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By Stan Goodenough
OPEN LETTER TO:
The Honorable Governor Sarah Palin
Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee
On the campaign trail with Senator John McCain
September 10, 2008
Dear Governor Palin
Shalom from Jerusalem, and heartfelt congratulations on your nomination as vice-presidential candidate for the Republican Party. You already know how much this development has ignited what was virtually extinguished hope in the hearts of millions of people, and not only in America. For that, alone, I thank God.
I imagine a “The Matrix”-style training program providing instant knowledge would be useful to you about now. You’ve been called “a quick study” and, God bless you, you will need to be. Among the myriad issues you will be having crammed into your brain will be the special and enduring relationship between the United States and Israel - your country’s most faithful ally in the Middle East, in fact probably in the world.
Specifically, you will probably be given a crash course in the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict and America’s efforts to end it by overseeing the creation of a Palestinian state.
On this issue the United States has a virtually set-in-stone policy which American leaders over the last three decades have insisted on pursuing despite the fact it has been repeatedly discredited as a road leading nowhere.
Initiated by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, the policy was re-invigorated by President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, whose team coined the designation: “land for peace.” It was accelerated by President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and translated under President George W Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice first into the “Road Map” and then into the “Two-State-Solution” that sees “Israel and Palestine living side by side in security and peace.”
But stripped of the diplomatic doublespeak so effectively employed by the State Department, this peace process amounts to nothing less than the theft of the Biblical and historical homeland of the Jewish people - in fact the very cradle of their nationhood - out of which the world wants to carve a new Arab state called Palestine.
Madam Governor, in light of prophetic scripture which foretells the Jews’ restoration to this very land, and which I understand you too believe this “peace process” has set your nation on a collision course with the Word of God.
I do not wish to level blanket-accusations at the men I hope you will soon be able to call your predecessors. But even if some of them have pursued this policy with the very best of peace-making intentions, the net effect has been to weaken Israel and leave her increasingly vulnerable in a neighborhood where hundreds of millions of people believe they are destined by Allah to destroy the Jews.
For the past two decades I have watched this process erode Israel’s security, divide the nation, and fuel the hatred of the Arab states for Israel.
Sixty years ago, the long-cherished and never forgotten Jewish homeland was reborn as the State of Israel in what hundreds of millions of Christians applauded as a miracle and a great victory for a nation whose very existence after two millennia in persecution-saturated exile defies all explanation except a biblical one.
Today, after six decades of fighting off the wolves in war after war and in a 24-7 battle against terrorism, Israel stands virtually abandoned on the world stage.
From the floor of the on looking international community, Israel is scorned, detested and hated by great swathes of humanity driven on by a God-loathing press. Virtually every national leader on the planet is in sync with the plan to placate the Islamic aggressors while forcing the Jews to pay an unprecedented, unfair and unjust price in order to try and ensure world peace and a stable oil market.
That the United States has been a blessing to Israel in many wonderful ways is an undeniable fact of contemporary history for which I thank God. Among the great things done for this nation:
* The United States, paying with the lives of 322,000 American soldiers, played a major role in defeating Hitler and bringing the Holocaust to an end, saving the remnant of Europe’s Jews.
* President Truman (a maverick too?) defied his own State Department and moved swiftly to recognize the newly-reborn State of Israel in 1948.
* During the decades-long Cold War, US leaders stood against the Moscow-supported Arab efforts to wipe Israel off the map.
* For the last eight years, the US has been going toe-to-toe with Israel’s sworn Islamic foes, beating them back and, in the process, again paying the price in American blood.
* I could add to this list of blessings the innumerable acts of public cooperation between the United States and Israel, the multiple times the US has vetoed United Nations Security Council efforts to demonize, delegitimize and weaken the State of Israel, and the, I’m sure, many, many untold ways in which American administrations have secretly worked in alliance with Israel’s.
And yet tragically, almost incomprehensibly, all of this great good has been nearly negated by the massive pushing ahead with the land-for-peace process.
Since June 2002, when Mr. Bush became the first US president to support the creation of Palestine, the United States has been increasingly moving into that global orbit that is so hostile to the Jewish state. And it cannot be otherwise. As recent history has demonstrated time and again, to support the creation of Palestine in Judea and Samaria is to gamble with the security and very existence of Israel.
Dear Mrs. Palin - for reasons you may well not yet fully fathom, God has seen fit to place upon your shoulders a burden that would break many men. When I heard you speak so beautifully and powerfully during the Republican National Convention, I had no doubt that - as with Esther in the palace of the king, the Lord has brought you into this world, watched over you, and prepared you to come to the second-highest office in your land, for such a time as this. And I have no doubt, if you look to Him for guidance and skill - that He will use you mightily for His glory, and through you bring your great and God-founded nation back into line with the destiny He has always had for her.
I have intensely prayed, and pledge to continue in prayer, for the protection of you and your family against the hoards of hell that we have already seen unleashed in your direction since Senator McCain made his choice. May God give His angels untiring charge over you in the momentous days, months and years ahead.
Truly, after years of this entrenched US mindset for dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict, a maverick, or better yet, a “team of mavericks” in the White House could really turn the Middle East upside down and introduce a whole new approach to bringing peace to this volatile part of the world.
As you said in Lebanon, Ohio yesterday, even as I was writing this in Jerusalem, there is a time for politics and there is a time for leadership. When it comes to the relationship between the United States and Israel - we truly need courageous and visionary leaders, real statesmen and women, at the helm.
The United States should not be an “honest broker” between the Jews and those pledged to destroy them. Your country should be boldly and unequivocally Israel’s unapologetic ally. To take such a stand would pit America against the world, but they already hate you and your values. A new BBC survey whose findings were released yesterday showed that every one of 22 nations polled want to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House rather than John McCain and you. Don’t rise to that bait. Don’t be deflected. You will never win the world’s approval and blessing until you turn your back on God and lose His.
Far more importantly, to embrace and stand with Israel would bring you into line with the will and purpose of God, which is to restore Israel to its place as head of the nations, and to bless all those who stand with Him in this.
By the way, the Arab states need America FAR MORE than America needs the Arab states and your plans to wean America off dependency on foreign oil is definitely a fantastic step in the right direction. It’s way past time to call the Arab bluff and, if they persist, to let them know that their cause is untenable and will no longer be championed by a God-fearing United States of America.
Concerning Israel, the bottom line for America, and for all the Gentile nations of the world, is recorded in Genesis 12:3. And as God warns through His prophet Isaiah: “The nation and kingdom which will not serve you [Israel] shall perish, And those nations shall be utterly ruined.” (Isaiah 60:12)
This is not, as God Himself says, because Israel deserves this unique treatment, but because God calls this Land and the People His own. If we reject His claim, we reject Him.
In this crucial area, and in the many others you are gearing up to face, may the Lord lead and enable you. And may He take you all the way to Washington DC, into the office of Vice President, and to the end of the destiny He has determined for you from before the foundation of the world. For His glory, and for the sake of His Name.
You have my prayers,
Stan Goodenough - A Watchman on Jerusalem’s walls
PS. This Friday I am flying to America to speak to Christians in six states specifically concerning the US-Israel relationship. Wherever I go I pledge to call for commitments to prayer and intercession for you and Senator McCain. You have a battle to fight, and America has an election to WIN!
