October 27, 2020 SnyderTalk—Jerusalem: A True Story

“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55: 6-7

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Jerusalem: A True Story

In 2004, a group of us from the United States participated in the Herzliya Conference in Israel. It’s an annual event that carries a lot of weight in Israel.

Herzliya is on the Mediterranean coast a few miles north of Tel Aviv.

See “In Israel, Herzliya Conference Increasingly Setting Public Agenda”:

In one corner of the sun-drenched lobby, one of Israel’s senior television journalists shared a joke with the head of Israel’s largest pharmaceutical company. In another, Mossad officials mingled with ambassadors and Knesset members. Welcome to Israel’s Herzliya Conference.

The annual gathering of Israel’s political and security elite has become the place not only to see and be seen, but the forum for setting the upcoming year’s public-policy agenda.

At last year’s conference, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plan for unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The previous year, he announced he would accept the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan.

This year all eyes again are on Sharon’s address to the conference, which was scheduled for Thursday. Also expected this year is an alternative blueprint for peace with Syria that does not include a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

Uzi Arad, a former senior Mossad official who served as Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser, chairs the conference, which is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a private college aiming to be one of Israel’s top academic institutions.

Arad compares the prime minister’s address at the close of every conference, now in its fifth year, to a State of the Union address in the United States.

About the Herzliya Conference

The 2004 Herzliya Conference was held in mid-December. Uzi Arad chaired the conference. Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister of Israel at that time. Every living Prime Minister of Israel addressed the conference as did many other Israeli government officials and business leaders.

During the conference, Ehud Olmert’s brother, Irmi, sat next to me on my right. Ehud Olmert had served as a member of the Knesset (MK) for many years, and he served as Mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003. Ehud Olmert would succeed Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister in 2005. Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter, Dalia, sat directly in front of me. Yitzhak Rabin served as Prime Minister of Israel 2 times. His second term was cut short when he was assassinated on November 4, 1995 by an Israeli Jew who was angry with him for signing the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993.

When I had questions, Irmi and Dalia answered them for me. One morning during the conference, I had breakfast with Uzi Arad. There were 4 of us at breakfast. One evening during the conference, every conference attendee ate dinner with Prime Minister Sharon. He talked about the Iran threat after dinner.

During the conference, among other things, Prime Minister Sharon discussed his plan to withdraw from Gaza and reach an agreement with the Palestinians. Click here to watch a video of his remarks.

Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza is one of the worst decisions ever made by an Israeli prime minister. It led to Hamas’ rise to power in Gaza and a state of constant war that continues to this day.

I’m telling you these things so you will understand that the Herzliya Conference is a big deal in Israel. In addition to Israeli dignitaries, government officials from countries around the world participated in the conference.

I took Katie with me to the conference in December. We extended our visit to spend some time with our Israeli daughter Noam and her family and to stay in Jerusalem for about a week. I took this picture of Katie showing Noam some pictures that she had taken at the conference. We were about half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem when I took this picture. As you can tell, it was cold. The high that day was about 45 degrees. For your information, shepherds in Israel did not keep watch over their flocks in the fields at night during December. It’s too cold. During the cold months, sheep were kept in a stable at night. In other words, the Messiah was not born in December.

Preconference Planning

Several weeks before the Herzliya Conference, a group of us went to Israel to participate in preconference planning. We broke out in small groups to discuss policy issues that were pressing at that time. Our group was assigned the problem of encouraging Israeli citizens to populate places in Israel that are not major population centers like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

We were in Israel for about a week. The night before we returned to the U.S., we spent the night with friends in Jerusalem. They had a small apartment with a very large patio. They didn’t have enough beds for all of us, so I decided to sleep outside on the patio.

The weather in Jerusalem at that time was very comfortable, but clouds blew through throughout the night. Because of Jerusalem’s elevation, the clouds can engulf the area intermittently. On the patio, I was awakened several times as clouds blew through and covered me with mist. At 5:00 in the morning on the dot, the Muslim call to prayer rang out across the city. It was very loud. After having been awakened so many times during the night, I was angry.

I said, “Yahweh, You need to put a stop to this. This is Your city. They are doing great harm to Your people. Besides, they are loud and obnoxious. You can put an end to it if You want to. I beg you to show me before I leave Israel this morning that You have everything under control.”

As quickly as I finished praying, the light breeze turned into a strong wind, and it started raining hard. It lasted for only a few seconds, but I was soaked. I went inside to dry off and take a nap.

At about 7:00 in the morning, Rowan Smith and I caught a sherut (a shared taxi) to Ben Gurion Airport. The trip takes about an hour. I love that ride. The scenery is beautiful.

As we turned off Highway 1 to enter Ben Gurion, the driver turned on the PA system. It was a radio broadcast in Hebrew. Rowan and I didn’t know enough Hebrew to understand what the reporter was saying, but the other people with us on the sherut broke out with spontaneous applause.

I asked the person sitting across the isle from me what the report was about. She said, “Yasser Arafat died this morning in France.”

Arafat’s death was Yahweh’s answer to my prayer. A short while later, Rowan and I were in the air flying home.

I took the picture below in Jerusalem while we were in Israel for preconference planning. These people traveled with us, but they were not involved in the Herzliya Conference. While we were in Jerusalem, we went to The Jerusalem Great Synagogue on Shabbat. I have an interesting story to tell about our visit to the synagogue, but it’s too long to tell here.

Yahweh is in Control

You can rest assured that Yahweh has everything under control. We may not understand exactly what He is doing or why He is doing it, but He is in control.

Yahweh has things under control all over the world. In a few days, we will have a presidential election in the U.S. Yahweh has that under control, too.

See “Don’t believe the polls — Trump is winning”. The article begins with this statement: “We predict that President Trump is going to win the 2020 presidential election — and win big.”

Despite a concerted effort by the establishment media to convey the impression that Joe Biden will win the election and Facebook, Twitter, and Google doing their best to prevent people from gaining access to and sharing information about Biden’s corrupt activities in Ukraine, Russia, and China, Democrat Party Leaders know that they are heading for defeat.

Democrat followers have bought the lie that Biden’s victory is a foregone conclusion. After the election, they will explode in anger, and the Democrat Party will experience an internal political bloodbath. Some Democrat followers will act out publicly and put innocent American citizens in danger.

Be prepared. The law does not require anyone to be a victim.

See “Biden Tries to Project Energy By Going to Where FDR Went to Die”:

Apparently awakening to the absurdity of his initial plan to forego campaigning in the days remaining before the election, Joe Biden summoned up the energy to make his way to Warm Springs, Georgia today, the home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House. In keeping with his gloomy portrait of a country ravaged by pandemic and hopelessly afflicted with institutional racism, in the course of his speech Biden inspiringly noted: “It was here on April 12, 1945 that President Roosevelt died.” That made it a perfect setting for a speech by an elderly, low-energy candidate that many assume will not live long into his presidential term if elected.

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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

John 17: 22-24

See “His Name is Yahweh”.

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