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Vince Dhimos answered a question at Quora.
Q: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BRING PEACE BY THE NEW MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROPOSAL? https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-bring-peace-by-the-New-Middle-East-Peace-proposal/answer/Vince-Dhimos The famous “Deal of the Century” was presented to the world by a Trump-Netanyahu duo on January 2. This was the first time in history that an Israel-Palestine peace plan was hatched with zero input from the Palestinians and presented with no Arab presence on the platform. Yet, this offer of absolutely nothing at all to Palestine is supposed to be taken seriously and debated by the two sides. We are also now witnessing a historic first, ie, a US administration fully guided by the cult of “Christian” Zionism, in a manner that puts paid to the old First Amendment concept of a government showing no favouritism to any one religion. Trump has killed that principle and Americans claiming to be conservative are fine with having their Constitution flushed down the toilet. Jesus said from the cross Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. But the people who are happy to trash the cherished principles of their Constitution are Americans who have had over 2 centuries to contemplate the importance of its provisions. How can they not know? And if they know, how can they be forgiven? Other presidents were guided by this religious cult but none had actual Zionist true believers in their administration. Trump has two, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo. Where is America headed? The irony is that the religion that is receiving the favouritism is not the religion founded by the early Christians and based on Christ’s teachings but a hybrid between Old Testament legalism – which Jesus abhorred – with a thin veneer of Christianity on top for show, like on TV. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus ask his followers to support a new secular state called Israel that brings together the diaspora that God created when He banished the Hebrews – on several occasions spread out over millennia – from their land as a punishment for their disobedience. And nowhere in the Old or New Testament does God even hint that Israel has become obedient again and hence deserving of returning to their land. It was Zionists who pushed that non-Biblical narrative, and it was Americans who bought into it. There are a few Christians alive today who still derive their principles from the words of Jesus, and for this remnant, “Christian” Zionism is heresy. But for most Evangelicals, it is a well-established cult that goes back about 200 years and has acquired the patina of age, making it seem like something divinely inspired – even though it departs radically from the scriptures (details here). No matter that it legitimizes a state that got its start by massacring innocent men, women and children – a heinous crime that is almost completely papered over by historians, msm, politicians and, of course, pastors whose outward appearance and demeanour slyly suggests piety and righteousness. Jesus called this type of religious leader “whitewashed sepulchres,” clean and white on the outside but corrupt and stinking on the inside. Let me first note that the standard excuse repeated ad nauseam by Israeli apologists is that the massacres by the Jews are justified by the Hebron massacres of Jews by Arabs almost 2 decades prior to the killing perpetrated by these Arabs in 1948 (and later). But here again, nowhere do the scriptures say that a massacre of innocents justifies the massacre of other innocents. But the “Christian” US and “Judaic” Israel no longer accept the moral concepts we normally associate with Judeo-Christianity. If a white man kills a black child to avenge a murder by a black person, nothing is accomplished except one senseless murder after another. The Ten Commandments were handed down to prevent this sort of injustice. But thousands of years of stabilizing common-sense tradition are being trashed by the US and Israel and the world, fearing the unbalanced US president, can only applaud. In horror. The following passage and quote from an eye witness of the massacre should illustrate what it is these pious “Christian” Zionists support – generally unwittingly: BEGIN QUOTE "On April 9, 1948, the armed groups Irgun and Stern (whose leaders included two future prime ministers of Israel, Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) carried out the massacre of the inhabitants of Deir Yassin. [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-testimonies-from-the-censored-massacre-at-deir-yassin-1.5494094 Testimonies From the Censored Deir Yassin Massacre: 'They Piled Bodies and Burned Them' A young fellow tied to a tree and set on fire. A woman and an old man shot in back. Girls lined up against a wall and shot with a submachine gun. The testimonies collected by filmmaker Neta Shoshani about the massacre in Deir Yassin are difficult to process even 70 years after the fact] The delegate of the Red Cross in the area, Jacques de Reynier, was the first person to arrive at the place while the Irgun militias were still present: "Among the troops there were some very young people, almost adolescents, all in military clothing and helmets, men and women armed to the teeth with pistols, machine guns, grenades and also big knives, most of them still bloodied. A very beautiful young woman showed me her blood still dripping like a trophy [from her knife]... I made my way between them and entered a house. The first room was dark with everything in disarray but nobody could be seen. In the next room I found, under the furniture and the busted mattresses, several corpses, aIready cold. The cleansing operation had been done first with machine guns, then with grenades and finally with the long knives, without any worries that it would be discovered. The same scene we found in the next room but as I was about to leave I heard what I thought was a sigh. I removed the corpses until I touched a small foot that was still warm. She was a ten-year-old girl, badly injured by a grenade but still alive. I picked her up and one of the officers tried to block me at the door, I pushed him away and left with my precious body ... We check the other houses and in all of them we find the same spooky scene. We only found two other people alive, two women, one of them an old woman huddled in the kitchen, who had been hiding there for hours ... The village had four hundred inhabitants, some fifty managed to flee, three had survived, the rest had been thoroughly massacred, following the orders of their leaders, as they are admirably disciplined troops ... "[3] Jacques de Reynier gives the figure of 347 dead in the killing of Deir Yassin; other sources speak of 250. In any case, it is not about the number of victims – because in those months of 1948 there were similar massacres in many other villages of Palestine – but about the echo that the killing had, the panic movement it provoked, which made Deir Yassin one of the keys to the exodus of the Palestinian peasants. [In my debates with Israelis and their apologists at Quora, they invariably tell me the Arabs left of their own accord and were not in any way coerced. Vince] END QUOTE “Christian” Zionism, which fully supports (probably unwittingly) all the Israeli actions like the one described above, is a mixture of both guileful deceit and naiveté. But whatever its origin or motivation may be, it is the guiding light of US foreign policy in the Middle East and has been at the root of millions of deaths, untold destruction and the silent suffering of the poor under economic sanctions (this is generally due to an indirect influence since US wars in the region are energetically promoted by Israel. Because part and parcel of “Christian” Zionism is the Israeli narrative that Islam is evil and is the origin of all the wars in the Middle East, even though it is the Israelis themselves who promote these wars (for example, constantly firing missiles at military installations in Syria and egging the US on to attack Iran, as reported here). Netanyahu spoke for 2 hours before the US congress urging the US to declare war on Iraq. All with the blessings of millions of US Evangelicals who pray God’s blessings on the US and the Israeli presidents as these atrocities are carried out and as Washington helps Israel grab more and more land from the hapless Arabs, who, you might have thought, have suffered enough these past 70 years. There have been two branches of Islam involved on both the giving and the receiving sides of US wars and sanctions, and one of them, ie, Wahhabism, the religion of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, has been the favourite of US presidents for decades. It is the religion that opposes Shiism, the more tolerant branch that is hated and feared by Israel because Shiite Iranian fighters oppose ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq while Iran also criticises and resists Israel’s abuse of Palestinians and other Arab neighbours. In turn, Israel threatens to annihilate Iran while Iran warns Israel to stay away, and this warning is taken by the US and Israel as a “threat.” Both Israel and the US are hard put to explain why fighting ISIS is bad. Instead of trying to explain, they go pro-active and accuse Iran and its proxy Hezbollah of being “terrorists,” but again, without explaining why they call them that. So far, there is no need to explain because the doctrine that Iran is evil is an integral part of the cult of “Christian” Zionism. But as long as the cult of death prevails in the American church and in Washington, expect the wars to go on and the bottomless US debt and the accompanying inflation to keep growing. After all, why would God bless a bunch of heretics? I was recently asked on Quora a question about Tulsi Gabbard and why she is getting no traction. Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present) “The problem with Tulsi is that she seems to be guided by this notion of “morality,” or a vision of “right vs wrong,” which are Christian values of a century ago (ya, I know she is technically a Hindu but like Ghandi, she is a universalist at heart. Her ideas are acceptable to people of all races and religions, as they should be in a country with a First Amendment). US foreign policy is guided by a vision that is considered “amoral” by policy makers and most of the public, but frankly “immoral” by traditionalists like myself who still cling to the Christian teaching “love thy neighbour as thyself” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The official cardinal “Western value” is “might makes right,” and it is perfectly illustrated by the Deal of the Century, which is based on the principle that “the US is overwhelmingly strong and can do whatever it damn well pleases, and whad’re ya gonna do aboudit, sucker?” Unfortunately, in the land dominated by “Christian” Zionists, who think God is on their side because they worship Israel, Tulsi cannot win an election.” END QUORA POST The “Deal of the Century” has now been presented in a joint presentation between Donald Trump and Israeli President Netanyahu, with no Arabs on the platform. It is a deal that annexes the West Bank, which had been designated by the UN as Palestinian territory.
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