Author: David Mark

David Mark is the founder and editor of Israel Rising. Besides Israel Rising, he heads up outreach for Ateret Cohanim in Jerusalem's Old City and acts as the Managing Director for Pulse of Israel. On the side he teaches classes that blend minimalism, mindfulness, and ecology with the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.
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This Chanukah, It Is Time To Finally Break The Chains Of The CCP And Their Global Partners

The world around us is in chaos. Old norms are buried, new ideas abound, and the tools purported to help us discover new avenues of abundance are now at our fingertips.

But what happens if all of this fast paced, information saturated global culture, is just a weapon wielded by a godless enemy determined to build a world based on a society where only the collective matters – not the individual.

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This is the war we are fighting now. The antagonist is the Chinese Communist Party – a godless machine whose goal is global control. They are aided and abetted by big tech, big pharma, Wall Street, legacy media, and many in academia. The war is about money and control and it appears to those who have not been swayed by their guile that the CCP and their friends are winning.

So how do we defeat an enemy who uses so many different weapons to fight us?

It starts by having pure and simple faith in G-D. However, simple faith is not enough to hold back their full power. We must learn to activate this faith as a real tool, because part of the enemy’s strategy is to force us into a corner by our own hands. Faith that remains latent, is faith which is equivalent to light without a vessel and that in a way gives the enemy “territory.”

Rebbe Nachman teaches that our faces can be likened to the Menorah, the seven branch candelabra in the Holy Temple. We too have seven places that have a potential to shine light and in the same vein they can show nothing but darkness – it all depends on what we take in and express.

Our faith is the light of G-D and it is this faith that requires vessels to contain it and shine it to others. This is why the CCP and their partners around the world work so hard to create so much information that our senses are overloaded. This is meant to first distract and then to overtake the seven openings in our face (two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and one mouth), thus dimming our pure and simple faith – extinguishing the Menorah within

This assault on our senses has been going on for a long time. It has taken the form of entertainment – meant to destroy our moral fabric. We have grown in our disdain for tradition and yet cannot pinpoint the exact reason why. All the while, we fill the growing void caused by our lack of faith with cheap products made by CCP run China and pushed on us by global corporations in order to distract us while making them richer.

We are now at the crossroads. We can fall deeper into the darkness or turn around and jettison the “slave masters” from our midst. The Greeks were able to gain control of the minds and the will of most of the Jews in the Land of Israel until one family stood up and led an uprising. It is true, the war was about freeing the Jewish people in the Land of Israel from Greek control, but ultimately the Jewish people needed to overthrow the Greek control over their minds and hearts to truly be victorious.

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The light of faith was represented by the rekindling of the Menorah by the Jewish people. The seven branched candelabra burned for a miraculous eight days. Today, we can overthrow our enemies and relight the Menorah, but we must choose to see the enemy for who he is and recognize how much he has penetrated deep within and by doing so nearly extinguishing our soul.

Like the Maccabees of old, each one of us can lead an uprising within and by doing so, defeat the army of darkness that appears to be so close to winning. There is still time and always plenty of faith no matter how dim the light appears.

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We Must Not Fear The Darkness – There Is Light Within

We are in a moment of time where humanity feels that it has no where to go. We are stifled by the unending information flow of how bad our lives really are. Lockdowns, layoffs, and business closures all connected to some sort of virus no one can really explain other than that it appears to be a problem.

Yosef HaTzaddik was thrown into a well of darkness. He had no way out and descended deeper into Mitzrayim (Egypt) – the Land of constricted G-D consciousness. There he was thrown into a dungeon of darkness with no seeming way out.

Yehuda, his brother also descended to such depths, he unknowingly had relations with his former daughter-in-law thinking she was a prostitute.

The darkness enveloped both brothers and their family – the House of Israel.

And yet, the Redemption came from all of this. The light within, burst forth and shone the path forward.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches that over inundation of information causes one to have a face of darkness – leading to depression. However, the simple path, the path pure faith, disregarding the negative messaging that seeks to flood our lives cause our faces to shine. We can be like a menorah – shining bright, but we first must disregard the forces of doubt and “dark winters” that seek to scare us into compliance and servitude.

This Chanukah is a time when we can find the light within and there is no better time than now!

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Trump The Peace Maker: Morocco Signs Full Normalization Deal With Israel

President Trump announced today that his administration achieved another historic peace deal between a Muslim majority country and Israel. The Kingdom of Morocco and Israel agreed to full normalization. In exchange the US agreed to Morocco’s claims over the Western Sahara, nearly doubling the Kingdom’s territory.

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Here are Trump’s tweets about the deal:

This is why the left and the Deep State hate President Trump. The left has utopian dreams about the world and yet it is their arch-enemy, the “Orange Man” who gets the job done. The Deep State thrives from conflicts raging around the world. After all, the more conflict, the more chaos, and that means more reason that outside forces, including weapons and of course mediation is needed. Peace means that the Deep State cannot keep control – they are not relevant anymore.

The fact is, President Trump actually showing that peace, when viewed in a practical manner, was always achievable. The problem was there was simply never the real determination to just get it done.

What we learn from all of these deals, is that peace does not need to be complicated. In fact, the more simple it is, the more of a chance it will work out.

Think about it. Morocco just wanted recognition over a chunk of territory and with that they agreed to peace with Israel. At the end of the day, Israel was not the central reason a peace deal has never been achieved, but rather just part of the transactional exchange Morocco needed in order to apply sovereignty over a large piece of land it has claimed for decades.

This is how it has been with the Abraham Accords. President Trump got the parties to agree that peace is simply smart business. In today’s world, where leftists and liberals pretend to live a sort of faux righteousness, disregarding the harsh reality of the world, sometimes it takes commonsense and a bit of deal making to get a realistic peace deal done.

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Has Israeli Drone Sales To Azerbaijan Backfired?

The recently ended Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia concluded with Azerbaijan gaining far more territory than it had before the war. Baku’s success came by way of strong military support from Turkey including the use of Syrian mercenaries that had fought for Turkey against the Kurds.

Aside from Turkey’s involvement, proof is clear that Israeli drones and other advanced weaponry from Israel gave Azerbaijan the needed edge against their Armenian foe.

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Israel and Azerbaijan have had warm relations since 1992. For years, it was one of the only Muslim majority countries to have relations with Israel. Besides that Azerbaijan is home to 30,000 Jews who live safely among their Muslim neighbors.

Israel has relied heavily on Azerbaijan for both 40% of its oil and a forward base against Iran.

However, in recent years, Jerusalem and Baku have seen their relations fray as Azerbaijan has drawn closer to Turkey. During Turkey’s invasion of Northern Syria directed at pushing out the indigenous Kurdish population, it was Netanyahu who pledged support for the Kurds. At the same time Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev vocally supported the Turkish invasion.

Which is why Jerusalem’s continued arm sales to Azerbaijan makes both right and left in Israel nervous that these weapons are falling into the wrong hands.

Advanced weapons sales by Israel to a county like Azerbaijan, who is ready to parter with Turkey, a belligerent actor bent on hegemonic control over the Middle East is increasingly problematic from both a PR and a security standpoint. Given the above, why is Israel continuing to arm Azerbaijan, especially after the Abraham Accords brought UAE oil onboard for the Jewish State as well increased relations with more Muslim nations?

The answer is: Iran. Israel still needs Azerbaijan for its location in order to keep close tabs on Iran for Israel’s continued Mossad operations. While the Mahabat region of Iran, which is Kurdish offers a great place for Israeli backed agents to spy and carry out operations, there is no strategic depth to it. The Iranian Azeri region on the other hand buttresses Azerbaijan.

Both Iran and Azerbaijan have had a rocky relationship. Iran supported Armenian claims to Nagorno-Karabakh in the past and also provided vital support to Armenia in past conflicts with Azerbaijan. Although in the present conflict, Iran claims to have stayed neutral, Turkey has insisted it secretly supports Armenia.

For Azerbaijan, its claims to the Azeri areas of Iran have given Tehran pause and concern.

With Israeli drone bases and listening posts in Azerbaijan and a close security partnership between the two countries, Israel can overlook Azerbaijan’s friends it does not approve of. This is because its geographical importance and friendly populace on both sides of the Azerbaijan-Iran border offers Jerusalem an indispensable forward operative base and strategic location unparalleled.

Taking Turkey out of the discussion makes it even more apparent that Israel is busy locking in partnerships with those countries surrounding Iran – the Gulf states to its South, Kurdistan to its West, and Azerbaijan to its North – in order to contain it and provide its intelligence units the locations they need to carry out targeted assassinations, information collection, and logistical support for minority actors in Iran that are focused on toppling the Ayatollahs.

In this light, Israel has made a strategic choice to continue selling Azerbaijan the arms it needs despite the drawbacks in order to secure help against a far larger threat.

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Ethiopian Troops Fire On UN Staffers In Tigray After Defying Checkpoints

In the scramble to try to find out whats going in the Tigray province of Ethiopia, UN staffers were fired upon because they defied the Ethiopian army checkpoints.

Redwan Hussein, spokesman for the Ethiopian government’s task force for Tigray, explained to reporters that the U.N. team passed through two checkpoints without stopping. The continued further hastily driving into an unauthorized area.

“When they were about to break the third one they were shot at and detained,” he said.

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The weeks old conflict has seen the federal Ethiopian government under PM Abi Ahmed crush the TPLF resistance in Tigray after they defied the central government. Ahmed has been focused on centralizing Ethiopia and breaking down the stranglehold over the Ethiopian economy that the TPLF has had over the last 20 years.

The UN staffers were told not to go into certain areas and they defied orders. Some were arrested and others shot at.

The international community has become worried about the Ethiopian conflict spiraling out of control and splintering the country along ethnic lines. Ethiopia is seen as a regional powerhouse, which is why China is hoping for a quick end to the conflict and a consolidation under Abi Ahmed’s moves. This is why Eritrea, who was once at war with Ethiopia has been interested in helping Addis Ababa put down the insurgency in the North. Both need stability in order to lock further Chinese investment across the Horn of Africa.

The UN’s defiance of Ethiopian orders in Tigray is more than just a mistake. There are those within the agency who seek a balance to Beijing’s expansion across the strategic Horn of Africa and may be willing to use Tigray to get it.

While there is a clear humanitarian crisis forming, the international community mostly European led appear to be exacerbating Ethiopian tensions with the outside world.

Jan Egeland, head of the internationalist Norwegian Refugee Council has jumped in, exhorting Addis Ababa to allow unfettered aid.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations chimed in as well:

Tigray may be a looming disaster, but it is unclear why the UN sees fit to focus outsized energy on it as opposed to the crisis between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh or even elsewhere on the African continent like Buhari’s ethnic cleansing of the Igbo.

This sort of over focus by Western international organizations unintentionally pushes countries like Ethiopia further into the pocket of China who asks no questions, except for demanding total obedience.