Epicenter 2.0

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Inside the Harvard Club, I found Sharansky and several aides waiting in the lobby. He immediately and graciously shook my hand and greeted me with a thick Russian accent, and we headed off to begin the day’s whirlwind schedule of media events.

  SHARANSKY MEETS PUTIN

  Over the next several days, we met with reporters and editors from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New York Post, and National Review, and Sharansky was interviewed by Charlie Rose and C-SPAN. Sharansky explained his views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his critique of Barak’s approach, and he offered alternative ways of making peace and promoting democracy.

  During our time in Washington, Sharansky asked me questions about my family’s history and about my career. He asked whether he’d heard correctly that my family was from Russia.

  “Yes,” I told him. “My father’s parents and grandparents were Orthodox Jews in Minsk.”

  He asked when they had left.

  “Around 1907, during the pogroms, when the czar was wiping out thousands upon thousands of Jews.”

  How had they gotten out?

  “They hid in a hay wagon that was about to cross the border. Czarist soldiers actually plunged their swords into the hay to see if anyone was in there. By God’s grace, no one was injured. By God’s grace, none of the children—of which there were several—sneezed or coughed or asked, ‘Are we there yet’ or said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom!’ And by the grace of God, my family didn’t get out of czarist, anti-Semitic Russia only to say, ‘Phew! Let’s settle in Germany or Poland or Austria.’ Instead they made their way across the continent of Europe, caught a steamship to the New World, were processed at Ellis Island, and like any good Jewish family, they set up shop in Brooklyn, which is where my father grew up.”

  Sharansky laughed and commended my family for getting out just in time.

  “I’ve been blessed to grow up in freedom,” I replied.

  “You have indeed,” he said. “So you were raised Orthodox?”

  Not exactly, I explained. By the time my parents met and got married in 1965, my father was fairly agnostic, as was my mother, though she was raised in the Methodist Church and came from a Protestant background, not a Jewish one. By the time I was born in April of 1967, they were on a real spiritual journey, reading the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the New Testament in search of the truth. In 1973, both of them came to believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah—and both became evangelical Christians. It took me a few years to wrestle it through for myself, I explained, but I was now a follower of Jesus as well.

  Sharansky seemed surprised, but curious.

  He went on to ask me about my various jobs in Washington and about my four and a half years working for Steve Forbes, during his 1996 presidential campaign and right through the 2000 Republican primaries.

  “It was great,” I said, “right up to the point where we got mowed down by Governor Bush.”

  He laughed.

  On Wednesday, September 13, we headed to Reagan National Airport, where we boarded a US Airways Shuttle back to New York. As we settled in for the forty-five minute flight, I pulled out my dog-eared, paperback copy of Fear No Evil, and asked him to sign it. A bit nostalgically, he flipped through the pages and noticed all of my underlining, notes, and other markings.

  He turned to the title page, pulled out a pen, and wrote, “To Joel—you do the same what I did in Moscow with American press—but much better—so be careful. With appreciation and friendship, Natan Sharansky.” [sic]

  This time it was I who laughed, hoping nine years in the Gulag wouldn’t be the price for helping this remarkable man make his case to the world.

  “I’m curious,” I asked him as we approached cruising altitude. “When you were sitting in your cell all those years, did you ever imagine yourself serving in the Israeli cabinet as a senior advisor to the prime minister himself?”

  Not at all, he said. But stranger still, he confided, was in 1997 when he was serving as minister of industry and trade and then–prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually sent him back to Moscow to strengthen economic ties between Israel and Russia.

  In February of 1999, Netanyahu sent Sharansky to Moscow a second time. Officially, the trip was billed as another high-level trade delegation. But privately, Netanyahu wanted Sharansky to hold a series of secret talks with Vladimir Putin, then head of the Russian intelligence services known as the FSB—the successor to the KGB—to discuss Israel’s growing fears that Russian nuclear scientists and/or Russian nuclear warheads could fall into the hands of radical Arab and Islamic regimes in the Middle East, namely the mullahs of Iran or Saddam Hussein’s Republic of Iraq.45

  Putin knew what was on the agenda, but as Sharansky explained it to me, Putin used their first meeting to launch a charm offensive, offering to show Sharansky the files the KGB had kept on him when they had tracked his human-rights activities in the 1970s and then charged him with working with the CIA. Sharansky had requested to see the files during his 1997 trip but had been denied. Now Putin seemed to be saying that Russia was a different kind of country and that he was a different kind of spy chief.

  At once grateful and caught somewhat off guard, Sharansky spent hours poring over the so-called dirt the KGB had amassed (i.e., made up) over the years. But eventually the two men got down to business. Why was Russia selling nuclear technology to Iran, the worst terror state on the face of the planet? Why was Russia building an $800 million nuclear reactor for the Iranians in Bushehr, near the Persian Gulf? Didn’t Moscow understand the dangers of a state like Iran developing nuclear weapons, especially given Russia’s bloody battle with radical Islamic jihadists in Chechnya? Did Russia appreciate how seriously the government of Israel viewed the possibility of an enemy like Iran going nuclear?

  Putin dismissed Netanyahu’s concerns and sent word back through Sharansky that Israel had nothing to worry about.

  A chill ran down my spine, and three thoughts flashed across my mind.

  First, God forbid that either Iran or Iraq should be able to acquire nuclear warheads. It was a nightmare scenario. The damage either country could do to U.S. national security either directly or through surrogate terrorist networks—to say nothing of the damage that could be done to Israel—with nuclear weapons would be catastrophic.

  Second, I was struck by how remarkable it was that God had given me the opportunity to sit here with this amazing man and get a rare inside look into the minds of Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, two leaders at the epicenter of world events.

  Third, I found myself thinking what a fascinating novel all this would make. I had always dreamed of writing novels and screenplays. Perhaps now was as good a time as any to write my first political thriller.

  And then as I stared out the window of the US Air shuttle, mulling over what Sharansky had just told me, I suddenly thought back to a book I’d read years before, and I began to wonder if a much larger scenario was beginning to unfold.

  THE FUTURE ALLIANCE OF RUSSIA AND IRAN

  Sometime around 1992, my wife gave me a nonfiction book called The Coming Peace in the Middle East that unexpectedly captured my imagination.

  At the time, I was serving as an assistant to the senior vice president and director of research at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, DC. It was my first job in DC—low-level and low-paying—but it did give me a front-row seat to witness the dramatic changes under way at home and around the globe. My third day on the job, for example, Henry Kissinger came for lunch to discuss the fall of the Berlin wall and what it meant for the future of the Western alliance.

  My job was mostly to type memos, serve coffee, and keep quiet. But soon my boss, Burt Pines, let me carve out a niche of my own, researching the prospects for free-market economic reform and a new era of peace and prosperity in the Middle East now that Kuwait had been liberated and Saddam’s Republican Guard had been defeated by coalition forces. As such, I was soon talking to every Ar
ab and Israeli expert I could find and reading everything I could that might give me insight into helping the people of that troubled region find new hope. 46

  Coming Peace, however, was unlike any other book I had found. It was not written by a current or former secretary of state or national security advisor or director of Central Intelligence. Nor was it written by a president, prime minister, or king of any Middle Eastern country, past or present. It was, instead, written by a theologian, offering a 189-page analysis of a biblical prophecy from chapters 38 and 39 of the book of Ezekiel. Specifically, it described a coming period of security and prosperity in Israel, followed by the rise of a military alliance between Russia, Iran, and a group of other Islamic countries that would target Israel and drive the world to the brink of the apocalypse in what Ezekiel described as the “last days.”

  The book offered no policy prescriptions for preventing such a Russian-led threat against Israel and U.S. interests in the region. Instead, its author, Dr. Tim LaHaye (who would go on to cowrite Left Behind, the first novel in what became the biggest-selling fiction series in American publishing history, with more than 63 million copies sold) simply stated that such matters were foreordained.

  In his introduction, LaHaye wrote:

  The eyes of the world are fixed on the Middle East. Every day, the headlines of all major countries carry lead stories about Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other Middle Eastern nations, the PLO, and Beirut. Most of the world looks for war. . . . Yet the Bible assures us that peace will reign in the Middle East someday—perhaps before the Lord returns. . . . The Jews will enjoy rest, safety, and prosperity unmatched since the days of Solomon. Unfortunately, it will be short-lived, for Russia will “think an evil thought,” mount up its forces, stir up Arab hatreds, and attack Israel with the greatest army in the history of the world. The threat of this attack will terrify Israel into turning to God for help. And their cries will not be in vain, for the Almighty will put on a demonstration of power unequaled since the plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. The result? Israel will continue in peace, and the world will know there is a God in heaven.

  LaHaye then went on to suggest that this scenario “could well occur during our lifetime.”47

  At first glance, the theory seemed ludicrous. In the early 1990s, Russia was hardly a threat to the U.S. anymore, much less to Israel; nor was it likely to be for some time to come. The Evil Empire had just collapsed like a house of cards. Its military machine was being withdrawn from Eastern Europe. Its missiles were being dismantled. More than a million Jews were pouring out of the former Soviet republics and heading to Israel. The Kremlin barely had important economic ties to Iran, much less a military alliance, and its relations with the rest of the Arab and Islamic world were, at best, on hold as it dealt with its own serious internal turmoil. Moreover, the United States was now effectively the world’s only superpower, and Washington’s military and economic ties to Jerusalem were stronger than ever.

  Still, I found myself intrigued with the book’s premise on several levels. First, given my family background, I had always been fascinated with both the history and the future of Russia. I could not help but be curious about the notion that the Scriptures spoke of Russia at all, to say nothing of the idea that Russia would attack Israel, perhaps in my lifetime.

  Second, as an evangelical Christian, I believed what the Bible said about God giving the land of Israel to the Jewish people as an everlasting covenant, one that could not be broken, no matter what mistakes we Jews made throughout the centuries. I had also had the opportunity to study for a semester at Tel Aviv University during my junior year and found those six months one of the most fascinating periods of my life. Thus, any prophecy that dealt with Israel’s future was one that piqued my curiosity as well.

  Finally, I had met Dr. LaHaye on a number of occasions. My wife worked for his wife, Beverly, at the time. I had always found him to be a strong friend of Israel and the Jewish people, as well as one of the most insightful and counterintuitive thinkers in the evangelical world. True, he was controversial in some circles, but if he saw such a scenario within the pages of Scripture, I decided I should not be so quick to dismiss it.

  As I sat with Natan Sharansky on that flight to New York in the fall of 2000, I tried to connect the dots. Never before in human history had Russia and Iran been allies. But according to LaHaye, Scripture said they would be in the last days. Was it possible that such an alliance was now beginning to form?

  ISRAEL, THE MODERN MIRACLE

  When Sharansky’s media tour was complete and I got back home to Washington, I dug out LaHaye’s book from a box in my garage and reread it. I also reread the book of Ezekiel. What struck me first was that much of Ezekiel 36 and 37 had already come true.

  In Ezekiel 36:10, for example, God vows to bring the Jewish people back to the land of Israel. “I will greatly increase the population of Israel, and the ruined cities will be rebuilt and filled with people.” Verse 24 picks up that theme. In it, the Lord promises to “gather you [Israel] up from all the nations and bring you [the Jewish people] home again to your land.” In verse 30, God promises to “give you great harvests from your fruit trees and fields, and never again will the surrounding nations be able to scoff at your land for its famines,” echoing his promise in Isaiah 27:6, which reads, “The time is coming when Jacob’s descendants will take root. Israel will bud and blossom and fill the whole earth with fruit!”

  As I read through Ezekiel 37, I found the prophet’s vision of the “valley of dry bones.” Ezekiel looks out over mountains of dead, dry, brittle bones—bereft of life and hope—stretching out as far as his eyes can see. He hears the Lord describe these bones as “the people of Israel,” but he also sees the Lord do a miracle. For as Ezekiel looks on in stunned amazement, the bones suddenly come back together. They take the shape of skeletons. They are wrapped in muscles and tendons and flesh, and then God breathes life into them and Israel once again becomes a fully living, breathing modern nation, with “a great army” and one leader at its helm.

  This has already happened, I thought to myself. My parents and grandparents and I have seen these exact things come true right before our very eyes.

  Indeed, out of the trauma of the pogroms and the ashes of the Holocaust, and despite the violent resistance of the Muslim world, Israel had been reborn as a modern state, and Jews were returning to the Holy Land just as Ezekiel said they would.

  Consider the numbers. When Israel declared her independence on May 14, 1948, the country’s population stood at only 806,000. Yet by the end of 2005, nearly 7 million people lived in Israel, 5.6 million of whom were Jewish. Thousands more arrive every year. In 2005 alone, some 19,000 Jews immigrated to Israel. In fact, today more Jews live in the greater Tel Aviv area than in New York City, as many Jews live in Israel as in the United States, and it will not be long before more Jews live in Israel than Jews who do not.48

  At the same time, the ancient ruins of Israelite cities and towns like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jericho, Hebron, Caesarea, and Tiberias have been rebuilt to house the massive influx of Jewish immigrants. Hundreds of new office buildings, hotels, shopping centers, restaurants, movie theaters, gas stations, and government ministry buildings were built during this period, and every time I visit Israel I see more construction under way.

  If this were not enough, the deserts of Israel are blooming again after centuries of neglect, filling the Holy Land and the world with fruit, vegetables, and flowers, just as the Bible said would happen. Take citrus exports as one example. Before 1948, Israel had no international citrus market to speak of. Yet by the 1960s, Jaffa oranges were world famous and actually made up 30 percent of Israel’s rapidly growing export market. By 1980, Israeli citrus exports had hit nearly one billion dollars, an extraordinary figure for such a small and newly developed country.49

  In the first three decades of the new Jewish state’s existence, total Israeli agricultural exports
increased a whopping 4,000 percent.50 What’s more, a remarkable 40 percent of Israel’s vegetables and field crops were grown in sparsely populated desert regions, and by the year 2000 some 90 percent of Israeli melon exports were coming from the desert regions known as the Arava.51

  Agriculture is now a $3.3 billion annual business in Israel, 20 percent of which is exported.52 Cotton exports rose from virtually nothing to $25 million a year by 2004. Exports of fresh flowers, particularly to Europe, have soared from less than $100,000 in foreign sales in 1949 to a stunning $238 million in 2004.53 Israeli potato exports have also exploded over the same period from virtually nothing to more than a quarter of a billion in annual export sales today.54

  And one hardly needs to recount the size, strength, or feats of the Israeli Defense Forces. Suffice it to say that Israel has been an island of a few million immigrants in a sea of 300 million enemies yet has proven victorious in the 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 war, the War of Attrition (1968–1970), the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the Lebanon war of 1982, while also saving the world from an Iraqi nuclear bomb when Israeli pilots took out the Osirik reactor in June of 1981.

  Maybe LaHaye’s theory wasn’t so ludicrous, I thought. He had, after all, published The Coming Peace in the Middle East in 1984, at a time when very few people believed the Soviet empire would ever allow a million Jews to flee for the Promised Land. But that is precisely what happened, and for me it raised an intriguing question: If the rebirth and repopulation of Israel described in Ezekiel 36 and 37 were coming true in my lifetime, was it not at least remotely possible that the peace and prosperity—and future war and divine rescue—described in chapters 38 and 39 could soon come true as well?

  I was not about to speculate about such things in public, of course—not if I ever wanted to work as an advisor to U.S. and Israeli political leaders and not be perceived as a lunatic. But I admit, I was intrigued. In what little spare time I had, I began studying these ancient prophecies, the latest developments in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the emerging relationship between Russia and Iran. What’s more, I began to consider the possibility that someday I might write a novel about how the Ezekiel scenario could unfold. What I didn’t know then was how soon that day would be.