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Life Arts    H3'ed 11/5/23

Scott Ritter, Hamas, Terrorism & The Judeo-Christian Tradition

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Mike Rivage-Seul
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Scott Ritter - .Israel has effectively LOST the War and Palestine will become a recognized state!... Scott Ritter - .Israel has effectively LOST the War and Palestine will become a recognized state!... Subscribe with all notifications ...
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Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10; Psalm 131: 1-3; 1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13; Matthew 23: 1-12

The liturgical readings for this 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time are about the hypocrisy of national "leaders" who bring disgrace to their office and who become for their people a curse rather than a blessing.

They pretend to know more than the ones they "serve." As a result, though they might say the right words about freedom, peace, and even "God," every action they perform contradicts the basic divine imperative (found in all the world's Great Religions) to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Consequently, the only policy these hypocrites know is war. In Israel-Palestine, they supply weapons to kill women and children (centralized in today's readings) and they prefer continued slaughter to cease-fires.

Religious pretenders all, they disgrace themselves before the world's poor majorities who know exactly what lawless settler-colonialists (and their facilitators) are always about. As Haitian film maker, Raul Peck has shown, they're always about ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and outright extermination. Always!

Today, the whole world is watching the script unfold once again in Apartheid-Israel.

A Pro-Palestinian Demonstration

All of that was brought home to me two weeks ago when I attended a pro-Palestinian rally in New Haven, Connecticut near the Yale campus.

By my estimate the highly enthusiastic crowd that gathered there numbered between 2000 and 3000 people. We marched from the New Haven Green through the town's center chanting slogans like "Free, free, free. . . free Palestine!" The whole experience was highly inspiring.

The signs people carried were inspiring too and very thought-provoking. One caught my eye more than others. It made me think more deeply about Hamas. It caused me to realize that contrary to acceptable opinion in the United States, Hamas is not "pure unadulterated evil" (as our confused president's handlers made him say). Neither is it simply a "terrorist organization."

The sign I'm referring to read "OCT. 7 IS AN OUTCOME NOT A TRIGGER."

I took that to mean "IF YOU PUT HAMAS' 'TERRORIST' ATTACKS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT, THEY BECOME FAR MORE UNDERSTANDABLE THAN THE MUCH WORSE APARTHEID-ISRAELI RESPONSE TO THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF OCT. 7TH."

So, before we get to this Sunday's readings, let's once again think more deeply about Hamas. This time, my guide will be Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector in Iraq who tried to tell our government that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He was relieved of his post as a result. As usual, the White House and Congress preferred lie to truth.

Hamas

According to Ritter, Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, a NATO member, agrees.

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Mike Rivage-Seul is a liberation theologian and former Roman Catholic priest. Retired in 2014, he taught at Berea College in Kentucky for 40 years where he directed Berea's Peace and Social Justice Studies Program. His latest book is (more...)
 

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