As we upgrade and insulate ...

Dear Joy and Jeremy - and copied to Joy's brother, Andy because of the reference to their father.

As we upgrade and insulate our building, buildings in Gaza with desperate, starving people inside them are being flattened by rockets and missiles.  A nasty way to die.  This will go on through this year when, last year, seven days of ceasefire brought hostage releases in exchange for Palestinians held in Israel.

There are many horrors of death and injuries, just as there have been for the last 76 years.  But, now on a much larger scale and done to the Palestinians much more than they do to the Israelis.  Should we be issuing a statement for a non-violent resolution, with the other churches and faith leaders in Halesowen?

Your dad once told me that he thought that Israel was the robber in the story of the Good Samaritan.  That makes the Palestinians the man who got beaten up and robbed.  Your dad was right.  Today there is no Good Samaritan to help the Gazans and the people in the Occupied West Bank who are also being killed and injured.  The nearest we get to the Good Samaritan is the United Nations relief agencies, MSF and their hospitals that are also attacked and closing.

A statement, from all Halesowen faith leaders, calling for a ceasefire, a terrorist rather than civilian targetted approach, with hostage releases will make no difference.  However, it may be seen in the Halesowen News, the Express and Star and heard, perhaps on Premier Christian Radio.  A good New Year's resolution.  And it sets a very good example to other leaders to follow civilised, land sharing, nonviolent and, indeed, Christ-like behaviours.

Every blessing to you both - and Andy

Tim

 Haaretz article

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

"The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, and Battle of the Withered Grain was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been governed by Hamas since 2007."

Thoughts on the Palestine/Israel horror

It's all talk of wiping out Israel on one side, while Israel is no talk but all action in actually doing it to their neighbour - the constant downtrodden, oppressed and imprisoned Palestinians who never see any improvement in their dire conditions; only starvation, aching thirst,  and the constant fear of house, home and family wiped off the face of the earth by their Bad Samaritan neighbour. Palestinians could always start by showing how to be the Good Samaritan to Israelis before total extinction.

This is what life was like for years, if not for decades, in Gaza. We, in the American-led West are responsible for this scandalous state of affairs. Not just Israel. What is the matter with us lot? We are inhuman, especially our politicians and leaders. We killed 2 to 3 million in Vietnam in the 50s to 70s. Now 20,000 and rising since 7.10.23 in Gaza. It is truly obscene with famine on top of war. Israel is the unjust, greedy rich man in his castle; the Palestinians are the poor man at his gate. And a famous Jew told the story of the Good Samaritan against his own tribe, faith and leaders. He was soon eliminated at 33 years. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr.

If you treat a whole nation like dirt, as violent criminals, as encaged dangerous animals, one day they are going to break out of that cage and run amok. As they did, in fact on 7.10.23.

'I Shall Not Hate' is a book that every so entitled, privileged, wealthy Westerner should read.

The disgraceful crying shame of it all, is that their neighbour has everything  - and, much, much more than enough. 

They have the powers, the position to turn things around but they continue in the ways of hate and oppression and refuse to try another approach. So greed and land grabbing continue apace. And their neighbour gets left with ghastly Gaza in a downward spiral.

Picking up on what you said on Friday

By and large, Arab and Jewish Israelis do indeed get on well with each other in Israel.  But, like us, they are so entitled, so advantaged and sitting pretty compared with Gazans.  They, like us, are like the hymn verse.  "The rich man in his castle".

The problem is the next line, "The poor man at his gate".  The poor man for us is the poor South nations of the world that were not responsible for the most destructive and greedy century humanity has ever seen.

Israel is part of the American led West, part of the very economic greedy/growth nations that have used their wealth - taking what has gone for ever and which we can never get back - to wage war, violence and killings on the poor man at our gate, as well as on ourselves in the rich West.

Our great friend and ally, Israel was born out of war, violence and their people largely wiped out by our Western nations civil war in the 30s and 40s.  No agreement with the Arab nations of which the American/Western backed Israel is in the heart of.  No negotiated settlement.  Simply a quick land grab by the men/women of violence while the going was good.  And,yet more land acquired from violence in the decades that have passed.

Ever since 1948 the Palestinians have been the poor man, literally at the gate of the rich man nicely ensconced in his castle of Israel.  For 75 years, too.  No wonder the believers in violence in Palestine have followed our extremely bad example and our most terrible centuries of violence.

Gaza must be the most densely populated place on earth, an impoverished, subjugated and blockaded people living in a prison camp from which there is no escape, whatsoever.  Unless, you have a foreign passport.

Our centuries of violence is underlined by every political party not wanting a ceasefire but fully supporting our friend's carnage in Gaza.  The three main parties fully support the saturation bombing of Gaza as an appropriate, proportionate response to the October 7 terrorist atrocity.

Only the over 300,000 demonstrators in London, yesterday are doing anything about it.  The pathetic politics of the West means nothing is ever done by our leaders.  Only President Macron has finally spoken out against the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza.

Diane Abbott was right in what she wrote

Diane Abbott was right in what she wrote.  Of course, there are degrees of racism with the Nazi kind being the worse we have ever seen in the 20th century.  But the 300 years of European and American white racism that killed and enslaved millions of black people is skated over.  Is that not the worse crime against humanity that we humans have ever inflicted on our own species?

However, that is played down because we were the perpetrators and, even worse, our Head of State has never apologised, let alone made reparations to the victims' relatives.  By only compensating the perpetrators, the Head of State has added insult to injury in the eyes of our Commonwealth partners.  Similarly, we cannot be too critical of our great friend and ally, the Israelis because we don't want to lose their friendship when the Jewish community in the UK is easily the most important and highly valued minority community.  And, of course, their land is the home of our national faith for the last thousand years.  When our Jewish friends talk of anti-Semitism we sit up and take notice.  We jump, damn pronto.  However, it has led to Keir Starmer, I believe, to act egregiously ("extremely and conspicuously badly") against Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott.

It is high time that Starmer shows some real leadership by setting a fine example in talking and then acting about the urgency to curtail the exporting of all armaments originating in the UK that are killing our fellow human beings in Palestine, Sudan and in Ukraine.  Keep British armaments on British soil for the defence of our land, only.

These top notch, fat cats are failing us at every turn

 XR BIRMINGHAM AT HSBC

Bank holiday Monday’s protest consisted of the XR Samba band and street theatre outside of the HSBC New Street branch. The demand was for the £67 billion that HSBC invests in the fossil fuel industry to be terminated. To illustrate the point, two rebels demanding divestment were covered in oil and sat through the hour-long proceedings on the carpet outside of the branch.

HSBC must be getting quite used to this. There have been many Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests outside of this branch as well as XR ones over the years.

Other well-known banks have been targeted as well.

This raises the question of why these institutions with vast financial reserves are in private hands anyway. Why not bring them into democratic public ownership, with transparent accessible accounting systems and with their employees being paid decent wages? Enough of fat cat unaccountable bankers treating the world as a giant casino, sloshing their huge wealth around the globe at the push of a button to make ever bigger profits, with no regard for the ethics of their actions.

Then the liberated money could be used to invest in renewable energy, mass building insulation, fare-free local public transport, electrified railways, and green jobs as part of a just transition.

So why not nationalise the banks and save us the trouble of all these constant protests?

The one Balfour pledge cancels out the other!

In 1917, the British government wrote:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ... "

However, on the next line of the letter and in the very next sentence to Lord Rothschild, this was made impossible to achieve by the pledge: "It being clearly understood, that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". 

I think, since 1948, the civil and religious rights of all the existing non-Jewish communities have been prejudiced.  Indeed, trampled all over with our own kith and kin being in the ascendancy and the non-Jewish communities being sidelined, marginalised and crushed.  They just could not compete with the enterprising, highly successful and powerful Jewish community that made up God's Chosen People (out of 193), to bring untold blessings to the nations of the world.

The November 1917 letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur was written at the very time the Jewish and non-Jewish communities were all helping our side to beat the predominantly Muslim Ottoman Empire to bring victory to our own, greater and longer lasting British Empire.

Robert Fisk gets it right

"Balfour initiated a policy of British support for Israel which continues to this very day, to the detriment of the occupied Palestinians of the West Bank and the five million Palestinian refugees living largely in warrens of poverty around the Middle East, including Israeli-besieged Gaza."

FISK'S FULL TEXT:

Theresa May told us that Britain will celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration this summer with “pride”. This was predictable. A British prime minister who would fawn to the head-chopping Arab autocrats of the Gulf in the hope of selling them more missiles – and then hold the hand of the insane new anti-Muslim president of the United States – was bound, I suppose, to feel “pride” in the most mendacious, deceitful and hypocritical document in modern British history.

As a woman who has set her heart against immigrants, it was also inevitable that May would display her most venal characteristics to foreigners – to wealthy Arab potentates, and to an American president whose momentary love of Britain might produce a life-saving post-Brexit trade agreement. It was to an audience of British lobbyists for Israel a couple of months ago that she expressed her “pride” in a century-old declaration which created millions of refugees. But to burnish the 1917 document which promised Britain’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but which would ultimately create that very refugee population – refugees being the target of her own anti-immigration policies – is little short of iniquitous.

The Balfour Declaration’s intrinsic lie – that while Britain supported a Jewish homeland, nothing would be done “which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” – is matched today by the equally dishonest response of Balfour’s lamentable successor at the Foreign Office. Boris Johnson wrote quite accurately two years ago that the Balfour Declaration was “bizarre”, a “tragicomically incoherent” document, “an exquisite piece of Foreign Office fudgerama”. But in a subsequent visit to Israel, the profit-hunting Mayor of London suddenly discovered that the Balfour Declaration was “a great thing” that “reflected a great tide of history”. No doubt we shall hear more of this same nonsense from Boris Johnson later this year.

Although the Declaration itself has been parsed, de-semanticised, romanticised, decrypted, decried, cursed and adored for 100 years, its fraud is easy to detect: it made two promises which were fundamentally opposed to each other – and thus one of them, to the Arabs (aka “the existing non-Jewish communities”), would be broken. The descendants of these victims, the Palestinian Arabs, are now threatening to sue the British government over this pernicious piece of paper, a hopeless and childish response to history. The Czechs might equally sue the British for Chamberlain’s Munich agreement, which allowed Hitler to destroy their country. The Palestinians would also like an apology – since the British have always found apologies cheaper than law courts. The British have grown used to apologising – for the British empire, for the slave trade, for the Irish famine. So why not for Balfour? Yes, but.... Theresa May needs the Israelis far more than she needs the Palestinians.

Balfour’s 1917 declaration, of course, was an attempt to avoid disaster in the First World War by encouraging the Jews of Russia and America to support the Allies against Germany. Balfour wanted to avoid defeat just as Chamberlain later wanted to avoid war. But – and this is the point – Munich was resolved by the destruction of Hitler. Balfour initiated a policy of British support for Israel which continues to this very day, to the detriment of the occupied Palestinians of the West Bank and the five million Palestinian refugees living largely in warrens of poverty around the Middle East, including Israeli-besieged Gaza.

This is the theme of perhaps the most dramatic centenary account of the Balfour Declaration, to be published this summer by David Cronin (in his book Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel), an Irish journalist and author living in Brussels whose previous investigation of the European Union’s craven support for Israel’s military distinguished him from the work of more emotional (and thus more inaccurate) writers. Cronin has no time for Holocaust deniers or anti-Semites. While rightly dismissing the silly idea that the Palestinian Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al Husseini, inspired the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe, he does not duck Haj Amin’s poisonous alliance with Hitler. Israel’s post-war creation as a nation state, as one Israeli historian observed, may not have been just – but it was legal. And Israel does legally exist within the borders acknowledged by the rest of the world.

There lies the present crisis for us all: for the outrageous right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is speeding on with the mass colonisation of Arab land in territory which is not part of Israel, and on property which has been stolen from its Arab owners. These owners are the descendants of the “non-Jewish communities” whose rights, according to Balfour, should not be “prejudiced” by “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. But Balfour’s own prejudice was perfectly clear. The Jewish people would have a “national home” – ie, a nation – in Palestine, while the Arabs, according to his declaration, were mere “communities”. And as Balfour wrote to his successor Curzon two years later, “Zionism … is … of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices [sic] of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”.

Cronin’s short book, however, shows just how we have connived in this racism ever since. He outlines the mass British repression of Arabs in the 1930s – including extrajudicial executions and torture by the British army – when the Arabs feared, with good reason, that they would ultimately be dispossessed of their lands by Jewish immigrants. As Arthur Wauchope, the Palestine High Commissioner, would write, “the subject that fills the minds of all Arabs today is … the dread that in time to come they will be a subject race living on sufferance in Palestine, with the Jews dominant in every sphere, land, trade and political life”. How right they were.

Even before Britain’s retreat from Palestine, Attlee and his Cabinet colleagues were discussing a plan which would mean the “ethnic cleansing” of tens of thousands of Palestinians from their land. In 1944, a Labour Party statement had talked thus of Jewish immigration: “Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in.” By 1948, Labour, now in government, was announcing it had no power to prevent money being channelled from London to Jewish groups who would, within a year, accomplish their own “ethnic cleansing”, a phrase in common usage for this period since Israeli historian Illan Pappe (now, predictably, an exile from his own land) included it in the title of his best-known work.

The massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians at Deir Yassin was committed while thousands of British troops were still in the country. Cronin’s investigation of Colonial Office files show that the British military lied about the “cleansing” of Haifa, offering no protection to the Arabs, a policy largely followed across Palestine save for the courage of Major Derek Cooper and his soldiers, whose defence of Arab civilians in Jaffa won him the Military Cross (although David Cronin does not mention this). Cooper, whom I got to know when he was caring for wounded Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, never forgave his own government for its dishonesty at the end of the Palestine Mandate.

Cronin’s value, however, lies in his further research into British support for Israel, its constant arms re-supplies to Israel, its 1956 connivance with the Israelis over Suez – during which Israeli troops massacred in the Gaza camp of Khan Younis, according to a UN report, 275 Palestinian civilians, of whom 140 were refugees from the 1948 catastrophe. Many UN-employed Palestinians, an American military officer noted at the time, “are believed to have been executed by the Israelis”. Britain’s subsequent export of submarines and hundreds of Centurion tanks to Israel was shrugged off with the same weasel-like excuses that British governments have ever since used to sell trillions of dollars of weapons to Israelis and Arabs alike: that if Britain didn’t arm them, others would.

In opposition in 1972, Harold Wilson claimed it was “utterly unreal” to call for an Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in the 1967 war, adding that “Israel’s reaction is natural and proper in refusing to accept the Palestinians as a nation”. When the Palestinians first demanded a secular one-state solution to Palestine, they were denounced by a British diplomat (Anthony Parsons) who said that “a multinational, secular state” would be “wholly incompatible with our attitude toward Israel”. Indeed it would. When the PLO opposed Britain’s Falklands conflict, the Foreign Office haughtily admonished the Palestinians – it was “far removed” from their “legitimate concerns”, it noted – although it chose not to reveal that Argentine air force Skyhawk jets supplied by Israel were used to attack UK forces, and that Israel’s military supplies to Argentina continued during the war.

A year later, Margaret Thatcher, according to a note by Douglas Hurd, included “armed action against military targets of the occupying power” as a definition of “terrorism”. So the Palestinians could not even resist their direct occupiers without being criminals.

On an official visit to Israel in 1986, Thatcher said that she regarded discussion of Jerusalem as “internal politics”. In 2001, Tony Blair’s government granted 90 arms exports licences to Israel for “defensive” weapons – including torpedoes, armoured vehicles, bombs and missiles. There is much, much more of this in Cronin’s book, including Blair’s useless and disgraceful period as “peace” envoy to the Middle East and the growing business contracts between British companies and Israeli arms providers – to the extent that the British army ended up deploying Israeli-made drones in the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Outside the EU, Theresa May’s Britain will maintain its close relations with Israel as a priority; hence May’s stated desire less than a month ago to sign a bilateral free trade agreement with Israel. This coincided with an Israeli attack on Gaza and a Knesset vote to confiscate – ie, steal – yet more lands from Palestinians in the West Bank.

From the day that Herbert Samuel, deputy leader of the Liberal Party and former (Jewish) High Commissioner for Palestine, said in the House of Commons in 1930 that Arabs “do migrate easily”, it seems that Britain has faithfully followed Balfour’s policies. More than 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted in their catastrophe, Cronin writes. Generations of dispossessed would grow up in the camps. Today, there are around five million registered Palestinian refugees. Britain was the midwife of that expulsion.

And this summer, we shall again be exhorted by Theresa May to remember the Balfour Declaration with “pride”.

FROM:

Theresa May wants British people to feel 'pride' in the Balfour Declaration. What exactly is there to be proud of?

Robert Fisk

The Independent2 March 2017

CONGRATULATIONS!

​

Dear James and team

Congratulations for winning the vote last night.  When will you win our wars in the Meddle East?

After four years of war, when will your side overthrow Assad to install our democratically elected, Western sympathetic leader?

Your side overthrew the Russian sympathetic President Yanukovych in Ukraine to replace him with our man, Petro Poronshenko.  War in eastern Ukraine ever since.  When will you win that war, James?

Your side has now lost four wars against 'weak', 'powerless' Afghanistan since the first 1839-42 war.

Your side overthrew Saddam but lost everything else; certainly, lost the peace in Iraq.

Your side overthrew Gaddafi (the friend of Tony Blair for a time) but gained anarchy in Libya.

You allowed terrorists to drive us brave Brits out of Palestine in 1947 to install our Judeo-Christian State in the Muslim Meddle East in 1948.  Many wars, over 67 years, ever since.  A failed state in successfully turning its neighbours into enemies. 

Your side overthrew democratically elected Mosadeq in Iran to install our man, the Shah.  Success for a time but little love and respect for the West for doing so, ever since.

Your side overthrew democratically and fairly elected Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to put in our Western sympathetic military government in Cairo.

After this 100 year record of Western and Christian misbehaviour, no wonder a very small minority of Muslims are radicalised and are raging against us!

When will your side make it safe, once more for white faces to move freely in the Meddle East and Tunisia without fear of kidnap and death?

The 'Today' programme this morning said that, in the second year of bombing there have, so far, been 7,500 air strikes to wipe Islamic State off the face of the earth.  Yet, the mightiest military force the world has ever seen, is nowhere near winning.  What is so inept about our armed forces, please James?

Winning votes for war to take place far from our shores, is so easy in safe and secure UK.  Victory in wars to bring tolerance and peace throughout the Near East and Meddle East is never delivered by your side.  Not even in our own powerful and WMD armed Israel!

Best wishes for the start of some true success for your side in 2016.  You certainly need it.

Tim

from Avaaz on Israel-Palestine

As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it's not enough just to call for another ceasefire. It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare. 

Our governments have failed -- while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and our companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence. The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, Hamas firing rockets, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear. 

We know it works -- when EU countries issued guidelines not to fund the illegal Israeli settlements it caused an earthquake in the cabinet, and when citizens successfully persuaded a Dutch pension fund, PGGM, to withdraw, it created a political storm.

Richard Alonzo on the Israel/Palestine misery

It's hard to know where to start with some one who won't even acknowledge the humanity of the other side and their right to exist. Who uses the crimes of others to justify their own. Who takes the word of the Israeli military as gospel. Who  he cites in quoting the militant:civilian 1:1 ratio, when in fact most independent sources put it at 1:3. 

You could also cite international law on the settlements in the occupied territories in violation of the fourth Geneva convention that inflame the situation and Israels refusal to recognize the Palestinian right of return in violation of UN general assembly resolutions 194 & 3236.

I've had similar conversations with people at work along the lines of what if it was your home so lets turn the example of Halesowen on its head. How would you feel if the original inhabitants Halesowen (the Celts) suddenly appeared on your doorstep one day brandishing guns and gave you 24 hours to leave your home and dumped you all in Cradley Heath. Then built a wall around it so you had to endure the daily humiliation of queuing up for hours each day at military checkpoints, to travel to Halesowen to do minimum wage jobs for the people who had occupied your homes, before travelling back home through the same checkpoints again. 

Finally you could tell him that the Bush doctrine, a war on terror, asymmetric warfare using over-whelming conventional force against terrorists has been a total failure. The Taliban still controls larges parts of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya following western military intervention have become failed states and breeding grounds for ever more extreme forms of terrorism. That history tells us it almost impossible to defeat terrorism militarily and despite public protestations to the contrary Government know this and talk to terrorists because all the time because the only viable solution is a political one. 

Here in the UK back channels to the IRA were opened in 1972 almost as soon as the troubles started and remained in place throughout the darkest days of the conflict. That is a far more constructive humane and christian response to terrorism than the one shown by the parents of Tim Parry in the aftermath of the Warrington bombing. 

Violence gets the world's attention but Palestine must try non-violence

Last week, I heard on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme a Palestinian MP and former Presidential candidate, mention the word, 'non-violence' half a dozen times.  He said that he had been urging non-violent resistance on his fellow compatriots for many years but that it had fallen on deaf ears, so far.  He said Hamas had, quietly, already changed its position over Israel.  What was his name?

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr commanded the moral high ground, as did the Indians who also chose non-violence during the Amritsar massacre by the British Army.  Eventually, India gained its independence from the British Empire.

In Northern Ireland, the sectarian men of violence (including the British Army), eventually, tried non-violence.  Ceasefires led to the peace process of talks, compromise, consensus, give and take and, a large drop in the numbers of killings.  Could Israel not talk and act on wanting a similar peace process, once more?

Could Israel not join with that Palestinian MP and, at least, talk non-violence, to begin with?  Israel's policy over 66 years has not worked in giving them peace and security and friendship with its Palestinian neighbours.

Could Israel not make use of the UN's General Secretary or, make use of the knowledge and experiences of both sides in Northern Ireland?

Could Israel consult with Angela Merkel to get her ideas and help to, eventually, get a resolution?  Or Desmond Tutu?

Violence gets the world's attention but Palestine must try non-violence and top level talks with world leaders - followed by Israel coming to the table, too.

Both sides might try a cycle of non-violence, compromise and constraint and never revenge to improve their prospects.

Such a pity but worth it when we didn't have to die!

We rushed to war on 4 August 1914.
Our intervention was premature, our army too small and, certainly, war was unnecessary when Germany had no intention of attacking Britain - until we attacked them.
The Cabinet knew it would fall, then lose power at the General Election, if it did not declare war on Germany - according to historian, Niall Ferguson.
Our war, much of its prosecution and the way it was resolved in 1919 was utterly stupid, especially the reparations and all the blame laid on Germany alone.
Germany nearly won in 1914, 1916 and, once more in 1918.  The beat Russia in 1917.
Violence, domination and control breeds more of all three, as we have seen off and on in Ireland for 800 years, in Israel/Palestine for 70 years - and, with the UK with our mighty victory minus magnanimity in 1919 that led to the second half of the European/Christian World War - in 1939, according to a former Conservative leader, Ian Duncan Smith.
UK has been engaged in warfare, somewhere in the world, for every single year for the last 100 years. Finally, in 2015 it seems, we may, finally live in peace and non-violence with all our neighbours in the world.
Even with the knowledge that 10 to 20 million people died horrific deaths in 4 years, nearly all Brits today still maintain this was such a pity but very necessary to stop Germany taking over some of our world control in 1914.  In 1914, a Germany far more democratic than the UK, too.
This is not a good example to set to the Muslim extremists/radicals of this day.
Ours is not a fine record.

The oh, so righteous of the Lord

The righteous of the Lord have a blind spot or, they slide over the little matter of declining to participate in armed conflicts around the world.  In other words, our aggression on, and domination of, other weak countries that won't hit back never figures in their list of unrighteous deeds.  The righteous of the Lord shun the sex industry but not the arms industry and the armed forces - and all this warfare has been on the other nations' holy soil who simply wanted to be left well alone!  The righteous of the Lord taking part in such unrighteous activities is hypocritical and sinful.

Bible believing believers are reluctant to endorse peace talks between Israel and Palestine.  They say that peace can only come when Jesus returns - and we have all been waiting for that to happen for 2,000 years.  Or, if everyone were to believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved.  A reluctance to enter into peace talks to get a just resolution after 65 years of intermittent killing is boosted by their interpretation of Scripture and simply means continuing injustice and periodic violence.  It invites the charge of complacency and an attitude of care-lessness.

Exactly, as does the oft repeated refrain, from those made right by God and who are now on God's side, that He is in control and we have nothing to fear and nothing to do.  Some of the rest of poor humanity, on the devil's side, insist that Nature is in control and, if we don't get our numbers and our activities in harmony with the powers of the earth to support life, then collapsing life support systems will do the job for us - as we get our inevitable and, rightful, come uppance.  I know which side I charge with being complacent, dangerous and very foolish!

Apartheid sorted; N Ireland sorted; Israel/Palestine sorted when?

Magnificent magnanimity from the South African government led to a peaceful transition from the immoral apartheid state, to majority rule there.

Amazing perseverance from outside politicians and concessions from both sides led to the Good Friday peace agreement and, for many years now, far fewer killings in N Ireland.  Dr Ian Paisley was transformed and even became, almost, best friends with a former IRA commander, Martin Maginnis.  They were even known as the chuckle brothers from all their laughter, such was their similar sense of humour.  Astonishing, astounding but, proves what can be achieved.  Oh, for the miracle of Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas becoming benevolent and bosom buddies!

When will Israel and Palestine, similarly get together?  First, actually sit in the same room in the White House and talk about the weather would be a good start!  Let them indulge only in small talk for the first few meetings.  Better, get them to play funny games together, watch romantic comedies, to see the 'Sound of Music' together or 'Cool Runnings'.  Next, when the're all smiling and happy, sit them down to thrash out compromise, concessions and some amazing mutual magnanimity and self sacrifice to bring, at least, an uneasy peace with justice, some kind of harmony between the peoples; even peaceful co-existence and tolerance, if not actual acceptance.

One problem, I think, is right wing thinking that brought us colonialism, empire building by the Western European nations, leading to one of them going one better than imperialism with their Nazism.  The 1945 victors have since defended their 'colonies' and dependencies - called defending their vital strategic interests around the world (or, more domination to bring democracy, freedom and the blessings of Western Christian culture down the barrel of a gun).  Such foreign policy is not about fairness with peace; not about living within our own borders; is not conducive to compromise and land sharing.  Hence, our ally and friend, Israel continues this white man thinking, this Judeo-Christian tradition, with its perpetual right wing, coalition governments that think like the West with disputes settled by coercion and military might is right - always first and last and only.  Thus, Prime Minister Netanyahu ups the anti with his tendency for a "belligerent stance",  "warmongering rhetoric", and "messianic impulse" (Yuval Diskin, former head of the Israel Security Agency, aka Shin Bet; former Mossad chief Meir Dagan,^[124] and the RAND Corporation in the US.  Taken from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu)

Another problem is that the fundamentalist, evangelical Christians in both Israel and the USA/UK want biblical prophecy quickly fulfilled, Armageddon and the return of Christ to wind things up and themselves taken to be with the Lord for eternity.

"The Jews were the first victims of the Nazis and the Palestinians are the last."  Peter Ustinov

"We either live together as brothers and sisters of the one human family on this one and only planet or, we perish as fools." So far, the latter is looming. But the true, born again believers have nothing to worry about because they will be taken up to be with the Lord!

For Israel, attack is the best form of defence

Israel only ever tries violence, terrorism and targeted assassination as the best forms of defence.

The nation was born in 1948 out of Israeli violence and terrorism against the British.  Terrorism was rewarded and its attacks and aggression on its neighbouring countries since then hardly endeared it to those nations.  An Israeli promotional film, I recently saw at church, actually admitted it was surrounded by enemies, as if this was something to be proud of rather than ashamed of, as a sign of failure.

After 64 years, I would have thought Israel would have tried a different strategy to win friends and influence people - even if this was only out of sheer self-interest to improve its security and future prospects.  But, then, it is an outpost of what the Palestinians see as the loathed USA/West in the very heart of the Arab/Muslim Middle East.  So, what more can one expect from Israel/USA/UK than continued warfare to ratchet up the hatred, to never bring peace with justice for either Israel or Palestine?

The problem of Israel - an outpost of the loathed USA

The problems that I have with Israel are these:

As last night's film showed, it is a mirror copy of the West, in particular the USA from whom it gets so much funding and enthusiastic support from the powerful Israeli lobby in the corridors of power.  There are many US companies in tiny Israel.  I feel the UK is the 51st state of the US and Israel is the 52nd.  Both countries are swift to carry out the wishes of
the USA in the Middle East.  As a result, both the UK and Israel incur the wrath of the vast majority of the populations of the Middle East who are horrified by the West's and Israel's attack, invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan from 7 October 2001 and then Iraq from the 19 March 2003.  I include Israel with the West and NATO because, as I say, it looks and feels like a very powerful Western nation.  They even speak the most impeccable English, too!

While Israel continues, by its own tragic admission in last night's film, to be "surrounded by enemies", it is a failed state.  It can make the desert bloom but it cannot turn enemies into friends.  It cannot turn the victim mentality of the Palestinians into bosom buddies.  "It is more blessed to give than to receive" is beyond its comprehension.  It simply takes yet more land in the West Bank for itself, feeling that is fair enough when it gave up Gaza.  But that was without the agreement of any Palestinian.  And what was left behind was razed to the ground to prevent the hated Palestinians from benefiting in any way!

In addition, the abysmal track record of who does the most killings puts Israel at the top of the league.  Its might is right, shoot first ask questions later tactic means it simply ratchets up the loathing.  The occasional extra-judicial killings by Mosad don't exactly help, either.  Those of us who want to be proud of Israel, continue to observe their answer of aggression to every problem, in utter amazement at such a foolish and counter-productive policy.  For them, it is always war, war and never jaw, jaw.  Lots of military aggression against the Lebanese and Palestinians but not lots of talking or acts of sacrificial giving or sharing of the land.  Now, threats against Iran to wipe their nuclear installations off the face of the earth.  No balance of terror is allowed by Israel; only they are allowed to place Iran and Syria under the threat of nuclear annihilation, with the blessing of the USA.  All their wars have got them absolutely nowhere.  It has not given them the peace and security that other Western nations enjoy.  Israel and the West are not respected by so many in the Arab world.

Yet, knowing all of this, many evangelical Christians look upon Israel as the apple of God's eye.  It doesn't say much for God!

Two Pertinent Points for Israel

Could Israel not allow the Palestinians to carry on saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, when they have known for years that it is only bragging, empty rhetoric and, cannot possibly be achieved? All downtrodden peoples always say the most uncomplimentary things about their oppressors.

Could Israel not attempt to meet Palestinian grievances through talking and compromising for the sake of getting peace through justice?  Like sharing the land and sharing Jerusalem?

Friends of Israel AND of Palestine!

Dear friend - of Prayer for Israel organisation

I have picked up my wife's copy of your latest 'Prayer Bulletin' on this Christmas Day (2008) afternoon and read some of it.

It does seem to be more about saving native-born Israelis for an eternity in heaven, rather than working for a more heavenly holy land, in the hear and now, where justice is done and seen to be done for the impoverished Palestinians, as well as the paranoid Jews. Do you, in fact, see any part of your discipleship as being about opposing Israeli government policy when it comes to allowing further homes forJews by forcing out Palestinians and turning a blind eye to further settlements in the West Bank? The new Great Wall or fence is encroaching into great swathes of the West Bank to leave the suffering Palestinians in an even more desperate plight. They are being constricted into enclaves controlled by the IDF and seem to be treated like prisoners in poorly run, open prisons where all movement is determined by the Israelis. Is this the way for your friends in Israel - born again believers and devout Jews - to be conducting themselves? Do you think that this turning of the screw ever further on the oppressed Palestinians is the best way to win friends and influence people? Or do you feel it perpetuates the hatred for Israel - a wealthy and very powerful nation that has so much when the Palestinians have so little, in comparison? Even their lands and livelihoods and olive trees are taken away from them. Yet, Israel is a modern, Western, highly materialistic, regional super-power that is heavily armed and possesses WMD - funded by the West. Even then you write, "Israelis can't take for granted their right to exist"! You could not get a bigger contrast with the plight of the 'imprisoned' Palestinians who,with every attack by Israel, get wiped out in far bigger numbers than the Israelis. And, in true hypocritical style, Israel is always pointing the finger at Hamas and Hezbullah for wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the map. In fact, Israel justs get on with it without any of the talk. Israel is all action; the Palestinian groups are all talk, it seems to me!

I think an even more shocking contrast is the evangelicals supporting this rich and powerful nation when their Lord and Saviour is the despised and rejected of men and the friend of tax collectors and sinners. The Lord rejected the temptation to rule over the world which the Christian West has been doing for many centuries with its European empires and, now, with the Anglo-American-Israeli hegemony! I am horrified by my Messianic Christian family - and others at church - assenting to all this. I am sure it just washes over you, fails to impinge and you just get on with the more serious business of saving souls for eternity! Saved for an eternity in heaven but extra judicial assassinations and pre-emptive attacks (always in the name of defence, of course!) on Palestinian fighters - as well as even invading the weak and defenceless nation of Lebanon - is all perfectly acceptable for the disciples of the Lord in this small but violent nation. And, it got the blessing of our God-fearing, UK Prime Minister in July/August 2006 War on Lebanon!

You wrote, "There are more believers in the IDF than at any other time in her history." Do you not think there is something deeply contradictory in followers of the Way of Yeshua giving their first and only allegiance not to the King of Love, the Prince of Peace and the Creator/Ruler of theUniverse but to the very fallible and sinful, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel and his Cabinet? You publish a piece from HKACM, with pride and approval that even more true Christian and Messianic believers are engaged in illegal attacks and invasions on their neighbours, as members of the armed forces. Armed forces that kill many times more of their neighbours than the Palestinians kill of them! All this when they are called to love God and love their neighbour as themselves!

This shocking record by Christian believers and Jews has gone on for sixty years in a constant war of attrition between Palestinian fighters and the IDF. I think you should be teaching your young Christians and Messianic Jews to have nothing to do with the illegality and aggression of the Israeli state. If they cannot be excused from conscription, they should suffer the consequences of total Christian discipleship and go to prison for the Lord - a privilege and a joy in such circumstances!

Could you please explain if PFI can be described as Christian Zionist? Who or what is a Christian Zionist? It is Scriptural for us to "pray (enquire about) for the peace of Jerusalem". However, should this not also include praying for the peace of Arab and Palestinian refugee camps, villages and towns? And, does not praying for peace mean being loving, peaceful and fair in all our dealings rather than being warlike and indulging in crimes of aggression? In the 34 day attack on Lebanon, 158 Israelis were killed of whom the very large majority were service people but, the IDF killed over 1000 Lebanese andPalestinians of whom most were civilians. It does seem to me that if you can't live at peace and in justice with your neighbours - and, as a minimum, refuse to vote for the war parties at elections and refuse to be conscripted - you cannot possibly have made peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. "Judgement (and repentance) begins in the house of the Lord".

This I can't believe!

This I can't believe I can't believe in a God who created humans for the sole purpose of them worshipping and praising him and to give him pleasure. What kind of God is that? The Westminster Confession has, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever."

I can't believe in a God who, as part of his purposes for his special nation of Israel, that nation under God can slaughter over 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinians in 2006 in Lebanon and a further 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza in 2008/9. Jews for Jesus Christians, certainly, and other Christians, too believe that God is working his purposes out through Israel and, therefore, Israel's aggression is all part of God's wonderful plan for Israel. They also believe that Christ's return is dependant on the Jews return to Israel and their acceptance of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. Israel's encroachment on to more and more of the West Bank is all part of God's glorious plan in these end times.

I can't believe that a God of justice and love, who is all powerful and all knowing can countenance the suffering, misery and large scale murder by the crown of his creation - humans killing humans. The track record of the West and the whites is easily the worst throughout the planet and down the centuries. Especially in the 20th century - the most ecocidal, suicidal and destructive in the history of humanity. And we all know which God fearers were responsible!

Israel has forgotten its past or ...

.. it is reliving it, this time, as the cruel oppressor.

"You were once strangers in a foreign land. Therefore, love the stranger in your new homeland." my paraphrase of Deuteronomy ch 10 v 18-19. Chapter 20 is the Lord's rules for waging holy war to obtain the Promised Land from the existing settlers - holy war endorsed by Jews and Christians but not found in the Koran.

You were once victims of barbarity and genocide in a strange land. Therefore, you of all peoples, should know how to behave to all the children of Abraham - and to all the human family - in your Middle East region.

You were once not a nation; now you are a mighty nation and the regional super-power. That brings its attendant responsibilities and restraints and obligations to behave within international law and in compliance with numerous UN resolutions over the last sixty years.