Sunday, December 19, 2010

James Wall & Hamas

David Fischler at Reformed Pastor has an excellent article on James Wall's last article, "The “Little Town of Bethlehem” Still Waits for Its Stolen Democracy." Fischler's article, James Wall: Hamas Supporter (UPDATED), begins with this:

"James Wall, the former editor-in-chief and still contributing editor of the Christian Century, comes out today as an unabashed, enthusiastic supporter of Hamas, the terrorist movement sworn to the destruction of Israel. He does so by way of mourning the fact that after the 2006 Palestinian election, Hamas was not permitted to takeover the Palestinian Authority and significantly increase the resources it had to pursue its war against the Jews."

Wall is also the writer that the PCUSA's Israel/Palestine Mission Network keeps linking to; they, in fact, think he is so good they have several of his articles on their web page.

After you read Fischler's article in which he quotes Wall, "Israel could not allow Hamas to be seen as a political party that had won an election the way parties do in a democracy. Hamas had to be peddled as a “terror” organization that is a threat to world peace, a narrative pattern that continues to this day, as Israel and its US neoconservative allies pound the war drums against Iran," come back and watch this video.

The video was made on Dec. 14th, just this past week, and covers a rally set up by Hamas marking their 23rd anniversary. The speaker is the Prime Minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh. He is making it quite clear that Hamas will never recognize Israel.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gee, Viola, I didn't know you spoke Arabic. I'm impressed!

John McNeese

Viola Larson said...

John, the original of this came from a news outlet and the news people themselves had it translated. I would have used that video because there was more clarity in seeing the whole news report but alas it wasn't available on Youtube.

will spotts said...

John, I'm curious - are you suggesting that the translation is in error - and if so, can you provide an alternative?

Or are you suggesting that people cannot use works in translation? I think you would find the results of that assertion problematic.

In that case, unless someone spoke to you in your own language(s), you could neither respond positively or negatively ... ever ... to anything. I'm pretty sure that doesn't square with most people's ability to function. Can you imagine, for example, meetings at the UN in which none of the diplomats or representative of any nation were permitted to comment/respond to anything in any language in which they were not fluent. Well, I guess they would save money on translators.