Israel’s only friends

The following letter was sent to the English language daily
Jerusalem Post, in response to an article that was highly critical of Christians
and Messianic Jews. The article appeared in the September 24th edition of the
Post's weekly supplement in Jerusalem.

"I was shocked and amazed by the Jerusalem Post's article
entitled 'Virtual Christianity'. My belief is that the "witch-hunt"
mentality expressed in this article is based on ignorance, hatred and bigotry. I
should know. I used to be a Christian hater myself.

I made my "aliyah" in 1968 for two reasons: First,
Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion wrote me two letters in 1964
convincing me that the Jews had no future in the Diaspora. But the second reason
for my leaving the US was that it had been inculcated in me in my synagogue back
in the States that all Christians hated us - so we should hate them, too.

It wasn't until 1986 that I saw an advertisement in the
Jerusalem Post that was to play a pivotal role in my life. Ray and Sharon
Sanders of Christian Friends of Israel placed ads looking for Israeli English
speakers to correspond with "American Zionist Christians." I was by that
time 37 years old and couldn't believe that Christians could be Zionists. It
seemed to me an oxymoron.

My resulting pen-pal relationship with Nancy in Texas took me
to her church in 1990. It was the first time in my 41 years of life that I
attended a Christian church. I saw Christians, whites, blacks, Hispanics and
native Americans crying tears of love and repentance for Israel. Since then, I
have visited and spoken in over 300 churches and groups of all denominations. I
have hugged and kissed tens of thousands of Christians who sincerely love us. Do
they want us to become Christians? Yes, because they do love us, and it is part
of their Christian faith. They would be delinquent if they did not
"witness" to or proselytize us.

Does this make the Christians our enemy? As a Torah loyalist
and mitzvah observant Jew, I think not. Judaism was a missionary religion until
135 AD, because in the book of Isaiah, God instructed us to be
"witnesses" to the nations. We were to be a light unto the nations.
The Christians are merely loyal to their faith, the faith in the same God of the
Jews, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They believe in the same Bible.

As opposed to this, there is a religion called Islam. The
Koran teaches in Sura 5;51: "Believers, take neither the Jews nor the
Christians for your friends." If it is wrong to take a Jew or Christian as a
friend, then please allow me to suggest that Allah is not the God of the Jew or
Christian.

As the Islamic agenda grows stronger in every country of the
world, including Israel, I think it would behoove Jews to take a new look at our
strategic and tactical situation. The Moslems have the money, the power, and the
numbers. I believe that the nations of the world - including the US - will
increasingly turn against the Jews and Israel in favor of the Islamic agenda
that seeks our destruction.

The Christians so vilified in Gail Lichtman's article are
not our best friends. They are our only friends.

Victor Mordecai