FAITH
Apr 13, 2024
Israelis Support A ‘Plausible’ Genocide
The recent International Court of Justice ruling confirms what experts have been saying for months: Israel is plausibly carrying out a genocide in Gaza. That’s why the court ordered Israel to take “all measures in its power” to prevent acts of genocide. They accepted South Africa’s claim that, at first glance, although not a final verdict, Israel’s words and actions appear genocidal.
Jewish Israelis, however, see things differently: 95% of Jewish Israelis believed the Israeli military had used either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza, according to a mid-January 2024 poll. That’s 95% support for a plausible genocide:
 |
| The International MA Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at the Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University |
Image: The International MA Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at the Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University
Polling data from the Agam Institute suggests that some 60% of Israeli Jews oppose allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is, 60% of Jewish Israelis believe all 2.2 million people in Gaza should die of dehydration and starvation.
Israel’s problem is not its lunatic fringe, as Gideon Levy said earlier this week, “Israel’s problem is its mainstream.”
So, how did this happen?
It would be easy to blame the atrocity propaganda—the 40 beheaded babies, the baby in the oven, the mass rapes, the military HQ under Shifa—stories that have all been debunked, even if still believed to be true among Jews in Israel.
But the propaganda runs much deeper in Israel, and goes something like this: the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) avoid civilian casualties, while the Palestinians use human shields; the IDF is the most moral army in the world, while the Palestinians either are themselves terrorists, harbor terrorists, or support terrorism. Or maybe they know a terrorist? Or maybe they once met a terrorist?
To restate the point in the words of a Jewish Israeli liberal Zionist, Israel is “an army targeting terrorists who plan to kill civilians,” fighting against “terrorists who kill civilians.”
The belief that “they are terrorists” is deeply ingrained in the Israeli social order. Israelis are reminded to fear Palestinians every time they enter a bus station, mall or cafe. Jewish Israelis fear walking through Palestinian neighborhoods, driving through Arab Israeli towns, or providing service in Arab Israeli villages. Jews are afraid to shop at Arab stores or hire Arab employees. You never know, maybe they support terrorism?
For Jewish Israelis, the myriad of reports carefully documenting Israeli apartheid, the Israeli army’s use of human shields, starvation as a weapon of war, and now a plausible genocide violate a basic principle of Jewish life in Israel: namely, that the Israeli Defense Forces are, at the end of the day, “the good guys.” That’s a principle that no fact or report can call into question.
After all, in his 10-page opinion on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, Israeli judge Aharon Barak claimed that it was in the “DNA of the Israeli military” to abide by international humanitarian law. In other words, Barak’s argument was not that Israel has not been committing atrocities, his argument was that Israel cannot commit atrocities. It’s a sort of impossibility.
There is at least one obvious reason the “IDF are the good guys” myth is so effective among Israeli Jews: for most, service in the Israeli military is compulsory. It’s not just compulsory, it’s a rite of passage, a fact of Jewish citizenship, an essential part of one’s identity as a Jewish Israeli that, in many cases, extends far beyond adolescence. Many Jews serve beyond their 3 years of required service, and many continue compulsory reserve duty until middle age.
But I would suggest there’s an even deeper problem here. Deeper than the propaganda and the compulsory military service.
The problem lies at the core of the idea of the Jewish state, which is that the state of Israel and its army, being a Jewish state and a Jewish army, are meant to protect Jews, to serve Jewish interests and to ensure Jewish prosperity.
And so, if there is a single Jew in need, the Jewish state and its army must try to save them. Now imagine that there are more than 100 Jews in need? No need to imagine—Hamas is holding more than 100 Jewish Israeli hostages. And so, in the words of one observer: “60% of Israelis believe they should not be providing aid to people that are still holding 136 of their brothers and sisters hostage,” stated as if the point is self-evidently defensible.
The logic of the Jewish state, the preference for Jewish life and the commitment to ensuring Jewish security above all else has reached its final destination: overwhelming support for a plausible genocide. -Religion Dispatch
1,800-year-old 'Iron Legion' Roman Base
An aerial view of an 1,800-year-old
Roman legionary base in Israel.
By Jennifer Nalewicki
Archaeologists have discovered the remnants of a massive 1,800-year-old Roman legionary base that is the only one of its size and caliber ever found in Israel.
Located near Tel Megiddo, a national park and the site of the ancient city of Megiddo (also known as Armageddon) in northern Israel, the "Iron Legion" camp once housed more than 5,000 soldiers and was used as a strategic military base for the Romans, according to a statement by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
The Roman legionary was a group of elite infantrymen who served and protected the Roman Empire, which made the region into the province Judaea in A.D. 6.
During ongoing excavations at the site that have stretched the better part of a decade, archaeologists unearthed a multitude of "extensive and impressive architectural remains" of the camp's main road, as well as a semicircular podium and areas paved in stone that were part of a "monumental" public building, according to the statement.
The camp was occupied for around 180 years, beginning sometime between A.D. 117 and 120 through A.D. 300. The military site was 1,804 feet long by 1,148 feet wide (550 meters by 350 meters) and was accessed via two roads that led into the base. That intersection was where the camp's headquarters were built.
"It was from this base point that all the distances along the Roman Imperial roads to the main cities in the north of the country were measured and marked with milestones," Yotam Tepper, an archaeologist and excavation director on behalf of the IAA, said in the statement. "The ancient building remains were not preserved to a height, as most of the building stones were removed over the years for reuse in building projects carried out during the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods."
While there are other known Roman camps sprinkled throughout Israel, they were used as "temporary siege camps," or small camps for auxiliary divisions, and "none compare with the entire complex of the legionary base," Tepper said in the statement. -Live Science
Something Fundamental About the Universe
Scientists report the first "strong direct evidence" for a fundamental cosmic phenomenon in a region of space near the beginning of the universe.
An international team of researchers has uncovered first-of-its-kind evidence from near the beginning of the universe that helps resolve a fundamental question about the cosmos.
The researchers reported collecting the first evidence that an outpouring of gas from some of the brightest and most powerful objects in the universe can curb new stars from forming. The finding adds to our fundamental understanding of how stars and galaxies came into being in the celestial moments after the dawn of time.
They observed this star-suppressing phenomenon using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and reported the findings in The Astrophysical Journal.
The research focussed on a quasar—a super dense region of space powered by a supermassive black hole—called J2054-0005. This particular quasar is moving away from Earth at tremendous speeds in a region of space when the universe was less than a billion years old.
They used ALMA to show how molecular gas—the stuff stars feed on to form—pours out from the quasar. It’s these powerful outflows that push molecular gas out into space faster than potential stars can use it, thereby suppressing their birth.
“Quasars are especially energetic sources, so we expected that they may be able to generate powerful outflows,” said study co-author, observational astronomer Dragan Salak, in a press release.
Astrophysicists have previously theorized that quasars might quash the ability for stars to form and therefore influence the evolution of galaxies. Other studies have provided more indirect evidence of this too, such as observing ionized gas pouring out of quasars that represent a more recent cosmic age.
“Even if ionized gas is outflowing, it is not direct evidence that star formation will be immediately affected, because star formation requires molecular gas,” Salak told Motherboard in an email. He said their work is the first “strong direct evidence”.
Detecting this torrent of molecular gas required measuring how the stream absorbed radiation coming out of the quasar. “We can observe a very bright source of light—microwave radiation in this case—such as a quasar. If the space between that light source and us is empty, we would see all the light coming out of the quasar. However, if we see that light at some specific wavelengths is missing, something must have absorbed it on the way from the light source to us,” explained Salak. Specific wavelengths correspond to different footprints of molecular gas pouring out of the quasar, and these footprints are what ALMA picked up.
The way stars and galaxies form is a complex dance, and black holes can either promote or hinder those processes. Scientists are constantly testing theories, and uncovering new evidence, of how this works. As their ability to image distant objects, like J2054-0005, gets better, more evidence will be revealed. -Vice
'Humanity Has Opened The Gates To Hell'
By Alexander C. Kaufman
The United Nations chief said “humanity has opened the gates to hell” in a speech Wednesday that warned that the global effort to cut planet-heating emissions is still “dwarfed by the scale of the challenge.”
It’s the latest attempt by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to capture in a soundbite the horrors unfolding in what is on track to be the hottest year in human history. Last year, he described the planet’s trajectory as a “highway to hell.” In March, he said that “humanity is on thin ice ― and that ice is melting fast.” In July, when temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the world, he declared the start of “the era of global boiling.”
By August, the United States tallied 23 climate disasters that eclipsed at least $1 billion in damages each so far in 2023 — with four months left before the year ends. Floods swept through Libya, killing thousands and sweeping enough bodies to sea that the tides deposited corpses on the beach like foamy driftwood. At the start of the hottest August on record, the U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund published new data showing that heat and humidity exposed 76% of children in South Asia to extreme temperatures.
Guterres delivered his speech at the opening of the “climate ambition summit” of the latest U.N. General Assembly in New York. Since 2009, New York has made the most of having many of the world’s leaders and diplomats in the city for the General Assembly by hosting an annual week of climate-focused events ― known as “Climate Week” ― ahead of the official U.N. summit that takes place overseas in November.
The U.N. climate summit in two months will take place in Dubai, where the United Arab Emirates put Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, the head of its state oil company, in charge of the talks. The conference is scheduled to be the first since the historic 2015 Paris Agreement ― the first global pact to cut emissions that included the two biggest polluters, China and the U.S. ― to require an official “stocktake” to examine what progress has been made in the past eight years.
“The move from fossil fuels to renewables is happening ― but we are decades behind,” Guterres said Wednesday. “We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels.”
Of course, doing so won’t be easy, he said. Rich countries’ failures to provide funding to help poorer nations adapt and avoid using more fossil fuels have left many “angry that they are suffering most from a climate crisis they did not create” and “angry that promised finance has not materialized,” Guterres said.
“Shady pledges have betrayed the public trust,” he said. “Shamefully, some companies have even tried to block the transition to net zero ― using wealth and influence to delay, distract and deceive.”
He urged governments to start negotiations now to build momentum for November.
“We need a transformation to rebuild trust,” he said. “Governments must push the global financial system towards supporting climate action.” -MSN
The Importance of an Open Mind
“Open-mindedness is a virtue all praise and few possess. Prejudice is a sin everyone denounces and almost no one seriously confesses. Prejudiced persons do not come crying to be saved from their bigotry. A closed mind is so cozy and comfortable to its possessor that he dislikes to be dislodged and driven out to the exposure of cold facts. And, just as the occupants of a crowded and closed room may become oblivious to the heaviness of the atmosphere which a newcomer detects at once, so those who dwell in closed minds may sit undisturbed until some fresh entrant opens the door.”
These opening words by Ralph W. Sockman, a United Methodist pastor, come from his chapter within the 1944 commissioned book on Protestantism. The chapter moves into the parable of the Sower, reminding us how closed-minded people can refuse Jesus’s teachings. Sockman notes having an open mind as “a necessary qualification for the follower of Christ.” He goes on to highlight the counterfeits we often fall for in our attempts at being open-minded.
False Substitutes
The first of these false substitutes is a mindset of indifference. Sockman conveys this with an example: when we no longer feel energetic toward good works. He goes so far as to state that ministers should leave the pulpit if they become like “winter sunshine—brilliant but cold.” Secondly is mental emptiness. Sockman writes that a lack of understanding of one’s own faith is not the same as being open-minded. This causes you to be a stranger to your own religion. More so, being unable to understand someone else’s way of life or even to interpret the distinctions of one’s faith cannot replace the virtue of open minds. For the quality of open-mindedness is developed in living life, not a quality pulled from a vacuum.
How do we become open-minded?
First, remember that Protestantism began by believing in the gospel’s ability to speak from itself about itself. Yet, Sockman points out how differing views develop to create fractures and barriers to community membership. He further questions: “How far can we carry open-mindedness without dissolving the cohesion of our communions?” He concludes that “if the open mind means a purely individualistic freedom of thought, then Protestantism has demonstrated its impracticability.” Or as revealed by this epigram, I belong to that holy and infallible church of which at the present time I am the only member.
To keep the church from crumbling into absurdity, Sockman points to the middle path between blind traditionalism and near-sighted individualism as the road the church must take. “Open-mindedness demands that we neither bow down to Church tradition nor bow it out. This requires respectful attention to time-tested dogmas.” Such as when scientists trace their present work back to the forerunners of their various fields of inquiry. This is key to viewing Christian doctrines “as gifts of heritage given over to us, not straight-jackets put over on us.”
Writing from within a time of war, Sockman sets clear expectations that open-mindedness does not stand for the authoritarian reality of fascism. We cannot accept what is said, preached, or taught based on it being simply sourced from an authority figure. In creating a safe democracy, Christianity, as a majority, stands to lose its core character if it does not protect the rights of minorities.
Then how do we know our minds are truly open?
Having a Truly Open Mind
Sockman gave three points to help us understand how open-minded we really are. Firstly, we need to “recognize the vastness of truth and the limitations of human reason.” Like seekers searching the vast ocean of truth, we are not to become self-satisfied, narrow, or fanatical about what we may know. Similarly, Sir Isaac Newton made a statement on his deathbed about only being able to play with pebbles on the beach of the vast ocean of knowledge. Our human reason, Sockman observes, cannot “initiate the revelation, cannot fully comprehend it, nor yet with full wisdom apply it.” He completes his observation by noting how mental humility is the greatest quality missing from the sporadic sects and cults that spring up from Protestantism.
Secondly, we cultivate true open-mindedness when we earnestly try to understand those who think differently. This means learning from sources outside of one’s own church. If we don’t try to understand other people, it “will lead to all sorts of rumors and rise to prejudices and poison the mind.”
Thirdly, we are to collaborate with others without a deception of conscience. Areas such as scholarship, social services, political issues, health care, and interfaith can become the pathways of showing how open-minded we honestly are. Sockman holds this relational engagement as the best way to bring about sympathetic understanding.
Sockman does not see tolerance as simply a passive attitude of non-interference, for that is not enough. He believes that the open mind demands that we try to eradicate the roots of prejudice. Where does it come from? Seemingly out of nowhere, for “prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home and lives where there seems nothing to live on.” Sockman does clue us in to the major role of social inheritance, of what we show and teach the younger generations. Whether on purpose or unknowingly, we give and take many forms of knowledge on how to be in this world.
Where Does Prejudice Come From?
Prejudice comes from two main sources, as Sockman sees it. First is ignorance, a problem that he connects to the bad education and echo chambers of his day, which only serves to rationalize unreasoned preconceptions. The second source is fear, which he calls attention to as an easy and cheaply popular form of psychology. He calls for the church “to help rid society of those pestiferous writers, secretaries, broadcasters, and agitators who make a living rousing the prejudices of people by stirring up their fears of other groups.”
Our Message Is Jesus
What Sockman leaves us with is a deep reminder of our active roles as Christians. By distilling Protestantism to its main reason for existing, he reforges our identities as thinking-doers within communities of faith. With a final reminder that all of Christianity has agreed that our message is Jesus Christ, Sockman nudges us onward, saying: “If our message can be kept Christocentric in spirit as well as in content, we shall be able to combine the glowing heart with a gracious inclusiveness.” -Spectrum Magazine
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)