How Mormons Should Think About The War In Israel

Previously: What The Book Of Mormon Says About Abortion

Douglas Casey recently described what’s happening in the Middle East as "a dog's breakfast."  That's a 19th century British colloquialism you don't often hear these days, but I've never seen it used so aptly.  No matter how disgusting the carnage before him, a dog will mindlessly attack and devour his chosen meal even it it utimately kills him.  You can't pull a determined dog off or get him to slow down. 

So as we consider this current dog's breakfast of a mess in Palestine, let us begin with two undeniable truths:

1. Hamas is wicked, vengeful, bloodthirsty and brutal.  

2. The government of Israel is wicked, vengeful, bloodthirsty, and brutal. 

Neither side is willing to slow down or take a breath and consider the chaos they are causing. Both sides are wholly focused on only one aim: to devour without stopping to pause. 

Notice I'm not blaming the Jewish or Arab people for this mess.  On both sides, it is the people who are  suffering and dying, not the leaders of Hamas and certainly not the Zionist government of Israel.  The Arab people of Palestine did not elect Hamas to represent them, yet the payback for the initial attacks that have brought on this war are falling squarely on the heads of the people living in Gaza. In return, countless innocent Jews will be slaughtered.  And on and on it will go, back and forth, back and forth, drawing entire nations into the fray as everyone assumes they must choose sides.

So what should be our response as members of the body of Christ? 

That should be simple: God commands us in Doctrine & Covenants 98 to "renounce war and proclaim peace," and to "turn the hearts of the Jews unto the prophets."  Most importantly (and the part of that section most Mormons are wont to overlook), is verse 32, where the Lord makes clear that His people are not to go out unto battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people unless the Lord Himself commands them. What we definitely should not be doing is choosing to take one side over another in this war of annihilation.

And yet I'm seeing and hearing from devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ demanding retribution against the Palestinian people for a horror most of those people had nothing to do with. I hear some of my Mormon brethren cheering on the state of Israel with cries of "crush them!" "wipe them off the map!" "we should finish them once and for all!" and other alarming cries for revenge. 

Seeing these bloodthirsty calls for vengeance reminded me of why the prophet Mormon threw down his sword and refused to continue as leader of the Nephite armies. After a successful series of battles wherein the Nephites had successfully driven back their Lamanite attackers, they got all full of themselves and decided that merely driving the enemy back was not enough. They aimed to go into the borders of the Lamanites and completely destroy that entire civilization. "Cut them off from the face of the land" is how they put it.

That's when their general called it quits.  Defending against invaders was one thing. Becoming the invader and taking a war of vengeance into the enemy's borders was something else.  It would result in the mass murder of Lamanites -including women and children- who had never come against the Nephites in the first place. Mormon simply would not have it. In case you don't remember what happened, this aggressive action on the part of the Nephites resulted in the complete annihilation of their entire civilization a mere ten years later.  Today there are no Nephites on the American continent. But the Lamanites are still here.  I'd say there's a lesson in there for us.

Now, I don't want you to get the impression I'm siding with Hamas in this controversy.   When it comes to this war between the residents of Gaza and the pretend "State of Israel," as Mormons and as Americans we should not be rooting for either side.  And as an American and a Mormon who has read the scriptural warnings, I also take that position as a descendant of Judah.

My Secret Life As A Crypto-Jew  

My maternal grandmother, Elsie Reichert, was five years old when she arrived at Ellis Island with her parents and siblings sometime in the late 1880s. Her family were Prussian Jews, come to America to escape the constant pogroms in the old world.  Like many other Jews at the time, the Reicherts chose to hide their Jewish heritage right then and there. Being a Jew had become just too much trouble for a growing number of Eastern Europeans, and some of them simply gave themselves a new name when passing through the immigration process.  A new country meant a new life; why not start out with a completely new identity as well?

Unlike other crypto-Jews, Great Grandma and Grandpa Reichert didn't have to change their last name in order to pass as gentiles. The surname Reichert was a neutral cognomen; it wasn't a name like Feldman or Finkelstein that instantly marked one as being Jewish.  Back in the old world there were Jews named Reichert to be sure, but there were also plenty of Germans with that same last name. Or maybe all those teutonic Reicherts were actually Jews secretly hiding their identities, who knows?   I can only tell you that when I was young I was told that my mother's family came from Germany. Even that story was false; they came from Prussia.

The fact that we actually derived from Jewish stock was unknown to us kids while we were growing up, although looking back there were plenty of clues I was too young to notice.  But Grandma hid our true heritage from the family so well that I don't know if she herself even knew she was a Jew; it's possible her parents never told her.  We kids found out after we were grown up, long after Grandma had died.  My mother and my Aunt Rose were the family geneologists, and that's how the secret leaked out. As Aunt Rose cryptically put it, somewhere back in our family tree "there was a Jew in the woodpile."

Under Jewish law and custom, if your mother was Jewish that makes you Jewish as well. Grandma Reichert Law gave birth to my mother, which under the law makes my mother Jewish. When I passed through my mother's birth canal in the Naval hospital at Oceanside, California...L'Chaim! I arrived in America an instant Jew!  Although I embrace Mormonism as my religion, by birth I am considered to be of the tribe of Judah. That's how it works. 

This Land Ain't Mine

My reason for bringing all this up is that, like a lot of Jews (and an overwhelming number of evangelical Christians who have misread the scriptures), I bought into the fable that in these modern times God desired His people to return to their Jewish homeland. "This land is mine," goes the stirring song from the 1960 film Exodus, "God gave this land to me."

Well, no it isn't, and no He didn't. God allowed the Assyrians and the Babylonians to take it away from us thousands of years ago when Judah and the other eleven tribes of Israel rebelled against Him. As much as that song still plays on my emotions to this day, I now recognize it as simple propaganda.  The fact is, this push to create a politically constructed homeland for the Jews in Palestine is antithetical to the will of God as clearly demonstrated in scripture. That is the stone-cold truth, and no amount of sentimental movie making is going to change that reality.

As a descendant of the tribe of Judah, when I have a question about Jewish orthodoxy, I don't look to mawkish songs and movies for my doctrine.  If I want to know whether God intended for the Jews to return to Palestine and push out its current residents, I'll look to the Torah, as these and many other orthodox Rabbis have been doing for decades: 

You may never have been told that hundreds of thousands of devout descendants of Judah assert that Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism.  They recognize that the phony Zionist "State of Israel" is a violation of the covenant that all of Israel made before God, and have for decades worked to expose the fraud.   A distant relative of mine, Irving Reichert, was the prominent Rabbi of San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El and he made headlines back in 1943 when he issued a Yom Kippur warning against the growing Zionist threat to Judaism. 

This was a good five years before the United Nations decreed, without consulting God, that the land of  Palestine was forthwith to be the new Jewish homeland.  Rabbi Reichert was alarmed at how many American Jews were already being taken in by the smooth-talking promoters of Zionism behind that decree.  Let's face it, even though the idea contradicted scripture, the idea of the Jews once again having a homeland of their own was very appealing.  As for Zionism: who wouldn't be attracted to the idea of a return to Zion?  "Zion!"  The very name is familiar to all Jews from their scriptures; it evokes images of peace, protection, rest, and refuge. 

But Israel today is far from a place of refuge.  And how could it be? The early founders of Zionism were not religious Jews, and they didn't have anything resembling a true Zion in mind. These early promoters were euphemistically known as "secular Jews," which is a nice way of saying they were Jews by birth but that they didn't practice the religion. Many of them were avowed atheists not motivated in the least by religious Judaism. For secular Jews, the religion of Judaism holds little appeal.  What they wanted was a massive tract of real estate and the power that goes with being in control of a country.  Theodore Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin -these were all unbelievers tirelessy working to deceive the believers.  Even the Prime Minister of Israel today is an atheist.  His real name isn't even Netanyahu, it's Mileikovsky. "Netanyahu" is a made up name meaning "God has given us."  This faker leads his followers into believing God has given him to them as some sort of modern messiah. This man who has the effrontery to incorporate God's name "Yehu" into his own is a liar and a mass murderer who will deserve his final reward.

It should be noted that prior to the establishment of a political "state of Israel," there were already plenty of Jews, Arabs, and even Christians living together in harmony in the Holy Land. In his 1943 Yom Kippur address, Rabbi Reichert made clear that he was in favor of continued opportunities for all persecuted and uprooted peoples of Europe to re-establish themselves in that area if that is what they want.  Jews have always had the right to move to the Holy Land if they want to.  They are simply prohibited by Torah from arriving in might, or as Jewish law puts it, to "go up as a wall" to claim a divine entitlement to be there, or to displace those already living in the area.

According to the Rabbi, individual Jews and their families were entitled to live whereever they could peacefully dwell, but for the Jews to establish a political nation was sinful and a violation of the religion of Judah.  Rabbi Reichert reminded his followers that the basis of unity among Jews is religion, not political nationalism. He contended that Jews should and do consider themselves nationals of those countries in which they live, and those various lands their homelands. He saw the Jewish problem, tragic and appalling as it is, in the last analysis a part of the world problem. Eventually it will have to be settled in those countries where Jews reside. The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine will not solve the problem of Jews living in other countries, Reichert maintained. On the contrary, he said, it may well aggravate them.

Well, the good Rabbi was certainly prescient on that last point. Relations between Jews and non-Jews the world over have never been worse than they have been since the creation of the State of Israel.  And remember, Rabbi Reichert said all this eighty years ago, long before American Jews would ever suspect their beloved land of Israel would one day become a bloody war zone, or that members of their own tribe here in America would angrily demand the wholesale slaughter of Judah's neighbors.

The Law vs. The Myth
Nearly everything the Zionists have proposed contradicts Jewish law as embodied in the Torah.  If you want to have your eyes opened on this subject, just dip in anywhere at the website True Torah Jews.  I particularly like the page that features Rabbinic Quotations, which go as far back as 1050 A.D., all of which give the lie to the scam currently being perpetrated by the Zionist State counterfeiters. Here are just a few I've chosen that prove the Jews are not permitted to return to the Holy Land and there create a political state complete with armies and navies as they have now done:

(Note: for those not familiar with Hebrew, "Eretz Yisroel" means "the land of Israel."  "Yaakov and Esav" are "Jacob and Esau," "Mitzvah" is one's duty to obey God by behaving kindly toward others, "Hashem" means "the name" and is simply a common way some orthodox Jews refer to God so as to not risk profaning His name.) 

Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman, the Ramban (1194-1270):

The Ramban holds that permission granted by a gentile government for Jews to return to Eretz Yisroel does not nullify the oaths they have taken to obey Hashem.

Rabbi Ishtori Haparchi, author of Kaftor Vaferach (1280-1366):

The book Kaftor Vaferach, written in 1322, details the geography of Eretz Yisroel and discusses the great mitzvah to live there: "It was taught in the name of Rabbi Meir: Whoever establishes his residence in Eretz Yisroel, speaks the Holy Tongue, eats only ritually clean food and recites Shema morning and evening is guaranteed the World to Come (Yerushalmi Shkalim 14b). However, they must not go up with the intent of conquering until the end arrives, as it states in the end of tractate Kesubos: Do not arouse or awaken... Rabbi Zeira says: This teaches that Israel must not go up as a wall." (Kaftor Vaferach chapter 10, p. 197)

Rabbi Yehuda ben Maharam Chalava (1300's):

What happened to Yaakov with Esav will happen to us in all generations, and we must prepare ourselves with prayer and gifts, but not with war. Scripture has prohibited this under oath.

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Lehren, Jewish community leader in Amsterdam (1844):

We also believe in what Chazal say (Kesubos 111a) that one of the oaths that Hashem made Israel swear is not to rebel against the nations of the world, and we are not permitted to take any action to come to the Promised Land. Even if we had 1,200,000 soldiers bearing swords and trained in warfare, we would not be allowed to ascend and conquer Eretz Yisroel; rather we must wait and hope until Hashem desires to redeem us and bring us to the inheritance of our forefathers, and all the nations will see that Hashem Tzevaos [the God of Armies] is our Redeemer. (Emphasis mine.)

Let me close out by sharing a recent twenty minute interview with one of my modern heroes, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, who succinctly summarizes the problems -and the great evil- represented by those who would convert the religion of Judaism into the force for destruction it has now become.

Meanwhile, I'm not done with this topic. Come back to this page in a week or two and I'll discuss what became of the lost tribes of Israel. (Spoiler alert: they're not as lost as you might think.)

                                                                                                      *****

Next: The Israel Scam: How America's Christian Churches Bought The Con