We who claim to be Christian are called to love our enemies and that the daughters and sons of God are the peacemakers. The last words Jesus spoke to his follower's before his martyrdom was to "put down the sword" and his first words after his resurrection was "My peace be with you."
During one of my seven trips to occupied Palestine since 2005, Mohammad Alatar, film producer of "The Ironwall" addressed my group on an Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions tour through Jerusalem and to the village of Anata and the Shufat refugee camp, in the very area where the prophet Jeremiah in the 6th century B.C. critiqued the violent conflicts in the Mid East, which were already old news: "I hear violence and destruction in the city, sickness and wounds are all I see." [Jeremiah 6:7]
After we broke bread and ate a typical Palestinian feast prepared by the Arabiya family in the Arabyia Peace Center, Mohammad Alatar said:
"I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it. What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues. Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel . After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address."
While he lived the FBI placed wiretaps on Reverend King's home and office phones and bugged his hotel rooms throughout the country. By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic.
In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 [a year to the day before he was murdered] King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
In 1986 the federal government 'honored' King with a national holiday.
America was founded by visionaries,
rebels, agitators, dissidents, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers who
essentially told the King of England to back off of this land and leave US
alone.
The most revolutionary minded of all America's founding fathers was Tom Paine,
who articulated a flaming hope birthed in a vision of a new world driven by the
spirit of independence from a British occupation.
Tom Paine's self published forty page pamphlet, "Common Sense" united
a disparate and disconnected group of settlers to become compatriots who rose
up in rebellion and formed a nation that can only thrive on dissent.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb.
14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the
system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of
religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good
is my religion."-Tom Paine
On with Rebuilding THAT Dream!
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