MK Candidate Joked with Church Group about Dome of the Rock being “Blown Up”

MK Candidate Joked with Church Group about Dome of the Rock being “Blown Up”

Posted by Richard Bartholomew

This one is being reported widely; from Haaretz:

Atlanta-born Jeremy Gimpel, who moved to Israel at the age of 11, is angling for a seat with Habayit Hayehudi and serving as a voice for English speakers in the West Bank.

…Now Gimpel, who sits precariously at number 14 on the party’s list, faces a more uncertain future following Channel 2′s broadcast Friday of a video in which he makes controversial remarks about the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Speaking at the Fellowship Church in Florida in 2011, Gimpel… reads from the book of Ezra then adds: “Imagine if the Golden Dome – I’m being recorded so I can’t say ‘blown up’ – but let’s say the Dome was blown up, right? And we laid the cornerstone of the Temple in Jerusalem. Can you imagine? None of you would be here. All of you would be like, ‘I’m going to Israel, right?’ No one would be here, it would be incredible!”

Gimpel now explains that this was a “joke”. I noted Gimpel back in 2006, when Agape Press (now OneNewsNow) unaccountably described him as being an “IDF spokesman”, based on the fact that he’s an IDF reservist with an unrelated radio show. At that time, Gimpel was visiting New Orleans to talk to a group called “Manna from Heaven Ministries“. He also met up with Maggid ben Yoseif, who is a ”Joe”; this is someone who has an inner conviction that he is a member of the lost tribes of Israel, and destined to replace the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Fellowship Church, based in Winter Springs, is typical of a growing strand in American Evangelicalism in which Jewish cultural forms are appropriated as “Hebrew roots”; according to the church’s blurb:

…We identify with all who know God and serve Him through Jesus the Messiah. We identify with Israel and the international Jewish community as the elect people of God. We identify with upright men everywhere who both fear the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and seek to walk uprightly before Him. We identify with the person in bondage to Sin because we all have a sinful past from which God, by His grace, has rescued us. Our two-fold mission is to confirm God’s promises to His people, Israel, and to demonstrate His grace toward all men as expressed through Messiah Jesus (Romans 15:8-9).

Further:

An exciting area of ministry has developed in Israel. We as a congregation have become active in the settlement movement in the Land of Israel and in the struggle for the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Both of these areas are crucial for the continuation of God’s redemptive purpose in the midst of His people Israel.

The site also mentions “our sister Israeli community, Kedumim, ‘The Vanguard of Jewish Resettlement in Biblical Samaria’”.

Returning to Haaretz:

Gimpel has also hosted church groups in his home in the settlement of Neveh Daniel, where he lives with his wife Tehila, a Cleveland-born lawyer, and their three children.

He denies speaking to or accepting donations from Messianic Jewish groups.

This highlights a particular problem for Gimpel from the right: forging links with right-wing Christian groups is one thing, but associations with “Messianic” Jews would be controversial: just the other day, the MK Ben Ari was reprimanded for ripping up a Christian Bible he had received in July (“those who sent the book to MKs wanted to trample the bodies of the millions of martyrs who were murdered for being Jewish”). Gimpel himself has spoken out against missionaries in Israel. “Manna from Heaven Ministries”, where Gimpel spoke in 2006, describes itself as a “Messianic congregation”, but this again appears to be a congregation of Judaizing Christians rather than a community of Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah.

Apocalyptically-minded Christian Zionists are indeed known for their Taliban-like hostility to the existence of the Dome of the Rock; Billye Brim, a Regional Director for Christians United for Israel, was recorded in 2007 promising that “that Dome is coming down!”, and a mentally-disturbed follower of Herbert Armstrong made an attempt to burn down the adjacent Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969. Gimpel’s “joke” has led to calls for his disqualification.

Habayit Hayehudi is headed by Naftali Bennett; he and his party were recently profiled by the Daily Telegraph.

Related articles

• MK Candidate Joked with Church Group about Dome of the Rock being “Blown Up” (barthsnotes.com)
• Watch: Israeli-American on Bennett’s list for Knesset imagines blowing up Muslim holy site (mondoweiss.net)
• Israel considers ban for far-right candidate over mosque gaffe (updatednews.ca)
• ADL chastizes Israeli candidate over Dome of the Rock comments (jta.org)
• Knesset Candidate Suggests Dome of the Rock Should Be ‘Blown Up’ (loonwatch.com)
• Disqualify Jeremy Gimpel over Dome of the Rock comments, opponents ask (jta.org)
• Right Wing Zionist Orthodox Party Ignores Injunction Over Deceptive Campaign Ads, Is Fined (failedmessiah.typepad.com)

Christian Zionist Fraudster and Fake “Ex-Terrorist” Walid Shoebat Claims Jewish Ancestry

Another self-serving, thoroughly discredited con man lauded by the American Religious Right, one Walid Shoebat, is now also trying to pass himself off as of Jewish Ancestry. Seems he’s milked and bilked the dirt dumb crazies of the American Religious Right and now angling to lure and sucker the Jewish community to hand over their hard-earned dollars! 

See here:-

Walid Shoebat: Fake Terrorist Busted!

And see here:-

‘Ex-terrorist’ Rakes in Homeland Security Bucks

And here:-

Shoebat Watch: “Ex-Terrorist” Fraud Sucking Up Taxpayer Money

http://www.walid-shoebat.blogspot.com.au/

 

Walid Shoebat Claims Jewish Ancestry “On Both Sides”

Posted by Richard Bartholomew

A particularly strange exchange between self-described “ex-terrorist” Walid Shoebat and Christian Zionist radio host Sid Roth:

Sid:… you also told me that on both sides of your family there’s Jewish ancestry and you went a bit further; most of the Palestinians you tell me have Jewish ancestry. Why do you say that?

Walid: Well, because I researched the archives of my family heritage, the Shoebat clan comes from Harris Ben Cobb, a Jew who converted to Islam. Before him he knew Harris Ben Cobb comes from a Ashomel Ben Adaya, no Muslim has the name Shomoel in fact if you look at Wikipedia Shomoel Ben Adaya was a Jew who created [sic] to Islam in Yemen.

This makes little sense. First, Samaw’al ibn ‘Adiya was a pre-Islamic Arab poet in Yemen who was either a convert to Judaism or of Jewish descent, not a Jewish convert to Islam (as “Shmu’el Ben Adaya”, he has a street named after him in Jerusalem). Second, “Cobb” is an English surname, and “Harris” is an English first name. Perhaps there’s a Jewish “Ben Cobb” surname of which I am unaware, but either way, it seems unlikely that a person with such a name would be the origin of the Palestinian Shuaybat clan, or that the family of such a person could be traced back to a sixth-century Yemeni poet.

It’s also not clear how he would have Jewish ancestry on his American side. According to his own account in Why We Left Islam (blogged here), he states that (pp. 19-20):

My maternal grandfather, F.W. Georgeson… was a great friend of Winston Churchill.

Frederick W. Georgeson was the mayor of Eureka, California; according to is a 1915 biography here, he was born in Scotland, and his wife was from Iowa and named Thompson. However, elsewhere he names Georgeson as his “Great Grandfather”, and from the birth date (F.W. was born in 1858) it seems likely that there is at least one intermediate generation (Incidentally, Georgeson’s supposed association with Churchill appears to have eluded the attention of historians and biographers).

Shoebat’s more general point of a genetic link between Jews and Palestinians has some scientific validity, although it’s a strange point for him to make, and in his case his argument is based on a supposed special access to knowledge:

…in all Palestinian homes you will find the Star of David in front of every home. The Star of David you will find Palestinians who still observe many things Jewish. Eating the lamb standing up comes from Exodus.

That “in all Palestinian homes you will find the Star of David” is a new one to me.

Related articles

• Hungary: Far-right leader demands lists of Jews who pose risk to national security (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)
• Orthodox Jews to Rally in Support of Proposed Palestinian State (sacbee.com)
• Anger as Hungary far-right leader demands lists of Jews (news.yahoo.com)
• Walid Shoebat Claims Jewish Ancestry “On Both Sides” (barthsnotes.com)