Paul Thabet > Recent Status Updates

It may be that it would cost more lives to end the genocide than the action would save, but it is not tolerable to allow such wickedness to go unchecked.

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.

My father tried to restrain the beast he helped to create, but Israel will stop at nothing, because, as Frantz Fanon scathingly wrote, "Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence, and only gives in when confronted with greater violence."

After taking his (Jewish) son, and his sister to practice karate in Ramallah with a group of Palestinian karate students, Miko writes: I do believe that Israelis and Palestinians will live free side by side one day. I wanted to teach them that things will change for the better, and to encourage them to believe it and to act sccordingly. The overwhelming force of the Israeli army can make anyone feel hopeless.

After being arrested at a protest in the West Bank alongside other peace activists, and taken to a police station in an Israeli illegal settlement: "Finally, the station commander came out of his office, clearly exasperated, and explained in slow, simple terms to the army soldiers, "Look, he is an Israeli citizen and he has rights. He's not a Palestinian that I can just beat up and throw in prison."

I began to think to myself, Palestine's landscape is the kind that beckons you to open doors and its people are hospitable and always welcome you with open arms. It is a land of hospitality and kindness. Yet the settlers and their protectors have chosen to impose themselves on this land and its people, to take the land by force and close themselves within fortified ghettos, called settlements.

One has to admire Abraham for his tenacity. Stepping near as he did to confront the almighty and argue with God for the sake of a principle that he held dear, the principle that human life is sacred. Abraham wanted to get a real commitment from God, that He would indeed spare the city for the lives of innocent people.
Who was there to speak for the people of Gaza?

No army in the world can claim that it could have done better than the Egyptians in planning, managing, and storming the Suez Canal. The decision to exploit the success was a grave mistake. Let us remember well that one of the main factors in the Egyptian plan was the recognition of the great superiority of the Israeli Air Force and its almost equal superiority in mobile armored warfare.

Humans have tried to camouflage this unchanging reality under a thin and mutable veneer of myths and rituals, but we have never really broken free from the law of the jungle. Indeed, our myths and rituals are themselves a weapon used by the jungle's top dogs to deceive and trap their inferiors. Those who don't realise this are dangerously naive and will fall prey to some ruthless predator.

Do we need to go through another cycle of global empires, totalitarian regimes and world wars in order to figure out how to use new technologies benevolently? The technologies of the twenty-first century are far more powerful and potentially far more destructive - than those of the twentieth century. We therefore have less room for error.

I never thought that two thousand years of absence conferred rights to the land, whereas twelve hundred years of presence gave none to the local population.

DNA investigating, a relatively young science, has a brilliant future. But where the law prevents marriage between a "Jew" and a "non-Jew," we should be very wary about research that seeks genetic markers common to the "chosen people." Like similar investigations carried out by Macedonian racists, Lebanese Phalangists, Scandinavian Lapps, and so on, such Israeli research cannot be entirely free from crude racism.

Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.
- The declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel, 1948
Another convenient lie!

The inclusive concept briefly adopted by Zionists was based on the assumption that it would be easy to assimilate a "low and primitive" Oriental culture, and so the first violent resistance from the objects of this Orientalist fantasy shook them awake. From that moment on, the descendants of the Judean peasantry (now Palestinians) vanished from the Jewish national consciousness and were cast into oblivion.

The central myths about the primeval origin of a marvelous nation that emerged from the desert, conquered a spacious land and built a glorious kingdom were a boon for rising Jewish nationalism and Zionist colonization. For a century they provided textual fuel of canonical quality that energized a complex politics of identity and territorial expansion demanding self-justification and considerable sacrifice.

Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen.

When does a joke become a "dad" joke???

...when it becomes apparent....

On "noble lies" that hold societies together: No wonder that various governments and churches have banned or limited the teaching of evolution, preferring to sacrifice truth for the sake of order.

The hypocrisy of the Christian world is so telling when it comes to its silence and even opposition to the right of return of these refugees. On the one hand, they celebrate the "return" of Jews two thousand years later to "their land" while denying the right of return to Palestinians who were expelled from their homes seventy years ago, many of whom still hold the keys to their houses.

When I see human cruelty and war, the silence of God does not trouble me; it is the silence of the church that troubles me. We are too busy with ourselves, occupied with our "festivals," "assemblies," "offerings," "songs," and "melodies of harps." And God says, "I hate all of this!"The church is too noisy. When will it quiet down enough to hear the cries of those experiencing injustice in our world?

The church has mastered the art of covering the wounds!
Real justice challenges unjust structures. As Bonhoeffer once said, "We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."

Can we trust computer algorithms to make wise decisions and create a better world? That's a much bigger gamble than trusting an enchanted broom to fetch water. And it is more than just human lives we are gambling on. AI could alter the course not just of our species' history but of the evolution of all life forms.

Would Jesus stay silent in the face of injustice? What kind of a message do we send to those who are suffering from injustice if our answer to them is: "Sorry, we do not engage in politics." The message we communicate when we say such things is simple: "God does not care!" or rather, "I have more important religious concerns than your suffering". In fact, our silence towards injustice is an approval of this injustice

إن سلامتنا مهدده لا لأن السنطوري يود البطش بنا بل لأن سلامة حارتنا كلها مهدده ببطش الفتوات و لو تغلبنا على السنطوري فمن يضمن لنا الا يتحرش بنا عجاج غدا او يوسف بعد غد. فإما أمن للجميع أو لا أمن لأحد

As Christians, we have no credibility when we only protest the persecution of Christians while ignoring the injustice against people of other faiths!

You are designed to be a burden to me and I am designed to be a burden to you. And the life of the family, including the life of the local church family, should be one of 'mutual burdensomeness'. 'carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.' (Galatians 6:2)

All round us moral standards are slipping. This is certainly so in the West. People are confused as to whether there are any absolutes left. Relativism has permeated culture and is seeping into the church.

The prevalence of Christian Zionism among white evangelicals in particular raises questions about the relationship between theology and those in positions of power and privilege and how the powerful and privileged tend to support the powerful and privileged.

We are talking about billions of dollars given (by white evangelicals) to the Israeli army and in support of illegal Israeli settlements, built on land confiscated by force from Palestinian families (including Palestinian Christians).

It is well documented how the Bible has been used over the centuries by Christians to justify slavery, apartheid, colonization, and the oppression of women in the church. Today, the Bible and Christian theology are being used against Palestinians, while also being utilized for those in power to legitimize and strengthen their positions of dominance and control.