It is Saturday night as I write this, and I am feeling very sad. I should be busy thinking of planting garlic and fava beans for a winter garden. I should be plotting where the Christmas tree will go, how many people will be here for Thanksgiving, whether we should play musical instruments for both holidays, etc., etc. Sometimes it is hard to think about anything except what is happening in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). It is hard to even be logical or feel rational. To the point, after my meanderings, I have discovered that for some reason I can post comments on the Israel/Palestine Mission Network site.
Tonight I saw that they had linked to this article, The Zionist lobby's First Lady in US Congress - Salem-News.Com on this site http://www.salem-news.com/. The article is by Alan Hart and it is also on Veterans Today, a vile anti-Semitic site which believes that Israel was behind 9-11, that they are trying to take over the world and control the United States. They have several sister sites which use the same writers and the same articles. One sister site is Salem-News.Com, the one the IPMN linked to. And IPMN links to the sites all of the time.
I discovered that Salem-News is now catering to the anti-Semite who is attempting get laws passed that no one can have their child circumcised. In California, before the court stopped it, a referendum, if it had passed, would have forced all Jewish parents who practice their faith by circumcising their sons, to leave the city of San Francisco or go to prison. The article I first saw is, “CIRCUMCISION as Attenuated Homicides.” There is a whole page of such articles.
There is also a vulgar one, “Vulva Girl Serenades Foreskin Man on San Francisco Election Day.” And in case you wonder, Foreskin Man is a superhero created by Matthew Hess, the man who attempted to put the referendum on the S.F. ballot. In one comic he attacks the evil rabbi who loves performing circumcision. In the above article, “Circumcision as Attenuated Homicides,” you can understand the underlying foundation of anti-Semitism by reading one of the footnotes # 27:
Note: Circumcision was brought into the 12 tribes by the Levites. Jews are from the tribe of Judah which since the Dispersion of Rome in 70 AD incorporated the tribe of Benjamin, but not the other 10 tribes. To make a point: Moses and Aaron were not Jewish, yet were Levites even though neither of them circumcised. Also, the Christian Apostle Paul was not Jewish. Paul (Saul) was a Benjamite – Romans 11:1.
This is all to say that I put a comment under the link on the IPMN Facebook page:
Please! this article is on a news site that is a sister to Veterans Today. They are both horrible anti-Semitic sites. They both believe that the nation of Israel was behind 9-11. Now they have on their site articles about how Circumcision is wrong which is a sick attack against the Jews. VT writes articles about the Jews attempting to take over the world just like the Nazis did Alan Hart writes for both sites. And Veterans Today is advertized on Salem-News.Com. Please, please, I am a Presbyterian don’t shame us in this manner. Quit using junk.And then, yes, rather irrationally, I placed it on the Facebook page of the Director of World Missions, Hunter Farrell, with a plea to do something about the problem. He, of course deleted it. I can’t blame him, but something does need to be done.
So, when this is read on Sunday morning, I will undoubtedly be in Church singing of the Jewish man who is also God, who died for all of our sins including members of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network. May they and all of those who read their site be moved by the Holy Spirit to work towards a peace that includes Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. May they learn to love both sides and tell their story without using anti-Semitic sites. It is possible.
7 comments:
Apparently it is perfectly OK with PCUSA leadership if IPMN pals around with anti-Semites, links to anti-Semitic web sites, and utilizes anti-Semitic tropes in their propaganda. I hope some Jewish leaders will take this up with PCUSA, and essentially give it and us-or-them choice. Disassociate from the anti-Semitic swill that IPMN mucks around in by de-recognizing them, or Jews will cut off interfaith dialogue.
Of course, if they do some boneheads from Jewish Voice for Peace or some other far-left group would probably step in an save face for the PCUSA. Or maybe Gilad Atzmon will start selling his book on the PCUSA web site.
David Fischler
Woodbridge, VA
Oh, and IPMN removed your comment, too. Can't have any dissent from the anti-Semitic orthodoxy, apparently.
David Fischler
Woodbridge, VA
By the way, I also read the piece of pseudo-scholarship (pseudo-journalism? pseudo something, that's for sure) at the Salem-News. The writer, Dr. Richard L. Matteoli, is an anti-circumcision fanatic whose "qualification" to opine on this subject are that he's a dentist. He's self-published a book on the subject that claims circumcision is a form of Munchausen's by Proxy Syndrome (something else he no doubt learned about in dental school).
David Fischler
Woodbridge, VA
PS--I've put a comment under the Salem-News link on the IPMN Facebook page. I'll check it occasionally to see how long it stays up.
@reformedpastor - that feeling, of being ignored instead of rationally engaged, is one that "orthodoxy" tends to engender in those who find themselves on the outside. I can vouch for that one, and is a reason I have an allergic reaction to the word even now when it is deployed.
@ Viola: This was a very good post.
Thanks Doug, and thank you for liking my comment on IPMN.
David thank you for placing a comment there too. I hope they all stay. Both of those sites are getting even more extreme if that is possible. I think I need to do a much larger posting on VT-minus IPMN. I do see some people looking for information on VT on my feed. I think an article with a list of all of their sister sites might be helpful.
Doug, this is tangential to Viola's post, but you say you or others have felt ignored, and sorry for that if it happens, but I can tell you that ignored is how the orthodox mostly feel by the hierarchy in Louisville. And I think it happens way more often than occasional ignorings of whoever you mean by "those who find themselves on the outside" by the orthodox, whose intention, at least by those whose faith is mature, is never to ignore anyone.
There is nothing like that on the IPMN website that I can find. Seems limited to sporadic links on their Facebook account. You have to try too hard to find this stuff, even if you link right to it.
That's the Internet for you. Everything gets connected to everything, sooner or later.
My advice: Take a hint out of Oprah Winfrey's play book. Stop giving them air time.
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