Mark Armstrong’s Weekly News Review – 14 August 2020

Greetings from Tyler,

It’s been ages since we’ve had even the slightest whiff of good news.  But in the last 24 hours something has happened that the media has no choice but to tell us.  Within a week or so the mainstream will come up with some line that makes the new relationship between Israel and the United Arab Emirites a terrible development.  But for now, they’re back on their heels.  The media has been so busy preaching masks, droplets, social distancing and the necessity of closing everything indefinitely, the unbelievable news out of the Middle East has caught them completely off guard.

For one thing it’s destroyed a long-held and much loved argument that Israel could never have peaceful relations with Arab countries unless it satisfied Palestinian demands, which has proven to be an impossibility.  A major lynch pin of Middle East peace has just been established without their input or approval.  Palestinian terrorist organizations, long pitied and excused for their violent hatreds by mainstream media, are apoplectic.

Get this, from an AP article trying to grapple with the impossible development.  “I never expected this poison dagger to come from an Arab country,” Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and veteran negotiator said Friday.  “You are rewarding aggression…You have destroyed, with this move, any possibility of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”  The Palestinian Authority says the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is a “betrayal of Jerusalem, the al Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian cause.”  Such a statement is designed to generate anger and outrage throughout the Muslim world, and that now includes Europe.  Terrorist attacks, demonstrations and riots all over Europe wouldn’t surprise anybody.

Since the onset of the Trump presidency, we’ve heard claims and hopeful sentiments that there would be progress toward peace between Israel and the Arab world.  Those claims have been dismissed and ridiculed in the press and most people, having lived through the mindlessness of terrorism and enraged rhetoric over the decades, were quick to dismiss the prospect of such a game-changing development.  But it’s not exactly peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  There will be no peace as long as Israel exists, and that’s a fact.  But there will be direct flights between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv, and that is huge.  Most know that there are many Arab nations that will not allow entry from anyone who has an Israeli stamp in their passport.  The Palestinians are furious that any peace progress is being made without their approval.

One of the great concerns of the Obama era was that the prisons would be emptied, and violent criminals would be unleashed to prey on American citizens.  It is being accomplished to a degree under the greatly hyped fear generated by the Chinese virus.  It just wouldn’t do to have these poor criminals get sick.  So they’ve let them out by the tens of thousands.  Then we’re left to wonder how there could be so many conscienceless criminals running amok in American cities.

The lead prosecutor in Chicago is reported to have dropped hundreds of cases against rioters and looters.  She just decided that it wouldn’t be right to prosecute people that do the dirty work in pursuit of “racial justice.”  They were “non-violent” after all.  It’s easy for them to be non-violent when nobody gets in their way.  Driving cars through plate glass windows so the mob can steal everything?  Yeah, that’s non-violent according to big city prosecutors.  Let those who are pursuing “racial justice” take what they want.  It’s only fair, according to those responsible for preserving law and order.  So those who’ve looted, started fires and destroyed Chicago’s most celebrated shopping district are able to liquidate their stolen designer merchandise without much concern.  As we all know, according to their twisted logic, it’s all that racist Trump’s fault anyway.

Once again, the looting has been justified by the black lives movement.  It’s just reparations anyway, they argue.  It was racist for those stores to be doing business in the first place, and it’s perfectly justifiable that those luxury outlets be looted and trashed by the mob.  You probably saw the parking lots full of trash and wondered how the scene was created.  Strewn all over the parking lot was the packaging from all the merchandise they stole.  You can watch the video of looters running in an out through the broken windows of Nordstrom’s and Coach retail outlets.  But they won’t be prosecuted because you see, they were only pursuing “racial justice.”  The nation owed the thugs everything they took, and the incredible mess they made.  Capitalist America should just calm down and realize it got what it had coming, according to spokespeople for the “revolution.”

The mainstream media may not admit that we’re in the middle of an evolving revolution against western civilization, but that doesn’t change much.  It’s not a surprise that the media, large corporations and socialist government officials are demanding that everyone just quietly go out of business.  But it is shocking when those who promised to protect our freedoms join with the lovers of mandates and issue disastrous proclamations with the threat of punishments for those who dare cling to Constitutional guarantees.

It seems that God may have revoked our protections, and it wouldn’t be the first time in history.  Israel and Judah were punished with captivity, even physically removed from their homeland.  America has collectively knelt on one knee in acquiescence to one heinous sin after another.  There’s no need to list them.  You know what they are.  Our society has relegated the sentiments and the warnings in God’s Word to the trash bin, deeming them unworthy even for discussion in the “woke” atmosphere.  They’ve re-defined what is righteousness, and we may well pay a huge price for remaining quiet.

Mark Armstrong