I have just had a talk with the head of Canadian Jews for Peace in the Middle East. She is very upset that the Israeli government is displacing 40,000 Bedouin Israelis from land they have lived on for centuries, and whose ownership of that land as private property was recognized by both the British and the Ottoman empires.

Now, these bedouin are Israeli citizens. Let us be clear on that. The land they live on is owned by them. But their land and their homes are being taken away by government fiat.

Why?

This is nothing to reply to, just a little story I remembered. I've never quite been sure what to make of it.

An old friend of mine is a Japanese-Canadian who, with his family, was banished to an internment camp in the second world war. I've seen pictures of the camp, and he's described it to me. It was terribly bleak.

I asked him, "What did your parents do there to pass the years?"

He grinned. "Mostly they went to the United Church."

Beyond Diversity:

Courageous Conversations about Race

A two-day seminar hosted by The United Church of Canada

and presented by the Pacific Educational Group

When:                       April 16 - 17, 2013

Yesterday on FaceBook, I saw a line  drawing. I was to find the word hidden. Sorry, I can't post it. I must learn to do that.

The word that was there was LIAR written and incorporated in a man's profile.

Cute ,I thought. I shared it.

Immediately, someone called it a racist picture because it reminded them of a black man, a liar, Barak Obama.

I did not  connect that meaning. Others said they did not either.

Here is my preliminary draft of my story and sermon for Sunday, Oct 28.  It is one of my longest.

October 28, 2012: Truth and Peace (Job)

Story: John Newton

See "Beyond Diversity" blog

Online Registration Now Available!

www.gifttool.com/registrar/ShowEventDetails?ID=1955&EID=13818

I am a fan of older literature, much of it from the Victorian period through to the "pulp" era of the 1920s and 1930s. One issue that reading a lot of this material presents is that the attitudes and mores are often at loggerheads with those of today. Ideas that would instantly raise concerns about racism or sexism if a writer used them today abound even in the more progressive writers of the time.

My sons (14 years old) are big on computer games. There are so many of theose games out there. And you know what? Almost all of them are about war and killing.

Then I check out the surviving comic books, often now coming out in book format. Just finished one called Commandos. It's second world war. the Japanese are yellow-bellies, little brown men, cowards, racially inferior.

Like most of us, I guess, I grew up in a world in which we can readily see evil, and identify pure evil as a cause of events.

Specifically, I grew up to see Hitler and Stalin and Mao as evil, and the terrible destruction of life that arose from them as something caused by their evil. I still think they're evil. But the second part of that sentence may be simplistic.

It may be that Hitler and Stalin and Mao were the norms for our new world - not exceptions, but terrible examples of a new normalcy.