It might be old news to some, but I've just been put onto it by Nilk, who assures me that, when she rises from her influenza-death-bed, she'll blog about it.
What to do (By David Meir Levi):
If you are a Christian:
- speak out on your own write letters to editors of local or national newspapers, offer op-ed pieces on this and related topics, offer to speak at your church, start a book club on arab-israel conflict books, offer to be interviewed on local radio talk shows, tv talk shows, email my emails to your email list, tell your email list to email your emails to their lists, write letters to your government officials
- speak out through your churchtalk with your pastor, board of directors/decons, get their buy-in to support your #1 activities, lobby for and volunteer to chair a committee in the church to address the arab-israel conflict from the vantage point of a church position which could even be a neutral position which by its neutrality undermines the anti-Israel churches, ask your pastor or some board member to speak at local or regional or national or international church conventions about these issues,work to get your church leadership to speak out against the anti-Israel churches
- work with your church or with other community organizations to produce or support or sponsor or co-sponsor Israel-related events like an "Israel awareness week" or an "Israel's 60th party" or a church-related adult education program (maybe for teens too) on the conflict and its history (be sure to invite both pro- and con- speakers so that both sides are heard and no one can accuse anyone of bias). synagogues in my area have "IAC" (Israel Action Committee) activities educating our lay folk in to the history of the conflict and the propaganda war being waged against israel.
- urge your church governance to seek out partners in the Jewish community to do #3 activities together (caution: some synagogues are run by leaders who believe that it is good to pressure Israel via boycotts and divestment...don't work with those synagogues).
- find, if you can (not easy) someone at some high level of church or community leadership who will take a strong public stand in opposition to boycotts and divestment and other forms of demonizing Israel, and assist that person(s) with your own and your church's support. Strong public stand = (inter alia) open letters to the public, interviews in media, letters to editors and op-ed pieces in newspapers (per #1, but a high level public figure who is a practicing Christian will have a stronger impact).
- start, if you can (not easy) a series of events, with the buy-in and participation of your church and other partners in your endeavour, in which you generate a high level of public awareness. For example: rabbis and Christian clergy hand-cuffing themselves to the Saudi embassy in protest of the Saudi treatment of women, or the Saudi support for terrorism. Same re the Sudanese embassy re the massacres in Darfur and the genocide of Christians in south Sudan (c. 2,000,000 dead to date and most churches are silent). Same re PLO/PA official offices (if there are any) in Australia. Stage a candle-lit night vigil in front of your own government offices to demand Australia's political and diplomatic actions re Saudi Arabia and Sudan, or re Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism and targeting of innocent civiliansor even (really not easy) a thousand Christian march (or think big...a million Christian march) to Canberra to protest any or all of the above Arab/Muslim crimes against Christians and Jews. Be sure to alert the media
- find donors who will underwrite week-long seminars (not necessarily one whole week in one place, but perhaps several or more institutions around your region or across the entire country - or one week on one place is ok too) to which you invite major international experts like
Dr. Daniel Pipes,
Steve Emerson,
Hugh Fitzgerald,
David Horowitz,
Walid Shoebat,
Brigitte Gabriel,
Wafa Sultan,
Nonie Darwish,
Dennis Praeger,
David Meir Levi,
to lead classes and public speeches and debates and panel discussions and TV appearances and radio talk show interviews and interviews with local or national newspapers. - Support financially (yourself personally, and/or your church, taking it on as a project) the institutions for which these people (in #7) work. Publicize your support. And in doing so, publicize your opposition (your church's opposition, etc.) to the stance of the anti-Israel churches.
- go to Israel for a visit...as long a visit as possible, and tell your church and your local media why you are going (show support, learn the facts, have a good time in the middle east's only western democracy where women and Christians and Muslims and other faiths are free to be).
- organize a church tour to israel, same as #9.
- buy my books and give them as gifts to all and sundry, and urge your church to buy them and use them for education and book clubs, and gifts to teens going to college etc.and buy as well Caroline Glick's new book "Shackled Warrior", and Matthias Kuntzel's new book "Jihad and Jew-Hatred". and if you are Jewish: then all of the above applies, just reverse church/synagogue and pastor/rabbi.
Update: Splice, apologies, I should have said that this was in response to an enquiry from another person about what they could do, and they are a Christian person... The email was headed "The UK universities' witch-hunt against the Jews: the reason why and what to do". From the link:
Today, the Universities and Colleges Union is discussing whether universities should single out Israeli and Jewish scholars for active discrimination.Maybe that will clarify the Judeo-Christian slant of the "what to do" list. The problem with Christians and with many others is the "turn the other cheek" and "live and let live" teaching.
Yes, you read that correctly. The UCU is debating a motion which not only raises the spectre yet again of an academic boycott of Israel but demands of Jewish and Israeli academics that they explain their politics as a pre-condition to normal academic contact. The motion asks colleagues to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they're collaborating... the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions... Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.
Now I gotta go!
4 comments:
Publicize your support. And in doing so, publicize your opposition (your church's opposition, etc.) to the stance of the anti-Israel churches.
Churches? Let’s count the anti-Israel churches on our fingers and toes... I’ve got one already, if you want to call it a church.
Islam.
Maybe you mean all the clerics around the world teaching the word of Allah and his Prophet, peace be upon him. What are you going to do about that, infidels? Divide the totality into suburbs? Keep playing the game.
Perhaps I should clarify. What troubles me about David Meir Levi’s approach is that it narrows the locus of Islamic Jihad to an apparent battle between Islamism and the Judeo-Christian West. This is clearly not the case. Islamist expansionism affects all religions and cultures throughout the world from Buddhists in Thailand and Hindus in Kashmir to Animists in Bali and secular office workers in New York. It’s not simply a case of Islamism versus the West, but rather, Islamism versus the rest.
Agreed, Splice, and unless the Rest gets on one cohesive side in the fight, the baddies will win.
This is why it really pains me when I see, in our media and its consumers, so much support for the Islamists.
This overt support for the enemy is probably most marked in attacks on Israel, but it is not limited to that and comes right down to local community levels in our own country.
This reminds me of the great USSR support of the 1950's. Yes shows my age. People usually wake up. Takes time. We will look back and say how so many could have been so gullible. Some of course still believe in Stalin, Mao, etc, etc.
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