No Helper for the State of Israel

Why does the State of Israel exist? Since its inception as a nation in 1948, Israel has been at constant war with its neighbors. It has had to deal with bloody uprisings from its own Arab population. It has had almost all of the international community ganging up against it in forums like the United Nations. Its territory lacks natural resources; half of it is bone-dry desert. That Israel has not only survived every attempt to destroy it as a nation but is the strong, prosperous powerhouse it is today is nothing short of miraculous.

One of the means by which this miracle happened was through a strong partnership with America.

United States President Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognize Israel’s legitimacy in 1948. President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. Thanks to America’s Jewish diaspora, many prominent Israeli leaders have roots in America. Most peace deals between Israel and the Arab world have happened through American mediation. Time after time, America has stood behind Israel in many different ways.

It looks like this decades-old support, however, is about to dry up.

On February 20, the United Nations Security Council (unsc) approved a non-legally binding resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinian-backed resolution was watered down from what was first proposed, but it is still the first anti-Israel resolution the U.S. has let through the unsc in six years.

This was in response to the Israeli government legalizing previously unsanctioned settlements in a tit-for-tat after an increase in Palestinian terrorist attacks. Legitimate criticism of Israeli policy is not wrong, but the UN is infamous for its irrational anti-Israel bias. Last year, the UN General Assembly approved twice as many resolutions against Israel as it did Russia—which that same year started the biggest war in Europe since World War ii. Security Council resolutions are more serious than those from the General Assembly, which is why the U.S. has traditionally been Israel’s shield at the unsc.

If the unsc resolution were legally binding, the U.S. would have been expected to veto it. Failing to do so would have made the Biden administration look bad to America’s influential pro-Israel lobby. But by letting the watered-down resolution through, the implication is that Washington wanted to let the anti-Israel resolution pass. It did so with minimal bad publicity, but making Israel look bad was the goal.

Israel has been constructing settlements since it took over the West Bank in 1967. Whether one supports it or not, the current policy is nothing new. America hasn’t dropped its support to Israel because of its settlements in the past. Why now?

The Knesset is in turmoil. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing to enact some controversial judicial reforms. If implemented, they would rein in Israel’s increasingly unaccountable and activist Supreme Court. This is driving leftists in Israel ballistic.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides revealed in a podcast episode on February 16 that Netanyahu’s judicial reform is getting under Joe Biden’s skin. Nides told former Barack Obama official David Axelrod, “We’re telling the prime minister—as I tell my kids—‘pump the brakes, slow down, try to get a consensus, bring the parties together.’” “We’re” in this case would mean the Biden administration.

The Biden administration meddling in Israel’s internal affairs is nothing new. In 2021, they even went so far as to undermine the Israel-Sudan peace process in the hopes of hurting Netanyahu’s electoral chances. But talking to a head of government “as I tell my kids” is patronizing at best. At worst, it suggests the U.S. government doesn’t see its Israeli counterpart as an equal. It views Israel as a dependent it has the right to discipline. And it views itself as having the authority to tell Israel how to govern itself.

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli fired back at Nides in a February 19 radio interview. “Mind your own business,” he said. “You’re not the sovereign here. … We’d be happy to debate with you international or security affairs, but respect our democracy.”

Nides responded on February 28 at an Israeli think tank interview. “Some Israeli official—I don’t know who he is, I don’t think I’ve met him—suggested that I should stay out of Israel’s business,” he said. “I really think that most Israelis do not want America to stay out of their business.” The U.S. ambassador to Israel didn’t even bother looking up the name or position of his critic—and he made sure everybody knew how little he cared.

Critics of the proposed judicial reforms call them “antidemocratic.” Whether their effects on Israeli society would be net positive or negative is up for debate. But what is definitely antidemocratic is one government pressuring the elected legislature of another government on how to behave. Nides giving the U.S. government’s position is one thing. But telling the prime minister what to do and the Knesset how to vote is crossing a line.

The timing of this coinciding with the UN vote is interesting. The Security Council resolution could be interpreted as a veiled threat from Washington: You start singing our tune or you’re going to lose what protection we’re still giving you.

This even as the U.S. surreptitiously sponsors Iran and Syria—two rogue regimes that are among the most serious threats to Israel’s survival. This even as Israel faces escalating threats from the Arabs in Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel proper.

The last time America betrayed Israel at the UN was at the tail-end of Barack Obama’s term in 2016. The U.S.’s Middle East policy at the time was one of undermining Israel’s security—especially regarding Iran. The Biden presidency extends Obama’s influence. The recent U.S.-Israel bickering must be interpreted within the context of the Obama-led campaign to marginalize Israel on the world scene. The question is: Why?

The answer has to do with a lot more than just Israel’s judicial reform.

There is a spiritual dimension to America’s current trajectory. Foreign relations are not the only aspect of society fundamentally transformed by the current government. Humanitarian disasters—like those at America’s border with Mexico and at East Palestine, Ohio—are ignored and left to hemorrhage. Unprecedented borrowing levels have decimated the economy through inflation. Sexual perversions are encouraged in schools nationwide.

Such radical transformation cannot be explained physically. But one biblical prophecy in particular sheds light on what is going on. This prophecy is in 2 Kings 14: “For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash” (verses 26-27).

In ancient times, there were 13 tribes of Israel, of which Judah (the Jewish state of Israel today) was only one. In Bible prophecy, “Israel” primarily refers to the United States, Britain and the State of Israel. (Please request a free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong, for more information.)

2 Kings is part of the former prophets—although history, they also contain prophecy for the modern nations of Israel, as Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry shows in his book America Under Attack. “Blotting out the name of Israel” has everything to do with the problems—in foreign affairs and elsewhere—that America is suffering, including its deteriorating relationship with its brothers in the State of Israel.

Mr. Flurry wrote in America Under Attack:

The Obama administration demonstrated in many ways that it dislikes the Jews. Israeli leaders recognized this. They must have asked why that administration harbored such antipathy for them. They don’t understand—and even the people who have that bitter feeling toward them often don’t understand why their own hatred is so deep. … Never did America direct such a hateful foreign policy toward our best ally in the Middle East.

But that isn’t the end of the story. 2 Kings 14 shows that God forcibly stopped this diabolical plot from succeeding. He temporarily saved ancient Israel “by the hand of Jeroboam.” The prophecy continues: “Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam … and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?” (verse 28).

God is still in the process of temporarily saving modern Israel (primarily the United States) through a modern Jeroboam to fulfill the prophetic aspect of these verses. But notice that when He does, the victories of the modern Jeroboam will involve helping the Jewish nation.

Mr. Flurry wrote in a September 2022 article:

When Barack Obama was president, he was terribly unmerciful to the Jewish nation of Israel. But in President Trump’s first term, he saved the Jewish nation of Israel (biblical Judah) from much of Obama’s tyranny. He supported Israel in many ways, including scrapping the Iran deal, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and helping Israel sign the “Abraham Accords” with Arab nations in the region. Joe Biden has taken America back to the terrorist-supporting policies of Barack Obama.

From the time of Joe Biden’s inauguration, I predicted that we would have more Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel because of the change in leadership. That is exactly what began to happen. Anybody should be able to recognize why!

The State of Israel is under great stress from enemies both inside and outside its borders. The current government in America is doing all it can to make this stress greater. If there ever was a time when Israel needed saving, it is now.

“[T]he indication is that Jeroboam reclaimed something to help Judah, the Jewish nation,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “This verse ties the politics of the U.S. and Judah together.”

The temporary saving of the State of Israel has yet to materialize. But the desperate need for it is becoming clearer and clearer. And this respite from its troubles will come. But first, there has to be a change in Washington.

To learn more, read “Britain and Judah’s Governments Fall—America Next?”