Update from someone in Israel

Ronny Simon was our tour guide when we went to visit Israel this last March. The dude knows a LOT of stuff. He occasionally sends out emails with insights, from an Israeli perspective, on current happenings in Israel.

Check this one out regarding the latest stuff with Lebanon.

From: roni simon
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 4:49 AM
Subject: Ronny Simon – up date about Lebanon
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 09:48:59 +0000

Shalom from Jerusalem.

Thank you all for your concern and e-mails of support.

These are hard times in Israel. It is not the first time and unfortunately might not be the last time. While the majority of the people carry on with their daily lives, a million people on the northern part of the country, Galilee, Haifa and the Golan heights are spending most of their time in bomb shelters.

Some short history to explain how we got to the present situation.

In May 24, 2000, the Israeli forces that were deployed in Southern Lebanon had pulled back to Israel. That was to comply with a Security Council resolution calling on all foreign forces to evacuate Lebanese territory. The Syrian army and its thousands of soldiers did not remove its forces from Lebanon and the country was held captive by the Syrian dictatorship. Lebanon was only independent by name. The decisions for Lebanon’s future were taken in Damascus.

When the Israeli withdrawal was completed, the U.N. with Israel’s approval had sent over a party to make sure that Israel had pulled back to the international border and that there are no territorial issues between the two countries.

Israel’s hope that the Lebanese army will deploy its forces along the border as the resolution dictated, were in vain. The Lebanese army never stood to the mission because Syria would not allow that. Instead, the Hezbollah, with Lebanese consent and over a $100 million annual support from Iran started to build a terror infrastructure on Israel’s northern border. More than 12 thousand rockets were hidden in bonkers all over south Lebanon. In the same time the Iranian government was building Hezbollah a fortified quarter in the southern part of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. That’s where the headquarters and the logistical center were. Israel was watching frustrated how the world was ignoring what was going on and doing nothing to stop Iran and its armed militia Hezbollah.

Temple Mount closed to tourists!

According to World Net Daily: Jews, Christians shut from Temple Mount

I was just standing there couple of weeks ago and got to say that a trip to Israel and not being able to go to the temple mount would have been poopy. It's definitely an experience.

To get to the western wall or even to the temple mount you have to go through pretty strict security. They've got metal detectors and some loaded guards there to make sure nothing funky goes down. Homeboy's don't play.

The elections that are going on are for Prime Minister of Israel. They have a president, but the president is just this guy you know? He doesn't really do anything other than to make sure he stays neutral in all political decisions, but I guess he's there to appoint people to office and stuff like that. He's more of a figure head than a power mover.

The main guy is the Prime Minister, he's the guy that makes the decisions and whatnot. There's also the Knesset which is like parlament.

I guess all the elections are coming up this week. According to Ronny, about 95% of the people come out to vote compare that to the 50% or whatever it is in this country. They take their right to vote very seriously over there.

That's cool.

Temple Mount and Jerusalem

One of the most interesting parts of our trip was to the temple mount. Our
guide mentioned that in one of the rabbinic writings, it was said that the top
of the mount of olives, lines up with the eastern gate which lines up with the temple’s Holy of Holies.

Israel Trip

We just got back from a trip to Israel. It was very awesome. The 11 hour plane trip was horrible, but once you're in the land, it's an amazing experience. There is so much to see and so much to learn there and it's definately an experience of a lifetime.

Our tour guide Ronny Simon knew so much about not only the land, but also politics, history, topography and the scriptures both old and new (and being a Jew, it was rather remarkable how much New Testament he knew).

We went to so many sights and saw so many things so I'll write a little bit about it here on my blog.

I've got over 15 hours of video to edit and a lot of people have expressed interest in purchasing it. Once I get it edited, probably down to maybe 5 or 6 dvd's, I'll let everyone know.