A Blog from David Crump
My friends at the Christian Forum on Israel-Palestine recently interviewed the influential, internationally known Palestinian pastor-theologian, the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb.
We had a wide-ranging discussion about the war against Gaza and the West Bank and its effects upon the Palestinian Christian community.
Please check it out:
On Tuesday, September 3rd I will interviewed by my friends at the Christian Forum on Israel-Palestine. Watch it live at 1 pm Eastern, 10 am Pacific.
We will focus attention our on the ways in which Israel is expanding its war against Gaza into the West Bank. I will talk about my most recent visit to the West Bank this past June where I stayed again with my Palestinian family in the Aida refugee camp.
Check out the link below to either watch the show live or to catch it later at your own convenience. Once it’s recorded, it will remain available available on YouTube.
Next Tuesday, August 13 you are invited to join a conversation Dr. Mae Elise Cannon, Executive Director of Churches for Middle East Peace.
Dr. Cannon wrote one of her two(!) doctoral dissertations on the history of the American evangelical church’s engagement with Israel. Which is more than a coincidence, since will be the topic of our conversation next Tuesday.
Why do western evangelicals generally side with Israel in its war against Gaza? Why don’t we respond to Palestinian suffering — some call it a genocide — as empathetically as we do the Israeli pain of October 7?
Tune in and share your own thoughts next Tuesday! Join us at 11 am Eastern, 8:00 Pacific at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHIs8HnRiMA
While the doe-eyed Democratic apparatchiks begin their predictably patriotic accolades for president Biden — the self-sacrificing commander-in-chief who willingly surrendered his presidential prospects in service to America’s beleagured democracy — now is also the time to remind ourselves that president Biden has served as the chief facilitator of the most public genocide in world history.
Joe Biden had/has the power to stop Israel’s genocidal assault against the people of Gaza at any time. But he chooses not to use it.
Why? Because his commitment to a racist nation-state is greater than what could have been his conscientious concern for human lives.
Biden (together with the US Congress) has not only allowed the Gaza genocide to continue, he empowered the Netanyahu government’s criminal assault by providing 12.5 billion dollars in American financial support as well as the vast majority of the high-tech weaponry used to slaughter Palestinian men, women and children.
Joe Biden, who is always proud to wave his Zionist bone fides before a campaign crowd, is a staunch, unreflective Zionist who has hardended his heart against Palestinian suffering. This will be his, and America’s, Middle Eastern legacy.
He is another racist Zionist who refuses to acknowledge the bloody, heartless reality presented by countless Al Jazeera reports, Palestinian Tik Tok posts and personal Instagram films, all creating an overwhelming record about the truth of Israeli genocide in Gaza.
This record will stand on its own as an historical indictment of all those, like Biden, who insist that what is happening in Gaza is not a crime against humanity.
Biden has admitted that he does not believe the casualty figures documented by the Hamas Health Ministry, but he confidently accepts the grotesque, well-documented lies spread by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) regarding the death toll on October 7.
[Nothing exemplifes the racist underbelly of Israeli/Zionist rhetoric more clearly than this example. European-looking Israeli Jews are always trustworthy, no matter how far fetched their claims. Whereas, brown-skinned, bearded Muslim Palestinians are inherently untrustworthy, prone to lies, dissimulation and violence.]
Only days after October 7, president Biden claimed to have seen the photographs of “beheaded babies” from the kibbutzim of southern Israel.
Except…such photographs never existed because there were no beheaded babies from the Hamas attack on October 7. (Biden’s administration had to retract the president’s statement and correct his lie the next day.) This Israeli claim has been thoroughly debunked by reputable news reporting. (See the reporting at The Electric Intifada, The Grayzone and Mondoweiss).
No babies were beheaded that day; 40+ babies were not killed; no infant was cooked in an oven; no baby was cut from its mother’s womb. These were all grotesque fabrications, incredible lies!, manufactured by sick Zionist minds who naturally shared in the widespread western, Orientalist assumption that European-looking Jews will always be believed because they always tell the truth (especially when under attack!).
Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, are inherently violent and conniving, constitutionally predisposed to exactly the kind of reprehensible violence described by Israeli sources. So, of course, their denials will not be believed by the majority of western listeners.
Joe Biden’s penchant for lies and exaggeration when standing behind a podium has always been a well-known character flaw. But his tendency to spew self-serving misinformation has descended to new depths of disgust whenever he talks about Israel and Gaza.
Take a few minutes to watch British, independent journalist Owen Jones as he offers an across-the-pond perspective on Biden’s legacy:
This coming Friday, July 12 at 1 pm Eastern time, 10 am Pacific, I will lead the next episode of the Christian Forum on Israel-Palestine.
The following link will allow you to watch the conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYXuwuUNJ-k
Our guest will be my friend Munther Amira. Munther is a Palestinian, non-violent, peace activist who lives in the Aida refugee camp where Terry and I stay during our visits to the West Bank.
Munther was arrested by Israeli soldiers in September 2023 and released in February 2024. He will talk with us about the dire conditions for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
But he will especially describe the brutal changes implemented after the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Trust me. You won’t want to miss Munther’s first-hand account of Palestinian Life in an Israeli Prison.
Again, use the following link to watch this important conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYXuwuUNJ-k
Last June I posted the story about my visit to the West Bank region known as Masafer Yatter.
Terry and I had helped to plant new trees and grape vines for a Palestinian farmer by the name of Hafez Hureini. Mr. Hureini’s hands had been broken by Jewish settlers who were in the process of stealing his land.
The young people from Aida Refugee camp (where we lived) were helping him to catch up on his backlogged farm maintenance. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, we were attacked by both Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers as we worked.
That’s right. In Israel it’s apparently illegal to help a Palestinian farmer work his own farmland.
A few days ago I happened across an Al Jazeera documenatary focusing on Mr. Hureini’s continuing struggle against Israeli land theft! Here you can meet this man and hear his story for yourselves.
Yes, the settlers are still stealing. The soldiers are still oppressing the innocent and defending the thieves. And Mr. Hureini continues to stand his ground peacefully.
All the while, our God sees it all and promises to one day restore justice to his world. And I’ll give you a hint: justice ain’t on the side of Zionist land theft.
I am happy to announce the next episode of the Christian Forum on Israel-Palestine. It will be broadcast on June 8th, 4 pm Eastern, 1 pm Pacific.
We will be speaking with Ilan Pappe, one of the world’s premier historians of modern Israel, but especially of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
When the time comes you can watch this conversation by clicking on the following link or paste it in your computer’s URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Azgev9Rc8
Professor Pappe has written many important books. Perhaps his best known
publication is The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. His most recent work, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (available in September), deals with the power and influence of Israeli/pro-Zionist lobbying efforts around the world.
Please join us for what I know will be a fascinating conversation with one of Israel’s foremost historians.
I am deeply disappointed to say that I will not be participating in this particular conversation. I will be flying home from Israel on June 8. But trust me, I will NOT miss any more of our upcoming conversations.
Mark you calendars now, not only for Ilan Pappe, but for what I know will be another fascinating conversation with Ali Abunimah, the founder and chief editor of The Electronic Intifada, on June 18.
I will provide more information once I return from my trip to Israel-Palestine.
Today the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies published my article titled “Echoes of Slavery, Racial Segregation and Jim Crow: American Dispensationalism and Christian Zionist Bible-Reading.”
Below is the abstract, that is a brief summary of the article:
The apologetics of pro-slavery, pro-segregation Christians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were identical to the methods of biblical interpretation used by Dispensationalist Christian Zionists today. The ideology’s specific rules of ‘literal interpretation’ and ‘antecedent theology’ led both groups to similar conclusions about slavery and racial segregation, on the one hand, and Jewish privilege and Palestinian displacement, on the other. Abolitionist efforts to promote a Christ–like hermeneutic rooted in Christian morality points the way forward to correcting modern theologies, such as Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, that continue to sanction human oppression.
I believe that clicking the highlighted title above will allow access to the article online. However, if this does not work for you, let me know and I can send you a copy.
Yes, I too am disappointed by the numerous formating and editorial errors in my article. Yuck! Unfortunately, it is too late for me to do anything about it now…sigh…
Breaking the Silence is an Israeli organization made up of former soldiers. They share similar stories. The majority did their tour of duty in the Occupied Territory (the West Bank). Upon reflecting on their behavior when they wore the uniform; after thinking about the ways they treated Palestinians, all develop a guilty conscience. In order to ‘atone’ for their sins, and to educate the Israeli public about the evils of occupation, they tell their stories
Below is one recent example dealing with Gaza:
