How Israel and the unborn baby are victims of a peculiarly illogical ‘victimhood’ scale
By Stephen Green
Why does the irreligious left hate Israel and support jihadism with such a passion? And how does their thinking spill over into abortion and the ‘gender wars’?
I am, of course, aware of right-wing hatred of Israel, where everything is the fault of ‘the Jews’ or that ‘they’ run the Bilderbergers and the World Economic Forum and the whole banking system.
Spiritual question
But why is there so much antisemitism among those who regard themselves as left-liberal and ‘progressive’?
Deep down, it is a spiritual question. It is the oldest hatred, after all.
However, American conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager believes it begins with the absence of a moral compass. Instead, he suggests, the irreligious left has a power compass, a race compass, and a class compass.
When the socialist-inspired kibbutz system was growing, Israel was seen as small and at the mercy of its Arab neighbours, so she was a fashionable cause for the left
In the early days, when the socialist-inspired kibbutz system was growing, Israel was seen as small and at the mercy of her Arab neighbours, so she was a fashionable cause for the left.
However, as Israel won wars and became strong, defeating the ‘Palestinians’ and confining them to enclaves, she became ‘bad’, and they have become ‘good’, on the power compass, according to Mr Prager.
‘Truly lost’
Next, Jews are perceived as ‘white’ and the Palestinians as ‘non-white’. That might not be true, but it’s how they see it.
Add in the Labour Party’s assumption that every non-white person must be in their constituency, including every Muslim, and the case is settled on the ‘race compass’. Mix in the class angle, and Jews, being hard-working and growing rich, tick all three ‘bad’ boxes, while Palestinian gunmen, being poor, tick all three ‘good’ ones.
Daniel, Lord Hannan wrote, also in The Telegraph: “Now Hamas, not content with murdering babies, posts videos of the captured infants it holds as human shields. If we cannot agree that such behaviour places it beyond the normal considerations of human decency and reciprocity, we are truly lost.”
The irreligious left does not agree. Top secret plans found on dead Hamas terrorists show they deliberately targeted children and wanted to “kill as many” Israelis as possible. Despite that, or even because of that, there have been Muslims and Hamas supporters all over our big cities cheering the death of Jews. Surely they, if not “we”, are lacking any sort of Christian moral compass, and are indeed “truly lost”.
Instead of a moral compass, the left has a power compass, a race compass, and a class compass
Actions are irrelevant
It is important to understand it does not matter what either group in the Holy Land actually does. Nothing which we might see as morally good which the members of an ‘oppressor’ group do will excuse them. Nothing morally evil done by the ‘oppressed’ will condemn them. Because the terrorists are seen as ‘weak’, they must be ‘good’, no matter how many atrocities they carry out. All is excused because they are ‘oppressed’.
It is irrelevant that the Islamic jihadists deliberately targeted women and children, because, remember, the left lacks a moral compass.
The Lord God asked Cain: “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). Jewish and Christian moral theology concerns itself with what people do. A tree, said our Lord, is known by its fruit (Luke 6:43-44). So the prophet Haggai can write: “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:7).
Jeremiah reports the Lord saying: “But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings” (Jeremiah 23:22).
But in the leftist view, their actions are irrelevant.
Denial of realities
Nevertheless, the irreligious left know that ordinary people have a moral compass. They know you have a moral compass and how it works, so they will use that against you and against those they have categorised as the oppressors.
That is why some Islamists tried to say Hamas terrorists were being “kind” to babies and comforting them. Or even denying they slaughtered anyone at all.
If Israel bombs Hamas installations, the amoral left say are committing genocide. If the IDF advises people to leave areas used by Hamas for their own safety, they are committing ethnic cleansing. Israel can do nothing right. Hamas can do nothing wrong.
Because the terrorists are seen as ‘weak’, they must be ‘good’, no matter how many atrocities they carry out
As well as lacking a moral compass, the irreligious left also lack the capacity to think things through and to examine themselves. It would therefore be a mistake to look for logical thinking or self-awareness among them. Instead, there is an unashamed denial of realities.
Pre-born babies are not people
For example, unborn babies are weak, and their mothers are strong, so abortion is wrong, you might think. Not so. Women are ‘weak’ by definition, so they are always good.
So what of female babies, or any babies at all? The left squares that particular circle by refusing to allow themselves to think of pre-born babies as human beings at all, so their obvious weakness as tiny people can never come into consideration.
They use Latin words or Latin-derived words like ‘uterus’, ‘foetus’, ‘termination’, instead of simple English, wherever they can. George Orwell said this: ‘A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.”
The Left do not use language to explain the truth, but to obscure it.
A man named Bill Palmer did just that on the Telegraph website in a comment about my trial for holding up a Bible verse in the Ealing buffer zone. He said Marie Stopes “are not ‘killing unborn children’. They are legally aborting a pregnancy – a clump of cells in the majority of cases, a dependent foetus in the few that are performed later – but still within the legal limit.”
Pro-lifers must wake up
Pro-life MPs have yet to wake up to this weakness in the pro-abortion mindset. They assume the Diana Johnsons and Stella Creasys (pro-abortion MPs attempting to liberalise our abortion laws) of this world think morally, because they use moral arguments against pro-lifers, eg “You want poor women to die from unsafe abortions!”
So our pro-life MPs never ask the other side to explain just what exactly is in the womb, because they assume the pro-aborts know already. But they are wrong. The irreligious left are unable to acknowledge it is a baby, because it would expose them to inconvenient thoughts and ‘wrong-think’.
However, constantly asking the question will discomfort the pro-death camp and allow them to make mistakes. Remember, when we do the little things, we can ask God to do the miraculous.
Changing the debate
That is why my action of standing with Psalm 139:13 outside the Marie Stopes facility in Ealing may have an impact beyond its simplicity. My banner read:
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). “Reins” means “kidneys” or insides. Yes, I use the KJV!)
An old adage from activist Saul Alinsky’s 1970s book ‘Rules for Radicals’ is that it is not our action which has the main effect, but the establishment’s reaction. On top of that, the establishment can only travel along its given tramlines. There is no ‘thinking outside the box’ for them.
That is why the only way Ealing Council could react to my inoffensive protest was to prosecute me. Having lost in Uxbridge Magistrates Court (on 1 February) I am now appealing to the Crown Court, intending to ask the prosecution to show why my Bible verse is anti-abortion.
So my case may, should the Lord bless it and grant me wisdom, raise the question of whether that is a human being in the womb – “Me”! – as the psalmist says, or Mr Palmer’s “clump of cells”.
Hierarchy of victimhood
Finally, women are weak and virtuous only until they oppose ‘trans-women’. That is because transgenders are always weak and oppressed, even when they are men and obviously stronger and more aggressive than the real women they oppose. Remember not to think logically if you are trying to follow this.
The Lord might well have said:
Isaiah 1:18a: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD.”
Lesbians are not as oppressed as transgenders, so they may not complain when a man complete with male genitalia demands to be accepted as a ‘trans-lesbian’
But reason cuts no ice here. Gays and lesbians are an oppressed group, but lesbians are not as oppressed as transgenders, so they may not complain when a man complete with male genitalia demands to be accepted as a ‘trans-lesbian’. There is a hierarchy of victimhood and if one group does not get along with another that does not matter to the left either.
Much people in the city
So what do we do about it? We cannot even assume that professing Christians will be immune from moral vacuity. Left-wing Christians, the Jayne Ozannes of this world (who has campaigned in the General Synod for same sex relationships to be recognised), will suspend logic and truth, especially biblical truth, just as much as the irreligious, when they are deciding which groups to support.
But there is still hope. God assured Elijah: “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
Elisha told his servant: “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them” (2 Kings 6:16).
That might have been the angelic host, but this is, after all, a spiritual battle. The point is, there are more with us than we imagine. The Lord told the apostle Paul not to be afraid and to speak up for the same reason: “For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:10).
Let us remember that as we fight these battles with eternal consequences.
PRAY:
Confound the workers of iniquity, O Lord, and lift up and encourage your people to proclaim the truth. Give us discernment to see when a moral compass is absent and to confront lies and distortions. Open doors, we pray, into the hearts of the seven thousand and the many people you still have in the city and bring them alongside us. Above all, show us what we can do and do the miraculous that only you can do.
WRITE:
To your MP at House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA or email him/her from the MP list at www.parliament.uk. Remember that, on whatever subject you write, yours is a point of witness that needs saying, and you are here for “such a time as this” to bring the Scriptures to bear on the issues of our day and to reassert the moral compass of heaven.
Stephen Green is the National Director of Christian Voice. He has recently challenged the buffer zone laws outside abortion clinics, resulting in being taken to court for displaying a banner with a Bible verse near an abortion clinic.
This article first appeared in Christian Voice’s monthly newsletter which can be ordered from www.ukcv.org