Meir Ben-Shabbat of the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy wrote the following article, Without total victory there can be no new regional order.
In response, Paul Cohen wrote Meir the following letter, addressing the true source of enmity with Israel’s enemies – Islam.
Shalom Meir,
Responding here to your article, “Without Total Victory There Can Be No New Regional Order.”
You’re right; of course Israel must continue the war in Gaza and finish Hamas. This mission is long overdue. You rightly imply as well that military victory won’t eliminate Israel’s enemies:
“Total victory (attaining all the objectives in full) is essential to rebuilding that deterrence. Without that, Israel will be exposed to an existential threat from its enemies in the various theaters and will also lose the asset that constitutes the mainstay of its diplomatic stance, including with regards to the peace accords and normalization.”
Israel’s military strength has made “peace accords and normalization” possible with enemies such as Egypt and Jordan, but this “peace” has not come with real friendship and mutual support. Enmity from the Arab nations still exists and can only be eliminated one way – the death of the source of that enmity. Islam, the great facilitator and enabler of this enmity, must be removed from the hearts of your enemies.
This wouldn’t be advisable if Islam was the Truth of God it presumes to be. But because Islam is based on lies, the Truth can and will overcome it. Israel hasn’t had a clear and coherent handle on this obstacle and therefore a campaign to meet it head on.
Here’s an example of where the battle must be engaged. I recently listened to an interview with Lucy Aharish, Israel’s first Arab-Muslim news presenter for mainstream Hebrew-language Israeli television. The subject was October 7th and she was asked the following:
Bari Weiss: “How do you explain—I mean, right now there’s, I don’t know if you’d
call it a jihad or what, but a total decimation of Christians in Nigeria by Islamists. If you look at what’s happening in Syria, you look all over the world and it’s people like the guy that stared at you from the window when you were five years old [terrorist attack in Gaza] or the people that carried out October 7, terrorizing people, including Christians, Jews, other Muslims all over the world. And there are lots of people who look at that and say what Israel’s fighting, fundamentally, is not a war with Hamas, it is a fundamental war between Western civilization and Islam. And what do you say to that, because you are Muslim?”
Lucy: “You know, I see what these fundamentalists are doing in the name of Islam. I see what they’re doing in the name of religion, in every religion. You—I think Christianity or Judaism or Islam. If you want to do something extreme, you will find the right excuse for it.”
Lucy gives a pass to Islam based on a false equivalence to Judaism and Christianity. The latter two recognize authority in the authentic Word of God, the Bible, whereas Islam’s Koran contradicts the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The Koran and the Bible aren’t the same in spirit or teaching.
The originator of the Koran, Muhammad, created a religion using the authority of the Jewish/Christian Bible to change whatever didn’t suit his personal agenda. He was a man who marauded and murdered in the name of a strange god, “Allah,” seeking whatever he lusted after and punishing those who stood in his way. His wasn’t the way of the servants of the God of Israel and His appearing in Messiah as related in the Holy Scriptures.
Muhammad sought to subdue and rule the world, by force if necessary and by trickery when lacking sufficient force. The God of Israel, on the other hand, said He would make His people a light to all nations. Jesus told His Jewish apostles to preach the good news to Israel and the Nations. There was never a mandate or effort by any of God’s people in harmony with Him and His commandments to subjugate the world under their temporal authority such as there is with Islam.
Islamists, called “extremists”, (such as Hamas) manifest the spirit of Muhammad and the Koran, which is the fount from which October 7th was conceived and executed. It is also the source of the strategy using disinformation to put the onus on Israel as the genocidal culprit and thereby taking the focus off itself.
Lucy’s opinion that true Islam is inherently harmless only shows (assuming Lucy is sincere) she has swallowed the lie Islam uses to conceal its true nature and intent.
What Lucy says next is key:
Lucy: “You know, if somebody is sitting in Israel and thinking that one day, 3 million Palestinians from, you know, the West Bank, 1 million in the West Bank and 2 million in the Gaza Strip will just disappear, you’re living in a really, really, really bad conception. And Israel—I’m announcing as an Israeli, Muslim, Arab woman, is not going to disappear anywhere, nor the Jewish people. The Jewish state is here to stay. Now we need to be part of a solution. And to just look at the geopolitical situation, we have a great opportunity.”
Yes, Lucy is an Arab – this is a physical fact that cannot be changed or denied. But being a Muslim isn’t automatic for an Arab – this can change. Arabs and all other converts to Islam can renounce its ideology and the false doctrines of Muhammad while remaining Arabs. Indeed they will do so when they see and know the God of Israel. That’s how there are Arab Christians such as Mosab Hassan Yousef, “Son of Hamas” who left the organization his father helped found and now is part of Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Campaign.
It’s impossible to stand on Israel is “here to stay” and be a true Muslim. Either Lucy is an Israeli Arab or a Muslim with Israeli citizenship supporting the overthrow of Israel, with or without her knowledge and consent. The overthrow of Israel is the aim of Islam as articulated by Muhammad in his House of War doctrine that calls for the subjugation of non-Muslim countries. This doctrine has been amply demonstrated over the centuries, especially recently with regards to Israel, a land once under the rule of Islam.
According to Islam, there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim when it comes to whether it is acceptable to have Jews ruling over Muslims. A Muslim may be moderate in their mind and show some tolerance towards Israel, even a friendly acceptance, but if in disagreement with the Islamic imperative to hold sway from “the river to the sea,” that Muslim must comply with Islamists holding fast to Muhammad and his god, Allah. Otherwise they face severe consequences.
The moderate Muslims in mixed populations like Israel and the West serve powerfully to deceive with the same notion Lucy espouses of Islam as a peaceable ideology. These moderates provide cover to their more faithful and belligerent brethren by giving credence to the argument that the three Abrahamic religions have radicals committing heinous acts, but moderates are the rule. “Radicals,” though, are the rule for Islam and the exception for Judaism and Christianity.
This duplicity, intended or not, is a stratagem sanctioned by Muhammad to confound and weaken the defenses of his perceived enemies and thereby create deluded allies not cognizant of being set up for an eventual overthrow.
As a Muslim asserting Israel is “here to stay,” Lucy pushes Israelis and the world to overlook Islam’s expansionist aspirations and to view it as a “religion of peace.” Her earnest passion and appealing sensibility make it easier to “just get along” with an outwardly benign people rather than deal with the threat real Islam presents.
And truly, Islam presents a much greater threat to the world than Adolph Hitler and his Nazi juggernaut. Hitler didn’t claim to be the final prophet of God, perpetuating a God-given mission to convert the world to his anti-God dogma and dictates. Hitler’s campaign to take over the world essentially ended when he killed himself. Muhammad left an ideology forever empowering his followers to spread over the world and pursue his objective of eventual takeover. Look at Europe today.
“Jihad,” the quest for world subjugation by any and all means, is justified because Muslims are “the best of people” (Koran chapter 3 verse 110). Due to the superiority of their religion, Muslims should subjugate Christians and Jews “until the they pay the Jizya [a penalty tax for the non-Muslims living under Islamic rule] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Koran chapter 9 verse 29).
To combat Islam, Israel first must recognize and acknowledge the false claims driving jihad and its strategy of conquest. There are two major claims.
First, the foundational covenant establishing God’s work on earth with His people, Israel, was made with Abraham:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation…to your offspring I will give this land’ (Genesis 12:1-2,7).
This promise was to the offspring of Abraham’s wife, Sarah (all of the following quote is pertinent in establishing the record for both children of Abraham – Ishmael and Isaac):
“And God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’
“Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ And Abraham said to God, ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before you!’
“God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.
As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year’ (Genesis 17:15-21).”
Yet for all the clarity offered in the Scriptures, Islam teaches that Abraham was told by God to offer Ishmael (the ancestor of Muhammad) and not Isaac. In other words, Isaac and his son Israel’s descendants aren’t the God-ordained inheritors of the land promised to Abraham through Sarah. The deduction is obvious – the promise of the land goes to Ishmael and Muhammad, his progeny.
The children of Israel occupied the promised land as acknowledged in the Koran, but these ancient Israelites are considered “Muslims” (true worshipers of God) who lost their status when they rejected God and the land was taken away from them. Islam presumes that the children of Ishmael and followers of Muhammad who took the land later are the rightful owners. Modern Israel is viewed by Islam as a Western invasion of “Zionist” colonizers, a cancer in the sight of Allah that must be excised.
Israel gives credence to Islam’s claims. For example, by granting the Temple Mount to Islamic authorities after the 1967 Six Day War, Israel bowed to their claim of Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Israel may not see it this way, but Muslims certainly do. Thus Islam has been defeating Israel in this ideological war and the world in darkness follows the one prevailing with a lie.
Lies about God and His Word come from the serpent, Satan, whom we first see making his appearance to Eve in the garden, enticing her to commit spiritual suicide. God called Satan the most subtle of beasts, artifice being the hallmark of this clever liar and murderer.
As Jesus said to the Jews who sought to kill Him: “You are from your father—the devil! And you’re eager to get on with what he wants. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he’s never remained in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells lies, he speaks what comes naturally to him, because he is a liar—in fact, he’s the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Lacking the light of God, many are bewitched by Islam. Even those who see in part are often complicit with Islam in fear of violence and loss. This includes Israel and much of the world congregating under the banner of Christianity, such as the Vatican and its many offshoots.
Islam doesn’t stop at reversing a major claim of the “Old Testament” to feather its own nest. The second major claim Islam turns on its head to justify and empower itself is from the “New Testament.” The Koran teaches that Jesus Christ didn’t die on the cross on the Passover and wasn’t resurrected three days later as recorded by Jewish witnesses.
The twin facts of Jesus’ death and resurrection are the central premise and core of the writings of the New Testament. If these are false, it’s not a matter of an isolated error. The corruption is systemic and destroys the foundation of the most critical work of the God of Israel in our history – past, present and future.
The falsification of Who Jesus is and what He did, according to Islam, must have been committed by Jews who wrote, compiled, and controlled the original documents of the New Testament.
Accordingly, the Christian world has been deceived by Jews. But this isn’t the outright declaration of Islam. Instead, Islam throws a bone to the Christians by giving Jesus, contrary to traditional Judaism that denies Him outright, the “honor” of being a prophet of God. The Koran denies Jesus was God in the flesh, as recorded in the Holy Scriptures and taught by the Jewish witnesses He specifically chose. They lived with Him, heard His words, saw His miracles and broke bread with Him after He was raised from the dead.
Saul of Tarsus in particular isn’t recognized by Islam for this reason, though it “honors” many other figures from the Old and New Testaments. Saul (known to the world as Paul) wrote most of the teachings of the New Testament that centralize on the appearing of God as a flesh and blood man conceived by the Spirit of God, born of a woman, and called “the Son of God.” God appearing in the flesh is considered blasphemous by Islam, in agreement with the Jewish religious authorities who persecuted Jesus, and later, Paul and other Jewish believers.
With the cunningness of the Devil, Islam ingratiates itself with mainstream Jews by bolstering their claim against the New Testament, yet pacifying nominal adherents of Christianity with a perfunctory recognition of Jesus as a prophet of God. In reality, Israel and Christianity are both “debunked” with their valuables pickpocketed.
Symbolizing Islam’s delegitimization of Israel and Christian faith in the God of Israel in one grand gesture is its audacious declaration – “God has No Son” – inscribed inside the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Yet God said of Jesus, “This is My Son, in Whom I am well-pleased” and of Israel, “When Israel was a child, I loved him,and I called My son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the farther he moved from Me.”
The Temple Mount is ground zero for temporal religious authority in this world, That’s why Islam covets control of it with The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques considered critical holy sites. This despite the Biblical account of the Jewish founding and connection to Jerusalem having over 800 references versus none in the Koran. There’s only a single traditional Islamic saying claiming Muhammad flew on a donkey from Mecca to Jerusalem in the darkness one night.
So, if the Jews say God promised them the land of Israel through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and then returns them as promised – they have lied and are poseurs, European colonists.
If the Jews weren’t promised the land of Israel, their Holy Book has been falsified at its core and cannot be trusted. Consistent with this accusation of profound tampering, the Jews also gave false testimony about Jesus in the Gospels.
According to Islam, Jesus raised from the dead and Author of our salvation is a Jewish lie.
But also because the Jews deny Jesus is sent by God, they’re in darkness and again found to be false.
The Jews are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Islam’s charges against the Jews, however, are a reflection of its own sins. The Scriptures aren’t corrupted – Islam has perverted the Scriptures in order to justify its “prophet” who contradicts the Word of God in a self-serving, self-glorifying agenda that makes him God.
Islam comes from Ishmael’s (Muhammad’s) covetousness of Isaac’s (Israel’s) inheritance, claiming both – spiritual and temporal. Israel’s rejection of Muhammad as the “final prophet” turned his envy into a murderous rage that animates his followers to this day.
“So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it’”(Genesis 4:6-8).
Muslims must forsake trying to be something they aren’t through religious observances mandated by a man who wasn’t sent by God or represents His interests. Forsaking Islam by embracing the God of the Bible, the God of Israel, they will be set free to bless instead of curse mankind.
Muhammad’s sin has instilled hatred and the insanity of blood lust in his followers. Unrepented of and doubled down on, this sin fuels a “might is right” jihad that seeks to subdue the world by sword and with sweetened lies. A world in darkness is intimidated and beguiled, conceding to Islam’s charming and outrageous assault on humanity.
The Muslims sacrifice their children to a false god in Gaza. There’s no redemption or hope in these deaths, only more desperation and devastation for all who support and enable this evil stance against Israel and humanity.
The God of Israel and those who love His appearing do not bow to Islam. They prevail by “right is might.” This is the spiritual war that must be engaged and will be won, bringing ultimate victory and peace.
Paul Benjamin Cohen