Ted Cruz booed in Washington Middle Eastern Christian Rights Conference

Lebanon envoy withdraws in protest of Israel remarks

BEIRUT: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz was booed offstage during a dinner for the Middle East's Christian conference in Washington D.C., with his pro-Zionists comments causing many Lebanese figures to withdraw in anger, including the Lebanese ambassador to the U.S.

“Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” Sen. Ted Cruz said, addressing a crowd of Arab Christian figures at a fundraising dinner for the non-profit organization "In Defense of Christians" in Washington D.C.

Billed as a keynote speaker at the event, Cruz switched the topic from defending Christians in the Middle East against terrorism, to the need to form an alliance between Christians and Jews, which he identified as “people of good faith.”

“Tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians. Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews,” he said. “Together, against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.”

As part of the controversial speech that led to the withdrawal of Ambassador Antoine Chedid, Cruz evoked the old argument that whoever disliked the state of Israel was anti-Semitic and did not follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.

“Those who hate Israel hate America,” he said, while crowd began to turn against him. “Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps.

“If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ,” he added, addressing an audience representing the Christian churches of the Middle East, including Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai.

The republican senator from Texas, who was a member of George W. Bush’s electoral campaign in 1999, also used the podium to equate fundamentalist groups massacring Christians in Iraq and Syria, to Palestinian and Lebanese groups fighting Israel.

“Religious bigotry is a cancer with many manifestations,” he said. “ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East.”

Criticizing those who he said “try to parse different manifestations of [one] evil,” Cruz argued about the similarities of the mentioned groups, seemingly ignoring the varied battlefields, history, context and at times aggressive enmity between many of them.

“Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together,” he added, “...that we have to understand their so called nuances and differences.”

“But hate is hate, and murder is murder,” he said. “Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice, a humanitarian crisis.”

Cruz’s comments on the region were too extreme for the audience, and provoked a round of cries that firmly asked him to leave.

“Stop it, stop it, enough,” and “Out, out, leave the stage!” were some of the shouts aimed at the senator, which prompted IDC’s president, Toufic Baaklini, to join Cruz on stage and ask the crowd to listen.

After failing in attempts to be heard, the senator announced “if you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you. Good night and God bless,” before walking off the stage, with some carrying on the shouts and others applauding his departure.

In addition to Chedid’s protest, media reports said that Future Movement MPs Jean Ogassapian, Atef Majdalani and former MP Ghattas Khoury all withdrew from the conference.

The reports said that while Patriarch Gregory III Laham had also intended to withdraw, Patriarch Rai called on the participants to avoid the tension and prioritize the conference’s success over some individual statements.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebano ... z3D7BNqeqz

This made me happy.

The fact that he has the audacity to think he knows more about the shit we’re in than we do is truly astonishing. Bitch, please. My family have been Christian long before your ancestors even heard of the word Jesus.

Arab Christians and Arab Muslims have both directly suffered at the hands of Israel, and to think Arab Christians will blindly support another country just because they’re not Muslim majority is just pure ignorant. We all hate the occupation of Palestine.

Israeli Christians Officially Recognized as Arameans, Not Arabs

Earlier this year, Israel took the first step in recognizing the nation’s Christians as an independent minority. Now, local Israeli Christians can register as a distinct ethnicity, as well.

Lumped together with the Arab population for centuries, Israel’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority (PIBA) has been instructed to now recognize the bulk of the country’s Christians as Aramaeans, the actual ethnicity of most of the region’s Christians prior to the Arab Muslim conquest.


“The existence of the Aramean nationality is clear and obvious,” wrote Interior Minister Gideon Saar in his official directive to the PIBA.

Saar noted that local Aramean Christians have a distinct “historical heritage, religion, culture, descent and language” - all the conditions necessary to be recognized as a national or ethnic group.

The change in the national registry will be by request for those Christians born into Christian families or clans and who can speak Aramaic. A large group of Christians had already applied for such recognition four years ago, and will now be granted the desired ethnic status.

This decision “corrects a historic injustice that wrongly defined Israel’s citizens of eastern-Christian descent as ‘Christian Arabs,’ although other than their spoken language, they have absolutely no connection to the Arab nationality,” wrote Father Gabriel Naddaf on his Facebook page.

Naddaf is the spiritual leader of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, which encourages local Christians to volunteer for Israeli army service and fully integrate with Israeli Jewish society.

Naddaf and like-minded Christian leaders have been arguing for years that in modern Israel, Middle East Christians are finally free to once again express themselves and their faith independent of the Muslim Arab majority.

“This is a historic moment,” forum spokesman Shadi Khalloul told Israel’s Ynet news portal. “The Aramean people are finally seeing justice after being persecuted across the region.”

Asked why the Israeli government’s decision means so much, Khalloul provided a short history lesson: “We have existed in this region for thousands of years. We accepted Christianity, but then had Arabic forced upon us during the Arab conquest, just as local Jews did. But we preserved our language in churches and other cultural settings.”

Khalloul further explained that the lack of proper ethnic recognition was a gaping hole in the lives of many local Christians. “I refused to officially register my two-year-old son after his birth because the Interior Ministry wanted to register him as an Arab,” he said. “Now I can happily register him as an Aramean.”

Khalloul and his Jewish interviewer went on to speak of the shared history between Jews and Arameans, and even the deep connections between Hebrew and the Aramaic language. In fact, many Jewish prayers, most notably several Passover blessings, are in Aramaic, and common modern Hebrew words like “aba” and “ima” - father and mother - come from Aramaic.

“Yesterday in Israel we saw the correction of an historical injustice,” wrote columnist Dror Idar in the daily newspaper Israel Hayom. “Congratulations to the Aramean nation, and here’s to a life of fruitful coexistence in the Holy Land.”

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/t ... fault.aspx

This is the same bullshit that comes up with both the Copts and the Maronites, I can’t even count the amount of times I been told by both that they were the original inhabiters, as if all the Arab Muslims were somehow imported from Arabia.

All Middle Easterners have Canaanite blood. Over time, the Canaanites merged into Arabic culture seamlessly. Arab culture was not something that a specific group of people owned. It belonged to the entire Semitic Middle East. Arab culture was the Semitic response to the huge cultural powerhouses of Rome and Perisa. It was a process that was started thousands of years before the birth of Islam.

I mean for god sake, the original Arabs, the Ghassanids, were Christians. They migrated from Yemen to the Levant and set up the first major Arab dynasty in history. Because of this, they had a huge influence on the rest of the Arabs. They practiced a rigidly monotheistic and simplified form of Christianity which eventually led to the catalyst for the development of Islam (One God, Jesus is human).

This new Israeli law is just further showing that Zionism is the cancer that is destroying Arab culture, and honestly it was what spawned all of these separatist movements like Phoenicianism, Pharaonism, Aramaeans, and even Wahbisim. We wouldn't have ISIS today if Arabs weren't so confused about their identity as a result of European Zionism.

Asked why the Israeli government’s decision means so much, Khalloul provided a short history lesson: “We have existed in this region for thousands of years. We accepted Christianity, but then had Arabic forced upon us during the Arab conquest, just as local Jews did. But we preserved our language in churches and other cultural settings.”

Khalloul further explained that the lack of proper ethnic recognition was a gaping hole in the lives of many local Christians. “I refused to officially register my two-year-old son after his birth because the Interior Ministry wanted to register him as an Arab,” he said. “Now I can happily register him as an Aramean.”

Khalloul and his Jewish interviewer went on to speak of the shared history between Jews and Arameans, and even the deep connections between Hebrew and the Aramaic language. In fact, many Jewish prayers, most notably several Passover blessings, are in Aramaic, and common modern Hebrew words like “aba” and “ima” - father and mother - come from Aramaic.

And WTF, they're both Canaanites, of course they share similarities. The Canaanites were the exact same people as the Northern Arab (Arabian Peninsula) until they migrated to the Levant because the Arabian Peninsula was going through desertification. If anything, they became hellenized and the Muslim conquest re-arabized them.

I see loads of one-sided horseshit thrown around in this thread.
People are being intellectually dishonest here, and that's a shame. Accusing Israel of genocide is exactly that - intellectual dishonesty, large amounts of gullibility, big doses of ignorance, or straight up evil agenda.

I personally feel that the way Israel handled Hamas's latest threat was abysmal. While it is unfortunate that innocents get harmed and killed in Gaza due to a complete lack of responsibility from terrorist organization Hamas, I think more should have been done to ensure security and safety of Israeli citizens.

I've learned long ago that it is important to educate yourself, as objectively as possible, regarding hot events and conflicts around the world, in order to formulate a coherent opinion based on facts (as much as resources at hand allow). If you fail to do that, or opt to trust only one media source to feed you information, or even simply don't do it because 'fuck it', then what you get is similar comments that can be seen in this thread.

It would be only fair to those who scream genocide and play the victim card all too often, to have a look at Palwatch.org - an important institute studying Palestinian media and its effects on Arab population. Understanding the fucked up foundations on which Palestinian society stands (education, religious beliefs, propaganda, etc) is key to understanding why everything is so messed up in the first place, and why it's not going anywhere in the near future.
Here's a link to palwatch youtube channel, enjoy countless hours of glorious fun: http://www.youtube.com/user/palwatch

Now to address some of the FreakLikeMe's posts...

FreakLikeMe wrote:There's technically systematic mass murder (GENOCIDE) of civilians going on in Palestine committed by Israel.

Definition of genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
Are you claiming that Israel is deliberately targeting and killing innocent people? If you honestly think so, may I ask how did you come to this conclusion?

FreakLikeMe wrote:How is it that there have been 62 Israeli soldiers dead, 3 Israeli civilians and OVER ONE THOUSAND Palestinian civilians are dead?

Simple. Gaza is a very densely populated area. 1.8 million people living in a 360 square km area. Hamas strategically places its terrorists, arms and headquarters in very dense civilian areas. If Israel wants to destroy a terrorist target, collateral damage is almost unavoidable.

FreakLikeMe wrote:Clearly Hamas is bad, but at least they're killing the necessary people.

Hamas targeted Israeli civilians and populated areas by aimlessly shooting rockets at Israeli cities. That's what the fuss was about from the beginning. The fact that Israel suffered minimal civilian casualties is only thanks to the Iron Dome technology. Otherwise, Israel would of suffered some serious damage - in which case Israeli counterattacks would have been much greater.

FreakLikeMe wrote:Sorry but the nation of Palestine is 100% in the right

There is no such nation. Here's an appropriate quote that says it all - from a PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein in 1977:

The Palestinian people does not [sic] exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

And oddly enough, especially coming from such a person, it's all true.
Even USSR has its fingerprints all over the myth that is called Palestine. Look up Ion Mihai Pacepa if that interests you further.

I hope you and others contemplate on this subject, and come to a fuller understanding of what's being discussed here.

You’re clearly are one of those people who thinks that Palestine was an empty land and Arab immigrants from Arabia all just magically “showed” up to the region. For anyone to be objective, it is important not to misconstruct historical facts, so maybe you should take your own advise, and you know, educate yourself.

At the end of the day, if we look at historical fact, there is a direct relationship between ethnic violence in the Middle East and the rise of Zionism since the 1920’s. Zionism is no different than any other form of extreme nationalism, it even integrates messianic elements that I feel makes it even more dangerous. And additionally, every respected scholarly and academic source on the matter (from Chomsky to Israel’s New Historians, etc) are of the consensus that Zionism was in fact one of the major driving factors for regional instability and the long history of insecurity within Israel. There is a reason why today, Jews living in Israel are the only ones, globally, to be self-classified as being unsafe.

cooldude wrote:You’re clearly are one of those people who thinks that Palestine was an empty land and Arab immigrants from Arabia all just magically “showed” up to the region. For anyone to be objective, it is important not to misconstruct historical facts, so maybe you should take your own advise, and you know, educate yourself.

The place was a shit hole that was of no concern to the Arabs who were living there back in the 19th century. It was of no concern to the very few religious Middle Eastern Jews who were living there as well. European Jews came in with money and bought a lot of land. Arabs sold the land. Arabs continued to sell the land, until one day they realized that the Jews bought loads of land and can actually, you know, make use of that land to their advantage.

Zionists made a mistake to come to Israel and claim this cesspool of a territory. This is a bad place for western-inclined people to live. Surrounded by hostile Arab countries, who made Israel to be the cause of all their problems.

Have you taken a look at palwatch yet? Can you come up with an excuse for this disgusting behavior?

The biggest problem Israel faces in said cesspool is Islam and Arabic culture. Both do no compute with western ideology.

Demo wrote:

cooldude wrote:You’re clearly are one of those people who thinks that Palestine was an empty land and Arab immigrants from Arabia all just magically “showed” up to the region. For anyone to be objective, it is important not to misconstruct historical facts, so maybe you should take your own advise, and you know, educate yourself.

The place was a shit hole that was of no concern to the Arabs who were living there back in the 19th century. It was of no concern to the very few religious Middle Eastern Jews who were living there as well. European Jews came in with money and bought a lot of land. Arabs sold the land. Arabs continued to sell the land, until one day they realized that the Jews bought loads of land and can actually, you know, make use of that land to their advantage.

Zionists made a mistake to come to Israel and claim this cesspool of a territory. This is a bad place for western-inclined people to live. Surrounded by hostile Arab countries, who made Israel to be the cause of all their problems.

The biggest problem Israel faces in said cesspool is Islam and Arabic culture. Both do no compute with western ideology.

Of course, It's ALL because of Islam and those damn hostile Arabs.

Seriously though, there is a difference between westerners and Arabs. I don't think I can articulate it properly. But I feel like Arab culture values "violence" or maybe more “physicality” since we have foregone any notion of humanity and only respect death.

The fondest memory I have is with my father, when we would ride on camels to the desert and he would train me in the art of killing awesome western people. And God, what really gets me off is when I beat women, obviously, It’s because I’m Arab and we are misogynist by nature.

As such, Westerners are 100% right to invade and occupy our land. The only solution would be for you guys to eradicate Islam and Westernize us brown people, obviously only then there will be world peace and Arabs will miraculously become tolerant and democratic and rich and sexy. It's so simple how can it not be true?

Demo wrote:Have you taken a look at palwatch yet? Can you come up with an excuse for this disgusting behaviour?

Have you seen this?



I mean, we can carry on, from video to video, but it proves nothing. At this point both sides are too indoctrinated and rooted in hateful ideology of dehumanization. What, I find, to be the most unforturate about all of this is how this affects the younger generation, those who are brainwashed on stupid stories about how glorious it is to fight for your country, for your religion, for your tribe or whatever else. The cycle of hate just continues. Ultimately, this comes down to the ignorance of the entire region.

cooldude wrote:Seriously though, there is a difference between westerners and Arabs. I don't think I can articulate it properly. But I feel like Arab culture values "violence" or maybe more “physicality” since we have foregone any notion of humanity and only respect death.

Thumbs up for your sarcasm, I like . I think Arab culture is indeed more "physical". Language, history and behavioral norms rooted in culture that have survived many years to this day are all evidence to that. Lack of education in many parts of the countries in the Middle East is also a factor. Having said that, I don't think Arab culture is "in to" respecting death - that part is strong with the Islamic folk.

This, of course, doesn't mean that all Arabs are violent.

Have you seen this?

I mean, we can carry on, from video to video, but it proves nothing. What, I find, to be the most unforturate about all of this is how this affects the younger generation, those who are brainwashed on stupid stories about how glorious it is to fight for your country, for your religion, for your tribe or whatever else. The cycle of hate just continues. Ultimately, this comes down to the ignorance of the entire region.

I think the parents of these children are stupid fuckers. This video does not represent general education in Israel. While there is propaganda (mandatory in each country around the world) in order to breed feelings of connection to the country, it is very subtle when compared to what we see on palwatch.org. You won't see fucked up content like this broadcast on Israeli TV, or taught in schools. Should we carry on from video to video, you will notice that you run out of videos soon enough, while I have a full bank of videos ten times worse than you posted.

But this isn't a contest. Just try to find some free time and browse the extensive 700+ video library of that youtube channel and watch some videos. It gets repetitive at some point, though.

“.....the narrative, in the popular minds, which of course the media carried and reinforced all the time was that Israel and the Jews were democratic and plucky and pioneering and they were whites, like us. Whereas the Arabs were fanatical and violent and so on and so forth, so the whole idea of trying to represent the other side was very hard and you always feel that you are guilty trying to prove you're innocent."

If you honestly believe that Israel or even Western media don’t play a significant role in the dehumanization of Arabs, then, clearly there is nothing further to discuss between us.



Anyway, on Thursday, the Russell Tribunal presented their assessment of the recent Israeli war crimes in Gaza to the European Parliament.

The full testimony can be found on their site; http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.c ... els/agenda

Our jury, so far composed of Michael Mansfield QC, John Dugard, Vandana Shiva, Christiane Hessel, Richard Falk, Ahdaf Soueif, Ken Loach, Paul Laverty, Roger Waters, Ronnie Kasrils, Radhia Nasraoui and Miguel Angel Estrella will listen to testimonies from Paul Behrens, Desmond Travers, David Sheen, Max Blumenthal, Eran Efrati, Mads Gilbert, Mohammed Abou-Arab, Mads Gilbert, Paul Mason, Martin Lejeune, Mohammed Omer, Raji Sourani, Ashraf Mashharawi, Ivan Karakashian, Agnes Bertrand and Michael Deas.

The jury will give its findings on 25th September in the morning during an international press conference at the International Press Center (IPC, Brussels). In the afternoon, the Jury will be received at the European parliament and address a message to the UN General Assembly for its reopening.

It’s very intensively detailed but I read most, if not all of it, and what most intrigued me was that Israel was personally invited to attend and present their evidence on Hamas deliberately targeting civilians, but no one came, they didn’t even make a statement. One would think that if Israel had such vast amount of evidence, they wouldn’t hesitate to show it the world.

In actuality, all evidence stands against Israel. The tribunal is not saying that Hamas hasn’t committed war crimes, they have, but they’re very minimal and almost inconsequential in comparison. Hamas is still the armed wing of a political party representing an occupied people, and according to UN resolution 3314 (https://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/GAres3314.html) the people of Gaza are legally entitled to resist the occupation.

Surprisingly, Hamas has agreed for Palestine to join the international Criminal Court, which would inevitably mean that Hamas would be prosecuted for war crimes. But Israel has prevented that from happening because if that were to occur, the UN would have to recognize the state of Palestine and Israel would also face prosecution.

Let me break this down as simply as I can, at least how I see it.

Hamas is a bad organization. However, Israel occupies Palestinean territory, period. Israel was given this land after WW2 by the UN, and immediately following this announcement, Arabs began a fight against this perceived occupation of their land. It's a territorial issue. People need to stop always making excuses for Israel.

Subconsciously, these excuses come from a feeling of, "oh these Jews suffered during the Holocaust and were displaced, so I must stand with them and defend every action they take, even if that action means killing, and deliberately targeting innocent civilians." And yes, the U.N. and many other countries' human rights groups have condemned Israel for DELIBERATELY targeting civilians.

From a historical perspective, this land was given to Israel, now they occupy and strictly enforce blockades in the region, and the Palestineans are attacking naturally. At the root of all of this is a territorial and religious conflict. I yearn for the day when we can move forward as a species and dispose of these thousands years old fairy tales we call religion, that always causes more killings and the oppression of people as time progresses. Science and critical thinking have advanced man far further than religion ever will, and I have hope that my generation (the millenials) will continue to distance themselves from the wool that continously is being placed over their eyes by religious zealots.