very interesting article I saw recently:
http://fromthetopcom.blogspot.com/2011/12/palestinianisation-of-jesus.html
Unfortunately, this happens quite often, and Palestinians turn to promoting history revisionism to naive Christians visiting the holy land. One example of this I have heard is Samson being the first suicide bomber!!
One thing the critics of Israel like to point out is the concrete separation barrier in between the main part of Israel and the West Bank.
A tour leader I spoke to told us that the concrete wall only accounts for less than 5% of the fence in between.
Not so easy to see in this picture perhaps but there is just a chain link fence in between the Jewish orchards and Palestinian towns in the background, the silver things is some rows of fruit trees with plastic sheeting over them.
Here we are passing in a quite narrow strip of land in Israel parallel with Tel Aviv.
I have done some more experimenting with Google Maps.
Note – please press the [ – ] button to zoom out on each of these maps to get a better understanding of where you are looking at.
This line drawn across is only 8.8 miles this show how narrow this section of Israel would be in parallel to a possible Palestinian state, further down a bit is Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport, this especially needs to be carefully guarded with the flights arriving and departing each day.
This map here shows the Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beer Sheva, both of these cities have been hit in recent months by GRAD missiles, these have a radius of 25 miles /40 kilometres. The diagrams show these cities are just in proximity of attacks from Gaza, now I don’t know where these are launched from in the Gaza strip exactly, so this is approximate but you should be able to get the idea, these cities are just about reachable by GRADs, and there is fear that other weapons could reach further in.
For those of you who think the middle east crisis can be fixed with a two state solution, I would advise you to check out this site, it shows how Israel’s borders are defended, and how a new Palestinian state is impractical as well as wrong I believe from a Christian biblical point of view.
http://shomroncentral.blogspot.com/
I personally want to see safety and security of all people here, but I think its important know exactly the threats and practicalities involved here.
I rode along the north part of Jaffa Street up to the bus station and saw my friend Dave along the way, actually its very easy to accidentally see anyone you might know in this city.
I think when Jesus returns here, it won’t be too hard to find him, even without a cellphone. 🙂
I visited the place where the bomb happened a few weeks ago:
Everything seems strangely normal, the man is still running the kiosk selling cigarettes, newspapers and ice cream, people are waiting for the bus, and some chap was using the phone box as well.
In fact nothing really looked any different apart from two wreaths left for the Christian woman who died, one from Israel and one from the UK.
Today, I was working home towards the bus (it was raining and I don’t like to ride my bicycle in the wet) a short distance from work I saw a large crowd of people and some Magon David paramedics dealing with someone on the floor, they were doing resuscitation on this woman, there was a drip rigged up, and I could see a set of electric pads as well. I prayed for this woman here that she would live, and after a while I noticed she was coughing, although the ambulance staff were still having to push her chest hard, I didn’t stick around too much longer, but will check the local news tomorrow.
You can see how fragile life can be from things happening on your street in any place, I must stress that I do feel very safe here, there isn’t a problem with alcoholism I see in Portsmouth, and there are occasional terrorist threats in the UK like the ones that happened on 7/7 on the London tube network in 2005. Police and military are often around here in Jerusalem so security issues are spotted in almost all cases very quickly.
Whats the best way of getting over a terrorist attack? Wearing cute rubber wrist bands, twee looking ribbons to put on your jacket, being a Twitter drama queen? No, none of this nonsense!
As friday was Jerusalem Marathon day, it is a case of just get on with life, no need to cancel anything needlessly. This meant it was a bit difficult to get to work as the bus services were going to be hugely different with roads blocked off.
The day before I saw barriers being put up and large palette loads of bottles of water.
I went to my church for a worship event, the main hall is in the basement of Clal centre in between Agrippas Street and Jaffa Street, but the meeting is on the 14th floor right at the very top, known as the prayer tower, I could open this huge sliding window and get some air and see an amazing view that you can see a large portion of the city, including the new King David harp bridge. Here I can see right over Jaffa Street in the distance where the bombing was.
Bad luck to anti-Zionist losers 🙂 the event was sponsored by Adidas and the boycotters of Israel who complained the sporting brand didn’t succeed in ruining the event for anyone! 🙂
As per every event like this, there are police and security to keep the event safe, although it did rain a little (which is a good thing, its is still really needed!) this was a nice day. I was at work as normal but I got some things done in our food bank again. Actually I thank the Lord I was in this place that day due a power cut due to a fault in our building, which I meant I had to manually shut some servers down, there was some equiment damaged by this but is all under control.
This race shows the determination and character of the Jewish people well I think.
Just heard in the news about alerts that parcels containing explosives from Yemen were bound for a synagogue in Chicago in the United States.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11654390
It would appear from a lot of news stories, that this was a bit of an amateurish attempt at terrorism and this was a test run, to analyse security on delivery and logistics companies like UPS.
I think Muslims and the media that says that try to convince 9/11 Mosques are a good plan, have questions that need to be answered here.
I know people who worked for an IT company in Portsmouth UK, 7 years ago that did some overseas installation work all over the world including Yemen. It sounds like shipments from this country are likely to be suspended. What kind of impact does this have on people in Yemen with ordinary businesses that want nothing to do with terrorism?
Yemen is a poor Arab country, nestled between the polar-opposite economies of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. With strange things happening this month in the news like ex UK PM Tony Blair must be hugely embarrassed of his sister in law Lauren Booth who is ultra pro-Palestinian and become a Muslim recently as already an apologist for Iran and Hamas. Shouldn’t spokesman in Yemen and other the Arab countries, regardless of what they think of America, Israel and Judaism, ought to be condemning these attacks, as this is only going to hurt the reputation and economy of their own nations? This is a good opportunity to do some PR work for Islam and shun extremism is it not?
Yemen had a sizable Jewish community, but its one of a few countries that is now more or less a void for Jews as they all moved to Israel or America, in the same way that other Jews from the other mostly Islamic Arab nations had faced hardship.
But in recent years, Yemen has some people coming to Christ. http://islamdom.blogspot.com/2007/10/2000-converts-to-christianity-in-yemen.html Please do pray for Yemenite people to see ‘dreams and visions‘ and find Jesus, and for those who who already believers to be safe from persecution. Of course Israel and the west, US and Europe are likely to be on higher alert, so pray for terrorism activity to be exposed and stopped.
The rubbish bins in a Jerusalem street are bomb proof. From normal perspective, they look like normal bins with a stronger steel base. When I was walking by, there was a truck come to empty them with a special crane attachment, you notice the chamber inside is about 2.5 metres long which is hidden underground. Next to the man in the florescent jacket you can see a bin the same already sitting in the ground, with the long chamber below the street.
Seems pretty good. Wonder if we could get such a thing around military bases in higher risk parts of the UK.
More evidence that mainstream news sites aren’t always pleasant and fair to the peace process in the middle east. Apparently one of the senior editors of CNN’s middle east department, wrote on twitter about a being a sad day about this week’s death of one of the founding fathers of of Hezbollah, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. Worrying stuff indeed.
Where as Gaza is getting plenty of attention in the news of late, there isn’t so much sympathy for the people of Sderot, an otherwise seemingly quiet town with neat gardens at the side of the roads but has to put up with regular Katusha rocket fire from terrorists in Gaza.
Meaning Boulevard in Hebrew, Sderot is a place I visited last September during my first season in Israel, not part of my normal job, but when given the chance to go there I thought it would be interesting to see a place closer to conflict than Jerusalem and to see things as they really are without the aid of television or internet.
Getting there we would be met by a local man who is actually in British but has lived in Israel for 30 years and in Sderot for most of that time. He played this audio track of some wailing on his mobile phone, this was the sound to expect if there was a rocket attack, when this happens the people in this town have 15 seconds only to get to a bomb shelter. People are allowed to drive their cars without seatbelts in Sderot to give them a chance to get out and run to a shelter (on bus stops) next to a street if necessary.
Outside the police station here in Sderot, most of the rockets are collected and are on display for people to see. A lot of these are thought to have been manufactured in Iran. There are some larger more sophisticated ones which have hit a large radius like the neighbouring cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon. Without adequate security around Gaza, much more powerful weapons would get in (and probably do through the tunnels) and threaten the whole country and could hit Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, which is why roadblocks and strict inspection of trucks is a very necessary business.
Here this town is otherwise very pleasant and clean looking place, the regular threats seem to give people a more community spirit I guess.
This a typical bomb shelter, a public one. Some of these you see attached to peoples houses as a home improvement, not unlike people getting a conservatory built back in the UK.
Because of the regular attacks here, although deaths or serious injuries from rockets do happen but not that often, children cannot sleep in fear, and mental health disorders are common, as well damage to people’s houses and cars. Unemployment is high here, but no Olympic sized swimming pools or fancy restaurants which Gaza has.
The Katuysha rockets are fairly crude by modern day weapons in the fact they are not accurate, and so fired indiscriminately not at a specific target like a military installation. In fact we were told that often the most common time the rockets happen is during children going to or from school. At least a basketball ground here as a concrete roof on top, just like this school here on the left.
Our aim was to help decorate some peoples houses here and as Christians show love to this neglected community. The first people we helped was a large static caravan which was on a farm which was in quite poor condition which we painted up. The next was for a young Orthodox man who was about the same age as me and was disabled, we painted and plastered his house. I got a chance to learn and practice plastering holes in walls which is quite fun and easy once you get used to it. Later once we finished painting, we got a chance to watch a movie ‘Don’t mess with the Zohan‘ a comedy filmed in Israel starring Adam Sandler.
Without being hasty and under the expertise of our local friend, he took us out in his car up to the border with Gaza, this was a very interesting visit that no normal tourist would ever get to see.
Here there is a small military base to watch for rockets and other terrorist activity. A small blimp (Zeppelin type balloon, not pictured) is up high tethered to the ground, this is not manned but has a camera and solider on the ground is alerted if a rocket is fired and the alarm is sounded to warn the people in the town. On the right is an interesting peace monument (sorry I can’t remember who provided it) in the form of a musical instrument. The buildings in the background is Gaza. There is also a water reservoir close by.
Really no community in the world would ever put up with rockets fired on them regularly over the last few years, I think Israel shows a lot more restraint that many other nations would if treated like this.
If you lived or been to my home city of Portsmouth UK, Sderot and the Gaza strip are as close together a Gunwharf Quays and Gosport, this is less than a mile in between.
Before we went home on the last day, the man we stayed with took us out for a meal in a restaurant on the pier on the nearby biblical city of Ashkelon.
This was an interesting weekend and I would like to do it again sometime this year maybe.
As this is a sensitive subject please note hateful or provocative comments will be deleted and reported.
Brit In Jerusalem 
