Anti-Israel Peace Industry Exposé

Bruce Bawer's article (linked below) is a worthy read.

I note some Christians within prophecy circles have been chiding their pretrib dispensational brothers and sisters over their "excessive" support of secular Israel - whatever that means. I read where one person claimed that Israel uses Christian Zionists for its own political agenda. Another soon-to-be-published author recently accused Zionists of misinterpreting Gen 12:3 and claimed that secular Israel has no rights to the land because of its unbelief.

Both individuals are under the impression that true Israel is composed of believing Jews and Gentiles, and that the land rightly belongs to them. They don't like the sharp "dispensational distinction" between Israel and the church, although I've yet to come across compelling rebuttals. Others, far more capable than I am, have consistently dealt with this issue.

But here's the thing; Israel has been made the scapegoat for most problems in the Middle East by both the media and several activist churches - as Bawer capably notes. The issue really isn't that "Occupier Israel" has "stolen" some land - the problem is that it exists. Israel's neighbors don't want Israel living anywhere in the region, or elsewhere for that matter.

It's that simple!

Both the media and some churches have portrayed Israel as an apartheid nation which oppresses Palestinians. But, while Israel may certainly not be perfect, it is far from being the oppressive regime the anti-Israel lobby claims it is. We can look to Hamas and the P.A. for oppression of its own people AND Christians. In fact, if we make unbelief a disqualifier for ownership or occupancy of the land then what do we do with Israel's neighbors?

Christians should support Israel because its people haven't had a safe homeland for nearly two millennia. In that time the Jews have been repeatedly persecuted and threatened with extinction. That is still the case! We should support Israel because God loves them (Zec 2:8, 12: 3,9; Rom 11:28-29) and will ultimately win the nation back into fellowship with Him. They also deserve to be defended.

Here are some excerpts of Bawer's article:

Perusing these friends-of-Palestine websites, one discovers certain phenomena over and over again – among them a staggering naivete and sentimentality, a colossal ignorance of history (or a remarkable determination to block it out), and a reflexive, vicious hatred of Israel and, yes, Jews.

And:

The websites of several of the Christian friends-of-Palestine organizations note the dramatic decline in the number of Christians in Palestine over the last couple of generations. A typical plaint: “Christians are the minority in this land where the faith was born. Many Palestinian Christians are suffering and leaving the country.” The implication is always that Israel is at fault. At none of these sites is there any mention of the fact that the number of Christians is declining across the Muslim world, and for one reason only. “Christianity ‘close to extinction’ in Middle East,” read a December 23 headline in the Daily Telegraph. No religious group, the Telegraph noted, is more persecuted around the world than Christians, and their chief oppressors are Muslims, thanks to whom “between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left [the Muslim world] or been killed in the past century.” It’s a phenomenon on a massive scale – but one that the mainstream media rarely report on, and one that all the smug, self-satisfied Christians who profess to fret endlessly about the Palestinians don’t show any sign of giving a damn about.

Read the article HERE

See also:

The Palestinian Authority's Inconvenient Truths 

Addendum:

Here's an interesting article by Moriel Ministries:

The Reality and Demography of Christians in Israel and the Middle East