Ethnic cleansing "in the name of God" in Gaza

Get the Point!

For those unaware, my very first Facebook suspension (first of seven) happened less than a decade ago when, following another round of Palestinian revolutionary groups launching ineffective rockets into Israel, the overwhelming Israeli military response which led to the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians moved me to post a picture of a Muslim father burying his son who had been killed by an Israeli bomb. 

The death toll rises each day among Palestinian civilians…

While that first suspension was short—three days to be exact—before the post was deleted by the Facebook police, I spent a number of hours responding to social media trolls who tried to paint me as an anti-Semite simply because I condemned the disproportionate military response by the Israeli Defense Force. 

Well, that was damnable lie then—and remains a damnable lie to this very day. 

You see, the sad reality is that far too many people in our world equate criticism of Israel's political or military moves to being against Judaism and the Jewish people!

To hold such a mindset takes a radical suspension of logic and the older I get, the more I realize that some people simply lack logical reasoning skills to aid them in understanding right vs. wrong—or truth vs. fiction. I am also old enough to understand that when it comes to the world's three largest monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, some people surrender their logical reasoning skills in deference to their interpretation of the Torah, Bible, or Koran. Which is sad because, if you separate what your Rabbi, Pastor, or Imam taught in their sessions about your faith, you would realize that in the realm of politics:

*Religion had LITTLE to do with modern Israel being created in what was called British Palestine in 1948. Rather, what we call Israel today was (and remains) the latest Euro-American colonial creation, one that had been contemplated for several decades before the anti-Semitic Adolf Hitler's regime killed six million European Jews during the Holocaust, but was hastened as a Jewish homeland to repatriate survivors of that horrific historical event. 

*There were many thousands of Jews already living in Palestine circa 1948, but when the European survivors arrived with U.S. and British backing over the next two decades, by the end of the Six Day War that Israel won over its Arab neighbors in 1967, a militarily powerful Israel had implemented many of the same apartheid/segregation policies that were endemic in America from the "Manifest Destiny" taking of lands from Native tribes, on through slavery and the Jim Crow segregation era that lasted until the mid-1960's.

*The idea "that lands have been won and lost during wars from the beginning of time" is true, but it doesn't make it right! Thus, the idea that Palestine was ripe for the U.S. and Great Britain to help European Jewish refugees to take over the cities, towns, and lands that were predominantly Muslim for a millennia still doesn't mean that those Palestinians that are still alive who remember their lands being taken in the 1940's, and the generations that have followed, shouldn't feel raw about the fact that in some places, they can't even visit the graves of their ancestors in what was once Palestine, but is now Israel! 

There was no Israel—just Palestine—until modern Israel was created in 1948 by the victorious World War II Allies by and through the brand new United Nations…

I strongly believe that in equating disagreement with Israeli political and military policy with being anti-Semitic, those who do so are cut from the very same cloth as those who believe that kneeling during the Star Spangled Banned or burning the American flag is sacrilege and anti-American. I disagree with that notion and further aver that governments and their leaders are SUPPOSED to be questioned, and military engagements MUST be criticized AND governed by the laws of war as codified in the Geneva Conventions!

Ergo, one can logically criticize Hamas for terror attacks on Israeli and American civilians last week, while at the same time believing that Palestinians have gotten a raw deal for nearly 80 years and deserve their OWN autonomous homeland! One can also believe that modern Israel has a right to defend itself, while logically criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military for its disproportionate response to the Hamas terror attacks—a response that has killed thousands of Palestinians civilians including those that the United Nations and “Doctors without Borders” have condemned for targeting Palestinian medical centers, ambulances, and civilian centers. 

Hamas targeted and killed over 1,300 Israeli and American civilians the weekend before last….

Now, I know that my words won't mean much to those who, in their own interpretation of the Judeo-Christian faiths, will shun recent history and political events to believe what they learned about Armageddon in church school long ago. But for everyone else who is open minded and believes in the separation of church and state per the First Amendment of the Constitution, lest we forget that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is wrong no matter who is doing the killing! After several millennia of wars that culminated with the worst one of all, World War II, logic would hold that surely the world would have learned its lesson by now?

But the world has learned very little because, to be bitingly real, too many of its inhabitants are only focused on suffering if it impacts them and their families—not if it hurts others that they may never meet and simply don't care about! Which is sad because I truly lamented the deaths of Israeli civilian men, women, and children 12 days ago, and I truly lament the deaths of every Palestinian civilian man, woman,and child who has died in the days since! Palestinian deaths, mind you, in their small home (Gaza) within the larger home (Palestine) that was taken and renamed Israel without their consent or political voices less than 80 years ago!

In the meantime, I will continue to pray for peace and an autonomous Palestinian state to join Israel and the rest of the so-called United Nations in the years ahead…