There are many political issues that we hear in the news almost daily from the Middle east, particularly as it relates to Israel and her Arab neighbors.  For now, to help orient you to Israel and the political borders of the region, below is a map of the Pre-1967 lines between Israel Proper & the West Bank of Jordan:

To be sure, Israel lays claim to a portion of land that equates to only 1/640th the land mass occupied by the 22 Arab states of the Middle East.  Yet they are accused of occupying land unjustly, all the while the rest of the Arab world aims for their total destruction and relinquishment of their land.

(The land of Israel is the RED portion of land in the middle of this map)

Most recently, a letter written and signed by 34 leading "Evangelicals" was sent to President Bush, urging the President to continue to pursue the establishment of a Palestinian State.  It is a letter, even though I am highly evangelical myself, in which views I do not share.  I regret this letter was sent, for it conveys and implies an anti-Israel presupposition as well as a revisionist view of both ancient and modern Middle Eastern history. 

I have not only included a copy of the text of the letter below, but also have included a listing of those who signed the letter.   Additionally, following the letter is the commendable response offered by Messianic Rabbi James Jacob Prasch, with whom I fully concur.

Please know that I do not aim to be a source who heightens the controversial dialogue of this sensitive Israeli/Palestinian issue, especially in evangelical circles.  I, too, know that particularly the Christian Palestinian community has suffered a great deal over the past decade, resulting in a diminishing Christian population of Palestinian brothers and sisters in Israel.  But the evangelical community needs to know that this has come as a direct result of intolerance of Islamic fascism that is increasingly dominating the Palestinian leadership, not as a result of the Israeli so-called occupation.  

However, I post this on this web page for the purpose of enlightening those who call themselves Christians of the waning support Israel is receiving from the evangelical community.  Hence, evangelicals around this country and around the world need to realize that a growing percentage of those in positions of leadership are seemingly abandoning Israel and their biblical heritage and right to the land given to them by God.

Here is the letter,

Letter to President Bush from Evangelical Leaders

Published: July 29, 2007
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write as evangelical Christian leaders in the United States to thank you for your efforts (including the major address on July 16) to reinvigorate the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to achieve a lasting peace in the region. We affirm your clear call for a two-state solution. We urge that your administration not grow weary in the time it has left in office to utilize the vast influence of America to demonstrate creative, consistent and determined U.S. leadership to create a new future for Israelis and Palestinians. We pray to that end, Mr. President.

We also write to correct a serious misperception among some people including some U.S. policymakers that all American evangelicals are opposed to a two-state solution and creation of a new Palestinian state that includes the vast majority of the West Bank. Nothing could be further from the truth. We, who sign this letter, represent large numbers of evangelicals throughout the U.S. who support justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. We hope this support will embolden you and your administration to proceed confidently and forthrightly in negotiations with both sides in the region.

As evangelical Christians, we embrace the biblical promise to Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you." (Genesis 12:3). And precisely as evangelical Christians committed to the full teaching of the Scriptures, we know that blessing and loving people (including Jews and the present State of Israel) does not mean withholding criticism when it is warranted. Genuine love and genuine blessing means acting in ways that promote the genuine and long-term well being of our neighbors. Perhaps the best way we can bless Israel is to encourage her to remember, as she deals with her neighbor Palestinians, the profound teaching on justice that the Hebrew prophets proclaimed so forcefully as an inestimably precious gift to the whole world.

Historical honesty compels us to recognize that both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine. Both Israelis and Palestinians have committed violence and injustice against each other. The only way to bring the tragic cycle of violence to an end is for Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate a just, lasting agreement that guarantees both sides viable, independent, secure states. To achieve that goal, both sides must give up some of their competing, incompatible claims. Israelis and Palestinians must both accept each other's right to exist. And to achieve that goal, the U.S. must provide robust leadership within the Quartet to reconstitute the Middle East roadmap, whose full implementation would guarantee the security of the State of Israel and the viability of a Palestinian State. We affirm the new role of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and pray that the conference you plan for this fall will be a success.

Mr. President, we renew our prayers and support for your leadership to help bring peace to Jerusalem, and justice and peace for all the people in the Holy Land.

Finally, we would request to meet with you to personally convey our support and discuss other ways in which we may help your administration on this crucial issue.

Sincerely,

Ronald J. Sider, President
Evangelicals for Social Action

Don Argue, President
Northwest University

Raymond J. Bakke, Chancellor
Bakke Graduate University

Gary M. Benedict, President
The Christian & Missionary Alliance

George K. Brushaber, President
Bethel University

Gary M. Burge, Professor
Wheaton College & Graduate School

Tony Campolo, President/Founder
Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education

Christopher J. Doyle, CEO
American Leprosy Mission

Leighton Ford, President
Leighton Ford Ministries

Daniel Grothe, Pastoral Staff
New Life Church (Colorado Springs)

Vernon Grounds, Chancellor
Denver Seminary

Stephen Hayner, former President
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor
Northland Church
Member, Executive Committee of the NAE

Jo Anne Lyon, Founder/CEO
World Hope International

Gordon MacDonald, Chair of the Board
World Relief

Albert G. Miller, Professor
Oberlin College

Richard Mouw, President
Fuller Theological Seminary

David Neff, Editor
Christianity Today

Glenn R. Palmberg, President
Evangelical Covenant Church

Earl Palmer, Senior Pastor
University Presbyterian Church Seattle

Victor D. Pentz, Pastor
Peachtree Presbyterian Church, Atlanta

John Perkins, President
John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development

Bob Roberts, Jr., Senior Pastor
Northwood Church, Dallas

Leonard Rogers, Executive Director
Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding

Andrew Ryskamp, Executive Director
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

Chris Seiple, President
Institute for Global Engagement

Robert A. Seiple, Former Ambassador-at-Large,
International Religious Freedom
U.S. State Department

Luci N. Shaw, Author, Lecturer
Regent College, Vancouver

Jim Skillen, Executive Director
Center for Public Justice

Glen Harold Stassen, Professor
Fuller Theological Seminary

Richard Stearns, President
World Vision

Clyde D. Taylor, Former Chair of the Board
World Relief

Harold Vogelaar, Director
Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice

Berten Waggoner, National Director
Vineyard USA

Here is the response:

This letter to President Bush by alleged Evangelical leaders predictably ignores the plight of Christians persecuted throughout the Arab and Islamic world. It unsurprisingly avoids the pro Israel views of Arab Evangelicals such as Walid Shoebat and Joseph Farah.

It also avoids the issue that territorial concessions already made by Israel, under pressure from the oil interest controlled Bush administration, only resulted in Moslems using the forfeited territory to continue the persecution of Arab Christians, the jihad against Israel and The West and created an Iranian-controlled Islamic base in Gaza and by George Bush Sr. in Lebanon.

Predictably, the letter overlooks the fact that the Al Aqsa Brigade of Abbas & the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is no less an Iranian linked terrorist organization than Hamas. It also overlooks that Fatah continues to inculcate their children to be suicide bombers and broadcasts a continuous stream of anti-American, anti-British, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian rhetoric and propaganda. It ignores the fact that Fatah has no electoral democratic mandate from the Palestinian Arabs and that the real so-called suffering of the so-called 'Palestinian people' is a double myth.

In 1970, King Hussein of Jordan proclaimed Jordan to be Palestine and Yasser Arafat proclaimed Palestine to be Jordan in 1968. When did self-proclaimed Jordanians become an ethnic Arab nation that never existed before in history? Moreover, a people proved by definition to be indigenous to the region by the archaeological record cannot be called an occupying presence. Jews cannot occupy Judea and Samaria anymore than Apaches can occupy Arizona.

The second myth is that Israel has a responsibility for Palestinian-Arab hardship. The truth of the matter is that standards of living in everything from infant mortality to longevity to unemployment improved under Israeli rule prior to the Islamic intifadas by 320% in the West Bank and 370% in Gaza above what it had been under Islamic governments.

What is even more apparent, however, is the heretical doctrine of so many of the apostate signatories ranging from Richard Mouw's reapproachment with the Mormon cult to Leighton Ford's departure from the biblical gospel which states that 'Christians should preach the gospel, but not believe they alone have all of the truth'. The twisted doctrinal position of Gary Burge of Wheaton College is too ludicrous to warrant serious comment. 'Christianity Today' has published openly heretical and apostate positions by heretics such as Bart Campolo, along with material supportive of the post modern/ neo gnostic 'Emergent Church'. World Vision, having abandoned its biblically evangelistic origins is best renamed 'World Hallucination' and is nothing more than a cheap political crusade with a social gospel. Ron Sider of the UK is best known for his combination of abject theology and bogus economics in his attempts to repackage Christianity as a sanctified socialism of some design of his own, void of authentic biblical substance and economic common sense.

Hypocrisy of hypocrisy

The final signatory to this hideous diatribe is the director of the Christian - Moslem Center for Peace & Justice. Why are Sider, Ford, Mouw, the Christian Missionary Alliance, and the Presbyterian Church concerned about alleged injustices by Israel, the one nation in The Middle East fully protecting the human rights and religious freedom of Arab Christians, while remaining silent about the Islamic genocidal extermination of Christians in Islamic countries from the Far East to North Africa? A New Testament cannot even be brought into Saudi Arabia.

Long before this unfortunate and misplaced letter emerged, for purely theological reasons we have sounded the alarm against “Christianity Today” and "World Vision" that have, in our assessment and in the estimation of others, long departed from their biblical origins. We have also exposed those we have regarded as teachers of false doctrine such Mouw, Ford, Sider, and Burge, in our efforts to shield the body of Christ from wolves in sheep’s clothing.

This pathetic letter, whose logical deficiency and lack of exegetically sound biblical foundation is eclipsed only by its hypocrisy, further affirms our convictions surrounding these individuals and organizations. The list of signatories resembles more a "who’s who" of backslidden and/or biblically, historically, politically ignorant theocratic hooligans than a bona fide list of "Evangelical Leaders" by any scriptural understanding of the term.

James Jacob Prasch

(from www.moriel.org)

To conclude on this subject, I have appreciated what Jim Schultz, of the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, once said (in response to a book written by one of the letter's signers, Gary Burge, whose book is entitled, "Whose Land?  Whose Promise?"),

"I see, however, that there is a developing effort underway to falsely discredit serious-minded Christians who are convinced that the restoration of Israel is not an accident, or worse yet, tragedy of history. To believe that we are witnessing the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy in the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland does not require one to be anti-Arab or a warmonger pressing for Armageddon and the destruction of the Dome of the Rock. Neither does it constitute a denial of any New Testament truth concerning the oneness of Jew and Gentile in Christ, the ultimate meaning of the Israel of God or the focus on the Kingdom rather than the land."