Zionism’s anti-Jewish nature: Darby, Scofield, Blackstone, Hagee, and of course Armageddon

“The Jews came to Zionism long after the Christians”, Yakov Rabkin writes in What is Modern Israel?

Christian Zionism precedes 19th-century Zionism, and is based on a particular Protestant reading of specific, violent passages of the Bible that were used to justify genocide against Indigenous people in the Americas by American settlers before being used by the 20th century Zionist movement.

US-based professor Samuel Goldman summarized some of his work on Christian Zionism in “The Real Reason Americans Support Israel”, a 2019 Tablet Magazine article.

The Christian Zionist literary story begins either late in the 1500s or early in the 1600s. The colonization of the Americas is underway and an apocalypse of disease and genocide is very much being unleashed upon the Indigenous peoples there (to get a sense of that, David Stannard’s book American Holocaust is a good starting point). The genocide in the Americas was justified in Biblical terms, using the same passages of Genesis and Joshua that Zionists find so useful.

In England, Thomas Brightman wrote the 1611 book Revelation of the Revelation, Henry Finch in 1621 wrote The World’s Great Restauration, or Calling of the Jews, and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ. Both men believed that for the Jews to return to Palestine would accelerate the Apocalypse. In 1643, Isaac La Peyrere, a Huguenot Calvinist of Jewish background wrote Du Rappel des juifs – about a Jewish return to Palestine and facilitating the Second Coming. 

In 1649, Johanna and Ebenezer Cartwright petitioned the Thomas Fairfax Council of War for Jewish re-entry to England (as a path for return to Palestine). “this Nation of England, with the Inhabitants of the Nerther-lands, shall…transport Izraells Sons & Daughters in their Ships to the Land promised to their fore-Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for an everlasting Inheritance.”

Anglo-American Zionism continued with Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) attempting to convince British rabbi David Levi (1740-1799) to “organize a transfer of Jews to Palestine”. Levi, however, “rejected the idea of reinstating the Jews in the Holy Land by material means and affirmed that the Jews must accomplish their mission in their countries of residence.” 

Anglican preacher John Nelson Darby (1801-1882) formulated the “premillennial dispensationalist” doctrine. His sect was the Plymouth Brethren, and he founded a sub-group of bible students called the Exclusive Brethren. Darby read the bible and believed the Rapture was coming. For those who don’t know, the Rapture is when all the dead Christians will be resurrected, all the living Christians will join them, and they all ascend to heaven together. Before this, there will be violent years of tribulation for Christians on earth who live through the end times, with the rise of the Antichrist, the restoration of the Jewish Temple in Israel and the sacrifice of a perfect red heifer there. This view of the bible, reading it as a codebook for future events (also called futurism) is novel – Catholics, for example, don’t learn it. But it is mainstream in American evangelical Christianity and has been popularized by the mega-bestselling Left Behind series of books (80 million copies), video games, and movies.

Unfortunately for the Americans of a century ago, the Left Behind multimedia experience was unavailable. The Left Behind of 1909 was the Scofield Bible – in fact, the Scofield Bible is the 19th century Left Behind and the Christian version of Theodore Herzl’s 1896 book The Jewish State. It’s an important book.

Cyrus Scofield in 1920. His Bible notes haunt the Middle East to this day

Civil War Confederate veteran Cyrus Scofield was a Missouri lawyer after the war, then an elected Congressman in the Kansas House of Representatives, a corrupt US District Attorney for Kansas – forced to resign for stealing political contributions, forging signatures, and taking bribes, and a family man who abandoned his first wife and children. After his checkered career in public service, Scofield found religion and became a minister. In 1909 Oxford University Press published his Scofield Reference Bible with his own annotations, which explained the biblical passages in terms of Darby’s premillennial dispensationalist visions. The Scofield Bible sold millions of copies

The previous generation had their own Left Behind series – another mega-bestseller (28 million copies) futurist geopolitical fiction mapping Darby’s doctrines on to the 1970s it was called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. Lindsay’s genius was to update versions of the book as America’s enemies changed. In 1970, the threat to Israel came from Russia; by the 1990s, it was a joint Russia-Muslim operation; by 1999, China was in there too. “It is amazing, is it not”, wrote Lutheran critic of Christian Zionism Joseph Neuberger in his Master’s thesis, “that the great enemies of God’s people just happen to coincide with the national enemies of America at any given moment?” In the Christian Zionist reading of the bible, unlike non-Zionist Christian readings, “Israel” means the state of Israel – this is to be read literally. But Israel’s enemies in the bible are tribes (Canaanites, etc.) that don’t exist any more – these enemies have to be read figuratively and flexibly, which the Lindsay and the Left Behind authors do.

Befitting a story about Christian Zionism specifically, there’s a trinity of key Christian Zionists: Scofield, Darby, and William Blackstone, who believed that America had the special role of fulfilling the Zionist dream. Blackstone’s mega-bestseller was a pamphlet published in 1898 and called, simply, Jesus is Coming.

William Blackstone, whose Zionist work, according to Brandeis, antedated Herzl.

He was described by Justice Brandeis in 1916 as “the Father of Zionism, as your work antedates Herzl.” Addressing the Provisional Committee in 1916, Justice Brandeis called Blackstone “the “most important ally which Zionism has in America outside the Jewish rank”, reminding the audience that Blackstone had sent a petition 25 years before to the US president asking him to “use his influence to consider Jewish problems with a view to the giving of Palestine to the Jews.” Blackstone was honored again in 1918: deep in the post-Reconstruction nadir of the Jim Crow US, when lynchings and race riots occurred in impunity, a Zionist meeting in Los Angeles honored Blackstone, who explained his theological view to the assembled Zionists (quoted in Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891-1948, pg. 62) :

“[There are] only three courses open to every Jew … The first is to become a true Christian, accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, which brings not only forgiveness and regeneration, but ensures escape from the unequaled time of tribulation which is coming upon all the earth … Second – become a true Zionist and thus hold fast to the ancient hopes of the fathers, and the assured deliverance of Israel, through the coming of their Messiah, and complete national restoration and permanent settlement in the land which God has given them. It is true that this leads through unequaled sorrows, as prophesied notably by Jeremiah … [Third – there is the way of] the assimilants. They are the Jews who will not be either Christians or Zionists. They wish to remain in the various nations enjoying their social, political, and commercial advantages … Oh, my Jewish friends, which of these paths shall be yours? … God says that you are dear unto Him … He has put an overwhelming love in my heart for you all, and therefore I have spoken thus plainly. Study this wonderful Word of God … and see how plainly God Himself has revealed Israel’s pathway unto the perfect day.”

Hal Lindsay was also a televangelist, and the super-popular Christian Zionist televangelists Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and of course John Hagee also keep the spirit of Christian Zionism alive through daily sermons. Hagee — who said Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on Americans for supporting Israel’s 2005 abandonment of the Gaza settlements — uses his pulpit to preach to Americans not to allow any Israel to make any negotiations or compromises (quoted in Neuberger): “God says when you divide up my land, or cause it to be divided up, I will bring you into judgment. And right now the peace process that we call the Road Map to Peace is forcing Israel to divide up the land that God has given to the Jewish people. And God’s response is ‘I am going to bring judgment on the nation that does this.’ I am going to say this without blinking. If America continues to force Israel to give up land to the enemies of Israel, the judgment of God will come to America in unprecedented portions.”

Pastor Hagee says Israel making peace could bring the judgment of God.

Hagee’s declarations are not unique for Christian Zionism. Theology professor Brad Harper in a 2011 article “Apocalypse Soon? Premillenarianism and Popular Responses to Zionism: A Brief History” quotes the final declaration of an Israel-sponsored Christian Zionist conference in Switzerland 1996.

“According to God’s distribution of nations, the Land of Israel has been given to the Jewish People by God as an everlasting possession by an eternal covenant. The Jewish People have the absolute right to possess and dwell in the Land, including Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan.

“Because of the sovereign purposes of God for the city, Jerusalem must remain undivided, under Israeli sovereignty, open to all peoples, the capital of Israel only and all nations should so concur and place their embassies there.

It would be an error for the nations to recognize a Palestinian state in any part of Eretz Israel.”

It is apparent that God’s will coincides perfectly with joint US/Israel geopolitical ambitions.

Brad Harper’s article, “Apocalypse Soon?” concludes by noting some passages of the bible that the Christian Zionists don’t seem to cling to as closely: “The same passages that speak of God’s future blessings to Israel also speak of his blessings upon Egypt and Assyria… in the biblical story of creation, we are told that all people are valuable because they were created in the image of God— and, in the New Testament story of salvation, we are told that God sent Jesus Christ into the world not just for Israel, but for the whole world.”

So, while Christian Zionists believe that America has a divine mandate to protect the State of Israel, their end goal is the end of the world and the mass conversion or death of all Jews. Israel’s cynical statesmen play along because to them the bible and the fools who believe in it are mere tools. The Christian Zionists, meanwhile, understand Israel to be their tool – in bringing about the Apocalypse.

Christian Zionism is the original type of Zionism and is an anti-Jewish doctrine. 

---

Submiited by Syed Ehtisham Abbreviated by Editors

During the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians, according to an analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times.

The video investigation focuses on the use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area of southern Gaza where Israel had ordered civilians to move for safety. While bombs of that size are used by several Western militaries, munitions experts say they are almost never dropped by U.S. forces in densely populated areas anymore.

The Times programmed an artificial intelligence tool to scan satellite imagery of south Gaza for bomb craters. Times reporters manually reviewed the search results, looking for craters measuring roughly 40 feet across or larger. Munitions experts say typically only 2,000-pound bombs form craters of that size in Gaza’s light, sandy soil.

Visual Investigations  Our investigative journalists use evidence that’s hidden in plain sight to present a definitive account of the news. Get an email as soon as our next Visual Investigation is published. Get it sent to your inbox.

Ultimately, the investigation identified 208 craters in satellite imagery and drone footage. Because of limited satellite imagery and variations in a bomb’s effects, there are likely to have been many cases that were not captured. But the findings reveal that 2,000-pound bombs posed a pervasive threat to civilians seeking safety across south Gaza.

In response to questions about the bomb’s use in south Gaza, an Israeli military spokesman said in a statement to The Times that Israel’s priority was destroying Hamas and “questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.” The spokesman also said that the I.D.F. “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

But U.S. officials have said that Israel should do more to reduce civilian casualties while fighting Hamas. The Pentagon increased shipments to Israel of smaller bombs that it considers better suited to urban environments like Gaza. Still, since October, the United States has also sent more than 5,000 MK-84 munitions — a type of 2,000-pound bomb.

Eric Schmitt, John Ismay, Neil Collier, Yousur Al-Hlou and Christoph Koettl contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/100000009208814/israel-gaza-bomb-civilians.html

posted by f. Sheikh

Some excerpts from article; “That might have been why, when President Biden and Israeli officials said that Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11, intending the comparison as a rallying cry for self-defense, their words seemed to many instead a cruel provocation of trauma. Were they kidding? The response to Sept. 11 was catastrophic for the Arab and Muslim world and, eventually, terrible for the United States. A similar response to Oct. 7 would be terrible for the Israeli people, and a total reinvention of hell for the Palestinians. We know this because we are Americans. In the Israelis, we saw our own leaders: shocked victims for a day, destroyers of worlds every day thereafter.

But by then, the bombing of Gaza had already begun.

This year, the United States found itself engaged in two major global conflicts, in Ukraine and Israel. Both Mr. Biden and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, have linked the two wars together in an effort to shore up a common foreign policy against those who seek to “annihilate a neighboring democracy.” Americans’ attitudes toward both conflicts vary, however, particularly among a youth population that is furious about Gaza and ambivalent about Ukraine. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that a stunning 72 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of the Gaza crisis.

The young always rebel against the old. But this generation might be unique for one reason. Their whole experience of American foreign policy — as well as American values, reflexes and rhetoric — has been defined by one overarching foreign policy era: the war on terror.

In the 20th century, the Cold War era inculcated a Cold War worldview. Many Americans came to see foreign conflicts through the prism of good and evil. They viewed their country’s foreign affairs “mistakes” as a divergence from, as the British writer Anatol Lieven called it, a “state of noble innocence.” The older generation spent most of their lives awash in such myths. Those of us in the middle absorbed them for half of our lives, until Sept. 11, 2001, ushered us into a whole new state of being.”

“After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it felt as if Americans might reconsider their country’s role in foreign affairs. But six months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. “Pressure is growing again, especially given the failures in Afghanistan,” as the legal scholar Aziz Rana had written just a few months earlier, “to find new ways to display American power, to prove that, as Biden has said, ‘America is back.’” Ukraine was a different enough war to resist comparisons to the war on terror. It was a clean break: a war that once again pitted democrats against authoritarians and restored Americans to the side of the good against evil.”

“But young people, according to polls, felt uncertain about American involvement in Ukraine. The binary of democracy versus authoritarianism didn’t ring true for a generation that had begun questioning the meaning of democracy at home and abroad. They lived with a sense of doom around climate change and many had embraced Black Lives Matter protests, both of which taught them about American hypocrisy and the preciousness of human life. “We have trouble with the idea that our nation has a right to lecture any other,” the young editors of the magazine The Drift wrote in June 2022. (I have taught international affairs to 20-year-olds for the last three years, so I have had exposure to these sentiments.) Many Americans had been left with a void in their emotional landscape, an unanswered question about the American project: If the war on terror was something imagined by a democracy, then what was a democracy? What is a democracy that kills so many people?

As of this writing, the Israeli military has killed around 20,000 Palestinians and wounded 52,000, according to Gazan health authorities. That death toll includes an estimated 7,000 children. It has killed more than 60 journalists, over 130 U.N. aid workers, poets and cooks and teachers and I.T. specialists and mothers. The bombing is worse — faster, heavier, more indiscriminate — than what the Americans did in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. But it is also reminiscent of all the wars there.”

“In October, the Americans and Israelis said that Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11. Americans know that on Sept. 11, Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people, and in the 20 years that followed, the U.S. war on terror killed almost one million. Many Americans, marooned in the condition of future thinking, fear what could come next in the Middle East. They fear that one day Israel, aided by the United States, will destroy Gaza entirely. They fear that the devastation will set off another horrifying cascade of crises, an unfathomable loss of life. And they know that someday Americans will question what madness overcame them in 2023, why they once again allowed the killing of so many people, and what happened to them long ago that made them this way.”

My comments on above article in NYT;

Your comment has been approved!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with The New York Times community.
FS | NY
We expected every American President to support Israel but they always also gave voice to Palestinian rights. The most disturbing aspect of Gaza war was that we impulsively jumped into this war as our war and President Biden’s Administration made clear they have no red line for Israel (John Kirby) and this is no time for being neutral (Lloyd Austin). President Biden himself furiously advocated on behalf of Israel, including some fabrications. This further inflamed the situation rather than calm it and now we have over 20,000 innocent Gazan dead with our supplied “Dumb Bombs” and Hamas still not much degraded.

We should be proud of our younger generation who can see this injustice and plight of violently oppressed Palestinians and is raising their voices against injustice. That is what we taught and expected from them to speak up if you see any injustice.”

Full article

posted by f.sheikh

“If the presidential election were held today, Donald Trump could very well win it. Polling from several organizations shows him gaining ground on Joe Biden, winning five of six swing states and drawing the support of about 20 percent of Black and roughly 40 percent of Hispanic voters in those states.”

“But both sides consistently misread Mr. Trump’s success. He isn’t edging ahead of Mr. Biden in swing states because Americans are eager to submit to authoritarianism, and he isn’t attracting the backing of significant numbers of Black and Hispanic voters because they support white supremacy. His success is not a sign that America is prepared to embrace the ideas of the extreme right. Mr. Trump enjoys enduring support because he is perceived by many voters — often with good reason — as a pragmatic if unpredictable kind of moderate.”

Full Article

posted by f.sheikh