"Perspective can definitely be filtered by when you decide to jump into the discussion."
~JH~
My friend, who responded to a post of mine on Facebook with the above quote, is correct. Your perspective can, and often is, filtered by when you decide to jump into any discussion. And I can tell you exactly where I was when I decided, after 50 years of keeping my head in the sand, to enter this one.
I was on vacation, driving down Hwy 168 in North Carolina, when I began to notice Israeli flags flying everywhere. Billboards, road-side attractions, and storefronts by the dozens were brandishing the Israeli flag and boasting, "We stand with Israel!" And because I'm an American and I like to be supportive, I thought, "I'd better stand with Israel, too!" Followed by, "I wonder what's going on in Israel." To be honest, I hadn't been keeping up with the happenings there recently, or since, well, ever.
So, just like I finally did with things like the white European move west and happenings at places like Mount Rushmore, I began to dig into what was, in fact, IS, happening with Israel, Palestine, the Gaza Strip, etc. I asked most everyone I knew, be they Christian, Jewish, or something in between about what they knew about what was happening in the Middle East and why we were supporting Israel. I got varying opinions (as you might expect), but the lead-in was nearly always, "Well, it's a complicated situation, but..."
But I'm here to tell you, from where I'm standing, based on just a little more digging (I am NOT professing to be any kind of Middle East expert) it is NOT complicated. In fact, it isn't complicated at all. So, should you be open-minded enough to consider what it is I've found, let's talk about why I, in fact, do not stand with Israel.
Let's clear up something first. For starters, not standing with Israel does NOT mean I don't care about Israeli people or Jews. What I'm about to discuss has absolutely nothing to do with one's "Jewishness." I've been called an Anti-Semite twice this week, and nothing could be further from the truth. Accusing me of antisemitism is a gaslighting technique to avoid facing a hard truth. To be clear, I do not support the Israeli government. The people are just like us and want what we do...to be understood.
Furthermore, I do NOT support the recent actions of Hamas. What Hamas has done is terrorism, plain and simple. And whether or not Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people, and whether or not Israel funds Hamas to discredit the Palestinians, what Hamas has been doing is wrong. But, so is what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades. Israel has been raining down genocide on the Palestinians in the name of God since WWII, and folks, that's just not okay.
How did this all get started? (I'm going to paraphrase a lot! I'm writing a blog, not a book). It may not surprise you to learn this is a religious war over, of all things, property. Apparently, some 6,000 years ago, the bearded sky man himself promised Abraham a "promised land." Abraham then spent some 40 years in the desert looking for said promised land, but never found it. Apparently, it turns out that land is Palestine.
Fast forward a few years to say, c. 1947, prior to which there was no geographic Israel, and the good ole Christian folks of the US of A supported the Jewish people in claiming lands in Palestine...violently, I might add. It was ordained by God, after all, and it was time the Israelites got their land. And besides, Israel was the only democratic state in the region and the United States needed stability (aka, someone who believes like they do) in the region so that we could peacefully get, you guessed it, oil. And so, the killing of innocent men, women, and children in the name of God to claim the holy land was begun and it's been going on for close to a century now.
This should sound familiar to you. Remember those white, European settlers who landed on the beach with a mandate from the Queen of England to "claim lands in the name of England?" Well, 54 million indigenous people and 98% of the native grasslands later, and they've done exactly that. They wiped out an entire, innocent population with no mandate other than an order from the Queen.
And how about the Crusades? How many people were slaughtered during that mess in the name of Christianity, and more specifically, Catholicism? And that leads me straight to the war we continue to wage in the Middle East over an attack on US soil. The number of deaths from 9/11 has now multiplied by the tens of thousands over a "war on terrorism" with the likes of Al Qaeda. 22 years. Twenty. Two. Years we've been waging war with an "enemy" we could have wiped out in 10 minutes. Follow the money.
The US is likely funding Al Qaeda so they can continue to wage war, because wars make the rich richer. Israel is likely funding Hamas in the same way, to not only discredit the Palestinians, but so they can continue to wage war that makes...the rich richer. In much the same way, the US funds drug cartels. You remember Ronald Reagan and the 1980's don't you?
So, you think this is complicated because it's a religious war in a region that has been at odds for centuries. I say it has nothing to do with religion, or being Jewish, or some mandate from god. I say it's as simple as right or wrong and it isn't that difficult to figure out. Want to know who the bad guys are? The terrorists?
If you believe the slaughter of innocent indigenous people in the name of the Queen was ok; if you think enslaving millions of Black people was ok, while proclaiming Christianity, was acceptable; if you think the Israeli government slaughtering innocent Palestinians to claim land promised by the word of god in an ancient text is prophetic, or that continuing to wage war with Al Qaeda in a war we could have won in minutes is "just the way things are," then you don't have to look very far for the religious, terroristic, cultist extremist...
It's you.
It's really that simple.
Namaste,
Matt
