This what happens when single issue voters applaud the appointment of anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court while ignoring, or remaining oblivious to, the fact that these same justices are strongly biased toward pro-corporate, anti-worker policies.
The Supreme Court this week ruled 8-1 in favor of corporate giants Nestle and Cargill who were being sued by former child laborers accusing the two companies of trafficking in child slavery in the west
African nations of the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Those of us old enough to remember the Citizen United decision in 2010 will recall that, in that case, the Supreme Court ruled in exactly the opposite direction, declaring that corporations are people and therefore able to contribute massive amounts of dark money to US political campaigns.
Many people warned in advance that the current slate of conservative, pro-
Neal Katyal, defense attorney for Nestle and Cargill corporations, testifies on behalf of now-Justice Neil Gorsuch, pro-corporate lawyer who ruled against the plaintives in a child slavery case. Tasos Katopodis Getty Images
corporate Supreme Court justices would have a disastrous effect on workers’ rights in this country.
The Supreme Court’s exoneration of two US corporations who knowingly profit immeasurably from the exploitation of child slavery in west Africa is entirely predictable.
Congratulations to all those evangelical activists who lobbied vociferously for the appointment of “pro-life” justices to the US Supreme Court! You got what you wanted. The desperately poor, exploited, enslave children of the third-world thank you.
A lawyer for six men who alleged they were victims of human trafficking said the corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery.”
Human rights advocates Thursday denounced a Supreme Court decision in favor of the U.S. corporate giants Nestlé USA and Cargill, which were sued more than a decade ago by six men who say the two companies were complicit in child trafficking and profited when the men were enslaved on cocoa farms as children.
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the plaintiffs, saying they had not proven the companies’ activities in the U.S. were sufficiently tied to the alleged child trafficking. The companies had argued that they could not be sued in the U.S. for activities that took place in West Africa. . .
. . . The plaintiffs, who are from Mali and say they are survivors of child trafficking and slavery in Côte d’Ivoire, filed their lawsuit under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law which allows federal courts to hear civil actions filed by foreigners regarding offenses “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”
In recent years the Court has limited when the law can be invoked in court, arguing it cannot be used to file a lawsuit when the offense was committed “almost entirely abroad,” according to the New York Times.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Nestlé and Cargill have total control over the production of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, where child labor is widespread and where the men said they were forced to work long hours and to sleep in locked shacks at night.
The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the use of child labor on family farms in cocoa-growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana increased from 31 percent to 45 percent between 2008 and 2019.
The corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery,” said Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Jim Hightower has an article at ScheerPost on the so-called labor shortage in the US economy and the airy-fairy theorizing now coming from America’s
Jim Hightower
most wealthy about how to solve the problem.
I live in Montana. Another state with a multi-millionaire governor (Greg Gianforte) who is planning to terminate the $300/week of extra unemployment benefits granted by the federal government in its most recent relief package.
This is how callous capitalists force underpaid workers to return to low wage, high risk jobs. It’s a form of wage slavery similar to the death grip that old-fashion “company towns” once held over coal miners and railway workers.
It’s called CLASS WARFARE. The haves against the have-nots. It’s the American way.
As Heidi Shierholz writes at the Economic Policy Institute, there is actually little evidence that the economy is currently experiencing a labor shortage. While citing a number of different factors at work, she explains:
…the footprint of a bona fide labor shortage is rising wages. Employers who truly face shortages of suitable, interested workers will respond by bidding up wages to attract those workers, and employers whose workers are being poached will raise wages to retain their workers…
But, of course, capitalists like Gianforte don’t think to raise wages for the working class. Instead, they think of ways to control workers, strip them of the few benefits that have come their way (after a pandemic!), and empower the owners who refuse to pay their workers a living wage.
Personally, I would love to see statewide labor strikes in every state where rich governors have instituted such predatory anti-worker, pro-capitalist shenanigans rather than doing the obvious — institute a $15 minimum wage.
To find workers, there’s a free-enterprise solution right at employers’ fingertips: raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect.
At a recent congressional hearing on America’s so-called “labor shortage,” megabanker Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, offered this insight: “People actually have a lot of money, and they don’t particularly feel like going back to work.”
Dimon is a billionaire who may be unaware that most people are living paycheck to paycheck. Since COVID-19 hit, millions have lost their jobs, savings, and even homes. Relief measures have helped, but ordinary people are not exactly lollygagging around the house, counting their cash.
Instead of listening to the uber-rich class ignorance of Dimon (who pocketed $35 million in pay last year), Congress ought to be listening to actual workers explain why they’re not rushing back to the jobs being offered by restaurant chains and such.
These workers would point out that there’s no labor shortage — there’s a wage shortage.
Then there’s the high risk of COVID exposure for restaurant employees, an appalling level of sexual harassment in their workplace, and demeaning treatment from abusive bosses and customers.
No surprise, then, that more than half of employees said in a recent survey that they’re not going back to those jobs. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.
So rather than demanding that government officials force workers to return to the old exploitative system, corporate giants should try the free-enterprise solution right at their fingertips: Raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect.
In short, create a place where people want to work! For a straightforward view from workers themselves, go to OneFairWage.site.
The city of Jaffa was a major metropolitan area when it was attacked by Jewish forces on May 13, 1948, two days before the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.
After three weeks of siege and attacks, Jaffa fell to Jewish troops. Those troops immediately began the expulsion, the ethnic cleansing, of Jaffa’s Palestinian population.
By the time they were finished, 50,000 people from Jaffa alone — all of them Palestinians — had been expelled, pushed into the Mediterranean Sea, or sent packing among the streams of destitute refugees looking for safety.
Many of these refugees died along the road. They were death marches.
Ebtihaj is now 86 years old. In April 1948 she was just a little girl, but she well remembers being forced from her home and expelled from Jaffa.
She vividly recalls the Jewish soldiers who shot and killed her unarmed brother as he watched them drive into town from his doorway.
Recently Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Central American country of Guatemala, the jumping off point for the folks braving a dangerous overland journey to our southern border.
She wasn’t worried about the risks these people would take in bringing their children to the US. Her motives were purely political, as the Republicans continue to browbeat President Biden over the pressures of (illegal) immigration.
The brutal irony of Harris’ order to Central America was the way it exemplified the history of US/Latin American relations. Once again, the USA is telling those Spanish-speaking southerners what they can and cannot do.
If only the people of Latin America had been able to tell the Americans, “Do not come. Stay home. Leave us alone.”
All of the countries in Central America, and almost all in South America, have been the victims of US-led military coups, US-trained death squads, political assassination’s, CIA interference with their democratically elected governments, and neoliberal economic manipulations that keep them as perpetual debtor states.
For just one example, journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone have produced a new documentary (approximately 13 minutes long) outlining current US efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, close neighbor to Guatemala.
It’s called “How US govt-funded media fueled a violent coup in Nicaragua.”
You will never hear these facts from Kamala Harris or American media:
The neighbor kids threw some firecrackers over the fence yesterday into my backyard. My dog was freaked out.
I had to teach them a lesson.
So, I fired up my oversized Hummer, with the extra-wide, off road, knobby
Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett
tires. I put it into overdrive and crashed through the side of their house at high speed. In the process I ran over their cat, clipped the mother making coffee, and popped out the sliding glass doors into their backyard.
That’ll learn ’em.
——————
It only took Israel’s new government two days to rain more terror down on the people of Gaza.
“The problem is bigger than Netanyahu—it’s apartheid.”
Just hours after far-right marchers chanted “Death to Arabs!” during a demonstration in the streets of Jerusalem, Israeli war planes bombarded the occupied Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning in the first series of airstrikes launched by the new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former IDF officer who once boasted that he has “killed a lot of Arabs.”
While initial reports indicated that no Palestinians were killed in the new
The Israeli military said it launched airstrikes against Hamas forces in Gaza early Wednesday. Credit…Mahmud Hams Agence France-Presse. Getty Images
bombing campaign, the air raid intensified fears of a fresh wave of violence by the Israeli government just weeks after a tenuous cease-fire agreement paused Israel’s deadly 11-day assault on Gaza last month, which killed more than 240 people.
The Israeli military characterized the latest airstrikes as retaliation for “incendiary balloons” released into Israel from the Gaza Strip. The balloons reportedly caused at least ten fires in Israel.
“Homemade fire balloons versus U.S. bombs. Is there a better example of the disproportionate use of force?” asked Ariel Gold, national co-director of the anti-war organization CodePink.
Abu Malek, whom the Associated Press identified as “one of the young men launching the balloons,” said the incendiary objects were released into Israel in response to a far-right, government-sanctioned march through Jerusalem, where demonstrators rallied alongside several members of the Israeli Knesset and chanted “Death to Arabs!”
Israeli police fired rubber bullets at Palestinians who tried to disrupt the march, which reached the main entrance to the Old City’s Muslim quarter.
“This is a genocidal chant. Let’s call it what it is,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.). “I represent many within the Jewish community who disavow and condemn this hateful language. So why does only a small portion of our Congress?”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, said that “after racist and violent ‘death to Arabs’ marches earlier today in Jerusalem, children in Gaza are being woken by bombs in the middle of the night.”
“Israel’s government doesn’t value Palestinian lives,” Tlaib added. “It has managed a decades-long ethnic cleansing project, funded by the U.S.”
The Israeli airstrikes came just over 48 hours after the country’s parliament narrowly voted to replace former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Bennett, a change that defenders of Palestinian rights did not applaud given the latter’s record and policy stances, which include support for annexing the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.
“While being hailed by many as the opportunity for a fresh start, Naftali Bennett is at best a continuation of Netanyahu’s policies and at worst an ideologue whose positions are to the right of Netanyahu’s,” Gold of CodePink wrote for Common Dreams on Monday.
The one time I have been arrested for peacefully protesting was at an Anti-War/Anti-NATO demonstration in Chicago. I include a brief account of that arrest in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).
I participated in that march, with tens of thousands of others, because I have long believed that NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) should have been disbanded at the end of Cold War.
It was and remains a Western military alliance that was created to “protect Western democracy” against the alleged threats of world communism advanced by the Soviet Union. But once the USSR ceased to exist, why shouldn’t the largest bloc of military forces in the Western world also disband?
Since then, the USA has easily twisted NATO into an ostensibly “independent” European arm of its own nationalistic, military objectives.
Quite predictably, NATO’s continued existence, and the omnivorous hegemony that inevitably characterizes every multi-national military machine, has been a key player in instigating many of the regional conflicts playing themselves out in Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East today.
The dissolution of the USSR meant the demise of NATO’s communist equivalent: the Warsaw Pact. So we can forgive Russia’s well-founded nervousness when NATO announced that it would not similarly disband.
To assuage Russia’s fears, the US pledged that if NATO expanded, it would never included nations that had once been a part of the Warsaw Pact.
NATO quickly broke that promise and now includes member states sitting cheek to jowl with the Russian border. And we wonder why Russia has become antagonist and suspicious of US foreign policy?
NOW who is the colossus seeking world domination? I’ll give you a hint: it sure ain’t Russia.
Dr. Stephen Wertheim is an historian of U.S. foreign policy, the director of
Stephen Wertheim
grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a visiting faculty fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School.
Even before today’s NATO summit, President Biden settled the most important question: He affirmed America’s commitment to defend the alliance’s 30 members by force. And despite divisions on many other foreign policy issues, his party stands in lock step behind him. To most Democrats, alliances symbolize international cooperation. Proof positive is that Donald Trump supposedly sought to tear them down.
Yet current progressive enthusiasm for NATO is anomalous. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, depriving NATO of its original reason for being, skeptics of the alliance included liberals as much as conservatives. In 1998, 10 Democratic Senators joined nine Republicans in opposing the first, fateful round of NATO enlargement, which would soon extend the alliance to Russia’s border.
Among the dissenters was Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. In between voting against the first Iraq war in 1991 and the second after Sept. 11, Mr. Wellstone warned that expanding NATO would jeopardize Europe’s hard-won gains. “There is peace between states in Europe, between nations in Europe, for the first time in centuries,” he said. “We do not have a divided Europe, and I worry about a NATO expansion which could redivide Europe and again poison relations with Russia.”
Events have proved him wiser than his party seems to think. The left has ceded criticism of NATO to the right, mistaking armed alliances for friendly partnerships and fixating on Mr. Trump’s rhetoric instead of his actions. (In the end, he reaffirmed every U.S. alliance commitment, embraced NATO’s expansion to Montenegro and North Macedonia, and beefed up U.S. forces in Eastern Europe.) It’s time for Americans to recover their critical faculties when they hear “NATO,” a military alliance that cements European division, bombs the Middle East, burdens the United States and risks great-power war — of which Americans should want no part.
At first, the United States figured it could enlarge its defense obligations under NATO because doing so seemed cost-free. Throughout the 1990s, post-Soviet Russia lay prostrate. The United States, by contrast, could trim its military spending only to enjoy greater pre-eminence than ever. If the Soviet collapse made NATO seem less necessary, it also made NATO seem less risky. Warnings like Mr. Wellstone’s, voiced by manyanalysts at the time, sounded hypothetical and distant.
But they have gained credence as Russia objected, first with words, eventually with arms, to the expansion of an alliance whose guns had always pointed at Moscow. By 2008, NATO declared its intention to admit Georgia and Ukraine. Each had been a founding republic of the Soviet Union and had territorial disputes with Russia. For each, Russia was willing to fight. It swiftly occupied parts of Georgia. Once Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown in 2014, Russia seized Crimea, home to its Black Sea naval base, and backed separatists in the Donbas region.
The conflict in Ukraine continues, with no resolution near. Rather than use diplomacy to back an internationally negotiated settlement, the United States has preferred to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons. After decades of overreach, the Biden administration now faces a stark choice: commit to fight for Ukraine, creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end.
Lacking an adversary of Soviet proportions, NATO has also found new foes “out of area” — its euphemism for waging wars in the greater Middle East. The bombing of Libya in 2011 was a NATO operation, signaling to war-weary Americans that this time the United States had real partners and multilateral legitimacy. The war proveddisastrous anyway.
NATO helped fight the forever war in Afghanistan, too. Seeking to support U.S. aims after Sept. 11, it undertook “our biggest military operation ever,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg boasted in March. Two decades later, European soldiers are leaving, having failed to remake Afghanistan but perversely succeeded in making NATO seem relevant. Absent the Soviet threat, as Secretary General Stoltenberg admitted, the alliance has had to go “out of area or out of business.”
At least the Middle East contains the real, if receding, threat of terrorism, against which minimal military action can be warranted. But Europe is stable and affluent, far removed from its warring past. America’s European allies provide their people with world-leading living standards. They can alsoperform the most basic task of government: self-defense. In any case, Russia, with an economy the size of Italy’s, lacks the capability to overrun Europe, supposing it had any reason to try. If American leaders cannot countenance pulling U.S. forces back from Europe, then from where would they be willing to pull back, ever?
The danger of permanent subordination to America has started to register in European capitals, long solicitous of American commitment. President Emmanuel Macron of France has accused NATO of experiencing “brain death” and proposed creating an independent European army, an idea rhetorically welcomed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The watchword in Brussels these days is “strategic autonomy,” meaning autonomy from the United States. Europeans scarcely seek to disinvite American forces from their continent. Still, they are finding that cheap security from Washington carries mounting costs: dependence on an erratic superpower, pressure to restrict business with China and Russia, and division in Europe itself.
The real question is what Americans want. They could continue to fetishize military alliances as a “sacred obligation,” as President Biden characterized NATO on Wednesday. Or they could treat them as means to ends — and coercive means that often corrupt worthy ends.
For progressives who seek to end endless wars and prevent new ones, the matter of Europe can no longer be skirted. The United States can trust Europeans to defend Europe. Otherwise, it would seem that America truly intends to dominate the world in perpetuity, or until the day a war so great puts dreams of dominance to rest.
Somali born US representative Ilhan Omar recently asked the US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, an important question about America’s
Ilhan Omar questions Anthony Blinken by Zoom
relationship to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
She asked Blinken a thoughtful, necessary question which he skirted completely. Here is the complete transcription of that question:
Mr. Secretary, the last time you were here, I asked about the Trump sanctions on the ICC staff, so I wanted to thank you publicly for doing the right thing and lifting them. I know you opposed the court’s investigation in both Palestine and in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen any evidence in either case [sic] that domestic courts both can and will prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I would emphasize that in Israel and Palestine, this includes crimes committed by both the Israeli Security Forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan, it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban. So, in both of these cases, if domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice, and we oppose the ICC, where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice and what justice mechanism [inaudible 00:01:29]?
Given the long-standing US antagonism towards the ICC, including the scuttling of any and all cases that even tangentially involve the United States or Israel, Rep. Omar asks the obvious question: where can the victims of these crimes against humanity turn for justice?
Predictably, conservatives and pro-Israel apologists jumped on Rep. Omar immediately. In her defense she sent out the following Tweet:
We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.
The pundit class immediately torn their clothes and screamed in outrage.
Anthony Blinken
How dare Rep. Omar put the US and Israel in the same class of miscreants as Hamas and the Taliban! She must be excoriated, even excommunicated, for her blasphemy against the lily-white mythology of “American (and Israeli) exceptionalism.”
Never mind the fact that those who study our history know full well that the US is every bit as guilty – many will argue even more so — of war crimes as are the Taliban or Hamas.
It did not take long for Rep. Omar to suffer the most hateful vitriol from not only her congressional colleagues but also conservative news media and the wider public.
Below is a short video explaining the recent series of attacks against Rep. Omar and her family:
Let me say again, as I have many times before, I love Ilhan Omar.
She is a very brave woman of color with the integrity, strength of character, and rightly attuned moral compass to speak truth to power.
Sadly, for jingoistic, “patriotic” Americans, including politicians in both parties who have sold their souls to corporate power, genuine justice and equality before the law are nothing more than bland banners to wave at 4th of July picnics.
They have no hold in real life; certainly not in the hardball realm of Realpolik. They possess no power of moral suasion that might move the consciences of America’s leaders to confess and repent of the nation’s many, grotesque national sins – including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Why are all the members of Congress claiming to be Christians on the wrong side of this debate?
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am grieved that (almost certainly) a majority of American evangelicals share in the hateful attitudes now on display in these vile attacks against Rep. Omar.
We are seeing another clear example of the corrupting influence of Nationalism, and why all Nationalisms are antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Nationalism is inherently incapable of genuine confession, repentance, rectification, and restoration. It is an ideology rooted in the elevation of the Collective Self, which has no relation to Christian discipleship.
Humility and self-abasement, cardinal attributes of authentic Christian faith, are anathema to Nationalistic sentiment. Thus, the label Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, a blasphemous self-contradiction.
Ilhan Omar’s Muslim faith, combined with her life experience as a Somali refugee, has formed a more noble and enlightened conscience, a more Godly sense of right and wrong than we now see among any of the Family Research Council, Religious Right, Republican, or Democratic critics demanding that she be punished for asking the obvious and necessary questions about America’s place in the world.
This is why I pray from Ilan Omar. I ask the Lord to protect her and her family, and that she continue to find the courage to continue working for justice in this world.
And this is why I pray for American Christianity, that the Lord redeem us from our apostasy. And that we renounce the destructive sin of Nationalism with all its evil power.
The National Football League recently announced its plans to stop the practice known as “race norming” after two black football players filed a civil rights suit.
Race norming has long been a part of the settlement process when retired players filed for disability benefits due to the brain damage we now know is
Pittsburgh Steelers’ Najeh Davenport is one of the players suing the NFL over its practice of race norming. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
caused by multiple concussions.
After years of resistance and legal wrangling, the NFL began a compensation program to help these players deal with the medical expenses and life adjustments made necessary by their brain damage.
That racist assumption systematically reduced the severity of claims made by black players as compared to white players.
Hopefully, the NFL will remain true to its word by not only abolishing race norming but by also reimbursing all the black players who received inadequate settlements in the past.
Race norming is yet another clear example of systemic racism at work in American society.
As far as I am concerned, these revelations about the NFL’s race norming practices puts a big, big score on the side of Critical Race Theory, which clarifies the many subtle ways in which systemic racism is embedded throughout our society.
Yet, far too many in the country continue to deny the existence of systemic racism! While evangelical Christianity has deepened its condemnation of Critical Race Theory.
The contradiction on display here is as palpable as it is repulsive.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this particular intersection of events is the stark exposure of white evangelicalism’s moral turpitude.
The evangelical church is more concerned with fighting its culture wars while tilting at secular windmills than it is in following Jesus. For Jesus taught us to confess our sins and repent, daily.
Confession requires introspection and honest self-examination. Confession means that we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal our faults and then listen as He speaks to us through others who recognize the habits we have closed our eyes to.
This story of race norming in the NFL ought to be the final nail in the coffin for all those — I am thinking especially of the Southern Baptist Convention, where members will reschedule Sunday services around the afternoon football game — ethically calloused and racially obtuse Christians who refuse to recognize the facts of systemic racism in America.
Evangelicalism’s silence on this score is its own condemnation.
I recently posted about Israel’s dependence on Christian Zionist support in this country.
The Brookings Institute (a conservative think tank) has also released a study examining Israel’s dependence on American evangelicals. The study also identified Israel’s new cause for concern — young evangelicals are
Israel bombs the offices of several news outlets in Gaza
turning away from their parent’s traditional pro-Israel politics.
Frankly, this article brings joy to my heart! I hope this new generation of evangelical young people will read my next book.
As the recent eruption in Israel/Palestine brought attention to shifting Democratic attitudes toward Israel, including among younger Jewish Americans, Israel’s focus on the evangelical right as a cornerstone of U.S. support for the Jewish state has proven increasingly important. As our University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll research has shown, evangelical attitudes toward Israel account for most of the Republican Party’s support for Israel; without evangelicals, Republican attitudes on Israel do not substantially deviate from the rest of America.
These trends in American politics may explain the recent statement by former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer that Israel should spend more of its energy reaching out to “passionate” American evangelicals than to Jews, who are “disproportionately among our critics.” Criticizing Dermer,
Jewish settlers take over a Palestinian home in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah April 16, 2021. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
Israel’s former consul general in New York, Dani Dayan, added that “our embassy in the United States capital has invested most of its energy in the relationship with conservatives, Republicans, evangelicals, and a certain type of Jews only.”
But a new survey commissioned by University for North Carolina at Pembroke researchers, carried out by Barna Group, has exposed what we have been finding for some time: younger evangelicals are much less supportive of Israel than older evangelicals, by a widening margin. The poll found a dramatic shift in attitudes between 2018 and 2021: support for Israel among young evangelicals dropped from 75% to 34%. This raises questions about the sustainability of the strong evangelical support for Israel that the Israeli right has cultivated for years and that proved reliable during the Trump administration.
Often times, authors are not allowed to pick the title for their books. The publisher typically makes that decision.
I recently learned, however, that Wipf and Stock Publishers has decided to use the title I proposed for my next book. I am letting you know about this so you can keep your eyes open for it once it becomes available (perhaps in the fall).
The title will be Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.
For those unfamiliar with the term, “Christian Zionism” (CZ) refers to a large segment of the Christian church who believe that the modern state of Israel is God’s chosen nation, now preparing the way for Christ’s second coming.
May of these folks will talk about reading “the signs of the times” anticipating various beasts, the antichrist, and the final battle of Armageddon, all occurring in the land of Israel.
My argument with Christian Zionism takes a three-pronged approach.
First, I dissect the basic problems with CZ Bible-reading, showing why and how their approach to scripture is wrong. Bad methods can only produce bad results. CZ has no Biblical foundation.
Second, I trace the history of political Zionism — the branch of Zionism that gave birth to the Jewish nation-state — and its abusive treatment of the indigenous Palestinians.
Israel’s establishment was the last venture of western, settler colonialism. The goal was to create a Jewish supremacist state (yes, go ahead and make the
Illegal Jewish-only settlements & related programs funded by Christian donations from the US
implied comparison to white supremacy in this country), where Jews alone claimed all the rights and privileges of citizenship. The natives were displaced, replaced, and excluded by European, Jewish settlers who built a society only for themselves.
Third, I tell a number of eyewitness accounts detailing the unrelenting brutality of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank. Captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel continues to violate international law by annexing large portions of this territory and building Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land.
The United States is Israel’s largest source of foreign aid, to the tune of nearly $4 billion each year.
Christian Zionists are the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in this country.
The logic is self-evident.
Israel will not change its behavior until the USA stops financing their military. The US government will not cut Israel’s foreign aid budget without consistent, long-term pressure to this end from American citizens.
Here is the logic that led me to write Like Birds in a Cage.
My prayers and my hopes are focused on educating American evangelicals, convincing them that not only does Israel not deserve the church’s support, but that Israel is a rogue state built on ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
No Christian, no congregation, no denomination, no non-profit organization, no country can ever support a nation like Israel with a clear conscience.
I hope you will look for my book and buy copies for you and your friends when it comes out. My Palestinian friends need your help.
and Cargill who were being sued by former child laborers accusing the two companies of trafficking in child slavery in the west
question: He 
anticipating various beasts, the antichrist, and the final battle of Armageddon, all occurring in the land of Israel.
Israel will not change its behavior until the USA stops financing their military. The US government will not cut Israel’s foreign aid budget without consistent, long-term pressure to this end from American citizens.