Holy Land @ MindSay

Avigdor Lieberman is the newest addition to Olmert's government in Israel. Olmert brought him on board to attempt to strengthen the governing position of the Kadima Party. For those who do not know, Israel is a Parliamentary system with a President as head of State and a Prime Minister as head of government. Unlike America Israel is a multi-party political system. The government is established by a coalition of political Parties with one Party occupying the central position. In today's Israel that is the Kadima Party formed by stroke victim Ariel Sharon and currently led by Ehud Olmert.

Lieberman is from an ultra-right Party. Today IsraelInsider reports that Lieberman is calling for the total separation of Jew and Arab in the Holy Land. The implication is moving all Arab non-Jews out of Israel and all Jews out of the so-called Palestine territories (governed by Islamofascist terrorists).

The Leftists in Israel immediately condemned Lieberman for racism. However, if you go to the IsraelInsider link, you can read the realism and the weariness of Islamofascist terrorism in Israel. Lieberman comes across as harsh; nonetheless a homogeneous Jewish State can protect itself better internally and confront their enemy with extreme prejudice on the outside.

Here is the problem I have with Lieberman's proposals: How does this affect the Arab that is not Mohammedan? Or, how does it affect the maintenance of Christians who maintain Christian Holy places in the Holy Land? If Lieberman's proposal applies to this group as well he may be going too far.

So I was driving to school yesterday or perhaps the day before listening to the radio.  A news break came on from the local talk radio show I was listening to.  They had started talking about the Palestinian Parliamentary elections, and how the Fatah party (the one that's been in power) would likely defeat the Hamas party (Hamas being the terrorist organization whose mission is to annihilate Israel and all Jews).  I tend to get concerned and upset about terrorist activity in the Middle East, but Hamas was expected to lose... so I was put at ease.  But later, late lastnight and this morning I find out that no, Hamas has won the damn Palestinian election.  Something like the total opposite of what they were expected to lose (at least I think that's what it was).  But whatever...  just think about this now.  The Israeli government already didn't get along with the Fatah controlled Palestinian government... but at least the Fatahs pretended they wanted peace.  But now... we see elected democratically an organization/party that was created for the very purpose of exterminating Israel!  {Shoot, the word "hamas" (at least in Hebrew) means something like "wanton violence" and Hebrew and Arabic are very similar languages... lots of cognates.  Can you imagine what it would be like if we had the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and the Violence Party?}  (oh, bythway, when the Hamas supporters stormed the Parliament building, the Fatah loyalists and they [Hamas supporters] started throwing rocks at eachother, etc.]

So what's this mean for Israel and us?  Who knows?  Perhaps (and very likely) even greater violence will ensue from the Palestinians... I mean what reason have we to believe otherwise?  But Israel is no pushover... by no means!  If Hamas opposes Israel so openly from this position of power, we may see the open war that has been brewing for so long.  Could this be the chance that Iran has been looking for to attack Israel?  Could this be the beginnings of another world war?  Certainly the United States won't let Israel be attacked by Iran unaided.  And when we start involving Iran; China and Russia will almost certainly join in.  From there who can say?  I don't like to be a fear-monger... and I don't like to talk about wars that haven't happened yet... shoot, I don't like making predictions at all!  But there is nothing good about Hamas being elected...

So I've been thinking about all this a lot.  War is very present in our world today.  It really always has been.  It's part of our human nature... we're greedy.  We all like to be in control of the things around us and involved in our lives.  And that's not just an individual thing... it expands to entire nations.  And therefore... we have war.  There are lots of wars in the world right now, but there are two specific ones that we hear about a lot here in America... one of them is the war in Iraq (not surprisingly, since we're fighting it), and of course, the war in Israel.  Needless to say, the Middle East would not be the most fun place to be right now in my mind.

I've been fairly silent on the war in Iraq.  I haven't had much to say, and that's okay with me.  I will admit that when the war first began, I was in favor of it.  Of course, I was being guided by the same mistaken intelligence that our president, his advisors, and our military leaders were working from.  Had I known that the reports of the WMDs were wrong, I'm not sure what I would have thought.  I mean, look at it this way: We knew that Saddaam Hussein wanted to hurt us, and that gave us a good reason to be concerned about what he was doing over there.  What we didn't know was that Saddaam didn't actually have the capabilities to hurt us like we thought he did.  Honestly, I can't blame President Bush for taking us into Iraq, though without a doubt all involved in the decision to go to war should have checked their sources better, because in all honesty, those people were in no position to inflict harm on our nation.  Now that we're there... my opinions have changed.  I am no longer a supporter of the war.  I am not vocally opposed to it, as I did not vocally support it.  I choose, for the most part, to stay out of conversations about it, because in my mind, arguing about it at this point does no good.  One thing that I do think... we have to stay in there.  We can't leave now.  If we suddenly pull out of Iraq, we are essentially leaving the country worse than we found it, and that's not good.  Whether we should have started this thing or not, we did, and now we have a responsibility to finish it... because otherwise the government and military in that nation could simply self-destruct.

I have no problem with those that protest the war... I also have no problem with those that demonstrate in favor of it.  The truth is, those are the very freedoms we're fighting to give the Iraqis in practice.  So while I personally may not agree with Cindy Sheehan's approach of "get the troops out now," I absolutely respect her right to hold that opinion.  As for me... I say do what is necessary to get the job done as soon as absolutely possible and then get out.  We need to finish the job, but we need to do it in the quickest, most efficient way possible.  I don't know what that way is, but I know that's what I think.

The other war in the front of America's collective mind is the Israel-Palestinian war.  Recent posts from christianisrael have gotten me thinking more about this.  The truth is, I don't know why any of us are surprised that the fighting still hasn't stopped, despite the best efforts of the governments involved.  The truth is, this conflict has been going on for over 2000 years... and we honestly thing it's going to stop now?  The truth is, each group honestly believes that they are entitled to that land, and I don't really think that the decisions of a few men in power have the potential to change an entire nation's mind.  From a Christian perspective, it's not hard to see why each group is angry.  But it is interesting to think about what the final outcome will be.  According to the Bible, the israeli nation was promised that land, but as christianisrael has pointed out, the jewish people have never completely occupied it.  Most Christians also interpret the Bible as saying that they will occupy it by or during the end times.  It will be very interesting to see just how  that happens.  It makes me think about the mystery of God.  He says it will happen.  We, as little incompetant humans, have no idea how it could happen, but we do believe that there is a way that God will do it.  That's where the faith element comes in.  It will be fascinating to see what happens over the course of the rest of my lifetime.