Israel might be in danger from . . . its most important ally

Last updated on: October 29, 2016 at 10:35 am by Gerald McDermott

Israel might be in danger from . . . its most important ally 2016-10-29T10:35:12-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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Friends, I rarely comment in this blog on politics. On those rare occasions, I restrict myself to political issues that pertain to matters of faith.

Here is one of those times. Some would argue that it is not, because the people of Israel are unimportant to God and Christian faith, and have been since the resurrection of Jesus. This is the theological error of supersessionism, which is widely accepted by theologians today as something we are bound to avoid.

The danger today is that the President of the United States might be getting the world ready for his denunciation of Israel in unprecedented ways. Here is Charles Krauthammer explaining this danger:

“Last week, the U.N.’s premier cultural agency, UNESCO, approved a resolution viciously condemning Israel (referred to as ‘the Occupying Power’) for various alleged trespasses and violations of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Except that the resolution never uses that term for Judaism’s holiest shrine. It refers to and treats it as an exclusively Muslim site, a deliberate attempt to eradicate its connection — let alone its centrality — to the Jewish people and Jewish history.

“This Orwellian absurdity, part of a larger effort to deny the Jewish connection to their ancestral homeland, is an insult not just to Judaism but to Christianity. It makes a mockery of the Gospels, which chronicle the story of a Galilean Jew whose life and ministry unfolded throughout the Holy Land, most especially in Jerusalem and the Temple. If this is nothing but a Muslim site, what happens to the very foundation of Christianity, which occurred 600 years before Islam even came into being? . . . .

“And what to make of the White House’s correction to a news release about last month’s funeral of Shimon Peres? The original release identified the location as ‘Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, Israel.’ The correction crossed out the country identifier — ‘Israel.’ . . .

“But such cowardly gestures are mere pinpricks compared to the damage Israel faces in the final days of the Obama presidency. As John Hannah of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently wrote (in Foreign Policy), there have been indications for months that President Obama might go to the U.N. and unveil his own final status parameters of a two-state solution. These would then be enshrined in a new Security Council resolution that could officially recognize a Palestinian state on the territory Israel came into possession of during the 1967 Six-Day War.

“There is a reason such a move has been resisted by eight previous U.S. administrations: It overthrows the central premise of Middle East peacemaking — land for peace. Under which the Palestinians get their state after negotiations in which the parties agree on recognized boundaries, exchange mutual recognition and declare a permanent end to the conflict.

“Land for peace would be replaced by land for nothing. . . . Israel would be hauled endlessly into courts (both national and international) to face sanctions, boycotts (now under color of law) and arrest of its leaders. All this for violating a U.N. mandate to which no Israeli government, left or right, could possibly accede.”

For the whole column, click here.

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