Did the Jews Force the Arabs Out of Israel?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. Currently we’re going through Dave Hunt’s book, A Cup of Trembling—Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy. And, Dave, one of the reasons we’re taking our time with this is that the book’s out of print. It’s no longer available, but, by the grace of God, we are hopefully going to get it back in print, maybe a revised, updated edition.

Dave: Yeah, we’re working on that right now.

Tom: Well, actually for our listeners who are maybe joining us for the first time, we have, in past programs, dealt with Israel, with Islam, with things that have been going on in the Middle East, trouble in the Middle East, basically, and talking about why these things have come about…how…the history, basically, of the people there. And more than that, I think, and the value of your book, and the thing that I hope speaks to the hearts of the people who are listening to the program, and maybe have the book or have read the book, prophecy—prophecy is proof that God exists and that the Jews are his witnesses.

Dave: Absolutely. And because the prophecies were laid out in specifics—in detail—centuries, even thousands of years, before they were fulfilled. These are prophecies about Israel. They’re recorded in the Bible. They’ve been there as a witness for a long, long time. The whole world has witnessed their fulfillment. No one can deny it. In fact, these prophecies continue to be fulfilled in our day. I mean, the very title of the book A Cup of Trembling—God said, “I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone around the necks of all the nations.” Well, what greater burden is there today than Jerusalem and Israel? The time that is spent—we all know. You’ve got to solve that problem over there. But yet, God said [that] all the nations that come against it will be cut in pieces. Even though all the world comes against it—and, of course, that’s talking about Armageddon. So the fact that these people have been scattered, they’ve been hated, persecuted, killed like no other people, anti-Semitism foretold in detail, yet God said He would preserve them an identifiable ethnic group, bring them back into their land, and there He would make the princes of Judah like fire that would devour the nations around them—and we’ve seen that in war after war.

Okay, so, Tom, as you said, you can’t be an atheist. You can’t deny it. There it is. God has proved that He is God—the God of the Bible is God and the Bible is His Word. And prophecy is unique to the Bible. There’s nothing in the Qur’an, or the Hindu Vedas, sayings of Buddha and Confucius—you go down the line about this. So many prophecies, and Israel and Jacob mentioned almost 3,000 times in the Bible; Jerusalem over 800 times—not once in the Qur’an.

So here we have a unique book. And it has laid it out in detail. You cannot deny it. And nowhere else is this declared and it has come to pass and is coming to pass. Tom, this, in fact, this is the proof that God himself offers—the Bible. The primary proof—and there are many other proofs.

Tom: Dave, chapter 7 of your book is titled “The Struggle to Survive.” We talked last week about something that can only be described as a miracle, and that is the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947.

Dave: Well, that has a long history, and I can’t…Tom, you get as old as I am—now you’re running fast to catch up to me, but you’ll never catch me, Tom. That’s just kind of the way time works, you know? But we have gone over some of this in the past, and how this all came about, and how the United Nations November 29, 1947, partitioned so-called Palestine—only gave the Jews 18 percent of what they had promised. But nevertheless, how that came about.

You would never get the United Nations to make such a vote today. They are so adamant in their opposition to Israel. You have more than 60,000 votes against Israel—these are individual votes, now. Israel has been condemned hundreds of times. They’re not even allowed a proper status in the United Nations, and so forth, and the prejudice against them just gets worse. Anti-Semitism is on the increase.

So that this happened at that time, and in fact, I guess you would have to say—it’s a horrible thing to say—but Isaiah ends saying, “When Israel travailed, she brought forth her children,” and it seems, had the Holocaust not occurred—had not the nations of the world had a momentary twinge of conscience, you could say, they would never have allowed Israel to exist. And even after they partitioned Israel—you know, the Arab armies attacked, the whole world was expecting that Israel would lose these few settlers against all this military might…

Tom: Well, Dave, that’s what I wanted to get into here. I used the term “miracle,” and as I said, I think that’s a right word for that. But what kind of miracle is this? Because once they are established as a state, as you were just indicating, the response of the Arab High Command and the Arab League was to destroy Israel—overwh…and they had overwhelming numbers. I think there were 90,000 Jews in Jerusalem—cut off from food, from arms, all of these things. But why the struggle here? The struggle to survive? If it’s a miracle of God, you know, why is that?

Dave: Well, God doesn’t just put us in a bed of roses and we don’t even have to feed ourselves or till the soil. Even Adam had to till the soil. There’s much that we have to do. He hasn’t turned us into puppets. He doesn’t just pull the strings. So, number one, there is effort that is involved. Number two, Israel is still in unbelief. They have rebelled. This is what got them in trouble in the first place, and I don’t think I’ve said it on this program—if I have, a long time—but I, you know, we have a mutual friend, a Jewish believer in Jesus, and he sometimes says, “Well, why do I have a Brooklyn accent and love bagels and lox? Because my forebears sinned, and God scattered us everywhere,” okay?

And we’ve been over there in Israel, and you remember standing there at that kibbutz at the base of the Golan, and the guy boasted he’s an atheist! And he doesn’t believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He doesn’t believe that that is why they’re in that land; and they are still in unbelief and rebellion against God and in rejection of their Messiah.

So of course there will be some trials and tribulations, and the worst is yet to come. Jeremiah:30:7Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
See All... calls it “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” and the Bible says two thirds of all the Jews on this earth will be killed. That’s worse than the Holocaust.

Tom: Now, Dave, these aren’t your ideas. These are prophecies written by Jewish prophets.

Dave: Absolutely. And the fact that they have come to pass—the ones that should have come to pass by now have been fulfilled—gives us every confidence that those that are yet future will be fulfilled.

Tom: Well, let me quote Jeremiah:30:11For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.
See All..., which relates to this: “I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee; though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee. But I will correct thee in measure and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.”

Dave: Well, that explains it, Tom. There are problems, and there will be travail, and there will be a loss of lives because they refuse to repent. And it will not be until Israel faces such an impossible situation with the entire world against them—Jerusalem is about to be captured, and Israel is about to go down in flames—then at last they will cry out to their Messiah, and He will appear, intervene, and rescue them. And that is given to us in Zechariah 12.

Tom: Dave, but in terms of details, we’re talking about the struggle to survive: Arafat’s uncle, Haj Amin al-Husseini—give us some particulars about this guy.

Dave: Well, he was amazingly voted in by the British to be the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. That was even after he’d been involved in terrorism. He utterly opposed Britain, and during the war, he managed to escape and got to Berlin. He was a friend of Hitler. We have letters passing back and forth between him and Himmler during the days preceding that time. We know what he did. He got on the…well, Himmler cabled him, on one occasion: “The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag ‘The Extermination of World Jewry.’ Our party sympathizes with the fight of the Arabs against the foreign Jew.”

By the way, Anwar Sadat wrote an open letter to Hitler after his death and said, “I hope you’re still alive. You were right. The only thing we have against you is you didn’t finish the job, and we are going to finish it.”

But anyway, when Haj Amin got to Germany, in Berlin, March 1, 1944—we have records of this—over the radio he issued the following call: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God [by that he meant Allah] and religion and saves your honor! God is with you.”

Now, Tom, whatever we say in here, and we say very little about Haj Amin al-Husseini, one of the most evil men that ever walked this earth—his hatred for the Jews knew no bounds. He was determined to wipe them all out. And that is why he—well, he went into Bosnia and helped organize troops there. He worked for Hitler, expecting that Hitler would take over North Africa, would take over Palestine, so-called, and would exterminate the Jews. Now this is all thoroughly documented. I have one entire book that deals with just this subject alone.

But this is not only the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. This is the Arab mentality…

Tom: Well, Dave, this statement—this isn’t just some demagogue out there. This is consistent with the Qur’an and the Hadith.

Dave:  Absolutely. And the statements made by Muhammad that every Jew on the face of this earth had to be wiped out before the last day could come.

Tom: Dave, along the line with regard to the struggles of the Jews, you mentioned earlier the votes in the United Nations. Amazingly, the Soviet Union cast the deciding vote in favor of partitioning Israel.

Dave: Yeah. That’s interesting.

Tom: Yet, they were the ones who supported the Arabs in their wars against Israel.

Dave: Oh, backed them with military advisors, with military hardware, with money, and arms, and so forth. So, when you consider that, Tom, and many other facts that we don’t have time to go into, it’s quite apparent that some of these nations that voted for the partition of so-called Palestine gave Israel such a narrow strip of land that it was indefensible, they thought that this would be the way to finally get rid of the Jews. They didn’t think Israel would survive. How could they possibly survive? They were outnumbered so badly and outgunned in every way. So you have to look at it several different ways—this vote.

But when Palestine was partitioned the end of November 1947, the Arabs rioted, and the British helped them! The British, who were there supposedly to keep the peace. The British, who were there under a mandate following the 1922 Declaration of Principles of the League of Nations that was to see to it that Palestine—this land they call Palestine, which used to be called the land of Israel and belonged to the Jews; that it was given to the Jews, and Britain betrayed the Jews. Kept them out and let in Arabs, and so forth. And even worse than that—I don’t believe we mention it in the book, but we certainly will in the revised edition—in 1944, you remember Hitler had not yet gotten into Hungary. He did not invade Hungary until after he was defeated on the Russian front. There were still 500,000 Hungarian Jews untouched by the Holocaust. Hitler needed money. Himmler and Hitler, the Nazis, and so forth—I mean, this is all, again, thoroughly documented—they offered to sell 500,000 Hungarian Jews to the allies for $2.00 a piece. For $1 million you could have saved 500,000 from Hitler’s ovens.

Britain said, “There is no room in Palestine for them,” okay? And we mentioned in the past, you can count the demise of the British Empire from the time they betrayed—they turned against the Jews. They drove back the skeletal survivors of the Holocaust who were within sight of the promised land—the British Navy drove them back and put them in camps, and so forth.

Now, by God’s grace, Wallenberg, as you know, he and his buddies managed somehow to put together false documents, false passports, and they rescued about 100,000 Jews. And Wallenberg was swallowed up in the Soviet Union—we don’t know exactly what happened to him, but they took him prisoner and did away with him. Why, I don’t know.

But the other 400,000 that remained went mostly to Auschwitz—they went to Hitler’s ovens. Incredible! And America stood by and allowed this to happen. We said we didn’t want them either. I mean, we were not willing.

Tom: Dave, you move on to the issue of, really, immigration and displacement. We have some Jews who were able to immigrate at that time, but there was a displacement you point out of about 800,000 Palestinian Arabs. And there’s a controversy over this in terms of who was doing what to whom?

Dave: Yeah, Tom, well in the revision I’m going to lower that figure from 800,000 to about 450,000. This was what people were generally saying at that time, but as we have investigated further, there were only about 450-500,000 Arabs. They left, not because the Israelis pushed them out. Now in some cases, they’re shooting at the Israelis. They got pushed out, no doubt about that. But in general, and again, we give you the documentation, the Israelis said, “Don’t leave. We can get along.” In fact, the very Declaration of Independence signed by David ben Gurion and the others who came up with the new nation Israel, they said, “We want to get along in peace with our neighbors. We can do this. We can build a prosperous Middle East together,” okay?

So it was the Arab High Command that broadcast, “All Arabs, get out! We’re coming in. We’re going to kill the Jews! We’re going to wipe them out.” And so many of them fled, and there were rumors about Israeli troops raping civilians, and so forth. That further frightened the Arabs, and many of them fled.

Now, we want to point out again that those who remained, they comprise about 16 percent of the Israeli citizens today. They have full voting rights. Some so-called Palestinian Arabs are even members of the Knesset. You can’t even be a citizen if you’re a Jew in Jordan or Egypt, or Muslim countries. In fact, no Jew is allowed even to set foot in Saudi Arabia. So we don’t condone everything that Israel has done, but when you look at the contrast—the way they tried to treat them and the way they have sat there and suffered….

And by the way, Tom, it was in the 1948 War of Independence that Jordan took East Jerusalem and what is called the West Bank. Now why do they call it the West Bank? Because it had all been designated for Israel. Israel, as you remember, there were a number of tribes that were on the east side of Jordan. That was part of the promised land that God had promised them. So the West Bank—oh, that’s the other side of Jordan, even. So they not only took the east side of Jordan, which the British gave to the Husseini family—this is a…well, they’re relatives also of Haj Amin al-Husseini—this was the Hashemite kingdom. They created Transjordan. They gave them the east side, and now they took the west…part of the west side called the West Bank in the 1948 War of Independence, along with east Jerusalem.

And Egypt took what’s called the Gaza Strip. They held that for 19 years: West Bank, Gaza Strip, and so forth. You never, ever once heard any mention of a Palestinian state. It was the Jordanians and the Egyptians who put them into camps, kept them there, would not give them citizenship or freedom, and so forth. And they never talked about a Palestinian state. Why didn’t they give it to them, when they had these territories? But in fact, they used them as launching pads for terrorism against Israel, attacks against Israel, over and over.

And then, you remember, in 1967 they’re threatening—they are going to come in….We were there, and I probably mentioned that before, but our family was over there, my wife and I and our four young children from 15 down to 8. We saw it firsthand. We were in Egypt in May/early June, 1967. We went up to Beirut—this was just before the Six-Day War, and God told us to get out, and I won’t go into those details (and He actually gave us four specific signs) and we headed north. And we just barely in our VW bus just got into Turkey when the war broke out. We had intended to be going…driving through Jordan at that time.

So here they are, and they are…they’re saying, “We have the armaments now…” In fact, as we drove through Egypt, they kept talking about the 19-Year War, 19-Year War. I have a degree in mathematics. I didn’t understand. “What do you mean, ’19-Year War’? Nineteen-Year War? I’ve heard of the Thirty-year War, the Hundred-year War. What’s this 19-Year War?”

‘Forty-eight to ‘sixty-seven—19 years. They had never been at peace. In fact, a Muslim cannot make peace. They can have a ceasefire. And they had been plotting the destruction of Israel all that time, and now, around…surrounding Israel, they’re saying, “We’ve got the armaments at last. We’re going to exterminate Israel. We’re going to wipe it off the map.” I’m just giving you verbatim quotes—there’s no Arab map that even shows Israel’s existence. And what is Israel to do? Well, are they going to just sit there?

They made a pre-emptive strike, as you recall, and they destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian Air Forces on the ground, and it took them six days to end that war. It’s known as the Six-day War, 1967.

Tom: Dave, we’ve got about a minute left, and we want to get into this. Dave, the thing that overwhelms me about this chapter is that a problem has developed that the more Israel expands, the more wars they win, the greater the problems. And it just seems overwhelming with regard to trying to solve it. You can’t solve these things.

Dave: Well, Tom, every bit of land they’ve taken, they’ve taken in self-defense against an enemy that has sworn to exterminate them. And they have given back more than 95 percent in attempting peace. They have offered a Palestinian state—on one condition: Just admit our right to exist! No Arab nation, no Muslims, will admit Israel’s right to exist. Now under those conditions, as you say, peace is impossible.