I apologize for not having blogged in a while, and as it turns out now I feel I have much to say. I have to come to believe that a big part of what this trip is for me and what a large part of my ministry is to simply inform. To see what others cannot and inform. Our contact we are working with is, to say the least, a very intelligent man. He is originally from Ohio but has come to call Israel home. He is a Messianic Jew and does hold true to the Jewish way of life including holding to a kosher diet. He is a fascinating man who seems to know more about everything that I will ever know about anything. He has a couple of master’s degrees and a doctorate in something else and I have come to respect him a great deal.
Our job here is working in a village with the Bedouin people. We are passing out literature to the Bedouins in a market of sorts, as well as teaching English a couple days a week. What we were passing out seems to have been received well enough despite one of them being torn up in my teammates face. However, this was an isolated incident and on the whole I felt we were received well.
The coolest part though of our time here in Israel thus far has been getting to hear from our contact. He has taught a couple lessons over the past few days to the three teams that are here. The first lesson was on how to read the good book. We talked about the original languages and how the Hebrew in the old testament brings out subtleties that simply can’t be capture by the English language. We did a very in depth review of the prophet’s Jonah’s book and I must say I have rarely been so intrigued by a lesson. We had another lesson yesterday and it was equally fascinating, but much more shocking. The lesson was on anti-Semitism. It was an enlightening day, but also a scary one. The first thing we watched was a History Channel presentation of something called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The Protocols as it is called is a forged document that originally came out of Russia, before spreading to literally the whole world. The document was supposedly the minutes of a meeting among Jewish leaders and it contained 24 or so steps to Jewish world domination.
When our contact originally talked to us about this, I was flabbergasted and almost thought it was a joke. It most certainly is not. This document once it was released spread like wild fire. It was just supposed to help one political party in Russia that was trying to discredit a more liberal left that had strong Jewish ties, in the end however, it was the single strongest document in promoting the holocaust. The document as a stand-alone probably would not have had the effect it did, but with the already anti-semitic environment that had been around in Europe for literally hundreds of years, the document gave the people who were looking for it an excuse to take things to the next level. Jews were massacred in Russia after its publications in 1897, being killed by the thousands. The protocols were even read aloud in churches in certain countries in Europe. The document was largely spread throughout Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s due to none other than American millionaire and strongly anti-Semitic Henry Ford and his ability to publish large amounts of the document(the things people do with their money). Winston Churchill even at one point claimed the document to be a document of fact after published by a paper in London before he was Prime Minister. The document was not to long after discredited by a English journalist. He found the exact same language in a French play that was written 50 years previous. Winston Churchill immediately made a public apology for his statements, but others did not. Namely American millionaire, Henry Ford, it was years before he offered any sort of an apology to the American Jewish community, and even then he still maintained that the article was a fake the ideas presented in it were still truth.
The last thing we talked about was the Holocaust itself. Holocaust denial is something I have heard about on TV but it is something that always seemed too ridiculous to me to actually have any repercussions. I believed that it was potentially the view held by a few certain radical groups, but I am sorry to say this does not seem to be the case. In much of the Arab culture the holocaust is taught as something that didn’t happen, but perhaps should have. Hitler is a name that is held in high esteem in many circles in this part of the world. Like he was the one guy who really understood what was happening. According to our contact many of his Arab friends still talk about Jewish plots to take over the world and some even hold to the belief that it was a Jewish conspiracy that was in charge of the 9/11 attacks, even some that are believers. These ideas are not simply around, they are mainstream some places. A professor from USC interviewed said a cut out of the protocols pamphlet was being passed out in an embassy in the Middle East where he was at. I encourage you to google this information and find out more about it. It has undoubtedly been a huge eye opener. Above all though most profound thing I have seen is even with our contact living here and his people being constantly attacked even today (there is a missile fired from the Pakistan areas into Israel on average once every 6 weeks or so and as little as a year and a half ago it was daily) he still has a dire love for these people and a hurt in his heart that they do have not heard the good news. While others in this country and around the world are proclaiming and blaming one side or the other, his heart is breaking that these people DON’T KNOW. As Jim Elliot put it, ” how deaf is the ear that has not heard and how blind is they eye that has not seen.” Please pray that in the promise land, hearts will be turned and eyes will be opened to The Truth. That people can come to know there is a savior and there is hope.
http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/protocols.shtml
This is a good link that seems to be fairly legitimate and contains the information.
Hope all is well back home. And just a reminder to please be careful with language used in comments.
P.S. Cant believe the Ags lost to Colorado….killing me
