the 1960s.
And you come to the United States.
The thing that you're going to film are
the homeless in the streets, junkies shooting up
everywhere, gangs killing each other.
Alright?
And crime and everything.
And that's what you're going to bring back
to the Soviet Union.
And everybody in Russia thinks that that's what
America is all about.
Correct?
That's how it was for a long, long
time.
So everyone's under the impression that if there's
something happening near a border in Gaza, which
is 150 miles away from anything, everyone thinks
that there's, you know, chaos and people, you
know, people say to me, Well, how can
people come to Israel?
Well, I say to them, Well, you know,
as soon as I get them off the
plane, they have to run really low to
get back onto the bus and make sure
they don't stand on mines or anything.
Trust me, nothing happens when you go there.
Almost every tour leader who's been there in
the last year and a half has sworn
that it was the best tour he ever
had.
First of all, they won't have long lines
anywhere.
But it's not like that at all.
Okay?
That's what I need to emphasize upon you.
And I looked through Scripture yesterday.
You know, I do that once in a
while because I'm a very sensitive kind of
person.
And I found something which pertains to all
of you.
You ready for this?
Now, you can follow me.
I sort of put together a bunch of
things, but this is what I read to
you.
I'm going to read to you first from
Isaiah 60, verse 10.
Foreigners will build up your walls, and their
kings will minister to you.
For in my wrath I struck you, and
in my favor I have had compassion on
you.
Now, here I put together a number of
things from Isaiah 60, verses 4, 5, 8,
and 9.
Okay?
So, you're going to have to skip around
with me.
But this literally has to do with you.
Lift up your eyes and look about you.
All assemble and come to you.
Your sons come from afar, and your daughters
are carried on the arm.
Then you will look and be radiant.
Your heart will throb and swell with joy.
The wealth on the seas will be brought
to you.
To you the riches of the nations will
come.
Who are these who fly along like clouds,
like doves to their nest?
Surely the islands look to me.
In the lead are ships of Tarshish, bringing
your sons from afar with silver and gold.
To the honor of the Lord, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, for He has
endowed you with splendor.
Here it's telling you that foreigners will come
from afar.
And this really gets me.
Who are these who fly along like clouds,
like doves to their nest?
Can you imagine?
You know, if you've ever been to Israel,
to me the most fascinating place is the
Mount of Beatitudes.
Because there, literally, it gives you a really
good picture.
We take for granted that everything that's written
here is correct, because our pastors tell us
that it's correct.
But obviously what you're reading is black and
white.
It's one-dimensional.
You come to Israel.
You see the land.
You come home.
And all of a sudden, everything that you're
reading, all the places jump out at you.
It's not one-dimensional anymore.
It's now three-dimensional.
You've been there.
You've seen it.
You've tasted it.
You've walked through the fields, and you've seen
the grass.
Now again, although you may take this for
granted, as you come back to your homes,
you now become a witness.
Because now you can truly say, you know
what?
Everything that's written here is correct.
I saw it.
And could you imagine, or could Jesus would
have imagined in his wildest dreams 2,000
years ago that people would fly in the
clouds and come to his land?
Who are these who fly along like clouds,
like doves to their nest?
It's you.
My request of all of you is this.
Israel doesn't want you to send them checks
and monetary gifts, because that's not going to
help us.
We want you to give us your support.
Now your support can just be prayer.
You don't necessarily have to get on a
plane in swarms to show that you're still
with Israel.
But your prayers are very, very important.
Do not reject or forget Israel.
It's very important.
And also what I would like you all
to do is just continue being who you
are.
You do not need to stand on a
street corner to witness to others and tell
them my way is better than yours.
Because just by your lifestyle and the way
you are, you are a walking, talking witness.
Thank you very much.
Just as we finish things up tonight, it
would be good for us to pray together
to pray for Israel, to pray for our
friends there.
There are, as we have Ronnie with us,
there are many believers there.
And then, of course, there are many that
have yet to believe in the Messiah.
But I know many Jewish people that have
been greatly impressed by the Christians that they've
met, and particularly the Christians at Calvary Chapel.
So we've got, the Lord is using a
number of the Calvary Chapel ministries, Ray Bentley
and Maranatha Chapel, they have a great influence
in Israel, and Bob Coy and different people.
So, you know, there's a connection that God
has made.
And we'll close tonight with a word of
prayer, specifically for the situation there in Israel
and God's people there.
Father, we tonight just, we thank you, Lord,
that Ronnie has been able to come and
be with us tonight.
We thank you, Lord, for the information that
he shared with us.
And Lord, just his personality and everything, Lord,
it's just been a good night.
It's been a blessing.
And we pray for him as he continues
to travel.
We pray you give him traveling mercies and
just continue to use him to encourage people
as he goes about.
And may he be encouraged by those others
that he's with.
And we pray, Lord, for him and many
like him in Israel who have come to
understand that you are the Messiah.
And we thank you, Lord, for those that
believe.
We pray that many more would.
We pray, Lord, that the eyes of many
would be opened.
And as they see the love and the
concern from Christians reaching out to them at
this time, may this all just be working
in the bigger picture to prepare them to
embrace you as their Redeemer.
So, Lord, we commit that to you.
And, Lord, the whole political and the conflict,
everything that's going on there, Lord, we know
this is all in your hands.
This is bigger than any man.
It's been declared from thousands of years ago.
And, Lord, you've told us in advance what
was going to happen.
But most of all, Lord, we rejoice in
the fact that one day soon Jesus will
come again.
And he will sit upon the throne of
David.
And he will rule over the house of
Jacob forever.
And, oh, how we long for that day
to come.
We pray, Lord Jesus, that you would come
quickly.
Amen.