12 minutes of Armageddon?

Shavua tov - a good week to everyone.

This morning in synagogue, my 9-year old son was reading a book called Matzmiach Yeshua (He who brings about salvation). My son showed me a passage in the book in which the author reports that he heard from Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch Shlita (may he live good and long days) - an English-born Rabbi who lives here in Jerusalem - who heard from Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky zt"l (may the memory of the righteous be blessed) that the Vilna Gaon zt"l (the genius of Vilnius, may the memory of the righteous be blessed) (1720-1797) said that the war between Gog and Magog - popularly known as Armageddon outside the Jewish world - will last twelve minutes. In those 12 minutes, one third of the world will die, one third will be injured and one third will survive.

Unfortunately, Iranian 'leader' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a lot closer to bringing the Gaon's prediction to fruition than he was a year ago. In Friday's Jerusalem Post, editor David Horovitz followed up on ten stories he covered over the last year. Here's what he had to say about Ahmadinejad and the US election:

9. Five minutes to midnight

On September 27, 2007, five days after last Yom Kippur, I wrote about that year's appearance by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations General Assembly: Ahmadinejad "sketched out a vision not merely of a world without Israel, but of a world without democracy," the article concluded. "He came to the headquarters of an organization established to prevent war and promote equality and tolerance around the world, and he challenged its leadership to end its 'obedience to Satan' or face calamity. Then he headed off, job well done, to continue the effort to translate that threat into action."

Dismally, at the close of another Jewish year, Ahmadinejad has just been permitted by the genuflecting UN to put in another of his annual appearances. This time, he used the platform to misrepresent his regime's nuclear program as peaceful and transparent, gloated, as ever, at the ostensible imminent demises of the Zionist regime and the American empire, and revived the classic anti-Semitic libel of a shadowy Zionist cabal manipulating the finances and the politics of the innocent, trusting global masses.

In May, George Bush assured this writer that, "all options" remained on the table when it came to challenging Iran's nuclear drive, but twice avoided an unequivocal answer when I asked him whether the program would be thwarted by the time he stepped down. The best he could manage was to declare that "what definitely will be done" before the end of his presidency was to put in place "a structure on how to deal with this - to try to resolve this diplomatically; in other words, sanctions, pressures, financial sanctions; a history of pressure that will serve as a framework to make sure other countries are involved."

But as the Bush Administration enters its final weeks, no such viable structure is in place, and Iran is steadily progressing toward its nuclear weapons goal. One of Bush's would-be successors, John McCain, whom I interviewed together with Herb Keinon when he visited Israel in March, caustically dismissed the UN's sanctions package against Iran as "remarkable in its weakness" and concluded that China and Russia would clearly go on blocking more "meaningful" pressures. He suggested ratcheting up the pressure through concerted action by a "League of Democracies" - countries that "share our values, our principles, our philosophy and our appreciation of the challenge that Iran poses to stability in the Middle East."

The other would-be next president, Barack Obama, interviewed during his Israel visit in July, believed Russia and China could yet be galvanized into more robust action if the US made it sufficiently clear to them that "this is not just a game that we're playing... this is a top priority." At the same time, Obama advocated tough diplomacy with Iran, in which the US would have to be "very clear and direct in our goals." If the Iranians failed to respond, he told me, "we've stripped away whatever excuses they may have, [and] whatever rationales may exist in the international community for not ratcheting up sanctions and taking serious action."

Plainly, the need to ensure that a regime inciting genocide against Israel is prevented from obtaining the means to achieve its declared aim has become ever-more pressing this past year, as the Iranians have closed in on the bomb and the international community has failed to deter them. Dismally, unthinkably, if the next year sees similar footdragging, it may be too late.

("McCain: The nature of the enemy is hydra-headed," March 21, 2008; "In the Oval Office, the sun is shining"; May 26; "Obama's presidential vision for Israel," July 25.)

Unfortunately, it looks like the 12 minutes of Armageddon are getting closer.

Cross-posted to Israel Matzav.