According to British-Israelism (BI), which Gerald Flurry is supposed to believe in, the land of Palestine belongs to neither Jew or Arab. It belongs to the tribe of Joseph, which is America and Britain.
I have quoted, in other articles, from the Nov-Dec 1955 Plain Truth (pages 5 and 7) where Herbert Armstrong said that the land of Palestine does not belong to the Jews, and that the Jews have no divine right to the land.
The Jews think they are birthright Israel, and believe this land belongs by God's birthright to them. And "silly dove" Ephraim (Hos 7:11), not realizing that she is really the birthright tribe of the House of Israel--the nation that God decreed should obtain Palestine December 9, 1917--blindly tried to build a national home for the Jews in this land, and at the same time blundered into a contradictory pledge to establish it as a home for the Arabs! (Herbert Armstrong, The Plain Truth, Nov-Dec 1955, page 5, here).
Later in the same article, Armstrong reiterates his point:
What a muddle! The Arabs believe Palestine should be theirs because they are descended from Ishmael. The Turks want it because they come from Esau. The Jews want it because they come from Jacob, but through Judah. Yet it belongs to none of them by divine right! It belongs to Great Britain and America, into whose hands God placed it, but who have been so valiantly trying to maintain it for Jew and Arab. (Armstrong, The Plain Truth, Nov-Dec 1955, page 7, here).
If the Jews have no right to the land, Flurry should not take sides with Israel in the conflict (war) with the Palestinians.
Gerald Flurry makes a huge deal about how he is supposedly following Herbert Armstrong better than any other Church of God (COG) leader. Yet, in contradiction to what Armstrong wrote in 1955, Flurry teaches that the Jews have a divine right to take over Palestine and to kill and displace Arabs.
Has Gerald Flurry simply forgotten, or perhaps never read, what Mr. Armstrong said about who that land belongs to?
Or did Armstrong change his mind at some point? How could he do that and still teach BI?
And has Flurry forgotten that he is not supposed to take sides in politics? Has he also forgotten that he is not supposed to advocate war and violence?
In this article I will quote from Flurry's booklet, Jerusalem in Prophecy, which shows that he is getting seriously carried away.
The Churches of God are supposed to be peace-loving Christians. They are supposed to be citizens of the future Kingdom of God. They are not supposed to take sides in the politics and wars of the nations of this age. Therefore, Gerald Flurry should not take sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but he does. Rather than being a neutral ambassador for Christ, he comes off sounding like a war hawk and a rabid supporter of Israel.
Personally, I favour a two-state solution where both Jews and Arabs remain in the land. But my own views are not relevant here. I'm not a church leader. I don't have a magazine and I don't have a television program. I do not claim to be Christ (i.e. That Prophet, the ultimate prophet), an apostle, a prophet, or even a lowly evangelist. My goal is to get Church of God people to question their assumptions. Sometimes I argue from the perspective of BI even though I no longer believe it myself. The goal is to seek out deeper insights; to get people to think. So my opinion does not matter much. I don't need to pretend to have the answers or to make position statements. I just need to help people question things.
I mention that because otherwise, to COG members, this article might seem pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish. It's not really pro-Palestinian or anti-Jewish; it's pro-objectivity and anti-Flurry. I don't take the Palestinian side here so much as I take the anti-Flurry side. And I take the anti-Flurry side because his arguments are full of holes. His followers need to see that.
According to Flurry,
The Jews have also given Gaza, Jericho, Bethlehem and other West Bank areas back to the Palestinians. It seems the world has forgotten that those areas were won in a war where the Arabs were trying to annihilate the Jews. (Flurry, Jerusalem in Prophecy, 2010, p. 12, here).
Were Arabs in general really trying to annihilate Jews or were they just trying to get back the land they thought was theirs? There is a big difference. Isn't Flurry accusing the Arabs of attempted genocide? That is a pretty serious accusation. Is that really true? Christians are not supposed to make false, exaggerated, or careless accusations.
The situation was actually much more complicated than Flurry implies, with both sides bearing responsibility. Did the Arabs even want war? The Wikipedia article on the Six-Day War says "Most scholarly accounts of the crisis attribute the drift to war to an escalation that was unwanted, however despite a desire to avoid war on all sides, everyone was in the end responsible for making the escalation unavoidable." (Wikipedia, Six-Day War, quoted on Nov 16, 2012).
Even if some Arabs do want to wipe out Jews, there are also Jews who want to wipe out Arabs. Given that the Isrealites wiped out the inhabitants of the land in Old Testament times, and that some Jews still see that as their mission, the Arabs might feel they have no choice but to respond in kind. The hard feelings are mutual between the two sides.
Again, Flurry takes sides with the Jews:
... Israel surrendered bits of that hard-won, strategically important land in hope that the Arabs could be simply bargained into giving up their goal of destroying Israel. (Flurry, p. 12, here).
According to Flurry, the Arabs have the goal of destroying Israel. He does not mention that the Jews are in the process of displacing Palestinians from the occupied territories, in violation of international law. Who is really "destroying" who?
Now, after years of gambling with its own soil, Israel finds itself depleted of property and will, sapped and bloodied... (Flurry, p. 12).
Note that Flurry calls the land the Jews are on their "own soil." Clearly, he has forgotten that, according to British-Israelism, the land belongs to Joseph.
The Jews have given back many other biblical sites to the Arabs. America and Britain have strongly urged them to do so. We fail to realize that such a lack of faith is why all the adults of ancient Israel had to die in the Sinai wilderness. (Flurry, Jerusalem in Prophecy, 2010, p. 12).
If the land belongs to Joseph, then America and Britain have every right to urge the Jews to hand over biblical sites. (Though, according to BI, they shouldn't really be giving them to the Arabs, they should keep them for themselves).
Flurry speaks of the the Sinai wilderness where Israelites died because they lacked the faith to wipe out the inhabitants and take over the land as Moses, at that time, commanded. Flurry clearly seems to think that the command to go boldly into the promised land and wipe out the inhabitants still applies today. He thinks Jews have a right to the land today and should apply Old Testament methods to get it. On pages 26-27 of his booklet he supportatively quotes a hard-line Jew who essentially says as much. This, of course, is what was commanded in ancient times.
When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. (Deuteronomy 7:2, New Living Translation, 2007).
Is this really what God wants for today? Is it the position he wants his church to take? Is Gerald Flurry a New Testament minister who teaches people to turn the other cheek, or an Old Testament warrior who wants to wipe out men, women, and children? Should a New Testament minister approve of Old Testament warfare?
The Israelis are trying to negotiate peace with the Palestinians. Many of the Hamas terrorists are Palestinians. In fact, the Palestinian people are their closest friends. The Israelis have given control of Gaza and areas in the West Bank to the Palestinians. The terrorists often operate from these Palestinian-controlled areas. That means the Israelis are no longer free to declare war on the terrorist base of operations. (Flurry, p. 15, here).
Flurry practically equates the Palestinians with terrorists. Does he ever mention that one Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, started out as a terrorist himself? Begin was leader of the Jewish terrorist group Irgun that killed 91 people at the British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.
The Palestinians have not been the only terrorists in the region. When the British were the official government, some Jews like Menachem Begin were terrorists. Now that the Jews are in control, some Arabs are terrorists.
Israel made a terrorist their Prime Minister. What does that say about them? What does it say about Flurry if he condemns Palestinian terrorists but not Israeli terrorists?
The number-one Arab leader in the peace process for many years was Yasser Arafat. Before the peace negotiations, he was the leading terrorist in the Middle East! This is not a good foundation for peace. (Flurry, p. 16).
Several times in the booklet Flurry associates Arafat with terrorism, but even though he mentions Begin as well, he does not associate Begin with terrorism.
Who is or is not considered a terrorist seems to have more to do with who is officially recognized and who isn't. Both sides are fighting a war. The problem has more to do with war than terrorism. Terrorism is one of many war tactics. It's a tactic that official governments don't use as much and condemn because they have other ways to wage war. Unlike Israel, the impovershed Palestinians are not allowed to have an official army with tanks and warplanes backed by massive U.S. foreign aid. So what choice do they have but to use some form of underground warfare?
A lone gunman or bomber is labeled a terrorist, but a soldier in uniform driving a tank is a considered a legitimate killer.
When King David was running from Saul, was his band of fighters a terrorist organization? They were not part of the official government army at the time. Saul was.
Some will say that David was annointed to replace Saul. But that does not mean David wasn't a terrorist. Perhaps that just means God put his stamp of approval on David and his undergound army.
Is a terrorist someone who attacks civilians? The Jews bulldoze civilian homes. Is that terror?
Israel's national intelligence agency, Mossad, carries out secret illegal assassinations around the world. Are they any different from a terrorist group?
If the official governments don't even keep their own laws or international agreements on the rules of war, and if they send secret agents into other countries to assassinate their civilians, does that make them terrorists too? Perhaps official governments are just better at hiding their terrorist actions. The news media often look the other way or condone such killings because they believe it helps protect national security or promote "democracy".
Though we might not define such crooked governments as "terrorists," are they any better morally?
The pro-Israel lobby in the US is probably the most powerful lobby group in the world. Many people believe that they basically own both parties. As a result, the US gives a lot of money to Israel's military machine. Gerald Flurry and other church leaders are supposed to know what's going on in the world. But do they understand how the system really works?
Flurry harshly condemns Israel's limited attempts to make peace with the Arabs.
The deadly delusion that "all problems can be solved by negotiation" is going to lead Israel and the U.S. to disaster! Such a philosophy destroys nations. No great nation has ever been built or sustained by such a belief! Any good history book should teach us that. Bible prophecy certainly does. It is a philosophy based on weakness. Any powerful nation that reasons from such weakness is plummeting to disaster! (Flurry, p. 16, here).
Just because people negotiate does not mean that they think all problems can be solved by negotiation. Does any world statesman really believe that all problems can be solved by negotiation alone? I doubt it. But Flurry makes it sound like negotiating puts one inevitibly on the road to ruin. He makes it sound like negotiation is a "deadly delusion." If so, the only alternative is war.
Any nation that never makes peace will be constantly at war on all sides. They won't last long.
He repeatedly and strongly condemns the peace process:
The Jews are afraid to get tough even in the Arab areas which they control. They don't want the "peace" process to break down. But what most of them don't know is that the peace process is a deadly delusion! It is a wound that will cause death. It is like terminal cancer! (Flurry, p. 16).
Flurry thinks the Jews should get tough on the Arabs in the occupied territories. He thinks making peace with Arabs will destroy the Jewish state.
The argument that a people can be destroyed by peace can go both ways. Maybe the peace process is "terminal cancer" for the Palestinians rather than the Jews. Is the peace process really hurting Israel? Many people believe that the Jews are using the peace process to stall for time while they continue to displace Arabs and move more Jews onto Arab lands. Far from being "Judah's wound" (Flurry, pp. 22-23) the peace process may in fact be one of their weapons. The map shows that the Palestinians have been losing the war badly.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with negotiating for peace. That's what countries should do. The problem is not that negotiation leads nations to destruction, because in many cases it could save them from destruction (war). The problem is that Flurry thinks negotiation is a sign of a lack of faith. He thinks the Jews are supposed to trust God to give them the land—through warfare. But what if God is not giving them the land? Unlike in the days of Moses and Joshua, God never told the Jews to go there in 1948 and take it over. No prophet appeared to them and told them it was time to return there. They decided that on their own. Maybe they consulted their false religious leaders, the ones Jesus called snakes. But no servant of God gave them the green light to take the land. And probably no true servant of God ever would if the land rightfully belongs to Joseph, not Judah.
The book of Luke says that negotiating for peace makes good sense.
Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. (Luke 14:31-32, KJV).
Even in the Old Testament (which does not seem to be consistent on the subject of making treaties), King Solomon made a treaty with a neighboring king.
And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together. (I Kings 5:12, KJV).
Though the Israelites were sometimes told not to make treaties (Deuteronomy 7:2), this verse sounds like an endorsement of the treaty Solomon made with Hiram, because it says "the Lord gave Solomon wisdom" in the same breath that it says he made a treaty with a Gentile king. In other words, making a treaty was a wise thing to do.
Flurry is not thinking rationally or biblically. He reads his own interpretations into the Bible and into current events. He is getting all mixed up. His basic premise—that God gave the land to the Jews in recent times—is presented without proof. It is also contrary to BI.
Part of the problem is that Flurry thinks it's impossible to negotiate with the Arabs. He demonizes the Arabs as genocidal. People have a tendency to demonize their enemies, especially in a time of war. During World War I the Allied powers (whom we always consider the "good guys") made up lies that German soldiers in occupied countries were impaling babies for sport. The news media helped our governments to promulgate war rhetoric. Media and government lies and distortions about our enemies go on today.
Flurry expects the end to come soon so he sees everything as a looming disaster for Jerusalem. He is reading his timeline and his view of prophecy into current events. He is not thinking objectively.
The end could be a lot farther away than he thinks. Armstrong thought the end was near in the 1930s. If he was wrong, Flurry could be wrong too.
Flurry's view of the situation is also distorted by skewed media coverage favoring Israel, especially in the US. Americans have a different view of the Middle East conflict than the rest of the world because the pro-Zionist lobby focuses its efforts on manipulating public and political opinion in America. America is where the power is, so that's who they must fool the most. It is no co-incidence that the most powerful country in the world is also the most pro-Israel.
Are the Jews really losing the war with the Palestinians? That is debatable. It does not look that way when Palestinian homes are being bulldozed. Over a million Jewish settlers have illegally taken up permanent residence on Arab lands, with the help of armoured Israeli military bulldozers. And the Jews still have the USA on their side. How bad can it get for the Jews with the USA on their side?
If Jews feel unsafe, perhaps God is simply not protecting them because it's not their land in the first place. Would God defend people who have no right to be there?
Maybe the Jews with all their money should just buy the land off the Palestinians and resettle them somewhere else.
Or if the Promised Land belongs to Joseph, maybe the Jews should leave and go someplace where Palestinian rockets cannot reach them. Of course, looked at that way, the Arabs should leave also.
If Gerald Flurry is wrong the people who financially support his work may have blood on their hands. Even if the Jews do belong in the land, it's questionable whether Flurry should use such harsh and one-sided rhetoric. He often sounds like he's trying to convince people to support the state of Israel. Isn't that getting involved in politics and war?