The Rev Colin Chapman, well known throughout the Christian world for his writings on Islam and the Middle East, provides the main input for this edition.
Articles 1 and 2 are reproductions of this year’s Redcliffe Lectures on Contemporary Christianity, given by Colin, and we commend them as a very comprehensive and thoughtful discussion of issues which deserve our closest attention as Christians trying to be faithful to God’s mission in the twenty first century. Because the articles are much longer than those usually published, we have also included edited versions (Articles 3 and 4). Readers ‘on the run’ may find these helpful.
Two other brief articles, one on Christian-Muslim relationships (Article 5) and one on the church in post-war Iraq (Article 6) complete the edition.
Experienced readers will soon discern that Colin Chapman, in particular, is coming from one side of a very definite fence in the evangelical discourse about Islam and the Middle East. They will also know that this debate has tended to be highly controversial.
Please, whoever you are, feel free to respond. We welcome debate, and feel that one of the great advantages of an Ezine is that it makes this debate possible.
Article 1: 'Islamic Terrorism': How should Christians & the West respond? (Rev Colin Chapman)
Article 2: Israel and Palestine: Where is God in the conflict? (Rev Colin Chapman)
Article 3: 'Islamic Terrorism': How should Christians & the West respond? (Rev Colin Chapman)
Article 4: Israel and Palestine: Where is God in the conflict? (Rev Colin Chapman)
Article 5: Muslims - Friends or Enemies. (Dr Jonathan Ingleby, 1548 words)
Article 6: The Church in One Small Corner of Post-War Iraq. (Clare W Henton)
Posts
2 comments:
What Really Happened in the Middle East?
by
Xavier Gomez
Palestine’s [1948] war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel (Textbook on Arabic Language, Analysis, Literature and Criticism, grade 12, p.104). Every claim in this statement is false
• There was no Arab state or nation called “Palestine” in the Middle East in 1948.
Or ever.
• There was no “Palestinian” nation that the Jews could steal.
Or occupy.
• For four hundred years until World War 1, the Middle East was ruled by Turks.
Ottoman Empire (1553-1922).
• There was no Palestine, no Jordan, no Lebanon, no Syria, and no Iraq.
They were all created by the European powers out of the ruins of the Turkish
Empire.
• The Jews have lived continuously in Palestine for 3700 years.
• Since the 19th Century, the Jews were a majority of the population in Jerusalem.
• Israel has much a right to exist in the Middle East as do any of these Arab states.
The Jews
• The Jews have been one of the most persecuted and oppressed peoples on the face of the earth.
• The Nazis set out to eradicate Jews from the human race.
• They nearly succeeded.
• Many of the six million Jews the Nazis murdered could have been saved if any country had allowed them refuge.
• But none did. Much of Europe including England expelled them.
The Creation of the State of Israel
• The Palestine Mandate was a piece of the defeated Turkish empire.
• The British promised to make the Mandate a homeland for the Jews.
• But in 1922, Winston Churchill gave 80% of Palestine to the Arabs.
• Today this is the state of Jordan, whose population is mainly Palestinian Arabs.
• Jordan would be the Palestinian state if that was all the Arabs wanted.
• But they don’t.
• In 1948 the United Nations divided the 20% that was left of the Mandate into two parts.
• One for the Arabs, the other for the Jews.
• Sixty percent of the new Israel was arid desert.
• The Jewish settlers went to work.
• The Jews made the desert bloom.
• Funded by the United Nations with billions of U.S. and Israel dollars for economic development, the Arabs could have done the same. Instead their money went into their leader’s Swiss Bank Accounts and for funding ethnic hatred and terrorism.
• If the Arabs had been willing to accept an arrangement in which they were given 90% of the original Palestine Mandate, there would be no Middle East Conflict.
• But they weren’t.
• The creation of Israel meant for the first time in 2,000 years that Jews had a state of their own that would protect them.
• But one sixth of one percent of the Middle East for the Jews was too much for the Arabs.
The Arabs’ War on the Jews
• There were no Arabs in Palestine until the Muslim invasions of the 7th Century.
• In the nearly 1300 years that followed, the Arabs made no attempt to create an independent Palestinian state. But, they did not want the Jews who were living in the Middle East to form a Jewish state.
• “If the Jewish state becomes a fact [the Arabs] will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea. – Hassan al-Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, 1948
• On the day Israel was created in 1948, the armies of the five Arab states – Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq – attacked the fledging Jewish state.
• One out of every one hundred Jews was killed in the war.
• But the Arabs failed to push the Jews into the sea.
• In the sixty years that followed the Arabs waged a continuous war that to destroy the Jewish state and finish the job they had started.
• They did it by terror
• And by traditional wars in 1967 and 1973.
The Middle East War Is Not About Land
• The Arabs justify their war against Israel saying the Jews stole their land and then occupied it.
• These claims are false.
• It was the Arab governments who encouraged the Arabs to flee their homes. Some Arabs fled out of fear of the war itself.
• Here is the testimony of Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority: “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.” [Falastin al-Thawra, “the official journal of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Beirut, 1976]
• Nonetheless a million Arabs chose to remain in Israel.
• The Jews made these Arabs citizens of Israel, and gave them rights.
• Today, the Arabs who live in Israel have more rights than those Arabs living in any Arab country.
• If the Jews were ruthless occupiers and thieves as the Arabs leaders and Jimmy Carter claim, why would they welcome Arabs as citizens and give them more rights than Arabs enjoy in any Arab state?
The Middle East War Is Not About Refugees
• After the 1948 Arab war against Israel, 850,000 Jews were forced to flee Arab countries in which they had lived for thousands of years.
• No one talks about these refugees.
• Because Israel re-settled them.
• Today, Jews are persona non grata in Arab states, but Arabs have full citizenship rights in Israel.
• Sometimes the present is a guide to the past.
The Palestinian Cause Is Not About Self-Determination
• The Arabs and their supporters claim that the Middle East conflict is about the Palestinians’ yearning for a state and the refusal of Israel to accept their aspiration.
• Both claims are false.
• The Palestinians were offered a state in 1948 and again in 2000. Both times they responded with armed aggression and terrorist attacks.
• If the Palestinians only want a state of their own, why is there no Intifada in Jordan where Palestinians are the majority of the population?
• In fact, after the failed 1948 war against Israel, Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt annexed Gaza.
• But when the Palestinian Liberation Organization was formed 15 years later in 1964 it did not call for the liberation of the West Bank from Jordan or the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
• Instead, the Palestinians called for the “liquidation of the Zionist presence” – the destruction of Israel.
• Today Hamas is the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority. Its declared aim is to “liberate Palestine from the Jordan to the sea.” In other words to eliminate the State of Israel.
• “Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it – Hamas Charter
The Middle East War Is About the Destruction of Israel
• According to Jimmy Carter and the Arab propaganda machine, the cause of the Middle East conflict is the Israeli occupation of Arab land.
• This statement is false.
• In 2005, Israel withdrew from its military forces from Gaza, which they had occupied to prevent terrorist attacks.
• The day of the Israeli withdrawal, Hamas began launching rocket attacks against towns and schools inside Israel.
• In 2000 Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon, which they had occupied because of Arab rocket attacks on Israeli schools and towns in Northern Israel.
• Hezbollah and Hamas responded by launching attacks against Israel using rockets made in Iran.
• The goal of the Arabs is the destruction of the Jews.
• The Arabs make no secret of the fact their goal is the extermination of the Jews.
• “The Jews are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment.” “There is no solution to the conflict except with the disappearance of Israel.”
• “If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” - – Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah
• “O Allah, destroy America, as it is controlled by Zionist Jews… Allah will avenge, in the name of His Prophet, the colonist settlers who are the descendents of monkeys and pigs…” - Ikrime Sabri, Mufti of the Palestinian Authority, weekly Sermon in Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Voice of Palestine (July 11, 1997)
• Hitler tried to eliminate the Jews from the human race and failed.
• The Jewish survivors gathered in a remnant of the Turkish empire and vowed:” never again.”
• In 1948, the United Nations said: the Jews can have a state on three silvers of desert in the vast land mast that is the Middle East, so that their people can have a refuge in this world.
The Arab War against the Jews
• During the Second World War, the Arabs supported Hitler and the final solution.
• Adolf Hitler conferred with his ally the Haji Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
• After the war, the Jews found a refuge in Israel. But, the Arabs who had supported Hitler, said no.
• For 60 years the Arabs have waged a continuous war against Israel in an effort to finish the job that Hitler had started.
The Civilized World Must Say: Never Again
Based on the pamphlet, ‘Why Israel is the Victim’ by David Horowitz.
Sources for the quotes and facts contained in this article can be obtained
from the David Horowitz Freedom Center at
http://www.horowitzfreedomcentre.org
&
http://www.terrorismawareness.org
http://www.christianzionism.org/
Post a Comment