Given the violence, destruction and death in the Middle East that we have seen on the news in May 2021, I thought that it would be pertinent to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in this episode. The root of the problem is that the Arabs are determined to destroy Israel. They are attacking Israel through proxy wars and are persecuting the Jews who have been citizens in Arab countries for generations. I would like us to consider two simple questions that this video will attempt to find answers to: The first is: where are the Jews who were citizens in Arab countries? The second is: who are the Palestinians and do they have a right to be in the Gaza strip and in the West Bank, let alone aspire to occupy the whole region that includes Israel? The persecution of Christians too has reached levels that it has caused leaders of nations that have been founded on Judea-Christian principles to speak out and to make the protection of Christians a foreign policy priority. The case that the Arab world has been making at the UN is that Israel is occupying Palestinian land and is guilty of being an apartheid state. That claim presupposes that the Palestinian people have a right to the Gaza Strip and to the West Bank, and that they are the descendants of the ancient Philistines that inhabited the five cities in Canaan called Gaza, Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron. Let us see if there is any truth in it. There are a number of references to the Philistines in the bible. Genesis 10:14 refers to the Philistines and the place that they came from which is Capthor. Joshua 13:3 refers to the five cities that the Philistines inhabited. Deuteronomy 2:23 speaks about the Capthorims who are the Philistines. Jeremiah 47:4 confirms that they are from Capthor. That information is repeated in Amos 9:7. Capthor is modern day Crete. The question is: are the Palestinians descendants of the Philistines? No. The DNA of the Philistines proves that the modern Palestinians are not descendants of the ancient Philistines. What happened to the Philistines, and who are the modern Palestinians? Babylon ruled over them (598 BC) and took the Jews and the Philistines captive. While the Jews returned to Judea, the Philistines did not. That was the end of the Philistines. The Romans ruled over that region in 63 BC. Between 132-135 AD, Simon Bar Kokhba led a revolt against the Roman Empire. That resulted in the third Jewish-Roman war, during which the Roman Emperor Hadrian besieged Judea and after massacring the Jews, he renamed the region as Syria-Palistina. On November 2 1917, Arthur James Balfour the British Foreign Secretary drew up a declaration called the Balfour Declaration that was in favour of a homeland for the Jews. The British were granted the Mandatory Authority over Palestine in 1920 by the League of Nations. It was only after World War II and the horrors of the that the international community were in favour of declaring Israel as an independent and sovereign state in 1948. If you really want to know who inhabited Palestine prior to the Balfour Declaration, then all you have to do is read Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad”. A 1923 British census estimated that there were about 700,000 Arabs and 56,000 Jews in Palestine. Palestine at that time was home to Jews, Christians and Arabs. On the 14th of May 1948 David Ben Gurion declared Israel as an independent and sovereign state. On the very next day, which was the 15th of May 1948 the Arabs attacked Israel. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that was illegally occupied by the Arabs in 1948. The modern Palestinians are not descendents of the Philistines. They are Arabs from the neighbouring states. So you may ask: Will peace ever prevail between Israel and the Arab states? Not until the ‘Prince of Peace’ who is the Lord Jesus Christ returns. The reason I say that is because of their beginnings. The Israelites descended from Jacob whom God renamed as Israel, and the Edomite Arabs who are the modern day Palestinians descended from Esau. They are two very different people groups as God told Rebekah that they would be. No government and no UN initiative will be able to resolve that issue. The bad news is that it is going to turn worse. The Arab and Islamic world will attempt to destroy Israel. That is what the Psalm 83 war is about. One morning we will awake to the news that Israel was attacked at night and that it exercised the Samson option which is its strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons, and that Damascus has ceased to exist as Isaiah 17:14 says will happen. That will still not be the end of Israel’s struggle. The book of Revelation 9:16 tells us that the largest army ever, numbering 200,000,000 troops will gather to destroy Israel. That will be the moment when the Lord Jesus Christ will appear and destroy the armies of the world as we read in Revelation 19:11-16. That will end all resistance to God’s chosen.

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