Ring the Bell

Friday, April 03, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Baltimore, Maryland in the year of our Lord 2026

“To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”

—Donald Trump’s ‘spiritual advisor’

---

It is Good Friday. It is the day Christians remember the crucifixion. Let us ring the bell, bow our heads and have a moment of silence.

Religion is in the news. The Irish Star:

Pastor slams White House Trump Jesus comparison

A pastor denounces White House’s likening of Trump to Jesus during an Easter lunch, sparking controversy and accusations of blasphemy.

But religion is running amok on both sides of the Iran war. Marco Rubio:

In an interview with Fox News, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Iran is led by “radical Shia clerics” who, he said, believe they have a “calling” to “usher in the end of the world.”

Iran is famously a ‘theocracy’ wherein religious and political power are in the same hands. Their leaders have been murdered. Their cities have been blown to pieces. Their defenses have been destroyed and their people killed. But Iranians still believe God is on their side.

That’s not what John Hagee thinks:

“God Almighty is brought onto the battlefield and the enemies of Zion and the enemies of the United States can be destroyed before our eyes...Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.”

Whatever else can be said about the Iran-US/Israeli war, it is surely giving God a bad name. He’s allegedly advocating war crimes almost everywhere.

Pete Hegseth seems to have begun reading the Bible at Genesis and when he got to Saul’s massacre of the Amalekites, that was all he needed to know. How his callow heart must have raced with excitement as he read about the massacres of Gideon’s seventy sons, or the slaughter of the Ephraimites, or the gang rape of the Levite’s concubine by the Benjamites and the subsequent massacre of all of the women and children of Jabesh-Gilead. Shame he never made it to Jesus.

Last week, he threatened an attack “as vicious as possible from day one.”

And then at a ‘Christian Prayer’ service at the Pentagon, America’s top gun prayed to Almighty God to “pour out your wrath.” And asked him to “break the teeth of the ungodly.” He quoted the Old Testament...in which God tells the ancient Israelites...to be ‘as bold as a lion’ and to visit ‘overwhelming violence’ on their enemies.

These are not ‘Christian prayers.’ They are pre-Christian incitations to violence, attributed to Isaiah seven hundred years before Christ was born. They show the world we come from, not the world as Christ meant it to be. Pope Leo explained:

‘This is our God: Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war...He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.’

Quoting a Bible passage, Leo added:

‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’

But if God ignores the prayers of those with blood on their hands, the Jews are out of luck too.

Hannah Arendt, reporting on the Nuremberg Trials, wrote that the accused were not especially evil. They were just ‘ordinary men’ who had fallen under an extraordinarily malign influence.

The evil influence she was looking at was Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. They murdered some six million Jews. Then, after the war, Jews enjoyed the sympathy of most of the world.

But now, as they carry out the policies of the Netanyahu government… Gallup:

‘Forty-one percent of Americans now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians in the Middle East situation, while 36% sympathize more with the Israelis...it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years.’

Netanyahu, like Hegseth, leans on the Old Testament mass murder stories. He says his people “are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world… You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”

He refers to the Book of Samuel where the prophet tells Saul:

I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

Historians say the Jews never went to Egypt, so the original charge was probably false. And you’d think that whatever happened 3,000 years ago might be best forgotten now, anyway.

And who is Amalek today, almost one hundred generations later? The staggering conceit of Netanyahu, Hegseth et al is to claim to know.

But as always, the gods will decide for themselves.

Regards,

Bill Bonner