The Rise and Fall of the Holy Roller Empire
Fundamentalist Christians are in control of the White House,
and U.S. foreign policy. God help us all!
From the U.S. Dept. of Energy - Energy Information Administration (EIA) web page
Country Analysis Brief - Israel
Although Israel does not produce significant amounts of energy, it is located strategically for regional energy transit and also is an important variable in the Middle East security situation.
As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting
New York Times; March 9, 2002.
By MICHAEL MASSING
Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.
Such startling propositions - the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 years - have gained wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis. But there has been no attempt to disseminate these ideas or to discuss them with the laity - until now.
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the United States, has just issued a new Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60 years. Called "Etz Hayim" ("Tree of Life" in Hebrew), it offers an interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archaeology, philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a human rather than divine document.
"When I grew up in Brooklyn, congregants were not sophisticated about anything," said Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" and a co-editor of the new book. "Today, they are very sophisticated and well read about psychology, literature and history, but they are locked in a childish version of the Bible."
"Etz Hayim," compiled by David Lieber of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, seeks to change that. It offers the standard Hebrew text, a parallel English translation (edited by Chaim Potok, best known as the author of "The Chosen"), a page-by-page exegesis, periodic commentaries on Jewish practice and, at the end, 41 essays by prominent rabbis and scholars on topics ranging from the Torah scroll and dietary laws to ecology and eschatology.
These essays, perused during uninspired sermons or Torah readings at Sabbath services, will no doubt surprise many congregants. For instance, an essay on Ancient Near Eastern Mythology," by Robert Wexler, president of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, states that on the basis of modern scholarship, it seems unlikely that the story of Genesis originated in Palestine. More likely, Mr. Wexler says, it arose in Mesopotamia, the influence of which is most apparent in the story of the Flood, which probably grew out of the periodic overflowing of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The story of Noah, Mr. Wexler adds, was probably borrowed from the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh.
Equally striking for many readers will be the essay "Biblical Archaeology," by Lee I. Levine, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "There is no reference in Egyptian sources to Israel's sojourn in that country," he writes, "and the evidence that does exist is negligible and indirect." The few indirect pieces of evidence, like the use of Egyptian names, he adds, "are far from adequate to corroborate the historicity of the biblical account."
Similarly ambiguous, Mr. Levine writes, is the evidence of the conquest and settlement of Canaan, the ancient name for the area including Israel. Excavations showing that Jericho was unwalled and uninhabited, he says, "clearly seem to contradict the violent and complete conquest portrayed in the Book of Joshua." What's more, he says, there is an "almost total absence of archaeological evidence" backing up the Bible's grand descriptions of the Jerusalem of David and Solomon.
The notion that the Bible is not literally true "is more or less settled and understood among most Conservative rabbis," observed David Wolpe, a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a contributor to "Etz Hayim." But some congregants, he said, "may not like the stark airing of it." Last Passover, in a sermon to 2,200 congregants at his synagogue, Rabbi Wolpe frankly said that "virtually every modern archaeologist" agrees "that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way that it happened, if it happened at all." The rabbi offered what he called a "litany of disillusion" about the narrative, including contradictions, improbabilities, chronological lapses and the absence of corroborating evidence. In fact, he said, archaeologists digging in the Sinai have "found no trace of the tribes of Israel - not one shard of pottery."
Iraq War Was about Israel, Bush Insider Suggests
Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service (IPS)
WASHINGTON, Mar 29 (IPS) - Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.
IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001--the 9/11 commission--in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about the unstated threat during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.
He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990--it's the threat against Israel", Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell", said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the war on terrorism it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of three to four billion dollars.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.
Known in intelligence circles as Piffy-ab, the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.
The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as code word that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned phone calls or email messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.
Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001.
In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganising and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritising its work.
Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official--Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the Muslim Middle East.
Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Centre of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of scarce hard currency to harness communications against electromagnetic pulse, a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange--they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis, according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
Play out those scenarios, he told his audience, and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it.
Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'Gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel'? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant.
To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration.
Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component, said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. But this is a very good piece of evidence of that.
Others say the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.
They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it, said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat, he said.
Still, Brown says Zelikow's words carried weight.
Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made, Brown said.
Evangelist Pat Robertson warns Bush over Jerusalem
Oct. 6, 2004
Israel is alone in recognising Jerusalem as its capital
American evangelist Pat Robertson has warned President George Bush that he will risk losing the support of evangelical Christians if he changes his support for Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.
During a visit to Jerusalem, Robertson has spoken repeatedly in favour of Israel and lambasted Arab countries, warning that the establishment of a Palestinian state would threaten Israel's survival and interfere with "God's plan".
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed the section of the city as part of its capital. Palestinians want east Jerusalem for the capital of a future state. The holy city is revered by Muslims, Jews and Christians.
Most nations, including the United States, never recognised Israel's annexation of east Jerusalem and keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.
Overwhelming support
Evangelical Christians - estimated at tens of millions of Americans - overwhelmingly support Bush for his pro-Israel policies, Robertson told a Jerusalem news conference on Monday. "But if he touches Jerusalem and he really gets serious about taking east Jerusalem and making it the capital of a Palestinian state, he'll lose virtually all evangelical support," Robertson said. "I think this is the key issue."
Bush had promised in his election campaign in 2000 to move the US embassy to Jerusalem as a sign of US backing for Israel's hold on the city.
But he later thwarted congressional action to move the embassy, reflecting official US policy that the fate of the city should be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians.
God's plan
Robertson said Israel should not have to give up land for a Palestinian state but Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt should take in the 3.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The fiercely anti-Islamic Robertson accused Islam of wanting to destroy Israel.
"I see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel and take the land from the Jews and give East Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. I see that a Satan's plan to prevent the return of Jesus Christ, the Lord," said the evangelical broadcaster.
The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network unabashedly said he favoured Israel over the Palestinians, saying: "It isn't a question of politics, it's just a question of God's plan."
Jews and Christians have a common heritage and a different God than the Muslims, Robertson said.
The Virginia-based reverend is visiting Israel as a guest of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.
More than 4000 evangelical Christian pilgrims are touring Israel during Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, a Jewish holiday some Christians also celebrate.
Exclusivist doctrine
Evangelical fundamentalist Christians in the US, who number as many as 50 million, follow the doctrine of dispensationalism which stipulates that the creation of Israel in Palestine in 1948 was a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and presages the second coming of Christ.
"But if he touches Jerusalem and he really gets serious about taking east Jerusalem and making it the capital of a Palestinian state, he'll lose virtually all evangelical support"
Some evangelist leaders have enthusiastically supported Israel's wanton atrocities against the Palestinians, such as the 1982 Sabra and Shatila refugee camp slaughter as well as the Jenin Refugee Camp massacre in the Spring of 2002 on the grounds that such events ushered the near second coming of Jesus.
Evangelical doctrine also teaches that a universal apocalyptic war between good and evil, called Armageddon, will take place in Palestine in which most Jews will be annihilated except some 40,000 who would accept Jesus and become Christians.
The Evangelicals are considered Israel's most fanatical supporters in the West, especially in the United States where they hold a swaying influence on the Republican party and could decide the outcome of the current presidential election campaign.
Their beliefs are bonkers, but
they are at the heart of power The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters:
homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to
process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be
repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax
should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus
fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000
miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and
near fist fights" began.
I don't know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered
down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted
stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that
Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that
Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to
see that the extremists didn't prevail then.
But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state
which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The
explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty
in taking it seriously.
In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an
extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled
together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to
be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions
have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel.
The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most
of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now
occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the
antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a
final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert
to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.
What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before
the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they
believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an
event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of
God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and
religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during
the seven years of Tribulation which follow.
The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means
staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were
deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements
in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and
seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United
Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out
to be.
The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their
efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi
Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. The
Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because
it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the
Beast.
By clicking on www.raptureready.com, you can discover
how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us
should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point
below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating
nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the
maximum five points (the EU is debat ing its constitution, there was a freak
hurricane in the south Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its
leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate
decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the antichrist (both
of which score only two).
We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their
beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe
that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to
these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of
Republicans. The best-selling contemporary books in the US are the 12 volumes of
the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a
"fictionalised" account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from
the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the
rest of us. The people who believe all this don't believe it just a little; for
them it is a matter of life eternal and death.
And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft,
the attorney general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and
the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the
marvellously named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance
reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that "there is no
middle ground, no moderate position worth taking".
So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the
current president's core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is
actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of
Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels "which
are bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the third part
of men". They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support
for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin
in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and
never mentioned the matter again.
The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments
stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East
is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the
polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic
matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration
there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other
words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he
stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He
would also be mad not to.
� George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New
World Order is now published in paperback
US Christian fundamentalists are driving
Bush's Middle East policy
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20, 2004
The Guardian
To understand what is happening in the
Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand
what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's
Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the
decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.
and show their support for Bush and Jesus:
Those morons are bubbling over the with the love of Jesus.
"Today Christians ... stand at the head of Germany ... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years." - Adolph Hitler - The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.
" "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people." -Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933
"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'. - Jerry Falwell, 9/13/01, appearing with Pat Robertson, explaining the reasons for the attacks on 9/11.
Onward, Christian Soldiers 2003
Louise Witt, Salon, January 3, 2003
One can't blame Jerry Falwell for feeling invincible these days. Religious conservatives fasted and prayed that antiabortion candidates would win in November; Falwell believes their prayers were answered when the Republicans won control of the 108th Congress.
Christian conservatives believe they tipped the close Senate elections to the GOP in Georgia, Minnesota and Missouri (though they lost a heated run-off in Louisiana). And Falwell gives much of the credit to fierce campaigning by President Bush, himself a born-again Christian, in the final days before the election. "His work brought out the religious conservative vote, which elected the people we want to have in office," Falwell says. "No one in the world would deny that the religious conservatives certainly played a major role in regaining Republican control of the Senate. It's encouraging to think that if we get people out, we can make a difference every time, just like in the election of Ronald Reagan."
Former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats may blame voters' preoccupation with terrorism and the impending war with Iraq for their party's midterm loss, but the Christian fundamentalists weren't distracted. With messianic zeal, they focused on a plan to control the nation's political agenda by securing the Senate. Many give credit to political strategist Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition who is now chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Now, as the 108th Congress readies to begin its work, it's clear that the religious right will press the most conservative agenda in recent American history -- and it's clear, too, that Falwell and other conservatives have faith they will achieve their goals.
The agenda is so controversial that it has created deep divisions even in Bush's White House. Though such internal dissent is usually hidden, it flared into the open late last year when John DiIulio, a top policy adviser who departed in frustration, ripped the influence of the religious right on Bush. Thus far, however, the president has done little to discourage the troops of the religious right from their radical mission to make the government and judiciary agents for the moral cleansing of America. In their vision, churches would be given government funds to carry out social services. Prayer would be allowed -- and encouraged -- in public schools. Israel would be backed virtually without question in its conflict with the Palestinians because that would fulfill a prophecy portending the second coming of Christ. Foreign countries would have to pass a moral litmus test to receive U.S. aid.
The American "Christian Right" is firmly entrenched in the White House and the Pentagon. They have succeeded in creating hell on Earth by shaping world events to conform to their distorted and erroneous beliefs about the Bible, bringing about a self-fulfilling prophecy of Armegeddon
The conflict in the Middle East, and the "War on Terrorism", have their roots in British religious fanaticism. There would be no modern state of Israel if not for the "British Israel theory", a belief that the British, Americans and several other European nations are the lost 10 Tribes of Israel. British Israel theory is based on so-called "Bible prophecies" concerning Israel in "the last days", after which Jesus Christ is supposed to return to earth in a murderous, vengeful rage in the battle of Armageddon, rewarding his true believers, while punishing "evildoers".
The British Literalists--strong among the Anglican Evangelicals and in various Nonconformist churches--were not about to abandon their hopes of converting Jews and sending them to Palestine to meet their Messiah, especially not around 1840, when the current British policy of offering protection to Jews living in Palestine raised great expectations among the the premillennialists. Indeed, Literalist influence was unofficially helping to shape that policy. An ardent Literalist, Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury), was stepson- in-law and confidant of Lord Palmerston, the British foreign secretary. Ashley had private hopes of bringing about, through British action, the restoration of Israel to Palestine in preparation for the Second Advent. In 1840 he prodded Palmerston, by adducing political reasons, into seeking international backing for Jewish migration to Palestine, while he confided to his diary his own very different motives, which were distinctly religious:
Dined with Palmerston. After dinner left alone with him. Propounded my scheme, which seemed to strike his fancy . . . . Palmerston has already been chosen by God to be an instrument of good to His ancient people; to do homage, as it were, to their inheritance, and to recognise their rights without believing their destiny . . . . I am forced to argue politically, financially, commercially; these considerations strike him home; he weeps not like his Master over Jerusalem, nor prays that now, at last, she may put on her beautiful garments.[1]
Ashley's influence was likewise behind the establishment of a consulate in Jerusalem in 1838, also the creating of an Anglican bishopric there in 1841 and the appointment to it of a Jewish Christian bishop. On October 16, 1841, he wrote in his diary: "Where would the Sultan's permission [to build the bishop's church] have been without Palmerston's vigour in consequence of my repeated and earnest representations?"[2]
But Ashley's dream of a British-sponsored and treaty-protected Jewish migration to Palestine did not materialize. The four-power treaty of 1840 ignored the matter. Even the Jews themselves showed little interest; more than half a century passed before Zionism arose.
[p. 4] Nevertheless, 20th-century British policy in the Middle East owed something to the prophetic interpretation of the Literalists of the 1830s and 1840s.
As one recent writer has put it:
Lord Shaftesbury's adventure marks the point when events began leading logically toward the [Palestine] Mandate. . . .
Palmerston['s Middle Eastern policies] mark the beginning of official British intervention on behalf of the "Jewish nation" and of its resettlement in Palestine. . . .
Ashley had not labored in vain. . . . All these events centering in the Holy Land [including "the visionary prospects aroused by the Evangelical craze for conversion of the Jews and the Jerusalem bishopric"] combined to create almost a proprietary feeling about Palestine. The idea of a British annex there through the medium of a British-sponsored restoration of Israel began to appeal to other minds than Ashley's.[3]
[1] Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, Diary entries, quoted in Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, vol. 1, pp. 310, 311. Ashley was the one referred to, but not named (in London Times, Aug. 17, 1840, p. 3, col. 5), as the promoter of western-sponsored Jewish migration to Palestine.
[2] Hodder, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 377 (cf. pp. 370, 374). See also Harold Temperley, England and the Near East: The Crimea (1936), p. 443, note 275; Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword (1956, 1968), chap. 10.
[3] Tuchman, op. cit. (1968 ed.), pp. xi, 197, 208.
American "Christian" fundamentalist television evangelists and their followers are responsible for bringing the Middle East to the brink of Armageddon.
Centre for American and
Jewish Studies
Conference on Christian
Zionism
13-16th March
2002
1. Christian Zionism in the
Churches
We, the undersigned Christian spiritual leaders,
communicating weekly to more than 100 million Christian Americans, are proud to
join together in supporting the continued sovereignty of the State of Israel
over the holy city of Jerusalem. We support Israel�s efforts to reach
reconciliation with its Arab neighbors, but we believe
that Jerusalem or any portion of it shall not be negotiable in the peace
process. Jerusalem must remain undivided as the eternal capital of the Jewish
people. [1]
That quote formed part of a full page advert which appeared in the
New York Times in 1997 entitled, �Christians Call for a United
Jerusalem�. It was signed by 10 evangelical leaders including Pat Robertson,
chairman of Christian Broadcasting Network and president of the Christian
Coalition; Oral Roberts, founder and chancellor of Oral Roberts University;
Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority; Ed McAteer, President of the Religious Roundtable; and David
Allen Lewis, President of Christians United for Israel.
In October 2000, a month after Ariel
Sharon�s provocative visit to the Temple Mount torpedoing any deal between Barak and Arafat on the status of Jerusalem, a similar
advert appeared in the New York Times, this time sponsored by Jews for Jesus. It
was entitled �Open Letter to Evangelical Christians from Jews for Jesus.�
In it they called upon evangelicals to show support and solidarity with the
State of Israel.
Now is the time to stand with Israel. Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our hearts are heavy as we watch the images of
violence and bloodshed in the Middle East... Christian friends, "The gifts and
calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29). So must our support for the
survival of Israel in this dark hour be irrevocable. Now is the time for Christians to stand
by Israel. [2]
Why such unequivocal support by Christian leaders for the secular State of Israel? Mike Evans in his book, �Israel, America�s Key to Survival� explains.
Only one nation, Israel, stands between
... terrorist aggression and the complete decline of the United States as a
democratic world power... If Israel falls, the United States can no longer
remain a democracy. ...Arab money is being used to control and influence major
U.S. Corporations, making it economically more and more difficult for the United
States to stand against world terrorism. [3]
Some Christians see America as the great redeemer, her role in the world providentially and politically preordained. [4] The two nations of America and Israel are like Siamese twins, linked not only by common self interest but also by religious foundations. Together they are pitted against an evil world dominated by Communist and Islamic regimes antithetical to the values of America and Israel. [5] So, for example, in February 2002, in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network�s 700 Club, Pat Robertson was asked, "As for the Muslim immigrants, Pat, it makes you wonder, if they have such contempt for our foreign policy why they'd even want to live here?" Robertson replied,
"I have taken issue with our esteemed president in regard to his stand in saying Islam is a peaceful religion," he said. "It's just not. And the Quran makes it very clear, if you see an infidel, you are to kill him... The fact is that our immigration policies are now so skewed to the Middle East and away from Europe that we have introduced these people into our midst and undoubtedly there are terrorist cells all over... Islam is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then if need be, destroy." [6]
The theological perspective which Pat
Robertson, Mike Evans and Jerry Falwell espouse is
known as Christian Zionism. As the prodigy of Dispensationalism it probably
represents the most influential movement within the evangelical and Pentecostal
churches of North America today, directly impacting not only domestic politics
but also foreign policy and international diplomacy.
1. Christian Zionism
Defined
...any Christian who supports the Zionist
aim of the sovereign State of Israel, its army, government, education etc.; but
it can describe a Christian who claims to support the State of Israel for any
reason. [7]
Christian Zionism is born of the
conviction that God has a continuing exclusive relationship with, and covenantal
purpose for, the Jewish people apart from the Church and that the Jews have a
divine right to possess the land of Palestine. |As we shall see in our next
session, this is based on an ultra-literal reading of Scripture and the
conviction that Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel are being fulfilled
in the contemporary State of Israel.
For Christian Zionists, God�s promise to Abraham remains unconditional
and eternal.
To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates... The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God. (Genesis 15:18; 17:8).
[1]�Christians Call for a United Jerusalem� New York Times, 18 April 1997, www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/united.html
[2]�Open Letter to Evangelical Christians from Jews for Jesus: Now is the Time to Stand with Israel.� The New York Times, 23 October 2000.
[3]Mike Evans, Israel, America�s Key to Survival, (Plainfield, NJ: Haven Books, 1981), back page, p. xv.
[4]Michael Lienesch, Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, University of North Carolina, 1993), p. 197.
[5]Merrill Simon, Jerry Falwell and the Jews (Middle Village, New York, Jonathan David, 1984), pp. 63-64, 71-72.
[6]Ellis Henican, �Pat Robertson Is at It Again� New York Newsday.com February 24, 2002. http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/newyork/ny-nyhen242600311feb24.story . Based on an interview with Pat Robertson, the 700 Club, Thursday 21st February 2002.
[7]Walter Riggans, Israel and Zionism (London, Handsell, 1988), p. 19.
What Right Do Zionist Jews Have To Palestine?
11-9-3
From Jason Collett
What title-deeds do the Jews of today actually have to the land of 'Israel'? The idea that a people can possess some kind of ethnic ancestral right to a territory supposedly vacated by their forebears some millenia previously, implying a right in perpetuity, can have no legal basis. Or otherwise Americans of European ancestry, to name just one group of people, will have to pack their bags.
According to Dr Alfred Lilienthal in his book The Zionist Connection, "The Jewish population of Palestine [what is now Israel and the occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza] at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 was a mere 7 percent of the 700 000 inhabitants. The rest were Muslim and Christian Arabs�At the time of the (US-dominated UN) partition vote in 1947 there were only 650 000 Jews in Palestine while there were 1,3 million indigenous Palestinian Arabs, either Christian or Muslim. Under the partition plan, 56 % of Palestine was given for a Zionist state to people who constituted 33 % of the population and owned about 6 % [six percent] of the land� These UN figures have never been in dispute�"
But there is a further issue, which also demonstrates the fundamentally questionable foundations of Zionism.
Jews are actually not even the modern descendents of the Israel of the Biblical "Old Testament":
According to both the early-20th-Century popular historian H.G.Wells and the Hungarian-Jewish intellectual and author Arthur Koestler, amongst numerous others, the people known today as Jews are primarily the descendents of a Turkish tribe known as the Khazars. The Khazars have no historical connection to Palestine. They converted to "Judaism" between 620 and 740AD, and have no genetic connection to biblical Israel, and hence to the narratives of the Bible and the �Holy Land�. Koestler actually devoted an entire book called The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) to the fact that the Jews of eastern European origin, who are known as the Ashkenazi Jews and who make up about 95% of the Jewish population of today, are of Khazar origin. In other words - virtually all of the Jews of the modern world have no Hebrew ancestry, and no ancient connection with Palestine.
Does it matter? Does world peace matter? Do the human rights of a violently oppressed people matter? Does anything but sport and television sitcoms matter?
Arthur Koestler was by no means the first to draw attention to this particular issue. He quotes from twentieth-century works on the subject by, amongst others, Professors A.N.Poliak of Tel Aviv University, D.M.Dunlop of Columbia University in New York, and J.B.Bury of Cambridge University. The courageous Jewish anti-Zionist commentator Dr Alfred Lilienthal raised the issue fifty years ago and has continued to do so for decades. In fact, the famous H.G.Wells in the early 1920�s in his popular Outline of History described the Jews as "a Turkish people" and stated that "(to the) Jewish Khazars.. are to be ascribed the great settlements of Jews in Poland and Russia" (chapt XXXII:8) and "The main part of Jewry never was in Judea, and never came out of Judea" (XXIX:1).
Lord Moyne the British secretary of state in Cairo declared on June 9, 1942, in the House of Lords that the Jews were not the descendants of the ancient Hebrews and that they had no "legitimate claim" on the Holy Land. A proponent of curtailing immigration into Palestine, he was accused of being "an implacable enemy of Hebrew independence."(Isaac Zaar, Rescue and Liberation: America's Part in the Birth of Israel, New York: Bloch, 1954, p. 115). On November 6, 1944, Lord Moyne was assassinated in Cairo by two members of the Stern Gang led by Yitzak Shamir, latter to become premier of "Israel". (This assassination was not unique in the history of Zionism. In September 1948 Count Folke Bernadotte, appointed by the UN as mediator between the Zionist settlers in Palestine and the native Palestinians, was murdered on orders from the same Yitzhak Shamir. Count Bernadotte was the head of the Swedish Red Cross and had risked his life to save thousands of Jews from German concentration camps. This set a precedent and encouragement for the Zionist use of assassination as a convenient political instrument, which the US and European governments have in effect condoned since then.)
Much old documentary evidence exists on the subject of the Khazars dating from the ninth and tenth centuries and earlier - from Arab, Byzantine, Hebrew, Russian and other sources. The conversion of the Khazars to Judaism is described in the so-called 'Khazar Correspondence' dating from the tenth century between Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, the Jewish chief minister of the Caliph of Cordoba in Spain, and Joseph, the king of the Khazars. In this the king traces the ancestry of his people not to Shem, father of the Semites, but to Japheth, Noah's third son. The Book of Genesis (10:2,3) itself also describes Ashkenaz as a descendent of Japheth, rather than Shem. In other words, the Jews are not a Semitic people, but their contempt for the Arab world and their bitter and violent war of dispossession against the Palestinian Arabs could be termed "anti-Semitic".
The Khazars were formerly well known as a powerful people who, at their peak, 'controlled or exacted tribute from some thirty different nations and tribes' (Koestler), and were the supreme masters of the southern half of eastern Europe for more than a century. The Caspian Sea is still known today in Arabic as Bahr-ul-Khazar, 'the Khazar Sea'. These people controlled trade on the Dnieper, the Don and Volga Rivers between the Swedish Vikings, known as the Rus (the founders of Russia) in the north, and Byzantium-Constantinople (capital of the Eastern Roman Empire), Persia and Arabia in the south. The extent of trade along these rivers is indicated by the very large number of Arab coins - approximately 50 000 � found, strangely enough, in Sweden and dating from Viking times.
After their conversion to 'Judaism', a religion based primarily on the teachings of the Pharisees and the Talmud, the Khazars adopted circumcision and became known as the 'Jewish Khazars' and then later simply as 'Jews'. Before the conversion, the 'Jewish' population of the entire region was sparse; afterwards, understandably, it suddenly became large. Writing in the tenth century, the Muslim chronicler Muqaddasi says 'In Khazaria, sheep, honey and Jews exist in large quantities' (Koestler p 43).
After being defeated by the Rus around 965AD, the power of the Khazars waned, and a gradual migration commenced westwards and north-westwards into Eastern Europe - the Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania. Koestler shows that Yiddish (the former Jewish lingua franca of eastern Europe which is classed as a German dialect) developed not in Germany but in Poland as an amalgam of German, Hebrew and Slavonic (Russian and Polish) - the strong German basis of the language being the result of the German social and cultural prominence in the main cities of Poland in medieval times (Koestler chapt VII : 3). Hebrew itself was only used for liturgical and rabbinic-scholastic purposes, not for everyday communication. No archaeological or other evidence exists of the use in biblical times of the six-pointed 'star of David', the emblem of the Ashkenazi Jews and the Israeli state, and the yarmulke, the skullcap worn by Jewish males, likewise has no biblical foundation. So neither the use of Hebrew nor the star of David, or the wearing of the yarmulke indicate any historical connection with the territory.
Koestler says: "The historical evidence.. indicates that the bulk of Eastern Jewry - and hence of world Jewry - is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than Semitic, origin."
(p 175). This of course poses various interesting questions on many issues, including that of the violent and manipulative Jewish takeover of Palestine during the last century. The reason these questions are not asked is that the story of the Khazar conversion is generally so little known. The academic, church and media establishments generally have shown no interest in correcting such an awkward and fundamental misperception, the source of so much suffering and spilt blood. They consider the issue to be unimportant or potentially dangerous in spite of the shocking human-rights outrages that the mainly Khazar-descended 'Israelis' and their Khazar-descended international Zionist supporters have perpetrated against the native people in Palestine over the last century.
Is there any doubt about the issue?
The British journalist Douglas Reed, former chief Central European correspondent of the Times, in 1950 wrote "The Eastern European Zionists are not Semites (though the Arabs are), have no semitic blood, and their remote forefathers never trod Palestinian earth."
Mr Benjamin Freedman, a Jewish industrialist born in New York, wrote in the Economic Council Letter published there of October 15 1947: "These Eastern European Jews have neither a racial nor a historic connection with Palestine. Their ancestors were not inhabitants of the Promised Land. They are the direct descendants of the people of the Khazar Kingdom.. The Khazars were a non-semitic, Turko-Mongolian tribe."
Mr Freedman was challenged, unwisely, by a Zionist objector. He invited his challenger to go with him to the Jewish room of the New York Public Library. There they could together examine the Jewish Encyclopaedia volume I pp. 1-12, and the published works of Graetz, Dubnow, Friedlander, Raisin and many other noted Jewish historians, which, as well as other non-Jewish authorities, "establish the fact beyond all possible doubt." (Somewhere South of Suez (1950) pp349-350).
If the Khazar account is untrue, we can be sure that a swift and comprehensive rebuttal would have followed Koestler's book and Lilienthal's long-standing allegations, let alone those of H.G.Wells. Can anyone name the book or books in which such a rebuttal appeared?
To confuse the Jews of today with the Hebrews of the Bible is like believing that the Cherokee 'Indians' not only follow the Hindu religion but will eventually return in triumph to the valley of the sacred Ganges�
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Racial or Ethnic Group
Sam Hamod, Ph.D.
06/27/03: One of the myths that has been perpetrated on the world
is that only Jews are semites. This is totally inaccurate. Unfortunately, the
ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) has made a fortune in donations and has conned
most media networks and most people in the world into believing this
untruth.
If one looks into the history of the word, �semite�, it has to
do with a language group and no more. The semitic languages are, at least
according to most linguistic experts, Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea,
the lands once known as Abyssinia), Arabic (spoken in all the Arab countries and
in many Muslim countries because it is the language of the Qur�an), Hebrew
(spoken in Israel and by some Jews and others outside of Israel), Aramaic
(spoken primarily by the Chaldeans of Iraq and by some Catholic and Maronite
Christians in the world, at least in their church services if not in their homes
or business) and Syriac (spoken by a few in various parts of Syria and in the
Middle East). Incidentally, according to most linguists, Abraham, the father of
the Jews and Arabs, spoke Aramaic, that was the language of the land at the
time, not Hebrew.
To get back to facts about semites, Jews, language and
genetics, let me go futher. The actual genetic Jews were born in the Middle East
and are known as Sephardic Jews. These Jews did speak a semitic language, Hebrew
, from their earliest incarnation, but also, some at the time of Christ, also
spoke Aramaic, Arabic and Amharic because of their location in Jerusalem and
other Middle Eastern cities such as what isnow Addis Abbabba, Cairo, Baghdad and
Damascus. One rarely hears a Sephardic Jew yelling, �anti-semite� because the
know better and because he is aware of his own history within semitic language
speaking lands.
Let me be clear about another important matter; I am not
touting for people who are anti-Jewish or anti-Arab, or anti-any ethnic or
racial group; those people who stereotype or attack others based on their race
or ethnicity are dead wrong and should be condemned�so too should those who
abuse labels and use them wrongly to stop others from being justifiably critical
should also be condemned (and in this case, I am referring to the ADL and other
groups of that sort who label people with impunity and carelessness, sometimes
wrecking their careers, their reputations, their businesses and their
lives!)
Thus, when a person from the ADL calls someone who is critical of
Israel, Zionists or Zionism, an �anti-semite�, this is pure nonsense. The person
speaking is simply critical of Israel or Zionism. Also, if a person speaks
against an Arab, and as I pointed out, Arabs speak a semitic language, he may be
anti-Arab, but he is not �anti-semitic.�. In both cases, the person may be
anti-zionist or may be a racist and be anti-Jewish or anti-Arab, but the person
is SIMPLY NOT ANTI-SEMITIC.
This abuse of the term and our language
reached new heights recently when some of the Zionists in the American media
began saying that Robert Novak, himself a Jew, was �anti-semitic.� First of all,
most of those Ashkenazim Jews who were born and raised in America, such as Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Feith, are not even Jews genetically because they
are descended from Slavic tribes known as the Khazars who converted to Judaism
and whose native language was Slavic and whose first language in America has
been English, as was the case of Robert Novak. I am not saying all Ashkenazim
are not Jews, but the way some of them behave is certainly not in the way Moses
brought Judaism from God through the Torah. One has but to look at the haters
and war-mongers in the Bush circle of influence and this is evident; no God
would want them to be associated with his name. Thus, as a friend of mine, Rabbi
Shmuel Handelman put it, "They may call themsevles Jews, but I doubt very much
if I'd them that, and if I did, I'd say they were the worst of what any person
might be. I'd rather not be associated with them."
However, Novak is
intelligent and educated enough to know the difference between a Jew, a Zionist
and what semitic actually is! An excellent and accurate source for this history
is Arthur Koestler (himself an Ashkenazi), THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE. The ADL and
others have attacked, and continue attacking this book, but scholars know of its
truth. The book is difficult to find, but one may find it with tenacity. This is
not a condemnation of Ashkenazis and their intent to convert to Judaism, but it
does mean they have enough genetic DNA in them not to have the same feelings
about Judaism and life in the Middle East as do the Sephardic genetic
Jews.
Unfortunately, the misuse of the label, �anti-semitic� and its
consequences have been so bad that even presidents, senators, congresspeople,
media giants and all others in the world cringe at being labeled, �anti-semitic�
by some Zionist, Israeli or ignorant religious, media or social group. Little do
they know they are being victimized by charlatans of the language who have found
a label that they throw around with impunity and for which there has been little
or no come-back. Those who read this article and do further research may now
correct those who speak this nonsense�they can throw this nonsense back in the
faces of the ignorant or the charlatans.
It is time our media people and
non-linguistically literate �scholars�, politicians, religious leaders and
others became educated about the truths about �semitic� and its misuse
(intentional or unintentional).. If not, we�ll keep allowing charlatans to abuse
our language and to continue their name-calling, abusing others, including Jews,
Arabs, Americans, Brits and others case, I am referring those individuals and
groups who label people with impunity and carelessness, sometimes wrecking their
careers, their reputations, their businesses and their lives!) by calling them
�anti-semites� if they speak against Israel ( which is not a semitic state) or
Zionists (a political group, not exclusively Jewish and which has nothing to do
with semitic).
Until we clean up our language and stop this incorrect
name-calling at the whim of a few politically ambitious and unscrupulous people,
we shall remain victims of a misuse of a legitimate language categorization that
has been abused for the benefit of a few.
Copyright, Sam Hamod,
2003.
Publications Showing the Jews to be Khazars and Not Israelites
"It is highly probable that the bulk of the Jew's ancestors 'never' lived in Palestine 'at all,' which witnesses the power of historical assertion over fact."
In addition, under the heading of "A brief History of the Terms for Jew" in the 1980 Jewish Almanac is the following: "Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an Ancient Israelite a 'Jew' or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew."
The World Book omits any reference to the Jews, but under the word Semite it states: "Semite...Semites are those who speak Semitic languages. In this sense the ancient Hebrews, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Cartaginians were Semites. The Arabs and some Ethiopians are modern Semitic-speaking people. Modern Jews are often called Semites, but this name properly applies only to those who use the Hebrew Language. The Jews were once a sub-type of the Mediterranean race, but they have mixed with other peoples until the name 'Jew' has lost all racial meaning."
There are hundreds of books {most of which are Jewish Encyclopedias and history books} available for study, which prove that over 90% of the Jews of the world are not a Semitic people, but few people other than historians ever bother to read them. Following are just a few:
The History of The Jewish Khazars, by D.M. Dunlop, pp. 4-15: "...Our first question here is, When did the Khazars and the Khazar name appear? There has been considerable discussion as to the relation of the Khazars to the Huns on the one hand and to the West Turks on the other. The prevalent opinion has for some time been that the Khazars emerged from the West Turkish empire. Early references to the Khazars appear about the time when the West Turks cease to be mentioned. Thus they are reported to have joined forces with the Greek Emperor Heraclius against the Persians in A.D. 627 and to have materially assisted him in the siege of Tiflis. it is a question whether the Khazars were at this time under West Turk supremacy. The chronicler Theophanes {died circa A.D. 818} who tells the story introduces them as 'the Turks from the east whom they call Khazars.'... A similar discussion on the merits of the different races is reported from the days before Muhammad, in which the speakers are the Arab Nu'man ibn-al-Mudhir of al-Hirah and Khusraw Anushirwan. The Persian gives his opinion that the Greeks, Indians, and Chinese are superior to the Arabs and so also, in spite of their low material standards of life, the Turks and the Khazars, who at least possess an organization under their kings. Here again the Khazars are juxtaposed with the great nations of the east. It is consonant with this that tales were told of how ambassadors from the Chinese, the Turks, and the Khazars were constantly at Khusraw's gate, and even that he kept three thrones of gold in his palace, which were never removed and on which none sat, reserved for the kings of Byzantium, China and the Khazars. In general, the material in the Arabic and Persian writers with regard to the Khazars in early times falls roughly into three groups, centering respectively round the names of (a) one or other of the Hebrew patriarchs, (b) Alexander the Great, and (c) certain of the Sassanid kings, especially, Anushirwan and his immediate successors. A typical story of the first group is given by Ya'qubi in his History. After the confusion of tongues at Babel, the descendants of Noah came to Peleg, son of Eber, and asked him to divide the earth among them. He apportioned to the descendants of Japheth - China, Hind, Sind, the country of the Turks and that of the Khazars, as well as Tibet, the country of the (Volga) Bulgars, Daylam, and the country neighboring on Khurasan. In another passage Ya'qubi gives a kind of sequel to this. Peleg having divided the earth in this fashion, the descendants of 'Amur ibn-Tubal, a son of Japheth, went out to the northeast. One group, the descendants of Togarmah, proceeding farther north, were scattered in different countries and became a number of kingdoms, among them the Burjan (Bulgars), Alans, Khazars (Ashkenaz), and Armenians. Similarly, according to Tabari, there were born to Japheth Jim-r (the Biblical Gomer ), Maw'-' (read Mawgh-gh, Magog ), Mawday (Madai ), Yawan (Javan) ), Thubal (Tubal), Mash-j (read Mash-kh, Meshech) and Tir-sh (Tiras). Of the descendants of the last were the Turks and the Khazars (Ashkenaz). There is possibly an association here with the Turgesh, survivors of the West Turks, who were defeated by the Arabs in 119/737, and disappeared as a ruling group in the same century. Tabari says curiously that of the descendants of Mawgh-gh (Magog) were Yajuj and Majuj, adding that these are to the east of the Turks and Khazars. This information would invalidate Zeki Validi's attempt to identify Gog and Magog in the Arabic writers with the Norwegians. The name Mash-kh (Meshech) is regarded by him as probably a singular to the classical Massagetai (Massag-et). A Bashmakov emphasizes the connection of 'Meshech' with the Khazars, to establish his theory of the Khazars, not as Turks from inner Asia, but what he calls a Jephetic or Alarodian group from south of the Caucasus. Evidently there is no stereotyped form of this legendary relationship of the Khazars to Japheth. The Taj-al- Artis says that according to some they are the descendants of Kash-h (? Mash-h or Mash-kh, for Meshech), son of Japheth, and according to others both the Khazars and the Saqalibah are sprung from Thubal (Tubal). Further, we read of Balanjar ibn-Japheth in ibn-al-Faqih and abu-al-Fida' as the founder of the town of Balanjar. Usage leads one to suppose that this is equivalent to giving Balanjar a separate racial identity. In historical times Balanjar was a well-known Khazar center, which is even mentioned by Masudi as their capital. It is hardly necessary to cite more of these Japheth stories. Their Jewish origin is priori obvious, and Poliak has drawn attention to one version of the division of the earth, where the Hebrew words for 'north' and 'south' actually appear in the Arabic text. The Iranian cycle of legend had a similar tradition, according to which the hero Afridun divided the earth among his sons, Tuj (sometimes Tur, the eponym of Turan), Salm, and Iraj. Here the Khazars appear with the Turks and the Chinese in the portion assigned to Tuj, the eldest son. Some of the stories connect the Khazars with Abraham. The tale of a meeting in Khurasan between the sons of Keturah and the Khazars (Ashkenaz) where the Khaqan is Khaqan is mentioned is quoted from the Sa'd and al-Tabari by Poliak. The tradition also appears in the Meshed manuscript of ibn-al-Faqih, apparently as part of the account of Tamim ibn-Babr's journey to the Uigurs, but it goes back to Hishim al-Kalbi. Zeki Validi is inclined to lay some stress on it as a real indication of the presence of the Khazars in this region at an early date. Al-Jahiz similarly refers to the legend of the sons of Abraham and Keturah settling in Khurasan but does not mention the Khazars. Al-Di-mashqi says that according to one tradition the Turks were the children of Abraham by Keturah, whose father belonged to the original Arab stock. Descendants of other sons of Abraham, namely the Soghdians and the Kirgiz, were also said to live beyond the Oxus..."
Benjamin Freeman, Facts Are Facts: "CHAZARS: A people of Turkish origin whose life and history are interwoven with the very beginnings of the history of the Jews of Russia...driven on by the nomadic tribes of the steppes and by their own desire for plunder and revenge... In the second half of the sixth century the Chazars moved westward...The kingdom of the Chazars was firmly established in most of south Russia long before the foundation of the Russian monarchy by the Varangians...At this time the kingdom of the Chazars stood at the height of its power and was constantly at war...At the end of the eighth century...the chagan (king) of the Chazars and his grandees, together with a large number of his heathen people, embraced the Jewish religion"
Encyclopedia Americana (1985): "Khazar, an ancient Turkic-speaking people who ruled a large and powerful state in the steppes North of the Caucasus Mountains from the 7th century to their demise in the mid- 11th century A.D...In the 8th Century it's political and religious head...as well as the greater part of the Khazar nobility, abandoned paganism and converted to Judaism..."
Encyclopedia Britannica (15th edition): "Khazars, confederation of Turkic and Iranian tribes that established a major commercial empire in the second half of the 6th century, covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia...In the middle of the 8th century the ruling classes adopted Judaism as their religion."
Academic American Encyclopedia (1985): "Ashkenazim, the Ashkenazim are one of the two major divisions of the Jews, the other being the Shephardim."
Encyclopedia Americana (1985): "Ashkenazim, the Ashkenazim are the Jews whose ancestors lived in German lands...it was among Ashkenazi Jews that the idea of political Zionism emerged, leading ultimately to the establishment of the state of Israel...In the late 1960s, Ashkenazi Jews numbered some 11 million, about 84 percent of the world Jewish population."
The Jewish Encyclopedia: "Khazars, a non-Semitic, Asiatic, Mongolian tribal nation who emigrated into Eastern Europe about the first century, who were converted as an entire nation to Judaism in the seventh century by the expanding Russian nation which absorbed the entire Khazar population, and who account for the presence in Eastern Europe of the great numbers of Yiddish-speaking Jews in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Galatia, Besserabia and Rumania."
The Encyclopedia Judaica (1972): "Khazars, a national group of general Turkic type, independent and sovereign in Eastern Europe between the seventh and tenth centuries C.E. during part of this time the leading Khazars professed Judaism...In spite of the negligible information of an archaeological nature, the presence of Jewish groups and the impact of Jewish ideas in Eastern Europe are considerable during the Middle Ages. Groups have been mentioned as migrating to Central Europe from the East often have been referred to as Khazars, thus making it impossible to overlook the possibility that they originated from within the former Khazar Empire."
The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia: "Khazars, a medieval people, probably related to the Volga Bulgars, whose ruling class adopted Judaism during the 8th cent. The Khazars seem to have emerged during the 6th cent., from the vast nomadic Hun (Turki) empire which stretched from the steppes of Eastern Europe and the Volga basin to the Chinese frontier. Although it is often claimed that allusions to the Khazars are found as early as 200 C.E., actually they are not mentioned until 627...most Jewish historians date the conversion of the Khazar King to Judaism during the first half of this century {A.D.}..." Krauss is of the opinion that in the early medieval ages the Khazars were sometimes referred to as Ashkenazim...About 92 percent of all Jews or approximately 14,500,000 are Ashkenazim.
The Bible relates that the Khazar (Ashkenaz) Jews were/are the sons of Japheth not Shem: "Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth;...the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz..." So the Bible verifies that the Ashkenaz Jews [Khazars] are not the descendants of Shem and cannot be Semite.
The American People's Encyclopedia for 1954 at 15-292 records the following in reference to the Khazars: "In the year 740 A.D. the Khazars were officially converted to Judaism. A century later they were crushed by the incoming Slavic-speaking people and were scattered over central Europe where they were known as Jews. It is from this grouping that most German, Polish and Hungarian Jews are descended, and they likewise make up a considerable part of that population now found in America. The term Aschenazim is applied to this round-headed, dark-complexioned division."
Academic American Encyclopedia Deluxe Library Edition, Volume 12, page 66 states: "The Khazars, a turkic people, created a commercial and political empire that dominated substantial parts of South Russia during much of the 7th through 10th centuries. During the 8th century the Khazar Aristocracy and the Kagan (King) were converted to Judaism."
The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 6, page 836 relates: "Khazar, member of a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century A.D. established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia...but the most striking characteristic of the Khazars was the apparent adoption of Judaism by the Khagan and the greater part of the ruling class in about 740...The fact itself, however, is undisputed and unparalleled in the history of Central Eurasia. A few scholars have asserted that the Judaized Khazars were the remote ancestors of many of the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia."
Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 14, page 65 states: "Khazars [kaza'rz], a semi-nomadic tribe of Turkish or Tatar origin who first appeared north of the Caucasus in the early part of the third century...In the eighth century Khaghan Bulan decided in favor of the Jews and accepted Judaism for himself and for his people..."
New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIII, page 173 relates: "The Khazars were an ethnic group, belonging to the Turkish peoples, who, toward the end of the 2d century of the Christian Era, had settled in the region between the Caucasus and the lower Volga and Don Rivers...At the beginning of the 8th century, dynastic ties bound the Khazars more closely to Constantinople, which led to a limited spread of Christianity among them. They also became acquainted with Judaism from the numerous Jews who lived in the Crimea and along the Bosphorus. When the Byzantine Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, persecuted the Jews in A.D. 723, many Jews found refuge in the Khazar kingdom, and their influence was so great that, around the middle of the 8th century, the King of the Khazars and many of the Khazar nobility accepted the Jewish faith."
The Cadillac Modern Encyclopedia, page 822, states: "Khazars (khah'-zahrz), a S Russian people of Turkic origin, who at the height of their power (during the 8th-10th cent., A.D.) controlled an empire which included Crimea, and extended along the lower Volga, as far E as the Caspian Sea. The Khazar Royal Family and Aristocracy converted to Judaism during the reign of King Bulan (768-809 A.D.) and Judaism was thereafter regarded as the state religion..."
There are many, many publications we could quote but from the above, we can clearly see that the Jews fully understand their Khazarian heritage as the third edition of The Jewish Encyclopedia for 1925 records: "CHAZARS [Khazars]: A people of Turkish origin whose life and history are interwoven with the very beginnings of the history of the Jews of Russia. The kingdom of the Chazars was firmly established in most of South Russia long before the foundation of the Russian monarchy by the Varangians (855). Jews have lived on the shores of the Black and Caspian seas since the first centuries of the common era [after the death of Christ]. Historical evidence points to the region of the Ural as the home of the Chazars. Among the classical writers of the Middle Ages they were known as the 'Chozars,' 'Khazirs,' 'Akatzirs,' and 'Akatirs,' and in the Russian chronicles as 'Khwalisses' and 'Ugry Byelyye.'
