Israel - Not the best at marketing!

This morning BBC news reports are telling us that Israel are to take some 400 hectares (almost 1,000 acres) of Palestinian land near to Bethlehem. Having had a quick look I find the following:

The official statement
"On the instructions of the political echelon... 4,000 dunams at (the settlement of) Gevaot is declared as state land," the army department charged with administering civil affairs in occupied territory said, adding that concerned parties have 45 days to appeal."

The expansionist statement
The Etzion settlements council welcomed this expansion of the current Gevaot settlement as it:
"Paves the way for the new city of Gevaot."

The response from the US State Department:
 "Counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians".

The response from Abbas:
This 'land grab' will “lead to more instability” and “inflame the situation after the war in Gaza."

Expected response from Palestinians:

The Bible assessment (Micah 2):
What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night, thinking up evil plans.
You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out, simply because you have the power to do so.
When you want a piece of land, you find a way to seize it.
When you want someone’s house, you take it by fraud and violence.
You cheat a man of his property, stealing his family’s inheritance.

But this is what the LORD says:
“I will reward your evil with evil; you won’t be able to pull your neck out of the noose.
  You will no longer walk around proudly, for it will be a terrible time.”

In that day your enemies will make fun of you by singing this song of despair about you:
“We are finished, completely ruined! God has confiscated our land, taking it from us.
  He has given our fields to those who betrayed us.”

Others will set your boundaries then, and the LORD’s people will have no say in how the land is divided.

For those of us who are Christians - pray for peace in Jerusalem and for right-thinking on the part of those who govern the nation state of Israel.

Pax

Amnesty Internation and Gaza

A challenging image and a testing question - especially for us as Christians as we seek to bless Israel and yet stand with the words of Micah, Leviticus and many other places calling upon us to live with humility seeking justice with mercy and loving our neighbours too!

I understand the rockets and am appalled at the lack of proportionality from Israel (and the proximity of civilians where due to space the 'human shield' challenge is often circumstantial rather than purely designed in hypocrisy) and wonder which is the chicken and which is the egg.

A challenge for prayer and reason for us all methinks:

Israel - Palestine: Proportionate and Legal?

Once again the naughty UN have put themselves into the firing line after a shell has hit a UN-run school (being used as a shelter) in Gaza - killing some 15 people and wounded something in excess of 200 injured. The Israelis are suggesting that it could have been caused by a failed Hamas rocket whilst others are suggesting that the MO points to Israel.

Foolishly thinking that they might be somewhere safe there were 'hundreds of Palestinians' taking refuge from the fighting in the school in Beit Hanoun (a place that made the news in 2006 when the Israelis shelled it).

Regardless of whose shell it turns out to be, things are looking bad with the Israeli's managing to kill one child per hour for the past couple of days. Add to this the fact that the death toll is looking rather unbalanced (Palestinians 750  - Israel's 33) and you'll see that the situation has gone past grim and is now something much worse!!!


Ban Ki-moon said in a statement regarding this:
'Many have been killed - including women and children, as well as U.N. staff'

Please pray for peace and comon sense to prevail

Israel - Palestine: A test from God?

Let's begin by making the pro-Israel folk smile as I say that those who fire rockets into Israel from Palestinian territory should stop their actions - they are surely wrong!

And now let's upset the pro-Israel folk by saying that the shelling of a hospital by a tank (this is not artillery errors - but determined and despicable aggression) and the fact that those killed by Israeli action now exceeds 500 - of which something around 170 of them were militants (against Israeli losses of 18).

The bottom line is this: It's time to stop!

Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has criticised the Israelis for their engagement in the densely populated area of Shejaiya last Sunday. Something he calls, 'An atrocious action!'

So here we are - two peoples, One previously displaced and another currently displaced acting in the classic force and immovable object scenario; something Cliff Fenn, our mechanics lecturer when I was an apprentice, broke his hand demonstrating (fist and blackboard - blackboard wins!!!). Once again, with the same scenario, played out differently, there is only pain to be found).

Here we are in the situation that 'God's people' and 'not God's people' are lined up against each other. One supported by the West and the other by the Arab nations.

The Jews have it as their historic homeland - the others are one of two groups:

i. Those who settled during the mid seventh century Arab conquests, or
ii. Those who were there before the conquests began alongside the Jews and remained after they left

Those in 'i'. are 'modern' settlers (after all they've only been there for some 1,350 years) but those in 'ii' have a much longer claim to be there. But it's not about who was holding the ball when the whistle blew or who dropped it. It's not about whose ball it is!

So some questions:

As the inhabitants of a land who have been moved off to facilitate the creation of the nation of Israel do the Palestinians (hereafter called 'arabs') have any claim to the land?

Does Israel's claim that a promise from God that the land would be theirs forever mean that the issue is cut and dried?

A radio interview with someone who was historian and expert on this subject presented the idea that Palestine and Philistine are synonymous and this people group (who date back to Abram's times) having married other non-Jewish (for which we can read Muslim) people are the descendants of the Palestinians and this being parallel occupants with the Jews gives them a valid claim for the territory (what they had until the West acted to remove them)!

So those who support the 'God's promise' route turn to their Bible and the Patriarchal Narratives (Genesis 12 to 50) - their point of interest being God's promise to Abram (Genesis 15.18-21):

'On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” '

Before you can ask a question (and without missing a beat)  they continue with another passage. This time it's Joshua 13.1-6 that interests them:

'Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the Lord said to him, 
“You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess. This is the land that yet remains: all the regions of the Philistines, and all those of the Geshurites (from the Shihor, which is east of Egypt, northward to the boundary of Ekron, it is counted as Canaanite; there are five rulers of the Philistines, those of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron), and those of the Avvim, in the south, all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that belongs to the Sidonians, to Aphek, to the boundary of the Amorites, and the land of the Gebalites, and all Lebanon, toward the sunrise, from Baal-gad below Mount Hermon to Lebo-hamath, all the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon to Misrephoth-maim, even all the Sidonians. 
I myself will drive them out from before the people of Israel.'

'How's that then?' they ask - feeling they have made their point and welcoming any challenge that comes from their place of God-appointed possession having been confirmed.

Great! God has promised them a land and the way forward is to turf out all the tribes who get in the way as the move forward and possess the land. So they've gone and the land is clearly the rightful possession of the Jews.

But what's that Sooty? Sweep says that the Philistines didn't go and were still there when we open the book of Judges. Let's have a butcher's at chapter three:

'Now these are the nations that the Lord left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before. 
These are the nations: the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. 
They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.'

Blimey - could it be that they (the Philistines) were there before the promised land was promised and after it was possessed too?

I am struggling with the clause:

'They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.'

Struggling because if the Palestinians are a test to see how God's people respond and seek to keep His commandments and live as He would have them live - I have to say I think they've failed the test badly. In fact I think they're on a 'U' grade at the moment!

I keep coming back to Leviticus chapter thirteen (verse thirty-four):

'When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.'

Now I believe that Jerusalem has an important part to play in the life of Jew and Christian alike.
I believe that it will be the centre of things that herald the coming of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah.
I pray for the peace of Jerusalem and for the spiritual entity that is Israel.

But it seems to me that the modern nation state and the spiritual nation, who keep God's word, are two very different animals. One I can bless - the other I can but despair over.

Of course, I'm happy to be proved wrong - and happier still to find the BBC reporting of what is a contravention of all conventions of wars and Laws of Armed Conflict

A postscript
I was going to use this in my next post but think it might be of assistance within this blog post - it's Leviticus 19.17-18:
'You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbour, lest you incur sin because of him.
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.'

Beggars the question someone else asked jesus regarding this: 'Who is my neighbour/"

Israel - how do you see it?

In various discussion with others over the issue of Israel and Palestine I found myself writing this to explain my position:

 The origins of the nation (with or without a God) are set in time and the religion of the Jewish people and their identity is inseparable and has, on many occasions, been the source of great opposition throughout the ages - finding its culmination in the Shoah. The happenings in the Ancient Near East put upon them (from others - not self-assigned),  or at least confirmed, the 'chosen people' label. Something I think, from the early dealings, might just be right.

The blood guilt felt after the War (1939-45) resulted in the the Israel we see today (modern Israel) and that which Balfour proposed  towards the end of the First World War was done - a formalised homeland for the Jews; and like the Samaritans almost two thousand years before them, the Palestinians became displaced. Winners and losers - and one had the backing of Western might. Not the best solution but  there was never going to be one.

The problem is (for me) that some acted to do God's job for Him and so putting the Jews back where "they ought to be' is up there with those who seek to rebuild the temple. It fits the conditions of prophecy physically and yet the key, as the God I cannot leave out tells us, is not the outer (physical) condition or appearance but is the heart and this is where the conflict ( // to the greater Jihad of Islam) really begins.

Modern Israel is a physical reality and, if the broadcast on it I watched a couple of years back is true it is a generally secular state. This means that Israel is but an ersatz offering in the spiritual sense.

I listened to a most interesting discussion on the World Service recently. Interesting and disturbing because it sounded like something that preceded Kristallnacht as the US Jews were portrayed as those who controlled the bulk of the nation's wealth. Shylock-like they hold the US to ransom and by dint of this ensure US (and UK where apparently the situation is the same) support for modern secular Israel. A worrying listen in every sense.

I understand that the placing of the Jews back into Jerusalem, a place found in Palestine, fitted the bill and fulfilled the Seder hope of ' next year in Jerusalem' - the cry of a displaced people but of course, like the Jews the Palestinians aren't going to go away as they take upon themselves the displaced label - but they haven't the warrant of the West and the emotional credentials that the Shoah brings, have they? 

But no one thought of that when the homeland became a nation did they? And so the scene is set and the conflict continues without charity or understanding from Israel and with bitter recriminations and a blood feud to settle from Palestine. (This is where God's 'leave none alive' policy in the OT saved lives - but that was something for then, not now!)

I find myself turning to the prophet to the Jews, Micah, and his call that those who would please God and live as His would exercise humility, seek justice in everything they do (and are) and exercise mercy - see little of that from them. Nothing of the stuff that confirms being God's people just the actions of people defending the rights of ownership without exercising the responsibilities YHWH would desire from them. My view will undoubtedly be unpopular with Zionists (Christian or otherwise) who, in the same way that many Americans fail to see their nation's actions as wrong, do the same with Israel.

The view that Israel, right or wrong, is always right because they are God's people is in itself wrong but if they are then surely God will call them to account and in the now see them live in a place where blessing them is difficult. I think that goes for those who support them too.

An inside edge on my week thus far

And we've only just reach Wednesday!

I woke up this morning and my body said, 'Monday!'
My brain said, 'Friday!'
The alarm clock (for the mortals in the house) read, 'Wednesday!'

So I climbed out of bed and got on with it. Paper work done - emails answered and diary filled just that little bit more (now booking into mid-2105 for some stuff). It's been an amazing week - so full that I haven't managed to blog and yet full of stuff that has challenged, blessed and incensed me. Here's just a glimpse of the first two days:

Was surprised to meet a vicar of the female persuasion who confided that she'd be glad when 'that' vote was over and we could get back to, 'Doing what we should be doing rather than getting bound up in all that's been going on over it!' I wasn't surprised that she was was a woman with that view but at the fact she shared it (I barely know her).

Went to meet with someone I was sure would have been all for a 'Yes' vote and found them bemoaning the rift it would cement between Roman Catholicism and the CofE (something I'd not really given much thought to). A fascinating insight into the situation and the thought that, having come from a positive engagement with Francis, Justin might encourage slowing things down to see how Rome (with an apparently professed 2% of paedophile priests in their midst who will have to go) might look towards women's ministry and try to get some coherence. Knew that was never going to happen though!

Had a friend (and colleague) write:
'Women bishops aren't going to be any better (or worse) than male ones. Remember the woman Prime Minister? And the first black President hasn't exactly lived up to all the hype and hope. So, no, I'm not "#excited" or whatever. I'm long past caring on this one. God bless 'em all and I'll just carry on as before i.e. by lying low and staying out of their way. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But better not to meet the boss at all if you can help it!'

I was surprised by the many (male and female) who were quite ambivalent towards women bishops - although more surprised by the women because I though there was a party line on the topic.

I was happy for those who were happy over it and sad with those who were saddened by it - I don't have an axe to grind either way and since I don't like the world of rights and inequality; or as I said to one lovely lady what might never talk to me again - positive discrimination has the word 'discrimination' and I'm never for that word - you perhaps do because you're the one hoping to be positively discriminated towards. Needs to be thought out that one I reckon. I'd rather see equality on the basis of the inability to differentiate on anything other than calling and ability (and that covers colour, sex, gender and anything else you might like to think of). It should be about righteous and right living - a quick and lively faith and the desire to preach (and live) Christ in and out of season. Anything else is religion (and probably politics).

Met a cleric who has decided to get on and do it all themselves after yet another Sunday came and went and the people who had taken jobs supporting, and in, the service failed to deliver. They made the very valid point that some of those who never do took great pleasure in moaning about stuff being wrong or not done well and the recipient of those moans was, of course, the cleric. So, they thought, 'I'll just do whatever needs to be done and then it'll work and if it doesn't then at least the complaints are rightly mine.'

Bumped into three people who had found themselves at odds with the 'We have to support Israel' brigade because they have the view that 'Palestine needs to be protected from Israel'! Also bumped into two who are trying to defend Israel by pointing to Syria and other places where, 'Even more atrocities are happening!'

Now that's some defence - don't deny that the nation is doing wrong but deflect criticism by telling those who criticise to look at someone else because they're worse - how cheap is that? Bet God loves that one ;-)

Apparently those who support Israel have the view that Israel is a spiritual nation and yet all I see is an increasingly secular state whose stated intentions of 'getting them before they get us' using the shoah* as some sort of defence+ denies everything that the God of the Jews calls Israel to be. I'm all for praying for the peace of Jerusalem and Gaza and Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and  . . . .  . but I would like to see Israel be peacemakers as well (and I know the views that it's a small nation surrounded by people who wish to conqueror and destroy - been like that since always - not an excuse!).

Are you busy Vicar?

Had a fantastic time with 50+ young men and women who having donned military uniform got to hear about the spiritual realities of being Green and the Values and Standards that make our Army one of the very best in the world. To see so many people with a quick and ready mind and the enthusiasm of youth take up spiritual themes and be willing to consider, examine and discuss (not always positively) them and the resonances they might bring was a heart-gladdening event indeed.

Had a good meeting to harmonise baptisms around the parish and are moving on to do the same with weddings.

Got excited about the prospect of offering Mission Shaped Introduction and Mission Shaped Ministry across the diocese.

Got even more excited about the 24/7 prayer as it enters its last week of a four week offering (four locations across Tamworth) and at the people who had committed time to find (or rediscover) the joy of praying for more than four minutes during a Sunday service!

Got more excited still about the young woman who is fired by God to 'do something new' for God and is seeking to make this a reality (such joy when people hear and do).

So there we are - a brief insight into the first two days of the week - Praise God or what?

Now I need to go and pray about them all - perhaps some have touched you and challenge you to pray too - hope so :-)

* shoah Hebrew word for desolation, used in favour of the word 'holocaust' which means a burnt offering (often in the context of a sacrifice to gods/God).

+ The defence goes: 'Look what they did to us before - everything we do is defence as per the Bible's command 'Get them before they get you!'

Israel - stepping back a little

I've already had a couple of mails telling me that Israel was 'merely defending itself from foreign invaders when it shot those people' and therefore, under international law acted lawfully.

Let's look at some of the ways that others dealt with protesters coming together to remember the 'nakba', the 'catastrophe ' that for them saw Israel established with a homeland and others (them) made homeless.

In Cairo the security forces fired warning shots and used tear gas to disperse protestors outside the Israeli embassy.

The Lebanese authorities fired in the air as they sought to disperse the protesters.

The Jordanian police used tear gas to disperse protesters gathering near the Israeli border.

Israel started with tear gas and rubber bullets but, characteristically, allowed itself to be baited and led down its usual excessive path. It was obvious that some of the crowd were being stirred up and the key to the managing the situation is proportionality and containment. The problem comes in that those who seek to arouse and enflame the passions of the protesters find that they no longer need to do so once the first dead person is carried away.

Those who protested might not have carried firearms, but sticks and stones can indeed break bones, and whilst some are claiming that those who died were innocent and unarmed, there is plenty of guilt to go around. Both sides have transgressed and both are guilty, but sadly some are made more guilty than others because of the wounded and the number of dead protesters.

What is assured is that Israel's General Mordecai sees the situation correctly when he says that, "We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations,". The problem is that if you knows that you are being provoked, the best response is not to give those provoking the ammunition they seek to escalate the situation. In the current situation, Israel has failed to do that and given the sea change in Egypt's attitudes to israel, the unsettled state of affairs in so many nation, the call of a senior Hamas leader for Islam to rally and unite against the usurper and aggressor, Israel, this could prove very costly on both world and Middle East stages.

The finger pointing will doubtless continue. Israel will continue to claim it used sensitive, minimal force and Hamas and pro-Palestinians will claim the people were unarmed and merely protesting. Neither are telling the truth. Neither have any integrity. One side has the dead to make them look, once again, excessive and wrong - which, as I read and watch, they are!

Pax

ps. No SC, I'm not pro-Palestinian, or anti-Israel, I'm for justice, mercy, humility, balance and a peaceful response and solution.

Protesters shot by Israeli forces

Reports are coming in regarding people having been killed by Israeli troops who opened fire on protesters at the various border points as they marked the founding of Israel in 1948.

Although the Israelis are pointing to the fact that the protesters had broken through the border fencing and claiming that these people posed a threat, I have to say that I fear the greatest threat to Israel is their shooting of unarmed demonstrators. Israel considers themselves to have merely used 'selective fire' but the deaths and wounded will only cause more tension and erode the already lessened goodwill from Egypt. Just how much of a threat the man dancing before a camera only to be shot, as shown on the ten o'clock news tonight, remains to be seen. How much damage footage like that will do is obvious and demonstrates a lack of balance, perspective and political (let alone moral) intelligence.

The news has already shown people calling for the Islamic world to unite and make a stand against Israel and this is only, sadly, the tip of the emerging iceberg that seeks to sink Middle East peace and drag the US (and therefore by inference and association) others into yet another area of conflict.

What a sadness.

Pax

Israel - 'The Promise'

I was advised to take a look as Peter Kosminsky's 'The Promise' and I managed to watch a few episodes to find that the same forces that drive me each year to commemorate the shoah were slowly aroused to find me despair in exactly the same way with the Jews and the way the Nazis engaged with the Jews then, and the ways the Jews engage now.

As I read and dialogue, I find that Israel has nothing to do with the day-to-day realities of the majority and yet it is a place, an issue, which sees great polarisation. All is condoned or condemned. Israel is poor little country on the brink of extinction, fight for her life every day or she is a territory grabbing, murdering, American-aided demon.

I find little or no balance regarding the issue (something that was admirably demonstrated by the responses I had from some when I supported an 'Israel and the Church') and even less intelligent dialogue. So I am going to have to work from scratch, it seems.

An observation from the frustration that the journey has been thus far has to be that surely those who see their support of the state of Israel, the rebuilding of the temple and the many other things that they drone on about as being necessary for 'The Return' all seem to forget one thing. If God is God then He doesn't need us to manufacture the condition for 'The Return', He is surely bid enough and powerful enough to do what is required Himself. It is immature, naive, outrageous even to assume that we can engineer the conditions so that, Genie-like, He will appear at our command 'out of the bottle'.

Any sympathy, any 'blood guilt' over the shoah, is slowly fading as the generation that witnessed the second world war, that perhaps saw the liberation of the camps (I know of three who were there and am trying to get them to share their experiences). The new anger, the new awareness of the slaughter of innocents is not about the Jews, but from them and they are losing ground in the eyes of many because of it.

I get the feeling that somewhere underneath it all, there is a parallel in a car I hired when working for a firm in Newark, NJ. It said 'Mustang' on the paperwork, it said 'Mustang' on the tail (and the steering wheel) but it wasn't and it was soon relabelled 'Ford Probe'. Is this the case here - are people reading the label 'Israel' and setting about bring God back on their terms and timing? Are people looking at the physical location and confusing it with a spiritual entity? Are 'all believer; now the 'New Israel' (as put forward by one person I am in dialogue with) and are we looking at double revelation or was the return to the 'Promised Land' something that took place long before Palestine was partitioned?

If I were Palestinian and saw my land taken from me, the homes of my forebears snatched by force and found myself excluded, pushed further away and acted against, would I maintain my intellectual and moral veneers or would I be firing rockets too?

Being acted against, however badly, does not provide warrant to act badly against others and so the case for supporting Israel slowly wanes if that's the excuse. The shoah has passed and all must learn from the wickedness that is was, and still is in the genocide to be found even today, and seek to make true the words 'never again'

Pax

Zionism - What is it?

In order to have a sensible dialogue we need to make sure that we all have the same understanding of the terms used. So let's make sure we are all meaning the same things when we use the same words.

From the many mails I have received, I have come to the baseline definition that Zionism is:

+ 'The belief in a Jewish homeland for THE Jewish people, in the geographic location that is Israel',

+ 'The possession the the human right of self determination, for the Jewish people' and

+ Concerned with the nation state of Israel, a modern secular nation where Judaism is to be found, but where nation and religious belief are separate.

+ It is about the return of the territory to the people who once occupied it as a God-given right.

I was also told that the label 'antisemitism' * applies to:

+ Those who oppose Jewish human rights,

+ Those who oppose the existance of a homeland for the Jewish people, and

+ Those who support and/or spread hate about Israel

(* Apparently this is the European Union's definition of antisemitism.)

I am taking myself off to watch 'The Promise' (and visit the gadget Show Live) and as I do, I wonder if there are any additions, modifications or subtractions that need to be made to the elements above to ensure that we have an agreed datum from which to work.

As it stands, I don't think I'm a zionist and I'm definitely not antisemitic (unless being critical of the nation's behaviour is to be considered antisemitic).

Thank you for those who have offered their views on zionism and antisemitism, the elements of which have been reduced to the lowest common denominator here.

So, are the definitions right?

If not, tell me where and why and we can move on.

Pax

ps. Thought I'd posted this before I left for Gadget Show (excellent) - apologies.