I just finished participating in another political action campaign with Jewish Voice for Peace focused on the recent Israeli bombing of Gaza.
Below is a collection of reasonable testimonies from both Jewish and Palestinian young people addressing this tragedy of non-stop violence.
Please check it out:
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of courageous young people from Israel and Palestine who are working to build a better, more peaceful future. As yet another round of conflict threatens to erupt, I urge you to listen to what they have to say. pic.twitter.com/tZe0HsqytE
Justice Samuel Alito composed the now famous ruling that recently overturned Roe vs. Wade. An important line of argument in that ruling was Alito’s assertion that abortion access did not have a long, established history in this country.
I am not an American historian, but then neither is Justice Alito.
I do know that this particular line of argument has been heavily criticized since its publication. PBS News recently offered a fascinating story covering this “complicated history” in early America.
Dissent magazine recently published a fascinating article by Aziz Rana, a professor of Constitutional law and political development at Cornell Law School.
Looking at this present moment in world history, professor Rana says that no one on the American political spectrum, neither the right nor the left, Republicans nor Democrats, is prepared for a looming future where the US will inevitably lose its unipolar power over world affairs.
The problem is that both the Right and the Left have been equally invested in the maintenance and expansion of American Empire, to the detriment of the rest of the world.
Both ends of the political spectrum have been equally blind to the policy constraints of America’s cookie-cutter approach to foreign policy, built around the long-entrenched, Manichean bromides of (1) Exceptional America is always working benevolently for the good, and (2) Anyone opposing America’s policies abroad must be on the side of evil.
What is needed now, Rana argues, is a genuinely Leftist International order, which frankly strikes me as a far more “Christian” way to view world affairs than anything the US has done in the past.
Below are a few excerpts from the article, though I recommend reading it all:
American leftists need an internationalist vision that universally and effectively joins anti-imperial and anti-authoritarian ethics.
The global international order seems to have entered what political theorist George Shulman has called an “interregnum.” The post–Second World War framework organized around U.S. international leadership is unraveling, but it remains unclear what will come next. As Shulman put it last year, channeling Gramsci, “the old gods are dying, the new ones have yet to be born.” To a significant degree, this unraveling is a product of American policymaking failures—whether destructive wars of choice in the Middle East, neoliberal practices that have promoted financial instability alongside extremes in wealth and immiseration, or internal political dysfunctions that have undermined any coherent strategy for dealing with a global pandemic. . .
. . . Across most of the political spectrum, policymakers and commentators largely embrace the essential goodness of the security state as it is currently constituted. The idea that the U.S. government is a benevolent historical agent with the potential to establish a pacific and stable world community is a central feature of establishment foreign policy—including among American liberals. As this view would have it, whatever the flaws within U.S. society—whether racism, sexism, or class inequality—at root American institutions are more or less just, and are organized around principles of liberty and self-government. American liberalism thus offers a clear vision of internationalism: the security interests pursued by bipartisan policymakers are coterminous with the world’s interests.
All of this justifies a presumptive political exceptionalism about how the United States operates on the world stage. Most liberals today would be hesitant to sign on to a strong account of such exceptionalism—that Reaganite cultural argument about the unique greatness of the country. Regardless, they would by and large agree that in a world of coequal nation-states in which no one has the real ability to enforce existing arrangements, it often falls on the United States to serve as the ultimate backstop of global security. It is therefore acceptable for the state to step inside and outside of established legal constraints if doing so helps ensure that the system functions and survives. American liberal internationalists acknowledge that the United States sometimes gets things wrong, even disastrously so—as with Vietnam or the second Iraq War—but these episodes are treated as particular follies of an otherwise legitimate and moral security project.
In response, many democratic socialists offer a general critique of U.S. primacy and faith in the objectives of the national security state. Such left activists question a rosy story of the postwar order. They note that U.S. violations of foreign self-determination were the overarching reality of the Cold War era. The period saw direct involvement or complicity in truly staggering forms of mass violence across large swathes of the world, including countless coups, political assassinations, and small-scale interventions. Rather than generating a stable and prosperous community of liberal democracies, U.S. power often encouraged economic exploitation and illiberal authoritarianism (as in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, and South Africa, to name just a handful of client states). . .
. . . The U.S. promotion of privatization and the starving of state institutions in Europe and elsewhere, alongside policies like NATO expansion, not only funneled money into a corporate-military framework but also fed a mix of economic oligarchy and belligerent ethno-nationalism—conditions ripe for a takeover by a despot like Putin. Yet none of that historical analysis answers the question of what should be done now.
The national security establishment, liberals included, has a straightforward answer: the U.S. security state should intervene through its classic toolkit, with some combination of aggressive sanctions and militarized confrontation. For defenders of American primacy, the inevitable global fact of bad actors means that each outbreak of overseas instability is new proof of the necessity of U.S. exceptionalism. In the immediate wake of previous strategic blunders—in Vietnam, in Central America, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya—there may be handwringing about past misbehavior. But faith in the unique responsibility of the United States means that with every new threat history essentially starts afresh. Rebooting the security apparatus takes precedence over thinking systematically about why the recent past has been littered with so much failure. .
I came across this very odd video clip recently filmed at a 7 Mountains of Influence conference. (I don’t know where or when). If you have never heard of this movement before, check out these websites (here, here, here).
The 7 mountains folks are part of what is called the “dominionist”
The 7 mountains of influence to be conquered for the kingdom of God
movement with the (primarily Pentecostal-fundamentalist) wing of the Christian church. They mistakenly imagine that the kingdom of God is expanded as Christians gain power and influence in worldly affairs, e.g., the 7 mountains of influence.
If you haven’t read my book yet, you really should.
Below is a segment filmed at a 7 Mountains conference. It includes something I can only describe as a “Christian Nationalist Pledge of Allegiance.”
I won’t apologize for saying that its identification of God’s kingdom with the United States is pure blasphemy.
Not only is this public exercise extremely bizarre, it breaks my heart to see how easily these false leaders (who call themselves “apostles”!) mislead large segments of the church into false teaching.
If you know anyone who is involved with this blasphemous malarky, please point out the error of their ways.
The video title, “Christofascists Want to Overthrow U.S. Democracy to Install a Theocracy,” is an accurate description of this movement’s objectives.
Also, forgive the host’s profanity. I can’t blame him for being shocked. But, really, profanity is not an inappropriate response to the 8 and 1/2 minutes of collective profanity spewed throughout the auditorium on screen.
Focus on the segment beginning at the 5:30 minute mark continuing through to 14:00.
I would say that the news clip below is “unbelievable” except that it appeared on the Christian Broadcast Network. A network that conforms its opinion pieces so closely to the conservative, Republican obsession with “law and order” that you’d be forgiven for assuming its commentators all had day jobs as prison guards.
This editorial discussion is supposedly highlighting the importance of the
Jayland Walker
public “having all the facts” about a situation before drawing conclusions or making objections to the work of the authorities.
But then, conservative Christianity has always highlighted the importance of “obeying the authorities,” no matter how abusive they may be.
The matter at hand is the police murder of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio and the quick display of community outrage that followed.
The initial police reports, the details of which have not been changed, explained that Mr. Walker was going to be stopped for some unspecified sort of traffic violation.
Mr. Walker then took the police on a high speed chase which ended with him leaping from his car and running away. Police allege that Walker fired a gun out his car window during the chase.
As Walker ran away, his was chased by 8 – 9 policemen who fired 90+ rounds at his back. Mr. Walker never returned fire because, as the police later discovered, he was unarmed. (Duh, the fact that he never turned to fire back while unsuccessfully dodging a hail-storm of gunfire, hadn’t tipped them off to this already?)
Walker’s body was hit by 60+ bullets. He died at the scene.
These were the original facts. They are still the facts.
Mr. Walker is another unarmed black man gunned down for the crime of running from the police who consistently insult, abuse, assault, and murder unarmed black men.
As an African-American friend asked me not long ago, “David, why can’t white people understand why we are afraid of the police? We have good reason to be.”
Nevertheless, these CBN commentators object. They insist that most, perhaps all?, media reports have not mentioned the (alleged) gunshot out of Walker’s car window during the car chase.
However, EVERY report that I have read and watched HAS either shown the relevant video or mentioned the alleged gun fire from Walker on the highway.
In other words, CBN is ginning up an illegitimate, irrelevant concern for their own rhetorical purposes. Can anyone say, MANIPULATION? or PROPAGANDA?
But they all say these things oh so unctuously with such apparent concern…
They also fail to mention the many, many times that the police have been caught LYING to the public in their initial police reports in order to protect themselves and hide their own wrongdoing.
Naturally, the local black community responded with a large, peaceful, public protest demanding answers and accountability.
The very next day these three CBN Christian stooges, doing the half-step shuffle for white privilege, self-righteousness, hard-heartedness, foolishness and stupidity, scold the black community (!) for expressing their grief and anger, while exercising their first amendment right to cry out in the streets for justice.
I am sorry, but I find the entire diatribe to be absolutely infuriating!
Here we see three comfortable, extremely well paid, audacious examples of the poisonous fruit of white privilege dripping with the decay of dead men’s bones, all white-washed and dressed up pretty for broadcast TV.
I am sorry, but this report is nothing but pious hackery, blindingly oblivious to the persistent and pernicious racial/racist dynamic playing itself out over and over and over again in our city streets.
It is also painfully obvious — AGAIN– that something has gone horribly wrong with the way police officers are being trained to handle both people and their weapons.
It’s not a few “bad apples,” folks. It’s the entire system that appears to be rotten.
I could go on, but I will stop now. Watch for yourself. Especially notice the mini-sermon about “unrighteous responses” given in coordination with the film of African-American protesters walking through the streets.
Really?!?!
I have asked in the past. I am asking again. If anyone has a video clip of an unarmed white man being shot or chocked to death by police, please send it to me.
Obviously, this post is spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade and the many conversations now occurring state-to-state about local abortion laws.
The premise of the anti-abortion (I refuse to use the term pro-life, since it is highly misleading) movement has always been the claim that “life begins at conception.” A secondary entailment of that assumption is the definition of “life” as the existence of a human person.
Let me begin by putting my cards on the table: I used to espouse this view myself. In the past, I have led protesters in prayer near an abortion clinic. But no more. Over the years, I have undergone a slow transformation.
Nowadays,I believe that only God knows when another “life” (see above) begins inside a woman’s body. Pinpointing this arrival of new life into the world is beyond human comprehension.
A human embryo
However, having said this, I also recognize two things. First, I recognize that opposition to abortion has been unanimous throughout Church history, going back as far as the earliest Christian Church fathers (among those who left written records). However, granting this fact still does not answer the question of when life begins.
For instance, some Jewish literature indicates that life was not thought to begin until the mother could feel movement inside of her body. So, terminating a pregnancy prior to that experience would not necessarily be considered abortion by all.
Second, understanding that the fertilization of a woman’s egg (both the egg and sperm are called a “gamete”) begins a process resulting in the creation and eventual delivery, assuming no interference, of a human baby. Whether or not we can say with certainty when life begins does not change the fact that pregnancy is a process that eventually produces a new life.
Thus, it only makes sense that abortion should be avoided as much as possible – yep, I am no longer an absolutist on this point, as I will explain below – as dictated by whatever reasonable concerns are raised by a pregnant woman’s circumstances.
Yes, I know that “reasonable concerns” is a subjective constraint, but it is not my goal in this post to explore that problem. I will only say that the current story of the pregnant 10-year-old Ohio girl, raped and impregnated by her father, raises more than enough “reasonable concern” to justify an abortion, in my mind.
Sadly, Ohio state law is now denying her that humane solution – yes, humane solution – to her tragic plight. That strikes me as terribly wrong.
Rather, in this post I want to explore the inconsistencies that I see in the conservative, anti-abortion position. Inconsistencies which suggest to me either that few conservatives actually believe what they claim to believe, OR they are ignorant, and therefore should remove themselves from this debate about the details of conception, contraception, and pregnancy.
Let’s first remind ourselves of the physiological details that everyone in this debate ought to understand…despite the fact that many, obviously, don’t.
Here is a simplified version:
When the female gamete, the egg, is penetrated by a male gamete, a sperm, fertilization occurs and produces a zygote. Remember that, according to conservative, anti-abortion advocates, this is when life begins, “at the moment of conception.” So, a zygote is a living person, according to this view. No, don’t try to quibble over this. A zygote is either “alive” or it’s not. And we are only talking about one kind of life: a human life.
After about five days of cell division, the zygote becomes a blastocyst.
The zygote or blastocyst continues to travel down the woman’s fallopian tube (coming from the ovary) towards the uterus and takes between four to ten days on average before implanting into the uterine wall.
But not every fertilized egg/zygote makes it to implantation. Implantation seems to be the moment when the blastocyst officially becomes an embryo. The embryonic period lasts for eight to nine weeks. At week nine or ten the embryo becomes a fetus.
The transition from a dependent fetus to an independent baby, capable of living outside the mother’s body, remains a matter of debate, partly contingent on the expanding capabilities of medical technology.
Sometimes the zygote implants inside the fallopian tube creating what is called an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancies are dangerous for the mother and are typically terminated (aborted, according to conservatives?) either naturally, chemically, or surgically.
Do you know of a woman, anti-abortion activist who terminated her ectopic pregnancy? I’d love to hear answers to my following questions.
Depending on what study you read, somewhere between 40% to 70% of fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus but are “flushed” from the woman’s body along with her menstrual fluids. In other words, IF life does begin at conception/fertilization, as anti-abortion activists insist, then either God or nature, whichever you prefer, is the greatest abortionist of them all.
More than that, if anti-abortion activists were serious about this belief, then why are these abundant “natural abortions” not being memorialized? Does anyone do this? Please tell me if you know.
Wouldn’t it make sense, both logically and morally, that every woman, anti-abortion activist – at least those who are still menstruating and capable of becoming pregnant – who believes that life begins at conception, ought to collect her monthly menstrual fluid in a bag for burial?
I am serious and not in any way trying to be flippant. That may sound foolish, but why? Does anyone do this? I really want to know. And if not, why not?
If you truly believe that life begins at fertilization, then it only makes sense, and conforms to the moral imperatives of honoring all life, to see those 40% to 70% of fertilized but unimplanted zygotes as “preborn babies” (to use the manipulative, propagandistic lingo deployed by certain activists).
In which case, every one of them deserves a decent burial with a headstone. Right? And, if not, why not? Please explain this to me and help me to understand. I have never heard of anyone doing this. Why?
This brings us to the question of miscarriages.
I am well aware of how extremely traumatic a miscarriage can be for everyone involved. In no way am I trying to be cavalier or callous. Nevertheless, we all must take the full implications of our moral positions with all seriousness.
If life begins at conception, then every miscarriage is a naturally occurring abortion which ends the life of a pre-born baby. This must be true at whatever stage in pregnancy the miscarriage occurs.
Obviously, this conviction is at the heart of what makes the experience of a miscarriage so very, very heartbreaking for those women who experience one.
So, let’s think this through together.
How many anti-abortion advocates who experience a miscarriage insist that the remains of their miscarriage be buried with a funeral and a headstone?
Perhaps some people do this. I don’t know? Do you know of any? I am asking questions for the purposes of logical and moral consistency. I would love to hear some answers from my readers.
In any case, miscarried fetal tissue is the remnant testifying to a human death, if human life does begin at fertilization. In which case, it is deserving of a memorial. How many conservative Christians name their miscarried fetuses and visit their graves?
Perhaps some do, which is wonderful. At least, they are showing real moral consistency.
Naturally, these questions also apply to those state legislatures that are talking about criminalizing the morning after pill, which chemically prevents the zygote from implanting into the uterus. Perhaps these activist legislators argue that this type of “abortion” is not a natural occurrence, so it is different from the 40% to 70% of fertilized eggs that are flushed naturally with a woman’s menstrual fluid.
But anyone making that argument is also underlining the importance of memorializing and properly burying those “flushed” zygotes…on a monthly basis. How many of these legislators do this themselves? I suspect the answer is, none.
But, why not? And, if they don’t do this, then aren’t they being hypocrites by criminalizing the morning after pill? I’d say they were.
The only logical response I can see to any of my questions is to say that “the degree” of life involved in these different events varies according to the developmental stage of the effected zygote, embryo, or fetus. So that, even though “life” begins at conception, certain stages of that “life” can legitimately be terminated, whether by nature or by human intervention, without the need for memorializing, burial, naming, or celebrating because they are “less alive” than they would be at other stages.
But if this is the case, then we have all agreed to the existence of those subjective matters regarding the “reasonable concerns” that make some abortions acceptable, depending on the mother’s circumstances (see above). Yet, these are the very concerns over a woman or a girl’s well-being that the average anti-abortion activist refuses to recognize.
This, my friends, is a major problem in this position, as I see it.
Christians need to think clearly and consistently, especially when the lives and future prospects of young girls and women are all at stake.
We need to follow the moral implications of our beliefs and behaviors all the way through to the very end, consistently, without fudging for personal preference.
Furthermore, we have no business applying moral directives to other people’s lives when we are not following those directives ourselves.
Personally, I don’t see any of these matters being taken seriously by the Religious Right; at least, not in the public conversation.
That’s a big problem for the anti-abortion movement.
As the January 6 congressional investigative committee takes a break, lets
MAGA Jesus. Photo by Tyler Merbler, via Flickr.
remind ourselves about the role Christian Nationalism played, and continues to play, in stirring political violence and rebellion in this country.
“Christian Nationalism” is an ideology promoting the belief that the USA is a “Christian nation,” “God’s very own country” in fact, now being used by God to spread his divine gifts of salvation, liberty, democracy, and capitalism to the rest of the world.
According to Christian nationalists, America is unlike any other nation in the world because it occupies a unique place in God’s heart. America is a “chosen nation.” If you look for this message in the parades and other official events celebrating Independence Day, you can’t miss it.
Below is an excerpt from an article in Religion News Service titled “How Christian nationalism paved the way for Jan. 6” written by Jack Jenkins. He disects the influence of Christian nationalism in the revolt of January 6:
WASHINGTON (RNS) — On June 1, 2020, then-President Donald Trump marched across Lafayette Square outside the White House, trailed by an anxious-looking team of advisers and military aides. The group shuffled past detritus left by racial justice protesters after a frantic mass expulsion executed by police minutes prior with clubs, pepper balls and tear gas.
The dignitaries stopped in front of St. John’s Church, where presidents, including Trump, have traditionally attended services on their Inauguration Day. St. John’s, which had suffered a minor fire the day before, was closed. But Trump took up a position in front of its sign and turned toward the cameras, a Bible held aloft.
“We have the greatest country in the world,” Trump said. In the distance, sirens wailed.
Washington’s Episcopal bishop, whose diocese includes St. John’s, condemned
“Jericho March” participants march around the U.S. Capitol, Tuesday Jan. 5, 2021, in Washington. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins
Trump’s stunt, saying it left her “horrified.” But White House chief of staff Mark Meadows declared he was “never prouder” of the president than in that moment, calling it a rejection of “the degradation of our heritage or the burning of churches.” Trump’s evangelical Christian advisers were similarly effusive, lauding the photo op as “important” and “absolutely correct.”
In retrospect, the “symbolic” message of Trump’s Bible photo op, as he termed it, operates as a bookend to the Christian nationalism on display at the attack on the U.S. Capitol seven months later. It communicated, however histrionically, that the president was leading an existential fight against politically liberal foes calling for a racial reckoning, but at the center of which was an attack on Christian faith. From that moment on, Christian nationalism — in the broadest sense, a belief that Christianity is integral to America as a nation and should remain as such — provided a theological framework for the effort to deny Democrats the White House.
As Trump’s poll numbers dipped the same month as the photo op, his campaign redoubled efforts to stir up support among his conservative Christian supporters. Then-Vice President Mike Pence embarked on a “Faith in America” tour, while Trump conducted interviews with conservative Christian outlets and held rallies at white evangelical churches.
Referring to “American patriots,” Trump told rallygoers at Dream City Church in Phoenix: “We don’t back down from left-wing bullies. And the only authority we worship is our God.”
In August at the Republican National Convention, Trump described early American heroes as people who “knew that our country is blessed by God and has a special purpose in this world.” Pence, in his speech, adapted Christian Scripture by swapping out references to Jesus with patriotic platitudes.
Despite then-candidate Joe Biden’s public discussion of his Catholic faith, and the overt religiosity of the Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump Jr. told the GOP crowd that “People of faith are under attack” in the United States, pointing to restrictions on large gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet it was Trump’s religious supporters who did the attacking the final night of the RNC. After leaving the convention’s fireworks-filled celebration at the White House, conservative Christian commentator and Trump loyalist Eric Metaxas was filmed punching an anti-Trump protester off his bike and fleeing into the night, only admitting to the assault days later in an email to Religion Unplugged.
After Trump lost the election in November, a report from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation concluded that Christian nationalism, also referred to as white Christian nationalism, was used to “bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” according to BJC’s Amanda Tyler.
In the days after the vote, Florida pastor Paula White, leader of the White House faith office, preached a sermon from her home church in which she called on “angels” from Africa and other nations to assist in overturning the election results. The next night, insisting she was only addressing “spiritual” matters, White vacillated between the ethereal and the electoral: She entreated the Almighty to “keep the feet of POTUS in his purpose and in his position” and decry any “fraud” or “demonic agenda” that “has been released over this election.”
Though I can’t agree with his theology, I can’t help but have the deepest admiration for Dr. Cornel West. He was denied tenure at Harvard because of his outspoken defense of the Palestinian people suffering under Israeli apartheid.
In this clip from Middle East Eye, he explain the complicity of US media in covering up Israeli war crimes.
The organization known as Defense for Children International, Palestine monitors the abuse of Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and the West Bank.)
They recently posted a horrifying story about a teenage girl being used as a
Ahed-Mohammad-Rida-Mereb. She was made a human shield by Israeli soldiers, made to stand in front of their Jeep, in the middle of a crossfire.
“human shield” by Israeli forces in the northern, West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
The Israeli military often refers to itself as “the most moral army in the world.” But you must understand the ideology of political Zionism in order to understand the meaning of this slogan.
To the average westerner, being called “the most moral army in the world” means that Israeli soldiers always obey international law, will never commit war crimes, and will always fight justly and fairly.
Don’t believe it.
This phrase is actually another Zionist word game. But you won’t get the joke if you don’t understand what makes political Zionism tick. In the Zionist world, the most moral thing any Jewish person can do is to defend the Jewish state.
Thus, the “morality” of the Israeli military is not measured by international law or humanitarian standards of fair play or just war theory. These concerns have no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of Israel’s military proposition.
Instead, Israel’s military is supremely moral because they are “defending” the Jewish nation-state. And THAT, by definition, is the apex of military morality.
Consequently, I am not surprised to read this heartbreaking story of life-threatening child abuse committed by Israeli forces.
By the way, also notice the example of another war crime mentioned briefly at the end of this story. Because the teenager’s older brother was a wanted man, the army fire-bombed her family home.
This form of collective punishment is also a war crime regularly performed by Israel forces against Palestinian families. Imagine if your cousin had committed a crime but law enforcement came to destroy your home simply because you were family.
Israel does this, and so much more, all the time.
Read Ahed’s story below:
Ramallah, May 19, 2022—Israeli soldiers used a 16-year-old Palestinian girl as a human shield in front of an Israeli military vehicle while deployed in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin last week.
Israeli soldiers forced Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on May 13 around 8 a.m. in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position, according to information collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside.
“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at Defense for Children International – Palestine. “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”
Israeli forces besieged Ahed’s home around 6 a.m. on May 13 in order to arrest her 20-year-old brother, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Israeli forces ordered Ahed, her parents, and her two younger brothers out of the house and to move to a yard across the street. Israeli forces exchanged fire with Ahed’s older brother, who remained in the house. Around 8 a.m., Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward an Israeli military vehicle, which is when Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle.
“Bullets were being fired at the military vehicle from all directions,” Ahed told DCIP. “I was trembling and crying and shouting to the soldiers to remove me because the bullets were passing over my head, but one of them ordered me in Arabic through a small window in the military vehicle, ‘Stay where you are and don’t move. You’re a terrorist. Stand in your place until you say goodbye to your brother.’”
Ahed tried to tilt her head to the side to dodge the bullets, but one of the Israeli soldiers ordered her to stand up straight, according to information collected by DCIP. Ahed stood in front of the Israeli military vehicle for about two hours before running to a nearby tree and collapsing on the ground, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Around two hours later, Israeli forces evacuated Ahed’s two-story house, where she lived with her parents, three brothers, grandparents, two uncles and their wives, and their eight children ranging in age from one to 11 years old, according to information collected by DCIP. After the family evacuated, Israeli forces bombed the house with rocket-propelled grenades, which caused the house to catch on fire. Israeli forces also shot live ammunition at the house, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Israeli forces withdrew from Ahed’s neighborhood around 11 a.m. She learned that Israeli forces arrested her older brother and that neighborhood residents posted on social media that she was being used as a human shield by Israeli forces, which led the Palestinian gunmen to stop shooting at the Israeli military vehicle.
Ahed was transferred by private vehicle to Jenin Hospital and was treated for intense mental stress and a severe lack of oxygen, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
The use of civilians as human shields, wherein civilians are forced to directly assist military operations or used to shield armed forces or armed groups or objects from attack, is prohibited under international law. The practice is also prohibited under Israeli law based on a 2005 ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
Since 2000, DCIP has documented at least 26 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. All except one case have occurred after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling. Only one of those cases led to the conviction of two soldiers for “inappropriate behavior” and “overstepping authority.” Both were demoted in rank and given three-month suspended sentences.
(The photos throughout this post display only some of the victims of the mass shooting in Buffalo.)
Below I have posted two very different analyses of the recent mass shooting committed by a young white supremacist in Buffalo, NY.
They are both fairly brief. So, watch both and then rejoin me at the bottom to read my own thoughts about each perspective. I will try to keep my comments as short as possible.
If you want to explore this issue further with me, just make a comment on the blog page. I always respond as quickly as possible.
The first is an editorial from the Christian Broadcasting Network titled “How Americans Can Prevent More Mass Shootings.” The second is an interview from the alternative news program Democracy Now titled “Lessons for Buffalo? Meet the Activist Who Sued the White Supremacists Behind Charlottesville & Won.”
My response. (I’ll give you a heads up — I disagree with everything in the CBN editorial. The Jewish granddaughter of Holocaust survivors makes much more sense and offers far better suggestions for change):
Celestine Chaney
We must begin by noting CBN’s utter neglect of the white supremacist ideology that motivated the Buffalo murders. It only mentions that he had “come under the spell of others” briefly as if he were unwittingly seduced my mysterious, dark forces.
The fact that the shooter wrote a very lengthy online manifesto declaring both his hatred of African-Americans and brown-skinned immigrants as well as his plans to commit a mass shooting are conveniently ignored.
Consequently, the obvious questions for local law enforcement as to how in
Ruth Whitfield
the world a young white supremacist, spewing vitriol, who had previously been brought in for questioning after threatening to commit a local school shooting, are nowhere within earshot.
The idea that his young man had personal agency and willingly embraced his racist ideology is also buried very deeply. My suspicion is that CBN’s right-wing Republican political stance is on full display in this editorial decision.
Roberta Drury
More than that, I suspect that CBN producers regularly consult with Republican party leaders to gather the newest party “talking points.” The Republicans are very busy working to separate their public image from violent racism at the moment — while continuing openly to embrace this evil on the campaign trail, especially when visiting Mara Lago to kiss Trump’s ring — so CBN was almost certainly told to keep
Heyward Patterson
this issue hidden beneath their tight fitting neocon helmet.
Unsurprisingly, the idea of tougher gun laws is put to bed immediately. The implication is crystal clear: restrictive gun laws do not work in limiting gun violence. The spokesman rightly points out that NY state already has very restrictive gun laws, but those laws did not prevent this shooting.
Aaron Salter
At this point, CBN demonstrates the complete absence of “fact-checkers” in the news room. It’s been widely reported that the NY shooter crossed the state line and purchased the guns and ammunition used in the shooting from a Massachusetts gun shop.
The obvious implication — at least, it appears obvious to my feeble mind — is the need for greater uniformity in US gun laws beginning with a nation-wide, federal ban on all semi-automatic rifles. The shooter ought not have been able to purchase his murderous implements anywhere in the country.
But then, on second thought, perhaps there are fact-checkers at CBN, but the powers-that-be decided to manipulate their conservative, anti-gun law viewers with gross misinformation, which are in fact, outright lies.
If this is the case, then so much for the Christian morality and integrity that the editorialist beats the drum about towards the editorial’s conclusion.
The heart of the problem, according to CBN, is American immorality, most profoundly displayed in the absence of any generally maintained “Christian world-view” among American church-goers.
I have an earlier post criticizing this particular red herring, so I won’t repeat myself here. You can read the previous post if interested.
Geraldine Talley
This supposed lack of a robust Christian world-view among American Christians then becomes a launching pad for the standard, conservative lament about the egregious moral decline of our society, as if we all now inhabit the historic, indecent nadir of US moral degeneracy.
Here it becomes obvious that along with the absent fact-checkers, neither are there any American historians in the CBN editorial room.
But the standard tropes are trotted out once again. The two successive turning points for America’s irreligious degradation are the well-known bobbsy twins of US degeneracy: the outlawing of prayer in our public schools (a ruling that strangely never affected me during my public school career, since I prayed regularly in school without difficulty or interruption), and the Supreme Court ruling of Roe vs. Wade.
As a direct result of these two legal decisions, the United States began a
Pearl Young
rapid descent into indecency and flagrant wickedness that has swept the nation and now instigates young, white men like the Buffalo shooter to “randomly” mow down black Americans with a semi-automatic rifle in the local grocery’s produce aisle.
Does that make sense to you? I must confess that it totally baffles me.
Naturally, by the end of CBN’s ahistorical and irrational monologue it all comes down to the failure of parents, meaning that the obvious solution is to, once again, “focus on the family.”
Cultivating stronger, more godly families is, as always, the social, cultural, political, religious panacea needed to solve the problems of white supremacy and gun violence in this country of ours.
More Christian parents, promoting the properly Biblical world-view, taking greater responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their children becomes the one-size-fits-all remedy for everything that ails America.
It’s just that simple.
Or is it? Come back tomorrow for part two of my response to these two videos. I’ve got a lot more to say…unsurprisingly. But I think that this post is already long enough.
professor of Constitutional law and political development at Cornell Law School.
constraints of America’s cookie-cutter approach to foreign policy, built around the long-entrenched, Manichean bromides of (1) Exceptional America is always working benevolently for the good, and (2) Anyone opposing America’s policies abroad must be on the side of evil.
What is needed now, Rana argues, is a genuinely Leftist International order, which frankly strikes me as a far more “Christian” way to view world affairs than anything the US has done in the past.
the RNC. After leaving the convention’s fireworks-filled celebration at the White House, conservative Christian commentator and Trump loyalist Eric Metaxas was filmed 
