Tristen

Proverbs 16:28 A perverse man sows strife, And a whisperer separates the best of friends. 1 Timothy 5:13 And besides they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not. 1 Thessalonians 4:11 that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. Matthew 15:11 Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”

Hi Kristina, I tend not to place too much emphasis on such labels (Apostles/Prophets) - especially when they are self-proclaimed. Proverbs 27:2 Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; A stranger, and not your own lips. What matters is that God used this person to bless you with a gift. The gift is from God, not the "man". No human should be placed on a pedestal above others - as if they have more authority than any other minister. If this "man" has a gift of prophecy, it is exclusively by the grace of God. In Biblical Christianity, there are no Christians who are more special than other Christians (i.e. no 'Saints' in the Roman Catholic sense). All spiritual communications, including the words of this "man", are accountable to be tested against the authority of scripture - the same as the words of any other minister. Furthermore, we Christians each have the Holy Spirit to guide us in peace concerning spiritual communications (1 John 2:20, Colossians 3:15). My advice would be to avoid getting hung-up on labels, and to set your eyes on the Giver of gifts.

You have chosen to believe the unconfirmable, statistically disputed, Hamas controlled Ministry of Health figures? If you are truly that susceptible to propaganda, there is little chance of a reasoned discussion. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers How is it that people still don’t understand the Hamas playbook – i.e. cause trouble to instigate an Israeli response, then cry victim when Israel responds? Israel claims to have killed around 15,000 Hamas combatants. Therefore, if we believe both numbers, that is a little over 1 non-combatant for every combatant killed. While the death of any non-combatant is regretful, this is remarkably low ratio for an urbane warfare setting. The elected government of Gaza committed such heinous atrocities against the local superpower – in such a manner as was bound to provoke a war. Then, those who committed the atrocities hide themselves in and around their own non-combatant civilians. But now they want to have a cry about their casualty numbers? How many times does Hamas get to play this same game before the world wakes up to the fact that we are being played (and not even in a sophisticated way)? Even if you believe the Hamas figures (which is so frustratingly naïve), there is no rule of war that a nation’s response to unprovoked attack must be “proportional” to the initial attack. A nation state is obligated to protect its own citizens. If that means hunting down its aggressors hiding amidst their own civilians – then so be it. That is – the numbers don’t matter. When your nation attacks another nation, the attacked nation is obligated to do everything in its power to destroy the capacity of the attackers to pose any further risk to its citizens. That is what I would expect from my nation. The idea that only Israel should be limited in its capacity to protect its people is absurd – and demonstrates a pathetically overt bias. If you don’t want to get maimed, you don’t ‘poke the bear’. The slaughter of Israel’s citizens by Gazans was ‘in cold blood’. The deaths of non-combatant Gazans by Israeli forces are collateral damage. That is, armed cowards from Gaza hunted unarmed, defenseless Jews, to commit en-masse, atrocities against them. Whereas the Israeli defense forces have strict rules of engagement designed specifically to mitigate civilian loss. One side specifically targets the unarmed while the other side specifically targets the armed. Any attempt to generate a comparison between the victims of each group is logically specious and intellectually compromised (a.k.a. blind to reality). But if you are not prepared to negotiate for your needs, and subsequently throw an intifada tantrum whenever you don't get your own way, then you are at-least as responsible for the outcomes of your people. Besides, it would be disingenuous/ignorant to suggest the "animosity" started when Israel got control of the water. Furthermore, Hamas in Gaza has received billions in international aid. Perhaps they could have diverted some of that tunnel/rocket money to making Gaza water-independent (i.e. maybe use the aid money for the people it was intended to help - especially given that the Gazan population has near-doubled under Hamas' tenure). You are making up excuses. The pretext for the ban on digging wells was to combat the decline in groundwater levels. https://jfjfp.com/gazans-fear-worst-after-hamas-bans-water-wells/

I agree. In the interest of objectivity, it is important that we honestly acknowledge Israel's shortcomings. But it is also important that we honestly consider the broader context of the conflict. The secular mainstream paints the issue as overwhelmingly Israel's fault. Israel is their big, bad oppressor that is victimizing the poor innocent "Palestinian" civilians. That narrative is the opposite of what is demonstrably true. Therefore, in the context of such a one-sided, mainstream, deceitful narrative, we should be cautious when pointing out Israel's flaws - that we don't give the false impression of equivalent accountability.

Lol! My prediction is that the spiritually blinded world will continue to align itself against Israel - and then God will ultimately intervene on Israel's behalf.

I'd say it's slightly more nuanced than your summary. I think the important 'highlights' are as follows: - The British were given official stewardship of "The Palestinian Territory" in July 1920. - Approaching this period of British mandate, as the result of Jewish immigration, the Arabs had become increasingly concerned and violent because of the changing demographics. - The British solution to the conflict was a partition plan (Peel Commision 1937) that separated Jews from Arabs (with a stretch in between remaining under the control of Britain). The Jews didn't really give a universal, united response to this plan. The Arabs increased their violence in the land as a universal rejection of this plan. - After WWII, Jews also became increasingly desperate and violent - due to displaced Jews now needing a place to go. Jews therefore also became violent against the British for limiting immigration to the land. - In 1947, Britain asked the newly-formed UN to help provide a solution. The UN resolution for a two-state solution passed. Jews celebrated and Arabs increased their attacks on Jews. - On the final day of the British Mandate (Friday, May 14th, 1948), Israel declared Independence at 4PM. Egyptian bombs fell on Tel Aviv around 4 hours later. The military forces of the surrounding Arab states mobilized against Israel the following day - starting a war that would last two years.

Correct. There are two narratives surrounding the "Nakba". There are many resources espousing the virtues of each narrative. The mainstream has adopted the narrative that incorrectly attributes Arab migration exclusively Israeli military intimidation. In this thread, you have also been a proponent of this false narrative.

I think that is perfectly reasonable. However, as someone with no 'skin in the game', who has followed the conflict for decades and studied the history of the region (including prior to my Christian conversion), I would struggle to come up with 10 instances of the Israel side acting in an egregious, unprovoked, atrocious manner. To be conservative, let's say I missed some - and the true number is closer to 20 or 30. There are, by contrast (and without exaggeration or hyperbole), literally thousands of documented occasions when the Arab side has committed atrocities against Israel. That is, if you list and count them, there have been more attacks against Israel than days past since Israel's declaration of independence over 70 years ago. I understand (and respect) the inclination to want to hear both sides of the conflict. But I can only do so much when the facts tell an overwhelmingly one-sided story, and the mainstream adopts and promotes a false narrative to make the opposite seem true. How many times can the supposedly 'victimized' side of a conflict choose violence over negotiations - before we can start to question their good faith in the negotiation process? Not-to-mention the regional Arab's oft-stated, unequivocal, unhidden, uncompromising goal to snuff out the existence of Israel.

With regards to the West Bank: In 1967, after the six day war (in which Israel was attacked by most of its neighbors), Israel gained control of the water supply and, unsurprisingly, favored distribution to its own civilians. Even so, for subsequent decades, the West Bank were also receiving ample water supplies for their needs from Israel (which Israel was not obligated to supply to its enemies – whose consistent stated goal is to annihilate Israel). However, since then, the needs of both Israel proper and the West Bank have increased beyond sustainability. Currently, Israel gets most of its water through desalination. Furthermore, all of Israel’s attempts to negotiate water supplies into the West Bank have been stymied by “Palestinian” rejections. For example, in 2004, Israel proposed to build a desalination plant to increase freshwater supplies to the West Bank. The proposal was rejected by the Palestinian Authority. Negotiations over water have been on-and-off depending on the state of the conflict. It is therefore disingenuous, (and simplistic and/or uninformed) to paint this as simply Israel being the big bad meanies regarding this aspect of the conflict. Negotiations have been attempted, but it makes life difficult when you have to periodically dodge an intifada (i.e. when everyone stops talking to each other for years at a time). Regarding Gaza: If only there had been a government in Gaza since 2005, receiving billions of dollars annually in international aid; i.e. a government which could have used that money to secure its own electricity and water supplies. Are you aware that in 2015, Hamas forbade their people from digging wells to get fresh water? Gaza is essentially a mini-state, under the control of an elected terrorist organization. When a state goes to war with another state, there is no reasonable obligation on the attacked state to provide their attackers with resources. I would therefore suggest that this example is a false equivalency - i.e. when compared against the consistent violent aggression against Israel; the constant threat to civilian lives; the thousands of rocket attacks, terrorist attacks (bombings, stabbings, shootings of Israeli Jews) and acts of war committed against Israel in the name of those explicitly seeking Israel’s extinction (not to mention the recent slaughter and kidnap of innocent Jews). The current state of affairs is: Israel gained control of the water supplies in Israel in 1967. Israel cannot sensibly give over control of the water supply (with the potential to compromise Israel’s access to water) to terrorist-inclined parties seeking Israel’s demise. Arabs in the West Bank consider accepting charitable solutions from Israel to be potentially compromising to their own claims over the water supply (a cynic might be inclined to assume the Arabs also gain political momentum from showing the sorrowful state of their people). Therefore, a solution needs to be negotiated – which is hard to do when no one is talking to each other. Perhaps Israel could have been more charitable with regards to supplying more water to their enemies. It’s not an ideal situation. But it’s also not as black and white as your post implies.

The true story of "Nakba". 1- Israel peacefully declared independence. That is, there was no initiation of violence on Israel's part against Arabs directly associated with Israel's declaration of independence. 2- Shortly after Israel's declaration, Arab forces commenced terrorist and military actions against Israel in an attempt to destroy Israel. Many Arabs fled this heated conflict (i.e. the conflict started by the Arab forces). 3- Israel's policy was that Israel was happy for peaceful Arabs to remain in Israel (as many do to this day). 4- Several atrocities were committed by the newly-formed, unprofessional Israel forces (i.e. against the policy of the state). Hearing of these atrocities likely prompted more Arabs to flee the conflict zone. 5- The word "Nakba" (catastrophe) was first used in relation to this conflict by an Arab academic (Constantine Zurayk). The word "Nakba" had been previously used to describe the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Zurayk used the term to criticize the catastrophic military failure of the Arab forces in Israel. That is, "Nakba" was originally intended to slander the Arab forces for the outcomes of the conflict, not Israel. This was the understood meaning of "Nakba" for decades after Israel's declaration of independence. 6- In 1988, the terrorist, Yasser Arafat, started promoting a revisionist meaning of "Nakba" - advancing the false narrative that Israel, unprovoked, drove poor, innocent, Arab civilians out of their homes as part of the process of establishing Israel's independence. This narrative is a "lie". Nevertheless, this false narrative is the one that has captured the mainstream paradigm. And this is the false narrative you are promoting in your posts.

Which of my claims pertaining to "the formation of Israel in 1948" do you think historically inaccurate? I'm happy to provide evidence supporting everything I wrote. I didn't address this part of your argument. However, if your argument is based on a demonstrably incorrect premise, your conclusions will be highly questionable. This is a disgusting and unsupported slur - a demonic lie. Israel has long had access to weapons of mass destruction (namely, nuclear weapons). Israel has therefore long had the capacity to exterminate/genocide the Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank. They have selected to not do that despite their military capacity because that is not Israel's "intended task".

This is not "truth". When the Arab extremists responded to the declaration of statehood with terrorism, all peaceful Arabs were invited by the Jewish government to stay where they were. There was no such thing as a "Palestinian" at the time. The "Palestinian" label was later adopted by the Arabs for purely political purposes - i.e. to give the false impression of indigeneity. In reality, the overwhelming majority of Arabs in Israel at the time migrated from the bankrupted Ottoman Empire in the late 1800s, or from Egypt in the 1920s. In the early 1800s, the land (called Palestine by the Romans) was mostly uninhabited. This is a lie. Jews purchased abandoned land from the diminishing Ottoman Empire and cultivated it. Arabs then moved from the north to where there were opportunities. With a few exceptions, Jews and Arabs largely coexisted peacefully in the land for the following few decades. The "colonial" narrative is antisemitic gaslighting. Only those unfamiliar with the facts would fall for such deception. Jews accepted the two-state solution offered by the United Nations in 1947 (General Assembly Resolution 181). Arabs rejected this plan in favor of terrorism. Prior to this, Arabs unanimously rejected the Peel Commision partition of the land between Arabs and Jews (1937). In 1993, the Arabs rejected the offering of a separate Arab state in the Oslo Accords. In 1998, the Arabs again rejected an attempt to reestablish the Oslo principles at Wye River. In 2000, Arabs rejected an offer (by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack) to control 10% more land than was currently under Arab authority. In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinian Authority near-total withdrawal from the West Bank, as well as the Old City part of Jerusalem. In all these instances, the Arabs rejected "a two state nation" in favor of intifada, or Jihad, or some other form of Holy war from this supposed "religion of peace". It is completely disingenuous (a.k.a. a demonstrable lie) to suggest that Israel have been the ones standing in the way of a "two state" solution. In 2005, Israel forcefully removed its own people from Gaza in order to give the Arabs a mini state under their own authority. Instead of using the opportunity and billions in Aid to establish a thriving state, they used the incoming wealth to turn Gaza into a terror state against Israel. Finally - something true. Yes - it is completely "justifiable". Sadly lacking in these protests is the demand for the Gazans to return Jewish hostages. Thereby demonstrating the innate susceptibility of these protestors to evil lies. 1 John 5:19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Israel has certainly behaved poorly in some rare instances. But you mainly have to go back 5-or-more decades to find these instances. And even then you find that almost all of these instances were, a) against state policy (e.g. local Jewish authorities being overly aggressive in contravention of the government mandates), and/or b) overwhelmingly (almost exclusively) in response to Arab-initiated aggression. By contrast, Israel has had to endure constant (near daily) attacks for over seven decades. These have included shootings, stabbings, and bombings inside Israel, as well as rocket fire from Israel's Southern and Northern borders, as well as wars initiated by the Arab states surrounding Israel, as well as a United Nations that routinely condemns Israel for responding to terror, but not the terrorist aggressors. My concern with the above quote (point 3) is that it could be perceived as spreading the accountability equally between Israel and its aggressors. That would be an astonishingly unjust misrepresentation of the history of the conflict. Neither side is completely innocent. Nevertheless, there is an overwhelmingly right side - who reserves the just right to defend its citizens, and an overtly evil side - that considers itself to have an Allah-given right to commit atrocities against Israeli civilians (and Jews in general, and westerners more broadly).

C14 is an interesting side-case to the other "radioactive dating" methods. The starting assumptions in C14 dating are far more local, and variable, and therefore far less trustworthy. However, in the short term (over a few thousand years), we sometimes have local artifacts of actual known ages - against which to calibrate this method. I too have seen many carbon dated items give 'ages' into the future. My examples have all been under 10,000 years. But my impression is that this is a common outcome. It is a shame that modern journals don't publish full data sets anymore. There is, unfortunately, a positive results bias across all of science publication. This means we no longer have access to the data needed to assess the method itself. It is only "possible" if, a) one (or more) of the assumptions failed, or b) the sample was contaminated. Sure - but is it a testable "reason"? It has become a very convenient rationalization to simply disregard disagreeable data as sample "contamination". And then, Whoa!!! - what are we left with but data sets in overwhelming agreement. Funny how that happens. And therefore gets a big green tick. And by "known dates", you mean "dates" previously established by other methods using the same set of unverifiable assumptions. But not "known" in the sense of observed rock formation. I only point this out to demonstrate that allegiance to the method forces you to apply biased assumptions and use exaggerated language. Right - so that is the propaganda. - Apart from an investigator determining that the generated 'age' "dated to an appropriate period", how do we know that an assumption is "good"? - How do we distinguish between a "good" assumption and a false positive result? - What do we do with the "millions" of data points generated by "radioactive methods" that fall outside of expectations (apart from simply not reporting them)? - What do we do about the many examples of dating methods disagreeing with each other, or disagreeing with the fossils, or even disagreeing with themselves? Regardless of how you answer the above questions, these inexorable components of the methods remain "assumptions" - i.e. unobserved, unverified, unverifiable elements which are a logical requirement of accepting supposed 'ages'. Therefore, regardless of how pompous the posturing and propaganda, no-one is rationally obligated to accept the methods as valid.

Sorry - a bit late to the party. I'd suggest that there are far greater problems with "radioactive dating" than the old earth assumption. 1- The logic of "radioactive dating" is compromised by a fundamental, necessary, irreducible reliance upon a slew of unverifiable assumptions (and yes - that includes isochron dating). If even a single one of those assumptions happens to be wrong, then any supposed "ages" generated by the methods are entirely meaningless. 2- There is already a lot of evidence that the assumptions are commonly false (e.g. by testing newly generated rock formations). In fact, older geological papers commonly use the failure of these assumptions to explain why their data didn't line up with expectations. 3- The common impression of generated 'ages' being in overwhelming agreement is a demonstrable lie. It is very easy to find examples of "ages" disagreeing with each other. Or 'ages' that are so far outside of expectation as to be automatically rejected. Or where the 'ages' are rejected because they disagreed with the assumed fossil 'ages'. I recently read an old paper that tested the same sample (a single zircon (rock crystal)) seven times using the same method, generating seven different 'ages' (with non-overlapping errors). Furthermore, these methods really should be in agreement more often - because many of the methods have been calibrated against each other by, a) rejecting 'ages' that disagree with those 'ages' generated by more trusted methods (i.e. leaving only agreed 'ages'), and b) literally calibrating one method to the other (i.e. using two methods, then using the 'age' generated by one to establish the decay rate of the other method). This practice should generate a bias towards broad agreement between the methods - which is still not achieved (despite the propaganda). Another bias is due to the detection limits of the equipment - meaning that the method chosen is determined by the expectation of the investigator. That is, only certain methods can be theoretically used for certain expected 'ages'. Therefore, it is common for investigators to only use methods they consider to be valid for the 'ages' they are expecting. I therefore don't trust "radioactive dating" whatsoever. I'm sure they can generate a relative pattern - but nothing precise enough to produce anything resembling a trustworthy 'age'.