The Christ at the Checkpoint Manifesto
Truth, Half-Truths and Lies: “Christ at the Checkpoint” anti-Israel Conference
The Christ at the Checkpoint Manifesto
By Olivier Melnick 20 Comments
One thing that the enemies of Israel have in common aside from their passionate desire to see that tiny strip of land obliterated, is that they are very creative in their ways to promote her destruction. It does not matter that Israel became a modern nation in May 1948, after vindication by the UN vote (33 Yes and 13 Nos) in November of 1947. It does not matter that Israel is the ONLY democracy in the middle east where many Arabs are better treated than in their own respective countries, and it certainly doesn’t matter that God Himself covenanted with Israel and the Jewish people so that Israel would never be destroyed (Genesis 12:1-3; Jeremiah 31:35-37)!
From the moment Israel was reborn as a modern nation, neighboring Arab countries and soon after other worldwide countries started to work overtime on a plan to thwart her growth if not her very existence. As it turned out, the UN, the very organization used as a platform to Israel’s rebirth out of the ashes of the Holocaust, has passed more resolutions against Israel since 1948 that any other country in the world.
Today, many solutions are brought forward to bring peace in the middle east between Jews and Arabs. While common sense dictates that any good solution requires compromise which is a bilateral effort, the options presented to Israel seem to be unilateral at best. At the end of the day, the destruction of Israel is always part of the equation, either in an obvious or insidious manner.
Three recurring options can be defined.
1. A Two-State Solution
Based on direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Two-State Solution envisions two countries side-by-side: Israel and Palestine, carved out of the Land currently know as the State of Israel. Constant disagreements pertaining to borders and sensitive areas such as the Temple Mount have rendered the Two-State solution very unlikely. Yet it continues to be pursued.
Regardless of the numerous geographical, political and spiritual roadblocks, many countries have pushed for Israelis and Palestinians to “get along” and live side-by-side. Just about all American presidents have tried to bring about a Two-State Solution since the first attempt was presented by the Peel Commission Report of 1937 under the British Mandate of Palestine.
Beyond governments, grass root movements such as Christ at the Checkpoint (CatC) have organized conferences (2010 and upcoming in March 2012) at the Bethlehem College of the Bible. Under the guise of hope, peacemaking and reconciliation, this gathering turns out to be a hateful parade of politically correct pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists wanting nothing less than Israel admitting her “colonialist” approach to the middle east crisis. Their agenda is only fueled further by recent movies such as With God on Our Side or Little Town of Bethlehem were Israel is clearly (but inaccurately) represented as the oppressor or “New Nazi of the Middle east” creating an “apartheid nation”. Both movies are boldly endorsed by an array of Evangelical Christians.
Even though many Israelis and Palestinian might genuinely be in favor of a Two-State Solution, the Palestinian leadership has made it impossible to achieve, especially when one looks at their unilateral demands. The Two-State solution is NO SOLUTION!
Last October, in a bold move praised by most of the world community, UNESCO decided to include the Palestinian Authority as its newest member. The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) failed attempt at forcing its membership at the United Nations a month prior, didn’t stop them from continuing to push their agenda of deceit. They had just obtained a new platform to promote that lethal agenda.
My immediate concern was that with the help of UNESCO, the PA would start a campaign of historical revisionism or negationism aimed at deligitimizing Israel’s right to the Land and/or some of the Jewish holiest sites. After all, the best way to send a people into oblivion is to make them irrelevant to the rest of the world, then their obliteration can be seen as a favor to the world, if even noticed by the international community. Nazi Germany nearly mastered that concept with the death of 6,000,000 Jews.
Of course, we are a far cry from that status of irrelevancy when it comes to Israel and the Jewish people, but we shouldn’t underestimate the enemies of Israel’s commitment to her total destruction. Ideologically, for radical muslims and too many liberals, Israel is a cancerous tumor that must be removed from the international body to keep it healthy.
If you can’t physically destroy them, you must at least deligitimize their existence, and what better way to do that than rewriting history. Radical attempts have been made in the recent past at rewriting history like for instance denying that the Holocaust ever happened. But Holocaust deniers, in as much as they exist today, still do not constitute a force to be reckoned with. As a matter of fact, Canada and Europe prosecute Holocaust deniers for racial defamation and hate crimes, a move prevented in the United-States by our First Amendment guaranteeing us free speech (that’s free speech of course as long as you don’t denigrate Islam or Mohammed).
Holocaust denial is negationism par excellence, it is hardcore revisionism on speed, and if there is one thing that Radical Islam has learned in regards to their establishment of Qur’anic ruling in the world, it is patience! Baby steps towards Sharia, removing one tiny freedom or right at a time from an increasingly weakened western civilization, are much more attainable and for the most part, fly under the radar of Postmodern tolerance.
As a result, I am afraid that some of my concerns might have been justified, as we are starting to see some of those baby steps being implemented. For instance, UNESCO just announced that Rachel’s Tomb in Israel also belongs to Christians and Muslims. While Muslims vaguely recognize Rachel in the Qur’an, there is no historical validity to the claim of her burial site being the “Bilal ibn Rabah mosque”. Bilal ibn Rabah was a slave of Mohammed first used to call Muslims to prayer five times a day, and he was buried in Damascus (ca. 640 AD). As a matter of fact, until 1996, Rachel’s tomb as much as it was revendicated by both Muslims and Jews, was never referred to as a “mosque”. This bold move flies in the face of Jewish history AND Islamic traditions, defying all logic. But who needs logic where demonization of Israel is the ultimate goal? I also find it puzzling and somewhat counter-productive that the very site suddenly claimed by Muslims to be a mosque was also bombed by them prior to that time. This is a bit self-destructive, isn’t it?
Possibly with the biased help of UNESCO and without any explanation from its Director Irina Bokova, the PA will succeed in forcing Israel to reconsider its inclusion of Rachel’s tomb and the Patriarch’s Cave into the country’s national heritage sites. That would be a shame!
If successful, this one baby step in historical revisionism would take us a bit closer to an Israel cleansed of its Jewish roots and would help reclaiming the land as “Palestine”. Truth would be turned on its head as the invented people “the Palestinians” would end up supplanting “the People of the Book”
If historical revisionism comes from the very organization known as “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”, how far will the demonization of Israel go? Are we again to be accused of self-victimization simply because we want honest reporting about Israel’s biblical heritage, its history and its people. Can traces of anti-Semitism be found in these actions by UNESCO? who are we to trust anymore? But then again, I should have seen it coming from UNESCO when the first two words in their name is “United Nations”
So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). And Jacob set up a pillar over her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel’s grave to this day.
By Olivier Melnick 10 Comments