School Bus Attacked With Missile In Gaza: Muslims CONTINUE To Target Israel’s Children

Please see my previous post here to see that this is no abberation, but a continuance of an incredibly longstanding strategy by Muslims to murder innocent Israeli children:

Missile from Gaza hits Israeli school bus; 2 hurt
By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Aron Heller, Associated Press – 1 hr 53 mins ago

JERUSALEM – An anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel Thursday, wounding two people, one of them critically, and prompting fierce Israeli retaliation that killed five Palestinians.

Israel unleashed airstrikes and tank fire against Hamas targets across the border. It was the heaviest assault on the coastal territory since a broad military offensive two years ago. Besides the dead, more than 30 Palestinians were wounded, said Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmiya.

He said one of the dead was a 50-year-old civilian who was sitting outside his home when he was struck by tank fire. Three others were militants killed near the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The fifth man was a Hamas policeman.

The sudden outbreak of violence illustrated the fragile situation along the Israel-Gaza border, where small bouts of fighting can quickly escalate into heavy-scale warfare.

After two years of relative calm, tensions have been rising between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza over the past few weeks. For Israel, Thursday’s attack was the most serious of this period.

But it also laid the groundwork for a major strategic breakthrough. The Israeli military activated a new cutting-edge missile-defense system for the first time, saying that the Iron Dome scored a direct hit on an incoming Palestinian rocket.

The escalation has also spilled beyond Israel’s borders.

In the past month, Israel has intercepted a cargo ship that it said was carrying arms bound for Gaza, jailed an alleged Hamas rocket mastermind believed to have been captured in Ukraine and been accused of carrying out a mysterious airstrike that killed two people in Sudan. Israel has not commented on this week’s airstrike, but officials have said they believe Sudan is a transit point for arms bound for Gaza.

Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the army to respond quickly to the attack on the school bus and said he held the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, responsible for the violence.

“We will respond until it will become clear that the Hamas fully understand that we cannot accept and we will not accept such events,” he said at a military base in southern Israel.

Hamas issued a rare claim of responsibility for the bus attack, saying it was in response to the killing of three of its leaders earlier in the week. Usually, smaller militant factions claim responsibility.

Palestinian officials said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was making calls to leaders in Egypt, Turkey and Qatar appealing for their intervention.

Israeli defense officials said the incident marked a significant moment that would warrant a severe response. But there were no immediate indications that the violence would devolve into all-out war.

Israeli medical services said the bus was nearly empty after dropping off school children and was carrying only the driver and a lone passenger at the time of the attack. A 16-year-old boy with a serious head wound was evacuated from the scene and undergoing surgery at a hospital. The driver was moderately wounded.

TV footage showed a yellow bus with its windows blown out and its rear charred.

Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the attack from New York, where he was holding meetings at the United Nations.

“This is another example of Gaza becoming a terror state,” he said in a statement. “Hundreds of thousands of mothers and children in southern Israel cannot sleep quietly at night as a result of the rocket fire from Gaza.”

The American and British governments condemned the attack.

Israel usually responds with tough reprisals to Palestinian attacks. It launched an airstrike on a Hamas training facility in northern Gaza.

Later Thursday, Israeli aircraft and tanks attacked Hamas facilities in northern and central Gaza Strip. A tank shell also struck a fuel depot in northern Gaza, sending a plume of smoke above the area.

“Israel will not frighten us and will not terrorize us,” said Hamas spokesman  Ismail Radwan. “We call on the Arab masses and the Arab revolution to stand by the Palestinian people in Gaza and to urge their regimes and their governments to stop this escalation, which aims to create a new pool of blood in Gaza Strip and Israel should be held responsible for the consequences of this.”

The missile attack came hours after Israel carried out airstrikes against tunnels it says are used by militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out attacks.

Hamas and other Gaza militants have fired thousands of projectiles toward southern Israel in previous years. Israel launched a massive offensive in late 2008 to counter the near-daily barrage.

Israel recently deployed its first system to defend its tanks from anti-tank missiles. As a result, Gaza militants may be turning the weapons on new targets, since the attack on the bus appears to be the first time such a missile has been fired at a civilian Israeli target.

The military said that after the missile attack, about 45 rockets and mortar shells were fired from Gaza toward Israel, including one that struck a home, causing damage but no injuries.

In a separate incident, Israel said it had arrested five Hamas militants in east Jerusalem and charged them in a pipe bomb attack that wounded a sanitation worker last month.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops rounded up dozens of Palestinian women overnight in a massive sweep as part of a search for the killer of five Israelis in a nearby settlement last month.

Residents in Awarta said that between 100 and 200 women were taken into custody and that Israeli troops took their fingerprints and DNA samples from them. By midafternoon, all the women were believed to have been released. 

Israel has been carrying out arrests in Awarta since a young Israeli couple and three of their children were stabbed to death as they slept in their home in the neighboring Jewish settlement of Itamar.

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Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Dalia Nammari in Ramallah, West Bank, and Ariel David in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

Tens of thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel by Muslims who would only rejoice if they were to strike a Jewish child.  For the record, 10,237 rockets were fired by Muslims at Israel in just a one month period in 2008.

The LORD (Jehovah), the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Living God, the Lord God Almighty who was, and is and is to come, is protecting Israel.

Islam is a religion of hatred.  That “Islam” means “peace” is a lie of the devil; “Islam” means “submission”; as in submission by force.

Today, we see that the United Nations is immorally siding with the terrorist Muslims against democratic Israel.  One day, the Bible teaches, the entire world will gather their forces in a valley called Armageddon (Rev 16:12-16).  And they will say, “Come and let us wipe them out as a nation. Let the name of Israel be remembered no more” (Psalms 83:4).

And it will be Messiah Jesus, coming again as He promised as King of kings and as Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11-16).

The story that will begin with undying hate will end in unending beauty and glory:

“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

God is protecting Israel.  The Jews are His covenant people, the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8).  And one day soon Messiah Jesus will come to His own and this time finally be welcomed.

You touch Jewish children at the peril of your immortal souls, Muslims.  One day soon you will be called upon to account for your evil.

And you stand against Israel at the peril of your souls, you “united” nations that likewise gather against her. 

As for me and my house, we pray every single day for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6).  We love and support Israel and we eagerly await the Jews’ embrace of the same Messiah that we also embrace as Savior and as Lord.

The Crisis In Egypt, The Future And Bible Prophecy

If the crisis occurring now in Egypt had instead occurred during George Bush’s watch, you can rest assured that the entirety of the mainstream media would have been asking, “Why didn’t the administration know this was coming?”  “How was this not a massive intelligence failure?”  And they would have characterized the Egyptian crisis as a failure of American leadership.

Conservatives like me have taken the attitude, “Do Unto Obama What Liberals Did Unto Bush.”  You find that the ideology out of power can drag down a president one bloody chunk of meat at a time.   Which was precisely what liberals did to Bush for eight unrelenting years.

As a conservative blogwarrior, what I would ordinarily want to do is take an event like the building collapse of the Egyptian government, link it to Obama, and blame his failure of leadership.  That’s what the liberals did on a daily basis to George Bush, and as much as the left decries the very tactic they developed and used to such advantage, it works.

And I CAN link this to Obama.  It was OBAMA’S regime that has been secretly backing Egyptian rebels, who literally set this whole firestorm in motion.  This support began during the period of transition, when Bush was on his way out and Obama was on his way in, and continued under Obama’s thumb.  And the American response to the Egyptian crisis has been nothing short of a fiasco:  Obama’s vice president Joe Biden said that Mubarak isn’t a dictator.  Which means he should stay.  But then Obama’s secretary of state Hillary Clinton says there needs to be an orderly transition of power, which means that he should go.  And then Obama’s press secretary says that the U.S. isn’t taking sides, when in fact the U.S. is incoherently taking sides first one way and then the other, basically as the wind blows.

Right wingers basically have all the evidence they need to throw out the bomb that Obama has been working to undermine US ally Mubarak in order to enable the Muslim Brotherhood to take over strategically vital Egypt.  And that he is even now undermining any coherent American effort to restore order.

And the thing about propaganda is that you can turn out to be completely wrong, but if people believe you at the time, you win, because those people turn against the leader(s) you’re seeking to undermine – and it’s hard to win them back.  And if you throw up enough blame, some of it is bound to stick.

All that said…

While I’m a political conservative, I’m not JUST a political conservative.  Unlike political liberals, who are secular humanists whose religion is big government – and for whom government is the only answer to the problems of man – politics is NOT the only solution to the world’s problems for me.  I also have Jesus Christ and the Scriptures that He came to fulfill.

And what the Scriptures say are more important to me than my opinions about Obama or even my limited government conservative political ideology.

With that said, I will NOT play the game of the political ideologue, using the latest crisis to denounce the current administration’s mishandling and predicting doom as a result of the president’s incompetence.

I will try to state what the Scriptures say about a strategically incredibly important nation that is nearly as ancient as man himself.

And so I am going to say that, as a student of Scripture and of Bible prophecy, I believe that Egypt will ultimately turn out okay.  Rather than point to the unrest in Egypt and denounce Obama for the horrors that will surely follow – as I would do if I were simply operating as a conservative ideologue and blogwarrior – I am stating my belief that Egypt won’t turn out like Iran.

Now why do I say that?

Because of the book of Ezekiel chapters 38-39.

Ezekiel 38 and 39 describes a list of seemingly obscure names of nations bearing their sixth century BC names.  Scholars can trace those ancient names and pair them with peoples and nations of today.  What we learn is that in the future, in the last days, a vast army of what are today Islamic countries led by Russia and Iran will launch a surprise attack against Israel.  And that God Himself will divinely and supernaturally intervene on Israel’s behalf.

Two things are significant: 1) the names of the nations on the list.  Why?  Because except for Russia – a key ally to Islamic regimes – every nation on the list is today a Muslim nation with animosity toward Israel; and 2) the names of the nations that are not on the list.

Joel Rosenberg became famous understanding this.  As just one example, Rosenberg wrote a “last days” novel.  Because he understood that Iraq (ancient Babylon) was not mentioned as one of the nations that would join the Russian-Iran-led coalition to attack Israel, Rosenberg “killed off” Saddam Hussein – whom he rightly understood would have participated in such an invasion.  And how did he do it?  By having America take him out after a terrorist flew a plane into an American building.  And he wrote this nine months prior to the 9/11 attack.

He writes in an interesting article that explains the book of Ezekiel and Bible prophecy:

It should be noted that conspicuously absent from the list is Egypt and Iraq (typically referred to in Scripture as Babylon or Mesapotamia). This is noteworthy since Ezekiel was writing the prophecy in the City of Babylon, in the heart of Iraq. We would have to expect, then, that neither Egypt nor Iraq will participate. Egypt, of course, signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Iraq is now so engrossed in its own internal struggles that it would be unlikely to join a coalition to destroy Israel in the next few years. We are, therefore, living in the first window in human history in which neither of these historic enemies of the Jewish people are likely to be involved in the next major Middle East war.

This isn’t the first article in which I make mention of Egypt and Iraq and their role in the future according to Bible prophecy, for the record.

Now, I don’t cite Joel Rosenberg because he’s a “prophet.”  Nor would he want me to do so.  Rather, I cite him because he has a rock-solid understanding of Bible prophecy and because he has concretely demonstrated that his understanding of the Bible makes him prescient of otherwise obscure and constantly-changing modern times events.

Prior to Anwar Sadat’s signing of a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 (for which he was murdered), Egypt had fought Israel during the 1948 war; it had fought Israel in 1956; it had fought Israel again in 1967; and it had fought Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

What is happening now in Egypt – with riots and violence and deaths and looting and vigilantes – is terrifying.  But somehow Egypt will end up with a government that will continue to be at peace with Israel.  Which means it won’t ultimately be controlled by terrorists or jihadist regimes.  We can’t know what will happen in the very near term, but overall, the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood will not end up in control of Egypt.  And up to this point, thank God, there has been a conspicuous absence of Israeli and American flag burnings in Egypt.

Frightening things are happening in the Middle East.  Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and Egypt are spiraling out of control as we speak.  Iran is one the verge of having The Bomb, and the world will become a very different place after this terrorism-sponsoring rogue regime feels it can act with impunity.  And the fact that Iran is Shiite will force many Sunni nations to develop nuclear weapons of their own in a terrifying arms race in the craziest place in the world.  And, of course, North Korea has committed several acts of war against its South Korean counterpart.

Jesus said that in the last days there would be wars and rumors of wars.  He described “birth pangs” in which each wave would be more painful than the last.  And while there have ALWAYS been wars, what we would see would be a level above anything the past has witnessed.  After two thousand years of relative peace, we had World War I, World War II, the Cold War (of which the Korean War and the Vietnam War were part), and now fighting that has at once gone to the “biblical world” (Iraq – Operations Desert Storm and then Desert Fox – as well as Afghanistan) even as it has spread to the rest of the world in an unprecedented way via terrorism.

And we aint seen nothin’ yet.  Soon there will come the Antichrist, also called the beast, who will come promising peace and prosperity, and who will come to rule the world, but who will in reality turn into the devil incarnate.  And those who are left on the earth will find war and ruin and death such as the world has never witnessed in all of its history.

It all sounds terrifying.  And of course it IS terrifying.  But I don’t have to be afraid.

First of all, I believe that God is in control.  And that God protects and delivers His people.  Second, I believe in the Rapture of the saints prior to the wrath of God.

What is God’s purpose for allowing such terrible events to befall mankind?  Why does God permit the coming of the beast?  Because mankind is in a stage in which it denies God and even claims that belief in God is creating all the problems in the world.  This powerful global secular humanist movement says that mankind is on the verge of greatness and that if the intolerant Christians could only be removed, humanity could attain that greatness.  And God will give them their chance.  He will remove all those who believe in His Son, and give the world its chance to govern itself without Him.  And what we will see instead of the Utopia these secularists have always described will be literal hell on earth.

And Jesus Christ will ultimately return to earth as King of kings and as Lord of lords just in time to prevent mankind from totally destroying itself as all the armies of the world gather at a place known as Armageddon.

It is THIS King of kings whose government I trust in; and no other.

The Book of Daniel says, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Daniel 12:4).  Knowledge has exploded as no other period in human history has ever seen, and yet we run to and fro in panic and uncertainty more than at any other time.

You don’t have to be afraid.  There is a God who knows the end from the beginning.  Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own [or the expert’s] understanding, and rest assured that ultimately the government of the world will be upon the shoulders of the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7).