"War Has Been Declared. Its Agents Must Be Answered ..."

Er, ever heard of Arab Rejectionism?

Onward Christian soldiers!  That's the title of a well-known hymn, and that, in essence, is the call of call a Christian supporter of Israel, Brian Schrauger, in a call, as it were, to arms.

Writes Brian Schrauger, inter alia:

 'Since 2010, the "Christ at the Checkpoint" conference has only been in Bethlehem. Last week organizers announced they are going global. What must Christians who stand with Israel know and do to counter "Christ at the Checkpoint" and its declaration of war against them?....

“There simply is no biblical basis for Christian Zionism,” says conference organizer Munther Isaac. He made this assertion in 2016 and did so as a pastor, Bible professor and theologian.

At the CatC conference in 2016, the hired gun to assault Christian Zionism was the so-called ‘Bible Answer Man,’ Hank Hanegraaff from the US.

Not only is the ethnicity of today’s Jews dubious, said Hanegraaff, Christian Zionists are directly responsible for what he called Jewish Zionism’s “murder, terrorism and ethnic cleansing in 1948.” Moreover, he asserted, all talk of a third Temple (as per the prophet Ezekiel) is “nonsense.”

In fact, said author and historian Robert Smith this year, all forms, all expressions of Christian Zionism lack ethical integrity. Hence there is no ethical common ground for discussing any of their arguments with them. 

Little wonder that the number one written objective of CatC this year was “to challenge the theology of Christian Zionism.”....  

When the conference kicked off on Monday evening, the keynote speaker was Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malik. Speaking in the place of President Mahmoud Abbas, he declared that Jesus was crucified because he was a Palestinian, then proceeded to eviscerate Israel and US President Donald Trump. 

Every CatC leader was there. They fawned and applauded and patted al-Malik on the back. Then, wrapped in Christian lingo, they re-asserted all of his key points. 

Later in the week an unscheduled representative of the PA appeared at the podium. Her powerpoint presentation was a gatling gun declaration of the PA’s explicit anti-Israel narrative, vilifying it as a criminal enterprise. ....

One of the main ways CatC and its advocates disarm evangelical opposition is by seducing it.

Pleading for love and unity, it relentlessly argues for Israel as an essentially criminal entity. Advocates for Israel who buy the seduction are persuaded that silence in the face of these assertions are necessary expressions of Christian love and unity.

Another seduction is using weapons from an entire armory of rhetorical accusations. The accusations against evangelicals who stand with Israel include charges of one-sided prejudice, lack of compassion, divisiveness, blindness, political motivation and, although the word itself is never spoken, heresy. 

Perhaps the most effective seduction is various use of “bait and switch” appeals. Like a salesman who gets his mark to say yes about things unrelated to his real objective, CatC does the same. Appealing to evangelical sensibilities and expressions, those who participate, standing with raised hands and bowed heads, invariably find themselves in that same posture as anti-Israel invective is proclaimed as gospel truth.

This happened at the very start of this year’s CatC. Asking attendees to stand for an opening prayer, the program immediately proceeded to the ‘Palestinian National Anthem.’ Asked to remain standing, everyone apparently did. Refusing to stand for the prayer, I was spared the embarrassment of having to sit in the face of an anthem that declares, 

Warrior, warrior, warrior, ...

Meanwhile, in London, an undisguised aim

I will live as a warrior, I will remain a warrior, I will die as a warrior - until my country returns Warrior!

.... Never, ever, let down your guard at this event or others like it—including a increasing array of services at local churches.

Go global

CatC’s leadership and advocates are already taking their attack to evangelicals around the world. Apart from the West, they are all-but entirely unopposed. War has been declared. Its agents must be answered. They must be opposed.

Everywhere.

Especially in such a time as this.'

[Emphasis added]

Read the entire article here

Putting The BS Into BDS

That inveterate campaigner against Israel and Zionism, the Reverend Stephen Sizer, has been participating in the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference which took place in Bethlehem.  (I blogged about it here, but do see, especially if you're American, this disturbing article)

The Rev. Sizer flew back to Britain yesterday, informing his Facebook faithful:

This must have been a joke (unwittingly a Purim joke), for surely the vicar cannot be under the delusion that the Arabs of Mandate Palestine owned and operated their own airline.  (The same cannot, with any high degree of confidence, be said of his followers.)

He surely cannot be among those who take a revisionist view of "Palestinian" history, although, after spotting this poster by Elder of Ziyon on my blog

he had this to say to his followers:

Whatever, the man who (note this, because it's not as generally known as it should be) not long ago declared that the time has come for a One State solution

 has returned from the Conference in fighting form.  He proclaims:

(Incidentally, the David Ruffell quoted above is yet another of Sizer's Facebook friends who makes one call into question the company that the vicar keeps on there; an apparent 9/11 truther, Mr Ruffell has posted such eyebrow-raising things as this:

Time to clean out the Augean Stables, vicar?)

Needless to say, Sizer and the rest of the anti-Christian Zionism brigade are unhappy with British prime minister David Cameron, who during his rousingly pro-Israel speech to the Knesset last week declared:

“I am proud to be pursuing the strongest and deepest possible relationship between our two countries.

From our trade – which has doubled in a decade and is now worth £5 billion a year to the world leading partnerships between our scientists, academics and hi-tech specialists.

Britain and Israel share a commitment to driving the growth of high-tech start-ups. In Britain we’ve introduced huge tax breaks on early stage investment and special visas for entrepreneurs and in just three and a half years we have grown our Tech City in East London from 200 digital companies more than 1300 today.

Israel is the start-up nation – with the second highest density of start-ups outside of Silicon Valley anywhere in the world. As the inspirational President Peres has put it: Israel has gone from oranges to Apple. There are now more than 60 multinational companies with research and development facilities in Israel.

Israel’s technology is protecting British and NATO troops in Afghanistan. It is providing Britain’s National Health Service with one in six of its prescription medicines through Teva and it has produced the world’s first commercially available upright walking technology which enabled a British paraplegic woman to walk the 2012 London Marathon. And together British and Israeli technical expertise can achieve so much more.

From our scientists working on stem cell cures for some of the worst diseases on the planet to our hi-tech specialists who are making a reality of the UK/Israel Tech Hub – the first of its kind in the world I hope this visit can lay the foundation for even more collaboration and even more business between our countries.

And to those who do not share my ambition who want to boycott Israel I have a clear message. Britain opposes boycotts. Whether it’s trade unions campaigning for the exclusion of Israelis or universities trying to stifle academic exchange Israel’s place as a homeland for the Jewish people will never rest on hollow resolutions passed by amateur politicians.

It is founded in the spirit and strength of your people. It is founded in international law. It is founded in the resolve of all of your allies to protect an international system that was forged in our darkest days, to put right historic wrongs. It is founded in the achievements of your economy and your democracy – a country pledged to be fair and equal to all its citizens whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian Arab or Druze.

It is your destiny. Delegitimising the State of Israel is wrong.It’s abhorrent.

And together we will defeat it."

Predictably this has not been received well by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (its logo rather gives its endgame away, of course), while one of Sizer's anti-Christian Zionism friends Jeremy Moodey, CEO of Embrace the Middle East, has dashed off an "Open Letter" to Cameron, in which he says:

"....Finally, there was your blanket condemnation of all forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories as ‘delegitimising the State of Israel’ and ‘abhorrent’. These assertions, together with your claim that BDS would deny ‘Israel’s place as a homeland for the Jewish people’ (NB this is not the goal of BDS), are simply a parroting of the Israeli government’s self-serving line on boycott, which is that BDS is just another form of antisemitism...."

"Not the goal of BDS?" Mr Moodey may honestly believe that this is the case, but he is sadly deceived.

As for David Cameron's rousing words, they are, needless to say, very welcome.

However, Cameron in Scots Gaelic means "crooked nose".  There are many who believe the meaning, given its prime ministerial representative's track record, should mean, rather, "crooked mouth" (he tailors his comments to his audience, and is as likely to be as  unctuous towards an Arab gathering tomorrow as he is towards a Jewish one today) or "long nose" (he has a distinct habit of not delivering on his promises) as in Pinnochio.

Cameron is good at a phrase.  But words are cheap.

He is untrustworthy, as I observed in this post which drew attention to his ambivalent attitude to Israel.

And anyone who's inclined to take Cameron at his word should go on over to the blog of the fine pro-Israel British blogger Edgar Davidson for a splendidly candid cautionary view.

The Christ at the Checkpoint Conference Roundly Denounced

Yes, the vicar's there, naturally ...

Well, here it is again, albeit in a deliberately  somewhat truncated version, the post of mine that mysteriously disappeared not long after I posted it a few hours ago:

The latest Christ at the Checkpoint Conference is taking place now, and NGO Monitor's BDS in the Pews initiative has produced a downloadable document exposing the Christ at the Checkpoint events, the main points of which are summarised thus:

 •Christ at the Checkpoint Conference (CATC) is a bi-annual event held in Bethlehem, launched in 2010 and organized by Bethlehem Bible College and the Holy Land Trust.  The second CATC conference was held in 2012, and another will take place March 10-14, 2014.

•Bethlehem Bible College (BBC) and partner Holy Land Trust (HLT) have been directly and indirectly funded by the governments of the United States, the Netherlands, UK, EU, and prominent religious institutions.

•CATC seeks to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical Christian churches, while simultaneously reviving theological antisemitic themes such as replacement theology.

•At previous conferences, multiple speakers made antisemitic comments, such as “God is continuing to have a program with the Jewish people who Paul describes as enemies of the Gospel…” and “Jesus is the true vine, not Israel. He is the faithful Israelite who will accomplish all that the nation of Israel failed to do.”  Other anti-Jewish themes promoted at CATC conferences include the de-Judaizing of Jesus and the promotion of a racial theory of Jewish origins.

•There is a total lack of financial transparency by Bethlehem Bible College regarding CATC.  Neither monetary amounts nor financial donors are available on the BBC website.  

And in a must-read article the project director of BDS in the Pews, Yitzhak Santis, asks not unreasonably:

"Why are taxpayer monies of Western democracies being used to fund anti-Jewish polemics more reminiscent of medieval disputations than 21st century pluralism?

How did government funds come to be used over recent years to enable the Christ at the Checkpoint (CatC) conference – now in its third iteration this week at Bethlehem Bible College – where such polemics were sounded in the past"

 He continues:

"The CatC conference revives medieval theological antisemitism in its discussions of how to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical churches toward disrupting traditionally strong support for Israel. In support of the BDS campaigns and the wider political war to demonize Israel, replacement theology, de-Judaization of Jesus and the defamation of Judaism are consistent themes.

The BDS movement sees churches as central to achieving their objectives:

Religious institutions are seen in many communities as embodying important moral and ethical principles… Divestment campaigns that target companies such as Caterpillar have been initiated in a number of major Christian churches. Not only will successful divestment campaigns financially weaken the Occupation, but will raise both the public profile and legitimacy of the BDS campaign.

One of the main vehicles for waging this political war against Israel is to revive the themes of religious disputations of the Middle Ages, in which ecclesiastic authorities required rabbis to debate priests on whether Judaism or Christianity was the “true faith.” This stacked deck often resulted in anti-Jewish persecutions."

Towards the end of his article, which really has to be read in its entirety, he remarks:

"No visits appear to be organized to Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem nor are meetings with Israeli Jewish families listed. Moreover, there are no apparent outings to the many Jerusalem sites where Palestinians carried out suicide terrorist attacks. There is a token visit to a West Bank settlement for a “brief tour” and meeting with one Israeli settler. The only Jews apparently scheduled to speak at CatC are so-called Messianic Jews.

Presbyterian theologian Professor Stephen R. Haynes wrote, “When Christians are confronted by the word-sign ‘Jew,’ they are more likely to conjure theological types and anti-types, not to mention cultural and literary stereotypes, than to think of real individuals with the same hopes, failures and foibles as non-Jews… Jewish security is threatened whenever real Jews are associated with the ‘Jew’ of the Christian imagination."

A number of Messianic Jews, askance at the tone and direction of the conference, have issued a no-holds-barred denunciation of it which makes disturbing claims against the sponsors:

"We, the undersigned, will not attend or support the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference because of our assessment of its anti-Semitic content and undertones. We cannot remain silent at a time like this, and as a matter of conscience, we express our serious concern for both the sponsors of this conference, and over the content, message and activities of the past two conferences.

We urge all participants to check their own hearts and minds regarding their attitude towards the Jewish people and the Jewish nation. Anti-Israel politics and political correctness have emerged as focal points of this conference, to which end the state of Israel and the Jewish people have been singled out for constant and severe criticism. The conference sponsors retain connections to pro-jihadist movements or persons, whose political stances threaten the entire Middle East.  By retaining such connections, the conference has failed to uphold points #6 and #10 of its own manifesto.

As sincere believers in Messiah Yeshua, we cannot, and we will not, endorse this conference."

As the earliest commenters on a certain news agency report commending the conference have pointed out, hypocrisy is rife among professing Christians who indulge in perpetual Israel-bashing:

"The reality is harsh: Christians are being attacked and massacred across the middle east in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon. Christians barely exist in many other Arab countries having been forced out or killed off over time. Palestinian Christians are an endangered species and get little protection or support from the PA - that's a sad fact. Christians are abandoning Bethlehem/BJaka/BSahour not because of Israeli rule, but Fatah rule and the Hamas/IJ/Salafist threat."

The Christian communities within the State of Israel are doing well if needs be to know. just go and ask them and then also go ask them how they are being treated by the Muslim Arab community."

"Israel Is The Home Of The Jewish People": Israeli Christian Arab Party Leader

"Delighted to see Christ at the Checkpoint is ruffling feathers among Zionists. Just wait for the Kairos Britain statement to be launched at Greenbelt. The article below is inflammatory but then they don't know any other way other than to prostitute language"

That, I'm told by reader P, is how anti-Christian Zionism crusader Stephen Sizer greeted in a Facebook message an article (in which he's mentioned) by American lawyer Joel Griffith which, far from being how the vicar describes, is in fact a model of straightforwardness and restraint.

"....Christ at the Checkpoint hosts a myriad of religious leaders at a biannual conference in the West Bank under the guise of promoting peace and spreading the gospel. Yet the conference keynote speakers, public pronouncements, and agenda betray the true agenda of these activists," points out Griffith.

"In 2010, the conference invited Naim Ateek, founder and head of Sabeel Center, to give a keynote presentation. Ateek was heavily involved in the first Christ at the Checkpoint conference. And the present director of Christ at the Checkpoint, Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, is a speaker at Sabeel’s upcoming 9th International Conference.

Beginning in 2005, the Sabeel Center took a leading role in encouraging churches to divest from Israel. In addition, Ateek engages in incendiary rhetoric against Israel. Consider his 2001 Easter message remarks:

"The suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago, is lived out again in Palestine…it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily."

In a 2011 speech, Ateek stated, “The establishment of Israel was a relapse to the most primitive concepts of an exclusive, tribal God.” Even more jarring is an article written by Ateek which suggests that the Sampson of the Bible was a “suicide bomber.” The close relationship between Christ at the Checkpoint and Naim Ateek indicates an organization bereft of a fully functional moral compass.

Not to be outdone, in 2002, board member and conference organizer, Dr. Bishara Awad, notably defended Dr. Hanan Ashrawi as “very moderate” in an open letter published in Christianity Today. Dr. Ashwari served on the committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and as political director of the First Intifada. She also founded an organization, MIFTAH, which refers to Israel’s founding as Al Nakba (the Catastrophe). Her rhetoric and political alliances are hardly those befitting a moderate. 

Not only does the organization’s leadership maintain ties with radical political leaders, but the organization also aligns with theological sentiments far outside the evangelical mainstream. Stunningly, Christ at the Checkpoint apparently endorses a doctrine long since rejected by most evangelicals known as “replacement theology.” The manifesto states, “Racial ethnicity alone does not guarantee the benefits of the Abrahamic Covenant.” ....

Replacement theology taught that a “New Covenant” granted only to those who believe in Jesus replaces the former Abrahamic Covenant between the Jewish people and God. Mainstream Christianity has rejected the “replacement theology.” Yet Christ at the Checkpoint rushes to embrace it....

An organization truly intent on fostering peace would draw attention to the fact that Arab nations force Palestinian refugees to suffer through lifetimes of isolation by refusing to grant citizenship or economic opportunities. Or such an organization could work to counter the overt racism taught in Palestinian schools.

Instead, Christ at the Checkpoint erodes support for Israel and hinders lasting peace through its distortion of evangelical theology and by lending credibility to extremists...."

It's easy to forget, and pleasingly startling to be reminded, that despite the demonisation of Israel from such organisations as Christ at the Checkpoint and individuals like Sizer, there are Israeli Christians stolidly unaffected by their propaganda.

"Israel appears to be the only country in the region whose Christian community does not have a negative emigration ratio as its members flee West in pursuit of a more promising life. 

Recent newspaper headlines involve Christian Israelis who are setting themselves apart from their Muslim counterparts, disproving the traditional perception of Israel's Arab population as homogenous. They want to join the Israel Defense Forces.

Against the backdrop of hysteria expressed by Arab MKs who object to national service of any kind, but particularly in the army, the comments emanating from Israel's Christian Arab community sound like a cultural and social declaration of independence."

So states Israel Hayom, which continues:

"Now comes the next phase in the independence process: forming a political party. As of today, the Arab Christian party will be named Habrit Hahadashah ... 

This is a historic turning point with profound and far-reaching consequences for Israeli society. If the party is successful, it will provide an alternative for that sector of Israel's Arab population that seeks full partnership in Israeli society, and which sees a Jewish democratic Israel as its home."

The party's leader, Bashara Shlayan from Nazareth, explains inter alia:

"The entire thing started from the fact that I wanted to get my nephew into the army and there were difficulties, they really didn't want him to integrate. Today he is a major in a combat unit.

When I wanted my son to join the army we decided to create a forum for Christian enlistment.... 

We saw that we needed to create a political party. There were articles about us published in the Arab newspapers and it sparked interest throughout the region that there is an Arab Christian in Israel who recognizes the land of Israel as belonging to the Jews....

Firstly we are completely Israeli, and then comes religion....

People see what is happening now in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. They understand where we are living. I tell them, 'For 65 years we have given to the Arab communist parties; 65 years and they have done nothing!' Give me three years, I will manage and solve their problems....

Look at what the Arab parties have done. Just talking nonsense about nothing but communism; [MK Dov] Khenin and [MK Mohammad] Barakeh (Hadash), what have they done for us? They want us to disappear and are not acting according to the integrity of their country's citizens....

At least in Israel, those who stayed here have been given the right to be a citizen and to integrate. But Israel's first demand, which I support -- and which needs to be understood -- is that Israel is the home of the Jewish people....

They [the Arab parties in Israel] think being against Israel is Arab nationalism, that it is the manly thing. But if you oppose this way of thinking, you are a traitor. This is what needs to be changed. It's stupidity. So I demand that we, the Christians, be recognized as loyal citizens of the state."

Read more here
Hat tip: TheAlmondRod blog