9th of Av And Middle East Update

Bashar Assad

Keep your eye on the solemn fast day of the 9th of Tisha B’Av . Several major catastrophes have befallen Israel on the 9th of Av. Tisha B’Av marks the culmination of the mourning period known as "The Three Weeks," and is a day of sorrow, and remembrance. The 9th of Av has become a solemn fast day among religious Jews especially those in Israel. This year it begins at sunset on Saturday July 28 and ends at sunset on Sunday July 29. The following 20 catastrophes occurred on the 9th of Av:

1.1312 BC After the exodus from Egypt, while the Jews were wandering in the desert, 12 spies were sent to report on the ‘promised’ land ahead, the land of Israel (Canaan). 10 of them returned on the 9th Av with negative reports. Their lack of faith caused God to condemn all of their generation, except for the two spies who brought back positive reports of the promised land, Hence the Jews died out in the desert rather than live to enter Israel.
2. 586 BC, Solomon's Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity began. 100,000 Jews lost their lives during the invasion by the Babylonians.
3. 70 AD Titus destroyed the Temple just as Jesus Christ predicted in Luke 19. By the way, most of the 15 Roman legions used in the destruction were Arab mercenaries and they and the Romans slaughtered over 2 million Jews. So many Jews were crucified that the Romans ran out of wood. More than 1,000,000 Jews were sold as slaves by Romans or were killed and tortured in gladiatorial "games" and pagan celebrations.
4. 71 AD the Romans plowed Jerusalem under with salt in order to make it permanently desolate.
5. 130 AD The Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered Governor Tineius Rufus to plow Jerusalem over again. This "plowing" fulfilled the prophecy in Micah 3:12, to erase Yehudah or the Jews from memory.
6.135 AD during the time of the Jewish revolt against Roman rule, soldiers led by Rabbi Simon bar Kochba were massacred in their final battle at Bethar and the Jewish revolt was smashed by the Romans. Over 500,000 Jews were slaughtered. The Roman emperor Hadrian turned Jerusalem into a Roman city. The Romans implemented their own version of the Nazi’s Final Solution by banning the practice of Judaism thinking the Jews would disappear as a nation and all the Jews would become Romans. Jews who circumcised their children, read the Torah, refused to eat non-Kosher food were subject to the death penalty.
7. In 136AD the Roman Emperor Hadrian established a heathen temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple. Jerusalem was renamed Alia Capitolina, and the Jews were forbidden to enter the city. Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city, and renamed the land Palestina, to distance the land from its Jewish heritage.
8. 1095 AD In the First Crusade declared by Pope Urban II, 10,000 Jews were killed in the first month. The Crusades brought death and destruction to thousands of Jews and totally obliterated many communities in the Rhineland and France.
9. 1190 AD There was a mass suicide of 500 Jews as a result of the people storming a castle in which the Jews had sought sanctuary in York, England.
10.1290 AD (5050)The Jews were expelled from England by King Edward I nicknamed "Longshanks." The expulsion was accompanied by pogroms and confiscation of property. The Jews were given until All Saints Day, Nov. 1, to depart. (Pogroms are an organized, often officially encouraged, massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially Jews.)
11. 1306 AD The Jews were expelled from France.
12.1492 AD (5252)An inquisition in Spain and Portugal culminated in the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. Jewish families were separated and many died by drowning. There was a massive loss of property. The Golden Age of Spain came to a close when Queen Isabella and her husband Ferdinand ordered that the Jews to be banished from Spain. The edict of expulsion, The Alhambra Decree, was signed on the 31st March and the Jews were given exactly four months to put their affairs in order and leave Spain and its territories. (Some historians believe Christopher Columbus may have had Jewish blood and that some of his sailors were Jews fleeing Spain.
13. 1626 The birth of Shabtai Tsvi, a false and apostate Messiah, was recorded.
14.1882 The pogroms against Russian Jews began.
15. 1914 (5674) World War I (WWI) began when Germany declared war on Russia. Russia began persecuting its Jewish citizens. Seventy-five percent of the world's Jews lived in war zones. Jews fought in armies of all sides, with more than 120,000 Jewish casualties. More than 400 pogroms began immediately following the war in Hungary, Ukraine, Poland and Russia.
16. The building of the concentration camp Dachau, the boycotting of Jewish businesses, and Jewish people being driven out of the military all began on the 9th of Av.
17. 1940 (5700) On the 9th of Av Himmler presented his plan for the “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem to the Nazi Party and the Nazis began the murder of all the Jews in Europe.
18.In 1942 the Nazis begin deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp.
19. 1989 Iraq walked out of talks with Kuwait.
20.1994 The deadly bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killed 86 people and wounded 300 others.
21. In Israel on the 9th of Av in 2005 Jewish settlers in Gaza were forcibly expelled from their homes to enable the transfer of Gaza to the Arabs in the so-called “disengagement.” Two years later, many of the Jews expelled were still without homes.
22.Mitt Romney is going to visit Israel on the 9th Av. Dan Senor of the Weekly Standard wrote, quote “What better way for the Governor to understand the opportunities and the threats to Israel than to be there on a day when the people of Israel and Jews around the world commemorate and mourn the destruction of the Jewish Temples and Jerusalem.”
Of course there’s no way of knowing in advance whether another terrible event will take place this year on the 9th of Av. But with the events in Syria approaching a crisis point and recent terrorist incidents anything is possible.
What are the facts concerning Colorado and Jerry Sandusky? We are living in a society where we punish the crime rather than the criminal. We hold society responsible rather than the person responsible for the act. We live in a society and culture that promotes and embellishes violence. In reference to Jerry Sandusky we live in a society that promotes man-boy relationships. For example, the American Psychological Association in its papers has promoted man-boy relationships. When someone commits these acts we are shocked and horrified. Our society is like ancient Israel. In Jeremiah 6:16 God says, "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask about the ancient paths, 'Which one is the good way?' Take it, and you will find rest for your souls. But the sinful Jews said, 'We will not take it.'" Yeshua said in Matthew 15:19, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness and blasphemies." 2 Chronicles 12:14 says, "He did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek God." All of these horrors - violence, murder, child abuse, child rape, pornography etc. have their root in sin. When sin is glorified in a society there are bad results. Each of us is responsible for our own actions. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it." The shooter in Aurora and Jerry Sandusky are ultimately responsible for their actions. And we are responsible for ours. This is a free society and is a reflection of it's people. We Christians must do a better job of being salt and light to this dark, dying and pagan world.
The U.S. government has officially shifted its Syrian policy away from trying to find a diplomatic solution through the UN, to undermining and ousting the Assad regime. The fact is the U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and other nations have been undermining Assad’s regime for months. Lame stream media reports in the last few days have made it seem that the Assad regime was on its last legs, nothing could be further from the truth. While defections by Sunni conscripts appear to have increased, loyalist forces show no sign of turning on the government. The 4th Division, commanded by Assad’s brother Mahar, is made up largely of Alawite officers and troops. They have been deployed in the capital where they have driven the rebels from many of the neighborhoods they captured a few days ago. The rebels are retreating from Aleppo dogged by the Syrian army’s 11th Division firing heavy artillery shells. The troops are also shooting Katyusha 240mm rockets into residential districts of Aleppo where rebels are still holed up. Aleppo, Syria’s second city stayed clear of the civil war up until now. The Alawites will fight to the death because their survival as a tribe and people is at stake. The U.S. is trying to get nations to stop the flow of arms from Iran to Syria but the government of Iraq on Monday publicly supported Assad and opposed his resignation. So the flow of arms by air from Iran over Iraq to Syria will continue. Christians, Druze, Kurds, Shiites, and especially the Alawites, who currently dominate the military and economy, know that a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood government in Syria would take away the relative freedom they have to worship, and impose Sharia law. The Syrian Kurds have made a deal with Assad to stay out of the rebellion if Syrian troops leave Kurdish areas. This frees up more of Assad’s loyal troops to go to other trouble spots. Assad has let 2000 Kurdish PKK rebels to set up bases in Syrian Kurdistan. The PKK has already launched their first attack against the Turks. The Turkish government countered by approving cross-border attacks against the PKK’s new bases in Syria
The fact is there is really very little that the US can do to assert control over a post-Assad Syria. The fact is Syria is in a civil war and any notion that we can direct events to our advantage is an illusion. If Assad goes down we can look forward to a radical Sunni Islamist government in Syria. We are between a rock and hard place in regards to Syria and the Islamist regimes now in power in North Africa. Can you spell Sunni Islamic caliphate?
Moscow and the US both warned Assad he would be held personally accountable if he used chemical weapons. Syria ratified an international protocol in 1968 that bars the use of poison gases as a method of warfare. Syrian officials said they would treat an Israeli attack on its chemical weapons stocks as war and use WMD against Israel.
In Jordan King Abdullah declared a national state of emergency and high readiness Friday when the number of Syrian refugees granted haven in the kingdom reached a quarter of a million. Jordanian authorities bar Palestinians living in Syria from entering Jordan.