Refuting Anti-Zionism

I must admit that it is highly disappointing and disturbing to me when a blog post topic inadvertently spins out of control and ends up including a "blame the Jews" guest commentary that really had nothing to do with the original topic. That is what I found when I recently revisited Professor Tracy's Memory Hole blog.  After reading it, my heart sank.

For anyone who has been following Professor Tracy's research regarding the inconsistencies in the Sandy Hook school shooting, you just might be as surprised as I was at his "allowing" a blogger named James Fetzer to post what appears to be an anti-Semitic (but more accurately, turns out to be anti-Zionist) rant against the Jews. If you read the link above, you will see the letter written by a blogger who commented against the original post:

Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 12:18 AM
Subject: Reader Comment
Comment: Dear Professor Tracy,
I am writing you to protest the anti-Jewish, anti-Israel bias of James Fetzer. Without any supporting documentation or proof, he declares in his articles that Israel is responsible for the Sandy Hook massacre and previous staged events. This is highly irresponsible. How dare he!
If he has any valid argument or evidence to back up his outrageous claim, he should state it. Otherwise, he should keep his own hateful opinion to himself and stop trying to indoctrinate your readers into becoming anti-Semitic bigots.
 

It is best to read the entire back-and-forth arguments over there, but my focus here is to address the supposed difference between someone being anti-Semitic vs. anti-Zionist.

Here is another brief excerpt from the Memory Hole blog:

What has struck me most about your email to Professor Tracy is your complete failure to distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Is this a difference you don’t understand?

VT and I are both anti-Zionist but are not anti-Semitic. Since you are reading some of my articles, where do you find me dismissing the opinions of others or their value as human beings on the basis of their ethnic heritage or religious faith? I and others at VT are critics of the actions and policies of the State of Israel, including of course its grossly abusive treatment of the Palestinian people. That is NOT anti-Semitism.

It is not anti-Semitic to raise objections to the violation of the rights of Palestinians and repeated violations of UN mandates. A rather large and growing segment of the world’s population regards Israel as running the largest concentration camp in the world at Gaza. It bulldozed peace activist Rachel Corrie to death, and its IDF forces are known for picking off Palestinian children for sport. You abuse the word, but it properly applies to such actions by the Israeli government. They ARE filth!
 

In the typical "blame the Jews" and "blame Israel" mindset of liberal leftists here in America, the Arab Muslims have no blame put upon themselves for the horrible conditions for their people or the constant war against Israel situation in Gaza. 

When the so-called "leaders," like Hamas, would rather spend millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, to buy weapons and rockets to send into Israel to kill and maim her people along with their edict to destroy (push Israel into the sea) the Jewish state rather than buy food, create a better infrastructure, educate their populace and teach PEACE RATHER THAN HATE against Israel; how is it that the Jewish state and Christian Zionism is to be blamed for all of the Palestinian ills and the obvious plight of their people?

I did a brief search and found two opposing Christian opinions regarding Christian support for Israel and Zionism.

This first link is against Christian Zionism:

Media Monitors Network: Zionism versus the Bible

Admittedly, it would take me a lot of time to type out rebuttals to most of what the writer at Media Monitors Network says regarding his essay pitting Zionism against the Bible.  I will make a guess that this was written by a leftist.  For one thing, the spelling and grammatical errors are very apparent.  For another thing, his misuse of Scripture is quite evident.  Here is one example:

Zionists say, based on their non-literal, speculative, spiritualized interpretation of Genesis 12:3, that we are to give total, unquestioned support to some of Abraham’s children, while others of Abraham’s children are to be hated, persecuted, ethnically cleansed, bombed back into the Stone Age, maybe even nuked.

I do not know of any Christian Zionists who think like that or would agree with such a barbaric "solution." Fighting against Muslim terrorists is not the same thing as what this author incorrectly presupposes in his rant. And labeling all Christian Zionists under such a ridiculous label is a LIE. So much for the author's subheading at his blog that states, "...where truth prevails."

Yes. The author is entitled to his own opinion but labeling it as truth is another subject entirely.

He goes on to write:

But in Genesis 21:13, 17-18 God also bestows His blessing on Ishmael and his descendants, saying, "For I will make him a great nation." According to the same principles of interpretation by which we have made Genesis 12:3 a command for political support of the modern nation of Israel, Genesis 21:18 must be taken as a command for political support of the modern Arab nations. (Anybody want to start up a "Christian Ishmaelist" movement to lobby for Arab national greatness?)
 

Years ago, during the "Ismail Ax" writings discovered after the Virginia Tech murders, I wrote a blog post which included the difference in how God views Isaac vs. Ishmael.

In the Face of Evil Updates from Talk Wisdom:

If you scroll down, you will see "The TRUTH from the Bible (NKJV). I will share two excerpts of Scripture written there and a brief comment:

Gen 22:1 NOW it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."

Gen 22:2 Then He said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

Gen 22:3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

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Note what God says to Abraham in Genesis 22:2 -  "Then He said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac,"  YOUR ONLY SON!

Note what the Bible says about Ishmael (Ismail in Arabic):

Gen 17:19 Then God said: "No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

Gen 17:20 "And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.


Gen 17:21 "But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year."

Gen 17:22 Then He finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.

Notice that God's Covenant is established with Isaac and his descendants. Ishmael's descendants were only referred to as a "great nation."

The term "great" can mean both large and/or  wonderful.  We know that the Arab nation lands are hundreds of times larger than tiny Israel - which is a nation the size of New Jersey.  History can determine whether or not both meanings of the word "great" apply to the Arab descendants of Ishmael.

The following essay is written in support of Christian Zionism:

Jewish Virtual Library: Christian Zionism

Excerpt:

Christian Zionism can be defined as Christian support for the Zionist cause — the return of the Jewish people to its biblical homeland in Israel. It is a belief among some Christians that the return of Jews to Israel is in line with a biblical prophecy, and is necessary for Jesus to return to Earth as its king. These Christians are partly motivated by the writings of the Bible and the words of the prophets. However, they are also driven to support Israel because they wish to “repay the debt of gratitude to the Jewish people for providing Christ and the other fundamentals of their faith,” and to support a political ally, according to David Brog, author Standing With Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State.

 

Christian Zionists interpret both the Torah and the New Testament as prophetic texts that describe future events of how the world will one day end with the return of Jesus from Heaven to rule on Earth. Israel and its people are central to their vision. They interpret passages from the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Isaiah as foreshadowing the coming Christian era. The New Testament Book of Revelation is read by many Christians as a prophetic text of how the world will be in the End Times.

 

Christian support for Israel is not a recent development. Its political roots reach as far back to the 1880s, when a man named William Hechler formed a committee of Christian Zionists to help move Russian Jewish refugees to Palestine after a series of pogroms. In 1884, Hechler wrote a pamphlet called “The Restoration of Jews to Palestine According to the Prophets.” A few years later, he befriended Theodor Herzl after reading Herzl’s book The Jewish State, and joined Herzl to drum up support for Zionism. Hechler even arranged a meeting between Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II to discuss Herzl’s proposal to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. The two men remained close friends up until Herzl’s death in 1904.

 

An important milestone in the history of Christian Zionism occurred in 1979, almost a century after William Hechler approached Herzl and offered to mobilize Christian support for a Jewish state: the founding of the Moral Majority. Founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority was an organization made up of conservative Christian political action committees that succeeded in mobilizing like-minded individuals to register and vote for conservative candidates. With nearly six million members, it became a powerful voting bloc during the 1980s and was credited for giving Ronald Reagan the winning edge in the 1980 elections. One of the Moral Majority’s four founding principles was “support for Israel and Jewish people everywhere.”

 

In 1980, Falwell, who ran a television ministry that reached millions of viewers, said of Israel: “I firmly believe God has blessed America because America has blessed the Jew. If this nation wants her fields to remain white with grain, her scientific achievements to remain notable, and her freedom to remain intact, America must continue to stand with Israel.” Falwell disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989, but conservative Christians have remained vocal supporters of Israel though they lacked a strong formal structure for pro-Israel political action.

 

Christian Zionists, through their volunteer work, political support, and financial assistance to Israel and Jewish causes, have shown that they are stalwart friends of Israel. They have donated large sums of money to support Israel, including to charities that pay the costs of bringing Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia to Israel. For example, Pastor John Hagee has raised more than $4.7 million for the United Jewish Communities. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to help poor Jews across the world move to Israel.

Continue reading at Jewish Virtual Library: Christian Zionism

Hat tips to all links.

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Additional posts regarding Christian support for Israel:

Talk Wisdom: Where Do YOU Stand Regarding the Nation of Israel?

Talk Wisdom: True Friends of Israel

Talk Wisdom: Israel: Prayer, Support and Prophecy

Talk Wisdom: And the Criticism Goes On...And On...

Talk Wisdom: We Are Witnessing Biblical Prophecy

Election 2012: America's Next Crucial Date With Destiny

I am currently reading a book called "America's Dates With Destiny."  In the chapter "Declaration Of Independence Signed," we find out precisely what the motivation was behind the creators and signers of the document in declaring America's independence from King George III in England.

We can only imagine how furious the king was after receiving the document.  In fact, he dispatched Admiral Lord Howe on an emergency mission to Staten Island in order to demand that the declaration be revoked.  The king thought of himself so highly that the thought of "his subjects" in America refusing to obey the king's laws - by declaring their freedom from his tyranny - must have infuriated him!  What the king didn't realize is that the "subjects" in America were appealing to a higher law - the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

That phrase had a very specific meaning in the eighteenth century.  John Locke (1632-1704), the British philosopher, said it quite simply:

"The law of nature stands as an eternal rule of all men, legislators as well as others.  The rules that they make for other men's actions must... be conformable to the law of nature....i.e. to the will of God." (11)

Sir William Blackstone (1732-80), the great teacher of the English common law, wrote:

"Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being....And, consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker's will.  This will of his Maker, is called the law of nature." (12)
 

The book goes on to describe that one law of nature is gravity.  This could be described as "the will of God revealed in creation."  Gravity is a law written into the workings of this world by the Creator.  You don't have to believe in God to understand the law or to witness its power, but the law is there nevertheless, and breaking it results in immediate and sometimes painful consequences.

But King George had broken God's revealed law.  He had overstepped the limits of his authority established by God in the Scriptures and noted by the Magna Carta.  Again, using Locke and Blackstone as our guides, we might categorize those eternal laws that limit a ruler's power as the will of God revealed in Holy Scripture.  Blackstone wrote, "Upon these two foundations, the law of Nature and the law of Revelation, depend all human law; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these."  (13)

We can definitely see how far our government has strayed from the original intent of both the Declaration and our U.S. Constitution.  They have done so at the extreme detriment to our nation.  There is A LOT than needs to be fixed.  But even a new leader can't fix it all at once.  It took decades to get to this point of the brink of destruction that we face (financially, economically, morally, internationally, militarily, and especially spiritually) and the only leader who will solve it all is Jesus Christ at the time of his return.  Living in the future Millennium will show us what the ultimate temporal life is like - and will adhere to the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" perfectly!  Meanwhile, we suffer under imperfect (and, unfortunately, often evil) "leaders" due to the "god of this world" and his penchant for spreading relentless evil, sin, and death.  But there is hope eternal - and that rests ONLY in the Son of God - Jesus Christ!

Back to the book chapter.

We have already discussed the Declaration's source of our Liberty.  Next, we find the Unalienable Rights of Mankind.

"Then, in the second paragraph, they got down to some specifics of that law, beginning with these eight wonderful words:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."

Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and the others were about to list the great truths that led to the birth of our nation and to the eventual creation of a better kind of government.  Yet they told King George at the outset that those same truths with all their historic consequences were "self-evident" -- that is, they were plain, widely recognized, and needed no further proof or explanation.

Then they listed these obvious truths:

That all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these end, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.
 

The book goes on to ask the question:

And where did our forefathers find this basic list of unalienable human rights?  Again, they found them in the Bible.  God is the giver of life.  Moses said it in the Old Testament:  "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." (17)

God is the giver of liberty.  The Apostle Paul proclaimed it in the New Testament:  "Now the Lord is the Spirit:  and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."  (18)

And God is the giver of humanity's right  to pursuit happiness.  King Solomon wrote about the pursuit of happiness in his ancient book of wisdom:  "And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor--it is the gift of God."  (19)

The framers believed those basic rights were God-given.  They were not man-invented or state-granted.  And because those rights were from God, they were "unalienable."  They could not be sold, traded, or taken away.  Moses said it this way:

"God is not a man, that He should lie,...
Has He said, and will He not do it?
Or has He spoken,
and will He not make it good?" (20)

And Jesus Himself promised, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."  (21)

When God gives rights, they are forever.  The words of Scripture made that perfectly clear.  But the signers had also learned at their parents' knees that we live in a fallen world where sin and wickedness prevail.  Every new generation has its share of men and women who attempt to steal God-given rights from their neighbors.  Because of this threat, civil government was instituted by God to protect people's rights.  The Old Testament stories of those first kings of Israel gave our nation's forefathers the basis upon which to institute a more perfect government in this land.

The signers said it this way:  "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Scripture informs us that after rescuing his people from Pharaoh,  God wanted to lead the Israelites directly, through God-appointed prophets, priests, and elders to be His voice among the people.  But the people wanted a king "like other nations."  We learn through the prophet Samuel that human kings would misuse and abuse them. 

God warned, "And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen...."(22)  But the people refused to listen, so God said to Samuel, "Heed their voice, and make them a king." (23)

God loved his people and established a godly pattern (the Ten Commandments for example) for the kings too follow; urging them not to turn aside from the commandments.

The apostle Paul reaffirmed this godly pattern for all civil government when he wrote, "For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God...For [a ruler] is God's minister to you for good...[and] God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil." (25)

Let me stop here for a moment.  Do you see a similar pattern in the election of Barack Hussein Obama here in America?  Some of the people were clamoring for a "new kind of leader" who promised the moon, but gave us the horrible situation that we are in now due to the Obama administration's  lies, deceit, deception, corruption, and dismissal of God's Word!  During the frenzy of the 2008 election, signs of "hope and change" were everywhere.  And Obama gave speeches telling the people what they wanted to hear.  However, once he got into office the real roots of his rage [see the documentary 2016:  Obama's America] became so apparent that many former supporters of his are now totally against his re-election!

I think that God heard our fervent prayers during the 2010 mid-term election which helped stem the huge tide of destruction that was occurring against our nation!  The change in the House of Representatives stopped the avalanche of the liberal leftist agenda that was previously being heaped upon our nation and people. 

We now stand at the crossroads of whether we will continue spiraling down away from our God-given liberty and unalienable rights into a pit of doom and despair! 

It's your choice, America. 

Hopefully, enough of us will vote Obama out (while at the same time, do so overwhelmingly so as to overcome the voter fraud, deceit, and deception that we are seeing happening) and continue to PRAY TO GOD FOR OBAMA'S REMOVAL FROM OFFICE!!

The covenant between God, the king, and the people was simple.  The king would retain his office as long as he obeyed God and protected the unalienable rights of the people.  But if he failed and elevated his own good above the people's good, he would be removed from office.  The signers of the Declaration said it this way:  "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the  People to alter or to abolish it." (26)

Hat Tip:

Pat Roberson, America's Dates With Destiny,  (Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc., and distributed in Canada by Lawson Falle, Ltd., Cambridge, Ontario, 1986).  66-71

End notes:

(11)  John Locke, Second Treatise On Civil Government 77 (n.d.:  Liberal Arts Press, 1952).  Quoted by Dr. Herbert W. Titus in an unpublished work titled "The Christian Legacy of America's Declaration of Independence,"  CBN University.

(12)  I. W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (39; reprint Chicago:  University of Chicago, 1979).

(17)  Genesis 1:27.

(18)  Genesis 2:7.

(19)  2 Corinthians 3:17.

(20)  Numbers 22:19.

(21)  Matthew 24:35.

(22)  1 Samuel 8:18.

(23)  1 Samuel 8:22.

(25)  Romans 13: 1, 4.

(26)  S. E. Forman, ed., The Life and Writing of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis:  Bobbs, Merrill Co., 1900), 255-256.