Posted on 09/12/2014 10:16:02 PM PDT by chessplayer
Aggressively supporting Israel is a political winner for conservatives. But when it comes at the expense of persecuted Christians who fear for their lives...
Since the second half of the 20th century, some of my fellow Christians have been the most persecuted religious group in the world. They still are. You probably are surprised to hear this. That's because most of these persecuted Christians don't live in the West. They are, as the awful phrase has it, too foreign for the right and too Christian for the left.
In recent weeks and months, however, the West has heard about the plight of at least one set of these persecuted Christians: those in the Middle East. These communities, many of which date back to the very beginning of Christianity, are now facing outright extinction. And it's happening at the hands of ISIS, the West's Public Enemy No. 1.
A summit was held this week in Washington, D.C., in support of Middle East Christians, and Cruz was supposed to be a keynote speaker. However, right in the second paragraph of his speech, he began exalting Israel. After a while, the assembly started to boo and heckle him. Cruz said, "If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you," and left the podium.
Keep in mind that many Christians in the Middle East are ethnic Arabs who live under Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and therefore have negative feelings about Israel. Of course, there are also many Middle East Christians who are supporters of Israel (indeed, there are even Arab Christians who serve, with distinction, in the Israeli Defense Forces).
As the excellent coverage, transcript, and recording provided by The American Conservative's Jonathan Coppage shows, the audience in Washington applauded Cruz's first lines of support for Israel and the Jews. The crowd turned against him ONLY WHEN IT BECAME CLEAR that he was launching into a rah-rah pro-Israel stump speech that had NOTHING to do with what they were doing there.
Cruz tarred and attacked one of the most powerless and beleaguered minorities in the world, solely for personal political gain. He was strong against the weak.
In the end, what was most striking about Cruz's tirade was the last phrase: "If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you." Cruz was literally standing in a room with his fellow Christians. In the Bible, the idea of the fellowship of Christian believers is a very important one, and to break fellowship is to put oneself outside the community. What Cruz was saying was that agreeing to his views on Israel was more important as a badge of fellowship than believing in Jesus Christ.
I know the history. my point was it is all Israel’s. east west south north from what is present day Jordan.
If you know the history, then keep this in mind: by international law, both Israel and what is known as Jordan belong to the Jews. Jordan is an artificial country that even the followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Zt”l tolerate for peace purposes. As for the borders of Judea or Israel given by the bible, I never claimed I knew what they were.
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