United Nations Archives - The New Antisemitism

July 1, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 8 Comments

Holocaust Denial Is Pure Evil?

As unfathomable as the Holocaust was to those who entered the death camps at the end of WWII, it is all the more unthinkable even to contemplate the idea that the Holocaust never happened. Of all people, General Eisenhower understood that very well when he visited a death camp with General Patton after the war. When he spoke to members of Congress who had just visited Buchenwald in 1945, he said, “You saw only one camp yesterday. There are many others. Your responsibilities, I believe, extend into a great field, and informing the people at home of things like these atrocities is one of them… Nothing is covered up. We have nothing to conceal. The barbarous treatment these people received in the German concentration camps is almost unbelievable. I want you to see for yourself and be spokesmen for the United States.”

Furthermore, in a letter to General Marshall, also in 1945, he also wrote, “While I was touring the camp, I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops the tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

General Eisenhower somehow understood that the human race is such that if the Holocaust could be erased, minimized or denied, people would find ways to do it. He was very concerned about preserving the memory of such carnage for future generations. In spite of his efforts and that of others, Holocaust denial is a real thing in 2023.

Of all the people who spent years hunting Nazis post-WWII, Simon Wiesenthal understood that bringing those criminals to justice was critical but not enough. In his book The Sunflower, he said, “Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.”

Wiesenthal was so right! Especially as we move forward into the 21^st century and both criminals and surviving victims are in their mid-90s. Soon, very soon, first-hand accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust will be a thing of the past, and the historical revisionists will be one step closer to making the Jewish catastrophe completely disappear from the annals of history.

So was Elie Wiesel in Night, the memoir of his time in Auschwitz, “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time,”

One of the most known Holocaust deniers is David Irving, who has written several books on the Third Reich and who has described the Holocaust as “limited,” “experimental,” “not systematic,” and “an invention of the allies.” He was exposed in a book by Jewish historian and antisemitism expert Deborah Lipstadt. In Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier. This led to Irving suing her and Penguin Books. Irving was found by the judge to be an antisemite, a racist and a falsifier of the historical record. He lost, but unfortunately, that was just one battle against Holocaust denial that was a victory, but certainly not the war.

Why are people not trying to deny American slavery or the Russian Gulag? I am not in any way suggesting that we should deny these two other human tragedies or any others, but I am wondering why such focus is on the Jewish tragedy.

To be honest, I am not wondering why such focus is on trying to erase the Holocaust from history. Satan will invest all his efforts in trying to ridicule, minimize, ostracize and even demonize Jewish existence. He would be thrilled if he could convince some that the Holocaust never happened or was grossly exaggerated by the Allies or Jewish people to justify pushing for the creation of a Jewish state.

One way to fight Holocaust denial is through education: at home, at school, through movies and even in churches and mosques. Some have said that people talk too much about the Holocaust, but a survey taken two years ago shows otherwise.

63% of Millennials and Gen Z didn’t know that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
48% of Millennials and Gen Z couldn’t name one single concentration camp.
56% of Millennials and Gen Z were unable to identify Auschwitz.
11% of Millennials and Gen Z believe that Jews caused the Holocaust.
49% of Millennials and Gen Z have seen Holocaust Denial on Social Networks.

Please do not tell me that we are speaking too much about the Holocaust after you consider the result of that survey. As first-hand accounts are becoming a rarity, the memory of the Holocaust is in our hands. Our generation is now responsible for continuing the fight for the preservation of historical truth and for the respect of the memory of the six million.

Holocaust Denial is pure evil, it is an insult to the victims and the survivors. When we see it, read it or even hear it, if we remain silent, we become the new bystanders of the 21^st century. Bystanders at such a critical crossroads in human history as at any other time are becoming co-perpetrators.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel).

May 10, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 2 Comments

The Six Stages of Antisemitism: It’s About to Get a Lot Worse!

Antisemitism, also known as the longest hatred, didn’t happen in a vacuum. It progressively grew, morphed and reinvented itself. It has been creatively adapted to fit the times. As one surveys the history of the Jewish people, it quickly becomes evident that it has been and continues to be punctuated by acts of antisemitism.

Forced baptisms and conversions, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, the Holocaust and the Middle East crisis are just a few of Satan’s creative ways to turn the world against the Jews. He succeeded in millions of casualties even though God promised never to forsake Israel completely(Jeremiah 31:35-37.)

He has been busy on two fronts toward the same goal: the destruction of the Jews. First, he works hard at turning the Jewish people against Yeshua by erroneously making them believe that following Him is antithetical to remaining a Jew. Second, he has turned many within the Church against the Jews throughout history and even today with the growth and influence of Replacement Theology.

Some believe that antisemitism was at its apex stage during the Holocaust and stopped after that. If history stopped, I could agree with such a statement. Still, almost eighty years have passed, and outside of maybe slowing down a bit for two decades after the Holocaust, antisemitism is alive and well. It has been on an uninterrupted continuum since biblical days.

We can also look at antisemitism as existing on a spectrum throughout the history of the Jewish people. To understand the gravity of the current situation, we must study that spectrum. This will allow us to determine where normalization sits on the spectrum and what it means to us today.

As we study the spectrum of antisemitism, one thing will become evident: Antisemitism doesn’t vacillate through history, going back and forth on the spectrum from non-existent to full force. Instead, it keeps moving in the same direction, never looking back. It might slow down a bit when a particular historical figure appears on the world scene and sees Jewish people with favor, such as–within reason–Charlemagne (747-814) or Napoleon (1769-1821). Still, it never completely ceases, even with their favorable treatment.

So, the spectrum moves only in one direction at various speeds but never reverses direction. It is driven by Satan from one end to the other, without exception.

The starting point of antisemitism is found in the biblical record of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament.) Pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph (Exodus 1), Haman in the book of Esther, the Amalekites (Exodus 17) or even the list of people groups provided by Asaph in Psalm 83. Those are obvious examples of the enemies of Israel. Still, the animosity goes back to Genesis 3:15, when the seed of the serpent (Satan) fights the seed of the woman (Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah).

At the origin, it was nothing more than biblical pagan jealousy. The people around Israel were jealous of the “chosen people” status of Israel declared by God (Deuteronomy 7:6-8; 14:2; 26:17-19; 2 Samuel 7:23-24, Psalm 105:8-15; 135:4; Isaiah 41:8). The Jewish people have been set aside by the God of Israel for His purpose, and that makes many people jealous, For You have separated them from all the peoples of the earth as Your inheritance, as You spoke through Moses Your servant, when You brought our fathers forth from Egypt, O Lord God.” (1 Kings 8:53).

Moving into the Greek Scriptures (New Testament), we find many passages that paint part of the Jewish leadership as antagonistic to Yeshua and His followers. This doesn’t validate the antisemitic tone that many have tried to attribute to the Greek Scriptures. That part of the Bible is not antisemitic, but it is not within the scope of this article to address that issue.

After the closing of the Canon of Scripture, from the late 1^st century forward, many of the ante-Nicaean Church Fathers contributed to the building of an early anti-Jewish sentiment. The following generations of Church Fathers continued the diatribes. This section of the spectrum could be called theological anti-Judaism. It continued throughout history with various degrees of intensity, peaking at times such as the Crusades or the Inquisition and specific recurring times on the calendar such as Holy Week as it became Classical Antisemitism.

Unbeknownst to him, Martin Luther set the stage for the Holocaust in his pamphlet “On the Jews and their lies.” He never intended for the Jews to be mass-murdered, but his words carried much weight, which led to tragic consequences. Martin Luther couldn’t look forward to the future or Adolf Hitler, but Hitler most definitely looked back at Luther and chose to act upon the theologian’s every word and beyond. There was another shift, and Classical Antisemitism became Racial Antisemitism. Hitler described the Jews as vermin and sub-humans to be eradicated for the betterment of mankind. He tried to support his lethal agenda against a backdrop of science by promoting Eugenics (debunked soon after, but seeing a bizarre comeback in the 21^st century).

Then came the interlude—two decades of relative respite for the Jews. The words “antisemitic” or “antisemitism” became taboo after the Holocaust. To be sure, while the words were avoided, the thoughts and actions continued. Yet, it was time for Satan to reinvent the oldest hatred. So, he repackaged it in the form of anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism so that an antisemite could continue their nefarious agenda without being called an antisemite. Most scholars now agree that this period, which continues to this day, is known as the New Antisemitism. It has benefited quite a bit from the advent of the Internet and social networks. People feel good about being social justice advocates while they demonize Israel and the Jews.

Yet, the spectrum is even broader. In 2012, in Toulouse, France, a man killed seven Jewish people total, including a rabbi and two young children at a day school. In my opinion, this attack marks when Jewish people started getting killed again for being Jewish. In 2015, during the “I am Charlie” days, a man entered a kosher supermarket on the east side of Paris, took Jewish people hostages, and ended up killing four of them. Keep in mind that killing four or more people in one event constitutes a “mass killing.” The carnage continues to this day all over the world. This is what I have called End-Times Antisemitism. It is part of the new antisemitism but is a hybrid of classical antisemitism (biblical days to Holocaust) and the new antisemitism (1948 to today).

I believe that there is one more brand of antisemitism coming, and I call it Tribulation Antisemitism. It will be a time of great turmoil and destruction for the Jewish people left behind. According to Zechariah 13:8-9, two-thirds of the Jewish people living at that time will perish, and one-third will survive and become followers of Yeshua the Messiah. As difficult as it is to say and comprehend, it will be a time far worse than the Holocaust for the Jews.

While, again, this is not within the scope of this work, I believe in a pre-tribulation, pre-millennial Rapture of the Church. Believers will be taken up in the air by Yeshua before the start of the Tribulation, also known as the Time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7).

The reason why I need to clarify my eschatological position is to avoid being accused of escapism. Some who do not adhere to a pre-Tribulation Rapture feel that those who do are simply buying into a doctrine of escapism to avoid the terrible days ahead. Believing in a pre-Tribulation Rapture should encourage believers to share with the lost before we are all gone. That includes sharing with our Jewish friends who will suffer the most during the Tribulation. I truly cannot wait for Yeshua to call us home, and yet, I can wait for Him to do so, as long as I can be used to lead more people to Him. Time is of the essence as the stage is being finalized for the antichrist and the Tribulation a little more each day.

This is where the normalization of antisemitism comes on the spectrum. While antisemitism has existed since biblical days, there always were people to defend the Jews against the libels and the diatribes. Israel’s advocates continue to be as vocal as they can today, but they are a dying breed.

What will happen when antisemitism becomes normalized and goes mainstream? This shift must occur for the Tribulation events to occur with such intensity. When normalization occurs, it will be open season for the Jews and those who defend them. We are not quite there, but we are very close. In other words, the stage is set for the final iteration of antisemitism… The incentive to share Yeshua with our Jewish friends has never been so palpable!

May 1, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

Do Biblical Zionists Love Palestinians?

Whenever one puts “Biblical,” “Zionist,” and “Palestinian” in the same sentence, definitions are in order. Unity might never be fully achieved, but it should never be because of a lack of clarity. First, what I mean by Biblical is “in accordance with the Biblical record,” which, as far as I understand, includes the sixty-six books of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. As far as a fair definition of Zionism, lest I be accused of any bias as a Jew, I prefer to give a plain dictionary definition of the word as, “a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.”

Now, for the definition of who is a Palestinian, it gets a little tricky. Again, for the sake of clarity, I will say, “any physical descendant of the various Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel known as Palestine before 1948.” While I do not believe that tracing the Palestinian people historically is possible, we must recognize that Arabs born in the Land of Israel when it was still known as Palestine are real people, not responsible for the conflict they or their children were catapulted into. We must not forget that Palestine as a word was introduced by the Roman emperor Hadrian at the time of the Bar Kochba Revolt in AD 132-135 (A failed Jewish revolt against Rome). To humiliate the Jewish people, Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina and Israel became known as Palaestina.

Unfortunately, the word stuck and until 1948, “Palestine” was the word used to describe the geographical area that had always been known as Israel before. Eventually, under the leadership of Yassir Arafat and subsequent “Palestinian” leaders, the word’s etymology was expanded to mean both a land AND a people, a political claim that cannot be proven historically, archeologically, culturally or biblically. Today’s “Palestinians” have an Arab culture, eat Arab foods, speak Arabic and have Arab ancestors. “Palestinians” as a people group do not exist, but “Palestinians” as Arabs do. This is in no way meant to belittle their right to self-determination and their right to exist, but not at the expense of or to replace native Jews. Here is a question: Why do pre-1948 ‘Palestinian’ coins, bills, postage stamps and other items with a country of origin written on it all include the two initials in Hebrew for ‘Eretz Yisrael’ meaning ‘Land of Israel’?

Logically, we now need to look at what defines a “Biblical Zionist.” We often hear the words “Christian” and “Zionist” put together to describe someone who would consider himself a follower of Yeshua (Jesus) and a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people’s right to the land. I prefer the term “Biblical” to “Christian” as it pertains to those who love and support Israel. Unfortunately, in the last few years, many people who call themselves Christians have displayed quite a bit of antisemitism and have supported faulty views like Replacement Theology or Christian Palestinianism. We must also mention the recent upsurge in support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement from several mainline Christian denominations.

The Biblical Zionist position is usually taken because of one’s eschatological (End-Times) perspective and/or theological approach. Many evangelical Christians have supported Israel over the years, seeing that God is not finished with the Jewish people and has never completely fulfilled His promise given to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 12:1-3. That same promise was ratified as a covenant known as the Abrahamic Covenant with a promise of a seed, a land and a blessing. At the ratification of the covenant made between God and Abram (Genesis 15:7-19), no conditions were made. However, specific land boundaries were given which, incidentally, are much larger than current Eretz Yisrael. When God specifically gave Abram the boundaries of the land He was giving him, He simply stated, “To your descendants, I have given this land.” When Abraham’s son Isaac settles in Gerar instead of moving to Egypt God repeats the promises of the Covenant He made with Abraham (Gen 26:1-4), “Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

Furthermore, in Genesis 28:13-15, the Abrahamic Covenant is reconfirmed through Isaac’s son Jacob where the same land (vv. 13, 15) spoken of prior, is promised to Jacob and his descendants as it was promised to Isaac before. It continues to be unconditionally given as we know through the Biblical record that Jacob lied to his father about his birthright. It was in God’s plan to have Jacob and not Esau inherit the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant from Isaac. So biblically speaking, the descendants of Abraham, through Isaac and through Jacob are the Jewish people.

The Biblical Zionist’s love for Israel and the Jewish people is a result of his understanding of the eternal, unconditional and unilateral Abrahamic Covenant and its three promises made that were later amplified in three other unconditional covenants known as the Land Covenant (Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20; Ezekiel 16:53-63), the Davidic Covenant (II Samuel 7:11-16), and the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

But the great love that Biblical Zionists display for Israel and the Jewish people should not be exclusive, and it should extend to all, even those who have been indoctrinated to hate and destroy Israel. In the words of Yeshua in Matthew 5:44, we read, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This doesn’t imply that all Palestinians today hate the Jews, as we should never paint with broad strokes. Yet, as difficult as it might be to fulfill that command, for those who take the Bible seriously, it is a command, nonetheless.

At the end of the day, Jews and Arabs have the same need of a redeemer to pay the price for their sins, just like anybody else in the world. There is only one way to God, and that is through the atoning death of Yeshua the Messiah for our sins. God doesn’t view people as Jews, Palestinians or Gentiles, but as sinners needing redemption. Once saved, we retain our ethnic identities, so a Jew remains a Jew and an Arab remains an Arab. It is only in Messiah that Jews and Arabs can truly get along and love and respect each other.

A Biblical Zionist not only can – but should – love the Palestinians. Over the years, I have found that to love Israel and the Jewish people and to love the “Palestinians” is not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, when we reverse this equation, love, too often, disappears, and those who support a Palestinian cause almost always show animosity toward the Jews and Israel.

January 25, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 5 Comments

The Silenced Six Million Are Crying Out!

When someone cannot defend themselves, they count on others to come to the rescue, and when it comes to the Holocaust, the others are you and me. As it turns out, the silenced six million are counting on us never to be forgotten. International Holocaust Remembrance Day It is different from Yom HaShoah (Day of the Catastrophe), which falls annually, a week after Passover in Israel (started in 1953). Since 2005, each year, on January 27, the international community remembers the Holocaust in various ways, from synagogue services to vigils to educational events that include Holocaust survivors or scholars. Yet, survivors are dwindling to a few thousand globally. Considering that anybody born at the onset of the war in 1939 would be eighty-four years old today, most survivors of the Holocaust are in their nineties. Soon, they will all be in our memories. Or will they?

Some clueless teenagers were recently spotted on TikTok pretending to be in the Holocaust. These teenagers put makeup on their faces to look emaciated and write pretend captions such as”I died in the Holocaust” and receive comments such as “I myself have been gassed over 6,000,000 times!!!” These young people are belittling the worst carnage against the Jewish people in the history of mankind; they think it is funny and their followers do too. That is not even considering all the other social networks getting away with posts about the Holocaust, going from ridiculing it to denying it.

The danger is threefold. First, we have a disappearing group of first-hand witnesses of the horrors of the Holocaust. In another five years, they might all be gone since the survivors are almost all in their nineties. Second, an uneducated and offensive younger generation is mocking the Holocaust and its victims online or in person. Finally, we have a growing number of people who minimize, alter or deny the catastrophe. As the survivors disappear and the new generation mocks the tragedy, it will only encourage those who choose to deny the Holocaust ever happened, and this breaks my heart.

As the international community commemorates the Holocaust on January 27, I am glad to see that some efforts are still being made, never to forget. Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem is inaugurating its book of names at an exhibit at the UN headquarters in NY. The Book of Names contains 4,800,000 of the 6,00o,000 names of the Holocaust victims. One of them is my grandfather Maurice Weinzveig. What else can we do?

Listen to a Holocaust survivor: This is a very effective way to learn about the event from a first-hand witness. The challenge is that in 2023, their number is exponentially reducing by virtue of their age. If you know one or are invited to hear one, I think you should take advantage of the opportunity. Additionally, the staff at Shadows of Shoah brings many testimonies from survivors on video and, by that medium, renders their unique stories eternal. The Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation also has over 50,000 video testimonies of survivors, including my dad Georges Melnick.

Visit a Death Camp: In November of 2010, I traveled to Krakow, Poland, to visit the remains of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where my maternal Grandfather Maurice Weinzveig was taken by the Gestapo from Paris in the Summer of 1942. I am set to visit again in the summer of 2023. The Death Camps are some eerie monuments left over from one of the darkest periods of mankind’s history. If possible, everybody, and most definitely every Christian, should walk through one of them once in their lifetime.

Visit a Holocaust Memorial Museum: The most extensive and most elaborate of them–Yad Vashem–is located in Jerusalem. I make a point of taking the people there each time I lead a tour to Israel. It is a must! It is a difficult visit punctuated by visual and audio markers that will undoubtedly leave an impression on you for many years. There are other Holocaust Memorials, several in the United States. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles are just two of them. The list is much longer and warrants several different visits if possible.

Read an account of the Holocaust: There is a tremendous collection of Holocaust literature in many languages. From survivors’ accounts to biographies, historical accounts, and even poems. Every human being should read the short but life-altering account of Elie Wiesel’s time at Auschwitz-Birkenau with his father when he was only 15. As told in his autobiography Night, his story of resilience and survival against all odds is very dark. A detailed and accurate account of the Holocaust can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz The War Against the Jews or in The destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg.

The silent six million are indeed crying out. It is heart-wrenching even to think their memory could disappear from history. To bring a little perspective to the 6,000.000 and to understand that they are much more than just a number–even though the tattooed forearm was an attempt at dehumanizing the victims–if we were to recite all the names of the 6,000,000 innocent victims of the Holocaust, it would take us 11.5 years nonstop day and night.

Please, tell your loved ones, especially the younger generation about the Holocaust. Don’t wait for schools or museums to do our jobs. We owe it to the silenced six million, so let us not be indifferent!

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
(Elie Wiesel)

January 21, 2023 By Olivier Melnick 1 Comment

The Biblical Case for Israel’s Right to the Land Should Be a Slam Dunk!

Israel continues to be in the news almost daily. Now they have a newly formed government coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Many critics of the new coalition are voicing their concern regarding the fact that Bibi had to form a coalition with some leaders who are more on the right than on the political spectrum. There was a gathering of 80,000 people on the streets of Tel Aviv to protest some of the moves the new coalition wants to make in the legal arena. People in Israel fear the survival of the only true democracy in the Middle East. Added to that is the constant tension about the land and the expansion of Jewish settlements.

The accusation of colonization and occupation–a fabricated narrative from the 1960s–is now well-seared into people’s brains. Very few, if any, in the mainstream media are questioning the validity of such a claim. Nothing shows how wildly accepted the “Palestinian Narrative “is more than the recent artifact “returned” to the Palestinian authority. A 2,700-year-old spoon from the Assyrian empire was confiscated from its owner as a part of a criminal case. It was then given to the Palestinian Authority and described as a “historic repatriation.”

Let’s not miss the point here. A significant shift just occurred. For the last sixty years, the Palestinian narrative has been part of anti-Jewish propaganda to turn Israel into “Palestine” so that the rightful original and indigenous original occupants could return. The narrative has become truth, and now is the time to begin validating it with artifacts and antiquities. Enter “the spoon,” heralded as “an example of Palestinian cultural patrimony.” This will undoubtedly be followed by more artifacts to enrich the history of a people that never existed–at least until their introduction to the world by Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1960s.

Jewish history has been rewritten to rob the Jewish people of their heritage, culture, customs, and, last but not least, their land: Eretz Yisrael! I wish the Palestinian Authority would be honest about their goals like PLO executive member Zahir Muhsein was in an interview for a Dutch newspaper in 1977, “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” He was very transparent and admitted that the Palestinian people were invented solely for political gain. Let’s look at a few points made by the Bible as it pertains to Israel and the land.

• The Land ultimately belongs to God: God has granted the title deed to the Jewish people forever, but ultimately, it is His land.
‘The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, because the land is Mine; for you are only strangers and residents with Me (Leviticus 25:23.)

• The Land was given to Abraham and his descendants by God: God has given the Land of Canaan to the Jewish people ONLY through Abraham and his descendants
And the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. (Genesis 12:7, 13:15.)

• The Land grant was based on an unconditional covenant with Abraham: God made a covenant with Abraham, but only the Shechinah glory of God passed through the split animals making it eternal, and God said, “I will,” making the covenant unconditional.
Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. ¹⁷Now it came about, when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, a smoking oven and a flaming torch appeared which passed between these pieces. ¹⁸On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: ¹⁹the land of the Kenite, the Kenizzite, the Kadmonite, ²⁰the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Rephaim, ²¹the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.” (Genesis 15:12, 17-21.)

• The Land grant was based on specific boundaries that should never be expanded: While the current size of Israel (about the size of New Jersey) is not what the millennial size (twice Texas) will be, even the specific boundaries of the more significant Israel are not expandable by one foot. There isn’t one country in the world that would have to abide by biblical boundaries and not try to expand its territory through war or other human means. Israel is unique in that regard.
⁴and command the people, saying, “You are going to pass through the territory of your brothers the sons of Esau, who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful; ⁵do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, not even as much as a footprint, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession.” (Deuteronomy 2:4-5.)
¹⁸‘Today you shall cross over Ar, the border of Moab. ¹⁹When you come opposite the sons of Ammon, do not attack them nor provoke them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as a possession.’ (Deuteronomy 2:18-19.)

• The Land was to Abraham, then Isaac (never Ishmael) and then Jacob (never Esau): While the land was first promised to Abraham, the promise was repeated through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob.
Now Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac; ⁶but to the sons of ^[a]his concubines, Abraham gave gifts while he was still living, and sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the east. (Genesis 25:5-6.)
Live for a time in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. (Genesis 26:3.)
May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, so that you may become a multitude of peoples. ⁴May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you, so that you may possess the land where you live as a stranger, which God gave to Abraham.” (Genesis 28:3-4.)

• The Land grant is only based on God’s character, never on Israel’s performance: Israel was sent into captivity more than once, but God, while He disciplined the Jewish people, never rescinded on His promise.
Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so loathe them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, so that I might be their God. I am the Lord.’” (Leviticus 26:44-45.)

• God’s promise to Israel is as unmovable as the universe He created: God gives the ultimate recipe for the guaranteed destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, but He makes it impossible.
³⁵This is what the Lord says, He who gives the sun for light by day And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— The Lord of armies is His name: ³⁶“If this fixed order departs From Me,” declares the Lord, “Then the descendants of Israel also will cease To be a nation before Me forever.” ³⁷This is what the Lord says: “If the heavens above can be measured And the foundations of the earth searched out below, Then I will also reject all the descendants of Israel For everything that they have done,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:35-37.)

These are seven points out of many more I could make to validate this claim. I am well aware that a biblical defense of Israel’s right to the land will only work with those who hold the Bible as the inerrant word of God. My measuring stick has been the Bible for the last 40 years, and I know that one day I will have to answer to God, not for my salvation which I received 40 years ago as a gift from God through the atoning sacrifice of Yeshua of Nazareth, but for how I served and obeyed after He rescued me. Many Bible believers today do not see a future for Israel and buy into the false narrative of the Palestinians as an ethnic group. It is to them that this article is addressed.

We cannot change God, we cannot change His character, and since His promises and covenants are rooted in His character, we cannot change them either. What people can always do, though, is to study the facts of history alongside the promises of the Bible. If Israel weren’t in God’s plan, from a human perspective, we would have been long gone, but we still exist and are growing stronger against all odds. So, the Bible is one aspect of why we survived all the attempts at decimating us. Add history, politics, and archeology to that foundational truth, and the case is a slam dunk for those who are honest and humble enough to admit it.

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