A CHRISTIAN REFERENDUM
Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR
Rael Jean Isaac

WHY CHRISTIAN EVANGELICALS SUPPORT ISRAEL
Reverend Pat Robertson

PRESBYTERIANS VS. ISRAEL
Rael Jean Isaac

AN EXTRAORDINARY TALE
Oliver Guitta

THERE ARE NO NON MILITARY SOLUTIONS
Steven Plaut

THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND ISRAEL
Ruth King

Herbert Zweibon

In this issue, we print the speech Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, gave in Herzliyah, Israel in which he made two crucial points. He said: "Please don't commit national suicide. It is very hard for your friends to support you if you make a conscious decision to destroy yourselves." And he reminded Israel that if it gave up its patrimony, it would be taken by Moslems as a sign that Allah is greater than the God of the Christians and Jews.
Friends of Israel have an obligation to reinforce Pat Robertson’s message, to tell Israel not to take actions which lead to tragedy for the Jewish people. Even if the Israeli leadership, for reasons of outside or internal pressures, decides to imperil its survival by creating a Palestinian state, it is the duty of the friends of Israel to do all they can to dissuade the leadership.
In that conviction we are cooperating with Christian friends of Israel in a referendum campaign aimed at evangelical churchgoers nationwide. A ballot is being distributed to thousands of evangelical and apostolic churches to enable Bible-believing Christians to record their feelings. This is what the ballot says:
"The U.S. government, together with Russia, Europe and the United Nations, is pursuing a policy that will form a Palestinian state within the Israeli territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. This policy will require the expulsion of thousands of Jews from their homes. This referendum seeks to assess your support for (Yes) or opposition to (No) a Palestinian state in the land of Israel.
Do you support the creation of a PLO state in the Land of Israel? Yes ___ No____.”
We will be presenting the results to President Bush and to each member of Congress. It is our hope that the results of this referendum will make it clear to President Bush that the constituency most akin to his own moral and political views unequivocally rejects any attempt to enshrine Islamic terrorism in the Land of Israel. Within the Bible-believing community, 4 million people stayed home in the last election. In a close election, which this promises to be, the President cannot afford a repeat—or even greater absenteeism. The President could help to inspire his supporters, many of them unhappy about his inability to advance more strongly a conservative social agenda, with a principled stand here. Certainly there is nothing to inspire anyone in the administration’s current policy of haggling over “outposts” and “caravans” in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and sending high-level government representatives to complain that its count does not correspond to Israeli tallies.
We hope the results of this referendum will also serve as a wake-up call to American Jewish organizations to cease dancing attendance on the mainline churches who are Israel’s foes. With all the focus on the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s decision to divest from companies investing in Israel, virtually no attention was paid to another resolution passed in the same church assembly-–namely, the disavowal of Christian Zionism as a legitimate theological stance.
Even if the President confines himself to strategic considerations, it is hard to see how a PLO state will advance what he euphemistically calls “the war on terror” (in fact, the war against Islamic jihad). The collapse of the Palestinian Authority into chaos is now apparent. “A democratic Palestine?” Can the president continue to say that phrase any longer with a straight face? The Commission looking into 9/11 has concluded that the government was guilty of significant failures, even given the limited information available to it. In this case all the data is in: clearly a Palestinian state will be a failed state, a breeding ground of terror and instability, not just for Israel but for its neighbors and for the Western democracies, above all our own.
To that ballot question “Do you support a PLO state in the Land of Israel?” our President, on all grounds, should be answering a resounding “No!”

Israel's Savant-Idiot
Shimon Peres, in line again for Foreign Minister in Israel's ongoing political farce, continues to churn out pearls of foolishness—although, perhaps proof of dotage, he often repeats old sound-bites. Like "Politics is the art of compromise, whereas religion is not about compromise." That and the following Jesse Jackson imitations are all from one speech given to the reverent applause of the Jewish Agency's annual assembly in Jerusalem. "Today we have a government without a policy and a policy without a government." "The Likud must make up their own mind. Do they want to go back to the greater Israel or do they want to go ahead to a greater peace." (Peres must be the only politician in Israel unaware that the last thing the Arab states have in mind is "peace" with Israel.) "Let them keep Arafat as a Palestinian problem instead of a Jewish problem." (As if what goes on in the Palestinian Authority does not affect Israel.) And then, for chutzpah: "I feel myself that I am also religious. I represent the religious interests more than many other religious people."
All this pales before Peres at a Labor Party conference in Tel Aviv, also in June, where he assailed Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's economic policies, their success the one bright spot in the record of the Sharon government. "The government's economic policies have resulted in 6,000 millionaires and 6 million beggars" proclaimed Peres. But what do you expect from the man who boasts that he wooed his wife Sonia by reading her from Das Kapital?
For those who fear Peresisms will die with Peres, we have good news. There is a Peres-in-waiting in Labor Member of the Knesset Matan Vilnai. Criticizing the fence, he told Israel Radio that "a safe border isn't one protected by land mines but one that the other side accepts." And when the border the other side has in mind is the Mediterranean Sea? Back in 2001 Vilnai explained that Israel should not be concerned if the PA had anti-aircraft missiles since "they do not endanger people -- just aircraft." Now there's a Foreign Minister in-the-making.

Home-grown Chutzpah
Dennis Ross, not content with the damage he did to Israel as arm-twister-in-chief in the Clinton administration, now makes a thinly disguised offer to run the Israeli government directly. Ensconced as director of the Jewish Agency's pretentiously titled think tank "The Jewish People's Planning Policy Institute", Ross suggests that a standing committee of Diaspora Jews be established with which the Israeli government would consult "before taking any initiative which could impact on the standing of Diaspora Jewish communities." (That's every policy of any consequence.) One didn't notice Ross consulting the Israeli government before taking around a group of PLO terrorists (the "Tanzim") to members of Congress last year.
And then there's Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, another candidate for that "standing committee" no doubt, fresh from stuffing his socks with secret papers from the National Archives.

Swedish Anti-Semitism
While most of the attention is focused on anti-Semitism in France, Sweden, despite its tiny population of Jews (an estimated 20,000 of whom only 8,000 are registered with the Jewish community) is emerging as yet another trouble spot. In a letter to the Israeli daily Haaretz published June 9, four former chairmen of the Jewish community of Stockholm now living in Israel took the occasion of a visit to Israel by Sweden's Foreign Minister to emphasize that her government needed to take determined measures to stem the anti-Semitic tide.
The former community leaders say that verbal and physical attacks on Jews have increased to the point that school children feel impelled to hide the fact that they are Jews and the police stand passively by when extremists attack pro-Israel demonstrations and activities. Moreover, they point out that the problem is not confined to Moslems. (There are 400,000 in Sweden.) They write: "Over the last decades, Sweden has become a center for racist and anti-Semitic White Power music, and several anti-Semitic groups have established Swedish websites spreading anti-Semitic propaganda. The Swedish Church has just recently initiated a boycott campaign, a reminder of the commercial boycott of Jews in various societies in the past." (The Presbyterian "divestment" campaign, discussed in this Outpost, has its European models.)

Israel's Ostrich Media
The wonderful Carolyn Glick, who pounds home painful truths in the Jerusalem Post, lambastes the Israeli media in a no-holds-barred article entitled "Our Daily Drivel." She reports that Shin Bet (Intelligence) Director Avi Dichter disclosed at a cabinet meeting that while Israel is the largest contributor to the Palestinian Authority's budget, a billion dollars or 45% of the
total budget, no oversight is exercised to ensure that part of the money is not used to fund terror. As Glick writes: "In saying this, Dichter was making a clear and almost unprecedented indictment of the government. Our government is putting a billion dollars a year into a black hole controlled by one of the most active terror regimes in the world. And this terror regime is actively waging war against our country." Glick writes that "in an even semi-rational country, this disclosure would have been the story of the week -- if not the year.”
But not in Israel. Says Glick: "Sadly, this story received four lines buried at the end of a story in the inside pages of Yediot Aharanot and barely a mention anywhere else."
Glick points out that Dichter's briefing had the makings of another major story the media ignored. Dichter told the cabinet that Jerusalem Arabs support the terror war against Israel as strongly as other Arabs. Since sixty percent of all suicide bombings in the last year occurred in the capital, how will a fence protect Israel from continued jihadists? Again, says Glick, the Hebrew language press paid this no mind.

Al-Jazeera in Canada
Another sign of anti-Americanism from our northern neighbor: the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has approved Al Jazeera, with its record of disseminating the most vicious anti-American and anti-Semitic fantasies as "news," for broadcast in Canada while "controversial" Fox News has still not been granted permission to broadcast by that same Commission.

Pat Robertson

One day in the late 19th Century, Queen Victoria of England reportedly asked her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, this question:
"Mr. Prime Minister, what evidence can you give me of the existence of God?"
Disraeli thought for a moment and then replied, "The Jew, your majesty."
Think of it, according to Disraeli the primary evidence that God exists is the existence of the Jewish people... A people who in 586 BC were deported to Babylon, yet returned after seventy years to rebuild a nation. Who were again brutally massacred and dispersed by the Romans in 70 AD, yet after countless centuries of Diaspora, expulsions, pogroms, ghettos, and attempts at genocidal extermination, have clung to their faith, their customs—and now after some 2500 years of wandering have returned to the land promised by God to their ancestors.
A new nation began in that land in 1948 named after their ancestor Jacob, whose divinely appointed name Israel means "Prince with God." And to fulfill another ancient prophecy, God moved the heart of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, whose son Ehud told me that, while his father was living in Eastern Europe, he heard a voice and saw a light directing him to bring forth for the Jewish people a pure language—Hebrew—the language of the Torah and of the ancient prophets.
Yes, the survival of the Jewish people is a miracle of God. The return of the Jewish people to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a miracle of God. The remarkable victories of Jewish armies against overwhelming odds in successive battles in 1948, and 1967, and 1973 are clearly miracles of God. The technological marvels of Israeli industry, the military prowess, the bounty of Israeli agriculture, the fruits and flowers and abundance of the land are a testimony to God's watchful care over this new nation and the genius of this people.
Yet what has happened was clearly foretold by the ancient prophet Ezekiel, who, writing at the time of the Babylonian captivity, declared this message for the Jewish people concerning latter days.
"For I will take you out of the nation; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back to your own land... I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you... to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.
"Then the nations around you that remain will know that I, Jehovah, have rebuilt what was destroyed and have replanted what was desolate. I, Jehovah, have spoken, and I will do it." Ezekiel 36:24 ff.
Evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God. We believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.
We believe that God has a plan for this nation which He intends to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.
Of course, we, like all right-thinking people, support Israel because Israel is an island of democracy, an island of individual freedom, an island of the rule of law, and an island of modernity in the midst of a sea of dictatorial regimes which suppress individual liberty and embrace a fanatical religion intent on returning to the feudalism of 8th Century Arabia.
These facts about modern day Israel are all true. But mere political rhetoric does not account for the profound devotion to Israel that exists in the hearts of tens of millions of evangelical Christians.
You must realize that the God who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai is our God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are our spiritual Patriarchs. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are our prophets. King David, a man after God's own heart, is our hero. The Holy City of Jerusalem is our spiritual capital. And the continuation of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land is a further bulwark to us that the God of the Bible exists and that His Word is true.
And we should clearly take note that evangelical Christians serve a Jew that we believe was the divine Messiah of Israel, spoken of by the ancient prophets, to whom He entrusted the worldwide dissemination of His message to twelve Jewish apostles.
It should be noted that today Christianity, with well over two billion adherents, is by far the fastest growing religion in the world. Within twenty years, that number will swell to three billion. Of these, at least six hundred million are Bible-believing evangelicals and charismatics who are ardent supporters of the nation of Israel. In twenty years, that number will reach one billion. Israel has millions of Christian friends in China, in India, in Indonesia, throughout Africa and South America, as well as North America.
We are with you in your struggle. We are with you as a wave of anti-Semitism is engulfing the earth. We are with you despite the pressure of the "Quartet" and the incredibly hostile resolutions of the United Nations. We are with you despite the threats and ravings of Wahabbi Jihadists, Hezbollah thugs, and Hamas assassins.
We are with you despite oil embargos, loss of allies, and terrorist attacks on our cities.
We evangelical Christians merely say to our Israeli friends, "Let us serve our God together by opposing the virulent poison of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that is rapidly engulfing the world."
Having affirmed our support, I would humbly make two requests of our Israeli friends:
First, please don't commit national suicide. It is very hard for your friends to support you, if you make a conscious decision to destroy yourselves.
I hardly find it necessary to remind this audience of the stated objectives of Yasser Arafat, the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. Their goal is not peace, but the final destruction of the State of Israel. At no time do they, or their allies in the Muslim world, acknowledge the sovereignty of Israel over even one square inch of territory in the Middle East. If a Palestinian State is created in the heart of Israel with sovereign power to deploy troops, import modern weapons—even weapons of mass destruction—and operate with full secrecy and diplomatic immunity, the ability of the State of Israel to defend itself will be fatally compromised.
The slogan "land for peace" is a cruel chimera. The Sinai was given up. Did that bring lasting peace? No. Southern Lebanon was given up. Did that bring lasting peace? No. Instead Hezbollah rode tanks to the border of Israel shouting, "On to Jerusalem!" Now, as many as 10,000 rockets aimed at Metulla, Qiryat Shemona, and all of northern Israel have been put in place throughout Southern Lebanon.
Arafat was brought up at the knees of the man who yearned to finish the work of Adolf Hitler. How can any realist truly believe that this killer and his associates can become trusted partners for peace?
I am aware of the deep feelings of many Israelis who yearn for peace. Who long to be free from the terror of the suicide bombers of the intifada. I would draw their attention to the fact that during the Cold War, the American people yearned to be free from the constant threat of a nuclear holocaust. Then, at Reykjavik, Iceland on the occasion of a summit between President Ronald Reagan of the United Sates and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, what seemed like an incredible opportunity for peace was presented to President Reagan by Mr. Gorbachev. An offer was made for hitherto undreamed of reductions in nuclear weapons. Gorbachev's offer included everything the U.S. arms negotiators had wanted, except one thing. The condition for the Russian offer was to be the agreement by the United States to abandon the so-called "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative.
Mr. Reagan carefully considered the offer—then reluctantly said no. Without the Strategic Defense Initiative, there would be no deal. Gorbachev was stunned. Then both leaders, with sadness in their hearts, adjourned the meeting and departed Reykjavik.
The American liberal press was apoplectic at Reagan's decision. But he held firm.
Now we all know that he was right. The Russians could not compete with the United States in a nuclear arms race and Gorbachev knew it. The bluster was over—the threats were over—Reagan had won by standing firm. Soon freedom broke out in Poland, in Hungary, in East Germany. The Berlin Wall came down. The barbed wire fences came down. And Soviet Communism came down.
The world is safe from super power nuclear terror. This terror is no more because one strong leader stood against public opinion—against the advice of many of his own counselors and said no! May the leaders of Israel in 2004 have the courage to look the nations of the world in the eye, and when your national interests demand it—say no!
Second, the world's Christians ask that you do not give away the treasured symbols of your spiritual patrimony.
I read recently in the Wall Street Journal an article written by an American Jewish commentator who remarked that the Temple Mount and what is termed the "Wailing Wall" are "sacred stones and sites," but hardly worth bloodshed.
Just think—the place where the Patriarch Abraham took Isaac to offer him to God. The place bought by King David from Araunah where the Angel of the Lord stood with drawn sword. The place of Solomon's temple. The place of the Holy of Holies. The place where Jesus Christ walked and taught. The very spiritual center of the Jewish worship of the one true God—nothing but a pile of sacred stones—unworthy of sacrifice? What an incredible assertion!
Make no mistake: the entire world is being convulsed by a religious struggle. The fight is not about money or territory; it is not about poverty versus wealth; it is not about ancient customs versus modernity. No, the struggle is whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah God of the Bible is Supreme.
If God's chosen people turn over to Allah control of their most sacred sites, if they surrender to Muslim vandals the tombs of Rachel, of Joseph, of the Patriarchs, of the ancient prophets, if they believe their claim to the Holy Land comes only from Lord Balfour of England and the ever fickle United Nations rather than the promises of Almighty God—then in that event, Islam will have won the battle. Throughout the Muslim world the message will go forth: "Allah is greater than Jehovah. The promises of Jehovah to the Jews are meaningless. We can now, in the name of Allah, crush the Jews and drive them out of the land that belongs to Allah."
In short, those political initiatives that some have asserted will guarantee peace, will in truth guarantee unending struggle and ultimate failure. Those political leaders who only understand the secular dimension of Israel's existence and dismiss the spiritual dimension will find that they receive the mess of pottage of Esau rather than the inheritance of Jacob.
On Christmas Day in 1974, I had the privilege of interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for my television program, The 700 Club. Rabin lamented the fact that after Israeli military victories, the nation had been stopped from achieving a peace treaty.
That was thirty years ago. Israel seemed as isolated and alone then as it does today. As I concluded my interview, I asked Prime Minister Rabin a final question. "What would you want the United States to do now for Israel?"
He replied without hesitation. "Be strong! Be strong!"
That evening I joined for dinner a group of several hundred people who had accompanied me from the United States. We were meeting in the large dining room of the InterContinental Hotel on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, whose floor-to-ceiling windows gave a stunning view of the illuminated Temple Mount. As I related to the group the substance of my meeting, I began to recall the feeling of sadness which had come from the Prime Minister, the sense of the isolation of his nation. That evening, I made a solemn vow to God that, despite whatever might happen in the future, I and the organizations I headed would stand in support of Israel and the Jewish people. I am proud to say that I have kept that vow each year since 1974.
In closing, I would deliver to Israel in 2004 the message Yitzhak Rabin delivered to the United States on Christmas Day in 1974. For you are the living witnesses that the promises of the Sovereign Lord are true. "Be strong! Be strong!"
He will be with you and so will your evangelical friends.

This speech was given by Rev. Pat Robertson on December 17, 2003 to the Herzliya Conference at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy .

Rael Jean Isaac

Jewish organizations have professed shock and dismay as the three million member Presbyterian Church (USA) at its annual General Assembly meeting overwhelmingly (431-62) approved a resolution that henceforth none of the Church’s $7 billion investment fund go to companies that do business in Israel, i.e. voted to strangle the Jewish state economically. Ironically, in the same week the Catholic Church signed a document equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
While “divestment campaigns” directed against Israel have been reported on a number of our increasingly radicalized elite campuses, each thus far has been nipped in the bud by college trustees fearful of alienating Jewish alumni donors. This is the first significant “success” of the anti-Israel divestment movement, but surely not the last. Already Sister Patricia Wolfe, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of 275 Christian denominations, has declared “This now raises the issue and will cause ICCR to have a discussion.” Since the Interfaith Center is a far left outfit enamored of attacking corporations (it would be better-named the Anti-Corporate Center) and there is no difference in attitude toward Israel between the Presbyterians and most of the ICCR’s other member churches, there can be little doubt that more denominations will fall in line. And, of course, the campus movement will certainly be reenergized.
The Forward reports the reaction of a variety of Jewish notables. From Rabbi Gil Rosenthal, executive director of the National Council of Synagogues: “The national policy is very, very troublesome.” From Rabbi Lennard Thal, senior vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism an expression of “disappointment.” James Rudin, long time inter-religious adviser to the American Jewish Committee, called the resolution “a catastrophic disaster.” Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League declared “To assert that there is a moral equivalency between the racist policy of apartheid and the efforts to protect the citizenry of Israel is unconscionable.”
Jay Rock, Director for Interfaith Relations at the National Council of Churches responded blithely that Jewish-Presbyterian relations “are very good”— the only problem is a “wildly different opinion on how to go about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian situation.” And there is the real scandal, that Israel’s survival registers so low on the priorities of the major Jewish organizations that despite the fact hostility to Israel on the part of the Presbyterian Church USA (the largest Presbyterian denomination) and the other mainline churches within the National Council of Churches goes back decades, Jewish organizations have chosen to overlook it. The Union for Reform Judaism recently launched a national inter-religious dialogue with Presbyterians along with other mainline churches. Foxman said the resolution threw into question the ADL’s own efforts in “interfaith dialogue between Presbyterians and Jews.” This is the same Foxman who only a few years ago launched an unseemly tirade against the evangelical Christians who are Israel’s staunch supporters.
In October 1981 this writer wrote an article in Midstream entitled “Liberal Protestants versus Israel.” Here is the first paragraph: “The hostility of liberal Protestantism toward Israel has been something liberal Jews have found difficult to accept. As a result they have largely ignored it. Yet the National Council of Churches, including the major denominations that set its policy—the United Methodists, the United Presbyterians, the Disciples of Christ, the Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ—have become centers of activity directed toward eliminating the Jewish state.” Almost twenty-five years later Jewish organizations have continued to turn a blind eye-- now professing “shock” at what is only the current wholly predictable manifestation of hostility by those who lead these church bodies.
The warning signs of liberal Protestant hostility were clear as far back as 1967. As the noose slowly tightened around Israel, as the straits of Tiran were closed, the UN forces withdrawn from the Sinai, the Egyptian forces massed there, and threats of destruction poured from Arab capitals, American Jewish organizations and rabbis who had been active in interfaith programs (yes, they were in full swing, then as in 2004) turned to the churches for expressions of support for Israel. Liberal Protestant churches shrugged off the pleas. But in the wake of Israel’s then stunning victory, they were quick to find their voice. Less than a month after Israel’s battlefield triumph the Executive Committee of the National Council announced that it “cannot condone by silence territorial expansion by armed force.” There was no indication that the National Council was aware the Arabs had precipitated the war; in the resolution’s antiseptic phrase violence had “erupted” in the Middle East.
When the Yom Kippur War “erupted” in 1973, the response was worse. The Arab surprise assault on Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year, with most of the population at prayer, might have been expected to provoke special indignation in a religious body. On the contrary, the National Council’s Governing Board (which happened to be holding its annual meeting at the time) promptly called for an arms embargo, this as Israel was desperately pleading for a U.S. airlift to secure her survival. A proposed amendment “supporting the need for Israel to defend its right to exist” (although what good that right would do in the absence of arms to exercise it is debatable) was voted down. Gerald Strober, then on the staff of the American Jewish Committee, who was present at the meeting as an invited observer, recalls that David Stowe, an official of the United Church of Christ, said to him “Israel might have to die for the cause of world peace.”
Two years later, when the UN passed its notorious resolution equating Zionism with racism, while individual church leaders spoke out, the National Council as an organization representing, as its leaders are fond of saying, 41 million Christians, was silent. If anything its actions could be construed as indirect support for the resolution, for in March 1976, at its first meeting after the UN had declared Zionism was racism, the Governing Board passed a resolution to “strongly reaffirm” support for the United Nations.
Since 1974, when the National Council of Churches (NCC) first called on the U.S. to open contacts with the PLO, both the NCC, as the umbrella for the mainline denominations, and the individual denominations in their own annual assemblies have consistently promoted the PLO. In 1977 Methodist churchgoer David Jessup did a study of his denomination’s funding and found that among a variety of groups fomenting Marxist revolution worldwide there were several PLO support groups, including the viciously anti-Israel Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), which put out a flyer following the murder of Israeli athletes at the Olympic games declaring “we should comprehend the achievement of the Munich action” (Joe Stork, current Human Rights Watch official, cut his teeth in MERIP) and the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, which likewise called for Israel’s destruction.
Over the years a spate of Middle East resolutions followed, the pattern identical to that of the United Nations: Arab atrocities were ignored, Israeli attempts at self-defense excoriated. To take just one example, in May 1978, when Israel retaliated after a particularly gruesome PLO incursion, which began with the murder of a young American photographer on an Israeli beach and culminated with the massacre of 36 other civilians, the National Council sharply attacked Israel. The Council rejected an amendment referring to persons “wantonly killed or maimed” in terrorist actions that occasioned the reprisal. After the Israeli raid that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the Reverend William Howard, President of the National Council, seized the occasion to write a letter to President Reagan saying the U.S. would lose all “moral credibility” if it did not impose a unilateral arms embargo on the Middle East. The United Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church and the Church of the Brethren, all National Council members, underscored their agreement by sending similar individual letters.
The Camp David Accords temporarily embarrassed the National Council. Its entire emphasis was on satisfying the aspirations of the “Palestinian people” via the PLO and the PLO opposed the Israeli-Egyptian agreement. On the other hand, it could not denounce an apparent breakthrough in the Middle East. The Council’s solution was to pass two resolutions, in 1978 and 1979, praising the accords but complaining they omitted the PLO. By 1980 the National Council was comfortably describing the Camp David agreement as “fundamentally flawed.”
In 1980, the National Council replaced its 1969 policy statement on the Middle East, which had failed to mention a state for the Palestinian Arabs, with a new statement affirming the moral imperative of giving the PLO a state. (While there was no difficulty on this issue, there was heated discussion as to whether Israel should continue to exist.) And while the policy statement asserted it was “giving voice to the voiceless and providing support for the powerless” and professed “a special concern for relations with Middle Eastern Christians” there was no mention of the Christians of Lebanon, then in a critical plight. Ironically, a delegation of Copts was at the November 1979 Governing Board meeting, passing out a report called “Christian Egyptians Call for International Help” on draconian legislation against Copts in Egypt. The group pleaded with the National Council Governing Board for a hearing; the Council refused to let them speak. So much for this particular group of the “voiceless.” The Christians of the Sudan, massacred by the hundreds of thousands by the Muslims of the north, were also absent from the policy statement.
Nothing has changed. As Richard Baehr notes in a recent FrontPageMagazine.com article (July 19), this year again the Presbyterian Church passed no resolution on “the slaughter of black Muslims in the Sudan by Arabs, and they never passed any resolutions in prior years, when the Sudanese Arabs chose to slaughter black Christians. They were silent when the Rwanda genocide occurred, as well. But hey, what’re a few million black African lives when Muslim olive trees are being cut down near the ‘green line’?” Baehr also notes that the hatred of Israel has grown so strong in most of the mainline churches “that advocates for Israel are not permitted to make presentations to these congregations anymore. If Jews want to speak about Israel, they have to be from the far-Left, and they must come to trash Israel (and help bury it).”
What explains the hostility of the mainline churches toward Israel? The most important factor has been the influence of so-called liberation theology. As historian Guenter Levy has pointed out, liberation theology transforms key symbols like Incarnation, Revelation and Resurrection so that they do not refer to a divine event in the past but to political liberation in the present. According to Presbyterian theologian Richard Shaull, only at the center of the revolution can man “perceive what God is doing.” Not surprisingly this perspective drove some ministers and priests into the hills to join guerilla bands, especially in Latin America. In the United States, identification of Christianity with the struggle for liberation led to uncritical identification with Third World “liberation movements.” (In 1977 the FBI actually uncovered a Puerto Rican FALN cell—the FALN had taken responsibility for 120 bombings including the bombing of historical Fraunces Tavern in New York City, which killed four and injured dozens more—operating out of the Episcopal Church’s National Commission on Hispanic Affairs.) The distinctively Christian task becomes to identify with the oppressed of the Third World. As Robert Turnipseed, speaking for the National Council, told an American Jewish Committee annual meeting: “The Palestinians have been seen as an oppressed people. Israel has been seen as part of the oppressing forces.”
Indeed, if one looks over the last decades at the resolutions of the National Council of Churches, the national assemblies of its constituent churches, and the groups the churches fund, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the view of those who control the bureaucracies of these churches is close to that of Osama bin Laden: the U.S. is the big Satan and Israel the little Satan. For while we have focused here on hostility to Israel, the U.S. government is cast in the role of chief oppressor of the Third World (which takes on a metaphorical meaning to include U.S. blacks, Hispanic Americans and American Indians). Most recently the churches have focused on attacking the Iraq war. Clifton Kirkpatrick, who for eight years has been the stated clerk (i.e. head) of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has even signed a World Council of Churches statement that seeks to bring President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to trial for war crimes for their “illegal resort to war” on Iraq.
Most Christians who belong to denominations that are members of the National Council do not agree with the perspective of the bureaucratic leadership (it is a rare resolution that could pass in a referendum of ordinary church members). But the efforts of groups within the denominations to effect change have been unavailing. Within the Presbyterian Church alone there are five such groups: the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Presbyterians for Renewal, Presbyterians Pro-Life, the Presbyterian Coalition and the Presbyterian Forum. They are thorns in the side of the bureaucracy, but no more.
The Jewish organizational representatives that busily run around to inter-religious meetings and task forces with various mainline churches know all this, which is why their professions of shock and dismay ring so hollow. They are comfortable pursuing “social justice” (as defined by the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party) with their mainline confreres. Mainline church leaders are confident their Jewish counterparts will soon “recover” and agree to put Israel aside as they embark on a common social agenda. And church leaders will be happy to issue statements condemning “anti-Semitism” even as they pursue their effort to destroy the Jewish state. Even now the Rev. William Harter, speaking on behalf of the Presbyterians, notes that a motion has been approved calling for study and reexamination of the relationship between Presbyterians and Jews over the next two years, which meant the Church “recognizes we need to do more in-depth conversation, dialogue and study of our relationship with the Jewish people.”
Will the Jewish organizations be busy engaging in empty dialogue over good lunches? Don’t bet against it.

Olivier Guitta

The story starts in Sarajevo at the beginning of WWII. Mustafa and Zaneiba Hardagan were a very tolerant Muslim couple who had a lot of Jewish friends, especially the Kabilio family. When the Germans occupied Sarajevo, the Gestapo’s Headquarters were situated across the street from the Hardagan’s residence. The Hardagans warned their Jewish friends many times about the upcoming arrests of Jews by the SS. Mustafa begged his friend Yossef Kabilio to come and stay with them telling him ”You are our brothers. This is your home.”
Yossef accepted, but later had to arrange for the departure of his whole family because the situation of the Jews was becoming worse by the day. Unfortunately, the Gestapo arrested him, while his family was safe. Zeineba made a point of visiting him every day, bringing him food and clothing. But after a month, she decided that she was not doing enough and took upon herself to ask the Gestapo head for Yossef’s release. He was obviously very surprised that a Muslim would risk so much to save the life of a Jew. In the end, after generously bribing the officer, she obtained Yossef’s liberation. Yossef escaped to Italy in 1943.
Zeineba is not the only courageous member of her family. Her dad, Ahmed Sahdik, a Muslim originally from Salonica, Greece, hid many Jewish families during the war in his own residence. Unfortunately he was denounced and then sent to a concentration camp, where he died in 1945. Sahdik’s name, albeit a Muslim one, is listed today on the Sarajevo memorial dedicated to the deported Jewish victims.
The Kabilios made it back safely to Sarajevo after the war and Zeineba gave them back the jewels they had left with her. They embarked on a ship going to Palestine, where they started a new life, but never forgot their Muslim friends during all these years.
The Kabilios decided to honor Zebeina’s courage by having the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem include her as one of the “Righteous among the nations” for her role during the Shoah. She was then invited in 1985 to Israel to be recognized as the first Muslim ever to hold that title. She spent two wonderful months there, where she was impressed by the warmth and the welcome of the Israeli authorities.
Obviously she had no idea that a few years later, the irony of history would save her family’s life. In fact in 1992, while Yugoslavia was in the midst of a bloody civil war, Zebeina’s family was in mortal danger because of the numerous bombings in their neighborhood in Sarajevo.
Yossef Kabilio’s children worked endlessly to save their saviors. They obtained directly from Israel Prime Minister Rabin a special authorization to bring the whole Hardagan family to Israel, along with members of the Jewish community of Sarajevo. So, in 1994, they settled in Israel: Zebeina’s daughter Aida had a revelation upon entering Jerusalem. She said that she did not feel like a stranger but rather it was like coming back home. She then converted to Judaism and was renamed Sarah. She added that until her death in October 1994, her mother Zebeina was very supportive.
Zebeina Hardagan, the first Muslim “Righteous among the Nations” was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Bet Zait according to strict Jewish law. Even the hard-line rabbis accepted bending the rules because of her story.
Today, Sarah is a firm Zionist, and this is what she has to say about Israel:
“I do not know of a single country in the world who would have welcomed us like Israel did. We were Muslims and it is the Jewish state, which embraced us with love and affection. The entire world witnessed what happened in Sarajevo and only Israel came to our rescue. This is the true state of Israel and not what foreign TV networks show you every night. If Israel was a racist state, how come they took care of Muslims like us? Our story is a message for those who really want to live in peace in the Near East.”
If all the symbols were not enough, Sarah has been working for the past ten years at the Museum of Yad Vashem, the Shoah memorial.
Sarah’s daughter, Esther, who was born a Muslim in Sarajevo, great granddaughter of Ahmed Sahdik who died in deportation while saving Jews, granddaughter of Zeneiba Hardagan, is now a 21-year-old officer in the Israeli air force.
This incredible story spanning generations, continents and religions, is the ultimate remedy for accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. It is very easy and convenient to blame Israel, the only democracy in the region, for all the problems in the world. The International Court of Justice’s decision to condemn Israel for the construction of the self-protecting fence is only the latest example of this phenomenon.
But it is high time to remember that Israeli Arabs remain far the best off among the Arabs of the Middle East. In fact, Israel is still the only place where the condition of women is one of fundamental equality, and where they can vote. So, instead of always pointing the finger to the most tolerant country in the Middle East, why is the UN not taking care of more pressing issues in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Sudan, where Christian minorities were and still are being slaughtered in the millions?

This appeared on the French-language website newsmagazine proche-orient.info.

There Are No Non-Military
Solutions

Steven Plaut

It has become the vogue in many circles to represent Middle East savagery as part of some sort of "War of Civilizations". In fact, it is simply a war by barbarism against all civilization. It is also considered chic to represent the Middle East conflict as a "cycle of violence", and as fundamentally symmetrical. The shallow appeal to a supposed "cycle of violence" is nothing more than a manifestation of the laziness of those unwilling to invest the energy needed to understand the conflict, or by those motivated by things worse than laziness when it comes to Jews.
At the beginning of the Oslo "peace process", the PLO officially renounced terror and swore to resolve all conflict with Israel through peaceful negotiation. In exchange, the entire world followed the leadership of the Israeli Left and legitimized the PLO, rescuing it from its pariah status and its exile in Tunisia, while Israel allowed the PLO to manage and govern the bulk of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By the mid-1990s, some 95% of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians were "liberated" from Israeli "occupation" and were ruled by the oppressive Palestinian Authority. The removal of Israeli occupation was the direct cause of the outbreak of the worst round of Palestinian barbarism in history.
It has been repeated so endlessly and so mindlessly that Palestinian terror is a supposed consequence of Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza that the most glaring and obvious fact of all is being ignored by the entire world. Palestinian terrorism these past eleven years was not caused by Israeli occupation but by its removal!
As a result of Israel's offering to allow the PLO control over the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel's willingness to acquiesce in Palestinian statehood in the medium run, the PLO and its affiliates have murdered 1300 Israelis, most of them civilians and many of them children, since foreswearing the use of violence. Proportionate to population, this is like 22 September 11ths for the United States. The world has grown so accustomed to the daily news reports of Palestinian barbarism that most have lost their shock value.
Nevertheless, several points need to be re-emphasized.
First of all, the notion that the terror is coming from "renegade" organizations outside the PLO and which the PLO cannot control is little more than an insult to the world's collective intelligence. Recently the bulk of the violence (including many of the suicide bombers) has come from the "Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades", from the Fatah, and from the Tanzim. All of these are under the direct personal command and control of Yassir Arafat.
Second, Palestinians have long used ambulances of the "Red Crescent", (the PLO's version of the Red Cross, directed by Arafat's own brother) to transport weapons and explosives and terrorists. The PLO then has the audacity to complain before the CNN crews and the world media that Israel is behaving in an "inhumane" manner when it stops ambulances at checkpoints and refuses to allow them to cross into Israel without inspection or delay. (The very idea that Palestinians can legitimately be denied automatic entitlement to free Israeli medical treatment is something CNN and the New York Times have never quite brought themselves to contemplate. This is curious since, in the United States, non-citizens and even citizens have no such automatic entitlement to free medical care.)
The PLO is doing everything it can to escalate the violence and turn it into an existential threat to the Jews. Israeli intelligence has turned up hard evidence that the PLO is seeking to construct chemical weapons of mass destruction. Palestinian terrorists have already experimented with lacing their terror bombs with poisons. The world media largely ignores the fact that the PLO operates a large military-industrial complex, much of it from North-Vietnamese-style underground tunnels. These have produced large numbers of ground-to-ground rockets. In 2003 alone the Palestinians fired 210 Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip into Jewish civilian areas. When Israel enters the Gaza Strip to demolish the tunnels into Gaza from Egypt, through which weapons are smuggled in to murder Israelis, it is accused of "inhumane behavior", the International Solidarity Movement designer-jean pro-terrorists try to block the Israeli bulldozers, while the US State Department never speaks a word against these Egyptian tunnels.
There are other indications that the PLO is seeking to escalate the war. While the PLO once held the world's Gold Metal for plane hijackings, it has abstained from such things since the beginning of its Oslo legitimization by the world. What goes unremarked is that Israeli intelligence has successfully foiled and stopped nine separate recent attempts by Palestinians to shoot down civilian airliners landing at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport. If Israel were to turn the West Bank over to PLO control, many of the landing routes into Tel Aviv airport would pass unavoidably over the Palestinian territories, making them hostages held by the very same terrorists who have already made nine recent attempts to fire shoulder-held missiles at landing jetliners.
Even if anyone thinks the Palestinians might have had some legitimate claim to statehood, the Palestinians forfeited any right to sovereignty they might have had due to the past century of Palestinian atrocities and terror. True, Israeli governments in the 1990s nevertheless were naively and foolishly willing to allow the PLO to exercise control over these territories in exchange for peace. But Israel got war and mass murder of its civilians in exchange, not peace, so the foolhardy Oslo deal is now off and should never have been implemented.
The only way to suppress the carnage is for Israel to re-occupy the West Bank and Gaza in full, implement open-ended military control there and a long-term program of de-Nazification (based in part on the Allied programs at the end of World War II), and expel the terrorists and destroy their infrastructure. Everything else is wishful thinking and delusion. While the terror has partly subsided over the past few months, since the start of the construction of the fence, the real reason for this is the stepped-up campaign by Israel of assassinating Palestinian terrorist leaders, not erection of the fence itself.
While I have my strategic doubts about the fence, if Israel is going to build it at all, it should be around the large Palestinian cities. These would fence the Palestinians in, rather than fencing the Jews out. When the world bellyaches, Israel should simply respond: If the Palestinians ever abandon Islamo-fascism and Nazi-like atrocities, then Israel may no longer need any fence.
Meanwhile, like in the famous Gene Autry song, let the rest of Judea and Samaria be unfenced and free, open Israeli range.
The endless post-Oslo Middle East violence and terror was triggered because Israel indicated that it was on the run, exhausted, unwilling to fight, and ready to capitulate. It will end only when Israel returns to its determination to end the terror through military victory and force of arms. The same United States that has understood that there is only a military option for dealing with terror in Iraq and Afghanistan must back up such a return by Israel to pre-Oslo sanity.
There are no non-military solutions to the problems of terrorism.

Steven Plaut is professor of economics at the University of Haifa

The State Department and
Israel
Ruth King

When the United States recognized Israel in 1948, it was against the explicit wishes of the State Department which promptly invoked the rarely used Neutrality Act of 1794 to forbid sale or transfer of weapons to Israel. Indeed, until 1964, Israel received no military aid from the United States.
"Neutrality" did not deter the State Department from proposing that Israel weaken her ability to withstand aggression. "Territories for peace," long predates the 1969 Rogers Plan. John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, urged Israel to give up much of the Negev to Egypt: Dulles lamented that "even territory which is barren has acquired a sentimental significance [to Israel]."
During the Kennedy administration, although the president had a warm regard for Israel, his Secretary of State Dean Rusk was an early opponent of the state's establishment. In 1964, when Israel requested review of a possible military relationship, Rusk’s memorandum read: “We shall avoid establishing any type of special military relationship with Israel. To create what would in effect be a military alliance with Israel would destroy the delicate balance we have so carefully maintained in our Near Eastern relations and would bring insufficient compensatory advantages.”
During the 1967 war, the United States remained determinedly neutral. Rusk, who remained Secretary of State under President Johnson, repeated his assertion that Israel was not an ally. The official State Department memo stated: "Our position [on the war] is neutral in thought, word, and deed."
Israel's stunning victory in 1967 proved a watershed. Now established as militarily dominant in the region, Israel was seen as a deterrent to Soviet ambitions in the area. But the “special relationship” became a mixed blessing, as the State Department increasingly interfered with Israeli government policy to the point where Israel's sovereignty has become compromised. Moreover, Israel's security needs have regularly been undercut (remember the sale of AWACS surveillance planes of 1981) to serve our alliance with Saudi Arabia, a relationship that is especially “special” due to our dependence on that country's oil.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, Israel, anxious for State Department approval and nervous about the fallout from the mistaken bombing of the United States vessel the SS Liberty, offered to return all territory taken in the war in exchange for normal relations with its Arab neighbors. The resounding “no negotiations, no recognition, no peace” response shelved the issue until Nixon’s Secretary of State William Rogers, in 1969, offered his own plan for territorial withdrawal which has become the model for all so-called peace plans. In spite of initial Israeli denunciations of the plan, the relationship between both nations flourished. Yet this did not change the State Department policy calling for virtually total Israeli territorial withdrawal.
In 1973, following a sneak attack by Egypt and Syria, Israel’s early severe losses were followed by a dazzling reversal when then General Arik Sharon marched towards Suez encircling Egypt’s vaunted Third Army. This victory should have culminated in Egyptian surrender, but was turned to ashes when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger issued his thinly veiled threat of a “reassessment” of relations if Israel did not release Egypt’s army and withdraw.
In 1978, Menachem Begin expected to sign a treaty with Egypt after returning the entire Sinai, including air bases and settlements. Again, the State Department under Jimmy Carter, bolstered by Vice-President Mondale, pummeled Begin into accepting a framework which included a second document that would lay out the principles for future negotiations in the area, based on the idea that Israel would grant autonomy to the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to be followed in five years presumably by independence. Failure to accept the entire framework would doom the entire process, Begin was told, and he would be painted as the spoiler.
In 1982 the State Department demanded Israel halt its Lebanon War. Israeli forces had entered Beirut and surrounded 6,000-9,000 terrorists, but they acceded to the State Department which negotiated a cease-fire that permitted the terrorists, including Arafat, to leave with their weapons.
During the first Gulf War, Israel, a non-combatant, was repeatedly bombed with SCUD missiles launched by Iraq. America refused to give Israel “friendly craft code” which effectively barred any retaliation. How did the State Department express its gratitude to Israel for staying out of the war and preserving the Arab coalition? Secretary of State James Baker (whose Princeton thesis argued that Israel should never have been born) demanded that Prime Minister Shamir send a top level delegation to Madrid to negotiate with the Arabs. Failure to do so, he warned, would bring a refusal of loan guarantees. Again, Israel accepted.
Since Oslo, which was the initiative of Shimon Peres (reluctantly endorsed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin), the United States State Department has refused to allow the process to die, however obvious its failure. Madeline Albright, who made no secret of her pro Arab proclivities, actually chased Arafat through the building when he walked out on Barak's offer of everything. To Secretary of State Albright, no Arab demand was unreasonable—and all Israeli positions were unreasonable.
Colin Powell may well have had more benign feelings toward Israel than his predecessors, but the State Department remains fixated on the same tired old nostrums.
Israel’s continual capitulation is now defended by those who claim that the United States is Israel’s only ally. In fact, it is also the other way around. Israel is America’s best and most enduring ally. Yes, Tony Blair is an ally, but his policy is intensely unpopular and England may soon go the way of the rest of appeasement-minded Europe. America and Israel, in spite of the euphemisms “war on terror” or intifada are facing the same implacable Jihadist enemies. A weakened and spineless Israel is the worst strategic nightmare for America, and an America that surrenders to the Islamo-fascists is the worst of all possible nightmares for Israel.
Nations repeal bad policies and reverse bad trends. It is high time for a properly grounded reassessment of the America-Israel alliance. Relations between both nations must be based on the need to confront the common enemy.