“…Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen for Myself to put My Name.” (Yahweh speaking, 1 Kings 11: 36)
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The Promised Land is not the Subject of a Political Debate—It’s a Faith Thing
Rogel Alpher published a piece titled “Minister Naftali Bennett, You Are Killing Zionism” that sheds light on the discussion in Israel today:
Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett accuses me of undermining “the foundations of the Zionist enterprise,” and of “blatant subversion of the foundations of our existence here and the future of the Jewish people” (Haaretz July 12). From here it is a very short road to marking me as an enemy of the people. The phrase “blatant subversion of the foundations of our existence here and the future of the Jewish people” smacks of treason. Bennett is one of the government’s senior ministers and also a member of the security cabinet. If he saw fit to publish an article under his name accusing a journalist of treason, one might be permitted to fear that it would follow naturally for Bennett to try to shut that journalist up by restricting his freedom of expression. That would obviously follow, even necessarily follow, in order to protect “the foundations of our existence here” and “the future of the Jewish people.”
Naftali, you are killing Zionism. You killed the Jewish state. You and your settlements. You and your occupation. You and your apartheid. I am choking on the broth you cooked. You established a violent binational state in Israel, awash in terror, radical nationalism and fundamentalist religion. You are blatantly subverting the foundations of all of our existence here, Jews and Palestinians. You have left me no choice but to declare that I feel a sense of shared fate with the Palestinians in Israel and the territories. Because I am a democrat. And I believe in universal morality. I am not a fascist like you.
You claim that “The State of Israel is the state of the Jewish people…the nation is the starting point and securing its future is the goal and the means.” The continued control over millions of Palestinians without basic human rights in Judea and Samaria is not Zionism, Naftali. You are dispossessing them and excluding them, but they exist. They live there. That is their state too. And they are not Jews. And they are not Zionists. And your insistence on continuing to rule them has turned Israel into a state that is not Jewish and not democratic.
Naftali, because of you we are living in a binational state. That is the reality. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s declaration that “a Jewish state has been established in the Land of Israel, which is the State of Israel,” is no longer relevant, I’m sorry to say. And therefore it is unacceptable to claim that Israel is the home of a Jewish baby born as an American citizen in Minneapolis as these lines are being written any more than it is the home of a Palestinian baby born at that same moment as a citizen of Israel in the town of Sakhnin. That is racism.
Alpher is a leftist Israeli journalist. He represents the minority, but it’s not a small group. Naftali Bennett is an Israeli government official. In Israel, he’s seen as a far right politician. Their views on the Promised Land remind me of the discussion about the Promised Land in Numbers 13:
25 When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, 26 they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 Thus they told him, and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.” 32 So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. 33 There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
Cutting to the chase, Israel isn’t an ordinary country. It’s the only nation in the world about which Yahweh made specific promises. He even set its boundaries.
See “Promised Land Boundaries.
Those “settlements” that Alpher mentions are inside those boundaries. They are not examples of “occupation” according to the contemporary definition of that word. Those “settlements” are examples of faith in Yahweh.
Like the spies in Numbers 13, Alpher is long on hyperbole and short on faith. Naftali Bennett is a modern-day Caleb.
Bottom line: this isn’t a political issue. It’s a faith issue. Either you have it or you don’t. Alpher doesn’t have it. Bennett does.
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His Name is Yahweh, the website, is a companion of the book His Name is Yahweh.
To see videos that explain the importance of God’s Name, click here.
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SnyderTalk Comment: Hillary Clinton is in bed with Islamists.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
