Rewarding the Israelis for Bad War Conduct

Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has been visiting with President Bush this week to secure more money for military aid. The present agreement is to give $2.4 billion to the Israeli government just for military aid alone, to say nothing of economic aid, along with all the loans that will never be paid back. See the article in Haaretz:

http://www.worthynews.com/news/haaretz-com-hasen-spages-873556-html/

America passed a bill over 20 years ago to ensure that we will always give them at least the amount that they owe on interest on our loans to them, which means that as long as we continue to pay the interest on our loans back to ourselves, they never have to repay the principle. How's that for a good deal?

The article above also mentions toward the end that America will be replenishing what the Israelis used up in last year's Lebanon war. I suppose this means replenishing their stock of cluster bombs, which they dropped on all those towns and villages. Now that the news media has gone on to other things, it's politically "safe" to do this.

My suggestion is that this $2.4 billion should go to help rebuild Lebanon, rather than to rebuild the Israeli's arsenal. We should at least use it for a constructive purpose, if we are going to spend it at all. That way it would do a little to discourage the Israelis from committing more war crimes in the future, since they would know that they would hit their pocket books.

In the past week or ten days the situation in Palestine has gone from bad to worse. I think when the truth comes out, it will show that our government fomented a revolution in which the democratically-elected government of Palestine was overthrown by the Fatah party which had lost the election. Certainly, the American government encouraged this and financed it, as we are now reading in the media. What is really strange is that Hamas is being blamed for trying to overthrow Fatah, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Okay, so one may argue that Hamas is bad. There are a lot of bad people in the world and bad governments, too. But here we are once again using covert means to overthrow governments that we disagree with, and then blaming those governments for fighting back as if they started the fight!

And now, since the legitimate Hamas government was overthrown in the West Bank and only has power in Gaza, we will see an increase in the starvation rate of the people in Gaza. The media's participation in twisting the truth will only justify this starvation and reduce sympathy for their plight.

To our President, I would say this one thing: You cannot use war and government as excuses to lie to the people, even if there is a lot of past precedent for doing so. You cannot establish righteous government by unrighteous means. The end does not justify the means. Jesus said in Luke 16:10,

"He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much."

It may seem like a little thing to you to have "the right to lie" for the supposed good of the American people, but God is not alright with this. If you were Dick Cheney or some other unbeliever, your standard of behavior would be much lower. But you claim to be a Christian believer. Please act in such a way that Christ's name is not blasphemed among the nations.