YOU SUPPORT JEWS? WHICH ONES?
By Harmony Grant
10 May 07
Every wise and divinely inspired person in the Bible urges us to
support righteous people and oppose those who do evil. “Love
must be sincere,” writes Paul. “Hate what is evil; cling
to what is good.” (Rom. 12:9)
Yet much of the evangelical church fails to apply this simple moral
law to the state of Israel. Most evangelical Christians blindly insist
we must “bless” Israel with unconditional support regardless
of what she does. We are taught to ignore her injustice, her rejection
and defamation of Christ, and her supremacist religious aims. Why
is Israel an exception to the rule of approving those who do what
is right? Evangelicals falsely believe God has an unconditional covenant
of blessing upon Jews—a covenant that is unaffected by Jews’ disobedience
and rebellion.
But God’s promise of blessing to Jews—including the
right to occupy Palestine—is conditioned on obedient faith,
the kind given by Abraham, Moses and Joshua. Someday, out of respect
for all the great Hebrew saints and prophets who labored for righteousness
in Israel, Christ will redeem a remnant of repentant Jews at His
second coming. They will satisfy God not because of their ancestral
blood but because of the same obedient trust we all must give our
holy Creator. Until then, God remains angry with unrepentive Jewry
as they persevere in unbelief, their leaders persecuting Christianity
in Israel and also in the West.
In addition to theological error, evangelicals are deceived by
lying images and decades of propaganda. It is pleasant to believe
that the Gush Katif settlers have made the desert blossom as a rose
but horrible to believe that they have smashed children’s bones
and stolen land God never wanted them to take. It is horrible to
believe we share the guilt for what Israel has done, does, and will
do—because we armed her, we supported her, and we are still fighting her wars. It is horrible to realize the truth of Gideon
Levy’s recent words, “Israel does not want peace… The
world has been turned upside down and it is Israel that stands at
the forefront of refusal.” (Haaretz, April 2007)
If you want to support Jews, why not those with the moral discernment
to see the truth of Levy’s words? Why not support those like
Mordecai Vanunu who share your faith in Jesus and have suffered terribly
at the hands of the Jewish state? Vanunu is a heroic Israeli Jew
who converted to Christianity and spent 18 years in prison (11½ and
a half of them in solitary confinement) for exposing Israel’s
nuclear weapons program in 1985. Vanunu told American
Free Press he was tortured in prison; recent
reports show that inhumane and
humiliating torture of prisoners continues to be “routine” in
Israel. Vanunu says he received worse treatment than Jewish prisoners
because of his Christianity; he says his captors tried to “destroy” him.
Vanunu wants to find freedom outside Israel; within her borders,
he says, non-Jews are prisoners without freedom of movement or speech.
His experience as a Christian at Israel’s hands speaks volumes
about the real character of our great Mideast “democratic ally.”
Why not listen to Jews like Sara Roy, a religious Jew who mourns
that her co-religionists now dwell in a “ghetto of our own
making.” She writes, “Our pathology is this: it lies
in our struggle to embrace a morality we no longer possess and in
our need for persecution of a kind we can no longer claim but can
only inflict.” With horror, Roy quotes the racist vengeance
of Israel's largest selling newspaper, Yedioth
Ahronoth: "A
village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed
by fire. This decision should have been made and executed after the
first Katyusha. But better late than never." Roy also quotes
this distressing ruling from the Yesha Rabbinical Council: "[A]ccording
to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such
term as 'innocents of the enemy'." (“A
Jewish Plea,” April
7, 2007)
Can you dismiss this easily? Roy writes that “the Jewish
community demands unity and conformity…There is enormous pressure
-- indeed coercion -- within organized American Jewry to present
an image of "wall to wall unity" as a local Jewish leader
put it. But this unity is an illusion … mainstream Jewry does
not speak for me or for many other Jews. And where such unity exists,
it is hollow, built around fear, not humanity, on the need to understand
reality as it has long been constructed for us --with the Jew as
the righteous victim, the innocent incapable of harm.”
Why not listen to Jews like Norman Finkelstein, Israel Shamir,
or the late Alfred Lilienthal, who all testify against the crushing
injustice committed by Israel and blindly supported by the West?
Why not listen to Neuterei Karta, who believe Zionism violates God’s
law? If you think criticism of Israel or domestic Jewish activism
is “anti-Semitic,” these are some reasons to change your
mind. Listen to these voices. These are Jews. Their testimony offends
the simplistic explanation that so appeals to evangelicals: “Support
the state of Israel with money and moral justifications, and Jesus
will come soon. Bless the state of Israel with support, and God will
bless you.”
Today, most American Christians believe “blessing the Jews” means
empowering Jewish leadership with financial, moral and political
support. Who exactly are we empowering? The leadership in Israel
is increasingly oppressive with its religious rulings; 12 of the
15 judges recently appointed to rabbinic courts were ultra-Orthodox,
says Haaretz. God told the Hebrews, “You too must show love
to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land
of Egypt. You must fear the Lord your God and worship Him and cling
to Him.” (Deut. 10:19,20) But Israeli rabbinic regulations
create a whole class of “unmarriageables” in Israel who
are forbidden from enjoying family life because of their status under
religious law.
Israeli Irit Rosenblum, writing for Ynet, said that in the “dark
state ruled by Jewish religious laws…We are still slaves to
the rabbinic institutions that clashes against us from the day we
are born to the day we die. It is they who dictate who is eligible
to have children and who is not, who is entitled to allowances and
who is not, and who will be sentenced to be buried outside of the
Jewish cemetery fence.”
Empowering evil actions is a curse upon a soul. To our shame, the
evangelical church is now more a source of cursing than of loving
truth to Jews. A recent
BBC poll revealed that Israel is the most
negatively seen nation on the planet. In an article for Ynet News,
Martin Sherman addressed Israel’s plummeting reputation in
the eyes of the world. We could still retrieve our honor, he said
hopefully, especially considering the evangelicals. There as many
as 100 million evangelicals in the United States alone, and they
remain “staunchly pro-Israel,” Sherman said.
It is a crime in the face of God that when a Jewish person considers
who might help recover Israel’s reputation in the midst of
her crimes and sins, he thinks of the Christian church! Instead of
being a source of light, the evangelical church has backslid into
the darkness of an unholy alliance with Israel. As long as we continue
to empower her defiant rejection of Christ and oppression of the
stranger, we too face judgment from God.
Christ said, "Things that cause people to sin are bound to
come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be
better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around
his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So
watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents,
forgive him.”
When we empower evil rabbis and religious Jews to enforce their
false traditions while forbidding the gospel in Israel—when
we assist American Zionists in their illegitimate reclaiming of God’s
land while in disobedience—are we not guilty for the souls
of innocent Israeli children raised in darkness, for Arab souls who
reject Christ out of hatred for the West’s injustice? Do we
not sin against Jewish leaders, further searing their consciences
by acting as if God is pleased with their rabbinic traditions, their
progressive activism, their supremacism and their false religious
state? We sin also against our consciences and those of our children.
But most of all, we sin against Christ, whose words we disobey
by not reproving our brother but being an accomplice to his sin.
Think of Jesus’ tortured body on the cross, His precious body
on fire with pain as He hung from nails piercing His hands, as each
breath grew more impossible to draw. He died for our spiritual salvation;
He died rebuking the rabbinic state that crucified Him.
Today I write against the Judaic/Zionist agenda because my own
people have become responsible for its crimes; we can’t be
silent. What business is it of mine if Israel sins or the cultural
and legislative attack on Christians is primarily spearheaded by
Jews? What business is it of mine? It is mine because the church’s
responsibility is to bear witness to truth, to bear witness against
evil, and because the church in America has become the opposite.
We now empower evil, as the primary enabler of Israel and the most
silent receptacle of domestic Jewish activism against Christ.
I write with a broken heart because these things should not be
true. We bear responsibility. We have to speak against what is happening.
When our nation is strapped with ADL-inspired “anti-hate” laws
that may soon make evangelism a crime—when we are pouring billions
into a Mideast whose violence continues because of Israel’s
injustice—when anti-Christ lies continue to saturate the Jewish-dominated
media and academia like an arterial wound spreading blood through
a t-shirt—the only question is: How could I sleep at night
if I did not speak?
Harmony Grant writes and edits for National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog group. Read more of her work at www.hisnamesake.blogspot.com.
Contact her at harmony@truthtellers.org.
Call the White House, and say, "Thank you, Mr. President, for
promising to veto the hate bill. We expect you also to not approve
a modified hate bill."
Protest the Senate hate bill! Call your senator toll-free at 1-877-851-6437
or toll 202-225-3121. Leave this message: "Please don't vote
for hate crimes bill S.1105. Hate laws have taken away free speech
in Canada and much of Europe. If you do vote for the hate bill, I
and my friends will never vote for you again." Send your senator
and his 8-10 influential aides Rev. Ted Pike's powerful flyer "Anti-Hate
Laws Will Make You a Criminal." This flyer and names of aides
are available here.
Come to www.truthtellers.org for the list of the crucial 14 Republicans
who have voted for the hate bill as well as 17 Republicans who are
uncommitted. Call and protest immediately.
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 do it
right 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.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Harmony Grant on current
threats to our freedom of speech and religion. Call (503) 631-3808.
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas,
OR 97015
