Middle East

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.”

FIND MORE VIDEOS AND INTERVIEWS ON OLIVIER’S YouTube CHANNEL!

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?

March 6, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

ICC Investigates Israel War Crimes…What’s One More Libel?

The International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands just launched an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians. Most people have heard of the ICC, but very few really understand its role and how binding its rulings are. The idea of an international criminal court goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, 1919 to be exact, during the Paris Peace Conference that followed WWI. Various people went back and forth trying to get something organized and started for several decades after that.

Eventually, in 1948, after the atrocities of WWII, the United Nations General Assembly saw the need for such a legal body. At that point, the International Law Commission or ILC (a group of 34 experts helping to develop and codify international law and elected by the United Nations General Assembly), slowly started to work towards the establishment of the ICC. In 1994, the ILC came up with their final proposal and it was agreed that a conference should convene with the various countries involved in hopes of solidifying the ICC statutes. That conference took place in June 1998 in Rome, Italy. Voting followed, and 120 countries adopted the draft, while 21 abstained and seven voted against. Out of the seven votes against, we can find the United States and Israel. in 2002, the ICC was officially born and became active soon after. It currently has 123 member states. The ICC’s maximum possible sentence is life in prison.

The long list of crimes that the ICC identifies is based on the Geneva Convention that established the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in wartime since 1949. According to their own website, the ICC claims that their purpose is, “Trying individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.” This sounds very honorable, and in the world we live in, it would appear that such a body is critically needed. That is of course if that body is truly unbiased, which remains to be seen. I am not implying that the ICC is corrupt at its core, but I wonder about some of the decisions made over the years, especially one that was recently made involving Israel and possible war crimes against Palestinians.

Israel is not part of the countries that signed the Rome Statute and doesn’t agree with its rules and/or jurisdiction of the ICC. As it would appear, the ICC is currently claiming that it has the power to enforce the rules of the 1998 Rome Statute on any country or individual of its choice regardless of that country agreeing or not with the Rome statute. This is definitely a case of overreaching or overstepping boundaries. The United Nations Security Council officially has the power to rule in that arena and the Oslo Accords (1993 and 1995) which dictate the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Palestine was declared a state by Yassir Arafat in 1988 and is recognized by 138 UN members. It is a non-member observer state at the UN. UNESCO accepted Palestine as a member country in 2011, even though Palestine isn’t a country per see. Could “Palestine” influence the ICC? Possibly!

There are several problems with what the ICC is doing right now, and it could have many grave ramifications for Israel and its citizens around the globe. Basically, according to what the ICC is trying to do, any Israeli citizen could become guilty of war crimes against Palestinians and become imprisoned for up to 30 years. Several issues must be considered as we look at the validity of such claims:

• The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel who didn’t ratify the Rome Statute: As one of several countries that do not agree with the Rome Statute, Israel doesn’t have to abide by the ICC’s ruling.
• The ICC claims that Israel can be prosecuted because they committed crimes within Palestine which has ratified the Rome Statute: This is an illegal unprecedented move.
• The ICC has no right to apply the rules of a treaty to any other countries than parties of that treaty:This would constitute a severe departure from the very nature of international law.
• The entity known as Palestine is neither a sovereign state nor has clearly defined borders: The entire case hinges on the acceptance of Palestine as a state, which it is not.

So, the question remains: Why is ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda going after Israel for war crimes, and did Israel really commit war crimes against Palestinians? This goes hand-in-hand with the same narrative being used to justify the accusations made by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. Israel continues to be accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes and illegal occupation. That narrative is constantly fed to the world and continues to paint Palestine and the Palestinians as victims. I have a few questions for Mrs. Fatou Bensouda:

• Why isn’t Hamas being investigated for war crimes against Israel?
• Why hasn’t the ICC investigated Syria for crimes against humanity, if not genocide in the last several years?
• Will the ICC ever investigate Turkey for killing so many Kurds over the last few decades?
• Should Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah be held responsible for crimes against Israel?

My concern is the fact that the ICC’s current decision seems to be a very biased one against Israel. We continue to witness a tremendous double standard against the Jewish state. The panel of judges who voted on the investigation comprised of three judges, one of them, Judge Péter Kovács, wrote a lengthy, detailed dissenting opinion in which he concluded: “I am convinced that without the cooperation of the directly interested States in the present and truly complicated, over-politicized situation, the Prosecutor will have no real chance of preparing a trial-ready case or cases.” I commend him for seeing through the real agenda.

I think it would be absolutely accurate to describe Mrs. Bensouda’s move as a libel against Israel and by proxy, all Israeli citizens anywhere in the world. A libel, according to the dictionary is, “a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression.” That is exactly what is happening here. I am not sure that this investigation will result in a trial, let alone a conviction, but it certainly helps in continuing to paint Israel as the problem standing in the way of peace in the Middle East. We don’t need the help of the ICC to further that propaganda. If they were doing their job properly and in an unbiased way, they would come to the opposite conclusion.

January 29, 2021 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

BDS directly affects Israel but should concern all of us!

Boycotts, censorship and cancellations have become very popular words in 2020. From “Cancel Culture” to “Social Network Censorships” to “Boycott, Divestment & Sanction (BDS)”, people are being exposed to what it means to have our civil liberties reduced, altered, or even revoked. We are being exposed to the danger of such actions and the repercussions they will have on us and the next generations. Of all of these attempts at crippling our freedom, the BDS movement is most likely the least of them when it comes to affecting Americans. Outside of a certain segment of the evangelical community–vocally and militantly pro-Israel–the rest of the Church and most Americans either don’t care or don’t know about BDS. If you are one of my subscribers, this might only be a refresher, but this bears repeating.

BDS isn’t an invention of the Church, but it has become increasingly attractive to many Evangelicals, where some believe that it is a valid, yet a peaceful, way to protest against Israel. There are several problems with that train of thought, but let us first look at the source of the BDS movement. You might be surprised by what you discover.

It is ironic that most of the people taking such a political stand have very little knowledge of how it got started and by whom. This movement was started on July 9, 2005, by the Palestinian civil society and orchestrated by the current leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian BDS National Committee. Omar Barghouti is co-founder of and the main spokesperson for BDS. His organization claims that Israel must meet three obligations for BDS to stop:
1.   Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall;
2.   Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3.   Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

Too often, there is an unspoken expectation from the Palestinian side. Much of the “not-so-hidden” agenda of the Palestinian Authority is focused on the destruction of Israel and the Jews. At the time that the Palestinian people were invented in the mid-1960s, the problem of refugees didn’t exist. The Jewish people abandoned the use of the term Palestine when Israel was declared a State in 1948. The word became exclusively descriptive of the Arab side and was adopted by Arafat when he created the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization).

The creation of a Palestinian narrative that has been purported over the last 50 years of historical fabrications has helped the world turn on Israel. However, the Palestinian Authority doesn’t really care about the well-being of even their own “citizens”. If they did, they would never use some of their own people as human shields or use schools and hospitals to store weapons and explosives. They are obsessed with the demonization of Israel, the turning of David into Goliath! If they succeed, they are just one step closer to appearing justified when they attempt to annihilate Israel. It is actually quite scary to see how much the West has been swayed towards the Palestinian agenda over the last few decades. Although, some of the Palestinian agenda has been pushed back recently by the signing of the Abraham Accords and the additional countries joining ranks in establishing formal relations with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority takes great pains to misinform, or simply not inform, the people they are trying to influence with the facts surrounding their standoff with Israel. The proper word for it is “propaganda”! The hope is that most people would accept their lies and historical revisionism simply as facts, and too often they do! UN Resolution 194 contains one short paragraph out of 15 on compensation to refugees – not even Palestinian refugees in particular – but refugees in general. People truly need to verify statements before they buy them and then sell them back as facts. Interestingly enough, the only specific identifying term used in that resolution is “Palestine”, and within the context of that 1948 document, it is clear that it refers to the geographical area known as Israel, not a people group.

BDS was born out of a Palestinian desire to enroll otherwise unengaged and apathetic people in their fight against Israel. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ goal might be the total destruction of Israel, but that is not a good marketing technique to recruit supporters for their agenda. Creativity calls for other means of striking the Jewish people.

What if they could get support from different groups of people? This would greatly advance their agenda, wouldn’t it? BDS does just that and it does it well, in the government, the entertainment industry, the universities, and even some Christian denominations such as The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) whose General Assembly voted in the spring of 2014 to divest from three companies engaged in business within Israel (Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions). This is the same PCUSA that unsuccessfully tried to blot out the name Israel from their prayer and hymn books in 2014, leading to a split within the denomination.

Originators of BDS count on the altruistic feelings associated with boycotting for a social justice issue. It becomes easy for anyone to feel good by refraining from buying Israeli products. This seems like a peaceful and worthy protest that could (from their perspective) make a difference and force Israel away from occupation, apartheid and crimes against humanity. Of course, the current BDS supporters are plagued with decisions to boycott that force them to be very inconsistent at best. Divestment is usually a matter of reinvesting your funds elsewhere, and there are plenty of opportunities for such a move. When it comes to boycotting, it is a bit trickier, especially if you want to be consistent and do it with integrity. People will easily stop buying Jaffa® oranges or Osem® cookies from Israel, but don’t ask them to stop using the Intel® chip in their personal computers or their mobile phones altogether (both originated from Israeli ingenuity). The boycott crosses into academia and entertainment as well as business.

BDS proponents often nip the pro-Israel narrative in the bud by loudly condemning Israel, which has become the hip, liberal mantra du jour, even though their own narrative is flawed and biased. Christians don’t want to be labeled as “haters”, especially of Jews. What they may do is find an easier way to participate in BDS rather than an all-out boycott. Divestment can be done silently. When sanctioning comes, they will have to make a choice – and I pray it is a decision based on biblical insight.
• BDS uses a false premise of Israeli occupation and apartheid policies. It is our responsibility to expose their lies and educate those who don’t know BDS or who believe that it is a cause worth fighting for.
• BDS proponents are inconsistent in their boycott and need to be made aware of their hypocrisy or ignorance about Israel’s contribution to the modern world (and the list of those contributions keeps growing every day), not to mention all the everyday products used by millions.
• BDS sends the wrong message to a lot of people thinking that they are helping to make the world a better place when in fact they are supporting anti-Israel, anti-Semitic terrorists.
• BDS counts on people’s ignorance and natural desire for justice to sell their falsified agenda of Palestinian victimhood.

BDS is dangerously infecting the masses with the wrong idea about Israel. It is evident that Israel isn’t “100% squeaky clean” when it comes to politics, but they are a far cry from the picture that BDS is painting. People might have different opinions on how antisemitic the BDS movement is, or if it even is, but one must wonder why BDS aims at stopping Israel from their “crimes” against Palestinians, and yet, they are turning a blind eye to all the other countries where real crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansings are taking place. What an obvious case of a double-standard!

BDS becomes very dangerous when it reaches the political realm and can turn into official policymaking and even bills and laws. Recently, the Biden administration picked Mr. Maher Bitar as the Senior Director for Intelligence on the NSC. The NSC or National Security Council describes itself as follows, ” The National Security Council (NSC) is the President’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his or her senior advisors and cabinet officials.” Maher Bitar’s résumé includes a very long list of anti-Israel involvement, BDS support, radical Islamist terrorism, and plain and simple antisemitism. Shouldn’t the Senior Director for Intelligence on the NSC be an unbiased intelligence professional?

BDS might be only aimed at Israel with its destructive agenda, but it is the symptom of a much greater threat to Western civilization. We can and must expose it, denounce it and fight against it.

Additionally, another thing we can do is to make sure that we do our best to buy Israeli products in the USA to beat the BDS proponents at their own game. There are sites offering a partial list of what BDS wants you to boycott. While the mentioning of this list doesn’t mean that this author endorses all of it, you will undoubtedly find plenty of brands that you already support; just review them, keep at it, and tell others. This would be a strong application of Genesis 50:20 when Joseph proved to his brothers that what some want to use for evil, God can turn around and use for good: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”

What BDS proponents, by commission and omission, too often have in common is a lack of a biblical approach to Israel and the Jewish people. Biblical truth provides a solid foundation for Israel. It describes a people created by God through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the twelve Tribes of Israel as well as precise land boundaries starting early in Genesis 12 and continuing through chapters 15, 17, and following. Zionism isn’t this evil colonialism feeding on Arab blood, yet without a biblical backbone, Zionism lacks the strength to fight the hypocrisy, hatred and double standard of the BDS campaigns around the world. BDS relies on the Bullying, Delegitimizing and Slandering of Israel and does it on a foundation of lies that can be debunked. If truth really matters, let us speak up! So instead, let’s Buy, Defend and Support Israel, Israeli products and corporations.

December 26, 2020 By Olivier Melnick Leave a Comment

Antisemitism 2020: A Year in Review – Part I

There are many topics that could be covered to punctuate the year 2020. Most of them are unusually different from previous years. The race riots, the pandemic, or the elections are just three of them. It could also be argued that 2020 will be remembered as the year when we became the Divided States of America. Nobody in America ever saw such polarization between neo-liberals and conservatives, and the chasm will probably get wider as time progresses. There is also a way to look at Jewish life through the year 2020; Antisemitism! I have been monitoring antisemitism domestically and globally for over two decades, and once a year, I review what events have made each year unique from that perspective. 2020 is no different. Events varied from wake-up calls to challenges to crimes, and they were both domestic and global. Keep in mind that even a global act of antisemitism has many ripple effects that will reach the United States. So, let’s review the year a month at a time:

January 2020: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Every January 27, we are reminded to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As multiple heads of state and key representatives gather to pay tribute to the victims and the helpers (Righteous Among the Nations), the rest of the world is also invited to post a photo of themselves with the hashtag #WeRemember. But Hashtags will not defeat Holocaust deniers, historical revisionists and antisemites. Hashtags are the bumper stickers of the twenty-first century, they make a statement in passing as they move to their eternal abode in cyberspace. Instead, people can visit one of the numerous US-based (30 states) Holocaust memorial/museums, read on the topic, share with the next generation and/or attend conferences and peaceful protests.

February 2020: The Aalst Carnival in Belgium
The city of Aalst, Belgium has officially held its carnival since 1923. Parades of that sort actually go back to the Middle Ages. Aalst almost always makes the news for its 3-Day carnival. The organizers repeatedly claim that the satirical tone of the carnival is to be remembered when one considers any of its floats. They regularly ridicule the Jewish people.
The “Aalst Jews of 2020” were wearing oversized shtreimels (fur hats), dressed in black this year, but the bottom half of their bodies were that of insects or vermin; ants to be exact (don’t miss the extermination innuendo here). Joining the crowds were dozens of people wearing caricatural orthodox Jewish garb and large fake crooked noses, not to mention the many flyers with stereotypical renditions of Jews with side curls, crooked noses and curly hair, and the many people wearing Nazi uniforms…All of it in the name of innocent satire!

March 2020: The Covid-19 Vaccine versus BDS
As of March, 149 countries had been infected. The global number of cases exceeded 150,000 and deaths were over 5,600. We thought that it was bad, but we knew nothing yet. Several countries in the world were racing against the clock to research, discover, test and manufacture a vaccine for Covid-19. At the forefront of these modern countries was Israel.
And then, there were the usual BDS movement people across the globe, selling the false idea that Israel is an occupying, colonialist and human rights violating country. They convince a plethora of uneducated people to boycott Israel. Evidently, they boycott whatever is not going to be too inconvenient. So, here is the million-dollar question: “Would BDS people refuse the vaccine if it came from Israel?” They should if they were consistent and ethical.

April 2020: A New Bible Without Israel
The Danish Bible Society published a new Bible known as “The Bible 2020.” It should be called the RTV (Replacement Theology Version.) This Bible is no Bible at all, and it is a very dangerous document. It chose to inaccurately replace or just ignore the word “Israel” (73 times in the New Testament), calling it instead “the land” or “the people.”
It is just one more proof showing us how close we are from the final chapter in the “Real Bible”, where Messiah Yeshua returns to establish his kingdom after fighting all those who went against Jerusalem (Zechariah 12:10), and establishes His messianic kingdom with His people among which the Jews will be the head and not the tail. That is the biblical truth that includes Israel AND excludes the enemies of Israel.

May 2020: Trump, Ford and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!
In May, President Trump made a very uncomfortable comment as he was visiting a Ford factory in Michigan. As he was addressing executives about the founder of Ford Motors, Henry Ford, he said, “The company was founded by a man named Henry Ford, good bloodlines, good bloodlines. If you believe in that stuff, you got good blood.”
Ford’s antisemitism is indelibly printed in the chronicles of history. It cannot be denied, it shouldn’t be minimized and will not be forgotten. I do not believe that President Trump was promoting Eugenics or racial superiority in the way that Henry Ford did when he published The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, but his statement can be used against him by his enemies and also by those who espouse such a view, linking President Trump to a group of fringe antisemites that already are believed by some to support him.

June 2020: Black Lives Matter but BLM doesn’t
2020 saw the tragic death of George Floyd and the rise of the BLM movement. But before we blindly join and support the BLM movement based on somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction, from a mix of compassion, rightful indignation and misplaced guilt, we should investigate who the BLM movement supports and promotes.
Black Lives Matter clearly supports BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). BDS has been pushing for a total boycott (academic, cultural and economic) of Israel and those who support Israel and Israeli products and companies. It has made great strides towards convincing people across the globe that Israel was the perpetrator of crimes against humanity, oppression, invasion and persecution. BLM is also one of more than 150 organizations within the coalition known as Movement for Black Lives (M4BL.) Let’s support all black lives, but not through a manmade movement that has a shaky foundation at best. Rather, because of our Messiah who supported all lives, enough to die for them. We all should support black lives and it definitely matters how we do it!

Part II with the rest of 2020 will be published next week.

Subscribe to our Daily Devotions

Archived Articles

Tags