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Haaretz Magazine Explains Another Lost Opportunity in Israel’s History

Adam Raz has a good article in the most recent Haaretz news magazine investigating the debate that raged among Zionism’s leadership immediately after the 1948-49 War, when Israel declared its “independence,” over the future status of Palestinians remaining within the borders of the new state.

I have excerpted selected paragraphs below to give you a sense of the attitudes held by these men. If you want to know more, you can find the entire article here.

There were early Zionist leaders who possessed the remnant of a

Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second Prime Minister

humanitarian conscience.  Men such as Moshe Sharett.

Although, frankly, any leader who failed vociferously to protest against the ethnic cleansing committed by Israel’s military forces in that war – which includes all of the men mentioned here — has abdicated any right to be respected, in my book.

Nevertheless, the article does a good job of showing that Israel did not have to end up where it is today: an oppressive apartheid state.  There were alternatives on the table at the time.  There were men advocating for a multi-ethnic state where Palestinians would have been fully integrated into Israeli society.

Sadly, those humane voices were a minority, and they lost the argument.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister

The iron-fisted racism of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and their equally savage ilk won the day, dooming both Palestinians and Israelis to the catastrophe that is Israel/Palestine today.

For those who are interested, I highly recommend a book by the Jewish, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale, 2011).

Pinhas Lavon, Minister of Defense

“(Pinhas Lavon, minister of Defense,) insisted, ‘The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means, he stated, adding, Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews…’

 “’It is impossible to work among them if the policy is to oppress Arabs – that prevents concrete action. What is being carried out is a dramatic and brutal suppression of the Arabs in Israel…’

 “(Moshe) Sharett maintained that Ben-Gurion had not given consideration to the root of the problem. ‘Terrible things were being done against Arabs in the country,’ he warned. ‘Until a Jew is hanged for murdering an Arab for no reason, in cold blood, the Jews will not

David Hacohen, Knesset member

understand that Arabs are not dogs but human beings…’

Zalman Aharon, Knesset member

 “(Knesset member David Hocohen argued), ‘These laws that we are coming up with in regard to Israel’s Arab residents cannot even be likened to the laws that were promulgated against the Jews in the Middle Ages, when they were deprived of all rights. After all, this is a total contrast between our declarations and our deeds.’..

 “’Zalman Aran compared the situation of the Arabs in Israel with the situation of Jews in other countries. On the basis of what we are doing here to the Arabs, there is no justification for demanding a different attitude toward Jewish minorities in other countries. I would be contemptuous of Arabs who would want

Moshe Dayan, military commander and politician

to form ties with us on the basis of this policy. We would be lying…we are lying to ourselves and we are lying to the nations of the world…

 “He (David Ben Gurion) added, ‘We view them [Palestinian Arabs] like donkeys. They don’t care. They accept it [their subjugation] with love… To loosen the reins on the Arabs would be a great danger,’ he added: ‘You and your ilk – those who support the abolition of the military government or making it less stringent – will be responsible for the perdition of Israel.’”

Let me make two observations on these citations.

First, the hard-line, political Zionists like Ben-Gurion make it very clear from the beginning that they envisioned a nation for Jews only.  There was no room for anyone else to have equal rights in Zionist Israel.

Here we see the essentially racist heart of political Zionism, the strain of Zionism that won these early contests and has controlled Israeli political life ever since.  For nearly twenty years Israel enforced two different sets of laws for its citizens.  Jews were governed by the state’s normal, civil legislation.  Palestinians, on the other hand, were governed by draconian military law stripping them of their civil rights.

When the United Nations passed Resolution 3379 in 1975 declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” they were absolutely correct insofar as “Zionism” was represented on the world stage exclusively by Israel.

Second, notice that drawing comparisons between Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and Zionist Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has a very long history.  Many Jewish critics of political Zionism have made the comparison, as you can see in this article.  It is not, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic slur, but a simple, fair-minded observation of “facts on the ground,” as Israeli politicians like to say.

What is Christian Worship? Part 5  Dispelling Two Common Errors

We have come to the end of this study in New Testament worship vocabulary, but I cannot close without taking note of two common obstacles that frequently hamper leaders who wish to act on the theology we have discovered by putting our theological conclusions into practice.  Perhaps you would like to review that theology in parts one, two, three and four.

 The key theological issue at stake is the New Testament’s elimination of the Old Testament distinction between the sacred and the profane (recall, especially, part four in this series).

Jesus Christ has made the Old Testament/Covenant idea of special/sacred space (a temple), personnel (priests), and activities (ritual offerings) obsolete.  The New Testament even goes so far as never to identify baptism or the Lord’s Supper as acts of “liturgy” or “worship,” as surprising as that may be.

But, for some odd reason, many churchgoers prefer living in a quasi-Old Testament world. Here is where we encounter the first obstacle.

Perhaps many churchgoers secretly prefer the idea of living life day-to-day as a truly profane existence.  After all, stepping in and out of God’s presence, spending the majority of our time free from the presence of God, seems preferable for those who don’t want to deal with Christ’s Lordship.

In any case, humanity’s predilection for an obsolete manner of religious thinking appears in our need to invent new ways of importing Old Testament structures into the New Testament church.  It happens all the time in every tradition.  Think of the many ways we reinstall the

Cathedral of St. Mary

sacred/profane distinction into the Christian life.

We create uniquely sacred people with ordination ceremonies.  We even call them “priests,” as opposed to all of the other Christians who become the “laity.”

We Christianize sacred spaces via grand cathedral/church architecture, and we then refer to these places as “God’s house.”

We elaborate uniquely sacred acts through sacramental liturgies that may only be performed by the appropriately sacred personnel (i.e. the ordained) inside the proper sacred space.

All of this, every last bit of it, is absolutely wrong as far as the New Testament is concerned.  All I can say is, thank God that the grace of Jesus Christ is so bloomin’ big that it extends even to wrong-headed people like us.

The second obstacle issues from the first.  It becomes the rational justification for the ecclesiastical mistakes described above.

One of my former colleagues loved to repeat this standard rationale, imagining that he had slain his opponent (usually me) with a single thrust, “If everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred!”  Have you heard that one?

In other words, by this logic we’ve got to create ‘special’ moments/places/personnel in order to preserve some sense of the divine majesty.  Otherwise, familiarity will breed contempt, and it’s only a matter of time before any sense of awe before God is melted away into the mundane mix of inattentive daily living.

Right?  If so, let’s reintroduce Old Covenant thought and its priestly structures from stage-right.

No.  This is exactly the wrong thing to do.  Let’s think about it for a moment.

The first flaw in my friend’s argument is a matter of simple logic.

Notice that my colleague’s objection to the New Testament perspective on worship must assume the continuing validity of the sacred/profane distinction in order to make its point.

In other words, it ignores the very assertion it pretends to refute.  To put it another way, it tries to dismiss New Testament teaching (i.e. there is no more sacred/profane distinction for those who know Jesus) by keeping its feet firmly planted in the Old Testament framework (i.e. we must observe the sacred/profane distinction if we want to truly worship God).

The next time you hear someone using this invalid claim calmly inform them that you reject the premise of their conclusion.  Ha!  Not really.  They probably won’t know what you mean.

At the end of the day, this “sophisticated” sounding refutation of New Testament teaching is really nothing more than a stubborn refusal to come to grips with the newly redeemed creation awash with God’s unfettered grace now available through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While I certainly understand the pragmatic concerns that lead people to cling to Old Covenant distinctions, I remain convinced that any practical decision contrary to biblical teaching, no matter how “helpful,” will ultimately prove crippling to God’s people.

It is better to wrestle with the difficult implications of sound theology than it is to ease the burden of church leadership by choosing expediency.
Yes, the innate limits of the human attention span may well require that we demarcate certain times and places for special events, i.e. a designated place…at a designated time…to gather together…for particular events and practices…as a community of faith.
BUT let’s never confuse the pragmatic needs born of human limitations with the proper theology of the New Covenant.  We do such things to accommodate human weakness, NOT because there are any real differences between different times, special places, or specially ordained people.

Christian worship, New Testament worship, is an obedient lifestyle where every day is received as the gift of God’s holy presence, personally indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, conforming us to the perfect image of His one and only eternal Son as we sacrifice ourselves in following His call.

Live out THAT life and you will worship and glorify our holy God all day every day without fail.

Chris Hedges Challenges Us to Put Faith Into Practice

Truthdig – an online magazine that I read regularly – has published an excellent essay by Chris Hedges describing the anti-war protests of Phil and Dan Berrigan during the 1960’s movement against the war in Vietnam.  It is entitled “Resistance is the Supreme Act of Faith.”

I became a follower of Mr. Hedges’ work years ago when I read his excellent book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, reflecting on his many years as a war correspondent.  It’s a book that I believe every American should read.

I have copied selected excerpts from the Truthdig article below.  You can find the entire piece by clicking on the title above.

“The struggle against the monstrous radical evil that dominates our lives—an evil that is swiftly despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction, stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms, waging endless war and solidifying the obscene wealth of an oligarchic elite at our

Catholic priests, Phil and Dan Berrigan, leading an anti-Vietnam, anti-draft demonstration

expense—will be fought only with the belief that resistance, however futile, insignificant and even self-defeating it may appear, can set in motion moral and spiritual forces that radiate outward to inspire others, including those who come after us. It is, in essence, an act of faith. Nothing less than this faith will sustain us. We resist not because we will succeed, but because it is right. Resistance is the supreme act of faith.”

…….

 “The Berrigans, who identified as religious radicals, had little use for liberals. Liberals, they said, addressed only small, moral fragments and used their pet causes, in most cases, not to bring about systemic change, but for self-adulation. Liberals often saw wars or social injustices as isolated evils whose end would restore harmony.”

…….

 “The Berrigans excoriated the church hierarchy for sacralizing the nation, the government, capitalism, the military and the war. They argued that the fusion of secular and religious authority would kill the church as a religious institution. The archbishop of New York at the time, Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, in one example, sprinkled holy water on B-52 bombers and blessed the warplanes before their missions in Vietnam. He described the conflict as a ‘war for civilization’ and ‘Christ’s war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam.’  Phil Berrigan, the first priest to go to jail for protesting the war, celebrated Mass for his fellow prisoners. The services were, for the first time, well attended.”

 I, personally, wish that churchmen like the Berrigan brothers would include a more forthright, verbal witness to Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God in their lifestyle of public resistance.

On the other hand, they at least are/were doing the work that precious few evangelicals bother to think about.

I wish that religious activists like Chris Hedges, a former Harvard divinity student, could understand that the foundation stone of spiritual death in this world is not found in temporal systems of repression, whether social, political or economic, but are rooted in the all-pervasive nature of humanity’s sinfulness.

On the other hand, he at least publicly identifies and  condemns the many evils that most evangelicals bless and embrace.

The kingdom of God on earth will never erupt from within.  It is a foreign entity, a rule from witsout, that only arrives with the resurrected Jesus.  I believe that this fact is the beginning of our only hope in life as well as in death.

But I also wish that more men and women who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ would also understand the essential, moral, spiritual continuity that ties Christian self-denial to our faithful resistance against all forms of evil, whether that evil shows itself in militarism, warfare, capitalism, nationalism, inequality, civil religion, racism, or injustice.

The church’s failure to make  this connection consistently, to think and to behave with coherence across all these areas of life, cripple our witness, stunt our spiritual development, and abandon a needy world to the merchants of half-measures.

I encourage you to read Mr. Hedges’ weighty words and think about his lessons through the lens of Jesus’ own ethics.  Perhaps, my book I Pledge Allegiance can help, if this is a new exercise for you.

A Story of Christian Self-Denial in Palestine

Terry and I always make a point of worshiping with Bethlehem Evangelical Church whenever we are visiting the West Bank.  On this occasion I took some time to visit and have coffee with pastor Nihad Salman.  I specifically wanted to talk with him about what it is like to be a Christian leader in the Occupied Territory.

Pastor Salman not only answered my questions, he provided a moving example of what it means to live a life devoted to faithful Christian discipleship.  The Christian population in Gaza and the West Bank has dropped dramatically in recent decades, not so much because of “Muslim extremism” (though it certainly can be difficult for Christians to live freely in a predominately Muslim society) but because of the many pressures and insecurities created by Israel’s military occupation.

Pastor Salman’s repeated message to me were these words of Jesus, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross

Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity

and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”  (Matthew 16:24-25)

Whoever loses their life for Jesus’ sake will find it.

Whoever works to save their life will lose it.

Nihad repeated those words over and over again in the course of our conversation…with a great big smile on his face.  And he shared story after beautiful story of the ways in which God’s grace is changing lives in the West Bank.

Many members of Nihad’s extended family have moved to the United States.  They regularly call trying to persuade him to relocate with his family as well.  “You can pastor another church here in America,” they insist.  “Your children will have more opportunities with better educational choices.  Get out of there while you can.”

Becoming a parent can sometimes become the greatest stumbling block to

Illegal Jewish Settlements are surrounding Bethlehem cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank

faithful discipleship.  Which is the reason Jesus warns us that his followers must love Him more than their own children.  He said, “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

So, this is what Nihad tells his family living in America: “Yes, my children could have better opportunities for important universities and high-paying jobs in the United States.  Yes, they may only have basic employment here and never make much money or have the opportunities your children will have.”

 “But Jesus has called me to be a pastor in Bethlehem.  He tells me that I must lose my life for His sake if I am to find true life at all.  And that includes the lives of my children.  They, too, must learn to lose their lives for Jesus. And we are all finding a wonderful life of mercy and grace here in the West Bank.”

Yes, I had the privilege of drinking coffee, praying and reading scripture

The light of the gospel is shining brightly in Bethlehem

with a saint in Bethlehem.

I was encouraged by Nihad’s model of genuine Christian discipleship, for here is a man who has said No to himself and Yes to our crucified, resurrected Lord Jesus.

This is what real Christianity looks like in every part of the world.

Please remember to pray for Pastor Salman, his family and the ever-expanding ministry of Bethlehem Evangelical Church.

P.S.  This particular church is not alone.  Over the years, Terry and I have worshiped with a wide variety of Christian churches throughout the Bethlehem area.  The gospel is being proclaimed widely by many faithful men and women in Palestine.

We Have Met the Enemy, And It’s Not Russia. It Is US

The journalist Aaron Mate has recently published a good article in The Nation magazine entitled “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong  About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics.”

I have copied an excerpt from Aaron’s story below.  Click on the headline

Aaron Mate

above to read the entire article.  It is well worth your time.

“On top of straining credulity, fixating on barely detectable and trivial social-media content also downplays myriad serious issues. As the journalist Ari Berman has tirelessly pointed out, the 2016 election was “the first presidential contest in 50 years without the full protections of the [Voting Rights Act],” one that was conducted amid “the greatest rollback of voting rights since the act was passed” in 1965. Rather than ruminating over whether they were duped by Russian clickbait, reporters who have actually spoken to black Midwest voters have found that political disillusionment amid stagnant wages, high inequality, and pervasive police brutality led many to stay home.

“And that leads us to perhaps a key reason why elites in particular are so fixated on the purported threat of Russian meddling: It deflects attention from their own failures, and the failings of the system that grants them status as elites. During the campaign, corporate media outlets handed Donald Trump billions of dollars worth of air timebecause, in the words of the now ousted CBS exec Les Moonves: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS…. The money’s rolling in and this is fun.” Not wanting to interrupt the fun, these outlets have every incentive to breathlessly cover Russiagate and amplify comparisons of stolen Democratic Party e-mails and Russian social-media posts to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Kristallnacht, and “cruise missiles.”

“Having lost the presidential election to a reality TV host, the Democratic Party leadership is arguably the most incentivized to capitalize on the Russia panic. They continue to oblige.”

A small handful of genuine reporters such as Aaron, Max Blumenthal and a few others have consistently pointed out the absurdity of this manufactured Russia hysteria from its beginning.  It has never made a lick of sense.

The greatest threats to our democracy come from within, from the very power-players who have worked so hard to keep this bogus, anti-Russia story alive.

Our elections are menaced by rampant voter suppression,

Voters may wait for hours in line, especially in poor neighborhoods

disenfranchisement, financial corruption, purging voter rolls, election fraud, outdated, faulty equipment, electronic, paperless voting machine (which are easily hacked by school children), and the Republican party’s growing use of the ridiculous Cross Check program.

Yes, the Democrats are also corrupt, as every Bernie Sanders support knows all too well.  They just seem to be too inept (thankfully???) to reach the depths of black-hearted efficiency to which Republicans so gleefully sink.

Former president Jimmy Carter once said that “we have one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America.  

The Carter Center has monitored hundreds of elections in countries around the world.  Do you know which nation the Carter Center rates as having the best, more democratic, most trustworthy electoral system in the world?

Venezuela.  Yes, Venezuela, folks.

We all need to stop swallowing the rubbish that the establishment voices constantly feed us about Venezuela, too.

Evangelicals Share in War Crimes Remaining Blind to Oppression All Around Them

Every time I return to Israel’s Occupied Territory, I am taken aback by the irreversible transformations foisted onto the resident Palestinians by Israel’s illegal settlements project.

Every year, more and more hilltops sprout cookie-cutter apartment blocks, all covered by the same red-brick tiles, stretching end-to-end from one

Ariel settlement in the West Bank

settlement rooftop to the next.  Older settlements have grown.  Newer settlements appear as if by magic.  All of them shamelessly blushing brick-red under heaven’s gaze.

What little forest and greenery once existed in this barren land has been uprooted, plowed under and paved over to make way for more Jewish settlers, a good many of whom come from the United States, happy to take advantage of the many financial enticements Israel offers to this new generation of “pioneers.”

Several weeks ago, the Israeli daily paper Haaretz published an interesting exposé about this settler movement, and its sad ties to American evangelicalism.  It is entitled:  “Inside the Evangelical Money Flowing Into the West Bank.”

The article details the vast sums of money being donated by U.S. Christian Zionists to Israel’s illegal settler movement.

According to Haaretz, “the total amount of funding raised in the past 10 years [is] somewhere between $50 million and $65 million.”

Yep, $50 to $65 million US dollars channeled from Christian coffers into the

An American family of Christian Zionists volunteering in an illegal settlement

last western, settler-colonial project occurring in direct violation of international law.

Believe it or not, it is another of the many bizarre ways in which Israel continues to mimic the behavior of Nazi Germany and every other settler-colonial project in history.  I kid you not.

Check out the Fourth Geneva Convention, if you’ve never read it.  Especially Section III, article 49 dealing with Occupied Territories.  The most relevant portions declare:

“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

 “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Written during a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment, this portion of the Geneva Convention was also drafted in the shadow of Hitler’s massive population transfers throughout Eastern Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II.  After his conquest of Poland in 1939, Hitler announced:

“a new order of ethnographical conditions, that is to say, a resettlement of nationalities in such a manner that the process ultimately results in the obtaining of better dividing lines.” 

Populations would be moved about in order to benefit the expansion of

American volunteers helping with an illegal grape harvest in Occupied Territory

ethnic Germans.

Hitler’s explicit goal was to protect all Germans in Europe who were “threatened with de-Germanization.”

THAT is the primary motive behind the inclusion of Section III, article 49 in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

How tragically ironic that the offspring of Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Israel now implement a similar ethnographic plan intended to “Judaize” Samaria and Judea (aka the West Bank) by means of massive population transfers, i.e. native Palestinians are being pushed out so that foreign, Jewish settlers can move in.

This is why Israel’s settler project in the Occupied Territory is illegal, folks.  It’s illegal because it would make Hitler proud.  It violates the Geneva Conventions, which was spearheaded by the United States.

Only weeks ago, I was driving past many of these settlements as my

Illegal settlements funded by Christian donations from the US

Palestinian friend pointed out the numerous, new expansions now under construction.  In several cases, he also told me the stories of how the Israeli authorities had, once again, used their laughable “laws” of land ownership to “legally” confiscate, i.e. steal, more of this Palestinian real estate.

As I read this article (and another on the same subject) I am struck by the near complete absence of any reference to the native inhabitants of this land – the Palestinian people.  When passing reference is made to the “other” folks who were living here long before the state of Israel, they are noted in passing as the restless hostiles who really ought to give up their struggle, if they know what’s good for them.

One American Zionist, working as a volunteer picking illegal grapes in an illegal vineyard rooted in stolen land, calmly passes judgement, “It’s impossible to remove the settlers from here, as long as they believe in the Bible.  The solution to the conflict will be for the media to stop encouraging the Arabs’ uprising and encourage them to live together with the Jews.”

So, I guess it’s all the media’s fault.  Too many reporters agitating the hapless Palestinians who, apparently, aren’t able to think for themselves.

But it’s hard for anyone “to live together” with the marauders who invaded your property, taken control of your home, pushed you out, made you homeless, and then warns you repeatedly not to put down new roots whenever you try to make a new start.

Another American volunteer confirms the Zionist prejudice that all Palestinians are violent agitators:

“Last February a number of [volunteers in an illegal settlement] found themselves in the midst of a clash between settlers and Palestinians near Har Bracha. According to them, Palestinians from the nearby village of Iraq Burin attacked them with stones while they were in the vineyard.

“The Har Bracha security coordinator came and fired on the Palestinians, who say they were defending their lands, wounding a shepherd.”

But, of course, the American visitor never bothered to learn the first thing about the history of this conflict.  He certainly does not know why he is helping these settlers to break international law.  He knows nothing about the resident Palestinians who have long depended on this very piece of land for their own livelihoods.  He has never ventured beyond the walls and electrified fence surrounding his settlement. He certainly has never asked a Palestinian about the difficulties of living under military occupation while watching strangers pick fruit from your soil.

As with most western accounts, there is no back-story; the narrative begins ex nihilo with a “Palestinian attack” that comes out of nowhere, seemingly for no reason.  It’s just another story about those pesky Injuns doin’ what Injuns do best.  Makin’ trouble, hinderin’ the advance of western civilization.

Christian Zionists are remarkably incurious people, by and large.  Rarely do they ask if the Palestinians might have a good reason to be angry.  If they did, they would hear stories about the many previous assaults launched against them by Israeli soldiers and the very settlers they are now helping to protect.

They might also stop to think about why they are helping Israel do for Jews in the Middle East what Hitler hoped to do for ethnic Germans in eastern Europe.

I encourage you to take a few moments to check out these articles for yourself.

Biggest Stories of 2018: Israel announced Apartheid, Shot Thousands of Civilians

Check out Juan Cole’s year-end review at Informed Comment here.

I have posted an excerpt below, but I encourage you to read the entire piece by following the link above.

“The horrible conditions of civilian siege under which people in Gaza labor (and

A handful of the thousands of Gazans crippled by Israeli snipers in 2018

half the residents of the strip are children) has become intolerable, and this year they began conducting marches demanding the right to return.

“These marches could have been a public relations disaster for Israel if the Western press actually did its job when it comes to Israel and Palestine (it does not, viewing the situation through a racialized and colonial lens rather as it used to view South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s).

“I do not believe any of the US news networks so much as mentioned the weekly protests in Gaza after the initial two or three.

“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his officer corps decided to deal with these marches by shooting the demonstrators down in cold blood on the Gaza side of the border. The American press, which despises the Palestinians with a passion for the crime of having been victimized by an American ally, invented entirely imaginary headlines claiming that the Palestinians had been killed or injured in “clashes.” But there were no clashes. They with perhaps one exception never reached the Israeli border or actually encountered Israeli soldiers. They were shot down well inside Gaza even though they posed no danger to any Israeli military personnel.

“They were sniped at by professional snipers. They were murdered. It is a measure of how ineffective and pusillanimous the mechanisms of international law and order are that no Israelis have been indicted for these murders.

“The US Senate passed a resolution naming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as the murderer of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“It did not pass a resolution about Netanyahu and his generals murdering unarmed, peaceful Palestinian demonstrators (not to mention journalists, medical personnel, and random children.

“As of October, Amnesty International reported that 150 Palestinians had been killed, 10,000 had been injured, “including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition.” The death toll rose by early December to 175 and by the end of the year to an alleged 220, and those shot in the legs are by now at least 6,392.

“One Israeli soldier has been killed and one injured.”

Israel Bombed Syria for Christmas. Who Will They Attack for New Year?

F-16 Fighter Jets

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the following headline today:   Six Israeli F-16s fired 16 missiles at Damascus, Syrians intercepted 14 of them.

Apparently, by flying through Lebanese airspace, the Israeli government claims that the fighters were able to launch missiles striking Iranian targets near Damascus.

Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that Israel behaves as if it owns Lebanon, especially noteworthy is the fact that Syria’s defensive anti-

Syrian defensive missiles launching, December 25, 2018

missile system was inhibited (thus, the two missiles that got away) by the presence of two civilian airliners sharing the same airspace.

According to a Russian spokesman, Israel appeared to have used the two civilian aircraft as airborne ‘human shields.’

If so, this would not be the first time Israeli military forces have been caught using human shields during combat operations.  You may recall that the 2009 Goldstone Report uncovered incidents of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian civilians as human shields during Israel’s 2008 attack on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead.

Follow these  links to catch up on this unfolding story: here, here, here.

Politics as Witness

The Christian blogosphere, Patheos, has published a guest opinion piece by Daniel Darling and Dean Inserra entitled “What Is Politics Doing to Our Witness?”.  I have copied the two, closing paragraphs below.  You can read the entire piece here.

“While the fracturing of friendships over politics is unnecessarily sad, even more tragic is the experience of those outside the church who may engage in a conversation about the gospel, because they have seen the church in action on their social media timeline and have decided that this is a gospel not worth investigating. Have we gained the world and lost our souls?

“As we steward our earthly citizenship, let us always be pointing, by the words we say and the way we say them, to a citizenship in a city whose builder and maker is God. Let’s not gain a political world and lose our missional soul.”

The authors thankfully remind their readers that a disciple’s citizenship in the kingdom of God takes priority over all other allegiances.  I admit that I am biased here, because this is the core of my message in my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Unfortunately – at least in my view – that is where the similarity between these two authors’ and myself ends.  For, while they rightly lament the unseemly levels of hostility and slander that often characterize Christian political discourse nowadays, a concern for personal deportment marks the beginning as well as the end of their concern.  Apparently, politics’ main threat to Christian “witness” is its power to fuel hostility within God’s family.

The glaring hole in this argument, however (and, again, I am not dismissing the importance of this solitary observation), appears in the authors’ failure to connect (a) the specific policies enacted by our politics to (b) the ethical norms demanded of us by citizenship in God’s kingdom.

The Patheos article leaves both the real-world consequences of our political choices and the personal demands of kingdom citizenship unaddressed, unspecified.  Both “the kingdom” and “politics” remain blank cyphers waiting to be filled in by the individual in whatever way they think best.  Of most importance is ensuring that our conversations on these subjects is always winsome.

Apparently, winsomeness is the key to winning people to the gospel.

But if the kingdom comes first, shouldn’t the kingdom be determining the shape of my politics, going above and beyond the shape of my demeanor when talking about my vote?

Is it ok to vote for genocide as long as I debate the decision with kindness?  I am sure these two authors would say “no” to that question.  But on what basis?

Here is my question:  What if my political decisions are rooted in fear and hostility?  Is that acceptable, as long as I talk about my xenophobic, fear-based political life in a calm, friendly, winsome tone of voice?

If the kingdom of God really does come first in my life, shouldn’t the Father’s kingdom ethics, as taught by Jesus, exercise control over my political actions – actions that go well beyond the way I talk with others about my choices?

Isn’t the content of my politics as (if not more) important to “my Christian witness” than my personal deportment?

That, my friends, is the crucial existential break that has set American evangelicalism and the Religious Right adrift, lost in its own sea of moral relativism.  The compartmentalization of a contentless kingdom, discreetly isolated from our idiosyncratic political choices, has left America with an individualistic church fueling a heartless, destructive politics, all in the name of Jesus.

Now for Some Sanity About Trump’s Withdrawal from Syria

Yesterday The Greanville Post published a good analysis of the current, bipartisan brouhaha that erupted over President Trump’s decision to

Jim Mattis

withdraw US forces from Syria, prompting the immediate resignation of the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis.

Its heading reads — The current kerfuffle amid the US ruling class shows more clearly than ever that all parties are morally repugnant.

Well said…

An except from the piece appears below:

“Despite theatrics, his [Mattis’] gesture is NOT about the nation’s security. Unless entirely brainwashed by his own propaganda, he knows neither Russia nor China nor Iran represent existential threats to ordinary Americans, only the interests of the ruling 0.00001%, whom he has served all his life…

“Major broadcast media outlets have been overwhelmingly critical of the withdrawal decision, bringing on former generals and intelligence figures like ex-CIA director John Brennan to denounce it as a capitulation to Russia, Iran and the Syrian government.

“The New York Times published an editorial Thursday invoking the authority of Trump’s national security adviser, the maniacal warmonger and international bully, John Bolton, citing his vow to expand the role of US troops in Syria to confront Iran.

“It criticized Trump for having ‘overruled Mr. Bolton and the rest of his national security team.’ His decision, the newspaper of record of what once passed for American liberalism, argued, had sowed new uncertainty about America’s commitment to the Middle East…’

“According to the monitoring group Airwars, nearly 30,000 Syrians have been reported killed as a result of US bombardments, with tens of thousands more maimed.

“This slaughter has been justified in the name of a war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), which was itself the product of the US war of aggression against Iraq, which claimed roughly a million lives and demolished an entire society. ISIS was further nurtured through the subsequent wars for regime-change in Libya and Syria, where Washington armed and supported the very same Islamist militias that it subsequently claimed to be fighting.

“The bitter debate in Washington is driven by rival factions within the ruling class that are equally rapacious and bloodthirsty, determined to prepare for global war to advance the interests of a crisis-ridden American capitalist order against its major rivals, China and Russia, while divided over tactics in terms of how to pursue these aims in the Middle East and elsewhere.”

You can read the entire piece here.

As you know, I am no fan of our president, but even a broken clock is correct once a day.  So, I applaud the president’s decision.  I hope that he will follow through in a way that is effective for all concerned.

The bi-partisan outrage now being leveled against him, with its bizarre

Nancy Pelosi described US withdrawal from Syria as a gift to Russia

connections to anti-Russian hysteria, is exhibit A in demonstrating how deeply the militaristic/imperialist mindset has taken control of American politics and media.

It is also a classic example of how easily blind passion (in this case, liberal-Democratic hatred of Donald Trump) can neutralize all sense and sensibility.