Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  1. Robert Royal, “Just War and Iraq,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 98 (http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr98.html).

  2. See the article on the development of the Church's teaching on war by Romano Amerio on pp. 427–436 of the companion to the present volume, Neo-CONNED!—Ed.

  1. U.S. Catholic Bishops, “The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response,” 1983, p. 93.

  2. ST, II, i, Q. 18, A 3.

  1. ST, II, ii, Q. 58, A 1.

  2. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. xvi.

  1. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 2.

  2. Walzer, op. cit., p. 67.

  3. ST, II, i, Q. 58, A.4: “Moral virtue cannot be without prudence, because it is a habit of choosing, i.e., making us choose well. Now in order that a choice be good, two things are required. First, that the intention be directed to a due end; and this is done by moral virtue, which inclines the appetitive faculty to the good that is in accord with reason, which is a due end. Secondly, that man take rightly those things which have reference to the end: and this he cannot do unless his reason counsel, judge and command aright, which is the function of prudence and the virtues annexed to it.” ST, II, i, Q. 65, A. 1: “One cannot have prudence unless one has the moral virtues: since prudence is right reason about things to be done, and the starting-point of reason is the end of the thing to be done, to which end man is rightly disposed by moral virtue.”

  4. Walzer, op. cit., p. xiii.

  5. MacIntyre, op. cit., p. 6: “The most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements; and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character. I do not mean by this just that such debates go on and on and on – although they do – but also that they apparently can find no terminus. There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture.” And, one might add, not even an irrational way.

  1. Walzer, op cit., p. 203.

  2. Ibid., p. 292.

  3. Ibid., p. 84.

  4. Chomsky believes that Jews and Palestinians should be treated as equals. In response to an interviewer's question in April 2004 – “As a Jew who has also lived on a kibbutz in Palestine, have your views changed at all over the years regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue?” – he replied: “My views have not changed. The only thing that has changed is that my views back in the 1940s were labeled Zionist, and today they are labeled anti-Zionist. Although my views back then did not represent the majority of Zionist Jews, the idea of forming a democratic state for both Jews and Arabs in Palestine was still considered within the mainstream of debate. Now, any talk of a democratic secular state is considered anti-Zionist” (Ahmed Nassef, “Hug a Jew: Hug Noam Chomsky,” MuslimWakeUp.com, April 29, 2004).

  1. Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, updated ed. (Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 1999), pp. 100–1.

  1. Richard C. Anderson, “Redefining Just War Criteria in the Post 9/11 World and the Moral Consequences of Preemptive Strikes,” Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics, January 24, 2003 (http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE03/Anderson03.html).

  1. William Jefferson Clinton, “A Just and Necessary War,” The New York Times, May 23, 1999. Clinton comes closest to the criteria of just war when he writes, “When the violence in Kosovo began in early 1998, we exhausted every diplomatic avenue for a settlement.” But the criterion of last resort was certainly not satisfied. As Richard Becker points out: “The Rambouillet accord, the U.S./NATO 'peace plan' for Kosovo, was presented to Yugoslavia as an ultimatum. It was a 'take it or leave it' proposition, as Albright often emphasized back in February [1999]. There were, in fact, no negotiations at all, and no sovereign, independent state could have signed the Rambouillet agreement” (“The Rambouillet Accord: A Declaration of War Disguised as a Peace Agreement,” (http://www.iacenter.org/rambou.htm)). And George Kenney reports: “An unimpeachable press source who regularly travels with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told this reviewer that, swearing reporters to deep-background confidentiality at the Rambouillet talks, a senior State Department official had bragged that the United States 'deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept.' The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason” (“Rolling Thunder: The Rerun,” The Nation, June 14, 1999, online).

  2. The second Iraq war was a continuation of the first, because there was no peace for Iraq during the interim. In a 1996 television interview, a journalist asked Madeleine Albright, then U.S. Ambassador to the UN, concerning the U.S. sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it” (“60 Minutes,” May 12, 1996).

  1. F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Wiesbaden: Böttiger Verlag, 1993).

  2. “For a 'Christian Road Map,'” The Israel Report, April, 2003 (http://christianac-tionforisrael.org/isreport/apr03/isrep03apr.html). Evans is founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team and the Evangelical Israel Broadcasting Network. See also Robert Kuttner, “Neocons Have Hijacked U.S. Foreign Policy,” Boston Globe, September 10, 2003, online.

  3. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “1997 – The 'Year of Zionism'” (http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/history/modern%20history/centenary%20of%20Zionism).

  1. Alan M. Dershowitz, Chutzpah (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1991), p. 241.

  2. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 158.

  3. Hess's crucial work on the subject, first published in German in 1862, is Rome and Jerusalem: A Study in Jewish Nationalism, tr. from the German, with introduction and notes, by Meyer Waxman (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1918).—Ed.

  4. Ralph Reed, Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994), p. 63.

  1. Martin Buber, “The Land and Its Possessors,” in Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p. 230.

  2. Even the Zionism of a religious Jew such as Buber is not based upon the promise of the land, but on the need for Jews to live together: “What is decisive for us is not the promise of the Land, but the demand, whose fulfilment is bound up with the land, with the existence of a free Jewish community in this country. For the Bible tells us, and our inmost knowledge testifies to it, that once more than three thousand years ago our entry into this land took place with the consciousness of a mission from above to set up a just way of life through the generations of our people, a way of life that cannot be realized by individuals in the sphere of their private existence, but only by a nation in the establishment of its society” (Buber, ibid., p. 229).

  3. Three organizations of non-Zionist Jews are Jews Not Zionists (http://www.jewsnotZi-onists.org), Jews Against Zionism (http://www.jewsagainstZionism.com), and Neturei-Karta (http://www.nkusa.org).

  1. Ernest F. Hollings, “Bush's Failed Mideast Policy is Creating More Terrorism,” Charleston Post and Courier, May 6, 2004 (online at http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/May/8o/Bush's%20failed%20Mideast%20policy%20is%20creating%20more%20terrorism%20By%20Senator%20Ernest%20F%20Hollings.htm).

  2. Bill Christison, “Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous: How They Might Influence the Election,” CounterPunch.org, March 5, 2004.

  3. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 15. The parenthetical remark “generally understood as criticism of policies of the Israeli state” is Chomsky's.

  1. The 18th International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee Meeting, “Joint Declaration,” Buenos Aires, July 5–8, 2004.

  2. G. Neuburger,
“The Difference between Judaism and Zionism” (http://www.jews-notZionists.org/differencejudzion.html).

  3. Ernest F. Hollings, “Senator Hollings Floor Statement Setting the Record Straight on his Mideast Newspaper Column,” May 20, 2004 (http://hollings.senate.gov/~hollings/statements/2004521A35.html).

  1. Among the more prominent Christian Zionists are Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Ralph Reed, Franklin Graham, Kay Arthur, and D. James Kennedy.

  2. Pat Robertson, “On Israel and the Road Map to Peace,” Christian Broadcasting Network, 2004 (http://www.patrobertson.com/Teaching/TeachingonRoadMap.asp).

  1. Joseph Farah, “The Jewish Lobby?” WorldNetDaily.com, January 27, 2003.

  1. Mohameden Ould-Mey, “The Non-Jewish Origin of Zionism,” The Arab World Geographer, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2002), pp. 34–52. Ould-Mey goes on to document the fact that there were indeed some Jews in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though extremely few.

  2. Donald E. Wagner, “The History of Christian Zionism,” The Daily Star (Beirut), October 7, 2003, online.

  3. Miles J. Stanford, “The Plymouth Brethren – A Brief History” (http://withchrist.org/MJS/pbs.htm).

  4. Stanford, loc. cit.

  1. Jack Van Deventer, “Eschaton: The Dispensational Origins of Modern Premillennialism,” Credenda/Agenda, Vol. 7, No. 3, online.

  2. Wagner, loc. cit.

  3. David Cloud, “Study the Bible Dispensationally,” Fundamental Baptist Information Service, October 4, 2004 (http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/studybible-dispensation.html).

  1. The High Priests of War (Washington, D.C.: American Free Press, 2004), pp 79–80.

  2. “Obituary: Balfour a Leader for Half a Century,” New York Times, March 20, 1930.

  1. Hal Lindsey with C. C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970), p. 42.

  2. Ibid., p. 53.

  3. Ibid., pp. 53–54.

  1. Ibid., p. 55.

  2. Ibid., p. 45.

  1. “George W. Bush and Bible Prophecy,” April 2004 (http://www.pawcreek.org/articles/pna/GeorgeWBushAndBibleProphecy.htm). The author does not reveal the identity of the “Biblical prophecy almost totally unknown by Bible teachers.”

  1. Allie Martin, “'Left Behind' Author Says Iraq Will Be Prominent in End-Times Events,” AgapePress.org, November 19, 2003.

  1. R. A. Coombes, “Prophetic Implications of Gulf War 2 upon Bible Prophecy,” The Alpha-Omega Report, December 19, 2004, online.

  2. Stanford, loc. cit.

  3. One team of researchers concluded in October 2004 that “the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is probably about 100,000 people, and may be much higher” (Les Roberts et al., “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet, Vol. 364, 2004, pp. 1857–64, published online October 29, 2004 at http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf). This includes only civilian deaths, not the thousands of Iraqi soldiers who died in defense of their country.

  4. The National Unity Coalition for Israel claims to include more than two hundred Jewish and Christian organizations. Among the more important Christian Zionist organizations are the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, Christians for Israel, Christian Friends of Israel, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, Christians United for Israel, Christian Action for Israel, Stand for Israel, Bridges for Peace, Chosen People Ministries, and the International Christian Zionist Center.

  1. See Ken Silverstein and Michael Scherer, “Born-Again Zionists,” Mother Jones, September/October 2002, online. The authors quote Thomas Lindberg, pastor of the Memphis First Assembly of God Church, who, reflecting upon a tour he led to Israel, said, “… let me say today that we – and when I say 'we,' I represent the Assemblies of God here in America, three and a half million of us, 42 million Assemblies of God people around the globe – we love Israel.”

  2. Mark O'Keefe, “Church Leaders' Anti-War Message Fails in the Pews,” Newhouse News Service, April 9, 2003, online.

  3. Michael Freund, “Onward Christian Voters,” Jerusalem Post, November 16, 2004, online.

  4. Frank Newport, “A Look at Americans and Religion Today,” Gallup Poll, March 23, 2004.

  1. Bill Broadway, “The Evangelical-Israeli Connection,” Washington Post, March 27, 2004, online.

  1. Gary M. Burge, “Christian Zionism, Evangelicals and Israel,” The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (http://www.hcef.org/hcef/index.cfm/ID/159).

  2. Nancy Gibbs, “Is It Good for the Jews?” TIME Magazine, July 1, 2002, online.

  3. Dana Milbank, “An Answer? Out of the Question,” Washington Post, April 22, 2003, online.

  4. James Bennet, “Palestinians Must Bear Burden of Peace, DeLay Tells Israelis,” New York Times, July 30, 2003, online.

  5. Megan K. Stack, “House's DeLay Bonds with Israeli Hawks,” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2003.

  1. Tom DeLay, Keynote Speech, Stand For Israel Rally, April 2, 2003 (online at http://www.internationalwallofprayer.org/A-173-Tom-DeLays-Speech-Stand-For-Israel-Rally-April-2003.html).

  2. David D. Kirkpatrick, “Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy,” New York Times, August 28, 2004, online.

  1. Silverstein and Scherer, loc. cit.

  2. Michael R. Welton, “Unholy Alliance: Christian Zionists and the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict,” Canadian Dimension, March/April, 2003, online.

  3. See Jonathan Krashinsky, “Zionist Christians Make Solidarity Visit,” Jerusalem Post, December 7, 2000; Jason Keyser, “Jews, Christians in Uneasy Alliance over Israel,” Associated Press, March 7, 2002, online; Danielle Haas, “U.S. Christians Find Cause to Aid Israel: Evangelicals Financing Immigrants, Settlements,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 2002, online; William A. Cook,” Ministers of War: Criminals of the Cloth,” CounterPunch.org, October 27, 2003; Josef Federman, “Rabbis Express Unprecedented Criticism of American Evangelical Support for Israel,” Associated Press, May 10, 2004, online.

  1. Scott Thompson and Jeffrey Steinberg, “25-Year 'Shotgun Marriage' of Israel's Likud and U.S. Fundamentalists Exposed,” Executive Intelligence Review, November 29, 2002.

  2. Reed, op. cit., p. 21.

  3. Silverstein and Scherer, loc. cit.

  1. Donald E. Wagner, “Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance,” Christian Century, November 4, 1998, p. 1020.

  2. Silverstein and Scherer, loc. cit.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Quoted in Nancy Gibbs, “Is It Good for the Jews?” TIME Magazine, July 1, 2002, online.

  5. Ibid.

  1. Silverstein and Scherer, loc. cit.

  2. Ibid.

  3. On the falsity of the official party line, see Stephen J. Sniegoski, “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel” (http://www.thornwalker.com:16080/ditch/conc_toc.htm), and (http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/20030102.php).

  1. Oded Yinon, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” trans. Israel Shahak; originally published in Hebrew in Kivunim: A Journal for Judaism and Zionism, No. 14, February 1982.

  2. Although the Old Covenant has never been revoked, abrogated, superseded, or replaced, the ceremonial and judicial precepts of the Old Law have been annulled by the fulfillment of the reality they signified, while the moral precepts of that Law bind forever. Various passages from St. Thomas make this clear: “The mystery of the redemption of the human race was fulfilled in Christ's Passion: hence Our Lord said then: 'It is consummated' (St. Jn. xix:30). Consequently the prescriptions of the Law must have ceased then altogether through their reality being fulfilled. As a sign of this, we read that at the Passion of Christ 'the veil of the temple was rent' (Mt. 27:51)” (ST, II, i, Q. 103, A. 3, ad 3). And elsewhere, “The judicial precepts did not bind for ever, but were annulled by the coming of Christ” (II, i, Q. 104, A. 3). Additionally, “The Old Law
is said to be for ever simply and absolutely, as regards its moral precepts; but as regards the ceremonial precepts it lasts for ever in respect of the reality which those ceremonies foreshadowed” (II, i, Q. 103, A. 3). Just as the New Covenant is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, the New Law is the fulfillment of the Old Law (St. Matt. v:17: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them”). There is no possibility of the Old Law or the Old Covenant continuing to exist today as something distinct from the New, for which reason St. Thomas remarks: “[because] the Old Law betokened Christ as having yet to be born and to suffer, whereas our sacraments signify Him as already born and having suffered … [,] It would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity” (II, i, Q. 103, A. 4).

  1. The tendency of many Protestant traditions to divorce the Old and New Covenants from one another is related to the other two “sola's” of the Protestant Reformation: sola fide and sola gratia. When the New Covenant is understood to be about faith and grace only, and not also about the fulfillment of the moral precepts of the Law, it becomes more difficult to understand the two Covenants as forming a unity. Thus, the temptation of supersessionism and replacement theology.

  2. ST, II, i, Q. 107, A. 3.

  3. ST, II, i, Q. 103, A. 4.

  4. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 128–129.

  1. Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, “Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church,” June 24, 1985.

  2. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dominus Iesus on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, August 6, 2000, §§13–14 (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html).

  1. Shmuel Golding, “Antisemitism in the New Testament,” Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics (http://www.messianic-racism.mcmail.com/ca/antisem/g2.htm).

  1. Buber, op. cit., pp. 232–3.