The last post quoted the Los Angeles Times. It is copied below with footnote number changed from [4] to [1]:
On May 26, 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported the following, quoted in part [1]:
“Militants attacked a bus and a car — they shot them, 28 persons were killed at least,” including women and children, said Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo-based think tank.
A group of laborers and volunteers from a village in Minya had boarded a bus to St. Samuel Coptic Orthodox Monastery about a dozen miles away Friday at about 8 a.m. Two white SUVs stopped them, said Anba Aghason, the Coptic Christian bishop in the area.
Aghason recounted what survivors told him happened next.
Armed men emerged, faces covered, and asked the passengers, “Are you Christian?”
The passengers said yes.
The armed men then distributed a 10- to 15-page pamphlet of Koranic verses that explained fasting during Ramadan, the Muslim holiday that started Friday. Then the armed men told the group to recite the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.
“They refused, and said, ‘No, we were born Christian and will die Christian,’ ” the bishop said. “So they killed all the men. They killed some of the women, injured others and stole what they had.”
Of particular interest are the facts recounted by Anba Aghason, the local Coptic Christian bishop, as reported:
A group of laborers and volunteers from a village in Minya had boarded a bus to St. Samuel Coptic Orthodox Monastery about a dozen miles away Friday at about 8 a.m. Two white SUVs stopped them. [2]
Do armed men in white SUVs regularly stop buses traveling away from Minya looking for Coptic Christians and kill them? If that is the case, policing locally would probably be a more effective deterrent than bombing militant camps in Libya. Since such killings do not appear regularly in the news, it is reasonable to assume that this massacre was premeditated as opposed to a random attack out of impulse.
In order for the killers to execute their plan with such precision as to date, time and place, they must have had knowledge of the trip the group of Christians from Minya had planned to take. The question is who was the "Judas" who betrayed them (assuming there was only one)? Was it a friend or relative of one of the members of the group? Was it a member of the church they belonged to? Was it the bus driver? Was it someone else from the bus company who knew about the pick-up? Does any one of these possibilities lead to anyone in the government of Egypt?
Judas is not only in Egypt. Politicians everywhere who betray their voters are also Judases. Just as evil begets evil, betrayer spawns betrayer. Anyone who has ever betrayed his own conscience is a Judas for conscience rests in goodness and goodness comes from God. Therefore, concluding broadly, the killers were Judases, the one who gave the killers information was a Judas, the leaders of the militant killers were Judases, and those who gave rise to these militant killers were Judases for they each betrayed their respective conscience, some for power, some for money, some for both, neither of which is a currency in Heaven, but the gatekeeper would gladly collect them at Hell's entrance. Unrepentant Judases should enjoy life while they can for life is short but an eternity is, well, forever.
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