Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/content/72/5571172/html/wp-content/plugins/wp-twitter-timeline/wp-twitter-timeline.php on line 236

I Do Not Stand With Israel. I Do Not Stand With Hamas.

I do not stand with a government that occupies, humiliates, and dehumanizes the other.

I do not stand with a nation that teaches their children that the killing of the other is “good for the state”.

I do not stand with a government that views successive generations of the other as “blades of grass” that must be “mowed down” so they “know their place”.

I do not stand with a government that forbids husbands and wives from living together based on one being born on the wrong side of a fence.

I do not stand with a government that believes that the blatantly illegal collective punishment is “self defense”.

I do not stand with a government that believes the appropriate response to attacks by outdated and ineffective military technology is to shell an entire population by land, sea, and air.

I do not stand with a government that views a 139 mi2 area with no access to airports, seaports, or the rest of the country as “unoccupied”.

I do not stand with a government that assassinates the other and then cries foul when the same is returned.

I do not stand with a group that glorifies killing innocent civilians as martyrdom.

I do not stand with a group that only sees peace through the elimination of their enemy.

I do not stand with a government or group run by religious extremists bent on destroying each other.

I do not stand with a group that believes the path to peace comes through rockets and missiles and bombs and death and destruction.

I do not stand with Israel.

I do not stand with Hamas.

I do not stand with those who say we should support Israel because “the Bible says so”.

I stand with those who know no hands are clean in this conflict.

I stand with those who are unafraid to speak prophetically to BOTH sides.

I stand with the 2/3 of both Palestinians and Israelis who desire peace through non-violent means.

I stand with the innocents caught in the middle of this deadly powerplay between religious extremists.

I mourn with the families who have lost loved ones.

I weep for the children who live in constant fear.

I weep for those who view “the other” as something less than human.

I weep for those who refuse to see the image of God in the people on the other side of the fence.

But mostly… I pray.

…for healing.

…for reconciliation.

…for peace.

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta


Updated: November 19, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Tags: , , , ,

  • Pingback: Christian_Salafia

  • Pingback: Marty Troyer

  • Pingback: T.C. Judd

  • http://twitter.com/WKenL Ken Leonard

    Amen.

    I have nothing to add, but this brought a tear to my eye. This whole situation is terribly sad, and the fact that a tiny minority of each population is causing so much death and destruction is horrifying in every way.

    • csalafia

      I agree. If change is ever going to happen, people who can look with an objective eye must lead.

  • http://www.facebook.com/sam.iam.378199 Sam Iam

    Thank you! Alife for every one!

  • Pingback: Lem Adal

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1140316259 Jamie Roberts

    Bravo.

  • Pingback: Lem Adal

  • Pingback: Lem Adal

  • Pingback: Unfundie Christians

  • Pingback: Joan Ruzsa

  • Pingback: Tracy Hutchins

  • Chad Woodburn

    If Israel puts down it’s guns, Israel gets wiped off the map.
    If the Palestinians put down their guns, the war ends.

    • csalafia

      So you’re saying all that needs to happen is the oppressed need to accept the “benevolence” of their oppressor.

      I’m sure Rome thought the same thing about the zealots in 1st Century Israel.

  • Pingback: Christians Misrep

  • Pingback: David Royster

  • Pingback: ERJ NZ

  • Pingback: Ian Tannahill

  • Pingback: Heather Stamatelatos

  • Pingback: Lee Dunkelberg

  • Pingback: Noe Quiñonez

  • Pingback: John Rooney

  • Pingback: Denise Winters

  • Pingback: John Middleton

  • Pingback: Kim Hakkenberg

  • Pingback: Ryan Schnurr

  • Pingback: Ann Finch

  • Pingback: Denise Winters

  • Pingback: Muhammad Manwar Ali

  • Pingback: Lyra_Belaqua

  • Pingback: Sara Mostafavi

  • Pingback: Rachel Mack

  • Pingback: Mike Friedrich

  • M Issue

    This is all naive and childish philosophies which assume that the conflict originates with two parts who refuse to have peace. I am guessing you have never lived in the Middle East. If you had, you’d be more aware. The conflict originates with centuries of jew hate and the incessant persistence from the Muslim side to not give up until every single Jew is wiped off the face of the earth.

    Exactly how to you negotiate and debate with such people? You can’t. They would have to agree to change their entire religion which tells them to always kill jews and be aggressors against jews. And they will never change the religion since it is completely forbidden to criticize or question the religion.

    • csalafia

      M,

      That is an incredibly naive position that arises out of the fear of the ‘other’. It’s the same us vs. them mentality that perpetuates this horrid cycle of violence.

      Congrats on being part of the problem.

      • M Issue

        Why congratulate me? Congratulate yourself for a truly small grasp of the world and reality at large. It is actually people like you who keep the problems ongoing forever and ever. People with your mindset don’t allow conflicts to end but feed it.

        With 20 years experience in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, I can only dismay at the naivety of people who live in a free and open society, and their imaginary take on what is happening out there and how to resolve it. It’s like watching a man taking a fish out of water to ‘save it’, and wrap it in a towel and serve it coffee.

        Terrorist ideology and churning out children suicide bombers is not ‘fear of others’ but is a reality taking place right now. Extreme antisemitism and pure Jew hate is what fuels the entire conflict. It has been ongoing from the first time Jews were slaughtered in a deliberate genocide killing in Arabia 1400 years ago. It continues to this day and is the core teaching of the Koran, instructed as a duty.

        We already dealt with similar totalitarian ideologies in fairly recent history. They were only contained and manage by a total ban and rejection (and it’s thanks to that ban that you can enjoy freedom today). They were never resolved by denial. In fact, your denial has already been tried for 60 years. And how is it working out?

        You can try it yourself and rather than be in denial, go and provide your solutions to Sudan, Pakistan, Syria, South Thailand where Buddhists are being slaughtered like lambs for no other reasons than being Buddhists, or in Egypt where Jews and Christians are executed regularly over no other crime than being of a different faith. All under Islamic ‘democracy’. Tell me how far you get in solving the problems.

        Here’s some TV for you: Enjoy Palestinian TV and feel the love. Unfortunately I could not find anything equivalent from Israeli TV.
        http://www.memritv.org/content/en/country.htm?country=pales

        • csalafia

          I do congratulate you… on your nominal ability to see the world as “us=good; them=bad”. Your inability to see the warts of the side you support makes you no different, ideologically, than those you condemn.

          2/3 of each peoples, both Israeli and Palestinian, desire peace through non-violent means. It’s only the hardliners on each side that desire to see peace through the destruction of the other.

          I know you didn’t see anything like that, probably because you didn’t look. Had you, then you’d have seen Israeli schoolbooks that characterize the Palestinian people, and Arabs in general, as terrorists… you’d have heard them say that successive generations must be ‘mowed down like blades of grass so they know their place’… and you’d see the downright apartheid-like policies of those you support.

          You get no points for raising the “Nazi” spectre, I’m calling Godwin’s law.

          It’s your denial that’s been at work for 60 years…the blindness to your own warts through economic and political oppression which leads a desperate people to resort to violence in return. Is it justified? No. Understanding one’s position does not mean it is supported.

          One last point. Being anti-Palestinian, as you are, makes you an anti-semite, as they are Semitic peoples. Pot.. meet kettle.

  • Pingback: Sister Krissy

  • Pingback: Tyssyna

  • Man of Peace

    M Issue your totally wrong. How can you say Muslims aim is to eliminate all the Jews from the face of the earth when in fact we love Moses and even fast on the day he freed his people from pharaoh. Jews are people of the book which is clearly in the Quran. Even Prophet Muhammad had married a Jew who then converted to Islam. It’s dumb people like you who give the wrong image.

    • M Issue

      Either you are intentionally lying or you have never lived in the Middle East. Extreme Jew hate is almost a daily media feast and encouraged in almost every sermon. Every Muslim has been fed Jew hate from infancy onwards. Islam is not a benevolent ‘religion’. The most important aspects of it is the Sunna, which is almost like a war manual.

      Here are a few tidbits for you to ‘enjoy’ while you figure out how to respond and tell me how wrong I am:

      1. Cleric Wael Al-Zarad: “Jews must be annihilated because they tried to kill the prophet several times”

      2. Muslim Cleric: “The Jews Are the Eternal Enemies of Muslims Regardless of the Occupation of Palestine”

      3. Muslim cleric “want to devour jewish people with falafel and humus”

      4. Hamas MP Marwan Abu Ras: “Jews Behind Every Catastrophe on Earth”

      5. Muslim Cleric Teaches Jew Hate

      6. Muslim Sheik “The Worst Enemies of the Muslims after Satan are the Jews. Who said this? Allah”

      7. Saudi cleric Sheikh Arifi “kill infidels, conquer their countries, convert them to Islam”

  • http://www.facebook.com/dillard.jenkins Dillard Jenkins

    There are 21 religions in the world, pick any one of them and you’ll discover that the members of all of them believe their religion is The Only True Religion.

    I am quite certain that any Theologian are Student of religion would find much at fault with and add generous amounts of elaboration about this general comment about religions: Though it is difficult to obtain exact numbers, there are about

    21 religions in the world, there are about 41,000 different Christian religions, there are basically 4 Jewish sects, there are basically three Muslim denominations, the largest denomination of which is Sunni Islam, which makes up over 75% to 90% of all Muslims the other two are Shia and Sufism. There are also six other Muslim denominations, the newest one is the Nation of Islam (NOI) a primarily African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit during the 20th century.

    No one has been able to explain how the over 7.3 billion humans who dominate this planet can possibly live in peace and prosperity together when all of these various faiths believe all the other faiths are false.

    All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. – Lucretius (94 BC – 49 BC)

    Faith is a belief which cannot be shaken by evidence to the contrary. Religion abandons logical thinking.

  • Pingback: Robert Heijkoop

  • Pingback: Top 10 Posts For 2012 | Homebrewed Theology

%d bloggers like this: