Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts

Friday, November 1, 2024

New “Ark of The Covenant” Constructed as a Weapon and “Communication Device” was Taken to Trump Before Bringing it to Jerusalem

New “Ark of The Covenant” Constructed as a Weapon and “Communication Device” was Taken to Trump Before Bringing it to Jerusalem

By Brian Shillhavy

Posted on November 1, 2024




Israeli journalist Alex Traiman wrote an article that appeared in many Jewish news publications last week, announcing that a new Ark of The Covenant replica, matching the ancient one that once was in the Tabernacle and in the first Jewish Temple in Jerusalem as described in the Old Testament scriptures, was now on display in Jerusalem.

With eyes on winning war, building third Jewish Temple, Ark replica shown in Jerusalem

It took 17 volunteers, who live in several countries, three-and-a-half years to build the replica ark, which is made out of donated gold and some three tons of Egyptian Acacia, according to “Jake” the project’s chief architect, who prefers to remain anonymous, and Lewis Topper, its principal financier. (Source.)

This new Ark of The Covenant was mainly built in the United States, and after it was completed, it was delivered to the home of Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence, before it was taken to Israel to visit sites there, and finally ending up in Jerusalem in recent days.

During President Trump’s first presidency, he became the first head of state to move their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

It has been reported that Donald Trump converted to Judaism during his first term (source), and excitement among Zionists skyrocketed as it was reported that Donald Trump would spearhead efforts to build a new temple in Jerusalem, where currently the Al-Aqsa mosque stands.

Top Israeli Rabbi Believes Trump Will Build Third Temple in Jerusalem

Trump has so thoroughly altered US policy toward the Jewish state that many Israelis believe the end is near

US President Donald Trump’s unabashed support for the Jewish state and his public recognition of Jerusalem as its capital have many Israelis electrified.

The current American leader’s positive attitude toward Israel seems nearly illogical, especially after decades of far more hostile trends.

A prominent Israeli rabbi believes the reason for this unprecedented (at least in modern times) shift is that Trump has a big role to play in the building of the Third Temple and the coming of Messiah.

Rabbi Yosef Berger is the rabbi in charge of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, and the son of a widely revered Hasidic leader.

In remarks to Breaking Israel News, Rabbi Berger cited a medieval rabbinical source that predicted that while the first two temples were built by Israel, the third would be built by the “descendants of Edom,” a phrase that in some later rabbinical literature is a euphemism for the Christian world.

This is so that the Christians, and the ancient peoples they have come to represent in rabbinical thought, can make restitution for millennia of wrongdoing toward the Children of Israel.

Rabbi Berger explained:

“No leader in history has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews and Israel. [Trump] has already created a great tikkun (reparation) for the Christians through his unprecedented relationship with Jerusalem. Trump is the representative of Edom that will perform that final historic reparation for his entire nation by building the Temple.”

Full Article.

Trump never got to complete this task, however, as he failed in his attempt to be re-elected in 2020.

And to build a temple in Jerusalem according to Old Testament Law, the Ark of The Covenant must reside inside the “Holy of Holies” in the inner temple.

Is this New Ark of The Covenant just a “Replica”?

While this new Ark of The Covenant is being called a “replica”, Traiman writes that many Jews see it as a weapon to use in their current war against Palestinians and their Arab neighbors, much like it was used in battles in the Old Testament times, beginning with the fall of Jericho.

He also stated that it was a “divine communication device.”

The replica ark stopped in Jericho, the first Israeli city inhabited by Jews after the biblical Exodus from Egypt, and in Shiloh, the site that served as the Jewish capital for 369 years after Jews settled in Israel and the location of the Tabernacle before the building of the First Temple.

Although the Torah delves into extensive detail about the construction of the Ark and its dimensions and materials, it leaves out a lot of critical information that a builder would need to create the sacred vessel.

“It was really a deep process of discovery and a mystery. It’s not a question of just reading the descriptions literally and building the device,” Jake said at the event.

“You have to do some heavy research, you have to immerse yourself and you have to go on a journey.”

“Building the Ark is the ultimate journey,” he added.

“It’s the ultimate pilgrimage to discover God and discover the Jewish people, and that pilgrimage was both horrifying and very satisfying.”

Each step raised new questions about how such a complex object was constructed before the advent of modern manufacturing.

“We went with the highest purity of gold available to the Egyptians,” Jake said at the event.

“The purity used for royal artifacts is around 23.75 carats, so we went with 23.75.”

The volunteers also drew on a “tremendous amount of math” to build the ark, according to the project’s chief architect.

“A lot of the concepts or motifs that we used follow up either Kabbalistic or some other concept by way of numerology,” Jake said.

“The math parallels the ones found both in the Tabernacle and the First Temple. They used the same kind of numerology.”

He added that the Golden Ratio—a relationship between values that has been seen as beautiful since ancient times and which appears in nature, including human anatomy—played a “very important part in the design.”

Divine ‘communication device’

The crown jewel atop the golden box, which required painstaking detail, is the pair of male and female cherubs—winged angels with child-like features that face each other.

“It’s very difficult to hammer gold to a high degree of precision, so a lot of the techniques have to be invented and discovered,” Jake said.

“Scripture tells us that God spoke to Moses in between the cherubs,” he said.

“The purpose of the Ark was to have a communication channel between Moses and God, so it’s the communication device. It certainly wasn’t an electronic communication device.”

It was also a sacred object with military implications.

“The Ark of the Covenant was the weapon that was taken into war,” he said.

Several attendees said that it was meaningful that the ark replica was built and brought to Jerusalem amid Israel’s seven-front war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and all of the latter’s other terror proxies.

Jake told attendees that the replica ark might be providing some symbolic military assistance already.

“We brought it to Israel to get it reattached to all of the places it was before. We actually visited Shiloh,” he said.

Jake hopes the replica ark can be used more formally in the current war.

“We would like to bring it to a number of military camps,” he told attendees.

“The original idea was to actually bring it physically into Gaza, but we are running into some administrative challenges.”

Topper, a businessman and philanthropist who lives in New York and Florida and who funded the project, told attendees that the replica ark is “a passionate task that was performed that encountered construction, engineering and architectural difficulties every step of the way.”

The rewards of the three-and-a-half-year journey were amplified for Topper when the replica ark arrived in Jerusalem.

“When we finally got the Torah delivered to us, it was this morning and it was at the City of David,” he said.

“When that Torah was put in, this ark became weaponized.”

Jake told attendees that the replica ark might be providing some symbolic military assistance already.

“We brought it to Israel to get it reattached to all of the places it was before. We actually visited Shiloh,” he said.

“The funny thing is that as soon as we took the Ark and assembled it in Shiloh, where the Tabernacle used to stay, I think within a few minutes, Sinwar (the Hamas leader) was taken out.”

The project architect noted that he and his colleagues claim no credit for the Israeli military killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, “but the symbolism, the irony is actually pretty funny.” (Source.)

Israeli Zionists Looking to Trump and GOP Zionists to Build the New Temple

A new temple built in Jerusalem would not be possible without the support of American Zionists, most of whom are Christians.

Republican Zionists, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, and many others have been traveling to Israel for years now, working with Kahanist activists and members of the “Temple Movement”, to plan the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the rebuilding of a new Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

The GOP’s Plan to Build the Third Temple

Republicans are working with Kahanist activists to advance a violent vision of Jewish control over Jerusalem’s holy sites.

BEFORE DAWN on April 15th, 2022, Israeli security forces laid siege to the Al-Aqsa mosque and compound in Jerusalem. Police shot Palestinian worshippers with rubber-coated steel bullets, subdued them with stun grenades, and beat them with billy clubs; over 150 were treated by the Red Crescent. By the end of the day, over 300 Palestinians had been arrested.

The New York Times explained the Israeli assault as a response to Palestinians blocking Jews from entering the compound amid rumors that “hard-line Jewish activists” planned to perform a Passover sacrifice at the site. Indeed, for weeks in the run-up to Passover, the right-wing religious group Beyadenu (In Our Hands), part of what’s known in Israel as the Temple Movement, had been planning and publicizing mass ascents to the hilltop compound, sometimes referred to as the Holy Esplanade.

When the Israeli government temporarily closed the esplanade to Jewish worshippers on April 25th in an attempt to prevent further violence, Beyadenu called the new policy a capitulation to Palestinian terrorism.

The policy was lifted in early May, and Beyadenu soon organized more Jewish ascents to the site.

On May 29th, when tens of thousands of armed settlers stormed the Old City for Jerusalem Day—chanting “death to Arabs,” calling for the burning of Palestinian villages, and attacking journalists—thousands entered Al-Aqsa, and Beyadenu celebrated the move.

The Temple Movement of which Beyadenu is a part has its roots in Kahanism, the Jewish fascist movement founded by Brooklyn-born rabbi Meir Kahane in the 1960s.

In the early ’70s, Kahane created an Israeli political party, Kach, which led a transnational campaign of violence in an effort to provoke the voluntary and forced transfer of Palestinians from Israel/Palestine, and advocated for the establishment of a theocratic ethnostate.

Though Israel banned Kach in 1984, publicly available tax filings show that the original party’s infrastructure has been reconstituted in a collection of Temple Movement-affiliated nonprofits founded and run by Kahanist luminaries.

Israeli researchers and organizers have documented some ties among Kahanist groups, and between Kahanist groups and the Temple Movement.

Jewish Currents’ review of Israeli tax filings identified a larger number of affiliated groups, including some that register nonprofits in the United States. (A new Kahanist party, Otzma Yehudit, has also taken Kach’s place in the Knesset.)

“The Kahanist movement is far from being dead in Israel,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher with Ir Amim, which monitors human rights violations in Jerusalem.

“It’s the strongest it ever was.”

The Temple Movement’s influence—once largely limited to the most extreme settler groups in Hebron and Jerusalem—has been on the rise since 2010, the same year that US voters gave the GOP control over the House of Representatives.

Since then, Republicans traveling in Israel/Palestine have repeatedly visited Al-Aqsa with Temple Movement escorts.

A Jewish Currents review of travel filings with the House Ethics Committee revealed that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan has met with Kahanists on more occasions than any other member of Congress, sitting down with them on four separate trips to Israel/Palestine—in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2020.

In all, more than 40 Republicans—including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, and, following his time in office, former Vice President Mike Pence—have met with Kahanists since 2011, in Hebron and near Nablus as well as in Jerusalem.

Many of these meetings occurred as part of privately sponsored Congressional delegations to Israel/Palestine that were organized and funded by Christian Zionist groups, including the United States Israel Education Association (USIEA) and Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN).

(Under House rules, lawmakers are permitted to participate in privately sponsored trips like those arranged by Christian Zionist groups, and members of Congress are under no obligation to notify the State Department when traveling on such junkets.)

The Temple Movement’s efforts are aimed at accomplishing a single, symbolically important piece of the Kahanist project: Its various organizations seek, per movement founder Yisrael Ariel, to “flatten” Al-Aqsa, the hilltop mosque and compound in Jerusalem’s Old City that is home to Islam’s third-holiest site.

For Palestinians, Al-Aqsa signifies their unbroken historical presence in Jerusalem. But the site is also the former location of Solomon’s Temple, the holiest in Judaism. (Full article.)

Will the Name of Jesus Christ and the New Covenant soon be Banned as “Anti-Semitic” Speech?

Jewish Zionists who have now constructed this new Ark of The Covenant believe that the Old Covenant under Moses, is still valid today, as they reject Jesus Christ as the Jewish Messiah.

‘The covenant remains valid’

Completion of the project and the replica’s delivery to Jerusalem has special significance to Jake.

“What the ark represents is the fact that the covenant is still valid. It was never abrogated, and the covenant is still strong,” he told attendees.

“God’s commitment to His people is as strong as it was 3,500 years ago when the Ark was built.”

“It should be the weapon that walks in front of the army,” he said.

“We truly believe that it should be both a weapon and inspirational too.” (Source.)

This is official Jewish doctrine, and to disagree and state that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and that he implemented the New Covenant, which supersedes the Old Covenant, is officially “Anti-Semitic” and “hate” speech against the Jews.

The current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already passed legislation through the House of Representatives earlier this year (2024), that would make this the law of the land in the United States.

This bill is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, where they refuse to bring it to the floor for a vote.

But if Donald Trump gains the White House, and the GOP retains control of the House and gains control of the Senate after next week’s elections, we can be sure that this law will pass, the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem will be destroyed to begin the construction of a new temple, and it will become illegal to quote the New Testament Bible in public, or to claim that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.

And yet, this is exactly what American Christians, most too ignorant because they are under the Satanic spell to even know what they are doing, are doing by heading to the polls next week as they attempt to install their new Jewish King, Donald Trump.

As the House majority leader Mike Johnson said earlier this year, “antisemitism” is the new “virus” that is spreading, and if you thought the tyrannical measures that Trump took back in 2020 during the COVID-19 “virus” were bad, you haven’t seen anything yet, as this upcoming “anti-semitism virus” is most certainly going to be far worse.

There’s a reason why this new “Ark of The Covenant” was presented to Donald Trump first, before going to Israel.

Brian Shillhavy

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Non-Zionist Jews Speak Out About Israel and Zionism

Non-Zionist Jews Speak Out About Israel and Zionism

By LiveSiteNews

Posted on October 30, 2024


The following is Part III in a series of articles by LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac regarding Zionism and the ongoing war in Gaza. Read Part I here and Part II here.

(LifeSiteNews) — From here on, this article series will present statements and videos from many varied Jews on Zionism and Zionist Israel and its dangers and crimes against humanity.

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro has been prolific in instructing anyone who will listen to him about the generally unknown reality of Zionism and the state of Israel founded to be a Zionist nation. He has been interviewed on numerous secular, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish programs. He has been enormously helpful to me and many others in understanding the complex differences between authentic Judaism and Zionism.

The next article in this series will refer to and quote more from Rabbi Shapiro and several other Jewish rabbis.

Additional parts will present numerous quotes from notable anti-Zionist Jews, both secular and religious.

Is Jerusalem the Capital of the Jews? – Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro

The seven-minute video below presents the main arguments by Rabbi Shapiro on why Israel is NOT a nation of the Jews and is strongly opposed by numerous authentic Jews because of its heretical ideology, many atheistic founders and leaders, and its frequent violations of Jewish laws.

Here is a brief bio of the rabbi as noted in a video interview with him. That video, different from the one below, has two titles: “How Zionism stole Jewish Identity” and “Zionism is the opposite of Judaism.”

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, is an international speaker, author, and rabbi for over 30 years. Amongst his areas of research are religious philosophy, analytic theology, Talmud, and biblical exegesis. He’s a well-known critic of Zionism, and his most recent work, The Empty Wagon, Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft, is a 1,381-page treatise on the differences between Judaism and Zionism. It is perhaps the most comprehensive work written on the subject.

This will likely be the first time most readers will have ever heard this instruction on the status of Jerusalem in relation to Zionism vs. Judaism, and yet, considering how much is now at stake for world peace, and the millions of lives at risk, we should all become aware of the presented information.

I have found Rabbi Shapiro to be one of the calmest, more impressive and easy-to-follow teachers on this otherwise complex and highly emotional issue.

Below the video is the full text that begins with President Trump’s brief proclamation about moving Israel’s capital to Jerusalem, which, by the way, the Catholic Church has strongly opposed, and then Rabbi Shapiro’s powerful response to what Trump stated.

President Trump: “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.”

Rabbi Shapiro’s response:

No.

No.

I was with him until he said the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

President Trump has the right to make whatever foreign policy he wants.

If he feels that Miami Beach is best to recognize as the capital of Israel, that’s his business.

He can do it.

But once he starts talking about the Jewish people, now he’s encroaching upon religion, and now that’s my domain.

There is absolutely no political relationship between the Jewish people and Jerusalem.

It’s merely a holy city.

The Jewish people don’t have a capital.

We never had a capital.

Countries have capitals.

States have capitals.

That’s the definition of a capital.

Capital.

Dictionary.

Noun.

The most important city or town of a country or region.

Now, the Jewish people are not a country or region.

The Jewish people are a religious community.

We pray towards Jerusalem, but we relate to Jerusalem only as a holy city, not as a political capital city of the Jewish people.

And all of those overtures that we make to Jerusalem and the yearning that Jews have for Jerusalem is only as a holy city, not as a capital city.

And because it’s a holy city, it doesn’t matter who has sovereignty over it.

Jerusalem is just as holy and just as much Jerusalem whether it’s under the auspices of the Turks or the Romans or the British or whoever.

It’s important to know that the Zionists were the ones that started this business of the capital of the Jewish people, and it’s an idea that conflicts directly with the teachings of Judaism.

At Mount Sinai in the desert, the Torah says, the Bible says about us, “Hayyim hazeh niyei salaam.”

That’s when we became a people.

The Jewish people aren’t a people because of a land.

We’re not a people because of a language.

We’re not a people because of a culture.

We’re a religion, and when we were deputized into the religion, when we accepted the religion given to us by God, that’s when we became the Jewish people.

We had no land, no territories, we had no capital city, and in fact, our commentators say the reason why God gave the Jews the Torah in the desert, before they went into the holy land, was in order to teach them that land, country, has nothing to do with your Jewishness.

Your Jewishness is because you accept the religion.

A couple of years ago, the Pope went to visit Netanyahu, and Netanyahu was bragging to the Pope, “This is where Jesus lived, in this land, and he spoke Hebrew here.”

So the Pope corrected him.

The Pope said, “No, Aramaic.”

And the Pope was right.

Netanyahu says, “Yeah, yeah, but he understood Hebrew.”

Well, you know, maybe he did, but Hebrew was never the national language of the Jewish people.

It was a holy language, just like the land of Israel was a holy land.

Oh, by the way, if you see the clip and you don’t know which of the two people talking is Netanyahu and which is the Pope, the Pope’s the one wearing the yarmulke.

Even if we were to pretend that the Jewish people have a capital, that would have nothing to do with whether Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel, because Israel’s not the Jewish people.

Israel has nothing to do with the old Jewish commonwealth.

It’s a country that was created in 1948. When you hear the Israelis or the Zionists talk about how Jerusalem has a connection with the Jewish people for 2,000 years, 3,000 years, 4,000 years, it’s all true.

But that doesn’t translate to, “Well, therefore, Jerusalem has to be part of Israel.”

People think that Israel is some kind of continuation of Jewish government, but it’s not.

It’s a completely different form of government, completely different values, completely different ideology, and completely different people.

These are not religious Jews that are running the country.

These are atheists.

And yet, the Israeli prime ministers from Ben-Gurion all the way up to Netanyahu use the Bible as an excuse for ownership of the land.

Ben-Gurion, he says, “The mandate is not our Bible, but the Bible is our mandate.”

This is a man that didn’t believe the Bible was given by God.

He didn’t believe God ever spoke to prophets.

He didn’t believe it at all.

Neither does Benjamin Netanyahu.

He says in the Bible, “Watch the Sabbath to keep it holy.”

Netanyahu doesn’t reframe from work on the Sabbath.

It says not to eat non-kosher food in the Bible.

Does Netanyahu do that?

No.

There is nothing holy in the Bible that Netanyahu cares about.

The only thing he cares about is his land.

Restorationist Protestants, we call them evangelical Christians today, they existed hundreds of years before any Jewish Zionist was ever born.

And because the evangelicals, the restorationists, had great influence in Britain, and Britain had the mandate, the Zionists very, very much adopted the Christian evangelical interpretation of the Bible, and that’s what they use today.

You’ll find that Benjamin Netanyahu sometimes even espouses Christian evangelical interpretations of the Bible over the Jewish ones.

A number of years ago, Netanyahu spoke in a site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and he mentioned a prophecy in the Book of Yeheshkel [Ezekiel] about how the prophets saw dried bones rising from the ground and growing flesh and becoming live again.

And Netanyahu said that that prophecy is fulfilled with the state of Israel, because the Jews were dried bones and now they grew flesh and they are real people again.

This interpretation is not found anywhere in any Jewish source, because in Judaism, this is impossible.

But for over a century, this has been a Christian evangelical interpretation.

The Zionists, when they talk about the Bible, they’re not talking about the Judaic version of Judaism and Jewishness.

They’re talking really about the Christian evangelical version.

Netanyahu has no right to claim that his state is mine.

I was born in America, my father was born in Poland, my mother’s family is from England.

We have nothing to do with Israel.

We’re Jews.

We’re observant Jews.

We’re religious Jews.

I wear a yarmulke.

Netanyahu doesn’t.

I keep the Shabbos.

Netanyahu doesn’t.

And Israel is not my nation state in the slightest.

This is a unilateral claim of the Israelis, of the Zionists, and it’s an assault on my religion.

So too, the claim that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people, because it transforms the Jewish people from a religious identity to a national identity, to a political identity.

And it’s an assault on my religion when Netanyahu says that because Jerusalem is so connected to the Jewish people, therefore it must be part of the state of Israel.

Jerusalem’s holiness, Jerusalem’s value to the Jewish people has nothing to do with who owns it, and it certainly has no reason to be part of the state of Israel.

Steve Jalsevac

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Zionism is Not Judaism

Zionism is Not Judaism

By Steve Beckow

Posted on November 22, 2023


by Julian Rose, November 20, 2023, rumormillnews.com


https://tinyurl.com/4cd4dvur

During the Summer of 1975 I worked as a volunteer on a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, close to the border with Lebanon. As a recent organic farming exponent in the UK, I wanted to explore how this unique socioeconomic experiment on the land was working.

Although my stay in Israel was relatively short, it was an intense and meaningful experience. One which, as you will see as this story unfolds, throws a highly prescient light on the current catastrophe.

There were maybe two hundred residents of the kibbutz, named ‘Rosh Ha Nikra.’

One rose early and went to work on the land, coming back for a common breakfast at 9.a.m. It was too hot to work later in the mornings so one returned to the fields late afternoon to put in another session.

At its inception, the basis of this community was carved out of a desert. Only an intense commitment to establishing an enduring self-sufficient village could turn the sour, salty land into something capable of growing sufficient food to provide for its occupants and a trading income.

By the time I visited, there was already a thriving rural economy in operation, growing and exporting avocado pears and dairy products. Houses and land are integrated as a cooperative in the kibbutz movement, with no private ownership.

Being situated close to the Lebanese border had its disadvantages. Missiles were periodically launched into surrounding territory as unresolved hostilities flared-up intermittently on the border land. It was disconcerting to an outsider, but the Rosh Ha Nikra community was hardened to this reality and did not let it break their daily routines.

I am not Jewish, but have worked closely with Jewish colleagues in theatre and education projects based largely in the USA and Belgium. This led me to become interested in further exploring the background to the Israeli/Palestinian tensions that dog the peaceful functioning of the ‘two-state’ land division established in 1948.

In a break from the Kibbutz work schedule, I was fortuitously given the opportunity to meet a senior figure of the Israeli military in Haifa. A kind, thoughtful individual who was close to retirement.

Questioning him about his perspective on Israeli/Palestinian tensions, he responded in a way that threw a highly significant light on the reality. I recount here my memory of the deeply prescient contents of what he said:

“Israel is not a country. The word in Hebrew means ‘to strive with God’ (to work with God). It is a tribal aspiration, it is not a place. To give the name Israel to this area of land is a falsification. It comes from the Zionist belief that this country is the original homeland of the Jews. There is no historical evidence for this belief, it is a dangerous fixation. Zionism is not Judaism.”

At the time I was not fully aware of the ramifications of this reply; however it vividly endured in my mind from there on.

My host asked what places I intended to visit in Israel. Definitely Jerusalem, I replied. His response was quite firm “Go beyond Jerusalem into the West Bank; into Jordan. Experience this place where Jordanians and Palestinian refugees live and work together.”

I took his advice, initially boarding a bus to Jerusalem. It was here that I first experienced an uneasy tension between Palestinian and Jewish citizens.

It should be remembered that a number of holy sites in Jerusalem are places of worship for both Palestinians and Jews. The ancient claims of both parties to the rights of ‘ownership’ of these sites causes an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion to never be far from the surface. Over the years, many bloody incidents have flared-up out of this febrile tension.

Within deeper spiritual texts of old, bestowing imaginary religious powers on material objects and buildings, is considered a form of blasphemy of God, whose omniscient presence is recognised as a manifestation of infinite spirit, giving equal status to all races, colours, creeds and places. A manifestation of universal truth, not a proclamation about rights of ownership.

This reflects on just why associating ‘Israel’ with a material possession would completely distort the true significance the epithet ‘To strive with God’.

After exploring the impressive but austere architecture of old Jerusalem, I stepped into a colourful, creaking bus heading down into the ancient city of Jericho.

Immediately the atmosphere lifted. The bus and its occupants slowly weaved its way down a long twisting road into the fertile valley below, while Arabic songs wailed out from the radio and the air became perfumed by sweet incense. Arabic headdresses replaced the casual Westernised attire of most Israelis.

Outside, barren mountain slopes predominated, but in a number of places basic agricultural cultivations were in progress.

Upon arriving in Old Jericho, a hoard of young men exuberantly offered their services to show visitors the local sites. I duly accepted the services of a young man with a broad smile, a good approximation of the English language and a promise of full knowledge of the relics of this ancient city.

After a long day spent walking the ruins and rugged path ways, my guide asked me where I was staying. I don’t know, was my reply. Did he recommend anywhere?

No he didn’t, advising it was not a good idea to stay in a local hotel. Instead, he invited me to his family home and to attend a ceremony celebrating the birth of his brother’s first child. A raucous event of much fraternal dancing and singing into which I was fully integrated.

During more quiet moments my host told me about living in a form of Israeli police state. He admitted the tensions, but never spoke badly of the occupiers of his homeland, even praising Jewish agricultural achievements made on the barren hills East of Jerusalem.

I spent a further few days visiting local townships; mostly peaceful, but some of the larger market towns, like Nablus, widely patrolled by Israeli armed police clearly expecting trouble.

A few weeks later I left the country, with a strong impression left imprinted on my mind: on the kibbutz I was treated as a co-worker – and in Jordan I was treated as a brother. It was possible for me to see how these two quite different cultures could coexist in peace.

But this could only work if the Israeli population would adopt the wisdom of the military leader I met in Haifa; and the Palestinians echo the respect for Israeli workers shown by my young Jordanian friend. Such qualities, forming the foundation of humanitarian inter-cultural respect, are the best, and perhaps only, chance for lasting peace and unity.

Almost fifty years later, my reflections are not dimmed. However they have been dashed on the rocks of a terrible political deception which has now emerged as the catalyst for an ethnic cleansing nightmare that blows apart any opportunity for a peaceful resolution.

This is a conflict created by the dark spin doctors of the New World Order. It is part of a deadly and carefully planned chess game designed to wipe Palestine, Gaza and the Palestinian people off the map and free-up the country of Israel to become the Zionist capital of the world.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has publicly declared as much. For him and his fanatical Zionist colleagues, it is ‘God’s will’ that they should obliterate any and all opposition to the ‘chosen race’ achieving its ends.

The great majority of Jews I know – and I believe the one’s I don’t – are appalled by this utterly insane megalomania. They have seen through the distortions and lies that surround the supposed preordained right of total ‘possession’ of this ancient strip of land at the Eastern most point of the Mediterranean sea.

Those warm hearted brothers, sisters and elders who presently live in Israel, hold the key to the restoration of sanity.

I most ardently call upon them to show the courage and irrevocable determination to resist Netanyahu’s mass extermination plans.

Such resistance has the potential to catalyse a large ground swell of bottom-up support from around the world; but to do so – it must start from within Israel itself and embody:

  • Total non compliance with political orders.
  • A nationwide refusal to to be party to the murder of fellow human beings.
  • A solid rebuttal of the demands of military recruitment.
  • A ‘pro humanity’ expression of unequivocal solidarity with Palestinian brothers, sisters and children who share the same territory and know it as home; and whose fate it is to be subject to the view that they are ‘animals’ destined for the slaughter house.

No thinking, feeling, self-respecting Israelite could fall into line with such depravity.

Israel, as I learned, means ‘to strive with God.’ A fine and liberating ideal. So if one is proud to be an Israeli citizen, one should know that this means to carry out actions that will be smiled upon by one’s Creator.

This is the true ideological goal of the tribe of Israel.


Steve Beckow