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Opinion - Stop the Gaza carnage

Published: January 14, 2009

The bombing and invasion of Gaza should stop now. It is immoral and impractical; the indiscriminate wounding of children and civilians makes the heart sick. And as is often the case, here is bloodshed and mayhem funded and aided by the United States. Joining my voice to those of friends around the world, I say: Stop the killings, end the occupation and pursue nonviolent methods of dialogue and cooperation toward a just, peaceful co-existence.

This to me, is the Christian, nonviolent and decently human response. My friends and I, we do not support anti-Semitism. The epithet "anti-Israel" doesn't apply to us. We are pro-peace. Which is to say, we don't plant our feet in one camp or another. We support both the Jewish vision of shalom and human rights for Palestinian children. We want a nonviolent solution and nonviolent movement toward a nonviolent Mid-East and world so that no more children die. Simple as that.

Something new is needed, some policy of substance and sense. For starters Israel should end its occupation and return the land it stole in 1967. And it should cobble together a two state system, one that begins the process of building trust and coming upon, not just peaceful coexistence, but of neighbourliness. And neighbourliness would begin with Israel dismantling its nuclear weapons.

As for the United States, it has long been a promoter of unrest in the region. Without US support in military and economic aid (about $3.5 billion annually) as well as weapons from US military contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Israel could not carry out this invasion or maintain its occupation. - Fr John Dear, National Catholic Reporter (click below for full article)

http://ncrcafe.org/node/2363

 

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Recent Comments

  1. Fr Dear denies being anti-semitic, anti-Israel, or in "one camp or another". But he condemns Israel's allegedly "indiscriminate wounding of children and civilians" whilst making no condemnation at all of the DELIBERATE TARGETING of children and civilians by the Hamas terrorists, whose formal written goal and raison d'etre is to forcibly obliterate Jews from the Holy Land. In fact his only mention of Hamas' deliberate murderous attacks on innocent civilians is to defend them with "of course, oppressed people, long steeped in the ways of violence, will reach for desperate measures, such as lobbing rockets. "

    On his own figures, one quarter of those killed by Israel have ben civilians. A remarkably low figure considering Hamas' policy of using civilians as "human shields" for its rocket launchers, ammunition stores and military command posts.

    The rule in war is not "you may only kill as many of the enemy as he has killed of your people". One may morally kill as many enemy combatants as necessary to prevent the murder of even one more innocent civilian. One of the Hamas rockets landed on a kindergarten. No doubt to Hamas' disappointment, it was closed at the time, but the clear intention was to kill as many innocent children as possible.

    If this is even-handed neutrality, I'm a Dutchman.

  2. Life is complicated, but Fr Dear would have us think it's very very simple. Unfortunately, the reality is that if Israel does not stop the rockets now, their increasing range will soon or even already be able to reach Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Dimona where Israel's nuclear reactor is. That is why Israel is in Gaza, making such an issue of the smuggling tunnels, and so on. If Hamas gets away with its aggressions, being given a free pass by people like Fr Dear, then the consequences could be utterly disastrous, with hundreds of thousands dead, some of them even Fr Dear's dear Palestinian terrorist supporters. Israel is morally and legally obliged to protect its citizens and even its very existence from the threat of a rocket bombardment from the Hezbollah in Lebanon that reaches Haifa and Tel Aviv, and from the south from Gaza that covers Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Dimona, both Hezbollah and Hamas being puppets of Iran and its possible nuclear bombardment.

    Fr Dear appears to be trying to protect Hamas from any retribution, and even therefore rooting for Hamas to destroy Israel and to help plunge the whole of the Middle East into a Holocaust. When you get right down to it, his neutrality is non-existent, Ronk is right.

    The Allies would not have been able to fight World War II if Fr Dear's one-sided criteria were applied, giving of course the Nazis a free pass just as he now gives one to Hamas and their Iranian leaders.

  3. Father Dear,
    You may be able to correct me on this, but wasn't the last unilateral withdrawal by Israeli troops followed by rocket attacks against Israel from Hamas killing Israeli civilians as well as military personnel?
    I recognise and agree with your general comments about the necessity for restraint. But what would be your specific advice be to the Israeli authorities should a second unilateral withdrawal be answered in the same fashion?

  4. What has me baffled is that many liberal and modernistic clergy decry the alleged 'disproportionate response' or 'targeting of civilians' which is simply untrue, yet if you quiz these same clergy and their professional lay diocesan staff- they will, almost to a man & woman, show a false respect to Jews by saying we cannot proclaim the Gospel to them.
    In other words the liberal and modernistic clergy and their helpers get it wrong twice:
    1) on geo-politics and the right of nations to defend themselves against rockets from terrorist organisations who have not changed one iota their evil platform and
    2) are also into non-conversion false ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue( or is that monologue??)

    I am totally baffled. I must raise the stakes and say that I must be double Dutch.

  5. Rev. Fr. You are quite entitled to have your opinion, however, get you facts right before you put pen to paper. HAMAS is a terrorist organisation who hides their activities under the cloak of "human shields." Nowhere in the UN Resolution is the word HAMAS mentioned. It is a onesided document placed forward by the Pan-Arab League and adopted by the politically correct members of the UN - including our own Australian government. Get a life and write the facts, not tripe.

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