The recent call urging Congress to reevaluate military aid to Israel by a group of Protestant Christian leaders is a nauseating example of applying double standards against Israel under the cloak of piety and hypocritical sanctimoniousness.

The signatories, who include leaders of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist and radical National Council of Churches, were obviously not inhibited from taking such action despite the role played by their churches in demonizing, persecuting and murdering Jews over the past 2000 years.

One might say that the Lutherans related to the teaching of their 16^th century founder, Martin Luther, who after failing to convert the Jews, called on his followers to murder these “poisonous envenomed worms” and set fire to their synagogues and schools Luther’s disciples have redirected his anti-Semitic teachings towards the Jewish state in lieu of individual Jews.

The timing of this appeal to effectively end military aid to Israel magnifies their malice.

It is a time when a nuclear Iran poses a potentially existential threat to Israel; when Islamic fundamentalism has extended its influence and menaces Israeli security at virtually every border; when the anti-Semitic Moslem Brotherhood, the creator of Hamas, holds the reins of power in Egypt; when Al Qaeda operates freely in the Sinai Peninsula; when Iran’s surrogate Hezbollah, is pointing thousands of missiles towards Israel’s major population centers; when Hamas continues launching missiles against Israeli citizens; when 30,000 Syrians have been killed in a bloody civil war between Al Qaeda, jihadist groups and Assad’s Alawites.

Is this a time for “Christians” to call on Congress to limit military support for an embattled Jewish state?

They act as though Israel represents the obstacle to peace talks. Yet PA head Mahmoud Abbas refused to talk with the Israelis even after Netanyahu implemented an unprecedented 10 month freeze on settlements in a futile effort to bring them to the negotiating table.

Nor were their “Christian” sensitivities disturbed by the vicious anti-Semitic incitement and hatred as well as the sanctification of terrorist mass murderers emanating not merely from Hamas but also the PA, which to this day still deny any Jewish link with Jerusalem.

And if that were not enough, the bizarre behavior of these Christians is magnified by their indifference to what their own Christian kinsmen are suffering in most Moslem countries where freedom of religion is prohibited and no day passes without new reports of pogroms and murders against Christian minorities.

Are they not aware of the mandatory death penalty which Islamic jurisprudence imposes on apostates from Islam or for blasphemy?

Yet these “Christians” have the gall to call on Congress to restrict military aid to Israel, the sole democracy and only country in the region in which Christians and all other faiths are guaranteed freedom of worship. A country in which Christians can be found at every level of Israeli society – the Knesset, the Supreme Court, the military and academia.

To their credit, most American Jewish leaders have responded with indignation at this primitive display of double standards against the Jewish state.

The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis stated that aside from the double standards employed, the timing for such an initiative in the midst of the Jewish holidays and the absence of any prior consultation is an “egregious breach of trust” challenging the merits of maintaining relations with these groups.

And full marks to Abe Foxman and the ADL who withdrew from an October 22 interfaith event with these groups and called on all Jewish groups to do likewise.

In a post Holocaust era in which Israel and the Jewish people are no longer powerless, we have no need to humiliate ourselves by sharing platforms with those Christian denominations which act towards us or the Jewish state like their predecessors behaved towards Jews in the Middle Ages.

Fortunately there are numerous other Christians like the many evangelicals who passionately love the Jewish state and Catholics influenced by the Vatican Council’s 1965 Nostra Aetate and who have demonstrated their strong support for Israel.

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com
He may be contacted at [email protected]
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom
Some of my recent articles:
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