Changing History and Eliminating Israel

"...the case against Israel currently being made on university campuses, in the media, and throughout the world relies on willful distrotions of the historical record, beginning with the first arrival of Europeans in Palestine near the end of the nineteenth century and continuing throughout the U.N. partition, the establishment of the Jewish state, and the wars between the Arab states and Israel, and culminating in the ongoing terrorism and responses to it. The historical record must be set straight so as to heed the philosopher Santayana's warning that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it . . .

. . . it is impossible to understand the conflict in the Middle East without accepting the reality that from the very beginning the strategy of the Arab leadership has been to eliminate the existence of any Jewish state, and indeed any substantial Jewish population, in what is now Israel. Even Professor Edward Said, the Palestinians' most prominent academic champion, has acknowledged that "the whole of Palestinian nationalism was based on driving all Israelis [by which he means Jews] out." This is a simple fact not subject to reasonable dispute. . . Various tactics have been employed toward this end, including the mendacious rewriting of the history of the immigration of Jewish refugees into Palestine, as well as the demographic history of the Arabs of Palestine. Other tactics have included the targeting of vulnerable Jewish civilians beginning in the 1920s, the Palestinian support for Hitler and Nazi genocide in the 1930s and 1940s, and the violent opposition to the two-state solution proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937, then by the United Nations in 1948. . ." (Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, pp. 6-7)

A Premillenial Apocalyptic Scenario for the Future?

Here is what conservative member of the European Parliament had to say about the goings on in the Middle East and European responses to it (his last line is right on the money in my book):


When We Question Israel, We Question Democracy Itself
By Daniel Hannan

It is striking how often Tory supporters of Israel turn out also to be Euro-sceptics, and Tory Arabists to be Europhiles. I first noticed the phenomenon among Conservative MEPs, and assumed it was a coincidence. But, over the past two weeks, the same fault line has emerged at Westminster and, most belligerently, on the Right-wing blogs, which are fizzing and crackling as never before.

The controversy was sparked by William Hague's view that Israel had over-reacted to Hizbollah's attacks. The intensity of the row is curious, given that the current conflict will be over long before Mr Hague is Foreign Secretary. His opinion on the proportionality of the Israeli response is thus in the same category as his opinion on the filioque clause or the identity of Jack the Ripper: potentially interesting, but not immediately important. Yet no Conservative politician can talk about the Middle East without opening a wider debate about the kind of world we want.

Israel is more than a country; it is an archetype. The Jewish state is the supreme embodiment of the national principle: of the desire of every people to have their own state. For 2,000 years, Jews were scattered and stateless, but they never lost their aspiration for a national home - "next year in Jerusalem", as the traditional toast had it. That they have fulfilled that aspiration delights Euro-sceptics, but unsettles Euro-enthusiasts, who believe that national loyalties are arbitrary and anachronistic.

My Dad, Pastor Mike Braun, responds from a more distinctly biblical and prophetic perspective:

This is a very interesting thesis and I whole heartedly embrace it. Israel does embody the “national ideal.” Why? Because the nation of Israel is a product of Biblical thinking. The Bible recognizes nations as the invention of God to order and set the boundaries of the lives of men. Internationalism is a clear cut evil in the Biblical mindset of both the old and New Testaments. World empires are a defiance in the face of God. The cruelty and arrogance of the trans-national amalgamations of Daniel’s politico-beasts from Babylon to Rome serve to show this. The evil of world empire and internationalism is a Biblical theme as early as the tower of Babel and the Exodus struggle for independence from Egyptian imperialism. It includes Isaiah’s understanding of the beastly Assyrian empire as well. Multi-nationalism is abhorrent to the Bible. This fact makes premillennialism a far more attractive alternative to the Romanist amillennial confusion of the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. The future, they say, lies in the hands of a great world wide kingdom and not under the yoke of a Jewish king ruling from Jerusalem. You must admit at heart amillennialism has always been an anti-Zionist movement which finds the present state of Israel slightly embarrassing and thoroughly unnecessary.

The fact, namely that Israel embodies the “national ideal,” is a major reason why the modern liberal mind of Europe, intoxicated on internationalism at least from the French Revolution to the present, finds “Zionism” so threatening. I believe this predilection is merging with a new spirit of American internationalism held by more and more liberal elitists in this country. American liberals are turning to international hopes because they realize the masses of the United States are hopelessly committed to the Red State world view. National independence is as strong a desire among most Americans as it is among most Israelis. A national power base resting on a Blue State majority is hopeless. The liberal, realizing this, will work ever more tirelessly to Balkanize the US with foolish commitments to “pluralism” and “diversity.” All the while liberals will seek to force the U.S. Federal government to surrender an increasing amount of its foreign policy prerogatives and place the power of its unparalleled military establishment into the hands of the UN.

Interestingly enough the American left, the UN elite and the British “Europhiles” all find Israel to be as much a bone in the throat as they find the USA to be irretrievably provincial and reactionary. In this they reflect similar concerns of the Vatican who favor Islamic goals to both Protestant and Israeli advancement. Roman Catholicism, the oldest of the empires of the western world, will play an ever greater role in anti-American and anit-Semitic propaganda. It appears that the nation of Israel will one day be the only national entity left standing against the world empires of the West, Rome and the Islamic “Kings of the East.” Sounds like a premillennial apocalyptic scenario of the future doesn’t it? “What rough beast, its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

Wilson always seems to nail it...

Now, I do not agree with a great deal of Pastor Wilson's theology these days. But he has a way of succinctly and pointedly summarizing the issues. Here is his take on the current Hezbollah-Israel conflict. Please read it.

http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=2632

The Leftist Vision for 'Peace' in the Mid-East

Go read a great article by David Horowitz critiquing the American left's distorted vision of the causes and solutions to this current struggle with Hezbollah over Lebanon and Hamas over Gaza: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23408

The fundamental piece of this leftist, anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric is that Israeli 'occupation' of Lebanon (and Palestine) is the root cause for these acts of terror and aggression from Hezbollah, not some radical Islamic jihadist theology (though this theological perspective oozes out of the Islamic Arab voice at every level). It is not a blood thirsty Islamic jihad we are dealing with, the reasoning goes, but a desperate and eager search for freedom and peace by an oppressed people. Horowitz responds to this leftist spin:

In point of fact -- and as everyone knows -- there is no Israeli occupation of Lebanon or Gaza that might have precipitated this war. Quite the contrary. It is the lack of an Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Gaza – of a controlling authority to enforce the peace -- that has precipitated the present war. Israel’s withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza have created the vacuum the terrorists have filled. These withdrawals, on the other hand, were successful in one sense, and one sense alone: They were designed to disarm the arguments of the terrorists and their apologists, who have now unmasked their own propaganda as a cynical sham. But the Nation goes on repeating it all the same.

There is no occupation of Lebanon for Hizbollah to protest. There is no occupation of Gaza for Hamas to protest. The occupation that inspires the terror is the Jews occupation of the state of Israel. This is what Hizbollah an d Hamas cannot abide.

The Nation’s [the periodical to which Horowitz is responding to in his piece]current apologetics for the terrorist bloc continue a nearly 100-year tradition of its editor's support for the totalitarian enemies of America and the West. For nearly 100 years, the editors of the Nation explained and justified every Communist tyrant from Stalin to Castro; when terrorists slaughtered the innocent on 9/11, the Nation's editors decried American jingoism and America’s “empire;” they opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and they continue to attack the liberation of Iraq as an imperialist “occupation” and democratic America as a “terrorist state.”

Brothers and sisters, let's pray for the peace of Israel.

A Letter to the Washington Post

Here is a link to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Charles Krauthammer:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401458.html

Specifically he says this in his article regarding the declining population of Jews in the West:

Israel's Jewish population has just passed 5.6 million. America's Jewish population was about 5.5 million in 1990, dropped to about 5.2 million 10 years later and is in a precipitous decline that, because of low fertility rates and high levels of assimilation, will cut that number in half by mid-century.

When 6 million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust, only two main centers of Jewish life remained: America and Israel. That binary star system remains today, but a tipping point has just been reached. With every year, as the Jewish population continues to rise in Israel and decline in America (and in the rest of the Diaspora), Israel increasingly becomes, as it was at the time of Jesus, the center of the Jewish world.

My Dad, Mike Braun Sr., wrote to Mr. Krauthammer and the editorial staff at the Post. Here it is:

Sirs:

Charles Krauthammer’s failure to provide better analysis when the American Jewish population is in serious decline is disturbing.(Op Ed May 4) A drop from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.2 million today is precipitous indeed. He blames “low fertility rates” and “high levels of assimilation” yet fails to mention a major cause: abortion. His pro-choice pragmatism is myopic. It ignores the genocidal results of pro-choice reproductive fantasies.

“Never again” indeed! Modern Jewish holocaust revisionists are increasingly critical of European Jewry under Hitler. Why did they not fight back? Why were there not a thousand Warsaw and Treblinka uprisings? It is “1938 all over again” in more ways than one. Once again naïve, deceived and materialistic Jews are surrendering their heritage to an ideological enemy who ultimately threatens their existence. This is happening not through assimilation but in failing to obey Torah’s command to be fruitful and multiply. Invade Iraq, sanction Iran, wage war on Hamas; decry anti-Semitism and appeal to the loyalty of the Jewish people. It is all to no avail unless the Jew denounces the evils of abortion. Their lost children are known to G-d, “written on his hand.”

Sincerely,

A Gentile who cares about Israel,

Michael A. Braun