VATICAN CITY, July 14 (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday strongly deplored Israel's strikes on Lebanon, saying they were "an attack" on a sovereign and free nation.
A sovereign and free nation that freely chose to declare and execute repeated and relentless acts of war against the sovereign and free nation of Israel, that is. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said the Vatican condemned both "terroristic attacks" and military reprisals, thus insinuating that the US should have left Italy in the hands of the Axis powers rather than attacking sovereign and free Europe.
The difference of course, between the two events concerns military reprisals by Jews, an entirely different thing than reprisals: kidnapping, torture, genocide and murder, by the Vatican against heretics, scientists, Jews, heathens and Protestants for the crime of not being Roman Catholic.
"In particular, the Holy See deplores right now the attack on Lebanon, a free and sovereign nation, and assures its closeness to these people who already have suffered so much to defend their independence," said the man in a red dress on Vatican Radio.
Oh but wait – Israel hasn’t suffered for 50 years to maintain its independence has it? Oh wait, Lebanon isn’t really independent as long as it’s controlled by religious militias, is it?
So maybe I should strongly deplore the proclamations from an organization that took a fortune from Mussolini to look the other way while Jews were rounded up in Rome and that somehow forgot to excommunicate Hitler, much less “Deplore” his actions.
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13 comments:
Because the Catholic church isn't saintly doesn't mean that what Israel is doing is okay. The Israelis will get my support when they start to comply with UN resolutions, a few of which are listed here: http://www.jatonyc.org/UNresolutions.html
Oh, wait a minute, they already get something like $10 billion of my tax money every year, so I guess I support them whether I want to or not.
"Isn't saintly" is a wee bit of an understatement and as a whole, the argument is a fallacy. If I'm not saintly, it doesn't give someone the right to support someone who kills my children. The Church comes to this argument with dirty hands and a thousand years of unadmitted guilt.
The UN has and always has made resolutions that are unfair and unreasonable and based on a struggle between superpowers for oil resources. The US occupied Japan for a long time after Japan attacked us and we would still be occupying them if they continued to attack us. It's not as though the Muslim world didn't declare war on Israel in 1948 and it's not as though the 1967 war was started by Israel
You also suppport Egypt to the tune of billions and yet Egypt has made peace.
Hezbollah is dedicated to killing every Jew in the area - how the holy hell do you compromise with that and how the hell can you believe that the return of territory would change the attacks which began 20 years before the territory was taken?
Why is there no discussion of giving the damn hostages back and why does everyone forgive that bearded basterd who just spent the morning pledging unending death and destruction?
Face it, Israel is the enemy for being there and not being Muslim and no deal, no compromise, no payoff, no seperate state will change the undying enmity of people willing to sacrifice the world to kill Israelis for ever and ever, world without end.
Your tax money also went to support Palestinians who diverted it to secret accounts in cyprus and spent the rest killing people. Doesn't that bother you?
Captain, you make it sound like the "Muslim world" declated war on Israel in 1948 and 1967 just because. Just because they were bored. Just because they had nothing better to do. There is historical context to it and it has nothing to do with a bunch of religious fanatics trying to get their jollies off.
Muslims and Jews had been allies for centuries beforehand, so there has to be a reason that things profoundly changed in the early 1900's.
There are 2 sides to every story.
Sometimes more than two but the truth may play no part in any of them. There is a religious context to both sides, whether it's those who can't stand to see an unbeliever on the same continent or those who want to build a third Temple and tear down al Aqsa. I can't imagine this conflict without hope of afterlife and without God.
But context or no context, what reason or context would you suggest that makes it all right to blow up school busses and ambulances and hospitals and crowded restaurants? What kind of understanding do such people merit?
What context justifies killing your own civilians by hiding behind wonmen and children?
It's simply a choice of life or death. What would you suggest that Israel do?
I would love to see them trade land for peace, but what they get is not peace but more killing. Just what are they supposed to do?
India and Pakistan were also artificial creations - as was Iraq - would you suggest that they continue to work out their differences by killing children or that they learn how to live in peace as is obviously possible? Japan had reasons to attack us - should we have said OK and just given them free rein? Westerners had no business in the Orient, did they?
It's possible to make peace with Israel - those who have tried have succeded, but you can't give land back to those who don't want peace and use the land to kill you.
I agree that you don't give land back to people who want to kill you. But Hizballah is not the same thing as the people of Lebanon just as Hamas is not the same thing as the Palestinian people.
It is the inability to distinguish among those groups that I find most problematic in these discussions. You say that the Muslim world declared war on Israel in 1948, but you make it sound as if it came out of nowhere.
If someone takes your house, kicks you out, and makes you live in the outhouse, you aren't going to be thrilled about it. And if they never apologize for it and never acknowledge that a grave injustice has been done, those wounds never heal. Of course it's easy to say you want peace when you have already taken everything you wanted.
The animosity against Zionists preceded 1948 and reprisals were made against Jews that had lived there for a thousand years, but I know that you know. I'm quite aware of the abuses by Israel and I sincerely want to see as much justice as can be done at this late date.
No justice will be done by using terrorism. No one will get back what they lost by murdering the great grandchildren of those who took it or by killing non Israeli Jews on another continent or blowing up buildings on the other side of the world while praising God.
I am convinced that the movement to create a viable Palestinian State would be successful if not for groups like Hamas who will use every concession to launch mortars and send their own children to blow themselves and other people's children to bits. In fact these incessant, daily murderous attacks may be the biggest obsticle to any degree of equitable settlement and I am convinced that these military groups are terrified of peace and unwilling to allow it. Hamas has made it impossible for those Israelis who wish to give back land to succede - and I think that is their intention.
It's too late to give Manhattan back the Manahattos or California back to Mexico and Israel is not going to dissolve. Peace may be a better option than wasting one's life and future or blowing ones self up for nothing.
As for inability to distinguish between groups, the Rhetoric from Hamas and al Qaeda and Hezbullah doesn't seem to distinguish between Israel and Europe and America either. It seems to be more about true believers Vs. the Infidel. Can you deny that things would have been quite different if those settling in Palestine had been Muslims?
And all along, there has been the possibility to give back the hostages, but for a handful of madmen who would rather destroy everything than back down and be seen as weak.
Egypt got back the land it lost when they tried to exterminate Israel. Isn't that evidence that other people may also?
Several interesting points. Israel was a strong force behind the creation and strengthening of Hamas. When Hamas started out, it was a fringe group that had no chances of competing with the PLO for the sympathies of the Palestinian people. The Israelis calculated that if they could play the secular PLO against the fundamentalist Hamas, the Palestinian community would go into civil war and there would be no need for peace. What we are seeing today is a direct result of how badly Israel's divide and conquer tactic has backfired (although that depends on what Israel is currently trying to accomplish).
Egypt didn't try to exterminate Israel. There is so much back story to that, not the least of which was that Begin, Sadat, King Faisal and the Shah of Iran had been meeting since the early 70's to discuss creating a regional superbloc. The Western powers got wind of it and each of the men was silenced in one way or another because peace in the region is incredibly dangerous to Western imperialism.
It really is not as simplistic as you describe it.
Oh, and I agree that violence isn't the way to accomplish much, but isn't that the history of most successes? Americans fought the British, Jews fought the British (Irgun, Haganah and Stern gang) and no one tisk tisk'd at them for fighting for their freedom. Why are the Palestinians held to a different standard?
Oh, and speaking of religious fanatics who hate Jews, here's a great story from WaPo:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071501032_pf.html
I'm sure many of the bullet holes in the feet of Israel are the result of bad decisions - even without knowing all the stories, I'm sure it's true.
Of course it isn't simple - it's one of the most complex stories around and one of the most difficult histories to get factual and unbiased information about. I don't argue with a lot of what you say, but if Egypt didn't want to overrun Israel, why all the tanks blazing across the Sinai?
I saw that story and having taken a tour of several military instalations not long ago, I can confirm that the atmosphere is similar to one of Billy Graham's "crusades." I don't mean among enlisted men either, I'm talking about colonels and generals.
I was first called a Christ killer a bit over 55 years ago when it was noticed that I didn't know the words to the Christian songs we had to sing at school.
That's most of what prompted me to spend a good part of my life reading the history of Christianity and the resultant cynicism with regard to the certainties of Bible babblers.
There are theories about the Yom Kippur War, but the widely held belief among Arabs is that Sadat and Begin could not have come to the table publicly without a preceding conflict.
I get called infidel, terrorist, jihadi, etc. and that nonsense really doesn't bother me, but I think it would really piss me off to be called a Christ killer. Let me get this straight - White Christians today shouldn't be blamed for slavery because they didn't do it, but Jews today still bear responsibility for the death of Jesus 2,000 years ago. As usual, their logic is like swiss cheese.
Well the Gospels are so full of narrative contradictions, errors and mistranslations of prior scripture and the events it describes are so at odds with history that basing anything on them involves more blind faith than anything else. And of course these books were written a generation or so after the alleged fact and in other countries by non-jews and for non-jews, and were selected from a group of dozens of books over 300 years later by people with an agenda that didn't include much regard for what was left of the Jews at that time.
There are, of course no contemporary accounts of Jesus, no evidence outside the religion for his existence and the similarities with figures from earlier hero cults are overwhelming. In my opinion, if a real historical Jesus jumped out of a time machine today, nobody would believe him and would probably kill him. To me, that's the deepest irony I can imagine.
I am reading a book right now called "What Jesus Meant" and the author makes similar points - Jesus was a radical, that he was not a Christian and that the people who profess to act in his name these days would find him threatening in the way the Romans did.
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