Cap Phantom

A wise man once said, ?The first one to plead his cause seems right until his neighbor comes and examines him.? That wise man was Solomon and the saying comes from the book of Proverbs, a book respected as the Word of God by both Christians and Jews alike. As an evangelical Christian born and raised in the charismatic movement, I grew up hearing only one side of the Israeli/Palestinian story, primarily the Israeli side. I always assumed that God gave the land to Jews and if the Palestinians don?t like it, well, they can sit on a tack, because everyone knows that Palestinians are the devil. ?unday school songs aside, what?s happening in the Gaza strip is serious. That?s why we need a grown-up Christian response. Sadly, that?s exactly what?s lacking in this crucial hour.

So here goes.

I believe that Israel has the right to exist in safe and secure borders. I also believe that Israel has the right to defend itself. I understand the sentiment of President-elect Obama when he says that if rockets were being fired at his home while his two daughters were asleep, he would do everything he could to prevent it. I believe Hamas is a terrorist organization that espouses an ideology diabolically opposed to freedom and progress. I despise the fact that they persecute my brothers and sisters in Christ living under their thumb and, of course, firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians is never justified. Period.

So is Israel justified in their heavy- handed approach towards the citizens of Gaza? Judging by the fire breathing on both sides of the debate, I don?t see a consensus on this one coming any time soon. As for my fellow Christians, we can debate the subject until Jesus comes back and the debate will have largely missed the point. Sure Israel may?or may not?be justified in their aerial bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of the Gaza strip, but that question alone shouldn?t determine the proper Christian response. Why? Because Christians are called to live by a higher standard than what?s merely justifiable.

Jesus would have been completely justified in slaying the bloodthirsty Romans of His day. The crimes that the Romans committed against the Jews were every bit as bad, if not worse, than the crimes Palestinians commit against the Jews today. But when Jesus hung on the cross, He showed the world that there?s a higher law in God?s moral universe than brute justice. And that law is mercy. When it comes between following the suffering redemptive love of the cross and the enemy crushing way of the sword, Christians are supposed to choose the cross?at least that?s what Christians used to believe.

No I don?t think that followers of Jesus would be prudent to impose New Testament standards on non-Christians, but what I find particularly odd is that when Palestinian Muslims embrace Christianity (like the case of Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader who recently made his testimony public) we expect them to embrace a new attitude towards their former enemy Israel. We expect them to love, bless, do good to, and pray for their enemies?like Jesus says to do. But when an Israeli Jew embraces Jesus as Messiah, most of my Christian friends don?t expect them to be less militant towards their Palestinian neighbors but more militant. We expect them to fight for their land and liberty even if that means that on the other side homes are demolished, land is confiscated, Palestinians participating in non-violent demonstrations are either tortured, imprisoned, or assassinated (this happens all the time in the West Bank by the way) and, as in the case of Gaza, women and children are denied food and medicine for years on end.

My Christian friends would say that problems in the Middle East would be solved overnight if every Jew and Palestinian would simply confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Without meaning any disrespect to people of other faiths, as a Bible believing Christian, I?m compelled to agree. But here is where the argument falls apart when the wrong people use it. Some of the same people who use this argument are also the ones bombarding the White House with e-mails urging our Secretary of State to let Israel fight. They never seem to ask themselves the question of who would Jesus bomb? What a shame that is! Because how can we as Christians say that the world would be a better place if everyone became one of us when we?re the ones cheering when the bombs go flying?

Being in the military is a lifestyle all its own. You might be a service personnel or the parent, spouse or child of someone in the armed forces. The military life touches everyone who loves someone serving in any one of the service branches whether it is the Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force, or National Guard. Military scrapbooking ideas all start with how the military life affects you.

Scrapbooking Ideas for Military Personnel

As a member of the armed forces, you will want to preserve and document your military experience. Recording your memories of your service years is important not only for yourself, but also for your children and future generations. Your years in the service are not only personal, but they document our national history as well. You might have served in a war or responded to a national crisis. Preserving your memories of those experiences will tell others your first-person account of a moment in history.

Items to Include In Your Military Scrapbook

Your service documents including your enlistment application
Newspaper articles
Photos of you receiving recognition
Photos of returning home from a duty station
Photos of your military friends
Photos of your service stations
A timeline of your years in service, including where and when you served
Pages or quotes from your personal journal, including your hopes, fears, and thoughts
Information on the training you received, including when and where you received training
Photos of boot camp, including your graduation
Awards and recognition with journaling on how, when and why you received them
Photos of your metals and ribbons including how, when and why you received these honors
Highlights of your military career
Photos of ceremonies you participated in
Your retirement party

Scrapbooking for Family Members of Military Personnel

Is someone you love in the armed forces? You may want to document their military career for them, or create a scrapbook about how that person’s military life affected you. Being the spouse, child or parent of someone in the military, you will have your own thoughts, fears, feelings and hopes about his/her military life. Your scrapbook can be a gift for the military personnel or for someone else in their family, like a son or daughter. It also can be an account of how military life affected your own life experiences.

Items for Family Members to Include in a Military Scrapbook

Photos of you with your loved one in the service
Farewell photos
Homecoming photos
Journaling of your feelings about being part of a military family
Moving day photos from one service station community to another
Letters or emails written from your loved one in the armed forces
Photos of military family events like picnics or formal parties
Newspaper articles

Scrapbooking companies are responding to the huge demand for military scrapbooking supplies. You can find albums with armed forces emblems on the cover. Stickers and embellishments relating to the military service are also available. However, it’s your own personal photos and journaling that will create a military scrapbook that will become a legacy to future generations.

Gaza has all the trappings of a State except declared Statehood.

The 22 members of the Arab League and the Quartet – America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union – have allowed this farce to continue for the last 18 months.

Gaza, larger in area than Malta, has a President, a Parliament, a Prime Minister, multiple police and security forces, a burgeoning bureaucracy, observers to every United Nations Committee you can think of, delegations to countries all around the world, a flag and an anthem and most importantly of all – not one Jew.

The 7000 Jews living in Gaza were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses 18 months ago. That they were so evicted by other Jews, supposedly for their own safety, is shameful. However given half a chance the Gazan Arabs would have willingly done the job. They even boasted that it was their campaign of terror and violence that finally forced the Jews to leave.

Ethnic cleansing is apparently acceptable in international humanitarian law where Jews are the victims.

The violence against Jews has been replaced by the killing and intimidation of Gaza’s now exclusively Arab citizenry, as Hamas and Fatah each battle to assert their authority over the other in an internecine struggle that shows no signs of abating.

The people without a land who had been yearning for a land for the last 40 years was suddenly in full possession and control of part of that land but just couldn’t bring itself to utter the magic words of independence.

Figuratively speaking the jilted bride was left waiting at the mosque.

The occupation had ended, the occupiers had gone but the population acted as though nothing had changed.

There was no rejoicing and dancing in the streets, no hugs embraces and tears among the populace who now found themselves in full control of their destiny and self-determination.

There have been no exciting nation building programs implemented to give new direction and vision to Gaza’s population.

Destruction, not creation, has become the buzzword in Gaza.

Sadly statehood is the last thing that Gaza wanted because it would put an end to the claim of statelessness, terminate the claim to refugee status by a large proportion of its population and signal the end of the perpetual financial support received from UNWRA since 1948.

Furthermore statehood might be taken to be an abandonment of further claims to any land that was formerly comprised in the Mandate of Palestine.

The reticence of the Arab League in these circumstances was misplaced. True, Statehood for Gaza would pull the rug from under the feet of this cartel and put pressure on it to end its refusal to recognise or negotiate with the State of Israel. But the League’s policy of inaction and its’ failure to call for statehood has seen Gaza’s population become a killing field of ever growing proportions.

The Quartet however need not have been so coy. It had a different agenda aimed at solving “the Palestinian question” which it considered to be the most intractable problem in the Middle East.

The unexpected removal of all Jews from Gaza presented the Quartet with the opening it had been desperately seeking to take a giant step forward in solving this problem. Yet the Quartet faltered dismally in failing to demand that the Parliament in Gaza declare statehood within the boundaries that separate it from Israel and Egypt.

This single act could have been the circuit breaker towards ending 130 years of conflict resulting from competing claims by Jews and Arabs over the same land.

Instead the Quartet focused its efforts on attempting to achieve an overall rather than a partial solution to Arab claims in the West Bank and Gaza in fulfilment of its’ misconceived Road Map aimed at misguidedly creating a third State in Mandatory Palestine between Israel and Jordan.

The Quartet has now paid the price for its’ folly.

It has created a void into which Hamas has stepped making it impossible now to achieve statehood in Gaza until Hamas is removed from power.

The frantic shuttle diplomacy and endless meetings continue to be held . They achieve no positive outcome other than the accumulation of frequent flyer points for their participants.

Meanwhile the killing and mayhem in Gaza continue to head the news bulletins.

It is now time to call on Jordan and Egypt to play a constructive role in cleaning up the mess in Gaza, which is quickly sinking into the arms smuggling tunnels it has been so busily excavating under its very foundations.

The time for playing semantic word games, holding joint press conferences and grabbing photo opportunities is surely over.

Military men are always said to be different from others because their life style is totally different from others. They look uncommon among common people because of a sturdy body inside a good looking uniform. Their uniform makes them to look different but when it comes to requirements it is similar to common people. They also can meet any emergency where they need a big amount of money at the same moment only. They also can have any urgent piece of work like you get chance to bring a car or any other expensive thing, buying a house, wedding, throwing a grand party etc. Military Signature Loans are there to help them.

Military men are given some extra basic facilities by the government as compared to common men in the same way they are given some extra facilities by lenders to avail Military Signature Loans. They are given Military Signature Loans at lower interest rates as compared to other Signature Loans. Some extra facilities are given like they can extend the period of repaying Military Signature Loans. The reason behind all these facilities is that lenders are sure to get their money back because military men always get their salaries in time. It is not so in the case of people working in private sectors because the graph of market keeps going up and down bringing company in loss and profit. Both credit holders can apply for Military Signature Loans. Military men who are still working or they are retired.

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There have been several opportunites and chances at a temporary peace; however, other than the three hour humanitarian option neither Hamas nor Israel seems to see any sort of cease fire as in their benefit. How is it that war is the best option? The answer has to be that only insanity knows.  

Israeli troops battled Palestinian gunmen in a suburb of Gaza City Sunday in one of the fiercest ground battles so far as Israel’s military inched toward Gaza’s population centers.

A top Israeli defense official said Hamas has been badly hurt by the offensive in Gaza – especialy by the deaths of senior militants and shortages of ammunition – but predicted that the group would fight on. The group “is not expected to raise a white flag,” military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told the Israeli Cabinet Sunday.

But is peace possible when children are taught at an early age to hate those who are unlike them?

Moving into Gaza City is going to take the war into very dangerous territory for everyone, especially innocent civilians. The fighting in the Sheikh Ajleen neighborhood erupted before dawn and continued through the morning as Israeli infantrymen and tanks advanced toward Gaza City and its approximately 400,000 residents, Palestinian witnesses said. Hamas and the smaller militant group Islamic Jihad said they ambushed the Israelis, leading to some of the heaviest fighting since Israel sent ground forces into the coastal territory on Jan. 3.

In war no one wins, some just lose less than others.

Israel wants a guarantee that any cease-fire would end Hamas rocket fire and weapons smuggling from Egypt. Hamas is demanding that Israel open Gaza’s blockaded border crossings. Israel is unlikely to agree to that condition because it would hand Hamas a victory and allow the group to strengthen its hold on the territory it violently seized in June 2007.

Does anyone think Hamas will offer such a guarantee?