Israel’s Messianic Jews Under Attack

The flyers appeared everywhere inside the Jewish settlement of Ariel, on car windshields, telephone poles, and in bus shelters. “Beware,” it read, “these are the members of the Jewish Missionary Cult. They are baptizing Jews into Christianity.” Included was a photo of Pastor David Ortiz and his address.

Ortiz didn’t give it a thought. His Jewish neighbors liked him, and so did Ariel’s mayor, who found Ortiz, originally from Brooklyn, useful in recruiting funds and political support from American and German Evangelicals for this stone-clad settlement on a breezy hilltop inside Palestinian territory.

But somebody disliked Ortiz and his beliefs enough to try to kill him and his family. By chance, Ortiz and his wife Leah were gone on March 20th when an unknown person dropped off a bomb disguised as a holiday gift package loaded with candy and chocolates. When Ortiz’s 15 year-old son Ami plucked off a chocolate, it detonated a bomb powerful enough to blow out all the apartment’s windows apartment and to be heard a mile away. The bomb was packed with nails, screws and needles. Doctors found over 100 piece of metal embedded in the boy’s body by the blast, which sheared off the skin and muscle on his legs and chest. The teenager survived, but still faces six more operations of skin grafts and the removal of shrapnel from his eyes. Whoever did it, says Ortiz, knew “that we adults wouldn’t open up the Purim package — it would be the kids.”

Messianic Jews, as these Jews who believe in Jesus are called, number just a few in Israel — anywhere between 6,000 and 15,000 — but they provoke hatred all out of proportion to their meager numbers. Many orthodox Jews view them as traitors for joining the Christian faith, which for centuries has persecuted Jews. One Messianic Jew, Tzvi Sadan, a teacher and editor, recalls telling his father, a Holocaust survivor, that he had accepted Jesus as his savior. “My Dad flipped out. He said that the SS guards in the camp had ‘God is With Us’ written on their belts. He told me, ‘You’ve joined the enemy.’ But he calmed down a bit when he saw my prayer shawl.”

Some rabbis also view the Messianic Jews’ conversion as part of a grand Evangelical scheme to fulfill Biblical prophecy (which requires the conversion of the Jews) and hasten the Messiah’s arrival. Messianic Jews observe Judaism’s rites, holidays and customs but believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

But lately, the outrage among extremist orthodox Jews has spilled into violence. Even after the Ariel bombing it has continued. Last month, when the deputy mayor of Or Yehuda, a town near Tel Aviv, found out that Messianic Jews had been passing out copies of the New Testament to a community of poor Ethiopian Jews, he ordered the books to be collected and they were set alight in a bonfire. He later apologized and said the Bibles had been burned accidentally. “If somebody had done that in Europe to Jewish Torahs, you can image what sort of a reaction that would provoke here,” says Ortiz. To be fair, commentators and officials in Israel were quick to condemn the act, comparing it to the infamous book burning by Nazis.

Messianic Jews living in the Negev Desert also say they are routinely harassed and attacked by yeshiva students, some inspired by Yad L’achem, a religious organization dedicated to stamping out Christian missionary activities in Israel. Random acts of anti-Christian violence have also occurred: last October in Jerusalem, a church was fire-bombed, and several days after Christmas, a German pilgrim who was returning from Bethlehem carrying a large wooden cross was attacked by a gang of ultra-orthodox youths who smashed the cross into splinters. These are isolated attacks, and Christians living in Israel say that as long as they refrain from missionary work — prohibited by the Israeli government — they are left free to worship.

Israel finds itself in a predicament: it wants to welcome Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land out of goodwill and for tourism revenue, but it also wants to keep exuberant missionaries from trying to convert Jews. At the same time, news of these attacks — especially the Ariel bombing and the Bible-burning — has circulated widely among Christian churches around the world. “I’m getting calls from Norway,” says Leah Ortiz, “asking if Christians are being persecuted in Israel, and I say ‘No, of course not.’ What happened to our son, this isn’t religion. It’s insanity.”

So far, police have failed to make any arrests in the Ortiz bombing. But whoever assembled the bomb knew what he was doing and had access to plastic explosives, probably stolen from the Israeli military. “We’re afraid that whoever did this,” says Ortiz, ” might try it again. With us, they crossed the line, and we’re afraid of it happening to someone else.”

Given the hardship Messianic Jews face in Israel and his son’s multiple injuries, would the Ortiz move his family back to Brooklyn? “No way” Ortiz replies. “Jesus wasn’t born in Brooklyn. He was born here. We’re staying.”

Religious sensitivity is always exacerbated by perceived intrusion upon one’s personal beliefs. Resentment leads to confrontation. Confrontation between two or more strong faiths leads to violence. Conversion is coercion. Conversion accepts that someone else’s beliefs are inadequate. Any religion that feels duty bound, through hearsay commands, to “SAVE” another from their own religion is provocative intrusion. Conversion must be left to those interested in converting. Dissatisfaction with one’s own faith or philosophy is what generates true seekers. When true seekers discover what satisfies their soul and spirit, they are finally at peace with themselves and their maker. Trying to convert the unwilling is despicable and demeaning.

The same energy used to intrude and insult other religions should be turned inward to polish the virtues you understand to be necessary. If you can set a shining example, you do your faith more justice than a hundred missionaries …

Atheist soldier claims harassment

• Army Spc. Jeremy Hall sues U.S. for religious discrimination
• Hall is known as “the atheist guy,” called immoral and a devil worshipper
• He turned to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation for help
• “It’s just about time somebody said something” about pressure to believe in God

It eventually came out in Iraq in 2007, when he was in a firefight. Hall was a gunner on a Humvee, which took several bullets in its protective shield. Afterward, his commander asked whether he believed in God, Hall said.

“I said, ‘No, but I believe in Plexiglas,’ ” Hall said. “I’ve never believed I was going to a happy place. You get one life. When I die, I’m worm food.”

The issue came to a head when, according to Hall, a superior officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, threatened to bring charges against him for trying to hold a meeting of atheists in Iraq. Welborn has denied Hall’s allegations.

Hall said he had had enough but feared that he wouldn’t get support from Welborn’s superiors. He turned to Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. (This takes more guts than lying just to get along … Hall is a HERO x 2)

This is not America. This is not the freedom of religion (or lack of) that America espouses. This is the hypocracy that the world sees and judges America as a deluded and dangerous super power. This is not what we send soldiers and mercenaries to fight and die for. Freedom, as mouthed by the Bush Administration, comes out with a different definition.

If I choose to worship a piece of crap or nothing at all, that should be my business. Who or what I worship has nothing to do with my patriotism. What this administration has done is define patriotism as worshiping their narrow definition of their own ‘institutional’ god. They have taken away the foundation this country was built on. No wonder there is so much mistrust and anger. Mind control is the worst abomination the Bush Administration has imposed upon this once great nation. We can dye our hair green, spike it like a porcupine, and tattoo naked people on our bodies. As long as we hate the ‘politically acceptable’ things in the name of a loving god, who had a son through an immaculate sexual encounter, while waving the American flag and putting magnet ribbons on our cars, we are true American Patriots. We are truly a bi-polar, dysfunctional nation that spends more time and money on image while ignoring the substance of life. If a Christian hears voices it must be God. If anyone else hears voices, they are schizophrenic.

America has failed to sell this bullshit and appears to be stuck within its own delusion. Countries have been careful to avoid offending their demented money machine, as we have witnessed. Countries that don’t tolerate the hypocracy, harbor terrorists. As we all know, history teaches us that those who loose are terrorists, those who win are freedom fighters.

Perceived Slights Have Left Many U.S. Muslims Wary of Pope

NEW YORK — Pope Benedict XVI has said he would like to reach out to the Muslim community through dialogue, and Muslims were included in the pontiff’s meeting with interfaith leaders in Washington on Thursday night. But many Muslims in America remain wary, saying the pope has created the impression that he is insensitive to their faith.

There are several perceived slights that linger in the memories of Muslims. This pope started off on the wrong foot with his lecture, September 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, in which Benedict quoted a Byzantine Christian emperor saying that the prophet Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Several incidents since then have nudged Muslims further away.

“I don’t think he did enough to apologize,” said Omar T. Mohammedi, a member of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Conversion and religious freedom remain major, thorny issues in the relationship between the Vatican and Muslim countries. Some Muslim countries prohibit Muslims from converting, and punishments can include the death penalty — a position that Catholics find an anathema.

Some Muslim leaders invited to meet the pope in Washington declined, citing the controversies over the Regensburg lecture and conversion. “I didn’t attend,” said Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who was invited to the interfaith meeting. “The invitation was to be involved in the ceremonies and the pageantry, but not in authentic, in-depth discussions on issues affecting Catholic-Muslim relations today.”