Something interesting I found.
The Islamic Threat To Israel (Part 1) - Dave Hunt
That vicious anti-Semitism would pursue the Jews worldwide throughout history is one of many prophecies about Israel (Dt 28:37; Neh 1:8; 2 Ch 7:20; Jer 24:9; 25:11; 29:18-19; 44:8; Amos 9:9, etc.) that God points to as proof that He is the one true God, that the Bible is His Word, and that the Jews are His chosen people (Is 42:8-9; 43:10; 46:9-10; 48:5, etc.). From a human point of view, there is no rational ground for such persistent, widespread anti-Semitism; yet this prophecy has come true with a vengeance. The only explanation is found in the Bible: the Jews are God's chosen people and under His judgment for their rebellion against Him (Dt 28:15-68; 29:24-28; 30:17-20, etc.).
There is a further obvious reason for this universal anti-Semitism: hatred of Jews and Israel is inspired of Satan because his only hope to escape eternal doom is to destroy them. This he must do to save himself from God's wrath. Had Satan been able to destroy the Jews before Christ came, he would have prevented the birth of the Messiah, the salvation of mankind, and his own defeat through the sacrifice of the Son of God for mankind's sins. Moreover, for promising a Messiah and a salvation that never came, God would have been proved a liar and thus could not righteously have punished Satan.
Of course, the Messiah came and defeated Satan, "tast[ing] death for every man" (Heb 2:9) and bearing "our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Pt 2:24). Countless multitudes have been redeemed and will spend eternity in the Father's house of "many mansions" because of having received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. But Christ's defeat of Satan through His death and resurrection did not end the battle between God and Satan for the hearts, minds, and eternal destiny of mankind. That battle continues to rage-and Israel is at its center.
The God of Ishmael?
The God of the Bible is called "the God of Israel" 203 times. Never is He called the God of any other people-and certainly never is He called the God of Ishmael or of the Arabs. He further declares, "I AM the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations" (Ex 3:13-16). Twelve times this name is given to God. Christ argued the resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (and thus of all believers) from this title, declaring that "God is not the God of the dead but of the living" (Mt 22:31-32).
The entire land of Canaan (which became Israel) was promised to Abraham and to his seed for ever (Gen 12:7; 13:15, 17:19; Ex 6:8; Lev 25:23). Who can claim to be this "seed"? Islam teaches that it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who was the "son of promise" and was offered by Abraham upon the altar. Ishmael was the firstborn, and thus the Arabs, who claim descent from him, are adamant that they-not the Jews-are the rightful heirs to God's promise of the land of Canaan. Of course, Ishmael was not the son God promised, but the product of Abraham's and Sarah's unbelief. Instead of being born to Sarah, Abraham's wife, his mother was Hagar, Sarah's maid.
The Bible makes it very clear in many ways that the promised son was Isaac and that he and his descendants were the rightful heirs to God's promises to Abraham. Apparently content with Ishmael whom he loved, Abraham desired no other son (Gen 17:15-18). But God insisted that He would give Abraham a son through his wife, Sarah, that his name would be Isaac, and that he would be the heir to the promises and to the land (17:19-21). Furthermore, the true heirs to the promises would be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years (Gen 15:13). This never happened to the Arabs, but only to the Jews, who, during this isolation, did not intermarry with non-Jews but became an identifiable ethnic group, were led en masse into the Promised Land, and we know who their descendants are today. In contrast, Ishmael's descendants intermarried at least with Midianites (Jdg 8:1, 12, 22, 24) and with those of Esau (Gn 28:9) who, in turn, intermarried with Hittites (26:34).
In the beginning, the Qur'an called Jews and Christians the "people of the book" and honored much of the Bible as inspired of the true God. When Muhammad turned against these people, however, the tone of the Qur'an changed. The claim is made today that the Bible was perverted in order to make it seem that the Jews were the heirs. Of course, we have Bible manuscripts both before and after Muhammad, and they are identical. In fact, the Qur'an itself repeatedly declares that the Jews are Allah's chosen people to whom he gave the Promised Land:
We made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel (Surah 5:70); We brought the Children of Israel across the [Red] sea, and Pharaoh with his hosts pursued themÉand we verily did allot unto the Children of Israel a fixed abode (10:91, 94); [Pharaoh] wished to scare them from the land, but we drowned him and those with him [in the Red Sea] all together. And we said unto the Children of Israel dwell in the land" (17:103-104); we delivered the Children of Israel from Pharaoh. We chose them, purposely, above all creatures (44:30-32); we favored them above all peoples (45:16); Remember Allah's favor to youÉ. HeÉgave you what he gave no other of his creatures. O my people, go into the Holy Land which Allah hath ordained for you (95:20-21), etc.
"Palestine"?
In spite of such Qur'anic passages, Islam claims that "Palestine" belongs to the Arab descendants of Ishmael. This is the basis of the hatred Muslims have toward Israel and of their determination to exterminate its people and to possess all of Israel for themselves. In fact, "Palestine" is not mentioned once in the Qur'an-very strange, considering the importance Muslims attach to it today.
That spurious claim is further "legitimized" through a people who today call themselves "Palestinians." They claim descent from the "original Palestinians" and that, therefore, the entire land of "Palestine" is theirs, but is being unlawfully occupied by Jews. They demand all of this land as their possession. Such a claim is fraudulent for many well-established reasons.
The land to which God brought Abraham (at this time called Abram), and which He gave to him and to his heirs, was called "Canaan" (Gen 12:5, 6-8; 13:7-17, etc.). There was no such land as Palestine and no such people as Palestinians. Its early inhabitants were Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizites, Rephaims, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites (Gen 15:19-21). God never promised anything called "Palestine" to Abraham and to his heirs. The only land He promised was Canaan: "And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God (Gen 17:8); Be ye mindful always the covenant which he made with Abraham, and of his oath unto Isaac; And hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance" (1 Chr 16:15-19).
Even had there been a land of Palestine and "Palestinians," the Arabs could not possibly be descended from them. They claim descent from Ishmael, who was certainly not a "Palestinian." His father, Abraham, was from Ur of the Chaldees, and his mother, Hagar, was an Egyptian. Neither of them was one of the "original inhabitants of Canaan," nor even remotely related to such a people. The land was already settled when Abraham with his wife, Sarah, and her maid, Hagar, arrived there.
Furthermore, as late as the 1950s Arabs refused to be called Palestinians. To the British Peel Commission in 1937, a local Arab leader testified, "There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented." Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, testified to an Anglo-American Committee of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history-absolutely not!" To the UN Security Council in 1956, Ahmed Shukairy declared, "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." Eight years later, in 1964, Shukairy became the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. No "Palestinian," like Arafat, he was born in Cairo.
Abraham settled in Hebron in the land of Canaan (Gen 13:18; 23:2, 19; 35:27; 37:14, etc.). Everyone knows where Hebron and Canaan were located then and now-nowhere near Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Yet the Qur'an and Islam claim that Abraham and Ishmael together built the Ka'aba. This is pure fabrication-as is the claim in the Qur'an that a Samaritan built the golden calf in the wilderness, 700 years before Samaritans even existed.
Ishmael was born after Abraham had lived in Hebron for ten years. Fourteen years later, Isaac was born in Hebron to Abraham and his wife, Sarah. Ishmael mocked Isaac, and Sarah banished him and his mother, Hagar (Gen 21:10-20). From that time onward, Ishmael was no longer part of Abraham's household but lived far away "in the wilderness of Paran" (21:21). Indeed, God did not consider him to be Abraham's son! God told Abraham: "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovestÉand offer him [as] a burnt-offering" (Gen 22:1-2).
Thirty-seven years after giving birth to Isaac, at the age of 127, Sarah died (23:1). Abraham was still in Hebron of Canaan, where he had lived more than 70 years. He purchased the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite (23:1-20) and there he buried Sarah. Thirty-eight years later, at the age of 175, Abraham died and was buried in Machpelah next to Sarah. After Abraham's death, Isaac continued to live in Hebron in the land of Canaan another 110 years. One by one, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah all died and were buried in the family tomb, the cave of Machpelah-but not Ishmael. No Arab or Muslim was ever buried there.
David was first crowned king in Hebron and ruled there over Judah 7½ years before moving his throne to Jerusalem. Hebron is of great significance to the Jews. Yet Muslims built a mosque at Machpelah, claim the burial place of Jewish patriarchs as their own, forbid access to Jews, have periodically slaughtered and expelled Jews from Hebron, and desire to make it Jew-free today. They also claim that Jerusalem and the entire land of Israel have always belonged to them, that no Jews ever lived there, and that the Israelis are occupying Arab land! Incredibly, the world accepts this lie as the basis for forcing upon Israel a fraudulent "peace" in the Middle East.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their families lived for more than 300 years in the land of Canaan, which God had promised to them and to their descendants. (Arabs never lived there in any numbers until after the seventh-century A.D. Muslim invasion of Israel.) Jacob and his family temporarily moved to Egypt because of a famine in Canaan, but remained there 400 years and became the slaves of the Egyptians, then were brought back to conquer Canaan as God had foretold, establishing them as the heirs of God's promises to Abraham (Gen 15:13-14).
Thereafter Canaan was known as the land of Israel, which it is called 31 times in Scripture. Its kings ruled from Jerusalem over a vast empire stretching from the Sinai to the Euphrates, until they were conquered by the Babylonians around 600 B.C. and scattered to many nations, as God had warned. Thus, for 300 years before Egypt and about 1,000 years thereafter-a total of 1,300 years-the Jews dwelled in their own land, the land of Israel. It is an insult to the God of Israel and to His chosen people to call Israel "Palestine"! Please don't encourage this lie!
Ishmael's descendants never lived in Canaan. Most of them settled in the Arabian Peninsula. It would not be until the seventh century, through the Islamic invasions, that Arabs would come in any significant numbers into the land of Israel, which in A.D. 135 the Roman conquerors (after rebuilding Jerusalem as a pagan city dedicated to Jupiter) had angrily renamed Provincia Syria-Palestina after Israel's ancient enemies, the Philistines.
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