Christians Helping Israel Targeted By Terrorists

organization Hizbollah, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) said Monday, October 28.

The report came as American diplomat Lawrence Foley from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was gunned down in neighboring Jordan early Monday, October 28, while the death toll of Sunday’s suicide attack in Israel rose to four.

Foley’s death and the Palestinian suicide bombing at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank seemed part of a wider campaign to discourage support for Israel and the US-led war against terrorism, the well informed ICEJ News Service suggested.

It noted that Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was quoted by the influential Beirut Daily Star as saying that American Christian supporters of Israel "are hatching a plot" to liquidate the Arabs and drive them into exile.

"CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS"

Sheikh Nasrallah reportedly told a graduation ceremony that "Christian Zionists" are gaining strength in the US and that they have a powerful impact on American foreign policy.

He added that Christian groups in America are financed by oil companies and weapons firms, and seek to encourage Jews to move to Israel and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

But the spiritual leader warned that "if they (the Jews and Christians) all gather in Israel, it will save us (Hizbollah) the trouble of going after them world-wide," the ICEJ News Service reported, citing the Beirut Daily Star.

"GROWING STREAM"

The ICEJ said the Hizbollah comments "reflect a growing stream" of thought within Islam that attempts to explain why the Arab/Muslim world "failed in its efforts over the past century to thwart the creation" of "a "cancerous" Jewish state in their midst."

Some leading Islamic clerics now hold that Allah is allowing the ingathering of Jews to Israel so that they may be more easily exterminated in one place, the ICEJ added.

It was not immediately clear how the latest revelations would effect the work of the ICEJ and other Christian organizations in the Middle East, which have helped Jews from around the world to emigrate to Israel. 

ANTI-CHRISTIAN SENTIMENTS

There is concern that the killing of the first American diplomat in Jordan on Monday, October 28, will further fuel anti-US, anti-Christian and anti-Israel sentiments across the region.

But Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio Monday, October 28, that Israel is strong enough to tackle those seeking to destabilize the region, despite an Israeli cabinet crisis over the budget, which analysts say could lead to early elections.

The minister added that Israel has seized and is holding in its jails a total of 175 Palestinian "would-be suicide bombers." He also defended the Israeli army’s controversial record of clamping down on what it sees as the terrorist infrastructure within the Palestinian-controlled territories.

At least 4 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military operations since Sunday, October 27, the ICEJ News Service and other sources said. The dead were described as a 15-year-old boy in Jenin and "three suspected terrorists in Nablus."