3/26/2008

Arab/Israeli Conflict

I am beginning a study of the Arab/Israeli conflict, which I know next to nothing about. I was never much of a student of history and found the subject boring in school. I do remember June 1967 in the news, however. I was just graduating high school at the time. The news that Jerusalem was in Jewish hands wafted in between strains of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. I especially associate the event with the song, A Day in the Life

I wonder why the news about Israel impacted me that day. There was something electrifying in the air. I hardly ever paid attention to the news at that stage of my life. But there are two events I distinctly remember from my youth....the day President Kennedy was assassinated (9th grade) and June 7, 1967. I can still visualize being in Mom’s kitchen in Quincy, MA. Why do I remember this? Am I Jewish? Why do I remember Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan and King Hussein of Jordan? I can not tell you who was President of France or Prime Minister of England at the time, or any other political facts. I remember Israel. And Jordan. That is all I remember on the world scene in the late 1960's as I degenerated into hippiedom after high school. Besides Vietnam of course. 

Somehow, in today’s volatile world, especially in the Middle East, the historical roots of the current conflict suddenly interest me....particularly when there is so much radical, left-wing propaganda being disseminated on college campuses. Universities have become hotbeds of subversive and dangerous politics. This needs to be countered with the facts. May the LORD lead to accurate and compelling information. I begin with an excerpt from Big Lies: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi. This is available for free download or purchase at http://www.frontpagemag.com/

THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS TEXT

Introduction by David Horowitz:

The War in the Middle East is nearly sixty years old. Most
people alive today are unfamiliar with its history and origins and lack
knowledge of its facts. This state of ignorance provides a fertile ground
for the unscrupulous to create myths that will justify their destructive
agendas. The political propaganda machine has created many such
myths to fuel their war against the Jewish state.

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East that elects its lead-
ers in free elections and guarantees rights to its citizens, and honors
those rights. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to be fighting
for “human rights.” There are about a million and a half Arabs living
as citizens in Israel who elect representatives to Israel’s parliament
and who have more rights than the Arab citizens of any Arab state.
Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to be fighting for “social
justice.”

Israel’s very creation is referred to by its Arab enemies as "the
Nakba", or the “catastrophe,” the clear implication of which is that
Israel should not exist. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to
support self-determination and oppose genocide. Israel was the victim
– at its very birth -- of an unprovoked aggression by five Arab mon-
archies and dictatorships. It has been the target of an Arab war that
has continued uninterruptedly for nearly sixty years because the Arab
states have refused to make peace. Yet Israel is the target of those who
say they want “peace.” Israel is the victim of terrorist attacks – sui-
cide bombings – which along with the Jews they mark for extinction,
kill Palestinian women and children as well. Yet Israel is the target of
those who claim to speak for humanity and a future that is “free.”
How is this possible? How can evil be dressed in the garments of
justice? How can a genocidal war to destroy a democratic people be
justified as a struggle for “national liberation?” They can through the 
creation of political myths that rationalize aggression and justify war 
against civilian populations.

In George Orwell’s futuristic novel, 1984, the Ministry of Truth
for the totalitarian state proclaims: Knowledge Is Ignorance; Freedom
Is Slavery
. The nature of political doublespeak never changes and
its agenda is always the same: Obliteration of historical memory in
the service of power. “The struggle of man against power,” wrote
the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, “is the struggle of memory against
forgetting.” Only a restored memory can demolish totalitarian myths
and make men free.

David Meir-Levi has written a text that restores the memory of
the facts that lie at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East. These
facts are crucial not only to the restoration of the history that politics
has obscured, but to the survival of a people who live in the shadow
of their own destruction. Everyone interested in justice will want to
read this little book.

3/08/2008

A Healing Captive

O God Who frees the captive
Do not liberate this carnal slave for freedom’s sake
For I will surely wing my flight to another thorny land
Break instead each evil bond
And rub my swollen wrists
Then take me prisoner to Your will
Enslaved in Your safekeeping.

O God Who ushers light into the darkness
Do not release me to the light to only see myself
Cast the light of my liberation upon Your face
And be Thou my vision
Do not hand me over
To the quest of greater knowledge
Make Your Word a lamp unto my feet
And a light unto my path
And lead me to Your dwelling.

O God Who lifts the grieving head
Blow away the ashes
But let Your gentle hand upon my brow
Be my only crown of beauty
Comfort me so deeply
My Healer
That I seek no other comfort.

O God Who loves the human soul
Too much to let it go
So thoroughly impose Yourself
Into the heaps and depths of my life
That nothing remains undisturbed
Plow this life, Lord
Until everything You overturn
Becomes a fertile soil
Then plant me, O God
In the vast plain of Your love
Grow me, strengthen me
And do not lift Your pressing hand
Until it can boastfully unveil
A display of Your splendor.

-- Breaking Free