Daphne Anson: Mirror, Mirror On The Wall: Who hates the Christians worst of all?

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Monday, 2 June 2014

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall: Who hates the Christians worst of all?

The following is a guest blog by Professor William Rubinstein.

He writes:

Open Doors – an organisation of which I had not heard before a few weeks ago – is dedicated to helping Christians persecuted throughout the world simply for being Christians. It was founded in the 1950s to smuggle Bibles to Christians in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (who were, if caught, likely to go on a one-way trip to Siberia) and later extended its activities to Communist China.

Since the 1990s Open Doors has extended its activities to the Muslim world. So far as I know, this body is totally on the level in what it tries to do, is not a “Christian Zionist” body, and has no connections with the State of Israel or with the American government. One interesting feature of its website is a list, updated annually, of “the top 50 countries where persecution of Christians is the most intense”, which makes for enlightening reading.

Number One on the latest list, not unexpectedly, is North Korea. The next ten countries on the list are as follows (in descending order): Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, and Sudan.

Every one of these, of course, officially totally or almost totally, Muslim. The next ten are as follows: Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Qatar, Turkmenistan, and Laos. Five of these are predominantly Muslim, and two are residual Communist states. The persecution of Christians in Nigeria of course occurs in the predominantly Muslim north. The Central African Republic is a typical black African hell-hole, with a Christian majority, but wracked by civil war. So, too, is Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian state, where non-adherents of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are persecuted.

And so it goes: of the remaining 29 states on the list, 20 are wholly or almost wholly Muslim. One of the most interesting of these is number 34, the “Palestinian Territories”, of which Open Doors has the following to say:

“There is noticeably more pressure on believers in Gaza than in the West Bank because the authorities are increasingly under the influence of Islamic extremists… On the West Bank the situation is different: the ruling Fatah party is based on secular principles.”

Notably absent from Open Door’s list is Israel, which is given a clean bill of health. All in all, 36 of the 50 countries where Christians are most heavily persecuted are wholly Muslim, and many others (like Nigeria) have violent, terroristic Muslim minorities.

Can Islam coexist with secular, pluralistic democracy? It does in places like Turkey and in the Balkan states such as Bosnia where there are a plurality of Muslims; elsewhere, this appears impossible, despite guarantees of religious freedom in the constitutions of most (not all) of these states.

Even if the elites there favour toleration, the impoverished streets and small towns are hotbeds of anti-Christian bigotry, terrorism, and murder, as recent appalling cases in Sudan and Nigeria have shown.

“Political correctness” by the left must not stand in the way of telling the truth.

Adds Daphne:

While we are on the subject of persecuted Christians, a robust leading article in yesterday's The Times (of London) which concluded that

"A Vatican official speaks of 100,000 Christians being martyred every year, more, surely, than at any time in history. We cannot be spectators at this carnage"

has provoked this worth-reading blogpost on the website of grassroots members of the British Conservative Party. It concludes:

"It is not just politicians who are to blame. Many of the rest of us have been too reticient about the issue of international Christian persecution – not least in the media. This climate would now appear to be changing. The Times and The Spectator have helped to break the taboo. That is welcome but there is a lot of catching up to do."

As Professor Rubinstein's post above reminds us, in eighth place on the list of “the top 50 countries where persecution of Christians is the most intense” is Iran, while Israel is not on that list at all.
How utterly bizarre it is, then, that Iran's notorious satellite propaganda channel, PressTV, has made a program excoriating Israel in the very field in which Iran (not Israel) is guilty, and that a certain Anglican vicar of this blog's acquaintance has taken a starring role in that program!

It would seem that Israel's enemies are so addled by the appearance in the West of Ms Christy Anastas that they are pulling out all the stops in an attempt to counter her brave veracious account.

Here, too, is something they won't like!

2 comments:

Ian G2 June 2014 at 10:40
It is beyond comprehension how the Liberal ( Apostate) church continues to support the enemies of Christianity and Judaism. I have met 'Brother Andrew' the founder of Open Doors. He used a code name then for obvious reasons. I still do not know his real name. I have also met Richard Wurmbrand and David Hathaway. All these men have worked behind enemy lines supporting Christians who were facing persecution from Atheist secularism ( Communism). The field has expanded since the 70s to include other regimes.

I cannot speak for Brother Andrew, but the late Richard Wurmbrand and the very much alive David Hathaway were, and are, unashamed Zionists.

Whenever people deviate from sound doctrine there is something that they are trying to hide. Contrary to what many will tell you, from a Biblical and Christian perspective, Christian Zionism is sound doctrine.Some people are deceived by false teachers, but others have no excuse.
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Daphne Anson2 June 2014 at 15:28
Very interesting. Thanks, Ian.
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

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Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

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The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

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Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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