Category Archives: Zionism

Review: The New Christian Zionism

Zionism,

By Michelle Van Loon

For decades, it seemed that there were only two basic options in the Church when it came to discussions of Israel. The first, dispensationalism, objectifies the idea of Israel both now and in the future, and requires elaborate charts and the entire fictional Left Behind canon to unpack. The second, supercessionism, says that the Church has replaced Israel. The first two-thirds of the Bible, the Old Testament, becomes nothing more than a long preamble to the “real” salvation story, and the promises God gave to the Chosen People now belong to Christians. Supercessionism spiritualizes the promises regarding the land of Israel. New Perspective theologians like NT Wright express a softened version of supercessionism when it comes to the land promises…

I’ve struggled for years to articulate a thoughtful, balanced line that threads the needle between these two divergent hermeneutical approaches. But I’m just one person.

I found it takes many reasoned and faithful voices to thread that needle well. The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land (InterVarsity Press, 2016) is an excellent example of what this can look like.

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‘Zionist Arab’ Youth’s Mother Springs to His Defense

Israeli Society, Zionism

From israelnationalnews.com:

Distraught and defiant, the mother of young “Zionist Muslim” from Nazareth Mohammed Zoabi said Wednesday that he has received threats from Muslim extremists in “the territories” and from Arab countries following his recent Facebook video, expressing support for the three Jewish youths abducted by Hamas.

In an interview on Tel Aviv’s 102FM radio, the mother of 17-year-old Mohammed said her son came under a barrage of threats after uploading the video to Facebook.

“My son is being threatened,” she said, “and it is not a temporary thing. I know what this is about, they cursed him as if he were the enemy of the entire Arab population. They did not care that he is a 17-year-old boy, they did not respect his opinion.”

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The Mis-Education of a Young Evangelical

Arab/Israeli Conflict, Christian Churches, Zionism

By Dexter Van Zile

For the past year, audiences of Christians in the United States and Great Britain have been treated to an anti-Israel extravaganza, With God on Our Side. Produced by Rooftop Productions in 2010, this 82-minute movie purports to be a documentary about Christian Zionism and its impact on the prospects for peace between Israel and its adversaries in the Middle East.

The movie fails as an honest documentary about the Arab-Israel conflict but as piece of propaganda, it succeeds spectacularly. Not only does it portray Israel as born in original sin and singularly responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict, it provides a model by which young Evangelical Christians in the United States can break ranks with their faith community which is largely pro-Israel and ignore Islamist hostility toward Israel in good conscience.

The centerpiece of the movie is its narrator, Christopher Harrell. Harrell, a twenty-something graphic designer (and recent film school graduate), plays the role of an ersatz Dante as he is led by various Virgil-like commentators through the hellish aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In his journey, Harrell is purged of his juvenile and unreflective support for the Jewish people and the modern state of Israel – which he got from his family. In Harrell’s first few scenes, he is shown undergoing a dark night of the soul, struggling with his conscience and incomplete understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict with a stained glass window in the background or while sitting in a pew.

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What Would Ibn Khaldun Say?

Zionism

by Gerald A. Honigman

It has become quite common these days to hear Arab “scholars” vilifying both Jews and their reborn nation. It’s useful, therefore, to see what the Islamic world’s preeminent scholar had to say about such things centuries ago. We’ll take a look at this in detail a bit later, but first we need to tend to some important preliminaries in order to set the stage properly.

While the national liberation movement of oppressed peoples is typically viewed in a favorable light, that of the most oppressed people this planet has ever known–the Jews–is increasingly declared illegitimate. There are a number of reasons for this. For some, theology taught for millennia that Jews were cursed to be perpetual, stateless wanderers for their alleged “deicide.” How dare the Jews upset such holy beliefs! For others, no other nationalism but their own was deemed legitimate in “their” neck of the woods. And in between exists a mixture of other reasons to apply a constant set of hypocritical double standards to the Jew of the Nations.

While perfect justice is to be found no where among the realm of imperfect men, it is nevertheless demanded of Israel in its struggle to survive.

So, a look at what the national liberation movement of the Jews is really all about is in order.

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The eternal danger

Zionism

Norman Geras, the erudite Manchester politics professor and proprietor of Normblog, notes a copy of a short news report from The Times for 8 May 1948 sent to him by Jeff Weintraub:

"ZIONIST DANGER TO LEBANON"

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

BEIRUT May 7

M. Chamoun, Minister for Home Affairs and Health, addressing a Press conference to-day, emphasized the Zionist danger to Lebanon if the Jews succeeded in forming a Jewish state intended, he said, to include Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan at a later date.

He revealed that the Foreign Ministers of the Arab League decided on April 26 to invade Palestine, but he blamed the Arab States for their military unpreparedness and the Palestinians for the lack of organization. The Arabs, he added, were now defending the world against Communism, which was being introduced to the Middle East under the cover of Zionism.

Norm points out the great danger, tongue firmly in cheek:

It’s the eternal danger of Zionism, you see, its content somewhat changeable. As Jeff points out, the Zionists were running the Soviet Union at the time, as they’re now running the US.