Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
In answer to my second point about Christian Zionism:
How do they see this movement fitting/not fitting into there Church's theology?
Here is an article written by Fr. Labib Kobti, Patriarchal Vicar of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem in North America.
Do members agree or disagree with his assessment?
Poosh BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon
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(1) Our faith teaches that all Human Dignity derives from God's dignity. This includes Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Americans, Europeans, Asians and even those of the third world, who are represented by one of the three monotheistic faiths, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In the eyes of the one God,all people are equal, be it Christian, Jew or Muslim.
(2) Our faith teaches that:
(a) There is no difference between the life of one person or another in their relationship with God.
(b) There is no difference in God's eye between Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Muslim, Christian and non-Christian.
(c) The one God is the creator of all life.
As believers in the one God, by whatever variant of name, we plainly state that fundamentally we all must live under the same LAW.
(3) Our faith teaches us that true peace and security cannot exist unless they are established on real Justice. In the words of the
prophet Isaiah who is revered by Jews,Christians and Muslims, "The effect of Justice will be Peace and the result of justice, quietness
and security forever" (Isaiah 32:17). God speaks of Justice and Righteousness. God does not accept oppression, but calls on all of us as members of the Human Family, to pursue justice and love righteousness.
(4) Jerusalem is not the exclusive domain of one religion or one people. Jerusalem, The Holy City, is the living symbol of Heaven, Jerusalem belongs to all peoples.
(5) For two thousand years, Jerusalem has been a source of continuing strife, because it was always governed by one political authority which represented one particular religious group. If
Jerusalem is to achieve lasting and permanent stability, so that it will truly be The City of Peace, it should have a special status which meets the needs of all those who revere it's holy sites. All people of faith should feel equally at home in Jerusalem, sharing equal rights and equal duties. If Jerusalem continues to be governed exclusively by one political authority represented by only one of the three monotheistic religions, it means that further strife will continue. We posit this as being so because the one who remains "outside" will only nourish hatred in his soul, and the desire to come back and enter Jerusalem once again, by violence and even war.
(6) A true Christian has a duty to serve Truth and Justice. The Lord calls on us to be the light of the world. We are only light if we
witness to the TRUTH. It is clear that the claims of the Christian Zionists are not truthful about the Holy Land or Jerusalem. A simple reading of history shows their claims are not well founded. We cannot pretend to be true Christians by saying we want to serve the Lord but in reality are only serving ourselves.
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Further the Bible does not give the Jews an "Indefinite Right to return" to Palestine.
1- The greatest majority of Biblical scholars, Jewish, Christian and Muslim agree that the Bible did not give to any people, not even for
Jews an "Indefinite Right to Return" to Palestine.
2- These scholars agree that if there is any "Right to Return", this right is limited and based on some conditions. It speaks only of a
moral right to return that should be considered within a reasonably short time after the factor prohibiting the return or caused the exile had ceased. And it pertain only those who had been forced to leave or have been unjustly exiled or prohibited from returning.
It does NOT allow that their descendants for generations and generations could have the "Right to Return" when the factor that
made it impossible to them to fulfill their dreams have ceased. It speaks also of the short time that the Law of that country or that
time had given them to return. The Bible does not provide open choice for the timing of the "return" indefinitely of distant generations.
3- Those who immigrated of their own free will and voluntarily looked for a better life, business elswhere have no right to claim
the same right of those forced to leave unjustly. These cannot claim any right to return in the name of the Bible or any civil Law of any
time.
4- Those who were unjustly exiled and therefore had a moral right to return but did not return following the removal of the factors that forced them to leave and preferred to stay where they are or immigrated freely to another place had lost their right to return under the Biblical right to return and any civil law of anytime.
Their descendants cannot claim in any time the right to return at all.
On the contrary under the Biblical Provision they disobeyed and should be punished. The Bible speaks of the punishment of the sons because of the sins of their fathers. They are no more considered to possess that Covenant because they disobeyed the appeals of the prophets of Israel. Their descendants have no right to claim that
Israelite heritage as they have disobeyed to the Law.
5- In fact "In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord inspired King Cyrus of Persia to issue this proclamation throughout his kingdom, both by word of mouth and in writing: "Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, �God has also charged me to build him a house in
Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with
him" Ezra 1:1-3.
Chapter two speaks about the Census of those who returned to Jerusalem, it shows that not all the Jews had returned.
Should then the appeal of Cyrus be considered as an indefinite right to return? Should the Jewish who remained in Babylon (some of them had remained in the present-day Iraq when others went to live in Israel) be obliged to return to Jerusalem? Can the descendents of those who returned and those who remained in Babylon consider themselves to possess an indefinite "Right to Return" ?
In fact after forty-eight years of deportation, in 539 BC, Cyrus the King, as we have said, allowed Jews to return, but a small group as
W.F. Albright, an archeologist and scripture scholar says had returned. He then speaks of a group of 20,000 by the year 522 B.C in the a small part of the Holy Land not the actual one (the territory of Judah was at that time not wider than 40 miles wide and 25 miles deep, much smaller than the kingdom of Judah before the exile), including the people who have never left Palestine. (see W.F. Albright, The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezdra, P.P.87, 110 F).
The number who returned did not exceed the number of Jews who chose not to return or those who chose freely to stay where they were, or
immigrated before, during and after Cyrus.
6- After the Diaspora, God who punished his people for their disobedience, as the Bible says, had given the Israelites a reasonably time to return and turn to him. Their return is a sign of conversion and repentance and not a sign and a right of repossessing the Land. The symbol of their conversion and repentance was to build
the house of the Lord and not to possess lands.
The Bible shows also that not all the Israelites accepted to return and repent or to participate to build the house of the Lord.
7- It is known also historically that before, during and after the Jewish- Roman wars, the majority of Jews were not living in Palestine. The majority did not return to Palestine, had not been obliged to return to Palestine, but exercised their choice to return or not to return. The right to return cannot be belatedly claimed because the factors that forced them to leave, or that prohibited their return had ceased to exist.
On the contrary, refusing to excercise their right to return at that short time given to them by God and the Prophets, shows that their right became nullified.
8- During the 78 years of the Maccabean Independence the vast majority of the Jews did not choose to return from the different disporas and live in Palestine.
9- Throughout the last 3000 years, many Jews have chosen to live out of Palestine. In fact, even today, the number of Jews outside Palestine are more than triple of the number of Jews in Palestine and in the State of Israel. The descendants of these Jews of 3000 years ago cannot by any means under Biblical Law or civil Law claim any "Right to Return" and repossess in the name of God any land in Plaestine.
As we have shown, they cannot belatedly lay claim to an ancient right of return which was intended for the limited period of time
during which the factors that unjustly drove them to exile had ceased. The Bible In fact had given a moral right to return only to those who obey to the Law and not to all Jew. If the have failed to exercise their right to return, that right was nullified.
Having lost their priesthood, Temple, covenant Jews cannot claim, based on the Bible any right of return as they disobeyed the Law of Yaweh and of the Prophets.
Lord had in fact given them a new covenant as says Jeremiah, the Prophet "The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they
broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the Lord. But this is the covenant, which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my People. No longer will they have need to teach their
friends and kinsmen how to know the Lord. All, form least to greatest, shall know me, say the Lord, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more" Jeremiah 31:31-34.
10- In fact a lot of Orthodox scholars do not believe that Israel is the fulfillment of God's Promises to the Jews. For example Jewish communities as Samtar and Neturei Karte and many other religious groups and secular groups of Jews reject present-day Israel.
11- A claim for a "Right to Return" to Palestine for Jews is not Biblical but a political fact, it is in fact a clear injustice toward the Bible to interpret it not according the will of the Lord but the will of men.
The Biblical "RIGHT TO RETURN" for the Catholic Church as a whole, as well for the majority of the Orthodox and Protestant Churches or Communities, as well for some Jewish Communities, is a spiritual call for repentance (return to the One, The Only One, The Holy God,
Yaweh, Allah) and the belief on the mission of Love of the Messiah.
For the Jews a spiritual awaiting for the coming of the Messiah who will restore the covenant pronounced by Prothet Jeremiah, quoted above. For Christians the belief that the Messiah had already came, that Jesus- Christ is the Messiah himself, and that he is the Son of God, the Redeemer, the Savior of the whole World.
This return then refers to a conversion of heart, a turn to God so as to inherit not an earthy kingdom but the kingdom of God : "Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will
prepare your way" Malachi 3:1. "A voice of one crying out in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord make straight his paths" Isaiah 40:3. Then comes again the above quoted verses of Jermiah the Prophet that Jesus the Mesiah dah realized in time and in the heart of every single beliver, through the work of the Holy spirit.
Note that as the Lord is speaking about a "New Covenant" in Jerimaiah the Prophet, the Lord declares that the "First Covenant" a covenant of flesh and of Land was abolished by the new one, and that the old one was only a symbol of the conversion of our hearts to Him.
He does not speak in Jeremiah about a right to return to a Land but about a kingdom of peace, love and truth open to all people, as He put the "Law within us and written it upon our hearts".
This call to return is an INDEFINITE appeal to man (Jewish, Christian, Muslim or beleiver of any faith or unbeleiver) for conversion to the Most Holy, to the Only one God, Aloho, Allah,
Yaweh.
In conclusion I would like to say that:
1- The Bible does not give to Jews any moral "Right to Return" and repossess all the Land, nor even a part of the land exclusively or
make the people, who have lived there for thousands and thousands of years, to submit themselves as illigal immigrants. God cannot be but God of righteousness, justice, peace and love. God is not a real estate agent for one people.
2- There is not historical proof that the Jews had ever possessed all the Holy Land (i.e. the today Palestine-Israel).
3- The Israelites came to Palestine as conquerors, they fought with an existed people who had never left Palestine, but coexisted with
the different conquerors and ethnic groups.
4- Whatever spiritual or moral right to return to Palestine that could still exist in the minds of some Jews, that right cannot and could not outweigh the spiritual or moral right of the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and Christians to their homeland, Palestine.
5- If some scholars are not sure to identify all the Palestinians with the Canaanites that possessed Palestine, it is also difficult,
if not impossible, to identify the Jews of today with the Jews of yesterday, those who were exiled in Babylonia or lived in the different Diasporas all over the world and still live today in different countries.
6- Whenever Europeann governments and the USA administrations try to support the claims of Jews to return and build their home country,
they should equally consider all those people they have themselves colonized, exiled, persecuted, depossessed of their land in the
modern times and tried to change their heritage, language, history, religion etc.
Native American, for example, have more demonstrable rights and historical claims to repossess the USA than any Irish, Scottish,
Italian, English etc.
7- It is known also historically that the agences that brought Jews from many parts of the world to present day Israel used many times
illegal methods. They coerced many Jews into by lies (Palestine is a land of no people), they used terrorist attacks to force non-Palestinian Jews to see Israel as the only safe place for the Jews.
They have used political, religious and economic means to oblige Jews to come to Israel. However many Jews chose to remain in the country of their blood, where they had a cultural heritage. Others also stopped in their way out from the country where they used to live and go elsewhere than to Israel, or left Israel after they
discovered that they have been tricked by those agences and hardly the land they have been led to beleive in.
All this shows that the claims of a Biblical right to return is anti-biblical and anti-religious as well anti-truth.
8- The Bible as a word of God could not but call for Justice, Peace, truth and love, regardless of the use of it by some Christians (the
Christian-Zionists, as they call themselves) saging that God is calling only the Jews and not anybody else. The Bible will never call for injustices and exclusivity, and should never be used to preach injustices. God, Adonia, Allah of the Bible, as it is the word of the same God, had made from all of us bloodbrothers to share
his love and not to fight.
