It had to happen. The day would come when a biased, uninformed commentator would voice an opinion so outrageous so as to require a response to set the record straight.
I refer to the malicious and misinformed commentary of Dennis Prager, in his headline assault, “Presbyterian Church defames Christianity,” carried on the website of Internet pioneer Joseph Farah’sWorldNetDaily on July 20th.
But before I take Mr. Prager to task, I must confess that it was Joe Farah and his WND that inspired me to write on the Internet, which I have been doing for over three years.
I have been a conservative Republican for forty years, and am not a member of the “left” as the Pragers, Limbaughs and the Hannitys would have you believe. But I am Presbyterian, and have held several officer positions in my church. I am an ordained Elder. That said let me address Mr. Prager’s insinuations and uninformed tirade.
He begins his piece, “I have argued in this column that the greatest sin is committing evil in God’s name. As bad as the evil committed by secularists, such as communists and Nazis, has ever been, the most grievous evil is that which is committed in the name of God. For not only do religious evils harm their victims, they also do lasting damage to God-based morality, which those of us who believe in God and religion consider the only viable antidote to evil. That is why Islamic terror is so evil. Not only because it targets the most innocent of people for death and torture, but because it does so in the name of Allah and Islam.”
It seems that Mr. Prager is totally unfamiliar with the partnership of Zionism and Nazism prior, during, and following World War II, and the subsequent reign of terror Israel perpetrated on innocent Palestinians to drive them from their lands and to exterminate them. Israel drew first blood, and Prager relies on the ancient biblical justification of Jews as the “chosen people” and the modern state of Israel as “the promised land.” Isn’t this precisely the same method of argument he himself refutes as God and religion being employed to authorize killing and terror? Isn’t this the same argument President George Bush uses to justify the war against Iraq, a war now proven false by both the 9-11 Commission and the U.S. Senate inquiries? Didn’t Hitler align himself with God?
Prager continues: “Incredibly, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) joins the list of religious groups committing evil. In the name of Jesus, it has called for the economic strangulation of Israel. They have equated the Jewish state with South Africa during apartheid and called for a universal divestment from it. The Presbyterians are the first Christian church to do this.” Mr. Prager is a misguided “Christian Zionist,” one who equates the nation of Israel with the Jewish religion. This incongruity is discussed in depth by Jewish Rabbis at their site: Jews Against Zionism. And the Presbyterian divestment hardly constitutes “economic strangulation.”
I find it astonishing that one man feels himself qualified to condemn “the list of religious groups committing evil.” The arrogance of that comment doesn’t even merit a response! All these religious groups are out of step – apparently dissenting Jewish rabbis as well! He objects to charges of “apartheid,” but isn’t the Gaza “security wall” just that? And hasn’t the International Court of Justice concurred with that assessment? And as to increasing hostilities against the Palestinians, such as bulldozing homes flat with their owners still inside, firing rockets from hovering helicopters into unarmed crowds for purposes of crowd control, participating in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, trying to destabilize the Kurds in northern Iraq, Prager wants us to pay no attention to any of that. That’s not evil because Israelis are doing it!
World opinion is turning against Ariel Sharon, his Likud Party, President Bush, and his April 15 letter and the House of Representative’s Resolution 460 authorizing Israel to take whatever Palestinian land it wants, and to kill as many Palestinians as needed to affect ethnic cleansing and property confiscation – a policy Israel has pursued since its inception as backed by the U.S. and Great Britain through the auspices of the United Nations in 1948.
The actions of the Presbyterian Church were warranted, and if anything, long overdue. And these actions coincide with a growing world opinion that is mislabeled as “anti-Semitism,” when it is Zionism that deliberately generates such animosity towards all Jews as a matter of continuing policy.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”