Davos - where the men who got the world in a mess talk about sorting it out - in style

Aye, the lunatics have well and truly taken over the asylum!

Methodist Church gives government a hiding over gambling proposals

A welcome statement from the Methodist Church concerning gambling proposals by out government - yes the same men in suits who are currently bringing us mass unemployment.


In a submission to the Department for Culture Media and Support (DCMS), the British Methodist Church has criticised the Government for ‘irresponsible’ and ‘potentially dangerous’ gambling legislation proposals.

The DCMS is accused of giving in to pressure from the gambling industry, concerned more with the profits of gambling operators than with protection of vulnerable people.

David Bradwell, Public Issues Policy Adviser, said; ‘The commitment to proper industry regulation and to the protection of those most vulnerable is at the heart of the Gambling Act and yet our calls for caution and proper analysis have been ignored by DCMS. It’s time that the victims of problem gambling were put before profits.’

David said he was ‘appalled’ by plans to increase slot machine stakes and prize limits even more than originally suggested just a few months ago. DCMS is proposing to double stakes and prizes for Category C slot machines, commonly found in pubs and clubs around the UK. This would see maximum stakes go up to £1 and maximum prizes to £70. At a time of increasing poverty and unemployment, the maximum prize for a pub fruit machine will be higher than weekly benefit levels.

‘Gaming machines are one of the most addictive forms of gambling,’ continues David. ‘This move would mean that every pub can become a hard gambling environment where large sums of money can be won, or more likely lost, in a very short space of time. This is a great deal for the gambling industry, and a poor deal for everyone else.

‘For such a change to be made in a time of recession, when most people have less money is at best unwise and at worst immoral.’


COMMENT: I am not sure who gets the greater quantity of my contempt, the parasitic industry which preys on vulnerable people or a government who allows them to do it. Neither are worth my spit yet in a way each richly deserves it. I am at present aware of a family who are going through Hell because a very young man has got thoroughly addicted to gambling. And believe you me, specialist help is not easily available in these parts.

The Methodist statement is correct. I just feel the urge to pepper it with swear words because this allowing a vile industry to wreck lives makes me want to scream with rage. Those who support these nasty proposals must not be allowed to forget the evil they are doing!

Chasing the devil away with a fart

Just fascinated to read this piece of enlightenment from that great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther.

But I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, “Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?”

Dear reader, have you ever employed this form of spiritual warfare. If not, why not?

Holocaust Memorial Day

I recommend this article by Rabbi Jonathan Sachs addressing the question of Where was God in the Holocaust

Here is a taster;

People sometimes ask me: where was God in the Holocaust? But the real question is: where was humanity? God was in a voice that has been speaking since man first walked on earth. In the words, Thou shalt not kill. In the words, Do not oppress a stranger. In the words, Your brother's blood cries to me from the ground. God wasn't silent in the Holocaust. God wasn't silent in Rwanda. But when God speaks and we don't listen, even God can't save us from ourselves. And still we aren't listening. Preachers of hate are still pouring out their poison, demonising their opponents, inciting their followers to violence.

Normal service resumed

Well, life is back to normal after almost a week away from blogging. My absence has been due to being rather busy with pastoral work added to by certain other factors. On Monday my car blew a gasket and reduced my wealth by about £800 - oops! I have also been in three pantomime performances of Babes in the Wood at Northam Methodist Church. Today I have been preaching without script. This morning at Bideford Methodist Church we looked at the call for change as illustrated by story of Jonah and the calling of disciples. This evening I preached at the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service which was held at Bideford Methodist Church. It was well attended which was pleasing.

Next week looks set to be more normal other than a trip to the Christian Resources Exhibition - more about that later in the week. So blogging will be back on track hopefully.

Bishop Gene Robinson opens Obama inaugural events with prayer

A gracious beginning to the week's events to celebrate the inauguration of President Obama by Bishop Gene Robinson.






HAT TIP: Opinionated Old Fart

A sermon on Obama's inauguration

With the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA drawing near, I would draw your attention to a sermon by the excellent Katherine Willis Pershey.


Anyhow here it is! Well worth the quarter of hour listening that the video requires!

Listening to God - A sermon for Epiphany 2 based on 1 Samuel 3: 1 - 10 and John 1: 43 - 51

It was at the Methodist Church Ministerial Selection Committee where I found myself facing a barage of questions. Desperately trying to explain myself I found myself talking ten to a dozen. But then I made a mistake by referring to the importance of listening to others. A sharp and rather daunting looking member of the panel raised his head and slowly said to me;

"I shouldn't think you stop talking enough to do much listening."

Ouch! For a moment or two I was floored. That is until I managed to ignore the question and resumed doing what I was most comfortable doing - namely more talking!

And yet listening is so important. If we do not listen to God, we have no good news to be shaped by or to share. If we do not listen to others we leave them feeling that their feelings are not important and we fail to get to know them.

Listening is very much a part of today's scripture readings. Our Old Testament reading has reminded us of that venerable judge, Samuel. Samuel was a man of high renown whose story is intertwined with the stories of those memorable Kings, Saul and David. He was very much of the Old Testament prophetic tradition. And by the time of the exile when the two books of Samuel were probably completed, he was doubtless remembered as one of the great men of the past.

And more than that, he was capable of being relevant to the world that then existed a good few centuries after his lifetime. Because the literature produced during the time after Jerusalem's destruction and the carrying off of Israel's elite to over half a century of exile in Babylon, was a literature that sought to comprehend the disaster that had happened. And the answer that such literature came to was that Israel had failed to behave as God's people over a prolonged period of time.

Now the story we have heard concerning the calling of Samuel became very important. For it relates to apast low point in religion. Even the family of the priest Eli, were behaving in a throughly irreligious and even debauched way. And Eli was failing to stop them.

Enter Samuel, who had been dedicated to God by his long barren mother Hannah. The lad would seemd to have grown in devotion to God. But now he hears God calling him. On three occasions he thinks it is Eli but each time Eli assures him that he has not called. On the third occasion, Eli tells him that it must be God who is calling Samuel and that next time Samuel should answer;

"Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

And so that is the response that Samuel gives on the fourth occasion he hears God's call. But what he hears is no tidings of great joy but a distrubing message of judgement on Eli and his family.

So listening to God is a mighty fine thing but this story serves to tell us that not all we hear from God will be comfortable for us. It may change both us and our experience of life.

From the gospel reading, we have heard of a man named Nathaniel who was changed by listening to Jesus. Nathaniel is a very Jewish name unlike the names of others in John's narrative whose names point to the influence of Greek culture.

Anyhow, Nathaniel's friend Philip tells him about Jesus. To Philip, Jesus is the one to whom the Law and the Prophets have pointed. But Nathaniel is certainly not easily impressed. Indeed, you may get the impression that Nathaniel is a man dominated by his prejudices - a sort of Jewish Alf Garnett. And we get a taste of that when his first reaction to hearing of Jesus of Nazareth is a somewhat bigoted response of;

"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?"

Now he may have had good reason to feel negatively to mention of Nazareth. But he is still caught in the utter grimness of prejudice which is a throughly destructive quality. And it is the miracle of the dialogue, both recorded and unrecorded, that the walls that Nathaniel has erected come tumbling down. Now in a prelude to that climax of John's gospel in which Thomas who has doubted the news of resurrection, cries out;

"My Lord and my God!"

Nathaniel makes the startling confession;

"Rabbi you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel!"

What a change! The bearer of prejudice now sees the Nazarene who will confront prejudice as the "Son of God" and the "King of Israel." And Jesus promises him that he will see much greater things for in what is an echo of that story of Jacob's ladder, heaven will be opened and angels of God will ascend and descend on the Son of Man.

So what do these stories tell us in Alwington as we come for our Covenant Service? I think the common theme is that we need to be listening for God in our lives. One of our problems today is that we are low on expectancy of God having something to say to us. Perhaps our age is a bit like that in which Samuel grew up - an age in which words from the Lord were rare. And if that is the case the temptation to rely on our wisdom or the norms of the day become high. And yet as the story of Samuel reminds us, in such times God does not cease to be lovingly concerned for us. At the times when we shut God out, we need once more to hear the challenge to be alert to the callings of God. And ready to respond with a;

"Speak for your servant is listening!"

The message Samuel would hear would be unsettling and disturbing yet hear it he must if he is to be a true follower of God. And the word of God continues today to challenge us and to move us forwards. Nathaniel learnt that he would have to see the world in a very different way. Staunchness would not be enough especially when it was combined with a harsh exclusiveness. Instead, he would need to learn of the generous and inclusive love that would be at the heart of the ministry of Jesus. New vision would be called for.

As people of faith, we can never be static. We need to urgently hear God's word for today. So often we have fallen into thinking of prayer as being about our talking to or even at God with our agendas. How much we need to realise that at the heart of prayer is our listening for God to speak to us those things that we need to hear. For surely we can never be useful followers of the Jesus way if we block out his voice by our cacophonies of noise and busyness.

In just a few minutes we shall renew our Covenant with God in the tradition of generations of Methodists and indeed nowadays of other Christians. As we hear God, we hear the voice of compassion for all humanity. We hear our calling to serve him and his promise that he is with us to the very end of the age. For in serving the God revealed to us in Christ, we are not left alone as orphans. On the contrary we are privileged to share in the divine work with divine help and empowering.

It is because we know that God is good and ever for us that we are able to enter the journey of faith, a journey with surprises and much that we need to learn and apply. God walks with us as we seek to embrace a world of hurt with the love and grace that is the gift of God. But as with any journey we need guidance. And to receive guidance we need to not just hear but to listen.

So on this Covenant Sunday may we cultivate the practice of listening to God so that we might learn how to truly live for God.

George W Bush - One in a million

It'll be a while before we see his likes in power again = thankfully!

"With God" - A Covenant Sunday sermon based on Mark 1: 4 - 11 and Romans 12: 1 - 2

And so today we gather once more to renew our Covenant with God. With the great Christmas celebrations behind us we offer ourselves to be God's people for today.

But what does it really mean? I guess that today we live in a world in which we are all to easily tempted to identify ourselves as much by what we are against as what we are for. A few days off sick has reminded me all too powerfully of that as I have watched the dreadful images coming out of the Gaza. The Israeli Government and Hamas are now as indeed has long been the case, rather quick to tell us how iniquitous the other is. And yet as both display a callous indifference to suffering, they might find a look in the mirror might show them how they have become as those whom they profess to hate.

Sometimes Christianity like the other great faiths, has allowed itself to be identified by the things that it opposes. This causes a life enhancing faith to be distorted. Whilst not without sympathy for the total abstinence movement, I worry as a Methodist when more than a few people see that as the defining feature of Methodism. Likewise as I have watched the debates over sexuality in recent years, there seems to be to be a great danger that some are allowing being a follower of Christ to be assessed on how zealously we put up walls of exclusion.

Now to be the big issue of faith for me has not been about the existence of God. Rather it has been about the nature of God. And that to me is one of the joys of the Covenant service. For this is a service which proceeds from an appreciation of the generous love of God which embraces us in a manner that is not dependent on our deserving it. Its message is that God loves us whether or not we chose to respond to the invitation to enter into the Covenant. Quite simply God is for us.

That is very much a theme of our gospel reading. Mark's gospel has no nativity to point to Jesus being the annointed one. Instead he introduces Jesus as one who like so many other God seekers is baptised by John in the River Jordan, only to adopted by God as the annointed one he comes out of the waters of baptism. Yet this Annointed One will continue be alongside in solidarity with struggling humanity not just at baptism but throughout his ministry. And the voice from heaven declares God's pleasure at this Jesus who is with us, who is for us.

So when in a few moments we respond with those daunting words of the Covenant;

"I willingly offer
all I have and am
to serve you
as and where you choose"

we make those words to the God whose love and grace are unconditional. And that means that these words are not a leap in the dark but the expression of a well founded intention to live for God in dependence upon God.

Now, at this stage the sermon needs to be rescued from being a tad too comfortable. And to such an end, we can with confidence look to St Paul. St Paul could never be accused of being sweet and cuddly. He was a rather uncomfortable figure in his day which goes some way to explaining the slanders directed at him, the beatings inflicted on him and the imprisonments he suffered. And believe you me, he remains an uncomfortable figure for us today. Why? In part at least this is because, he suggests that being a follower of Christ involves reponding positively to a challenge to let our faith change the way in which we see our world and the callings on our lives. To Paul being a follower of Christ means entering into a new vision, a vision that is for example based on a love for those who seem to be the least lovely, a vision that sees love breaking the cycles of hatred, a vision of a kingdom of God which is radically different from the ways of empire. Yes,for Paul being a follower of Christ entails being caught up in new vision which at times involves being at odds with life denying realities to which the world slavishly becomes enslaved.

But of course, in living for God, we face as the Covenant Service itself reminds us, very different services for God. And you yourselves, will find that for no two people is the life of discipleship identical.

For some of you, the calling may be for services within the church. Soon I shall be begging for at least one new steward. I have no doubt that this church would benefit from worship leaders or the circuit from new local preachers. And given the host of rotas and jobs needing doing in this church,the list could go on just like this sermon is in danger of doing.

For some of you it could be that the calling is to be involved with church based social action - the Street Pastors which Duncan has spoken to us about, the Winter Warmers scheme or the Learning Disability Club.

For some of you, the calling could be to take a part in local community activity or to enter the campaigning and political arenas.

And on and on we could go. But I know that some will say that all of this is fine for those able to be active. What of those who are feeling their age or infirmity? Well, doing is not all that matters. Although it might go against my self interest as the minister of this church, I feel I must say that being is even more important than doing. And age and infirmity are never barrier to praying and then to encouraging!

Ultimately what this service is about quite simply this. God is good and God is for us. God's love is for us even if we walk out rather than stay to make our Covenant. But God graciously invites us to share in the divine purposes by following through this Covenant in which we respond to God's grace by offering ourselves to be Christ followers who long to bring God's love and grace into our world, even our small corner.

Wisdom from an Israeli veteran

I strongly recommend anyone anting further understanding of current events in Gaza to read this article by Avi Shlaim.


The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.


"An eye for an eyelash" - that sums up the disproportinality of this barbarism!

I'm back

Well first of all thanks for good wishes in the past few days. Yesterday I resumed full working. I wait some test reults but am optimistic that the kidney stone episode is behind me.

This weekend is dominated by last rehearsals for a pantomime in Northam the following weekend in which I shall be the dame - more on that next week. I also am beginning Covenant services and have a huge backlog of pastoral work etc to put right. So blogging will be slow but by nomeans will it be nonexistent.

Out of action

This weekend there will be no sermons posted on this site. The reason is simply that I am unwell with a kidney stone problem which has meant that I haven't completed writing them today and I will not be leading worship tomorrow.

the problem began on New Years Eve and came on in full force this morning. I spent nearly two hours at the local hospital being well cared for by the locum GP service. The pain was such that I was physically sick. An injection eased the pain and now I am on pain killers - indeed I think I need one in the next few minutes as the pain is coming back. I have been told that will need to be admitted to hospital if it doesn't come out the proper way. So this evening I am feeling sore and planning what for me will be a very early night in bed for non recreational purposes!

I had looked forward to this Sunday. In the morning I was planning to speak about Epiphany whilst in the evening I was going to explores what the story of Herod massacring the innocents says to us today - Israel and Hamas were going to figure in that one! Anyhow when I'm better I'll post a reflection around these themes.

With only 2 weeks to go before treading the boards as a pantomime dame, I feel that all of this could not have come at a worse time. 2009 - I'm sick of it!