Beyond Chutzpah: Missionary Shamelessness

Paul, the founder of the early Christian church, confessed to employing deceptive techniques to gain converts to his new faith. "If through my lies G-d’s truth abounds to His glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?" (Romans 3:7) Paul's spiritual successors have learnt well from his example. In their zeal for destroying the Jewish faith and nation, missionaries have stooped to the most deceptive and dishonest tactics. While they are a fifth-column determined to convert us, they portray themselves shamelessly as victims of "Orthodox persecution". They feel no guilt at publically accusing the Jewish people of blood libel on international television without a shred of evidence. Of course, intellectual dishonesty is nothing new to Christianity.

A recent bomb attack on the son of a Messianic pastor prompted calls of condemnation on Orthodox Jews. Without any proof, Pat Robertson has denounced Orthodox Jews on his television station for complicity in this attack. This is despite the fact that the Mufti of Jerusalem issued a fatwa against this pastor for converting Muslims and that Fatah took credit for this attack. None of this has stopped the slander directed at the Jewish people. On the other hand, there are numerous cases of missionary abuse and assault on those who try to stop them. Eddie Beckford, head of the Messianic cult in Arab, was caught on video brutally assaulting a counter-missionary activist. Meanwhile, in all of Yad L'Achim's, a major counter-missionary organization, 50 years of activism, not one of its members has been convicted of violence. By playing the victim, they are able to gain sympathy and support to their evil cause.

Missionaries recently entered the mostly religious town of Or Yehuda and distributed missionary pamphlets, specifically targetting the Ethiopian community which is particularly succeptible to Messianic propaganda. Having found themselves in possession of idolatrous and undesirable material, they resolved to dispose of it in the most appropriate fashion. The mayor of Or Yehuda, along with several yeshiva students, went across town collecting these pamphlets and burnt them in a synagogye parking lot. The head of the Israeli branch of the cult which distributed these Christian Bible, Victor Kalisher, the son of Holocaust survivors, stooped so low as to abuse the memory of the Holocaust to support converting Jews. "As Jews we were raised and taught that were books are burned, worse things can happen. That's what I think when I see the pictures of what happened in Or Yehuda. What worries me is that nobody has stood up against this." Messianic activists compared the burning to medieval burnings of the Talmud or the Nazi destruction of Jewish books. By painting themselves as suffering from Jewish "Nazis", they hope to gain public support. These Messianics fail to realize one key difference. The Nazis, or the Christians during the Middle Ages, forcibly confiscated Jewish holy books and burnt them. In Or Yehuda, Jews were subjected to material that is considered higly offensive and had no way to get rid of it. According to Jewish law, anything associated with idolatry must be destroyed. Therefore, the only halachic solution would be to destroy the pamphlets. Yet the missionaries could not make this distinction. They gladly spit on the memory of the 6 million martyred Jews in their crusade to finish off the task of eliminating the Jewish people.

These missionaries have no shame and will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. They spend billions of dollars every year in order to gain influence and convert Jews. Evangelical leaders exert tremendous pressure on the Israeli government to strike down laws prohibiting missionizing and aid Messianics in furthering their agenda in Israel. They have slandered traditional Jews, desecrated the memory of the Holocaust, preyed on the vulnerable and even attacked counter-missionary activists. They are certainly enemies of the Jewish people and must be treated as such. In this day and age, when we are quick to accept "Zionism" as a common building ground, we must carefully re-examine our relationships with spiritual thieves.