‘Why Israel Matters’

A new documentary praising Israel has been made by Evangelicals (Christians in Defense of Israel, to be precise): Why Israel Matters.  Here is what one of the main people behind the series, Mat Staver, had to say regarding this project:

There are three critical reasons Israel matters to every one of us. Two of them are temporal. The third and most important is spiritual. And it is time for our voices to be heard.

•First, Israel matters because it is the only stable democratic nation in the Middle East. This is more important than ever as we watch regimes totter and fall across the region. And Israel has long been a faithful friend and ally of the United States.

•Second, Israel matters because of the enormous economic and scientific contributions it makes. Though Israel is a tiny nation with just a few million people, it is a world leader in developing new technology. Some of the most important advances we now take for granted — the flash drive, the pill camera, and robotic technology — were birthed in Israel.

•But the most important reason Israel matters is because it matters to God! The promises of God to the Jewish people have never been revoked. Israel is at the very center of God’s plans for our world today … and tomorrow.

Source:  http://libertycounsel.com/why-israel-matters-cidi/, opened 30 March 2017

Let us look briefly at this list.

First, the praise of democracy.  This is based on a faulty metaphysical notion that the free, autonomous individual actually exists, and that he is the foundation of good civil society.  But he is neither.  The extended family would make for a better floor on which to build.  Thus, a government made up of the heads of the various clans/extended families of the country would be a better model than a democracy of atomized individuals with no allegiance to anything other than their own narrow self-interest (ironically, this is also close to the model Israel followed in the Old Testament, but secular, Enlightenment Modernity is her rule nowadays). 

These patriarchs would have a natural tendency to work for the good of their families as opposed to the representatives of invented, make-believe districts whose duty to uphold abstract ‘constitutional values’ withers quickly before the heat applied by corporate lobbyists, deep state operatives, and such.

So, hierarchy, not democracy, is to be preferred.  This is something the South understood in her better days, and hopefully will once again.

Second, technology.  Here are some of the benefits of the ‘robotic technology’ Israel has given the world:

When one or more robots was introduced into the workforce between 1990 and 2007, it led to the elimination of an average of six jobs.

During those years, robots accounted for the loss of about 670,000 manufacturing jobs, and this is expected to rise in the coming years as robots continue to take over tasks previously performed by people.

The report, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, estimated that one more robot per thousand workers reduces wages by 0.25-0.5 per cent.

Between 1993 and 2007, the authors of the report wrote that ‘the stock of robots in the United States and Western Europe increased fourfold’.

It explains that industrial robots are ‘fully autonomous machines that do not need a human operator and that can be programmed to perform several manual tasks such as welding, painting, assembling, handling materials or packaging’.

 . . .

Source:  https://www.prisonplanet.com/six-jobs-are-eliminated-for-every-robot-introduced-into-the-workforce-new-report-reveals.html, opened 30 March 2017

Third, God’s supposed continuing covenant with Old Israel.  This is the Dispensationalist heresy.  Listen to what St John Chrysostom (+407), one of the Orthodox Church’s greatest teachers, had to say about the Jews.  His words will seem harsh to some, but they are necessary to help the misguided get back onto the right path:

 . . .

(4) And so I wanted again today to engage in that contest. For if the enemies of the truth never have enough of blaspheming our Benefactor, we must be all the more tireless in praising the God of all. But what am I to do? Another very serious illness calls for any cure my words can bring, an illness which has become implanted in the body of the Church. We must first root this ailment out and then take thought for matters outside; we must first cure our own and then be concerned for others who are strangers.

(5) What is this disease? The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now. My homilies against the Anomians can be put off to another time, and the postponement would cause no harm. But now that the Jewish festivals are close by and at the very door, if I should fail to cure those who are sick with the Judaizing disease. I am afraid that, because of their ill-suited association and deep ignorance, some Christians may partake in the Jews' transgressions; once they have done so, I fear my homilies on these transgressions will be in vain. For if they hear no word from me today, they will then join the Jews in their fasts; once they have committed this sin it will be useless for me to apply the remedy.

 . . .

Many, I know, respect the Jews and think that their present way of life is a venerable one. This is why I hasten to uproot and tear out this deadly opinion. I said that the synagogue is no better than a theater and I bring forward a prophet as my witness. Surely the Jews are not more deserving of belief than their prophets. "You had a harlot's brow; you became shameless before all". Where a harlot has set herself up, that place is a brothel. But the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater; it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts. Jeremiah said: "Your house has become for me the den of a hyena". He does not simply say "of wild beast", but "of a filthy wild beast", and again: "I have abandoned my house, I have cast off my inheritance". But when God forsakes a people, what hope of salvation is left? When God forsakes a place, that place becomes the dwelling of demons.

(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who say so? The Son of God say so. For he said: "If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father". Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?

(3) If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place.

 . . .

I could have said more than this, but to keep you from forgetting what I have said, I shall bring my homily to an end here with the words of Moses: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you". If any of you, whether you are here present or not, shall go to the spectacle of the Trumpets, or rush off to the synagogue, or go up to the shrine of Matrona, or take part in fasting, or share in the Sabbath, or observe any other Jewish ritual great or small, I call heaven and earth as my witnesses that I am guiltless of the blood of all of you.

(2) These words will stand by your side and mine on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you heed them, they will bring you great confidence; if you heed them not or conceal anyone who dares to do those things, my words shall stand against you as bitter accusations. "For I have not shrunk from declaring to you the whole counsel of God".

 . . .

(4) Do not think, then, that you are doing your brothers a favor if you should see them pursuing some absurdity and should fail to accuse them with all zeal. If you lose a cloak, do you not consider as your foe not only the one who stole it but also the man who knew of the theft and refused to denounce the thief? Our common Mother (the Church) has lost not a cloak but a brother. The devil stole him and now holds him in Judaism. You know who stole him; you know him who was stolen. Do you see me lighting, as it were, the lamp of my instruction and searching everywhere in my grief? And do you stand silent, refusing to denounce him? What excuse will you have? Will the Church not reckon you among her worst enemies? Will she not consider you a foe and destroyer?

 . . .

Source:  Against the Jews, Homily 1, http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm, opened 25 Feb. 2017

But Evangelicals are going straight in the opposite direction expressed by St John:  They are mixing with all kinds of Jewish customs, and their hero, Donald Trump, and those close to him are falling right in line:

(JTA) -- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was gifted a traditional Jewish prayer shawl by a pastor during a visit to a black church in Detroit.

Bishop Wayne Jackson of the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit draped the tallit around Trump’s shoulders after the candidate finished addressing the congregation.

“Let me just put this on you,” Jackson said as the congregation burst into applause.

 . . .

Source:  forward.com, via Julia Duin, https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/9/8/donald-trump-and-the-telltale-tallit-jewish-media-shed-lots-of-heat-but-little-light?rq=donald%20trump%20prayer%20shawl, opened 31 March 2017

The Yom Kippur appeal was not White’s [Prosperity Gospel preacher Paula White, Pres Trump’s main ‘spiritual advisor’--W.G.] first foray into mixing Jewish symbols with evangelical Christianity. In a 2012 episode of her nationally syndicated TV talk show, “Paula White Today,” preserved on YouTube, White allowed herself to be wrapped in a Torah scroll by a Messianic “rabbi” named Ralph Messer, a “coronation” ceremony that she explained embodied being “wrapped in the Word of God.”

Source:  forward.com, via Julia Duin, https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/10/27/does-megachurch-pastor-paula-white-deserve-to-be-trashed-yes-says-the-forward, opened 31 March 2017

There is a realpolitik dimension to all this as well:

 . . .

The release of the email followed a March visit to the United States by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He addressed a joint session of Congress on the supposed nuclear threat posed by Iran. Netanyahu was invited to speak by Republicans who did not consult with the White House.

“Let me be frank. The speech by Netanyahu was the speech of a demagogue. And from the outset he spoke of Persians attacking Jews millennia ago. This is a sort of a religious fanaticism that is a parallel with the religious fanaticism of Islamic fundamentalists who engage in terrorism. In fact Israel has bombed many neighbors in the Middle East,” Norman Solomon, the Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told RT on March 4.

Not only has Israel bombed its neighbors, it has also used its nuclear arsenal to blackmail the United States.

In 1991 the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal an American Foreign Policy. The book reveals how a nuclear warhead was developed in an underground facility in the Negev Desert in the 1960s with technology acquired from France. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel blackmailed Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. It threatened to use a nuclear weapon against Egypt and Syria during the war if the United States did not ship ammunition and spare parts.

“It was nuclear blackmail, but it worked,” writes Daniel Goldstein. “President Richard Nixon was enraged by the Israeli atomic ultimatum, and at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s strategy, described by then–U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger as allowing Israel to come out ahead but making sure it bled. ‘By the evening of October 9th,’ Kissinger wrote in his memoir, ‘Israel had been assured [by the U.S.] that its war losses would be made up. Relying on this assurance, it stepped up its consumption of war materiel,’ as dozens of U.S. C-5 and C-141 cargo planes began roaring into Tel Aviv’s airport with replacement tanks, missiles and spares.”

Israel has routinely betrayed the United States. The Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate held classified briefings that revealed “Israel spies on the United States more than any other ally does and these activities have reached an alarming level…The main targets are US industrial and technical secrets.”

In 1967 Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters with aircraft and torpedo boats, killing 34 sailors and wounding 171. “Instead of determining whether the attack was deliberate, the Navy blocked all testimony about Israeli actions,” writes James M. Ennes Jr. Congress has all but ignored demands the attack be investigated and the Israelis punished.

 . . .

Source:  Kurt Nimmo, http://anotherdayintheempire.com/state-department-establishment-media-silent-israels-200-nukes/, opened 31 March 2017

Christopher Pisarenko wrote a good passage that shows just how deeply the mania over Israel has rooted itself in the Evangelical heart:

If we consider the evangelicals, support for Israel is the central tenet of their religion – it is not Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit, and it is certainly not any of the teachings of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Support for Israel is the most fundamental idea behind evangelical Christianity or what could also be called Christian Zionism. And evangelicals will continue their support for Israel no matter what heinous atrocities that that illegal terrorist state continues to perpetrate against the indigenous non-Jewish peoples of the region. Evangelicals and Christian Zionists in general simply do not care. They evaluate the righteousness or unrighteousness of someone by the degree to which that person supports Israel.  . . .

Source:  http://katehon.com/article/roots-american-christian-zionism-part-2, opened 31 March 2017

May they wake up soon.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð!

Anathema to the Union!