And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword….
And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.
From Joshua , King James Version
You are a resident of the oldest continually inhabited community in Asia Minor, aka the Middle East. Before the Younger Dryas brought drought, your Natufian ancestors were hunters and gatherers in a region that could easily have been the model for the Garden of Eden. Your city is
the cradle of western civilization—the first with agriculture, the first with domesticated dogs, the first with a tower, the first with a city wall. From 9000 BC to 1500 BC----from PrePottery Neolithic A to the height of the Bronze Age----you have prospered thanks to your decision to locate your home on fertile land on the River Jordan. You have worked hard to achieve wealth and security for yourselves and your children.
Then, a bunch of desert nomads show up. With the help of a spy, they knock down your city walls, kill every man, woman and child within your community, loot your treasury---and declare that their God told them to do it. And, they have the nerve to brag about it in the same holy text that proclaims
Thou shalt not kill and
Love thy neighbor as thyself. . Did I mention that the annihilation of your community is just the start of the desert nomads’ plans to conquer the whole region? Which is celebrated as part of a divine plan to conquer the entire world, by the sword if necessary?
Welcome to the Christian Bible, which derives from Jewish teaching, which begat Islam. No wonder our Founders wrote things like
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
And
There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice..... Thomas Paine
Shocking indeed. When your book of moral teaching is a
how to pillage and slaughter for fun and profit who can be surprised at wars for oil or presidents who blame the dead for their own demise?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/59041.htmlAccording to McClatchy today, 111 children have died so far in the Israeli invasion of Gaza. To hear our god fearing President speak, their deaths are the result of the actions of the Palestinians, even though the Israelis are the ones firing the rockets and manning the tanks and using the phosphorous in areas where civilians are present. That is because the Israeli’s are
good and Hamas is
bad , and the Palestinians showed their wickedness when they cast their votes for the wrong party. And, in that fine old Biblical tradition, they are being cursed unto their sons and their sons’ sons.
Since I am
not a Christian, I can not help thinking that there must have been more to the story of Joshua and Jericho than the Biblical account. For instance, was Canaan a center of trade, situated as it was between Assyria, Egypt and Mesopotamia? Did the rival empires compete with each other for control of the region? Did the “desert nomads” hire themselves out as mercenaries? Maybe Joshua and his army were instructed to teach Jericho a lesson. Now, that would make sense.
Here is what makes more sense in Gaza than the
Hamas bad, Israel good line that the Bush administration keeps spouting. The U.S. supplies Israel with over two billion dollars a year in aid, which it then turns around and spends on U.S. made weapons, though I am sure it keeps some of the money for itself, to cover expenses. To justify this huge military budget, Israel must have a threat, some enemy against which to defend itself. As long as the Palestinian people are deprived of food, health care, education, equal rights under the law, freedom of travel and the other basic liberties, they are angry. Their anger makes them a threat to the people of Israel. (This is the Fear the Black Man strategy recycled from the US) The state of Israel can use this threat to justify a near infinite military build up, since surrounding Muslim countries express solidarity with the Palestinians. And guess what? The US gives out almost two billion dollars a year in military aid to Arab countries, too. Best of all, from the point of view of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, the rich nations of the Middle East participate in the arms race, as well. The Middle East becomes a tinder box, full of U.S made weapons, thanks to a few billion dollars in U.S. tax payers money and the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people. Any time the NeoCons want to declare some country “unstable” so that they can move in and steal its oil, they can cook the intelligence, and no one will call them on their lies. Hell, with all that dangerous weaponry floating around, it is a miracle the whole region does not explode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-United_States_military_relationshttp://www.siyassa.org.eg/esiyassa/AHRAM/2003/10/1/MILI2.HTMIf President-elect Obama cares about Israel and about the Palestinian people he will cut Israel’s military aid and restore its nonmilitary aid. At the same time, he will give the Palestinians their own (nonmilitary) aid. Once the Palestinians have economic justice, they will no longer be angry. Then, they will no longer be a threat. The Arab nations surrounding Israel will be able to relax and think about more important problems, like why their leaders are spending more on military buildup than they are on health care and education (see the link above). Obama will tell the U.S. Military Industrial Complex to go fuck itself (in his own words) when it protests.
And someone needs to rewrite the Bible if they are really serious about the Christian religion. Stories like the one about Joshua and Jericho set a bad example.