ISRAEL: JUDAISM OR ZIONISM?

:http://worldnewstrust.com/commentary/3798-demystifying-zionism-yakov-m-rabkin

From the linked article:

" The word “Zionism” means different things to different people. Some use it a badge of honour, unconditionally defending the state of Israel right or wrong. Yet, many Zionists take umbrage at the appellation of Israel as a Zionist state. They insist that it is a “Jewish state,” a “state of the Jewish people.” Quite a few people who identify themselves as Zionists are distressed by what Israel is and does, but remain reluctant to express their distress in public. Others, including quite a few Israelis, see Zionism as the main obstacle to peace in Israel/Palestine, a path to collective suicide. And, finally, in some circles the word is used as an insult.

A concern to many is the blind support of the U. S. to the state of Israel,

even to the point of framing our foreign policy according to Israel's fears and needs. Many believed, as we were told and taught, that in 1948, according to 'biblical prophesy' the jews were able to return to the 'promised land' of present day Palestine. There was, but a small problem: the land was already occupied as it had been for centuries with predominantly Muslim Palestinians. The world-improvers 'solved' this problem by partitioning the land, some for Jews, some for Muslim Palestinians. These two groups were and are enemies. Thus the birth of endless strife.

There is ignorance about the difference between Judaism and Zionism

among many notable bible students and Christian leaders, as well as whether Israel is a Jewish state or a Zionist state.

"In the words of late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz of Hebrew University in Jerusalem:

'The historical Jewish people was defined neither as a race, nor as a people of this country or that, or of this political system or that, nor as a people that speaks the same language, but as the people of Torah Judaism and of its commandments, as the people of a specific way of life, both on the spiritual and the practical plane, a way of life that expresses the acceptance of … the yoke of the Torah [Old Testament five books of Moses] and of its commandments. This consciousness exercised its effect from within the people. It formed its national essence; it maintained itself down through the generations and was able to preserve its identity irrespective of times or circumstances."

". . . Zionism rejected the traditional definition in favor of a modern national one. Thus Zionists accepted the anti-Semites’ view of the Jews as a distinct people or race and, moreover, internalized much of the anti-Semitic blame directed at the Jews, accused of being degenerate unproductive parasites. Zionists set out to reform and redeem the Jews from their sad condition. In the words of Professor Elie Barnavi, former Israeli ambassador in Paris, “Zionism was an invention of intellectuals and assimilated Jews … who turned their back on the rabbis and aspired to modernity, seeking desperately for a remedy for their existential anxiety." However, most Jews rejected Zionism from the very beginning. They saw that Zionists played into the hands of their worst enemies, the anti-Semites: the latter wanted to be rid of Jews while the former wanted to gather them to Israel. The founder of Zionism Theodore Herzl considered anti-Semites “friends and allies” of his movement.

Among the many tendencies within Zionism, the one that has triumphed formulated four objectives: 1) to transform the transnational and extraterritorial Jewish identity centred on the Torah into a national identity, like ones then common in Europe; 2) to develop a new national language based on biblical and rabbinical Hebrew; 3) to transfer the Jews from their countries of origin to Palestine; and 4) to establish political and economic control over the land, if need be by force. While other European nationalists, such as Poles or Lithuanians, needed only to wrest control of their countries from imperial powers to become “masters in their own houses,” Zionists faced a far greater challenge in trying to achieve their first three objectives simultaneously.

Zionism has been a rebellion against traditional Judaism and its cult of humility and appeasement. It has been a valiant attempt to transform the meek pious Jew relying on divine providence into an intrepid secular Hebrew relying on his own power. This transformation has been an impressive success.

According to a sarcastic remark of an Israeli colleague, "Our claim to this land could be put in a nutshell: God does not exist, and he gave us this land." Indeed, secular nationalism and religious rhetoric lie at the root of the Zionist enterprise.

Indeed, Zionism turned prayers and messianic expectations into calls for political and military action. In his intellectual history of Zionism, Professor Shlomo Avineri of Hebrew University observes “Jews did not relate to the vision of the Return in a more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming.… The fact remains that for all of its emotional, cultural, and religious intensity, this link with Palestine did not change the praxis of Jewish life in the Diaspora: Jews might pray three times a day for the deliverance that would transform the world and transport them to Jerusalem, but they did not emigrate there.” They did not because Jewish tradition discourages collective, let alone violent, return to the Promised Land: this return is to be operated as part of the messianic redemption of the entire world.

There is little wonder that the Zionist idea provoked immediate opposition among traditional Jews.'Zionism is the most terrible enemy that has ever arisen to the Jewish Nation.… Zionism kills the nation and then elevates the corpse to the throne,' proclaimed a prominent European rabbi nearly a century ago. The Israeli scholar Yosef Salmon explains this opposition: It was the Zionist threat that offered the gravest danger, for it sought to rob the traditional community of its very birthright, both in the Diaspora and in the Land of Israel, the object of its messianic hopes. Zionism challenged all the aspects of traditional Judaism: in its proposal of a modern, national Jewish identity; in the subordination of traditional society to new life-styles; and in its attitude to the religious concepts of Diaspora and redemption. The Zionist threat reached every Jewish community. It was unrelenting and comprehensive, and therefore it met with uncompromising opposition.

While Zionism has profoundly divided the Jews, it has united tens of millions of evangelical Christians in the United States and elsewhere. Some of them claim that Israel is “more important for Christians than it is for Jews.” For the prominent evangelical preacher Reverend Jerry Falwell the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 is “the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven … Without a State of Israel in the Holy Land, there cannot be the second coming of Jesus Christ, nor can there be a Last Judgement, nor the End of the World.” The coalition of Christians United for Israel claims many times more supporters than the sum total of Jews the world (between 13 and 14 million). Most Zionists today are Christian, which is hardly surprising since the very project of actually gathering the Jews in the Holy Land had emerged in Anglo-American Protestant circles well before Jews embraced it in late 19th century.

While Zionism has profoundly divided the Jews, it has united tens of millions of evangelical Christians in the United States and elsewhere. Some of them claim that Israel is “more important for Christians than it is for Jews.” For the prominent evangelical preacher Reverend Jerry Falwell the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 is “the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven … Without a State of Israel in the Holy Land, there cannot be the second coming of Jesus Christ, nor can there be a Last Judgement, nor the End of the World.” The coalition of Christians United for Israel claims many times more supporters than the sum total of Jews the world (between 13 and 14 million). Most Zionists today are Christian, which is hardly surprising since the very project of actually gathering the Jews in the Holy Land had emerged in Anglo-American Protestant circles well before Jews embraced it in late 19th century."

Whether God in 1948 intended for the State of Israel to be established in Palestine the Hatman doesn't know; however, the aggressive paranoid behavior of Israel is not of God, but of the Zionist mentality. Israel is a rogue state.

Legislation being considered before our government is the so called "hate bill" that would make it a crime to speak openly about any thing that could be called "anti-semite". This Zionist sponsored bill is typical of the influence and stranglehold these anti-American forces have on us. America's evil wars and threats of wars can be laid at the doorstep of Zionism.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN