The Coming Crisis In Israel

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The Past, Present, and Future—Exposed The events wracking the Middle East today are confusing to even the most avid news buff. Now all the answers to your questions are offered in just one resource. Divided into five main sections, Iran: The Coming Crisis contains the most up-to-date, thorough information available and is complete with maps, charts, and timelines for visual assistance. Iran’s past, present, and future are exposed—the country’s quest for nuclear weapons and support of Palestinian terror groups, its ability to “play the oil card,” and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic beliefs that motivate his actions. You’ll discover the truth about today’s events, how they relate to Bible prophecy, and what the Bible clearly describes is yet to come. It’s a crisis unlike any the world has ever faced. Are We Headed for a Nuclear Jihad? “Israel must be wiped off the map,” Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said it himself. He has denied the Holocaust, and his actions are motivated by a dangerous apocalyptic view of Islam. Meanwhile, Islamic extremists are in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons as they stand as gatekeepers to the Persian Gulf oil flow. Closer to home, President Bush has stated that the greatest threat to America is nuclear terrorism. In a prophecy written over 2,500 years ago, Ezekiel 38-39 foretells Iran ’s future. Iran , Russia , and other Islamic nations will invade Israel in the end times. Today, the connection between Iran and Russia only grows. How close is this invasion? What will happen? Will America survive? Will the world? Mark Hitchcock , an expert in Bible prophecy, exposes Iran ’s past, present, and future with striking clarity. Find maps, charts, and answers to your every question inside. “I highly recommend Mark as a faithful guide to understanding current events in light of God’s wonderful plan of prophecy.” -Tim LaHaye, Pastor and bestselling author Story Behind the Book There seems to be no turning back from the looming crisis in the Middle East. The Islamic and political rulers of Iran are set in their ideology by principle. The West and Israel are headed for some sort of confrontation economically, socially, and likely militarily. Mark Hitchcock ’s background as a lawyer, pastor, and expert in Bible prophecy suits him perfectly as a Christian authority on the subject. Timing is critical, and his new book will release as more and more everyday people—Christians and non-Christians alike—realize the gravity of world events and question how they relate to Bible prophecy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns Iran is developing nuclear weapons not just to annihilate Israel but to destroy the West. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton tells us the Iran deal will lay "nuclear trip wires" throughout the Middle East, while a German reporter writes ISIS is planning a "nuclear tsunami" to fulfill its apocalyptic version of Islam. Nuclear alarm bells are sounding throughout a region already filled with several raging wars. Those wars have changed the lives of millions. From a nineteen-year-old Yazidi girl sold into sex slavery, the ten-year-old Christian girl who found it in her heart to forgive her persecutors, or the veteran Kurdish general holding the line against the ISIS--these and so many others have been caught up into the midst of these fiery conflicts and developments that are fracturing the Middle East. The book plots a grid for these major and sometimes bewildering developments transforming the Middle East. Those developments include: In what could be the document defining our generation, the U.S., five other world powers and Iran signed a nuclear deal. Critics charge it all but guarantees the Ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic will become a nuclear power. After its barbaric splash onto the world stage in the summer of 2014, the Islamic State caliphate appears to be gaining strength and followers throughout the Middle East and from such faraway places as Mississippi. Christians in Syria and Iraq stood in the pillaging path of ISIS. Some call what has happened to the two-thousand-year-old church genocide against Christians in the very cradle of Christianity. Russia's leader Vladimir Putin launched the biggest military buildup inside Syria in decades: his warplanes are bombing ISIS. This development signals a much greater role for the former Soviet Union in the region and evokes Ezekiel's prophesied war of Gog and Magog. These developments affect your life. What happens in the Middle East can shake stock markets around the world, lead to a greater Western military intervention in the region, spark a confrontation between major powers or flood immigrants into your country. ISIS, Iran and Israel attempts to answer the question: What You Need to Know about the Mideast Crisis and Upcoming Mideast War.

Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group's generally progressive stance: support for Israel. Despite Israel's record of militarism, illegal settlements and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish "homeland". But, as Norman Finkelstein explains in an elegantly-argued and richly-textured new book, this is now beginning to change. Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the United Nations, and books by commentators as prominent as President Jimmy Carter and as well-respected in the scholarly community as Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Peter Beinart, have increasingly pinpointed the fundamental illiberalism of the Israeli state. In the light of these exposes, the support of America Jews for Israel has begun to fray. This erosion has been particularly marked among younger members of the community. A 2010 Brandeis University poll found that only about one quarter of Jews aged under 40 today feel "very much" connected to Israel. In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein's customary meticulous research with polemical brio, Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel's record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.

The new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that a primary foreign policy objective is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability. Israel is a "one-bomb state," such that one atomic weapon, even a relatively low-yield bomb of the type the United States dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in World War II, would destroy the modern Jewish state as we know it today. The Obama administration has repeatedly declared the intention of following up on the campaign promise to negotiate directly with Iran. This represents a fundamental policy shift from the Bush administration's efforts to apply international sanctions through the United Nations in an effort to force Iran to quit enriching uranium. Consistently, Iran has insisted upon the nation's right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue the "full fuel cycle," code words for Iran's determination to advance uranium enrichment technology in Iran under Iranian control. In recent months, top Iranian government and military figures have issued warnings that the time is getting short, such that Iran might well have the capability to develop and deliver at least one nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. At the same time, the international community has expressed doubt that the Iranian government will make any serious concessions on their atomic program. In press conferences and speeches, President Obama has openly acknowledged the U.S. government now believes Iran is pursing a nuclear weapons program. At the end of the Bush administration, the international press credibly reported that the Olmert government in Israel was denied fly-over rights in Iran in order to launch a military strike on Iran. Known as the "Sampson Option," an Israeli first-strike on Iran's nuclear facilities becomes increasingly likely to the extent Israel feels isolated from the world community and concludes there is no chance the Obama administration will ever be able to induce Iran to stop enriching uranium, regardless how seriously the president intends to push direct negotiations as a strategy. We have already seen two wars launched by Israel against terrorist surrogates financed and supported by Iran: the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the 2008 war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Now, a war between Israel and Iran is on the near horizon, possibly fated to occur before the end of 2009.

A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organisations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream, the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals, may die. In The Crisis of Zionism, Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the centre of the crisis: Barack Obama, America's first 'Jewish president', a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions, not just of American and Israeli national interests, but of the mission of the Jewish people itself. Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.

How will continued proliferation of nuclear weapons change the global political order? This collection of essays comes to conclusions at odds with the conventional wisdom. Stephen Rosen and Barry Posen explore how nuclear proliferation may affect US incentives to confront regional aggression. Stephen Walt argues that regional allies will likely prove willing to stand with a strong and ready United States against nuclear-backed aggression. George Quester and Brad Roberts examine long-term strategic objectives in responding to nuclear attack by a regional aggressor. Richard Betts highlights the potential for disastrous mistakes in moving toward and living in a world heavily populated with nuclear-armed states. Scott Sagan explains how the nuclear nonproliferation policies best suited to some states can spur proliferation by others. Caroline Ziemke shows how the analysis of a state's strategic personality can provide insights into why it might want nuclear weapons and how its policies may develop once it gets them. And, Victor Utgoff concludes that the United States seems more likely to intervene against regional aggression when the aggressor has nuclear weapons than when it does not.