Lest the Scots forget

In his May 24 op-ed, “Church of Scotland must end its war on Judaism,” Ben Cohen castigates the Church of Scotland for its long and ongoing anti-Israel stance. That church would do well to look into their own Bibles, which their adherents bring each week to church.

Allow me to respectfully suggest that they open their Bibles, and turn to the book of the prophet Ezekiel. There they can read the prophet’s description of his vision of a valley that was filled with dry bones, and his prophecy that the people of Israel would return to live and thrive in their own land. Not someone else’s.

If the Church of Scotland has a problem with Israel’s right to its land, allow me to respectfully suggest that they turn in their Bibles once and for all, and replace them with anti-Israel tomes, which are, unfortunately, readily available in bookstores that are fully stocked with polemical works about the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.

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One final suggestion: The Church of Scotland would do well to track down and read a biography of Orde Wingate, who, I believe, was partly Scottish. Wingate was an Arabic-speaking British army officer who was assigned to British-ruled Palestine in the late 1930s. Long regarded as an eccentric, Wingate developed original and unique tactics for use in warfare. As a Bible-reading and Bible-believing religious Christian, Wingate came to relate to and identify with the Jewish settlers in northern Palestine, where he was stationed. There he took it upon himself to train young Jewish fighters in the underground Haganah, including Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, to help him quell an ongoing Arab revolt (led by Haj Amin el-Husseini, known as the Grand Mufti) against Jewish immigration and British rule of the country. Over the years, Wingate’s unorthodox tactics, taking the fight to the enemy’s territory, became standard for the Israeli military.