The opening Checkpoint speaker in 2014 has continued to blame Israel for Palestinian ills, and speak in victimization imagery. Here we go again.
So let me give a proposal. Instead of issuing victimization images; instead of blaming others, especially Jews and the Western world, for all sorts of social, economic and political problems; what would happen if the following occurred: if CaTC sponsors set aside their adoption of liberation theology as the failed heresy that it was in the 1960s during its South American birth. Instead, teach their children to take responsibility for their own lives; not to hate, but to embrace others as valuable human beings. And as parents, take responsibility for their children’s education, so that the people who force your 7th graders to memorize jihadist poetry, as is the case today in Hevron, will no longer be empowered to do this. (I saw such a ‘homework assignment’ poem, in Arabic, and it made me ill). Take responsibility to build their economy through learning about business and being responsible with Western and Israeli funds that are invested, as a society.
No one denies that billions of dollars that was donated to the PA by the US, by the EU and by Israel in recent years disappeared at the hands of PA leaders, the same ones who encourage Palestinian Christians to speak the language of victimization. Those funds were supposed to build an educational system and an economy for the Palestinians. I donated some of them from my own taxes. The funds are gone, and those of you to whom I’ve talked have conveniently ignored this situation. None of the 3 Checkpoint sponsors to whom I’ve said this personally would comment on it. Why don’t you challenge your leaders as to what happened to those funds? Were they used for luxuries or other more sinister purposes? Take responsibility so that this doesn’t happen again. This was Israel’s attempt to help your people out, and boom! It evaporated into smoke, and we are blamed for it. We gave you some of those monies in trying to finance the two state solution. Didn’t work.
In fact, on Wednesday, December 4, 2013, a group of 21 Norwegian organizations apologized to the Israeli Knesset for allowing the funds that they donated to the PA during this time period to be used for buying weapons to be used against Jews. They knew what happened to the funds that their nation gave to the PA. Here is the reference: Breaking Israel News—for Dec. 8, 2013.
It is high time for the Checkpoint sponsors to stop pointing the finger at others, especially Jews; and to plan their lives so that hatred does not motivate them; so that they have a plan on how to develop their educational systems, economies and social infrastructure that teaches communal responsibility. Until they do that, we’ll continue on with the current ‘dance’…Israel will be forced to defend ourselves and keep our distance from Palestinians; their people will continue to teach their children to kill and destroy, and there will be a total lack of infrastructure for any society. That is what Hamas wants for them, since by such a set-up they are vulnerable to participation in Hamas’ war against the Jews. That way Hamas can remain in power and continue to supervise a fundamentalist Muslim war against the Jews and more subtley against the Christians. Is that what the CaTC sponsors want? Thinking Israel is their enemy, when she is not, is also misplacing their energies. God sees such demonization. “Every hater of Zion will be humiliated and will retreat backwards” (Ps. 129.5). Don’t fall into that trap.
So, I have a solution to avoid this.
What would happen if you (the CaTC sponsors) collectively said: “Israel, there is room for the Jewish state in the Middle East. We want you to be here. We support your existence behind secure borders. We oppose Iran and Hizbullah’s plans to destroy you. We’d like you to help us form a society where we can have democracy, where we can build an educational system and a viable economy. We reject jihad, and we will oppose it in the ballot box as well as in the media, and will teach our children to love the Jewish people, who have been the most persecuted people in the history of mankind.” What would happen if you declared that? I can imagine what would happen, and it would be pretty positive. Especially if you verbally disassociated yourselves with two of your past conference speakers, one who has jihadist connections, and the other who accuses me of practicing apartheid. I believe you know whom I speak about here.
So let me ask this: for the love of Messiah, why do we not hear these words coming from your lips? Why? I have yet to hear a good reason, one that was not founded upon the simple idea of rejecting the Jews.
My proposal is a positive, building one. Anti-Israel rhetoric and constant blame is a losing battle for you; you will fail to reach your desires and goals. Loving Israel and taking responsibility for yourselves will lead to what you aspire for—unless your aspirations are for war with Israel, G-d forbid. Messiah is all about building life, not blaming others for lack of it. And many Arabs around the world are realizing the very same thing. Here’s a list of them: you can read about each one of them on their websites or through their writings or books:
Khalid Abu To’ameh: Jerusalem Post reporter and a Muslim who is glad to be living in Israel, and is honest about explaining the benefits of freedom of speech that he enjoys as an Arab journalist in the Jewish state. He notes, by the way, that the politics of the Checkpoint are: “more anti-Israeli than pro-Palestinian. They never advocate against the repression and corruption that are actually stifling the Palestinians. Instead, they prefer to ignore the reality on the ground and often blame Israel for all that goes wrong in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
Abu Toameh goes on to write that: “Israeli checkpoints have nothing to do with restricting freedom of expression and voting. They are fully aware that the checkpoints are there to stop terror attacks and not democracy or reforms. He obviously has his issues with the Checkpoint frames of reference. In addition:
Majdi Allam, Joseph Farah, Bridget Gabriel, Ali Sina, Jamal Jivanjee, Kamal Salim, Moktar Essid, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Yusuf Hadad, Majd El-Shafie, Sam Solomon & Walid Shoebat: all are Arab believers in Yeshua who have issues with Checkpoint politics vis-à-vis Israel, who all believe in an Israel behind firm and secure borders, and who all believe it’s high time to stop blaming Israel, and that it’s time to reject jihadist politics wholesale, and time to take responsibility for your own lives. And there are Muslims who hold a similar political ground. Some of their number are: Hasan Afzal of the “British Muslims for Israel” organization; and well known figures Dr. Tawfik Hamid, Tashbih Sayyed, Salah Choudhury, Hani Abbas, Ahmad al-Bagdadi, Irshad Manji, Salim Mansur ,Irfan al-Alawi, Abdurrahman Wahid, Mithal al-Alusi, Ali al-yami, Kasim Hafeez, Abdullah Saad Al-Hadlaq, Sulafa Balool, Zuhdi Jasser, Hassan Khadar and Khaleel Mohammed. You’d do well to consider their viewpoints about Israel.
I find it interesting that a growing number of Israeli Arabs are speaking out about Israel, and I will now quote some of them:
Bishara Shilyan of Nazareth, who just founded a new Arab Christian pro-Israel political party called “Sons of the New Testament”. He calls for Israeli Arab enlistment in the IDF, and stated: ““If I was in America, I wouldn’t be American? At least in Israel, everyone who stayed was given the right to become a citizen and integrate into society. But the first demand of Israel, and I’m for it — you need to understand it — is that it is the land of the Jewish people.” Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett recently announced the 3,000th Arab national service volunteer, almost double the number of volunteers in 2012 (1,700). Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek orthodox priest, joined Shilyan. Furthermore, 2012 showed a sharp several-hundredfold increase in requests by young Golan Druze for Israeli citizenship, as they come to the understanding that Israel offers them a future much brighter and safer than neighboring states.
How you respond to this very challenge will determine your future. And towards the Jewish people and Israel, God’s very words: “ve’ahavta le’re’eka kemoka” ring strong. But you can’t do that if you are doing anything that smirks of advocating the dismantling of the Jewish state, or blaming Jews for your ills. If you think we behave badly because we aren’t believers, then your every prayer should be directed towards our hearts turning to Messiah. That is what your conferences should be about. Your conference theme may do well as “How can we encourage Israel to love her Messiah?”, not, “The Jews don’t deserve Israel because they sin.” Or how about “What can we do to encourage our own Arab people to love Messiah?”, not “What can we do to encourage Westerners to believe that Israel no longer are God’s covenant people?” Furthermore, if one prominent conference participant can claim that his dubious visit to Iran was for the purpose of bringing the good news to the fascist ayatollahs there, why does he not care to share goodwill and light with Israel? If we’re such a ‘dark’ people, why does he not write in his blogs and website about how much the Jewish people need prayer motivated by love, instead of harshly criticizing us and advocating political opposition? I have to ask myself why such an element of compassion and care is missing.
If one cares about reconciliation with Israel, I do not see any logic in showing any support to a regime, which this particular conference speaker did, that the Canadian government has asserted is the world’s worst in committing human rights violations, especially its “clerical leadership’s use of domestic and international terrorism.”
The Canadian Justice Minister and his fellow parliamentarians from a broad range of parties in the House of Commons condemned the assault on the human rights of the Iranian people, as well, by the Islamic Republic’s government.
In my assessment, I see the conference content as furthering the political stances of anti-Semitism; of furthering the “blame game” without having any constructive reconciliatory actions. Real reconciliation may be possible between Messianic Jews and Arab believers, but I fail to see the foundations for this by the contents of the Checkpoint conference.
I assure the website readers that Israeli-Arab reconciliation initiatives among believers do exist that are based upon the teaching of scripture, upon prayer, friendship building, & upon love and support for Israel and the Arab peoples of the world. But I fear that the Checkpoint is not one of them, unless it drastically changes.
D. Friedman
So let me give a proposal. Instead of issuing victimization images; instead of blaming others, especially Jews and the Western world, for all sorts of social, economic and political problems; what would happen if the following occurred: if CaTC sponsors set aside their adoption of liberation theology as the failed heresy that it was in the 1960s during its South American birth. Instead, teach their children to take responsibility for their own lives; not to hate, but to embrace others as valuable human beings. And as parents, take responsibility for their children’s education, so that the people who force your 7th graders to memorize jihadist poetry, as is the case today in Hevron, will no longer be empowered to do this. (I saw such a ‘homework assignment’ poem, in Arabic, and it made me ill). Take responsibility to build their economy through learning about business and being responsible with Western and Israeli funds that are invested, as a society.
No one denies that billions of dollars that was donated to the PA by the US, by the EU and by Israel in recent years disappeared at the hands of PA leaders, the same ones who encourage Palestinian Christians to speak the language of victimization. Those funds were supposed to build an educational system and an economy for the Palestinians. I donated some of them from my own taxes. The funds are gone, and those of you to whom I’ve talked have conveniently ignored this situation. None of the 3 Checkpoint sponsors to whom I’ve said this personally would comment on it. Why don’t you challenge your leaders as to what happened to those funds? Were they used for luxuries or other more sinister purposes? Take responsibility so that this doesn’t happen again. This was Israel’s attempt to help your people out, and boom! It evaporated into smoke, and we are blamed for it. We gave you some of those monies in trying to finance the two state solution. Didn’t work.
In fact, on Wednesday, December 4, 2013, a group of 21 Norwegian organizations apologized to the Israeli Knesset for allowing the funds that they donated to the PA during this time period to be used for buying weapons to be used against Jews. They knew what happened to the funds that their nation gave to the PA. Here is the reference: Breaking Israel News—for Dec. 8, 2013.
It is high time for the Checkpoint sponsors to stop pointing the finger at others, especially Jews; and to plan their lives so that hatred does not motivate them; so that they have a plan on how to develop their educational systems, economies and social infrastructure that teaches communal responsibility. Until they do that, we’ll continue on with the current ‘dance’…Israel will be forced to defend ourselves and keep our distance from Palestinians; their people will continue to teach their children to kill and destroy, and there will be a total lack of infrastructure for any society. That is what Hamas wants for them, since by such a set-up they are vulnerable to participation in Hamas’ war against the Jews. That way Hamas can remain in power and continue to supervise a fundamentalist Muslim war against the Jews and more subtley against the Christians. Is that what the CaTC sponsors want? Thinking Israel is their enemy, when she is not, is also misplacing their energies. God sees such demonization. “Every hater of Zion will be humiliated and will retreat backwards” (Ps. 129.5). Don’t fall into that trap.
So, I have a solution to avoid this.
What would happen if you (the CaTC sponsors) collectively said: “Israel, there is room for the Jewish state in the Middle East. We want you to be here. We support your existence behind secure borders. We oppose Iran and Hizbullah’s plans to destroy you. We’d like you to help us form a society where we can have democracy, where we can build an educational system and a viable economy. We reject jihad, and we will oppose it in the ballot box as well as in the media, and will teach our children to love the Jewish people, who have been the most persecuted people in the history of mankind.” What would happen if you declared that? I can imagine what would happen, and it would be pretty positive. Especially if you verbally disassociated yourselves with two of your past conference speakers, one who has jihadist connections, and the other who accuses me of practicing apartheid. I believe you know whom I speak about here.
So let me ask this: for the love of Messiah, why do we not hear these words coming from your lips? Why? I have yet to hear a good reason, one that was not founded upon the simple idea of rejecting the Jews.
My proposal is a positive, building one. Anti-Israel rhetoric and constant blame is a losing battle for you; you will fail to reach your desires and goals. Loving Israel and taking responsibility for yourselves will lead to what you aspire for—unless your aspirations are for war with Israel, G-d forbid. Messiah is all about building life, not blaming others for lack of it. And many Arabs around the world are realizing the very same thing. Here’s a list of them: you can read about each one of them on their websites or through their writings or books:
Khalid Abu To’ameh: Jerusalem Post reporter and a Muslim who is glad to be living in Israel, and is honest about explaining the benefits of freedom of speech that he enjoys as an Arab journalist in the Jewish state. He notes, by the way, that the politics of the Checkpoint are: “more anti-Israeli than pro-Palestinian. They never advocate against the repression and corruption that are actually stifling the Palestinians. Instead, they prefer to ignore the reality on the ground and often blame Israel for all that goes wrong in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
Abu Toameh goes on to write that: “Israeli checkpoints have nothing to do with restricting freedom of expression and voting. They are fully aware that the checkpoints are there to stop terror attacks and not democracy or reforms. He obviously has his issues with the Checkpoint frames of reference. In addition:
Majdi Allam, Joseph Farah, Bridget Gabriel, Ali Sina, Jamal Jivanjee, Kamal Salim, Moktar Essid, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Yusuf Hadad, Majd El-Shafie, Sam Solomon & Walid Shoebat: all are Arab believers in Yeshua who have issues with Checkpoint politics vis-à-vis Israel, who all believe in an Israel behind firm and secure borders, and who all believe it’s high time to stop blaming Israel, and that it’s time to reject jihadist politics wholesale, and time to take responsibility for your own lives. And there are Muslims who hold a similar political ground. Some of their number are: Hasan Afzal of the “British Muslims for Israel” organization; and well known figures Dr. Tawfik Hamid, Tashbih Sayyed, Salah Choudhury, Hani Abbas, Ahmad al-Bagdadi, Irshad Manji, Salim Mansur ,Irfan al-Alawi, Abdurrahman Wahid, Mithal al-Alusi, Ali al-yami, Kasim Hafeez, Abdullah Saad Al-Hadlaq, Sulafa Balool, Zuhdi Jasser, Hassan Khadar and Khaleel Mohammed. You’d do well to consider their viewpoints about Israel.
I find it interesting that a growing number of Israeli Arabs are speaking out about Israel, and I will now quote some of them:
Bishara Shilyan of Nazareth, who just founded a new Arab Christian pro-Israel political party called “Sons of the New Testament”. He calls for Israeli Arab enlistment in the IDF, and stated: ““If I was in America, I wouldn’t be American? At least in Israel, everyone who stayed was given the right to become a citizen and integrate into society. But the first demand of Israel, and I’m for it — you need to understand it — is that it is the land of the Jewish people.” Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett recently announced the 3,000th Arab national service volunteer, almost double the number of volunteers in 2012 (1,700). Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek orthodox priest, joined Shilyan. Furthermore, 2012 showed a sharp several-hundredfold increase in requests by young Golan Druze for Israeli citizenship, as they come to the understanding that Israel offers them a future much brighter and safer than neighboring states.
How you respond to this very challenge will determine your future. And towards the Jewish people and Israel, God’s very words: “ve’ahavta le’re’eka kemoka” ring strong. But you can’t do that if you are doing anything that smirks of advocating the dismantling of the Jewish state, or blaming Jews for your ills. If you think we behave badly because we aren’t believers, then your every prayer should be directed towards our hearts turning to Messiah. That is what your conferences should be about. Your conference theme may do well as “How can we encourage Israel to love her Messiah?”, not, “The Jews don’t deserve Israel because they sin.” Or how about “What can we do to encourage our own Arab people to love Messiah?”, not “What can we do to encourage Westerners to believe that Israel no longer are God’s covenant people?” Furthermore, if one prominent conference participant can claim that his dubious visit to Iran was for the purpose of bringing the good news to the fascist ayatollahs there, why does he not care to share goodwill and light with Israel? If we’re such a ‘dark’ people, why does he not write in his blogs and website about how much the Jewish people need prayer motivated by love, instead of harshly criticizing us and advocating political opposition? I have to ask myself why such an element of compassion and care is missing.
If one cares about reconciliation with Israel, I do not see any logic in showing any support to a regime, which this particular conference speaker did, that the Canadian government has asserted is the world’s worst in committing human rights violations, especially its “clerical leadership’s use of domestic and international terrorism.”
The Canadian Justice Minister and his fellow parliamentarians from a broad range of parties in the House of Commons condemned the assault on the human rights of the Iranian people, as well, by the Islamic Republic’s government.
In my assessment, I see the conference content as furthering the political stances of anti-Semitism; of furthering the “blame game” without having any constructive reconciliatory actions. Real reconciliation may be possible between Messianic Jews and Arab believers, but I fail to see the foundations for this by the contents of the Checkpoint conference.
I assure the website readers that Israeli-Arab reconciliation initiatives among believers do exist that are based upon the teaching of scripture, upon prayer, friendship building, & upon love and support for Israel and the Arab peoples of the world. But I fear that the Checkpoint is not one of them, unless it drastically changes.
D. Friedman