Crimson > He urged the congregation to denounce any politician showing the slightest sympathy for the Palestinians such as ex-President Jimmy Carter has just done.
I simply cannot understand this? The Palestinians are not the enemies of Israel, they are its neighbors. Their gripe is that Israel took their land and they want it back, at least some of it. And as I understand it, they ask for no more than that -- as does Jimmy Carter. For a man of religion, like your rabbi, to preach political hatred from the pulpit is, to me, no different from the Muslim imams who preach anti-Zionist and anti-US material -- and are then branded as terrorists and arrested. Instead of preaching tolerance and justice for all men these people preach hatred -- and their congregation listens to them and does their bidding.
> I cannot tell you how much it pains me to see the depths to which the so-called Jewish establishment (well much of it anyway) has degenerated
My parents were Jewish but they gave up the religion before I was even born. I went to a Catholic school. My wife is also Jewish and, like me, is completely irreligious. Our children have married non-Jews. I regard myself as an atheist or else a pantheist but under no circumstances can I bring myself to accept the God of Abraham and the various religions that worship him/her/it. Thus I can truly appreciate your dilemma and your pain because, despite all the protestations to the contrary, religion, certainly as it is practiced, is not a recipe for love but for hatred.
Dammit, man, the Israelis and the Americans have spent so much time and trouble trying to justify the theft of the bits of land the Israelis took from the Palestinians and the Syrians that they could have paid for them over and over with the money that has been spent on arms. And now they want more war. All I can say is these people are stark raving mad. |
