Time to stand by Israel.

As I write this article I have just heard that one of our colleagues was injured in London University when he tried to stop a student from defacing a Jewish Society poster with a swastika.

The level of hatred against Israel and the Jewish people has reached frightening proportions not just in the Middle East, but here as well. The main reason for this is that the media have adopted a double standard when it comes to reporting events in Israel. Israelis apparently have the right to be killed by Palestinian terrorism, but not to defend themselves against it. I receive daily information from Israel telling me what is happening. Then I turn on the TV and receive a totally different version.

Clearly someone is not telling the whole truth.

Is it the Israelis? They say that reams of documents were found in Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah compound linking him and his Fatah movement to terrorism; that Israel was at pains to minimise loss of life in Jenin, but was hampered by Palestinian terrorists who placed their bomb making factories in the midst of residential areas; that the Palestinian media, education system and mosques give routine calls for Israel’s destruction and indoctrinate the population with a call to ‘kill the Jews’.

Is it our media? They say that suicide terrorism is an understandable Palestinian response to decades of occupation; that Israel is guilty of massacres against defenceless civilians; that peace will come when Israel withdraws from the territories occupied in 1967 and allows the establishment of a Palestinian State.

The fact is that Palestinian Arabs could have had a state alongside Israel in 1947, in 1968 and in 2000 but chose not to because the aim of the PLO and most of the Arab world is to have a state in place of Israel. That is why Arafat rejected Barak’s offer of a settlement in May 2000 and launched the Intifada, which has brought misery and destruction to his own people as well as to Israel.

We recognise that Israel makes mistakes as all nations and people do. But let us be in no doubt that if the Palestinian terrorists and their backers should be successful in their aim, we would be looking at a second holocaust. If western governments and church leaders wish to look the other way and say, ‘This is no concern of ours,’ that is their decision and they must answer to God for it.

We cannot keep silent on this issue, not only because we are concerned for Jewish people, nor because we have a prophetic view which has a future for Israel, but because we are concerned for the truth. Isaiah complained that ‘Truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter’ (Isaiah 59.14). Sadly truth has also fallen in the public places of our time. Jesus said, ‘For this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth’ (John 18.37).

Updated 30/04/2002

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