February 19, 2011
Dear Pastors:
From the beautiful Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, where all "future events" will end up with this city as the center-piece, I write on this beautiful Saturday morning looking out over the City of Zion.
At a wedding of a Jewish Bride and Jewish Groom, the Hebrews have a custom in which they use the passage of Scripture from Psalms 137, breaking a glass, and making "holy vows" not to forget Zion. I wish you could have been here yesterday to hear Meryl Dzikansky’s explanation of the "wedding ceremony." I thought as she was explaining, ole hell-deserving sinner Jim Vineyard is heading also to a Wedding Supper one of these days, which, from Scripture, I simply call the "Marriage Supper of the Lamb."
Ps. 137:1, "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."
For you dear ones which have helped to make this trip a reality, I just wish you could be here to hear these football players sing, "O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."
There is so much going on over here at this time, it is mind-boggling just trying to keep one’s mind in gear long enough to comprehend each and every thing. Events haven’t played out exactly as I would have had them to, but, I learned back there in July of 1967 when our second son Lorne Matthew, 3-1/2 years old, died during a simple tonsillectomy, I had to get my calendar fixed on God’s calendar.
As Omar, who we now call "Fast Freddy," (his time in the forty yard dash is 3.4 seconds – or, at least that's what he told me on the plane) and Jason, both found last fall as their dear mothers were escorted from this realm through the glories of heaven —GOD’S CALENDAR is the one we must "attune" our affections and attentions on!
NEWS FROM HERE:
The 25 generals now ruling Egypt believe the tide of international acclaim for the youthful, pro-democratic popular revolution that swept Hosni Mubarak out of office will also keep them in power for at least the next two years.
My intel sources in Washington and Cairo report exclusively that the supreme military council sent a message in no-nonsense terms to President Barack Obama and his administration Monday, Feb. 14 – their fourth day in power - laying out their six-point plan for the coming year and their expectations of Washington:
1. The military regime is committed to meeting Washington and the opposition's demands for a transition to democratic government. However, there should be no misunderstandings between Cairo and Washington: Before approaching that point, the military rulers need time to bring stability to Egypt and thoroughly study the steps necessary for reaching that objective.
2. A period of at least a year to two years - and perhaps more - is cited in the message.
Washington is advised to ignore last weekend's military bulletins promising a transition period of six months to a general election. There would be no election after six months, said the generals – or at any time before they feel the political and economic situation in the country is steady and a new constitution is formulated.
On this point, the Egyptian officers were brutally clear, say our sources. Without those pre-conditions, democracy would be of "no real value," they stressed, adding, "It would be complete madness to run for early elections… "
But, as I see it from here in Jerusalem, The generals will create a mechanism to keep them in control!
3. What would not be madness?
The officers explained elections cannot take place before the ruling National Democratic Party through which Mubarak ruled Egypt is overhauled and rebuilt from the bottom up. Friday, February 11, shortly before Mubarak's ouster became final, the military sacked the party secretary, Hossam Badrawi, just a few days after he was installed by Egypt's intelligence overlord, Gen. Omar Suleiman, who was then vice president.
The other generals want a military council consensus on this key appointment - not just one voice.
4. The Egyptian generals went on to warn President Obama that without an orderly, controlled transition to a stable government "anything could happen in Egypt, including events whose outcome no one can imagine."On this point, the generals were sending Washington a double message, sources say:
In the first place, they do not see the High Army Council role as technical - merely to oversee the writing of a new constitution, set the scene for a democratic election and then retire, leaving the rival political parties to vie for votes and the winners to run the country.
On no account, will the military rulers let this process go forward before they have put a strong political mechanism in place to guarantee the army's continued control over governance.
Never! say the Egyptian military to US on Muslim Brotherhood in government!
In the second place, the generals, like Mubarak and his predecessors, strongly object to raising the highly-organized Muslim Brotherhood to a role in government, thereby drawing the lines of the first major rift between the military junta in Cairo and the Obama administration in Washington.
Egypt's military rulers made this point very forcefully in their first message to the US, our Cairo sources report, because they were shocked and exasperated by the testimony given by James Clapper, Director of US National Intelligence to the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday, February 10, in response to a question about the Brothers from Rep. Sue Myrick, a Republican from North Carolina.
"The term Muslim Brotherhood … is an umbrella term for a variety of movements," Clapper said. "… in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera… In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally."
And ole JAV states unequivocally, "What an out of tune sap-sucker the ‘obamessiah’s’ Director of US National Intelligence is!"
This followed an article published in the Washington Post on February 3, under the headline "US Reexamining its Relationship with Muslim Brotherhood Opposition Group."
Clapper Thursday, Feb. 17, partly corrected his first briefing, admitting there was a wider range of opinion within the Brotherhood than he had represented - especially on the merits of preserving peace with Israel.
The WP article quoted Emile Nakhleh, a former CIA official who directed the agency's program for analyzing political Islam, who said: "If we are truly going to engage with the 99 percent of Muslims who do not support terrorism or violence, then we've got to engage indigenous groups, including Islamic political parties."
Although the Brotherhood is Egypt's best-organized opposition group, with an active charitable arm that dispenses social services nationwide, Nakhleh said it would not necessarily win a majority of votes in an open election. "They would be a hefty minority," he said, predicting that it would receive support from about 25 to 30 percent of the Egyptian population.
But, the question is, "Does the Brotherhood sees its chance to break into government?"
Egypt's generals inferred from what they were hearing that the Obama administration had departed from traditional US opposition to a role in government for the Muslim Brotherhood and decided to push for one in the post-Mubarak era.
Remember now, the Generals have just watched our "obamessiah" through Mubarak under the bus!
The army chiefs felt it important, therefore, to make Washington understand from the very outset that co-opting the Brotherhood to a future administration in Cairo was totally unacceptable to them.
Meanwhile, Brotherhood tacticians were encouraged by the signals from Washington.
Mohammed Mursi, a member of the group's political bureau, announced Tuesday, Feb. 15: "The Muslim Brotherhood believes in the freedom to form parties and is therefore determined to have its own political party."
This reversed their assertions in the course of the Egyptian uprising that they would neither put up a candidate for the presidency nor stand for election as a party. Under Mubarak they were banned but broadly tolerated.
Not any more: Mursi explained that the old constitution barred the establishment of any parties unless sanctioned by the ruling National Democratic Party. The regime which made those rules is gone.
5. Regarding the way Washington handled itself during the uprising, the generals wrote in their message: "In order to avoid such mistakes as happened during the last month, we propose" an American-Egyptian mechanism for coordinating future steps. Now, because of American "Flip-Flopping" Egypt's generals face must face US with good will and caution!
My Intel sources say that one of the highest-ranking officers of the High Army Council commented in a private conversation with fellow officers this week: "We don't want President Obama to keep breathing down our necks as he did in the past month. We also need to avoid falling into the mistakes he made - and will continue to make."
6. Even before this mechanism is in place, the generals made a gesture of good faith and willingness to cooperate with Washington – for as long as they are backed by the US: They duly notified the Obama administration of plans to keep two Mubarak-appointees in place - Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdi – while replacing at least half of the cabinet, including Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Abul-Gheit.
A new information minister would also be appointed to deal with the Egyptian media.
And so, the Ishamelites continue to "stir the pot" all over the Mid-East. I am told by my ex-Military friends here in Israel, folks who retired with high rank from the IDF, THAT the IDF has had to busy themselves greatly this past week "preparing rapid response teams" to expected "Cairo-style" West Bank demonstrations, which, in my opinion, will have the collective support of the idiots as clapper in the Obama administration.
The American government continues to send the wrong message to Israel’s enemies.
Washington should be saying right now that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
In a worrying move this week, the US, through its Ambassador to the UN Susan E. Rice, reportedly informed Arab governments and the Palestinians that it would support a statement by the president of the UN Security Council censuring Israel for "settlement activity."
The US reportedly agreed to back a statement that "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, which is a serious obstacle to the peace process." According to news reports, the US also agreed to consider supporting a UN Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and to commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel’s settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.
The Palestinians, however, were unwilling to budge on their demand that settlements be labeled "illegal" in a Security Council resolution, and are pushing to have the council vote on Friday. Barring a compromise, the Obama administration must now contemplate the prospect of using its veto power in the council for the first time. But even if the Palestinian resolution is vetoed by the US in the end, damage has already been done.
THERE ARE those who would play down the importance of Rice’s reported offer. It is no secret that the US views settlements as an obstacle to peace. The Obama administration even attempted, unsuccessfully, to introduce a complete building freeze in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem as a condition for the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians last year. Furthermore, a statement by the president of the Security Council is a declarative act that would have no substantive impact on Israeli policy.
Besides, if the US vetoes the Palestinian-pushed Security Council resolution as expected, that would be more than it did during the Carter administration. In March 1979, the UN Security Council passed resolution 446, stating that "the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East." The US abstained in that vote.
Yet the reported US willingness to diverge from what Israel regards as its interests and to cave in partially to Palestinian demands to censure Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East, contrasts sharply with its stated willingness to "engage" with, rather than punish, its enemies.
Just last month, for instance, the US appointed a new ambassador to Syria, a country that backs both terrorist insurgents killing American troops in Iraq, and Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible, among other outrages, for the deaths of 241 American soldiers in Lebanon in October 1983.
Washington should be saying right now that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
THE MESSAGE that Washington should be sending out right now is that Israel is the US’s only stable, dependable and democratic ally in the fast-destabilizing Middle East.
I want to thank, once again, all of you who supported this trip, and I want to ask each of you to pray that these HYLES ANDERSON FELLAS will get the remaining "almost $5000" in to me "machen schnell" from what they still owe on the trip for Tuesday evening I shall have to have those monies in hand.
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
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