Britain’s betrayal

As the 75th anniversary of Israel’s rebirth approaches, let us not forget that while British Bible believers prepared Israel for statehood, we then stopped listening to God

by Charles Gardner

The rebirth of Israel 75 years ago clearly showed the hand of God at work, but it could not have happened without Britain’s involvement.

Looking back to the century preceding the rise of the Jewish state, Britain had gained such worldwide influence that it was said the sun never set on our empire.

Certainly not everything we did historically was good, but we did succeed in spreading the Gospel of the Jewish Messiah far and wide, and there is no question that it had a civilising and hugely beneficial effect.

And just as proclaiming the Gospel was a key factor in blessing China, Africa, India and elsewhere, so our determination to facilitate the restoration of Israel was cut from a similar cloth.

Evangelical preachers and politicians were the prime influence on British government policies leading to the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent internationally-backed Mandate to prepare the Jewish people for statehood.

But we soon broke our pledge and betrayed Israel, as a result of which we have lost our moral moorings. The miracle of modern Israel came about anyway.

But after doing so much to promote her restoration, we subsequently moved in precisely the opposite direction.

Appeasing Arab opposition to Jewish immigration most likely led to the death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews who could have escaped Hitler’s concentration camps through emigration to Palestine, as it was then known.

In addition, post-war Britain went out of its way to ensure the new state would not survive, even appointing a British officer, Lt Gen Sir John Bagot Glubb, to command the Jordanian Arab Legion.

In her disobedience to God long ago, Israel was sold into the hands of her enemies (Judges 2:14), and it appears that Britain is suffering the same fate today. We own few of our major industries or football clubs, for one thing; and we have presided over a steep decline in churchgoing while Islam – the antithesis of Christianity in so many ways, particularly with regard to freedom – has established an extraordinarily strong foothold in the nation.

Hugely respected Bible teacher Derek Prince in 2003 saw “very little hope for Britain” and repeated his warning that “the nation not serving Israel would perish” (Isaiah 60:12).

The British Government’s response to the latest outrage – the brutal murder by Palestinian terrorists of a British-Israeli rabbi’s wife and two of their daughters – is indicative of no real change in our attitudes with a spineless, lily-livered call for Israel and Hamas to ‘de-escalate tensions’ as if the fault runs equally both ways.

We soon broke our pledge and betrayed Israel, as a result of which we have lost our moral moorings

We stopped listening to the evangelicals, who believe in the authority of Scripture. Now, instead of spreading the Gospel around the globe, we have become leading exporters of degrading morality as stable society and family life collapses around our ears. And our priests, like those who brought Jesus to trial, are spitting in his face and crucifying him all over again.

In the words of Rev Calvin Robinson, our bishops are promoting the idea of ‘sacramental sodomy’, referring to the Church of England’s decision to bless same-sex marriage.

The murky moral quagmire into which Britain has sunk can, I suggest, be traced back to the time when we began treating the people who gave us the Bible with contempt.

But instead of supporting Israel through our politics, our prayers and our goodwill born of a Christian ethos, we have exported our rebellious ways, encouraged rainbow flag-waving and pushed anti-God propaganda wherever we can. Now it seems that believing the Bible, as a strong contingent of Israel’s new government do, has become the ultimate blasphemy.

There is a flicker of light on the horizon, however. In Britain, as in Israel, Bible believers are fighting back with forthright faith.

Rev Robinson, in an Oxford Union debate, said: “Our purpose as clerics is to lead people away from sin, not embrace it… Sin is the problem, not the sinner.”

We were once a great nation sending missionaries around the world to share the nation-changing good news of Jesus. Yet now we have thrown out our most precious possession. Jesus told us to build on the rock. But we have built on sand.

Iranian Jews told to Join anti-Israel protest

The Iranian regime instructed the country’s Jewish community to refrain from celebrating the day after Passover and instead participate in the annual anti-Israel Quds Day demonstration calling for Israel’s destruction. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

“If you don’t demonstrate, you will be harmed,” explained Beni Sabti, an expert on Iran from the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.

Quds Day protests are also held in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Iran has marked the day since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Abbott controversy

Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott, who once served as Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Home Secretary, suggested that Jews don’t experience racism, likening it to prejudices experienced by ‘red-heads’.

‘Double standard’ on Antisemitism

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is concerned that a ‘double standard’ exists when it comes to antisemitism, which must not be treated as ‘racism-lite’. She added: “Racism that would be called out if it were directed against any other minority is explained away or ignored when it comes to Jews. We need to be really clear. Antisemitism is not racism-lite. It’s racism.”

Bereaved Rabbi speaks out aftter brual murders

Britain’s Jewish community was in profound shock after two sisters and their mother were brutally gunned down by Palestinian terrorists in Israel.

Rina and Maia Dee, aged 15 and 20, died at the scene after being shot at point-blank range and their mother Lucy later succumbed to her injuries in hospital.

Father and husband Leo Dee, who witnessed the shocking scene as he was following in a separate car, was formerly a senior rabbi at Radlett United Synagogue in Hertfordshire and assistant rabbi in Hendon, north London. The family moved to Israel in 2014.

In a statement following the tragedy, Leo referred to the anti-government protests in Israel.

“Some people think a religious government will suppress minority rights and become totalitarian,” he said. “But this is not a risk in Israel as religious Jews simply believe in balancing love and justice.”

He said humanity has lost the ability to differentiate between good and evil as a “small minority” has peddled moral relativism, which he compared to a cocaine addiction where the addict keeps magnifying the problem.

“Let’s reverse this negative loop,” he said. “We will never accept terror as legitimate… There is no such thing as moral equivalence between terrorists and victims. The terrorist is always bad.”

He was referring to calls from politicians for both sides of the conflict to reduce tension as if blame for the atrocity went both ways.

Doctor jokes about gassing Jews

A junior doctor who joked about gassing Jews has been suspended from his executive post on the British Medical Association pending an investigation.

Dr Martin Whyte, a paediatrician and deputy chair of the junior doctors’ committee, is reported to have found videos about the Holocaust being a hoax “pretty convincing”. The committee has been coordinating recent strikes in pursuit of a 35 per cent pay rise

Life and death contrast

Israel’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat, meanwhile, noted how the Dee family’s decision to donate the mother’s organs further accentuated the difference between the values of Jews and those of the terrorists who try to murder them. A Palestinian was among seven recipients.

Speaking to CNN, Barkat said: “That’s the difference between living as Jews, seeking life and making a better life for other people, and the terrorists, who all they seek is death.” Lucy Dee’s organs offered life-saving hope to critically ill people while the terrorists (or their families) can expect to receive a million dollars from the Palestinian Authority for killing innocent Jews.

In the wake of these shocking murders, which also included an Italian tourist on the same weekend, calls were made for the sacking of a UN official who claimed that Israel had no right to self-defence against Palestinian terrorism. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has a long history of antisemitism.

The Guardian and Times newspapers also came under fire for their skewed reporting of these attacks. And Lee has since called on The Guardian to fire cartoonist Martin Rowson, accused of fostering antisemitism with his caricature of departing BBC chairman Richard Sharp, a Jew.

The Dees are the latest of thousands of Israeli terror victims, whose plight has been taken up by British Christian photography lecturer Jennie Milne.

After learning that some of her own ancestors died in the concentration camps, Jennie Milne was shocked to discover that thousands of Israelis have since perished at the hands of Palestinian terrorists and has mounted a photographic exhibition of survivors to illustrate their trauma. Her exhibition was presented in a Zoom conference hosted by Glasgow Friends of Israel, which included Arnold Roth, whose beautiful 15-year-old daughter Malki was blown up by a suicide bomber in the centre of Jerusalem on 9 August 2001.

Swastika cut into boy’s back

The FBI is investigating a shocking crime involving a large swastika cut into an autistic boy’s back in a Nevada school.

The mother of the 17-year-old, who does not speak and attends the Clark High School in Las Vegas with both a service dog and a shadow, said: “My son is the only student I know of who wears a kippah at the school,” adding that his assistant is apparently still working there. “Her job is to be with my son. If she did not do [the etched mark], I believe she knows who did.”

A spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League pointed out: “Not only was this student targeted for his identifiable faith, but he was particularly vulnerable due to his disability.”

Initial complaints generated no response and the FBI got involved after the Israeli American Council intervened. They have a website called School Watch monitoring the growing number of anti-Jewish incidents and reporting that a startling 75% of Israeli-Americans encounter antisemitism in school.

Billionaire Bible scholar

The richest woman in the world is a Bible scholar, though she did not make her money that way. Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, 69-year-old granddaughter of L’Oreal founder Eugène Schueller, is worth £64.6 billion.

She heads this year’s Forbes billionaire list of the world’s richest women, with handbag and perfume magnate Bernard Arnault knocking Elon Musk off the men’s list, meaning the world’s richest man and woman are both French for the first time.

Françoise owes her entire wealth to the 33% stake her family continueto hold in the cosmetics firm, which she inherited as sole heiress upon her mother’s death in 2017.

Raised a strict Catholic, she is a respected Bible scholar and has written books on topics ranging from Greek mythology to Jewish-Christian relations.

She is married to Jean-Pierre Meyers, grandson of a rabbi murdered at Auschwitz, and they have two children. Her marriage caused controversy as her grandfather, a pharmacist who invented a hair dye called L’Oreal in 1907, was put on trial for ‘economic and political collaboration’ with the Nazis during World War II, but was later cleared of the charges by a Parisian post-war court.

Her socialite mother and former Cabinet minister father Andre Bettencourt were known for throwing exclusive parties. But Françoise does not indulge in the same glamorous lifestyle, preferring to play the piano or write. She has been labelled a ‘serious minded intellectual’ by Time magazine and pledged £160 million to repair Notre Dame Cathedral after it was ravaged by a fire in 2019.

TV presenters glorify terror

Two exiled Egyptian television presenters are using their ‘safe haven’ in Britain to glorify terror and broadcast anti-Israeli propaganda,
a Jewish Chronicle investigation revealed.

Osama Gaweesh defended Hamas as “the resistance” while his colleague Moataz Matar called the murder of former Radlett Rabbi Leo Dee’s wife and daughters “an operation by the resistance”.

Between them, they regularly reach millions of viewers via satellite TV and their social media channels.

Antisemitic ‘mass murder’ warning

Antisemitism will only ultimately be beaten when Jesus returns, a spokesman for Chosen People Ministries told a Zoom meeting in Britain.

Speaking from the United States, Olivier Melnick, a Jewish believer originally from France, warned Christians that “we could be inches away from mass murder of Jews,” which is where things are headed due to worrying factors such as apathy, misinformation and people getting away with outrageous insults. A particularly worrying factor was that antisemitism was not on the radar of most Christians as they did not consider themselves affected by it.

“But silence is complicity,” said Olivier, reminding participants of German pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous quote, suggesting that if we did not stand up for others, there would be no-one left to speak for us.

Melnick cited a recent case in France where a man has walked free for throwing a Jewish woman out of the window to her death on the basis that he was high on cannabis, whereas French law dictates that you can be imprisoned for simply throwing a pet out of the window.

He further warned that some may soon be forced into civil disobedience when the law no longer protected Jews, citing the case of Anne Frank in Nazi-occupied Holland. “Those who hid Anne Frank were breaking the law; those who killed her were following the law.”

Antisemitism, he said, would “only be fully dealt with when Jesus returns. But we must fight it; we must be vocal against it.”

Doing so also enables us to build bridges with the Jewish people and earns us the right to speak to them about Jesus – many Jews are still under the impression that the church was complicit in antisemitism over the centuries.

Islamic world called to unite against Israel

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the Islamic world to unite “against Israel’s attacks in Palestine” in a message to his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi. It came in the wake of clashes on the Temple Mount followed by missiles and rockets launched by Hamas from Israel’s northern and southern borders.

Other recent articles by Charles Gardner, which can be found at www.heartpublications.co.uk, include:

• Battle of Britain
• The Pursuit of Kindness
• In Memory of Malki
• Fatal Rebellion
• Appointment in Jerusalem
• Jewish Scientist finds Messiah

Charles is a regular contributor to Israel Today at www.israeltoday.co.il and is author of ‘To the Jew First’, ‘King of the Jews’, ‘A Nation Reborn’, ‘Israel the Chosen’ and ‘Peace in Jerusalem, variously available from Christian Publications International, Amazon and Eden Books (Eden.co.uk).