Unimaginable suffering

Sent in response to the Oct 7 homepage.

Dear Winnipeg Free Press

Your homepage above the fold right now is sadly one-sided.

Now I suppose Russians may say the same thing about the FreeP's coverage of the war in Ukraine; but you've sided against the oppressor in that conflict, while you've sided with the genociders in Gaza, contrary to international law.

Of course the Jewish community is entitled to feel relief and joy that the Israelis taken hostage on 7 October 2023 have been released. They may also feel rage and despair that those hostages weren't released on 9 or 10 October 2023 when there was already a hostage deal on the negotiating table.

But to spill an entire article of ink on Jewish grief for the ~1500 (rounded up) with nary a word of Palestinian grief for the 67,000 (likely an undercount by a factor of 10) is unbalanced.

To only mention the “relatively good shape” of Israeli hostages without mentioning the shockingly poor physical condition of the tiny fraction of 11,000 Palestinian hostages released from illegal “administrative detention” is neither fair nor rigorous.

To not even get a single quote from a member of Winnipeg's Palestinian community is blatantly biased.

The lack of concern for Palestinian lives is astonishingly callous. The relentless bombing they have endured is “unimaginable.” The manufactured famine is “serious and solemn.”

It is indeed “paramount that the Canadian government supports a principled approach” in the aftermath of the ceasefire: one that requires a thorough investigation of reckoning for all the war crimes committed.

Comments

Upside down economics of Jesus: household action and global change

--Presented at a CAWG event in Altona -- In Living More with Less , Doris Janzen Longacre shares a story about envelopes from Marie Moyer, a missionary in India, who was studying Hindi with Panditji. Marie writes: “From his philosophic mind, which probed the meaning of events and circumstances, I learned more than Hindi.” Just before her teacher’s arrival one day before Christmas, she’d received and opened a pile of Christmas cards and discarded the envelopes as he walked in the room. She writes: “He sat down soberly and studied the situation, then he solemnly scolded me: ‘the reverberation of this wasteful act will be felt around the world’.” Marie was stunned. “What do you mean?” she asked him. “Those envelopes,” he said, pointing to the wastebasket. “You could write on the inside of them.” “Chagrined”, Marie apologized and rescued the envelopes with the help of Panditji, who “caressed each one” as he pulled it out of the garbage. This forever changed Marie’s relationship to p...

My favourite nativity scene

“There’s no accounting for taste.” That’s my dad’s favourite way of explaining personal tastes that are incomprehensible to him, like living downtown, and riding bike in winter. The inexplicable factors which determine an individual’s likes or dislikes are probably the only way I can explain why my favourite nativity scene contains a horribly caricatured black magus, a random adoring child attired – to my fancy – like a Roma person, an old shepherd carrying some sort of blunderbuss. And a haloed holy family with an 18-month-old baby Jesus. This is the "Christmas Manger Set – the Christmas story in beautiful cut-out scenes and life-like figures." See how the 1940s-era family admires the realistic flourishes, like raw wood beams and straw protruding from the edge of the roofline; the rough, broken wood of the stalls; the tasselled camels; the richly dressed magi; the woolly sheep; the Bethlehemites on the path in the background, ostensibly out to get water, judging...

Broken people...

After reflecting with one coworker on how often churches in all their forms really mess up and hurt a whole bunch of people in the process -- and how "we gotta do better" -- I stumbled into another conversation with a coworker which highlighted our brokenness, and I suddenly realized what was wrong with my take in the first. I wanted the church to be better at fixing our mistakes, or better yet, at not making them in the first place. But maybe this "fix-it" attitude is partly the reason we keep blowing it again and again! My friend recollected an experience when a church community was in a terrible place: compounded mistakes, hurts, and frustrations had blown up, spewing pain all over all parties. (I'm sure anyone with a long history in the church can think of one, if not several, such occasions in their past.) A new Christian who observed all these goings on responded in an unexpected way. Instead of "you people are a bunch of screw-ups! How could this pos...

kar0ling

Search This Blog