Christian Identity

The picture shows Israeli PM, Binyamin Natanyahu, at a memorial service for Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson. Patterson was an early supporter of the Zionist cause, a military figure who helped train Jewish soldiers, and a believer in British Israel (see below). This belief holds that the Lost Ten Tribes gave rise to the British and related peoples. Millions of people once held such beliefs and very many still do. Historically they were of importance and still may be. See: "The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist & Nationalistic Ideas in Europe," by Leon Poliakov, 1996.

The question was:
When and how do the members of the Christian Identity believe that the "modern fake Jews" "supplanted" the "real Jews"?

Christian Identity (CI) says that Western Peoples are descended from Israelites. They also claim that the present-day Jews are not of Israelite stock but foreigners from elsewhere and identifiable as the enemy.
Where did this idea come from and what is its origin?

Christian Identity (CI) and the BIWF
Christian Identity (CI) adopted beliefs held by British Israel adherents. This included anti-Jewish prejudices whose virulence was intensified by CI. British Israel had not always been anti-Semitic. Its early leaders (e.g. John Wilson and Edward Hine) had once held philo-Semitic (i.e. pro-Jewish) attitudes and some of its adherents still do. British Israel is now in the eyes of the public mainly represented by the BIWF (British Israel World Federation) founded in 1919 as an umbrella organization of several British Israel groups. As indicated, the term "British Israel" is often used as synonymous with the BIWF but this is not an exact correlation. The anti-Jewish aspect of the BIWF is a relatively recent development. It was not there in the beginning. It is there now. Anti-Jewish beliefs very similar to those of Christian Identity are now held by many leading members of the BIWF. This is not however a unanimous attitude. In practice, many members of the BIWF and some of its branches are actually favorable to Zionism, pro-Israel and not anti-Jewish. The anti-Jewish problem seems to be mainly with the leading branch of the BIWF which is in England and presently under the aegis of Secretary Michael Clark.

Beliefs
The beliefs of BIWF and CI are a synthesis of various doctrines:
Below is a listing of the various ideological concepts common to these groups with an emphasis on the anti-Jewish ones. The relative importance given to each one of these doctrines varies from one group to another and from one era to another. Some of the doctrines may seem to be contradictory and so they are,

They claim that:

• # The Children of Israel were divided into two sections: Judah and the Ten Tribes. Judah and the Ten Tribes are the Chosen People.
• # The Lost Ten Tribes are to be found among Western Peoples. The Lost Ten Tribes are distinct from Judah.
• # They say that, the Jews as we know them are not really descendants of "Judah" but either Canaanites or Edomites or others who converted to Judaism and have a pernicious influence on the world scene. CI now goes further and identifies the Jews as the Serpent Seed of Satan.
• # Judah (as distinct from the Ten Tribes) became the German People. This is according to many in CI. The BIWF, on the other hand seems today to identify Judah not with Ashkenazi Jews but rather with a small minority of Sephardic Jews who converted to Christianity some while ago in Britain.
• # Mankind is divided into Races. The White Aryan race they hold is superior to all. The colored races are lower than the others. Israelites or stock akin to Israelites gave rise to the Aryan peoples. [The BIWF these days actually has its own extensive missionary program teaching Christianity to Black people from Africa. Do not expect ideological consistency from these people. The BIWF in the last few decades has come to stress the Christian Faith aspect and in a de facto sense distances itself from traditional British Israel ancestral notions.]
• # Classical Replacement Doctrine i.e. Christianity replaced the Jews as the Chosen People. True Christians are Israel. The Jews did not accept the Christian Savior but killed him. The Jews have therefore been disowned.

Personal Researches
I, Yair Davidiy, am the author of this article. I also believe that the Lost Ten Tribes are among Western Peoples. A movement encouraging research on this matter exists in Israel. It is known as "Brit-Am." Yair Davidiy heads Brit-Am. Yair is Jewish by religion and ancestry and approaches the subject from a Biblical Jewish point of view. I have written several books and numerous articles on the subject. I did research about it. The National Library in Jerusalem has a large stock of BIWF and related literature in its archives. In my researches I read a good portion of what was available. My impression was that in the beginning the BIWF took a benign, even positive, attitude towards Jews. Later from the 1930s onwards a pseudo-scientific approach crept in. This was influenced by Continental racialism, racial pseudo-science as it was then understood, and Biblical Criticism (sic) which was both anti-Bible and anti-Semitic. Negative prejudices against the Jews began to be incorporated. Ethnically, in addition to Israelites the British Isles and related nations also contain many from Edom and elsewhere. They had arrived together with the Ten Tribes as a result of Assyrian domination. Since the CI and BIWF accuse the Jews of being Edomites and some of them seem obsessed with it we may suggest that, to some degree, they may well themselves be of such origin.

Early Days of the BIWF and Christian Identity I Aberration
Historically beliefs that at least some of the various peoples who populated the West were of Israelite origin are as old as Christianity or older. I found written references (in Old French) from the 1600s from the Netherlands and from earlier elsewhere. Nevertheless, the BIWF seems to now attribute the origins of their movement to Christian Jewish apostates of Sephardic stock such as Dr. Abadie in 1732. After that came others such as Richard Brothers from 1794 onwards. John Wilson (1840), who identified the Germans with Assyrians, and Edward Hine (1871) followed. A useful work dealing with the more recent developments concerning the BIWF and CI is "Christian Identity. The Aryan American Bloodline Religion," by Chester L. Quarles, USA, 2004. The first openly anti-Jewish British Israelite writer of note (says Quarles) was W.H. Poole of Canada in the 1880s. The anti-Semitic creed spread to the USA. There was Gerald A. K. Smith, Wesley Smith, and Ellsworth Perkins. At some stage the North American adherents adopted the appellation €œChristian Identity€ instead of "British-Israel" or "Anglo-Israel" that had previously been used. William J. Cameron was especially important in the USA. Cameron was the editor of the Dearborn Independent, a pro-Nazi publication funded by Henry Ford. A Wikipedia article on "Christian Identity" traces its ideological origins not only to British Israel but also to German Volkisch beliefs that preceded Nazism and influenced it. The present Aryan Nations movement is described as a break-off of Klu Klax Klan members who have picked out various Christian Identity beliefs from different sources.

Good Gentiles of Similar (but pro-Jewish) Belief

We emphasized that not all British Israel adherents are against the Jews. Some are pro-Jewish. For the sake of balance, it is worth noting that important friends of Jews and advocates of Jewish rights have also believed in British Israel type doctrines.
Three examples are:

Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 - 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ri...

Meinertzhagen was of Danish ancestry. He had achievements in the military sphere having served in Africa and Palestine as it was then known. Meinertzhagen became a strong advocate of the Zionist cause. He believed in British Israel.

John Henry Patterson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo...)

Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, DSO (10 November 1867 - 18 June 1947), known as J. H. Patterson, was an Irish born British soldier, hunter, author and Christian Zionist, best known for his book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907), which details his experiences while building a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in British East Africa (now Kenya) in 1898-99.

In world War-1 Patterson had commanded Jewish forces serving in the British Armies. These included "both the Zion Mule Corps and later the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (also known as the Jewish Legion) which would eventually serve as the foundation of the Israeli Defence Force decades later. "
Patterson also believed in British Israel.

Orde Wingate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Or...
Orde Charles Wingate DSO & Two Bars (26 February 1903 = 24 March 1944) was a senior British Army officer, known for his creation of the Chindit deep-penetration missions in Japanese-held territory during the Burma Campaign of World War II.

Prior to World War-2 Wingate had been appointed as a military intelligence officer in the British Mandate of Palestine. Wingate helped train the Jewish militia known as the Haganah. His methods and doctrines are still applied today in the IDF. His Jewish peers referred to him as "Ha-Yedid" i.e. "The Friend." Wingate believed in British Israel [See a remark on this matter in the biography of Wingate by Christopher Sykes].