Justinology

By Atara Beck

TORONTO – According to Professor Paul Merkley, a member of the advisory panel of the Canadian Institute of Jewish Research and board member of International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), Christian Zionists have always been the most consistent supporters of the Jewish state, “even more consistent than those who identify themselves as Jews.”

Merkley, professor emeritus (history), Carleton University, and author of scholarly books on the history of Christian involvement in Zionism, spoke at Beth Tzedec synagogue last Wednesday evening as part of a series on Christian Zionism.

“The World Council of Churches today is in the vanguard in the campaign in the UN to have Israel condemned,” Merkley stated. That campaign, which focuses on a twofold agenda – to dismantle the security barrier and to encourage the withdrawal of business projects with Israel – is not about the wall, nor about divestment, he said. It challenges Israel’s right to exist.

Article Continues… (Jewish Tribune)

This is kind of a skewed claim, as not all Jews are Zionists, just as not all Christians are Zionists. On top of that, how are we defining “Jew?”

As for the rest of the article, it’s worth the read.

HT: Israpundit

Despite the recent ruling by the Chief Rabbinate that Jews may not participate in any Christian events, Rabbis Shlomo Riskin and Benny Elon spoke in support of the Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem (DPPJ) on Sunday night at the Haas Promenade.

Full Article (Jerusalem Post)

This is good to see. As I said yesterday, there’s a middle ground somewhere that we’re all either missing or completely avoiding.

Sometimes the injustices we fight and resist in life can overtake our lives and forever distort our views and opinions. Some of my colleagues who joined with me in the 1980s in the struggle against Apartheid were never able to move on when the apartheid system finally collapsed in South Africa.

They had allowed “the struggle,” as it came to be known, to overwhelm them. Whites were always held in suspicion, and the new, non-racial South Africa was thus such a surprise that it took away their purpose in life, yet they were left with the prejudice.

This prejudice said that people could never change. They would always be tied to the chains of their historical past. Therefore they should be mistrusted, rejected and guarded against. The “new day” will never come! Well, it did in South Africa.

The scenario I have painted above applies to Ellen Horowitz’s recent Jerusalem Post op-ed (“A Jewish mother’s guide to end times,” August 28). She is a prisoner of the past and will never accept the “new day” in Christian-Jewish relations.

Christians who support Israel, no matter how genuinely or sacrificially, will always be a fifth column peddling some hidden agenda to subvert the Jewish people.

Full Article (Jerusalem Post)

Written by Malcolm Hedding, executive director of the ICEJ.

Just to be fair, here’s the article he’s referencing:

No weapon engineered against you will succeed…. (Isaiah 54:17)

The above words from a recent Haftara, the reading from the Prophets, are comforting for a mother who sits in a leaderless country run by lunatics.

With Iranian-backed Syria literally looming on my horizon, my sons are assigned to combat units. America’s liberty crusade through the Middle East has just been turned into a shop-’til-you-drop arms extravaganza for peace, with headlines blaring: “US military deals with Mideast promote stability.”

There is talk of imminent war, but our army is preoccupied with desecrating Hebron, the city of our forefathers, while those affected are so pained as to blaspheme our army. The Jewish unity needed to ensure victory, security and sanity seems eons away.

Nu? So what else is new?

Full Article (Jerusalem Post)