The New Anti-Semitism

An inflammatory sign that recently appeared on a Chicago expressway

So, who's behind the inflammatory signs that encourage folks to boycott Israel? The signs have been popping up along the interstates across the U.S. for the past several years.

The group that's paying for the signs is known as StopFundingApartheid.org (SFA), a subsidiary of an organization called the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SMAC). The SMAC says it's not anti-Semitic, but claims it merely exists to alert Americans to Israel's alleged persecution of the Palestinians, and the Jewish nation's unlawful occupation of Palestinian land. Yep, sure.

One of the SFA's signs recently appeared in the Chicago area before it was taken down when the company that put up the sign decided to remove it following an avalanche of complaints. Evidently, a lot of Chicagoans are unenlightened bigots and racists who don't agree with the SFA.

And so, what's the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign really all about? Is it truly just an educational group that believes Israel is persecuting the Palestinians? Or, is it a front group peddling Islamic propaganda for such terror organizations as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood?

According to folks such as David Horowitz, the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center that battles anti-Semitism and the spread of Islamic propaganda on college campuses, the SMAC is indeed a front group for Hamas that seeks Israel's destruction and the elimination of all the Jews from the world.

Furthermore, a group called Standwithus.com has linked Edward Mast, a leading SMAC spokesman to the International Solidarity Movement, a group with close ties to Islamic terror groups.

Who's Mast? According to Familysecuritymatters.org, Mast is a playwright who grew up in California and now resides in Seattle. And furthermore: Seven years ago, Mast was an activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and more recently he has been involved with the “Palestine Online Store.” He is a founding member of the Seattle-based Palestine Information Project which also goes under the name Palestine Solidarity Committee, which has campaigned to boycott Israeli products and produces (Islamic) propaganda.

Islamic terror groups pay puppets such as Edward Mast to spew their vile propaganda to ignorant folks who don't understand what the real agenda is. And what's the real agenda? The real agenda is the Islamic world's vehement hatred of the Jews and Israel. The Islamic world wants to destroy Israel and murder all the Jews. Why? Because that's what the Quran and the Hadith teach. Here's an example:

The last hour (Judgment Day) will not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims will kill them until the Jews will hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree will say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him. (Sahih Muslim, 6986, Hadith)

Since the call for the mass murder of world Jewry and the destruction of Israel is overt anti-Semitism, terror groups camouflage that message in the covert sophistry of "human rights."

And they use front groups such as the SFA and SMAC to deliver that message to ignorant, gullible and unsuspecting folks in order to turn them against the Jews and the nation of Israel. Tragically, too many people embrace that message without investigating its source or examining what its real motives are.

When we examine the evidence, we can easily discover what the real motives are. I've written at length on it, so there's no need to deal with it again here. Here's are some links to articles I've written on Islam, Israel and God's promises to the Jews: Israel and Islam, Isaac and Ishmael. Israel, the Jews and the World. Blissful Ignorance. Islamic Fundamentalism 101.

Why is anti-Semitism metastasizing throughout the world once again? Tragically, the Jews remain under an ancient curse that they incurred thousands of years ago because of their chronic rebellion against God.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Lord spoke these words to the prophet Jeremiah: "I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten. I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague and will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth, a curse and an object of horror, of scorn and reproach, among all the nations where I drive them. For they have not listened to my words," declares the Lord, "words that I sent to them again and again by my servants the prophets." (Jeremiah 29:17-19)

The Bible reveals that this ancient curse will end when Jesus Christ comes back to rescue Israel and destroy her enemies at an event known as Armageddon. (Zechariah 14) But before that happens, Israel and the Jews will continue to be persecuted by both the old anti-Semites, and the new ones such as Edward Mast and his SMAC.

Sowing and Reaping

Jimmy Carter

Unless you're an evil person, you experience sadness whenever you learn that someone is seriously ill with cancer. And that's how I felt when I learned that former President Jimmy Carter was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Though Carter is scheduled to undergo radiation therapy to treat the malignant tumor in his brain, he's resigned to the fact that at age 90, he's probably not going to be around much longer. Here's what he said: "I've had a wonderful life. I've had thousands of friends, I've had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence. So I was surprisingly at ease, much more so than my wife was."

I believe in being honest and blunt, so I'm not going to sugarcoat my words concerning Carter. Even though I'm saddened that he's ill, Carter was a terrible president who caused significant damage to the United States and the world during his only term in the White House from 1977-1981. And he's caused significant harm to the nation of Israel since he left the Oval Office.

Though he claims to be a Southern Baptist, Carter's an anti-Semite who's chronically sided with Israel's enemies that seek to destroy the Jewish nation. Under his leadership as America's 39th president, the U.S. suffered domestically and internationally. The U.S. economy choked under high taxes and inflation that led the the term "stagflation."

Thanks to Carter's atrocious foreign policy, the Iranian Revolution occurred in 1979 because Carter refused to come to the aid of the Shah of Iran who was under siege from the fanatical supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Though the Shah pleaded with Carter to help him put down Khomeini's rebellion, Carter ignored him and Iran became an Islamic theocracy after the Shah was overthrown. Thanks to Carter's ignorance, Iran has now become a grave threat to the entire world.

And now, even though this is going to infuriate some people, I'm going to say it anyway: Carter is reaping what he's sown. That' not my opinion. That's a biblical tenet. Here's what the apostle Paul wrote in his epistle to the early church in Galatia: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Galatians 6:7-8)

While Paul was speaking about God's judgment on those who willfully disobey Him by breaking His laws, the apostle referenced a spiritual truth that everyone ultimately gets what they deserve. To the early Roman church, Paul wrote this: "To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism." (Romans 2:7-11)

Carter's anti-Semitism is legendary. Until Barack Obama occupied the White House, Carter was the most anti-Israel president in the history of the United States. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote this for the Observer about a year ago: Mr. Carter said in 2006 that Israel’s policies in the West Bank were actually worse than apartheid South Africa. He followed this disgusting libel with his infamous 2009 book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” in which he claimed that due to “powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media.” We’re skirting awfully close to a protocols-of-Zion style argument here, that the Jews control the media and American foreign policy.

In 2006, Carter also made this preposterous claim during an interview with Der Spigel: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

No one knows how many prisoners Israel holds--not even Carter. And yet he concocted the figure of 10,000 to justify his contempt for the Jewish nation. For several years, Israel has been inundated with rocket attacks that have come from Lebanon and Gaza. Thus, the Jewish nation has bombed Lebanon and Gaza to destroy those rockets and the terrorists that launch them. Some of those rockets have destroyed schools, homes and businesses in Israel. That's a fact that continually escapes Carter.

Or, maybe Carter ignores that fact because he loathes Israel. Whatever his reasons are for habitually condemning Israel while siding with Israel's enemies, his reasons aren't based on factual and historical evidence. Rather, they're based on personal animus. 

I don't know where Carter stands with God. He promotes himself as a bible-believing Christian, but he doesn't sound like one. I hope he examines himself thoroughly during his last days on earth, because he has a lot of repenting to do. And I sincerely hope he changes his heart toward the Jews and Israel before he takes his final breath.

Shame on the UCC

During his three-year ministry in ancient Israel, Jesus Christ often used agricultural examples to explain spiritual principles. For example? When he taught this parable of the wheat and the tares.

Here's what He said: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared." (Matthew 13:24-26)

What did Christ mean? He meant that throughout history, Satan has opposed God by counterfeiting the Lord's works in order to deceive God's people. In the ancient times, the devil encouraged the Jews to create their own religious system and reject God's covenant He established with Israel through Moses. That system perverted many of the laws and commandments mandated by the Mosaic Covenant, and it added many additional laws written by the rabbis that violated the covenant (Deuteronomy 4:2).

That's the religion that many Jews continue to follow today. It's a sham system that orders its adherents to bow down to the rabbis and obey their teachings. And it's a system that's designed to steer its followers away from Calvary into a works-system that can't save anyone.

Satan also has his own church. Soon after Christ established His church 2,000 years ago via His crucifixion on the cross for all sin and His resurrection from the dead, the devil established a counterfeit that offered a perverted gospel that added and subtracted to its tenets. In the early days, some churches taught such heresies as arianism and docetism. Later, the Roman Catholic Church appeared and denied the biblical gospel of salvation by faith alone in Christ (John 3:16, Romans 10:9-12, Ephesians 2:8-9) and replaced it with an unbiblical gospel of works.

Today, many churches promote an unbiblical, ecumenical gospel that legitimizes all religious paths while denying what Christ stated: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the (Heavenly) Father except through me." (John 14:6) Though Christ clearly taught that He alone is the only way to eternal life, many churches now deny that. And by doing so, they've called the One who they claim to represent a liar.

One example of that is the United Church of Christ that claims to be a Christian denomination and yet promotes a very anti-Christian gospel and agenda. If you read the UCC's statement of faith, you'll not find a single reference to the biblical gospel that mandates faith alone in the crucified and resurrected Christ as the only path to eternal life.

Rather, you'll find this: The UCC has no rigid formulation of doctrine or attachment to creeds or structures. Its overarching creed is love. UCC pastors and teachers are known for their commitment to excellence in theological preparation, interpretation of the scripture and justice advocacy. Even so, love and unity in the midst of our diversity are our greatest assets. www.ucc.org

And, you'll find this: We believe that God calls us to be servants in the service of others and to be good stewards of the earth's resources. 'To believe is to care; to care is to do.' And this: We believe in the power of peace, and work for nonviolent solutions to local, national, and international problems.

While those statements may sound commendable to many people, they promote a false, universal gospel rather than the genuine biblical gospel. A church's most vital mission is to call sinners out of the world into salvation and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. All other objectives are secondary to that mission. If a church either denies that mission or makes it secondary to some social cause--no matter how noble that cause may seem--then it's defied the Great Commission of Christ (Matthew 28:16-20) and failed its responsibility to preach the gospel.

And the UCC not only doesn't preach a biblical gospel, it's also become an organization that increasingly opposes Israel and sides with the enemies of the Jewish state. Recently, the UCC's General Synod voted overwhelming (508-124) to divest economically from companies that do business with Israel because the UCC claims that Israel unlawfully occupies land that rightfully belongs to the Palestinians.

The Rev. Mitri Raheb, a "Christian Palestinian" who lives in Jordan, applauded the UCC's decision and said this: "For Palestinians living under occupation or facing systematic discrimination as citizens of Israel, enduring the destruction of their homes and businesses, the theft of their land for settlements, and living under blockade and siege in Gaza, this action sends a strong signal that they are not alone, and that there are churches who still dare to speak truth to power and stand with the oppressed."  

For the record, there was no Palestine when Christ walked the dusty roads of ancient Israel. Palestine was created by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 130 A.D. when he voided Israel after he quashed the Bar Kochba rebellion that sought to win Israel's independence from Rome.

Prior to Hadrian's edict, Palestine (Philistine) had existed as an ancient maritime kingdom located along the southwest coast of the Great Sea until about the 2nd century B.C. Those who claim to be Palestinians today are not the descendants of the ancient Philistines.

Rather, they are a mixture of Turks, Bedouins, Persians, Arabs, Egyptians and Assyrians who migrated to that land over the 1,800 years between Hadrian's edict and 1948 when the United Nations voted to declare Israel a sovereign nation once again. Thus, the modern "Palestinians" have absolutely no right to claim that land for themselves. It doesn't belong to them. And it never did.

As a Christian denomination, the UCC ought to know that. The UCC ought to know that the modern Palestinians were given their own homeland by the UN. And that homeland is Jordan. But instead, the UCC has chosen to oppose Israel and side with the enemies of God. By doing so, and by rejecting the biblical gospel to preach a worthless ecumenical one, the United Church of Christ has joined with Satan. No sincere Christian should ever belong to such a wretched organization as this one.

Sadly, the existence of such corrupt churches as the UCC fulfills biblical prophecy concerning the great apostasy (falling away) of many denominations in the last days. Christ said this: "At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people." (Matthew 24:10-11) And the apostle Paul wrote this: "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Shame on the United Church of Christ. And shame on any church that misuses the Lord's name (Exodus 20:7) to promote a false gospel that denigrates Israel and sends people into eternal damnation.

Israel, the Jews and the World: Pt. I

The New Anti-Semitism

Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Lord spoke these words to the prophet Zechariah: "I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves." (Zechariah 12:2-3)

While the prophecy describes the future event called Armageddon when the armies of the world will gather together and attempt to annihilate Israel, it also reveals the world's increasing hostility toward the Jewish nation in the last days preceding the return of Jesus Christ.

The world has indeed grown so hostile toward Israel these days that "Never Again", the promise the world made to the Jews at the end of World War II that it would never again remain silent and allow them to be persecuted by evil tyrants such as Adolf Hitler, is indeed happening again.

Why have the Jews been maligned and persecuted throughout the world for centuries? Because they're under a powerful curse that traces back to the time of the prophet Jeremiah who lived during the 6th century B.C.

These are the words the Lord spoke to Jeremiah: "I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a curse and an object of ridicule, wherever I banish them. I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their ancestors." (Jeremiah 24:9-10)

But why? What did the ancient Jews do that so angered the Lord that He pronounced judgment upon them? They continually broke His laws and violated His covenant He established with them through Moses. And the Lord sent numerous prophets to warn the Jews to repent or face the consequences. Those warnings occurred over a span of several centuries, so it wasn't as though the curse came as a surprise. 

Some folks claim that the Jews came under a curse after they rejected Christ as their Messiah. But the Jews had already rejected God centuries before Christ came into the world. 

During the time of the ancient prophet Samuel, the Jews asked for a human king to rule over them, prompting the Lord to tell Samuel this: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights." (1 Samuel 8:7-9)

Thus, the Jews have lived in rebellion against God for over 3,000 years. And yet, despite their chronic rebellion, the Lord has preserved a remnant of them throughout history. Just as the world's ageless persecution of the Jews defies logic, so does the fact that the Jews continue to exist today despite the numerous attempts to destroy them throughout the ages.

In fact, the Jews are currently celebrating Purim, a festival dedicated to their triumph over the evil Haman the Agagite who sought to annihilate them about 2,500 years ago while they were living in captivity under the Persians.

Concerning the remnant of the Jews, the apostle Paul wrote this: "I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 'Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me.' And what was God’s answer to him? 'I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace." (Romans 11:1-5)

That remnant has been preserved by God throughout the centuries. The existence of the Jews today isn't a coincidence, despite the incredible hostility they've endured wherever they've gone in the world throughout history. They've been preserved by the hand of God. 

And the return of Israel as a sovereign world nation in 1948 after 1,800 years also fulfilled God's promises He made to His ancient prophets. However, the world--including a significant portion of the Christian church--refuses to believe that Israel's reestablishment 67 years ago had anything to do with God.

To the contrary, much of the world and part of the church are determined to eliminate Israel. They'll fail, but they'll keep trying. In Part II, why the Islamic world is determined to destroy Israel and eliminate the Jews.

The Ageless Anti-Semitism

Islam and Nazism: A common goal

The western world has discovered rather belatedly that when it comes to multiculturalism, Islam is the proverbial square peg that can't be jammed into the west's inclusive round hole.

Rather, if Islam has its way, the west and the rest of the world will be forced into its narrow, square hole that has no room for the Jews. 

And if Islam has its way, the Jews will be rounded up and eliminated from the planet, just as Adolf Hitler envisioned before he underestimated the brutal Russian winters during his invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Like Hitler, Islam loathes the Jews and wants them gone--first from the Middle East and then from the rest of the planet. That will only happen if Islam overtakes the eastern world as it has overtaken the west. 

For now, Islamists are content to spread their religion and its contempt for the Jews through the many useful idiots in the west who masquerade as journalists and educators. Not that many years ago, a college or university campus provided a safe haven for Jewish students. Today however, western colleges and universities have become the latest breeding ground for anti-Semitism, thanks to the useful idiots who embrace Islamic propaganda without even attempting a modicum of fact-checking.

But why allow the facts to disturb your ideology? The ideology claims that those rotten and scheming Jews connived the United Nations in 1948 to give them land that belonged to the Palestinians. However, the facts tell us that no such indigenous tribe called Palestinians ever inhabited that land. In fact, the facts tell us that no such indigenous tribe has ever existed.

How did Israel come to be known as Palestine? It was renamed Palestine in 130 A.D. by Roman Emperor Hadrian after he crushed the Bar Kochba rebellion that sought to win Israel's independence from Rome. 

Prior to 1948, a Palestinian was considered a Jew and the assorted Arabs, Egyptians, Turks, Bedouins, Persians etc. who lived in that land refused to be identified as Palestinians. And for obvious reasons.

However, in the early 1960s, an Egyptian named Yasser Arafat and his cohorts came up with the clever idea to reinvent themselves by claiming to be Palestinians that had been stripped of their homeland by the Jews. After all, if the Jews now referred to themselves as Israelites, then it was no longer detrimental to be identified as a Palestinian.  

And so, on June 2, 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was born. The PLO became the godfather of all terrorist organizations and a propaganda factory that churned out tons of bovine manure that accused the Jews of all sorts of high crimes against God and humanity.

That bovine manure was eagerly embraced by an ignorant world always eager to find fault with the Jews, even if that fault was manufactured. And the more BS the PLO and other organizations that hopped on the anti-Semitic bandwagon manufactured, the more the world embraced.

How bad has it become for European Jews? It's become Kristallnacht, circa 2015. All throughout Europe, Jews are coming to the realization that they have no future on the Continent. It hasn't gotten to that point yet in the U.S., but it will. When America's president defines a shooting at a kosher deli in France a "random" act of violence, then you know who he sides with. And you know where his nation is headed. 

What's the reason for the relentless anti-Semitism that has plagued the Jews for 2,500 years? The Jews came under a curse in the ancient times for their chronic rebellion against the Lord. Though He sent numerous prophets to warn them to repent and return to Him, they refused, prompting the Lord to issue this curse through the ancient prophet Jeremiah: "I will send four kinds of destroyers against them," declares the Lord, "the sword to kill and the dogs to drag away and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh son of Hezekiah king of Judah did in Jerusalem." (Jeremiah 15:3-4) 

Will this curse ever end? Indeed it will. But not until Jesus Christ returns to rescue Israel from the armies of the world at an event known as Armageddon. Then the Jews will finally embrace Christ as their Messiah who they rejected many centuries ago.

But until that time, anti-Semitism will continue to plague the Jews wherever they go. That's tragic. But that's reality.