Archive for June, 2010
Avoiding “Negatives” about Israel
Jun 21st
by James M. Hutchens
Romans chapters 9-11 of Paul’s letter to the Gentile followers of Jesus Christ in Rome, is God’s definitive word about Jews and Israel in the New Testament. At the same time it voices some admonitions to Gentiles about potentially negative attitudes on their part – some significant “Don’ts” that we do well to avoid.
Romans 9-11 follows one of the clearest statements in the Bible about the confident security of our eternal salvation that we have as the beloved people of God. Romans 8:31-39 proclaims: “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died–more than that, who was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now if this is true of us who confess Christ, and we most certainly do believe it is, then what are we to make of the “everlasting covenants” that God has promised to the Jews? Are they no longer in effect? Have they been so completely fulfilled in Christ that they have no continuing validity for Jews? Has God, in fact, totally rejected the Jews because of their sin, unbelief and disobedience? Paul answers these questions in Romans 9-11.
In summary, Paul connects God’s continuing work with the Jewish people with Isaiah’s prophecy concerning “the remnant.” “Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.” [Romans 9:27 quoting from Isaiah 10:22.]
Paul further identifies himself with this “remnant” when he says, “I ask then, did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people. …So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.” [Romans 11:1-2, 5.] Finally, Paul sees the “remnant” as being the present continuation of the faith of the Patriarchs and the covenant community that he identifies as the “root” in the Olive Tree metaphor of Romans 11:17-24.
Paul tells us in Romans 11:25, the Olive Tree metaphor is a mystery. What is this mystery? The mystery now being unveiled is that Gentiles who believe are now grafted into the “root” or the “remnant.” In Ephesians 3:6 Paul states the new mystery relationship this way, “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” We must note that believing Gentiles do not become physical Jews in this new mystery relationship, however they do have a spiritual “citizenship in Israel – fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.” [Ephesians 2:12, 19.] This new mystery relationship appears to be what Paul is referring too when he speaks of the “Israel of God.” [Galatians 6:16.]
However, in the Olive Tree metaphor of Romans 11:17-24, Gentile believers are referred to as a “wild olive shoot” that has been “grafted in” to the original olive root, in other words, the believing Jewish remnant. It is at this point that Paul gives his admonitions against negative haughty attitudes evidently existing in his day and expressed by believing Gentiles toward Jews. In giving these admonitions he is anticipating these same attitudes that are pervasive today among Gentile believers. There are four admonitions.
The first, “do not boast,” is found in verse 18. This speaks to a prideful attitude that sees Gentile believers or Christians as superior to Jews and in some cases as having replaced them as the covenant people of God. Paul declares that no such replacement has taken place. He further clarifies by saying in effect, “let’s get one thing straight,” “You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” That is to say, we as Gentile believers are dependent on our Jewish spiritual linkage, not vice versa.
The second, “do not be arrogant,” is found in verse 20. The word used here means “high minded” or having a superior and condescending attitude on the part of Gentiles to Jews. Paul’s warning here is indeed a stern and solemn one. God did not put up with arrogant, disobedient and obnoxiously unbelieving Jews in the past. Be careful! He will put up with you only if you continue in His kindness and grace.
The third, “do not be ignorant,” is found in verse 25. Here the Apostle is calling for knowledge and understanding of the “mystery.” What mystery? Clearly the context is speaking of the mystery of the Olive Tree. Paul is obviously referring to the mystery, heretofore unknown, but now revealed, namely, “that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” [Ephesians 3:6.] Paul is speaking to a problem that pervades the Gentile believing community today and it is one of ignorance. We simply don’t have the first clue that we are inseparably linked to our Jewish root. As such we are like an orphan who doesn’t know who his parents are. It is a matter of gross ignorance based on lack of clear knowledge from God’s Word.
The fourth, “do not be conceited,” is also found in verse 25. Literally the words mean, do not be “wise in yourself” or have an attitude of “self-exalting wisdom.” The question is, about what? The answer is, about the role and goal of salvation for both Israel and the Gentiles. Paul refers to both when he says, “Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” That is to say, the day is coming when the remnant of Israel will be significantly enlarged by ethnic Jews and will include the full number of Gentiles that have come in, and in this way, “all Israel will be saved.”
Until that time, Paul’s admonitions to Gentile believers remain in effect. Basically, these admonitions or “Don’ts” are directed against a willful and prideful ignorance on the part of Gentile believers in Christ regarding their vital and inseparable connection with Jews as a people as well as the believing Jewish remnant. Since it is impossible to know what Jews will ultimately constitute that remnant, we are exhorted to follow Paul’s further admonition:
“Just as you were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they to have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.” [Romans 11:30-31.]
Of all the plans to enlarge the Jewish remnant, proactively showing them mercy appears to be the Biblical means of moving them to jealousy and envy and avoiding the “Don’ts” of Romans 11.
Turkish Delight – But not for the Oppressed
Jun 20th
by Victor Sharpe, Familysecuritymatters.org
In 1974, a flotilla set sail from Turkey. No, it wasn’t destined for the Gaza coast carrying thugs and jihadists masquerading as human rights activists – as ill armed Israeli commandos discovered to their cost. No, this was a flotilla of naval ships sailing towards Cyprus as a fully-fledged invasion force, illegally employing U.S. arms and equipment.
Later, after Greek Cypriot resistance had been crushed in the north of the island, Turkish forces began to ethnically cleanse almost half of the island from its Greek population, The Turkish military employed hundreds of U.S. tanks and airplanes and 35,000 ground troops, with the result being a land grab by Turkey of 37.3% of Cyprus. Turkey later sent additional flotillas to the island; ships containing 150,000 Turkish settlers who proceeded to colonize the land after some 200,000 Greeks had been driven out and made into refugees.
The capital city of Cyprus, Nicosia, remains today a city divided with barbed wire marking the border like an ugly scar. Though relatively quiet today, pockmarks still cover the walls where bullets struck civilians and snipers held sway. This was how Jerusalem and its Jewish residents also suffered during the illegal Jordanian occupation from 1948 until 1967. This division of the city left its eastern half and the biblical and ancestral Jewish homeland of Judea and Samaria, known by the world as the West Bank, under Arab occupation.
In 1948, the Jewish population of Jerusalem’s Old City were expelled by the British officered Jordanian Arab Legion. Only in 1967 were they able to reclaim their homes throughout the eastern half of the Holy City, including the ravaged Jewish Quarter, after Israel was forced to fight a defensive war against Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Fifty seven ancient synagogues had been desecrated by the Arabs and Jewish gravestones in the Mount of Olives were torn up and used as latrines by the Arab Legion.
Just as now Nicosia is a city divided against itself, so too was Jerusalem before its liberation and reunification. In Cyprus, churches were desecrated and left in ruins. Cyprus and Israel both now endure Turkish aggression. Turkey, with its new found Islamic triumphalism and alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran, has become a threat to the Jewish state and has become even more obdurate towards any hope of a peaceful settlement with the Greeks in divided Cyprus.
It is interesting to note that just as Britain held and abused the terms of the Palestine Mandate conferred upon it with the express agreement to establish within much of its borders a Jewish National Home, so too did Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus. Its use of the terms Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot came to be viewed as a classic “divide and rule” tactic.
Britain and the U.S. helped formulate in the United Nations what became known as the Annan Plan, named for the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. But this plan was grossly unfair to the Greek population of the island. Most problematic was the document’s inability or unwillingness to address the core issue: Turkey’s original and premeditated invasion and aggression.
During their reign, the Ottoman Turks occupied vast areas of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, southern Russia, the Balkans and Greece including Cyprus. They held their empire from 1517 to 1917 and in that time, as Islamic states have always done to their non-Muslim populations, treated them as dhimmis; discriminated against, second class citizens.
Throughout the long years of occupation, the dhimmis often suffered horrendous crimes committed against them, including in Cyprus. For example, massacres of Cypriot civilians occurred throughout the island and in the city of Famagusta a massacre of the Greek Christian population took place with the public hanging of Archbishop Kyprianos, three Bishops, and Greek Cypriot dignitaries in Nicosia.
Many Christians and Jews were treated as second class citizens with no right to hold office in the Ottoman state. They were discriminated against and forced to pay the jizya, the onerous tax paid by all “infidels” to the Muslim authorities. It was, and remains in some Muslim territories, a veritable protection racket enshrined in Sharia law.
Some Jews who faced expulsion or conversion in Spain and Portugal during the Catholic Inquisition of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 and thereafter, converted in mass public events to remain in the Iberian peninsula. However, most concealed their Jewish faith in order to retain their beliefs. Similarly, many Greek Christians in the mainland and in Cyprus converted to Islam but secretly these “Linovamvakoi” continued to worship in underground churches and keep Greek culture alive.
In 1878, the Turks sold Cyprus to the British in order to replenish their dwindling financial reserves. Turkey was already fast becoming known as the “sick man of Europe” and would later ally itself with Germany during the First World War, resulting in the destruction of the Ottoman Turkish empire and the liberation of vast territories – including the liberation in 1917 of Jerusalem.
The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne ended any notion of a legitimate Turkish claim to the overwhelmingly Greek populated island. After World War 2, many British territories began to seek their independence from the Crown. In 1947, the Indian sub-continent was partitioned between the largely Hindu state of India and a smaller bifurcated Islamic state of East and West Pakistan. The result was a bloody conflict between the two religions. East Pakistan later became present day Bangladesh.
In Mandatory Palestine, a territory which had never existed in all of recorded history as an independent, and certainly not an Arab independent state, the Jewish community had supported Britain during the war against Nazi Germany, but had also struggled for its own independence in the tiny territory left to them after Britain’s earlier betrayal of the Mandate in 1921/22. In this, Britain arbitrarily removed from the Mandate the relatively vast territory east of the River Jordan extending to the borders of the newly formed Iraqi state; creating yet another artificial Arab state – now known as the Kingdom of Jordan.
The Cypriot people also demanded to be freed of the British yoke following the example of other Crown Colonies and territories. But Turkey reneged on the earlier treaties and a campaign of Muslim violence and a land grab was instituted, funded by Turkey.
Cyprus finally gained its independence from Britain on 16th August 1960. In December 1963, Turkey sent commandos into northern Cyprus. Despite UN and international condemnation, Turkey mounted indiscriminate air strikes using chemical weapons and napalm on civilians. And in 1974, we know what took place – a full scale Turkish invasion.
In a moral world it would be eloquent justice for flotillas containing true humanitarians to sail towards Turkey to publicly demand restoration of the national integrity of Cyprus and removal of all Turkish military occupation; of the rights of the Kurdish people for an independent State of Kurdistan; of full admittance of the horrors perpetrated against the Armenian people; and for Turkey to come to its senses regarding the embattled State of Israel by accepting the Jewish state’s inalienable right to defend itself against Arab and Islamist aggression emanating from Gaza.
To this day Turkey is ratcheting up its Islamic ambition to restore the old hateful Ottoman Turkish empire and Caliphate instead of showing any remorse for the atrocities that it and the Ottoman Empire perpetrated against the occupied non-Muslim peoples. It refuses to accept any recognition or acknowledgment of its crimes against humanity in the past and in the present.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration, the United Nations, and a deeply immoral world looks on in silence as yet another flotilla of lies and violence prepares to set sail from Turkey and Iran to create a maritime pipeline of advanced and ever lethal missiles for Hamas in Gaza to use against Israeli civilians.
This article was originally published on FamilySecurityMatters.org. Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Volumes One and Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
A guide to the perplexed
Jun 20th
by Victor Sharpe
I was asked by a friend recently to assist a Christian Zionist lady who had received some anti-Israel propaganda at her church and was perplexed and swayed by the opposing points of view she was reading. I have taken the liberty of using as my title the same one used in the great work of Moses Maimonides who clarified Jewish law during medieval times. I have used only the first letter of the lady’s name and replied to her as follows:
Dear C, Israel is the ancestral and biblical homeland of the Jewish people. Not only is it their spiritual homeland but they are the indiginous, native people of the land. Simply read the Bible. It is not only the word of Almighty God but a remarkable and accurate history book. Though Arab propagandists attempt to accuse Israel of rejecting peace, the facts are that the reborn Jewish state has offered repeatedly to make the enormous sacrifice of sharing its tiny land – no larger than Wales or New Jersey – with its Arab neigbors, but this has been rejected time and time again.
The tragedy is that those Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, do not want to live in a state side by side with Israel – they want a state instead of Israel. The ultimate tragedy for the world is that wherever the Muslim foot has trod triumphal – as in the 7th century Arab invasion of the Jewish homeland – that land is forever considered in Islam as part of the Umma, the Muslim community, and, if lost, must be recovered through endless war. Thus, while it remains free of Muslim occupation it is considered in the Dar al-Harb, the House of War.
This means that Islam will not permit any non-Muslim state to exist in land the Muslims consider was once theirs. The same applies to Spain and Portugal, which once were conquered by Muslim armies, along with vast areas of France, Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, Southern Russia, Greece – even up to the very gates of Vienna in Austria. All these territories were once invaded and conquered by Muslim armies and must be returned to Islam according to Islamic teaching.
I merely write the above so that you will see that whatever Israel offers the Arab and Muslim world in a heartfelt plea for peace it will always be rebuffed and rejected. The terrible proof of this is the breathtaking concession that Israel made in 2005. It took the immense risk for peace and left the Gaza Strip for the Arabs to begin creating a nascent and peaceful nation, which would hopefully build schools, libraries and hospitals and all the trappings of a civilized and democratic state.
Israel’s government at the time even forcibly removed the 10,000 Jewish villagers from their productive farms throughout the Gaza Strip and left the greenhouses and agricultural infrastructure behind for the Arabs to use. Instead, the farms were trashed and the remaining synagogues desecrated. Meanwhile the exiled Jews still live as refugees inside Israel. Shortly after, the Islamist Hamas organization, which calls in its charter for the slaughter of the Jews in Israel and the destruction of the reborn Jewish homeland, launched a bloody civil war against the Fatah organization and occupied the Gaza territory.
Immediately, Hamas began to fire missiles into Israeli scholls, kindergartens and civilian homes. To date, Hamas has launched over 12,000 rockets into Israeli villages and towns and continues to smuggle in ever lethal and advanced weapons to kill and maim Israeli civilians. Israel’s amazingly risky decision to leave Gaza and help the Arabs to create the beginnings of a viable and peaceful state were torn to shreds by the Hamas and Islamic jihad terror machine, which now has given the world empirical proof that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians want NO peace with Israel ever.
One vital matter you must also understand is that there has never, in all of recorded history, been an independent – let alone Arab independent – state of Palestine. That word was created and employed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who destroyed the Jewish homeland in 135 AD, and who renamed it Philistia, which morphed into Palestina and Palestine, because he knew that the ancient and hated enemies of the Jewish people were the Philistines and he chose to insult the surviving Jews by changing the name of their homeland thus.
The land remained merely a geographical territory in name only, just as Siberia and Patagonia for example are not independent nations but merely geographical regions. Despite an endless succession of alien occupiers, Jews always remained in the land in whatever numbers they could sustain. Wherever Jews lived throughout the long years of dispersion, Israel was and is always a focal point in the synagogue service. The very agricultural cycles of Israel are celebrated in various Jewish harvest festivals.
No other people has such an inextricable religious and national relationship with the Promised Land; a special place that the first Jew, Abraham, was led to by God and through Isaac and Jacob – not Ishmael – became a special people unto the Lord. In time, Moses, the Lawgiver, led the Jews from Egyptian bondage back to the Promised Land and the biblical narrative proceeds from there.
C, please do not be swayed by emotional claims from the Arab world, and from those in your church who would deceve you as they have themselves been deceived, unless you can find the truth and the proof to back up their statements. Feel free to run them by me at any time if it helps. I will certainly be willing to answer your questions.
Best wishes, and because you want to understand and learn, let me write in Hebrew this honorific:
Kol HaKavod (All honor to you).
Victor Sharpe
Israeli and Kurdish victims of Turkey
Jun 17th
by Victor Sharpe
Sometime ago, before Turkey chose to lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamism, I received a plea from a Kurdish friend who remains supportive of Israel’s epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He is also devoted to the Jewish people for he knows of the shared ethnicities believed to exist between Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.
Here is some of my Kurdish friend’s impassioned letter from two years ago, which uncannily warned against any alliance with Turkey:
“I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel’s cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?
“Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah (he used the Hebrew term for the Holocaust — VS) and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.
“Of course it’s not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.
“We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same pestilence of anti-Semitism that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.
“I remember your moving article in which you categorically made clear that the people who truly deserve an independent sovereign state are the Kurds; not the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. I also feel deeply that one day there will be an abiding and honorable alliance between the Jewish state and a free and independent Kurdistan. But arming Turkey, our people’s oppressor, is morally and geographically not to Israel’s advantage. Israel’s cooperation with Turkey is, in reality, a misguided support for political Islam and its oppression of the Kurds. It undermines Israel’s credibility with the only true friend it has in the Middle East.”
Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend’s warning at the time was.
Turkey is now an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people. In a previous letter, as Turkish troops were invading Kurdistan and jet aircraft were bombarding Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, my friend was more pointed in his criticism of the Israeli leadership’s shortsightedness. He defended without question what he called, “Israel’s cause and the undying truth that Jews are the rightful owners of the historic Jewish lands — now partially occupied by the Arabs. But he also pointed out that, “the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change….”
Coincidentally, Ruth King, a freelance writer who is a columnist for several magazines, urged those who read, “feelgood stories about Turkey” to remember the ship, Struma. In 1941, while carrying 769 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi German killing machine, it was not permitted to land in Turkey and sank with appalling loss of life.
With the reality of Israel’s reconstitution as a sovereign nation in its ancestral and biblical homeland has come the equal reality of its uniqueness and isolation within a hostile world.
The rush to bash Israel by hypocritical national leaders and the falsehoods perpetrated by international news agencies such as the Associated Press (AP) despite the video tapes and pictures showing pipe wielding, masked thugs, screaming “kill the Jews,” while beating up Israeli soldiers — armed at first only with paint ball guns — is despicable. Thugs, Islamists, and jihadists claiming to be “peace” activists aboard a Turkish ferry boat, with the Turkish Prime Minister’s own direct collaboration, should be an indictment of Turkey, not Israel. But this is not a moral world.
The international outpouring of imbecilic hatred towards the embattled Jewish state for merely trying to defend its citizens from a future maritime pipeline delivering lethal weapons and deadly missiles into Gaza to be used to kill Jewish civilians is one of the most depressing indictments of humanity. In this, Israel shares with the Kurds a familial fate. Both endure relentless aggression from their neighbors. Even though it lives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends, Israel must not evade its unique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors — especially Iran, Syria, and last but not least, Turkey.
The Jewish state, now undergoing what individual Jews endured for centuries — a bloody and irrational persecution – must now, more than ever, not ignore the Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries but have been denied; an independent state of their own.
According to an article titled “Can Israel make it alone?” written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: “Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests — like survival.” With the stark reality now of a profoundly less friendly Obama Administration, it is more important than ever to see what he wrote: “If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances.”
Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. It has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is desolating to watch. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.
The Turkish regime is allowing ant-Semitic films and documentaries to be broadcast relentlessly, thus poisoning the minds of both its secular and Islamist population. One need only hark back to the demonization and vilification spewed against the Jews for years under Hitler in Nazi Germany to see how most Germans behaved and what horrors resulted.
Whether or not President Barack Obama continues to act negatively towards the Jewish state, any new Israeli alliances should include the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. That may be the silver lining from the present international flotilla of xenophobic hatred presently sailing towards Israel’s shores.
Victor Sharpe is the author of Volumes One and Two of Politicde: The attempted murder of the Jewish state, available at LuluPress or on Amazon.com
Indigenous Christians of Israel
Jun 17th
By Shelley Neese
Visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and you are bound to notice a short ladder resting on a second story window ledge. You can also see it in century old photographs and art in the exact same position it is today. On the surface the ladder bears testimony to the disunity of Israel’s Christian community, but scratch the surface and the ladder becomes a symbol of something altogether different—a story of endurance.
There are many legends concerning the origins of this immovable ladder but the general agreement is that the ladder was placed there by the Armenians in the early 19th century. In 1852 the Ottoman Sultan enforced the Status Quo, a rigid division of rights and property between the Church’s six competing denominations. With the Status Quo—which is still enforced today—every stair, icon, and corner and every menial chore has a designated custodian that possessively guards their turf and privileges. Under the Status Quo no part of the designated “common ground” can be changed even slightly without the consent of all the denominations. Windows and ledges fell under “common ground,” leaving the ladder untouched until the religious orders agree—for the sake of the Church façade—on moving the eyesore.
Another example of denominational rivalry at this Holy Shrine is the 12-inch iron key that controls the Church’s single entrance. For the past 816 years the owners of this key have been two neighboring Muslim families. These families meet at an exact time twice a day with the key in hand to lock and unlock the massive wooden doors. The Church can only be locked from the outside. This arrangement was originally assigned by Saladin in 1192. By allowing a neutral party to assume control of the key, the Sultan hoped to bring peace between the jealous factions whose disputes commonly turned violent.
As the Church of the Holy Sepulchre vividly demonstrates, talking about the “Indigenous Christians of Israel” is hardly referring to a monolithic group. They neither speak with one voice nor act as one movement. Israel’s Christians maintain a strong degree of heterogeneity along ethnic, cultural, and denominational lines. The Christians of Israel—consisting of at least 20 ancient churches and 30 Protestant denominational groups—are a microcosm of Christianity at large.
Survey of Christians in Israel Christians constitute 2.1 percent of Israel’s total population, putting their numbers around 148,000. This statistic does not include Christians under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria. The great majority (around 80 percent) of Israel’s Christians are Arabic-speaking and indigenous to the region. They are Christian Arabs who after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 stayed inside Israel’s new borders and became citizens of the new Jewish state.
Many of these indigenous Christians have lineages that go back to the early periods of Christianity. The Greek Orthodox have historical roots in the region from the days of the Byzantines. The Armenians have had a heavy presence in Jerusalem since the 5th century. The Syrian Orthodox claim an unbroken presence in Jerusalem since the 6th century. The Egyptian Copts built churches near the Holy Places in the ninth century. Roman Catholics came over with the Crusaders in 1099. The Protestant churches did not come to Israel until the 19th century when the Western powers revived their interest in the Holy Land.
Most Christian Arabs in Israel are affiliated with one of the traditional Christian confessions. 42 percent are Greek Catholic; 32 percent are Greek Orthodox; and 16 percent are Roman Catholic. Other confessions in Israel include the Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Catholic, Maronites, Melkites, and Egyptian Copts. Of Israel’s 7,000 resident Protestants, the largest group by far is the Anglicans (4500). There are a host of other Protestant denominational groups including Lutherans (700), Baptist (900), and Evangelicals (400).
State of Affairs
In 1949 there were 34,000 Christian Arabs living inside Israel. Over the last 60 years the population has more than tripled. This stands in stark contrast to the Christian communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza where Christians have been emigrating at alarming rates, particularly after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. There Christians have dropped from 15 percent of the population to just 1.3 percent today. Bethlehem, the place of Christ’s birth, has gone from 80% Christian to 80% Muslim. From 1997 to 2002, the Christian population in the West Bank declined 29 percent and in the Gaza Strip it went down 20 percent. In roughly the same period from 19952003, the Christian Arab population in Israel grew 14.1 percent (CAMERA, Dec. 24, 2004).
Almost everywhere else in the Middle East the Christian community is in decline. In the Middle East as a whole 2 million Christians have fled in the last 20 years. Given current trends, many Church leaders are concerned that in a matter of decades Christians in the Middle East will be on the verge of extinction. Israel—the only place in the region where the Christian community has grown in the last half century—is the exception.
Rights and Freedoms
Christians in Israel enjoy the inherent advantages of living in a democratic pluralistic society where they are guaranteed many rights and freedoms. The different religious communities are free to observe their own holy days and days of rest. They have freedom of worship and access to the Christian Holy Places.
Christians in Israel vote and are active in the political arena. They receive compulsory education and attend Israel’s public universities. Israel’s Christians are characterized by low levels of unemployment (even lower than the Jewish population) and high levels of education. They are generally middle class and live in urban areas. 70% of Israel’s Christian Arabs are concentrated in the Galilee, chiefly Nazareth where they make up over a quarter of the population.
On statistical analysis, the Christian Arabs of Israel more closely resemble the Jewish population than the Muslim population. This is true economically and educationally and it is also the case in their birth rates and housing patterns. According to Daphne Tsimhoni, an expert on Christians in Israel:
“The average number of births for a Christian woman is 2.6, a little lower than that of a Jewish woman (2.7) and far lower than that of a Muslim Arab (4.8 per woman). In 1998 the average Christian household had 3.6 members per unit, a little higher than the Jewish 3.2 and by far lower than the Muslim household (5.4 per family). The average Christian finished twelve years of schooling, compared with the average Muslim who finished nine.”(1)
Concerns and Dilemmas
After acknowledging the ways Christians are flourishing in Israel, it would be amiss to overlook their unique dilemmas as well. For the Christian Arabs in Israel, they are a minority within a minority in a majority Jewish state. Many Christians in Israel say their community struggles to maintain their identity. Being Christian, they will always be viewed suspiciously by Muslim Arabs as potential collaborators with Israel. Being Arab, they will never fully integrate into the Jewish state. Being Christian Arab, they often feel rejected by the wider, particularly Western, Christian world.
Christian Arabs generally find common ground with their Muslim counterparts in their support for Palestinian nationalism and resentment of Israel’s identification as a Jewish state. The most critical Christian spokespeople are the Arab church notables, like Rev. Naim Ateek and the Latin Patriarch Michael Sabbah. The public utterances of these church leaders and their persistent condemnations of the “occupation” are intended to embarrass the Israeli government. Israel has on more than one occasion asked the Vatican to restrain Sabbah’s rhetoric but to no avail. The lay Christian Arabs choose to express their discontent through political and legislative channels. From 1950 until the mid 1970s, Christians accounted for about 50 percent of the Arab members of Knesset, far exceeding their proportion in the population (2).
As for Christian Arabs relations with their co-citizens in Israel, tensions between Christians and Muslim have mounted since the 1980s but particularly over the last eight years. The second intifada and its emphasis on violent resistance alienated Christians operationally. Though many Christian Arabs speak critically of Israel they do not engage in political violence. There has never been a Christian suicide bomber in Israel (3) nor are there any Christians in Israeli jails suspected of terrorism (4). With the electoral victory of Hamas and its takeover of Gaza, Christians are also put on the defensive ideologically. The Palestinian national movement has become an Islamic movement where at best Christians are merely tolerated and at worst they suffer the same fate of Rami Khader Ayyad, owner of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore who was murdered in October. The intentions of the Islamic movement are uncomfortably clarified in the common Palestinian grafitti: “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.”
In regards to Christian-Jewish relations, despite Christian Arabs’ often pro-Palestinian stance, they tend to have a low level of social conflict with Jews. They coexist well in mixed Jewish-Arab towns like Haifa where Christians often prefer to live because of the stronger Western influence. While there is no formal segregation, there are obvious patterns of self-segregation. Christian Arabs speak Hebrew as a second language and have adapted to Israeli culture.
Most importantly, Christians may sympathize with Palestinians under the Palestinian Authority but they believe their own future is tied to Israel. This was best demonstrated in 2004 when the Sharon government was flirting with the idea of ceding the Galilee Triangle, which is mostly Arab, to the Palestinian Authority; 90% of the Arab residents (Christian and Muslim) said they wanted to stay in Israel.
Future
Christians have been a permanent fixture of the religious landscape in the region for 2,000 years. From the preaching of Peter at Pentecost through the successive foreign occupations to present day in the Jewish state, Christians have shown enormous staying power in the Holy Land. Though the outlook for Christians in the rest of the Middle East seems bleak, Christians in Israel are slowly growing and thriving. Christians in Israel who do not admit as much and publicly criticize the state at least acknowledge that they are only able to do so because they enjoy so many rights. One can only hope that one day Christian Arabs overcome the pressure exerted on them by their Muslim counterparts and come to appreciate their status as the Middle East’s freest Christians.
When tour guides bring Christians to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, they inevitably point out the ladder on the second story window and the one-way lock on the Church doors. As they speak of these legends, the Christian groups blush from embarrassment at such petty examples of denominational dissension. But what they often do not appreciate is that the ladder and key have had such permanence because Christians are still there, still fighting, and creating workarounds. When that wooden ladder rots it is actually replaced with a new one. Once a year, the largest denominations at the Church submit an official request to win back the iron key. The ladder and key are actually symbols of stability that characterize the unbroken tradition of Christians living in the Holy Land.
(1) “Israel and the Territories Disappearance Disappearing Christians of the Middle East” by Daphne Tsimhoni. Middle East Quarterly (Winter 2001).
(2) Ibid.
(3) There were three Lebanese Christian Suicide Bombers during Lebanon’s Civil War in the 1980s. George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is often cited as an example of a Christian terrorist but Habash was more Communist than Christian.
(4) Archbishop Hilarion Capucci of the Greek Catholic church is the exception. He was caught smuggling arms for terrorists into Israel from Lebanon in the early 1970s and was imprisoned in Israel for three years.
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
Timeline 2010 to 2019
Jun 15th
by Bill Koenig
I will continue to add new information to our time line as it is discovered and revealed. Never before have we had so many biblically significant events evolving at such a rapid pace.
The peace talks in Israel could lead to the Daniel 9:27 seven-year peace covenant, and Benjamin Netanyahu could be the leader who would sign for Israel.
Major earth cycles pertaining to Israel, Jerusalem and the U.S. are beginning to occur in 2010 — with many converging in 2011; Eric Hadik has shared that with us, with more coming from him soon.
Accuweather’s Chief Hurricane Meteorologist Joe Bastardi predicts a total of 16-18 storms this hurricane season that begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30. To put that in perspective, only eight years in the 160 years of records have had 16 or more storms in a season.
The back-to-back ‘blood-red’ total lunar eclipses on the first day of Passover and Sukkoth in 2014 and 2015 is very significant. Three previous sets of back-to-back “blood-red” lunar eclipses occurred right after/or at the time of a very trying times for Jews — with the last two being at the time of two major wars in Israel.
The blood-red moons occurred on the first day of Passover and Sukkoth in the two years after the end of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 (1493-1494), the two years after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 (1949-1950), and the same year and the year after the Six-Day War in 1967 (1967-1968).
The 2014 and 2015 back-to-back “blood-red” moons on the first day of Passover and Sukkoth will be the last time this century and the eighth time since Jesus Christ was on earth.
The 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem falls on May 27, 2017 (Sivan 2, 5778).
The 70th anniversary of Israel’s statehood falls on April 20, 2018 (Iyar 5, 5779).
A major earthquake, fitting the 14-year pattern, is expected in 2018, which will be Israel’s 70th anniversary.
The Significance of the Time Frame
The peace talks in Israel are moving into a very serious stage; there is an increasing chance that a Psalm 83 war, a major conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas, could be near — which could lead to their demise and the possible fulfillment of Isaiah 17:1 pertaining to the destruction of Damascus.
The battle is intensifying over the city of Jerusalem; the relations of Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey are becoming more problematic; there is a rapid movement towards biometric IDs; and the world is quickly moving towards one-world financial, political and religious order and rapid moral decline.
One that calls for a response
Jun 3rd
Gary Bauer said: “The flotilla of boats intercepted by Israel this week flew the Turkish flag and was paid for by a “charity” deeply implicated in Islamic terrorism. But the Captain of the fleet was none other than Barack Hussein Obama. … The enemies of Israel and the U.S. are emboldened. They have taken the measurement of the man in the White House and have found him soft. That is why war looms on the horizon eighteen months into hope and change. And that is why the war’s outcome is very much in doubt.”
God says: “If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways, how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes. Those who hate Yahweh would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever.”… “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” [Psalm 81:13-15; 2:12].
The Jerusalem Connection says: 
The international lynching of Israel is a work in progress. We have only to see the recent “Gaza Flotilla” incident as an effort to further demonize Israel in world opinion. The tragedy is, it has been a huge success. Sadly, too many in the U.S. have jumped on the band wagon of those criticizing Israel. It’s not going to get better. War is inevitable. As a matter of fact the Scriptures indicate it will get a lot worse before it gets better. It will only get better when Israel cries out, “Blessed is he that comes in the name of Yahweh.” [Matthew 23:39]. Even sadder is the fact that many who are supposedly Israel’s strongest Christian supporters believe they won’t even be here when Israel will need us the most. While that will be a rude awakening for many, we should be encouraged by these words, “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus the Messiah. He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” [I Thessalonians 5:9-11].
A Frightening And Harrowing World
Jun 1st
by Victor Sharpe
Barack Hussein Obama, the President of our United States of America, hates Israel and always has. He also hates America as it is presently constituted and he will work to bring down both the reconstituted Jewish state in its ancient and biblical homeland along with this glorious republic that is America.
Before and since coming to power, this president has surrounded himself with people like Rashid Khalidi, a one-time spokesman for the Islamist Hamas terror organization and offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood: In other words, those who are Islamic haters of Jews and Christians and whose followers have committed persecutions and slaughters down the ages – and still do.
As a mirror image to the Muslim haters of the Jewish people, Obama also has surrounded himself with people like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whose perverted form of Christianity, along with elements of Replacement Theology, has also been responsible for anti-Jewish persecutions and slaughters down the ages.
As Mark Levin inferred in his Talk Radio program the other day, this Obama regime, the Democrat Party, and the grotesquely compliant Congress has made this world a much more dangerous place.
What are we to make, for instance, of our president calling the Turkish Prime Minister and expressing his condolences for the deaths of jihadist and Islamist thugs masquerading as “peace-activists” on board what I describe as “The Flotilla of Lies and Violence?” One word to describe Obama’s obeisance to the Turkish prime minister is: “shameful.”
But no outrage came from this president towards the activities of the Turkish leader who deliberately and cynically connived in sending a convoy of ships full of jihadists and their misguided supporters to aid and abet the murderous Hamas regime; a regime which calls for the genocide of the Jews in Israel and the destruction of the tiny and embattled Jewish state. For those “peace-loving activists” who were on board some of the ships, Lenin had a phrase for them: He called them, “useful idiots.”
Obama’s earlier outreach at Cairo to the Muslim world – a world of some 57 regimes, dictatorships, kingdoms, emirates and tyrannies, all stuck in the 7th century – was warning enough for those of us who still cherish the fundamental freedoms of expression, of the press, of free assembly, of religion and of the rights of women and minorities, that the United States of America has given us and the world.
These essential and divinely inspired freedoms do not exist in the Muslim world. Is it any wonder then that they hate us for not submitting to their rigid Islamic and Koranic strictures?
Let’s look at the Islamic, anti-Western IHH – the chief supporter of the flotilla to Gaza – which poses as a humanitarian relief fund (Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation), while supporting Hamas and several Jihadist organizations in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
IHH was involved with Ahmed Ressam, an Islamic terrorist, who attempted to smuggle 1,320 pounds of explosives and plant them at the Los Angeles International Airport. According to French intelligence, Bulent Yildirim, the president of IHH, recruited “Jihadi warriors” and transferred money, firearms and explosives to Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists in various countries.
He also ran “peace convoys” from Syria into the Fallujah Triangle in Iraq; convoys which carried IEDs and weapons used to kill American soldiers. It would seem inconceivable for President Obama or his State Department not to know this.
So now we have the Muslim world predictably calling for Israel to be isolated, to be made into a pariah state for the crime of trying to defend itself. Add to it the nations of that charnel house called Europe, which has spewed upon the world stage Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and before them an endless parade of monsters and despots. Most alarmingly of all, we now have the Obama regime and much of the western media siding more and more with the thugdoms and rogue regimes in this benighted, early 21st century world.
So inevitably Israel is being portrayed as brutal and unconcerned for the human rights of the militants on board the flotilla. Hamas and the many other Islamic terror organizations, who relentlessly commit unspeakable atrocities against the human rights of women and non-Muslims, are adept at masterfully playing the Western world, its press and governments, for the suckers they truly are.
The pro-Hamas flotilla of lies and violence was concerned not with genuine human rights but with providing the trigger and excuse for a future Arab and Muslim war of genocide against Israel. Just as Hitler’s Nazi regime systematically demonized the stateless and defenseless Jews as a precursor to the Holocaust, so the Muslim world and the immoral Europeans, and too many in America, repeat the storyline.
The end result is that Israel, as so often, is caught in a “No-Win” situation and must ultimately use force to stop the aggression and depredations of the Hamas terror organization. Whether Hamas and the Islamists unleash incessant rocket fire into Israeli towns and villages, kidnap Israelis, inflict terror attacks, or bring a flotilla of so-called “peace activists” to Gaza, Israel is brought to a position that it must act; to not do so is ultimately to commit national suicide.
It is worth repeating: Much of the mainstream press consistently refuses to accept or understand how they are being relentlessly manipulated by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamists and Jihadists.
We are witness today to the radical Left joining in an unholy alliance with the Islamic world and supporting the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria – all Muslim groups and states that will crush the Left if the worldwide Islamic Caliphate ever comes to power: And all joining gleefully in the anti-Israel hate-fest.
If any advice can be given to Jewish Americans and others it is to jettison ties with a Democrat party that has lurched so far to the left that it is unrecognizable as the Democrat party of their parents and grandparents time. The same goes for those Catholic and Protestant Americans whose values also are now being betrayed by both this president and the Democrats in the House and Senate.
The only hope is for citizens to realize that in America this November the election for House and Senate members is the most crucial that America has perhaps ever faced. Without a massive brake on the power of Obama’s agenda – and on those who surround him – we truly face a frightening and harrowing world.
Victor Sharpe is the author of the two volume book, Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
Recipe for a new blood libel
Jun 1st
By Stan Goodenough
I love watching Israel being exonerated. It has happened time and again over the years: Israel’s enemies falsely level blood libels against the Jews, the reflexively anti-Israel news media snatches and runs – exhilarated – with the story, spreading the perverted version of events far and wide. Sooner or later their “reporting” is shown to be inaccurate if not downright false, and Israel is absolved.
Not that this makes much difference to those who hate Zion(ism) – of course. But it is music to the ears and eyes of those who love Israel.
The attempt Monday morning by Israel’s navy to enforce its blockade of the Gaza Strip terrorist mini-state is just the latest example. There is no telling what distortions you may have heard, but let me lay out how it was.
Days ago two organizations – the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) – the latter known to have ties with internationally-recognized terrorist organizations – began making announcing their intention to sail a flotilla of boats towards Gaza in an attempt to breach the Israeli government’s blockade of the Strip.
Israel, which banned all maritime traffic to Gaza in an effort to limit the quantity of weapons being shipped into the Hamas stronghold (from which thousands of rockets have been fired upon Israeli civilian population centers) made it clear it would not permit the ships to reach Gaza.
The government of Turkey – an erstwhile ally of Israel’s that has become increasingly antagonistic towards the Jewish state in recent months, while moving deeper into the orbit of Ahmadinejad’s Iran – stepped into the developing fray, warning Israel not to try and stop the boats.
Emboldened by this, the “activists” sailed to Cyprus and prepared for the final leg of their voyage to Gaza. Israel, making every effort to avoid a confrontation – short of backing down – invited the demonstrators to sail into Ashdod and have their humanitarian supplies shipped overland to Gaza from there. Israel’s officials outlined in detail the exact course of action they would follow (which they did) to foil the flotilla’s purposes. The “peaceniks” rejected the offer and paid the warning no heed. And on Sunday evening set course for Gaza.
This was Israel’s response: Naval ships intercepted the flotilla and Israeli commandos, armed with paintball rifles (!) and wearing side arms strictly for self-defense, slid to the deck of the largest ship – the Mavi Marmara. Their purpose: to tell the protesters one last time that they would not be allowed into Gaza.
A few minutes later a reporter for Turkish television was heard screaming into his camera: “These savages are killing people here, please help!”
The news flashed around the globe. That is to say, an uninformed and misinformed version of what was happening flew from network to network.
The headlines and reporting, condemnations and outrage voiced on the morning of May 31, 2010 were predictable.
Israel had attacked a sailing flotilla of peace activists who were simply seeking to take humanitarian aid to the “suffering” people of the Gaza Strip.
IDF soldiers had opened fire indiscriminately on the unresisting protesters, killing up to 19 of them.
The Israelis had “dropped from a helicopter onto the deck of a Turkish ship [and] immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians.”
Israel had deliberately “targeted innocent civilians,” claimed trouble-making Turkey’s foreign ministry, warning of “irreparable consequences” to the two countries’ relations.
Israel had committed “a massacre,” cried PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas, while his mouthpiece, Sa’eb Erekat, pronounced Israel guilty of “another war crime.” For good measure the PA/PLO immediately declared three days of mourning for those killed.
Screamed the BBC: “Death as Israel storms aid ship.”
CNN: “Israeli commandos killed at least 10 people in pre-dawn raids on a flotilla of six ships carrying aid for the Palestinian territory of Gaza…”
The network also gave a platform to Gaza-based Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri who said: “The Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla is an ugly crime and against international law and this reflects the nature of the criminal Israeli occupation.”
Deceived (willingly?) by these hysterical headlines, officials like Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, and senior UN figures Robert Serry and Filippo Grandi laid the blame for the whole affair at Israel’s door and demanded Israel immediately lift the blockade of Gaza.
The new British Foreign minister John Haig also called on Israel to open all the crossings for free flow of aid into Gaza.
Deputy United Nations chief Oscar Fernandez-Taranco said the deaths could have been avoided if only Israel had lifted its blockade. Needless to say, the fact that the deaths could have been avoided if the “activists” had kept their noses out of Israel’s affairs never entered the man’s head.
Sky News’ Dominic Waghorn said Israel had “handed an enormous PR victory to the Hamas.” Waghorn is oblivious, it seems, to the fact that it is his and other international journalists’ skewed coverage of what occurred that was providing that very PR victory for their Arab friends.
What really happened? Israel has plenty of footage revealing the truth.
You can view the sickening scenes here , and here, and here.
The “peace-loving” protesters tried to lynch the Israeli soldiers. As each paintball-armed soldier reached the deck he was leaped upon by iron-bar wielding, chair-smashing, knife-stabbing and even gun-firing “activists.”
Some soldiers were beaten senseless. One was dropped headfirst onto a lower deck, sustaining serious injuries. Another was stabbed, his pistol was grabbed from him and used to fire at the Israelis. Stun grenades and firebombs were thrown at the soldiers.
When they eventually opened fire, it was only to defend themselves, and we still do not know how many of those killed were killed by the soldiers or by the terrorists (because that’s what they were) who were trying to shoot the IDF men.
This is the real story. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the currently convening emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to find in Israel’s favor.
When it comes to the state of the hated Jews, the truth rarely finds traction in the court of international opinion. Thanks largely to the media, many millions of people are primed and ready to believe the worst about the actions of Israel’s Jews. For them it’s a case of: why let the facts get in the way of a convenient and expedient story that further feeds their prejudices and satisfies their twisted desires.