How does a real-life axis of evil work? Slate examined that on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal came back on it today. Here is probably the most ominous thing — no, excuse me, one of the most immediately ominous things; I can think of a lot worse — about the Syria/Iran alliance:
…Syria’s long-term backing of the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah is translating into greater popular support for Mr. Assad, who since Israel’s recent attacks began has cast himself as a wartime leader immune to internal criticism. That Israel is a sworn enemy of Syria is an opinion so widely held here that it is difficult for the country’s opposition to attack Mr. Assad.
And just when I had the boy written off as not nearly the thug his Daddy was. Still, he is an ugly little cuss, ain’t he? That’s him below, meeting with a Russian envoy. (A familiar scene, eh, Tovarich?)
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Syria, broke and corrupt and backward. Iran, corrupt, backward, but lots of money to spend on schemes to kill the free people of the world. The weakling Jimmy Carter turned Iran over to tenth century neanderthals and the world is still paying his debt. But at least these two are isolated from even the other Arab/Moslem nations. Their day is coming we hope.
Brad,
Your choice of quotes is ironic, and it sums up nicely why so many Americans feel ambiguous about this war and our current president. The quote has this phrase:
“…who since Israel’s recent attacks began has cast himself as a wartime leader immune to internal criticism. That Israel is a sworn enemy of Syria is an opinion so widely held here that it is difficult for the country’s opposition to attack Mr. Assad.”
It’s pretty easy to restate, isn’t it:
“..who since the events of 9/11 has cast himself as a wartime leader immune to internal criticism. That Al Quaeda is a sworn enemy of the US is an opinion so widely held here that it is difficult for the country’s opposition to attack Mr. Bush.”
American’s aren’t despairing about this war because it’s impossible to win. It’s because the morality and the justification of the thing are so poor that you can describe our President with the same words as Assad Jr. God what a mess! Don’t criticize good people like Bud or KC because the solution they want to try is follow what they see as the path of least compounded damage and get out. Or any other patriotic American who is ashamed of the immorality and ineptitude displayed by our leadership. It makes it really hard to see the win-win scenario that could be pulled out of this. I agree that we have to find some way to, though…
Why Syria and Iran are pals? Well, why America and Israel ass?
OK Brad,
If these people are such a threat to the security of the US and the world, and if you really believe what you say, then let’s pull your kids out of college right now to go and fight!!! No more privilege. No more hob-knobbing with your influential white-collar criminal friends. 0300 grunts with M-16s in hand-that’s what I say. We’re all in this together aren’t we? You’re willing to sacrifice your family’s health insurance for the sake of paying for the war aren’t you?
You want to start a draft, Mark? A universal one, no college deferments? I’m all for it — for young males.
Of course, that would start a huge political fight, but there would be no need to draft females. As things stand, women are necessary to the military because, as someone at the Pentagon told me back during the Clinton administration, they can’t fill the noncombat billets without them.
With a universal draft of young guys, the Selective Service has so many to choose from that it can be truly selective, choosing the men that it wants — who would be stronger, healthier and smarter than the population at large.
We could also stop this ridiculous nonsense of outsourcing support functions — from cooking to engineering — to the private sector. The military could provide the labor and management for those functions, and be more efficient (and more secure) as a result.
But hey, if you don’t think a draft would work, we could try the approach Heinlein proposed in Starship Troopers. Basically, his military was all volunteer, and took anyone who volunteered — male, female, fit, unfit. You could be a quadriplegic, and they’d find a job for you.
The catch was, you couldn’t be a citizen — meaning you couldn’t vote — unless you were a veteran.
I’ve always liked his idea for two reasons: First, I think we should all have to give something back. People take the franchise far too lightly in this country. Second, under his system, I would have been allowed to serve. Win-win.
Dave, Carter does indeed have much to answer for. All outr current problems in the Middle East can be directly traced back to him. The worst president of the 20th century, bar none.
Here’s one of those fearless jihadis doing his part to defend Lebanon:
Banished Islamofascist Begs For Britain’s Protection
O, the irony! Omar Bakri fled the UK after spending years preaching hate from his London mosque, and got out just ahead of a British deportation order. The Home Secretary banned him from ever returning to Britain after Bakri left — for Lebanon. Now that the Hezbollah lunatics he supports started a war they cannot handle, Bakri now demands that Britain allow him to return — on humanitarian grounds!
In the somewhat purple prose of the British tabloid, The Sun:
EXILED preacher of hate Omar Bakri has begged the Royal Navy to rescue him from war-torn Beirut.
The Muslim cleric who fled Britain last year, tried to board a ship full of women and children yesterday but was turned away.
He also wrote to the British embassy asking to be allowed back on “humanitarian grounds”.
In an email to officials, dole scrounger Bakri pleaded: “The current situation in Beirut left me without any choice but to appeal to you to grant me a visit visa to see my children for one month.”
…When he did leave Britain, he made it clear that he would never willingly return to the nest of infidels he had left behind. Just four months ago, he told reporters: “When I left England I bought a one-way ticket out. I never want to see the place again.” Now, apparently, he wants to make that a round trip.
(Sorry for the several posts. Apparently a bold tag didn’t close correctly and I posted the following posts in an attempt to fix the problem.)
Brad,
The point is that since you constantly preach about prosecuting the “war” (it’s not a war anymore, and it hasn’t been for years-it’s un unsuccessful occupation) in Iraq, then you ought to be the first in line to get you and yours involved-and it’s just not going to happen.
That’s the problem with your neo-conservative/neo-liberal philosophy-you want all the benefits and privileges that a lopsided economic system provides you, yet when the bullets start flying, you don’t show up.
You shouldn’t have to wait for the draft-you should have been encouraging your kids to enlist in the military years ago. Are your buddies at the Chamber of Commerce getting their kids to sign up? How about the Board of Directors of the Palmetto Institute-are they queuing up for a chance to fight the terrorists?
No, let me guess, you people spend most of your time conspiring to keep unions out, to make the tax system even more regressive (and call it “balanced”), to even further privatize the government (and euphemistically call it a “private/public partnership”), and to further encourage job killing free trade agreements (and call it “opportunity”)-all the while blaming the education system for the woes that in large part you created. Just let Globalization take its course-that way you guys are guaranteed to stay in power.
You’re the paid mouthpiece for these crooks-you should be ashamed of yourself.
Brad, it would never fly but that idea of only letting veterans vote is fantastic. Maybe we can get a compromise where each veterans vote is worth 10 ballots. That would give the vets quite a bit of clout. Even corporations in the US have turned their backs on vets. Some hold it against applicants who have served. After all, they were trained to use those hateful implements – guns of all things.
Lexwolf – that post about Stanford is so true. I would add all the Ivy League schools into that same realm. Remember the infamous phrase from an infamous past president – “I loathe the military”. That about sums it up. Even to the point now where one party went so far as to try to litigate to disallow military ballots from counting. Recently, that party decided to use photos of US Soldiers coffins as a fund raiser. Beyond belief and beyond disgusting.
Mark – how low can you go? Now you want to castigate Brad’s children for his positions on fighting the WOT and national defense. Actually Mark, the Cuban government economic policy is very much in line with your thinking, power to the people and all that, it would do you good to emigrate there for about 5 years. You would be like the Islamic cleric who is now begging to get back into the UK for humanitarian reasons no less.
Brad, it would never fly but that idea of only letting veterans vote is fantastic. Maybe we can get a compromise where each veterans vote is worth 10 ballots. That would give the vets quite a bit of clout. Even corporations in the US have turned their backs on vets. Some hold it against applicants who have served. After all, they were trained to use those hateful implements – guns of all things.
Lexwolf – that post about Stanford is so true. I would add all the Ivy League schools into that same realm. Remember the infamous phrase from an infamous past president – “I loathe the military”. That about sums it up. Even to the point now where one party went so far as to try to litigate to disallow military ballots from counting. Recently, that party decided to use photos of US Soldiers coffins as a fund raiser. Beyond belief and beyond disgusting.
Mark – how low can you go? Now you want to castigate Brad’s children for his positions on fighting the WOT and national defense. Actually Mark, the Cuban government economic policy is very much in line with your thinking, power to the people and all that, it would do you good to emigrate there for about 5 years. You would be like the Islamic cleric who is now begging to get back into the UK for humanitarian reasons no less.
LOL Dave. You’re trying to take the high road when you’ve done nothing but make the most vicious, acrimonious, disparaging, and insulting remarks against liberals and people you disagree with that I’ve ever seen. Of course I’m being facetious when suggesting that people of Brad’s ilk actually DO something to contribute to the well being of the country-that’s sheer fantasy. On the other hand, there’s a very real possibility that my little working class kid is going to end up carrying the load for people like you and Brad-and I’m not going to let that happen-not over some BS conjured up in the twisted neo-con mind. I don’t need your pathetic leadership or advice, your cowardness (Dave who?) or your fanciful ruminations about me going to Cuba for a while, especially after I spent six and a half years helping to defend this country.
I guess it’s not good enough to blame Clinton for all of Bushes many failures we have to go back 26 + years to Jimmy Carter. It really is amazing the lengths the right will go to explain away one very simple fact about the world:
January 2001 – Peace and Prosperity
July 2006 – War and Poverty
All while Bush and the conservatives are in charge.
There is a law in most states but specifically Florida that says ALL absentee ballots must be post marked by a specific date to count in elections.
This law wasn’t quickly orchestrated to disallow military votes in Florida. It has been on the books for years.
When the military’s postal clerks failed to cancel those ballots, how is that a scam by the election board in Florida to manipulate the votes? IT WAS LAW, not a political move.
Spin Sucks no matter from where it comes.
Yes, Mark, I got your “point.” I was ignoring it in order to be polite.
I’ve always considered that form of “reasoning” to be contemptible. We live in a society based on the rule of law, in which people who are personally involved in a question recuse themselves because they are not regarded as sufficiently objective.
Thus, it is insulting to everyone’s intelligence to say, “You can’t have an opinion on abortion because you’re not a woman,” or “You would feel differently about the death penalty if someone in your family were murdered.”
To inject emotion into such important questions is wrong. To say, “you can’t have an opinion on this unless you go yourself” is intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
It insults me because the very idea of shaping important policy decisions on such factors is outrageous to me. As traumatic as the experience was, my father’s going to Vietnam to spend a year in the very thicket of Viet Cong activity did not change my mind about foreign policy. I think more clearly than that. When I have an emotional involvement in something, I recognize that fact, and take it into consideration. I do not make it the fundamental basis of my decision.
Maybe I should say that no one is allowed to have an opinion on smoking in public places unless he or she has asthma, like me. If I could enforce that rule, we’d have smoke out of restaurants in no time.
I still have yet to meet anyone who knows the Middle East well, and the Arab mindset, and supported the start of the Iraq war. I also have serious doubts that a Muslim country can be ruled by democracy. Jordan is doing the best job, with a benevolent king. That is what we need to support. We have got to get out of our heads the idea that we can transport our system of government abroad. The more I look at the idea, the plainer it becomes: it won’t work. We need to put a strong, benevolent man in power in Iraq and slowly but surely pull out.
Jimmy Carter tried hard. I fear that he did not comprehend the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, nor the fact that trying to implement democracy in the region would lead to more instability. Hats off to Sadat. He started to think differently, and tried valiantly.
Herb writes: “Hats off to Sadat. He started to think differently, and tried valiantly.” I believe Jimmy Carter helped strengthen the moderates in the region. We must not forget that Eqypt and Isreal have been at peace for 3 decades now. That is at least a partial success.
Did Carter make mistakes? Yes, many. But he had the right way of thinking on the middle-east. And during his four years some progress was made. Sadly, Reagan squandered much of the headway we were making. His idiotic arms-for-hostings fiasco, combined with his cut-and-run episode in Lebanon were the catylists for much of the mess we are dealing with today.
Vietvet, OK, so on an innocent technical error by a third party postal clerk you would disallow a ballot from a soldier, but meanwhile, there were people who picked 2 presidential candidates instead of 1, and the Dem lawyers were trying to get those votes counted. Yes, the law indeed.
Herb, I believe what you are saying but how many repressed Iraqis did you talk with? I imagine most of the Egyptians, Jordanians, and others were happy to leave well enough alone. Saddam wasn’t gassing them.
To a certain extent you are right, Dave. Certainly the Kurds have welcomed Sadaam’s fall, and that is no surprise. But, as usual, there are two sides to everything, which is part of the complex world we are in. Which is why I can’t adopt an ideology like you guys seem to do. Two things are at the root cause of Islamic extremism: on the one hand, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the one-sided way it has been handled by the West, plus the additional aggravation caused by the Iraq invasion, an invasion that was planned way back in 1991 by Wolfowitz and his cohorts. The other side is the failure and corruption of Arab governments to modernize their economies.
What I cannot do is congratulate our wonderful politicians on the great job they have done.
And don’t overlook the fact that Saddam cared nothing about religion. As a secularist, Saddam was a thorn in the flesh of fanatical Muslims. By removing him, we have opened the field. If you are going to take the lid off of Pandora’s box, you’ve got to know what you’re going to do with the results.
Certainly for Christians in Iraq, the fall of Saddam has been a catastrophe. There was much more freedom of religion in Iraq before than there is now.
Bud says: If you are going to take the lid off of Pandora’s box, you’ve got to know what you’re going to do with the results.
Sadly, Bud, your sentiment is a remnant of people who’re based in reality.
Brad, Dear Leader, Cheney and the rest see no need for such nit picking.
Herb, I guess you don’t recognize the larger interconnnected pieces of this that I do, but I call zero terrorist attacks since 9-11 a great success. Especially knowing how effectively numerous terrorist cells have been stopped before they could do harm. I also believe that with Bin Laden hiding in a cave way under some mountain (with no usable cell phone, etc.) that AQ has been severely crippled, not eliminated, but diverted from anti-US terrorism. We also have killed thousands, tens of thousands of this horrible subhuman scum in Iraq. Iraq has been a terrorist magnet even if that was never the intention of Rumsfeld and company, it has been a brilliant unintended consequence. But it is not over yet. Iran and Syria will need to be dealt with. The Syrian president is a coward so they will back off. The Iranians are mental and will have to be handled militarily eventually.
Dave, be careful about seeing every M.E. conflict through the 9/11 lens. This is what conservatives like to do, but it isn’t really helpful. It is simple, of course. Just like an African-American convert to Islam told me: “Islam is so simple.” But simplicity does not always do justice to the complexities of truth. Israel is going way over the top in destroying an entire country because of one group within it. I’m appealing to you as someone who respects Biblical revelation, to see this as the injustice that it is. It does not even come close to the “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” principle of Biblical law. By responding the way it does, Israel continues to breed more anger and trouble. And the U.S., by tacitly encouraging the same, continues to make itself more and more the target of hatred. This does not need to be.
Nor does characterizing Iran as a bunch of madmen really help the cause. True, these revolutionaries are not saints, but there are ways of dealing with people besides the cowboy “shoot-em-up” approach. There is a strong element of opposition in Iran, but we negate its effect by such blanket characterization of its people as “mental” and our one-sided support of Israel’s injustice.
RTH, maybe I’m being too accomodating, but I don’t see Brad in the same category as our politicians. I don’t think he is wedded to a neo-con view of things, though I do think he is too positive about what the American military can accomplish. At the same time, I don’t want to be negative about many of the positive things are military people, especially on a humanitarian level, have done in Iraq. But I pretty much agree with you about the “John Wayne” approach to international politics that this current administration seems to have. Except for Afghanistan. Northern Afghanistan has been a great success, and the only place in the Muslim world where our military is praised on billboards at the border and in the cities. However, we are squandering this capital by our actions elsewhere.
Thus, it is insulting to everyone’s intelligence to say, “You can’t have an opinion on abortion because you’re not a woman,” or “You would feel differently about the death penalty if someone in your family were murdered.”
To inject emotion into such important questions is wrong.
Then why the HELL do you keep accusing everyone who disagrees w/you on the Iraq war of wanting America to lose?
Herb, the Lebanese government is totally complicit in allowing Hisballshurt to arm as they have. Syria complied with UN 1599 and withdrew, at least the uniformed military did, but part of the deal was also for disarmement. Here we have rockets and missiles being flown into the Lebanese national airport and the government sat there and watched this for 6 years. That is not innocence. I think the Israelis are doing what they can to avoid civilian bloodshed but unless people evacuate its going to happen.
Regarding the opposition in Iran, they are hoping that Israel and the US among others shows the Iranian people that their leaders are not immune from harm. That is what their leaders have been telling their people, no harm can come to Iran because of Allah blah blah blah who will destroy the infidels and Jews. I think they need to see how vulnerable they are. They import 85% of their gasoline. They are oil rich but dont have refineries. Let’s shut off their gasoline and see how they handle that. I would start with that immediately.
“You want to start a draft, Mark? A universal one, no college deferments? I’m all for it — for young males.”
No, Mark doesn’t want to start a draft. He wants you to show whether you’re a loyal American (someone who is willing to take up sacrifices in favor of a course of action that he believes is in America’s best interest) or a chickenhawk (someone who urges sacrifices upon others that he has no intention of taking up himself). Mark was giving you an opportunity to show whether or not you had any integrity.
And you did.
“Yes, Mark, I got your “point.” I was ignoring it in order to be polite.
I’ve always considered that form of “reasoning” to be contemptible. We live in a society based on the rule of law, in which people who are personally involved in a question recuse themselves because they are not regarded as sufficiently objective.
Thus, it is insulting to everyone’s intelligence to say, “You can’t have an opinion on abortion because you’re not a woman,” or “You would feel differently about the death penalty if someone in your family were murdered.”
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This is a false analogy. Mark isn’t suggesting that you aren’t entitled to have a particular viewpoint on an issue because of a lack of particular characteristics or past experiences. He is looking at what you are doing NOW, as a gauge of your seriousness about the course of action you advocate.
You are urging sacrifices on others, but doing nothing to shoulder any portion of those sacrifices yourself. So, Mark is judging your level of seriousness as:
Serious enough about the issue to send the children of others to die, but not serious enough to risk the lives of your own children, or the lives of anyone you know or the lives of their children.
In other words, your seriousness is that of the chickenhawk and the hypocrite.
Mary, I have to work in New Jersey this week. Does that count as my sacrifice for the good of all?
No, Dave, it doesn’t count. While I’d rather work someplace than NJ, it’s far preferable to anyplace in the Middle East. The question is a serious one: What (besides our freedom) are we prepared to sacrifice? So far, there haven’t been any good answers from the choir.
Dave, I know it must be difficult for you to be in a place where you can’t wear your sheet for a whole week, but that’s not really a sacrifice; that’s just normal decent behavior. If you really want to make a sacrifice, why don’t you make a voluntary contribution to the U.S. treasury so that the amount you put in equals the amount you take out.
That would show a commitment to your beliefs.
Or you could continue to sit around taking handouts paid for by the taxes of people from New Jersey.
VOA, you may not realize it, but you and every other American is making a sacrifice every day in the process of both financing the war and other changes to your life. I traveled to NJ this week. Me and all other travelers need to be at the airport nearly 2 hours before boarding time to make sure we get through security. We are patted down, shoes off, scrutinized during the security check. We cannot park as close to the airports as we used to. The terrorists have raised the costs of travel, the costs of oil, basically the costs of everything, while also costing many of us dearly from our own time. If you think nationwide that doesnt add up to billions of dollars you are mistakene. As a result, every time I travel I become more committed to the need to literally kill every single terrorist that is found. There is no compromise, no negotiation, no talks, just kill the sick minded Muslim idiots who if they could would destroy our way of life. I could go on but hopefully I made my point. When you pay at the pump, you are paying your share because of the terrorists. As far as I am concerned, every single American is making some kind of sacrifice in this war. I honor the ones who are fighting directly overseas as they may suffer the ultimate price.
Mary – do you have a spare gas mask while I am here? I hate breathing in all this NJ pollution. At least I did get a non-smoking room in my motel.
a result, every time I travel I become more committed to the need to literally kill every single terrorist that is found.
Great. When are you gonna start?
Dave, that smell you find unfamiliar and unpleasant is probably the soap in your hotel bathroom.
KC, I haven’t found one yet, in SC, maybe I will in NJ. Maybe Mary can round one up.
Dave, High gas prices due to terrorism? Try China, India, Iraq, Hummers and the total excess of American society dumbass. Your rants are becoming beyond ridiculous. If I didn’t know better I’d think you wrote that post in the midst of a gas huffing binge.
Please tell me you are travelling because you are a castrato touring with your opera group. It would help explain your anger, and put me at ease knowing you couldn’t procreate.
Dave, my heart is breaking at the extent of your sacrifices. Why don’t you head off to Iraq, where all that lovely oil is located?
I believe that the vast majority are ignorant, concerning what is taking place in The Middle East, because they ignore God’s Word The Holy Bible. The Arab Nations are descendants of Ishmael the son of Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah. Isaac son of Abraham and Sarah is the father of the Nation Israel. Jacob Isaac’s son produced 12 sons and they became the 12 Tribes of Israel. Israel and the Arabs are 1/2 brothers and they have been fighting for some 4,000 years. God declared of Ishmael read Genesis chapter 16 and you will see what God has to say concerning Ishmael and his his offspring. God named Ishmale and in verse 12 of this 16th chapter declares Ishmael would be a wild man: his hand will be against every man; This declaration by God has proven out over the centuries since the Lord stated them. You can find in Chapter 15 verse 18, as well as other scripture, a discription and the boundries of the land that God gave to Abraham and his seed thru Isaac(ISRAEL) At present and since 1948 Israe has not occupied by about 10% of the property God gave them for them to occupy forever. read also Genesis Chapters 12 verse7, Chapter 17 verses 8,15-22, Exodus chapter 23 verse 31; In Numbers Chapter 34 God again gives the boundries of land He gave Israel. In Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses 8-25 gives the instructions for how the Israelites were to live as they possessed the land God had given to them. In Joshua Chapter 1 verses 1-5 again God states the boundries of the land and in chapter 21 verses 43-45 He (GOD) gave the land and He gave rest to Israel. God only need say something once for it to come to pass but He has chosed to set forth the land boundries in many places in His Word and yet men ignore it as though it’s not important. There will never be peace in the Middle East between Arabs and Israel until the PRINCE of PEACE, CHRIST JESUS return as KING of KINGS and LORD of LORDS and sets up HIS KINGDOM here on earth at Jerusalem. This event will happene in this present generation according to JESUS himself as He taught in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21. Look up not to be raptured out, which is a deceptive lie of satan, but to see CHRIST RETuRN. Even so come LOED JESUS
Reading what Ken says reminds me that many fundamentalists are now looking intensely for the Rapture, when they will all be taken from the earth. The good thing about the Rapture is, after all the fundamentalists are taken away, we can go collect their cars and their other possessions.
The bad thing is that their cars are all broken down old beaters and their possessions are all from K-mart.
Mary, after the rapture, those who are left will be dead from fire, flood, plagues, etc. So you can have my old car but it won’t do you any good. By the way, I was in NJ last week and can only sympathize with those trapped there by job or whatever. Thankfully, I am back in beautiful, pristine, sunny and pleasant SC.
Ken, I’m an evangelical Christian too, and just have a couple of questions to what you have written:
1) In the Old Testament, it is often said that the Israelites had to leave their land because they were disobedient. After the exile, in 536 B.C. and afterwards, they were allowed to return, but again they were warned about idolatry and keeping pure (book of Nehemiah, etc.) Jesus warns Israel in Matt. 24 about the destruction of Judea and Jerusalem as a a result of their disobedience. Given the fact that Israel today, apart from a very few Messianic congregations, does not believe, how do you justify them being given back their land, when they do not fulfill the conditions that the prophets laid down?
2) There are a lot of Christians among the Arabs and Palestinian populations, and some of them are what you and I would call “true believers.” What justifies the fact that their houses and property were taken away from them, and not just from Muslims, in order to give the Jewish people land in Palestine?
3) do you think it is just to take somebody off of their land because of claims that it belonged to somebody else 2000 years ago? What if that was done to your family, on the basis that your family’s house is standing on land that belonged to the Catawba or Cherokee a few hundred years ago?
I assume that you would think the same way I do, that we should leave the fulfillment of prophecy up to God. To what extent should we require Israel to practice justice towards the Palestinians today? Isn’t that our responsibility before God?
I am genuinely interested in what you think, as I am seeking to understand better. I do have friends who are Arabs Christian believers, and who think much differently that we Western Christians tend to think.
Just re-reading my last post, I don’t want to give the impression that I think it is just to take property from anybody. Not from Muslims, not from HIndus, or Christians. I mentioned Christians specifically because of the fact that Ken and I have something in common there, and I was hoping for his comments on it.
Herb, since in the days of Christ on the earth there were no “Palestinians or Muslims for that matter” throughout the holy land, isn’t it true that the Jews and Christians held the land in ownership? Later, the Muslims conquered that area and you know the rest of the story. The Muslims, members of a theocracy type cult, have zero claims to the lands of Israel, let alone Jerusalem. The Muslims have nearly an entire continent under their auspices yet insist on the tiny slice of Israeli land also. If I had time I would post the scripture where God told David to destroy the non-believers. So be it and the Jews are doing that today. Hopefully they keep it up.
That is pretty poor, Dave. Yes, the Muslim conquests had something to do with it. But erasing centuries of history is obviously non-productive. Fact is, in 1880, the population of Palestine was 480,000, and 456,000 of those were Arabs. Then came Zionism and Jewish immigration, legal and illegal. The final result: land where Palestinian Arabs had been living for centuries was taken from them. In 1880, Jews and Arabs were living pretty much peacefully together. The whole history is not a pretty one.
As far as Biblical prophecy is concerned, I think we should leave that up to God. I think you need to re-think what you are saying about Muslims. You seem to be saying that they have no rights at all.
Herb, what you forget is that when the Muslims conquer a nation, then everyone who wants to survive from that point on is a Muslim. Forcible conversions to Islam don’t count in my numbers. If they weren’t forcing people to practice that cult, there would not be a billion Muslims, but more like 10 million.
Dave, I would suggest reading Whose Promised Land?, by Colin Chapman, lecturer in Islamic Studies in Beirut. It is the most balanced view of both sides of the Middle East conflict (including the historical complexities) that I have seen, and written from an evangelical perspective, with reference to the Scriptures.
Muslims did not force conversions. True, by relegating Christians and Jews to secondary status, they kept the pressure on over generations. But many Christians continue to exist today that existed prior to Islam in the Middle East, as for example the Armenian Orthodox, the Coptic, etc.
[I’m going to address Dave in the rest of the post as a fellow evangelical, so others may not be interested in the rest.] Also, as an evangelical, you almost have to see the conquest of Islam as God’s judgment upon a corrupt church that was more interested in fighting with itself than in reaching out to its neighbors. Even Muhammad himself never read the Bible, because it did not exist at the time in his language. He got his input from Jewish traditions and such. The North African church never attempted to translate the Bible into Berber, but instead continued its services in incomprehensible Latin, fully ignoring the command of Jesus to reach and disciple all nations. Then came the Crusades, in which the Muslims showed themselves to be on a higher ground morally than many of those who called themselves Christians.
From an evangelical point of view (respecting the authority of Scripture), we have no basis for mistreating anybody. There is plenty of kaka in our camp, without forking it over to the other side.
Dave, you must be fair in how you represent Muslims. Their religion, with all of its attention to detail, and the keeping of dietary laws (not eating pork, etc.) is very, very, similar to the orthodox Judaism of the first century. The great missionary of the Church, Paul, said that he would be willing to go to hell for such people, if it would save them. Is there any room in the New Testament for hate of other people groups?
Many Christian denominations today (Presbyterian, Lutheran) are predominantly a-millenial in their interpretation of Scripture, which means, among other things, that they usually see the claims of Israel upon the land as Old Testament. These ended, in this understanding, with destruction of the land by the Romans. It was a disobedience which Jesus predicted (Matt. 24). The fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies about the coming people of God finds then its fulfillment in the Church alone, believers of Jewish, Muslim, pagan, and whatever else background under the Lordship of Jesus. Certainly James, the brother of Jesus, interprets Jewish claims to the Holy City in this way in his interpretation of the prophet Amos in Acts 15.
I happen to believe that there is still some Biblical prophecy relating to the Jewish people as a race, but as a Christian, I can personally never support what Israel is doing now in Lebanon. And as historians have aptly said, Zionism was founded upon violence from the beginning. This is not the spirit of Jesus, who told Peter to put away his sword.
Herb, no time to comment on this, but we know Lebanon is doing nothing to Israel (as your take is the converse of that). Who is doing something, Iran and Syria, both corrupt and basically evil regimes. More later.