Judaism’s sacred texts are called the Talmud, which are rabbinic commentaries on the Bible. Dr. Israel Shahak says on p. 5 of his Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,

“Jewish fundamentalists believe that the Bible itself is not authoritative unless interpreted correctly by Talmudic literature.”

After the fall of Judea and the cessation of the temple rituals in the first century, the rabbis could not help but understand that God had done this to them because of their sin. However, they never believed that they sinned in crucifying the Messiah. Yet the famous Talmudic passage in Tractate Ketubot, page 111, laid the foundation of Jewish thought on the Messiah and the Holy Land. Dr. Shahak writes about this on page 18 of his book,

“. . . God is said to have imposed three oaths on the Jews. Two of these oaths that clearly contradict Zionist tenets are: 1) Jews should not rebel against non-Jews, and 2) as a group should not massively emigrate to Palestine before the coming of the Messiah. (The third oath, not discussed here, enjoins the Jews not to pray too strongly for the coming of the Messiah, so as not to bring him before his appointed time. . . During the past 1,500 years, the great majority of traditional Judaism’s most important rabbis interpreted the three oaths and the continued existence of the Jews in exile as religious obligations intended to expiate the Jewish sins that caused God to exile them.”

Yet there was one dissenting rabbi named Moshe Nachmanides, who died in the year 1270. Speaking of this rabbi, Dr. Shahak says (p. 19) that he . . .

“. . . opined that Jews should not only emigrate to but should also conquer the land of Israel. Other important rabbis of that time and for many centuries thereafter ignored or strongly disagreed with the view of Nachmanides.”

“In the 1970’s, seven centuries after his death, Nachmanides became the patron saint of the NRP {National Religious Party in the Jewish State] and the Gush Emunim settlers.”

The Gush Emunim (“Block of Faithful”) is the primary settlement movement in the Jewish State that is messianic in its ideology. That is, while they reject Jesus as the Messiah, they are messianic in that they are looking for another messiah that is more to their liking—such as Barabbas, Bar Kokba, or the Eliezar ben Jair, the leader of the Assassins (Sicarii) at Masada.

The Chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1920-1935 was Avracham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook (1865-1935). He was the primary rabbi who developed the most extreme form of Zionism. His son, rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook succeeded him at his death as head of the NRP until his own death in 1981 at the age of 91.

In 1977 the NRP formed a “holy alliance” with the newly-formed coalition of extreme Zionist parties founded by Ariel Sharon with the help of Menachem Begin. It is called the Likud Party. This was when the Gush Emunim began to exert a huge influence on Israeli policies, particularly in regard to the settlement movement in the occupied territories.

Basic Doctrine of the Gush Emunim

Rabbi Kook was primarily influenced by the ideas of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, who was the founder of the most influential school of Cabbala (Jewish mysticism) in the 16^th century. Luria’s book, The Gates of Holiness, taught that all non-Jews have satanic souls. According to Rabbi Hayim Vital, who was Luria’s chief interpreter,

“Souls of non-Jews come entirely from the female part of the satanic sphere. For this reason souls of non-Jews are called evil, not good, and are created with [divine] knowledge.” [quoted from Shahak’s Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, p. 58]

This same teaching was echoed by Rabbi Schneerson, who was the head of the Lubovitcher Hassidic movement and lived in New York until his recent death. On page 59, 60 Dr. Shahak quotes from Schneerson’s book of recorded messages entitled, Gatherings of Conversations:

“. . . the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world . . . An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, wile the Jewish soul stems from holiness.”

Later, on page 61, Dr. Shahak mentions:

“Ariel Sharon was the Rebbe’s favorite Israeli senior politician. Sharon in turn praised the Rebbe publicly and delivered a moving speech about him in the Knesset after the Rebbe’s death.

This sheds much light on the personal ideology of Ariel Sharon in his treatment of non-Jews. It explains why the Arabs hate him above all Israelis.

Ariel Sharon

Mr. Sharon’s own autobiography, Warrior, tells us much about him, although he omits many things and lies about that which is forced to admit. He was just 20 years of age in 1948, so he was too young to join the terrorist organizations of Begin and Shamir during the 1940’s. But he then joined the military and soon rose to higher ranks.

On October 14, 1953, Ariel Sharon, commander of “101 Unit,” was just 25 years of age when he dynamited 56 houses of Kibbiya (or Qibya) one night, killing 67 civilians who were trapped inside and not allowed to leave. Sharon tells the background of this raid in his own words, writing on pages 85 and 86 of Warrior,

“At times the successes were mixed with tragedy and sometimes controversy, as happened at the village of Kibbiya in mid-October. The raid on Kibbiya was mounted in response to a particularly horrendous incident at the town of Yehud, where terrorists murdered a young mother named Susan Kanias and her two infants, one and three years old, while they were asleep. The police investigation indicated that the killers had infiltrated from the direction of Kibbiya, a Palestinian village near the border . . . .

“The paratroop officer and I were informed that General Headquarters had decided to carry out a retaliatory operation against Kibbiya . . . .

“This would be the first major Israeli reaction to Arab terrorism. . . .”

On page 88, Sharon continues the story:

“The orders were clear. Kibbiya was to be a lesson. I was to inflict as many casualties as I could on the Arab home guard and on whatever Jordanian army reinforcements showed up. I was also to blow up every major building in the town. A political decision had been made at the highest level.”

In Sharon’s book he excuses himself, claiming he did not know there were people in the houses. He says on pages 89, 90,

“According to the radio, sixty-nine people had been killed, mostly civilians and many of them women and children. I couldn’t believe my ears. As I went back over each step of the operation, I began to understand what must have happened. For years Israeli reprisal raids had never succeeded in doing more than blowing up a few outlying buildings, if that. Expecting the same, some Arab families must have stayed in their houses rather than running away. In those big stone houses where three generations of a family might live together, some could easily have hidden in the cellars and back rooms, keeping quiet when the paratroopers went in to check and yell out a warning. The result was this tragedy that had happened.”

Sharon tries hard to make people think this was just a “tragedy,” over which he had no control. And yet he says specifically that his orders were to inflict as many casualties as possible. Where did he expect those casualties to come from, if not from civilians? It was, after all, a “reprisal raid” for an attack on a civilian Jewish woman and her two children, killed by an Arab “terrorist” who had no right to oppose Zionist immigration and conquest of his own land.

The incident forced David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, to make a public apology for Sharon’s actions. However, Sharon makes it clear that he was only acting under orders—Ben Gurion’s orders! Frankly, I believe he tells the truth here. This is supported by Livia Rokach’s book, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, page 15, which is a report on the published diaries of Moshe Sharett, who was the Foreign Minister under Ben-Gurion at the time.

“Sharett tried to block the Kibya reprisal operation which had been endorsed by Ben Gurion on the eve of his departure for a vacation preceding his formal retreat. He pointed out that the minor border incident which was to have served as a pretext for the planned attack on the West Bank village had just been publicly condemned by Jordan and that the Jordanian representatives in the mixed armistice commission had promised to see to it that similar incidents would not be repeated.”

Rokach quotes directly from Moshe Sharett’s diary dated Oct. 14, 1953, page 37 where Sharett writes:

“I told Lavon that this [attack] will be a grave error, and recalled, citing various precedents, that it was never proved that reprisal actions serve their declared purpose; Lavon smiled . . . and kept to his own idea . . . . Ben Gurion, he said, didn’t share my view.”

The next day, after the massacre of Kibya, Sharett wrote this:

“According to the first news from the other side, thirty houses have been demolished in one village. This reprisal is unprecedented in its dimensions and in the offensive power used. I walked up and down in my room, helpless and utterly depressed by my feeling of impotence . . . I was simply horrified by the description in Radio Ramallah’s broadcast of the destruction of the Arab village. Tens of houses have been razed to the soil and tens of people killed. I can imagine the storm that will break out tomorrow in the Arab and Western capitals.”

Sharon’s willingness to murder Arabs is why he rose in the ranks of the military. Sharon writes a very revealing paragraph on page 250 of his book, Warrior,

“Years before, not too long after I had taken over the paratroopers, Dayan had once said to me, ‘Do you know why you’re the one who does all the operations? Because you never ask for written orders. Everyone else wants explicit clarifications. But you never need it in writing. You just do it.’ Now it was almost twenty years later and absolutely nothing had changed. Anyone other than Dayan would have carefully formulated an order describing what should be done and defining the parameters of the intended action. But from him there was only a signal, the nod of a head. That meant, as it always had, ‘Do what you want. If you succeed, fine. If it backfires, don’t start looking to me for support’.”

So we see the typical way in which Israeli politics was conducted in the years that the Labor Party was in power. They supported terrorism, but did not want to be held liable for their terrorism. So they hired Sharon as their “hit man” to do the dirty work for them. Sharon’s account of his own innocence is contradicted by Alexander Cockburn’s Feb. 6, 2001 article for Upstream, entitled “Ariel Sharon—the People’s Choice?” where we read,

“Sharon’s order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. . . Sharon and his men claimed that they believed that all the inhabitants had run away, and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses.

“The UN observer who inspected the scene reached a different conclusion. ‘One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them.’

“The U.S. Department of State issued a statement on 18 October 1953, expressing its ‘deepest sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives’ in the Qibya attack as well as the conviction that those responsible ‘should be brought to account and that effective measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future’.”

Sharon, of course, was never brought to trial, nor was he held accountable in any way. Such murders continued unabated. Sharon himself has never wanted peace and has actively worked against any peace arrangement, believing that the only solution is to drive all Arabs off the land.

This has been the consistent policy of the Gush Emunim’s settlement movement, backed by Sharon.

Ariel Sharon is the perfect man to fulfill Bible prophecy, and even his name identifies him with the “bloody city” of Jerusalem. The prophetic name of Jerusalem is Ariel. We read in Isaiah 29:1-4,

¹ Woe, O Ariel! Ariel the city where David camped! Add year to year, observe your feasts on schedule. ² And I will bring distress to Ariel, and she shall be a city of lamenting and mourning; and she shall be like an Ariel to me. ³ And I will camp against you encircling you, and I will set siegeworks against you, and I will raise up battle towers against you. ⁴ Then you shall be brought low. . . ⁵ But the multitude of your enemies shall become like fine dust, and the multitude of the ruthless ones like the chaff which blows away; and it shall happen instantly, suddenly. ⁶ From the Lord of hosts you will be punished with thunder and earthquake and loud noise, with whirlwind and tempest and the flame of a consuming fire.

It has been assumed that God was speaking about destroying the non-Jewish enemies who had come against Jerusalem. But that is simply not true. God did not say that He would save the Jews from annihilation at Jerusalem. He was speaking to Jerusalem itself, which would be delivered from God’s enemies. Luke 19:27 says,

²⁷ But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.

He was speaking of the Zionists themselves. They are the “enemies” of Jesus Christ in the parable, the “citizens” who hated Him and refused to have Him reign over them. These are also the enemies of Jerusalem itself. These are the people who have invaded and conquered Jerusalem. (See also Is. 63:10.) The city will be cleansed by a nuclear strike that is clearly described in Isaiah 29:5, 6 above.

In a nuclear strike, people are vaporized—that is, they “become like fine dust.” It happens “instantly” and “suddenly,” as the prophet says. It is accompanied by a “loud noise,” and the earth shakes as if struck by an “earthquake.” The blast creates a huge “tempest and the flame of a consuming fire.” Anyone who has seen pictures of a nuclear test know that Isaiah 29:5 and 6 is a perfect description of a nuclear blast.

In this way Jesus’ words will be fulfilled in Luke 19, where He says of the Zionists, “Bring them here and slay them in my presence.” It is my opinion that Ariel Sharon is the one called to lead the Jewish State to this destruction. It is also possible that the present escalation in the conflict is the beginning of a series of events that will end with this nuclear strike. The Arab nations are very disturbed over his invasion of the West Bank, the destruction and carnage that He has ordered and for which he is personally liable. Even now, before the damage has been assessed fully, the U.N. monitors, the Red Cross representatives, and the media are shocked at what they are finding.

All of this is vintage Sharon and fits perfectly with what he said in the interview with Amos Oz in 1982. In a news article dated April 19, 2002,

“The United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, visited the most heavenly damaged area and described the scene as ‘horrific beyond belief.’ He told Israeli Army Radio: ‘Jenin will forever be a blot on the history of the state of Israel’. . . Yesterday the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw added his voice to the calls for an outside investigation into Israel’s ‘excessive actions’ in Jenin, which is forces invaded on 3 April in a ‘counter-terrorism’ operation. Mr. Straw said, ‘Such is the scale of the evidence that there is a strong case for Israel to answer’.”

The next day Mr. Roed-Larsen reportedly said:

“Combating terrorism does not give a blank check to kill civilians,’ he said, angering Israeli officials who said the envoy had seemed to ignore the deaths of Israelis there.”

If these officials were speaking of the deaths of 23 Israeli soldiers in the siege of Jenin, the charge is rather ludicrous. The “gunmen” in Jenin were defending their city from the Israeli invasion. Have they no right to defend themselves from Israeli soldiers under orders from Ariel Sharon to inflict as many casualties as possible and destroy as much as they can?

Most incredible is how President Bush could call Sharon “a man of peace,” as reported on April 19. Ariel Sharon does not even believe that about himself! He believes that he is just doing the necessary “dirty work” on behalf of his country.

Also on April 19, Mr. Roed-Larsen was reported in the Washington Post to say, “Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict.” Protests “turned violent when Israeli security forces fired tear gas and beat the participants. Among those beaten were three members of the Israeli parliament.”