SHAFAQNA – Notorious for his bigotry and racist comments against Israel’s 2.2% Christian population and being the head of Israel’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, Israel’s belligerent defense minister Avigdor Lieberman attacked his country’s 168,000 Christians calling them ‘fifth column’ and denounced the avid American Protestant missionaries for seeking to convert Israel’s dwindling Jewish population and propagate Christianity.
Addressing a joint press conference in late April, Mr. Lieberman reiterated that the State of Israel shall remain a democratic entity, though warned that the Israeli government will vigilantly thwart any proselytizing of Jews by American missionaries whose sympathies lie with ‘terrorist Palestinian groups’.
“To those Christian so-called peace activists, I shall say their pernicious actions of opposing the unquestionable nature of Israel’s religious identity, amount to complicity in crimes against innocent Israeli citizens,” said Israel’s Soviet-born Israeli official, adding, Jesus the Nazarite sought to change the divine foundation of Judaism that ultimately doomed to failure and thus God condemned him and brought upon him nothing but excruciating death.
Israel during the past decades diligently strived to assert itself as the guardian of Christian sites in the disputed city of Jerusalem though the emergence of extremist Jewish parties—namely Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu —party in Israeli politics jeopardized Israel’s claims as of being a religiously tolerant country.
Having been lambasted by human rights organizations for his earlier inflammatory comments against Israel’s %5 Arab populations — threatening to decapitate all Arab-Israeli citizens who are not loyal to the Jewish State of Israel–, Lieberman’s recent remarks may harbinger Israel’s yearning for fresh war with its neighbours.