Jews opposed to Zionism

In 1990 I was on a ship that docked at Zada on the Adriatic Coast of Yugoslavia. The place looked so inhospitable. When I came ashore further down the coast at Split, I had a similar impression. The outward indicators were that the officials were officious; the modern architecture was bland; there were few flowers around the streets. Others had told me that you get a certain feeling in a Socialist country. And I felt it. The feeling was more normal when I mixed among the local people.

Surprisingly, I had a similar feeling as I flew into Tel Aviv for the first time, which surprised me. And it was there when I visited a kibbutz which had been founded by people with a socialist mind-set. I had thought that Israel would be a bigger version of my childhood neighbours’ place.

As a child, I had lived for a time next door to the Jewish Club in Wellington, New Zealand, a few years after the Second World War. The cook’s son and I played together. I still remember the fresh platted bread loaves with sesame or poppy seeds on top. Sometimes I would see men with a haunted look at the club and my mother told me that they had suffered in the war. Even with these sad reminders of the recent past, there was a sense of hospitality and of faith in God about the club.

 Things fell into place when I came across Jewish people on the Internet who are opposed to Zionism. Their beliefs seemed much closer to the ones that I had experienced as a gentile child amongst Jews.

http://www.nkusa.org/index.cfm

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/

http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/index.htm

Jews opposed to Zionism think that secular Jews have taken matters into their own hands to get back the Promised Land.  From my reading of it, Jews opposed to Zionism believe that they were dispossessed of their land in the first century because they had been unfaithful to God and His Law. God would restore them to the Holy Land in his time and in his way.

Inspired by their earlier history, they say that the Jewish people are to be productive citizens in their places of exile. (See Jeremiah 29:7, 10) God will intervene by choosing a gentile instrument like King Cyrus (See 2 Chronicles 36:19-13) who would provide them with the help to return home. They are to believe and not to interfere in God’s work.

Such an approach does raise interesting questions. Do Zionists unwittingly carry out the socialist plans of their financial backers?  Does God have a plan to restore the Jewish People to their historic homeland so that they can live in peace and justice with the people around them?  Are the Muslims neighbours not so much opposed to people of Jewish faith as they are to secular Zionists? In other words, do they smell a rat, something to do with a socialist New World Order?

The faith of the Jews opposed to Zionism inspires me to think even further. They believe that God will restore them in his time and in his way to their land. The God they worship is also ‘the God of all the kingdoms of the world’ (Isaiah 37:16). Then, if the Christians among us are as faithful to our Gospel as they are to be to their Law, the Peace of Christ will come to the earth. (See Luke 2:14)