Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. – Rev 13:18
And the number shall be a marketing gimmick for Tim LaHaye:
However, LaHaye’s got competition.
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A comment arrives, from Evangelist Nigel Owens:
Hi, please feel free to check out our new Northern Ireland Springbok Club website. It is really good and has a few articles on anti-semitism and Israel. God bless Israel.
So off we head:
Welcome To The Northern Ireland Springbok Club
Where the British Empire Lives On!
Proudly Standing For Faith, Flag, Family, Freedom & Future
I’d always wondered what had happened to the British Empire…The site carries a disclaimer:
Needless to say, it is not the intention, policy or purpose of the ‘Northern Ireland Springbok Club’ and / or its web site to incite or justify law breaking or hatred against anyone, in fact we condemn all such activity…Whilst there may be those with whom we disagree, we bear them no evil whatsoever, we wholeheartedly respect their legal right to have, defend, express and promote whatever opinion they hold to and we hope that they, in return, will afford us those same courtesies.
Evangelist Nigel contacted me in response to a couple of blog entries (here and here) that mentioned the Springbok Club, which I described as “a London-based network for disaffected white South Africans and Rhodesians living in the UK.” His Northern Ireland Springbok Club is the official NI branch of that organisation. The “Who We Are” section gives further details:
The current Chairman of the Northern Ireland Branch is Evangelist Nigel Owens B.Th., B.A. (Hons) and we are incredibly privileged to have none other than Mr Jim Dixon of Enniskillen as our ‘Honorary Life President’.
And as it happens, Jim Dixon (a survivor of the 1987 Enniskillen terrorist bombing) was interviewed in the Daily Ireland just a few days ago. Take a deep breath:
“It’s wrong that blacks are coming to Northern Ireland,” he said.
“I couldn’t care less if people call me a racist. I couldn’t care less what they think. Apartheid meant the black man was better treated and respected
“Immigration is a recipe for trouble. It shouldn’t happen anywhere. Each to their own. Other races should have their own schools, hospitals and buses.”
It should also be remembered that the London Springbok Club is headed by Alan Harvey, a former activist with the National Front. However, the NI Springbok Club insists that it is “not a ‘far right’ movement”.
As promised, the NI website also hosts a number of articles. There we can find news about how there is “massive Jesuit Activity Reported in Rhodesia and South Africa“, among much else (and the writer means “Rhodesia” in a contemporary sense). A number of pieces come from Shaun Willcock, a South African who runs Bible Based Ministries. Willcock is vehemently anti-Catholic, and on his own website he mourns the end of Afrikaner supremacy and rails against the “occult fantasy” of CS Lewis.
Evangelist Nigel also runs True Grace International Ministries, and is president of Reaching Mormons for Christ Ministries. Neither has any internet presence that I could find. Back in late 2004 Owens was complaining that one of his fellow evangelists had been banned from harassing Mormon missionaries.
A few weeks ago the Guardian was heavily criticised for running a two-part article that explored the idea that Israel can be compared to apartheid-era South Africa. Less criticism, if any, has been levelled against a constituency that supports Israel precisely because it reminds them of the good old days of Rhodesia and 1980s South Africa.
(Daily Ireland link via Slugger O’Toole)
UPDATE: Apparently Owens responded to the Daily Ireland piece with a letter. He provides a copy in the comments section of Slugger O’Toole:
…Within the ‘Northern Ireland Springbok Club’, as is the case throughout the black and white communities of South Africa themselves, you will find a variety of views on the issue of apartheid.
We are not a ‘white rule’ club. Our vision for the future of South Africa is to see a multi-racial, Conservative, Judeo-Christian, pro-freedom, Atlanticist party (or coalition of parties) replace the present day Marxist ANC government. We do not campaign for a return to apartheid.
…We are ‘neo-imperialist’, not ‘old imperialist’. We only wish to restore those things that were good about the Empire, and them alone.
One wonders how this squares with Alan Harvey’s vision for the Springbok Club, which he laid out at its founding:
In a nutshell our policy can be summed up in one sentence: “We want our countries back, and believe this can now only come about by the re-establishment of civilised European rule throughout the African continent.”
Harvey spoke in similar vein when he was interviewed by Anthony LoBaido (himself the subject of a recent ConWebWatch exposé) for WorldNetDaily in 2001:
White rule around the world has a lot more influence than people think. I personally believe that the white man will return to Africa and rule one day.
It should also be noted that while the NI Springbok Club is prepared to be ecumenical about whether white and black people should be allowed to mix, some other views are unacceptable. Hence the Google cache of the site shows that it used to sell books by Alan Campbell, while these appear have been purged from the current website. One assumes that someone noticed that Campbell is a British-Israelite who believes in “the Celto-Anglo-Saxon peoples as the Israel of God”, rather than Jews.
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I’ve now added the third update to my blog entry on Peter Waldron, the US businessman and Christian Right activist currently in prison in Uganda on illegal weapons charges, this time adding some information about his work with the Anatole Fellowship as reported in a 1991 book by Russ Bellant.
I’m still not sure what it all means: on the one hand, Waldron has boasted of a clandestine military past in Africa, berated Ronald Reagan for not having supported South Africa, and draws much of his religious thinking from authoritarian Christian Reconstructionists such as Rousas Rushdoony. That sets off alarm bells.
But on the other hand, one of the charges made by Police Inspector General Kale Kayihura is that Waldron wrote a “defamatory” article about Uganda. Why that should be of concern to the Police Inspector General in a democracy is not clear; and when we read the actual article, we find a reasonably argued piece in which Waldron calls for the Ugandan constitution to be respected and for a “fair, free, and open election.” Waldron’s supporters also claim he has been beaten in custody.
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Not nationalist or religious extremists
Still in Israel, Ynet reports on Friday’s firework attack on the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which led to a riot:
Haim and Violet Habibi, who threw firecrackers inside the Church of the Annunciation on Friday after entering the compound disguised as pilgrims, are known by welfare authorities for having a troubled past.
…Immediately following the signing of the Oslo Accords toward the end of the 1990s, the couple moved with their three children to Jericho and applied for Palestinian citizenship, claiming they felt they received better treatment there. Following their return to Israel, Violet barricaded herself with her children in the family home and threatened to kill them due to what she claimed was inappropriate treatment by the authorities.
The Habibis actually pulled the same stunt at the Church of the Nativity back in 2003:
An Israeli couple who had barricaded themselves inside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity on Saturday and threatened to set off an explosion surrendered to authorities, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
“Their explosives were in fact fireworks and they also had a plastic gun,” the officials said, adding the “affair is closed.”
…In November 2002, [Haim] Habibi staged a hunger strike inside the church, revered as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, to protest against his “persecution” by Israeli authorities.
…Palestinians said the couple had told them Israel was refusing to grant the wife citizenship and that their children were being held by Israeli social authorities.
An AP report – which I could find only in Spanish – adds that Haim’s wife is Polish, and that he had threatened to kill himself with the toy gun.
The Nazareth incident has led to Palestinian protests, as Haaretz reports:
Several thousand people – led by Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, local Christian leaders and Arab lawmakers – joined the protest, snaking through the town’s narrow streets to the basilica. Marchers clapped and sang songs, amid the chiming of church bells.
Participants held up Palestinian flags and banners with slogans such as “Israel breeds hate” and “they accuse us of terrorism but they do terrorism.”
Unfortunately, Sabbah didn’t check all the facts before he spoke out:
Latin Archbishop Michel Sabbah, the most senior Catholic figure in Israel, said the Vatican was following closely the events in Nazareth. Sabah said that the person who tried to perform the terrible deed was born and bred on racist views and wild incitement against Christians in particular and Arabs in general.
But it’s a strange Jewish extremist who marries a Christian and tries to get political asylum with the Palestinians, as was reported in detail in 1999:
Haim Habibi, 38, his wife Violetta, 33, and their three children aged six, 10 and 13, who come from Jerusalem, appealed to Palestinian deputy Hatem Abdel Qader Monday for “protection and political asylum.”
“I said ‘yes’ straight away as far as protection went,” Abdel Qader told AFP.
…Habibi, an unemployed Kurdish Jew, who is currently staying in a hotel in Ramallah, said he had done what he did because he was being harassed by the Israeli authorities.
“We are always being persecuted by the authorities, especially the social services, who want to take our children away from us,” he told AFP.
“They claim we are incapable of bringing them up and want to take them away and send them to institutions,” he added.
A 2000 follow-up added:
Haim Habibi, an Israeli Jew, returned to Israel after taking refuge in PNA territories for 8 months. Haim Habibi, who is a Jew of Iranian origin, took refuge together with his wife and children last August in the home of Hatem Abdel Kader, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Jerusalem. Abdel Kader was able to smuggle him into Ramallah with the help of activists in the Fatah movement.
…Regarding the circumstances surrounding Habibi’s return to Israel Abdel Kader said, “Habibi was exposed to harassment after his return. The Jewish rabbis took his children from him to bring them up and considered him unfit to bring them up because of religious reasons, and accused him of being psychologically disturbed.”
This is a bit vague – “the Jewish rabbis” do not run Israel’s social services. A report on Ma’an News claimed that Habibi was the victim of subsequent police harassment; however, the report is no longer on-line, and only a glimpse is available from Google (cache doesn’t work).
On the other hand, we can see why Palestinians would have assumed an extremist motivation for the attack. The Israeli far right has in the past plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock, and in 1994 the Ibrahimi mosque at Hebron was famously attacked by Baruch Goldstein, killing dozens of worshippers. The influential Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph, (the spiritual leader of the Shas party, and whom I’ve blogged before), has also spoken against churches, complaining that (square brackets in citation):
The Israeli government is obligated by international law to guard the Christian churches in the land of Israel, even though those churches are definitely places of idolatry and cult practice. This is so in spite of the fact that we are commanded by our [religious] law to destroy all idolatry and its servants until we uproot it from all parts of our land and any areas that we are able to conquer… Surely, this fact continues to weaken the religious meaning of the Israeli army’s conquests [in 1967].
UPDATE: The BBC did at one point state that police are contradicting reports that Mrs. Habibi is a Christian, but the report has since been changed.
(Hat tips: World War 4 Report and Christianity Today Weblog)
(Name variations: Chaim Havivi, Haim Eliahu Havivi)
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The latest from WorldNetDaily’s Jerusalem correspondent Aaron Klein:
While Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has the past few weeks directed large numbers of Israeli forces to demolish several isolated West Bank Jewish homes deemed illegal, a report newly released here charges Jerusalem’s city hall deleted files documenting hundreds of illegal Arab building projects throughout eastern sections of Jerusalem.
Aryeh King, chairman of the Jerusalem Forum, which promotes Jewish construction in Jerusalem, initiated a state investigation into the deletions, which allegedly took place while Olmert served as mayor of the city. He charged Olmert told senior municipal workers not to enforce a ban on illegal Arab buildings, allegedly saying to them eastern Jerusalem would one day be given to the Palestinians…
Klein goes on to quote King at length, but tells us very little about his background and what his “Jerusalem Forum” really stands for. So time for Google, which brings us to the website of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Back in October they produced a report about settler activity in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Some interesting details:
The settler project is a well-thought-out and deeply dangerous attempt by right-wing Israelis to thwart future peace-plans. Quietly and furtively, Israel’s government is using the settlers to seal up the last loopholes through which peace can conceivably make its way, and is creating significant facts liable to bury the peace process…Several settler associations operate in East Jerusalem: the most notable are Elad, Ateret Cohanim, Atara L’Yoshna, Beit Orot and Shimon Ha’Tzadik…All of them collaborate in a framework known as the Jerusalem Forum, which links up all organisations working to Judaise East Jerusalem, including the Messianic groups hoping to build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount.
ICAHD tells us that the various settler groups enjoy particular patronage from an American businessman, Irwin Moskowitz. He submitted the plans for a yeshiva for Beit Orot, and in
…Ras-al-Amud there is a large complex known as Ma‚aleh Hazayit, extending over 15 dunams, with 132 apartments: the plans were approved in 1998, and the project was financed by Irwin Moskowitz. Aryeh King, Moskowitz’s son-in-law and his personal representative in Israel, is a prominent figure in this context.
…In November 2005 a construction file was opened regarding the Shepherd Hotel which is located in Sheikh Jarrakh, on the road up to Mount Scopus. Again, Irwin Moskowitz is the developer, and the traces lead to Ateret Cohanim.
Moskowitz’s activities, both in the USA and Jerusalem, have been controversial for a while. Back in 1999 the pro-settler news source Arutz-7 published a piece defending him – for some reason the article was reposted a few months ago on the website of Anglicans for Israel, the British lobby group I covered recently. However, that article ignored quite a few facts, which are handily gathered on an unflattering website, www.StopMoskowitz.org. This organisation, of which a number of rabbis and Jewish groups are members, states that it
…has been working since 1998 to stop Irving Moskowitz’s activities in Jerusalem and Hawaiian Gardens, a small, predominantly Latino city in Los Angeles County, California.
In Hawaiian Gardens, Moskowitz operates a bingo hall and owns a casino; he controls the government for the benefit of his gambling operations. In East Jerusalem, he uses profits from those operations to thwart Israeli-Palestinian peace by buying strategically placed Palestinian real estate for Jewish settlers and supporting militant anti-peace organizations.
The site reports such charming details as this:
In February 2000, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonot, discovered an Internet assassination “game” that invited visitors to “destroy” Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak and other moderate, pro-peace Israeli political leaders. It reported tracing the registration of the “especially violent” website to Cherna Moskowitz, Irving Moskowitz’s wife and business partner in the Hawaiian Gardens Casino and other business ventures.
The game encouraged visitors to click on a leader’s picture, which would “explode,” accompanied by the sound of screaming.
There is also a forty-page pdf, which lays out the whole story of Moskowitz’s activities. It includes an anecdote from a 1995 Mother Jones story:
Moskowitz’s defense of [1994 Hebron massacre perpetrator Baruch] Goldstein gives some credence to a report in Mother Jones magazine that suggested he was in favor of the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. Robert Silverstein told reporter Christopher Cook he had been childhood friends with Moskowitz. Silverstein recounted to Cook part of a conversation he had with Moskowitz soon after Rabin’s assassination, “I said this business with Rabin is too much. Suddenly there was a cold silence. Then he said, “You don’t know all the facts.” Shocked, Silverstein concluded that Moskowitz supported the assassins. Their friendship was at an end.
So, yet again we have Aaron Klein whitewashing far-right, terrorist-supporting Jewish extremists as concerned citizen-activists, for the benefit of his Christian Zionist boss and target readership.
Interestingly, Ateret Kohanim was also behind the recent purchase of various properties in East Jerusalem owned by the Greek Orthodox Church. This understandably upset Greek Orthodox Palestinians, and led to the removal of the Patriarch, Ireneos. Ireneos, however, maintained that he had had nothing to with the sale, which had been arranged by his (now missing) treasurer, Nikolaus Papadimas. Ireneos’ replacement, Theophilos, has used this allegation of fraud to try and derail the deal, provoking howls of rage at WND, both from Klein and from editor Joseph Farah. But now we see for the first time that Klein has cosy chats with the personal representative and son-in-law of the man who has provided the financial muscle for the group that made the purchase. And that this son-in-law works with the various “Temple Mount” Messianic groups for which Klein has also provided whitewashed publicity (see this general survey by Terry Krepel at ConWebWatch).
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A commentator has sent me a press release claiming that Peter Waldron, the American recently arrested in Uganda over illegal guns, has been framed as retaliation for a report he wrote about riots in the country. See the update to my entry here for further details.
There is also a new website, called Free Peter Waldron. This website includes a message from Waldron’s wife; the website’s author, Dave Racer, has also contacted me (see comments) to point out that the purported “girlfriend” arrested with Waldron was in truth his secretary, and that media reports have corrected this detail.
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The Jerusalem Post reports an alleged shift in Jerry Falwell’s thinking (links added):
An evangelical pastor and an Orthodox rabbi, both from Texas, have apparently persuaded leading Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell that Jews can get to heaven without being converted to Christianity.
Televangelist John Hagee and Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, whose Cornerstone Church and Rodfei Sholom congregations are based in San Antonio, told The Jerusalem Post that Falwell had adopted Hagee’s innovative belief in what Christians refer to as “dual covenant” theology.
This creed, which runs counter to mainstream evangelism, maintains that the Jewish people has a special relationship to God through the revelation at Sinai and therefore does not need “to go through Christ or the Cross” to get to heaven.
However, Falwell’s website denies that this is the case:
Earlier today, reports began circulating across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven without being converted to Jesus Christ. This is categorically untrue…Before today, I had never heard of Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg or had any communications with him. I therefore am at a total loss as to why he would make such statements about me to the Post, if in fact he did…Like the Apostle Paul, I pray daily for the salvation of everyone, including the Jewish people.
This is a somewhat inauspicious start to Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a new Christian Zionist lobby group headed up by Hagee. It’s also a bit of an embarrassment for the Post, which publishes a special “Christian edition” for the benefit of US Christian Zionists. Scheinberg was present at the launch of CUFI, and he told the Post that:
“It seemed there was a great deal of unity – not unanimity – on nonconversion, a nonproselytizing agenda, that the Jews have a special covenant, and this was stated over and over,”
The Post added:
…Falwell has altered his position, according to Scheinberg, apparently because the pastor decided to put End of Days theology aside in favor of the overriding need to support Israel, particularly against the mounting threat of a nuclear Iran…”Obviously Falwell was very passionate about conversion, but he absolutely clearly knows Hagee’s position and the Christians United for Israel position,” Scheinberg said. “No question about that; Hagee assured me. I would trust him in his role for Israel, for Israel’s security, to strengthen Israel. I would be very surprised if Falwell ever tried to pull a fast one…”
Falwell is being gracious when he says that he is “at a total loss as to why” Scheinberg “would make such statements”. It’s obvious that the rabbi’s rather aggressive statement (“pull a fast one”) was calculated to back Falwell into a corner. Clearly, just because the CUFI does not exist to convert Jews, it does not therefore follow that members have foresworn any attempts to evangelise Jews through their churches or other environments.
The “dual covenant” idea has been a source of controversy for a while. Religious Tolerance.org has gathered a number of documents and quotes which deal with a statement on the subject made by the Alliance of Baptists in 1995:
The Alliance of Baptists broke with conventional conservative Christian beliefs about Judaism. They issued “A Baptist Statement on Jewish-Christian Relations” on 1995-MAR-4…The Alliance acknowledged that the Nazi Holocaust was made possible only by “centuries of Christian teaching and church-sanctioned action directed against the Jews simply because they were Jews.” They called upon all Baptists to join them in:
1. “Affirming the teaching of the Christian Scriptures that God has not rejected the community of Israel, God’s covenant people (Romans 11:1-2), since ‘the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable’ (Romans 11:29)…
In essence, they urged that fellow Baptists abandon the traditional, conservative supercessionist concept and accept the mainline and liberal dual covenant belief. Jews would no longer be evangelized. The Baptists advocated sincere dialogue between Christianity and Judaism, accepting both religions as being of equal stature.
The fact that Christianity is supposed to be the only true religion while being the offspring of another religion has always been a bit of a problem, and after the Holocaust the thought of millions of Jews being dispatched from Auschwitz to hell must be an intolerably distasteful proposition. The “dual covenant” idea deals with that – although we might ask a few questions: can a non-Jew get salvation by becoming a Jew, or is special “Chosen People” DNA required? What forms of Judaism are acceptable – can a Reform Jew get saved, or must he or she belong to an Orthodox group? Have Jews who converted to Christianity made a mistake? And should, say, a Buddhist listen to a Christian who says that he should become a Christian in order to be saved, or to a Jew who says that he needs only to follow various ethical commands? The Southern Baptist Convention – with which Falwell is affiliated – was having none of it:
Meeting in New Orleans, LA, in 1996-JUN, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) passed its 10th resolution on Jewish evangelism…The resolution passed by an overwhelming majority. It urged the membership to “direct our energies and resources toward the proclamation of the Gospel to the Jews.” . It criticized “an organized effort on the part of some either to deny that Jewish people need to come to their Messiah, Jesus, to be saved or to claim, for whatever reason, that Christians have neither the right nor obligation to proclaim the gospel to Jewish people.”
The SBC’s position came under fire from both mainline churches and Jewish groups. But while Falwell and the SBC reject the idea of Jews finding salvation without Jesus, Falwell and other Christian Zionists believe that Old Testament promises from God about Jewish ownership of the Holy Land remain valid, and that Jews have a special role in God’s plans. Christians who deny this are accused of propounding “Replacement Theology” and anti-Semitism.
Dual covenant theology was actually originally in large part a Jewish idea – as a way for Judaism to legitimate Christianity, rather than vice versa. A discussion on the website Jewish-Christian Relations has further details:
Paulist Press recently published a translation of Elijah Benamozegh’s book, Israel and Humanity. It is a valuable contribution to the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity, because it makes available to the English-speaking world the thoughts of an important nineteenth-century Italian rabbi in the theological discourse of what has come to be called the “dual-covenant” theory… Benamozegh’s attitude toward Christianity is almost fraternal His insights, based on the Law of Noah and the use of kabbalistic traditions, lead him to believe that Judaism and Christianity can work as religious partners in telling the world that God is One. Jews should remain absolutely committed to Judaism, which he prefers to call “Hebraism” and Gentiles should learn of the One God through Christianity. As a thoroughly Orthodox rabbi, Benamozegh does not attempt a theological fusion of Judaism and Christianity, but he is theologically progressive when he examines Christianity’s relationship with Judaism.
Similar arguments are made today by the likes of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who says that
…Judaism and Christianity simply have vastly different appeals even as they share a great deal in common. Christianity will always appeal to those who prefer a more corporeal religion, where God is incarnate in human form, just as Judaism will always appeal to those attracted to a more subtle and intangible God, and those who wish to approach God without intermediaries.
The Post also notes some of the other prominent Christian right figures involved with CUFI:
Dr. Jack Hayford, president of the Foursquare Gospel Church; Paul Walker, assistant general overseer of the Church of God; international Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church; Benny Hinn; George Morrison; Kenneth Cop[e]land; Steve Strang; Matt Croutch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network; and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council.
(Hat tip: Christianity Today Weblog)
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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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