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September 12, 2003
Strong support for Israel
Christian Zionist shares Mideast views at the JCC.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
There was an air of revival meeting at the Jewish Community Centre
of Greater Vancouver Monday night. Hundreds of Christians joined
with Jewish supporters of Israel to hear one of the world's foremost
Christian Zionists speak on the current and historical situation
in the Middle East.
Clarence Wagner, who has lived for the past 26 years in Israel,
spoke to a unanimously supportive audience made up of a large number
of Christians and a seemingly smaller number of Jews in the Wosk
Auditorium. Wagner explained the difficult history of Jewish-Christian
relations, but said the atmosphere has changed since the independence
of Israel in 1948 when many Christians came to see the creation
of the state as a fulfilment of the biblical prophecy of the ingathering
of the exiles.
Wagner is the leader of Bridges for Peace, a Christian Zionist organization
dedicated to encouraging concern for the people of Israel. It has
branches all over the world, including in Vancouver, and publishes
Dispatch from Jerusalem, a periodical that reflects Israeli affairs
from a strongly pro-Zionist and fundamentalist Christian perspective.
"When you live in Israel, disappointment is palpable,"
said Wagner, in an electric sermon that had some members of the
audience voicing support and applauding frequently. He ex- pressed
a view of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that Jewish Zionists
rarely voice, noting in passing that he is opposed to a two-state
solution, implying not only that Israel has a right to the West
Bank of the Jordan River, but perhaps even the East Bank, which
is the nation of Jordan.
Reviewing the 20th-century history of the region, during which time
the Ottoman Empire fell and European powers seized control of the
Middle East, Wagner noted that the Balfour Declaration implied that
a Jewish state was to be created where all of Israel and Jordan
is now located. The Jewish territory, Wagner said, was pared down
by 70 per cent with the creation of Jordan, which he said is the
Palestinian state. Seventy per cent of Jordanians are ethnic Palestinians,
Wagner said, though he refuted the idea that there is a Palestinian
people. Wagner said the term Palestinian used to refer to the Jews
who lived in the region and was usurped as a defining term by Arab
residents only after the creation of Israel. He said the people
who now call themselves Palestinians are not ethnically different
from the Arab peoples of any of the neighboring states. He views
the covenant between God and Abraham as significant in that it descended
through Isaac, not through Abraham's son by Hagar, Ishmael. In this
interpretation, there is an implication that the Jews have been
divinely ordained with a right to the land and that Muslims have
not been.
Wagner also depicted the Jews as the only people in the region who
live now in the same land, under the same name, worshiping the same
God as they did thousands of years ago.
Wagner said the Christian tradition is deeply intertwined with the
Jewish tradition, but also spent some time depicting the Muslim
world as clearly outside this fraternal relationship. Listing off
terror attacks that have occurred in the past three years, from
Israel, to 9/11, Bali, Mombassa, and even international affairs
such as the India-Pakistan tensions, Wagner told the audience that
it was Muslims behind the violence and tensions, before offering
a short disclaimer that not all Muslims are bad.
Wagner depicted Islam as a religion that expands through territorial
conquest.
"It's not a religion of the heart," he said. "It's
a religion of land."
Israel routinely has its validity questioned, Wagner said, yet Israel
is a product of the same age of nation-carving as most of its neighbors.
Though many peoples had historical claims to territory in the Middle
East, all had lost their sovereignty to the Ottomans by the early
20th century. The lands that became the Arab states of Jordan, Egypt,
and most of the other neighboring countries, were all created or
gained independence in the last 80 years, he noted.
"People don't ever question the legitimacy of other lands of
the Middle East," he said. "Nobody questions the validity
of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan."
The master plan of Yasser Arafat and much of the Arab world, according
to Wagner, is what Arafat articulated in 1974 as a "phased
program" in which Palestinian Arabs would gain self-government
over parts of the territory, then infiltrate Israel with terror,
while neighboring Arab armies invaded. Wagner paints the first intifada
as Arafat's failed effort to incite an Israel-destroying regional
war and the latest intifada as Arafat's second attempt.
Wagner also compared the way different states have dealt with refugees.
The Arabs have kept their own people in refugee camps for generations,
while Israel has absorbed the millions of immigrants who have made
aliyah.
"Do you see Jews in refugee camps? No," he said.
Wagner depicted the two sides' reaction to terrorism as wildly divergent,
using Baruch Goldstein as an example. Goldstein, an apparently deranged
Jewish Israeli, killed 29 Muslim worshippers in 1994 at the Cave
of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Survivors of the attack beat Goldstein
to death and Israeli leaders condemned Goldstein's rampage. Palestinian
terrorists, Wagner said, become martyred heroes, having town squares
named after them.
Wagner depicted Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin as naive if well-intended
for their numerous offers of peace, a move Wagner dismissed as less
important than maintaining a strong Israel. The idea that an Israeli
prime minister at this point in history should attempt to negotiate
with Arafat, Wagner said, is "like trying to tell George W.
Bush to have lunch with Osama bin Laden."
Arafat, he said, rejected Barak's offer of peace because he could
not return to his people with an olive branch suggesting coexistence
with Israel.
"It seemed like a winner of a deal," said Wagner, who
is originally American and still speaks with a distinct drawl. "But
Arafat walked away. He never wanted a two-state solution.... He's
going to die a terrorist because that's what he is."
Wagner defended Israel's use of targeted killings, suggesting that,
had Hitler been the subject of a targeted killing in 1932, millions
of victims of the Holocaust and the Second World War would have
lived.
Wagner lives in Gilo, the Jerusalem neighborhood that has been subjected
to machine gun fire and mortar attacks from neighboring Beit Jala
since the intifada began. About 500 apartments in the neighborhood
had bulletproof glass windows installed but, despite the ongoing
attacks on civilian targets, Israel resisted occupying Beit Jala
for a full year after the intifada began. In the immediate vicinity
of the Bridges for Peace office in Jerusalem, Wagner said, there
have been 17 car or suicide bombings since 2000. In one incident
he witnessed, Wagner said a bomber boarded a bus deliberately in
front of a junior high school in order to kill as many students
as possible. Though the world criticizes Israel's occupation of
erstwhile Palestinian territories, Wagner said the atmosphere in
his neighborhood changed dramatically after the Israeli army entered
the nearby Arab wadi.
"As soon as Israel went into those areas, the shooting stopped,"
he said.
Wagner's love for Israel is reflected in his idealization of the
state and the Jewish people, whose written traditions Wagner credits
with preserving the word of God for millennia and being the spiritual
ancestors of Christians. The support of conservative Christians
for Israel is based in part on an interpretation of biblical prophesy
and Wagner found several verses to reflect current affairs.
"The Bible is as accurate as the morning newspaper," he
said, though, ironically, he had earlier described the media as
fundamentally misrepresenting the situation in Israel.
Wagner's defence of Israeli policy is based on his view that Israel
has a special role in the world.
"Their raison d'etre is to be a light unto the nations,"
Wagner said.
But that light is flickering, Wagner warned, because the intifada
has severely damaged the Israeli economy, increasing the number
of people living in poverty from 700,000 to 1.1 million. At one
point in the evening, Wagner sent ushers into the audience to collect
funds for the work of Bridges for Peace.
Wagner's visit was sponsored by the Jewish-Christian Friendship
Circle, which is part of the Israel Action Committee, and by the
local chapter of Bridges for Peace. In addition to publishing Zionist
news, Bridges for Peace has extensive aid programs targeting immigrants
from the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, who are presented with
food hampers, household needs and other supports. Wagner said his
organization has helped 18,000 Jewish residents of the former Soviet
Union make aliyah and has provided 250,000 immigrants with aid packages,
which include a copy of the Old Testament in Russian and Hebrew.
The organization's Web site is www.bridgesforpeace.com.
In addition to Wagner's talk, Israeli performers sang traditional
folk songs in Hebrew and English at the beginning and end of the
presentation.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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