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One Christ follower thinks about Gaza, Israel and Palestinians, Part 2

In the first part of this series we considered a little of the history of modern Palestine. A few things were noted most evangelicals may not know including a position in the Israeli government since pre-1948: that the Palestinians should be dispossessed.

If you have not read the above I encourage you to do so before continuing. Some context will be helpful. For reasons probably obvious let me state I am not against Israel, their right to exist as a sovereign nation, nor their right to self-defense. If my posts seem one sided it is due to my effort in providing needed balance within the evangelical community. In most cases I am not reiterating that which is commonly accepted as true; those arguments have been made many times. I also do not defend terroristic or militaristic threats from either side.

Hatred flows both ways in this struggle. Much is made about Hamas’ platform that Israel should not exist, but little is made of Israel’s ongoing desire (and forced effort) to occupy as much of Palestine as possible. Remember the King-Crane commission found a mindset among the Jews to completely dispossess the non-Jewish residents of Palestine. This matched the desire of many in the Arab nations to have neither the Jews in Palestine nor the displaced Palestinians in their own country (though thousands ended up inside those borders anyway).

So what is really going on in Gaza? This from Diane Buttu, a Canadian attorney who has counseled both the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas:

Today, the people of Gaza suffer from a brutal blockade that has lasted for more than 6 years and isolation that has lasted for more than 20 years. Israel strictly controls imports into Gaza and exports are virtually non-existent. Palestinian life is so controlled by Israel that the Israeli government even sets policies on the minimum number of calories needed to prevent malnutrition. Access to the sea – one of their main sources of livelihood – is strictly curtailed and the water of the Gaza Strip is barely drinkable, with less than 5 per cent of their water supply fit for human consumption.

This via Wikileaks and published in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz:

“As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge,” one of the cables read.

Israel wanted the coastal territory’s economy “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis”, according to the Nov. 3, 2008 cable.

Note two of the objectives: to regulate the amount of food–down to the number of calories residents received–to avoid an official humanitarian crisis (ie, Darfur), and keep the economy on the brink of collapse. Note the source of the economic warfare is not a shrieking Palestinian terrorist, but an official diplomatic cable.

Water is needed for any people to survive as we all know. Prolific author and M.I.T. professor, Noam Chomsky, wrote in a November 9, 2012 article,

Sitting in a hotel near the shore, one can hear the machine-gun fire of Israeli gunboats driving fishermen out of Gaza’s territorial waters and toward land, forcing them to fish in waters that are heavily polluted because of U.S.-Israeli refusal to allow reconstruction of the sewage and power systems they destroyed.

The Oslo Accords laid plans for two desalination plants, a necessity in this arid region. One, an advanced facility, was built: in Israel. The second one is in Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza. The engineer in charge at Khan Yunis explained that this plant was designed so that it can’t use seawater, but must rely on underground water, a cheaper process that further degrades the meager aquifer, guaranteeing severe problems in the future.

The water supply is still severely limited. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which cares for refugees but not other Gazans, recently released a report warning that damage to the aquifer may soon become “irreversible,” and that without quick remedial action, Gaza may cease to be a “livable place” by 2020.

Writing in the Boston Globe last week, Sara Roy addressed the issues of arable land and fishing, both of which have been curtailed by Israel’s government:

Gaza’s economic decline is seen in the near collapse of its agricultural sector. One factor is the destruction of around 7,800 acres of agricultural land during Cast Lead. Consequently, approximately one-third of Gaza’s total arable land is out of production. Furthermore, Israeli-imposed buffer zones — areas of restricted access — now absorb nearly 14 percent of Gaza’s total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land.

Similarly, the sea buffer zone covers 85 percent of the maritime area promised to Palestinians in the Oslo Accords, reducing 20 nautical miles to three, where waters are fouled by sewage flows in excess of 23 million gallons daily.

And it is not limited to Gaza. According to Pakistani reporter M. AQavi, writing in the Tribune, dispossession is still taking place in East Jerusalem. From March of this year, he writes,

Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, is across the road from the American Colony Hotel where Mr Tony Blair and his staff have their offices. It is also one of the sites where a Jewish Settlers’ organisation is planning to build a 200 unit Settlement in place of the existing Arab housing.

Arab homes are being forcibly occupied by Settlers and their Arab occupants thrown out on the street…A Mr Al Kurd, who is one of the evicted Arabs, stands out and of course a swarm of children from the neighbourhood also gather around. The routine is to gather around the Sheikh Jarrah mosque holding banners in Hebrew, Arabic and English and clutching Palestinian flags. After 15 minutes or so, we march to visit each occupied house in turn, to remind the new occupants they are living in someone else’s house. Each occupied house is guarded by border police, video monitors, and at one of the houses I notice barbed wire as well. On the way back from visiting the last occupied house I see male members of a Settler family heading home for the Sabbath, all dressed in fine traditional dress with circular fir hats and all that.

In the last few days, a Israeli government official, in response to the U.N. granting non-member observer status to Palestine, confirmed “a report that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had decided build the 3,000 units in response to the Palestinians success at the UN…’It’s true – in (east) Jerusalem and the West Bank,’ without saying exactly where.”

In Israel possession continues to be 10/10ths of the law and dispossession is the means of keeping it.

After 6+ decades of dissension there is no end of examples, but Bob Roberts, Jr. can summarize the situation better than I. Theologian, missiologist, pastor and statesman, Roberts has friends in both Israel and among the Palestinians. He has been on the ground there. He is aware of the dire situation in Gaza. This is an excerpt from his blog on November 17, 2012. All emphasis is mine.:

First, each side overwhelmingly in every survey done wants a two state solution. From Jewish & Palestinian college students, cabbies, men, women, faith leaders, and yes – even governmental leaders on each side, I’ve heard the same thing.

[…]

Second, as one Palestinian scholar told me – the biggest problem is they are both “victim” cultures. The Jewish statement “never again” causes overreach on the part of the Jews in how they can be heavy handed with the Palestinians. The displacement of millions of Palestinians having been driven from their homeland after centuries and millennia prevents them from thinking about moving forward with where things are versus what they wish they could go back to.

[…]

Third, not just during this current crisis – but everyone who has been living in bunkers with sirens for the past 60+ years – this has got to be incredibly destabilizing for people as individuals and culture in general. Gaza is the most densely populated places in the world. Putting a wall around it with automatic movement operated machine guns, mines and trying to cut the people off from the world and daily necessities is a recipe for an explosion. People when forced to live in that animal environment become animals. Frankly, I’m amazed there hasn’t been more conflict – if it was Texas, speaking as a Texan – I assure you there would be. Ever heard of the Alamo?

[…]

Let’s be clear, there are Palestinian terrorist [sic] that don’t want to compromise, respect Israel, her right to exist and would circumvent any movement towards peace – this cannot be. Let’s be equally clear, it isn’t a fence or a barrier – it is a 30 foot concrete wall, with machine gun towers pointing down on the people that has been built around Palestinians in Gaza, Bethlehem, Ramallah, other cities – putting entire populations of millions in virtual “prison” – this is simply unsustainable.

I have thought often about the scenario Roberts references in his “Remember the Alamo?” statement. Unless you literally move to flatten every structure in Gaza and commit genocide on this race of people, the increases in pressure will result in eruptions. Whether a masked Hamas terrorist, a teenager throwing rocks or a kid making obscene gestures, there will be a response. And we should not be surprised when there is.

One Christ follower thinks about Gaza, Israel and Palestinians

Anyone within 500 miles of a television or the Internet last week could scarcely have missed the near warlike conditions between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East. Following a continuous storm of unguided missiles from inside the Gaza strip, primarily into southern Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East fired back with tanks, gunships, artillery and guided munitions. A ground invasion was a very real possibility before a cease fire was reached

One count (subject to change if more wounded Palestinians die) is 130 Palestinians killed and five Israelis dead. Many additional Palestinians were injured, while a handful of Israelis were also hurt.

This serves not to minimize the damage of either side, but the simple facts are more Palestinians than Israelis were both killed and injured. This includes damage and loss of life from the many, many rockets fired leading up to this conflict.

The narrative in the West is almost always the same. Indeed, there is virtually no deviation: Palestinians elected Hamas to govern them, Hamas conducts random attacks on Israel using rockets smuggled into Gaza (usually) procured from an enemy of Israel such as Iran, Israel shows great restraint in not answering every attack, Israel is forced to finally defend herself with force. This force is always overwhelming and disproportional in type of weapons used, amount of damage caused, amount of combatant lives lost, and amount of civilian life lost.

Among some conservative Evangelicals the narrative is even more pronounced as it is founded on a specific biblical interpretation. Books and sermons by Joel LaHagee have all but instilled this view as a test of orthodoxy this amongst many of them. Consequently it is held, based on specific interpretations of biblical prophecy, that Israel has a God given right to all of the land of Palestine including Gaza and the West Bank. (More on this in Part 3.)

A portion of the Israeli constructed wall confining Gaza. [Image credit]

(Another fantastic image of the Gaza wall is here. )

Through my years in church, which are more by far than my years in the Kingdom, I was taught the year 1948 saw the fig tree bud which was an answer–in our day–to Bible prophecy. The date was May 14 the exact date Israel’s fledgling government declared independence. The land was theirs and they were back in it.

While told of Israel’s “miraculous” victories in the 1948 War and the Six Day War, rarely, if ever, were the former inhabitants of the land we call Palestine mentioned in any way other than haters of Israel. The story of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael was constantly called to mind. “We can expect nothing but warfare because that is what the Bible promised, but we most surely should pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

Left to our own research efforts was understanding the carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War 1 which led to the geographic creations of Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq and Palestine, as mandates of England or France. Barely mentioned were the divisions–often conflicting–within the movement known as Zionism which led the political charge for a Jewish homeland. Left unmentioned was the dispossession that took place as tens of thousands of Jewish families immigrated to Palestine. As British historian Peter Mansfield notes regarding the findings of the King-Crane commission,

the Zionist programmes would have to be greatly modified if the promises of the Balfour Declaration to protect the rights of the non-Jews in Palestine were to be upheld. After discussion with Zionist leaders in Jerusalem, they had no doubt that the Zionists looked forward ‘to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. [Emphasis added] “A History of the Middle East,” p. 180-181

A number of years ago a very pro-Israel acquaintance recommended a book by Elias Chacour entitled, Blood Brothers. It chronicles Chacour’s years growing up in Palestine, living through the dispossession mentioned above. As a youth he was witness to Palestinian land owners, orchard and grove owners, whose houses, lands and agricultural products were taken from them by force. This often happened at the point of a gun by Zionists intent of removing Palestinians by force or “asking” them to leave. Orchards owned by Chacour’s family were occupied by military forces then sold to an investor.

The dispossession–over a space of years–of some 700,000 Palestinians created a humanitarian crisis that continues nearly unabated until this day. Thousands and thousands of the early refugees were either absorbed into surrounding countries, or fitted into camps in those countries. Tens of thousands were gathered into Gaza (the biblical home of the Philistines) to endure restrictions they have now faced to varying degrees for many decades.

Little known to American evangelicals is the Zionist leadership never intended for a two state solution even though both Jews and non-Jews had lived peacefully in Palestine. Even before May 14, 1948, future prime minister David Ben-Gurion and others planned to drive the non-Jewish residents completely out of Palestine. United States diplomat and future ambassador to Lebanon, Robert McClintock, underscored president Truman’s concern when Israel refused to accept a truce in early 1948.

The Jewish Agency refusal exposes its aim to set up its separate state by force of arms–the military action after May 15 will be conducted by the Haganah [the unofficial Jewish army] with the help of the [Jewish] terrorist organizations, the Irgun and LEHI, [and] the UN will face a distorted situation. The Jews will be the real aggressors against the Arabs, but will claim they are only defending the borders of the state, decided upon [by the UN]. “How Israel Was Won,” Baylis Thomas, p. 69, 70. [Emphasis added]

Another future prime minister, Golda Meir, secretively secured a non-agression pact with Transjordan that Israel never intended to keep and, as night follows day, they violated. In 1976 the Koenig Memorandum reiterated the goal to “examine the possibility of diluting existing Arab population concentrations.” During the conflagration last week Gilad Sharon wrote in the Jerusalem Post:

There is no justification for the State of Gaza being able to shoot at our towns with impunity. We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

It does not take much history to see Israel began with a plan of territorial expansion, implemented it and have always kept it in mind.

This is not in any way to insinuate that terroristic activity should be without account. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah, and Hamas have done all within their power to wreak havoc on Israel. There has been a significant amount of push and push-back throughout this uneasy existence. However, Yasir Arafat was only a schoolboy when the dispossession began. His Fatah movement (which merged with the PLO) was not formed until years after Israel declared statehood. Hamas, in its nascent form, was shepherded along by Israel. From the WSJ in 2009 (“How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas”):

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor’s bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile’s trajectory back to an “enormous, stupid mistake” made 30 years ago.

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with “Yassins,” primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Hamas, then, is to Israel what Al Queda is to the United States. And, like our son has turned against the father–complete with retaliation–the same thing has been played out between Israel and Hamas over and over in Gaza.

It bears asserting my purpose in this series is not to absolve Hamas from guilt or blame the government of Israel for every death in the region. Hamas, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have had their own problems. My hope is to provide, perhaps, some balance to how the situation is viewed especially as it relates to some Christians in America who think all actions of national Israel are beyond any and all criticism. In the Middle East, as in all cases, we need to look for the truth with eyes wide open.

Part two will cover the ongoing situation in Gaza, while part three will suggest how Christ followers might react to the situation there.

A little context for the complementarian-egalitarian debate

In the past few weeks the complementarian-egalitarian debate has again featured prominently in the blogosphere. Perhaps it is time for a little context.

From Allison Dinoia Newcombe at the Huffington Post:

Last week, I visited the spot where a young girl was brutally murdered, set on fire and burned to death in the middle of the street in Los Angeles. I have searched to find answers about her plight, but to no avail; this story barely made local news. She was just 17 years old.
[…]
Every single day, girls in Los Angeles are kidnapped and coerced by traffickers and pimps into a life of sexual slavery and violence. The average age of entry into this life is 12 years old — the age of a child in seventh grade. There are hundreds of children affected by this crisis in LA alone. Alarmingly, yet not surprisingly, estimates consistently show over 70 percent of the children victimized through sex trafficking are foster children. Traffickers know that foster kids are an abused and vulnerable population, and that these girls are desperate for the love and attention that they did not receive from their own families. Lacking the necessary relationships and support, coupled with likely sexual and physical abuse at a young age, these girls are particularly at risk for the organized and pre-meditated tactics of traffickers.

Child sex trafficking, though largely unheard of and often misunderstood, is in fact a domestic crisis. It has become one of the most common organized crimes in the country, third only after the sale of illegal drugs and arms. Gangs, which have been entrenched in Los Angeles neighborhoods for many years, are increasingly becoming involved in child sex trafficking. Gang members have learned that, unlike drugs or weaponry, a young girl’s body is a “commodity” that can be sold time after time. An added benefit for traffickers is the decreased risk: when selling girls, the primary risk falls on the child being sold, who is standing alone on the street, not on the trafficker who is safely out of sight. And while a child is not of age to consent to sex, they can be arrested and charged with the crime of prostitution due to legal loopholes. Just last week I observed a court hearing where a 12-year-old was being charged with the crime of prostitution. Likely pre-menstrual, still with a childish look in her eyes, she sat in court in an orange jumpsuit, with tears streaming down her cheeks, while the judge explained the charges.

Do not miss it: a 17 year old girl, set afire and burned to death in the middle of a street in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Do not miss it: a 12-year old girl, likely brutalized and trafficked by a gang, arrested and charged with prostitution by cops and D.A.s who should know better. With tears on her face she sits in front of a judge who may be too uncaring to set aside unjust laws. Or possibly hindered by a legislature too stupid to change them.

From a Reuters report entitled, “Syrian forces use sexual violence against men, women, children”:

[Human Rights Watch] said many of the assaults were in circumstances in which commanding officers knew or should have known the crimes, such as electric shocks to genitalia, were taking place.

In another face-to-face interview a woman from the Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs city which was overrun by Assad’s troops said she heard security forces and shabiha militia rape her neighbors while she hid in her apartment in March.

“I could hear one girl fighting with one of (the men)… She pushed him and he shot her in the head,” HRW quoted the woman as saying. She said three girls, the youngest aged 12, were then raped. After the men left the woman went next door.

“The scene on the inside was unreal. The 12-year-old was lying on the ground, blood to her knees… More than one person had raped the 12-year-old… She was torn the length of a forefinger. I will never go back there. It comes to me. I see it in my dreams and I just cry.”

Some interviewees told HRW that victims did not want their families to know about the assault because of fear or shame. In one case, HRW said a female rape victim was willing to be interviewed but her husband forbade it.

Do not miss it: a 12-year old girl gang-raped in an apartment. Brutalized emotionally, psychologically and physically with body ripped as if she had endured a traumatic childbirth.

In fact here’s an entire website dedicated to tragedies being endured by women in Syria: Women Under Siege: Documenting Sexualized Violence in Syria. Recent entries included, “Woman tells Brandeis students Assad soldiers raped her,” “Man reports Republican Guards raped woman, killed men, in Douma apartment building,” “Former officer describes being ordered to rape in Homs,” and more.

Or this from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, September 2012:

Note to parents: Go check your kid’s cellphone. Or Facebook. Just check. Just … check.

Back in April 2010, one mother did just that. Her daughter was 14 at the time, right in the thick of middle school. Should be texting about cute boys or Hannah Montana or pre-algebra problems.

Instead, here’s what showed up in her sent texts.

“Cud u use a condom this time. I’m still not on birth control pills yet.”

You’d freak, right? Ready to wring the neck of some punk seventh-grader? Mom found more texts, all involving a caller known as “Greg.” Police traced the texts back to a cellphone number. Turned out Greg hadn’t been in middle school since the 1970s.

He’s Greg Austin, a 46-year-old Ooltewah father of three and former president of CTC Technologies in Chattanooga.

Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to two charges of statutory rape: having sex with two middle-schoolers in a $45-per-night motel.

Want to know where he is today?

Not in jail.

Thanks to sentencing reform and the fact Austin had no prior record, he received six months of jail, followed by 18 months’ probation and registration as a sex offender.

Even though he pleaded guilty to statutory rape of two girls barely old enough to see a PG-13 movie.

Know how many days in jail he has served for that crime?

“Zero,” said his attorney, Bryan Hoss.

Two middle school girls manipulated into sex–raped–by a man old enough to be their Dad. Probably, he was fantasizing that he was.

Or consider these statistics from Forbes:
–One in every four women have experienced severe physical violence by a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend.
–Stalkers victimize approximately 5.2 million women each year in the U.S, with domestic violence-related stalking the most common type of stalking and often the most dangerous.
–One in ten 9th-12th grade students (mail and female) were physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend in 2009 alone.
–One in five women have been raped in their lifetimes, and nearly 1.3 million women in the U.S. are raped every year.
–The statistics are sobering – even more so with our understanding that these types of crimes are often the most underreported. Many victims suffer in silence without confiding in family and friends, much less reaching out for help from hospitals, rape crisis centers, shelters, or even the police.

According to the newly released documentary, The Invisible War, which gathered its statistics from the United States government, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire; over 20% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US army; of 3,192 sexual-assault reports in 2011 only 191 members of the military were convicted at courts martial. Further, as reported by ABC News,

As terrible as the rape was, the repercussions were almost as horrendous — [single] women were accused of adultery (if the perpetrator happened to be married) or “conduct unbecoming an officer.”
Cori Cioca, formerly of the United States Coast Guard, alleges assault and rape by a superior officer [Image credit]
They lost rank, they were accused of having “set up the men.” When one of the women reported a rape — the third that week in one particular unit — she was asked, “You girls think this is a game; are you all in cahoots?”
[…]
A Navy study conducted anonymously reported that 15 percent of incoming recruits had attempted or committed rape before entering the military, twice the percentage of an equivalent civilian population. Women who’ve been raped in the military have a higher PTSD rate than men in combat. In 2010, there were 2,617 military victims (women and men), but that represented only about 14% of the estimated number of victims; 86% did not report they had been sexually assaulted.

Until early 2012 military regulations required rapes be reported to one’s supervising officer. It was all to common, in cases where the victim was female, for that officer to be her rapist.

If you have not seen The Invisible War check out iTunes, Amazon.com, Vudu.com or the website above.

While on the subject of the military do not forget the fastest growing segment of the homeless population is women, many of them veterans.

Native American women? How about this?

The official number is bad enough: One in three American Indian women have experienced rape or attempted rape, a rate more than twice the national average. But it gets worse: One survey finds that in some rural villages, the rate of sexual violence is as much as 12 times the national rate, and interviews by the New York Times found that sexual assault is so common that few, if any, Native American women living on tribal reservations escape it.

The Times article relays wrenching stories (the 19-year-old rape victim who never received a return phone call from tribal police), offers more heartbreaking statistics (just 10% of sex assaults on reservations are reported, and arrests are made in just 13% of those cases), and details the myriad problems contributing to the tragic situation: isolated villages; alcohol abuse and a breakdown of the family structure; a lack of sexual assault training.

Look at this picture of Tarana Akbari, a young Afghani girl. She survived a suicide bomber’s attack that claimed seven members of her family and injured nine of her other relatives. This is anger. This is hurt. This is the face of one suffering inexplicable injustice. This is real; not manufactured. Complementarian vs egalitarian? It does not even get into the ballpark.

An egalitarian friend of mine read this yesterday to provide feedback. She wrote back:

Feminist and womanist theologians in the Third World have long accused white Western feminists of focusing on semantics and meaningless symbols (like female language for God) instead of doing real things to help real women suffering all over the world.

Now, go ahead and tell me how wrong it was that you did not get to teach that Sunday School class because there were men in it. Tell me how some couple is in sin because she cuts the grass and he vacuums the house rather than holding traditional gender roles. Tell me how debates about semantics and theology even come close to the tragedies endured by women–from those born to those unborn–on whom Satanic war has been waged since the Garden of Eden.

I wonder if these victims of inhuman barbarity wake up each day frustrated because they were not allowed to speak at a panel discussion, did not have their CV considered by a pastor search team, or thinking their dad was too patriarchal. Think about these stories when you are trying to decide whether a women testifying in church can speak behind the pulpit or must stand on the floor so as not to be confused with the preacher.

Tell me instead how unborn girls have a right to live. Tell me 12 year olds have a right to not be sexually brutalized 70 or more times a week. Tell me how women have a right not to be raped by soldiers or law enforcement officers. Tell me teenage girls should not be shot for wanting an education. Tell me seventeen year olds should not be burned to death in the street.

Tell me the gospel matters for more than discussion, debate and division. Tell me these women matter more than the luxury we have for endless disagreements.

If they do matter then why do we not redeem the time in a way reflecting it?

Below is a brief TED Talk called, “Every 15 Seconds.” It was presented by Matt Friedman at TEDxSanJoaquin. The title refers to the frequency people around the globe are sold into some kind of human slavery. Women, girls, men, and boys.

Listen to him talk about professional rapists. Do not even try to hold your anger.

Ground Zero, Syria [PHOTOS]

“It is well that war is so terrible otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”
Robert E. Lee

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower

My son Timothy alerted me last week to this blog, the LiveJournal of Ilya Plekhanov, editor of military and literary almanac, The Art of War. These sites are in Russian some of which Chrome will translate into English. (See also Plekhanov on the Russian edition of Forbes.) All of the photos below are from the collection on the LiveJournal blog.

While viewing the photos I was reminded of the hell of war. I also question why so many who follow Christ seem given over to it, at times with virtual bloodlust. For people who follow the Prince of Peace, who often made fun of the “peace-niks” of the 60s, we should be reminded yet again that Jesus words, “There will be wars and rumors of wars,” was not intended to be a foreign policy statement.

What questions should Kingdom residents ask? Is the violence in Syria merely a civil war? How are we involved behind the scenes? Is this all about installing a democracy friendly to U.S. interests? Passive toward Israel?

How many of the people in the pictures below do not or did not know Christ? How many have never or had never heard a clear presentation of the gospel? How many are now or soon will be in a Christ-less eternity?

In the below photo gallery, compiled during October and the first of November 2012, the struggles of Syria are chronicled. There is a warning before the more graphic ones. But I encourage you to look unless you absolutely cannot. Be reminded. War is hell. People die. Eternity never ends.

When is it worth it? When is it not?

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS INCLUDE SCENES OF INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND SOME GORE

Two men with guns accost an apparently unarmed man.

The unarmed man appears to be attempting evasive action.

The unarmed man lies dead from a bullet to the head.

A man appears to be running for cover.

Apparently the man has been wounded.

As someone extends help to the man in the street, I wondered if the man laying wounded or dead on the sidewalk is the man who was in the foreground in the first picture of this series.

People are people. Nobody wants their child to die.

Friedersdorf on the abject failure of conservative media

Conservative radio theater host, Rush Limbaugh [Image credit]

Over the last few weeks I have come to appreciate the writings of Conor Friedersdorf, columnist for The Atlantic. Following last night’s election results he addressed the failure of the conservative media to see the big pre-election stories, opting instead for conspiracy theories, and faux news.

The losers, according to Friedersdorf, were the “rank-and-file” conservatives who took Limbaugh, Hannity, et al, as authoritative and truthful casting a wary eye at all other outlets.

From the article:

Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike 4 years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday’s result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout — Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes. Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that the election was anything other than a toss-up. Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs.

Those audiences were misinformed.

Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election ’08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected. Other experts echoed his findings. Readers of The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other “mainstream media” sites besides knew the expert predictions, which have been largely born out. The conclusions of experts are not sacrosanct. But Silver’s expertise was always a better bet than relying on ideological hacks like Morris or the anecdotal impressions of Noonan. Sure, Silver could’ve wound up wrong, but people who rejected the possibility of his being right?

They were operating at a self-imposed information disadvantage.

[…]

You haven’t just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven’t tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they’ve done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.

Why do you keep putting up with it?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.

Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. World Net Daily brought you Birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemy in a “Grand Jihad” against America. Seriously?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pander in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they’re plausible presidents, rather than national jokes who’d lose worse than George McGovern.

I encourage you to read the entire piece.

I’m sure some will say, “But what about Benghazi? What about Fast and Furious? What about socialism? What about Obamacare?”

To which I answer, “What about the boy who cried wolf?” As conservative media beats the birther drum, the Obama 2016 drum, and every other drum of suspiciousness, why should conservatives be surprised to find the wolf soundly dismissed even when loudly announced?

Conservative media, like liberal media, does not exist to tell the truth. It exists to relate a narrative. Each narrative fulfills–they hope–two functions: to sell ads and to make money. I really do not see this as cynicism. This is just reality.

The air inside any bubble eventually becomes toxic.

As long as Americans–conservative and liberal, Right and Left–eat pablum like it is a 5-star breakfast and drink muddy water like Italian roast, media sources will be content to serve it up as a never ending feast.

Six reasons to consider voting third party

Throughout this election season, as in the last one, I have written and discussed here and on Facebook about the need to break the two party, Democrat-Republican dominated political system in the United States. The adversarial aspect of this system has led to a stymied congress, lies, deceit, and an ongoing “lesser of two evils” approach to voting.

The election tomorrow seems to be potentially as close as any since Bush-Gore in 2000. Some have even speculated of an Electoral College tie between president Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Some of my friends have made the informed decision not to vote–and have been castigated for it.

The objection I normally face has been that a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Barack Obama (if the objection is coming from a conservative) or a vote for Mitt Romney (if coming from a liberal). I reject this reductionistic approach as inaccurate and illogical. Others say a vote for a third party candidate is akin to throwing away one’s vote. On the contrary, I say voting for someone who does not best represent your principles and philosophy of government is throwing away your vote.

Considering such dominance from the Democratic and Republican parties when should you vote for a national candidate not among the two major parties?

1. When you would have to violate your conscience to do so. If an issues or issues important to you are ignored by the most well known candidates do not cast a vote for them.

2. If neither candidate has earned your vote. I do not look at my vote as something I give to a candidate. It is something they must earn. If he or she does not earn it, they do not get it.

3. If your state is polling overwhelmingly toward one candidate or the other. My state, Tennessee, has been Republican since before Obama was elected. It is not about to change; polling is not close to the margin of error. Because of the Electoral College, every single vote truly does not matter; only the total number of votes matter. For that reason you can confidently vote for the candidate your prefer with no concern you might rip the space time election continuum.

4. If you consider the lesser of two evils argument to be abhorrent. Some Christians will make the argument that we will never have a perfect candidate, so every choice is a lesser of two evils. I find this to be thoroughly unpersuasive. First because the “two evils” necessarily eliminates other, better choices. Second because the lack of perfection does not equate to evil. (Try that on your wife: “No, she’s not perfect. In fact, you might as well say she’s evil.” Good luck with that one.)

5. If you are more concerned about being the cure than spreading the cancer. Our political system, while functional, spews a dangerous toxicity. Abuses of power, mindless spending and selfish gain seem to be the norm on The Hill.

6. If neither major party candidate even begins to address issues of vital importance to justice. Most on the Right have reduced the idea of justice to abortion, while most on the Left have similarly reduced it to taking care of the poor. Where, in three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debates, were discussions about our unjust justice system, the unjust “War” on Drugs, concerns to address human trafficking, the NDAA, the unjust drone war? They were nowhere to be found. A candidate who thinks these major issues not worth a mention does not even qualify for the office.

Can you think of any other reasons to consider voting for a third (or “minor”) party candidate?

The real issue with abortion and the DNC

The closer the presidential election draws the more attentions return to the issue of abortion. Those on the left cry “women’s rights” while those on the right plead “right to life.” Both sides are passionate, and often enflamed in their attempts to solidify or overturn–respectively–Roe v Wade.

In early September 2012 the Democratic National Convention met in North Carolina. Amidst the debacle over “God” and “Jerusalem” the Democratic Party passed as strong a pro-abortion plank as has been ever hammered into a platform.

In the days following the DNC meeting ABC’s Cokie Roberts said

I think this Democratic Convention was really over-the-top in terms of abortion. Every single speaker talked about abortion. At some point, you start to alienate people. Thirty percent of Democrats are pro-life.

On the same program Roberts challenged Newark, New Jersey mayor Cory Booker

on why the platform committee removed the phrase saying that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” which had been in the platform since Bill Clinton ran on that platform in 1992.

Below is the abortion plank from the 2012 Democratic National Platform called Moving America Forward. Read it carefully.

Protecting A
[Image credit]
Woman’s Right to Choose. The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. We also recognize that health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. We strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child by providing affordable health care and ensuring the availability of and access to programs that help women during pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including caring adoption programs. (2012 DNC Platform, pg. 18)

Here is the thing implicit in the DNC platform: abortion and adoption are moral equivalents. This is the real issue with abortion and the Democratic National Convention.

That Democrats affirm the legality of abortion from conception to birth for any reason or no reason is self-evident and has been for decades. But it is startling they cannot even bring themselves to recommend adoption over abortion. This is slavish adherence to ideology at the expense of civilized thinking.

Perhaps pro-life Democrats should be added to the endangered species list.

The moral and ethical position of the DNC is abortion = birth = adoption. Whether a woman aborts a child, keeps a child, or gives the child to adoptive parents it is a morally equivalent decision. No recommendation is made for a preferred end. They “strongly and unequivocally support” all options. Dismembering a child in the womb is given no moral difference from one delivered healthy into the arms of its mother.

Author Steven Waldman noticed this very thing,

[T]he 2004 platform said abortion “should be safe, legal and rare” – language that’s [sic] casts abortion reduction as morally preferable, something this platform does not. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, the DNC does seem to have a moral preference in the matter though unstated. This can be derived from the statistics of the DNC’s preferred provider of abortion, pre-natal care and adoption referrals, Planned Parenthood. In 2010 Planned Parenthood (who, as seen above in the Booker link, was a prominent player at the 2012 DNC) reported the following:

Planned Parenthood did 329,445 abortions while it provided prenatal care to 31,098 women (90% less) and referred only 841 women to adoption agencies.

The number of women receiving prenatal care dropped significantly from 2009 to 2010, as the abortion business helped 40,489 women in 2009 — meaning almost 10,000 fewer women received prenatal support from Planned Parenthood last year than the year prior, or a drop of almost 25 percent.

The number of women getting adoption referrals also declined — from a low 977 in 2009 to 841 last year, or a decline of 14 percent.

Examined another way Planned Parenthood does 391 abortions for every adoption referral it makes and almost 11 abortions for every woman it helps with prenatal care.

The direction the DNC has taken this year is indeed tragic. They have increased their strident support for Roe v Wade to a philosophical landfill in which good and evil are comparable. To quote Javert, “The world is inside out. The world is upside down.”

Interview with Sarah Jackson and Preview of New Album Release

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It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

Stan Getz

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Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

Stan Getz

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U.S. drone use challenged in court

On March 17, 2011 at least 42 people were killed by a United States drone strike in northwestern Pakistan. Four have been confirmed as Taliban members, while the others were civilians, including tribal elders who had gathered for an administrative meeting. Reports the Global Post on October 10, 2012:

Opponents take the stance that these strikes are not part of an armed conflict and the rules of war, thus, do not apply. The armed conflict claim is a legal fiction and the United States is cherry picking the legal framework that protects its conduct under the rules of war, thus doing indirectly what they cannot do directly under international human rights laws. Shamsi contends, “I think the key issue here is that the US is claiming that the laws of war apply in places where they absolutely do not apply.”

Contrary to the US stance, this interpretation holds that, regarding Anderson’s explanation, “There is no war going on in a legal sense, and if there is, it is strictly limited to hot battlefields of Afghanistan. [Drone strikes are] governed by standards of international human rights and domestic law, and therefore any killings that take place under the circumstances are not protected by the law of war and instead are just extrajudicial executions, and frankly murder.”

Meanwhile, the CIA wants to up the number of drones that it denies having. Reports Policymic.com:

While the 2012 presidential election racket focuses on gaffes, Romney’s binders, and Big Bird, the CIA and the Pentagon are currently busy finding ways to increase their military power and influence around the globe. According to the Washington Post, CIA Director David Petraeus wants an increased drone fleet to “bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging Al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots.”

In case you miss the significance here, the CIA is running a covert war using a kill list known to exist but which the president denies. Our “intelligence agency” requests even more drones at a time when the international community is already questioning the legality of how we are using them. In America there is little argument that “intelligence agency” = “paramilitary organization.”

Finally, the Daily Mail reports that two specific Americans could be investigated for murder related to their roles in drone strikes.

A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strikes’ targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones’ dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.

The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.

CIA attorney John A. Rizzo [Image credit]
Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s former chief lawyer.

[…]

The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters’ degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan.

His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet, and Mr Khan said: ‘We are an educated family. My uncle is a hospital doctor in Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching.

‘We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.’

History may ultimately adjudge our current drone war on the same level as the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam war.

I’ve also written about America’s drone war in these posts:
The Drone War and the kingdom of God

One former British soldier talks about drone warfare

TaterBox

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