Please Pray for Peace in the War Torn Nations! - The Daily Voice

The following post was originally written and published back in 2012 when an ongoing war was taking place in Syria. I have taken out the references to Syria and placed instead "a war torn nation."

Jesus speaking in prophecy:

“How many more will die before my people are moved with compassion to pray for the peace of that war torn nation? Each day of fighting means another day of death and destruction to the dear people of that nation. Why do not My people cry out to Me to stop these atrocities of war? War is man at his worst. Why do My people sit idly by and are not moved to pray? 

"Prayer moves My hand, but if My people do not pray, do call upon Me, My hands are tied. But if you will call upon Me, I will answer. Call. Raise up your voices like the sound of a trumpet or like the roaring ocean. Let the world itself hear your cries. Your cries will affect change in that country's favour. The fact that you are praying will affect other people and will cause a chain reaction of prayer. 

"Will you pray for peace in that war torn country? Will you pray for its leaders, that I will help them to put the future of their country above their own personal safety and ambitions? Pray that I will help them to make the right decisions that will lead to a just and lasting peace for all the people of that nation, and not just for one political or religious or social group.

"Will you pray against the war mongers who provoke war for their own personal or political agenda and care not for the people of that war torn nation, nor their aspirations? Please pray against those whose agenda is war and the promoting of war. Pray for peace in all the war torn nations. 

"Be moved with compassion and get together with a friend or family member and pray for the peace of that nation. If thousands or millions of My people of the world begin to pray, I will hear. Maybe even your governments will hear. Maybe the war will be stopped?

"I will use your prayers. I will translate those prayers into action in the lives of those involved in the war. Your prayers will not go unanswered. Although I am limited by the decisions of men, your prayers will not be in vain. Pray. Pray with all your heart and mind and body and soul, as if one of your own were there in the midst of the fighting and your only means to help them was through the power of your prayers."

Dennis Edwards:

Brother Andrew´s Open Doors Ministry found that nation to be one of the most exciting witnessing places in the Arab world before the war started. Nearly 10% of the population was of a nominal Christian faith. Religious tolerance was the norm. Let us pray that God will strengthen their faith in this time of crisis and will raise up Godly leaders to be His ministers of love and peace within that war torn nation.

Prayer: Dear Jesus,

There is little that we can do as individuals to stop the war in that country. We know that war is hell and that the people of that nation are passing through hell right now, because of the war and instability. We call upon you, Lord. Hear our prayers and come to the aid of the people of that nation. Come to the aid of those who want the fighting to stop. You said, "Blessed are the meek." Save the meek, the weak, the poor, and the persecuted.

Bring peace to that nation. Stop the war mongers and those who are promoting the war for their own personal or political agenda. Stop them, Lord. Bring the evil they are promoting upon their own heads. Bring peace to that nation. Bless those who truly want peace and are truly seeking for peace, whichever side they may be on.

You said, “Blessed are the peacemakers...” Bless the peacemakers in that war torn nation and internationally, wherever they may be and whoever they are. Lord, put pressure on the international bodies to really desire and press for peace. Rebuke those who are using the war for their own agenda or their country's political or religious agenda. Move the hearts of Your people to cry out to You for peace and to cry out to their governments to pursue avenues for peace. 

Lord, You promised that if we called, You would answer. Hear our prayers. Send help to the broken people of that war torn nation, those who want peace. Bless them and strengthen them. Raise up a bulwarks in their defence. May the angel of the Lord encamp around about them and be their guardian.

Lord, your hand is not shortened that it cannot save. Save thy children who are crying out to You in desperation. Hear their cries and answer from above. May the elements of war and those that incite violence and war suffer the evil they desire for others. In Jesus´ name, we pray. Amen.

Originally published November, 12, 2012.

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Al-Assad in Moscow as Syrians Worldwide Celebrate

Syria war live news:




(02:30 GMT December 9, 2024)

Photos: Syrian-Americans in Dearborn celebrate al-Assad’s fall

Syrian-Americans and their supporters gathered to celebrate after Syrian rebels announced they had ousted al-Assad, in Dearborn, Michigan on Sunday [Rebecca Cook/Reuters]People played music and danced and waved Syrian opposition flags [Rebecca Cook/Reuters]A woman holds a sign saying ‘Syria is liberated’ and the flag of the Syrian opposition [Rebecca Cook/Reuters][Rebecca Cook/Reuters]

(02:15 GMT December 9th, 2024)

Two killed by landmine near Hama

The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR) says two civilians have been killed by a landmine explosion in Al-Tuwaina village near Hama, Syria.

Since early 2024, at least 160 people, including 24 women and 57 children had been killed by “old landmines, unexploded shells and bombs across Syria” according to SOHR.

More than a decade of war has left up to 300,000 landmines and other unexploded weapons littered across Syria, according to the aid group Humanity and Inclusion (HI).


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/12/8/syria-war-live-news-opposition-groups-say-al-assad-rule-is-over

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Syrain War Updates: Opposition Takes Damascus as al-Assad Flees

 

Leader of Syrian Opposition Forces 

Abu Mohammed al-Julani

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/12/7/syria-war-live-news-govt-says-president-al-assad-has-not-fled-damascus

Here’s what happened today

Here’s a recap of the day’s developments:

• Syrian opposition fighters have captured the capital, Damascus, and declared victory on state television.
• Russia says Bashar al-Assad has left the country and given orders for a peaceful transition. His whereabouts are unknown.
• Opposition groups have declared a curfew in Damascus, where people are celebrating in the streets, from 4pm (13:00 GMT) until 5am (02:00 GMT).
• Opposition leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani says all state institutions will remain under the supervision of al-Assad’s prime minister until they are handed over officially.
• Crowds of Syrian refugees abroad are celebrating al-Assad’s fall and planning to return home for the first time in years.

• Israeli PM Netanyahu visits Syrian border, hails ‘historic day’: Report

  Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has joined military commanders for a stop at the Israel-Syrian border, where Israel plans to bolster its defences, according to Israeli media reports.

  “This is a historic day in the annals of the Middle East,” Netanyahu was quoted by Israel’s i24 TV as saying.

  The Israeli prime minister went on to claim that al-Assad’s fall “is a direct result of the blows we landed against Iran and Hezbollah”.
• 1h ago

   (13:35 GMT)

  Lack of Russian panic could mean some sort of understanding with Turkiye

  The Russian Foreign Ministry said it did not participate in negotiations that preceded Bashar al-Assad’s resignation, and it did not specify his whereabouts.

  The military at the Russian bases in Syria are on high alert, but there are no threats to their safety.

  Russia and Iran appear to be negatively affected by the opposition ousting al-Assad, said Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow.

  “Both have played a major role in supporting the Assad regime since the uprising began in 2011,” she said. “Russia actually continued to be on al-Assad’s side, because just recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed that Syria has been its strongest ally in the Middle East.”

  Shapovalova said this gave Russia influence in the Middle East, and the ability to have a base in Tartus and an air base in Hmeimim in exchange for Moscow’s support. Russia has gained a key military presence in the Mediterranean and air power in the region as a result.

  “Allegedly, Russia uses its naval base in Tartus to send its mercenaries to Africa, to Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic,” Shapovalova said.

  “Judging by the lack of panic in Russian bases, it could mean an element of agreement with Turkiye could have taken place.

  At the moment, we understand all flights between Moscow and Damascus have been cancelled and the atmosphere at the Syrian embassy in Moscow remains calm.”
• 1h ago

   (13:30 GMT)

  

  Who is Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who led the ousting of Bashar al-Assad?

  Abu Mohammed al-Julani stands at the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group that has become the most powerful armed opposition force in Syria and led the offensive that ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

  Al-Julani was born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa in 1982 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as a petroleum engineer. The family returned to Syria in 1989, settling near Damascus.

  He was allied with top leadership at ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda before resigning those ties to rebrand and present a more “moderate” image while renouncing a transnational mission for a national takeover roadmap.

  The HTS continues to be designated a “terrorist” group by the UN, the US and the EU.
• 1h ago

   (13:25 GMT)

  Syrian side of Jaber crossing with Jordan empty

  • 
    Nour Odeh

  Reporting from Jaber, Jordan-Syria border

  The Syrian side of the Jaber border crossing between Jordan and Syria, in Deraa, has been empty.

  There was no presence of security forces – at least for the last 24 hours – as Jordan allowed Syrians to return home.

  In Deraa, people did not wait for the opposition groups to enter the city but took over it themselves.

  People and some rebel groups that had not been known to be operating in the area captured the city and then marched north – towards Damascus – meeting with the other rebel groups there.

  Deraa has been free of the al-Assad regime’s control for more than 24 hours now.
• 1h ago

   (13:20 GMT)

  Lebanon says boosting troops on Syria border after al-Assad’s fall

  The Lebanese army says it is reinforcing its presence on the border with neighbouring Syria after the government of al-Assad fell and opposition forces took the capital, Damascus.

  “In light of rapid developments and delicate circumstances that the region is going through… units tasked with monitoring and controlling the northern and eastern borders have been reinforced, in conjunction with tightening surveillance measures,” the army said in a statement.

  On Sunday, Syrian rebels swept into Damascus declaring they had toppled “tyrant” al-Assad, whose current whereabouts are unknown after he reportedly fled the country.

  An AFP correspondent saw dozens of cars lining the main Masnaa crossing between the two countries as Syrian families returned home, with crowds cheering and chanting anti-Assad slogans.

  Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he discussed the situation at the Syrian border in a call with army commander Joseph Aoun and security forces chiefs.

  Mikati insisted “in these calls on the priority of tightening control over the border and distancing Lebanon from the repercussions of the developments in Syria”, his office said in a statement.

• Syria war live news: Al-Assad overthrown, curfew declared in Damascus | Syria's War News | Al Jazeera

• Syria’s governing powers should not repeat past ‘atrocities’: UN commission

  A UN commission responsible for probing war crimes in Syria has urged Syria’s new governing forces to avoid repeating atrocities it says were a hallmark of al-Assad’s rule.

  “Today marks a historic new beginning for the Syrian people who have suffered unspeakable violence and atrocities over the past 14 years,” the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a statement.

  “It is incumbent on those now in charge to ensure that such atrocities are never again repeated within the walls of Sednaya (prison) or any other detention centre in Syria.”

  As we reported earlier, opposition fighters claimed to have freed all the prisoners at the infamous Sednaya Prison as they stormed into Damascus.

• Important to be ‘cautiously optimistic’ about Syria, says activist Omar Suleiman

  • 
    Usaid Siddiqui

  Reporting from Doha, Qatar

  Palestinian-American activist Omar Suleiman says it was vital to understand the “gravity of the moment ” for the Syrian people amid al-Assad’s ouster.

  “There is a historic wrongdoing that has been undone, and that there’s cause for jubilation in that regard, and that we should celebrate with the Syrian people and center the Syrian people,”  Suleiman, founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, said.

  Nevertheless, like many others, he called for everyone to be “cautiously optimistic”.

  “We should be calculated, careful and make sure that we see the revolution through,” Suleiman added.

  “Much of the Arab Spring … was a cause of happiness followed by a cause of great disappointment.”

  The Arab Spring was series of popular uprisings which erupted in 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa including in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya.

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DESTRUCTION OF DAMASCUS! IS THIS THE PROPHECY?

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Operation Failing Empire

By Maj. Danny Sjursen, Truthdig, April 20, 2018

You’ve got to hand it to the good old US of A: We sure know how to overpromise and underdeliver. After 17 years of perpetual wars stretching from West Africa to South Asia, nobody does it better. America’s military–the nation’s governmental tool of choice these days–never saw a problem it couldn’t “fix” or missed an opportunity to coin a slick code name for its open-ended operations.

First, we had Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), then Iraqi Freedom (well, you know where), New Dawn (Iraq, again), Unified Protector (Libya) and now, Freedom’s Sentinel (Afghanistan again). Boy, do these operations sound cool and altruistic. Hmm … I wonder how they actually turned out?

Well, that’s the tricky part. See, in reality, the U.S. has naught but a few defeats, several ongoing stalemates and a trail of chaos to show for all that effort. And, predictably, the local civilians usually foot the bloody bill.

If only the outcomes for the people on the ground bore any resemblance to those uplifting titles. And we’d hate to be dishonest or inaccurate in our labels, so how about we find a remedy? Seeing as Washington shows no predilection to even vote on, let alone end, its ongoing wars, perhaps the best we can do is review America’s recent record and suggest more appropriate code names for its ongoing wars.

Operation Enduring Freedom: The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001–this is the one we had to do, right? The one even “liberal” President Barack Obama referred to as the “good war.” After all, al-Qaida had attacked the homeland, Osama bin Laden was there and, it seemed, the Taliban wouldn’t give him up–not fast enough for our liking, anyway.

Still, that mission “creeped” from counterterrorism to full scale nation-building. Nation-building on the cheap, that is, because most resources were promptly shifted to a war of dubious legality in Iraq. Seventeen years later, the only thing “enduring” in Afghanistan is chaos, and “freedom,” well, that’s limited, at best, to the urban centers the marginally legitimate, U.S.-sponsored Afghan government actually controls. With corruption rampant in Kabul, record numbers of districts contested by the Taliban and the harvesting of a record opium crop, it’s hard to argue that the U.S. military mission has lived up to its name.

After Obama finally reduced U.S. troop counts in 2014-15, Enduring Freedom was rebranded as Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, and the American military shifted to an advise, assist and sustaining force. Problem is, enduring freedom hadn’t ever been realized, so how the heck could the remaining U.S. troopers act as “sentinel” for the success-of-liberty that never came? It’s all so confusing.

For the sake of truth in advertising, let’s rename this ongoing conflict Operation Everlasting Quagmire.

Operation Iraqi Freedom: Boy, did the military planners dodge one heck of a gaffe when naming this one. They originally wanted to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation, but, yikes, that acronym spelled OIL–a bit too on the nose, no? Anyway, Washington settled on Iraqi Freedom and supplied a litany of reasons to invade: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (he didn’t), he’d colluded with al-Qaida (he hadn’t), the war would pay for itself (it wouldn’t), and on and on.

The conventional ground war took less than a month, President George W. Bush flew onto an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and declared the “mission accomplished” and everyone waited for Iraqi “freedom” to break out across the country. We waited and waited and … the place fell apart. The reality is that the U.S. military fractured an ethno-sectarian basket case of a country and unleashed chaos. We triggered a civil war, exponentially multiplied anti-American Islamists and delivered an Iraq even worse than had existed before 2003. Some 4,500 Americans and at least a couple hundred thousand Iraqis died. My unit didn’t arrive in Baghdad until October 2006, and one of the most heartbreaking–and recurring–interactions I had with those poor people was listening to them lament that life in the city was actually better under Saddam.

Iraqi Freedom was later renamed New Dawn when Obama shifted the mission to advisory and assistance and turned Iraq’s security over to a suspiciously chauvinist Shiite government under the strongman Nouri al-Maliki. New Dawn had such a nice ring to it. No more overt U.S. military occupation, increased Iraqi sovereignty and a fresh start for the embattled local civilians. A few years into New Dawn, in December 2011, almost all U.S. troops–as Obama had promised–left the country. Victory in Iraq.

Only the whole thing was a new-dawn-that-wasn’t. Maliki was an authoritarian, his government held little legitimacy in the eyes of minority Sunnis and Kurds, and the Iraqi army we’d trained and equipped collapsed in the face of the veritable Frankenstein’s monster that had grown up in U.S. military prisons: Islamic State. These lunatics helped themselves to billions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-supplied equipment and ran rampant for a couple of years across western Iraq and eastern Syria.

So, in round two (or three, if you count 1991’s Operation Desert Storm), the U.S. military was back on the ground, the Air Force was back to bombing and, while Islamic State has been rolled back, American troops are still there, with no end in sight.

So, in honor of a 1980s cult classic film, I propose a coded title that’s more apropos: Operation Neverending Story.

Operation Unified Protector: This is the NATO “humanitarian” mission to “protect” Libyan rebels from the vicious tyrant Moammar “Mad Dog” Gadhafi. The Arab Spring uprisings toppled a few Mideast dictators in 2011, but Obama had been elected on a promise of no more new wars in the region. So when assorted Libyan rebels were in danger of losing out to Gadhafi’s army, Obama assured us that Americans would “lead from behind,” keep U.S. “boots off the ground” and simply deter a massacre.

Unfortunately, that protection from the world powers wasn’t so unified after all, with Russia and China bowing out when the full scope of the NATO project became clear. And as for the “protection” part, or all that due-process stuff that Americans are always talking about, well, it didn’t apply to Gadhafi himself, who was tortured and murdered in a grisly manner by a lynch mob.

Things only deteriorated from there. Humanitarian intervention evolved into regime change, and then into the fracture of Libya into statelets led by rival warlords. Even Islamic State opened a local franchise. And that arsenal of guns Gadhafi had spent three decades accumulating? Tribal fighters took those south and across the border to sow chaos and destabilize Cameroon, Niger and Mali.

So in honor of what’s really occurred in Libya, I’ll leave the naming of this mission to former President Obama, who, in hindsight, referred to the Libyan mission as a “s–t show.” Operation S–t Show. It has a nice ring to it.

Operation Restoring Hope: Yemen, 2015-present. Sure, it’s Saudi Arabia that kicked this one off and came up with the impressively ironic title. And sure, it’s Saudi pilots bombing and Saudi ships blockading that have unleashed the worst cholera epidemic in recorded history and brought millions of civilians to the brink of famine. So why should we care?

Simple. The U.S. backs and enables the Saudi terror campaign and has the power to end this war. The Saudi campaign could not continue without U.S. military support in the form of aerial refueling, targeting intelligence and guided munitions sales. One vignette, among countless others, says it all: In 2016, when a Saudi airstrike killed 140 Yemenis attending a funeral, it did so with American-manufactured bombs. Yemenis are fond of digging up the tail fins of these munitions, and many are manufactured in the USA. Nonetheless, the war, and America’s support for it, continues to this day.

Here’s an apt title for what America is really enabling in Yemen: Operation Moral Repugnance.

I am done being cheeky and flippant. There are real human beings–too often women and children–under all those bombs and in the line of all that fire. What I suggest is twofold: First, let’s do less–militarily, at least–in the Mideast, and second, let us ditch the euphemistic-to-the-point-of-Orwellian code names and quit overpromising and underproducing.

The hard truth is that too often, in contrast to the noble code names, U.S. military operations have had precisely the opposite of their intended effects for the people living in the Greater Middle East.

What shall historians call these 17 years of post-9/11 warfare? Bush called it the “war on terror,” but terror is a tactic and not a tangible enemy. Others labeled it the “long war,” but that’s vague and not catchy enough. Esteemed historian Andrew Bacevich suggested “the war for the Greater Middle East,” which is indeed accurate, but a bit too scholarly and bland.

Given the actual outcomes of these campaigns, the horrors endured and the illogical paths blazed along the way, I’ll affix one more appropriate label to these disasters: “the war on reason.” Code name: Operation Flailing Empire.

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In Middle East Wars It Pays to be Skeptical

By Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch, April 23, 2018

During the bombing of Baghdad in January 1991 I went with other journalists on a government-organized trip to what they claimed was the remains of a baby milk plant at Abu Ghraib which the US had just destroyed, saying that it was really a biological warfare facility. Walking around the wreckage, I found a smashed-up desk with letters showing that the plant had indeed been producing “infant formula” milk powder. It had not been very successful in doing so, since much of the correspondence was about its financial and production problems and how they might best be resolved. It did not seem likely that the Iraqi government could have fabricated this evidence, though it was conceivable that in some part of the plant, which I did see, they might have been manufacturing biological weapons (BW).

I was visiting a lot of bombed-out buildings at the beginning of the US-led air campaign and I did not at first realise that “the Abu Ghraib baby milk factory” would become such an issue. I was more impressed at the time by the sight of a Cruise missile passing quite slowly overhead looking like a large black torpedo. But, within hours of leaving Abu Ghraib, the true purpose of the plant there had become a topic of furious controversy. The CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, who was on the trip, had reported that “whatever else it did, it [the plant] produced infant formula”. He saw a lot of powdered milk and, contrary to the Pentagon claim that the place was guarded like a fortress, we could only see one guard at the gate. Arnett did not deny the US government version that the place was a BW plant, but he did not confirm it either. He simply reported that “it looked innocent enough from what we could see”.

Even such mild dissent from the official US version of the bombing turned out to be unacceptable, producing an explosion of rage in Washington. Colin Powell, the US chief of staff, expressed certainty that the Abu Ghraib plant had manufactured BW. The US air force claimed that it had multiple sources of information proving the same thing.

Arnett was vilified as an Iraqi government stooge by the US government. “This is not a case of taking on the media,” said the White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. “It’s a case of correcting a public disclosure that is erroneous, that is false, that hurts our government, and that plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.” US news outlets, none of which had correspondents in Baghdad, vigorously toed the official line. Newsweek derided Iraq’s “ham-handed attempt to depict a bombed-out biological weapons plant near Baghdad as a baby-formula factory”.

It took years for the official version of the bombing to fall apart. Even though I had been in the plant soon after it was destroyed, I could not prove that it did not produce biological weapons, though it seemed to me highly unlikely. Media interest waned rapidly: the best study I could find about how the destruction of the milk factory was spun by official PR is a piece by Mark Crispin Miller, from which the quotes above are taken, published in 2003.

Proof came slowly, long after public interest had waned. A Congressional report in 1993 on US intelligence successes and failures in the Gulf War revealed the shaky reasoning behind the US Air Force decision to bomb the site. It turned out that “mottled camouflage” had been used on the roofs of two known BW facilities. The report said: “at the same time, the same camouflage scheme was applied to the roof of the milk plant”. This was enough for the US Air Force to list it as a target.

Confident official claims about multiple sources of intelligence turned out to be untrue. One has to burrow deep into an unclassified CIA paper on Iraq’s BW programme, to find a sentence admitting that another plant, which was the real centre of Saddam Hussein’s BW effort, was unknown to the US-led coalition and “therefore was not attacked during the war, unlike the Abu Ghurayb (sic) Infant Formula Plant (the Baby Milk Factory) that the Coalition destroyed by bombing in the mistaken belief that it was a key BW facility”.

The story of the Abu Ghraib baby milk factory is worth retelling because it underlines–in the wake of the US, British and French air strikes on alleged Syrian BW sites on 14 April–the need for permanent scepticism towards claims by governments that they know what is happening on the ground in Syria or anywhere else.

But government duplicity is scarcely new and denunciations of it may obscure an even greater danger. Look again at the attack on Peter Arnett’s story by the White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater who was wrong–and Arnett was right–in saying that it contained “a disclosure that is erroneous, that is false”. But he adds correctly that it was a disclosure “that hurts our government and plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein”.

So it was in a minor way, and this brings us to a toxic attitude towards those who question the official version of events increasingly common in Britain and the US. It is overwhelming freedom of speech in Hungary and Poland and has already triumphed in Turkey and Egypt. In all cases, opinions diverging from those of the powers-that-be are branded as disloyal and unpatriotic and “false facts” are being spread by “useful idiots”, to use two ghastly clichés much in use. Marginalisation of dissenting is followed by its criminalisation: Turkey once had a flourishing free press but now any criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or words or actions of which he disapproves can be labelled as “terrorism” and punished accordingly.

There is much tut-tutting in Britain by the commentariat about the spread of authoritarianism in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, but less so about the growing limitation on what can be freely expressed at home. Increasingly, anything less than full endorsement of the government line about the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury or the suspected gas attack on civilians in Douma in Syria is characterised as support for Putin or Assad.

A telling instance of this new authoritarianism is the denunciations of a party of Christian clergy and peers who have been visiting Syria to meet church dignitaries and government officials. This is an understandable mission for concerned British Christians because Christians in Syria can do with all the solidarity they can get as they are forced to flee or are kidnapped or murdered by Isis, al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood. Like many Syrians, they see their choice as not being between good and bad but between bad and worse. They generally prefer survival under Assad to likely extinction under his enemies.

Visiting embattled members of the depleted Christian community in Syria is a good thing to do. And, yes, it could be said that the presence of British Christians in Damascus is very marginally helpful to Assad, in much the same way that Peter Arnett’s truthful report on the baby milk in Abu Ghraib must have pleased Saddam Hussein. The Foreign Office said the Christians’ visit was “not helpful” but then helping the British state should not be their prime concern.

None of the arguments currently being used in Britain and the US to smear those sceptical of the governmental and media consensus are new. The Bolsheviks used to denounce people who said or did things they did not like as “objectively” being fascists or counter-revolutionaries. When those being denounced, often only a preliminary to being shot, replied that they were no such thing, the Bolsheviks would reply: “tell us who supports you and we will tell you who you are”. In other words, the only thing that matters is what side you are on.

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U.S. Embassy Road Signs Go Up in Jerusalem & More

(Reuters) U.S. Embassy road signs went up in Jerusalem on Monday ahead of next week’s opening of the mission in accordance with President Donald Trump’s recognition of the city as Israel’s capital.

Dennis Edwards: Keep your eye on this event. Many eschatology students believe Israel is an important piece in End-time prophecy. The "Holy Covenant" is believed to be some kind of peace agreement over the Jerusalem situation. Some propose that Jerusalem will become an international city. We will see how the Arabs and the rest of the world respond to the opening of the USA embassy on May 15th which is the 70th year birthday of the modern state of Israel.

Israeli Minister Says ‘Lebanon Equals Hezbollah’ After Election

(Reuters) Hezbollah’s gains in the Lebanese election on Sunday show that the state is indistinguishable from the Iranian-backed Shi’ite group and that Israel should not distinguish between them in any future war, an Israeli security cabinet minister said.

Israeli Minister Threatens Assad Over Any Iranian Attacks From Syria

(Reuters) Israel could respond to any Iranian attack on it from Syria by toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, an Israeli security cabinet minister said on Monday, hinting that Assad himself may be targeted for assassination.

Dennis Edwards: Many conservative Orthodox Jews believe that the land God promised to Abraham is rightly theirs. The boundaries of Greater Israel include the Nile River in Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq. Both Lebanon and Syria would fall within Greater Israel. With this type of belief system you can better understand Israel's political and military position toward these two countries. Some Israelis believe that it is God's will for Israel to rule over the area of Greater Israel. The following link [The Oded Yinon Plan] gives more details about Israel's military plans since 1982 in respect to the future hopes of Israel.  If you take time to read the link you will note that Israel has been following this very plan and as a result we see the unstable situation in the area of Israel's dreams - Greater Israel."

PM Orban Vows to Preserve Hungary’s Christian Culture

(Reuters) Viktor Orban said on Monday the main task of his new government will be to preserve Hungary’s security and Christian culture, sticking to his nationalist policy to keep out migrants and fend off what he calls foreign meddling.

Dennis Edwards: In a similar move as the election of Trump, Viktor Orban has been elected. Like the Polish who wish to maintain their Christian culture and Polish ways, the Hungarians feel the same. The very strong European agenda which includes gay-marriages, abortion, gender identity is offensive to many traditionally Christian and Bible believing cultures. Trump gained support from this group in America in spite of his lackluster speaking ability and questionable morals. The Christians knew what Hillary stood for and could not in good conscience vote for her. I believe Trump won in protest to the strongly anti-family agenda of the left. Of course in Hungary, the question of accepting refugee immigrants from the Middle East is another concern. Eastern Europeans want to hold on to their traditional culture and feel threatened by European Union policies on the family and believe accepting thousands of immigrants could further destabilize their culture which is already feeling the pains of entering into the European Union. How the European Central Bank will take to Orban, and whether or not they will give him clear sailing is another question. Watch to see how Hungary's financial situation develops.  

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