This weekend the Jewish world and biblical Christians will be studying the texts called Chukkat (Hebrew for “statutes,” in Numbers Chapters 19-21). They’ll be discussing how some of the instructions that God had given the Israelites at Mount Sinai are not subject to logical explanation. These include the statute about the Red Heifer (i.e., the ritual which purifies someone who was defiled and which defiles the person performing the ritual, who was pure). And the situation of the brazen serpent upon the pole (a ritual wherein the people, bitten by serpents in the desert, looked upon the brazen serpent on a pole and were healed of the serpent bites). These statutes defy explanation and are very hard to figure out in terms that make any kind of sense. It kind of reminds me of how some Israeli and American citizens are trying to figure out this “cease-fire” that defies logical explanation.
Why is it that the U.S. government has said (in the past) that they would never negotiate with terrorists, but when the Israeli government says the same thing, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is called belligerent in some of the Western press? And why is it that the majority of the news media is still talking about a “cease-fire,” albeit described by some as fragile or tenuous? Yet, there is no real “cease-fire” on the ground! There have been shootings and people wounded or killed every single day since the CIA director achieved this so-called “cease-fire.”
I used to use a riddle in my management development seminars which is pertinent to this situation. I’m sure it is documented somewhere, but forgive me that I have forgotten the original source. It goes like this: If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? People typically respond with the answers of 5, 4 or 1. The answer five, because in calling the dog’s tail a leg, he now has an extra leg. The answer of one, because in calling the dog’s tail a leg, it would repudiate the four legs that we thought he had, so now there’s only one leg. And the answer of four, because the dog only has four legs, no matter what you call the tail. Or, in other words, “calling the dog’s tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” Calling the situation in Israel a “cease-fire” doesn’t make it one either – not if firing is still going on.
In a related matter, it was reported by Dateline Israel that Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said in a live interview broadcast “bridging is possible” between PM Ariel Sharon’s requirement of 100 percent cessation of the violence and incitement and the American position that the Palestinians be permitted to continue carrying out a “realistic” number of attacks.
Then, they quoted the Independent Media Review Analysis organization as saying:
It is not known if under the American “realistic terror” program if the “realistic number” is the number of attacks or number of casualties. If the latter is adopted, it will require very strict coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. For example, if America proposes that five Israelis can be murdered and 15 wounded each week, it will be necessary for Palestinian security officials to maintain tight contact with Israeli rescue forces as well as the hospitals to make sure that the weekly murder-wounding quota has not been exceeded before the next Palestinian squad acts.
A particularly thorny issue will be the treatment of mortally wounded Israelis who have not yet been taken off of life support. If, under the American proposal, they are to be counted only as “wounded” until they actually die, the Palestinians would still be able to murder other Israelis to fill their weekly quota.
At that point, it may be necessary for an American observer to be present in the hospital to insure that life support is only removed either at the end of the week (if the Palestinians have not met their quota) or to carryover the Israelis death until the next week. It also remains unclear if the unused quota of dead Israelis can be carried over from one week to the next.
I’d like to remind everyone that we live in a world where words mean something! Unless, of course, words are not being used to convey meanings, but rather they are being used to manipulate and control the opinions of those people who don’t think for themselves and who allow others to think and reason for them. There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on today! Especially in terms of what the United States would/will do in a situation of “terrorism” being used against U.S. citizens (and especially on U.S. soil) vs. what the United States wants Israel to do in the face of the “terrorism” that they face at the hands of the PA/PLO.
Speaking of hypocrisy, I’d also like to mention the hypocrisy of the criminal proceedings against Ariel Sharon in Belgium for war crimes in Lebanon. Christians, in general, are woefully ignorant of what the PLO did to the Christian Lebanese. According to Naji Najjar, in an open letter to Hanny Megally (of Human Rights Watch), Naji writes, “Did you really assume that the Palestinians were attacked for no reason or that groups of civilian Christians suddenly developed a blood lust for Palestinians? Why did the Christians attack only Palestinians and not the Lebanese Muslims with whom they lived peaceably for centuries? The Christians have historically been a peaceful people who preferred to live in Lebanon in a historical balance with their Muslim neighbors, a friendly and respectable balance that existed until Yasir Arafat and his killers entered Lebanon.”
And as Professor Kahl points out: “An unprofessional BBC, ill-prepared, ill-informed, and ill-advised, did not interview – nor attempt to meet – any of the in-exile Lebanese numerous eyewitnesses to Sabra and Chatilla, yet released a series of unfounded charges without any foundation in fact. Nor did they address, as a breech of human rights, the massacres to which the Christians of Lebanon were subjected to by the minions of Yasir Arafat.” This article gives historical events about which most people, even today, are totally ignorant. It is my own personal belief that the both the BBC and the Belgium Court will be labeled by historians as “hypocrites” of the highest order if they do not interview all of the various elements in Lebanon (including those presently in exile) who were present at that time. Only if this is done will people get a complete picture of the situation!
