Making Mountains Out of Molehills

Doesn’t this all get kind of old, stale and boring?

Israel makes a stupid mistake on Palm Sunday, a holy day for Christians a week before Easter Sunday, and the world pounces.   One of my correspondents immediately blurted out in an email, in response to Israel’s security forces preventing the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem from accessing the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Sunday: “This was a declaration of war on 1.4 billion Catholics.”  Seriously?

According to news reports the decision was taken for security reasons during a time when Israel is at war with Iran, where destructive missiles from Iran land here every day. Isn’t it possible that the security services were actually acting to protect both the worshippers and the Latin Patriarch?

No doubt there were better ways to have handled the security issues that caused the dustup on Palm Sunday with the head of the Catholic church in Israel.  Nevertheless, cooler heads eventually prevailed and by Monday a joint accommodation between Israel and the Church agreeing that the matter, which by the Patriarch’s own admission was handled respectfully, was now closed and solutions were agreed upon satisfactory to all.

Given that the email referred to here came from someone in the US I could not resist pointing out the obvious.

First, if that indiscretion on Israel’s part was a declaration of war on 1.4 billion Catholics (I would say this statement is clearly somewhat of an exaggeration) then Monday, 24 hours later, we made peace with 1.4 billion Catholics…..an amazing feat given how spread out that community is in so many parts of the world.

Secondly, as usual I heard no complaints from the US populace when Secretary of War (Defense always seemed to be a better word), Pete Hegseth, said at more than one of his briefings last week that America has to have faith in Jesus Christ, King of all Kings, etc…..you can see one of these here….

at 3.50 minutes into the video.  Need I point out that there are 145 million non-Christians in America, so by saying this did he declare war on them?  I think not…..he may have broken the tradition of separation of church and state but he certainly did not declare war on the non-Christian community in the US.  He may have made many of them uncomfortable, of course

Frankly none of this should come as a surprise from a man who has the following tattoos on his body:

• Jerusalem cross, also known as the Crusader cross.
• “Chi-Rho,” the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ and one of the earliest forms of a so-called Christogram (letters formed into a monogram expressing the essence of the religion).
• “Deus Vult,” meaning “God Wills It,” believed to be a Crusader battle cry.
• Another cross with a sword, referencing a verse in the Gospel of Matthew reporting the following words of Jesus: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” “Yeshua,” Jesus’ name in Hebrew, can be read across his elbow.
• The US Constitution’s famous opening phrase “We the People.”
• The year “1775” in Roman numerals (the year the American War of Independence started)
• A “Join, or Die” snake from the American Revolution
• An American flag with an AR-15 rifle,
• A pair of crossed muskets, a circle of stars and a patch of the regiment he served with when he was on active military duty, the 187th Infantry.

Yet in prior administrations this kind of conduct would have been deemed unacceptable.  What is surprising to me is that not a single person in the audience for his daily briefings stands and objects.  No one. Nada.

Contrast that with the instant opprobrium that surfaces as soon as Israel does something that just appears to be negative.

There is probably little we here can do to neutralize this type of thinking.  Yet, as I wrote at the beginning of this piece it all gets kind of old, stale and boring.  Yet responses are necessary else even more people will be encouraged to climb on to the “Let’s Bash Israel” train, a mode of transport in dire need of being derailed.