Melanie Phillips: The defining issue [Israel is the canary in the mine of the world]

Melanie Phillips ^ | July 21, 2004 | Melanie Phillips

[Tolik]

The world terror supporters' club, aka the UN, has told Israel to tear down its security barrier. This follows the ruling by the terror court, the ICJ, that the barrier is illegal (see below). Neither of these decisions is binding, but they are intended to build up the global demonisation of Israel as a pariah state, the necessary prelude to its destruction. Meanwhile, in the US where Christian support for Israel is so strong, the General Asssembly of the Presbyterian Church has equated Israel with apartheid South Africa and called for universal divestment from it.

These developments all signal a world that is descending ever deeper into a terrifying moral darkness. If the Jews have always been a society's pit canaries whose fate is an early warning of that society's wider collapse, Israel is surely the canary in the mine of the world. The way it is being treated bespeaks a mortal sickness. Israel is the victim of a continuing, half-century attempt to annihilate it. Yet its attempts to defend itself are denounced and vilified, its activities are misreported and distorted, it is judged by malign double standards to paint it falsely as a rogue state -- and all the while those doing so look the other way while a genocide is perpetrated in Sudan, sanitised even in today's papers as merely a 'humanitarian' catastrophe. The moral inversion involved was captured in a remark by Mark Steyn in yesterday's Telegraph:

'The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.'

This is the same UN that has now pronounced that Israel should not defend itself aganist the war of exterminatory mass murder being perpetrated against its citizens. This treatment of Israel goes far beyond the fate of that particular region. The obsessive malice with which it is vilified and libelled, and the tacit and even explicit encouragement of the war of mass murder against it, while atrocities in Africa are not only ignored but their perpetrators given a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission, for heaven's sake, shows that not just the UN but the world order it represents are bust, broken, bankrupt.

For faced with this obscene parody of a world body that is supposed to promote and uphold peace and justice but actually ignores, promotes and upholds genocide, mass murder, tyranny, terrorism and endemic corruption, the democracies of the west not only ignore such evidence but profess to believe that the UN is a moral exemplar without whose imprimatur wars are illegitimate and whose every utterance or action possesses unchallengeable moral authority. But the correct -- indeed, the only -- moral response to the UN would be to shut it down. While the world is run by tyrannies --and despite the US veto at the UN, it is so run -- tyranny, terrorism and genocide will of course continue unabated, and the victims of these atrocities will be regarded at best with indifference and at worst demonised as villains in order to protect the guilty. That is the twisted and lethal phenomenon of which Israel is both victim and symbol.

The scale of this moral inversion is so huge, so profound and so fundamental that the Presbyterian Church decision has provoked an incandescent protest by Denis Prager, a US talk-show host who thought Christianity was on the side of good but now finds it has been hijacked to serve the cause of evil. Prager spells out the nature of this obscenity:

'It takes a particularly virulent strain of moral idiocy and meanness to single out Israel, not Arafat's Palestinian Authority, or terror-supporting, death-fatwa-issuing Iran, or women-subjugating Saudi Arabia, for condemnation and economic ruin. One of the most decent societies, one of the most liberal democracies in the world, is fighting for its life against Islamic fascists who praise the Holocaust and publicly call for the annihilation of Israel -- and the Presbyterian Church calls for strangling Israel!

'Apartheid state? This Goebbels-like Big Lie, concocted by the world's anti-Israel and anti-American Left and by those who want Israel destroyed, is now an official doctrine of the Presbyterian Church. Israel is a nation whose population is one-quarter non-Jewish Arab, with the same rights, including voting and its own political parties, as Jewish citizens; a nation whose second official language is Arabic, the language of those who wish to annihilate the Jewish country; a nation that occupies a tiny sliver of land known as the West Bank only because Jordan, overwhelmingly composed of Palestinians, invaded Israel in 1967 in order to destroy it and thereby lost its ownership of the West Bank.'

And then Prager draws a conclusion as stark and bleak as it is true:

'This is one of the morality-clarifying issues of our time. To single out Israel for economic strangulation while that good nation fights for its life is an act of such immorality that holding that view precludes one from the title "good" or "God-fearing," for if they are true to God, I am false to Him. If they are good, I who support Israel am bad. If their Bible teaches them to strangle Israel and support Yasser Arafat, I am guided by a different Bible. They have drawn a line. It is now time for good people, Presbyterians specifically, Christians generally, to distance themselves vigorously and publicly from this morally sick church. And it is time, once again, for Jews to realize that the enemies of the Jews in our day are to be found on the Christian Left while their friends are far more often on the Christian Right.'

Israel is the defining moral issue of our time. Not because its situtation is the worst in the world -- the genocide in Sudan is clearly in a different league. But because the way the world is treating it exemplifies a global moral sickness in which truth, goodness and the victims of an annihilatory madness are ignored, dehumanised or attacked, while lies, wickedness and their perpetrators are appeased, endorsed and supported.

[Tolik]

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of good stuff that is worthy attention. I keep separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson, Lee Harris, David Warren, Orson Scott Card. You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

And a ping for those on Alouette's list, she's away from her computor.

[missyme]

Christian Left while their friends are far more often on the Christian Right.'

There is no "Christian Left" They hide behind who they truly are The Anti-Christ.."Sheeps in Wolves Cloting"

"Jesus" spoke of these hypocrites and how Satan would decieve many, we need to be aware and alert at all times so we are not influenced by the powers of "Evil"

[nuconvert]

B U M P!

[AZLiberty]

My wife noted the irony that China voted for Israel to take down its wall. Ha!

[missyme]

China will be one of "Israel's biggest defenders according to Biblical Prophecy...

[nuconvert]

PONG

[NonValueAdded]

Here is FR's post of the referenced Steyn piece: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1177988/posts

[NonValueAdded]

I think this one will interest you and your UN list.

[Lindykim]

Slowly but surely the world is sliding back into the dark pit of paganism from which it had escaped over two-thousand years ago. Nietzsche said that history was ultimately the struggle between paganism and Judaism/Christianity.
Hitler opined that once Judaism was destroyed, Christianity would logically follow. And now, for the first time in the history of mankind, the epic struggle between the dark forces of paganism and the forces of light {Judaism/Christianity} has encompassed the whole earth.

[ex-Texan]

Bravo Bump!

[time4good]

China will be one of "Israel's biggest defenders according to Biblical Prophecy...

missyme, I believe you're incorrect on that. Can you give a chapter/verse? The 200-million strong army mentioned marching into the plains of Mediggo have been thought to be from China but it wasn't to defend Israel.
Not to get into a huge FR side-thread on Biblical prophecy, but, I've always seen it as the only One defending Israel on that Day is the King Of Kings and Lord Of Lords and HIS heavenly hosts without number riding behind Him. That's where the blood up to the horse's bridle will come from.

[OldPossum]

And to think that I once was a member of the Presbyterian Church. I may eventually "re-church" myself but it won't be with that denomination.

[Piranha]

Two weeks ago a handful of us leafletted at the 4th Presbyterian Church in Chicago on Sunday morning (during all 3 of their masses). The leaflet included a letter asking them to consider their Jewish neighbors and included a quotation from Jimmy Carter (when he signed into law the anti-Arab Boycott law of 1977) about how boycotting Israel is wrong. The leaflet also included a release from the Presbyterians' own website and two commentaries (including Prager's), and asked for an opportunity to present the case against the boycott in a forum. We gave away about 350 leaflets.

To date we have heard nothing.

However, the response of the congregants was interesting. There were quite a few who said that they had not known about the Presbyterian vote, and would not have believed it until we showed them the church's own release. One woman said that she received daily reports about the general assembly, and that there was no inkling of an anti-Israel resolution until after it was passed.

We're not sure of our next step, and would appreciate any suggestions.

[Piranha]

http://techcentralstation.com/080204D.html

Does anyone know a participant in the Presbyterian pension plan? Perhaps a class action suit on behalf of the victims of this policy would be the way to go (since I know how much FReepers love lawyers, I'm sure I'll get a lot of positive responses to this one).

[missyme]

"The Chinese government persecutes the house churches because it is terrified of the end-times gospel they preach. This message liberates the people from bondage to their control and so it has to be denounced as " anti-revolutionary" superstition." from the book, " China: The Last Superpower", by William Bray.

" Unlike believers in the USA, the Chinese don't expect the Great Tribulation to come "some day" far away in the future."

WE will take a look at China's involvement in the Great Tribulation in a moment but first let's look at a sobering thought.

"When Abraham and his children failed to live holy lives and reach their world with the light, God permitted them to be taken captive by the Egyptians. They became slaves of the very people to whom they should have been missionaries!

So the Philistines, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome were allowed to attack Israel and Judah. It was the only way that God could disperse them to be his witnesses. They failed to voluntarily evangelize their neighbors, to be salt and light, so God allowed them to be defeated and taken captive.

This happened again and again until all the world knew about the one true God of the Jews."

I see pros and cons regarding China in Biblical Prophecy?

[knighthawk]

'The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency

No more UN for US-list

If people want on or off this list, please let me know.

[knighthawk]

Indeed. The UN is a fraud and the Sudan-situations proves it.

[prophetic]

China will be one of "Israel's biggest defenders according to Biblical Prophecy...

Veery intresting, I've never thought about China's role in Biblical prophecy i.e. whether its was pro-Israel or Anti-Israel.
I've always thought about it in a context of a mid-east slugfest among the world's major powers (Europe, China, Israel, etc) and somehow it spirals ultimately whereby at God's planning that (almost) all the armies of the world has the grand finale on the plains of Meggidio against Israel... And then the Lord returns to wipe them all out and rescues Israel from its final Holocast.

Israel will have been badly beaten by its enemies and is struggling to make its last stand; and in its desperation they FINALLY acknowledges that Jesus is/was the Promised Messiah and calls out to HIM; The Lord's return destroys all His enemies and ushers in 1000 years of world peace & prosperity.