Religious Discrimination and Fanaticism in the Holy Land

 Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them  
Amiram Barkat, Haaretz - A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face. more

 Israeli army rabbis criticized for stance on Gaza assault 
Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times - The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel. more

 IDF rabbinate publication during Gaza war: We will show no mercy on the cruel  
Amos Harel, Haaretz - During the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the religious media - and on two occasions, the Israel Defense Forces weekly journal Bamahane - were full of praise for the army rabbinate. The substantial role of religious officers and soldiers in the front-line units of the IDF was, for the first time, supported also by the significant presence of rabbis there. more

 Christian Deported from Israel 
Rev. Ted Pike, National Prayer Network - A Christian student was scheduled for deportation from Israel June 30 because the government accused her of “missionary work.” Roused by police at 6:30 a.m., German grad student Barbara Ludwig was taken to prison and told she must leave Israel by May 30. Haaretz says she “denied being a missionary, although she admits contact with Messianic Jews.” more

 Forgotten Christians 
Anders Strindberg, The American Conservative - At the time of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it is estimated that the Christians of Palestine numbered some 350,000. Almost 20 percent of the total population at the time, they constituted a vibrant and ancient community; their forbears had listened to St. Peter in Jerusalem as he preached at the first Pentecost. Yet Zionist doctrine held that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Of the 750,000 Palestinians that were forced from their homes in 1948, some 50,000 were Christians—7 percent of the total number of refugees and 35 percent of the total number of Christians living in Palestine at the time. more

 Book: Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years 
Israel Shahak - This book, although written in English and addressed to people living outside the State of Israel, is, in a way, a continuation of my political activities as an Israeli Jew. Those activities began in 1965-6 with a protest which caused a considerable scandal at the time: I had personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who happened to have collapsed in his Jerusalem neighbourhood. Instead of simply publishing the incident in the press, I asked for a meeting which is composed of rabbis nominated by the State of Israel. I asked them whether such behavior was consistent with their interpretation of the Jewish religion. They answered that the Jew in question had behaved correctly, indeed piously, and backed their statement by referring me to a passage in an authoritative compendium of Talmudic laws, written in this century. I reported the incident to the main Hebrew daily, Ha'aretz, whose publication of the story caused a media scandal. more

 Video: British film crew threatened by jewish settler in Hebron 
lordfinalcall - Tel Rumeida is a small Palestinian neighborhood deep in the West Bank city of Hebron. Palestinian families from whom these jewish settlers occupied lands, live directly next to these jewish settlers and are often virtual prisoners in their homes, subject to the settlers' violent attacks and destruction of property. Watch Video

 Extremists boast they cursed Sharon 
Yaakov Katz - Far-right activists took credit Thursday for the severe deterioration in Ariel Sharon's health, claiming that a pulsa denura - Aramaic for "lashes of fire" - death curse they instigated against the prime minister in July was the real catalyst behind his current state of health. more

 Row erupts over Israeli textbooks 
BBC - Israel's education minister has said school textbooks should show Israel's pre-1967 borders, prompting a storm of criticism from right-wingers. more

 Rabbis forbid using books with map of pre-1967 lines 
Akiva Eldar in Haaretz - An organization of right-wing rabbis on Tuesday issued a Halakhic decree forbidding students from using schoolbooks featuring maps of Israel which include the Green Line, Israel Radio reported. more

 Muhammad’s sword 
Uri Avnery in Media Monitors - Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes. Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 – exactly 1700 years ago – encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority. more

 Book Review: Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years 
Morris Halle in Z Magazine - The author of this book, Israel Shahak was born in Warsaw in 1933 and was one of the tiny minority of Polish Jews who survived the war in a concentration camp. He came to Palestine in 1945, was educated there, served in the Israeli military, and since the 1960s has been a leading advocate of human rights in the state of Israel. An important part of Shahak’s book is his expose of and an attack on the views on non-Jews held by the main proponents of Judaism, especially in its traditional orthodox form. more

 Israel’s Christian Problem 
Robert Novak on CNN - There is hardly a more resolute supporter of Israel in Congress than Rep. Henry Hyde, the venerable chairman of the House International Relations Committee. That is why his March 25 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell is so important. It is a plea to deflect Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s wall around the Holy Land from its planned position blocking the Scriptural pathway of Jesus Christ. more

 Christians Choose Love Over Empire: Opposition to Christian Zionism 
Sabeel - Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel. The programme provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism, and militarism. In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today. more

 Pursuing the Millennium: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel 
David Hirst in The Nation - In the minds of many Westerners, Muslim fundamentalism has replaced communism as perhaps the greatest single “threat” to the existing world order. Almost totally absent from such arguments is any inclination to examine Jewish fundamentalism, or so much as to ask whether it, too, might be a factor in the conflict over Palestine, one of the reasons why it seems so insoluble. more

 Opinion: The end of Zionism 
Avraham Burg in the UK Guardian - The former Speaker of Israel’s Knesset says Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy. more

 A Strange Kind of Freedom 
Robert Fisk in the UK Independent - We all know about the perils of Islamic fanaticism. But, says Robert Fisk, the biggest threat to liberty in the US may come from other kinds of fundamentalism: Jewish and Christian. more

 Israel’s Discrimination Against Christians 
Donald Neff in Fifty Years of Israel - Desecration of Christian property and churches—arson, window breaking, burning of the New Testament—had long marred relations between the two communities. A small but fanatical group of Jews wanted no Christians, whom they considered fallen Jews, in Israel. This virulent strain of prejudice had been present since before the Jewish state was founded. more

 Book Review: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel 
Allan C. Brownfeld in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - In recent years there has been a dramatic growth of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel which has manifested itself in vigorous opposition to the peace process and has played a key role, as well, in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the murder of 29 Muslims at prayer by the American-born fundamentalist, Baruch Goldstein. more