Sermon on Sunday

As Israel bombs Gaza, it’s informative to see how the media online is reporting this.

The Huffington Post has had pictures of the carnage. The New York Times has a left lead article “Israel says strikes against Hamas will continue ” The Christian Science Monitor is really outdated with a sentence saying Israel is planning attacks against Hamas. BBC shows a bleeding Palestinian child with an excellent article on the whys behind the bombings. CNN has a long shot of the smoke from an explosion with the headline of “U.N. urges halt......” (The U.S. has told the "Hamas thugs" to stop being bad. Remember, the U.S. hates Hamas and we don’t have a history of tolerating elected governments we don’t like.) The New York Daily News takes the neutral, but right-on headline of “Cycle of Violence” with a picture of the carnage.Al Jazeera has three pictures with articles on the current crisis and the “60 Years of Division.”

And so it goes. Children, the innocent, will die. My country will not be the honest broker here because of the government’s relationship with Israel. And the next government will be no better. Both Obama and Clinton gave their first speeches after the Democratic convention to AIPAC. A first speech to Habitat for Humanity would have been much more promising.

The world does have the United Nations. But we don’t like the United Nations unless it's our United Nations.

I was once asked that, as a pacifist, didn’t I think that World War II had to be fought. And I said that, as a pacifist, I condemn warfare and don’t pick and choose my wars.

It’s the same way with violence. You have to work very hard to keep the world peaceful but it’s worth the good struggle.

I fully understand Arnold’s:

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

But I would rather live by Millay’s:

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.