Who and What is “Israel”?

Preface

We have received a second round of emails relating to our hypothesis that U.S. aid to the State of Israel is repugnant to the General Welfare clause of the Constitution. As with the first round of responses, there is more agreement than disagreement.

Because we are interested in the truth and care about people whose feelings we may have hurt or whose treasured shibboleths we may have undermined, we endeavor herein to once again objectively, intelligently and rationally respond to our critics.

However, there is a danger. With each new article, round of emails and responses to those emails, our readers may lose sight of the fundamental Constitutional question before us. This is especially true as we respond more and more to critics whose criticisms are based on biblical doctrine and philosophy, esoteric or otherwise.

Please remember, as you read this article, our hypothesis is what is important here, and our hypothesis is not the result of any ill-will toward Israel, Jews, AIPAC or apostate Evangelical Christian groups. Our hypothesis is aimed squarely at the United States Government in defense of the Constitution and individual Rights, no more or less.

Our hypothesis is as follows:

1) U.S. tax money is being used to oppress and destroy the Palestinian society;
2) in response, the Palestinians and their sympathizers are attacking the United States;
3) in reply, the United States has instituted a domestic War on Terror;
4) the War on Terror has given rise to a growing Police State in the U.S.;
5), the Police State has resulted in an across the board erosion of individual Freedoms, Rights and Liberties; and 6), therefore, U.S. financial aid to Israel is violative of the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1).

If anyone can show that the hostilities being directed toward the United States and the War on Terror has nothing to do with our funding of Israel’s occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, we beg them to do so.

In the meantime, we are not to close our eyes to violations of the General Welfare clause of the Constitution because we have a personal/political relationship with a particular association, and see only other violations, say, violations of the tax clauses.

Last week we received yet another batch of e-mails in response to our recent articles regarding the question of US foreign policy and the Constitutional violations that result from that policy. One email consisted of no message but a simple terse subject line that read simply, “We Are Israel.”

At the time, we had no idea what was meant by those three words. Now we do.

It has come to pass that the meaning of two of the most important words in America’s vocabulary -- “Income” and “Israel” -- appear to have been hijacked for nefarious ends.

Our readers have long known that the Constitutional meaning of the word “Income” was hijacked during the early part of the last century by the U.S. Government for the purpose of duping the People into believing that U.S. law requires them to pay a direct, un-apportioned tax on their labor.

Specifically, the Government maliciously adopted a practical working definition of the word “income” which was fraudulently and diametrically opposed to that conveyed and consistently reiterated by our nation’s Highest Court. The public was eventually overcome by the malevolent definition. The end result has been the establishment of a system of legally sanctioned slavery of our nation’s workers and the stealthy transformation of our government into a fascist, socialist entity.

Our readers know how WTP arrived at this conclusion and what WTP has been doing to Redress the Grievance and educate our countrymen about this important definitional abuse.

Our readers also know that for the past few months we have been working to determine whether U.S. Middle East Policy, particularly our financial aid to the State of Israel, is repugnant to the General Welfare clause of the Constitution.

As is true with the term “income,” it is now apparent that a concise, historically correct definition of the word “Israel” may be the key to a better understanding of the true nature of the conflicts that appear to exist between our Constitution and popularly embraced frameworks of religious belief.


Looking Back

Our interest in this subject was initially piqued upon our reading of two recent publications: 1) “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a paper published by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt; and 2) “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” a book by Jimmy Carter.

According to the Professors and Carter, our financial and military aid to the State of Israel has been detrimental to our national interest and general welfare, and the Israel Lobby has been extraordinarily effective in not only influencing our foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction, but also in stifling all public criticism in the United States of the adverse consequences of our support of the State of Israel.

On March 18, 2007 we posted our first article on this subject saying, “Unless the facts presented by Jimmy Carter and the two Professors can be effectively denied, we, the People have a duty to do everything in our power to hold the Government accountable to the following clause of the Constitution, and thereby arrest and roll back America’s advance toward a Police State and its headlong rush into debt, dependency, and decay – i.e., a rush to the bottom.

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States ….”
Art. I, Section 8, Clause 1

We had invited the Israel Lobby and the Governments of Palestine, Israel, and the United States to identify representatives that could attend GML 2007 to comment on the accuracy of the publications by the Professors and Carter. Only Palestine responded positively, resulting in the participation in GML 2007 by Dr. Muhammad Hallaj and Dr. Norman Birnbaum, both of whom attested to the accuracy of the two publications.

On March 22, 2007, we posted our second article on the subject, in which we included additional evidence on the power and activities of the Israel Lobby, including links to publications by former U.S. Representative Paul Findley and former U.S. Senator James Abourezk.

On April 7, 2007 we posted our third article on the subject saying, we had received a number of sharp and caustic emails following our initial announcement that we would openly and objectively discuss the constitutionality of America’s unconditional financial and military support of Israel. We then asked our critics to carefully consider and to answer for themselves a number of questions about their own possible personal biases and mis-perceptions regarding their understanding of the larger historical and spiritual contexts framing the Israel question, with particular focus on the higher-order Founding Principles embodied by the Constitution.

On April 10, 2007 we posted our fourth article on the subject, reporting that dozens of people had taken the time to respond to our previous articles on the subject. We included a number of the responses, dividing them into two groups: those from people that agreed with WTP’s inquiry into the constitutionality of U.S. Middle East Policy and those from people that did not agree.

Evidence Is Compelling: List Is Growing

Our April 10^th article included additional compelling evidence in support of the findings of Mearsheimer, Walt and Carter, including the video, "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict" --- Google Video. This documentary by the Media Education Foundation, dated July 26, 2006, is a striking expose comparing U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, focusing on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This pivotal documentary details how the foreign policy interests of American political elites, (including oil and a need to have a secure military presence in the region) work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to control and exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

We also provided a link to a Dutch documentary released on April 3, 2007, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3497308896275775092&hl=en , created as a result of the controversy created by Mearsheimer and Walt's article on the Israel Lobby.

We also provided a link to the article, "About That Word Apartheid,” a timeline published in April by Americans For Middle East Understanding showing the troubling relationship between Israel and apartheid South Africa.
See http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=271&aid=584&pg=1

New Responses, More Criticism

Notwithstanding the growing list of evidence in support of our hypothesis that U.S. aid to the State of Israel is repugnant to the General Welfare clause of the Constitution (Israel is co-mingling United States tax money with Israeli tax revenues to fund oppression and apartheid in Palestine, U.S. complicity in the destruction of the Palestine society has made the United States a target of acts of terrorism resulting in a rising Police State in the United States and the erosion of unalienable, individual Rights), we have received a second round of emails sharply critical of our position.

Once again, we have divided the responses into two groups -- those from people who agree with our position and those from people who disagree.

You will notice that some People disagree with us on the ground that we are “diluting our efforts and putting our cause at risk by adding new issues to those already on our plate.”

We must respectfully disagree. We believe, first, that each and every responsible citizen of this Republic is duty bound to do everything he or she can possibly do to defend each and every provision of the Constitution against those in Government who would dilute the power of the Constitution to govern the Government. As the Freedom Keepers of our generation we must be ready to confront each and every usurpation. As Government gains ground Liberty loses ground. An act of tyranny anywhere is a threat to Freedom everywhere.

In addition, we believe the cause of Freedom is strengthened as more People become better informed about the meaning, effect and significance of every provision of the Constitution, and as more People learn to look, first to the Constitution, rather than to politicians, for solutions to our problems.

The truths of the Founding documents and their essential, underlying principles need to be taught, embraced and reinforced, over and over again, at every opportunity. Government is the enemy of Freedom. It is through the Constitution that we control the reins of government and insure that it remains the protector of individual, unalienable Rights – i.e., the servant of the People.

Therefore, it behooves the People to show the Government that the People know what their Rights are and what Government’s obligations are, that the People are watching Government as it exercises its delegated powers and that the People are prepared to act if the Government steps outside the boundaries drawn around its power by the Constitution.

"Israel"

You will also notice that in the second round of emails are some that fault us for “speaking against Israel,” saying, in effect, that the State of Israel is Biblical prophesy fulfilled; “God has raised up America to support the State of Israel; the Bible says the modern day State of Israel is the Promise of the Kingdom fulfilled; the people in today’s State of Israel are God’s chosen people; nations that bless the State of Israel are always to be blessed, and nations that curse the State of Israel are cursed; the Holy Bible trumps the Constitution.”

Whew! What could we say over and above what we had said in our April 7^th article, where we had asked our critics to carefully consider and to answer for themselves a number of questions about their own possible personal biases and mis-perceptions regarding their understanding of the larger historical and spiritual contexts framing the Israel question, with particular focus on the higher-order Founding Principles embodied by the Constitution.

In effect, we had respectfully suggested that these critics take personal responsibility for what they profess to believe. We were suggesting that they examine the source of their beliefs. Did they merely adopt what they were told by someone, or by some association, without ever accepting personal responsibility for the totality and potential contradictions posed by those beliefs -- that is, without taking the initiative to verify the truth of what they were told? In other words, we were asking our critics if their beliefs regarding “Israel” were based on a sound and well-considered personal study of the Holy Bible.

Admittedly, we had no personal, comprehensive knowledge of such matters beyond what we learned from our Sunday school teachers, from pulpits and televangelists, from Charlton Heston as Moses in “The Ten Commandments,” from Todd Hunter as Jesus in “King of Kings,” and so forth.

Until recently, we had not studied the Holy Bible to discover for ourselves the Biblical meaning of the word “Israel.”

In essence, we had no compelling reason to search beyond the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and the compelling spiritual framework embodied within the founding documents. This framework, which joyously proclaims and celebrates the Sovereign nature of the Children of the Creator, the purpose of limited government and the gift of the Light of Liberty functions as the spiritual compass directing our lives, our hearts and our work.

To us, it was no coincidence that the framework for secular government expressed in our founding documents trumpets within its manifestations the highest order spiritual ideas shared by the world’s leading religious orders, including the Christian principle that Government is to be God’s minister of Justice on Earth – “God’s minister to [us] for good” (Romans 13:4).

Unfortunately for many, we could not reconcile U.S. support of Israel with the Constitution of the United States of America. We instinctively knew it was not “good,” and not in the national interest and not serving the general welfare to tax the American people to fund apartheid and the oppression of the Palestinian people. Indeed, our nation’s policy of supporting the State of Israel has been a direct cause of the Middle-East conflagration and our own government’s attack on the Freedoms of our People.

Notwithstanding these hard observations and obvious constitutional conflicts, our strongest critics have been telling us their framework of spiritual belief has enabled them to reconcile U.S. support of Israel with God’s word.

Could our critics be correct?

Could the same God that divinely inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the original thirteen State Constitutions and the Constitution of the United States of America also sanction wholesale violations of those spiritual gifts while also encouraging general world disorder and attacks on the world’s Peoples in the name of protecting a foreign religious theocracy, which as a form of government, is itself banned by those same documents?

Who and What is Israel?

Is the “State Of Israel” the Israel Of God?

Fortunately, and as divine influence may have delivered, included in the second round of emails was an email with the subject, “Biblical Support of Israel.” The text of the email read, “I would like you to consider the following presentation about Israel. Please go to this website http://www.hopevideo.com/audio_with_david_asscherick.htm and RIGHT-click to download #26, "All Eyes on Israel."

We did as the sender suggested. We listened to the 1 hour and 19 minute audio tape of a presentation given at the Arise Institute in Troy, MI, by David Asscherick, a 33 year old ordained minister.

At the outset of the lecture, Pastor Asscherick stated he would be answering two questions:1) Who and what is Israel today?
and 2) Is modern day Israel the Israel of God?

He says the answers to these questions are important because U.S. support of the modern State of Israel has become the priority issue for apostate Evangelical Christian groups, “of greater importance to them than the issue of abortion.” Asscherick asserts the issue of U.S. support for the State of Israel is “the epicenter around which Evangelical Christian groups now orbit.”

Importantly, Pastor Asscherick states that knowing who and what Israel is is important because apostate Evangelical Protestant groups are asserting, “God has raised up America to support the State of Israel, the Bible says these are God’s people, nations that bless the State of Israel are always blessed, and nations that curse the State of Israel are always cursed.”

We listened to this audiotape, all 1 hour and 19 minutes. We then listened to it again, with the Holy Bible in hand, pausing and restarting the tape as we followed Pastor Asscherick on a journey through the old and new Testaments, checking every scriptural reference.

What we learned directly from the Holy Bible is that He gives one meaning to the word “Israel” in the Old Testament, and an entirely different meaning to the word “Israel” in the New Testament.

In the Old Testament Israel is a man named Jacob (a man who gained a spiritual victory after wrestling with God), and Jacob’s ancestors Isaac and Abraham, and all of Abraham’s seed. The word “Israel” first appears in Genesis where God says to Jacob, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel.” The word “Israel” then appears many times throughout the rest of the Old Testament, were it means corporate Israel, that is, the collective assembly of all those to whom He promised the Kingdom – i.e., Abraham’s seed.

According to the New Testament, Jesus fulfilled the promise by becoming Israel. According to the New Testament, Israel is now Jesus (another man who gained a spiritual victory - in the wilderness), together with His spiritual descendants. According to the New Testament, all who have accepted Jesus are included in Israel, having been “grafted in” by their faith. According to the New Testament, if you are in Christ, you are Abraham’s seed. According to the New Testament, Peter and Paul spoke to the Gentiles and the Romans the promises Moses spoke to the Israelites; there is now “neither Jew nor Greek.”

Nowhere in the Holy Scriptures did we find the Kingdom of God being promised to those occupying any piece of geography, or to the members of any nationality, race, creed or religion. Nowhere did we find it written in the Holy Scriptures that God’s ultimate plan would be implemented by a specific nation of people (Americans or Israelis) acting pursuant the direction of their secular government leaders.

Pastor Asscherick concludes his lecture by sharing some personal knowledge and insight into current events. He argues that based on their misunderstanding of Bible prophesy, apostate Protestantism and apostate Evangelical Christian groups are pressuring politicians to support Israel, unconditionally, “if you want to stay in office.”

It seems to us the Biblical meaning of the word “Israel” has been hijacked by the “Israel” Lobby and apostate Evangelical Christian groups for the purpose of duping the People of the United States into believing: 1) that the promises of God will be frustrated unless the State of Israel gains total control of Palestine and Jerusalem; and 2), the United States will be cursed if the United States does not unconditionally support the State of Israel.

Indeed, it would seem that this further understanding of the true etymology of the word “Israel’ is of the utmost importance in considering and critically evaluating both our individual and national collective justifications for the support of Israel.

Conclusion

The mission of the We The People organization is to expose and confront any and all un-constitutional behavior by the Government. We are not against taxes or the State of Israel. We are certainly not anti-Semitic. We are pro-constitution and oppose those forces that seek to diminish the efficacy of our founding documents or undermine the fundamental principles of Spirit and Liberty they embody.

Being guided by an understanding of the larger design and purposes of the Constitution, particularly its guarantee of individual Rights “endowed by the Creator,” WTP believes that the defense of the Constitution is not only everyone’s duty and personal responsibility, but that such defense is in essence, service to the Creator.

As was the case with the hijacking of the definition of the word “Income,” the hijacking of the word “Israel” has led to behavior by the U.S. Government that is violative of the U.S. Constitution and injurious to the People.

The constitutional tort is the Government’s violation of the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1). The national interest and general welfare of the citizens of the United States of America have suffered as a result of the U.S. Government’s use of its tax revenues to finance Israel’s morally, and perhaps Biblically, unjustifiable oppression and destruction of the Palestine society.

As a free People, we must once again claim and exercise our First Amendment Right to hold the Government accountable to the Constitution by Petitioning the Government for Redress of this Grievance Regarding the unconstitutional funding of the oppression and destruction of the Palestinian society.

WTP will soon post the Petition for Redress on this website.Read the latest e-mails regarding WTP’s inquiry into the constitutionality
of U.S. Middle East Policy: Those that who agree and those who disagree.