ISRAEL'S MOST DANGEROUS CHRISTIAN
By Harmony Grant
30 Aug 07
"I want to tell those who say I am a traitor, I suffered
here 18 years because I am a Christian.”
In 2004, a brave, sober-eyed Jew named Mordechai emerged from almost
two decades in a Mideastern hell of a prison. Why was he in prison?
After 9 years employed at Israel ’s top-secret nuclear installation,
Dimona, Mordechai went public with the fact of "tiny" Israel ’s
stockpile of 150 to 200 nuclear weapons and its development of a
hydrogen bomb, which can kill millions of human beings. He spoke
as an eyewitness at a time when the nation denied it even possesses
nukes.
For speaking the truth, Mordechai was abducted from Italy, drugged
and gagged, and imprisoned. His first two years were spent in a small
room where a light and a surveillance camera were trained on him
24 hours a day. He spent his first 11-1/2 years in solitary confinement.
Amnesty International described his treatment as “cruel, inhuman,
and degrading.”
Our friendly “democratic ally” imprisoned Mordechai
Vanunu for exposing the nuclear power it concealed from the world
(including us!). Israel has now sentenced Vanunu to six more months
in prison for speaking to foreign press.
The whistleblower--now 49, unmarried, unemployed, forbidden to
leave Israel --has no secrets left. What he has to say is that he
suffered as a Christian in a state that is not free, not humane,
and punished him for accepting Christ as well as for speaking a truth
that matters to the future of the human race.
Vanunu’s story and his testimony for Christ are virtually
unknown to the millions of American Christians who support and even
fund the very prisons, ultra-orthodox settlements, and anti-Christian
government that oppresses Christians in Israel. (See, Christians
in Israel: An Endangered Species) Pastor John Hagee's website
brags that he has visited Israel 22 times and "given more than
$8.5 million to bring Soviet Jews from the former Soviet Union to
Israel." In all these visits, Hagee has apparently never seen
the harsh reality of Israel 's institutionalized hatred of Christ.
Maybe Mordechai could give him just one tour.
“I was baptized into Christianity,” says
Vanunu, who changed his name to the Christian name John Carson
in 2005 to reflect his total identification with Christ, not his
Jewish ancestors. “If I was a Jewish [believer in Judaism],
I would not have had all this suffering, isolation, only because
I am a Christian.” During his 11 years of isolation, Mordechai
resisted his captors’ commands by reading the New Testament
loudly in English. Upon his release from Ashkelon Prison in 2004,
Vanunu took refuge in St. George's Cathedral. It was stormed
by 30 armed Israeli police that November, to question him about
speaking to foreign media.
Today “I am still free,” Vanunu tells supporters through
his website. He plans a September appeal of his sentence of six more
months in prison. Vanunu told Democracy
Now! that his press interviews were about “freedom of speech,
freedom of movement, [my] human being, human rights.” He explained, “And
all what I have to say is my political view. And I have the right
to speak them if Israel is a real democracy. And I hope you in the
United States will support me, and support my right to freedom of
speech.”
He said, “I don't think they will be stupid [enough] to arrest
me or to question. But... they can do anything - it is Israel.
Israel, all of the world knows, they're [able] to do anything.” He's
right. This isn’t the US. It’s Israel, and Vanunu faces
the real possibility of life locked up again. He has lost the strong
years of his youth. He longs to escape Israel, to find a wife and
a job in the freedom of the United States. Instead he remains trapped,
a prisoner in the "Promised Land."
Am I my Brother’s Captor?
To American evangelicals, the dusky desert hills and rolling valleys
of Israel represent the land where Christ walked--a romanticized
nation, precious with history. Evangelicals believe it is where
God's "Chosen People" must prosper before the eventual
return of Christ brings their conversion.
Israeli Christians like Vanunu worship the same Jesus Christ adored
by evangelicals. They, too, treasure the Son of God who once walked
on the Sea of Galilee and hung from that lonely cross at Golgotha. But to most of them, the land of modern Israel is becoming a prison,
not a spiritual paradise. They experience the real Israel, where
Christ cannot be spoken of to minors, where modern-day Pharisees
base laws on the evil Babylonian Talmud, where truthtellers like
Vanunu are locked away and spit upon--like Christ!
In 1997 President Ezer Weizman had this to say about Vanunu: "He
was a spy who gave away secrets, and the fact that he did so for
conviction rather than for money makes no difference. He was a traitor
to his country."
Vanunu is also a "traitor" because of his acceptance
of Christ. Just as Jesus opposed the Judaism of his day, Vanunu betrayed
the Judaism of his. It is the religion that undergirds Zionism, an
increasing danger to the world, amassing powerful weapons of mass
destruction and resting on an Orthodox fundamentalism that grows
only more anti-Gentile and anti-Christ. Vanunu has exposed more than
his nation's nuclear secret; his story shows the "secret" of
their national identity – that Israel is no friend of Christianity.
Christians in the US must realize the enormous antagonism of Talmudic
Judaism (the official religious position of the State of Israel)
toward Christianity. The idealized Judaism of evangelicals’ imagination
does not exist in Israel. Vanunu suffered at the hands of this religious
state, and he still suffers today. Christ also suffered and was crucified.
Christians are called to resist—not with violence or weapons,
but with truth spoken in love. Instead, the church today funds the
state of Israel and its atrocities against the Palestinians and believers
who work for justice and peace.
If it weren’t for American Christians’ unbiblical support
of Israel, this tiny Mideast nation would not even possess nuclear
weapons. It would not have prisons in which to torture Palestinians
or lock men like Vanunu away from human touch.
The state of Israel was founded and settled and is now run primarily
by European Jews and their children who flocked to the “Promised
Land.” Despite their idealism, the result has become
a Judeofascist anti-Arab state. It is a society based on the worship
of Talmudic Pharisaic religion and very real racism against Gentiles.
American evangelicals will have to answer for supporting the captors
of this gentle Israeli Christian.
Harmony
Grant writes and edits for the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watch dog organization.
Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they
have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal
it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate
Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase
this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at www.truthtellers.org for
$24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas,
OR 97015
