Sparks Fly in High-Level Meeting Between U.S. and Israel

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Sparks Fly in High-Level Meeting Between U.S. and Israel

On Friday, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot ran a front-page story reporting on a recent meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Dan Shapiro, America’s ambassador to Israel, and Mike Rogers, a Republican congressman and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Here are a few snippets from the article, translated by The Blaze and printed under the telling headline, “The Confrontation.”

Netanyahu, according to a source who participated in the meeting, was particularly surly and stressed. At the start of the meeting, he opened with a sharp attack on the Obama administration which according to him has not done enough on the Iranian issue. “Instead of effectively pressuring Iran, Obama and his people are pressuring us not to attack the nuclear facilities,” he said, and then moved on to a harsh criticism of the administration’s pronouncements indicating there is still room for diplomacy. “The time has run out,” he said resolutely.

Who can blame Bibi for being “surly and stressed”?

Being prime minister of Israel, a tiny nation lacking friends and encompassed by well-armed enemies, has always been an incredibly stressful and taxing responsibility. But in recent weeks the burden on Mr. Netanyau has reached an almost unprecedented level.

When he wakes in the morning and looks north, he sees Syria, a nation laden with chemical weapons, crumbling amid a violent civil war. When he looks south, at Egypt, he sees a radical Islamist government crushing dissenters, militarizing the Sinai, and trashing its three decade peace agreement with Israel. And when he looks east, at Iran, he sees a Jew-hating, holocaust-inducing regime that is quickly advancing a nuclear weapons program chiefly designed to annihilate the Jewish state.

Not sure about you, but it’s not hard for me to empathize with Mr. Netanyahu, and forgive him for being a little “surly and stressed.”

But there are some, it appears, who cannot. The Yediot Ahronot article continued:

At one point, an anomalous thing occurred in the office, which is very unacceptable in diplomatic code. Ambassador Shapiro, who was appointed by President Obama and for years was among his closest advisers, decided he’d had enough. Enough is enough. He spoke and answered Netanyahu politely but in a manner that left no room for doubt. The ambassador in fact accused Netanyahu of distorting Obama’s position. He quoted the president, who promised he would not allow a nuclear Iran and said that all options—including a military strike—are on the table. …Diplomatic sources who were privy to the incident say that “lightning and sparks flew” in the room, and that the exchange of words became more harsh.

For many years now, Gerald Flurry and the Trumpet have been warning about an inevitable split in the formerly rock-solid U.S.-Israel relationship. Bible prophecy says that in the end time this historic brotherhood would be severed. In Zechariah 11:14, among other prophecies, God said He would “break the brotherhood between Judah [modern-day Israel] and Israel [primarily the United States and Britain].”

It’s clear that this prophecy is even now being fulfilled. Keep watching the Israel-U.S. partnership; the “lightning and sparks” that reportedly flew in last week’s meeting are merely the beginning stages of the full-scale combustion of America’s historic brotherhood with Israel.