STRAIGHT OUTTA’ DENVER

As the title would suggest, this is mainly written to P. muse so as to bring comfort and understanding but also to clarify to the best of my ability what really is going on with Israel today. As soon as I read an e-mail sent out by P. muse that was nearly the same as his latest post I urged him to lay it all out here so that we as a community can see and understand what it is he’s been going through. As Paul tells in his first letter to the Corinthians “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.” (12:26) I see that your suffering here P. muse so I urged you to place it up here so that we could all bring comfort and prayers in his time of need. So please do bring prayers on behalf of P muse and also for peace in Israel. This is certainly proving to be trying times in that region and it has had me rethinking a lot of my believes towards Israel but I know that the Palestinians hold a special place in your heart as they should. But we all need to remember that we all need each other here and when a bother is suffering we need to lift him up. You all have done the some for me and now it’s my turn to lift up a brother in Christ. So I’m sure you’ll all be interested and I’m sure that Bear will get a kick out of it but here’s my letter to P. Muse:

My brother: your exactly right! Looking at the situation as it exists today, this is completely unacceptable! What did we immediately say when Russia started blowing the crap out of little Georgia (the country Georgia not the state south of Carolina)? We started condemning them immediately! Well I did, Invot still has his arguments but they don’t matter for the purpose of this letter :P. But just as you spelled out in your latest post, it looks like the oppressed have become the oppressors! Just looking at what they have been doing over the past few years, like building walls to hold in the Palestinians and such things, just are the sort of things that we’ll find unacceptable in these days from a devolved nation. Going through and shooting down aid ships trying to help the starving and hurting people in Gaza is something that we never do! Why would we allow Israel to do it? It’s starting to be a really strange set of circumstances where we are starting to support a state that just throws all caution to the wind and start to blow things away just because their angry. Now you’ll get the argument “well if we had rockets shot off over our border wouldn’t we get angry?” Well, of course we would! We’d go kick some butt! But unlike what Israel is doing, we also have the tendency to rebuild that country we destroy and leave it in a place of peace and prosperity so that we won’t have to deal with any more attacks from that country. We’ve rebuilt Germany and Japan, and depending on Obama, we’ll also be leaving Iraq and Afghanistan in places of peace and prosperity or at least that’s what we were trying to do. But on the other hand you have Israel, who’s walling up the people they don’t like rather than actually making peace for them, and they’re treating them like dogs! Can we really that it’s all right for the Israelis to go ahead and keep fighting this war of attrition and completely starve out the Palestinians from the land that they have lived in for generations? What would that be saying of us? Just because your granpa went though the Holocaust does not mean that you have a right to go shooting someone who had nothing to do with it. Didn’t Jeremiah say of his own people:

Jeremiah 3:19-20
“I thought to myself,
‘I would love to treat you as my own children!’
I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land—
the finest possession in the world.
I looked forward to your calling me ‘Father,’
and I wanted you never to turn from me.
But you have been unfaithful to me, you people of Israel!
You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband.
I, the Lord, have spoken.”

So what really has changed with the Jews? They’re still acting this way! They’re still doing the same evil acts that they were back in the day of Jeremiah! Didn’t Isaiah tell us:

Isaiah 5:8
What sorrow for you who buy up house after house and field after field,
until everyone is evicted and you live alone in the land.

Humm, What are the Israelis doing today? Evicting the Palestinians so that no one else lives there! Yea, their still doing the same things that they always have been doing for thousands of years. And all their doing is just invoking more and more wraith upon themselves! What they are doing is for one, wrong and two, not working! So are we really to be supporting this? NO!

I remember going to Israel awareness day back in 2005 or so, down at that maga-church, and going to listen to Denis Pager speak about Israel, and it was a good speech. There where alternating Israeli and American flags hung up on the ceiling, and he just started out by taking about how these two flags belonged together. It was just an amazing sight to see, one of the men I looked up to as a mentor in my growing up and learning how to think rationally in this world, it just felt like the place for me to be! And I still do look up to and admire Pager a lot! He has certainly helped bring me out of a dark and dismal period of my life by his theories that he came up with on happiness. Something that I have tested and proven to be true in my own life, but now I have to part company with this line of thinking. Not out of anger at him or others that hold his positions, and I still very much look up to thous that still do hold these positions. But to sanction the mass killings without some sort of cause and vision to at least build up a society that is open and truly free, is just something that I can no longer do. I can’t say that it’s alright for the Israelis to go ahead and just imprison a large group of people without some sort of means to rebuild and make a new life for themselves. They’re not trying to make these people part of a greater society that holds equality as a value, but they are enslaving a group of people in certain towns. I can’t agree with that!

Now having said all that, your call “that the rouge state of Israel be brought to justice and swiftly dissolved for being the racist” is just not possible at this time nor do I support that idea ether. We also have to remember that there is an evil side to the Palestinian cause as well and to dissolve the state of Israel would just be switching roles. At this time there is no possible way for us to dissolve the state of Israel without massive blood shed of Israelis and displacement from their homes because there is a group of people in the Palestinian camp who also wish to kill off all of the Jew as well. And you can’t deny this fact as well. They are locked in mutual hatred of each other and they will continue to fight this war, unfortunately I think, until God decides to intercede here. We have two sides of different faiths fighting out a holy war here and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ are getting cut up in the middle. And just like you, I am very heart broken over these turn of events, as we should. We should not accept this situation as it is and there is plenty of blame to go around. But while there is a burning of hatred going on around this whole region, I beg you to please, don’t let your heart to get too hard. You were a big part of helping me to find my way and calling, please let me be that brother to you as well. I still think that this rouge state will have a part to play in the grand story that is being written. Paul tell us in Romans:

Romans 11:19-21
“Well,” you may say, “those branches were broken off to make room for me.” Yes, but remember—those branches were broken off because they didn’t believe in Christ, and you are there because you do believe. So don’t think highly of yourself, but fear what could happen. For if God did not spare the original branches, he won’t spare you either.

So while the Jews are broken and lost branches, we were also broken and lost branches. And God very much wants them to be grafted back into His tree of life as well as the rest of us. So don’t let your experiences start to also make you hard as well. That’s something that we all have to deal with and by the grace of God, He gave me such an amazing friend as you to help me along through my darkest periods in my life. Keep on loving the Lord your God with all your mind, your heart and your strength and He will bless you for it. He will bring you though your most difficult times so keep Him close and never let go. It might just be that the Palestinian Christians are just the first who are going to go through a suffering that we will all have to endure. So really the only bit of advice that I can give to them is:

Romans 13:1-3
Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.

I know that’s easy for me to say when I’m not the one getting my home taken away and getting shot at, but if we support each other, I believe that we will also keep true to our principals when it’s our time of persecution. I’ll tell you to remember the words that God told me Himself when I started moving into my recent dark period: “Don’t worry my son, I AM still in control.” I know that it just doesn’t look possible right now but what Isaiah said will come to pass:

Isaiah 2:4
The Lord will mediate between nations
and will settle international disputes.
They will hammer their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will no longer fight against nation,
nor train for war anymore.

That day is still coming and we are still looking and working towards that day, and when it comes there will be much rejoicing for we will be vindicated by our faith in Jesus.

I love you
Your Brother and Fellow bondsmen in Christ
Bryan Federowicz

2 comments.

Things are blowing up in Israel, Again!

Posted on December 30th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, War, Terrorism, Islam, Judaism, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Religon, Palestine.

It’s actually quite strange that the American media had to take several days to analyze the situation but they eventually did. P. muse has been on top of the bombings Israel just committed and sent this article around form electronicintifada.net:

“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

Hey Israel! When Al Jazeera is praising you, that’s not a good thing!

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

That article continues on painting an even grimmer picture of Israel’s bombing, and assuming that it’s true, then Israel is guilty of some serous war crimes here. Being a former conservative, I would have most certainly rationalized Israel’s attack as a necessary loss to get as the enemies that they face. And there is still some truth to that statement but with how much that Israel keeps everyone in the dark about what they’re trying to do, you really can’t know all of the truth of the situation. But it does seem that Israel tried to explain themselves here but were cut off. This from commentarymagazine.com:

Yesterday, the IDF did something innovative: it opened a channel on YouTube and posted videos to it that help explain why Israel is fighting Hamas. The site hosted about a dozen videos showing things like Israeli humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza and airstrikes that prevented terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

This was apparently too much for YouTube, which moments ago removed several videos from the IDF’s channel, including the most-watched video, which showed a group of Hamas goons being blown up in an air strike as they loaded Katyusha missiles onto a truck. The point of such footage, as if it needed to be said, is not to revel in violence — it is to show the legitimacy of Israeli self-defense.

The rank double-standard that YouTube has applied to Israel is disturbing. YouTube hosts all manner of similar footage — much of it far more gory than the grainy infrared images posted by the IDF — of U.S. air strikes. Why is YouTube capitulating to those who do not wish for Israel to be able to tell its side of the story?

So this does get even more complicated just due to the fact that there are interests in hiding the truth in our media. There are many interest groups in portraying Israel in the worst light possible or in the best light possible. So it’s hard to really know what is accurate here but ironically enough here the New Republic actually does have the best analysis:

It was Israel at its best. In response to random attacks aimed at its civilians, Israel launched precise attacks aimed at terrorists. In place of political schism, Israel suspended election campaigning, and initiated coooperation between government and opposition. Instead of illusions about an imminent peace agreement with Bashar Assad or about half a negotiated peace agreement with half of the Palestinian leadership, we exhibited sobriety and a willingness to defend ourselves. And instead of military confusion and ineptitude, as we displayed in Lebanon two years ago, we showed the most impressive display of our intelligence, air power, and psychological warfare in decades.

But what’s next? Here are some of the possible consequences to watch for in the coming days and weeks.

So for a paper that been praising Obama like crazy, they just move in on supporting Israel. I thought Obama was suppose to keep them under control?

Israel’s Options: There are three possible scenarios for how this operation will evolve. The first is that the government will opt for a limited attack whose goal isn’t the overthrow of the Hamas regime but merely the attainment of better terms in the next round of ceasefire–such as supervision over tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt and through which Hamas has smuggled in missiles. The argument for a limited operation is that Mahmud Abbas’s men aren’t ready to secure the Strip from Hamas–and even if they were, they would bear the mark of collaborators if they took control of Gaza courtesy of Israel.

The second scenario is the overthrow of Hamas and turning the Strip over to a foreign power–ideally Egypt, as the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has suggested. It’s doubtful, though, that Egypt will agree to relieve Israel of its Gaza burden. And NATO is on record as refusing to commit peacekeeping troops in the Palestinian territories.

The third option is to begin with the first option of a limited operation but, as fighting intensifies, find ourselves reluctantly implementing the second option of all-out war against Hamas. That may well be the least desirable option of all, leaving Israel vulnerable to events beyond its control. But given previous Israeli experience, that could be the most likely scenario.

The Iranian Bomb: The countdown to a nuclear Iran is now being measured in months rather than years. Few here in Israel believe that President Obama’s diplomatic efforts will succeed; and if those efforts fail, there won’t be enough time to galvanize the international community to adopt effective sanctions. The danger of the current conflict in Gaza, then, is that Israel will be too preoccupied with fighting Hamas and perhaps Hezbollah to effectively respond to the Iranian threat.

The Gaza conflict, though, could also have the opposite effect, especially if the IDF loses focus and finds itself immersed yet again in a no-win battle. Israeli policymakers may begin asking themselves what the point is of fighting Iran’s proxies every few years rather than confronting Iran itself, especially given the urgency of stopping a nuclear Iran.

The Fate of a Two-State Solution: The future of the West Bank may well be resolved in Gaza. If the international community forces the IDF to end the operation before the missile threat against southern Israel is resolved, Israelis will inevitably conclude that, even when we withdraw to the 1967 borders, as we did on the Gaza front in 2005, the international community will not allow us to protect ourselves. And the likelihood then of convincing a majority of Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank–within easy rocket distance from our major population centers–will be close to non-existent. Ultimately, then, the creation of an independent Palestine depends on neutralizing Hamas.

The Moderate Arab Response: About six months ago, during a meeting with a senior Palestinian official, I was stunned when he asked me matter of factly, “So when are you Israelis going to invade Gaza already?” “You mean you want us to?” I asked. “If you want a peace agreement,” he replied, “you will have no choice.” I never expected that position to be made public. But some Arab leaders–including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and even the feckless Abbas–have both come as close as any Arab leader can dare go in expressing support for the Israeli attack by condemning Hamas for inviting it.

In the 1990s, there was hope that a “new Middle East” would emerge through peace talks. For Israel, that turned out to be a near-fatal illusion. Now, though, a new Middle East may actually be emerging–not through peace but conflict. And in this new Middle East, moderate Arabs are siding with Israel against Iran and its proxies. That is the reason why several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, condemned Hezbollah rather than Israel in the initial phase of the Second Lebanon War. And it’s the reason why most of the Arab world failed to condemn Israel’s air strike last year against the Syrian nuclear reactor–intended, according to one intelligence report, as an eventual nuclear bomb factory for Iran.

In the interest of not making this post way too long I’ll cut to the end of the article:

As I am writing this article, a ground operation appears imminent. That may be necessary to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at southern Israel, but it will also result in growing casualties in Gaza. And that will increase international pressure against Israel and undermine the Israeli domestic consensus on which the success of the operation depends. The Israeli Zionist left, which so far supports the government, has resricted its backing to a limited operation. We still don’t know what the government wants to achieve, and what the army believes is achievable. What constitutes victory? Will we know how to translate military success into political gain? Will the government be strong enough to resist world pressure, even in the event of a disastrous accident that results in Palestinian civilian casualties? Most of all, what’s required is patience, and the realization among Israelis and our friends abroad that this battle is part of the larger war against jihadism that shifts from one part of the world to the other, and whose outcome will define our generation.

But I find it really funny that this one comes out supporting Israel. While I do see Iran a major threat to us and the rest of the world, especially as they complete a nuclear bomb and can be a helpful as an ally in that region. However on the other hand, Israel is becoming exactly like the people that they hate! They’re starting to shoot down any aid that comes to Gaza and are starving them out. Is this indiscriminate killing really helping their cause? P. muse is calling for us to contact our congressmen to protest these chain of events. I’ll give you the link here, but I don’t have any faith that it will change anything. The real solution is to have Israel to cease all operations and allow us to take over the situation along with some sort of solution to Iran to get at the heart of the problem. But theirs no will left in the American people. So with Israels excessive force and the Palestinians desire to destroy Israel, were looking at a middle east that is just going to continue to get more and more bloody. I pray that Obama will have the wisdom to do what is right here.

6 comments.

Sir Mario gets the death penalty

Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Death Penalty, Ethics, Law, Judaism, Religon, Christianity.

Colorado does have the death penalty but it is rarely used in this state. Sentenced on Monday, June 16, Sir Mario Owens is now going to join one other inmate on our death row in this state. This from the rocky mountain News:

“We did it, Vivian.”

Those were the first words out of Christine Wolfe’s mouth today after a jury sentenced her daughter’s killer to die by lethal injection.

The all-white jury deliberated six hours in Arapahoe District Court before handing down a unanimous verdict that 23-year-old Sir Mario Owens should die for the 2005 ambush murders of Vivian Wolfe and her fiance, Javad Marshall-Fields, both 22.

Now why did they have to point out that it was an all white jury? See, the news media around our county is first concerned with race. They first ask the question “what’s the race of the guy” instead of asking “did he do it!” But just like a judge in California, they don’t want to see any more black men sitting on death row. That judge let that guy go who proceeded to murder again but that’s ok, we’re making up for our raciest past!

I don’t care! I want to know if he did it or not.

Monica Owens, mother of Sir Mario Owens, said the verdict will be appealed.

But of course it will. It always is!

Vivian Wolfe and Rhonda Marshall-Fields, mother of Javad Marshall-Fields, left a meeting with jurors arm-in-arm following the reading of the verdicts.

“We told them we knew it was a long, difficult trial,” said Rhonda Marshall-Fields about the meeting with the jurors. “But it will never be over for us.”

Christine Wolfe, mother of Vivian Wolfe, said her reaction to the verdict was to whisper the words “We did it, Vivian” to her daughter.

“Javad and Vivian were our angels,” Rhonda Marshall-Fields said.

Both mothers praised the work of prosecutors and said the verdicts restored their faith in the criminal-justice system.

Wouldn’t you want some closure for this family? It’s not that this will bring them back but now they can take comfort in that this man will not harm again.

Wolfe said she would stop at her daughter’s grave in Mount Olivet Cemetery on her route home this evening to repeat her message to her daughter. Vivian Wolfe is buried beside Javad Marshall-Fields. The graves are within walking distance of Christine Wolfe’s home.

Owens was found guilty in May on two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe, who had graduated from Colorado State University only weeks before they were killed.

Prosecutors said the deaths were particularly heinous because they were carried out only days before Marshall-Fields was slated to testify against Owens in connection with the death of his friend, Gregory Vann, at an Aurora park.

Owens is serving a life-without-parole sentence in connection with the death of Vann. Members of Vann’s family attended the reading of the verdicts.

“This is not something we celebrate or take great joy in,” said Arapahoe County Assistant District Attorney John Hower, who delivered the final arguments in the penalty phase of the trial on Friday. “But it is a just verdict.”

I don’t take joy ether but this is something that we have to do.

Chambers said questionnaires completed in April by prospective jurors for the trial indicated 90 to 95 percent of them were in favor of the death penalty and said the verdict represented “a community decision.”

Heavy silence hung in the courtroom as Judge Gerald Rafferty read the jury’s verdict forms.

Owens, dressed in red jail fatigues, showed no emotion when the verdict was read. Throughout the two-month trial Owens wore stylish street clothes brought to him by his parents.

What is wrong with this picture? Here you have a man that has murdered two people and you have the Rocky treating him like a victim here. However when you have a greedy business man that steals money you hear the media cry bloody murder and get that guy in life imprisonment. My point is not to defend the greedy man but to point out bad inconstancy in our county. When we go after greedy business executives more harshly than someone who commits murders, what does that say about our society? It says that we as a society are more concerned with the equality of people financially than we are concerned with human life! That’s a harsh road to go down because now it is worse for you to be a corporate executive in our society than it is to be a murderer. Why is that? Shouldn’t we be more concerned with human life in this country? In the attempt to make everyone equal the left has thrown out many of the other values that have made this country great. They have compassion for the African-American community so they want to see less of them on death row. I agree with that but I judge on the basis of if that person has committed the crime or not and not on the basis of their skin color. It just so happens that right now a lot of blacks are committing this crime and thus more of them are being put on death row. The reason for that is our welfare state because government has taken the place of dad in the home of many black families. Why should the dad stick around when the government can just foot the bill for you. This is a trend that has completely destroyed the black community and left it in the state that it’s now in. People may say “ahh, you don’t need a dad in the home, a mother can do just as well!” For you I offer my own life as an example that while there are many single mothers that do a wonderful job there are many children that must have a father in their life in order to make it in life. I would be dead right now if it was not for my fathers influence on me. However, society constantly belittles fathers and keeps on telling us that they are useless. There is something very wrong with this! We need men in this society to stand up for what is right and to punish what is wrong. By killing murderers we are sending a clear message that we take this seriously and if you commit such an act you forfeit your own life.

Many of my fellow Christians will say that we are to be caring and compassionate, even to murders. They are right! But that does not mean that we should throw out the standard because we have compassion. We have been ordered by God to kill murders. Every one of the first five books has a commandment to kill murderers. Numbers 35 explains this clearly:

16 “But if someone strikes and kills another person with a piece of iron, it is murder, and the murderer must be executed. 17 Or if someone with a stone in his hand strikes and kills another person, it is murder, and the murderer must be put to death. 18 Or if someone strikes and kills another person with a wooden object, it is murder, and the murderer must be put to death. 19 The victim’s nearest relative is responsible for putting the murderer to death. When they meet, the avenger must put the murderer to death. 20 So if someone hates another person and pushes him or throws a dangerous object at him and he dies, it is murder. 21 Or if someone hates another person and hits him with a fist and he dies, it is murder. In such cases, the avenger must put the murderer to death when they meet.

Jewish laws allowed for accidental killers to go to a certain town and live out the rest of their lives there and no one seeking vengeance can go there and kill someone of that town. Thus you separated out people who have killed out from the regular population and if someone forced to one of thous towns are found outside of the town and are killed it’s not considered murder.

30 “All murderers must be put to death, but only if evidence is presented by more than one witness. No one may be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. 31 Also, you must never accept a ransom payment for the life of someone judged guilty of murder and subject to execution; murderers must always be put to death. 32 And never accept a ransom payment from someone who has fled to a city of refuge, allowing a slayer to return to his property before the death of the high priest. 33 This will ensure that the land where you live will not be polluted, for murder pollutes the land. And no sacrifice except the execution of the murderer can purify the land from murder. 34 You must not defile the land where you live, for I live there myself. I am the Lord, who lives among the people of Israel.”

In Jewish law, eye for eye allowed for plea barrings so that someone could do some monetary compensation for breaking laws but this passage did not allow for plea barrings for murder, they must be put to death and there must be at least two witnesses to the murder for them to be put to death. But, this passage also stresses the point that keeping murders alive defiles the land that you live in and it does because most murders try to break free and also kill other inmates in prison and sometimes they do break free and murder others. Now does this mean that murders are absolutely condemned to hell? Not necessarily, I can not judge if people are going to hell or not. That is a decision that is made by God and no one else can take that away from him. It’s not a worthless pursuit to try to save the soul of murders and we should try but they are to be put to death according to the bible. This is a point that has been stressed to me over the years by my father. He has said to me on several occasions that he loves me but if I do murder someone he will push for me to be put to death. It’s not that he would love me any less than any other parent would but he does expect me to hold to this standard as we should expect everyone else in our society to hold to this standard. This penalty stresses this point and prevents murders from continuing murdering. Another Pragerism goes like this: when you are kind to the cruel then you are cruel to the kind. I hate that we need to do this but we do need to do this! My God have mercy on his soul.

0 comments.

The Courts in CA have just changed something for the first time in history!

Posted on May 22nd, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Law, Constitutional Law, Philosophy, Islam, Judaism, Religon, Christianity.

The Issue is same sex marriage and just last week the California Supreme court just through out California’s ballot initiative to ban same sex marriage (even though it was overwhelmingly pass by California voters). It came down to a 4 to 3 vote and 4 judges decided that they were wiser than the entire state of California. This is a bad development for many reasons. Dennis Prager has been on this issue from day one and he has a new article out at townhall.com:

Americans seem mesmerized by the word “change.” And, by golly, they sure got it last week from the California Supreme Court. It is difficult to imagine a single social change greater than redefining marriage from opposite sex to include members of the same sex.

Nothing imaginable — leftward or rightward — would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history: Not another Prohibition, not government taking over all health care, not changing all public education to private schools, not America leaving the United Nations, not rescinding the income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax. Nothing.

Unless California voters amend the California Constitution or Congress amends the U.S. Constitution, four justices of the California Supreme Court will have changed American society more than any four individuals since Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison.

And what is particularly amazing is that virtually none of those who support this decision — let alone the four compassionate justices — acknowledge this. The mantra of the supporters of this sea change in society is that it’s no big deal. Hey, it doesn’t affect any heterosexuals’ marriage, so what’s the problem?

“What about ancient Greece?” No, there was no Gay marriage there. There was a lot of homosexuality in ancient Greece but thous men still married women and had kids. They didn’t marry the other men that they had sex with. And this was the same for ancient Egypt as well.

This lack of acknowledgment — or even awareness — of how society-changing is this redefinition of marriage is one reason the decision was made. To the four compassionate ones — and their millions of compassionate supporters — allowing same-sex marriage is nothing more than what courts did to end legal bans on interracial marriage. The justices and their supporters know not what they did. They think that all they did was extend a “right” that had been unfairly denied to gays.

However they do still have the right to marry just as much as anyone else in this society. Where on the Marriage form does it have a sexual orientation check box? Just like everyone else in this society we are limited to marring one person of the opposite sex. I’m Heterosexual but it would be nice to get a tax brake, so why don’t I just marry Bieren to get a tax brake even though I have absolutely no sexual attraction to him whatsoever? More money in my pocket!

Another reason for this decision is arrogance. First, the arrogance of four individuals to impose their understanding of what is right and wrong on the rest of society. And second is the arrogance of the four compassionate ones in assuming that all thinkers, theologians, philosophers, religions and moral systems in history were wrong, while they and their supporters have seen a moral light never seen before. Not a single religion or moral philosophical system — East or West — since antiquity ever defined marriage as between members of the same sex.

That is one reason the argument that this decision is the same as courts undoing legal bans on marriages between races is false. No major religion — not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam, not Buddhism — ever banned interracial marriage. Some religions have banned marriages with members of other religions. But since these religions allowed anyone of any race to convert, i.e., become a member of that religion, the race or ethnicity of individuals never mattered with regard to marriage. American bans on interracial marriages were not supported by any major religious or moral system; those bans were immoral aberrations, no matter how many religious individuals may have supported them. Justices who overthrew bans on interracial marriages, therefore, had virtually every moral and religious value system since ancient times on their side. But justices who overthrow the ban on same-sex marriage have nothing other their hubris and their notions of compassion on their side.

Modern Christianity doesn’t ban you from marring a non-believer anymore and most churches don’t excommunicate for that reason anymore. Although it is still strongly discouraged but that is mostly for common sense reasons. You will have a much easier marriage if your spouse does have the same religious values as you do. However we understand that life happens and you really can help who you fall in love with all that much.

Since the secular age began, the notion that one should look to religion — or to any past wisdom — for one’s values has died. Thus, the modern attempts to undo the Judeo-Christian value system as the basis of America’s values, and to disparage the Founders as essentially morally flawed individuals (They allowed slavery, didn’t they?). The modern secular liberal knows that he is not only morally superior to conservatives; he is morally superior to virtually everyone who ever lived before him.

Which leads to a third reason such a sea change could be so cavalierly imposed by four individuals — the modern supplanting of wisdom with compassion as the supreme guide in forming society’s values and laws. Just as for religious fundamentalists, “the Bible says” ends discussion, for liberal fundamentalists, “compassion says” ends discussion.

If this verdict stands, society as we have known it will change. The California Supreme Court and its millions of supporters are playing with fire. And it will eventually burn future generations in ways we can only begin to imagine.

This will be destructive to the idea to the family and bring with it many implications that will be hard for our society to get through and here is a big part of the reason:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared “heterosexist,” morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is “heterosexism,” a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man’s finger — if they show only women fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians — i.e. those who believe in a divine scripture — will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it — a man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

Me and Prager will end up in jail because I won’t shut up and I think Prager won’t ether.

Indeed — and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex marriage activists — the terms “male” and “female,” “man” and “woman” will gradually lose their significance. They already are. On the intellectual and cultural left, “male” and “female” are deemed social constructs that have little meaning. That is why same-sex marriage advocates argue that children have no need for both a mother and a father — the sexes are interchangeable. Whatever a father can do a second mother can do. Whatever a mother can do, a second father can do. Genitalia are the only real differences between the sexes, and even they can be switched at will.

And what will happen after divorce — which presumably will occur at the same rates as heterosexual divorce? A boy raised by two lesbian mothers who divorce and remarry will then have four mothers and no father.

We have entered something beyond Huxley’s “Brave New World.” All thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.

And that has been one of the most foolish developments in our society to date. The Idea that the only difference between men and women is genitalia is absurd. Mothers have different things to offer a child and like wise fathers have different things to offer a child. Both offer good things to a child that help them grow! This is not to discourage single parents, many of them do the best that they can and work amazing wonders with their kids. However I am sure that most of them would admit that it would have been easier if they have had a good man or woman in the home as well. Also there are some kids that absolutely need both parents in the home or they won’t survive. I know this for a fact because I am one of them. As I have talked about in my A True B’Strad posts, I wouldn’t be alive today if I only had one of my parents raising me. This isn’t always the case, I am a special case and there are children that are much more resilient in this way than me but still I have to encourage marriage as much as possible because I am not the only one like this.

Anticipating reactions to this column — as to all defenses of man-woman marriage — that it or its author are “homophobic,” i.e., bigoted and unworthy of respectful rejoinder, it is important to reaffirm that nothing written here is implicitly, let alone explicitly, anti-gay. I take it as axiomatic that a gay man or woman is created in God’s image and as precious as any other human being. And I readily acknowledge that it is unfair when an adult is not allowed to marry the love of his or her choice. But social policy cannot be made solely on the basis of eradicating all of life’s unfairness. Thus, we must love the gay person — and his and or her partner as well. But we must never change the definition of marriage. The price to society and succeeding generations will be too great.

That is why Californians must amend their state’s Constitution.

That last part was absolutely critical that Prager wrote it and actually I think his piece might have been better if he had lead in with that paragraph instead of sticking it at the end. As a Christan, I do feel that my church does owe the gay community an apology for how the church has been handling this entire issue. On one side, Christians have been overly hateful towards gays and they forget that Jesus had commanded us to love them. We are not to lash out at gays with hate. To be perfectly honest here I used to be one of them and I think that most of that I did hate gays was because I kept on getting teased as being gay when I wasn’t. I am here now saying I’m sorry for hating you gays out there and I shouldn’t have let my feeling get in the way of the real issue here. I am still growing and learning and God is now taking control of my life and changing me into the man that he wants. However on the other had you have Christians that are taking the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy here. The bible is firm in saying that this is a sin that is destructive. We Christians should not be afraid to talk about it and as Prager pointed out here they are still people made in God’s image and he still wants to be apart of their lives. Just because some can not find them selfs attracted to the opposite sex does not mean that God can be apart of their life. We are all sinners and none of us Christians are any better than anyone that is gay! We all have to work on trusting God and bringing people in to our faith and teaching them to trust God too. And that includes gays as well! We need to work at loving them and being kind to them just like when Jesus encountered the prostitute at the water well.

Now that I have tried to make amends for me and my religion, I still must say that I can not support gay marriage. This has nothing to do with who people love and how people decide to live their lives but rather the impact that this will have on our society. The vast majority of our society wants to keep our current definition of marriage as one man and one woman but now you have 4 judges that are saying “to hell with what you people want! We’re going to force this down your troughs anyway!” The absolute hubris and arrogance for them is absurd here and now we no longer have any freedom in this county! Now all it takes is 4 or 5 judges to make laws up that aren’t elected and can overrule anything in this county! This is a bad development that is setting up a judicial dictatorship in this county where the courts rule everything. Why bother with ballot initiatives if courts can just say that it’s unconstitutional when they have no basis to make that ruling. Even if you are for gay marriage you should be against this ruling because if the courts can make it then the courts can also take it away. We no longer have a say anymore in our county! Laws are now made by the judicial branch here. Why bother with the legislature anymore because anything that they pass can be overturned by judges that think they are going to save the world. I know they have good intentions but this can get really bad really quick.

Now on the actual issue, the reason why this is so important is because marriage is what the society deems is the basic family unit. Again, this is not to put down single parents here but explain that we should try our best to obtain this ideal. Having one man and one woman raising children is the healthiest environment for kids to be raised in. I understand that life happens and that it gets messy but we as a society should work hard to try to make this ideal easier. As Prager had explained, having gay marriage will confuse kids and make this harder on religious families to follow their values. This is a development that will degrade our society and destroy the family. There are many people that don’t get to marry who they want! You can’t marry your sister or brother! You can’t marry someone who is already married! You can’t marry many different people in this society. If we keep down this path then marriage will no longer hold any meaning and our children will pay the price for it.

0 comments.

Here’s a post for the Pacifist Muse

Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Terrorism, Islam, Judaism, Israel, Christianity, Palestine.

Just Read up here P Muse, I have an article from the New York Times just for you:

The Islamist Hamas group said on Monday it would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, but it was not prepared to recognize the Jewish state.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, in an apparent softening of the group’s position, was confirming an account of his remarks given by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter after two meetings in Damascus over the weekend.

“We accept a state on the June 4 line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel,” Meshaal told reporters, referring to the borders as they stood before the 1967 war

Sounds great doesn’t it! All they need to do is go back to pre-67 borders and you have peace! Well actually NO! here is the real key to the entire article:

Carter said his understandings with Hamas called for a referendum to be preceded by reconciliation between the group and Abbas’s Fatah faction. Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June and Abbas has demanded the territory’s return.

Gaza-based Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Palestinian refugees living in exile must take part in a referendum — a condition that could dim the chances of approval since Israel opposes their mass return to what is now the Jewish state.

“TRANSITIONAL”

Abu Zuhri also noted Hamas would see any future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as “transitional.”

Speaking later to reporters, Carter said Hamas leaders whom he met “didn’t say anything about transitional.”

Translation: we start with the west bank and then start a “transitional” move into Israel. Once they move into Israel then you no longer have a Jewish state there but another Palestinian one that will just oppress the Jews just like the others do. Quite a grate deal that good OL’ Jimmy has cooked up for the Israelis, ay. And he still doesn’t get it even when people inform him of it. “Well they never said anything about that?” That doesn’t really invoke confidence now does it? Not to mention that in Hamas’es charter is the destruction of Israel (another words the reason that this terrorist group exists is to destroy Israel). Mass moving Palestinians into Israel and taking control of the government is an easy way to do that. We have also seen them do the same thing to other countries in the past, for example Lebanon. Lebanon was a majority Christan country for a long time until Palestinians started moving into their country and slowly started to take over and anyone who was not one of them was pulled out of their car and shot on the spot. Don’t believe me? How about you try reading Because they Hate by Brigitte Gabriel a woman who was there when the Jihadist took over her country. So if you are “open minded” then why don’t you try and read the other side and go ahead and let your emotions get wrapped around that one too! Since you make no distinction will your emotions still lead you to the Palestinians side or thous who lives they destroy. Most of the time I just want clarity but this is a subject that I do want to change your mind because it threatens us as well. The Jihadist calls the Israelis the “little satin” but they call us the “big satin” and we are just as much in their cross hairs as the Israelis are. I don’t even agree with Brigitte Gabriel on everything but she does have life experiences with the enemy that we face and it is critical that we defeat them. This is war and a hard one at that because not only do we need to kill the Jihadist but also we need to somehow train up their children not to follow the ways of their fathers but to work for real peace and not the fake kind that you want. Introducing liberty in these cultures will not be easy and may even take many generations to accomplish be we need to do it because we can’t fight a billion Muslims. And we’re not going to nuke them because we just don’t do that sort of thing and also there are many peace loving Palestinians and they do deserve a chance at life! The peace you want is not realistic because every time the Israelis give up something to the Palestinians they turn around and use to to attack the Israelis and any peace agreement just gives them time to rebuild for the next attack as the article puts simply here:

“Israel is targeted on a daily basis by rocket barrages from Hamas controlled territory in the Gaza Strip. Israel sees no change in Hamas’s extremist positions,” said David Baker, a spokesman in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

Not to mention that the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, will take the deal and then continue to kill Jews as he had said here:

“We accept a state on the June 4 line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel,” Meshaal told reporters, referring to the borders as they stood before the 1967 war.

Translation: they will just use the west bank as another platform to attack Israel. There will be no peace without victory and Israel is an ally of ours and we need to help them out. If we sit around and wait to see Jerusalem go up in a cloud of smoke then the entire middle east will also go up in a cloud of smoke because by that time Israel will not care anymore. Sorry bro, but we are at war here and while it is true that the Israelis can do some appalling things but it still fails in comparison to the Russians who we had to ally our selfs with in order to win the second world war. First we need victory then we can work on changing them. We just need to do what America does best; free enslaved people and teach them about liberty. We did it for Germany, Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan and we are still in progress with Iraq. This is The United States of America and if we set our minds to and and work hard for it we can get it done!

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The entanglement called Palestine: Identity and Narrative

Posted on April 15th, 2008 by Pacifist Muse.
Categories: Political, Creative Writing, Islam, Judaism, Religon, Christianity, Palestine.

Occupied East Jerusalem, The Old City, Summer 2007.

The warm light of a slow solar setting casts its animating rays over the signs of too much in too little a space. The competing symbols of multiple multi-faced traditions collide and tensely co-inside in a space that necessarily implies an opposed overlap. Seemingly so.

The confusion of talking tongues narrating too many tales makes faithful repetition far too complex for politicians and outsiders and insiders alike. The babel of rhetoric is deafening. And yet the narratives stand up and demand rightful recognition like the symbols, edifices, and persons to which they give situation and meaning.

The day’s old rays cast the red-orange light of gold off the muezzin’s minaret onto the faint white blue landscape of the Zionist’s national symbol. The whole scene casts a long dark shadow over the last wailing prayers of an Ashkenazic Jew at the walls of Kotel remembering deliverance from the persecution of Christian eugenic madness. As the last evening prayers at the gates of heaven called Kotel fade the sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer rings out and is echoed back by other muezzins in other minarets. Three birds christen the moment, fleeing like prayers into the sun’s eclipsing crescent as it falls belows the earth’s horizon.

The architectural entanglement that is Old City Jerusalem is a stone and metal symbol of the competition of national narratives in Israel and Palestine. In Palestine. In Israel.

The wanton demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem: a destructive symbol of a wider disentanglement of allegedly opposed narratives and identities, in which one people’s remains and the other’s is at best repressed and at worst cleansed from existence.

“They” say that the ensuing violence is a causal inevitability of such an entanglement and certainly such a disentanglement. I wonder. Wonder if such an entanglement could not be interpreted differently? Could it be that in the interpretation of entangled difference, as the possibility of coexistence, there is beauty and truth far more poignant than any sterilized uniformity or deterministic assumption of violence? Could it be that the assumption of perpetual conflict is as racist as it sounds? Could it be that it is the misuse of power and weaponry and not the difference itself that necessitates violent conflict?

The birds over this picture of entangled identities are doves. A Judaic, Christian, and Muslim symbol of peace.

12 comments.

Blowing up Gaza

Posted on June 20th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: War, Terrorism, Judaism, Israel.

This from washingtonpost.com:

Leaders of the Hamas and Fatah parties began operating parallel Palestinian governments Friday after days of intense factional fighting that have sharply defined the political and geographic divisions undermining the Palestinian drive for statehood.

As street battles in the Gaza Strip gave way to calm, Palestinian analysts and Israeli officials said Hamas’s swift military conquest of the strip has badly fractured the Palestinian territories and the government established 13 years ago to run them.

The hardening differences could be seen in both Gaza and the West Bank, the two increasingly separate pieces of a future Palestinian state now administered by rival armed parties whose leaders each claimed Friday to be conducting official government business.

The division has broad humanitarian and security implications for the Palestinians, for Israel and for foreign donor nations, which are weighing whether to end economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority now that it no longer includes Hamas.

“Two governments — one in Gaza, one in the West Bank — is what we will have now,” said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Bir Zeit University, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. “The international embargo will be lifted against the government in the West Bank, and Gaza will be left to starve.”

Their splitting up the Palestinians, Hamasistan to the south in Gaza and Fatahistan to the east in the west bank. But wait it just gets worse, this from Yahoo news:

In Gaza, it was a day of major victories for Hamas and its backers in Iran and Syria — and of devastating setbacks for the Western-backed Fatah. In one particularly humiliating scene, masked Hamas fighters marched agents of the once-feared Preventive Security Service out of their headquarters, arms raised in the air, stripped to the waist and ducking at the sound of a gunshot.

“The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived,” Hamas spokesman Islam Shahawan said.

The violence has killed at least 90 people in the past five days, including 33 on Thursday alone. Witnesses, Fatah officials and a doctor reported executions by Hamas militants of defeated Fatah fighters Thursday; Fatah said seven of its men were shot in the head gangland-style. Hamas denied any such killings.

“Oh, that wasn’t me on camera shouting that guy in the head.”

Abbas, of Fatah, fired the Hamas prime minister and said he would install a new government, replacing the Hamas-Fatah coalition formed just three months ago. Abbas’ decrees, which he issued in Ramallah, won’t reverse the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Instead, his moves will enable Fatah to consolidate its control over the West Bank, likely paving the way for two separate Palestinian governments.

At a news conference in Gaza City early Friday, deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh rejected Abbas’ declaration, calling it “hasty” and saying he would maintain the unity government. Haniyeh said the situation was “not suitable for unilateral decisions.”

He said the Hamas militia would impose law and order “firmly, decisively and legally.” He also rejected the idea of a Palestinian state in Gaza only, run by Hamas.

In Damascus, one of the exiled leaders of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzouk, also rejected setting up an Islamic state there. “Gaza will remain Gaza and there will be no changes in its future and will continue to be linked to the West Bank,” he said.

yea, they’ll make it all one Hamasistan, duh.

By capturing Gaza City’s three main security compounds and the southern town of Rafah, Hamas secured its hegemony in Gaza, putting Islamic extremists in control there. The final target for Hamas was Abbas’ Gaza City headquarters, which fell without a fight late Thursday as some officials fled by boat in the direction of Egypt.

For first time since fighting erupted five days ago, Abbas issued an order to strike back. But his words were too little, too late.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Abbas’ decisions have “no value” on the ground.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed not to let the takeover of Gaza spill over into violence against Israel. Some Israelis said only a Gaza invasion could curb Hamas’ military power. But for now, the government seems more inclined to stay out, fearful of inviting more rocket attacks on southern Israel.

So Gaza has now officially Hamasistan. That also means that amir peretz the new Israeli Defense Minister is going to have a second front to worry about. It’s also striking how brutal Hamas is over there. This from haaretz.com:

“Panic is ruling our lives,” said S. of the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood two days ago, when Hamas had almost completed its takeover of the Gaza Strip. “We’re sitting here on the floor, the entire family. We can’t approach the windows or stand up. So we’re sitting. Every moment a missile explodes, but the greatest fear is for the future. Nobody knows how things will look a few hours from now, when Hamas captures Gaza.”

The fears of S., like many Gaza residents, are not unfounded. A look at Hamas’ behavior in the Strip in recent days has revealed zero tolerance toward the “other.” Anything identified with Fatah was attacked, even women and children related to activists. “I’m not sure what they’ll do with the secular, and what they’ll to with me, since my brother is in the security services,” S. added.

Two days ago, Hamas activists fired at a procession of unarmed citizens and killed two of them. On Tuesday they killed three women and a child. On Monday they threw a Fatah activist from the 18th floor of a high-rise building. Although these actions sowed panic among Fatah activists, they also increased residents’ hostility toward Hamas.

Oh, all we need to do is just talk to those people and then they’ll just stop. Well Yoni isn’t going to by this line, here’s what he had to say on Yonithebloger.com

After watching the situation in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria (west bank) I no longer think it was a Hamas action to solidify power.

I am reminded of the days of Yasser Arafat that when things got to tough for him he would pull the Hamas terrorist card out of his deck and turn it loose. America then would pressure Israel into giving up on a point of contention and also send money and weapons to Arafat.

We have seen Hamas “take over” Gaza, but we have seen no attempt to kill Abbas and we also have not seen large scale revenge killings in Judea and Samaria (west bank).

If this was not a staged event then we would have seen Fatah people take Hamas people into the streets of the major Palestinian cities and we would have seen thousands lined up against the walls and shot.

But the threat of Hamas taking over has resulted in America, Europe and Israel falling over themselves to give food, money and weapons to Fatah.

Let me tell the truth that George Bush and America has refused to see, Hamas is Fatah and Fatah is Hamas, 99% of Palestinians want every Israeli dead and Israel destroyed.

Israel should not send the IDF into Gaza if the rockets continue to fall on Israel.

Israel should shut off the water and electricity to Gaza and let the evil that is the Palestinian people suffer just as the Germans had to suffer for their sin of supporting the Nazis.

Last week before the drama in Gaza, Israel arrested two Palestinian women that tried to enter Israel from Gaza to kill themselves in a double suicide bombing. One of the women was nine months pregnant, how evil can a society become?

Before they have gone beyond the pale?

If the intended victims of this society are the Jewish people then apparently there are no limits and the brotherhood of man is willing to sit and watch from the sideline.

Again Gaza is a game and it has worked America and Europe have bought it and after 16 years of being beat over the head by a peace process Israel no longer has any leaders.

Harsh, as you can tell. Yoni is a bit of a had liner on this issue being that he has Israeli-American duel citizenship and has served in Israel for over 20 years. But he does have a good point: they elected Hamas! But they clearly didn’t take his advice as he has this to report:

IDF Allows 200 Tons Of Food into Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) The IDF allowed 200 tons of food and 30 tons of medical supplies to enter Gaza though the Kerem Shalom crossing Tuesday as part of an effort to provide humanitarian aid, army spokesmen said.

In addition, five Arabs were evacuated through the Erez crossing for medical treatment in Israel after they were wounded by Hamas terrorists.

let’s feed the enemy so all they have to worry about is getting guns and rockets to kill us. yea, that sounds like a great idea. But as usual Hugh Hewitt gets the good guests. Yesterday he interviewed Ambassador Dore Gold, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and here is what he had to say:

HH: Last time we talked, we were just talking about your book and theoretical problems and challenges to Jerusalem over the next ten years. Well, Hamas has now taken over Gaza. What’s the significance to the fight for Jerusalem of that?

DG: Well, you know, there was a report today that’s gotten out over the wires that Hamas attacked a Latin Church in the Gaza Strip, a monastery was torched as well, crosses broken, the whole place was robbed. If Hamas is doing this to the miniscule Christian community in the Gaza Strip, imagine if we foolishly agree to the Saudi peace plan, divided Jerusalem, gave them the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Imagine what would happen to the holy sites of the greatest faiths. Only a free and democratic Israel will protect Jerusalem for all faiths, not Hamastan.

HH: Oh, that is a very, that’s a very telling point. I hadn’t thought about that. They are putting on display how they would govern, if in fact they governed the entire two-state side allocated to the Palestinians. Dore Gold, what’s the mood in Israel where we’re talking to you this evening? Is it alarm? Or is it simple resolve?

DG: Well, I think Israelis are concerned about trends. I mean, nobody’s going to be affected tomorrow by what has happened. But the day after tomorrow, some very tough things could occur. For example, over the last two years, we’ve seen a tremendous build up in Gaza from two sources. One, al Qaeda has come across what’s called the Philadelphia Corridor, from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, and has built up a presence. They’ve kidnapped notable American journalists, British journalists. They have been harassing the entire population there, and basically making the place far more extreme, much more Taliban like. But from a military standpoint, the Iranians have also penetrated Gaza through the Philadelphia Corridor. They take Palestinians out, train them near Tehran, and send them back to increase the number of operatives. And they’re pushing a lot of weaponry. Should we see longer range rockets, like the kind we saw in Lebanon, based in the Gaza Strip, aimed at one of Israel’s main ports, Ashdod, hitting most of the Southern Negev, Israel’s going to have to take action. We cannot allow a kind of new Cuban Missile Crisis to emerge in the Gaza Strip.

HH: Now there are wire reports as well that Ehud Barak has already ordered up the plans necessary to reoccupy Gaza. Are those…are you putting credit into those?

DG: Well, you know, I think that’s a little premature, and I know the source in the Times of London. It wasn’t particularly reliable. But I’m pointing out a real problem that we’re facing. The Egyptians, for a variety of reasons, have failed to stop the smuggling of massive amounts of weaponry from the whole Middle East into the Gaza Strip. As that military presence builds, and if it includes rockets and missiles that can hit Israeli cities, Israel cannot sit quiet and allow this build up to keep moving forward.

Their preparing for another strike at Israel this summer. I knew that this would happen after Olmert completely botched the Lebanon war last summer. However as usual those on the left are always looking for Israel to make concessions in order to archive peace. Here’s what J-Ro had to say at theseminal.com:

The current situation is positive in the sense that Hamas is now somewhat out of the picture. After the relative progress of the 90’s, the election of Hamas, a terrorist group that doesn’t recognized Israel’s right to exist, threw a huge wrench into the peace process. Israel moved again to seal of Palestine, withheld taxes, and the international community withdrew its support, hoping to starve Hamas out of power. With Hamas now out of the government, the world is free to deal solely with Fatah in the West Bank, leaving Gaza as some sort of rouge state. I think Olmert and Israel realize that having a Palestine with Hamas in power is much more threatening than anything they have faced before. Therefore, they are willing to make concessions. If Israel acknowledges the mistakes they made in the past, offers restitution for Palestinian refugees, and helps build a Palestinian state, it may alleviate a lot of the tension in the region. While hardliners will never be satisfied until Israel ceases to exist, many Palestinian refugees may feel at least some sort of closure on the issue.

Oh come on now J-Ro did you learn anything form them pulling out of Gaza. This is a full out civil war there now. Can you imagine what that would be like if Israel went back to the 48′ borders? This would be all over in the areas that they retreated from. But I do have to give credit where credit is due and J-Ro gets it right here.

However, there is one big point of contention: We must keep in mind the fact that Hamas was elected to power. While Hamas’s actions are certainly a power grab, it isn’t a coup d’etat. Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people, and for good reason. They were’t put in power because they want the destruction of Israel, though I’m sure that didn’t hurt. They were put in power because Fatah is widely seen as corrupt and out of touch with the common Palestinian. As Gaza looters point out, “I saw dozens of the latest model cars and Mercedes [in Fatah compounds], while the people have nothing.” Hamas was elected on a populist platform, promising to raise the living standards of the Palestinian people through Muslim governance.

Exactly right but that is also why there is not going to be peace. Hamas does not want peace. They want to kill the Jews simply because they are the infidels. These are evil people that we are dealing with here and you are not going to convince them to be peaceful. Hamas is committed to the elimination of state of Israel. They don’t want peace! And when you are dealing with a evil group of people appeasement never works. This situation has gotten worse because the Jews pulled out of Gaza and thus the jihadist think that they got a victory here. We can not allow this. We are at war here folks and we have to win it and Israel is a key ally in this fight that we need to support. This is going to take a long time and it will be hard but we must do it!

Also P Muse is already in Israel now making a documentary on the situation and he is trying to get into Gaza. So I ask all of you out there that are religious to pray for his safety.

2 comments.

Alan Johnston makes a video for the Jihadist

Posted on June 4th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: War, Terrorism, Judaism, Israel.

Alan Johnston is a reporter for BBC who had been kidnapped by Jihadist 12 weeks ago. This is the transcript of the video that he made for whatever Jihadist group that is holding him. This is from BBC News:

First of all my captors have treated me very well. They’ve fed me well. There’s been no violence towards me at all, and I’m in good health.In three years here in the Palestinian territories, I’ve witnessed the huge suffering of the Palestinian people.

And my message is that their suffering is continuing, and that it is unacceptable.

Every day there are Palestinians arrested, imprisoned for no reason. People are killed on a daily basis.

The economic suffering is terrible, especially here in Gaza where there’s an Israeli [audio jumps] absolute despair after nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation which has been supported by the West.

The situation in Iraq is even worse, we see every day maybe 100 or more Iraqis being killed, in the violence there which followed the failed invasion of Iraq by America and Britain.

Ordinary people who are losing everything and can’t live their lives properly. Because of not just the violence, but the shortage of everything they need for normal lives, for bringing up their children.

Errr… Afghanistan, the situation again terrible.

You see on your television screens ordinary people [audio jumps] suffering as the armies of America and B… [audio jumps] America attack [audio jumps] attack.

In all this, we can see the British government endlessly working to occupy, err, the Muslim lands, against the will of the people in those places.

From history, the British worked to bring about the state of Israel, which is the cause of all the suffering of the Israeli… of the Palestinian people, and we, the British, are completely to blame, along with the Americans, for the situation in Iraq, and the British are the main force in Afghanistan, causing all the trouble to ordinary, simple Afghans who simply want to live.

To my family, my family… [audio cuts off abruptly].

I have two words for you: Stockholm syndrome. Ever notice that those types of videos are only made by Jihadist? Why don’t we have any videos of captured Jihadist saying that the Jihadist movement is evil? But you just do not see such things. Now I really don’t know that he has been tortured or maltreated but still it’s been 12 week since he has been captured. Do you really think that he has not been forced to make this video if not tortured to make it?

Now I know what some of you might be thinking right now. “Well he might have been forced but what he said is true.” It’s always surprised me how much people think that the state of Israel is an illegitimate state. If you said the word Palestinian prior to the 1920’s people most likely would have thought you were talking about Jews because that word is recent development. But for some reason people start to think that it was the Palestinians had their land stolen from them. The reality is that there was no one living there before the Jews settled it again back in the 20’s. There is no other group of people that have a historical claim to a piece of land than the Jews to Israel. But let’s put aside the Jews rightful calm to Israel. If Israel is an illegitimate state then why is Pakistan legitimate. Pakistan has no historical claims, it’s just a country that was carved out of India by a very bloody civil war and it resulted is far more refuges than Israel. but you do not see anyone saying that Pakistan is illegitimate. Not only that but you also do not see any Buddhist suicide bombers in Pakistan blowing up civilians because they stole their land. Why is this? It’s only Israel that is the country that is illegitimate and they should have to move to Germany because that’s who committed the Holocaust. And thus you get everyone supporting the Palestinian because they are the poor victims in all of this. People like, oh, say the Norwegians. This from yahoo.com:

OSLO, Norway - Norway resumed direct aid to the Palestinian administration with a $10 million transfer, after it became the first Western country to recognize the new Hamas-led coalition, the foreign minister said Thursday.
“We hope our contribution will help ease the social crisis the Palestinians are now going through,” said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere. He said the aid will be used to pay wages for civilian public servants.

Aww, ain’t them Norwegians great! Giving to help Hamas train and commit more suicide bombings. It’s just wonderful ain’t it? Sorry Bieren and P Muse, but I think the people running the country your ancestors were from are fools! But I going to tell you the dirty little secret of this whole thing. That simply put is the Palestinians are responsible for all of the suffering that the Palestinians are going through. They are the ones that failed to slater the Jews in 48′ and again in 67′ and during this time they rounded the refuges into camps and delegated second class citizenship to them in order to keep them angry and keep blaming it all on Israel. But since the Palestinians are seen as the victims here so their allowed to commit suicide bombings. Something that I am starting to notice about evil people are that they always see themselves as victims of something. So since they are victims that gives the the right to murder, rape and destroy societies as a way to get back at the “aggressors.” But really they are the ones that are the aggressors, Israel is just trying to survive. If the Palestinians through away all of their weapons their would be peace but if the Jews through away all of their weapons then their will be six million dead Jews. They don’t just want Israel to give up some land they want them to die. How do I know? They say so over and over again. The destruction of Israel is in the charter of Hamas and they will not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

So why are people on the side of the Palestinians. Well, the Jews won’t kill them like the Palestinians will. It’s easier to take on the Jews because if you criticize them they will civilly disagree with you and move on. But if you criticize the Palestinians they’ll kill you. It’s hard to confront evil and the majority of people just don’t want to think about it. But they don’t want to seem like cowards so they take on something that is easy to criticize: Christians, Jews, the United States, Israel and the West in general. So that way they can feel that they have done something worthwhile. But another dirty little secret is the Jihadist are still coming to kill you anyway. You can make peace with the Jihadist by killing yourself. So all of you pacifist out there you can advance the cause by offing yourself. Until we change the victimhood mentality of the Palestinians then their will always be war between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Olmert in trouble

Posted on May 3rd, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Terrorism, Judaism, Israel.

This from Haaretz.com:

More than 100,000 people rallied in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Thursday, in the first national protest calling on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to resign over the damning Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War.

While police would only say the number of protestors was over 100,000, the rally’s organizers said closer to 200,000 were in attendance. A banner reading “Failures, Go Home!” hung behind a podium set up at one end of the square in front of Tel Aviv city hall.

“Ehud Olmert, you said you work for us. Olmert, you are fired!” said the evening’s keynote speaker, author Meir Shalev. “Amir Peretz - you said [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah will never forget your name. Neither will we.”

If you thought you had a bad day today at lest you didn’t have 100000 people say so. It seems that this whole thing was started by a war report by Judge Eliyahu Winograd. Yonitheblogger.com had this to report:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz all failed in their roles during the Second Lebanon War, Judge Eliyahu Winograd said at a press conference in which he presented his report into the war’s failings.

The retired judge said the prime minister “formulated his stance without a second thought, without being presented with a detailed military plan, without considering the complex conditions of fighting in Lebanon.

There was no organized consultation with others, mainly outside of army, despite his lack of diplomatic and military experience,” Winograd said.

“The prime minister is responsible for failing to clearly set out the aims of the war, and for there not being a clear definition of aims of war and ways to achieve them. The war’s aims were ambitious, and could not be reached. They were not within reach. All of these factors come together to form a serious failure of judgment, responsibility, and caution,” he added.

But Winograd did not stop at just Olmert

Winograd added that “many others” shared responsibility for the severe failures he highlighted, and turned his attention to previous Israeli governments which allowed Hizbullah to set up base on Israel’s border.

“The complexity of Lebanese arena is not under Israeli control. The ability of Hizbullah to sit on the border, and dictate the level of escalation, was made possible by the 2000 retreat of the IDF from southern Lebanon. IDF commanders and political leaders are responsible for internal IDF failures before the prime minister and the defense minister came in,” he said.

Winograd also laid blame at the remainder of the government for its “support for an immediate response out of unjustified faith in the decision makers.”

“For 25 years, there hasn’t been a war. The IDF was not ready for war, for a number of reasons, among them being that the political and military leaders decided that the age of wars has ended, and that the IDF had enough deterrence power and ability to deliver painful reminders to those who didn’t know that,” Winograd said.

“The challenges of ground forces were thought to remain in dealing with ongoing low intensity clashes. According to such view, there is no need to prepare for war or update Israel’s general defense approach. We believe that we must look beyond the decision making failures, at these issues which form central questions, raised by the Lebanon War,” he added.

“These are the questions standing at the heart of our existence as a Jewish and democratic state,” Winograd continued.

Sounds like Israel is starting to rethink their policies here. This is good to hear that Israel is starting to summon up some courage to fight and if they keep this up they may be able to start fixing some of the problems in the middle east. However they should not just stop at Lebanon they need to go to Syria as well. That’s what I thought they should have done last summer and then they would not have Hizbullah on their front door right now still launching rockets at them. So we’ll see if new leadership can change things around here. However I think that Israel will be back at war again here soon so hopefully Olmert takes a hint soon and resigns soon.

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Because they Hate: By Brigitte Gabriel

Posted on April 28th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, War, Terrorism, Reviews, Books, Philosophy, Islam, Judaism, Christianity.

Because they hate is a book by Brigitte Gabriel that illustrates the horrific terror of Islamic Fascism. As a little girl in Lebanon, she grew up during the Lebanese civil war. Before the the civil war Lebanon used to be a very peaceful country as the only middle eastern county with a majority Christian population. Through out the wars with Israel Lebanon would open up it’s arms to Muslim refuges and integrate them into their society. However after awhile the Muslims started to over populate the Christians there and when it did the Muslims did not treat the Christians the same way.

In Lebanon everyone carried a national ID card that identified not only our religion but also what sect of that religion we belonged to. It proved to be something that could mean the difference between living or dying. Incidents were being reported of Muslims setting up checkpoints and stopping cars to check IDs. Sometimes, if the Muslims saw that a car’s occupants were Christians, they would order everyone out of the car and then shoot them all. they didn’t kill us because they were Communists and we were capitalists. They killed us because we were Christians. They would shout “Allahu Akbar,” “God is Great,” as they sprayed Christians with machine-gun bullets. These became known as “identity card killings.”

In November of 1975 the fighting in the civil war started to brake out. Brigitte Gabriel in her little town was hit by motor fire and one landed right on her house. A little girl of 10 years old she had just barely survived the attack on her house that night. However it was not over then they had to live in a bomb shelter with a dirt floor, rats and shorting food rations. living there in fear that if a shell fell directly on their shelter then they would die. they would have to go out at night and crawl in ditches (in order to avoid snipers) to get food. After three years of this the Muslims were preparing to attack her little town in southern Lebanon. At 13 years old Brigitte Gabriel wanted to look pretty before she died so she dressed up before the attack. But guess who saved her? Not the US, not France, Spain or Italy but Israel did. The next day Israel entered the war and pushed back the Muslims (actually they ran from Israel). Israel was getting tired of bing shelled by Lebanon. One of the favorite tactics of the Muslims was to put artery around heavily populated Christan areas and then run like hell when Israel responded. So then they were able to kill more Christians and also have the UN blame Israel. In the years that Followed Brigitte Gabriel moved to Israel to become a news broadcaster and eventually moved here to the United States. After the history lesson and her personal story Brigitte Gabriel then moves on to the political and tell us how critical it is that we fight the Islamic extremist because their trying to do the same thing here that they did to Lebanon. This book is a must read in order to understand the real nature and threat that we face. And the reason why can be summed up in a simple phrase: It’s because they hate.

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A letter to the Pacifist Muse.

Things are blowing up in Israel, Again!

Sir Mario gets the death penalty

The Courts in CA have just changed something for the first time in history!

Here’s a post for the Pacifist Muse

The entanglement called Palestine: Identity and Narrative

Blowing up Gaza

Alan Johnston makes a video for the Jihadist

Olmert in trouble

Because they Hate: By Brigitte Gabriel