Sid Roth

Sid:  My guest this week is a Jewish believer in Jesus her name is Sandy Teplinski she’s a Jewish Believer in the Messiah.  She’s an attorney and I’m speaking to her in her home in Anaheim, California and she’s just written a book called “Why Care About Israel.”  I would have to believe that the devil has done a masterful job of confusion using the press primarily.  And even Christians are totally confused on God’s plan for the nation Israel.  And I have to tell you as a child of God I want to know God’s plan and I want to be on God’s side and with all this confusion we need the facts.  Sandy most Christians don’t have a clue on the history of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.  Most Christians don’t even know where the name Palestine came from.  Most Christians don’t even know that the generation called Palestinians most of them never even lived in Israel they just came to Israel for jobs and even Arafat was an Egyptian; he wasn’t even a Palestinian.  See if we can make some sense out of this.  I know that if they read your book they’ll get it all clear but briefly tell, me a bit about the history of that land.

Sandra:  We really can’t understand Israel’s modern history Sid unless we go back to its biblical roots.  And the biblical roots of the conflict between Jews and Arabs.  And of course that’s going to take us all the way back to Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael.  Ishmael as most of us know was the son of Abraham and Hagar who was an Egyptian.  And Ishmael grew up believing that he was the child of promise.  He grew up for 13 years believing that he was going to inherit God’s promises that He had made to Abraham.  Then on course Isaac does come along, Sarah does get miraculously pregnant at a very ripe old age. Isaac comes along and in Ishmael’s eyes he usurps all the promises that God had made to Abraham to be inherited to be inherited by his son.  The scriptures tell us that Ishmael began to resent and mock Isaac who he began to see as his rival.  Now we can understand… just to side track a bit we can all understand and relate to the sense of rejection and the pain that Ishmael must have gone through.  None the less he allowed that to fester into a bitterroot to the extent that he and his mother Hagar were eventually told by Abraham who heard from God to leave the household.  And so we eventually encounter Isaac and Ismael again when Abraham dies.  And we see that the two of them are standing shoulder to shoulder.  But there’s no evidence in scripture that they have reconciled their differences.  We revisit the conflict again when we see Esau and Jacob at odds with each other and again there’s a time of reconciliation between the two of them.   But none the less they still go their separate ways.  Now through the centuries, and of course not exclusively through Ishmael gave birth to many other sons through his second wife Keturah  and all of those people became collectively known in the scriptures as the Arab peoples.  And we see in the scriptures the Arabs pretty much continually at enmity with the Jewish people. And we read in the scriptures God’s wrath being roused against the Arab nations on account of their enmity towards Israel.  Now if we can fast forward several centuries you know and kind of fast forward past the Jewish exile, the exile from Israel. Which by the way not all Jews left Israel during the exile; there has always been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel proper through the centuries through the millennia. Let’s fast forward now to World War II okay let’s stop at World War I.  World War I the whole Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Turks.  The Ottoman Turks sided with Germany in World War I and lost the war.  As a result of losing the war the league of nations, which was in essence the predecessor to the United Nations, divided up the whole Middle East and distributed portions of the land to different countries such as France and England.  And England the British Great Britain ended up with the mandate to hold Israel which was not yet called Israel it was called Palestine.  And I’ll get to that in a moment. To hold that land in trust to create the Jewish State.  The reason Israel was called Palestine is that Israel’s enemies, the Romans.  The Roman’s that were responsible for dispersing Israel out of the Land specifically named it Palestine in mocking remembrance of Israel’s ancient and extinct; and let me repeat extinct enemy the  Philistines.  It has nothing to do with the existence or the nonexistence of any so called Palestinian people ethnic group.  They’re has never been an independent polity by the name of Palestine that was self-ruled of governed by a Palestinian people.  Okay, back to where we were (Laughing).  The British issued a mandate called the Belfour Declaration after World War I which stated that Israel would be held; I’m sorry Palestine would be held in trust for the Jewish people and a Jewish state would be created out of it.  However due to Arab pressure at the very declaration of the Belfour Declaration and the fact that some pioneer Zionist were beginning to relocate to the land to redevelop it.  England ended up giving away unilaterally almost 80% of the land that the nations collectively through the league of nations had given to Great Britain to hold in trust for the Jewish people.  So we’re left now with approximately 20% of the amount of land that originally the nations allocated to Israel.  On that 20% sliver of land there are both Arab and Jews living.  During World War II Great Britain prevented many many more Jews that wanted to settle there from actually settling there. In the meantime there’s Zionist Jews there that are helping to build the land.  And they’re reclamation of the land is what brought other Arabs from surrounding nations to settle in Palestine.  Because with the reclamation of the land came a higher standard of living; hospitals, institutions that endured the Jewish portion of Palestine a more developed and  hospitable environment than any of the other Arab surrounding nations.  And so by the time Israel is declared a State in 1948 we have many many Jews living there of course.  And we have about 650,000 Arabs living within Israel proper.  Many if not most and by all reasonable documentation it is most of these Arabs have only very recently immigrated from other Arab countries attracted by better employment opportunities stemming from Jewish development of the land.  When Israel was declared a State Israel pleaded with the Arabs to stay and to live with them peaceably side by side.  However the Arab leaders; the Muslim leaders; the Arab leaders from surrounding nations, remember there are no Arab Palestinian leaders now because they don’t exist as an independent people there.  They just kind of nomads that have kind of wandered into Israel proper because of the opportunities the Jews gave them basically for a better life.  None the less these folks were told by the Arab leaders from outside that they should leave Israel; they should go camp out somewhere else because all the Arab nations surrounding Israel were going to run the Jewish State into the sea.  And before long and it was just a matter of days the whole of Israel would turn into just another Arab nation.  Well, as you and I and our listeners know that did not happen.  The Arab nations did not win what has since come to be known as Israel’s War of Independence.  In the meantime all of these other Arab refugees who fled their homes voluntarily at the behest of their Arab leaders not as the instruction of the new Israeli government found themselves camped out as refugees.  Now what’s critical to know is that the Israeli government began to negotiate for the full repatriations of all of these refugees.  Israel said “Okay, it’s enough we want you to come back; just come back go back to your homes and live peacefully with us.  However they could not find a negotiating partner.  And the reason; the primary reason that they could not find anyone to negotiate with among the  Palestinian refugees or the Arab nation is simply that the Arabs refused to negotiate with Israel is because to do so would have inherently acknowledged recognized existence or Israel’s right to exist as a State.  So the Arab’s consistently refused the right of return that was essentially offered to them back in 1949; beginning in 1949.   And so you know critical to all of this is that we need to understand that the Palestinian plight is not the cause of Arab enmity toward Israel it is a result of it.  Now having said all of this I need to say that Israel is not… I’m not accusing Israel committing of no sin whatsoever with respect to the Palestinians.  There were a few scattered isolated instances of radical Israeli soldiers that were kind of out of control and contrary to the instructions from their higher ups did unfairly and unreasonably…

Sid:  Sandy I have to stop right now we’re out of time.  Listen Mishpochah this is history; this isn’t fabrication this is history you must understand the history.  But even more important you must understand what God has to say in this situation. Because if you’re on the wrong side on this situation you’re on the wrong side with God.  Get the facts. Why care about Israel.