As everyone knows, the most vociferous ally the Israeli ultra-nationalist government has aside from the Israel Lobby is Christian evangelists like John Hagee and Christians United for Israel (with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein‘s International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a close second). I’m always astonished about this considering that the theology of settler Jews is exclusivist and supremacist. In other words, the Christian Zionists’ most ardent allies are the most hateful toward any religion other than Judaism. They are, in short Islamophobic and Christophobic. Not to mention that these settlers hate most of the rest of us Jews as well and view us as fakes, idolaters or worse.
I’ve reported here on settler attacks on Christian holy places including the ancient Church of Loaves and Fishes in the Galilee. I’ve also reported on other similar attacks against other Christian sites and holidays. Then there are other attacks I haven’t reported on here like the priests spat upon by the ultra-Orthodox settlers in the Old City. Jack Teitel planted a bomb outside the family residence of a Christian family and one member had his hand blown off.
In the comment section, readers challenged one of the pictures I posted. So I’m now linking to multiple videos of Israeli verbal and physical assaults against Christians. In one video (mp4 download), Lehava Stoßtrupper, Benzi Gopstein assaults a Christian choir performing in an Israeli mall as part of the celebration of Festival of the Cranes. You can clearly see Israeli police doing a piss-poor job of removing him from the premises. They take so long to do so that the performance is entirely sabotaged, which is what both parties wanted. In other videos, ultra-Orthodox stormtrooopers harass Christians, tell them to go back to Germany, or simple “Get out!” One charming fellow tells the Christians that if they spill Coca-Cola on themselves they’ll become Black Christians. Another tells the Christians they can “take all the stinky, rotten Jews,” including one who has a ‘Black child.’ “Take them all,” he says. He continues: “We needed that stupid Jesus, that bastard of Jews, to take out all the sick Jews, the six-million Jews.” In this video, two settlers tell Christians: “We killed Jesus and we’re proud of it.”
But today on Twitter, I saw some interesting Christophobic graffiti I hadn’t seen before. It “graced” the Jerusalem Baptist Church in 2012. Here are the translations: 1. Death to Christianity 2. We will crucify you. 3. Jesus, son of a whore. 4. Jesus son of Mary, the whore.
Might our Christian Zionist friends want to reconsider their slavish alliance with settlerism and its crude Judean idolatry, which worships Jewish racial purity and power–a corrupt theology passing for Judaism? Unless of course, their aim is to use such extremism to promote the Apocalypse. In that sense, radical settler Jews aren’t really allies, but tools for a bloodthirsty messianic redemption.
ISIS of course treats Christians even worse in other Arab countries. It murders them and bombs their churches with worshippers inside. But is this the standard Israel wishes to measure itself against? It only spits on and assaults Christians and burns down their churches without killing them?
What’s also ironic is that this same Jesus was a nice Jewish boy named Yehoshua ben Yosef. A bit of a troublemaker, it’s true. Even one prepared to die for his beliefs. But his views were no more radical than those of many other Jews through the ages. And many other Jews were martyred before him (and after) for their beliefs. It was only after his death at the hands of the Romans that others came along and transformed his legacy into a new religion.
So when you think about it–why disparage such a nice Jewish boy? He was one of us until his last dying breath. When you smear him aren’t you smearing his own Jewish faith?
Please, no approaches from Jews for Jesus, Messianic Jews and the like. This is not an advertisement for conversion to Christianity.
NOTE: My newest piece for The New Arab was published today: Who was responsible for Israel’s 1967 massacre? Please circulate it via social media.
1. “Settler Jews” – you make it sound as if settlers are some Jewish sect. They’re not. In fact there are many settlers who are secular.
2. The picture in the post is hardly of settlers, they look more like American kids studying for a year in some Yeshiva in Jerusalem. These are not even remotely the same as those accused of vandalizing the Church of Loaves and Fishes.
@ AnUnseriousMan: Anyone, whether Americans or Israeli who live in settlements on Palestinian land are settlers. Those in this picture are settlers not only because of where they live, but their clear hatred of Palestinians marks them as settlers. They share the same ideology. If it walks & talks like a settler & smells like a settler, then it is a settler.
Hi Richard,
You may have not been in Israel for many years but you misuse the term settler as I wrote in my comment from a few days ago.
There are settlers who voted Meretz in the last election especially in those nearby to Jerusalem.There are settlers who have great relationships with their Palestinian neighbors. Hate for Christianity have very little to do with the conflict and more with religion.
Sure, in many, maybe even most, of the far extreme cases, there are strong parallels between these groups, but those minorities in their communities don’t represent the whole.
In my opinion, wrapping the two together does disservice to the Palestinian cause b/c clearly there is no proof of those people being settlers, and thus the claim you make is baseless which makes it super easy to debunk.
@Richard: Do you have statistics regarding the incidence of these hate crimes? I am not sending you to do research, but if you make the statements you have made (including the gross over-generalization that settler Jews hate all other Jews and everybody else) I am challenging you to back them up in a meaningful way.
If you are saying that the hate crimes are evidence, the only rational way to give any type of meaning to a phenomenon (and therefore to come to a conclusion) is to put it in context by comparing it to something else. In this case it could be in comparison to:
*Hate crimes in other countries or territories or populations.
*Crime in general (IOW of all crime, how much is hate crime)
*Changes in hate crimes rate over time
Do you have reason to believe that Israel’s (or settler’s) rates are exceptional? Otherwise by bringing your examples all you have done is proved that the rate is not 0 (However much we would all like to see that, its not realistic for any kind of crime). How much is a lot? Your generalization is no different than the unjustified and racist statement that “African Americans are drug dealers” or “Arabs are terrorists”.
@Yehudah: Since this subject interests you, i urge you to explore it. There are NGOs like Peace Now & B’Tselem which track such things. Of course the police ministry should as well. But I doubt they do. Let me know what you discover.
I’d add to your questions: of all Jewish terror incidents reported how many result in investigation? Charges brought? Trial? Conviction? Both as a percentage & raw numbers. What do NGOs estimate the total number of incidents compared to those reported. Do victims not report? If so, why?
I’ll let you know what I come up with.
There is point I would like to make about statistics, which are often used to “prove” how the Occupation is affecting Palestinian well being. For example
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/ten-year-gap-between-palestinian-and-israeli-life-expectancy-report
Here, the underlying message is that Palestinian don’t live as long and Palestinian babies die because of Israel. “Israelis are murdering Palestinians, and strangling their health care”, etc etc. But if you look at the actual underlying numbers:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934744.html
http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/life-expectancy-country.html
you see that Palestine (particularly the West Bank) compares favorably with many of the surrounding Arab, Asian and less wealthy European countries. Life expectancy includes deaths from violence as well as diseases. Presumably nobody would blame Jordan or Iran’s infant mortality or life expectancy rate on the Zionists, so why the Palestinians?
I recognize that there is an undesirable gap with the rates for Israel, but should that really be the basis of comparison? Just as in those other countries there are many sociological explanations, so with the Palestinians. Attributing these gaps to Israel’s wrongdoings is simply dishonest.
I say all of this not to justify Occupation or to dismiss it’s impact, but I think its a total distortion for people here, and the Palestinians themselves, to blame Israel for everything that is wrong.
@Richard
Let me see if I got this right. You were prompted to write this piece because you chanced to read some anti-Christian graffiti written four years ago?
Your photo captioned “Settlers assault Christian woman in Jerusalem” is by photographer: Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images and dates back to May 2010. This took place in Sheikh Jarrah and the woman in question is Muslim, not Christian. What on earth made you think she was Christian?
As for evangelical Christian support of Israel, they see the resurrected Jewish State as nothing less than the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. They don’t care that the vast majority of Jews don’t believe in Jesus or that a small, vocal minority occasionally defaces Catholic or Baptist Churches. They continue to support any and all Jews including settlers and most that I have met don’t want Israel to engage in any territorial compromise with the Palestinians.
‘Settlers assault Christian woman in Jerusalem’.
First, how have you determined that these young Jewish men are ‘settlers’, and how have you determined that the woman is a Christian?
Yes, it is an ugly photo, but I see that the woman is holding a garbage can lid in one hand (a possibly banging on it with the other hand).
Maybe the woman is a Muslim Mourabitat?
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.680653
Can we get more information? A date would help.
I think Richard is wrong, I’m almost sure she’s not a Christian, she’s wearing a hijab as far as I can see. Anyway this photo is pretty famous, and you could have found infos yourself.
It was taken by photographer Ahmad Gharabli (Agence France Presse) in 2012, and the caption says:
“A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers faces Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the mainly Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem”.
But if you want to know of recent incidents of Jewish Talibans insulting and harassing Christians in Jerusalem, or generally about Christians in historical Palestine (the State of Israel included) the FB of “Palestinian Christians” post infos everyday (there used to be articles in English too, but recently it’s nearly exclusively in Arabic), anyway last incident was in the end of september when Jewish settlers thugs guided by Benzi Gopstein harassed Palestinian Christian worshippers in the Old City. I tried to find images from another incident (or maybe the same) that I came across on FB recently (where Jewish Talibans are heard insulting Christian worshippers) but I can’t find it.
So this four year old picture is about a land dispute, not about Christophobia or religious triumphalism.
I don’t mean to minimize the thuggish behavior of Gopstein’s gang. I mean to show how Richard has once again ‘gone to press’ without adequately vetting his sources.
@ Whole Lotta Carlotta: You’ve gone to press without adequately vetting your ideology & prejudices.
@Deir Yassin
“A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers faces Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the mainly Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem”.
Not so fast.
First, the photo is form May 2010, not July 2012.
Second. The 2010 eviction of some Arab families from some Sheik Jarrah properties was the culmination of THIRTY YEARS of litigation.
In 1956 the government of Jordan in cooperation with the United Relief and Works Association housed 28 families of Palestinian refugees as tenants in a compound built on lands owned by two Jewish trusts and managed after 1948 by the Jordanian “Custodian of Enemy Property.”
In 1972 the Israeli Custodian General ordered that the property be released and registered
under the ownership of the Jewish trusts, who demanded rental payment from the
refugee families residing there.
Since the 1990s, the trusts had been filing legal petitions for the eviction of Palestinian tenants as part of a plan for widespread Jewish construction and settlement in Sheikh Jarrah.
Those proceedings resulted in court rulings that led to the eviction of four Palestinian families that had been residing there.
I hope that clears things up.
Bullshit ! Sheikh Jarrah is in Occupied East Jerusalem, and I don’t give a shit about Israeli court rulings concerning East Jerusalem !
And it’s always interesting to see Zionists justifying the taking over of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem because some Jews might have lived there before 1948 (but not the present settlers who are often American newcomers) all while denying the Palestinian right of return for actual refugees and their descendants and to places, land and houses that they can actually prove belonged to their family. Zionist supremacism at it’s best.
PS. And Lotta, don’t forget you claimed to be a non-Jew. Why are you so interested in this topic, and why haven’t we seen you around here before now ?
@ Whole Lotta Carlotta: Clears things up? Sure, like mud. What about the 1-million Palestinian residents of pre-State Israel evicted forcibly from their homes, to which many have legal documentary title?? No mention of them. So I’ll make you a deal. I will accept the eviction of these 28 if you’ll accept the return to Israel of the 1-million refugees Israel created in violation of international since 1948. Deal?
As far as I’m concerned, when settlers present legal documents of any kind, including trusts, deeds, etc. it’s bogus unless proven otherwise. I don’t trust the paper these things are written on regardless of whether a judge or municipal authority has blessed them. There are experts in property disputes throughout the world. If Israel accepted the appointment of such independent authorities to unravel the property claims of Jews & Palestinians going back to 1948 (including those expelled during Nakba), I would be willing to respect such decisions. How about you?
@Lotta: Sure you can get more information. Do it. Yourself. There are online photo apps which help with such research. Do what I do. Search. Research.
Isn’t calling these lunatics settler instead of Israelis (what they certainly are), whitewashing Israelis’ crimes?
Assuming that Richard is right that (on the whole) the religiously-zealous Jewish settlers hate all religions (and all people of those religions) other than (perhaps merely their own narrow brand of) Judaism, how does that constitute an argument for Evangelical Christians (ECs) not supporting them? It does not.
The ECs believe (as I understand it) that the Jews of Israel will brings about the war of “end times” (war of Armegeddon) which will have many results among which is the conversion of many Jews to Christianity (no doubt of the EC stripe) and the condemnation of all others (that is, all human beings at all who fail to embrace Christ as the ECs think he s/b embraced) to Hell. The ECs are not befriending the settlers (or Israel) from friendship or approval or the like, but because they think Israel and the settlerws are an INSTRUMENT for bringing about a religiously-inspired future which the ECs look forward to as a positive thing.
In this way, both the ECs and ther Zionists agree: each group believes that efforts by humankind (or my zealous splinter groups of humankind) can — without God’s apparent help — bring about a religiously-described wonderful future. Most orthodox Jews have been taught and still teach that only God can bring about a return to “the Jews” to Zion, and that Zionism is therefore anti-Jewish.
So it goes.
Richard I’m sorry but how is this not fear-mongering? The stats on these attacks are very rare and are far less of a threat than physical terrorist attacks, yet you often (legitimately in my view) downplay the chances of being killed in an attack (i.e. “more likely to be struck by lightning” etc). So why would you promote these events and inevitably create division? Don’t we want tikun olam and unity and peace?
@John F: “Unity?” Whose unity? Settler unity? United with whom? Christians? Muslims? And whose “peace?” Peace on Israeli terms? No thank you.
I “downplay the chances of being killed in such attacks?” Yes, when it’s Qassam rockets we’re speaking of. But when it’s settlers, police or army, the odds are significantly different. If you were a Palestinian you would not be singing this tune. For them these attacks are a daily occurrence. Not to mention that a high proportion of Palestinian men have been turned into political prisoners by the Israeli national security state. So no, their chances of being maimed or killed by these folks are quite high. But then if you had more human empathy than for just your own, you”d know that.