On Lebanon
This whole conflict between Lebanon and Israel has gotten me thinking lately about situation in the Middle East, which lead to a whole lot of things regarding the history of the State of Israel and the Palestinians and such.
Let’s begin with Lebanon and Israel right now. Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers, hoping to exchange them for the release of political prisoners, and Israel responds by immediately blowing up the entire country. Basically. They destroy pretty much any way for anyone in the country to get out and take out power and communications. Hezbollah responds by firing rockets into Israel, lather, rinse, repeat.
There are some interesting questions that arise from this situation.
First of all, I don’t understand why there isn’t more pressure to stop Israel. Lebanon isn’t like Afghanistan, where they were harbouring terrorists and were a despotic regime. And Israel is just pounding Lebanon, who really doesn’t have the power to stop either Israel or Hezbollah. I really think that Israel is just jumping on this as a chance to attack Lebanon, whether to provoke the other countries in the region or as a chance to occupy the country again.
Next is the question of Canada. We know that for some reason, Bush and the Christian Conservatives love Israel. We also know that from recent events, Harper is trying to get on Bush’s good side. And yet, with 40000 Canadians in Lebanon and seven killed by Israel, I find it incredible (in the bad way) that Harper still stands by Israel. I agree with his critics that he knocked our credibility down a few rungs in trying to be America’s best friend again.
And so about Canadians in Lebanon. I read through some of the comments at the Globe and Mail and I was quite surprised to find comments saying how it wasn’t the government’s responsibility to get those people out of there and how those 40000 probably aren’t even real Canadians. I mean, I think it would quite difficult to get out of the country without assistance when the Israeli military has bombed the roads and airport, don’t you think?
And about Israel. From what I’ve read, it appears that Israel has been constantly stirring up crap in the region, trying to grab land and rebuild the Promised Land. Basically, the UN drew up borders for the new State of Israel, which was on some of the Promised Land, but not all of it. They evicted the Arabs who were there for the past while and shoved them into the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Then for the past few decades, the Israelis have been occupying land agressively, leading to several confrontations, and generally causing a mess in the area.
This leads to the reason why the Christian Conservatives are so worried about Israel. They believe that one of the conditions, so to speak, upon which Jesus will return is that Israel has control of the Promised Land or something like that. Of course, they seem to forget that God doesn’t need their help.
I’ll have more on what I think of Christians and politics later.
Tags: Christianity, isreal, lebanon, middle_east, Politics