Evangelicals nd ISIS Have Similar End Games

I take grief at times for equating reality detached evangelical Christians with Islam extremists such as ISIS and its brutal followers.   The reality is, however, that other than the level of violence they are willing to use, both groups have more similarities than many (especially American politicians, particularly Republicans) care to admit.  Both base their world view and belief system on  "holy book" which are works of fiction and/or the ravings of the unhinged.  And both have frighteningly similar visions of the "end times" and the need for a final battle of good versus evil as their "holy books" define the enemy, i.e., largely the other group.  The result?  Both groups want a violent final confrontation in or around Israel.  Even more frightening, the evangelicals largely control Republican Party policies and foreign policy views.  It's a potential recipe for disaster for the rest of us living in the real, objective reality based world.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the frightening delusions and parallels of ISIS and the evangelicals.  Here are excerpts:

What if two mortal enemies both wanted a cataclysmic, world-ending battle, at roughly the same time, in roughly the same place?  Can you say “self-fulfilling prophecy”?

As Americans become better acquainted with the apocalyptic beliefs of the Islamic State, thanks to a spate of recent presentations of them, it’s worth noting that there are end-timers on our side as well: over three-quarters of U.S. evangelicals believe we're living in the End Times right now. And while evangelical millennialists are not calling the military shots at the moment, their prophecies align in potentially terrifying ways with those of our enemy.

ISIS’s “prophetic methodology” (Wood’s translation) involves not just a revanchist revival of slavery, crucifixion, and excommunication but also the reestablishment of a territorial caliphate that is necessary for the coming of the Mahdi, the messiah. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is said to be the eighth of twelve caliphs—which may mean that Armageddon will not take place for another few decades, or that the caliphs’ reigns may be short.

ISIS’s military strategy is driven by millenialist zeal. The capture of the Syrian town of Dabiq, for example, was heralded as a great victory not because it is strategically important (it isn’t) but because it is prophesized as the place of the final battle. Just like Megiddo, the plain in Northern Israel that gives Armageddon its name.

The specific prophecy is that the armies of “Rome” (in Islam and Judaism, Rome is a euphemism for Christianity—though some experts say it may be a stand-in for the Byzantine empire, or infidels more generally) will come to Dabiq, and lose in a great battle. Then, the victorious caliphate will expand.

But things will not go smoothly. The dajjal, an Antichrist-like figure, will arise from Persia—conveniently, ISIS’s current nemesis, Iran—and defeat most of the caliphate. The remainder will retreat to, you guessed it, Jerusalem.  And then? Remarkably, the figure who will save the caliphate is none other than Jesus, who will kill the dajjal and enable the caliphate to re-form.

It is very close to the Christian apocalyptic narrative. Indeed, as a student of millennialism for some time (my dissertation was on a false messiah), it was shocking to see the congruence between the Islamic State’s vision of the End Times and that of evangelical Christianity: a large battle somewhere north to northeast of Jerusalem, a final battle in Jerusalem with the near-defeat of the heroic believers by an Antichrist figure, and then Jesus appearing from heaven to win the battle once and for all.

[I]f enough people believe that a particular narrative is true, it can become true. Especially if those are the people with the guns. Evangelical-led Christian Zionism has already had a substantive impact on U.S. policy, and has been driven by theological propositions.

Christian Zionists have paid millions of dollars for Jews to immigrate to Israel, on the belief that at least half of world Jewry must be in the Land of Israel for the End Times to proceed.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Jewish Daily Forward that such efforts are “ for their own salvation, not for Jewish salvation, it’s so they will see the second coming of the messiah.” Foxman added, “a campaign of Christians to send Jews to Israel is morally offensive.” . . . .  it is also a billion-dollar business, and a popular one: over 60 percent of white Evangelicals believe that the State of Israel fulfills a prophecy about the Second Coming. In this view, Jews living in Israel will catalyze the End Times, culminating in a huge battle with the forces of evil—first in Northern Israel or Syria, and then in Jerusalem itself. A very similar goal to that of the Islamic State.

[T]he crazies are out there, not on the fringe, but in CPAC, AIPAC, and the Republican establishment. And they are numerous. Seventy-seven percent of U.S. evangelicals believe we are living in the End Times . . . 

That America has twice been at war against Babylon (ancient Babylon’s ruins are adjacent to Saddam Hussein’s former summer palace) added fuel to the fire. Now, we find ourselves on the brink of yet a third war there.

But this time is different. When it comes to apocalyptic warfare, it takes two to tango. And now, apocalyptic Christian Zionists have found their perfect partners: a savage, bloody cult that wants to drag “Rome” into war and is doing everything possible to provoke it. God help us if both sides decide to dance.

Be afraid.  Very afraid.

Netanyahu's Speech Likely Harmed His GOP Supporters

Israel has already proved itself tone deaf to concerns of the American public as evidenced by its killing of civilians and children in Gaza.  Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have made matters worse both for himself and his Republican supporters who, like Netanyahu will not be happy until the embroil America in a war against Iran - a war that in the long run, America will lose.  Seemingly, these folks have learned absolutely nothing from the Iraq War fiasco.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the likely damage done to Netanyahu and, more importantly, to his GOP cheerleaders.  Here are excerpts:

Today’s speech to Congress by Benjamin Netanyahu may have been about theater (it isn’t like there was some confusion about his position on Iran that he had to come here to clarify), but it did put before the American public a forceful statement of the Likud/Republican position on the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

And in doing so, it may well have done Netanyahu and his American supporters far more harm than good.

Much of the speech was given over to arguing that the Iranian regime is terrible and is doing terrible things, which isn’t going to get much argument from anyone. (Nancy Pelosi released a statement afterward calling it an “insult to the intelligence of the United States.”) 

And when he argued that Iran and ISIS are heads of the same beast, it began to sound awfully familiar, much like when George W. Bush argued that al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein must be working together (and let’s not forget that Netanyahu was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War, which dramatically increased Iran’s power and influence in the Middle East).

This is the Republican foreign policy perspective, as much now as it ever was: there is only black and white, no complexity, no compromise, and all enemies are the same. Iran is literally fighting ISIS in Iraq right now, but Netanyahu wants everyone to believe that they’re going to join together to take over the world. “When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy,” he said. Matt Duss, the head of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, called it the Islamist Voltron Theory.

The real problem came, however, when Netanyahu began to address the current negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu argues that if the U.S. walked away, Iran would eventually capitulate on everything; the “better deal” he imagined is one in which Iran does everything short of dismantling its government. He had nothing to say about why this might happen if we weren’t negotiating, other than that we should “keep up the pressure.” That’s his alternative: Do nothing, and instead of just going ahead and developing nuclear weapons, Iran will see the light and completely reverse everything it’s been doing.

To call that position “absurd” is too kind. You don’t have to be some kind of foreign policy whiz to grasp that there’s something weird about arguing that 1) Iran is a nation run by genocidal maniacs; 2) they want nuclear weapons so they can annihilate Israel; and 3) the best way to stop this is to abandon negotiations to limit their nuclear program and just wait to see what they do. But that’s the position Netanyahu and his supporters in the Republican Party are now committed to.

And everyone will ask the next question: what’s your alternative? Short of an invasion, they have no real answer, and they won’t be able to convince anyone otherwise.

Netanyahu wants a war and he wants Americans to fight it and pay for it in no small part because he thinks it will keep his sorry ass in office.   I have no love for the current regime in Iran or the lunatic Islamist in control of the country.  It is ironic, however, to hear Netanyahu call the Iranian people barbarians when history shows that Iran in the form of the Persian Empire was a great empire for centuries while Israel, if one believes new archaeological discoveries, was being ruled by petty hill fort chieftains named David and Solomon. 

The Catastrophe Netanyahu Is Courting

One of the rules of the world is that he who has the gold makes the rules. In the case of American-Israeli relations, Israel is a client state propped up with American money and arms no matter how much bluster we hear otherwise.  The other rule is that politicians can only ignore public opinion for so long before there will be a revolt against agendas that do not fit what the public wants.  The truth is that most Americans do not want another war in the Middle East.  To date, every war launched by the Republicans and the neocons has made matters worse, not better, except for defense contractors and arms manufacturers.  That reality is lost on both Netanyahu and his GOP allies.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at where they are trying to take America and the danger it poses to Israel as well.  Here are excerpts:

[Netanyahu] has forced a true low point in U.S.-Israel relations. As has been often observed, he’s turning Israel into a partisan issue—up to somewhere around a quarter of congressional Democrats are refusing to attend the speech. That’s a crack, a big one. If he remains prime minister after the March 17 elections, the fissures between Netanyahu’s government and Barack Obama and the Democrats will only widen.

Congressional support for Israel is due for a reconsideration. As Scott McConnell wrote last month in The American Conservative (an anti-neocon magazine), Congress “does not come close to representing the views of the American people” on Israel, either with respect to Iran or the occupation. 

Now, Congress can go a long time without representing American public opinion. On certain big-money issues like banking, that’s all Congress does. But on most issues, Congress at least has to act like it’s listening to the American people, and on foreign policy questions in particular, Congress, and for that matter the president, can’t usually go where the American people don’t want to go.

So one of these days, in two years or five or six, congressional fealty to Israel will cease being so bipartisan and reflexive—and that will be entirely an outcome of Netanyahu (and John Boehner’s and Ron Dermer’s and AIPAC’s) making.

But all that is just politics. Netanyahu is creating a much bigger problem here. Ultimately, he wants war with Iran. And American neoconservatives want it, too.  Few of them will say so (although some do—see below). But that’s what they want, and we need to be clear about it.

Think about it. What is the alternative to negotiating with Iran? Well, there is only one: not negotiating with Iran. And what are the possible courses of action under that option? At the end of the day, there are two. Number one, let Iran do what it wants. Number two, ultimately, be willing to start a war to block Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Knowing the neocons’ world view as I’m sure you do, how willing do you think they’d be to let Iran do what it wants? Correct. Not very. That leaves war. . . . . with a country of 77 million people, a huge army, and formidable wealth. As a point of comparison, Iraq in 2003 had about a third of Iran’s population.As noted above, not many on the right are going to be honest enough to speak openly of war. The Republican presidential candidates, for example, don’t want the American public to think they’re crazy, so they won’t admit this . . .

Netanyahu wants, at the very least, a bombing campaign. . . . .  Do Netanyahu and Bolton really expect that Iran would not retaliate in such a case? Of course it would retaliate. And far more likely against Israel than against the United States. But the United States would be dragged into it, which is exactly what Bolton and Cotton told CPAC we should all want.

It seems to be what Netanyahu wants, too. It’s what he wanted back in 2002, when—then as a private citizen—he went to Congress and made the case for war against Iraq.

He and his Republican backers are leading us down a potentially catastrophic path. And catastrophic not least for Israel itself: If this path someday reaches its logical end point, it won’t be only liberal Democrats in America who’ll conclude that we should just let Israel fight its own battles.

Israeli Official/Leaders Call for Concentration Camps and Ethnic Clensing in Gaza

9-year-old Dina wounded when shrapnel pieces hit her eyes in an Israeli strike in Gaza, is treated at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza city on August 5, 2014.

I continue to be utterly shocked and dismayed by the horrible actions being undertaken by Israel in Gaza.  Worse yet are the calls for concentration camps and/or ethnic cleansing - a sanitized term for genocide - coming from Israeli figures who are not easily relegated to the category of the lunatic fringe.  What is all the more shocking is that if any ethnic/religious group ought to be sensitive to the dangers of such horrors it should be Jews who suffered so much under the Nazi "Final Solution."  Yet some like Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, are calling for actions all too reminiscent of Nazi actions against the Jews.  Equally disturbing is the fact that individuals like Feiglin seemingly do not care or grasp that Israeli is alienating those who formerly supported Israel.  A piece in the Daily Mail looks at the disturbing situation.  Here are excerpts:

An Israeli official has called for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’.

Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend.  

He lays out a detailed plan for the destruction of Gaza -  which includes shipping its residents across the world - in a letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He says another important part of his plan is the 'conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.' 

In the letter he expresses his desire for the IDF to find areas on the Sinai border to establish 'tent encampments...until relevant emigration destinations are determined.'

He says that the supply of electricity and water to the Gaza would be disconnected before being 'shelled with maximum fire power.'

Understandably, Andrew Sullivan is appalled as well.  Especially because Feiglin is not an isolated fringe case.  Andrew explains and vents:

What is one to make of the fact that the deputy speaker of the Knesset has called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza?

He’s not an obscure blogger for the Times of Israel. He is a luminary of the Likud – a man who got 23 percent of the vote in a contest for the Likud Party leadership. He was appointed to his current high position by Benjamin Netanyahu.

You read that right. There will be temporary “camps” where the Gaza population will be “concentrated”; they will be expelled with subsidies; basic supplies of water and electricity will be cut off for those who remain. The war-time ethics he recommends are: “Woe to the evildoer, and woe to his neighbor.” He backs the “annihiliation” of Hamas and all their supporters. His strategic goal is to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.” (Modern Jaffa, of course, was built on the ethnic cleansing of most of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948.)

The usual response to this kind of thing among the lockstep pro-Israel community is that it is a tiny fringe opinion. And I can only hope they’re right. But what concerns me is that this racist, genocidal bigot was appointed deputy speaker of the Knesset by the current prime minister. What concerns me are the statements of Ayelet Shaked, the telegenic young protege of Naftali Bennett, who is touted as a future prime minister. This is from a Facebook post she wrote the day before the gruesome lynching of an Arab teen who was forced to drink gasoline and then burned to death by Jewish extremists. Note that her call for war came before any Hamas rocket was fired:

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Again, she and Feiglin dispense with the distinction between civilians and militants in Gaza. So too did the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, David-Seth Kirshner, at a recent 10,000 strong rally for Israel in New York.

I suppose someone will claim that the deputy speaker of the Knesset, and the former head of the National Security Council or the former chief rabbi in Israel or the head of the largest Jewish youth group in the world are fringe figures. But I note that, so far as I have been able to find, there have been no consequences for their statements for any of them. And I have to ask a simple question: which leader of another American ally has appointed a man who favors genocide and ethnic cleansing as the deputy speaker of the legislature? Which other democracy has legitimate political parties in the governing coalition calling for permanent occupation of a neighboring state – and deliberate social engineering to create a new demographic ethnic reality in that conquered land? Putin’s Russia has not sunk that low.

And we are not merely talking about a hypothetical situation. The grotesque death toll from Gaza is a distillation of this mindset – revealing at best a chilling contempt for Arab life and at worst, with the shelling of schools and shelters, a policy of indiscriminate hatred and revenge.

I concur with Andrew.  ALL American aid to Israel needs to be halted until the barbaric murder of children and civilians in obscene numbers ceases permanently.  To Senator Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, I say, grow a spine and call for cuts to aid immediately.

 

Are The Trigger Points for World War III In Place?

One Hundred years ago tomorrow, Germany invaded Belgium and Great Britain declared war on Germany.  While what became known as World War I had actually begun in the east a few days earlier when Germany declared war on Russia, August 4th was when the rest of the dominoes for that disaster for millions began in full earnest.  While the lead up to World War I differed in some ways  from German aggression in the late 1930's, a common thread in the events leading up to both wars was the same: imperial ambitions on the part of some rulers and rabid nationalism.  Some argue that one hundred years after the beginning of World War I, the triggers are now in place for World War III.  It would be nice to hope that humankind might have learned from the disasters and horrors of the past, yet if one looks at events in Ukraine and Gaza and and the personalities of Putin and Netanyahu, it is easy to see aspects reminiscent of Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolph Hitler, and Mussolini.  Here are excerpts from an article in The Atlantic which looks at today's triggers for disaster:

Pessimism is a useful prism through which to view the affairs of states. Their ambition to gain, retain, and project power is never sated. Optimism, toward which Americans are generally inclined, leads to rash predictions of history’s ending in global consensus and the banishment of war. Such rosy views accompanied the end of the Cold War. They were also much in evidence a century ago, on the eve of World War I.

Then, as now, Europe had lived through a long period of relative peace, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Then, too, rapid progress in science, technology, and communications had given humanity a sense of shared interests that precluded war, despite the ominous naval competition between Britain and Germany. Then, too, wealthy individuals devoted their fortunes to conciliation and greater human understanding. Rival powers fumed over provocative annexations, like Austria-Hungary’s of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, but world leaders scarcely believed a global conflagration was possible, let alone that one would begin just six years later. The very monarchs who would consign tens of millions to a murderous morass from 1914 to 1918 and bury four empires believed they were clever enough to finesse the worst.

The unimaginable can occur. That is a notion at once banal and perennially useful to recall. Indeed, it has just happened in Crimea, where a major power has forcefully changed a European border for the first time since 1945.

Events cascade. It is already clear that the nationalist fervor unleashed by Putin after a quarter century of Russia’s perceived post–Cold War decline is far from exhausted. Russians are sure that the dignity of their nation has been trampled by an American and European strategic advance to their border dressed up in talk of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Whether this is true is irrelevant; they believe it. National humiliation, real or not, is a tremendous catalyst for war. That was the case in Germany after the Treaty of Versailles . . . .  Russia, convinced of its lost greatness, is gripped by a Weimar neurosis resembling Germany’s post–World War I longing for its past stature and power. The Moscow-backed separatists taking over government buildings in eastern Ukraine and proclaiming an independent “Donetsk People’s Republic” demonstrate the virulence of Russian irredentism. Nobody can know where it will stop. Appetite, as the French say, grows with eating.

[T]he realization that the Russian bear can bite as well as growl is timely. It is a reminder that a multipolar world in a time of transition, when popular resentments are rising over joblessness and inequality, is a dangerous place indeed.

The international system does not look particularly stable. The Cold War’s bipolar confrontation, despite its crises, was predictable. Today’s world is not. It features a United States whose power is dominant but no longer determinant; a one-party China that is a rising hegemon; an authoritarian Russia giddy on nationalism and the idea of a restored imperium; and a weak, navel-gazing, blasé Europe whose pursuit of an ever closer union is on hold and perhaps on the brink of reversal.

Pacifist tendencies in western Europe coexist with views of power held in Moscow and Beijing that Bismarck or Clausewitz would recognize instantly.
A century ago, in the absence of clear lines or rules, it was just this kind of feel-good hope and baseless trust in the judgment of rival powers that precipitated catastrophe. But that, it may be said, was then. The world has supposedly been transformed.

But has it? Consider this article in my father’s 1938 high-school yearbook:

The machine has brought men face to face as never before in history. Paris and Berlin are closer today than neighboring villages were in the Middle Ages. In one sense distance has been annihilated. We speed on the wings of the wind and carry in our hands weapons more dreadful than the lightning … The challenge of the machine is the greatest opportunity mankind has yet enjoyed. Out of the rush and swirl of the confusions of our times may yet arise a majestic order of world peace and prosperity.

The ghosts of repetition reside alongside the prophets of progress. From the “rush and swirl” of 1938 where “distance has been annihilated” would follow in short order the slaughter of Stalingrad, the mass murder of European Jewry, the indiscriminate deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the anguish of all humanity. We should not lightly discard a well-grounded pessimism or the treaties it has produced.

 

Millennials - And Others - Are Over Israel

Seemingly, I am not the only one who is over America's blind backing of Israel no matter what atrocities the IDF may commit (I got a letter from Senator Mark Warner in reply to my inquires that was just as mealy mouthed and unacceptable as Senator Tim Kaine's earlier in the week). A new Pew Research Center poll shows a huge generational shift in support of Israel so even though Congress has slavishly backed actions by Israel that seem aimed at genocide - several posts have appeared in the Times of Israel calling for out right genocide against Palestinians - , younger voters are not willing to close their eyes to the atrocities.  A piece in Salon looks at Israel's apparent effort to destroy long term American support for that nation.  Here are excepts:

It might seem counterintuitive to make the argument that Israel should no longer count on U.S. support for its policies as assuredly it has in the past.  After all, hasn’t the Senate just passed not one but now two resolutions by unanimous consent declaring its backing of Israel’s deadly attacks on and invasion of Gaza?

Yet even with these unambiguous resolutions emanating from the Senate, we find more and more evidence that support for Israel from the American public is slipping.  A recent report in the Washington Post noted that “A new Pew Research Center poll is the second in the past week to show a huge generational split on the current conflict in Gaza. While all age groups north of 30 years old clearly blame Hamas more than Israel for the current violence, young adults buck the trend in a big way. Among 18 to 29-year olds, 29 percent blame Israel more for the current wave of violence, while 21 percent blame Hamas.”

Clearly there are a number of possible explanations for this; here are three that come to mind.

First, . . . . As much as the world should strongly and unambiguously condemn such acts of anti-Semitism, to focus on a “second Holocaust” is to ignore the actual reason why anti-Semitism has today reared its ugly head again. It is not because of some essential, primordial racism against Jews. It is because of the actions of the state of Israel in staging a brutal, prolonged attack on the Palestinian people that is replete with violations of human rights and international law. That Hamas has also committed attacks on civilians does not erase the fact that Israel’s violence violates basic international humanitarian laws regarding proportionality.

International support for Israel is ebbing because the Holocaust narrative can no longer offer an omnipotent shield against a critique of the second narrative regarding the founding of the state of Israel.  Israel is in fact risking losing the narrative war altogether, as more and more of the global public is asking questions that probe into that history, prompted by the evidence of Israeli’s current efforts to continue and expand Israeli power and land, efforts that are now increasingly regarded not as survival tactics but as violent colonial ones.

More and more younger Americans, growing up well past the postwar era, find the Holocaust narrative to be less than absolutely and unquestionably a good reason to support the horrible killings in Gaza.  And as they learn more, their support will wane further.

Second, the massive attack on Gaza and its obscene civilian death toll is now delivered to a global audience via a variety of media forms that far exceed the mainstream media.  

Younger people are open to these modes of narrative, curious to know more, and morally puzzled and deeply concerned, and they in turn become conveyers of opinion and witnessing, as seen in the Tumblr site, TheWorldStandsWithPalestine which documents the demonstrations taking place around the world by means of uploaded photos from the participants themselves.

The Senate’s criticism of the U.N.’s findings on Gaza thus is immediately made questionable by stories like these and many others that create a cognitive dissonance in our minds between the claim of “equal violations” and the actual, not fabricated, figures that give quantitative weight to the visual images of disproportionate Palestinian death and destruction.

Finally, support for Israel is going to wane because unlike before, those who wish to criticize Israel today have already well-established and well-recognized modes of protest available to them. Most important of course is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which was established in 2005. 

The fact that more and more younger Americans are increasingly skeptical of supporting Israel’s military efforts is encouraging in the long run.  But we should not lose sight of the tremendous humanitarian crisis we are witnessing today. Change might be coming, but for now action is needed.

Israel may continue to plead and play the role of the victim, but the endless barrage of  photos and video clips that show what is really taking place will increasingly erode support for Israel.  Actions have consequences and the fact that Israel - and the U.S. military for that matter - may have gotten away with committing atrocities in the past no longer guarantees that such will be the case in the future.  Murdering hundreds of children is not what a victim does.  It's that simple. Netanyahu and his fellow henchmen hopefully will figure this out sooner as opposed to later.  Meanwhile, I personally support a 100% cessation of US military aid to Israel.  

Ann Coulter: Deal With Border the Way Israel Deals with Hamas

If one wants a good glimpse at the ugly racism that is now a pillar of Republican Party policy look no farther than the remarks of drag queen look-a-like Ann Coulter who would have America deal with the supposed "border crisis" by treating the undocumented children the way that "Netanyahu deals with Hamas."  With hundreds of Palestinian children being murdered by Israeli forces, the demand is horrifying.  But then again, to Coulter and much of the GOP base, if one isn't a white, heterosexual conservative Christian, one isn't really human and, therefore, murder or misery are one's due.  Perhaps the only good news is that people like Coulter are driving the younger generations not only from the GOP but from Christianity as well.  The Raw Story looks at Coulter's heinous statements:

Ann Coulter told host Sean Hannity that she wished Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “our president,” so he could deal with our border problems the way he deals with border issues in his own country.

Comparing tunnels found at the U.S./Mexican border with tunnels used by Hamas, Coulter asserted the U.S. is being invaded.

“We need a Netanyahu here. Can you imagine all these — yes, sometimes Palestinian kids get killed, ” she said as she began to laugh. “That’s because they are, they’re associated with a terrorist organization that is harming Israel, and Netanyahu doesn’t care what the religious leaders say, weeping about Palestinian children. He doesn’t care what the UN says. He doesn’t care what the media says.”

She concludes, “We are a country, we have borders, and Netanyahu enforces them. Why can’t we do that in America?”

 Laughing about the death of children - yep, that's today's GOP.  It is down right evil.  Just like the "godly Christians" in the GOP base.

Are We Turning our backs on Syrian Atrocities?

The answer to the question posed in the title of this post is a resounding "yes" - at least in some circles.  In others, the horrors being done in Syria are used to justify a stance of "see, what Israel is doing isn't so bad." Neither approach is right and moral.  Just because one group is committing atrocities doesn't make it OK for a different group to engage in evil.  Michael Gerson, a sometimes Israel apologist, brings needed focus on the murderous Assad regime in Syria through a column in the Washington Post.  While religion plays a role in the nightmare in Syria as in the Israel/Gaza atrocities, in Syria the difference is that Assad is a brutal dictator who seemingly wants to become the Hitler/Stalin of the Middle East.  Here are column highlights:

For every dissident and defector I’ve encountered, there is a moment when observation begins to feel like complicity, when remaining a bystander involves culpability. 

A photographer in the criminal and forensics department of the Syrian military police recently told a group at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “My job on a daily basis was just regular accidents, burnings, drownings, routine things.” In late 2011, as the Syrian uprising intensified, his routine changed. The photographer was sent to the morgue at a military hospital to document the bodies of prisoners arriving from 24 regime intelligence branches and military units. Soon 50 to 60 mutilated, emaciated corpses were coming each day — so many they were kept in storage rooms and parking lots. “Some victims were brought alive to the morgue and killed,” he recalled. 

He was involved in archiving the pictures of corpses taken by all the military photographers. “Pictures of children,” he said, “pictures of the elderly, pictures of women. I saw pictures of my own neighbors, from my own village.” They were images not of terrorists but of a broad, populist movement. 

The photographer decided he “could no longer take part.” But when he approached the opposition to defect, he was urged to stay, continue his work and smuggle out the archive on thumb drives. The result is 55,000 high-resolution photographs taken of more than 11,000 victims between September 2011 and August 2013. The corpses, variously, bear marks from being chained; their eyes have been gouged; there are dark spots left by electric shocks; most are gaunt from starvation.

Why would the Syrian regime keep such meticulous records? The photographer, who goes for security reasons by the name Caesar, describes it as part of a bureaucratic routine in which “the higher-ups got proof their orders were carried out.” It is also the type of practice — witness Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union — employed by a government completely unconcerned with eventual accountability, because it believes it will win. As the Syrian regime assaults Aleppo, the last major city contested by the rebels, this belief is not unreasonable. 

The Syrian conflict will be remembered as a strategic watershed for American foreign policy. When the rebellion was a broad, non-radical uprising — the dead in Caesar’s photos — President Obama did almost nothing to help. When radical groups gained momentum, it became an excuse for further inaction, because America didn’t want to create jihadists. We got the jihadists anyway, who are now causing regional havoc.

Obama embraced the narrowest possible definition of U.S. interests in Syria — the elimination of chemical weapons — which has nothing to do with civilian atrocities by other means. If Obama’s Syria policy is the model or norm for future presidents on atrocity prevention, no atrocity will ever be prevented. And the anti-genocide movement is relatively quiet about it all.

This is the problem with impunity for mass atrocities. It encourages future horrors, which create cycles of terror and revenge, which destabilize whole regions and generate new threats. Which is why atrocity prevention is a core national security interest.

Both Assad and Netanyahu need to be removed from power.

Israel Has Lost All Moral Authority

The image above (which a blogger friend shared via Facebook) is horrible and perhaps I am susceptible to easy emotion because I have young grandchildren in the same general age bracket as the young victim of Israeli war crimes (at least that's how I see the situation).  Ironically, once upon a time I was sympathetic to Israel and thought its military action against Palestinians justified if not overly palatable.   But no more.  Under Netanyahu and his government, Israel acts more like 1940's Nazi murderers that helped prompt Israel's creation.  Hamas supposedly represents a threat to Israel, yet the dead are over 10 to 1 Palestinian versus Israeli.  And the number of children being killed is horrific.  

I for one am tired of being forced to unwillingly subsidize Israel's murder of children through American military aid to Israel.  I've told my U.S. Senators as much.  Tim Kaine sent me a mealy mouthed response that basically said nothing and which I take as an insult to my intelligence.  Mark Warner hasn't even bothered to reply - his campaign just got a pretty nasty e-mail from  me that I will share with readers if I do not get a response tomorrow.

Part of what bothers me in addition to the deaths of innocents is the mindset evidenced by Israel which mirrors the Christofascists/Tea Party elements of the GOP base: if one isn't of the same skin color and/or religious belief construct, then you are not human and are worthy of death and mayhem.  Religion is a poison and it is what needs to be eradicated from the face of the planet.

Assholes like Victoria Cobb, Maggie Gallagher, and Tony Perkins, et al, spend millions against gay marriage and the dissemination of hatred when there are far larger evils to be defeated, starting with religious based bigotry and hatred.  If they are what Christianity is all about, please consider me an atheist.  Their God is nothing less than horrifically evil.  Ditto for Netanyahu's God.

Israel: A Study in Alienating Public Opinion and Fueling Anti-Semites

Dead children killed by Israeli forces

Like many others I am growing weary with more images every day of children slaughtered by Israeli military forces in Gaza.  Yet as the carnage continues, some are calling anyone  who criticizes Israel an "anti-Semite."  The leadership in Israel continues to be blind to what the war on Hamas is doing for Israel's moral standing in the world not to mention that the daily murder of children can only result in more and more hard core enemies of Israel among Palestinians.  Just because one can do something militarily, doesn't automatically make it the right or smart thing to do.  It is a lesson America has failed to learn from its own disastrous Middle East policies.   Andrew Sullivan looks at some thoughts as to how Israel my be defeating itself:

In effect, what Israel can do militarily is to kill a lot of people, the majority of which will probably be Hamas members or supporters, but which will do nothing to politically advance Israeli security beyond demonstrating to Palestinians and their supporters that in favorable circumstances Israel can do what it wants with international support.

Yet the Israeli superiority that needs to be demonstrated is political not military; no sane Palestinian believes they can defeat the Israelis in battle. … In the end there will be a cease-fire, and Hamas will have survived by virtue of the campaign they forced Israel to wage, even if every single current Hamas member in Gaza is somehow killed by the IDF. After all, Hamas is already being treated by mediators as an almost equal of Israel while the Palestinian Authority is all but forgotten. At that point what truly will have been accomplished?

It is Netanyahu who proved that the PA’s moderate strategy is futile – since Israel has only rewarded that moderation with more aggressive settlements. It is Netanyahu’s hysterical and belligerent exploitation of the deaths of three Israeli teens that elevated Hamas to a position it would never have achieved on its own. And this awful cycle of extremism from Jerusalem has now forged a unanimous Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire. But once the dogs of war have been released, it’s hard to rein them back in:

I can’t help but ask myself, What is this end they’re striving toward? Even if each and every Hamas fighter is taken out, does anyone truly believe that the Palestinian people’s aspiration for national independence will disappear with them?

The Israeli military can win the battles, but peace and quiet for the citizens of Israel will only be achieved through political compromise. But this, according to the patriotic powers running the current war, is something that we’re not supposed to say, because this kind of talk is precisely what’s stopping the I.D.F. from winning. Ultimately, when this operation is over and the tally is taken of the many dead bodies, on our side and theirs, the accusing finger will once again be pointed at us, the saboteurs.

Noting that Israel has carried out over 2,400 airstrikes since the start of the war, Robert Beckhusen explains why Israel’s air power is so ineffective against Hamas:

Whether Israel is justified or not in attacking Hamas, the choice the Israeli military to rely heavily on air power to achieve its objectives has resulted in disproportionate civilian losses compared to the threat Hamas poses. … The result is that either way, Hamas will probably come out of the fight with enough Israeli dead on its hands to claim some kind of victory. Hamas will likely be hurting badly. But Israel’s reliance on air power to destroy Hamas’s rockets will also likely fall short. Without a political solution, the conflict will almost certainly resume again.

Winning the battle sometimes nonetheless results in losing the longer term war.  This message seems lost on Israel's leaders at the moment.   They are creating endless propaganda opportunities for their enemies and losing the support of former supporters.

Right Wing Christians Dream of Holy War With Islam

One thing that seems to be getting nowhere near enough attention in the presidential contest is Mitt Romney's pandering to the ugliest elements of the Christian Right who want nothing less than a full blown war against Islam and a strike against Iran by Israel sometime prior to election day.  It is part and parcel with why I view religious extremism to be one of the biggest dangers in the world whether it be Islamic extremism or Christofascist extremism.  The far right seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous fool's errand in Iraq and the bungled mess in Afghanistan  a country that NO foreign power has tamed in over 2300 years.  I have no love for fundamentalist Islam, but another fool's errand is not the answer.  PoliticusUSA looks at the frightening dreams of American Christiofascists who are chomping at the bit to take the nation into another disastrous and non-winnable war.  Here are some excerpts:

Throughout world history, some of the worst atrocities known to mankind were committed in the name of religion going all the way back to Christian bible’s Old Testament. There are instances of ancient Israelites following god’s command to kill every man, woman, child, slave, and animal in a kingdom simply because the vanquished failed to abandon their religion and follow the Israelites’ god. 

The idea of Holy War did not end with the Old Testament, and the practice of shedding blood for the Lord became the rallying cry for the Crusades that pitted Christians against Muslims throughout the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries in several Christian military campaigns. Most Christians are aware that their religion’s namesake, Jesus Christ, taught his followers to pursue peace, and it is likely they can recite verbatim his admonition that if one “lives by the sword, they will perish be the sword,” and yet Christian religious leaders have been some of the most outspoken advocates for war.

America has avoided Holy Wars because the Founders kept a wall of separation between religion and the government, and one founder told Muslims America was not a Christian nation and had no enmity against Muslim laws or their religion. All that changed with the terror attacks of 9/11, and despite statements by George W. Bush that America was not at war with Islam in Afghanistan and Iraq, he often referred to those conflicts as Crusades.

At the Values Voter Summit last weekend, the Republican presidential ticket attached themselves to a religious hate fest that was contrived to demonize Muslims as liars and infiltrators, and called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike Iran before November 6 to begin a 21^st Century Holy War. There is a concerted effort by Bush neo-conservatives serving as Willard Romney’s foreign policy advisors to entice Israel to strike Iran to begin what one Romney advisor calls “a very substantial war,” and their goal is not to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but to begin a Holy War between Christianity and Islam. There has been a persistent push in America by Islamophpobes to demean the Muslim faith, and without exception it is the purview of Christian conservatives and religious leaders.

One of the speakers at the Values Voter Summit said, “Islam’s number one enemy is the truth! America’s number one virtue is the truth! Islam obliges Muslims to lie,” and that “it’s a daily thing to lie about America.” It was a classic case of projection for Christians to impugn Muslims for allegedly doing precisely what Republicans have been doing with impunity since 9/11, and at a panel entitled “Israel, Iran, and the Future of Western Civilization,” attendees were told Christians were under attack by Muslims to convince evangelical fanatics to vote out President Obama who they claim is letting it happen.

The Christian fanatics seeking global Holy War with Islam are being bolstered by Israel’s prime minister who said, “Iran is guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism. It’s the same fanaticism that you see storming your embassies today. Do you want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?”    .   .   .   . 

It must be the first time in American history that a foreign leader is campaigning for a presidential candidate to drive this country into a war that will certainly engulf the entire region, if not the entire world.

Romney has been warmongering for the past six months, and as his electoral support wanes, there can be little doubt he and Netanyahu are using Middle East violence to affect the upcoming election. The neo-con warmongers and Christian conservatives could not care less about the state of Israel, because the impending Holy War is not about Israel’s existence, but about killing Muslims and bringing about end times. 

It is a 21^st Century Crusade, and Americans must understand that Romney and his neo-con acolytes are not panting for war between America and Iran, but a war between Christians and Muslims to incite the battle of Armageddon and a quick rapture to heaven. 

As I have said many times, both domestically and overseas, Christianist extremist are a clear and present danger to America and the principles of the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Would that there were more media coverage of the insidious efforts of the Christofascists to take the nation into war.