I found this article in THE SUN…yeah…I know…why are you looking at the Sun. Well it’s because I like to read Michael Coren. By the way grab a copy of Coren’s new book HATRED. It is enlightened reading and sad at the same time. I found that it affected me because it makes me realize that Christians are in a losing battle with Islam and I find I have a no so nice feeling about them. They hate us but I as a Christian I am supposed to turn the other cheek. So when I saw this article I realized that so many of the points are resonating with me because I feel the same way. The article is I HATE THE HATRED and it brings home many feelings; so bear with me and read it and then see how you respond to it.
Israel and Gaza. I hate the deaths on both sides. I hate the outsiders on both sides claiming to care. I hate the lack of empathy on both sides. I hate the hatred.
I hate the way the Marxists and their friends who supported Israel in the 50s and 60s now call Israelis Nazis. I hate the way Islamic fanatics pretend to care about the Palestinians when at the same time they slaughter their own people and use those same Palestinians as metaphorical and literal shields. I hate the hatred.
I hate the way sound-bite radicals with no sense of history or context refuse to grasp that Israel is not a product of design but of desperation, and that the Jews of Europe and the Arab world didn’t just decide to take a holiday but fled to anywhere they could be safe. I hate the way liberal Christians obsess about criticizing Israel when if European Christians had genuinely followed Jesus when it came to their Jewish minorities and not slaughtered them, expelled them, persecuted them, gassed them, Israel would not have come into existence. I hate the hatred.
I hate the way some on the right and in Zionist circles refuse to listen to the Palestinian experience and believe Israel can do no wrong. I hate the way some evangelical Christians think the ghastly battle over Israel and Palestine is some sort of Biblical combat and modern Armageddon to be fought vicariously by Jews and Arabs. I hate the hatred.
I hate it when North African thugs in Paris attack synagogues in the name of Palestine, beat up Jews in the street and then scream about human rights. I hate it that kids from Pakistan will say not a word about their home country’s blasphemy laws and murder of Christians but roar their hatred of Israel when they probably couldn’t even find it on a map. I hate the hatred.
I hate the singling out of Israel for condemnation but the ignoring of the murderous regimes that surround it. I hate the fact that Iran can hang young gay men, Syria can murder tens of thousands and Turkey can occupy two countries and deny the Armenian genocide but there are no demonstrations. I hate the hatred.
I hate it that when supporters of Israel, like myself, argue that there has to be another way, that Palestine has to exist and that the settlements are wrong, we are mocked as compromisers – I actually wear that badge with pride. I hate it when the same people who welcomed Soviet diplomats, sportsmen and artists and now welcome diplomats, sportsmen and artists from repugnant Arab dictatorships, boycott Israeli kids who can kick a ball or play an instrument. I hate the hatred.
I don’t have a solution, I don’t even have much hope — and for someone who has spent so long in the Middle East, read so much, met so many people, listened to so many stories, I am I suppose a terrible disappointment. I’m obviously not as clever as those on both sides who know exactly how all of this can be settled. But I do know that I hate the damned hatred.