Dear Aaron
I much enjoyed meeting you at Hasbury Community Church and found your excellent address full of interesting details and insights. The Lord has blessed you with great eloquence, and a great memory and intelligence. You have a superb style of delivery that engages the attention of your audience. Most attractive.
I have a somewhat jaundiced opinion of humanity's unhappy tenure of this planet to date and, with the record of Israel's leaders and kings in the Old Testament. And no better since 1945, with the revelation of one Christian nation's horrifying holocaust, after centuries of European wicked oppression and persecution of the Jews; plus, Western and Christian wars around the globe, followed, with dear Bibi being the final straw for my sensitive conscience. Hence, not surprisingly, you kindly commented that you totally disagreed with me. Great!
You said you did not want a two-state solution but, presumably, Jews/Christians and Arabs living together in peaceful co-existence. EXACTLY! However, it does not help when we Jews/Christians/Westerners continue our imperialistic endeavours of being the dominant, controlling force throughout the world. Hence, we decide unilaterally, what happens to our subjects whether they be the black peoples of past centuries or today's Arabs, Muslims, Gazans, Palestinians, Lebanese. This is called apartheid governance where we White Europeans/Americans remain firmly in control over every other human group with the wrong colour skin. We see it in our US/UK/EU member or representative, Israel, in the heart of the Arab, Muslim Middle East. That tragedy began out of the disastrous 1914-18 World War and continued with our British Mandate over Palestine. And has never ended, with our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia as the All Dominating Powers in the Middle East.
We are all turning the Greater Promised Land, from the Jordan to the Sea, a land flowing with milk and honey, into a desert of death and destruction, "an unliveable wasteland" - awash with the blood and the tears of the people of non-violence like me and of the violent. First Gaza and now Lebanon. Because of Old Testament barbaric, brutal, war crime ethics instead of New Testament ethics of repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness. We all know what Yahweh wants.
Our Hebrew/Christian Bible seems to be inspiring our side, our representative Israel to "utterly destroy" (exterminate) Amalek
Aaron, in your talk, you even mentioned the annihilation of the Amalekites by the people of Israel that was commanded by the God of Israel. I know at least one Israeli government minister has talked of doing exactly the same to the Palestinians. The Jewish annihilation of the Amalekites was many centuries before the Nazis attempted the same wickedness on the People of Yahweh but, this time, failed. It looks to me as though modern-day Israel is bringing the same atrocities on the Palestinians and Lebanese. Have the Jews learnt nothing?
Listen to the horrors on BBC Sounds, Radio 4's 6 pm News on 14 Oct 2024, 08:35 from the beginning to 13:20 (nearly five minutes of OUR war crimes).
I started off so well for the first thirty years, too! I was brought up in an evangelical Christian family, was soon converted and spent my late teens and twenties on summer beach missions in England and Wales.
The problem is that as I have read widely, listened widely, thought deeply and been preached at for decades, including Linda's eloquent talks at church (my wife), I remain disappointed by my Christian friends' embracement of coercion, force, and violence on other peoples.
My God is my conscience and the God revealed in the life and teachings of my Master, Jesus Christ - the very best monarch out of a terrible bunch of miscreants from around the world, including those in the Bible.
Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see." It starts with personal integrity and example. In addition, all we have is the power of the pen and word. Much mightier and more moral than the US/UK/Israel sword that has solved nothing since 1945 but only ratcheted up the mutual hatred between the unhappy Children of Abraham, especially in the unHoly Land. Violence begets violence. War has not achieved peace for Israel.
I was honestly impressed by your good self, Aaron. I genuinely think highly of you and wish you every blessing and goodness throughout your days.
By the way, the most Christian book ('I Shall Not Hate') I have ever read was by a Palestinian. Details of the author here, from Wikipedia:
"Izzeldin Abuelaish OOnt MSC is a Canadian-Palestinian medical doctor and author. He was born in Gaza, and was the first Palestinian doctor to work in an Israeli hospital and has been active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. During the Gaza War in January 2009, his three daughters and a niece were killed by Israeli tank fire directed at his home. He had been calling in reports about the effect of the war by phone to a TV station. In his regularly scheduled report, in tears, he described their killing on-air, in a video that was widely circulated in Israel and around the world."
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