Imagine a foreign people moving into Texas and confiscating the land and farms of Texans. I suspect that many Texans would resist. And they would resist with violence. Yet, when this happens to the Palestinians, somehow, they are the terrorists. Oh, my bad. I forgot that things are different with the Palestinians. After all, the land belongs to Israel. God said so. Now, let’s assume that God really said this (NB: I have a book coming out in the next... Read more
Two weeks ago, I posted another blog about Christianity Today’s podcast series, “The Promised Land.” To say I was disappointed with the six episodes would be an understatement of monumental proportions. As I noted in my response to the podcast’s first three episodes, I had high hopes for the series. Unfortunately, these hopes were not only unmet; the series does more harm to the prospects of peace than it does good—and this, too, might be an understatement. NB: perhaps I... Read more
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
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