Seraphim Hanisch
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
I want to lead this off by saying that I absolutely love Dr. Steve Turley and his work. He is certainly a great American patriot, and deeply committed to trying to find the truth of what is going on in American politics and in geopolitical activity as well.
It is rare that I disagree with him, but this is one of those rare points, and I felt it necessary to note my disagreement and to try to analyze the issue at hand more carefully. Since I live outside of the United States, and since I try to orient everything in my life around Orthodox Christianity in all principles and practice (not that I get it right… but I still try!), this effort does create a different and often very inconvenient perspective on “hot stories”, this being one of them.
Here is what happened: Three University Presidents were called before a Congressional hearing and grilled for antisemitism on their campuses. All three were asked “does a call for genocide of Jews constitute harassment?” All three answered, “It depends on the context.” All three got roasted for this answer.
They were not supposed to answer this way, at least according to Elise Stefanik who was doing the grilling. For Mrs. Stefanik, the only right answer was “yes, it is harassment, it is wrong, and I will condemn anything that besmirches Israel, because… Israel.”
Dr. Steve seems to have taken the bait, probably because while he is also an Orthodox Christian, his roots are deeply in American evangelical Protestantism, and that means that there is a deeply-set idea present that “Israel is the modern incarnation of the Chosen People of God, therefore American support of Israel is a way of allying ourselves with God because we are helping the Chosen People of God.”
If it were true that Israel as a state really WERE trying to exist as a nation of God-fearing Jewish people, then such an argument would have a lot of merit, in my opinion. I believed this for a long time myself, having grown up in the same cultural context. The only reason I think differently about it is because my Palestinian brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Christian church where I was baptized in 2001 (the day after 9/11, no less!) had quite a different set of personal experiences with Israeli government and security forces. And they were Christian people, not Muslim terrorists.
Ever since those times I have tried to come to an assessment of this situation that I can be comfortable with. I have not succeeded at being comfortable with it (how can anyone be comfortable with absolute evil carried out in an endless series of reprisals?), but I am at a point I think is intellectually honest, and so when I watched this video, I found there to be a lot of incorrect assessment.
The comment I made seemed like it might find good use being read here, so here it is.
I hate to say this, but the president of the university WAS technically correct, and the Congress is jumping on the “You are antisemitic!!!” bandwagon. Look, I DO understand that the wokesters have been using identity politics as a means of “protecting” horrible rhetoric against certain groups of people – BUT!!! The First Amendment grants each of us the right to be idiots.
We CAN say such statements like “All _____ people have got to die” but (1) doing so is not Christian, (2) reveals a serious problem in the heart and mind of the person saying it, (3) it can be a prelude to action taken by the person who says it or more likely other people who agree with the anger and think they are now ‘licensed to act’ because of what was said.
Nevertheless this right is protected and it can be harassment; if directed against Jews it could be antisemitic, but this kind of speech is commonly deployed against Trump supporters and it is seen as “free speech.”
The litmus test HERE is politics, and I hate to say it – I don’t know if the University presidents necessarily have antisemitic biases or not. Maybe they do. I know I do not have such a bias, nor do I have a bias against Palestinians or anyone else. So, I am just looking at the “letter of the law” in terms of what was said and what our rights are as Americans and I think the issue here is Elise Stefanik being caught up in the GOP “line” that “supporting Israel is ALWAYS right” and she is making a big show out of this to virtue signal to the pro-Israeli crowd. That is what I think.
Now, again, this awful issue with the war between Israel and Hamas – there is a lot going on that very few people are reporting. I don’t want to excuse anyone. I personally despise the actions of both sides in this conflict because neither side has any humility or willingness to work out a peace.
For everything Palestinian activists do there is a cause on the Israeli side; for everything the Israelis do there is cause on the Palestinian side. This war is killing a LOT of Palestinians, far more than it is killing Israelis. Just a fact, given the situation on the ground.
But who is right?
In my opinion (which is worth precisely nothing, of course), NO ONE IS RIGHT.
As long as people refuse to try to find common ground to work out conflicts, they will kill each other. Full stop.
I personally can only say that both sides are wrong, and who is “wronger” doesn’t matter because neither side is interested in getting humble and working things out.
The rest of this stuff is showmanship in Congress.
I love Dr Steve, but on this one he appears to have been tricked by the cultural predisposition most conservative Americans have which says that supporting Israel is somehow “Christian” because Israel is the “Chosen People.” I suggest watching my assessment of this on my channel, @AmericanInExile1967, and doing some thinking for yourself:
It would be idiotic to say I am totally right, but I think it quite likely that some things I say in that video are very important to consider as we assess who it is we support and why.
Remember, almost everyone in the USA got hoodwinked by Zelensky, and now we are seeing more and more what a monster we are supporting.
We were lied to about COVID and vaccines en masse, to deadly effect.
We were told Putin is evil because he is Putin, therefore he is evil, and that the same thing applies to President Trump because he is President Trump.
This is a total absence of logic. We have been led astray by the American press over and over again, so badly that even at our best we cannot avoid being misled. Our way back has got to be to THINK, to QUESTION, and to NOT TAKE ANYONE’s word for a given story. We must MAKE OUR BRAINS WORK AGAIN… to make America Great again.
Love you all, and to Dr Steve! You always do a great job – I just think you missed the point on this one. God be with you!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
There is a very simple method of determining the right and wrong side of current political events most of the time.
Find out which side America is on. That is the wrong side.
This, of course, has much to do with the fact that America is run by the Jews. Anyone who denies this is either naive or dishonest. Starting with Jewish immigration into America in the 1880s, control of Major Media such as the New York Times, control of the Entertainment Industry (Hollywood), of Big Money (Income Tax and the Federal Reserve, and thus of politics, we can paraphrase James Carville’s “It’s the economy stupid” to say “It’s the Jews stupid”.
Thank you for your comments! I have to be honest – I still resist the sort of blanket attribution of “it’s the JEWS!” as the cause of our problems. Let me explain: There are a lot of Jewish people that have no geopolitical aspirations. Probably most of them, actually. The Jewish people that are causing trouble are generally NOT believers and followers of God; they are atheists. They are Jewish by ethnicity and heritage. For this second reason I wish there were a more precise way to call this out – you ARE correct, of course, you have no doubt… Read more »
Of course, peoples and tribes of all sorts have been fighting wars and killing forever. The American “War between the States” (it was not a civil war) took place before Jews started their immigration into America, and it was a very bad exercise in human behavior. The Indian tribes were seriously fighting each other before Europeans arrived and upped the ante. So certainly no groups of people can be exempt, although some may have been more peaceful than others. Compare the Nez Perce tribe to the Comanches. So naturally, we cannot place 100% of the blame on anyone. But percentages… Read more »
My God – it’s like the middle ages anti Jewish mindset has slipped through the evolve net.
Re: “evolve net”
Evolution 1.0: Random and Uncontrolled Breeding
Result: Overpopulated world full of dumbasses.
Future: Dismal
Martin Luther understood the situation hundreds of years ago better than most do today.
Call it the “devolve net”
And today Putin understands America better than most Americans.
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One further comment about the Jews as a nation / people. They are the chosen people of God, but their history shows a very poor record of them keeping up their end of the deal. At the time of Christ, both John the Baptist and Christ pointed out repeatedly that there is NOTHING special about being of the Judaic race / people. “I tell you, God can raise up sons from these very stones!!” (John the Baptist) – and Jesus prophesied over and over directly and in parables, that the fact that God’s chosen people kept rejecting Him had reached… Read more »