Monday, May 22, 2006
Leftist Church alert: The World Council of Churches knows who's at fault for the current state of affairs in the Middle East. You get three guesses and the last two don't count.
World Council of Churches slams Israel
The Christian Left's leading ecumenical organization stated Israel's actions towards the Palestinians "cannot be justified morally, legally or even politically."
The failure "to comply with international law" had "pushed the situation on the ground to a point of no return," they concluded.
The WCC condemned the killing of innocent civilians by "both sides" in the conflict and called for the Palestinians to "maintain the existing one-party cease-fire toward Israel" and asked Israel to base its security on "the equitable negotiation of final borders" with its neighbors.
However, the present disparities between Israel and Palestine were "appalling," the WCC said...
While churches on the left continue to abuse the Jewish State, the Jewish establishment continues to kick churches on the right in the groin. This is unfortunate, as David Brog, author of Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State, explains in this interesting interview at NRO: Jews & Evangelicals Together - Why some Christians are so pro-Israel.
...Evangelicals who support Israel most certainly do want to convert people. Evangelicals who don't support Israel also want to convert people. The mission of sharing the "good news" of Jesus Christ is central to being an evangelical. But it is important to note that this is not about converting just the Jews-Christians want to share their faith with Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and their Christian friends and neighbors who have yet to be born again.
The important question is this: Is evangelical support for Israel merely a tool in the effort to convert the Jews? Is this merely some scheme to soften the Jews up so that they can better sell Jesus to them? And the answer to this question is absolutely not...
Finally, Dexter Van Zile was at an event sponsored by the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel this weekend. A text of his very excellent speech is posted at UCCTruths, here. A snip:
For the short term, it's not about the money, it's about the podium.
Divestment resolutions afford pro-Palestinian activists the chance to speak before large audiences that gather at our church-wide assemblies and talk about checkpoints, home demolitions, and the security barrier without having to explain why Israel does what it does. The story offered is one of innocent Palestinian suffering and Israeli intransigence and savagery.
On this score, divestment is a McGuffin, or plot device used to capture our attention before it is directed to Israel's uniquely sinful behavior. After hearing this story, our church-wide assemblies pass judgment on the behavior and defense policies of a people who for the last 58 years, have fended off three attempts to destroy their homeland...
We all know that the number one "Jewish" issue is abortion rights. And we just don't get no satisfaction from conservative Christians. So we reject their support of Israel and throw our lot in with the Israel haters on the Left. It's totally demented.
This post nicely cuts through some of the silly stereotyping and crutches used, in lieu of cogency of thought and transparency in general.
"Instead, we are looking to shift the dialogue to whether or not to divest from Israel, without extraneous discussion of the basics. We hope that in 10, 20 years the public will just take for granted the premises that Israel is an apartheid state, and then we can move from there." Van Zile, quoteing a Univ of Michigan student, emphasis added
S.O.P. Yet once again, rather than a desire to promote transparently and soundly explicated terms of the general debate, instead the strategy of obscuring, eliding, occluding, etc. is invoked: the ends sought justify every means. Tellingly, and ironically, these are the same people who readily scoff at (in general, negate) the notion, or the concept, of authority, of authorization, of warrant.
Depressing.
Thanks for the link which provided some interesting facts not disclosed by the MSM and certainly not used against the propaganda war directed at Israel.
Van Zile mentions:
" And in May 1985, Shiite Militia involved in the Lebanese civil war
laid siege to Sabra and Shatilla, the scene of the massacre that took
place three years before. The residents of these camps, subjected to
intermittent bombardment for 18 months, were reduced to eating rats
by the time the siege ended. An estimated 2000 people were killed.
Nabih Berri, the leader of the militia group that laid siege to these
camps, became a protégé of the Syrian government and is currently
speaker of the Lebanese National Assembly. "
A pity the Christian leaders don't mention the massacre (more than 500) of inhabitants of the Christian town of Damour, Lebanon in 1976 by Arafat and his PLO, and the desecration of their church and cemetry(the corpses were 'exhumed', robbed and the bones flung around the countryside).
If anything that inflamed the hatred for the Palestinians who had sought refuge from King Hussein and resulted in Sabra and Shatilla.