I honestly think that for most people, they simply parrot [about the conflict] what their favoured media outlets tell them to, and CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo and WSJ all tell them the same thing... with some surface-level permutations based on domestic political / cultural / tribal alignment. God forbid we should read actual books about each region’s history and the roots of each conflict, instead of just regurgitating easily-digestible headlines, op-ed columns and talking-head takes.
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One thing that Vladimir Solovyov got very much right in War, Progress and the End of History, is that there is a kind of falsehood, a deep moral obscenity, in those who preach non-violence to the powerless, from a position of safety and security.
The argument between the General and the Prince in the first conversation was over the Armenians in the late 1800s, but equally so I think it could apply to the Palestinians today.
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Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French.
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We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.
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It’s tragic that so many people are made unable to tell the difference between “explanation”, “justification”, and “apologia”. Often, those things are conflated on purpose with the help of the media to prevent/shut down any civilised discussion around certain subjects.
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A few assorted thoughts. Not all of them are completely consistent with each other, but so be it.casus belli are more just than others.
- All war is bad on all sides.
- Some
Few conflicts have stable solutions (this side of Parousia). Still fewer conflicts have obvious solutions. That does not mean we (individually and collectively) shouldn't look for solutions. No one who isn't in a position of power should be expected to have the solutions.
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Imagine engaging in abstruse academic debates about dogmatic vs. hopeful universalism as Gaza burns.
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To have empathy is not to assert power or to take revenge. It is to feel broken with those who have been broken—and if you are a follower of Jesus, which, de facto, we are not, is to be broken with them.
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My hope and prayer is to be a source of light, and not darkness. Let’s be honest: this pain we’re all feeling isn’t specific to this moment; it’s ongoing. The truth is that for me, for my family, for Palestinians: this is life.- Mo Amer
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Enough oppression against the Palestinian people! Peace does not come from the bodies of children, killed people, innocent people, and women. Peace comes when the decision-makers in this world realize that our people have dignity, as all the peoples of the world. We are not advocates of war, we reject violence and killing, and we are seekers of peace, but at the same time, we seek justice and have a right that we will not give up.
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In the Middle East, the net effects [of European cultural hysteria] are:
- that Europe is burdened with the heavy baggage of interventions that inflame Muslim hostility toward the West, and
- to create the psychological imperative to find some way to assuage their own sense of guilt by finding, and magnifying, the sins of their victims.
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Moral discourse in the West has degraded so far that even the most basic calls for justice and humanity are considered to be Marxist, subversive or terroristic.
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The descent to evil. “Do unto others what you would like them to do to you” has increasingly been replaced by “Do unto others the evil they did to you”, and even by “Do to others the evils before they might do it to you.”
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As an Orthodox Christian leftist with Semitic ancestry, I have two questions.
- By what moral logic are the Arabs supposed to shoulder 80 years of responsibility, at the cost of their lives and their homes, for the crimes of Hitler?
- By what moral logic are Palestinian Christians supposed to shoulder responsibility, at the cost of their lives and their homes, for the recent crimes of Hamas?
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