It must surely be considered the ultimate badge of shame – a word of thanks from Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It was given this week in response to Australia’s complicity in defeating the Palestinian UN resolution, calling on the world to recognise their homeland by 2017.
It makes no difference that the goal of the Palestinians resolution is entirely in accord with official Australian policy, and it makes no difference that the Australian people are unequivocal in their support for a Palestinian state. The Australian government continues to do what its US overlords tell it to do, thus betraying not only the Palestinian people but her own people as well.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that here, as in other foreign policy arenas, Australia is intent on fanning the flames of violence and division. We happily send troops to help bomb Iraq again while refusing to allow aid workers to fight Ebola in Africa. We thwart every attempt by the Palestinians to reach a political solution to their crisis while remaining mute about the murderous Israeli attacks on Gaza. Meanwhile, back at home, we dream up new ways to inflict pain on refugees. Indeed it is a shameful time to be an Australian.
Father Dave
Benjamin Netanyahu thanks Australia for helping to prolong Palestinian suffering
source: www.jpost.com…
Netanyahu lauds US, Australia for efforts to reject Palestinian UN bid
Israel responds to draft Palestinian statehood resolution that failed to pass UN Security Council vote on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday lauded the US and Australia for voting against the Palestinian UN Security Council draft resolution on Tuesday, and praised Rwanda and Nigeria for abstaining.
“I want to express appreciation and gratitude to the United States and Australia, as well as special appreciation to the President of Rwanda, my friend Paul Kagame, and to the President of Nigeria, my friend Goodluck Jonathan,” Netanyahu said when he arrived Wednesday morning to vote in the Likud primary.
“I spoke with both of them, they promised me personally that they would not support this decision, and they stood by their words. That is what tipped the scales,” he added.
The Palestinian resolution calling for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines by 2017, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, did not muster the necessary nine votes Tuesday in the Security Council.
Earlier Wednesday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said the Palestinian failure to get their statehood resolution passed Wednesday in the UN Security Council should teach them that provocations and attempts to unilaterally impose conditions on Israel will lead them nowhere.
“The Palestinian disregard for important countries in the international arena, first and foremost the US, stems from the backing they get form some of the states in Europe,” he said, in an obvious reference to the “for” votes cast by France and Luxembourg.
“Every state that truly wants to move an arrangement forward needs to act responsibly and make clear to the Palestinians that decisions are only made around the negotiating table,” Liberman said.
While France and Luxembourg voted for the Palestinian resolution, two other EU countries – Britain and Lithuania – abstained, illustrating the wide differences on the Mideast that exist inside the 28-state EU.
Liberman praised his ministry for the work it did to thwart the resolution, the second time in three years that Israel dodged a bullet on this issue in the Security Council, and cited Israel’s concentrated diplomatic efforts in Africa, the far East and central Europe. In 2011 the Palestinians failed in their attempt to win full UN statehood recognition in the UN.
In addition to the United States, Australia voted against the resolution on Tuesday. Britain, Lithuania, South Korea, and two of the three African states on the Security Council – Rwanda and Nigeria – all abstained, depriving the Palestinians of their nine votes needed to pass the resolution and force a US veto.
read the rest of this article here
Filed under israel and palestine articles, israel and palestine conflict by on Jan 1st, 2015. Comment. 
This is an excellent article by , highlighting the sickening hypocrisy of ‘Western’ politicians and media.
I do not for a moment condone the killing of Israeli teenagers. It is tragic and unacceptable. But surely this tragedy should only serve to highlight the tragedy of the deaths of so many Palestinian children at the hands of militant Israelis. Instead this tragedy is be being used to justify greater oppression and murder in the West Bank and Gaza!
And so the Australian Prime Minister, along with so many world leaders, forwards his commiserations to the parents of the dead Israeli children. This is admirable but wouldn’t it be a little more even-handed if he followed this with an expression of grief for their dead Palestinian sisters and brother? Such one-sided support only serves to reinforce the dark truth that the ‘Western’ world considers an Israeli life far more valuable than a Palestinian life. It does nothing to further the prospects for justice and peace in Israel/Palestine.
Father Dave
Naftali Bennett – bent on vengeance
source: www.thehindu.com…
The searing hypocrisy of the West
Since the teens went missing from Gush Etzion, a Jewish-only colony in the West Bank, Israel has besieged the 4 million Palestinians who already live under its thumb, storming through towns, ransacking homes and civil institutions, conducting night raids on families, stealing property, kidnapping, injuring, and killing. Warplanes were dispatched to bomb Gaza, again and repeatedly, destroying more homes and institutions and carrying out extrajudicial executions. Thus far, over 570 Palestinians have been kidnapped and imprisoned, most notably a Samer Issawi, the Palestinian who went on a 266-day hunger strike in protest of a previous arbitrary detention. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed, including at least three children, a pregnant woman, and a mentally ill man. Hundreds have been injured, thousands terrorized. Universities and social welfare organizations were ransacked, shut down, their computers and equipment destroyed or stolen, and both private and public documents confiscated from civil institutions. This wonton thuggery is official state policy conducted by its military and does not include the violence to persons and properties perpetuated by paramilitary Israeli settlers, whose persistent attacks against Palestinian civilians have also escalated in the past weeks. And now that the settlers are confirmed dead, Israel has vowed to exact revenge. Naftali Bennet, Economy Minister said, “There is no mercy for the murderers of children. This is the time for action, not words.”
Although no Palestinian faction has claimed responsibility for the abduction, and most, including Hamas, deny any involvement, Benjamin Netanyahu is adamant that Hamas is responsible. The United Nations requested that Israel provide evidence to support their contention, but no evidence has been forthcoming, casting doubt on Israel’s claims, particularly in light of its public ire over the recent unification of Palestinian factions and President Obama’s acceptance of the new Palestinian unity.
In the West, headlines over pictures of the three Israeli settler teens referred to Israel’s reign of terror over Palestine as a “manhunt” and “military sweep.” Portraits of innocent young Israeli lives emerged from news outlets and the voices of their parents are featured in the fullness of their anguish. The US, EU, UK, UN, Canada and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) condemned the kidnapping and called for their immediate and unconditional release. Upon discovery of the bodies, there has been an outpouring of condemnation and condolences.
President Obama said, “As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing. The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth.”
Although hundreds of Palestinian children are kidnapped, brutalized or killed by Israel, including several in the past two weeks, there is rarely, if ever, such a reaction from the world.
Just prior to the disappearance of the Israeli settler teens, the murder of two Palestinian teens was caught on a local surveillance camera. Ample evidence, including the recovered bullets and a CNN camera filming an Israeli sharpshooter pulling the trigger at the precise moment one of the boys was shot indicated that they were killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers. There were no condemnations or calls for justice for these teens by world leaders or international institutions, no solidarity with their grieving parents, nor mention of the more than 250 Palestinian children, kidnapped from their beds or on their way to school, who continue to languish in Israeli jails without charge or trial, physically and psychologically tortured. This is to say nothing of the barbaric siege of Gaza, or the decades of ongoing theft, evictions, assaults on education, confiscation of land, demolition of homes, color coded permit system, arbitrary imprisonment, restriction of movement, checkpoints, extrajudicial executions, torture, and denials at every turn squeezing Palestinians into isolated ghettos.
None of that seemingly matters.
It does not matter that no one knows who murdered the Israeli teens. It seems the entire country is calling for Palestinian blood, reminiscent of American southern lynching rallies that went after black men whenever a white person turned up dead. Nor does it matter that these Israeli teens were settlers living in illegal Jewish-only colonies that were built on land stolen by the state mostly from Palestinian owners from the village of el-Khader. A huge portion of the settlers there are Americans, mostly from New York, like one of the murdered teens, who exercise Jewish privilege to hold dual citizenship; to have an extra country no matter where they’re from, one in their own homeland and one in ours, at the same time that the indigenous Palestinians fester in refugee camps, occupied ghettos, or boundless exile.
Palestinian children are assaulted or murdered every day and barely do their lives register in western press. While Palestinian mothers are frequently blamed when Israel kills their children, accused of sending them to die or neglecting to keep them at home away from Israeli snipers, no one questions Rachel Frankel, the mother of one of the murdered settlers. She is not asked to comment on the fact that one of the missing settlers is a soldier who likely participated in the oppression of his Palestinian neighbors. No one asks why she would move her family from the United States to live in a segregated, supremacist colony established on land confiscated from the native non-Jewish owners. Certainly no one dares accuse her of therefore putting her children in harms way.
No mother should have endure the murder of her child. No mother or father. That does not only apply to Jewish parents. The lives of our children are no less precious and their loss are no less shattering and spiritually unhinging. But there is a terrible disparity in the value of life here in the eyes of the state and the world, where Palestinian life is cheap and disposable, but Jewish life is sacrosanct.
This exceptionalism and supremacy of Jewish life is a fundamental underpinning of the state of Israel. It pervades their every law and protocol, and is matched only by their apparent contempt and disregard for Palestinian life. Whether through laws that favor Jews for employment and educational opportunities, or laws that allow the exclusion of non-Jews from buying or renting among Jews, or endless military orders that limit the movement, water consumption, food access, education, marriage possibilities, and economic independence, or these periodic upending of Palestinian civil society, life for non-Jews ultimately conforms to the religious edict issued by Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, saying “a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”
Israeli violence of the past few weeks is generally accepted and expected. And the terror we know they will unleash on our people will be, as it always is, cloaked in the legitimacy of uniforms and technological death machines. Israeli violence, no matter how vulgar, is inevitably couched as a heroic, ironic violence that western media frames as “response,” as if Palestinian resistance itself were not a response to Israeli oppression. When the ICRC was asked to issue a similar call for the immediate and unconditional release of the hundreds of Palestinian children held in Israeli jails (which is also in contravention of international humanitarian law), the ICRC refused, indicating there’s a difference between the isolated abduction of Israeli teens and the routine abduction, torture, isolation, and imprisonment of Palestinian children.
When our children throw rocks at heavily armed Israeli tanks and jeeps rolling through our streets, we are contemptible parents who should be bear responsibility for the murder of our children if they are shot by Israeli soldiers or settlers. When we refuse to capitulate completely, we are “not partners for peace,” and deserve to have more land confiscated from us for the exclusive use of Jews. When we take up arms and fight back, kidnap a soldier, we are terrorists of the extreme kind who have no one to blame but ourselves as Israel subjects the entire Palestinian population to punitive collective punishment. When we engage in peaceful protests, we are rioters who deserve the live fire they send our way. When we debate, write, and boycott, we are anti-Semites who should be silenced, deported, marginalized, or prosecuted.
What should we do, then? Palestine is quite literally being wiped off the map by a state that openly upholds Jewish supremacy and Jewish privilege. Our people continue to be robbed of home and heritage, pushed to the margins of humanity, blamed for our own miserable fate. We are a traumatized, principally unarmed, native society being destroyed and erased by one of the most powerful militaries in the world.
Rachel Frankel went to the UN to plead for their support, saying “it is wrong to take children, innocent boys or girls, and use them as instruments of any struggle. It is cruel…I wish to ask: Doesn’t every child have the right to come home safely from school?” Do those sentiments apply to Palestinian children, too? Here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here are video examples of the abduction of Palestinian children from their homes at night and on their way to and from school.
But none of that matters either. Does it? It matters that three Israeli Jews were killed. It doesn’t matter who did it or what the circumstances were, the entire Palestinian population will be made to suffer, more than they already are.
Filed under israel and palestine articles by on Jul 4th, 2014. Comment.
He was never going to please everybody in his visit to the vortex of the world’s spiritual turbulence. Even so, the Pontiff’s visit to Palestine and Israel was a miraculous balance of grace and prophetic energy!
He went with a promise that his tour of the Holy Land would be of a strictly religious nature. Even so, Zionists had plenty to criticise him for:
- The Pope flew directly from Jordan to Bethlehem, thus by-passing Palestine’s Israeli gate-keepers.
- He refused to speak of Israel as a ‘state of the Jewish people‘ (despite promptings from Mr Netanyahu)
- He did refer to the ‘State of Palestine’, confirming the Vatican’s recognition of Palestinian as an independent state.
Even so, the Pope did not openly advocate the Palestinian cause but rather directed all his energies towards emphasising inclusiveness:
- He travelled everywhere with his Jewish and Muslim companions – Rabbi Abraham Skorka and and Sheikh Omar Abboud.
- he spoke of Jerusalem as the birthplace of the three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
- He stopped and prayed at a graffitied section of the so-called ‘Apartheid Wall’ that separates Israel and Palestine.
- He likewise stopped and prayed at the so-called ‘Wailing Wall’ in Jerusalem – inserting into the wall a prayer for peace between Christian, Muslims and Jews
The Pope’s coup de gras though came when he invited both the Palestinian and Israeli Presidents – Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres, respectively – to join him at his home in the Vatican to pray for peace between Israel and Palestine.
This was a political master-stroke as neither of the two men could respectfully decline such an offer. At the same time, who knows whether this might not give birth to a genuine peace-process, mediated over by a far more honest broker than the heavily compromised Americans!
With this bold initiative the Roman Pontiff managed to harness leaders of both countries and take them to neutral soil where they will have the opportunity to listen to the Almighty as well as each other!
Was this a piece of subtle political maneuvering or simply the prayerful offer of a pious man. In truth it was both, for prayer and politics cannot be easily separated. Both are concerned with the welfare of people, and so both are the business of the church!
Father Dave
Filed under israel and palestine religious conflict by on May 28th, 2014. Comment.
Abouna Labib (‘Abouna’ being the Arabic word for ‘Father’) is my favourite parish priest. Not only is he is a man of wonderful personal qualities – combining energy, compassion, and humility to an amazing degree – but he is a model pastor. I have never seen any Christian community that better models the Kingdom of God than does his church of St Thomas More in San Francisco.
Abouna Labib has more nationalities represented in his thriving congregation than were there at Pentecost! He has Anglos and Arabs, Filipinos and Brazilians, people of every colour and culture! Somehow between this humble Lebanese-American priest and the ever-present Spirit of God they manage to keep this mutli-coloured conglomeration a unified whole! St Thomas More church in San Francisco are a wonderful example to the rest of the world of what unity in community is all about!
Labib’s other great passion is for the plight of the Palestinian people. He did his seminary studies in Palestine and this opened his eyes to the suffering and injustice of the Occupation. Labib was the very first, I believe, to go online to promote the Palestinian human rights. His site, al-bushra.org…, is a vast repository of information on the Israel/Palestine conflict.
I can only hope that many people read Abouna Labib’s open letter. It is evidently written with prayer and passion. I pray that God will use it to forward the cause of justice and peace in Israel/Palestine and around the world.
Father Dave
Father Labib with Ange and myself in 2011
An open Letter to the Israelis and to the Friends of Israel
by Fr. Labib Kobti, San Francisco
Dear Friends,
Please, see on the following words of respect, a call for Justice, Peace and Truth.
1- Arabs and Jews are blood brothers: they are both Semitic, they are both sons and daughter of the Same Father Abraham.
The Arab people are not the enemies of the Jews (www.al-bushra.org…).
If we look at both ancient and recent history we will find that the Arab People are not the ones who persecuted the Jews. Millions were killed in Europe, but millions have been living in the Arab Lands. With their Arab blood brothers and sisters Jews will live in the Middle East.
History tells that the Jews found in the Arab World and with them Friends, Brothers and sisters.
In fact, before the promises to create the State of Israel the Arabs did not do anything against the Jews. Please, ask the good Jews who used to live in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, many of them still live in these Arabic countries. ( Please, read also” Blood Brothers”, by Elias Chacour)
When the Jews were suffering, unfortunately because of the Inhumane Holocaust,Palestine and not USA, Europe or any country have received thousands and thousands of Jewish immigrants from Germany, Poland, USA, Russia, Ethiopia … The USA, Europe, Russia, South America, Australia …refused to receive them. This is a fact.
Remember that before the existence of the State of Israel, Jews were living with the Palestinians: Muslims and Christians and Jews in peace. Jews were living in Haifa, Jafa, Lod, Ramleh, Jerusalem, Nazareth….This is also a fact that the Jewish historians mention with great honor.
Arab Christians have nothing to do with the Western Christianity who persecuted the Jews. Western Christianity does not represent the Arab Christians.
Arab Muslims and Arab Christians welcomed the Jews always; they did not fight with them for at least the last 1000 years. They have never fought against the Israelis until the promise of a creation of an Israeli State. The Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Iraqi, Syrian or Jordanian peoples decided fight with you because you created Israel, refusing to live with the Arabs as brothers and sister.
Arab Christians and Arab Muslims are Arabs and it is their right to fight occupation so as to defend their Arab Countries and entities. They fought against the French, the British, the Italians… in the past for the same reason.
In Europe, your Jewish people were those who pioneered in different fields, scientific, inventions, music, art, economic, etc., BUT you were persecuted in different periods there and not in the Arab World. Those who are defending you today in Europe or in USA, they do it because they are feeling the guilt and not because they do love you.
2- Are Arabs enemies of Jews?
Enemies they became when Jews took the Palestinian land, and when they made from Palestinians dispersed refugees all over. When Jews claimed that Palestinian lands, culture, history, food belong to them. They used even the Bible to justify their claims.
Jews said that they have the right to build settlements everywhere anywhere in Palestine. Although Palestinians belong to that land for thousands and thousands of years as descendants of the Cananites, Jebusites and Philistins, Jews claimed the right to take of others’ land and rights isin contravention of international law.
Jews placed the majority of Palestine under Israeli control by annexation, often coercive or of questionable legality.
Palestinians have the right to resist occupation. Israel is an occupation; it is said by the UN resolutions and International Law. And International Law gives any nation under Occupation to resist Occupation by all means.
I call for a nonviolent resistance. All people under occupation resisted occupation and their resistance was lauded by the whole world. Resistance is a right. It is not terrorism.
3- Facts of history on resistance:
a) Do you remember the Story of Samson in the Bible?His enemies tried by all means to kill in him everything. But they could not kill hisSoul, his Spirit, his Will to resist his enemies. He return back to win, he even killed himself, but it was disastrous for others.
b) Do you remember the history of the brave place called Masada in Israel? The Jews chose to resist and preferred the death to surrender to the Romans. By their brave death they inspired you, their people, for the future. They won the war against the Roman occupation. And by that brave death, you multiplied as people. You use this same place. Masada, today, as a symbol of your wonderful heroes and ask the tourists to visit it. In what way Masada was a victory? How Masada won? Because Jews resisted and the Roman Empire with all its big army could not kill the Soul of the Jews, their Spirit and their Will to resist.
c) Do you remember the Concentration Camps the Nazis? By the UNJUST and unjustified suffering and death of innocent people, the Jews eventually resisted and became stronger and unified. No Nazi could kill the Spirit, the SOUL and the WILL of the Jews. The Jews won the battle and history. Today history speaks about the Holocaust and will speak and sympathize with them. The world will say with you:never again. Do you know in what way the People in Auschwitz and other camps won at the end? Because the suffering and the death did not and could not and will never be able to kill the Soul, the Spirit of people who is determined to live and survive.
Do you understand the great lesson of all these facts of your history for the present time?
Your history is an example for all nations WORLDWIDE now.
Isn’t it also the history of the wonderful American Black people in USA, with Martin Luther King? Isn’t it the history of the Apartheid in South Africa with Mandella and many other people who fought for their rights, dignity and identity and build their national countries or entities? Nobody could destroy the Will, the Soul and the Spirit of people to survive and win one day.
4- History repeats itself:
This history will be repeated for the Arabs: Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians and especially for Palestinians, they shall overcome one day in spite of what those who do not read the history are doing to kill their soul, spirit and will.
Since the beginning of the Jewish immigration, the Jewish authorities were saying that Palestinians do not exist, Palestine has never existed, and there were no Palestinian identity.Then in Oslo, Madrid and Washington, after more than fifty years, Palestinians were recognizedpartners of peace, people with full rights, a proud nation. They do exist then. They do have a Soul, a Spirit and a Will to exist, and you will be unable to kill it.
Do you think that having the USA at your side now that you will have it forever with you and it is sufficient for you to prevail?
Do you think really that by weapon and armies you can always control the weak people?
Do you think that in killing and jailing for years without a proper trial, and exiling Palestinians you can kill their soul and their will and destroy for ever their spirit and future as a people?
With great respect and love, listen to me, Friends:
This people will multiply, as happened to you throughout the history; the history will speak about Palestinians and Arabs and will sympathize with (Palocaust) the Palestinian Holocaust; the war criminals will pay by the will of the International law one day or another.
Samson will return, and please, be friend to him before it is too late, he may do the same as he did thousands of years ago in our history…Already some people say that they are Samsons in offering themselves as suicide bombers. I do not agree with them, as I have never agreed with Samson. Samson killed innocent children, women and families and you regard him as a great Biblical hero.
So, please, remember your history, it could repeat itself, but this time with another people…in another time…and we do not want any more killing…
The Palestinian people will live, will survive and will come back as you did.
The history is with those who have a will, a determinate spirit.
Time is not working for you and with you.
You cannot kill the will and spirit of a people, the will of a nation!
Nobody could kill yours, Dear Jewish People and you came back, and you multiplied.
Just remember, please this, my friends.
Be friends to the Palestinians.Give them their Lands and work for justice.
Treat them as human beings; and will then have peace and prosperity.
Samson will not stop growing his hair and come back to destroy himself and others with him. It will be sad for everybody.
We do not need any Samson any more. We need Abraham who was the Father of the Jews, Christians and Muslims to unite his children for a better life.
5- An open letter:
There is a saying in Arabic: “When the soul of a whole nation yearns for survival, nature cannot but respond” (and it Will respond)
Dear Israelis and friends of Israel:
Help Israel to live and survive? Only peace and justice can help Israel to live and survive. Only if Israel and USA work for real justice and real peace in the Middle East region could help Israel to live and survive. In giving a blind eye on the injustices you are not helping Israel, the history tells you that, already I am sure your conscience is telling you this truth.
No chance with violence. The USA and Israel are nourishing violence and war, they are not helping Israel. USA cannot be then a good friend to Israel.The veto will not help. On the contrary it is feeding with more violence the soul, the spirit and the will of those people who want to survive. In working against justice in the Middle East you are nourishing the souls and spirits of people with anger and violence. You are creating thousands and thousands of Samson, you are creating a new Masada.
The best way is to help Israel to make Justice. The US money for weapons will not help the future of a people who have already suffer of violence paid with money.
Do you believe really that the Jews have the right over Palestine by the promise of God?
How could God, HaShem, Allah, the Creator of all prefer one people on another?
How God would give right to one people over one other people?
In God’s eyes we are all his creatures, we are all equal, there is no difference in His Holy Eyes of love between Jew, Arab, American, European or any foreigner, we are all brothers and sister of the one God “who art in Heaven”.
Please, read Genesis:1:27“So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created them; male and female created he them”. It did not say God created those people and the others not. We are all his image of love
We should live all then in front of God under the same law.
There are no differences, no preferences. God is not a real Estate agent.
You the friends of Israel (Americans, Europeans …) will find yourselves strangers in front of the choices of the God of the Jews.Are we creatures of second hand, or second class? Do not please use God for human interests and injustice!
Remember, please you cannot kill the soul and spirit of a people. Try to make from them your friends not your enemies.
The Arabs will be the neighbors of the Israelis forever,Americans are not the neighbors of Israel, and Europe is not their neighbor. Americans and Europeans will not stay forever friends of one only people. Time will tell you that this is what will happen one day or another. Work for justice do not make war, please, listen to the voice of your conscience and to the appeals of the history of nations.
Any kind of violence is a kind of war. And violence is not only killing one person but also depriving him of his fundamental rights. Stop all kinds of violence. Cultivate a culture of love, cooperation and sharing. Confiscating Palestinian lands, building settlements, demolishing their houses, jailing their youth…closing the roads to Jerusalem is violence. Please, just stop this and go back, if you use a Biblical claim to the real word of God and read in the Bible, Leviticus chapter 25 and ss.
Our Arab children and the Jews children are cousins, sons of the same Father, Abraham; they deserve to live together in Peace.
6– Some Evangelicals and some Christian-Zionists pretend in the name of the Bible that Jews have right on the Palestinian lands. Do not listen to them, they want you to go to Israel only for one reason to become one day Christians, they pretend that if you go to Israel the prophesy will be accomplished, and the Messiah will come and you will become all Christians.What kind of hypocrisy is the “Rapture” claim. It is not even a respect to your religion, it is not even a respect to your future, it is not even a respect to your past as Jews.
Listen to the real Christians and real Muslims who try to respect you and tell you:
That Jews, Christians and Muslims should have the same and equal rights and responsibilities. Build a society of love and not of hatred and violence. You can never empty Palestine-Israel from Arab Muslims and Arab Christians, make from them your friends, as you will be living for ever with them.
They do not deserve that you build hatred and violence. They did not persecute you in the past or made war with you before the existence of the State of Israel, and your claims that you do not want them to have their own State and Capital is very wrong.
Arab Muslims and Arab Christians are not your real enemies…do not listen to the lies of some people who are profiting economically and politically by creating a cold war against Islam and Arab Christians.
Just use your judgments. You cannot empty Palestine from Arab Muslims and Arab Christians who want to live a decent life and real future of peace and justice.You cannot kill the soul, the spirit and the will of Samson. He will return one day…make from him your friend before him returns, if not it will be too late for him and for you then…
I will pray for you.
May God, Allah, HaShem, the one Most Holy give you the wisdom to see clear the needed comprehensive justice so as to find the way for peace and cooperation, and love.
With love and respect,
Fr. Labib Kobti,
An Arab-American Roman Catholic Priest in San Francisco
The Original Article was written on 1996. Re-edited by the author on May 2, 2014: www.al-bushra.org…
For more articles, please go to: Al-Bushra.org…
Filed under israel and palestine articles by on May 8th, 2014. Comment.
Sir Gerald Kaufman is the world’s greatest weapon against Anti-Semitism!
As people worldwide are driven to despair over the unrelenting cruelty of the Palestinian Occupation it is easy to start blaming all Jews for the suffering of the Palestinian people. After all, the Israeli government claims that it speaks and acts of behalf of all Jews. It would be understandable (though regrettable) if any number of otherwise compassionate and intelligent people bought into this rhetoric, except that people like Sir Gerald expose the lie for what it is!
Sir Gerald Kaufman is unmistakably Jewish and proud of it! At the same time he is a passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause and a card-carrying member of the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign’ (BDS) against the Israeli government.
It was Kaufman who famously attacked Israeli apologists who drew on memories of the Holocaust to justify the 2008/2009 assault on Gaza by saying “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.”
Below is Kaufman’s latest offering, delivered to the British Parliament on February 5th in the context of a debate over human situation in Gaza. May God strengthen Sir Gerald to make many more such stirring speeches, and may God grant Sir Gerald’s colleagues ears to hear them!
Father Dave
Sir Gerald Kaufman
source: english.alarabiya.net…
“I once led a delegation of 60 parliamentarians from 13 European Parliaments to Gaza. I could no longer do that today because Gaza is practically inaccessible. The Israelis try to lay the responsibility on the Egyptians, but although the Egyptians’ closing of the tunnels has caused great hardship, it is the Israelis who have imposed the blockade and are the occupying power. The culpability of the Israelis was demonstrated in the report to the U.N. by Richard Goldstone following Operation Cast Lead. After his report, he was harassed by Jewish organizations. At the end of a meeting I had with him in New York, his wife said to me, “It is good to meet another self-hating Jew.”
Again and again, Israel seeks to justify the vile injustices that it imposes on the people of Gaza and the west bank on the grounds of the holocaust. Last week, we commemorated the holocaust; 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza are being penalized with that as the justification. That is unacceptable.
The statistics are appalling. There is fresh water for a few hours every five days. Fishing boats are not allowed to go out—in any case, what is the point, because the waters are so filthy that no fish they catch can be eaten? The Israelis are victimizing children above all. Half the population of this country is under the voting age. What is being done to those children—the lack of nutrition—is damaging not only their bodies and brains; it will go on for generation after generation.
It is totally unacceptable that the Israelis should behave in such a way, but they do not care. Go to Tel Aviv, as I did not long ago, and watch them sitting complacently outside their pavement cafés. They do not give a damn about their fellow human beings perhaps half an hour away. The right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) quoted the prime minister as saying that Gaza is a prison camp. It is all very well for him to say that, as he did, in Turkey—he was visiting a Muslim country—but what is he doing about it? Nothing, nothing, nothing!
The time when we could condemn and think that that was enough has long passed. The Israelis do not care about condemnation. They are self-righteous and complacent. We must now take action against them. We must impose sanctions. If the spineless Obama will not do it, we must do it—even unilaterally. We must press the European community for it to be done. These people cannot be persuaded. We cannot appeal to their better nature when they do not have one. It is all very well saying, “Wicked, wicked Hamas.” Hamas is dreadful. I have met people from Hamas, but nothing it has done justifies punishing children, women and the sick as the Israelis are doing now. They must be stopped.
As has been pointed out, there is a time limit for what we are talking about. The idea that things can go on, while we wait for a two-state solution, is gone. Sooner or later, the Palestinians will say, “We are dying anyhow, so let us die for something.” Let us stop that: I do not want a war. I do not want violent action, but the action that the international community takes must be imposed, otherwise hell will break loose. ”
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on Feb 19th, 2014. Comment.
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