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<font size=3><br>
</font><font size=2 color="#990000">December 28, 2010<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Jesus Recruited
to Help Ethnic Cleanse Forest<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
God-TV Helps Israel Oust
Bedouins</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By
JONATHAN COOK<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cook12282010.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook12282010.html<br>
</a><i>Nazareth.<br><br>
</i>A sign posted a few kilometres north of Beersheba, the Negev's main
city, announces plans to plant a total of a million trees over a large
area of desert that has already been designated "God-TV
Forest".<br><br>
The Jewish National Fund, an international non-profit organisation in
charge of forestation and developing Jewish settlements in Israel,
received $500,000 from God-TV to plant some of the trees, according to
the channel's filings to US tax authorities last year.<br><br>
A coalition of Jewish and Bedouin human rights groups have denounced the
project, accusing God-TV and the JNF of teaming up to force the Bedouin
out of the area to make way for Jewish-only communities.<br><br>
No one from God-TV was available for comment, but in a video posted on
its website, Rory Alec, the channel's co-founder, said he had begun
fundraising for the forest after receiving "an instruction from
God" a few years ago. He said God had told him: "Prepare the
land for the return of my Son."<br><br>
Standing next to the "God-TV Forest" sign, Alec thanked
thousands of viewers for making donations to "sow a seed for
God", adding: "I tell you Jesus is coming back
soon!"<br><br>
Part of the forest has been planted on land claimed by the Aturi tribe,
whose village, al-Araqib, is nearby.<br><br>
Al-Araqib has been demolished eight times in recent months by the Israeli
police as officials increase the pressure on the 350 inhabitants to move
to Rahat, an under-funded, government-planned township nearby.<br><br>
Earlier this year, Joe Stork, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch's
Middle East and North Africa division, criticised the repeated attempts
by Israeli authorities to eradicate the village and displace its
residents.<br><br>
"Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless
without exhausting all other options for settling long-standing land
claims is outrageous," he said.<br><br>
Human Rights Watch and other international human rights groups have
criticised Israel for harsh measures taken against the people of
al-Araqib and the other 90,000 Bedouin who live in Negev villages that
the Israel refuses to recognise. They accuse the government of trying to
pre-empt a court case moving through Israeli courts aimed at settling the
Bedouin ownership claims.<br><br>
God-TV's involvement in the dispute has prompted fresh concern.<br><br>
Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba,
said the JNF, which has semi-governmental status in Israel, had set a
"dangerous precedent" in accepting money from God-TV.<br><br>
"The Israeli authorities are playing with fire," he said.
"This dispute between the Israeli government and the Bedouin is a
long one that until now focused on the question of land rights. But the
involvement of extremist Christian groups like God-TV is likely to turn
this into a religious confrontation, and that will be much harder to
resolve."<br><br>
The JNF did not respond to questions about its involvement with God-TV or
the Negev forest.<br><br>
Gordon said it was particularly worrying that Alec was using the language
of Biblical prophecy in justifying his decision to finance the
forest.<br><br>
The channel, which has become one of the most popular global evangelical
stations since its founding in Britain 15 years ago, claims a potential
audience of up to a half-billion viewers, including 20 million in the
United States.<br><br>
Stephen Sizer, a British vicar and prominent critic of Christian Zionist
groups, described God-TV as part of an evangelical movement that believes
Israel's establishment and expansion are bringing nearer the "end
times" or the moment when, according to Christians, Jesus will
return for the second time.<br><br>
Its followers, he added, believed that, by dispossessing Palestinians of
their land and replacing them with Jews, Jesus's return could be
expedited.<br><br>
"Funding aliyah [Jewish immigration] and planting trees in the
desert may look innocuous but it's actually their way to side with the
Israeli right's hardline policies towards the Palestinian
population."<br><br>
Sizer said there was increasing co-operation between Israeli institutions
and Christian evangelical groups, which have begun basing their
operations in Israel.<br><br>
God-TV has proclaimed itself the only television channel to broadcast
globally from Jerusalem, following its relocation there from the UK in
2007.<br><br>
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the Union of Reform Judaism in the US, has
repeatedly called on Israel to sever contacts with Christian Zionist and
evangelical groups, describing them as opposed to "territorial
compromise under any and all circumstances".<br><br>
God-TV has close ties to Christians United for Israel (Cufi), an umbrella
group founded in 2006 by John Hagee, a Texan pastor, that lobbies on
behalf of Israel in Congress.<br><br>
Hagee, a frequent preacher on the TV channel, has regularly courted
controversy with comments seen as anti-Semitic. Most notoriously, in a
sermon in the late 1990s, he called Adolf Hitler "a hunter" who
carried out God's plan for the Jews to return to Israel by leaving them
"no place to hide" in Europe.<br><br>
Cufi and the other evangelical groups have lobbied strenuously in
Washington on behalf of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and for
Israeli control over the holy sites in East Jerusalem, said
Sizer.<br><br>
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has been especially keen to
seek out support from Christian evangelical groups, according to Shalom
Goldman, a professor at Atlanta's Emory University, who recently
published a book on the Christian Zionist movement.<br><br>
Last year Cufi announced a $38 million marketing drive to bring more
Christian tourists to Israel, including the establishment of a "task
force on global Christian relations" jointly overseen by Hagee and
Netanyahu.<br><br>
Haia Noach, the director of the Negev Coexistence Forum, which campaigns
for Bedouin rights, said her organisation feared more of God-TV's trees
would be planted on Bedouin lands in the coming weeks. A depot has
recently been established close to al-Araqib to store four
bulldozers.<br><br>
"The villagers refuse to abandon al-Araqib, even though it has been
destroyed many times. But once a forest is planted there, there will be
no chance to go back," she said.<br><br>
She said she feared the goal was to build Jewish communities on Bedouin
land. She cited the case of Givat Bar, which was secretly established by
the government on part of al-Araqib's lands in 2003.<br><br>
Repeated letters to the JNF for information about their forestation
programme had gone unanswered, she said.<br><br>
Awad Abu Freih, a community leader at al-Araqib, said the house
demolitions and forest-planting were only the latest measures by the
government to remove the villagers.<br><br>
Repeated destruction of al-Araqib's crops by spraying them with
herbicides was ruled illegal by Israel's Supreme Court in 2004.<br><br>
Efforts to move 90,000 Bedouin off their lands close to Beersheba have
been intensifying since 2003, when the Israeli government announced plans
to move them into a handful of townships.<br><br>
The Bedouin have resisted, complaining that the official communities are
little more than urban reservations that languish at the bottom of the
country's social and economic tables.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2><b>Jonathan Cook</b> is a writer and
journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/counterpunchmaga">
Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake
the Middle East</a> (Pluto Press) and
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/counterpunchmaga">
Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair</a> (Zed
Books). His website is
<a href="http://www.jkcook.net">www.jkcook.net</a>.<br><br>
<br><br>
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