IPMN, James Wall, Veterans Today and the tragedy in Arizona

I hesitate to write about anything that has to do with the awful tragedy in Arizona, it is too much like walking on sacred ground with my shoes on. [1]But after thinking about it, praying about it and reading an extremely distasteful article I have decided to write again on some of the same subjects I have written before. Yes, this is about the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), James Wall and Veterans Today as well as Gabrielle Giffords who is Jewish and pro-Israel.

Just today Gordon Duff the Editor of Veterans Today, a loathsome anti-Semitic web site, wrote and posted one of the strangest and most despicable articles I have read, MURDER IN ARIZONA-MORAL FLEXIBILITY AND RELATIVISM. It was about Gabrielle Giffords. The point of his article was that Giffords had decided to highlight her Jewish heritage to get elected. She was somehow under the watchful eye of those Jews who, according to Gordon and others on his site, control the United States, world banks, wars, etc., etc. They, according to him were displeased and so sent someone her way that had been programmed to get rid of her. He begins this way:

We all agree, Gabrielle Gifford [sic] is an “innocent,” a decent woman, progressive and caring. When faced with political defeat, Gifford, a “pro-choice” liberal with strong credentials for taking the honorable side on issues, “found” a Jewish relative and “converted” to Judaism. Finding a Jewish relative and “unfinding” Christ is a form of “moral relativism.” Anyone who doesn’t see that the link between genealogy and revelation is purely financial is lucky to have lived long enough to read these words.

He ends the part on Giffords this way:

In the process, however, Gifford [sic] had to also, not only “unfind” Christ. She also had to find herself ready to answer the phone and do what she was told when the call came in and it comes in, over and over. It isn’t all “goodness and light,” sending unlimited money to Israel or weapons, depleted uranium and white phosphorous to be used on Gaza. It also involves keeping silent when asked. …

Relativism and flexibility is how people the Nazi’s put into concentration camps can now, 65 years later, be running one ten times the size of anything Hitler imagined. Gifford is “right with that” and has stated it repeatedly. Won’t she be surprised if she learns she may not have been the victim of a “random act of violence.” Did we have a “little Mumbai” in Arizona?

After this Duff goes on to write more on the subject he writes endlessly about, that Israel was supposedly responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.

So where does the Israel/Palestine Mission Network and James Wall, a contributing editor of the Christian Century who blogs at Wallwritings fit into this awful scenario? Simply this, James Wall has never rescinded his view, when he wrote, “The website Veterans Today is not a “sludge-bucket”. It is a progressive website that sees injustice and calls it for what it is, which explains why these days, I find myself more at home with my new friends at Veterans Today …”

And IPMN links to everything that Wall writes on Israel.

The connection goes deeper. IPMN constantly hunts for alternative news sources to find articles that will show how Israel is an evil state. In doing so they often connect to very bad sources including other sites that use some of the same writers as Veterans Today, such as this article, Daily Israeli Crimes Against Humanity, on this news site, Opednews.com.

My intent here is to show how very terrible Walls discernment is, how relentless his one sidedness. For him it appears that it is better to be on the side of vile anti-Semites then to say anything good or constructive about Israel. And the same is true of IPMN. They will continue relentlessly.

Although I pray for the situation, I no longer hope for any change in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on this issue. Perhaps it is one of God’s ways of bringing judgment. What I do know is that God allows evil to only go so far and he has the finale authority. His judgment, and mercy, will be the final word.


[1] I want to point out two excellent articles. The first is George F. Will - The charlatans' response to the Tucson tragedy. Will uses the history of the assassination of political leaders in the United States to point out the foolishness of tying political meaning to the act of a mentally induced crime. The other article is by David Brooks of the New York Times, is The Politicized Mind. Brook’s article ends with the acknowledgement that we need better care for the mentally ill.