Why Do “Jewish Organizations” Promote Hate Between Jew and Christian?

During November, the head of the Anti-Defamation League declared Christians to be the enemies of Jews. “Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview, to Christianize America, to save us!" he said. He proceeded to name names: "Major players include Focus on the Family. Alliance Defense Fund, the American Family Association, Family Research Council and more. They and other groups have established new organizations and church-based networks, and built infrastructure throughout the country designed to promote traditional Christian values."

Where do these traditional Christian values come from? Why, from the Bible of course. Remember that book? The one God gave to the Israelites at Mount Sinai a little over 3,000 years ago. Would you tell me please which ‘traditional Christian values” could be opposed by any Jew who took the Torah seriously? In attacking Torah values, the ADL’s leader clearly indicates that his organization is driven by Democratic Party doctrine, not by Jewish values. Jewish values derive from the Bible. But one isn’t supposed to say that.

Have you noticed? In a weird sort of Alice-in-Wonderland reversal of reality, people now utter apologetic disclaimers whenever they quote something Biblical. It wasn’t so long ago that failing to incorporate Biblical metaphors into your conversation labeled you an ignoramus. Now, for the first time in 500 years, people utterly ignorant of the Bible still think of themselves as educated.

Stop the defensiveness already. Whether Jew or Christian, you need to know this book. It is the only book never to be out of print since 1452 when it became the first book ever printed. It is the book in which is enshrined the moral code of western civilization. It is the book which inspired Isaac Newton to probe and reveal secrets of science. It is the book that encouraged Oliver Cromwell to rebel against King Charles 1.

It is the book which stirred Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write, “In the Bible I have found words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs.” It is the book from which sprang the Founders’ vision for America. It is your legacy. Know it and quote from it.

I told you all that only so I could tell you this: Biblical morality declares peace to be more important even than truth. Or to put it a bit more accurately, peace is one of the elements that defines truth. If you didn’t understand this, you’d have to accept that God lies. In fact, God appears to have lied to none other than His first devotee, our father Abraham. Here is what happened.

In Genesis chapter 18, God’s angel informed one-hundred-year-old Abraham that during the following year, his ninety-year-old wife, Sarah would have a son. The next verse reads: “Now Sarah was listening from behind the door.” This is followed by Sarah laughing to herself at the very notion of an elderly couple having a son. She explicitly says in verse twelve, “…and my husband is far too old.”

God seems to lie in the very next verse, distorting what made Sarah laugh. “And God said to Abraham, ‘why did Sarah laugh at the news saying ‘How could I give birth with me as old as I am? ” God told Abraham that Sarah laughed at her own age. In fact, she didn’t laugh at the thought of her own age as much as she laughed at her husband being too old. That is exactly what she said in verse twelve . Yet God changed the facts when He reported Sarah’s laughter to Abraham.

Ancient Jewish wisdom points out that the Bible is a moral guide not a history book. Thus it teaches humanity that peace, in this case between husband and wife, is more important than recitation of facts. What is more, it explains that an ultimately truthful report would have to take into account how horrified Sarah would have been had she embarrassed her husband. For this reason, God reported Sarah’s laughter as having been the result of contemplating her own age rather than doubting her husband’s virility.

That is how important peace is to Judaism. Peace isn’t the highest value of all; it can’t be pursued, for example, at the price of betrayal, defeat, or dishonor. But gratuitously picking fights and encouraging disharmony is abhorrent. Doing so to one’s friends is even worse. Peace between American Jew and American Christian is not only achievable, it is a beautiful reality. If you think about it, this peace is an amazing historic development. But more importantly, it is a brotherhood of destiny. What on earth motivates those so-called Jewish organizations who jeopardize it?

If America is to prevail against Islamic terror and once again save Western civilization, American Jews and American Christians must link arms. This great struggle which threatens to plunge, not just Europe but the whole world back into darkness and primitivism is ultimately a struggle between the culture of the Koran and the twin civilizations of the Bible. Only if we, who sprang from the Bible, stand firm can we hope to prevail.

If America is to stand with Israel, American Jews and Americans Christian must link arms. The Washington Post reported how Donald E. Wildmon, chairman of the evangelical American Family Association, warned in a Dec. 5th 2005 radio broadcast that Foxman was fighting the very people who are the strongest supporters of Israel. "The more he says that 'you people are destroying this country,' you know, some people are going to begin to get fed up with this and say, 'Well, all right then. If that's the way you feel, then we just won't support Israel anymore.' " I know Don Wildmon and he is a philo-Semitic supporter of Israel. He is not saying that he will stop loving Jews and Israel. He is warning that many people finally tire of being endlessly kicked by those they considered their friends, and eventually change their minds.

If America is to restore its culture, banish vulgarity, and resist those who would remake it in Europe’s image, American Jews and American Christians must link arms.

In the face of these mighty challenges, Mr. Foxman of the ADL, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Reform Jewish movement see fit to try and destroy peace between American Christian and American Jew. In mid-November, Rabbi Yoffie insisted that anyone who opposes homosexuality is like Hitler. That is right, Rabbi Yoffie is saying that adhering to the words of Leviticus makes me a Nazi!

Mr. Foxman denounced by name, organizations like Focus on the Family. Alliance Defense Fund, the American Family Association, and Family Research Council. I have spoken for these fine organizations on numerous occasions. Whenever I have done so, my speeches were Torah-based words of an Orthodox rabbi. These organizations which Mr. Foxman not so subtly suggests are anti-Jewish applauded my remarks. I have broadcast and socialized with Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family; he is a Bible-loving supporter of Israel and friend of the Jewish people. Alan Sears, the head of Alliance Defense Fund is a dear friend and is deeply committed to Biblical values. His organization does outstanding work and is supported by many members of Toward Tradition as indeed it ought to be. The American Family Association and Family Research Council both stand for the basic unit of social organization—the family. What Jew committed to Jewish values would not support these excellent organizations that advocate for the life model recommended by the Bible?

Peace is a foundational Jewish value. Those who try to bring about peace and maintain it are acting in accordance with Biblical values. Those who undermine it and attempt to replace it with enmity are acting in accordance with some other set of values. I am not sure what it is but I am sure it isn’t Jewish.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox Rabbi in Seattle, Washington, is author of Thou Shall Prosper, America's Real War and Buried Treasure ,is President of Toward Tradition and hosts his own television and radio shows

Toward Tradition is America's leading bridge-builder between Jewish and Christian communities; spanning the divide between Christians and Jews by sculpting ancient solutions to modern problems in areas of family, faith, and fortune.

To schedule an interview with Rabbi Daniel Lapin, contact Rachael Whaley at (800) 591-7579

Israeli Heroes By Israeli Academic Leftists
By: Steven Plaut
Thursday, March 16, 2006

http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/8687/The_Persecution_Of_Israeli_Heroes_By_Israeli_Academic_Leftists.html

In the campaign in the UK to organize an academic boycottof Israeli universities, led by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT), it turned out that University of Haifa faculty member Ilan Pappe was the driving force, seeking to create a boycott of his own university. That campaign ultimately fizzled and failed.

But attempts by radical anti-Israel faculty members in Israel to promote attacks on their own country continue. Recent campaigns are in some ways more outrageous and far worse than the earlier boycott initiative. The newest campaigns are directed against individual Israelis in their private capacity and are being promoted by some of the most openly anti-Israel of Israel’s academic extremists.

These campaigns are based upon demonizing and persecuting individual Israeli military officers as "war criminals" in European courts. As you may recall, a few months ago, an Israeli army officer named Doron Almog was forced to cancel a private visit to the UK because some anti-Israel activists, including some leftist ex-Israelis, had petitioned a British court to issue an arrest against the former head of Israel’s Southern Command.

One of those seeking the prosecution in the UK of Almog was a lawyer named David Machower, a promoter of the campaign to boycott Israeli universities. Machover’s client, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, is a politicized nongovernmental organization (NGO) that refuses to condemn Palestinian suicide terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Among Almog’s most famous "war crimes" was his role in the Entebbe rescue operation in 1976. He was the first Israeli para-reconnaissance commander to land on the runway at Entebbe, marking it for incoming Israeli airplanes and leading the capture of the airfields control tower in the stunning rescue operation. He also participated in the clandestine airlift of some 6,000 black Jews from Ethiopia to Israel in the eighties.

Is Almog a murderous monster, as the British anti-Semites painted him? Hardly. In a recent interview he was asked about the greatest challenge in his career and he said it was caring for his autistic son. "Taking care of my boy – that’s the most immense challenge I’ve ever faced," said Almog, watching his son, Eran, frolic in a toddler’s wading pool. Eran is 20. He wears diapers, chews only baby food and cannot speak. Almog is active in groups helping the retarded.

The latest victim of a campaign of leftist vilification is an Israeli army officer named Aviv Kochavi. He was scheduled to begin studies in Britain this summer as a private person at the Royal College of Defense Studies. He has now been forced to cancel his planned trip to the United Kingdom after the Israeli Military Advocate’s Office instructed that he refrain from commencing studies, fearing that he would be arrested on trumped-up charges of "war crimes." Kochavi has been serving as the commander of the Israel Defense Forces division along the Gaza border.

Like the earlier campaign in Britain to organize a boycott of Israeli universities, this personal campaign against Kochavi is the scurrilous initiative of a fanatical leftist faculty member at an Israeli university. Kochavi is the victim of a venomous vendetta on the part of one Neve Gordon, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Ben Gurion University.

Gordon has conducted a campaign of vilification and defamation against Kochavi for years. Beginning in 2002, Gordon published an article, carried on numerous anti-Semitic and communist websites around the world, declaring Kochavi a "war criminal." The article not only smeared Kochavi; at the very least it was also a clear attempt to get Kochavi indicted by an overseas court on the weight of Gordon’s trumped-up charges.

Gordon lists his affiliation with Ben-Gurion University in his Kochavi hit piece, in violation of the university’s prohibition against such behavior. In his article, Gordon declares that Kochavi committed atrocities and war crimes against innocent Palestinian civilians, having given direct, personal commands to his troops to do these acts.Gordon lists the supposed use of Palestinians as human shields by the soldiers as one such "crime."

Now, it goes without saying that this is mere allegation. There have been no charges filed against Kochavi for his behavior in the military or anywhere else. In the battle during which Gordon claims Kochavi misbehaved, Kochavi’s troops were hunting for bands of vicious terrorists, including suicide bombers. Gordon’s claim that Kochavi ordered troops to utilize Palestinian civilians as human shields has been investigated and dismissed as fantasy by the Israeli authorities.

Gordon was hired by Ben Gurion University back when Avishay Braverman, currently the economic trigger man for the Israeli Labor Party, was running the school. Under Braverman’s leadership, Ben Gurion University was filled with anti-Israel leftist faculty members and "post-Zionists."

The Department of Political Science at BGU was so uniformly leftist that it adopted a policy under which no non-leftist was permitted to teach there. The single non-leftist in the department was essentially dismissed for incorrect thinking. Some have characterized Ben Gurion University in the Braverman era as the "Bir Zeit (radical Palestinian college) of the Negev."

Gordon is so extremist that he has repeatedly endorsed and praised the writings of Norman Finkelstein, considered by the Anti-Defamation League to be a Holocaust denier. Gordon has compared Finkelstein to the biblical prophets.

A regular columnist for the rabidly anti-Israel web magazine Counterpunch, Gordon’s writings are so venomously anti-Israel that they have been featured on the website of Ernst Zundel, deported by Canada for his neo-Nazi ranting. Gordon was arrested for interfering with Israeli anti-terror military operations and served as a "human shield" to prevent the arrest of wanted terrorists hidden in Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters.

So why is an Israeli military hero being victimized by a hard core leftist employed at an Israeli taxpayer-financed university? If you would like to ask the new president of Ben Gurion University that question, contact Prof. Rivka Carmi at rcarmi@bgumail.bgu.ac.il.

Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. His book "The Scout" is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com .

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