Letter to a Facebook Friend, a Christian-Zionist Facebook Friend (for now, anyway!)

Dear Carrie,

You are a kind lady so I hope you will take the time to read what I have written here. Israel deserves your support but not the kind you are used to giving.

This is what you currently support: Land, water, soil and fishing rights are stolen from Palestinians. Palestinians live in refugee camps, in open-air and behind-bars prisons and all of Palestine even those not in camps live under oppressive tyrannical rule. Women and babies die in childbirth delayed at Israeli checkpoints. Diabetics and the cancer-stricken perish waiting for permits to get treatment. Generations-old olive trees belonging to Palestinian families are literally ripped out of the earth to build apartheid walls or roads that only Israelis can use. Palestinian university students are denied exit visas even when they have scholarships abroad. Palestinian children are attacked on their way to school by extremist Israeli settlers and have their skin melted off of their little bodies by Israeli white phosphorous attacks from the sky. Entire Palestinian families are disintegrated by drone bomb attacks where the pilot could see exactly who he is targeting. Israeli commandoes killed 9 peace activists trying to deliver aid to Gaza and Israeli police imprison Palestinian human rights workers and activists routinely, practically on a daily basis.

Carrie, I am a recovering Catholic, born into a Catholic & Episcopalian family but even as a child, I recognized the hypocrisy woven into the tenets and practices of these and many religions. If you actually read the Bible, you find Jesus was a peacemaker and a social justice activist. Nowhere did he ever call for the annihilation or subjugation of anyone. Never did Jesus call for war. Just the opposite. Jesus lived to serve, help and heal others including those who hated him.

Did you know, Carrie, that Christian zionists outnumber Jewish zionists and that progressive Jews in the United States and anti-zionist Jews in Europe are standing up and speaking out against Israel's policies towards Palestinians. They too are calling Israel a terrorist state.

You can support Israel by supporting peace. Please share this message with other Christian zionists and take the time to truly inform yourself as I have and continue to do.

And sing with me, this, my favorite Sunday school song:

Jesus loves the little children,
All God's children of the world,
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Palestinians are children of this world, too, Carrie.

I hope we remain FB friends!
Peace and good luck!