Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA: check your sources! UPDATE!

I am almost certain that the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is not into weird conspiracy videos. But who knows.  On July 13th on Twitter the IPMN placed a link and added a “Please Share,” to the link. Since they will not allow me to follow them nor reply to them, I am making my comment here and it will be longer than a reply would have been. Here is their tweet:

IPMN ‏@IPMN 13 Jul

iDF mass arrest of Palestine schoolkids *** PLEASE SHARE *** http://fb.me/6iClWy9aT

The video could be about the arrest of Palestinian schoolchildren but it is impossible to tell—there is no solid information to help the viewer understand. And because of the site the video on it is suspect. The You Tube site is “StopFundingIsrael.” The main site that is referred to on the You Tube site is StopFundingIsrael.org.

On the StopFundingIsrael.org front page is an explanation of sorts:

Boycotting the companies that fund the illegal behaviours of israel will strangle the arterial veins of cashflow that is funnelled into the killing policies of the most APARTHEID REGIME EVER and hopefully starve the bloodthirsty beast that is Zionist Occupation and outright landtheft of ancient Palestine.

The reason the StopFundingIsrael authors give for this is:

When Israel have finished taking over Palestine. They will have a taste for land conquest and your town WHEREVER it may be is not immune from this insidious agenda... It must not EVER be allowed to rule over Palestine, or we are doomed as a HUMAN RACE on PLANET EARTH. StopFundingIsrael is about investing in a collective future.

The explanation goes hand in hand with the demonic red eyed creature on the page.  But going deeper into the site one finds many links with hatred not just for Israel but also for Jewish people. And of course all of the conspiracies lead back to Israel or the Jews including 9-11.

On the You-Tube page are side links to featured channels including Gordon Duff and Ken O’Keefe of Veterans Today.

I was tempted to place a video here by one of the editors of StopFundingIsrael, Steve Johnson. He calls the Australian Human Rights Office in an attempt to get them to say that Tzipi Livni, past foreign minister to Israel, is a war criminal. In the end he insists that all of the western governments including Australia are ruled by Israel. And he even throws in a reference to the Illuminati as a ruling power. But it is trash and I won’t place it on my blog.

My main thoughts here is that when people gleefully place links to a video they believe will help their cause but don’t bother to check out the source they are not aiding anyone except some creepy people who continually spew bile. They are not aiding the Palestinians and they continue to ruin their own integrity. As Christians, as well as Presbyterians, God calls us to truth because we belong to Truth. In the first epistle of John there is this:

This is the message we have heard from him [Jesus] and announce to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;

But there is a promise:

But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his Son cleanses us from all sin.

May the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) walk in the light of his truth thus seeking peace for all in the Middle East.


UPDATE: It is necessary to place a large update here:

Not only was the video I wrote about on the very strange StopFundingIsrael site it is in several other places.  One of the places is a Huffington Post World article, “Palestinian Children Arrested In Hebron During Obama Visit To Israel” The author of the article, Eline Gordts, speculates using various groups and other news sources.  The IDF stated that there were stone throwing incidents and information from a Reuter’s article pointed to protests because of President Obama’s visit to Israel.

This is the video:

But there is another helpful video which explains why the IDF arrested the children. This is the video with an explanation by Captain Barak Raz:

 

 “Published on Mar 30, 2013

On the morning of March 20, 2013, following near daily rock throwing at civilians passing by and security forces positioned in the area, the perpetrators of the rock throwing were apprehended and detained during such an incident. 27 were detained, of whom 7 were transferred to the police and 20 were released.

Contrary to reports and footage of children being "arrested on their way to school," (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03...) THIS is the complete picture of what really happened and what, in fact, led to that arrest.

As we said that morning, this arrest was carried out in real-time during an incident of rock throwing, and following similar incidents that had occurred almost daily.

Unfortunately, we experienced technical difficulties that morning with retrieving the footage, but we did make it very clear that footage made available from that incident only showed the arrest, and not what had led to it. The fact that we had such footage was also made very clear that morning, despite the claims that were made.”


Needless to say, once again the Israel/Palestine Mission Network not only got it wrong, they used the worst possible site to link to a video.
HT to a lady