The Pope, Benedict XVI, has written a new book, to be released next week on March 10 that discusses questions including who killed Jesus and why He died. Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection is a sequel to Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration and attempts to answer the following questions:

• Why was Jesus rejected by the religious leaders of his day?
• Who was responsible for his death?
• Did he establish a Church to carry on his work?
• How did Jesus view his suffering and death?
• How should we?
• And, most importantly, did Jesus really rise from the dead and what does his resurrection mean?

One of the significant arguments made by the Pope is that the Jews, as a collective, were not responsible for his death, a significant break from historical Christian thought. This book should be a very interesting read for Christians of every denomination. To preorder Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection, click on this link. The hardcover is only $13.72.

Facebook has a PR issue on their hands and we can only hope that they do not cave into the demands of the Muslims behind this issue. Muslim Facebook users are upset at the removal of 4 pages:

Facebook.com/Rassoul.Allaah
Facebook.com/Logo.Ramadan
LikesFacebook.com/I.Love.Mohammed
Facebook.com/Quran.Lovers

We, at Christians for Israel, going to be presumptuous and say that these users/groups/pages were contravening Facebook’s terms of use or even breaking the law. However, “2.5 million Muslims” don’t care about these issues and are threatening to boycott Facebook, in favor of going to madina.com, a Muslim social networking site.

We think it’s fair to say that there are a few Muslim idiots who are hoping to gain traction (and republishing this story, no doubt, helps their cause), but that the actual number that would carry through and actually close their account would be in the thousands at most. I mean, really, are people going to leave Facebook for Madina.com? Most Muslims realize there is a world outside of Islam…and that it’s better than their world! (And all this makes me think that this is just a publicity stunt by the folks at Madina.com – I bet today made them grow much more than any other day since they launched!)

Their demands to the Facebook team are:

1. Reactivating the four pages that have been disabled
2. Adding a Facebook Term that illegalizes disrespecting all Islamic religious symbols, including Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and the Qur’an, as well as Prophet Moses (PBUH), Prophet Jesus (PBUH), and the original Bible
3. Disabling any Facebook Page, Group, or Event that shows direct or indirect disrespect towards Islamic religious symbols

In other words, Muslims want to be able to have carte blanche to insult and harass anybody (including the Christians for Israel facebook fanpage, which is routinely spammed by Muslims who can’t spell), but expect the world to bend over backwards for them.

As we said before, we hope Facebook upholds their decision to remove these pages and continue pursuing users/groups/pages that are actually insulting to most Facebook users. For more information, see the article on the NBC Website. We were hoping to include information about how to contact the folks at Facebook, but alas, it appears they don’t make it too easy!

Palestinians, for the last 40 or so years, have been claiming that they’ve existed since time immemorial. However, Joseph Farah, one of the first Christian Arabs to come out in strong defense of Israel, wrote in 2002 that “Palestinian people do not exist“, and he, of course, is right!

Instead of compiling opinions of this matter from world leaders and the press, Farah goes straight to the source – the PLO/Palestinian Authority. Here are some beautiful quotes that he compiles:

Zahir Muhsein, Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee member, 1977: ‘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.’

Yassir Arafat, Palestinian Liberation Organization leader, 1993: ‘Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.’ This quote, by the way, confirms a recent post we wrote about the Palestinian’s Phased Plan of 1974.

It is interesting to read this article from 8 years ago – the issues have not changed at all. There is still an intransigent Palestinian Authority that resists peace at every move, a press that despises the state of Israel and the Israelis still standing tall and proud as the only (militarily unenforced) democracy in the Middle East.

Benjamin Netanyahu FINALLY speaks about the Gaza Flotilla capturing. He justifies Israels actions and lays out a case. He starts by saying “Once again, Israel faces hypocrisy and rush to judgement”. The rest of his speech is great – I’m sure most would agree.

Israel needs our support now more than ever. Talk to your friends and neighbours about what you’ve learned and make sure they know the truth about what happened Monday morning in the Mediterranean Sea!