Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Yesterday, I interviewed a refugee Ukrainian family in transition from their homeland looking for a permanent place to settle. They were being visited by evangelical church friends. Since I was teaching a course on current world conflicts, the conversation turned to Palestine/Israel where a number of references […]
Written by Safa Hebron’s Al-Shuhada Street checkpoint with at least 8 CCTV cameras and the Smart Shooter in view. Photo by AV, used with permission. 2024. ( Globalvoices.org) – Data collection and technology can have harmful applications, especially when used to monitor and subjugate marginalized people. This can be seen most clearly in how Israel […]
By Jasmin Lilian Diab, Lebanese American University | – (The Conversation) – The escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah since September 2024, and Israel’s bombing of civilian areas across Lebanon, have unleashed a profound humanitarian disaster. The mass displacement of over 1 million people, including Lebanese citizens, migrant workers and Syrian and Palestinian refugees, […]
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Yesterday, I interviewed a refugee Ukrainian family in transition from their homeland looking for a permanent place to settle. They were being visited by evangelical church friends. Since I was teaching a course on current world conflicts, the conversation turned to Palestine/Israel where a number of references were made to Babylon and Jeremiah.
After leaving them, I researched Babylon and evangelical beliefs and read the familiar story of captives taken from Jerusalem and forced to reside in Babylon in 567 BC. A generation later Cyrus conquered the city and allowed the captives to return. The passage referenced by the Evangelicals was: “Tell this news to the nations!/Wave a flag to make sure that people listen!/Do not try to hide anything/ …the people of Israel and Judah will return to their land/They will weep because of their sins… / Babylon has been like a gold cup of wine in the Lord’s hand/The nations of the world had to drink that wine/It made everyone become drunk/and so they all became crazy/But now Babylon will quickly fall/An enemy will destroy it/so weep for it!/Find some medicine that will make its wounds better/Perhaps it will become well again/Wave a flag and prepare to attack Babylon’s city walls!/ Bring plenty of guards to watch all around the city/Put soldiers to catch anyone who tries to escape/Yes, the Lord will now do everything that he has decided/He will punish Babylon’s people, as he said he would do/you people of Babylon, who live beside many rivers/it is now time for you to die…..”.(Jeremiah 50:1-51)
From their point of view, evangelists view all forms of “wickedness and evil” in the world as symbolized by “Babylon”. To some, America is a modern version of Babylon. But how is it that Babylon became associated with confusion, yet was known in classical times as being accepting of many languages and customs?
Babylonian references are widespread among the 24% of American adults who consider themselves evangelical. The negative references are not related to Hammurabi of Babylon who provided a “code of laws”, nor to Cyrus, who conquered Babylon and allowed the Jewish captives to return to Jerusalem; His story was chronicled by Xenophon in the Cyropaedia. “Cyrus was a Persian, a leader in the Achaemenid Empire who defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC. Aramaic became the official language of the Persian empire, and its official religion was Zoroastrianism. Cyrus’s enlightened policy put an end to the Assyro-Babylonian practice of deporting conquered peoples and trying to destroy all local nationalisms.”
According to the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, much of the Bible was composed in Jerusalem in the 5th century BC, following the return from the “Babylonian captivity”. Those who composed the Books of the Bible amplified ancient battles in order to magnify the power of their monotheistic God. Relatively small battles became exaggerated into massacres for the purpose of impressing the listener or reader to the power wielded by Yahweh.
“ The book of Revelation describes Babylon the Great as the dominant superpower in the world of the end times—so dominant, that it actually shapes the culture and economy of the world as it exists at the start of the tribulation period. The nature and scope of Babylon the Great’s dominance is such that only one such entity could ever exist in the history of the world, and there is no doubt that the United States of America is this entity. (Rev 17:6; 18:20, 24; 19:2).by Steven Anderson in Bible prophecy
“Babylon,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland 3
After having a discussion with my class concerning Babylon, I introduced them to Plato’s Cave, a story associated with classical Greece in the 5th century BCE. Plato’s description of the cave was an analogy depicting two versions of reality. In the shadowy recesses of the cave people were shackled to benches while images floated by, projected by a priesthood displaying images of deities while pacing behind a fire that cast images on a wall in front of the shackled spectators. The viewers were mesmerized by the images, but periodically one viewer made the decision to unshackle themselves and exit the cave to encounter the sun of truth.
I posed a question to the class: “Are there opportunities for all the cave dwellers to unshackle themselves?” The philosopher, Heidegger, whose book “The Essence of Truth”, considered the unshackling the most important part of the myth, which the class agreed with. They became absorbed by the implications of this story and how it could apply to those who supported the conventional “history” espoused by evangelicals, and the cynically disposed Israelis and Americans who were complicit in the genocide taking place in daily images; the virtual reality of destruction transmitted throughout the world by the technical wizardry of modern media.
Plato’s (and Heidegger’s) explanation of those shackled in the cave was that they ceased to see what is taking place and are bound by their biases and beliefs to the “unhidden” nature of reality. Dissociation and a dulling of moral sensibilities are the lot of those shackled to benches in the cave which can be compared to the Israeli activists and intellectuals who exit the shadow world of the cave and become Illuminated by the sun of truth.
Are those dwelling in the cave bound by biblical beliefs or deliberately ignoring the massacres taking place in Gaza? The Amalekites in Exodus were massacred as a reprisal for an attack against Israelites after crossing the Red Sea? Yahweh “vowed to blot them out from under heaven”, thus becoming a primal source for the justification of genocide by the more militant members of Israeli society, who compared Amalekites to modern Palestinians. A question addressed was: do “mythic histories”, which are, to some extent, historical fabrications, provide reasons for tribal vengeance and on-going genocide?
Our class discussed these questions and the disjunction between two truths, one dealing with light emanating from the sun of truth and the other portraying the darkest aspects of biblical passages relating to mythic history. The result portrays a nation incarcerated in a cave of mistruths and misinformation, still shackled to hallucinatory images and unwilling to accept the consequences of the massacres that have been taking place in their name; Nor have they been able to empathize with the calamitous nature of the suffering caused by the deliberate bombing of women and children; Nor are they ready to atone for the moral shame causing generational traumas to the 16,000 children slaughtered by bombs provided by America, the “Great Babylon”. Such moral catastrophes will have to be confronted in the times to come, since they have not yet become crystallized, except to those who have exited the cave of shadowy images and confronted “the essence of truth.”
About the Author
Hugh J. Curran Hugh J. Curran has been teaching in "Peace and Reconciliation Studies" at the University of Maine for the past 20 years
With Media Enamored by US Presidential Race, Israeli Massacres in Gaza Get Even Deadlier
"We must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse," said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Israeli forces have massacred nearly 60 people in the Gaza Strip over just the past 24 hours, and the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war began more than nine months ago.
But you'd hardly know it by looking at the front pages of major newspapers in the United States, despite U.S. President Joe Biden fueling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assault with diplomatic support and billions of dollars worth of weaponry.
While outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters have kept Israel's onslaught at or near the top of their pages, coverage of the relentless war on the Palestinian enclave has largely been supplanted in the U.S. by presidential politics, particularly in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday—the same day Israeli forces killed around 100 people in an attack on a southern Gaza town that was previously designated a "safe zone," as Common Dreamsreported.
Fresh Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed dozens of people—including children—but the massacres didn't receive mention on the front pages of the web versions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, each of which heavily featured coverage of the high-stakes U.S. presidential contest between two candidates who have backed Israel's war on Gaza.
As of Tuesday morning, Gaza was entirely absent from the website landing pages of the Journal and USA Today. The Post's home page buried a story about the potential for an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, while the Times' home page contained a piece about surging settler violence in the West Bank amid Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
In recent weeks, U.S. corporate media coverage of developments in Gaza has not reflected the extent to which Israel has intensified its aerial and ground attacks, even as recent cease-fire talks have sparked some hope of a pause.
After a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, pictures of the former president's bloodied ear and raised fist were plastered across the front pages of major newspapers in the U.S. and around the world while the far more numerous images of child victims of Israeli bombs—many of them supplied by the United States—faded from view.
Israel does not allow journalists with major U.S.-based media outlets to enter the Gaza Strip unless they are embedded with Israeli forces and agree to let the military vet their coverage.
(Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
Al Jazeera, a Qatari-funded outlet that Israel's far-right government has repeatedly targeted, reported Monday that "Israeli forces have attacked five separate schools in Gaza in just eight days, killing dozens of people sheltering in them."
One attack on Sunday, the outlet noted, "struck the United Nations-run Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 80. Most of the victims were women and children, said Palestinian Civil Defense."
Reporting from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said he witnessed children "crying out in pain and agony" at the facility, which—like all of Gaza's remaining hospitals—is under-resourced and only partially functioning.
"This is the result of incinerating bombs," Mahmoud added.
The death toll from Israel's war on Gaza is nearing 40,000—likely a dramatic undercount, given how many bodies are missing under the rubble that now dominates the landscape of the enclave and could take 15 years to clear.
Those who have survived Israel's onslaught are now living amid sewage, decomposing bodies, and the ruins of their homes, shops, schools, and hospitals, with nowhere safe to flee. Famine and disease are spreading rapidly across the territory as the Israeli government continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has urged the Biden administration to cut off all offensive weapons assistance to Israel, said in a statement late last week that "while much of the media is focused on the drama of the U.S. presidential election, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse."
"We must end our support for Netanyahu's war," said Sanders. "Not another nickel to make this horrific situation even worse. I intend to do everything I can to block further arms transfers to Israel, including through joint resolutions of disapproval of any arms sales. The United States must not help a right-wing extremist and war criminal continue this atrocity."
Rescue teams carry a Palestinian woman within the search and rescue operation after Israeli airstrikes hit a residential building in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on July 15, 2024.
Though Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries signed onto inviting Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to address Congress on July 24 in the “spirit of bi-partisanship,” many US and Israeli Jews loudly object. They plan a major demonstration in Washington to show up his address. The organization UnXeptable is organizing an effort to have Bibi’s Congressional speaking invitation rescinded. Considering Schumer’s bold break to become the highest ranking elected Jewish-American to call for Bibi’s resignation, it is surprising he would execute this abrupt about-face and sign on to such an outrageous invitation. While Bibi’s showmanship may be entertaining in a dark Trumpian way, no one expects him to have a sudden epiphany, and decide to embrace US leadership or to honor a cease fire in Gaza. He is not an honorable negotiating partner.
Biden and the Democrats do not get the sea change in Israeli politics under this government, into which Netanyahu invited the most extreme factions of Jewish Power and Religious Zionism. One of his predecessors, Ehud Barak, served honorably as Israeli PM from 1999 to 2001, and has a distinguished record as a general. He sees Bibi as trying to stage a judicial coup, “with its goal of establishing a racist, ultranationalist, messianic and benighted religious dictatorship.”
It’s painfully obvious that Bibi is playing President Joe Biden for a stooge. After he upstaged President Barack Obama with a speech to Congress in 2015, it is absolutely mystifying that Democrats would leave themselves open to another choreographed insult with this invitation. Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken are letting Bibi make fools of them. While Donald Trump hopes to be president again to stay out of jail, Bibi is struggling to stay in power to avoid going to prison. But Biden and Blinken act as though they are dealing with an decent ally, rather than a wily and treacherous war monger.
Bibi is openly mocking Biden! Despite his reticence to deny significant military aid to Israel despite its deliberate atrocities in Gaza, Biden did withhold one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs in response to the Rafah invasion, which crossed Biden’s red line. These munitions cannot be used in Rafah in any case, or ought not to be.
Haaretz columnist Yossi Verter called out how Bibi has dared to dictate to the US about its own foreign policy, when said, “It’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel. Israel, America’s closest ally, is fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.” Bibi forgets that Israel is the client-state, and the US is the benefactor and enabler. Bibi also had the audacity to compare himself to Winston Churchill, as if he’s a liberator rather than a genocidal oppressor.
The July 24 demo led by UnXeptable is appropriately titled, “Non-Grata.” Offir Gutelzon, founder of UnXeptable, said, “We hope that Jewish-Americans will get off the fence and join us. We know that the majority of them support the Biden plan to end the war and bring home the hostages, and they also must know that most Israelis oppose Netanyahu, so there is good reason to be there showing their solidarity with us.” Their campaign pitch states: “Benjamin Netanyahu has lost the faith of Israeli citizens, and does not deserve the honor of addressing Congress. UnXeptable calls on all who those who care about Israel’s future as a liberal and democratic state to join American Jews and Israelis, including families of hostages still held in Gaza,” in declaring Netanyahu to be persona non grata.
NYT columnist Thomas Friedman articulated objections to Bibi’s invitation to Congress, saying that Biden and Blinken are “debasing themselves” by going along. Doing so illustrates how badly most US leaders fail to recognize how destructively radical this Israeli government is. It is ludicrous to think Bibi could offer any thoughtful perspective, “to share the Israeli government’s vision for defending democracy, combatting terror, and establishing a just and lasting peace in the region.” That’s because Bibi is actively destroying Israeli democracy and the justice system, with his Trumpian efforts to avoid prison by continuing as PM — and because he is inciting and promoting terror, not combatting it. He has adamantly and repeatedly refused to work toward any long-term peace agreement, and insists on prosecuting the genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Though he called for Bibi’s resignation in March, Schumer said he signed on, “because America’s relationship with Israel is ironclad and transcends one person or prime minister, I joined the request for him to speak.” That presumes that Bibi is a reasonable man, open to embracing new ideas and approaches. Many prominent Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren plan to boycott the event. She said, “Prime Minister Netanyahu has created a humanitarian catastrophe. He has also made clear that he does not support U.S. policy for a two-state solution that will let the people of Israel and the Palestinians develop their own national self-determination and live with dignity.”
Meanwhile, disingenuous Republicans continue with their campaign of divisiveness, and wail their phony concerns about anti-Semitism (while promoting it with their unqualified support of Bibi’s government, among other factors.) They fail to recognize that the genocide in Gaza is driving global anti-Semitism worse than any time since WWII. Republicans are weaponizing anti-Semitism as a cudgel of divisiveness for the US electorate. Though Biden is also guilty of some pandering to weaponize anti-Semitism, Trump and Republicans employ this tactic with greater cynicism to their perceived advantage. Bibi’s July 24 invitation is designed by Speaker Mike Johnson to elicit cat-calls and insults from House Democrats, in order to alienate Jews from their Democratic loyalties, and drive them to vote for Trump. So many are sitting this one out. It’s yet another attempt by Bibi to interfere with US electoral politics, as no Israeli or other foreign leader has ever done; that is beyond Putin’s brazen election interference to aid Trump in 2020. Both Putin and Bibi are biding their time for Trump’s re-election, and doing all they can to promote it.
Bibi’s goal is to expand Israel’s territory with permanent annexations of the West Bank and Gaza in violation of international law, and in the teeth of overwhelming world opinion. He doesn’t deserve a platform in a joint session of Congress to promote this aggressive expansionism. With a Republican majority in the House, the invitation won’t be rescinded. Ideally, both Schumer and Jeffries would revisit their foolish invitation, and withdraw their support. They can do it gracefully by pointing out how quickly the situation in Gaza has deteriorated under Bibi’s leadership and campaign of genocide. They signed on. They should sign off!
About the Author
H. Scott Prosterman is a writer and communications consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area, and holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan
