Kudos to Michael Brown

I have been critical of Charismatic leader Dr. Michael Brown for accepting a speaking slot at the odious “Christ at the Checkpoint” gathering in Beit Jala, outside Bethlehem. As has been said many times, CATC is a leftwing, anti-Semitic hate-fest.

I felt that Brown would be used as a propaganda photo-op, as certain Palestinian Christians continue to assault Israel via the Palestinian Authority.

My friends Dexter Van Zile and Brian Schrauger are there, reporting now on the CATC gathering. Brian’s Jerusalem Journal is absolutely an indispensable resource for all of us who care about what is going on in Israel. He is literally the best on-the-ground source for Bible-believing Christians.

Dexter’s new piece details Brown’s impressive speech, given in the most hostile of settings. Imagine if you wanted to laud the legendary status of Vince Lombardi and his Packers, and do it in the Minnesota Vikings’ stadium.

Brown’s task has been daunting. Although I still would not have accepted an invitation, his performance must be given its due.

“Instead of defending Israel’s efforts to defending itself and leaving it at that, Michael Brown, a conservative radio host and a Jewish believer in Jesus, went on the offensive. Brown, who spoke at the conference on May, 29,2018, began by describing his problems with the conference.

“’I have already been grieved by things I heard from leaders in private, comparing Israel to Hamas, vilifying Palestinian Christians who have a different perspective, CATC encouraging tours of the blatantly propagandistic Walled Off Hotel, which distorts the past and the present and accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing,’ Brown said.”

There was much more.

There in the heart of PLO country, Brown was bold:

“Brown didn’t just chide CATC organizers for their apparent submission to the PA. He called on conference organizers to condemn the tendency of Palestinian leaders to celebrate the murder of Israelis in terror attacks. He made this plea after recounting the details surrounding the murder of Fogel family in 2011: ‘Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, a neighbor who entered the house with their 12-year-old daughter (who returned from a youth event to find her slaughtered family), told the Ynet website that her two-year-old brother ‘was lying next to his bleeding parents, shaking them with his hands and trying to get them to wake up, while crying … The sight in the house was shocking.’ Brown said.

“’Today, the families of the murderers, Amjad Awad and Hakim Awad, receive regular payments from the PA as part of their pension. In fact, it is reported that PA payments to families of terrorists and prisoners amount to roughly 10 percent of the PA budget,’ he added.”

Munther Isaac, the director of the CATC, is an enemy of truth and of course he was dismissive of Brown’s comments when he followed. But the word is now out, and Brown’s performance on the battlefield is important.

Remember, the PLO was formally launched—incredibly—on the Mount of Olives in 1964, at what is today the Seven Arches Hotel. This is only miles from where Brown spoke to the CATC group.

Congratulations to Dr. Brown, Dexter Van Zile, and Brian Schrauger for going into that den of vipers and speaking truth.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

The Hague

There are myriad ways in which the Palestinian “leadership” works its evil regarding the conflict with Israel.

Being relentless is the overall strategy, but within that umbrella is any number of lies.

One is that Israel is guilty of “war crimes” against the Palestinians.

If you want one piece of proof that we live in a fallen world, consider that no Palestinian leader has ever been tried in The Hague. Not Yasser Arafat, not Mahmoud Abbas.

Yet Israeli leaders have to be concerned about traveling in some parts of Europe, lest they’d be arrested. In a report this week from the Times of Israel:

“The Palestinian foreign minister said Tuesday that he had asked the International Criminal Court to open an ‘immediate investigation’ into alleged Israeli crimes against the Palestinians. Israel rejected the request as ‘cynical’ and ‘absurd.’

“Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said he submitted the ‘referral’ to the court during a meeting with the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, in The Hague on Tuesday.”

It is absurd! But remember that many Palestinian lawyers were educated in the United States and Europe. The West has tolerated blatant evil by the Arabs for generations.

Which makes the West complicit.

Gaza has been a snake’s den for 13 years, since Israel pulled out. There isn’t a Jew in the Gaza Strip.

The story was that this “good-faith measure” by Israel would help and encourage Palestinian society to flourish and thrive.

That is sadly a fantasy. This week, too, Western aid agency reps were pelted with rocks and other materials while attempting to bring relief supplies to…the Palestinians!

Why? Because Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

There are numerous examples of Arabs murdering Jews over the years. Just two that are largely forgotten by the West are: the Ma’alot school massacre in northern Israel in 1974; and the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv a year later. Dozens of Israelis were murdered in these two incidents. In both, Israel’s elite counter-terrorism unit, the Sayeret Matkal, ended the sieges.

To give you an idea of the utter destruction that exists in the minds of the PLO (and other Palestinian terrorist groups), the Savoy killers were originally instructed to lie to their captors in the event they were caught. They were told to tell them they had come from Egypt (in fact, they had come from Lebanon), in the hopes that such a scenario would enrage the Israelis and cause them to cut off peace talks with Egypt’s Sadat.

They aren’t content with must murdering Jews. They want to spread chaos throughout the Middle East.

If the international leadership community had any moral compass, the Palestinian leaders would be arrested and tried in The Hague.

How long will we tolerate this evil? Much of the American evangelical leadership turns a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism and in fact, much of that leadership community is indistinguishable from Western elites in politics, the media, and religion. They are all leftists.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com