Supporting The Troops Or Supporting Israel?

What looked like it would be just another Saturday protesting the war in West Chester, PA turned up something different this time. The alleged American patriots, who are always across the street from our peace vigil, had another country's flag with them, namely Israel's:

At least they're being honest about who benefits from the wars the troops are fighting and dying in!

The pro war side seems to have forgotten about liberty. Not one of their signs mentions it and certainly Israel is no shining example of it. They're all about victory and supporting the government, not a view the Founders would have shared:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

--James Madison, April 20, 1795 (Works. Vol. 4, Pp. 491-2)

To the pro war side I can only say, heed the wisdom of the Founders and make freedom your goal. That way peace, liberty, and security will ours.

Below are some pictures from the peaceful side of the street:

Oh, Come, All Ye Hateful

There is an increasingly vocal and aggressive direction being taken by some Christians. That many American Christians supported the Bush administration and its wars is well known. At present the level of dehumanization of Muslims and outright advocacy of genocide is becoming much louder.

Consider the following exchange on Facebook (I'm going to keep these people anonymous). Someone posted, "If the Palestinians put down their weapons there would be peace, if the Israeli's put down their weapons there would be no more Jews". The supportive comments started coming in. I replied with,

I don't know. It would behoove the Palestinians to engage in civil disobedience. They'd get a lot more support that way (witness the Freedom Flotilla).

If Israel stopped oppressing, Israel as we know it would cease to exist, but no more Jews? The Afrikaners said the same kinds of things in South Africa to justify Apartheid. While it's very true that Mandela & his successors are making a mess of things, there's been no slaughter.

Consider this about the fighting:

The Israeli government, like the one ruling us, thrives on crises and seems to go to great lengths to cultivate them. As I've pointed out before, there is a sick symbiosis between the Israeli regime and Palestinian terrorist chieftains, a relationship documented by Richard Ben Cramer in his valuable and infuriating book How Israel Lost.

"Things are not as they seem," writes Cramer. "The [Palestinian Authority's] business intersects with Israeli business at the highest levels of Israeli political life." This explains the tacit "arrangement" in which Israeli and Palestinian rulers sustain each other through carefully timed incidents of lethal violence.

Before Yasir Arafat died, he would be regularly "rescued" by Israeli military strikes against Palestinian targets, Cramer observes. The same was true of Arafat's supposed arch-enemy, Ariel Sharon: "If his polls dropped, something terrible happened -- dead Jews all over the TV" -- and Sharon's political fortunes would dramatically improve.

From "We Bought The Bullets"

Every state needs its Emanuel Goldstein, don't be fooled!

The hate began. During the discussion one person replied with these two comments,

If the Israelis would just use all of theirs, we could stop talking about all the other cockroaches. They want to be martyrs, let's help the [sic] succeed... all at once, right now.

Followed later in the discussion with,

Israel is going to have to wipe them all out eventually, in order to survive. That being the case, and we all know it is the case, why not just get it over with? How many thousands of their cirizens [sic] can be saved by not waiting to be hit first (for the ten thousnadth [sic] time)? Just do what needs to be done, we did it to end WW2, and look how effective it was. No we've turned into a bunch of female genitals (poltically [sic] speaking) and look at the manure we routinely put up with, just like Israel. Just push a few buttons and send 'em to their blow-up doll virgins in hell. That's my vote.

Referring to people as cockroaches is using the language of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Another disgusting example of dehumanizing an enemy to justify killing them. One is reminded of the Nazis referring to the Jews as rats.

Another person decided to turn their hate on me,

Thanks XXXX! Sometimes you feel alone battling against the blockheads who think Peace Flotillas, are peaceful, and that hitting a terrorist BACK is bad. There are just so many stupid people in the world, and we don't have enough bullets!

The person who posted the above has since deleted it, which is quite understandable, I'd be embarrassed to have written that too.

Along the same lines there was an exchange at the Future of Freedom Foundation's event "Restoring Liberty and the Constitution" on Friday June 4, 2010. (Which I attended.) During the question and answer period a woman took exception to James Bovard calling for the rights of the prisoners at Guantanamo, Cuba being respected. The woman went on to say that "those bastards" have to be stopped so they won't kill our families. They don't need to be Mirandized, she said. They're guilty, the government wouldn't just arrest people "willey-nilly", she went on.

Now, I can't say with certainty that that woman is a Christian, I don't even know her name. Certainly the odds favor her being one. Perhaps she's Jewish. Surely she's not a Muslim.

The last example is a conversation I had years ago with a devout Christian who said of the War on Terror that it's better to be the hunter than the prey.

This is not to say that all Christians are so evil. There are no doubt many who are as repulsed by this kind of thinking as I am. However, it would seem that there are too many who subscribe to this hateful world view. During the discussion on Facebook mentioned above no one else took exception to the calls for killing. If anything the other commentors were supportive of the hate.

These hateful Christians may only be a minority of those who believe in that religion. It is important, though, that they be exposed and taught a better way. That being the way of peace, liberty, and tolerance. Then, and only then, can we end the hate and the killing.