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Wednesday, May 1, 2019

AN EPIDEMIC OF JEW HATRED ON CAMPUS: THE TOP TEN NEO-NAZI INCIDENTS

AN EPIDEMIC OF JEW HATRED ON CAMPUS: 
THE TOP TEN NEO-NAZI INCIDENTS

Atrocities at Columbia, UCLA, U. Nevada-Reno and Stanford all made the list

BY SARA DOGAN
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Editor’s note: The following report documents horrifying instances of anti-Semitism on ten prestigious American campuses and exposes the pivotal role that the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel plays in provoking these hate crimes. In a stealth campaign conducted on Monday, 1000 copies of a printed newspaper containing this report were distributed to public locations on the UCLA campus, one of the schools named in the report. The newspapers also contained a poster highlighting the links between the BDS movement and Adolf Hitler’s “final solution.”
A fast and rapidly growing epidemic of global anti-Semitism is now threatening Jews worldwide. Many discount incidents of Jew hatred and neo-Nazi rhetoric as the actions of a fringe minority, or mistakenly believe it is a problem endemic to conservatism, rather than a facet of the radical Left.  The blatantly anti-Semitic statements of recently elected congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and the leaders of the Women’s March—and the Democratic Party’s failure to strongly disclaim them—prove that Jew Hatred has become part of mainstream Leftist dogma.
Our nation’s campuses, dens of radical politics that they are, have long been a precursor to this wider epidemic. Now that Jew Hatred has become mainstream, neo-Nazi incidents on campus have only grown in their violence and magnitude, as the campus adherents of Adolf Hitler become increasingly emboldened by their success at infusing Jew hatred into the national conversation.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel is a key feature of the plot to destroy the Jewish state. Funded and promoted on American campuses by the anti-Israel terror groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the BDS movement has infiltrated our universities, funneling money to campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine through an intermediary organization, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Gilad Erdan recently declared, “The relationship between terrorist organizations and the BDS movement has never been closer, ideologically or operationally.”
The goals and means of the BDS movement show a direct parallel to the rhetoric and methods employed by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Where Hitler denounced the Jews with slurs, and segregated them into ghettos before employing his “final solution,” the BDS movement similarly slanders the Jewish nation—the only liberal democracy in the Middle East—as an “apartheid state” which illegally “occupies” Palestinian land.  Hitler used similar rhetoric to excise Jewish citizens of Germany from the larger community, claiming they were robbing Germany of the wealth that properly belonged to the Aryan race, and then codifying these principles in the Nuremberg Laws and other ordinances, encouraging Germans to boycott Jewish businesses, and forbidding Jews to intermarry with German citizens, or participate in virtually all forms of public life.
Just as Hitler’s reforms aimed to marginalize Germany’s Jews, the BDS movement seeks to isolate and delegitimize Israel, cut it off from the world community, and bankrupt its resources in the hopes of ultimately destroying it. The BDS campaign against Israel is a true and deserving successor to Hitler’s Nazi party. Yet university presidents and administrations have done little to check the rampant resurgence of this Nazi ideology on campus. And that failure has had grave consequences for Jewish students on American campuses who face the impossible choice of choosing to conceal their faith and their heritage or knowing they may become a target because of it.
It is no coincidence that five out of the ten universities featured in this report--UCLA, Tufts, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Michigan--have welcomed the Students for Justice in Palestine National Conference to their campuses. The remaining five campuses each boast active chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Students Association—a campus group linked to the Nazi-supporting Muslim Brotherhood network—or similarly-minded groups.
The ten incidents that follow—occurring over the past two years—represent only a small sampling of the egregious Jew hatred and lust for the return of the Nazi regime that now infects America’s college campuses.
Columbia University: Holocaust Scholar’s Office Defaced by Swastikas
Jewish professor and Holocaust scholar Elizabeth Midlarsky entered her office at Teacher’s College of Columbia University on Wednesday, November 28, 2018, to find two gigantic red swastikas scrawled on the walls and the anti-Semitic slur “YID” painted adjacent to them.   “I was in shock,” Midlarsky told the Columbia Daily Spectator. “I stopped for a moment, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
“I opened the outer door and almost passed out,” she described to CNN. “I was so shaky, I wasn't sure I was going to make it.”
Nor was this the first time Midlarsky’s office had been vandalized. In 2007, a swastika was painted on her office door and anti-Semitic flyers were found in her campus mailbox. As both a Jew and a scholar of the Holocaust, an event Jew haters are eager to minimize or deny outright, she apparently makes for a tantalizing target.
According to the Columbia Daily Spectator, Midlarsky “attributed this second incident to a broader national rise in anti-Semitic crimes and a changing culture.”
Teacher’s College President Thomas Bailey issued a statement saying:
“We unequivocally condemn any expression of hatred, which has no place in our society. We are outraged and horrified by this act of aggression and use of this vile anti-Semitic symbol against a valued member of our community. Please rest assured that we are working with police to discover the perpetrator of this hateful act.”
Columbia University, despite its location in New York City, home to a significant proportion of the nation’s Jewish population, has a longstanding reputation for tolerating anti-Semitism on campus. The university has frequently made the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s annual list of the “Top Ten Universities Most Friendly to Terrorists,” and hosted the Students for Justice in Palestine annual conference in 2011. After the Fall 2018 mass-shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Columbia administrators initially released a statement that made no explicit mention of “Jews” or “anti-Semitism”—a lapse widely derided by alumni and others. Despite the university’s statements promising to pursue the perpetrator of this horrific act of Jew hatred, it appears that no one has yet been arrested for the crime.
Duke University: Memorial to Pittsburgh Synagogue Victims Defaced with Swastika At Duke University, a lovingly painted mural dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue mass-shooting in Pittsburgh presented too tempting a target to Jew-haters on the North Carolina campus.
The mural was painted in a “Free Expression” tunnel on campus where students are encouraged to express their opinions through writing and artwork. It contained a gold Star of David and the names of the 11 victims of the Pittsburgh attack alongside the epitaph, “We must build this world from love,” transcribed in both English and Hebrew.
Yet on Sunday, November 18, a large red swastika was discovered on the mural, painted over the Star of David. According to the Duke Chronicle, there had been something of an epidemic of swastikas on campus in recent months. The one desecrating the mural was the third to be discovered. Another was found on a bathroom door and the third was carved into a pumpkin on Halloween.
In a statement, Duke President Vincent Price called the painting of the swastika “a craven and cowardly act of vandalism – a desecration of a memorial to individuals who were killed because they were Jewish and practicing their faith” and added “That it should occur in such a visible, public location at Duke should be a matter of grave concern to us all.”
Duke University is home to a highly active chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine which hosts an annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus featuring anti-Semitic slogans. These include, “To exist is to resist” and “From the river to the BC, Palestine will be free,” (the BC is a plaza on Duke’s campus) a take on the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a call to destroy the totality of Israel as a Jewish state. Together with the Muslim Students Association, Duke SJP hosted notorious anti-Semite Linda Sarsour on April 15.
Penn State: Menorah Belonging to Jewish Fraternity Vandalized and Repeatedly Stolen
In two separate incidents in late November and early December of 2018, a nine-foot-tall menorah belonging to the Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau at Penn State University was first vandalized and stolen, briefly returned, and then stolen again, before finally being recovered in a nearby park. A fraternity member who attempted to thwart one of these attempts at theft was assaulted.
The menorah had been purchased by the fraternity earlier that year to commemorate the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue mass-shooting in Pittsburg. When it was returned after the first theft, two of its nine electronic branches were damaged.
“Due to recent events, that’s why we got the menorah... to show strength and unity with the Jewish community,” Penn State Zeta Beta Tau president Adam Schwartz told a local television station. “We just want to show that hate won’t stop us.”
Nor was this the only episode of menorah-snatching on the campus. The previous year, a twelve-foot-tall menorah was stolen from outside the house of Penn State Rabbi Hershy Gourarie and then was left in a damaged condition in front of the house of another Jewish fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu. Individuals were eventually arrested and charged in each incident of menorah-theft.
Penn State is home to a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter that has held multiple events supporting the BDS movement against Israel and demonizing the Jewish State. The campus is also home to a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Muslim Students Association.
University of California-Santa Cruz: Blocking the Hillel Table and Shouting Anti-Semitic Profanities
In May 2017, an event held at UC-Santa Cruz to celebrate Israeli Independence Day was violently disrupted by the African/Black Student Alliance (ABSA). ABSA deliberately blocked access to the Hillel table for more than an hour while protestors repeatedly hurled anti-Semitic and profane insults at the assembled Jewish students.
The event was billed as “Israel Palooza” and was meant to be a peaceful celebration of Israeli life and culture including music, dancing, and food. But ABSA swarmed the pro-Israel festival, cordoning off the Hillel table with protestors so that interested students could not reach it and on three separate occasions chanting, “Free Palestine” and “F—k Jewish Slugs.”  An Israeli flag brought to the event by Hillel was also torn down by the protestors.
statement released by Hillel declared courageously, “Our students feel disappointed that they were not able to celebrate Israel fully on her birthday but we will not be deterred… At Santa Cruz Hillel, Israel will always be at the core of our mission.”
In an open letter to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a coalition of Jewish community leaders and UC-Santa Cruz students and alumni expressed their outrage that the University administration had neither provided sufficient security for the event, nor acknowledged the outrageous mistreatment of Jewish students on the campus:
“Despite the fact that the previous week Hillel Director Sarah Cohen Domont had informed UCSC administrators of the impending A/BSA protest and asked for assistance in ensuring that the Hillel event would not be disrupted, only one member of the university staff, Associate Vice Chancellor Jean Marie Scott, was present during the protest. No security was there to prevent the disruption or was called once it began,” states the letter.
It continues, “Even worse, it has been more than two weeks since these events took place, and your office has yet to say a single word even acknowledging, let alone condemning, this blatant suppression of Jewish and pro-Israel students’ freedom of expression and assembly. Nor have the students who perpetrated these acts been subject to disciplinary actions or held accountable for their reprehensible behavior. This is an outrage.”
University of California-Los Angeles: Vicious Disruption of Pro-Israel Event On May 17, 2018, an event held at UCLA by the campus chapter of Students Supporting Israel was viciously disrupted by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
The panel was titled, "Indigenous Peoples Unite” and featured speakers from several different nations. While one of the panelists was speaking about surviving genocide in Armenia, a protestor walked over and tore the Armenian flag off the wall and threw the speaker’s notes on the floor, while screaming directly in his face. SJP protestors used horns and whistles to create a chaos of noise and chanted slogans including "We don't want 2 states, we want '48," a genocidal statement to abolish Israel and return to a time before it existed. Other slogans shouted by the protestors included, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," "No peace on stolen land, justice is our demand" "Protesting is not a crime, free free free Palestine," and "Israel is a terrorist state!” Due to SJP’s protest, the event was forced to halt for over 15 minutes until calm could be regained.
UCLA administrators denounced the protest about a week later but claimed that they could not take action against the protestors because a police report had not been filed by SSI. After this announcement, over a dozen pro-Israel students filed complaints with the university police department.
Despite the horrific actions of SJP on campus in this incident and others, the UCLA administration nevertheless permitted SJP National to hold its infamous annual conference on the UCLA campus the following semester in November 2018. SJP National conferences are known to feature speakers who promote terrorist violence against Israel and the Hamas-funded BDS movement and instruct students in how to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events on campus. The announcement for the 2018 conference at UCLA even bragged about this disruption of pro-Israel events, stating "Other instances of our perseverance include disruptions of pro-war, Zionist, and racist guest speakers." It also demonized Israel by claiming that “Zionism is ethnic cleansing, destruction, mass expulsion, apartheid, and death.”
Stanford University—Resident Advisor Threatens Jews on Social Media Students who are appointed as Resident Advisors are charged with keeping peace and order in campus dorms. It is a position of privilege and authority. But at Stanford University, the screening process appears to be lacking. Student Hamzeh Daoud was appointed a Resident Advisor in the summer of 2018 despite his numerous social media posts bashing Israel and threatening violence against Jews which were made public after his appointment was announced. 
“I’m gonna physically fight Zionists on campus next year if someone comes at me with their ‘Israel is a democracy’ bullshit. And after I abolish your ass I’ll go ahead and work every day for the rest of my life to abolish your petty ass ethno-supremacist, settler-colonial state,” the Stanford student shared on social media.
One of his posts on Twitter states: "fuck your liberal Zionist ass. fuck your jewish state. and fuck the notion that makes you believe that the resoliance and beauty that embodies Judaism, jewish people, and the jewish religion is Israel. Israel is a state that needs to be dismantled. Any other opinion is complicity [sic]."
Another tweet explains, "For those who don't speak Arabic; this translate to God curse Israel. God Curse the shit out of Israel :)! [sic]."
Daoud is a member of the Stanford chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an organization that is financially linked to the terror group Hamas and which uses Hamas funds to disparage and delegitimize Israel.
Once Daoud’s anti-Semitic posts became public, the Stanford College Republicans called on the University to fire him from his position as Resident Advisor arguing that “Threatening to assault other students who hold a different point of view is anathema to a free society and any kind of education, let alone the operation of the premier research university in the world.”
“While we are disturbed by Hamzeh Daoud’s statements, we find it unsurprising that a member of SJP, an organization with financial ties to terrorist affiliates, would issue a call to violence against pro-Israel students,” the Stanford College Republicans wrote.
Meanwhile, after being publicly outed as a potentially violent anti-Semite, Daoud attempted to walk back his virulent social media posts, editing the one promising to “physically fight Zionists” to read “intellectually fight Zionists.”  He also issued a statement of apology which reads, “I respect the Jewish community, the beauty and resilience of the Jewish religion and people, and the power that Jewish students bring to campus.” The supposed apology makes an interesting contrast to his previous tweet in which he used almost the same language to state precisely the opposite: “fuck the notion that makes you believe that the resoliance [sic] and beauty that embodies Judaism.”
Jewish Voice for Peace at Stanford, an organization that supports the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state, conducted an email campaign supporting Daoud and attempting to turn the blame back on the Stanford College Republicans, claiming that the conservative organization “intentionally misinterpreted [Daoud’s] post” and “triggered a right-wing and alt-right backlash against Daoud.”
A legal team also entered the fray, sending a letter to Stanford President Marc Tessier-Levigne on behalf of a Jewish student who preferred to remain anonymous, expressing the student’s concern that Daoud’s Jew-hatred makes him unfit to serve in a position of authority over other students.
“Daoud's public statements—including statements he has made that were public, but that he has recently hidden by deleting certain of his social media accounts—make clear that he is not capable of performing the duties of a Resident Assistant,” the letter states.   
"Worse, if Stanford were to retain a person of Daoud's temperament in that position after being made aware of his statements, Stanford will have clearly discriminated against Zionist students on campus, in violation of federal law and its own formal policies," the letter continues.
Stanford pledged to investigate Daoud’s posts but this process was cut short when the SJP member elected to voluntarily resign from his resident advisor post. In a statement Daoud acknowledged “the language in my first post had a strong negative effect on many in our Stanford community.”  While he may have apologized for the language he used, it seems likely that his actual opinions have not changed. And it remains far from clear whether Stanford—which hosted the SJP National Conference in 2013—is truly up for the task of tackling Jew hatred on campus.  
University of Minnesota: Academic Department Supports Hamas-Funded BDS Movement
On March 2, 2018, the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota held an event dedicated to Hamas propaganda titled “BDS, Racial Justice, & Pinkwashing in the Trump Era.” The forum capped off “Divest Week” at the University, a week organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and supported by other campus organizations to promote the anti-Semitic, Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and to garner votes in a campus-wide referendum on the topic (the BDS resolution passed by a narrow margin).
The event description which was posted on the department’s Facebook page demonized Israel by accusing it of “daily human rights abuses” and made clear that attendees are expected to learn how to “work in solidarity with the global BDS movement.”  The topic of the event, ‘pinkwashing,’ is a term used by Israel’s enemies to accuse Israel of using its support for gay rights as a shield to cover for other alleged abuses.
Further down on the official event page, a section of text titled “What is BDS” again demonizes and delegitimizes Israel. It states falsely that “Israel is occupying and colonizing Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.” It again promotes the BDS movement, stating, “BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”
A large image of a pink banner with the words “No to Pinkwashing. No to Israeli Apartheid” accompanies this text.
The Amcha Initiative, an organization dedicated to tracking anti-Semitism on campus, revealed that “The official GWSS department Facebook page additionally promoted the event by posting a demonizing image to the event page's wall about Pinkwashing that also contained the image of a poster saying ‘Israel Out of Palestine’ as well as an image saying, ‘No Pride in Zionism, Israeli Apartheid, Occupation. Justice for Palestine.’” 
This rampant support for the anti-Semitic and genocidal BDS movement on the part of an official university academic department is a flagrant violation of the proper role of an academic institution and reveals the depths of Jew hatred on the University of Minnesota campus.  University of Nevada-Reno: Campus Dorm Defaced with Swastika, Plea to “Kill all Jews” A message threatening the lives of Jews was found on the wall of a campus residence hall at the University of Nevada-Reno in March, 2019. The highly disturbing message contained a swastika and the threats “Kill all Jews” and “Watch Out Communist Bombing on March 6, 2019, and March 7, 2019.”
Former student Matthew Levin who lived in the University residence hall called the threat “Unacceptable.”
 “This was found at Juniper Hall on the campus I called home (and in a way still call home) for 5 years,” he explained. “Never in my life did I think that this was going to happen on our campus that has always been so supportive of all students. The students, faculty, alumni, and community deserve better than this. The Wolf Pack should not and will not stand for this.”
An email signed by several university administrators promised an investigation and further action: “This symbol and the threatening remarks that accompanied it are unacceptable and wrong,” it stated. “We strongly condemn any symbols and actions that represent hate, intimidation or terror. We stand with members of our Jewish community and all people who find such hateful symbols and abhorrent threats to be offensive, and we will work with a number of groups to ensure that our campus remains safe and welcoming.”
The death threat scrawled on Juniper Hall was not the first incidence of Jew hatred expressed in a campus residence. Earlier that same academic year, on October 27, 2018, the very same date on which a gunman massacred individuals at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh—a swastika was found carved into the dorm room door of two Jewish roommates. The Jewish students had recently hung a mezuzah (a small box containing a Jewish prayer) on their door frame. 
Still more swastikas were found painted on a creative expression wall within the campus arts building in October 2017.  Despite rhetoric promising to stamp out anti-Semitism on campus, administrators at UNR clearly have an uphill battle ahead.
Tufts: Hillel Center Targeted with Anti-Semitic Posters Featuring Militarized Pigs
On February 12, 2019, the Granhoff Family Hillel Center at Tufts University was papered with several dozen flyers featuring garish cartoons of pigs in military uniforms. Just in case the intent of the vandalism was unclear, some of the flyers were captioned with anti-Semitic text reading “DESTROY ISRAELI APARTHEID FORCES AND AMERIKKKAN [sic] PIGS WHICH FUND IT.” Another flyer featured the image of a pig wearing a uniform patterned in stars and stripes and captioned “U.S. Imperialism.” In the cartoon, the pig is shoved back against a spiked wall by guns labeled “Get out of the ghetto,” “Get out of Latin America,” “Get out of Africa,” and “Get out of Asia.”
The flyers were discovered by Hillel’s executive director and the Tufts’ Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Naftali Brawer.  He contacted campus police and immediately removed the flyers from the building with the assistance of Hillel staff. “We were clearly targeted as a Jewish center,” Brawer said. The Hillel Center appears to be the sole target of the vandals—the flyers were not hung anywhere else on campus.
One particularly unsettling aspect of the incident is that a number of the flyers were placed so that the printed portion faced inside through the Hillel Center’s windows, as if to communicate their hatred directly to those within the facility.
The defacement of Tufts Hillel notably occurred only days after radical freshman congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) tweeted that Congressional support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins”—a remark that led to widespread outrage and discussions about the growing acceptability of anti-Semitism on the Left.
In an interview with The Tufts Daily, Rabbi Brawer addressed the impact that the flyers had on Jewish students at Tufts: “It’s been a really unsettling experience for everyone here at Hillel. It shows us that bigotry and hatred are sadly alive and well, even on a university campus.”
Tufts University President Anthony Monaco did not immediately label the posters anti-Semitic—he later claimed to be unaware of the caption referencing Israel—but he did send out a campuswide email calling them “profoundly disturbing and hurtful to those targeted and to others in our community.”
Tufts has been featured on several of the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s past lists of the Top Ten Universities Who Support Terror. While under President Monaco’s leadership, Tufts University hosted the SJP National Conference in 2014, an infamous event which bars media and outsiders and features supporters of anti-Israel terrorism as speakers.
University of Michigan: Two Faculty Members Refuse to Write Letters of Recommendation for Students to Study in Israel 
In the Fall of 2018, not one but two instructors at the University of Michigan, one of the premier public universities in the nation, refused to write letters of recommendation for students planning to study abroad in Israel in deference to an academic boycott of Israeli universities which is part of the genocidal BDS movement.
One of those refusing the request was graduate student and teaching assistant Lucy Peterson.  When student Jake Seckler asked her for a recommendation to study abroad, she declared that she would be “delighted.” But upon learning that he was planning to enroll at Tel Aviv University, Peterson had an abrupt change of heart. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t ask before agreeing to write your recommendation letter, but I regrettably will not be able to write on your behalf. Along with numerous other academics in the U.S. and elsewhere, I have pledged myself to a boycott of Israeli institutions as a way of showing solidarity with Palestine,” she explained.
The previous month, another Michigan instructor, this one an associate professor of American Culture, John Cheney-Lippold, also rejected a student’s request for a letter supporting his application to study abroad in Israel, again citing his support for the academic boycott against Israel. Screenshots of Cheney-Lippold’s communication with the student, identified only as “Abigail,” reveal that his conflict is exclusively with the nation of Israel, not with recommending the student’s academic work. “As you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel in support of Palestinians living in Palestine. This boycott includes writing letters of recommendation for students planning to study there," Cheney-Lippold wrote to Abigail. "I should have let you know earlier, and for that I apologize. But for reasons of these politics, I must rescind my offer to write your letter," he added.
"Let me know if you need me to write other letters for you, as I'd be happy.”
In a later interview with the publication Inside Higher Ed, Cheney-Lippold asserted, “I firmly stand by the decision because I stand against inequality, I stand against oppression and occupation, I stand against apartheid and I use that word very, very seriously.”  He added, “I have extraordinary political and ethical conflict lending my name to helping that student go to that place [Israel].”
The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is part of the anti-Semitic BDS movement, an attempt to isolate, delegitimize, and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. The BDS movement is promoted and funded on American campuses by the anti-Israel terror groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Michigan President Mark Schlissel and Provost Martin Philbert released a statement criticizing the conduct of the two faculty members without mentioning names or details. “Withholding letters of recommendation based on personal views does not meet our university’s expectations for supporting the academic aspirations of our students,” the statement read. “Conduct that violates this expectation and harms students will not be tolerated and will be addressed with serious consequences. Such actions interfere with our students’ opportunities, violate their academic freedom and betray our university’s educational mission.”
According to the Detroit News, Chenney-Lippold has faced disciplinary consequences for his refusal, including the denial of a merit pay raise and the postponement of an upcoming sabbatical. It is unclear if instructor Peterson has also faced consequences.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), released a statement calling on “the University of Michigan to adopt a formal policy ensuring students' academic pursuits are not stymied by the political views of their professors.”
“Boycotts such as these, refusing to recommend a worthy student solely because she intended to study in Israel, have a chilling effect on Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus, who may feel isolated and vulnerable when authority figures or campus groups express hostility or shun them based on their views and associations…” continued the statement. “Singling out Israel alone among all the nations of the world as worthy of boycott, according to the State Department working definition, potentially crosses the line from criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism.”
The University of Michigan is home to a highly active chapter of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality(SAFE), an SJP surrogate group which holds events supporting the BDS movement. Michigan also hosted the SJP National conference in 2012.
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Dangerous Rise of Anti-Semitism all Over the World, Including the Church

BY MICHAEL SNYDER
SEE: http://the-trumpet-online.com/dangerous-rise-anti-semitism-world-including-church/republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Michael Snyder – Economic Collapse Blog April 30, 2019 Share this article:
There is no place for anti-Semitism in our society, and all of us should be deeply alarmed by how rapidly anti-Semitism is rising across North America, Europe and the Middle East.
 The numbers that I am going to share with you in this article are incredibly disturbing, and many believe that anti-Semitism is now the worst that it has been since the end of World War II.
After what we witnessed during the 1930s and 1940s, you would think that the world would never want to go down that path ever again, and yet it is happening.  Millions upon millions of people deeply hate the Jewish people just because they are Jewish, and it is getting worse with each passing day.
The lastest example is the New York Times which just days after the Times published an op-ed falsely claiming Jesus was a Palestinian, placed a cartoon on their op-ed page, depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog leading a blind U.S. President Donald Trump.
Imagine if the New York Times cartoon that depicted Israel’s Prime Minister as a dog had, instead, depicted the leader of another ethnic or gender group in a similar manner? If you think that is hard to imagine that you are absolutely right. It would be inconceivable for a Times editor to have allowed the portrayal of a Muslim leader as a dog; or the leader of any other ethnic or gender group in so dehumanizing a manner.
What is it then about Jews that allowed such a degrading cartoon about one of its leaders? One would think that in light of the history of the Holocaust, which is being commemorated this week, the last group that a main stream newspaper would demonize by employing a caricature right out of the Nazi playbook, would be the Jews. But, no. Only three quarters of a century after Der Stürmer incentivized the mass murder of Jews by dehumanizing them we see a revival of such bigoted caricatures.
Threats of rising anti-semitism caught the world’s attention after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018, where the gunman murdered 12 people and injured 7 during Shabbat morning service.  Now another one has happened…
19-year-old John Earnest was once a quiet piano player that had a seemingly bright future in front of him, but after being infected by the vile anti-Semitism that is rapidly spreading all over the Internet, he decided that it would be a good idea to walk into a synagogue and start shooting people…
One woman was killed and three others were wounded when a man entered a synagogue during Passover services Saturday at the Chabad of Poway temple and opened fire with an AR-style assault weapon shortly before 11:30 a.m.
Poway is about 25 miles northeast of San Diego. The city’s mayor, President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom all called the attack a hate crime.
The suspect, 19-year-old John Earnest, was arrested and is being questioned by authorities.
60-year-old Lori Gilbert Kaye was killed when she stepped in front of the synagogue’s rabbi as he rushed to evacuate children.  She will be remembered as a hero, while John Earnest will be remembered as a hate-filled racist that said that Jewish people “deserve nothing but hell”.
All over the globe, prominent political leaders are condemning what John Earnest did.  In his statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it “an attack on the heart of the Jewish people”…
“I condemn the abhorrent attack on a synagogue in California; this is an attack on the heart of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “We send condolences to the family of Lori Gilbert-Kaye and our best wishes for a quick recovery to the wounded. The international community must step up the struggle against anti-Semitism.”
Unfortunately, we aren’t talking about just a few isolated individuals.
A recent CNN survey that was conducted in Europe discovered that anti-Semitic attitudes are very widespread over there…
Anti-Semitic stereotypes are alive and well in Europe, while the memory of the Holocaust is starting to fade, a sweeping new survey by CNN reveals. More than a quarter of Europeans polled believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance. Nearly one in four said Jews have too much influence in conflict and wars across the world.
One in five said they have too much influence in the media and the same number believe they have too much influence in politics.
Other polls have showed the majority of British adults don’t know that 6 million Jewish people were murdered in Holocaust, or they believe the number killed to be much less than this.
The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency study published last year asked European Jews in 12 countries their views on anti-Semitism. Hundreds of Jews polled said they had experienced a physical, anti-Semitic attack in the past year.
According to authorities in France, the number of anti-Semitic attacks in that country rose 74 percent last year.
Of course this is not just a recent trend either.  According to the Anti-Defamation League, there was a huge increase in global anti-Semitic attacks from 2016 to 2017…
The Anti-Defamation League has identified 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in its 2017 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents. That’s up from 1,267 in 2016, marking the highest single-year increase since the organization released its first audit in 1979.
Those are deeply chilling numbers.
If you are not Jewish, you may not think about anti-Semitism much.  But for those that must deal with it on a daily basis, it is a nightmare that never ends.
According to another survey of Jewish people living in Europe, 90 percent indicated that they believe that anti-Semitism is growing in the country in which they currently live.  The following comes from the Guardian…
The report found 90% of respondents felt antisemitism was growing in their country and 30% had been harassed. Over a third avoided going to Jewish events or sites because of safety fears, while the same proportion had considered emigrating. Nearly 80% no longer reported minor incidents because they thought “nothing would change”.
Even in polite mannered Canada the number of antisemitic incidents in Canada spiked in 2018, according to a new study published on Monday. The 2018 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents commissioned by the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada showed 2,041 incidents of antisemitism took place last year, a 16.5 percent increase from 2017. The study also showed a 28.4-percent jump in antisemitic harassment, a 61.5-percent increase since 2015.
Here in the United States, anti-Semitism is rising rapidly as well.  In fact, there are an increasing number of “Christian churches” and “Christian ministries” that claim to be Christian but that also boldly express hatred for Israel and for the Jewish people at the same time.
Much of this hatred finds it’s roots in replacement theology which essentially teaches that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan. Adherents of replacement theology believe the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, and God does not have specific future plans for the nation of Israel.
If you are anti-Semitic, you are literally embracing evil itself.
And you can see it in their eyes.  You can literally see the evil in the eyes of anti-Semitic terrorists in the Middle East, in the eyes of crazed skinheads in Europe, and in the eyes of deranged extremists in the United States.
I love the Jewish people, and I am proud to stand with Israel.  We are not going to put up with anti-Semitism, and we are going to fight it wherever it is found.
Prophecy News Watch April 30, 2019
(Publisher’s comments: One of the reasons that this issue is so difficult for Christian believers to decipher between the right and wrong position to take on the Jewish issue is because of the liberal and Anti-American activities that are sponsored by organizations such as the ACLU, the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center. We could mention many more wicked areas of Jewish influence such as entertainment, psychology and finance. However, if one is honest you can find gentile influence in all of these areas as well, even more so in the long run. The crucifixion of Christ could have never taken place without the permission of Rome. Based on scripture the Jews do not “control the world.” According to Daniels Prophecy the thigh and Legs were of iron, which depicts Rome. The UK and America are an extension of Rome. You can’t practice law or medicine without the Latin language. We have not had a Jewish state since David and Solomon and won’t have a Jewish state until David’s greater son Jesus comes again and establishes His Kingdom in Jerusalem and rules over the entire world. I would suggest that all reread Romans Ch. 11. “Hath God cast away His people?” This speaks of His earthly people the Jews. No, He hasn’t. He said that they would return to their land in unbelief and they have, and they are going to go through great Tribulation, but they will be converted in their land, many of them before Christ comes and the rest when He comes.
Until these things are fulfilled we need to be about “our Father’s business” until he comes. He said, “Mt 28:19-20 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.)

RENT-A-CHILD SERVICES THRIVING AT THE BORDER

RENT-A-CHILD SERVICES THRIVING AT THE BORDER

When a child becomes a get-out-of-detention-free card

BY MATTHEW VADUM
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Mindful of the leftist-led uproar over family separations at the border, immigration scammers are now taking advantage of American good will by “renting” children for cash to illegal aliens crossing the border to help them obtain quick release by the U.S. Border Patrol. Depending on where you sit, it’s either human-trafficking or social-justice entrepreneurship in action. It was made possible when a leftist, Obama-appointed judge arrogated to herself the role of creating U.S. immigration policy and in the process incentivized the behavior.
Being accompanied by a child is a get-out-of-detention-free card, Charlotte Cuthbertson reports in The Epoch Times.
“You can walk through any of our processing centers and you can see that there are potentially parents, or adults with children, that there may not be a familial relationship,” said Raul Ortiz, Border Patrol chief for Del Rio, Texas.
“There’s probably many more cases like that happening across all nine southwest border sectors on any given day. Really, if you think about it, it’s human trafficking.”
“These kids are being trafficked through multiple countries and put through terrible conditions,” Ortiz said. “If we don’t do something to stop this, if we don’t make a stand on the border security and immigration problem right now, there’s going to be more of these kids that are going to be subjected to some serious harm.”
The news report came as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced it is shipping agents and experts to the border to “investigate child smuggling and document fraud used to exploit family immigration loopholes.”
In 2014, under 1 percent of all men detained by the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley Sector had a child with them. Now the figure is 50 percent, according to Rodolfo Karisch, the sector’s chief Border Patrol agent.
In both fiscal 2016 and 2017, about 77,000 individuals arrived as members of a family, but by the fiscal 2008 the figure had soared to 107,000. In the first six months of fiscal 2019, which began Oct. 1, 2018, the fiscal-year-to-date figure has skyrocketed to nearly 190,000.
The overwhelming majority come from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras.
These big figures can be traced back to decisions rendered in 2015 and later by  U.S. District Judge Dolly Maizie Gee of the Central District of California who found the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in contempt of the Flores Settlement Agreement of 1979, which arose out of a court case called Flores v. Reno. The settlement established standards for the detention and release of unaccompanied minors taken into custody by immigration authorities. The settlement mandates that the government try to place the minors with a parent, legal guardian, adult relative, or a licensed program.
Gee ruled that any child, including those with parents, cannot be detained more than 20 days, which means asylum claimants are now routinely released before their claims are finally determined. The cases, which are growing in number, cannot be adjudicated in such an abbreviated period, so many of those detained can’t be held for long.
“Make no mistake about it, the word is getting out: if you are part of a family, if you bring a child, you will be released,” Karisch told a U.S. Senate panel April 9.
The Border Patrol recently intercepted a text message from an MS-13 gang member who was posing as a member of a family unit.
The message stated: “You should see the amount of Hondurans that are traveling with a child. And they pay less to the smugglers in order to be delivered to the Border Patrol. And it’s a direct trip. They have them a few days with Border Patrol and afterwards, they are released. There are a lot of people with that law. That is the easiest way right now. Entire families are coming.”
A group of 35 illegal aliens was captured by the Border Patrol on April 18 in the Rio Grande Valley.
One woman, who claimed to be five months pregnant, reported that her spouse and child had crossed the international border on a different day together as a family unit.
Families are now splitting up and crossing the border to make sure everyone in their party is released soon after apprehension, according to Carlos Ruiz, a Border Patrol agent in the valley.
“Because if they came as a whole family … we can hold one of the parents for however long we want to,” Ruiz said “We’re not going to separate the child from either the mother or the father, but we will separate the father or the mother from them.”
In the Yuma, Arizona sector, every day an average of three fake families surface.
Sector Chief Anthony Porvaznik said in the previous six months his agents have identified 550 fraudulent family units.
“And we know we’ve missed many, many more, simply because we’re overwhelmed with the sheer numbers,” he said.
“And so those are kids that are being rented, for lack of a better word, to an adult to format a fraudulent family unit so that they can be released in the United States and then that child will be recycled back to its country of origin—usually Guatemala, in our case here in Yuma.”
Some adult border-crossers are altering their birth documents to indicate they are juveniles, to guarantee a speedy release from custody inside the U.S., Porvaznik said.
“So there’s a huge fraud problem that’s going on with this process,” he said.
“Our agents do a great job with trying to detect [fraud], but the problem is, is when we have 1,000, 1,100 people in custody, really our goal is to get those people processed … we need to move those people out of our custody.”
And if these fraud-happy border-jumpers and illegal aliens wait around long enough, they’ll receive amnesty and all will be forgiven.

ROB BELL'S NEW GOD

ROB BELL'S NEW GOD 
BY DAVID CLOUD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
May 1, 2019 (first published July 7, 2011)
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
Rob Bell’s book Love Wins stirred up something of a hornet’s nest of controversy among “evangelicals” when it was published in 2011, which we found puzzling. The man had been denying eternal hell and teaching a universalistic faith for a long time.  In a 2005 interview with Beliefnet, Bell said “the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever.”  In his influential book Velvet Elvis, which is popular with a great many Southern Baptists, he described a wedding that he conducted for two pagan unbelievers who told him that “they didn’t want any Jesus or God or Bible or religion to be talked about” but they did want him to “make it really spiritual” (p. 76). Bell agreed with this ridiculous request and said that his pagan friends “are resonating with Jesus, whether they acknowledge it or not” (p. 92).  Love Wins is just more of the same. Not only does he preach near-universalism, he preaches a false god, a false christ, a false gospel, a false heaven, a false hell, you name it. He is a master of taking Scripture out of context and shoehorning his heresies into a text.  Though Bell has denied that he believes in universalism, he certainly makes a case for it in this book, though he might have left room for some folk to wind up for awhile in some type of hell. Consider two of many quotes we could offer as evidence:  “This insistence that God will be united and reconciled with all people is a theme the writers and prophets return to again and again. ... The God that Jesus teaches us about doesn’t give up until everything that was lost is found. This God simply doesn’t give up. Ever” (Love Wins, Kindle location 1259-1287).  “The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God. And so, beginning with the early church, there is a long tradition of Christians who believe that God will ultimately restore everything and everybody” (Love Wins, location 1339-1365).  Bell even claims that Sodom and Gomorrah will be restored (location 1057-1071, 1071-1082).  Bell has nothing but ridicule for the gospel that Jesus died for man’s sins and that only those who repent and believe will be saved. “What happens when a fifteen-year-old atheist dies? Was there a three-year window when he could have made a decision to change his eternal destiny? Did he miss his chance? ... What exactly would have had to happen in that three-year window to change his future? ... Some believe he would have had to say a specific prayer. Christians don’t agree on exactly what this prayer is, but for many the essential idea is that the only way to et into heaven is to pray at some point in your life, asking God to forgive you and telling God that you accept Jesus, you believe Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for your sins, and you want to go to heaven when you die. Some call this ‘accepting Christ,’ others all it the ‘sinner’s prayer,’ and still others call it ‘getting saved,’ being ‘born again,’ or being ‘converted” (Love Wins, location 129-143). While ridiculing the “repent and believe” gospel, Bell is perfectly happy with a works gospel: “How do you make sure you’ll be a part of the new thing God is going to do? How do you best become the kind of person whom God could entrust with significant responsibility in the age to come? The standard answer was: live the commandments. God has shown you how to live. Live that way. The more you become a person of peace and justice and worship and generosity, the more actively you participate now in ordering and working to bring about God’s kind of world, the more ready you will be to assume an even greater role in the age to come” (Love Wins, location 538-565).  In true heretic fashion, Bell redefines Biblical terms.  He defines heaven as a present reality: “In Matthew 20 the mother of two of Jesus’s disciples says to Jesus, ‘Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and other at your left in your kingdom.’ ... She understood heaven to be about partnering with God to make a new and better world, one with increasingly complex and expansive expressions and dimensions of shalom, creativity, beauty, and design” (Love Wins, location 630-643). “Jesus invites us, in this life, in this broken, beautiful world, to experience the life of heaven now” (Love Wins, location 798-822). He defines hell as a present reality: “God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it. ... There are individual hells, and communal, society-wide hells, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously” (Love Wins, location 920-932, 1008-1020). “We need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep within our hearts all the way to the massive-society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way. And for that, the word ‘hell’ works quite well” (Love Wins, location 1183-1189). He says the statements in Bible about hell being a place of fire and torment are mere poetry: “Some agony needs agonizing language. Some destruction does make you think of fire. Some betrayal actually feels like you’ve been burned. Some injustices do cause things to heat up” (Love Wins, location 944-958). Bell even claims that heaven and hell are “within each other, intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other” (Love Wins, location 2031-2045). Bell claims that Jesus die not preach about hell in order to motivate people to be saved. “Jesus did not use hell to try and compel ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’ to believe in God, so they wouldn’t burn when they die” (Love Wins, location 1045-1057). Bell defines the “everlasting punishment” of Matthew 25:46 as “‘a period of pruning” or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of correction” (Love Wins, location 1056-1170). He says, “Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of forever” (location 1170-1183). 
REJECTING THE GOD OF HIS GRANDPARENTS 
Emergents such as Brian McLaren and Rob Bell are boldly and brashly rejecting the God of their grandparents. They are not just rejecting some doctrines their Christian grandparents believed; they are rejecting the God that their grandparents worshiped. Bell’s God is not the thrice holy Lawgiver who hates sin. In Love Wins there is a photo of a painting that hung on a wall in Bell’s grandmother’s house. It depicts heaven as a shining city on the far side of a dark, burning, fearsome chasm. Bridging the chasm is a cross upon which people are walking toward safety. When Bell asked his sister if she remembered the painting, she replied, “Of course, it gave us all the creeps.”  As well it should if you aren’t saved! The painting depicts the truth of the gospel. There is a heaven and there is a hell and only through regenerating faith in Christ’s cross can hell be escaped.  Bell has plainly rejected the doctrine of heaven and hell that his grandparents held: “Are there other ways to think about heaven, other than as that perfect floating shiny city hanging suspended there in the air above that ominous red and black realm with all that smoke and steam and hissing fire? I say yes, there are” (Love Wins, Kindle location 357-368). But Bell has gone even further. He has rejected the God his grandparents worshipped.  Bell claims that the God who would allow multitudes to go to eternal hell is not great or mighty (Love Wins, location 1189-1229). He calls the preaching of eternal hell “misguided and toxic,” a “cheap view of God,” and “lethal” (location 47-60, 2154-2180). He implies that this God is not a true friend and protector; he says there is something wrong with this God and calls Him “terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable” (location 1273-1287, 2098-2113). He even says that if an earthly father acted like the God who sends people to hell “we could contact child protection services immediately” (location 2085-2098). It is obvious that Bell wants nothing to do with the God worshiped by his grandparents.  Bell’s god is more akin to New Age panentheism than the God of the Bible. He describes God as “a force, an energy, a being calling out to us in many languages, using a variety of methods and events” (Love Wins, location 1710-1724). “There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, the mystics call it ‘Spirit,’ and Obi-Wan called it ‘the Force’” (Love Wins, location 1749-1762). Bell also worships a false christ. His Jesus is “supracultural ... present within all cultures ... refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture ... He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him ... there is only one mountain, but many paths. ... People come to Jesus in all sorts of ways ... Sometimes people use his name; other times they don’t” (Love Wins, location 1827-1840, 1865-1878, 1918-1933). It is not surprising, then, that Bell recommends that his readers sit at the feet of Ken Wilber, who believes in the divinity of man.  “For a mind-blowing introduction to emergence theory and divine creativity, set aside three months and read Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 192).  The god described in Love Wins is the very same god depicted in the novel The Shack by William Young. The book is all about redefining God. It is about a man whose becomes bitter at God after his daughter is murdered and has a life-changing experience with God in the very shack where the murder occurred; but the God he encounters is most definitely not the God of the Bible. Young says the book is for those with “a longing that God is as kind and loving as we wish he was” (interview with Sherman Hu, Dec. 4, 2007). What he is referring to is the desire on the part of the natural man for a God who loves “unconditionally” and does not require obedience, does not require repentance, does not judge sin, and does not make men feel guilty for what they do.  In that same interview, Young said that a woman wrote to him and said that her 22-year-old daughter came to her after reading the book and asked, “IS IT ALRIGHT IF I DIVORCE THE OLD GOD AND MARRY THE NEW ONE?”  This is precisely what the emerging church generation is doing. Young admits that the God of “The Shack” is different from the traditional God of Bible-believing Christianity. He says that the God who “watches from a distance and judges sin” is “a Christianized version of Zeus.” This reminds me of the modernist G. Bromley Oxnam, who called the God of the Old Testament “a dirty bully” in his 1944 book “Preaching in a Revolutionary Age.”  Young depicts the triune God as a young Asian woman named “Sarayu” * (supposedly the Holy Spirit), an oriental carpenter who loves to have a good time (supposedly Jesus), and an older black woman named “Elousia” (supposedly God the Father). God the Father is also depicted as a guy with a ponytail and a goatee. (* The name “Sarayu” is from the Hindu scriptures and represents a mythical river in India on the shores of which the Hindu god Rama was born.) Young’s god is the god of the emerging church. He is cool, loves rock & roll, is non-judgmental, does not exercise wrath toward sin, does not send unbelievers to an eternal fiery hell, does not require repentance and the new birth, puts no obligations on people, doesn’t like traditional Bible churches, does not accept the Bible as the infallible Word of God, and does not mind if the early chapters of the Bible are interpreted as “myth.” (See “The Shack’s Cool God” at the Way of Life web site, www.wayoflife.org.) 
FULLER SEMINARY PRESIDENT PRAISES ROB BELL’S BOOK 
 Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, told USA Today that “Rob Bell’s newly-released Love Wins is a fine book and that I basically agree with his theology” (“The Orthodoxy of Rob Bell,” Christian Post, Mar. 20, 2011). This tells us just how terribly far Fuller Seminary has fallen from its roots in Charles Fuller’s “only through the blood” evangelistic ministry. Mouw agrees with Bell that it is wrong to say, “Accept Jesus right now, because if ten minutes from now you die without accepting this offer God will punish you forever in the fires of hell.” Mouw comments, “What kind of God are we presenting to the person?” The answer is the God of the Bible and the God that was preached by the founders of Fuller Theological Seminary. It is Bell and Mouw who have the new god. Mouw says that after a rabbi friend of his died, he “held out the hope that when he saw Jesus he would acknowledge that it was Him all along, and that Jesus would welcome him into the heavenly realm.” I’ve never read anything like that in the Bible, but C.S. Lewis taught this very thing. Mouw says that those who question Mother Teresa’s salvation just because she believed a false gospel should be ashamed of themselves. Mouw implies that Bell’s critics just want to keep people out of heaven, which is patently ridiculous and slanderous. Mouw would have us believe that he is more compassionate than Jesus, who stated very bluntly, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:35). Both Bell and Mouw complain about their “critics,” but they don’t draw back from lashing out pretty fiercely at the “fundamentalists.” Bell calls hellfire preaching “lethal,” “toxic,” “unloving,” “creepy,” a “cheap view of God.” No judgmental criticism there! Nothing but compassionate, tolerant dialogue!  
“CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL” HYPOCRISY  
 Some of the “conservative” evangelicals are criticizing Rob Bell in a pretty strong way. John Piper tweeted, “Good bye, Rob Bell.” Albert Mohler, Jr. of Southern Baptist Seminary described Bell’s view as “Velvet Hell.” I’m glad to see a bit of backbone among some evangelicals and a level of doctrinal conviction that would drive them to actually name the name of a false teacher, but it appears very hypocritical at the same time. The view that atheists and pagan religionists might be saved without submitting to Jesus Christ is not new. Billy Graham has been saying it for decades, but I don’t recall any outcry from the evangelical world, including from Graham’s own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. In an interview with McCall’s magazine, January 1978, entitled “I Can’t Play God Any More,” Graham said: “I used to believe that pagans in far-off countries were lost—were going to hell—if they did not have the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them. I no longer believe that. … I believe that there are other ways of recognizing the existence of God—through nature, for instance—and plenty of other opportunities, therefore, of saying ‘yes’ to God.” In 1985, Graham affirmed his belief that those outside of Christ might be saved. Los Angeles reporter David Colker asked Graham: “What about people of other faiths who live good lives but don’t profess a belief in Christ?” Graham replied, “I’m going to leave that to the Lord. He’ll decide that” (Los Angeles Herald Examiner, July 22, 1985). In 1993, Graham repeated this doctrine in an interview with David Frost. “And I think there is that hunger for God and people are living as best they know how according to the light that they have. Well, I think they’re in a separate category than people like Hitler and people who have just defied God, and shaken their fists at God. … I would say that God, being a God of mercy, we have to rest it right there, and say that God is a God of mercy and love, and how it happens, we don’t know” (The Charlotte Observer, Feb. 16, 1993). In an interview with Robert Schuller in May 1997, Graham again said that he believes people in other religions can be saved without consciously believing in Jesus Christ. “[God’s] calling people out of the world for His name, whether WHETHER THEY COME FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD, OR THE BUDDHIST WORLD, OR THE CHRISTIAN WORLD OR THE NON-BELIEVING WORLD, THEY ARE MEMBERS OF THE BODY OF CHRIST BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN CALLED BY GOD. THEY MAY NOT EVEN KNOW THE NAME OF JESUS but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don't have, and they turn to the only light that they have, and I think that they are saved, and that they're going to be with us in heaven” (television interview of Billy Graham by Robert Schuller, broadcast in southern California, Saturday, May 31, 1997). What is Rob Bell saying today that Billy Graham hasn’t been saying for more than 30 years?  
C.S. LEWIS’S INFLUENCE ON THE EVANGELICAL DOWNGRADE OF HELL  
 C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) has been called a “Superstar” by Christianity Today. A 1998 CT poll rated Lewis the most influential evangelical writer, and In light of the wretched spiritual-doctrinal-moral condition of “evangelicalism” today, that is a very telling statistic and certainly no praise for C.S. Lewis.  One of the ways that Lewis has influenced evangelicalism is in the fundamental issues of hell and the exclusiveness of salvation through the name of Christ. Lewis said that it would not be very wrong to pray to Apollo, because to do so would be to “address Christ sub specie Apollonius” (C.S. Lewis to Chad Walsh, May 23, 1960, cited from George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis, 1994, p. 378).  Lewis claimed that sincere followers of pagan religions can be saved without personal faith in Jesus Christ (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco edition, 2001, pp. 64, 208, 209). In the popular Chronicles of Narnia series, which has influenced countless children, Lewis taught that those who sincerely serve the devil (called Tash) are actually serving Christ (Aslan) and will eventually be accepted by God. “But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.’ ... Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him’” (The Last Battle, chapter 15, “Further Up and Further In”).  Lewis also denied the finality of one’s destiny at death. He taught the possibility of repentance beyond this life. This is the theme of The Great Divorce. “Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven? ‘It depends on the way ye’re using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand’” (The Great Divorce).  In this book Lewis taught that questions such as the finality of men’s destiny and purgatory and eternal destinies cannot be understood in this present life and we should not fret about them.  “Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it’s ill talking of such questions. ‘Because they are too terrible, Sir?’ ‘No. Because all answers deceive” (The Great Divorce, Kindle location 140-150). In light of these views, it is not surprising that Lewis has been cited as a major influence by evangelicals who are soft on hell and near-universalists.  Clark Pinnock said, “When I was a young believer in the 1950s, C.S. Lewis helped me understand the relationship between Christianity and other religions in an inclusivist way” (More Than One Way?Zondervan, 1996, p. 107).  Richard Mouw says, “If I were given the assignment of writing a careful theological essay on ‘The Eschatology of Rob Bell,’ I would begin by laying out the basics of C.S. Lewis’s perspective on heaven and hell” (“The Orthodoxy of Rob Bell,” Christian Post, March 20, 2011).  In the acknowledgements section of Love Wins, Rob Bell writes, “... to my parents, Rob and Helen, for suggesting when I was in high school that I read C.S. Lewis.” Beware of C.S. Lewis. That he is loved with equal fervor by “conservative evangelicals,” hell-denying emergents, Christian rockers, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and even some atheists is a fact that speaks volumes to those who have ears to hear. There is really nothing that Rob Bell is teaching today that was not first taught by C.S. Lewis.