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Standing in support of Israel, Jews, and believers in all the nations, in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). Sharing biblical truth, encouragement, news and prophecy.
Showing posts with label Jerusalem Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerusalem Post. Show all posts
Monday, December 18, 2017
Joel C. Rosenberg - Mr. Pence’s high-stakes trip to Egypt. (My new column for The Jerusalem Post.)
Saturday, October 14, 2017
WATCH: NETANYAHU CONGRATULATES TRUMP ON 'COURAGEOUS' IRAN DECISION - Jerusalem Post
WATCH: NETANYAHU CONGRATULATES TRUMP ON 'COURAGEOUS' IRAN DECISION
BY JOY BERNARD Jerusalem Post
OCTOBER 13, 2017
Netanyahu, a strong adversry of the Iran nuclear accord, welcomed the news of Trump's decision not to recertify the deal with satisfaction and praise for the US president.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the UN. (photo credit:AVI OHAYON - GPO)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded US President Donald Trump on Friday evening for deciding not to recertify the nuclear deal with Iran, which he has been openly opposing since its inception in 2015. "I congratulate President Trump for his courageous decision today. He boldly confronted Iran's terrorist regime," the prime minister said in a video statement he released in English.
Moments after Trump declared a new and tougher US policy on Iran, leaving the US Congress to decide whether or not to impose new sanctions on Tehran, Netanyahu asserted that "If the Iran deal is left unchanged, one thing is absolutely certain- in a few years' time, the world's foremost terrorist regime will have an arsenal of nuclear weapons and that's tremendous danger for our collective future."
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"President Trump has just created an opportunity to fix this bad deal. To roll back Iran's aggression and to confront its criminal support of terrorism," Netanyahu continued.
"That's why Israel embraces this opportunity. And that's why every responsible government, and any person concerned with the peace and security of the world, should do so as well," he stressed.
In September, Netanyahu expressed once more his deep dissatisfaction with the nuclear accord, telling the United Nations General Assembly in a speech that the the deal with Tehran is bad.
"Fix it or nix it. Change it or cancel it," he urged at the time. Netanyahu warned that "an Iranian curtain is descending across the Middle East. It spreads this curtain over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere and pledges to extinguish the light of Israel."
However, the prime minister also noted that while Israel is facing an imminent threat that could further evolve should Iran remain unchecked, he had a simple message to what he often terms a "rogue terrorist regime."
"I have a simple message for Khamenei: The light of Israel will never be extinguished."
But other Israeli officials were less enthusiastic about Trump's speech announcing that the nuclear accord will be decertified by the US, which is also slated to impose new sanctions on elements linked to the deal, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Speaking to Channel 2 following Trump's speech, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said that he thought the US president's speech was "very significant" but that he believed it could trigger a war with Iran.
"I think that the speech was very significant. Iran is the new North Korea. We see where things are going," Katz stated.
Avi Gabbay, the recently-elected new head of the Zionist Union party who many predict could replace Netanyahu one day, echoed the prime minister's sentiment over Trump's announcement.
"I welcome Trump's decision to financially hurt the terror system of the Revolutionary Guard," Gabbay stated Friday evening. "The next stage- fixing the agreement and lengthening it so that Iran can't go back to enriching uranium," he expressed his hope.
Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union), who formerly served as Israel's Foreign Affairs Minister, also lauded Trump for his strong stance. "Justifiability President Trump is dealing with the Iranian danger in general. The Revolutionary Guards, the support of terror and the missile program- the immediate threats that were not handled in the deal and demand an answer," Livni tweeted moments after Trump concluded his speech.
Watch speech here: JERUSALEM POST
FACING THE PAST: GERMANS USE PHOTO ALBUMS TO CLOSE THE PAGES OF NAZISM - BY ORIT ARFA JERUSALEM POST
An SS officer questions two Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1943. (photo credit:Wikimedia Commons)
FACING THE PAST: GERMANS USE PHOTO ALBUMS TO CLOSE THE PAGES OF NAZISM
> Austria seizing Hitler's birthplace to prevent Nazi pilgrimage site
> German populist party head: Country to stop feeling guilty about Nazi past
“They’re all torn out,” he said, pointing to a page consisting only of tear marks whose residue reveals the side of a tank and soldiers posing on a Mercedes.
AT THE weekly antique flea market in Berlin, Christoph Kreutzmueller, a Holocaust historian and curator for the new permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, picked up a Nazi-era family album at random from a book stand, fascinated not by the black and white pictures that were there ‒ but by those that weren’t.
“They’re all torn out,” he said, pointing to a page consisting only of tear marks whose residue reveals the side of a tank and soldiers posing on a Mercedes. The “war” page?
The album, however, opens with a picture of paradise: a German couple with their nude toddlers are picnicking in a lush forest. As for the rest, most photos have been rearranged, out of order.
“There’s the innocent reading that [the album owner] hated the war and didn’t want to think of it anymore,” Kreutzmueller said of the reason for the missing pictures. “The biased, ‘mean’ reading is that perhaps they showed murder. I think that he really didn’t want to think of war anymore because the remnants that you see are not of fighting.”
In another album from the same vendor (collected from an apartment liquidated upon the resident’s passing), photos are neatly organized and labeled. They, too, open with “paradise” ‒ a Nazi government-sponsored outing amid beautiful landscapes in May 1938. In October that same year, the month in which Germany began to deport its Polish Jews, the matriarch and patriarch celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. A few pages later, in 1940, the living room is newly adorned with a radio, the tool for Nazi propaganda nicknamed, “Goebbel’s Schnauze” (Goebbel’s snout).
> Austria seizing Hitler's birthplace to prevent Nazi pilgrimage site
> German populist party head: Country to stop feeling guilty about Nazi past
BY ORIT ARFA JERUSALEM POST
OCTOBER 14, 2017
OCTOBER 14, 2017
“They’re all torn out,” he said, pointing to a page consisting only of tear marks whose residue reveals the side of a tank and soldiers posing on a Mercedes.
AT THE weekly antique flea market in Berlin, Christoph Kreutzmueller, a Holocaust historian and curator for the new permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, picked up a Nazi-era family album at random from a book stand, fascinated not by the black and white pictures that were there ‒ but by those that weren’t.
“They’re all torn out,” he said, pointing to a page consisting only of tear marks whose residue reveals the side of a tank and soldiers posing on a Mercedes. The “war” page?
The album, however, opens with a picture of paradise: a German couple with their nude toddlers are picnicking in a lush forest. As for the rest, most photos have been rearranged, out of order.
“There’s the innocent reading that [the album owner] hated the war and didn’t want to think of it anymore,” Kreutzmueller said of the reason for the missing pictures. “The biased, ‘mean’ reading is that perhaps they showed murder. I think that he really didn’t want to think of war anymore because the remnants that you see are not of fighting.”
In another album from the same vendor (collected from an apartment liquidated upon the resident’s passing), photos are neatly organized and labeled. They, too, open with “paradise” ‒ a Nazi government-sponsored outing amid beautiful landscapes in May 1938. In October that same year, the month in which Germany began to deport its Polish Jews, the matriarch and patriarch celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. A few pages later, in 1940, the living room is newly adorned with a radio, the tool for Nazi propaganda nicknamed, “Goebbel’s Schnauze” (Goebbel’s snout).
Christoph Kreutzmueller views old albums (Orit Arfa)
“There’s another living room where you could see good old Adolf Hitler under the light bulb, so he’s lit,” Kreutzmueller said, noticing the tiny, mustached figure in the framed photograph on the wall.
Later, grooms appear in Wehrmacht uniforms at their respective weddings, and then from the war front. One son seemed to have sent a photograph from Russia in September 1941 ‒ Kreutzmueller surmised that he had just been awarded the Iron Cross.
According to photo-historian Sandra Starke, who co-curated the 2009 traveling exhibit on Wehrmacht photo albums, “Focus on Strangers,” the Nazi regime encouraged amateur photography, in part so Germans could record for posterity how nice life was under Hitler’s reign.
“They supported the camera factories, made the prices low, made competitions, courses, training, how-to books,” said Starke at her home in Berlin. She opened such how-to books whose guidelines included: avoid levity while wearing a Nazi uniform; capture various angles of the perfect “Aryan” profile; do not include portraits with “racially inferior” friends. During wartime, the men usually took the cameras to the battlefields.
HOW FAMILY photos from the Nazi-era are being maintained and kept today can give insight into how second to fourth generation Nazi-era Germans come to grips ‒ or not ‒ with possible family involvement in Hitler’s murderous, tyrannical regime. These two flea market albums represent two approaches to the past: torn and “untouched.”
According to Michaela Buckel, project manager for March of Life, an organization that includes descendants of German Wehrmacht soldiers and Gestapo and SS members who seek personal reconciliation with Nazi victims and their descendants, most German families keep albums in their homes ignored. Among some of her friends, portraits of grandparents hang in the living rooms, sometimes in Wehrmacht uniform.
“What you normally won’t find are family pictures in SS uniform,” Buckel tells The Jerusalem Report. “In that case, it’s more likely these photos are taken from the album, or the badges and insignia are blackened. Photo albums are rarely hidden. Often you just do not look at them.”
Most German families, Buckel says, often tell stories of their own “victimhood” ‒ air raids, fallen soldiers, prisoners-of-war.
“I’d say from experience that there is definitely a difference between how the national German government commemorates and memorializes the Holocaust and how individual families recognize the role their families played in the destruction/war,” she says. “Today, most people in Germany would agree with the statement that the Nazis were criminals and the Holocaust a genocide without comparison. But they will not likely link that to their own families. Because you learn about the Holocaust in history with all its atrociousness, you can’t link it to the great-grandfather whom you love and know as a kind man.”
March of Life was founded by Pastor Jobst Bittner of TOS Ministries, which in American terms is a Christian Evangelical ministry, based in Tübingen in southern Germany ‒ a city that once boasted a high concentration of avowed Nazi party members. Several years ago, Bittner encouraged his congregants to inquire into their family’s history during the Nazi era. With the Holocaust generation dying out, most families must rely on family albums for clues if they did not receive firsthand accounts.
UNTIL HE heeded his pastor’s call, Friedhelm Chmell, 40, felt indifference on obligatory visits to concentration camps.
“It never really touched my heart, so I never felt anything,” Chmell, a hospital nurse, said via Skype from his home in Tübingen. “I felt a little bit sorry, but it was nothing personal.”
As a young adult, Klaus Schock, 47, a March of Life member from a small village near Tübingen, never wanted to “touch” his family’s role in the war years.
“In Germany, normally in school, you go into detail about Nazi times and the Nazi regime, and about the Third Reich,” Schock said. “For me, it was like something that had nothing to do with my life. I was wondering why do we learn about this. It was a terrible time, so what? I wasn’t really interested.”
According to the oral history of Chmell’s family, his maternal grandfather worked at an army desk job, literally. Two pictures of him in uniform were assembled as part of a family album arranged by his uncle: one of him writing a letter at a desk and another of him posing on the balcony at his Antwerp office.
“I always saw this picture with this office and everything seemed so peaceful,” Chmell said. “We don’t want to see behind all these nice stories and pictures they gave us. My whole family didn’t ask further, ‘What did he really do?’”
With the support of his wife, but not his siblings, Chmell became a sleuth. His investigation led him to Antwerp, Belgium, where, through Google Street View, he scoured balconies from the vantage point of the skyscraper in the photo. He eventually found the building where his grandfather posed and soon learned what it had housed.
“During World War II, it was the main headquarters of the Deutsche Wehrmacht in Antwerp, and then I searched for what the Deutsche Wehrmacht exactly did there.”
His grandfather’s department was responsible for summoning Antwerp’s 20,000 Jews for deportation.
“When I found out this fact, it broke my heart,” Chmell said, teary-eyed. “For the first time, I could see the truth about my family. I always thought there was nothing bad in my family, and maybe my family never killed a Jew, but he was one of the main people responsible in this office and he’s responsible for 20,000 Jews. They went straight to Auschwitz.”
Klaus Schock, a physicist, decided, on Bittner’s call, to open the lids of boxes with albums, letters and even army medals that had been shelved in his grandparents’ home.
At first, when he asked his parents about his paternal grandfather’s service under the Nazi regime, they said, dismissively, that he had been a Nazi Stormtrooper (the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party) for a brief period. Documents and pictures revealed the facts: his grandfather enlisted in the stormtroopers in 1932 and then renounced his Nazi-party membership to become a professional soldier for the next 12 years.
His grandfather’s album from France could be mistaken for that of a vacation: he took photographs of the Eiffel Tower and other French landmarks that suddenly became the Nazis’ playground. But the war of annihilation and aggression was on full, organized display in the “Russia album.”
Via Skype, Schock opened the album and showed neat, labeled titles of images of dead Russian soldiers ‒ some in a ditch, some being hanged.
“I realized he must have seen a lot of things. Normally I’m a scientist and I’m more rational, but it shocked me.”
The grandparents of Chmell and Schock are no longer living, but Schock recalls his encounters with his grandfather as a young boy.
“As long as I’ve known him, he just lived in the house nearby together with my grandma, and so when I had to decide to go to the military or to civil service, he always wanted me to go the military, and he was a passionate soldier,” Shock said. “He never talked about, say, Nazi philosophy or ideology; but looking back, I would say he never regretted it, and I don’t think he realized what he really did, what kind of murdering he did.”
Their respective processes of coming to terms with their families’ history, rare among their peer group, have changed both their lives. Today, Chmell and Schock are staunch Israel supporters, fighting modern antisemitism as expressed in hostility toward Israel, propelled both by a sense of obligation they feel toward the Jewish people and their Christian faith.
March of Life members believe face-to face apologies by the descendants of Nazi perpetrators to Nazi victims, as opposed to national proclamations, could most effectively facilitate healing and reconciliation. In their marches across Europe, at sites of attempted Jewish genocide they often connect with Holocaust survivors and their progeny, but one of Chmell’s most meaningful encounters occurred spontaneously in Israel.
“In May, I was in Jerusalem and went on a tram, and met someone who was the same age as me. His grandparents were collected at Antwerp and sent to Auschwitz, and one of them survived. That is one reason why I could meet him, and we connected on WhatsApp and I said I’m sorry about what my grandparents did to your family. It was such a special moment.”
Schock believes he became a “softer,” more emphatic person. “Looking into my family’s past, it also revealed prejudice, racism and antisemitism inside of me. I realized that I am not better than my grandfather; I could have done the same things. That was shocking for me. But this opened the way that I could repent.”
He and his wife of seven years never wanted children ‒ until he visited Israel for the first time.
“Before the trip, I realized something must be wrong with me but I couldn’t figure out why I was so afraid to be a father. When I came back from Israel, suddenly all the fear somehow disappeared.”
Back at the flea market, inside the “untouched” family album, photographs become sparse after 1942 and virtually non-existent from 1943, the year in which Hitler’s downfall begins with his defeat at Stalingrad. The idyll disintegrates. A downed plane appears in September 1942. Women pose in front of an air raid shelter. Men are back home, holding canes, presumably injured. Finally, the end: a small boy standing in ruins, leaving no progeny, as it were, to safeguard the album and family legacy.
As their WhatsApp profile pictures, Chmell and Schock each proudly display family portraits ‒ their own family albums won’t be sold to the highest bidder at a flea market. Chmell loves taking family pictures.
“To show how I love my family, to show that our lives ‒ mine and my wife’s ‒ have been changed totally, to remember all our family past but also to say our kids belong to the new generation.”
“There’s another living room where you could see good old Adolf Hitler under the light bulb, so he’s lit,” Kreutzmueller said, noticing the tiny, mustached figure in the framed photograph on the wall.
Later, grooms appear in Wehrmacht uniforms at their respective weddings, and then from the war front. One son seemed to have sent a photograph from Russia in September 1941 ‒ Kreutzmueller surmised that he had just been awarded the Iron Cross.
According to photo-historian Sandra Starke, who co-curated the 2009 traveling exhibit on Wehrmacht photo albums, “Focus on Strangers,” the Nazi regime encouraged amateur photography, in part so Germans could record for posterity how nice life was under Hitler’s reign.
“They supported the camera factories, made the prices low, made competitions, courses, training, how-to books,” said Starke at her home in Berlin. She opened such how-to books whose guidelines included: avoid levity while wearing a Nazi uniform; capture various angles of the perfect “Aryan” profile; do not include portraits with “racially inferior” friends. During wartime, the men usually took the cameras to the battlefields.
HOW FAMILY photos from the Nazi-era are being maintained and kept today can give insight into how second to fourth generation Nazi-era Germans come to grips ‒ or not ‒ with possible family involvement in Hitler’s murderous, tyrannical regime. These two flea market albums represent two approaches to the past: torn and “untouched.”
According to Michaela Buckel, project manager for March of Life, an organization that includes descendants of German Wehrmacht soldiers and Gestapo and SS members who seek personal reconciliation with Nazi victims and their descendants, most German families keep albums in their homes ignored. Among some of her friends, portraits of grandparents hang in the living rooms, sometimes in Wehrmacht uniform.
“What you normally won’t find are family pictures in SS uniform,” Buckel tells The Jerusalem Report. “In that case, it’s more likely these photos are taken from the album, or the badges and insignia are blackened. Photo albums are rarely hidden. Often you just do not look at them.”
Most German families, Buckel says, often tell stories of their own “victimhood” ‒ air raids, fallen soldiers, prisoners-of-war.
“I’d say from experience that there is definitely a difference between how the national German government commemorates and memorializes the Holocaust and how individual families recognize the role their families played in the destruction/war,” she says. “Today, most people in Germany would agree with the statement that the Nazis were criminals and the Holocaust a genocide without comparison. But they will not likely link that to their own families. Because you learn about the Holocaust in history with all its atrociousness, you can’t link it to the great-grandfather whom you love and know as a kind man.”
March of Life was founded by Pastor Jobst Bittner of TOS Ministries, which in American terms is a Christian Evangelical ministry, based in Tübingen in southern Germany ‒ a city that once boasted a high concentration of avowed Nazi party members. Several years ago, Bittner encouraged his congregants to inquire into their family’s history during the Nazi era. With the Holocaust generation dying out, most families must rely on family albums for clues if they did not receive firsthand accounts.
UNTIL HE heeded his pastor’s call, Friedhelm Chmell, 40, felt indifference on obligatory visits to concentration camps.
“It never really touched my heart, so I never felt anything,” Chmell, a hospital nurse, said via Skype from his home in Tübingen. “I felt a little bit sorry, but it was nothing personal.”
As a young adult, Klaus Schock, 47, a March of Life member from a small village near Tübingen, never wanted to “touch” his family’s role in the war years.
“In Germany, normally in school, you go into detail about Nazi times and the Nazi regime, and about the Third Reich,” Schock said. “For me, it was like something that had nothing to do with my life. I was wondering why do we learn about this. It was a terrible time, so what? I wasn’t really interested.”
According to the oral history of Chmell’s family, his maternal grandfather worked at an army desk job, literally. Two pictures of him in uniform were assembled as part of a family album arranged by his uncle: one of him writing a letter at a desk and another of him posing on the balcony at his Antwerp office.
“I always saw this picture with this office and everything seemed so peaceful,” Chmell said. “We don’t want to see behind all these nice stories and pictures they gave us. My whole family didn’t ask further, ‘What did he really do?’”
With the support of his wife, but not his siblings, Chmell became a sleuth. His investigation led him to Antwerp, Belgium, where, through Google Street View, he scoured balconies from the vantage point of the skyscraper in the photo. He eventually found the building where his grandfather posed and soon learned what it had housed.
“During World War II, it was the main headquarters of the Deutsche Wehrmacht in Antwerp, and then I searched for what the Deutsche Wehrmacht exactly did there.”
His grandfather’s department was responsible for summoning Antwerp’s 20,000 Jews for deportation.
“When I found out this fact, it broke my heart,” Chmell said, teary-eyed. “For the first time, I could see the truth about my family. I always thought there was nothing bad in my family, and maybe my family never killed a Jew, but he was one of the main people responsible in this office and he’s responsible for 20,000 Jews. They went straight to Auschwitz.”
Klaus Schock, a physicist, decided, on Bittner’s call, to open the lids of boxes with albums, letters and even army medals that had been shelved in his grandparents’ home.
At first, when he asked his parents about his paternal grandfather’s service under the Nazi regime, they said, dismissively, that he had been a Nazi Stormtrooper (the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party) for a brief period. Documents and pictures revealed the facts: his grandfather enlisted in the stormtroopers in 1932 and then renounced his Nazi-party membership to become a professional soldier for the next 12 years.
His grandfather’s album from France could be mistaken for that of a vacation: he took photographs of the Eiffel Tower and other French landmarks that suddenly became the Nazis’ playground. But the war of annihilation and aggression was on full, organized display in the “Russia album.”
Via Skype, Schock opened the album and showed neat, labeled titles of images of dead Russian soldiers ‒ some in a ditch, some being hanged.
“I realized he must have seen a lot of things. Normally I’m a scientist and I’m more rational, but it shocked me.”
The grandparents of Chmell and Schock are no longer living, but Schock recalls his encounters with his grandfather as a young boy.
“As long as I’ve known him, he just lived in the house nearby together with my grandma, and so when I had to decide to go to the military or to civil service, he always wanted me to go the military, and he was a passionate soldier,” Shock said. “He never talked about, say, Nazi philosophy or ideology; but looking back, I would say he never regretted it, and I don’t think he realized what he really did, what kind of murdering he did.”
Their respective processes of coming to terms with their families’ history, rare among their peer group, have changed both their lives. Today, Chmell and Schock are staunch Israel supporters, fighting modern antisemitism as expressed in hostility toward Israel, propelled both by a sense of obligation they feel toward the Jewish people and their Christian faith.
March of Life members believe face-to face apologies by the descendants of Nazi perpetrators to Nazi victims, as opposed to national proclamations, could most effectively facilitate healing and reconciliation. In their marches across Europe, at sites of attempted Jewish genocide they often connect with Holocaust survivors and their progeny, but one of Chmell’s most meaningful encounters occurred spontaneously in Israel.
“In May, I was in Jerusalem and went on a tram, and met someone who was the same age as me. His grandparents were collected at Antwerp and sent to Auschwitz, and one of them survived. That is one reason why I could meet him, and we connected on WhatsApp and I said I’m sorry about what my grandparents did to your family. It was such a special moment.”
Schock believes he became a “softer,” more emphatic person. “Looking into my family’s past, it also revealed prejudice, racism and antisemitism inside of me. I realized that I am not better than my grandfather; I could have done the same things. That was shocking for me. But this opened the way that I could repent.”
He and his wife of seven years never wanted children ‒ until he visited Israel for the first time.
“Before the trip, I realized something must be wrong with me but I couldn’t figure out why I was so afraid to be a father. When I came back from Israel, suddenly all the fear somehow disappeared.”
Back at the flea market, inside the “untouched” family album, photographs become sparse after 1942 and virtually non-existent from 1943, the year in which Hitler’s downfall begins with his defeat at Stalingrad. The idyll disintegrates. A downed plane appears in September 1942. Women pose in front of an air raid shelter. Men are back home, holding canes, presumably injured. Finally, the end: a small boy standing in ruins, leaving no progeny, as it were, to safeguard the album and family legacy.
As their WhatsApp profile pictures, Chmell and Schock each proudly display family portraits ‒ their own family albums won’t be sold to the highest bidder at a flea market. Chmell loves taking family pictures.
“To show how I love my family, to show that our lives ‒ mine and my wife’s ‒ have been changed totally, to remember all our family past but also to say our kids belong to the new generation.”
Saturday, September 23, 2017
THE GOLDEN AGE OF JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS - TULY WEISZ Jerusalem Post
THE GOLDEN AGE OF JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS
BYTULY WEISZ
SEPTEMBER 22, 2017 13:36
Christian love demanded that they try and convert the Jews, but more often than not, Jews felt more wrath than grace.
Powerful docudrama produced by CBN.. (photo credit:CBN)
Earlier this summer, hundreds of Israelis packed the Jerusalem Cinematheque theater for the
premiere of the Six Day War documentary, “In Our Hands.” The film traces the steps of the
55th Paratroopers Brigade through firsthand interviews with IDF soldiers and historical battle
reenactments. Following the screening, an emotional curtain call featured four of the now
elderly paratroopers who appeared in the film. They shuffled onto the stage to receive
bouquets of flowers and a standing ovation.
There was nothing unusual that evening to distinguish this event from any of the other
There was nothing unusual that evening to distinguish this event from any of the other
Six Day War commemoration events that took place in Israel or abroad, except for the
evening’s host – Gordon Robertson, CEO of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).
Robertson, who also served as the film’s executive director, explained to the Jerusalem
audience his motivation as a Christian to make a film about Israel. “One of the guiding
verses for me in this whole project was Psalm 126: ‘Then they said among the nations,
the Lord has done great things for them.’ And I say to you, ‘The Lord has done great
things for you.’”
While the movie was produced by CBN, which was founded by Gordon’s father and
While the movie was produced by CBN, which was founded by Gordon’s father and
televangelist Pat Robertson in 1961, it contained no overtly, or even covertly,
Christian messages.
“This is a film made by Christians, but it is not a Christian film,” Erin Zimmerman,
“This is a film made by Christians, but it is not a Christian film,” Erin Zimmerman,
the film’s director, explained. “The Six Day War is not a Christian story; it is first and
foremost a Jewish and Israeli story and I wanted to honor that.”
This desire to honor Israel without strings attached and devoid of proselytizing is one
This desire to honor Israel without strings attached and devoid of proselytizing is one
of the newest, and most welcome, trends in Christian Zionism. The relationship between
Christians and Jews is long and complex, and a fascinating case study in how shifting
theology correlates to changes in behavior.
A short overview of some major shifts in Christian beliefs toward Israel can explain this
A short overview of some major shifts in Christian beliefs toward Israel can explain this
new era of Christian Zionism marked by greater sensitivity and respect toward the
Jewish People.
Christianity emerged as an offshoot of Judaism 2,000 years ago, putting the two religions
Christianity emerged as an offshoot of Judaism 2,000 years ago, putting the two religions
immediately at odds. Early Church Fathers added pagan elements to recruit more local
adherents, thus widening the gap ‒ and animosity ‒ with the Jews.
When it came to relating to Judaism, Christianity developed what has become known as
When it came to relating to Judaism, Christianity developed what has become known as
“replacement theology.” The idea is that, as a punishment for rejecting Jesus, God replaced
Israel with the Church and the original Bible (Old Testament) with a new one. It didn’t take
long for Jews to go from being viewed as replaced to rejected, despised and, ultimately, hated.
Christian love demanded that they try and convert the Jews, but more often than not, Jews
Christian love demanded that they try and convert the Jews, but more often than not, Jews
felt more wrath than grace. One could draw a direct line from replacement theology to the
blood libels, forced conversions, inquisitions and expulsions that shaped the Middle Ages.
During the modern period, Christianity underwent an internal revolution known as the
During the modern period, Christianity underwent an internal revolution known as the
Protestant Reformation, which paved the way for a new approach for relating to Jews.
In the 16th century, Martin Luther battled against the Catholic Church and advocated for
individuals to read the Bible, made widely available for the first time through the newly
invented printing press, for themselves. No longer was biblical interpretation in the hands
of the ruling elite. Rather, everyone was encouraged to read and understand God’s word for
themselves, which they did in large numbers.
It doesn’t take much of a bible scholar to recognize that one theme appears on almost every
page and in nearly every chapter of this holy text ‒ that is the relationship between the land
and the people of Israel. With an open mind and in the absence of previously held interpretations,
a literal reading of the text started to lead some Christians to begin viewing Jews differently.
For centuries, the people of Israel had been relegated to sub-human status and the land of
For centuries, the people of Israel had been relegated to sub-human status and the land of
Israel reduced to a metaphor. However, the age of enlightenment allowed Christians to see
the Jews as real people and, in the era of exploration, they discovered that Israel was an
actual place. More and more Christians started reading the bible literally and saw the
prophecies of the return to Zion as being something within worldly reach.
The Puritans were among the first Reformed Protestants who began praying for a Jewish
The Puritans were among the first Reformed Protestants who began praying for a Jewish
return to their homeland and were responsible for introducing the idea of Jewish restoration
to America. While popular in England, as well, Restorationism (also described as Christian
Primitivism) struck a noticeable chord in the New World. US presidents studied Hebrew,
and American scholars traveled to Palestine to map out the area and dig up archeological relics.
At the time, Restorationism was steeped in replacement theology, which, even in its benign
At the time, Restorationism was steeped in replacement theology, which, even in its benign
form, calls for proselytizing the Jews. The motivating force behind Christian efforts to restore
the people to the land was best summarized by the influential pastor Charles Spurgeon who
preached in 1864: “We look forward, then, for these two things. I am not going to theorize
upon which of them will come first ‒ whether they shall be restored first, and converted
afterwards ‒ or converted first and then restored. They are to be restored and they are to
be converted, too.”
Restorationists were among Theodor Herzl’s most ardent supporters. The Reverend William
Restorationists were among Theodor Herzl’s most ardent supporters. The Reverend William
Hechler, an Anglican clergyman, dedicated his life to assisting Herzl upon reading
“The Jewish State,” which was published 12 years after his own treatise, “The Restoration of
the Jews to Palestine.” Hechler immediately began to introduce Herzl to Europe’s leading
political rulers, including
German Kaiser Wilhelm, Queen Victoria of England and the Sultan of Turkey. Appreciatively,
Herzl invited Hechler, in 1897, to the first World Zionist Congress in Basel as a non-voting
delegate and the “first Christian Zionist.”
Major shifts in Christian theology vis-à- vis Israel continued into the 20th century because
Major shifts in Christian theology vis-à- vis Israel continued into the 20th century because
of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. Many Christians recognized
the Holocaust as the bitter culmination of centuries of Christian antisemitism, which led to
soul searching throughout the Church. Christian thinkers recognized the perils inherent
in replacement theology as playing an active role in the Holocaust and began to question
this theology seriously for the first time.
The establishment of the State of Israel, and its hard-to-explain successes, chipped away
The establishment of the State of Israel, and its hard-to-explain successes, chipped away
at replacement theology from the opposite direction. Christians began asking themselves:
If God had rejected Israel, then how come the Jews are so successful making the deserts
bloom and defending themselves from their enemies? The perception that many biblical
promises were being fulfilled seemed like clear and convincing evidence that God had not
broken His covenant with Israel, after all.
In recent decades, Christian Zionist leaders and organizations have emerged all over the
In recent decades, Christian Zionist leaders and organizations have emerged all over the
world. In addition to their political and philanthropic support of Israel, Christian leaders
are, more significantly, for the first time publicly rejecting replacement theology.
Perhaps the best-known group, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, has a
Perhaps the best-known group, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, has a
lengthy essay on their website explaining why they renounce replacement theology.
Similarly, Pastor John Hagee has used his influential ministry, Christians United for Israel,
to unreservedly, “expose the lies of replacement theology.”
To be sure, these Christian Zionist voices are still a minority within the Church.
Nevertheless, we have entered a new age of Jewish-Christian relations.
Chris Mitchell, CBN’s Middle East bureau chief, said “In Our Hands” doesn’t ever
To be sure, these Christian Zionist voices are still a minority within the Church.
Nevertheless, we have entered a new age of Jewish-Christian relations.
Chris Mitchell, CBN’s Middle East bureau chief, said “In Our Hands” doesn’t ever
mention Jesus, quote from the New Testament or push a Christian agenda. In that way,
“I feel that the movie is a gift to the Jewish people honoring the soldiers who fought in the
Six Day War and the Jews who waited over two millennia to return to Jerusalem.”
I asked Mitchell if CBN would have been as sensitive had the movie been released upon
I asked Mitchell if CBN would have been as sensitive had the movie been released upon
the 25th anniversary of the 1967 war in the early 1980s. He said, “There has definitely
been a remarkable development of deeper relationships between Jews and Christians
in recent years. A greater understanding of the Jewish community and getting to know
each other better has led to more sensitivity.”
Christian theology has shifted since its inception and has never been as respectful toward
Christian theology has shifted since its inception and has never been as respectful toward
the Jewish people than it is now. The growth of Christian Zionism is a direct outcome of
this change, so it is no wonder that Israel is enjoying unparalleled support from large
segments of Christianity. After 2,000 years, Christian-Jewish relations are entering a new,
golden era of restoration without replacement.
Tuly Weisz is an Orthodox rabbi and founder and director of Israel 365, the publisher of
Tuly Weisz is an Orthodox rabbi and founder and director of Israel 365, the publisher of
‘Breaking Israel News’ and the editor of The Israel Bible.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
NORTH CAROLINA GETS TOUGHER ON BDS - BENJAMIN GLATT JERUSALEM POST
Sloan Rachmuth. (photo credit:FACEBOOK)
NORTH CAROLINA GETS TOUGHER ON BDS
Evangelical Christian group brings expert Sloan Rachmuth on board.
On the heels of North Carolina’s anti-BDS bill, the state will be getting even tougher against the anti-Israel and antisemitic movement, with an evangelical group’s introduction of a new state director.
Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, an organization dedicated to creating dialogue between Christians and Jews to educate them about the dangers of antisemitism and the BDS movement in the US, announced recently that Sloan Rachmuth would be in charge of its North Carolina operations.
“Unfortunately, I have plenty of experience exposing the nature of the BDS movement as well as activists and financiers within the movement,” Rachmuth told The Jerusalem Post. “I have exposed anti-Israel programming within Jewish institutions, such as Conservative synagogues and major Hillel organizations. I have also exposed far-right antisemitism, such as displaying Nazi flags on our college campuses.”
Rachmuth’s name made it to the headlines in 2015 and 2016 when she and her husband, Guy, took on the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement. While raising her family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, she faced a turning point after fighting a legal battle against a private school that hired teachers who promoted hate speech against Israel and racist ideologies to teach her children.
These experiences led her to the Proclaiming Justice to the Nations organization, and in turn she took an active role fighting antisemitism and BDS and being more vocal on Israel security issues, with the goal of fostering relationships between the State of Israel and the American people.
“[Proclaiming Justice to the Nations President Laurie Cardoza-Moore] and her team helped educate me about the existence of the BDS movement in schools,” she said. “Later, the organization stood by my side as I defended my family against attacks from members of the BDS movement when my case proceeded through the judicial process.
“After two years of my anti-BDS activism here in North Carolina, I was approached by the organization about putting together a team of like-minded activists from multiple faiths to educate my community about the antisemitic nature of BDS.”
In a letter to the followers of organization, Cardoza-Moore said Rachmuth has learned a lot from her experiences in protesting the anti-Jewish movement.
“Sloan is an expert in exposing the true nature of the BDS movement and anti-Israel bias in our schools and universities,” she said. “Journalists have utilized her investigative research to teach people how to recognize the BDS movement and ways to stop its growth.”
Rachmuth, who began her position with PJTN in June, founded and is the lead instructor of the North Carolina fitness center reCharge Pilates & Barre Durham. This won’t prevent her from dedicating as much time necessary to help make her state free from antisemitism and BDS, she said.
“In my new role, I plan to work as many hours necessary to get the job done,” she said. “Some weeks it may be 60 hours, others as little as 20 hours per week. As we get more challenges from anti-Israel activists, it will likely require more attention from me, and it is attention that I am willing to give.”
When exposing the BDS movement to the media, Rachmuth said she relies on financial records, the spoken word, recordings and other hard evidence that show the high-level coordination of many of these groups.
As chapter president, she said she will help educate business leaders, educators, legislators and university administrators about the true nature of anti-Israel and BDS activists, who are extremely active in this state.
“In North Carolina, we have some of the most well-financed and highly coordinated anti-Israel groups in the country,” she said. “Sadly they are far-left groups, as well as far-right groups, that are now highlighted in the mainstream media.”
In 2016, a Nazi flag was spotted in a dorm window at the University of North Carolina, and in Durham, activists persuaded the city council to end a contract with the G4S security company, which works in prisons and checkpoints in Israel. Also, Palestinian solidarity movements have become stronger over the years in North Carolina’s post-secondary educational institutions.
The recent anti-BDS bill in the state, however, has shown that the counter-BDS protests are making a difference.
“I did not have a hand in the BDS bill, which passed recently in North Carolina. However, with PJTN, we will pass an anti-antisemitism piece of legislation that will help protect college students in the state.”sign up to our newsletter
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
AN ATTACK ON A SYRIAN REACTOR - MIKE EVANS JERUSALEM POST
An Israeli Air Force F-35 fighter jet flies during an aerial demonstration at a graduation ceremony for Israeli airforce pilots at the Hatzerim air base in southern Israel December 29, 2016.. (photo credit:REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)
AN ATTACK ON A SYRIAN REACTOR
BY MIKE EVANS SEPTEMBER 10, 2017 JERUSALEM POST
Ten years ago last week, on September 6, 2007, Israel reportedly bombed an eastern Syrian complex which was reportedly a nuclear reactor being built with the assistance of North Korea. The planned attack had begun months before in a quiet Vienna neighborhood.
In an article for The New Yorker, David Makovsky painted a graphic picture of the preparations surrounding the secret operation: “In the first days of March 2007, Mossad agents made a daring raid on the Vienna home of Ibrahim Othman, the head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission. Othman was in town attending a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, and had stepped out. In less than an hour, the Mossad operatives swept in, extracted top-secret information from Othman’s computer, and left without a trace.”
Innovative measures aren’t always heralded on the front page of The New York Times or International Herald Tribune. Such was the case when the Israel Air Force struck, according to foreign sources, a suspected nuclear site northwest of Damascus on that September day. In the aftermath of the attack, global attention focused on Syria’s nuclear ambitions, but little was released about the actual incursion.
Few knew that prior to the incursion then-prime minister Ehud Olmert had contacted US president George W. Bush and asked the US to bomb the compound that housed the nuclear facility. According to Bush, an intelligence report had crossed his desk noting a “well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria.”
The former president felt he had no clear justification for such a move and declined Olmert’s request.
On September 6, I met with Olmert.
Behind his desk sat a picture of him and George W. Bush standing back-to-back.
The dedication written on the picture said, “I have your back.” Ehud told me that the president had offered to send secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to Israel on a diplomatic mission, and the prime minister refused. Olmert said, “No, we don’t need diplomacy; I need you to take it out – or I will.” President Bush declined; Olmert gave the green light for an attack.
As information on the mission began to emerge, it was revealed that this was likely the first incidence of “electronic” combat – also called “non-kinetic” warfare.
Such warfare involves the use of electromagnetic transmissions to alter, destroy, or seize the opposition’s military systems without initiating perceptible loss. It is, in essence, military computer hacking and electronic intelligence methods designed to reduce enemy capabilities. Israel discovered it was not only conceivable, but doable.
As the incursion was being made ready, an Israeli strike force slipped into Tall al-Abyad, Syria, a border town near Turkey. The group disabled two radar systems, enabling Israeli jets to overfly airspace without detection by the Syrian air force. That was a major coup, as Syrian radar defenses were considered the most complex and exhaustive in the Middle East.
The actual bombing run was reportedly carried out by 10 Israeli F-15I Ra’am fighter jets attached to the IAF 69th Squadron. According to a 2013 article at Pravda Report the aircraft were armed with laser-guided bombs and were escorted by F-16I Sufa fighter jets. Three of the F-15s were reportedly ordered back to base, while the remaining seven continued towards Syria.
In the early morning hours, Israeli pilots whispered, “Arizona,” the code to alert those in Jerusalem who were monitoring the mission that the reactor had been destroyed and not a pilot had been lost.
Following the attack, Olmert reportedly contacted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to inform him of the circumstances. Erdogan was then asked to forward a communique to Syria’s President Bashar Assad.
The message in blunt form: “Don’t try to build another nuclear plant.”
The Syrian dictator was urged not to make media fodder of the attack, and was assured the Israelis would show restraint as well. Caught in a trap of his own making, Assad could not retaliate for the destruction of a nuclear reactor he averred did not exist.
Questions to Israeli sources regarding how the feat was accomplished were met with restrained silence by Israel and a false report by the Syrian Arab News Agency. It was erroneously stated that the Israelis “dropped some ammunition” and departed Syrian airspace leaving behind no damage.
After the successful attack, Olmert visited president Bush in the White House. The president invited Ehud upstairs to the private residence where he opened a closet and offered the prime minister a cigar. The two men walked out on the Truman Balcony overlooking the south lawn; each lit a cigar in celebration of the successful attack on Syria’s nuclear site.
The area of Syria that housed the reactor is now home to Islamic State terrorists. Who knows what evil would have been perpetrated had the Syrians been left to develop nuclear capabilities? As with the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak facility prior to the ISIS takeover in Iraq, the world owes a great debt of gratitude to Israel.
In an article for The New Yorker, David Makovsky painted a graphic picture of the preparations surrounding the secret operation: “In the first days of March 2007, Mossad agents made a daring raid on the Vienna home of Ibrahim Othman, the head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission. Othman was in town attending a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, and had stepped out. In less than an hour, the Mossad operatives swept in, extracted top-secret information from Othman’s computer, and left without a trace.”
Innovative measures aren’t always heralded on the front page of The New York Times or International Herald Tribune. Such was the case when the Israel Air Force struck, according to foreign sources, a suspected nuclear site northwest of Damascus on that September day. In the aftermath of the attack, global attention focused on Syria’s nuclear ambitions, but little was released about the actual incursion.
Few knew that prior to the incursion then-prime minister Ehud Olmert had contacted US president George W. Bush and asked the US to bomb the compound that housed the nuclear facility. According to Bush, an intelligence report had crossed his desk noting a “well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria.”
The former president felt he had no clear justification for such a move and declined Olmert’s request.
On September 6, I met with Olmert.
Behind his desk sat a picture of him and George W. Bush standing back-to-back.
The dedication written on the picture said, “I have your back.” Ehud told me that the president had offered to send secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to Israel on a diplomatic mission, and the prime minister refused. Olmert said, “No, we don’t need diplomacy; I need you to take it out – or I will.” President Bush declined; Olmert gave the green light for an attack.
As information on the mission began to emerge, it was revealed that this was likely the first incidence of “electronic” combat – also called “non-kinetic” warfare.
Such warfare involves the use of electromagnetic transmissions to alter, destroy, or seize the opposition’s military systems without initiating perceptible loss. It is, in essence, military computer hacking and electronic intelligence methods designed to reduce enemy capabilities. Israel discovered it was not only conceivable, but doable.
As the incursion was being made ready, an Israeli strike force slipped into Tall al-Abyad, Syria, a border town near Turkey. The group disabled two radar systems, enabling Israeli jets to overfly airspace without detection by the Syrian air force. That was a major coup, as Syrian radar defenses were considered the most complex and exhaustive in the Middle East.
The actual bombing run was reportedly carried out by 10 Israeli F-15I Ra’am fighter jets attached to the IAF 69th Squadron. According to a 2013 article at Pravda Report the aircraft were armed with laser-guided bombs and were escorted by F-16I Sufa fighter jets. Three of the F-15s were reportedly ordered back to base, while the remaining seven continued towards Syria.
In the early morning hours, Israeli pilots whispered, “Arizona,” the code to alert those in Jerusalem who were monitoring the mission that the reactor had been destroyed and not a pilot had been lost.
Following the attack, Olmert reportedly contacted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to inform him of the circumstances. Erdogan was then asked to forward a communique to Syria’s President Bashar Assad.
The message in blunt form: “Don’t try to build another nuclear plant.”
The Syrian dictator was urged not to make media fodder of the attack, and was assured the Israelis would show restraint as well. Caught in a trap of his own making, Assad could not retaliate for the destruction of a nuclear reactor he averred did not exist.
Questions to Israeli sources regarding how the feat was accomplished were met with restrained silence by Israel and a false report by the Syrian Arab News Agency. It was erroneously stated that the Israelis “dropped some ammunition” and departed Syrian airspace leaving behind no damage.
After the successful attack, Olmert visited president Bush in the White House. The president invited Ehud upstairs to the private residence where he opened a closet and offered the prime minister a cigar. The two men walked out on the Truman Balcony overlooking the south lawn; each lit a cigar in celebration of the successful attack on Syria’s nuclear site.
The area of Syria that housed the reactor is now home to Islamic State terrorists. Who knows what evil would have been perpetrated had the Syrians been left to develop nuclear capabilities? As with the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak facility prior to the ISIS takeover in Iraq, the world owes a great debt of gratitude to Israel.
The author is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, the founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem and a member of President Donald Trump’s Founding Faith Board.
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