Islamo-Fascism

July 5, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

6 Signs Reveal That We Are Back in the 1930s!

When I started the research in 2000 for my first book on antisemitism, I identified some troubling trends in the new antisemitism that were slowly becoming a reality. Most people looked at me funny when I claimed that what I was observing, appeared to be an ominous return to the 1930s and 1940s in Europe for the Jews. I was even called a conspiracy theorist, but it is only a conspiracy theory if it is not true, and as it turns out, my fears are now confirmed. We are in the 1930s and we haven’t seen the worst yet.

I have identified 6 signs revealing that we are in a 21st-century version of the 1930s. When we remember how that previous era ended for six million Jews, it should bring chills down our spine and it should really motivate people of goodwill in general and Bible-believing Christians in particular, to expose the lies and fight for the truth. The sad reality is that this time, not just the Jews are the target, but Christians as well. This being said, and as history has shown, the Jews are the first to be targeted and they are persecuted the most. There is a reason why antisemitism is often called the longest hatred.

1 – Demonization
Often, the first step in separating a people group from the rest of society is to make people believe that they are different in a negative and even dangerous way. This has been the stigma attached to my people for much of our history, from the Biblical record to the early Church Fathers to the medieval lords to the reformation to the Holocaust. Yet, it didn’t really stop because antisemitism never stops. Antisemitism is on a continuum that constantly reinvents itself to better attract more people towards hating the Jews. The demonization of the Jews is nothing new. We have been accused of crucifying Messiah from the day of the crucifixion to this day, a false accusation that can easily be debunked starting with the Bible in John 10:14-18, where Yeshua speaks of His death as a necessary part of God’s plan, and how He gave His own life for all and was able to take it back at His resurrection. Additionally, we have been called so many things from criminals to wild beasts to poisoners of wells to usurers to little devils to vermin and sub-human. The last two names were part of Nazi propaganda to dehumanize the Jews and facilitate their demonization. Vermin need to be exterminated for the safety of people, thus the Holocaust was thought of, justified, organized and six million times successful.
What about today? Are Jews still being demonized? You tell me. We are called the new Nazis of the Middle East, colonizers, occupiers, guilty of ethnic cleansing. The old antisemitism was going after the Jews in the Diaspora and the new antisemitism is going after them as well as Israelis and the Land of Israel as well. At the 2018 Convention of the Islamic Society of North America, American/Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour said, “if you’re on the side of the oppressor, or you’re defending the oppressor or you’re actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that’s a problem sisters and brothers and we got to be able to say: that is not the position of the Muslim American community.” I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me that I am trying to humanize someone else, it must mean that they believe that someone else not to be human. If the Jews are not human, they become irrelevant to our society and demonization is ever so easier to commit. Linda Sarsour is closely connected to every member of “the Squad.”

2 – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
The BDS movement has officially been going for 16 years now. It was started by two men, one of whom we all know well, Mahmoud Abbas (current leader of the Palestinian Authority), and Omar Barghouti from Qatar, who incidentally received the Gandhi Peace Award in 2017 for his efforts towards peace in the Middle East. Boycott, in and of itself, isn’t bad; it all depends on who or what one is boycotting, the reasons they do so and of course the integrity of the boycott. Abbas and Barghouti didn’t invent the boycott of Jewish people, products or inventions; they simply revived an age-old practice that was used in the 1930s. Not long after coming into power, the Nazi leadership started to boycott Jewish businesses and Jewish professionals. On April 1, 1933, they decided to station stormtroopers in front of Jewish stores and paint yellow stars of David on storefront windows. The boycott officially lasted only one day, and many Germans ignored it. Nevertheless, it was the start of a campaign of ostracization that would lead to more boycotts and confiscation of Jewish property.
The modern BDS movement relies on the ignorance of those it targets as recruits. Being in the entertainment industry, on the political scene, in academia or even in various Christian denominations, BDS influences people who have blindly bought the Palestinian victimhood narrative. The very fact that Omar Barghouti received the Gandhi Peace Award in 2017 for peace efforts, shows the hypocrisy and lack of understanding of the facts in the Middle East. It is so sad to see so many people infatuated with a false narrative cloaked in the attractive garment of social justice. The BDS movement continues to tighten its grip on Israel and Jewish products, inventions and people (with much hypocrisy as they only boycott what is convenient to them), and financed by liberals like George Soros.

3 – Pogroms
The first pogroms occurred in Eastern Europe in the mid to late 1800s. They mostly occurred within what was known as the Pale of Settlement. The Pale (1791-1913) included about 20 percent of European Russia and much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia, for a total of about 1,000,000 square miles. About 90 percent of Russian Jews lived inside the Pale, growing from 1.6 million in 1820 to 5.6 million in 1910. Life was very difficult, and additionally, the pogroms (Russian for “devastation”) of the 1870s through the 1910s created a very hostile environment that exacerbated the miserable conditions in which the Jews lived. The first pogrom might have been as early as 1821 in Odessa, Ukraine. The official reason given for the hundreds of subsequent pogroms was the assassination of Alexander II in 1880, for which some blamed the Jews. Pogroms became government-sponsored riots against the Jews, and they claimed the lives of many in the little Jewish shtetls (hamlets) of the Pale. They included looting, rape and murder.
While today’s pogroms might not be government-sponsored, they are mostly ignored by the authorities. To be sure, we are not seeing major destruction of Jewish property and lives like in the 19th-century pogroms, but today’s new antisemitism is expressed in ways that come very close. Consider the destructive attack on Jewish neighborhoods in conjunction with the murder of George Floyd. Jewish businesses were attacked and looted in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles where many Jews live. Graffiti such as “Free Palestine” and “F…Jews” were spray-painted on walls. What this has to do with George Floyd still escapes me.

4 – Blood libels and other accusations
While the world is still trying to recover from the pandemic that changed everything, to some people, the Jews are to blame for the virus. This is nothing new for the Jewish people, but more of a repeat of what took place in the 14th century. By the mid-1300s, with the advent of the “Black Death” or “Black Plague”, the legend of the poisoning of the wells of Europe had found fertile ground. It was the most devastating pandemic in the history of mankind, responsible for the death of about 75 million people worldwide (25 million in Europe alone) from 1347 to 1350. It was four years of horror for the Jewish communities of Europe. As the rest of the continent appeared to be on its way to total extinction, people started to look for a cause and it was not long before the Jews were once again used as the convenient “scapegoats of humanity”. Jewish people also died during the “Black Death”, but generally in lesser numbers. The Kosher laws Jewish people followed forced them to maintain stricter hygiene and thus resulted in fewer infections and fewer deaths than the communities around them. The Jews also lived in separate communities and the liturgical washing of hands before meals also kept them from being as sick or dying from the Black Death. However, even with these known facts and traditions, it didn’t stop the masses from destroying – slaughtering – over 200 Jewish communities.
So, today, and around the world, some are blaming the Jews for creating the virus to benefit from the sales of a vaccine; which is a combination of the poisoning of the wells of Europe and the myth of the greedy Jew. They come from the left, the right and religious groups worldwide. Some even claim that the Jews are more dangerous than Covid-19 and should be eliminated. Social media is the big culprit in allowing antisemitic rhetoric to go unchallenged and unpunished. More than 17,000 occurrences of the phrase “Hitler was right” have been found on various platforms and very little has been done to stop it. Recently, a Twitter post by ex-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) resurfaced where she claimed that Jews were behind 9-11

5 – Killings
Tragically, Jew-hatred rarely stops at the defacing of property or online threats. We have now entered a phase where Jews are being killed again. The Holocaust was the most devastating, organized genocide in the history of mankind. It was also the only of its kind where Jews were brought back to their death after they fled, making it incredibly unique. While the new antisemitism is not claiming the lives of Jews in the same manner and comparable numbers, just the idea that Jews would be massacred again should send chills down our spine. Perhaps France, more than any other civilized country, has seen the death of Jewish people in the last decade, and it is very alarming. This is why I believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that antisemitism has once again morphed into a more voracious beast: End-Times antisemitism.
The 2017 killing of Sarah Halimi in Paris, when she was thrown out the window of her apartment was one of the worst acts of antisemitic killing in recent years, and it is only one of several in 2012, 2015 and 2018. To add insult to injury, her killer was allowed to walk free without a trial because he had been found high on cannabis. This sets a precedent for the killing of Jews in France, and this should also be a wake-up call for French Jews. France is no longer a safe place for Jews. Let’s also not forget the Pittsburg Synagogue massacre and the one in San Diego. Jews worldwide now live in constant fear for their lives. It is not safe to walk outside with a yarmulke on your head or a star of David around your neck. They used to be potential targets for verbal abuse, but the abuse is now turning physical. It is not only on the streets that Jews are at risk. Just days ago, a bullet was fired at the window of a Brooklyn synagogue.

6- Apathy
As if all these signs weren’t enough to sound the alarm, there is one more aspect that must be brought up, and that is the apathy of the general public. For the most part, people don’t care about Jewish people being the victims of antisemitism. If they are not affected, they move on. This tragically is reminiscent of the Holocaust era when many looked the other way when trains overfilled with Jews passed through their towns. Even worse, as Erwin Lutzer documents in his book, When a Nation Forgets God, the story he heard from an eyewitness telling him how people would sing louder in church when they heard trains go through, packed with Jews in cattle cars: “I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it because what could we do to stop it. A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance, and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars. Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us. We knew the time the train was coming, and when we heard the whistle blow, we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.”

The apathy of yesteryear is still contagious today. I am not surprised when people who do not believe in God act selfishly, but I am disgusted when people who call themselves Christians either denigrate the Jewish people or reenact the Holocaust era scenario and ignore the tragedy befalling my people today. The bystanders of the 1930s and 1940s are part of history, and please don’t go trying to cancel that! My disgust is with the bystanders of today; the apathy within and without the church is a clear sign that the Jews have very few friends who will come to their rescue in time of need. Incidentally, American Jews being oblivious to these signs is another mystery to me. How much do my people need to go through to accept the fact that we are back in the 1930s and 1940s?

May 21, 2021 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Is the stage being set for the prophecy of Zechariah 12:3 ?

Having been a follower of Yeshua for 37 years, I have often heard or even said that we are in the last days. To be sure, even 1st-century believers thought they were in the last days, and each day that passes puts us closer to the end of God’s program for mankind on this side of eternity. So, when people hear that we are in the last days, many of them, suffering from some sort of eschatological fatigue, roll their eyes and move on. Are those of us claiming that it is 11:59 at the eleventh hour just sensationalists? Are we overreacting and redirecting our focus on the less important at the expense of what matters in life? Frankly, it all depends on what our focus is being redirected to.

I have always been a very literal, context-driven student of God’s Word. If God left us the Bible as His message to us on how to live and what to look forward to, we can look at it from different cultural vantage points, but we must agree that it contains the same truth for all mankind. We might not like some of the statements that the Bible makes, but that doesn’t give us the authority to declare that they are not the truth. When we survey God’s counsel, we are bound to find many prophecies fulfilled and more yet to be fulfilled. We must resist “newspaper exegesis”, but we need to honestly look at the news through a Biblical lens if we want to know where we are on God’s timeline of human history.

Much of that timeline revolves around Israel as God has promised to never forsake Israel or allow for its destruction (Jeremiah 31:35-37). At a time when rockets are raining down on Israel by the hundreds, from a human perspective, the situation looks very bleak. While casualties are inevitable on both sides, God isn’t caught by surprise by the present conflict, and neither should those of us who take His word seriously. Satan’s demise clock is ticking quickly, and he is desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Satan finds, in most of the world, a plethora of willing executioners for his antisemitic agenda. Truth has long ceased to matter. Fact-checks are politically or socially motivated.

If someone believes that they are contributing to social justice, multiculturalism and tolerance, they immediately feel like they are making a difference to improve the world we live in; even if it is at the expense of someone else, and in this case, as is too often the case, at the expense of Israel and the Jewish people.

Not long after the tragedy of the Hyper Cacher Supermarket on the east side of Paris in 2015, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a piece in The Atlantic that still resonates in my head. In it, he made a sobering statement that I was really hoping was inaccurate, but as it turns out, he might have been spot on. He wrote, ” The Shoah served for a while as a sort of inoculation against the return of overt Jew-hatred—but the effects of the inoculation, it is becoming clear, are wearing off. What was once impermissible is again imaginable. Memories of 6 million Jewish dead fade, and guilt becomes burdensome….Israel is coming to be understood not as a small country in a difficult spot whose leaders, especially lately, have been making shortsighted and potentially disastrous decisions, but as a source of cosmological evil—the Jew of nations.”

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What Goldberg saw six years ago, was the erosion of Europe’s compassion towards the Jewish people. I have long been a believer that what happens in Europe, and even particularly in France, is a good indication of what is coming to America. The barometer of the new antisemitism in Europe sets the temperature for what is coming to America. Since 1948–when Israel was reborn as a modern nation–antisemitism, which was localized mostly to Greater Europe, became a global virus. The tiny Jewish state gave anti-Semites a justification for a Jew-hatred that has now spread over the four corners of the world. The irrational conclusion has been that if Israel is guilty, by proxy, all Jews are as well. This could lead to the whole world hating the Jews…but wait, isn’t there a prophecy in the Bible about that?

The prophet Zechariah wrote, “Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah. On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.” (Zechariah 12:2-3). Mind you, this is a reference to the Campaign of Armageddon, and we are not there since this will be taking place during the final stretch of the Great Tribulation (Revelation 16:16, 19:19). Yet, we cannot afford to put our heads in the sand and ignore the signs of the times. None of this final chapter of mankind, hinging around Israel is going to happen in a vacuum, but rather, it will be progressive AND exponential. I believe that we are well on the way to that final Biblical curtain call, as the pressure is mounting against Jews worldwide. In the last week:

In a recent conversation with the Pope, Turkish president Erdogan declared, “All of humanity should be united against Israel.” I wonder if he had any idea of how Biblical he was when he made that outrageous statement?
Pro-Palestinian crowds gathered in Los Angeles and attacked Jewish diners as a result of the current conflict between Hamas and Israel.
Pro-Palestinian crowds rallied in Westwood, CA demanding that Israel stop the airstrikes over the Gaza Strip. They didn’t ask for a ceasefire or for an end to the conflict, but just for Israel to stop defending itself.
In New York, Jewish people were attacked by pro-Palestinian passing cars who threw fireworks at them, screaming “F…ing Zionists”. One Jewish person was burned.
In Germany, people marched on the streets shouting “free Palestine for the Jordan to the sea” which is a euphemism for getting rid of all the Jews.
In London, a group of cars drove through a Jewish neighborhood screaming, “F… the Jews, rape their daughters.“
In Washington D.C., protesters gathered outside the Israeli Embassy and shouted “Free, Free Palestine” and declared that Israel had no right to exist.

As of this writing, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. It is uncertain if that ceasefire will hold, but what is sure is that the hatred for Israel and the Jewish people seems to continue to grow on a global scale, preparing the way for an all-out war against the Jews. The Bible is clear, at some point, all the nations of the world will gather against Jerusalem, but that doesn’t mean that all people will follow suit. It is time for all Christians and people of goodwill to unite in rebellion against the real oppressor. For the last several decades, under the leadership of the new antisemitism, the Jews became the perpetrators, something that they never have been. Now is the time to reset our moral GPS because nobody in his right mind will find any moral equivalence between a country that uses weapons to defend its civilians and a group of people who uses civilians to hide their weapons.

Maybe the days of Zechariah 12:3 are closer than we think?

April 26, 2021 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Do Jewish Lives Matter only in Theory?

If 2020 was the year of Covid-19, it was also the year of the US race riots. The tragic death of George Floyd is still having ripple effects in America, and the motto “Black Lives Matter” continues to be seen and heard across the land. It is not my intention to debate the various ways that this motto has been used, suffice it to say that there exists a certain amount of racial inequality in America that needs to be addressed if we desire to move towards solving it. Being a Bible believer and modern-day follower of Yeshua the Messiah, I believe that “All Lives Matter” to God and should matter to us as well.

The African American community has been at the forefront of the news for the past year; and while much remains to be accomplished, voices are heard and opinions are formed and even altered for the better. It’s all good, but unfortunately, it is not equally good for all people. I am devastated by the recent news out of France regarding the trial of a man who murdered an innocent Jewish woman. All seems to indicate that in France–and possibly other countries–Jewish lives do not matter. Let me elaborate.

On April 4, 2017, 65-year-old Sarah Halimi, a retired doctor, was tortured by her neighbor Kobili Traoré, and then thrown to her death from the window of her third-floor apartment. Traoré committed this murder while reciting verses from the Qur’an and calling Sarah Halimi a “dirty Jew”. Upon throwing her through the window, Traoré shouted in Arabic that he had succeeded in killing an evil spirit or “killed the Satan”.

When questioned, Traoré declared that he felt “persecuted”, and after realizing that he was high on marijuana, the French justice system decided that he would not stand trial. That decision basically sent the message that anyone’s voluntary drug consumption exonerates them from any responsibility. Traoré was officially acquitted in April 2021 and is literally getting away with murder, while the global media is – for the most part – completely ignoring this story.
France continues to be a very secular country and authorities don’t like to report acts of antisemitism. This doesn’t stop people from reporting them, but since not much gets done to remediate the problem, many of these acts remain unreported at worst or wrongly reported at best.

It is also shameful that much of the media in France and in the USA decide to remain silent on the fact that Traoré will walk free after killing a Jewish woman. Islamic antisemitism is a very touchy subject in France. They only started to report the news after the decision to let Traoré walk free and when the Jewish community started to protest in large numbers. It looks like a reaction to a protest that couldn’t be ignored rather than honest reporting about a murder that went unpunished. Within a few days of the acquittal, a police officer in the city of Rambouillet near Paris was stabbed to death by a Tunisian man. The news in France, Europe and the United States were all over it within hours. The death of that police officer was a tragedy indeed, leaving a father and two children behind. Its reporting was necessary, but when I compare the two events and how one was ignored, I cannot help but think that there is a double standard being applied here. What a shame!

Traoré’s exoneration sets an extremely dangerous legal precedent in France and the rest of the world. French President Emmanuel Macron said that the Jewish community has his full support. What did he mean by that? Were these empty words to save face? It is not the first time that Jewish people have been killed in France in recent years. What about the multiple stabbing of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in 2018, left to die in her burning apartment? Of course, we all remember the kosher supermarket carnage of January 2015 when four Jewish shoppers were murdered. That was six years ago! The site of the tragedy–just a stone’s throw from the house I grew up in– continues to see flowers and photos brought in memory of the victims, that’s very thoughtful, but you cannot fight terrorism and antisemitism with flowers, photos and poems.

Before that, there was the 2012 Toulouse massacre, when Mohammed Merah entered a Jewish day school and killed three students and a rabbi in cold blood. What about 2006, when Ilan Halimi (no relation to Sarah Halimi), was tortured, burned over most of his body and then thrown beside railroad tracks to die? Not to mention the killing of Jewish people that occurred in other parts of the world such as the Pittsburgh synagogue and the San Diego attack of recent years.

Back to the Sarah Halimi case. The man who killed her didn’t just kill her. He insulted her, killed her and then threw her out her apartment window. This shows much more than killing for whatever motive, it shows violent, uncontrollable hatred. We are told that because he was high on cannabis, he was not acting rationally because of being in some sort of altered state. The problem I have with that is that whenever someone is under the influence of any mind-altering substance, it doesn’t just alter their behavior, it may also enhance the tendencies that lie dormant within them. Whatever control that person may have while sober may not be controlled while under the influence. To say that Kolibi Traoré cannot be held guilty of murder because of cannabis in his system is wrong, but to decide to not even go on with a trial is adding insult to injury. Even if murder is off the table–and it shouldn’t be–manslaughter would be the absolute minimum charge. Doesn’t that endanger Jewish lives elsewhere once someone is seen to be not responsible for their actions because of a drug or alcohol?

I can promise you that if the victim(s) had been from the Muslim faith, the case would have not been swept under the rug. If the victim was a Muslim thrown out the window by a Jew, the Imams would be all over the case and the news would have exploded with the details shouting “Islamophobia” from the social networks’ rooftops. For Jewish victims…Not so much! Let me reiterate that all lives matter: Jewish, Muslim, Christian or atheists, but why is this case of murder ignored and the perpetrator exonerated of any responsibility? What a slap in the face of the Jewish community, and not just in France. This will probably be seen as a go-ahead for violence against Jews elsewhere.

It would appear that the lives of Jewish people are not worth much. Incidentally, France is a country where people will get one year in prison if they throw their dog out the window. So, is the life of a dog worth more than the life of a Jewish person? It would appear so!

This can only encourage antisemites to perpetrate more crimes against Jews as they see that their actions if noticed AND if reported properly, might not even garner any punishment. Justice is usually served, but maybe not for Jews, after all. At least not for the foreseeable future in France. This is despicable and very scary for the Jewish community of France. That community already doesn’t report all antisemitic acts because very little if anything gets done when they do. Sometimes Jews even get accused of playing “the victim card” or calling any disagreement with the Jewish community “antisemitism.” There might have been some abuse in that area, but throwing a Jewish woman through her third-floor window screaming “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed the Satan” is antisemitism without a doubt. So, do Jewish lives matter? Well, it certainly looks like they don’t in France.

In every situation, there are always going to be the perpetrators, the victims and the bystanders. In the case of Sarah Halimi (the victim) and Kolibi Traoré (the perpetrator), inevitably, there are some bystanders. People who are not Jewish, people who fear Islamic extremism’s repercussions and people guilty of “soft antisemitism” who wouldn’t kill Jewish people, but certainly don’t care if someone else does.
If you don’t see the beginning wave of a repeat of history in Europe, you are not really paying attention. The last time a Jewish life was worth nothing, we let an evil man and his cohorts decimate six million Jews in the most horrific, systematic way possible.

The never-ending scapegoating of the Jews and bloody massacres against them will not stop until Messiah brings peace to the world. That day will come soon at the Second Coming of Yeshua of Nazareth. Some people say that since we cannot stop evil, we should just pray for God to intervene, and He might very soon. After all, if Hitler had not committed suicide, who knows how many more Jews would have perished at the hand of the Nazis. It is believed that Germany would have acquired the atomic bomb within six months after he died. Imagine the damage inflicted if that would have taken place.

So, yes God is absolutely in control, but He works through people. Not because He needs our help to fulfill His program, but because He wants to give us opportunities to bless and be blessed. Don’t be a bystander, be a lending hand, be a helper, be a blesser and be blessed as you do your part in reassuring the Jewish community that Jewish lives do matter! In the meantime, don’t be surprised if French Jews start making Aliyah in droves again. After all, didn’t France just throw them under the bus?

In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old.
(Isaiah 63:9)

April 16, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

A New US Assistant Secretary of State with Ties to Hamas…What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

The Arab-Israeli conflict was not born yesterday. Although hope appeared during the last US administration, this conflict will most likely continue for the foreseeable future. Without positioning ourselves anywhere on the political spectrum, it is not difficult to notice the progress that was made during the Trump administration. Again, this is not meant to be an apology for Donald Trump’s policies, but simply an acknowledgment of some of his accomplishments regarding the Middle East. Many previous presidents spoke of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (the historical and biblical capital of Israel), only Trump did it. He defunded the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency and received a lot of criticism, but it turned out he was right. After a year-long investigation, his administration decided that the settlements in the West Bank were not illegal and started to describe the area as Judea and Samaria instead of the West Bank or the “Occupied Territories”. Then you have the Abraham Accords that historically paved the way for normalization between Israel and some of her Arab neighbors (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan). Seemingly, more would have followed suit; but we are now under a new administration.

To be sure, President Trump openly declared his love for Israel and the Jewish people, so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone; but many before him also spoke great words about the Jewish State and the right to the Land, and yet, accomplished little. We could say that even the friendliest previous administrations settled for some sort of status quo regarding Israel and the Middle East. I am reminded of the foundational passage of Scripture found in Genesis 12:1-3, where God promises to Abram (later to become Abraham) great blessings, a specific piece of land and a myriad of descendants as numerous as the stars. In that passage, in what could be called “God’s foreign policy as it pertains to Israel”, we read: “And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse.” It might be helpful to notice that God didn’t give mankind three choices as to how they interact with Israel and the Jewish people. We either bless or we curse. Nowhere in the Bible are we ever told that we can remain uninvolved or indifferent when it comes to the Jewish people. We either bless or we curse. There is no sitting on the fence out of ignorance, or even worse…by choice!

Unfortunately, it can get more destructive. Apathy is never a good move, but hypocrisy is much worse. We now are under a new administration claiming that the safety of Israel is a priority, but is it really?

For starters, the current administration wants to reset the US-Palestinian relations. In a recent memo, it was stated, “the Biden administration will seek to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees”. So, it looks like we are back to the pre-1967 borders agenda. This would bring Israel’s borders back to the 1949 armistice lines and make the country extremely vulnerable to attacks on several points; not to mention that it would reduce the area given by God to the Jewish people in Genesis 15:18-21 even further. Additionally, radical Islamists, Hamas and other enemies of Israel have clearly indicated that the pre-1967 borders are still not enough. These borders would only lead to further attacks and invasions by the Palestinians.

Even though the current US administration vows that they seek Israel’s safety, they have shown no interest in dealing with the Middle East as a priority and have made Hady Amr the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israel and Palestinian Affairs. He is the highest US ranking official for Middle East affairs, but the question is, “Does he have the credentials for such a task?”

• Hady Amr is a practicing Muslim: This isn’t an issue in and of itself, as freedom of religion is part of our constitution (rightfully so), but might not be the best choice for the person officially representing the US government in the Middle East.

• Hady Amr wrote that He was inspired by the Palestinian Intifada: The Intifada (meaning “uprising”), was organized unrest from Palestinians against Israel, based on the false premise that Israel is an occupier and colonizer and trying to push Palestinians out of their own ancestral land. There is no archeological, geographical or historical basis for such a claim.

• Hady Amr has repeatedly called for dealing with Hamas: Hamas is a terrorist organization with a charter calling for the complete destruction of Israel.

• Hady Amr has been instrumental in resuming US funding to the PA: One of the first items on his agenda has been to restore US funding to the Palestinian authority. US taxpayers are now forced to fund terrorism again.

• Hady Amr has strong ties to Qatar: He lived and worked there for years, establishing a branch of the Brookings Institute. Qatar is notorious for funding terrorism and supporting Hamas and having ties with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

• Hady Amr has accused Israel of murdering innocent children: He wrote: “Arabs will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.”

• Hady Amr has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing: He continues to promote the false narrative that Israel has taken over Palestinian land and committed ethnic cleansing, when in fact, there are more Arabs in Israel today than there were prior to 1948.

I can definitely see credentials in that list, but I am not sure they are the credentials needed for an unbiased approach to the Middle East crisis. It looks to me like the current administration is determined to undo all that the previous administration achieved. President Trump will be remembered as the single American President who did the most for Israel and the Jewish people. He was Genesis 12:3 in action on many fronts. He blessed Israel!

While it is still too early to know all that President Biden will do in the Middle East, by gathering a team of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian staff members, one can only imagine what the future might hold in terms of Arab-Israeli conflict resolution.

There are things to consider when the US appoints a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israel and Palestinian Affairs:

• Consider the weight of the 1917 Balfour Declaration: The very brief letter written by Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild set the international stage for the birth of modern Israel. It read as follows: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

• The San Remo Conference validated the Balfour Declaration: After World War II, allied forces met in San Remo, Italy, to divide land conquered in the Middle East. They decided to include the decision made in the Balfour Declaration in their statement as follows: “The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

• The League of Nations included the Balfour Declaration in their 1922 mandate for Palestine: While Great Britain didn’t have the right to intervene in the future borders of Israel, the Balfour Declaration gained credence when the League of Nations incorporated it in their mandate for Palestine in 1922.

• The United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine in 1947: Fifty years after Theodor Herzl spoke of it in 1897, the ancestral land for the Jewish people was reborn as a modern nation. The signatories included President Harry Truman who was a close friend of Chaim Weizmann (Israel’s first President).

• The Bible makes the best case for the existence of Israel: While this should be the topic of another article, the Bible is replete with passages promoting and defending the Land of Israel as belonging to the Jewish people by divine decree (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:18-21, Isaiah 14:1, 27:13, 43:5-7, 60:21; Ezekiel 37; Jeremiah 31:35-37; Hebrews 11:8-9.) The biblical case for the land is very strong

• Modern Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East: Contrary to the false narrative being pushed by academia, the media and the current US administration, modern Israel is a haven of peace for Arabs in the public sector, private sector and is represented in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).

All we need is some balance in the way our new administration interacts with Israel and Palestine. I don’t see any of that coming from the man who doesn’t have a problem dealing with Hamas and even looking to make a deal with them. I still rest in the fact that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is on our side; and He is definitely a Zionist in the purest sense of the term!

May 20, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Can Some of Israel’s Foes Become Her Friends?

For over twenty years, I have labored ardently at exposing global antisemitism and its morphing trends. At some level, that task has become part of my daily routine within my ministry to my people. It has been emotionally, intellectually and even physically draining at times. Unfortunately, I do not see antisemitism slowing down any time soon. Everything seems to indicate that it is on the rise, now even including the deaths of Jewish people (San Diego, Pittsburg, Paris.) That is why when something positive takes place, it comes as a breath of fresh air in a suffocating world of xenophobic hatred. It recently happened through one of my reliable sources.

One of my many sources on the topic is a site called canarymission.org. They do a very thorough job of exposing those who loathe Israel publicly. They are not interested in character assassination, but simply in exposing the people by name, position and quoting their own words to illustrate their antisemitism. They let people decide what to think based on quoting Israel’s enemies verbatim and. as far as I can tell, they have always been fair. They describe their mission as follows: “Canary Mission documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews. We investigate hatred across the North American political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.”

In April 2020, they published statements made by five “ex-canaries” as they call them. These people, whose identities are being kept private for safety reasons, have done a 180º on Israel and the Jewish people. They have recognized the indoctrination that they had been victims of, and have decided to think for themselves. Imagine that! These people were anti-Israel activists involved with groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS.)

They have been under a lot of pressure from these organizations and various people supporting their agendas. Courageously, they changed sides because they realized that they had been lied to. In all fairness, we must also admit that as much as the Palestinian narrative is based on a premise that is historically unsustainable, Israel is never 100% squeaky clean either. Regardless, these young people have chosen to seek the truth, not just what they think the truth is or what they are told the truth is. They went out of their way to research, compare, study and think for themselves, something that goes against what they experienced in college. Their conclusion changed them from foes to friends of Israel.

One “ex-canary” said: “I have come to renounce SJP because my experiences in the Holy Land have opened my eyes to several key points. Jewish people are not “colonists”, rather, the Jewish people are historically indigenous to Israel… Israel [is] being unfairly held to a higher standard…”

Another one stated:” although I am very visibly Muslim, the Israeli employees treated me with the utmost respect and kindness as if I was one of their own… Seeing that truly made me so ashamed that I ever thought so negatively of people who literally did nothing to deserve so much hate being aimed towards them. I am very fortunate to be among those who have realized the error of my ways and use the opportunity to better myself and better the community.”

Yet, another one spoke about BDS, “I used to be involved with the BDS movement and would boycott certain companies and support the movement at my university. I no longer support this movement because it is aggressive and preventative to creating efficient dialogue… Many people back this movement because of their antisemitism and I refuse to participate in a movement that furthers the oppression of a group of people.”

They had a lot more to say about how they were misled and indoctrinated against Israel. Their campus experience was not uncommon and continues to plague thousands of gullible college students. Equipped with common sense and honesty, these students sought the truth. As it turns out, they actually applied biblical principles to arrive at the truth.

• They did their own research (Deuteronomy 29:29; Acts 17:11)
• They stopped lying (Deuteronomy 5:20)
• They put any preconceived notion about Israel aside (Isaiah 29:20-21)
• They chose to respect all people as humans (Proverbs 25:21)
• They refused to commit character assassination (Exodus 14:14)
• They didn’t rejoice over the fate of their enemies (Proverbs 24:17)
• They ended up loving their former enemies (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:43-45)

We can all learn from them (and incidentally, from the Bible) and certainly hope and pray that more of Israel’s foes will seek the truth and become her friends…Israel could use a few more friends right now!

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