January 12, 2011
Dear Pastors:
Two years ago today I was between Sderot and Gaza in Southern Israel when a 13 foot long Katyusha rocket fell some 200 yards from me and three IDF Artillery Lieutenants. I carry a piece of shrapnel in my pocket which dug into the ground and came to rest just a few feet from me. Colonel Guy Markizano, who had previously commanded that Reshef Battalion used to tell his men, "When the Preacher arrives, God’s presence is now with us!" Colonel Markizano will be our "enabler" when we are there on the Deaf Football Player’s trip to the IDF in February! Now, if you were to talk to the Bride of my youth, she would doubt what Guy said simply because of my being such a mischievous person.
This morning in our Bible Reading together, Chapters 14, 15, 16 & 17 of the Gospel of Luke, I was impressed once again with my own "unworthiness" to be in the Lord’s Service. Had I gotten what I deserved, as a "hell-raiser and whore-monger" I would be in the Lake of Fire right now, crying out for just one drop of water to cool my tongue, as the Rich Man [Luke 16] we read about this morning did!
The News from Arizona on the Jared Loughner:
An enlarged picture of Jared Loughner, the Skinhead, in an editorial, has his picture, with these words around his "wickedly smiling face:"
* This is not Sarah Palin!
* This is not the Tea Party!
* This is not A Divided America!
* This is not a Reason to limit Free Speech!
* This is not an indictment of Rep. Giffords Record!
* This is not a reason to take away Constitutional Rights!
* This is not Rush Limbaugh!
* This is not the Result of Today’s Political Discourse!
* This is not the Result of a Dim-witted Sheriff politicizing a Tragedy!
* THIS IS A LONE, DERANGED, DRUG-USING MURDERER!
An article:
Mysterious black bag in hand, Jared Loughner ran into the desert, his angry father stopping pursuit in his truck.
Hours after Randy Loughner’s futile confrontation with his 22-year-old son Saturday morning, six people were shot dead and more than a dozen others wounded – and Jared Loughner was in custody.
The sheriff’s deputies who swarmed the Loughners’ house removed what they describe as evidence Jared Loughner was targeting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who doctors said Tuesday was breathing on her own for the first time after taking a bullet to the forehead. Among the handwritten notes was one with the words "Die, bitch," which authorities told The Associated Press they believe was a reference to Giffords.
Investigators with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department previously said they found handwritten notes in Loughner’s safe reading "I planned ahead,""My assassination" and "Giffords." Capt. Chris Nanos said all the writings were either in an envelope or on a form letter Giffords’ office sent him in 2007 after he signed in at one of her "Congress on Your Corner" events – the same kind of gathering where the massacre occurred.
On the morning of the shooting, a mumbling Jared Loughner fled after his father asked him why he was removing a black bag from the trunk of a family car, said Nanos and Rick Kastigar, chief of the department’s investigations bureau. Investigators are still searching for the bag.
In one apparent reaction, the FBI said background checks for handgun sales jumped in Arizona following the shootings, though the agency cautioned that the number of checks doesn’t equate to the number of handguns sold.
Still, there were 263 background checks in Arizona on Monday, up from 164 for the same day a year ago – a 60 percent rise. Nationally, the increase was more modest: from 7,522 last year to 7,906 Monday, a 5 percent jump.
[Opinion of JAV: In dealing with scores and scores of "troubled youth" over the years, I have advised Parents and Grandparents to keep all possible weapons —butcher knives, paring knives, Guns, Ball Bats, etc., from those "troubled youth." We live less than three miles from such Grandparents who have a troubled Grandson. That boy has the potential of doing the same as Jared Loughner, but, as I have told the Grandpa, "He will kill you and your wife; so get your guns, as he will go and do mayhem to others." Now, The black bag held the gun, which Loughner’s parents had locked up in the trunk of their car to keep it away from Jared! Whether that will come out or not, will yet be seen.]
Other News:
There are many heroes who showed indomitable courage and grace under fire during this weekend’s horrific Tucson massacre. Blowhard Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was not one of them.
If the White House has any sense, President Obama will stay far away from the demagogic Dupnik and his media entourage when he visits Arizona on Wednesday to memorialize the victims. Indeed, if the White House is truly committed to unifying the country, it will explicitly disavow Dupnik’s vulture-like exploitation of the shooting rampage.
Within hours of the bloody spree, Dupnik mounted more grandstands than a NASCAR tour champion. A vocal opponent of S.B. 1070, the popular state law cracking down on illegal immigration, Dupnik immediately blamed Arizona for becoming a "mecca for prejudice and bigotry."
To date, there is no public evidence that accused shooter Jared Loughner was in any way motivated by the national rancor over illegal immigration and the Arizona law (though open-borders extremists from the Justice Department on down most certainly wish it were so). When he complained about non-English speakers, Loughner’s nonsensical diatribes were aimed at illiterates in general — not illegal aliens — and "grammar control" by the government.
No matter. Dupnik vehemently singled out "people in the radio business and some people in the TV business" like Rush Limbaugh for creating the New York Times-patented "Climate of Hate." Sounding more like an MSNBC groupie (which, surprise, he confesses to be) than a responsible law enforcement official, Dupnik baselessly suggested that the shooting was part of a larger conspiracy and railed against "vitriol" from limited-government activists who are stoking "anger against elected officials."
Dupnik’s mouth has done more to stoke self-inflicted ire against elected government clowns than anything the right could muster against him. Had the hyper-partisan Democrat been more in tune with his job than the media airwaves, the murderous, maniacal gunman might have been stopped.
As Dupnik himself has now admitted, Loughner leveled death threats against others that were investigated by law enforcement — and then apparently shrugged off. Locals note that Loughner’s mother worked for the county and may have had some pull. Pima County College campus police reported five serious confrontations with the mentally unstable young man before he was kicked out of the school, which he decried as an unconstitutional "torture facility." Classmates said they feared for their lives. His friends say he was a pothead, a 9/11 Truther and a UFO conspiracist so kooky that even flying-objects adherents spurned him.
Despite zero evidence that Rush Limbaugh, cable news, the tea party movement or immigration enforcement activists had anything to do with Loughner’s warped attack, shameless Sheriff Dupnik shows no signs of shutting up.
The worst sheriff in America is walking in the footsteps of another infamous law enforcement official who put fame, ambition and ideology above public safety: disgraced Montgomery County (Md.) Police Chief Charles Moose, the publicity-hungry Keystone Cop who grossly bungled the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002.
Like Dupnik, Moose let politically correct assumptions drive his investigation and incessant press conferences. He insisted on hunting the wrong vehicle while the snipers’ Chevy Caprice (spotted by several witnesses and whose license plates had been checked by police at least 10 times during the shooting spree) got away.
The hapless Moose clung to the notion that white militants in a nonexistent white box truck were to blame — leading to a string of unnecessary murders as the real shooters escaped capture for several deadly weeks. No matter. Moose cashed in on his notoriety, inked a fat book deal and beat a hasty retreat to Hawaii.
Dupnik is now following the same ill-gotten path. But decent Americans understand that he and his civilian counterparts have traveled a smear too far. Despite desperate attempts by the progressive left to pin the massacre on the "harsh tone" of its political opponents, a vast majority of Americans reject the cynical campaign to criminalize conservatism, suppress political free speech and capitalize on violent crime for electoral gain.
At the risk of being accused of inciting violence, you might say they’ve done gone and shot themselves in the foot.
Now, as I have already written, a "Truther" is a 9/11 conspiracist, a UFO-alien and mind-control freak. Laughner was all.
Reading in the above, "I planned ahead,""My assassination" and "Giffords." Capt. Chris Nanos said all the writings were either in an envelope or on a form letter Giffords’ office sent him in 2007 after he signed in at one of her "Congress on Your Corner" as far back as 2007 tells this ole man, this "skinhead" was a JEW HATER, a 2011 HAMAN!
And Dupnik, like Moose in Maryland, is letting "politically correct miss-assumptions" guide him in his remarks. When, and if the right investigator can get to the bottom of this, this ole "not a gambling" preacher, will bet you his socks they’ll come up with "motivation on Laughner’s part," I hate the Jews!
** Let me mention some illustrations: First, the Seligman brothers. Joseph [1819-1880] emigrated from Bavaria to America in 1837 at the age of 18. After working for a while in a small mining town in Pennsylvania, he sent for his brothers and together they went peddling dry goods, first in Pennsylvania, then in Alabama and Missouri.
By 1846 they had settled in New York, where they went into business as wholesale clothiers. Two years later, with the Gold Rush in full swing, they presciently set up shop in San Francisco, where they had no competition in the sale of clothing and were paid in gold for what they sold.
From there it was a short step into banking and in the fullness of time to the financing of railroad construction, the Panama Canal, and many industrial firms like General Motors and Republic Iron and Steel.
Second, there is Marcus Goldman, who left Bavaria for America in 1848 at the age of 27, and who later founded the investment banking firm of Goldman Sachs. He also started as a peddler.
Third, so did Meyere Guggenheim, who arrived in the same year as Goldman at the age of 20. In his case the route out of peddling led not to Wall Street but first to a business dealing in stuff he had previously peddled from a wagon and then ultimately to the purchase of silver, lead and copper mines, leaving the Guggenheim family, wealthy beyond their farthest dreams.
I could further write of Andrew Carnegie, the Rothschilds, Warburg, Kuhn, Loeb, etc.
How did all these Jews make it?
George Washington, the founder of our Christian Nation, assured Jews in his day that Micah 4:4-5 would be the basis of this new nation. Mic. 4:4, "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.
5 For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever."
In America, Jews were able to sit freely "under his vine and under his fig tree" without anyone making them afraid.
Let me quote to you from Louis Berg, "Founders and Fur Traders," Commentary, May 1971— "....the decades between 1820 and 1860 were a period of broad freedom and social acceptance in America....of actual anti-Semitism there was very little ..."
What the Jews found in America was "a country" beyond all doubt a "blessed land of liberty and prosperity." They were free and equal in the economic realm, and also in the political realm, as was seen in Gabby Giffords being elected an Arizona Congresswoman.
Now, let us turn our attention to the French Enlightenment, which, in my opinion, was Anti-Christian, and hence, in line with the adage "that the enemy of my enemy" is "my friend," it could have been expected to be "pro-Jewish." And, in some instances, the French Enlightenment was!
The "Enlightened" part of despot French King Joseph II, said that "the Jews were not demoniac creatures, but human beings; this was the enlightened part of King Joseph speaking.
But, the despotic part added that they had to be "kept in check." Remember now, at the time of the beginning of the French Enlightenment, those who operated under the "guise" of Christianity were severely persecuting the Jews.
The historian Paul Weissman, Anti-Semitism, The Enlightenment, wrote: "...protests against the persecution of Jews— and especially against the Inquisition, the Enlightenment’s bete noire— [French for "black beast," "a person or thing that one particularly dislikes," ] became one of the standard set pieces of eighteenth-century rhetoric." So, in that sense, the Enlightenment was "pro-Jewish."
And, were this all of it, it would add one more powerfully unambiguous reason for the attachment Jews began forming for the "political left."
But, the pro-Jewish aspect of the Enlightenment was very far from "all there was" to its attitude toward the Jews; it was not even the predominant element in the incoherent Enlightenment mix.
Much more typical was the article "Jews [philosophy of]," in the Encyclopedia, the bible [so to speak,] of the philosophers. The Author of this article was the editor of the Encyclopedia, Diderot himself, who declared that the Jews bore "all the defects characteristic of an ignorant and superstitious nation.
Diderot was not the only philosopher who felt this way. Baron d’Holbach, who contributed a number of entries to their Encyclopedia was even more extreme in his contempt and hatred both of Judaism as a religion, and the Jews as a people:
"The revolting policy of the Jewish legislator Moses has erected a stone wall between his people and all other nations. Since they are submissive only to their priests, the Jews have become the enemies of the human race. [The little Austrian Paper Hanger really clued in on this d’Holbach teaching.]
As such, the d’Holbach explained:
"...the Jews have always displayed contempt for the clearest dictates of morality and the laws of nations...
"They were ordered to be cruel, inhuman, intolerant, thieves, traitors, and betrayers of trust...
"All these are regarded as deeds pleasing to God...
"In short, the Jews have become a nation of robbers...
"They have become notorious for deception and unfairness in trade, and it may be assumed that if they were stronger, they would, in many cases, revive the tragedies which occurred so frequently in their own country."
So much for d’Hollbach!
In closing this treatise of Jared Laughner, the Jew Hater, let me quote for you Dr. J. Frank Norris, simultaneously the Pastor of First Baptist, Ft. Worth, and Temple Baptist, Detroit, where during the war, over 30,000 people combined attended the two churches every Sunday:
"I will tell you what you do—you go persecuting the Jew and you are digging your own grave. He isn’t going to bother you, no—he isn’t going to fight you back [this was before they had their own Nation - the 1930s. No, he won’t burn your house down; he won't shoot you in the back----no—no danger of that; he isn’t going to do that—but you lay your hand on him and God will put HIS CURSE upon you—that is what HE says—"I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee!"
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
"Solutionalism","Nowism"
January 11, 2010
Dear Pastors:
The Bride of my youth and I are back home in Oklahoma, where, from time to time, we continue to watch the news unfold about Jared Laughner, Congresslady Gabby Gifford’s shooter this past Saturday.
Patricia Maisch looks like a grandmother, but she is being hailed as a hero today for helping to stop alleged Tucson shooter
The FBI states that there is no doubt Gabrielle Giffords was Target. [ Laughner’s favoritism of Mein Kampf, and Gabby being Jewish, tells the whole story. He appears to be a "skin head Anti-Semite!"]
Maisch, 61, effectively disarmed the shooter as several men pounced on him and threw him to ground. As they struggled to hold him down, Maisch joined the scrum on the ground, clinging to the gunman's ankles. aisch and her fellow heroes -- identified as Bill Badger, Roger Sulzgeber and Joseph Zamudio -- stopped the carnage after 20 people were shot, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Six people died.
Ole JAV watches acts of "anti-Semitism" grow in intensity and greater numbers continually. There are many "Jew Haters" in the Holy Scriptures, of which I shall mention Haman only. History’s greatest anti-Semite probably was Adolf Hitler!
The real root of the extreme hostility within [those who operate under the guise] of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ towards Jews worldwide, and Israel especially, lies in the resurrection of the "previously discredited doctrine of "Replacement Theology," which is also known as "supersessionism," all neatly wrapped in "politics and ideology."
Condi Rice was an admitted "supersessionist." But, probably her "anti Semitic feelings" had more to do with Birmingham’s KKK in September 1963 than anything else.
"Replacement Doctrine Theology" goes all the way back to the 3rd century when Origen, of Alexandria, regarded as the "father of Christian doctrine" by Catholics, concluded that the Jews had lost their "favored position" [as Everlastingly Covenanted People,] with God, and that Christians were now the "New Israel."
There were people in Jeremiah’s day, the princes of the court, whom I simply call "dandies" as there are "dandies" in our day who state that "the Jews’ divine election was revoked and they were ‘destined to stand in perpetual opposition’ to God Almighty!"
Some Jews feel that "this doctrine," which lays behind centuries of Christian hatred of the Jews, was "driven by the Holocaust" underground, which I don’t think I can totally agree with.
However, I do know positively that it is "back," ‘kick-started’ by Palestinian Christian Liberation Theology, which states falsely, that the Palestinian Arabs were the "original possessors" OF THE Land of Israel
Thus, the former Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal, claimed that Palestinian Christians are "the true Israel,' adding' no one can deny me the right to inherit the promises, and after all the promises were first given to Abraham and [don’t miss this,] [Riah says,] "Abraham is never spoken of as a Jew, just as the father of the Faithful."
This false claim that the "so-called Palestinians" are the true people of the land combines with replacement theology to make the case against the State of Israel. To supersessionist Christians, such as Condi Rice and George W., and some of our present day "dandies," Israel is an ungodly interloper and her defenders are the enemies of God—which is precisely the Muslim and Arab argument, a characterization which has tapped into unsavory echoes deep in church history.
The Middle East Council of Churches, a WCC shootoff, states that we "Christian Zionists" are heretics. During the centuries that the churches in the MECC were under "Muslim rule" they were treated as dhimmi-subjugated minorities-alongside the Jews.
But, the folks of these "Churches" operating under the "guise" of Christianity wanted to exaggerate the theological gulf between them and the Jews "to insure that the Muslims would treat them better. Consequently, these churches, which primarily are "eastern Churches," deeply committed themselves to supersessionism over the Jews, which they believed helped them to have comfortable relations with Islam.
Have you heard of the "Truther Movement?" It says that AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory, Princess Diana was murdered to prevent her from marrying a Muslim, 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, in some versions [particularly popular in the Muslim word,] was aided and abetted by the Israeli Mossad.
All such "anti-Semitic" nonsensical ideas have been presented in a documentary called "Loose Change," which posits such ideas, and on a steadily enlarging fringe, fevered discussions of UFOs, aliens and mind control veer into allegations of conspiracies by hidden elites amongst the Bilderbergers, Rothschild banks, heavily laden with anti-Semitic paranoia about the alleged sinister power of the Jews.
At Wellesley College, Professor Anthony Martin, taught his students that Greek culture was stolen from Africa and that the Jews were responsible for the slave trade. He was exposed by Mary Lefkowitz in her book History Lessons. Mary found that "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews," one of Martin’s texts, accused Jews of instigating a "black African Holocaust" and was drawn in large measure from Henry Ford’s "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem."
Philosopher Leo Strauss, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, influenced those called "neocons" in the George W. Administration, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. Strauss was grateful to the United States and deeply committed to liberal democracy.
However, anti-Semites went after Strauss post-haste, using a set of compound misapprehensions: Because neocons supported the war in Iraq, anyone who supported the war in Iraq was a neocon. Because neocons supported the war, they were natural "warmongers." Because they opposed the left, they were "the right." Because a lot of them were Jews, all neocons were Jews.
The neocons were accused of believing in the "lying on principle" in accordance with the thinking of he who had influenced so many of them, Leo Strauss. Strauss, the anti-Semites claimed, had concocted the idea of the "noble lie" without which the "vulgar masses" would become ungovernable. The claim of the anti-Semites was, Straus was "a profoundly tribal and fascistic thinker" with "a profound antipathy to both liberalism and democracy."
In my left pants pocket I carry a piece of shrapnel from a Hamas Katyusha rocket which exploded about 200 yards to my front, two years ago tomorrow, January 12, 2009. While there in Israel during Operation Cast Lead, the "so-called" Palestinians, and their willing dupes in the media, were belaboring the "medieval blood libel," centered on the idea that the Jews are child-killers and blood drinkers.
The Jews, my brethren, are a unique people, with a unique history. I would recommend you read everything Dr. J. Frank Norris had to say about the Jews. The treatment of the present Jewish state is also unique.
There is no other nation in the world that, having been the target of annihilatory attacks for six decades, is expected to make concessions to its attackers even while the assaults continue.
There is no other nation in the world whose right to existence is deemed to be forfeit through its behavior.
There is no other nation in the world whose right to existence is deemed to be forfeit through someone else’s behavior, for which it is made the scapegoat.
On July 2, 1881, after four months in office, President James Garfield, who had survived the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga, needed a vacation. He was vexed by warring Republican factions — the Stalwarts, who waved the bloody shirt of Civil War memories, and the Half-Breeds, who stressed the emerging issues of industrialization.
Walking to Washington's Union Station to catch a train, Garfield by chance encountered a disappointed job-seeker. Charles Guiteau drew a pistol, fired two shots and shouted "I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president!" On Sept. 19, Garfield died, making Vice President Chester Arthur president. Guiteau was executed, not explained.
On Sept. 6, 1901, President William McKinley, who had survived the battle of Antietam, was shaking hands at a Buffalo exposition when Leon Czolgosz approached, a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand, concealing a gun. Czolgosz, an anarchist, fired two shots. Czolgosz -"I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people — the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime," was executed, not explained.
Now we have explainers. They came into vogue with the murder of President Kennedy. They explained why the "real" culprit was not a self-described Marxist who had moved to Moscow, then returned to support Castro.
No, the culprit was a "climate of hate" in conservative Dallas, the "paranoid style" of American (conservative) politics, or some other national sickness resulting from insufficient liberalism.
Our Holy Bible states in Colossians 2:8, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. "
Dr. Ed Bragg, St. Louis, Mo., after watching Boogie speaking on the DVD’s we made in California last month, wrote me stating:
"Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'Alon used four words that were perfect explanations of Col. 2:8... He used "Solutionalism" and "Nowism". These two words are good explanations of the words, "philosophy" and "vain deceit". He then used the phrase, "self guilt". Self guilt explains the "traditions of men".
Neither "Solutionalism" nor "Nowism" will settle the problem facing the world’s people today. Explaining away conduct won’t cut it either! Americans have to deal with what we are facing, and we, in our dealings, best come down on the side of the NATION OF ISRAEL, THE EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Dear Pastors:
The Bride of my youth and I are back home in Oklahoma, where, from time to time, we continue to watch the news unfold about Jared Laughner, Congresslady Gabby Gifford’s shooter this past Saturday.
Patricia Maisch looks like a grandmother, but she is being hailed as a hero today for helping to stop alleged Tucson shooter
The FBI states that there is no doubt Gabrielle Giffords was Target. [ Laughner’s favoritism of Mein Kampf, and Gabby being Jewish, tells the whole story. He appears to be a "skin head Anti-Semite!"]
Maisch, 61, effectively disarmed the shooter as several men pounced on him and threw him to ground. As they struggled to hold him down, Maisch joined the scrum on the ground, clinging to the gunman's ankles. aisch and her fellow heroes -- identified as Bill Badger, Roger Sulzgeber and Joseph Zamudio -- stopped the carnage after 20 people were shot, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Six people died.
Ole JAV watches acts of "anti-Semitism" grow in intensity and greater numbers continually. There are many "Jew Haters" in the Holy Scriptures, of which I shall mention Haman only. History’s greatest anti-Semite probably was Adolf Hitler!
The real root of the extreme hostility within [those who operate under the guise] of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ towards Jews worldwide, and Israel especially, lies in the resurrection of the "previously discredited doctrine of "Replacement Theology," which is also known as "supersessionism," all neatly wrapped in "politics and ideology."
Condi Rice was an admitted "supersessionist." But, probably her "anti Semitic feelings" had more to do with Birmingham’s KKK in September 1963 than anything else.
"Replacement Doctrine Theology" goes all the way back to the 3rd century when Origen, of Alexandria, regarded as the "father of Christian doctrine" by Catholics, concluded that the Jews had lost their "favored position" [as Everlastingly Covenanted People,] with God, and that Christians were now the "New Israel."
There were people in Jeremiah’s day, the princes of the court, whom I simply call "dandies" as there are "dandies" in our day who state that "the Jews’ divine election was revoked and they were ‘destined to stand in perpetual opposition’ to God Almighty!"
Some Jews feel that "this doctrine," which lays behind centuries of Christian hatred of the Jews, was "driven by the Holocaust" underground, which I don’t think I can totally agree with.
However, I do know positively that it is "back," ‘kick-started’ by Palestinian Christian Liberation Theology, which states falsely, that the Palestinian Arabs were the "original possessors" OF THE Land of Israel
Thus, the former Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal, claimed that Palestinian Christians are "the true Israel,' adding' no one can deny me the right to inherit the promises, and after all the promises were first given to Abraham and [don’t miss this,] [Riah says,] "Abraham is never spoken of as a Jew, just as the father of the Faithful."
This false claim that the "so-called Palestinians" are the true people of the land combines with replacement theology to make the case against the State of Israel. To supersessionist Christians, such as Condi Rice and George W., and some of our present day "dandies," Israel is an ungodly interloper and her defenders are the enemies of God—which is precisely the Muslim and Arab argument, a characterization which has tapped into unsavory echoes deep in church history.
The Middle East Council of Churches, a WCC shootoff, states that we "Christian Zionists" are heretics. During the centuries that the churches in the MECC were under "Muslim rule" they were treated as dhimmi-subjugated minorities-alongside the Jews.
But, the folks of these "Churches" operating under the "guise" of Christianity wanted to exaggerate the theological gulf between them and the Jews "to insure that the Muslims would treat them better. Consequently, these churches, which primarily are "eastern Churches," deeply committed themselves to supersessionism over the Jews, which they believed helped them to have comfortable relations with Islam.
Have you heard of the "Truther Movement?" It says that AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory, Princess Diana was murdered to prevent her from marrying a Muslim, 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, in some versions [particularly popular in the Muslim word,] was aided and abetted by the Israeli Mossad.
All such "anti-Semitic" nonsensical ideas have been presented in a documentary called "Loose Change," which posits such ideas, and on a steadily enlarging fringe, fevered discussions of UFOs, aliens and mind control veer into allegations of conspiracies by hidden elites amongst the Bilderbergers, Rothschild banks, heavily laden with anti-Semitic paranoia about the alleged sinister power of the Jews.
At Wellesley College, Professor Anthony Martin, taught his students that Greek culture was stolen from Africa and that the Jews were responsible for the slave trade. He was exposed by Mary Lefkowitz in her book History Lessons. Mary found that "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews," one of Martin’s texts, accused Jews of instigating a "black African Holocaust" and was drawn in large measure from Henry Ford’s "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem."
Philosopher Leo Strauss, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, influenced those called "neocons" in the George W. Administration, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. Strauss was grateful to the United States and deeply committed to liberal democracy.
However, anti-Semites went after Strauss post-haste, using a set of compound misapprehensions: Because neocons supported the war in Iraq, anyone who supported the war in Iraq was a neocon. Because neocons supported the war, they were natural "warmongers." Because they opposed the left, they were "the right." Because a lot of them were Jews, all neocons were Jews.
The neocons were accused of believing in the "lying on principle" in accordance with the thinking of he who had influenced so many of them, Leo Strauss. Strauss, the anti-Semites claimed, had concocted the idea of the "noble lie" without which the "vulgar masses" would become ungovernable. The claim of the anti-Semites was, Straus was "a profoundly tribal and fascistic thinker" with "a profound antipathy to both liberalism and democracy."
In my left pants pocket I carry a piece of shrapnel from a Hamas Katyusha rocket which exploded about 200 yards to my front, two years ago tomorrow, January 12, 2009. While there in Israel during Operation Cast Lead, the "so-called" Palestinians, and their willing dupes in the media, were belaboring the "medieval blood libel," centered on the idea that the Jews are child-killers and blood drinkers.
The Jews, my brethren, are a unique people, with a unique history. I would recommend you read everything Dr. J. Frank Norris had to say about the Jews. The treatment of the present Jewish state is also unique.
There is no other nation in the world that, having been the target of annihilatory attacks for six decades, is expected to make concessions to its attackers even while the assaults continue.
There is no other nation in the world whose right to existence is deemed to be forfeit through its behavior.
There is no other nation in the world whose right to existence is deemed to be forfeit through someone else’s behavior, for which it is made the scapegoat.
On July 2, 1881, after four months in office, President James Garfield, who had survived the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga, needed a vacation. He was vexed by warring Republican factions — the Stalwarts, who waved the bloody shirt of Civil War memories, and the Half-Breeds, who stressed the emerging issues of industrialization.
Walking to Washington's Union Station to catch a train, Garfield by chance encountered a disappointed job-seeker. Charles Guiteau drew a pistol, fired two shots and shouted "I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president!" On Sept. 19, Garfield died, making Vice President Chester Arthur president. Guiteau was executed, not explained.
On Sept. 6, 1901, President William McKinley, who had survived the battle of Antietam, was shaking hands at a Buffalo exposition when Leon Czolgosz approached, a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand, concealing a gun. Czolgosz, an anarchist, fired two shots. Czolgosz -"I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people — the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime," was executed, not explained.
Now we have explainers. They came into vogue with the murder of President Kennedy. They explained why the "real" culprit was not a self-described Marxist who had moved to Moscow, then returned to support Castro.
No, the culprit was a "climate of hate" in conservative Dallas, the "paranoid style" of American (conservative) politics, or some other national sickness resulting from insufficient liberalism.
Our Holy Bible states in Colossians 2:8, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. "
Dr. Ed Bragg, St. Louis, Mo., after watching Boogie speaking on the DVD’s we made in California last month, wrote me stating:
"Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'Alon used four words that were perfect explanations of Col. 2:8... He used "Solutionalism" and "Nowism". These two words are good explanations of the words, "philosophy" and "vain deceit". He then used the phrase, "self guilt". Self guilt explains the "traditions of men".
Neither "Solutionalism" nor "Nowism" will settle the problem facing the world’s people today. Explaining away conduct won’t cut it either! Americans have to deal with what we are facing, and we, in our dealings, best come down on the side of the NATION OF ISRAEL, THE EVERLASTINGLY COVENANTED PEOPLE!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Friday, January 7, 2011
Letter to Pastors
January 7, 2010
Dear Pastors:
From my motel room in Brownsburg, Indiana, where the Bride of my Youth and I are, after having conducted her mother’s funeral yesterday, I write you this snowy Friday morning.
This morning one of our Bible Chapters read was Jeremiah Chapter 29, which was written around 599 B.C. during the time that Nebuchadnezzar's carrying the Israelites away into captivity in Babylon.
Thus those "apples of God’s own dear eye," the Everlastingly Covenanted People, whom some of you preachers, bless your hearts, believe like George W. Bush and Condi Rice, and the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, and even in our day the Huguenots, that, "we of the Church" have replaced the Jews and that God is through with them. It matters not to me whether you are a "died in the wool Texan," as my friend Garry Way is, or red neck as my friend Bryan Sharp is, or a Hoosier as my wife and our three sons are, or a Cajun as my friend Cecil Ballard is, or a Tar Heel as my brother-in-law Woody, whom my wife and I are to eat with he and Sandy and their son Junior and his wife Paula, this evening, are, YOU ARE WRONG, YOU ARE WRONG, YOU ARE WRONG!
But, as one of my Special Forces Colonel friends, James "Bo" Gritz, used to say, "Every man does that which he is big enough to do!" So, if you are big enough to flaunt "Replacement Doctrine Theology" in the eye of Almighty God, and "get away with it," have at it. It won’t be one hair off my leg.
In Jeremiah 29 the Nation of Judah was reeling under the blow of captivity. Jehoiakim, like our "obamessiah", was a ruler, who would have brought even a "strong state" to the brink of ruin. Frivolous and superficial, despotic and brutal, Jehoiakim was greatly detested. And, for three years, Jehoiakim [2 Kings 24] observed his oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of which he refused to pay his annual tribute, trusting in Egypt to help him maintain his independence.
2Ki 24:1 In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years: then he turned and rebelled against him.
2 And the LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by his servants the prophets.
3 Surely at the commandment of the LORD came this upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did;
4 And also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the LORD would not pardon. [A byword here, the same God that was against the shedding of innocent blood, the sin of the sodomites, and treatment of his chosen people, the JEW, has not changed his mind about those things in 2010.]
5 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
Then, we read that Jehoiakim goes out into eternity to meet his maker and give "an account" for all he had done, and he was succeeded by his youthful son of 18 years, Jehoiachin, who ruled but three brief months; for Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem and besieged the city and forced the king and his "queen-mother, his servants, and the officers of his court to go into captivity to Babylon [597 B.C.]
6 So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead.
7 And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt.
8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. {Jehoiachin is also called Jeconiah and Coniah.]
9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done.
10 At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged.
11 And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, and his servants did besiege it.
12 And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.
13 And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD, as the LORD had said.
14 And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.
15 And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king's mother, and the king's wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.
16 And all the men of might, even seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths a thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.
17 And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah his father's brother king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah.
18 Zedekiah was twenty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
19 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.
20 For through the anger of the LORD it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
Jehoiachin lay in prison 37 long years, till Evilmerodach, the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, released him. 2Ki 25:27 And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evilmerodach king of Babylon in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison;
28 And he spake kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon;
29 And changed his prison garments: and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life.
30 And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.
Now, whether I am an "Adopted Okie," a "Hoosier," a "Red Neck," a "Tar Heel," a "Cajun" or a "died in the wool Texan," whatever I say, whatever I write, best be in "tune" with the Holy Word of the Living God relative to the "Everlastingly Covenanted People," or I shall only be "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal."
The Prophet Ezekiel, who shared Jehoiachin’s captivity, regarding him as the last legitimate ruler of Judah as the first 13 verses of Ezekiel 19 brings out, and verse 14 solidifies: 14 And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a scepter to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.
Brethren, the Judah then that remained, no more deserved the "name." Only the miserable dregs remained. The choicest spirits were taken into exile. Ezekiel was among them, and possibly Daniel and his three companions, although, they may have been brought to Babylon at an earlier period.
2Kings 24:14 tells us: And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. To these melancholy captives Jeremiah addressed a letter of cheer and consolation in Jer 29:1-14.
I know Brethren that I am no "Jeremiah," but from the perspective which I see when I hear and know of all the "brethren" who are falling for the "Catholic Doctrine of Replacement Theology" hook, line, and sinker, sometimes I think, "Man, you sure do look lonely and pathetic." And, yet, Jeremiah was not absolutely alone; for there were Zephaniah, Nahum and habakkuk, and probably others, who were contemporizes, both in time, and certainly in "doctrine."
The "false leaders" back in Jeremiah’s day, as in ours, for example, said, "Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah." Jer 18:18 Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.
Such words, to Jeremiah, must have been as exasperating. Indeed, it called forth from Jeremiah the most powerful and passionate invective in all his prophecies.
Jer 18:21 Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle.
22 Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet.
23 Yet, LORD, thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me: forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight, but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the time of thine anger.
And even Ezekiel likewise indulges in caustic sarcasm concerning them, when he said: Eze 13:10 Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered morter: Brethren, if our "mortar" is untempered, then our built walls won’t stand!
Now, what resulted was a "most instructive contest" taking place between Jeremiah and Hananiah, in the Temple, the priests and the people being judges.
The "question" at issue was the "duration of the Captivity." Jeremiah had said it would last two generations; Hananiah predicted that within two years the exiles would return, with Jehoiachin at their head.
Jeremiah was right; but, the people, of course, sided with Hananiah, using my parlance, saving themselves "time and money," which I’ve always taught one has to expend if you are gonna help people. Jeremiah was put to silence, for it is always easier to believe "smooth things" than it is things which cost "time and money."
The effect of such controversaries, then, as today, was to "confuse" and perplex the people. Remember now, Scriptures plainly teach "God is not the author of confusion." All external criterion was wanting for the "weigh in, in the balances" with God Almighty.
I received a text message from a young preacher this week about another controversary raging in our time, with certainly the textual matter, simply saying "sad." Thats how Jeremiah must have felt. And, thats how this almost 71 year ole beat-up, worn-out, preacher feels about what is being said about "us-the Church" replacing the "Everlastingly Covenanted People."
The fase prophets preached "peace." Jeremiah preached "punishment." They emphasized the Power of Jehovah God; Jeremiah emphasized ‘HIS MORAL BEING AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.’
They stood on the moral level of the masses; Jeremiah was laboring to raise the masses to a higher plane.
Their words did nothing to awaken conscience; Jeremiah was ever reminding them of their sins, and the inevitable retribution that awaited them.
Time alone demonstrated the untruthfulness of their predictions. The cause of their blindness was their "inadequate conception of the ethical nature of Jehovah God."
In justifying "Scripture with Scripture," Brethren, in this context, it is important that we look at the "most graphic picture" painted in Lamentations 4:13 For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her,
14 They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.
15 They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.
Scripture has many applications, and what we need do is apply these scriptures to our
controversaries of today.
To change the subject, but, to stay with the same people, let me mention something that my Jewish Friend Gil Ronen writes from Israel:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday against "any new assault" on Gaza, CNN quoted state-run Nile TV as reporting. Mubarak and Netanyahu met in Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Egypt's state press said that Mubarak emphasized to Netanyahu "the necessity for Israel to reconsider its position and policies, and to take the initiative and conduct procedures that will build trust with the national Palestinian authorities."
A statement on the Prime Minister's website said that "Netanyahu reiterated that he believes that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is possible provided that the latter are willing to end the conflict."
Netanyahu "asked President Mubarak to act to persuade the Palestinians to move to direct, intensive and serious negotiations -- in which all core issues will be raised -- forthwith."
The PM's Office added that "Netanyahu said that Israel is committed to aggressively fighting terrorist elements in Gaza that endanger its security and peace."
An evangelist that I trained at OBC stated some months ago, in opposition to our positions on the Jews, "What is the big deal about the Jews? What about the Chinamen?" Show me in the Holy Scriptures where Jehovah God made a covenant, an Everlasting Covenant, by the way, with the "Chinese" and I will see your point! It's not there!
As far as this ole man is concerned, it is really a matter of "Whose side are you on?" I am unequivocally on the side of the Jews. You can be on the side of the Egyptians if you want, I am not. Now, yes, I would like for there to be peace between the "so-called Palestinians" and the Jews, but, of Ishmael, the writer of the Book of Genesis said, "his hand shall be against every man...." Throughout the sordid history of the Ishmaelites, that has been the truth.
Whatever the Jews find that Hamas, one of the proxy armies for the Iranians, are doing in Gaza, which endangers the security and stability of the nation of Israel, or its citizens, then, regardless of what Muburak has said, Israel has to take care of "matters."
In what I have mentioned to you from Jeremiah’s writings, the time frame involved Jehoiakim, who had come to the throne as the "vassal’ of Egypt, with the consequence being that the Egyptian party was dominant in Jerusalem.
Jeremiah came on the scene as the chief representative of the party that favored the supremacy of the Chaldeans "as the only way of safety." Time, and history, have both proved Jeremiah right.
Jeremiah 26 shows that the "naysayers" with the populace, brought Jeremiah before the civil authorities, urging that capital punishment should be inflicted on him for his threatening.
There were those, thank the Lord, in Judah, who endeavored to protect ole Jeremiah, and appealed to the precedent of Micah the Morasthite, who had uttered a "like prophecy" in the reign of Hezekiah; and so for a time, Jeremiah escaped.
Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, seems to have had influence to secure Jeremiah’s safety. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah was commanded to write the predictions which had been given him. Brethren, let me say this, "Ole JAV would be "scared to death" to take any position which might contravene the only possible thing of safety which he sees in Genesis 12:3, "Bless the Jews." Otherwise, any other position curses them.
Jeremiah deputed Baruch to write the predictions and to read them publicly on the fast day. Baruch was summoned before the princes, who advised that both he and Jeremiah should conceal themselves, while they endeavored to influence the mind of the king by reading the roll to them.
But, Jehoiakim read three or four leaves and then destroyed the roll. He gave orders for the immediate arrest of Baruch and Jeremiah, who, however, were preserved from the angry king.
The Prophet, at the command of God, rewrote the roll, adding "besides unto them many like words" [Jer 36:22]. To this period is assigned the prophecy in the valley of Benhinnom [Jer 19,] and his ill treatment at the hand of Pashur.
Moving then on to Zedeikah’s reign, B.C. 593, Hananiah prophesied that the power of the Chaldeans would be destroyed and the captives restored from Babylon [Jer 28:3.] Hananiah corroborated his prophecy by taking off Jeremiah’s neck the yoke which he wore by Divine Command [27:2.]
Jeremiah then consequently was told what to prophesy. Jer 28:13 Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron.
It was probably not until the latter part of the reign of Zedekiah that Jeremiah was put in confinement, as we find that "they had not put him into prison" when the army of Nebuchadnezzar commenced the siege of Jerusalem [37:4-5.]
The approach of the Egyptian army, and the consequent withdrawal for a time of the Chaldeans, brightened the prospects of the Jews, and the king entreated Jeremiah to pray to the Lord for them.
The answer, however, received "from the Lord," was that the Egyptians would go to their own land, and that the Chaldeans would return and destroy the city [37:7-8.]
Well, all this angered the "princes," as I am sure some of the words of this ole man does the "dandies" of our day, so Jeremiah’s "dandies" made the departure of Jeremiah from the city the "pretext" of accusing him of desiring to the Chaldeans.
Jeremiah’s "dandies’ got him cast into the prison in spite of his denial, where he would doubtless have perished but for the interposition of Ebedmelech, one of the royal eunuchs [37:12-38.]
The king seems to have been favorably inclined toward the prophet, but, for fear of his "dandies," consulted with Jeremiah secretly [38:14-28.]
In one of those secret interviews Jeremiah obtained a milder imprisonment in the "guard-court" belonging to the royal citadel [37:17,] and while in prison he bought, with all requisite formalties, the field at Anathoth, which his kinsman Hanameel wished to get rid of [32:6-9] THUS SHOWING JEREMIAH’S FAITH IN HIS COUNTRY’S FUTURE.
I am not a gambler. I did marry a "gambler’s" daughter! Bless her heart, even as a member of Bethesda Baptist Church, Brownsburg, Indiana, Mammer, my ‘now-in-heaven’ mother in law, liked to buy her lottery tickets. She would say, "Now, James Allen, you know that one of these days my ship is going to come in!"
But, were I a mind to "gamble," I would never bet on the Ishmaelites against the Jews. That is a bad lottery ticket boys [by the way, I’ve never bought even one lottery ticket.]
Preachers, if you can help me with my "Deaf Football Players" trip, it looks like right now that I am going to have to come up with something in the neighborhood of $7,000.00 by Feb. 12th to pull some of those deaf "chestnuts out of the fire," who are going with me! $50, $100, $500 or a $1,000 would really be a blessing on these expenses which I shall have to come up with. God will bless you as a consequence. Checks should be made out to Yedidim of Israel and sent to Jo Harding, 5517 NW 23rd, OKC, Ok., 73127. Apprise her please what it is for!
When we do the "Booklet" we are going to make up, with the 12 offensive plays [1 per page] to give to the IDF units, we will put your name in the back of that booklet. Each page will show blocking assignments. I will then take those assignments and make "3 Lessons per page from Football about Combat." Thats what we shall leave with the IDF units. All who support us ont his trip will have their names on the back cover of that 12 page booklet.
I remain, on the side of the Jews! You "dandies" can line up with the Egyptians!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
PS YOU KNOW, I DON’T REMEMBER IF I TOOK MY MEDICINE TODAY OR NOT!
Dear Pastors:
From my motel room in Brownsburg, Indiana, where the Bride of my Youth and I are, after having conducted her mother’s funeral yesterday, I write you this snowy Friday morning.
This morning one of our Bible Chapters read was Jeremiah Chapter 29, which was written around 599 B.C. during the time that Nebuchadnezzar's carrying the Israelites away into captivity in Babylon.
Thus those "apples of God’s own dear eye," the Everlastingly Covenanted People, whom some of you preachers, bless your hearts, believe like George W. Bush and Condi Rice, and the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, and even in our day the Huguenots, that, "we of the Church" have replaced the Jews and that God is through with them. It matters not to me whether you are a "died in the wool Texan," as my friend Garry Way is, or red neck as my friend Bryan Sharp is, or a Hoosier as my wife and our three sons are, or a Cajun as my friend Cecil Ballard is, or a Tar Heel as my brother-in-law Woody, whom my wife and I are to eat with he and Sandy and their son Junior and his wife Paula, this evening, are, YOU ARE WRONG, YOU ARE WRONG, YOU ARE WRONG!
But, as one of my Special Forces Colonel friends, James "Bo" Gritz, used to say, "Every man does that which he is big enough to do!" So, if you are big enough to flaunt "Replacement Doctrine Theology" in the eye of Almighty God, and "get away with it," have at it. It won’t be one hair off my leg.
In Jeremiah 29 the Nation of Judah was reeling under the blow of captivity. Jehoiakim, like our "obamessiah", was a ruler, who would have brought even a "strong state" to the brink of ruin. Frivolous and superficial, despotic and brutal, Jehoiakim was greatly detested. And, for three years, Jehoiakim [2 Kings 24] observed his oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of which he refused to pay his annual tribute, trusting in Egypt to help him maintain his independence.
2Ki 24:1 In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years: then he turned and rebelled against him.
2 And the LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by his servants the prophets.
3 Surely at the commandment of the LORD came this upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did;
4 And also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the LORD would not pardon. [A byword here, the same God that was against the shedding of innocent blood, the sin of the sodomites, and treatment of his chosen people, the JEW, has not changed his mind about those things in 2010.]
5 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
Then, we read that Jehoiakim goes out into eternity to meet his maker and give "an account" for all he had done, and he was succeeded by his youthful son of 18 years, Jehoiachin, who ruled but three brief months; for Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem and besieged the city and forced the king and his "queen-mother, his servants, and the officers of his court to go into captivity to Babylon [597 B.C.]
6 So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead.
7 And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt.
8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. {Jehoiachin is also called Jeconiah and Coniah.]
9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done.
10 At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged.
11 And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, and his servants did besiege it.
12 And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.
13 And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD, as the LORD had said.
14 And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.
15 And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king's mother, and the king's wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.
16 And all the men of might, even seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths a thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.
17 And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah his father's brother king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah.
18 Zedekiah was twenty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
19 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.
20 For through the anger of the LORD it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
Jehoiachin lay in prison 37 long years, till Evilmerodach, the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, released him. 2Ki 25:27 And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evilmerodach king of Babylon in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison;
28 And he spake kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon;
29 And changed his prison garments: and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life.
30 And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.
Now, whether I am an "Adopted Okie," a "Hoosier," a "Red Neck," a "Tar Heel," a "Cajun" or a "died in the wool Texan," whatever I say, whatever I write, best be in "tune" with the Holy Word of the Living God relative to the "Everlastingly Covenanted People," or I shall only be "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal."
The Prophet Ezekiel, who shared Jehoiachin’s captivity, regarding him as the last legitimate ruler of Judah as the first 13 verses of Ezekiel 19 brings out, and verse 14 solidifies: 14 And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a scepter to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.
Brethren, the Judah then that remained, no more deserved the "name." Only the miserable dregs remained. The choicest spirits were taken into exile. Ezekiel was among them, and possibly Daniel and his three companions, although, they may have been brought to Babylon at an earlier period.
2Kings 24:14 tells us: And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. To these melancholy captives Jeremiah addressed a letter of cheer and consolation in Jer 29:1-14.
I know Brethren that I am no "Jeremiah," but from the perspective which I see when I hear and know of all the "brethren" who are falling for the "Catholic Doctrine of Replacement Theology" hook, line, and sinker, sometimes I think, "Man, you sure do look lonely and pathetic." And, yet, Jeremiah was not absolutely alone; for there were Zephaniah, Nahum and habakkuk, and probably others, who were contemporizes, both in time, and certainly in "doctrine."
The "false leaders" back in Jeremiah’s day, as in ours, for example, said, "Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah." Jer 18:18 Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.
Such words, to Jeremiah, must have been as exasperating. Indeed, it called forth from Jeremiah the most powerful and passionate invective in all his prophecies.
Jer 18:21 Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle.
22 Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet.
23 Yet, LORD, thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me: forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight, but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the time of thine anger.
And even Ezekiel likewise indulges in caustic sarcasm concerning them, when he said: Eze 13:10 Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered morter: Brethren, if our "mortar" is untempered, then our built walls won’t stand!
Now, what resulted was a "most instructive contest" taking place between Jeremiah and Hananiah, in the Temple, the priests and the people being judges.
The "question" at issue was the "duration of the Captivity." Jeremiah had said it would last two generations; Hananiah predicted that within two years the exiles would return, with Jehoiachin at their head.
Jeremiah was right; but, the people, of course, sided with Hananiah, using my parlance, saving themselves "time and money," which I’ve always taught one has to expend if you are gonna help people. Jeremiah was put to silence, for it is always easier to believe "smooth things" than it is things which cost "time and money."
The effect of such controversaries, then, as today, was to "confuse" and perplex the people. Remember now, Scriptures plainly teach "God is not the author of confusion." All external criterion was wanting for the "weigh in, in the balances" with God Almighty.
I received a text message from a young preacher this week about another controversary raging in our time, with certainly the textual matter, simply saying "sad." Thats how Jeremiah must have felt. And, thats how this almost 71 year ole beat-up, worn-out, preacher feels about what is being said about "us-the Church" replacing the "Everlastingly Covenanted People."
The fase prophets preached "peace." Jeremiah preached "punishment." They emphasized the Power of Jehovah God; Jeremiah emphasized ‘HIS MORAL BEING AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.’
They stood on the moral level of the masses; Jeremiah was laboring to raise the masses to a higher plane.
Their words did nothing to awaken conscience; Jeremiah was ever reminding them of their sins, and the inevitable retribution that awaited them.
Time alone demonstrated the untruthfulness of their predictions. The cause of their blindness was their "inadequate conception of the ethical nature of Jehovah God."
In justifying "Scripture with Scripture," Brethren, in this context, it is important that we look at the "most graphic picture" painted in Lamentations 4:13 For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her,
14 They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.
15 They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.
Scripture has many applications, and what we need do is apply these scriptures to our
controversaries of today.
To change the subject, but, to stay with the same people, let me mention something that my Jewish Friend Gil Ronen writes from Israel:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday against "any new assault" on Gaza, CNN quoted state-run Nile TV as reporting. Mubarak and Netanyahu met in Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Egypt's state press said that Mubarak emphasized to Netanyahu "the necessity for Israel to reconsider its position and policies, and to take the initiative and conduct procedures that will build trust with the national Palestinian authorities."
A statement on the Prime Minister's website said that "Netanyahu reiterated that he believes that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is possible provided that the latter are willing to end the conflict."
Netanyahu "asked President Mubarak to act to persuade the Palestinians to move to direct, intensive and serious negotiations -- in which all core issues will be raised -- forthwith."
The PM's Office added that "Netanyahu said that Israel is committed to aggressively fighting terrorist elements in Gaza that endanger its security and peace."
An evangelist that I trained at OBC stated some months ago, in opposition to our positions on the Jews, "What is the big deal about the Jews? What about the Chinamen?" Show me in the Holy Scriptures where Jehovah God made a covenant, an Everlasting Covenant, by the way, with the "Chinese" and I will see your point! It's not there!
As far as this ole man is concerned, it is really a matter of "Whose side are you on?" I am unequivocally on the side of the Jews. You can be on the side of the Egyptians if you want, I am not. Now, yes, I would like for there to be peace between the "so-called Palestinians" and the Jews, but, of Ishmael, the writer of the Book of Genesis said, "his hand shall be against every man...." Throughout the sordid history of the Ishmaelites, that has been the truth.
Whatever the Jews find that Hamas, one of the proxy armies for the Iranians, are doing in Gaza, which endangers the security and stability of the nation of Israel, or its citizens, then, regardless of what Muburak has said, Israel has to take care of "matters."
In what I have mentioned to you from Jeremiah’s writings, the time frame involved Jehoiakim, who had come to the throne as the "vassal’ of Egypt, with the consequence being that the Egyptian party was dominant in Jerusalem.
Jeremiah came on the scene as the chief representative of the party that favored the supremacy of the Chaldeans "as the only way of safety." Time, and history, have both proved Jeremiah right.
Jeremiah 26 shows that the "naysayers" with the populace, brought Jeremiah before the civil authorities, urging that capital punishment should be inflicted on him for his threatening.
There were those, thank the Lord, in Judah, who endeavored to protect ole Jeremiah, and appealed to the precedent of Micah the Morasthite, who had uttered a "like prophecy" in the reign of Hezekiah; and so for a time, Jeremiah escaped.
Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, seems to have had influence to secure Jeremiah’s safety. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah was commanded to write the predictions which had been given him. Brethren, let me say this, "Ole JAV would be "scared to death" to take any position which might contravene the only possible thing of safety which he sees in Genesis 12:3, "Bless the Jews." Otherwise, any other position curses them.
Jeremiah deputed Baruch to write the predictions and to read them publicly on the fast day. Baruch was summoned before the princes, who advised that both he and Jeremiah should conceal themselves, while they endeavored to influence the mind of the king by reading the roll to them.
But, Jehoiakim read three or four leaves and then destroyed the roll. He gave orders for the immediate arrest of Baruch and Jeremiah, who, however, were preserved from the angry king.
The Prophet, at the command of God, rewrote the roll, adding "besides unto them many like words" [Jer 36:22]. To this period is assigned the prophecy in the valley of Benhinnom [Jer 19,] and his ill treatment at the hand of Pashur.
Moving then on to Zedeikah’s reign, B.C. 593, Hananiah prophesied that the power of the Chaldeans would be destroyed and the captives restored from Babylon [Jer 28:3.] Hananiah corroborated his prophecy by taking off Jeremiah’s neck the yoke which he wore by Divine Command [27:2.]
Jeremiah then consequently was told what to prophesy. Jer 28:13 Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron.
It was probably not until the latter part of the reign of Zedekiah that Jeremiah was put in confinement, as we find that "they had not put him into prison" when the army of Nebuchadnezzar commenced the siege of Jerusalem [37:4-5.]
The approach of the Egyptian army, and the consequent withdrawal for a time of the Chaldeans, brightened the prospects of the Jews, and the king entreated Jeremiah to pray to the Lord for them.
The answer, however, received "from the Lord," was that the Egyptians would go to their own land, and that the Chaldeans would return and destroy the city [37:7-8.]
Well, all this angered the "princes," as I am sure some of the words of this ole man does the "dandies" of our day, so Jeremiah’s "dandies" made the departure of Jeremiah from the city the "pretext" of accusing him of desiring to the Chaldeans.
Jeremiah’s "dandies’ got him cast into the prison in spite of his denial, where he would doubtless have perished but for the interposition of Ebedmelech, one of the royal eunuchs [37:12-38.]
The king seems to have been favorably inclined toward the prophet, but, for fear of his "dandies," consulted with Jeremiah secretly [38:14-28.]
In one of those secret interviews Jeremiah obtained a milder imprisonment in the "guard-court" belonging to the royal citadel [37:17,] and while in prison he bought, with all requisite formalties, the field at Anathoth, which his kinsman Hanameel wished to get rid of [32:6-9] THUS SHOWING JEREMIAH’S FAITH IN HIS COUNTRY’S FUTURE.
I am not a gambler. I did marry a "gambler’s" daughter! Bless her heart, even as a member of Bethesda Baptist Church, Brownsburg, Indiana, Mammer, my ‘now-in-heaven’ mother in law, liked to buy her lottery tickets. She would say, "Now, James Allen, you know that one of these days my ship is going to come in!"
But, were I a mind to "gamble," I would never bet on the Ishmaelites against the Jews. That is a bad lottery ticket boys [by the way, I’ve never bought even one lottery ticket.]
Preachers, if you can help me with my "Deaf Football Players" trip, it looks like right now that I am going to have to come up with something in the neighborhood of $7,000.00 by Feb. 12th to pull some of those deaf "chestnuts out of the fire," who are going with me! $50, $100, $500 or a $1,000 would really be a blessing on these expenses which I shall have to come up with. God will bless you as a consequence. Checks should be made out to Yedidim of Israel and sent to Jo Harding, 5517 NW 23rd, OKC, Ok., 73127. Apprise her please what it is for!
When we do the "Booklet" we are going to make up, with the 12 offensive plays [1 per page] to give to the IDF units, we will put your name in the back of that booklet. Each page will show blocking assignments. I will then take those assignments and make "3 Lessons per page from Football about Combat." Thats what we shall leave with the IDF units. All who support us ont his trip will have their names on the back cover of that 12 page booklet.
I remain, on the side of the Jews! You "dandies" can line up with the Egyptians!
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
PS YOU KNOW, I DON’T REMEMBER IF I TOOK MY MEDICINE TODAY OR NOT!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Letter to Pastors
January 5, 2011
Dear Pastors:
From our Motel Room in Brownsburg, Indiana, as my wife and I await the arrival of our three sons, John from California, Tom from Oklahoma, and Paul from Florida, this ole man writes, as he prepares to tell my wife’s kin today at the viewing of her Mother’s body and tomorrow at the funeral for Mammer, this ole man pulled up and read, as he does all her articles, another piece by Melanie Phillips from England.
Melanie is one bright Jewish lady who has her head screwed on right about the "Jewish-[I call it]Ishmaelite [many call it]Palestinian" question.
Preachers, look, all we have to do is get down what the Bible Declares correctly about the Jews, and then our whole outlook will be as it should be.
Take the Psalms, for instance, which I shall be using in tomorrow’s sermon, but, in this regard, about the Jews, Ps. 135:4, "For the LORD hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure."
Ps. 17:8, "Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,"
Preach all the sermons you want to preach, write all you want to write, and say all you want to say, about these passages [in the Psalms, or anywhere else] replacing the Jews with the Church.
Ezekiel 16:60 says, "the length of the Covenant God made with Abraham was an "Everlasting Covenant." Genesis 17:7-8 says, "God’s covenant with Abraham was made "...for an everlasting covenant..." and that the land of Canaan, would be "....for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God."
Concerning the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, God says several times that they will have to change their orbit before this Covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David, would CHANGE. It is not going to happen. It did not happen. The Church did not replace the Jews. "Replacement Doctrine" theology, or, "dispensationalizing away the Jews ‘peculiar’ position with God Almighty," whether you, or anyone else preaches it, says it, writes it, just isn’t so.
Zec. 2:8, " For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye."
Am. 3:2, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."
De. 32:10, "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye."
De. 11:12, "A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."
Romans 3:1 says, "the Jews have an advantage, because to them were committed the Oracles of God." Romans 1:16 and 2:9 and 2:10 makes it very plain "to the Jew first," as does Acts 3:25-26. Romans Chapters 9, 10 & 11 makes it plain it is "to the Jew First." Galatians chapters 3 and chapter 4 make it plain it is "to the Jew First."
My mother in law was from Indiana, so she was a Hoosier. My wife is a Hoosier. Our son John is a Hoosier. Our son Tom is a Hoosier. Our son Paul is a Hoosier. I am an "adopted Okie," a native born Texas. Bryan Sharp is a red-neck. Cecil Ballard is a Cajun. Garry and Julia way are died in the wool Texans. Dewayne Nichols is from Tennessee. They are Volunteers.
Brethren, we best be very careful in "reading about" or "believing about" the Jews something which the Scriptures do not prove. The 45th Infantry was the National Guard from Oklahoma in WWII. The 36th Infantry was the National Guard from the state of Texas.
Prior to the Italian invasion by the Allies in WWII, in North Africa, in the clubs the 36th fellas would attack the 45th fellas cause the 45th Okies wouldn’t stand and put their hands on their hearts as the "45th Infantrymen sung "Deep in The Heart of Texas." They had many slugfests over such a thing as that.
Well, they were plugged into the lines in Italy side by side and the Krauts were kicking the Royal Backsides of both the 45th and the 36th for awhile till they honed their combat skills and dwelt on the weaknesses of the Krauts.
The German 88 was an antiaircraft weapon originally. But it was very effective as an "anti-tank weapon" and also as "artillery." Both the positions of the 45th and the 36th were getting bombarded by 88 artillery.
From one of the foxholes next to the 36th, there rang out an Okie cry to the Texans: "Hey, you Texans, have you been able to get the Krauts to stand and put their hands over their hearts when you sing DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS?" No answer was the reply from the Texas’ foxholes.
It doesn’t matter if a Texan says it, an adopted Okie says it, a red-neck says it, a "died in the wool Texan" says it, a Hoosier says it, a Cajun says it, a Volunteer says it! Paul the Apostle said in that 3rd Chapter of Romans, "Let God be true and every man a liar."
The validity of what I am saying has to be based on the WORD OF THE LIVING GOD, or whatever this "adopted Okie" [some of the Jews call me "Wingate of Oklahoma"] is saying is a "lie" and GOD BE TRUE!
ANYWAY, I THOUGHT YOU’D ENJOY THIS EXCELLENT PIECE BY MELANIE PHILLIPS. She wrote "Londonstan." I have purchased and given away several hundred copies of that book. It specifically shows what the Muslims are doing in London and in Europe. You would do yourself well to read everything this lady writes about the Muslims. She is "right on."
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
January 3, 2011
The challenge of public diplomacy vis-a-vis the delegitimisation of Israel
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.
Calls for more and better hasbara, however, are meaningless if the message or narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it. And it does miss that point, by a mile.
You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature.
The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.
In Britain, the universities, the established church, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, significant elements within the Foreign Office, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media have overwhelmingly signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.
The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilisational crisis.
The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.
In routine, everyday discourse history is turned on its head; logic is suspended; and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.
This has led to a kind of dialogue of the demented in which rational discussion is simply not possible because there is no shared understanding of the meaning of language. So victim and victimiser, truth and lies, justice and injustice turn into their precise opposite.
This madness is being promulgated through a global alliance between state and non-state actors – diplomats and journalists, politicians and NGOs and websites. Many of these are waging war not just against Israel but against the west.
There are two preconditions for an effective fightback. First is to form effective structures of resistance. Those structures, however, depend in turn on a correct understanding of the nature and scale of what we are up against.
So far, the structures are not in place, and more important still, what Israel is up against is grossly — and fatally — underestimated and misunderstood.
The problem is that we are dealing with a pathology — to which we nevertheless respond as if it were rational behaviour.
What’s happened is a pattern of thinking in the west which turns reality upside down. Remarkably, this in turn echoes a very similar inversion of reality within the Islamic world, where such inversion has a theological base.
Because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression.
So in this Orwellian universe the enslavement of Muslim women is said to represent their liberation; democracy is a means of enslavement from which the west must be freed; and the murder of Israelis is the purest form of justice.
Furthermore, this is overlaid by the phenomenon of ‘psychological projection’ in which the Islamic world not only denies its own misdeeds but ascribes them instead to its victims.
So while Muslims deny the Holocaust, they claim that Israel is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza. Antisemitism is central to Jewish experience in Europe; Muslims claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is rife throughout Europe.
Israel gives all Jews the ‘right of return’ to Israel on account of the unique reality of global Jewish persecution; the Muslims claim a ‘right of return’ – not to their own putative state of Palestine, but to Israel. They even claim that the Palestinians are the world’s ‘new Jews’.
These and many other examples are used within the Islamic world to negate Jewish experience and appropriate it for itself to obtain what Muslims want in terms of status, power and conquest.
What is remarkable is that instead of treating this as a pathological deformity of thinking, the western progressive intelligentsia has largely embraced it as rational and true. And to a large extent this is because that same western intelligentsia has itself supplanted rationality by ideology – or the dogma of a particular idea.
Objectivity, evidence and truth have been ditched for ideologies such as moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, transnationalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism.
Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent.
This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies become merely ‘alternative narratives’.
Moral and cultural relativism – the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth – has turned right and wrong on their heads.
Because of the dominant belief in multiculturalism, victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups — those without power — can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because – in the hateful discourse of today – Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.
So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.
So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason – centred in the crucible of reason, the university.
All these different ideologies are utopian; in their different ways, they all posit the creation of the perfect society. That is why they are considered ‘progressive’, and people on the progressive wing of politics sign up to them. That helps explain the distressing fact that so many Jews on the left also sign up to Israel-hatred, since they too sign up to such utopian ideologies.
But when utopias fail, as they always do, their adherents invariably select scapegoats on whom they turn to express their rage over the thwarting of the establishment of that perfect society. And since utopia is all about realising the perfect society, these scapegoats become enemies of humanity.
For Greens, such enemies of humanity are capitalists; for anti imperialists, America; for militant atheists, religious believers. Anti-Zionists turn on Israel for thwarting the end to the ‘Jewish question’: the redemption of western guilt for the persecution of the Jews — a guilt which can never be redeemed as long as the wretched Jews continue to make themselves the targets of attack.
In short, therefore, the west cannot defend itself against the Islamic jihad because it can’t itself even think straight any more.
But this lethal muddle in the minds of the intelligentsia must be viewed in turn in the context of a global diplomatic process which itself embodies upside-down thinking, which fans the flames of bigotry and defeatism – and in which Israel itself has been tragically, and suicidally, complicit.
It cannot be stressed enough that the reason why those promoting genocidal bigotry are winning is that the western world has not sought to defeat them but instead has appeased them from the very start.
In Palestine under the British Mandate, when the Arabs used terrorist violence to frustrate the will of the League of Nations in restoring the Jewish home, Britain rewarded them by offering them part of the Jews’ legal and moral entitlement. When the Arabs started hijacking planes, the west’s response was to invite them to the UN to plead their cause.
And despite the Arabs’ repeated refused to accept the two state solution, offered in the 1930s, in 2000 and under Ehud Olmert and their current refusal to negotiate at all, America punishes Israel for not making enough concessions to them — while giving a free pass to those who still refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist.
It is astonishing that the west expects Israel to make any concessions to such attackers at all. After all, forcing a country which has endured more than six decades of existential siege to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing such a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country.
Yet we are repeatedly told even by certain supporters of Israel that the Palestinians have a right to a state. Why? In any other conflict, such aggression forfeits any rights at all.
I am not saying that Israel should retain all the disputed territories; it may well be in its own interests to give some of them up. But the point is that Israel has made all the concessions over the years while the Arabs have made none – yet it is Israel, not the Arabs, that is under pressure from the west.
This is diplomacy as scripted by Franz Kafka.
The single greatest reason for the endless continuation of the Middle East impasse is that Britain, Europe and America have continuously rewarded the aggressor and either attacked the victim or left it twisting in the wind.
That’s what needs to be said by Israel and its defenders. But Israel and its defenders themselves have been crippled or cowed by the false analysis of the enemy’s narrative.
Even many of Israel’s friends spout the demonstrably absurd proposition that a Palestine state would solve the problem, that the impediment to a Palestine state is the ‘settlers’, but that Israel is not taking action to remove the ‘settlers’ — and so therefore they too inescapably agree that Israel is the problem.
Israel and its defenders have been fighting on the wrong battleground: the one that has been chosen by its enemies. The Arabs brilliantly reconfigured the Arab war of extermination against Israel as the oppression by Israel of the Palestinians.
That has transformed Israel from victim to aggressor — the reversal of reality which lies at the very heart of the western obsession with the ‘settlements’ and the territories.
Yet since Oslo, Israel has meekly gone along with this mad pressure. It has never said it is totally unconscionable. It has never put the all-important argument from justice on its own account. So it has allowed its enemies to appropriate this argument mendaciously as their own. But if Israel doesn’t make the case properly on its own behalf, how can anyone else do so?
To which Israel says realpolitik dictates it has to go along with the diplomatic game being played. But diplomatic realpolitik is what brought us all to this position — the brink of a terrible war with Iran which is treated by America with kid gloves while Israel is put under the cosh.
For the west to suck up to its enemies while bashing its friends like this is the diplomatic version of auto-immune disease. And eventually this disease will kill it.
What Israel has failed to recognise is that the battleground on which it is being forced to fight is not just military. It is also a battleground of the mind, and the strategy being used against it – and to which it needs to respond in kind — is psychological warfare.
The Arab and Muslim world long ago realised if it set the narrative in its own image, it would recruit millions of fanatics to its cause and also confuse and demoralise its victims. In this it has wildly succeeded.
There is therefore an overwhelming need for Israel to alter its strategy. Indeed, it needs to have a strategy.
And this brings us to perhaps the most difficult challenge in all of this – the fact that the role played by the Israel government is of critical importance. Unless it adopts the correct strategy, its defenders will remain crippled.
Yet any promising initiatives seem to fall victim to Israel’s chaotic political structure, which appears to prevent the Prime Minister from being master in his own house. Good ideas are habitually destroyed by rampaging egos and turf wars between Israeli Cabinet ministers.
This is no way to run a chip shop, let alone a country under existential siege.
The fact remains that both Israel and diaspora Jews have to rethink. They have to realise they must start fighting on the battleground where the attack is actually being mounted against them. And the goal has to be to seize and retake the moral high ground.
This strategy requires two different tactics: one for those who are capable of rational thought, and another for those who are not.
The first group comprises those who are not irrational but merely desperately ignorant. Much of the obsession with Israel’s behaviour is due to the widespread belief that its very existence is an aberration which, although understandable at the time it came into being, was a historic mistake.
People believe that Israel was created as a way of redeeming Holocaust guilt. Accordingly, they believe that European Jews with no previous connection to Palestine — which they believe was the historic homeland of Palestinian Muslims who had lived there since time immemorial — were transplanted there as foreign invaders, from where they drove out the indigenous Arabs into the West Bank and Gaza. These are territories which Israel is now occupying illegally oppressing the Palestinians and frustrating the creation of a state of Palestine which would end the conflict.
Of course every one of those assumptions is false. But from those false assumptions proceeds the understandable belief not just that Israel’s behaviour is unjust, illegal and oppressive but that it is unjust and oppressive by virtue of its very existence.
For these people there is an urgent need for a proactive educational approach. No-one has ever told them that these beliefs are false – and when they are told, the effect is often transformative.
There is a desperate and urgent need to educate such people in Jewish and Middle East history; to enlighten them about the shameful role played by Britain in Palestine in tearing up its treaty obligations; to tell them that under international law Israel is entitled to the disputed territories – land within which Britain undertook to settle the Jews ‘from the river to the sea’ because of their historic and unique rights to that land.
That’s all necessary for those who are still rational. For bigots, however, there is no point arguing with them. They are, by definition, beyond all reason. Their influence simply has to be destroyed. They have to be held to account for their lies and bigotry which should be forensically exposed.
So Israel and its defenders should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.
They should expose the pretence of Britain or European countries which claim to have Israel’s security needs at heart but forbid it from using military means to defend itself; and which – as did the British Government recently — turn Israeli self-defence against the jihadi lynch-mob on board the Turkish terror ship Mavi Marmara into an attack to be condemned, or demand the opening of the border with Gaza which would allow in arms to kill more Israelis.
Israel and its defenders should be asking why so-called friends in the west want a Palestine state, since once the IDF depart the disputed territories they will become in short order yet another Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist entity which will pose a further threat not just to Israel but to the west.
They should be asking why the EU is continuing to fund the genocidal incitement against Jews promoted by the Palestine Authority.
They should be asking so-called ‘progressives’ – including Jewish ‘progressives’ — why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine.
They should be asking them why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.
Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Mahmoud Abbas’s PA and Hamas, on account of Abbas’s Holocaust denial and the clear evidence of continuation of Nazi Jew-hatred in a direct line of descent from predecessors who were Hitler’s supporters in Palestine.
As for western Israel-bashers, Israel and its defenders should accuse them not of Jew-hating motives that cannot be proved but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny. They should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to social gatherings, show them disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.
They should be telling the Jews ‘own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing – the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention. In Britain virtually no-one knows about it. At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.
They should be holding Arab and Islamic democracy weeks on campus, to expose the oppression and persecution within that world against women, homosexuals and others.
They should be singling out the Anglican church and the revival of ancient theological Jew-hatred being spread within the Anglican world by the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel centre.
At the same time, they should be focusing on their true friends within the Christian world, not just in America but also in Africa and Asia where there is an enormous reservoir of goodwill towards Israel which could be mobilised into a global fighting force.
They should be campaigning against the UN and the hijacking of international law and human rights by anti-western, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian ideologues.
They should be confronting head-on the false claim that bigotry is confined to the right. They should be pointing the finger at the ‘progressive’ left to show how it is actually supporting the mortal enemies not just of Israel but the west.
And they should be making this case to Israelis themselves, to counter the delegitimisation and ignorance in Israeli universities and to educate the Israeli young in their own national history.
In other words, both Israel and diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence. Israel has nothing to be defensive about or for which it needs to apologise. It is the enemies of Israel who are promoting injustice and the denial of international law and human rights. Playing defence intrinsically cedes ground to the enemy.
It is time for Israel and its defenders to stop conniving with that smokescreen for the war of annihilation being waged against Israel – the claim that the Middle East impasse would be solved by establishing a state of Palestine to which the settlements, and thus by extension Israel, are the obstacle. It is time for them to stop agreeing that the Jews are to blame for their own predicament.
Israel and its defenders need to make the argument from justice and reclaim that moral high ground from the enemies of Israel and the west, both at home — including within Israel — and abroad. It is those enemies who deny truth, justice and human rights. It is those enemies who should be in the dock. It is time to take the gloves off and put them there.
In short, Israel and its defenders must understand that the tsunami of bigotry against Israel sweeping the west is intimately related to Israel’s seriously flawed diplomatic strategy.
For years, Israel has been playing a defensive diplomatic game, which suggests inescapably that it has a case to answer. Such diplomatic cringing has badly undermined it and hugely strengthened its enemies, who are taking advantage of such weakness over and over again.
It’s time for Israel to realise that military campaigns against its enemies are not enough. It has to call time on its false friends too, and start fighting both these and its more obvious enemies on the battleground of the mind.
For a full analysis of the problem described above, please see my latest book
‘The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power‘ published by Encounter.
Dear Pastors:
From our Motel Room in Brownsburg, Indiana, as my wife and I await the arrival of our three sons, John from California, Tom from Oklahoma, and Paul from Florida, this ole man writes, as he prepares to tell my wife’s kin today at the viewing of her Mother’s body and tomorrow at the funeral for Mammer, this ole man pulled up and read, as he does all her articles, another piece by Melanie Phillips from England.
Melanie is one bright Jewish lady who has her head screwed on right about the "Jewish-[I call it]Ishmaelite [many call it]Palestinian" question.
Preachers, look, all we have to do is get down what the Bible Declares correctly about the Jews, and then our whole outlook will be as it should be.
Take the Psalms, for instance, which I shall be using in tomorrow’s sermon, but, in this regard, about the Jews, Ps. 135:4, "For the LORD hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure."
Ps. 17:8, "Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,"
Preach all the sermons you want to preach, write all you want to write, and say all you want to say, about these passages [in the Psalms, or anywhere else] replacing the Jews with the Church.
Ezekiel 16:60 says, "the length of the Covenant God made with Abraham was an "Everlasting Covenant." Genesis 17:7-8 says, "God’s covenant with Abraham was made "...for an everlasting covenant..." and that the land of Canaan, would be "....for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God."
Concerning the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, God says several times that they will have to change their orbit before this Covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David, would CHANGE. It is not going to happen. It did not happen. The Church did not replace the Jews. "Replacement Doctrine" theology, or, "dispensationalizing away the Jews ‘peculiar’ position with God Almighty," whether you, or anyone else preaches it, says it, writes it, just isn’t so.
Zec. 2:8, " For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye."
Am. 3:2, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."
De. 32:10, "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye."
De. 11:12, "A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."
Romans 3:1 says, "the Jews have an advantage, because to them were committed the Oracles of God." Romans 1:16 and 2:9 and 2:10 makes it very plain "to the Jew first," as does Acts 3:25-26. Romans Chapters 9, 10 & 11 makes it plain it is "to the Jew First." Galatians chapters 3 and chapter 4 make it plain it is "to the Jew First."
My mother in law was from Indiana, so she was a Hoosier. My wife is a Hoosier. Our son John is a Hoosier. Our son Tom is a Hoosier. Our son Paul is a Hoosier. I am an "adopted Okie," a native born Texas. Bryan Sharp is a red-neck. Cecil Ballard is a Cajun. Garry and Julia way are died in the wool Texans. Dewayne Nichols is from Tennessee. They are Volunteers.
Brethren, we best be very careful in "reading about" or "believing about" the Jews something which the Scriptures do not prove. The 45th Infantry was the National Guard from Oklahoma in WWII. The 36th Infantry was the National Guard from the state of Texas.
Prior to the Italian invasion by the Allies in WWII, in North Africa, in the clubs the 36th fellas would attack the 45th fellas cause the 45th Okies wouldn’t stand and put their hands on their hearts as the "45th Infantrymen sung "Deep in The Heart of Texas." They had many slugfests over such a thing as that.
Well, they were plugged into the lines in Italy side by side and the Krauts were kicking the Royal Backsides of both the 45th and the 36th for awhile till they honed their combat skills and dwelt on the weaknesses of the Krauts.
The German 88 was an antiaircraft weapon originally. But it was very effective as an "anti-tank weapon" and also as "artillery." Both the positions of the 45th and the 36th were getting bombarded by 88 artillery.
From one of the foxholes next to the 36th, there rang out an Okie cry to the Texans: "Hey, you Texans, have you been able to get the Krauts to stand and put their hands over their hearts when you sing DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS?" No answer was the reply from the Texas’ foxholes.
It doesn’t matter if a Texan says it, an adopted Okie says it, a red-neck says it, a "died in the wool Texan" says it, a Hoosier says it, a Cajun says it, a Volunteer says it! Paul the Apostle said in that 3rd Chapter of Romans, "Let God be true and every man a liar."
The validity of what I am saying has to be based on the WORD OF THE LIVING GOD, or whatever this "adopted Okie" [some of the Jews call me "Wingate of Oklahoma"] is saying is a "lie" and GOD BE TRUE!
ANYWAY, I THOUGHT YOU’D ENJOY THIS EXCELLENT PIECE BY MELANIE PHILLIPS. She wrote "Londonstan." I have purchased and given away several hundred copies of that book. It specifically shows what the Muslims are doing in London and in Europe. You would do yourself well to read everything this lady writes about the Muslims. She is "right on."
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
January 3, 2011
The challenge of public diplomacy vis-a-vis the delegitimisation of Israel
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.
Calls for more and better hasbara, however, are meaningless if the message or narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it. And it does miss that point, by a mile.
You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature.
The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.
In Britain, the universities, the established church, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, significant elements within the Foreign Office, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media have overwhelmingly signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.
The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilisational crisis.
The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.
In routine, everyday discourse history is turned on its head; logic is suspended; and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.
This has led to a kind of dialogue of the demented in which rational discussion is simply not possible because there is no shared understanding of the meaning of language. So victim and victimiser, truth and lies, justice and injustice turn into their precise opposite.
This madness is being promulgated through a global alliance between state and non-state actors – diplomats and journalists, politicians and NGOs and websites. Many of these are waging war not just against Israel but against the west.
There are two preconditions for an effective fightback. First is to form effective structures of resistance. Those structures, however, depend in turn on a correct understanding of the nature and scale of what we are up against.
So far, the structures are not in place, and more important still, what Israel is up against is grossly — and fatally — underestimated and misunderstood.
The problem is that we are dealing with a pathology — to which we nevertheless respond as if it were rational behaviour.
What’s happened is a pattern of thinking in the west which turns reality upside down. Remarkably, this in turn echoes a very similar inversion of reality within the Islamic world, where such inversion has a theological base.
Because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression.
So in this Orwellian universe the enslavement of Muslim women is said to represent their liberation; democracy is a means of enslavement from which the west must be freed; and the murder of Israelis is the purest form of justice.
Furthermore, this is overlaid by the phenomenon of ‘psychological projection’ in which the Islamic world not only denies its own misdeeds but ascribes them instead to its victims.
So while Muslims deny the Holocaust, they claim that Israel is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza. Antisemitism is central to Jewish experience in Europe; Muslims claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is rife throughout Europe.
Israel gives all Jews the ‘right of return’ to Israel on account of the unique reality of global Jewish persecution; the Muslims claim a ‘right of return’ – not to their own putative state of Palestine, but to Israel. They even claim that the Palestinians are the world’s ‘new Jews’.
These and many other examples are used within the Islamic world to negate Jewish experience and appropriate it for itself to obtain what Muslims want in terms of status, power and conquest.
What is remarkable is that instead of treating this as a pathological deformity of thinking, the western progressive intelligentsia has largely embraced it as rational and true. And to a large extent this is because that same western intelligentsia has itself supplanted rationality by ideology – or the dogma of a particular idea.
Objectivity, evidence and truth have been ditched for ideologies such as moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, transnationalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism.
Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent.
This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies become merely ‘alternative narratives’.
Moral and cultural relativism – the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth – has turned right and wrong on their heads.
Because of the dominant belief in multiculturalism, victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups — those without power — can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because – in the hateful discourse of today – Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.
So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.
So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason – centred in the crucible of reason, the university.
All these different ideologies are utopian; in their different ways, they all posit the creation of the perfect society. That is why they are considered ‘progressive’, and people on the progressive wing of politics sign up to them. That helps explain the distressing fact that so many Jews on the left also sign up to Israel-hatred, since they too sign up to such utopian ideologies.
But when utopias fail, as they always do, their adherents invariably select scapegoats on whom they turn to express their rage over the thwarting of the establishment of that perfect society. And since utopia is all about realising the perfect society, these scapegoats become enemies of humanity.
For Greens, such enemies of humanity are capitalists; for anti imperialists, America; for militant atheists, religious believers. Anti-Zionists turn on Israel for thwarting the end to the ‘Jewish question’: the redemption of western guilt for the persecution of the Jews — a guilt which can never be redeemed as long as the wretched Jews continue to make themselves the targets of attack.
In short, therefore, the west cannot defend itself against the Islamic jihad because it can’t itself even think straight any more.
But this lethal muddle in the minds of the intelligentsia must be viewed in turn in the context of a global diplomatic process which itself embodies upside-down thinking, which fans the flames of bigotry and defeatism – and in which Israel itself has been tragically, and suicidally, complicit.
It cannot be stressed enough that the reason why those promoting genocidal bigotry are winning is that the western world has not sought to defeat them but instead has appeased them from the very start.
In Palestine under the British Mandate, when the Arabs used terrorist violence to frustrate the will of the League of Nations in restoring the Jewish home, Britain rewarded them by offering them part of the Jews’ legal and moral entitlement. When the Arabs started hijacking planes, the west’s response was to invite them to the UN to plead their cause.
And despite the Arabs’ repeated refused to accept the two state solution, offered in the 1930s, in 2000 and under Ehud Olmert and their current refusal to negotiate at all, America punishes Israel for not making enough concessions to them — while giving a free pass to those who still refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist.
It is astonishing that the west expects Israel to make any concessions to such attackers at all. After all, forcing a country which has endured more than six decades of existential siege to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing such a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country.
Yet we are repeatedly told even by certain supporters of Israel that the Palestinians have a right to a state. Why? In any other conflict, such aggression forfeits any rights at all.
I am not saying that Israel should retain all the disputed territories; it may well be in its own interests to give some of them up. But the point is that Israel has made all the concessions over the years while the Arabs have made none – yet it is Israel, not the Arabs, that is under pressure from the west.
This is diplomacy as scripted by Franz Kafka.
The single greatest reason for the endless continuation of the Middle East impasse is that Britain, Europe and America have continuously rewarded the aggressor and either attacked the victim or left it twisting in the wind.
That’s what needs to be said by Israel and its defenders. But Israel and its defenders themselves have been crippled or cowed by the false analysis of the enemy’s narrative.
Even many of Israel’s friends spout the demonstrably absurd proposition that a Palestine state would solve the problem, that the impediment to a Palestine state is the ‘settlers’, but that Israel is not taking action to remove the ‘settlers’ — and so therefore they too inescapably agree that Israel is the problem.
Israel and its defenders have been fighting on the wrong battleground: the one that has been chosen by its enemies. The Arabs brilliantly reconfigured the Arab war of extermination against Israel as the oppression by Israel of the Palestinians.
That has transformed Israel from victim to aggressor — the reversal of reality which lies at the very heart of the western obsession with the ‘settlements’ and the territories.
Yet since Oslo, Israel has meekly gone along with this mad pressure. It has never said it is totally unconscionable. It has never put the all-important argument from justice on its own account. So it has allowed its enemies to appropriate this argument mendaciously as their own. But if Israel doesn’t make the case properly on its own behalf, how can anyone else do so?
To which Israel says realpolitik dictates it has to go along with the diplomatic game being played. But diplomatic realpolitik is what brought us all to this position — the brink of a terrible war with Iran which is treated by America with kid gloves while Israel is put under the cosh.
For the west to suck up to its enemies while bashing its friends like this is the diplomatic version of auto-immune disease. And eventually this disease will kill it.
What Israel has failed to recognise is that the battleground on which it is being forced to fight is not just military. It is also a battleground of the mind, and the strategy being used against it – and to which it needs to respond in kind — is psychological warfare.
The Arab and Muslim world long ago realised if it set the narrative in its own image, it would recruit millions of fanatics to its cause and also confuse and demoralise its victims. In this it has wildly succeeded.
There is therefore an overwhelming need for Israel to alter its strategy. Indeed, it needs to have a strategy.
And this brings us to perhaps the most difficult challenge in all of this – the fact that the role played by the Israel government is of critical importance. Unless it adopts the correct strategy, its defenders will remain crippled.
Yet any promising initiatives seem to fall victim to Israel’s chaotic political structure, which appears to prevent the Prime Minister from being master in his own house. Good ideas are habitually destroyed by rampaging egos and turf wars between Israeli Cabinet ministers.
This is no way to run a chip shop, let alone a country under existential siege.
The fact remains that both Israel and diaspora Jews have to rethink. They have to realise they must start fighting on the battleground where the attack is actually being mounted against them. And the goal has to be to seize and retake the moral high ground.
This strategy requires two different tactics: one for those who are capable of rational thought, and another for those who are not.
The first group comprises those who are not irrational but merely desperately ignorant. Much of the obsession with Israel’s behaviour is due to the widespread belief that its very existence is an aberration which, although understandable at the time it came into being, was a historic mistake.
People believe that Israel was created as a way of redeeming Holocaust guilt. Accordingly, they believe that European Jews with no previous connection to Palestine — which they believe was the historic homeland of Palestinian Muslims who had lived there since time immemorial — were transplanted there as foreign invaders, from where they drove out the indigenous Arabs into the West Bank and Gaza. These are territories which Israel is now occupying illegally oppressing the Palestinians and frustrating the creation of a state of Palestine which would end the conflict.
Of course every one of those assumptions is false. But from those false assumptions proceeds the understandable belief not just that Israel’s behaviour is unjust, illegal and oppressive but that it is unjust and oppressive by virtue of its very existence.
For these people there is an urgent need for a proactive educational approach. No-one has ever told them that these beliefs are false – and when they are told, the effect is often transformative.
There is a desperate and urgent need to educate such people in Jewish and Middle East history; to enlighten them about the shameful role played by Britain in Palestine in tearing up its treaty obligations; to tell them that under international law Israel is entitled to the disputed territories – land within which Britain undertook to settle the Jews ‘from the river to the sea’ because of their historic and unique rights to that land.
That’s all necessary for those who are still rational. For bigots, however, there is no point arguing with them. They are, by definition, beyond all reason. Their influence simply has to be destroyed. They have to be held to account for their lies and bigotry which should be forensically exposed.
So Israel and its defenders should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.
They should expose the pretence of Britain or European countries which claim to have Israel’s security needs at heart but forbid it from using military means to defend itself; and which – as did the British Government recently — turn Israeli self-defence against the jihadi lynch-mob on board the Turkish terror ship Mavi Marmara into an attack to be condemned, or demand the opening of the border with Gaza which would allow in arms to kill more Israelis.
Israel and its defenders should be asking why so-called friends in the west want a Palestine state, since once the IDF depart the disputed territories they will become in short order yet another Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist entity which will pose a further threat not just to Israel but to the west.
They should be asking why the EU is continuing to fund the genocidal incitement against Jews promoted by the Palestine Authority.
They should be asking so-called ‘progressives’ – including Jewish ‘progressives’ — why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine.
They should be asking them why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.
Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Mahmoud Abbas’s PA and Hamas, on account of Abbas’s Holocaust denial and the clear evidence of continuation of Nazi Jew-hatred in a direct line of descent from predecessors who were Hitler’s supporters in Palestine.
As for western Israel-bashers, Israel and its defenders should accuse them not of Jew-hating motives that cannot be proved but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny. They should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to social gatherings, show them disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.
They should be telling the Jews ‘own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing – the 800,000 Jews driven out of Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention. In Britain virtually no-one knows about it. At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.
They should be holding Arab and Islamic democracy weeks on campus, to expose the oppression and persecution within that world against women, homosexuals and others.
They should be singling out the Anglican church and the revival of ancient theological Jew-hatred being spread within the Anglican world by the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel centre.
At the same time, they should be focusing on their true friends within the Christian world, not just in America but also in Africa and Asia where there is an enormous reservoir of goodwill towards Israel which could be mobilised into a global fighting force.
They should be campaigning against the UN and the hijacking of international law and human rights by anti-western, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian ideologues.
They should be confronting head-on the false claim that bigotry is confined to the right. They should be pointing the finger at the ‘progressive’ left to show how it is actually supporting the mortal enemies not just of Israel but the west.
And they should be making this case to Israelis themselves, to counter the delegitimisation and ignorance in Israeli universities and to educate the Israeli young in their own national history.
In other words, both Israel and diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence. Israel has nothing to be defensive about or for which it needs to apologise. It is the enemies of Israel who are promoting injustice and the denial of international law and human rights. Playing defence intrinsically cedes ground to the enemy.
It is time for Israel and its defenders to stop conniving with that smokescreen for the war of annihilation being waged against Israel – the claim that the Middle East impasse would be solved by establishing a state of Palestine to which the settlements, and thus by extension Israel, are the obstacle. It is time for them to stop agreeing that the Jews are to blame for their own predicament.
Israel and its defenders need to make the argument from justice and reclaim that moral high ground from the enemies of Israel and the west, both at home — including within Israel — and abroad. It is those enemies who deny truth, justice and human rights. It is those enemies who should be in the dock. It is time to take the gloves off and put them there.
In short, Israel and its defenders must understand that the tsunami of bigotry against Israel sweeping the west is intimately related to Israel’s seriously flawed diplomatic strategy.
For years, Israel has been playing a defensive diplomatic game, which suggests inescapably that it has a case to answer. Such diplomatic cringing has badly undermined it and hugely strengthened its enemies, who are taking advantage of such weakness over and over again.
It’s time for Israel to realise that military campaigns against its enemies are not enough. It has to call time on its false friends too, and start fighting both these and its more obvious enemies on the battleground of the mind.
For a full analysis of the problem described above, please see my latest book
‘The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power‘ published by Encounter.
Letter to Pastors
January 4, 2010
Dear Pastors:
As I write you these lines from Brownsburg, Indiana, where my mother-in-law lived for many years, I wanted to tell you a bit about "MAMMER!" I met this lady shortly after having met her daughter those many, many years ago. And, like a lot of people, Mammer didn’t like me up front.
Bob Macy, who played football at Broad Ripple High School, Indianapolis, and then was a Four Year Starter at Fullback for Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, loved "Mammer’s comment" to the woman whom I then married, Jo Ann, 49 years ago.
Mammer was making Christmas Cookies. She was working in powdered sugar. She had on a dark blouse and dark skirt. She exclaimed to my sweetheart, "Look at him! He’s swaggering sitting still." Bob says, "That takes some practice to do that!"
Well, you all know the story, Jo and I were married. She got saved, then over 2 years later I trusted the LORD as my personal Saviour.
Mammer gave testimony to my wife that she had trusted the LORD at the First Baptist Church in Shelbyville, Indiana when she was about 15 or 16 years old.
Mammer deserved "hell" just like her daughter deserves hell, and just like her son-in-law deserves hell. But, God in his goodness and God in his Grace, reached down all those many years ago, 75 years or so ago, and SAVED HER.
At about 12:15 AM Monday morning of this week Angels came and escorted Mammer’s soul through the realm up above to where she will be "now," "Forever in the presence of the LORD." Mammer has already met my Mama and my Mama’s sister Betty, who prayed for our whole family to be saved. My Mama went to heaven in September 1998.
In my Mama’s case, in Mammer’s case, the sin question had to be dealt with! But, Thank God, the REDEEMER TOOK CARE OF ALL THAT!
Job 19:21, "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. "
My Redeemer Lives. My Mama’s Redeemer Lives! My Mother in Law, Mammer, her Redeemer Lives. Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."
Back there my sinner friend, at the First Baptist Church of Shelbyville, Indiana, those some 75 years ago, when Mammer [she was only called Dorothy then,] bowed her knee and trusted the LORD, her sins were washed as white as Snow in the Blood of the Crucified One.
At the time of Death, the Born Again Child of God, ALL TRUE BELIEVERS, Jew or Gentile, can and will find great solace in the Word of the Living God!
Psalms 23:1,"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. "
Ps 121:1, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
[Like the Psalmist, ole JAV will "lift up his eyes unto the hills" which cometh his help. Ole JAV’s help is the LORD, plain as the nose on your face in the very next verse.]
2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore."
Ps 125:1, "They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever."
Ps 126:1, "When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.
2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD hath done great things for them.
3 The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.
4 Turn again our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the south.
5 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
6 He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. "
I don’t know that I have told you much about Mammer. I have told you a bit about HER GOD! And, the Lord Willing, this coming Thursday, in front of our eldest son John, our 3rd Son Tom [our Pastor] [and his youngest, Esther Von - whom Melissa calls "Grandpa in a Dress"] and our youngest son Paul, my wife, and all her kin, I shall tell them about the greatness of Mammer’s Redeemer, whom, if they only see themselves as "hell deserving sinners" and petition God Almighty for HIS GRACE, he will extend it to them just as he did Noah, just as he did Abraham, and just as he did for Mammer some 75 years ago.
This will be, if my count is correct, the 1,270th time I have stood before a group of people and preached someone’s funeral. Pray for me especially at 10:00 AM, Indianapolis, Indiana time Thursday morning! [I just wish I could round up a bag-piper before Thursday morning, I would have him play for mammer’s funeral!]
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Dear Pastors:
As I write you these lines from Brownsburg, Indiana, where my mother-in-law lived for many years, I wanted to tell you a bit about "MAMMER!" I met this lady shortly after having met her daughter those many, many years ago. And, like a lot of people, Mammer didn’t like me up front.
Bob Macy, who played football at Broad Ripple High School, Indianapolis, and then was a Four Year Starter at Fullback for Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, loved "Mammer’s comment" to the woman whom I then married, Jo Ann, 49 years ago.
Mammer was making Christmas Cookies. She was working in powdered sugar. She had on a dark blouse and dark skirt. She exclaimed to my sweetheart, "Look at him! He’s swaggering sitting still." Bob says, "That takes some practice to do that!"
Well, you all know the story, Jo and I were married. She got saved, then over 2 years later I trusted the LORD as my personal Saviour.
Mammer gave testimony to my wife that she had trusted the LORD at the First Baptist Church in Shelbyville, Indiana when she was about 15 or 16 years old.
Mammer deserved "hell" just like her daughter deserves hell, and just like her son-in-law deserves hell. But, God in his goodness and God in his Grace, reached down all those many years ago, 75 years or so ago, and SAVED HER.
At about 12:15 AM Monday morning of this week Angels came and escorted Mammer’s soul through the realm up above to where she will be "now," "Forever in the presence of the LORD." Mammer has already met my Mama and my Mama’s sister Betty, who prayed for our whole family to be saved. My Mama went to heaven in September 1998.
In my Mama’s case, in Mammer’s case, the sin question had to be dealt with! But, Thank God, the REDEEMER TOOK CARE OF ALL THAT!
Job 19:21, "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. "
My Redeemer Lives. My Mama’s Redeemer Lives! My Mother in Law, Mammer, her Redeemer Lives. Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."
Back there my sinner friend, at the First Baptist Church of Shelbyville, Indiana, those some 75 years ago, when Mammer [she was only called Dorothy then,] bowed her knee and trusted the LORD, her sins were washed as white as Snow in the Blood of the Crucified One.
At the time of Death, the Born Again Child of God, ALL TRUE BELIEVERS, Jew or Gentile, can and will find great solace in the Word of the Living God!
Psalms 23:1,"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. "
Ps 121:1, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
[Like the Psalmist, ole JAV will "lift up his eyes unto the hills" which cometh his help. Ole JAV’s help is the LORD, plain as the nose on your face in the very next verse.]
2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore."
Ps 125:1, "They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever."
Ps 126:1, "When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.
2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD hath done great things for them.
3 The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.
4 Turn again our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the south.
5 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
6 He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. "
I don’t know that I have told you much about Mammer. I have told you a bit about HER GOD! And, the Lord Willing, this coming Thursday, in front of our eldest son John, our 3rd Son Tom [our Pastor] [and his youngest, Esther Von - whom Melissa calls "Grandpa in a Dress"] and our youngest son Paul, my wife, and all her kin, I shall tell them about the greatness of Mammer’s Redeemer, whom, if they only see themselves as "hell deserving sinners" and petition God Almighty for HIS GRACE, he will extend it to them just as he did Noah, just as he did Abraham, and just as he did for Mammer some 75 years ago.
This will be, if my count is correct, the 1,270th time I have stood before a group of people and preached someone’s funeral. Pray for me especially at 10:00 AM, Indianapolis, Indiana time Thursday morning! [I just wish I could round up a bag-piper before Thursday morning, I would have him play for mammer’s funeral!]
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)