* * * * FLASH TRAFFIC: WASHINGTON UPDATE * * * *
MR. PRESIDENT: DON'T DIVIDE JERUSALEM
Natan Sharansky launches campaign to protect the Holy City, briefs Joshua Fund supporters on importance of evangelical Christians joining with Jewish groups on this sensitive issue.
By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C., November 26, 2007) -- The Bush administration's much-anticipated and highly-controversial Arab-Israeli peace conference opens tomorrow in Annapolis, Maryland. A great deal is at stake. The most contentious issue on the table: the future of Jerusalem. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is talking openly about the possibility of dividing the holy city and giving part of it to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
This would be a mistake of colossal proportions. It would not send a message of goodwill and peace to Israel's enemies, as Olmert and his advisors hope. Rather, it would invite more attacks by radical Islamic jihadists who want all of Jerusalem, not just part of it. What's more, talk of dividing Jerusalem fuels the apocalyptic, genocidal ambitions of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his colleagues who believe Israel's day of judgment is coming and that Shia Muslims are destined to annihilate Judeo-Christian civilization and gain control of Jerusalem for themselves, and soon.
Mr. President, don't divide Jerusalem. Don't consider it. Don't talk about it. Don't encourage others to talk about it. Doing so will bring war -- and a horrifying one at that -- not the peace that you seek. Rather, open tomorrow's conference by making it crystal clear that precisely because we want peace in the Middle East, the U.S. will not support any division of Jerusalem any more than we would support dividing Washington or London or Paris or Moscow with our enemies or our neighbors.
To stop Olmert, former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky last week launched a multi-million campaign to keep Jerusalem the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish State. What's more, Sharansky is calling not only on the Jewish community worldwide to stand with him, but is also reaching out to evangelical Christians.
On November 8th at the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem, Sharansky briefed a Joshua Fund breakfast my colleagues and I organized with some 52 evangelical business and ministry leaders from the U.S., Canada, Germany and Australia. He made a powerful case for the centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish life and the reason Christians and Jews need to work together, shoulder to shoulder, to keep the city from being divided.
As someone who helped Sharansky launch his first campaign to protect Jerusalem in September 2000, I join him again in calling on Christians all over the world to join his organization, One Jerusalem, and to sign his "Jerusalem Petition," which reads:
United Jerusalem Petition
* I support a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, to ensure free and open access for all people to the holy sites of the three major religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
* I support a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, as an expression of the unique relationship between the Jewish People and its eternal capital.
* I support a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, so as never to return to the dark period of 1947-67, when Arab control over an artificially divided Jerusalem meant religious persecution, desecration of holy sites, and wanton destruction.
* I support a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, according to the current municipal boundaries, set in the wake of Israel's defensive 1967 Six Day War.
* I support a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, where Jews may enjoy the right to pray on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in the Jewish world.
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JOSHUA FUND DELEGATIONS VISIT ISRAELI LEADERS, COMPLETES RELIEF PROJECTS IN SDEROT AND CARMIEL
(Jerusalem, Israel) -- A Joshua Fund delegation with 52 evangelical Christian business leaders from the U.S., Canada, Germany and Australia just completed a two-week trip to Israel. The group was briefed by current Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman on the growing Iranian nuclear threat; former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky on the threat to Jerusalem; MK Yuval Steinitz, Member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee, on the growing strategic threats to Israel from Iran and Syria and the growing Russian involvement in the Middle East; former Israeli General Yossi Peled on the Hezbollah threat in Lebanon; and former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Dore Gold on the upcoming peace conference in Annapolis. The group toured Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Galilee region. It also did two humanitarian relief projects in the towns of Carmiel and Yavniel, distributing care packages of food and kitchen supplies to needy families in cooperation with the Mayors of these two towns and Bridges for Peace, an evangelical Christian relief organization based in Jerusalem.
On November 12, The Joshua Fund took a group of 25 evangelical Christians from Rio Rancho, New Mexico to do a humanitarian relief project in Sderot, an Israeli town on the southern border of Gaza. The town has been hit with more than 2,500 Palestinian rockets and missiles since the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005 for "peace." Three rockets hit the day we were there, but by God's grace we were safely able to distribute more than $100,000 worth of clothes, toys, school supplies, and others goods to some 300 needy Israeli families who live below the poverty level and live in great fear of these constant terrorist attacks. The Sderot relief effort was done in cooperation with the Mayor of Sderot, the local social welfare office, and The Joseph Project, a Jewish organization committed to caring for the poor and needy and for victims of war and terrorism in Israel.
Please pray for peace for the 21,000 citizens of Sderot. More than 6,000 residents have left the town and relocated elsewhere in Israel in the last two years because of all the attacks. Please also pray that more evangelical Christians around the world become involved in helping needy families in Israel with humanitarian relief and unconditional love.
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