Thursday 31 January 2013

Palestinians are ‘chosen people’ & not Israel's Khazars

Kentucky paper publishes piece describing Palestinians as ‘chosen people’

by Philip Weiss on January 28, 2013

in today's Kentucky.com, which is published by the Lexington Herald-Leader. The piece is pegged to Israel lobbyists' opposition to Chuck Hagel, and is notable for its Christian anti-Zionism. Maybe this is a trend in the heartland? Surely it indicates a change in Israel's image in the U.S. The author is Mike Rivage-Seul, a former priest and professor, and liberation theology adherent:

Individuals like Elliott Abrams and organizations such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee implicitly used that criterion [unconditional support for Israel] to criticize the nominee for failing to offer such support, despite Hagel's unblemished record of voting for Israel's interests.
In doing so, the AIPAC and its allies were evidently hoping to find receptive ears in the conservative Christian community which typically constitutes Israel's strongest support-group on the grounds that the Jews are God's "chosen people."
However, even passing acquaintance with the Bible shows that God himself never offered "unconditional support" of Israel, nor did the prophets or Jesus of Nazareth.
In fact, the Bible's stories are largely accounts of Israel's infidelities, of prophetic criticism of those failures, of their severe punishment by God...
In fact, it might be argued that the Jews were God's chosen people only insofar as they made up a paradigm of the poor and oppressed when Jacob's descendents were enslaved in Egypt and exiles in Babylon.
Given that understanding, the Palestinians today far better fit the profile of "chosen people" than do Zionist Jews.