Is Mel Gibson a sinner?

Uh, yes, because the ‘I’m going to answer a question with a question.’ question is: ‘Is Mel Gibson a human being.’

I have empathy for Mel and I pray for him. Alcoholism is a terrible disease. There are all kinds of drunks: mean, happy, sleepy, and funny. Nevertheless, they are drunks. They need to heal their addiction with honesty and humility.

I think we’ve learned enough as a country and as a people to know all this. Twelve step programs and addictions are talked about incessantly in the press and in the news.

I found it very unfortunate that a person’s disease, and recklessness, became the fodder for hate mongers.

Those with a prejudice against Mr. Gibson, and his work, saw the opportunity. Let’s pile on.

What really took me aback was not the fact that people were offended by his tirade, for the prejudicial statements on his part were indeed offensive, but the attitudes I heard from the Jewish talking heads on the news shows. ‘He is an anti-Semite.’ ‘He is responsible for his father’s statements.’ ‘His apology will never be accepted.’ ‘His apology is not good enough.’

Because of God’s own words expressed to us by His son, Jesus, the Messiah, we as Christians have a very charitable concept of forgiveness. Confess your sins, be forgiven. Mr. Gibson did that almost immediately, and did so publicly. I would imagine that his penance is to seek healing for his disease.

Some have stated that the Jewish concept of forgiveness either doesn’t exist or is far harsher. They would be wrong.

Jewish thought on forgiveness is at its root similar to the Christian concept of forgiveness. It is charitable and generous. After all, God laid down the Law for the Jewish people. He didn’t contradict His Law; rather Jesus fulfilled the Law.

The Ethics of Forgiveness from the Talmud Torah Center for Basic Jewish Education states:

Jewish law (Halacha) requires us to ask forgiveness from anyone whom we may have harmed, whether the harm was physical, financial, emotional, or social. Nevertheless, one is required to be gracious in granting forgiveness. The source for this halacha is the Mishna in Baba Kamma 8:7 which says, “From where do we know that it is cruel to not forgive? For it says, “Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech…” (B’reishis (Genesis) 20:17).

It is forbidden to be cruel and difficult to appease, rather, a person must be quick to forgive and difficult to anger and when the sinner asks for forgiveness he should forgive him willingly and wholeheartedly….”

Mr. Gibson was wrong and his words were cruel. He asked for forgiveness —“ so it should be freely and generously given. Then we should pray for and support him so that he seeks the recovery he so badly needs for his illness. That’s what God’s people would do.

…and a stinging indictment of U.S. policy from Patrick Buchanan in Israel is Playing Us for Fools. An excerpt below, but make sure you take a look at the whole thing:

If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians are injured. Perhaps 800,000 are homeless.

Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Instead of maintaining the moral and political high ground it had — when even Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were condemning Hezbollah, and privately hoping Israel would inflict a humiliating defeat on Nasrallah — Israel launched an air war on an innocent people. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese back Hezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world, Shia and Sunni alike, is rallying behind Nasrallah.

And how does one defend the behavior of the United States?

When Gillerman was exulting in the disproportionality of Israel’s attack on Lebanon, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was smiling smugly beside him. When the UN Security Council tabled a resolution condemning Hezbollah’s igniting of the war and Katyusha attacks, but also the excesses of Israel’s reprisals, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton vetoed it. When a few congressmen sought to moderate a pro-Israeli resolution by adding words urging “all sides to protect innocent life and infrastructure,” GOP leader John Boehner ordered the words taken down.

Why? Because, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, had prepared the resolution and wanted it passed the way they wrote it. Our Knesset complied. It sailed through the House 410-8.

And yes, it is the munitions made with our technology, by our hands, in our factories, that is killing the children of Lebanon. Thanks Mr. Bush, maybe the up-tick in military sales will offset the slowing economy and the huge trade deficit.

Tip ‘o the biretta to the Young Fogey and Hallowed Ground.

Excerpts from: Robert Fisk Reports From Lebanon on the Israeli Bombing of Qana That Killed 57, Including 37 Children

Background:

Lebanon is marking a national day of mourning, a day after Israeli warplanes bombed the village of Qana killing 57. Israel has announced it will halt air strikes for 48 hours in Southern Lebanon, but its ground troops continue to fight. Robert Fisk was in the nearby city of Tyre, where many of the victims were taken following the attack. He joins us from his home in Beirut. [includes rush transcript]

After the attack, Israel released what appeared to be video footage of Hezbollah rockets being launched from Qana towards towns in northern Israel, and the Israeli military said that Qana had been targeted because Hezbollah had been using the village as a base from which to launch rockets. This is not the first time that Qana has been devastated by Israeli fire. In 1996, more than 106 villagers died after Israel bombed the UN compound where they were seeking refuge. In the aftermath of the strike 10 years ago, reporting by Robert Fisk led to the United Nations condemnation of the attack. Robert Fisk had just returned from Tyre, where the victims from Sunday’s Israeli air strike in Qana were taken following the attack.

Interview:

AMY GOODMAN: Following Israel’s bombing of the town of Qana, that killed nearly 57 people, we turn to veteran war correspondent, Robert Fisk. I reached Robert Fisk early this morning at his home in Beirut. Robert Fisk’s reporting in Lebanon led to the United Nations condemnation of the Israeli attack on Qana ten years ago, in 1996. Early this morning, when we reached Robert Fisk, he had just returned from Tyre, where victims from Sunday’s Israeli air strike in Qana were taken, following the attack.

ROBERT FISK: I went to Tyre, Amy. By the time this has happened — to get from Beirut now to the south takes 46 hours, because of the broken bridges and the bombed roads, and I realized that by the time I got down there, the wounded would have been in the hospitals in Tyre, and the dead would be already brought from Qana to the villages. So when I got there, I went straight to the government hospital in Tyre, where many of the wounded — and there weren’t many, because most of them died — had been taken and where they were counting the number of children.

When I arrived there, there were a number of, maybe 20, 30 children, the corpses of children, lined up outside the government hospital, hair matted, still in their night clothes. The bomb that killed them was dropped at 1:00 in the morning. And they ran out of plastic bags. They were trying to put the children in plastic bags, their corpses, and they would put on it, you know, —Abbas Mehdi, aged seven,— and so and so, aged one, and use a kind of sticking tape on it. But then they ran out of plastic bags, so they had to put the children’s corpses in a kind of cheap carpet that you can buy in the supermarkets, and they roll them up in that and then put their names on again. I was having to go around very carefully and write down, from the Arabic, their names and their ages. It would just say —Abbas Mehdi, aged seven, Qana.—

And, of course, every time I saw the —Qana,— I remember that I was actually in Qana ten years ago when the massacre occurred there then. This is the second massacre in the town whose inhabitants believe that this is the place where Jesus turned water into wine in the Bible, most of whom, 95% of whom, are Christians — I’m sorry, are Muslims. I think all who died were Muslims. The 5% is Christians who have been there for hundreds of years, their families, because they do believe it is the Biblical Qana. There is a claimant to the rival of Qana in Galilee in northern Israel actually.

The Lebanese soldiers were trying take down the names of all who had died, but I found a man with a clipboard who had taken down 40 names, and he said that they weren’t accurate, because some of the children were blown into bits and they couldn’t fit them together accurately and there might be — they couldn’t put the right head on the right body, and therefore they might not be able to have an accurate list of the dead. But he was doing his best in the circumstances of war to maintain the bureaucracy of government.

One by one the children’s bodies were taken away from the courtyard of the government hospital on the shoulders of soldiers and hospital workers and were put in a big refrigerated truck, very dirty, dusty truck, which had been parked just outside the hospital. The grownups, the adult dead, including twelve women, were taken out later. The children were put in the truck first. Pretty grim. As I said, the children’s hair, when you could see the bodies, were matted with dust and mud. And most of them appear to have been bleeding from the nose. I assume that’s because their lungs were crushed by the bomb, and therefore they naturally hemorrhaged as they died.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk reporting from Beirut. After the attack Sunday, Israel released what appeared to be video footage of Hezbollah rockets being launched from Qana toward towns in northern Israel. I asked Robert Fisk about the footage.

ROBERT FISK: I’ve seen the video footage. It’s impossible to tell from the footage if indeed this is from Qana. You know, you have to realize that last time the massacre occurred at Qana in 1996, when they killed 106 refugees who were sheltering in the then-UN base that was there — it doesn’t exist anymore, but it did then — more than half of them children, again. They said that missiles had been fired from within the UN base. It turns out that they were fired from half a mile away. They then said that they didn’t have a live time pilot-less aircraft over the UN base at the time. And, in fact, on the Independent, I found a UN soldier who did have a videotape, showing clearly at the time of the bombardment — this is in 1996 — a live time photo reconnaissance unmanned aircraft over the base. The Israelis were later forced to admit that they had not told the truth: indeed there was a machine over the base at the time. You know, you can do what you want with photo reconnaissance pictures and with photographs after the event. It’s interesting that we weren’t shown these pictures before the massacre. We were only shown them after the massacre.

But they may be correct. The Hezbollah are firing missiles from villages in southern Lebanon, just as, for example, when the Israelis entered southern Lebanon and go into places like Bent Jabail, they’re using civilian houses as cover for their tanks, so the Hezbollah use houses as cover for their missile launching. But the odd thing is the idea that for the Israeli military that somehow it’s okay to kill all these children; if a missile is launched 30, 90 feet from their house, that’s okay then. We’ve got some film to show the missiles were launched; that’s okay then. I mean, did the aircraft which dropped this bomb, a guided weapon, by the way — they knew what they were hitting. It’s a guided weapon. We know that because the computer codes have been found on the bomb fragments. Did they say, —Oh, well, then, the man who launched the missile is hiding with the children in the basement of the house we’re going to hit—? Is it the case now that if you happen to live in a house next to where someone launches a missile, you are to be sentenced to death? Is that what Israel thinks the war is about?

I’m sitting here, for example, in my house tonight in darkness — there’s no electricity — next to a car park. What if someone launches a missile from the car park? Am I supposed to die for that? Is that a death sentence for me? Is that how Israel wages war? If I have children in the basement, are they to die for that? And then I’m told it’s my fault or it’s Hezbollah’s fault? You know, these are serious moral questions.

It’s quite clear from listening to the IDF statement today that they believe that family deserved to die, because 90 feet away, they claim, a missile was fired. So they sentenced all those people to death. Is that what we’re supposed to believe? I mean, presumably it is. I can’t think of any other reason why they should say, —Well, 30 meters away a missile was fired.— Well, thanks very much. So those little children’s corpses in their plastic packages, all stuck together like giant candies today, this is supposed to be quite normal, this is how war is to be waged by the IDF.

The fact that when they made these comments, they went unchallenged on television, was one of the most extraordinary scenes I’ve seen. I got back from Tyre on a very dangerous overland journey on an open road, which was under air attack, and I got back, and just before the electricity was cut, I saw the BBC reporting what the Israelis had said, but without questioning the morality that if someone fires a missile near your home, therefore it is perfectly okay for you to die.

…

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview with Robert Fisk of the Independent. He has been based in Lebanon for the last 30 years. I spoke to him early this morning, after he had just returned from Tyre. I asked him to respond to Israel’s announcement it would suspend air strikes over southern Lebanon for 48 hours.

…

ROBERT FISK: You know, it’s very interesting that the Israelis should say now, now after all these days, they’re going to give 48 hours. Why didn’t they give an extra 48 hours at the beginning to get the people out? Why now? Is this a bonus, a plus point, something you — a supermarket extra card that you win because you’ve killed so many people? Is it a monopoly board that you’re going to gamble? Okay, you get 48 hours free of air attack, because you killed so many people yesterday. Is that what this is supposed to mean?

AMY GOODMAN: In an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, it voted Sunday not for a cessation of hostilities — the U.S. was opposed to that — but to deplore what happened in Qana and an end to the violence. I asked Robert Fisk to respond.

…

ROBERT FISK: On the ground, when you’re here, when you see the wounded, see the dead, you realize the immorality, the obscenity, the atrocity of statesmen, as they think they are, claiming that, you know, it isn’t yet time for a ceasefire. A hasty ceasefire would not be a good thing, as Condoleezza Rice said. 24 hours before, I saw a picture of her on a beach in Malaysia. And people remember this. People remember this. In the hospital it was a young man who said — turned to me, he said, —Why have you done this to us? Why have you done this to us?— And the woman I was talking to said the same: —Why does the West want to do this to us?—

You know, this has been going on for more than two weeks now. I’m traveling around the south, increasingly outraged at what I see, as a human being. And I’m not a Muslim. I’m not a Muslim. And I keep saying to myself, —If I was a Muslim, how much more outraged might I be?— I turned to an American friend of mine tonight back in Beirut before I came home, and I said, —You know, I’ve been watching this now for more than two weeks, and there’s going to be another 9/11.— There’s going to be another 9/11, and then we’re going to hear all the usual claptrap about how it’s good versus evil, and they hate us because we’re good and democratic, and they hate our values, and all the other material that comes out of the rear end of a bull that your president and my prime minister talk.

What’s going on in southern Lebanon is an outrage. It’s an atrocity. The idea that more than 600 civilians must die because three Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured on the border by the Hezbollah on July 12, my 60th birthday — I’ve spent 30 years of my life watching this, this filth now, you know — is outrageous. It’s against all morality to suggest that 600 innocent civilians must die for this. There is no other country in the world that could get away with this.

You know, when — I wrote in my paper last week, there were times when the IRA would cross from the Irish Republic into northern Ireland to kill British soldiers. And they did murder and kill British soldiers. But we, the British, didn’t hold the Irish government responsible. We didn’t send the Royal Air Force to bomb Dublin power stations and Galway and Cork. We didn’t send our tanks across the border to shell the hill villages of Cavan or Monaghan or Louth or Donegal. Blair wouldn’t dream of doing that, because he believes he’s a moral man, he’s a civilized man. He wouldn’t treat another nation like that.

…

From the Australian: ‘Safe house’ that held no refuge by Peter Wilson in Qana, Lebanon

MOHAMMED Zaatar did not celebrate yesterday’s news that Israel would limit itself to land and sea attacks for two days because of the outrage over the killing of more than 50 people in a single house in the Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday.

The 48-hour suspension of Israeli air attacks would allow Zaatar and other Red Cross volunteers to look for bodies in south Lebanese towns that had previously been too dangerous to approach, he said last night — and that was not something he was looking forward to.

On Sunday, Zaatar, a 32-year-old industrial mechanic, had been in the first group of rescue workers to arrive in Qana after an Israeli bombing raid had brought a three-storey home down on top of two extended families, including more than 30 children, who were sheltering in its basement.

Zaatar joined the Red Cross 13 years ago, hoping the service would help him to overcome the shyness of his teenage years. He is still quietly spoken.

Talking beside the house as a large excavator was still clawing away at the wreckage, he paused several times to gather his emotions as he explained how he had pushed his fingers into the rubble looking for survivors.

“We had no equipment, so we had to search with our hands in the earth,” he said.

Scrabbling in the dirt was a weird sensation.

“Because you are following your senses and your fingers, whenever you think somebody is under your hands you feel like it is you trapped down there, and something shakes you inside.”

First, he came across an arm. When he pulled away the debris, a seven-year-old boy was curled up dead on his side in a sleeping position. Many of the 34 dead children were in similar positions — they were killed just after 1am.

As he carried the small body to a waiting stretcher, Zaatar heard a neighbour wail that the boy’s name was Yousef.

Next, his probing fingers struck the head of a smaller child. It was a baby of about four months, lying on his back, face upwards. As he gently wiped the dirt from the baby’s face, Zaatar could see his little tongue was clenched between his teeth.

Zaatar winced at the memory and looked away silently.

He was on Red Cross duty in 1996 when there was a similar Israeli atrocity in the small town atop a rocky hilltop in Galilee, 11km from the Israeli border.

That Israeli attack, said to be intended for Hezbollah guerillas, killed 105 people sheltering in a UN compound.

Their mass grave is two minutes’ walk from the scene of Sunday’s disaster.

“In 96 the bodies were all chopped up and burned by artillery. It was horrible, but this has been worse because it’s mainly children, and they were buried alive — terrible,” Zaatar said.

His three-year-old daughter, Mariam, begged him not to go when the call came from the Red Cross, and his wife was angry with him because he was putting himself into danger. The Israelis had already hit two Red Cross ambulances on the road to Qana.

When Zaatar’s 15-strong Red Cross crew arrived, neighbour Mohammed Ismael was already helping to pull bodies from the wreckage of the house.

“The bombing had gone on all night and we didn’t realise until dawn what had happened here,” said the 38-year-old glazier and farm worker.

“The house was still being built and the owner is away in Africa, and the families thought they would be safe there because it was so big.”

The families did not have enough money or petrol to leave the town and the roads were not safe anyway, he said.

The first thing he saw when he ran to the house was the body of seven-year-old Zainab Hashem al-Sheik. He had taken some food to her family a few days before because they were trapped in the town and had little money.

“Her father, Mohan, survived — he is in hospital — but his wife and children were all killed.”

Ismael’s T-shirt carried a portrait of Moussa al-Sadr, a former Shia leader who disappeared on a trip to Libya in 1978. Qana is firm Hezbollah territory. Like other witnesses, Ismael denied the Israeli claim that guerillas had provoked the attack by firing rockets from the village.

Many are now hoping the tragedy will have the same effect as the 1996 massacre in Qana, which is believed to be Cana, the Galilee town where Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine.

In 1996, the international uproar over the killing forced the Israelis to end their campaign.

But for that to happen this time, when the Bush administration and the Israelis are still ruling out an immediate ceasefire, might require a second miracle.

…and tonight I cried while brushing my daughter’s teeth.

QANA: An Israeli air strike killed more than 60 Lebanese civilians, including at least 37 children, 15 of them physically or mentally handicapped.

…

Rescue workers dug through the rubble with their hands for hours, lifting out the twisted, dust-caked corpses of children.