Malevolent Momentum
Michael Freund writes in The Jerusalem Post, “Something is stirring in the Middle East.” How right he is. And it isn’t good for Israel or the nation’s supporters. “The winds of war are blowing,” Freund writes, “picking up speed with each passing day, and the threat to Israel is growing steadily more alarming.”
Freund’s analysis shows how anti-Israel sources are driving events to the precipice of a devastating confrontation.
On February 22 the Simon Wiesenthal Center ran a report titled “Presbyterian Church USA Ready to Declare War Against Israel.” It appears the PCUSA’s theological, anti-Israel invectives have been incremental. Leaders have been testing the waters to see how far they could go at a given time.
Their 2004 move to divest from Israel, stalled by a displeased membership, was consequently rescinded. This setback, however, did not alter the determination of the denomination’s liberal leadership, which bided its time and is now, according to the Wiesenthal Center, on the verge of making its next move. A 2008 PCUSA report did the following:
- Called for the United States to withhold financial and military aid to Israel.
- Apologized to Palestinians for even conceding that Israel has a right to exist.
- Declared that Israel, if defined as a Jewish state, must be inherently racist.
- Embraced the Kairos Palestine Document, produced by Palestinian Christians, that calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel and endorses a full Palestinian “right of return” to Israel, which would lead to the demise of the democratic Jewish state. (See “Christians Against Israel?” in the March/April 2010 issue of Israel My Glory. )
- Denied any connection between biblical covenants and the Jewish people. Israel’s history, it claimed, begins with the Holocaust. It is a nation mistakenly created by Western powers at the expense of the Palestinian people to solve the “Jewish problem.”
The Wiesenthal Center sees the Presbyterian Church’s document as nothing short of a declaration of war against Israel and its friends—an action, by the way, encouraged by the World Council of Churches.
On the political front, Michael Freund says, “From Beirut and Damascus in the north to Teheran in the east, and back to Gaza in the south, the ‘arc of hate’ surrounding the Jewish state is speaking openly and brazenly of conflict and destruction.”
Freund reported that, in a conversation between Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmadinejad told the Hezbollah terrorist, “This readiness [for war against Israel] must be at a level that they [the Zionists] will be finished off and the region will be rid of them forever.” And for good measure he added, “The regional countries need to eradicate them once and for all.”
Israel’s enemies—religious, political, and military—appear to be convinced the time has come for them to make another run at destroying the Jewish state. This rationale is no doubt fueled by two elements: (1) the perception that the West is in denial, refusing to acknowledge the inherent peril Israel and the region are in, and (2) the belief that if Israel is attacked, there will be no appreciable reaction from America or Europe other than to ask with a whine, “What’s Israel done to cause such anger and frustration?”
The Iranians have tested these waters repeatedly as they have stalled for time to finish their nuclear projects. “Fearsome” UN talks about “crippling sanctions” are benign paths to nothing. They will merely buy Iran the time it needs to complete its doomsday weapons and then rewrite the future of the Arab world and region, destroy Israel, and bring the world beyond to its knees.
On a frigid January night, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, stood somberly before the memorial plaques at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland. There he remembered what the world is choosing to forget. And he made a promise.
“Remember what Amalek did to you,” quoting from Deuteronomy. “I have come here today from Jerusalem to tell you: We will never forget. We will not allow the Holocaust deniers or those who desecrate [Jewish] graves and signs to erase or distort [our] memory.”
Mr. Netanyahu recognized that new Amaleks are on the prowl. And they are just as determined to annihilate the Jewish people as were their enemies of the past. It will not happen. It cannot happen. Nor can we here in America afford to let the memory of the 9/11 tragedy fade away. We must never forget or grow weary in the pursuit and orderly prosecution of Islamist Amaleks who slaughtered thousands within our shores. Should we do so, it will happen again.
