Russians & Syrians, Allied by History and Marriage

Russians and Syrians, Allied by History and Related by Marriage

By Ellen Barry, NY Times, July 1, 2012


MOSCOW—On one jasmine-shaded block in the Syrian port city of Latakia, Natalya lives three doors away from Nina, two from Olga, across a narrow alley from Tatyana, and a short walk from Yelena, Faina and Nadezhda. They are all women from the former Soviet Union who married Syrian men. Pan out to the greater expanse of Syria and the number of Russian wives grows to 20,000, the human legacy of a cold war alliance that, starting in the 1960s, mingled its young elites in Soviet dormitories and classrooms.

This unusual diaspora offers some insight into the many-stranded relationship between the two countries, one that makes the Kremlin reluctant to cast off Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Russia has strategic interests in Syria, including arms contracts that amount to $700 million a year, and a tiny port on the Mediterranean Sea that is its last military base outside the former Soviet Union.

But there is also a human factor, set in motion 50 years ago when social ties were forged among young people who met in college. Walk into any government ministry or corporate headquarters in Syria and you will almost certainly find men who spent their 20s in Russia; many brought home wives and raised children in Russian-speaking households.

“They are wives of the elite, who can have some influence, but it’s a soft influence,” said Nina Sergeyeva, who until recently led an organization of Russian expatriates from her home in Latakia. “The elite of Syria, the men, are very oriented toward Russia.”

As the conflict in Syria continues to defy a diplomatic solution, there are an estimated 30,000 Russian citizens living there, most women and children, Russian government officials estimate. This is an issue that Moscow has confronted before in the Middle East, when the collapse of Soviet-allied governments left Russian citizens stranded. But it has not faced anything on these proportions, or in the age of social media, when the plight of ethnic Russians could prove a serious embarrassment to Moscow.

“Based on the recent experience of evacuation from Lebanon and Palestine in recent years, problems always arise—though there we weren’t talking about thousands or tens of thousands of people, but several hundred,” said Yelena Suponina, a Moscow political analyst specializing in the Middle East. The task of evacuating Russians from Syria, she said, “would be 100 times worse.”

The Russian population in Syria is the result of an experiment begun in 1963, when the socialist Baath Party came to power. The Soviets provided education to top students from Asia, Africa and Latin America, throwing them together with Soviet classmates in work brigades and “evenings of friendship.”

The goal was to forge a global, pro-Soviet intellectual elite; the immediate result was weddings. Young women emigrated as the wives of doctors, professors and officials; “the Soviet side said farewell to them and essentially gave them up for lost,” said Natalya Krylova, a historian who has published widely on Russian populations in Africa.

Syrian-Russian unions were especially common—and not just for geopolitical reasons, husbands and wives said in interviews. Many Syrian men felt genuinely transformed by their time in Russia; they also sought to avoid paying a bride-price as is customary in the Middle East. Mahmoud al-Hamza, who met his wife, Nadezhda, in a Moscow park in 1971, said that in order to marry a Syrian, “you need an apartment, you need to pay money, you need to buy gold, and for a Russian woman you just need a wedding ring.”

Soviet women had their own reasons to pursue Syrians—nondrinkers who, thanks to the Baath Party’s ties to the Communists, traveled freely in and out of the Soviet Union. A new wave of marriages followed the Soviet collapse, as young women sought a way out of economic chaos.

Russian-Syrian families were drawn into a bitter conflict 16 months ago, when Mr. Assad’s government began a harsh crackdown on antigovernment protests. The opposition has since become an armed insurgency. Russia blames outside elements for the bloodshed and stands staunchly behind the government, continuing to supply Syria with arms and blocking international efforts to force Mr. Assad from office.

The Russian Orthodox Church has also defended Mr. Assad’s secular government, arguing that it protects religious minorities and acts as a bulwark against radical Islamism.

In February, after Russia blocked a United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for Mr. Assad to leave, the top representative of the Orthodox Church in Syria complained to Interfax that his parish was melting away as Russian families left Syria, the embassy had closed its school and, he said, “our women are insulted out loud in some districts of Damascus.”

A Russian consular official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about 9,000 Russians have officially registered with the embassy, though upward of 30,000 citizens are believed to be in Syria. He said there are currently no plans for evacuation, but said that if the need arose, buses would be sent to cities to transport Russian citizens to safety.

Such an operation would be especially daunting, because a vast number of the expatriate wives come from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, countries that would almost certainly turn to Moscow for assistance with their own citizens, Ms. Suponina said. She said she knows dozens of families who have quietly flown out women and children to Russia in recent weeks. Officials, she said, “are paying more and more attention to this.”

“You can criticize them for some mistakes, but nonetheless in Moscow they understood long ago that this is a very painful question,” she said.

Among the thorniest aspects is that, after 50 years of intermarriage, the line between who is Russian and who is not may be difficult to find, if it exists at all.

Svetlana N. Zaitseva, who spoke by telephone from her home in the Syrian port city of Tartus, was 19 when she met her husband, a linguistics student living in the same dormitory in what was then Leningrad.

She and her friends had only the dimmest idea of what life was like in other countries, she said. In the Soviet Union, “it was like the entire world was our friends, brothers and comrades.” Six months after the two met, she said, “I realized that we loved each other and could not live without one another.”

“From the height of my age, I must say that it’s of course better to marry someone from your own country,” she said.

But that decision is long past for Ms. Zaitseva, 62, a mother of three and grandmother of four. She is clinging to the hope that the conflict will end; but even if it escalates into war, she said, she would still choose to stay in Syria to the end.

“It cannot be otherwise,” she said. “We have become part of this place. Our children are here, who are citizens of Syria, and our grandchildren. Everything here is ours.”

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The End of American Independence

By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, July 1, 2012

We celebrate the fourth of July with fireworks, memorializing the American colonists’ struggle against the British empire by reenacting, in symbolic fashion, what was a war for independence—that is, an assertion of American sovereignty. As we’ve built an empire of our own, however, the celebration has degenerated into an orgy of nationalist vaunting, with the original conception obscured and mostly lost. Indeed, the US government disdains the very concept of national independence, routinely violating the sovereignty of others—and even denying its own.

When the colonists declared their independence, they recorded their reasons in a document—a Declaration that demonstrated this wasn’t just a territorial matter. They asserted their right to make a revolution because sovereignty resided in the people—not the king and his councilors. They didn’t want to create a centralized European-style state that would mimic the imperial grandeur of Britain. They wanted a republic—and they wanted to be left alone.

Flash forward 236 years, and—poof!—the republic is an empire, one that asserts its “right” to attack any nation on earth for any reason. Having divested itself of its modest republican cloth coat, and taken to wearing the imperial purple, Washington has also discarded the old-fashioned concept of popular sovereignty as conceived by the Founders. When the President can take the country to war with a single command, without consulting anyone, sovereignty is no longer in the hands of the people, but of one person—our de facto king.

If this power has no respect for the sovereignty of other nations, neither does it honor its own. Instead of petitioning Congress to unleash the dogs of war, American presidents routinely go before the UN Security Council to seek international sanction first—while stoutly maintaining congressional approval is unnecessary. When George Herbert Walker Bush went to war against Iraq he did it in the name of a “New World Order”—a concept that takes old-fashioned imperialism to a new level. For it would not be an American empire so much as it would be a trans-national entity, one that hovers over the world, but owes no special allegiance to any particular spot.

The idea was taken up by Bush I’s successors. “In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete,” declared Strobe Talbot, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State and one of that administration’s Deep Thinkers. “All states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.” The American revolutionaries, according to Talbot’s logic, should have saved themselves the bother of Valley Forge.

As Ron Paul has pointed out, the very idea of national sovereignty has been under attack, with all sorts of “multilateral” institutions—not only the UN but also the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the proposed North American Union—that are chipping away at the traditional concept of America’s independence.

These institutions are inhabited and controlled by a wealthy, arrogant, continent-hopping elite that owes no allegiance to any national entity, but only to its own interests as an emerging ruling class. Centered not just in Washington, but in all the capitals of Europe and the developing world, this unmoored elite of government officials, international bureaucrats, transnational corporate honchos, and professional do-gooders is hungry for its turn at power, and ruthless about attaining it. There is no international “crisis” where they haven’t meddled, making it worse—and providing an opening for direct military intervention by the Western powers.

Syria is a perfect example of how this crowd operates. Fund the “opposition,” funnel arms to the rebels, manufacture atrocity stories and feed them to complicit “mainstream” media outlets—then let the UN and NATO do the rest. In thinking about how the concept of national sovereignty has fared recently, I was struck by this account of the UN’s latest pronouncement on the Syrian crisis:

“The UK and French foreign ministers have said a UN communique drawn up in Geneva on Saturday night to address the escalating conflict in Syria will mean President Bashar al-Assad is ‘finished’ and will have to step down.

“The communique, which agreed terms for a transitional authority to oversee the end of violence in the country, was hammered out with the inclusion of Russia and China and called for ‘clear and irreversible steps’ after a fixed time frame.

“It stated that present members of the government could be included in the new body and initially leaving unclear the key question of whether Assad could be part of that transitional government.

“However, speaking on Sunday morning, the foreign secretary, William Hague, confirmed Assad would be excluded from any unity government under the terms of the agreement.”

Not an eyebrow is lifted by the imperious tone—and the assumption that the UN has the right to depose and enthrone at will. What if the Security Council decided a duly-elected US president was to be excluded from holding office? Americans think they are exceptions to this New World Order-ish rule, but they may wake up one day to find out they aren’t.

We are a prisoner of our own allies, who have constructed a thousand tripwires that can set us careening off into yet another war at a moment’s notice. We are, finally, a captive to our own self-conception as “the indispensable nation,” so puffed up with our own sense of ultimate power that we cannot conceive a crisis in which we do not have a hand.

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The Little Blind Angel

By Angela Koltes

On a dreary and overcast winter day, I set out with a few friends to spend the afternoon at the nearby school for the blind. It was one of those “any old Sundays” where I was exhausted from the week’s busy schedule and longed for the comfort of my warm bed and the welcoming idea of lounging at home.

I had no desire to go outside; after all, almost everyone would be spending time on themselves and taking the day off. But because we had promised to go by the school to give the children a little cheer and fun on a lonely Sunday afternoon, we were obligated to go.

On weekends, most of the families of students came to pick up their children, as the blind children boarded at the school during the week. So there were few kids this Sunday, yet each one of them showed their delight at our coming, welcoming us with joyful expressions.

We didn’t have much of a plan, but we brought a guitar, shakers, and bongos, hoping to bring some happiness into their seemingly colorless worlds. The children crowded around us, listening to the music and trying to understand where we came from and what we looked like. Some of them had their own instruments, as most of them are musically talented, and they played along, enthusiastically showing us what they knew.

In the midst of all the noise and activity I noticed one little short-haired girl sitting shyly away from the other children. I wondered who her parents were and why they hadn’t come to visit such a beautiful little girl. I felt angry, wondering how this child could deserve to be deprived of her sight and made to live as handicapped.

While watching her, the first thing that captured me was her bright and radiant smile. “How could this little blind girl, in her sad condition, be so happy?” I wondered to myself. The teacher, who followed my gaze, began to tell us her story. Seda was seven years old and had been through a brain operation two years before. “I could see the trees, the birds, the doctor’s face, everything.” She added, listening to her teacher, “But after I woke up, I couldn’t see anything anymore.”

It was as if a rock fell from a high ledge and landed at the bottom of my heart! I could only continue to watch the little girl in silence.

“But I am so happy!” she exclaimed, giggling and playing with her hands. “Why are you happy, Seda?” her teacher asked for us. “Well,” she began softly, “Even though I cannot see on this earth anymore, I will be able to see again in heaven—and I am waiting and looking forward to that day.”

My eyes filled with tears, and I knew by looking around that my friends shared the same feeling. The rest of the afternoon Seda stuck near me. She grabbed my hand and led me around the school. She sat on my lap and talked about all the food she liked to eat, each vegetable and fruit she enjoyed and why. She found such delight in the tastes and sounds around her, it was as if she had forgotten she could not use her sense of sight.

When I drove home that evening, Seda’s face stuck in my mind. What did this girl see in her black world that made her so happy? Later, when I would feel the strain of a difficult workday, whatever I might be going through at the moment, when I thought of Seda, I knew I couldn't complain.

Sometimes the dark days we are forced to pass through seem unbearable and we see no shining rays of dawn. We struggle each day while despising what we see around us. Yet I know if I can only strive to think as that little angel did, whose sight had been taken from her, and look toward heaven as she did, I can praise for each day I have been given on this earth.

Whenever I am tempted to curse the darkness and criticize what I see around me, that little girl’s smile comes to mind. I think of her faith and I think of the eyes that were given to her to see the daylight of tomorrow, and I know if she can, I surely can too.

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Yitzhak Shamir- a Pole we are not proud of! How a terrorist became Prime Minister in Israel!

By Joel Brinkley, NY Times, June 30, 2012

Yitzhak Shamir, who emerged from the militant wing of a Jewish militia and served as Israel’s prime minister longer than anyone but David Ben-Gurion, promoting a muscular Zionism and expansive settlement in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, died Saturday at a nursing home in Tel Aviv. He was 96.

Mr. Shamir had Alzheimer’s disease for at least the last six years, an associate said. His death was announced by the prime minister’s office.

A native of Poland whose family was wiped out in the Holocaust, Mr. Shamir was part of a group of right-wing Israeli politicians led by Menachem Begin who rose to power in the 1970s as the more left-wing Labor Party declined, viewed as corrupt and disdainful of the public.

Stubborn and laconic, Mr. Shamir was by his own assessment a most unlikely political leader whose very personality seemed the perfect representation of his government’s policy of patient, determined, unyielding opposition to territorial concessions.

Many of his friends and colleagues ascribed his character to his years in the underground in the 1940s, when he sent Jewish fighters out to kill British officers whom he saw as occupiers. He was a wanted man then; to the British rulers of the Palestine mandate he was a terrorist, an assassin. He appeared in public only at night, disguised as a Hasidic rabbi. But Mr. Shamir said he considered those “the best years of my life.”



Prime Minister Begin appointed Mr. Shamir as foreign minister in 1980. When Mr. Begin suddenly retired in 1983, Mr. Shamir became a compromise candidate to replace him, alternating in the post with Shimon Peres for one four-year term. Mr. Shamir won his own term in 1988.

As prime minister, Mr. Shamir promoted continued Jewish settlement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel conquered in 1967; the Jewish population in the occupied territories increased by nearly 30 percent while he was in office. He also encouraged the immigration of tens of thousands of Soviet Jews to Israel, an influx that changed the country’s demographic character.

One of the most notable events during his tenure was the Palestinian uprising against Israeli control that began in December 1987, the so-called intifada. He and his defense minister, Mr. Rabin, deployed thousands of Israeli troops throughout the occupied territories to quash the rebellion. They failed; the years of violence and death on both sides brought criticism and condemnation from around the world.

The fighting also deepened divisions between Israel’s two political camps: leftists who believed in making concessions to bring peace, and members of the right who believed, as Mr. Shamir once put it, that “Israel’s days without Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip are gone and will not return.”

The intifada dragged on year after year as the death toll climbed from dozens to hundreds. Israel’s isolation increased, until finally the rebellion was overshadowed in 1991 by the first Persian Gulf war.

Yitzhak Shamir was born on Oct. 22, 1915, in a Polish town under Russian control to Shlomo and Perla Penina Yezernitzky. He immigrated to the Palestine mandate when he was 20 and selected Shamir as his Hebrew surname. The word means thorn or sharp point.



Members of his family who remained in Poland died in the Holocaust; his father was killed by Poles whom the family had regarded as friends. Memories of the Holocaust colored his opinions for the rest of his life.

In the British-ruled Palestine mandate, Mr. Shamir first worked as a bookkeeper and a construction worker. But after Arabs attacked Jewish settlers and the British in 1936, he joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground Jewish defense league. In 1940, the Irgun’s most militant members formed the Lehi, or Stern Gang, named for its first leader, Abraham Stern.

After the British police killed Mr. Stern in 1942, Mr. Shamir became one of the group’s top commanders. Under his leadership it began a campaign of what it called personal terror, assassinating top British military and government officers, often gunning them down in the street.

To the Jewish public, and even to the other Jewish underground groups, Mr. Shamir’s gang was “lacking even a spark of humanity and Jewish conscience,” Israel Rokach, the mayor of Tel Aviv, said in 1944 after Stern Gang gunmen shot three British police officers on the streets of his city.

Several histories of the period have asserted that he masterminded a failed attempt to kill the British high commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael, and the killing in Cairo of Britain’s minister of state for the Middle East, Lord Moyne. When Mr. Shamir was asked about these episodes in later years, his denials held a certain evasive tone.

It was during his time in the underground that Mr. Shamir met Shulamit Levy, who was his courier and confidante, he wrote in his autobiography, “Summing Up.” The couple married in 1944, meeting at a location in Jerusalem and gathering people off the street as witnesses, said their daughter, Gilada Diamant. After a hasty ceremony in deep cover, each departed immediately for a separate city.

For a brief period after World War II, the three major Jewish underground groups cooperated—until the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946. Scores of people were killed, and Mr. Shamir was among those arrested and exiled to an internment camp in Eritrea. But he escaped a few months later and took refuge in France. He arrived in the newly independent Israel in May 1948.

Mr. Shamir was a pariah of sorts to the new Labor government of Israel, which regarded him as a terrorist. Rebuffed in his efforts to work in the government, he drifted from one small job to another until 1955, when he finally found a government agency that appreciated his past: the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. He served in several posts, including that of top agent in France, but returned to Israel and spent several years in business.

He joined Mr. Begin’s Herut Party in 1970 and was elected to Parliament in December 1973. When the Likud, or unity, bloc, which absorbed Herut, won power in 1977, Mr. Shamir was elected speaker. And when President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt visited Jerusalem in November 1977, Mr. Shamir and Israel’s president, Ephraim Katzir, escorted him to the speaker’s rostrum for his speech. But the next year, when the Parliament voted on the Camp David accords, which set out the terms for peace with Egypt, Mr. Shamir abstained.

In 1979, when Moshe Dayan resigned as foreign minister, Mr. Begin proposed appointing Mr. Shamir to replace him. Yechiel Kadishai, chief of the prime minister’s office under Mr. Begin, recalled that Mr. Shamir was chosen because the prime minister did not want or need a powerful figure high in his cabinet.

The liberal members of Mr. Begin’s coalition objected, so Mr. Begin named himself foreign minister until 1980, when Mr. Shamir finally took the post.

Mr. Shamir’s political opponents said that his laconic nature played into his handling of the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut in September 1982, during Israel’s war in Lebanon.

On the evening of Sept. 16, Phalangists—Lebanese Christian militiamen—entered the camps and began killing hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children while the Israeli Army stood guard at the gates.

The next morning in Tel Aviv, Ze’ev Schiff, a prominent Israeli journalist, received a call from a military official who told him about the slaughter. He rushed to the office of his friend Mordechai Zipori, the minister of communications, and told him what he had heard. Mr. Zipori then called the foreign minister, Mr. Shamir.

Mr. Shamir was scheduled to meet with military and intelligence officials shortly, so with some urgency Mr. Zipori told him to ask about the report he had received that the Phalangists “are carrying out a slaughter.”

Mr. Zipori remembered that Mr. Shamir promised to look into the report. But according to the official findings of an Israeli government commission of inquiry, Mr. Shamir merely asked Foreign Ministry officers to see “whether any new reports had arrived from Beirut.” When the meeting ended, Mr. Shamir “left for his home and took no additional action,” the report said.

Mr. Shamir was certainly not the only Israeli official who failed to act, but the commission found it “difficult to find a justification” for his decision not to make “any attempt to check whether there was anything in what he heard.”

When Mr. Begin retired in 1983, Mr. Shamir was designated his successor largely because of his position in the Foreign Ministry.

Even many in his own party thought Mr. Shamir would lose the election. And even after he took office, many saw this low-key, colorless man as a caretaker. In some ways he was. Asked once what he intended to do in his second full term in office, he said he had no plans except to “keep things as they are.”

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The Rock - Devotional

By P. Amsterdam

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to Switzerland for a yearly foundation board meeting as well as other related business meetings. While there, I would often look out the window at the beautiful lake and surrounding mountains, which I could see from the windows of the home of the friends we were staying with. There is one mountain in particular, across the lake, which stood out to me. It juts up like a gigantic rock, and each morning when we opened the curtains I would look at it and marvel at how majestic it was, towering over the lake. At the base of the mountain and going about halfway up, there are fields and trees. Then beyond the tree line it’s sheer rock all the way to the top.

We had many meetings, but during each break I’d step outside to look at the beautiful lake view and scenery, and would invariably end up focusing on the mountain, enjoying its splendor. Some days the sky was blue and clear, and the mountain seemed close enough to reach out and touch. One day, the top half of the mountain was covered in clouds, and all that could be seen were the trees which reached halfway up, while the rest was obscured. One morning, because of fog, it wasn’t possible to see the mountain at all. I knew it was there, but it was hidden from my view.

On our last morning in Switzerland, when I was looking one last time at the mountain, the Lord brought to mind a number of friends that I have spoken with or heard from of late and the different experiences and challenges they have been facing. One found himself fighting a severe life-threatening illness virtually from one day to the next, which required months of being in the hospital, with the uncertainty of whether he would recover or not. One couple had plans in place which would help them financially, but at the very last minute their plans fell through. Another is moving her family to another country without knowing whether she will have the means to make it financially once she arrives. She needs to go for a variety of reasons, she has desperately sought the Lord for His guidance, and things are falling into place, but it’s still a major step of faith. One couple’s ministry, which they’ve had for years, has come to an end, and they are struggling, not knowing what to do next. Another man’s job came to an end at the same time as he and his wife were facing some sickness in their family, and he hasn’t been able to get a new job yet.

I was looking at the mountain and thinking of these friends, and of the challenges they have been faced with. I thought about their fears, not knowing what’s ahead, not knowing how they will make it or what the future will bring. Each of them has expressed that while their faith has been tested and is still being tested, they believe the Lord will bring them through. As I thought about these loved ones, and so many others who are faced with uncertainty, the Lord reminded me of what I had observed while looking at the mountain over the previous days.

He reminded me that on some days the mountain was so clear, so obviously there, while on other days parts of it were obscure, and on the foggy day I couldn’t see it at all. And yet, whatever the weather, even when it couldn’t be seen, the mountain was there. Fog or clouds or raging storms might make it difficult to see, or even invisible, but it is always there, standing strong, unmovable.

I was struck by the courage of these people and of countless others who face the uncertainties of life with deep faith, even when the Lord’s presence is less evident. The Bible verse “we walk by faith, not by sight” came to mind.[1] The fact is that, like the mountain, God in all His majesty is there, always. Whether we see or feel Him is irrelevant to the fact that He is there. Through all the storms of our lives, through the times of uncertainty or confusion or weakened faith, through the fears, the questions, the doubts, the loss, He is there.

Sometimes things are bright and sunny in our lives, and God’s blessings are very clear to us. At other times, like when the top of the mountain is covered in clouds, it’s a bit more difficult to see or feel His presence; and in the dense fog of uncertainty one can question if He’s there at all. But, like the mountain, nothing has changed on His side. He is there, solid, unmovable, ever loving, ever caring, never failing. As mentioned in The Heart of It All: The Nature and Character of God—God’s Immutability, the Old Testament repeatedly calls God “the Rock.” It was the ancients’ way of expressing His steadfastness, His total faithfulness; the fact that He doesn’t waver, that He is always true to His word, His promises; that He doesn’t change His mind, that He is always there for us. I understood this better as I looked upon this mountain, realizing that through everything that happens around it, it stands; it is never moved.

Who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God?[2]

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.[3]

He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.[4]

Looking at this mountain—this gigantic rock rising above the lake—brought to mind the stability of God, the sureness of His presence and help, regardless of the circumstances. We may worry or fear; we may doubt or be unsure. The storms that seem to engulf our lives at times can make it seem that He’s not there, not listening, or not concerned. But the simple fact is that the storms, the fog, and the winds in life don’t affect the presence of God any more than these elements in nature affect the mountain.

God is there, always. He is faithful, always. He is the unmovable Rock. He will never leave nor forsake us.[5] Our faith may fail, but He isn’t dependent on our faith, for He is the Rock, the mountain, the faithful one whom we can depend on. Always.

This mountain was to me a reminder of God’s faithfulness, love, and concern; a reminder that God is in control. Even if things seem uncertain to me or in the lives of loved ones, even when it seems the clouds or fog have been there for a long time, the rock still stands, the mountain is there.

Later, when I was meditating on this and praying about it, the Lord said:

I am the solid rock, the firm foundation. I am He who is faithful and true, who is always there for you, who has everlasting love for you. Though there are times when you may not feel Me—when you feel that I have forsaken you or when you are fearful and feel the need of reassurance, but don’t seem to find it—you should remember that I am always there. Your circumstances do not determine whether I am with you. I am with you always. I always hear your prayers, and I will always answer you. It may not be on your timetable, it may not even seem to be the answer that you want or expect, but I always respond.

It often takes patience on your part to receive, and to even understand, the answer I have given. Sometimes you have to wait for the fullness of the answer, or the understanding of how I have answered. Sometimes My answers are a process which requires certain events to transpire one after another over time. But I am always there, ready to hear your prayers and to answer them.—And the lack of an immediate answer, and the subsequent time when things are foggy and uncertain, doesn’t mean that I am not there or that I am refusing to answer. You must always remember that beyond the fog and the uncertainty, I am there, just as the mountain is there even when you can’t see it. I am faithful and true, I am the Rock you can run to. I am steadfast in My promises, in My love and care for you and yours. I am with you always, even to the end of the earth, even for eternity. No matter what happens or doesn’t happen, know that I am always here, I will always love and care for you, and I will never fail you. Keep trusting Me, because I am always there.

This morning, when thinking and praying about some of my own tests of faith and uncertainties, I found myself singing an old hymn which quotes Psalm 121. It was a reminder to me about the Lord’s faithfulness and of His promise to keep us throughout our lives.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.[6]

[1] 2 Corinthians 5:7.

[2] Psalm 18:31 ESV.

[3] Psalm 18:2 ESV.

[4] Psalm 62:2 ESV.

[5] Hebrews 13:5.

[6] Psalm 121:1–8 KJV.

Copyright © 2012 The Family International.

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Humility: A Gateway to Blessing!

Humility: A Gateway to Blessing

A compilation

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Humility is like a magnet that attracts favor, attracts blessing. The more humble you become, the more magnetic you become! A humble spirit attracts honor, attracts favor, attracts blessing. A prideful spirit repels it.

When you humble yourself, the Holy Spirit does the heavy lifting. Humility allows God to do what God does. Humility is the key to spiritual authority: more humility = more authority.

If you want to see God move in powerful ways, all you need to do is stay out of God’s way. How? Humility! Staying on your knees is the way to stay out of the way! Or to say it another way, humility is the best way to get out of the way of what God wants to do!

God can accomplish more in one day than you can accomplish in a thousand years, but you’ve got to posture yourself in humility. You’ve got to stay humble, stay hungry. Getting on your knees is the surest and fastest and truest way to get where God wants you to go.

Hit your knees!—Mark Batterson

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God descends to the humble as waters flow down from the hills into the valleys.—Tikhon

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There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.—Martin Buber

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When you are humble, you enjoy the blessings of My love, joy, peace, faith, patience, understanding, and the fruits of My Spirit in your life. These bless you in your interactions with others, and smooth over the rough edges. They make your relationship with Me more alive and real, because you realize how much it is My blessing in your life that gives you happiness, rather than anything you could work up yourself.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

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The parable of the Pharisee and publican is a sermon in brief on humility and self-praise. The Pharisee, given over to self-conceit, wrapped up in himself, seeing only his own self-righteous deeds, catalogues his virtues before God, despising the poor publican who stands afar off. He exalts himself, gives himself over to self-praise, is self-centered, and goes away unjustified, condemned and rejected by God.

The publican sees no good in himself …, does not presume to lift his eyes to heaven, but with downcast countenance smites himself on his breast, and cries out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Our Lord with great preciseness gives us the sequel of the story of these two men, one utterly devoid of humility, the other utterly submerged in … lowliness of mind.

“I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”1

God puts a great price on humility of heart. It is good to be clothed with humility as with a garment. It is written, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.”2That which brings the praying soul near to God is humility of heart. That which gives wings to prayer is lowliness of mind. Pride, self-esteem, and self-praise effectually shut the door of prayer. He who would come to God must approach Him with self hid from his eyes. He must not be puffed up with self-conceit, nor be possessed with an overestimate of his virtues and good works.

Humility is a rare Christian grace, of great price in the courts of heaven, entering into and being an inseparable condition of effectual praying. It gives access to God when other qualities fail. Its full portrait is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. In our Lord’s teaching, humility has such prominence in His system of religion, and is such a distinguishing feature of His character, that to leave it out of His lesson on prayer would be very unseemly, would not comport with His character, and would not fit into His religious system.

Happy are they who have no righteousness of their own to plead and no goodness of their own of which to boast. Humility flourishes in the soil of a true and deep sense of our sinfulness and our nothingness. Nowhere does humility grow so rapidly and shine so brilliantly as when it confesses all sin, and trusts all grace. “I the chief of sinners am, but Jesus died for me.” That is praying ground, the ground of humility, low down, far away seemingly, but in reality brought nigh by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. God dwells in the lowly places. He makes such lowly places really the high places to the praying soul.

Humility is an indispensable requisite of true prayer. It must be an attribute, a characteristic of prayer. Humility must be in the praying character as light is in the sun. Prayer has no beginning, no ending, no being, without humility. As a ship is made for the sea, so prayer is made for humility, and so humility is made for prayer.

Humility is not abstraction from self, nor does it ignore thought about self. Humility is born by looking at God and His holiness. A true nobleness and greatness are in humility. It knows and reveres the inestimable riches of the cross, and the humiliations of Jesus Christ.

Humility is much more than the absence of vanity and pride. It is a positive quality, a substantial force, which energizes prayer. Humility springs from a lowly estimate of ourselves and of our deservings. The Pharisee prayed not, though well schooled and habituated to pray, because there was no humility in his praying. The publican prayed, though banned by the public and receiving no encouragement from church sentiment, because he prayed in humility. Humility is just feeling little because we are little. Humility is realizing our unworthiness because we are unworthy, feeling and declaring ourselves sinners because we are sinners. Kneeling well becomes us as the attitude of prayer, because it betokens humility.

There is no Christ without humility. There is no praying without humility. If thou wouldst learn well the art of praying, then learn well the lesson of humility.—E. M. Bounds

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The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.3

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Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly: but the proud he knoweth afar off.4

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For this is what the high and lofty One says—he who lives for ever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”5

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By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and honor, and life.6

Published on Anchor July 2012. Read by David Salas. Music by Michael Dooley.


1 Luke 18:14.

2 James 4:6.

3 Psalm 51:17 NIV.

4 Psalm 138:6 KJV.

5 Isaiah 57:15 NIV.

6 Proverbs 22:4 KJV.

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The Harbinger- The End of Gadalfy Explained

Open publication - Free publishing

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Israel´s Ultra-Orthodox Jews Face Military Draft!

Israeli Coalition Divided on Military Conscription for Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs

By Isabel Kershner, NY Times, June 29, 2012


JERUSALEM—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s supersize coalition was showing its first serious signs of stress on Friday in its quest for a more universal draft system in Israel.

An effort that has so far focused on phasing out mass army exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews suddenly became more charged as right-wing nationalist parties decided to press the equally—if not more—contentious issue of national or civilian service for Israel’s Arab citizens.

The issue is highly provocative. While most Jewish Israelis, and Druze men, are conscripted at 18, Israeli Arabs are generally not required to perform mandatory military service, though they may volunteer.

Many view the years of military service and reserve duty a burden, but the experience is often a requirement in the job market. and it affords certain social and economic benefits.

Arab citizens are entitled to equal rights in Israel but, like minorities in many countries, many experience discrimination. And many Israeli Arabs identify in terms of nationality with the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip more than with the country’s Jewish Zionist majority.

There is still a month to go before the deadline by which the government must come up with an alternative to the Tal Law, passed 2002, which formalized exemptions for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies. Israel’s Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and invalidated it in February.

But as the government struggles to come up with a new formula for a more equitable distribution of the burdens of citizenship, Mr. Netanyahu, whose recently expanded coalition commands a majority in the 120-seat Parliament, finds himself increasingly squeezed between the secular and religious forces in his government.

Many analysts here saw the political wrangling as a sign of Mr. Netanyahu’s weakness and predicted that it was unlikely to result in any drastic change regarding the draft.

“All that’s left is to be amazed by Benjamin Netanyahu, whom many call the king of Israel, who managed get into this mess,” Ofer Shelah, a well-known commentator, wrote on Friday in the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv. After Mr. Netanyahu chose to stave off early elections by expanding his coalition, he finds himself “with elections ahead of him and not behind him, and with coalition party members who only have their eyes on the ballot boxes,” Mr. Shelah wrote.

Mr. Netanyahu’s newest partner, the secular and centrist Kadima Party, is demanding a tougher line on drafting the ultra-Orthodox than the strictly religious parties in the coalition will probably tolerate. One Kadima legislator warned on Friday that the issue could tear his party apart.

Meanwhile, the secular, ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party led by Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, is championing the cause of obligatory service for Israeli Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population of 7.8 million. Mr. Netanyahu is in favor of encouraging more Arabs to volunteer for civilian national service, in a gradual process and in dialogue with the Arab community, but he is opposed to compulsory service for Arabs, an aide said.

On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Arab legislators by telephone and told them it was imperative to gradually increase the share of all sectors of society in the burdens of citizenship, according to officials in the prime minister’s office. But they added that it should be done in a phased manner and in coordination with Arab representatives.

One of the Arab legislators, Ahmad Tibi, told Israel Radio on Friday that Arab citizens were not willing to be the victims of a coalition war among the Jews. He said that before talking about equally sharing the burden, there had to be equality for everyone—in infrastructure, in budgets, in land and in education.

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Ten Habits of Grateful People- Even In Tough Times!

Ten Habits of Grateful People … Even In Tough Times

Stepcase Lifehack, 28 Jun 2012

“Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.”—Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

It is no secret that gratefulness is correlated with life satisfaction and happiness. Countless research findings, particularly in the rapidly emerging field of Positive Psychology, have shown that gratefulness and life satisfaction go hand in hand. Those who tend to be more grateful rather than bitter are generally more positive, more satisfied with their lives, and will be able to see the silver lining even on cloudy days.

Despite this intuitive understanding of the importance of gratefulness, all too often when life throws us curve balls, this grateful mindset all but disappears. It certainly is easier to be grateful when you are on a winning team and things go in your favor. However, the true test of resiliency and gratefulness is when life does not go your way.

No matter what happens to us, if we “dig deep” we often can find that there is really plenty to be thankful for in our lives. The following are the 10 top habits of people who remain steadfast in their ability to be grateful, and can temper the blows life gives them with an unwavering “attitude of gratitude” mindset:

1. Grateful people don’t expect that life is going to give them everything they deserve. They realize that good things do not always happen to good people, and they have given up the notion that life “owes them” anything more than it can offer. Cancer, afflictions, and even the death of innocent people are unfortunately part of life. The question is not if life is unfair, but can we move on in spite of it.

2. They do not have preconditions to their happiness. They do not think “If this happens” only then “I will be happy.” They understand happiness is not coming from the outside, but from within. They focus more on their adjustment to what happens rather than try to change what cannot be changed. They do not attempt to micromanage people and things in their lives that are not really in their control.

3. People who are grateful have realized that you cannot have the rainbow without the rain. Furthermore, they know that you don’t have honey without the bee, and you can’t have the rose without the thorns. They see rainy days as a normal part of life rather than an aberration, and learn from the rain rather than just wait for it to go away. They admire the beauty of the rose even though it has its thorny side, and savor the sweet taste of honey even though the bee can sting. Realizing you cannot have one without the other, they are grateful for both.

4. Grateful people have hope. No matter what happens, hope is not lost. They realize the future is uncertain, and while they plan for it, they do not try to micromanage outcomes that are beyond their sphere of influence. They take comfort in the fact that once the sun sets, it rises the next day. They have faith that there is more to life.

5. Those who are steeped in bitterness and grudges have no space in their heart to be grateful. Forgiving your spouse for not being as understanding as you would have been, forgiving your children for making choices that would not have been your own, and giving up the grudge of a slight or injustice from a friend, are all parts of the gratitude equation. Forgive others for not acting or being like you had hoped. Carrying the torch of bitterness is going to hurt you more than them. As Buddha said, “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

6. People who are grateful know that a grateful attitude takes work. Gratefulness does not always come naturally, especially in the most challenging times. In such times, grateful people work on keeping a good perspective.

7. Grateful people have healthy thinking habits. They go by the motto, “Think Straight—Feel Great!” They can separate their perceptions from the facts and separate rational from victim-like irrational ways of thinking. For example, they will replace victim self-talk such as “They make me so mad” to victor self-talk such as “I was mad when they did that.”

8. Grateful people are flexible in their thinking. People who think flexibly are at an advantage in life, as flexibility is the key to growth and wisdom. They don’t cling stubbornly with ways of thinking that do not work, and do not need to see a shift in attitude as meaning a personal defeat and referendum of how wrong they used to be. They realize they can choose their perceptions and have a right to change their minds. With this mentality, the doors that close yield others that now become open.

9. People who love to learn tend to be grateful. Each setback or unforeseen life event offers us lessons, and grateful people focus more on the lessons they can get out of each situation rather than the disappointments. Even mistakes and failures are seen as learning opportunities.

10. Grateful people define their self worth by their determination and their dreams, not their regrets and disappointments. A grateful mindset has no room for excessive self-recrimination and low self esteem. People who are stuck in past regrets and see themselves as losers in life or as having failed badly in even certain areas of their lives will not be able to be truly grateful. Positive self esteem sets the foundation for gratefulness.

How about starting a Gratefulness campaign in your own life? Start now by writing down at least 10 things you are thankful for.

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