Posts Tagged ‘culture’

𝐄𝐔’𝐬 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭: 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐁𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐖𝐈𝐈

December 12, 2023

Israeli officials have invoked the allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to justify its mass slaughter in Gaza

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, December 11, 2023

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, said Monday that the destruction in Gaza as a result of the Israeli bombing campaign could be “even greater” than the damage to German cities during World War II, AFP reported.

Borrell called the situation in Gaza “catastrophic, apocalyptic” and noted that the Israeli onslaught has resulted in “an incredible number of civilian casualties.” Discussing the destruction of buildings in Gaza, he said it is “more or less or even greater than the destruction suffered by the German cities during the Second World War.”

Borrell made similar comments on Friday, saying the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza was “one of the most intense in history” and said the destruction is “comparable, if not higher, to levels of destruction of German cities during World War II.”

A report from Financial Times found the damage to northern Gaza was comparable to the most heavily bombed cities of Germany in World War II. “Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne — some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” Robert Pape, a US military historian who focuses on air power, told FT. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”

Israeli officials and their supporters in the US have invoked the allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to justify the mass slaughter in Gaza. “There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, told a Sky News anchor in October, according to The Grayzone.

“Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed … Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes,” she added.

The Israeli bombing campaign has also been compared to the US bombing of Japanese cities during World War II, which includes the fire bombings of Tokyo that killed around 100,000 civilians in one night in 1945, as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said Gaza is “going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over. And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake.” He made the comments in an interview where he said there was “no limit” to the number of civilians Israel kills in Gaza, which is the policy of the Biden administration as it continues to provide unconditional military aid despite the massive civilian death toll.

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Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com

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Christian Soldiers in Afghanistan

May 30, 2009

by Valerie Elverton Dixon | Sojourners.net, May 30, 2009

William Faulkner once said: “The past is not dead.  In fact, it’s not even past.”  We often think about time and history as a straight line leading from the past, running through the present, heading into the future. With this conceptualization, the past is past and gone.  However, there is another way to think about time.  Tree time.  When we cut down a tree, the rings of the stump are concentric circles of time. The first year exists at the center and each succeeding year surrounds it.

So it is with the meeting of Christianity and Islam on the battle fields of Afghanistan and Iraq.  The historical center of the present conflict is the history of the Crusades.  Many in the Muslim world consider the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as another Crusade.  The Crusades were wars between Christians and Muslims, Christians and Pagans, Christians and Christians over four centuries.  It was a tragic time when armies of the state fought to promote a religious cause.  Crusaders travelled far from home as warriors and pilgrims, warriors and penitents, warriors as walls to stall the spread of Islam.  They won and lost battles.  They destroyed and plundered and raped. They were sometimes brutally massacred when the Muslims won on a particular day.

This historical core has not passed from the consciousness of some observers.  Enter the U.S. military.  The military is full of Christians.  Many of these men and women consider themselves as fundamentalist and evangelical.  An important part of their religious commitment is to witness to Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior and to win souls to Christ.  At the same time, the U.S. military has a strict rule against proselytizing.  And so the warriors must walk a fine line between obligations to faith and country.

However, in my opinion, at least one soldier has been unfairly characterized in this discussion.  From what I can tell from the four minute video of a group of Christian soldiers in Afghanistan, army chaplain Captain Emmitt Furner gave them sound advice.  He reminded them of the army regulation and he reminded them that to witness to and for Jesus was more a walk than a talk. It is what we as Christians do that is important.  He said:  “You share the word in a smart manner: love, respect, consideration for their culture and their religion.  That’s what a Christian does is appreciation for other human beings.”  Another soldier in the group spoke of love and respect for the people they meet.

Some observers see Captain Furner’s advice as a sly way to spread the gospel, an element of a 21st century Crusade.  In my opinion, this interpretation is incorrect.  He gave his fellow soldiers the instruction to be living epistles that can be known and read by all (2 Corinthians 3:2).  It is an instruction that we who are not on the front lines in Afghanistan and in Iraq can use.

Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her Ph.D. in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.

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