Category: Israel, Palestine & Zionism

Israel’s New Legal Changes Removes the Last Obstacle to Limitless Settler Expansion

Massive protests continue in Israel even though the series of judicial review laws being protested have successfully begun to be passed.

Here is the best overview I have seen of the different issues involved, produced by VPRO, the Dutch Public Broadcasting Service.

It is fairly well rounded and allows the viewer to hear voices that are typically left out of the American conversation. It offers a good perspective on what all the anger and uproar has been about, and why it will not end anytime soon.

My only complaint, which is actually a major flaw, is that no Palestinian Israelis are allowed to speak for themselves.

Here are my suggestions of what to look for:

Notice the arrogance and entitlement of the Jewish settlers-colonizers. Like early American pioneers, they are blind to the legitimate claims of the native people, the Palestinians. They simply presume to have a divine right to take as much land as they want, wherever, whenever, from whomever they wish. What in the world do biblical stories about Abrahamic land purchases have to do with Israeli land theft today????

Notice the legal benefits that the current judicial reforms will offer to these settlers-colonists. This point is highlighted towards the end of the 30-minute documentary. I suspect that THIS is the primary, driving force behind the push for this new legislation. The Supreme Court can no longer impede settler expansion in the Occupied Territory.

Notice the stratification of Israeli society. Not only is there a wide divide between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. There is also a considerable divide between Ashkenazi Jews of European descent and Mizrahi Jews of Arab descent. This discussion begins at the 17:00 minute mark. Even though they are often treated as second-class citizens by the Ashkenazi, the Mizrahi tend to be among the most vehement Zionists. Note how they refer to Ashkenazis as a “white elite.”

Notice the hero of the piece Netta Amar-Schiff. She appears at the 25:45 mark. She is a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer who defends the rights of embattled Palestinians in the face of ever-expanding Israeli encroachment. Netta says it plainly, “Occupation and democracy do not go together.” One of the great failures of the current protest movement is its the omission of this key perspective from their demonstrations.

You will never hear about any of these issues or perspectives on a Christian news network. You’re unlike to hear it on the mainstream networks, for that matter.

As Israel Claims It only Acts in Self-Defense, It Is a Good Time to Remember the Deir Yassin Massacre

Dina Elmuti retells her grandmother’s story of fleeing the massacre by Israeli troops of well over 100 Palestinians in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in 1948.

Fatima Radwan on a visit to Deir Yassin in 2015. Photo by Dina Elmuti 

Many Israeli historians insist that the massacre never happened.

Elmuti’s grandmother says otherwise. She is living testament to the inhumanity of war, whether it is a Jewish war against Arabs or an Arab war against Israelis.

Below is an excerpt from Elmuti’s article at the Electronic Intifada. It’s entitled “Deir Yassin Makes a Mockery of Israel’s ‘Never Again” Pledge.”

As Israeli security forces continue to ravage the people of the West Bank, now is a good time to remember what happened at Deir Yassin.

. . . Earlier that same morning, my great-grandmother, Aziza, and her oldest daughter, Rifka who was 13 at the time, went to the village bakery to bake bread. That was something they did each morning as their homes were not equipped with ovens.

My grandmother, nearly 10, and her five younger siblings remained at home.

A tribute to child survivors of the Deir Yassin massacre; Fatima Radwan is pictured in the middle of the top left row. Photo by Dina Elmuti

Inside the bakery, my great-grandmother and great aunt witnessed a horrific scene that continues to haunt me. My grandmother often shared this story with us because she believed it was our responsibility to never forget.

While holding villagers in the bakery hostage, Zionist soldiers ordered the baker, Hussein al-Shareef from the town of Lydd, to throw his son Abdul Rauf into the burning oven. After refusing, the soldiers knocked Hussein to the ground and proceeded to throw Abdul Rauf into the oven while his father watched.

“Follow your son. He needs you there,” said one of the soldiers before throwing Hussein in next.

These are among scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history. Yet, this memory often remains too controversial to share.

Telling it challenges the myths that Israel has manufactured.

Following the gruesome scene, soldiers took the captive villagers and paraded them through the streets of Jerusalem. That is how Zionist forces celebrated their “victory” in Deir Yassin.

Upon returning to the village, the male villagers were lined up against the stone quarry wall and executed. Bodies riddled with bullets were then dumped into a mass grave and set aflame.

Approximately 110 villagers were massacred. Untold hours of human life, gone up in flames. . . 

You can read the entire article here.

How Would You Respond?

The escalating violence instigated by the Israeli military in the West Bank continues unabated.

The numbers of dead, wounded, and arrested Palestinians far exceeds the number of Israeli civilians killed last week in Israel. But this is par for the course.

Israel’s vengeance against the undifferentiated “mass” of neighboring Palestinians always far exceeds the damage done by isolated acts of Palestinian violence.

God intended to curb the ancient urges for Israelite vengeance with his rule of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Modern Israel, however, has kicked that rule to the curb.

Israel now insists on a dead body for an eye, or five of their dead or injured for one of ours.

The two videos below are only a tiny portion of the many available reports that western, corporate media deliberately ignore.

I challenge you to ask yourself, How would you respond to such treatment?

When Will Israel’s Jewish Citizens Uniformly Condemn Their Country’s Institutionalized Terrorism Against Palestinians?

The recent flurry of seemingly random shootings committed by Palestinian men in Israel has spurred a new wave of demands that Palestinian leaders “condemn these acts of terrorism” against innocent Israeli civilians.

Naturally, every Christian should certainly condemn these acts of violence and grieve with the victims’ families.

However, as I mention in my book, Like Birds in a Cage, such attacks are extremely rare. Their rarity is especially noteworthy when we recall that millions of Palestinians are subjected to Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism on a daily basis throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

For those of us who follow this story, it is not unusual to read weekly accounts about Israeli soldiers demolishing Palestinian homes and property, cutting down family olive groves, or  attacking, beating, arresting, and shooting Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and old men.

What amazes me about Palestinians in Israel/Palestine is how docile they remain in the face of Israel’s unrelieved terrorist campaign against them.

Below are excerpts from two recent pieces in Haaretz newspaper written by the Israeli journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. Click on the titles to read the entire articles.

Hass and Levy speak for the small minority of Israeli Jews who faithfully cultivate a humanitarian conscience, seeing Palestinians as fellow human beings equal to themselves.

First, Hass’ article, “For the Palestinians in the West Bank, It’s an Exception, Not a ‘Terror Wave” (all emphasis in mine):

While the Palestinian public understands the attackers’ motives, the vast majority does not choose this path, which does not advance their cause, and has reservations about targeting civilians. But condemnation? Let Israelis first condemn the violence they exercise against Palestinians.

The three acts of murder-suicide perpetrated by four Palestinians — from both sides of the Green Line — in less than two weeks only highlight the absence of a leading political Palestinian body, employing a single, clear and unifying strategy. The attacks reflect internal divisions and the painful awareness of Palestinian weakness and inability to act in the face of Israel’s might. On the other hand, the fact that so few choose this route, despite its availability, indicates a broader political understanding that such attacks do not further the Palestinian cause.

The vast majority is voting with its feet: it knows that individual wolf attacks driven by despair or revenge have not, are not and will not achieve a thing. They won’t change the balance of power. The Palestinian public in the West Bank understands this without being thus directed from above, without open public discourse on the topic and while its political organizations, mainly those of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, are at their lowest point in terms of power and public confidence — and are in conflict and competition with one another more than ever before.

Every Palestinian, on both sides of the Green Line, has many reasons to wish that Israelis feel pain, because it’s they and not only their government that are responsible for the Palestinians’ predicament. It’s likely that this was the desire of the four suicide-murderers — regardless of their background, family circumstances or individual character. Israelis immediately know, since there is an entire apparatus disseminating such information, which attacker had been arrested previously, after which attack candy were handed out and next to which assailant’s house young people celebrated (with total disrespect for the family’s pain). But Israelis, on the whole, are not interested in the extent to which Israel, and they themselves, as its citizens, constantly and for many decades have been harming Palestinians, as individuals and as a people.

This huge gap between specific knowledge and willful lack of knowledge is sufficient to explain why the Palestinian public in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is indifferent to the recent attacks by individuals, whether committed by Israeli citizens or West Bank residents, and is not obeying Israeli demands to condemn the murders. What is noteworthy is not that the attackers have escaped the Shin Bet’s attention, but that despite their understanding for the assailants’ motives, the vast majority of Palestinians do not choose to take this route.

Thousands of Palestinians without a work permit openly enter Israel every day through the multiple gaps in the separation fence. This has been going on for years, with the full knowledge of the army and police. As everyone knows, there are ample weapons and ammunition among the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. These two facts could have engendered many more revenge attacks by individuals that could not be discovered in advance, both by Palestinian citizens of Israel and by West Bank residents. Even if copycats crop up in the coming weeks, like the screwdriver attack on Thursday, for Palestinians, the number of these attacks pales in comparison to the extent of the injustice Israel inflicts on them, and its systematic nature.

Every Palestinian has good reason to desire cracking the false normalcy enjoyed by Jewish citizens, who by and large ignore the fact that their state is acting tirelessly, day and night, to dispossess more Palestinians from their lands and their collective, historical rights as a people and society. In order to achieve this goal, Israel maintains a continuous regime of oppression. 
Second is an excerpt from Gideon Levy’s piece entitled “The Palestinian Perspective on the Terror Attack.”
Raad Hazem was born on Kaf Tet B’November, 1993 – November 29, the date of the 1947 United Nations vote to partition Mandatory Palestine. He was born into the hope of the Oslo Accords and grew up in the catastrophe of Operation Defensive Shield. He was nine when the Israeli tanks invaded his refugee camp, destroyed its center and killed 56 of its inhabitants. This boy saw in the streets bodies that could not be buried until the army left, tanks that crushed the homes and cars of residents whose lives were wretched and a bulldozer that flattened the camp and “turned it into Teddy Stadium” – the home field of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, whose most vocal supporters are the notoriously anti-Arab La Familia group – as the digger’s driver bragged.

“Raad” means thunder in Arabic. On Thursday evening he sat on a bench on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street for 20 minutes before he stood up and began shooting at people around his age who were enjoying happy hour at Ilka Bar. In the picture that was posted later he looks handsome; in a different picture, in which he clutches two rifles, he appears enraged and frightening. Hazem killed Tomer Morad, a mechanical engineering student; Eytam Magini, a computer science, psychology and neuroscience student; and Barak Lufan, a former Olympic athlete and the head coach of Israel’s national kayak team. All of them, like him, were young men.

It’s hard to imagine better casting for this story. No one can know for sure what went through his head, but we can assume that Hazem wanted to live the lives of his victims. He didn’t have even the smallest chance. He, too, would have wanted to study neuroscience or mechanical engineering, or to coach kayaking. He too would have wanted a happy hour. He would have wanted to serve in the military, like them, maybe even in an elite unit whose members boast about it. But he was born into a reality from which it’s impossible to escape into the worlds of his victims on Dizengoff. He couldn’t even get to Dizengoff the direct way, imprisoned as he was in his refugee camp, prohibited from entering Israel. He probably never saw the sea, and certainly not a kayak. Instead, he saw soldiers invading his camp almost nightly, mistreating and humiliating its residents, and members of his parents’ generation fighting and dying with courage and determination that have become iconic. There is no place as militant, armed and brave as the Jenin refugee camp.
The bench on Dizengoff was removed by security forces after the attack, in order to collect physical evidence of the man who had sat on it, when he was still unknown. But no DNA analysis can tell his story, just as a thousand police officers couldn’t find him when he was on the adjoining street. Police, Border Police, Shin Bet security service, Sayeret Matkal, Shaldag, Yamam, Yasam, Lotar and all the other military forces will never extinguish the fire of this struggle. All of these organizations, which train for years for exactly this moment, whose budgets exceed those of the health and education systems together, are no match for one resolute descendant of refugees in the moment of truth.

It was a mirror image that could have been from a movie. Young people from the same country, sitting across from each other: the so-called stranger on the public bench, tense and agitated, facing locals in a bar on Thursday evening. In the days preceding the terrible night friends of the guys in the bar, soldiers and Border Policemen, killed five young people in his refugee camp, and now he sets out to kill them indiscriminately.

The people facing him are the characters he would like to be, with the life he would like to live, the freedom and the opportunities he too would like to have. He wants to make his existence known and say: If I don’t have that life, those rights, you who sit in the bar facing me will also never have them. That’s the whole story. On top of it one can build piles of intelligence and weapons, punishment and deterrence, theories about bloodthirstiness and moral judgment, about murder and killing, war plans, operations and fences. In the end, that’s the story. This and no other. Nothing can beat it.

ChristianZionism.org Spotlights My Book “Like Birds in a Cage”

Professor Gary Burge was a New Testament professor at Wheaton College

Professor Gary Burge

for many years. He is also a good friend of mine and is now a dean at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.

Gary has written three excellent books about the errors of Christian Zionism and the real-world fallout that it helps to create.

Thus, I was quite happy when Gary agreed to write the forward to my new book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Wipf and Stock, 2021).

I recently discovered that a website called ChristianZionism.org, which Gary helped to organize, is promoting my book by reprinting Gary’s very kind forward.

If you haven’t yet purchased your own copy of the book, I encourage you to read Gary’s forward here.

Another Lesson in Framing and Propaganda

Perhaps you have heard or read about some recent confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Bedouins living in the Negev in southern Israel.

Below are two video clips of the same incident. The first is from i24 News, an official Israeli news outlet. The second is from Middle East Eye, a London-based news outlet covering news in the Middle East and North Africa.

Notice the differences. How is the same story being relayed in each clip?

First, notice the inflammatory language used in the i24 News clip:

  • Bedouins are not protesting; they are “rioting.”
  • Soldiers are only responding to Bedouin “crimes.”
  • That Bedouins would object to trees being planted (without consultation) on their property is part of “Israel’s crazy reality.”
  • The only person allowed to speak is a representative of the Jewish-only settlements replacing Bedouin homes and families.

Now notice the language and storyline in the second clip:

  • Bedouin protesters are allowed to speak for themselves.
  • The protests are placed within their broader context, which (quite tellingly) is never explained in the i24 clip.

The bigger narrative goes like this.

[a] The Israeli government unilaterally expropriates (i.e., steals) land on which Bedouins have lived for generations; it is now called “disputed land.” The Bedouin village is labeled as “unrecognized,” making  it easier to eradicate.

[b] The Zionist process of ethnic cleansing and colonization moves forward.

The Jewish National Fund (the largest land owner in Israel, which prohibits Palestinians from living or working on JNF land) plant trees (probably non-native) on Bedouin grazing land.

The Bedouins are told they must move out.

Bedouin homes are demolished.

The people resist and demonstrate against their expulsion.

The colonizers call the Bedouin resistance “criminal” and “crazy” while their invasion brings “noble” results. (A common technique used by settler-colonizers).

These stark differences in how the story is framed and described illustrates both the construction and the power of propaganda.

It also reminds us of how we should doubt and question every news story presented to us by the media.

Watch the clips again. Who is providing a more accurate version of the actual events?

For further discussion of this situation, I recommend Gideon Levy’s article “A Bedouin Negev is No Less Israeli Than a Jewish On.”

I love the smile on the young protester’s face. She is going to a military jail, but she is not intimidated.

And an article in +972 Magazine by Amjad Iraqi, “When a forest has more rights than a Bedouin village.”

Why Israel’s “Peace” Negotiations Have Always Been a Farce

Future Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, recently announced, “When I am prime minister, we still won’t hold negotiations with the Palestinians.”

In one sentence, Lapid brazenly let the proverbial cat out of the bag. For the truth is that Israel has never been an honest negotiating partner in the Palestinian/Israel peace process.

Israel’s Likud party, which has been the nation’s dominant political party since the time of Menachem Begin (Israel’s sixth Prime Minister, 1977 – 1983), has it written into its party platform that Israel’s eastern border must extend to the Jordan River denying any possibility of a Palestinian state.

You can read the Likud party platform here in an article by Jonathan Weiler. Items one and three in the platform declare:

a. “The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”

c. “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

So much for all the gibberish we have heard over the decades about Israel’s willingness to “exchange land for peace.”

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy’s new article in Haaretz discusses the real world consequences of Israel’s historic hostility towards peace with the Palestinians. His piece is entitled “The Truth Will Set You Free.”

Below is an excerpt (all emphases are mine):

. . . This item [Lapid’s statement] didn’t make big headlines, which isn’t surprising, since there is nothing new here – aside from the spectacle of a minister telling the truth, if

Yair Lapid said he will not negotiate with the Palestinians when he is Prime Minister. Credit. Gil Eliyahu

only for a moment. Lapid deserves credit for revealing something that has long been known: There is no Israeli partner. No Israeli partner for ending the occupation, no Israeli partner for any solution, nor even an Israeli partner for negotiations. In truth, there never was, but now official Israel, for the first time in its history, is acknowledging as much. The explanation, as usual, comes from internal politics. “The coalition agreements prevent progress in this channel,” the prime-minister-in-waiting explained. . .

If an Israeli foreign minister had said something like this years ago, the sky would have fallen. No negotiations? None? The Americans would have issued condemnations, the Europeans would have been furious, the UN would have passed a resolution, Labor and Meretz would have threatened to quit the government. But now – no one bats an eyelid.

Lapid spared us all of that. He announced the end to the peace process ritual that has facilitated the many years of occupation. No one really thinks that Israel will get a more moderate government than this one in the coming years, and anyway the 50 years of moderate peace governments should have been enough to make us see that there is no one to talk to in Israel, no matter who is in power. Lapid is advancing one small but important step towards recognition of this fact. Now it needs to really sink in: There will be no solution, definitely not a two-state solution.

The possibility that the Palestinians will be doomed to another hundred years of apartheid cannot be dismissed. In fact, it is the most likely possibility. For who is going to extricate them from this apartheid, and how exactly can they extricate themselves from it? They’ve tried everything already. Now they at least understand, and the world too, that there is no chance of them having a partner, because Israel has coalition agreements.

The Americans won’t keep bugging us with their special envoys, the Europeans won’t keep issuing hollow statements of condemnation, nor will the UN, and the Quartet will die too. World leaders will no longer have to waste their time and honor on pointless talks about the Palestinian issue; for there’s no one to talk to about that in Israel. . . 

For anyone is interested in learning more about the reality of past “peace negotiations” and the dishonest coverage they receive in western media, here are a few good books to read:

Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.

Naseer H. Aruri, Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine.

Rashid Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.

Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process.

Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit, Israeli Rejectionism:  A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process.

Two New Publications Exposing the Many Failures of Christian Zionism and the State of Israel

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer is an acquaintance of mine (I would call him a friend, yet we have only chatted on Facebook) who has written two very fine books about the dangers of Christian Zionism and the many injustices that Zionist Israel inflicts on the Palestinian people.

After receiving his MA in theology from Oxford University he became a long-time vicar in the Church of England at Christ Church, Virginia Water, in Surrey, England. He retired from parish ministry in 2017.

He is now the director of the charitable organization Peacemaker Trust.

Dr. Sizer’s two books are Zion’s Christian Soldiers? The Bible, Israel and the Church, and Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?

Both books arise from Dr. Sizer’s doctoral research into the histories of dispensational theology (to which Christian Zionism has always been a favored handmaiden), the emergence of political Zionism in
Europe and Israel, and the relationships between the them.

I am very happy (and somewhat proud) of the fact that the publisher of my forthcoming book on Christian Zionism is also the publisher now reissuing both of Dr. Sizer’s important works.

Let me say again that I highly recommend them both!

Zion’s Christian Soldiers? is available for order HERE from the Wipf & Stock publications website. The second book, Christian Zionism Road-map to Armageddon?, will also become available from Wipf & Stock in the near future. So, keep your eyes open.

So why are Dr. Sizer’s books being reissued?

Both books were originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in the UK. Dr. Sizer quickly became public enemy #1 for the Israel Lobby and other pro-Israel, pro-Zionist apologists who immediately set their sites on him as their next target.

Consequently, he has been viciously slandered and attacked by people who care less about facts than they do about winning.

I suspect that the publisher, IVP-UK, came under great pressure to withdraw these books from their catalogue. I know that Dr. Sizer endured a tremendously savage campaign of pro-Zionist opposition, including all manner of slander and false accusations.

While I confess that I have not been privy to the details, I strongly suspect that, in the end, profit margins proved more important than principle to the publishing powers at IVP-UK.

Which now makes it all the more important that Dr. Sizer’s work is being reissued by Wipf & Stock in the USA. Hip hip hurrah!

As the voice of the Holy Spirit once said to St. Augustine, “take up and read.”

My New Book on Christian Zionism Can Now Be Ordered Online!

A prepublication ordering page is now available at the Wipf & Stock website for my new book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.

I hope that you will check it out and seriously consider buying a copy so that you can inform your Christian friends, and others, about the serious mistake the American church makes by endorsing Israel’s behavior in the Middle East.

You can place your orders (because I understand that everyone will want to place multiple orders for friends and relatives. Ha!) by clicking HERE.

Unfortunately, the fellow in charge of cover design has been very ill for some time, but whatever he eventually comes up with will be inserted into the order page.

Below is the description I wrote for the publisher’s advertising purposes:

When Christians collude in crimes against humanity, they betray their citizenship in the kingdom of God, demonstrating that Christ’s Lordship does not rule over every area of their lives. The popular ideology known as Christian Zionism is a prime enabler of such widespread discipleship–failure in western Christianity. As the state of Israel continues to violate international law with colonial settlement in lands captured by warfare, legalized racial discrimination, and the creation of what many have called “the world’s largest open-air prison” in Gaza, Christian Zionists continue their unqualified support for Zionist Israel. Though Israel advertises itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” it is actually a rigid ethnocracy–its entire society built on the foundations of Jewish supremacy over a Palestinian underclass. History will eventually judge Christian Zionist support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians in the same way people of conscience now condemn the Christian church in the American South for its defense of slavery and hostility towards the civil rights movement. Just as the Southern Baptist church finally repudiated its pro-slavery past, so everyone genuinely devoted to Jesus Christ must repudiate both the ideology and the legacy of Christian Zionism.

Ethnic Cleansing Never Ends in Israel and the West Bank

The modern state of Israel was founded upon ethnic cleansing.

750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes by a Jewish military that freely committed war crimes just as every invading army has violated civilian populations throughout history.

Below is a video telling the story of only one Palestinian family whose home was recently demolished in order to make way for Jewish settlers.

Zionist ethnic cleansing has never ceased, not since it began in 1947.

The Israeli government refers to the process as “Judaization,” that is the replacement of native Palestinians with Jewish settlers.

It is also referred to as “redeeming the land.” For political Zionism, redemption is not God’s business. It is Jewish Zionist business. And it is accomplished by ridding the land of the pollution created by Palestinians.

I could post several such videos and articles every day and never run out of new material exposing the ongoing injustices of Israeli political Zionism.

So, here again is a new, representative story I have selected out of many, many possibilities this week alone.

Watch it and ask yourself, as well as your elected representatives, is this why the US subsidizes Israel to the tune of nearly $4 billion each year????

So they can destroy more Palestinian lives?