Ten things Christian Zionists ask about Jews and Israel

Gavriel Sanders tells us ten things Christian Zionists ask him about Jews and Israel.

As I've traveled the country this last year, I've had numerous conversations with pro-Israel evangelicals, commonly known as Christian Zionists. They have many questions about how the Jewish community works, how Israel functions as a society, and how Jews around the world see themselves in relation to God, the Torah, Jewish values, and Jewish influence. Here is a distilled list of commonly heard questions.

1. How is it that the people that gave the world the Bible live more like the world than the Bible?

2. I thought Israel was to be a light unto the nations. Why are they trying so hard to be like and liked by the nations?

3. If, after 2000 years of dispersion and prayer for restoration, Jews finally have a homeland: Why don't more Jews go home? Why are they giving away the land?

4. It the title deed for the Temple Mount, Joseph's Tomb, and the Cave of the Patriarchs is contained in the Jewish Bible, how can the Israeli government give away these treasures of heritage to an enemy?

5. If pidyon shuvyim (ransom of a captive Jew) is a priority amongst Jewish values, why isn't there a greater outcry to free Jonathan Pollard? After his unfair sentencing and 20-year imprisonment, isn't he as much a prisoner of Zion as was Natan Sharansky?

6. In a 'land for peace' exchange, the Jews give up tangible turf that can't be returned for an intangible pledge that can't be guaranteed. Why?

7. If Jews are so committed to saving Jewish lives, why have more than two million Jewish babies been aborted in Israel since 1948? How does that square with replacing the 1.5 million children lost in the Holocaust?

8. Why do liberal Jews insist on making peace with an enemy that has not renounced its commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state? America would never do this. Is the "New Israel Fund" really a "No Israel Fund"?

9. Why do so many Jews insist on bending the Torah to fit their cultural preferences rather than adjust their lives to live by the Torah? Isn't God's will more important than a Saturday golf game? Isn't preserving faith and family more important than eating seafood?

10. Why does it seem that so many Jews hate their own religion or have so little knowledge of their own Bible? Most evangelicals know the Jewish scriptures better than most Jews.

QOTD: Paul Johnson

QOTD:Paul Johnson

Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them. It also has many hypocritical and humbugging pseudosupporters, which is one of numerous lessons to be drawn from the situation in Iraq.

A free PA?

Jerusalem Post brings hope to the current "peace" process. A nod to BOTW.

In the first decision of its kind since he succeeded Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has ratified death sentences against three Palestinians found guilty of 'collaboration' with Israel.

It is not clear when the three men, whose identities were not revealed, will be executed by firing squad.

However, senior PA officials told The Jerusalem Post that the three were Gaza Strip residents who had been convicted of 'high treason' for tipping off Israeli security forces about the whereabouts of wanted gunmen.

Bureaucracy at Work, Protecting the Skies

Bruce Schneier's CRYPTO-GRAM from 2/15/05.

As I wrote last month, I am participating in a working group to study
the security and privacy of Secure Flight, the U.S. government's
program to match airline passengers with a terrorist watch list. In the
end, I signed the NDA allowing me access to SSI (Sensitive Security
Information) documents, but managed to avoid filling out the paperwork
for a SECRET security clearance.

Last month the group had its second meeting.

At this point, I have four general conclusions. One, assuming that we
need to implement a program of matching airline passengers with names
on terrorism watch lists, Secure Flight is a major improvement -- in
almost every way -- over what is currently in place. (And by this I
mean the matching program, not any potential uses of commercial or
other third-party data.)

Two, the security system surrounding Secure Flight is riddled with
security holes. There are security problems with false IDs, ID
verification, the ability to fly on someone else's ticket, airline
procedures, etc. There are so many ways for a terrorist to get around
the system that it doesn't provide much security.

Three, the urge to use this system for other things will be
irresistible. It's just too easy to say: "As long as you've got this
system that watches out for terrorists, how about also looking for this
list of drug dealers...and by the way, we've got the Super Bowl to
worry about too." Once Secure Flight gets built, all it'll take is a
new law and we'll have a nationwide security checkpoint system.

And four, a program of matching airline passengers with names on
terrorism watch lists is not making us appreciably safer, and is a
lousy way to spend our security dollars.

Unfortunately, Congress has mandated that Secure Flight be implemented,
so it is unlikely that the program will be killed. And analyzing the
effectiveness of the program in general, potential mission creep, and
whether the general idea is a worthwhile one, is beyond the scope of
the working group. In other words, my first conclusion is basically all
that they're interested in hearing.

But that means I can write about everything else.

To speak to my fourth conclusion: Imagine for a minute that Secure
Flight is perfect. That is, we can ensure that no one can fly under a
false identity, that the watch lists have perfect identity information,
and that Secure Flight can perfectly determine if a passenger is on the
watch list: no false positives and no false negatives. Even if we could
do all that, Secure Flight wouldn't be worth it.

Secure Flight is a passive system. It waits for the bad guys to buy an
airplane ticket and try to board. If the bad guys don't fly, it's a
waste of money. If the bad guys try to blow up shopping malls instead
of airplanes, it's a waste of money.

If I had some millions of dollars to spend on terrorism security, and I
had a watch list of potential terrorists, I would spend that money
investigating those people. I would try to determine whether or not
they were a terrorism threat before they got to the airport, or even if
they had no intention of visiting an airport. I would try to prevent
their plot regardless of whether it involved airplanes. I would clear
the innocent people, and I would go after the guilty. I wouldn't build
a complex computerized infrastructure and wait until one of them
happened to wander into an airport. It just doesn't make security sense.

That's my usual metric when I think about a terrorism security measure:
Would it be more effective than taking that money and funding
intelligence, investigation, or emergency response -- things that
protect us regardless of what the terrorists are planning next. Money
spent on security measures that only work against a particular
terrorist tactic, forgetting that terrorists are adaptable, is largely
wasted.

QOTD: Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips's Diary: The Middle East's dance of death
The uncomfortable reality is that, while it is possible that Abbas will turn out to be a world-class statesman, what looks rather more likely is that he is instead a world-class tactician, who will be able to pose with ostensibly clean hands -- and the approval of the gullible, Israel-hating west -- disclaiming the murderous terrorism that Hamas and co will continue to inflict upon Israel, thus forcing Israel to react and casting it even more decisively as the regional bully. If this is so, then Israel is in even more danger now than it was in before -- the danger of being trapped inside a far shrewder and more sophisticated dance of death.

DISENGAGEMENT or DISASTER?

In DISENGAGEMENT or DISASTER?, Serena Weil gives an eye-opening account of the real facts in the Middle East.

Israel is presently grappling with a heart rending, soul-searching dilemma. Some call it disengagement, redeployment, resettlement; others call it evacuation, withdrawal, retreat. Living as we do in a mire of misinformation, we are inundated with a never-ending tsunami of words and images. At best, they portray the "news" — bits and pieces of information — but they rarely present the entire picture in intelligent context; at worst, they distort reality to the point where the consumer of all this news cannot possibly differentiate between truth and falsehood. And when the stakes are as high as they are in Israel today, the lack of dependable information to inform public opinion is downright frightening.

Recently, in the Israeli paper Hatzofeh, Boaz Haetzni enumerated a number of unpopular, seldom reported facts. They are worth repeating together with the disturbing questions they engender.

1. GAZA vs. KATIF: A Clearer picture. Historically, the city of Gaza (and its surroundings) is part of Biblical Israel, included in G-d's divine promise to the Jewish People. Jews have resided in Gaza from Biblical times until 1948 when, as the result of Arab violence, they were forced to leave. The city contains ruins of synagogues, a Jewish cemetery, and archeological finds of Jewish origin. A Jewish presence in the Gaza area (known as the Gaza Strip) was re-established in the wake of the Six Day War after 1967. Known as Gush Katif (the Katif Block), it comprises 22 communities and numbers 8,500 inhabitants and comprises only 12% of the Gaza Strip.

2. CAN THE IDF LEAVE GAZA? The IDF already left the Gaza Strip (!) eleven years ago as part of the Oslo agreements. Since then the Strip has been governed by the Palestinian Authority (under Arafat). Israel remained in Gush Katif. The IDF manned points of entry into Katif and at the border-like road blocks. They enter Gaza itself only when terrorist activity makes their entry necessary. Meanwhile, a monstrous terror network of worldwide proportions has surfaced in Gaza. Constant shelling of nearby Israeli settlements and cities, suicide bombers, shootings, and mines have become daily fare. (Many, thank G-d, miss their mark.) The media barely mentions them before going on to more "interesting" news.

Retreating from Katif would bring the cities of Ashkelon, Netivot, and Ofakim into the range of Arab missiles in the south. As it did in Lebanon, the Hezbollah terrorist organization intends to bring thousands of missiles into Gaza as well. The highly successful results of the terrorist organizations in the recent Palestinian Authority elections in Gaza do not bode well for peaceful intentions or resolutions. With additional, far ranging weapons in Gaza, the long arm of Hezbollah will bringing not only Ashkelon, but the port of Ashdod, Beersheva and the nuclear reactor in Dimona within firing range. Israel has to be utterly insane to allow this to happen.

3. WHOSE WATER IS TASTIER? Israel is presently supplying Gaza with water. After Oslo and the Israeli retreat from Gaza, as a result of total Arab/ Palestinian Authority mismanagement and greed, vast amounts of water were pumped from the wells in the area, the salt level rose drastically, and the water is no longer potable. Humane Israel, unwilling to deny water to thirsty Arabs, now provides for their needs from its own water supply. The IDF also forces the Arabs to treat their sewage and refrain from pouring it into the sea. In addition to severe pollution, the sewage destroys the filters from a large purification plant in nearby Ashkelon.

Sharon speaks of further withdrawals in northern Samaria which sits atop one of Israel's largest aquifers and main sources of water. Once in Arab hands, it is expected that the Arabs will, as they have done throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria, pump water without plan or thought for the future, thus endangering vital water sources in the Jezreel Valley. The oft-bandied solution of treating sea water would cost billions of dollars. Can Israel afford to place her precious and limited water supply in the hands of her Arab neighbors?

4. DEMOGRAPHY & GEOGRAPHY and other fraudulent claims: Gaza, we are told, is the most crowded place in the world. The Arabs, they say, need land, living space! Well, so does Tel Aviv. The population density in the city of Tel Aviv is eleven times higher than in Gaza!

Not only that. The much maligned Katif area, on only twelve percent of the Gaza Strip, covers approximately ninety square miles! Does anyone really think that giving this pittance of the Strip as a gift to the Arabs will solve their demographic problems? (It is highly suggested that the reader open a map of the Middle East to verify the size of Israel, of the Gaza Strip and of Katif. If Israel is infinitesimal, then Katif is infinitely more so!)

Perhaps Egypt, a huge country, would like to contribute a portion of its vast holdings in Sinai to its fellow Arabs. Sinai was never officially part of Egypt (just as Judea and Samaria were never officially part of Jordan). It is devoid of settlements — absolutely empty except for several tourist locations (originally built and set up by Israel) and best of all, it borders Gaza. Could there be a more perfect, fitting, humane solution to lessen the population density in Gaza?

Gush Katif was built on virgin sand dunes which even the Arabs had never exploited. The constantly attacked and bombarded community of Kfar Darom was built on swampy land which was purchased at full price by Jews during the time of the British Mandate. The Jews have turned the entire Katif area into a mini Garden of Eden. Eleven percent of all Israeli agricultural exports come from this tiny spot on the map. No wonder the Arabs living in their squalid cities nearby have dreams of inheriting it!

5. ECONOMICS — What's the Price? According to government assessments, direct costs for disengagement will be upwards of six billion NIS (one and one half billion U.S. dollars). Since this figure was released, the Knesset upped it by offering larger restitution to the settlers. (The previous amounts were rather parsimonious and it was felt that a bit more generosity would make things easier for all concerned.) Add to this related expenses such as additional security for settlements within the Green Line which will now be within Gaza's firing range; unemployment for the several thousand evacuated families; establishing new communities, new schools or classrooms for the thousands of Katif children who will be evacuated; new social services; and the necessary psychological counseling and help for those evacuated (this promises to be a highly traumatic experience, to put it mildly), Etc., etc.

No country, and surely not the U.N. or the E.U., is offering to reimburse or assist Israel with disengagement. The Israeli taxpayer will be expected to foot the entire bill. All the advances Israel has so painfully made in the past ten years on the economic front will be wiped out. And the price of real estate all along the shrunken new border will fall drastically. (Who will want to live next to Gaza?) Disengagement promises to be an economic disaster.

6. THE ARMY — What affect will disengagement have on it? Is the Israel Defense Force here to evacuate Jews from their homes, or to protect them from their enemies? Discomfort at the idea of the army forcefully evacuating peaceful citizens is widespread. So much so that the government changed gears and decided the police would be given the job while the army stood guard to make sure the Arabs don't take advantage of the evacuation and aim their missiles in the direction of the evacuees.

There is also the well founded fear that a large number of soldiers and police will refuse to take part in the disengagement. And if nonetheless it does take place, it is feared that tens of thousands of young people across the country will be so disillusioned that many of them will refuse to serve when they are called up. Huge numbers of youngsters from youth movements and yeshivas, the ones you see at the demonstrations and on street corners passing out flyers, are passionately anti-disengagement. These youths tend to be some of our best soldiers and a high percentage, out of all proportion to their numbers, of officers. Which is why the government is taking such a hard stand against conscientious objectors whom they view as a "threat to democracy". Many older people will refuse to continue to serve in the Reserves as well.

7. DEMOCRACY or DICTATORSHIP? Sharon ran for office on a platform diametrically opposed to this plan. His own Likkud party overwhelmingly rejected the proposal in an internal Likkud referendum. After much political wrangling and the firing of two cabinet ministers, Sharon finally managed to obtain Knesset approval for his plan although the law approving the financial restitution has not yet been passed.

No legitimate government, however, has the right to oust people from their legal homes by means of a highly questionable order and without recourse to due process of law. No government has the moral right to make historic changes and cede parts of its historic homeland with only a slim majority and a highly unstable minority coalition. Just as no government, even with a large majority, has the moral right to legitimize murder, rape or robbery. Years ago, Yossi Sarid, one of Israel's extreme, leading Leftists, proclaimed: The day that an order is given to transfer [Arabs] from their homes, an order which is patently illegal and immoral, will be the Day of Refusing Orders. … We will not fulfill an order to transfer [Arabs], nor will our children or our students fulfill such an order. How, then, can he legitimize transferring Jews?

Democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the many over the few. Democracy is built on a shared set of values; its laws are supposed to give form to these values. Destroying the basic values underpinning democracy, and ripping apart the social fabric and shared values of a nation destroys democracy itself.

Where might all this lead? The papers are rife with reports of detention centers being set up for reluctant settlers, their wives and children; of special, speedy courts of "justice" to deal with resisters; with special police training courses hastily organized to program the police to deal with the expected, traumatic expulsion. (All this while it was just announced that over nine hundred convicted terrorists will be released from Israeli jails as a sign of Israel's "good will").

Remember, we are not speaking of evacuating an enemy. We are speaking of 8,500 Israeli citizens who settled an empty, new area with full government approval and are now being ousted after thirty years because a prime minister, without the necessary democratic sanctions, has decided they must leave.

8. DID YOU SAY DISENGAGEMENT? From what? According to the government's own declarations, Israel will continue to supply the Palestinian Authority in Gaza with 1) water; 2) electricity; 3) communications (a telephone system); 4) food, medical and other supplies, just as we do now. Oh yes, and also employment in Israel. No one expects Gaza to support itself or provide employment for its people. Everyone - the entire world - expects Israel to help the new "fledgling state" along. Israel assumes she will fill all these needs although she insists that in case of trouble or terrorist activity, she will feel free to re-enter Gaza whenever necessary. (Just imagine the world's reaction to that!)

What then will be different? What exactly is being "disengaged"? Only one thing. Jewish communities in one small corner of the Gaza Strip. They are being evacuated, transferred, "resettled" — all the things Israel would never allow to be done to its Arab citizens or neighbors. Judenrein at the hands of the Israeli government.

9. WHAT IS SHARON THINKING? No one seems to know. If the above is an accurate description of the situation, based on true, objective facts (and it is), how could any normal, intelligent person choose this path?

Sharon has led us to a Palestinian state. He gave his approval to the Road Map whose cease-fire cost scores of Jewish lives. He approved the infamous prisoner swaps which put an end to hope for finding or releasing Ron Arad, the missing Israeli pilot. And now he is taking us further along the road to destruction with his new plan. Why?

While there are a few souls who feel that Sharon is taking a brave step forward and has the best interests of the country at heart, there are many more who are doubtful. The rumors are that he is depressed, demented, or wants to go do down in history as the great Man of Peace after having been demonized as Israel's worst war-monger. There are other, even more disturbing theories at large.

Zvi Handel a Knesset member from Gush Katif, and a former friend of Sharon who spent years working in close contact with the Prime Minister, has an different explanation. Both of Sharon's sons were involved in highly publicized, highly questionable, extremely lucrative, international business transactions. There was grave evidence of illegalities and the country was waiting for a judicial decision to indict. Suddenly, when things became exceedingly uncomfortable, Sharon dropped a bombshell and announced his disengagement plan. It immediately replaced the stories of his sons in all the media and has kept them out of the public eye. The indictments are also still on hold.

It is believed by many that this sudden bombastic political decision, which ran counter to Sharon's entire history and career (he was called the "Father of the Settlement Movement" and was a close and constant advocate of settlement activity), which conflicted with all his previous statements, promises and campaign platform, was a way of turning the public attention away from his private troubles. If the settlers had to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it. Better them than Sharon's sons.

Handel's accusations were made publicly and were detailed. The media made mention but chose not to dwell on them and they were "lost" in the governmental tsunami of determination for the disengagement plan.


10. WHAT ELSE IS LOST? Much has been "lost" in the media reports. Not only the legalities of the Sharon family affairs, but many of the above uncomfortable facts and observations. The settlements in Gaza have existed for more than thirty years. Families have four generations in the area. There is rarely a family in Israel which doesn't haveIsraelis all over the country have a a relative, a neighbor's relative or a friend in Katif. Most of the population - truly a silent majority — is distinctly uncomfortable with disengagement although they have few public avenues open to express their discomfort. (The media gives expression primarily to the left.) The more active and vocal section of the populace that supports Katif and the settlements and is thoroughly opposed to "disengaging" is dubbed "the extreme right" by the media. There is never — or very rarely — an "extreme" left. Disengagement ("evacuation" is a more accurate term) of Jews from the area — is not a simple, administrative decision. It is truly a moment of crisis for Israel.

Nor is disengagement a legitimate legal, democratic decision. Sharon consistently refuses to consider either a referendum on disengagement or new elections, even though two years after the elections he still does not have a stable, dependable coalition to pass . Nor has he been successful in passing the annual budget (which is why he is turning somersaults to put a coalition together. Without an approved budget, new elections are in the offing whether he wants them or not.)which he needs in order to assure funds for the evacuation of Katif. Yet he has engaged the country in a disastrous process. Anti-democratic, anti-Zionistic, militarily and economically incomprehensible.

Add that to the national, emotional and religious issues which have been stirred up and you wonder if the man has not gone mad?

PA TV Sermon

Palestinian Media Watch/IMRA carried the following from PA TV:

"On Feb. 4, 2005, senior Palestinian religious figure Ibrahim Mudyris delivered the official Friday sermon broadcast on PA television:
'We tell you Palestine, we shall return to you, by Allah's will, we shall return to every village, every town....Our willingness to return to the 1967 borders does not mean that we have given up on the land of Palestine. No!'
'We shall return to the 1967 borders, but it does not mean that we have given up on Jerusalem and Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Netanya [Al-Zuhour], and Tel Aviv [Tel Al-Rabia]. Never.'
'Our approval to return to the 1967 borders is not a concession for our other rights. No!'
'This generation might not achieve this stage, but generations will come, and the land of Palestine...will demand that the Palestinians will return the way Muhammad returned there, as a conqueror.' "

The roadmap is similar to the definition of remarriage -- it is the triumph of hope over experience -- but with deadlier consequences.

QOTD: Condi's final solution

QOTD: Jack Engelhard on forced evacuations of Jews from the Disputed Territories.

As proof that we learn from the past, we merely need to update the agenda of Wannsee [the Nazi conference that implemented the Final Solution], item two, wherein we deduce, as policy being acted upon today by governments in both the United States and Israel, that 'Jews must be expunged from the living space of the Arab people.' [Emphasis mine]

Who Would Have Thought?

JPost reveals that working for the PA Security Forces has its benefits...

At least 600 members of various Palestinian Authority security services have been killed since the beginning of the intifada more than four years ago, most of them while participating in violence against Israel, a senior PA security official revealed Sunday.

...Most of these men doubled as security officers and members of armed groups," the official admitted. "The fact that they had received paramilitary training as policemen was an asset because they were able to implement the tactics they learned in the fighting with the Israeli army."

Many PA policemen and security agents were trained by Egyptian, Jordanian and American security experts; others had attended military academies in former Eastern Bloc countries and the former Soviet Union before and after the signing of the Oslo Accords.

The policemen who also "moonlighted" as militiamen came mainly from the General Intelligence Force, the Preventative Security Service and the National Security Force.

The True Colors of Ariel Sharon

Michael Oren writes in The New Republic about the true nature of Ariel Sharon. Seems to be right on the money. Ignore his conclusions about where the peace process should go, however.

Sharon's transformation from warrior to peacemaker, making the Gaza withdrawal his personal crusade, has shocked the Israeli left, but many right-wing Israelis long anticipated that change. Raised in a secular Labor environment, Sharon was never nurtured on religious or conservative ideology, and, for all his opposition to a return to Israel's pre-1967 borders, he repeatedly conceded territories captured in the Six Day War. And, when his policies no longer enjoy public support, Sharon, unlike true rightists, pays no mind to the will of the people--a tendency historically displayed by members of Israel's socialist left. Sharon, rightists insist, is actually a Mapainik.

Mapai is a Hebrew acronym for the Israel Workers Party, the dominant Zionist movement in pre-Israel Palestine and the ruling political party for the first decades after Israel's independence.

...Sharon formed his own party, Shlomtzion, in 1977, and personally drafted its platform. Not only would Israel forfeit territories in order to achieve peace, Sharon wrote, but it would also negotiate with any Palestinian organization--presumably including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)--willing to recognize the Jewish state. Sharon later said he formed his own party, rather than simply joining Labor, the successor to Mapai, because he was disgusted with the cronyism in Labor. Still, following his pragmatic Mapai instincts, Sharon initially tried to have Shlomtzion form a joint list with Labor. After Labor refused, Sharon approached the centrist Shinui. When they, too, refused, Sharon revised his platform along more right-wing principles, declared his admiration for Begin's commitment to Greater Israel, and approached Herut. Begin embraced Sharon and, together with other factions, they formed the Likud, which then dealt Labor its first national defeat.

...By talking right but acting pragmatically, Sharon was adhering to the classic Mapainik tradition. Yet, in addition to its distinctive stands on territorial and security issues, that heritage also had a peculiar relationship with democracy. In contrast to Revisionists and Likudniks, who traced their intellectual roots back to nineteenth-century Central European liberalism, Mapai's founders came from the revolutionary turmoil of turn-of-the-century Russia, with its preference for proletarian dictatorships. In Israel, the nonreligious right has always been the champion of individual freedoms and the rule of law, while leftist leaders were notorious for pushing through their personal agendas, irrespective of democratic norms. The young Ben-Gurion, who modeled himself on Lenin, rejected the liberal constitution proposed by Herut shortly after independence. He waged a war against Egypt in 1956 without so much as informing the Knesset.

In his disavowal of democratic institutions, Sharon is much less a Likudnik than a Mapainik. Several ministers insinuated that he executed Israel's ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon almost unilaterally, without fully consulting the cabinet. Similarly, Sharon was accused of singlehandedly allocating vast sums for the construction of roads and settlements in the territories. And today, Sharon is once again revealing his Mapainik relationship with democracy. His decision to disengage from Gaza is based on the practical realization that the majority of Israelis are no longer willing to defend the settlements there and that Israel's occupation of the Strip only strengthens Palestinian demands for the creation of a binational Arab-Jewish state. Evacuating Gaza also enables Sharon to test the willingness and ability of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to crack down on terrorism before Israel proceeds to negotiate the future of the West Bank and Jerusalem--all policies unacceptable to true Likudniks like Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, who could be pragmatic under U.S. pressure but would never give up on the idea of a Greater Israel.