Reformed Reflections

We Should Oppose Anti-Christian Forces

Russia's programs have been a major factor in the establishment of modern Zionism. In the 1880's and 1890's thousands fled the violent persecutions that were sweeping Russia and went to Palestine. Golda Meir, one of the builders of modern Israel, states that "almost all were poor. Some were penniless, with no money even for railroad fare. So they walked all the way. It often took them two years."

Nazi Germany developed its own extermination methods. The Jewish problem had to be solved. Signs that said "No Dogs Or Jews Allowed" were erected, and in the shop windows notices appeared that said: "We Do Not Sell To The Jews." On September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which made every Jew legally and officially an outcast in his land of birth.

Some years ago when my wife and I were visiting the Netherlands, we saw a monument dedicated to the memory of Jews, who succumbed in concentration camps, in the former Jewish section of Amsterdam. I can still remember as a young boy in Amsterdam seeing the streets of the Jewish section blocked. Its population became completely isolated from the rest of the city. Thousands were led to the gas chambers. Only a few Jews have returned, and Amsterdam has never been the same city since. I have also seen Jewish homes ransacked by the Germans. One will never forget these impressions.

Considering the centuries old tragedy of persecution, the Zionist movement is no mystery. Zionism, in one form or another, has been an intrinsic element of Jewish hope ever since the Babylonian Captivity of the sixth century B.C. It was renewed after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. However, the effective origin of modern Zionism must be traced to a completely secularized Jewish journalist of Vienna - Theodore Herzl (1860-1904).

After he had witnessed the horrible Albert Dreyfus case in Paris in 1895, Herzl was converted to the Zionist cause, and in 1896 he published his manifesto Der Judenstaat (the Jewish State). As the sole solution of the anti-Semitic problem, he demanded an international treaty-supported act of indemnification (the payment for compensation for loss sustained).

The Zionist cause had its many opponents among the Jews, but the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in Germany led many to flee to Palestine. By 1949 some 25,000 European Jews had come from the camps in Cyprus and 75,000 of the remnant from the camps of Germany and Austria. Thousands also came from Arabian countries where the Jews had been terrorized in ghettos.

Christians must condemn the anti-Semitic attitude within the United Nations. The Jewish state is not only a result of the deep longing of many to return to the land of their fathers, but above all to escape terror. In Palestine the Jew can be a Jew without having to make an apology for it.

At the time when I heard about the new wave of anti-Semitism, I was reading a biography of a Dutch pastor who had joined the underground during the last World War. He became one of the leaders of this movement and was instrumental in leading hundreds of Jews to safety. It cost him his life. Why did he do it? For the sake of his Lord. He saw in Nazism and Fascism an anti-Christ spirit. He chose to live and die for his convictions that were formed by the Scriptures. Let Christians rise up today also and speak against this anti-Christian force of our time.

Johan D. Tangelder
November, 1975