Mike put up a piece this morning asking what the Israeli cops were doing shooting rubber bullets at and firing tear gas canisters at Palestinians inside the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. This is Islam’s third holiest shrine and occupies part of the site of Solomon’s Temple. According to today’s Independent, the clashes have been provoked by the possible eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem and the land and homes given to Israeli settlers. Crowds had gone to the mosque for Friday prayers to celebrate the end of Ramadan, and protests against the possible evictions began after the service ended. Members of the crowd threw rocks at the police, injuring 17, but over 100 Palestinians have been hurt.
Would the Israel apologists – preferably those who scream “anti-Semitism” at every criticism of that country’s appalling government – please explain this shocking act of brutality in one of Islam’s most holy places of worship?
It’s a good question, and no doubt the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and all the other frantically pro-Israel smear merchants are working on their mealy-mouthed apologies, just as they managed to excuse the IDF for the shooting of unarmed civilians, including a young nurse, when they broke through the Gaza fence a year or so ago. That was a disgrace, but the present violence is potentially explosive.
The al-Aqsa mosque is so revered that even secular Muslims will flinch in shock and outrage at the idea of any assault on it. Way back in the 1980s the Israeli government was forced to crack down on a militant Jewish extremist organisation, Gush Emunim, after they caught a group of its members trying to bomb the shrine. They wanted to destroy it so that Solomon’s Temple could be rebuilt. If they’d succeeded, I think it would have resulted in an apocalyptic war as every Muslim nation would have wanted to avenge the attack. I think Gush Emunim were banned, but not before they spawned Kach, another extreme Israeli nationalist organisation which openly wants all Palestinians expelled from eretz Israel. I’ve got a feeling that Kach, or an organisation derived from it, merged with another extreme nationalist party, and that party that resulted from the merger is now a partner in Netanyahu’s governing coalition. And unfortunately, Kach also has sympathisers in Britain. Tony Greenstein has put up photos of various Zionist demonstrators from some of the protests against pro-Palestinian meetings and the mass rallies held against Jeremy Corbyn a few years ago. One of those attending them is seen sporting a Kach T-shirt.
A few years ago one of the liberal papers – I think it was the Independent – carried a piece by a liberal Israeli journo, who was shocked at the growing racial and religious intolerance by Israelis against the Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem. He described meeting a group of Jewish schoolgirls, who blithely told him that Jerusalem had to be purged of Palestinians so that the Messiah would arrive. The impression I’ve got from reading Tony’s blog and other materials elsewhere is that the Israeli settlers are extremely right-wing and bitterly intolerant, with a number expressing similar views about the necessity of expelling the Palestinians and/or other non-Jews from Israel.
This is the government British Jewish official organisations like the Board of Deputies have been defending and smeared its critics as anti-Semites, even when they are staunch anti-racists and proud, self-respecting Jews. This is the Israeli government, which was greatly aided in its aims last year when Trump’s government moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, dealt in land seized from the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. There has been international condemnation of the land seizures by the United Nations, but such disapproval is just brushed aside by the Israeli state. That’s why Boycot, Divest and Sanction movement was founded to persuade shoppers not to buy Israeli goods produced in the Occupied Territories. However, they’re under legal attack in America and elsewhere as a supposed anti-Semitic organisation, despite considerable Jewish support.
It’s very ominous indeed that the Israeli police feel they can fire on people in the al-Aqsa mosque. It looks to me that the support for Netanyahu’s fascistic government by Trump and other world leaders has emboldened the Israeli authorities to take such violent action. And it’s action that could very well produce terrible conflict in turn from justifiably outraged Muslims around the world.
Israel’s actions aren’t unprovoked, but they seem massively disproportionate and a real threat to world peace.
Tonight, 13th May 2019, BBC 2 are screening a documentary at 9.00 pm, ‘One Day in Gaza’, about the terrible events there last year when Israel fired on Palestinian demonstrators. The article for it on page 74 of the Radio Times runs
On 14 May 2018, mass disturbances on the border between Israel and Gaza led to one of the deadliest days in a generation. For weeks Palestinians had been protesting along the border fence, but tensions were running particularly high due to the inauguration of the new US embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, a controversial step ordered by Donald Trump. By the end of the day, as many as 60 Palestinians were dead or dying, and over 2,000 were injured, mostly by live ammunition. One year on, Olly Lambert’s film relates the events of that day using footage filmed on the ground and interviews with those on both sides of the fence.
A further piece about it on page 72 runs
Palestinians in Gaza had already been protesting Israel’s land, sea and air blockade of the territory for a fortnight when, on 14 May 2018, the situation turned from tense to bloody. While Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and other officials of the Trump administration were in Jerusalem to inaugurate a controversial new US embassy, violence exploded at the Gaza border. The Israeli army claimed to have acted in self-defence; more than 60 Palestinians died in a day, with more than 2,000 hurt.
A year on, film-maker Olly Lambert pieces together an account of what happened, by interviewing political leaders on both sides and drawing on video footage at the time.
This follows the mass demonstration through central London on Saturday, commemorating 71 years of the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning ‘catastrophe’, which the Palestinians use to describe their own genocide and dispossession by the Zionist settlers. The protest was organised by the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Stop the War Coalition. The protest was also against the continuing failure of the Israeli state to honour the peace treaty it had signed with the Palestinians over Gaza, and its continuing campaign to strangle the area’s economy, fishing and obstruction of medicine and humanitarian aid. The star speaker was Ahed Tamimi, the 15 year old girl who got 18 months in prison for slapping an Israeli storm trooper after her brother was shot in the head with a rubber bullet.
This could be a really interesting documentary. But I have no doubt it will also be highly controversial. Whenever anyone, no matter how respected, reports atrocities committed by Israel or its allies, there are instantly accusations of anti-Semitism by the Jewish press and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. This happens even though the reports are accurate. Those, who have been smeared for their reportage include the very well respected Beeb foreign correspondents Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin, and the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.
The anger of the siting of the American embassy in Jerusalem was inevitable, as Israel would like to claim Jerusalem as its capital rather than Tel Aviv, despite UN recommendations that it should be shared between Israel and the Palestinians. It also raises very deep fears about what Israel intends to do with the Dome of the Rock mosque. This is the third holiest site in Islam. But it’s built on the remains of Solomon’s Temple, and Jewish fanatics like Gush Emunim would like to see it destroyed and the Temple rebuilt instead.
Israel also has a policy of deliberately bombing and closing Palestinian places of worship. While the world mourned the destruction of Notre Dame cathedral by fire, the Palestinians were also feeling the destruction of one of their holiest mosques in Gaza. This precious monument, dating from the 7th century, was deliberately targeted by the Israeli military. Else where in eretz Israel, mosques and other places of worship are vandalised and desecrated by Jewish fanatics. And this includes Christian churches and monasteries. Benzi Gopstein, an extreme right-wing rabbi in one of the Israeli settlements, a few weeks ago issued the statement that Jews had a divine commandment to destroy churches in Israel, as they were places of idolatry. It’s a statement that I know shocks genuinely liberal Jews worldwide. I am also aware that Christian churches and other monuments in Israel have also been attacked by intolerant, fundamentalist Muslims. But the respected historian of the Middle East, Albert Hourani, has pointed out in one of his articles on the history of Palestine, that traditionally Christian churches were regarded as mawsin – sacred, sacrosanct – by Palestinian Muslims, who respected them. I have also heard that quite often the doorkeeper at Christian churches is a Muslim, and that they are often instrumental in preventing attacks by fanatical Jewish mobs. But you will not hear this from the mainstream press and news, and especially not from Christian organisations like Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, who want to see an Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.
This is why people do need to hear and see the truth about Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians against the attempts to silence it by the Zionist Jewish establishment, and establishment that’s also strongly opposed by an increasing number of Jews, disgusted at what is being done in their name. As one genuinely liberal Jews has said, ‘to be a Jew means that you are always on the side of the oppressed, never the oppressor.
This is a short piece from RT reporting the outrage that erupted last week after David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador in Jerusalem, posed with a photograph he’d been handed of the city. However, the photo had been altered so that the al-Aqsa mosque – the Dome of the Rock – had been removed and replaced with the Third Temple. This was condemned by the secretary-general of the PLO and Ahmad Tibi of the Palestinian joint list, who said ‘This madman wants to bring peace. Good job you didn’t put your embassy there!’
The Americans have apologised, and said that Friedman didn’t know what was on the photo when he posed with it. They have also stated that they support the status quo about the Haram al-Sharif/ the Dome of the Rock. Achiya, the organisation to which the man belonged, who gave the photograph to Friedman, have also distanced themselves from the stunt. They’ve said that the photograph was the man’s own action, and nothing to do with them.
However, Paula Slier, the reporter on this issue for RT, also says that this is particularly controversial as the ambassador, Friedman, is a supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and has gone on record as saying that the Palestinian territories seized by Israel should not be known as the Occupied Territories. She also points out that Friedman’s acceptance of the photo was also going to be extremely controversial as it came at the same time there was both regional and international criticism of the Americans’ decision to move their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This might look like a simple, minor stunt – a straightforward case of somebody photoshopping a picture to suit their nationalistic fantasies, rather than reality, but it’s actually extremely dangerous. Jewish extremists and the Christian Zionist right in America are both looking forward to the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, and the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. For the Christian Zionists, this will be a step towards an apocalyptic war with Islam, which they equate with the Battle of Armageddon at the End Times, which will culminate in Christ’s return to Earth. There were several attempts in the 1980s by the Israeli extremist organisation, Gush Emunim, to bomb the al-Aqsa mosque in preparation to what they hoped would be the rebuilding of the Temple. As the mosque is this third holiest in Islam, this would almost certainly have set off a global war.
In fact, as I understand it from reading Steven Runciman’s History of the Crusades, the mosque isn’t quite on the precise site of the Temple. When the Caliph Uthman conquered Jerusalem in the 7th century, he was aware that his followers would want to build a mosque wherever he prayed. So he decided to respect the site of the former Temple itself, and prayed instead in its rubbish dump. And this is the site the mosque actually occupies.
Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem has done nothing but inflame Palestinian and Muslim opinion, and seemingly encourage the dangerous fantasies of Israeli nationalists and Christian Zionists hoping for the imminent end of the world. It’s a threat to world peace that should never have been taken, no matter what support Trump, or his predecessors thought they should give to Netanyahu and his wretched regime.
Yesterday, 7th December 2017, Jonathan Cook published a very revealing piece about Netanyahu’s attitude to towards liberal American Jews in Counterpunch. The Israeli butcher is basically turning his back on them. Cook begins his piece by noting that most American Jews are politically liberal domestically. But they support Israel, and have been prepared to overlook or support the atrocities it has committed as they believed they had the right to a strong state themselves following the Holocaust. But he goes on to argue that Netanyahu’s increasing intolerance towards liberal Judaism makes this position increasingly difficult, and that they will have to confront their hypocrisy.
Much of this centres around the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the remains of Solomon’s Temple. At the moment it’s controlled by Orthodox rabbis, who do not want Reform Jews and women praying there. There was an attempt to set up a special space for them, but the Orthodox was resolutely against it and Netanyahu caved in. As a result there has been outrage amongst Jewish Americans. Avraham Infield, a liaison to the American Jewish community, told Haaretz that many Jewish Americans now believe that Israel doesn’t give a dam’ about them.
Matters have been made worse by Tzipi Hotovely, the deputy foreign minister. She criticised American Jews for not fighting in either the US or Israeli militaries. They were leading ‘convenient lives’. Cook notes that this echoes the views of Orthodox rabbis, who argue that Reform Jews aren’t real Jews, and may even be enemies of Judaism.
This has been accompanied by an increased intolerance of Israeli critics of the regime. Netanyahu’s government has for a long time denounced the Palestinian human rights group B’Tsalem and the veterans’ organisation Breaking the Silence as traitors. But now they have targeted the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is the Israeli equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union. According to Netanyahu, the group supports ‘terrorists’. Recent decisions by the government allow pupils to give racist answers in exams, and expand gender segregation at the universities. The government is also trying criminalise boycotting the Israeli state. There are two bills to make advocating this illegal, punishable with seven years in jail or $150,000 fine. The Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, wants stronger power to clamp down on protesters and critics, including the ability to detain without charge.
And Cook notes that for the first time, Jews are being asked at their airports what their political views are.
He also cites an article in the far-right Israeli newspaper, Makor Rishon, owned by the American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. This apparently gave Netanyahu’s reasons for turning his back on liberal American Jews. Netanyahu is convinced that the low birth rate and high rate of intermarriage amongst American Reform Jews mean that they will die out within a couple of generations. So he’s abandoned them in favour of cultivating closer ties to Orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals.
I am not surprised at Netanyahu’s attitude towards Reform Jews. Orthodox Judaism very much is the religion of the Israeli state. And the pronouncements of leading Jews in this country have shown their intolerance towards Reform Jews. A few years ago, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, caused outrage when he declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. There is indeed a very high rate of intermarriage amongst male secular and Reform Jews in the Diaspora. I think it’s about 80 per cent, though against that the rate of intermarriage for women is much lower. As a result, many Jews are worried that they’re people are disappearing. As for Christian Zionists, as Richard Coughlan pointed out in his video on this issue, they’re the largest Zionist group in America.
It is thus all too credible that Netanyahu is turning his back liberal, American Jews.
I don’t know whether it will force them to reconsider their support for Israel. It may well do so, as an increasing number of young Jewish Americans are coming to despise the country and the way it treats the Palestinians, even when they have been on the heritage tours organised by the Israeli authorities. This includes Jews, who have been victims of anti-Semitism. Other critics of Israel, like Norman Finkelstein, have pointed out that Israel was traditionally very peripheral to mainstream Judaism, and that by far the majority of American Jews wanted to live as equal citizens in America. They definitely did not want to go to Israel, and did not see Israel as having any potential to revive interest in their religion or community.
This all changed in the late 1960s, when Israel defeated the Arabs in the Six Day War. The American Right also seized on these victories as psychological compensation for American defeats in Vietnam. And the Neocon movement was launched by American Jewish Zionists as part of a campaign to drum up support for Israel. American support for Israel is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon.
Whatever happens, I think we can expect more screaming and shouts of anti-Semitism at Israel’s critics, including Jews, as Netanyahu’s government becomes increasingly intolerant. And this may, in turn, cause more people to turn away from supporting Israel, as they find themselves tarred as anti-Semites and supporters of terrorism simply for not being quite so enthusiastic in their support as Netanyahu demands.
In this short video from RT America, they interview Max Blumenthal on the withdrawal this week from the United Nations’ cultural organisation, UNESCO, by America and Israel. The two countries have claimed that the organisation is profoundly anti-Semitic. He says that the Israelis would far rather have been in the organisation, haranguing it from inside. Blumenthal states that Israel was more or less forced to leave the organisation against its own wishes by Trump’s decision to quit. He makes the point that Washington would never have left it, if they thought it was biased against France or Spain. He also says that America owes UNESCO $500 million, which it now no longer has to pay back. The bigger question, he also suggests, is why Israel was ever allowed into the UN in the first place, considering its Talibanesque destruction of Palestinian archaeology and historic monuments. He also states that the present coalition government in Israel, led by Likud, includes the 3rd Temple Foundation, who would like to tear down the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to rebuild Solomon’s Temple. The mosque is the third holiest in Islam, and its destruction would start a war throughout the region.
The programme then discusses Trump’s decertification of the nuclear deal this week with Iran. One of the foreign policy advisors, Ben Rhodes, has said that Trump’s withdrawal from UNESCO, his decertification of the nuclear agreement with Iran, and his threatened withdrawals against NAFTA, the TPP and other international agreements, means that no other country will trust America. Blumenthal also comments that Trump’s decertification will strengthen the hand of the hardliners inside the Iranian government, against the current liberalisation that the country is going through. He also makes the point that Trump’s decision has been influenced by ‘Israel-first’ billionaires, like Sheldon Adelson, who have contributed millions to his campaign.
The news that the Likudnik coalition includes maniacs, who would like to destroy the al-Aqsa, or Dome of the Rock, Mosque is terrifying. There have been several attempts by Jewish extremists to destroy the Mosque already in the hope that by doing so they will start an apocalyptic war that will lead to the restoration of the Temple and the coming of the Messiah. The same belief is held by some of the extreme right-wing Christian Fundamentalists, who hope that it will bring about Christ’s return to Earth. This apocalypticism is one of the main influences behind Christian Zionism.
I’ve read, however, that the Mosque isn’t built over the remains of Solomon’s Temple. Stephen Runciman, in his History of the Crusades, states that the mosque was built where the caliph Omar prayed after conquering Palestine. Omar did not pray at a site already venerated by the country’s Jewish and Christian inhabitants, as he realised his followers would want to turn it into a mosque. So he deliberately chose a place outside the Temple precincts, where rubbish was dumped.
As for the destruction of Palestinian monuments, I would have liked to know much more about this. The Israelis have destroyed immense numbers of Palestinian homes and villages as part of their campaign of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Arabs. Blumenthal himself in the clip refers to the way Arab villages are being bulldozed in order to build settler colonies.
I am, however, aware that Muslims in Britain are very much aware, and very concerned about the closure of Palestinian mosques. I did part of my minor degree in religious studies, which included modules on Islam. One of the pieces of literature I read researching British Islam was the Muslim ‘parish’ magazine for the congregation in a British mosque. Apart from the local news, it also covered the closure of a mosque in Israel, and its conversion into a disco/ nightclub by the Israelis. This is to them a shocking sacrilege, and it would be to many other religions if their centres of worship were treated in this way.
The newsletter also reported that a local Christian church in the same area of the mosque had also been closed. This is something you definitely don’t hear about from the very pro-Israel Christian Zionist right. The impression these organisations try to give is that Israel is very positive towards Christianity, and that Christians are religiously obliged to give their absolute support to the country. As opposed to the Arabs, who are bitterly opposed to Christianity. Yet I can remember being told by a former local priest, that in his experience of visiting Israel and Syria, it was Syria that had a far more tolerant attitude towards Christian antiquities and those visiting them.
I don’t mention this in order to stir up any kind of religious hatred against Jews. I am very much aware that Jews have suffered horrendous persecution by Christians down the centuries, and am very definitely opposed to it. I am merely trying to make the point that Christians in America and elsewhere are not being told the whole truth about the state of religious politics in Israel. They are being instead presented with a very biased and distorted account that places the blame almost wholly on Muslims.
One of the points made by Jewish supporters of the Palestinians is that there at more Christian than Jewish Zionists in America. Indeed, Prof. Norman Finkelstein has pointed out that support for Israel amongst Jewish Americans was marginal until the late 1960s, when Conservative activists worked hard to engineer support for the country after its victories against the surrounding Arab nations. Mike made a similar point in his defence of himself and his commenter, Paul Mabbo, against the accusations of anti-Semitism flung by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Not everyone making the accusations was necessarily Jewish.
In fact there has been an alliance between right-wing American Christian groups and militant Zionists since before the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980s. Reagan’s election was partly due to his support from these right-wing Christian groups, brought about by the fundraisers and PR men Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, Howard Phillips and Ed McAteer. These men founded, led or advised a slew of conservative Christian organisations such as Conservative Caucus, Religious Roundtable, National Conservative Political Action Committee, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Christian Voice, Young Americans for Freedom and the Moral Majority. The term ‘Moral Majority’ was coined by either Weyrich or Phillips when McAteer arranged for them to meet Jerry Falwell. McAteer was then the head of the Christian Freedom Foundation, which was funded by money from the Pew and DeVos families, who owned Sunoco and AmWay respectively. It isn’t surprising that Betsy DeVos has now popped up as Trump’s Education Secretary, with a militant right-wing plan to privatise all American public schools into Charter Schools with an explicitly right-wing Christian curriculum. Weyrich was also a member of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which was financed by money from the Coors and Richard Scaiffe. As well as being a member of Young Americans for Freedom, Phillips had also been a minor member of Nixon’s administration. They chose Falwell because he had helped Anita Bryant defeat the Dade County Gays Rights Bill in 1977.
Falwell was one of the most notorious of the right-wing televangelists of the 1980s. He was actually the least popular of them, became the most influential through his contacts with Ronald Reagan. He first came to public attention for his 1965 speech denouncing Martin Luther King. However, it was the series of rallies he conducted in 1976 and ’77 which brought him to the attention of the leaders of the American Christian right. In 1983 Reagan allowed Fallwell to attend National Security briefings on the possibility of nuclear war with Russia, and discussed theology and nuclear war with him in his presidential limousine. Fallwell was also active establishing links with the Israeli leadership to the point where he became the most influential gentile lobbyist for Israel and Israeli expansionism.
As part of this, Falwell began arranging tours to the Holy Land. One of these was attended by a journalist, Grace Halsell, in 1983. She noted the prominent role apocalypticism played in the tours, with many of her fellow tourists believing that Christ’s return, and the end of the world were imminent. These tours also had an explicit agenda in drumming up support for Israel. The Israeli guide referred to Palestinians as Arabs, following the official Israeli line set by Golda Meir that there were no Palestinians. He then went on to state that the ‘Arabs’ preferred to live in poverty, had repeatedly refused Israeli friendship and bluntly stated that ‘all Muslims were terrorists’. When the tour bus stopped at Nazareth, it was only to use the toilets there. Halsell suspected that they were being prevented from speaking to any Palestinians or Christians living in Israel. This is not unlikely. One of the ministers at our church said that if you go to Israel, you will be kept from meeting Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. The tour finally met Falwell at a hotel in Jerusalem, where they were treated to a speech by the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Arens, boast about Israeli victories in the invasion of Lebanon.
Falwell was richly rewarded by the Israelis for his services to them. A forest was named after him, he was showered with free trips to the country, and was also given a private jet by the Israeli government. He became the only gentile to receive the Jabotinsky medal, named after the Zionist leader, who advocated waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians in order to set up an Israeli empire that straddled both sides of the Jordan. It was Falwell who turned Jesse Helms, another prominent Reaganite, from a militant anti-Zionist into an enthusiastic supporter of Israel.
Falwell also visited the West Bank, where he had his photo taken with a Jewish American family, who had recently immigrated there. He set up a convention in Annapolis in 1983 to organise support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This was attended by James Watt and Richard Allen, two members of Reagan’s administration; Yehuda Hellman and other Jewish leaders; Viguerie, Phillips and Weyrich; and former presidential sleazebag Richard M. Nixon. Falwell also told a Texan newspaper that same year that Israel had a divine mandate, through the covenant between the Lord and the patriarch Abraham, to parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan, and that the whole of Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait should also belong to Israel. This would have to be achieved through force. Falwell stated that ‘good intentions are acts of stupidity’.
Extremist American Christian groups have also given support to Jewish terrorists, such as Gush Emunim, who have attempted to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem in order to restore Solomon’s Temple, whose site they believe the mosque occupies. In 1984 18 members of the terrorist group were convicted of trying to blow up the mosque, with the covert support of the Shin Bet and other members of the Israeli army and police. The group also attacked three Palestinian mayor, wounding them.
The terrorists were received as popular heroes in Israel, including by the judge who sentenced them. There were pleas for mercy from Yitzhak Shamir, and American right-wing Christians and Jews began sending money to finance their defence. Wealth American Jews also fund Gush Emunim and Meir Kahane’s extreme right-wing Kach party. Gush Emunim is also funded by Marcus Katz, a Mexican arms salesman, who made immense profits from selling guns and other armaments to Iran and various South American countries. Ruben Mattus, the head of the ice cream firm Haagen-Dazs, is one of the major backers of Kahane’s Kach party in Israel and his Jewish Defence League in the US.
The foremost Christian supporter of Israeli terrorism, at least in the 1980s, was the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, headed by the self-declared new Nehemiah, Terry Reisenhoover. Reisenhoover’s an Oklahoma speculator in oil and land, and styles himself after the Biblical Nehemiah, who was the first governor of Jerusalem after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon. The land Reisenhoover has speculated on, along with his Israeli partner, Shony Braun, includes land taken from Palestinians on the West Bank. Reisenhoover appointed as secretary Stanley Goldfoot, once implicated in the Stern gang’s 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Temple Foundation aimed to raise $100 million annually to rebuild the Temple and establish a yeshiva to teach the future priests the correct way to sacrifice animals there. They also supplied funds to Gush Emunim’s defence lawyers after the 1983 attack.
Another right-wing Christian group funding Israeli terrorism is the International Christian Embassy, who lobbied their governments to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This group were also financed by South Africa.
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