"And with reporters recording his words, Falwell said that God was kind to America onlv because 'America has been kind to the

Jew/ He added that American Christians must involve themselves politically in such a way 'as to guarantee that America continues to be a friend to the Jew'—that is, the Israelis. Falwell added, 'I believe if we fail to protect Israel, we will cease to be important to God/ " As Dr. Price finished that story, Dr. Goodman picked up:

"Falwell became the first major American political figure to argue that the United States must support Israel not simply for Israel's own sake, but for America's own self-preservation. And he began to boast: The Jewish people in America and Israel and all over the world have no dearer friend than Jerry Falwell/ As the 1980 elections approached and his Moral Majority began to get national press attention, Falwell emerged as a prime time media personality, with reporters giving wide coverage to his views on Israel.

"Falwell found many opportunities to tell Americans the fate of the nation stood or fell according to the attitude they took toward Israel. If Americans did not show an unflinching willingness to provide Israel with arms and dollars, Falwell said, America would lose all."

What, I asked,—besides the gift of the jet plane—was Falwell getting in return for all his public relations work for Israel?

"Begin must have given considerable thought to how he could repay Falwell," Jim Price said. "And he decided to present him with one of a very limited number of medals named for Vladimar Zeev Jabotinsky, the right-wing Zionist ideologue—and mentor to Begin. And Begin gave Falwell such a medal at a 1980 gala dinner in New York. If you understand the background of Jabotinsky you can understand why an Israeli leader such as Begin would seek an ally like Falwell. They both understand they have the same goals: they admire power and they advocate ruthlessness in achieving it."

I was sure most Americans had never heard of Jabotinsky. Why did he loom so important?

"Jabotinsky provides a key to understanding why many Israelis such as Begin, Sharon, Shamir and Arens like Falwell and want him as an ally, and also why Falwell looks upon the most militant of the Israeli leaders as heroes," Dr. Price explained.

"Falwell felt honored to recieve a Jabotinsky award because Jabotinsky said power should be your goal, and Falwell thinks like Jabotinsky.

"Jabotinsky held that Jews settling in Palestine should not be held accountable to the laws of man. Anyone who believed in justice, he said, was 'stupid'. No one should trust his neighbor, but rather go fully armed. And Jews should never compromise with the Palestinian Arabs. He insisted on total, unquestioning devotion to the single ideal of establishing a Jewish state. To secure such a state, he urged armed aggression."

In 1923 Jabotinsky founded Betar, a militant youth organization that urged emigration to Palestine. He also started the Jewish Haganah militia, out of which eventually evolved the Israeli army. By 1925 he had formally founded the Revisionist movement as a faction within the World Zionist Organization. Jabotinsky demanded a Kingdom of Israel on both sides of the Jordan River. And urged all Zionist organizations to engage in uncompromising militancy against Arabs.

Falwell's evangelical militancy parallels that of Jabotinsky, explained Dr. Goodman. Falwell claims that "nowhere does the Bible rebuke the bearing of armaments." He scorns the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and says America's rate of arms production is too slow, calling it a form of "unilateral disarmament." Like Jabotinsky, Falwell has said that "peaceful intentions are acts of stupidity."

"Falwell is the only Gentile ever to receive the Jabotinsky medal. The only difference between his and Jabotinsky's philosophy is that Falwell talks of Christ. But he talks of a militant Christ, a kind of Jabotinsky Christ. Falwell likes Israel not in spite of but because it is militarily aggressive. He admires Israel because it has a big standing army, a big air force, a huge array of tanks and nuclear weapons.

"After pinning the Jabotinsky medal on him, the Israelis utilized Falwell for their purposes to an even greater degree," Dr. Goodman continued. "In 1981, when Begin bombed the reactor at Baghdad, he feared a bad reaction in the United States. For support, he didn't call a Jewish senator or a rabbi—he called Falwell. Begin was worried because we Americans supplied F-16s and bombs to Israel for defensive use and Begin had used them for a preemptive strike. So Begin told Falwell, 'Get to work for me.' And Falwell promised he would. Before hanging up, Falwell told Begin:

" 'Mr. Prime Minister, I want to congratulate you for a mission

that made us very proud that we manufacture those F-16s.' "

"Whatever military action Israel has taken—or will take—Israel can count on the New Christian Right to support it," Jim Price said. "After Israel bombed the sovereign nation of Iraq, the Moral Majority's Cal Thomas praised the Israelis for what he termed a brillant military operation. Winning in war, Thomas added, was following the Golden Rule—'Whoever has the gold, rules.'

"To my mind, that statement is both unChristian and unAmer-ican," Price continued. "He is saying that when one loses in war, one has absolutely no rights. This is what the Romans were saying with vae victis, woe to the vanquished! But it contrasts with our generous treatment of Germany and Japan after World War II. Though we won that war, we did not assume that we had the right to send settlers in and confiscate German and Japanese territories."

In addition to mustering support for the Israeli strike on Iraq, in what other ways, I asked, had the Israelis made use of Falwell?

"They made good use of him during their 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Falwell had nothing but praise for the invasion," Dr. Goodman said. "He and Cal Thomas of the Moral Majority went over and met Major Haddad, the Israeli puppet in southern Lebanon. Then back in the States, they acted as publicists for the Likud government.

"And when the massacres occurred at the two Palestinian camps, Falwell just mimicked the Israeli line: The Israelis were not involved.' And even when the New York Times was giving eyewitness accounts of Israeli flares sent up to help the Phalangists go into the camp, Falwell was saying, That's just propaganda.''

To muster national support for the Israeli invasion, Falwell called a meeting with, among others, members of the Reagan administration and former President Richard Nixon. The group met in early August 1983, in Annapolis, Maryland.

Among those attending, Goodman said, were then Secretary of the Interior James Watt; former National Security Counsellor Richard Allen; Frank Shakespeare, a director of the U.S. Information Office; prominent Jewish leader Yehuda Hellman, and New Right leaders Richard Vigurie, Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips, the founders of the Moral Majority. After the meeting, Falwell said that while none in the group was delegated to speak officially for

A VISIT TO LYNCHBURG

the White House or other governmental agencies, they were all in "total agreement" in their support of Israel and its invasion of Lebanon.

Price and Goodman told me that in their opinion Falwell and other right-wing Christian leaders gave their "total support" to a foolish military foray that cost Israel 654 deaths with 3,840 wounded. The burden of paying a million dollars a day to sustain the invading and occupying armies wrecked Israel's economy, producing an almost unbelievable inflation rate that drove the consumer price index up to an estimated 1,000 percent and caused countless Israelis to flee the Jewish state for more stable countries, particularly the United States.

Moreover, they concluded, the Israeli bombings and shellings of Beirut and the massacres in the Shatilla and Sabra refugee camps wounded the Jewish state's international reputation almost as much as the war damaged its economy.

A SECOND TOUR WITH FALWELL

Traveling with Brad

In early 1985, I heard Jerry Falwell announce on TV that he would sponsor another Holy Land tour. I sent the required down payment and asked for further information. And Falwell sent me an expensively produced color brochure. I read details of when I would leave New York, when I would arrive in Tel Aviv, and when I would board a bus and where I would sleep. The brochure, printed in Israel, carried Falwell's words and Falwell's signature. I thought it strange that nowhere in the material did Falwell mention Christ.

On this second tour, I came to a better understanding of why perhaps 40 million evangelical-fundamentalists believe that God favors Jews but not Arabs. One person in particular helped me understand this. His name was Brad, age 35, a native of Georgia, unmarried and traveling alone. A financial manager, a person who helps others plan the most profitable way to invest their money, Brad was well-mannered and neatly dressed.

Unlike many religious zealots who must argue because they cannot discuss, Brad was patient and spoke in a soft yet resonant voice. He seemed to be flattered I would seek his opinions, and in spite of or even because of the differences in our ages and life experiences we were developing a friendship, or at least a pattern of seeking one another out to share a meal or a bus ride.

With a full head of red hair and neatly cropped mustache and beard, Brad seemed a deadringer for the Atlanta syndicated columnist Lewis Grizzard, who once bragged he was the "quintessential southern male." Brad had read all of Grizzard's books, including If Love Were Oil, Yd Be About a Quart Low, and, on the subject of his open-heart surgery, They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat.

"We think alike," Brad said. "We both think that in a marriage someone has to be boss—and it's got to be the male." And Brad added, "He thinks homos are sick. And so do I."

SI

It was surprising, in retrospect, how many subjects we discussed. But generally we discussed the Bible and Brad's church affiliation, which was Assemblies of God or Pentecostal, the fastest growing segment in Christianity today.

It was while he was in college, Brad said, that he experienced a failed marriage and a time of heavy drinking. He entered a period of spiritual distress, and in these dark days—where he had even contemplated suicide—he had turned to Christ. For the first time he had a focus and meaning to his life. Previously he had been a loner, unable to express his emotions, but among other born again Christians and particularly charismatics, he was able to express some of his deepest feelings—and even to shout these emotions. He now felt a sense of belonging, of not being alone, of being part of an expansive community of other men and women who felt and thought as he did.

One day Brad and I were on our tour bus and our conversation had lapsed into a long silence when Brad somewhat suddenly said:

"I just wish I had been born a Jew!"

It was a softly-muted, yet fervent confession. As he spoke, his body moved with a visible shiver—as if a cold wind had blown over him. His sharing of a religious conviction left me with no ready response. My mind flitted back to Japan, when, shortly after World War II, I was riding a crowded Tokyo subway with a young Japanese woman friend who suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! I wish I had been born a man!" When I had asked why, she explained her father did not view females as good as males. I thought her regret at not being one of the "chosen" might provide a key to Brad's pronouncement.

With this in mind, I asked Brad if God viewed non-Jews as less good than Jews—because Jews were His Chosen People?

"Yes, definitely," he replied, adding that when God made the universe, He gave His special blessing to the Jews. For this reason, Jews were "different and better" than non-Jews.

"First of all, He wanted the Jews to take possession of the Holy Land. As to who has title deed to the Holy Land, God settled that question. God promised all of this land to the Jews." Then naming Genesis 12 as source for "the original blessing," Brad quoted verses that go:

'The Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country ... to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation . . . and by you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' "

Brad also quoted from Genesis 15:18, "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates."

"There is some question as to what is meant by 'the river of Egypt', since there is a stream bed now known as the Wadi El Arish which has been known also in times past as 'the river of Egypt,' ; Brad said. "But I believe that 'the river of Egypt' is no less than the Nile. And if that is true, then parts of Egypt—that is, the Sinai and some additional land now controlled by Egypt—fall within the divinely-given title given to Abraham.

"I think it would be evil in the sight of God for American officials to consider sitting down to any 'peace process' that would take one square foot of land away from the people who hold the oldest title deed to property known to mankind," Brad said.

If indeed a universal God deeded land only to a few, did this not smack of particularism, favoritism and discrimination?

"God did not promise the land to the non-Jews, the Arabs," Brad answered.

Did Brad believe, I asked, that the modern political entity called Israel—created after the holocaust in Nazi Germany—is the same as the ancient entity we read about in the Bible?

"Yes," said Brad. "The Hebrew nation established 3,000 or more years ago and the Jewish state created in 1948 are the same. The Bible says Israel will be recreated—and it was. This convinces me that the Bible is true."

And were the people who in recent years moved into Palestine from Europe—Westerners such as Menachem Begin from Poland and Golda Meir from the United States—were they the same people as the Semites who lived in Palestine over 3,000 years ago? Those Semites, I suggested, were Orientals.

"The Jews," Brad replied, "are all one race of people."

I suggested that a Jew living in Yemen would be considered an Oriental and a Jew living in France would be a Caucasian, while the Ethiopian black Falashas would be Negroid.

"No, all Jews are one race—and have been since Abraham," he

maintained. Brad insisted that the world "consists only of two races of people, Jews and non-Jews. And God always has His eye on His people, the Jews."

Earlier on, I recalled, Brad had said he felt so strongly on this subject that he wished he had been born a Jew. I had no idea whether he was sentimentalizing out of piety, or whether he truly desired to don a yarmulke and worship God in a synagogue. In either event, Brad tended to resemble and identify with pre-Christian messianic Judaism. In this respect, he was like some of the Pilgrims, who also felt in their heart of hearts they were Jewish. Many prayed in Hebrew and utilized the Mosaic law in their daily lives. They felt their own history the continuation of the early Hebrews, their own lives the reflection, their own achievements the fulfillment of the experience of a Palestine of so many centuries before.

"Gentile," Brad told me, means "pagan" and he added, "There are only Jews and pagans. And I don't want to be a pagan."

Palestine, he had said, was a land selected by God for His Chosen People, and Brad, if he wished to convert to Judaism, would have the right to Palestinian land as did Ben-Gurion, Begin, Shamir, Golda Meir, Bobby Brown and other immigrants. Under the Jewish Law of Return, any immigrating Jew (defined as one with a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism) is granted citizenship.

Since Brad strongly identified with the Jews as a Chosen People and with the land we traversed not as a spiritual Zion—an allegorical haven for all those who believe in one God—but rather as a piece of real estate exclusively for Jews, I wondered if he might feel more comfortable practicing Judaism rather than Christianity. Had he considered converting to Judaism?

"No," he said, "Our duties as Christians are to be a blessing to the Jews, to support them in all their endeavors, to stand with them."

For Brad, the pronouncements to bless Israel are living words, as real as "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not steal." When and where and under what circumstances the words were composed are unimportant to him. The early blessings and curses written down by an early Oriental tribal people, Brad insisted, can and do extend to our shores.

Brad believed that the term "chosenness" meant God wanted only Jews to live in the Holy Land. In this respect, he was unlike the Hebrew prophets, who regarded "chosenness" as requiring responsibility and not granting special privilege in real estate claims or sovereignty.

"Israel was right to invade Lebanon," Brad said to me. "If they took Arab lands, they had the God-given right to do so. And they should have taken more!"

Was it in the Bible, I asked Brad, that God wanted Israel to invade Lebanon—and precisely at the time they did?

"Yes, it's part of prophecy," he said. "You see the Palestinians who fought against the Israelis in Lebanon were part of the PLO. And they used weapons provided by the Soviet Union, so the invasion was a proxy war with the Soviet Union, with the PLO fighting in place of the Russians. So the defeat of the PLO was a defeat for the Russians.

"The Bible also shows," Brad continued, "that we should momentarily expect an attack on Israel by Russia and a confederation of Arab leaders. We can be confident that this attack is coming because it is prophesied in the books of Daniel and Ezekiel."

Like many Christians on the tour, Brad carried a personal Bible with him, often referring to it when our group waited for a bus or a meal. Brad's Bible was a Scofield Bible. One evening, Brad and I looked over his Bible. He turned to the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, with a heading—provided by Scofield—entitled "The prophecy against Gog." The chapter begins, "And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him."

Then following the biblical scripture, we read Scofield's interpretation. In a footnote identifying Gog, Scofield wrote "That the primary reference is to the northern (European) powers, headed up by Russia, all agree."(Scofield does not amplify who is included in the term "all".)

" 'Gog' is the prince/ 'Magog' is his land,' " Scofield writes. "The reference to Meshech and Tubal (Moscow and Tobolsk) is a clear mark of identification. Russia and the northern powers have been the latest persecutors of dispersed Israel . . ." They (Russia

and cohorts) will meet destruction, Scofield writes, adding that the whole prophecy "belongs to the battle of Armageddon."

As Brad and I studied the text, it became plain that Gog was described as a 'chief prince'. The terms used in Ezekiel 38 for chief prince are nasi 7 (meaning prince) and rosh (meaning head or chief).

That comes out "chief prince/' I said. How did Brad get Russia out of it?

"Ros/z should not be used as a descriptive noun qualifying the word prince, but rather as a proper name. So this makes the phrase nasi ' rosh means 'prince of rosh', which gives us the term, 'prince of Russia'."

Since he was convinced that rosh meant Russia, we therefore must fight rosh, that is, Russia?

"Yes, definitely/' he replied.

Brad was not impressed by my pointing out that the author of the phrase about rosh did not speak or understand English (Russia is an English word) and moreover that back in those days there was no Russia, anyway. In any case, what seemed of greater interest to me at the moment was Brad's reverence for Scofield. Brad, as a born again Christian, believed the Bible was infallible, without error. Since Scofield had written his interpretation of Scripture in the Bible, at least in the Bible Brad carried, Brad believed every word penned by Scofield. He accepted Scofield's words as literally and completely as he accepted the words of Jesus Christ.

What, in essence, I asked Brad, did Scofield—and dispen-sationalism—teach? How would Brad define his own belief system of dispensationalism?

"We believe that history is now unfolding to a seventh and climactic time period: the establishment of Christ's kingdom, where Christ will reign from Jerusalem for 1,000 years. All Jews will have converted to Christ and will participate in the administration of Christ's millennial kingdom—a literal kingdom on earth with its headquarters in Jerusalem."

Asked to name the events that must precede the seventh and climactic time period, Brad began:

"First, the return of the Jews to the land of Palestine. Second, the establishment of a Jewish state."

Because Brad believes the biblical Israel of millennia past to be

the dateline for all history, past, present and future, he says he "rejoiced" when a new political entity was carved out of Palestinian soil in 1947 and given the old biblical name of Israel, to associate it in the minds of people today with the religious Zion of Scripture.

'The creation of a new Israel with the Jews reestablished in the land promised them by God gives us incontrovertible proof that God's divine plan is in operation and the Second Coming of our Savior is assured. For me, the creation of the state of Israel is the most momentous event of modern history. It represents the first step toward the beginning of the End Times.

"God gave us another signal in 1967, when He gave victory to the Israelis over the Arabs and allowed the Jews to take the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria as well as to gain military control over the old city of Jerusalem. For the first time in more than 2,000 years the Jews were in control of Jerusalem. Again I felt a new thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.

"The third necessary event is the preaching of the gospel to all nations, including Israel. With short-wave radios and television, the message of Christ has been spread around the world. We now have 40,000 evangelical foreign missionaries around the world. The word has gone to all nations.

"I expect the fourth event, the Rapture or lifting up of the church, to occur any day. Then comes the fifth event, the Tribulation, a period of great suffering. For seven years those who are not Raptured will undergo great persecution. They will be waging wars—led by a leader called the Antichrist. Then comes the sixth event—the Battle of Armageddon."

Brad paused and reflected a moment. While he said he was happy the Jews had returned to Palestine and that the state of Israel had been created, he felt the Jews had not entirely completed their mission: "Jews today must redeem all of the land God gave to the Hebrews."

When he used the word redeem the land, what exactly did ne mean?

"The Jews must own all of the land promised by God before Christ can return." He added, "The Arabs have to leave this land because this land belongs only to the Jews. God gave all of this land to the Jews."

A Visit to a Holy Mount

On the 1985 tour, I became acquainted with Owen, 59, a retired Army major. Slightly built, about five feet, five inches tall, he stood erect and had a pleasant if rather shy smile. Well dressed and with a full head of sandy hair, he looked younger than his age. He had served in Europe during World War II and later for a number of years in Japan. Like Clyde, whom I met on the 1983 trip, Owen was a widower. His wife recently had undergone a long and agonizing death from cancer, and he had faithfully cared for her. He now lived alone in a northern town of Nebraska.

I enjoyed spending time with Owen. He was a walker and we often rose early to get in a couple of miles of hiking. Sometimes we walked in the evenings, after dinner. He and I had both traveled and lived in many of the same places, and we enjoyed reminiscing about days in Rome, Paris and Vienna—about skiing in Bavaria and climbing Mt. Fuji in Japan.

Most of all, however, we talked about religion, the most important aspect of his life. Since his retirement, Owen had gone into the real estate business. Having made good money, he was a big contributor—in the tens of thousands of dollars, I learned—to Jerry Falwell as well as to other TV evangelicals, including Pat Robertson. Like Brad and Clyde and Mona and others I had previously met, Owen carried a Scofield Bible and used it as an infallible guide to interpret today's events.

One day our group went to the old walled city of Jerusalem. As we entered Damascus Gate and passed along cobblestone corridors, I could easily imagine Jesus having walked a similar route. In the midst of a rapidly changing environment, the old walled city, guarding layer upon layer of history and conflict, provides the stellar

Al-Aqsa /^-n — Mosque

Dung Gate

Jerusalem (Old City)

For most of its long history, Jerusalem has been a predominantly Arab city. Within the walls of the old city are shrines for three faiths: Islam's Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque (on raised platform grounds); Judaism's Western Wall and Christianity's Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The old city is home for 25,000 people, many of whose forebears have lived there since before the time of Christ.

attraction for tourists and remains home for 25,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

I was walking alongside Owen as our group approached the large Muslim grounds called Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, which encloses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Both these edifices, on raised platform grounds, are generally referred to simply as "the mosque" and represent Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine.

We stood on lower ground below the mosque and faced the Western Wall, a 200-foot-high and 1,600-foot-long block of huge white stones, believed to be the only remnant of the second Jewish temple.

"There—" our guide said, pointing upward toward the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque—"we will build our third temple. We have all the plans drawn for the temple. Even the building materials are ready. They are hidden in a secret place. There are several shops where Israelis work, making the artifacts we will use in the new temple. One Israeli is weaving the pure linen that will be used for garments of the priests of the temple." He paused and then added:

"In a religious school called Yeshiva Ateret Cohanim—the Crown of the Priests—located near where we are standing, rabbis are teaching young men how to make animal sacrifice."

A woman in our group, Mary Lou, a computer specialist, was startled to hear the Israelis wanted to return to the rites of the old Solomonic sacrificial altar of the temple.

"You are going back to animal sacrifice?" she asked. "Why?"

"It was done in the First and Second Temples," our Israeli guide said. "And we do not wish to change the practices. Our sages teach that neglecting to study the details of temple service is a sin."

As we left the site, I remarked to Owen that our Israeli guide had said a temple would be built on the Dome of the Rock site. But he said nothing about the Muslim shrines.

"They will be destroyed," said Owen. "You know it's in the Bible that the temple must be rebuilt. And there's no other place for it except on that one area. You find that in the law of Moses."

Did it not seem possible, I asked, that the Scripture about building a temple would relate to the time in which it was written— rather than to events in the 20th century?

"No, it is related to the End Time," Owen said. 'The Bible tells us that in the End Times the Jews will have renewed their animal sacrifice."

In other words, I said, a temple must be built so that the Jews can resume their animal sacrifices?

"Yes," said Owen, quoting Ezekiel 44:29 to prove his point.

Was Owen convinced that Jews, aided by Christians, should destroy the mosque, build a temple and reinstate the killing of animals in the temple—all in order to please God?

That, said Owen, was the way it had to be. It was in the Bible.

Does the building of the temple, I asked, fit into any time sequence?

"Yes," he said."We think it will be the next step in the events leading to the return of our Lord. As far as its being a large temple, the Bible doesn't tell us that. All it tells us is that there will be a renewal of sacrifices. And that would require a relatively small building."

He was referring to animal sacrifice within the temple? Was it not atavistic to go back to animal sacrifice?

"It is, but that is what the Bible predicts," Owen said. "Now the people who are going to do it are not Christians but Orthodox Jews. Of course the Old Testament made out a very specific formula for it, and they can't carry it out without a temple and they were observing it until 70 a.d. And when they have a temple they will have some Orthodox Jews who will kill the sheep or oxen in the temple, as a sacrifice to God."

As Owen talked of animal sacrifice—a step in his dispensa-tionalist belief system he felt necessary for his own spiritual maturity—he seemed to block from his awareness the fact that Muslim shrines stood on the site where he wanted a temple to stand.

Would he take the time, I ventured to ask—and I mentioned a time when our group would be given a couple of hours in our schedule for shopping—to visit the Muslim shrines with me? He registered surprise and even disappointment that I would consider going to shrines built by "heathens." He added that he would not go and I should not either.

Nevertheless, when others, including Owen, went shopping, I walked alone to the Muslim Noble Sanctuary or Haram al-Sharif.

It was a Friday, a Muslim Holy Day, and walking to Al-Aqsa, I was aware I was moving among thousands of Arabs as they made their way along Jerusalem's cobblestone corridors to pray at the mosque.

As Paris has for thousands of years been predominantly and overwhelmingly Gallic or French, so Jerusalem throughout its long history has been predominantly and overwhelmingly Arab. Amorites came to the holy site 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, then Canaanites from Canaan. AD of this early history predates the arrival of the Hebrews by many centuries. And when a tribe of Hebrews, one of many tribes in the area, did arrive, they stayed for less than 400 years. And they, too, like many before and after, were defeated. And 2,000 years ago they were driven out. It was what we in the West called the Orient in our history books, and it remains so.

I continued my walk, and near the Western, or Wailing, Wall— where Owen and I had once talked—I climbed steps to enter onto raised platform grounds on a man-made plateau. The Noble Sanctuary or Haram al-Sharif grounds measure 40 acres and cover one-sixth of the old walled city.

For 1,300 years, continuously from the seventh century to the present, except for an 88-year Christian Crusader period, the Muslims have maintained the "Sacred Place" of Jerusalem, ruling it through the Muslim Supreme Council and its executive arm, called the Islamic awqaf, which control not only Haram al-Sharif but 35 other mosques, many cemeteries and other Islamic religious sites within the old city.

In 1967, the Israelis seized military control of the old city. Wanting space for a large plaza in front of the Wailing Wall, they bulldozed the Arab Moghrabi quarter—so named for an area in Arab North Africa—and evicted an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people living in this quarter. The obliteration of homes, schools and mosques in the area triggered the concern of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Alarmed about the safety of major Islamic monuments around Haram al-Sharif, the school began a survey of 1,300 years of Islamic architecture and pinpointed monuments that should be preserved.

In their survey, the British School lists some 30 Islamic monuments in the old city from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Farimid and Ayyubid periods, 79 from the Mamluk period and 37 Ottoman

buildings of note. The Islamic awqaf authorities have responsibility for most of these buildings, which create the present shape and skyline of much of the old city and are therefore of great importance in determining its character.

Walking alone in the old city, I make my way toward the magnificent Dome of the Rock, one of the most beautiful shrines in all of the world—often compared in its beauty with the Taj Mahal. It was constructed—in 685—by the order of Abdul-Malek Ibn Mar-wan, the Umayyad Caliph of Damascus. To visit this shrine, an octagonal masterpiece fashioned with blue and green tiles that glisten in the Mediterranean light, I step onto a raised, terrace-like platform, surrounded by pillars with stairways on every side. I look above to an incredibly large yet graceful gilded dome.

At the entrance of the Dome of the Rock, I, along with dozens of other visitors from around the world, remove my shoes and once inside walk on ancient, richly textured Oriental rugs. After a half-dozen steps I reach a guardrail framing a large boulder. I am startled by the unexpected dimensions of the rock. I see a large mass of mineral matter from the earth's crust, a boulder like many others I have seen in countless regions of the earth. The rock, which rises above the ground to my shoulders and covers an area half the size of a tennis court, dominates the entire space within the shrine.

Jerusalem's most beautiful architectural gem was built for one sole purpose: to protect and enhance the huge rock. I see only mineral matter, but Muslims looking at the rock see eternity, a foundation stone of the universe, the center of the world and a focus of their faith.

The prophet Mohammed believed the great rock had its origins in Paradise. And today about 800 million Muslims believe that from this sacred rock Mohammed was transported by God to heaven.

Nearby stands Al-Aqsa Mosque, with its vast courtyard, where 10,000 Muslims may gather to pray. On entering the mosque the first time, I note the beauty of more than a hundred stained-glass windows fashioned in stylized, colorful arabesque designs. Again, as in the Dome of the Rock, I walk on luxurious handwoven carpets. I am impressed by the mosque's stately architecture and dignity, unmarred by over-scheduled tourists following leaders who shout details of holy sites through amplified mouthpieces. I see only in-

dividuals at prayer. I kneel, remain quiet and after awhile, leave.

Having visited Haram al-Sharif, I gleaned a sense of how deeply the Muslims—now so numerous they are every fifth person in the world—cherish their holy shrines. I feared that if Jewish fanatics, aided by Christian fanatics, in a holy war, or jihad, against the Muslims destroyed the Muslims' most holy Jerusalem shrines, they might easily trigger World War III and a nuclear holocaust.

I had talked at length with Owen about this. But whenever I reminded him that the Muslim shrines were there and deeply meaningful to the Muslims, he said that was "inconsequential."

I wondered: was his thinking truly representative of Christian fundamentalism? Were the evangelical-fundamentalist leaders unaware, unmindful or even scornful of the feelings of almost a billion Muslims in 60 countries around the world?

The Hebrews built their first temple in Jerusalem in 950 B.C. and this temple was destroyed in 587-6 B.C. by the Babylonians. They built a second temple in 515 B.C. and this was destroyed in a.d. 70 by the Romans. Archaeologists have not found any artifacts indicating where either the first or the second temple was located, but many presume that they were built on the site where Islam's most holy shrines are now located.

Most Christians today believe that when Christ was here on earth He taught that each of us should build "a temple of goodness" within our souls. In John 2:20-21, Jesus speaks of its having taken 46 years to build a temple, and asks, "Will you raise it up in three days?" The Scripture adds, "But he spoke of the temple of his body." And in John 4:7-24, we read the story of the woman of Samaria who draws water from a well for Jesus. When she asks Him about worship on a holy mountain and at the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus replies:

"Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father . . . The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him."

Christian dispensationalists insist, however, that God wants more than a spiritual temple, that He demands an actual temple of stone and mortar, and on the very site of Muslim shrines.

Of my concerns about the dangers inherent in the plot to destroy Islam's holy shrines, Owen had answered that Christians need not do it, but he was sure the shrines would be destroyed. His logic was simple—what will be will be because God wills it.

"I say Jewish terrorists will blow up the Islamic holy place and this will provoke the Muslim world into a cataclysmic holy war with Israel that will force the Messiah to intervene. The Jews think He will be coming for the first time, and we Christians know it will be His second visit," Owen told me, adding simply, "Yes, there definitely must be a third Jewish temple."

This is also what Hal Lindsey says. In The Late Great Planet Earth he writes, "There remains but one more event to completely set the stage for Israel's part in the last great act of her historical drama. This is to rebuild the ancient Temple of worship upon its old site. There is only one place that this Temple can be built, according to the law of Moses. This is upon Mt. Moriah. It is there that the two previous Temples were built."

Provoking a Holy War

Before going on the second Falwell-sponsored tour, I talked with Terry Reisenhoover, a native of Oklahoma, who heads an organization called the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, which he and other Americans established to aid Jewish terrorists destroy the Muslim shrines.

In his mid-40s, short, rotund, and balding, Reisenhoover lived in California where he headed the Alaska Land Leasing Company and Sunbelt Homes. Reisenhoover also formed an exploration company specifically to search for oil in the portion of occupied Palestine called the West Bank.

A born again Christian, Reisenhoover is blessed with a fine tenor voice. In White House gatherings of right-wing Christians, he has been a featured soloist, accompanied on the violin by Shony Braun, an associate in schemes for buying up West Bank Palestinian land. A survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he is today an American-Israeli dual citizen.

Reisenhoover views himself as "the new Nehemiah." As the biblical Nehemiah was dispatched to rebuild Jerusalem, so he believes he is called to rebuild a temple even though he is a Gentile and most Jews, Christians and Muslims would disapprove of his program and tactics.

To move tax-free dollars to Israel from wealthy American donors, Reisenhoover helped organize and in 1985 served as Chairman for the American Forum for Jewish-Christian Cooperation. He was assisted by Douglas Krieger as executive director, and an American rabbi, David Ben-Ami, closely linked with Ariel Sharon, as president.

Additionally Reisenhoover served as chairman of the board for the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, and as his international secretary for this foundation he chose Stanley Goldfoot, regarded

by some people as a terrorist. Goldfoot, who emigrated in the 1930s from South Africa to Palestine, became a member of the notorious Stern gang, which shocked the world with its massacres of Arab men, women and children. Such figures as David Ben-Gurion denounced the gang as Nazis and outlawed them.

Goldfoot, according to the Israeli newspaper Davar, placed a bomb on July 22, 1946, in Jerusalem's King David Hotel that destroyed a wing of the hotel housing the British Mandate secretariat and part of the military headquarters. The operation killed about 100 British and other officials and, as the Zionists planned, hastened the day the British left Palestine.

Although Stanley Goldfoot, one of the Israelis most intent on building a temple, does not believe in God or sacred aspects of the Old Testament, he and his associates justify their militant plans to take over Haram al-Sharif by quoting Scripture. They say that God gave the Holy Land to Abraham and his son Jacob and not to another of Abraham's sons named Ishmael. As Goldfoot's deputy Yisrael Meida, a member of the ultra right-wing Tehiya party, explains:

"It is all a matter of sovereignty. He who controls the Temple Mount, controls Jerusalem. And he who controls Jerusalem, controls the land of Israel.

"This is the land of Israel and not the land of Ishmael," Meida continues, adding that even if militant Jews don't succeed in expelling the Arabs from Haram al-Sharif in his generation, "it will be done in the next generation. King David bought the Temple Mount for good money and we have a kushan (certificate of ownership, that is, the Bible) for it."

Christians such as Reisenhoover admire such talk. And many of them view Goldfoot with an awe that resembles a six-year-old kid's admiration for the biggest bully on the block. "Goldfoot is a very solid, legitimate terrorist," said Reisenhoover in describing Goldfoot's qualifications for building a temple.

In Jerusalem, I had sought to learn more about the Jerusalem Temple Foundation from George Giacumakis, who for many years headed the Institute for Holy Land Studies, a long established American-run evangelical school for studies in archaeology and theology. I set an appointment with Giacumakis, a Greek American

with dark eyes and cultivated charm. After we visited casually over coffee, I asked if he might help me arrange an interview with Goldfoot. In response, Giacumakis dropped his head in both hands, as one does on hearing a disaster.

"Oh, no. You don't want to meet him. He goes back to the Irgun!" Then raising his head and waving an arm toward the King David Hotel, he added, "Stanley Goldfoot was in charge of that operation. He will not stop at anything. His idea is to rebuild the temple, and if that means violence, then he will not hesitate to use violence." Giacumakis paused and then assured me that while he himself did not believe in violence, "If they do destroy the mosque and the temple is there, that does not mean I will not support it."

Sponsored by Terry Reisenhoover, Goldfoot has made several trips to the United States, where he spoke on religious radio and TV stations and in Protestant churches, asking Christians for donations but not mentioning that a mosque sits on the site where he contemplates a temple.

Goldfoot admits that he has received money from the International Christian Embassy, whose funding, many believe, comes from South Africa. Asked about the Goldfoot statement that he had received money from his organization, Christian Embassy spokesman Jan Willem van der Hoeven denied that they are directly involved in the temple construction efforts. Rather, he said, when supporters volunteer to give money for building a temple, he directs them to Goldfoot. The embassy has, however, made a cassette it sells for $5.00 that features a taped message about plans to build a temple on Haram al-Sharif. Van der Hoeven is one of the speakers on the tape.

I heard more about Goldfoot from one of his many Christian admirers, the Reverend James E. DeLoach of Houston's Second Baptist Church. I first talked by telephone with the pastor one day in late 1983 when I was in Houston. On the phone, he was low-key, quiet-spoken, genial and, like many Texans, in no rush. I noted he used a Dale Carnegie technique of repeating one's first name often and pronouncing it in a way one likes to hear. We had never met and I knew nothing about him and he did not know anything about me, except that I had told him I was a writer and had talked

with Tern Reisenhoover—and that Reisenhoover had given me his name and suggested I call him.

A few weeks later, I was back home in Washington, D.C., and DeLoach arrived in town for a religious conference. He called telling me he was at the Sheraton Hotel. I said that I lived "next door," and I invited him by for a visit. Shortly a bell rang and I opened the door to see a bald-headed man with a kind face—a man who could be my brother, uncle or a helpful neighbor. We soon were seated, and he began telling me about Goldfoot.

"I know Stanley very very well. We're good friends. He's just real unusual. . . he's a loyalist, a Zionist, and a very strong person."

And, I asked, Goldfoot wants to see the mosque destroyed?

"Well, now, naturally every Jew that I know would like to see the mosque gone. But they tell me that they believe it will be destroyed by an act of God, by an earthquake or something—so that they won't even have to do it."

Why, as a Christian, was he working to build a Jewish temple?

"My interest in the Jerusalem Temple Foundation is not primarily an interest in the temple. My interest primarily is in religious freedom. The thing that troubles me more than anything else is that in all the land of Israel, one of the most sacred sites for Christians and Jews and Muslims is the Temple Mount area and the Muslims consistently have forbidden Christians to have worship services on the very hill and the very place where the church was born.

"Now, in America, we believe in Christian freedom, and that means that we believe in religious freedom. That means that any-religious person has a right to practice his religion under the full protection of the law—anyone, evangelical Christian, Jew, Roman Catholic, Muslim—whatever. But in Jerusalem, at one of the most sacred places, Christians are not permitted to pray."

DeLoach talked for more than an hour, devoting about 15 minutes to a Christian's right to a freedom to pray—all of which he allowed me to tape record. And while none of it made much sense to me, I heard him to the finish, with all his references to chapters and verses that he thought to include. I refrained from interrupting him, but I could scarcely believe Pastor DeLoach along with Tern- Reisenhoover, Doug Krieger and other dispensationalists

were raising $100 million—he had said that was their annual yearly goal—to gain the right to pray at a certain shrine in Jerusalem. One may, of course, pray anywhere, and at no cost.

"Other than this freedom to pray, I have absolutely no interest in the temple," DeLoach insisted. Asked if Terry Reisenhoover's reason for building a temple was the same as his, he said, "I think that Terry maybe . . . Terry ... I can't really speak on that, I can't really. Terry and I have discussed this on occasions, and I'm not really clear as to what Terry really believes."

Despite Reisenhoover's being in charge of a $100 million annual fund raising project, DeLoach did not understand his associate's motives?

"Well, Terry has been blessed by God with a gift of making money. And he is also a very generous person with his gifts." As an example of his generosity, Reisenhoover produced the money, DeLoach said, used to pay lawyers who gained freedom for 29 Israeli militants who in 1983 stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque, were jailed and put on trial.

"It cost us quite a lot of money to get their freedom," DeLoach told me.

The pastor also indicated that Reisenhoover's group is providing support for the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva that prepares students such as 27-year old Mattityahu Hacohen Dan—a cohen, or priest—for service in a Temple they hope will be built. Twenty-five of the yeshiva's young scholars devote at least one hour every day, and an additional afternoon every week, to concentrated study of the laws of temple worship. Three other yeshivas as well teach their students how to burn incense and follow other laws dealing with the temple practice, including how to offer animal sacrifices.

"Two of the young Israelis who study animal sacrifices were guests in my home for several weeks," Pastor DeLoach told me.

Before DeLoach left my apartment that day I asked him one final question: What if the Jewish terrorists he supports are successful and they destroy the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa and this triggers World War III and a nuclear holocaust—would he and Reisenhoover not be responsible?

"No," he said—because what they are doing was "God's will."

In addition to Reisenhoover, Krieger and DeLoach, other

Jerusalem Temple Foundation directors include Dr. Charles E. Monroe, president of the Center of Judeo-Christian Studies in Poway, California, and Dr. Hilton Sutton, an evangelical-fundamentalist preacher and chairman of an organization with Israeli ties called Mission to America, located in Humble, Texas.

Dr. Lambert Dolphin, a top-ranking scientist with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California, does not serve on the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, but he nevertheless maintains the closest of ties with its leaders and he adheres to its goals. Dolphin, Pastor DeLoach told me, is the innovator of a plan "that uses ground search radar sort of like an x-ray machine for archaeological purposes. His ground search radar has a great deal of validity."

I first began a correspondence with Dr. Dolphin in April, 1983, and because we wrote each other with some frequency, occasionally talked on the telephone and exchanged Christmas cards, we got on a first-name basis.

He sent me packages of his material, some of it highly technical and some of it personal, such as a pamphlet describing his born again experience. He does not detail specifically his past imperfect years but one might assume he was in a fast lane, intent on gaining money rather than saving his soul. Then he found Christ. Finding Christ in his case also meant accepting the dispensationalists' belief that many events connected with his Christian growth must occur in Israel, and that America therefore should give 100 percent support to that nation. Otherwise there might not be an Israel, and without Israel his dispensational belief system would crumble.

Dolphin, who probably earns a six-figure salary at the prestigious Stanford Research Institute, has provided dispensationalist clients of SRI with a synopsis of why he believes they should help the Jews build a temple. His pamphlet "Geophysical Methods for Archaeological Surveys in Israel," describes how an area can be explored archaeologically—by aerial photography, thermal infrared imagery, ground penetration radar and seismic sounding—without actually digging.

In many of the proposed archaeological digs, heavy equipment is required. Dolphin explains that he would need the cooperation of those in control of the area, in this case the Muslim Supreme Council, which is rot likely to agree to any such project. Dolphin

points out that with airborne radar it would not be necessary to inform the Muslims that the activity was taking place.

In another pamphlet, Dolphin notes that on the holy mount, where three religions lay claim to a sacred plot of land of 100,000 square meters—"digging is difficult and remote sensing is to be preferred." In asking for funds—to be sent to Stanley Goldfoot— Dolphin indicates that a single field season and follow-up program can cost from "low six figures to mid-seven figures," that is, anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand to several million dollars.

In 1983, Lambert Dolphin spent several weeks in Jerusalem on a mission connected with the Jerusalem Temple Foundation and partially funded by the Reverend Chuck Smith's Calvary Baptist Church in Santa Ana, California. Dolphin intended using his ground search radar equipment to probe Haram al-Sharif for any evidence that a temple had once been there. Thus far, no one has found any such evidence.

In Jerusalem, however, after he began "x-raying" Haram al-Sharif, including the space over, around and under the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, the religious Muslims who control the area objected to his probes. Faced with stiff opposition from religious Jews, who believe it wrong to disturb the holy site, as well as religious Muslims, Dolphin packed his gear and returned to California.

Nationalistic minded Zionists over the years have applied unrelenting pressure on successive Israeli governments to assume sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif. The Israeli parliament as well as the Israeli Supreme Court, fearful that the destruction of the Muslim shrines might lead to World War III, say that the decision does not fall under their jurisdiction, but rather that it is one to be decided by halacha, or religious law.

Halacha law states clearly that no Jew may enter the holy mount until the coming of the Jewish Messiah. So ruled the noted 12th-century Spanish rabbi-philosopher Maimonides, as well as Israel's first chief rabbi, Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook. Although most Orthodox Jews rigorously adhere to this halacha ban, many other Jews—orthodox and secular—do not.

Since 1967—the year the Israelis seized military control of

Jerusalem, Jewish nationalists, many of them armed Israeli rabbis, officers, soldiers and religious students, have on 100 or more occasions stormed the Muslim grounds. Chief Chaplain of the Armed Forces, Shlomo Goren (who later became Israel's chief rabbi) was one of the first to disobey the centuries-old halacha ban. In August 1967, he led 50 armed extremists onto the site in order, he claimed, to conduct "a religious service/'

In most all armed assaults on Haram al-Sharif, religious Israeli youths have been led by militant rabbis. "We should not forget," said Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Hacohen Aviner "that the supreme purpose of the ingathering of exiles and the establishment of our state is the building of the temple. The temple is the very top of the pyramid."

In the two decades (1967 to 1986) that Jewish militants have made sabotage attempts on the mosque, the chief Sephardic and Ashkenazic rabbis have never condemned the Jewish militants. "The chief rabbis, who even receive their salaries from the state, haven't condemned at all the violence committed. This signals that it is not so terrible," an Israeli journalist noted.

For some years now, Muslim authorities have feared that armed Jewish militants who storm the holy grounds and excavate underneath the mosque are intent on destroying their holy shrines. Speaking at a 1983 press conference, Sheikh Muhammad Shakra, director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, said Israeli archaeological excavations under the mosque had brought to light only relics from the Omayyad Abbassid and Ottoman eras. He added that the Israelis had found no clues that a temple ever stood there.

The most damaging Israeli intrusion on the Supreme Muslim Council authorities has occured, quite literally, under their feet. Since the early 1970s, the Israeli ministry of religious affairs has been digging a tunnel along the edge of the Haram, underneath a number of historic buildings. Its aim is to locate possible clues that the second temple stood on this site. According to Adnan Hus-seini, who is in charge of Muslim properties, the tunnel now stretches over 1,000 feet (more than the length of three football fields). From an engineering point of view, the tunnel was not dug scientifically. Five buildings, including several schools and offices of the Muslim authorities, now have structural problems. The crack-

ing has occurred gradually as the tunnel proceeds.

In Jerusalem, I interviewed an American archaeologist, Gordon Franz of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, who spent two years on digs while a resident at Jerusalem's Holy Land Institute. Together we visited in West Jerusalem a model of ancient Jerusalem in the era of Christ, or, as the Israelis say, at the time of the Second Temple. As we stood, looking at the model, which is the size of a large living room, I asked: Was there any evidence that the temple was located where the designer put it in this model? That is, on the site where the Dome of Rock and Al-Aqsa stand today?

'There's no evidence either way, that it was there or that it was not there. Some people assume that the temple was there."

Did he mean that Avi-Yonah, the Israeli-Jewish designer of the model, made that assumption?

"Yes. He made the asumption because he and most other Jews want to believe the temple was there.

"There are several theories about the temple: Many say it was located where the Dome of the Rock is today. So Zionists say, 'Well, the mosque has got to go' and they say that an act of God, like an earthquake, will destroy it or somebody is going to put dynamite there.

"Former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Goren believes the temple was located slightly north of the Dome of the Rock. A third idea is the temple was located on the northern side of the platform. They suggest that the Holy of Holies is over near the Dome of the Spirit.

"A fourth idea is that the temple is already built—in the form of a great synagogue on George V street, in West Jerusalem. And those holding this theory quote from Isaiah, where the question is asked, Where is my house? They interpret this text to mean the temple was not on the present Muslim grounds, but somewhere else."

Franz said that when he goes with Christians to the holy mount, "I like to remind them that Christ used a geographical location to convey a spiritual truth. As you recall, religious leaders always were reminding Christ that they were holy, as was their father Abraham. To teach them that spirituality did not come from one's lineage or even from worshiping in a temple, Christ told them, Tou are of your father the devil'—that's in John 8:44. Always," Franz added,

"Christ taught that God did not reside in a temple, but in the souls of men and women."

As regards the subject of a temple, "It is is a big controversy."

Where did Franz think a temple stood 2,000 years ago?

"I don't know," he said. "No one really knows. But I do know that those who say they want a temple want primarily to destroy the mosque. Now I have no idea how the destruction is going to happen. But it is going to happen. They are going to build a temple there. But how, who, when, where—don't ask me."

One Israeli, Scottish immigrant Asher S. Kaufman, claims he has positive proof that the Jewish temples did not stand on the site of the present Dome of the Rock, but rather south of there. Kaufman, who is not an archaeologist but a Hebrew University physics professor, wrote a lengthy article in the March-April 1983 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) in which he stated that his research, paid for by the Israeli Government, "precludes any other interpretation."

For an analysis of the Kaufman article, I talked with an American archaeologist, James E. Jennings, who lives in Chicago and has done extensive archaeological field work in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, serving as project director, organizer and field archaeologist for five expeditions, one under sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution.

Does he as an archaeologist and long-term student of Haram al-Sharif agree with the findings of the Israeli physics professor?

"I feel strongly that the study is politically motivated and that sober research could raise innumerable objections to it," Dr. Jennings said. "I object to the sources and what might be 'atmospherics' or the climate in which the work was undertaken.

"I object most seriously to its methodology and the use of biased, compounded assumptions and arbitrariness. I believe that a new study might well produce a different conclusion. This Israeli physicist is interested in tying in the Dome of the Tablets, which marks a holy site, with the temple, and he talks about the threshing floor of the Jebusites mentioned in the story of David in the Old Testament and tries to tie that in. And there are certain cuttings on the rock, which he can measure and establish a distance. Kaufman has an interesting theory, but in general it is somewhat less

than 50 percent probable."

What, I asked Jennings, might be Israel's political advantage in supporting and publicizing a study that in effect tells the world: we don't need to destroy the mosque to build our temple? We will put it alongside the Dome of the Rock.

"Many Israeli Zionists like to go step by step. If they do not blow up the mosque, they hope to be seen as moderate. Rather than risk a cataclysmic holy war with the 150 million Muslims who surround Israel, some Israeli leaders seem to be testing the political climate for building a temple alongside the mosque. If they can get by with this, they might later on decide to confiscate all of the Muslim holy grounds of Haram al-Sharif. It's a political power play.

"Don't forget, some of the most fanatic leaders in the plan to destroy the mosque are not religious Jews but militant Zionists. They may not believe in God, but they want a temple for nationalistic, political reasons. And it's not that they want a temple so much as they want to negate the presence of the mosque. As ardent Zionists, they want to eliminate Muslim shrines. They believe that is what any good Zionist should do," Dr. Jennings concluded.

It was in 1979 that I first heard Jewish settlers illegally encamped on Palestinian lands quite openly discuss plans to destroy the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa. While staying in the occupied West Bank with Gush Emunim or Bloc of the Faithful Jewish settlers in their strange ghettos, protected by high barbed wire fences, search beams and armed sentries, I listened as they boasted of breaking laws and creating new "facts."

"If destroying the mosque to build a temple creates a big war, then so be it," the Gush settlers, about one-third of them dual Israeli-American citizens, told me. As "pioneers" with army-issued weapons, they seek excitement, adventure and a new challenge. "In the beginning when we could practice guerrilla-type tactics to seize land and make our settlements it was exciting," Bobby Brown from Brooklyn explained. Shifting his Israeli army-issued submachine gun, he added:

"Now we are getting bored. We are fully armed. And we feel it is a stain on our land to have a mosque sitting in our midst. You look at any picture of Jerusalem and you see that mosque! That

will have to go. One day we will build our Third Temple there. We must do this to show the Arabs, and all the world, that we Jews have sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, over all the Land of Israel."

Brown and I were sitting in a prefabricated home in a colony near Bethlehem called Tekoa, built on land Brown admits he and other recent immigrants confiscated by armed force from Palestinians. In that year, 1979, Brown told me that he and other Gush settlers would be deeply involved in politics. "We will have our own party, called Tehiya. We will use members of this party to lobby, to press for a program to build our temple."

To build a temple for prayer was one thing, I suggested. But destroying the mosque could ignite an apolcalyptic war between Israel and the Arabs.

"Exactly," said Brown. "But we want that kind of war—because we will win it. We will then expell all of the Arabs from the Land of Israel, we will rebuild our temple and await our Messiah."

In early 1979, a group of ultra-Orthodox Gush Emunim settlers met in an apartment of one of their spiritual leaders in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish colony placed in the heart of the otherwise exclusively Palestinian town of Hebron. They met to discuss sabotaging the Camp David accords. "We feared these accords would lead to an independent Palestinian state," Brown explained. The settlers' spiritual advisors were Rabbi Moshe Levinger and Rabbi Eliazer Waldman, a parliamentary member of the Tehiya party.

In their earliest meeting, Gush members—composed of army officers and leading right-wing personalities, men with friendships that reached high into the Begin government—decided to blow up the Dome of the Rock. Names of the Jewish terrorists and details of their acts became known in 1984 after a trial in which most signed confessions of the crimes of which they were accused.

Robert I. Friedman in the Village Voice (November 12, 1985) writes graphically of Gush fanatics who formed "the most violent subversive organization in Israel's history." He gives details on how they plotted to destroy the mosque:

"Menachem Livni, the bearded, stern-faced commander of a reserve battalion of combat engineers in the Israeli army and the leader of the Gush underground, obtained aerial photos of the mosque and recruited an air force pilot to steal a plane and strafe

it. But Livni later opted for a ground attack.

"Squads of bomb-laden Jews were to scale the Old City walls into the mosque's courtyard. A model of the mosque was built; practice runs were timed; homemade explosives were tested in the desert. Livni calculated which way the mosque would fall after it exploded and how far the schrapnel would be catapulted. It was imperative not to harm Jews in the neighboring quarter, nor to damage the Western Wall. Finally, the conspirators obtained silencers for the Uzis and tear gas grenades to overcome the mosque's Islamic guards."

At the same time the Gush fanatics were plotting to blow up the mosque, they also plotted to kill three Palestinian mayors-Ibrahim Tawil of El Bireh, Karim Khalif of Ramallah and Bassam Shaka of Nablus—by planting bombs in their cars. Tawil escaped injury but a grenade rigged to his garage blinded an Israeli disposal expert. Khalif lost a foot, and Shaka, the most seriously injured, lost both legs. Reporter Friedman gives us ample evidence that many high placed Israelis looked upon the maiming of the Palestinian mayors with satisfaction:

"Two days after the West Bank bombings, the Jewish Regional Council of Judea and Samaria—a committee of the elected leaders from the Jewish West Bank settlements—held its monthly meeting with Brigadier General Ben Eliazer, commander of the West Bank. According to two settlers who were at the meeting, Eliazer expressed satisfaction with the attacks on the mayors, allegedly saying that he was only sorry that the would-be assassins had done 'half a job.' "

"Everyone around the table was happy," recalled council member Pincus Villershtine of Ofra (an illegal Jewish settlement). "We were all smiling."

Natan Nathanson, head of security at the West Bank Jewish colony called Shilo, who had been part of the team that planted the bomb in Shaka's car, left the meeting, Friedman reported, feeling the underground had the tacit support of the Israeli military and government at the highest level. He interpreted Eliazer's remarks as a signal that the underground had done something for "the glory and security of the people of Israel."

All over the West Bank, "Jewish settlers and soldiers celebrated

the attacks on the mayors," said Benzion Heineman, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the Gush underground. "When they heard about Shaka at the military headquarters in Nablus, the military government and soldiers made a b'raha (a blessing) over wine," Heineman told reporter Friedman.

Israeli deputy attorney general Yehudit Karp was chosen to head a secret blue-ribbon commission to investigate the allegations. After more than a year of work, the commission submitted its report, which revealed that Israeli police and military officials had acquiesced in vigilante attacks against West Bank Palestinians.

In 1983 Karp resigned from the commission, charging that Begin was suppressing the report because it was a political liability. Describing law enforcement in the occupied territories as "lackadaisical" and "ineffective," Karp asked, "How is it possible that they (the Israeli government) take measures against each Arab stone thrower, yet fail to bring to justice (Jewish) settlers who open fire on Arabs?"

During the trial, attorneys for the Gush terrorists came up with a politically explosive defense: that Shin Bet (Israel's FBI) knew the identities of the Jewish terrorists soon after their attack on the mayors and had prior knowledge of a Jewish attack on an Islamic College. Shin Bet failed to arrest anyone, according to chief defense attorney Avi Yitzahk, because "top political and military authorities had urged the underground to take actions that a democratic state cannot."

"The truth about the level of government involvement in the Gush Emunim underground may never be known," reporter Friedman noted.

In July 1985 an Israeli judge sentenced 18 members of the Gush underground to prison terms ranging from four months to life. As he read out his sentences, the judge added that the convicted men should be praised "for their pioneering ethos and war records."

The following day, Vice Premier Shamir began to press for clemency. Speaking to graduates of the right-wing Betar youth movement in Jerusalem, Shamir said that the members of the underground were "excellent people."

Rabbi Waldman, named by Menachem Livni as having given approval to the West Bank bombings, was another ardent supporter

of clemency. 'They (the members of the underground) are devoted citizens who must be released from prison so that they can continue to build the country ... It will weaken the government if they are held in jail . . . Clemency is necessary," the rabbi said.

Throughout the trial the Orthodox Jewish terrorists portrayed themselves as defenders of Jewish rights in the West Bank. Yehuda Etzion, the conspirators' spiritual ideologue, told the court that in 1981 he began to consider the necessity of "purifying" the Muslim site by removing the Islamic shrine, a mission, he believed, that should have been carried out by the state immediately following the 1967 war. When the government did not act, Etzion said in his testimony, he realized that he himself would have to blow up the Muslim shrines since "the state of Israel was not interested in achieving redemption."

In spite of the gravity of the crimes, the Israeli court judges handed down astonishingly light sentences. The judges were forced by law to give mandatory life imprisonment to three defendants convicted of murder. But having discretionary power in other instances, they handed down prison terms ranging from three to seven years.

As the judges announced their lenient sentences, the atmosphere in the packed courtroom became "a carnival," an Israeli reporter wrote. Spectators hugged and kissed the defendants and some sang Jewish nationalist songs as the convicted settlers congratulated one another. Supporters from West Bank settlements proclaimed the defendants "heroes of Israel."

The defendants "should get medals. They were chosen by God to change the Jewish law of this country. The law is in the hands of God," said Shoshana Helkiriyahu, 60, who immigrated from New York in 1935 and lives in the illegal Jewish Kiryet Arba settlement near Hebron.

"I told my son, 'Now you have to do the same as they did so that there will be more people in the Land of Israel who want to get rid of the Arabs,' " Helkiriyahu said.

The Jewish terrorists, while not a political force in themselves, have become the fulcrum of Israeli fascism. Though at the time of their arrest, only the Tehiya party and Kahane's Kach movement openly came out in their defense, by July 1985 all the right-wing and clerical parties as well as some Labor party members were

working for their release. Parliament members Ariel Sharon and Geula Cohen, as well as other high ranking Israelis called the convicted criminals "great heroes."

Of his light sentence and possible future pardon, Etzion, 34, said he knew the trial would take place but he added, "I think that in the court of history I'm 100 percent not guilty because the building (Dome of the Rock) will be removed."

In raising money for the Jewish terrorists, Jewish Press editor Yehuda Schwartz said he worked closely with Rabbi Avi Weiss, head of the Hebrew Institute in Riverdale, New York. Weiss said he separately collected about $100,000 from American Jews to defray the terrorists' legal expenses. Charlie Fox, an elderly Jew in Florida, contributed $75,000 of that sum.

"Neither Schwartz nor Weiss has registered—or filed financial statements—with the New York State Attorney General's office, or with the Secretary of State's office," wrote Friedman in the forementioned Village Voice article. State law "requires any nonprofit charity raising in excess of $10,000 a year to register with the Secretary of State's office. Charities must also register with the State Attorney General's office. Additional sums of money have been collected for the Gush underground in right-wing Orthodox synagogues across America." Friedman added that Rabbi Maurice Lamm of the Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, California, raised "very large sums of money" for the terrorists. Rabbi Lamm, who made appeals for donations from his pulpit, said he sent the money to Rabbi Moshe Levinger, spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, in occupied Hebron.

Over the years, the Gush Emunim settlers movement also has reaped a harvest in America, where it has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in private donations, according to Israeli reporter Danny Rubinstein, Davar's West Bank correspondent and author of a book on Gush Emunim. The movement's largest contributor, Rubinstein says, has been Marcus Katz, a wealthy arms dealer of Mexican nationality, who represented the Israeli arms industry in Iran and later in Central America. Katz also helped finance a legal battle waged by Ariel Sharon against Time magazine. Cyril Stein, known as the king of London's gambling industry, also has given substantial sums to Gush Emunim, according to Rubinstein.

The U.S.Treasury provides the largest source of funding for the

Gush Emunim and their illegal West Bank settlements. Hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars have been funneled into building the illegal Jewish settlements and their costly infrastructure. For example, Rubinstein says, many Gush terrorists were also employed by the Israeli government as West Bank functionaries.

Despite the conviction of the Gush terrorists, the movement itself remains committed to its messianic mission. 'Their notion of a Zionist order is a dark mixture of religious fanaticism and brutal chauvinism which takes precedence over the laws of the state," wrote S. Zalman Abramov, a former Likud deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament. "Maybe some of the terrorists will regret their actions after the shock of what they have been through. This is not what will happen, however, to the Gush itself. They will continue to cling to their faith and their path, assured of the admiration of many government leaders. The hothouse which nurtured the scourge of terror is alive and well and shows absolutely no sign of regret."

Research done by Robert Friedman indicates that Meir Kahane, the rabble-rousing rabbi from Brooklyn, has been even more successful than the Gush in tapping American Jewish support. Since founding the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968, Kahane has collected millions of dollars from American Jewish businessmen. Among the wealthy Jews who have supported the JDL is Reuben Mattus, the founder and president of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. "If they needed money, I gave it," Mattus said.

Rabbi Kahane, told reporter Friedman that donations to him have increased "especially from Jewish millionaires," since his election to the Knesset. Currently, his largest bastions of support are in New York and Los Angeles. "He has received substantial sums from extremely prominent businessmen, well-known in the Jewish community," says Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen of Temple Shaarei Tefila of Los Angeles, who himself has collected money on behalf of the Gush underground.

"The emotional and financial level of support for Kahane in my district is tremendous," says Assemblyman Hikind, whose district has the largest Jewish constituency in New York State. "After Kahane won a Knesset seat, many people from my district came to me emotionally high from his victory. Kahane is one of the great men in the Jewish community today!"

In May 1984 Kahane traveled to Dallas with Jimmy DeYoung, a born again Christian vice president and general manager of religious radio station WNYM in New York. The two appeared on a television talk show. Later Kahane attended private cocktail parties where he reportedly solicited funds from Christian evangelicals.

Kahane, who writes a weekly column for the Jewish Press, where he was once an editor, has used the paper to solicit funds for Kach members convicted of terrorist activities. The JDL, however, is still one of Kahane's most lucrative sources of funding for his activities in Israel, although he stepped down as head of the organization in August 1984. The JDL is listed with the New York Secretary of State's office as having a religious exemption from filing financial statements—"a neat trick for a group that is listed as a terrorist organization by the FBI," reporter Friedman noted.

In October 1985 the State Department stripped Kahane of his U.S. citizenship. He continued to shuttle, however, with ease between Israel and the United States.

In pursuit of his messianic vision, Kahane has sought alliances not only with American Jews but also with right-wing Christian evangelists in America, who, like him, believe that Jews are God's Chosen People and that the Messiah's coming is linked to the Jewish return to Israel and the expulsion of Israel's enemies—the Arabs.

Since my research leads me to believe that the Middle East, which is receiving more weapons than any other area of the world, represents the most dangerous powder keg for a nuclear conflagration, I still could not comprehend why Christians such as Reisenhoover, DeLoach, Hilton Sutton, Douglas Krieger, Charles Monroe—none of whom look anything at all like fanatics who would go on a suicidal mission—had banded together to aid Jewish terrorists destroy Muslim shrines. Nor could I understand why one member of that group, Pastor DeLoach, would claim if they started World War III, they were doing God's will.

For additional perspective on such thinking, I arranged an interview with Professor Gordon Welty of Wright State University in Ohio. A sociologist and anthropologist, he has traveled throughout the Middle East and has written and lectured extensively on the subject of the Christian right-wing support for Israel. Our schedules were such that both of us were to be in Chicago,

and we met there in a hotel restaurant and talked over lunch.

How, I asked, can Christians consider it moral to negate the existence of about a billion Muslims and praiseworthy to donate millions of dollars for the destruction of their holy shrine?

'The evangelical-fundamentalists who raise money to destroy the mosque practice the same type of muscular theology that many of our forefathers did. They thought it brave, moral and right 'to win the West/ to slaughter Indians and march forward with white civilization. Since the 'frontier' of America is gone, they seek to recreate it elsewhere. The 'New Zion' of the settler's dreams has become the plain old Zion of Palestine.

"Just as some Christian settlers found it moral to kill Indians, some Christians now find it moral to give money to Zionists who kill Palestinians," Dr. Welty said. "With a disdain of history and sociological laws, they make invisible those who stand in the path of their manifest destiny. Now that the West is won, the Reisen-hoovers must fly over to Israel.

"One of the best descriptions I've seen of this type of power-makes-right is given by John Hobson in his book, Imperialism. He calls it 'muscular Christianity.' It translates into a rough-and-ready, take-what-you-can brand of action. The 'muscular Christians' supporting Zionism settle for short-term goals and deal in strange inconsistencies. They compartmentalize: they hold in one section of their brains the conviction that the Jews are God's Chosen People, and in another compartment they believe God does not hear the prayers of the Jew. They have, to a marked degree, this ability to hold incompatatible and often self-contradictory ideas and motives.

"Thus, they do not 'see' Palestinians, they do not 'see' the mosque—they only say 'they must go.' "

What, I asked, about Pastor DeLoach's fascination with the reinstitution of animal sacrifice to please God? He proudly said he hosted in his Houston home two Israeli religious students who were studying how to kill sheep in a temple service.

"Yes, can't you imagine bonfires, the bleating of lambs being slaughtered—the blood, the smell of burning flesh, all to please God! Both the Jews and the Christians who want this are ignoring or abandoning the most valuable theological and moral precepts of the Hebrew prophetic tradition. What Yahweh really demanded

was not the blood of sheep and goats but, in the words of Amos, justice and righteousness."

The main reason, I recalled to Professor Welty, that Pastor DeLoach gave for favoring the removal of a Muslim shrine for the building of a Jewish temple was that, as he put it, Christians must have "freedom" to worship on that particular holy site in Jerusalem.

"Yes, freedom is one of the 'masked words' the muscular Christians like most to use. Yet, does Pastor DeLoach think for a moment he would have the 'freedom' to preach a sermon anywhere in the Jewish state? Does he think he would have the 'freedom' to speak about Christ to any Israeli Jew? Does he think he would have the 'freedom' as a Christian to immigrate to the Jewish state? Since citizenship is reserved only for Jews, he would not have that freedom."

Since Pastor DeLoach had said he was concerned only about a Christian's freedom to pray at Haram al-Sharif, was the pastor, I asked, being hypocritical?

"No, not in the least," Professor Welty said. "If the minister is typical of the muscular Christians I have studied, he is incapable of being hypocritical. Their power is to keep inconsistencies in airtight compartments, so that they themselves never recognize these inconsistencies. As far as the muscular Christians know (or accept) they act with high minded, upright, self-sacrificing, generous, moral rectitude." In this context, Dr. Welty concluded, if the money a muscular Christian donates to the Jewish terrorists buys the dynamite that destroys the mosque, the muscular Christian will say, simply:

"It was an act of God."

Soon after this interview, I read an Israeli public opinion poll published in 1984 showing that 18.7 percent of the Israeli public support terrorist activities by extremist Jewish groups. In commenting on the poll, the Israeli writer Yehoehus Sobol pointed out that in 1938, a representative sample of the Nazi Party members found that 63 percent of them objected to hurting Jews, 32 percent expressed apathy on the subject and only five percent were in favor of harming Jews.

Four years later, in 1942, when the annihilation of Jews was already speedily taking place, a representative sampling of the Nazi Party members showed that those against attacking Jews decreased

to 26 percent, while the number of apathetic increased to 69 percent. The number of Nazis in favor of attacking Jews remained the same: five percent.

"It is clear," Sobol said, "that during the activation of the policy of genocide toward the Jewish people, only five percent of the Nazi Party members were prepared to identify with the policy . . . Now after 50 years, there is no justification anymore for ignoring a danger that is embodied in a fragmented-fanatic minority. A careful examination of the distribution of the views and positions in German society in the Nazi period has left no excuse for anyone today to claim that as long as racist ideas belong only to a small minority, there is no basis on which to speak about the fascistization of the whole society.

"The opposite is true: the German experience proves that fascistization of the society begins where racist ideas and extreme chauvinism belong to a small minority on the extreme right whose activities are carried out against the background of the majority's apathy."

Fanatics who belong to what the vast majority of Christians and Jews might term a crazy minority—and numbering no more than five percent of the total Israeli population—are nevertheless capable of destroying Islam's most holy shrine in Jerusalem, an act that could easily trigger a worldwide war involving Russia and the United States. The only necessary condition for this to happen is the existence of a decisive majority of the apathetic. The mainline Israeli and American Jews, together with non-Zionist American Christians, may well represent the decisive apathetic majority.

This decisive apathetic majority provides breeding grounds for the religious extremists. Increasingly, terrorists are recognized as heroes and, if sentenced, do not serve their full terms in jail. On December 8, 1985, President Chaim Herzog of Israel commuted the prison sentences of two Jewish terrorists who had been convicted of plotting to blow up Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine.

The prisoners freed are Dan Beeri, 41, and Yosef Tzuria, 26, who were serving three-year terms for plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. According to court records, the terrorists' plan was to dynamite and destroy the shrine to provoke the Islamic world into a holy war with Israel.

They are now free to continue the plot.

No Christian to Guide Us

On both Falwell-sponsored tours, when I disembarked an El Al non-stop 747 New York to Tel Aviv flight, I was one more tourist with dollars to bolster the Israeli economy—dollars that even on a package tour would be distributed to a wide variety of Israelis throughout the economy: Israelis who run hotels and restaurants, own and operate taxicabs, bus lines, tourist agencies and souvenir shops, as well as Israelis who stamp passports, and move baggage and own and operate tourist agencies and act as guides.

On the 1983 tour I was one of 630 pilgrims who each paid more than $1,000, which represents a total sum of more than $630,000. On the 1985 tour, I was one of 850 pilgrims who paid about $1,300, or a total sum, a Jerusalem tour operator told me, that translates into more than a million dollars for Falwell and the state of Israel. With this group, one among literally hundreds of similar package tours, "Falwell probably made a quarter of a million dollars—and Israel three-quarters of a million," the tour operator said.

Since its creation in 1948, Israel increasingly has benefited from tourism. In one decade (1967-1977) after prop planes were replaced by jets, international tourism increased nearly 75 percent, producing 243 million international tourists in 1977. Between 1970 and 1975, international tourist receipts more than doubled, from $18.2 billion to $38.8 billion.

By the 1970s, international tourism operations brought in almost as much revenue as the overall value of the world production of aluminum, lead, copper and iron ore combined. And despite recession, unemployment, oil crisis, inflation and political upheaval, tourism unabatedly continued its upward spiral. By the mid-1980s, tourism was bringing in more money than oil and employing more

people than any other activity. It held the number one position among all industries.

As many as 100,000 tourists visit Jerusalem each year, and since each foreign visitor leaves more than $700 in Israel, they represent about a billion-dollar-a-year industry for the Israelis. Tourists account for about six percent of the Gross National Product and represent an important foreign exchange earner for the beleagured Israeli economy.

For over a thousand years, Christians, Muslims and Jews have gone as tourists to Jerusalem. However, since 1967 when Israelis gained military control of Jerusalem, only Christian and Jewish tourists go there in large numbers. While nearly a billion Muslims over the world revere Jerusalem as one of their most sacred shrines and presumably would want to travel there, most of them cannot at present do so since the Arab states have never, with the exception of Egypt, recognized that Israel is a bona fide entity. (Indonesians, citizens of the world's largest Muslim country, can get to Jerusalem but in the main are not interested as long as Jerusalem is militarily occupied by Israeli soldiers.)

Israel can attract only a limited number of Jewish tourists. Worldwide, Jews number only 14 million, and of this total well over three million are Israeli citizens. To increase tourist dollars, Israelis must look to the Christians, who number one billion worldwide and account for more than 70 percent of Israel's tourism revenue. Conservative Christians, including evangelicals, fundamentalists, Pentecostals and charismatics, supply most of that revenue.

When Prime Minister Begin came into office, he personally met with evangelical-fundamentalists to help plan package tours. In early 1981 Begin chose the intimacy of his home to entertain an Assemblies of God evangelist, Reverend David Lewis, and his wife. He discussed tourist package plans with the Springfield, Missouri, minister, who that year created Lewis Tours to move thousands of evangelicals to Israel.

Tourist dollars also helped cement the close relationship between Israeli leaders and Falwell. In 1982, Falwell dispatched Ronald Godwin and 37 other Moral Majority organizers for a week's stay in Israel, where they collaborated with top Israelis devising package plans for Christian pilgrims. They agreed on arrangements

that were relatively simple, with each partner gaining monetarily.

Falwell would collect names and money. He would instruct pilgrims to make their way individually to New York's JFK airport, where the Israelis would take charge. They would book all pilgrims on the Israeli El Al airlines and once the Christians were on Israeli soil, Israeli guides with Israeli ground transport companies would shepherd the Christians about. As for the proceeds, Falwell's Moral Majority would get a slice of the pie, with the bigger chunk going to Israel.

Israel also benefits economically from the International Christian Embassy, created in 1980. In that year, Prime Minister Begin illegally annexed Arab East Jerusalem. And in protest 13 foreign embassies moved their offices from West Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. To offset disapproval by the secular powers, the Israelis encouraged evangelical-charismatics to form an "embassy" to express approval. In opening ceremonies attended by leading Israeli officials, 1,000 Christians, representing 23 nations, stepped forward to pledge their support.

It was widely alleged, and brought out in a court hearing, that New Zealand, Austrian, Dutch and American money poured into this embassy and was passed on to militant Israeli groups to aid in the expulsion of Palestinians and the removal of Muslim shrines in the Old City, to prepare grounds for the building of a Jewish temple. Money was also provided to set up programs to bring in large numbers of Christian tourists to Israel.

The embassy chose a major Jewish day, the Feast of the Tabernacles, or Succoth, and built a tourist promotional package around that special day. Working with Israel's tourism department, the embassy devised a ten-day program for Christians that includes El Al air fare, room, meals and sightseeing. The embassy sells this plan almost exclusively to evangelical-charismatics, who cherish a belief system that God's countdown on history has begun, with all major events to take place in Israel. In 1982 the Christian Embassy brought over 2,000 pilgrims, in 1983 about 3,000 and by 1985, it sponsored more than 5,000 U.S. Christians, the vast majority American charismatics.

The charismatics, more openly demonstrative of their faith than most Christian sects, shout, sing and dance through Jerusalem

streets for a week and turn the Feast of the Tabernacles into a kind of Mardi Gras. In 1982, Prime Minister Begin, overlooking the carnival atmosphere, warmly welcomed the charismatics, proclaiming they provide "great satisfaction." Presumably, part of the satisfaction came with the three and a half million tourist dollars they left in Israeli hands. The celebration in 1985 earned, according to Timothy King, financial officer for the Christian Embassy, "between 15 and 20 million" tourist dollars, most of it going to Israel.

By 1985, many Israeli leaders recommended the country make greater efforts to attract Christian tourists. Tourism Minister Avraham Sharir told a cabinet session devoted to tourism that for every dollar the government invested in tourism, the country reaped $150 in return. He suggested they spend even more than the current $3 million annually earmarked for promotion and advertising. Tourism, he said, was Israel's leading product.

On each Falwell tour, we listened to generals and politicians and visited Israeli farms, battlefields and shrines to the dead. Travelers to foreign countries often visit farms, battlefields and shrines to the dead, and may even hear local military chiefs and politicians. The Falwell fare seemed unusual only because we were in the Holy Land, and most travelers traditionally have gone there for a spiritual renewal and not to immerse themselves, as we did, almost entirely in learning about the country's present-day politics.

"Yours is not a 'regular' tour group," David Frank, Jerusalem whole tour operator who handled the Falwell delegation, wrote me. "You are visiting the Holy Land with one of the greatest friends the modern/ancient State of Israel has ever had—Reverend Jerry Falwell. Jerry's friendship for the people of Israel is as pure as his love of the United States ... By associating with Jerry Falwell, Dr. Ron Godwin and the Moral Majority—and their great support of Israel—you too are a great friend of ours."

All groups traveling to Israel are required by Israeli law to have an Israeli guide, licensed by the Israeli Government Tourist Office. However, if Falwell had so desired, he could have contested this ruling, since by international protocol pilgrim groups are not regarded as tourists and may be guided by pilgrims. Falwell apparently does not wish to categorize himself as a pilgrim.

Rather, as a promoter of Friendship Tours to Israel, Falwell is

able to meet top Israeli leaders. On several occasions he met with the Likud leader Begin when he was prime minister and in 1985 he met with the Labor leader Peres, who was then prime minister.

On each tour, Falwell gave the impression he was more interested in selling us on the idea that Israel needs more U.S. weapons—today it has more tanks than France and Germany and the third largest air force in the world—than he was in promoting reconciliation and peace.

On each tour, I attempted to count the hours we spent at Christian sites and hearing about Christ, and the time we spent learning the political and military achievements of the Zionist state. I came up with a ratio of about one to 30. That is, for every hour for Christ's teachings, we spent about 30 hours on the political-military aspects of Israeli life. We heard the words of Jesus read from the New Testament on three occasions: one being at Caesarea—a Christian lay leader read Acts 24:1-9; the second time at the site where Jesus said to Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my church," and the third time on the Sea of Galilee.

Why would Christian ministers such as Falwell, Hilton Sutton of Texas, or Chuck Smith of California, take Christians to the Land of Christ and choose not to guide them to the sites where Christ was born, had his ministry and died? I think of three reasons: first some ministers might make the tours for the money involved. Second, some ministers, like the rest of us, might be susceptible to flattery. Most of the American Christian ministers who take an initial tour to the Holy Land are viewed by the Israelis as potential tour leaders for groups of Christians. The Israelis offer them flattering travel grants, red-carpet hospitality and reduced rates or free tickets on El Al. Most of the ministers going to Israel have never personally met leaders of a nation. The Israelis make time for them and talk over war strategy. The Israelis provide helicopters and guides to give the ministers conducted tours of the Golan Heights and they repeatedly tell the ministers that Israel is the only friend America has in the Middle East.

The Israelis gave that kind of attention to the Reverend Bailey Smith of Oklahoma, after he told a meeting sponsored by the Religious Roundtable of Dallas that "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew." Rather than rebuke him, the Israelis invited

him to visit Israel, with the Israelis picking up the tab for all expenses. Smith accepted, and at the conclusion of his visit he promised: 'The bottom line is that you're going to read my name many times in the future in activities supporting the Jewish people and Israel." He then inaugurated a series of joint Baptist-Jewish programs and economic ties.

How many Christian pastors, I asked a prominent Presbyterian minister, did he estimate went on subsidized trips to the Holy Land?

Tn recent years, of those I know who have traveled there, I would say 90 percent have had their trips partially or wholly paid for by Israeli or Zionist grants, discounts or tie-ins."

Eliot H. Sharp of Brooklyn, New York, who is in his 80s and has long studied the Middle East, told me that he had a relative, a minister, who returned from the Holy Land "strongly biased in favor of Israel." Eliot asked if the Israelis paid his expenses.

"Yes, for the most part," the relative said. "I was one in a group of invited clergy and spouses who had never been to Israel before. While there, the Israelis encouraged us to get other Christians to visit Israel and they indicated they had offered us a subsidized rate based on the expectation that our visit would help increase the number of other tourists."

In concluding the story, Eliot Sharp said he understood that "Every Bible-loving Christian longs, as a Gospel hymn puts it, to 'walk today where Jesus walked.' But if they accept a partially or wholly subsidized trip, they should know the Israelis will want them to leave the land of Christians, Muslims and Jews as my relative did—strongly biased in favor of only one group, the Israelis."

In addition to the possible motives of money and flattery, there's a third and overwhelming reason why Christian ministers go to the Land of Christ and do not speak of Christ and do not choose to see indigenous Christians: They negate or downplay their allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount in order to upgrade and strengthen their belief in and their cult worship for the land of Israel. As one woman on the Falwell tour put it to me, "Jesus can't return unless there's an Israel for him to return to."

The Reverend Chuck Smith of the Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana, California, has sponsored more than 2,500 Christians from Calvary Chapel on journeys to the Holy Land. His members also

have given more than $700,000 for Israel's hospitals—including an ambulance and emergency relief supplies—and irrigation projects. In return, the Israelis gave the Reverend Smith permission to streamline the process of getting baptized in the Jordan, the site where John the Baptist is said to have immersed Jesus to mark His coming to divine power and ministry.

Smith, by means that are not clear, seems to have purchased with donations from his 25,000-member congregation a portion of the river. He installed chains alongside one side of the river indicating where Christians by the dozens may enter systematically, get baptized by immersion and hurriedly exit—much as one moves in and out of chained corridors in a crowded bank, post office or supermarket.

In forming their alliance with Falwell and other Christian Right ministers, the Israelis have insisted that Christian tourists fly only Israeli El Al airlines, which at one point had complained of losing traffic to the Royal Jordanian Airlines Alia and had declared bankruptcy. Previously, many tourists flew Alia into Amman, Jordan. After two or three days in Jordan, they would proceed by bus or taxi and at the Allenby Bridge cross the Jordan river, enter occupied Palestine (the West Bank) and travel a short distance on to Jerusalem. After spending time in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jericho and other sites, the tourists returned to Amman for a departure flight. About 60,000 persons a year, or roughly six percent of the total number of Holy Land tourists, did it that way.

In 1981 Prime Minister Begin issued an order to close the Allenby Bridge to two-way crossings. This order has since been rescinded, but it established a pattern among many travel agencies to book Holy Land tourists only on El Al.

Although El Al had urged Begin for economic reasons to encourage travel exclusively on El Al, Begin took the action "not so much out of economic considerations for El Al as for political reasons," an Arab Christian travel agent in Jerusalem told me. "Begin wanted only Israeli Jews—not Arab Christians or Arab Muslims—to represent the Holy Land. As long as tourists could book a tour to Jerusalem through Jordanian-based agencies, Begin feared Arabs would exploit these opportunites, that is, tell the tourists our side of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

The travel agent's theory was substantiated in an Israeli release quoted in the New York Times on July 10, 1981. As far as permitting Palestinians to become guides for visiting tourists, the statement said, "Israeli authorities are known to resent the pro-Arab views they believe are conveyed to the tourists."

"As much as we suffered economically by Begin's stopping two-way traffic from Amman, all of us (Arab tourist operators) are agreed he did this not because we took business from Israeli tourist agencies, but because the Israelis wanted tourists to meet only Israeli Jews—and have no contact with any of us," the Arab Christian said.

In that same year, 1981, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism began applying a regulation requiring that all tourist groups be accompanied by a guide with an Israeli Department of Tourism license. Israeli bus companies stopped renting vehicles to Christian tourists who traveled without an Israeli-licensed guide. And Palestinian priests accompanying pilgrims on religious tours reported they were harassed and intimidated by Israeli police because they did not carry an Israeli license. (In this respect, the Israelis were disregarding international protocol which establishes that pilgrim groups may be guided by pilgrims.)

"Why do I have to hire a guide if I accompany a visiting group of Christians who want to pray in the Holy Sepulcher on Sunday?" Brother Lowenstein of the U.S. Catholic Mission in Jerusalem asked. "The Israelis demand this—for economic and to a greater extent for political reasons. In this manner they control what the tourists see. They generally want them to see only stone monuments and historic sights and to speak only to Israelis.

"The Israeli guide gives them a map of Israel that includes the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel. In fact, the Israelis have made it illegal to print a map in Israel showing any part as occupied Palestine. Should anyone ask about Palestine, the Zionist guide will say, There is no Palestine.' And should anyone ask about the Palestinians, the guide will say, They are all terrorists.' Thus, concluded Brother Lowenstein, "they are successful in giving 95 percent of the Americans only one side of the reality of the Holy Land."

"The so-called non-political trip is impossible," observed Richard Butler, former spokesman for the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States. "It is in fact very political by what

people don't see. To ignore the people of the area and their problems, concerns and hopes is not spiritual." Butler expressed the hope that American Christians visiting the Holy Land would begin to get in touch with area churches, with various viewpoints, and not, as most Christian tourists presently do, limit their contacts to only one group of people and only one viewpoint.

Native Palestinian Christians repeatedly have denounced Israeli regulations that result in visiting pilgrims not being permitted the opportunity of being escorted by Christian guides to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, to the Holy Sepulcher or to the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem.

In March 1984, the Christian Pilgrimage Commission in the Holy Land criticized the Israeli government for restrictions placed on local religious tours. "The Israelis by insisting that all groups have an Israeli guide are violating the freedom of pilgrimage that Christians have enjoyed for 2,000 years," a spokesman for the Christian Commission charged, adding, "Never before has any government tried to control the freedom of pilgrimage to the Holy Land."

Despite the criticism, however, the Israelis continue to insist that all groups be accompanied by a guide bearing an Israeli license. It is generally assumed that the guide with the license will be an Israeli, not an Arab. Since 1967 the Israelis have issued only two official guide licenses to Arabs.

During my 1979 stay in Jerusalem, I asked one Palestinian Christian named Sami, who I knew had applied for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism's licensing course in tour guiding: What happened when he took the examination?

'They gave me verbal and written 'psychotechnic' tests to examine my knowledge in academic, historical and scientific subjects. They also tested my ability to organize and talk with tourists. I passed my verbal test and my language test"—he speaks English, French, Hebrew, as well as Arabic—"but then they told me I had failed the written exam. I asked to see my test results, but they would not permit this."

And how did he feel about that?

"I am convinced they deliberately denied me the right to study tour guiding because they have a hidden policy to prevent Palestinians from entering the profession. You know," Sami added, "former

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan reportedly once said 'It is easier for Arabs to become Israeli air force pilots than to become tourist guides.' "

If such a hidden policy against Arab guides does exist, were the Israelis discriminating against Palestinians because of economic or political reasons?

"Foremost for political reasons," Sami said. "They worry a great deal about 'image'. They fear that a Palestinian guide might relate incidents that would neutralize or even tarnish their position. The Palestinian guides who were licensed prior to 1967—before the Israelis imposed harsh restrictions—live in fear of saying something the Israelis will interpret as 'political'.

"As an example, a friend who works with the Terra Sancta Travel Agency was speaking to a group of Christians. In answer to a tourist's question about where he was born, he gave the reply, 'in Palestine'. And apparently some Israeli overhearing this answer deemed it too 'political'. And the Israelis revoked his license for six months. So, if you are a Palestinian guide you must try to satisfy a tourist's natural curiosity while steering clear of the Israeli government's obsession with their image."

A Jerusalem Post story (February 3, 1985) substantiated much of what Sami had told me. It said only two Palestinian guides have qualified since 1967. And that those who qualified before 1967 retain their licences because of international law regarding military occupation. Most are afraid to speak out regarding the plight of the Palestinians, the story said, and one guide who did in early 1985 was suspended for three months because, according to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, "he showed a lack of knowledge of the history of the Jewish people in the land of Israel and slandered the state."

Dr. Glen Bowman, a social anthropologist at Oxford University who is writing a book about Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, also substantiated what Sami told me. "The Israelis do not want Christians to act as tour guides," he said. "Older guides who have been allowed because of international laws governing occupied territories to retain the licenses are timorous and frightened to talk of the situation of the Palestinian communities." Moreover, said Dr. Bowman, Israeli guides give "reiterated warnings" to Christian tourists that they should not deal with Palestinian shopkeepers.

'This sunders one of the few remaining channels of communication between local and visiting populations."

Dr. Bowman says American Christians' negation of Palestinian Christians will inexorably lead us to these developments: First, by ; urging Israel to fight more wars and take more territories from Arabs, American Christians push Muslim Arabs toward a more strict, militant fundamentalism. By not supplying a lifeline of support for Palestinian Christians, we leave them vulnerable to the most extreme Islamic movement, which, in taking revenge against the West, may turn also on native Christians, seeing them as an appendage to their oppressors. Secondly, if the Palestinian Christian presence continues to be destroyed, the Christian churches will have no presence and no role to play in the Holy Land.

Finally, a militant, nationalist version of Christianity, if not challenged, will replace the primary Christian values of compassion, love and understanding. Then, he warns, Christians will have only a God of war. "Palestinian Christians, largely unperceived by the rest of the Christian world, may prove to be the testing ground of the international Christian community," Dr. Bowman believes. The Palestinians' fate "will determine what role, if any, the foreign churches will play in the future of the Holy Land. And, perhaps in their own communities as well."

Increasingly Palestinian Christians feel themselves in an untenable position. They know that many Muslims, hearing a great deal about Falwell and Robertson, view these dispensationalists as representative of Christianity today. Robertson's "Voice of Hope" TV station in south Lebanon beams anti-Arab, anti-Muslim messages and supports Israeli take-over of Arab lands. One Palestinian Christian told me: "Muslims, listening to these anti-Arab 'Christian' messages ask, 'How can you be Christian?'

Cirres Elias Nestas told me he and his ancestors, for as long as memory served, were born and grew up in Bethlehem, "when it was a Christian town." When he was a youth, "Bethlehem was 90 percent Christian. Now it is less than 20 percent Christian. This began to happen with the creation of Israel. The Jews wanted an all-Jewish state, with Judaism as the official religion. Now the Christians are moving out of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem—from all over the West Bank and Gaza as well as from Israel.

'The Jews encourage this exodus. Many Jews say their aim is to rid Palestine of all the Palestinians, the Christians as well as the Muslims. The Christians we know who are leaving are educated and do not want to work and live under Jewish domination. There is little for them to do here. We cannot lead our own lives here." Nestas estimated that about one hundred thousand Christians have moved out since the Jewish occupation in 1967 of the West Bank.

Figures showing the exodus of Christians from Jerusalem are revealing: in 1940, there were 45,000 Christians living there. By 1960, the number had dropped to 25,000. By 1985, only 10,000 Christians were in Jerusalem.

By early 1986, only 120,000 Christians remained in the area of mandated Palestine (now Israel and the occupied territories).

At the time the British held its mandate over Palestine, Christians represented 15 percent of the population. By early 1986, this had dropped to about eight percent.

Every Christian I met repeatedly said, "If this exodus continues, there will be no Christians left in the land of Christ."

EXPLORING NON-JEWISH ZIONISM

In late August 1985, I flew from Washington, D. C, to Switzerland to attend the first Christian Zionist Congress held in Basel. I was one of 589 persons from 27 countries attending the Congress, sponsored by the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem. I went to the Congress hoping to get a definition and a background of political Zionism.

Professor Marvin R. Wilson of Gordon College, Massachusetts, one of the speakers, pointed out that among Jews, there are several definitions and interpretations of Jewish Zionism.

There were in the past, and are today, deeply religious Jews who refer to themselves as Zionists, and there were in the past and are today secular Zionists—Jews who do not believe in God. Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist who in 1897 called the first Jewish Zionist Congress in the same Basel musical auditorium where the Christian Zionists met in 1985—was a secular Jew, as was David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister. The majority of Israeli Jews today say they do not believe in God—rather they define themselves as secular Jews. Newsweek (November 30, 1985) reported that 54 percent of Israelis consider themselves secular Zionists. Other sources put this figure as high as 60-65 percent.

At the first Zionist Congress, Herzl, known as the father of political Jewish Zionism, made an appeal for Jews to live exclusively among Jews. He said all the world hated Jews. And that they could only be safe among themselves.

Eighty-eight years later, in Basel, facing a large portrait of Herzl, I listened to Christian and Israeli Jewish speakers repeat as a litany Herlz's credo: all the world hates Jews. All through history people have hated Jews. There's only one solution: the Jews have to live

exclusively among Jews and be militarily strong.

Each speaker emphasized the central conviction of political Zionism: all Gentiles suffer a disease called anti-Semitism (more accurately, anti-Jewishness) and it is an incurable disease. Period. We must recognize this as immutable law, Herzl said. It had no beginning, ending or explanation. It simply was; it existed. It exists.

I listened to the long history of Christian persecution of Jews: Christians expelled Jews from England in the 13th century, from France in the 14th century and from Spain and its possessions, including Sardinia, Sicily and Naples, in 1492. But were the Jews ever the only victims in their times of suffering? In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Muslim Moors. The Jewish minority went with them and, for the most part, settled in Muslim countries. The Spanish royalty then tortured to death those Christians who disagreed with them and sent conquistadores into the Western Hemisphere to rob, subjugate and kill its natives. They gave them only two alternatives, convert or die.

I listened to Christian speakers review the horrors of the holocaust—the Nazi persecution of Jews that provoked worldwide sympathy and led to the creation of a Jewish state. No speaker, Israeli Jew or Christian, however, suggested that somehow we all— all humankind—must in a nuclear age learn to live as good neighbors. Rather than provide hope by suggesting steps whereby Arabs and Jews and all enemies might reach reconciliation and peace, each speaker seemed to reinforce the Jews' haunting fears about security. Rather than stressing how much in common Arabs and Jews have—and indeed how much in common all human beings have—many speakers told us: Jews are different. They must live in an enclave unto themselves.

After three days of listening to political talks, the delegates passed a series of resolutions, which had been written in advance by van der Hoeven of Holland, fervent spokesman for the International Christian Embassy; Johann Luckhoff, a South African who is the Christian Embassy director; Dr. George Giacumakis, former director of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem; Richard Hellman, Christian Embassy representative in Washington, D.C., and others.

In one resolution, the Christian Zionists urged all Jews living

outside of Israel to leave the countries where they now are residing and move to the Jewish state. In this resolution, the Christians stated that they realized "the terrible suffering the Jews have experienced" and that since the Jews still face "hateful and destructive forces" they should all—all Jews in America and in every other country of the world—move to Israel. And that every Christian should expedite their doing so.

The Christians also urged Israel to annex that portion of occupied Palestine called the West Bank, with its near one million Palestinian inhabitants. An Israeli Jew, seated in the audience, rose—before the motion was voted upon—to suggest that perhaps the language might be modified. He pointed out that an Israeli poll showed that one-third of the Israelis would be willing to trade territory seized in 1967 for peace with the Palestinians.

"We don't care what the Israelis vote!" declared van der Hoeven. "We care what God says! And God gave that land to the Jews!" After his impassioned outburst, the Christians by a nearly unanimous show of hands passed the resolution.

The Christians also urged that the United States and "all nations" legitimize former Prime Minister Begin's illegal annexation of Arab Jerusalem by moving their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Christians "demanded" that the United States, West Germany and other European nations "desist from arming Israel's foes." They added that the United States should withhold military weapons promised to Egypt until "she fully honors her treaty obligations to establish normal relations with Israel, including trade and tourism."

We met in sessions for 12 hours a day on three consecutive days. I estimated that out of a total of 36 hours we were in session, the Christians who sponsored the Congress devoted less than one percent of the time to the message and meanings of Christ, while they devoted more than 99 percent of the time to politics. This was not surprising since the sponsors, although Christians, were first and foremost Zionists and therefore primarily interested in the political goals of Zionism.

Following the Basel meeting, I took a Swiss train to a small village near Berne called Wildersil and sat, outside a small hotel, in the sun, with an occasional glance to the snow-covered Jungfrau,

reading books and essays on Zionism.

While Theodor Herzl generally is known as the father of political Zionism, he did not initiate or create the movement to encourage Jews to move to Palestine. English Protestant Christians did so three centuries before the first Jewish-Zionist Congress.

Before the Reformation, all Western Christians were Catholic and generally accepted a view taught by Saint Augustine and others that certain biblical passages should be interpreted allegorically— not literally. As an example, Jerusalem and Zion were heavenly, other-worldly—open to all of us, and not an actual place here on earth, to be inhabited exclusively by Jews.

By the 16th and 17th centuries, Christians for the first time were buying Bibles and interpreting Scripture for themselves. In doing so, they began to elevate the concept of Israel—and the Jews—as the key factors in Biblical prophecy.

Few scholars have examined why Christians somewhat suddenly began to support the idea that all Jews should move to Palestine—an idea that had not flourished in orthodox Christian theology. Or why Protestants began to write lengthy biblical prophecy tomes that gave the Jews, traditionally viewed as enemies of the church, a new Christian theological significance. After the Reformation, European Christians became more interested in the Jews and changed their attitudes toward them, some scholars tell us, because of developments in European international law which led to greater tolerance. Other scholars point to the expanded economic role that the Jews came to play in world trade. Some maintain that the Renaissance interest in Hebrew studies as well as Reformation theology, with its emphasis on the Old Testament, focused attention on the Jews, so much so that Judaic sects—or sects with strongly judaizing influences—emerged within English Protestant churches.

Some scholars have characterized the Reformation as a "hebraizing" or "judaizing" revival, with early Protestants accepting such features of the Judaic tradition as messianism (expecting a Messiah) and millenarianism (a rule of peace for a thousand years on this earth). It was during the Reformation that Protestant Christians accepted the Bible as constituting the supreme authority of belief as well as conduct. Instead of an infallible Church as

EXPLORING NON-JEWISH ZIONISM 135

represented by the Pope in Rome, the Protestants accepted an infallible Bible, which was now translated into the languages of ordinary people.

With the translation of the Scripture into the vernacular, the early Protestants turned to the Old Testament, known as the Jewish or Hebrew Bible, to familiarize themselves with the history, stories, | traditions and laws of the Hebrews and the land of Palestine. They I memorized the Old Testament stories and could recite passages by heart. And many Protestants began to think of Palestine as Jewish land.

The Protestants turned to the Old Testament not only as their most popular literature but also as their one source book for general historical knowledge. They thus reduced the total history of pre-Christian Palestine to those episodes including only the Hebrew presence. Vast numbers of Christians became conditioned to believe that nothing had happened in ancient Palestine except the hazy events half-concealed in murky legends and sparse historical narratives recorded in the Old Testament. Bible-loving Christians came to regard the Old Testament as the only history that mattered in the Middle East.

By the mid 1600s Protestants began to write treatises declaring that all Jews should leave Europe for Palestine. Oliver Cromwell, as Lord Protector of the newly established Puritan Commonwealth, declared that Jewish presence in Palestine would be the prelude to the Second Coming of Christ.

In 1655, German Protestant Paul Felgenhauever proclaimed that Jews at the Second Coming of Christ would recognize Jesus as their Messiah. The sign that would prove this, he wrote in Good Sews for Israel, would be ''the permanent return of the Jews to their own country eternally bestowed upon them by God through the unqualified promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

In 1839, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shafts-bury and known as the "Great Reformer" for his championing of more humane treatment of child labor, the mentally ill and prisoners, urged all Jews to emigrate to Palestine. In a published article, "State and Prospects of the Jews," he expressed concern over the "Hebrew race" but opposed the idea of assimilation and emancipation on the ground that Jews would always remain aliens

in all countries where non-Jews resided.

Lord Shaftesbury saw Jews playing a stellar role in the "divine plan" of the Second Coming of Christ. As he interpreted Scripture, the Second Coming of Christ would transpire only with the Jews living in a restored and converted Israel.

Convinced that he should help God bring about the divine plan of moving all Jews to Palestine, Lord Shaftesbury made it his task to convince his fellow Englishmen that the Jews, "though admittedly a stiff-necked, dark-hearted people, and sunk in moral degradation, obduracy and ignorancy of the Gospel"—were nevertheless vital to a Christian's hope of salvation.

The English lord did not bother to investigate whether Palestinians were then living in Palestine, nor did it concern him that the people and their land were not his to give away. He simply stated that the land of Palestine was available. As he put it, Palestine was "a country without a nation for a nation without a country," a phrase later used by Jewish Zionists as "A land without a people for a people without a land."

In his zeal to move Jews to an exclusively Jewish state, Lord Shaftesbury influenced his step-father-in-law, Lord Palmerston, Britain's Foreign Secretary, to open a British consulate in Jerusalem. In appointing devout evangelical William Young as first British Vice Consul to Jerusalem in 1839, the Foreign Secretary specifically stated that he should protect all the Jews residing in Palestine, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. In that year a total of 9,690 Jews lived in Palestine. They included both native Jews as well as foreign national Jews.

According to established treaty rights, British consular protection applied only to foreign national Jews residing in Palestine. Native Jews on the other hand were still under the sole jurisdiction of the Sultan as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. However, the British Vice Consul, wishing to "make the Hebrews in Palestine appreciate how kindly the British government was disposed toward them," extended protection to all Jews in Palestine.

The British had no more right to extend sovereignty over native Jews living in Palestine than France or Spain would have had to extend sovereignty over native Catholics living in Palestine. The British action not only was interference in the internal affairs of

a foreign country, it also set a major cornerstone of Zionism: it affirmed the national unity of all Jewish people.

In 1841, Charles Henry Churchill, British staff officer serving in the Middle East, wrote to Moses Montefiore, President of the Jewish Board of Deputies in London: "I cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your countrymen endeavor once more to resume their existence as a people. I consider the object to be perfectly obtainable. But two things are indispensably necessary. Firstly that the Jews themselves will take up the matter, universally and unanimously. Secondly that the European powers will aid them in their views."

In 1845, Edward L. Mitford of London's Colonial Office proposed "the establishment of the Jewish nation in Palestine, as a protected state under the guardianship of Great Britain," tutelage to be withdrawn once the Jews were able to take care of themselves. A Jewish state, he said, "would place us in a commanding position in the Levant from whence to check the process of encroachment, to overawe our enemies and, if necessary repel their advance."

However, Europe's Jews had little or no desire to leave their native lands and emigrate to Palestine.

For 150 years, Christians—for the most part in England, but also in other parts of Europe and later on, to a marked degree in America—were the only advocates of Zionism. Protestants acted on their own in insisting that Palestine belonged to the Jews—and in urging all Jews to go there and live separate from the Gentiles. For a century and a half, the Christians—leaders in the movement of Western imperialism—gained no support from Jews in their non-Jewish Zionism.

Christians in the forefront of this movement were, without exception, pious church-going Protestants. However, the terms Christian Zionist or Gentile Zionist can be misleading since it suggests a Zionism motivated by biblical or theological reasoning. Beyond the piety, writes Regina Sharif in Non-Jewish Zionism, the Christian Zionists held "political motivations," and these, she stresses, were from the beginning far more important than their religious beliefs.

Regardless of why Reformation Protestants supported the idea of an England and a Europe free of all Jews, many Jewish Zionists

today say they are glad the Christians acted with such fervor. They credit Christian Zionism with helping modern Jewish Zionism achieve its goal—the creation of a Jewish state where only a Jew is welcomed as a citizen.

In a February 6, 1985, address on Christian Zionism at the National Prayer Breakfast for Israel, Israeli U.N. Ambassador Benjamin Netanyahu praised the "historical partnership that worked so well to fulfill the Zionist dream." Journalists, he said, in recent time "have made much of the support of evangelical Christians for Israel. Many have been puzzled and surprised by what they consider to be a new-found friendship. But for those who know the history of Christian involvement in Zionism, there is nothing either surprising or new about the steadfast support given to Israel by believing Christians all over the world . . .

"For what, after all, is Zionism?. . .

"There was an ancient yearning in our common tradition for the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel. And this dream, smoldering thoughout two millennia, finally burst forth in Christian Zionism . . . British and American writers, clerics, journalists, artists and statesmen all became ardent proponents of facilitating the return of the Jews to their desolate homeland.

"There was, for example, Lord Lindsay who wrote in the 1840s that the 'Jewish race, so wonderfully preserved, may yet have another stage of national existence open to them, may once more obtain possession of their native land/ And there was George Grawler, who in 1845 urged: 'Replenish the farms and fields of Palestine with the energetic people whose warmest affections are rooted in the soil/

Christian Zionism, Ambassador Netanyahu continued, was not only a current of idealism. Practical plans were actually drawn up for the return of the Jews. In 1848, Warder Cresson, the American Consul in Jerusalem, helped establish a Jewish settlement in the Valley of Refaim, supported by a joint Christian-Jewish society in England. And Claude Condor, an aide to Lord Kitchener, carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, concluding that "the country could be restored by the Jews to its ancient prosperity/'

Christians had provided a "long, intimate and ultimately successful support" for Zionism, Netanyahu continued, a support that

expressed itself in English literature such as George Eliot's influential novel on Zionism, Daniel Deronda, which predicted Jews would establish "a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the old—a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which gave . . . more than the brightness of Western freedom amid the despotism of the East. For there will be a country in the East which carries the culture and the sympathy of every great nation in its bosom."

Christians, Netanyahu said, helped turn "a sheer fantasy" into a Jewish state. "Consider, for example, Edwin Sherman Wallace, the U.S. Consul in Palestine, who in 1S9S wrote, The Land is waiting, the people are ready to come, and will come as soon as protection to life and property is assured ... This must be accepted or the numerous prophecies that asserted so positively must be thrown out as worthless . . . (Yet) the present movements among Jews in many parts of the world indicate their belief in the prophetic assertions. Their eyes are turning toward the Land that once was theirs and their hearts are longing for the day when they as a people can dwell securely in it.'

'The writings of the Christian Zionists, British and American, directly influenced the thinking of such pivotal leaders as Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour and Woodrow Wilson at the beginning of this century," Netanyahu said. 'These were all men versed in the Bible. These were men whose imagination was ignited by the dream of the great ingathering. And these were all men who had a crucial role in laying the political foundations, internationally, for the restoration of the Jewish State. Thus it was the impact of Christian Zionism on Western statesmen that helped modern Jewish Zionism achieve the rebirth of Israel.

"A sense of history, a sense of poetry, and a sense of morality imbued the Christian Zionists who more than a century ago began to write, and plan, and organize for Israel's restoration ... So those who are puzzled by what they consider the new-found friendship between Israel and its Christian supporters reveal an ignorance of both. But we know better. We know the spiritual ties that link us so profoundly and so enduringly," Netanyahu concluded. "We know the historical partnership that worked so well to fulfill the Zionist dream."

Herzl's dream, however, was not spiritual. It was geographical, a dream for land, power and territory. This being so, many Jews have become disillusioned with political Zionism.

To take the land of Palestine with clear conscience, the Zionists had to assume that the people who owned the land were not there. Initially, political Zionists claimed that there were no Palestinians living in Palestine. Immigrant Jews were startled, however, to discover the other occupants of Palestine, the 93 percent indigenous populace. The Israeli writer Amos Elon relates that in 1897 one of Herzl's associates came crying to the Zionist leader:

"But there are Arabs in Palestine. I did not know that!"

"From the beginning of Zionism/' writes the American Jewish writer I. F. Stone, "we have hated to admit that the Arabs were there. We knew they were there, but we pretended that they weren't. Imagine that you were a dentist or a doctor in Jerusalem or Haifa, or that you had a villa along the little Arab Riviera in Jaffa—there were some lovely Arab villas there. Or imagine that you were a farmer, or that you had a business, or that you went to school. Then, suddenly, everything was swept away. You lost your home, your business, your school, your country. You would feel bitter—there is nothing mysterious about that—and you would feel desperate."

Moshe Menuhin, father of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, said he moved to the newly-created Jewish state hoping to find a spiritual haven but discovered the Zionists were worshiping "not God but their own power." In 1981, in a personal letter to me, Menuhin, then 88, bemoaned "the tragic decadence" of prophetic Judaism that he said had been replaced by political Zionism.

In a Jerusalem Post interview, the noted American Jewish violinist Isaac Stern called Zionism and the Zionist state "my tarnished dream."

Mark Bruzonsky, a Washington, D. C, writer and computer specialist, also calls political Zionism a tarnished dream. Before breaking with Zionism, Bruzonsky had worked for Jewish Zionist organizations. "Being a liberal in politics, I viewed Zionism with varying degrees of enthusiasm, as the Jewish version of self-determination."

And what changed his mind about Zionism?

"Simple," he said, "I learned too much. I started reading. And I kept reading. A Jew is supposed to work for Zionism, but not read too much about it. A Jew is supposed to accept the history of Zionism but in fact not really study it."

How, I asked, is Zionism best defined?

"Some define Zionism as the end of exile and the ingathering of all Jews. Most Arabs define Zionism as a form of racist colonization. And delegates to the United Nations at one point voted to condemn Zionism as a form of racism. George Orwell said Zionism had the usual characteristics of a nationalist movement, 'but the American version of it seems to be more violent and malignant than the British/ And the British historian Toynbee defined Zionism as 'the worship of a false god*—an 'idolatrous religion.' '

What, I asked, was Bruzonsky's definition of Zionism?

"I term Zionism a political, expansionist, colonial-type movement that led to the creation of Israel, and I term the Zionist as one who accepts the rationale of Israel's actions, regardless of how dangerous or wrong they may be."

Then from his definition it was apparent that Christians could be classified as Zionists?

"Oh sure. Zionism would never have been started without Christians wanting to put Jews in a ghetto—called a Jewish state, exclusively for Jews. The tragedy is that after resisting the idea for about 200 years the Jews went along with it."

Just as early Christian Zionists urged European Jews to go to Palestine and take as much land as they could, so Christian Zionists such as Jerry Falwell urge Jews today to go beyond Palestine—and claim all the Arab lands that stretch from the River Euphrates on the east, west to the Nile River.

Falwell, on February 6, 1983, told the Tyler, Texas, Courier Times-Telegram that he favors Israelis taking portions of present day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan and all of Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait. As far as the boundaries of mandated Palestine, it all belongs to the Jews, Falwell said, adding "God has blessed America because we have cooperated with God in protecting that which is precious to Him (Israel)."

It is because they know they have the support of some 40 million Christian evangelical-fundamentalists that American Jews such as

Andy Green move from the Bronx and at gunpoint take land from the Palestinians. 'The Arabs have no claim to the land (Palestine)/' says Green, who moved to Israel in 1975 but still retains his U.S. passport. "It's our land, absolutely. It says so in the Bible. It's something that can't be argued. That's why I see no reason to sit down and talk with the Arabs about competing claims. Whoever is stronger will get the land."

"Jewish sovereignty over Israel," says Hanan Porat, a leading Gush intellectual, "and the dream of the Priestly Kingdom and being a Holy Nation are preconditions for the world to become whole again. Unless these preconditions are met, there will be no peace."

All Zionists—Christians, Jews and most especially the leaders of the Jewish terrorist movements Kach and Gush Emunim—share Porat's mystical-messianic views. They see the Land of Israel as a moral absolute. Both Christian and Jewish Zionists insist that mysticism is a healthy part of their religious heritage. Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a ringleader for the terrorists convicted of plotting to kill Palestinian mayors and destroy the Dome of the Rock, defines Zionism for himself and countless others:

"Zionism is mysticism. Zionism will wither away if you cut it from its mystical-messianic roots. Zionism is a movement that does not think in rational terms—in terms of practical politics, international relations, world opinion, demography, social dynamics—but in terms of divine commandments. What matters only is God's promise to Abraham as recorded in the Book of Genesis."

The Andy Green, Hanan Porat and Rabbi Levinger quotes are all taken from the forementioned Village Voice article, "Inside the Jewish Terrorist Underground," by Robert Friedman.

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Why Israel Sought the

Alliance With the New Christian Right

Perhaps I am somewhat typical of many Christians who grew up before there was an Israel on our maps. All Christians I knew in the year of 1948 welcomed the creation of a Jewish state with our prayers and admiration. We read and heard and knew only good aspects about Israel.

And my image of Israelis perhaps was somewhat typical. I viewed them as a hard-working, fair-minded people, toiling the fields, making the desert bloom, a God-fearing, peace loving people. In short, I identified with them, as perhaps so many of other millions of Americans did, because they seemed so much like us— "pioneers" or descendents of pioneers who, one was led to believe, created a new and better world from what many perceived was a backward region of Orientals.

I did not personally know Israelis in the 1950s and 1960s. I gained my perception of Israel and Israelis largely from liberal American Jews who had done so much to bring the Jewish state into existence. I learned about the first settlements of Jews in Palestine through the books and other writings of early prophetic Jews, whose conceptions of a Jewish homeland had been nourished in the richest of ideals. The early Zionists voiced their dedication to an Israel of socialistic justice for all its citizens and of peace with their Arab neighbors into whose world they had moved.

Just as liberal Jews such as Ha'am, Buber, Magnes and Menuhin recognized that Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) were indigenous to the land, and identified with the suffering of Palestinians who were made homeless, so liberal American Jews, possibly

more than any other U.S. group, identified with and worked to alleviate the suffering of other Americans, such as blacks and Indians who have known discrimination. Liberal American Jews had strong ties with U.S. labor and were often identified as a strong pillar in the northern liberal establishment, with which the Christian Right often takes issue.

The most active and best known Jewish liberals live in the Northeast and in major urban centers, in particular New York City. They had little interest in or knowledge of evangelical-fundamentalists, who were largely in the South, Midwest and West. The two groups have had little or nothing in common. Many Southern fundamentalists were parochial and openly racist, convinced that as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants they were superior to blacks, Indians, Catholics, Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, Muslims and Jews.

Millions of American WASPS had been bequeathed this legacy of narrow-mindedness and hate. Right-wing Christians such as Gerald Winrod preached and published through his The Defender magazine a blatant anti-Jewish doctrine. Other right-wing Christians including Gerald L. K. Smith, Willian Dudley Pelley, William Kullgren, Wesley Swift and William L. Blessing preached that a "Christian" America would be better without the Jews.

As regards a Jew, white evangelical-fundamentalists have often alleged their superiority not, as is the case of the black Christian, because of fairer skin, but because they, as Christians had accepted Jesus Christ and were thereby saved, while the Jew, along with all who refuse to accept the divinity of Jesus Christ, was not.

The Christian fundamentalist therefore believes he should save the Jew from his Judaism by showing him that Christianity is the true fulfillment of Judaism. Since American Jews were repelled by this Christian proselytizing, they kept their distance from fundamentalists.

Besides the geographical separation between Jews and fundamentalists, there were the traditional theological and ideological differences on social issues. Liberal Eastern establishment Jews and Gentiles alike recoiled at the aggressive conservative social agenda of many evangelical-fundamentalists including their support for more nuclear bombs, prayer in school and anti-abortion measures. Liberal American Jews had early on joined with liberal American

Catholics and Protestants in supporting measures that would heal and be constructive, and this became increasingly true after the creation of Israel.