Israeli Religious Newspapers Distorting My Comments

April 20, 2009
HaModia, Kol Ha'Ir and Dati Dromi and Yeshiva World News website
Israeli Religious Newspapers Continue to Distort the Facts Behind My Comments

Reports that imply that I made claims that PM Benjamin Netanyahu has made promises to the Christian Community in 2009 NOT to back campaign promises he made to the Shas Party - namely that the next government would "examine the claims of an increase in illegal missionary activity in Israel” are a distortion of my actual comments.

For the Record
Here are the comments made by PM Netanyahu in 1997 that I referred to in my comments. Source is CNN website:

Statement from Prime Minister Netanyahu:
July 9, 1997
Web posted at: 2:02 p.m. EDT (1802 GMT)

"It has come to my attention that a bill before the Israeli parliament concerning possession of missionary literature has created a stir among our many Christian friends.

"I would like to assure you that this bill does not have the support of the Israeli Government. It was introduced as a private member bill by Mr. Nissim Zvilli of the Opposition Labor Party and Rabi Moshe Gafni of the Yahadut HaTorah Party. With fewer than thirty Knesset members present at the session, the bill succeeded in passing a preliminary reading in the Knesset. But to become law, it must pass three additional readings. The government strenuously objects to this bill and will act to ensure that it does not pass."

To date, several religious newspapers have carried reports that have mischaracterized my comments including HaModia, Kol Ha'Ir and Dati Dromi and Yeshiva World News website.

These kinds of distortions lay a foundation for stirring the religious to apply more pressure to the Prime Minister when the "examinations" are made into the claims of increased illegal missionary activites in Israel.

Take note of the truth, for the time it will be needed by believers in Israel coming under false accusation and undue persecution.

The following is my first response to the first misreporting of my comments in the HaModia newspaper.

April 1, 2009

Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Newspaper Misrepresents My Comments

On Monday I sent out a Prayer Priority for Arrows of Zion writing, “After my first trip to Israel in 2003 – one of three visits I’ve been able to make – I determined that if it ever came to a choice between me being able to visit Israel OR my continued association with the indigenous believers of Israel that I would not bat an eyelash that the priority was the Israeli Body of Messiah. I figured the time would come and it looks like that day is starting to arrive.”

Uncanny.

On Tuesday reviewing the latest issue of the Caspari Media Review – a sort of clipping service that gleans the Israel Hebrew media for all references regarding the believers of Israel, Christians, anti-missionary activities, views of Christianity, and so forth, I ran across some quotes that almost sounded like my writing…but not quite.

The latest weekly issue summarized an article in the ultra-Orthodox Haredi daily newspaper, HaModia, or “The Informer”, translating quotes from the Hebrew:

HaModia (March 26) reported that that the "missionary" bulletin "Prayer for Israel" stated recently that "'[Binyamin] Netanyahu has promised us that he won't support any attempt on the part of the religious parties to pass a law stopping the activities of Israeli missionaries which is liable to prevent them from sharing their faith.'" Citing the "typical commentary" given by the bulletin, the article further cited it as saying, "'A radical right-wing government is a double-edged sword: while it safeguards Israel's national security, it doesn't protect the missionary organizations within the country. Our priority is naturally the protection of our fellow believers.'"

At first I didn’t recognize the writing as mine because the facts were misrepresented and words were used that I would never use, like referring to the “Israeli Jewish believers” as “missionaries,” a word freighted with evil connotation in the Israeli psyche.

What HaModia, The Informer – or shall we rather say, The Accuser – quoted is a misrepresentation of what I actually wrote in a prayer request forum on the message board of Francis Frangipane Ministries. This is to clarify.

First of all: I am not surprised that opposers of the gospel and of the indigenous Israeli believers have taken note of what I write. Nor am I concerned that ‘my cover is blown’ – that I may never again be able to clear entry to Israel at the Ben Gurion airport.

The thing I am concerned about is the false impression they are proposing to their own faithful readers that newly installed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made promises to Christians that he would not support any attempt of the religious parties to curtail the freedom of Israeli believers to share their faith.

My reference was to promises Netanyahu had made and broken in the past – the last time he was Prime Minister, in 1996-99, as I actually wrote on the Frangipane message board:

“Netanyahu in the past promised Christians worldwide that he would not back the religious parties' efforts to pass legislation that could lock up Israeli Jewish believers for sharing their faith....and then he crumbled when he needed the religious parties support. Soon after he was removed from office before his term was up. I believe it was the intervention of God on behalf of the believers because bills were being introduced relentlessly by religious parties during the Netanyahu administration.”

"Part of the current deal Netanyahu struck with the Haredi party Shas to get them into his coalition government, is that his Likud party guaranteed Shas that the next government would "examine the claims of an increase in illegal missionary activity in Israel.”

"This is the open door agreement Netanyahu struck as he handed control of critical Knesset Ministries over to the direction of the ultra-Orthodox, Shas.

"This is the same party that launched many attempts to criminalize the gospel in Israel during the last Netanyahu administration.

"It is not that Netanyahu himself has no respect for religious liberty, but that his natural allies in the national security issues of Israel – those he needs to hold his government stable – are deeply anti-gospel, anti-Jewish believers in Jesus. Push comes to shove, Netanyahu will sacrifice the believers in his reach for national security. Make no mistake, however, there will be no safety for an Israel that mistreats the Body of the Lord within it. All the peace for Israel is tied up in the ambassadors of the Prince of Peace in Israel."

To What Purpose?

I suspect the purpose of misrepresenting my comments to the religious Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), is to cause them to be more demanding of Netanyahu to fulfill his promises to let Shas pursue and persecute the indigenous believers in Israel, and the Christians who support them.

The misrepresentation is being spread in the Haredi world. I found this entry on the web at another ultra-Orthodox news site (“Tefilat Yisrael missionary site” is a reference to my prayer request here):

Report: Netanyahu Will Not Work to Halt Missionaries
March 25, 2009

Premier-designate Binyamin Netanyahu has promised not to support a bill by religious parties to further limit the activities of missionaries in Eretz Yisrael the Chadrei Chareidim website reports.

The report quotes the Tefilat Yisrael missionary site, which states the incoming prime minister has promised he would not lend support to a move to further limit activities of organizations such as theirs.

The organization praises Netanyahu’s commitment which they view as further distancing chareidi influence in national government. They express the hope the incoming prime minister will be strong enough to stand to his word against the pressures that will face his decision.

Furthermore

In a bold demonstration of the intent of the increased religious muscle in Israel, last week an evangelical family from Hong Kong was arrested at Ben Gurion airport, put in jail and told they would be sent back to Hong Kong on the next available flight. They were told by a Ministry of Interior clerk at the entrance terminal that they were suspected of "illegal missionary activity".

The main “anti-missionary” organization in Israel, Yad L’Achim, which pursues and persecutes the believers in Israel in a multitude of ways, recently was invited by the Chinese authorities to come teach in a conference Yad L’Achims’s anti-missionary techniques for fighting “destructive sects.”

In reports from two Israeli religious newspapers, the Yad L’Achim director is quoted as saying, "'If the Israeli authorities would only learn from the Chinese authorities how to struggle mightily against these dubious and dangerous sects, the missionaries would not dare lift their heads. Unfortunately, the Chinese have understood what people in Israel do not want to understand.'"

Therefore

This is a wake-up call to Christians and Messianic Jews throughout the world to AWAKEN to the dangerous season our spiritual brothers and sisters in Israel have entered into. The Book of Acts never closed, and now that there are 10 to 15,000 indigenous Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel again, Acts is a continuing chapter being written in the pages of biblical history.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be an effective guardian of Israel’s right to exist, but he has failed in the past to protect the Israeli followers of Jesus right to exist. That should be of much greater concern to the Christian community than has ever been in manifest evidence.

Please stand in support of the believers in Israel, for their right to exist in the Jewish State and to worship according to their own conscience and faith.

Israel supporting Christians have turned a blind eye to the believers in Israel long enough – let us throw that compromise and indifference off and stand as we would have stood in the first century by the Israeli Jewish believers, Stephen, James, Peter, John, Philip, Barnabas, Paul and all the other saints of the kingdom of His Son.

Thank you for praying for our brothers and sisters in Israel according to Acts 4: 29-30:

Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants
that with all boldness they may speak Your word,
by stretching out Your hand to heal,
and that signs and wonders may be done
through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus.”

The time to take a stand with the believers in Israel has come.

The Israel-Hamas War in Gaza

On the right: One of the storage facilities for thousands of Kassam rockets fired from Gaza into the city of Sderot since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in August of 2005.

Since Israel decided to put a stop to the terrorist rain of missiles on her towns in the south from the terrorism bad lands of Gaza, conflict has been rippling through the Body of Christ – not just between those in Israel and the Palestinian areas, but also in other parts of the world. We need to be cognizant of the spiritual warfare we all have entered into at the same time as the physical conflict is fiercely engaged in Israel and Gaza. This is not the time to hand the enemy of our souls the advantage.

As a Christian who has heavily invested in listening to the voices of the believing indigenous Body of the LORD in Israel, I can tell you that I am always challenged by people who don’t like how I stand on the issues of Israel. It comes with the territory. However in times of war, like in the past couple of weeks, there is such a rise in conflict between brothers over how different ones view the issues.

There are those with no compassion whatsoever for the plight of Palestinian people – a position that grieves the heart of God. There is also a position that is only superficially informed about the history, nature and dynamics that Israel faces day in and day out, year in and year out from Islamist terrorism avowed to eradicate Jews and Israel from the map.

Of the latter, portions of the Church somehow accept the premise that the humanistic secular media is reporting the truth when it casts Israel as a menacing Goliath against a helpless and cowering Palestinian people.

I realize this is because of spiritual deception, but if those in the Church who held this view would just do the due diligence on the facts you would see and know the truth. It is a truth summed up succinctly in a newspaper editorial today, "Hamas is not a mass national liberation movement of the Palestinian people: It is tiny Islamo-Fascist organization that forcibly took control of a disheartened strip of land and turned it into a nightmare of an Islamic state."

Yesterday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzippe Livni said, "I can understand that sometimes the situation and the pictures that come from Gaza are difficult." But in fighting Hamas in Gaza, she continued, "Israel is doing what the entire free world is doing and needs to do, which is to fight terrorism."

When people magically separate Israel’s need and right to fight terrorism targeting Israeli citizens, from the rest of the world’s right and need to fight the Islamist terrorism targeting our citizens, I call that religious deception and hypocrisy.
I really would like to be more diplomatic about this, but I wonder how that is possible when I see huge demonstrations of anti-Semitism across American cities and the cities of the world churning hatred toward Israel.

Newspapers are not covering the fact that the core makeup of these international demonstrations are organized and fueled by pro-Hamas Arab supporters. Hamas is a terrorist organization for any of you who have been persuaded they are just “Palestinian soldiers” fighting with Israeli soldiers over disputed parcels of land. Hamas is an Islamist terrorist group that says the State of Israel has no right to exist at all.

The fact is that secular humanistic media are making an editorial choice to publish photos that downplay the pro-Hamas makeup of the demonstrators. It is part of the establishing facts on the ground to portray the demonstrations as a mostly non-Middle Eastern protest.

There is longstanding editorial choice behind the broadcast and print media favoring the pictures of Palestinian suffering, but rarely the scenes of Israelis in carnage and suffering.

These pictorial-editorials are not exactly a lie but close enough. If the media does not deliver all the facts then the whole, honest-to-God truth is not revealed. On the contrary, the media has long stacked the deck against public support of Israel. Remember, the press is mostly secular humanistic in its thought processes, ethics and morals. They believe their view is the high ground and the presentation of the conflict between Israel and terrorist groups is the media attempt to set its own agenda in public opinion toward the conflict.

It is not conspiratorial thinking about the evil media. It is simply understanding the power of the humanistic mindset that rules most of the media. Christians have all seen it in operation many times before so why should any Christian accept that the media are conveying the truth about Israel to us?

This is the same Israel that God has said many times over in the Scriptures that He would keep an eternal covenant with. Jeremiah 31:33-36 is not a matter of private interpretation: The promise of God is that the sun and the moon will cease before Israel will cease to be a nation before Him forever.

It is also not a matter of ignoring that the Lord loves the Palestinian people. It surely is the heart of God to bring many Palestinians to salvation, rescuing them from tyranny of abuse they have suffered because of the Islamist agenda of hatred. The opportunity is squelched by the rule of terror groups over the Palestinian people. Even before the war broke out we were getting urgent prayer requests for Christian Arabs threatened with murder in the West Bank and Gaza by terrorists. Thousands of Christian Arabs have fled the country for precisely this persecution by fellow Arabs who are Islamists.

As I pity children brought up in racist enclaves of America, like the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nations, so I deeply pity the Palestinian children. This is a people who have been kept living in squalor for decades by their own leaders because their continued suffering suited the cause of Islamist propaganda.

Millions have been given to benefit and raise the quality of life for the Palestinian people, but it was not just greed in the Palestinian Authority leadership that gobbled it up. It was also the propaganda value of Palestinian suffering in the refugee camps – those inside West Bank and Gaza, as well as those over the neighboring borders. No one allowed the Palestinian people to benefit and live any better because their lives are cheap, traded for the propaganda value of blaming their plight on Israel.

Palestinian lives are cheap – they are raised from the cradle to the grave with indoctrination to embrace suicide ‘martyrdom’ as their greatest value in this life. I saw it myself in the much evidence presented in two 12-week trials of a Hamas fund raising group recently convicted in Dallas for material aid to Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.

Until the terrorist stranglehold is taken off the Palestinian people, they will never be given the opportunity to live a normal, peaceable life. Many people think the gospel only thrives in hardship and persecution, but it is a fact that the Palestinians will never be able to respond to the gospel until the power of Islamist terrorism control is broken off of them.

The desire among Israelis for peace is so strong, but the ability to give peace is impossible when terrorists control the Palestinian population. How can there be peace when Israeli cities around Gaza are being terrorized by thousands of Kassam rockets falling on their schools, their homes, their streets and their playgrounds? This is the cause of the current conflict.

I want to give you the tools to educate yourselves in what is really going on beyond the headlines of CNN or the New York Times, both notoriously unbalanced in presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am asking you to trust that I am a seasoned veteran of the propaganda wars that go on surrounding the conflict and have learned to fact-check and know the reliable sources from the unreliable.
I am asking you to consider the resources that I put in front of you in this weekly Arrows from Zion prayer summary and the special focus issues I do on my IsraelPrayer.com and my blog IsraelWatcher.

I am not a propagandist for Israel but a Christian who knows that God has purpose for the indigenous Body in Israel – the Messianic Jewish and the Palestinian Christian.

This conflict is not about a perverted version of an Israeli Goliath against a little David Palestinian. It is about Islamist hatred of the purposes of God in Yeshua-Jesus in Israel and the whole Middle East. This is where I am putting my stake in the ground. As a person of God, I must rise and stand against that no matter what the eventual and ultimate cost.

Dallas Hamas Supporters Rally with Lies

Since Israel finally took measures to stop the relentless bombing of its citizens by Islamist terror groups in the Gaza Strip, CAIR and other have been rallying protests across the U.S. Some have been pretty ugly, showing the face of unreasoning hatred for Israel that we witnessed in the recent Holy Land Foundation trial.

One brave soul wandered with his video camera into the protest in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to document this footage.


In Dallas we’ve had two protests so far with organizers vowing to come back daily but protesters are on their best behavior, seeing how the Federal Judge Solis has not yet passed sentence on the 5 Hamas fundraisers of the Holy Land Foundation convicted Nov 4th in Dallas. Here is the first protest on 12/30/08

For the protest yesterday, 1/2/09, they began the protest march in front of the Dallas Federal Court House and marched over to the Dallas Morning News, a news source they have been trying to intimidate for years.

What I want to know is why their lying message is getting picked up and communicated to the public without any challenge to the veracity of the statements. Local news are unprepared or unwilling to challenge the baloney these people speak with great conviction. That’s all the public ever sees or hears so they assume it is irrefutable truth. We better quit letting this stuff go thinking that the public will know better. They don’t! All they hear are accusations about Israel “occupying” Gaza or a “humanitarian crisis” and the accurate information is not given. Letters to the editor are great, but reporters challenging claims and giving the balance is greater.

A Correction for example of this opening statement from the Dallas footage: