Healing hatred

Wherever hatred is taught to the masses there will always be conflict. And certainly and sadly hatred of the Jews is being taught in the schools and churches of Middle East.

I agree with Vjax and annoyedvet101 (and thank them for taking the time to respond.)

Trey’s letters say much more about him than the subject he addresses. He seems to need to reduce complicated issues to black and white, right and wrong, for the purpose of justifying his anger and disdain.
In Jesus’ name, of course.

I believe it is possible to struggle with the political and moral issues, and still mourn the loss on both sides. We can state we are on the side of humanity. Period.

As a follower of Christ, I trust that St. Paul is correct when he assures the Ephesians–“one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

Surely ALL His children will find a way to exist in peace.

Thank you, Annoyedvet, for your very reasoned response to Trey’s latest.

I feel like Trey is not actually trying to explain the conflict in the Middle East with this missive, though. Regular readers will recall, Trey’s last letter encompassed: Hamas attack on Israel = Abortion activism in the USA.

It’s his trick: how to turn any tragedy into a referendum on the libs.

So we cannot be surprised that having already linked terrorism to abortion, he moves on to his #2 bugaboo: the LGBTQ community. Next week, I suppose, somehow he will find a way to advocate for the Second Amendment because of Hamas, and, as the war progresses, perhaps he will equate Hamas terrorism to Voting Rights.

Trey takes his cue from Rahm Emmanuel’s direction “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” He will seize on whatever crisis has captured attention and do whatever logical jujitsu he must to link it to one of his Fox News talking points.

So, of course, we should have expected this specious argument that somehow LGBTQ people are demonic because some may support Palestinian liberation. Par for the course with Trey.

A couple of things surprised me, though. First was what he calls the “concept of a coalition of the wretched.” I had never heard this and did a few minutes internet search to try to find where it originates. I couldn’t find it, but did find “Wretched of the Earth,” an influential book by a dissident back in the days of Algeria’s revolution for independence from France.

The author, Franzt Fanon, posited that violence was the only way marginalized/indigenous people could counteract colonialism and regain their land and rights from colonizers. I find it interesting that Trey should fit so neatly into Fanon’s paradigm: Trey continually demonizes the oppressed who are asking for their rights — and vehemently condemns if they respond to their oppression with violence … He wants to keep the wretched in their wretched state and reserve the right to blame them for it. No wonder Fanon believed only violence could make a revolutionary difference; he was dealing not just with one angry old white man, but with decades of colonial brutality.

This however is a sidetrack. My main question for Trey is this: why call out the LGBTQ groups that fail to condemn Hamas or actually speak up for them? There are many LGBTQ groups that have condemned them; there’s an organized LGBTQ umbrella organization in Israel that is actively raising funds for the Israeli victims and for the Israeli Defense Force reserves called into service. They are certainly condemning terrorism and supporting Israel.

Trey argues: “LGBTQ movement has joined [the coalition of the wretched] as well and they have common cause with Hamas and other radical Islamist terrorist groups. They all want to see the West fall and will unite in any effort, no matter how heinous, that furthers that goal.”

But the fact that many vocal LGBTQ groups have condemned the violence and do not agree with terror tactics or extremist Islam makes it clear that Trey’s reasoning here is flawed. Some LGBTQ folks stand for Palestinian liberation, some Christians do as well, some Jewish people also do. You cannot say they’re all part of this coalition that wants to bring down the West, can you? Of course not; rather say they are hopeful the ideals of liberty and justice for all that are supposed to motivate our stance in the USA can prevail elsewhere. How does that crush the West?

This letter from Trey is more evidence that his diatribes aren’t really intended to say anything about the Israel-Gaza situation or other ostensible subjects he writes about, but rather are intended to flog the dead horse of the conservative issues that increasingly seem to take up all of Trey’s mental bandwidth. Sad.

The broad generalizations made here don’t help anything and are an example of why conflicts like the one discussed here proliferate. Until the nuance of reality is continually included in dialogue around sensitive issues like this type conflict, poor explanations like this will only serve to fuel the fire of one side or another. The nature of this issue cannot be explained in a few hundred or even thousand works. The hubris one must have to believe they can explain the reasons of a conflict as old as Christianity itself in a single letter to the editor is gobsmacking.

“You simply cannot have a “two-state solution” when one state wants to wipe the other off the face of the earth.” Absolutely astounding that someone can type this out and not realize the irony. What has Israel been trying to do to Palestine over the last 70 years? Terrorism is borne out of conflict and does not germinate in a vacuum. Western incursions into the middle east created the conditions for Al-Qaeda, Haqqani, Taliban and ISIS existence. This is not to say that western powers should be isolationist and not make efforts to keep the global western order in place, but as a point of clarity that you can’t just say “those guys bad, our guys good” without the historical context of why terrorist factions exist. When people still their family die and diplomacy fail, the justification of barbaric acts is borne.

Honest to God question – when has praying ever solved a conflict? As far back as written history can tell us, religious zealots and their poor interpretations of their associated religious texts are the leading factor in conflict. I can’t think of a single instance when an atheist or agnostic person was moved to start a war by their beliefs.

I won’t pretend to offer an explanation or a solution to this terrible situation, but hope that folks reading will simply understand you can’t just say “Palestine bad and Israel good” and think that is helping anything. The government or leaders of a population almost never represent the true feelings of a population, but those of the most radical and vocal faction. Just like Americans say “Not my president” for Biden/Trump so do Palestinians for Hamas, and Israelis for Netanyahu. You just won’t see that in mainstream media.

The Citizen is meant to be a local newspaper, publishing garbage like this in the Letters to the Editors section is doing a disservice to everyone that reads.

Not unusually, Mr. Hoffman pens a missive that berates the left end of the political spectrum without any condemnation of similar behavior on the right end. I guess fascists, Neo-Nazis, and KKK right-wingnuts get a pass from Trey along with his orange deity who recognizes these antisemites as “fine people” and Hezbollah antisemitic terrorists as “very smart.” The left wing groups he calls out deserve derision of course, but as always, his narrow focus can’t see beyond his extremely limited news echo chamber.

Unfortunately, hatred exists all along the political spectrum even if Mr. Hoffman is blind to much of it.

Much of this letter is factual. Some is opinion.
It is a fact that the left is blaming the victim- Israel. 1400 inncents were murdered, including babies.
Hamas buries its military facilities under churches, hospitals, mosques and schools. It dares Israel to fight back. Then, blames it for the deaths caused by Hamas policy.
The left needs to be woke about the facts on both sides of this conflict.