There is a lot of discussion about the influence that Israel may have on US foreign policy and all the military aid that the US gives Israel.

There is a story from the Bible about Samson who was chained to pillars in the palace of his enemies after being robbed of his legendary strength. When his strength returned, he pulled the temple down killing himself and his tormenters.

When the Jews rebelled against the Romans in 70 AD, Rome destroyed Jerusalem, crushed the Jewish resistance and pursued the remanants to the mesa of Masada. There the Romans lay siege for months until they were able to build a ramp up the side of the mesa. When they finally breached the defenses on top of the mesa, they found that all of the rebels had committed suicide rather than be captured. A rallying cry for the Israeli army is “Never Again” which refers to what happened at Masada.

I am sure that every new US president receives a visit from an Israeli official who says something like “You can support us or leave to our fate but if they come for us and all hope is gone, we will turn the Middle East into a radioactive wasteland until the end of time.”

Since it is generally accepted that Israel has about 200 nulcear bombs and the planes to deliver them, the new president can only reply, “What do you want?”

So much of diplomacy is a game of finding the right words that are acceptable to both sides who might not completely agree. This process sometimes goes astray.

Recently, the Bush administration was trying to find a compromise between their position of never setting a specific timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and the Iraqi demand for just such a time table. This has been a major sticking point (not the only one) in the drafting of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq to replace the expiring UN mandate for the US presence in Iraq. The Bush administration has been pressing hard for a SOFA by the end of July. The Iraqis have been understanably reluctant to sign any long term agreement with an administration that will be gone in a few months.

Some genius in our state department finally came up with a phrase that was apparently acceptable to both sides, the now famous “time horizon for aspirational goals”. Isn’t that a great bit of polysyllabic garbage! I guess the intent was to craft a linguistuc Rorschach test that would be seen differently by different people. For a day or two, it seemed that the Bush people and the Iraqis were on the same page (even though it was not clear which page that was) but then came the al Malaki interview in the German paper, Der Spiegel.

Al Malaki remarked that he thought that the Obama proposal for a US withdrawal in 16 months was in the right range. He was then careful to say that he did not mean to endorse Obama as a presidential candidate. The next day, the Iraqis released a statement that al Malaki had been mistranslated and misunderstood. The problem with that is that al Malaki’s own translator provided Der Spiegel with the translation. Then the US said that there was not going to be a firm date for withdrawal and that conditions on the ground would determine when we withdrew. In other words, the same position that Bush has always taken. Following that, a senior Iraqi official stated that a firm date was important to the Iraqis. So much for the magic of the State department wordsmith.

I don’t like to be cynical (well, that’s not completely true) but I have to admit that this whole oil price rollercoaster is making me suspicious. If you were in a high government position and you wanted to make a lot of money quickly, is there some way that you could exploit your position? How about this? The oil market is nervous so you make a belligerent public statement about an enemy in the Middle East. The price of oil jumps $8 a barrel. You have used the low margin of $8 a barrel on a futures contract to tie up some oil futures. When the price spikes, you sell and double your money. Then you make a concilliatory statement and the price comes back down. Then your enemy does the same thing. And they double their money. Then someone in the US state department does the same thing and they double their money. Maybe I am just paranoid but I have to wonder…..

One of the problems that I have in understanding many religious traditions is that such a great gulf of time separates their origins from our present time. The people who witnessed the birth of an ancient religion saw the world very differently than we do. It is difficult for us to understand how they might have experienced the events that have come down to us through the centuries.

The idea that Jesus served as the scapegoat for the whole human race is the center piece of Christianity. What did this mean to the Jewish people of the 1st century?

The scapegoat was a Jewish tradition where they symbolically put the sins of the community on a young and innocent goat or lamb. Then they sacrificed the animal and offered the blood to Yahweh to wash away their sins. The story told in the Christian bible is that Jesus voluntarily went to the cross in sacrifice so his blood would atone for our sins.

In the early part of the 4th century CE, Arius, a presbyter from Alexandria promoted the idea that Jesus was human and was inhabited by the spirit of God. The spirit of God left him as he hung on the cross and he died as a man to atone for our sins. One of the things that Jesus is reported to have said on the cross is “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” which is Aramaic for “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” This makes sense in the context of the scapegoat.

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