Readers write

VIEWPOINTS

We welcome your comments and publish most letters sent by subscribers intended for publication. Respecting our theology of the priesthood of all believers and of the importance of the faith community discernment process, this section is a largely open forum for the sharing of views. Letters are the opinion of the writer only- publication does not mean endorsement by the magazine or the church. Letters should be brief and address issues rather than individuals.

Please send letters to be considered for publication to letters@canadianmennonite.org or by postal mail or fax, marked "Attn: Readers Write" (our address is on page 3). Letters should include the author's contact information and mailing address. Letters are edited for length, style and adherence to editorial guidelines.

Do more than 'mutter' about military taxes

THE DEPARTMENT OF Defence gets about 9 percent of our federal tax money. It claims to need billions of dollars every year to defend Canadians from those dangerous enemies, those peasants leading hardscrabble lives in the Afghan countryside.

"Defence" is a euphemism. Let's call it what it is: war. If we have enemies in Afghanistan, we have made them. And if Afghans are our enemies, are we loving them as Jesus taught us to do, by forcing ourselves into their homeland and lives with armed troops, tanks and bombers? Unfortunately, the conflict we've created requires the ongoing replacement of expensive military hardware and heartbreakingly vulnerable young men and women, while Afghanistan becomes further warriddled with every annual infusion of our tax dollars.

Yet we continue to obethently send in our taxes. There must be a point at which a citizen of the world, not to mention a Christian brought up in a peaceful and peace-loving community, says "I object!"

We will not be heard if we only mutter "I object" under our breath as we file our taxes as usual. We must voice our objection loudly and clearly by not sending to Ottawa the portion of our taxes that would go to the department responsible for waging war.

A mechanism to facilitate this objection has been devised by Conscience Canada. Since 1978, this organization has created a Peace Tax Trust Fund that will hold the 9 percent of your federal taxes if you send it to it. Conscience Canada has been working diligently through the years to get permission from the government to legally disperse these held taxes for peaceful ends.

It has also prepared a Peace Tax Return to be sent in with taxpayers' income tax forms objecting to having to support the Canadian military with their taxes and calling on the right to redirect their taxes to peaceful causes.

This easy-to-use Peace Tax Return 2009 can be obtained online at consciencecanada.ca.

MARY GROH, SCARBOROUGH, ONT.

If I am a Christian must I be pro-Israel?

IN RESPONSE TO the editorials and letters on Israel and Palestine published last year, I want to bring questions to the discernment process.

My first question is this: Is Israel the same now, as people of God, as they were in biblical times? I think the coming of the Messiah made a great difference.

Was Israel rejected by Jesus? I think it was. Did he not say to his disciples in Luke 9:5, "If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them"7. We have to remember Jesus was rejected by Israel.

The second part is this: Is modern Israel the people of God? I think that Israel is not representing the interest of God any more as a community of faith, and that this task or privilege was given to the church. Am I against the people of Israel? Absolutely not. God is the God of the nations: Israel, Palestine and Canada. But when there is injustice, there is no holy presence. Therefore, we are called to bring that holy light.

Third, sometimes we believe we are against God when we are not pro-Israel. I think this is not an accurate position. We need to be with God, who is against all injustice, be it in Israel, Palestine or Canada.

If being a Christian makes me against Israel, so be it. Our priority is with Christ, the king of the Jews and king of kings.

EDGAR RIVERA, MISSION, B.C.

* Prime Minister responsible for funding cut to Kairos

RE: "KAIROS OUT $7.1 million," Jan. 11, page 21.

Who is being served when Canadian Mennonite accepts the Harper administration's framing that "Kairos was notified that its project proposal for 2009-13 did not meet CIDA priorities," and this without even naming whose words were these? Any reader, myself included, who mistook these words as the reporter's assessment would be biased against receiving the full import of the very next sentence. The truth be told, the Canadian International Development Agency did not cancel funding. Neither mincing words, nor inflaming any, Kairos's loss in funding has Prime Minister Stephen Harper's approval, and is 180 degrees out of step with CIDA, which had approved Kairos's funding proposal all the way to the desk of Beverley Oda, minister of international co-operation.

EDUARD HIEBERT, ST. FRANCOIS XAVIER, MAN.