- During the past month, the world has again seen the wounds
of the Middle East open, gash-red in Gaza. In response to continuing home-made
rocket fire from Gaza, Israel hit back. Within several days 120 Palestinians
were dead. More than half were civilians, 1 in 5 being children. Two Israeli
soldiers who were involved in the fighting were killed, as well as one
Israeli.
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- Israel says the continued terror of such rocket
attacks justifies collective punishment of a million and a half inhabitants
of Gaza. This includes heightening blockade of food, electricity, and essential
supplies around Gaza, which is now reduced to a virtual Israeli concentration
camp.
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- While 120 Palestinians died in two days, how many
Israelis have actually perished as a result of rocket attacks from Gaza?
Only 14 in the past seven years. 1
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- Perspective on Terror
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- I do not approve of Palestinians raining rockets
on Israel's cities, killing or maiming the innocent, including children.
Yet we need perspective on the balance of power - and terror, between Israel
and the Palestinians. The level of Israeli aerial bombardment of innocent
Palestinians through invasions of Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza over
the past decades vastly exceeds that of Palestinians against Israel.
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- Israel's invasions of Lebanon in, and earlier in
1982, were largely provoked by firing of rockets from Lebanon into Israel. Although
terrifying to Israel's northern cities, they also left relatively few dead.
Consider though, Israel's response in 1982 - a response made possible by
U.S. made bombs and fighter planes.
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- According to the Beirut police, some 18,000 Lebanese,
largely Palestinian refugees in Tyre and Sidon (many of whom were Christians)
were slaughtered by Israeli firepower. 2 Even the staunchest defenders
of Israel, including Stan Mooneyham, president of World Vision, were appalled
at the evident callousness of the Israelis to bombard non-strategic civilian
areas and prevent the delivery of relief and medical supplies.
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- Listen to this credible eyewitness, as recounted
in World Vision Magazine, September 1982:
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- Some say there was two hours' notice. Others insist there
was none. In a camp of 60,000, it's not easy to get the word around, even
when warning leaflets are dropped. . . . the first planes came at five
o'clock in the evening; from just after midnight until eight the next evening
the bombing was continuous. For three days the pounding went on. Everybody
here has friends who died in the attack. A woman makes a chopping
motion across the knee of a baby another woman is holding, saying she saw
a baby at Ein-el-Hilweh who had both legs blown off.
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- There is no Ein-el-Hilweh anymore. Never before have
I seen such total destruction, not even in Managua, the earthquake-stricken
capital of Nicaragua. If the world's war-makers and peacemakers want
to see what saturation bombing looks like, they should look here. Israel,
the country skilled in making the desert blossom like a rose, knows also
how to turn rose into desert.
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- Block after block of crumpled wreckage is all that's
left. Plus the unknown number of bodies. There must be hundreds down
there underneath the rubble - the permeating odor of decaying flesh tells
you that much. Refugees who escaped say that as many as 8,000 died. The
Red Cross puts the number at 1,500. Either way, it's one of the major massacres
of modern times.
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- Mooneyham then describes the Israeli attack on
Sidon in the darkness of the early morning:
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- . . . at 2:30 Monday Morning, June 14, an aerial bomb
slices into Kineye School. It rips bodies apart, strews arms and legs and
pieces of what a second before had been living, breathing human beings. The
concussion takes the rest.
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- No more running. No more crying. Now they sleep.
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- Now here I am three weeks later, where no observer is
supposed to be, seeing what no observer is supposed to see. The bodies
and pieces of bodies. . . .Kineye School is a charnel house; body fluids,
creeping across the basement floor from the stack of bodies, are ankle
deep in places. It is possible to count 50 or so bodies. The rest
are piled atop each other, hurled there by the blast that took their lives. We
are told there are 255 in the helter-skelter pile.
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- Lest We Forget
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- The Israelis, of course, played down the casualties
and damage in Sidon, as well as Beirut. Yet Mooneyham, who managed to penetrate
the area much sooner than other western observers has this to report:
-
- If the Israeli figure of 165 killed in Sidon is accurate,
I saw all but ten of those bodies in one school basement, still unburied
three weeks after the invasion. That says nothing about the township of
Ein-el-Hilweh just outside of Sidon which had a normal population of 60,000
and was obliterated by saturation bombing.
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- As the head of an international relief organization
bringing $400,000 worth of medical and relief supplies to the victims of
the holocaust, Mooneyham was astonished at the refusal of the Israeli
conquerors to allow distribution of such necessities, even after the fighting
had ended and the area was secure.
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- Early delivery attempts were thwarted on several occasions
by Israeli blockades. . . . causing costly delays. . . .Israel refused
all relief agencies access to occupied areas for more than ten days of
the worst need when quick action could have saved many lives. The Red Cross
ship SS Anton (carrying World Vision relief supplies) was refused permission
on security grounds to land critically needed supplies to Sidon two weeks
after the invasion, although our people in the city reported total security,
with people fishing on the docks.
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- Although Mooneyham did not view other areas of
Lebanon as closely as his inspection of Tyre and its environs, what he
saw there prompts him to make an ominous comparison: "the sheer magnitude
of this one visible piece of the Israeli war machine is incredible. David
seems determined to become Goliath."
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- Except for Mooneyham, there was no public criticism
of Israel's 1982 invasion by any major American evangelical leader. Nor
was there criticism of Israel for providing aerial lighting for the slaughter
of between 1,500 and over 2,000 innocent Palestinian men, women and children
in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps.
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- Actually, there was more criticism of Israel from
Jews. In the New York Times, (August 5, 1985, p. 1) a Mr. Hareven, retired
senior Israeli military officer, is quoted as saying, " Begin called
the Palestinians in Lebanon 'two-legged animals' and (Rafael) Eytan (former
Military Chief of Staff) referred to them as 'cockroaches in a bottle.'"
Richard Arens, brother of Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Arens, in an
article in the Portland, Oregonian, (May 15, 1983) said, "Relative
to the Palestinians, he (Moshe) has complete hostility and perhaps only
thinly veiled ruthlessness. His reaction to the massacres was 'nothing
happened' and if it did they deserved it I have abandoned any hope of appealing
to Israeli ruling circles on humanitarian matters. They claim privileges
as victims of the holocaust, but it is difficult to appeal to them in behalf
of other victims of genocide."
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- Tragically, as we have seen this past month in
Gaza, it is also seem impossible to appeal to the compassion of at least
40 million evangelicals. For them, only Jewish suffering is important.
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- Endnotes:
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- 1. The Guardian, (March 5, 2008, page 33 of the Comment
and Debate Section) "To Blame the Victims for the Killing Spree Defies
Both Morality and Sense."
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- 2. The number of dead as a result of Israel's 1982 invasion
is now regarded as at least 19,500.
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- http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/acluheavywithjews.html
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- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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-
- Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network,
a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.
-
- Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach
you how they have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting
Christians: <http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp>http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
-
- Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants
to steal it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7217700265038533779>Hate
Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase this
gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at <http://www.truthtellers.org/>www.truthtellers.org
for $24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
-
- TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this subject.
Call (503) 631-3808.
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