Remapping the world

As stormy as the year 2016 ended for world politics and Israel, it doesn’t look like the storm will abate going into 2017 - at least at this point in time. In a desperate, last-ditch closing act, the Obama Administration invested great effort in the attempt to chisel its foreign policy convictions regarding the Middle East peace process in stone – thereby bypassing the will of the American people and the democratically elected US-Congress. To do that, Obama used the same back-road detour he used to push the Iran deal through, the UN Security Council. UNSC resolution 2334 established one single guilty party for the lack of peace – the State of Israel and Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and in East Jerusalem. The resolution declared the settlements to be “illegal according to international law” – a step that drew sharp criticism across the political spectrum in Israel as well as from the newly elected, but not yet sworn-in President-elect Donald Trump. The USA withholding its veto and simply abstaining in this vote marked a significant shift in American policy and position up to that point.  (http://www.unwatch.org/joining-jackals-open-letter-amb-samantha-power/)

“For Zion’s sake, I will not be silent…” (Isa. 62, 1)

A time …

To commemorate

The end of the greatest crime in human history

On May 8, 1945 Nazi-Germany signed a document of unconditional surrender in front of representatives of the three Western Allies (USA, UK and France). On May 9 it was signed in Berlin in the presence of the representatives of the Soviet Union. With the end of World War II in Europe the Holocaust, the greatest crime in human history, finally came to a halt.

The end of the greatest suffering of Jewish experience

The genocide of six out of eleven million European Jewish people was the greatest tragedy in the last four thousand years of Jewish experience. For us Christians who love the Jewish people with the love of God, this is an appropriate moment to identify with their unique suffering 70 years ago and to obey the call of God: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people…”  (Isa. 40, 1)