“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says Yahweh Sabaoth.
(Zechariah 4: 6)
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NBC News—As Israel moves right, young American Jews target Birthright tours in protest:
For nearly 20 years, the Birthright program has been a rite of passage for hundreds of thousands of young American Jews, who get a free trip to Israel along with a tour that shows the country in a very positive light.
But in recent weeks, the same discomfort that many Americans Jews feel about the current Israeli government, and in particular its continued occupation of the West Bank, has been reflected in some of the tours. An American anti-occupation group, called IfNotNow, has organized walkouts by a few Birthright participants, hoping the resultant publicity will inspire other young tourists to make the same gesture, and pressure American Jews to reassess its support for Israeli policies.
In June, that led to a chaotic scene on one of the tour buses. Bethany Zaiman of Washington stood up and announced that she and four others would leave the bus to “learn about the occupation from the perspective of Palestinians,” and would visit the West Bank.
The Israeli tour guide interrupted her several times, and — as seen on a video that was shown on Facebook on June 28 — erupted as the group was leaving.
“No Palestinian is going to send me away from here!” the guide said.
Moments later, a male Birthright participant wearing a white T-shirt and holding what appears to be an American flag, pointed at Zaiman and said: “Guess what’s going to happen. You’re going to get killed, you’re going to get raped.”
IfNotNow helped stage another walk-off on video a few weeks later. The second group left a Birthright tour and visited a Palestinian family in danger of being evicted from their home in eastern Jerusalem, which was occupied along with the rest of the West Bank in 1967 after the Six-Day War with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
Though only a few participants have engaged in walk-offs, the protests have been widely shared on social media and have helped shine a light on the growing disillusionment with Israel that many young American Jews feel.
Dubbed radical, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic by some critics, members of IfNotNow say they are tapping into anger at established U.S. Jewish institutions such as Birthright, which they say have hidden the reality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and acted as apologists for a government that has increasingly moved to the hard right. (The group takes its name from a well-known saying of the ancient Rabbi Hillel: “If not now, when?”)
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SnyderTalk Comment:
Reading this article made me angry because I know it’s true.
I spend a lot of time in Israel. I know lots of Israeli Jews. I know how hard they work, and I know the risks they take to defend their families and their country. I also know how warm and friendly they have been to me and my family over the past 20 years.
I know lots of American Jews, too. Very few of the ones I know have ever been to Israel, but they recite the phrase “next year in Jerusalem” as if they mean it.
You can teach a parrot to say those words with the same depth of feeling and commitment.
When an American Jew talks about the “Israeli occupation of Palestine”, I know 3 things:
- He/she doesn’t know Yahweh.
- He/she doesn’t know Yahweh’s word.
- He/she doesn’t have faith in Yahweh.
Eretz (or Aretz) Yisrael (the Land of Israel) is unlike any other country in the world. Yahweh promised it to the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob/Israel as a permanent possession. Literally, it’s their birthright, hence the name of the program mentioned in the article above.
Nothing and no one can change even one of Yahweh’s promises in the slightest way, not even the recipients of those promises. Yahweh’s promises are infallible. See “Yahweh’s Covenants and Promises”.
The Promised Land
Eretz Yisrael is called “HaAretz HaMuvtahat”, the Promised Land. Haaretz is a newspaper in Israel. Editorially, it’s like the New York Times. It’s as anti-Israel and anti-Yahweh as you can get.
Just like writers for the New York Times, writers for Haaretz take pride in their great intellect and their overall superiority. They should be ashamed. The name “Haaretz” is a misappropriation of Yahweh’s promises. It’s blasphemy to claim Yahweh’s promises in your name and then deny the One who made those promises.
I’m not exaggerating. There’s a place near the center of modern Jerusalem called the German Colony. In Hebrew, it’s HaMoshava HaGermanit. Jerusalemites refer to it as HaMoshava. HaGermanit is understood but not said. If you visit Israel and you refer to the German Colony as HaMoshava HaGermanit or as Emek Refaim (another name for the German Colony), Jerusalemites know that you are not one of them. You are a visitor. If you get to know them well and they like you, they will tell you the correct pronunciation so that you will be seen by other Jerusalemites as one of them.
The same is true for HaAretz. HaMuvtahat is understood but not said. Israelis are supposed to understand that Haaretz means HaAretz HaMuvtahat or the Promised Land.
As I said, it’s blasphemy to claim that the Promised Land is your heritage from Yahweh and then to deny His promises that make it true. Denying Yahweh’s promises is denying Him. It’s like claiming to have faith in Yahweh and but denying His power to save/deliver.
Telling the Truth is a Good Thing
Tzipi Hotovely is a member of the Knesset for the Likud and Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In November 2017, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu punished her for remarks she made during an interview with i24 in Israel that were critical of U.S. Jews. According to Jerusalem Online:
Last week, JOL reported that Hotovely said during an interview with i24 that American Jews are “not even interested in going to the Kotel” and that they are “too young to remember how it feels to be a Jewish person without a Jewish state.” Netanyahu denounced her comments, saying that they “do not reflect the State of Israel’s position.”
At that time, I wrote that Netanyahu made a terrible mistake when he punished Hotovely. First, she was telling the truth. Second, I’ve heard Prime Minister Netanyahu say the same thing or words to that effect many times.
Punishing Hotovely for telling the truth was hypocritical. Netanyahu should have praised her and supported her.
Do U.S. Jews realize that their criticism of Israel is offensive to Yahweh?
Do U.S. Jews have any idea that their criticism of Israel is a form of betrayal of Yahweh?
Do U.S. Jews know that their criticism of Israel puts Israelis at risk unnecessarily?
Do U.S. Jews understand that their criticism of Israel plays into the hands of Israel’s enemies? They are being used as propaganda puppets.
From time to time, Iranian leaders trot out Iranian Jews to dutifully tell the world that they support the Iranian regime. Before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, there were between 80,000 and 100,000 Iranian Jews. Today, there are roughly 10,000 Jews in Iran. When Iranian leaders tell them to speak out, they do it, and they say just the right words or else.
I have much more respect for ordinary Iranian Jews than I have for typical U.S. Jews. Iranian Jews may be lying when they say negative things about Israel, but their reason for doing it is legitimate.
U.S. Jews have no legitimate reason to criticize Israel. As I said, few of them have ever been to Israel, and they don’t know what Yahweh said about Israel. In other words, they are totally ignorant.
Typical U.S. Jews remind me of the spies that Moses sent into HaAretz. This is what the Torah says about that incident:
When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they told him, and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.” So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13: 25-33)
With the exception of Joshua and Caleb, the Children of Israel believed the spies’ report. Thus, Yahweh made all of them wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
Every adult traveling with Moses in the wilderness except Joshua and Caleb died before the Children of Israel were allowed to enter the Promised Land. Having betrayed Him, Yahweh refused to permit them to benefit from His promises. Even so, He took care of them and protected them in the wilderness.
This is my advice to U.S. Jews. You had better start taking Yahweh seriously. He is not a cartoon hero or a fairy tale character. He is El Shaddai, the Lion of Judah, the Great I AM. You shouldn’t want to make Yahweh any angrier than you have made Him already.
There are serious consequences for betraying Yahweh.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
