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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Mark D. Tooley</title>
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		<title>Quakers, Ferguson and Palestinians</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-d-tooley/quakers-ferguson-and-palestinians/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=quakers-ferguson-and-palestinians</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2014 05:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[struggle]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245042</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The twisted myth of a "common struggle."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/gaza_ferguson.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245047" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/gaza_ferguson-450x299.jpg" alt="Pro-Palestinian protesters take part in a demonstration against the violence in the Gaza strip, in Lyon" width="296" height="197" /></a>The multimillion dollar American Friends Service Committee, with offices in several dozen U.S. cities and 14 other countries, is the nearly century old political advocacy arm of Quakers in the U.S. Rooted in the Quaker pacifist tradition, AFSC advocates a form of &#8220;peace&#8221; that has aligned it with countless dubious international causes over the decades, usually anti-American, anti-Western and often anti-Israel.</p>
<p>AFSC touts accommodation of Iran, for example, naturally more concerned about U.S. or Israeli military action than about a nuclear armed Iran. And AFSC endorses Palestinian nationalism in ways that of course demonize Israel while minimizing Palestinian terror.</p>
<p>But AFSC offered a somewhat new twist when recently highlighting a young Palestinian-American activist&#8217;s solidarity visit to, and arrest in, racially charged Ferguson, Missouri.</p>
<p>&#8220;When Mike Brown was murdered in Ferguson my people in Gaza were being slaughtered by Israel in Operation Protective Edge,&#8221; <a href="http://afsc.org/friends/ferguson-i-am-reminded-palestine">explained Bassem Masri</a> on AFSC&#8217;s blog.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The timing of the two events woke up a lot of people. When Mike was killed, much of the media started demonizing him and the protestors, often the same sources that blamed Palestinians for their own deaths in Gaza. People naturally saw the connections.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Masri, a self-described “pissed off citizen,&#8221; said Americans have long &#8220;maligned&#8221; the Palestinian struggle for liberation, but at least the people of Ferguson now understand their common struggle.</p>
<p>&#8220;On those terrible nights in Ferguson when the police were attacking peaceful civilians with tear gas, Palestinians under Israeli occupation offered advice on how to deal with the effects of the gas,&#8221; Masri recounted.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Facing violence from an occupying force, whether in Palestine or Ferguson, forges a mindset that demands resistance and standing up for one’s community. When the police used military tanks and checkpoints to imprison the residents of Ferguson, I was reminded of life in the West Bank where I saw the Israeli military use the same tactics of repression.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Masri said while in Ferguson for protests he&#8217;s been &#8220;tear gassed, shot at with rubber bullets, and physically assaulted by the police&#8221; before his eventual imprisonment and &#8220;interrogation,&#8221; apparently just like his kindred on the West Bank. The commonality between the the two similar oppressions, he concluded, is clear: racism.</p>
<p>Arrested at a Walmart with a dozen other demonstrators, Masri was, unlike others, jailed over night, for having spat at a police officer. He denied the charge, admitting that he &#8220;curses and levels vulgar insults at police officers,&#8221; as evidently confirmed proudly on his own film, but no spitting. According to him, the police contrived the charge so as to browbeat him into becoming their &#8220;collaborator&#8221; against fellow resistance fighters, which naturally he bravely declined.</p>
<p>No doubt Masri enjoys the street theater, and no doubt the chronically aggrieved AFSC was moved by the shared struggles of Ferguson and the West Bank.  The ostensible Israeli repressions of Palestinians are virtually the only form of human rights abuses that typically interest Religious Left outlets like AFSC. But if the West Bank is egregiously suffering, it was not illustrated by a <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/10/30/people-in-emerging-markets-catch-up-to-advanced-economies-in-life-satisfaction/">Pew Research global survey</a> of health and happiness in various countries, including the Palestinian Territories that released only days after Masri&#8217;s vivid report for AFSC.</p>
<p>According to the Pew study, Palestinians see themselves as better off compared to five years ago at higher rates than do other Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. Forty three percent of Palestinians said they were better, compared to 36 percent of Tunisians. Palestinians also reported higher satisfaction with their health, safety, education, standard of living and jobs than did Jordanians and Egyptians. Twice as many Palestinians reported overall happiness than did Jordanians, and Palestinians were nearly four times likelier to be happy than Egyptians. They were one third likelier to be happy than Tunisians.</p>
<p>None of which proves or even suggests that the Palestinians are living in Nirvana. But living standards and quality of life are better on the West Bank than in much of the developing world. Palestinians receive more international aid per capita than almost any other people group. There also likely are per capita more international human rights monitors among the Palestinians, from anti-Israel groups like AFSC, than almost anywhere else in the world.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the AFSC blog, for which Masri wrote, features a special &#8220;Israel/Palestine&#8221; section, an honor not accorded to any other region. For the Religious Left, Israeli infractions against Palestinians merit very special attention.</p>
<p>Masri&#8217;s and AFSC&#8217;s correlation of Israeli oppression with oppression in Ferguson fits the Religious Left narrative that Israel and America are uniquely set apart in their moral failures. As Masri explained:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Our goal is to dismantle apartheid regimes wherever they exist. That is the most important link between Palestine and Ferguson, and it is the link that will make both struggles stronger.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Soros-Funded Religious Left Group Targets Gitmo</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/soros-funded-religious-left-group-targets-gitmo/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=soros-funded-religious-left-group-targets-gitmo</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 04:35:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Soros]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guantanamo Bay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religious left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=188922</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But silence on Sudan's chief torturer being welcomed to Washington.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/torture-banner-5x71.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-188939" alt="torture-banner-5x7" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/torture-banner-5x71-450x340.jpg" width="270" height="204" /></a>The chief torturer of Sudan’s Islamist regime is soon to visit the U.S., igniting not a peep of concern from left-leaning church officials ostensibly very concerned about “torture.”  Instead, a long list of prominent church honchos is instead demanding President Obama close Guantanamo Bay detention center because of its reputed history of “torture.”  Their letter was organized by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which has received over $1 million from George Soros.</p>
<p>“Guantanamo Bay is a place where our government tortured prisoners, and it continues to be a place where many are detained indefinitely without trial,” the church activists wrote Obama.  “We believe that our government has a moral obligation to close the prison at Guantanamo. We hope that you share this belief and that you will act expeditiously to close Guantanamo.”</p>
<p>The letter was signed by old-line Protestant officials with groups like the National Council of Churches and United Methodist Board of Church and Society, with old leftist Catholic lobbies like Pax Christi and Sister Simone Campbell’s “Nuns on the Bus” NETWORK, plus the Islamic Society of North America of course.</p>
<p>The prelates and activists are “deeply concerned” about Guantanamo’s persistence and the &#8220;indefinite detention without trial of many of the people imprisoned there” at the “nation’s most visible and painful symbol of torture and indefinite detention,” exemplifying America’s “deep moral wound.”</p>
<p>Church officials are particularly troubled by 86 “cleared detainees” who remain there, without mentioning that a chief problem is finding countries willing to accept them.  They also don’t mention the released inmates who have returned to murder and terror.  And they’re troubled by the “desperation and hopelessness felt by many of the detainees” that has “recently sparked a hunger strike,” “highlighting the growing human tragedy of the detention center.”</p>
<p>The church activists complain about a proposed nearly $200 million upgrade for Guantanamo, which does sound pricey.  But their complaint showcases how the Religious Left is only concerned about costs when related to national security, for which nearly any price is too much.  They want to start “transferring prisoners” but don’t say where or how.  Presumably they want them, if not released, moved to the U.S. and into the domestic criminal justice system.</p>
<p>For the Religious Left, Guantanamo is important as an unwanted symbol of the War on Terror, which for them does not or should not exist.  For them, the U.S. largely has no enemies who were not provoked or cannot be ameliorated through good will and reparations.  For them, detainees are more victims than dangerous terrorists or terror sympathizers.</p>
<p>This denunciation of Guantanamo comes courtesy of George Soros’ philanthropy.  The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) (by the U.S.) received over $1 million from 2007 to 2011, the last available reporting year.  Soros’ Open Society Foundations in 2010 hosted a NRCAT conversation on 9-11’s anniversary to spotlight the giving outreach of the philanthropy’s <a href="http://www.soros.org/initiatives/usprograms/focus/security">National Security and Human Rights Campaign</a>.  Participants were NRCAT chief and Presbyterian minister/activist Richard Kilmer, former <a href="http://www.isna.net/">Islamic Society of North America</a> president Ingrid Mattson, Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster of <a href="http://rhrna.org/">Rabbis for Human Rights – North America</a>, and former National Association of Evangelicals chief lobbyist Richard Cizik, now head of <a href="http://newevangelicalpartnership.org/">New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good</a>.  Cizik boasted of NRCAT’s “Shoulder to Shoulder” campaign against “anti-Muslim bigotry,” whose purpose was evidenced, he said, by Congressman Peter King’s 2011 Homeland Security Committee hearings on what Cizik dismissed as alleged “radicalization of the American Muslim community,” but which he said actually exemplified the “marginalization and typecasting of a religious community.”</p>
<p>NRCAT itself was formed in 2006, in response to the Abu Ghraib photos, by Princeton University theologian George Hunsinger “to examine how religious communities could respond to the U.S. military’s use of torture against 9/11 detainees.”  NRCAT fights “torture” by the U.S., or by implication any government that may help the U.S., but not by anybody else.  NRCAT also combats “anti-Muslim bigotry,” which is laudable, except that “bigotry” often includes any substantive concern about radical Islam.</p>
<p>June will be NRCAT’s annual “Anti-Torture Month” when local religious congregations are enlisted to oppose the U.S. War on Terror, of which “torture” is presumed to be central, and which includes a film called <a href="http://www.nrcat.org/post-911-detainees/fact-not-fiction-campaign/a-study-for-people-of-faith"><i>Ending U.S.-Sponsored Torture Forever</i></a>.  There are even anti- torture prayer and sermons for a complete worship experience devoted to opposing “torture” by the U.S., but not really by anybody else, especially America’s adversaries.</p>
<p>So don’t expect any NRCAT or wider Religious Left concerns about the impending U.S. visit of former Sudanese chief torturer <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/26/world/fg-sudan26">Nafie Ali Nafie</a>, once head of the genocidal Islamist regime’s notorious intelligence service and still a top presidential advisor infamous for personally having tortured opposition leaders, for which he expresses no regret when asked.   Any protests against him might stoke anti-Muslim bigotry (although most of that regime’s victims are themselves Muslim) and distract attention from the far more vital mission of endlessly spotlighting U.S. detention abuses, real and alleged, of mostly 10 years ago.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Emory President Ignites Furor over Slavery Reference</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/emory-president-ignites-furor-over-slavery-reference/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=emory-president-ignites-furor-over-slavery-reference</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 04:03:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civil war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compromise]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[constitution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emory university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Slavery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[three fifths]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179273</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where the campus witch-hunters get it wrong. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/emory-president-ignites-furor-over-slavery-reference/460x-5/" rel="attachment wp-att-179330"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179330" title="460x" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/460x-416x350.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="210" /></a>The President of Emory University has ignited controversy for citing the original constitutional agreement of 1787 that counted three-fifths of the slave population in congressional representation as a “compromise” that should inspire today’s gridlocked American politics.</p>
<p>Critics are assailing President James Wagner for ostensibly glorifying an arrangement that perpetuated slavery.   He wrote in the university magazine for Winter 2013:  “Both sides [north and south] found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union.”</p>
<p>Confronted by outrage, Wagner has apologized:  “Certainly, I do not consider slavery anything but heinous, repulsive, repugnant, and inhuman. I should have stated that fact clearly in my essay. I am sorry for the hurt caused by not communicating more clearly my own beliefs. To those hurt or confused by my clumsiness and insensitivity, please forgive me.”</p>
<p>Not everyone was mollified.  The 200 faculty of Emory’s College of Arts and Sciences voted to censure him. There was a demonstration against him.  <em>The New York Times</em> and <em>The Washington Post</em> have published articles. NPR aired a story.  <em>The Times</em> quoted one Emory history professor: “The three-fifths compromise is one of the greatest failed compromises in U.S. history,” she said. “Its goal was to keep the union together, but the Civil War broke out anyway.”</p>
<p>Wagner was pretty clumsy to cite the three-fifths accord as an admirable example for modern times.  He was needlessly inviting controversy for his benign advocacy of political compromise.  Why didn’t he instead cite the Constitutional Convention’s mollification of large and small states by creating a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with each stated represented equally?  Or there was the deal paying off state war debts, but mollifying Virginia and Maryland, which had paid their own debts, with the location of the new capital city.</p>
<p>But Wager’s critics aren’t entirely fair.  Contrary to the history professor’s claim it was the one of the “greatest failed compromises,” it did successfully keep north and south together for over 70 years instead of fracturing the nation at the start.  And as Abraham Lincoln understood 70 years later, there could be no likely eradication of slavery without preserving the union.  If the southern slave states formed their own country apart from the northern free states (some of which had not yet themselves abolished slavery at the time of the Constitution), southern slavery likely would continue indefinitely.  And forestalling the Civil War by over 70 years was a sort of accomplishment. Victory for the Union cause, and for emancipation, would not have been so sure if war had occurred in earlier decades before the north gained the firm advantage in population, industry and wealth.</p>
<p>Atlanta-based Emory, with 14,000 students, has in recent years under President Wagner focused on its own history with slavery. “Emory acknowledges its entwinement with the institution of slavery throughout the college&#8217;s early history,” its board declared in 2011.  “Emory regrets both this undeniable wrong and the university&#8217;s decades of delay in acknowledging slavery&#8217;s harmful legacy.”   Before the Civil War the school sometimes “rented” slaves from local owners for work on the campus.  The school is named for Methodist Bishop John Emory, himself a slave owner.   Methodism, as America’s largest church, split between north and south in 1844 over slavery, precipitated specifically by slave owning by one southern bishop.  Emory is today still at least officially affiliated with the United Methodist Church, although it’s mostly secular and replicates the culture of most liberal universities.</p>
<p>Likely not all disputants in the Emory controversy recall the three-fifths history very accurately. At the Constitutional Convention, northern delegates wanted zero congressional representatives for slaves, who lacked rights as citizens.  Southern delegates demanded full representation for slaves to bolster their own region’s congressional strength.  Three-fifths was the middle ground that allowed eventual agreement on the Constitution.  Of course, in the republic’s early days, most even non-enslaved Americans lacked voting rights.  Women were disenfranchised, as were many if not most non-property owning men.  In the 18<sup>th</sup> century, only a handful of nations had any semblance of democracy. Nowhere was there full franchise for everyone.  Only a small fraction of British people could vote for members of Parliament. Notorious “rotten boroughs” had their members handpicked by or purchased by nobles.   In their dispute with the American colonies, who complained of taxation without parliamentary representation, the British claimed their Parliament represented the whole British nation, including colonists, irrespective of voting rights.  In his tract against the Revolution, Methodist founder John Wesley, a prominent Church of England clergy, accurately declared that most British in the homeland had no more voting rights than did American colonists. But the original American republic, for all its sins, slavery chief among them, represented the greatest expansion of voting rights that history had ever seen.</p>
<p>In apologizing for his three-fifths comment, Wagner added that American democracy was founded as a “noble experiment, however flawed and imperfect.”  And he asked:  “Would the alternative have been a fractured continent, a portion of which might have continued far longer as an economy built on the enslavement of human beings?”  And he surmised:  “Inevitably, our existence as human beings is a compromised existence, never pure. Unless we recognize that with humility and mutual charity, we will always remain polarized.&#8221;</p>
<p>America’s founders tried to create an approximate justice amid the constraints of a fallen world, which included the evil of slavery.  Their ideas eventually, over a long bumpy ride, created a great republic with legal equality for all persons.    They, like we, were not “pure,” but sinners looking for the best available means.   Wagner tried to explain their predicament and presumably will do so with more finesse from here on.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Is God Against Drones?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/is-god-against-drones/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=is-god-against-drones</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:03:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178647</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For the Christian Left, no method of national defense is justified.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/is-god-against-drones/drone_1898982b/" rel="attachment wp-att-178900"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-178900" title="drone_1898982b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/drone_1898982b-450x281.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="169" /></a>The Religious Left does not like drones and even under the current administration has sounded their alarm.  Give them some credit for consistency in that they are reliably opposed to whatever tools are currently deployed in defending America. Some Religious Left critics have tried to exploit Just War teaching against drones, though they are themselves at best skeptical of Just War and are typically pacifists, explicitly or functionally.</p>
<p>David Gushee, a liberal Baptist ethicist at Mercer University, recently opined against drones as exemplifying a “disturbing combination of American arrogance and self-righteousness.”  In a recent “Washington Post” online op-ed, he faults them on America’s false notion of itself as the “exceptional nation, the beacon of freedom and justice, [which] can be trusted with the power to kill our own and others around the world in the name of national self-defense (and global security).”</p>
<p>The Religious Left never likes thinking of America as “exceptional,” though their own demands and unique expectations of America showcase their own vivid but unconfessed form of American exceptionalism.  Call it what you will, the United States is the most powerful nation. And with this power flows responsibility not just for the security of our own people but also a wider duty for upholding a global peace, to the extent possible.  Absent a global police force, the United States is the final arbiter of an approximate global stability.  That stability requires America to deter, contain and sometimes deploy lethal force against renegade states and terror groups.</p>
<p>Gushee complains that America would never accept China or Russia launching drone attacks inside the U.S. Indeed not, but is Gushee unaware of the significant distinctions between the U.S. and Afghanistan or even Pakistan, which are unable to police their own nations, and whose governments privately if not publicly consent to U.S. drone strikes?  And in the rush to reject American exceptionalism, Gushee and the Religious Left typically refuse to distinguish U.S. and Western strategic actions from pariah states.  Germany invaded France in 1940, and the U.S. and Britain invaded in France in 1944.  Were American and Britain therefore morally indistinguishable from Nazi Germany?</p>
<p>Typically in Just War thinking, intent is key.  U.S. drone strikes on homicidal terrorists operating freely in a failed nation state is quite different from communist China theoretically launching drones against Chinese dissidents residing in the U.S.  Could the Religious Left ever comprehend this distinction, or does their seething anti-Americanism blind them to discerning moral judgment?</p>
<p>Gushee complains of the U.S. “self-perception of being in an endless war on terror” is an excuse to overlook moral restraints.  Does he dispute that the U.S. is locked in an ongoing conflict with terror groups dedicated to killing Americans and many others?  In some sense, the world is always at war and always has been.  Fortunately, the current open wars, although vicious, are largely contained in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan.  American power, among other forces, helps to keep them contained, and to deter the explosion of other conflicts that could become more widespread and threatening. This American power provides an approximate peace for most of the world, although there have always been and will always be forces of disorder working against peace and stability.  Such is the bent of human nature, which Gushee and the Religious Left are loath to admit.</p>
<p>Similar to Gushee is another Religious Leftist, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, former president of Chicago Theological Seminary, and now a fellow at the Center for American Progress.  In her recent online op-ed in “The Washington Post” against drones, she complained that some drone targets do not actually present an “imminent” threat.   She likens drone strikes against terrorists for whom there is not necessarily explicit evidence of an immediate planned attack to the U.S. preemptive war on Iraq.  And she cites civilian deaths in some drone attacks, without pondering alternatives that would inevitably entail far more civilian deaths.  Thistlethwaite is “grieved” that President Obama is not living up to the lofty promises of his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize speech to wage “just peace.”  Doubtless she will be “grieved” by all U.S. chief executives sworn to defend the American people, with lethal force inevitably at times.</p>
<p>Echoing Thistlethwaite, and praising Gushee, liberal Baptist columnist Jonathan Merritt really liked Gushee’s comparison of U.S. drone attacks to China or Russia launching strikes in the U.S, exclaiming: “Hard to disagree with that!”  Why don’t these Religious Left critics just go ahead and liken U.S.  drones to Nazi Germany’s v rocket attacks on London?   Merritt is really upset that U.S. drones are launched against targets in Yemen, a “sovereign nation,” opining:  “Last time I checked, America is not at war with Yemen.”  Maybe Merritt should check on Yemen’s latest political situation, which is less than rosy, with a very weak “sovereign” government that is not routinely able to act effectively against terrorists.   U.S. drone strikes typically occur in nations whose regimes cannot fully police their own territory; otherwise terrorists would not have encamped there. Those regimes usually back U.S. drone strikes privately, even while sometimes denouncing them publicly, unable to admit their own impotence.  But Merritt and the Religious Left seem to prefer the pretense that weak or non-existent governments are “sovereign” if it facilitates arguments against decisive U.S. action.</p>
<p>Pretense is the utopian Religious Left’s often favored pose.  They prefer to imagine the world as though a family board game, with each player patiently waiting for his or her cards to be dealt.  Anybody caught cheating gets a quick slap on the wrist and the friendly game moves forward amicably. In the Religious Left imagination, it’s America that typically cheats, and the Religious Left’s prophetic role is to be the wrist slapper.</p>
<p>The real world is quite different from the imagined board game, and thoughtful Christians are called to develop policies that acknowledge the world for what it is, and to seek an imperfect, approximate justice by the flawed available means.  Even in the best circumstances, wars still happen, and the innocent horribly suffer.  The goal is to limit the suffering wherever possible, which often demands that legitimate governments must act forcefully and lethally.</p>
<p>People of faith trust that God, in His own time, will fully redeem the world and defeat evil forever.   But the utopian Religious Left sometimes wants to pretend their policies can preempt God. Fortunately, their counsel is mostly ignored, on drones, and virtually on every other issue.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Anti-Israel Evangelical Left Perpetuates Palestinian Suffering</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/anti-israel-evangelical-left-perpetuates-palestinian-suffering/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-israel-evangelical-left-perpetuates-palestinian-suffering</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 04:33:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Evangelical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What the Middle East would look like if the Religious Left got its way. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/anti-israel-evangelical-left-perpetuates-palestinian-suffering/jerusalem-cross-mosque/" rel="attachment wp-att-177740"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-177740" title="jerusalem-cross-mosque" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/jerusalem-cross-mosque.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="185" /></a>Recently “Christianity Today,” the prominent evangelical journal, spotlighted the “Top 5 Books on Israel &amp; Palestine,” as asserted by Gary Burge, a professor at Chicago-area evangelical Wheaton College, one of evangelical America’s most prestigious schools.</p>
<p>Burge is a crusader for trying to shift evangelicals away from their typically pro-Israel stance.  All five books naturally tout a pro-Palestinian perspective to varying degrees.   Evidently a book offering the Jewish experience did not merit attention.</p>
<p>The first book Burge touted was “Blood Brothers” by Elias Chacour, the <a title="Melkite Greek Catholic Church" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkite_Greek_Catholic_Church" target="_blank">Melkite Greek Catholic Church</a> Archbishop of <a title="Akko" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akko" target="_blank">Akko</a>, <a title="Haifa" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa" target="_blank">Haifa</a>, <a title="Nazareth" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth" target="_blank">Nazareth</a> and All <a title="Galilee" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilee" target="_blank">Galilee</a>.  As Burge recounts, Chacour recalls his life story as a Palestinian cleric, confronting the “thorny problem of struggle and reconciliation in Galilee.”   Another book is “I Am a Palestinian Christian,” by Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, whom Burge describes as “one of the leading Christian intellectuals in the Palestinian church.”  A third book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/On-Road-Armageddon-Evangelicals-Israels/dp/B003E7F09M/" target="_blank">On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel&#8217;s Best Friend</a>” by Timothy Weber, explains<em> </em>“why America and its evangelical communities are so ardently pro-Israel.” A fourth book is “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Coffins-Our-Shoulders-Experience-Palestinian/dp/B005IUV87G/" target="_blank">Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel</a>,” by Dan Rabinowitz and Khawla Abu-Baker, who are<em> </em>sociologists, “one Israeli and one Palestinian, [who] tell their personal stories growing up near each other in Haifa.”  The final book, “Whose Promised Land?: The Continuing Crisis over Israel and Palestine” by Colin Chapman is perhaps somewhat more impartial.  As Burge describes, it is a “poignant and compelling history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, told by a British Christian scholar who now resides in Cambridge,” who was for “many years a professor in Beirut and, thanks to his fluency in Arabic, can see this struggle from the inside unlike many others.”</p>
<p>Burge’s book selection for <em>Christianity Today</em> asserts his overall narrative of Israel as an imperialist intrusion on indigenous Palestinians, for which America and especially America’s pro-Israel evangelicals are especially culpable.  By telling stories of victimhood by Palestinians, especially the tiny Christian minority, Burge hopes to influence evangelicals towards neutrality or, better yet, pro-Palestinian advocacy.</p>
<p>Ostensibly this new stance will deliver oppressed Palestinians from their imperialist overlords, who will accede to Palestinian demands thanks to U.S. pressure.  The assumption is that initial Palestinian political victories will actually help Palestinians, especially its Christians.  What is the basis for this assumption?  It’s not clear. Where in the Middle East currently are Christian minority groups living safely under pluralistic democracy?</p>
<p>Burge and fellow Evangelical Left anti-Israel crusaders of course assume that Israeli intransigence is the primary blockage to peace. But what if Israel unilaterally withdrew to its pre-1967 borders, abandoned Jerusalem, and allowed an unlimited right of return for all Palestinians claiming descent from original Palestinian residents in what is now Israel?  Would these unilateral concessions completely appease most Palestinians and create mutual concord? Or would they not likelier feed thirsts for even greater victory, to include the eradication of Israel as a Jewish nation?</p>
<p>Contrary to the anti-Israel narrative that Burge prefers, if the actual obstacle to peace is Palestinian refusal to accept the permanent reality of Jewish Israel, then what Burge et al advocate only fuels greater strife and suffering for Palestinians.  In reality, peace is only attainable if most Palestinians firmly accept Israel’s permanence and settle for a Palestinian state based in the West Bank, not dreams of a greater, and Jewish-free, Palestine.</p>
<p>The Burge/Evangelical Left narrative on Israel/Palestine also unquestioningly accepts the public pronouncements of a handful of Palestinian Christian clerics and activists without admitting these besieged Christians have little choice to say anything else.   Their survival requires constantly burnishing their Palestinian nationalist credentials.   It’s interesting that the Evangelical Left, so critical of American nationalism, and of Israeli nationalism, makes such easy cause with Palestinian nationalism.</p>
<p>Burge serves on the board of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, an ongoing campaign to neutralize pro-Israel evangelicals.  This group met at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in November 2012, featuring anti-Israel speakers like Church of England priest Stephen Sizer.  Burge was also prominent in the 2010 film “With God on Our Side,” which targeted evangelical audiences, and which aimed to caricature Christian Zionists as end-times zealots indifferent to Palestinian suffering.</p>
<p>If Burge and anti-Israel Evangelicals, ostensibly so concerned about Palestinian Christians, actually got their way, the result almost certainly would be even greater suffering for all Palestinians.  Israel is sufficiently strong militarily and economically that it will persevere.  Any hope for Palestinians requires acceptance of mutual co-existence.   But intentionally or not, the anti-Israel Evangelical Left urges policies that would inflame unrealizable Palestinian hopes for eradicating Israel but actually only ensure their own continued marginalization.</p>
<p>The “Christianity Today” anti-Israel book suggestions from Burge superficially offer empathy for Palestinians. But like most leftist political naiveté, the policies to which they point are foolish for all.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Methodist Women for Open Borders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/methodist-women-for-open-borders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=methodist-women-for-open-borders</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2013 04:09:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enforcement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[open borders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reform]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Methodist Women]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Religious Left reveals its true agenda. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/methodist-women-for-open-borders/open-borders/" rel="attachment wp-att-176060"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-176060" title="open-borders" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/open-borders.jpg" alt="" width="282" height="216" /></a>Give credit to the New York based United Methodist Women. Most religious lobby groups currently pushing for “immigration reform” at least pay lip service to border security and law enforcement.   But the UMW is bracingly, audaciously refreshingly, demanding completely open borders with no immigration law enforcement.  Come one, come all, just like to a church pot luck supper!</p>
<p>UMW once was the largest women’s organization in America, with over 1 million members.  Today it is likely the fastest declining women’s organization, with just over half a million, and plunging. Few church women under age 60 or even 70 are still members, and most of them are mercifully unaware of the radical politics long touted by the UMW’s New York activist bureaucrats.  But thanks to the bequests of countless Methodist women now in glory, and the earnings from even more countless church bake sales and Christmas bazaars, the UMW no longer really needs members.  It has endowments to fuel its leftist politicking in perpetuity.</p>
<p>Just in time to back President Obama’s immigration initiative, or more accurately, to offer proposals well to his left, UMW released its “Principles for How We Negotiate a Deal.”  Here is the essence of what the church women want:  “All raids, detention and deportation of migrants should be suspended, instead shifting resources to immigration processing and services for underserved communities.”  So no further law enforcement, at all.  They demand that immigration be forever detached from the “context of national security and border enforcement.”  Instead it should all focus on “human rights, including economic and social rights.”  Just to be clear, there must “no ‘enforcement first’ or enforcement/legalization trade-off deals.”  UMW likewise insists there be no more talk of “war on terror,” which has “unjustly targeted Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrant communities.”  And no more talk of “war on drugs, “which after all was merely “pretext to profile, arrest, detain and shuttle primarily black and brown men through the criminal justice system directly to the deportation system.”</p>
<p>Bracing indeed.</p>
<p>UMW warns against dividing immigrants by “criminal” versus “law-abiding” immigrants,” or even “straight versus gay families, men versus women, immigrants currently in the United States versus those yet to come.”  America should instead just have a permanent “y’all come” policy, no matter who you are or what you’ve done.   And this giant mosaic of “diverse and integrated constituencies must be part of the policymaking process.”  Don’t try to marginalize anyone now, ya hear!  Amnesty for current illegals must not be granted at the expense of “future” immigrants.  UMW even frets that the 1986 mass legalization didn’t go further in guaranteeing a warm welcome to all future illegals.</p>
<p>Oh, whoops, don’t call anybody “illegal.”  If you do, that’s your hang-up. There is, according to UMW and most of the Religious Left, a universal right to U.S. residence, citizenship and unlimited welfare and entitlement benefits.  Illegals should instead be considered special visitors and soon to be family.  They are also victims of U.S. “global economic, trade, finance, and war policy that has forced millions to migrate to the United States.”  What else could they do?  Of course, absent the U.S., there would be universal peace and prosperity with no need for mass immigration.  But since we’re stuck with America, there must be endless atonement and reparations from the guilty nation.  Even “past criminal convictions of immigrants” ought not to matter.  Are we going to be hospitable, or what?  Employers must not be penalized for hiring illegals because, of course, nobody should be illegal. Even guest worker status must be abolished because it implies less than full automatic citizenship.</p>
<p>And of course UMW mandates that all immigrants immediately access all welfare and entitlement programs, including “reproductive and sexual health,” i.e. free contraceptives and abortions, courtesy of the taxpayer!</p>
<p>Also, no more walls or border security, please, which is so unwelcoming.  What do we want our guests to think of us?  UMW declares:  “End militarization of the U.S. border!”  UMW likewise wants to ditch free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA.</p>
<p>Unconsidered or at least unmentioned in the UMW’s “principles” are the unfairness of illegal immigrants needing to travel to the U.S., at their own expense no less.  Shouldn’t the U.S. offer travel vouchers to ensure safe and comfortable voyage?  Better yet, why not U.S. stipends for all the tens of millions around the world who might like to relocate to the U.S. but would just as enjoyably stay home if subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, saving everyone the hassle of the immigration process?</p>
<p>Thank you, United Methodist Women, or at least your New York spokespersons, for so comprehensively and earnestly illustrating the absurd logical outcome of the most extreme “immigration reform” arguments from the Religious Left.  The UMW’s non-negotiable principles, so filled with grievance and resentment, insult and dishonor all the millions of immigrants who have legitimately made America great over the centuries.  They came to build a nation not of chaos and entitlement, but of laws and reward for honest endeavor.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Anti-Israel Zealots Chastise Episcopal Church</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apartheid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[divestment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[episcopal church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Church stands tall against calls to boycott "apartheid" Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/anti-israel-zealots-chastise-episcopal-church/mozaheb20121215165546567/" rel="attachment wp-att-174895"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174895" title="mozaheb20121215165546567" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/mozaheb20121215165546567.jpg" alt="" width="282" height="196" /></a>Prominent, radically anti-Israel Episcopalians are urging their denomination to adopt a more aggressive stance towards Israel, including divestment. The Episcopal Church largely has stood back from some of the more stridently negative policies towards Israel adopted by other old-line Protestant denominations.  It has avoided serious consideration of anti-Israel divestment.  And its officials did not endorse an ecumenical plea with other denominations last October asking the U.S. Congress to reconsider U.S. military aid to Israel, a plea prompting major Jewish groups to cancel scheduled interfaith dialogue with those denominations.</p>
<p>As reported by Episcopal News Service, the anti-Israel “Episcopal Voices of Conscience” drafted a letter dated on Martin Luther King’s birthday as a self-proclaimed “Prophetic Challenge” to their denomination’s executive council.  “Just as this church stood with South Africa and Namibia during the dark days of Apartheid, so we recognize that we need to be standing with our sister and brother Palestinians who have endured an Apartheid that Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has described as worse than it was in South Africa,” their plea began.  They lavishly quoted from Martin Luther King to justify their “call for justice on the land where Jesus lived his earthly ministry,” ignoring that King himself strongly supported Israel.   Interestingly, the “Voices of Conscience” themselves evidently had not yet publicized their letter.  So seemingly the Episcopal Church leadership chose to preempt it with their own response.</p>
<p>The letter urges that the Episcopal Church “immediately move forward with our church’s corporate engagement policy so that our financial resources are not being used to support the infrastructure of this suffocating occupation.”  Signers include former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, Washington, D.C. National Cathedral Dean Gary Hall, and Bishop Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church’s first openly homosexual bishop who in retirement is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC.  Although not Episcopalian, retired South Africa Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a renowned critic of Israel, is also a signer.</p>
<p>Besides “corporate engagement,” these anti-Israel Episcopal prophets want their denomination, after having been “woefully missing,” to join the Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodist and United Church of Christ officials who asked Congress in October to reconsider U.S. military aid to Israel.  “The <em>truth</em> that is so readily seen worldwide, except among our nation’s leaders, is that Israel imposes a matrix of control over the occupied Palestinian territories, locating Jewish settlements on prime Palestinian land, building segregated roads forbidden to Palestinians to connect the settlers to Israel proper, erecting a wall that causes havoc in the daily lives of Palestinians and serves as another pretext to occupy yet more land,” the distressed Episcopalians, plus Tutu, explained.  “We see check points that are used to control the movements of people on their own land where tactics of bullying, intimidation, and detention are practiced; and where the demolition of homes and the uprooting of olive tree orchards are commonplace causing further humiliation and insult, along with the destruction of livelihoods.”  They also complained that “once Palestinian East Jerusalem [is] being subsumed through Israel’s settlement policy,” while the “teeming population of Gaza [is] held under confinement on land, in the air, and at sea.” Nowhere do they admit that Israel is surrounded by adversaries, many of whom openly call for its destruction.  Nor do they fault any Palestinians for inflexibility towards Israel.</p>
<p>For this crowd of dissident Episcopalians, it is all quite simple, as “Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians the oppressed.”  They fault the U.S. for “irrational bias” towards Israel in “its blind support of an immense injustice perpetrated every day on the Palestinian people.”  Oh, they do reject violence from “either side.”  And they affirm Israel’s right to live in peace, but only through the “prism of justice as we believe Dr. King would insist.”  They also affirm Palestinian “non-violent resistance to the occupation just as African Americans resisted the inhumanity of Jim Crow and segregation.”  After all, just like Martin Luther King, Palestinians “have a dream” too, they surmise.  Except that unlike King, who dreamed that black and white children would someday hold hands, many Palestinians and their supporters throughout the Middle East and beyond dream that Israeli children will either be incinerated or driven into the sea.</p>
<p>In response to the anti-Israel plea, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori told Episcopal News Service:   “We cannot build a lasting peace by directing or imposing strategies on others.”  Evidently this comment was her polite Episcopal way of dismissing the anti-Israel plea.  She publicly opposed divestment last year before the church’s governing General Convention, which, as the Episcopal News Service cited, “rejected boycott, divestment, and sanctions by an overwhelming margin.”  Another Episcopal Church official is quoted noting that the church’s House of Bishops rejected a “trajectory toward supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.”  Also cited is a 2005 Episcopal Church report that rejected comparing Israel to Apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p>So good for the Episcopal Church leadership that is resisting the harsh demands of radical anti-Israel activists. Those activists claimed that pro-Israel America is living in a “bubble of unreality.”  But they are themselves inside a surreal bubble, where amid all the turmoil and repression of the Middle East, only democratic Israel is the villain.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Religious Left Wants Control of More than Guns</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 04:30:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jim Wallis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religious left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why human liberty is the real target. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-d-tooley/religious-left-wants-control-of-more-than-guns/attachment/159538053/" rel="attachment wp-att-173954"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173954" title="159538053" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/159538053.jpg" alt="" width="196" height="148" /></a>A Religious Left coalition convened in the historic United Methodist building on Capitol Hill early this week essentially to back President Obama’s new gun control initiatives.  Of course, Sojourners chief Jim Wallis was prominently featured.   Of course, as elaborated in a later column, Wallis lambasted the National Rifle Association as a chief culprit for violence in America.  He especially detested Wayne LaPierre’s assertion that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”</p>
<p>Instead, Wallis countered, “When we are good, we want to protect our children — not by having more guns than the bad people, but by making sure guns aren’t the first available thing to people when they’re being bad.” He added, “Being good is protecting people and our children from guns that are outside of the control of rules, regulations, and protections for the rest of us.”</p>
<p>Wallis cited the current murder rates in Chicago, where more died last year from gun deaths than did U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan.   Of course, Wallis does not mention that Chicago has very strict gun control.  Instead he wonders if the mainly non-white victims of murder in Chicago elicit less sympathy and provoke more indifference than do white deaths.  “It’s morally mistaken and also religiously repugnant,” he laments.</p>
<p>Recounting a conversation with his evidently precocious 9-year-old child, Wallis quotes that child saying that gun access should be limited to “licensed hunters, [who] have guns if they use them to hunt. And people who need guns — who need guns for their job like policemen and army. But I don’t think that we should just let anybody have any kind of gun and any kind of bullets that they want. That’s pretty crazy.”</p>
<p>Presumably Wallis’ child speaks Wallis’ own views.  Since Wallis is largely pacifist, it’s likely Wallis is not enthusiastic about armed military or even police but grudgingly accepts the political reality.  Absent from Wallis’ commentary is any argument as to how the types of gun control he and much of the Religious Left advocate would actually reduce gun deaths.  And he ignores, as do so many others, the almost unprecedented drop in America’s murder rate, which is now one half what it was per capita 30 years ago, and is now lower than it was 50 years ago.  This plunge in murder rates accompanied a large increase in the number of personally owned guns in America.  Clearly gun control did not cause the drop, which has meant hundreds of thousands of Americans who otherwise would be dead are now alive.  As Wallis mentions race, he might note that since non-whites are disproportionately the victims of murder, they are correspondingly the greatest beneficiaries of America’s plunging murder rate.</p>
<p>Maybe Wallis prefers not to admit the wonderful drop in murder because it detracts from his preferred narrative to justify greater state power over individuals and their right to gun ownership.   He also does not likely like one main explanation for the drop in murder, which is the dramatic increase in America’s incarcerated population over the last 40 years.  Persons who would be murdering are instead behind bars, i.e. incarcerated by “good guys with guns.”  The incarceration rate of today is in fact five times per capita what it was 40 years ago.</p>
<p>Law enforcement and judicial leniency of the 1960s, confronted by surging crime and disorder, provoked stricter enforcement and tighter sentencing in subsequent decades, including longer prison terms and frequent elimination of parole. It was an obvious answer to runaway crimes rates, but an answer that the Left, including the Religious Left, which prefers to think of criminals as victims rather than morally responsible agents, prefers to ignore.   A 2010 “Time” magazine story estimated that just over the previous 18 years 170,000 Americans who would have been murdered were spared.  Just in 2008, the lower crime rates included 40,000 fewer rapes, 380,000 fewer robberies, half a million fewer aggravated assaults and 1.6 million fewer burglaries than would have occurred under the old crimes rates.  Perhaps Wallis and other Religious Left lobbyists should have convened a press conference in the United Methodist Building to praise God for these miraculous drops, and the millions of people who have been spared the ravages of violent crime thanks to more effective law enforcement, among other factors.  Meanwhile, by some counts, the number of guns privately owned in America has increased by 50 percent in recent decades, following the growth in population. About half of Americans say they have a gun in their home.</p>
<p>Besides incarcerating more criminals, smarter law enforcement backed by higher technology, along with an overall aging population are likely also factors in the stunning drop in murder and violent crime in America.  But there’s no comprehensive evidence that gun control has played any major role in reducing crime.</p>
<p>Yet Jim Wallis and the Religious Left cling with tenacious faith to their dream of reducing private gun ownership in America. Since there’s no solid evidence that gun control has substantively contributed toward crime reduction, their objectives must lie elsewhere.  We can only conjecture, but aligning with the rest of their politics, their constant political goal seems to be the reduction of personal liberty and greater government control at every level.  So maybe the next Jim Wallis press conference in the United Methodist Building should more forthrightly urge greater “control” over every aspect of American life and not limit its scope to guns.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Cathedral Crusade for Gun Control</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/cathedral-crusade-for-gun-control/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cathedral-crusade-for-gun-control</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 04:10:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[episcopal church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national cathedral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171238</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The first step in the Religious Left's agenda to dismantle the Second Amendment.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/cathedral-crusade-for-gun-control/national-cathedral-dc/" rel="attachment wp-att-171275"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171275" title="national-cathedral-DC" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/national-cathedral-DC-445x350.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="210" /></a>Barely a few hours after the horrendous December 14 Newtown, Connecticut murders, the National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, D.C. quickly publicized a news release pledging to “work with our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures.”  Then the cathedral announced its relatively new dean, Gary Hall, would sermonize on gun control that Sunday.   The gothic cathedral that soars over the nation’s capital has been struggling in recent years, like many liberal, old line Protestant institutions, over declining membership and finances.  And the political pronouncements of cathedral clergy, like most Episcopal and other old line clergy, in recent decades are mostly ignored.  More typically the National Cathedral gains attention as a favored locale for state funerals, such as for Presidents Ford and Reagan, as well as astronaut Neil Armstrong.  But CNN, <em>The Washington Post</em> and <em>New York Times,</em> among other media, uncharacteristically covered this sermon.</p>
<p>“If we are truly America’s ‘National’ Cathedral, as we say we are, then we must become the focal point of faithful advocacy of gun control, calling our leaders to courageous action and supporting them as they take it,&#8221; Rev. Hall preached.  “For a variety of reasons our political culture has been unwilling and unable to address the question of gun control, but now it is time that you and I, as followers of Jesus, help them to do that.”  Ostensibly “helping” Americans identify the right political solutions has been, unsuccessfully, the objective of old line Protestant elites for many decades.</p>
<p>In keeping with liberal theology, Rev. Hall warned against calling the Newtown murderer “evil” as dehumanizing.   Instead, he focused more abstractly on “violence” and social tolerance for it.  And in a familiar theme for old line Protestant clergy, he touted a political rather than a redemptive or spiritual crusade:  “Our political leaders need to know that there is a group of people in America who will serve as a counterweight to the gun lobby, who will stand together with our leaders and support them as they act to take assault weapons off the streets.”  The best way to mourn Newtown’s victims is to “mobilize the faith community for gun control.”  And the Episcopal priest pledged his cathedral would become a “focal point of faithful advocacy of gun control, calling our leaders to courageous action and supporting them as they take it.”  Rev. Hall promised that the “the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby.”</p>
<p>Keeping his promise, the National Cathedral last week hosted an interfaith press conference for gun control.  Rev. Hall was joined by the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., a United Methodist bishop, the National Council of Churches, a retired Catholic prelate, and the Islamic Society of North America.   Cathedral officials urged banning semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, while also urging better care for the mentally ill.  These stances are of course within the realm of reasonable discourse.  But for much of the Religious Left, these policy objectives are only incremental steps towards more sweeping gun bans.  The United Methodist Church, for example, has advocated for about 40 years an abolition of hand gun ownership.   A former National Council of Churches president suggested transcending a Second “Amendment crafted for a time that bears little resemblance to our own.”  Former lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) Richard Cizik professed to represent “new” evangelicals in backing gun control.   “American Evangelicals need to be born again on this issue,” he insisted, denouncing “weapons of war” that defy “everything we say we stand for.”</p>
<p>But the president of his “old” evangelical group, although not joining the National Cathedral press conference since NAE has no official gun control stance, told <em>The New York Times</em> that maybe they should<em> </em>“take a harder look.” He cited the “decisive action” of the Holy Family after King Herod slaughtered the innocents.  Whatever the NAE ultimately says, polls show that evangelicals are the religious demographic most opposed to more gun control.</p>
<p>At the press conference, Rev. Hall mocked the National Rifle Association’s suggestion of more armed guards at schools as answering “violence with more violence” and showing the NRA’s “answers are directly at odds with the teachings of all faith traditions of the vast majority of people of faith in America.”  Unlike the United Methodist stance for a total ban on handguns, among other weapons, the Episcopal Church, according to its D.C. lobby, apparently more moderately advocates keeping “guns out of the hands of criminals (and to make certain assault weapons impossible to own), as well as to promote better availability of mental-health care and other measures designed to address the causes and effects of violence in our communities.”</p>
<p>Rev. Hall more specifically declared:   “We must urge our legislators to support a ban on assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines, and commit ourselves to improving mental health treatment and critiquing our culture of glorified violence.”  He also wants “tighter controls on all gun sales.”  Rev. Hall insisted he doesn’t want to “take away someone’s hunting rifle, but I can no longer justify a society that allows concealed handguns in schools and on the streets or that allows people other than military and police to buy assault weapons or that lets people get around existing gun laws by selling weapons to people without background checks at gun shows.”</p>
<p>The cathedral dean’s seeming emphasis on background checks and mental health is obviously not outrageous of itself.  But clerics leading political campaigns tend to invest their crusades with rhetoric pitting the angelic against the demonic.  Not just the NRA but nearly all gun owners likely are the ultimate target of the true believing Religious Left, which for more than a century has had almost unlimited faith that the Kingdom of God can be achieved through legislation expanding state power.   Interestingly, the Newtown killer reportedly degenerated emotionally after his parents’ divorce.  Murderers and other violent felons overwhelmingly come from families broken by divorce or out of wedlock births.  Churches typically bring no particular expertise to legislative issues, much less gun control.  They do have 2000 years of expertise in promoting family life and the morality it sustains.  None of the clerics who spoke at the National Cathedral press conference evidently extolled traditional church teachings about marriage and family as at least a partial remedy not only to violent crime but to a vast array of destructive social pathologies.  Maybe they could start.</p>
<p>Nor did any of the clerics on the lawn of the National Cathedral mention that, even with the Newtown and other horrendous mass murders of recent years, murder rates in American are at record lows. In 1980, there were 10.2 murders for every 100,000 Americans. In 2011, it was 4.7, a more than 50 percent per capita drop.   Murders today are less common per capita in America than they were in 1960.  While not minimizing the urgency of deterring future Newtown-like horrors, maybe the clerics should have, and still could, give thanks for this massive improvement.  And they could even ponder the reasons behind it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Deranged Left-Wing Fundamentalist Syndrome</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/deranged-left-wing-fundamentalist-syndrome/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=deranged-left-wing-fundamentalist-syndrome</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Dec 2012 04:00:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Evangelical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Franky Schaeffer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HATE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170618</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to Franky Schaeffer's twisted world of hate. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/deranged-left-wing-fundamentalist-syndrome/frankschaeffer/" rel="attachment wp-att-170735"><img class="size-full wp-image-170735 alignleft" title="FrankSchaeffer" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/FrankSchaeffer.jpg" alt="" width="265" height="335" /></a>Children of conservative religious backgrounds who spend a lifetime rebelling against their parents often replicate the &#8220;fundamentalism&#8221; of their youth.  Except their mutated version is often angrier, more intolerant, and unmitigated by the sense of divine grace that permeates even the most zealous of Christian &#8220;fundamentalists.&#8221;</p>
<p>Franky Schaeffer, hyper resentful son of the late great evangelical thinker Francis Schaeffer, is an icon of this pathology.  But in the wake of the horrible Connecticut killings, he has outdone even the most foaming at the mouth caricature of himself.</p>
<p>&#8220;George W. Bush was a serial killer of children too for no better &#8216;reasons&#8217; than the shooter in the school was,&#8221; Schaeffer pronounced in his latest diatribe.  &#8220;Why were we in Iraq? Bush also went on a senseless killing spree. It was birthed by insane Christian Zionism, defended by neoconservative anything-for-Israel idiocy. Period.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yes, it&#8217;s all quite simple, just as any good fundamentalist should angrily, yet confidently assert.  But few Christian &#8220;fundamentalists&#8221; of any note typically talk this way, certainly not Schaeffer&#8217;s father, nor even his disciples, such as the late Jerry Falwell, who would have been quickly browbeaten into a public apology had he likened a political opponent to a serial murderer, especially in the wake of a crime so abysmal.  Christian &#8220;fundamentalists,&#8221; even when negative, typically have hope in a final victory for goodness, as their faith demands.  Their leftist scoffing children often do not, hence they are completely cynical and see human history as a miserable cycle dominated by rubes lacking their own wisdom.</p>
<p>&#8220;But these days this freedom is starting to look like crap,&#8221; Schaeffer decreed of American liberties.  &#8220;I am beginning to think that our country is a blood-soaked monstrosity that mostly won’t admit what it is and we are.&#8221; Admitting that &#8220;hate is not cool, even wrong,&#8221; he then delineates all the millions of Americans who merit his disdain:  militias, gun owning &#8220;urban white moms and dads,&#8221; secessionists who remind him of the Klan because they&#8217;re really motivated by prejudice against a black president, the &#8220;white trash&#8221; who harken to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News, and the &#8220;idiots, stupid, ignorant persons, blockheads, boors, bucolic buffoons, bumpkins, oafs, peasants, yahoos, yokels… and other Republicans.&#8221;</p>
<p>Schaeffer&#8217;s hate list is a long one.  He also despises Democrats who support drone strikes, Christian Zionists, and the &#8220;radical hate-filled bigots occupying the West Bank,&#8221; who in his mind seem to be honorary contemptible Americans.  All of this bigotry &#8220;infects and &#8216;inspires&#8217; our crazies with a virus of lethal scope,&#8221; he explained.  &#8220;It’s in the air so to speak.&#8221; America&#8217;s strong military is also to blame because it&#8217;s &#8220;about 10 times bigger than we need for self-defense&#8221; and is an &#8220;invitation to murder.&#8221; Former President Bush of course is his prime example of mass murderer.</p>
<p>But Schaeffer generously granted that America&#8217;s intrinsic taste for murder can&#8217;t be faulted on Bush.  It&#8217;s always defined us.  He recalled the Puritans killing Pequot Indians &#8220;not long ago,&#8221; i.e. over 350 years ago.  He cited high prison incarceration rates and how America has &#8220;watched blacks, Native Americans, and other minorities marginalized, targeted killed, raped, shot, and imprisoned.&#8221; So America is not a civilized country and &#8220;actually, we never were.&#8221; After all, Thomas Jefferson, was a &#8220;slave owning rapist.&#8221;</p>
<p>Indeed, &#8220;this whole place stinks of the blood that’s been shed, from the Native Americans slaughtered and lied to, to the 3 million buffalo shot down from train windows and wagons by swaggering fools for no reason, to the glorification of weapons by the lynch mobs surrounding one black man hanging from a tree to all the &#8216;sporting rifles and shotguns&#8217; that somehow turn out to be military weapons just-for-fun.&#8221;  Schaeffer&#8217;s knowledge of American history seems mostly confined to the worst analysis of Harold Zinn.  America was always rotten, based on a &#8220;Calvinistic theology of retribution and hate&#8221; in the north and slavery in the south.  &#8220;We never had this country,&#8221; Schaeffer concludes, without defining &#8220;we,&#8221; which presumably includes himself and a few other isolated, noble souls.</p>
<p>Schaeffer&#8217;s father, a Presbyterian theologian and commentator, strongly critiqued America&#8217;s failures.  But he did so with hope of renewal, based on God&#8217;s love, and knowing that not all dead white men in American history were necessarily evil.  The younger Schaeffer, who&#8217;s largely lost his faith, of course offers no hope because he doesn&#8217;t really believe in it.  He offers only fury, smugness, and despair.  The father believed all of humanity is sinful but God offers redemption.  The son, so obsessed in rejecting his father&#8217;s faith, seems to locate evil only in people identifiable with his father: virtually all Americans, but especially Christians, conservatives, gun owners, and &#8220;white trash.&#8221;</p>
<p>The older Schaeffer, who loved rather than hated, is still revered by millions even decades after his death.  The son, although on MSNBC and in <em>The Huffington Post,</em> will be mercifully forgotten, unless, we can pray, he too seeks redemption.  In the spirit of this season, let&#8217;s hope he does.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Quakers: Hard on U.S., Easy on Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/quakers-hard-on-u-s-easy-on-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=quakers-hard-on-u-s-easy-on-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2012 04:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pacifist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Quakers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[American Friends Service Committee's peculiar silence on the warmongering Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/quakers-hard-on-u-s-easy-on-iran/afsc-logo-gif/" rel="attachment wp-att-169197"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169197" title="AFSC logo gif" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/AFSC-logo-gif-392x350.jpg" alt="" width="235" height="210" /></a>Long ago, the political arm of Quakers in the U.S. shifted away from traditional peace causes to radical, far-left advocacy that benefits violently aggressive regimes that torment their own people and threaten world peace. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) never met an anti-American regime it could not defend.  Iran’s notorious theocracy of the apocalyptic mullahs with nuclear weaponry ambitions is the latest beneficiary of Quaker advocacy.</p>
<p>AFSC has contacted members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate Armed Services committees, with “appropriate” committee staff, to warn against a “dangerous provision threatening war with Iran” within the final National Defense Authorization Act that that Congress is currently negotiating.</p>
<p>The House version of the legislation urges U.S. policy to &#8220;take all necessary measures, including military action if required, to prevent Iran from threatening the United States, its allies, or Iran&#8217;s neighbors with a nuclear weapon.&#8221;  The Quakers object that this language would require the Defense Department to theorize about enhancing U.S. naval strength in the Middle East and to conduct preparatory military operations in the region.</p>
<p>In their letter to the congressional committee, the Quakers complained that this legislation would challenge the President’s “well-established constitutional prerogatives with respect to U.S. foreign policy” and would attempt to “micro-manage” presidential command over U.S. Forces.  How touching that the Quaker lobby is considerately now defending presidential war powers, for which the Quakers are not typically renowned.</p>
<p>More characteristically, the Quakers tut-tut that the House legislation would “undermine” the administration’s “diplomatic efforts with Iran, and push the United States closer to a war that countless military leaders and top national security officials have warned would be disastrous for U.S. national security interests.”  Their pleading letter concludes:  “We hope you will also join countless U.S. and Israeli military and security officials in speaking out against another war of choice in the Middle East.”  Again, the sudden Quaker regard for U.S. and Israeli military and security officials is unusual.</p>
<p>A more candid letter from the Quaker lobby would forthrightly declare that even if Iran were testing a nuclear weapon tomorrow with specific plans to obliterate Tel Aviv (or to sneak into a U.S. city), they would oppose any consideration of military action to stop it.  The modern Quaker approach to statecraft, aligned with contemporary Religious Left activism almost everywhere, opposes all “violence,” no matter how many innocents must die in defense of their abstract philosophical point.  That their policies would directly encourage and facilitate even greater violence is seemingly inconsequential to the professional religious peace activists.</p>
<p>The U.S. House legislation to which the Quaker lobby objects urges diplomacy, sanctions and “credible, visible preparations for a military option.”  Noting that diplomacy and sanctions so far have been unsuccessful in sidetracking Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the legislation suggests that “additional pressure” could come from a “credible threat of military action against Iran&#8217;s nuclear program.”  So of course the legislation seeks to protect the world from nuclear-armed Iranian psychopaths and to prevent war by offering a credible threat to the mad regime of mullahs.   But even the suggestion of implied force to deter even greater violence is sufficient to give these Quakers the vapors.  Oddly, the prospect of Iranian theocrats anxious for End Times and for extinguishing Israel, among other targets, does not seem to fuel much if any anxiety at the Quaker lobby office.</p>
<p>Maybe the Quaker lobby perspective might have a pinch of credibility if, while forthcoming about the Quaker commitment to absolute pacifism, at least expressed alarm about Iranian nuclear weapons, about Iranian threats against Israel and others, and about the Iranian regime’s bloody 33-year reign of terror over the Iranian people.  But the Quaker lobby prefers to imagine, as it has across the last half century or so, that murderous tyrants are in fact quite reasonable, and the main threat to peace is not from the killers but rather from those who attempt to stop them.</p>
<p>In a FAQ about the Iranian nuclear question, the Quaker lobby avoids virtually any negative language about Iran’s theocracy. Instead, it faults the U.S. for failure to accept Iranian compromises.  And it wonders about the seriousness of objections to Iranian nukes when the U.S. and Israel already have nuclear weapons.  After all, from the Quaker lobby perspective, all regimes seem to be morally equal, and all violence is equally unacceptable.  The real solution, it insists, is a nuclear free world.</p>
<p>Quakers have always been pacifists but they have not always funded a far-left Capitol Hill lobby that churns out dogmatic policy demands for a radically egalitarian and utopian view of social justice.  Ironically, the Quaker lobby wants lots, lots more government but doesn’t want the government using force.  So it’s not really clear how the state should gain its revenues or impose its rule.</p>
<p>No matter.   The Quaker lobby prefers surreal dreams to reality.  Quakers are few in number, and probably most are far more realistic than the political lobby that professes to represent them.  But the Quaker lobby says what virtually the whole organized Religious Left believes in terms of dogmatic pacifism, anti-Americanism, and incongruent demands for ever more monolithic and controlling Big Government.</p>
<p>Very little, if any of it, makes sense.  But the Quaker lobby, which dates back to World War II, is undeterred and, thankfully, mostly ignored.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Merry Christmas: Jesus’s Birthplace is an &#8216;Open-Air Prison&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/merry-christmas-jesuss-birthplace-is-an-open-air-prison/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=merry-christmas-jesuss-birthplace-is-an-open-air-prison</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:25:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bethlehem]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A special holiday message from the haters of Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/merry-christmas-jesuss-birthplace-is-an-open-air-prison/churchofthenativity_620x350/" rel="attachment wp-att-167435"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-167435" title="Churchofthenativity_620x350" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Churchofthenativity_620x350-450x348.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="209" /></a>The Joint Advocacy Initiative (JAI), a collaboration of the <a href="http://www.ej-ymca.org/" target="_blank">East Jerusalem YMCA</a> and <a href="http://www.ywca-palestine.org/" target="_blank">YWCA of Palestine</a>, has released its special “Christmas Message.” And this year’s holiday season is apparently all about bashing Israel.  “The birthplace of Jesus Christ has become an open-air prison,” they complained with Christmas cheer.</p>
<p>JAI is chiefly about disseminating anti-Israel advocacy through Christian and relief groups worldwide to “influence decision-makers and prompt actions that contribute to end Israeli occupation and all its violations of International Law.”  JAI was founded in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in response to terror attacks from there by Palestinian groups.   As a Christian group, JAI might laudably advocate spiritual reconciliation.  But its chief ministry seems to be demonizing Israel without acknowledging ongoing terror by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.</p>
<p>This year’s “Christmas Message” from JAI amply illustrates its political and spiritual emphases.  There is no mention of opposing terror or working for peace, just opposing Israel.  Recalling the Nativity of Christ, JAI grimly notes that the fields where Shepherds first heard of Baby Jesus are now witness to “harassment, imprisonment, and land confiscation,” making hope difficult.</p>
<p>JAI denounces Israel’s “campaign of aggression towards our people in Gaza” without mentioning years of rockets launched by many of “our people” in Gaza at the behest of Hamas.  The holiday message complains of “extremists,” but only when describing Israeli settlements around Bethlehem.  “Not dissimilar to Herod’s campaign to find and kill the baby Jesus, Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza is a campaign to kill the hope and livelihood of steadfast Palestinians who desire to be free in their homeland,” JAI carefully explains, unavoidably comparing Israel to King Herod, infamous for infanticide.</p>
<p>In their concluding fundraising appeal, JAI implores supporters to “act against all the injustices we live under so we may be liberated from oppression and live in peace with justice.” But how or why would Palestinians be free from “oppression” or live in “peace” if Hamas or kindred spirits are rulers is unexplained.  Evidently “oppression” only applies to Israeli policies in a region that is full of pervasive oppression by Arab regimes.</p>
<p>This spirit of chiefly blaming Israel of course is not confined to Palestinian groups.  The impact of the October letter to the U.S. Congress from mostly old-line Protestant church officials urging reconsideration of U.S. military aid to Israel continues to ricochet.   Seven prominent Jewish groups cancelled a long-scheduled interfaith dialogue with these denominations in response, fed up with years of anti-Israel scapegoating.   After about a month, the denominational officials finally have replied to the Jewish groups, ignoring the substance of their distress, while offering to meet for a special summit to discuss their concerns.  The Jewish groups, likely exasperated, have not yet responded.  Since the exchange began, U.S. military aid to Israel has proved vital to facilitating Israel’s “Iron Dome” anti-missile protection against attacking Hamas rockets.  Seemingly the United Methodist, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America officials who endorsed the original appeal, if they actually mean what they say, would be fine with Israel unable to defend its cities from terror attacks.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in early November, B’nai B’rith International helped convene a summit outside Jerusalem of pro-Israel Protestant activists from the U.S., Canada, and Europe to combat the unrelenting anti-Israel bias within old-line Protestantism.  “The humanitarian concern is the veil that covers, or is the rationalization for ultimately what I believe to be anti-Semitic ideas and anti-Semitic policies,” said one United Church of Canada minister, as quoted in <em>The Times of Israel</em>. A British pastor added:  “That Goliath cannot be felled with a stone and a sling as in the days of King David, because the problem isn’t political, the problem isn’t sociological; the problem isn’t about lack of education or lack of dialogue.”  He concluded:  “The problem is a spiritual one. The problem is that there is an adversary of God, of Israel, of Christians.”</p>
<p>The summit in Jerusalem was not only about complaints.  The Protestant activists are releasing their own manifesto that’s a lot more cheerful than the JAI’s ostensible “Christmas Message.”  Not yet finalized, it will affirm “love for Israel” and commend Israel’s pluralistic democracy that is so unique in the region.  It also affirms love for Palestinians and hopes for peaceful co-existence. These Protestants chide churches who insist that helping Palestinians requires undermining Israel.  And they declare that encouraging forces who want to destroy Israel does not exemplify Christian love.  Unlike most church critics of Israel, they connect hostility to Israel to oppression of Christians and other religious minorities throughout the region.</p>
<p>God bless these Protestant activists who resist the bureaucracies of their own declining denominations by asserting mostly simple self-evident truths about the Middle East.  JAE’s exploitation of Christmas to delegitimize the nation that produced Baby Jesus surely is a gross spiritual contradiction.   The Canadian pastor at the Jerusalem consultation emphasized that church bureaucrats don’t speak for most church goers.  He could have added that especially at this time of year, even as Hamas rockets still target Israel, most Christians in America and many globally still deeply sympathize with an embattled friend.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Religious Left Joins in Condemning Israel</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Nov 2012 04:30:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[But Hamas's genocidal onslaught against the Jewish State gets a pass. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/religious-left-joins-in-condemning-israel/feb15-03-0068/" rel="attachment wp-att-165687"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-165687" title="feb15-03-0068" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/feb15-03-0068.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="212" /></a>It didn’t take long.  Israel had barely begun to respond militarily to Hamas’s ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians when the “U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation” quickly asked its supporters to urge President Obama to “investigate” Israel’s “violations” of U.S. weapons laws.</p>
<p>The suggested communication to Obama noted Israel had killed 21 mostly civilian Palestinians in the “occupied and besieged” Gaza.  It also kindly admitted that 3 Israeli civilians had died from a Palestinian rocket.  It’s not clear how Gaza is “occupied” since Israel withdrew in 2007, leaving it to suffer under Hamas rule.</p>
<p>“Israel&#8217;s attacks against the Gaza Strip are being committed with U.S. weapons given to Israel as military aid by the U.S. taxpayer,” the U.S. Campaign complained.  “These weapons are being misused by Israel in violation of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act to commit grave human rights abuses of Palestinians.”</p>
<p>Naturally, the U.S. Campaign omits that Hamas and its agents have launched 120 rockets against Israel in the recent week.  Or that Hamas this year has fired over 760 rockets and mortar rounds into Israel.  Or over 2500 since 2009.  Or that Hamas and friends have a stockpile of 10,000 rockets.  For the U.S. Campaign, these facts are largely irrelevant.   They do not really support Israel’s right to exist, much less to defend itself.  The U.S. Campaign and its member groups are not asking any other nation in the world to endure routine rocket attacks on civilian centers by a terrorist group.</p>
<p>What is the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation?  It boasts that it’s the “largest and most diverse coalition working to change U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel to support human rights, international law, and equality.”  By “human rights” it means exclusively criticizing Israel for all Middle East strife and ignoring transgressions by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and every other actor in the region.</p>
<p>The U.S. Campaign claims over 400 member groups, many of them pretty marginal and kooky, like Code Pink and the National Lawyers Guild.  It lists only 165 groups as in “good standing” for 2012.  Religious groups are prominent among them, including the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, which is an over $150 million missions agency, the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the Methodist Federation for Social Action, United Methodist Board of Church and Society (official lobby office for United Methodist Church), Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns (leftist Catholic order), Lutherans for Justice in the Holy Land, Episcopal Bishop&#8217;s Committee for Israel/Palestine, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, United Church of Christ Palestine/Israel Network, and the United Methodist Task Force on Peace with Justice in Palestine/Israel.  There are also local chapters of Sabeel and the Council on Arab Islamic Relations.  Interestingly, the only major official denominational agencies are from the United Methodist Church.</p>
<p>Needless to point out, the U.S. Campaign has special programs equating Israel to Apartheid South Africa, to commemorate the “Nakba” (catastrophe) of Israel’s founding, to advocate boycotts and divestments against Israel, and to oppose U.S. support for Israel across the board.  Its very focused theme is to stand with Israel’s enemies in disputing Israel’s right to exist.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some U.S. denominations are advertising a new statement from 100 Palestinian Christian elites, many of them based in “Occupied Jerusalem,” urging Palestinian membership in the United Nations.   “Just like our Palestinian Muslim brothers and sisters, we have been denied our national and human rights for almost a century,” is how they introduce themselves, which is very interesting.  Apparently they’re dating the loss of their “human rights” to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which was not typically renowned for “human rights.”   Does this group equate “human rights” with Muslim rule? They also describe 64 years of “exile,” referring to their having been “forcibly expelled” from Israel at its founding.   They refer to Israel as a “belligerent occupying power that works tirelessly to distance us from the peace we seek and pray for.”</p>
<p>According to the Palestinian Christians, “The occupation, oppression, exile and Apartheid, have made of everyday a good Friday,” likening their plight to the sufferings of Christ on the cross.  “We believe the Palestine Liberation Organization&#8217;s initiative to enhance Palestine’s status in the United Nations to an Observer State is a positive, collective, and moral step that will get us closer to freedom,” they insist, targeting their appeal especially to European governments.  At least one of the signers, Alex Awad, is a United Methodist missionary.</p>
<p>Such statements from Palestinian Christians are routinely heralded by U.S. denominations to prove that Israel is oppressing Christians.  As such, Palestinian Christians, who comprise a tiny percentage of the Palestinian population, serve as convenient props for anti-Israel campaigns.  Of course, these Christians have little choice but to burnish their Palestinian nationalist credentials as they struggle for survival as a tiny minority under Muslim rule.  And their plight would not in the least concern these same U.S. church groups if Israel were not the villain.  Compare the ink and verbiage expended on the few tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians versus millions of Egyptian Coptic Christians, whose plight now under Muslim Brotherhood rule is of virtually no interest to these church crusaders for “human rights.”</p>
<p>At least the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, with its religious advocates of “human rights,” has fully unveiled its true intent, by opposing Israel’s right even to react against years of rocket attacks by Hamas.  For them, there can be no peace or justice in the Middle East until Israel just goes away.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Anti-Israel Christians Stir Further Controversy</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Nov 2012 04:10:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Religious Left presses on with its favorite campaign.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/anti-israel-christians-stir-further-controversy/electionsign2012-cutisraelaidsave30billion/" rel="attachment wp-att-164585"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-164585" title="ElectionSign2012-CutIsraelAidSave30Billion" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ElectionSign2012-CutIsraelAidSave30Billion.gif" alt="" width="315" height="241" /></a>The October 4 ecumenical letter to the U.S. Congress from 15 mostly old-line Protestant bureaucrats warning against U.S. military aid for Israel absent “immediate investigation” of Israeli human rights abuses continues to stir controversy. The letter from United Methodist, Presbyterian Church (USA), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and other clerics of course was uninterested in any potential human rights abuses by the Palestinian recipients of U.S. aid. Seven major U.S. Jewish groups cancelled an October scheduled interfaith dialogue with these denominations in protest.  The Jimmy Carter Center has since endorsed the ecumenical anti-Israel appeal, naturally.  And anti-Israel Episcopalians are imploring their denomination’s Presiding Bishop, who notably declined to sign the appeal, to reconsider.</p>
<p>Episcopalians for Mideast Peace has organized an online petition whose “target” is Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, who also publicly opposed anti-Israel divestment earlier this year before her General Convention was scheduled to debate it.  Divestment was overwhelmingly rejected in July, and doubtless anti-Israel Episcopalians were further peeved when her name or any other senior Episcopal leader failed to appear on the letter against U.S. military aid for Israel.  The online petition urges Jefferts Schori to “take a stand for justice for the Palestinians by adding her signature to the letter to Congress.”</p>
<p>Last month poor Bishop Jefferts Schori received another similar negative appeal from the Palestine Israel Network of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.  She had written both U.S. presidential candidates to commend “a just and peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”   In it she had cited the regional complexities against peace, including a “nuclear Iran; continued Israeli settlement building, particularly in and around Jerusalem, at a pace and pattern that complicates the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state; unacceptable levels of violence on all sides; and the humanitarian disaster of the Gaza Strip.”   She urged that “American political leadership” work to “play a catalytic role in supporting the work of peacemakers.”</p>
<p>The curious Palestine Israel Network of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship asked Jefferts Schori why she had failed to sign the letter to Congress against military aid for Israel.  This group reminded her that this year&#8217;s Episcopal General Convention had called for the U.S. to “hold in escrow aid to Israel by an amount equal to any expenditures by the Government of Israel to expand, develop or further establish Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and only release the aid from escrow if proof is given that settlements are not being established.”</p>
<p>So naturally the anti-Israel Episcopalians were “perplexed” about Bishop Jefferts Schori’s failure to sign the letter to Congress. “We could not have a clearer policy base for you to join in this important initiative,” they told her.  “We hope to see your name added in the coming days.”  These irritated Episcopalians were further miffed that her letter had implied that there are “two equal parties to the conflict” and never mentioned their favorite word: “occupation.”  They complained that readers of her letter to the presidential candidates would not understand from her omissions that Israel has been “oppressing the Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967.”</p>
<p>The anti-Israel Episcopalians even announced to their Presiding Bishop:  “We believe our Church should review its policy of support for a two-state solution in light of Israel’s continuing expansionist policies that seriously draw into question its commitment to this goal.” So evidently they prefer to dissolve Jewish Israel in favor of a new “Palestine” where Jews are at least momentarily a tolerated minority.  The querulous Episcopalians told Jefferts Schori that they seek a “common witness from our Church on behalf of justice for oppressed Palestinians and liberation from the role of oppressor by Israel so that our common vision of peace and security can be realized for all Israeli Jews and Palestinians.” How evenhanded.</p>
<p>In a similar spirit of piling on Israel, The Carter Center released a news release commending the October 5 ecumenical appeal for Congress to reconsider U.S. military aid for Israel. “Like these church leaders, The Carter Center has long been concerned about Israel&#8217;s disregard for stated U.S. policy,” it explained. “This is demonstrated by an unprecedented massive increase in encroachment on occupied Palestinian territory, with illegal settlement expansion during recent years.”  The former president himself was even quoted:  &#8220;This is precluding the possibility of a two-state solution and endangers a peaceful future for both Israelis and Palestinians.&#8221;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, pro-Israel Presbyterians reacted to their denomination’s Stated Clerk having endorsed the October 5 ecumenical appeal against Israel.  “Israel should be judged alongside the human rights records of the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank,” suggested Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, which noted that U.S. funds the PA directly and Hamas indirectly through the UN.  “We think all of the Jewish groups offended by the letter to Congress, and a great many Christians, ourselves included, would more than welcome such a side-by-side comparison.”  No doubt.</p>
<p>These pro-Israel Presbyterians also observed:  “Given the outspoken commitment of the leaders of Iran, in alliance with Hamas and Hezbollah, to ‘annihilate’ Israel, loss of security assistance and military aid would threaten Israel’s very existence and the lives of its people.” It’s an obvious point, and not one that evidently concerns the ecumenical, mostly Mainline Protestant letter signers the least bit.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Relations Break Down Between Jewish &amp; Protestant Groups</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Oct 2012 04:15:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Church leaders' obsessive denunciation of Israel encourages interfaith estrangement.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/relations-break-down-between-jewish-protestant-groups/pres_church_584-5/" rel="attachment wp-att-163270"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163270" title="pres_Church_584" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/pres_Church_5843.gif" alt="" width="315" height="216" /></a>Major Jewish groups have indignantly cancelled a scheduled interfaith dialogue after Mainline Protestant officials urged Congress to reconsider U.S. military aid to Israel.  The October 5 Protestant letter complained of &#8220;widespread Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinians, including killing of civilians, home demolitions and forced displacement, and restrictions on Palestinian movement.” The National Council of Churches, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodist and United Church of Christ officials (Episcopalians were notably absent) asked Congress to investigate Israeli abuses before granting further aid.  They faulted U.S. military help for “sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.&#8221;  The Protestant letter did not mention U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority or to Arab regimes.</p>
<p>“The participation of these leaders in yet another one-sided anti-Israel campaign cannot be viewed apart from the vicious anti-Zionism that has gone virtually unchecked in several of these denominations,&#8221; pointedly explained Jewish Council of Public Affairs President Rabbi Steve Gutow. Having &#8220;squandered our trust,&#8221; he said these churches&#8217; officials have shown a &#8220;stony silence to the use of anti-Judaism and relentless attacks on the Jewish state, often from within their own ranks,&#8221; which &#8220;speaks loudly to their failure to stand up and speak the whole truth about what is occurring in the Middle East.”</p>
<p>Previously Jewish groups have largely confined their public concerns about Mainline Protestant bias against Israel to anti-Israel divestment initiatives by the churches.  This Summer the United Methodists and Presbyterian Church (USA) both rejected divestment, the Presbyterians only very narrowly.  But fierce denunciation of Israel, and mostly silence about human rights abuses nearly everywhere else, have characterized official Mainline Protestantism for about 30 years.  Once pro-Israel, Mainline Protestant elites in the 1970s succumbed to a Liberation Theology perspective that portrayed Palestinians as Third World victims and Israel as colonialist oppressor.</p>
<p>&#8220;While we remain committed to continuing our dialogue and our collaboration on the many issues of common concern, the letter represents an escalation in activity that the Jewish participants feel precludes a business-as-usual approach,&#8221; the Jewish groups publicly complained as they withdrew from a Christian-Jewish Roundtable set for late October.  The dialogue began in 2004 to ease interfaith tensions as Mainline Protestants first pondered anti-Israel divestment.</p>
<p>The protesting Jewish groups were the American Jewish Committee (AJC), B’nai B’rith International (BBI), Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), Rabbinical Assembly (RA), Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), and</p>
<p>United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ).</p>
<p>“The [Protestant] letter could also have highlighted the relentless attacks on Christians throughout the Middle East, including the brutal oppression of Coptic Christians or just as easily have called for a suspension of aid to Palestinians until the Palestinian Authority take steps such as returning to the negotiating table,&#8221; observed one JCPA official.  &#8220;That would have been equally unhelpful but might have mitigated the obvious conclusion that the signatories bear a deep and singular antipathy for Israel.”</p>
<p>Typically official Mainline Protestant pronouncements have exclusively faulted Israel for the absence of Mideast peace.  &#8220;Our churches are equally concerned about the well-being of Israelis and Palestinians, and are concerned about the massive amounts of U.S. military aid for Israel, and how those funds are used to perpetuate occupation,” a United Church of Christ official told <em>Haaretz</em>, an Israeli publication.  A JCPA official pointed out to <em>The New York Times</em> that Mainline Protestant pronouncements often brand Israel an &#8220;Apartheid state.&#8221;</p>
<p>“We asked Congress to treat Israel like it would any other country,” the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) told <em>Haaretz</em>, “to make sure our military aid is going to a country espousing the values we would as Americans — that it’s not being used to continually violate the human rights of other people.” But neither his denomination nor the other Mainline Protestants typically if ever offer critique of any governments other than Israel, much less the Palestinians.  “Where’s the letter to Congress about Syria, which is massacring its own people?” asked an official with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, as quoted in <em>The Times.  </em>“When Israel is the only one that is called to account, that’s when it becomes problematic.&#8221;</p>
<p>But the Presbyterian official fairly pointed out that he was representing the official statements of his denomination as approved by its biannual General Assembly.  The German-based United Methodist bishop who signed the letter made the same point, quoting the copious resolutions her denomination has approved aimed at Israel.  &#8220;We stand clearly on the side of Israel and we are committed to human rights for all God’s people,&#8221; insisted Bishop Rosemarie Wenner, president of the Council of Bishops.  &#8220;We are ready to continue the dialogue with Jewish faith groups,&#8221; she added.  &#8220;And we will also continue to express publicly our desire for peaceful solutions for the conflict in the Middle East.&#8221;</p>
<p>The protesting Jewish groups have requested a &#8220;summit&#8221; with Mainline Protestant officials to help heal the rift.  Likely it will occur.  And just as likely it will not significantly alter the anti-Israel reflexes of Mainline Protestant elites.  Jewish groups rightly challenge biased Mainline Protestant officials.  But they should remember that the Mainline has become culturally sideline though often giving political cover to dubious political causes.  And liberal church elites don&#8217;t speak for most church members.  A Pew poll last year showed Mainline Protestants sympathizing with Israel over Palestinians by 46% to 12%.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Defending Sudan’s Christians from Islamist Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/defending-sudans-christians-from-islamist-terror-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=defending-sudans-christians-from-islamist-terror-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Oct 2012 04:10:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Archbishop of York]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[John Sentamu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political Correctness]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=149117</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Archbishop of York John Sentamu speaks out while too many other clerics stay silent.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/defending-sudans-christians-from-islamist-terror-2/sent/" rel="attachment wp-att-149178"><img class="wp-image-149178 alignleft" title="sent" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sent.jpg" alt="" width="299" height="393" /></a>The Church of England’s Archbishop of York continues to distinguish himself as a frequent fly in the ointment of political correctness by defending British culture and Christianity. Himself a Ugandan refugee from the horrors of Idi Amin, John Sentamu is thankful for the civilization that has protected and elevated him.  It’s perhaps no great surprise that a Church of England commission assigned to nominate the next Archbishop of Canterbury, who would be their church’s and the global Anglican Communion’s senior prelate, declined to nominate Sentamu.  Amid allegations of adamant resistance by some to the Archbishop of York, who is a strong and sometimes polarizing figure, the commission instead has so far failed in its duty and nominated nobody.   The Church of England is left dangling.  Almost certainly the Archbishop of York would provide greater leadership and clarity than the often left-leaning, poet intellectual who is currently the Archbishop of Canterbury.</p>
<p>Further evidence of Sentamu’s leadership emerged in an October 17 speech he delivered to the House of Lords in defense of the besieged and mostly Christian people of South Sudan.  The South Sudanese won their independence from the brutal Islamist regime in Khartoum last year after decades of vicious war in which millions perished.  Yet Sudan’s tyrants still threaten the south just as they continue to wage war against various Muslim minority groups in northern Sudan that don’t subscribe to Khartoum’s nasty brand of radical Islam.</p>
<p>In May Sentamu attended a retreat in South Sudan with 14 senior Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops.  Bishops from Sudan itself, representing the often besieged Christian minority that remains in the north, were unable to travel.   The senior prelates issued an appeal to a world that does not often heed their plight. “Much of the last six decades has been characterized by a struggle for freedom on the part of marginalizd peoples within the old nation of Sudan,” the Sudanese bishops noted with understatement.  They celebrated the “peaceful birth” of South Sudan amid the north’s frequent refusal to abide by the peace accord and despite “military provocation from Khartoum.”   And they emphasized that South Sudan represents only “one section of the marginalized peoples of Sudan.”  The bishops expressed frustration that the United Nations and other prominent international actors mostly are ignoring the ongoing plight of Sudan’s oppressed minority groups against whom Khartoum continues to wage war.  The targeted peoples include Darfur and the peoples of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile.</p>
<p>The Anglican and Catholic bishops accused Sudan of supporting “rebel militia” in South Sudan that are abducting recruits to fight against the “democratically-elected government” there.   “Unlike the rebel movements in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, they do not appear to have any popular support nor just cause,” noted the bishops, who said Khartoum is suspected also of supporting the notorious Lord&#8217;s Resistance Army.   Citing Martin Luther King, Jr., the bishops declared they “too have a dream” about “two nations which are democratic and free, where people of all religions, all ethnic groups, all cultures and all languages enjoy equal human rights based on citizenship,” and where Christians and Muslims “can attend church or mosque freely without fear.”</p>
<p>Such a dream from the Sudanese bishops is lofty, and the international community, above all the churches, should embrace it. But most are silent in the face of Khartoum’s ongoing crimes.  As the Archbishop of York politely told the House of Lords:  “The fact is that the needs and aspirations of these noble people are not actually understood in the West.”  Sentamu said Britain should encourage Sudan to recognize the reality of itself as a “multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious nation.”  But of course, Khartoum’s Islamist regime despises this notion.   “Freedom of religion is an essential element of respect for human rights in Sudan and needs to be emphasized,” Sentamu said, citing the “significant indigenous Christian presence in Sudan whose rights must be respected.”  With restrained language, he recalled “dangerously provocative language” earlier this year from Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, which was followed by a Sudanese Islamist mob destroying a Presbyterian church and the Khartoum police destroying an Anglican church.  Sentamu described the senior Roman Catholic and Anglican clerics as key leaders for negotiating a satisfactory peace in wider Sudan.  And he concluded:  “I call upon Her Majesty’s Government to do all in their power to assist both countries in making this dream [of the bishops] a reality.”</p>
<p>Let’s see if Her Majesty’s Government or other Western nations pay sufficient heed to the Archbishop of York’s appeal.   Or even if Western churches bother to listen and echo Sentamu’s concern.  The many Western church elites, for example, who obsess over Israel’s reputed oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank might make just a little time to examine the many millions more who suffer far, far worse in Sudan.  Just as South Sudan did for decades, the tormented minority groups of north Sudan yearn for decent government if not independence.  Unlike Israel, which has repeatedly acceded to the idea of a Palestinian state, Khartoum prefers to crush its opponents where possible.</p>
<p>Of course, acknowledging the wickedness of a radical Islamist regime is hard for many Western church elites who, unlike Sentamu, typically locate evil only in Western culture.   But at least the Archbishop of York is speaking when too many other clerics are silent.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Leftist Christians vs. the Jewish State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/leftist-christians-rally-against-the-jewish-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=leftist-christians-rally-against-the-jewish-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:01:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Religious Left condemns Israel -- while ignoring the most repressive regimes on earth. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/leftist-christians-rally-against-the-jewish-state/004aa/" rel="attachment wp-att-147836"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-147836" title="004aa" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/004aa-443x350.gif" alt="" width="310" height="245" /></a>As much of the Middle East tilts towards or implodes into Islamist rule, the ever feckless Religious Left in America has organized an ecumenical appeal asking the U.S. Congress to reduce U.S. aid for Israel.  After all, it is pro-America, democratic Israel that is the primary threat to peace and stability in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Of course, the church potentates opened their recent letter to Congress with the usual claim to evenhanded neutrality.   “We recognize that each party—Israeli and Palestinian—bears responsibilities for its actions and we therefore continue to stand against all violence regardless of its source,” they supinely insisted.  How nice.   But of course their only policy recommendation is to punish Israel.</p>
<p>The signers are the usual suspects representing the United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the American Baptist Church, the Quakers, Mennonites, and the Maryknoll Order of the Catholic Left.  The Episcopal Church is notably and commendably absent.</p>
<p>Citing “grave concern about the deteriorating conditions in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories,” the ecclesiastics blamed “unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel” as the key source for the Middle East’s “deterioration.”  Apparently U.S. military aid to Israelis is responsible for “sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.”  They name tear gas from America as a special threat to regional peace. Who knew that Israel’s use of tear gas against rioters was so key to Middle East upheaval?</p>
<p>Specifically, the church officials want an “immediate investigation into possible violations by Israel of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act and the U.S. Arms Export Control Act which respectively prohibit assistance to any country which engages in a consistent pattern of human rights violations and limit the use of U.S. weapons to ‘internal security’ or ‘legitimate self-defense.’”</p>
<p>No doubt Israel, like all even lawful governments, especially when surrounded by enemies who desire their destruction, at times exceeds all the requisite niceties that ideally should be observed in its police and military reactions to provocations.  All democracies should be self-critical and on guard against violating their own lofty principles.  Unlike most of Israel’s neighbors, the Israeli government contends routinely with its own political opposition and critical media, who themselves often spotlight police and military misdeeds.</p>
<p>Yet the Religious Left prelates do not acknowledge Israel’s unique position as a functioning democracy trying to remain lawful while also struggling for survival against a sea of mortal enemies. The prelates cavalierly add, almost as an afterthought, that U.S. laws against human rights violations with U.S. weapons should be “enforced in all instances regardless of location.”  This brief phrase is as close as they come to any admission that governments other than Israel’s might violate human rights.  Much of the corrupt Palestinian Authority’s police force is subsidized by the U.S.  And of course the Egyptian military, now governed by the Muslim Brotherhood, depends on billions of dollars of U.S. largesse.  But neither evidently concerns the Religious Left, which aims its probing microscope exclusively at Israel.</p>
<p>Comically, the Religious Leftists complain about Israeli settlements that infringe on a potential future Palestinian state as outlined in the 1993 Oslo peace process.  Of course they do not mention how Israel ceded over 95 percent of the West Bank as a Palestinian state but instead were greeted by Yasir Arafat’s Intifada, not to mention chronic Palestinian rhetoric that disputes Israel’s right to exist.  According to the Religious Left, Israel should reward demands for its destruction by banning additional Jewish residents from East Jerusalem, the historic Jewish capital.  The prelates complain, with perhaps some basis of fact, of “separate and unequal legal systems for Palestinians and settlers, confiscation of Palestinian land and natural resources for the benefit of settlers, and violence by settlers against Palestinians.”  But they do not offer Israel any plausible alternative other than complete surrender to all Palestinian and Arab demands in exchange for likely only redoubled exertions against Israel.</p>
<p>The concerned Religious Left prelates insist they “recognize that Israel faces real security threats and that it has both a right and a duty to protect both the state and its citizens.”  But they and their likeminded ecclesial cohorts have not for decades shown any meaningful interest in Israel’s ongoing struggle for survival against neighbors and much of the world who dispute its existence.  They want Israel to “conform to international humanitarian and human rights law” but do not substantively levy this standard against any other government in the world.</p>
<p>“As Christian leaders in the United States, it is our moral responsibility to question the continuation of unconditional U.S. financial assistance to the government of Israel,” they concluded in their missive to Congress.  “Realizing a just and lasting peace will require this accountability, as continued U.S. military assistance to Israel &#8212; offered without conditions or accountability &#8212; will only serve to sustain the status quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.”</p>
<p>Again, note the prelates exclusively fault Israel as the obstacle to peace without even noting Palestinian and Arab rejection of Israel’s existence. They demand Congress make all future U.S. military aid to Israel “contingent on the Israeli government’s compliance with applicable U.S. laws and policies.”  But the prelates do not mention that many if not most of them oppose all U.S. military aid to Israel.</p>
<p>These Religious Left church officials are at least somewhat consistent.  The same utopian and self-destructive national security policies they urge upon Israel they have urged upon the United States for even more years.  Of course, America is a large and powerful nation that mercifully has sufficient strategic space to pursue momentarily suicidal policies and yet still persevere.  Tiny Israel has no such room for maneuver, and its every decision impinges directly on its future survival.</p>
<p>Religious Leftists who are preoccupied with Israel might gain a little traction if they occasionally raised even slight concerns, however insincerely, about other far more repressive regimes. But the Religious Left, consistently across over 40 years, is temperamentally and intellectually incapable of deep criticism aimed at anti-Western regimes.  They can at least be commended for predictability. And we can be thankful that they are almost universally ignored by both policymakers and their own church constituencies.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Denouncing Jihad Is &#8216;Hate Speech&#8217;?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/denouncing-jihad-is-hate-speech/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=denouncing-jihad-is-hate-speech</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2012 04:25:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[bus ads]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Christian Left is more concerned with language used to describe killers than their war of annihilation. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/image001-1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146068" title="image001-(1)" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/image001-1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="242" /></a>Responding to controversial New York subway ads denouncing “jihad,” the United Methodist Women’s organization is placing counter ads against “hate speech.”</p>
<p>The ad from the American Freedom Defense Initiative declares:  &#8220;In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.&#8221;  Its organizer, Pamela Geller, insists the ad targets violent extreme Islamists, not Muslims. The critics insist it’s an attack on Islam.</p>
<p>Among those critics is the New York-based United Methodist Women, whose counter ad responds:  &#8220;Hate speech is not civilized. Support peace in word and deed.&#8221;  The head of the church women’s group joined a press conference on the New York City Hall steps on September 24 to denounce the anti-jihad ads.</p>
<p>&#8220;We needed to be present with a counter voice, we need to stand for the work of peace, and to say that free speech should not be used recklessly or in an inflammatory or divisive way,&#8221; declared Harriett Olson, president of the once formidable United Methodist Women.  Once the largest women’s group in America, with well over 1 million members, the UMW is now closer to half a million and falling.  Long sustained by the bake sales and holiday bazaars of local church women who were unaware of the New York staff’s radical politics, the mostly grey haired group has minimal appeal to younger women and is imploding much faster than the U.S. membership of its denomination.  Like other declining liberal church groups, the UMW increasingly depends on the bequests of deceased supporters as its living members dwindle.</p>
<p>It’s unclear from the United Methodist Women whether any criticism of jihad, or holy war, is acceptable.  UMW officials over the decades have loudly denounced U.S. wars.  Almost immediately after 9-11, its officials denounced U.S. military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.  Does it oppose jihad by radical Islamists?  If so, it never says.  Instead, it seemingly accepts the premise that all critique of jihad and violent Islamists defames all Muslims, which seems unfair to non-jihadist Muslims.</p>
<p>The anti-anti-jihad ad press conference was convened by the New York Interfaith Center to denounce the “anti-Muslim hate advertisements” as “harmfully provocative and inherently divisive.” The Interfaith Center’s chief, the Rev. Chloe Breyer, explained:   “While legal, the ignorance, prejudice, and disrespect the ads display betray the American ideal of E Pluribus Unum ‘Out of Many, One’ and dishonor the efforts of New Yorkers who, after 9/11, overcame their religious differences and worked together to rebuild our great city.”  A religious activist from Auburn Seminary involved with the press conference concurred:  “These ads fuel anti-Muslim sentiment that aims to divide us, but we will always come together, louder and stronger, for respect and dignity.” A “progressive traditionalist” Muslim activist at the press conference complained: “When I ride the subway and see messages smeared that demean me, I am scared.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Quakers Divest from Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/quakers-divest-from-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=quakers-divest-from-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Sep 2012 04:00:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[While few in the congregation condemn Iran or Islamic terror. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/boycott.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-145850" title="boycott" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/boycott.gif" alt="" width="375" height="245" /></a>Hold the presses!  The Quakers are divesting from firms doing business with Israel.  Maybe the famed smile of the Quaker Oats Man should now turn to a frown.  Specifically the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation (FFC) is divesting from Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Veolia Environment. Ostensibly HP was guilty of providing technology consulting to the Israeli Navy, while Veolia was convicted for “environmental and social concerns.”</p>
<p>Naturally, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation gushed that it was “thrilled” that FFC was the “first U.S. national fund” to divest from those firms in reaction to demands from “Palestinian rights advocates.”</p>
<p>“Thrilled,” no doubt.  Anti-Israel divestment advocacy has largely been a dud in the U.S.  Just this Summer, three major denominations rejected divestment, though the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and United Methodists are all governed by elites who routinely condemn Israel (but not its foes).   There are only about 80,000 Quakers in North America.  Their spokespersons are heatedly anti-Israel. Quakers are traditionally pacifist of course.  But Quaker ire does not typically focus on Hamas or Hezbollah terror, nor on the violent threats of Israel’s neighbors.</p>
<p>Reputedly FFC has $250,000 in HP investments and $140,000 in Veolia.  According to the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, HP “maintains a biometric ID system used in Israeli checkpoints for racial profiling; manages the Israeli Navy&#8217;s IT infrastructure; and supplies the Israeli army with other equipment and services used to maintain its military occupation.”  The equally sinister <a href="http://www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/campaigns/veolia">Veolia</a> is complicit in “a light rail linking illegal Israeli settlements with cities in Israel; it operates segregated bus lines through the occupied West Bank; and it operates a landfill and a waste water system that dumps Israeli waste on Palestinian land.”</p>
<p>The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation reports that the FFC manages portfolios for over 300 Quaker meetings, schools and other church related groups, with a total of $200 in assets.  Earlier this year FFC divested $900,000 in Caterpillar stock at the urging of the Palestine Israel Action Group of Quakers in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  FFC then explained it had a &#8220;zero tolerance for weapons and weapons components.”</p>
<p>Quakers of course are pacifist.  So it’s not exceptional that they would divest from military related firms. But why cite Israel in this particular divestment?  Caterpillar has sold its wares to the U.S. Defense Department for many decades. Presumably so too have HP and Veolia.  Why not simply declare their actions to be anti-military as opposed to anti-Israel?</p>
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		<title>Britain Remembers Its &#8216;Finest Hour&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/britain-remembers-its-finest-hour/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-remembers-its-finest-hour</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 04:04:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[John Sentamu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Winston Churchill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[world war ii]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=144025</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ugandan-born Archbishop of York displays touching patriotism.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/John-Sentamu_1544394c.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-144047" title="John-Sentamu_1544394c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/John-Sentamu_1544394c.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a>Seventieth anniversary celebrations of various World War II anniversaries continue to slip by in what is maybe the last time that large numbers of veterans from that conflict will be able to participate.  Most of our current global struggles pale in scale and in importance next to the last world war, which killed over 50 million, and on whose outcome rested the fate of decent civilization.</p>
<p>Often enthralled by pacifism, many of today’s Western clergy prefer not to remember that war too closely. Otherwise they would have to explain how peaceful resistance to Hitler and Tojo would have looked, or justify non-violently standing by as millions of innocents were incinerated.  They are also loath to honor military valor or patriotic zeal, which they often regard as idolatrous.</p>
<p>A notable exception to this reluctance is the Church of England’s Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.  Himself native to Uganda, he is usually un-intimidated by the demands of political correctness and often bold in affirming Western and British culture.  He often honours Britain’s military veterans, especially from World War II, which Churchill rightly recalled as his nation’s “finest hour” when standing alone against Nazi Germany.  Sentamu’s father served in the King’s African Rifles, as did his uncle, who died fighting the Japanese in Burma.</p>
<p>Last Sunday, Archbishop Sentamu observed a military procession and presided over worship at Allied Forces Memorial Day, marking the 70<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command in Elvington, which had housed both RAF bombers and the Free French Air Force.  A military band performed “When the Saints Go Marching In.”  He was joined by a dozen elderly veterans of the original 77 Squadron, who were the first RAF group stationed at the base.  During 18 months the squadron lost 600 men.</p>
<p>“The service took place in the hangar, where guests were surrounded by aircraft, which was a fitting tribute to the men who fought and died in the fight against tyranny,” explained a spokesman for the Yorkshire Air Museum, which organizes the annual commemoration, and one of whose vice presidents is Sentamu.  Other vice presidents include the chiefs of the RAF and the French Air Force.</p>
<p>Before the event, Archbishop Sentamu explained:  “It’s wonderful to be back at Elvington to remember the important contribution and sacrifice made by Allied Air Forces during the Second World War. We are reminded of the heroic personal struggles of those who worked together to combat evil during this time in our history. We are in their debt. It is right that our service on Sunday will remember the brave and those who made the ultimate sacrifice.  In Churchill’s words: ’Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’”</p>
<p>Archbishop Sentamu presided over stirring English hymns like “I Vow to Thee My Country” during the worship. “We are reminded of the heroic personal struggles of those who worked together to combat evil during this time in our history,” he preached. “We are in their debt. It is right that the service today remembers the brave and those who made the ultimate sacrifice.”  Afterwards there were also flyovers by the RAF’s vintage Lancaster Bomber, Spitfire and Vulcan, which once flew missions over Nazi occupied Europe, targeting the German war machine.</p>
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