Earlier this month, the Reverend Franklin Graham, son of Billy, wrapped up the Hong Kong Franklin Graham Festival, his largest evangelistic event. Over the course of four days he preached to 423,335 people in Hong Kong and Macau. The two cities are special administrative regions on the southern periphery of the People’s Republic of China.
“I feel as though I am an ambassador for Christ, to bring this wonderful message to this part of the world,” Graham said. The famous preacher was undoubtedly happy that 33,464 souls accepted Jesus in his presence, yet he had a higher calling in mind. As he noted, “We pray that God will open up other doors.”
Which other doors, we might ask? Graham said he will go to Beijing in May to see if he can stage one of his extravaganzas on the mainland. “When I look at China and there’s a billion people and God loves each and every one of them; that is a wonderful truth and that is a great message that we are here to share with this city and this great nation,” he said. China, with a rapidly aging population, is religion’s most fertile ground today.
He’ll need God’s help to accomplish this. So far, the Chinese central government, which is officially atheistic and deeply hostile to religion, has confined prayer meetings to churches and prohibited the mass gatherings that Graham has in mind. Billy’s son should be glad that he is at least getting an audience with China’s Communist leaders. Those leaders have persecuted and tortured Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians of all denominations.
Officially, Beijing says it guarantees freedom of religion, but it tolerates only seven “patriotic” religious organizations run by the state, and it has carried on long-running disputes with religious figures such as the Dalai Lama and the last six popes. An untold number of Chinese have died because they prayed in the way they chose.
Five mainland officials attended the Hong Kong event at Graham’s invitation, and due to his family’s long-standing connections to China—his mother was born there, for instance—he has a better chance than most of being able to stage some sort of event. Yet the Communist Party is an insecure mass organization that has lost the loyalty of most of its people and will not tolerate any organization it does not control. It will not allow a charismatic reverend to convert millions of Chinese at one time. Among other things, that would be too embarrassing.
How will the Israelis know when the task has been completed? Will one of a dwindling number of masked Hamas gunmen emerge to sign surrender papers? Or what? And how does this have a big negative effect on Iran? There’s no shortage of mujahideen scattered about the middle east that can be nominated with some variation of “Allah’s warriors” and supplied with the relatively cheap arms, explosives, and training needed to continue the assault on the “Zionist entity”. As has been stated many times, the real war here is between Iran and Israel, more properly, Iran and the West. The defeat of Hamas would simply be a battle victory, not the winning of a war.
Bush is doing precisely what he did in 2006 when he and Chirac sponsored Resolution 1701.
“The one-step-from-madness gangster theocracy in Gaza — just four days before the fighting, the Hamas parliament passed a Sharia criminal code, legalizing, among other niceties, crucifixion …”
Crucifixion? Is this for the potential tourism benefit?
RCAR Says:
January 9th, 2009 at 10:25 AM
“Israel simply needs us not to pressure her into a premature ceasefire that will undo the good that may be achieved.”
Please describe exactly the “pressure” you are referring to. Are we going to cut back on aid,arms to Israel? Are we going to offer aid,arms to the Palestinians? What are you saying?
Bush has not been Israel’s true firend.
He has not even been least worst.
He fought the Iraq war with his eyes on the arab street- teh street the saudi palaces are on – rather than the American street, and, as a result, lost the midterm elections and torpedoes his party for 2008.
En passant, he was the first US president to explicitly state the American goal of a ‘two state solution’ and tried to ram this down Israel’s throat with the ‘road map’, while Condi restrained Israel from fighting back, getting everybody used to the idea of the Jews just sucking it up, and thereby increasing the outrage when the Jews finally decided to defend themselves.
Sharon’s disgraceful decision making didn’t help, Olmert’s sycophantic toadying of the US admin was nauseating to watch, and Livni’s incompetence in pushing for 1701 did ISrael no favors.
Nonetheless, Bush railroaded Israel for most of his term.
In the dying days of his admin, he has perhaps had a little change of heart. Bully for him.
Bush a friend of Israel, overall? Feh.
A Fatah Restoration at the point of an Uzi? Arafat II at Israel’s throat in Jerusalem sooner than you think? Just so we understand what neoconservatism means in practice !
No to Fatah. Yes to Egypt. And if Egypt won’t control Gaza, retake of the Sinai, in the fullness of time. Rinse and repeat for the ‘West Bank’.
If only Israel could defend itself without fear of loss of the American Sec. Council veto, it could truly defeat its enemies and dictate terms, the way victorious nations after defensive wars have always been able to.
No to the double standard applied against the Jew of nations.
Citing shopworn Bush rhetoric–which always outran his performance–as inspiration for…what? Or is that just to remind him of what he claimed to stand for? Let’s not omit his “religion of peace” idiocy, which I believe Condi amended to love and peace.
Maine’s Michael is correct. No “friend of Israel” would have been the first POTUS to explicitly endorse the two-state “solution.”
I await with dread another version of Resolution 1701–and its aftermath. I’d love to be surprised.
@ 7 Maine’s Michael:
Rinse and repeat for the ‘West Bank’.
Must part company with you there having read Hillel Halkin’s “The Jewish State & Its Arabs” in the January issue of Commentary. “Retaking” the West Bank would entail huge governance problems of for Israel.
As I wrote on January 3rd
Richard Jansen Says:
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:37 PM
The stated and operational goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel. Israel must either destroy Hamas or at least destroy Hamas as an existential threat to Israel. It is fortunate that we didn’t see every night live pictures of Berlin and Tokyo being bombed by our forces. The Best friend Israel has right now, close to the only friend, is the United States in the person of George Bush.
Krauthammer supported ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza. He NEVER apologized and never admitted that he had been wrong. At least he should admit that he was wrong to have respect of anybody with memory in tact.
And of course the fact that Bush endorsed “two-states” farce does not make him a good friend of Israel, but do not forget, that it was Sharon who called YESHA the occupied land and called for “Palestinian” state BEFORE Bush. So do not expect Bush to be more saint than Pope, sorry Sharon. IT was Sharon, who convinced Bush that expulsion of Jews from Gaza was a good idea, and it was Olmert who tried to convince Bush that abandoning Golans ans expilsion of JEws from their would be a good idea too.
Resolution 1701 was a disaster, but it was Tzipi who pushed for this resolution from the first days of fighting, and it is Israel who asks for “International” force to prevent Hamas for rearming.
Israel has no better friend than George Bush, who has never retreated one step in the war on terror, or uttered one word of appeasement or weakness. He refused to go wobbily in the face of the images of civilian casualties in Gaza, and has ignored the voices from the usual “blame Israel first” crowd. There is NO pressure to stop the destruction of Hamas. Israel has a green light to take as long as it needs, and use whatever means are necessary to destroy the enemy.
That Omert, Livni and Barak have been relentless is the amazing new reality. Bibi Netanyahu could be expected to be unrelenting, but to discover the spine in the Kadima party is a nice surprise. Ihere is now hope in Israel and the world that the facist terrorists will be well-and-truly crushed.
We can debate the preferable long term status of Gaza after the deed is done. No solution is possible while Hamas exists.
My view favors the annexation and settlement of Gaza by Israel, and the exit routes, with subsidies, made available to the current inhabitants. Look at the map. Gaza in Arab hands is a daggar always poised to stab. In Israeli hands, a stability will emerge, and a pre-withdrawl peace with prosperity may return. Sharon made a terrible mistake in withdrawl, now painfully being corrected. The sooner the better.
Dr Rubin,
I, in the main agree, yet find that I am not quite ready to believe and accept that the Kadima party ‘has a spine’. IF they finish the job, then, I shall reevaluate my assessment of them.
If President Obama is hell bent on meeting Hamas, let him visit their tombstones.
I agree. let israel continue to dminish themselves in the yes of their sugar daddies, the american taxpayer.
i hope this war goes on for a long long time
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