The Inheritance of Abraham and the promised land

In May 2013, the Church of Scotland released a report titled, 'The Inheritance of Abraham and the promised land.'

This said, in part:

"Do any of the Hebrew Bible accounts really sanction future occupation of the land and the driving out of the people already there? For example, the occupation of the land by Jewish immigration in recent times and the violence used to deprive some 750,000 Palestinian people from their homes at the time the State of Israel was established in 1948?…  

Justice is a major theme in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. For example: 

'What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?' (Micah 6:8) and 'Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness'. (Matthew 6:33). Are these not a challenge to the policies of the State of Israel? How can Christians support the violation of human rights in the name of alleged divinely conferred exclusive rights to a specific area of land?  

For instance, in the building of illegal settlements; the continuing policy of driving out of Palestinians from East Jerusalem; disregard of UN resolutions and violation of international law; and the daily provocation and humiliation of the Palestinian people.  

According to the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel of 14 May 1948...  

'The State of Israel will… ensure the complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.' 

This formal acceptance of the equality of all its citizens created a tension from the start with the state of Israel’s ethno-national, Zionist goals. There is a direct conflict of interest between wanting human rights and justice for all and retaining the right to the land.  

The decision not to adopt a formal constitution led to the limiting of civil liberties, for example, in relation to land expropriation and the imposition of military government on Palestinians in Israel until 1966. Despite an independent judiciary, liberal-democratic values were violated in immigration, citizenship, education, economic, and most of all in land policies.  

The state of Israel has always been an ethnic democracy. Under Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, the Arab minority had to live separately under Jewish rule...  

The Jewish people have to repent of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. They must be challenged, too, to stop thinking of themselves as victims and special, and recognise that the present immoral, unjust treatment of Palestinian people is unsustainable…  

As long as Zionists think that Jewish people are serving God’s special purpose and that abuses by the state of Israel, however wrong and regrettable, don’t invalidate the Zionist project, they will believe themselves more entitled to the land than the Palestinian people.  

No part of the New Testament gives any support to a political state of Israel beyond that to any other state. All are challenged to the same requirements for justice and the protection of human rights for all their inhabitants…  

Promises about the land of Israel were never intended to be taken literally, or as applying to a defined geographical territory. They are a way of speaking about how to live under God so that justice and peace reign, the weak and poor are protected, the stranger is included, and all have a share in the community and a contribution to make to it.  

The ‘promised land’ in the Bible is not a place, so much as a metaphor of how things ought to be among the people of God. This ‘promised land’ can be found, or built, anywhere. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom is not for one limited area of territory, it is a way of anticipating how things can be if people are obedient to God… 

Religion cannot favour or support any unjust political regime, but must rather promote justice, truth and human dignity. From this last perspective, the desire of many in the state of Israel to acquire the land of Palestine for the Jewish people is wrong. The fact that the land is currently being taken by settlement expansion, the separation barrier, house clearance, theft and force makes it doubly wrong to seek biblical sanction for this. 

Church leaders from South Africa, following a visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the autumn of 2012, observed similarities to the concluding years of the apartheid regime in South Africa. They concur with proposals to consider economic and political measures involving boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against the state of Israel focused on illegal settlements, as the best way of convincing Israeli politicians and voters that what is happening is wrong, and that Christians around the world should not contribute in any way to the viability of illegal settlements…  

Christians should not be supporting any claims by Jewish or any other people, to an exclusive or even privileged divine right to possess particular territory. It is a misuse of the Bible to use it as a topographic guide to settle contemporary conflicts over land… The current situation is characterised by an inequality in power and therefore reconciliation can only be possible if the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza, are ended.  

The Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under International Law. The Church of Scotland, individuals and civil organisations should urge the UK government and the international community as a matter of urgency to put pressure on Israel to cease from the expansion of these settlements…  

The Church of Scotland should do nothing to promote the viability of the illegal settlements on Palestinian land… Human rights of all peoples should be respected but this should include the right of return and/or compensation for Palestinian refugees… The current situation is characterised by an inequality in power and therefore reconciliation can only be possible if the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza, are ended…  

Urge the UK Government and the European Union to use pressure to stop further expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank."

Not just me any more, is it?

Even the notoriously tame Christian big shots are beginning to tell it how it is. However, we mustn't expect miracles in this Godless age, not even from the Christian elite.

At one point in the report its creators felt obliged to genuflect thus:

"It has to be recognized that the enormity of the Holocaust has often reinforced the belief that Israel is entitled to the land unconditionally. There is guilt among Western Christianity about centuries of anti-Semitism that led to discrimination against the Jews, culminating in the total evil of the Holocaust. There is also a belief among some Jewish people that they have a right to the land of Israel as compensation for the suffering of the Holocaust."

I wish these people would do their homework.

I wish they'd put just a fraction of the effort and sweat they invested in 'The Ineritance of Abraham' into investigating the reality of the so-called 'Holocaust'. But they don't. Instead they just parrot the same old schoolbook b***ocks.

Ah well, something is always better than nothing and I admit that I'm grateful to the Church of Scotland for this contribution.

As regards the 'Holocaust', here's a summary of the info that is now known.

At Nuremberg, the Soviets insisted that 4million had died at Auschwitz. The same people would, until Gorbachev arrived, likewise insist that that the Nazis had murdered the Polish elite in the Katyn Forest.

These unfortunate folk, more than twenty thousand of them, were, in fact, murdered by the Soviets themselves.

In 1945, the allies chose not to question the Bolshevik version of events. Thus, in 1948, memorial tablets in 19 different languages were laid commemorating the innocents said to have perished at Auschwitz.

Despite the 'official' Auschwitz figure, a French documentary was, from 1955 onwards, insisting that 9MILLION had died! For more than forty years, 'Nuit et Brouillard, (Night and Fog) was repeatedly shown on French TV and in their schools' system.

In 1973, Dr Jacob Bronowski's intellectual gravitas was brought to bear upon the subject in 'The Ascent of Man.'

'Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some 4 million people,' he said.

In 1990, the original memorial stones laid at Auchwitz were removed. Five years later they were replaced. 50 years after Nuremberg first trumpeted the 4million statistic, a new memorial tablet stated that 1.5 million had died there. Nowadays the Auschwitz website tells us that 1.1m died.

A great many people lost their lives at Auschwitz. But at least 2.9million more survived than was originally thought. The death totals have been coming down at other camps too. At Nuremberg, the Soviets declared that 1.5 million had been killed at Madjanek. As of December 2005, the site museum was saying 78,000 people had died. On page 288 of volume 18 (1963) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, no less, this is said:

"At Mathausen... close to two million people, mostly Jews, were exterminated between 1941 and 1945."

The US Holocaust Museum now says:

"At least 95,000 died there. More than 14,000 were Jewish."

The Dachau concentration camp used to display a sign saying 240,000 Jews had perished there. Nowadays, another sign suggests that 19,000 people lost their lives, mainly of typhus and starvation.

Once upon a time, the powers-that-be demanded we believe that four million died at Auschwitz and six million died overall. If you dared to question either figure you would have been vilified as an anti-Semite. And yet, as we have seen, those who once had us pay homage to four million have now reduced this figure considerably. However, THE SIX MILLION STAT HAS STAYED THE SAME!

Using the latest figures from the cited camps alone, a total of 462,000 dead emerges, many of whom would not have been Jewish. If that statistic was an accurate record of those who lost their lives in such circumstances, it would still be horrifying. But it wouldn't be as horrifying as six million.

Check out The Holocaust?