Posts in Israel
Words Worth Noting - June 26, 2025

“Running along both sides of the building’s arcade, a series of verses disparaged the doctrine of the Trinity. ‘The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was only a messenger of God.’ This was not merely to reopen theological debates that Christians had thought settled centuries before, but to condemn the entire New Testament, Gospels and all, as a fabrication. Squabbles among those who had written it, so the Dome of the Rock sternly declared, had polluted the original teachings of Jesus. These, like the revelations granted prophets before him, Abraham, and Moses, and David, had originally been identical to those for claimed by Muhammad. There was only the one true deen, the one true expression of allegiance to God, and that was submission to him: in Arabic, islam. Here was a doctrine with which ‘Muslims’ – those who practice islam – were already well familiar. It was not only to be found emblazoned on buildings. Most of the verses on the Dome of the Rock derived from a series of revelations that Muhammad’s followers believed had been given him by none other than the angel Gabriel. These, assembled after his death to form a single ‘recitation’ or qur’an, constituted for his followers what Jesus represented to Christians: an intrusion into the mortal world, into the sublunar, into the diurnal, of the divine.... This gave its pronouncement on Christians, as on everything else, an awful and irrevocable force.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

Words Worth Noting - May 2, 2025

“A remarkable quirk of our current moment in history is how hard people work to assure themselves and others that those they disagree with have no valid point – nor even a perspective of their own. Ever since the October 7 attacks on Israel last year, I’ve tried my best to adhere to a very simple rule: my time and energy are finite. I have demands upon both. I’m not going to spend a single moment of time or calorie of energy trying to change anyone’s mind about the situation in the Middle East. I’m not going to argue or reply to anyone who disagrees with me, beyond a polite acknowledgment. There is simply no value for me in a debate. That being said, I have been genuinely surprised over these last almost 12 months by how little even Israel’s many harsh critics seem to value understanding the Israeli perspective.”

Matt Gurney on The Line October 3, 2024 [in places frankly he flirts with relativism, but you can understand a differing point of view without succumbing to mental or moral paralysis]

What if we had good, clear, bold policies?

In my latest Epoch Times column I urge people to put aside small-minded, defeatist, timid claims that practically speaking Canada can only have the bad muddled policies it currently does, and write down what they really think is wrong and what they really think would fix it.