Political news from Israel, via Agape Press:
A conservative Israeli activist notes that, thanks to immigration, the Christian population of Israel has grown to a politically significant percentage. That is why he wants to form a new political party to place Christian representatives in Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset.
Avi Lipkin is perhaps better known by his pen name, Victor Mordecai. The American-born Israeli author and lecturer has been back in the U.S. recently, telling American Christians about his desire to create the “Bible Bloc Party.”…The author says he would have been able to get the Bible Bloc Party on the ballot for this year’s elections, had it not been for certain political upheavals.
Lipkin/Mordecai had made this promise early last year, when he predicted that
By the end of 2005 there will be the creation of a Judeo-Christian political party to run for the Knesset in Jerusalem that will garner 12 of the 120 members of the Knesset.
There are four broad categories of Christian Israeli citizens: Israeli Arab Christians (one of whom was recently made a Roman Catholic bishop), Messianic Jews, Russians who have used tenuous Jewish links to immigrate to Israel, and a community of Armenians (I once did a blog entry on the subject – see here). Lipkin explained his plan in his Israel Today magazine a year ago:
…there are grounds here for a Christian political constituency of 7% of Israel’s population or roughly, perhaps 8 MK’s (members of Knesset). Add to that those Jews who came here with their non-Jewish spouses and relatives, perhaps another 5%. So the total constituency for such a political party could theoretically reach 12% or 14 MK’s. Let us not forget that there about a dozen Moslem MK’s in the Knesset all out to replace the Jewish State with a “democratic, secular Palestine,” i.e., destroying the Jewish State, while Christians today are serving and dying for the Jewish State in its military, police and security services. Yet they are disenfranchised.
Maybe Lipkin is on to something, but if Israeli Christians are disenfranchised, it’s not because of the existence of “a dozen Moslem MK’s”. What about the claim by the Ultra-Orthodox party Shas that Russian immigrants are “hundreds of thousands of Gentiles flooding the land with pork, prostitution, impurity and filth”? Or the attacks on Messianic Jews and other Jewish converts to Christianity in Arad and elsewhere? Or the various instances of discrimination against Arab Israelis (for example, here)? But back to Lipkin:
The ideology of this political party, I suggest, should be neither Christian nor Jewish but of “Judeo-Christian Western Civilization and Democracy.”
…Conservative and Christian political parties globally will be invited to open an office in Jerusalem as part of the “Bible Block International.” The candidate list should be equally divided between Jewish and Christian candidates. Numbers 1,3,5 … etc. will be Jews. Number 2,4,6… etc. will be Christians.
The candidates will include Christians who are Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant. Amongst the Jews, an effort will be made to include Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. Women candidates will also be encouraged to run.
In Hebrew, the party will be known as HaGush HaTanakhi. On his website, Lipkin gives further details:
The final redemption of the human race from the threat of Islam is finally beginning to take shape globally in general and in Jerusalem, Israel in particular.
A Judeo-Christian political party called “The Bible Bloc” is being formed to represent both Jews and Christians for whom the two most important commandments are “Love the Lord thy God” and “Love thy fellow as thyself,” two commandments on which all human civilization is based, and which are non-existent in Islam.
What Lipkin fails to do, however, is to give us any idea of how much support he enjoys, or even to name a single associate in his political venture. Instead, we are encouraged to buy a $20 book on the following subjects:
The Five Deceptions of Islam
The Threat of Socialism to Israel.
The Threat of Globalism to Israel.
Israel’s Bible Bloc Party in the Knesset.
Bible Bloc International representing conservative and Christian political parties throughout the world.
Lipkin is a prominent speaker in American Christian Zionist groups, where he enumerates the evils of Islam and exhorts listeners to lend unconditional support to the Israeli right. A profile tells us:
For the last several years, Avi has traveled extensively throughout the United States, speaking to churches and groups of every size and denomination. He has appeared on TV many times with Zola Levitt, 700 Club, Carlos Ortiz, (in Spanish), J.R. Church, and on radio with Marlin Maddox, Jewish Voice, John Loeffler, Chuck Missler and many others. He has spoken across the country at Calvary Chapels, Prophecy Club, Assemblies of God, Women’s Aglow and more.
A second one adds:
Victor Mordecai is the author of three books on the Middle East (www.vicmord.com) and is cofounder of Israel Today Magazine. He has been a guest on Sean Hannity, Fox and Friends, Dayside with Linda Vester and other popular U.S. radio and television programs, as well as in person in hundreds of churches and synagogues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Switzerland, France, Greece, Norway, Finland, Russia, Germany and Israel.
According to the bio on his website, his mission to Christians began when, as an army reservist, he “escorted and lectured to Christian groups visiting IDF bases” – such military bases ranking alongside (if not above) the tomb of Christ and Bethlehem for Christian Zionist pilgrims to the Holy Land. And judging from his newsletters, he really knows how to massage his audience with apocalpytic language:
…The bottom line is, after the next war between Israel and its Islamic neighbors, there will be a tremendous homecoming of Jews and Christians to Israel…We Jews and Christians will receive the triumphant Messiah in Jerusalem at the Mt. of Olives, and of course, Satan, Allah, will be relegated to the pits of hell for a 1,000 years!
So far, there’s no evidence that Lipkin’s proposed “Bible Bloc Party” is anything more than just another example of this kind of massaging.
Lipkin is also touted as a terrorism expert, and Christian Zionist leader Chuck Missler reported soon after 9/11 that:
…just weeks ago, Avi Lipkin, from our own platform in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, warned specifically about the likelihood of an attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
However, Lipkin’s predictions for 2005 proved less Nostradamus-like: as well as his failure to deliver the “Judeo-Christian” MKs, we were supposed to see a Russian invasion of the Ukraine, a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the collapse of Saudi Arabia, the creation of Kurdistan and the deaths of both Pervez Musharraf and Hosni Mubarak…
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