[popsicesHoupe]

Mike, putting aside opinions and feelings for the moment, look at the facts.

Look at the distribution of the land, look at the laws that have been passed against the Arabs, look at what the Jews had in the past and what they have now. I was once very sympathetic to the Jews and what they had suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany, but look at what they are doing now.
Put yourself in the place of a Palestinian - an ordinary palestinian who has no connection with any groups terrorist or otherwise - I should say here that the word "terrorist" is subject to many meanings, it all depends on who is using it - and then ask yourself how you would feel towards the Israelis.

That is what I try to do as well. I don't get my information from TV either (actually, I watch almost no TV) but from newspapers, magazines, and books. Even there, I have to constantly cross-reference due to contradictory accounts. Figuring out who is telling the truth gets confusing. And putting myself in the place of an ordinary Palestinian or Israeli (I've tried to do both) may help me understand how they feel, but not who is right (if, indeed, anyone is).

Certainly "facts are facts". But "facts" aren't necessarily "truth". And when this set of "facts" contradicts that set of "facts" -- which is the situation I constantly run into -- then piecing together reality is a difficult proposition.

Add in that I've seen and read plenty of documentation of things considered to be "facts" which turned out to have been invented, distorted, faked, misrepresented, or etc. - in both directions - and sometimes I think there's no realistic chance of penetrating to "the truth". Fortunately, we don't need to know "the truth" about the situation before we can pray.

[Ltftujkg]

Fortunately, we don't need to know "the truth" about the situation before we can pray.

You are right, Mike. We can pray and that is what we should do. As you say, contradictory reports on almost all conflicts are what we experience daily. When we speak from personal experience we might be lucky enough to see a glimmer of the truth. I usually use personal experience as my guide when I post on our forum, but on this subject I relied on what I had read.

Yes, we can pray that God's Will be done in this region of the world.

Effie

[Ltftujkg]

Palestine was not really a "country" in recent times. It was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 1500s up through World War I, after which it became part of the British Mandate of Palestine (which actually included all of current Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan, though the latter was later excluded from the plan to create a Jewish homeland). The 1947 partition plan created by the UN would have created both a Jewish state and an Arab Palestine, but it was rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders (though, after looking at the map, I think the only reason the Jewish leaders accepted it was post-Holocaust desperation for a homeland - both territories looked like a set of Rorschach inkblots).

In Christ,
Mike

Mike, I was going to end this discussion with my last message which is truthfully how I feel, but I do need to respond to something in your above message which I only just read.

You write : "Palestine was not really a "country" in recent times. It was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 1500s up through World War I, .."

This statement is misleading. Are you saying that Greece, which was also occupied by the Turks for 400 years - and therefore to all intents "part of the Ottoman Empire" - ceased to exist as a country during this time period?

We were liberated in 1912 up here in North Greece. We never stopped being Greeks just because the Turks occupied our country. Can we not assume that Palestine and its people remained true to their country as we did? Did they become Turks? Perhaps our Orthodox religion protected us to a certain extent. I am not sure that all Palestinians are Muslims (I know a percentage of them are Christians) but does the fact that they had the same religion as the Turks mean that they forgot that they were Palestinians?

Effie

[popsicesHoupe]

This statement is misleading. Are you saying that Greece, which was also occupied by the Turks for 400 years - and therefore to all intents "part of the Ottoman Empire" - ceased to exist as a country during this time period?

We were liberated in 1912 up here in North Greece. We never stopped being Greeks just because the Turks occupied our country. Can we not assume that Palestine and its people remained true to their country as we did? Did they become Turks?

The big difference I see is that Greece was and is a country with a national identity that spans millenia, whereas I don't see any historical indications that Palestine ever gained a new (i.e., non-Jewish) national identity of its own after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the attempted expulsion of the Jews. In fact, I don't see any indication that Palestine had any kind of independent existence between the end of the Hasmonean Kingdom in 37 BC, and the establishment of modern Israel in 1948 - it was always part of some other kingdom or empire or whatever. Also, I've seen no real evidence that the people there thought of themselves primarily as "Palestinians", at least before the time of the British Mandate, and possibly not even until the establishment of modern Israel.

That's only to say that when Annalise asked "is Palestine not the only country in the world that in recent times actually has been wiped off the map?", I have to answer "no" because I don't see that there was a "country" there - at least "in recent times" - to be wiped off the map. That does not mean in and of itself that the Palestinian Arabs there don't deserve to have their own country; there are a lot of considerations beyond national identity which are knotted up in that question, and I try to avoid commenting on that particular issue because I definitely have neither the wisdom nor the discernment needed to unravel them.

In Christ,
Mike

[Ltftujkg]

OK. Thanks Mike. Your answer is quite clear.

Yesterday I watched an interview with a Greek doctor who is with Doctors for Peace (I translated from the Greek). He told us of his life and his dedication to helping others. Recently he took his wife and two young daughters with him for 3 weeks, as they had repeatedly asked to see some of the things he always talked about when he was home.

Because of his daughters, he decided on Lebanon as being one of the less dangerous places he had visited. During the interview he showed some slides of a graveyard of young children. These youngsters had been hit by an Israeli rocket while they were sleeping. The Israelis defended themselves by saying that it was all a big mistake. There will be an exhibition taking place next week in Athens of photos taken, not months after the Israeli attack but in some cases 15 mins. after. Some of the photos are of this group of children. He said that no children would be admitted to the exhibition because of the horror of these pictures.

You can find the report here : http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Sto...833884,00.html

This is the last paragraph : "Israel apologised and said it had been an accident caused by old maps and poor calculations. Backed by the US, Israel blamed mainly Hizbullah for using civilians as human shields. But a UN report noted many inconsistencies in the Israeli account and said it was "unlikely" the deaths were the result of technical errors."


No matter how many children are killed it is always a mistake and the enemy is blamed for using "civilians as human shields". It is always the same, time and time again, in all these countries. Why doesn't it stop? Greed, greed and more greed is at the heart of these conflicts. Nothing else.

Sorry Mike for going on again about this matter, but instead of improvement each year, everything just keeps getting worse. Lies, always lies, back through the ages, in order to justify killing, and in order to allow us a sense of righteousness that we are "putting things in order." Satan is the master of lies. Isn't that what our Lord has told us?

a murderer and the father of lies (John 8:44)

Effie

[immoceefe]

America gives enormous amounts of foreign aid to Egypt. One of the problems with Gaza is that Egypt cuts it off from their territory just as much as Israel cuts it off from their territory. It would be much more rational for Gaza to become part of Egypt, but the Egyptians don't want the headache. Ditto for Jordan. When "Palestinians" tried to revolt against King Hussein, he had had enough, and he arrested and deported thousands of them. King Abdullah hardly wants the left-bank back under those circumstances. So the Arab Palestinians are not only rejected by Israel, they are rejected by their Arab Neighbors. Arab states like Iran are quite willing to supply training and guns and explosives and rockets. But the wealthy Arab oil magnates have done very little that could be done to improve the lot of these refugees. Fact is, Arab governments and Arab mullahs like the situation as it exists, so that they can arouse their own populace against Israel, without having to do with their own profound political, economic, social and religious problems. As I have said all along, there is plenty of sin to go around on all sides. It is very convenient for some to blame the problems on America.

[Ltftujkg]

America gives enormous amounts of foreign aid to Egypt. One of the problems with Gaza is that Egypt cuts it off from their territory just as much as Israel cuts it off from their territory. It would be much more rational for Gaza to become part of Egypt, but the Egyptians don't want the headache. Ditto for Jordan. When "Palestinians" tried to revolt against King Hussein, he had had enough, and he arrested and deported thousands of them. King Abdullah hardly wants the left-bank back under those circumstances. So the Arab Palestinians are not only rejected by Israel, they are rejected by their Arab Neighbors. Arab states like Iran are quite willing to supply training and guns and explosives and rockets. But the wealthy Arab oil magnates have done very little that could be done to improve the lot of these refugees. Fact is, Arab governments and Arab mullahs like the situation as it exists, so that they can arouse their own populace against Israel, without having to do with their own profound political, economic, social and religious problems. As I have said all along, there is plenty of sin to go around on all sides. It is very convenient for some to blame the problems on America.

As it is for others to blame everything on Arabs and "terrorists".

[Ltftujkg]

2002 - a description of life in Jerusalem by an American nun.


http://www.wfn.org/2002/04/msg00345.html

[Creva4k]

Thank you for that post Effie.

He sits huddled in his home in Beit Sahour (Beit Sahour is
Shepherd's Field-here lived the shepherds who heard the angels announce
Christ's birth and even today 2000 years later their descendants live in this
town, men as gentle and hard-working as those shepherds of Christ's time)
with his wife and children, praying that the Israeli soldiers will not enter
his house or that some emergency will force him to leave the house. I found this a very moving paragraph. How the suffering of humanity resonates through the ages and across cultures, binding us all together in compassion.

Annalise

[ssupermegatone]

Since this is a topic dare to my heart, (I currently live in Lebanon and am half Arab) I fill the need to make a few points. First, the United States has a political position towards Israel that is highly influenced by the Christian Right (about 20% of America) and the also powerful Jewish Lobby. I wrote a paper for a senior seminar on the Modern Middle East (for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey) where I set out to show this position, the influence is so strong and overt that it can easily be shown.

But I have two main concerns on this matter. The suffering of the Palestinians and the way Christians are made to look.

Regardless of religion, every body in the Palestinians is suffering because of the current apartheid and genocide being carried out by the Israeli government. Reading an American newspaper might not make things seem so bad, but reading the Lebaneese newspapers shows a whole different story. People are still dieing from the cluster bombs dropped all over the Lebaneese south by Israel last summer. It is really sickening some of the stories that I have heard.

My second concern is the way the Christian Right has been behaving. I have been called both a "snake" and "antichrist" by members of the Christian Right for voice my anti-zionist agression opinions. But more importantly, when people abuse the name of Christ our Lord in an evil way liek this, they reflect poorly on both Chrisitanity and Christ. Therefore, I think it is our responsibility to speak out against these so called "Christians".

[Ltftujkg]

James, do you have any information about Christians in Palestine and other Arab countries? At one time in the past they lived peacefully together but I have read that some Christians are being persecuted. Is this true? I'm asking because of the poor quality of the media these days. Someone who has personal information is more reliable.

effie

[ssupermegatone]

I was two language classes short of having a double minor in Middle Eastern Studies when I graduated college, so I have been dealing with Christians in the Middle East for a while.
I know that Palestinian Christians, thats right, some of those suffering Palestinians aren't Muslims but are Christians, are suffering right along with the other Palestinians. As for specific stories, I don't have any official stories that I can share with you. But, I know that the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem has been cheated out of land with by the goverment there. There have been several instances of spitting on our Priests by Israelis and similar problems like that as well.
I dont remeber the exact circumstances but maybe 5 years or so back there was an incident where Muslim "terrorists" were hiding out in a Church. It was an Armenian Church, and the Armenian Paper that had interviews from the Priests of that Church painted a totally different picture than the American news agencies.
If I come across specific information on Christians in Israel/Palestine I will defiantly let you know.
As for Lebanon, things are best understood by a article in the paper here last week. A shepherd in Southern Lebanon stepped on an Israeli cluster minor in southern Lebanon. The shepherd's son died last summer from stepping on a cluster mine. If you don't know, after bombing all sorts of civilian targets during the summer was 2 years ago, the Israeli military dumped about as many cluster minds as they could on Southern Lebanon during the closing days of the war, knowing full well, that this weapon, which I am pretty sure is banned by the UN, would inflict innumerable civilian casualties.