Today is the one year . . . (I don’t see how the word “anniversary” is appropriate). Let me reword this. One year ago today, Hamas broke through the security barrier and launched its terror attack on Israel. I will be live tonight (October 7, 2024) at 5:00 pm PST (this link is good even after the live event) to discuss the past year and where we are today. I intend to have several guests to hear their perspectives as... Read more
“The West Bank is unlivable.” These are the words of Palestinian Christian Pastor Munther Isaac. While the world’s focus shifts from the utter destruction of Gaza to the increasing violence in Lebanon, the radicals within the Israeli government and the settler community have seized the opportunity to take more and more control in the West Bank. Has evangelical rhetoric only made matters worse? In the days, weeks, and now months following October 7, it became evidently clear that Evangelical Christians... Read more
A week ago, I was in a meeting in which one of the participants was a colleague in Bethlehem. He noted that he was anxiously awaiting a call from his mother, who was in Gaza. Without her call, he did not know if she was alive, let alone well. Then, earlier this week, we contacted him to inquire whether he had heard from his mother and if she was well. He replied that she indeed was alive, but she had... Read more
“When you commit crimes against another you are not only hurting them, you are also damaging your own soul” (Wendell Berry, The Need to be Whole). Two years ago I wrote a series of posts titled: The Status Quo ain’t the Status Quo. (links for each post can be found below). In those posts, I argued that as long as things remain as they were, which at the time included a lack of war and intermittent violence at best, Israel... Read more
The West Bank is under siege by Israel With all the attention on the war on Gaza, extremists within the Israeli government have seized the opportunity to intensify the oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank. And things are beyond “out of control.” In fact, I fear that it will soon be too late if we do not speak up now. Now, you might say that this is an overreaction. But I dare say that the events of the... Read more
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not find a swift resolution, it may never be resolved. By this, I mean that whatever resolution that eventually comes may well entail the erasure of either the Israelis or the Palestinians, or conceivably both. And it could well mean the destruction of the U.S. as well. NB: After I finished writing this post, I received an update on conditions in the West Bank from Mercy Aiken, a colleague at NEME. We decided that we... Read more
War is a business. And the Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) profits from it. A lot. As I have noted in previous posts, my expertise is in the book of Revelation. For the past 25 years, I have been contemplating the nature of the Beast in Revelation 13 and what it means for us today. This has especially been a pressing concern for the past several years. The problem is that the more I consider this, the more deeply I am disturbed. War... Read more
This title derives from a recent blog by Craig Murray, “We Are the Bad Guys.” Craig is not a nobody. He is a former UK ambassador. He begins his post by noting, “In Murder in Samarkand I describe how as a British Ambassador, when I discovered the full extent of our complicity in torture in the War on Terror, I thought it must be a rogue operation and all I had to do was make ministers and senior officials aware and they... Read more
The war in Ukraine is going so well. After two years of fighting off the mighty Russian army, the Ukrainians have entered and seized control of Russian territory! Well, that’s what the US Government, the Western media, and the military-industrial complex want us to believe. We must remember that when it comes to war, those in power and those who benefit from war want us to believe that it is going well so that we will support their intent on... Read more
Lest there be any question: torture is immoral. As Christians, we should fundamentally oppose torture because it is dehumanizing and thereby undermines the divine image inherent within humanity. It dehumanizes both the victim and the perpetrator. If we were to address Russia’s use of torture, I am confident that we would unquestionably condemn their actions and demand the international courts investigate. Russia’s poisoning of Alexi Navalny, formerly Russia’s most famous dissident and Putin’s most ardent rival, who was exiled to... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In