Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her first weekly Live- Dialogue in 2024, on Jan. 3, 11 am EDT, and help to ring in the year of the New Paradigm for all of mankind. Please submit your questions ahead of time to questions@schillerinstitute.org Or you can write them live in the YouTube chat.
The holidays and the turn of the year brought no peace for the population of Gaza, where the death toll now exceeds 30,000. The bombardments continue and the shortages of water, food, medicine and electricity are getting worse. For people in the West, the question of how their governments can tolerate or even condone such blatant barbarism is extremely worrying. And all this while they constantly talk about human rights and morally superior “Western values.”
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, addressed the issue forcefully in his sermon on December 23; an excerpt follows:
“We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called “free” lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing political cover. And, yet another layer has been added: the theological cover with the Western Church stepping into the spotlight….
The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling! …
We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear: Silence is complicity, and empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action — are all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world…
If you are not appalled by what is happening; if you are not shaken to your core – there is something wrong with your humanity. If we, as Christians, are not outraged by this genocide, by the weaponizing of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and compromising the credibility of the Gospel!…”
There have not been many, if any, years that began as tumultuously as the current one. As 2024 commences, we see wars across the globe, indescribable amounts of suffering and destruction, combined with dysfunctional governments and institutions at every turn.
Despite how dramatic these events may seem, they are actually less significant than the much larger process which they betray: The end of the modern neocolonial world system. As EIR has pointed out since the 1970s proposal of Lyndon LaRouche’s International Development Bank idea as the core of a new, anti-colonialist system, this process is the actual play on the stage of history, despite most others’ failure to recognize this fact.
In this New Year, it is important to remind ourselves, and consciously rediscover if need be, that the problems in the world can be solved. Human beings were created in the living image of the Creator, Imago Viva Dei, and are not simply beasts of the field that are destined to accept whatever fate is bestowed upon us. Today, more than ever, the future must be created, as a conscious action by at least a significant margin of society. It’s our job to do just that, and a good place to start is the urgent need to retool and repurpose today’s bloated military-financial complex, before the next war becomes our last.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche writes this in her Christmas Message “Turn Swords into Plowshares!”:
“Technically speaking, it would be relatively easy to re-tool these capacities for civilian purposes, and rather than producing bombers, fighter jets, and missiles, to produce modern high-speed rail systems, inherently safe nuclear reactors of the 4th generation, and nuclear fusion reactors, as well as space stations for international space travel. In other words, all the industrial capacity currently used for the destruction of actual physical value—what else are weapons systems good for?—could serve the production of useful goods that promote the common good. Instead of tanks and ammunition, they could produce schools and hospitals, and help our nations to have prosperous economies once again!”
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her first weekly Live- Dialogue in 2024, on Jan. 3, 11 am EDT, and help to ring in the year of the New Paradigm for all of mankind. Please submit your questions ahead of time to questions@schillerinstitute.org Or you can write them live in the YouTube chat.
