Israel Shamir
Exposing the Big Lie About Muslims and Christians
Fri Nov 2 16:39:00 2001


Exposing the Big Lie About Muslims and Christians
by Israel Shamir


When in 1543, the typhoon-blown Portuguese schooners approached the
shores of Japan, the astonished sailors could not believe their eyes:
on a warm spring day, the tropical island ahoy was buried under snow.
They were witness to one of the real Seven Wonders of the World, the
flowers of sakura, the wild cherry of Japan. As soon as the
benevolent heaven bestows this seasonal gift to earth, the Japanese
forget their wives and kids, their duties, employers and bills; they
just sit under the trees, drink sake wine and write poems, short and
sharp as swords.

That is why, these days, leaving behind our man-made troubles, I sit
under the white cloud of a tree and watch the beautiful white and
pink blossoms of almond trees covering the hills of Galilee. These
lovely blossoms are our version of the Japanese sakura, and a chance
to indulge in the custom of flower viewing. A honey aroma wafts
through the air; the skies are crystal blue. Yellow daisies dance on
the lush green grass at the base of these almond wonders,
interspersed by violet cyclamen and red anemones. The glorious
backdrop is provided by the huge snow mass of Jebel al Sheikh (Mt
Hermon). Palestine is a sister to Japan. These two hilly lands are
home to stubborn mountain folk, devoted to their customs and ways.

For all the similarities in the landscape, there are differences. The
hill we sit on, all white like Jaffa sea surf, is the ruin of a
village. If we were in Japan, it would be alive and humming. The
village of Birim has been dead for fifty years. It is beautiful even
in death, like Ophelia floating down the stream in the pre-Raphaelite
painting of Millais.

It was not ruined by war. Its Christian inhabitants were expelled
from their houses well after the 1948 war. They were told to leave
for a week or two, for "security" reasons. They had no option but to
believe the Israeli officers and move out. Their village was
dynamited, their church surrounded by barbed wire. They went to
Israeli court, they went to the government, commissions were
appointed and petitions signed. Nothing helped. Ever since, for 50
years, they have lived in the nearby villages and on Sundays they
continue to visit their church. Their lands were seized by their
Jewish neighbors, but they still bring their dead to be buried in the
church graveyard, under the sign of the cross.

Until the arrival of the Israeli army, this ruined village with its
orphaned church was the home of the rural Christians of Birim who,
for centuries of Moslem rule, lived in peace with their Moslem
neighbors of Nebi Yosha and with the old Sephardi Jewish community of
nearby Safed. This little Guernica in the Galillee can single-
handedly undermine the myth of a "Judeo-Christian" civilization
opposing a "monstrous" Islam. This myth lays at the foundation of the
Christian Zionist movement; among its fervent supporters, one can
find a friend of Mark Rich and a newly minted New York citizen,
William J. Clinton.

The problems of the Middle East are ugly enough without the current
Moslem-bashing. The pro-Israeli pundits of the New York Times quote
the blood-curling verses on Jihad, retell the old traditions of
religious wars and persecutions, to "prove" Islam's cruelty and
intolerance. They are repeated by a pleasant upper-class Jewish lady
from London, Barbra Amiel.

In a sotto voce, she writes about "exclusivist" Islam and
Jewish "moderation". In order to incite hatred, the Israeli lobby
works all the ropes. Before the rise of Israel, Arab sheiks were
depicted as romantic heroes in movies acted by Rudolf Valentino.
Nowadays, the pro-Israel producers of Hollywood turn out propaganda
films on ill-shaven Moslem terrorists with the subtlety of Edward D.
Wood, Jr. This new prejudice is amplified a hundredfold by the
Christian Zionist Congress, claiming "protection for Christians of
Palestine from the Moslem persecution" (?!).

These people obviously have not walked among the ruins of Birim.

Another email comes into my laptop, this time from Gaza. An American
girl, Alison Weir from San Francisco evades Israeli bullets, comforts
the scared Palestinian kids, and writes: "The problem is when you
know the truth, it is far too cruel, far too diametrically opposite
what we used to think and what everyone still thinks to express. The
lie is too big, the repression too complete, the Palestinians' lives
too horrible to write about reasonably."

Well, Alison is right. We face a huge lie, an anti-Moslem blood
libel, and it is time to stop it. I do not think that the problems of
Middle East have anything to do with religion. But if the supporters
of Israel want to wake up the sleeping ghost of religious
intolerance, to incite Christians against Moslems, let us audit their
balance.

If these Christian Zionists care for Christ, not only for Zion, let
them learn what Jews and Moslems feel towards Christ. Rami Rozen
expressed the Jewish tradition in a long feature in a major Israeli
newspaper Haaretz[i]: "Jews feel towards Jesus today what they felt
in 4 th century or in the Middle Ages: ..."For centuries, Jews
concealed from Christians their hate to(ward) Jesus, and this
tradition continues even now."

"He (Jesus) is revolting and repulsive", said an important modern
religious Jewish thinker. Rozen writes that this "repulsion passed
from the observant Jews to the general Israeli public".

On Christmas Eve, according to a report in the Jerusalem local paper,
Kol Ha-Ir, Hasidic Jews customarily do not read holy books, as it
could save Jesus from eternal punishment [the Talmud teaches that
Jesus boils in hell]). This custom was dying out, but Hasids of
Chabad (Lubavitch), the fervent nationalists, brought it back to
life. I still remember old Jews spitting while passing by a church,
and cursing the dead, while passing by a Christian cemetery. Last
year in Jerusalem, a Jew decided to refresh the tradition. He spat at
the Holy Cross, carried in the procession along the city. Police
saved him from further trouble, but the court fined him $50, despite
his claim that he just fulfilled his religious duty.

Last year, the biggest Israeli tabloid Yedioth Aharonoth reprinted in
its library the Jewish anti-Gospel, Toledoth Eshu, compiled in the
Middle Ages. It is the third recent reprint, including one in a
newspaper. If the Gospel is the book of love, Toledoth is the book of
hate for Christ. The hero of the book is Judas. He captures Jesus by
polluting his purity. According to Toledoth, the conception of Christ
was in sin, the miracles of Jesus were witchcraft, his resurrection
but a trick.

Joseph Dan, a Professor of Jewish mysticism in Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, writing on the death of Jesus stated: "The modern Jewish
apologists, hesitantly adopted by the church, preferred to put the
blame on Romans. But the medieval Jew did not wish to pass the buck.
He tried to prove that Jesus had to be killed, and he was proud of
killing Him. The Jews hated and despised Christ and Christians."

Actually, adds Prof. Dan, there is little place to doubt that the
Jewish enemies of Jesus caused his execution.

Even today, Jews in Israel refer to Jesus by the demeaning word Yeshu
(instead of Yeshua), meaning "Perish his name". There is an ongoing
argument, whether His name was turned into a swear word, or the other
way around. In a similar pun, the New Testament Gospel is
called "Avon Gilaion", the booklet of Sin. These are the endearing
feelings of the friends of Christian Zionists towards Christ.

What about Moslems? The Moslems venerate Christ. He is called "The
Word of God", "Logos", Messiah, the Prophet and is considered "a
Messenger of God", along with Abraham, Moses and Muhammad. Many
chapters of the Kor'an tell the story of Christ, his virgin birth and
his persecution by Jews. His saintly mother is admired, and the
Immaculate Conception is one of the tenets of Islam. The name of
Christ glorifies the golden edifice of Haram al-Sharif. According to
the Moslem faith, it was there that the founder of Islam met Jesus,
and they prayed together. The Hadith, the Moslem tradition, says in
the name of the prophet, "We do not forbid you to believe in Christ,
we order you to."

Moslems identify their prophet with Paracletes, the Helper (Jn 14:16)
whose coming was predicted by Jesus. They venerate places associated
with the life of Jesus: the place of Ascension, the Tomb of Lazarus,
the Holy Sepulchre are adjacent to a mosque and perfectly accessible
by Christians.

While Moslems do not consider Jesus God, they proclaim him as the
Messiah, the Anointed one, the Paradise Dweller. This religious idea,
familiar to Nestorians and other early churches, but rejected by
mainstream Christianity, opened the gates for those Jews, who could
not part with the notion of strict monotheism. That is why many
Palestinian Jews and Christians of the 7th century accepted Islam and
became Palestinian Moslems. They remained in their villages, they did
not depart for Poland or England, they did not learn Yiddish, they
did not study the Talmud, but they continued to shepherd their flocks
and plant almond trees, they remained faithful to their land and to
the great idea of the fraternity of men.

In the south of Hebron, in the ruins of Susiah, one can see how in
the course of two centuries a synagogue slowly evolved into a mosque,
as the population of nearby caves abandoned the exclusionary faith of
Babylonian wizards and adopted Islam. These shepherds still live
there, in the same caves. In the last year, the Israeli army has
twice tried to expel them to provide more room for new Jewish
settlers from Brooklyn.

Why, in this season of blossoming almond trees, do I brood on the
sensitive subject of Jewish and Moslem attitudes towards Christ?
Because one has to stop the mills of hatred operated by Israel's
supporters. Because the "Judeo-Christian" code language is being used
to justify the barbed wire around Birim's Church and the tanks around
Bethlehem. Because there is a duty to remove an obstacle from the
path of the blind.

The majority of the Christian Zionists are simple misled souls,
people of good intentions but little knowledge. They think
they "support Jews," but they promote the Christ-hating spirit among
the Jews. It was not in vain that a hero of the Zionist
book, "Exodus" by Leon Uris, kept a poster in his room saying "We
crucified Christ". It was not in vain that an Israeli soldier on the
roadblock of Bethlehem told me yesterday, "We starve the beasts",
referring to the native Christians of the city of Nativity.

It was not in vain that the Gospel was burned on a stake in Israel,
while anti-Gospel literature is widely spread; that new immigrant
Jews embracing Christianity are persecuted and deported; that every
preacher of the Christian faith in Israel can be sent to jail
according to new anti-Christian laws; that Israeli archaeologists
erase the Christian holy sites and memories off the face of the Holy
Land.

To the leaders of the Christian Zionists, who surely know these
facts, but lead their innocent flock on the path of the Anti-Christ,
I say, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Christ
to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone tied
round his neck and be drowned in the deep sea" (Mt 18:6).

To my Jewish brothers I say: the opinions of medieval Jews do not
bind us. Every Jew can decide for himself, whether to pray for the
destruction of the Gentiles or to share the blessing of the Holy Land
with the villagers of Birim and Bethlehem. Within the Jewish people,
there were always spiritual descendants of the prophets who wished to
bring peace and blessing to all the children of Adam. As true as this
almond blossom, in you the prophecy will be fulfilled: "All the
nations of the earth will bless you" (Deut. 7).

Israel Shamir | GALILEE FLOWERS | February 25, 2001
=============================================================================
Pakistani official reports anthrax exposures
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/11/02/pakistan.anthrax/index.html


http://www.barryandtheboys.com/

February 5, 2001
None Dare Call It Treason
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&c=3&s=bugliosi

• Profiles of Zionist Racists, War Criminals and Fanatics — adicio, Fri Nov 2 16:56