As a Jewish believer in Messiah Yeshua, who lives in a Druze/Arabic community in Israel, with dear Arabic Christian friends and spiritual family, I yearn to share with you, and with the Church at large, my perspective on Israel and our peoples. FYI, I pray several times a week with Arabic and International friends, and worship several times a week with Jews and Internationals. Both sides cry with a combination of pain and hope. Both sides share deep-seated fears and amazing faith. Both ache and believe for God’s timing to bring forth His unity in our Land. Both yearn to accelerate that timing through prayers and worship. 

In fact, we are not two peoples, Palestinian vs. Israeli, Ishmael vs. Isaac, embroiled in ancient land and authority jealousies that rip us apart. Instead, we are one people battling the most intense religious/spiritual/political war that the enemy of our souls could possibly create. God promised Ezekiel (37:15-28) that Israel would never be divided into two nations again. God’s enemy is bound, set and determined to prove Him wrong. God promised us that we would have one king: David, and one Shepherd, and we would all live at peace under His commandments. Instead, most Palestinians are Muslims and most Jews don’t know their God. 

Let me explain. 

According to DNA research done at Haifa University and other locations, starting in 2000-2001, on the genetic pool of the Palestinians, 90% of Palestinians are 90% Jewish.  They include as many priests (Cohens) in their genetic pool as do Jews in general. They call this Land their own because it is. But other Jews also call this Land their own because it is. We don’t recognize ourselves as one, yet we are. God gave us this Land through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Similarly, many internationals, who inexplicably yearn to live in Israel, have discovered from personal DNA research that they are genetically Jewish.) 

We are NOT dealing with Ishmael vs. Israel.  We are dealing with Muslim Jew vs. Jewish Jew. We are fighting against religious principalities at war with each other, using the Church, world-wide media, and general deception to create an unsolvable conflict that they hope will cause God’s defeat and their victory in God’s land. 

Historically, how did this happen?  (Note the reference links at the end of this article.) From the research, the Palestinians’ common genetic pool with other Jews is about 2,000 years old. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and slaughtered its inhabitants, renaming Israel Palestine and renaming Israelis Palestinians, to honor Israel’s long-standing enemy and mock the Jews, the ancestors of current day Palestinians either stayed, or went down to Gaza and returned to Israel/Palestine as soon as possible. When the Muslims invaded Israel in the 600s or so, they were forcibly converted to Islam. Thus, our inheritance was divided. The Jewish people who fled Israel into the Diaspora retained their religious affiliation with GOD, and the Palestinians who stayed in the Land, and held it, lost their faith. 

Many in the older generation still know this. Prior to 1948, many Palestinian homes hid Jewish symbols, in stone flower decorations, over the doorposts of their houses. In 1948, both the Jordanians and the Palestinians probably knew that Palestinians were Jews. Heartbreakingly, there is something genuine in their permanent refugee status. Israel is their home. It is also my home, as a Messianic Jew. That doesn’t solve our dilemma, but it more adequately defines it.

So, what do we do from here? We pray for unity, for peace, for deepening understanding, for the removal of fears, for the ability to reconnect and love each other. We pray for family reconciliation. We pray for Yeshua. We pray for Yeshua to declare His Presence over the Land and in all our hearts. We pray for Him to reconcile our differences in His Blood. We pray for millions of Jewish Muslims to believe in Yeshua, for millions of secular and orthodox Jews to believe in Yeshua. I know He wants all of us saved and whole in His Name. I know He wants all of us home in Him, living here in His Land together in peace. Israel is crying out to us. Ezekiel 37 is calling us together. Can we hear God’s Voice of Return?

There will be a special prayer initiative here to hopefully bring together ministry leaders from across the ethnic and political spectrum, focusing on His heart for the land and its diverse peoples. It will be from May 10-13. We are expecting, in the LORD, much reconciliation and love and joy to come from these meetings. Please pray for us as we prepare for this prayer initiative. 

In conclusion, these are our requested prayer points:

1. Yeshua to take His Place as King over all our hearts, with all of our hearts ready and rejoicing to receive Him.
2. The world, and especially the Christian world, to stop taking sides, but to join in prayers for reconciliation and unity.
3. The enmity to completely cease, and truth and reconciliation between the brothers to be restored.
4. All idols to collapse, with false gods cast out, never to return.
5. Yeshua’s Love to strengthen us, body, soul and spirit, so that as we come together in His Love, we would make the surrounding nations jealous for Him.
6. The Prayer Initiative in May to bring forth ALL the GOOD FRUIT the LORD DESIRES, without any interference, and for all of us organizing this event, and/or participating in it to be completely covered in our LORD and Savior’s protection. All the finances for the initiative to be provided for completely. Amen and amen.

Dear Yeshua, thank YOU for YOUR WISDOM and for the depth and height and breadth and width of Your Love which you are pouring into and through all of us. Thank You for the salvation of all Your People, Jew and Gentile alike.  Guide us in understanding Your Truth and Your Love.  Bring us into the borders of Your Kingdom of Grace and Righteousness, so we can dwell in Your Peace. Ba Shem Yeshua, I pray!  Amen and amen.

Wendy Cohen

References:

http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/The-lost-Palestinian-Jews,

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/science/1.681385,

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2009/01/shared-genetic-heritage-of-jews-and.html#sthash.fyFm6XYC.dpuf,

For more detailed scientific information go to:

M. F. Hammer (2000). Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97 (12), 6769-6774 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.100115997

A NEBEL, D FILON, B BRINKMANN, P MAJUMDER, M FAERMAN, A OPPENHEIM (2001). The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East The American Journal of Human Genetics, 69 (5), 1095-1112 DOI: 10.1086/324070

M THOMAS (2002). Founding Mothers of Jewish Communities: Geographically Separated Jewish Groups Were Independently Founded by Very Few Female Ancestors The American Journal of Human Genetics, 70 (6), 1411-1420 DOI: 10.1086/340609

Doron M. Behar, Ene Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Saharon Rosset, Shay Tzur, Yarin Hadid, Guennady Yudkovsky, Dror Rosengarten, Luisa Pereira, Antonio Amorim, Ildus Kutuev, David Gurwitz, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Richard Villems, Karl Skorecki (2008). Counting the Founders: The Matrilineal Genetic Ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora PLoS ONE, 3 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002062