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Rick Perry Gets it Very Wrong About Israel Palestine
by Eileen Fleming
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been to Israel more than any other presidential candidate and he believes he’s on a mission from God.
In his 11 years in office he also wrested much power away from that states Legislature.
This citizen of conscience for US House of Representatives has been to Israel seven times since 2005, but I spent my time in occupied Palestine, on my mission from God: seek truth and report it!
When Perry led a delegation to Israel in 2009, he told The Jerusalem Post, the alliance was a natural one, “When I was here for the first time some 18 years ago and I was touring the country, the comparison between Masada and the Alamo was not lost on me. I mean, we’re talking about two groups of people who were willing to give up their lives for freedom and liberty.” [1]
Denial is safe harbor for those who cannot bear the light of truth, and only the blind miss the glaring similarities of what European colonists did to the Native Americans and what Israel has done to the indigenous Palestinians.
Perry’s recent opine piece for The Jerusalem Post, “The Palestinians’ illegitimate UN gambit” follows with my corrections to this presidential candidates misunderstandings.
PERRY: “Our nations have developed vital economic and security relationships in an alliance based on shared democratic principles, deep cultural ties and common strategic interests.” [2]
On May 28, 1993 Ariel Sharon explained:
“The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.”
America and Israel’s economies are both tied to an Industrial Government Military SECURITY/Surveillance Complex and the poor keep getting poorer while the merchants of war are fat and happy.
PERRY: “The Jewish state faces growing hostility from Turkey. Its three decade-old peace with Egypt hangs by a thread. Iran pursues nuclear weapons its leaders vow to use to annihilate Israel.”
It was President Harry Truman who crossed out the word “Jewish state” on the draft of the Establishment of Israel that was cabled him and substituted “State of Israel” which he affirmed was contingent upon Israel upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Read more…
Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, fled to Israel following protests that erupted after Israel failed to apologize for murdering nine Turkish humanitarian activists and killings five Egyptian Policemen. Some of Egypt’s political parties have also called for changes to the country’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The planned demonstrations in Jordan at the Israeli embassy in Amman on Thursday forced Israel to pull its ambassador and staff out as the people called for ending the shameful “peace treaty”.
In 2006, Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science explained:
“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word ‘map’ or the term ‘wiped off.’ According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was ‘this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’
“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s-a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then.
“Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison.
“So, too, the ‘occupying regime’ in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence: ‘This too shall pass.’”
PERRY: “And now, the Palestinian leadership is intent on trashing the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the conflict with Israel in favor of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations. The Palestinian plan…threatens Israel and insults the United States…They seem to prefer theatrics in New York to the hard work of negotiation and compromise that peace will require.”
What decades of negotiations and the “peace process” have wrought is to disseminate the so-called holy land into pieces!
What threatens Israel is being held accountable and responsible for a 44-year military occupation; whereas under international law occupations are to be temporary and occupiers are not to pilfer resources, colonize or build a wall on land that belongs to the occupied.
“Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile. The Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.” [3]
PERRY: “It was a mistake to inject an Israeli construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, as an unprecedented precondition for talks. Indeed, the Palestinian leadership had been negotiating with Israel for years, notwithstanding settlement activity. When the Obama administration demanded a settlement freeze, it led to a freeze in Palestinian negotiations.”
Obama’s mistake was backing down and negotiations must be done between equal players; but these two sides have never been equal players.
PERRY: “In refusing to deal with the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and taking this destabilizing action in the UN, the Palestinians are signaling that they have no interest in a two-state solution. The Palestinian leadership’s insistence on the so-called ‘right of return’ of descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel’s sovereign territory, thereby making Jews an ethnic minority in their own state, is a disturbing sign that the ultimate Palestinian ‘solution’ remains the destruction of the Jewish state.”
Refusing to recognize the rights of the indigenous people of the so-called holy land is what has destabilized the Middle East.
As Israel’s nuclear whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu said, “Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew.” [4]
The “so called right of return” is what Zionists claim for any Jew without any historical connection to that land to come and colonize upon legally owned Palestinian property.
The establishment of the State of Israel was contingent upon upholding the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, which enshrines:
Article 13.
- Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
- Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
PERRY: “The circumvention of serious negotiations by PA President Mahmoud Abbas demonstrates a basic failure of leadership and a betrayal of the true interests of the Palestinian people.”
The Palestinian Civil Society Calls for:
- Ending the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
- Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
PERRY: “Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the US has provided more than $4 billion in aid to the Palestinian Authority. This year alone the Obama administration is seeking to secure $550 million in funding for Palestinians.”
By all accounts the United States has given more money to Israel than to any other country. The Congressional Research Service’s conservative estimate of total cumulative US aid to Israel (not adjusted for inflation) from 1949 through 2010 is $109.001 billion.
Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel and the Palestinians
Fiscal Year 2011
During Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.2 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)
PERRY: “The United States must not condone and legitimize through our assistance a regime whose actions are in direct opposition to a peace agreement with our ally Israel, and in direct opposition to our own vital interests.”
Our vital interests should be what is best for all Americans first and the “special relationship” with Israel has become a liability for US!
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad involvement in the terror upon America, “By his own account stemmed from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” [5]
Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas Day in 2009, was fueled by “his sympathies toward the Palestinians and anger over Israel’s actions in Gaza.” [Ibid]
Of the 193 UN members, 122 already recognize Palestinian statehood. Israel has diplomatic relations with 156 states.
The Palestinians have rightly lost faith in the leaders of the West to be honest brokers for justice that could bring peace, and the showdown on 20 September at the UN-the body that partitioned the land and thus is very responsible for the ongoing disaster is the very body that must intervene.
Recognition of a Palestinian state in the UN will not end the military occupation, but it will gain virtual citizenship, a passport and sovereignty, legal protection against violence by Israeli settlers, the right to fight back in self-defense if attacked and potential backing for their claims from international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
“The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership. A leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures.” –William Fulbright
This Citizen of CONSCIENCE for House of Representatives 2012 is in solidarity with that!
Come September:
- Rick Perry is longtime friend of Israel – and Jesus
- Comment: The Palestinians’ illegitimate UN gambit
- Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007
- BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010
- Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2010, page 35
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=141402
Posted by Eileen Fleming on Sep 16 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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That picture of king Rick just about says it all don’t it? He represents everything that sucks about what our country has become on a political level. I wonder if that big ole kosher schlong of a sausage he’s about to fellate has some sort of deeper metaphorical meaning?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but thanks for starting my day with a laugh as if I can’t laugh and “If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution” [Emma Goldman]
Eileen, you are very ignorant about Biblical history. Palestine has NO right to any part of Israel, God gave it to His chosen people the Jews long ago. They are squatters with a false idol for a god.
Rick will be an excellent President, as he has been a Governor. May God set you straight on the godless muslims. THEY are the enemy of every man/woman that is not a muslim. Are you going to wear your berka like a good girl sympathizer? Get a clue.
There is no such thing as a “chosen people”. I’m tired of hearing this racist crap go unchallenged. Jews are NOT “The chosen people” anymore than blacks,whites,or Asians or latinos or anyone else.
So your reasoning is faulty.
i understand your last sentence, wolf. maybe he is just trying to send a subliminal message to the people in the village down in downtown Manhattan?
I wonder if Christian fundamentalist Perry is misleading on purpose or if he is that brainwashed. I assume the latter.
I think BRAINWASHED most likely as so much bad theology is out there teaching that God made a real estate deal with the ancient Hebrews- but they always neglect the deal was contingent upon the Hebrews honoring their part of the bargain!
“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:
“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” -Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007
“What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8
If this man gets the job of running America God help us!
Don’t worry. That’s the whole point. God will help us with Rick in charge.
What kind of liberals claiming to be conservative veterans occupy this wierd website? Why don’t you just vote for Slowbama again and let it all slide down the toilet.
That same toilet is your only throne and “kingdom”, Mr. “King”
It would be Bush II complete with false-flag terror, foreign adventures, bankruptcy, zero-tariff “free” trade, more lost manuf jobs, bad border security…etc…fm a “conservative” that Fox will fawn over..
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! You cursed Brat!
There were no “Jews” in the Old Testamant. NONE, The Children of Israel @ Deut 32 & Genesis 49 are Hebrew “Israelites” not Yiddish speaking ASHKENAZIM proselytes to Talmudic Judaism. “Jews” are not Israelites. = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27-eI5UuUUI&feature=related = Not that mixing “Metaphors” can’t be done…see BOONDOCK SAINTS…I Liked Yogi Berra, better. But Dig this Chutzpah…Under the heading of “A brief History of the Terms for Jew” in the 1980 Jewish Almanac we read: “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an Ancient Israelite a ‘Jew’ or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew.”
The World Book omits any reference to the Jews, but under the word Semite it states: “Semite . . . Semites are those who speak Semitic languages. In this sense the ancient Hebrews, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians were Semites. Modern Jews are often called Semites, but this is inadvisable as it perpetuates a “Jewish” lie. .”
There are hundreds of books, mainly Jewish Encyclopedias and histories available for study, which prove that over 90% of the Jews of the world are not a Semitic people, but few people other than historians ever bother to read them. Following are just a few:
The Jews are Not a Race! by Dr. Alfred Lilienthal – Jewish historian, journalist, lecturer, and graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Law School. During the Second World War, he served with the US Army in the Middle East. He later served with the Department of State, and as a consultant to the American delegation at the organising meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco.
Since 1947, he has been at the forefront in the struggle for a balanced US policy in the Middle East. He is the author of several acclaimed books on the Middle East, including The Zionist Connection. He now lives in Washington, DC.
On December 18, 1993 Dr. Lilienthal celebrated both his 80th birthday and the 40th anniversary of his first book, What Price Israel? Dr. Lilienthal, who is a courageous anti-Zionist Jew, was joined by more than 200 guests who travelled from all over the United States to attend. . . an information night on the zionist crime against humanity called “Israel”, where no Israelites actually live. As for Rick the Zionazi Whore dog…well he should, if he had any Honor, or decency defer to the Sr. Texas Delegate to the National Legislature Ron Paul. But Being a former cheerleader at A&M, well let’s just say, he’s not really into Truth and Justice,,,just light in the loafers. One day, maybe soon, people will get over the Jewish Myth, and deal strictly with the Truth. Jews are not Israelites, and need to return to Khazaria.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jews.htm , oh and by the way the Davidians didn’t commit mass suicide, they were murdered by terrorists working for the currency printers and Media owners…so Rick Perry wasted a lot of time not going after real murderers and terrorists who just happen to be “JEWISH”.
The Zionists have picked Perry as the Republican Presidential candidate. It doesn’t matter how moronic his comments are, or that others, like Ron Paul, blow him out of the water, showing him to be a vacuous talking head.
Rick Perry is just parroting the rhetoric, talking points, thought memes that his Zionistz backers and handlers have provided and coached him with.
Rick Perry says he believes he’s on a mission from God, how many Lunatics who gained Political Power throughout History have said or had this same mindset, maybe he is just having auditory/visual hallucinations,they do have medications for this, which or what kind of Spiritual Entity is Rick Perry listening to?
Rick Perry really will say whatever he thinks will get him elected.
Chuck Baldwin knows and understands about this all too often “Godly” or “Spiritual Hucksterism”
Reminds me of Trinity Broadcasting Network , CUFI, Jack Van Impe,Jimmy Swaggart,Paul Crouch,Jim & Tammy Baker,John Hagee,Benny Hinn,Pat Robertson,etc.
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was on a mission from God,too,right?
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush
”Just in the past few months,” Bartlett said, ”I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.” Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush’s governance, went on to say: ”This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them. . . .
”This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,” Bartlett went on to say. ”He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.” Bartlett paused, then said, ”But you can’t run the world on faith.”
Former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used ‘biblical images’ to deliver reports on the war in Iraq to President Bush.
With the former president known for his devout evangelical beliefs, bible passages were printed on the top secret briefs detailing the progress of the war in 2003, it has emerged.
The hand-delivered messages, which were leaked to GQ magazine by a source at the Pentagon, were said to portray the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein as being more like a ‘ crusade’ than a modern day war.
One example had a U.S. Abrams tank in the desert and below it the biblical quote from Ephesians: ‘Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.’
Another brief showed an image of Saddam under a quote from the First Epistle of Peter: ‘It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.’
The biblical remarks take on a greater significance as it is now known President Bush considered he was on a mission from God when he ordered the 2003 invasion.
Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour during the Israeli-Palestinian summit in Egypt four months after the invasion.
Rumsfeld was not known for having strong religious beliefs and has been described as acting as a modern-day Rasputin by ‘manipulating Bush’s evangelical beliefs’.
According to GQ writer Robert Draper, Pentagon staff were worried the messages would outrage Muslims if made public.
The idea for the cover sheets was reportedly not Rumsfeld’s, but came from Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence at the Pentagon.
The June issue of GQ claims that he told those who complained about the cover pages that ‘my seniors’ appreciated them, including Bush and Rumsfeld.
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ”I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, ”and I was telling the president of my many concerns” — concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. ”’Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ”My instincts,” he said. ”My instincts.”
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ”I said, ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”’
Behind Bush were two banners. ‘King of Kings’, proclaimed one. ‘Lord of Lords’, said the other.
Bush is already under fire for allowing the appointment of General William Boykin to head the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Boykin, who speaks at evangelical Christian meetings, once said the war on terror was a fight against Satan, and also told a Somali warlord that, ‘My God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.’
George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.
Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.”
Mr Bush went on: “And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East’. And, by God, I’m gonna do it.”
“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word ‘map’ or the term ‘wiped off.’ According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was ‘this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’
Thanks for including this in your post Eileen Fleming
Rick Perry , Trinity Broadcasting Network , CUFI
Jack Van Impe,Jimmy Swaggart,Paul Crouch,Jim & Tammy Baker,John Hagee,
Benny Hinn,Pat Robertson,etc.
Jim Jones & Charles Manson / Dick Cheney & Binyamin Netanyahu
Rick Perry , just another puppet for the Apocalypse Cults
“God speaks through me,” he said. ( This story was first reported in the local papers, including the Intelligencer Journal and the Lancaster New Era, on July 16, 2004.)
God speaks through George W. Bush? Gosh. That sounds crazy. That sounds like the President of the United States, the most powerful human being on the Earth, the man who commands the greatest stockpile of nuclear missiles and other weapons of mass destruction ever created, believes that he is a prophet chosen by God to represent all that is good and right in the Universe. When George W. Bush says, “God speaks through me,” it sounds as if George W. Bush really believes that whatever words happen to come out of his mouth are the words of God himself.
A Puppet President Perry could also launch a nuclear attack- which is what legions of fundamentalist Zionist ‘Christians’ have been lusting for in the very mistaken belief they will be raptured out/escape the man-made madness.
A Puppet President Perry could also launch a nuclear attack- which is what legions of fundamentalist Zionist ‘Christians’ have been lusting for in the very mistaken belief they will be raptured out/escape the man-made madness.
……..ouch
Activist Post
Yet, unfortunately, there has arisen a new danger of a false flag terrorist attack inside the United States or even one being staged in another country which may be justified to further crack down on civil liberties in the United States or another illegal war against a foreign nation.
In a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on September 8, the US government claims that it cannot account for or track thousands of pounds of “highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium.” While the initial report received little attention in the mainstream or even the independent media, this is a serious issue because this radioactive nuclear material is “weapons usable.” That is, it could be used to make a nuclear or, in the parlance of our times, a “dirty” bomb.
REMEMBER Mordechai Vanunu
Just did and remembered this conversation we had in 2005:
I asked Vanunu if he had heard of the “Left Behind” series. He hadn’t, so I explained that “What got left behind was the gospel of peace and love. These books are bad theology and poor literature. Did you know that in America there are Christians who actually want Armageddon? They believe they will escape the nuclear holocaust because they are now the new chosen ones. They think they will be raptured; they think they will be lifted out of the world. They believe a theology of escapism and they ignore that Christ promised that ‘The peacemakers shall be called the children of God’ and that Jesus is the Prince of Peace.”
Vanunu replied, “The time has come for the United States to see the truth of Zionism. It began as a secular nationalist movement, not a religious one. Then some Christians believed that when Israel became a nation, it was the beginning of the second coming. They are deluded if they believe peace will come through atomic weapons. Atomic weapons are holocaust weapons. Christians should be the first people against them. The Christians in America should be helping the Christians here. America needs to wake up to this fallacy that Jesus will come back by nuclear war. America needs to wake up to the fact that the Palestinian Christians here have no human rights. Aren’t Christians supposed to be concerned about other Christians? Aren’t Christians supposed to be concerned about all the poor and oppressed?”
I replied, “It is non-negotiable: all of that stuff Jesus said about doing for the least and the oppressed. It is non-negotiable for Christians; we must forgive our enemies, and we must love those who hate us. Whatever we do or do not do, we do it unto God. Every time I went through a checkpoint, saw the wall, or heard a story of oppression, I wondered how God can stand this situation. I can’t.”
Eileen Fleming,
Yes the “Left Behind” series is an excellent example of the whole Rapture/Scofield madness.
Nuke/destroy the World and Jesus would/will be quite pleased, I don’t think so, Plenty of Churchs don’t directly refer to the Scofield distortions just made up to fulfill a long term Political agenda(s)
but they still are taught about this particular interpretation of the Book of Revelations which if anything referred to events in the first or second Century ad.
Martin Luther of the Protestant Reformation referred to the Book of Revelations as a “stack of Hay”.
Over the last 100 years or so there have been how many books,tracts,writings,movies,etc. about that Book and it is open to virtually as many different interpretations as one can imagine.
TO GENERAL ALEXANDER SMYTH MONTICELLO FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON
January 17 1825
DEAR SIR,
I have duly received four proof sheets of your explanation of the Apocalypse with your letters of December 29th and January 8th; in the last of which you request that so soon as I shall be of opinion that the explanation you have given is correct I would express it in a letter to you. From this you must be so good as to excuse me because I make it an invariable rule to decline ever giving opinions on new publications in any case whatever. No man on earth has less taste or talent for criticism than myself and least and last of all should I undertake to criticise works on the Apocalypse. It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. I was therefore well pleased to see in your first proof sheet that it was said to be not the production of St John but of Cerinthus a century after the death of that apostle. Yet the change of the author’s name does not lessen the extravagances of the composition and come they from whomsoever they may I cannot so far respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas. You will judge therefore from this how impossible I think it that either your explanation or that of any man in the heavens above or on the earth beneath can be a correct one. What has no meaning admits no explanation and pardon me if I say with the candor of friendship that I think your time too valuable and your understanding of too high an order to be wasted on these paralogisms. You will perceive I hope also that I do not consider them as revelations of the Supreme Being whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to Him a pretension of revelation couched at the same time in terms which He would know were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed. In the candor of these observations I hope you will see proofs of the confidence esteem and which I entertain for you.
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson By Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Adgate Lipscomb, Albert Ellery Bergh, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson memorial association of the United States
As Don Hewitt always said: “The formula is simple and it’s reduced to four words every kid in the world knows: Tell me a story. It’s that easy.”
I offer Chapter 16: A CONFRONTATIONAL CONVERSATION from my first book, “KEEP HOPE ALIVE”
“Father Paul, you cannot possibly be telling me that an Episcopal priest has been taken in by fundamentalist theology?” Terese incredulously asked the new assistant to the rector at St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church in Orlando, who also served at the noon mass every Wednesday.
Father Paul Hendricks was a passionate evangelist on a mission to convert every Jew he encountered to become a Christian. Terese had kept her silence for the first six months she had been listening to his Wednesday noon sermons, but finally broke her silence after the rest of the parishioners had departed.
Paul sighed and shook his head. “Look, Mrs. Hunter, I read your op/ed in the newspaper about Israel and Palestine, and we both agree we want peace; we just go about it differently.”
“Father, let me say that the fastest growing cult in the U.S.A. is the cult of Christian Zionism. Approximately 25 million U.S. Christians believe as you do, and I am most depressed to see that the simple answers of fundamentalism have reached their tentacles into the thinking man’s church. You just preached for thirteen minutes on Genesis 12:3–‘I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse: and in you all the families of the world are blessed’–as if God meant blessings to be political power and military might. Father, surely you understand that the belief of the ancient Israelites, who held that they were chosen, as if they were somehow special from others, as if God esteemed them above others, is just basic primitive nationalism. Come on, Father, looking down on one’s enemies to foster one’s own tribal interest and praying to God to smite one’s enemies is what the ancients did. Isn’t it about time we moved beyond that limited thinking?”
Father Paul clenched his fists and held them behind his back, as he suppressed a simmering rage. He stood nine inches above Terese’s upturned head, and with a slick smile and condescending tone told her, “Mrs. Hunter, you are very misled. The text is understood to mean a blessing to Abraham’s lineage–”
Terese cut in. “Agreed! And Genesis 12:3 was promised even before Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, and Isaac, the Jew, were born! And what about the very first mention of Israel? Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with God. That is how I understand Israel; everyone who struggles and wrestles with God is Israel, too. Israel means more than a geographical location, Father Paul.”
“Mrs. Hunter, the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of the prophetic scriptures, and God’s covenant with Israel is eternal, exclusive, and will not be abrogated. I refer you to Genesis 12:1-7, 15:4-7, 17:1-8; Leviticus 26:44-45; and Deuteronomy 7:7:8.”
“And Father, I refer you to Matthew 5:43-45, which does not only critique Genesis 12:3; it blows it apart, for Christ commanded, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despite-fully use you, that you maybe children of your Father.’”
The two had reached Paul’s SUV and he silently prayed he could make a swift escape, but Terese had positioned herself at the driver’s door, and if he were to open it swiftly, she could be easily moved aside. Father Paul entertained the thought for more than a moment, but remained mute and still, as the tiny woman exploded with a torrent of words.
“Look, blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed them to become a big bully, and isn’t God always on the side of the oppressed? My sense is that you Christian Zionists see the political state of Israel as a replacement for Christ and that certainly is not Christianity!
“How do you take Genesis 12:3 to literally mean that blessings equal land and political power, yet ignore God’s promise in Genesis 21:17-20 to ‘make a great nation out of Ishmael’s descendants and that ‘God was with the boy.’ Yet your way of thinking allows the growing apartheid wall to continue, and supports occupation and oppression of people that God also made promises too.”
“Mrs. Hunter, why don’t you make an appointment and we can discuss this further? I really have to go.”
“Okay, I can take a hint, but let me leave you with this: when religion and politics are in bed together, everybody gets screwed! The Israeli government is using you Zionists as apologists in support of their agenda of illegal occupation and settlements in the West bank, Golan, and Gaza, on literal biblical grounds taken out of context. Your blind allegiance to every act of Israel, understood as being orchestrated by God and which should therefore be condoned, supported, and even praised, makes me want to puke! And I wonder about the true motives of Christians who actually relish the idea of Armageddon and love to speculate on who gets ‘left behind.’ Christ was very clear that there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who were so sure they were in, but get left out. God has always been on the side of the oppressed, and your uncritical endorsement and justification for Israel’s racist and apartheid policies are an abomination.”
The stunned and silent priest watched in relief as Terese turned, flipped her braid, and walked away.
PS: Nobody knows what the author of John’s Revelation was burning as incense when he wrote his imaginative poem that ends with this warning:
Rev. 22: 18-19: For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life.”
PSS: The “Left Behind” series of fiction is the epitome of what millennium of theologians have always understood to be what the term anti-Christ is truly about
The term “Antichrist” only appears five times in the Bible, but a cult not based on sound theology has created an urban legend that seeks Armageddon.
The term “Antichrist” never appears in John’s Revelation or Daniel, two disparate works of literature written three centuries apart and under very different circumstances, yet the Left Behinder’s weave them together.
The small texts that mention the “Antichrist” were written to attack the Gnostic understanding of whom Christ was. A Gnostic relies on intuition and not on dogma and doctrine. Gnostic’s were most certainly free spirits and most all of the writings we have about Gnostics, have been the attacks upon them. That all changed when the Nag Hamadi Library was translated and published, for what had been deemed heretical by those in power in the fourth century can now be read in most every language.
Read more: Have you heard the true tale of the Bedouin named Mohammed Ali? @
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=824&Itemid=195
The theology promoted in the Left Behind fiction is a theology based on fear and punishment.
These misinformed Christians worship a punitive father as God. They do not have eyes to see that nature is God’s primary temple, and war the greatest abomination.
The theology of the fictional “Left Behind” series is the epitome of the spirit of the anti-Christ: which is the evil within ones own heart that leads one to fear “the other” and compels them to violence.
Eileen Fleming,Thanks and keep posting articles/essays
There are too many scenarios in motion or could be at any time that will or could close the book,so to speak,for everyone
Support is growing for a two state solution whereas each state is totally independant seperated from the other and transparent in its foreign policy. I am of course talking of Israel and the United States.
As for Israel and Palestine it needs to be a one state solution. It needs to be secular, one man one vote to be truly democratic.
This was forced on South Africa despite the belief it could not happen.