I’ve been waiting for this, for heartland America to take its power, for the intelligent and balanced folk out there to insist on fairness. The Denver Post has a great piece by John Kane calling on Christians to decry the injustice in Israel/Palestine. Kane is a professor of religious studies at Regis University in Colorado, and he is joined by other religious figures in this op-ed, including Rob Prince of Progressive Jewish News:
American Christians for too long have been largely silent about the most dangerous conflict threatening peace in our world: the decades-old crisis in Israel and Palestine.
…Such "Christian silence" is rooted to a great extent in ignorance of what is actually happening in the Holy Land, and it is also rooted in a legitimate fear of offending Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens.
Yet those who seek true peace in the Holy Land and who want to stop the spread of ethnic and religious hatreds throughout the Middle East must challenge the sacred pieties and the raw political power that so far have stymied President Obama’s efforts for Middle East peace…
In responding to the call of the Christian leaders in Israel and Palestine, Christians in this country will also be joining with newly powerful voices in American Judaism, such as the Jewish lobby J Street and the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace. They, too, see this as a new moment, no matter that the headlines remain filled with cycles of terror, of occupation and response, of injustice and violence on both sides in the Holy Land.
I led a delegation that lobbied on Capitol Hill for J Street. One Arkansas congressman’s staffer told us that the “congressman’s constituents are interested in farming.” I asked her if they were Christian and if they had in interest in the Holy Land, the Christian holy sites or the welfare of Christians in Jesus’ birthplace. She said that there was once one delegation of local churches that petitioned the congressman, in general terms, about “peace in the Holy Land.” I couldn’t make out from her reply whether this was some fundamentalist group or just a gesture of solidarity.
Amazing – this guy is one of the most powerful men in the world and has settled for this.
I’ll bet they don’t say that when AIPAC comes calling.
You’re to be commended for your efforts! Might I add a suggestion for another tack to take, when you get a response like that? Mention that all that US money spent on military aid to Israel could be better spent providing local benefits for his constituents.
J Street!!!
Actual lovers of Israel, and protectors of the Zionist dream.
There seems to be a correlation between the physical distance between you and Israel — roughly 6,000 miles — and the distance between your perception of the reality in Israel and the dream that you have in your head – most likely from childhood.
Keep dreaming.
Hey hey, ML King had a dream too, as did Adolph Hitler. Even David Duke dreams. You can love your child, but not what that child does. When the kid’s a full grown adult and keeps up spoiled and horrible activities–maybe tough love is called for?
So is Richard Goldstone. That didn’t stop him from realising what Israel has become. Same with Einstein
The powerful evangelist organizations have been able to keep the truth about the acute discrimination against their fellow religionist in Israel. If ordinary American Christian majority finds out the truth – Israel certainly would loose it billions of dollars of annual pricks.
Christian priests and Nuns have experienced being spit on their faces in Israel (not in the Muslim countries) or the ever-decreasing Palestinian Christian population under Jewish rule since 1948 – but thanks to Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) and with the support of ‘Islamophobe’ tele-evangelist mafia – Israel is still considered by the Christian-majority Americans as their countries best ally. …..
Israeli Santa’s Christmas present
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
” If ordinary American Christian majority finds out the truth – Israel certainly would loose it billions of dollars of annual pricks.”
While I love me some Sunday morning poetry, I’m pretty sure Israel has a surfeit of pricks.
Yes it does, maybe what was meant was surfeit of USA perks. But you knew that. LOL
I will not be surprised if this group is squashed within a week or two.
The call sounds:
a) Anti-semitic; and
b) Like “Delegitimizing Israel and its right to defend itself” talk.
Phil, i just attended an AMAZING 2 day interfaith conference in san anselmo. check out the STELLAR cast of speakers. this was hosted by Friends of Sabeel – North America, in affiliation w/International Friends of Sabeel.
the conference was sold out @ 400 people days before, many many professionals from different ecumenical backgrounds. there is a mobilization taking place that hasn’t been there in the past according to the organizers who are going to have to look towards expanding venues due to sold out attendance. the church was packed and the response was overwhelming. the conference closed w/remi kanazi’s forceful poetry and a prayer from Canon Naim Ateek from jerusalem. having to choose between workshops w/Jeff Halper, Omar Barghouti, and Norton Mezvinsky was challenging to say the least!. the conference is over but the seminary is hosting a nakba exibit today so i’m out the door. it is a traveling conference and the response has been overwhelming. if all these people go back to their respective churches and start focusing on i/p it cannot help but make a difference. oh, i can’t forget mads gilbert, he brought down the house.
unfortunately the denver post did not link to The Kairos Document. it’s worth a read.
If we manage some similar reaction to Kairos in the UK – we’ve ignored it to the point fo sin – I’ll hope to attend. I read that the US Presbyterian Church, host of the conference attended by annie, has angered ‘Jewish human rights groups’ by announcing that Biblical Israel and modern Israel ‘are not the same’ and that the Bible should not be used to determine Israel’s boundaries. This fights rather shy of the more important question of whether the Bible should be used to justify Israel’s existence but it may be a start of more significant and painful theological reflection.
No religious text – as you likely agree – should be the basis for anything in today’s world except for matters of personal faith and perhaps some moral inspiration.
To take it farther than that is to get stuck in a world that is neither rational, nor spiritual. I don’t think God – if there is one – would approve of the duplicity often peddled by the likes of RW, for example.
Well, I think that there is a genuine theological dimension to ethics, ie one can have a meaningful ethical discussion in which theological terms and theological traditions are used.
The ME debate is haunted by the theory of divine donation, which sometimes takes solid and angry form and sometimes is a sort of intangible presence in the background, never quite forgotten.
My own belief is that there is no divine donation of sovereignty except through the processes recognised as just by rational human thought. My study of the Bible leads me to think that there was a strong element of multiculturalism about ancient Palestine in many of its epochs, accounting for its religious creativity.
Gotta wonder which “Jewish rights groups” those were.
There’s a report in ‘The Christian Post’ of Feb.23rd, or was it 24th? It actually names only one organisation, that is the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The others seem to have left the Presbies to be voices crying the wilderness.
A COMMENT FROM THE DENVER POST:
There will be no peace in the middle east until some basic fundamentals change.
1. When muslims accept Jews as a nation and as a race.
2. When muslims stop teaching their children from an early age that Jews are devils and that it is an honorable thing to kill them.
3. When muslims stop shooting missiles into Israel, killing jewish people.
There is no way to establish peace in that region as long as this goes on. The jewish state of Israel will never be surrendered again. The Islamic world will never cease to hate Israel. Therefore, there will never be peace in that region until one of those populations is all but eliminated.
As for Christians remaining silent… they were never silent. Christians just do not follow this liberal thought that Israel must cave to Arab demands in order to acheive peace. Christians know this will not bring peace to Israel. Most Christians are in full support of Israel and know from scripture that in Genesis 12:3 God, in a covenant with Abraham promises to curse those who curse Israel and the Christian will believe this. Christians will not abandon or stand against Israel.
SW
Steven Watson | 6:59 PM on Saturday Mar 6
P.S. I have seen “fundamentals” # 1-3 above (verbatim) used by numerous comments recently.
So the invitation to genocide is issued, and in God’s name.
People like that are going to murder the United States. They already hate most of the pillars of American society — separation of church and state, free expression, the illegality and immorality of cruel and unusual punishment, namely.