During the week covered by this review, we received 15 articles on the following subjects:
Arab Believing Community
Christian in Israel
Archeology
Sport
Christian Sacraments
Culture/History
Miscellaneous
Christian Sites
Arab Believing Community
Magazine HaMoshavot, August 9, 2013
Yoav Itiel reports that in two weeks’ time, Netanyahu’s government will create a forum together with the Christian committee to promote the issue of Christian Arabs being drafted into the IDF. “The forum will operate to integrate the Christian Arabs into the law for equal responsibility, will promise protection from threats and violence for those who support the draft and those who are drafted, and will enhance law enforcement against those who instigate and incite to violence.” Itiel adds that according the government, there has been a significant rise in the number of Christian Arab draftees in the past year.
Netanyahu has pledged his full support to those of the Christian Arab community who wish to join the army. The Prime Minister said in a statement that he “salutes and supports” the draftees, adding that his government will “not tolerate any threat made against [them].” Father Nadaf of the Orthodox Church, who has been severely criticized by the Arab community in Nazareth for his attempts to promote Christian Arab draftees, said: “our goal is to protect the Holy Land and the State of Israel. We have broken through the fear-barrier – the State deserves our share in working for and protecting it. Whoever objects to the integration of Christians in state institutions is not walking in the way of Christianity.”
Christian in Israel
Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, August 22, 2013
Two papers reported on the latest “price tag” attack which took place on Monday night on the Beit Jamal monastery just outside of Jerusalem. According to Haaretz, “Perpetrators threw a fire bomb into the entrance hallway and sprayed the monastery walls with the words ‘price tag,’ ‘death to the Gentiles,’ and ‘revenge.’” One Israeli woman who knows the nuns at Beit Jamal, told the press that “the nuns are in shock. They’re the most non-violent people there are. They say they have good relations with the Jews. Why would they do this?”
According to The Jerusalem Post, police are looking into the possibility that the attack was nationalistically motivated. The paper also quotes MK Rabbi Dov Lipman, who visited the monastery after the attack. Speaking to the nuns, he said that “this act runs counter to the Jewish way. As a resident of Beit Shemesh, we appreciate your neighborly friendship. It is critical that we live in peace and respect with those who hold different beliefs. I hope the police will catch the perpetrators very soon and that justice will be served.” The nuns responded with gratitude, telling Rabbi Lipman that “your coming today reinforced our belief that these people who did this do not represent the Jewish people.”
Archeology
Yediot Aharonot, Yisrael HaYom, Maariv, Makor Rishon, The Jerusalem Post, August 19, 2013
Every leading paper in Israel reported on the rare discovery of a 2700 year-old Hebrew inscription on a pottery shard. The piece of pottery was found in excavations at the City of David and was among “thousands of fragments of pottery, candles, ceramics, and figurines dating to the end of the First Temple.” As for the inscription, archeologists believe it may contain the name of a biblical figure. The bowl on which it was found dates back “to eighth century earthenware [and] can be traced to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem under King of Judah Zedekiah, around 586 B.C.” The name on the shard, which is missing the first letter, is “Zachariah son of Benaiah.” This name is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 20:14. According to a statement issued by the Antiquities Authority, “while not complete, the inscription presents us with the name of a seventh century BCE figure, which resembles other names known to us from both the Biblical and archeological record . . . and provides us with a connection to the people living in Jerusalem at the end of the First Temple Period.”
Morasha, August 15, 2013
Morasha ran a story on the archeological site of one of king David’s palaces, which has recently been opened to the public (see third Media Review for July and second Media Review for August).
Sport
Yediot Aharonot, August 22, 2013
In his weekly column, Amir Peleg reflects on the recent announcement made by Beitar Yerushalyaim (Jerusalem’s soccer league) that they are in negotiations with Ibrahim Bangora, a soccer player who is of Christian background. In their statement, Beitar said “we don’t look at the ID of people we are hoping to bring on to the team, but if it interests anyone, we are talking about a player from a Christian background.” What seems to be of more significance, however, is the fact that Bangora is Arab, and Peleg quotes famous soccer player Haim Revivo as saying that the Beitar fan club is not ready for an Arab player. “This is pretty sad and shocking,” says Peleg, “in a country that is so appalled by any show of anti-Semitism.”
Christian Sacraments
Yediot HaGalil, August 16, 2013
This short snippet explains the meaning of baptism in the Catholic Church, saying that it is “a supernatural act that cleanses the one being baptized from primordial sin.” The article goes on to say that “baptizing the body . . . symbolizes the rebirth of a pure and cleansed soul. This is also why Catholics are quick to baptize infants . . . in order to cleanse them as soon as possible from primordial sin so that they wont be unclean if they happen to die, which would put them in limbo (the place between heaven and hell).”
Culture/History
The Jerusalem Post, August 15, 2013
Aviva Bar-Am takes a tour of South Tel Aviv’s Florentin neighborhood, which was originally built by American Christian Zionists in 1866. “Their mission,” writes Bar-Am, was “to develop the land and its resources in preparation for the return of the Jewish people.” They built the first neighborhood outside Jaffa’s city walls. The difficulties they faced were immense, so that “two years after their arrival in Jaffa, all but two dozen or so members of the American Colony in Jaffa had gone back to the New World.” The neighborhood that they built eventually fell into disrepair, and in the early 1980’s the buildings were slated for demolition. Jean Carter, a Christian construction supervisor from Massachusetts, “persuaded the government to declare the colony a site to preserved . . . She even got the Tel Aviv municipality to place a memorial plaque on the beach where the American Colony had landed long ago.”
From this point on, Bar-Am gives a “written tour” of the neighborhood, walking the reader through the various buildings, their history, and what they are being used for today. Of interest is her mention of a hotel that was eventually “sold to the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews (today known as CMJ, or Christian Mission to the Jews), which opened a girls’ high school. Eventually, in the 1970’s, Beit Immanuel became a meeting place for Hebrew-speaking Messianic Jews. Today it functions mainly as a guest house.”
Miscellaneous
Haaretz, August 16, 2013
Haaretz reprinted an article that appeared in the Guardian about a Christian family who left the United States because its government supports abortion. The couple, together with their two young children, set sail from San Diego in a small boat they hoped would bring them to the undeveloped island of Kiribati. But their boat was damaged in a storm, and they drifted for two months before being rescued by a Venezuelan fisherman. The couple have said that “the churches in the US belong to someone else, neither Jesus nor God are at the head of the church.” They also said that they were never afraid while adrift at sea, because “we believed that God would protect us.”
Christian Sites
Maariv, August 23, 2013
Dubi Zachai recommends a weekend outing around the Sea of Galilee, and includes the Jordan River baptismal site in the trip. He describes the ceramic plaques with verses from the New Testament that adorn the steps leading down to the river. He writes that “groups of pilgrims arrive at this site accompanied by a priest who performs mass and the baptismal ceremony in the waters of the Jordan River. . . One can watch the ceremony from a big balcony overlooking the site.”