Politics Pushes Uneven Policies

"the Palestinians are so short on legitimate spokespersons and are virtually without a voice."

Viejita has spoken a spiritual truth:

"Any kingdom that is divided against itself is being brought to desolation and laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will last or continue to stand."

The blurb on this column made it sound like the usual "blame Israel" rant. I'm glad I read it anyway. I am saddened and horrified by the way the American religious right and others high in our political structure continue to encourage and enable the worst instincts of the Israeli government. This type of ally is no friend to Israel. They are merely pursuing their own apocalyptic, political or economic aims.
Richmond T. Stallgiss: You may have a point about the agendas of specific activists, but isn't it part of the problem that the Palestinians are so short on legitimate spokespersons? If we wish to, we can readily follow the disputes between different factions in Israeli society, but I can't shake the feeling that most of the Palestinians are virtually without a voice.

Palestinian violence against Palestinians:

Alaa Siyam's limbs are purple from a beating by Hamas police _ but he says that won't stop him from joining protests against the militant group's leaders now running Gaza.

Hamas' defeated rival, the Fatah Party of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is counting on loyal foot soldiers like Siyam as it takes hesitant first steps to rebuild its shattered organization in Gaza.

After staging small anti-Hamas prayer vigils in recent weeks, Fatah hopes to intensify protests in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started Thursday, and galvanize its supporters. Some in Fatah are floating even bigger dreams, of a popular uprising that would force Hamas to agree to new elections.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091400195.html

Annonymous, just because you go from forum to forum posting lame opinion piece by lame writers doesn't give it any validity lOL! If the piece you posted was some kind of epiphany you must have been locked up somewhere for a very long time.

In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 15, 2007; Page A01

BURGESS HILL, England -- Every morning on his walk to work, high school teacher Graham Wright recited a favorite Anglican prayer and asked God for strength in the day ahead. Then two years ago, he just stopped.

Wright, 59, said he was overwhelmed by a feeling that religion had become a negative influence in his life and the world. Although he once considered becoming an Anglican vicar, he suddenly found that religion represented nothing he believed in, from Muslim extremists blowing themselves up in God's name to Christians condemning gays, contraception and stem cell research.

"I stopped praying because I lost my faith," said Wright, 59, a thoughtful man with graying hair and clear blue eyes. "Now I truly loathe any sight or sound of religion. I blush at what I used to believe."

Wright is now an avowed atheist and part of a growing number of vocal nonbelievers in Europe and the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, membership in once-quiet groups of nonbelievers is rising, and books attempting to debunk religion have been surprise bestsellers, including "The God Delusion," by Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins.

New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses, anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general, more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith.

More than three out of four people in the world consider themselves religious, and those with no faith are a distinct minority. But especially in richer nations, and nowhere more than in Europe, growing numbers of people are actively saying they don't believe there is a heaven or a hell or anything other than this life.

Many analysts trace the rise of what some are calling the "nonreligious movement" to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sight of religious fanatics killing 3,000 people caused many to begin questioning -- and rejecting -- all religion.

"This is overwhelmingly the topic of the moment," said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society of Britain. "Religion in this country was very quiet until September 11, and now it is at the center of everything."

Since the 2001 attacks, a string of religiously inspired bomb and murder plots has shaken Europe. Muslim radicals killed 52 people on the London public transit system in 2005 and 191 on Madrid trains in 2004. People apparently aiming for a reward in heaven were arrested in Britain last year for trying to blow up transatlantic jetliners. And earlier this month in Germany, authorities arrested converts to Islam on charges that they planned to blow up American facilities there.

Many Europeans are angry at demands to use taxpayer money to accommodate Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, which now has as many as 20 million followers on the continent. Along with calls for prayer rooms in police stations, foot baths in public places and funding for Islamic schools and mosques, expensive legal battles have broken out over the niqab, the Muslim veil that covers all but the eyes, which some devout women seek to wear in classrooms and court.

Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science research, reverse abortion and gay rights and teach creationism rather than evolution in schools are also angering people, according to Sanderson and others.

"There is a feeling that religion is being forced on an unwilling public, and now people are beginning to speak out against what they see as rising Islamic and Christian militancy," Sanderson said.

Though the number of nonbelievers speaking their minds is rising, academics say it's impossible to calculate how many people silently share that view. Many people who do not consider themselves religious or belong to any faith group often believe, even if vaguely, in a supreme being or an afterlife. Others are not sure what they believe.

The term atheist can imply aggressiveness in disbelief; many who don't believe in God prefer to call themselves humanists, secularists, freethinkers, rationalists or, a more recently coined term, brights.

"Where religion is weak, people don't feel a need to organize against it," said Phil Zuckerman, an American academic who has written extensively about atheism around the globe.

He and others said secular groups are also gaining strength in countries where religious influence over society looms large, including India, Israel and Turkey. "Any time we see an outspoken movement against religion, it tells us that religion has power there," Zuckerman said.

One group of nonbelievers in particular is attracting attention in Europe: the Council of Ex-Muslims. Founded earlier this year in Germany, the group now has a few hundred members and an expanding number of chapters across the continent. "You can't tell us religion is peaceful -- look around at the misery it is causing," said Maryam Namazie, leader of the group's British chapter.

She and other leaders of the council held a news conference in The Hague to launch the Dutch chapter on Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States. "We are all atheists and nonbelievers, and our goal is not to eradicate Islam from the face of the earth," but to make it a private matter that is not imposed on others, she said.

The majority of nonbelievers say they are speaking out only because of religious fanatics. But some atheists are also extreme, urging people, for example, to blot out the words "In God We Trust" from every dollar bill they carry.

Gaining political clout and access to television and radio airtime is the goal of many of these groups. With a higher profile, they say, they could, for instance, lobby for all religious rooms in public hospitals to be closed, as a response to Muslims demanding prayer rooms because Christians have chapels.

Associations of nonbelievers are also moving to address the growing demand in Britain, Spain, Italy and other European countries for nonreligious weddings, funerals and celebrations for new babies. They are helping arrange ceremonies that steer clear of talk of God, heaven and miracles and celebrate, as they say, "this one life we know."

The British Humanist Association, which urges people who think "the government pays too much attention to religious groups" to join them, has seen its membership double in two years to 6,500.

A humanist group in the British Parliament that looks out for the rights of the nonreligious now has about 120 members, up from about 25 a year ago.

Doreen Massey, a Labor Party member of the House of Lords who belongs to that group, said most British people don't want legislators to make public policy decisions on issues such as abortion and other health matters based on their religious affiliation.

But the church has disproportionate power and influence in Parliament, she said. Forexample, she said, polls show that 80 percent of Britons want the terminally ill who are in pain to have the right to a medically assisted death, yet such proposals have been effectively killed by a handful of powerful bishops.

"We can't accept that religious faiths have a monopoly on ethics, morality and spirituality," Massey said. Now, she added, humanist and secularist groups are becoming "more confident and more powerful" and recognize that they represent the wishes of huge numbers of people.
While the faithful have traditionally met like-minded people at the local church, mosque or synagogue, it has long been difficult for those without religion to find each other. The expansion of the Internet has made it a vital way for nonbelievers to connect.

In retirement centers, restaurants, homes and public lectures and debates, nonbelievers are convening to talk about how to push back what they see as increasingly intrusive religion.

"Born Again Atheist," "Happy Heathen" and other anti-religious T-shirts and bumper stickers are increasingly seen on the streets. Groups such as the Skeptics in the Pub in London, which recently met to discuss this topic, "God: The Failed Hypothesis," are now finding that they need bigger rooms to accommodate those who find them online.

Wright, the teacher who recently declared himself a nonbeliever, is one of thousands of people who have joined dues-paying secular and humanist groups in Europe this year.

Sitting in his living room on a quiet cul-de-sac in this English town of 30,000, Wright said he now goes online every day to keep up with the latest atheist news.

"One has to step up and stem the rise of religious influence," said Wright, who is thinking of becoming a celebrant at humanist funerals. He said he recently went to the church funeral of his brother-in-law and couldn't bear the "vacuous prayers of the vicar," who, Wright said, "looked bored and couldn't wait to leave."

Now, instead of each morning silently reciting a favorite nighttime prayer, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers . . . " (from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), he spends the time just thinking about the day ahead.

He said his deceased mother, a Catholic, was comforted by her faith: "It kept her going through difficult times," particularly when his father left her when he and his sister were young.

"I really don't know how I will react if something really bad happens," he said. "But there is no going back. There is nothing to go back to."

Not believing in an afterlife, he said, "makes you think you have to make the most of this life. It's the now that matters. It also makes you feel a greater urgency of things that matter," such as halting global warming, and not just dismissing it as being "all in God's plan."

He called himself heartened that the National Secular Society, which he recently joined, is planning to open chapters at a dozen universities this fall. The rising presence of the nonreligious movement, he said, is "fantastic."

"It's a bit of opposition, isn't it?" he said. "Why should these religious groups hold so much sway?

Hermit, Israel is defending herself. She is surrounded by those who hate her. All thats left is for the USA to take away or make conditional the USA support for Israel and she will truely be surrounded by her enemies AND THEN THE END WILL COME. No, don't shout for joy, not the end of Israel but the end on planet earth of life as you know it. Armageddon starts.

ThinkAboutIt; not to defend the Palestinian violence here, but what do you do with the fact that the Israelis have killed three times as many Palestinian civilians over the last five years (including children) as vice versa?

You are right to condemn the Arab leaders who want to destroy Israel, but there are Israeli leaders (and influential Americans who agree with them) who want to seize Arab land for themselves and eliminate any hope for an independent Palestine.

So the question is; why are so many Americans outraged by the bad acts and intentions of the Palestinians but accept without question identical behaviour on the part of Israel?

Just curious

A Hermit

And those same evangelicals who are righteously calling for a two state solution to the Jewish thorn (as God foretold She would be called)are also calling for the Church to righteously normalize homosexuality. The difference between those who hide behind the Evangelical mantle and Born Again Christans is that Born Again Christians put their trust in God, that what HE says is true NOT what man wants. No matter if hell is payment. Now the Lord Jesus foretold two things before His Crucifixion for our sins: the destruction of the Jewish Temple and with it the identity of the Jewish people. And second, the rebirth of the Jewish nation Israel and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple on its Just site and with it Her identification with the Self Existant Eternal God and Father of our Messiah. The Temple is just around the corner! If the rulers of this age had wisdom that would scare them to the Cross. You are one of the rulers of this age Jim Wallis.

Mr. Wallis: Please expand and explain this part of your piece:

I have always believed that if most American Christians could see the daily and constant humiliation of all Palestinians at Israeli check points in the West Bank they would think such behavior is wrong—but they never see it or even hear about it in the American press. For any serious debate about Israeli government policy you must turn to the BBC or international press, or to the press in Israel itself, which regularly features a far more evenhanded and robust discussion than can be found anywhere in the U.S. media.

Why doesn't the U.S. Media give more even-handed treatment to the Palestinian plight?

Mr. Wallis,

Let me preface what I am about to say with a statement that I have tremendous respect for your work, especially with regard to raising awareness of the "other American Christianity" ... the "mainline churches" that have honored political activisim while leading the way in respecting separation of Church and State.

That said, I want to warn you if your lunch with "Palestinain Christian Leaders" may have been with Naim Ateek or one of his representatives from the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. This group has approached the leadership of several mainline American denominations and recently swayed their national church congresses to pass extremely biased anti-Israel Divestment resolutions. Both the Presbyterians (PCUSA) and the United Church (UCC) have since issued follow-on resolutions that moderated the harsh Anti-Israel stances advocated for by Sabeel.

I would advise you to become familiar with the "Simon Wesienthal Center", the "Christians for Fair Witness in the Middle East" and other groups that provide another view of these Christian Palestinian leaders and their agendas.

I understand and share your desire for moderation in the seeking of peaceable solutions, but I want to make sure that in your journey to avoid extremism you don't ally yourself with extremism of another flavor.

Peace,
RT

Great post, however I you inadvertently bring up the sad fact, that (some) U.S. evangelicals do not, and will not care about the Palestinian people, unless they are Christian. The Muslim as enemy has been so infused with the teachings of many evangelical leaders, that collective punishment against all Muslims for any crime committed by a Muslim is now not even questioned in most evangelical circles (For me at least the idea of “collective punishment” is the root problem on both sides fueling this conflict). But what does that say about Christianity in the U.S. when the only way you can get them to see someone as an individual person, with rights and dignity, is to present them as a Christian???

God has placed in His creation a love of LIFE. It is deeply against the Laws of Nature to pursue the MURDER of innocents and SUICIDE of your own progeny.

When you make DEATH an idol and teach your children HATRED and to desire and pursue an early DEATH, you will in time REAP what you have sown.

This is the natural outcome of such despicable acts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBuiSP8X6E

I am not an "Evangelical," Christian. I am though
a Catholic Christian, who has seen through the medium of video the horror that the Palestinian people are put through every day. It is with regret that I say, I too once stood for the state
of Isreal and not the oppressed people of Palestinian background. I wish that my evangelical brothers and sisters could witness with their own eyes either through personal exper-
ience or through the medium of video the degrading
and depressing actions of the Isreali army and police. This all propped up by the American gover-
nment with the largest amount of money and arms that the USA can give. Yet to call for, at least some measure of restraint on the part of the US and Isreal towards the Palestinian people is seen as "anti-semitic" and "anti-zionist." I truly believe that the reason that some in the Christian
Right back Isreal to the hilt and forget that there are and have been Jews, Christians and Muslims, living in the land of Palestine for almost 2,000 years is that "prophecy" predicts that the Messiah will come back only when the land of Isreal is back in the hands of the chosen people and the "temple" is rebuilt. So yes, there are very hard feelings on the part of Palestinian Christians and Muslims everywhere in the Islamic part of the world towards the US, especially for the governments hardline stance of support for Isreal, no matter what the cost to the other people in the land of Palestine. It would take the US and the rest of the world's governments to support the idea of a "two-state" solution to the problems that now exist in Palestine to make it work. I, too, pray for the peace of Jerusalem and Isreal, but as well, pray for the people of Palestinian Islamic descent that they also find peace of heart and mind. So that they can pursue the cause of peace among their own people and the surrounding lands.

Mr. Wallis, I have a great deal of respect for you personally; but I disagree with you on this issue. Here is why:

But first, let me start of to say I am not Jewish, nor have I ever had any Jewish relatives. I count both Jews and Muslims as friends and co-workers.

Thirty years ago, I knew an Israeli girl visiting the States. I ran over an empty sack while driving a group of people in my car, and she almost had a heart attack. Why? It seems in Israel it was common (even back then) for bombs to be put out in sacks to indiscriminately kill Jews, including children.

The percentage of Muslims who partook in violence – then and now – are in the minority of Muslims. Just to throw a number out, it was higher in Israel – say in the 20% range – to place the entire population in fear. Muslims were (are) taught that Israel does not have a right to exist and that it was their religious duty to eliminate (kill) Jews.

What can a society do under these conditions to try and maintain any peace and stability for its citizens? The hatreds are largely religious based, so this is difficult to address.

I always look for analogies for these types of situations to try and understand all the angles: Did the Irish Catholics set off bombs to kill innocent English Protestants? Yes – but not at the scale we see by Muslims against Jews. If they had, I think it would have made sense for them to have had checkpoints too -- to try and protect the public.

It is the % incidences that determine whether harsh security measure are needed – and what I feel is a factor you ignore in your piece.

The Muslims in this country are 99%+ nonviolent against Americans. This is the message that the media has not accurately conveyed to the public. Individuals such as yourself are trying to rectify this.

You do a disservice, however,by merging together two very different situations (the US vs Israel) together. Yes, let’s put pressure on Israel to make sure it treats Palestinians fairly—but let’s not do it while ignoring their needs for basic security.

PS. I am for wiretapping in the US, but TOTALLY against Bush’s version which seeks broad powers to eliminate judicial review (opening itself up for executive abuse.) This President also seeks the right to torture, with no safeguards for ensuring the person is really innocent first. Don’t confuse my response please with any support for this administration – which I view as fascist.

Have a good day.