A R C H I V E S

JUNE 2005

June 15, 2005
Fifty Years War

Above: Jordanian artillery shells Jerusalem, 1948

Last month, in honor of Israel’s Independence Day, our family watched a videotape of a documentary, “The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs.” We’re really glad we did, because it re-ignited our zeal for praying for Israel. This documentary aired a few years ago on PBS. PBS, like other networks, usually has a hard time properly presenting anything Judeo-Christian, but this documentary was a notable exception (most of the time, anyway). It covers Israel’s struggle for her very existence with a host of interviews with leading participants, soldiers, politicians, and diplomats, on both sides. These included Abba Eban, Ariel Sharon, Jimmy Carter, Yitzhak Shamir, Jordan’s King Hussein, Henry Kissinger, and Joseph Sisco (to name a few). These insider accounts were what made this production so interesting and historically sound. There are two lessons to be learned from this documentary.

1. A cycle of Arab action (attack), and Israeli reaction (defense), becomes evident, providing a refreshing contrast from the typical media picture of “Israeli aggression.”
2. The preservation of the Jewish state, surrounded by neighbors committed to its destruction, clearly evidences God’s Providential protection to anyone with “eyes to see.”

Of course, the program had its faults. There were times when the narrator tended toward an immoral “moral equivalency” attitude regarding Israelis and terrorists, but fortunately the narrator had a very limited part (merely filling in a little background between interview segments). And the section covering the Oslo accords negatively presented the more conservative Israelis as “mistrustful.” (Would you trust Yasser Arafat?) But, considering PBS’s track record, these were relatively “minor” problems. The great thing about presenting this history in the words of the participants is that the overall effect actually undermined these and other misrepresentations of the Israel situation. Television producers rarely craft accurate history. It’s nice to see an exception.


Blogosphere
Internet blogging is a new, and burgeoning, phenomenon. This came to the fore in the elections this past November, with a multitude of bloggers of every political persuasion posting their commentaries – and being noticed. Matt Drudge, known to some as a “founding father” of blogging, got 1 million visitors to his site on election day. That was about 30,000 more visitors than the New York Times had on their website, according to a BizReport article. The appeal of blogs is that they are (ideally) an engaging format from which to get information and commentaries out to everyone who comes looking. We like the idea of blogging for that very reason. We’re new to this world of “blogosphere,” but we originally got the idea from the blogs that we (various members of the Weinberger family) read regularly or semi-regularly.

First is Doug’s Blog, the weblog of Doug Phillips (president of Vision Forum). He started blogging more than two years ago (in May 2003), and has made a very interesting blog talking about everything from personal family happenings, to speaking engagements, to producing his documentary on Iwo Jima, to national politics.

Next is Ken Ham’s blog. Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis started blogging just about a month ago, and he hasn’t missed a day without posting something interesting related to creation, Biblical authority, and his many interesting activities speaking, teaching, and being interviewed on these topics!

I don’t want to give you too many links (it’s hard to know where to start!) But I’ll just mention a few others we have enjoyed. Howard Phillips, father of Doug Phillips, has fascinating behind-the-scenes perspectives on current happenings, gleaned from years of activity in the political field, and he just started a new Constitutional Government Blog. George Grant has informative historical perspective on current events (and he’s also the author of one of my favorite biographies, Carry A Big Stick) on his “Grantian” blog. And my friend Josh Wheeler just started blogging about what’s happening with his audio-visual business, Mantle Productions.

Posted by Lael Weinberger