Sunday, May 16, 2021

Israel's Big Brick Wall From 2009 Developed By Supersessionism: The Kairos Palestine Document

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

      Kairos 10th Anniversary Conference and Call to the Church-November 29, 2019

Most of the church denominations and religious organizations subscribing to replacement theology have signed on to a shared manifesto called the Kairos Palestine Document, which was composed by a group of Palestinian Christians in December 2009. 

Such a document creates a brick wall, amounting to many bricks keeping any peaceful unity from happening between the Israelis and Palestinians.  Jews can keep banging their heads against this wall in making peace.  Whatever they do, however they help, Israel has been  rebuffed all too much.   When Israel announced their creation on May 14, 1948, it wasn't more than 5 minutes later than they were again attacked, and the attacks really haven't ever stopped. There was nothing like the Welcome Wagon for them that Americans might look forward to when moving into a new neighborhood.  Theirs were missiles and rockets, instead.   In 1967 after the 6 Day War, the Kartoum Conference, this wall grew from a brick to the whole wall in their declaration of driving Jews out and never making peace.  It's become a whole structure, not just one brick amongst the many that also make up this wall such as poverty, being used by their leaders as ammunition against someone who has won every war thrown at them; from 1947-48, 56, 67, 73 and 82 with following intifadas, their school textbooks that teach fairy tales instead of truth about Israel, their Great March of Return, and now, of course, another war that has lasted 7 days, outdoing 1967.    

Here below is how this philosophy against Jews developed.  

I note that not all churches believe in this replacement theory.  Some Popes have and some haven't.  BDS was developed by Palestinian Arabs, Omar Barghouti, and Ramy Shaat

    Omar Barghouti is a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. He received the Gandhi Peace Award in 2017.  Ramy Shaat is a Palestinian-Egyptian human rights defender as long as they aren't Israelis.   How can such a person be for human rights as long it's for him but not at all for Jews?  That's ironic to have him on such a human rights committee.  

Kairos calls for “churches and Christians in the world” to oppose the “oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid” of Israel, “the occupying state.”  In carefully crafted wording, Kairos blames Israel for anti-Zionist terrorism and declines to denounce it. (Kairos 4.3) 

 Note the use of the word, OCCUPYING from 2009s Christians.  Israel is not an occupier of Israel.  It has a recognized statehood not only through the League of Nations, but the newer United Nations.  It happened on May 14, 1948. Only some people today were alive in 1948, but I was.  I was 14 years old then.  

This is their statement:  Since the launch of A Moment of Truth ten years ago, life in Palestine has rapidly deteriorated under the illegal occupation by the State of Israel.  The oppression is more aggressive and brutal.  Our imprisoned and besieged sisters and brothers in Gaza, non-violently gathering in the March of Return, were the targets of a bloody and deadly response. 

The 2018–2019 Gaza border protests, by the organiser called the Great March of Return (Arabicمسیرة العودة الكبري‎), were a series of demonstrations held each Friday in the Gaza Strip near the Gaza-Israel border from 30 March 2018 and onwards. The demonstrators demanded that the Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to lands they were displaced from in what is now Israel. They also protested against Israel's Gaza blockade and United States recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

 Kairos continues: Settlements continue to expand.  Threats of annexation of the Jordan Valley and the settlements themselves grow without a word of condemnation from the major powers.  We are experiencing the continued dispossession of our land, our freedom and our human rights.                   

   Israel's Arab parties made historic gains as election support surges

Palestinians living in Israel, not Gaza or the West Bank, have all the rights of all Israelis with the exception of not being called to serve in the IDF.  They have the same freedoms and human rights.  Palestinians have political parties that serve in the Knesset.  

                                                        


Rana Raslan (Arabic: رنا رسلان‎, Hebrew: רנא רסלאן‎; born 17 March 1977) is an Arab−Israeli former model from Haifa who won the Miss Israel title in 1999. 

 A particular method of interpreting the Bible is a doctrine called Supersessionism, an older name for Replacement Theology of the Christians.. The idea is that God is finished with the Jews, and that in his unfolding linear program of history, the New Testament Christian church has replaced the Jews as his chosen people of promise.   Those churches supporting another practice, that of BDS,(standing for the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel). support the replacement theology.                                  

The replacement theory goes back to the 2nd century CE with Justin Martyr.  Justin Martyr put forward the idea that the Christian church is “the true spiritual Israel.”  One outcome of this theory is that of non-support for the establishment of Israel in 1948.  So our brick wall is made up not only of many Muslims who have their own copy of this belief but many Christians as well.  Justin died a martryr's death because he was a Christian.  What he disliked in Jews, the Romans disliked in him.  How ironic can you get?

I believe that even though the major churches in the USA have been our brick wall that gives us a bad rep, more exist in Europe, since Jews left Europe for the USA  shortly after 1776 and thereafter till about 1922.  Jews face lots of anti-Semitism here today, but not necessarily the pogroms that they did in Eastern Europe.  In fact, that was the cow that kicked over the pail;  the pogroms.  That drove the meeting of intellectual Jews into a discourse with the British with World War I's obvious win as to what they were going to do with Palestine.  The Jews had been having a brilliant idea---many did after their last pogrom experience.  Even Golda Meir had her pogrom experience and then decided to come to America.  My own paternal grandmother had her legs broken in a pogrom in Lithuania-or was it Poland by then?  So many wars over there.   

It was the Romans who drove the Jews out of the homeland, Judah at that time, and into Europe in the first place.  I want to make this clear.  Not all Jews left Palestine, but, G-d help us, most did with the threat of death if they didn't, so they fled from the Romans.  Otherwise, they were grabbed and  held as slaves to be used in the famous circuses like New Christians were, to build in Roman buildings, even though Rome had had Jewish citizens for some time doing business with Rome.  

The New Christians, now were under the power of the Roman Emperors who held meetings about how to see the role Jews were playing in the world in the 300s.  Romans saw Jews as competition in religion, so did all in their power, and they held it all, to end any power Jews had in that respect.  Before 70 CE when the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, which was the 2nd one built over the 1st, there were many pagan Romans converting to Judaism.  They put a big stop to that practice.  I think the Roman wives would have been disappointed since Judaism stood for family values, rights, etc. It became against the law if Jews ever converted another person.  This is one reason why Jews do not practice conversions except it asked for, and in that they usually have to ask 3 times.  Sammy Davis must have been asked if he was in his right mind to want more problems than he already had.  He insisted and he was converted to Judaism.

"Justin continued to wear his philosopher's cloak, seeking to reconcile faith and reason. His teaching ministry took him first to Ephesus (c. 132), where he held a disputation with Trypho, a Jew, about the true interpretation of Scripture. The Dialogue with Trypho teaches three main points: the Old Covenant is passing away to make place for the New; the Logos is the God of the Old Testament; and the Gentiles are the new Israel."

As a teen I experienced some anti-Semitism.  Hurting comments in our high school cafeteria from friends about Jews-and then I would have to break in and say, "Hmm.  I happen to be Jewish.  Did you know that?"  Facts that Jews were not invited to join any sorority or fraternity in high school, causing us to have our own, and hold our own dances at our own athletic clubs.  Things like that.  A generation before me had problems getting jobs, even at telephone companies because of their being Jews.  But as a teen, I was aware, but it also went over my head and didn't last in my heart.  Looking back, I am angrier about it as I realize the state of people's minds then.

Reference

Edited: 4:11pm 5/16/2021

https://jij.org/news/replacement-theology/?campaignid=11016534694&adgroupid=108986655500&adid=461192352626&keyword_session_id=vt~adwords%7Ckt~%7Cmt~b%7Cta~461192352626&_vsrefdom=wordstream&gclid=CjwKCAjwhYO

https://www.maccabeetaskforce.org/bds-qa/?gclid=CjwKCAjwhYOFBhBkEiwASF3KGVAP6ueQtUTEyJ5nWalyshjLf2aMTO8uDpAeu7nRwqZxk9zL_ldu9hoCAq8QAvD_BwE

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/evangelistsandapologists/justin-martyr.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions

https://www.fidh.org/en/region/north-africa-middle-east/egypt/grave-concerns-over-prominent-activists-ramy-shaath-and-zyad-al

https://www.maccabeetaskforce.org/?gclid=CjwKCAjwhYOFBhBkEiwASF3KGReMojaDRAD6dKRYSpbQONbRfqkKPXo8g9sCHVNAg1LHfxa1YrjwMBoCuXUQAvD_BwE

https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php/resources/statements/kairos-palestine-10th-anniversary-conference-statement-call-to-the-church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rana_Raslan

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/04/israel-arab-parties-make-historic-gains-election-support-surges

2 comments:

  1. i stand in opposition to christians who claim the state of israel is an oppressor and aggressor and should be punished. they are on the wrong side of the Bible, the wrong side of history, and i am ashamed of them that they are so ignorant of what the Bible actually teaches about the jewish people and the land God gave them. against what Jesus, a jew himself, taught..

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  2. Your words make me feel a lot better, Andre. They always do. These Christians have a complete misunderstanding of the word, "chosen". It belies me as to how they could misconscrue it so badly.

    ReplyDelete