I agree, with one caveat: What about the minority of Palestinian Arabs who are Christians? Currently, they receive no better treatment from Israel than the Muslims do. They are not suicide bombers. What will likely happen to them during the deportation?

My guess is that they would be deported too, because the observant Jews in Israel hate Christians for their proselytizing and conversion of a handful of nonobservant Jews from time to time.

Mr. Coleman forgets the close relations between Israel and American Christians, who are Israel’s strongest supporters in the world. Last year the press reported a group of visiting American Christians being addressed by Sharon. He said to the group, “You love us, and we love you.”

As for Jewish fears of proselytization, I don’t think there has exactly been a problem with Arab Christians proselytizing Israeli Jews!

Also, I don’t suppose even the most severe expulsion plan would include every single Arab. There would be many exceptions. However, it’s clear that many of the Israeli Arabs side with the “Palestinians” in seeking the destruction of Israel.

“Mr. Coleman forgets the close relations between Israel and American Christians, who are Israel’s strongest supporters in the world.”
********

Mr. Auster, don’t you think that is a bit of an overstatement? Certainly *most Protestant evangelical* Christians can be counted upon as Israel’s staunchest allies. But the Roman Catholic Church has a rather different attitude, as does the Orthodox Church. And “Palestinian Christians” are almost entirely Roman or Orthodox.

Paul is quite right. I meant, of course, Protestant evangelical Christians, not all Christians.

Correct, Paul.

Of course, one must remember the “most” that tempered your statement about Protestant evangelicals supporting Israel.

Here is one Protestant evangelical Christian who couldn’t care less about what happens between Israel and Palestine.

“Here is one Protestant evangelical Christian who couldn’t care less about what happens between Israel and Palestine.”

*******

But you must admit, Mr. Friedrich, that you are at odds with virtually all of Anglo-American Protestant/Puritan/Evangelical theological history, which has been philo-Semitic and greatly concerned with the fate of Israel since the time of Cromwell.

Mr. Friedrich wrote:

“Here is one Protestant evangelical Christian who couldn’t care less about what happens between Israel and Palestine.”

That is an extraordinarily crass statement, and I hope Mr. Friedrich will think the better of it. It’s not something that anyone should say. For example, I know very little about, and have no stake in, the conflict between Indians and Sri Lankans. Yet I would never say that “I couldn’t care less about what happens between Indians and Sri Lankans,” especially when “what happens” includes terrorist attacks.

It is possible that the only possible solution to the conflict in the Middle East is to expel the Arabs from Israel. I would hope that would not be necessary, but It would not bother me terribly. What does bother me is how neocons like Mr. Shapiro do not offer America the same choice in merely restricting who they will let into the country. In a column attacking Pat Buchanan, he writes

Buchanan holds immigrants in contempt. Not just illegal immigrants — even some who immigrate legally are not fit to be Americans in Buchanan’s eyes. In his book, “The Death of the West,” Buchanan writes that Mexican immigrants are problematic because they are “not only from another culture, but of another race,” and that “different races are far more difficult to assimilate than different cultures.” This is plain un-American. The color of your skin or the racial background of your parents should never disqualify you from becoming a true American. This is the most diverse nation on Earth, even if Buchanan would prefer that it not be. ( http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20030312.shtml )

Mr. Epstein is correct about the Jewish neocons’ double standard. But the correct way to respond to it is not to turn against Israel (since Israel is certainly not responsible for the neocons’ double standard), but to tell the neocons: “Israel has the right to preserve its national identity and integrity, and so does the United States.” Of course, they are quite blind on this point. Therefore one must keep sticking it in their faces, and not them them escape from it, until they respond.

I agree with Mr. Auster, here. Of course, it’s not just Israel these days. Last evening, Wm. Kristol was on CNN, demanding that the US move immediately to control Iraq’s borders. Just a couple of months ago, Fox News had him doing color commentary, goo-gooing, over the arrival of Haitian illegals literally washing ashore in Florida.

Mr. Auster: I mean that I do not care politically what happens in the Middle East. Certainly I care if Palestinians and Israelis kill each other. But I care about that on a personal level. On a political level, they can do whatever they please and, as I said, I couldn’t care less. And even though terrorism is involved…I don’t care, politically. The actions of those terrorists do not affect me or my country, as long as they keep their terrorism in the Middle East.

Paul: Perhaps. Certainly I put myself in opposition, on that one issue, to most Protestant mainstream evangelicals. But speaking as a Protestant evangelical Reformed Christian I wholeheartedly agree with the following quote from David Chilton:

“The god of Judaism is the devil. The Jew will not be recognized by God as one of His chosen people until he abandons his demonic religion and returns to the faith of his fathers - the faith which embraces Jesus Christ and His Gospel.”

I feel for the Israelis…they are fellow human beings. But I do not feel any political or religious connection with them, and therefore I don’t particularly care (in the political sense) what happens to them.

Mr. Auster, Paul Gottfried makes a similar point in his recent article in Chronicles Online, “Getting Israel Right” ( http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Gottfried/NewsPG082603.html )

Mr. Friedrich, I’m a Christian but that shocking quote you gave from David Chilton would make me feel I was further away from Christianity than the planet Neptune, if it represented Christianity. Luckily, it doesn’t.

This article reads almost like a parody of the preceding discussion:

http://www.americanoutlook.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=3015&pubtype=DailyArticles

The author suggests that we solve the Palestinian problem by having all the Palestinians emigrate to the United States.

I suggest that Mr. Friedrich read the book of Romans, chapters 9-11, very, VERY closely.

“The god of Judaism is the devil. The Jew will not be recognized by God as one of His chosen people until he abandons his demonic religion and returns to the faith of his fathers - the faith which embraces Jesus Christ and His Gospel”

Chilton.

“Yoy Gentiles are like branches of a wild tree that were made to be part of a cultivated olive tree. You have taken the place of some branches that were cut away from it. And because of this you enjoy the blessings that come from being part of that cultivated tree. But dont think you are better than the branches that were cut away. Just remember that you are not supporting the roots of that tree. Its roots are supporting you.”

Romans 11 vs 17 and 18.

Either Chilton is right and the Bible wrong, or the Bible right and Chilton wrong. Anyone want to take a guess as to which?

Mr Friedrich does not merely have a dofferent opinion to most Protestant/Evangelical Bible believing Christians. His opinion is un-Biblical heresy.

What is it about traditionalist forums that attracts all these Jew haters?

I had missed Mr. Friedrich’s quote about the God of the Jews being “the devil” until just now, 12:30 a.m. Of course, no Christian could believe such a thing, only some weird gnostic or Jew-hating sect. So now we understand where his earlier remark, “I couldn’t care less about what happens between Israel and Palestine,” was really coming from. I knew there was something more in that comment than a simple lack of interest in mideast affairs.

Meanwhile Shawn asks: “What is it about traditionalist forums that attracts all these Jew haters?” Now, Shawn has recently told us that he does not see himself as a traditionalst, which is fine, and perhaps there’s a implied criticism there of VFR as well as of Mr. Friedrich. But it occurs to me that the way we attract certain types to VFR is sort of like the way our armed forces in Iraq are attracting Jihadists and terrorists: we bring them out into the open and expose them.

Mr. Friedrich was quoting Chilton who was quoting Martin Luther, I believe. It is not a sentiment that I agree with, but it should be taken in its historical context. Modern Christians will sometimes (and sometimes not, certainly) take it simply as an expression of the falseness of non-Christian religion. Mr. Friedrich will have to explain himself, of course.

I would like to point out, however, that much of the Evangelical Christian support for Israel is based on Apocalypse ideology that is hardly respectful of Judaism as a religion.

Thrasymachus’s statement deserves a response from another Evangelical Christian. Apologies if it is lengthy, but it is intended for those who have a peculiar interest in the subject.

Christianity by its very definition pronounces condemnation on all who reject Jesus Christ as God’s Son and man’s Saviour. No one is exempted from this.

The history of God’s dealings with the Jewish people form the bulk of the Biblical record. The Diaspora which the Jews have known for over 1900 years, only lately finding the beginnings of relief, was prophesied long before the coming of Messiah.

God sent the people into captivity, the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians, and the Southern Kingdom, (Judah,) by the Babylonians for reasons enumerated clearly, comprising a sorry list of the worst sins a people can commit. The Babylonian captivity lasted a mere 70 years before a remnant of Judah, (and presumably representatives of the Ten Tribes,) were given to return to the land, rebuild the City and Temple, and the walls of Jerusalem.

The sins for which they were taken captive are mostly absent during the First Century A.D. Yet in A.D. 70, the Second Temple was destroyed, the City leveled, and all but a very few among those who escaped death deported throughout the Empire. Without the Temple, the Mosaic worship essentially ceased. The question of why this occured has been a matter for much agonizing.

To the Christian the reason is clear. As Jesus Himself lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that the killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” (Matt 23:37-39) He then immediately proceeded to foretell the destruction of the Second Temple.

Evangelical Christian support of Israel is based on the fact that God told Abraham, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all nations of the earth be blessed.” This holds regardless other prophetic considerations.

As to the prophetic issues, it is based on the belief that God will yet restore the Jewish people and they shall recognize Jesus whom they had forsaken. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” (Zech 12:2-10)

The Christian’s recognition that the Jews largely remain in rejection of their King does not excuse disrespect for God’s Covenant people. So it is one thing to say that “Apocalypse ideology” does not respect the religion — in fact, it embraces a recognition that God has preserved this people and their identity, (and has already brought Israel back among the nations of the earth.) This stands in contrast to the “Replacement Theology” embraced for so long by Roman Catholic and many Protestants alike, which Luther was apparently swayed by, which respected neither Judaism nor the Jews.

Very few held otherwise until recently, J.N. Darby and the so-called Plymouth Brethren are one exception. They boldly asserted in the mid-1800’s that Israel would indeed rise again as a nation. They and others were laughed to scorn for this of course, but no one’s laughing about it now. A few have even ‘modified’ their position, now acknowledging the ongoing validity of God’s Coventant with the Jews, though certain among them still refuse to fully concede Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, and have even entertained the unspeakable Arafat.

But a straightforward Biblical reading gives every reason to respect the Jews, to pray for them and support them as best we can as a testimony to Christ, leaving to God to work out His perfect plan. As Paul said, noting that the rejection of Christ is ironically what brought salvation to the world:

“I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? … For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? … For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved.” (Rom 11)

This thread is why I frequent VFR: a reasonable, informed discussion of the issues. As I’ve stated elswwhere, I’m not Christian; howver one will find no better defender of the faith as one of the pillars of our civilization. I suppose I’m a God-fearer or an Old Testament believer. Regardless, I thought this bit of Scripture was appropriate. (I quote the Authorized Version, still the undisputed heavyweight champion of English Bible tranlations.)

Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.

Zechariah 8:23

Joel and Adam, thank you so much for those explanations and those really sublime Bible quotations! Those are just the thing to strengthen me for the rest of my day!

Joel, I do not know that “Replacement Theology” should be brushed aside so easily, especially in view of Paul’s argument in Galatians chapter 3. But understanding the nature of the ‘Kingdom’ is a fundamental problem, especially concerning the apostle’s views in Acts 1:6, and reconciling them with the nature of the ‘Kingdom’ in the Gospels, the later writings of Paul, and its mention in James 2:5.

Regardless, Paul sets the right note when he says “And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews… I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” I do not find this attitude compatible with disrespect.

Asked to explain myself, I will.

What I believe the quote means is this…

The god of any pagan (non-Christian) is to be condemned. That’s very clear. But the god of the Jews is, in a way, to be condemned even more harshly. After all, it is the Jews who bear responsibility for Christ’s death and it is the Jews who, after thousands of years of awaiting the Messiah and worshipping the one true God, rejected Jesus Christ. One could argue that the sin of the Jews is greater than the sin of the average pagan.

Does this mean we’re to hate Jews? No, not at all. For one thing, most people who hate Jews hate Jews for their ethnicity…not their religion. I don’t hate Jews, but I do condemn their religion…but no their ethnicity.

And yes, I do believe that ultimately the Jews as a people will be redeemed by Christ. But until they are redeemed, and as long as they continue to worship their god and reject Jesus Christ (if you reject Jesus, you reject God, because Jesus is God…you cannot, like the Jews, worship God the Father alone) it will continue to be true that the god they worship is the devil.

If what I said was taken to mean that I desire to see the destruction of the nation we currently call Israel, or to see the destruction of the Jewish people, then no, that’s not what I meant at all.

If the Jews worship the Father alone, and not our Christian Trinity, then your statement that “the god they worship is the devil” equates to “The Father alone, separated from the Son and the Holy Spirit, is the devil.”

I would say, rather, that to know the Father alone is to have an incomplete knowledge of God. You might want to consider that, in the Old Testament scriptures, there were hints at the Trinity, looking back from a Christian perspective, but it could hardly be said that the doctrine was spelled out. Had God wanted every Jew to have an explicit conception of the Trinity, He could have inspired the prophets to write directly about it.

Thus, there can be little doubt that many great prophets, priests, kings, etc. of the Old Testament had nothing like the Trinitarian conception that we have today in Christianity. To fail to grasp this concept when it is finally and fully revealed is sad from our Christian viewpoint, but it does not leave Jews worshiping the devil.

That is, IF words still have any meaning and are not just vessels of hyperbole.

Mr. Coleman: The Father alone, separated from the Son and the Holy Spirit, is not the revealed God of the Bible. Certainly, in the Old Testament the Trinity was not fully revealed (to my knowledge). Yet we are living in a post-New Testament era when it is inexcusable for anyone, most especially the Jews, to reject Christ and the Trinitarian God.

Beyond that, I don’t intend to spend more time on this particular thread. I merely wanted to do as Thrasymachus insisted I do and explain myself. I also wanted to clear myself of the charge of heresy. I believe I’ve done the first adequately, and I hope I have succeeded in the second.

“Israel has the right to preserve its national identity and integrity, and so does the United States.”

If this is the case, then why didn’t the Palestinian Arabs have a similar right between 1917 and 1948 to preserve their national identity and integrity, and to block Jewish immigration? While Britain was the power administering the Palestine mandate during that time, the theory of the mandatory system, as set up in the Covenant of the League of Nations was that the mandatory power was to administer the mandate for the benefit of its inhabitants. It is no answer to say that the League granted the Palestine mandate to Britain in order to implement the Balfour Declaration, since the League had no authority to violate its own Covenant. (And in any event, even if the League had the legal right to do so, it would have been wrong of them to force the Arabs to accept massive immigration that would result in their becoming strangers in their own country. After all, isn’t that the reason for objecting to massive Hispanic immigration into the southwest United States?)

Another poster referred to the proposal that Palestinian Arabs emigrate to the United States. A far better suggestion would be that all the Israelis immigrate to the U.S. They are far more likely to be assimilable than the Arabs (except the Christian Arabs). I’ll go even farther and say that the world would have been a far better place if the Jews who came to Palestine in the aftermath of World War II had instead come to the United States. At the time, people said that the experience of the Holocaust proved that the Jews needed their own state in order to be secure. Can anyone deny that the Jews would have been more secure today in the United States (even taking into account such things as the Crown Heights pogrom of a few years back) than they have been in Palestine? Or that the history of the Middle East would have been more peaceful if the State of Israel wasn’t there?

And, please, let’s not hear the argument that “every other people has a national homeland; it’s anti-semitic to deny the Jews theirs.” In point of fact, there are plenty of people who don’t have their own national homeland—gypsies, Sikhs, Copts, and Assyrians, to name a few—and nobody thinks there’s a moral obligation to provide them one. Moreover, I suspect there are few Americans prepared to set aside of a portion of, say, Florida as a national home for such a people, and to permit massive immigration and ultimately the establishment of an independent gypsy, Sikh, Coptic, or Assyrian state on that land. And while it would be wrong for the Americans to react to the immigration with violence (comparable to the Hebron pogrom of 1920), that wouldn’t affect the justice of the American determination to keep Florida American. So why shouldn’t the Palestinian Arabs have been permitted to keep their own country? (And it doesn’t help to argue that the Palestinians have all the rest of the Arab world to live in, any more than it would help if Americans living in Florida were told that they could move to anywhere else in the United States.)

The flaw in Seamus’ reasoning is that the refusal to take a stand on the basis of race, ethno-culture, and religion leads to a form of nihilism.

Just as there is no way to deduce morality purely logically — so that we must have recourse at least partly to religious faith in order to be able to apprehend it — in like manner, there is no way to decide the *ultimate justice* of certain kinds of national land disputes, and instead of trying to decide which disputant is favored by “ultimate justice” (which is not knowable in these cases) we must either choose whom we support based, for example, on who is most closely related to ourselves, or we are condemned to go round and round in circles of ever more meaningless nihilistic moral-equivalency arguments amounting to “everything equals everything else” — i.e., no distinctions exist, good and evil don’t exist but are arbitrary illusions, there’s no such thing as meaning; finally we arrive at the inanimate’s being the same as the animate and death the same as life, and we are staring the Buddhist void in the face — an acceptance of meaninglessness in the final abyss.

Rather than go this route which leads straight to nihilism and ultimately to our own annihilation, let us acknowledge and affirm our preference (not without limit, naturally, but always within certain bounds of humanity and morality) for those who are the more closely related to us — provided of course they have just as valid a claim as others. (If they don’t, then we must support the others.)

If our racial, spiritual, cultural brethren stake a claim which is as reasonable and as legitimate as the claims of others, let us support our racial, spiritual, cultural brethren. There simply is no other way to decide these issues.

It seems to me that Unadorned gets it exactly backwards. His advice to just support our racial, spiritual, or cultural brethren, not the attempt to seek impartial justice, looks to me more like the path that leads to nihilism. His advice sounds like “My country (or my race, or my religion, or my culture), right or wrong.” It amounts to a claim that the natural law does not obligate me to respect the rights of people of other races, religions, or cultures.

And if he wants to play that game and say that I should support the claims of my “racial, spiritual, [and] cultural brethren [who] stake a claim which is as reasonable and as legitimate as the claims of others,” then I have to support the claims of my fellow Catholics in the Holy Land, which means Palestinian Arabs like His Beatitude Michel Sabbah. Catholics (and other Christians) have had a continuous presence in the Holy Land since the time of Our Lord, and their claim to the land is certainly “as reasonable and as legitimate as the claims of” Jews who came to the Holy Land only in the past 100 years (notwithstanding the fact that the ancestors of those Jewish immigrants may have been there some 1700 years earlier).

The State of Israel has had a baleful destabilizing influence on Christian communities throughout the Middle East. In Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Israel authorities have been directly hostile to the Christians whose ancestors have been there for centuries (see, e.g., http://www.khsnsw.org/decimation_of_palestinians_christians.htm). Moreover, the very existence of Israel in the Holy Land has inspired Arab states to become more explicitly Moslem, and hence much less hospitable to the minority Christian populations throughout the Middle East. Consider the fact that Egypt, before the establishment of the State of Israel, was about 30% Christian (Coptic). I don’t have exact percentages, but the Christian minority in Iraq was similarly much larger than it is now. In 1948, over 18% of the population of the Holy Land was Christian; now, it is less than 2%. In 1922, Jerusalem was 51% Christian. Today, it is less than 2%. Bethlehem was a Christian city from the time of the Roman Empire until very recently (as much as 80% Christian after World War II); now, it is predominantly Moslem, as the Christians, caught between Moslems and Jews, have emigrated.

As a Christian, it outrages me that my co-religionists are being driven out of their homelands. I have no wish to see the Church in the Holy Land reduced to a token presence, like that of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople. Unadorned, on the other hand, seems untroubled by this prospect, as long as it’s the Israelis doing the driving out. If he is Jewish, then his support for his co-religionists against the native Christians is at least comprehensible, given his refusal to consider objective justice. What I don’t understand, though, is how he can expect Christians to take the same side.

Regarding the Seamus-Unadorned discussion, as I understand it, the major moral claim the Zionists made for Palestine as the “Jewish Homeland” was that the particular piece of land in question had been given to their ancestors by God, a concept supported by many apocalyptic evangelicals in the U.S. and rejected by Arabs who had lived in Palestine for generations, and by some Orthodox Jews at the time. (The film “The Chosen” does a beutiful job of showing the conflict within the American Jewish community over the formation of the state of Israel.)

My question is: how does this relate to the American Indians when the pioneers pushed westward under the concept of Manifest Destiny, that is, under the concept that the descendants of white Europeans had been given this land by God? The attitude of most whites concerning the Indians at the time was to contain them, remove them, or eliminate them. All of these methods were practiced until the Indians were finally overwhelmed.
Is there a parallel with Palestine?

“Zionism is a modern national liberation movement whose roots go far back to Biblical times. Its purpose is to return to the Jewish people the independence and sovereignty which are the right of every people. The Jews lost that independence and sovereignty in the Judaeo-Roman war two thousand years ago.

ZIONISM differs from other national Liberation movements in its point of departure. Whereas other movements arose among peoples who, though oppressed and exploited, continued to live on their own land, Zionism had to cope with Jewry’s unique position in the world: homelessness and exile.

This movement sought to introduce a fundamental change in the geo-demographic position of Jewry in the world. It meant the transfer of a whole people back to its home, the land of Israel. Palestine has never been a state with a separate identity except in the minds of the Jews — in their prayers, in their historical memory, in their hopes, and national ideology. It is the Jews, and the Jews alone, who lent a special status and gave political, religious and cultural identity to that land. For all other people who occupied the land, Palestine was merely a piece of their empire. This was the case for Rome, Byzantium, and Ottoman. Even for the Crusaders, Palestine was an extension of Christian Europe.”

Professor Robert Rockaway

Jews have always lived in Israel. It is not simply a case that they were expelled and then returned. Jewish people have the longest continual presence in Israel and are the only people to have exercised national sovereignty over the land. Moreover, their claim to the land is based on a Covenant with G-d, and is not simply an expression of ethnic ownership.

While Christians have an understandable relationship to the land as well, and many have lived there for centuries, they have no claim to sovereignty.

Seamus blames the liberation of Israel for the demise of Christian communities in the Middle East, but this is false. If Israel’s liberation brought out Islamic antagonism towards Christians, it brought out an antagonism that was always there, even if below the surface. If Israel had not been liberated, the Muslims would, sooner or later, have found another excuse. Islam by its very nature is an imperialist and expansionist religious ideology, and it has always been the dream of the Islamic world to conquer the Christian West. Merely because they allowed Eastern Christians to live as second-class citizens within Muslim lands does not mean that they sooner or later would not have turned on them, especially as their conflict with the Christian West intensifies. I recently had the opportunity to talk with a Coptic priest, a Father Suriel. He described to me the horrific persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt by Muslims, and made it clear that this persecution had been ongoing for centuries. Such persecution could not be blamed on Israel.

And if Seamus did not want any negative consequences for Christian communities in the Middle East from Israel’s liberation, then perhaps Christians should have thought about that before subjecting Jews to 1500 years of persecution, pogroms and genocide. Until recently in America, Jews were not safe in any European/Western country, a fact that inspired the modern Zionist movement in the first place.

Most “Palestinians” are in fact Muslim Arabs. They have no claim to one inch of any of the land west of the Jordan River, and Israel should expel them all as soon as possible.

Shawn, if you are going to make Covenants with God the justifying principle for sovereignty, then you cannot dismiss the Christian claim so easily. For, according to Paul, “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise…And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

I am no expert on Muslim theology, but I wonder if they have no similar divine right to the land.

My point is not to argue whose religion is true, but only to point out that basing a claim on your religion may only be persuasive to people of your own religion. And were this argument to turn into a religious one instead of a political one, I would be forced to call for a Crusade to liberate the Holy Land for the persecuted Christians living there.

Shawn quotes Professor Rockaway to the effect that Zionism’s “purpose is to return to the Jewish people the independence and sovereignty which are the right of every people.” But, as I observed in an earlier post, independence and sovereignty are *not* the right of every people. Or maybe Shawn believes that the gypsies, Sikhs, Copts, and Assyrians are all entitled to independence and sovereignty. If so, is he willing to have any of them take over his neighborhood and establish their independent and sovereign state there? After all, the gypsies/Sikhs/Copts/Assyrians would only be taking over a small part of the United States, and there would be plenty of land left in the United States for him to move to. If he objects that he is attached to his particular home town, then perhaps he will understand why Christian and Moslem Palestinians were attached to their particular home towns (e.g., Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Deir Yassin), and resented being forced to move to Beirut, or Damascus, or Dearborn. (And if he’s going to go on about how the Land of Israel is particularly sacred to the Jews, entitling them to expel the Arabs, then he shouldn’t object if he and his neighbors are expelled from their neighborhood to make room for American Indians whose ancestors used to live there and who regard it as sacred to them.

“For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise…And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”—The Apostle Paul

Isn’t it true that the Jews were a branch that was cut away…because they rejected Christ? If that’s the case, then they would no longer be considered Abraham’s seed, would they? For you are Abraham’s seed if you are Christ’s. Jews are not Christ’s.

I’m checking in from a public library in upstate New York and am enjoying reading the discussion.

Seamus is incorrect and Robert Rockaway and Shawn are correct. The Zionist movement was not based on God’s Biblical coventant with Israel, but on the historic fact of the Jewish people’s connection with that land, of their being the only people to have had a nation on that land since ancient times, and on the fact that Jews had maintained a continuous presence in that land from ancient to modern times. Also, from the 1840s onward, 60 years before the modern Zionist movement, Jews comprised the majority of the population of Jerusalem. Add on top of that the insight Herzl had at the time of the Dreyfus affair, the insight that gave birth to the modern Zionist movement: that the Jews would never be safe in Europe, and as a matter of simple survival needed their own homeland. That prophetic thought was confirmed by Nazism only 40 years later.

For Seamus to blame on the Jews the Muslims’ expulsion of Christians from Arab lands really takes the cake. Truly, for some people, everything that goes wrong anywhere always ends up being the fault of the Jews.

“Shawn, if you are going to make Covenants with God the justifying principle for sovereignty, then you cannot dismiss the Christian claim so easily. For, according to Paul, “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise…And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.””

Except that I can and do dismiss the claim, as do all Jews. Jews do not accept the Christian scriptures as valid, therefore we do not accept any Chritian claim to soveriegnty within Israel as valid.

This is not to say that Christians cannot and should not live their. I for one would certainly stand up for allowing Christians to continue to live in Israel, especially those Christians who have lived there for hundreds of years. But they live their by the blessing of the Jewish people alone, and not be any right.

“Zionism’s “purpose is to return to the Jewish people the independence and sovereignty which are the right of every people.” But, as I observed in an earlier post, independence and sovereignty are *not* the right of every people. Or maybe Shawn believes that the gypsies, Sikhs, Copts, and Assyrians are all entitled to independence and sovereignty.”

As far as I am aware gypsies do not and never have had a national homeland, so I do not think their example is valid. Jews do, and always have had a national homeland, called Israel.

I cannot speak to Assyrians and Sikhs, as I do not know enough about their particular histories, but I do indeed think the Copts have their own national homeland. It’s called Egypt, and I would fully support the Copts expelling the Arab/Muslim invaders from their land.

“And if he’s going to go on about how the Land of Israel is particularly sacred to the Jews,”

It is not a matter of it being “pariticularly sacred”. This is a ludicrous way to put the Jewish understanding of Eretz Yisrael. The land of Israel was given to the Jews, in total, by G-d. Jewish soveriegnty over Israel is by G-ds decree. This is not a matter of their being a few sites of religious import, is is a matter of soveriegnty, a soveriegnty established by G-d. There is no comparison to this anywhere else in the world.

As to the Arabs (there is no such thing as a “palestinian”, the concept of a seperate “palestinian” people and land is a con job invented by the Arabs after 1947 to justify their imperialist warmongering against Israel) having some attachement to parts of Israel, they should have thought about that before choosing to wage war against Israel in the first place. By 1), waging wars against Israel, and 2)choosing the use of terrorism, they have forfieted any and all rights to one inch of Israel. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

In less than fifty years France, Spain, Italy, Holland and Britian will have Muslim populations approaching 30, 40 and even 50 percent. While Arab Muslims in Israel milk gullible Westerners and Catholic/Orthodox Christians for sympathy, their co-religionists are invading your own lands. Before long great swathes of the heart of Christendom will be under Muslim control and under Sharia law. Already they are carving up Serbia and Macedonia (with NATO and U.N help to boot!), and yet some Christians whine about the “rights” of “palestinians”. This would be laughable were it not so tragic.

Christians need to wake up. NO Muslim is your friend. Their intentions are to conquer the world by any means necessary. While some deluded Christians argue for the “rights” of Muslim invaders in Israel, they are building Mosques, breeding, and making converts in Europe and the Americas.

Shawn, that is why I went on to write “My point is not to argue whose religion is true, but only to point out that basing a claim on your religion may only be persuasive to people of your own religion.”

Thrasy, on completely non-religious grounds it is the Jewish people of the world who have the most legitimate claim to the Holy Land. That’s on completely non-religious grounds. The religious grounds only strengthen a claim which already needs no strengthening — and these particular religious grounds are by themselves uniquely powerful and incontrovertible in the history of the world. The Zionist claim to Palestine overwhelms that of any other people in its legitimacy.

By “non-religious grounds,” of course, I mean pertaining to the historical Jewish nation, whether or not you yourself actually believe the religious article of faith that God gave them the land. (Needless to point out, by the term “religious grounds” I mean belief in the religious tenet that God did bequeath to them the land.)

On either of those grounds, their claim is stronger than any other people’s — which is only all the more reason we, their white-Euro-Christian racial, spiritual, and cultural brethren (and our non-white brethren who find themselves attached to us and to our Euro-Christian culture, such as the traditional American Negro Community) should support what already, on non-racial, non-spiritual, non-cultural grounds was far and away the world’s most compelling claim to that land.

Unadorned: Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Land changes hands over and over again. The Israelis may have a claim to the land, but so also do a multiplicity of other peoples who have lived there in the past. And…arguing on completely non-religious grounds…why shouldn’t I just look at the situation and say, “Well, the Israelis lost Israel. Things like that happen in this world. The American Indians lost America. The Welsh lost Wales. The Canaanites lost Canaan. Why, therefore, should my contention be that the Israelites used to have Israel and so they should have it once again?”

Certainly, if the Israelis have Israel now then they have every right to keep it. But if they lose it…then they’ve lost it as they have before, and as a great many peoples have lost their lands before.

Unadorned: Unless I’ve missed it in this discussion, then what you’ve done is to prove that, if we support anyone, we should support Israel. But I don’t think you’ve proven why we should be supporting Israel.

Perhaps the Israelite’s claim is one of the strongest in the world. Perhaps the Israelite’s have every right to keep Israel. But why is that the concern of American citizens? Why should we be involved in helping the Israelites keep Israel?

It may be true that if we help anyone, we should help the Israelites. But why should we help anyone?

Basically, from an isolationist viewpoint, why should we help Israel? And, though I am an isolationist, I’m not presently arguing the viewpoint in its application to any nation but Israel.

I do not know so much about legitimacy of land claims, Unadorned. I do not even know a great deal about whether a state can be “moral” or not in its actions. I do think that an individual can be moral or immoral in his actions.

In the first half of the last century, a lot of people in that area fled their homes and were replaced by another group of people, many of whom were fleeing their own homes. From what I know, some acted morally, some did not. It was a great tragedy for many people. It was a wonderful chance for a new life for others. In the end, it was military power that decided the outcome, as it always does.

Today, those who inhabit Israel are a people who for the most part did not live during that war, and were born and have their homes in that place. They are spiritually attached to the land. They want peace and safety for their people, and the only moral course they have is to protect that peace and safety. Giving up the land is a silly thing to ask for, and would be intolerable for any people. Any people that could display such self-sacrifice could not survive.

Right next to them, are people living in the occupied territories under intolerable conditions for any group of men. Their leadership is intolerable, their poverty is intolerable, and their humiliation by foreign soldiers is intolerable. Also their humiliation at having lost their land is intolerable. They are desperate, and can be expected to act desperately. What is the correct moral course for an individual there? That is a harder question than it is for Israelis, but I would think that it would be for a man to attempt to the best of his abilities to better his people. That they will not give up as a people is as much a given as it is for the Israelis.

However, it is not morality but power that decides the future of states. And that equation is clear enough.

Now who do I support?

That is a harder question. I suppose that I will answer it by saying that I see no way that my support for either side will in any way lessen the tragedy that is playing out for so many people in that region. And I see no debt on my part that obligates me to support either side. When I think to my own people, I can only see dangers for us in getting involved. If there is some neutral way to speed the way to some peaceful accommodation, then I support such a thing.

Thrasy wrote,

“Now whom do I support? That is a harder question.”

Harder for him, maybe.

Was the West as a whole diminished by the fall of Constantinople? Or was that a matter of complete indifference to it? If it was diminshed, why was it?

Was it good for the West as a whole when Charles Martel finally stopped the unstoppable Moorish advance at the Battle of Tours and drove them back to Spain, and when Ferdinand and Isabella took Spain back from them seven centuries later? If these were good for the West, why were they?

Did the West as whole benefit in more recent times when the Turkish advance into the heart of Europe was driven back at the gates of Vienna? If so, why?

Is Israel — is Jerusalem — part of the West? Foolish question: if Christianity is, then you have your answer. Europe and Jerusalem are bound together in a marriage that cannot be put asunder — a two-thousand-year wedlock that cannot be broken.

As the West was diminished by the fall of Constantinople and was benefitted on those occasions when its parts were preserved, so it would be both, were either of those outcomes to befall another of its parts: Jerusalem.

(For the record, by the way, I’m Catholic. Someone — I forget who or where, exactly — wondered in a recent thread if I was Jewish.)

Mr. Friedrich wrote,

” … [I]f the Israelis have Israel now, they have every right to keep it. [Thanks so much for that, Mr. Friedrich!] But if they lose it, they’ve lost it as they did before, and as a great many peoples have lost their lands before.”

They aren’t about to lose it militarily except if some maniac Muslim leader like Rafsanjani carpets them with A-bombs, as he threatened to do in a speech.  (Of course, they’ll take him with them.)

They could lose it by attrition, though — the Israelis have their fair share of leftists and liberals, thanks to whom this could well happen.

“Unadorned, … [you seem to feel that,] if we support anyone, we should support Israel. But I don’t think you’ve proven why we should be supporting Israel.”

I support Israel. And, were I an Israeli, I’d definitely support the Likud party. But I respect the opinions of people who feel they have no preference in the matter. I respect Prof. Chomsky’s view, for example, though I disagree. What I do not respect are people who apply one standard to Israel and another to this country. Examples would be Pat Buchanan on the one hand, and Abe Foxman — along with many Jewish neo-cons — on the other. I respect views like Chomsky’s (though I strongly disagree), but I don’t respect theirs.

” … Why should we be involved in helping the Israelites keep Israel? It may be true that if we help anyone, we should help the Israelites. But why should we help anyone? Basically, from an isolationist viewpoint, why should we help Israel?”

Mr. Friedrich can count on one thing: what we’re doing is restraining Israel from conquering more territory. That’s the role we’re playing there. Israel doesn’t need our help. The surrounding Arab countries need a restraining American hand on Israel. Were we not part of the picture, Israel today would be physically five times as big, at LEAST — and a hell of a lot more secure.

Unadorned, you are right about the importance of Jerusalem. And I think that it is a fine thing for the Holy City to at least have a Western government. If I thought that Israel was in any danger of actually being destroyed and her people slaughtered, I would have a different viewpoint from what I have already expressed. It is not in danger, however — excepting the long term demographic picture for now — and it is the Palestinians who will do the majority of any dying that needs to be done. When the various politicians try to stir up support for Israel by talking about its destruction, they are being disingenuous. Remember that a great deal of money is at stake in the equation. In my view, Israel can take care of itself just like South Korea and Germany — neither of whom I would like to see fall.

I just realized that I called the Israelis “Israelites” in my comment above.

Unadorned: Thanks for your comment. I disagree that we should be supporting Israel, but your response was certainly as reasonable as I can expect from someone I disagree with. And no, I’m not going to voice my disagreements…I don’t know a lot about this particular issue, and I find it best to just attempt to understand your position.

You said, “What I do not respect are people who apply one standard to Israel and another to this country.” What do you mean when you speak of people who apply “another [standard] to this country]”?

Pieter, I meant the approval of patriotism, nationalism, or efforts to preserve ethno-cultural integrity for only one of the two, and not the other. 

Pat Buchanan strongly disapproves of nationalism for Israel (as it has been expressed in Sharon-Administration policies and in other ways) but strongly approves of it for the U.S.  A great many Jewish neo-cons who have absolutely no quarrel with the deliberate preservation of the ethno-cultural integrity of Israel go into hysterics when the same is proposed for this country (or for the countries of Europe). (I strongly approve it for this country, for Israel, and for the countries of Europe individually.)

Prof. Chomsky, who opposes nationalism and measures aimed at ethno-cultural self-preservation for both the U.S. and Israel, is not being inconsistent.  (I disagree with Chomsky’s views but do not criticize him for hypocrisy, which he hasn’t been guilty of.)    

I just wish to add, if I may, that — as Mr. Auster has pointed out — the hypocrisy of the American Jewish neo-cons isn’t the fault of the Israelis, who know nothing about that particular phenomenon, and have naught whatsoever to do with it.

I think some Americans who are bitter about neo-con hypocrisy sort of take it out on Israel in their minds and in their political opinions. They should take it out on neo-cons, not on Israel. Israel is innocent. It is a part of the West which is struggling to preserve itself (an extremely important part of the West, as everyone knows), and as such deserves our FULL support. Israel and Israelis have done nothing wrong, and are NOT the same as the irritating neo-cons. (It’s also true, of course, that many of the most irritating neo-cons in this regard — such as the extremely irritating Chris Weisskopf, for example, who, unless I’m mistaken, is Catholic — are not Jews but Christians.) (*)

Now, speaking hypothetically, if there were a country peopled exclusively by American Jewish neo-cons who warmly supported for their own country the ethnic and nationalistic measures they hysterically opposed for ours, I personally wouldn’t favor helping their country, but would prefer teaching them a richly-deserved lesson by letting them stew in their own hypocritical juice. But that’s not Israel.

Never forget: the Israelis aren’t the same as American Jewish neo-cons, but are instead more like ordinary Americans. They’ve done nothing wrong and deserve our full support. Their claim to their country and land is sound, moral, and better than anyone else’s in the world.

( * If I’m wrong about Weisskopf, no matter — there are plenty of others I could name.)

Excuse me: I meant Chris Weinkopf, not Weisskopf, of course (a former editor at David Horowitz’s always excellent web-zine, www.FrontPageMag.com, whose stuff still appears there). Weinkopf has complained about all sorts of deterioration that has taken place in LA over the past dozen or so years, while extremely irritatingly refusing to acknowledge the connection between all that and excessive incompatible immigration, which he has ardently defended, shallowly and meanly attacking its critics.

Yes, Weinkopf wrote a piece in frontpagemag in the fall of 2000 attacking people who favored curbing immigration. Then a few months later, Weinkopf whined that the LA electorate was too left-wing. Where does he think these leftist voters came from?

See Mr. Shapiro’s townhall.com column of August 13. He tells us that only a liberal Republican like Schwarzenegger can carry California, particularly the hispanic vote. “Conservatives” can’t win for now. Well, why is that? The neocons complain that the California electorate is “too liberal.” Then they favor bringing in more of the same through open borders.

Expulsion is impractical, because it would greatly increase the number of aggrieved refugees without significantly affecting the will of the militants to fight or the support of the population for the militants. Indeed, it would supplement the population of pseudo-refugees—who are largely descendants of people who voluntarily fled Israel on the advice of the Arab leadership—with genuine victims of the first deliberate mass Israeli expulsion. Only a convincing military defeat of the Palestinians followed by the exercise of undisputed Israeli sovereignty over the disputed territory, including a “de-Nazification” of the Palestinians, will lead the Palestinians to make their peace with Israel and no longer be used as pawns by Arab nationalists.

Expulsion may be the only solution to the demographic problem, but it is not a solution to the military problem.

This “de-Nazification” though, I do not exactly see how you would go about doing it. I think that the word may have been chosen for its Orwellian values more than its practicality. The Nazi movement was never as deep a part of German culture as hatred for Israel is part of Palestinian culture. Besides, it was a movement with symbols, texts, and a specific political organization. Nationalism is a bit harder to get rid of. And Palestinian Nationalism will always be intensely anti-Israel. I think better parallels for the actions that you are suggesting will come from European colonialism. Those actions had mixed results, however, and I think that the twentieth century proved that no democracy has the staying power to undertake those sorts of projects with the necessary ruthlessness.

I also wonder what a convincing military victory over the Palestinians would look like over and above what has been going on these past couple of years.

I appreciate Thrasymachus’ hesitation, but neither Palestinian nationalism nor the modern state of Israel go back very far. It should therefore be possible for the Palestinians to become disillusioned with pursuing their claims rather than living peacefully in Israel.

I probably should not have volunteered any thoughts on this subject; such kibitzing is of little use to those who will pay the price for whatever course events take, but the issue involves the general question of reconciling national survival with higher justice. Our Judeo-Christian God challenges people to defend themselves and their offspring without betraying their responsibility to the divine order. The Israelis, like us, are susceptible to suicidal temptations in their seemingly endless willingness to placate their enemies. They and we need to realize that ruthlessness is appropriate and required by the divine order in certain circumstances. People of a community have an obligation to each other and to future generations to preserve and improve that community, obligations which are not satisfied by merely harboring doubts as to whether a potentially harmful course of action will really turn out to be as destructive as it appears.