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First—Grateful for all your prayers, concern and PATIENCE while we’ve been traveling. We have not been able to respond to most email, internet and phone calls most of this past week.
Why? Well, these “spiritual Paul Reveres” have been on the move… quite literally! After last week’s phone call, we packed our apartment, then drove through 9 hours of snow, freezing rain, sleet and outright ice. Sounding like a mailman here. That night we ministered in Albany NY and then traveled to Vermont for three days of ministry in a fantastic conference. We were privileged to minister Sunday in Vermont’s state capital of Montpelier, and then drove 10 hours straight to get home at 2am… So we could finish packing!
And tomorrow WE’RE MOVING.
Needless to say, yesterday we slept between boxes and talked to nobody. With our only prevailing inspiration getting a bite to eat before dozing off again.
Hallelujah, tonight I’m invigorated! And we’re looking forward to our first prayer call from our new “watchman’s perch” tomorrow evening. Please make plans to join us!
Below is an article by our friends Martin and Norma Sarvis from Jerusalem. In addition to posting weekly on Israel prayer for Chuck Pierce, they serve as associate directors of the 24/7 Succat Hallel. We had the privilege of staying with Martin & Norma for much of our stay in Jerusalem. Please review with care!
ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK
“Do not let those who are wrongfully my enemies rejoice over me; nor let those who hate me without cause wink maliciously. For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful words against those who are quiet in the land” (Psalm 35:19-20).
This week posters have gone up on many college campuses across the US and UK proclaiming “Israeli Apartheid Week 2014”. Most of these posters bear somewhere on their faces a depiction of the “wall” (some with an Israeli flag waving atop) which separates Israel from parts of the contested territories of Judea and Samaria. Taking its cue from the “state of being apart” enforced by the ruling party in South Africa during much of the latter half of the last century, the term “Apartheid” is today used generally to describe “every kind of segregation, established by the state authority in a country, against the social and civil rights of a minority of citizens, due to ethnic prejudices” (Wikipedia).
Throughout the week, on campuses from Oxford to Michigan, students will be invited to attend anti-Israel lectures, films and demonstrations. In some cases this cause appears to be supported by the administrations themselves. The London School of Economics’ International History department reportedly actually used the term “Israeli Apartheid” in an e-mail sent out to students inviting them to an event organized by the local Palestine Society. After being confronted by an Israeli graduate student for forwarding an official e-mail to the entire student body using the words “Israeli apartheid”, in effect presenting it as a “fact” which would be commented upon at the forum, the department was forced to send out a clarification stressing that the positions and opinions of the e-mail did not represent those of the department (“Israelis abroad prepare to battle Israel Apartheid Week”: www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4491254,00.html 23 Feb 2014, 01:06).
Of course, Israel is not an apartheid state, nor does the “wall” set apart a people on a basis of race or creed. Over 20% of Israel’s citizens residing within its internationally-recognized borders are Arab, most of them Muslim. Nor was the wall built by “state authority against the social and civil rights of a minority of citizens, due to ethnic prejudices.” Rather, it was built after Israel had withdrawn its military presence from cities in Judea and Samaria, rendering up governmental autonomy to the Palestinian Authority, an authority which then sanctioned the preparation and sending forth of terrorist murderers to prey unprovoked upon Israeli citizens. Hundreds of civilians, men (women, children, Jew and Arab) were slain, and multiple thousands seriously wounded. The wall was built as a defense against these attacks. But today propagandists are using its presence as a tool to demonize Israel, banking on the ignorance or forgetfulness of the public at large as to why it was constructed in the first place. (This past Christmas season, a prominent church in the heart of London infamously spent a reported 30,000 British Pounds to construct a 30 meter long, eight meter high replica of the “wall”, presumably (for all of their written disclaimers) to focus attention upon the heartless callousness of an Israeli entity against the poor citizens of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”) Ironically, the very Palestinian leaders who support the “Israel Apartheid Week” have on numerous occasions declared that there will be no Jews allowed to live within the borders of any future Palestinian State.
PLEASE PRAY
• That falsehood related to Israel will not be allowed to multiply in deceiving students in the universities where this delegitimization effort is being observed.
• For courageous men and women of integrity and spiritual insight to arise to counter the lies with truth.
Psalm 129.5: “Let all those who hate Zion be put to shame and turned back.”
Martin & Norma Sarvis
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