An excel­lent post Grace. I appre­ci­ate you hon­esty and ques­tion­ing in this upside-down time in which we are liv­ing. When you state that you “can’t trust the main­stream report­ing, because it’s too one-sided. I can’t hang out end­lessly in alter­na­tive media out­lets like talk radio and the right blo­gos­phere, because they’re too one-sided. And it’s start­ing to seem that I can’t trust the talk­ing points in my own church, because (unless I’m totally miss­ing some­thing) they’re too one-sided.”, I think you are speak­ing for a great many peo­ple, churched and uncurched, lib­eral and con­ser­v­a­tive, at what infor­ma­tion to believe and hold on to. For myself that is where my faith comes in. I don’t recall where the quote came from but I try to “read with the news­pa­per (inter­net, radio, tele­vi­sion) in one hand and my bible in the other” and always with lots of prayer.

In read­ing over my com­ment I real­ize that I am not address­ing your thoughts on Anti-semitism and anti-Zionism so I will have to return and re-visit that aspect of your post.

Bless­ings to you and yours…

No need to feel like you have to go over things point by point if you don’t want to. As you can prob­a­bly tell, I tend to just start in and see where things take me. Some­times when it’s over and I real­ize I’ve filled four screens, I feel like I’m ask­ing an awful lot of people.

But it’s a GREAT relief to hear that I might not be the only one feel­ing a mite aban­doned these days.

It is hard because we have a nat­ural ten­dancy (and I cer­tainly fall into this myself as well) to paint one side as “right” and one side as “wrong” when in my hum­ble (and very well could be wrong) opin­ion, there is plenty of blame to go around, and all sides have made bad deci­sions, and all sides have made good deci­sions, and cer­tainly most of the peo­ple who have died have been caught in the middle.

Lord have Mercy.

See, there you’ve boiled down my four-screens-ful into a few sen­tences. I think the ten­dency in the “global com­mu­nity” envi­ron­ment is for every­one to feel like they can tell every­one else how to run their coun­try. Cer­tainly out­siders can bring some objec­tiv­ity, but we lack con­text and we get impa­tient with gray areas. We have this ten­dency to want to draw sim­ple lines — “Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Okay, Right Peo­ple get what they want. Wrong Peo­ple have to apol­o­gize and promist never to do it again! Prob­lem solved!”

We have this ten­dency to want to draw sim­ple lines — “Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Okay, Right Peo­ple get what they want. Wrong Peo­ple have to apol­o­gize and promist never to do it again! Prob­lem solved!”

That’s it exactly. I’ve been con­tem­plat­ing a lot lately con­text and how much good con­tex­tual under­stand­ing is needed. And, sadly missing.

How­ever, it’d be nice if it was that easy, kind of McLaugh­lin­ish “Wrong. The Cor­rect answer is…”

Sigh.

One thing to remem­ber is that this kind of fight­ing in the Mid­dle East has been passed down gen­er­a­tionally for hun­dreds and hun­dreds of years. This fight­ing and killing is no new prob­lem, nor has it really wors­ened over time. Each side just has big­ger and newer toys—ahhhh the illu­sions of progress: tech­no­log­i­cal advances and med­ical dis­cov­er­ies. Some­times all this “pro­gres­sion” can cause good, but some­times it just con­tributes to the dis­ease, cre­at­ing an even big­ger mon­ster. But more than that, the media plays an inte­gral role in spread­ing “news” almost instan­ta­neously around the world, giv­ing all the world cri­sis’, dis­as­ters, and dra­mas, global expan­sion. And the great thing about this, is all this global “expo­sure” can be enjoyed in the com­fort of your own home: sit­ting on the couch in front of the tube, pick­ing up the paper and read­ing it over a cup of cof­fee, dri­ving into work and lis­ten­ing to the radio, search­ing the Inter­net for a recipe for dinner—it’s EVERYWHERE. Con­flict gives the media some­thing to do. The media thrives on con­flict, blood, killing, war, sex, crime, drugs, pornography—anything and every­thing that pol­lutes the human mind and dis­torts our per­cep­tion of “nor­malacy” and reality.

The sad state of things, I think, is that I don’t think there really is an answer to this war and all the killing. No democ­racy or insti­tu­tion or law or con­se­quence can change the human heart. You grow up in a cer­tain cul­ture and that is what is nor­mal to you. Some peo­ple know no dif­fer­ently. But destroy­ing one ter­ror­ist group doesn’t solve the prob­lem. It might tem­porar­ily, but there will inevitably always be another group of peo­ple that will step up to the plate and be the “heros” and accept their posi­tions of “dig­nity” and fill the spots of those that were killed prior to them. It’s not about rid­ding the world of ter­ror­ist groups, it’s about chang­ing the hearts of peo­ple. And that is one task that a pres­i­dent of any coun­try can­not do on his own, and pos­si­bly can­not be done at all.

It makes me think of how the Jews wanted the Mes­siah that was promised to them. Then He came, and they did not rec­og­nize Him. They wanted Him but they’re hearts were not ready. We might want peace in the Mid­dle East, Africa, Korea, or any­where, and those places might want it for them­selves too, but it’s one thing to want it, another thing to do it, and whether or not it sticks is depen­dent upon whether your heart is ready for the change.

And in the mean­time, we as Chris­tians know that killing is not the answer. Christ did not come to “teach peo­ple lessons”–at least not the lessons of vengeance, revenge and hatred. He came to bring love. He came to for­give. And He came to save. Our respon­si­bil­ity then is to pray for the state of mankind–WE ARE ALL HIS CHILDREN–whether you are Chris­t­ian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Athe­ist, what­ever. We are all His chil­dren. We must con­tinue to pray that the Lord have mercy on us all…

O God, our help and assis­tance, who art just and mer­ci­ful, and who heareth the sup­pli­ca­tions of thy peo­ple; look down upon us, mis­er­able sin­ners, have mercy upon us, and deliver us from this trou­ble that besets us, for which, we know, we are deservedly suf­fer­ing. We acknowl­edge and believe, O Lord, that all tri­als of this life are given for our chas­tise­ment, when we drift away from thee, and dis­obey thy com­mand­ments; deal not with us after our sins, but accord­ing to thy boun­ti­ful mer­cies, for we are the work of thy hands, and thou know­est our weak­nesses. Grant us, we beseech thee, thy divine help­ing grace, and endow us with patience and strength to endure our tribu­la­tions with com­plete sub­mis­sion to thy Will. Thou know­est our mis­ery and suf­fer­ing and to thee, our only hope and refuge, we flee for relief and com­fort; trust­ing to thine infi­nite love and com­pas­sion, that in due time, when thou know­est best, thou wilt deliver us from this trou­ble, and turn our dis­tress into com­fort, when we shall rejoice in thy mercy, and exalt and praise thy Holy Name, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

OK, I have one sim­plis­tic ques­tion. It’s not who’s right and who’s wrong; that’s unac­cept­ably sim­plis­tic. It’s this: Imag­ine the world in five years under two sce­nar­ios: the Israelis win and Hezbol­lah wins. Which world would you prefer?

Hezbol­lah is hold­ing civil­ians hostage; its fight­ers are mas­querad­ing as civil­ians; it’s man­u­fac­tur­ing evi­dence of civil­ian atroc­i­ties at Israeli hands even while it delib­er­ately tar­gets Israeli cities. At the same time, Israelis are held account­able for not fight­ing this war with one hand tied behind their backs. But Israel’s sur­vival is a real ques­tion, and Iran’s ascen­dancy is a real pos­si­bil­ity. These Mid­dle East­ern Chris­tians who think they’ll fare bet­ter in a Mid­dle East man­aged by Iran’s mul­lahs than in one with a func­tion­ing Israeli state are either vic­tims of Stock­holm syn­drome or oth­er­wise deluded.

The death of the inno­cent is a mat­ter of pathos, no mat­ter which side the inno­cent is on. But some­times to delay war is to make it big­ger and to make its out­come even more uncer­tain. Con­sider the dif­fer­ence between the few thou­sand who would prob­a­bly have died if the Ger­mans had been stopped at the Mag­inot line in the 1930s and the mil­lions who even­tu­ally died stop­ping them after they took over Czechoslavakia, Poland, Aus­tria, enlisted the Ital­ians and the Japan­ese, mur­dered mil­lions of Jews, attacked the Sovi­ets and the Brits .… What might have been is a mat­ter of idle spec­u­la­tion, but by the time the Allies coun­tered the Axis, the out­come was in doubt.

The out­come of this war is com­ing to be in doubt now, and a lot of peo­ple haven’t stopped to imag­ine a rad­i­cal­ized Mid­dle East direct­ing gov­ern­ments in Eura­bia, tak­ing over the dec­i­mated for­mer Soviet Union, and begin­ning the process of tak­ing over Amer­i­can cities that has worked so well in Europe.

Jan,
That was so clear-headed and well-put that I really wish I’d said it. I think that part of the rea­son that so many peo­ple insist on turn­ing a blind eye to the absolutely hor­rific tac­tics of Hezbol­lah and other rad­i­cal Islamic fac­tions is because they really *can’t* imag­ine that they would ever suc­ceed. I get the impres­sion that the rea­son the whole world asks Israel to fight “with one hand tied behind its back” is that’s some­how the only way that it’s “fair” to the poor Arab countries.

That’s the prob­lem I often have with peo­ple who are obsessed with fair­ness. They’re the last ones to real­ize that there are a lot of times when the only way to make things more fair for one is by mak­ing them less fair for another.

Jamie,
I agree that it’s impor­tant not to con­fuse my judg­ment with God’s. Mine is clouded and lim­ited; His is per­fect and omni­scient. And given that we’re all a half world away, it’s also impor­tant to real­ize that — as you say — the reports you get are prob­a­bly rid­dled with errors.

But I’d prob­a­bly dis­agree that the pic­ture being hazy means that there isn’t a pic­ture at all. And just as it would be a bad thing to make too much out of unclear facts, it seems like a bad thing to ignore known facts or pre­tend that there’s a bal­ance where there isn’t one. In Hezbol­lah, we have a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion that

opened up for busi­ness in 1983 by killing 361 peo­ple in sui­cide bomb­ings in a U.S. embassy and a marine base in Lebanon.

exists with the STATED objec­tive of rid­ding the world of all non-Islamic influ­ences in the area

has car­ried out that objec­tive since 1993 by launch­ing rock­ets into Israel and car­ry­ing out bla­tant acts of war. The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity has con­tin­u­ally told Israel not to respond (or, as Jan said, to fight with one hand tied behind its back).

has embed­ded its artillery into the mosques, homes and non-military tar­gets, thus ENSURING that its host coun­try would take enor­mous civil­ian losses in a war

has won eight seats on the Lebanese par­lia­ment, thus show­ing that it means to make its poli­cies the state policy

has repeat­edly vio­lated UN res­o­lu­tions, most recently Res­o­lu­tion 1559 which called for it to dis­arm. Instead it tun­neled into Israel, killed eight sol­diers and took two prisoner

To say that Israel and Hezbol­lah are equiv­a­lent is just an exer­cise in denial. BUT, if you did say it, you still wouldn’t have arrived at the view­point that prompted me to write all this, which is the decided prefer­ance for Hezbol­lah over Israel.

I don’t say that our job as ordi­nary cit­i­zens and mere Chris­tians our job is easy. But there’s a dif­fer­ence between being judg­men­tal and using judg­ment. Doing the for­mer is a sin, but sus­pend­ing the lat­ter will keep us from mak­ing the most rea­soned deci­sions we can and arriv­ing at any sen­si­ble resolution.

I think Michael Medved makes an excel­lent point regard­ing why the Jews are hated. His per­spec­tive, how­ever, does not take into account the spir­i­tual side of real­ity. Satan hates the Jews. It was the Jews who God called as a nation to rep­re­sent Him­self. It was the Jews who brought to us the Old Tes­ta­ment Saints. It was the Jews who wrote and deliv­ered the Holy Scrip­tures to the world and exposed the unseen real­ity of Satan’s ulti­mate defeat. And it was the Jews who deliv­ered to us our Sav­ior and Lord Jesus Christ who crushed the head of the ser­pent and dis­armed the pow­ers & author­i­ties mak­ing a pub­lic spec­ta­cle of them, tri­umph­ing over them by the cross.

The Jews are a tes­ti­mony to God’s faith­ful­ness and real­ity. And Satan con­tin­ues to get his “pound of flesh” for all the grief they have caused him. So, he con­tin­u­ally stirs up trou­ble and incites the world against them.

They cer­tainly aren’t inno­cent and we can’t sim­ply write off every­thing they do just because they are the Jews, but because of the over­whelm­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic opin­ion of them, I think we hear only the bad stuff, which of course incites more neg­a­tive pub­lic opinion.

So, even though I think Michael is cor­rect form a nat­ural stand­point, I believe there is more to it than what we can see nat­u­rally. Even though the Church is now the new Israel, the nat­ural Jews are still on God’s heart, and He will ful­fill his promises to them as His Word has declared.

Thank you for those words. They’re a balm to my soul in all this. If we Ortho­dox acknowl­edge that there is mys­tery in the sacra­ments, the icons, the liturgy — in short, in phys­i­cal things that God makes sacred by the work of the Holy Spirit — I can’t under­stand why the Ortho­dox would deny that there is any mys­tery left in the peo­ple and place that gave us David, Abra­ham, Joseph, Daniel, Jonah and the Theotokos.

But you’re right — they suf­fer in a way that seems all out of pro­por­tion. I think every­one can sym­pa­thize with Tevye’s words in “Fid­dler on the Roof”: “We know we’re Your cho­sen peo­ple, but can’t You choose some­one else for a while?”

Grace — I am new to your site, com­ing across it while look­ing up St. Mary of Egypt, find­ing your church and blog. I am a Roman Catholic teacher liv­ing in Vir­ginia. I have a cou­ple of com­ments, not nearly as deep or insight­ful as the ones I have pre­vi­ously read.

First, regard­ing the arti­cle by the priest that states that we must see in each other a com­mon human­ity and value in life: in read­ing more and more about the his­tory of Islamic extrem­ism, some­times called Islamism, I have come to real­ize that we do not as Chris­tians or Jews, share with them com­mon val­ues of human decency. As I watched the news cov­er­age from Heathrow air­port, I was struck by the women in Islamic dress wait­ing to board planes with their chil­dren. The extrem­ists are will­ing to sac­ri­fice them because they believe that they will imme­di­ately enter Par­adise. We are fac­ing a foe who does not hold human life and free­dom in the same esteem as we do. I fail to see how we can have a fruit­ful dia­logue with the extremists.

Islamism is a polit­i­cal move­ment that seeks reli­gious purity, much as the Nazis sought racial purity. It is the dri­ving force in much of the reli­gious vio­lence across the con­ti­nents, seek­ing to bring about a world gov­erned under Islamic rule. Remem­ber, I am not speak­ing of all fol­low­ers of Islam, but the extrem­ists who can be traced back to the found­ing of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the early 1900s. How­ever, I won­der when reli­gious Mus­lims who abhor the vio­lence per­pe­trated in the name of Allah and under the ban­ner of Islam will wake up to what is hap­pen­ing. There are over a bil­lion Mus­lims in the world — by far out­num­ber­ing the extrem­ists. But their silence is deaf­en­ing. I do not believe that any­thing can be changed by non-Muslims. Pres­sure and out­rage must come from their com­mu­nity and cler­ics, and be directed at the Imams who are foment­ing hatred and who will with­out hes­i­ta­tion sac­ri­fice inno­cent life.

Con­cern­ing the mate­r­ial you are receiv­ing from your reli­gious lead­er­ship, I share with you the grief and sad­ness that springs from see­ing your Metropolitan’s nation­al­is­tic posi­tion take prece­dence over his Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples. It is equally dis­turb­ing for me to read of Syr­ian Catholics cheer Hezbol­lah. It seems that ancient hatreds trump reli­gion. How can we on one hand read the ancient Scrip­tures given to us by God through the Jew­ish peo­ple, and then curse them on the other? Jesus was born and died a Jew. I feel sorry for those who have lost their lives in Lebanon, but their lead­ers have allowed the nation to be a shel­ter for Hezbol­lah for years. May God have mercy on them. I grieve for the Israelis and their losses. They have not always done what is right, but in giv­ing back so much of their land, they have made them­selves vul­ner­a­ble to attack.

I pray that another Holo­caust does not occur. I ask God to also raise up lead­ers in the Islamic com­mu­nity who will con­front the Evil that has taken lead­er­ship of their reli­gion and endan­gers all of humankind.

Bar­bara,
Wel­come. Very sober­ing thoughts to con­tem­plate. Let’s hope that some of the sea changes begin to occur inside of Islam and those who have a shared his­tory with these rad­i­cal fringes. It seems that all that the ter­ror­ist fac­tion of Islam can think of with any voices for changes that come from the West (and DEFINITELY those that might come from Israel) is to stick their fin­gers in their ears and bide their time wait­ing for a chance for a sneak attack to silence the criticism.

And wait­ing for those who thought that appease­ment might work to wake up is get­ting a lit­tle nerve-wracking as well.

As you say, it’s hard to know where this might end.

Grace:

I share your trou­bled view of things. At the request on the Anti­ochian web­site, I did make a gift to the IOCC. They’re ask­ing for $500,000. I felt like this was a drop in the bucket…very nom­i­nal. And as a new­comer, I gave nom­i­nally. Yet I also felt that y’know, the Israeli’s are suf­fer­ing, too, and I ought to give there as well to even things out. I see no good side in this, but I also see the Israeli’s in more of a fight for sur­vival after Iranian’s pro-nuclear pres­i­dent vowed to wipe them off the map…well before this present strug­gle started. Have I made the coun­ter­bal­anc­ing gift yet? No. The pro-Israeli lob­by­ists are endeav­or­ing to raise some­thing like $500 mil­lion. Wow. I’m sure they’ll get it, too. I don’t know how they intend to use it, either.

But as a new­bie, it does trou­ble me about the imbal­ance in the news. I do know that if you check out the goarch.org web­site, there is some­thing that says the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­arch offi­cially buried the hatchet with between Ortho­dox and Hebrews in the 17th century.…just a few 100 years ahead of Rome. So there is more neu­tral ter­ri­tory here than per­haps seems in our juris­dic­tion. Frankly, espe­cially in view of AGAIN’s recent issue on juris­dic­tion­al­ism, one won­ders whether in this case the whole of juris­dic­tion­al­ism isn’t part of the prob­lem (again) as I doubt that a uni­fied Ortho­dox church would have felt itself quite so vul­ner­a­ble to pres­sures in this way. I would have rather left out all the pol­i­tics and pick­ing of sides.…a mat­ter com­pli­cated by the way that “cease fires” have been used as a tac­tics to the advan­tage of Hezbol­lah and their like for years to con­sol­i­date and strengthen any ground taken, or avoid the inevitable losses that follow-on to their oft-initiated for­rays as the Israeli’s respond. So I find the whole a very very tricky mat­ter to nav­i­gate, but I am glad that you did.

There needs to be a way for the Ortho­dox church to present a holy case for the pro­tec­tion of cap­tives, the res­cue of chil­dren and wounded and old/infirm, and prayer for peace. Seems this should be untainted by the “sides” to the con­flict. And sep­a­rately, there needs to be a call by the Church for both the Israelis and the Islamists to respect the peace of the non-combatants. I don’t know that the Chris­tians are not involved in this strug­gle or whether they have made com­mon cause with one side or the other, or both. Cer­tainly there is a place to call for respect of the rights of Chris­tians to wor­ship in both Lebanon and Israel.

As to an ending.…there is only an end to the present episode and not to the whole.

James the T.,
It’s been very vin­di­cat­ing to find out that I wasn’t the only one who was hav­ing a prob­lem with these things. I would hope that no one is say­ing that nav­i­gat­ing these shark-filled waters is easy. A lot of times there’s NO really per­fect move to make, just the one that causes the least amount of harm.

I have the feel­ing that part of what’s fuel­ing the emo­tion from those whose ances­tral home (or some­times fam­ily or extended fam­ily) is in this region is that there is an ancient feud between Arabs and Jews that New Worlders just can’t under­stand. We def­i­nitely have our his­tory of bad racial rela­tions, treat­ment of the Amer-Indians and all that, but this isn’t the same. We didn’t view those peo­ple as some­one that we would be at war with until the end of time (nor do I think that thought — or think — that about us, but I guess I don’t know for sure). It’s a strange thing to have (cap­i­tal ‘e’) Ene­mies in that way, and I think there’s some­thing that just can’t be described. I think it seems a lit­tle bar­baric to us, but West­ern ways just seem new­fan­gled and irrel­e­vant to these cul­tures, it seems.

I like the idea of the coun­ter­bal­anc­ing dona­tion. I didn’t read that issue of Again — wish I had.

JamesT:
Addi­tional thought: Israel look­ing for $500K in dona­tions doesn’t seem right to me either. It’s for cer­tain that Lebanon is tak­ing vastly more casu­al­ties and dam­age than Israel. I’m not say­ing that Israel couldn’t find a good use for that money, but Lebanon would prob­a­bly need it a lot more … IF you could donate that amount of money and not have it go to fund Hezbol­lah. But that’s prob­a­bly impossible.

Grace:

Okay. Got off my duff. Did the off­set­ting gift. The issue is a bit dif­fer­ent I guess: it’s clear the Israelis after 50 years are accus­tomed to war­fare and in-coming strikes as a way of life. If you check out the web­site (UJA.ORG) you’ll note the empha­sis on bomb shelters.…something Amer­i­cans for­sook in the 1950’s (except for the com­mit­ted Y2K-ers). But note also that one thing over­looked in this is the ten­dency for indis­crim­i­nant attacks by the Hez (title is just too long for this dude to keep typ­ing), while the Israeli’s are expected to pin­point their response. My point in stat­ing the obvi­ous is that surely some of the suf­fer­ing in Israel is by Arab Israelis.….not that the Hez would care.

Here’s the mate­r­ial off the UJA.ORG site:

“Is there a fundrais­ing goal?”

“It is cost­ing JDC and JAFI some $50 mil­lion monthly to pro­vide this vital sup­port. It will cost an esti­mated $250 mil­lion monthly in addi­tion once hos­til­i­ties cease to rebuild the econ­omy, infra­struc­ture, and pro­vide the nec­es­sary pro­grams. Because the needs are evolv­ing as the sit­u­a­tion evolves, we are aim­ing to raise a floor, not a ceil­ing, of $300 mil­lion, but likely much more will be needed.”

“Do dona­tions go only to Jews?“
“No: we are help­ing all vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing Israeli Arabs, Druze and Jews.”

There’s more, but this does give a start to under­stand­ing that IOCC’s $500,000 is a mere droplet in the water mol­e­cule of an ocean. A case of low expec­ta­tions? I don’t know. I do know that solely replac­ing the bridge bombed out this week­end would cost many, many mil­lions in the USA. And the cost of rebuild­ing in Iraq is prob­a­bly a good mea­sure of the actual costs in Lebanon as well.