Annexation for dummies

Years ago Steve Stills penned a song in response to the November 1966 protest-riots on Sunset Strip. One of rock’s classic protest songs, its first line goes, “There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear . . .  You better stop! Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what going down.”

A lot is going down. COVID-19 has morphed into protests/riots in major American cities. Riots then mutated, vandalizing America’s cultural icons. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring).

Bounding toward us down the primrose path is the fast approaching date of July 1, 2020. On May 4, 2020 Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Alternate PM Benny Gantz signed a coalition agreement. Paragraph 29 of that agreement reads: “After discussions and consultations are conducted between the Prime Minister and the Alternate Prime Minister based on the principles outlined above, the Prime Minister will be able to bring forward the agreement reached with the United States on the application of sovereignty for debate by the cabinet and government and for approval by the government and/or the Knesset as of July 1, 2020.”

July 1, 2020 has become a ground-zero date. What will happen on that date? Will Israel annex up to 30% of the West Bank (including Jewish cities and towns in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley) according to the guidelines of President Trump’s ‘deal of the century?’ Will the PLO then establish a Palestinian state in the remaining 70% of Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank?  Is this process a dividing up of the Land of Israel spoken of in the warnings given by the Hebrew prophets? Does the Bible shed any light about how this relates to Israel, the Middle East and the future? What follows is rough seven-point sketch of the issues involved.

Biblical milestones

Today no modern country bases its foreign policy on the Bible (see Deuteronomy 17:18-20). What carries the day for most politicians is realpolitik –  a German word referring to diplomacy based on pragmatic considerations of given circumstances, rather than on moral and ethical premises. But the Scriptures have much to say regarding the Land of Israel and its borders:

Based on these signposts, all nations – including the Jewish nation – should stay far away from dividing up any part of the Land of Israel. They should instead champion her God-given borders (Genesis 15:18; 17:8; Numbers 34:1-15; Deuteronomy 11:24; Joshua 15:1-12; etc.)

Waltzing without a partner

Politically correct wisdom at the United Nations and the European Union declares that the Israel-Palestinian conflict will only be solved by face-to-face negotiations between the two parties. But the unappetizing fact is that there is no trustworthy Palestinian negotiating partner available. All Palestinian groups either refuse to negotiate with Israel (Hamas, Islamic Jihad) or refuse to accept any Israeli offers (PLO, PA). The Palestinian bare minimum would still result in Israel’s fatal dismemberment. Negotiations with all of the Palestinian groups are a non-starter.

Two lucid examples of this reality:

On July 1, 1994 Yasir Arafat crossed from Egypt into Gaza after signing the Oslo Accords. His ‘peace entourage’ of limousines was simultaneously smuggling terrorists into Gaza (Mamduh Nawfal, Jihad Amarin, etc.) who had the blood of many Israelis on their hands. Unregistered weapons and night vision scopes were hidden in the same vehicles:

Throughout the Oslo Accords period (1993-2000) PLO President Arafat repeatedly declared that violent Islamic jihad would continue, and that the Palestinians would eventually destroy and replace the Jewish state. Stipends to terrorists (the ‘pay to slay’ martyr’s fund) increased during this period:

The goal of Palestinian terror – Israel’s destruction – continues to this day:

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Zalman Shoval once said that “the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The Palestinians are now missing a ‘golden opportunity’ – this time under U.S. auspices – to receive 70% of the West Bank. U.S. conditions in ‘the deal of the century’ insist that the Palestinians must abandon terror and violence for the deal to go forward. Similar conditions were blatantly violated by the PLO and Hamas during the period of the Oslo Accords. These conditions will not be followed by the Palestinians at this present time either.

What the Palestinian Authority leadership is counting on is European and Arab pressure to significantly alter Trump’s plan. Instead of 30% of the West Bank going to Israel, Europe would push for the Jewish state receiving less than 10%. The Europeans would not insist on a realistic end to Palestinian terror. The nations of the world are pressuring Israel with malice to hand over 90% of the West Bank to Palestinian terrorists sworn to bring about the Jewish people’s destruction. America (on the other hand) is cajoling Israel to hand over 70% of the West Bank to Palestinians who (they hope) will change their spots and begin to sing kumbaya.

When your neighbor is of the jihadi persuasion

Israel is surrounded by Islamic countries on all sides. Two of them (Egypt and Jordan) have peace treaties with the Jewish state. Nevertheless, strong jihadi Muslim Brotherhood movements fester just below the surface in those countries, waiting to overthrow those governments:

Jihadi forces move about and operate effectively between the countries of Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran.  These are serious people, highly motivated in desiring to destroy Israel. Both Sunni and Shi’ite, they also have plans to overthrow pro-Western Sunni Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan, etc. Some of the abovementioned countries pay protection money to the jihadis to keep the Islamists off their backs. Others (like Qatar) play both sides of the coin. These kingdoms live in fear of being bulldozed by Iran’s jihadi Revolutionary Guards. At present, Sunni countries are willing to secretly cooperate with Israel because their fear of Shi’ite Iran overshadows their own Sunni desire to see Israel’s destruction.

Israel cannot afford to let down its guard in the face of these threats. Were Hamas jihadis given the chance to run in West Bank elections, they would soundly defeat the Palestinian Authority (PLO) and establish a new Hamastan in Ramallah, Jenin and Hebron. The presence of so many jihadi groupings in such a close proximity to Israel illuminates why, for Israel, having truly defensible borders is not merely an intellectual or philosophical exercise. It is a matter of survival.

Iran and ISIS

Iran’s jihadi ‘Shi’ite crescent’ is spreading, wrapping its cold revolutionary fingers around Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen, Gaza (Hamas) and Egyptian Sinai. ISIS (the Sunni jihadi movement) is waiting in the wings, working toward the establishment of its own jihadi caliphate in Syria and Iraq, while infiltrating into North Africa and other countries. The dangers facing Israel are increasing. Establishing a Palestinian state on 70% of the West Bank (America’s idea) or on 90% of the West Bank (Europe’s idea) at this time is a very bad idea indeed. 

Auschwitz borders

Abba Eban once referred to the U.N.’s efforts to shrink Israel back to its 1948 borders/cease-fire lines as a move to return the Jewish state to ‘Auschwitz borders’ – indefensible front lines that could lead to its annihilation.  Yet at this very moment the vast majority of the nations insist that Israel must abandon large chunks of its biblical and historical homeland or face punitive international sanctions, both political and economic. Most nations are opposed to the U.S. annexation plan which calls for a Palestinian state on 70% of the West Bank. Instead, they want Israel to hand over at least 90% of Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) to Palestinian terror-diplomats.

Some Israelis argue (based on this pressure) that it would be better not to move forward with American annexation plans at this time:

On the other hand, Israelis on the Right and among the religious believe that now is the time for reclaiming the Jewish people’s heritage even if only in part:

Israeli statesman Abba Eban adds a thoughtful comment: “Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement . . . There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable concession” (New York Times, November 18, 1981).

The obsessive fixation of the nations of the world on shrinking Israel’s borders has dark echoes of Joel 3:2: “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and they have divided up My land.”

Tremblings in a distant land

U.S. President Trump is considered by Israelis to be the most pro-Israel President in recent history. Here are some of the reasons:

One of President Trump’s goals has been to “do the deal of the century” – to achieve a peace treaty between Israel and Palestinians that no other President has managed to pull off.

Though recent events in the U.S.A. have weakened Trump’s power, many Evangelicals strongly support him in the ‘deal of the century.’

Trump’s deal is based on the presupposition that both Israel and the Palestinians will sit down to negotiate. Israel has been willing to talk, but the Palestinian Authority has refused to meet. In the likely event of such a zero-sum scenario, the shapers of the deal gave Israel the right to unilaterally apply Israeli law on up to 30% of its ancestral homeland in the West Bank. The other 70% of those territories would then be earmarked for a Palestinian state, and Israel would be forbidden from building or operating there.

Technically it is not accurate to define Israel’s move here as an annexation for three simple reasons:

Many Orthodox Jews (including the settler movement) and many Christian evangelicals are hesitant about any moves to establish a Palestinian state under any circumstances, based on three reasons – the Bible’s teaching; the refusal of all Palestinian groups to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; and Palestinian refusal to turn away from terrorism.

Ironically at this juncture the most positive pro-Israel U.S. government in history is also pushing for a dividing up of the land of Israel. The Hebrew prophet Zechariah warns all nations to be careful about these matters:  “It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured” (Zechariah 12:3).

Could the increasing divisions happening right now in U.S. society be a Genesis 12:3 result of America’s pressure (even if enacted with finesse) to divide the Land of Israel?

What will the nations say?

Jewish people in Exile always found themselves at the mercy of the nations. Every important decision (and many less important ones) needed to be weighed against the potential negative consequences that unfriendly Gentiles might aim against Jacob’s family. In the same way as one would not want to annoy a hungry bear, so it was important not to irritate non-Jewish kings and princes.

Prime Minister Ben Gurion went against conventional wisdom when he said, “It matters not what the Goyim (the non-Jews) say, but what the Jews do” (The Windsor Star, Canada, December 3, 1973). Ben Gurion meant that the Jewish people could probably count on Gentile opposition to Jewish restoration. In light of this, his counsel to the resurgent Jewish nation in her soon-to-be-sovereign homeland was that she would need to make decisions based on prophetic vision and not on fear.

The climate of fear is very present in many discussions concerning applying Israeli law to portions of the West Bank. The following questions are raised: What happens if Trump is not elected? Will Biden and the Democrats then take revenge on Israel? Will the European Union boycott and apply bone-crushing sanctions against Israel? Will the fledgling under-the-table connections with Arab Gulf states evaporate in the hot desert sands? Even some Zionists who acknowledge the age-old connection between the Jewish people and their ancient cities and farms in the West Bank are deeply concerned that this whole scenario could easily turn the world against us – kol ha’olam negdenu, as it is said in Hebrew.

In 1948 there were many learned voices who urged Ben Gurion NOT to proclaim the Jewish state. Annihilation at the hands of foreign armies was a real possibility. The combination of international pressures, the after-effects of Nazi mass murder, and British cold-heartedness were all too real. But in the end David Ben Gurion proclaimed the Jewish state on May 14, 1948. The rest is history.

Physical and political abuse

A woman who has suffered physical abuse from her husband is afraid of doing anything which might trigger more beatings. Similarly, Israelis realize that an international consortium could arise and do damage to the Jewish state if we try to hold onto our historic homeland. More than anything else, this dynamic reveals that the Hebrew prophets’ End of Days vision is not so far-fetched after all.

Pray with us about all these above points. Lay them before the God of Jacob in earnest prayer. Ask Him to establish His purposes over His Jewish people and His Promised Land in these matters, speedily and in our day. And let’s stay away from dividing God’s Promised Land!

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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My name is called Disturbance

A shudder went through Obi-Wan Kenobi’s spirit. Staggering, he collapsed in a chair and whispered, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” He had just sensed the destruction of Alderaan by Darth Vader’s Death Star (www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W2sUwujekU; Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope). Some of us have also felt a shudder go through our spirits in the past months and days. We are aware that there is ‘a disturbance in the force.’ What is going on? What does it mean? Where is it all going?

Revolution with the Rolling Stones

In March 1968 Mick Jagger penned the lyrics of ‘Street Fighting Man’ after watching an anti-Vietnam war rally at Grosvenor Square in London. Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave led the demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy (which eventually became quite violent; www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.secondwave/grosvenor-square.pdf). This was Britain’s sixth largest demonstration ever with over 10,000 protesters, 300 arrests, 75 hospitalized; www.britishpathe.com/video/grosvenor-square-anti-vietnam-riots). The Stones’ sizzling rock song encapsulated the adrenaline rush of the rioting crowd: “ Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy, ’cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy . . . Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution . . . Hey! Said my name is called disturbance. I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants!”

Tariq Ali led that demonstration. Today part of “the royalty of the British left,” the former Trotskyist candidate for Parliament commented in 2015 that “the original radical segment of the African-American population [including] Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were destroyed . . .  But the young people who came out in Black Lives Matter have this older spirit” (www.truthdig.com/articles/tariq-ali-the-time-is-right-for-a-palace-revolution/). Ali worries, though, that they “lack an understanding of their own history and that very few are literate in basic revolutionary theory, from Karl Marx to Rosa Luxemburg” (ibid.).

What does the sound of marching, charging feet in recent American riots signify?

Rotten to the core

One of the main messages that the Black Lives Matter movement (BLMM) hammers into the floorboards of America’s consciousness is this: the established order (and especially the police) are corrupt to the bone and rotten beyond redemption with systematic White racism. There is a burning need to defund, dismantle and destroy such systems, with special focus on the police. Another message in their political manifesto deals with the need to redistribute wealth based on an anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois worldview, as well as a call for White Americans to pay financial reparations to African-Americans.

A glance at youth movements over the past hundred plus years (see Professor Walter Laqueur’s ‘Reflections on youth movements’; 1971; The New Left and the Jews; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Laqueur) reveals that the BLMM tactics of ‘removing rotten systems’ are not new:

The Jacobins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics)) were a left-wing anti-Christian organization during the French Revolution which conducted the blood-soaked ‘Reign of Terror’ (16,594 official guillotine-based death sentences; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror). Under the leadership of Maximilien de Robespierre, they set about to destroy the final remnants of what they labeled corrupt and traditional authority. They hoped that this would pave the way for the rise of man’s natural virtue. The terror they unleashed opened the gates to Napoleon’s police state.

The German Youth movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Youth_Movement) began in 1896 as an anti-industrialization and Romantic movement. The Wandervogel and Bündische Jugend grew to nearly 8 million participants by 1938.  But “by 1930 the youth movement was displaying an incontinent eagerness to rid Germany of democracy. Almost all its members shared the assumption that anything at all would be better than the detested old regime” (Laqueur, ‘Reflections’). Between 1924 and 1932 the Hitler Youth movement (Hitlerjugend; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth) rose to overshadow the German Youth movement as it asserted an iron grip over all German scouting organization. The shunning of liberal democracy in Germany opened the gates to Hitler’s police state.

The French youth movement in 1931 was characterized as having totally rejected the existing order. There was a “tremendous wave of revolutionary enthusiasm, of holy frenzy and disgust” (Laqueur, ‘Reflections’). Many of these leaders ended up as Nazi collaborators during WWII.

The matrix out of which these dictatorships was born was a profound pessimism about present-day culture (in German kulturpessimismus). For the younger generation at that time, the world was in a mess, filled with cultural and social uncertainties. Morals and authority systems were breaking down. Decadence in music, theater and the arts fostered the angst of purposelessness, boredom, anger and finally violent political expression.

Red and Black violence

Prior to WWII, Communists carried a primarily red flag in street protests, while Fascists favored the black swastika flag. Both budding dictatorships channeled the common people’s deep insecurities and massive resentments and directed them against the whole superstructure of the culture within which they lived.  And there was fertile soil: France’s young philosopher leaders of the 1890’s were “forever complaining about the evils of corporate guilt” (Laqueur, ‘Reflections’). In 1890’s France, national self-degradation was the most popular national sport.

Both Red and Black held European democracy in disgust. Their goals involved the destruction of the existing order and its replacement with a dictatorship of a radical elite.

Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini explained that revolutionary violence is morally justified when it leads to the destruction of Fascism’s enemies. In a speech on September 20, 1922 in Udine, Italy, he declared: “There is a violence that liberates, and there is a violence that enslaves. There is a violence that is moral, and a violence that is immoral.”

On the Marxist side, Dr. Herbert Marcuse, Professor of Political Theory at Columbia, Harvard and Brandeis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse), justified the use of violence by the oppressed against the oppressor – or to say it another way, by the communist revolutionary against the capitalist.

Fascist and Marxist agree – violence is legitimate in the pursuit of one’s political goals. This foundational principle was an axial meeting point for Marcuse and Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, (www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/67dialecticlib/677DialectLibIntro.htm) who incorporated Marcuse’s arguments into his own. The New Left movement presents the radical revolutionary conclusions: “There is a worldwide class war between imperialism (led by the United States), and the third world of revolutionary nations. In this international class war it is the Left’s job to weaken, disrupt and help destroy the main enemy which is the American government” (Irving Howe, ‘Political terrorism: hysteria on the left’; The New Left and the Jews, 1971).

Here is where revolutionary Marxism and the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement intersect: they both declare that the established order (and especially the police) are corrupt to the bone and rotten beyond redemption. BLMM would then point the finger on its take that systematic White racism is the prime culprit. According to this synthesized Marxist/BLMM perspective, there is a burning need to defund, dismantle and destroy such systems. This hybrid strategy is being played out on a daily basis across the TV screens of America and the world.

The radical Sixties revisited

The ‘Swinging Sixties’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swinging_Sixties) were not only known for Carnaby Street fashions and pop groups. They also birthed the hippie counterculture and the revolutionary Left (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s; www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-secret-and-violent-history-of-sixties-underground-radicals-200866/). Many of the strategic goals of the Black Panthers seemed revolutionary back then, but have become mainstream in the BLMM today (https://archive.thinkprogress.org/most-of-the-radical-ideas-the-black-panthers-had-are-now-totally-mainstream-5c575897310d/).

Part of the negative fallout in the Sixties was a turning away from critical thought, analysis and careful consideration. Instead, there came an embrace of the primacy of experience, personal affirmation and hedonism. One side-effect is that a whole generation has grown up with no sense of history, and no awareness of the consequences of social violence. Many are pathologically afraid of appearing unfashionable or being perceived as representative of older ways and more traditional truths. Values are on the outs, replaced by a frantic desire to fit in with whatever is avant garde. The Zeitgeist – the spirit of the age – is all the rage, even though whatever is currently ‘in’ will morph within a few years into something barely recognizable to any of us today.

Post-modernist thinking – that there are no objective and timeless truths – is what dominates today’s public square. This popular belief system road marries skepticism and subjectivism to relativism. It also is highly suspicious of reason and facts. Whatever perspective does not meet the current definition of ‘politically correct’ is axed and censored in what is now called ‘the cancel culture’ (https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/06/15/rolling-stone-editor-unloads-on-media-says-the-american-left-has-lost-its-mind-n531675; www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/17/black-lives-matter-leverages-george-floyd-death-cu/). The widespread destruction and defacing of both the symbols of America and the fathers of American history show how mob violence is blending with anti-Americanism in a classic display of the Marcuse/Carmichael/Panther ideological strategy.

1984 revisited

The tsunami of censorship, called the ‘cancel culture,’ is sweeping the internet and the media. Wear the wrong t-shirt, use the wrong noun, speak out the name of certain historical figures – and you can easily find yourself blackballed, shunned and without a job. George Orwell described such a society in his (then) science fiction novel ‘1984.’ Today truth is stranger than fiction.

The ‘cancel culture’ has roots and they are not all communist/fascist. What we are seeing is actually the outworking of the Abrahamic Covenant’s curse in Genesis 12:3. The one who mocks/scorns /disses the Jewish people (that is the meaning of the Hebrew word meqalelecha), will be directly cursed by YHVH. For years the world has generally tolerated the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), a Marxist-energized attack on the Jewish state. All of a sudden, the Western world finds itself wounded from within, with citizens boycotting and sanctioning each other. As Lutheran German pastor Martin Niemöller said after the defeat of Nazism: “First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...).

Neo-barbarism

Professor of Hebrew Literature Dr. Robert Alter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alter) in his article ‘Revolt and the Democratic Society’ explains that the rebellion being seen in today’s streets can justly be labeled ‘neobarbarism.’ It is in many cases “a rebellion against restriction, against the disciplines of culture and the mutual restraints that are necessary if men are to live their lives together.” The jejune revolutionary desire to dismantle, destroy and dehumanize which has characterized much of both BLMM’s public pronouncements and its rioting fellow-travelers, leads step-by-step to the collapse of social protections and ultimately to totalitarian dictatorship. 

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spoke about the rise of mob movements in history which leave destruction in their wake. His original context referred to the riotous vengeance carried out by Alexandrian slaves against ancient Egypt: “There is nothing more terrible than a class of barbaric slaves who have learned to regard their existence as an injustice and now prepare to avenge not only themselves but all generations” (Nietzsche; The Birth of Tragedy III:18).

The kangaroo court images of BLMM spokespersons attacking and accusing America on our TV screens are flashing out their warning. What kind of people will we all become if we turn to such methods? Nietzsche again notes, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146).

For every action, there could be an equal and opposite reaction

The recent riots in America are a form of domestic terrorism. Calling it for what it is seems to be beyond the capabilities of most in the media today. Nightly news is taking its talking points from the BLMM playbook. The rioters’ and semi-violent protesters’ threats have been heard by Americans across the board – even by those Americans who are strongly opposed to Marxist justifications for revolutionary rioting. It is also quite possible that more radical elements in the White community may eventually respond to these events with violence of their own. We need to to remember that there are intelligent and determined people on both sides of this raging river. The presents tensions have the very real possibility of escalating into ethnic clashes across America. This scenario should move us all to our knees in fervent prayer, asking for God’s oil to anoint and heal the United States of America.

The penetrating Jewish writer Irving Howe spoke these words fifty years ago which still ring true: “Human beings will tolerate almost anything but the threatened loss of authority in the social order – the authority of law, custom, convention . . . Every state must react against terrorism, otherwise it ceases to exist . . . In a democratic society minorities have no right to inflict damage on property simply because they oppose [capitalism]. The aim of socialists [should be] to socialize the control of property, not to vandalize or destroy it” (Howe, Political Terrorism)

Self-hating Jews

Jews who know their own people’s history and culture hit a wall when they come face to face with Karl Marx. According to classical Marxism, Zionism is an outmoded expression of nationalism and a bourgeois non-progressive political philosophy. It is ‘old and in the way.’ Jewish people who believe in the continuity and restoration of the people of Israel to their own land can expect short shrift from the Communist and Socialist worlds.

These anti-Semitic tendencies and positions were examined in detail in our last newsletter (https://davidstent.org/a-time-to-be-silent-a-time-to-speak/). An anti-Semitic snake path wends its twisted way from the PLO to the Nation of Islam/Malcolm X, from Stokely Carmichael to the Black Panthers, and up to the present in repeated official anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist declarations by BLMM spokespersons. These issues are very much alive and of great concern to all Jewish people and Bible believers today.

A sorry phenomenon exists among some Jewish people. A minority of Jews are ‘self-hating.’ They are knocked off balance by their encounter with racist anti-Semitism, and in fear they attempt to escape from their own Jewish identity and community by assimilating into the universalistic Gentile world. This phenomenon was widespread among Left-leaning German Jews before the Nazi period. It is becoming a major problem for today’s American Jewish community. Some modern examples follow.

One of the leaders of the New Left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was Michael Kazin, a Jewish radical. In 1969 he explained that “SDS has consistently supported the political viewpoints and actions of the most militant segments of the black movement . . .  from Malcolm X to SNCC to the Black Panther Party” (Kazin, American Scholar; ‘Some Notes on S.D.S’; August 1969).  Here is an example of a Jewish leader trying to build his mass radical movement among fellow Jews by getting them to follow the political path of Black extremists, while ignoring the virulently anti-Semitic propaganda of its founders.

Berkeley Rabbi Michael P. Lerner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lerner_(rabbi)), founding editor of Tikkun, declared that “the synagogue as currently established will have to be smashed . . . The demands of the Jewish radical must be: ‘Shut down the synagogues, so that Judaism may have a chance’ . . .  [The Jewish community is] racist, internally corrupt, and an apologist for the worst aspects of American capitalism and imperialism” (www.nytimes.com/1970/01/10/archives/editor-of-judaism-quits-in-protest.html). He added that modern Black anti-Semitism “is rooted in the concrete oppression by Jews of blacks in the ghetto. In short, this anti-Semitism is in part an earned anti-Semitism” (Lerner, ‘Jewish New Leftism at Berkeley’; Judaism; Fall 1969).

Today it is not hard to run into American Jews who combine left-wing outlooks with right-wing lifestyles. A famous Jewish thinker (and friend of Martin Luther King) described some of these Jewish people as sitting in quite nice homes in “Scarsdale, Great Neck and Beverly Hills, discussing what an awful corrupt, immoral, undemocratic and racist society the US is” (Seymour Lipset, ‘The socialism of fools: the left, the Jews, and Israel’; 1970). This unsettling scenario calls us to redouble our prayers for a spiritual wake-up call to come to Jacob’s children, especially in America.

Once there were strong bonds and deep friendships between the broader Jewish community and the Black civil rights leaders and movement. Today, these have been dealt a severe blow by a myriad of influences, including the PLO, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers, The latest link in this venomous chain can be found among some of the spokespersons for BLMM.

American pogroms

The riots in May and June 2020 saw an unusual amount of attacks on Jewish synagogues, temples, kosher food stores and Jewish owned shops. Here is a small list, mostly from the Los Angeles area:

Specific attacks on Jewish houses of worship and places of business are a serious red line to cross for American society. For the most part this story has gotten lost in the U.S. media. But it is speaking loudly (to those who have ears) of dangers lurking in the BLMM and in the hearts of other ‘non-violent protesters.’ This is a wake-up call to American Jews that our people’s time in the U.S.A. is drawing to a close.

‘Go home Jacob, go home!’

An event which has prophetic significance occurred in Minneapolis on Saturday June 6, 2020. Mayor Jacob Frey (who is Jewish) came out to speak with protesters from Black Visions Collective (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Visions_Collective; www.thrillist.com/news/nation/how-to-support-the-black-community-where-to-donate-resources) an organization involved in BLMM. A spokeswoman from BVC asked Mayor Frey publically if he would defund and disband the Minneapolis Police Department, threatening him that a ‘no’ answer would cause his defeat in upcoming elections (www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/chants-shame-boos-protest-minneapolis-mayor-jacob-frey-1011261/ ; www.newsweek.com/minneapolis-mayor-booed-out-protest-after-saying-hes-not-favor-abolishing-police-department-1509214).

When Frey said that he would not abolish the Minneapolis police department, chants of “Black Lives Matter,” “shame, shame” and “get the f*** out”  were yelled at the mayor. Frey then began to walk slowly away through the profanity-shouting crowd. The mob all of a sudden began to chant repeatedly: “Go home, Jacob, go home! Go home, Jacob, go home!” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suz_HC0XG00). These mocking protesters were castigating their Jewish mayor (see Genesis 12:3). But like Caiaphas in John 11:49-51, it seems as if they were unwittingly prophesying God’s strategic heart over all of America’s Jews: “Time’s up. That’s it! Time to leave what has been the land of the free and the home of the brave. Follow God’s pillar of fire, because He’s leading you back to the land of your forefathers!”

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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A time to be silent, a time to speak

Three thousand years ago King David’s son spoke these words in Jerusalem: “There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every event under heaven – a time to tear down and a time to build up; a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; a time to search and a time to give up as lost; a time to tear apart and a time to sew together: a time to be silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

This newsletter is longer than usual. It takes a serious look at recent events in America catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd, and then asks the question “How did we get here?” There is insight to be gained through examining specific developments over the past hundred or so years which have contributed to the present situation. It is not light reading. The conclusions here call for much thought and prayer. Take the time to chew on this newsletter. We are living in significant days.

Murder in the Twin Cities

On May 25 America and the world were shocked as they watched the video of the asphyxiation murder of 46 year old African American George Floyd by a White Minneapolis police officer. Floyd’s last words were “I can’t breathe!” Anyone who watched the video was overwhelmed by the trauma and agony of this senseless killing. Bishop T.D. Jakes described his own response after watching the video, “It’s hard to be balanced when you’re angry.” He also added a warning, “Anger without effectiveness leads to destruction” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfCnXOhxXU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR26WLqfTwK_m6GsKVitBIx6RjeHhVCFmj-1hNctqH5RbXaEa6hYju6Qcnw).

What began as tears of grief quickly morphed into tears of rage. Within one day, thousands of Minneapolitans were protesting, and the four policemen involved in Floyd’s killing were fired. On Wednesday May 27 protests spread to Los Angeles and Memphis. But quickly a new development raised its violent head – vicious looting, arson and rioting broke out in South Minneapolis.

A senior Justice Department official said that the disciplined nature of the arson and looting (“very organized coordination from professional agitators”) raised FBI suspicions that Antifa and Antifa-like groups were involved. Attorney General William Barr said at a press briefing that “three different sets of actors” were involved in the demonstrations – peaceful protesters, looters and “extremist agitators that hijack protests.” By Thursday Barr could add (based on SIGINT – signals intelligence) that there was a "witches brew" of extremists with varying ideologies, including anarchists and those seeking to incite a civil war.

The Attorney General noted that “one of the difficulties is that while there are peaceful demonstrators and participants in these protests, it is the instigators, those committed to violence who basically shield themselves by going among them” (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ag-barr-evidence-antifa-foreign-actors-involved-sowing/story?id=71066996).

Chauvinism?

The police officer who murdered Floyd has an unusual name – Derek Chauvin (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/01/us/derek-chauvin-what-we-know-trnd/index.html).  That family name has French roots. French tradition has it that a Napoleonic soldier named Nicolas Chauvin manifested “a form of extreme nationalism and a belief in national superiority” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvinism). Today chauvinism is defined as “an irrational belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people.” This sobering linguistic connection is beyond the ability of mortal men to plan.

Casting the first stone

Two questions here: does Floyd’s murder reveal anything about American society, and are there any unrighteous dynamics here which need to be changed.

Most of the media’s interpretations and proffered solutions to these questions tend to stay close to the talking points of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Most people know little about the historical and ideological foundations of this movement. What are those origins?

Solomon tells us that “the first to plead his case seems right until another comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17).  Isaiah adds “The crooked will become straight and the rough places plain” (Luke 3:5; Isaiah 40:3-5).

Regardless of one’s stance about these issues, all should be able to agree that the open murder of a handcuffed Black man on the streets of an American city is a horrific travesty of justice. Before people take up battle positions over the ‘correct interpretation of the underlying causes’ of this injustice, for just one minute, first things first: let’s make sure that we get in touch with our hearts, and give ourselves time to grieve. That would be a normal, healthy and open-hearted first response. Tears have a way of cleansing the doors of perception.

Roots and shoots

The roots of American history are intertwined with slavery, though Europe, Asia and Africa have had much longer involvement in these matters. While it’s politically correct to target White Americans regarding slavery and racism, history’s unblinking eye shows that the main on-site operators of the African slave industry were Arab Islamic slave traders and Black African tribal leaders. The biggest slave markets in times past used to be the Islamic countries. Up to the present day Islamic countries are connected to the phenomenon of slavery:

Slavery’s effects on African Americans were huge – families ripped apart, social cohesion destroyed, widespread poverty. African cultural roots and tribal connections for the most part disappeared, except for some aspects of music and dance. Slavery’s power was eventually broken, starting with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 which in principle freed all Southern slaves (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation;  www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html). But to make that Proclamation a reality, approximately 854,000 mostly White Union soldiers died in battle for Black freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#Costs). 

Yet slavery’s collateral damage to African Americans lingered on. Congressional decrees do not automatically create brotherhood or change human hearts. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, Black Americans continued “to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, . . . the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect” (‘The Other America,’ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Grosse Pointe High School - March 14, 1968; www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/).

In the same way as Jewish people remember Pharaoh, Haman and the Crusades, so African Americans remember some bloody milestones on their path. The lynching of 4,000 to 4,800 U.S. Blacks between 1877 and 1968 is a somber reminder how racist hearts can catalyze racist hands:

Dare to be a Daniel

The blowback from slavery, lynching and racism still loiters on the outskirts of American society. Yet a balanced approach notes that nearly every people group in the world has its own rancid inheritance of hatred, prejudice and murder.  Solzhenitsyn reminds us that the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. Repentance from sin is a divine calling on all human beings, not only on Whites, not only on Americans. Racist anti-White responses heart attitudes and actions are also sin.

Dr. King once said that “voting is not the key that will unlock the door to racial equality . . . I do not believe that (the problem) will be solved until there is a kind of cosmic discontent enlarging in the bosoms of people of good will all over this nation” (www.apa.org/monitor/features/king-challenge).

There is a place for believers in Messiah Yeshua to enter into identificational repentance under the leading of the Holy Spirit for sinful deeds of previous generations in their own land. Americans can grapple in prayer before the God of Israel, asking Him to forgive and heal national sins in the past and present connected with racism and violence against African Americans.  Daniel 9:20, Nehemiah 1:6; 9:2, 2 Samuel 21:3-4 and Psalm 80 are biblical examples of such prayer in a Jewish context.

Many believers already understand this dynamic vis-à-vis repenting for sins against the Jewish people. A helpful book here is James Goll’s ‘Father forgive us’ (www.amazon.com/Father-Forgive-Us-Jim-Goll/dp/0768420253).

The red pill or the black pill?

The 20th Century witnessed many Black leaders proffering solutions to what was then called ‘the Negro problem’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Problem_(book)). Here are some of their names, analyses and endgame suggestions:

West Indian Edward Blyden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wilmot_Blyden) viewed ‘a return to the homeland’ – colonizing Liberia – as the solution. In 1898 he published a pamphlet ‘The Jewish Question’, two years after the publication of Herzl’s ‘Der Judenstaat’ (which Blyden read and admired). There he stated, “The Jewish question, in some respects, is similar to that which at this moment agitates thousands of descendants of Africa in America, anxious to return to the land of their fathers.”

Jamaican Marcus Garvey (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey; www.Blackpast.org/african-american-history/1921-marcus-garvey-address-second-unia-convention/) organized a Black nationalist movement in 1920’s America with nearly one million followers (Universal Negro Improvement Association). Known as ‘the Negro Moses’ he preached the racial unity and purity of all Black Africans, Black pride and separatism, anti-colonialism, institution building and self-sufficiency. Garvey advocated against intermarriage and integration, and preached a massive return of all Blacks to the African homeland under his rule. He  had a strong influence on the next generation of Black leaders, especially on Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam and Stokely Carmichael (leader of SNCC – Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). He designed the flag flown today as the Black Liberation or Pan-African flag (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-African_flag). His UNIA convention in August 1924 canonized the Virgin Mary as a Black woman of Ethiopian extraction  (see Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons, Roger Hill, p. 408). Vietnamese Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh stated that Garvey’s strategies shaped his political outlook during Ho’s stay in America. African American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has described Garvey as the “patron saint” of the Black nationalist movement (see also www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations).

West Indian Frantz Fanon of Martinique was a political radical, Pan-Africanist, and Marxist writer whose themes included the psychopathology of colonization and the consequences of decolonization. He was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), a Pan-Arabist, socialist and Islamic group responsible for breaking the colonialist rule of France over Algeria at the cost of approximately 100,000 killings (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerre_d%27Alg%C3%A9rie). His perspectives on violence and revolution (“having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death”) have inspired radicals including Malcolm X, Che Guevara and the Black Panther Party (Fanon’s books were required reading for all Panthers, and six of their Panther Ten Point Program were based on Fanon’s teachings). Fanon's work Wretched of the Earth is quoted approvingly in the preface of Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton's book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967; https://mygaryislike.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/Black-power-kwame-ture-and-charles-hamilton.pdf).

W. E. B. Du Bois (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois) was a sociologist, Pan-Africanist and civil rights activist who fought against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. He believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, supported socialist causes throughout his life, and thought that Communism had the solutions to racism. He opposed Marcus Garvey’s racial separatism, while Garvey denounced Du Bois’ efforts to achieve equality through integration. He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.) was a Christian minister who became the most visible spokesperson and leader of the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. His strategy was the advancement of civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience. He was America’s most famous advocate for integration. He was inspired by both his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he organized the Selma to Montgomery marches. Before King’s assassination he strongly organized against poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.

Malcolm X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X;https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/malcolm-x) was an American Nation of Islam (and later) Muslim minister who advocated for Black supremacy, Black empowerment, and the separation of Black and White Americans. He publicly criticized the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on nonviolence and racial integration, advocating instead that Black people should defend themselves from Whites by force of arms. Malcolm X “made clear the price that White America would have to pay if it did not accede to Black America's legitimate demands.” He is largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the Black community in the United States. The Black Power movement traces its roots to Malcolm X. Malcolm X taught that Blacks were the world’s original inhabitants, that Whites are a race of devils created by an evil scientist, that Blacks are superior to Whites, and that the demise of the White race is imminent. He advocated the complete separation of Blacks from Whites, and the establishment of a separate country for African Americans in the southern/southwestern United States as an interim measure, until African Americans could return to Africa. Malcolm X declared that the U.S. government owed reparations to Black people for the unpaid labor of their slave ancestors. He was assassinated on February 21, 1965 by three members of his former denomination the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X laid a foundation stone for the Black Power movement when he stated that the entire political system was responsible for Black citizens’ ongoing economic exploitation and political repression. In his “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech (April 1964; https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/Blackspeech/mx.html), Malcolm X stated that the federal government had failed Black citizens. In a veiled warning to government officials, Malcolm X suggested that, if Blacks didn’t receive the political representation they deserved, they would take up arms to defend their rights.

In an article ‘Zionist Logic’ (September 17, 1974; www.globalresearch.ca/zionist-logic-malcolm-x-on-zionism/12385) Malcolm X declared, “The number one weapon of 20th century imperialism is zionist dollarism, and one of the main bases for this weapon is Zionist Israel. The ever-scheming European imperialists wisely placed Israel where she could geographically divide the Arab world, infiltrate and sow the seed of dissension among African leaders and also divide the Africans against the Asians.”

Trinidadian Stokely Carmichael (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokely_Carmichael) was a Black activist and advocate for violent revolutionary change in America. 

Stokely Carmichael’s legacy has strongly influenced the present Black Lives Matter and related movements. Quotes from his speeches are presented below, revealing some significant ideological links.

According to FBI files (https://vault.fbi.gov/Stokely%20Carmichael), Carmichael said in a February 5, 1966 interview to The Independent in San Rafael, California:

“Our country does not run on reason; it is run on violence. That’s the reality of how things are done here. It is to my benefit to get the Negro out on the streets to stop the machine which is keeping me from my rights. Whether they do it by marching or singing or dancing or fighting is irrelevant . . . Being non-violent is a personal thing; I might be non-violent but I wouldn’t try to push that on to people I am trying to organize. If the people were out there, ready to fight for their rights, I certainly wouldn’t say that they should all be very nice and not hurt anybody. I’d tell them to get what they deserve . . . This nonviolence bit is just a philanthropic hang-up. I don’t see why people keep thinking about that. The violence is inevitable. I don’t try to stop the fight. I try to prepare the people I am organizing so that when the fight comes they will be able to win it.”

“To fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones. That's the real question that faces us today . . . This country is a nation of thieves. It has stole everything it has, beginning with Black people . . . This country cannot justify any longer its existence . . . It seems to me the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist and that they're built upon racism” (UC Berkeley  October 29, 1966; https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/Blackspeech/scarmichael.h).

“A ‘non-violent’ approach to civil rights is an approach Black people cannot afford and a luxury White people do not deserve” (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation; Ture, Kwame; Hamilton, Charles, 1967; Random House. p. 53).

Carmichael stated that Blacks’ self-defense from White violence was both legitimate and ethical. At UC Berkeley in November 1966, he compared U.S. law enforcement to the German Gestapo under Hitler, asserting, “Because this is not 1942. And if you play like Nazis, we’re playing back with you this time around. Get hip to that” (www.crmvet.org/info/stokley.htm).

In a Garfield, Seattle speech on April 16, 1967, Carmichael sharpened Malcolm X’s definition of Black Power: “Black Power is the coming together of Black people to fight for their liberation by any means necessary. Now we want to talk about violence. Because I understand now that some of your so-called Negro leaders have been saying that we violent. I won't deny it. Yeah, I'm violent. Somebody touch me, I'll break their arm. But the problem isn't one of violence, see. The problem is one of hitting back White people when they hit you. That's the real problem 'cause we've never done that all our lives. They've been able to walk over us, bomb our churches, beat us up, shoot into our houses, lynch us, and do everything they wanted to do and we would just sit there and whisper about it behind closed doors. It's a new day today! It's a new day today!” (https://aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_carmichael01.html).

In 1967 Carmichael revealed that SNCC’s founders had chosen the acronym SNCC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_Nonviolent_Coordinating_Committee) with subterfuge: “We used the name ‘nonviolent’ because at that time Martin Luther King was the central figure of the Black struggle and he was still preaching nonviolence, and anyone who talked about violence at that time was considered treasonable . . . so we decided that we would use the name nonviolent, but in the meantime we knew our struggle was not about to be nonviolent, but we would just wait until the time was right” (“We Must Destroy the Capitalistic System Which Enslaves Us: Stokely Carmichael Advocates Black Revolution”; https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6461/).

Dr. King was critical of Carmichael, stating in an August 1967 speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Convention: “Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout ‘White Power!’ – when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’ – but everybody will talk about God's power and human power” (August 16, 1967; Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention). He added that the label ‘Black Power’ “connotes Black supremacy and an anti-White feeling that does not or should not prevail.”

NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins also drew a clear line: the Black Power movement was “a reverse Hitler, a reverse Ku Klux Klan”  (The NAACP, Black Power, and the African American Freedom Struggle, 1966–1969; Simon Hall; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-6563.2007.00174.x). The slogan ‘Black Power’ was “the father of hate and the mother of violence,” and Wilkins predicted that Black power would eventually mean ‘Black death’ (Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America; James Oliver Horton and Louise E. Horton, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

After Dr. King (America’s prime advocate of non-violent protest) was assassinated, Carmichael announced to Black Americans, “Go home and get your guns. When the White man comes, he is coming to kill you.” In the wake of King’s assassination, 168 U.S. cities and towns experienced rioting, looting, arson and sniper attacks. There were 2,600 fires and 21,270 injuries. Arsonists in  Washington D.C. set 711 fires, including some just blocks from the White House.

Carmichael told a 1966 Cleveland audience “When you talk about Black Power, you are talking about bringing this country to its knees. When you talk of Black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created” (In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s; Clayborne Carson; 1981; pp. 206, 221; www.davidgarrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/DJG2015RAHStokely.pdf).

In April 1996, Carmichael said: “We want to economically destroy capitalism because capitalism goes hand in hand with racism and exploitation” (https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6461/ ).

Carmichael had a warm relationship with Louis Farrakhan (www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1998-11-16-3225176-story.html) and his Nation of Islam (www.c-span.org/video/?c4718374/user-clip-snccnation-islam-jewish-proble).

Over the years Carmichael said many times that “the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist” (Stokely Speaks: Black Power back to Pan-Africanism; 1971).

Since Stokely Carmichael exerted a strong influence on the Black Power movement and on the Black Lives Matter movement, it is not surprising that “a growing number of scholars conceive of the civil rights and Black power movements as one interconnected Black Freedom Movement” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Power).

Carmichael died November 15, 1998 at the age of 57, mourned by many African American leaders, including Louis Farrakhan, Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson. Jackson eulogized, “He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He rang the freedom bell in this century” (www.caribbeanlifenews.com/prime-minister-of-the-Black-panther-party/).

On a personal note: I was raised by Yiddish-speaking communist parents who were Stalinists. As an 8 year old boy, my heroes were the Freedom Riders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders#:~:text=Freedom%20Riders%20were%20civil%20rights,ruled%20that%20segregated%20public%20buses) and I wanted passionately to head down South in order to march and work with them in 1961. Brother Stokely was a personal hero, and when he came to McGill University, Montreal for the Congress of Black Writers in October 1968, I was there in the front row listening to every word he said. I spoke with him after his speech, asking for advice as to what a Jewish kid could do to lend a hand. His response was curt and rude: “We don’t need or want your help.” Carmichael had already made his decision at SNCC during the Atlanta Project to take a Black separatist approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokely_Carmichael#Chair_of_SNCC_and_Black_Power). White kids – Jewish or otherwise – were not needed on the other side of the color line.

The original Black Panther

In 1966 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale established what is today known as the Black Panther Party (BPP). Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver soon joined the leadership. “These Black Power activists - like their contemporary Black Lives Matter activists - identified racism as a structural issue. They viewed it as part of spectrum of social, political and economic inequality that made America less of a democracy . . . The movement's panoramic critique of institutional racism anticipated the Black Lives Matter protests” (Black Professor Peniel E. Joseph; www.reuters.com/article/us-social-race-Blackpower-commentary-idUSKCN0Z7329).

The Black Panthers did not discount the use of violence, but embraced Malcolm X's philosophy of self-defense “by any means necessary.”  The Panthers made use of their constitutional right to carry arms in order to shadow and patrol the local Oakland Police Department – “patrolling the pigs” was their term. They taught from a Marxist perspective that “the economic and political roots of racism were in the exploitative capitalist system and that the Black struggle must be a revolutionary movement to overthrow the entire power structure” (www.socialistalternative.org/panther-Black-rebellion/the-Black-panther-party-for-self-defense/). The revolutionary book that most influenced Panther leaders was Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.

In light of this revolutionary goal of overthrowing the entire capitalist power structure, here is a quote from well-known Houston rapper Trae Tha Truth (a longtime friend of George Floyd) at a recent march in memory of Floyd: “We’re gonna represent him right . . . We are gonna tear the system from the inside out . . . George Floyd is looking down at us now and he’s smiling” (www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests-houston/george-floyd-a-gentle-giant-remembered-in-hometown-houston-march-idUSKBN2392ZK).

The Panthers campaigned for prison reform, held voter registration drives, organized free food programs and school breakfast programs in several cities, opened free health clinics in a dozen cities and created Freedom Schools in nine cities.

Huey Newton explains: “Malcolm (X), implacable to the ultimate degree, held out to the Black masses . . . liberation from the chains of the oppressor . . . Only with the gun were the Black masses denied this victory. But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun, they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality.” The Panther appeal to Black youth was directly connected to its willingness to challenge police power by asserting the right of armed self-defense for Blacks (https://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/essaysministerdefense.pdf).

Cleaver spoke of the Marxist goals of the Panthers, which involved transforming the government into a Marxist state: “We had a strong economic place in our program … we were also Marxist in our orientation, which is like totally economics… we understood the relationship to our freedom and our access to our economic remuneration victory in those terms would have meant that we would have been able to have a group of people who could get control of the government and administer it . . . We never dreamed that we would be able to overthrow the American government. We didn't see that as our task. We saw that as the task of the survivors. Our job was to tear down the status quo and leave it to other people on how to rebuild because it was not possible to seize control of the government and install our people” (PBS interview with Eldridge Cleaver, Spring 1997; www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/ecleaver.html).  This goal of social destruction finds expression in a way similar to how the devil speaks, “All that exists deserves to perish” (quoted from Goethe’s Faust in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,’ Karl Marx, 1852).

Saul Alinsky, radical community organizer and activist famous for his influential relationship with Hillary Clinton, agrees with this Panther paradigm in his ‘Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals’ (page 10; https://chisineu.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/saul-alinsky-rules-for-radicals-1989.pdf):

In May 1969, three members of the New Haven BPP tortured and murdered Alex Rackley, a Black 19-year-old New York chapter member, because they suspected him of being a police informant. Popular support for BPP in the Oakland area waned after reports of the group's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion of Oakland merchants. An investigative journalist-filmmaker says regarding the Panthers that “among their own senior ranks were pathological killers, ideological madmen and depraved opportunists” (www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/18/Black-powers-coolest-radicals-Black-panthers-vanguard-of-the-revolution-stanley-nelson-interview).

Accolades from leftist academia include the following: “The Panthers have left us with an invaluable experience. Their dedication, will and bravery in the face of what might have appeared as insurmountable odds is an example which any serious Black activist or revolutionary should be proud to follow. They were the highpoint of the civil rights movement” (www.socialistalternative.org/panther-Black-rebellion/the-Black-panther-party-for-self-defense/). In Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist (2202), Professor Judson L. Jeffries of Purdue University calls the Panthers “the most effective Black revolutionary organization in the 20th century.” Bloom and Martin posit that the Panthers were “the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism” (Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party; 2013; Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin).

‘Change we can believe in’?

The accession of a Black man, Barak Obama, to the highest office in the land in 2008 struck many as the final nail in the coffin of racism. Was it not now time to celebrate the collapse of all racial ‘glass ceilings’? Surely a new wave of believable change had crashed on the shores of ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave”? (www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/obama-Black-lives-matter-epilogue-170126073428660.html)

Yet within a brief time indeed, it became clear that President Obama did not support the view that a post-racist society had triumphed. “Throughout his tenure in office, Obama used the power of his position to resonate and legitimize positions on race that until then had been relegated to the leftist margins of American politics. Obama cultivated the view that far from being a post-racial society, America is inherently racist and that American racism is structural – that is, it was baked in and impossible to overcome. In so doing, Obama gave credence to the false claim at the heart of the riots: that Black Americans are under continuous, existential threat from the state as a whole and from law enforcement bodies first and foremost. Calls by Hollywood celebrities and Obama administration alumni to defund the police take this view to its logical endpoint” (https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-great-threat-to-america-and-to-american-jewry/).

The criticisms made by Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers against America – that it is endemically and systemically poisoned by racism – had now found a sympathetic resonance in the Oval Office. Eldridge Cleaver had once spoken wistfully of the dream of having ‘his people’ in the government who could carry out the aspirations and goals of the Black Power movement. Would Obama’s rule turn out to be the fulfilment of Eldridge’s dream?

Black Lives Matter

It was Black Power’s “panoramic critique of institutional racism [that] anticipated the Black Lives Matter protests” (“Commentary: ‘Black and proud:’ From Black Power to Black Lives Matter”; Dr. Peniel E. Joseph; June 22, 2016; www.reuters.com/article/us-social-race-Blackpower-commentary-idUSKCN0Z7329; www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/02/01/Black-lives-matter-Black-power-movement/78991894/); see also https://Blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/; https://Blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/).

In an article called “Why Black Lives Matter Still Matters” (April 6, 2017; https://newrepublic.com/article/141700/Black-lives-matter-still-matters-new-form-civil-rights-activism) Dr. Peniel Joseph outlines the origins, philosophy and strategies of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The unique blend that is BLM allow for both non-violent protest and violent demonstration to be carried out under the one ‘big tent.’ This blending of strategic positions leads to a difficulty for even BLM followers to know clearly where their movement stands  (www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-mind-of-Black-lives-matter). Marxist revolutionary strategies can join in with social engineering activism in ways which are diametrically opposed to what is commonly known as the Judeo-Christian ethic. This can and will lead to open ‘lawfare’ against biblical values (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare). The recent mash of violent looting/arson/attacks on police (on the one hand) with other protests more on the non-violent side (on the other hand) may well be a harbinger of things to come.

Specifically regarding defunding and closing down of police forces, it is instructive to read the words of Angela Davis (former Panther spokeswoman) regarding BLM’s strategies here:

Blacks Lives and Jewish matters

On August 2, 2016 ‘A Vision for Black Lives’ was released August 2, 2016 by The Movement for Black Lives, an umbrella group of more than 50 organizations, including the Black Lives Matter Network, the Black Liberation Collective, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. In the ‘Invest/Divest’ section of “A Vision for Black Lives,” classic anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist declarations were made. Since then the pertinent paragraphs on Israel been scrubbed from official internet websites, though they are still found in many secondary locations. The ‘A Vision for Black Lives’ platform statement includes a link to a website promoting the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel (BDS):

“The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people . . .  Israel is an apartheid state . . .  [BLM supporters should] build invest/divestment campaigns that ends US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex.” 

In recently distributed BLM flyers there are calls for boycott of Israel which have historical echoes of Nazi times (www.juf.org/news/local.aspx?id=441953; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_boycott_of_Jewish_businesses).

The ‘Invest/Divest’ section of “A Vision for Black Lives,” was co-authored by Ben Ndugga-Kabuye and Rachel Gilmer. Rachel has an African-American father and a Jewish mother. A former member of Zionist youth group Young Judaea, She no longer identifies as Jewish and is an anti-Israel activist. She is the chief of strategy for Dream Defenders, a black community organizing group based in Florida. (www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Black-Lives-Matter-author-defends-genocide-accusation-toward-Israel-463709).

Dream Defenders released an August 12 statement accusing pro-Israel critics of the new ‘Invest/Divest’ plank of the platform of being “wolves in sheep’s clothing” for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement only as long as it supports Israel. It asserted that Israel committed genocide during its 1948 War of Independence. Fighting Israeli “apartheid,” the statement said, is inseparable from fighting racism in America. It called on its allies to join the BDS campaign:

Jewish Voice for Peace (www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/jewish_voice_for_peace_jvp_/) is a leftist advocacy group which supports boycott, divesting and sanctions against Israel. On August 5, 2016 JVP released a statement unconditionally supporting the newly released platform of the Black Lives Matter movement: JVP “endorses the Movement for Black Lives platform in its entirety, without reservation.” Regarding the genocide accusation, JVP responded that “it is not our role to police the language of the ‘Vision for Black Lives’” (www.jta.org/2016/08/05/united-states/jewish-pro-bds-group-unconditionally-endorses-black-lives-matter-platform).

A long and winding road

If you are interested in understanding in greater detail how anti-Semitic and anti-Israel positions have infiltrated the Black Power and Black Lives Matter movements, here are four instructive articles:

Cultivating anti-Semitism

If you are interested in understanding in greater detail how Palestinian terror groups have cultivated Black movements with one of their goals being the release of anti-Israel statements and declarations, here are four instructive articles:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. threw a spotlight on the underlying motives of these attitudes and statements when he noted, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism” (“The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews and Israel”; Seymour Martin Lipset; Encounter Magazine, December 1969; https://martinkramer.org/sandbox/2012/03/in-the-words-of-martin-luther-king/; https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/words_of_martin_luther_king.pdf).

Black opposition to the BLM declaration

Here are two articles revealing opposition within the African American community to anti-Semitic statements coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement:

Other opposition to the BLM declaration

Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, a scholar of United States constitutional law and criminal law and a noted civil libertarian. His response to anti-Semitism within BLM minces no words:

Earl Bowen Jr., PhD, an African American associate rabbi at Congregation Temple Beth El in Philadelphia, states clearly: “BLM statements are anti-Semitic not only because they are false and modern versions of tradition anti-Semitic blood libel, but also because BLM selectively chooses the Jewish state out of all the states in the world to demonize” (www.meforum.org/7303/black-lives-matter-promoting-anti-semitism).

Gary Gambill presents a history-based warning for us and for BLM as to how the Boycott movement against Israel (BDS) ends up imploding just about every movement it touches (“Black Lives Matter's Anti-Semitic Bedfellows:; Gary C. Gambill; https://nationalinterest.org/feature/black-lives-matters-anti-semitic-bedfellows-17701).

Co-opting George Floyd for Palestinian terror

Russian communists came up with an important phrase – ‘agitprop’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agitprop). This term refers to political propaganda when spread to the general public through popular media. George Floyd has recently become the theme of street murals worldwide (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/jun/05/george-floyd-murals-worldwide-street-artists).

Palestinian anti-Israel propaganda has specifically co-opted the murder of George Floyd and turned it into agitprop against the Jewish state of Israel. Huge murals of Floyd surrounded by PLO-associated flags and keffiyeh headdress (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keffiyeh; www.arabamerica.com/may-11-world-keffiyeh-day/) with a backdrop of Israel’s anti-terror wall/fences (https://mfa.gov.il/MFA_Graphics/MFA%20Gallery/Documents/savinglives.pdf), have been hitting the internet in recent days:

Mark Ayash, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Peace Studies Initiative at Mount Royal University, Calgary, ties these propaganda efforts all together:

An encouraging response to these false narratives is found in the work of African American Joshua Washington and his Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (www.ibsi-now.org/; https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-palestinian-appropriation-of-black-pain/; www.youtube.com/watch?v=BglGY5cYMEA&feature=youtu.be).

Never let a good crisis go to waste

Sir Winston Churchill, UK Prime Minister during WWII, said “Never let a good crisis go to waste” towards the end of World War II as he considered the prospective alliance between the UK, the U.S.S.R, and the USA (which led to the formation of the U.N.). The quote was later adopted by Saul Alinsky in his 1971 book ‘Rules for Radicals.’  Rahm Emanuel, former advisor to President Obama and later Mayor of Chicago, modified and re-used the same quote. The quote is meant to encourage activists who have political strategies to always be on the lookout for helpful breakthroughs.

The Black Power movement and its offspring Black Lives Matter have a multifaceted agenda. A lot of people are not aware of some of these facets. People for the most part are also not tracking about how the agendas of leftist anarchists (who crashed the latest round of protests) can derail an entire group by moving them solidly onto the violent side of the street.

Some of BLM’s goals (if carried out) would lead to tragically destructive fallout for America. Yet at the same time, some of BLM’s grievances are all too real.

The solutions to real problems are not to be found in failed Marxist revolutionary methods – disastrous strategies including the crippling of government police forces and the forced redistribution of wealth. Another point: the cultic and threatening demands to Whites ‘to kneel before Blacks or be considered the enemy’ are spiritually bogus and have the potential to catalyze socio-racial conflict on a much greater scale.  A lot of ‘politically correct’ propaganda is circulating using fuzzy yet dogmatic buzzwords like ‘white privilege,’ ‘white fragility,’ ‘systematic police brutality’ and ‘American systematic racism.’ Many of these claims are overstated and under-substantiated. These are false narratives intended to paralyze Americans and to weaken productive discussion. America’s talking points at this time of crisis should not be those established and guided by the ghosts of Malcolm X, Brother Stokely and the Panthers.

For those who love America and what it could yet be in the sight of God, it’s time to take the knee – in prayer.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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