Hezbollah seized control of most of Beirut on Friday. Right now, those terrorists are roaming the streets with guns and grenade launchers. It’s a scene eerily similar to the one in Gaza last June, when Hamas gunmen seized control of the strip after several days of firefighting with Fatah members. “US-backed Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is now being mocked by Hizbullah as Lebanon’s new Mahmoud Abbas,” writes the Jerusalem Post (emphasis mine throughout).

What’s interesting is that Hamas and Hizbullah have used the same excuse to justify their deeds. Both have defended their actions as a “counter-putsch.” Hamas continues to maintain that Abbas and Fatah were planning to overthrow its “democratically-elected government” with the help of the US and Israel.Similarly, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has accused the Saniora government and its political allies of seeking to turn Beirut into a “base for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Mossad.”It’s worth noting that in both the Gaza Strip and Beirut, the US-backed side hardly put up any resistance, to Hamas and Hizbullah, respectively.

There is, however, one frightening difference between Hezbollah’s takeover and what happened last year in Gaza, as noted in Time:

[N]ow Hezbollah has almost an entire country in which it can securely headquarter operations and train for war with Israel. And unlike the easily isolated Hamas-controlled Gaza strip, Lebanon is a mountainous country with a long coast, porous borders, anti-Israeli neighbors, an excellent banking system and an international airport. No doubt flights from Tehran will be among the first to resume when Hezbollah re-opens the airport.

Ah yes—flights from Tehran. Another article in today’sJerusalem Post quotes Vice Premier Haim Ramon saying, “Lebanon must be treated as a Hezbullah state.” Ramon explains, “Everything that happens there is the responsibility of Hezbullah.” In fact, everything happening there is the responsibility of Iran. As the Washington Postreported yesterday,

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted Friday that Hezbollah was not acting alone when its gunmen took over West Beirut yesterday. … A senior State Department official said Hezbollah was unlikely to have taken such a brazen step without “some kind of green light” from Iran, given the political and military risks involved.

Will the United States deal with the problem at its source?

The Bush administration has been scrambling to mobilize international support for the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Rice spoke to Siniora as well as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the French and Saudi foreign ministers. The Arab League announced an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the crisis, with the State Department calling on the regional body to show its displeasure with Hezbollah and its sponsors.

Yes, Washington is very displeased with the fact that Hezbollah is killing off the prospects of Lebanon growing as an example of peace and democracy in the Middle East. This is clearly a project the U.S. is heavily invested in—trying to show the world how to transform terrorist states into peace-loving, West-friendly nations. So what is its strategy for confronting the problem? Seeking help from the UN, France, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab League.

The Bush administration has spent $1.3 billion over the past two years to prop up Siniora’s government, with about $400 million dedicated to boosting Lebanon’s security forces. But Washington’s assistance has been put in check by Hezbollah—the Shiite militia trained, armed and financed by Iran and Syria—which has the Siniora government under virtual siege.

Why is all this aid doing no good? The reason is crystal clear. The State Department knows it. The Washington Post knows it. The real problem—which everyone is talking about—is Iran. It is because Iran has unleashed a terrorist organization that has the Lebanese government under siege!

The Post article talks about three priorities President Bush has had in the Mideast: Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and Lebanon. He is having trouble locking down even one of these situations.

Do you realize that Iran is behind all three of those problems?

The United States will never solve the problem in Iraq without confronting Iran. The U.S. and Israel will never put down the Palestinian terrorist groups without confronting Iran. Lebanon will never be secured unless Iran is put down. All efforts to put these issues to rest—while ignoring the Iran connection—are exercises in futility.

The fact that the U.S. simply will not confront Iran is the single greatest proof that God has broken the pride of our power (Leviticus 26:19).

Life After Olmert

Judging by the mood in Israel, the post-Olmert political era has already begun, wrote the New York Times yesterday.

Calls for his resignation came from left, right and center, although all acknowledged that Mr. Olmert had won himself time by vowing, as he did Thursday night, to resign if charged. The investigation is likely to take another month or two. …Since Mr. Olmert has been investigated several times before and proven himself to be a highly skilled political survivor—a Houdini, in the words of a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity—his political obituary may yet again prove premature.This inquiry, however, is widely viewed as the most serious he has faced. It involves accusations that he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Morris Talansky of Long Island over a decade.

Israel’s Ynetnews.com also sees the handwriting on the wall:

[T]here is no other way to say it: Olmert took part in official Independence Day events as an illegitimate prime minister. These are ceremonies where the most distinguished bodies are represented; the State of Israel’s security, legal, academic, and public elites. If there is a place where this legitimacy is manifested, this is the place; at the annual Defense Ministry event, at the Israel Prize award ceremony, and at the Presidential Residence. And there, the suspicions against Olmert were the talk of the day.But not only there: It is doubtful whether there is one citizen in Israel who saw Olmert at one of these ceremonies and was not shaking his head with disapproval, while listening to his words with much less respect than could have been expected.

One wonders if Iran coordinated its attack in Lebanon to coincide with Olmert’s latest debilitating scandal.

Putin’s Soviet-Style Military Parade

One can only imagine how the world would react to the United States if it commemorated its World War ii victory in Europe with a parade of marines goose-stepping along Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the White House, followed by a huge procession of Abram tanks and nuclear missile launchers, even as the deafening sound of F-16 flybys drowned out the wild cheering of thousands of onlookers lining the streets.

That was the scene in Moscow on Friday. It was the first military parade at Red Square since the Soviet era. “The history of world wars warns that armed conflicts do not erupt on their own,” said Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev, who was inaugurated two days earlier. “They are fueled by those whose irresponsible ambitions overpower the interests of countries and whole continents,” Medvedev continued—a warning many observers believed to be directed at the United States.

But Russia’s decision to parade its military hardware across Red Square can also be viewed as a clear signal to Europe. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who arranged for the celebration of military power, insisted that he wasn’t saber rattling. “Russia is not threatening anyone,” he said. But as Bloomberg.com notes, “Putin has clashed with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization over its expansion toward Russia’s borders and with the U.S. over its plans to install elements of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying these moves threaten Russia’s security.”

Bloomberg also mentioned Putin’s March 8 meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel—where he insisted that as his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, would continue Putin’s legacy as an aggressive Russian nationalist.

To read more about the coming clash between Russia and Europe, download our booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.

German Doublespeak

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel in March she received full red carpet treatment from Prime Minister Olmert and the Jewish state. “The chancellor’s visit has the same status as a visit by the U.S. president,” said Olmert’s chief of staff. Israel’s warmth was understandable: During her trip Merkel delivered a groundbreaking speech before the Knesset repenting of German atrocities committed during World War ii, and congratulating Israel on 60 years of growth. The chancellor’s speech further confirmed Jewish perceptions that Germany is one of its staunchest allies.

During her address Merkel apologized to Israelis, saying Germans were “filled with shame” over the Nazi holocaust. TheTrumpet.com’s editor in chief called Merkel’s message “the most significant speech made by any German leader since World War ii.”

But what made the speech especially courageous, noted Mr. Flurry, was that it went against German public opinion. A survey released last week proves that point, finding that only 13 percent of Germans say they favor providing military support to Israel if the country ever comes under attack. Germany’s Der Spiegelreports further:

According to the poll, which was published Saturday, 53 percent of people questioned responded in the negative when asked if Germany had a “special responsibility” towards Israel because of its history. Only 40 percent said the country did have a special responsibility.Younger Germans in particular felt less responsibility toward Israel, with only 29 percent of those aged between 30 and 39 responding in the positive to the question. A massive 65 percent of respondents in that age group said Germany had no special responsibility to Israel. However, 48 percent of the over-60s said that Germany did have a special obligation.When asked if Germany should support Israel politically in the event of the country being attacked, 58 percent responded yes, with 33 percent saying no. A total of 35 percent supported financial support for Israel in the event of an attack, while 57 percent were against it.A vast majority rejected military support for Israel should the Jewish state come under attack. Only 13 percent of respondents said they were in favor of supporting Israel with weapons if it were attacked. Asked if Germany should send soldiers if Israel was attacked, again only 13 percent said yes, with the overwhelming majority—81 percent—responding in the negative.

The sharp contrast between Angela Merkel’s brave speech before the Knesset and what this survey says about broader public opinion toward Israel among Germans could not be more obvious. Jewish leaders ought to be wondering how much support Germany could really provide in the event of a dangerous predicament for Israel. Furthermore, as Mr. Flurry wondered in his article, how much longer can the German chancellor survive when her policy toward Israel runs counter to that of the majority of Germans?

America’s Barometer

In an interesting article on Israel’s 60th anniversary, Mark Steyn says the same trends that are bringing down Israel could also cause the demise of the West.

These days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming President Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic fancies don’t come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don’t fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the Atlantic Monthly cover story: “Is Israel Finished?” Also the cover story in Canada’s leading news magazine, Maclean’s, which dispenses with the question mark: “Why Israel Can’t Survive.” …Since Israel marked its half-century, the “right to exist” is now routinely denied not just in Gaza and Ramallah and the region’s presidential palaces but on every European and Canadian college campus. …Richard Cohen in The Washington Post was more straightforward: “Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.” Cohen and [Matthew] Parris, two famously moderate voices in the leading newspapers of two of the least anti-Israeli capital cities in the West, have nevertheless internalized the same logic as Ahmadinejad: Israel should not be where it is. Whether it’s a “stain of shame” or just a “mistake” is the merest detail. …The joke, of course, is that Israel, despite its demographic challenge, still enjoys a birth rate twice that of the European average. All the reasons for Israel’s doom apply to Europe with bells on.

Our view, based on Bible prophecy, is that rather than causing the European continent’s downfall, the spread of radical Islam will actually be the trigger for a far more expansionist, Catholic-dominated Europe to form.

But when it comes to the Anglo-Saxon standing in the world, Israel is definitely a good barometer.

Dollar’s Dominance Again Questioned

If the United States was any other country, writes the International Herald Tribune, these would be days of panic and austerity.

With debts spiraling higher, a trade deficit exceeding $700 billion a year, and its currency plunging for years, the government would be forced to cut spending and jack up interest rates in a frantic bid to attract investment.But the United States is not any other country. For more than half a century, Americans have enjoyed a unique privilege in the global economy: The dollar has been the world’s dominant currency, the money used in most transactions and the repository for the national savings of many countries, including China, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

All of that, however, is beginning to change. Some foreign governments—including Russia, China, and Middle Eastern nations—are beginning to look at dollar purchases less like an investment and more like foreign aid to America—and they want out of the program. This is why some nations are now diversifying to other currencies.

The day of reckoning is inevitable. The article continues,

For Americans, losing that status could be painful, sending interest rates higher and raising the costs of buying homes and cars. A country that has been operating with essentially unlimited credit might have to learn to live within a budget. …Yes, foreigners have been lending alarming amounts of money to Americans, who have spent extravagantly in excess of their means, economists say. One day, balance will be restored in line with the basic laws of economics—perhaps chaotically, and probably via a substantial fall in the dollar’s value.

Elsewhere on the Web

Pope Benedict and the patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church met on May 9 to pray together for the day to come when both churches could take the Eucharist in unity. Like the Anglican, Lutheran, and other Eastern Orthodox churches, the Armenian Church is coming back into the Roman fold.

A former Jordanian minister gave a speech on Arabic television saying that Islam must conquer Rome, like it once conquered Constantinople.

This report shows that the government’s “creative” accounting methods are disguising a coming crisis for public worker pensions. TheTrumpet.com has reported on the government changing its accounting procedures using methods that would land companies and private accountants in jail. Now the results of dishonesty in the “boiler room” of economics are coming to the surface.

And Finally …

Happy Mother’s Day, moms!