I'm not going to say a lot about this, because the reality of the situation is unspeakable, and I don't wish to cause even more anguish to those whose loved ones have been taken hostage by Hamas. Nevertheless, there's so much pablum being tossed around about "rescuing the hostages" or "prisoner exchanges" that it's time someone pointed out the harsh, unpalatable, brutal truth.
The animals who did this are not thinking or behaving like human beings at all. They're reacting out of hatred, instincts that have been spoon-fed to them since they first drank their mother's milk. They have been indoctrinated to the point that they regard their actions as justified, even blessed by God. They are terrorists, not soldiers.
I don't need to post pictures of what happened to Shani Louk, the German woman who was one of the first victims of the Hamas invaders. You've almost certainly seen them already. She was driven through the streets by her murderers, sitting on top of her naked body, one leg at a physically impossible angle, her crotch visibly bloodied. You know how that blood got there, I'm sure. May God have mercy on her soul . . . but at least she's now beyond further harm.
You may also have seen pictures of several schoolchildren captured by Hamas at Kibbutz Be'eri, being led through the streets. More pictures show bodies found by Israeli forces at the kibbutz after it was recaptured. The images show the same people. The fact that the victims were children meant precisely nothing to their captors. They were prisoners who proved to be "inconvenient", probably because there was no way to take them back to Gaza . . . so they were murdered.
The other hostages, those that were taken into Gaza? They're almost certainly being treated as badly, or worse, right now . . . those that are still alive.
I've seen terrorists and terrorism at first hand, for far too long. I've written about it before - scroll down at that link to find the description. I also know how deep the hatred runs between militants in the Middle East, whether Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian. Extremists of any ilk are beyond rational thought, beyond reason. They react rather than think - and those who differ from them are automatically classified as "other", as "not allies", as "things" rather than "human beings".
Let us, by all means, pray for those taken hostage by Hamas: but let's be honest in our prayers, and pray that if worse comes to worst, they may find a merciful death rather than have to endure the tortures of the damned, as some of them have already had to do. There is a terrifyingly, vanishingly small chance of a better outcome for them, and it gets ever smaller as time goes by and Israeli retaliation builds up. Their families probably can't help but hope for the best - but the best, in this case, may not be what they hope for.
May God have mercy on their souls; and may their families receive what comfort may be possible.
Peter
30 comments:
I spoke with an Israeli friend yesterday who lives here in the US. I hadn't spoken to him in over ten years. He said his family back home was safe. We spoke of the intelligence failure, a second front in Lebanon and how the military had been pulled from the area prior to the attack. All suspicious. We spoke last about the hostages. He said we should consider them dead already. Hamas has to be completely and utterly destroyed.
Modern times are not good for innocents, from the millions aborted, to the thousands trafficked as sex slaves, through the ten of thousands of Armenians that are suffering ethnic cleansing.
The hundreds of innocent victims in the Palestinian-Israel conflict are victims, too.
Sad truth, extremists of any ilk are animals not humans with any form of mercy.
Not looking forward to this sort of trouble here in America, but we are allowing, nay supporting access to anybody lately.
Tell us you are a Judeo Christian without telling us. Remember that time Israel helped us secure our border? Yeah me neither.
@Anonymous at 6:34 AM: And your meaning is?
Not sure how accurate this is but early on I heard that most of the hostages taken are/were women; they will suffer greatly before they are murdred.
It is very dificult for me to see Hamas and other terrorists as people for whom Christ died and who need the gospel.
Seasoned travelers can tell you it is a wise idea to avoid countries with known internal and external enemies where conflict has a chance of breaking out. I made that mistake in the former Yugoslavia.
Meaning is.... Not my circus, not my Monkees.
These people have been fighting each other for centuries. Let them, I say.
I saw on Steve Bannon's show yesterday he had his Reporter Ben Bergquam at the border in AZ. Ben showed a video of the Border Patrol with about 500 military aged men from various countries the BP were letting into the USA. Ben identified at least one as a Syrian Terrorist as indicated by tattoos on his arms. This mass invasion does not bode well for us. Make sure you are armed and have ammo.
In response to a couple of comments...(not surprising in our "modern enlightened" society)
Israel - the size New Jersey - is one of our allies, we support them no differently to a younger brother being protected from schoolyard bullies by his bigger older brother.
Dennis Prager says this on such subjects:
"There are three types of people; Those who protect, those who support the protectors, and those who do nothing."
Which one are you?
This also comes to mind...directly from Jesus: Luke 10:25-37
We see the reprobates chanting for Israel's demise, effectively (if not directly) supporting Evil-Doing Terrorists, having been fully indoctrinated to the point of going against their contrived "me too" chants to give a pass on the raping of woman and children before being murdered. The worst of the worst manner of torture and death.
Gee, maybe it's just me...but is there any question what must be done to eradicate these 15th Century angry cockroaches from the planet?
No excuse can ever be made to spackle-over what has been perpetrated on the innocent, or what must be done as a result. We are "the big older brother".
Using Jesus' admonition, and while I can do nothing directly from my cheap seat, I will never be one of those priests who switched sides of the path to avoid "the problem", beaten and bloodied laying at their feet. I will - minimally through prayer - support Israel without equivocation.
There is no nice solution for the dilemma Israel faces. Either they capitulate to Hamas to save the hostages or they accept the reality that hostages must be considered dead so their existence doesn't interfere with what must be done. Politically that's generally a no win situation for a government and a full hand of aces for the hostage takers. Which is why Hamas took a boatload of hostages. They know any government that doesn't do everything possible to save them will generally lose the support of the people and collapse. Which is part of Hamas goals. There is a TON of blame to go around for this. I wouldn't want to be in Netanyahu's shoes right now. A truly no win situation.
The only correction I would make to the above comment is I think seventh century barbarians would be more accurate than fifteenth century, but the sentiment is wholly approved.
Our host here called for neither military assistance to Israel nor a single tax penny. If you truly felt “not my circus, not my monkeys”, the only response this post should have gotten is you ignoring it.
But no: the mere suggestion that human sympathy be invoked at the deliberate murder of a thousand civilian man, women, and children—that offends you so much you feel the need to protest.
May God repay you as you deserve; I regret only that your pseudonym will prevent me from applauding His justice when it arrives.
The juice deserve everything they get.
Sadly, in order to quash the idea that taking hostages is a profitable tactic, Israel must proceed as if the hostages are dead. Dealing with the animals in order to get hostages back guarantees that many many more will be taken in the future.
If all you Christian Zionists are comfortable with a Final Solution to the Palestinian Problem, go ahead. That you and your god are comfortable with this arrangement says wonders about your actual moral orientation.
Sieg Yisrael
Most likely Anon is beaking off about the Israelis not giving out supposed information about 9-11. Nothing was proved just conjecture so (as I suspect) like most Jew haters he is blaming them for the fault of the US government to secure it's own borders. As an antisemitic Jew hater he probably blames the weeds in his lawn on the Jews.
Then again I could be wrong about his motive.
Last man standing?
Agreed. Israel is far from a perfect society but the alternative is unthinkable.
And you know how God feels about the oppression of the innocent.
Proverbs 6:16-17
16These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
17A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
Charlie, one is fighting for extermination of it's declared enemy. The other is fighting for survival.
So yes, both are fighting. But that distinction is absolutely necessary to acknowledge.
Rick
Anon, say I come intobyour home uninvited. I threaten you then beat you to the ground. I take from you what I want. That includes your family members. I force you to watch. I leave but not before issuing a threat to you that you better be more docile next time.
Throughout the night, your home is pelted with rocks and fires are lit on your lawn. Voices call out to taunt you and to threaten all that you hold dear. Small arms fire into your home provide the exclamation point. That continues for weeks.
Sometime later, I return but this time with twenty buddies. We're not so nice this time. Use your imagination of what we do to you. This occurs every now and then for weeks, months, years.
The greatest insult is that the world is taught to believe that all that has happened to you is your fault. Yes, you are to blame. You deserve what you get. How dare you even exist.
Now, please inform us what is your solution to gain peace and harmony. Be careful to not include anything which has already been tried either by Israel or other world powers.
Peter, I require a better understanding of a point in your essay. To wit, it seems that you conflate the Jew with the Arab where you speak of militancy in the Middle East.
Frankly, I ask that you provide support for your contention that the Jewish state is as militant as the Arab, et al.
Rick
@Anonymous at 7:48 PM: I have never said that "the Jewish state is as militant as the Arab", or anything resembling that. I have said - repeatedly, over many years, in these pages - that extremists (individual extremists, not states or nations) are militant to the point of being completely untrustworthy. I care not what their faith, or their politics, or their culture might be: extremism produces unbalanced, unreliable individuals who can never be trusted to act consistently or with humanity. That's a blanket condemnation.
In that sense, yes, Jewish militants are as untrustworthy as Arab/Muslim militants. Their religious extremism renders them incapable of balanced judgment, thought, word and deed. However, that does not apply to nations, which are not individuals, and therefore cannot be judged as such. Their leaders? Certainly - but not the nation.
In Israel now I think it is likely that the overwhelming majority of the population knows someone who has been wounded, killed or kidnapped (and then probably raped and either killed or wishing they were) by Hamas. I say that because people like me who are not Israelis but have significant contacts there are in a similar situation, plus people I know from entirely different spheres of life are equally affected.
Even more than the Russian barbarities in Ukraine this brings home how close civilization is to barbarism. Those of us in the civilized "west" could ignore the massacres, rapes etc. in the Congo, Sudan or other parts of Africa if we heard about them on the news (big if, the news rarely covers them) because we didn't know anyone and didn't have any particular interest in the Congo etc. In much the same way the various persecutions in Burma, in Syria and Libya and Iraq are also remote and to a degree we think "well those places are at best barely civilized anyway so what do you expect?"
Ukraine? well that's closer to us. Kind of like Yugoslavia (remember that?). Ukraine has most of the trappings of civilization at least in the cities. Plus it traded with the world in grain and various sorts of metal bashing products amongst other things. Sure it was kind of run down and corrupt but it had internet (and was the source of many internet scams and other crimes) and there are a lot of people who know Ukrainians (and Russians) and so know people affected by the conflict. That's a difference between Ukraine and Georgia or Armenia/Azerbiajan - we don't know people there.
Now there's Israel and hamass. A large chunk of the internet passes through products that have been designed in Israel, many key medical technologies have been developed in Israel and sold to the rest of us and so on. Jewish lawyers, doctors, scientists, engineers are all over the West and so we know them personally. Almost all of them have close relatives or friends in Israel who are affected by the attacks. We are therefore all one or two degrees away from them. This is the key difference. Ukraine we were 3 or 4 hops away, Africa, Iraq etc. 5 or more.
You can't summon up much sympathy for your mate's cousin's friend's spouse's brother if you even know that he's from Sudan or Burma. Your mate's sister's husband's family in Ukraine? That's closer, you may have met the sister if not the husband. You can imagine a bit what they are going through. Your mate's niece in Tel Aviv? Your mate has pictures she sent him of the last moments of one of her classmates.
And that's the other difference between today and 2001 or 1990s Yugoslavia. We all have cellphones with cameras. We can see the blood stains, the corpses and so on. It's going to be much harder for the apologists of evil to make their case this time (which of course isn't stopping them)
one is fighting for extermination of it's declared enemy. The other is fighting for survival.
So yes, both are fighting. But that distinction is absolutely necessary to acknowledge.
So being a slave caste in and Apartheid state is fight for pleasure? The Askenazim coopted modern Jewry and returned to Palestine after 2000 years as what? How about the Philistines are back and the actual Hebrews that stayed on as farmers when their elites fled to Babylon and Khazaria have invaded and forced them into concentration camps. Guess how far a Pali gets to go from their new reservations? 3 miles, bubkis. The Mizrahim get to do the dirty work of the IDF while their pale-skinned masters hop planes to New York until the latest Helot revolt is suppressed. Since the media is controlled by a certain group that has a vested interest in maintaining the Israeli state the idea of balanced coverage is foolish. How about accepting that slaver have to maintain an iron fist, and when the grip is loosened, or a momentary weakness is noted an attack is sure to follow. Ask any Corrections Officer, maximum security prisoners always watch and wait. And Gaza and the West Bank are nothing but prisons. There are only 2 ways out for Bibi; a negotiated Palestinian homeland or total extermination. Since they are the Chosen Ones the Final Solution is acceptable to both Israelis and their Christian Zionist lapdogs. The only question will be whether the remainder of their neighbors will jump in should the beast be wounded in the process
It is very dificult for me to see Hamas and other terrorists as people for whom Christ died and who need the gospel.
Didn't the Philistine Jews killed Christ? So how does your bought and paid for 'Christianity' justify serving the murderers of your Savior?
Now, just to twist the knife, the terrorists have clained Shani is alive and in a hospital. Somehow, I find that rather hard to believe. It is time for a cleansing of Hamas and all those that support them, their beliefs and their actions
I've noticed that most pro-Israel commentators leave their names while the pro-terrorists remain anonymous. Is this down to moral cowardice or is due to an internal recognition that what they support is actually indefensible?
I sat on my Uncles lap as we listen to the UN vote on state hood for Israel. They cheer and cried when it passed and they were so happy. No we are not Jewish but Aunts grandmother who raised her came from Germany and left due to practices there. She never had anything good to say.
One of the things people never think about was that the first settlers bought the land from the Arabs who laughed at selling a parcel of sand. When years of back breaking work the same land began to produce that suddenly began to foment more hatred. How dare they make their sand produce items for sale. That started the constant lawsuits. The Jews tricked them. And on and on into today.
As to them needing, wanting, demanding more land please note that not any Arab country surrounding Israel will allow the Palestinians into their lands. They don't want that hatred coming in and infecting their people. They have control of most going on so no need to add to it.
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