‘Foreigners’ 101 for the Faithful

Christianity, Hebrew Testament, IMMIGRATION, Judaism & Jews, Nationhood, Uncategorized

“I’m often surprised by how many Christians and Jews are confused about what the Bible tells us about national borders, foreigners, citizenship and the law,” writes Joseph Farah. In “What the Bible says about illegal immigration,” Mr. Farah teases out the differences between the “stranger” of the bible and the “illegal alien” who has usurped him in the mind of many a “bad theologist”:

“Countless Bible studies have been conducted in America in recent years using some familiar citations about ‘strangers’ and ‘aliens’ and applying them to our current controversy. Let’s take a look at those – in context.”

* Leviticus 19:33-34: And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
* Exodus 22:21: Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
* Exodus 23:9: Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
* Deuteronomy 10:19: Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
…

“You can develop some really bad theology – not to mention politics and morality – by reading the Bible out of context, by not fully understanding what is being said to whom and about whom.”

Strangers that sojourn with you or live with you do not equate with illegal aliens. In fact, the corollary here, in each and every case, is that the children of Israel were “strangers” in Egypt. That’s why they were to treat their own “strangers” well, because they knew what it is like to be “strangers” in a foreign land.

Clearly, then, what it means to be a “stranger” is to be a foreigner. In the case of the children of Israel in Egypt, they were invited and, at first anyway, were honored guests. Later, they would be oppressed by a generation who “knew not Joseph.” But they were certainly not trespassers. They were certainly not in Egypt illegally. They were certainly not breaking the laws of the land by being in Egypt. In fact, they were commanded not to offend their hosts in any way (Genesis 46:28-34).

So, we must conclude that “stranger” does not equal “illegal alien.” Even when the term “alien” is used in the Bible, it seems to have the exact same meaning as “stranger.”

MORE.

UPDATED: Timing Iran Offensive for Nov. 2012? (FB Cyber-ejaculate)

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iran, Israel, War

“Four Iranian missiles can destroy tiny Israel,” blared Fars, The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) news agency. DEBKAFile counters as follows:

[these] sources point [to the fact] that the experiences of the Gulf war show that this number of ordinary missiles could not cause anything like the damage calculated by the writer. What Zarey may be referring to are the stubborn rumors going around Western intelligence circles since early 2005 that during the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tehran laid hands on black market nuclear cruise missiles form the Ukraine and 3 to 5 more from Belarus.

THE SAME SOURCE cites “Western intelligence as suspecting that Tehran obtained those warheads from Belarus or from unconventional arms traffickers based in the Muslim Republics which were part of the USSR up until the 1990s. And indeed the Fars report did not specify what warheads the ‘conventional’ missiles would carry.”

Equally disconcerting: War president extraordinaire Barack Hussein Obama knows too well that his waning popularity rises when he kills people abroad. DEBKAFile predicts that “Obama is set to attack Iran’s nuclear sites by the fall of 2012.”

Indeed, Iran apologists have framed Iran’s nuclear belligerence as the “ultimate safeguard against an American attack.” The reference is, presumably, to Iran’s legitimate quest to defend against an American army that advanced on a neighbor—Iraq—and conquered it in the absence of provocation. I agree. But this is not Iran’s sole reason for arming itself with nuclear capability.

Iran’s leaders have made no bones about the need to solve the Jewish Question for once and for all. (In case you’re a public school graduate, this is code for liquidation.)

That Iran fears an out-of-control, aggressive U.S. is likely—and understandable. However, Iran’s madman-in-chief hasn’t threatened the United States; he has threatened Israel. Yet Iranophiles seldom depict Israel’s nuclear program as an equally legitimate, last-ditch defense. Instead, they contort like Cirque du Soleil contortionists to downplay the real threat Iran poses to Israel.

UPDATE: Via PBS’s FrontLine: “At the same time, it is not just Israel that may attack Iran. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that the British military is rapidly developing contingency plans to aid the United States in case it attacks Iran, based on the belief that “the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities.” Efforts are evidently underway to determine the optimal location for deployment of the Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles to participate in such strikes.

Apparently, Iran’s resilience in the face of economic sanctions, as well as the cyberspace attacks on its nuclear facilities last year, has surprised Western observers. They believe that within a year, Iran will be moving all of its nuclear materials and more advanced centrifuges to the Fordow enrichment facility, built under a mountain near Qom. There they will be protected from most missiles and bombs, even though the Obama administration has quietly supplied Israel with bunker-buster bombs, something that even the George W. Bush administration refused to do.”

Read more.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/11/news-rhetoric-suggesting-potential-israeli-attack-on-iran-escalates.html#ixzz1czfsz4Dp

As I pointed out in 2002/2003, when Bush was circling Saddam Hussein like a shark his prey: bluster has been a large part of the Islamic culture. It is possibly that Iran’s regime is putting on a show. But if Iran doesn’t intend to attack Israel, why does A-Jad (short for Ahmadinejad) not stop the threats? The Iranian leadership has never allayed Israel’s legitimate fears.

UPDATE II (Nov. 7): FACEBOOK CYBER-EJACULATE. I am interrupting this frivolous topic with news of the most “urgent” of facebook posts. I have been forced to post the following in response to “The white noise, the inability and unwillingness of Facebook participants to focus the mind on the topic of a post—their shameless habit of posting about every bowel movement experienced during the day to my Wall; the utter cyber-ejaculate spewed with confidence. I am expected (I have a life) to “moderate” what amounts to a meaningless stream of, “I hate Israel; I love Israel; Israelis should die; Israelis may live.”

What does it say about debate (at least on my FB thread)? I’m clearly permitting the wrong “friends” on the Wall, although FB has now made it near-impossible to be more selective in the posts allowed on a Wall.

I hinted at it before, here, but the more I am forced to interact online in the course of doing my thankless job; the more it repulses me. (And after experiencing this Cesspool of anti-Semitism and irrationality, my “professional” day of reckoning is closer.)

If you have a half a brain, you won’t enjoy this.

Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters

Debt, Democracy, Economy, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy

As commentators on MSNBC first pointed out, the leaders of Greece, the cradle of democracy, have sundered direct democracy in their country—a referendum on whether the country ought to leave the eurozone.

For its own good and for the good of the northern European nations funding the ongoing Bacchanalia in the south, Greece should be expelled from the eurozone. (After which the whole EU edifice should be allowed to crumble.)

A world perfected by global central planners is one in which wealth consumers live at the expense of wealth creators; where the rich are coerced into paying for the poor, the North for the South.

If they had a moral and intellectual compass—and were permitted to chart their destinies—the people of Greece would opt to leave the eurozone and the wider European Union (EU). Under that scenario, “loser countries” would be better able to serve as cheap labor and resume exporting goods to their neighbors. Work for a living, if you remember that old-fashioned concept.

It so happens that Greece has become “The Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters.” If the polls are correct, the “Greek public has strongly resisted the austerity measures,” yet at the same time, “70% of them want to remain within the eurozone.”

If these polls reflect public opinion, then a referendum would have seen the Greeks decide to continue on the path they are on.

UPDATED: The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower’ (The Sanctity of Life)

America, Colonialism, Crime, Democracy, Founding Fathers, History, Nationhood, Race, Racism, South-Africa

The following is excerpted from “The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower,'” now on WND.COM:

“Whites will become a minority in 2042 and will fall to 46 percent of the population by 2050, comprising only 38 percent of U.S. population under 18. So writes Patrick J. Buchanan in his formidable new book, ‘Suicide of A Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?’

Every immigration worrywart recalls the ‘astonishing episode’ Mr. Buchanan recounts next. In 1998, Bill Clinton brought tidings of ‘their coming minority status’ to a ‘largely white student body’ at Portland State University.

‘In a little more than 50 years,’ rejoiced President Clinton, ‘there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through a demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time.’ Taking their cue from their ‘enthnomasochistic’ president, the students erupted in cheers.

‘Ethnomasochism,’ laments Mr. Buchanan—who is surely one of the great patriots of our time—is ‘the taking of pleasure in the dispossession of one’s own ethnic group.’ It is ‘a disease of the heart that never afflicted the America of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower.’

In this writer’s latest book, the example of post-apartheid South Africa is used to deconstruct the effects of such a shift in a country’s majority/minority power structure.

Granted, the shift underway in the U.S.A. is incremental. But as is clear from the facts unfurled in ‘Suicide of A Superpower,’ the transformation of America will be as detrimental as the almost-overnight shift orchestrated in South Africa. …”

Read the complete column, “The Sequel to ‘Suicide of A Superpower.'” It’s now on WND.COM.

The aforementioned book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE (Nov. 4): THE SANCTITY OF LIFE. Here is a statistic from the book “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.” It might edify the Facebook writer (on this column’s WND page) who cavalierly compares the devastation of crime in the New South Africa to the devastation inflicted by the National Party (the apartheid regime): More people are murdered in one week under African rule (plus/minus 420) than died under the detention of the Afrikaner government over the course of roughly four decades (approximately the same). But, left-liberals do not consider the sanctity of life in a society as a measure of justice; only democracy—the might of the majority–rights all wrong.