The Evil Empire in action...

I try to follow the news from a wide variety of sources, rather than rely exclusively on the heavily censored and controlled domestic MainStream Media (MSM). In the case of Israel's brutal assault on Gaza, we once again see confirmation of centralized control over the MSM. Those receiving their news from press outside of the US are aware that the carnage and brutality against civilians in Gaza are much more severe than the sanitized domestic coverage would suggest.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that world opinion toward the US is being affected adversely (as if the Bush regime hadn't damaged our reputation enough already). It didn't help when the US vetoed a UN resolution condemning the attack on Gaza. Israel is widely viewed as a client state of the US Evil Empire, although the relationship is more complex than that.

Israel claims that their assault on Gaza is purely “defensive”, because Hamas has been lobbing occasional shells into Israel. Of course, this begs the entire question of how this situation came about; the roots of violence and hostility in Palestine are the result of Zionist expansion into the area over the past century.

Defenders of Israel speak piously about Israel’s “right to exist”, but again the true issues at stake are obscured by the rhetoric. In reality, no one questions whether Jews should be able to live in peace in the area – they had for centuries prior the modern creation of the Israeli state. The conflict is fueled by the Zionist concept of Jews having a divine mandate to “retake” and occupy land of ancient Israel, regardless of how many Palestinians must be pushed aside or liquidated in the process. The fact that Palestinians had owned the land for far longer than, say, Caucasians from Europe have occupied the territory of the US, is disregarded. The justification? God has supposedly bestowed the “Chosen People” title on the Jewish race.

Once again, this is a graphic illustration of problems caused by Theism, (the belief in an external God, separate from creation). I have written on this previously, but will be turning to this topic again soon.

Will the real God please stand up?

All monotheistic religions tend to believe that their God is The Almighty Ruler of the Universe, but since there can be only one, the other erstwhile Gods are rejected as imposters and pretenders. Christians, Muslims and Jews all claim to pray to the one Almighty God, but many followers of each religion believe that the other religions pray to a false and different God. I have encountered this many times in my own experience with Christianity. Many Christians think of Islam as the epitome of evil, so they conclude that Allah must represent some pagan relic of ancient Arabian mythology. I have heard Christians proclaim that Muslims cannot possibly pray to the same God as they do. Muslims promote monotheism, with of course their God being the only true one. They see Christians as heretics for elevating Jesus to Godhood, claiming this is actually polytheistic.

Jews reason that none of the rival concepts of God matter, since they are already in Jehovah’s “Chosen People” category, and He will eventually straighten things out.

Christians are in the peculiar position of adopting the Jewish version of God as their own, but nevertheless believe that Jews are damned for eternity for rejecting Christ. Of particular danger to world peace is the Evangelical Christian doctrine that God is still honoring the “chosen people” contract of the Jews, and thus God is solidly behind the brutal Zionist displacement of the Palestinian people.

The Christian Bible clearly teaches that “God is love”, thus the incongruity with bloodshed and brutality (even within the same Bible) is difficult to reconcile. In my book, bloodshed and brutality are as close to a definition of evil as one can get. Thus, the images of bloodied people in Gaza represent a great evil being perpetrated. I suppose that it only makes sense that an Evil Empire would be in favor of it.

-Darkwave