At least his honesty was refreshing, if not his hypocrisy and lack of ethics.

When he told his grandmother he was leaving the states, she warned him, "Israel is no place for a nice Jewish boy."

Jeff can no longer count the times he has been arrested for NONVIOLENT acts of civil disobedience against the occupation of Palestine and all of its evils, in particular, the destruction of Palestinian homes by Israel, who receive no compensation for their legally owned homes and land.

He wrote: AN ISRAELI JEW IN GAZA:

A STATEMENT BY JEFF HALPER

In another few days, I will sail on one of the Free Gaza movement boats from Cyprus to Gaza. The mission is to break the Israeli siege, an absolutely illegal siege which has plunged a million and a half Palestinians into wretched conditions: imprisoned in their own homes, exposed to extreme military violence, deprived of the basic necessities of life, stripped of their most fundamental human rights and dignity. The siege violates the most fundamental principle of international law: the inadmissibility of harming civilian populations. Our voyage also exposes Israel's attempt to absolve itself of responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. Israel's claim that there is no Occupation, or that the Occupation ended with "disengagement," is patently false. Occupation is defined in international law as having effective control over a territory. If Israel intercepts our boats, it is clear that it is the Occupying Power exercising effective control over Gaza. Nor has the siege anything to do with "security." Like other elements of the Occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Israel has also besieged cities, towns, villages and whole regions, the siege on Gaza is fundamentally political. It is intended to isolate the democratically-elected government of Palestine and break its power to resist Israeli attempts to impose an apartheid regime over the entire country.

This is why I, an Israeli Jew, felt compelled to join this voyage to break the siege. As a person who seeks a just peace with the Palestinians, who understands (despite what our politicians tell us) that they are not our enemies but rather people seeking precisely what we sought and fought for – national self-determination I cannot stand idly aside. I can no more passively witness my government's destruction of another people than I can watch the Occupation destroy the moral fabric of my own country. To do so would violate my commitment to human rights, the very essence of prophetic Jewish religion, culture and morals, without which Israel is no longer Jewish but an empty, if powerful, Sparta.

Israel has, of course, legitimate security concerns, and Palestinian attacks against civilian populations in Sderot and other Israeli communities bordering on Gaza cannot be condoned. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel, as an Occupying Power, has the right to monitor the movement of arms to Gaza as a matter of "immediate military necessity." As activists committed to resisting the siege non-violently, I have no objection to the Israeli navy boarding our boats and searching for weapons. But only that. Because Israel has no right to besiege a civilian population, it has no legal right to prevent us, private persons sailing solely in international and Palestinian waters, from reaching Gaza – particularly since Israel has declared that it no longer occupies it. Once the Israeli navy is convinced we pose no security threat, then, we thoroughly expect it to permit us to continue our peaceful and lawful journey into Gaza port.

Ordinary people have often played key roles in history, particularly in situations like this where governments shirk their responsibilities. My voyage to Gaza is a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people in their time of suffering, but it also conveys a message to my fellow citizens.

First, despite what our political leaders say, there is a political solution to the conflict, there are partners for peace. The very fact that I, an Israeli Jew, will be welcomed by Palestinian Gazans makes that very point. My presence in Gaza also affirms that any resolution of the conflict must include all the peoples of the country, Palestinian and Israeli alike. I am therefore using whatever credibility my actions lend me to call on my government to renew genuine peace negotiations based on the Prisoners Document accepted by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas. The release of all political prisoners held by Israel, including Hamas government ministers and parliamentary members, in return for the repatriation of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, would dramatically transform the political landscape by providing the trust and good-will essential to any peace process.

Second, the Palestinians are not our enemies. In fact, I urge my fellow Israeli Jews to disassociate from the dead-end politics of our failed political leaders by declaring, in concert with Israeli and Palestinian peace-makers: We refuse to be enemies. Only that assertion of popular will can signal our government that we are fed up with being manipulated by those profiting from the Occupation.

And third, as the infinitely stronger party in the conflict and the only Occupying Power, we Israelis must accept responsibility for our failed and oppressive policies. Only we can end the conflict.

In the Israeli conception, Zionism was intended to return to the Jews control over their own destiny. Do not let us be held hostage to politicians who endanger the future of our society. Join with us end the siege of Gaza, and with it the Occupation in its entirety. Let us, the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, declare to our leaders: we demand a just and lasting peace in this tortured Holy Land.

(Jeff Halper, the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, was a nominee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org. )

Here are the Footnotes and Sources:

2. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/new_christian_zionism/single
3. http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html

Other Sources:
http://www.christianzionism.org
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=704&Itemid=180

Speaking as an American Christian of The Beatitudes [meaning I follow what Jesus TAUGHT, not any institution] and having sat in the audience of a Hagee Cult event, I testify, Hagee is a false prophet and master manipulator of the fears of right wing and fundamentalist Jews and Christians in the US.

Let us not forget, most Americans consider themselves Christian, even if they are clueless as to what JC was all about.

Indeed, we must start some where and exposing Hagee and WAKING UP his legions of mis-informed Christians and Jewish supporters who have been led by his neo-con Armageddon-based foreign-policy views is THE place to begin!

In America, "tons" of Christians have been led by the Armageddon-based foreign-policy views of John Hagee, a false prophet who has captivated a congregation of 18,000 in his Cornerstone Church and those who tune into his TV show to applaud the drum beat of a full-scale military assault on Iran.

A nuclear Iran would make the 'Holy' Land a less desirable home for Jewish settlers, even though Israel's underground WMD facility in the Negev remains un-inspected-a fact ignored by the US Government.

Hagee is a 'Christian' Zionist who believes that the modern state of Israel is a divinely-ordained phenomenon and its establishment was essential to the Second Coming of Christ.

'Christian' Zionists adhere to a misunderstanding of God as a Real Estate broker.

'Christian' Zionists opposes land-for-peace negotiations and have no eyes to see or hearts that bleed for their Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers enduring under a 40+ year military occupation.

Many 'Christian' Zionists fail at the commission to love all, and they seek to convert the Jews to their narrow small god or see them left behind in a nuclear holocaust that they erroneously believe they will be raptured/lifted out of.

The White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with 'Christians' United for Israel (CUFI), Hagee's demented dream which sees CUFI as "the Christian version of AIPAC," referring to the pro-Israel group which is rated a close second to the National Rifle Association as the most powerful lobby in Washington.

Hagee has "endeared himself to key members of the Israeli right. [And] recently united America's largest Christian Zionist congregations and some of the movement's most prominent figures–including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer and Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher instrumental in launching Republican Ken Blackwell's gubernatorial campaign–under the banner of CUFI, creating the first and only nationwide evangelical political organization dedicated to supporting Israel." [2]

On November 6, 2007, I attended a Hagee cult event in Miami and heard him claim, "Israel was re-born by an act of God and Israel lives! The Jews have suffered great persecution and survived slavery and the Final Solution! God Jehovah will bury Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran! The flag of Israel will fly over the undivided Jerusalem and be the praise of all the earth! It's 1938 again and the new Hitler is Ahmadinejad! Radical Islamisicts are threatening to develop nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and then the USA! But we are indivisible and we are both here forever!"

The oft repeated comment ascribed to President Ahmadinejad, that "Israel must be wiped off the map," was addressed by Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science who wrote:

"In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.

"In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the "occupying regime" in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass." [3]

What Has Already Passed:

Following the War of 1967, Israel gained an increased portion of USA foreign aid and military budgets, becoming the ‘western pillar’ of the USA strategic alliance against Soviet incursion into the Middle East.

During this period AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobby agencies began their ascent to power in shaping USA foreign policy. The Roman Catholic Church and mainline Protestant denominations began to develop a more balanced approach to the Middle East, bringing them closer to the international consensus on the Palestinian question. Pro-Israel organizations interpreted this shift as being Anti-Israel and in turn began to court the conservative Christians.

In 1977, when President Carter stated “The Palestinians deserve a right to their homeland,” the Christian fundamentalists and Israeli lobby responded with full page ads stating:

The time has come for evangelical Christians to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel’s divine right to the land…and affirm our belief in the Promised Land to the Jewish people.

The Reagan White House hosted a series of seminars from the Israeli lobby and Christian right. This was when Hal Lindsay, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority infiltrated the West Wing.
Falwell received a Lear Jet from the Israeli government for his personal travel and when Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant in 1981, Prime Minister Begin called Jerry Falwell -before he called Reagan- to ask him to explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombings.

In 1996, Netanyahu and Likud ideology dominated Israeli policy and 17 evangelical USA pastors pledged their support of the illegal colonies in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and full support for a Jerusalem under sovereignty of Israel.

The Christian Zionists launched a PR campaign under the banner: “Christians Call for a United Jerusalem.” They ignored the fact that they were in conflict with American policy and the Oslo process as well as a direct attack on Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant unity with the Churches for Middle East Peace that called for a shared Jerusalem.

In 2006, Hagee wrote in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma, "The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty."

Candidate Bush once claimed his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, but President Bush hasn't much in common with the Prince of Peace who warned that to be forgiven, one must forgive, to not judge the unbeliever and that one must love and bless one's enemies; not bomb, occupy or torture any.

Before Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into the mainstream, all the early Church Fathers taught that Christians should not serve in the army but instead willingly suffer rather than inflict harm on any other.

St. Augustine was the first Church Father to corrupt the message of Jesus who promised that, "The Peacemakers shall be called the children of God"[Matthew 5:9] when he penned his Just War Theory.

Within 100 years after Constantine, the Empire required that all soldiers in the army must be baptized Christians and thus, Christianity was watered down as ritual trumped love and commitment to the teachings and philosophy of Jesus.

With the justification of war and violence supplied by Augustine’s Just War Theory, wrong became right and in today’s Orwellian world politicians who claim the way to peace is through war have been united with the very wrong 'Christian' right, and history repeats itself.

In 313 AD, Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity and thus, those who had been considered rebels and outlaws began to enjoy political power and prestige. Jesus’ other name is The Prince of Peace, and with the marriage of church and state, his true teachings were reinterpreted. Church advocacy of warfare and the use of state sponsored violence corrupted what Christ was all about, which was:

WAKE UP! The Divine already indwells you and all others. Christ taught that to follow him requires that one must love ones enemies; one must forgive those who hate, curse and revile them, without a thought of payback.

Christ lived a life that proved evil can be opposed without being mirrored, and that the cycle of a “tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye”, will never bring peace and justice.

The term Christianity was not even coined until three decades after Christ walked the earth. Until the day of Paul, followers of Christ were called members of The Way; the way being in DOING what he taught!

Jesus, while never a Christian, was a social, justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the Temple priests by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay them for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God LOVED them just as they were: sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Military Occupation.

What got Jesus crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces by teaching the subversive concept that Caesar only had power because God allowed it and that God preferred the humble sinner, the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Occupation above the elite and arrogant.

When Jesus said: "Pick up your cross and follow me" everyone back then understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.