The Long History of Zionism In Canada

Canada’s Conservative government is trying to convince Canadian Jews to support its right-wing imperialistic worldview.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently spoke to the annual Toronto gala of the Jewish National Fund, which has a long history of dispossessing Palestinians and discriminating against non-Jews.

Echoing the words of Theodor Herzl, a founder of political Zionism, Harper told the 4,000 attendees that Israel is a “light of freedom and democracy in what is otherwise a region of darkness.”

Shortly before this event the Minister for Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney spoke at the launch of the Canadian chapter of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Established by a former colonel in the Israeli military, MEMRI selectively (mis)translates stories from Arab and Iranian media in a bid to advance expansionist Israeli interests.

Kenney told the audience assembled at Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue that MEMRI is “a peaceful weapon of truth-telling in a civilizational conflict in which we are all engaged.”

The comments from Harper and Kenney certainly play well with those in the Jewish community committed to Israeli and Western imperialism, but they also spur that sentiment. Most people respect power and when leading politicians say a country is involved in a “civilizational conflict” against “a region of darkness” it tends to shape opinion.

Few Canadian Jews — or others among the target audience for that matter — realize that Harper and Kenney don’t take this “clash of civilizations” talk literally (if they did they wouldn’t be deepening political ties with a number of Middle Eastern monarchies and selling billions of dollars in weaponry to the region’s “darkest” regime, Saudi Arabia.)

While the Harper government’s pro-Israel comments are particularly extreme, they are far from unique in Canadian history. For more than a century non-Jewish Canadians have promoted a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Similar to Europe, Zionism’s roots in Canada are Christian, not Jewish. Early Canadian support for Zionism was based on the more literal readings of the Bible that flowed out of the Protestant Reformation.

They were also tied to this country’s status as a dominion of the British Empire, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century began to see Zionism as a potential vehicle to strengthen its geostrategic position in the region.

At the time of confederation, Canada’s preeminent Christian Zionist was Henry Wentworth Monk. To buy Palestine from the Ottoman Empire in 1875, Monk began the Palestine Restoration Fund.

Unsuccessful, seven years later he took out an ad in the Jewish World proposing a “Bank of Israel” to finance Jewish resettlement. Irving Abella’s book A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada describes Monk as “an eccentric but respected businessman” who took up a campaign in Canada and England to raise funds for buying land in Palestine during the 1870s and 1880s.

“In 1881 Monk even proposed setting up a Jewish National Fund,” Abella writes. “He issued manifestoes, wrote long articles, spoke to assorted meetings and lobbied extensively in England and Canada to realize his dream.”

Monk called for the British Empire to establish a “dominion of Israel” similar to the dominion of Canada. In the 1978 book Canada and Palestine, Zachariah Kay notes: “Monk believed that Palestine was the logical center of the British Empire, and could help form a confederation of the English-speaking world.”

Monk was not alone in Canada. Citing a mix of Christian and pro-British rationale, leading Canadian politicians repeatedly expressed support for Zionism. In 1907, two cabinet ministers attended the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada convention, telling delegates that Zionism had the support of the government, according to Kay’s book.

Kay’s book also states that Arthur Meighen, then solicitor-general and later prime minister, proclaimed in November 1915: “I think I can speak for those of the Christian faith when I express the wish that God speed the day when the land of your forefathers shall be yours again. This task I hope will be performed by that champion of liberty the world over — the British Empire.”

The 1917 Balfour Declaration, which declared British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, boosted support for Zionism in this country. In the years thereafter, Canadian politicians of various stripes repeatedly urged Jews (and others) to support Zionism.

During a July 1922 speech to the Zionist Federation of Canada, the anti-Semitic Prime Minister Mackenzie King “was effusive with praise for Zionism,” explains David Bercuson in Canada and the Birth of Israel. King told participants their aspirations were “in consonance” with the greatest ideals of the “Englishman.”

A dozen years later, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett told a coast to-coast radio broadcast for the launch of the United Palestine Appeal fund drive that the Balfour Declaration and the British conquest of Palestine represented the beginning of the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.

According to a 1962 book by Canadian Zionist Bernard Figler, Bennett said, “When the promises of God, speaking through his prophets, are that the home will be restored in the homeland of their forefathers…Scriptural prophecy is being fulfilled. The restoration of Zion has begun.”

Jewish Zionism must be understood from within the political climate in which it operated. And Canada’s political culture clearly fostered Zionist ideals.

British imperialism, Christian Zionism and nationalist ideology were all part of this country’s political fabric. Additionally, in the early 1900s most Canadians did not find it odd that Europeans would take a “backward” people’s land, which is what settlers did to the indigenous population here.

A number of books about Canada’s Jewish community discuss how elite Canadian Jews, especially after the 1917 Balfour Declaration, were more active Zionists than their US counterparts. In Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey, Gerald Tulchinsky explains: “The First World War accentuated differences between Canadian and American Jewry. For example, loyalty to Britain’s cause provided Zionists with opportunities to identify their purposes with Britain’s imperial mission.”

When British General Edmund Allenby led a campaign in late 1917 to take Palestine from the Ottomans as many as 400 Canadians (about half recruited specifically for the task) fought in Allenby’s Jewish Legion. Sometimes beleaguered Jewish communities were praised by the media for taking up England’s cause to conquer Palestine.

Since Israel’s creation in 1948 different Canadian governments have expressed varying degrees of support. But overall, the laudatory public declarations have continued.

After a long career of support for Zionism as external minister and prime minister, Lester Pearson referred to that country as “an outpost, if you will, of the West in the Middle East.”

External Affairs Minister Don Jamieson echoed this sentiment in an October 1977 speech. “Israel is an increasingly valuable ally of the West and Jews and non-Jews alike should see to it that Israel remains … an ally of the Western world,” Jamieson said. “We in Canada must see to it that when Israel is making such tremendous sacrifices, we should stand ready to help Israel with oil and material assistance.”

Yes, the current government is more aggressive in its public declarations than any before it and this has helped drive the establishment Jewish community to an even more hardline position.

To the Conservatives’ delight, two years ago the ninety-year old Canadian Jewish Congress was disbanded by its wealthy donors in favor of an even more Israel-focused Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Similarly, the Conservatives’ strong ties to Christian Zionism has prodded the Zionist lobby group B’nai Brith to deepen its ties with Canada Christian College and the prominent right-wing evangelist Charles McVety.

At the same time, the anti-racist sectors of Canada’s Jewish community have made major strides in recent years. Groups such as Independent Jewish Voices, Not In Our Name, Jewish Voice for Peace, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Women in Solidarity with Palestine and Jews for a Just Peace, have undercut the notion that all Canadian Jews support Israeli policy or Zionism. But these groups are unlikely to become dominant voices within the Jewish community until there is a shift in Canada’s political culture.

Canadian Zionism has long been part of the religious and political establishment. In every community there are those who take the side of the rich and powerful.

Source: Global Research

A Simple Explanation of Scofield Dispensationalism

A flaw foundation lies under most evangelicals’ understanding of God’s moral dealings with humanity and particularly Jews. This foundation drives their support of the Jewish state. It is called “Scofield Dispensationalism.” It says that throughout successive epics, or “dispensations,” of time God has revealed Himself through extremely different moral standards. The law given before the Flood was different from the law after. The law given to Moses is completely different from what we now observe in the millennia after Christ. Cyrus Scofield lived at the turn of the 20th century and created an annotated Bible which claimed to lay out each dispensation’s unique requirements.

Scofield’s commentaries have greatly influenced evangelicals to this day. Written at the dawn of the modern Zionist movement, they suggested a nation of suffering and persecuted Jews, though Christ-rejecting, had a divine right to return and occupy Palestine.  This idea was virtually absent from Christianity before the mid-1800s. How did such permission gain so great a foothold that it’s now unquestioned dogma for most evangelicals?

It starts with a defect in the King James Bible. King James scholars mistranslated 2 Thess. 2:7.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth [restrains] will let, until He be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming…

The actual New Testament Greek says the one who restrains, the Holy Spirit, is not passively removed. Instead He “gets out of the way” or “steps aside” (ek meseu genetai). The Holy Spirit is never going to be taken out of this world. God owns the world. He is not about to be removed by a mere satanically inhabited man, Anti-Christ.

For hundreds of years Christians were unbothered by the King James Bible’s error. Yet in the first half of the 19th century, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Edward Irving, seized on the mistranslated passage. He saw its profound prophetic implications. He said that since the Holy Spirit would be removed from this world just prior to revealing of Anti-Christ, so Christ’s church must also be removed, for Christians cannot function without the Holy Spirit. That removal is described, they said, in 1 Thess. 4:16.

For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. . .”

Clearly, said Irving and his later disciple, John Nelson Darby, these passages from II Thessalonians suggest two second comings of Christ: the first, when Christ descends and removes the Holy Spirit and all believers, both dead and living unto Himself. Then, three and half, He comes a second time. In His final second coming He converts remnant Jews, judges the nations, and begins His thousand-year reign on earth from Jerusalem.

The Beginnings of “Pre-Tribulationism”

Irving and Darby’s “prophetic breakthrough” had an electric appeal to evangelical Christians, particularly in the British Isles and North America. It assured Christians that, “raptured,” they would not have to endure the suffering that follows revealing of Anti-Christ. Thus began the “pre-tribulationist” interpretation of Bible prophecy. It started with a mistranslation of one verse by King James scholars. Incredibly, that disastrous mistranslation is repeated in most modern translations of the Bible.

Enter Cyrus Scofield.  He did not originate the pre-tribulationist rapture craze that has enthralled evangelicals and made millionaires of “prophecy experts” such as Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. Yet Scofield did something far more damaging: he laid the keel of Christian Zionism. He taught that, under the dispensation Abraham was in, God gave the patriarch and his physical descendants unconditional rights as God’s chosen people. They were guaranteed the Promised Land and rights of occupation, even without obedience. Scofield said Israelites automatically receive “all blessings” by just being there.

Yet Scofield said Jacob and his sons, during world famine, unwisely left security in Palestine and went to Egypt. In doing so, he claims, they lost their ability to please God by simply staying in the Holy Land. Scofield contends that, even worse, they foolishly accepted the Mosaic Law at Sinai 400 years later. The Law imposed on them an onerous obligation to obey God on penalty of exile. Such conditional terms of occupation, Scofield said, didn’t exist under the “pure grace” that Abraham and his descendants enjoyed while in Palestine. (See, List of Conditional Salvation/Occupation Verses)

Scofield said of the dispensation and covenant Abraham enjoyed:

That covenant is wholly gracious and unconditional. The descendants of Abraham had but to abide in their own land to inherit every blessing. In Egypt they lost their blessings, but not their covenant. The dispensation of promise ended when Israel rashly accepted the Law (Ex. 19:8). Grace had prepared a deliverer (Moses), provided a sacrifice for the guilty, and by divine power had brought them out of bondage (Ex. 19:4); but at Sinai they exchanged grace for law. (Scofield Reference Bible, 1909, page 20)

Scofield conveniently omits the biblical record that God powerfully delivered Jacob and his sons from death by famine, providing safe haven for them under Joseph’s protection in Egypt. Similarly, God commanded the Hebrews at Sinai to obey the Mosaic Law. Scofield’s idea that simply staying in Canaan guaranteed to Hebrews “every blessing” is an affront to God’s timeless moral standards which say that in every age we are justified by trusting and obeying God. Only through such faith do we inherit “every blessing” from Him. Scofield’s view of the sanctifying power of the Holy Land, even for reprobate Jews, powerfully anticipated the teachings of the most extreme present day Israel-firsters who believe Jews to be so morally advantaged that they have a separate covenant of salvation and land rights without obedience to Christ.

Yet, Scofield said, when Jesus came and died at Calvary, God returned to a dispensation entirely of grace. This, by inference, means to millions of evangelical readers of the Scofield Bible that our present “age of grace” does away with the requirement of dozens of Old Testament verses demanding obedience for Jews to occupy Palestine.

Scofield, as no other figure, legitimized Christian participation in a Jewish political movement: Zionism. Evangelicals then united pretribulationism and its “rapture escapism” with Zionism. The new prophetic script for Christians read like this:

The right of God’s dispersed and persecuted chosen people to the Promised Land is covenanted to them by God unconditionally, forever. It is the duty of every Christian to honor God’s great last day’s regathering of His people, bidding them godspeed by any possible means. If any nation or person refuses to stand by God and the Jewish nation, he is in league with Satan.

Satan desires above all things to obscure the fact that Israel makes possible fulfillment of biblical prophecy that empowers Jesus to return as predicted. Without Israel’s existence and the hundreds of prophecies it fulfills, Christ cannot return. Christ stated clearly that “it must needs be that Scripture be fulfilled” before He could go forward with God’s plan.

Criticizing the state of Israel is thus to oppose the Almighty. It is to curse the Jewish people, incurring dire judgment. “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you…” (Genesis 12:3)  

In accordance with an end-times storyline created by Darby, Irving and Scofield, Zionist evangelicals now keenly watch Israel for necessary fulfillment of the following Scriptural predictions:

1. Rebuilding a Jewish temple. The new temple is necessary because Scripture says anti-Christ must profane it and sit in it proclaiming himself to be god. Without such a temple and its defilement, Christ cannot return as He predicted.
2. Israel enters a “covenant” or peace treaty with Anti-Christ.
   Once such a covenant has taken place, Daniel’s prophetic “clock” of a “week” or seven years leading to Christ’s second second coming will begin to tick.

The problem, however, for pretribulationists is this: If the church is to be raptured when the anti-Christ is “revealed,” what does Scripture mean by that term? Does it mean “revealed” as in anti-Christ signing a peace treaty with Israel or “revealed” such as occurs in the middle of Daniel’s week when anti-Christ manifests himself as the enemy of the Jews, bringing his armies against Jerusalem (Ez. 38). At that time, he desecrates the temple, kills two thirds of Jerusalem’s inhabitants, and exiles the remainder to the nations. Also, since most evangelicals believe Christ could come in his first second coming and rapture us out without preconditons, perhaps we will not even have to wait for the “revealing” of Anti-Christ at all.

Clearly, the Zionist evangelical prophetic scenario at this point becomes very clouded. But it is not at all clouded up to that point. The pretribulationist view point could not be simpler in its obligations: Dark as the world may become, if the church above all things makes sure to bless Israel, it will be blessed and kept safe. Jesus will be faithful to take out true believers before anything resembling great tribulation begins. In reality, nothing could be more unbiblical, corruptive to the church and the Jewish people, and ultimately dangerous to Christianity than building up that Zionist one-world system of oppression Scripture calls Babylon the Great. (See, ‘Babylon the Great’ is Israel)

Pre-tribulationism is thus escapism. Calvinists also very largely adhere to this idea.  It fits well with their belief that once we are soundly “born again” we are always saved, even if committing the grossest sin. If we as citizens fail in our duty to occupy and resist evil, this Calvinist/pretribulationist theology says Jesus understands. He will not require us to bear the consequences of our neglect. We will soon be gone. The consequences will be passed on to those of our children who are not born again, not fortunate enough to be raptured.

Of course, Scripture does promise a first resurrection or “rapture” of the dead and living of Christ at His second coming. Yet a high percentage of evangelicals actually believe the rapture will occur within several years. What’s the point of knocking ourselves out opposing evil, especially as Jewish big media corrupts our children…because very soon we’ll be in heaven? (See, Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish)

We clearly see such apathy right now as ABC gores the church through its Christian-bashing sitcom “Good Christian Bitches.” But there is a virtual absence of Christian willingness to publicly oppose it. This largely originates in the ingrained belief that, if the power of evil proves too great, Christ no longer expects us to be the salt of the earth, resisting evil with all that is within us. Instead, we should buckle up for heavenly removal.

Yet Jesus said that the church would not be taken out of tribulation. Instead, He said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” (John 16:33) In China before 1949 a highly evangelized Chinese population also accepted pre-tribulationism, believing the church had little to fear from “anti-Christ” Mao Tse Tung and his armies. They would be raptured before great tribulation came. Yet deliverance for millions of pre-tribulationist Chinese came not through rapture, but death.

One of the paramount reasons Christians must understand how the church has gone so far astray is so we may marshal ourselves to hold back anti-Christian offensives leading to persecution. “Good Christian Bitches” is one such offensive that simply must not remain unopposed. If it is, it will only beget worse attacks, leading to outright persecution. Someday, if the church remains apathetic and pre-tribulationist like the Chinese Christians, American Christians will be standing in front of firing squads. They are about to be taken out of this world, not out of the mercy of the rapture, but the “mercy” of a bullet.

Source: Truth Tellers

Lebanon’s Maid of Darkness facing US Hate Crimes Investigation

Increasingly a marionette of the US Zionist lobby, Ms. Brigitte Gabriel has enjoyed a few lucrative and unobstructed years of increasingly hysterical Muslim and Arab bashing. Recently however, she has attracted the attention of the FBI investigating her organization, “Act for America!” (actfor) for possible hate crimes and financial irregularities, according to US Congressional Judiciary Committee sources.

Who is Brigitte Gabriel?

“The difference, my dear Christian friends, between Israel and the Arab world is quite simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil and this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic and Islamic world. I am angry. They have no SOUL! They are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah,” which is very different from the God we believe in, because our God is the God of love”. – Brigitte Gabriel, speaking at John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Convention, July 27, 2007

Marjayoun, Lebanon — One imagines that all Americans, and people from every part of the globe and of sundry faiths, are touched emotionally upon encountering the natural beauty of the northern Biblical Holy Land that is South Lebanon. With its rugged vegetation-covered hills and valleys and more than 500 picturesque villages, many quite ancient and populated by warm, devout, and peaceful people, the area is hypnotic.

So it is for this observer, visiting Marjayoun (“meadow of springs” in Arabic), one of Lebanon’s most stunning towns and the home of the historic Cathedral of Saint Peter as well as beautiful historic mosques.

A lovely, modest, bucolic town of roughly 2,300 residents in winter and 3,500 in summer, Marjayoun sits majestically on a hill facing Mount Hermon to the east, Beaufort Castle, the 1,000-year old Crusader Castle above the Litani River and overlooking Mount Amel (jabal amel) to the west. Marjayoun’s fertile plains, some of the richest in the Middle East, extend southward into the Galilee and Syria’s Golan Heights.

Maid Brigitte of Marjayoun

Marjayoun has become notorious recently, in some circles, not just for decades of Israeli crimes, but also as the base whence Ms. Brigitte Gabriel, a local woman, appeared and launched her virulent strain of Islamophobia. Joining with the US-Israel Lobby, she has been organizing perhaps the most vicious hate campaign against Islam, Arabs, and Muslims ever witnessed in America.

There is no shortage of people in Marjayoun with varying views of “what happened to Miss Brigitte” and how she became so hateful toward her countrymen and became an Israeli collaborator. “She always loved the Israeli occupation of Marjayoun and over time just came to dislike Arabs of all types, even though as a Lebanese she is totally Arab,” one of her former neighbors explained.

Another disagreed, “Brigitte never really thought of herself as an Arab at all, rather she fantasized that she was ‘Phoenician’ and pointed out to her Arabs neighbors that ‘Phoenicians were in Lebanon long before the Arabs invaded and it belongs to us!’” According to a former classmate, when she was in middle school, Brigitte preferred French and would announce to classmates in Arabic class, “I don’t speak Arabic, I speak Lebanese!”

Before moving to Israel and eventually to the United States, Brigitte worked for Middle East TV, a Marjayoun-based station run by the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and funded by Israel. It moved to Cyprus for a period and was later purchased by Pat Robertson, who is now building a Christian Zionism Center in Israel.

After obtaining a green card by marrying an American, Brigitte set up a business selling her new country “insider information not available elsewhere “about the existential dangers posed by Islam and Arabs, based, she announced, “on my unique perspective having been nearly killed by them and rescued by Israel.”

Regarding recent Lebanese affairs, according to her former neighbors in South Lebanon, Brigitte has been a close supporter of the Phalange militia and SLA since her teenage years. According to her ACT office in Virginia Beach, Brigitte hopes to host the current Lebanese Forces warlord, Samir Geagea—five times convicted of murdering various Christian opponents and their children—during his upcoming March visit to the US.

Brigitte As Student of American History

One can just forget about Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine, the Bush Administration invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its threatening much of the world, Brigitte sees a jihadist campaign against her adopted country going back to the very day America was founded. While Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Washington and Madison considered the Barbary pirates, who had operated for centuries along the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, “nothing but petty tyrants” and “nests of banditti,” Brigitte knows better.

In her view, the founding fathers were simply duped because the Muslim pirates were in fact serious Jihadists using a promise in the Koran of Paradise and virgins if they warred against infidels, so they became pirates.

Nor is Brigitte, who lives not far from Monticello, Jefferson’s birthplace, impressed by Jefferson’s liberal views about religion. It may be recalled that the author of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s Act for Religious Freedom was most proud of his role as a resistance leader against British occupation:

“Where the preamble [to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom —Ed.] declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment that was proposed for the insertion of the words ‘Jesus Christ’ into the preamble was specifically rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu, and Infidel of every denomination.” (Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom)

Jefferson might have had people like Brigitte in mind when he wrote:

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

While religious tolerance and the existence of other religions did not pick Jefferson’s pocket, they are filling Brigitte’s as she panders to the uninformed, the bigoted, and the xenophobic.

Brigitte attracted attention from this observer, who previously had not heard of her, when she posted her July 2006 ‘Thank You Israel!’ letter expressing “heartfelt gratitude” for Israel’s attack on Lebanon. According to a former colleague of hers, this was drafted at Virginia Beach while working on her suntan in a period during which much of her birth country was being destroyed.

In nearly every speech, Marjayoun’s Maid routinely mentions the essential reminder that Israel, with its estimated 250-plus nuclear weapons and superpower military, needs more US money and servicemen to die in order to protect the apartheid regime from the fantastic threats from the Lebanese resistance and its supporters, which include a majority of her fellow Lebanese Christians.

Not your run of the mill democrat, Brigitte regularly complains to her audiences that:

“Hezbollah’s Shiite extremists began multiplying like rabbits and are out producing moderate Sunnis and Christians. Twenty-five years later they have produced enough people to vote themselves into 24 seats in the Lebanese parliament and now are a majority in Lebanon. Hamas is doing the same thing with the Palestinians as part of their ‘Resistance to Occupation.’

This is the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon to bomb Israel. They have cells in over 100 cities in the United States. Hamas has the largest terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades, hoping it will go away.”

Recently Brigitte has been telling her audiences about a Des Moines, Iowa imam who not long ago offered the prayer to open the Iowa legislature. In this prayer the Muslim gentleman made a plea for “victory over those who disbelieve,” i.e., those who are atheists. That John Hagee and his ilk and countless rabbis say the same thing every day does not appear to have dawned on Brigitte.

While reassuring her audiences “that Islamic terrorism is, of course, a serious, global threat that we must — repeat, must — defeat,” Brigitte has recently been seeing another dark penumbra on the horizon: “But there is another threat to our safety, security and liberty that we must also defeat and that is the increasing threat of Cultural, Social and Civilization Jihad aided by the forces of American political correctness”:

“I am very troubled that in the name of tolerance and educating American children about the Muslim empire in history liberal American teachers get away with giving beginning Islamic teaching which may cause many to perhaps one day become Muslims. We have reports that in some classes teachers are allowing students to use calligraphy to copy parts of the Quran in Arabic as an enrichment activity. This has got to stop!

Westerners must mount a united front against Islamic law!

“I believe that the way Sharia will insinuate itself into our law would be through arbitration and mediation of domestic and financial disputes through an extra-judicial arbitration system condoned by our courts. That would entail setting up separate a Sharia law section of the American Arbitration Association overseen by Islamic law panels. Many agree with me and this should be a warning to all about how Sharia will spread through the proverbial legal back door.”

Brigitte urges Americans not to allow mosques to be built and suggests that if citizens observe one being constructed, it should be immediately reported to the FBI. Brigitte has joined Daniel Pipes and the thought-policing and silencing actions of AIPAC and its Zionist affiliates and instructs students that “if a college professor or public figure criticizes U.S. policies you have a patriotic duty to report this un-American activity to the Dean, or alert the media and authorities.”

For her Valentine’s Day message nest month Brigitte warns that “We must start doing more than exposing or resisting the advances of Islamofascism — we must go on the offensive to roll it back and fight for the bedrock values that made America the beacon of hope to the world. … The only real question is: Do we have the will to do what is necessary to stop Islamofascism, in whatever form it takes? Because, simply put, if we do, we will. If we don’t, we won’t. That’s it. Bottom line.”

Her message of hate, ridicule, and incitement to action against Islam is akin to shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre, and constitutes egregious and condemnable hate speech. Her rantings and extreme vitriolic hate speech are fundamentally un-American, un-Lebanese, and un-Christian. Her campaign should be vigorously rejected by all people of good-will, including those seeking simplistic explanations and solutions for the consequences of a catastrophic Bush Administration Middle East policy, which has caused so much death, destruction and desperation across the region.

The coming weeks may shed light on what US authorities intend to do about Bridgette’s violations of American hate laws.

A Christian Palestinian Gandhi Responds to the GOP

Newt Gingrich claims the Palestinians are not just an “invented people” but also “Terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools”.

Newt also stated “It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, enough lying about the Middle East.”

In solidarity with “enough lying” and because it’s not my revolution unless I can laugh I’ll begin with Jon Stewart’s nailing of the pandering from the GOP:

Naim Ateek is a Palestinian Christian who became a refugee in 1948 and he founded SABEEL after the first Palestinian intifada [translates to: rise up and cast off] that erupted on December 9, 1987.

The theology of SABEEL rose out of the oppression of Palestinians by the state of Israel and is rooted in righting the injustices inflicted upon the indigenous people of the Holy Land.

SABEEL seeks to unite the World Wide Body of Christ to the suffering of their sisters, brothers and cousins in the dysfunctional family of Father Abraham.

SABEEL is a global ecumenical Christian organization that collaborates with Muslims, Jews and any other faith and those without who work together for peace by seeking justice in the Holy Land: equal human rights for all and an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

Rev. Ateek teaches that when the Bible is correctly read it points to a God of justice and God seeks the liberation of all people.

SABEEL addresses in particular the Christians who have been misled and misinformed by an heretical and anti-Christ theology, such as Christian Zionists like the GOP candidates who support the ongoing 44 years of military occupation, The Apartheid Wall and the illegal settlers but they have no eyes to see or ears to hear their Palestinian sisters and brothers in Christ, who are known as The Forgotten Faithful.

SABEEL’s theology is based on Jesus’ example of non-violence and on what Jesus taught: that one must forgive to be forgiven, one must pray for and do good towards ones enemies-NOT to impose sanctions, bomb, torture or occupy them!

Jesus’ death on the cross is in vain unless his follower’s comprehend he was saying ENOUGH with the violence of man against man! It is to END with my broken body!

Over a thousand years prior, in Genesis 9: 5-6, it was written:

“And from each man, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has man been made.”

The 6th Commandment is “You shall not murder.”

SABEEL also reminds us that God is not a racist, does not play favorites, nor loves any ethnic group over any another.

SABEEL sees Jesus in his divinity and in the fullness of his humanity and I add that the term Christian was not even coined until three decades after Jesus walked the land where he promised the peacemakers are the children of God.

Jesus was a Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior and he was born, lived and died under a brutal  Military Occupation and his follower’s were called Members of The Way.
Author and Feminist Theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explains SABEEL developed “an anti-imperial theology. It stands in the tradition of the anti-imperial theologies of Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament, and applies this critique of ancient empire to modern empires, such as the American empire. It rejects a Son of David imperial Christology, rooting itself in a Suffering Servant Christology of the early Church, in its non-violent way of the cross.  It is a theology that aims at reconciliation and peace, through a social, economic and political transformation of relationships between Israel and Palestinians that makes it possible for these people to co-exist in genuine justice.”

In November 2008, I attended SABEEL’s 7th International Conference in the Holy Land: THE NAKBA:  MEMORY, REALITY AND BEYOND, Read more… 

During that conference Reverend Ateek also guided me through his boyhood village which had became 100% Israeli in 1948 when the Zionists came and forced all the Palestinians to flee under threat of death.

Ateek’s father was the town’s only and very successful Jeweler. His response to the Israeli soldiers who ordered him to vacate his home immediately and board a bus that would make the family into refugees was, “Naked I came into this world and naked I will leave it.”

In his book, “A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation” Rev. Ateek wrote:
“The Christian faith points to two superior levels that can lead to reconciliation and forgiveness and repentance is a precondition; it must precede reconciliation and forgiveness. Repentance calls for the admission of guilt, crime and injustice.

“In the conflict between Israel and Palestine, repentance would correspond to an admission of guilt by the government of Israel of the injustice it has dealt to the Palestinians in its confiscation of land, violation of human rights, and its systems of domination and oppression.

“There is the divine paradigm of revolutionary forgiveness even when no admission of guilt [is expressed]. Christians are suppose to practice forgiveness of others because it is how God deals with us: as God forgives continually, we must forgive others.” [Ateek, Page 183-184]

That kind of forgiveness is radical and revolutionary and exactly what Jesus demonstrated as he hung upon the Roman Empire’s Cross of capitol punishment after he quoted from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus ended with a plea for reconciliation: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34]

Way past time for Christian and Mormon politicians to act upon the simple truth that only the truth can set US free and only justice can bring a secure peace for all the people of the Holy Land.

“Justice is done when international law is implemented. So long as the injustices persist, hate and its derivatives have the upper hand…justice and peace begins when the oppressor becomes aware of its violations of the other’s humanity. Justice is done when the international community, through nonviolent methods, forces Israel to put an end to its injustice…justice tempered by mercy and compassion. The doing of justice must not crush the enemy but hold the enemy accountable…no hope for change is possible until the occupation ends.” [Ateek, Page 185]

The essence of Christianity is to bear witness to what Jesus was always on about; forgiveness and love.

“Christians must condemn violence and terrorism whether it is recorded in legendary stories or in history being written today. We condemn suicide bombings as a crime against God. It is a crime to shed another’s blood; it must also be equally criminal, if not more so, to shed ones own blood. Those who love God do not kill themselves for the sake of God. Nothing justifies the killing of people.”[Ateek, Page 123-124]

“No hope for change is even possible until the occupation ends!

“The first step is to confront and analyze the roots of the conflict and its development…to move toward a solution in Israel-Palestine, the illegal Israeli occupation must come to an end and Palestinian violence must stop…Justice will be done when international law is implemented…Once justice is done, peace will not be far off.” [Ateek, page 185]

The last time I saw AReverend Ateek was on October 5, 2009 in D.C. at a SABEEL conference. I was already convinced there was no need for me to take my 8^th reality trip through the West Bank to investigate and report because:

“Enough with the analysis! We are dying in Palestine and everything is clear! We need an American Intifada [Arabic for rise up and cast off]. We must continue our work here in D.C. and empower the UN; the conflict belongs there and USA policy must be changed. And yes we can do it because our God is a God of Justice, Hope and Love.”

In 2011, I became a candidate for US House of Representatives, Florida District 5.

On November 3, 2006, Ateek addressed over 330 international ecumenical Christians who had gathered in Jerusalem at the Notre Dame Conference Center for SABEEL’s 6th International Conference: The Forgotten Faithful.

He sent chills through me when he stated, “Israel will not survive unless it does justice! The situation is deteriorating and we must frustrate Israel’s plans and actions because they are not built on justice. All we are asking for is that they honor International Law! Israel is afraid of International law and this proves something is very wrong with Israel. We want Israel to live in peace and with security. The only way is honoring International law. That is the bottom line and what we work and pray for.”

Reverend Ateek’s classic “Justice and Only Justice” laid the foundation of a theology that addresses the conflict over Palestine and explores the political as well as the religious, biblical and theological dimensions. From a position of faith, Reverend Ateek seeks solutions based on justice, peace, nonviolence and reconciliation.

On November 8, 2006 Reverend Ateek informed me:

“In Israel officially speaking of Palestinians is taboo: we are referred to as Arab Christians. When I say the Holy Land I include both Israel and Palestine. Ultimately only God knows about the future of Christianity in this place. We live in the scientific world and God has given us wisdom, knowledge, technology to be used for good and our future and destiny are in Gods hands.

“There are many red lights; external and internal dangers. What can we do at the grass roots level? The Palestinian Christian community must rise above petty denominational differences. The impending dangers force us to ask what can we do, what must we do?

“There is no future in isolation or passivity. Our futures are all linked together. There is an urgent need to articulate and work with other faiths, especially Islam. Our future depends on good relations with all our brothers and sisters. We need a Committee of Christian and Muslim leaders to dialogue and work together to confront militant extremist fundamentalism.

“Our relation with Israel is the most important issue for there can be no peace without justice. There can be no effective policy without ending the occupation in accordance with all UN Resolutions. The city of Jerusalem must be shared and there must be a just solution for refugees.

“Pressure on Israel must be done with nonviolent needs and the way is the way Christ taught: nonviolent and forgiving. The achievement of peace is not the end; but the beginning of reconciliation. The survival of Christianity in the Holy land is through true democracy. We must avoid the minority complex. We cannot depend on the good will of people in power. We want to be protected by a constitution with full citizenship and nationality must be combined. Only in Israel is there a distinction between nationality and citizenship. Only good democracy can guarantee all citizens are treated equally under the same law.”

“What can the West do? There is an urgent need for education about the roots of Christians in Palestine and to challenge the myths. Seek out Palestinian Christians in your midst and relate to them. Be aware of Palestinian concerns for justice and human rights. Work for a just solution of the conflict, which is equal human right for all. Support projects to increase the Christian witness: visit the Holy land and meet with Palestinian Christians. Forge closer links with churches in the West and in the Holy Land. Challenge Christian Zionism. Think Creatively!

“In the beginning the Jesus movement was very small. It began with 12 committed citizens. It began with love and Christ addressed his followers: FEAR NOT little flock! You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. To capture the essence of what Christians should be is to be salt and light. You don’t need a lot of salt to add flavor and even a small light can illuminate the way for many.

“To be salt and light is to be truthful, honest, have integrity and to be of service and do it with humility. Salt affects change: it is active, never passive. To be a light is a global challenge and when the light is seen clearly so is the glory of God. Sabeel means the way, and the way is to love all your neighbors and labor on with God.”

Israel has no constitution but does have a Declaration of their Establishment:

“On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.” – May 14, 1948.

And what a wonderful world it will be when Israel honors its original promises and words and American politicians told the truth and everyone listened to what the many Palestinian Gandhi’s are talking about:

http://www.palestiniangandhiproject.org/

Zion’s Zealots: A Book Review and Nailing of Christian Fundamentalism

Many American Christian Evangelicals interpreted the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the return of the Jews to the Hebrews ancient homeland as a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ.

Millions of Americans believe in the theology espoused in the “Left Behind” series of novels that chronicle apocalyptic times set in the 21st century that winds up in Israel where, according to the author’s understanding of the Book of Revelation, the final battle in the world will be fought on an ancient battlefield called Armageddon. These literalists believe that war will be followed by seven years of global tribulation before Jesus returns to begin a 1,000-year rule on earth; but the Jews and all others who do not believe Jesus is God will be annihilated.

The bottom and nearly the last line in the book of Revelation is this warning:

“I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.

These fundamentalists also believe that the only Jews who are following God are the hard line Jewish fundamentalist settlers who occupy legally owned Palestinian property in the West Bank and who were evacuated from Gaza in 2005. The Jewish settlers and Christian fundamentalists share the core conviction that God made a real estate deal with the ancient Hebrews that gives 21st century Jews every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Mediterranean.

My first book, KEEP HOPE ALIVE counters the theology found in the Left Behind series and the fictional character, Brother Harold nails this particular fundamentalist misunderstanding in Chapter 8

Harold lifted his almost empty pouch of Crown Royal and exclaimed, “Let’s toast the man, and then I’ll tell you what my daddy told me when I was a kid, when my brothers and I would get out of hand. He’d say, ‘boys, you all are going the way of Cain and Abel, and you’d better quit. For one of those boys was filled with so much hatred and jealousy that he killed the other.’

“Then my old man would be on a roll, and he’d tell us about Sarah, Abraham’s wife. And we loved to hear that part, so we’d quit our fight. You see, although Sarah was already menopaused, she still desired a child. God had even shared a laugh with her about it coming true, but just like a woman, she took the matter into her own hands, and refused to wait for the Lord to deliver. So old Sarah decided to give her maidservant to her old man, and that chick and Abraham made a kid. Everything was fine when Ishmael arrived, but only for a very short while.

“Now, although Sarah was a dried-up old crone, she, too, birthed a son, and named him after the laughter she had shared with God, but called the kid Isaac. Sarah had gotten very territorial and demanded Abraham cast out his beloved first son with his mama Haggar, into the barren wilderness, and Abraham did it! But, as God always hears the cries of mothers and sons, he promised to make a great nation from Ishmael’s descendants, too. And thus, the Arab nation was born.

“By the sixth century before Christ, the conflicts in the land were already old news, and Jeremiah warned the people that all God could see was violence and destruction in the city. Sickness and wounds were all around.

“And then my old man would get tears in his eyes and softly recite:

“For every misunderstanding, every condemning thought, every negative vibration, every tear torn from a heart, every time one grabbed and wouldn’t let go, and they only did it because they did not know. The Divine is within all creation and within all women and men.

“And every tiny kindness you have ever done, every gentle word spoken, every time you held your tongue, every positive thought, every smile freely given, every helping hand that opens, helps bring in the kingdom. And the kingdom comes from above, and it comes from within. Imagine a kingdom of sisterhood of all creatures and all men.”

Dr. Rev. Stephen Sizer is an Anglican priest from the UK and internationally recognized Biblical authority regarding Christian Zionism.

In ZION’S CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS? Sizer sheds much needed light on how Jesus/The Prince of Peace- who commanded of his followers that they must forgive their enemies and love all people equally- has morphed into a militant crusader by many professing Christians.

Sizer’s timely focus on the Holy Land, in particular Jerusalem, The Temple and the future of the world juxtaposed with the current political climate and neo-con ideology could wake up many American Christians who have been led astray by the heretical teachings of John Hagee, Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye.

The vast majority of American Christians are unaware that since 1948, the indigenous Christian population of the land we call Holy has gone from 20% of the total population to less than 1.3% today.

Scholars and researches claim that unless things change asap, there will be no Christian witness in the land where Jesus promised that it is the Peacemakers who are the children of God by 2020!

“It is irresponsible to suggest that God will bless us materially if we support the largely secular State of Israel, especially when this invariably means ignoring the plight of the indigenous Christian population of Palestine.”-page 46, Zion’s Christian Soldiers

Sizer’s previous book Christian Zionism-Road Map to Armageddon? is the companion text to ZION’S CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS? which details how a cultish escapist theology fused with neo-con political ideology which has lead millions of US Christians astray as it tips the world on its side heavy with military artillery.

“Zion’s Christian Soldiers” utilizes easy to comprehend diagrams and thought provoking end of chapter questions that could help bring American Bible Study programs into the 21st Century and infuse them with a much needed breath of fresh air.

Having been to Israel Palestine seven times since June 2005, I highly recommend Sizer’s scholarly yet easy to comprehend work to all Christians who have the courage to face reality and reclaim the gospel Jesus taught which is The Peacemakers are the children of God.

Sizer’s struggle is also intended to provoke Christians to remember that the Prince of Peace is the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures as fundamentalist militant minded Christians have replaced Jesus with the state of Israel.

On 23 November 2011, Stephen Sizer wrote:

After extensive field use, I’ve pruned and, I hope, enhanced the Seven Biblical Answers leaflet. I have removed verses used twice and added two illustrations. I hope you find this useful.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Sizer
Christ Church Vicarage
Virginia Water,
GU25 4LD
www.stephensizer.com

What follows is an excerpt from Sizer’s Seven Biblical Answers to Popular Zionist Assumptions can be downloaded here: http://www.sizers.org/articles/7answers.pdf

God blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse Israel

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3). The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ… There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:16, 28-29)

“I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore… and through your seed all nations on earth will be blessed…” (Genesis 22:17-18)

This popular assumption is based on Genesis 12:3. First, note that the promise was made to Abram (that is, Abraham) and no one else. Second, there is nothing in the text to indicate God intended the promise to apply to Abraham’s physical descendants unconditionally, or in perpetuity. Third, in the New Testament we are told explicitly that the promises were fulfilled in Jesus Christ and in those who acknowledge Him as their Lord and Saviour. God’s blessings come by grace through faith, not by works or race (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The “Promised Land” was given by God to the Jewish people as an everlasting inheritance

Contrary to popular assumption, the Scriptures repeatedly insist that the land belongs to God and that residence is always conditional.

For example, God said to his people, “‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.” (Leviticus 25:23). In Ezekiel, it seems the Lord anticipated the reasoning of those who arrogantly claimed rights to the land because of the covenant originally made with Abraham.

“Son of man, the people living in those ruins in the land of Israel are saying, ‘Abraham was only one man, yet he possessed the land. But we are many; surely the land has been given to us as our possession.’ Therefore say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you eat meat with the blood still in it and look to your idols and shed blood, should you then possess the land? You rely on your sword, you do detestable things… Should you then possess the land?’ … I will make the land a desolate waste, and her proud strength will come to an end.’ (Ezekiel 33:24-26,28-29)

Residence was open to all God’s people on the basis of faith not race. Indeed, the writer to Hebrews explains that the land was never their ultimate desire or inheritance any way but a temporary residence until the coming of Jesus Christ. Our shared eternal inheritance is heavenly not earthly.

Jerusalem is the exclusive and undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish people

The Christian Zionist assertion that God intended Jerusalem to be the exclusive and undivided eternal capital of the Jewish people has no basis whatsoever in Scripture. God insists in Psalm 87 that Jerusalem must be a shared and inclusive city. Nations specifically mentioned include what is today, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon. Even the hated Philistines are mentioned as “…born in Zion” on the basis of faith not race. Likewise, the vision of Isaiah 2 associates Jerusalem with the end of war, with peace and reconciliation.

“In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 2:2-3)

But what of Luke 21:24, “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”? The assertion that this prophecy came true in 1967 is problematic since Revelation 11:2 says the Gentile ‘trampling’ of Jerusalem would last only ’42 months’. The context of Luke 21 shows Jesus was referring to the events of 70AD and God’s sovereign use of foreign tyrants to fulfil his purposes. The focus of the New Testament instead moves away from the earthly Jerusalem toward the new, heavenly Jerusalem as the home of all who trust in Jesus (Hebrews 12:22-23; Revelation 21:2; 22-27).

Believers will soon be ‘raptured’ to heaven before the ‘end-time’ battle of Armageddon

The rapture is a popular idea that Jesus will actually return twice: first of all secretly, to rescue true believers out of the world, then later visibly with his saints to judge the world. There is, again, no basis in Scripture for this novel idea. The Bible is emphatic: the return of Jesus will be personal, sudden, public, visible and glorious. -Matthew 24:30-31

“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the peoples of the earth[a] will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”- 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

The idea of a secret rapture is actually based on a misreading of Matthew 24:40-41 and Luke 17:34-35…Our mandate is to be peacemakers not widow makers (Matthew 5:3-10). We are ‘God’s co-workers’ entrusted as ambassadors with a ministry of reconciliation not speculation (2 Corinthians 5:11-6:2)…###

A recent Zogby International poll found that 31% of those surveyed in the national poll strongly believe or somewhat believe in the ideas behind Christian Zionism, defined as “the belief that Jews must have all of the promised land, including all of Jerusalem, to facilitate the second coming of the messiah.”

A CNN/Time poll showed that 59% of the American public believes the prophecies contained in the Book of Revelation will come true.

Christian Zionism is an extremist Christian fundamentalist movement which supports the claims of those who believe that the State of Israel should take control of all of the land currently disputed between Palestinians and Israelis and views the creation and expansion of the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy toward the second coming of Jesus.

Christian Zionism is a two hundred year old theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel.

The Christian Zionist program provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

Christian Zionism is also an escapist theology and a match made in hell for neo-con ideology.

These Christians believe that God fights on the side of Israel and they call for unqualified support for the most extreme right wing political positions related to the Holy Land. Christian Zionism has significant support within American Protestant fundamentalists, who number between 10 and 20 million. Its reach is broad, by virtue of its favorite themes related to the “End Times” and an Israel-fixated Christian media.

Christian Zionism is both a “movement” and a way of interpreting current events. Its focus is on Israel and the Middle East, as much an ideology as a “movement.” Its promoters share many beliefs but are not organized through any one institution.

Throughout history Christians have at times twisted scripture to justify violence: for the Crusades, for Anti-Semitism, and for slavery. Too often the church has been neglected to respond to these biblical distortions and with disastrous results.

Although the Christian Zionists motives are couched in terms of compassion toward the Jewish people based on a literal reading of scripture their political agenda of territorial expansion Zionists has allowed the ongoing injustices against Palestinians.

Tikkun is Hebrew for mend, repair and transform the world. Tikkun is also an organization that researched to discover that there are three distinct elements energizing the Christian Zionists:

1. A strong commitment to conservative and ultra-nationalist American politics (so strong, I believe, that if the U.S. were to decide to break with Israel, this part of the Christian Zionist leadership would go along with that and drop its defense of Israeli policies).

2. Dispensationalist religious commitments that lead many of the Christian Zionists to yearn for a cataclysmic “end of history” eschatological war in the Middle East that will precipitate the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture in which all true Christians will go to heaven and all Jews who have not yet converted to Christianity will burn in hell for eternity.

3. A widespread understanding among many Christians that atonement and repentance is needed for 1700 years of murder, rape, and oppression of Jews that was frequently generated by the Church (though, of course, the Evangelicals do not recognize that church as their church). In this category are many Christian Zionists who genuinely feel terrible about what has happened to the Jews and genuinely want to help the Jewish people. Their philo-Semitism is real and sincere.- Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine page 9, Nov/Dec. 2007

Jews and Christians worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but many fail to comprehend that the first mention of Israel is in Genesis 32:22, when Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with the Divine.

Thus, to claim that the secular ethnocratic state of Israel has a divine right that supersedes the divine rights of the indigenous people of the land, reeks of racism and misses the point of what the Hebrew prophets were always on about:

“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

“My people are fools, they do not know me! They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.”-Jeremiah 4:22

“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:

“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’”-Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

The term Christianity was also not even coined until three decades after Jesus Christ walked the earth.

Until the day of Paul, followers of Jesus were called members of The Way; meaning the way he taught his followers to be!

Christ was never a Christian, but was born and died a Palestinian devout Jew who was a social justice radical revolutionary road warrior that challenged the job security of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVED them just as they were: sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under a brutal Roman Military Occupation.

What got Jesus crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces, by teaching the subversive concept that Caesar only had power because God allowed it and that God preferred the humble sinner, the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Occupation above the elite and arrogant.

The problem is not with Christianity, but that too few who claim to be Christians have actually done what Jesus taught and I spin Jesus’ Manifesto this way:

About 2,000 years ago, when Christ was about 33, he hiked up a hill and sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people;

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”

In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and ‘sins’ honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God.

How comforted we will all be, when we see, we haven’t got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe.

God’s name in ancient Aramaic is Abba which means Daddy as much as Mommy and He/She: The Lord has said, “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours.” -Isaiah 55:8

Christ proclaimed more: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The essence of meek is to be patient with ignorance, slow to anger and never hold a grudge. In other words: how comforted you will be when you also know humility; when you know yourself, the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled.”

In other words: how comforted you will be when your greatest desire is to do what “God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord.”-Micah 6:8

“Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy.”

In other words: how comforted you will all be when you choose to return only kindness to your ‘enemy.’

“For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you” Christ warns his disciples as he explains the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God.”

In other words: how comforted you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom.

“Blessed are The Peacemakers: THEY shall be called the children of God.”

And what a wonderful world it will be when we all seek peace by pursuing justice; for there can be none without the other.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires, theirs is The Kingdom of Heaven.”

And one fine day the lion will lie down with The Lamb; meaning man will make war no more and that would create a sisterhood of man which just maybe the Kingdom of God on planet earth.

The Fighting Father, a Christian Anarchist and God Part III

Native Australian, Professional boxer and social justice Anglican priest, Rev. David B. Smith is currently in the midst of a 17 day USA speaking tour that began in California and concludes in D.C.

While in Florida, Rev. Dave and this reporter got together around my kitchen table and began a two day conversation about God, Israel, Palestine, Zionism, Human Rights, Mordechai Vanunu, etc. and we began with a few of my theological questions:

My first book, KEEP HOPE ALIVE, was written with hope to inform USA Christians of the Palestinian side of the story of the establishment of the state of Israel and also as a direct challenge to the putrid pulp fiction of the “Left Behind Series” which promotes a heretical theology of escapism that leaves behind the message that Jesus commanded his followers must adhere to: forgive, pray for, bless and love your enemy and to respond to evil with nonviolence for it is the Peacemakers who are the daughters and sons of God.

From Smith’s 2006 essay, “The final word on the place of modern Israel in Biblical Prophecy” I excerpt:

“I’ve been hearing it, in one form or another, every since I was converted as a teenager – that God has a plan for political Israel…the spiel is always basically the same – that the triumph of Israel over its Middle-Eastern neighbors has been clearly prophesied in the Biblical texts, and that until this happens, the ‘final battle’ (‘Armageddon’) and the ensuing 1000-year reign of peace can’t happen either.

“Biblical prophecy is never normative. In other words, prophecies in the Bible never function as commandments – telling us directly how to determine our relationships with our neighbors. They function to bring us closer to God.

“Biblical prophecies are not given for the sake of satisfying anybody’s curiosity about the future, any more than they are designed to help shape 21st century foreign policy. Prophecies are given in order to call people to back to God. This is where Christian Zionism just gets it plain wrong.” [1]

The Christian Zionists political message is “that we should all lend a hand to the state of Israel in her battles with her neighbors” and Dave explains that this miss-interpretation of Scriptures, “tends to flourish best in areas of the church where there is a strong distinction between the sacred and the secular – between religion and politics…[and] they translate into an aggressively pro-Israel foreign policy…in my view, Christian Zionism is both wrong and dangerous!

“It is wrong because it arises out of a misunderstanding of the Bible. It is dangerous because it sanctions actions that contribute to the supremacy of the state of Israel without regards to their broader consequences, and without any serious evaluation of the moral nature of the actions themselves.

“Biblical prophecy has never been normative for people of faith. It is the commandments that are normative. You know the ones – ‘love God and love your neighbor’. These are the Divine commands that inform our actions and tell us how we ought to behave towards our neighbors. And it is only on the basis of these commandments that we can construct a Biblically-based foreign policy – on the basis of love!” [Ibid]

Being the first candidate of the Citizen of Conscience Party to run for US House of Representatives, I am in solidarity with all of that and I also stand on 1 John 4:16,18:

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment.”

I also contend that living in the past has got no soul and the future of Christianity will not be found in antiquity, but in our ability to re-IMAGINE those ancient stories, symbols and concepts with modern eyes and open minds and hearts.

Christianity came into existence in a world radically different than ours. The ancients believed the Universe consisted of three tiers; the earth at the center was flat, and the judging, all knowing deity was up in the sky and hell was the place below.

The ancients ascribed to a tribal, male supernatural being who validated warfare as a noble and divine enterprise and his foreign policy was pro-Jewish.

The Christian god “evolved’ from tribal roots and the power of the Church to control knowledge and public opinion in an invasive deity dominated civilization for 1,600 years until a new concept dawned.

Copernicus and his disciple Galileo concluded that the sun did not rotate around the earth but that the earth rotated around the sun. This revolutionary evolution in consciousness began the shift from a god who was not so involved in the daily affairs of humans.

Galileo was condemned a heretic but on 28 December 1991, the Vatican officially admitted that he was right and the Church and Bible had been wrong about the universe and humankind’s place in it.

When Freud exposed the childish neurotic elements in religion he was vilified and demonized by Christian leaders.

Carl Jung offered a bridge of reconciliation when he recognized the historic process necessary in the development of Consciousness; which is the quality or state of being aware of something within oneself.

Albert Einstein introduced relativity as present in all things including “eternal and unchanging truth.”

Astrophysicists raised awareness of the emptiness in the heavens above and that hit at the heart of human loneliness, which is self-absorption meaning a preoccupation with oneself to the exclusion of others or the outside world.

“In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta.”-Mother Teresa, Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997.

The theistic concepts of a supernatural big daddy in the sky, an errand boy just waiting to fill our desires, and a deity that will punish us and thus motivates behavior is a god that must at least be fired, if not killed; for the Ultimate Mystery of the Universe we call God, for lack of a better name is beyond all concepts and “Any god who can be killed ought to be killed.”- Clifford Stanley, Episcopal Priest and Professor of Theology

Among the forward thinking founding father’s of America was Thomas Jefferson, who weeded out the miracle stories from the gospels and clarified the teachings and ethics of Christ in:

THE LIFE AND MORALS of JESUS of NAZARETH:

1. Be just: justice comes from virtue, which comes from the heart.
2. Treat people the way we want to be treated.
3. Always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with COMPASSION.
4. Consider valuable the things that have no material value.
5. Do not judge others.
6. Do not bear grudges.
7. Be modest and unpretentious.
8. Give out of true generosity, not because we expect to be repaid.
9. Being true to one’s self in more important than being loyal to one’s family and those who think they know the most are the most ignorant.

The most ignored of our founding fathers was Thomas Paine, who penned:

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

“Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.”

“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

“Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.”

“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

“Soon after I had published the pamphlet ‘Common Sense’ [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion… The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”

I contend that compassion is evidence of The Divine and as Smith concludes:

“When you confuse prophecy and commandment, you run the risk of breaking the commandments for the sake of seeing your prophecy fulfilled. Let’s get specific here:

“The oppression of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel in recent years has been horrendous. Between the massacres and assassinations and the daily grind of an apartheid system that treats Israeli Arabs as second-class citizens, all the commandments have been broken.

“If we look at the situation through the eyes of Jesus – with eyes of compassion and mercy – we cannot but be moved to both pity and anger. Pity for the many who have been victimized – both Palestinians and Jews who have tried to resist the occupation. And anger towards the foreign countries who make the oppression possible – countries that include Australia as well as the US.

“And the saddest part, from my point of view, is that much of this oppression takes place in the name of religion, and with the blessing of the many parts of Christ’s church, because it is all seen as being a necessary part of the great end-time drama, as depicted in the Biblical prophecies.

“The fact that something has been prophesied does not mean that such an outcome is a good thing. The predicted events may be things that we should oppose. We need to be guided here by the commandments. The commandments inform our actions, not the prophecies themselves…the Christian Zionist position is not logical, it’s not moral, and it’s certainly not Biblical, even if its adherents to add ‘because the Bible says’ every time they state their case.’” [Ibid]

God gave us a conscience that we should use it and I contend that a prophet is anyone who points out danger ahead and provokes those so inclined to think about God-to THINK!

I pray that God will continue to raise up prophets to admonish ALL “stiff necked people” [Exodus 34:9, Proverbs 29:1] because “people are fools, they do not know me! They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.”-Jeremiah 4:22

“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:

“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [2]

“If I can’t dance, it’s NOT my REVOLUTION” [Emma Goldman] and as a fiscal conservative with libertarian leanings I am also in solidarity with U2′s God Part II

“I believe in love.”

1. Israel in Prophecy
2. Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

Beware of Bachmann Palin and Religion in Politics

Less than 24 hours after President Obama stated:

“The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.” [1]

Presidential candidate, Tea Party congresswoman Michele Bachmann launched 150,000 robo-calls to residents in Iowa and South Carolina on May 19th accusing Obama of not standing up for Israel.

In her recent speech at the “Faith & Freedom Conference” held in D.C., Bachmann termed Obama’s call for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict based on Israel’s 1967 boundaries and mutually agreed land swaps “shocking ” and she followed up by buying ads on Jewish websites reiterating her message.

After graduating from high school, Bachmann worked on a kibbutz in Israel near to Beersheva, one of over 500 Palestinian villages and towns that Israel ethnically cleansed beginning in 1948.

In 1986, Bachmann received a J.D. degree from Oral Roberts University, a cross-denominational/non-denominational Christian university that is part of a movement of individual, historically mainstream congregations who have adopted beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals, which includes a wide range of different theologies, such as The NAR/New Apostolic Reformation.

The NAR is a religious movement of elites and regular people guided by an entire genre of books, texts, videos and other media. Among NAR adherents, is Sarah Palin and the NAR is one of the largest movements in America that nobody knows of due to the dearth of investigative reporting on the intersection of faith and politics.

NAR videos “demonstrate the taking control of communities and nations through large networks of ‘prayer warriors’ whose spiritual warfare is used to expel and destroy the demons that cause societal ills. Once the territorial demons, witches, and generational curses are removed, the ‘born-again’ Christians in the videos take control of society…Leaders in the NAR movement refer to themselves as ‘apostles.’

“Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin’s extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.

“Palin has also been blessed, or ‘anointed’, by an African cleric, prominent in the Third Wave movement, who has repeatedly visited the Wasilla Assembly of God and claims to have effected positive, dramatic social change in a Kenyan town by driving out a ‘spirit of witchcraft.’

“The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology…The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form ‘Joel’s Army’ to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God…” [2]

Jesus called politicians foxes and with Bachmann and Palin being touted as presidential material, the issue of faith in politics has never been more deadly.

As Don Hewitt advised: “Tell me a story. It’s that easy” I offer this one to my sister and brother Americans, in particular those who claim to be Christian:

On March 20, 2006, I traveled from the Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory to the Mount of Beatitudes in Israel. This awe inspiring site sits above the shimmering Sea of Galilee where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, and I ended up delivering my own Sermon on that Mount! Read more…

Four Franciscan Sisters, one each from Syria, Jordan, Malta and Italy care for the shrine and the pilgrim guests at the Hospice Center where I spent two nights and a day of silent reflection after nine days on a Sabeel Reality tour through occupied Palestine.

At dinner a Catholic Pentecostal from Scotland introduced himself and asked me why I was there and what church I was from.

I responded that I have Irish Roman Catholic, Polish Jew and Ukrainian DNA and my rock is The Beatitudes.

He looked even more perplexed when I told him I had come to the Mount of Beatitudes to decompress and reflect upon my nine days in Occupied Territory. I asked him if he were aware of the work of Sabeel, the Palestinian Christian liberation theology organization founded by a 1948 refugee, which promotes a theology of liberation, based on justice, peace, non-violence and reconciliation with all people regardless of faith path or nationality.

He sternly admonished me; “God gave this land to the Jews! The Bible never mentions Palestine, and that is that! God gave this land to the Jews and that is that!”

I responded just as fervently that the Palestinian Christians are the descendants of those who first followed Jesus and they have been denied inalienable human rights by the Israeli government. I told him the Christians in the Holy Land have shrunk from 20% of the total population to less than 1.3% since 1948 and if things don’t change soon, there will be no Christians left in the land where Christ promised that it is the peacemakers who are the children of God.

He sputtered, “But the Jews have suffered! God gave this land to the Jews and that is that!”

This really got my Irish up and I retorted, “Yes they did because good people did nothing for far too long, and now the oppressed have become the oppressors. In the 21st century good people are unaware, ignoring or are in total denial of the injustices Israel gets away with in the so called Holy Land. And the Hebrew prophets, such as Micah reminded the people of what the Lord requires: To be just, to be merciful and to walk humbly with your God!”

I could NOT shut up although I knew that that Scotsman was trying to get away from me, but, I was on a tear and barely took a breath as I told him that instead of staying in Israel for his entire visit, he should go and witness life in the occupied territories; go and see the effects of The Wall on his spirit and see what it has done to the Palestinian economy. I told him he should go and tour some of the Bethlehem refugee camps and see the ruins of all the uncompensated home demolitions. I brought it on home by telling him that I also doubt that God was ever in the real estate business!

His eyes had bugged out and his mouth had dropped open while the torrent of words spewed out of me. After I finally shut up, he stammered, “But there is suffering everywhere!”

“Yes there is and Christ always stood up for the poor and the oppressed. And he told us what ever we do or do not do for the least and the outcast; we do it or not unto God.”

He shook his head and turned and walked quickly away and never again looked my way.

Nobody else spoke to me the rest of the evening or the next day. That was fine with me, for I was listening to the voice within and I kept hearing Luke 23:34:

“Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

But when you know and if you are of good will, you must do something and as education is the way to compassion and compassion is the way to change, so I persist to try and Wake Up the Bachmann’s and Palin’s of America many of whom have been misled into accepting the ideology of Christian Zionism as IF it were theologically sound!

What is Christian Zionism?

Christian Zionism is an extremist Christian movement, which supports the claims of those who believe that the State of Israel should take control of all of the land currently disputed between Palestinians and Israelis. It views the creation and expansion of the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy toward the second coming of Jesus.

Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel. The Christian Zionist program provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

What is the Christian Zionist connection with the Holy Land?

Believing that God fights on the side of Israel, Christian Zionists call for the unqualified support for the most extreme political positions. They do not have eyes to see or ears to hear their sisters and brothers in Christ, or cousins in the family of Father Abraham who are caught in the crossfire of the military minded.

Christian Zionist spokes persons have also attributed Hurricane Katrina to God’s wrath over America’s failure to stop Israel from “disengaging” from Gaza in 2005, although Israel has never ceased their total control over air, land and sea borders!

They also consistently oppose any moves towards a solution to the conflict, which would validate the political aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis.

Who Supports Christian Zionism?

Christian Zionism has significant support within American Protestant fundamentalists, and number between 10 and 20 million. Its reach is broad, by virtue of its favorite themes related to the “End Times” and an Israel-fixated Christian media.

Christian Zionism is both a political movement and a way of mis-interpreting current events. Its focus on Israel and the Middle East is an ideology and a movement. Its promoters share many beliefs but are not organized through any one institution.

Throughout history Christians have at times twisted scripture to justify violence: for the Crusades, for Antisemitism, and for slavery.

Too often the Church has been slow to respond to these biblical distortions and with disastrous results.

Today Christian Zionists – particularly those with dispensationalist leanings – are well organized and although their motives are couched in terms of compassion toward the Jewish people they base their theology on literal readings of scripture.

The political agenda of territorial expansion advocated by Christian Zionists has given rise to the brutal injustices against Palestinians, which fuels the fires of militancy in the Middle East.

While Jewish Zionism began with the hope that all Jewish people would have a safe and peaceful dwelling place, these corruptors of the gospel Christ preached, adhere to a 200 year old convoluted interpretation of disparate scriptures that they have chosen to weave together to support their fear based judgmental narrow minded doctrine.

This heretical theology of Premellenial Dispensation worships a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus/The Prince of Peace modeled even while being nailed to a cross.

The “Left Behind” series of fiction is the epitome of what millennium of theologians have always understood to be what the term anti-Christ is truly about

The term “Antichrist” only appears five times in the Bible, but a cult not based on sound theology has created an urban legend that seeks Armageddon.

The term “Antichrist” never appears in John’s Revelation or Daniel, two disparate works of literature written three centuries apart and under very different circumstances, yet the Left Behinder’s weave them together.

The small texts that mention the “Antichrist” were written to attack the Gnostic understanding of whom Christ was. A Gnostic relies on intuition and not on dogma and doctrine. Gnostic’s were most certainly free spirits and most all of the writings we have about Gnostics, have been the attacks upon them. That all changed when the Nag Hamadi Library was translated and published, for what had been deemed heretical by those in power in the fourth century can now be read in most every language. Read more…

The theology promoted in the Left Behind fiction is a theology based on fear and punishment.

These misinformed Christians worship a punitive father as God. They do not have eyes to see that nature is God’s primary temple, and war the greatest abomination.

The theology of the fictional “Left Behind” series is the epitome of the spirit of the anti-Christ: which is the evil within ones own heart that leads one to fear “the other” and compels them to violence.

According to Christ, to be his follower, one must do what the Father requires. The Hebrew prophet Micah summed it up best: “What does the Lord require? He has already told you o’man: Be Just, Be Merciful and walk humbly with your God.” -Micah 6:8:

To be just is to be fair and reasonable. To be merciful means to treat all people the way we want to be treated. To be humble is knowing oneself; the good and the evil, for both cut through every human heart.

Jesus taught that the only way to resist evil is with good and he modeled that one must always work for peaceful resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion and forgiveness.

No religion owns God and no church owns Jesus, who was never a Christian, for that term was not even coined until three decades after he walked the earth.

Jesus was a social justice radical revolutionary nonviolent Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the temple priests by teaching the people no need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVES you just as you are.

Christianity and this republic were founded by rebels, revolutionaries and dissidents. Jesus called politicians foxes and I take that as a warning to US that when religion rules politics instead of guiding ethics and morality, we the people for justice, peace, equality and true democracy get screwed.

RELATED:

• John Hagee CUFI
• conference in Miami
• Obama speech on middle east transcript
• Questions for candidate Palin and sister Sarah

Israel’s Best Friends Are Its Worst Enemies

Only if we truly love our friends will we always tell them the truth and call them on their bad behavior. When religion and politics get in bed together, we the people for JUSTICE and PEACE get screwed.

Many of my Christian sisters and brothers are members of the fastest growing cult in America: Christian Zionism-which has nothing much in common with what Jesus was all about- and one of its leader is the fundamentalist fire and brimstone preacher, John Hagee.

On 6 November 2007, I attended a Hagee fest in Miami, Florida at the James L. Knight Center that was packed to the rafters with Hagee’s tribe of Christian Zionists and south Florida’s right wing Jewish community.

Zion’s Fire Banners, dancers, singers and a band whipped the crowd into a frenzy of spinning, jumping, clapping, twirling and moved the rotund Hagee to link arms with men in skull caps and dance the Hora-not to Hava Nagila- but to repeated choruses of:

Shout for joy and victory! Bat Yerushalyim

From one end of the stage to the other, the largest American and Israeli flags I have ever seen were draped side by side and by the end of the evening I imagined every star on the red-white-and blue had morphed into the Star of David.

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez pointed to the flags and exclaimed: “Isn’t that beautiful up there together? I get goose bumps! All nations have been created by an act of man, except Israel was created by an act of God.”

Rabbi Freedman delivered the Invocation, “We are all friends of the only democracy in the Middle East.”

I immediately recalled what American Israeli, Jeff Halper, the Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told me during one of my five journeys to Jerusalem:

“Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.”

Rabbi Freedman continued on, “From Mount Sinai to Mount Zion to Mount Vernon we are all Zionists! Israel is second to America in how many immigrants we have absorbed.”

Immigrant absorption in Israel comes with perks and is called Aliyah, [“go up”] and is a fundamental concept of Zionism enshrined in Israel’s Law of Return, which permits any Jew from any where in the world the legal right to government assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, automatic Israeli citizenship, unemployment benefits, free medical, and subsidized housing. Young adult immigrants receive free room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months and 100 percent of their tuition is paid by the government.

Hagee’s mastery of manipulating the fears of his audience garnered him a standing ovation as the shofars blew, “Israel was re-born by an act of God and Israel lives! The Jews have suffered great persecution and survived slavery and the Final Solution! God Jehovah will bury Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran! The flag of Israel will fly over the undivided Jerusalem and be the praise of all the earth! It’s 1938 again and the new Hitler is Ahmadinejad! Radical Islamisicts are threatening to develop nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and then the USA! But we are indivisible and we are both here forever!”

The oft repeated comment ascribed to President Ahmadinejad, that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” was addressed by Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science who wrote:

“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word ‘map’ or the term ‘wiped off’. According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was ‘this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’

“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the ‘occupying regime’ in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, ‘This too shall pass.'”

Tikkun is Hebrew for mend, repair and transform the world.

Tikkun is also an interfaith organization which researched to discover that there are three distinct elements energizing Christian Zionists:

1. A strong commitment to conservative and ultra-nationalist American politics (so strong, I believe, that if the U.S. were to decide to break with Israel, this part of the Christian Zionist leadership would go along with that and drop its defense of Israeli policies).
2. Dispensationalist religious commitments that lead many of the Christian Zionists to yearn for a cataclysmic “end of history” eschatological war in the Middle East that will precipitate the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture in which all true Christians will go to heaven and all Jews who have not yet converted to Christianity will burn in hell for eternity.
3. A widespread understanding among many Christians that atonement and repentance is needed for 1700 years of murder, rape, and oppression of Jews that was frequently generated by the Church (though, of course, the Evangelicals do not recognize that church as their church). In this category are many Christian Zionists who genuinely feel terrible about what has happened to the Jews and genuinely want to help the Jewish people. Their philo-Semitism is real and sincere. [Rabbi Lerner, Tikkun Magazine page 9, Nov/Dec. 2007]

But in Miami that night, multitudes of misled and misinformed Christian’s celebrated military occupation, violence, power and political control but ignored the gospel Jesus preached: “It is the peacemakers who shall be called the children of God.” –Matthew 5:9

Hagee repeatedly cited that all worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but neglected to mention that the first mention of Israel is in Genesis 32:22, when Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with the Divine.

Hagee threw out the names of all the Hebrew prophets, but not the fact that God raised up prophets to speak truth to power and arrogance and to remind people of what God desires:

“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

God also raised up prophets to remind them they cannot know the mind of the Mystery of the Universe, for “His thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”- Isaiah 55:8

God raised up prophets to admonish the “stiff necked people” [Exodus 34:9, Proverbs 29:1] and that “My people are fools, they do not know me! They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.”-Jeremiah 4:22

Hagee invoked the “Torah Way” but neglected what the Torah commands:

“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:

“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.'” [Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007 ]

Because I love ALL people as sisters and brothers and I seek SECURITY for Israel by pursuing JUSTICE for Palestine, in 2005 I wrote KEEP HOPE ALIVE

Because as Don Hewitt always said: “The formula is simple and it’s reduced to four words every kid in the world knows: Tell me a story. It’s that easy.”

In Chapter 16, I told the story of  A CONFRONTATIONAL CONVERSATION

“Father Paul, you cannot possibly be telling me that an Episcopal priest has been taken in by fundamentalist theology?” Terese incredulously asked the new assistant to the rector at St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church in Orlando, who also served at the noon mass every Wednesday.

Father Paul Hendricks was a passionate evangelist on a mission to convert every Jew he encountered to become a Christian. Terese had kept her silence for the first six months she had been listening to his Wednesday noon sermons, but finally broke her silence after the rest of the parishioners had departed.

Paul sighed and shook his head. “Look, Mrs. Hunter, I read your op/ed in the newspaper about Israel and Palestine, and we both agree we want peace; we just go about it differently.”

“Father, let me say that the fastest growing cult in the U.S.A. is the cult of Christian Zionism. Approximately 25 million U.S. Christians believe as you do, and I am most depressed to see that the simple answers of fundamentalism have reached their tentacles into the thinking man’s church. You just preached for thirteen minutes on Genesis 12:3–‘I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse: and in you all the families of the world are blessed’–as if God meant blessings to be political power and military might. Father, surely you understand that the belief of the ancient Israelites, who held that they were chosen, as if they were somehow special from others, as if God esteemed them above others, is just basic primitive nationalism. Come on, Father, looking down on one’s enemies to foster one’s own tribal interest and praying to God to smite one’s enemies is what the ancients did. Isn’t it about time we moved beyond that limited thinking?”

Father Paul clenched his fists and held them behind his back, as he suppressed a simmering rage. He stood nine inches above Terese’s upturned head, and with a slick smile and condescending tone told her, “Mrs. Hunter, you are very misled. The text is understood to mean a blessing to Abraham’s lineage–”

Terese cut in. “Agreed! And Genesis 12:3 was promised even before Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, and Isaac, the Jew, were born! And what about the very first mention of Israel? Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with God. That is how I understand Israel; everyone who struggles and wrestles with God is Israel, too. Israel means more than a geographical location, Father Paul.”

“Mrs. Hunter, the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of the prophetic scriptures, and God’s covenant with Israel is eternal, exclusive, and will not be abrogated. I refer you to Genesis 12:1-7, 15:4-7, 17:1-8; Leviticus 26:44-45; and Deuteronomy 7:7:8.”

“And Father, I refer you to Matthew 5:43-45, which does not only critique Genesis 12:3; it blows it apart, for Christ commanded, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despite-fully use you, that you maybe children of your Father.’”

The two had reached Paul’s SUV and he silently prayed he could make a swift escape, but Terese had positioned herself at the driver’s door, and if he were to open it swiftly, she could be easily moved aside. Father Paul entertained the thought for more than a moment, but remained mute and still, as the tiny woman exploded with a torrent of words.

“Look, blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed them to become a big bully, and isn’t God always on the side of the oppressed? My sense is that you Christian Zionists see the political state of Israel as a replacement for Christ and that certainly is not Christianity!

“How do you take Genesis 12:3 to literally mean that blessings equal land and political power, yet ignore God’s promise in Genesis 21:17-20 to ‘make a great nation out of Ishmael’s descendants and that ‘God was with the boy.’ Yet your way of thinking allows the growing apartheid wall to continue, and supports occupation and oppression of people that God also made promises too.”

“Mrs. Hunter, why don’t you make an appointment and we can discuss this further? I really have to go.”

“Okay, I can take a hint, but let me leave you with this: when religion and politics are in bed together, everybody gets screwed! The Israeli government is using you Zionists as apologists in support of their agenda of illegal occupation and settlements in the West bank, Golan, and Gaza, on literal biblical grounds taken out of context. Your blind allegiance to every act of Israel, understood as being orchestrated by God and which should therefore be condoned, supported, and even praised, makes me want to puke! And I wonder about the true motives of Christians who actually relish the idea of Armageddon and love to speculate on who gets ‘left behind.’ Christ was very clear that there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who were so sure they were in, but get left out. God has always been on the side of the oppressed, and your uncritical endorsement and justification for Israel’s racist and apartheid policies are an abomination.”

The stunned and silent priest watched in relief as Terese turned, flipped her braid, and walked away…….

I will not, I cannot walk away until US policy changes course and Gaza Palestine are free from military occupation, so I am on my way to D.C. to converse with my American and Israeli sisters and brothers at AIPAC’s annual conference.

Interview with Stuart Littlewood on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Zionists wield their influence by winning the ongoing propaganda war: Stuart Littlewood…

Stuart Littlewood is a British writer and photographer. He is the co-author of the book “Radio Free Palestine” in which he has elaborately described the plight of the Palestinian nation under the Israeli occupation. Littlewood’s articles on the cause of the Palestinian nation have been published on a variety of websites, newspapers and online magazines including Intifada Palestine, Veterans Today, Palestine Chronicle, Dissident Voice, Ramallah Online and Voltaire Net. In a 2009 interview with Media Review, Littlewood described his contributions to raising the public awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ignorance of the British people concerning the suffering of the Palestinian nation.

Stuart joined me in an in-depth interview to discuss the ongoing anguish of the people of Palestine, the situation of Gaza Strip and West Bank, the influence of Israeli lobby over the mass media in the West and the international isolation of Iran due to its unconditional support for the Palestinian people.

Kourosh Ziabari: Zionists have always claimed that the Land of Israel historically belongs to them and this verdict is clearly emphasized in the Hebrew Bible. They say that according to the Book of Genesis, the land was promised by God to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. So, what’s your response to them? Do they have the right to cite claims over what is called the Land of Israel? Is there any historical evidence to demonstrate that Palestinians are the true possessors of this land?

Stuart Littlewood: Using mythical scripture to make out that God is a racist who favors one tribe above all others, is bizarre to say the least. Some Zionists don’t believe it, so why should anyone else? In a booklet called “Zionism: A Jewish Communal Response” recently launched by The Board of Deputies of British Jews, Rabbi Tony Bayfield writes: “I am horrified by some strands of Zionism which treat the Bible as an exclusive title deed written by God. I do not regard the Torah as an extra-historical document written by the Divine hand… It is not Judaism’s title deed to the land.”

But it provides cover for the Zionists’ criminal scheme to dispossess the Palestinians-Arabs and Christians – so its importance is pumped up to bursting point. But why any non-Jews should take it seriously is beyond me.

The Jews were expelled by the Roman occupation. These days the right of return must be exercised as soon as the reason for expulsion, for example, foreign occupation, ceases. The Jews had their chance when the Roman Empire collapsed. They didn’t take it. It’s ridiculous to lay claim 16 centuries later at gun-point and eject the people whose homeland it now is. Most of today’s Jews, I’m told, have no ancestral links to the Holy Land anyway.

The Jerusalem Declaration of 2006 by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches sums it up for me: “We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation… We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war…”

As for Jerusalem itself, it was already 2000 years old and belonged to the Canaanites when King David captured it.  Historians say that before the present-day conflict the Jews controlled Jerusalem for some 500 years, whereas it was subsequently ruled by Muslims for more than twice that long. And for nearly 90 years it was a Christian kingdom. Lots of people, besides the Jews, conquered Jerusalem, so there are many competing claims, which is probably why the UN declared it should be independently administered as an international city.

Matters weren’t helped when Obama opened his big mouth and declared to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that Jerusalem “will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided”. Realizing it was a stupid thing to say, he added: “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations… And I think that it is smart for us to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem, but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city.” A legitimate claim? As everyone knows, the Old City officially belongs to Palestinian East Jerusalem.

I don’t think it’s a question of the Palestinians proving ownership, though I imagine most families can produce Ottoman-era land deeds – if the Israelis haven’t confiscated and forged them.

Hamas chief Khalid Misha’al has said: “We shall never recognize the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognize the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else’s sins or solve somebody else’s problem.” That doesn’t sound unreasonable.

KZ: As you mentioned in one of your recent articles, the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has categorically condemned the atrocities committed by the regime of Moammar Gaddafi and the mass killing of Libyan citizens by his mercenaries. The UK government revoked Gaddafi’s and his family members’ political immunity in an action aimed at threatening the interests of the Libyan dictator worldwide; however, we haven’t seen any action against or condemnation of the brutal massacre of the defenseless Palestinians by the Israeli regime in the December 2008 and January 2009. What does this exercise of double standards imply? Is it possible to justify it?

SL: It’s no use looking to the British government for fair play. The political scene here is heavily infiltrated by the pro-Israel lobby, and money talks. The Friends of Israel movement claims 80 per cent of Conservative Party MPs including of course its leader, David Cameron. Membership, I hear, is a necessary stepping stone to high office. Cameron calls himself a Zionist and our foreign secretary, William Hague, has been a Friend of Israel since his schooldays.  His side-kick, Liam Fox, the defense secretary, thinks that “we must remember that in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression – Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together or we will all fall divided”. The minister for Middle East affairs was an officer of Conservative Friends of Israel.  It’s all sewn up.

David Cameron recently told Jewish dinner guests: “With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible… I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel.” Cameron, and Brown and Blair before him, are patrons of the Jewish National Fund. Quite simply, Israel is never punished. It is allowed to get away scot-free.

A body called the Committee on Standards in Public Life is supposed to call to account MPs who place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organizations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties, but it too has been infiltrated.

It’s interesting to see how the British Government rushed to press for a UN mandate to take whatever steps might be necessary to protect Libyan civilians from their bully-boy dictator and wasted no time establishing a no-fly zone and annihilating Qaddafi’s air defenses. But it stood idly by and watched the Israeli slaughter of Gazan civilians and showed no sign of wanting it stopped.

Headlines this week quoted Hague saying, “There can be no hiding place for tyrants”, referring to Qaddafi, but he’s leading the rush to change our Universal Jurisdiction laws to protect Israel’s war crimes suspects from arrest. These double standards are the hallmark of a corrupted political class. It can never be justified, but for the moment we’re stuck with these people.

Hague condemned the recent Jerusalem bomb blast as “a callous and disgusting act of terrorism” but he’s careful not to condemn the almost daily air-strikes by Israel on Gaza’s civilians. I’m reading a report now on just one day’s horror inflicted by the Zionist military on the Occupied Territories that says:

24 hours to 8 am, 23 March 2011

3 air strikes – 7 attacks – 28 raids including home invasions – 8 dead – 15 injured – 1 curfew – 15 taken prisoner – 14 detained – 79 restrictions of movement

 

Child, teenager and 3 adults killed in Israeli shelling – homes damaged

Injury and 4 deaths in Israeli air strikes

Agricultural sabotage: farms and homes under Israeli fire in 3 Gaza areas – crops bulldozed

Israeli Navy opens fire on Palestinian fishing boats

Zionist mob smashes on-duty ambulance windscreen

Zionist militants cut down Palestinian olive trees

Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in 8 towns and villages

 

[Source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group]

The Fourth Geneva Convention puts Contracting Parties under a solemn obligation to act. They don’t seem to have grasped that.

 

KZ: It’s widely believed that the Zionist lobby has an enormous influence over the mass media in the U.S. and European countries. AIPAC and other influential Zionist circles usually block the publication of materials critical of Israel and its policies, and vilify as anti-Semitist whoever dares question the barbaric conducts of this illegitimate regime. What’s your idea about the dominance of Zionist lobby over the mainstream media in the West?

SL: You are right to focus on this question. The Zionists wield their influence by winning the ongoing propaganda war. The Arabs, after being on the losing end for decades, still haven’t learned how to fight it and don’t show any sign of wishing to. I have put forward proposals for media skills training but it’s hopeless. Even allowing for the PA being dominated by Israel’s stooges their failure to address this is not only ignorant but a major strategic blunder.

Last year The Israel Project, a US media advocacy group, produced a revised training manual to help the worldwide Zionist movement maintain its control over the propaganda war, keep their ill-gotten territorial gains and persuade international audiences to accept that their crimes are not only necessary but conform to “shared values” between Israel and the civilized West.

It’s a clever document. It teaches how to ‘justify’ the slaughter, the ethnic cleansing, the land-grabbing, the cruelty and the blatant disregard for international law and UN resolutions, and give it a sweeter smell. It is designed to have us gullible Americans and Europeans believing that we actually share values with the psychopaths of Israel’s racist regime and that their abominable behavior deserves our support.

The strategy from the start is to isolate Hamas and rob the resistance movement and the Palestinian population of their human rights…. It drums into them nonsense like, “The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘security,’ and ‘peace.’ These four words are at the core of the American political, economic, social, and cultural systems, and they should be repeated as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American.”

Most mainstream media in the UK are under pro-Israel influence, if not Zionist ownership. The BBC also is heavily biassed and too often broadcasts Israel’s definition of the situation. However, a small number of outlets, such as Channel 4 News, take an independent line.

Then there’s the over-representation of Jews in Parliament. If Muslims were over-represented to the same extent they’d have 200 MPs. And there’d be a big fuss.

These are not the only issues. It has to be admitted that Israel’s propaganda people do a good job of cultivating the news media, providing timely briefings and making sure spokesmen with good English are available whenever needed. The Palestinians on the other hand are lazy, disorganised and their embassy here in London is worse than useless. They fail to take media relations seriously so they and their countrymen pay a heavy price.

Nor is it enough to be the crushed victim. Having labels like “extremist”, “militant” and “terrorist” pinned on them, no matter how unjustly, is deeply damaging. The Palestinians must shake off these slurs, but before they can do so Hamas must re-write its objectionable charter and ‘re-brand’ itself.

Hamas and Hezbollah are only regarded as terrorists by the White House and Tel Aviv and by US-Israeli stooges and flag-wavers at Westminster and elsewhere. The definition they use describes the antics of the US and Israel perfectly, and the whole situation needs reframing to reflect this.

The resistance movements have work to do on this. The propaganda battle can’t be won without a properly planned communications strategy skillfully executed.

 

KZ: The 13 May 2010 incursion of IDF commandos into the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was followed by the astounding silence of the international community, United Nations and the United States. No credible investigation was carried out to shed a light on the atrocious attack of Israel on the international peace activists and Tel Aviv never heeded the call of Turkey to officially apologize for its criminal action against the peace activist. Let’s imagine that a third country, for example Iran, had attacked the flotilla of Israeli activists in the international waters, killing 9 and injuring tens of others. What would the reaction of international community, UN and the U.S. have been? Would they assume the same passive stance and remain silent deafeningly?

SL: Former British MP George Galloway, a mainspring behind the Free Gaza movement, called the assault “a murderous act of piracy” on innocent humanitarian aid workers and demanded a wholesale review of the international community’s relationship with “the criminal pirate state of Israel”.

But Israel’s Mark Regev told BBC TV. “We did everything we could to avoid violence. They [the aid workers] chose the path of confrontation… This is elementary, we have to defend ourselves.” He claimed the Israeli boarding party was attacked! The BBC failed to question Israel’s act of piracy in international waters and its blatant violation of maritime law.

As it turns out, the Israelis did themselves immense damage by attacking the Mavi. They were too stupid to understand how it would be seen as an ‘own goal’.

It’s funny how HMS Cumberland and York magically appeared in the Mediterranean when Hague or prime minister David Cameron snapped their fingers during the Libyan crisis.  Where were these ships when British nationals on the Mavi Marmara and the Dignity and other vessels were being assaulted in international waters and terrorized by Israeli pirates, abducted and thrown in their stinking jails? Why weren’t they bringing life-saving aid to innocent Palestinians after Israel’s indiscriminate ‘Cast Lead’ blitzkrieg?

Our ships have been protecting victims of Qaddafi, and HMS York unloaded tons of medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for the Benghazi Medical Centre. Israel is still bombing and strafing Palestinian civilians in Gaza with impunity on a daily basis, so when the Libyan crisis dies down I see no reason why York shouldn’t be loaded up with more supplies and sail for Gaza, along with the rest of the NATO fleet, where the humanitarian crisis continues unabated.

On the Libya situation Hague has been sounding off with loud threats of retribution. “Crimes will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten; there will be a day of reckoning and the reach of international justice is long,” he says.

Let’s not imagine Iran attacking the humanitarian flotilla. If Britain and the so-called civilized countries of the West won’t call Israel’s bluff and break the blockade let’s imagine Iran doing so.

KZ: In its resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has always called Israel the occupying power, implicitly attesting to the occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli regime; however, no practical steps were ever taken to end the occupation of Palestinian lands by Tel Aviv. Do you know of any effective solution to bring an end to this occupation and hold Israel accountable for the crimes it has committed against the Palestinian nation?

SL: Israel is violating over 30 Security Council resolutions that require action by it and it alone. If any other state in the world were to defy the will of the international community so persistently, it would be subjected to economic and/or military sanctions.

UN resolutions must be implemented and international law enforced. If the international community won’t act to rein in the delinquent all hopes of global peace will remain in shreds. UN Security Council Resolution 242 (fully binding) affirms among other things the necessity for guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area. The blockade must be broken, if necessary by vessels with an armed escort.

The Israeli regime relies heavily on the EU for its exports and enjoys preferential treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 1995. An obvious part of the solution would be the suspension of this agreement. Its terms require compliance with the principles of the United Nations Charter placing emphasis on peace, security and regional co-operation, and on the need to contribute to the stability and prosperity of the Mediterranean region and promote understanding and tolerance.

Article 2 says that “respect for human rights and democratic principle constitute an essential element of this agreement”. Israel has never complied but continues to reap the benefits. In April 2002 the European parliament, with a large majority, requested the European Commission and the Council of Europe to suspend the agreement, without success. The EU has all the leverage needed but is afraid to use it.

We are maybe halfway through the process of educating and informing Western citizens. There will come a point, I feel sure, when civil societies will be savvi enough to clean up their Zionist-infested politics and force the necessary action. In the meantime the Palestinians need to be heard in Western Europe and the United States. A proper on-the-ball communications and media centre and a radio station should have been established years ago. Iran too needs to improve its image to counter the barrage of smears.

Israel is always trying to upgrade its image, but no amount of marketing gloss can hide the evil beneath.

KZ: What’s in your view, the reason behind the unconditional support of Israel by the United States? Why does the White House endanger its interests to pay for the atrocities and brutalities of Tel Aviv? Why does it distort its global image in compensation for the suicidal mistakes of Israel?

SL: The ignorance of your average American citizen plus Jewish domination of major business, media and financial institutions and the whole political fabric.

Another reason why Americans are soft in the head about Israel is the Scofield Bible, which became the standard fodder of fervent Christians. Cyrus Scofield, a sleazy character and convicted criminal, was commissioned to re-write the King James Version of the Bible by inserting Zionist-friendly notes. The aim was to change the Christian view of Zionism by creating and promoting a pro-Zionist subculture within Christianity.  The Oxford University Press used Scofield as the editor, and the Scofield Reference Bible, as it was called, has been a best-seller in America for over 90 years.

It introduced a new worship icon, the modern State of Israel, which did not exist at the time but was already on the drawing board of World Zionist movement.

KZ: A report which is attributed to CIA indicates that the political entity of Israel will decline within 20 years. Do you agree with this prediction? Will Israel survive, should the United States lift its support and backing for it? Is Israel capable of standing on its own feet without the assistance and endorsement of the United States?

SL: Israel has an attitude problem. I suppose it might survive without US support if it mended its manners drastically. But I doubt if it will ever be able to throw off its pariah status or stop shooting itself in the foot. It will become isolated and slowly crumble. Thanks to its selfish fanaticism and unhinged leadership it will do a great deal of damage in the process.

Fortunately, a good many Jews across the world are not Zionists and are disgusted by Israel’s conduct, and their number seems to be growing.

And the worldwide boycott and disinvestment movement is making good progress and the effect is hurting Tel Aviv.

So the tide is turning.

US government aid to Israel runs at around $3 billion annually and Israel is not required to account for how it is spent. The money helps pay for Israel’s costly occupation and the high-tech paraphernalia of military oppression. Most of it violates the US’s own laws, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the brainwashed Washington administration. Israel usually gets another $2 to 3 billion in indirect aid – military support, loan write-offs and special grants. The US has also been paying Egypt and Jordan to buy their co-operation with Israel.

If Americans wake up to what’s going on and aid is withheld until Israel complied with UN resolutions and international law there would probably be peace. But hostilities would soon flare up again if aid resumed. The tap has to be turned off permanently.

KZ: Israel‘s illegal nuclear activities are almost known to everyone. Under the pretext of not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel has deposited more than 200 atomic warheads in its arsenal and the Federation of American Scientists has admitted that Israel is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. However, in violation of the UNSC resolutions that demand Israel to bring its nuclear program under the safeguards of IAEA, Tel Aviv is secretly continuing to develop atomic bombs. How should this concern be tackled? Who is responsible for disarming Israel?

SL: The responsibility is America’s, because it has encouraged Israel to duck its international obligations. In October 2009 the Washington Times ran a report, by Eli Lake, that Obama had agreed to keep Israel’s nukes secret by reaffirming a decades-old understanding that allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections.  Under this understanding the US has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.

Israel is never required to honor what it signs up to. Back in 1995 it agreed, with the other parties to the Barcelona Declaration, to “pursue a mutually and effectively verifiable Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, and their delivery systems” and “consider practical steps to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as excessive accumulation of conventional arms.”

There has been no progress, either, on the Security Council’s demand in resolution 487, passed in 1981, that “Israel urgently … place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”.

Considering the Zionist regime’s notorious lack of restraint, it is obvious that Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose a massive threat not only to the Middle East but the rest of the world.

As you say, it is the only state in the region that possesses nuclear weapons (and probably the only one that possesses chemical and biological weapons) while not being a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Why not?  Because being a menace is necessary to its ambitions.

Israel is capable of wiping Iran, and every Arab state, off the map at the touch of a button. Its warheads can also be targeted on European cities and, some say, already are.

Despite all this, in the words of Israel’s chief spin-doctor Mark Regev, “Israel is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program. And for good reason. Iran’s President openly talks about wiping Israel off the map. We see them racing ahead on nuclear enrichment so they can have enough fissile material to build a bomb. We see them working on their ballistic missiles…  The Iranian nuclear program is a threat, not just to my country, but to the entire region. And it’s incumbent upon us all to do what needs to be done to keep from proliferating.”

Iran’s nuclear facilities, including its uranium enrichment facilities, are under IAEA supervision. Strange, isn’t it, that the West is putting such immense pressure on Iran about its nuclear activities, but not Israel.

KZ: As you may acknowledge, Iran is at the forefront of ideological battle with Israel. Tehran has already paid the price for its confrontation with Tel Aviv and championing the cause of the Palestinian people: diplomatic isolation and financial sanctions. What’s your viewpoint regarding the role of Iran in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

SL: Here’s what Israel’s infamous propaganda handbook says: “The force undermining peace is Iran and their proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. You must not call Hamas just Hamas. Call them what they are: Iran-backed Hamas. Indeed, when they know that Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah, they are much more supportive of Israel.”

That’s the sort of poison being pumped out to demonize Iran. The point for the West to remember, I think, is that Iran as a member of the region is entitled to be involved in its affairs. The US, an outsider, isn’t.

Back in the 1920s the US State Department described the oil deposits in the Middle East as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history”. Since then, its designs on Iraq and Iran have been plain to see.

Nobody has forgotten how the US and Britain schemed to snuff out Dr. Mossadeq’s first steps towards democracy in the 1950s and reinstated the hated Shah.

The West has betrayed the Palestinians for nearly 100 years and immediately strangled their fledgling democracy when they made an ‘inconvenient’ choice in the 2006 election.

Democracy is not what they want to see in the Middle East. It’s too uncontrollable.

In the turmoil following Iran’s presidential election, the country’s Supreme Leader denounced Britain as the “most treacherous” of Iran’s enemies. Western diplomats, he said, “are displaying their enmity against the Islamic state, and the most evil of them is the British government”.

I seem to remember from my own business experience with Tehran that relations between Iran and Britain remained surprisingly good up to the Iran-Iraq war when the UK government pulled the plug on trade. “Her Majesty’s Government does not encourage trade with, or investment in, Iran,” says the government’s trade website now. “Nor do we offer any commercial services for companies wanting to do business with Iran. We do not give financial support for trade promotion activities and we do not organize trade missions.”

Turn to Israel and it says: “Israel is a remarkable success story for British exporters… Bilateral trade has consistently been in excess of £2 billion over the last 10 years and should reach £3 billion by 2015. Companies who dismiss Israel as too small without exploring its potential are overlooking a serious market of solid and regular opportunity. Israel can be seen as the land of opportunity especially in all high tech sectors.” Words supplied by Tel Aviv’s scriptwriters, I imagine.

Iran clearly needs more friends in the West. A good move would be to re-establish business links and forge new friendships regardless of silly ministerial hostility.

Free-Market Zionism: Three Simple Steps

The gang at Christians United for Israel (CUFI) has its undies in a bunch about Ron Paul’s amendment to the fiscal 2011 funding bill that would end aid to Israel.

I have an idea: why not try a free-market approach to supporting Israel? I am quite serious. Here is my three-step plan for free-market Zionism.

1)      Shaking down the American taxpayer to provide aid to Israel – or, for that matter, any foreign country – is not just unconstitutional. It is also unbiblical. In the words of II Corinthians 9:7, “So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Christians are never to bankroll their works by force. So if CUFI truly wants to support Israel, let its members reallocate their funds. Instead of, say, building bling-bling megachurches that resemble the Burj Al-Arab Hotel in Dubai, why not pass the hat for Israel? Perhaps CUFI supporters could take a special love offering after each service.

2)      Of the 12 current senior members of CUFI, only two have any military experience. Instead of sending kids from places like Camden, New Jersey and Muskogee, Oklahoma to fight and bleed and die all over the Middle East for the sake of Israel, why don’t they pay the bill with their own blood? Why don’t they enlist as infantry privates in the Israeli Defense Force? (IDF) And why don’t they encourage the CUFI rank-and-file to do likewise?

3)      If the IDF will not have them for whatever reason, let them form their own detachment to fight alongside the IDF. There are precedents. During the Spanish Civil War, for instance, a group of Americans calling themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought for the Spanish Republican forces against Franco’s Spanish Nationalists. To be sure, a lot of them were communist sympathizers, but I will give them this: they produced enough testosterone that they put their own lives on the line for their convictions.

Let them call it the Sword of the Lord. It’s just an idea.

Wake Up Hillary: We The People of the Internet Have Risen Up!

During a speech about Internet freedom a heckler interrupted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was hauled away in a lame attempt to silence him, for within hours this YouTube went viral:

I knew not to drink from Obama’s Kool-Aid of so called change as soon as he chose as his VP, Joe Biden, a blatant and pandering ‘Christian’ Zionist, who stated on Shalom TV, “There is this inextricable tie between culture, religion, ethnicity that most people do not understand…You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, I am a Zionist.” [1]

Christian Zionism is a contradiction in terms and Christian Zionism is adding fuel to the tensions between Muslims, Christians and Jews. A ‘blind spot’ of Christian Zionists is the fact that the Palestinian people, every day and in every aspect of their lives are living under an oppressive military occupation. [IBID]

Before we the people elected Obama because we trusted he would be an agent for real change, I attended a rally for him on 14 September 2008, hosted by New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and soap opera star Deidre Hall.

Immediately after the two took their final bows addressing “Central Florida Women for Obama” I infiltrated the back room and was allowed a few minutes with the Congresswoman.

I had more than a few questions, so I handed her paper copies of my 13 September 2008 article, “Questions for the Christian ‘Quartet’ Pursuing the White House Regarding the Holy Land”
Read more…

And requested she please deliver them along with the copy of my second book, Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girls’ Life in Occupied Territory to Joe Biden that I inscribed with this quote from St. Augustine:

“HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it.”

Congresswoman Maloney said she would deliver my offerings and even added, “I’ll read it too and get back in touch with you.”

I am still waiting for that part of hell to freeze over.

But it is Hillary Clinton, the democrat demimondaine-defined as “a prostitute who provides service to military personnel” and consummate pandering politician that keeps my Irish up and flaming, and which inspired this:

On 1 February 2007, while still a Senator, Clinton gushed for AIPAC, “Both Israelis and Americans know so well, a democracy is far more than just holding elections. Democracy has to spring from an active and open citizenry dedicated to tolerance, to respect for differences, to the rule of law, to policies that lift us up not tear us down as fellow human beings, and to the value of human life.”

It was Jeff Halper, American Israeli, a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions who first explained to me that, “Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.” [2]

When Israel became a state in 1948, it was contingent upon upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

One of many Articles Israel ignores, is Article 13 which affirms:

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

The state of Israel allows, encourages and entices any Jew without any historical tie to the so called holy land to migrate-settle/colonize on Palestinian property under the Jewish Law of Return, while ignoring Article 13 of the UN UDHR and UN Resolution 194:

UN Resolution 194 guarantees the Right of Return-or compensation to the indigenous population of the so called holy land-which is in pieces-Bantustans; disconnected enclaves that warehouse Palestinians; akin to what ‘civilized’ white men did when they forced Native Americans onto disconnected reservations in the “bestest and greatest nation in the world”-Sean Hannity.

The indigenous Palestinians were forced from their homes in 1948 and 1967 and are still denied the right to return home.

They will continue to get screwed by THIS ADMINISTRATION, UNLESS they can be moved to conscience by the TRUE facts on the ground in Israel Palestine; and it is Apartheid!

American taxpayers have also provided the state of Israel, “$1.8 billion a year in military aid and $1.2 billion in economic aid, plus another $1 billion or so in miscellaneous grants, mostly in military supplies, from various U.S. agencies. Tax exempt contributions destined to Israel bring up the total to over $5 billion annually.” [3]

IMAGINE how many Americans could receive basic and humane health care with that funding!

Hillary the hawk and Mistress of AIPAC fantasies claimed, “Israel is a beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism. We need only look to one of Israel’s greatest threats: namely, Iran. Make no mistake, Iran poses a threat not only to Israel, but to the entire Middle East and beyond… U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. And in dealing with this threat as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.”

I was in the audience on Feb. 10, 2007 when Dr. Phyllis Bennis, Mid East analyst stated, “Iran has signed the NPT, which allows them the right to have nuclear power and to enrich uranium. The 185 non-nuclear states have agreed to give up the right to have nuclear weapons and the five nuclear powers that signed the NPT agreed to get rid of their nuclear weapons… Iran is not in violation of the NPT, but America is! The USA has been in violation ever since the day they signed it. The USA is acting like a rogue state. The rhetoric out of Washington, the arresting of Iranian diplomats in Iraq, are deliberate provocations hoping that the Iranians will take the bait and respond.”

At that same AIPAC fundraiser, Clinton’s pimping continued, “We also know that the dangers posed to Israel have been compounded by the rise to power of Hamas…Hamas leaders have refused to disarm, to reject violence, or even to recognize the right of Israel to exist.”

Not only did the Palestinian Authority first agree in 1988 to recognize Israel, they reaffirmed this in 1993 during the Oslo Accords, and in 2006, Hamas also issued another olive branch of recognition of Israel- but Israel instead ignored all offers to make peace through justice.

The American government also appears to be under Israeli Occupation or how else to explain their silence which colludes and allows the unabated relentless seizure of Palestinian land and resources?

On 15 November 2005, while a Senator, Hillary Clinton stood on the Jerusalem side of The Wall and was quoted in Ha’aretz, expressing support for The Wall stating it “is against terrorists” and “not against the Palestinian people.”

In 2006, Mordechai Vanunu sent this WAKE UP message and invitation to Hillary and US Christians Regarding The Wall:

After I read Senator Clinton’s inaccurate and insensitive remarks in Ha’aretz, I immediately contacted her through her website.

My email bounced back to me, for I am no longer a New York constituent.

That really got my Irish up, for I was born in The Village and came of age in Levittown, Long Island, and that makes me much more New York than Hillary will ever be.

I also snail mailed Hillary a respectful letter informing her that even a little one such as I, knew all about the many gaps and lack of ‘security’ along The Wall that every taxi driver and ANY would be ‘terrorist’ also knew about in order to travel from the West Bank to Jerusalem without stopping for SECURITY checks.

I also reminded her that we were in the midst of the UN Decade of Creating a Culture of NONVIOLENCE for all the Children of the world.

The only response I received from Senator Clinton was to be put on the DNC’s mailing list soliciting funds!

Clinton also said, “I’ve been a strong supporter of Israel’s right to build a security barrier to keep terrorists out. I have spoken out against the International Court of Justice for questioning Israel’s right to build that fence of security.”

International Law states occupation is to be temporary and that the occupiers are not to transfer their population into occupied territory. And what RIGHT has anyone to put a fence up on somebody else’s property?

When The Wall is super-imposed on a map of Palestinian aquifers, it clearly illuminates that The Wall is all about grabbing land and resources from the indigenous peoples of the land.

“Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007]

On page one of Jeff Halper’s, Obstacles to Peace, A Re-Framing of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, he wrote, “Missing from Israel’s security framing is the very fact of occupation, which Israel both denies exists…and that ‘security’ requires Israel control over the entire country…rendering impossible a just peace based on human rights, international law, reconciliation.”

During one of my interviews with Jeff, he also made me laugh out loud when he told me this joke-and jokes are only funny when they are also true:

“Do you know why Israel does not want to become America’s 51st state? Because then they would only have two senators!”

Another reason my Irish stays up over Hillary, is that she went to the illegal settlement of Gilo, but NOT to the Christian neighborhood of Beit Jala, which is less than a mile away and a five minute car ride from downtown Bethlehem.

Hillary said: “I went to see the fence with my own eyes. During a trip to Gilo, a Jerusalem neighborhood, I was greeted by Col. Danny Tirza, who was overseeing the construction of the security fence.”

The Media and most all of Americas politicians spin Israel’s ILLEGAL colonies as ‘neighborhoods’ but the truth is that every one of them is built upon legally owned Palestinian land; and NOT one of the settlements has been built on legally owned Israeli land!

I too have seen “the fence” and reality is that it divides Palestinians from Palestinians with 25 to 30 foot high concrete slabs with razor wire, trenches, sniper towers, electric fences, military roads, electronic surveillance, remote controlled infantry and buffer zones stretch over 100 miles wide and deny Palestinians access to their land, families, jobs, and resources!

The Wall has also eviscerated the sister cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and will soon completely separate Bethlehem from her sister villages of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala.

Bethlehem’s significance to and historic ties with Palestinian East Jerusalem and its economic demise caused by The Wall is the end of any viable Two-State solution.

The growing ghettoization of Bethlehem is not only destroying ancient communities, it violates International Law, The Road Map, and basic human rights!

The Wall is an APARTHEID Wall for it divides, separates, humiliates, dominates, controls and denies inalienable human rights to the indigenous people of the so called Holy Land, which it is raping!
Clinton also said, “Col. Tirza’s explanation in his graphic depiction of what was part of the daily life of people living in that one neighborhood, gave me an even greater appreciation for the imperative of the fence and the need to do everything possible to protect Israel against these continuing attacks.”

The truth is that in 2000, before the construction of The Wall began, there were less ‘attacks’ than in 2008!
Clinton is also conveniently clueless that in Beit Jala, in the year 2000, a few hopeless militants who had given up on the ‘peace makers’ of the West to demand Israel adhere to International Law, UN Resolutions and the UN Declaration of Human Rights-instead, infiltrated the Christian village to shoot into the illegal colony of Gilo.

The Israeli Defense Force immediately retaliated and let loose with hell fire upon the innocent ones who are always caught in the crossfire of violence!

One such little one was George Nazzal of Beit Jala, and it is his face that adorns my website.

The shrapnel that blew apart the wall of George’s bedroom read “Made in USA” and was delivered via American made Apache helicopters that buzzed over his innocent head.

If George had been in his bed, he would be dead!

American Israeli,  Professor Jeff Halper also informed me:
“Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.

“Since 1967 the Israeli government has destroyed over 18,000 Palestinian homes. 95% of the cases have nothing to do with security. All these homes are on Palestinian private property. The Israeli government will not grant permits for them to build on their own land, and in reality are quietly transferring the Palestinians administratively from the land. They make conditions so intolerable that the Palestinians give up and leave and this is exactly what they are after. Not only do the Palestinians receive no warning when their homes are to be destroyed they are fined $1, 500.00!

“The Israeli government simply does not want to take responsibility and the USA government ignores the situation.

“Missing from Israel’s security framing is the very fact of occupation, which Israel both denies exists…and that ‘security’ requires Israel control over the entire country…rendering impossible a just peace based on human rights, international law, reconciliation.

“Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence, which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.

“One out of three Israeli children lives below the poverty line. It’s probably about 80% for Palestinians. Jews are like everyone else, those who have been abused grow up to be abusers. Things here have been turned on their head: its victim mentality and denial about the occupation. Once Israelis accept the fact that they are occupiers they will have to admit their State Terrorism.

“It has been said that the Israeli’s do not love this land, they just want to possess it.

“There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states.

“It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators. In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible.

“The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa!

“The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives.

“Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground. Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side.”
However, I do agree with one thing Clinton did say while she was a Senator from my home state:

“It is not enough for us to say the right things; we’ve got to be smart and tough enough to do the right things that will protect American and Israeli interests now and forever.”

Tough and smart comprehends that the only way to security for Israelis is to do justice for Palestinians.

Tough and smart would demand an end to the occupation and ensure that all people do indeed have equal human rights.

No enduring peace, no security, and no reconciliation is even possible without the foundation of justice; which equates to equal human rights and international law!

1. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1031&Itemid=204

2. eileen fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory, Page 15.

3. Dr. Phyllis Bennis, Understanding the Palestine-Israeli Conflict Page 24.

Other SOURCES:
http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=268474

Eileen Fleming is a regular columnist for Novakeo.com

Eileen Fleming, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com
Author of “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”

Education leads to Compassion, Compassion leads to Change

An Interview with Richard Forer and the Arab Awakening…

Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, was born in 1957 in Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem. He became a Professor of Genetics and taught at Yale University School of Medicine and Duke University. He is currently teaching at Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine and his main interests are media activism and public education, human rights and international law. In a 30 January 2011, email he wrote:

“Arabs everywhere (yes even here in occupied Palestine) are talking about a transformation and about revolution.  But all such transformations carry pain. Over 200 Egyptians were killed, thousands injured, and there is much destruction. Yet in a nation of 85 million people this is still a relatively peaceful transformation…I know most politicians like to feel 100% safe (mostly for their position of power) and are afraid of any change. But I wish they would realize that daring politicians make the history books and those who hang around trying to protect their seats will be forgotten. Cowardice is never a virtue…Clearly, the era of ignoring the masses is gone.”

Richard Forer, was born in New Jersey in 1948 and attended Sunday school at his reform synagogue from the ages of five through fourteen. In 2006, Forer zealously supported of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. At about the same time, he became a member of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S. When a Jewish friend challenged him on the ‘facts’ he used to justify his support for the invasion, he began an intensive study of the history of Israel Palestine. That led to a crisis of identity as he discovered that his attachment to the State of Israel had blinded him to the heart of Judaism and to the universal truth that lies beyond all labels and beliefs: there is no exclusive or separate self. We are all connected.

Regarding Islam, Richard said, “Many who’ve been influenced into forming enemy images of Islam will find the fact that all but one of the Koran’s 114 chapters mentions compassion infuriatin­g because their identities require an attachment to a belief that Islam is evil. In my book, Breakthrou­gh: Transformi­ng Fear into Compassion – A New Perspectiv­e on the Israel-Pal­estine Conflict I describe my awakening to True Compassion­.

“Briefly, True Compassion only arises when one gives up his/her core identity. Once that relinquish­ment occurs the world is no longer seen as a realm of Us against Them. That is because the attachment to a separate/i­ndividual identity requires the creation of the ‘other.’

“The other is a person, society, religion, idea that does not fit within the boundaries of how an individual­, consciousl­y and unconsciou­sly, defines his/her identity. Thus, the other is a threat to the ‘reality’ of one’s self-image or identity. Additional­ly, I assert that Clarity always accompanie­s True Compassion­. True Compassion­, unbounded by labels or definition­s and the influence exerted upon one’s belief structure by a presumed identity, can see from a 360 degree perspectiv­e and, therefore, understand or be willing to understand all points of view. Thus, I can also say that although I find the brutal violence carried out by extremists abhorrent I understand that deep in their hearts even these extremists want the same things we all want – self-deter­mination, freedom and peace.”

Regarding particular Christians, Richard wrote: “Christians who ignore the suffering of human beings by using the same justification as the more fundamentalist of Jews – that ‘God gave the land to the Jewish [or chosen] people’– need to take a closer look at the teachings of Christ. Did Christ single out some for his blessing while ostracizing others? Did he teach hatred or did he teach love and compassion? And they need to look more deeply into their own hearts. Then they will discover that in denying the humanity of some they deny their own humanity…Separative thinking is never divinely inspired. It is always narcissistically inspired; it is, in fact, the very antithesis of the unifying and all-encompassing nature of the divine.” [1]

Regarding the fundamentalist fire and brimstone preacher, John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel/CUFI cult, Richard said:

“Hagee raises millions of dollars annually for Israel’s settlement enterprise on Palestinian land. He believes that the boundaries of Israel are set by God, that Judea and Samaria, otherwise known as the West Bank, are within these God-given boundaries and that these lands must be inhabited by Jews. This, of course, would require the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. One can argue that this viewpoint obstructs the chances for peace but it certainly doesn’t qualify as anti-Semitism.

“Unfortunately, though, Hagee is an exponent of the ‘End of Days’ when Jesus will return to Earth and non-believers, Jews included, will have to either convert to Christianity or fall into a lake of fire (Hell). Hagee further believes that the Jewish people are guilty of deicide – the murder of Christ – the one unpardonable sin. This belief has been at the heart of anti-Semitism for nearly two thousand years. Without this belief, Adolf Hitler might not have been able to rely on both the hatred and the silence of those who supported or closed their eyes to the evils of the Holocaust. But most perniciously, Hagee has stated that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and ‘shepherd’ them to Palestine. And, Hagee continues, Hitler was a ‘hunter’ sent by God to expedite His will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.”

I was born in Greenwich Village, New York in 1954 and up until that day we call 9/11, I never gave a thought beyond my family, friends and local community. That day transformed me and I began to research about the Middle East and traveled seven times to Israel Palestine beginning in 2005.

On 6 November 2007, I attended a John Hagee cult event in Miami and was astounded by his mastery of manipulating the fears of Christian Zionists and south Florida’s right wing Jewish community.

As the shofars blew in the packed to the rafters James L. Knight Center, Hagee blew idiot wind that brought the crowd to their feet, “Israel was re-born by an act of God and Israel lives! God Jehovah will bury Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran! The flag of Israel will fly over the undivided Jerusalem and be the praise of all the earth! It’s 1938 again and the new Hitler is Ahmadinejad! Radical Islamists are threatening to develop nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and then the USA! But we are indivisible and we are both here forever!”

The oft repeated comment ascribed to President Ahmadinejad, that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” was addressed by Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science who wrote:

“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word “map” or the term “wiped off”. According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the ‘occupying regime’ in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, ‘This too shall pass.'”[2]

Tikkun is Hebrew for mend, repair and transform the world.

Tikkun is also an American Jewish progressive political and spiritual community and organization, that researched and discovered that there are three distinct elements energizing the Christian Zionists:

1. A strong commitment to conservative and ultra-nationalist American politics (so strong, I believe, that if the U.S. were to decide to break with Israel, this part of the Christian Zionist leadership would go along with that and drop its defense of Israeli policies).
2. Dispensationalist religious commitments that lead many of the Christian Zionists to yearn for a cataclysmic “end of history” eschatological war in the Middle East that will precipitate the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture in which

   all true Christians will go to heaven and all Jews who have not yet converted to Christianity will burn in hell for eternity.

3. A widespread understanding among many Christians that atonement and repentance is needed for 1700 years of murder, rape, and oppression of Jews that was frequently generated by the Church (though, of course, the Evangelicals do not recognize that church as their church). In this category are many Christian Zionists who genuinely feel terrible about what has happened to the Jews and genuinely want to help the Jewish people. Their philo-Semitism is real and sincere. [3]

But in Miami that night, I witnessed multitudes of misled and misinformed Christian’s celebrating military occupation, violence, power and control but they ignored the gospel/good news that Jesus promised, “It is the peacemakers who shall be called the children of God.” –Matthew 5:9

Hagee repeatedly cited that all worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but neglected to mention that the first mention of Israel is in Genesis 32:22, when Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with the Divine. This Christian Anarchist [meaning I take Jesus very seriously but all the rest is commentary for me] contends that anyone who wrestles and struggles with the Ultimate Mystery of the Universe is also Israel, for Israel is not just a State but a state of mind, spirit and soul.

Hagee threw out the names of Hebrew prophets, but neglected the fact that God raised up prophets to speak truth to power, to confront arrogance and to remind the people, “What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

God also raised up prophets to remind the people that they cannot know the mind of God for “His thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”- Isaiah 55:8

God also raised up prophets to admonish the “stiff necked people” [Exodus 34:9, Proverbs 29:1] and warned them that, “My people are fools, they do not know me! They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.”-Jeremiah 4:22

Hagee also invoked the “Torah Way” but the Torah commands:

“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]: When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.'” [4]

A Brief History of Christian Zionism:

In 1891, Christian fundamentalist and lay-preacher, William Blackstone appealed to President Benjamin Harrison to help establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Blackstone was a disciple of Dwight L. Moody and the father of premillenial dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby, influenced them both.

Darby had great success in connecting with the post-Civil War survivors and was able to transmit his new heretical theology into the heartland of America. Despite the horrifying news of Czarist pogroms that could have been the catalyst to establishing a Jewish state before the Holocaust, the Christian fundamentalists moved onto the Scopes Trial and forgot about the Jews-for a while.

Fifty years later and after millions of Jews and other innocents who had been deemed outcasts by the Third Reich were tortured and murdered and the British Mandate ran out, the land we call Holy was partitioned by the United Nations to make a home for Jewish immigrants.

Most evangelicals interpreted the establishment of the state of Israel to be the fulfillment of -how they understood and interpreted- certain prophetic scriptures. They interpreted the Israeli victory in the 1967 War and the capture of Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights to be an act of God but neglected to consider the fact of Israeli superior military might.

The American Bi-Centennial in 1976 was a watershed year for the religious right. While mainline churches declined, evangelical and fundamentalist churches became the fastest growing sector of American Christianity. TIME magazine named 1976 as The Year of The Evangelical and suddenly they became a political force.

Following the War of 1967, Israel gained an increased portion of USA foreign aid and military budgets, becoming the ‘western pillar’ of the USA strategic alliance against Soviet incursion into the Middle East.

During this period AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobby agencies began their ascent to power in shaping USA foreign policy. The Roman Catholic Church and mainline Protestant denominations began to develop a more balanced approach to the Middle East, bringing them closer to the international consensus on the Palestinian question but Pro-Israel organizations interpreted this shift as being Anti-Israel and in turn began to court conservative and fundamentalist Christians.

In 1977, when President Carter stated “The Palestinians deserve a right to their homeland,” Christian fundamentalists and the Israeli lobby responded with full page ads stating: “The time has come for evangelical Christians to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel’s divine right to the land…and affirm our belief in the Promised Land to the Jewish people.”

The Reagan White House hosted a series of seminars from the Israeli lobby and Christian right. This was when Hal Lindsay, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the Moral majority infiltrated the West Wing.
Falwell received a Lear Jet from the Israeli government for his personal travel. When Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant in 1981, Prime Minister Begin called Jerry Falwell -before he called Reagan- to ask him to explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombings!

In 1996, Netanyahu and Likud ideology dominated Israeli policy and 17 evangelical USA pastors pledged their support of the illegal colonies in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and full support for a Jerusalem under sovereignty of Israel.

The Christian Zionists launched a PR campaign under the banner: “Christians Call for a United Jerusalem.”

They ignored the fact that they were in conflict with American policy and the Oslo process as well as a direct attack on Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant unity with the Churches for Middle East Peace that called for a Shared Jerusalem.

In 2006, Hagee wrote for the Pentecostal magazine Charisma, “The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty. Israel and America must confront Iran’s nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide.”

With the publication of the fictional Left Behind series many more Christians were mislead and a major reason I wrote KEEP HOPE ALIVE was to challenge its escapist heretical theology.

274 years ago on 29 January, Thomas Paine was born a man before his time; but his wisdom and spirit speak to the NOW:

“Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion…The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

Thomas Jefferson penned The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth which weeded out the miracle stories as it illuminated what Jesus’ was about:
Always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with COMPASSION.

Consider valuable the things that have no material value.

Do not judge others and do not bear grudges.

Give out of true generosity; not because you expect to be repaid.

Being true to your self is more important than being loyal to ones family/tribe.

Those who think they know the most are the most ignorant.
Jesus said that his mother, sisters and brothers were those that did the will of the Father and again, the Hebrew prophet Micah summed it up best: “What does the Lord require? He has already told you o’man: Be Just, Be Merciful and walk humbly with your God.”

To be just is to be fair and reasonable.

To be merciful means to treat all people the way we want to be treated.

To be humble is knowing oneself; and good and evil cut through every human heart.
Jesus taught that the only way to resist evil is with good. Jesus was a nonviolent Palestinian devout Jew who was mocked, whipped and nailed to a cross and his final prayer was, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Education is the way to compassion and compassion will bring in the change we all really want to see in this world for we all desire this same trinity; self-deter­mination, freedom and peace.

When the people Rise Up/Intifada to seize their RIGHTS governments had better get out of their way and let them have them.

Hear Richard’s latest interview here:

/1752-1-totw012611rforer.mp3

Very RELATED:

1. http://www.richardforer.com/writing/jewish-support-for-anti-semitic-theology-dooms-israel-to-endless-conflict/

2. http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html

3. Rabbi Lerner, Tikkun Magazine page 9, Nov/Dec. 2007

4. Rabbi Lerner, Tikkun Magazine page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

Talking Zionism in the Financial Times and from the Mount of the Beatitudes

Tony Judt is a University Professor at New York University who recently wrote that “Israel must unpick its ethnic myth” published first in the Financial Times. Judt  also provides the lead for this Christian Anarchist’s response regarding Zionism.

Judt wrote: What exactly is “Zionism”?

Its core claim was always that Jews represent a common and single people; that their millennia-long dispersion and suffering has done nothing to diminish their distinctive, collective attributes; and that the only way they can live freely as Jews – in the same way that, say, Swedes live freely as Swedes – is to dwell in a Jewish state.

I can certainly confirm, from personal experience, that anti-religious sentiment – often of an intensity that I found discomforting – was widespread in left-leaning Israeli circles of the 1960s. Religion, I was informed, was for the haredim and the “crazies” of Jerusalem’s Mea Sharim quarter. “We” are modern and rational and “western”, it was explained to me by my Zionist teachers. But what they did not say was that the Israel they wished me to join was therefore grounded, and could only be grounded, in an ethnically rigid view of Jews and Jewishness…

If the Jews of Europe and North America took their distance from Israel (as many have begun to do), the assertion that Israel was “their” state would take on an absurd air. Over time, even Washington might come to see the futility of attaching American foreign policy to the delusions of one small Middle Eastern state. This, I believe, is the best thing that could possibly happen to Israel itself. It would be obliged to acknowledge its limits. It would have to make other friends, preferably among its neighbours.

The civil war in Northern Ireland came to an end in part because an American president instructed the Irish emigrant community in the US to stop sending arms and cash to the Provisional IRA. If American Jews stopped associating their fate with Israel and used their charitable cheques for better purposes, something similar might happen in the Middle East. [1]

On March 20, 2006, I traveled three hours away from the Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory to the Mount of Beatitudes in Israel. The awe-inspiring site sits above the shimmering Sea of Galilee where Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount.

My Sabeel [Arabic for The Way] Reality Tour through the West Bank had concluded and I needed to be alone and silent, but I ended up delivering my own Sermon on the Mount.

At dinner a Catholic Pentecostal from Scotland introduced himself and asked me why I was there and what church I was from. I responded I have Irish Roman Catholic, Polish Jew, Russian Orthodox and Episcopal roots but that my rock is The Beatitudes.

He looked even more perplexed when I told him I came to the Mount of Beatitudes to decompress and reflect upon my nine days in Occupied Territory.

I asked him if he were aware of the work of Sabeel, the Palestinian founded organization that promotes a theology of liberation based on justice, peace, non-violence and reconciliation for all, regardless of faith path or nationality.

He sternly admonished me, “God gave this land to the Jews! The Bible never mentions Palestine, and that is that! God gave this land to the Jews and that is that!”

I responded just as fervently that the Palestinian Christians are the descendants of those who first followed Christ and they have been denied inalienable human rights by the Israeli government.

I told him the Christians in the Holy Land have shrunk from 20% of the total population to less than 1.3% since 1948 and if things don’t change soon, there will be no Christian witness in the land where Christ promised that it is the peacemakers who are the children of God.

He sputtered, “But the Jews have suffered! God gave this land to the Jews and that is that!”

That really got my Irish up and I retorted, “Yes they did suffer because good people did nothing for far too long, and now the once oppressed have become the oppressors. In the 21st century good people are unaware, ignoring or are in total denial of the injustices in the Holy Land. And what about all the Hebrew prophets, such as Micah who reminded the Jews of what the Lord requires: To be just, to be merciful and to walk humbly with your God!”

I could NOT shut up although I knew that that Scotsman was trying to get away and he looked most terrified by my passionate plea and as I was on a tear, I barely took a breath as I told him that instead of him staying in Israel for his entire visit, he should go and witness life in the occupied territories; go and see the effects of The Wall on his spirit and see what it has done to the Palestinian economy. I told him he should go and tour some of the six decades old refugee camps and see the ruins of all the uncompensated home demolitions.

I brought it on home by telling him that I also doubted that God was ever in the real estate business!

That Scotsman’s eyes had bugged out and his mouth had dropped open while the torrent of words spewed out of me and after I finally shut up, he stammered, “But there is suffering everywhere!”

I retorted, “Yes there is, and Christ always stood up for the poor and the oppressed. And he told us what ever we do or don’t do for the least and the outcast; we do it or don’t do it unto God.”

The Scot shook his head and turned and walked quickly away and never again looked my way again. Nobody else spoke to me the rest of the evening or the next day. That was fine with me, for I was listening to the voice within and what I kept hearing was Luke 23:34: “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

But when you know and if you are of good will and a person of CONSCIENCE you must do something, and as the saying goes-we must preach to our own, so I address USA Christians regarding the fastest growing cult in the USA-and also perhaps in Scotland- the cult of Christian Zionism.

What is Christian Zionism?

Christian Zionism is an extremist Christian movement which supports the claims of those who believe that the State of Israel should take control of all of the land currently disputed between Palestinians and Israelis. It views the creation and expansion of the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy toward the second coming of Jesus.

Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel. The Christian Zionist program provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

What is the Christian Zionist connection with the Holy Land?

Believing that God fights on the side of Israel, Christian Zionists call for the unqualified support for the most extreme political positions related to the Holy Land. Christian Zionist spokes persons have attributed Hurricane Katrina to God’s wrath over our failure to stop Israel from pulling out of Gaza. They consistently oppose any moves towards a solution to the conflict, which would validate the political aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis.

Who Supports Christian Zionism?

Christian Zionism has significant support within American Protestant fundamentalists, who number between 10 and 20 million. Its reach is broad, by virtue of its favorite themes related to the “End Times” and an Israel-fixated Christian media.  Christian Zionism is both a political movement and a way of interpreting current events. Its focus is on Israel and the Middle East, as much an ideology as a “movement.” Its promoters share many beliefs but are not organized through any one institution.

Throughout history Christians have at times twisted scripture to justify violence: for the Crusades, for Anti-Semitism, and for slavery. Too often the church has been slow to respond to these biblical distortions with disastrous results.

Today Christian Zionists – particularly those with dispensationalist leanings – are at it again. Although their motives are couched in terms of compassion toward the Jewish people based on a literal reading of scripture the political agenda of territorial expansion advocated by Christian Zionists has given rise to injustice against Palestinians and added fuel to the fire of conflict in the Middle East. For some time, individuals, and theologians have spoken out against Christian Zionism. In the past few years, whole church bodies are adding their official voices to the distortions and injustices perpetuated by Christian Zionism.

The GOOD NEWS is that some mainstream churches have spoken out against this inherently anti-Semitic theology. What follows are but a few words from some of those who have:

The Presbyterian Church in the USA at its July 2004, National General Assembly issued a statement on Confronting Christian Zionism: “Christian Zionism promotes a theology that justifies grievous violations of basic rights of people who are also made in the image of God, and is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The United Church of Christ in July 2003, at its National General Synod offered An Alternative Voice to Christian Zionism: “We believe that the tenets of Christian Zionism neither reflect the intention of the teachings of Jesus and the prophets, nor promote peace in the Middle East, and respectfully recommend …an alternative voice to this theology.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in June 2005 at its Chicago Metropolitan Synod issued a Resolution to Encourage the Study of Christian Zionism: “the movement of Christian Zionism based on these biblical interpretations seeks to influence U.S. policy toward Israel in a manner that would arguably facilitate mistreatment of Palestinians, continued occupation of the land, opposition to a two-state solution, and exclusive Israeli control of Jerusalem.”

The United Methodist Church, in June 2005 at its Illinois Conference on Unwrapping the Rapture warned, “Every household should give prayerful consideration as to how God will actually judge us for our silence about and complicity in the crushing of the Palestinian people.”

The Episcopal Church, in November 2004 at its Diocese of Chicago Confronted Christian Zionism: “A partial response to Christian Zionism would be to say that we read Scripture in light of [Jesus’] two great commandments – to love God and our neighbor.”

In the gospel [good news] told in Mark 3: 31-35, the mother of Jesus’ and his brothers arrived at the house where he was teaching.

Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him out. The crowd around Jesus told him, “Your mother, sisters and brothers are outside asking for you.”

Jesus replied, “I am here with my mother, sisters and brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother.”-Mark 3: 31-35

“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

Being just means correct, true, accurate, right and fair.

Merciful is to have, feel and show compassion, that sense of viscerally feeling the pain of another and being moved to help.

Being humble is knowing yourself; the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.

1.  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f8fafee-e366-11de-8d36-00144feab49a.html

The Political Christian

“We live in a world captured, rooted and upturned by the titanic economic and techno-scientific process of the development of capitalism, which has dominated for the past two or three centuries. We know that it cannot go on ad infinitum. The future cannot be a continuation of the past, and there are signs that we have reached a point of historic crisis. The forces generated by the techno-scientific economy are enough to destroy the environment, that is to say, the material foundations of human life… Our world risks both explosion and implosion. It must change… If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or present… The price of failure, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness”. Eric Hobsbawm

Hobsbawm is a Marxist but his observation is more accurate than most church sermons. A similar assessment should be on the lips of every Christian and blaring from the pulpit of every Christian church. It should be fleshed out with accurate information and clear Godly alternatives.

Communists promote a humanistic religious outlook bent on creating revolution through pitting one class against another. They have succeeded in enslaving vast portions of the world and murdering millions. Christians have allowed secular Communists to attain great power by failing to preach and teach a full Gospel.

Unlike Communists, Christians are working to bring freedom, peace and prosperity to everyone; the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat. The formula for these blessings is clearly outlined in God’s Word and it is the duty of every Christian to seek to bring it to the world by learning, teaching and supporting it.

When we speak of a Christian worldview we are making a political statement. If Christians would stop seeking power for themselves and allow God and His Law-Word to provide loving restraint to the evil forces of the world, Christian politics would bring freedom, peace, and prosperity to God’s creation.

Every Christian should be a politician but none should embrace the label Republican or Democrat. Partisan politics is double-minded, secular and evil. Christians need to understand what is meant by Christian government and what God seeks for His people.

There is only one true King and he has only one immutable Law, the only standard for a free, orderly and properly nourished culture. Christians are to eschew pragmatism standing instead on the unchanging truth of God and His Word. Bi-partisan politics and negotiations with the Devil should have no place in the agenda of ambassadors for Christ.

The Gospel has always involved obedience; not the spooky pietistic obedience of those who claim to have conversed with the Savior but a disciplined adherence to God’s Commandments. There is no other way to win the world for Christ!

Our God should be our King. When His creatures sought human oversight they did so in rejection of their creator and to the detriment of their own freedom. “Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations…And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” Some of the Old Testament Kings pleased God by following His Commandments, most did not. In spite of the fact that some human Kings pleased God, their presence was not God’s first choice.

God’s Law is indispensible to righteous government. Human law is sinful. God’s Law is righteous. Without righteous immutable standards the arbitrary evils of mankind will exacerbate the secular barbarities responsible for the slaying of millions during the past century.

What seems right to the human mind is often an abomination to God. There can be no compromise with human reason. The goal must be to properly interpret and apply God’s Word.

Christianity seeks individual freedom for every citizen, sound family structures, clear and understandable legal standards and judicious, merciful enforcement. Marxists seek tyrannical human control through revolution and fear. Marxist rebellion has not only become popular but is the main instrument behind world government.

God’s Christian Churches are to be His instruments of instruction. They are not ordained to govern, but are vested with the responsibility of critiquing righteousness. Government is not an arm of the church, but an agent of the Creator that is expected to function under His Laws.

In our time Orthodox Christianity has been virtually wiped out by the minions of Dispensationalism. Obedience has been replaced with a flaccid emotionalism. This flawed theology will not support an offense and is responsible for a noisy but ineffective defense.

Humanism is a totality; it addresses the entire social order. Humanist laws are the product of secular power centers where they are imposed on the weak at the whims of the powerful. The goal is hegemony and those seeking it are the gods of the society. Humanism has won the battle in the United States which is now a secular nation governed by secular law. Little by little every vestige of God’s Law is being removed from the culture.

Islam has Sharia law. Much to the chagrin of the secular humanists, Dispensationalism has not robbed Muslims of their legal system. Sharia law is the target of Western hordes who seek to impose an arbitrary secular tyranny over the Middle East. Their aim is to wipe out Sharia law and replace it with the tyrannical secular codes of the West.

Without God’s Law Christians are helpless to redeem the culture. Every law should be tested against His commands. If it does not conform it should be discarded.

The success of the heresy of Dispensationalism is not the sole responsibility of its promoters. Western Christians embraced an emotional spiritualism that neutered their religion. The Pilgrims and Puritans lived under Godly legal standards but Unitarianism offered an easier religion more compatible with man’s sinful quest for power. The New World offered asylum to heretics from Europe and Arminianism thrived. When Darby, Scofield, and Moody came offering a lawless Christian theology, Americans jumped at the chance to accept the Christian label without commensurate responsibility. Orthodox Reformed Christian scholars who thought through and rendered the platform for Christian theology were thrown aside in the rush to embrace a more popular religion. The Seventeenth Century Synod of Dort and the Westminster Assembly would have rejected Darby, Scofield, and Moody as quickly as they would have diagnosed and condemned the willingness of our ancestors to encroach on God’s dominion.

Dispensationalist doctrines have found their way into the theology of several major seminaries and the ministry of most of our major leaders. Christian Zionism is so pervasive that U. S. Christians are as detached from real Christianity as they are from reality.

The political involvement of Christian leaders like Dobson, Robertson, Graham, and the late Jerry Falwell has been nothing short of disastrous. They have consistently supported evil regimes and failed to support candidates that promised to advance righteousness. They have been unable to present specific plans for change because the difference between secularism and righteousness is wrapped in law. When they fail to support God’s Law these men are double minded and unstable. They are critical of secular law but because they are bereft of a replacement they are unable to provide a cogent solution.

Preachers evade confronting the impending disaster by using expository or topical formats. Determining whether the message should be expository from a particular text or topical is a useless determination. Preaching that is not related to action is not only useless but quickly forgotten. Whatever text is used it should be related to the entire Bible and every sermon should provide specific actions that would fulfill God’s Will as it relates to the subject being taught.

Recently, I received an email describing a vision. In the vision, Christians walked in “holiness, righteousness, obedience, brokenness and utter submission” to God’s Will. I responded with this question: Exactly what behavior would constitute “holiness”, how about “righteousness”, “obedience”, “brokenness”, and “submission”? I did not receive a reply.

The use of religious verbiage that is not properly defined may provide an aura of holiness but is useless in effecting the behavior of listeners. When preachers are critical of homosexuality or abortion they are using God’s Law as a basis for their critique. When they are Arminian and Dispensational they are mixing God’s Law with the heresy of their theology putting the critique on an unstable platform and failing to provide a convincing solution.

The ultimate goal of every Christian should be to create a righteous culture where God’s Commandments are widely known and obeyed. The sermons coming from every pulpit should be in support of that goal; teaching the specific actions needed to return the culture to God’s dominion.

Individual Christian maturity is important but obedience should always be the dominate issue. Every Christian should understand exactly what it means to be obedient. This should be the goal of every Christian leader.

When and if our church leaders begin to do their job properly, every Christian will become a politician seeking a government that protects the family, enforces the Law and functions within the boundaries set forth in the Bible.

The perennial battle is to prevent God’s creatures from usurping God’s power. All power must remain in the hands of the Creator and His Law. Obedience is the primary duty of every Christian. Obedience will provide righteousness and God will provide blessings.

How Lobby Controls US

In the early 1960s, Sen. William J. Fulbright fought to force the American Zionist Council to register as agents of a foreign government. The council eluded registration by reorganizing as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has since become what Fulbright most feared: A foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as a domestic lobby.

Israelis and pro-Israelis object when they hear that charge. How, they ask, can we so few wield such influence over so many? Answer: It’s all in the math. And in the single-issue advocacy brought to bear on US policy-making by dozens of “domestic” organisations that now compose the Israel lobby, with AIPAC its most visible force.

The political math was enabled by Sen. John McCain whose support for all things Israeli ensured him the GOP nomination to succeed George W. Bush. McCain’s style of campaign finance reform proved a perfect fit for the Diaspora-based fundraising on which the lobby relies. Co-sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, this change in federal election law typifies how Israeli influence became systemic.

“McCain-Feingold” raised the amount (from $1,000 to $2,300) that candidates can receive from individuals in primary and general elections. A couple can now contribute a combined $9,200 to federal candidates: $4,600 in each of the primary and general elections. Primary elections, usually low-budget, are particularly easy to sway.

Importantly for the Diaspora, this change also doubled the funds candidates can receive without regard to where those contributors reside. A candidate in Iowa, say, may have only a few pro-Israeli constituents. When campaign support is provided by a nationwide network of pro-Israelis, that candidate can more easily be persuaded to support policies sought by Tel Aviv.

Diaspora-based fundraising has long been used by the lobby with force-multiplying success to shape US foreign policy. Under the guise of reform, John McCain doubled the financial resources that the lobby can deploy to elect and retain its supporters.

Fulbright was right. The influence-peddling process works like this. Candidates are summoned for in-depth AIPAC interviews. Those found sufficiently committed to Israel’s agenda are provided a list of donors likely to “max out” their campaign contributions. Or the process can be made even easier when AIPAC-approved candidates are given the name of a “bundler.”

Bundlers raise funds from the Diaspora and bundle those contributions to present them to the candidate. No quid pro quo need be mentioned. After McCain-Feingold became law in 2003, AIPAC-identified bundlers could raise $1 million-plus for AIPAC-approved candidates simply by contacting 10 like-minded supporters. Here’s the math: The bundler and spouse “max out” for $9,200 and call 10 others, say in Manhattan, Miami, and Beverly Hills. Imagine the incentive to do well in the AIPAC interview. One call from the lobby and a candidate can collect enough cash to mount a credible campaign in most congressional districts. From Tel Aviv’s perspective, that political leverage is leveraged yet again because fewer than 10 per cent of the 435 House races are competitive in any election cycle (typically 35 to 50).

Additional force-multipliers come from: (a) sustaining this financial focus over multiple cycles, (b) using funds to gain and retain seniority for those serving on congressional committees key to promoting Israeli goals, and (c) opposing any candidates who question those goals. “Jewish Achievement” reports that 42 per cent of the largest political donors to the 2000 election cycle were Jewish, including four of the top five. That compares to less than two percent of Americans who are Jewish. Of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, 25 percent are Jewish according to Michael Steinhardt, a key funder of the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC was led by Jewish Zionist Sen. Joe Lieberman when he resigned in 2000 to run as vice president with Al Gore.

Money was never a constraint. Pro-Israeli donors were limited only by how much they could lawfully contribute to AIPAC-screened candidates. McCain-Feingold raised a key limit. The full impact of this foreign influence has yet to be tallied. What’s known, however, is sufficient to apply the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Of the top 50 neoconservatives who advocated war in Iraq, 26 were Jewish (52 per cent).

Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, remains one of the more notable recipients of funds. In 1948, he was trailing badly in the polls and in fundraising. His prospects brightened dramatically in May after he recognised as a legitimate state an enclave of Jewish extremists who originally planned to settle in Argentina before putting their sights on Palestine.

That recognition was opposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the bulk of the diplomatic corps, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency and numerous distinguished Americans, including moderate and secular Jews concerned at the troubles that were certain to follow. Not until 1984 was it revealed that a network of Jewish Zionists had funded Truman’s campaign by financially refueling his whistle-stop campaign train with $400,000 in cash ($3 million in 2009). To buy time on the public’s airwaves, money raised from the Israel lobby’s network is paid to media outlets largely owned or managed by members of the same network. Presidents, senators and congressmen come and go but those who collect the checks rack up the favors that amass lasting political influence. The US system of government is meant to ensure that members of the House represent the concerns of Americans who reside in congressional districts — not a nationally dispersed network (a Diaspora) committed to 
advancing the agenda of a foreign nation. Federal elections are meant to hold senators accountable to constituents who reside in the states they represent, not out-of-state residents or a foreign government.

In practical effect, McCain-Feingold hastened a retreat from representative government by granting a nationwide network of foreign agents disproportionate influence over elections in every state and congressional district. Campaign finance “reform” enabled this network to amass even more political clout — wielding influence disproportionate to their numbers, indifferent to their place of residence and often contrary to America’s interests.

This force-multiplier is now wielded in plain sight, with impunity and under cover of free speech, free elections, free press and even the freedom of religion. Therein lies the perils of an entangled alliance that induced the US to invade Iraq and now seeks war with Iran. By allowing foreign agents to operate as a domestic lobby, the US was induced to confuse Zionist interests with its own.

How Israel Wages War in Plain Sight

It’s now well known that Israelis and pro-Israelis “fixed” the intelligence that induced the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What’s not yet widely known is how. If peace-seeking nations hope never again to see deceit operate on such a scale, those deceived must learn this lesson before these same operatives induce a war with Iran.

To “wage war by way of deception” (the motto of the Israeli intelligence service) requires the capacity to operate in plain sight yet without detection. To detect this duplicity in real time requires a grasp of how Israeli strategists rely on three key categories of operatives: agents, assets and sayanim (Hebrew for helpers or volunteers).

Agents are fully conscious of the intended goal of an operation. Intent is what distinguishes premeditated murder from involuntary manslaughter. Culpability is gauged by the state of mind. Agents operate with what the law calls extreme malice and an “evil mind.” Thus the severity of the sanctions for premeditated capital crimes.

From 1981-1985, Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard stole 360 cubic feet of classified U.S. intelligence documents on Soviet arms shipments, Pakistani nuclear weapons, Libyan air defense systems and other data sought by Tel Aviv. With oversight by only a few case officers (katsas), Israeli agents routinely manage sophisticated operations with the help of pre-staged assets and a network of sayanim.

Assets are people profiled such that—within an acceptable range of probabilities—they can be relied upon to behave consistent with their personality profile. Assets lack the state of mind required for traditional culpability due to their lack of intent. Assets contribute to an operation simply by pursuing their subconscious personal needs. Typically those needs are for recognition, influence, money, sex, drugs or the greatest drug of all: ideology.

Put a profiled asset in a pre-staged time, place and circumstance and Israeli psy-ops specialists can be confident that—within an acceptable range of probabilities—that person will perform consistent with their profile, much as Bill Clinton behaved with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Israelis are indifferent to political parties. Pro-Israeli assets include Christian Zionist presidents Harry Truman, a Democrat, and George W. Bush, a Republican. Both were reliable and pliable advocates for a geopolitical agenda pursued by an enclave of Zionist extremists. Truman granted them nation-state recognition while Bush dispatched the U.S. military to help pursue their expansionist goals for Greater Israel.

Granting Aid and Comfort

Sayanim play a role akin to military reservists who can be activated on short notice to support Israeli operations. These helpers are shielded from criminal culpability by being told only enough to perform their narrow role. Because recruiters ensure these volunteers are kept ignorant of the broader goals of an operation, they could easily pass a polygraph test. Their narrow intent: to respond promptly to requests to assist Israel.

That assistance could be logistics, medical care or intelligence gathering. Sayanim routinely staff the “in between” positions in political offices. Morris Amitay, a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), described the strategic role played by sayanim in U.S. policy-making:

There are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill]…who happen to be Jewish, who are willing…to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness…These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in those areas for those senators…You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.

Author Victor Ostrovsky, formerly a katsa, conceded in 1990 that the Mossad had 7,000 sayanim in London alone. What this vast volunteer corps is not told is that an operation may endanger not only Israel but also the broader Jewish community when Tel Aviv is linked to extremism, terrorism, extortion, organized crime, espionage and treason. Ostrovsky explains in By Way of Deception:

…the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the Diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: “So what’s the worst that could happen to those Jews? They’d all come to Israel. Great!”

The signaling system for pro-Israeli operatives remains opaque. Yet to be explained by this U.S. ally is why, for instance, ten days before the mass murder of 911, Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to super-spy Jonathan Pollard.

As the duplicitous how of this Information Age warfare becomes transparent, the consistency of this treachery will become apparent as will its common source. Jurisprudence will need to adjust to ensure that those aiding such “evil mind” operations are held accountable consistent with the gravity of the crimes. Those crimes include ongoing treason, a capital offense.

In combination, agents, assets and sayanim provide a powerful force multiplier that enables an extremist few-within-the-few to wage war non-transparently yet in plain sight. Thus their key role in the “in between” domains—media, pop culture, think tanks and politics—where duplicity can be deployed to displace facts with what “the mark” can be deceived to believe.

Next Page »