Onward Christian Soldiers

By AM Saturday, March 2, 2013

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Ex-Blanket columnist Dr John Coulter is an ardent supporter of the state of Israel. In this controversial column which he penned for the Irish Daily Star of 25 February, he argues the contentious case as to why all Irish Christians should follow his example in his support of Israel.


Irish Christians needs to take their heads out of the sand and start openly supporting Hamas-battered Israel. With the North’s marching season already kicking off weeks earlier because of the Union flag dispute, already Israeli and Palestinian flags have started to flutter in loyalist and republican strongholds.

The Irish Churches must understand that whatever happens in the Middle East in the coming weeks, too, will have serious implications for the so-called Christian West.

Two people have had a real impact on me in writing today’s column – Daniel Taub, the UK’s Israeli Ambassador, and a young Palestinian Christian girl, who can only be called Christy, because of the persecutions against her family in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.

What scares me is just how close the West is to World War 3. While I have always regarded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinegad as a complete nutball, Ambassador Taub left me in no doubt how serious Iran’s nuclear threat has become.

Mad Mahmoud’s nuke programme has produced seven tonnes of enriched uranium – enough for FIVE atomic bombs! And guess where this Iranian nutter wants to drop them, yes you’ve got it – on Israel!

The hard reality is that the West needs to pull out of Afghanistan and get ready to go into Iran before Mad Mahoud starts pushing red buttons all over the place. And it’s no use sending a drone to blow up the Iranian President. His supporters will just replace him with another nutter.

Syria is just as unstable. It is simply one bunch of Islamic militants fighting another equally sadistic band of Islamic militants.

Egypt, once the pillar of stability in the Middle Eastern Arab world, is dominated by the hardline Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is second only to Ahmadinegad in its hatred of Israel.

But the real danger seems to be in the Sinai desert, scene of some of the great Arab/Israeli tank battles of the 20th century. Many of the radical Islamic gangs in this area have been armed by weapons smuggled out of Libya after the death of tyrant Muammar Gaddafi.

The big problem is that many of these heavily armed gangs are linked to the global Al Qaeda movement.

This crisis cannot simply be dismissed by the Irish Churches as a muslim, Jewish or Middle East problem. The American State Department has already warned that at least half a dozen Islamic radical terrorist cells are based in Ireland, north and south.

There have even been suggestions some elements of the dissident republican movement have reached a terrorist agreement with Islamic fundamentalist groups, in the same way the Provos teamed up with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

But the real ethnic cleansing in the Middle East is the killing of Palestinian Christians by radicals, especially from Hamas, which wants a new Holocaust against Christians.

Christy said the Christian population of Bethlehem had dropped from 85 per cent in 1987 to 9 per cent last year. A common taunt from the Islamic radicals to Christians is – “First we finish with the Saturday people, and then the Sunday people.”

The Irish Christian community needs to stop any trendy Israel-bashing and start shouting out about the plight of the Jewish people and Palestinian Christians; the latter getting virtually nothing of the global aid going to Hamas.

And if you want to know how bad it could become if Christians don’t stand up for Israel – just visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland where one and a half million Jews were butchered.