Some thoughts on the events leading to 9/11 and how they relate to events today with Israel and Hamas
In May of 2001, Rachel and I went to Israel with a group of brethren from the Messianic assembly we were involved with at the time. We flew out of Boston’s Logan Airport. It turned out to be, praise God, an absolutely wonderful trip! Just after Thanksgiving in 1999, we went with a group to Israel by Israel’s airline El Al, from NYC. The El Al personnel were very friendly until it was time to board.
The security all along was very tight. At Jerusalem’s Ben Gurion Airport, there’s only one place to drive up and you are met by at least two security men armed with long guns. You don’t board the plane directly from the terminal. Rather you board a shuttle bus that takes you out to the plane on the runway, and vice versa when you arrive. When you check in there’s a number of questions that you’re asked.
As we were standing in the terminal in Boston waiting to board our 2001 flight to Israel, I remember looking around and turning to Rachel and saying, in light of the difference between things in Israel and our El Al flight from NYC and Boston, “If someone had a half of mind it wouldn’t be that hard to hijack a plane out of here”. Four months later, 9/11.
Tragically and very unfortunately, our government had no idea of the mindset and mentality that it was dealing with in radical Islam and Osama bin Laden. (‘Bin’ means ‘son of’ Laden. We see in the Bible where men are called so and so ‘son of’ so and so).
It seems that President Clinton decided to fire a Tomahawk missile at bin Laden. Tragically apparently, the government, at least those in the key decision-making process, had no idea of the mentality and mindset of what they were dealing with. The problem is that when that one missile was fired and it didn’t kill bin Laden, it seems that the government went on their way.
Before firing that Tomahawk missile the question should have been raised and discussed, “If we miss bin Laden, are we prepared to stay on bin Laden 24/7?” Why? On our May 2001 trip, we visited a Bedouin tent in the Judean wilderness, an area south of Jerusalem. The Bedouins today live not much differently than their forebears did many many centuries ago.
The Bedouin that hosted us extended much hospitality, which is very very important in the Middle East. For example, we see the importance of hospitality in the opening of Genesis 18 where Abraham, even though having been circumcised just beforehand, gets up and runs to take care of the needs of the three travelers who came by his tent. One of these travelers we know was Yeshua. The rabbis correctly point out based on the Hebrew of the opening of Genesis 18, that Abraham interrupted his time with the LORD, to attend to his visitors.
Most of the year the Middle East is very dry and warm or hot. Other than December and January, which is when Israel receives its rain, that’s pretty much it for the year. To be traveling in that environment and be without water or shelter from the heat can be deadly.
The Bedouins are Muslim and very fierce defenders of Israel! Bedouins serve as trackers for the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). On another trip to Israel that Rachel and I took ourselves, at a checkpoint along the road that runs not too far west of what’s called in Hebrew the Salt Sea the ‘Dead Sea’, we were able to chat for a few minutes with the three soldiers who manned it.
One of them told us that they use the Bedouins for trackers because the Bedouins know the wilderness like the back of their hand. The soldier said, “If a single rock looks out of place the Bedouins will spot it when we never would. They’re very valuable because they help protect against any potential terrorists who might come in from the east”.
Our Bedouin host told us he was Muslim and that honor is very big among them. Honor is huge in the eastern half of the world. The Chinese have an expression about losing honor called ‘losing face’. They would literally almost rather kill themselves than ‘lose face’!
Our Bedouin host very matter-of-factly said that if we insulted him, he merely had to kill us. If we insulted his wife or his mother, he had to kill us and four members of our family. The former Queen Noor of Jordan had as the major part of her platform attempting to stop honor killings from going on in Jordan. Jordan by the way is 70% Palestinian.
Not too far from me here someone originally from Beirut had a store. He was neither Muslim nor Christian he was actually a J Witness. A big corporation tried to run him out of his store after making what he considered an insulting offer to buy it; he later told me the following.
‘When they made me an insulting offer and then tried to force me out of my store, they insulted my honor. You know, I would have sold you the store for a dollar before I would have given in to them”. (This was really saying something as I’m a Jew!) He closed his store for a year – a year – while he took the corporation to court, a case he eventually won, because ‘they insulted my honor’.
You may be saying, “Interesting, but how does this relate to 9/11?”
Tragically again, our government did not realize that when they took the shot at bin Laden, they insulted his honor; and worse his honor was insulted by those he considered ‘infidels’. Our government did not realize that once they took that first shot at bin Laden, even without the other reasons why bin Laden did what he did on 9/11, he didn’t care how long it took, what it cost, and how many would be killed in the process of avenging his honor that in his demonic mind, had been insulted by ‘the Crusaders’.
Bin Laden said that one reason for 9/11 was to get ‘the Crusaders’ out of Muslim territory. The Crusades were a millennium ago; yet bin Laden and other radical Muslims – still – speak of avenging the Crusades and reconquering Europe.
On 9/11 as I was learning what was happening on that terrible day, I was not at all totally surprised. I was very heartsick of course but not totally surprised. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have a mindset that’s difficult for Westerners to understand. This demonic mindset doesn’t care how long it takes, what they have to do, what it costs, and how many are murdered – including their own!
Bin Laden knew there would be Muslims in the Twin Towers. They were seen as a ‘sacrifice’ for his demonic cause. This is exactly the same mindset that Hamas has. Hamas very very deliberately embeds itself among their fellow Palestinian Muslims in Azza. This is because Hamas knows – and the Palestinians who voted Hamas in over Fatah, the very corrupt and incompetent Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, about a 20- or 25-minute ride north of Jerusalem – that Israel will defend itself.
Hamas knows that no matter how careful and out of its way the IDF goes – even putting its own soldiers’ lives at risk to avoid civilian casualties – there will be civilian casualties.
Hamas wants dead Palestinian children showing up on the 6:00 news because it makes Israel look bad. The dead children are seen as a ‘sacrifice’ toward their ultimate cause of the destruction of Israel.
Dear ones, as I’ve written before; what’s going on in 2024 is a result of Israel not being allowed to finish Hamas not only in 2014 but actually even earlier.
This all of course must be seen from the Big Picture perspective of spiritual warfare.
A Little Learning Together
We learned together before that in a way Hamas is the modern version of the Jewish People’s ancient enemy Amalek, first seen in the latter part of Exodus 17. The LORD saw the attack on the stragglers of Israel whom He had brought out of Egypt as an affront to Him. He said that He would blot out the, more deeply in Hebrew, the ‘calling to mind of Amalek’, v.14.
The Hebrew uses two different forms of ‘blot out’ back-to-back to emphasize ‘blot out’. The LORD tells Moshe with emphasis to write this in a book and put it in the ears of Yehoshua. This is Hebrew’s way of emphasizing how strongly this was to be impressed upon Yehoshua!
If we take the Hebrew ‘blot out’ and give the letters their symmetrical inverse, i.e., reverse the order of the letters, we get the word ‘heat/hot’.
The names of Noach‘s sons in the latter verses of Genesis 9 are Shem (‘Name’). Yapheth (‘Beauty’), and Cham (‘Ham’, ‘Heat’). It is through Shem’s descendants beginning with Avraham, that eventually the LORD will make His Name known. From Yaptheth will come Yavan. Yavan is the father of the Greeks. Noach‘s wish is that Yavan would dwell in the tents of Shem.
Cham‘s descendant K’naan (‘Canaan’) was to be a servant to the other two. If we look at the descendants of Cham in Genesis 10, we see that Israel’s enemies are descended from one who is by nature ‘hot’.
The only way to reverse being ‘hot’ in one’s nature, is to reverse it, to ‘blot out’ that nature, by coming to the LORD through His Son Yeshua, who is also a descendant of Avraham Mt.1:1.
May we be and do what will work towards bringing the Mashiach back, when there will be no more – no more – 9/11s and no more pain because of it.
On the night of 9/11, a group of young Orthodox Jewish women went down to the site of the collapsed Towers. There, throughout the night, they recited Tehillim ‘Shine Forth Songs of Praise’, the Hebrew name of the Psalms.
These young Jewish women did this because the Jewish community, especially the Orthodox Jewish community, has a practice that my dear Christian brethren could learn from.
Jews Treat Their Dead Better Than Christians Treat Their Living – A Lesson for My Dear Christian Brethren
Traditionally and as much as it’s possible to do so, when a Jew passes away they are not left alone for a moment – not even a moment – until they are buried. If someone passes away say on their sick bed at home or at a hospital., once the body is wrapped up the family members and others who are there accompany the body to the hearse that has been called to transport the body to a funeral home.
In the Orthodox Jewish community, they have something in Hebrew basically called Friends of Holiness. These are individuals who volunteer to go to the funeral home and wash the body in order to prepare it for burial. In Judaism there is – most certainly – no cremation. Someone from the volunteers sits with the body overnight reciting the Psalms.
In Judaism, the deceased are buried very quickly or at least as quickly as possible. Even the same day if possible. Orthodox Jews outside of Israel are buried in a plain pine box. In Israel the body is just wrapped without a coffin because they are being buried in the Holy Land; why would a coffin be needed?
After the funeral service, the people attending accompany the body as it is carried outside and loaded into the hearse to take it to the cemetery. At the cemetery, the Jewish community buries the body. Beginning with the family, each physically able person takes a shovel, and one after another throws dirt over the body once it has been lowered into the ground.
I still well remember the funeral of the sexton of the synagogue that I grew up in. He was the one, in this instance not the cantor, who taught me the Hebrew reading and the trop, the notes to chant for my Bar Mitzvah reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. There were not enough people at the sexton’s graveside to fill in his grave. I also well remember one of the more active members of the synagogue saying to my friends and me very fervently, “’Please fill in the rest of the grave. He was such a holy and special man, that we don’t want the goyim (Gentiles, i.e., the cemetery workers) to finish burying him, we need to do it ourselves”.
We of course finished burying the sexton, and I remember thinking that this was the least I could do for him for what he had done for me throughout the time that I knew him. Not just the time he tutored me for my Bar Mitzvah one-on-one at his dining room table after the Sabbath ended.
What Has This Got to Do with Christians?
I was raised in a solidly Jewish environment in which I was told, “’It’s not about you; you don’t count. You have an obligation to your family, and you have an obligation to your People. Your People have suffered greatly, you have an obligation to your People”. We were told more than once during our time in Hebrew School, “You are an ambassador for your People. When you are asked why do Jews do this and don’t do that, you need to be able to explain things to people. If you cannot, it doesn’t reflect badly on you – it reflects badly on us and your People”.
Christians Are the Most Forgiven People in the World – But the Least Forgiving
Some years ago, a Christian writer wrote the above. Someone also wrote a book entitled Only Christians Shoot Their Wounded.
Dear ones, I’m trying to say the following not negatively but what I hope will be instructively and constructively.
Not long after becoming a follower of Yeshua 32 years ago now – and especially not long after beginning in ministry almost 30 years ago – I experienced something you have probably unfortunately experienced as well.
There were times my Christian brethren walked away from me at the drop of the proverbial hat. Not just me, but I noticed they walked away from one another for the slightest of things.
This is why some years ago I came to the conclusion, “Jews treat their dead better than Christians treat their living”. As I wrote above it was a Christian writer, not me, who said that Christians are the most forgiven people in the world – and the least forgiving. When I’ve asked my dear Christian brethren if they’d had the same experience, that of brethren walking away from them very easily, they said yes, they had experienced or seen the same thing.
What’s the Lesson?
I saw why Jews treat their dead better than Christians treat their living. What I heard from the Christian Religious System was a focus on three people (plus of course the focus on the Universal and local assembly); ‘me, myself, and I’. When I was greener than green as a follower of Yeshua I thought, “This makes sense; the Hebrew Bible is about ‘we’ and the ‘New Testament’ is about ‘me’ “.
I still will remember also one of the things that stunned me when I began learning Koine Greek close to 30 years ago now. It was how I kept coming across more/far more uses of you – plural – than su and related forms of ‘you’ – singular. I realized then one reason – and one very key reason – why the Body is so splintered.
Because it’s not about ‘we’ it’s about ‘me’. It’s not about God and we – which is the actual Biblical emphasis – everything I heard virtually from the System was about God and ‘me’. It wasn’t about seeking blessing from God for ‘we/us’, it was seeking it for ‘me’. My obligation wasn’t to the Community – it was to God – of course – and to ‘me’, and also – of course – the System. In Greek an ophelo an obligation, to others? Maybe to pray for them; but, certainly not in place of the focus on ‘me’.
Fall – A Time We Can Focus on Forgiving Others
In the Spring there is of course – as it should be – a great deal of focus on the atonement made by our LORD through Yeshua on the Cross, and the forgiveness of sin. In the Fall, as people’s thoughts turn from Summer to Fall and the cold weather ahead in most of the U.S., it is a time we can warm the hearts of others, by turning our hearts toward the forgiveness of others, if we need to.
As we’ve pointed out elsewhere: forgiveness of others is not optional. In the very Jewish-based Lord’s Prayer Mt. 6:12, 14-15, forgiveness of others is required in order to be forgiven by God! Yeshua speaks of a key principle first found in the Torah, something known in Hebrew as ‘measure for measure’, cf. also Mt. 7:1-2.
If forgiveness is extended to us by our Father, so we must extend it to others!
Despite the actual teaching and emphasis of forgiveness to others by Yeshua – cf. esp. the Lord’s Prayer – where – again please- it is a requirement to be forgiven by God cf. Mt. 6:12, vv. 14-15, all that I heard from the System was about how I needed forgiveness from God and was forgiven by placing steadfast trustworthiness in Yeshua. But forgiveness of others? Not anything that I heard of from Traditional teaching.
Paul in Greek in Ephesians 4:32 says that since God has forgiven umin you – plural – you need to forgive eautois (‘yourselves’). ‘You’ here is plural – and put last for emphasis. Paul begins for emphasis with an exhortation to be/ become with a result/movement towards allelous (‘one another’), reciprocating back-and-forth, regarding being kind and compassionate to one another.
The reciprocating back-and-forth idea is used by Yochanon to render Yeshua’s Hebraic original regarding love among the Taught Ones in Yeshua’s last recorded teaching to them Yochanon 13-16 after their last Passover Seder Yochanon 13:34-35.
Here is an extremely key thing the original hearers of Ephesians heard from Paul in Eph. 4:32. Paul’s use of ‘forgive’ regarding the forgiveness from God, by means of Yeshua, is given in a form that sees it in sum, in total. It is not something that God then does repeatedly or consistently. Though not technically so in Greek, it is in effect a ‘one time once for all’ action.
Paul though before that in Eph. 4:32, gives followers a description that we are to ‘…forgive (others) as a continuous process’. Paul’s form has no equivalent in English but his Greek told his hearers that forgive is something that involves/affects them.
In a sentence; God’s act of forgiveness through Yeshua is a one-time action; but followers are to continually forgive one another!
The highest level of forgiveness in Hebrew means not that one just forgives, but that any claim to anything owed is renounced. This level of forgiveness is what the LORD does for the followers of Yeshua!
Dear ones, how can we then do any less for others, and honor the forgiveness graciously extended to us?
Incidentally, the KG (Koine ‘Common’ Greek) word ‘forgive’ in Eph.4:32, contains (depending on the form used) the letters xaris ‘grace’.
Forgiveness of others requires following Yeshua’s teaching requiring putting Self, i.e. ‘me’, to death cf. Mk. 8:30-35, Yochanon 13:34-35.
One way to do so? Be encouraged dear one to start thinking in terms of ‘we’ not ‘me’. When you come across ‘you’ in the RCS part of your Bible, think ‘you’ plural rather than ‘you’ singular. 35% of the time you’ll be wrong. But almost 65% of the time you’ll be right!
By doing the above – and guided by the Ruach Hakodesh (original Hebrew name of the Holy Spirit) – followers will start treating their living, as well as the Jewish Community treats their dead.
Followers will then reflect well to the World and fill full the potential we are given, as ambassadors of Yeshua!
On the Cross, Yeshua as recorded in Lk.23:34 asked the Father to forgive those who had crucified him, because they did not know what they were doing. As followers of Yeshua praise God, we have the Ruach to guide us to know what to do from the Word!
Let us fully honor not only the ‘vertical atonement’ and forgiveness made by means of Yeshua, i.e. the atonement and forgiveness between God and Man, but also the atonement and forgiveness made ‘horizontally’, that between man/woman and brother/sister.
Doing so will honor the work of Yeshua on the Cross, warm the heart of our Father, and warm our hearts – no matter how cold the weather may get! It’s a totally Hebrew and Jewish thing to do, because we remove any separation from others, and restore wholeness and shalom to the Body!
If there is someone we need to extend forgiveness to but we are just unable to, ask our Father in Yeshua’s name to help us to do so – He will!
I’ve had quite a bit of interference from you know who In trying to get this email out to you. That one is all about Self and ‘me, myself and I’. But we resist him and he will flee Jacob 4:7 (!) – because greater is he that is in us than he that is in the World!
Jacob
assemblywithoutthewalls.org
2 Pet 3:11-13
2 Cor. 5:14-21, Phpns. 2:2-3, 1 Pet. 2:2, v. 12, v. 17!