The Cause of the Conflict: Fixing Blame

By C. E. Carlson
May 2002
http://www.whtt.org/articles/020707.htm

The terrible war between Israel and Palestine that erupted in a second uprising of the prisoners (Intifada II) 20 months ago has claimed over 2,000 Palestinian lives and almost 600 Israelis. It is time to name and condemn the responsible parties. Only then can the killing stop. This will be the least complicated of this 9-or 10-chapter series entitled "Inside the Gaza Strip."

Naming the guilty parties is easy because they have come forward publicly to name themselves. The guilty are neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli people. At the root of the problem is a race-hate cult that has emerged under American Zionist leadership. Without this unholy alliance there would have been no uprisings, because the West Bank and Gaza would not have become occupied territories.

Ralph Reed, Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and former executive director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, and Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, have become co-chairmen of a new anti-Islamic hate group called the "Stand For Israel" campaign." Southern Baptists Jerry Falwell and Oliver North, and many others have expressed support for the campaign's goal of recruiting 100,000 churches and a million Christians to "support Israel."

Rabbi Eckstein describes "Stand for Israel" as the "the Christian AIPAC" (American Israeli Political Affairs Committee). Please see our report on an AIPAC meeting held on May 13, 2002. At that meeting the National Anthem of Israel was sung, but not the Star Spangled Banner ( http://www.whtt.org/articles/020513.htm). Note that AIPAC is called "American," but it is controlled by Israel. "Stand for Israel" will also be controlled by Israel.

The "Stand For Israel" campaign is a hate group pitting Christians against Muslims and led by Israeli Patriots. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is for Israel and against Islam. Our source is the Christian leaders' own words. Let us quote some of its founders and most powerful supporters:

According to a report by Adella M. Banks of the Religious News Service, the new SBC president, Reverend Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, joined other leaders of his denomination in publicly denouncing Islam's venerated prophet Mohammed as a "demon-possessed pedophile." This could be likened to calling the pope a pervert--a highly unusual act by a dignified church leadership committed to Christ's commandment to "love your brother" and even "your enemy."

Here is the text of the statement by Jerry Vines, outgoing president of the SBC: "ISLAM IS FOUNDED BY MOHAMMED, A DEMON-POSSESSED PEDOPHILE WHO HAD 12 WIVES, AND HIS LAST ONE WAS A NINE-YEAR OLD GIRL." (emphasis added) So said Reverend Vines.

After his June 11 election, Dr. Graham said he believes successor's statement is "accurate." Mr. Graham did not make it clear why having a harem, one wife being a child, is proof of either pedophilia or demon-possession in the 9th century. Baptists also read the Book of Genesis as if it was written today, as we will see.

Perhaps Dr. Graham is judging the Islamist prophet's marriage and sexual practices by his own congregation in Dallas, Texas, in the 21st century. It is noted that the word "pedophile" is big in religious news right now--a handy word to toss around a Baptist convention because everyone has learned what it means. But name calling and character slurs is mild when compared two what others in the Baptist bureaucracy want to say.

Richard L. Land, a Harvard-educated spokesman for the SBC, obviously thinks Southern Baptist ethics do not preclude slandering another religion, if that religion is an enemy of Israel. What has Dr. Land said about the ethics of Catholic leaders on the subject of pedophilia? Very little, judging from the SBC website. Dr. Land saves his attacks for enemies of Israel--the hapless Palestinians, some of whom are Baptists, too, and among whom crimes like this are virtually unheard of.

In its condemnation of Mohammed, the Southern Baptist leadership did not mention the well-known rules for pederasty set out in Israel's state religion, Judaism, in the 5th century Talmud, gross and ugly as they are (Sanhedrin 55b-55a). Rabbi Eckstein could no doubt enlighten Mr. Land about what the Talmud says.

Outgoing President Vine expressed what must be taken as the official Southern Baptist view. His choice of words, "pedophile" and "demonic," is slanderous and seems designed to deliberately provoke anger among Muslims. Reverend Graham affirmed Vine's comment, but later soft-pedaled by stating "we realize there are differences in religions but every person has the right to worship in adherence to the confines and dictates of his heart." Obviously Dr. Graham cannot believe both of his statements. Hatred of Islam is Baptist policy, and it leads not to a call for political action, but to war on Islam.

The SBC's own leadership explains the heretical use of scripture that demands it go to war against Islam on the side of Rabbi Eckstein and his fellow Israeli Patriots. Richard L. Land, a permanent fixture as head of the powerful Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission stated:

"God made an unconditional covenant (with the present day state of Israel), and he doesn't negotiate. It's God's way or the highway."

These are not just hot words from a cold pulpit; they were delivered at a June10 press briefing at the Southern Baptist Convention at the American Center in St. Louis. They are Dr. Land's crass way of saying Palestinian families should hit the road and turn over their land to the state of Israel, because he thinks they did not get their land title from God. Dr. Land, like so many others, does not tell the Palestinians which highway to use or into which desert they should go. His interpretation of scripture dictates that each family give up all its worldly property and leave...or die like many already have.

Land continued: "SUPPORTING ISRAEL IS A MATTER OF BEING OBEDIENT TO GOD." (emphasis added)

Can anyone doubt the meaning of Dr. Land's words? He has said that the state of Israel is carrying out God's work. Therefore, the secular state of Israel is the Baptist Church's proxy God. What does this make Ariel Sharon? What about the first of the Ten Commandments, THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GOD BEFORE ME?

When the Baptists allow Israel's Sharon to become a God icon, they accept the acts of Israel as their own. By so doing, the Southern Baptist Convention has declared itself to be a 25-million-member hate cult led by Ariel Sharon, or whoever replaces him when his acts become so hideous the world will no longer accept them.

Ariel Sharon embraces the Celebrity Christians fondly as "Christian Zionists," but he makes no secret of his own heathenism. Recently Sharon told the American Congress he knows the land of Palestine was given to the Zionists because "the Pope told me so." Sharon loves to joke of those who believe in God.

Whatever became of the "Christian Right?" Dr. Land provides a childish explanation which he no doubt expects every Baptist to understand from the footnotes of his Scofield or McArthur Study Bible. These are the incredible words Dr. Land has publicly proclaimed: "GOD HAS BLESSED THEM (referring to Arabs), AND HE WILL CONTINUE TO BLESS THEM EVERYWHERE BUT PALESTINE, BECAUSE GOD GAVE PALESTINE TO THE DESCENDANTS OF ISAAC FOREVER." (emphasis added)

Land's logic is explained in the heretical footnotes of Oxford University Press's own dispensationalist bible, custom written in 1962 and named the Scofield Study Bible (to be discussed in detail in our next edition). The Southern Baptist Convention has apparently dropped the true and uncorrupted bible as its standard of truth; it now relies on footnotes printed in a book published by one of the most anti-Christian publishers one could find. Dr. Land quotes almost word-for-word from the Oxford bible's heretical footnotes, composed by unknown and unspecified authors 500 or more years after the King James Edition was written.

The SBC interprets the ancient Hebrew scriptures found in Genesis as if they were written in 1948. The reason for this is that the Oxford Press rewrote the Baptists' favorite Bible in 1962 to accommodate the creation of the state of Israel 14 years before. In other words, a secular publisher rewrote Genesis by adding and changing hundreds of pages of interpretive footnotes, some of which recognized "Israel" as a state, and declared it a national sin not to support the Israeli government.

Dr. Land wants us to believe that while God blessed both the sons of Abram, one was given land and the other none. Furthermore, he wants us to believe he has divine knowledge of which of the sons is the founder of which living tribe, and moreover he want us to believe he knows which families today are descended from each of the two sons. He gets his information from an Oxford 1962 vintage heretical bible. Of course, there is not a shred of historical or genetic evidence to support any of these assumptions. Abraham's DNA has not been found.

Worst of all, based upon Dr. Land's (and Rabbi Eckstein's) interpretation of these footnotes, we are supposed to decide who lives and who dies in the Middle East.

Had Oxford University Press known they could get away with it in 1962, they might have inserted a footnote about Prophet Mohammed that made him out to be a "demon-possessed pedophile." After all, Mohammed was born well before 1962, so why not put him in too?

The Southern Baptist Christian's outrageously racist words make this writer personally ashamed to have once been a Baptist Deacon. Drs. Graham, Vine and Land and many others all clearly tell us they are prepared to commit genocide on the Palestinian people, members of the Arab race. Perhaps it is less painful to watch them die if their Prophet is considered a pedophile and a devil.

Dr. Land wills that the Arabs should leave. He makes no concession for the Christian Arabs in Palestine, which includes some of my own friends who live in Gaza and attend the Baptist Church there. Land says they must hit the "highway" because God gave the land they live on to someone called Jacob who fathered a different tribe. Thus, on account of their race, they must die or starve, even if they are Baptists. How racist can you get? Does this also apply to Arab Jews in Gaza, of whom there are quite a few, I'm sure?

Not a single Israeli of any religion can prove himself to be in direct lineage to someone three thousand years ago. This is also true of the rest of us, no matter how tidy the family records. Yale University geneticist Mazim Qumseyeh has told We Hold These Truths that the DNA evidence is not available and that the Arab Palestinian is genetically similar to the Arab Jew.

In Gaza City, the Baptist church is located between the Library of Culture and Light and the Islamic Center on Omar Mukhter Boulevard. There I met and interviewed three Christian Arab members who consider themselves Baptists. Some of them have already been bombed by the Israelis. One, who asked that I not use his name had to find a new school for his two boys because the Israelis had bombed their school into rubble a few days before I arrived. They used American-made F-16s and 500-pound American Smart Bombs.

Dr. Land and his allies would, of course, approve of this raid, because they believe the Israelis are of Jacob's seed and the Arabs are of Ishmael's. But they have no shred of evidence for either belief, except in the footnotes of the Oxford Bible and its several prosperous imitators. Does Dr. Land have a special "dispensation' to protect his children when the rest of the Arabs have to hit the "highway?" Does he really believe Israelis from Russia should occupy his land that his family has owned for hundreds of years?

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