An open letter issued by the World Council of Churches denounced “repeated declarations by the [Israeli] government’s top leaders” that “all of Jerusalem will belong to Israel.” This organization, which represents a large portion of institutional Christendom, has for years stood in solidarity with the Muslim Arabs against what they call Israel’s ‘illegal occupation of Palestine.’ This contradicts the viewpoint of many born-again Christians who hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible. They support Israel’s possession of the entirety of Jerusalem as its eternal capital, with Judea and Samaria as the historical heartland of Israel.

This discrepancy in ‘Christian’ viewpoints must appear puzzling to Jews. Yet for some Jews, the discrepancy is beginning to make more sense. In the progression of Jewish-Christian relations, an interesting development has occurred in recent years. During a conversation I had with a prominent Israeli leader, this person said, “We Jews now understand that there are two kinds of Christians—those who love us, and those who do not.” This seems to be a new revelation for many Jewish people, who until recently viewed the Christian world as a somewhat monolithic entity. It was an entity correctly viewed as a primary source of extended misery for the Jews over the course of time.

Anyone familiar with history knows the awful record of horrid atrocities committed against the Jews by the ‘church.’ The use of that word in quotes is to distinguish between those deviant religious institutions and the true Church. The latter is supposed to be characterized by love, but somewhere in the process, attitudes towards the Jews were twisted into ecclesiastically sanctioned hatred.

How did this happen? As the concept of the church devolved from the simple, untainted spiritual assembly of believers to the foul, grotesque political monstrosity that dominated Europe for centuries, a theology of animosity towards Jews was fabricated. The developing church ignored Paul’s clear and authoritative instructions, relayed in his letter to the church at Rome, on how to treat the Jews. Even though they had been resistant to the message regarding the claims of Jesus, Paul directed the Christians to love the Jews regardless. They were “beloved,” declared that erudite metamorphosed Pharisee, because of the promises God had made to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

Tragically, the church chose to ignore this divinely inspired directive, and instead constructed a theology of hatred for Jews. This theology taught that Jews were under God’s eternal curse for rejecting Jesus as Messiah, and were to be actively condemned for the part their leaders played in Jesus’ unjust execution. The church had become the new Israel, replacing the spurned Israel. Therefore, the Jews were to be blamed and scorned as “Christ killers.”

As this warped doctrine pervaded the churches, taught universally for centuries, it incited extensive oppression, expulsion, and murder of Jews. The church, which was supposed to be exemplary in love, became exemplary in hatred. In modern times, a segment of the church has taken a fresh look at the Bible, and renounced the theological concept the church has replaced Israel, along with all of the resultant viciousness. It has in repentance embraced the doctrine that all Jews are to be loved unconditionally, regardless of any difference in viewpoint on the identity of the Messiah. It has affirmed the message of the Biblical prophets that God still has auspicious intentions for the nation of Israel.

Notice that it is only a segment of the church which has renounced that theology. This is the basis behind my friend’s accurate observation about the “two kinds of Christians.” The replacement theology which was at the root of historic anti-semitism is still prominent in many church organizations and denominations. Sure, they are now more civilized in the way they present their distorted teachings, no longer inciting the masses to torch Jewish towns. But the rancid core of that theology still remains. Now they incite the masses to tear down Jewish towns in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Anti-Zionism is the modern expression of that old rotten creed. Israel has become a nation once again, in marvelous fulfillment of the pronouncements of the Biblical prophets. However, rather than giving the God of Israel his due renown for this momentous act, rather than applauding God’s renewed compassion for the Jews expressed by returning them to their place of refuge, the replacement theologians persist in their hoary spite. They deny any connection between the Israel of the Bible and the Israel of today. They deny its legitimacy as a special preordained accomplishment of God’s sovereign plan.

This is why the World Council of Churches, comprised of members who still promulgate that reprobate replacement theology, consistently issue anti-Israel proclamations. This is why these “Christians,” who deny the Bible is the authoritative, inerrant Word of God, support a Palestinian state on land God promised in an eternal covenant to Israel. This is why these spiritual descendants of the ecclesiastical hate mongers demand that Jerusalem be wrested from Jewish possession. This is why these clerics find more in common with the descendants of Ishmael, who worship a foreign god and advocate jihad, than they do with the descendants of Isaac.

Yes, there are two kinds of Christians. We are those who stand on the word of our God, who will be unconditionally supportive of Israel, based on the unconditional covenant promises to Abraham.

—Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider from which this article was taken, nor of this publication

As Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict XVI—rarely chose to intervene in a public way in Jewish-Catholic questions. Certainly he had been involved in almost all of the major documents and actions concerning Judaism under Pope John Paul II, but he had generally chosen to take a more indirect, ‘background’ role, guiding and approving the work of others, such as the Pontifical Biblical Commission. This excerpt is from an article that first appeared in December 2000 in the Vatican paper, L'Osservatore Romano.

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
The Heritage of Abraham
“The Church was considered by her own mother to be a degenerate daughter, while Christians considered their mother to be blind and obstinate.”

…The God of the Jewish Bible [which, together with the New Testament, is also the Christian Bible]—a God at times infinitely tender, and at times so severe as to inspire fear—is also the God of Jesus Christ and of the Apostles. The Church of the second century had to resist the denial of this God by the Gnostics and, above all, by Marcion, who created a dichotomy between the New Testament God and the “inferior” Creator God who was the source of the Old Testament. The Church, however, has always maintained its faith in a single God, the Creator of the world, and the author of both Testaments. The awareness of God contained in the New Testament, which finds its summit in the Johannine definition that “God is love” (I John 4:16), does not contradict the past, but rather serves as a summary of all of salvation history, which initially had Israel as its central figure.

For this reason, the voices of Moses and the prophets have rung out in the Church’s liturgy from its very beginnings until today; Israel’s psalter is also the great book of the Church’s prayer. As a result, the primitive Church did not pit itself against Israel, but in all simplicity believed itself to be the legitimate continuation of Israel. The splendid image of chapter 12 of the book of Revelation of a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, pregnant and suffering in the pangs of giving birth is Israel, which was “to rule over all nations with an iron scepter” (Psalm 2:9). Nonetheless, this woman is transformed into the new Israel, the mother of new peoples, and she is personified in Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The bringing-together of these three meanings—Israel, Mary, the Church—shows how Israel and the Church were, and are, inseparable for the Christian faith.

“…from the very beginning, relations between the infant Church and Israel were often marked by conflict.”

We know that every act of giving birth is difficult. Certainly, from the very beginning, relations between the infant Church and Israel were often marked by conflict. The Church was considered by her own mother to be a degenerate daughter, while Christians considered their mother to be blind and obstinate. Down through the history of Christianity, already-strained relations deteriorated further, even giving birth in many cases to anti-Jewish attitudes, which throughout history have led to deplorable acts of violence. Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah [holocaust] was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this latest tragedy that a new vision of the relationship between the Church and Israel has been born: a sincere willingness to overcome every kind of anti-Judaism, and to initiate a constructive dialogue based on knowledge of each other, and on reconciliation. If such a dialogue is to be fruitful, it must begin with a prayer to our God, first of all that he might grant to us Christians a greater esteem and love for that people, the people of Israel, to whom belong “the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs are the patriarchs, and from them comes Christ according to the flesh, he who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen” (Rom. 9:4-5), and this not only in the past, but still today, “for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). …

It is evident that, as Christians, our dialogue with the Jews is situated on a different level than that in which we engage with other religions. The faith witnessed to by the Jewish Bible [the Old Testament for Christians] is not merely another religion to us, but is the foundation of our own faith. Therefore, Christians—and today increasingly in collaboration with their Jewish sisters and brothers—read and attentively study these books of Sacred Scripture, as a part of their common heritage. It is true that Islam also considers itself as one of Abraham’s offspring, and has inherited from Jews and Christians this same God. Muslims, however, follow a different path, and so dialogue with them calls for different parameters…

—Courtesy of SIDIC. www.sidic.org
This excerpt from the English translation is by Rev. Murray Watson,
Roman Catholic Diocese of London, Ontario, Canada, on study leave in Jerusalem.

By Dr. Jeff Halper
Jeff Halper is a regular speaker to incoming MennoJerusalem
and Bat Kol study and tour groups in Jerusalem.
A Palestinian Prison-State?
“If Abbas says yes, he…will win the Nobel Peace Prize,
sharing the stage proudly with Sharon and Bush—and he will be assassinated!”

In peace-making, as in law, business, and other areas of life, the devil is in the details. The crux of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not over a Palestinian state. The “Quartet” of the Middle East road map—Europe, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States—all agree that a Palestinian state must emerge. Even Ariel Sharon himself, the father of the settlements and a fervent proponent of the Greater Land of Israel ideology, has come to understand the need for a Palestinian state in order to relieve Israel of the four million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. No, the problem is not a Palestinian state, but a viable Palestinian state.

Viability, a term found in the road map, is not a secondary issue. After almost four decades of deliberate Israeli de-development of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians are left today with scorched earth. No functioning economy (the Palestinians, 70 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, are being kept alive by international relief agencies); no agriculture (since 1967 Israel has uprooted or cut down a million olive and fruit trees); no homes for the young generation (Israel has demolished 12,000 Palestinian homes since the occupation began, and refuses to issue permits to build new ones).

“Israel needs only five to 15 percent of the occupied territories to retain complete control and confine the Palestinians to a prison-state.”

Two generations of Palestinians have never known freedom, only military occupation. They have been brutalized, traumatized, undereducated, and left with few skills and little hope of employment. A full 60 percent of the Palestinian population is under the age of 18. Add to this equation the fact that the small, truncated Palestinian state that emerges will be required also to provide an infrastructure, services, employment, and a future to the thousands of refugees that will return—Israel, with American backing, refuses to take in any refugees even though it expelled them in 1948—and President Bush’s recent call in Brussels for a “truly viable” Palestinian state sounds hollow. While he declared emphatically that “a state of scattered territories will not work,” his agreement to Israel’s annexation of its major settlement blocs leaves one to wonder just where that viable Palestinian state will be.

One gets the impression that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is being set up for yet another “generous offer.” At the end of the Oslo process, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was supposed to have offered 95 percent of the occupied territories to the Palestinians. It is not true—the 95 percent figure came from a Clinton proposal that both the Israelis and Palestinians accepted, but which never materialized! But even if it were true, Israel needs only five to 15 percent of the occupied territories to retain complete control and confine the Palestinians to a prison-state. Israel could control the borders, Palestinian movement, all the water and most of the agricultural land, the Jerusalem area (which, because of tourism, represents almost half the Palestinian economy), the country’s airspace, and even its communications sphere. The Palestinians could get 85 to 95 percent of the actual territory and, like inmates of a prison, still be locked into a series of cells called a ‘State.’

This, it appears, is what awaits Abbas in the next few months. The euphoria generated around the “moderate and pragmatic” Abu Mazen in this “post-Arafat era” is intended to put him in a corner, to place expectations of concessions upon him that he cannot possibly fulfill. Coordinated, as always, with the Americans, Sharon will spring his Generous Offer: Gaza plus 60-75 percent of the West Bank and a symbolic presence in East Jerusalem. Sounds OK, and fleshed out on a map it will look OK to most people abroad who have no way of evaluating the issue of viability. But it will lock the Palestinians into the cantonized entity toward which Sharon has been tirelessly and openly working this past quarter century. It will be a new apartheid.

If Abbas says yes, he will be the quisling leader Israel has hoped for. Two things will happen: Abbas will win the Nobel Peace Prize (sharing the stage proudly with Sharon and Bush), and he will be assassinated. Say no, and Sharon will pounce: “See?” he will proclaim. “The Palestinians have refused yet another generous offer! They obviously do not want peace!” And Israel, off the hook, will be free to expand its control of the occupied territories for years to come.

The Chinese expression has it: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The generous offer, though fictitious, worked once. It is the responsibility of everyone seeking a just and endurable peace to ensure that it does not happen again. Viability is the devil in the details.
—This article first appeared in the Boston Globe.
Dr. Halper is the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

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By Clarence Musgrave
“To be silent in the face of victimization is collaboration.”
Another Genocide—A Forgotten Holocaust
“If only they will stop their violence, we will be able to stop oppressing them.”

Before walking along the road that runs by the side of the Armenian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem in the summer of 2000 when we came to live in Jerusalem, I was unaware of the Armenian Genocide which happened in 1915. This year marks the 90th anniversary of that date. To commemorate it there recently have been a series of Symposia in Jerusalem.

One aspect of it was information on the sheer scale of the Genocide, with over one million people having been killed. It is a sad reflection on my education that I can recall nothing about this from my history studies. Present at the meeting was one of the Bishops of the Armenian Church. His parents escaped from Armenia and came to Haifa where he was born. The current Armenian Patriarch was born in the desert of Iraq, when his parents fled from the Genocide. Almost all the Armenian families now in Jerusalem are “survivors” of the Genocide, in that their parents escaped from Armenia and found their way to Jerusalem.

One presenter from Spain spoke about the ways in which events leading to Genocide can be observed and monitored: an early warning sign will be when the Government of a country treats one group of its citizens in an unequal way compared to others. Another warning sign will be the “demonizing” of those whom you intend to get rid of—they are sub-human, they are animals, they are a threat to our purity, our security etc. Another will be the process whereby the ‘strong’ will characterize themselves as the victims of crimes perpetrated by the ‘weak,’ so that they can then claim to be acting in self-defense. “If only they will stop their violence, we will be able to stop oppressing them.”

It was pointed out that for all the information which has been increasingly available to the world-wide community, genocides have still occurred. Darfur, Rwanda, the Balkans—all were referred to as having happened in the last 20 years, and information about them all has been widely available. One of the heartfelt cries from peoples who feel that they are being oppressed is, “Why do people not do something about it? Why do they not know?” Certainly, the number of people who have come through Jerusalem in the past year who have little knowledge of the Wall and its effect on life here is troubling. How is it that folk here who have the information, and who put it out, seem to make so little impact on the world outside? One remark during a seminar was, “To be silent in the face of victimization is collaboration.”

Some of the time was spent in speaking about what the Armenians call “Genocide Denial” whereby people say that the genocide never really occurred. One of the Jewish speakers quoted the following remark from Shimon Peres, quoted in a Turkish newspaper before an official visit to Turkey, as saying: “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide.”

—See also: Israel’s Denial of the Armenian Genocide Desecrates the Memory of the Holocaust:
http://www.hairenik.com/armenianweekly/april_may_2002/politics001.html

Educators’ Forum in Bethlehem on Education, Democracy, Identity, and Conflict

From July 4-15, at Bethlehem University, international educators and community activists will join their Palestinian counterparts to explore how all forms of education affect socialization processes within a society and between societies: before, during, and after conflict. “How does education polarize identities under conditions of stability/peace or war/conflict?” For program information contact Howard S. Davidson, University of Manitoba: