Anna Baltzer, the DVD of Steadfast Hope and the International Solidarity Movement

Anna Baltzer participates in the DVD that comes with the publication Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace. The DVD is now on the web site of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in You-Tube video segments. This is a DVD made up of different film clips.

“Life in Occupied Palestine,” chapter three, is the segment that features Baltzer.

I am interested in Baltzer for several reasons. The first reason is that when I did research on the computer to prove that Dr. Mary Mikhael's blood libel story, told in her workshop, at the Presbyterian Women’s Gathering, was fraudulent, Baltzer’s blog came up with the original story and then with a different story that was just as fraudulent as the first.

And rather than print a retraction, as the original story teller did, she simply changed the names, place and actions. She eventually did admit the first story was untrue but in a rather non-caring manner stating that there was a miscommunication but still claiming the second story. The posting about encountering the libel story is here, The reason I left Dr. Mikhael's workshop on Joshua...it's because of the Jewish people.

The next reason I am interested in Baltzer is because she has had training and connections with the International Solidarity Movement. Baltzer is a member of the International Women’s Peace Service and for some of the IWPS events the ISM provides training. And in fact, the women’s group in their application pact state, “IWPS supports and is part of the loose network that calls itself ISM and will provide on the spot help and support to ISM activists.”

The ISM is a far left group working for the Palestinian cause. I first became aware of ISM when writing about the terrible anti-Semitic protests in the United States during the last Israel/Gaza conflict.

My interest here is with the kind of influence the ISM has on its trainees and the organizations connected to it. They do have a statement at their Seattle location, Racism Against Jews Is Not Acceptable and it is put that way because they refuse to use the term anti-Semitism. They write:

“Anti-Semitic” is the common adjective for prejudice against Jews, but the terms "anti-Semitism" and "anti-Semitic" can be misleading. While historically understood to refer to prejudice against Jews, the terms actually promote an outmoded use of racial categories. Under that terminology, Arabs are also Semitic people. Since for the moment we are focusing on prejudice against Jews, we prefer in this context the more precise term “anti-Jewish".

This of course means they have divorced Zionism and the State of Israel from the Jewish people. As they put it we “reject the false identification of Zionism with the Jewish people of the world” and “We reject the false identification of the State of Israel with the Jewish people of the world.”

The ISM movement then goes on to address control of the media and the US Government.
They first make a point, thankfully, of discounting some of the more egregious myths of the last few centuries including the Protocols’ of the Elders of Zion, and other conspiracy theories. And yet they write:

“The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a powerful pro-Israel lobby, but it is not a Jewish lobby: it does not lobby for the Jewish people of the world, but for the State of Israel. Furthermore, there are several other powerful factions that pressure the US government to support the Israeli government, such as right-wing Christian groups (many of which give funding to AIPAC) and the Aerospace Industry Association (AIA).”

The authors of this publication also insist that the holocaust did happen and the Jewish people were persecuted through the ages, however, they write:

“This history of persecution in no way justifies the State of Israel's persecution of non-Jews, but the history itself is not made up, and persons promoting justice do themselves no service by trying to ignore or minimize it.

The State of Israel, on the other hand, has systematically invented a history for itself, just as many nation-states have done, in which it is simultaneously victim and victor against overwhelming odds. The well-documented truth of the six million Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust is exploited by some Israelis to justify the policy of oppression against Palestinians. We have every reason to reject this practice and the falsehoods of Israeli history, but we must not let that lead us into underestimating or denigrating the appalling worldwide history of persecution of Jewish people.”

What is actually going on in the paper, besides a redefinition of terms, is a rending of the Jewish people from their identity and from their sense of well being. There is a lack of knowledge or understanding of how much the Jewish people around the world identify with Israel.

And as usual there is failure to acknowledge the total history and problems connected with the Middle East. But the worst part of the paper is the way concepts and words are manipulated in order to give the members of this organization the right to indulge in anti-Semitism.

A small paper put out by StandWithUs, on Anna Baltzer is helpful.
Also see-“Anna Baltzer Out of the Middle East.”

Words to a Jewish college student: Treating him like he is not a "real" person? !!

More than thirty years ago, when I was part of a church that had become a safe haven for young people finding Christ during the hippy years, I remember a powerful scene at a Saturday night concert. One young man who had embraced Jesus but kept slipping away into the drug scene had the attention of the church pastor.

The pastor had his arms wrapped around the young man in a tight embrace and was talking to him. From my distance he was seemingly pleading with him. I could easily imagine him saying “I will not let you go.” Meaning I will not let you keep slipping away into such darkness.

God speaks that to our lives. Jesus promises that to his people. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28) That is our promise from God and it includes discipline within the grace.

I feel that way about the subject I have been writing on for the last several weeks, the Israel/Palestine Mission Network and their publication Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace, which I have shown to be anti-Semitic. I will explain. God intends justice, peace and fulfillment for both the Jewish people and the Palestinians.

He is sovereign, his plans and purposes will be accomplished. But who will rise up and who will fall because of their stance toward that which belongs to the Lord?

I will not let go because I see the injustice of telling lies to accomplish our own agenda, our own vision of justice. I will not let go because this is my denomination and I, as well as everyone else who is PCUSA, is responsible for our church’s attitude toward the Jewish people.

As I was writing an answer to someone’s comment yesterday, I had the booklet Steadfast Hope open and my eyes saw something I had marked much earlier. This is from the section “Biblical Israel and the Modern Political State of Israel”:

“Some Jews recognize the threat posed by Christian Zionism’s brand of allegiance to Israel. Israel journalist Gershom Gorenberg, in a 60 Minutes interview on October 12, 2002, warns that ‘Christian Zionists do not see Jews as real people but as actors in their religious drama, where two-thirds of Jews are killed in one act, and the remainder must convert to Christianity.’”

This is how that section ends. When I read that I thought of the chapter on question 10 in Victor Styrsky’s book Honest to God: Christian Zionists Confront 10 Questions Jews Need Answered.

The last question is “What is your deepest prayer for the Jewish People? In the last part of that chapter under the section, ‘You Are A Jew!’ there is a marvelous interchange of words between Styrsky and a Jewish college student. Hopefully he will forgive me if I quote the whole section here:

“’Pastor Victor,’ the Jewish college student addressed me as he stood.

‘It is very, very hard to be a Jew on any college campus and to try and stand for Israel,’ he bemoaned a painful truth.

My response was immediate, unprepared, and seemed to fly out of my mouth like a frightened dove from a thicket.

‘YOU ARE A JEW!!’ I exclaimed with tears filling my eyes. ‘You are the first born of HaShem! [the name-a substitute for using the name of God when not in worship] Yours is the adoption as sons, the Divine Glory, the covenants, the receiving of the Law, the Temple worship and the promises! (Romans 9:3-5)

‘Be strong, be encouraged, do not be terrified, do not be discouraged: for ‘HaShem your God is with you wherever you go!’ (Joshua 1:9)

‘You are a Jew, and if you can’t make it to synagogue yet, your rabbis will understand- but you have got to read your Bible. Until you do, you don’t fully know who you are, nor do you know the power of your God!

‘You must read the account of creation and your heritage in God’s promise to Abraham recorded in the book of Genesis, your birth as a slave-child nation, and your redemption in the book of Exodus.

You might want to skip Leviticus for a while-and nobody really likes math, so leave the Book of Numbers until you connect with a rabbi, but you must also study the Prophets and the Writings!

‘Read your Bible, seek the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and be Jews. That is what you need to do on your college campuses.’"

Enough said!

Some ramblings about Steadfast Hope and steadfast hope for a Christian

So what does steadfast hope mean? There is a great chapter in the New Testament that deals with a hope that is steadfast. That is Hebrews 6:19-20: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”

This hope has to do with our union with Jesus Christ and it is based in the truthfulness of God’s Word. As John Calvin, writing about this verse, looks at the simile ‘anchor’ and notes how a ship is held in the midst of rough seas by letting down the anchor into the darkness of the ocean. But he concludes as we all must, that sometimes even with that physical anchor the ship is not held. But he goes on to write of the sureness of God and His Word.

“There is this difference, that an anchor is cast down on the sea because there is solid ground at the bottom, but our hope rises and flies aloft because it finds nothing to stand on in this world. It cannot rely on created things, but finds rest in God alone. Just as the cable on which the anchor hangs joins the ship itself to the ground through a long dark gulf, so the truth of God is a chain for binding us to Himself, so that no distance of place and no darkness may hinder us from cleaving to Him. When we are bound in this way to God, even though we have to contend with continual storms, we are safe from the danger of shipwreck. That is why he says that the anchor is sure and steadfast. It is possible for an anchor to be torn out or for a cable to break or a ship to be broken in pieces by the violence of the waves. But the power of God to support us is quite different, as is also the strength of hope and the firmness of His Word.” (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Hebrews, 1& 2nd Peter, Eerdmans)

So united with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection and anchored in the hope and truthfulness of God’s word, how do we deal with truth? Once again, only through His Word, Psalm’s 119 tells us that His Word “is a lamp” and a “light” for our feet and our path.

Truthfulness is a part of the Christian's orders. It belongs to the hope we are given. Steadfast hope belongs to those who follow Christ, but it carries all kinds of interesting attributes. Walking in hope we walk outside of darkness, we walk away from lies. We insist on truthfulness.

We belong to a city and a Lord which excludes among other sins, the sins of lying. Yes, we enter, only because of the righteousness of Christ, but we are changed and forgiven to walk in good works as Paul says in Ephesians: “for by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” ( 8:8-10)

Pulling this all together with what I have been writing about the last few weeks, our steadfast hope in Jesus Christ prohibits the use of anti-Semitism because it is basically founded on a lie. In this case many lies about the Jewish people. And we are put in an opposing position to the Lord of the Church if we attempt good works or our own notion of social justice by means of lies.

Indeed when we are silent in the face of such lies we also participate in the lies. I pray the Church as a whole will speak out against the anti-Semitism being pushed and pursued among us. Faithfulness has many twists and turns that we often do not envision as we walk with Christ. But we all are called to faithfulness.

Let us come back to Hebrews, to chapter eleven. That is the great faith chapter which lifts up, not the saints of the New Testament, but the saints of the Hebrew Bible. And some do not realize this but even some saints that existed at the time of the Maccabees.

If the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was to accept the writings of the author, Sand, used in the booklet Steadfast Hope to discredit the ancestry of the Jewish people, we would find our bible text gone. The faith chapter of Hebrews would be meaningless because for Sand, and undoubtedly for the Israel/Palestine Mission Network leadership who used him, the saints listed in that chapter never existed.

I prefer to listen to David Torrance brother of James and Thomas Torrance. In A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry,” in the chapter , “The Mission of Christians and Jews,” he writes of five ways God uses the Jewish people to confront the nations of the world. Number one is:

“Their remarkable preservation through history, scattered as they have been across the world and persecuted time and again in most horrific ways, points to the miraculous hand of God who set them apart for himself and promised, ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me’ (Jer 31:36). Their preservation points to the hand of God.”

We, as a church, are treading on ground that is infused with God’s blessings and promises as well as his wrath. We are reaching out to touch, with untruthful words, God’s purposes in history.

A movie, the Presbyterian Middle East Study Team and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network

As I stated in my last posting it is amazing what one can find on the internet.

Hunting around for internet information on Israel and Palestine I discovered this film titled “Occupation 101,” by Sufyan Omeish and Abdallah Omeish. It, like Steadfast Hope, the booklet published by Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is full of misinformation and lies about the State of Israel and Jewish history.

For instant, Camera: the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America writes:

“A succession of film clips depict oppression in Northern Ireland, in Algeria, against black civil rights marchers in America and South Africa. Words of righteous indignation by Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are juxtaposed with these scenes of violence. This culminates in footage of Israeli forces assaulting — without a hint of context — stone-throwing Palestinian protesters. The viewer is led to see the Palestinian cause as connected to a worldwide struggle for civil rights. But the viewer is being fed a lie, because the concept of equality and coexistence championed by civil rights leaders in South Africa and America is inconsistent with the Palestinian leaders' exhortations to violence.”

The film uses many interviews including several Jewish ones, which is an absurdity, since the list also includes one person, William Baker, who has ties to neo-Nazi groups.

As Camera puts it:

“Most disturbing was the segment featuring pro-Palestinian Christian activists which contained classic anti-Jewish undertones and crucifixion imagery. These activists blame Israel for the disappearing Christian presence in the Holy land, notwithstanding the ongoing attacks by Palestinian Muslims against Palestinian Christians. William Baker, head of Christians and Muslims for Peace, asserts the "first converts to the teachings of Jesus were Palestinians." The first converts to Christianity were, of course, Jews, just as Jesus himself was Jewish, along with most of his close associates and early followers.

Baker’s appearance in the film is noteworthy. He was expelled from the congregation of Dr. Robert Schuller, founder and head of Crystal Cathedral in Gardengrove, CA after his association with groups espousing anti-Semitic views was revealed. An exposée by Stan Brin in the Orange County Weekly (Feb. 13, 2002) details Baker’s connections with anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi organizations — for example, he chaired the neo-Nazi Populist Party in 1984 — and also alleges that Baker’s academic pedigree is fake.” (emphasis mine)

Another interesting part of Occupation, 101 is that Douglas Dicks, who is “the regional liaison for the PC(USA) in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem,” is also one of those interviewed.

Dicks is also an advisor to the Middle East Study Team who will present recommendations to the 2010 General Assembly. As pointed out on the web site of the Presbyterian Office of the General Assembly the “The team is assisted in its task, as needed, by drawing on the resources of staff most familiar with the historic relations with people in the region, issues and dynamics of the conflict and PC(USA)’s wide range of policies relative to the mandated study.”

Since the booklet, Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace, in an anti-Semitic tirade, implies that most present day Jews are not connected to the ancient Israelites, that the Jewish people control the media in the United States and that the Israelis committed ethnic cleansing it is not a surprise that Dicks has purportedly praised the booklet, suggesting that although some in the church may not like it, he believes “it represents the most up-to-date resource that may be able to help educate Presbyterians and others about the current realities in Israel/Palestine.”

A friend of mine has suggested that we should all be out in the street protesting such anti-Christian anti-Semitism. I agree.

But my biggest concern is that we have a seemingly official Presbyterian organization, the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, apparently, accountable to no one, pushing such hateful rhetoric. (The unaccountability of Israel/Palestine Mission Network was confirmed to me by Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the General Assembly Council, in an e-mail.) And not only that, we have a Middle East Study Team whose report will come to the 2010 General Assembly after having been influenced by an advisor who believes and commends the anti-Semitism of the publication Steadfast Hope.

Anti-Semitism, the Israel Lobby and Israel/Palestine Mission Network

It’s amazing what you can find on the internet. Sometimes, without intending to. Yesterday trying to find something from an old news site, (I think it is old) of the San Francisco Presbyterian Peace Makers, I was looking under both Israel/Palestine and then the name Venezuela caught my attention and since I have written on dictator Hugo Chavez I clicked on it.

One of the two choices after that was Venezuelanalysis.com. The first article I found was “Community Media: The Thriving Voice of the Venezuelan People.” The article was about how awful the private/commercial media was and how the many local media outlets of the people are far better. That was on July 31. Today, August 3, on the regular news and on the Venezuelanalysis.com are articles about how Chavez has taken over all of the private media. This is Marxism at its best.

Today, I once again was reading Steadfast Hope, the new publication put out by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). They also have some things to say about the media, but in this case it is the media in the United States which they believe is controlled by the “Israel Lobby.” You know it’s that old story that Henry Ford told in “The International Jew.” Ford wrote:

“All leading news agencies in America are Jew controlled. Jews in charge of newspapers adopt the policy of “a slurring headline a day.” Jews in charge of the newsboys on the streets (all the street concerns are pre-empted by Jewish ‘padrones’ who permit only their own boys to sell) give orders to emphasize certain news in their street cries—“a new yell against him every day.’ The whole campaign against the critic of Jewry, whoever he may be, is keyed to the threat, ‘Watch us get him.’”

So how is this story in Steadfast Hope any different? :

“Skewed coverage is no accident, writes Walter Rodgers, Jerusalem bureau chief for CNN from 1995 to 2000. ‘At the height of the second Palestinian intifada, Richard Griffiths, the editorial director of CNN, admonished me, ‘You have to remember, Walt, there are two standards of reporting at CNN, one for Israel, and the other for the rest of the world.’ Like many in US news organizations responsible for the Middle East coverage at that time, Griffiths had just taken a terrible beating from Jewish-American pressure groups as well as from his own avowedly pro-Israel management.”

And who do the author’s of Steadfast Hope and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. recommend for truthful news. The Electronic Intifada; they write “is an influential, respected internet source of news and analysis from a Palestinian perspective.”

There is an opinion piece on the Electronic Intifada entitled, “Why Israel won't survive.” In it the author states such things as:

“True, in terms of ability to murder and destroy, Israel is unmatched. But Israel's problem is not, as its propaganda insists, "terrorism" to be defeated by sufficient application of high explosives. Its problem is legitimacy, or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it. Israel simply cannot bomb its way to legitimacy.Israel was founded as a "Jewish state" through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's non-Jewish majority Arab population. It has been maintained in existence only through Western support and constant use of violence to prevent the surviving indigenous population from exercising political rights within the country, or returning from forced exile.”

There is just no other way to put it. Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is involved in rabid anti-Semitism. From insisting that those Jewish people who have returned to their ancient homeland are not really Jewish in their ancestry to insisting that the Israel Lobby and/or Jewish groups in America are controlling the media this organization that bears the name Presbyterian is treading where other anti-semites have trod before. And I, for one do not want to travel with them. I pray that our leadership will listen and do something about the Israel/Palestine Mission Network’s seeming hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

An exchange of e-mails between myself and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).

On July 27 I e-mailed Carol Hylkema the Moderator of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).

This is my e-mail:

Dear Carol,

I am writing in regards to the booklet, Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace. I am both reading and blogging on this booklet. I am bothered by the history of Israel as it is portrayed in the booklet, but I must admit that I have not seen such a blatant statement of anti-Semitism in a Christian Church publication as this quote:

“The founding narrative of the State of Israel links the modern-day Jews’ claim to the land of Israel/Palestine to their direct genealogical descent from the ancient Israelites. Recent anthropological scholarship shows that this widespread belief is very likely a myth, not historical fact. Shlomo Sand, an expert on European history at the university of Tel Aviv, and author of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? posits that the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that many European Jewish populations converted to the faith centuries later. Thus, he argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the ancient land of Israel.”

I must ask the question, who wrote that and why are you allowing it in a Presbyterian publication? Does it not bother you that you have cut the Jewish people away from their own Biblical history? This is not unlike statements made by racist anti-Semitic groups, who also wish to cut the Jewish people away from their history.

I am sincere in asking for information about who wrote that and why? Can you give an explanation for this? Will you please tell me you have done this unintentionally? Will you apologize? I have written on this here:

Were Holocaust victims linked genealogically to biblical Israel?

In the grace of God,
Viola Larson

(In case anyone wonders I used Ms Hylkema first name because we know each other and it seemed a bit more friendly)

Here is the e-mail that came today. I will be answering it in my next posting.

Dear Ms. Larson,

Carol Hylkema has asked me to respond to your email of July 27 and I am happy to do so. In your letter you say that you are "reading and blogging on [Steadfast Hope]." Your description indicates that you are commenting publicly about a document that you yourself may have misunderstood.

Your specific point of concern is the challenge posed by Professor Shlomo Sand's research on Jewish genealogy and demography to some of the common understandings about the connection between the Jews as a people and the modern-day state of Israel. Sand's fundamental assertion that the Jewish people have, like all populations, experienced dynamic historical forces including migration, conversion, and intermarriage is, on the face of it, not controversial. The world is and has always been a "melting pot." (A related historical issue not mentioned in the resource is whether some present-day Palestinian Muslims are the descendants of Jews who converted to Islam during the era of Islam's expansion who have, themselves, subsequently intermarried with Muslims of non-Jewish ancestry.) Future scholars will continue the fascinating project of uncovering centuries of Jewish history; those historians will continue the time-honored service of those in their profession: making important discoveries, challenging common assumptions, and disagreeing with each other.

Even so, it would be a mistake to reduce the vitally important ongoing conversation about Israel/Palestine to an argument about genetic purity and we assume your inquiry to Ms. Hylkema is not an attempt to do so. Sand's claim that many Jews in the modern-day global diaspora are not direct genealogical descendants of the ancient Israelites does not and cannot challenge the powerful collective identification among many Jews with Israel as the spiritual homeland referred to in their sacred scriptures and prayers.

Steadfast Hope makes the simple, factual observation that biblical/theological claims to the land are made by followers of all three of the Abrahamic religions. Such claims undermine peace because they pit Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions against each other and provide their followers with divine sanction for the harm they do to members of the other religions.

Historical examples include 1) the Christian use of biblical texts during the Crusades; 2) Christian use of New Testament texts to claim that in Christ God’s covenant with the children of Abraham has passed from Jews to Christians (the so-called supersessionist theology); 3) the use of the Quran to justify jihad against Christians and Jews; and 4) the Zionist claim to all the “Land of Israel” based on biblical texts in which God makes these promises to Abraham and his descendants. The book of Hebrews challenges this Zionist reading of the Old Testament by claiming that the “real” children of Israel are not genetic descendants but descendants by faith.

Steadfast Hope proposes that the use of these and other scriptural claims to land perpetuates the conflict and that a lasting, durable resolution to the conflict will be based on international law and respect for the humanity and aspirations of all who live in the Holy Land. This is the approach that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) has taken in its statements about Israel/Palestine ever since 1948.

If you are interested in pursuing the issue of the role of the Bible in the Israel/Palestine conflict I would recommend to you the 2009-10 Horizons Bible study selection by Dr. Mary Mikhael, President of the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, entitled Joshua: A Journey of Faith.

As you surely understand, practical size limitations pose an enormous challenge in any treatment of a complex topic. We have not attempted the impossible task of covering all aspects of the conflict, but have chosen instead to highlight perspectives that are less well known to many Americans, including our fellow Presbyterians. As we explain in the booklet, "Even now, however, Americans are broadly familiar with the dominant Jewish narrative about Israel, but relatively few fully comprehend the Palestinian historical narrative.... This widespread imbalance in understanding is, itself, a barrier to peace.... It does not diminish the importance of the Jewish narrative on Israel to advocate an equivalent awareness of the Palestinian experience both past and present." (p. 4) It is our sincere hope that Steadfast Hope will be the beginning of a journey of discovery for concerned readers, not an end in itself.

Given your interest in Jewish history, tradition, and genealogy, you may wish to read Sand's work in its entirety before dismissing its conclusions. Evidently a large number of Israelis do not regard his scholarship as anti-Semitic because his book was on the best seller list in Israel for nineteen weeks when it first came out in Hebrew.

Best wishes to you and your congregation as you engage in these and other important issues related to peacemaking in Israel/Palestine.

Sincerely,

Walt Davis,
Chair, IPMN Education Working Group

More from the Presbyterian Israel/Palestine Mission Network's booklet Steadfast Hope

I have deleted my last posting in order to put this closer to my posting Were Holocaust victims linked genealogically to biblical Israel?. I have decided to simply place some quotes here from the booklet, "Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace" published by the The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

In my last posting I quoted this from the booklet:

“The founding narrative of the State of Israel links the modern-day Jews’ claim to the land of Israel/Palestine to their direct genealogical descent from the ancient Israelites. Recent anthropological scholarship shows that this widespread belief is very likely a myth, not historical fact. Shlomo Sand, an expert on European history at the university of Tel Aviv, and author of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? posits that the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that many European Jewish populations converted to the faith centuries later. Thus, he argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the ancient land of Israel.”

This anti-Semitic statement makes the whole booklet suspect but there is more. I will write out a couple of quotes from Steadfast Hope and then show how the quotes are misleading by using other authors to counter them.

"On March 10, 1948, (Well before surrounding Arab nations joined the conflict), David Ben Gurion (Who later became Israel's first Prime Minister) and his advisors implemented Plan Dalet, a military operation to depopulate and destroy non-Jewish villages, The goal was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's non-Jewish population." (p.9)

The term "ethnic cleansing" is used constantly in this booklet. In contrast, Walter Laqueur, who is not a conservative, but an excellent historian, in his comprehensive book "A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel," writes about what happened shortly after The United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine:

"The next morning the Palestinian Arabs called a three day-protest strike, and Jews in all parts of the country were attacked. On that first day of rioting seven were killed and more injured; the fighting continued to the end of the mandate. The next months, as chaos engulfed Palestine, were a time of crisis for the Jewish community. ...The most pressing task facing the Jewish population was to strengthen its defenses, since the Arab countries had already announced that their armies would enter the country as soon as the British left. Syria was not willing to wait that long: an 'Arab Liberation Army" inside Palestine was established in February with the help of Syrian officers as well as irregulars." (p. 583-84)

And:

"While Britain continued to supply arms to the neighboring Arab countries, and America had declared a general arms embargo, the Jewish forces had great great difficulty in obtaining supplies. By February the Arab forces were on the offensive throughout the country. While they did not succeed in capturing Jewish settlements, they all but paralysed the traffic among them, and even Jerusalem was about to become a besieged city. The Jewish relief force sent to the help of the Ezion settlements had been wiped out to the last man, a terrible loss by the standards of these days." (p583)

And writing of the horrible retaliations that happened on both sides, including the destruction of the Palestinian town Dir Yassin, Laqueur writes:

"Fighting became more intense and savage, as acts of reprisal followed one another. On 8 April, most of the inhabitants of the Arab village of Dir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem, 254 in number, were killed by a combined IZL-Sternist force. Three days latter, a Jewish medical convoy on its way to the Hadasssa hospital on Mount Scopus was ambushed in the streets of Jerusalem with the loss of seventy-nine doctors, nurses and students. A British force stationed two hundred yards away did not intervene." (p 584)

Another statement from "Steadfest Hope."

"On June 5, 1967, Israel initiated a preemptive strike by bombing and then invading Egypt, Jordan, and Syria with the goal of expanding the boundaries of the state."

Not only had there been constant terrorist attacks against Israel but Egypt began to mass troops along its borders with Israel. Nasser ordered an international peace keeping force to leave. Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israel stopping her flow of oil. Mitchell G. Bard in his book Myths and Facts: A guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict writes that Israel was ringed by a massive troop build up from many Arab countries. Nasser announced :

'The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel...to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations.'

Syrian defense minister Hafez Assad stated that 'I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.'" (p 53-54)

While it is true that dialogue and understanding often being peace, lies, such as these above, bring discord and even persecution. I will continue in some further posts writing about the problems with this material.

Were Holocaust victims linked genealogically to biblical Israel?

If I was reading a booklet from some “Christian Identity” person like Pete Peters in Colorado or some anti-Semitic person like David Duke I would simply shake my head and say typical. But instead I am reading a new publication by “The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).”

At least that is what it states on the booklet and it was recommended to me by them at their booth at the Presbyterian Women’s Gathering.

The booklet, a large booklet, is titled, “Steadfast Hope: the Palestinian Quest for a just peace.” I am troubled as I read; the information is slanted, terribly slanted. But although not finished with my reading or research I must write.

The “Identity” groups insist that the Jews of Israel and elsewhere are not Jewish but only people who converted to Judaism, probably Edomites or Khazars. They insist that the white European and British people are the “lost” tribes of Israel. But the Israel/Palestinian Mission Network have a new but old story to tell. It isn’t that the white races are the true Israel it is rather that only those Jewish people who have lived in Palestine for several thousand years belong, by ancestry, to ancient Israel.

So what about all of the other Jewish people who migrated to Palestine both before the Holocaust and after? Oh, they are just converts to Judaism. They supposedly have no link to ancient Israel. That would of course mean that those who died in the Holocaust were not genealogically linked to ancient Israel!

Under the subtitle, “The Genealogical Claim to Israel,” the authors write:

“The founding narrative of the State of Israel links the modern-day Jews’ claim to the land of Israel/Palestine to their direct genealogical descent from the ancient Israelites. Recent anthropological scholarship shows that this widespread belief is very likely a myth, not historical fact. Shlomo Sand, an expert on European history at the university of Tel Aviv, and author of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? posits that the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that many European Jewish populations converted to the faith centuries later. Thus, he argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the ancient land of Israel.”

This lie about the Jewish people both inside of contemporary Israel and outside of Israel is undoubtedly the worst affront I have experienced concerning Israel and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. At least a small group of people in the denomination, my denomination, are truly anti-Semitic- they are capable of using the worst kind of lies to bring about their own political agenda.

Since, evidently, Shlomo uses the Khazars as an example just as the neo-Nazi groups do I will copy part of my paper that dealt with that here:

“In 740 AD a group of people who were Tatars converted to the Jewish religion. This was the kingdom of Khazar, “on the western shore of the Caspian Sea between the Volga and Don rivers.” This kingdom was aggressive and existed until 969, when the Khazars were conquered by Russia. Henceforth, the people became Russian Orthodox under Vladimir. These people who were Jews by conversion, as many people are, are neither the Israelite descendants nor are they the Jews of today as many Identity teachers insist. They are simply a group of people who were converted to Judaism in the early Middle Ages and then converted to Orthodox Christianity.”

And then I should, from the same paper, explain the genealogical linkage of most of the Jewish people of today with ancient Israel.

“While the history of the Jews is complex and travels over many roads and centuries, it is very clear that the ancient Israelites are the Jews of today. Their language, religion and communities connect their centuries in an unbreakable line.

“Both from biblical texts and from historical sources it can be shown that at the time of Jesus, Jewish communities, (those who were Israelites), existed not only in Palestine but also in most of the known world. The Jews of the Diaspora, that is the Jews living outside of Palestine, were diverse but linked by “ethnicity,” “the local community,” “links with Jerusalem and other Diaspora Communities,” “the Torah” and “Jewish practices and beliefs.”7

Scholars consider the Jews in Diaspora to have been a large population. Although they do not know the exact amount they acknowledge, “that the total Jewish population of the Diaspora considerably exceeded the Jewish population in Palestine.”8 The Dictionary of New Testament Background gives information about many of those communities including the acknowledgement that, 'Literary and inscriptional sources indicate that some Jewish communities in the Diaspora continued to flourish until the end of antiquity.'9

The Jews of second century A.D., who existed without a central location, built into their Diaspora communities a means of connectedness that prevented them from being absorbed totally into the cultures where they existed. They held the Hebrew language and the liturgy of their worship in tact. Max Dimont, author of Jews, God and History, explains:

To prevent the Hebrew language from becoming fragmentized into hundreds of dialects, Jewish scholars set about writing the first Hebrew dictionary and grammars. Though modern Hebrew has grown in the number of words, anyone able to speak Hebrew today can read the Hebrew of the ancient Israelites, the Hebrew of the Jews in Islamic civilization, or the Hebrew of the Jews in the Middle Ages, without special guide books.10

The Jewish people and their culture, which connects with ancient Israel, are found in many cultures in many different ages culminating in contemporary Jewish communities and peoples including the state of Israel. By 1960 Israel had a population of two million people, “Jews from Yemen and Germany, Morocco and Russia, Turkey and Poland.”11

These many diverse peoples, who of course, include converts from many other races and people groups, are generally the physical children of Abraham through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob; they are not Edomites. And they are not Khazars.”

At this point I believe it is time for many in leadership in the Presbyterian Church to rise up out of concern for the awful place we are descending to and confront those who are moving into the murky world of anti-Semitism.

7 For a detailed description of these links see, P.R. Trebilco, “Diaspora Judaism,” Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, Editors, Craig A. Evans & Stanley E. Porter, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press 2000), 291-93.
8 Ibid., 285.

9 Ibid., 295.

10 Max I. Dimont, Jews, God and History, (New York: Signet Books 1962) , 121.

11 Ibid., 410.