by Ghassan Kadi
The world has heard the Zionist rhetoric about the alleged ownership of Palestine and there is no point in repeating it herein. That said, some argue that God’s promise to Abraham was taken literally and out of context. After all, God is fair and loving, and a fair and loving God would not give unconditional privileges to offspring, regardless of whether they are virtuous or not.
In any event, with or without the so-called promise to Abraham, Jewish presence in Palestine is more ancient than that of Muslims, but that does not win the Zionist argument and does not justify the displacement of Palestinians even if they have “only” lived there for thirteen centuries in comparison to thirty centuries of Jewish presence.
As a matter of fact, no matter how one spins the Zionist claim, nothing justifies displacing Palestinians and taking away their homes, land, and dignity.
To be fair and rational, we must also examine the Muslim claim of the ownership of Palestine from the Muslim vantagepoint that Muslims use to support their argument. Are Muslims the rightful owners of Palestine as they claim to be?
The Torah and the Quran are Holy Books, and not real estate guidelines and manuals. There is no mention of any land rights in the Quran, least of which to Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic) is not even mentioned in the Quran. There is however a mention of “Al-Masjed Al-Aksa”, which literally means “The Distant Place of Prostration”, and which Muslims believe to be in Jerusalem/Al-Quds.
This does not make Jerusalem inherently a Muslim city, and even if it did, there is absolutely no reference to any Muslim exclusivity either.
Furthermore, there has never been a time in history in which there was an Islamic state called Palestine with Al-Quds as its capital. This is a fact and remains to be a fact even when staunch Zionists say it. If anything, Al-Quds perhaps rose to prominence in the Muslim psyche during the reign of Saladin.
After all, have we forgotten the Christian claim of the ownership of Jerusalem? Even though this claim is not current, but we cannot speak of Jerusalem and Saladin and dismiss a whole century of Crusader Campaigns who were sent by the then Pope(s) to liberate the Christian holy land from the “infidels”.
Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders in 1099 and a massacre of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants followed. It was recaptured by Saladin in 1187 and when he did, the Christian inhabitants feared a massacre akin to the one that happened against Muslims and Jews nearly a century earlier. But Saladin ordered his troops to spray the city streets with “Rose Water”; a Levantine essence extracted from the petals of the Damascus Rose. Such were those days.
English King Richard The Lion Heart tried to take it back from Saladin, but never managed to put a foot on its soil.
If anything, in real terms, and in the nicest way possible, Jerusalem is regarded as a trophy, and it perhaps regarded by Muslims as a city where Muslim religious romance flourishes, and during the days of Saladin, that romance story must have reached its peak.
Muslims need to admit facts and stop making unfounded historic and religious claims that they own Jerusalem, because they do not.
When Zionism established the state of Israel, the Zionist aggression was, and continues to be, practised equally against both Arab Muslims and Christians. The anti-Zionist resistance was once called the Arab Resistance, and it was comprised of both Christians and Muslims. When Palestinian Resistance was established, it was meant to be an armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine. George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was a Christian.
Last but not least, and unbeknown to most, the state of Israel practiced the same aggression against dissenting Palestinian Jews who refused to join the madness and considered themselves to be Palestinians of Jewish faith, rather than Israelis. Very little is ever heard and said about those unsung heroes; not only shunned by Zionist Jews, but also eyed with suspicion by some distrusting Arabs, mainly Muslim Arabs.
Zionists regarded all Arabs as inferior to them, and when they were shelling the Church of Nativity some years back, the West stood back and watched. It would be easy to imagine the Western outcry had Al-Qaeda or the Talibans committed a fraction of the Israeli atrocities at any Church.
As Israel treated both Christian and Muslim Palestinians equally as second grade citizens and considered dissenting Palestinian Jews as traitors, it was only natural for the anti-Israeli resistance to be nationally-based and driven. The slogan of those days was “Al-Quds lil Arab” ie Al-Quds belongs to Arabs. There was even a song with that title. The term “Arabs” back then meant the inhabitants of the land; ie mainly the Muslims, Christians, as well as Jews who refute Zionism.
Suddenly, rather early in the 1980’s, a huge turn of events took place in Lebanon and Palestine almost concurrently.
The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was soon followed by a resistance then named the “Lebanese Resistance”. Soon after Hezbollah rose to prominence the name changed to “Islamic Resistance”. In Palestine, Hamas renamed the anti-Israeli resistance and turned into an “Islamic Resistance” as well. All of a sudden, the struggle against Zionism changed course from a national secular Arab struggle against the theocratic state of Israel into a Muslim struggle against Jews!
Instead of rising above the narrow-minded theocratic bigoted Zionist views of land ownership, fundamental Muslims stooped to those very same levels and became equal partners in bigotry and exclusionism.
The biggest losers in numbers here are the Palestinian Christians as they are well and truly excluded by both. A Christian Palestinian friend once told me that Zionism took Palestine away from him first, and then Hamas took it away again. That man is a former Palestinian activist who decided to quit after Hamas hijacked the nature of the struggle.
The truth must be said and heard. It will neither please the Zionist Jews nor the fundamentalist Muslims. Even though Israel is the aggressor and instigator of this whole needless tragic calamity, and even though Hamas is meant to be a freedom-fighting organization, ideologically speaking, and when it comes to the exclusion of Christians, Zionism and Islamic fundamentalism represented by Hamas are equal partners in crime.
It is of little wonder therefore that when the “War On Syria” broke out, Hamas was quick to turn its back on secular Syria, even though Syria had been its main supporter since its inception, and sided with the Islamists.
When Islamists make claims of ownership of Palestine in general and of Jerusalem to be specific, they would be using the same false argument of Zionist Jews; only in reverse.
Rational and open-minded people need to realise that they have to make loud and clear statements to their policy makers that they refuse fanaticism and bigotry irrespective who the culprit is. That said, there is little doubt that as far as the Palestinian-Israeli dilemma is concerned, the Palestinians are the victims, but rationality stipulates that not even victims are entitled to be irrational. After all, two wrongs do not make it right.
This is neither about vindicating Zionists nor about vilifying Muslims and/or defending Christians. This is about justice and common sense. Justice cannot be selective and wrong cannot be undone by another wrong.
Palestine is not for Muslims, nor is it for Jews or Christians; not exclusively. It is for all of them combined, together with the myriad of minority ethnic and religious groups and sects, including those who opt not to follow any religion at all. It is for all who want to live there in peace and harmony with the rest of its inhabitants under laws that give equal rights and equal responsibilities without any favouritism and exclusion.
The proposed Palestinian statehood that was UN-mandated in September 2011 and all other initiatives that are based on two-state resolutions are in reality an admission of failure, a sell-out of Palestine and its people, and an act of condoning apartheid.
There is a mention of jerusalem(not clearly) see ‘imran hosein jerusalem in the quran.’ The quran talk about a city which has been destroyed and the population has been exiled. And they will not return(to the city) unless gog and magog has been released and the came from every direction… Jerusalem is for the jews(tribes) with condition of pious and virtue. European jews(by conversion) claimed jerusalem by oppression.
Israel does not belong to Jews !!!
Palestinians will liberate themselves, by Gilad Atzmon:
https://platosguns.com/2015/12/19/palestinians-will-liberate-themselves-gilad-atzmon/
Wend it’s unfair to ignore the fact that Jews have a connection to Jerusalem. It’s also got nothing to do with whether Israel/Palestine belongs to the Jews. The point is a theological one and equally the point that Muslims do not have an exclusive right of ownership to Jerusalem. Christians too have deep connections to that city.
@Bob1
While Bob1 maybe right about the existence of the Philistines, Hittites and all othe groups he mentioned, ie that the Philistines existed on the land prior to the arrival of the Hebrews (even according to Israeli archeologists and the biblical narrative itself), the point Ghassan Kadi was making was (my reading), even if you discounted these facts and accepted the Zionist narrative, even then, the Israelis have no right to seize Palestinian homes and drive them off the land.
True,all three faiths have a deep connection in the religious sense to Jerusalem. And it would be foolish to deny that. To both Jews and Christians it is considered as the “birthplace” in many ways of those faiths. While to Muslims its important as a part of their faith. But for Palestinians,both Muslim and Christian its also their actual “home” for thousands of years. For the ancestors of the current Palestinians,whether as Jewish,Christian,or Muslim in faith, have always been there. They unlike the zionists didn’t just immigrate there over a 100 year period. My disagreement with the article wasn’t that most of it wasn’t correct. But instead,that the author seemed to accept the zionist argument that they had a valid prior claim to Palestine. The author agree’s that the Palestinians do also have a claim. But seems to accept the zionist claims. And those “claims” are based on false history.
Now, I’ve always thought that a “one state” solution was the only peaceful way to settle this situation. But it has to be one that gives justice to the Palestinians (both,Muslim,Christian,and Jewish Palestinians) in their ancient homeland. And that would,in my view,be a secular,non-sectarian state. Divided into a Swiss or Belgium type of state. The many years of zionist crimes (continuing as I type this) has made that very,very,hard to bring about. There are rivers of blood to wade across,and forgive. But there are Jewish Israelis that are horrified at Israels actions,and support the Palestinians. Much of what we know of Israel’s crimes come from them revealing them to the World. And those people suffer from the zionists because of their desire for justice. And there are Palestinians that accept that after a hundred years the Jewish communities are also now “native” to Palestine. So that is a start. But still,it will certainly be a hard task to bring peace and co-existence there. Even if both sides were to truly work for it. Its ironic,that the country that spawned the word Apartheid,South Africa. Even during the worst of that system. Treated its victims “better” than the “new” Apartheid state of Israel does their current victims.
@UB-1,
What I am going to say here corresponds to all your entries. You definitely have the knowledge, not generally known in the West. I would like to confirm that accordingly to what I know the exodus from Germany to Poland was in XVII century +/-. I love the way you wrote “Tsar” it’s so correct unlike the common weird Western names for Russian Emperor. Tsaritsa Katerina did herself in, like you said it.
Love your writings.
Thank you,I appreciate it. And also,remember, Casimir the Great in the 1300’s was the first Polish King (I believe) that opened up Poland to mass Jewish immigration. And from then on,Poland had one of ,if not the largest,Jewish population in Europe. Until Russia replaced them,by annexing a lot of territory that had been Polish (not ethnically Polish) in the 18th Century.
Correction. I wrote “Germany”, but I should have used your expression “Germanies”, which is very correct as there were only “Germanic Principalities” at the time.
A Tour de force – Bravo Esp. interesting about Palestinian Jews and Hams – Brilliantly illuminating.
Jews lived in Europe long enough to learn some very destructive western economic and political technologies which they transplanted with success to USA and Israel. Of course, I am speaking here about Jewish elite (=Zionists), not Jews in general. But evil technologies can multiply, become viral and infect others, especially if they are oppressed. It hurts me too, to see the suffering of Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims.
This article has a few errors,well not so much errors,as half truths,or even “unfinished truths”. First,most of the European zionists are not Hebrews,or certainly not “fully” at least.Throughout the centuries,from a small number of Hebrew immigrants to Europe.Through many conversions of Europeans,and mass intermarriage with each other and their neighbors. There grew up, today’s “Jewish people”. The people the zionists sprung from. But if you follow the Bible it was to the Hebrews God promised the land. Not to non-Hebrew converts,or to half,a quarter,one-tenth,or .0001% Hebrews. So right at the start the zionist claim to the land is false. A telling question is asked by Palestinians to show that,”how is it that the Jews left Palestine tan colored and returned white”. But the author also forgets an equally important point. A huge percentage of today’s Palestinian people are descended from what were Hebrews (Jews) in the time of the coming of Islam to Palestine. Most of the Jews of Palestine converted during the time of the Eastern Roman Empire to Christianity. And after the coming of Islam,over centuries, they slowly converted to Islam. So the Palestinians would certainly have a better claim to the land of Palestine than the imported European Jews would.
Second,as to an ancient Palestinian State in Palestine. That is also a zionist argument. But lets not forget that there have been countless “states” in that area over three thousand years. A Canaanite state (or states),a Philistine state,an Israel, a Judea,a Crusader state,and yet for most of that three thousand years its been a province (or parts of more provinces) in many Empires. The Egyptians ruled them,the Hittites,the Assyrians,the Babylonians,the Persians,the Greeks,the Romans,the Arabs,the Turks,the British. So the zionists have no valid claim there either.
Third,the PLO (not Hamas) has always been a secular Palestinian organization. Certainly most of them were Muslim,as most Palestinians are Muslim. But it always has had Christian (and a few Jewish) members. Some of its higher officials have been Christian. And there is a great deal of unity between Palestinians of all faiths. Also,its important to remember,that from a small Muslim organization, Hamas grew large at first, because they were sponsored and encouraged by Mossad. There is a dispute as to whether they “knew” Mossad was helping them or not. But the Israelis were terrified of a secular PLO uniting all Palestinians against them. And wanted to sow the seeds of division by building up an Islamic only force to break the PLO’s unity. Of course,the same thing happened to them as has happened to the US with al Qeada, the Taliban, and ISIS. Hamas has become an enemy of the people that helped it grow.
Well stated and absolutely correct.
The most ridiculous part of the Israel-Palestine situation is the fact that a bunch of Europeans who converted to Judaism by order of a European potentate claim to have more right to Palestine then the descendants of the original Jews who converted to Islam who actually have lived there for centuries.
This fact DESTROYS any Israeli claim to Palestine. It’s also a clear example of how stupid the human race is that this absurd situation could arise out of greed and power lust.
It’s time to bomb Israel into the Stone Age.
Yes, it’s true that Jews, the original Jews, are still being persecuted, because Palestinians are descendents of the original Jews, while the current Jews in Israel are mostly Europeans, they were not descendents of the original Jews, but descendents of converted Jews. So in summary, the New Jews are persecuting the Original Jews.
A refreshingly humane reflection on Palestine/Israel. The only thing missing is some account of how a shared polity can be achieved.
I do not speak English. I am Brazilian and I speak only Portuguese. I’m using google translate to translate from Portuguese to English, so I apologize for mistakes. Always read this blog using the google translate. I always suspected that modern Jews are not Semites. Always I found it very strange the large population of Jews in Eastern Europe and partly migrated to Israel, the United States and other countries. I would like to know the opinion of the regulars of this blog on the subject?
http://www.christusrex.org/www2/koestler/
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm
http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Arthur.Koestler/The.13th.Tribe.htm
Its a very complicated situation (but also interesting from an historical viewpoint). You had a fairly large immigration (for ancient times) of merchants and traders from the area of today’s Israel /Palestine coming to Southern Europe over the ancient centuries. They, over those centuries converted quite a few Europeans to the Jewish faith. They also freely in those days intermarried with their neighbors. When the Roman Empire imposed Christianity throughout the Empire. For religious doctrinal reasons, they “mostly” didn’t enforce conversion onto those of the Jewish faith (though some Jews did convert to Christianity). But in most cases many restrictions were placed on people following Judaism. Some of which ended “legal” conversions and intermarriages. So for centuries, except for in Eastern Europe, where legal conventions were more blurred most Jews intermarried, and the communities grew from inside themselves.
Probably in Western Europe ,Spain and Portugal, were the countries where the amount of intermarriage between the religious communities was the highest in all West Europe. Over the centuries there was an enormous amount of conversions between the faiths. And intermarriage was fairly common (especially amount the upper classes). Many of the richest and most noble families had/have part Jewish ancestry (though many times denied). There is a story that in Portugal,where the intermarriage was even higher than in Spain. In the 18th Century the government was going to order all people with any Jewish ancestry to wear a special hat to mark them. The PM of Portugal came to the King’s Palace in Lisbon carrying four of those hats. And when the king asked him why he had the hats with him he said there was one for the King,the Crown Prince,the Catholic Cardinal,and himself. The King canceled the law after that.
In the “Germanies” , which in the Middle Ages had one of the largest Jewish communities they suffered a lot of persecution. And quite a few moved to Poland and what is now Belarus and Ukraine (included in Poland in that period). The Kings of Poland wanted to simulate trade and always needed money for wars. In those states most Christians were divided into one of three groups by law. Either peasants (the vast majority),the noble class,or the Church (priests,monks,and nuns). The Jews formed, for those days, what passed for a “middle class”. Poland was known for a while as the “Jewish Paradise”. The Germanic Jewish communities were joined by the remnants of the Khazar Jews. A mixed Turkic people, many of who had adopted Judaism. There,through the centuries those people all intermarried together. And while no clear studies show percentages. Common sense says that element must have certainly influenced the Jewish communities throughout Eastern,and Central Europe. As well as because of immigration to the Americas and now Israel,those areas as well.
Until much of Poland became part of the Russian Empire in the 18th Century. Russia, had had few Jews . After that they acquired the largest Jewish numbers in Europe by far. A great many of today’s European Jews are descended from those communities. The Tsars of Russia until just before the Russian Revolution forbade “officially” Jews to live anywhere in Russia beyond Western Russia. And the non-Russian ethnic regions of the Empire.In what was called the “Pale of Settlement”. Which is why the Russian owned areas of Poland,Ukraine,Belarus,Moldova,and the Baltic States had such a huge number of Jews before WWI and WWII. Many people from those areas immigrated throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries to other areas of Europe,the Americas,and were the majority of early zionists in Palestine.
Great points brought up by Ghassan Kadi.
Great to see more people stand up for the unpopular and inconvenient truth.
The Christians of middle-east have been victimized by all sides (except by the secular leaders like Assad). I am so glad to see an official article here reminding people of the treachery of Muslim-Brotherhood Hamas, a group who didn’t hesistate for a second to turn on the secular Syrian state, the most steadfast supporters of the Palestinian people. A secular government that has steadfastly supported the Palestinians: even when the Syrians were subjected to a hail of bombs and terrible casualties Assad’s support did not waver. I’ve been saying this on this blog for almost 2 years (since I first came across this blog).
Islamist, Muslim Brotherhood Hamas has done more to destroy Palestinian credibility and unity than any other force. It’s no wonder if you look into who helped create this group (go look up the wall street journal article), and if you look at the original sponsors and current allies of the Muslim Brotherhood (British Intelligence and their partners in crime the Qataris). Remember Erdogan is also Muslim Brotherhood. They are criminals. They have done nothing for the people of Gaza other than use them as cannon fodder. They have done tremendous service to the hateful zealots on the Israeli side, providing them with the Bogeyman they need to drive the Israeli electorate to greater polarization and extremist racist and theological bigotry.
And the author is right, Jerusalem is a Holy city to the Jews, it’s unfair to ignore that truth. Islamists are lying if they contend that they have exclusive right to claim that place. That place is also deeply significant to Christians.
I’ll repeat: Israel DOES NOT belong to the Jews. The creation of Jewish state in 1948. was deeply immoral and is a direct cause of the violence promoted today by all the sects of Judaism, which are all branches of Christianity and Islam.
Jewish Zionists, Christian Zionists and Muslim Takfirists should all be viewed as members of a single violent cult and outlawed globally.
@Wend
Take a chill pill. Re:
The Wend on December 19, 2015 · at 7:05 pm UTC
I’ll repeat: Israel DOES NOT belong to the Jews.
When did I ever say that it (Palestine/Israel) did or it didn’t? You reply to me as if that’s something I said in my post. I never addressed that issue at all. What I did address is that Islam does not have an exclusive claim on Jerusalem and that both Christians and Jews do have historical and theological connections to that place that should be acknowledged. (as well as other minorities as pointed out by the author).
Re your observation regarding the common theological, philosophical and mindset* commonality between the fundamentist sects of the 3 (non-hetrodox) sects of the Semitic religions; these fundamentalist sects being: Judaism (as you defined it), Sunni Islam and Fundamentalist-Evangelical Christianity, I believe you may have a point of view that deserves investigation.
*(footnote) by mindset I mean:
the black & white, my-way or the highway, violent intolerance of divergence from the path, lack of nuance or grey or the third-state (neutrality or zero), bipolar values, hell or heaven (no third state of existence like the Earth or the material universe), good or evil as defined by primitive limited childish tribal humans, the lack in bipolar religious sects of a state of that transcends the limitations of the human shell and its associated primitive concepts,
A mindset that lacks the ability to concieve of or conceptually perceive of a third state or other transcendental states that result from merger with the Creator/Architect, Controller/Maintainer of the Universe(s), the Infinite Soul, Infinite Being of Infinite-Intelligence that transcends mundane good & carnal evil.
Fact is over 60% of current Israeli Jews are not descendent of real Jews, there are descendent of Europeans who converted to Judaism. The descendents of real Jews are now Palestinians! They are the real Semites!
@Alan
What about the other 40% of truly Semitic Jews (based on your claim), they don’t have a theological and cultural claim on Jerusalem and their Temple Mount either? What about the Sephardic, Mizrahi, Yemenite, and Levantine Jews (Palestinian, Syrian/Lebanese Jews)?
What about non-Semitic Christians? According to the “Khazarian” logic here then non-Levantine Christians should have no right of religious or cultural connection to Jerusalem either. In fact, that should then include all non-Levantine non-Semitic Muslims too, they too should have Zero right to a cultural or theological claim to Jerusalem – according to the logic that says since 60% of Jews in Israel are not descended from Semitic Levantine Jews and therefore they have no right to claim connection to Jerusalem.
So according to the view that only native inhabitants of the Levant and their descendants have any right of theological and cultural claim to Jerusalem then 98.6% of Christians, 97.5% of Muslims and 60% of all Jews (based on Alan’s calculations) have no right of claim to Jerusalem. I’m neither agreeing with nor disagreeing with this view, I’m simply point out that it needs to applied to all parties and not just one group.
See where this is leading?
Lotsa maps like this on the net show the encroachment approaching complete eviction/extinction:
http://mycatbirdseat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Occupied-Palestine-Map-2-Stu.jpeg
Palestine does not belong to Jews either.. Their origin lies in Hayyan in Syria, Abraham just moved out of Hayyan to Kanaan.
Palestine has been inhabited by humans for at least 70,000 years, and by other near-human hominids for much longer. The Palestinians are the indigenous inhabitants, the result of millennia of settlement, invasion, migration and inter-breeding. Indeed their inheritance includes that of Jews who remained in Palestine after the Roman expulsions, some of whom stayed Jews over the millennia while others converted to Christianity and Islam. Their claim to Palestine is not that of relligion, but of simple, millennial existence.
In contrast the Jews who have expelled them on the basis of religious mythology, thoroughly disproved by archeology, consist of various groups, many of whom have no recent heritage (ie the last few tens of thousands of years)in Palestine at all, but are descendant of groups, like the Khazars, who converted to Judaism over the centuries. Even Jewish existence in Palestine/Canaan is but 3500 year old, a mere 5% of the extent of human occupation. The occupation, brutal dispossession, ethnic cleansing and ever deepening savagery are born of perverted religion, that strand of Judaism that supposes the Jews to be a Herrenvolk, the supreme beings on Earth (some strains even see the Jews themselves as God) and which sees ALL non-Jews as inferior, of typical European settler racism exactly akin to Afrikaaner racism and that of other Western racial and civilizational supremacists and of understandable rage and hatred born of the Nazi Judeocide. The Germans being too valuable as milch-cows, the lust for vengeance for the Shoah was and is still being taken out on the powerless and defenceless Palestinians instead.
The way out is obvious. Either a non-sectarian state where all social groups are equal, or two states where all may live in peace and amity. Of course not just Hamas (a creation of Mossad to subvert the PLO)but Israel itself utterly rejects those alternatives. Israel has been rapidly growing ever more brutal and aggressive, and its society, once admirable in many ways, increasingly dominated by the vilest racists and fascists, while it enjoys total immunity from International Law because, in a development surely unprecedented in history, Jewish Fifth Columns have taken total control of Western politics and the MSM, and the commanding heights of the financial apparatus, by the simple mechanism of buying them, in a development that illustrates the essential and absolute corruption of ‘Western moral values’. The way things are proceeding signals an utter catastrophe for ALL concerned, and not too far away.
.
What do you think about the possibility of modern Jews are not Semites?
“The Thirteenth Tribe
by Arthur Koestler
THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry. . .
The Khazars’ sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain.
In the second part of this book, “The Heritage,” Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced. Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term “anti-Semitism” would become void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler writes, it is based “on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.”
ISBN 0-394-40284-7
THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
Rise and Fall of the Khazars
I RISE
II CONVERSION
III DECLINE
EARLY RUSSIAN CULTURE BELITTLED
SOVIET HISTORIAN REBUKED
IV FALL
V EXODUS
VI WHERE FROM?
VII CROSS-CURRENTS
VIII RACE AND MYTH
SUMMARY
A NOTE ON SPELLING
A NOTE ON SOURCES
(A) ANCIENT SOURCES
(B) MODERN LITERATURE
THE “KHAZAR CORRESPONDENCE”
SOME IMPLICATIONS – ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
-oOo-
What the Critics have to say!
Finally Available To ALL – Absolute Historical Proof : Jews are not Israelites!
Research Proves “Jews” are non-Israelite Asiatics!
DATELINE U.S.A. (1977) — In 1976 Random House published a book that should have hit the Christian Churches like a blockbuster, but instead they chose totally to ignore it. It dealt with the racial origin of the people in Communist and Christian countries who call themselves “Jews,” and whom the Churches (and the Jews themselves) generally insist are “God’s Chosen People,” the Israelite descendants of Abraham. Since the late 1800’s a small number of Bible Scholars, who were also students of History and Racial origins, have insisted the Church denominations were wrong; that instead of being Israelites, these Jews from Eastern Europe and Western Asia were descended from Mongolians and other Asiatic peoples who had adopted Judaism as their “religion” over 1,000 years ago and had become know as “Jews.” These Bible scholars were ignored or condemned, and often called “cultists” or “anti-Semites.”
Now, after many years of research, a well-known Jewish author, Arthur Koestler has published a 255 page book titled THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE in which he proves the same point; i.e. that these Eastern European “Jews” are neither Israelites nor “Semites,” but are instead Khazars, Mongols, and Huns! Most major newspapers and magazines reviewed the book during 1976. Also, Random House, the publisher, advertised it extensively and began some of their ads with the following headline: WHAT IF MOST JEWS AREN’T REALLY SEMITES AT ALL? In addition, Random House quoted the following reviews:
“Mr. Koestler’s excellent book…Is as readable as it is thought-provoking. Nothing could be more stimulating than the skill, elegance and erudition with which he marshals his facts and develops his theories…” Fitzroy Maclean, New York Times Book Review.
“You do not have to be Jewish to be interested… Are today’s Western Jews really ethnic, Semitic, Biblical Jews, or are most of them descendants of converted Khazars?…This compact, interesting book…examines tragic-ironic implications in [this question] for modern history…It should fascinate.” –Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal
“Koestler marshals the evidence in a clear and convincing way. He tells a good story, pulling together materials from medieval Muslims and Jewish travelers, scholarly controversy and the mysterious lore of the Khazars.” –Raymond Sokolov, Newsweek
Robert Kirsch of the Los Angeles Times stated in his lengthy review that ‘Arthur Koestler publicizes with his customary skills a daring hypothesis: that THE KHAZAR JEWS MIGRATED TO POLAND AND BECAME THE FOREBEARS OF EASTERN EUROPEAN JEWRY…’ Then Kirsch quoted Prof. A. N. Poliak of Tel Aviv University, who stated that “The large majority of world Jewry is descended from the Jews of Khazaria.” Then he again quoted Koestler in THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE, “If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga; not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that GENETICALLY THEY ARE MORE RELATED TO THE HUN, UIGUR, AND MAGYAR TRIBES THAN TO THE SEED OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB…” (emphasis added) We cannot stress enough how absolutely imperative it is for all Christian Americans to consider the startling proof in Arthur Koestler’s book that today’s Jews are not Israelites. The Jewish influence on American life has reached such a stage that no student of contemporary history can ignore it. Not only the news media are Jewish monopolies, but top positions in the U.S. government are largely filled by Eastern European Jews. The magazine and book publishing houses are in Jewish hands; and movies, television, and the other entertainment industries are dominated by Jews in all phases. America’s government and most of her people’s sources of information are controlled and directed by Jews. If these people were really “God’s Chosen People,” perhaps Americans would have little cause for concern — BUT WHAT IF THEY ARE REALLY THE “HUNS” AND THEREFORE THE ANCIENT ENEMIES OF CHRISTENDOM? Since many Americans may not have an opportunity to read Koestler’s book, we shall herewith submit our own index-style review.
THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE
(by Arthur Koestler, Random House)
Reviewed by Pastor Sheldon Emry
Page
Information
15 Khazars adopt Judaism as their religion in A.D. 740.
16 Majority of Eastern European Jews are Khazar and Japhetic in origin, not Semitic. Refers to 1973 Jewish Encyclopedia and A. N. Poliak, Professor, Medieval Jewish History, Tel Aviv University.
17 Jews more closely related to Hun, Uigur, and Magyrs than to the seed of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.
18 Khazars exacted tribute from subject peoples.
20 Identified them with the hosts of Gog and Magog.
22 German word Ketzer is our word for Khazar and means heretic or Jew.
23 Khazars were with Attila the Hun in 4th century.
37-39 Some were phallic worshipers, killed anyone thought to be extra intelligent and called it an offering to god.
46 Quotes 1,000-year-old Arab historian, “The Khazars and their King are all Jews…some are of the opinion that Gog and Magog are the Khazars.”
47-50 Khazars were re-exporters of foreign goods, middlemen, inspectors of trade, goldsmiths, and silversmiths; and they exacted 10% tax on all trade.
59-63 Jews fled Rome and Greece to Khazaria to avoid forced conversion to Christianity. They adopted Islam when forced, repudiating it when safe.
72 Khazar King, in a letter, traced his people in Togarma and Japheth, the ancestors of all the Turkish tribes.
81 In A.D. 864 a monk wrote “there exists a people under the sky in regions where no Christians can be found, whose name is Gog and Magog, and who are Huns; among them is one called Gazari [Khazari?], who are circumcised and observe Judaism in its entirety.”
93 Russian communists tried to hide Khazar-Jewish connection!
95-132 History of breaking up of Khazar Empire and integration of these Jews into Russia, Poland, etc.
135 Khazar kingdom known as a kingdom of “Red” Jews.
141 Khazars joined Ghengis Khan and retained their Judaism.
145 Interchangeable names –Khazar, Zhid (or Yid), and Jew
151 Majority of Jews in Middle Ages were Khazars.
152-154 Jews were mintmasters, royal treasurers, tax collectors, and money lenders. Principal source of income was foreign trade and the levying of customs dues and they practiced communal life.
159-161 They lost the name of Khazars and became known as Jews. During Dark Ages commerce largely in Jewish hands, including slave trade.
163-167 During Crusades whole families and towns of Jews committed suicide rather than accept Christianity.
167-171 Proves only a handful of Sephardim Jews were in Europe so the vast majority of Jews today are Khazar in origin.
172-174 Gives origin of Yiddish language. It is NOT Hebrew!
178 “The Jewish dark ages may be said to begin with the Renaissance.” (Reviews comment: This remark by the Jew Cecil Roth, coupled with other information, is a sorrowful admission that the Jews were supreme in the Dark Ages but lost their dominion over Europe when the Light of God’s Word brought about the Renaissance!)
180-199 Quotes from many sources to prove Jews NOT descended from Biblical Israelites, ending with this, …evidence from anthropology concurs with history in refuting the popular belief in a Jewish race descended from the biblical tribe.
200-222 Refers to others who have written on the same subject.
223 Israeli’s right to exist…not based on…the mythological covenant of Abraham with God; it is based on international law — i.e., on the United Nations’ decision of 1947. . .
224-226 Koestler ends his book by saying he believes many Jews have learned of their Khazar ancestry and now reject the Chosen-Race doctrine.
THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE proves beyond doubt that modern Jews are not Biblical Israelites. Every church member in America should insist that his Pastor investigate these claims. Are our Jewish politicians, publishers, movie makers, and opinion molders God’s “Chosen People”? Or are they Mongol and Hun infiltrators of Christendom?
Is The Jews’ “Chosen People” Masquerade Finally Over?
Shortly after World War I, Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, assembled a staff of experts in Detroit to conduct research on the European Jews who had been entering America in large numbers since the 1880’s. Ford provided the staff with several million dollars for this research, and in 1923 he published the results in a four-volume work titled “THE INTERNATIONAL JEW.” It was Henry Ford’s conclusion that very few of these people who called themselves “Jews” were descendants of the Bible Israelites. Ford further proved that these Jews, using all sorts of crimes while under the cloak of being the Chosen People of the Bible, were rapidly taking economic and political control of America. In the religious field, Ford claimed THE JEWS HAD SECRETLY GAINED CONTROL OF MOST PROTESTANT SEMINARIES AND CHRISTIAN BOOK- PUBLISHING HOUSES and had been able to remove almost all criticism of Jews from Christian literature. In summing up his findings, Henry Ford stated, “The Jews are not the Chosen People, though practically the entire Church has succumbed to the propaganda which declares them to be so.” Ford’s book caused a furor for a few years but soon disappeared from colleges, universities, and public libraries and became unobtainable at any price. The Churches continued to teach “The Jews are God’s Chosen People, Israel,” and the (by then) Jewish-dominated news media began to refer to Jews always as Israelites. Anyone opposing the increasing Jewish control of the nations was immediately branded “anti-Semitic;” and Jewish dominated Seminaries taught new ministers to quote Genesis 12:1-3 and sternly warn their flocks that anyone speaking unfavorably of the Jews would be “cursed by God.” Jewish control of American society, politics, and religions continued to increase.
In 1951 retired U.S. Military Intelligence Officer, Col. John Beaty, published a scholarly 265-page book IRON CURTAIN OVER AMERICA. In it Col. Beaty gave overwhelming evidence this strange Race of Eastern European “Jews” were actually Khazar and Mongol Asiatics and had no racial ancestory in Israel at all.
He then proved that by 1951 these “Jews” had a stranglehold on American politics, on Banking and Credit, on all sources of news, on the entertainment industry, on America’s education system, and that they were the predominant race as judges, lawyers, doctors, and in organized crime. The Jewish news media refused to review the book, Jewish book dealers refused to handle it, Christian book stores ignored it, and only a few thousand copies were distributed. Most Americans never heard of IRON CURTAIN OVER AMERICA. Now, because of renewed interest, both THE INTERNATIONAL JEW (in an abridged edition) and IRON CURTAIN OVER AMERICA have been reprinted and are available. (See ordering information below). The latest, and perhaps the most succinct book on this subject, is ISRAEL’S 5 TRILLION DOLLAR SECRET by Col. Curtis B. Dall, former son-in-law of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a personal acquaintance of many high officials in the U.S. Govern ment since the 1930’s. Col. Dall lives and works in the Washington, D. C. area, and his book, published in 1977. Col. Dall proves again, from reliable sources, that the Jews are NOT Israelites. In fact, Col. Dall calls their masquerade as “Israel” the greatest “hoax” of the last centuries! It should be read by every non-Jew.
You now know their false identity as “Israel” protects these “Jews” from being exposed as aliens and as anti-Americans. Read the books below. Give this sheet to your Minister. Tell him to preach the truth – or resign! Most preaching today is based on the “Jew-Israel” myth, and it is false.
“Fear them not therefore; for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed: and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye on the housetops” (Jesus, in Matthew 10:26,27).”
There is a lot of truth there. The ethnic roots are very complicated. There are elements of many ethnic peoples within the Jews.
With all due respect to the author…
I believe his secular analysis and methodology on the Holy-lands does not give him the authority to decide who should rule over Palestine or Jerusalem.
What history shows us is that ever since the Western Christian crusaders or the Jewish Zionist (as of now) controlled the Holy-lands, they caused great pain, destruction and crimes.
Justice, peace and prosperity can and will only be found in the Holy-lands under Islamic rule. The Prophet of Islam, peace and blessings be upon him, has prophesied that full control and rule of the Holy-lands will return to the Muslims after the return of our beloved prophet Jesus son of Mary.
There is a difficulty for those who claim their God gave them the land: no-one need accept the authority of their God who does not believe in Him. So the dispute is not settled.
There is the converse difficulty for a secular solution: those who believe in their God think His say-so trumps any secular ruling.
Competing exclusive religions have an innate tendency to generate conflict.
A step towards a resolution in the Holy Land would be for the religious to accept that their God does not take sides in territorial disputes. (There are plenty of more mundane conflicts would have to be resolved, of course – but would this not at least take some of the righteous zeal out of the enmity?)
I recall when I was about 8 years old, a little girl was telling the kids that her father owned the park so they had to get off the swing and let her on when she wanted them to. That was one of the first ‘religious’ assertions I encountered from someone, and the stuff coming from the zionists (or some other political-religious sorts of people claiming special authority) isn’t much different, even if couched in more elaborate terms. But the kids in the park mostly just ignored her and gave her no respect at all in the matter.
The point of the article, surely, is that such arguments should have no weight coming from any side in the dispute.
your an idiot. The Christians controlled Jerusalem for 300 years and to this day the best archaeological remains originate from thE Roman rule.
Palestine has been conquered and reconquered dozens upon dozens of times in the past 3500 years. Currently the zionist jews control it, in the future it maybe another group.
No, Muhammed NEVER promised the “Holy Land” to muslims. The Koran makes clear that it was divinely given to the followers of the Torah as long as they follow those tenets delivered by Moses (surah 5.21). The very litmus test of whether the jews are following the Torah is their control of Palestine!. Read chapter 5.20-30 of your supposed religious text ands understand that your religious text COMMANDS the jews to slaughter your fellow Palestinian muslims and any group that dares to take it away from them.
So this article is only partially true. The Islamic religion does claim the adherents of the Torah were divinely given Palestine.
I say give it back to the Romans. Since the word comes from the designation, Palestina, named by the Romans when they conquered that area, give it to them. It’s a Latin word, not Jewish or Arabic.
For an excellent commentary on the history of Palestine, Google “This land is mine” and listen to a wonderful video by Nina Paley.
@ Christians too have deep connections to that city.
Actually, they have the deepest connections. The places of the Passion, Death, Ressurection of Jesus Christ are still there and millions of pilgrims visit them every year. The Holy Light descends upon the Tomb of Christ every Easter since the days of Constantine. These facts confer the sacredness to the place. The Temple of the old Zionism was destroyed, by the admission of the Jews themselves, because of repeated desecrations of it by the Jews themselves.
The Muslim connection is the result of pure usurpation, in the past as well as in the present. The fight of the Palestinians has been highjacked by the Muslim Brotherhood. On should not overlook the fact that Hizb ut-Tahrir (Arabic: حزب التحرير Ḥizb at-Taḥrīr; Party of Liberation) the international pan-Islamic political organisation whose declared goal is the unification of all Muslims into an Islamic state or caliphate ruled by Islamic law (sharia) and with a caliph head of state elected by Muslims, was founded in 1953 as a Sunni Muslim organization in Jerusalem by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, an Islamic scholar and appeals court judge (Qadi) from the Palestinian village of Ijzim.
I haven’t followed previous commenters much, but I know this. I have friends who were citizens of Beit Jalla, next to Jerusalem, from long before the Muslims took over the area. Long before the Muslim times there were Arab Christians living, worshipping,working and burying their dead in the lands around Jerusalem and throughout the current ‘Israel’. Just look at the many monasteries and churches in the area, since destroyed by the Muslims, and now being recovered, mostly as mosaic floors in abandoned churches.
there was a large and vibrant Christian community in both Israel and Syria (just look at all the ruins there!) but was decimated and pulverized by the Muslims who took over those countries.
And yes, I am an Orthodox Christian who prays daily for those who are martyred by the Muslims.
Jim, the Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in Iraq and Syria were protected by the secular Baathist regimes, but, when those regimes were destroyed by the ‘Christian’ USA and its allies, the Wahhabist butchers, also enemies of Shia Moslems, Alawi, Druze and non-Wahhabist Sunni, set about slaughtering them. It was NOT ‘the Moslems’ who did this, but the takfiri extremists, working for the ‘Christian’ West, and, above all else, for Israel, which has been working for decades to foment a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ between Islam and the West.
Well, the takfiris are not Moslems, you say? Perhaps they are crypto-western-Christians(?!). You see: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”. It actually is most certainly a duck. They are “fundamentalists” but of the Muslim religion, make no mistake. This is their culture medium. It showed it for 1400 years, again and again. And please don’t bring in the “Crusades” BS.
Why would the Crusades be BS. But Muslim crimes in the past are “fair game” to bring up. No religious group there is “without sin”. All three of them have a list a mile long of crimes done in the name of their faiths. That is just a fact,beyond even any serious denial. So its past time,people stop blaming only one side for all the problems. People didn’t think in the past as we do today (and many of us haven’t changed that much either). All the horrible things that secular people fear about Sharia Law were also the law in the Bible as well. The difference is that modern day Christians don’t follow them. There is a video on Youtube of some people in the Netherlands that disguised a Bible as a Koran. And showed it to Christians on the streets. They read the punishments in the Bible thinking they were Sharia Law from the Koran. They all condemned them as horrible. And then when shown they were reading a Bible instead they were shocked and embarrassed at their bigotry.
@people stop blaming only one side for all the problems.
Well, the real problem is when you blame more the victims than the perpetrators of the crimes. And the fair game in all that are the Christians. Muslims are exonerated of any wrong doings because they learned from the “Bible” (which they disguised as a Koran). The reactions of the hapless Dutch to the antics of the Muslim preachers in the Netherlands (which in KSA or ISIS would lead straight away to the application of Sharia Law – decollation of crucifixion of the kafir- Bibles are banned in KSA) streets is not a proof of bigotry, but of ignorance (and PC stupidity, to be honest). “Modern day Christians don’t follow them” for quite a long time.
“Modern day Christians don’t follow them” for quite a long time.
Only a couple of hundred years. In many cases less then that. And then if we consider the other “modern” Christians of the 1930’s-40’s Germany,much less than that.
Here we go (again). Can we talk of anything without the Holohoax?
I just draw your attention that the phrase “Modern…”, that you trash with the Holo, was your own.
@Mulgamungledbrain
You can’t have your cake and eat it too: you can’t maintain the fantasy that Sunni Islam’s theology does not have anything to do with slaughter and oppression of minority religious groups and it’s all the fault of lay Christians in the West. It’s sickening how socialist liberals in the West continue to be apologists for Islamists.
The West is not ruled by a Christian elite.
The West is ruled by an inbred gaggle of atheist materialists, Malthusian socialist bigots, God-less corporate fanatics, and other demonic carnally-oriented non-religious types along with a small deist component. Your attempt to sweep under the rug the fantastic destruction and slaughter meted out on Orthodox Christians, Alawites, Druze, Yazidis, buddhists, Hindus, Animists, Shia muslims and other innocent minorities by Sunni Islamic rule is obscene, or, to give you the benefit of the doubt, ignorant. You try to absolve the Sunni forces that committed these atrocities by trying to direct the blame entirely onto the lay “Christian” people of the West, that is crazy and ignorant.
Even Shia Islam had a bloody history, but due to their own status as a persecuted minority that had pogroms commited against them by the ruling and majority Sunni forces (ottomans, their predecessors, and post-ottoman Arab rulers), the Shia found common cause with the other sects (in the past and the present). In addition, Shia Islam, being a heterodoxy, has theological mechanisms for incorporating and accepting different views and schools of thought: Alawites believe in Karma, Reincarnation, and final transcending to the heavens once purified enough to escape the cycle or rebirth (much the same way as Yazidis and their Hindu counterparts in India) yet they are accepted under the umbrella of Shia Islam and have protection of mainstream Shia forces due to this (the Sunnis would never tolerate or accept the Alewites under their umbrella). In addition the Shia have a system of debates and review that makes it possible for them evolve/change and maintain contemporary relevancy – unlike orthodox rigid, by the 7th century books, mainstream Sunni Islam. As a result, contemporary Shia Islam has a future and today finds itself protecting Christians and other minorities in Lebanon and Syria. It is wrong to muddle the accomplishments and rationality of elements of the Shia with worst nihilist elements of Sunni Islam.
The suffering of Orthodox Christians (and other minorities) under the oppression of Sunni rule is real and can’t be discounted just because of a false belief that the only bad player in the region is the West.
Even Assad’s grandfather Ali Suleiman Al-Assad acknowledged this when he wrote a letter to the French Prime Minister to keep the French Mandate and to not leave the region (and let the then theocratically oriented Sunni majority rule Syria). He correctly feared the slaughter and oppression of all religious minorities and the destruction of free-thought by the Sunnis in Syria as had happened in Iraq to the Assyrian Christians and Kurdish Yazidis (at the hands of Sunnis), some time earlier when the British left.
Thats why the Assad family and all the other minorities in Syria are such advocates of a secular government. In addition, many Sunnis have had the opportunity to enjoy the social freedoms of the socially free society of secular Syria and can contrast their lifestyle to hellhole of existence that everyone in Sunni Saudi Arabia experiences. Over time a great plurality of these Sunnis have grown to want to maintain this freer lifestyle and support Assad.
I agree. In fact palestinian muslims are delusional. Their very own religious text the Koran calls for their slaughter in surah 5.20-30!
It makes clear that palestine is indeed divinely given to those that follow the Torah and thise will keep the holy land as long as they follow the Mosaic Law. They lost it and got it back. The koran commands jews to slaughter anyone misbehaving on their land. Dont believe it? Read the koran starting on 5.20 and understand what its implying. Palestinian muslims endorse their own genocide!
“…divinely given…” – there we go again. Not “divinely given” if the Divinity does not exist. In several thousand years no-one has come up with credible evidence for a Divinity dispensing such edicts. We are left with one “Divine” edict fervently believed in up against an opposing “Divine” edict fervently believed in, with no means of adjudicating.
Read what I wrote. I do not believe Palestine was divinely given to anyone as the place is a crappy desert. Perhaps if it was Hawaii I can understand such a claim
It is Islam itself that claims the followers of the Torah were divinely ordained to be the sole inhabitants of Palestine. Again it’s the Koran that says so in surah 5.21.
I don’t see your interpretation of Surah 5.21?
5.21. “O my people! Enter the holy land which God has prescribed for you and commanded you to enter; and do not turn back (from faith to your previous state), for then you will turn about as losers (in both this world and the Hereafter). ”
Which is described as: “4. This verse refers to Palestine, where the Prophet Abraham emigrated and settled, and which was the homeland of the Prophets Isaac and Jacob, upon them and all other Prophets be peace. At that time, the Divine trust – the representation and promotion of God’s Religion, which has always been called “Islam” – rested on the shoulders of the Children of Israel. It is for this reason that God Almighty prescribed that land for them and commanded them to enter it and make the primordial Religion of Islam prevalent there. So this prescription is not for the Children of Israel as a race, nor as the followers of the Jewish religion or Judaism. It is for those who represent Islam, the complete surrender to God, and shoulder its promotion and exaltation at all times.”
http://mquran.org/content/view/690/4/
Read what you wrote. You said the Koran “makes clear that Palestine is indeed divinely given…” In other words, you did not distance yourself from what you quoted. I take it your clarification is your intended meaning.
@Jim of Olym,
Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem
Author: Issa Nakhleh
Please read a few times CHAPTER 14: THE DESTRUCTION AND DESECRATION OF CHRISTIAN HOLY PLACES AND THE VIOLATION OF CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS RIGHTS
http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com/EPP/TOC.htm
Examples of Attacks on Christians BY ISRAELI JEWS:
St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. On 3 Feb. 1944 three Jews were surprised as they tried to set a bomb at the gate through which the British High Commissioner would pass on his way to Sunday service.
French Catholic Ratisbonne School. On 20 Nov, 1947 Jews smashed the statue of the Virgin Mary in the enclosure.
German Catholic Church of Jerusalem. On 16 Feb. 1948 Jews threw hand grenades into the yard of the the church.
Dormito Abbey, Mt. Zion. Also on 16 Feb. 1948 a bomb was thrown by the Haganah into the garden barely missing two Fathers.
The Zionist attack on Christianity in Jerusalem:
• In 1947 Christian Population of Palestine was 350,000. In 1948 the Israelis grabbed 80% of Palestine and expelled 800,000 Muslim and in 1969 the Christian population of Israel was less than
45,000.
Convent of St. George of the Greek Orthodox- occupied 14 May 1948; struck on 18 May by a mortar shell.
Hospice “Notre Dame de France” of the Assumptionist Fathers- occupied 15 May 1948; used as a main base to attack Jerusalem. Large part of it was destroyed by the Israeli Occupation.
Convent of Repartrice Sisters- occupied 15 May 1948; used in the attack on Jerusalem. Set on fire and mostly destroyed.
French Hospital- occupied 15 May 1948 in defiance of the International Red Cross and French flags flying over it.
Italian Hospital- occupied 15 May 1948 despite its being under the protection of the Red Cross; used to shell Jerusalem.
Seminary of Ste. Anne was bombed on 17 & 19 May 1948 suffering heavy damage and many of the refugees within were wounded.
Church of St. Constantin and Helena- struck by a bomb on 17 May 1948 the fragments of which damaged the Church of the Holy Sepulcher next-door.
The Armenian ORTHODOX Patriarchate was hit with about one hundred mortar bombs launched by the Zionists from the monastery of the Benedictine Fathers on Mount Sion. These bombs also damaged St. Jacob’s Convent, the Archangels Convent and their churches, their two Elementary and Seminary schools along with their libraries. 8 killed and 120 wounded.
The Apostolic Delegation (protected by the Holy See)- occupied 18 May 1948.
Monastery of the German Benedictine Fathers (Dormition)- occupied 18 May 1948; used as one of the main bases for the attack on Jerusalem.
The English School at Mount Sion- occupied 18 May 1948.
Convent of St. John (Greek Orthodox)- occupied 18 May 1948; struck by a
mortar shell on 23 May 1948.
St. Abraham convent struck by mortar fire on 23 May 1948.
St. Spiridon convent struck by mortar fire on 23 May 1948.
Convent of the Archangel (belonging to the Coptic Patriarchate) forming part of the Holy Sepulcher struck by a mortar shell on 23 May 1948.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate hit by mortar shells on 23 & 24 May 1948 wounding many refugees.
Franciscan Convent (St. Saviour) near the Holy Sepulcher hit by mortar
shells on 19, 23, 24, & 28 May 1948- orphanage damaged; general secretariat damaged; many nearby houses destroyed; many sheltering children killed and wounded.
Latin Patriarchate hit by mortar shelling on 23, 26, 27 & 28 May 1948 damaging the Patriarchal Palace, especially the Cathedral.
Greek Catholic Patriarchate struck by mortar shells on 16 & 29 May 1948
damaging the building and wounding several people.
Church of St. Mark (Syrian Orthodox)- struck by mortar shell killing the monk Peter Saymy, secretary to the bishop, and wounding two others.
Zionists fired on Jerusalem from the Hebrew University, Hadassah Hospital and from two
synagogues located in the Old City.
Desecration in Peace: 1949-1967
• On Mt. Zion in Jerusalem Israeli forces first seized then looted various
churches and convents. Gold and silver religious objects were taken and the
churches and convents turned into military posts. The soldiers desecrated
and vandalized the Armenian and Greek Orthodox cemeteries.
• Churches were destroyed in Damound & Somata.
• Christmas Day 1952 the Israeli army blew up the village of Ikret, whose population was 100% Catholic. Its beautiful church was destroyed and the the population were scattered to other parts of Galilee.
• October 1953 the Israeli army destroyed the Christian village of Kafr Bur’om in Galilee. Its churches and schools were demolished and the population scattered to various parts of Galilee.
• 16 April 1954 Zionist attack the cemetery of the Greek Catholic Community in Haifa. 73 crosses and 50 statues of angles were smashed.
• July 1954 Israeli fundamentalists attack a Christian religious procession of the Carmelite Fathers and the Christian community of Haifa on Mt. Carmel near Haifa. The procession was dispersed, many crosses were destroyed and many Christians were injured.
• 12 July 1954, a Protestant Minister in Tiberias went to a house where some families of Christian and Jews had gathered. A rabbi provoked Jews to riot by spreading the rumor that many Jews were to be baptized in that house. Hundreds of Jews gathered and attacked the house. The police were rushed to disperse the mob, and it was only the presence of the police which saved the Protestant Minister from being lynched.
• July 1961 a Christian missionary group in Jerusalem was forced to cancel it services when attacked by stone-throwing Jewish religious fanatics. They chanted “Eichmann! Eichmann!” and began tossing rocks.
• 10 January 1963 the Finnish Christian Mission School in Jerusalem is attacked by seventy Jews. Mostly Yeshiva students.
They smashed windows and beat Mr. Risto Santala, the school pastor. Further along the street the plate glass windows of the Zion Mission shop run by Reverend William Hall were smashed. All of this was the result of an editorial in the Jewish newspaper Yediot Aharonot of 23 Dec. 1962 which accused the Christian Mission of converting Jews to Christianity, and calling on Jews to
demonstrate outside the Finnish School.
Attacks on Christianity– 1967 & After The War:
• Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem shelled by Israeli forces.
• Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem- Israeli soldiers and youths throw stink bombs into the church Israelis inappropriately dressed entered the church;they smoked cigarettes; they littered the church; they brought dogs with them.
• Church of the Nativity suffered some of the same desecretions as the Holy Sepulchre.
• Israeli forces shot up the Episcopal Cathedral just as they had done in 1948.
• IDF smashed the Episcopal school for boys with their tanks.
• IDF wrecked and looted the YMCA.
• IDF wrecked the Lutheran Hospital, even though it was being used by the UN.
• The Lutheran center for cripples was also heavily damaged by the Israelis.
• In Ramallah the Episcopal school for girls was fired upon by Israeli forces and some of the girls were killed.
• The Reverend S.J. Mattar, warden of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, was murdered in his home by Israeli soldiers according to witnesses were also fired upon.
AFTER the War: 1967–
1972 Arson destroys the bookstore of the Baptist Church in Jerusalem. The church suffers several attacks per year- usually window breaking. The bookstore also is a favorite for vandalism.
The chapel had recently been vandalized by a member of the ultra-right Kach movement.
1974 Two American Jewish girls attempt to set fire to the Baptist Church bookstore.
1975 A grenade damages the Baptist Church. Slogans were painted on the Church’s property- a common practice in these attacks.
1978 Law against missionaries.
8 Oct. 1982 “Unknown persons” set fire to the Baptist Church in Jerusalem destroying it. The adjacent church library suffered damage also.
23 Dec. 1982 “Unknown persons” drew swastikas on the entrances of two churches in Jerusalem. They also tried to set the two churches on fire. In addition to the swastikas the word “OUT” was painted on the entrance of the Notre Dame Church- the second such desecration.
Dec. 1982 Meir Kahane’s Kach group burned to the ground a Baptist church in Jerusalem.
23 May 1983 “Unknown persons” attacked a convent run by German nuns in Jerusalem. Al-Fajr, a Jerusalem weekly, reported that this was just the latest incident in a series of many anti-Christian incidents in Jerusalem.
June 1983 The Mother Superior and another nun of the Russian Orthodox Church were stabbed to death by an AMERICAN JEW. In mid-month men entered the church and threatened the nuns. At another Russian Orthodox church, directly across the street from Jerusalem’s main police center, swastikas were painted on the main entrance.
Nov. 1983 Father Fawzi Khoury of the Fassouta Roman Catholic Church was held for weeks without charge.
25 Dec. 1983 A fire was started in the Hotel Nitzan in Tiberias on Christmas Jews claimed that the hotel is a center for missionary activity and Jews claimed that the hotel is a center for missionary activity and that various Christian sects are offering jewelry and sneakers to Jews who would attend missionary lectures.
The Jerusalem Post noted the incident as one of many such actions harassing the group
Meetings interrupted and photos of the participants taken and sometimes published later in anti-missionary tracts; windows smashed; stones tossed into meetings; homes broken into and
and converts are often harassed.
The owners closed the hotel and asked the group to leave. The anti-missionary group Yad Le’ Achim and a local yeshiva, Kolel Yad Rambam, seemed to be the instigators of the attacks.
Dec 1983 Explosives placed outside several Christian and Muslim religious institutions in Jerusalem injured a number of people.
5 Jan. 1984 “Unknown persons” set fire to the Messianic Assemblies Church in Jerusalem– the latest of a number of arsons and bombings against Christian and Muslim targets. The church’s address had been placed on copies of Biblical literature later distributed in Orthodox Jewish circles. The church had nothing to do with the literature to which its name had been affixed.
15 Jan. 1984 At the Russian Orthodox convent Ain Karem an Israeli army issue hand grenade exploded as a nun opened her door. The door was blown to pieces but the nun eluded death by ducking around a corner just before the grenade exploded. Israeli police point to the terror group Terror Against Terror held responsible for at least 14 such bomb attacks throughout the West Bank.
Jan. 1984 Plans to build a Christian hotel near Bethlehem were scrapped by the Jewish municipality which refused to issue a building permit.
After the fire meetings of the Baptist congregation are held in tent like structures. Their rebuilding plan is approved by Mayor Teddy Kollek but in the fall the district planning commission decided to allow only the building of a structure similar to the congregation’s original 60 seat chapel built in 1929. The Church filed suit in Israel’s High Court.
Yad Le’ Achim organized protests against the rebuilding plans. an unnamed ultraconservative Orthodox Jewish leader told the Jerusalem Post that his political party would withdraw from the municipal coalition if approval were granted.
The High Court in mid 1985’s asked the Baptist congregation to leave the area before it builds a new sanctuary. The court said it would not rule on the church’s suit for two months.
The delay is designed to give the congregation and the Baptist Convention of Israel time to consider trading the church property for another site in Jerusalem.
Lawyers for the church have recommended that the Baptists move on condition the church’s building will be approved and submitted.
23 Jan. 1985 Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest opposite the Baptist Church against plans to rebuild the burnt-out church. The signs read: “Get Out,” “We don’t want a missionary center here.” One demonstrator said: The Church disrupts the Shabbat peace and lowers the quality of life in our quiet residential area.”
13 Apr. 1985 Members of the Assyrian community (the oldest Christian community in Jerusalem), led by their archbishop, were walking to their quarter of the Old City on the occasion of Holy Fire when they were bombarded with hot water and rocks by a Jewish family from their home.
This was the fifth time an Assyrian procession had been attacked during Christian holidays. The Jerusalem Post reported that the attackers were newly converted Orthodox Jews from America.
The Jewish neighborhood in the vicinity of the Assyrian convent is all Assyrian property confiscated after 1967 to build the Jewish quarter.
12 Apr. 1987 “Unknown persons” set fire to St. Savior’s Episcopal Church in Akka. The arsonists also painted racists slogans in Hebrew on the church walls: “Kahane the Great,” “Get Out Christians and Muslims, ” and Death to the Pope”.
1988 In Gaza, 18-year old Kader Tarazi, on his way to buy groceries was caught in a crowd fleeing Israeli soldiers. He ducked into the house of a friend but the soldiers dragged him out. While beating him they demanded to know his religion, when he replied “CHRISTIAN” the soldiers spread him cruxiform on the hood of a jeep and beat him on the head. Then they drove him around the streets of Gaza for hours as an example. He died from the beating.
As you spoke of “mosaic floors”….
Type: Rare mosaic vandalized in Valley of Elah .
Article from Ynet ( Jewish newspaper)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4220742,00.html
IMO…You Jim, have been bamboozled by the Zionist Jews to blame the hatred of Christianity on the Muslims. I am going to use the words of Malcolm X.
“Oh! I say it and say it again!
You’ve been had,
You’ve been took,
You’ve been hoodwinked”
—Malcolm X
Bamboozled,
Led astray,
Run amok,
This is what he does ”
Indeed this speech of Malcolm X is perfect to describe how the Zionist Jews bamboozle so many.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT1jLY20tLo
Carmel by the Sea
wow Carmel…that’s a great comment
The whole premise falls down as there is no imaginary man in the sky. The only reality is mans hatred and bigotry towards others. Religion is a intellectual retarded justification for murdering others. I loath all religions. If man cannot overcome the tyranny of religions we are doomed to die out.
Well said.
Religion is not all bad and can be a beautiful and meaningful art form or expression of that which is not expressed rationally — as for other art forms. It is problematic when people look at a work of art and think it literally depicts the real physical world, however, or attack people who prefer other styles and form of art (which has certainly been done at times). Anything can be misused and perverted by people.
@Anonymous @8:35 am.
You say: “Religion is a intellectual retarded justification for murdering others. I loath all religions. If man cannot overcome the tyranny of religions we are doomed to die out.”
I disagree.
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history .
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html
It’s not about atheism any more than it’s about religion, or any other theological position — but about land, money, and power. (Hitler, BTW, was big on using religion as a means to make war — hardly atheistic).
Blindly blaming atheism is as wrong as “Blindly blaming religion for conflict”.
Neither Harris nor Dawkins understand the politics of this, and neither does Dinesh D’Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the right wing, American exceptionalist, war mongering, Hoover Institution.
STATE OF PALESTINE QUIZ ~~ QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/state-of-palestine-quiz-questions-and-answers/
Save this link, (if you wish, of course) when you have a need to answer the Zionist Jews, X-tian Zionists and Israel Firsters.
Thank you Carmel by the Sea for your input and the good links.
Thank you Mulga Mumblebrain for excellent points as well.
This is why I come to this site.
Thank you.
Dear Siljan,
You are most welcome. I am was born a Christian, live as a Christian ( try hard, don’t always succeed) and will die a Christian and I defend my fellow brothers and sisters, the Muslims, whenever the opportunity arises. I totally understand that millions of dollars have been invested in creating hatred against the religion of Islam and its followers– the Muslims.
And I will NOT bend my knee to the Zionist Entity that poisons ( among many other evil acts) the minds of the West. The effects of Islamophobia is to dehumanize the Muslims. I will NOT do it, because the One I love, Jesus Christ, a Palestinian, would not want me to.
Period.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-buys-loyalty-us-university-administrators/13399
http://archive.tennessean.com/article/20101024/NEWS01/10240374/Anti-Muslim-crusaders-make-millions-spreading-fear
Salaam,
Carmel by the Sea
QUOTE: “n any event, with or without the so-called promise to Abraham, Jewish presence in Palestine is more ancient than that of Muslims, but that does not win the Zionist argument and does not justify the displacement of Palestinians even if they have “only” lived there for thirteen centuries in comparison to thirty centuries of Jewish presence”
Not a question of Jewish presence or Muslim presence. The central injustice revolves around a native people to a region (irrespective of their religion–Christians lived there too) being displaced by a foreign people (mostly Europeans) who immigrated into the region over the course of a number of decades, and who used their superior technology and support by world powers to forcibly displace those native people. That is the injustice which cries out to be redressed.
Some words from the Bible on correct justice for “crimes”. People should think about these the next time they are frothing at the mouth over the “horrors” of Sharia Law. This is a short list. There are far more similar “laws”:
Leviticus 24:16
Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.
Exodus 35:2
Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.
Genesis 38:24
About three months later Judah was told, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.” And Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.”
Exodus 22:18
“You shall not permit a sorceress to live”.
Leviticus 20:14
If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity; he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you.
Leviticus 20:27
“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.”
Leviticus 21:9
And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.
Exodus 21:16
“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.
Exodus 22:19
“Whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death.
Exodus 21:15
“Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.
Exodus 21:17
“Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.
@Bob
(1).Every one of your examples where pulled out of the old testament, true christianity is the new testament. And the example of Jesus Christ and Mary magdalen gives us a clear picture on Jesus’s view of this matter (as well as the transformation of Saul from a Saudi-style executioner and hand-chopper to a repentant apostle Paul).
(2) No Christian dominated country implements any of these brutal punishments, but several major Muslim dominated countries do.
Therefore that argument has no relevancy to contemptary Christianity unless your argument is that Jewish religious law was as harsh as Shariah Law current is -in which case I fail to see how this makes Muslims feel any better about their barbaric medieval punishments and inexcusable (for secular humanists) support of them.
Unless you have a different Bible than I do. All of that is still in the Christian teachings. In fact many Ministers preach every Sunday on the Old Testament. My point was/is that Christian beliefs and others are not that different. Its modernity that has changed our societies. For centuries in many Christian countries it was a criminal offence to do most of the “crimes” recounted in the Old Testament. And changing Religion in many Christian states was a death crime. Up until the 19th Century in some of those states people were burned alive for “heresy”,converting to Judaism or Islam. Or for just helping others to convert. In some states “witches and werewolves”,etc, were drowned,hung,or stoned. And into the 1930’s-40’s there were priests and monks in some Christian states that joined with the fascists and nazis in the murders of Jews and other Christians of different rites. All “in the Name of the Lord”. While you had Christian leaders in some states blessing the nazi troops,in their “Crusade in the East”. So again,no people and no religion is without “sin”. The Christians doing evil no more “represent” Christianity. Than Muslims doing evil “represent” Islam. They are/where bad people,doing bad things. I see a very dangerous portent sweeping the West,which needs to be stopped. And that is a “Holier than Thou” attitude taking hold. And it is leading straight to a new version of the anti-Jewish hysteria that flourished in 1930’s Europe. Only in today’s version the Jews are replaced by the Muslims.
Mark Twain:
http://warprayer.org/
Not long ago, and General Boykin is still at it.
A major cause of the demise of religion is the misuse of it, and religious mythology, is by practitioners who fail to understand the proper use of it (and overdo it, or use it as an excuse for their own failings or evil undertakings).
The US invaded Philippians to convert the heathen Catholics to Christianity…
Guess the level of the US public education system has not improved much in 300 years..
Well, let’s be real here: none of these religious conflicts center around debates on fine points of dogma, such god has green ears vs god has yellow ears, of course, but about land, political power, economics, succession of power, and so forth — like the whole Chrurch of England things was not about Catholic vs Protestant but about if the Pope had political and economic power in England. Christianity itself was about the Roman empire, local rule, social conditions and money, and so forth. Religion becomes a proxy for the mundane conflicts with very little ‘spiritual’ anything contained therein.
The US invasion of the Philippines was about territorial expansion, money, and so forth, of course. This ‘Sunni vs Shia’ is a distraction from the actual issues too, and a false rallying point for divide and conquer — a standard imperial strategy. Even nationality and ethnic differences is used for that to a great extent — does anyone really care if someone else eats blintzes or flat bread, enough to go to war? The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is about land, money, and power, and always has been.
@Bob1
Look I get your point of view with respect to theological dirt in so-called Christian books (even though the old testament is supplanted by the New testament). I get that a religious fundamentalist Jew or evangelical Christian who pedantically and rigidly hangs onto and uncritically believes every part of the old testament does not have the moral high ground with respect to extremist and fundamentalist Islam. However your comparison between current Islamophobia and Nazi vicious racism is a gross exaggeration on many levels:
Jews were not cutting people’s heads off, slitting the throats of helpless POW soldiers (chechniya) exterminating Christians, Yazidis, and other religions, in the 1930s. This in contrast to what islamists are doing and have done in this era in checheniya, Bosnia, Sudan, Kashmir, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Kosovo, china, Thailand, Lebanon, Libya, etc., etc., etc., etc., There are qualities to Sunni Supremicist theology that is clearly part of the problem and can’t be ignored. Pointing out indefensible brutality, bigotry and glorificatuon of genocide in the old testament/Jewish bible doesn’t make for a moral equivalence at all. Most modern Christians reject these barbaric tribal theocratic laws in the old-testament, whereas most Muslims defend and support Shariah Law.
The comparison between the premeditated hate and pre-planned violence of the Nazis against European minorities (not just Jews) and Slavs, is not comparable to the Islamophobia that is growing in the World. In the current case, the response and reaction of Sunni Islamist mainstream apologists, their mullahs, and the vicious practices of the governments & societies of their home-countries toward other sects, shows that, in this case, they as responsible for the Islamiphobia as the dirty Anglo-Saxon establishment (particularly the British) and duplicitous elements of the Israeli establishment that fund and use Islamists for their geopolitical goals.
This discussion about the history of the Palestinian region, the people that have lived there in the past and are living there now, the associative religious beliefs (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and the politics behind it all do not justify by any measure the ongoing egregious and deplorable situation that has occurred every day for nearly 70 years. The German Jews never suffered this long a hardship under the Nazi regime.
The State of Israel is an occupying force with no legal authority to impose their will on the Palestinian people, steal land (i.e., West Bank settlers), deny fishing and farming rights (i.e., Gaza Strip) and murder with impunity the lives of innocent people. This is an abomination for which no country has condemned Israel for committing these heinous acts and no United Nations adjudicative body has offered one serious indictment against them.
This is a shame upon humanity that can not be explained away by referring to ancient texts of dubious claims. The past is a failed argument as a claim of authority to subjugate and rule over an indigenous people. The Palestinians have an inherit right to their lives, to earn a living, to pass on their culture to their progeny and to not bear the constant whip of oppression on their backs by a self-proclaimed overlord who neither God nor man has imbued them to do so by divine decree.
I grow weary when men speak of the past in an attempt to rationalize or excuse criminal acts. Israel is the pharaoh, the fuhrer, the despot and martinet who seeks the world’s pity and cries foul when any entity dares to challenge them for their inhuman deeds. They deserve neither understanding nor pathos but only execration for their iniquities.
“The German Jews never suffered this long a hardship under the Nazi regime.”
Er…that might be because said Nazi regime killed them all…
The Israelis are working on it,one by one. I think he meant before the nazis came up with the “Final Solution” the years of just oppression.
Israel is not working on it one by one. In criticising Israel it is better to be precise about what they are doing.
Ah,yes they are. Almost every single day there are Palestinians killed there. All you need do is look at the news to see that. There are expulsions,as well. And there are denials of the ability to get to a hospital in many cases. Some of which lead to the deaths of pregnant women and their babies.So yes,they are killing them. Just so far its not in mass numbers. If the World wasn’t at least watching, I wouldn’t be surprised by that as well.
Israel has never intended to annihilate the people of Palestine (whatever some repellent Rabbis may say). They have killed plenty and will continue to. They have expelled as many as they can.
They have corralled the rest in ghettoes. They are however more civilised in their ethnic cleansing than either the Nazis or the settlers and government in America. It is not good to exaggerate. It weakens what you say.
@ Ewan,
Europeans never intended to annihilate entirely the Natives/Indigenous people. But! look at what dire straits positions most of those Indigenous are in today.
Though in in all fairness, the Indigenous today can travel out, have civil marriages and are not living in the biggest prison ghetto ( Israel) the world has . This evil Zionist Entity has been the the Devil’s Den for almost 70 years now and it’s steeped in blood of the innocent Palestinians that are both Muslims and Christians.
Prof. Leibowitz: There are Judeo-Nazis. Israel Represents the Darkness of a State Body-VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM2fXTkjU2E
“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er,” (Macbeth:Act 3)
Israel to a tee.
Carmel by the Sea
I think you’ll find the European settlers in America, North and South, were fairly explicit about the natives, and were very successful in doing what they said they would.
Zionists since the late nineteenth century have recognised the need to “transfer” the natives. The transfer in 1947-8 was not complete. One way and another they’ve been whittling away ever since. Massacres have been part of the modus operandi. What Israel is doing falls within the definition of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Nevertheless, it is very different from what the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe and what the Europeans did to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is not extermination.
South Africa managed to kill many more and ruined the lives of generations just as thoroughly as Israel. The US and UK through Rwanda and Uganda manage to kill millions in the Congo just to protect their economic interests.
Israel is not the greatest evil there is or has ever been. It is one malefactor among many.
Exaggerated rhetoric surely only serves to obscure.
“Zionists since the late nineteenth century have recognised the need to “transfer” the natives.”
Recognized the “need” to transfer (i.e, ethnically cleanse) the “natives”. So would you say equally that the the nazis “recognized” the “need” to transfer the Jews in the 1930’s? I would call both the nazi and zionist actions as an abomination in history.
Sorry. I’m doing what I’ve accused someone else of doing and not making myself clear. The Zionists recognised the need to transfer the natives – if their project of establishing a “Jewish Homeland” in the Holy Land was to succeed. Since I said that what the Zionists have been doing ever since falls within the definition of ethnic cleansing or genocide, I would have thought it obvious that I think it a crime. There is plenty of documentary evidence now of Zionist deliberations over the last century. As I say, the intention has never been extermination (apart perhaps from the odd zealot), but “transfer” encouraged by massacres and expulsions under cover of “war” and the immiseration of the population. It may be that what looks like the impossibility of now achieving this will push them to yet more drastic measures. They will continue to “mow the lawn”. They may try to persuade Egypt to take Gaza (minus the oil and gas reserves) or Jordan to take the West Bank Palestinians. Systematic slaughter is surely unlikely. Such slaughter is now only practicable for US allies in places like Rwanda, not in the full glare. The regular massacres in Gaza seem to be the limit on what they can get away with.
@ Ewan
It’s important to realise that Zionist/Israeli control extends beyond the current geography of Israel; the Zionists also control the governments of the West (USA, Britain etc). The latter have carried out many proxy Wars on behalf of Israel which have lead to the deaths of millions. Once the numbers are added up, it becomes clear that the modern day Greater Israel project is one of the/if not the most devastating undertaking in the history of human civilisation.
That is a point worth thinking about. I do not know how the powers that be in the US operate. The “Israel lobby” has been fantastically successful in the last fifty years. I still don’t think Big Oil, Wall Street, and the military-industrial complex would go along with anything that didn’t suit their interests. So I don’t think we can say it’s all the fault of the Zionists.
I don’t exaggerate. I think you need to check out the news more often. And read some of the reports from “Israeli” human rights groups. I may have used a bit of sarcasm with the ,”one at a time” remark. But that isn’t far off the mark. Over the years the Israelis have killed thousands of Palestinians. The vast majority innocent victims. Even many righteous Israeli Jews will attest to that. And while at present the zionist rulers haven’t adopted a mass slaughter policy. That is still an option for them. The nazis didn’t begin with the “Final Solution” either.They worked up a campaign of hate first. Then tried to drive people to leave. When that didn’t work liked they wanted they turned to genocide. The Israelis helped by their Western stooges already have a campaign of hate working. Daily associating all Arabs and Muslims with terrorists. And paving the way to the “Clash of Civilizations” they created propaganda about. That would be a nice cover for the West to “accept” a cleansing of Palestine of “terrorists”. The zionists plan for the “long haul” in everything they do. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they tried something like that in the future.And already have thought of it.
There you are being smoked out as an apologist for Israel. How would you know what the inside track leaders in Israel have planned for the Palestinians?
Bob is right, there is no doubt that if the world wasn’t watching that state closely, the hate filled, entitled and extremist settlers would be exterminating the Palestinians. Look at how shamelessly they kill people, children in front of the camera, in our faces, and how one-sided and tribal their fake legal system is that their is zero accountability for Israeli extreme nationalistic killers.
Or because they have been lavishly compensated ever since by an endless flow of German reparations, restitutions, and indemnifications amounting to billions of dollars?
Looks like a non sequitur.
My comment addressed the decades of ongoing, brutal occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government. You however, chose to twist the focus around to the horrible atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi’s against European Jews, offering no opinion on the draconian measures imposed upon the Semites of the region by the Zionists. Are Arabs invisible to you?
I can only conclude at this point is you feel nothing for the plight of the Palestinian people who have been forced to live as slaves in their own land.
What you had to say would have had so much more force without the silly remark. It’s easy enough to admit a mistake.
Silly remark? Your proffer earlier suggested the Israeli government demonstrates mercy compared to the settlers in the West Bank or the U.S. when you wrote,”They are however more civilised (sic) in their ethnic cleansing …”, as if the Palestinians are Untermensch, merely animals humanely corralled and then culled for slaughter.
Only a doppelganger of Morton Klein would report the reality of genocide against the Arab culture and treat it as ho-hum, life goes on and there is nothing to be done about it.
Poke the Truth. You made a silly remark. I made a silly remark. Mine had the slight advantage of irony. Yours apparently you stick by. I still think it devalues an otherwise strong case against Israel to make silly comparisons with the Final Solution.
I stand by my statement written earlier, (“The German Jews never suffered this long a hardship under the Nazi regime.”).
You picked out the one sentence and made the claim it was “silly” offering up the millions of Jewish murders by the Nazis in comparison as if it is an acceptable response but remained silent about the remainder of my muse. Instead you continue to dance, to parry and shun to give an opinion as to whether Israel should be condemned for their brutality towards the Palestinians or perhaps instead, you feel the Zionists are justified because they have a “right to exist”. Sitting on the fence while murder and mayhem occurs unabated is a vacillation unworthy of moral men.
I have no time to waste with such immature dawdling; state you position clearly so we may all know it.
Once the distinction is made, as by Norman Finkelstein, between the holocaust (the historic events) and the Holocaust (the Zionist propaganda construct) it is better, even if you think only from a polemical point of view, to leave the holocaust out of the discussion of Israel and its crimes. It is Zionists and anti-Semites insist on blurring the distinction for their own unedifying ends.
@Ewan
You are clearly unable to answer the question posed to you because you are in the wrong and have been outed.
Bob is right, the process of genocide by the Nazis was graduated, increasing with brutality year over year. The same process is in play in Israel, they same dynamic of total genocide is a logical possibility if the Israelis face similar circumstances to the Germans in the latter half of the war. In fact, I never would have thought about this had you not elected to deflect and run from Bob’s contention.
The fact that you try to focus on Nazis and their victims and try to deflect away from the stated goals of extreme zionists and their victims exposes you and the weakness of your arguments.
Jerusalem belongs to everyone and therefore to no one, should be Heritage of Humanity and be a free and open city where all faiths, religions and human beings, be them religious or secular, had free access, with a special system of government under a rotating basis by all nations in the world. Also could well be placed there the UN; I do not understand why this international organization has to be in New York, USA.
We want to visit and see Jerusalem, although we also like to visit Arab countries.
Enough to appropriate what is not yours, Netanyahu!
On the other hand, Dimona nuclear facility must be open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as all others.
Finally, all guilty of Mavi Marmara killings should be arrested and tried.
No more impunity and bravado!
Wow. What an enormous amount of rubbish posted here about Jewish origins. Haven’t any of you folks heard of population genetic studies?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jewish_origins
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_people#DNA_and_genetic_studies
At the same time, it’s amazing not a one of you can bring up that many modern Palestinians are also immigrants, such as Arafat, who was born in Cairo.
Lastly modern problems must be solved by modern people living today, not by digging back into irrelevant historical occurrences and political arrangements.
Is the focus on “historical occurrences” not driven by the Zionist insistence that such occurrences somehow justified them in establishing a state in Palestine without regard to the wishes of the population?
It is difficult to solve the problems because the state thus imposed by the Zionists has an overwhelming preponderance of power and those they seek to expel have no power at all. – Unless, of course, by “solve” is meant “transfer”.
You are of course correct. This has nothing to do with genetics, but a peculiar variant on European colonialism driven by a peculiarly European version of nationalism, misinformed racism, and (what one hopes is) a perversion of an ancient religion.
“Palestinians are also immigrants, such as Arafat, who was born in Cairo.”
Arafat’s father was a Palestinian working in Cairo when he was born. Afterwards the Palestinian family returned to Palestine. People don’t talk of those immigrants because whereas around 90% of Israeli Jews (at the least) were immigrants to Palestine. For the Palestinians that figure would be around 5%,understand the difference. Before starting to come to Palestine the Zionist leaders sent a group of Zionists there to do a report on the land. They cabled back to the Zionist leadership,” The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” They knew there was already a nation of Palestinians in the land. And with the help of the West set out to steal the homeland of another people.Its not like the West didn’t already have experience with that. So they were certainly able to help.
As to your links. As they clearly showed there is a lot of dispute on the origins of Jews. I think some of them certainly reflected what I’ve said in posts (while some denied it). Here is what I consider the closest to be true: ” In 2013, Richards et al. to the contrary published work suggesting that an estimated ” 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, and 8 percent from the Near East, with the rest uncertain”, suggesting that Jewish males migrated to Europe and took new wives from the local population, and converted them to Judaism.” and “In July 2010, Bray et al., using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, “confirms that there is a closer relationship between the Ashkenazim and several European populations (Tuscans, Italians, and French) than between the Ashkenazim and Middle Eastern populations,” and that European “admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome.” They add their study data “support the model of a Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazim population followed by subsequent admixture with host Europeans or populations more similar to Europeans,” and that their data imply that modern Ashkenazi Jews are perhaps more similar to Europeans than modern Middle Easterners. The level of admixture with European population was estimated between 35 to 55%.” and ” Zoossmann-Diskin (2010) argues, that based upon the analysis of X chromosome and seventeen autosomal markers, Eastern European Jewish populations and Jewish populations from Iran, Iraq and Yemen, do not have the same genetic origins. In particular, concerning Eastern European Jews, he believes the evidence points to a dominant amount of southern European, and specifically Italian, ancestry, which he argues is probably a result of conversions during the Roman empire. Concerning the similarity between Sephardi and Ashkenazi, he argues that the reasons are uncertain, but that it is likely to be caused by Sephardic Jews having “Mediterranean” ancestry also, like the Ashkenazi. Concerning mitochondrial DNA, and particularly Y DNA, he accepts that there are superficial signs of a Middle Eastern origins, but he argues that this can be ignored as it is may came from a small number of ancestors.”
As to the Palestinians here you are: “Nebel; et al. (2000). “High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews” 107. Human Genetics: 630–641.”According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)… Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record… . That was only talking of the Muslim Palestinians. The Christian Palestinians,if for no other reason than them still being Christians,would be considered as even more certain to be descendants of the ancient population.
But now lets see what the Zionists “themselves” admitted to in the early days. Before they decided that the Palestinians should be “done away with”,its very enlightening reading:
Salim Tamari notes the paradoxes produced by the search for “nativist” roots among Zionist figures and the so-called Canaanite followers of Yonatan Ratosh.[109] For example, Ber Borochov, one of the key ideological architects of Socialist Zionism, claimed as early as 1905 that, “The Fellahin in Eretz-Israel are the descendants of remnants of the Hebrew agricultural community,”[110] believing them to be descendants of the ancient Hebrew and Canaanite residents ‘together with a small admixture of Arab blood'”.[109] He further believed that the Palestinian peasantry would embrace Zionism and that the lack of a crystallized national consciousness among Palestinian Arabs would result in their likely assimilation into the new Hebrew nationalism.[109] David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later becoming Israel’s first Prime Minister and second President, respectively, tried to establish in a 1918 paper written in Yiddish that Palestinian peasants and their mode of life were living historical testimonies to Israelite practices in the biblical period.[109][111] Tamari notes that “the ideological implications of this claim became very problematic and were soon withdrawn from circulation.”[109]
Ahad Ha’am believed that, “the Moslems [of Palestine] are the ancient residents of the land … who became Christians on the rise of Christianity and became Moslems on the arrival of Islam.”[109] Israel Belkind, the founder of the Bilu movement also asserted that the Palestinian Arabs were the blood brothers of the Jews.[112] In his book on the Palestinians, The Arabs in Eretz-Israel, Belkind advanced the idea that the dispersion of Jews out of the Land of Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman emperor Titus is a “historic error” that must be corrected. While it dispersed much of the land’s Jewish community around the world, those “workers of the land that remained attached to their land,” stayed behind and were eventually converted to Christianity and then Islam.[112] He therefore, proposed that this historical wrong be corrected, by embracing the Palestinians as their own and proposed the opening of Hebrew schools for Palestinian Arab Muslims to teach them Arabic, Hebrew and universal culture.[112] Tsvi Misinai, an Israeli researcher, entrepreneur and proponent of a controversial alternative solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, asserts that nearly 90% of all Palestinians living within Israel and the occupied territories (including Israel’s Arab citizens and Negev Bedouin)[113] are descended from the Jewish Israelite peasantry that remained on the land, after the others, mostly city dwellers, were exiled or left.[114]
But leaving aside all else we come back to the question asked by Palestinians to show the truth: “If the Jews are descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Palestine as they claim? How is it they left Palestine Tan colored,and return White?”
In 2010, Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital”.
Historically, Jerusalem existed under the name “Salem” during the time of prophet Abraham 3000 years ago – and Abraham was certainly not an Israelite or a Jew. The entire city was demolished by Babylonians in 586 BC. and rebuilt seventy-year later by Cyrus, the King of Persia, who could not be a Jew. In 40 BC Romans occupied Jerusalem and incinerated the Temple of Solomon (Masjid-e-Aqsa, mentioned as “the Far-away mosque” in the Holy Qur’an).
Palestine has existed, though not as an independent state, for over 10,000 years. Its inhabitants have been Jebusites (the ones’ who most probably built the city), Cannanites, Phoenicians, Hittites, Aramaeans, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Arabs, Franks and Turks. Part of Palestine was ruled by Israelite under the name of “Kindom of Judea and Samara” until they were defeated and taken as slaves or expeled by Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and Persians between 171 BC and 135 CE. The City of Jerusalem was handed over to Muslim Army by the Christian Patriarch Sofronius in a public ceremony. Muslims found out that the ruins of Temple of Solomon were used as the city garbage dump. Under the orders of Khalifah Umar Ibn Khattab (ra), the site was cleaned of garbage and handed-over to the Chaief Rabbi of Jerusalem, who in gratitude declared the Khalifah as the “Promised Jewish Messaih”. Sheikh Imran Nazar Hossein in his book Jerusalem in the Quran exposes the Zionist lies about their Biblical claim on the Holy Land.
http://rehmat1.com/2010/04/01/who-built-jerusalem/
Well, Imran Hossein is a Hodja Nasreddin kind of “wise” man. He tells funny stories and anecdotes. To take them seriously is to make a fool of yourself.
I agree but he is charismatic, entertaining and mesmerizing. All useful traits for a gifted story teller and teller of tall tales. Plus you can’t beat that warm carribean accent.
One only needs to read all the foregoing disputation to realize why the curse of religion needs to vanish from the earth.
Until then there can never be peace.
your an idiot. The Christians controlled Jerusalem for 300 years and to this day the best archaeological remains originate from thE Roman rule.
Palestine has been conquered and reconquered dozens upon dozens of times in the past 3500 years. Currently the zionist jews control it, in the future it maybe another group.
No, Muhammed NEVER promised the “Holy Land” to muslims. The Koran makes clear that it was divinely given to the followers of the Torah as long as they follow those tenets delivered by Moses (surah 5.21). The very litmus test of whether the jews are following the Torah is their control of Palestine!. Read chapter 5.20-30 of your supposed religious text ands understand that your religious text COMMANDS the jews to slaughter your fellow Palestinian muslims and any group that dares to take it away from them.
So this article is only partially true. The Islamic religion does claim the adherents of the Torah were divinely given Palestine.
Religion can be good if understood and used properly — as an art form.
Take http://tolkienguide.narod.ru/promet/Ainulindale.pdf , Tolkien’s creation myth, for example, which includes a mix of Biblical myth (Christian especially), early Europe, and even a bit of Hegelian dialectic and systhesis, and what ever else Tolkien picked up or invented along the way. Very nice mythology, and his LOTR books also very nice and could be used to form a basis of a religion, with much wisdom contained therein (along with some foolishness) —– but I would not want to see anyone taking them literally, as reality.
Frodo lives!!
(But not really…)
Are other religions all that different at the roots?
Tolkien’s myths are nothing else than rehashings and regurgitations of Gnostic myths. These are the “fables” that St.Paul was warning against: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound teaching; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables”. They should not be taken as reality, their role is to turn the mind away from any efforts to strive to find the truth (the Christian one) and plunge it in a drug-like state (one may wonder whether these “myths” were not actually “revealed” in drug-induced states – which BTW, seems to be the case with Tolkien). They bear a great responsibility for the infantilization of several generations.
Christian mythology is just one of a great many, often similar myths because of similar concerns of people and what is mysterious to them, and the similarities of the brain and perceptual systems. Paul could hardly have been talking about the European pagan myths (unconnected to and pre-dating gnosticism) which are found in Tolkien, and I see no reason to think that drugs were involved with any of this. Tolkien was, of course, quite familiar with Christian myths. There is nothing more ‘true’ about Biblical or Christian mythology than any other, except as faith statements by someone who believes in them. Myth is myth.
(Bless Bob. http://www.subgenius.com/ ; http://www.venganza.org/ Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster )
If you post something from within some particular beleif system rather than about a belief system, or belief systems, myths, and religion and theology in a general way, then you lose me and other who are not within that system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_denom2.htm
Beliefs of world religions about origins
etc.
@There is nothing more ‘true’ about Biblical or Christian mythology than any other
Well, actually it is. Christian so-called mythology is in fact, well-documented history. Tolkien is just phantasy, drugs or not, fiction literature. People love fairy tales and are ready to pay lavishly for them.
@then you lose me and other who are not within that system.
“I hate to see you go/Don’t pass me by, don’t make me cry”, but if that’s your wish then Good by. I won’t cry.
Tolkien’s works are based on history and well known historical literature, and other religions are just as historical as Christianity. Don’t try to pawn that ‘Christianity is history’ stuff on me — I’ve done too much reading and research to swallow that.
Keep your religious beliefs, but keep them to yourself when posting to me because I don’t pay any more attention to your myths and fairy tales than anyone else’s, and I don’t like being preached to and fed a load of ‘I’m right and everyone is is wrong’ malarky. Go start a religious war with someone else if you want to and can — I’m not interested. But I’ll tell you this, I’m far less disposed to be tolerant to Christianity than I was a few days ago because I’m fed up with the arrogance.
All right, take your toys (or myths) and go.
How about the curse of governments? Was the Mongol Dynasty established over religious expansion? How about the Communist revolutions of the 20th century?
How about the wars between Persia and ancient Greece? Was Alexander the Great conquering the world for Zeus?
How about the two world wars? How about Napoleonic wars, Vietnam, Korea, El Salvador, and so on. Were any of them religion based? Did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor over Shintoism?
How about the 50,000 murders from 1970-2000 on the streets of New York City? How about one of the bloodiest 100 hour war of two agrarian societies ever recorded? That is El Salvador invading their neighbor of Honduras in 1969 over a soccer game?
And is not the entire Saker website dedicated in explaining the truth that the secular western powers aligned with humanism are the root cause of instability in both the Ukraine and the Middle East? People really need to think before they parrot secular “enlightenment” propaganda. Even though this site tends to be anti-western, anti empire of chaos, many still can’t let go of the western propaganda they have been conditioned to believe
Give England back to its rightful owners – the Druids!
Ok, but where are they?
Here.
They call us ‘tree-huggers’ now.
I mean the real Druids of real, and demonstrable, Celtic descent. The tree-hugging, pot-smoking, drum-beating clowns who disgrace Stonehenge annually with their farcical “ceremonies”, are not.
Who then? The Masonic Lodges of the “Ancient Order of Druids”? But it was founded just in 1781 (notwithstanding that such famous personage like Sir Winston Spencer Churchill became a member – maybe an Archdruid!). Or the “Ancient and Archaeological Order of Druids”? We don’t fare any better here either. It was founded in 1874.
Perhaps the Druid Order of Ross Nicholls? Even more distant from the real Druids – 1964!
But who were the “real” Druids of yore and why are they so important? “The Druidic priesthood was established in Ireland and Britain, by Joshua of the Old Testament… Never before has there been a historical link which so dramatically sets the British peoples apart from the rest of the world. The presence of Joshua in Ireland and England, makes the British inheritors of the title: ‘a chosen people’, of the Bible historical account.”
It’s like a Midsummer’s Night Dream (or should we call it Litha?).
@wizOz Druids exist and practice their religion.
Careful now or you’re starting to show your own totalitarian or supremicist colors and bigotry by trying to diminish and dehumanize those that don’t belong to your particular cult-in-Christian -trappings. You can’t expect people’s sympathy for secular and Islamic persecution of “Christians” and them turn around and shamelessly diminish and dismiss the native religions of Britain and Western Europe as if only you and your cult have the truth. This makes you no different than a self-righteous atheist who foolishly believes he has the truth and can laugh at those who are religious (when, in fact, he too is an ignorant fool who can’t explain the Universe either) or an Islamist who believes only his sect or cult of Islam is legitimate truth and all others are deluded fools and kuffars.
The Catholic and Protestant Churches should be ashamed of themselves at the vicious religious jihad, forced conversion
and mass slaughter they meted out on the native people’s of Europe and the British Isles: destroying their Druidic religion and nature respectful way of life.
“The Druidic priesthood was established in Ireland and Britain, by Joshua of the Old Testament”
Yeah — sure….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua#Historicity
[…]
The prevailing scholarly view is that Joshua is not a factual account of historical events.[20] The apparent setting of Joshua is the 13th century BCE,[20] a time of widespread city-destruction, but with a few exceptions (Hazor, Lachish) the destroyed cities are not the ones the Bible associates with Joshua, and the ones it does associate with him show little or no sign of even being occupied at the time.[21]
[…]
Zionism is, at its core, anti-Semitic – regardless of whether the Semites are Jews, Christians or Muslims.
“Jewish presence in Palestine is more ancient than that of Muslims”
Well, duh. That might be due to the fact that islamism is a relatively recent religion. But that is some ridiculous criteria to analyse the question. It’s not like around the 7th century islamists started to pop out of thin air or migrate in droves: those people were already there, whatever the beliefs they adhered to before converting.
HI Ghassan ! Good to see you here…I’m just reading your article right now….and I wanted to say something, even though I haven’t quite finished yet…
Muslims were Arabs before they were Muslims, and Jesus Christ was an Arab. Isn’t that what you call Chaldeans ? And I guess Persians were a different race, but Abraham was an Arab, wasn’t he ?
“Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders in 1099 and a massacre of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants followed. It was recaptured by Saladin in 1187 and when he did, the Christian inhabitants feared a massacre akin to the one that happened against Muslims and Jews nearly a century earlier. But Saladin ordered his troops to spray the city streets with “Rose Water”; a Levantine essence extracted from the petals of the Damascus Rose. Such were those days.”
Well, before the Europeans took it…didn’t the Muslims take it from the Romans who took it from the Jews who stole the land from the Arabs ?
Good article and great comments from many people.
However, for a person like me, who knows much less about history of Palestine and vociferous claims on it by various groups, is a bit puzzling.
My thoughts are that people of Palestine were Jews / Pagans. Some of them converted to Christianity and later on some converted to Islam. Does changing Religion diminish anybodies claim to citizen of a country ? In my mind, Religion is Not connected to Nationality. Hence, no such diminishing effect can be there.
I am assuming that Jews were numerically stronger at Jerusalem at some specific point of time and so they are asking it to be a Jewish state. But that does not give Jew of other places an automatic claim to this place.
And relating what is written in any Holy Book to this claim – it is very difficult to follow. That will mean God is not universal, rather He is limited. It is something like ‘Our God’ versus ‘Your God’. And people are asking God to play a partisan role !
But I understand that for some religions, religion has many more roles than spirituality part. Religion has been a basis for organized power. They will like to keep it that way, till they become powerless. That time, they will ask for secular states.
Anyway, the whole thing looks quite medieval to me .. or say like Tribal warfare.
I apologise if I have offended anyone.
Just a few comments…
First, the Palestinians who live in Palestine (state of Israel + occupied territories) today, are mostly the descendants of immigrants of the end of XIXth and XXth centuries, come from poor neighbouring countries to have a share in the prosperity which the sionists had created — and I say that, while I share nothing with the ideology of that sionist movement, to me the same kind of rubbish as the US “manifest destiny” though they claim it has its roots in the Holy Scriptures — not if you really read them. Very few of these Palestinians are the descendants of people who were present before the arrival of the sionists, or very diluted; these people present then, were the very few urban “elite” (traders, officials, religious) of such a predominantly rural region, and serves of the great ottoman estates, whose patrons lived far away, and legally sold their estates to sionists — and even of these, we don’t know for how long their families had been there. Thus, the first sionists were peaceful, underarmed cultivators of a land they had lawfully bought, and they were immediately, and repeatedly, attacked by larger numbers of much more armed Muslim people, already fanatized. The sionists fanatized themselves later, I would say. I don’t like fanatism… and I wouldn’t vouch for the greater share of responsibility in present day situation, but it is a fact that even post-1947, the attacker were the Arabs, and with genocidal views, on a people who had himself just been the victim of, maybe the worst “proper” genocide in human history (I consider Cambodia’s a “totalicide”).
About the Muslim claim over Jerusalem, recent research show that the first followers/guides of Muhammad, were the sect of the Nazarenes, who were mostly ethnic Jews (but also Arabs) who believed Jesus was the Messiah, but a purely human one (to them the Holy Spirit was not God either); and that Jesus would come back when the Temple is rebuilt at its place, and institute a terrestrial kingdom dominated without alloy, by themselves.
They started their wild wars, so, with a religion which had something of Jewish, something of (monophysite) Christian, and not so much of present-day Islam.
Muhammad conquered many lands (starting probably from Northen Syria, not Arabia, at least the first contemporary relations of “Muslim” battles are there) and attracted two recent Christian convert tribes, there being no more real polytheists in the region (the “associators” were the real Christian, so called by the Nazarene because these considered Christian “associate” Christ and Holy Spirit as “secondary gods” to the “one and only”), the Romans being weakened by Persian attacks; but only Omar could take Jerusalem, in 637; he then massacred all the Christian (as his Nazarene guides/priests had instilled him such a genocidal hatred), rebuilt the Temple (today the al-Aqsa mosque), and, as nothing happened, no return of the Messiah, he killed the Nazarene themselves, and continued his conquests, while trying to have preachers who were Arabs on their own, and collecting what he could of the Nazarene “litterature”.
Later, around 700, abd-al-Malik, wanting to have “his book” relatively coherent as other religions, decided to have it rewritten, and had something made with as much as possible of the second version Quran, but adding pages, suppressing others, and changing some words (such as : the Holy Spirit changed to the Envoyee, as shown in a palimpsest, exegetes stating later that this Envoyee was Jibril/Archangel Gabriel), as proved by the Sanaa Manuscripts, the earliest known edition of Quran, which was very probably started in the Othmaninc version, then amended to spare parchment; later, the diacritics changed the meaning of other words; Jesus became a secondary figure, Muhammad getting the preeminence, and becoming “Rasûl” (The Messenger, The Apostle; later would he become “Prophet”). They also changed completely their policy towards the Christian, as they had no more their “real Nazarene” mentors who had vowed extermination of all Christians, and stated that who had to be called “the Associator” in the Quran were polytheists (by then everybody had forgotten they were non-existent 80 years before in the region), and invented legends about them (little girls sacrifice, etc); and that the “Nazarene” in the Quran was the word for the Christian (as there were no more real Nazarene since short after 637), and they were not to be killed systematically, “because they were useful”…
But the “new faith” ordered to the Umma (a notion which seems to have existed from the beginning) didn’t reach the ends of the empire before many years… as we can see for instance, on early VIIIth Century coins of Northern Africa shortly after its conquest, with crosses, or Jesus claimed to be the Messiah; as well as in early “muslim” Spain, which explain the fast adhesion of many Wisigoth/Spanish lords to what looked very much like the Arianism which was still in their minds, rather familiar and sympathetic to them, plus the perspective of looting etc.
Later, when Baghdad wanted to impose Muhammad (not merely as historical, but as a religious figure) and other new concepts, there was some resistance, and I suspect the Omeyyade kingdom was not totally “muslim” as we mean it today, rather a mixture (and there were people and animals pictured, marriages with Christian lords in both ways, etc); only later, in Xth Century, it became so. Even in Baghdad Court religious discussion was still possible, as we can see a small remain in Shia; between XIth and XIIIth Centuries all this was over and only the most fanatical, obscurantist authors were kept, and any further discussion forbidden.
And about the Crusaders alleged violence, yes there has been violence and there has been a slaughter in Jerusalem in 1099, but I believe it is proved civilians were allowed to flee at least once in the siege. And, if only you could go and see Dr Bill Warner’s “Jihad vs Crusades”, it is a quick illustration of the asymmetry of attacks and lets guess, by itself, how more defensive were the Crusades, and offensive the Jihad (after all, following each faith’s books), which otherwise is a long story…
TR
I’m not competent to discuss the history of Islam. I do like the notion that the Crusaders – in the Holy Land! – were “defensive” – a bit like the US on the defensive in Iraq!. And I know the Byzantines would have a thing or two to say about the Crusaders’ “alleged” violence.
However, I do know that population surveys in the 19th and 20th century indicate that your first paragraph is not accurate. The inhabitants of Palestine were not recent immigrants. (There were immigrants later when the Yishuv established itself – and they left again when the Yishuv stopped offering jobs to Arabs and the Revolt was suppressed.) It’s one of those canards that tend to appear again and again on Zionist websites and “A Land Without a People” type history books/frauds. No matter how often scholars point out that it is nonsense, it pops up again, as here. Similarly, your account of early relations between Zionist immigrants and the inhabitants, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, is not accurate, as even Zionist historians (honest and competent ones like Tom Segev) could tell you. And your account of events post-1947 is grotesque.
Spelling “Zionist” “Sionist” has me completely fooled. Your motives are clearly those of a disinterested inquirer.
Haha,here we totally agree.
Very naive.
The current state of the world – polluted, sick and savagely unequal and violent i.e. fascist – is down in no small to the twisted Nietzcheanism of an atheist plutocracy and their belief in scientific materialism above all.
The earth is nothing but a ‘resource to be plundered at will. The masses are but livestock to be used or dispensed with (‘useless eaters.’)
Nazism is not visibly resurgent by coincidence.
Those who believe they are gods by virtue of power conferred by status/money/knowledge are a far greater danger than the religious extremists – they threaten the very nature of humanity and the harmonics of the universe itself.
These are the real lunatics.
Some great points made in this article, on a difficult and contentious subject. How often we can see how `literalism is death´regarding spiritual truths. I love the assertion that God was not talking about real estate! From a buddhist/synchratic point of view, the teleological end point of many religions is situated in the human heart and consciousness. The rebuilding of the temple need not destroy or desecrate the Al Aksa Mosque, as it is not located in that spot. The reference is symbolic. When our minds are sufficiently purified by generosity, ethical actions, patience, concentration, and understanding the way things really exist (emptiness), and of course love supreme, then we achieve the state of a christ, a buddha, or the temple within. It is only with loving eyes and a purified consciousness that the temple will be rebuilt, in the consciousness. No act of violence, or injustice can move us towards this goal. It is in giving we receive, and we need to move this understanding into the political and public realms.
Happy Holidays! May the divine child be born in all of our hearts this year, and may peace reign!
Right below to one side of the Mosque, part of its grounds, is the so-called “wailing wall”. Said to be a part of the walls of the Temple. How would a rebuilding of the Temple not harm the Mosque. The zionists intention (and that of their Christian-zionist helpers) has long been to destroy the Mosque and rebuild the Temple in its place. Its not a secret about their plans.
What a baloney… Quilt of a lie from the patches of truths.
Wiz – that was a joke !!
You seem pretty interested in the subject.
Here’s a little of what I know.
The Druids of Ireland were basically the ‘intelligensia’ or ‘cognosceti’ of their time.
They were known as ‘Na Fili’ – or ‘The Poets/Bards.’ They were doctors, judges, musicians, priests and often more powerful than the chieftains they advised.
Their training was lifelong, with twenty years only leading to the lowest level of graduation.
Music was a very important aspect of their function. It was believed to have healing properties with particular harmonics inducing optimal – or not – mental, spiritual and physical states: the Strain of Lament, the Strain of Anger and the Strain of Laughter.
They transmitted their knowledge orally, though all were literate in languages for trade purposes. The oral transmission was a safeguard, with chosen acolytes entrusted with the lore.
Not much is known about ‘ogham’ , a stone-carved rune language made up of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines, but it may have been a coded communication system meant only for initiates. (There was a little ogham stone on the grounds of the tiny church my Grandmother took me to as a kid: it was stolen eight years ago. Makes me think of ISIS and the destruction of millennia-old human artefacts – what does it say about this era? Can you imagine what they would do to the Caves of Altamira?)
They followed a very harsh, ascetic regime, including sleeping on stone beds. (The asceticism of early Irish Christianity – the Celtic Church – was strongly influenced by Druidism, and generally monastic in form. As a kid I could see the bee-hive huts on Skellig Michael from my grandfather’s farmhouse: a really wild and isolated fragment of rock off the South-West Atlantic coast. )
Some say the Druid inheritance also facilitated the Coptic influence on the early Christian illustrated manuscriPts – they were lovers of the arts, including healing.
Na Fili reflected the Celtic belief in the power of words through their satires. It was believed such satires – lengthy curses really, but with very strict grammatical and rhythmic conventions – could even cause death. (Kind of true – defamation is a sort of ‘death.’ And ill-will actively and cruelly expressed can certainly depress, even lead people to suicide.)
They would be hired to compose eulogies too.
Sometimes the satires were composed ad hoc, to reflect a bard’s displeasure at inhospitable treatment – hospitallity was a social obligation, and poor quality could excite their satirical wrath. Generally, the petty kings made sure the bards were treated well rather than risk one of their satires. (I think the Vineyards Scott would have been well-suited to this job..:)
Another branch of Na Fili were Na Breitheamh (na bre -hiv) or judges. They adjudicated over disputes, calculated compensation and regulated social conduct. Women retained their property on marriage and they had to receive compensation if they divorced. Quite a few of the breitheamh were women.
There were social obligations to the sick, the maimed and the disabled – the breitheamh made decisions about their care, including compensation if crippled or made sick through culpable behaviour by others. They also made decisions about fosterage – the fostering out of children to allies among the chieftains was standard practice to foster closer ties and reduce the likelihood of conflicts.
They also presided over the Celtic electoral system where candidates had to prove their fitness to rule through various competitions. The early Irish did not have a system of either democratic or monarchial control – the candidate had to be fit, mentally and physically. And prove it against peers.
I assume many of na Fili became Christian converts but retained their Celtic habits. So much so, th Council of Whitby nearly resulted in a schism in the Celtic church when the Irish monks refused initially to accept the new Roman dates for Easter: they wanted to retain the old ones, probably because they reflected the true seasonal earth rythms manifested in pagan rituals.
Interestingly, along with the Southern European Catholic countries, as well as South America, Ireland had, until very recently , a very strong tradition of maryolatory, which anthropologists argue is an ancient fertility cult transformed through Christian dogma. The Anglo-Saxon Protestant tradition eschews it completely. Perhaps the latter are really bearing the torch for the Church of Rome? :)
They gave in when threatened with excommunication.
The rest is history.
Finally a bit of good sense. There is little doubt that the Druids have converted, most probably led the conversions. In any case “the dreadful and savage religion of the Druids” was abolished by Claudius and not by any Christian ‘jihadists’.
The tradition that Britania began to be converted in the first century AD, was unshakable for centuries until modern “criticism” took center stage. By the IV century, Britain was thoroughly Christianized. Of course many old habits survived, old places of worship survived, but Christianized. The Easter Controversy had little to do with “pagan rituals” but very much with the Judaizing trends in the Church. “Easter” has nothing to do with a supposed goddess Eostre, Ostara, but was clearly derived from “East”, the rising sun, easily transferred to the “rising (from the tomb) of Christ” (analogous to the Slavic Vostok=East, Vostanie=Resurrection).
“Mariolatry”, i.e. the veneration of the Mother of God, was universal in the Church and had nothing to do with “fertility cults” transformed.
oh please! wizOz
Druids were forcibly converted and persecuted by Catholic jihadists.
By denying it you sound completely like your islamic counterparts, those apologists of radical intolerant Islam who like to flog the lie that conquered people converted to Islam voluntarily “because they saw the light” (an-noor, more like the glint of a bloodied sword that had just been used for decapitation), only in your world we substitute the word catholic. A good example Teutonic knights were baby butchers and slaughtered based on religion.
The loss to world of the accumulated knowledge, spirituality and culture of native religion and cultures of Europe at the hands of the Catholic and later Protestant churches is incalculable; it was a monstrous crime.
Oh, my Goddess, of course, I can’t change your beliefs (or to be more PC, “belief system”, “spritualty”). The more difficult it is if these “belief systems” are of your own invention (or just “mirror” the inventions of the Crawleys and Asphodels).
Now, how do you know what the “accumulated knowledge, spirituality and culture of native religion and cultures of Europe” were, if they have been so thoroughly obliterated (by the pagan Romans, not yet Christians, if I may be politically incorrect and refer to historical sources)? Or to be more exact what make you believe that the parodies of “Druidic rituals”, “ceremonies”, created by revelling Masons in the Apple Tree Tavern, or by femocrat Asphodels are the same as those of the Druids? Or you believe that nine million “witches” have been killed by the “Inquisition”? (Be careful how you trade there, the allowed figure for non-Holocaust victims should stay below six).
Don’t flatter yourself Wizoz
(what an ironic name!) you have no idea what my belief system is, here’s a hint it has something to do with Jesus.
It’s the inconsistent views that you espouse and hypocritical attitude of expecting sympathy for the assault on Christian beliefs and values by the Western elite but selfishly withholding it towards those your faith has wronged: excusing away Western so-called Christianity’s crimes against it’s victims that undermines our position regarding to unrelenting assault by the anti-christian western “secular” juggernaut. (I make the distinction Western Christianity because genuine Christianity is eastern orthodox not the politically appropriated cults of Charlemagne and Martin Luther, sorry but that’s the bitter truth)
In any case this argument is soon going to be moot: the power structure in the West, especially in Europe, has successfully decimated Western churches past the point of recovery: this is a demographic fact. People belonging to the Catholic or Protestant denominations will continue to get marginalized, with generation after generation no longer indentifying with the Church. The implosion in both numbers and, even more extreme, the implosion in influence of Western Christianity is past the point of no return. Perhaps this is God’s plan.
The same is not true of the values and faith of our Eastern Christianity, they are experiencing an organic resurgence in the Slavic world. even in the middle-east it will make a comeback – the victory of Assad’s government over Western created Islamist death-squads and the domino effect this will creat in Lebanon and northern Iraq, will signal a resurgence of Christianity (Eastern) in the middleeast. Meanwhile your continent will return to the Druids, Spiritualists and the Masons: this is the way it should be, what was taken illegitimately should be returned and made whole, who are we to argue with God’s justice?
@you have no idea what my belief system is
I wonder whether you know. An Orthodox wouldn’t speak in neo-paganistic lingo to support inaccurate history.
To those who write that the Quran says that the Holy Land was given to those who follow the Torah and it asks the Children of Israel to kill others (Muslims included) if they try to displace them…They should read Imran Hosein to better understand the Islamic pov.
In short those who follow the religion of Abraham (PBUH) and the Children of Israel no longer do that as they changed the Torah and they rejected the True Messiah and also the Last Prophet (PBUT), are entitled to the Holy Land as controllers.
In effect the deed to the Holy Land was conditional and the Children of Israel have violated the conditions long ago.
Now they have been brought back by Gog and Magog to the Holy Land as controllers of this Land (many still lived there but were not the masters) and have returned to their wicked ways. ..it is only a matter of time before the Lord God returns with his punishment (if it has not already commenced).
30 centuries? how did this article end up on an otherwise intelligent site? we’re not talking about ancient or “oriental” jewish boodlines in the region (and for the record, most palestinians are fine with the few jews that fit those categories within the area). we’re talking about european and russian settlers with no ties – historical or otherwise – to the region. even the “diaspora” is a myth; the romans didn’t expel people who bothered them, they simply nailed theem to crosses or fed them to lions.
all the talk of holy books is a red herring. the real conflict is “native population” vs “colonial settlers”. it was that way when the king david hotel got bombed and it remains so today. if you want to get into religious technicalities then the very existence of israel is blasphemy according to jewish tradition since the “mashiach” hasn’t made his grand entrance yet. the only people seriously invested in any kind of abrahamic fantasy are the evangelicals who look forward to seeing both jews and muslims end up in a lake of fire when jesus “reappears”. the rest are cynical zionists or overly hopeful muslims who think the west has any respecct for history or tradition.
short version: the land “belongs” to the generations of people that have lived there for centuries, not to newcomers flying in from brooklyn or moldova or whatever hellhole they come from to steal land and resources. if you want to get technical about it, then the palestinians are closer genetically to the ancient inhabitants – jewish, muslim or otherwise – than the blond-haired, blue-eyed europeans and opportunistic slavs waltzing over the border to spend their life getting day drunk in hebron.