Tell me again how Israel is filled with saints and can do no wrong!

Church of the Holy Family in Gaza

Oh, yes...and that anyone who criticizes Israel's policies and tactics hates Israel and is anti-semitic Targeting Palestinian Christians and Catholics is just an unfortunate reality of war -- wrong place/wrong time. 

As for Muslim women and children, I borrow a phrase from Sheridan, "The only good Indian Muslim is a dead Indian Muslim."

At least two dead in Israeli destruction of Catholic Church in Gaza: Enough - Updated

The church was hit by an IDF fired directly at the church by a tank. It's hard to believe that was done "by mistake." 

Let us all pray for an end to this terrible war that has killed so many from the three religious groups in the area including the mostly forgotten Christians.

The Israel Wars: Of Cancelling, Banning, and Ending Friendships

NEWS ALERT: A few minutes after writing this column, I learned that John Henry Weston, co-founder of  LifeSite News and a courageous voice for truth, has been fired by the board in a narrow 5-4 vote. Why? Not for scandals, doctrinal error, or mismanagement, but because he criticized some of the actions of Pope Leo XIV, actions which are indeed problematic. One of LifeSite's reporters was also fired for the same reason. Read The Purge at LifeSite News. This is one more example of what Paul Gottfried describes in his article on Israel and it has broad implications for the future of those who defend orthodoxy even against high ecclesial authority. This is a developing story and I'll be writing further about it in the days ahead.

The Israel Wars

As I've said often in the past, I'm a big fan of Chronicles Magazine. Sometimes an article is spot on! Paul Gottfried pegged it in more ways than one in the article linked below. I agree with him 100%! But even if I didn't, I'd be happy to be friends and engage in spirited Socratic argument -- and do it with a smile.

Zionism Should Not Be a Conservative Sine Qua Non

The Forgotten Minority in the Holy Land

Most of the debate over the Middle East is about the conflict between Jews and Muslims. Another group seems mostly invisible. While gallons of ink are poured out about Hamas and Israel, Judaism and Islam, you hear very little about these forgotten people who are rapidly disappearing from the Land of Christ's birth -- the Christians.

In 2019 The Catholic Register described their plight in an article titled Holy Land Christians: Threatened With Extinction, but Still Bearing Witness:

...the Christians of the Holy Land — who are often forgotten in this crisis, as they are ignored by worldwide media, and whose number has been reduced to an alarming level — struggle every day for their own religious identity.

What's the Answer to the World's Mess? Don't Ask Me!

This post was inspired by a comment about the bombing in Iran that I didn't approve for two reasons. It was too long and included multiple links. I appreciate all those who comment on the blog, but I've reached the point that I won't post comments that go on and on and include link after link. I don't have time to check all those links for one thing. Sometimes I agree with the person commenting as I mostly did with this one. Nevertheless, it went into my spam folder. 

For Those Who Consider Themselves on the Side of the Angels. Are You Really?

Getty images

There are few human controversies: wars, feuds, marital strife, personal disagreements between friends, etc. where one side represents the angels and the other side the devils. Of course, sometimes individuals and groups deliberately align themselves with evil, a more serious situation. Terrorist and satanic groups (including freemasons), drug and sex trafficking cartels, etc. enthusiastically embrace evil. But even in those cases, the members often are a mixed bag. Only God knows the percentages of good and evil in a person's heart. Is there anyone on earth who has never done a good deed? I think that would be a hard case to prove in court. Jesus Himself made that clear through the words of St. Matthew:

Can There be Peace in the Middle East?

Abraham expels Hagar and Ishmael

How can we understand what's happening in the Middle East? The conflict has raged since the enmity between Sarah and Hagar. Their sons and grandsons, and great grandsons through the centuries continue the conflict from one generation to the next until the horror of today's killing, killing, killing!

Conflict Between History and the Modern World - Then vs Now

Tel Aviv today
(Pro-Palestinian students at Columbia, Yale, MIT, NYU  yell,
"Hamas we love you! Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!")

The famous author Mark Twain managed to hitch a ride on a steam ship to the Holy Land in 1867. The young man joined a group of pilgrims he sarcastically named "the Innocents."

The ship was called Quaker City, a former Civil War ship. A budding writer, Twain's passage was paid for by a Californian newspaper. He wrote about the Holy Land in his novel Innocents Abroad, and unlike other writers of the day who Romanticized the place, Twain drew blood in his usual acerbic style -

Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.

Is Just War Theory Dead? Are Babies Just Collateral Damage?

Bombing of Yassin Mosque in Gaza City --
Are Churches, synagogues, and mosques appropriate targets during wars?

Regular blog visitors know that I'm a big fan of Chronicles Magazine. The January issue ran a sobering article titled Sowing the Seeds of Future Terror by Mark G. Brennan. I recommend it for anyone who is an unbridled cheerleader for Israel's response to the horrible terrorist attack of October 7th. Yes, Hamas deserves our condemnation and Israel has a right to defend herself, but do the peaceful civilians in Gaza, the babes in arms and innocent children, deserve annihilation for the sins of Hamas?

Hamas - The New Nazis

This is exactly like the Russia/Ukraine war, that is, Russia having to go in to de-Nazify, de-radicalize and de-militarize Ukraine because of Nazi Ukraine's murder and persecution of Russians in the Donbas. The problem with the Israel/Hamas-Palestinian war is that in order for there to be de-militarization and de-radicalization of Islamic Hamas and a future of peace in the area, Islam would have to be destroyed. 

Please study the origin of Islam in older sources (going back at least 100 years) in order not to be duped by the Left's whitewashing of Muhammad and his religion. The Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. Did the Archangel Gabriel also appear 600 years later to Muhammad to announce a new religion? God is immutable so that's impossible, but people easily believe Satan's deceit that Islam came before Christ and Muhammad is God's most beloved last prophet. When you discover who Muhammad's Angel Gabriel is, you'll have the key to understanding exactly what Islam is. 

The Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

Visual meaning of "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"
In short, it means genocide of Jews

Internet sewers have broken open flowing filth across the world with Jew-hatred and love of radical Islam. Do any of the thousands of pro-Palestinian brain-washed university students know a thing about radical Islam other than the left's white-washed version? Do they know they support beheading and cold blooded murder of Jewish people, rape and torture of Jewish captives? Do they know of Islam's motto: We love death more than you love life? Have they a clue of the meaning of what they lustily chant day after day - From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, or are they merely ignorant? In a recent video, a female news anchor didn't know that Gaza and the West Bank are two different areas! She had to be corrected by the Israeli President.

Gassing Rats

"The real nature of Islam is evil. Hamas must be stopped!" 

Mosab Hussan Yousef, son of founding Hamas leader, is a convert to Christianity

Jews and Muslims still operate in the Old Testament times of "an eye for an eye". Unless they turn to Christianity (love thy enemy, love thy neighbor) they'll never agree to peace. It's impossible without Christ. Mosab Hussan Yousef, son of a founding Hamas leader, converted to Christianity after he wanted no part of the evil and cruelty of "religious Islam" (radical Islam) and the terrorism of Hamas which he saw first hand. 

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesperson Sets the Record Straight

 

Here We Go Again - Islamic Massacre of Every Jew in Sight

Israeli mother and two little sons captured by Hamas. 

While reading Lindsay O'Rourke's Covert Regime Change:America's Secret Cold War, she mentioned a book - Years of Horror, Glimpse of Hope:the Diary of a Family in Hiding by Moshe Maltz - which I immediately ordered and read. It was about the eradication of all the Jews in Sokal, Ukraine, during WWII...a horrific book with Nazis killing Jews much in the same way as Hamas Islamic terrorists slaughtered Jews this past weekend in Israel. I was glad to be finished reading about the horror. Then I turned on the Internet (I have no TV) and could see the very same horror in real life, in real time, taking place in Israel. No more just reading about it from 80 years ago. We can watch the barbaric terror, killings and slaughter still happening today in 2023. 

As much as Canada and Ukraine need to deal with their Nazi problem, Islam needs to deal with the Quran. Their "holy book", or as they like to call it, the Nobel Quran, is the main problem of Islam along with their murderous pervert prophet, Muhammad.

Deborah Ben Aderet - "How I Survived the Hamas Attack"

This is an interesting account of how one family lived through the Hamas horror. Deborah Ben Aderet also gives insider facts of living in a kibbutz close to the Gaza Strip and Israel's actions with the Palestinians on a daily basis (before the attack).