Israel, Jerusalem, and The Jewish People: The Unredacted Truth

By Mervi Karsi-Howard

The State of Israel is 8,020 square miles or 0.014 percent of the earth's land surface, and as of May 2019, its population of 9,009,000 was approximately 0.1 percent of the earth's population; however, it seems to be daily in the global crosshairs. In the Middle East, the Arab countries' territory and population are 650 times and 50 times greater than Israel's respectively. Israel's land area is 0.18 percent that of the Arab countries, and its population is about 2.5 percent that of the Arab countries. Business Insider ranks Israel as the number eight most powerful country based on its alliances, influence, and leadership in the world. The State of Israel was accepted into the United Nations in 1949, yet the same organization has written 78 percent of its resolutions against Israel in addition to trying to change its history by denying the fact that Jerusalem was established as the capital of Israel by King David. Israel has never started a war, yet it has had to constantly fight for its existence. There are still thirty-six nations that do not recognize or have foreign relations with the State of Israel. Every country has had the freedom to choose its capital city, yet most countries refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and have their embassies in Tel Aviv. Israel did not exist for nearly two thousand years, and yet it was born in a day after its dispersed citizens returned despite or maybe because of persecution and the Holocaust. We are witnessing the greatest miracle of our time and one of the greatest fulfillments of Bible prophecy, but many are still asking what is meant by the miracle. God's truth is without compromise, and the prophecies about Israel are the clearest and easiest to understand; however, many do not know them or, for some reason, get them wrong. Israel is the litmus test for the believer, and this book will guide the seeker to deeper biblical understanding with an abridged but unredacted truth about Israel, Jerusalem, and the Jewish people. The recommended list of additional reading, in concert with the Bible, serves as a guide for those who want to know more. "A Bachelors degree from UCSD ensured both knowledge of and research of historical facts, a Masters degree in Education from GCU ensured quality of writing and ability to teach, but everything would have been in vain if not guided buy God and His Word."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646708512

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Israel, Jerusalem,

and the Jewish People

The Unredacted Truth

Mervi Karsi-Howard

ISBN 978-1-64670-850-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64670-851-2 (Digital)

Copyright © 2020 Mervi Karsi-Howard

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Israel

The Beginning: The Covenant

Israel—An Unconditional Covenant

Israel—God’s Land

Historical Character of the Jew

Israel—not the Holy Land but the Land of Milk and Honey

Jerusalem—God’s Peculiar City

Conqueror After Conqueror

The Muslim Rule

Dispersion of the Jews—the Diaspora

Zionism—The Burning Fire

Roots of Zionism

Early Settlers

Political Judaism—Theodor Herzl and a Dream

The Return

Ezekiel’s Dry Bones

The Return 1200–1841

The Return 1841–1904

Second Aliyah 1904–1918

Results of the Second Aliyah

Difficult Road to Independence

Jewish Life During the British Mandate

The Second World War

The Result of the British Heartlessness

The Independence

The War of Independence

The New, Old Home

The Suez Campaign (1956)

The Six-Day War 1967

Yom Kippur War 1973

West Bank, Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian State

Biblical Holidays, Set Times, and Christian Anti-Semitism

How the Church Changed God’s Appointed Times

Biblical Set Times

Feast of Passover

Feast of Unleavened Bread

First Fruits

Feast of Weeks

Feast of Trumpets

Day of Atonement

Feast of Tabernacles

Shemini Atzeret and Simhath Torah

Hanukkah

The Temple

The Jewishness of the Messiah

Jewish Wedding Customs During Biblical Times

Why Should We Love the Jewish People and Israel?

What Can a Believer Do?

Appendices

Basic Law: Israel—the Nation State of the Jewish People

Jewish Feast Cycle

Important Dates in Jewish History

Suggested Reading

This iconic Israeli photograph was taken by David Rubinger (1929–1948) at the Western Wall in 1967. The men are, from left to right, Zion Karasanti (24), Yitzhak Yifat (24), and Haim Oshri (23), reservists of the 3rd Company of the 66th Battalion of the Paratrooper’s Brigade’s reserve force. The men were at the Wailing Wall, for the first time in their lives, June 7, 1967 when the Israeli Army liberated Jerusalem. Rubinger himself has said that photographically The Photo is not his best; however, historically it is one of the most loved and memorable photographs in Israel. Rubinger was on an assignment for the Israeli Army, and he had to turn over the negatives to the government of Israel. The Photo has since become the property of the entire nation.

Yossi Klein Halevi, the author of Like dreamers: the story of the Israeli paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem and divided a nation, writes that The image endures, in part, because of the humility it conveys: At their moment of triumph, the conquerors are themselves conquered. The paratroopers, epitome of Zionism’s ‘new Jews,’ stand in gratitude before the Jewish past, suddenly realizing that they owe their existence to its persistence and longing.

Source: ©️David Rubinger/State of Israel Archives

I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you.

—God

Introduction

I felt wonderful as I woke at dawn to the melancholy cooing of the turtle doves. I savored these morning moments and thought how fortunate it was to be here. Through the open window, I caught the intoxicating scent of roses and of cedar trees with their decaying needles and cones on the ground. Relishing the moment and the melancholy cooing I never tired hearing, I scanned the few items in my old barrack room: the bed, a coffee table in front of it, a closet in one corner of the room and an old wooden armchair in the other, a small dining table by the entry door with electric water kettle, coffee cups, and an array of mismatched silverware. Underneath the furniture, covering the beige tile floor, was a blue camel hair rug from the Old City. I loved this room and its central location to the swimming pool and the communal dining room of my kibbutz. I was happy having everything I needed and wanted. I was where I wanted and needed to be: in Israel.

I loved this place. I had been here the summer before and had fallen in love with Israel and its people. I had worked in the orchards and cotton fields of the kibbutz during the day. During the afternoons and evenings, I had lounged by the pool, chatting and drinking endless cups of coffee or tea with fresh mint leaves, eating chocolate cake, and listening to stories from the time of the early settlements. Sometimes we had danced Israeli folk dances in the dining room. In the fall, when I had to return home, I had cried but was comforted by the kibbutz committee’s invitation to come back the following summer. So here I was the luckiest girl in the world.

I got out of bed and dressed to go to the services a visiting rabbi was going to conduct in the clubhouse. It was Yom Kippur, the Day of the Atonement, the holiest day of the year, 1973. The whole country was quiet. Everybody that could, would fast on this day. I could hear my stomach growling when I walked to the restroom, I shared with Oded, a soldier who lived in the room next door. I finished my morning rituals and glanced out through the small-screened window in the shower stall. It looked dark outside.

As I made my way to the clubhouse for the services, I stopped on top of the stairs of our barrack. My eyes feasted on the incredible vista that laid before me like Michelangelo’s masterpiece. I never tired marveling at its breathtaking beauty. At different times of the day, the colors of the sky changed from purples, yellows, and all shades of reds to gold as the sun bathed the hills, villages, olive, palm, pine, and cypress trees, the orchards, and the old ruins against the sky in the horizon.

The Judean hills laid before me, and they were not Mark Twain’s hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land. No, this was not only a land of roses and streams, orchards in valleys and hillsides, a land of deserts, but also of green fields, of sunshine, rain, and of pipelines that water the fields.

I stood there as the morning scattered itself over the misty hills in awe that I was privileged to witness and to be part of the fulfillment of one of the most important prophecies for our times. The smell of the latter rain was in the air. It could rain today. It was quiet…too quiet. There was something different about today, but what?

It was Yom Kippur, and most members stayed in their apartments while only the strict minimum of members worked. With a feeling of uneasiness, I made my way to the clubhouse across the green and was surprised to see many of the soldiers hurriedly walking toward the parking lot. I knew them all, every one of them. They were coworkers, fathers of the children from my kindergarten, and friends.

I was puzzled, but before going to the clubhouse, I decided to check the volunteer work assignments in the dining room foyer. I pushed in the door and saw Joel standing in the phone booth clutching the black receiver while repeating and writing down numbers.

After talking hurriedly for a while, he hung up and turned slowly toward me. From the look on his face, I knew something was amiss. He greeted me with his characteristically nervous smile and looked directly into my eyes. He calmly said, We are at war.

I was not afraid, and unlike many volunteers who chose to go home, I stayed.

I was eighteen years old then, and from the time God appeared to me on my sickbed thirteen years ago, He had poured His love into the Israel-shaped chamber of my heart. He had chosen to trust me with His truth. He taught me, and He brought me here to Israel to learn through experiences among His people. I am more assured today than I was then that God will keep His promises to the letter and that the Jewish right to the Land of Israel is irrevocable.

God will fulfill every single prophecy in the Bible, and the purpose of this book is to encourage believers to study the Bible—the road map for the future—and to seek the truth.

Bible is not only a narrative of Jewish history but also predictions about their future to be fulfilled in the future. In Hosea 4:6, God claims that His people perish for the lack of knowledge.

The purpose of this book is to provide believers with a bit of knowledge and wisdom—truth tested with time—and an essential amount of history, for Israel, and the Jewish people in hopes that believers will desire to learn more.

Israel is God’s timepiece, and expedient Bible students should keep their eyes on Israel at all times.

Israel

The State of Israel is 8,020 square miles or 0.014 percent of the earth’s land surface, and as of May 2019, its population of 9,009,000 was approximately 0.1 percent of the earth’s population; however, it seems to be daily in the global crosshairs.

In the Middle East, the Arab countries’ territory and population are 650 times and 50 times greater than Israel’s respectively. Israel’s land area is 0.18 percent that of the Arab countries and its population about 2.5 percent that of the Arab countries. Business Insider ranks Israel as the number eight most powerful country based on its alliances, influence, and leadership in the world.

The State of Israel was accepted into the United Nations in 1949, yet the same organization has written 78 percent of its resolutions against Israel in addition to trying to change its history by denying the fact that Jerusalem was established as the capital of Israel by King David.

Israel has never started a war, yet it has had to constantly fight for its existence.

There are still thirty-six nations that do not recognize or have foreign relations with the State of Israel. Every country has had the freedom to choose its capital city, yet most countries refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and have their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Israel did not exist for nearly two thousand years, and yet it was born in a day after its dispersed citizens returned despite or maybe because of persecution and the Holocaust. We are witnessing the greatest miracle of our time and one of the greatest fulfillments of Bible prophecy, but many are still asking what is meant by the miracle.

God’s truth is without compromise, and the prophecies about Israel are the