From Eliyahu

Hello friends,

In a recent Midrash we read about a cluster of grapes from the Hebron area that was so large it took two men to carry. Dawn gave me this picture (right) of a boy carrying grapes from Hebron. As you can see, those grapes may not be as big now as in Numbers 13, but they are still some pretty impressive grapes, and definitely an armfull for this little guy.

These beautiful grapes are typical of the abundant delicious fruits and vegetables of the Land of Israel - when Israelite people are in control of the Land. When we are not, the Land soon reverts to a barren and empty wilderness. This has definitely been true since the destruction of Judah by the Romans forward.   

Dio Cassius, writing at the time of the destruction of Judah, described the ruin of the Land:

Of their forts the fifty strongest were razed to the ground. Nine hundred and eighty-five of their best-known villages were destroyed....

Thus the whole of Judea became desert, as indeed had been foretold to the Jews before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, whom these folk celebrate in their sacred rites, fell of its own accord into fragments, and wolves and hyenas, many in number, roamed howling through their cities. [Dio Cassius, History of the Romans, lxix, 12-14, cited by de Haas, History, pp. 55-56]

The desolation of the Land of "Palestine" (the Roman name) continued down to the modern era. The British Consul in Palestine reported in 1857:

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.. [James Finn to the Earl of Clarendon, Jerusalem, September 15, 1857, F.O. 78/1294 (Pol. No. 36)]

Many historians have reported the same thing, right down to more recent history and the start of the Jewish Return. One historian wrote:

In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880's, Palestine was laid waste. Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation... Under the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy of disfoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil. [Carl Hermann Voss, "The Palestine Problem Today, Israel and Its Neighbors" (Boston, 1953), p. 13]

The truth is, the returning Jews in that empty and barren Land did not become the majority population by "stealing" land from Arabs. Rather, they purchased the over-priced barren land from the Arab sheiks, who laughed at them while happily relieving them of their money. It was only later, after the returnees multiplied and began transforming the Land into a productive wonder, that Arabs began to complain of the growing Jewish presence. By then, the gathering momentum towards a Jewish state was unstoppable. Since the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948, the Land of Israel has risen to a level of fruitfulness and beauty it has not known since Biblical times.

Israel's Islamic enemies are not happy about her success. They want Israel gone and they want to claim all that Israel has built for themselves. But what would become of the Land of Israel if they got their wish? Perhaps Gush Katif provides an object lesson in that regard.

On August 15, 2005 the unthinkable happened. Jews were forcibly removed from their homes in all 21 Jewish communities in Gush Katif, the Jewish bloc of communities in Gaza. These pioneers had built their homes and incredible greenhouses for more than 30 years, with the government’s blessing, on the sand dunes of the Mediterranean Sea. What were once beautiful and thriving Jewish communities became a desert of destruction overnight. Everything was uprooted and destroyed, and Gaza has not bloomed since. [http://cfoicheartland.com/dror/]

The Land and the people of Israel need each other. Not the Jews [Judah] only, but all twelve tribes of Israel. Indeed the return of a remnant from the scattered twelve tribes in the "greater Exodus" is prophesied for the near future. Even now YHWH is calling and gathering that remnant from the four corners of the earth. [Remnant Prophecies]

Israel, rise up, that we may return as One Man to our Land!

Blessings and Shalom,

Eliyahu ben David

______________________________________________

______________________________________________