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The Vatican Against Israel

May 19, 2014 8:11 am By Robert Spencer

PopeFrancisMahmoudAbbasThe Vatican Against Israel
by  William Kilpatrick

Christians in many parts of the Middle East and Africa face extermination at the hands of Muslims, yet many Christian leaders seem far more concerned over the transgressions, real and imagined, of Israel—the only safe place for Christians in the Middle East and the only Middle Eastern country where the Christian population is growing.

According to Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist, Catholic leaders are no exception. In The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse, he makes the case that ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the Vatican has taken what is essentially a pro-Islamic/anti-Israel stance.

Meotti acknowledges that the Catholic Church has made great progress on the theological level in reconciling itself with Judaism, but he contends that this advancement is counterbalanced on the political level by policies and pronouncements that are hostile to the State of Israel.

Although the Israeli state was created in 1948, it was not accorded diplomatic recognition by the Vatican until 1993, making the Vatican the last Western government to do so. Meotti offers this and numerous other pieces of evidence to support his thesis that the Vatican’s attitude toward Israel has been governed by an anti-Zionist agenda. He further argues that the Vatican’s corresponding support for Islamic causes has contributed to the creation of a world that is increasingly unsafe for Jews and Christians alike.

Part of this anti-Zionist attitude, says Meotti, can be attributed to a residual anti-Semitism in the Church. Although the Second Vatican Council absolved the Jews of the charge of deicide, he believes that a not-negligible element within the Church leadership continues to regard the Jews as intrinsic enemies of Christianity. Meotti does not say that the majority of Catholic leaders are anti-Semitic, but he does believe that they have come under the influence of those who are.

The main culprits, as he sees it, are Middle Eastern bishops and patriarchs (Orthodox as well as Catholic). The Vatican, he says, relies heavily on their assessment of the situation in the Middle East and in the Arab world in general. Partly out of fear of retribution and partly out of genuine conviction, these Arab Christian leaders tend to parrot the Islamic party line, with the result that Vatican officials receive a biased version of events in the Middle East. For instance, after an al-Qaeda attack at a Catholic church in Baghdad, Gregorius III Laham, the Melkite Catholic Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, declared that terrorism against Christians had “nothing to do with Islam,” but was actually a “Zionist conspiracy against Islam.” In a similar vein, Michael Sabbah, the former Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem and a great admirer of Yasser Arafat, once said of the Jews, “We will send them away, just as we did to the Crusaders.” On another occasion, he accused Israel of inflicting “the sufferings of the Passion of Jesus on the Arab Christians.” His successor, Patriarch Fouad Twal, has said that “a democratic state can’t be also Jewish: you can’t have both democracy and Zionism.”

Some prelates have taken their antipathy toward Israel even further. Hilarion Capucci, the former Catholic Melkite Archbishop of Jerusalem, was “found guilty of smuggling arms and explosives for Fatah terrorists from Lebanon into Israel, exploiting his Vatican immunity.” Even after his release (the result of Vatican intervention), Capucci continued his pro-Palestinian activities, including a speech in Rome in 2002 at which he offered “Greetings to the sons of Intifada and to the martyrs who will go and fight…Intifada till victory.” In 2010, he participated in the provocative Gaza Flotilla to break the Israeli naval blockade. That piece of sea theater resulted in nine deaths and numerous injuries. However, according to Meotti, the Vatican never publicly condemned Capucci for his renewed activities, but instead promoted him to further appointments.

Meotti maintains that the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli rhetoric of the Arab Christian bishops has become a staple of Western clerics, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Their criticism, he says, falls into roughly three categories: 1) comparing Israeli policies to the Holocaust; 2) comparing Israeli to an apartheid state; 3) comparing the sufferings of the Palestinians to the sufferings of Christ.

Ever since the founding of the Jewish state, says Meotti, Catholics and other Christians have accused Israel of Nazi-like behavior toward the Palestinians. Thus, on May 7, 1949, the Vatican news agency Fides carried a story attacking Zionism as “the new Nazism.” Abbe Pierre, who is sometimes referred to as “the most famous French priest” and “a modern St. Francis,” declared that “the Jews, once victims, have become executioners.” The Vatican newspaper L`Osservatore Romano in a front-page article accused the Israelis of carrying out a campaign of “extermination.” In another piece, it spoke of “a precise strategy to annihilate people.” In 2007, two German bishops compared Ramallah to the Warsaw Ghetto. In the same year, a group of Irish bishops said that Israel had made the Gaza Strip “little more than a large prison.” In 2009, Cardinal Renato Martino compared Gaza to a “concentration camp.”

Another way to demonize Israel is to brand it as an apartheid state. In 2003, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray said that the Israeli security barrier “creates a geography of apartheid which provokes rather than controls violence.” In 2011, Barry Morgan, the Anglican Archbishop of Wales, said of the situation in Gaza that it “resembles the apartheid system in South Africa.” Most of the criticism centers on the Israeli security fence which, according to Britain’s senior archbishop, Vincent Nichols, has created a “tragic situation” for Palestinians, and which Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the archbishop of Cologne, likened to the Berlin Wall. In 2004, Pope John Paul II criticized the wall by saying “The Holy Land doesn’t need walls but bridges.” Despite the walls’ efficiency in stopping suicide attacks, it was criticized again in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI, who said “it is tragic to see walls still being erected.” As Meotti points out, there are some fifty similar security walls and barriers throughout the world, but Israel’s is the only one that comes in for universal criticism. Meotti doesn’t mention it, but it may be relevant to the discussion to note that the Vatican itself is surrounded by a massive wall which in many places is considerably higher and thicker than the Israeli one.

Catholic and other Christian critics have not only maligned the Israelis as Nazis and segregationists, they have in a roundabout way brought back the charge that Jews are Christ-killers. Over the last two decades, says Meotti, Christian and Muslim Palestinians have collaborated to create a Palestinian Jesus or, rather, to cast the Palestinian people as the “new Jesus” who is being crucified by the Israelis. For example, each year during Christmas festivities in Bethlehem, first Arafat, then Mahmoud Abbas, have extolled Jesus as the “first Palestinian.” But the comparisons don’t stop there:

A Palestinian daily, “Intifada,” displayed on one-half of its front page a provocative caricature, showing a crucified young woman called “Palestine”—with blood flowing from her pierced hands and feet. A long spear transfixes her body to the cross, its protruding point embossed with a Star of David, and an American flag at the shaft end.

Rather than condemn this misappropriation of Christian symbolism, many Christians have elaborated on the theme. In Edinburgh, as part of an Easter celebration, St. John’s Episcopal Church “displayed a picture of a crucified Jesus in Mary’s arms, with both of them dressed as Palestinians” and an Israeli tank guarding the cross. Fr. Manuel Musallam, head of the Latin Church in Gaza, “compared the armed Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity to Jesus on the cross.” This was in reference to the invasion and desecration of the Bethlehem church in 2001 by Palestinian terrorists and the subsequent siege by Israeli troops.

When the Palestinians are not being compared to Christ on the cross, they are often cast in the role of the innocents massacred by King Herod, with the Israelis as Herod. For example, on the occasion of the war between Israel and Hamas, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, commented: “I think of the ‘massacre of the innocents.’ Children are dying in Gaza, their mothers’ shouts is a perennial cry, a universal cry.”

Children who are killed in war are surely innocents. But to suggest, as many Christians do, that the Palestinians as a whole are nothing but innocent victims is a stretch. It’s even more of a stretch to suggest that they are the new Jesus. Jesus didn’t recruit suicide bombers, arm his apostles with AK-47s, or fire missiles into Jewish villages and schoolyards on a daily basis. And when he gathered little children around him, it was not for the purpose of indoctrinating them in Jew hate. In an interview with the Catholic magazine, Famgilia Cristiana, William Shomali, the vicar-general of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said that “in Israeli schools, love for the other is not taught, but rather the destruction of the other.” But this is pretty much the reverse of the truth. Has he never seen any of the numerous videos of Palestinian schoolchildren describing Jews as “apes and pigs” or reading poems about their desire to kill Jews? Does he not know about the Palestinian mothers who proudly proclaim the wish that their children grow up to be suicide bombers? In Palestine, the families of suicide bombers are given cash awards, and candy is passed out in the streets to celebrate the murder of Israeli civilians.

As described in Meotti’s book, many Catholic and Protestant clergy profess to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and to support the Palestinian cause. But what exactly is the Palestinian cause? The charter of Hamas, the elected ruling party in Gaza, calls for the obliteration of Israel and rejects the idea of negotiated settlement since “there is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad” (article 13). These aspirations seem to be widely shared. For instance, in January 2014, the government graduated 13,000 teens from what can only be called terrorist training camps. At the graduation ceremony, the Hamas prime minister took note of the female trainees who “oversee the training of young women to follow in the footsteps of the female suicide operatives.” There are numerous indications that Palestinian leaders, like Iranian leaders, are hell-bent on the destruction of Israel.

And after that? “First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday” is a popular saying among Islamists. It means that after the Jews are defeated, Christians will come next. There are many signs, however, that in Palestine, the Islamists are tired of waiting for the conquest of the difficult-to-destroy Saturday people and have already turned some of their wrath on the Sunday people.

Although Palestinian Muslims and their Arab Christian apologists claim that the suffering of Palestinian Christians is the fault of Israel, nothing could be further from the truth. According to Michael Curtis, Distinguished Professor-Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers:

Christians have suffered direct harassment. They have been intimidated and maltreated; money has been extorted, land and property confiscated, and Christian women have been abused, raped, abducted, and been subjected to forced marriage. Attempts have been made to impose the Islamic women’s dress code on them…Christian holy sites have been disparaged or insulted…Theft of Christian land and property as well as desecration of Christian institutions and disparagement of the religion has occurred.

Palestinian Christians know that they have to speak out against the “Israeli occupation” or risk the consequences. But their steady exodus from the Palestinian territories is a better gauge of who the real oppressor is. The number of Christians in the Palestinian areas has dropped from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today. After the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population there declined by more than half. In Gaza, under Hamas, there are only a few hundred Christians left.

This is a common pattern across the Middle East and many parts of Africa. Christians in Muslim lands are being forced to flee or to convert. Yet many Catholic leaders still subscribe to the myopic view that somehow all these troubles will go away if only the Arab-Israeli conflict were resolved. There are no Jews to speak of in Iraq, but Christians are viciously persecuted nonetheless. Of the 1.5 million Christians who lived there in 2003, only 250,000 are left. Nearly half a million Christians have left Syria in the last three years, yet Jews make up only a negligible portion of the population. How about the persecution of Christians in Pakistan? Egypt? Nigeria? What does Zionism have to do with it? Likewise, is it just possible that the problems of Palestinian Christians have more to do with the religion of Islam than the religion of Judaism? Palestinian Christians may say otherwise, but what else are they supposed to say? With much less to risk, citizens of the U.S., the U.K., and most of Europe are extremely cautious about saying anything that might offend Islam.

The Vatican Against Israel is not without its faults. The book is marred by Meotti’s attempt to link the Vatican stance toward Israel with the Church’s supposed lack of concern for Jews during the Nazi period. He seems unfamiliar with the many efforts undertaken by the Vatican to rescue European Jews during the war years. Pope Pius XII, he says, turned a “blind eye” to the plight of the Jews and therefore “earned the title ‘Hitler’s Pope’.” No one, however, thought of Pius in that way at the time. In his book Disinformation, former Soviet spy chief Ion Mihai Pacepa convincingly demonstrates that the myth of “Hitler’s Pope” was the creation of Soviet intelligence—a deliberate post-war attempt to smear the reputation of the pope and thereby undermine Catholic resistance to communism. It’s one thing to say that Pius could have done more, but it’s completely untrue to suggest that he had any sympathy for Hitler.

Meotti also tends to assign the worst motives to Vatican actions and/or inaction vis-a-vis Israel. On the one hand he concedes that “Today there are very few leaders in the Vatican who consciously and publicly embrace anti-Semitism;” on the other hand, “I don’t really believe that Catholicism has changed its spots and put 1,700 years of anti-Semitism behind it.” Because of this and other intemperate remarks, many Catholics will be tempted to dismiss the book’s argument. One Catholic reviewer said his first response to “the many untrue and exaggerated statements is that people will see through it and ignore it as it deserves.” He then accuses Meotti of being “totally unaware of what the Holy Spirit has done in causing RC to repent of its former wrong attitude to the Jews.”

This particular reviewer supplements his review with eight pages of excerpts from Nostra Aetate, Verbum Domini, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, two apostolic exhortations, and other documents to prove that the Church has high regard for Jews and Judaism. But that misses the point. Although Meotti does venture into discussions of theological issues (such as replacement theology), his main contention is that the Vatican’s diplomatic response to events in the Middle East displays a bias against the State of Israel and for the Palestinians. Meotti’s musings over theological motivations are not very rigorous, but his factual case is not so easily dismissed. More or less the same case has been made against mainstream Protestant churches and some Evangelical groups. Mark Tooley, President of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, and others have presented detailed evidence that a significant segment of the Protestant leadership is engaged in an anti-Israel propaganda campaign aimed at delegitimizing the Israeli state. These Protestants employ the very same rhetoric that Meotti speaks of—the “apartheid wall,” “the new Nazis,” the “crucifixion of the Palestinians,” and the “massacre of the innocents.” In addition, many Protestant churches have instituted boycott and divestment drives against Israel (as Meotti points out, these BDS campaigns are also a favorite strategy of Catholic NGOs such as Pax Christi, Trocaire, and Cordaid).

Israel, which at one point is no wider than Manhattan is long, has been attacked five times by surrounding Arab states. It leads a precarious existence. It is inconsistent for Christian leaders to talk about their spiritual oneness with Jews, and then turn around and call for measures—sanctions, tearing down the security barrier, pulling back to pre-1967 borders– which would undermine the ability of Jews to defend themselves. Since approximately half of the world’s Jews live in Israel, it is understandable that some Jews might question the sincerity of Church leaders when they talk about “our beloved brothers” and “building bridges of lasting friendship.”

The above quotations are from Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter, Verbum Domini. Most Catholics who are familiar with the lives of Benedict and other recent popes will have no doubt that their concern for the Jews is genuine. The anti-Semitic label doesn’t stick. But popes and cardinals are not protected from misinterpreting political movements or, for that matter, religious ones. A common interpretation of Islamic terrorism—one shared by many world leaders—is that it is the result of poverty, or oppression, or colonialism, or—well, anything but the dictates of Islamic theology. For example, the U.S. State Department long resisted naming Boko Haram as a terrorist group and chose rather to attribute their activities to “poverty,” “inequality,” and “disenfranchisement.” And this despite the fact that Boko Haram’s stated aim is to rid Nigeria of infidels and to institute sharia law.

What unites Palestinian terrorists, Nigerian terrorists, Iraqi terrorists, Syrian terrorists, Afghani terrorists, Libyan terrorists, Somali terrorists, Filipino terrorists, and Thai terrorists is not a shared oppression, but a shared religion. In narrowly focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian situation and on the “oppression” and “humiliation” of the Palestinians, Church leaders seem to be missing a much larger picture. The problems that Christians and other “infidels” all over the world are now encountering are problems that would exist even if the state of Israel had never existed. In fact, Muslim persecution of Christians was a constant of history long before the creation of modern Israel. By accepting the Islamic narrative that Israel is the source of Islamic unrest, Christian leaders are doing a disservice not only to Israelis, but also to all the past and present Christian victims of Islamic aggression

A final note: It would be a mistake for conservative Catholics to assume that Meotti is simply a knee-jerk liberal, Catholic-bashing Jew who seeks to make the world safe for relativism. His “J’accuse” against Catholic leaders is precisely that they are engaging in moral relativism by drawing a moral equivalence between Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli government. It’s also interesting to note that his publisher, Mantua Books, identifies itself with “Judeo-Christian values” and opposes “cultural and moral relativism.” Moreover, as anyone who is paying attention should realize, many liberal Jews don’t give a fig for the state of Israel and are as likely to sympathize with the Palestinian cause as is any liberal Catholic.

Anti-Semitism has been conveniently labeled by the left as a right-wing phenomenon, but it is becoming more acceptable, even fashionable, among liberal elites in both Europe and the U.S. As described in Meotti’s book, the most strident anti-Israeli groups in the Catholic world are left-liberal organizations such as Pax Christi, Caritas, Trocaire, and Cordaid. In 1999, Michael Sabbah, the former Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem who aligned himself with Yasser Arafat, praised jihad, and justified suicide bombings, was named as president of Pax Christi International—an organization that advocates radical pacifism. As the old saying goes, “anti-Zionism makes strange bedfellows.”

Sabbah was also associated with the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, which, as the name implies, defends the Palestine liberation movement in terms of liberation theology. Sabeel provides a theological justification for the Intifada, and it has been in the forefront of groups that have compared Palestinians to Christ on the cross. Sometimes, it seems, Christian leaders are more intent on the liberation of Palestine than are Arab leaders. The late Coptic pope, Shenouda III, refused to accompany Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat on his visit of reconciliation to Israel in 1977. And in 1978, Pope Shenouda issued an edict forbidding Copts to visit the Holy Land until Jerusalem is “liberated.” It’s a telling indicator of left-right unanimity on the subject of Israel when a conservative figure in the Orthodox Church embraces the methods of leftist agitprop. Meanwhile, Egypt’s Copts are seeking their own liberation—from Egypt. It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands have fled the country in recent years.

Although Meotti includes Orthodox Christians and liberal Protestants in his critique, his main focus is on the Vatican. Many Catholics will be put off by this book because of its jaundiced view of Catholicism, but it is too important for them to ignore. The Vatican’s preoccupation with the mote in Israel’s eye has blinded it to a much larger problem. Even though the author spends much of the book indicting the Catholic Church for indifference to the State of Israel, he seems to have written it partly in the hope that the Church will redeem itself by charting a new course. His first chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Pope Francis, who, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, “had voiced solidarity with Jewish victims of Iranian terrorism and co-written a book with a rabbi, Avraham Skorka.” He holds out hope that the reign of Pope Francis will see a new phase in the Vatican’s relationship with Israel.

Will we see the kind of course correction that Meotti desires? My own guess is that we will not—not that I have any doubts about the pope’s love for the Jewish people, but that I have less confidence in the quality of the advice he receives on Israel. On the other hand, with Muslim attacks against Christians increasing by the day, Church leaders may now be ready for an agonizing reappraisal of the situation in the Middle East. Stay tuned.

William Kilpatrick taught for many years at Boston College. He is the author of several books about cultural and religious issues, including Psychological Seduction, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong and, most recently, Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West. Professor Kilpatrick’s articles on cultural and educational topics have appeared in First Things, Policy Review, American Enterprise, American Educator, Los Angeles Times, and various scholarly journals. His articles on Islam have appeared in Catholic World Report National Catholic Register, Aleteia, Saint Austin Review, New Oxford Review, Investor’s Business Daily, FrontPage Magazine, and other publications. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation.

 

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Comments

  1. The Levite says

    May 19, 2014 at 8:48 am

    just one of many out there and so often ignored and denied:

    http://www.heartpublications.co.uk/middle-east-update-o-little-town-of-bethlehem-where-are-all-your-christians/

  2. Joseph says

    May 19, 2014 at 8:59 am

    “A common interpretation of Islamic terrorism—one shared by many world leaders—is that it is the result of poverty, or oppression, or colonialism, or—well, anything but the dictates of Islamic theology.”

    While this is true, the Pope himself [Francis] claims that Islamic theology itself is inherently peaceful:

    He has officially declared: “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”
    (Evangelii Gaudium #253)

    In the very same paragraph of this Apostolic Exhortation, [Pope] Francis then chides the faithful: “…our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations…” (EG #253).

    By these two astounding statements, Pope Francis demonstrates a profound ignorance of the true nature of Islam.

    And he is the HEAD of the Church[?]

    THIS is the discussion we need to be having within the Church: What precisely IS the Church’s official teaching on the nature of Islam? Because from all the information I can gather, I am beginning to agree with many Evangelicals, like Walid Shoebat, that Islam is none other than the Anti-Christ spoken of in 1John2.

    So how does the ostensible “Vicar of Christ on Earth” get it so patently wrong??

    • Burt says

      May 19, 2014 at 2:45 pm

      “So how does the ostensible “Vicar of Christ on Earth” get it so patently wrong??”

      This Vicar of Christ gets not only Islam wrong he gets Catholicism wrong. We live in strange times.

      He is a friend of rabbis but he is probably so left wing his Jewish friends may well be anti-Zionists themselves.
      I do not think it is inappropriate for a pope to remind souls of the tragedy of barriers when former popes commented on the walls instead of bridges.
      Exhortations to peace and dialogue should not be seen as one sided statements. It is a message for all of us.

      I am not a Zionist but a realist. Israel exists. It is the only democratic country in the Middle East. Like almost every state it was born historically in struggle and bloodshed. It is for the Israelis and their indigenous non Jewish population to work out how to resolve their problems.

      Islamic hatred for Jews derives from the Koran the ‘Palestinian’ situation notwithstanding.

  3. umbra says

    May 19, 2014 at 9:06 am

    There is the Catholic Church and then there are leaders of the catholic church – including those within the Curia. They are often mistaken as the same when they are clearly not. Many of these leaders (bishops, but also laity) are completely hopeless, clueless or worst.

  4. RichardL says

    May 19, 2014 at 11:02 am

    I am devout Catholic and generally very happy with the Church. Except for two related issues: the treatment of Israel and islam. I was raised under JP II and to me Jews are our older brothers/sisters. Catholics, like all the disciples are born as Jews and then baptised and become Catholics. I also had the pleasure of living in a Muslim country and could see what this demonic cult does to normal people. I understand the popes and the cardinals that they do not understand islam because they have never faced it. It is simply incomprehensible that a religion is based on fear and hate and one has to see it to understand it. I think the Church’s policy is a mixture of hoping for love where hatred lives and trying to protect the Christians living in islamic countries from being exterminated. Both assumptions are wrong and will lead to Christian-free Muslim zone. That is why we all need to defend Israel and Jerusalem.

  5. Salah says

    May 19, 2014 at 11:35 am

    Like most today’s leaders, the Pope is simply playing political correctness. His views on Islam has nothing to do with the Church’s teachings. He did not, and CANNOT, express these views while on the Chair of Peter (ex cathedra).

    “Hey, if we had the pope we deserved we would have Pope Snoop Dogg right now, so… yeah. Sigh.” (Ann Barnhardt)
    http://www.barnhardt.biz/2013/11/28/unpacking-the-latest-hot-mess-from-pope-francis/

  6. Prinz Eugen says

    May 19, 2014 at 11:42 am

    This new “pope” sounds more like Lenin than one would expect from the leader of the Catholic Church. He seems totally blind to the fact that the communists would make the Vatican into a museum, while the moslems would make it into an in-fiddle free mosque!

    Will the pope help out his enemies? Give Vatican artwork and valuables to illegal immigrants? Allow islam to move in and take over their state? How gullible can a supposed “leader” be when confronted by serious enemies?

  7. Susan Warner says

    May 19, 2014 at 12:01 pm

    The question finally boils down to Christian Theology which is anti-Semitic at its core. As a student of the church of the first century, I have come to understand how the early church rewrote the scriptures through their founding documents and theology and manufactured and anti-Semitic narrative. The paganization of the Church by the early ‘Church Fathers” in effect hung a sign around the neck of every Jew as a ‘Christ Killer” . The Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity to his own ends, rewrote to narratives, changed the calendar and set the stage for and eternal wall between the Jews and the Christians. The Church Fathers actually rewrote
    scripture to embrace a theology with an intent to turn Christians against the Jews. Just like today’s inversion of scriptures by Islam, the Anglicans, the Methodists, The Catholics and the Presbyterians as well as various offshoots of those manufactured a case against the Jews and Israel. Islam needed no theology to corrupt it. It was anti-Semitic from its outset and even back to Ishmael and Isaac…the eternal feud.

    http://www.israelolivetree.org

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      May 19, 2014 at 7:12 pm

      So you believe that the text of the entire New Testament canon as Christians like me have and use it today is a fourth-century artefact created or massively rewritten at Constantine’s behest?

      That doesn’t square with what the textual scholars say. *Their* consensus based on the manuscripts – including manuscripts, papyri, that date from the second and third centuries – is that the canon – that is, the *koine greek texts of the four gospels, Acts, the various pastoral letters and the book of Revelations, exactly as we have them today* – were already written and in circulation and use, as a body of writing recognised as authoritative by all orthodox Christians, *long* before the persecutions ceased and official recognition was granted to the church within the Roman Empire.

    • Kepha says

      May 19, 2014 at 9:08 pm

      I will echo much of what Dumbledore”s Army says.

      I have also made an extensive study of the New Testament and early Christian history.

      I will grant you the following: Christians and Jews did indeed experience hostile relations during the early Christian centuries. Perhaps the New Testament has sometimes been read wrongly by the church.

      However, textual tampering is a very hard charge to prove–especially when you allow for misspellings by Georgian, Latin, or similar scribes; a scribe’s eyes skipping over a line; and a number of other understandable glitches among the “thousands of textual variants”. Yet against this, we must also consider that (a) perhaps the best ancient MSS actually agreed more with our Receptus, yet were loss to greater use, while the ancient MSS we have (such as Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Bezae, etc.) represent the copies people knew to be faulty, and hence “shelved”, and (b) The New Testament as we have it contains a fair amount of material embarrassing to the sorts of churches that preserved it in ancient and medieval times; including the absence of attempts to “correct” such embarrassments.

      But I will challenge you to take off the hermeneutical glasses of (1) a sociology that cannot accept any overlap of “Jewish” and “Christian”, (2) The heritage of which the article speaks, and (3) Post-Shoah guilt feelings exegesis (exemplified by Krister Stendahl and a number of his followers.

      To take John, the supposedly most “anti-Semitic” of the Gospels, I see the scholars scratching their heads over what to do with it. On the one hand, many of Jesus’ enemies are identified as “Jews”. Yet on the other hand, in Jesus’ most extensive interaction with a non-Jew in the Gospel, namely, with the Samaritan woman in John 4, Jesus himself is identified as a Jew, and states, “Salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). John is also full of detail on first century Jewish (“Palestinian”?) customs, ‘Eretz Yisroel topography, and even the layout of Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the Temple. There are also strange “eyewitness” types of detail such as “Jesus sat thus on Jacob’s Well” (John 4:6, Greek and AV, among others), as if we can imagine the Apostle acting out a part of the story as he either relates it orally (before writing it down) or as he reads the newly produced text. What is happening?

      The most economic explanation is to see John’s criticism of “the Jews” (other than those clustered around his Messiah) as part of Israel’s own ancient tradition of prophetic self-criticism. For example, are Micah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, or even Moses himself “anti-Semites” when they criticize “Israel”?

      Now, to all: Given that I have rejected “post-Shoah guilt” as a legitimate hermeneutical principle , I believe that my readers and friends (and enemies, too) who post here deserve some explanation. I neither deny the holocaust nor argue that it was justified. Indeed, I see it as a monumental, Hellish, extremely disturbing crime and a frightful warning about how a lot can go appallingly wrong even in a highly educated, civilized, cultured, scientific, and creative country (one reason I remain confidently pre-modern in my religion). This rejection of “post-Shoah guilt” as a hermeneutical principle calls attention to the fact that the New Testament (and also Clement and Papias among the Apostolic Fathers) belong to the 1st century, during which a number of issues among and between Jews, those Christians called from among the Jews, and those Christians called from among the nations (Gentiles)/ ethnoi) were very different from those to be found in the 18th-20th centuries–or, for that matter, the 3d-a7th centuries. It also demands that serious exegesis do its level best to get into the actual historical and cultural context in which the New Testament was written (a difficult task, although not completely impossible).

      I’d also counsel all here to be extremely skeptical towards the media events masquerading as New Testament scholarship (such as the Jesus Seminar or the touting of the supposed “gospel” of a married Christ, which I STRONGLY suspect will prove to be a modern-day forgery in the end–fits too strongly a lot of the “Jesus just for me” thinking of the 20th and 21st centuries. I will even charge such “stars” of the post-modern “quest for the historical Jesus” as Elaine Pagels as examples of how poor our present-day scholarship is (her reconstruction of the historical contexts of the Gnostic Gospels, etc., demands a very radical re-writing of Christian history from roughly 150-325 A.D. which the available evidence simply cannot support; and that evidence is far more extensive than many suppose).

      And I will end on this note:

      Yes, I am pro-Israel. One cannot but be a supporter of a functioning state protecting a number of constitutional liberties and decent to its minorities when it is up against some of the most odious regimes on the planet (and I include the “Palestinians” whom progressive opinion has ennobled). Nor can anyone who pretends to have a conscience blind himself to the fate of the Mizrahi Jewish communities whose presence everywhere from Khuzistan to the Atlantic long predated that of the Arabs); or the unwillingness of the Arab states to naturalize even the fourth- and fifth-generation descendants of the actual victims of An-Nakhba. I say this even though I believe that the Zionist movement made some dreadful blunders and miscalculations. Further, you cannot suddenly uproot six million or so people without terrible repercussions for the area and the rest of the world.

      But I’m an “additionist”, if not a supercessionist, in my view of who is the Chosen People. I believe that the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16) is gathered about the Messiah Jesus, and includes not only the Jews who were the original church (such as all the NT writers but Luke), but also the Gentiles who have been “grafted in”. And if you need to know my theological affiliation, I am an Old School Calvinist (although we prefer the term Reformed, since Calvin would be the first to admit himself other than the founder of the movement), thank you.

      As for Meotti’s attempt at “course correction”, I wish him well. Further, I am not as pessimistic as Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer, are you not of a Middle Eastern Uniate group yourself? Yet how anti-Israel are you? How accommodating are you towards Islam? Not very on both counts, it seems.

      • gravenimage says

        May 21, 2014 at 10:19 pm

        Good posts, Dumbledore’s Army and Kepha.

    • Dennis Trisker says

      May 20, 2014 at 5:29 am

      Yes, you have something there. The Catholic Church in its many branches such as Copts, Orthodox and Roman have persecuted the Jews and spread anti-semitism in the world. Many Protestant, and Fundamentalists churches have done the same. A book written many years ago by a Jesuit Priest, also a psychologist has said that Christian Jew hatred is based on: the Jews are the blood family of Jesus; the Jews know the truth about Jesus; and because of that cannot accept Jesus as their savior, which is a Pauline, Roman invention. In other words Jews are the living witness of the authentic Yeshua!

      • dumbledoresarmy says

        May 21, 2014 at 12:42 am

        Mate, you know nothing about church history if you claim that the Copts and the Orthodox are “branches” of the “Catholic church”.

        Newsflash: There are the Eastern and the Western churches, which divided in the early Middle Ages.

        Furthermore the Coptic church is quite distinct from the Byzantine/ Eastern Orthodox communion generally (the division took place *before* the rise of Islam); and it is *also* distinct from the WEstern/ Latin/ Catholic church.

        There is an *ethnically-Copt* Egyptian Catholic church but that is the result of Catholic mission among Copts; what they are is Catholics of Coptic ancestry.

        And the attempt to split off a “Pauline” ‘paganised’ Christianity from a supposedly separate and pure “real”/ “original” Christianity – to divide the Epistles, and for that matter, Acts, from the four Gospels and throw the former into the wastepaper basket – is a very modern “liberal Christian” – and also nonChristian/ antichristian – project and is in the end not sustainable on the basis of the extant texts.

        I have a friend who teaches comparative religion at an Australian university. On one occasion she set her students the task of reading the four gospels and separating out “pagan” or “Gentile” elements from “Jewish” elements. One of her students had been raised within an observant Orthodox Jewish background. Eventually, this student came to my friend and said, “But there is nothing here that is *not* Jewish…!!”

        And you seem to be forgetting that Shaul/ Paul was himself Jewish, not a pagan Roman.

    • Jay Boo says

      May 21, 2014 at 1:18 am

      @Susan Warner
      As a student of the church of the first century

      Me suspects that this ‘student’ is being tutored by an anti-Christian liberal professor.

      Typical molding of the narrative to fit the premise.

      • Jay Boo says

        May 21, 2014 at 1:21 am

        A simplistic yet well tailored stereotyped image

    • Ninive says

      May 23, 2014 at 12:23 am

      Susan Warner wrote :”The question finally boils down to Christian Theology which is anti-Semitic at its core”.

      People in the west have taken into associating anti-semitism with Judaism because they have been fed that term and they followed without even thinking about it. “Semitism” is not exclusive to Jews or Hebrew speaking people, most people in the Middle East are Semites. Hence, the term to be used must be anti-Jewish or anti-Israel, but certainly not anti-semitism.

      As for changing scripture, I do not agree with it at all. As for the calendar, the Jews are till today using the Assyro-Babylonian calendar which is a lunar calendar and the same was done by muslims who have many things in common with jews when it comes to religious customs. As for Christians, they follow either the Gregorian or the Julian calendar.

      What I think is shameful, is that Christians in the East and West are not united as Christians, had they been united no one but no one would have been able to cause any rifts between them, and this is very true in the case of Christians in the Middle East who have been sacrificed, killed, and chased out of their ancestral homelands because the so-called Christians of the west (governments) are supporting wars which come to their advantage while they allow the uprooting of indigenous and ancient communities of Christians. Had the Christians (the people) of the west supported the Christians of the East, we would not have witnessed the miseries and uprooting which is taking place against the Christians of the Middle East.

      The Christians in the East have been paying over and over for the sins of the “Christians” of the west and in a way yes, I do agree that the Vatican played a huge role in the misery which befell the Christians in the East and still is.

  8. Pennswoods says

    May 19, 2014 at 12:15 pm

    Is Israel above criticism? If so we have a problem. The filth and anti Christian hatred by a large percentage of Orthodox rabbi’s like the late Ovadia Yosef ( a former Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem) who was quoted in an October 2010 issue of the Jerusalem Post where he says that “the goyim were created to be slaves of Jews” and other obnoxious rants against non Jews needs to be reviewed here along with any criticism of the Vatican and its policies toward Israel since 1948. This rabbi can be found in many photos over the years with Israeli leaders including Netanyahu.

    • HimalayanPony says

      May 20, 2014 at 1:57 am

      The Jews did not kill Jesus, all our sins did… But He is now resurrected, He is alive!

      • Kepha says

        May 21, 2014 at 7:35 pm

        To the Pony from the Abode of Snow, I can only say “Amen!”

    • The Levite says

      May 20, 2014 at 3:36 am

      Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew and at the hands of the Romans.

      But like all good blood libelist’s, your preference for hate and easily lead mind, chooses to believe otherwise and behave contradictory to your “prophet”.

      • HimalayanPony says

        May 21, 2014 at 12:14 am

        @The Levite – If you were addressing me, I just wanted you to know that Jesus not only died, he became resurrected! And no He is not just a “prophet” for me (I am still not sure if you addressed me), I believe He is the Son of God…. and well as an Indian Christian, I love the Jews, and I am praying for Israel! So no hatred!!

      • Jay Boo says

        May 21, 2014 at 1:29 am

        @HimalayanPony

        The comment appears to be at Nordicelt who in turn praises Pennswoods .

        Both of them seem to be determined to either cause needless petty dissension or just trying to get attention.

      • Jay Boo says

        May 21, 2014 at 1:32 am

        @HimalayanPony
        The comments don’t line up like the did in the older format of JW

    • gravenimage says

      May 21, 2014 at 10:29 pm

      “Pennswoods” and “Nordicelt” are both notorious antisemites here.

      Neither of them seem to care that Israel is the *only* place in the Middle East where Christians can live freely and without fear, nor that she is the only democracy in the region.

      But given their commenting history, it seems *very unlikely* that either of them have any respect for freedom and democracy. *Ugh*.

  9. mark says

    May 19, 2014 at 1:13 pm

    Regardless of Roman Catholicism’s complicated relations with, and views about, Israel, I am so glad to have renounced that religion on my birth certificate. There are so many reasons to renounce it, not the least of which: the rampant pedophilia that is tolerated and perpetuated by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

    • RichardL says

      May 20, 2014 at 2:43 am

      mark, get your statistics right. You have strong feelings and they do not match with reality. A super left-wing researcher, Christian Pfeiffer, did a study and found that pedophilia cases among the Catholic clergy were BELOW those in the general population. If you factor in the vastly higher undisclosed number of cases in the general population, the clergy is doing much, much better than the general population. I agree with you: there should be none at all because the clergy should be better, but then they are humans. I also counsel to always differ between the doctrine and the people, especially dealing with islam and Muslims. Otherwise you lose your humanity – no matter what ethical system you believe in.

  10. Walter Sieruk says

    May 19, 2014 at 2:28 pm

    If the Vatican really believes the Bible, as they claims to, then they should understand the God has given this land that is now the State of Israel to the Jews. That according to the Bible the Jewish people have every right to all this land that is now Israel. As seen for example, Genesis 28:13–15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. 135: 4 Likewise, if the people of the Vatican really believe the Bible then they should further understand that the Jewish people should have this land the the rights of history. As shown in First Kings 4:20,21,24,25,. 8:55,56. Could if be then the Vatican members are afraid of the violet and deadly forces of Islam ? Could it be that the Vatican member actually don’t have the guts to take a stand for what the Bible teaches is right ? Could it be ever somthing worse ? Could it be that the members ofthe Vatican are letting the powers of darkness take control over them.? After all , the Bible also teaches in Isaiah 8:20. “To the law of the Testimony : if they speak not according tothis word, it is because there is no light in them.” [KJV]
    If those are the real reason that the Vatican is acting this way that don’s say much for them

    • Wyldeirishman says

      May 19, 2014 at 11:59 pm

      Oddly enough, it’s this same Scripture that upbraids Christ Himself as the fulfillment of ALL of the OT types, shadows, and prophetic utterances.

      Not all who are descended from Israel ARE Israel.

      Could it be that you are disappearing down a dispensationalist rabbit-hole from which there is no exegetical exit?

      Could it be that Ishmael will continue pissing against the wind until the very end of the age?

      Could it be that, if a single iota of the promise remains unfulfilled in Christ, then the Law still condemns without the promise, found in the faith once for all delivered to the saints?

      Could it be that support for national Israel’s continued existence ought to have everything to do with her beacon of freedom whilst surrounded by jihadist poison, and not due to some imagined parallel covenant of salvation for specific ethnicity?

  11. Flying fish says

    May 19, 2014 at 2:40 pm

    The Vatican is full of dangerous jesters now.

    That is something even some Catholics started to notice. My Catholic family doesn’t even like them.

  12. Steve Golay says

    May 19, 2014 at 2:47 pm

    Thanks much, Jihad Watch, for publishing this piece. (And it is more of a publication than a posting.)

    Didn’t note a linkage so I’m assuming it was written specifically for JW. Nice journalistic catch. Looking forward to more from Mr Kilpatrick. Catch him when I can elsewhere.

    NOTE: The author is exhibiting a certain bravery for making these points. He understands.

  13. Charli Main says

    May 19, 2014 at 3:17 pm

    I suspect that the reason that the Catholic hierarchy in Rome are endlessly kissing Muslim arse is because they think that by doing so they are .protecting Christians and Christian property in Muslim countries.
    If the Pope were to speak out against Muslims and Islam it would lead to a more violent backlash against Christians, in Muslim occupied Christian countries.
    Its another form of Neville Chamberlain type appeasement policy

    • traeh says

      May 19, 2014 at 9:47 pm

      Exactly.

      Many of the Christians in the Middle East have been brutalized, terrorized, and psychologically or otherwise raped by their Muslim hosts and, to avoid further terror, death threats, violence, murder, kidnapping, and so on, know what to say to appease the monstrous Islamic goons who keep them in line.

      Many of these broken dhimmi Christians in the Muslim world probably even believe the appeasing tripe they spout, just as those with Stockholm syndrome believe they really empathize with their monstrous captors. Then in parts of the world safe for Christians, there are always some Christian leaders — apparently now the Pope included — who don’t see an inch beyond their own noses, and when they hear the tripe spoken by the broken dhimmi Christians in the Middle East, assume it can be taken at face value.

      • dumbledoresarmy says

        May 20, 2014 at 12:21 am

        Yes.

        This is where Mark Durie’s two books – his detailed study of the psycho-dynamics and spiritual dimension of the dhimma system – “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom”, and the companion booklet (intended primarily for pastoral use by and among Christians), “Liberty to the Captives” are so important.

        “The Third Choice”, in particular, needs to be read by all English speakers – Christian or not – who have dealings with dhimmi Christians – whether within the “Middle East” or in diaspora . Both books could do with translation into the forms of Arabic used by the dhimmi Christians in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq; and then, a wide circulation.

        Translated into Hebrew, “The Third Choice” would help Israelis to understand not only the position into which the Muslims are trying to “groom” them as a whole, but also some of the strange behaviours of that large part of their community which is or descends from the Jews who lived as dhimmis in the dar al Islam. It would also show them *why* the Arabised “Palestinian” Christians and others in neighbouring countries do what they mostly do, and what a *huge* step is involved when people like Fr Gabriel Naddaf *stop* toeing the Arab/ Muslim line and start professing a willingness to be part of the Jewish state as loyal citizens.

        Translated into languages like German, Italian and Danish, these books could help people in the “host” countries understand the dhimmi Christian refugees who have come into their midst…and not only understand them, but help them to free themselves.

        They could do with translation into Spanish, Greek, Serbo-Croat, Armenian and Bulgarian…to assist peoples whose *forebears* lived as dhimmis for centuries. There are old wounds that need healing, old bondages that need to be broken.

        Indeed, a Hindi translation of “The Third Choice” might be useful, too.

    • gravenimage says

      May 21, 2014 at 10:47 pm

      Charli Main wrote:

      I suspect that the reason that the Catholic hierarchy in Rome are endlessly kissing Muslim arse is because they think that by doing so they are .protecting Christians and Christian property in Muslim countries.
      …………………………..

      With respect, Charlie, this might be the case if this was just the Vatican mouthing the usual bs about Islam being “a religion of peace”—but throwing Israel under the bus goes a lot further, and is much uglier.

      The very worst kind of dhimmitude—if this is what this is—is not kissing Muslim arse, as sickening as that is, but is when dhimmis *turn on the other victims of Islam*.

      I think there are times when the former is understandable—but only by immediately threatened dhimmis themselves—but the latter is *never* morally justified.

      And the Pope is supposed to be a moral force in the world—something he certainly *is not* in this instance.

  14. Uri says

    May 19, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    Patriarch Fouad Twal is right. Unless you have separation of church/temple/mosque and state, you can’t have real democracy.

    קדושת הארץ או קדושת העם

    That is is question Jesus would ask. Unfortunately the Naftali Bendts of this world — true Pharisees — want קדושת הארץ

  15. Champ ✞ says

    May 19, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    Very interesting essay, William Kilpatrick! …thank you 🙂

    Yeah the Vatican has been a corrupt institution from the *very* beginning, and this information from “Got Questions” answers why …

    Question: “What is the origin of the Catholic Church?”

    Answer: The Roman Catholic Church contends that its origin is the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ in approximately AD 30. The Catholic Church proclaims itself to be the church that Jesus Christ died for, the church that was established and built by the apostles. Is that the true origin of the Catholic Church? On the contrary. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament will reveal that the Catholic Church does not have its origin in the teachings of Jesus or His apostles. In the New Testament, there is no mention of the papacy, worship/adoration of Mary (or the immaculate conception of Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the assumption of Mary, or Mary as co-redemptrix and mediatrix), petitioning saints in heaven for their prayers, apostolic succession, the ordinances of the church functioning as sacraments, infant baptism, confession of sin to a priest, purgatory, indulgences, or the equal authority of church tradition and Scripture. So, if the origin of the Catholic Church is not in the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, what is the true origin of the Catholic Church?

    Much more here:

    http://www.gotquestions.org/origin-Catholic-church.html

    Very eye-opening!

    • ecosse1314 says

      May 20, 2014 at 10:56 am

      Churches develope and evolve. Doctrines develope over time. You seem to have a problem with the RC church.

  16. Larry A Singleton says

    May 19, 2014 at 5:17 pm

    The End of Evangelical Support for Israel? by David Brog
    http://www.meforum.org/3769/israel-evangelical-support

    • Kepha says

      May 19, 2014 at 9:38 pm

      @Larry Singleton.

      A fundamentalist is an Evangelical whom a liberal writer does not like.

      I think there is something that a lot of people should understand about Evangelicals and Israel, and it has everything to do with Evangelicalism’s theological identity and little to do with anything Israel says or does.

      Much Evangelical sympathy for Israel is predicated on Dispensational Premillennial theology, which sees the church as a “parenthesis” in God’s dealings with Israel. Dispensational eschatology therefore posits a “rapture” of the church prior to the millennium ushered in by Christ’s physical return. The church gets carried off body and soul to Heaven while the Jews–who somewhere along the line will recognize the Messiah, will defeat the Gog and Magog hosts at Armageddon. Something like that. I read the Olivet Discourse, the Thessalonian Epistles, and Revelation (not “Revelations”) in a very different way myself; and hence am concerned that pro-Israel sentiment among my Evangelical brethren rests on a weak foundation.

      The Dispensational scheme was thought up by an Anglo-Irish Protestant clergyman named John Nelson Darby back in the 19th century. Late in that century, it got codified into the Schofield Reference Bible by an American, Cyrus Ingersoll Schofield (which was later disseminated widely). It seemed to fit with the drift of the 20th century, when Evangelicals found themselves outmanouvered and marginalized by theological liberals in denominations and institutions which the Evangelicals themselves had founded (everything getting worse, so to say). Hence, for most of the 20th century, Dsipensational Premillennialism had a very great resonance.

      However, Dispensational Premillennialism offers modern Evangelicals no “useable past”, so to say; and its novelty is well known. As more Evangelicals rediscover the ways the Puritans, Reformers, and their more direct heirs read Bible prophecy and New Testament apocalyptic, they are changing their views. This may or may not make them less pro-Israel. In my case and many others, it did not.

      But I would also note that a lot of Evangelicals are people who wish very much to be fair-minded and charitable (even though the MSM makes you think we eat live-stewed liberated lesbians and minority children for Thanksgiving rather than turkeys–images about as baseless as the one about Christian blood being used in matzoh). For now, they cannot but sympathize with the plight of the Falastin Arabs to a degree. But give them more familiarity with the wider Middle East, and I suspect they will notice things like the very cynical game the Arab states have been playing with the victims and descendants of An-Nakhba, the persecution of Christians by resurgent Islam, and the destruction of the ancient Mizrahi Jewish communities. And, did Borg’s pollsters ask Evangelicals what they think of Islam in the wake of 9/11?

      Finally, in interpreting Evangelicaldom, avoid the temptation to look for an “Evangelical Pope” or whatnot, despite attempts by outsiders to so anoint Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, James Hagee (of whom I’d never heard before 2008), Joel Osteen, or whoever. It’s a rather diverse movement. I suspect one reason why the socialist MSM and academy so hates us is because we don’t offer a nice, tidy, easily identified umbrella organization, but cover a very bewildering set of groups.

  17. Elliot says

    May 20, 2014 at 4:45 am

    @Kepha

    Further, you cannot suddenly uproot six million or so people without terrible repercussions for the area and the rest of the world.

    Seriously. What 6 million ( Arabs?) were uprooted. When and from where?

    • Kepha says

      May 20, 2014 at 5:54 pm

      I was referring to 6,000,000 Israelis. As for the Palestinians, I think that it is a disgrace that the international community doesn’t call on the Arab states to naturalize them.

      • elliot says

        May 20, 2014 at 6:28 pm

        ah, i didnt get that from your comment sorry

        however I think you’ll find there are nearer 8million Israelis-just saying like lol

  18. Elliot says

    May 20, 2014 at 4:51 am

    @ Kapha

    Further, you cannot suddenly uproot six million or so people without terrible repercussions for the area and the rest of the world.

    6 million you say. When and from where and how do u come up with that figure

  19. Elisheva14 says

    May 20, 2014 at 11:26 am

    Great article and balanced. Fiction is strong to many than TRUTH. Thank you for fighting to get out the truth in each story. Robert, you are a Giant in a world run by liars and thieves.

  20. dumbledoresarmy says

    May 21, 2014 at 12:54 am

    Imagine…just imagine…

    Imagine the Pope issuing an invitation to the Vatican to the following people: Mr Robert Spencer, Rev Dr Mark Durie, Canon Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, “Sam Solomon” (ex-Muslim, now-Christian, author of “Al -Hijra: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration), Dutch scholar Hans Jansen; and Bat Yeor and Mordechai Kedar.

    Imagine another thing…imagine the Pope arranging a Papal visit to Pakistan, and then, once he’s inside the country, publicly saying to the Pakistani head of state, face to face, head to head – “Let My People Go”; and denouncing the Muslim abductions and rapes and forced “conversions” not only of Christian (Catholic and non-Catholic) but also of Hindu and Sikh girls and women – *naming names supplied to him by the leaders of the minority communities* – and demanding that these women and girls be found, and released. And also, to be specific, publicly demanding, so that the entire world media can hear it, to be permitted to visit Asia Bibi in prison and take her the sacraments; and demanding that she be declared innocent, and released, to be given asylum, with her entire family, in Italy.

    The requests would be refused, I have no doubt. But if they were made in the full glare of the publicity attending a papal visit, the world’s non-Muslim Media would surely not be able to ignore the ugly brazenness, gross injustice and gloating cruelty of the refusals. The ugly leering and sneering face of Islam would be stripped of its masks.

  21. gravenimage says

    May 21, 2014 at 9:55 pm

    Christians in many parts of the Middle East and Africa face extermination at the hands of Muslims, yet many Christian leaders seem far more concerned over the transgressions, real and imagined, of Israel—the only safe place for Christians in the Middle East and the only Middle Eastern country where the Christian population is growing.
    ………………………..

    Bravo, William Kilpatrick!

    This would be appalling in any case—but that the Vatican is behaving in this manner at a time when there is a full-on *genocide* of Christians being waged in many parts of the Muslim world is grotesquely perverse.

  22. Daniel Bielak says

    May 22, 2014 at 11:29 pm

    Woe has been unto any Jewish person (among Christians) who (among Christians) has tried to state these obvious basic essential truths.

    And the Christian theological sanctimonious rhetoric here (in comments on posts on this blog) in response to serious actual matters (global genocidal anti-Jewish bigotry and the political movements and actions caused by it) — invented by Christianity (and adopted and crudified by Islam) — is disgusting.

    And the vicious anti-Jewish bigotry of Arab Christian leaders is Stockholm syndrome? Give me a break. Stockholm syndrome means vilifying your own people — people who you identify as being your own people.

    The actions of Christians — the Christian churches et al — toward the Jewish people throughout the past two thousand years — the many mass–murders, the systematic legalistic persecution, the systematic villification and demonization, the almost global holding of antipathetic wrong views, the continuous mass–propagation of and belief in libels, — have import.

    When the people whose ancestors believed in the religion of Appolo etc stopped believing in that religion they saw that religion as being the fiction that it was. So will your ancestors view your religion, Christianity, if they are fortunate to have enough intelligence and integrity to do so.

    I understand that your religion gives you emotional support. But try to find a religion that is not bigoted toward an actual group of actual living human beings.

    • Daniel Bielak says

      May 22, 2014 at 11:53 pm

      Correction: Apollo

      And I apologize for venting.

      I’m only human. Please forgive me.

      I should have heeded the following teaching:

      “Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

      “Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.”

      The Buddha, Dhammapada, Chapter One, Verses One and Two

    • Foolster41 says

      May 23, 2014 at 5:03 am

      Oh god. Not him again, spouting about his “obvious basic essential truths.” He reminds me of someone.

      *WARNING*
      Be warned that Daniel Beliek is not interested in debate, or the exchage of ideas. He makes assertions about how Christianity is anti-semetic, but points only to past experienves and events, and refuses to point to any specific scriptural evidence. He will refuse to clarify vague statements such as saying Jews are presented as “totems” in christianity, and instead will says he is clear enough.

      Daniel has in the past used numerous logical fallacies.
      -Ad honim: comparing people who politely disagree with him with murderous turkish jihadists, and refusing to apollogice, claiming people have been hostile to him, when they have not.
      -Apeals to emotion
      -Genetic fallacy (In his analogy of non-druid non-Irish person saying something about the druidic religion, as if that metigates Jesus’ own claims of messiaship if a non-Jew affirms it)
      -Apealing to events as proof of anti-semetism in Christian doctrines.
      -Straw man arguments (or maybe just red-herrings): Brining up all he’s saying is, that Jesus was a jew, that Christians did terrible things to jews and many other arguments that no one is actually disagreeing with (but this doesn’t remove the other things people do diasagree with)
      -False Analogy (He admited his analogy about the Druids, and comparing people to Jihadists are faulty, but he said the former still “descently expressed” and the later “apt”! (No explination how a faulty analoogy can be decent or apt)

      You can see in the topic here and judge for yourself if I’m misrepresenting him.
      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/jesus-was-not-a-palestinian.html
      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/05/boston-jihad-murderer-f-america-praise-allah.html

      Of course, if you choose to engage is up to you, but I thought I should recomend you read some of the past encounters with him, and give a fair warning you will be most likely wasting your time.

      “And I apologize for venting. I’m only human. Please forgive me.”
      I don’t tihnk he means it. He has “Apollogizerd” in the past, but has posted attacks like this against Christanity, and has not clearified or recanted hisw anti-Christian bigoted views, provided further textual evidence, directly addressed objections brought by Christians (Jesys was a Jew, clear scripture that does not blame all Jews as “Christ kilelrs”) or apollogized for personal attacks (comparing me to turkish Jihadists).

      • Daniel Bielak says

        May 23, 2014 at 6:32 am

        Foolster41,

        Accusing me of what you have done toward me — ad hominem attacks etc.

        And “Politely disagreeing with him”?

        One can read the initial responses I have gotten from Christian commenters here on various posts on this blog.

        And, yes I’ve made some logistical mistakes in communicating in writing. And it’s very difficult for me to communicate in writing. And much of what I’ve written is harsh in tone. And I’ve felt badly about that, and I’ve apologized about that. But the gist of what I’ve written is, I think, reasonably clear, and is true.

        The mischaracterizing by others here of what I have written is beyond belief.

        The denial by others here who have responded to what I have written here is beyond belief.

        Hovever, I realize that my posting comments on this forum has not been beneficial.

        • Foolster41 says

          May 23, 2014 at 4:17 pm

          (Oops, posted in wrong place)

          “Accusing me of what you have done toward me — ad hominem attacks etc.

          And “Politely disagreeing with him”?”

          You know? Fine. Put your money where you mouth is.

          If you can point out just one instance of me using ad honim attacks against you, or being rude to you (name calling for example, though accusing you of lying is not name calling), then i hereby promise to never post on JW again. Likewise, if you cannot find evidence of the same, you must stop posting on JW. Deal?

  23. Daniel Bielak says

    May 23, 2014 at 1:57 am

    Another correction: descendants

  24. Foolster41 says

    May 23, 2014 at 4:15 pm

    “Accusing me of what you have done toward me — ad hominem attacks etc.

    And “Politely disagreeing with him”?”

    You know? Fine. Put your money where you mouth is.

    If you can point out just one instance of me using ad honim attacks against you, or being rude to you (name calling for example, though accusing you of lying is not name calling), then i hereby promise to never post on JW again. Likewise, if you cannot find evidence of the same, you must stop posting on JW. Deal?

  25. Daniel Bielak says

    May 23, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    Foolster41,

    It is very difficult for me to communicate in writing and especially by typing. I’m not going to address the matters that you referred to in your most recent comment. One can read what each of us has written.

    I’ll address here in this message the most benign form of
    Christian bigotry toward Jewish people.

    A Christian commenter here who I think has never, here, expressed any antipathetic expression toward nor about Jewish people, and who has expressed sympathetic expressions about Jewish people, said that Christians are born Jews and that when they are Baptized they become Christians (which the Christian political commentator Ann Coulter has called “perfected Jews”).

    If a Jewish person were to say: “Jews are born Irish, and when they are Bar- Mitzva’ed or Bat-Mitzva’ed they become Jews (perfected Irish, in effect).” how would you feel about that?

    And what I meant by “totems” is that Jewish people are characters in the
    official narrative of the religion Christianity ( therein symbolic
    characters — symbolic malignant foil characters at that — in the religion
    Christianity). That in and of itself is bigoted toward Jewish people.

    That
    is not even to say about the fact that the official narrative of the
    religion Christianity accuses Jewish people of killing the god of
    Christianity (a god which is a concept about an actual person who was a Jewish man who in fact was killed by the regime of a European people (the Romans)– a regime who commited genocide against the Jewish people and who were subsequently the main
    initial adopters and developers of Christianity). That is not even to say
    about the fact that even in the USA, until a generation ago, the epithet of
    “Christ-killer” was the main concept that Christians had of and expressed
    about Jewish people. That is not even to say about the continuous brutal persecution and torment of Jewish people by Christian European people for several hundred years. Moreover, that is not to say about the contemporary vilification and libeling of the sole Jewish country, Israel, by main churches and denominations of Christianity.

    That you and other Christians who claim to support Jewish people and Israel have denied these things (and have maliciously attacked a Jewish person — me — for pointing out these things) is part of that Christian bigotry and arrogance and callousness toward Jewish people and has caused me to feel distress and anger.

    However, I realize that my posting comments here about that has been bad for me, and I think that my posting comments here about that has been not good for others. So, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry for doing wrong action. I’m sorry for expressing wrong speech.

    So, regardless of anything, and in any case, best wishes.

    And I think that if we were to meet each other in person we would be friendly with each other. It’s just that in these forums these issues and concepts take the foreground in the mind and obscure the essential component of interpersonal relationships and overwhelm the mind.

    So, again, best wishes.

    • Foolster41 says

      May 24, 2014 at 2:20 am

      So I guess you don’t accept my challenge then?

      “And what I meant by “totems” is that Jewish people are characters in the
      official narrative of the religion Christianity ( therein symbolic
      characters * symbolic malignant foil characters at that * in the religion
      Christianity). That in and of itself is bigoted toward Jewish people.”

      Aaaaah, I see! Characters! Not presented as historical people who were in conflict! Only “symbolic malignant foil characters”! Nothing but Fagins and Shylocks in the NT! After all there aren’t positive models like Jesus(?!), John the babtist, 10/12 apostles, Paul and many more! Nope! After all, it’s unreasonable to present any group as having both good and bad people! How dare the NT be realistic! Shaaaame! (and if you can’t tell: sarcasm). Isn’t it perfectly clear that the worldview lens Daniel aproaches the NT is biased and bigoted? He wants to hate Christianity. He doesn’t give pretense of objectivity when he says things like this.

      “That is not even to say about the fact that the official narrative of the religion Christianity accuses Jewish people of killing the god of Christianity ”

      Once again, Daniel won’t and can’t point to any specific teaching in the NT that says all Jews are to blame for the Killing of Jesus, though he’s been asked a great number of times. Jesus, almost all of his disciples and Paul were all Jews. A number of verses states that Jesus was destoned to die for all of our sins (Is. 53:10, Rom. 1:16 (“Salvation is first to the Jew, then to the greek”), 3:23). Chrstiranity has a distinctly Jewish character to it. Also, the logic that people in group A did B, thus A promotes B is not logical. (This is elementry logic)

      “That you and other Christians who claim to support Jewish people and Israel have denied these things (and have maliciously attacked a Jewish person — me — for pointing out these things) is part of that Christian bigotry and arrogance and callousness toward Jewish people and has caused me to feel distress and anger.”

      That Daniel calls them “facts” do not make them so. (See above). Once again Daniel claims I have “attacked” him, but refuses to take my challange to actually point out when and where I attacked him, called him names or used ad honim. I disagreed with his assessment of Christianity, but that is not “attacking.” That he conflates and contenues to conflate disagreement with attacks has troubling implications.

      “However, I realize that my posting comments here about that has been bad for me, and I think that my posting comments here about that has been not good for others. So, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry for doing wrong action. I’m sorry for expressing wrong speech.”

      If Daniel was sorry, he’d stop, but he won’t.If you know it’s wrong, stop doing it

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