Christian Attitudes

Link: http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/campaign/gaza/index.htm

It’s not quite up to ‘Massacre of Jenin’ standards, but the propagandists are working on it. The pretence that there is a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, where some have to struggle without their fridges and televisions, continues. There may be genuine difficulties, but on nothing like the scale described so hysterically by those who want to force Israel to stop defending herself.

"The situation in Gaza is not even close to developing into a humanitarian crisis," head of the Gaza Liaison Administration Col. Nir Press told The Jerusalem Post, claiming that charges made by the Palestinians were aimed at deceiving the international community.

Press said that the type of merchandise ordered by the Palestinians and transferred into Gaza via Karni, included thousands of boxes of cherries and proved that there was not a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. "Judging by what the Palestinians order you can tell that there is not a crisis there," he said.

Even the Red Cross agrees.

Despite what the media (and Palestinian activists) seems to be saying about a crisis in Gaza, Red Cross officials have deemed the need for medical supplies to be "not urgent", and reports from the border show that between the 2-6 July, 239 trucks with suplies crossed into Gaza. This included 105 trucks of aid and goods which passed into Gaza on the 4 July alone.

Some Christians are gleefully joining in the propaganda claims. True to form, Christian Aid is running a new campaign, entitled "Take action: Ask your MP to condemn attacks against Gaza civilians"

The title dishonestly suggests that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians. The Israelis try to avoid civilian casualties, although it is difficult when terrorists deliberately surround themselves with children as human shields.

Please write to your MP condemning the recent Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip and ask them to sign Early Day Motion 2840 which supports Christian Aid’s concern for the civilian population.

Christian Aid tries to appear even-handed, except that it is Palestinians who target civilians, not Israelis.

Attacks on civilians, Palestinian and Israeli, cannot be justified by any means, wherever and for whatever reason they take place. They are contrary to the basic human right to life.

Some of it describes Israeli actions while ignoring the reasons for them. For instance, even the media, so unfriendly to Israel, tells us that bridges were destroyed to prevent the removal of the kidnapped soldier.

Then it tells lies.

The complete closure of the borders to the Gaza Strip is obstructing access to essential supplies.

Border crossings have been opened to allow supplies through, although one had to be closed early because of a terrorist alert

Christian Aid is deeply concerned about the impact this is having on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. We also unequivocally condemn missile attacks against Israeli civilians and the fear and despair they cause in population centres such as Sderot and Ashkelon.

We are also concerned with the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier as well as any Palestinian prisoners, especially children, held unlawfully by Israel.

Why didn’t they object to the missile attacks earlier? They have been going on for so long. Would it be cynical of me to suppose they are just trying to appear even-handed? Perhaps, but let’s give them a pat on the back for showing some sympathy to the suffering of Israelis, and the injustices wrought against them by the Palestinians.

Better still let’s ask them to drop their support for a motion which condemns Israel’s attempts at self-defence. Let’s ask them to support a motion condemning Palestinian missile attacks on Israel instead. This would be long overdue, but it‘s better late than never. Christian Aid can be contacted here.

If you are British and want to contact your MP to give a more accurate picture of what is happening in Gaza and request opposition to the motion, you can contact him or her via this site.

Link: http://www.indcatholicnews.com/urgecarit118.html

Caritas (Latin) is a term in Christian theology (one of the three theological virtues), meaning loving kindness towards others

Caritas International fails dismally to live up to this. It has joined the angry cries of those who object to Jews defending themselves from attack, and issued an Urgent appeal from Caritas and churches in Gaza.

Hamas is calling on the international community to force Israel to stop defending herself from missile attacks. Caritas and Christian Arabs are adding to this pressure on Israel. Emotional articles, arousing sympathy for the Palestinians while demonizing the Jews, are appearing in the Christian press.

Caritas’s lengthy statement makes much of the sufferings of Palestinians caught up in Israel’s restrained efforts at self-defence. It completely ignores the sufferings of Israelis who are subject to continuous missile attacks and fails to condemn Palestinian terrorists, who, unlike Israelis try to cause as many civilian casualties as possible.

It tries to make much of what appear to be minor inconveniences, pretending they are some kind of ‘humanitarian disaster’. It ignores Israeli efforts to prevent such a disaster. Yesterday, the humane Israelis risked their lives by opening the Karni crossing to allow humanitarian aid.

The crossing was opened on Thursday morning to allow the entry of 100 trucks into the Gaza Strip. It was initially planned to remain open until 6 p.m. Supplies entering the Palestinian territories included medical and food supplies sent by international humanitarian sources.

Typically, the Palestinians tried to abuse this kindness and the crossing had to be closed again due to a terrorist alert.

An earlier trip, last Sunday, brought in the following:

By early Sunday evening, 50 trucks of wheat, corn, meat, cooking oil and other basics had passed through the Karni crossing, according to Captain Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman. One million liters, or 264,000 gallons, of diesel, 80,000 liters of gasoline and 200,000 tons of natural gas were shipped through the fuel terminal at Nahal Oz, he said.

Caritas is too dishonest to mention this, as it would spoil the propaganda value of their appeal.

If you read through the statement carefully, you will see that the circumstances of the Palestinians, although very trying, are still far better than those of many people in the world who live permanently in real poverty and deprivation. Those poor people’s voices are drowned in the constant loud squawling demands of the Palestinians.

Palestinians receive more aid per head than any other people on the planet – and there are many more needy and more deserving.

Palestinians receive nine times more aid per head than people living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their average incomes are little more than a quarter of Palestinians'.

Caritas knows this, and yet chooses to contribute to the Palestinian propaganda campaign. They have a bad history of this.

Caritas Internationalis (“Caritas”), a self-described “Catholic agency for overseas aid and development,” devotes much of its activities to being an outspoken cheerleader of the Palestinian cause, while there are few Israeli responses to Palestinian terror that does not “appall,” “affront,” “shock,” or “deeply concern” its sensibilities.

In 2004 the Wiesenthal Center asked the Holy See to “Condemn, as incitement to Middle East-related terrorism, a Caritas campaign poster against the Israeli security fence

Caritas also ignores the problems of poverty facing Israel, where one in three Israeli children are hungry.

Over 400,000 families in Israel suffer from "nutritional insecurity," a euphemistic term for "hunger." 28% of Israeli citizens, or 1,600,000 people are living in poverty. Among them are more than 600,000 hungry children. Those experiencing "nutritional insecurity" eat smaller portions, skip meals and, in extreme cases, don't eat for a whole day. Diets may be high in carbohydrates and lacking or almost devoid of meat, dairy products, vegetables and fruit. In Israel, 22% of families are deemed moderately insecure and 8% suffer from severe insecurity.

Rather than give donations to Caritas, I suggest you click on the above link, and give to the charities for the poor listed there.

Link: http://www.indcatholicnews.com/gaza338.html

Oh dear. Just let the Jews defend themselves from attack, and refuse to accept the role of helpless victim, and the anti-semites start to scream.

Unfortunately, this particular scream ? long, irrational and full of wild accusations ? is picked up and amplified by a Catholic news outlet: Only Gazans suffer, not Jews.

Since Israeli war planes bombed and destroyed Gaza's only power plant, as part of their efforts to rescue a kidnapped soldier - life for the 1.3 million people living without electricity or water is becoming increasingly difficult, with the threat of widespread disease just days away. Dr Virginia Tilley has written a graphic account of conditions there.

Reminder: not only are they trying to rescue a kidnapped soldier, but to defend themselves from a ceaseless barrage of missiles. For a long time Israel has reacted to these acts of war with great restraint.

Tilley doesn't seem to mind the missiles, but she isn?t happy that the terrorist-supporting Palestinians, who voted for the Party who Promised to Drink the Blood of the Jews have lost the use of their fridges and televisions.

Mass terror, despair, desperate hoarding of food and water. And no radios, television, cell phones, or laptops (for the few who have them), and so no way to get news of how long this nightmare might go on.

There are millions of truly poor people in the world who don?t enjoy such luxuries as fridges and televisions in the first place. They have difficulty finding food and never enjoyed anything as sophisticated as clean water coming out of taps.

And now for the obligatory blood libel bit:

In the hot darkness, massive explosions shake the cities, close and far, while repeated sonic booms are wreaking the havoc they have wrought before: smashing windows, sending children screaming into the arms of terrified adults, old people collapsing with heart failure, pregnant women collapsing with spontaneous abortions.

?Old people collapsing with heart failure, pregnant women collapsing with spontaneous abortions?? Is there any evidence for this? It looks more like an attempt at the ?Jenin massacre? style of propaganda. The only known death of an innocent recorded recently was of a young Jewish man, murdered by terrorists.

Does she care how the people of Sderot feel as they endure a bombardment of Palestinian missiles? Hamas declared "We have decided to make Sderot a ghost town" ? in other words, to carry out ethnic cleansing, but she voices no objection.

Or how about the people of Ashkelon? But, I forgot ? they are Jews, so perhaps she thinks they don't matter. At any rate, she wants to see the destruction of the Jewish state and promotes the One-State Solution (which, in practice, would be very like the Final Solution)

No, Palestinian Quassams are not harmless, home-made toys, as we are reminded by Simply Jews, pointing to some earlier examples: Collective Punishment: Quassam Rockets Kill - the Agony of Sderot. As you will see, most of the victims have been children.

Tilley's full original article, at Counterpunch (more about it here) says: ?Israel has done many things argued to be war crimes?, including ?aerial bombardment of civilian areas?. Tilley seems to have forgotten that the Palestinians have been carrying out that particular war crime, along with others, for a long time.

She gives herself away when she suggests that Israelis are like Nazis.

But destroying the only power source for a trapped and defenseless civilian population is an unprecedented step toward barbarity. It reeks, ironically, of the Warsaw Ghetto. As we flutter our hands about tectonic political change, we must take pause: in the eyes of history, what is happening in Gaza may come to eclipse them all.

A restrained attempt at self-defence, which deprives some Gazans of their fridges and tellies, is going to be worse than the Holocaust?

If you are wondering who Tilley is:

Dr Virginia Tilley is a chief research specialist in the Democracy and Governance Research Programme. She holds an MA from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and an MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What is regrettable is that Independent Catholic News, one of the news sources linked by the Bishops? Conference of England and Wales site, sees fit to reproduce the uncorroborated, unjust and wild accusations of this woman.

ICN frequently publishes material which demonises the Israelis, even including material like this by the notorious anti-semite mentioned in this article, but never anything critical of the Palestinians and their terrorism.

In other words, it contributes to the present growth of anti-semitism, which, as the Vatican recognises, has found a new disguise as ?anti-Zionism?.

Link: http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=1667#more-1667

Did you know that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a Christian Zionist? I expect that came as a surprise to him, too. The extremists in Sabeel will condemn someone merely for pointing out that terrorism is wrong. A Christian Zionist ? a Christian who believes in a Jewish right to self-determination in a state of their own ? is a reasonable and just thing to be, but Sabeel demonizes them.

Sabeel?s attack on the Archbishop occurred during its fifth international conference in 2004, according to Shelley Neese of The Jerusalem Connection The conference addressed what Sabeel ?perceives as one of the world?s biggest threats: Christian Zionism.? The members accused Christians who support Israel of failing to complain about Israeli actions, while Sabeel carefully avoids even a whisper of criticism of terrorist acts. Well, there was just a faint whisper, but that soon turned into a murmur of admiration for terrorists.

There is certain hypocrisy though to Sabeel?s accusations against Christian Zionists for turning a blind eye. While reading Challenging Christian Zionism, it does not take long to notice the apparent censorship of criticism for Palestinian terrorism. Excluding one lecture by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in 328 pages of enumerating the problems that plague the region, terrorism is mentioned only four times. To be sure, counting those four references, totaling fifteen lines, is being very generous because at no point is Palestinian violence ever referred to as terrorism. ?Resistance? is the term of choice and ?suicide bombings? are never named. Also, Palestinian violence is never actually denounced. Instead, it is excused in subsequent sentences as an understandable reaction to the ills of ?occupation.?

And the faint whisper?

Out of the four speakers who mention terror, Revd. Dr. Elias Chacour is the only one to say ?we cannot agree with terror? and to acknowledge the fact that there are Israeli civilians who have died. Immediately after this disclaimer, however, he refers to terrorists as martyrs.

In contrast with the immoral approach of the creeps around him, Rowan Williams stands out as heroic and honest. But all he does is tell the truth.

Only one of the conference?s thirty-one speakers denounced terrorism for its ugliness or acknowledged the holocaust and centuries of Jewish persecution. In any other setting Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams would not be considered a pro-Israel sympathizer, but in the company of the other self-censoring speakers Williams was accused of what in Sabeel?s opinion is the worst of crimes?being ?a kind of Christian Zionist.? This label was forced on him because he made due reference to Scripture as proof that Jews do have a special place under God. His speech provoked so much ?outrage? and ?disappointment? that the last three chapters of the book are critical responses to his address.

Sabeel is a heretical Christian organization. Its beliefs are based on the old heresy of Marcionism and on hatred (which is opposed to Christ?s law of love). Being heretical but also blind to its own obvious faults, it screams: ?Heresy!? at others whose right behaviour puts them at variance with Sabeel. Even denouncing terrorism and acknowledging the Holocaust is heretical to the twisted souls who occupy the Sabeel movement.

More on Sabeel and Marcionism here.

Link: http://www.cathnews.com/news/607/8.php

Students from a New York Catholic university paid their own way to travel to Belarus in order to restore long-abandoned graves of a Jewish community massacred by Nazis during World War II.

Some 160 gravestones with Hebrew writing had been set upright in the Belarusian village of Vselyub, and now stood in the sunlight, surrounded by a freshly painted aluminum fence featuring a big Jewish star above the entry gate.

Village chairman Vasiliy Korol looked bewildered as he watched the group of American college students from Siena College near Albany, New York, helped by local schoolchildren, work to clean up the town's Jewish cemetery, abandoned since the Nazis killed the entire local Jewish population 65 years ago. Just a few days earlier, Mr Korol said, this was an empty field where kids played soccer.

According to Global Jewish News, Siena students had to pay their own way and raise $10,000 to cover the cost of the fence.

Ralph Blasting, Siena College's dean of liberal arts, and Diane Strock-Lynskey, a professor of social work at the college volunteered to accompany the group to Belarus at their own expense.

There were forty Jewish families in the village when the war started, but none survived. Now a group of Catholic students, with the help of local villagers of all ages, have cleaned up their cemetery.

"They saw the writings in Hebrew on the stones we uncovered as evidence of a very vibrant Jewish community that once lived here but one day was taken away and never came back," he says. "Now, more than 60 years later, they could at least re-erect the tombstones and preserve the place that says there was once a Jewish community here."

There is something touching about this, but also very sad. While anti-Semitism is on the increase, and Arab terrorists take on the mantle of the Nazis, we need to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Cleaning up the cemetery is a mark of respect for those who died – but it would be better to prevent such massacres in the first place. I wonder whether these good-hearted young people are also encouraged to make efforts to protect the Jewish state and its threatened inhabitants, by protesting unjust double standards applied by politicians and media. Perhaps they could also protest the support by a certain other Catholic university for Palestinian terrorists and Holocaust deniers.