I am not sure if you saw this or not.  But I ran across an article discussing the fact that Reuters, the well-known news service, modified pictures of the Gaza Flotilla episode when Israeli forces stopped the boats headed to Gaza.  Reuters apparently removed weapons in the pictures such as knives in the hands of the activists on the boats as they attempted to fight the Israelis who had boarded.  Why would Reuters do such a thing?  Apparently they are not just reporting the news.  They are trying to manipulate opinion in a direction against Israel by portraying the activists as more helpless than they actually were.  If you are interested in checking out the photos, go to this link:  http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=164073.  The article is entitled “Reuters cropping knives out of flotilla photos?”

Dispensational theology involves in some measure a belief in Christian Zionism (Israel has a right to its land in the Middle East).  The converse is not always true.  Not all Christian Zionists are dispensationalists.  In recent times, dispensationalists have been accused of influencing American foreign policy in the Middle East in a bad direction (pro-Israel).  Strangely, at the same time it has been claimed that dispensationalism is in serious decline within evangelicalism.  In any case, dispensationalists are overwhelmingly pro-Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

That position was put to the test (as it is from time to time) in the recent controversial event of Israel’s military stopping and boarding the so-called Gaza Flotilla which allegedly carried humanitarian aid to Gaza, the territory controlled by Hamas.  Unfortunately, in the confrontation that occurred, nine people were killed.  For those who love Israel there is an ethical dilemma.  Was Israel wrong here as a matter of policy?  Are the nation’s leaders at fault for misreading the situation?  Were the flotilla activists “peace activists” or were they (at least partly) jihadists taking military supplies to Gaza?  In actuality, there appeared to be little in the way of weapons found (although there were some).  But do the past attempts at smuggling weapons into Gaza help justify the Israeli blockade and concern about these kinds of things?  Read the rest of this entry »