Category Archives: Genocide

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The Shadow at the Pride Festival

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A year ago last Saturday, the Friends Meeting I’m part of took a big step, for us: we rented a booth at the Alamance Pride Festival, held in a large park in downtown Burlington NC.

The Spring booth, with a blogger on duty at the table.

Outwardly, our booth was not particularly eye-catching. Amid the fluttering of a thousand floating rainbows, the yellow table banner we made for it is about as gaudy as we get. Spring Friends Meeting has been what many call an “affirming” congregation for more than a dozen years, and we’ve paid our share of dues for that. But we didn’t do it for publicity, and we haven’t done much of what many others call evangelism, which we’d  rather name “outreach.” We have  lots of opinions about things, but are  mostly quiet about them.

Maybe too quiet. Spring has been gathering for Quaker worship in southern Alamance County for 251 years, but we soon found out in the booth that hardly anyone we talked to knew we were there.  Which meant that Pride was a great opportunity for our outreach aspirations, but it also brought home the suspicion that maybe we had been a bit too ready to “hide our lamp under a bushel,” for much of those two-and-a-half centuries, which is something the gospel says not to do. There’s a false modesty which at bottom is mostly a mix of snobbery and pride.
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Activism, antisemitism, Antiwar activism, Arabs, Corruption, Cross-Generational Issues, Current Affairs, Death & Dying, Disasters, Ecumenical & Interfaith, Genocide, Islam & Muslims, Israel, Jews & Judaism, Military Matters, Nazis/Nazism, Other War Notes, Palestine, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Signs of the Times, Terror and Terrorism, Torture & Human Rights, War & Peace

On Israel/Hamas: Many Conflicting “Truths”, Or Convictions

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Friends,

Kudos this week to the Christian Century (CC) magazine, for its statement on the Hamas/Israeli war.  They were not quick to run to the pundit barricades; when Hamas attacked, despite their shock, they grabbed their knees and kept them from jerking. They thought and struggled about it; their struggle likely continues.

And their considered editorial answer was –for me at least — clarifying. In sum, they said: the situation is complex as hell. (That’s my paraphrase.) More precisely:

From “Bearing Witness to Multiple Stories” (11/6/2023):

“Every conflict involves competing stories, but often one story clearly embodies far more truth than the other. Not in this case. Each of the two stories sketched out here [Palestinian & Israeli] is factually sound, historically informed, and morally compelling. Both stories are true.

And they are heartbreaking and tragic. Both are stories of people who love the land and deserve to live there in peace. Peace has long been stymied by political missteps, cycles of violence, and interventions by those who can only see one story’s truth. For US Christians, bearing witness to this conflict begins with recognizing that it contains more than one true story.”

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Current Affairs, Disasters, Genocide, Military Matters, Other War Notes, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Terror and Terrorism, Torture & Human Rights, War & Peace

Syria’s Butcher is Welcomed Back by the Arab League

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Syria’s Bashar Assad is being rehabilitated

by Gwynne Dyer, Opinion columnist – May 15, 2023

Syria-War damage

“There is no such word as ‘auto-genocide,’ but that would describe what Assad has done to his own country over the past 12 years.”

There is no justice. Bashar al-Assad, the murderous Syrian dictator whose membership even the Arab League suspended 12 years ago, is off to Riyadh this week to celebrate his admission back into the organization. He will pay no price for his many crimes against humanity: The name of the game now is not retribution but “rehabilitation.” Continue reading Syria’s Butcher is Welcomed Back by the Arab League →

Anti-semitism, Genocide, Jews & Judaism, Journalism/Media, Justice?, Mass killings, Media, Minority Rule, Other War Notes, Populism, Propaganda, Racism, Religious Issues & Conflicts, To Save Democracy

“Fear Speech” vs “Hate Speech”: An Important Distinction

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From, The New York Times:

[NOTE: I learned something valuable from this piece: “fear speech” is distinct from (but closely related to) “hate speech,” and its emergence in research further complicates such tangled issues as how to preserve free speech in the toxic media culture we seem stuck in. I didn’t find simple or easy solutions here. But being enabled to think more clearly about what we’re facing — to me that’s progress. Check it out.]

Few Are Addressing One of Social Media’s Greatest Perils

By Julia Angwin — May 6, 2023

Ms. Angwin is a contributing Opinion writer and an investigative journalist.

[F]ear is weaponized even more than hate by leaders who seek to spark violence. Hate is often part of the equation, of course, but fear is almost always the key ingredient when people feel they must lash out to defend themselves.

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