Israel Imperiled

My wife, Cheryl, and I just returned from Israel, leading a tour group of 102 people. As always, we had a fantastic time. Few things are as enchanting, exhilarating, and encouraging as a journey to the land of the Bible and the epicenter of end-times prophecy.

This was my seventh time to lead a tour. But this visit was very different than any time we’ve visited the land. Israel has always faced an existential threat from its enemies, but during this visit I sensed that the threat has rarely been this serious—not since the late 1960s and early 1970s when Israel fought two wars against the Arab alliance. The threat is mounting on several fronts. 

Some of them are internal.

Internal Combustion 

While we were in Israel, protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms were commonplace. On a nightly basis, tens of thousands of protesters flooded into the streets. One protest attracted half a million agitated citizens across the nation.

At one point, access to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv was temporarily blocked for several hours. One of the protests was dubbed “a day of disruption.” According to Haaretz, “Protesters blocked major roads and intersections, and held marches and demonstrations in dozens of city centers.” 

Two days before we departed, we were in the lobby of our hotel (The Inbal) in Jerusalem. At around 8 p.m., we heard a loud commotion outside. I went outside to see what was happening