31/07/02

washingtonpost.com

To the editor:

[A reaction to Evangelical Leaders Ask Bush to Adopt Balanced Mideast Policy.]

I don't when I have ever been so disgusted with such an article as this!
These "leading theologians" may be evangelicals, but they come from a strong Replacement Theology background. This type of teaching today is more subtle than before the Holocaust, but every bit as deadly. The Holocaust would NEVER have taken place if not for this theological revisionism.

Regarding their statement about the "theft of Palestinian land" : Hello, there has never been a Palestinian land. Before the Israelis took it in 1967 (in a war the Arabs started, I might add) the land was under Jordanian rule. Before that it was under British rule, and before that Ottoman Turk rule for 400 years.

Today it is "disputed territory". UN Resolution 242 asks that Israel give back "territories" acquired in the 1967 war. It doesn't say "all territories" or "the territories". This was purposely written this way by Lord Caradon, the British ambassador who said: "It would be wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967 because these positions were undesirable and artificial." The basis of any withdrawal was conditional on the Arabs agreeing to peace.

The Arabs have time and time again been offered this land for peace and have refused. They don't want peace - they want the Jews out. 22 Arabs nations in the Middle East don't satisfy them, they want a 23rd.

Israel never purposely targets civilians; whereas, the PLO always target civilians. When civilians in Israel are purposely slaughtered, the Palestinians dance in the streets. If Israel accidentally kill civilians, you never see them rejoicing.

When these pompous hypocrites whine about the "bombing of little Palestinian kids", I would suggest they remove the beam from their own eye before looking for the speck in anothers'! .

Where was their outcry when we bombed Dresden or Hiroshima? Where was their outcry when we killed 600 civilians in 1989 going into Panama City to get Noriega? Where was their outrage when over 1,000 civilians were killed as the USAF bombed Somalia in response to the killing and mutilation of 15 of our soldiers? Hmm, or the 400 - 800 civilians who have been killed while we've tried to get Bin Laden? Civilians from time immemorial have been killed in wars. Sadly, It is an unfortunate consequence of war.

As an evangelical, I am ashamed to be identified with these theologians. The church looked the other way during the Holocaust - out of 14,000 evangelical pastors in 1933 Germany, only 800 refused to sign the Nazi oath - - it looks like history is repeating itself.

Monica McMillen
Fort Worth, Texas