Category: Religion

Where will Palestinian and other migrants who’ve settled in Vatican City move now that Pope Francis has died?

by philg

Pope Francis was celebrated by U.S. media primarily for two positions:

  • it is immoral for a country to refuse to accept welfare-dependent migrants
  • the fighting in Gaza is the only war to which anyone need pay attention and Israel is the evil aggressor behind the fighting (although any Pope is infallible, Israelis would probably take issue with this and point out that Arabs started the overall war in 1948 and the Gazans started the most recent battles by invading Israel and taking civilians hostage on October 7, 2023)

Presumably the Vatican, therefore, under Pope Francis’s direction, took in at least thousands of migrants with a special emphasis on Palestinians (built up with Chinese-style apartment blocks, Vatican City’s 121 acres should be able to hold at least 50,000 cherished migrants). Where will these folks go now that Pope Francis is gone and his replacement might not share Francis’s love for the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

The Catholic Church did not take sides in World War II (i.e., it was neutral regarding the policies and actions of Nazi Germany), but Pope Francis was quick to weigh in the Hamas side of the recent fighting in Gaza. Example from state-sponsored NPR:

See also this January 2025 Catholic World Report:

In a decree issued last month by the Holy See, the monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate the strict security regulations of Vatican City have been considerably increased.

The document, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, provides for monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (about $10,200 to $25,700) and prison sentences ranging from one to four years.

These fines will apply especially to those who enter by means of violence, threats, or deception, bypassing border controls or security systems. In addition, those who enter with expired permits or do not meet the established requirements will receive administrative sanctions ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 euros (about $2,060 to $5,145).

Full post, including comments

Our Easter Experience

by philg

About half of the people we encountered today (in the neighborhood, at the Norton Museum of Art, at Tropical Smokehouse) wished us a “Happy Easter”. It wasn’t so happy for the turkey whose breast I roasted in the LG steam oven (not very steamy, actually), but the kids enjoyed their Thanksgiving-inspired Easter dinner.

A Louise Nevelson is one of the highlights of the sculpture garden for me.

Back in the neighborhood (let’s hope that our kids don’t demand this level of signage!):

Easter should be more important than Christmas, I think, even for non-Christians, and yet a lot more effort is made to communicate the Christmas story.

Full post, including comments

Grab your masks for an anti-Zionist Passover Seder

by philg

Flash back to 2024 when the Western Washington University Jewish Voice for Peace (unclear if there are any actual Jews involved in JVP; major funding is from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Lannan Foundation, neither of which seem to have any Jewish heritage) invited everyone who hates Israel and loves wearing masks (“required”) to a Seder starting at 5:30 pm (Jewish law says to start at 8:13 pm, sunset in Bellingham, Washington).

Readers: What are you doing for Passover this year? I’m going to join a medical school professor and his kids. Maybe masks will be required since, as an MD and PhD, he personifies The Science.

Full post, including comments

Eid Mubarak from Apple

by philg

Eid al-Fitr is now a “US Holiday” according to Apple:

(Separately, nobody can write precisely precisely?)

How about some new phrases, e.g., “As American as Eid al-Fitr”?

(Eid al-Fitr is not on the analogous Google Calendar “Holidays in the United States”. Hatefully, neither Apple nor Google includes International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31 every year) on the list of US Holidays.)

Related:

  • Profiles in Corporate Courage (Apple offered Pride Edition products in 2021 and “is proud to support LGBTQ advocacy organizations”, but at the same time does not offer these sacred rainbow items in places where full LGBTQ rights have already been achieved, e.g., in the UAE (Wokipedia 2021: “Male homosexuality is illegal in the UAE, and is punishable by the death penalty under sharia law”))
Full post, including comments

Is the Sacred Rainbow Flag the new Golden Calf?

by philg

Today is the big day for the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County:

Here’s the organization’s “Inclusivity Statement”:

Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County embraces a culture of diversity and inclusivity in accordance with our Jewish values. We celebrate the uniqueness of our community members, lay partners and staff as varied perspectives enrich our learning and reinforce our commitment to making the world a better place. We aim to create an accessible environment that accommodates individual needs and welcomes the full participation of our community. Learn more at jewishpb.org/inclusivity.

I’m wondering why attending a Pride parade is a specifically Jewish activity, especially in light of Leviticus 20:13. My conclusion is that the Sacred Rainbow Flag is to modern-day Jews (at least the non-Deplorables) what the Golden Calf was to ancient Israelites.

Update… let’s look at a few photos. From the Palm Beach Post…

A child on the sidelines…

… learns that the Future is Trans:

The 2SLGBTQQIA+ religion is not promoted in public schools, but the public school police department actually paraded in the parade:

Here’s a T-shirt from the “Jewish Dems” and, apparently, the trans-enhanced rainbow flag is something everyone at the intersection of Judaism and the Democratic Party could agree on back in 2023:

Loosely related, a tweet from Tim Cook, who identifies as a member of the 2SLGBTTQIA+ community, today:

What is the traditional way for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community to celebrate Eid al-Fitr?

Full post, including comments

How are Islamic groups able to hold Islamic hostages?

by philg

Gaza is run by three groups:

  • the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”)
  • UNRWA (an all-Islamic staff except for a handful of white savior European atheists, such as Philippe Lazzarini (there weren’t any qualified Arabs to lead this funnel for US/EU tax dollars headed for Hamas?))
  • Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Today we learned about a man (“Farhan al-Qadi” might be the best transliteration of his name) liberated from Gazan captivity and returned to his family in Israel (military.com):

The military said Qaid Farhan Alkadi was rescued from a tunnel “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip,” without providing further details. It was not immediately known if the rescue was made under fire or if anyone was killed or wounded during the operation. The 52-year-old was one of eight members of Israel’s Arab Bedouin minority who were abducted on Oct. 7. He was working as a guard at a packing factory in Kibbutz Magen, one of several farming communities that came under attack. He has two wives and is the father of 11 children.

Wikipedia says that all Negev Bedouins are Muslim.

So… we have Muslim Gazans who explicitly call themselves “Islamic” holding a hostage who is himself Muslim/Islamic. Where in the Koran or the Hadiths does it say that this is allowed?

Separately, how does the father of 11 children look this good (the photo below was before he was taken hostage by his Arab-Muslim brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Gaza)? An American man will often be reduced to overweight wreckage by just one wife and one or two kids, even in those cases where the wife doesn’t turn plaintiff.

Also, let’s see how western media covers this guy’s traditional Islamic lifestyle, i.e., the two wives. Our journalists say that they’re on a mission to combat Islamophobia. If so, it would make sense to suppress the information about this freed hostage having two wives in order to make Islam seem less alien to a Western audience. For example, the New York Times article “Who Is Farhan al-Qadi, the Rescued Hostage?” doesn’t mention his marital status, only a “family”. NBC says he’s “a father of 11”, but there is no mention of any females having participated in the 11 births (as with Pete Buttigieg in the hospital bed with his husband Chasten). (See below for how the same media outlets find polygamy very interesting indeed if it can be tied to the Mormons.) “‘Brought back to life’: Family hails rescue of Israeli hostage from Hamas tunnel in Gaza” (CNN): “On Tuesday evening, his brothers and 11 children, along with their cousins and neighbors, were busy putting up tents, chairs and lights ahead of his return to the village.” (a Buttigieg-style “family” for the “father of 11” according to CNN, with children but no mothers) Wall Street Journal: “Al-Qadi, an Israeli Muslim from an Arab community known as Bedouins, is the father of 11 children and a brother to 10 siblings. He lives in a small village in Israel’s Negev Desert.” (the size of the village where he lives will be more interesting to readers than that he has two wives; no reason to rephrase as “He lives with two wives in Israel’s Negev Desert”)

Finally, what if al-Qadi comes to the U.S. with his wives and 11 children? He claims asylum on the grounds that the Gazans have said that they want to eliminate Israel and Israelis and that he has a reasonable fear of being attacked again because the Biden-Harris administration is continuing to fund Hamas, UNRWA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He settles in Rashida Tlaib’s district in Michigan. Wife #1 decides that she’d rather spend time with a neighbor and sues al-Qadi for divorce in the local family court. If Wife #2 also wants her freedom does she have to sue for divorce as well? Or does the first divorce render al-Qadi no longer married to anyone in the eyes of the Michigan family court? In theory, polygamists cannot become U.S. citizens (Nolo), but that shouldn’t affect their right to claim asylum and de facto permanent residence. Non-citizen residents of the U.S. have the same rights to file divorce lawsuits as citizens.

More from Nolo:

a refugee who was practicing polygamy before he immigrated will be required by U.S. immigration law to designate one wife as his legal wife to accompany him to the United States. Years later, after becoming a U.S. citizen, he might divorce that wife, and marry the woman who was formerly his second wife, in order to petition for her (on Form I-130) to immigrate to the United States.

Related:

  • in 2023, the New York Times devotes 20 pages to a tiny polygamist community that spun off from the Mormon Church in 1890
  • “The Persistence of Polygamy” (NYT, 1999) about “Mormon fundamentalists”
  • “Mormons seek distance from polygamist sects” (NBC, 2008)
  • Wikipedia: “The trans-Saharan slave trade, part of the Arab slave trade … In Al-Andalus, the area of medieval Iberia under Islamic control, black Muslims could be legally held as slaves … This all occurred despite the orthodox Muslim jurist position that no Muslim, regardless of race, could be enslaved … Even as late as the 19th century, many of the common people in Islamic society still believed that enslavement based on skin color, rather than based on religion, was approved by the religious laws of Islam” (but Farhan al-Qadi doesn’t have especially dark skin)
Full post, including comments

Santiago de Compostela and End Stage Christianity

by philg

Santiago de Compostela is the holiest Christian site in Europe, being the supposed burial place of St. James, and pilgrims have been walking there for more than 1,000 years. Suppose that a pilgrim spends a weeks or months walking from France or Portugal to this sacred site, what does the committed Christian find on entering the old city? An official rainbow crosswalk and streets covered in sacred Rainbow Flags:

Here’s a different crosswalk in which we can see the directional sign for the Camino and a Rainbow-enhanced crosswalk in the same frame (multiple pilgrimage routes enter the city at different points):

Suppose that the tired pilgrim wants to rest in a park and be fresh before transitioning (so to speak) over this sacred pavement?

The rested pilgrim will walk past a Queers for Palestine display after entering the city:

The Praza do Obradoiro, adjacent to the Cathedral, is the traditional gathering place for pilgrims. It has been decorated with two Joe Biden-style official trans-enhanced Rainbow Flags (the “True Flag”?):

What if the pilgrim wants some ideas from the city’s official tourist office, a few steps from the Cathedral?

Perhaps the Christian pilgrim is tired and needs refreshment? It will be served by someone in a sacred outfit:

Pilgrims can dine with an overhead canopy of Rainbow Flags:

If they have money left over, they can buy souvenirs:

A variety of stores practice Rainbow-first Retail:

(“Orgullo” means “Pride” in Spanish)

Can the pilgrim prepare for the rigors of Rainbow Flag worship while on the road? Absolutely! If the pilgrim happens to walk through Celanova, Spain, for example, he/she/ze/they will find that the former monastery is now a town hall and that a Rainbow Flag is larger and higher than any of the government flags (tough to see because it had been rolled up by the wind, but it is in the upper right corner):

There were rainbow flags in Ourense as well, but Pontevedra, Spain has gone a little farther with its town hall:

The transition from traditional Christian to Queers for Palestine is encapsulated neatly in Pontevedra in which pro-Palestinian graffiti is adjacent to a ruined monastery:

A clothing store in Pontevedra practices Rainbow-first Retail:

Based on the above, is it fair to conclude that the inevitable End Stage of European Christianity is Rainbow Flagism and/or Queers for Palestine? Spaniards were willing to fight for centuries to make the Iberian peninsula completely Christian. Now Spain is covered in the sacred symbols of Rainbow Flagism and is on track for a conversion to Islam via immigration demographics.

For readers who ask “Didn’t you take pictures of anything other than rainbow flags in Santiago de Compostela?” here are some photos inside the Cathedral (get there 45 minutes prior to a mass if you want a seat, even though there are at least four masses per day; no need to dress up because the masses accommodate pilgrims who might have arrived dusty):

Here’s the apparently-never-used front entrance:

Don’t skip the Cathedral Museum because it gives you the chance to look over the main square where the pilgrims gather underneath the Trans-enhanced Rainbow Flags. Try not to show up on a Sunday afternoon/Monday morning as I did because most of the museums are closed all day Monday and may close early on Sunday. I had especially wanted to go to the pilgrimage museum, but will have to some that for another Pride.

Here’s an image taken from a balcony that is accessible only from the Cathedral Museum:

Does it make sense to do the pilgrimage? I’m not sure if modern pilgrims have mental space to reflect the way that pilgrims did 1000, 500, or even 50 years ago. Why not? The smartphone. If you’re getting emails about bills, projects at your house, things happening at work, etc., you’re not in the same mental place as a Christian pilgrim was in the pre-smartphone era. One group that I met seemed to have combined some of the best of the old and new worlds. They signed up for a tour with Active Adventures and eight of them were guided and shuttled over a monthlong pilgrimage route in a little more than a week, starting in Bilbao. When the (French) Camino was an interesting and peaceful footpath they walked (8-10 miles per day). When the Camino coincided with a boring/busy road, they hopped a shuttle bus.

Full post, including comments

Should automakers offer a factory Palestinian flag paint scheme?

by philg

Parked in front of the Embassy Suites RDU for the entire evening of May 29:

It occurred to me that this demonstration of solidarity with Hamas (see Talking with a pro-Hamas college student for how the folks who say that they’re only “pro-Palestinian” actually do expect and seek long-term Hamas rule) would be more effect if (a) done 24/7, and (b) done in paint rather than via a draped flag.

How about a car company that already caters to progressives, e.g., Subaru, offering a factory Palestinian flag paint scheme? It might also be popular with Muslim-Americans.

Separately, I’ve been listening to parts of Robin Williams: When the Laughter Stops (included with an Audible subscription). The 2014 book quotes Williams as being interested in world peace, but asking “How do you create a Palestinian homeland when there’s a large amount of Palestinians who want to obliterate Israel?” (the “large amount” has been quantified as 85 percent support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a 2023 poll)

Full post, including comments

Anti-Jewish protests in Latin America and attacks on Jews and Israelis in Europe

by philg

Israelis and Jews were being attacked in Europe. Latinx protesters were explaining that Zionism was a variant of National Socialism (Nazi), decrying a “Palestinian holocaust”, supporting the liberation of Palestine, and chanting “Death to the Jews”… in 1982:

(As part of helping my mother move from Maryland to Florida, I found this in an album (the flip side of the page above contains an article about a book that mom wrote about Herman Perlman, an artist).)

What happened to the Palestinian population after the 1982 “holocaust” mentioned in the article? “Number of Palestinians worldwide increased 9 times since the 1948 Nakba – statistics bureau” (2019). Here’s the Statista chart of Gaza population, up from 0.46 million in 1980 to over 2 million today:

Regarding our inflation-free economy, I also found these Kennedy Center main concert hall tickets from 1980… $7.50.

Full post, including comments

Progressives hate Jews more than Europeans did in the 1930s and 1940s?

by philg

Europeans, especially Germans, are famous for their Jew-hatred in the 1930s and early 1940s, culminating in the death camp system run by the Nazis and their collaborators. (Remember that the original German goal was a Jew-free Europe to be achieved via expulsion and expropriation, similar to what the Muslim/Arab nations achieved after 1948, and the death camp idea was conceived after expulsion proved impractical due to other countries’ refusal to accept Jews (to keep the Arabs happy, the British wouldn’t allow Jews expelled by the Germans to move to Mandatory Palestine, for example).)

Could it be that today’s progressives in the U.S. and Europe have outdone the 1930s/40s Europeans in Jew-hatred?

Let’s consider a German circa 1933 who was among the 44 percent who voted for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and its 25-point program (not too different from what today’s politicians promise). Getting 500,000 Jews out of Germany, whose population was 65 million at the time, would deliver a potential personal benefit to the non-Jewish German. The German who supported the Nazi plan to expel Jews might have felt that social cohesion in German society would be improved without a group whose value system was different or at least perceived as different. Such a German would not need to feel any personal animosity towards Jews in order to prefer having Christian Germans as neighbors rather than Jewish Germans. (Similar to today’s Americans who are opposed to low-skill immigration, especially from non-European nations; they might not hate Somalis or wish them any harm, but they don’t want to live in a neighborhood whose culture is imported from Somalia.)

Although only some of the progressives marching in London, New York, San Francisco, etc. will openly say that they want to “end Israel” or that they support the general Palestinian goal of destroying Israel (2021 poll, for example), support for the “Palestinian cause” inevitably is helpful to the majority of Palestinians who have a long-term goal of destroying the Zionist entity and establishing a river-to-the-sea Palestinian nation. In theory, some of the Jews in Israel could return to places where their ancestors lived, e.g., Russia, Poland, etc. But the largest group of Jews in Israel are from Arab/Muslim countries and there is no evidence that the ancestors of their former neighbors in Iran, Iraq, etc. want them back. So the progressives are where the Nazis were in the 1930s. They want to rid the former Ottoman-then-British-ruled areas of the Levant (present-day Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt) of Jews, but aren’t particular about how the ridding is accomplished.

A March 29, 2024 example, “Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt Berkeley City Council meeting, Holocaust remembrance vote: ‘End Israel'” (deplorable Fox News):

Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted the City Council in Berkeley, California, on Tuesday, shouting “Zionist pigs!” and “End Israel!” during a meeting that included a vote on marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, video of the event shared by the Jewish Community Relations Council showed.

A sticker that a group was handing out on the Berkeley campus, March 14, 2024:

If progressives have the same goal as the Nazis how can they hate Jews more than the Nazis did? The progressives demonstrating in Washington, D.C. and Toronto don’t live in or near Israel and they have no plans to visit the new Palestinian state whose establishment they support (the new Hamas-ruled nation might not be as friendly to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community as the Queers for Palestine might want for a vacation destination). In other words, the progressive works for the destruction of Israel but would receive no personal benefit via the destruction of Israel. It’s an entirely unselfish Jew-hatred, unlike the Europeans of 90 years ago who had selfish reasons for wanting to live in a less diverse society. One could argue that this selfish desire was irrational (diversity is our strength, after all), but that isn’t relevant to the question of whether the Europeans were doing something that would have an effect on their own lives.

Full post, including comments