I appreciate you sharing this message. When I went to Bethlehem in 2009 and visited a Baptist church, the pastor asked our delegation of Christian "youth" (I was 34 and not that young) to not forget about them. He said Christians remember Israel, but the Arab Christian in Palestine stands somewhat alone. They get hassled by Israel at the border, he said, and the surrounding Muslims are even more oppositional.
The pastor said he had been shot at with nine bullets and three had hit the mark. He said he was the first Christian in his family, but his entire family eventually embraced the faith. His youngest brother was the longest holdout, coming to Christian faith 26 years after the pastor did. He was cut down by Muslims with machetes as he was doing evangelism in Arab East Jerusalem.
I'm a strict neo-Darwinian, so I don't have a dog in the theological wars, but I do have a different take:
What might save us, me and you
Is if the Russians love their children, too.
-Sting ("Russians" 1985)
This is not an unreasonable hope, both then and now. Russians are not uncivilized people. We have to believe that eventually, Russian mothers and fathers will tire of sending their sons anddaughters to die in Ukraine, and do something about it - in the longer run, to raise their children to reject participation in aggressive wars.
But that is not a reasonable hope with respect to Gazans. They unabashedly reveal their priorities in their political charter, and in their schools and mosques every day. Gazans believe that any and every sacrifice is worth making if it results in more Jewish deaths. Literally, not figuratively. The ghouls who butchered hundreds of innocent Jews on October 7th - and took hundreds more hostage - had to have known that this act would result in tens of thousands of their own being killed in response; they simply didn't care. They celebrated their barbarism with elation and jubilation - proudly live-streaming it to their folks back home and to the world. Nor were their folks back home horrified by the savagery of the attack they witnessed; indeed, there was universal joy and celebration in the streets of Gaza in the days that followed - brought to a fevered pitch whenever a Jewish corpse was present.
We know from decades of experience that Gazans do not love their children, not in any way that civilized people recognize as parental love. They regard their male children as future martyrs and their girl children as bearers of future martyrs. Hating Jews takes precedence over loving their children. One mistake a lot of people make is to assume that Gazans think like themselves, like you and me and Russians and nearly everyone else - that life is a precious gift. They do not; they regard their earthly life as expendable in the spiritual service of ridding the Middle East, and the world, of Jews and other infidels.
There has been a big hue and cry over the killing of "innocent Palestinian civilians" by Israel since October 7th. Every one of those deaths is on account of Hamas, which commits the war crimes of using human shields and employing non-uniformed combatants (making civilians unidentifiable as such). But there is another problem with this meme: You would be hard-pressed to find a truly innocent Gazan. The reality is that "innocent" Gazan civilians indoctrinate their "innocent" children into their death-cult ideology from birth. Gazan children lose their innocence at a very young age, in a self-perpetuating death spiral.
Death cults like that in Gaza normally do not have a long shelf life; they tend to burn themselves out in battles of attrition. Like the celibate Catholic priesthood, it would be impossible to sustain the Gazan death-cult without support from outside. But Gaza isn't a closed system, it isn't an "open-air prison." Gaza receives boundless support from outside, in the form of military aid from Iran (mostly), "humanitarian" aid from the rest of the world (quickly converted to military use), and political cover from the United Nations. Israel isn't allowed to give Gazans their wish of becoming martyrs to their cause - and so the unnatural danse macabre winds endlessly on.
The world has to smarten up and stop feeding sugar to this cancerous tumor in the Middle East. The world has to stop taking in "refugees" who are members of the death cult. The world has to stop tying the hands of Israeli forces removing the cancer, whether surgically or with chemotherapy. Compassion has its place; Gaza is not that place. The brass rule is the medicine that is called for on this sick patient: Do unto others as they do unto others.
I appreciate you sharing this message. When I went to Bethlehem in 2009 and visited a Baptist church, the pastor asked our delegation of Christian "youth" (I was 34 and not that young) to not forget about them. He said Christians remember Israel, but the Arab Christian in Palestine stands somewhat alone. They get hassled by Israel at the border, he said, and the surrounding Muslims are even more oppositional.
The pastor said he had been shot at with nine bullets and three had hit the mark. He said he was the first Christian in his family, but his entire family eventually embraced the faith. His youngest brother was the longest holdout, coming to Christian faith 26 years after the pastor did. He was cut down by Muslims with machetes as he was doing evangelism in Arab East Jerusalem.
These believers are in a tight spot.
I'm a strict neo-Darwinian, so I don't have a dog in the theological wars, but I do have a different take:
What might save us, me and you
Is if the Russians love their children, too.
-Sting ("Russians" 1985)
This is not an unreasonable hope, both then and now. Russians are not uncivilized people. We have to believe that eventually, Russian mothers and fathers will tire of sending their sons anddaughters to die in Ukraine, and do something about it - in the longer run, to raise their children to reject participation in aggressive wars.
But that is not a reasonable hope with respect to Gazans. They unabashedly reveal their priorities in their political charter, and in their schools and mosques every day. Gazans believe that any and every sacrifice is worth making if it results in more Jewish deaths. Literally, not figuratively. The ghouls who butchered hundreds of innocent Jews on October 7th - and took hundreds more hostage - had to have known that this act would result in tens of thousands of their own being killed in response; they simply didn't care. They celebrated their barbarism with elation and jubilation - proudly live-streaming it to their folks back home and to the world. Nor were their folks back home horrified by the savagery of the attack they witnessed; indeed, there was universal joy and celebration in the streets of Gaza in the days that followed - brought to a fevered pitch whenever a Jewish corpse was present.
We know from decades of experience that Gazans do not love their children, not in any way that civilized people recognize as parental love. They regard their male children as future martyrs and their girl children as bearers of future martyrs. Hating Jews takes precedence over loving their children. One mistake a lot of people make is to assume that Gazans think like themselves, like you and me and Russians and nearly everyone else - that life is a precious gift. They do not; they regard their earthly life as expendable in the spiritual service of ridding the Middle East, and the world, of Jews and other infidels.
There has been a big hue and cry over the killing of "innocent Palestinian civilians" by Israel since October 7th. Every one of those deaths is on account of Hamas, which commits the war crimes of using human shields and employing non-uniformed combatants (making civilians unidentifiable as such). But there is another problem with this meme: You would be hard-pressed to find a truly innocent Gazan. The reality is that "innocent" Gazan civilians indoctrinate their "innocent" children into their death-cult ideology from birth. Gazan children lose their innocence at a very young age, in a self-perpetuating death spiral.
Death cults like that in Gaza normally do not have a long shelf life; they tend to burn themselves out in battles of attrition. Like the celibate Catholic priesthood, it would be impossible to sustain the Gazan death-cult without support from outside. But Gaza isn't a closed system, it isn't an "open-air prison." Gaza receives boundless support from outside, in the form of military aid from Iran (mostly), "humanitarian" aid from the rest of the world (quickly converted to military use), and political cover from the United Nations. Israel isn't allowed to give Gazans their wish of becoming martyrs to their cause - and so the unnatural danse macabre winds endlessly on.
The world has to smarten up and stop feeding sugar to this cancerous tumor in the Middle East. The world has to stop taking in "refugees" who are members of the death cult. The world has to stop tying the hands of Israeli forces removing the cancer, whether surgically or with chemotherapy. Compassion has its place; Gaza is not that place. The brass rule is the medicine that is called for on this sick patient: Do unto others as they do unto others.