You’ve heard of the daytime soap opera “The Young and the Restless.” We could maybe call this “The Young and the Gullible.” As I’ve said on a number of occasions, Christian Zionists do not worship Jesus, they worship Jews. And this sentiment comes through very clear in this video.
These young supporters of Israel offer us a lot of selective quoting of Bible verses (almost two to one in favor of the Old Testament), but of course that’s how the game is played. In justifying support for Israel, the teachings of Jesus invariably must be downplayed, for there is no way to reconcile such teachings as “love your enemies” or “blessed are the peacemakers” with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
And what of Jesus’ remarks on the Pharisees?
“ For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven,” he says in Matthew 5:20.
This comment leaves open the shocking possibility that Jews just might be capable of doing something unrighteous every now and then, and of course that has to be omitted from Christian Zionist discourse as well. Instead, we hear one of the teenage girls assert that, “As Christians, we need to stand in solidarity with Israel.”
Actually, she’s got it wrong. As Christians, we need to stand with our fellow Christians living under occupation in Palestine. These are the people who need our love and support–they and their Muslim neighbors who for 68 years now have seen their homes destroyed, their olive trees chopped down, and whose daily lives are a frustrating and nightmarish tangle of walls and checkpoints.
Below is an article I wrote back in January of this year. I reproduce it here in the off-chance that a Christian Zionist or two just might read it and draw some lessons from it. I’m not holding my breath, of course.
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Vandals Strike Jerusalem Church on Eve of Christian Zionist Conference in L.A.
“Death to Christians, enemies of Israel,” reads graffiti painted on the wall of the Dormition Abbey
Timing, as they say, is everything…
On Sunday morning before dawn vandals attacked the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem, leaving a hodgepodge of vile as well as threatening graffiti scattered on its walls. The attack comes on the eve of a conference in L.A.–a conference organized, ironically, to teach evangelical Christians in America “the facts about the assault on Christian support for Israel.”
Yes, you read that right–not the facts about the assault on “Christians in Israel,” but on “Christian support for Israel.”
Organized by the pro-Israel CAMERA organization, the event takes place Monday, January 18, in Los Angeles, and one of its speakers is Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder and president of an organization called Proclaiming Justice to the Nations. As part of her work with PJTN, Cardoza-Moore hosts a weekly TV show called “Focus on Israel,”and currently she is in the midst of a drive to get states to adopt resolutions condemning the BDS movement. The PJTN website refers to BDS as “an anti-Semitic movement” aimed not only at Israel but “ultimately the Jewish people.”
“May his name and memory be erased, bastard,” reads graffiti scrawled upon the church.
Cardoza-Moore obviously has a deep reverence for the Jewish people, so I really have to wonder–I really do–what she would think about the attack upon the Dormition Abbey and especially about some of the graffiti messages scrawled by the vandals:
“Death to Christians, enemies of Israel.”
“The revenge is coming very soon.”
“Send Christians to hell.”
“Idols will be extirpated.”
“The revenge of the children of Israel is on its way.”
“May his name and memory be erased, the bastard.”
That last one, perhaps the vilest of all, is a reference to Jesus. The Talmud portrays the Virgin Mary as a whore and depicts Jesus as the bastard offspring from her alleged union with a Roman soldier, and the part about erasing his “name and memory” is from a Judaic curse known as yimakh shemo, which I discussed in a post put up yesterday.
Father Nikodemus Schnabel, spokesperson of the Dormition Abbey, points towards anti-Christian graffiti written in Hebrew.
A statement released by the Dormition Abbey, as reported by YNet News, includes the following:
The inscriptions are not only against Jesus the Messiah, but also call to slaughter the Christians and send them to hell! How long will these acts of vandalism continue?This is the area of our convent, which until today is not monitored by police cameras, although this has been promised to us in the summer of 2013 by the Israeli security authorities after the cars of the monastery were badly damaged and several hate graffiti were discovered.
You can also read reports about the attack in the Jerusalem Post, Ma’an News, and RT.
Israeli officials, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have rushed to condemn the assault on the church, but the incident comes just one week after an attack upon a Christian cemetery west of Jerusalem in which dozens of crosses were destroyed. Moreover, this isn’t even the first time that this particular church has been hit. In February of last year arsonists set fire to parts of the Dormition Abbey and spray painted the words “Jesus is the son of a whore” and “redemption of Zion”…while in 2013 several cars at the abbey, as the statement above alludes, were also vandalized.
The Jerusalem Post, in its report on this latest attack, includes a quote from Ayman Odeh, an Arab member of the Israeli Knessett.
“In Jerusalem members of the clergy have been harassed for years, but lately this phenomenon has become worse, more common and more violent,” said Odeh, who went on and described the present Israeli government as “leading the hatred and approving, with a wink, the continuation of the hate crimes against the Arab minority in the state.”
Christian Zionists are fond of portraying Israel as a place where Christians are welcomed and protected and where freedom of religion is regarded as sacrosanct, but actually this is a very misleading picture, and that is probably putting it mildly.
During the week before Christmas, Jewish settler leader Benzi Gopstein published an op-ed piece on a Hebrew website in which he referred to Christians as “blood sucking vampires.” Gopstein is head of Israel’s Lehava organization, a movement which strictly opposes Jewish assimilation and intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. I published two articles on Gopstein’s anti-Christian tirade, see hereand here, and I also put up a post on him last summer, here, after he called for churches to be banned in Israel. In his pre-Christmas rant, Gopstein expressed contempt for the Christian holiday of Christmas, and he also issued a clarion call to his fellow Israeli Jews: “Let us remove the vampires before they once again drink our blood!”
Gopstein, by the way, isn’t the only Israeli who hates Christmas. A couple of years ago, Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, issued a ban on Christmas trees. “Upper Nazareth is a Jewish town and all its symbols are Jewish,” the mayor said. “As long as I hold office no non-Jewish symbol will be presented in the city.”
How much of all of this anti-Christian sentiment in Israel is Cardoza-Moore aware of? Hard to say. My guess is that were she presented with this information she would either block it completely out of her mind or try to rationalize it in some way. That’s human nature, I guess. Avoid cognitive dissonance at all cost.
According to the PJTN website, Cardoza-Moore “has devoted her life to educate Christians about their Biblical responsibility to stand with their Jewish brethren and the State of Israel,” and the organization seems preoccupied, to the point of obsession, with the subject of anti-Semitism. There are videos on anti-Semitismas well as a page onLeveraging Our Assets Against Anti-Semitism, and then there is the Mission Statementwhich proclaims:
We challenge those who engage in anti-Semitic and unbiblical teachings with the hope of educating them on their responsibilities as Christians to uphold the protection and welfare of our Jewish brethren. We are Christians educating and calling this generation to protect and defend God’s Chosen People and the land of Israel.
Perhaps interestingly, there is nothing mentioned about Jesus in the Mission Statement. Not much mention of him on this video either:
Repeated airstrikes on civilians, home demolitions, building walls that hem people in and separate farmers from their lands–the gospels aren’t exactly full of stories of Jesus advocating these things. But of course, the Old Testament wouldtake a much more friendly view of it all. If Cardoza-Moore feels so strongly it is her life mission to “protect and defend God’s Chosen People and the land of Israel,” I can’t for the life of me figure out why she doesn’t simply convert to Judaism.
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