U.S. Jews and Evangelicals Help Israel Rebuild After Fires

Michele Chabin
Religion News Service

JERUSALEM (RNS) American Jews and evangelical Christians are taking a central role in rebuilding the Carmel region in northern Israel after a deadly fire decimated large swaths of the Carmel forest and left many people homeless.

Several Jewish and evangelical Christian organizations have launched fund-raising drives to assist the region after a massive wildfire in early December killed 43 people in one of Israel's few green belts. It took a team of international fire fighters to put out the blaze.

The fire highlighted the woeful state of Israel's fire service, which employs fewer than 1,500 fire fighters in a nation of 7 million people. There is a severe shortage of fire trucks and the under-funded service does not own a single fire-fighting plane.

American Jews and evangelical Christians, who have a long tradition of funding everything from Israeli tree plantings and soup kitchens to ambulances and bomb shelters, will be supplementing Israeli government aid for fire relief. They hope to raise several million dollars.

Israel's Ministry of Tourism and the Jewish National Fund USA announced a joint plan to raise funds from American Jews and U.S. evangelicals. Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov instructed his North American representatives to increase marketing and fundraising to fund the planting of trees on Tu Bishvat, a holiday celebrating trees and nature, in late January.

The New York-based Orthodox Union said it will donate 100 percent of donations collected for fire relief to organizations providing "rescue, relief, emergency services and support."

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has earmarked $3 million in emergency aid "to help stricken families and communities." Israeli media reports accused Eli Yishai, the ultra-Orthodox Jew who oversees the fire service, of previously refusing IFCJ's previous offer of several fire trucks because he considers it a missionary organization.

Some have suggested the Israeli government, and not foreign donors, should foot the entire bill for the damage caused by what they consider gross government negligence.

"The fact that (Israel) doesn't possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault," commentator Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in Atlantic magazine. "At some point, the good-hearted Diaspora Jews who still think of Israel as a charity case are going to have to tell their cousins to learn to fully fund basic services like fire fighting."

Comments

[yavuz]

02:55 AM on 12/16/2010

it wasnt only US jews and evangelicals that helped israel during the firestorm, TURKEY sent in firefighting aircraft and PALESTINIAN FIREFIGHTERS helped control the fire.

In return, Israel prevented palestinian firefighters to attend ceremonies in Jerusalem and denied the apology Turkey has been expecting for killing of its citizens by Israeli army.

Please get your reporting right

[Json]

01:02 PM on 12/17/2010

Yes Turkey and Palestinians helped fight the fire, but this story is about rebuilding after the fire, not the efforts to fight it.

Please get your outrage right

[Robert Roffman]

05:26 PM on 12/18/2010

yes !

[steiner123]

10:16 PM on 12/15/2010

The majority of Muslims in Israel are recent arrivals (within the last 70 years)

Those came in to Israel for the same reasons many are coming to Europe today.

Jewish people were making Israeli land productive once again, and as a consequence this attracted many Muslims to the area, just as many are attracted to the West now and compared to 40 years ago have grown greatly in population.

But just think, Arafat (the leader of the Palestinian movement) was not even a Palestinian, he was from Egypt.

We have allowed ourselves to believe the Palestinian fantasy!

Even the Koran quotes that the land beyond the river Jordan is Jewish land.

The Hebrews always remained in Israel and were taxed heavily by the Turks (during the Turkish empire days) as a matter of record...

The great majority of "Palestinians" are Egyptian, Syrian or come from Jordan.

Jordan is the Palestinian homeland. Over 70% of Jordanians are Palestinians, and the Queen is Palestinian as well.

There is no historical evidence for Palestinians. No Palestinian history, no Palestinian coinage, no Palestinian literature of old...just Muslims who are very much against any non -Muslim nation in the Middle East. Just look at what happened to Lebanon...

[DeuxExMachina]

01:53 AM on 12/16/2010

"The majority of Muslims in Israel are recent arrivals (within the last 70 years)"
You are being disingenuous and that statement of yours should have read,
"The majority of Muslims in Israel HAVE BEEN EXPELLED (within the last 70 years)"
The rest of your contribution is likewise junk.

[steiner123]

05:53 AM on 12/16/2010

The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins. Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds.

-- English pilgrim in 1590

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population"

-- British consul in 1857

-- Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937

"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not"

-- Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."

-- Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council, 1956

--Zahir Muhsein, Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member .
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism."

[steiner123]

05:54 AM on 12/16/2010

There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction. . . . One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.

An hour beyond Rachel’s tomb...desolate and unpeopled valley save for some camels..”
W. Prime – “desolate country”

W. H. Barlett – “present wretched desolation and neglect...abandoned”

-- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. . . . Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it."

[DeuxExMachina]

03:57 AM on 12/15/2010

See an article by Max Blumenthal explaining the history of the Carmel Forest area and how the original Palestinian Arabs there in 1948 were expelled from the area by the Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers.
http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/12/the-carmel-wildfire-is-burning-all-illusions-in-israel/

[genrel1248]

06:51 PM on 12/14/2010

Evangelicals rebuilding just so gawd can destroy it again.

[NonConforming]

03:52 PM on 12/17/2010

Actually the Bible predicts Israel's enemies will be destroyed prior to the attempt to kill all the Jews in Israel.

[Hank007]

02:04 PM on 12/14/2010

Palestinians also helped fight the fire. There was supposed to be a dinner honoring the firefighters, but Israeli border guards denied the Palestinian fire fighters entry. The story is somewhere on HP.

[StCuthbert]

03:37 PM on 12/14/2010

And the Palestinian firefighters were widely criticized and denounced by their fellow Arabs.

[Avirahim]

03:44 PM on 12/14/2010

"Reuben Moscowitz, a Holocaust survivor who took part in the mission, expressed his disbelief that "Israeli soldiers would treat nine Jews this way. They just hit people."

"I as a Holocaust survivor cannot live with the fact that the State of Israel is imprisoning an entire people behind fences," Moscowitz said, adding that "it's just immoral."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/jewish-gaza-bound-activists-idf-used-excessive-force-in-naval-raid-1.316247

"What happened to me in the Holocaust wakes me up every night and I hope we don't do the same thing to our neighbors," Moscowitz said, adding that he was comparing "what I went through during the Holocaust to what the besieged Palestinian children are going through."

[DeuxExMachina]

04:47 PM on 12/14/2010

That still doesn't beliitle the gesture of goodwill of the Palestinian Arabs who risked their lives to fight the forest fire. A good will on the part of the Israelis would be to give the forest to the original Palestinian Arabs or their descendants.

[tallen]

01:22 PM on 12/14/2010

No day would be complete at HP if it did not give the rabid Israel hating crowd a new article to spew their venom.

[DeuxExMachina]

01:59 PM on 12/14/2010

Only that some people hate the truth. Most of the comments below are factual and non use foul language.

[Avirahim]

02:35 PM on 12/14/2010

You are a rabid Palestinian hater, so why are you complaining?

[stpmdn]

10:38 AM on 12/14/2010

Hmm I wish some of these people would have a fund raising for the fires in colorado this year. We had over 200 homes burned over the summer and we didn't get any money from these evagelicals that are supposedley americans

[lightningbolt]

11:54 AM on 12/14/2010

Those Arab villages are built upon thousands and thousands of years of Jewish villages.

[DeuxExMachina]

12:56 PM on 12/14/2010

Those Jewish villages were abandoned under Roman rule 2000 years ago. If Jewish people had a problem with that fact it is with the Ancient Romans. Formerly an overwhelmingly Palestinian Arab area, the modern state of Israel is nothing but a 20th century colonization by Europeanized Jewish people . Since then, the Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers have been ethnically clensing indigenous Palestinian Arabs firstly from designated Israel and latterly East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

[lbsaltzman]

04:54 PM on 12/14/2010

A two thousand year old land claim is absurd. And the Palestinians are also the descendents of the ancient Judeans. Their religion is irrelevent.

[StCuthbert]

01:05 PM on 12/14/2010

Define "justice for the Palestinians"

[Hank007]

02:15 PM on 12/14/2010

Not having white phosphorous dropped on their children.

[Saint Poopypants]

07:45 AM on 12/14/2010

We're going to help rebuild a lot more than the Carmel Forest...

[lonngfello]

05:02 AM on 12/14/2010

I'm all for people helping each other and when it comes to Israel I believe many Americans who think they are helping Israel are actually promoting the continuation of something that should be re examinied.

"the fire exposed a terrible history that had been concealed by layers of official mythology and piles of fallen pine needles." (Concealing history in 400 to 500 Arab villages and towns is one of the reasons the trees were planted in the first place.)

"[ ]This is not the first time Ein Hod was evacuated, however. The first time was in 1948, when the town's original Palestinian inhabitants were driven from their homes by a man-made disaster known as the Nakba."

"Most of the original inhabitants of Ein Hod, which was called Ayn Hawd prior to the expulsions of '48, and was continuously populated since the 12th century, were expelled to refugee camps in Jordan and Jenin in the West Bank. But a small and exceptionally resilient band of residents fled to the hills, set up a makeshift camp and watched as Jewish foreigners moved into their homes."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-carmel-wildfire-is-bu_b_793484.html

Many Americans don't know the true history, a true history that could be the best remedy for a lack of peace in the Mideast.

[Balzac]

01:51 AM on 12/14/2010

Condolences to the families of the victims of these tragic fires.

[riff4u]

01:48 AM on 12/14/2010

The American Evangelicals believe that as soon as all the Jews return to the holy land, Jesus will return and rapture all of them to a really boring version of heaven. They can force Jesus to return by supporting Israel politically and financially. Oh by the way........Jesus kills all the Jews and Muslims and sends them to hell. Seems these Evangelicals are promoting a spiritual holocaust of the Jewish people. The Jews see all of this as nonsense but they play along for the political support in Congress. Such love.

[crparke]

11:24 AM on 12/14/2010

Actually they believe that many of the Jews will be saved as God's covenant with them in the Old testament was supposed to be an everlasting contract. A lot of evangelical theologians think that the "144,000" mentioned in Revelation are going to be converted Jews.

Also, the jews returning to the Holy Land is far from the only prerequisite for the Second Coming. Scripture tells us that the gospel must be preached to every corner of the world, and then the end will come. Since there are still billions of people in the world who have never even heard of Jesus, it's safe to say that the Second Coming is still far off, even from an evangelical perspective.

And many evangelicals (myself included) believe that God is sovereign and controls everything that happens. He is all powerful and controls time and space. His plans can not be frustrated or advanced by men and no amount of support for the jews is going to make Jesus come any sooner. God has planed the exact hour when the Christ will return and there is nothing his followers can do to manipulate his plans.

[Hank007]

02:17 PM on 12/14/2010

So why does God let Jews lock Palestinian Christians in camps?

[riff4u]

02:40 PM on 12/14/2010

Very few serious Biblical scholars support this theory. It became popular after the movie "The Omen" came out during the 1970's. Pastor John Hagee and a few others picked up on this and have made a comfortable living off of it. He bilks his followers out of money for himself and his mega church by preaching this stuff.

[Marianne TB]

11:45 AM on 12/14/2010

yep. why why why would any jew in their right mind have anything to do with these nutters?

[Vlady]

01:29 PM on 12/14/2010

Because the others are much nuttier including her ostensible progressive friends.

[Fireslayer]

10:38 PM on 12/13/2010

Here is hoping an olive branch will be sent in honor of the Palestinian fire fighters who sacrificed so much to stop this fire. This could be a healing moment.

[moflard]

11:19 AM on 12/14/2010

Yeah, not going to hold my breath on that one....

[patience1]

02:16 PM on 12/15/2010

It does not come out from Palestinian olive trees that they are uprooting somewhere else to build settlement does it?

[tomstedham]

05:56 PM on 12/19/2010

Best comment yet!

[DeuxExMachina]

09:41 PM on 12/13/2010

Pity these same groups don't help Palestinians re-build their homes and lives bulldozed by the Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers.

[haval2]

06:21 AM on 12/14/2010

Medical treatment is but one of the things provided to Palestinians by the Israelis. There is a great deal more going on than the press reports fairly.

[Londoncall]

07:46 AM on 12/14/2010

Give us the details then.

[DeuxExMachina]

10:35 AM on 12/14/2010

Like more ethnic clensing of Palestinian Arabs and land seized in East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Please don't be both disingenuous and patronizing.

[JibberJabberwocky]

09:17 PM on 12/14/2010

At least every dollar these Evangelicals send for the reforestation in Israel will be one less dollar these same Evangelicals were sending to build the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

I prefer real charity over providing material support for terrorists.

[chachablix]

09:37 PM on 12/13/2010

all because of some dumb kids with a hooka. what a waste of beautiful forest.

[stpmdn]

10:40 AM on 12/14/2010

The forest was man made and some of the trees were planted over raised palastinian villages from the 40s. I'm sure it was beautiful on the outside but.....

[GraphicMatt]

03:04 PM on 12/14/2010

The palestinian villages were elevated? Oh, you mean razed.

[MarcEdward]

04:34 PM on 12/14/2010

A "forest" made of non-native trees that were not suited for anything other than covering up bulldozed Palestinian villages.

[TheLonelyGod]

07:18 PM on 12/14/2010

So it's okay that it got burned.

(That is what you are IMPLYING, even if you did not come right out and SAY it.)