One of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations is calling on the Israeli parliament member who ripped pages from the Bible to apologize.
“There is no excuse for abusing the sacred scripture of any other religion,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of interfaith affairs at the center, in a statement Wednesday.
“Israel from its inception guarantees religious freedoms and mutual respect for holy sites and objects of all its citizens. Israelis of all persuasions and backgrounds welcome the friendship and support of members of all faiths,” Cooper and Adlerstein said. “Thank God Israel is not Saudi Arabia, where keeping a Christian Bible, let alone a Torah, Talmud or Siddur is a criminal offense. We urge MK Ben-Ari to apologize for his act and to find appropriate ways to strengthen Jewish identity and loyalty”.The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center was reprimanding Michael Ben-Ari, a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Ben-Ari was photographed ripping up pages from the New Testament and throwing it in the trash.
The Bible Society in Israel, a messianic Judaism group, had sent copies of the Bible to all 120 members of the Knesset, according to Israel National News. Ben-Ari had perceived the society’s sending him the Bible as an attempt to proselytize and also blamed the Bible for violence against Jews: “Millions of Jews were murdered in the name of the New Testament, this revolting book brought massacres of Jews in the [Spanish] Inquisition and throughout history.”
However, the society said it only wanted to inform MKs that the Bible is among the religious texts produced in Israel, the Anti-Defamation League explained.
“Ben-Ari had perceived the society’s sending him the Bible as an attempt to proselytize and also blamed the Bible for violence against Jews: “Millions of Jews were murdered in the name of the New Testament, this revolting book brought massacres of Jews in the [Spanish] Inquisition and throughout history.””
Whether or not the gentleman’s perception of himself being proselytized is correct, his understanding of the facts of the Bible and of history are somewhere in outer space. He is not representative of moderate, enlightened, jewish thinking. The (jewish) people who wrote up THE EVIDENCE AGAINST ADOLPH EICHMAN (executive manager of the gas chambers) said it all. “If the Jewish people did not exist, the Nazis would have invented them” (not an exact quote).
If the backyard falls in, the crops fail, the wife does not meet expectations, a child loses his mind …… find a culprit to ‘take it out on.’ Find the cause of the perceived curse, and eliminate it.
Jesus Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world. Personally, I think I was half Pharisee. That’s my natural instinct — blame people because they haven’t got their religion right. I was harrassed by it. Pastor Danny rocked up and rebuked that thing, whatever it was (a ‘religious’ spirit?) and, suddenly, people out there look a lot better. Life is much more worth living.
But the MK (K for Israeli parliament eh?) didn’t take the time to read a history book to discover that while the Spanish were being monsters in the name of Christianity (and their fanaticism was fostered by a war of extinction visited on them by, guess what — Islam!) — one Francis Drake was “singeing the beard of the King of Spain”. This Drake, unlike the Spanish, actually kept a copy of the New Testament, and sincerely led prayers every day on deck — from a book that is the antithesis of blind bigotry. Inspired by the God who loves all men and whose authority overpowers all curses. Drake was a fine representative of a people who finally granted equality to the Jews and who gained one Benjamin D’Israeli as a leading statesman.