Posted on 08/24/2006 4:59:39 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
Despite backing off its previous anti-Israel and divestment positions, the Presbyterian News Service of the PC(USA) has given space to Rev. Nuhad Tomeh, "PC(USA) regional liaison for Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the gulf," but otherwise known as Hizballah's "fixer" for travelling Christians. (See: Fallout for the PC(USA) and Criticism of Church Behavior Equals Attacking the Body of Christ?) Tomeh is the man who has arranged for traveling Presbyterian groups to have sympathetic meetings with Hizballah, and his writing shows it. This piece is about as pure a demonstration of straight propaganda as you're likely to find.
God’s grace in the midst of hostility - PC(USA) mission worker visits Lebanon’s war zone
BEIRUT, Aug. 21 — Yesterday, being a Sunday — the day of the Lord, my colleague the Rev. Adeeb Awad, secretary of the Ecclesial and Spiritual Affairs Department in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon, and I traveled all the way south from Beirut to the border with Palestine... Like that part I bolded? Now I'm thinking he didn't cross over into Israel and head for the West Bank. How about you? Does the PC(USA) recognize Israel or not?
The rest of Tomeh's piece is a seeming description of a completely bombed out Lebanon where uncaring Israeli soldiers target civilian structures for inhuman, perhaps demonic reasons. A typical passage:
...We headed directly to the house of the mayor of Alma, a Presbyterian who is a very decent and respected man in his 60s. There were many burnt and destroyed houses. We waded through all kinds of spent detonators, bomb fragments and rocket casings that had rained down on that peaceful town. The mayor, Jamil, and his sweet wife, were busy cleaning up around the house that was full of shrapnel and blown earth and black smoke. A tank projectile hit the front yard, just in front of the door, and drove its way all under the house into the back yard without exploding.
Word is that these are programmed not to explode until something hits them, such as a tractor or anything else that might come in contact with it. Similar strikes happened in other areas and killed many civilians.
Fayez, Jamal’s brother, and two of his sons and their wives watched the destruction of their houses and wondered why? We spoke with a neighbor, Boutros, who lost his house completely. So did his father.
Asked why anybody would target their houses, they answered, “Soldiers were sitting in their tanks doing nothing. Every now and then they would pick a house, target it ... and there goes that house into a heap of chaos.”...
Tomeh even ups the ante on the Qana propaganda numbers -- 62 is the number of dead he reports.
Another typical paragraph:
We had to drive 95 percent off the road to reach Alma, unconsciously and unceasingly repeating the question: Why? Why? Why? The theme of questioning the unfairness of it all pervades the piece from start to finish. Why, why, indeed? On one side, evil, inscrutable Israelis (or are they Palestinians?), on the other, peace-loving Lebanese going about their daily affairs until so rudely and murderously interrupted.
There is an explanation for it all, however, and it's a word that literally does not appear anywhere, even once, in Tomeh's piece...
Hizballah.
In Tomeh's mind Lebanon borders Palestine. He must only have the maps prepared by Hamas to study,
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