Top 20 Israel facts

1. The name “Israel” first appears on an Egyptian obelisk from 1209 BCE. The twelve Israelite tribes, having escaped slavery in Egypt, settled in the land of Canaan between 1200 and 1000 BCE.
2. Jews have had a continuous presence in the land (including the modern-day West Bank) for the past 3,300 years.
3. Jerusalem has always been considered the focus of Judaism and Jewish identity. Jerusalem is mentioned at least 700 times in the Jewish scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Quran.
4. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, ravaged the land of Judea and killed hundreds of thousands of Jews.  In an effort to de-Judaize the land, the Romans renamed Judea as “Palestine.” Many Jews fled, although a remnant remained, especially in Galilee.
5. The word “Palestine” has always been a vague term denoting a mutable territory that is to the south of Syria, to the north of Egypt and to the west of the River Jordan.
6. There has never been a country or a state called Palestine. But there have been several Jewish commonwealths in the land of Israel.
7.  The word “Palestinian” does not denote ethnicity. Palestinian Arabs are ethnically and culturally identical to Arabs living in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
8. Before the State of Israel, the word “Palestinian” usually referred to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. It wasn’t until the 1960s that a distinct non-Jewish Palestinian identity came into being.
9. The Palestinian Arab leadership actively collaborated with Hitler before and during the Second World War and there was talk of bringing the Holocaust to the Middle East in order to eradicate the Jewish population.
10. In the 1948-49 war, local Arabs were encouraged to leave by their leaders who promised to purge the land of Jews.  Two-thirds of the Arab population evacuated (around 600,000 people). The remaining third were afforded Israeli citizenship rights.
11. Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial democratic state.  Jews from Europe, Ethiopia, Russia, America and the Middle East live in Israel. A fifth of Israelis are Muslim and Christian Arabs, with full voting and citizenship rights. Minorities such as the Druze, the Samaritans and the Circassians enjoy full rights in Israel.
12. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. It is the only country in the region where freedom of religion is observed and minority rights (e.g. gay rights) are observed.
13. Following the creation of the State of Israel, nearly a million Jews who had lived in Arab lands for centuries were forced to flee due to anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms. Many came to Israel and are keen supporters of Likud, Israel’s best-known right-of-center political party.
14. Many of the Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 and 1949 were recent economic migrants to the Holy Land. The United Nations has acknowledged that many had only lived in Israel/Palestine for two years prior to Jewish independence.
15. The surrounding Arab nations have consistently refused to integrate the Palestinians, preferring to keep them in camps. The UN has perpetuated this problem by creating a unique agency for the Palestinians.  Since 1971 and for nearly ten years, the UN General Assembly condemned Israel every year for trying to rehabilitate the refugees.  This condemnation always had one requirement: “Send the refuges to the camps.”
16. UN Security Council Resolution 242 does not call on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank but instead calls for a negotiated solution which would leave Israel with secure borders.
17. Following the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians were given full control over 55% of the West Bank population and administrative control over a further 41% of the population.
18. Contrary to popular opinion, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria) are legal under international law. The League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine (1922) encouraged the Jews to settle the entire Land of Israel (including the modern-day West Bank). This legal instrument has never been superseded.
19. Since 2000, the Palestinian leadership had three major opportunities to establish an independent state. Yasser Arafat walked away from the Camp David talks in 2000 despite being promised 92% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza and east Jerusalem. A resolution was also put forward by the Israelis in 2008, in which the Palestinians would receive Gaza, the majority of the West Bank, parts of east Jerusalem, safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza, and the dismantling of settlements in the Jordan Valley and eastern Samaria. Unfortunately, Mahmoud Abbas did not give a final response on the matter and negotiations ended.
20. Israel is not the only country to impose a blockade on Gaza. Egypt, too, has imposed a blockade because of Hamas. Despite the blockades, Gaza’s real GDP grew by more than 25% during the first three quarters of 2011. Gaza also boasts a five-star hotel, restaurants, a luxury shopping mall, vibrant markets and a thriving beach community.

Greenbelt festival: A Christian (and Jewish) betrayal of the Israeli people

What could possibly be harmful about a group of socially-engaged Christians gathering for a summer festival in Cheltenham, England? On the surface, it seems innocent enough. So what if I told you that this glorified summer camp – known as Greenbelt – is simply an excuse for self-righteous Christians to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel under the umbrella of human rights? Would you be shocked? No, probably not – but you might be more surprised to learn that one of the main attractions at the festival is a prominent Israel-hating American Jew.

The Greenbelt festival – “where faith, arts and justice meet” – is an annual gathering of Christians, many of whom are young people enticed by the prospect of worshipping Jesus, having fun in the sun and engaging in social activism. Greenbelt has been doing this for four decades. But critics of the organization point out that the festival is now a staunch critic of Israel and a purveyor of pro-Palestinian propaganda.

Christians who attend the festival in the third week of August will be bombarded with anti-Israel messages. On offer will be the opportunity to sign up to a trip to “Palestine” in order to “rebuild a demolished home” in Bethlehem. (Sorry, there are no offers of help to rebuild demolished homes in Sderot.) Apparently, rebuilding a Palestinian house is a “practical way to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people” and “experience first-hand life under occupation.” Solidarity with the Israeli people is obviously out of the question.

Such trips to the fictional country of Palestine are (according to the colorful Greenbelt website) acts of “creative resistance.” This is the kind of left-wing nonsense that really excites self-righteous liberal Christians who can’t think of anything better to do than to rally to the side of Jew-hating terrorists. What is “creative resistance” anyway? It sounds like they intend to paint a scary picture on Israel’s security barrier.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Greenbelt is a boycotter of Israeli goods from the so-called occupied territories (which according to the Bible is the land promised to the Jews, but never mind). Christians are called “to make a stand” by boycotting produce from the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. To drive the point home, Greenbelt director Paul Northup compares Israel to South Africa:  “In the 1980s, Greenbelt joined people all over the world in championing the boycott of goods from South Africa as a form of protest against the unjust apartheid regime there.”

Of course, there is not a single word about the murder and maiming of Jews by Palestinians. Nothing about how Arabs regularly vandalize Jewish property and damage holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron. Also omitted is any mention of Palestinian-sponsored anti-Semitism in PA-authorized textbooks or the fact that the Arabs have repeatedly rejected a negotiated peace with Israel. As usual, it’s all Israel’s fault. And it’s such a boring cliché.

All of which is bad enough. But what really irritates me is the fact that the main attraction at this year’s Greenbelt festival is a Jewish American called Mark Braverman who was “transformed by witnessing the occupation of Palestine” (his words) on a trip to Israel in 2006. He now condemns Zionism as racism.

Braverman may be “reared in the Jewish tradition” (his words again) but he is no friend of the Jews. Braverman has thrown his weight behind a number of morally dubious Christian organizations, most notably the Friends of Sabeel North America and the Presbyterian Church, both of which promote a nasty ideology called Christian Palestinianism, which involves recasting Jesus the Galilean Jew as a Palestinian martyr and stripping the Bible of any Zionist overtones, thus neutralizing the prophetic significance of the Land of Israel.

Braverman hates Israel so much that he regularly endorses the anti-Semitic Kairos Palestine organization, which claims to speak on behalf of Christian and Muslim Arabs who share a “deeply rooted” history and a “natural right” to the land of “Palestine.” Some years ago Kairos Palestine produced a major document which branded Israel as evil and sinful. The text (which can be found on the World Council of Churches website) audaciously claims that the presence of a Jewish community in Judea and Samaria “distorts the image of God.” It is a depressing fact that Braverman was present at the unveiling of the Kairos Palestine document in Bethlehem in 2009. He also gave a speech celebrating its launch.

Despite his authorial ambitions (he has written books castigating Israel), Braverman is too stupid to realize that he is a pawn in somebody else’s game. In love with his own image as a human rights activist, he fails to see that he is a marketing tool in the hands of anti-Semites. Anti-Israel organizations like Greenbelt and Kairos Palestine are able to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism by obtaining the approval of a small handful of Jews, who are mainly from the Far Left.

So as far as Greenbelt is concerned, the presence of just one Jew is enough to legitimize its program of Israel demonization and delegitimization. This is the depths to which political discourse has sunk.

Luckily, a number of Christians are not convinced by Greenbelt’s Israelophobic agenda. Indeed, some are furious that Greenbelt has been hijacked by an anti-Israel contingent. Pastor Mike Fryer, the founder of a group called Christians for Zion, has expressed deep concern about the political trajectory of Greenbelt. And he is very worried that Christian children who attend the festival will be negatively influenced by Braverman and other anti-Israel speakers.

In an interview with The Jewish Telegraph, Pastor Fryer said that “one of the biggest problems with the [Greenbelt] camp is that there are a lot of kids in attendance.” He added: “We cannot allow them to grow up thinking Israel is evil.” It is a sobering thought that a new generation of Christians could grow up hating the Jewish state. It would also be an unfortunate throwback to a bygone age when Christian children were taught that Jews were Christ-killers. According to Greenbelt and co, Jews are now Palestinian killers.

Pastor Fryer (who visits Israel two or three times a year) aims to set the record straight. He is outraged by the lies perpetrated by Israel’s enemies. And he is particularly concerned that the people of Sderot and other victims of Palestinian terrorism are being ignored by the international Christian community. “The people living there are traumatized as a result of the constant rocket fire,” he told the newspaper.

The pastor plans to use his knowledge of Israel to oppose Braverman’s harmful message. He is arranging for a group of around 50 pro-Israel Christians to attend the Greenbelt festival in order to spread a pro-Israel message and to “pray for Israel.” I wish him luck.

Pastor Fryer’s persistent and generous support for Israel and the Jewish people is to be applauded. He stands in direct contrast to the cowardly Mark Braverman who has betrayed the Jews in order to sell a few badly-written books about the plight of the Palestinians and to ingratiate himself with anti-Semitic gentiles who care nothing for the security or human rights of the Israeli people.

 

 

Identicide: Christian Palestinianism and the strange death of Jesus the Jew

“We have been taught for centuries that the Jews are the Chosen People. We do not believe anymore that they are the Chosen People of God, since now we have a new understanding of that Choseness.” (Father Elias Chacour, Catholic Archbishop of Israel, 1999).

What is Christian Palestinianism?

Christian Palestinianism is a phrase coined by Paul Wilkinson, an evangelical author based in Manchester, England. Wilkinson defines Christian Palestinianism as “an inverted mirror image of Christian Zionism,” and describes it as “diametrically opposed to that of biblical Christian Zionism, and whose opposition to Israel and her Christian allies is expressed in their outspoken support of the Palestinian agenda.”

The term Palestinianism, however, seems to have originated in the writings of Jewish Egyptian author Bat Ye’or. In Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis, she outlines the growing phenomenon of Palestinian replacement theology and the gradual Islamization of Christianity. Christian Palestinianists, according to Ye’or interpret the Bible from the viewpoint of the Quran and “do not admit to any historical or theological link between the biblical Israel, the Jewish people and the modern State of Israel.”

Christian Palestinianists and their supporters in the West recognize the political benefit of undermining the State of Israel’s biblical foundations. This is achieved by stripping the Bible of its Jewishness, neutralizing the prophetic significance of the Land of Israel and recasting Jesus as a Palestinian. This is despite the fact that Jesus was a Galilean Jew and the word “Palestine” didn’t exist during his lifetime.

Wilkinson places the birth of Christian Palestinianism at the end of the 1980s. However, the groundwork had already been laid in 1967 by an Arab-Christian memorandum entitled “What is Required of the Christian Faith Concerning the Palestine Problem.” The document, which had the blessing of Catholic and Orthodox clergy, declared that it is “a total misunderstanding of the story of salvation and a perversion of God’s plan for a Christian to want to re-establish a Jewish nation as a political entity.”

In one of its most audacious passages, the memorandum reads: “The Christian conscience should always discern what is the authentic vocation of the Jewish people and what is the other side of the coin, that is, the racist State of Israel.” In fact, the memorandum calls for a permanent exile of the Jews on the grounds that “the Jewish race was chosen to serve the salvation of Humanity and not to establish itself in any particular religious or racial way.”

The theological underpinning of Christian Palestinianism is a rebranded version of replacement theology. Fulfillment theology is based on the premise that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual fulfillment of God’s promise to return the Jews to Israel. Therefore the Jews – and by extension the Land of Israel – have no prophetic meaning and have fulfilled their roles in salvation history. The theologian N.T. Wright, for example, argues that Israel’s restoration was achieved through the resurrection and that Jewish ethnic identity is no longer important on a religious level. The Land of Israel, Jerusalem and Temple are all obsolete, according to Wright, because Jesus embodies all three.

Although keen to neutralize the prophetic significance of the Bible for Jews, Christian Palestinianists have no problem with appropriating the tradition for themselves. In 2005, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu el-Assal, claimed of Palestinian Christians: “We are the true Israel […] no-one can deny me the right to inherit the promises, and after all the promises were first given to Abraham and Abraham is never spoken of in the Bible as a Jew.”

In 1997, the Palestinian Authority aired a program that claimed the stories in the Torah took place in Yemen, not in Israel. The PA also says there is no evidence that the Western Wall has anything to do with Second Temple.

Christian Palestinianists question or even condemn passages in the Bible that elevate Israel above other nations. In fact, the prime mover of the Christian Palestinianist movement, Naim Ateek, who is the Anglican canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem , has stated that some Bible passages are explicitly “exclusivist.” There is a “great need to ‘de-Zionize’ these texts,” he believes.

In 1989, Ateek published the founding document of Christian Palestinianism, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, which drew much of its strength from South American liberation theology. Five years later, Ateek founded an organization called Sabeel – the Palestinian Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Sabeel means “the way,” which is a clear reference to both Jesus as “the way,” and the early name of the Christians, who were called “followers of the way.”

The version of liberation theology espoused by Ateek is that of Jesus as “a Palestinian living under an occupation.” In his 2001 Easter message, Ateek spoke of Jesus as “the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint.” Apart from the fact that Jesus wasn’t a Palestinian, this is harmless enough. But Ateek then steps up the rhetoric, with disturbing anti-Semitic undertones:

“In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.”

This is shocking and inflammatory on a number of levels. The Palestinians are indeed restricted in their movements because of the terror threat, but being held up at a checkpoint is hardly a crucifixion. The reference to “hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land” is obviously figurative but the image is overblown and patently absurd. If any place on earth should be dubbed Golgotha, surely it should be Auschwitz or Treblinka, not the West Bank. The reference to the “Israeli government crucifixion system” is outrageous and quite possibly anti-Semitic, given the old canard about Jews being responsible for the death of Jesus.

The Kairos Palestine Document

Perhaps the Christian Palestinianist movement found its ultimate expression in the Kairos Palestine Document. Published in 2009 and subtitled “A moment of truth: A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering,” the paper was a rehash of the 1967 Arab-Christian memorandum.

Notably, the Kairos document (which can be found on the World Council of Churches website) speaks on behalf of Christian and Muslim Palestinians, who apparently share a “deeply rooted” history and a “natural right” to the land. In contrast, Israel is an alien entity, and only exists because of Western guilt over the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, the document makes no mention of Muslim involvement in the Holocaust, nor does it comment on the decades of Jewish immigration in the decades before Hitler’s genocide.

The Holocaust aside, the State of Israel is associated with the words “evil” and “sin.” According to the text, the “occupation” is an affront to both humanity and the divine, and “distorts the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier.”

The document criticizes Christian Zionism as being “far from Christian teachings” and praises the first intifada, referring to it as a “peaceful struggle.” Terrorism, while not sanctioned, is excused on the grounds that Israel is ultimately responsible for Palestinian acts of violence against Jewish civilians.

And if any proof is needed that conformity is in fashion, the document calls for economic sanctions against Israel: “Palestinian civil organizations, as well as international organizations, NGOs and certain religious institutions call on individuals, companies and states to engage in divestment and in an economic and commercial boycott of everything produced by the occupation.”

This, according to the writers of the text, is an example of non-violent protest, despite the fact that there is nothing praiseworthy about ruining Jewish businesses and putting Palestinians out of work.

Christian Palestinianism in the West

Since the turn of the century, Christian Palestinianism has been warmly embraced by various Christian groups in the West, notably Anglicans, Presbyterians, evangelicals and left-wing protestants, such as the Quakers. Apart from attacking Israel, westernized Christian Palestinianists have gone to great lengths to ridicule and invalidate Christian Zionism.

In 2004, the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America declared Christian Zionism to be an “extreme form of dispensationalism,” a “distortion of the biblical message,” and an impediment to a “just peace in Israel/Palestine.” In 2007, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland accused Christian Zionism of portraying “an unjust God, with an unjust people.”

Many of the books attacking Christian Zionists accuse the latter of advocating “Armageddon” rather than justice. As well as removing the prophetic significance of the scriptures, books such as Anglican vicar Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer’s Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? misrepresent and deride centuries of mainstream protestant tradition.

Sizer, a virulent opponent of Israel, believes there is a sharp distinction between God’s covenant with Israel and the beliefs of Jesus’s disciples. “There is,” he says, “no evidence that the apostles believed that the Jewish people still had a divine right to the land, or that Jewish possession of the land would be important, let alone that Jerusalem would remain a central aspect of God’s purposes for the world.” Sizer adds: Jerusalem and the Land of Israel “have been made irrelevant to God’s redemptive purposes.”

Sizer is a regular contributor to Islamic media outlets, including Iran’s Press TV. He has been photographed with Arafat, and with Zahra Mostafavi Khomeini, the daughter of the Ayatollah. He has met with – and publicly defended – Raed Salah, a Hamas fundraiser who accuses the Jews of making Passover bread with the blood of Christian children. (There are numerous photos of Sizer and Salah enjoying each other’s company.)

Sizer seems unembarrassed by the fact that his own remarks and writings stray into anti-Semitic territory. For instance, he once stated that the reason Jews “were expelled from the land was that they were more interested in money and power and treated the poor and aliens with contempt.” In 2011, he posted a link on his Facebook page to an anti-Semitic website called “The Ugly Truth,” and in the same year, he went to Malaysia to work with Viva Palestina, whose leading activists include Holocaust-denier Matthias Chang.

Another Anglican notable, Desmond Tutu, has likened Zionism to racism and repeatedly referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state. He is also a supporter of boycotts. Tutu, a friend of Yasser Arafat and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, accepted the role as patron of Sabeel International in 2003. This is the same Sabeel that is spearheading the Christian Palestinianist movement in the Middle East. It is perhaps no surprise that US attorney Alan Dershowitz has called Tutu a “racist and a bigot.”

The number of Christian organizations censuring the Jewish state is increasing. It is common for left-wing Christians to exonerate the Palestinians of any historical and contemporary accountability, thereby holding Israel solely responsible for ending the crisis. In 2009, the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches released a statement condemning the so-called Israeli occupation and encouraging a boycott of goods made in settlements. Significantly, the World Council of Churches is also calling for the internationalization of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Christian Aid and the Quakers are calling on the UK government to implement a total ban of settlement goods. In North America, the United Church of Canada is heading towards an official boycott policy. And the Church of England, which has a large overseas membership, is considering whether it should adopt the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniers Programme in Palestine and Israel. The EAPPI is blatantly pro-Palestinian and holds the Jewish state solely responsible for resolving the situation in the West Bank.

Islamic appropriation of the Jesus and crucifixion

When Arafat made his first Christmas appearance in Bethlehem in 1995, he invoked the Christian nativity by crying, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.” To which the crowd responded, “In spirit and blood we will redeem thee, O Palestine!”

Bethlehem obviously held a special place in Arafat’s heart. Not because he had any special love for Jesus and Christianity but because it was a political rallying point. Bethlehem, according to Arafat, was the “birthplace of the first Palestinian Christian, Jesus Christ.”

Arafat’s reference to the nativity is obviously a ploy to unite Muslims and Christian Arabs against Israel. In and of itself, this is unspectacular, but when placed in the wider context of Islamic replacement theology, the (mis)use of Jesus is sinister. (Arafat not only proclaimed that Jesus was a Palestinian but is “our Lord the Messiah,” which is an astonishing statement for a Muslim to make. Referring to Jesus as Lord is to detract from the strict monotheism of the faith, a grave sin known as shirk.)

The appropriation of the crucifixion by Muslim Palestinians in their war on Israel is puzzling. The image of the crucified Palestinian/Jesus is a common propaganda motif. And yet the Quran says that Jesus wasn’t put on the cross but was raised up to heaven. So, not only are Muslims committing an act of apostasy by referring to Jesus as “our Lord” they are even refuting their own sacred scripture by claiming Jesus was a crucified Palestinian. (This is not the only example of Muslims cherry-picking the Quran to suit their agenda. The Quran explicitly states the Land of Israel is a Jewish and not a Muslim inheritance.)

Other times, Jesus is referred to as a Shahid, a holy martyr of Islam. Arafat often referred to Jesus as the first Palestinian martyr, which is historically incorrect and is at odds with Islamic tradition. There are no references to Jesus as a Shahid in Islamic works, and it is impossible for Jesus to be a martyr if he did not die on the cross, which is the view of the Quran.

The final step in the Palestinianization of Bethlehem is the news that UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – has approved a Palestinian bid to categorize the Church of the Nativity as a World Heritage Site.

It is fairly obvious that the Palestinian bid is politically motivated. UNESCO’s approval effectively endorses a specifically Palestinian culture and heritage that is distinct from the history of Israel.

Obviously, the invention of the Palestinian Jesus and the misuse of the crucifixion as a political weapon is just one more lethal narrative aimed at demonizing Israel and is not an authentic reconciliation with Christianity. In fact, the Christian population in the West Bank has ebbed away under PA rule. And yet Christians in the West seem happy to play along with the pretense that nothing is amiss because they both share the same enemy – Israel.

The globalization of Chrislam

One of the most alarming developments in the Christian world is the alliance between a number of evangelicals and the Muslim world. Examples of cooperation abound.

Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP) is an organization that devotes itself to discovering common ground between the two religions through an exploration of the Quran and the Bible. Based in California, CAMP is led by Dr William Baker, the former chairman of the neo-Nazi Populist Party. In 2002, Baker was fired from Crystal Cathedral Ministries when his anti-Semitic inclinations and ties to the Far Right were exposed by the media. (This is the same Robert Schuller who once told an Imam of the Muslim American Society that “if he came back in 100 years and found his descendants Muslims, it wouldn’t bother him.”)

“A Common Word Between Us and You” is an open letter from the leaders of the Muslim community to Christians, published in 2007. It opens with the lines: “Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world.” A large number of Christians responded positively to the statement. The most highly publicized response was written by a group of four academics from the University of Yale, entitled Loving God and Neighbor Together. The response included the lines: “Before we ‘shake your hand’ in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.”

In 2009, Rick Warren, the well-known evangelical author and pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, addressed 8,000 Muslims at a national convention in Washington D.C. The convention was organized by Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which champions terrorist organizations and disseminates extremist literature. Since then, Warren has been involved in an initiative called the King’s Way, a partnership with a number of California mosques, which involves the establishment of a set of principles outlining the shared principles of Islam and Christianity, including the declaration that both faiths worship the same God.

A number of evangelicals, including Stephen Sizer, Presbyterian writer Gary Burge (who has criticized Judaism’s “territorial world view”) and Professor Donald Wagner, have participated in events sponsored by the Bridges of Faith (an evangelical Christian-Muslim dialogue group) and the Muslim World Islamic Call Society, which until recently was funded by the Gaddafi regime in Libya. On the Bridges of Faith website, the dialogue group states that it “looks forward to a day when we can make our deliberations public through the publication of papers, open meetings and media outreach in order to spread the message of tolerance and commonality of values to a wider community of grass-roots groups, as well as a wider community of inter-religious dialogue.” It remains to be seen whether “the message of tolerance” will extend to the State of Israel.

In February 2008, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, told Radio 4’s World at One that some aspects of Sharia law should be introduced in the UK to accommodate Britain’s Muslim community. The archbishop’s comments were welcomed by Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Ramadhan Foundation, who said: “Sharia law for civil matters is something which has been introduced in some western countries with much success.”

This, and other bridge-building exercises, may turn out to be the start of a political variation of Chrislam. Strictly speaking, Chrislam is a syncretistic religion of Nigerian origin that combines Islam and Christianity. Established in the 1970s, the followers of Chrislam recognize both the Bible and the Qur’an as holy texts. The religion is very local and only commands around 1,500 members.

Nonetheless, the principles behind Chrislam are the same principles that are shaping an alliance between western Christianity and Islam. Indeed, there are already various so-called insider movements in the Christian missionary industry. (Insider movements are when Christians from a Muslim background still attend mosque and perform Islamic rituals.)

Open Doors USA President Carl Moeller has referred to the insider movement as a “fourth branch” of Christianity: “Muslims are turning to faith in Jesus Christ, and out of that movement is emerging an entirely new way of expressing Christianity within the context of the Middle Eastern culture.” However, this “entirely new way” has been criticized by right-wing evangelicals for not teaching sound Christian doctrine.

The fact that many Christians are reaching out to Islam suggests they are pre-empting the very real possibility that Islam will be the dominant religion in Europe in fifty years’ time. If this is the case, then it is a tacit admission of defeat and an example of self-imposed dhimmitude. Dhimmitude, says Ye’or, is the “surrender of the Christian clergy and political leaders to the Muslim jihad armies, and their submission to Islamic domination of both their lands and peoples.” In exchange, Christians receive a pledge of protection or dhimma.

According to Ye’or, the first step towards dhimmitude and the Islamization of the Church is “the removal of the Gospels from their Judaic matrix.” For this to happen, Jesus the Jew must be killed and replaced by Jesus the Palestinian.

The ethnic cleansing of Jesus and the Jews

In recent decades, the quest to rescue Jesus’ Jewish identity has yielded much fruit. Geza Vermes, Robert Eisenman, E.P Sanders, James Tabor, R. T. Herford, George Foot Moor and Hyam Maccoby are among those who have highlighted Jesus’ Jewish identity and origins. Combined with the shared interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jews and Christians have found common ground in the exploration of the Jewish roots of Christianity.

Jesus was born of a Jewish woman in the Judean town of Bethlehem, and was given the Jewish name of “Yeshua,” literally “Joshua.” He was circumcised, attended synagogue services and the Temple, wore tassels, was referred to as “Rabbi,” and observed the Sabbath, Passover and Sukkots. He quoted from the Hebrew bible and clearly saw himself as fulfilling the scriptures in some way. He held the Torah in high esteem and reiterated the importance of the Shema. He also made it clear that he had “come for the lost sheep of Israel” and that “Salvation is of the Jews.”
However, Christian Palestinianism has a done a great deal to undermine this. The Palestinian Jesus falsehood is a shocking return to the “Jesus was an Aryan” falsehood of the Far Right or the Church-sanctioned portrayal of Jesus as a fair-skinned, blue-eyed gentile. The identicide of the Jewish Jesus is also redolent of an ancient heresy known as Gnosticism, sometimes described as a metaphysical anti-Semitism.

Ye’or, in her book Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis, writes of the theological similarities between Palestinianism and Marcion gnosticism, which rejects the Hebrew Bible and believes the God of Israel to be a lower entity than the God of the New Testament. Likewise, Christian Palestinianism either ignores the Hebrew scriptures or wants to de-Zionize the prophecies that do not suit the Palestinian agenda. As with Marcionism, God is no longer the God of Israel with a special interest in the fate of the Jewish people, but the God of Palestine.

The ethnic cleansing of Jesus is part of a wider effort to de-Judaize the Jewish people in order to undermine their claim to the land of Israel. So as well as being de-chosen by God, the people of Israel are not even Jewish, according to some Christian Palestinianists. In the mid-1990s, the Palestinian Authority aired a program that claimed Palestinians are the real descendants of the biblical Israelites. One of the so-called experts who was invited to appear on the show was Jarid el-Qadaweh, who declared: “In my blood there is more of the Children of Israel than in that of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.” Mitri Raheb, the pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, has used the figure of Jesus to question the ethnic validity of the State of Israel:

“I’m sure if we were to do a DNA test between David, who was a Bethlehemite, and Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and Mitri, born just across the street from where Jesus was born, I’m sure the DNA will show that there is a trace. While, if you put King David, Jesus and Netanyahu, you will get nothing, because Netanyahu comes from an East European tribe who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages.”

Like el-Qadaweh, Raheb claims the average Palestinian is native to the land and is genetically similar to Jesus. In contrast, the average Israeli is an interloper from eastern Europe and is genetically dissimilar from Jesus. This raises the controversial question: is there such a thing as a Jewish gene? Extensive DNA testing does show there is such a thing. Genetic studies on the Y chromosome show that modern Jewish populations have a predominantly Middle Eastern ancestry, thereby discrediting the theory that Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of the Khazars (a semi-nomadic Turkic people from the Middle Ages). But the question of “who is a Jew?” is wide open to interpretation and has been debated for thousands of years, sometimes with devastating consequences.

Conclusion

Christian Palestinianism is a religion of resentment. It is a projection of a sense of inferiority onto an external scapegoat. Thwarted by failure, Christian Palestinianists blame their problems on “the Jews.” This is done by killing Jesus the Jew and resurrecting him as Jesus the Palestinian. The God of Israel is also declared dead, only to be replaced by the anti-Semitic God of Palestine.

Of all the anti-Israel discourses that exist today, Christian Palestinianism is perhaps one of the most shocking. Shocking because it wants to de-Judaize both Jesus and the Bible, as well as undermine Jewish identity. Shocking because it also revives the notion of Jews as killers of Christ. Moreover, the post-Holocaust reconciliation of Jews and Christians is lethally undermined. The work of Geza Vermes, and others like him, who have examined in close detail the Jewishness of Jesus, is being cast aside in favour of a quasi-gnostic Jesus.

On a theological level, Christian Palestinianism is entirely self-defeating. If God no longer honors his covenant with the Jews and the Land of Israel, then the whole foundation of Christianity collapses. A God who changes his mind about the Jews is no longer the God of Abraham, Moses or Jesus. Palestinianism is not only un-Biblical, it is un-Christian.

Pro-Palestinian Christians in the West need to take a long, hard look at themselves and ask whether it is ethical to be consorting with liars, terrorists and anti-Semites. They should also ask themselves if their actions are likely to lead to a fresh outburst of religiously-motivated anti-Semitism. The trouble is, history shows that many Christians need no excuse to persecute the Jews. There seems to be an in-built tendency to raise their fists against the descendants of Isaac and Jacob. This is bad news not only for the State of Israel and the Jewish diaspora, but also for Christianity itself, which will not survive another destructive wave of anti-Semitism.

As it says in Ezekiel 35, “Because you harbored an ancient hostility and delivered the Israelites over to the sword at the time of their calamity, the time their punishment reached its climax, therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will give you over to bloodshed and it will pursue you. Since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you.”

Let’s hope Christian Palestinianists take note of Ezekiel’s prophecy. But given their track record, they would probably decry its exclusivism and attempt to de-Zionize it.

Jewish Nakba

[nakba: Arabic for “catastrophe”]

On November 29, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly voted to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s status to non-member observer status. This is exactly 65 years after the same body recommended the adoption and implementation of “British Palestine.” It is also exactly 65 years since the start of one of history’s most dramatic but forgotten refugee emergencies: the Jewish nakba.

In the days, weeks, months and years following the historic decision on November 29, 1947, between 850,000 and 1,000,000 Jews were uprooted from Arab (and other Muslim) countries. Many Jews were killed and/or raped, and their property and money confiscated. Many of the expelled Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East dated back 2,500 years (two millennia before the rise of Islam). The violence against Arab Jews was deliberate and vicious. Massacres, mutilations, rape, property confiscation and deportations were commonplace. Millions of Jews had no choice but to seek shelter in Israel or elsewhere.

The Jewish nakba has been largely forgotten, partly because most refugees were absorbed by Israel and partly because Arab states have chosen to ignore it. Today, about 50% of Jews in Israel have Arabic ancestry because of the exodus. Not surprisingly, Jews who have experienced Arab violence and Muslim anti-Semitism are hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state. As such, they tend to vote for Likud, the major right-wing party in Israel.

Today, there are fewer than 9,000 Jews in the Arab and Muslim world. In Libya, for example, the Jewish community no longer exists.

There is evidence that shows the Jewish nakba was a deliberate and planned act of ethnic cleansing. According to the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, the Jewish exodus was a policy decision taken by the Arab League. This view has been endorsed by the Jewish advocacy group Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.

Even before the UN vote in 1947, the Arab League had endorsed the persecution of Jews. The fact that riots and massacres broke out across the Arab world on the same day (30th November 1947) also suggests a degree of planning. Indeed, the Arab League met in Syria in 1946 and Lebanon in 1947, and agreed a draft plan to rob their Jews of their property, threaten them with imprisonment and expel the impoverished Jews.

In May 1948, the Arab League drafted a series of recommendations for all Arab and Muslim countries on how to take action against their Jewish populations. The New York Times of 16th May 1948 contained details of an Arab plan based on Nuremberg laws to ‘ethnically cleanse’ their Jews.

Above: The New York Times reveals danger facing Jews in Muslim lands

Above: Arab League’s version of Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws

The Arab armies in the 1948-49 war also encouraged the Palestinian to evacuate while they fought their war of extermination against the Israelis. The refugee crisis was not engineered by Israel, nor did Israel systematically expel the Palestinians.

At least 120 UN resolutions deal with the 600,000 Palestinian refugees. But not one resolution refers to the Jewish nakba.

Jewish nakba: individual countries

Iraq: Iraqi and Kurdish Jews were encouraged to leave in 1950 by the Iraqi Government. A year later, Iraq ordered “the expulsion of Jews who refused to sign a statement of anti-Zionism.” By 1949 Jews were escaping Iraq at a rate of 1,000 a month. Between 1950 and 1952, 130,000 were airlifted from Iraq. In 1969, the remaining 50 Iraqi Jews were executed.

Egypt: In July 1948, Jewish shops and the Cairo Synagogue were attacked, killing 19 Jews. Hundreds of Jews were arrested and had their property confiscated. By 1950, 40% of the Jewish population of Egypt had fled the country. In October 1956, 1,000 Jews were arrested, 500 Jewish businesses were seized by the government, Jewish bank accounts were confiscated, Jews were barred from their professions, and thousands were ordered to leave the country. They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash, and forced to sign declarations “donating” their property to the Egyptian government. In 1967, Jews were detained and tortured, and Jewish homes were confiscated.

Bahrain: In November 1947, Arab mobs in the capital of Manama attacked Jews, looted homes and shops, and destroyed the synagogue. Over the next few decades, most Jews left for other countries, especially England.

Algeria: In the early 1960s, Algerian Jews were declared non-citizens. Many left the country in 1962-63.

Morocco: After the pogroms of 1948, 18,000 Moroccan Jews left for Israel. This continued until the 1960s.

Above: Moroccan Jewish refugees

Yemen: In 1947, rioters killed more than 80 Jews in Aden. The Israeli government evacuated 44,000 Yemeni Jews in 1949 and 1950. Emigration continued until 1962, when the civil war in Yemen broke out.

Judea and Samaria / “the West Bank”: In May 1948, the residents of Kfar Etzion, a kibbutz located outside the borders of Israel, were massacred. Despite surrendering to the Arab army, 129 Palestinian Jews were murdered and the kibbutz destroyed.

Following Jordan’s annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1948, all but one of the thirty-five synagogues in East Jerusalem were destroyed. Israelis were forbidden to pray at the Western Wall. The ancient Jewish cemetery on Mount of Olives was desecrated and tombstones used for construction, paving roads and lining latrines. Palestinian Jews were exiled. This was the only time in over 1,000 years that Palestinian Jews were forbidden to live in Judea and Samaria.

Tunisia: From 1956, Tunisian Jews emigrated because of anti-Jewish policies. Half fled to Israel and the rest went to France. More attacks in 1967 accelerated Jewish emigration.

Libya: In June 1948, rioters in Libya killed 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. Between 1949 and 1951, almost 31,000 Jews fled Libya and headed for Israel. During the 1950s and 1960s, the remaining Jews were put under numerous restrictions, including laws which curtailed freedom of movement. A further 18 Jews were killed in 1967. Following this, 7,000 Jews were evacuated to Italy. In 1970 the Libyan government confiscated all the assets of Libya’s Jews and refused to compensate them. In 2003, the last remaining Jew in Libya was finally allowed to leave to Italy. Israel is now home to about 40,000 Jews of Libyan descent

Syria: In November 1947, the Jews of Aleppo were attacked, leaving 75 dead. Some 300 houses, 50 shops and many synagogues were destroyed. The violence prompted half of the Aleppo Jewish community to flee. However, the Syrian government imposed severe restrictions on Jewish emigration. In the early 1990s, the USA pressured the Syrian government to ease the restrictions. In 1992, the Syrians began granting exit visas to Jews but prohibited them from emigrating to Israel.

In August 1948, rioters in Damascus killed 13 Jews, including eight children.

Non-Arab Muslim countries

Turkey: In September 1955, Greeks, Jews and Armenians were attacked, resulting in the exodus of 10,000 Jews.

Iran: Between 1948 and 1953, over 30% of Persian Jews emigrated from Iran to Israel. Another 15% of the Persian Jewish community fled to Israel between 1975 and 1991 because of religious persecution. The exodus of Iranian Jews peaked following the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The proto-nakba

In the years and the decades before the UN partition vote in November 1947, Arab violence against Jews was widespread in British-ruled Palestine and across the Middle East/North Africa. A lot of the violence was the direct consequence of an informal alliance between pro-fascist Arabs and the Nazis. Both parties were motivated by extreme anti-Semitism and a desire to terminate British influence in the Middle East.

Tunisia: In 1942, the Tunisian Arabs Army assisted the Nazis in the genocide of 2,500 Jews in North Africa.

British Palestine: On 24th August 1929, 67 Palestinian Jews were massacred in Hebron. Dozens were wounded. Some of the victims were raped, tortured or mutilated. Jewish homes and synagogues, as well as a hospital, were ransacked. Sir John Chancellor, the British High Commissioner, wrote: “The horror of it is beyond words. In one house I visited not less than twenty-five Jews men and women were murdered in cold blood.” The survivors were evacuated by the British authorities. Many returned in 1931, but almost all left again between 1936 and 1939.

Above: a survivor of the Hebron massacre

Despite having been the home to a Jewish community since 1000 BCE, Safed was the scene of a pogrom that took place on 29th August 1929. The main Jewish street was looted and burned. 20 Palestinian Jews were killed and 80 wounded. Some of the victims were hacked and stabbed to death. Witnesses say that children in a local orphanage had their heads smashed in and their hands cut off.

In April 1936, riots broke out in Jaffa, the start of a three-year period of violence known as the Arab Revolt. The leader of the Palestinian Arabs and notorious Nazi collaborator, Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, led a campaign of terror against Jewish and British targets.

The Tiberias pogrom took place in October 1938 during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. Dozens of armed Arabs set fire to home and killed 19 Jews in Tiberias, 11 of whom were children. More than 415 Palestinian Jews were killed by Arabs over the three-year period.

During the 1920 Jerusalem riots, an Arab mob ransacked the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, attacking pedestrians and looting shops and homes. About 160 Jews were wounded and five killed. Hundreds of Jews were evacuated.

Egypt: Jews began leaving Egypt after the Cairo pogrom in 1945.

Iraq: At the behest of Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, pro-Nazi Arabs slaughtered 180 Jews in Baghdad in 1941. 240 were wounded. Hundreds of Jewish businesses and homes were destroyed. The Farhud or “violent dispossession” was the beginning of the end of the Jewish community in Iraq, a community that had existed for 2,600 years.

Libya: In November 1945, an outbreak of what has been described as “bestial violence” took place in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. During a 50-hour rampage, Jews were tortured and dismembered. More than 140 Jews (including 36 children) were killed and hundreds injured. Synagogues, homes and businesses were looted and/or destroyed. In the aftermath, 4,000 Jews were homeless. The pogrom, which was the culmination of anti-Semitic legislation, resulted in an exodus of Libyan Jews.

Muslim abuse of Jews before the 20th century

Since the Muslim conquest of Spain and the Middle East, Jews were dhimmis or second-class citizens. Depending on the time and the place, Jews were barred from public office and made to wear distinctive clothing, both of which foreshadow Nazi legislation. And like the Nazis, Muslims had the option of simply killing the Jews en masse, which is exactly what happened in Granada in 1066, when 4,000 Jews were massacred.

Maimonides, the great 12th century Jewish scholar, was shocked by the level of violence and discrimination meted out by Muslims. Islam, he said, had done the most harm to the children of Israel. “None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us,” he wrote in an epistle to the Jews of Yemen. His letter cites the “imposed degradation,” “the lies” and “their absurdities,” which are “beyond human power to bear.” He continues:

“We are not spared from the ferocity of their wickedness and their outbursts at any time. On the contrary, the more we suffer and choose to conciliate them, the more they choose to act belligerently toward us.”

Fast-forward to the 18th and 19th centuries when Jews were systematically expelled and/or massacred by Muslims. Between 1770 and 1786, Jews were expelled from Jedda in Saudi Arabia. Massacres took place in Morocco (1790), Baghdad (1928), Iran (1839, 1867), Syria (1840, 1848, 1850, 1875, 1890), Lebanon (1847, 1862, 1874), Jerusalem (1847), Egypt (1844, 1870, 1871, 1873, 1877, 1882, 1890, 1891, 1901–08), and Turkey (1864, 1866, 1868, 1870, 1872, 1874).

There were also innocuous – but still shocking – incidents that deprived the Jewish people of dignity. One symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of spitting and stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. The victims of these abuses were in no position to retaliate.

An enlightening passage about Muslim attitudes towards Jews before the creation of the State of Israel can be found in George Orwell’s 1939 essay “Marrakech”:

When you go through the Jewish quarters [of Marrakech] you gather some idea of what the medieval ghettoes were probably like. Under their Moorish rulers the Jews were only allowed to own land in certain restricted areas, and after centuries of this kind of treatment they have ceased to bother about overcrowding.

[…]

You hear the usual dark rumours about the Jews, not only from the Arabs but from the poorer Europeans.

‘Yes, mon vieux, they took my job away from me and gave it to a Jew. The Jews! They’re the real rulers of this country, you know. They’ve got all the money. They control the banks, finance — everything.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘isn’t it a fact that the average Jew is a labourer working for about a penny an hour?’

‘Ah, that’s only for show! They’re all money-lenders really. They’re cunning, the Jews.’

Return to the 20th century and conclusion

There is a long history of Arab and Muslim violence against Jewish communities. Before the 20th century, the treatment of Jews was the consequence of anti-Semitic statements in the Quran and other Islamic literature. From the 1920s, Arab Muslims became increasingly enthralled by Hitler’s lust for power and his anti-Semitic ideology. Many Arab leaders and regimes actively collaborated with the Nazis and sought to enact his vision of a world without Jews.

Above: Palestinian leader Husseini and Hitler

In the 1940s, the Arab League conspired to rob and harass their Jewish populations. This soon turned into a wholesale act of ethnic cleansing, peaking between 1947 and 1949. The multi-pronged military attack on the nascent State of Israel should be seen in this context. Ironically, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands actually strengthened Israel’s hand. Not only did the new arrivals boost Israel’s population, it gradually pushed Israeli politics towards the right, making it less likely that there will ever be a rapprochement between Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

Report: Israeli apostate blamed for UK anti-Semitism

An investigation into Judeophobia in Britain concludes that Jewish renegade and jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon is responsible for injecting a “relatively new form of antisemitism into anti-Zionist discourse” in the UK.

According to Antisemitic Discourse in Britain in 2011, published by the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism in the UK, the apostate Israeli’s rancorous views are contributing to a climate of mistrust and hostility.

Thankfully, explicit anti-Semitism in British public life is rare, says the report. Nevertheless, anti-Semitic themes alleging Jewish conspiracy and power still exist within mainstream discourse about Israel and Zionism. This, claims the CST, is partly due to the nefarious writings of Atzmon, whose recent book The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics is cited as an example of anti-Semitic discourse.

Atzmon, born in Tel Aviv and trained at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, describes himself as a “proud self-hating Jew.” Now based in London, Atzmon has released over a dozen jazz albums. Atzmon is also a prolific opponent of Israel, Jews and Judaism. His conspiratorial articles have been published by a number of dubious media outlets, including Counterpunch, Al-Arab online, the Palestine Telegraph and Aljazeera.info.

The Wandering Who? was released in September 2011 by left-wing publisher Zero Books. It is packed with anti-Semitic rhetoric and is barely distinguishable from the worst Nazi propaganda (one of the chapter headings is “Swindler’s List”). The book is a litany of hatred and lies that blames Jewish bankers for two world wars and “one communist revolution.” Jews are also responsible, says Atzmon, for persuading the UK to attack Iraq in order to “erase one of the last pockets of Arab resistance to Zionism.” Jews, he asserts, have no origin in Palestine “whatsoever” and Israeli children who visit Auschwitz return home to “mimic SS barbarity.” And perhaps most shockingly, Atzmon states that one day people “may be bold enough” to argue that “Hitler was right after all.” This is just a small sample of the book’s outrageous claims.

A few months ago I tried to have all copies of The Wandering Who? removed from libraries in Manchester, which is home to Britain’s second-largest and fastest-growing Jewish community. But because the book “has not incurred penalties under the law,” the city council says “it should not be excluded from libraries on any moral, political, religious or racist ground alone to satisfy any sectional interest.” Apparently, Manchester city council believe that the book is a legitimate expression of “human experience and activity.” I will, of course, try again to have all copies removed from the city’s libraries on the grounds that such blatant anti-semitism does not serve the public interest and may actually incite hatred or violence against the Jewish community.

It is troubling that Atzmon’s books are available in British public libraries (and elsewhere). His texts are useful fodder for far-right extremists, far-left radicals and Islamic fundamentalists. But I am cheered by the fact that many Palestinian activists and left-wingers have condemned Atzmon and want nothing to do with him. Indeed, Atzmon’s views are so repellent that even the Guardian newspaper has removed his book from its site(!)

Following the publication of The Wandering Who in 2011, ten anti-Zionist authors wrote to the publisher to complain that “the thrust of Atzmon’s work is to normalize and legitimize anti-Semitism.” Moreover, a number of Palestinian intellectuals wrote to Atzmon himself, saying: “We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities.”

Of course, it is possible that some in the Palestinian camp have no choice but to distance themselves from Atzmon because such blatant anti-Semitism hurts their cause. Indeed, there there have been “some factional splits” on the Left, with some people still defending him. This is to be expected, I suppose. The Left is always disintegrating and reforming behind some cultish personality. But I did not expect the BBC World Service to take Atzmon’s side.

A few weeks ago, Atzmon was invited by the World Service to take part in a discussion on music and politics. Julian Woricker, who presented the program, claimed to be familiar with Atzmon’s writings but did nothing to challenge Atzmon. In fact, Woricker seemed incredulous that anyone would think his guest was anti-Semitic! The fact that the broadcaster – a supposedly mainstream and impartial news organization, funded by the British taxpayer, – invited Atzmon into the heart of the BBC is a disgrace.

II

The reasons for Atzmon’s self-hatred are no doubt complex. Historian Bernard Lewis believes that Jewish self-hate is a neurotic reaction to gentile anti-Semitism, whereby the victim incorporates, articulates and amplifies the views of the dominant culture. Well, this is nothing new. The burning of the Talmud in the 13th century was at the behest of a Jewish apostate to Christianity. Karl Marx authored a work called “On the Jewish Question” Jews and asserted that usury was the “object of the Jew’s worship.” Among the most notable Jewish self-haters is American publisher and pornographer Samuel Roth (who died in 1974), whose 325-page anti-Semitic diatribe Jews Must Live: an Account of the Persecution of the World by Israel on All Frontiers of Civilization, published in 1930, was quoted at Nazi rallies and is held in high esteem by modern-day white supremacist groups.

According to Rabbi Yisroel Cohen (Chabad Lubavitch, Manchester), Jewish self-hatred is as old as the Jewish people. Of course, there are various spiritual and psychological explanations for the phenomenon, he explained. Plus, there are midrashic sources which say that “no nation can gain an upper hand over the Jewish nation without having support from within.”

This chimes with the view of Netta Kohn Dor-Shav, a US-born clinical psychologist now at Bar Ilan University in Israel, who warns: “It is fair to say that the plague of Jewish self-hatred is more dangerous for the survival of the Jewish people than any outside threat.” In a report for the Ariel Center for Policy Research, she concludes that such self-hatred “fuels a vicious cycle that can lead to disaster and dissolution of the Jewish people and the Jewish State.”

The CST points out that “expressions of anti-Semitism in public discourse remain a serious issue of concern as they exacerbate hostile attitudes towards Jews.” The CST is absolutely correct. But I would also add that “such expressions of anti-Semitism” legitimizes extreme violence against the State of Israel and Israel individuals. Anti-Semitic language easily translates into Hamas rockets or Islamic suicide-bombers. If I had the money, I’d bet a million pounds that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has read The Wandering Who? and has absorbed the book’s claims into his own rhetoric against Israel. Today’s verbal bombast is tomorrow’s nuclear missile aimed at Tel Aviv.

Anyone who cares about ending anti-Semitism should urge the BBC and other broadcasters not to collaborate with Atzmon. Tell mainstream newspapers that it’s unacceptable to print Atzmon’s anti-Semitic articles. Write to publishers, libraries and booksellers, and encourage them not to publish or stock Atzmon’s hateful texts. Zionist or anti-Zionist, each of us has the ability to help push Atzmon’s obscene opinions into the gutter where they belong.

Walking with Noah

The recent Torah portion, Noach, (Genesis 6:9-11:32), is an important reminder that any individual, Jew or gentile, has a place in this world and in the world to come.

The story of Noah is particularly important to those gentiles who refer to themselves as B’nai Noach (literally, children of Noah) and follow the Seven Noahide Laws, a set of principles that are a divine blueprint for ethical living.

For thousands of years, there has been a belief that all men and women are bound by a universal code of morality. Following the Deluge, HaShem renews His relationship with creation in its entirety and promises to never again to “cut off” all flesh with the waters of a flood. In return, mankind must behave wisely and justly, and walk with HaShem.

According to Maimonides, six laws were commanded to Adam in the Garden of Eden. These were prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, sexual immorality  and theft, as well as the commandment to establish laws and courts of justice. To Noah, God reiterated the law against murder and added the prohibition against eating flesh from a living animal, sometimes interpreted as behaving compassionately towards animals.

This universal and ancient code was arguably the faith of Noah, Shem, Abram, Job and possibly even Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law. These great men had strong ethical beliefs, and enjoyed a fruitful relationship with HaShem. Noah’s son Shem, for example, is believed to have been Melchizedek, the King of Salem or Jerusalem. Melchizedek means “my king is righteousness” or “righteousness is my king.” As a priest, Melchizedek brought out bread and wine and blessed both Abram and G-d.

The Seven Laws of Noah were reiterated at Mount Sinai and form part of the 613 commandments given to the people of Israel. The reason for this is simple: the Jewish people were to safeguard these universal principles and to teach them to the nations. In other words, the Jews are a nation of priests tasked with bringing non-Jews into a relationship with HaShem. Jews themselves, of course, have their own particular covenant with HaShem as expressed in the Torah.

Judaism is not a religion which seeks converts. The rabbis clearly teach that non-Jews have the option of following the Seven Laws of Noah. Although conversion is not prohibited (far from it), it makes no difference in terms of that person’s “salvation.” Jew and gentile alike are loved by G-d and judged by their deeds, not by their religious affiliation.

When a gentile resolves to observe the Seven Laws, his or her soul is elevated. According to the rabbis, a non-Jews who commits himself to the Noahide Way becomes one of the “pious ones of the nations” and receives a share of the world to come, as well as blessings in this world.

The Noahide faith has nothing to do with creating another religion, which is forbidden in the Torah, but is about acknowledging  HaShem as the One G-d of both Jews and non-Jews, and recognizing that He is a righteous and loving G-d, Who is intimately concerned with His creation.

Noahidism is rapidly gaining in popularity in the West, especially among former Christians who wish to have a relationship with HaShem without the baggage of Christian dogma and two thousand years of Church-sanctioned anti-Semitism. In fact, not since the days of the Second Temple when G-d-fearing gentiles regularly attended synagogues throughout the diaspora, has the Torah played such an important part in the lives of non-Jews.

There are many Noahide groups and communities in the UK, Australia, parts of Europe, and throughout the US. In the early 1990s President George Bush Senior signed into law an historic Joint Resolution of both Houses of Congress recognizing the Seven Noachide Laws as the “bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization.”

Chabad Lubavitch has done the most in recent years to reach out to non-Jews. In 2006, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel met with a representative of Chabad to sign a declaration calling on all non-Jews in Israel to observe the Noahide Laws. A year later, Chabad brought together ambassadors from Poland, Japan, Ghana, Latvia, Mexico and Panama, who all championed the Noahide Laws.

In Manchester, England, where I live, Chabad has been prominent. Hasidic Jews are often seen handing out leaflets to passers-by. There is now a small Noahide study group, which gathers every week to discuss the Torah and Halachic matters. I am glad to say I am one of the participants in this group.

The majority of Noahides are very supportive of the State of Israel and are on the frontline in the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in their own countries. Most Noahides have their own blessings and prayers (written by orthodox rabbis) and have turned away from pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Some Noahides attend synagogues and most, if not all, study under trained rabbis. In 2005, the scholar Rabbi Moshe Weiner of Jerusalem started work on an in-depth codification of the Noahide precepts. Published three years later, Sefer Sheva Mitzvot HaShem (“The Book of Seven Divine Commandments”) has been approved by the chief rabbis of Israel, as well as other halachic authorities.

As a Noahide I am proud to be part of a growing movement which seeks to restore the faith of Noah and Shem. I am also gratified to be considered a friend of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. But mostly I am glad to have heeded Jeremiah 6:16, which speak of a journey of righteousness and a life of fidelity towards HaShem: “This is what the Lord says:

‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls’.”

The Noahide Way truly is the ancient path.

Time to recapture the Temple Mount

Recent reports of Arabs throwing stones on Temple Mount and the ongoing harassment of Jewish worshippers during Sukkot tells me that liberating Judaism’s holiest site from Muslim occupation is long overdue.

The government’s appeasement of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, which controls the Temple Mount, is an affront to the Jewish people. After all, the Temple Mount is where HaShem chose to rest the Divine Presence.

It is a disgrace that Jews are abused and pelted with stones. It is a scandal that Jews are subject to expulsion by the police if they are caught openly praying on the Temple Mount.

Earlier this year, a young British Jewish student was accosted by Waqf officials, who demanded that he remove his yarmulke, which they said they found to be “offensive.” The student later told reporters that while he has experienced anti-Semitism in England, he “never thought that in Judaism’s holiest site I would be subjugated to such discrimination.”

Meanwhile, the Waqf allows illegal digging to take place. In the process, valuable artifacts and important historical remnants from the two Jewish temples are being thrown away. It is clear that this is an attempt to disconnect the people of Israel from their inheritance.

UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, has done nothing to prevent such blatant cultural and historical vandalism. Not only is this shameful, it is a violation of its promise to “create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values.”

It is patently clear that non-Jews cannot be trusted to protect Jewish sites. Following Jordan’s occupation of Judea and Samaria, the Arabs went to great efforts to erase Jewish history. The graveyard on the Mount of Olives was desecrated and all but one of the thirty five synagogues in the Old City were destroyed.

It is obvious that Islamic control of the Temple Mount is motivated by politics, not religion. During the Jordanian occupation, no foreign Arab leader came to pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque. The fact that Muslims continue to pray with their backsides toward the Temple Mount is an affront to HaShem and the Jewish people.

While it is still forbidden for Jews to set foot upon the actual location of the Holy Temple, the rabbinic prohibition against visiting the Tempe Mount is giving way to a heartfelt desire to reincorporate the site into Jewish religious life. It is significant that a number of rabbis have visited the complex, as well as schoolchildren.

Therefore, it is time for Israel to once again make history and recapture the Temple Mount. Whether this can be achieved without causing another intifada remains to be seen. But the symbolic importance of taking control should not be underestimated. It would send a clear message to the Palestinians (and to the world) that Jerusalem is a Jewish city and will never be divided.