"All of them -- the remnants of Israel, the Gentiles in Galilee, the half-breed Samaritans in Samaria and many, many other ethnic groups in the Region make up the rich and vibrant human tapestry, whom I love and admire as my brothers and sisters, the indigenous people of Palestine … Yes! Today’s Palestinians!”
Many are descendants of people living in the Region for millennia before the biblical Abraham has followed God’s commandment to “leave his father’s house” and enter the Region. Abraham, the Patriarch of the Israelites, Christians and Muslims, who reveres and dignifies the local people, accepts their invitation to settle in the Land.
“So,” I ask, “are the Israelites, biblically speaking, indigenous to the Land?”
“No”!
What makes today’s Palestinian Body of Christ so special? Many of today’s 400,000 Palestinian Christians descend directly from Christian converts – Israelites and Gentiles – in the early Church who have been personally touched by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the oldest and perhaps most important Christian institution in the Holy Land, has existed in unbroken succession since the Roman period.
The Prophet Isaiah prophesizes that God would honor the people of the Israelite tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, who are living together side-by-side in Jesus’ times with Gentiles in the Galilee.
Isaiah: “The ‘Israel of God’ will be enlarged, because the Gentiles will respond in faith to the Son of Man [God in the flesh eds.] and his message of the [Spiritual eds.] Kingdom [of God eds.], adding to the Ancient Israel of God” (Isaiah 9: 1-7; Romans 2:28-29; 9:6-8; Galatians 6:15-16 GNT). Matthew tells us this prophecy is fulfilled (Matthew 4:13-14). Also, he confirms the presence of the mixed crowd, the remnants of Israelites and Gentiles, (Matthew 4:24-25).
Rabbinic circles in Jerusalem hold Galilean Israelites and half-breeds and the area in which they live with contempt. Their religious worship does not conform to the standards of the elitist Pharisees. The Pharisees condemn the Israelites in Galilee for their mixed ‘ancestry.’ They are the descendants of the Northern Ten Lost Tribes of Israel that have defected from Ancient Israel and intermarried with pagan Gentiles. Startlingly, Jesus accepts Israelites and Gentiles. Ancestry is not a pre-condition to God’s salvation.7
And now a historic bombshell! These indigenous Palestinians – Israelites and Gentiles, including those who convert to Christianity – have mostly remained in the Land while the Holier- than -thou elitists together with the Pharisees are driven out, expelled by the Romans.
In 1918, two gifted young men, David Green aka David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and the future President of Israel, state in their book, ‘Eretz Israel in the Past and Present’: “To argue that after the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus [70 CE] and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt [132 CE] Judeans altogether ceased to cultivate the land of Eretz Israel is to demonstrate complete ignorance in the history and the contemporary literature of Israel … The Judean farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil, which had been watered with his sweat and the sweat of his forebears … Despite the repression and suffering, the rural population remained unchanged.”8
In 132 CE, the Romans changed the country’s name from Judea back to Palestine. Palestine has always been a magnet that has attracted people coming from all over. Of course, some Palestinians are Arabs as are many Mizrahi9 or Oriental Middle Eastern Jews. But most Palestinians, an admixture of Israelites and Gentiles, are an amalgam of humanity from all over.
For millennia, the Region greets and meets East and West, with merchants traveling back and forth between Europe and Asia. Many have settled in the Land. Because of this vibrant genetic blend, Palestinians rank among the highly intelligent, the best looking and the stunningly beautiful, some with blue eyes and bronze skin, others with blond hair yet dark skinned; not to mention, some possible descendants of the Crusaders with red hair.
What most Israelis and Jews still deny, a history not taught in Israeli high schools, is that during the 7th Century CE many indigenous people of Palestine, Jews and Christians, have converted to Islam to please their new Arab overlords. As converted Muslims they are exempt from paying the exorbitant extra surtaxes required of People of the Book. Consequently, many indigenous people of Palestine are more Israelite than many present-day Jews who have wandered into the region from Central and Eastern Europe.
“The local population in Palestine is racially more closely related to the Jews than to any other people, even among the Semitic ones. It is quite probable that the fellahin10 [native peasant in Palestine] in Palestine are direct descendants of the Judeans and Canaanite rural population, with a slight admixture of Arab blood …”11
David Green, aka David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Zvi continue:
“The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab conquerors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations, the Arabians did not engage in farming … They did not seek new lands on which to settle their peasantry, which hardly existed. Their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious and material to rule, to propagate Islam and to collect taxes.”
According to Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Schlomo Sand: “… the ancient Judean peasants converted to Islam … they had done so for material reasons – chiefly to avoid taxations. Muslims are exempt from having to pay the sur-taxes imposed upon the People of the Book. They were in no way treasonous. Indeed, by clinging to their soil they remained loyal to their homeland … In addition to the Muslim law, there was, for a long time, a code of ‘fellahin laws, or unwritten customary judgments known as Shariat al-Khalil – the laws of the patriarch Abraham.’”
Daily, I thank God, the One God of Many Names, that each day more and more Christians are choosing for Jesus and rejecting the dark side of Judaism, that’s been seeping like sewage into the consciousness – the convictions and values – of Evangelical Christians. Israeli crimes against humanity their incessant atrocities against a defenseless indigenous people is a Christian Concern. Christians must let go and let God deal with Israel in His divine love and compassion for the people of Israel.
Christians everywhere understand what Jesus means by "I am the true vine (John 15:1 GNT)." The 'vine' is in reference to ancient Sacred Texts that "Israel is a vine planted by God (Psalms 80: 9-12, 15; Hosea 11:1, Ezekiel 15; 19:10f; Jeremiah: 2:21 GNT)." In short, Israel is meant and called to become a 'Light among nations.’
The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, among others, focus on Israel's failure 'to bear fruit' as the people of God (Isaiah 5; Ezekiel 15). The Israelites do not fulfil God's purpose for which God has 'planted' the vine/nation ... to be an exemplary people of God, the Light Among Nations.
Jesus does not mince any words. His parable of the vineyard is direct and to the point, focusing on Israel's failure to produce fruit (Luke 20: 9-19; Matthew 20: 1-5; 21:28-41; Mark 12: 1-12 GNT). Modern Israel today is as much of a failed state as Ancient Israel, 2000 years ago. Jesus, their Son of Man, God in the flesh has offered to release the Israelites from bondage of 1) the Law of Moses, 2) ancestry with self-proclaimed pedigree and 3) their claim as the sole Chosen People of God, taking their chosenness for granted, with neither good works nor faith.
God intends Israel be ‘a light among nations, to bring about a ‘heaven on earth’12. Instead, Israeli ultra-right nationalism, branded as 'Zionism' has become a HELL ON EARTH, especially for the indigenous people of Palestine. Many Jews reject this heathen form of Zionism. Two of my heroes who embrace the holy form of biblical Zionism, Rabbi Joshua Heschel (“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”) and Rabbi Kerry M.