THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION FOR MID-EAST STRIFE

THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION FOR MID-EAST STRIFE

By Rev. Ted Pike

On July 22, 1946, Jewish Irgun terrorists put milk cans filled with explosives in the basement of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. After an alleged 25-minute warning, this huge structure and Mid-East landmark, the administrative center for the British in Palestine, blew up. Ninety-two were killed. This terrorist attack by Israel’s covert forces against British rule in Palestine was masterminded by Menachem Begin, later Prime Minister of Israel.

Is Israel sorry for this heinous act? Hardly. Begin always defended his bombing of the King David Hotel as a legitimate military act. Incredibly, many Israelis are proud of it, including former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On, July 22, the 60th anniversary of this terrorist atrocity, Netanyahu and representatives of the Israeli right dedicated a plaque on the rebuilt King David Hotel. It celebrates the bombers as freedom fighters, not terrorists, but persons of principle. Like Begin, modern Zionists say the 1946 carnage was justified because it helped drive the British from Palestine, making the State of Israel possible. (Times Online, July 20, 2006)

Evidently, Christian evangelicals agree. Rev. Jerry Falwell has called Begin a “great man of God.”

Why Remember?

What is significant today about a Jewish terrorist act committed 60 years ago, one of many acts of terror in a region torn by strife? These past actions are key to the bloody Mid-East turmoil raging on today.

Begin was one of the most violent pioneers of modern Israel. A member of the Polish unit of the Red Army, Begin, like so many early Zionists, came to Palestine from eastern Europe to put his Marxism to work within a Jewish nationalist setting. In 1946, Begin and the Zionists wanted all of Palestine for Jews—a goal that would require Arab expulsion from homes and businesses they had occupied for 1300 years.

Because the British stood between Zionists and Arabs, respecting Arab rights, Begin was determined to get the British out. His terrorist group, Irgun, would stop at nothing.

Destruction of the King David Hotel was a great outrage. But Irgun’s most searingly unforgettable act of terrorism took place in the weeks preceding the UN partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Palestinian states. Begin and the Zionists were as determined to keep an Arab state from being created as their descendents are today. They planned to thwart the creation of an Arab state by driving out the Palestinians through terror.

The National Geographic tells how Begin's reign of terror began.

At 4 o'clock on the morning of April 9, 1948, a hundred and thirty-two Jewish terrorists from the Irgun and Stern Gang fell upon the peaceful, sleeping Arab village of Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem. For eight hours, terrible murder occurred until more than two hundred men, women, and children lay dead, fifteen houses dynamited. The corpses were piled in a nearby quarry and burned, and that pillar of black smoke has darkened the Jerusalem air ever since.

A Swiss representative from the Red Cross was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the attack. He counted 254 dead, including 145 women; 35 of them had been pregnant and some of their stomachs had been sliced open. A 6-year-old girl was found still living beneath a heap of corpses. Even while he was investigating, he saw a “young woman stab an elderly man and woman cowering on the doorstep of their hut.” 1

Geographic continues:

Today a hospital for the mentally ill covers the site; many think that use appropriate. Irgun leaders like Menachem Begin (who was not present at Deir Yassin) have denied the accusation of atrocity; the deaths were a result of what he considers then and now, a legitimate military action. (National Geographic, April 1983)

Sheer Terror

After this brutal attack, Irgun drove loudspeakers through the Arab quarters of Jerusalem and its suburbs, threatening to inflict the fate of Deir Yassin on any Arabs who did not flee Palestine immediately.

Roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled in panic, abandoning ancestral olive groves, lands, homes and businesses. Israel was determined to frustrate the UN attempt to partition Palestine between Jews and Arabs, and it wasn’t hard to do. Town after town in Israel was largely emptied of its Arab inhabitants, a high percentage of whom were Christians. 2 The bulk of refugees fled not only to escape Zionists but the war which erupted when the outraged armies of Syria and Jordan attempted to restrain Zionist oppression and expansion. Armed with the latest Soviet weaponry, at Stalin's orders, the Zionists were able to easily defeat their backward and poorly organized Arab adversaries.

Did God Fight for Israel?

Evangelical Christians today, echoing Zionist propaganda, proclaim Israel’s victory over the Arabs and establishment of the state of Israel as a remarkable example of divine intervention. They claim the armies of heaven fought for Israel against the Arabs, as God fought for Joshua in the Old Testament.

In truth, the state of Israel was birthed by the most inhumane, ungodly acts of terrorism. From the King David bombing to the Deir Yassin massacre, as well as many other massacres of Arabs, it’s evident that guns, not God, were behind Israel’s creation.

The Arabs have been demonized in the United States through Jewish media. Yet although Arabs have certainly protested with violence, the great preponderance of atrocities during that bloody conflict were committed by Israel. (See Wikipedia’s list of massacres during the 1948 Israeli-Arab War. www.wikipedia.com)

Living in the Skin of a Palestinian

After being terrorized and forced to flee their homes, the Palestinian refugees were herded into internment camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Gaza. The formerly proud merchants, artisans and farmers of Palestine huddled in makeshift tent cities, forbidden by the Israelis to even dream of returning. There, hundreds of thousands remain today, given little compassion by the world and basically ignored by evangelical Christians of the west.

Christian Americans, do you know what it is like to live in the skin of a Palestinian refugee?

What if you suddenly heard rumbling and the crashing of glass and timbers advance up the cul-de-sac of your cozy, prosperous suburb? Massive bulldozers smash through the houses up your street. A military vehicle through loudspeakers informs you that the “chosen race” now owns everything you have and you must flee for your life. You hastily throw a few precious things in your car and escape, even as bulldozers ram your home.

Relocated far out in the desert, you are told by the government that the “chosen race” now owns your land and you can never return. You must now be content to raise your family in an arid shantytown, subsisting on a pittance provided by the UN.

To add insult to injury, Christians worldwide side with your oppressors. Televangelists like Dr. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee now proclaim on Christian TV that occupation of your homes by the “chosen race” is God’s will, fulfilling Bible prophecy. They describe your oppressors as the “apple of God’s eye” who can do no wrong. In fact, as if you are not already cursed enough by the “chosen race,” you are informed that terrible curses from God Himself will fall on you if you criticize them!

As the decades pass and no one pities you, news comes that your former neighborhood has been entirely built up in expensive high-rise apartments, making it inconceivable for you to return. And if any of your angry sons and daughters opposes the chosen race, they will be considered terrorists, likely to be arrested, jailed without trial, or even shot on the spot as a potential “suicide bomber."

Christian evangelicals, how does it feel to live, just for a few minutes, in the skin of a dispossessed Palestinian?

You say you never had it explained to you like that before? What do you expect since America’s media, Congress, and government are dominated by the “chosen race?” (See, “Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish”)

Root Cause of Mid-East Strife

Christ instructed His followers to have mercy on the poor Samaritans of the world, beaten and thrown into their respective ditches to die. Instead, Christ’s followers today join with the Zionist Pharisees who pass by on the other side of the road. I once tried to explain the plight of Palestinians to an evangelical pastor. He told me God only cares about Israel and has “written off the whole Arab world.”

The injustice of Israel’s expropriation of the Palestinians is staggering enough. But the blindness of evangelicals to endorse it defies comprehension.

A century ago, the Arab world was at peace with the West, fighting on the side of the Allies during WWI. Then Jewish Zionists, encouraged by Christian evangelicals, established themselves in Palestine. From that moment, Mid-East tensions mounted. Ultimately, after nearly a century of Zionist abuses, the Arab world has been driven to frenzy. This is not only against Israel but also against its arch-supporter, Christian America. Such outrage erupted in fury on September 11, 2001.

Why does strife continue to rend the Middle East?

Israeli injustice against the Palestinians is the seminal reason why the Arab world, from Morocco to Indonesia, remains inflamed against Israel. They are righteously angered by Israel’s perpetual mistreatment of their Palestinian brethren. They also, correctly, fear Israel wants to do the same to them.

Tensions in the Mid-East continue to escalate. Why?

Because evangelicals ignore the Biblical standard that only by obedience to God can the Jewish people reoccupy Palestine. (See, “Why the Mid-East Bleeds”)

Because evangelicals encourage virtually unlimited military and moral support to Israel -- turning Israel into a superpower and super tyrant in the Mid-East.

Because evangelicals do not restrain Israeli oppression of Palestinians and instead accept Zionist racism, believing Arabs are second-class persons, inferior to Jews.

Empowered by evangelicals, Israel has surged forward to become the most powerful nation in the Middle East, but also the most unjust and hated. Such oppression could not have come into being or continued to exist without the unconditional support of Christian evangelicals.

This is why the Mid-East bleeds.

Endnotes:

1 Jacques de Reynier, cited in The Zionist Connection, pg. 155
2 There is no truth in the Zionist claim that 700,000 Arabs fled Palestine in 1948 because Arab armies commanded them to do so, wanting to protect them from impending war from Israel. Nor is it true, as Zionists assert, that the sloth of Palestinian farmers and businessmen is the reason they abandoned their orchards and businesses in a time of stress. Israel has always used the pretext of Palestinian irresponsibility for not allowing them to re-occupy their homes. Jewish historian, Alfred M. Lilienthal, in his book, The Zionist Connection, pg. 157, quotes Menachem Begin confirming the real reason behind the Palestinian exodus. In The Revolt: The Story of the Irgun:

…Begin boasted of the daring deeds he committed. He referred to “the military victory at Deir Yassin,” greatly simplifying the task of transforming Israel into an exclusively Jewish state and admitted that the “subsequent tales of ‘Irgun butchering had resulted in:

…maddened, uncontrollable stampede. Of the about 800,000 Arabs who lived on the present territory of the State of Israel, only 165,000 are still there…In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror…All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter…The Arabs who began fleeing in panic, shouting ‘Deir Yassin!’…The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.

Since 1948, 385 of an original 475 Arab villages in Israel have been leveled by the Israelis, largely replaced by modern Jewish towns. This gives rise to another Jewish lie: that Palestine, before responsible Zionists made it “blossom as a rose” was virtually desolate, neglected and undeveloped by unworthy Arabs. Dr. Israel Shahak’s report, “Arab Villages Destroyed in Israel,” 1975, cited in The Zionist Connection, pg. 159.

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Rev. Ted Pike is the director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian-conservative, watchdog organization.

Preview seven minutes of Ted Pike’s astonishing, fast-moving, 80-minute video “Why the Mid-East Bleeds.” Available for $24.90 in VHS or DVD at http://www.truthtellers.org. This unprecedented documentary shows how America and the church have gone wrong in the Mid-East but may return to biblical truth and go right again.

For many more articles concerning biblical truth and the troubled Mid-East, visit http://www.truthtellers.org.

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