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BULLETIN FIFTY

The Australian February 23 and 24, 2017

CARTWHEELING CARTOONS

You can make too much of cartoons. They often tend to be exceedingly selective in finding sites for their wit, and as a one shot slot, create a sense which in general may not even be meant to be applicable.

On the other hand, because of allowances of various kinds which may be made for them, there is a possibility that they may make a huge emotional impact and crystallise some point in particular which is not true in general. One must always watch all media utterances, whether artistic or the instruments of a cabal of some kind, to ensure that what they SUGGEST in thrust is, if at all true, true of more than the superficial crust of the matter. Otherwise a misleading impact may remain and influence where facts are otherwise.

It is however when the apparent target of a cartoon, is not merely some over-reaching body or entity, not some power-crazed loon, or ludicrous misdemeanour or some such category, but a long-suffering butt in its own domain, of multi-national genocide and UN concentration in condemnation which is of unparalleled intensity while far greater events unfold on this furious earth (cf. Revelation 12:17) in other places (such as Syria and Co.), that there is a more demanding call to consider.

When there is in the UN then, minimal resolution on vast and ramifying events, scouring the Middle East, a set of multiple meddlings in the case of much abused Israel, making numbers involved in its land and its defence, tiny  by comparison, for that is the topic, that one needs to be ready to consider the comedy in cartoon. Is it indeed comedy, and is the action of Turnbull and Netanyahu an act malapropos to the point it needs a scathing rebuke ? Should not the rebuke be analysed at least a little!

This is the case in the cartoon in The Australian, for February 25, p. 13. This depicts with ludicrous gravity our PM and the PM of Israel walking in what appears a sanctimonious agreement, away from a dismissive depiction of former PMs Hawke and Rudd, and their current conversation is singularly unpleasant. What are they saying about those Australian former PMs ? The first two words are "silly old" and the next is one of the crudities now so often inserted into public affairs, but which indicate contempt. In other words, the two ruling PMs have attributed to them a supercilious sounding and arrogant attitude, a bilious belittlement of the Labour leaders in view. Their demeanour - those to  whom the crude comment is attributed - is a scoffing at which the cartoon appears to be scoffing. Their apparent dismissal of the former PMs is dismissed, derided, as if they were a crowd of rioters reduced to two, is made to appear jejune, ludicrous, unthinking, rank.

These, the expressed views of the two current PMs, which is the main point, are therefore lampooned, and their agreement together is made to appear ugly, demeaning and oppressive. They are in short held up in this cartoon, to ridicule.

Why ?

In The Australian of February 24, we read that Bibi, the Israeli PM on a current visit to this land, "blasts Labor elders," a strange enough comment for a headline. It is then discovered that the issue in mind is this: that he objected strenuously to something they had once done. Such a lot has been done by others to Israel for the last 68 or so years, not to mention the earlier little destruction of A.D. 70 and the resulting despatch of Jews from their land of many centuries, and the intervening 1900 or so years, that this new assault becomes one item in a long list.

In this case, it is that he did not appreciate, this Bibi, his visit enabling him to focus readily, something significant for his people, that the former Labour leaders in Australia had done. He declared that they were not correct in their favour and support for having the UN acknowledge certain of those peoples who had sought to destroy Israel, even remove it before reborn, and then act with those of genocidal intention.  To have a UN grant of recognition to the 'state' of Palestine was simply to add status to what in attitude and approach does not allow for a Jewish State at all!

Nor was this all.  The recognition aspect, has this added: "condemning the Israeli government's expansionist settlement program." Now if Israel condemned Australia's immigration program, or use of atomic weaponry (though it is not yet known to deem this appropriate), it would appear rather free in its use of the tongue, unless of course it threatened Israel or world peace in some very obvious manner.

But one has not observed any rash or brash interventionism of this kind on the part of Israel. The idea is strange indeed that there is some expansionism in that hated devotee to destruction called Israel (as increasingly it seems to be regarded, in world terms). It is despised, as manifested in the resilient UN assault on Israel (or the Jews, depends on which is nearer), in seeking to use a little more of the land stolen from it, in terms not only of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 from the British Empire but from the League of Nations likewise.

How base! we are seemingly to gather,  to establish slightly more defensible screens against the ever threatening invasion, already with four massive examples to examine. To condemn in such a case, mischaracterise, decide issues not resolved by the participant parties in the direction of one of these only, attempt to legitimise the exterminatively inclined camp: this does indeed seem something at which to object. With his normal courage, Bibi has not left this propaganda prop untouched! Of course, this is a particular issue, and it in no ways decides - always a danger with cartoons, the general status towards Israel of any in view. For instance, Hawke had a list of actions of some kinship to Israel.

The matter is the one in view in the cartoon, and to this one must keep. It involves a particular action or type of action on the part of particular people in a particular setting at a particular time. This needs attention, and it is getting it.

What of the Party to be accorded these privileges, relative to Israel ? Known as Palestinians, they were defeated along with the other invading nations more than once; when the stated intention was the destruction of Israel, a mass thrust not of one nation against Israel, but of several with a joint share of this earth's crust of no mean scope. Israel of course, in square miles, by comparison scarcely exists.

But its mission is by no means missing.

The point of Bibi's criticism, then, was that Hawke and Rudd had acted in terms of Australia action, and "called for recognition of a Palestinian State." In answer Bibi asked if they wanted recognition of a Palestinian State which did not recognise Israel's right to exist (cf. Bulletin 46 above). Extensive indeed is the miseducation, misanthropy and mischief wrought by Palestinians, operating intensively to instil in their young, the desire to eliminate Israel and Israelis, and the congratulation to many who indulge in this multi-murder prelude to annihilation of what, to them, is presented as a cursed land.

Is it therefore in some way arrogant when Bibi and Malcolm Turnbull express a desire for the participating parties in Israel and surrounding nations not to be hounded by an international supplement to the enormous preponderance of land and people in the nations that have been bent on supplementing Hitler's removal of over six million Jews from the face of the earth, in some kind of aggregation ?   The motives of that peak of European assault on the Jews, linked to pogroms in Russia and elsewhere over centuries, were indeed specialised, and Hitler had his own type of totalitarian resolution of issues; but the result is the same. It is destruction and misuse of Jews, sometimes using their talents at the same time.

Does the congregation of territory and power and hatred and oppression, mixed richly with genocidal blasts and actions in the wars in and later than 1948, need help ?

Do those who failed to destroy need a ramp into the heart of Israel, to destroy even more than Hamas has done when given freely the area of Gaza ? Is Israel horrid because it wishes to defend itself against this latest phase of extinction, and does one not need to expose the propaganda element in the thrust of which we read this: that certain Labour leaders had sought this recognition of the Palestinian body, in this way: that Australia should in this join with 137 other nations.

How near to unanimous is this new form of crucifixion! It is of course true that the attitude of the State of Israel to Christ had the same sense of frenzy (Matthew 27:23-26); and how Israel has suffered for the death of the Lord whose predicted and sacrificial death constitutes the only salvation for any in this earth (Isaiah 43:8-10, 53-55). But it was warned from as early as Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and this enlarged on in Isaiah and Micah and the Psalms, of this unhappy rebellion and then of the grievous act. It has suffered as prescribed, and now the Gentiles are seeking to treat Israel as a nation as it treated as a nation, Jesus Christ.

Of that the Lord does not approve (Isaiah 51:21-23, Zechariah 12:2, Micah 4:11-12, Psalm 83:4, Jeremiah 33:24). Enough is enough. He intends in due course to back His drafting of thousands of years, and love (Hosea 14, Jeremiah 31-33) with intervention as the case requires. The intervention of the UN and others, is to suffer divine intervention! and when Israel's power is low (Deuteronomy 32:36), then the Lord will manifest the settlement, wrought from the first. After all, as to the real estate, He made it, and the same is true of this earth, the rebellion of which in predicted futile myths (cf. II Timothy 4), based on nothing (Jeremiah 10:11), is a key to its condition and peril. The place of His crucifixion in human form, burial and resurrection will be honoured as He pleases; but some would even want to bring elsewhere or for others, even this!

That, then, is the biblical perspective, which includes the element that Israel the nation, but also in ore individual terms, as in Zechariah 12:10ff., is called to return to the Lord.

Meanwhile, the Gentile nations are now pell-mell rejecting Christ and killing Christians in many places with such gusto and malevolent deceit and propaganda, that their sharing of the error is lit up as if by a searchlight. So are the Gentiles called to cease their rebellion and find peace where allne it is to be found (Acts 4:11-12). Indeed, their expulsive attitude in many nations to this same Lord is increasingly clear as they forget, reject, despise, ignore or revise the Lord out of their ways. This provides an unhappy parallel. As Paul indicates in Romans 11, for Israel there is hope, and more, certainty of a return to the Lord, and as Jesus made clear, Jerusalem will not remain forever under the trampling feet of Gentiles.

Thus there are more parties in this affair than some choose to acknowledge, and the Lord is the only One whose words and deeds have exactly matched each other, concerning things present and to come, Israel's return being one of them, its successful wars against ludicrous odds, another, the trouble those who try to interfere and direct (almost as if they had been elected to a Jewish Parliament), a third, the division of Jerusalem at one stage into two sections, a fourth, the raping and theft therein, a fifth, and the agricultural acclaim a sixth (cf. SMR Chs.   8  - 9).

Thus it is not some impolite and ungermane drivelling dismissal of the advice of the Labour leaders which is justly in view in the cartoon or anything like it, as if their speech was in ignorance and general unreflecting abuse, as if in the matter in view,  they are joined in an unworthy project. On the contrary, the two current PMs are instead standing for what has been fact, despicable fact, extended fact, a fact over ages, a fact newly made more murderous in kind in entire attempt to settle the "Jewish question" once and for all, help towards that end, though this be not intended: it is this which is the point. Helping such vagrancies, and giving place to such genocidal past approaches to the "question" as repeatedly wrought by many since 1948, is indeed unworthy, and however different may have been the intent, there is in the UN an almost inconceivable breach of decency, as if to hallow the unholy and support the heights of hatred.

One has not recently noticed any effort of Israel to do more than safeguard its borders and people from incessant murderous assaults, however difficult, or in whatever way misconstrued, or anything remotely like the vast destructions wrought by the Allies on German cities, in their defence from Hitler. Israel has been a butt for many, and is currently the object of what almost appears buffoonery on the part of the UN, acting as if it needed to protect the bullying thrusts of endless assaults, and those responsible.   

Losing a war to destroy a nation does not give ground for receiving international assistance for grabbing more land for indulging the same propensities, and this the more obviously so, when a profound and emotionally stark and blazing hatred is evidenced continually by the would be receiver of a new gift that would enable a far more pleasant way to destroy, than the gift of Gaza (in some ways, an experimental gift) ever did. Imagine grabbing part of the unique Jewish capital attested voluminously over thousands of years, and this by gift by pressure of the nations! What a coup! Imagine what could be wrought in that way...