August 2009 Newspaper- Israel and Christians Today

August 2009 edition
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Top Myths about the Middle East Conflict By Jonathan S. Tobin Sixty-one years after the birth of the State of Israel, the Jewish state continues to be assailed by its enemies. From the halls of the United Nations to the classrooms of major universities and in the pressrooms of major newspapers and magazines, attacks on the legitimacy of every move by Israel – and even of the state's existence itself – continue to be made.	Rev. Dr. Canon James Wong – What Israel means to me By Henk Kamsteeg “One night in early January 1973, I was in prayer before I went to sleep. As I was praying, I sensed the Lord was going to touch me in a special way. I went to the study room and waited upon the Lord. The presence of the Lord came upon me and I found myself beginning to praise and worship Him in an unknown tongue. It was a very definite and real encounter with the Lord as I found myself initiated into this experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Lament in Oslo By Elena Bonner Elena Bonner, wife of the late Andrei Sakharov, speech before a conference in Oslo. In his invitation to this conference, the president of the forum, Thor Halvorssen, asked me to talk a bout my life, the suffering I have endured and how I was able to bear it all. But today all that seems to me quite unnecessary. So I will say only a few words about myself.	The Genocide Mechanism By Itamar Marcus Caption illustration: Demonized Israeli eating Palestinian childSurvivors of the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur spoke in Geneva recently at the parallel conference on human rights to counter the UN Durban II event. Listening to them describe how they were systematically demonized by the killers made it clear that genocide does not happen in a vacuum. The hate condition of a population willing and anxious to commit genocide needs nurturing. Genocide must be framed positively to get the necessary broad public support.
The Anti-Semitism of the Church By Rev. Henk Poot I read the following on the weblog of Hirschi Ayaan Ali, a famous Dutchwoman: “One day In 1994, living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. She and I had applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted one, she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study.	The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the causes of the Holocaust By N. Shuldig If we could say that there was a bright spot in the gloomy and somber history of the holocaust, perhaps we could point to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. If in all the dark and disgusting annals of recent history, when Jews were led to murder like sheep let to slaughter, when Jews were tortured for fun, it was the revolt in the Warsaw ghetto.
Who Should We Believe? By Wafa Sultan After President Obama's Cairo speech, many of my Middle Eastern Arab readers reacted with bewilderment. As one of them expressed; "Who should we believe, Obama or you?" – in particular his statement that "America and Islam overlap and share common principles, the principles of justice, tolerance and dignity for human beings".	The Jewish Problem By Daniel Greenfield The Jewish problem has always been around. When Jews lived in their homeland, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, and then Arabs again, swept through Israel with the sword and the torch. Over and over again, the Jewish population of Israel was murdered and enslaved, the land was emptied and renamed, new populations were imported to take their place. Then the subjugating empire would fall, the Jews would return, reclaim their holy places, build new homes, plant vineyards and cultivate fields. And the cycle would begin again.
Two Peoples By David Pawson Israel and the church, Jews and Christians, do exist side by side in the world today, as clearly differentiated entities. And there are nations in which Christianity is the ‘established’ religion as there is now a nation in which Judaism is, though neither is exclusively monofaith, as in some Muslim countries.	Jerusalem: The eternal front line By Caroline Glick The following is the full text of Caroline Glick`s speech after accepting the `Guardian of Zion` award. For nearly as long as I can remember, the image of the watchman on the gates of Jerusalem has been the singular image of Jewish strength for me. It is has always been to the Jewish watchmen, ever vigilant, to whom we have owed our lives, and our survival as a people.
How to win a war without firing a shot. By Elwood McQuaid There`s a sleeper in the two-states-living-side-by-side scenario now tantalizing the Mideast peace process. The Israelis have offered a perfectly sensible five-point plan that takes into account their need for future security:	Should Christians observe the biblical Jewish holy days? By Dr. Michael Brown It is increasingly common for Gentile Christians to celebrate the biblical, Jewish holidays, and there are many commendable reasons for doing so. Here are a few:
JERUSALEM AND GALATIANS 4 By Rev. Willem J.J. Glashouwer For many Christians over the centuries the city of Jerusalem was not that important at all. They were more focussed on the ‘ New Jerusalem’, Revelation 21:2, the ‘Jerusalem that is above’, Galatians 4:26, the Heavenly Jerusalem’,	An Arab Journalist in Jerusalem By Robert Fulford The clouds that normally obscure events in the Middle East start to recede when Khaled Abu Toameh begins talking about the future of Palestinians and Israelis. This relationship, the key to his future life as an Israeli Arab, has been the subject of his journalism for more than two decades. What he's learned contradicts beliefs held by much of the world, and differs sharply from what we expect from someone with his background.