Rachelle and I just returned from leading another wonderful tour to Israel (April 26 – May 5, 2023).
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- Boaz and Yuval with the Burlesons
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- Shepherd’s Cave, Bethlehem
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- Shepherd’s Cave, Bethlehem
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- Capernaum in background
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- The Garden Tomb, Jerusalem
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- Steps outside Caiphus’ house
The pictures represent some of the places and sites we visited during our eight-day tour of Israel.
I come back, though, with a heavy heart over the future of Israel and peace in the Middle East.
News reports from Israel reveal the Israeli Defense Minister believes Iran has the capability to build five nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Treaties the U.S. signed with Iran to limit plutonium production have been canceled by the current U.S. administration, and Iran is moving at a rapid pace to become a nuclear powerhouse in the Middle East.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran are an existential threat to Israel. The Shia Islamic government who rule the beautiful Persian people with an iron fist has promised to “blow Israel into the sea.”
Israel will not give them the chance.
For the first time in nearly 30 years of leading tours in Israel, my friends who have held positions of authority in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) told me that Israel has an 80% likelihood of taking the initiative and attacking Iran first. They have to take the first strike or it will be too late after the nuclear bomb is in production.
The trouble is this “first strike possibility in 2023” may be the match that lights a wider regional or world war.
Israel has no idea if the United States will back Israel during its existential crisis.
Here’s hoping the U.S. government will defend Israel.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Wade,
Sounds like your Israel trip was great. The pictures are really nice. Judy and I will never forget the trip when we went with you years ago.
You said the conditions there are bad. Sounds like two guys holding a gun to each other’s head, and the one that pulls the trigger first will be winner.
Rex,
As always, it could not be said better. Rachelle and I thoroughly enjoyed you and Judy on our last trip. You both are amazing people.
WADE, glad you are all home safely. My son will be traveling in Europe this summer, soon, so I am very concerned about what you have picked up in the way of what may happen and yes, I agree, that any serious all-out war with those two entities will likely involve other countries also. (sigh)
My son will be in Latvia and in Spain, and may touch down on connecting flights in various countries, but still, with all the unrest at present, I remain very concerned for him and the family.
I had not heard that the current administration canceled the US treaties with Iran to limit plutonium production . . . I had heard that it was the previous administration that did this, so I wondered if you had additional information that was not in the wider news. It happens that our new cycles in this country vary on what is announced and when and are not always ‘in sync’. So it goes.
My family has three military members on active duty, so I try to keep up with the ‘news of the world’, so to speak, but yes, it is concerning and at times depressing. I try to be hopeful as I do believe that rational people KNOW that a nuclear ‘war’ with the current weaponry available will have eventually no survivors on the Earth in the nuclear winter that will result. Hope is what saves me these days. 🙂
Israel is dear to our country and to the Western World since the time of the opening of the German ‘holocaust’ camps when the horrors of what was done to the Jewish populations was discovered in all of its totality. It seemed right to restore a Jewish ‘homeland’ in Israel. It may have been done in a way that forever set the Palestinian people and their neighbors at opposition, and that was a mistake at the time. Perhaps some day there may come some peaceful resolution? The Palestinian people have suffered. (?)
Again, glad to hear you are home safely. I don’t take travel safety for granted anymore for my own family.