Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
The truth about "oppressed" Palestinians
Jerusalem
The Middle East essentially is one big battlefield over Israel’s right to exist, and it long ago spread onto American college campuses as the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement gained strength.
But human-rights activist, documentary filmmaker and New York Times bestselling author Joel Richardson charges many people have fallen victim to a false narrative about “oppressed” Palestinians and actually have become part of the propaganda on the issue.
The BDS movement wants economic penalties against the Jewish state, boasting the campaign could cost Israel as much as $ 1.4 billion a year. It casts Israel as an oppressor of civil and human rights and charges that the exclusion of Israel from the world’s economy is just desserts for its alleged actions.
On the other side, some pro-Israel activists charge the campaign against “Zionism” has moved far beyond a political opposition into a hate campaign against Jews, with swastikas and calls to violence appearing at some campuses, especially in California.
Richardson explains the reality, “In some circles of evangelical culture, it is fashionable to espouse the Palestinian narrative, which casts Israel in the most grotesque caricature, essentially as an illegal, apartheid, juggernaut nation that exists only to run roughshod over the poor, oppressed, Palestinian victims.
“Of course, in swallowing this narrative hook, line, and sinker, they have unwittingly allowed themselves to become pawns in a well-resourced propaganda war funded by Islamic hate groups.”
University of California President Janet Napolitano has asked that, at a minimum, the sides agree on the words, urging the state’s university system to adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism, which defines how it can “manifest itself with regard to the state of Israel” by “demonizing, delegitimizing, or applying a double standard” to the Jewish state through criticism dissimilar to that made against any other nation.
Critics of Israel, however, portray this is an attempt to silence protests against Israel, even as many Zionist supporters believe the line between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews has long since faded.
Richardson, in his latest work, “When a Jew Rules the World: What the Bible Really Says About Israel in the Plan of God,” specifically condemns the BDS movement as “a global campaign, which uses economic and political pressure to fundamentally undermine the security, legitimacy and future of Israel.”
Richardson also says the movement has “created an atmosphere of such strong pressure and intimidation that many Jewish students are now beginning to express that they do not feel safe.”
Some non-Jews also feel intimidated. Hosanna Thalhofer, president of Students Allied for Israel at Tacoma Community College, said, “As a pro-Israel Christian student on campus, I have constantly been called a baby killer and other disgusting things for simply standing up for the Jewish people and Israel.”
She believes campus administrators need to do more to protect pro-Israel students, and “not allow or tolerate such extreme hatred against one race, the Jewish people.”
Pastor Mark Biltz, discoverer of the “Blood Moons” phenomenon and author of “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs,” sees ominous parallels between economic actions taken against the state of Israel and the eventual Nazi persecution of Jews.
“BDS is just the beginning of a new parallel to Kristallnacht where all the Jewish stores were demolished and ransacked in Germany,” he warned.
Biltz praised states like South Carolina which have passed legislation designed to combat the BDS movement by preventing public entities from working with groups supporting a boycott. However, Biltz says the government needs to go further.
“We need resolutions in every state of America condemning the BDS movement, and I would like to even see legislation stating that promoting BDS against Israel become a hate crime,” he said.
Biltz justifies his concerns by what he describes as the blatant dishonesty and murderous intentions of the Palestinian cause.
“Many people around the world have been fed a lie being victims of a massive propaganda hoax. The lie is that the Palestinians want freedom by having their own state,” he said. “Actually, Israel knows full well that this can’t possibly be about freedom because Arabs in Israel have more freedom than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East.
“So if Palestinian leaders want a state, why do they spend so much time talking about killing Jews and glorifying those who do? What does glorifying murderers have to do with getting your own state? Why do their schools teach their children that Israel has no right to exist and must be destroyed? People always talk about what they want. The Palestinian leaders talk about erasing the Jewish state. That’s why their leaders spend so much time demonizing Israel.”
In Biltz’s view, the opposition to Israel “isn’t about statehood or independence.” Instead, he charges, “It’s about genocide.”
Talk-radio host, pastor and author of “Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation” Carl Gallups believes rising anti-Semitism “only serves to further demonstrate the authenticity of the Bible as the only and final Word of God.”
Gallups says the BDS movement is only one manifestation of growing opposition to Israel, also noting the Obama administration’s conflicts with Israel and the recent recognition of “Palestine” by the Vatican. But while Gallups is concerned, he believes these historical events are simply part of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
Gallups told WND: “Only the Bible contains dozens of prophecies (written centuries before they were fulfilled) predicting the return of a scattered nation of Israel, the subsequent alignment of certain nations coming against the returned Israel (Ezekiel 38), and the culmination of end time prophecy resulting in an eventual worldwide hatred for Jews, the nation of Israel, and even true believers in Jesus Christ – especially those Christians who support the Jews and the returned Israel. We are not only seeing these prophecies being played out before our eyes, but they are occurring at lightning speed – coming ‘like a flood’ if you will (Daniel 9:26). I believe, these factors are some of the most prominent and ominous harbingers of the prophetic days in which we now find ourselves.”
Gallups grounds his own support for Israel and the Jewish people in his reading of history, as well as his faith.
“Most of the vitriol against Israel and the Jews is being driven by the world’s infatuation with the fictional ‘Palestinian state.’ I say ‘fictional’ because, in truth, the ‘state’ of Palestine has never existed,” he said.
“Of course, most students of the Bible know that the word ‘Palestine’ is an ancient Roman invention to designate that particular part of the Roman Empire in the days it was expelling the Jews from the land. Palestine translates to ‘land of the Philistines.’ There was a time, not too long ago, when one was referred to as a Palestinian Jew or a Palestinian Arab,” he continued. “Now, however, since the rebirth of the official nation of Israel, the political-speak of today is to refer to the Arabs as ‘Palestinians’ and to demand that somehow Israel divest itself of its national borders and help to create a ‘Palestinian state.’
“Yet, as any astute student of history is aware, Israel is the only nation that has ever existed in that land as a sovereign nation. Israel had well-established borders, kings, historical records, historical national artifacts, historical sources outside its own sources that attest to its existence as a legitimate nation, trade and treaty agreements, a standing military, a national coinage – and they were unquestionably recognized as a sovereign nation by the other nations and superpowers of the world. Israel existed in this state of nationhood for over 500 years. The ‘Palestinians’ can lay claim to none of those features that truly define a ‘nation.’ This is why I speak of the myth of the Palestinian nation.”
In Gallups’ view, the movement against Israel is fundamentally anti-Jewish because it aims to remove the Jewish people from their own historic homeland.
Richardson concludes “anti-Zionism” and the BDS movement is really directed against Jews as a people, not just Israel as a state.
“Despite the veneer of social justice that supporters seek to face their movement with, the underlying racism is increasingly becoming more visible and more brazen,” Richardson said. “After waking up to this demonstrable reality, I pray that the younger generation of thoughtful and informed believers would reject this movement for not only for the bad theology that is behind it, but also because of its fundamentally racist agenda.”
WND » World
The truth about "oppressed" Palestinians