The New Anti-Semitism

by Jesma O'Hara

As we direct our attention to the topic of  ‘The New Anti-Semitism’, it will be helpful for us to first establish the basis for ALL Anti-Semitism down through the ages – and that is the desire of humankind – and the powers of darkness, to challenge the sovereignty of the Almighty God.

In His quest to give the world constant reminders of His existence, His sovereignty, and the unchanging nature of His Word and Covenants, He set apart three entities, choosing a People out of all peoples, a Land out of all lands, and a City out of all cities to be His own peculiar possessions. 

They were to be His ‘matsebot’, or memorial pillars, visible down through the ages for all the world to see – a grace gift from above whose task is to keep turning the attention of a predominantly pagan, rebellious world towards the God of Grace, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In doing this, the Almighty chose to communicate His purposes through a custom prevalent in the Middle East during Bible Times and even up to the present day – placing His stamp of ownership on a small portion to serve notice to the world that He is Sovereign Lord of all.

When he was Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said that the problems in the Middle East would not be solved using western understanding and the west has failed to understand this ancient custom still at work in Israel today, in the dispute between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples over the Land of Israel.  It is part of the reasoning behind the building of Jewish settlements in Judea/Samaria and the opening of Orient House in east Jerusalem by the Palestinians.  Both sides are taking small portions of the Land, and the city of Jerusalem, attempting to place their stamp of ownership there, as a means of saying to the other party, and to the rest of the world, “This small portion is a reminder that we actually own ALL of it.’ placing their stamp of ownership on a small portion as a faith statement that the Almighty had promised them and their descendants the whole Land.

It is interesting that the sages point out that from the time Ephron chose to try to defraud Abraham, his name lost a letter in its Hebrew spelling showing that he diminished as a person.  The choices we make as individuals have the capacity to either enlarge us or diminish us as people made in God’s image.

Thus, in the same way, God took a tiny people, less than half of one percent of the world’s population, and set them apart to be channels of His redemptive purposes to the nations and His reminder that he is LORD of all peoples on the face of the earth.  This was to be their divine calling and the cause of much of their suffering as a people.

Leviticus 20:24, 26  I the LORD am your God who has set you apart from other peoples… You shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy, and I have set you apart from other peoples to be Mine. [holy = kadosh = set apart for a particular purpose]

Exodus 19:5-6  Now if you will pay careful attention to what I say and keep my covenant, then you will be my own treasure from among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you will be a kingdom of priests for me, a nation set apart.

The word translated treasure here, segulah, was used by kings during this period to describe their first choice of the booty following the conquest of a town.  They would take the best of the flocks, the prettiest women, the strongest men to be their slaves along with the pick of the gold, silver and precious stones before anyone else had the opportunity to take any spoils for themselves.  This special treasure would be the object of the king’s care and protection.

Deuteronomy 7:6-7 For you are a people set apart as holy for the LORD your God.  The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His own unique treasure.  The LORD didn’t set His heart on you because you numbered more than any other people – on the contrary, you were the fewest of all peoples.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9  When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man, He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers, for the LORD’S portion is His people, Jacob His own allotment.

This little people are, to much of the world, like an irritating itch in the middle of the back, just out of reach, who refuse to assimilate into the nations, even after thousands of years, a people who have been called to ‘dwell apart’ [Numbers 23:9-10].  Indeed the Grand Vizier Haman complained to the King that they were a people whose laws were different from those of every other people. [Esther 3:8]

The Almighty then took a Land, a Land that at the present time covers only 7,847 square miles or 20,324 square kilometres, placed at the present time in the midst of Arab lands covering 10% of the world’s surface, and area larger than any other ethnic group.  Arab lands today cover 5.4 million square miles or 14 million square kilometres and contain two thirds of the world’s oil reserves.  God called this little strategically placed land situated on a land bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa, ‘His Land’ [Leviticus 25:23;  Psalm 10:16].

This Land, the only land on the face of the earth that contains one of the Names of God in it, [Israel – a prince or one who has contended with God and man and prevailed] establishes and confirms the Almighty’s Sovereignty over all lands on the face of the earth.

Then of course, there is the City, the City of Jerusalem, the City God has chosen above all cities, to be the place where He has chosen to place His Name. Deuteronomy 12:4;
 2 Chronicles 6:6 – Jerusalem – Foundation of Shalom.

Even the three valleys on which the city is built, the Hinnom, the Tyropean and the Kidron, when viewed from above in Bible times, take on the shape of the Hebrew letter shin, that represents the name Shaddai, on the mezuzot that Jewish people attach to the doorposts of their homes.  The three letters of Shaddai, the shin, the dalet and the yod are taken to also represent the words Shomer, Dalet, Israel – the Guardian of the Doors of Israel.  So the Almighty even placed his stamp of ownership on the topography of the city.

Billy Graham has said of this city:

“Jerusalem, the nerve centre of the world geographically; the salvation centre of the world spiritually; the storm centre of the world prophetically; the glory centre of the world.  Some day it will be the centre of peace.”

These three entities, the people, the Land the City, are really God’s challenge to a Godless world, that He is LORD of ALL, and this constitutes the real battle in the Middle East today, and the basis for all Anti-Semitism – the battle over Who is Lord of the earth, its peoples and its cities.

Having established this fact, we now turn our attention to one of the out-workings of this rebellion against God’s Lordship – Anti-Semitism as it is expressed throughout the world in these days.

One of the most powerful forms of Anti-Semitism at work today, perhaps more aptly called Anti-Zionism or Anti-Israelism, is facilitated by an unholy alliance of politics and media, sadly all too often encouraged and supported by ill-informed, well meaning Christians and Jews who have not understood the foundational point we have just established concerning the sovereignty of the Almighty and His right to direct the affairs of this People, Land and City.

This alliance, choosing time and again to promote deception over truth, has very successfully instigated and sustained a campaign of Historical Revisionism where established historical fact is ignored or altered to attain a particular result, in this case the obliteration of Israel.  The apostle Paul spoke of a time when people would stop listening to the truth and turn aside to follow myths. [2 Timothy 4:4]

The Nazi Goebels is quoted as saying that if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed.  This proved to be correct during the Third Reich and the heirs to the Nazi doctrines continue to spread the lie that the Holocaust is a myth perpetrated on a naïve world by the wicked Jews.  Historical Revisionism relating to Israel and Jerusalem is now being pedalled throughout the world, and is believed by an increasing number of people.

The Palestinian Authority website quotes Waled M Awad, the Palestinian Authority Director of Foreign Publications for the Ministry of Information, as saying, ‘Jerusalem is not a Jewish City.  Thirty years of excavations have revealed no evidence that it was ever Jewish.  Jewish claims to Jerusalem are based on a Jewish myth’.

Sari Nusseibah has said that Palestinian historical ties precede Jewish claims.  This claim of course is being ‘helped along’ a little by Palestinian destruction of archaeological material from around the Temple Mount Area.

My own lecturer in Post Graduate Studies in Early Christianity and Judaism corrected my use of the name Israel in an assignment on the Second Temple Period and substituted Palestine, proving that this Historical Revisionism has infiltrated the highest halls of learning.

Historical revisionists have succeeded in changing the name Israel to Palestine, and Judea/Samaria or the Biblical mountains of Israel spoken about in Ezekiel 36 to the West Bank, a name not used until Jordan took control of that region following the 1948 war. This same area is increasingly being called Palestine by the media and politicians.   The Village of Silwan on the outskirts of the Old City 3000 years ago was part of David’s City and was home to many Jews until, like Hebron, they were massacred or forced to leave.  Both are now spoken of as Arab towns and any attempt by Jews to live there is seen as encroachment on Arab lands.

In the Bible, all names of places and people reveal truths of their destiny, calling and character so the changing of names given by God is, once again an attach on His sovereignty, plans and purposes, and an attempt to sever the covenant ties the people have with the Land and the City.

In this thinking Israel and the Palestinian issue has become the cause of all problems in the region and people have long forgotten that the PLO was actually established by Nasser of Egypt in 1964, 3 years before Israel won back Judea/Samaria and East Jerusalem from Jordan.  The fact that Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt, not in Israel is also never mentioned in this thinking.

A quick look at some of the history of the region in recent times reveals that the Palestinian cause is only one of a multitude of difficulties the region faces:

• 1990 – Iraq invaded Kuwait, a conflict that resulted in 300,000 Palestinians being evicted from Kuwait following Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein
• Syria’s control of Lebanon and its repeated attempts to destabilise Jordan
• Islamic persecution of Christian minorities in the Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.
• 17 assassinations of Arab leaders by other Arabs between 1949 and 1992.

Historical revisionism reverses the statistics relating to size and power in comparing Israel to its Arab neighbours despite the fact that Arab lands are 690 times larger that Israel.  It constantly enlarges the numbers of Palestinian Arabs accorded refugee status following the War of Independence [the 650,000 have grown to millions], choosing to ignore the 800,000 Jewish refugees who were evicted from Arab lands during the same period and were immediately absorbed into the fledgling nation of Israel by its population of 650,000.

The second, equally insidious outworking of the new Anti-Semitism is that carried out by world leaders in the name of world peace – Political Anti-Zionism.

The United Nations :-

• In 1975 the ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution was passed, and though retracted in 1991, the damage done to the world’s perception of the Jewish desire for their Biblical homeland remained.
  
  
• In 1988 the UN ungraded the PLO from observer status, in the process giving recognition to the non-existent state of Palestine.
• In 1997 they chose to ignore the 50th anniversary of the UN vote to partition Palestine, however just two days later they observed the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian peoples.
  
  
• In 1998 they passed a resolution making Israeli law and sovereignty illegal over Jerusalem.
  
  
• 30% of all meetings and one third of all resolutions made by this body concern the tiny Land of Israel with its 6.7 million people.
• There are 31 documented incidents in which Hizb’allah terrorists have fired on Israel from UN enclaves with UN buildings often being used to house Hizb’allah fighters and their families in Lebanon.

The European Economic Community :-

• In 1998 called for a boycott on all Israeli produce originating in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Judea/Samaria and Gaza.
  
  
• Despite the Oslo Accords forbidding PLO activity in East Jerusalem, EU foreign ministers continue to visit Orient House, in effect affording the Palestinian Authority Government status over the area.
  
  

Political Anti-Zionism ensures that Israel is forced to make concessions that no other country has ever been expected to make.  In 1979 Israel, in pursuit of peace, gave up 91% of the land it had won in a war of self-defence, [the Sinai Peninsula] while the US, three decades after World War Two, was still occupying Okinawa in case of renewed Japanese aggression and Eastern Europe remained under Soviet control to provide a buffer zone against any renewed German militarism, all with world approval.

The Word of God is clear in providing us with God,’ view of Political Anti-Zionism:

Psalm 2 Why are the nations in an uproar, the peoples grumbling in vain?  The earth’s kings are taking positions, leaders conspiring together against Yahweh and His anointed.  They cry, ‘Let us break their fetters! Let’s throw off their chains!’  He who sits in the heavens laughs: Yahweh holds them in derision.  Then in His anger He rebukes them, terrifies them in His fury.  ‘I myself have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.’

Joel 4:1 For the, at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat [Yahweh judges].  I will enter into judgement there for my people, my heritage Israel whom they scattered amongst the nations; they divided my Land.

Political Anti-Zionism is assisted by Anti-Zionism in the World’s Media.

Israel has one of the highest concentrations of media personnel in the world, due in part to the fact that it is the only democracy in the Middle East with freedom of speech and the press and these media personnel all too often abuse the rights they enjoy in Israel to give a biased perspective of what is happening here.

The media have become adept at fulfilling the previously mentioned words of the Apostle Paul… “Yes, they will stop listening to the truth, but will turn aside to follow myths’.  They have achieved this, partly through the use of historical revisionism mentioned earlier in which, for example, 3000 years of Jewish presence in Jerusalem is conveniently forgotten and only revisionist Palestinian history is propagated and thus re enforced and given credibility. [e.g. respected Australian newspapers, using articles written by correspondents in Jerusalem, including Jewish ones, speak of the ‘Israeli occupation and displacement of millions of Palestinians in 1948’.

The second, more subtle way they have succeeded in influencing world opinion and rewriting history is in what George Orwell, in his book, ‘1984’ called ‘Newspeak’, in which the meanings of words are changed to alter the way people think.

• Thus the school bus that was blown up in Gaza recently was called, not a school bus, but a settler’s bus, so that people would associate the bombing, not with innocent children, but with the settlers, who are constantly portrayed as ‘right wing fundamentalist fanatics’, rather than Jews wanting to live in obedience to the promises contained in the Word of God.
  
  
• Articles about Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon always preface their names with ‘right wing hardliner’ while Yasser Arafat, until his death recently was simply ‘Palestinian President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner’.
  
  
• In ‘Newspeak’ it is always ‘Arab Villages’ and ‘Israeli Settlements’, ‘Occupied Territories’ and ‘Palestinian Land’.
  
  
• ‘The Peace Process’, despite the fact that there has been a 900% increase in Israeli casualties since the beginnings of Oslo.
• ‘The Israeli Aggressor’, despite the fact that 95% of all confrontations in the current Intifada have been initiated by the Palestinians.
  
  
• And the oft repeated lie that the present violence was precipitated by the visit to the Temple Mount of Likud Leader Ariel Sharon despite Palestinian comments to Arab journalists that the Palestinian Authority had begun preparing for the Intifada under directions from Yasser Arafat following the Camp David Meetings.