I am writing to explain why I want to renounce Israeli citizenship. 

When I originally moved to Israel in 1982, I told my mother that I would either live as a Jew in a Jewish land or return to America and convert to Christianity. 

I moved to Israel and joined the Chozer b'Tshuva movement and lived as an Charedi Orthodox Jew from 1983-1999. In 1985 I officially made aliyah and obtained Israeli citizenship.

In the year 2000 I was converted to Christianity through the help of South African missionaries I met in Israel. I was baptized in a natural spring outside of Tzfat on June 20, 2000. 

Since that time, my sense of identification with Israel has diminished. Even prior to my baptism, following a period of hospitalization in Jerusalem during which time I became friendly with some of the male Palestinian nurses who worked there, I had begun to doubt many aspects of Zionist ideology. As I learned about the many similarities between Jewish and Islamic religious law, I recognized the tragic nature of the confrontation between these two cultures promoted by Zionism. 

This process of disillusionment accelerated in 2005, when I worked as a security guard for Mikud Security in Jerusalem and saw on a daily basis how Arabs were mistreated by Israeli authorities. I also perceived the impoverishment of the average Israeli citizen and recognized that s/he has much in common with the Palestinian population, both of whom are oppressed and manipulated by their respective power elites who profit by perpetuating conflict, war, and misery. 

I tried to join various Messianic organizations in Jerusalem, such as King of Kings and Shemen Sasson, in 2005, but I found that virtually all of them identify with the racist and militaristic policies of the Israeli Government that I believe totally contradict the teachings of Jesus Christ, by perpetuating a climate of aggressive enmity against Arabs, both Moslem and Christian. 

Not only are Arabs persecuted by Israeli Zionists, but so are Messianic Jewish believers in Jesus. I have followed closely the plight of the Jewish missionaries in Arad, Eddie and Lura Beckford, and I am horrified at the nonchalance of the authorities in Arad about their abuse at the hands of the fanatics from the Gerrer Chassidic movement: http://roshpinaproject.wordpress.com/tag/arad/  

I also personally suffered discrimination in Israel when I was fired from my security job in 2005 for expressing Christian beliefs to my employer. I had not even tried to proselytize to him, but merely protested when he told a distasteful anti-Christian joke. That was enough to see my position terminated. 

When I flew back to the USA on December 23, 2005, I told the security guard at Ben Gurion airport: "You may laugh and scoff at Christians, but were it not for the generosity of Christian nations like the USA and Germany, Israel would be just a piece of rotten wood floating in the Mediterranean." 

The writings of Christopher Bollyn (www.bollyn.com/index.php) and other intrepid journalists and researchers about the complicity of Israeli and American Jewish Zionist fanatics (i.e. "Neocons") in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States reveal the ruthless depravity of the Israeli State and confirm my worst fears about its essential anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian character, which indeed is the spirit of the anti-Christ. 

Now the latest outrageous Israeli attack against the humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Flotilla has catalyzed my final decision to renounce Israeli citizenship. I realize that I no longer can identify with the values of Zionism. Instead I embrace the gentle and hopeful vision of Jesus Christ, who created One New Man in Christ, encompassing both Jew and Gentile, including people of every race, creed, and tongue in what He taught is the New Israel of God.  

I believe that the Zionist State of Israel not only contradicts this Messianic Vision of Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah known in Hebrew as Yeshua Hamoshiach - ישוע המשיח, but it represents an sinister step backward in the general struggle of all humanity to rise above petty tribalism and primitive savagery to more humane and godly ways of both belief and behavior. 

I also have been inspired by the examples of Gilad Atzmon, whose article below is a searing indictment of all that is wrong with contemporary Israeli society, Reuven Schossen, whose writings about the depredations of Israel are shocking, and Avigail Abarbanel, who renounced Israeli citizenship in 2001. 

For all these reasons I wish to renounce Israeli citizenship immediately. 

Shalom rak beShem Yeshua, 

Michael Korn

M.Z. 01197343-5 

PS The name that appears on Israeli documents is "Menachem" Korn

www.henrymakow.com/messianic_jew_renounces_israel.html