“A day of the Lord is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls.

“I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights on a day of battle.” (Zechariah 14:1-3)

For 100 years, Palestinian Arabs (and neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan) have sought to exterminate the Jewish population in what was once known as Palestine. Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, any Jewish presence has been unacceptable to the Arabs, and that continues to this day.

A couple years ago I was strolling through Jerusalem’s Old City, and stopped at a shop in the Arab Quarter. There with t-shirts depicting NBA basketball teams, Barack Obama, and soft drinks, I spotted a shirt with the image of a map of Israel and the words: “Free Palestine.”

All of it.

This is what the Arabs have sought to do for generations, and this effort has greatly accelerated since Israel was established in 1948. The 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel took the bulk of its ancestral lands in a defensive conflict (Egypt, among others, had threatened to wipe Israel off the map), became an excuse for a new round of violence from the Palestinians.

Though Israel has already returned 90 percent of the territory taken in ’67 (Gaza, The Sinai, territory ceded to the Palestinian Authority)…it still isn’t enough. And not only for the Palestinians. The international community, led by its de facto chief, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, really, truly doesn’t like Israel. Ki-Moon recently has claimed that Palestinian murder of Jews is justified.

This is grotesquely immoral.

Since last fall, Israelis have been hunted by Palestinians, who have killed scores in knife attacks, shootings, and by ramming cars into crowds. Rather than reign-in his people, PA/PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas contributes to the incitement, as the Palestinians name streets and soccer fields after the killers of Jews. The PA/PLO, the recipient of billions in foreign aid, also gives stipends to the families of the murderers.

As the world descends into chaos, it is ironic that jihad is sweeping the globe. Until now, people have thought that throwing the Jews to the fiends would prevent wider killing. Think again. When the West shows weakness, Islam will pounce.

The only silver lining in this dreadful scenario is that Israel can defend itself. The Israel Defense Forces is feared, thank God.

The prophets spoke of a time in the distant future in which the international community (“the nations”) would turn on Israel, for a final assault on Jerusalem. Today, the Holy City, all of it, remains under Israeli sovereignty and this the world despises.

It sets up perfectly the final stage, prophesied by Zechariah and others. People everywhere mock the Bible and scorn those who believe in God.

Soon and very soon, they’ll never know what hit them.