Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Israel is a Jewish State: IPMN's Noushin Framke would like that to end

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a policy of a two state solution for the troubled Middle East. I have been writing for over a year that the Israel/Palestine Mission Network was and is pushing for a one state solution. On November 9th I posted, Is an overture for a one state solution looming on the horizon? I was wrong about the overture but I was not wrong about the IPMN’s attitude toward a one state solution. Noushin Darya Framke of the IPMN, (She is chair of their communications committee), has written an article for Ecclesio.com. The article, Ye Shall Share the Land calls into question the very concept of a Jewish State.

There are details in the article that I am going to skip over and refer my readers to an excellent post on Framke’s article written by my friend David Fischler at Reformed Pastor. His article is “The Mask Comes Off,” and as always he carefully goes into the details. But I want, instead, to deal with this continuing arrogance that permeates the IPMN. And at the same time the great need for the Jewish people to have a Jewish State.

The IPMN’s attitude toward Israel as a Jewish State is troubling. In the article Framke quotes Tony Judt writing that she prefers his way of seeing Israel. She writes:

Judt famously called Israel an anachronism, saying it was a good idea for the nineteenth century but an idea whose time had passed in the 21st century. Judt said Israel arrived too late: “The very idea of a ‘Jewish state’—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is ananachronism.”
The truth is Israel as a Jewish state was created for the care and safety of Jewish people. And its Arab citizens are not excluded. They can vote and hold office. They have freedom of religion. Yes, there are problems, serious problems, recently racist problems, but they are solvable but the destruction of Israel as a Jewish State is a disaster.

I have watched from my distant computer chair the speed with which the Israel/Palestine Mission Network has entered into the dark world of radical anti-Jewish thought and ideas. I have watched with fear, because rather than pushing for solutions between two peoples they have excluded anything good done by Israel and have made her the ultimate enemy. Entering the radical world of the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions movement they have embraced a movement that believes Israel should never have existed and that one state with an Arab majority is the solution.

IPMN has not entered the world of Israel at all; Israel is the other. Neither have they entered into the world of the Palestinians, but instead into the world of Hamas and Hezbollah, and further into a world of dark sinister hatred for the Jew.

Just two days ago IPMN, once again, linked to another James Wall posting in which he was suggesting that the Israelis were the source of Wikileaks. Wall was using as a source another writer who writes for Veterans Today. The article he referenced was on another anti-Semitic site, but it was also on VT since the writer, Jeff Gates, is a staff writer for them.[1]

Veterans Today is the awful anti-Semitic site that James Wall thinks “is a progressive website that sees injustice and calls it for what it is …” At the same time that Wall was referencing a VT writer, a different writer on that site was explaining that all of the United State leadership during the last presidency was controlled by the Jews (he still thinks leadership is controlled by the Jews) and he wrote:
These people must all be hanged, which is the accepted and traditional American punishment for capital crimes and especially for war crimes. They have already committed the crimes that call for their hanging, so they feel they have nothing to lose by nuking Iran and Syria for their Israeli masters. … We are up against a combination of cunning, greed and insanity that is hard to describe, let alone argue with. It can only be exterminated, as we do with dangerous or filthy insects and vermin in our homes. And when we’re dealing with rats and cockroaches, we don’t take any of them prisoner.
After writing that he wrote this about Israel:
The various agencies of the gangster state of Israel must be similarly disposed of. No more Jewish rules of conduct, and no Jewish Rule under the North American Union. Do we want to be the laughingstock of the world? I should say, do we want to continue to be the laughingstock of the world? To be big, tough Americans who let a bunch of creepy Jews run us like cattle?[2]
None of this bothers the leadership of IPMN. They are sliding into a dreadful place. But what is truly shameful is that they are themselves perpetrating the very reason that the Jewish State of Israel needs to exist. Anti-Semitism is growing around the world, it is growing in the United States, and even in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The IPMN’s actions, including Framke’s article, is proof enough that there must be a Jewish State.


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[1] If all of this seems confusing please see, “The Israel/Palestine Mission Network, James Wall and conspiracy theories

[2] The article is an old one written in 2006, but it was posted at Veterans Today because it was thought relevant.

1 comment:

Pastor Bob said...

A clear and important issue related to all of this is that Jews have considered themselves a nation for millenia. They call themselves a nation because God made them a nation.

This has not meant for most of the past two millenia that there was a Jewish nation with land. It is in this sense a very curious meaning of the word nation.

Now that Israel has been established as a landed nation it is called a Jewish nation. One might ask if all Jews around the world are citizens of Israel. Certainly all are invited to do aliya and become citizens of Israel.

Thus while there are many nations that have a state religion, Muslim nations in particular, those nations in theory are not also nations that consist of a particular racial group.

One could ask if a few Muslim nations are also becoming nations that are based on race. The persecution of black African Muslims in the Sudan is an example.

There are also nations that seek racial purity but not religious purity although they don't make a point of saying it. Japan is a good example.

Israel is really not so much a religious state (although it is become more so) because Jews can be atheists and still be Jews. But while Israel does have citizens of a variety of races the term "Jewish state" is primarily a racial statement.

While the need for a Jewish state can be proved by persecution of Jews throughout history the term "Jewish nation" means much more than a state based on religion.

None of this is to say that Israel should not exist as a Jewish state. Rather it is to say that we all should recognize what Israel means when it uses the terms Jewish state or Jewish nation.

Bob Campbell
Sharon Hill, PA