To:

Zcom_simple
Home » Z Blogs » Michael McGehee's Blog » The Pathology of Apologetics

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

Amys_pic_of_me

Michael McGehee's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/truthaddict
Bio: (More)

All McGehee Blogs

Recent McGehee Content

Znetarticle_icon ZNet Articles
Zmagarticle_icon ZMag Articles
Zblogpost_icon Blog Posts

The Pathology of Apologetics

By Michael McGehee at Dec 31, 2008

PDF Version

Printer Friendly Version
Change Text Size a- | A+

The meaning of the word apologia is to defend or justify a belief.

I am thinking about a popular and malignant statement that is used to either justify what Israel is doing in Gaza or how this statement is used to suppress any attempt to forge sympathy for the Palestinians.

"They've always been fighting."

"This is all they know."

"It's been like this since biblical days."

And so on and so on and so on.

Not-so-well-hidden in these statements I keep hearing is plentiful ignorance and an extra serving of bigotry. As if all the other cultures and regions of the world have not been cursed with near constant fighting. These claims aren't worth the weight of air that carries them to our ears.

First, the state of Israel has not always been there. It was created sixty years ago and was built on the dispossession of indigenous inhabitants. Folks should read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe or the recent article by Nir Rosen, Israel, Gaza, and the Logic of Colonial Power.

Second, this is not symmetrical warfare by any means. Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinian territories and has been subjecting the occupied to brutal punishment and living conditions for more than forty years now.

This current escalation in fighting is not about the occupied lawfully resisting with rocket fire - and per the UN Charter the Palestinians are justified in their resistance (whether it is productive is another discussion) - but about daily abuses the Palestinians have endured. It has also been revealed that Israel began planning this operation just six months ago. The cease fire has been honored much more by the Hamas-led government than anything Israel has honored. We cannot forget this. But when the brutal blockade has blocked food, medicine and fuel from those already living in squalid conditions and when the oppressor is being openly supported with military, economic and political aid by the U.S. then honestly: What choice do the Palestinians have? Roll over and die?

I suspect many who use the excuses above know what is being done is wrong and are opting for the easy way to avoid the obvious. I also suspect that religious convictions are another factor behind this intentional ignorance. To recognize that the state of Israel is an aggressor would be a serious blow to theistic dogma, which of course it is.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (0)

Loading_border