All About Israel
All About Israel
The Popes of Eurabia
Policy behind the Passion of Christ
“When the ancient Hellenic culture was in decline, it found support in the Roman government. Rome defended the upper class against proletarian outbursts, and in defense of the Hellenes, Rome crushed the Jews and other Easterners, who challenged Hellenism in Cyprus, Egypt, Syria, and Cyrenaica. Likewise Rome occasionally persecuted the Christians. (Enc. Americana, entry Hellenism)
Historian Robert Wolfe explains: “The Romans and their Greek allies killed something like 2 or 3 million Jews during this period out of a total Jewish population of approximately 7 million within the boundaries of the so-called ‘Roman Empire.’ The total number of Jewish casualties reported by Josephus for the ‘First Jewish War’ add up approximately 1,300,000. The Roman historian Dio Cassius states that 580,000 Jews were killed during the ‘Second Jewish War.’ Historians estimate that many hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the Romans and Greeks during the ‘Diaspora Revolt’ of 115-17 CE. There were close to 1 million Jews in Egypt alone at the start of this period, yet hardly any remaining by the end of the 2nd c. CE. The large Jewish communities in Syria and Turkey were likewise decimated…By the end of the 2nd c. CE, only 750,000 Jews remained in Judah, home of something like 4 million Jews prior to the Roman onslaught.
The developing anti-Semitic nature of Christianity perfectly reflects the hardening attitudes of the western Empire to the Jews. By the early 4th century Eusebius was describing with relish how the destruction of Jerusalem was God’s punishment on the Jews for the murder of his son. At the end of the 4th century St. John Chrysostom was preaching that demons dwelt in synagogue and in the souls of Jews, and St. Augustine was writing in a treatise Against the Jews:” You in your parents killed Christ.” In 412 Cyril became Patriarch of Alexandria and one of his first acts was to incite the monks to pillage and expel from the city the wealthy Jewish community some 40,000 strong. Similarly, they expelled them from their Holy Land and Jesus’ crucifixion was the justification of the robbery of their homeland. During the 5th century the Emperors safeguarded the survival of the Jewish communities, but as second-class citizens, “in order that they might serve as a living testimony to the Christian interpretation of the scriptures and to the victory of the Catholic Church.”
The Traitor who became the “First Pope”
And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. – Lk 22:34. Now Peter sat without in palace: and a damsel came unto him saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the crock crew. – Mt. 27:69-74
And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon’s, greatly wandering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. (Acts 3:12-15). Well, he identified Jesus’ god with the God of the Hebrew Bible. And, please note, this “Prince of life” was raised from the dead by YHWH i.e. the God of the Bible.
The following is a portion of the discussion of the death of Jesus found in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a:
“On the eve of Passover Jesus was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, “He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favor let him come forward and plead on his behalf.” But since nothing was brought forward in his favor, he was hanged on the eve of Passover. Ulla retorted: Do you suppose he was one for whom a defense could be made? Was he not a mesith (enticer), concerning whom Scripture says, ‘Neither shall thou spare nor shall thou conceal him?’” With Jesus, however, it was different, for he was connected with the government” i.e. with the Herodian dynasty.
You see, Peter, the beloved disciple of Jesus had the opportunity to come forward and plead on Jesus’ behalf. Instead he had chosen to deny him and so to condemn him to death. Had he any moral right to reproach the Jews? He had admitted “through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:17). But his denial did not come ‘through ignorance’ (See, Mt 16:13-19)! And yet he had the nerve to say, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out…” Acts 3:19
Crucifixion according to the apocryphal Gospel of Peter
The final pages of this gospel were discovered in 1886 in the grave of a Christian monk in Egypt. The text begins in the middle of a passage with the statement that “None of the Jews washed his hands, neither did Herod nor any of his judges. As they did not wish to wash, Pilate got up. Evidently, the preceding passage narrated the story, otherwise known only from Matthew, of Pilate’s washing his hands at Jesus’ trial (Mt. 27:24). In Peter’s account, however, the emphasis is not on Pilate, who is throughout portrayed as innocent of Jesus’ death, but on Herod, the king of the Jews, and on the Jewish leaders who collaborated with him. They do not wash their hands – that is, they are seen as guilty for Jesus’ blood. In the next verse, it is Herod who orders Jesus to be taken out and crucified.
Pilate commands the soldiers to silence, but only after reminding the Jewish leaders that Jesus’ crucifixion was indeed their fault, not his. Christian anti-Judaism began to assert itself with particular vigor. One by-product of this heightened animosity is that Christians began to exonerate Pilate for Jesus’ death and to blame Jews, indeed, all Jews, more and more. In the Gospel of Peter, it is Jews who actually do the dirty work of crucifying Jesus. Later, they regret it, and explicitly express their fears that Jerusalem will now be destroyed as a result of their actions.
Ecumenism in Hatred
Special Dispatch-Egypt/Antisemitism Documentation Project August 18, 2006No. 1255The Mufti of Egypt: The True Face of the Blood-Sucking Hebrew Entity has Been Exposed To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD125506
In an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram, Egyptian Mufti Sheikh Dr. 'Ali Gum'a expressed his support of the resistance in Lebanon and stated that the lies of the "Hebrew entity" expose "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers... who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood." The ancient Christian accusation that ‘The Jews Murdered Jesus’ has become a standard widespread cliché in Arab anti-Semitic discourse. One example: Y. Arafat’s adviser Bassam Abu Sharif, writing in the London-based Saudi daily Al Sharq al-Awsat, referred to the Virgin Mary statue that was damaged by Israeli fire during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He wrote: “The sad smile of the Virgin Mary as she shields her son, the Messiah, did not prevent the soldiers of the Israeli occupation from taking up positions to shoot at the face of this Palestinian angel (i.e. Jesus) and murder the smile so as to murder throughout 2.000 years.
July 23, 2000 – “Eternal struggle”: The Palestinian Authority Television program “Good Morning Jerusalem” features an artist with a painting of Jesus between two Israeli soldiers. The artist tells the viewing audience: “Our struggle today against the Other is an eternal struggle: one can say that it began 2,000 years ago and it continues until today. I portray this with the figure of Jesus who came to the world with the gospel of justice, and the Other Side did what they did to him, and the Palestinian demands the same justice, and deal with us the same way.”
July 24, 2000 – “Jewish murderers”: The official Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah publishes an article in its issue headlined, “Nazareth: The City Where the Jews Murdered the First Palestinian of Her Sons.” The article declares: “Nazareth became famous as the place where Jesus grew up…The Jews tried to attack the city many times in order to disperse the people of Nazareth and uproot them, just as they obliterated many Arab villages…The forces of the Zionist occupation did not succeed in altering the face of the Palestinian Nazareth, and that she did not forget and will not forget her first son that the Jews betrayed and handed him over to the Roman emperor, and persisted until he was taken out to be killed.”
John Paul II’s visit to Syria in 2001 was supposed to amplify this anti-Jewish hate propaganda. In Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Assad welcomed the Pope with an anti-Israeli spleen-buster that veered irrationally from contemporary Middle East politics to ancient but still vibrant anti-Semitism. The Israelis, the second-generation dictator said, tortured and killed innocent Palestinians. He suggested Christians and Muslims join forces not only against the Jewish state, but against Judaism itself – the people “who try to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ.” This repetition of historic anti-Semitism – the Jew as the Christ killer – is something of a modern innovation for Islamic countries, maybe the one Western development they have adopted with alacrity. Interestingly enough, according to the teaching of the Koran Jesus never died on the cross but was taken up into heaven uninjured! President’s of Syria outburst was to convince the world that Pope John Paul II rejected the theological reform of Vatican II and joined the neo-Nazi movement advanced by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and in in the USA by actor M. Gibson and his father. They were counterparts of Nasrallah in Lebanon. Interestingly, in 1988 when Secretary of State Shultz frantically sought to establish political contacts with PLO’s fuehrer Y. Arafat, Archbishop Lefebvre had ordained four bishops and 16 of his followers as priests. Excommunication of the “rebel archbishop” notwithstanding, Card. Ratzinger visited Lefebvre’s seminary.
The Pope’s Thumbs Up For Gibson’s ‘Passion’
“Mel Gibson’s The Passion gets a thumbs-up from the Pope,” was the jolly image conjured by a headline over Peggy Noonan’s column for the Wall Street Journal Web site as she relayed the happy news this Christmas season” on Dec. 17. In Ms. Noonan’s view, the pope’s blessing was likely to settle the controversy over a movie that Jewish and Christian critics alike have faulted for its potential to reignite the charge of deicide against the Jews. It was also perfectly timed to boost the bookings of a movie scheduled to open nationally on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday. Gibson’s film was to justify the destruction of the state of Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian state, exactly like in the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Jewish hope dashed
The reaction of Jews to the publication of The Gospel of Judas is understandable. There was a bit of pathos in the prominence given in Israel to the publication of the Gospel of Judas. The story appeared prominently on the front page of Ha’aretz. Prominent radio talk shows interviewed leading experts and asked time and again, would the revelation work to end the religious basis of anti-Semitism? Ira Sharkansky, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem concluded his article for the Jerusalem Post not without bitterness: “We should hope for the best in the continuing efforts of the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian leaders to accept Jews as something other than Christ killers.” But it may be that the cartoonist of Ha’aretz got the story better than the serious writer of the front-page article. He pictures two worried fathers of the Church, with one of them saying, That Judah is again causing problems. Indeed.
Agenzia Giornalistica Italia reported on April 13:
Vatican: Pope banishes Judas’ Gospel
The Vatican, by word of Pope Ratzinger, grants the recently surfaced Judas’ Gospel no credit with regards to its apocryphal claims that Judas betrayed Jesus in compliance with the latter’s own requests. According to the Pope Judas freely chose to betray Jesus “an open rejection of God’s love”. Judas according to Ratzinger “viewed Jesus in terms of power and success his only real interests lied with his power and success, there was no love involved. He was a greedy man: money was more important than communion with Jesus; money came before God and his love.” According to the Pope it was due to these traits that led Judas to “turn liar, two-faced indifferent to the truth,” “losing any sense of God,” “turning hard, incapable of converting, of being the prodigal son, hence throwing away a spent existence.” (http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=)
Such outbursts contrast strongly with the church’s non-condemnation of Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie, The Passion of the Christ, which outraged many Jews and theologically conscious Christians with its near-pornographic violence and emphasis on scriptural passages blaming Jews for the death of Jesus. Nothing is so sure of itself as fanaticism.
Well, Rev. Ioannes Rakhman of the Jakarta Theologiocal Seminary when asked by The Jakarta Post’s Evi Mariani:
Can we say these findings indicate progress? answered:
“If the findings manage to shift the prevailing beliefs and Christianity is ready to face that, we can say Christianity is growing more mature. Openness to various findings is clearly one indicator of maturity and progress in a human being.” (www.thejakartapost.com/misc/)
Some Bible experts have claimed Judas’ traditional portrayal as a sinister villain has helped foster anti-Semitism through the ages. In medieval plays and paintings, Judas is portrayed with a hooked nose and exaggerated Semitic features. This Christian visual propaganda matches or even surpasses in many cases the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Nazi Der Stuermer.
Because the Judas story has been the direct cause of the death of millions of Jews at the hands of faithful Christians it should be kept in mind that it is a shameful history based on a preposterous fabrication, which distorts the truth about Jews in the time of Jesus. Sadly, Vatican Council II notwithstanding, armies of Christian “soldiers” continue to march to the ancient drumbeat broadcast from the Vatican.
According to the Gospel of John, contrary to Jesus’ repeated prophecy, Judas did not betray him with a kiss. Jesus simply asked the soldiers who were they looking for. On having been told “Jesus of Nazareth” he readily acknowledged his identity without being kissed by Judas! (John 18:7-8) Judas’ kiss was redundant because Jesus himself said that he could have been arrested any day he taught in the Temple: “Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. (Mt 26:55). These words of Jesus are repeated by the remaining three evangelists. There is no such unanimous report from four evangelists regarding Judas’s offer to betray Jesus. Two evangelists: Mark and Matthew confirm that Judas offered to betray Jesus but the two remaining: Luke and John don’t blame Judas for such an offer! In other words, the guilt of Judas was not proven “beyond reasonable doubt” by the canonical gospels. After two thousand years he fully deserves the principle of “presumed innocent until proven guilty” to be applied to him. Especially after publication of “his” Gospel which, therefore, deserves the title The Gospel of Rehabilitation.
The Timing of the Papal Attack on the Gospel of Judas tells a lot
The papal attack on The Gospel of Judas came on Thursday April 13. On Sunday April 16, in his first Easter message as pontiff, Pope Benedict urged nations to use diplomacy to defuse nuclear crises and prayed that Palestinians would one day have their own state alongside Israel. The timing of his prayer, on the day closing the traditional Passion week when the anti-Semitic feelings of the Christians run exceedingly high, was chosen to achieve the maximum effect. (The Arab historian Philip Hitti testified in 1946 before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not).
In harmony with this Papal prayer in Rome Greek bishops dismissed Gospel of Judas as “Zionist conspiracy” designed to cause scandal.
You see, in the Darfur region, Arab militias and African Christian rebels have fought for nearly three years, with the Arab militias forcing out Sudanese, Christian farmers in a campaign of rape, killing and arson that the United States has labeled genocide. Yet, the Pope did not even mention the word “autonomy” for these people.
Let me remind in this context that the Roman Church is capable of singing Te Deum over a massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of blessing Muslim swords drawn to slaughter orthodox Christians in the Balkans and elsewhere.
A Mexican bishop has said that the Vatican is still refusing to allow him to ordain permanent deacons from the indigenous populations in his diocese in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquival of San Cristobal de las Casas also said that he has been told to stop his formation programs for candidates to the permanent diaconate. The Vatican fears that the ordinations are part of a plan to develop an autonomous local church for the ordination of married priests, he said. (The Tablet Apr. 15, 2006)
According to Bernard Lewis, an eminent authority, “The word Palestine does not occur in the Old Testament…Palestine does not occur in the New Testament or The Qur’an at all.”
The official adoption of the name Palestine in Roman usage to designate the territories of the former Jewish principality of Judea seems to date after the suppression of the great Jewish revolt of bar-Kokhba in the year 135 C.E…It would seem that the name Judea was abolished…and the country renamed Palestine or Syria Palestina, with the … intention of obliterating its historic Jewish identity. The earlier name did not entirely disappear, and as late as the 4th century C.C. we still find a Christian author, Epiphanius, referring to “Palestine, that is, Judea.”
Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel ... -- Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of
its Executive Council, Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977
And that’s what the so-called peace process is all about, never ending war until the final destruction of the Jewish state.
When Th. Herzl approached Pope Pius X in Jan 1904, seeking his assistance for the Zionist venture, the pope dismissed him with these words: “We cannot favor this movement. The Jews did not recognize Jesus, our Lord, and we therefore cannot recognize the Jewish people. If you come to Palestine and settle your people there we will be ready with priests and churches to baptize you.” And Card. Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, was sufficiently cooperative with Pius XII’s anti-Semitic policy, to advise the Curia against Jewish transportation to Palestine, which might challenge “Christian possession of the exceedingly profitable Holy Places. That’s why six million had to die! No pope throughout centuries has ever prayed that the Jews would one day have their own state alongside “Palestine”. On the contrary, it was mostly the Catholic priests who incited the Christian mob to pogroms and to complete isolation of the Jews inside their ghettos. Is not the fence that Israel built along its border a result of the perennial Roman ghettoization policy vis-à-vis the Jews?
Well, Pope John Paul II in his relentless pursuit of Palestinian statehood met with “martyrdom seeking” terrorist fuehrer Y. Arafat 14 times, thus turning Palestinians into the Vatican’s new “chosen people”, which was the core of the Roman policy of hate towards the Jews. The anti-Semitic mob applauded. John Paul II’s mad monk Father T. Rydzyk through his radio and TV stations promoted the Stuermer’s-like anti-Semitic propaganda even though it is against the Polish law. But in Poland the “Polish” Pope and his henchmen were and still are above the law. This sole fact adequately mirrors the Vatican obsession with and fear of the Jewish state. Because, the furious opposition of the Vatican notwithstanding, the Jewish people received, after centuries of dispersion, their Promised Land back; as the God of the Bible had promised them:
“Even if you are dispersed to the ends of the heavens, from there will YHWH your God gather you and from there will He take you up. And YHWH your God will bring you to the Land which your ancestors have inherited and you shall inherit it. And He will do well by you, and make you more numerous than your ancestors.” (Dt.30:4,5)
And the prophet Jeremiah said the same:
“The days are coming,” declares YHWH, “when men will no longer say, ‘as surely as the Lord lives who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but they will say, ‘as surely as YHWH lives who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the North and out of all the countries where he banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land that I gave to their forefathers…Then they will know that my name is YHWH.” Jer. 16:14-16, 21). No human effort can thwart God’s purpose.
In 1849, after reading passages like Jeremiah 16, a Bible student wrote the following words:
“There is … a …restoration of the Jews before the manifestation (i.e. return of Jesus)… The…colonization of Palestine will be on purely political principles; and the Jewish colonists will return in unbelief of the Messianship of Jesus, and of the truth as it is in him.” (John Thomas, Elpis Israel) (See, GladTidings, no. 1423)
The writer of these words clearly expected the Jews to return to Israel, or Palestine, as it was then known. He did not claim to be a prophet, he merely stated what the Bible had clearly said would happen. Note that he wrote these words almost one hundred years before the advance of the Zionist movement.
In 1938 Father Denis Fahey, professor of philosophy (like K. Wojtyla) published the booklet entitled, The Rulers of Russia that received imprimatur of Jeremias, Episcopus Waterfordensis and Lismorensis. And here is the most revealing paragraph of this booklet: “A step to be taken to undo the naturalism of the French Revolution and, at the same time, prevent onslaughts on the Jews, is to withdraw citizenship of other states from all of them and limit them to citizenship of one state, their own. That state must not be Palestine…” The imprimatur meant that it was a statement of the official Church policy. And that explains why the Vatican for so long period of time after WWII did not recognize Jewish statehood established in 1948.
This fact scares the Vatican hierarchs even more than the empty churches in Europe and in this country. Because, the fact that the Biblical prophecy came true and Pope Piux X’s “prophecy” about baptizing the Jews in Israel turned out a hollow promise to the Christian World proves beyond any doubt that the attempt at attributing to Jesus the powers and personality of God who created the Heavens and the earth can be viewed now as a useless comedy played by the Roman Church with mankind, as, after all, Jesus’ mission ranks scarcely less than a complete failure.
From the outset, Gibson was clear that the principal sources for his retelling of the crucifixion story were the Gospel of Matthew, the most problematic of the four Christian passion narratives, and the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century nun and mystic who recorded her anti-Semitic "visions" of Jesus' arrest and execution. The filmmaker, in fact, reportedly keeps a relic of the nun.Then there was Gibson's repeated refusal to disavow the views of his father and spiritual mentor, Hutton Gibson, a notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, who cheerfully shares public platforms with unrepentant neo-fascists like the odious Willis Carto. No one can demand that another person repudiate their father, but it's perfectly possible to say, "I love my father, but I don't agree with his ideas." Somehow, Gibson's refusal to do that never bothered "The Passion's" fans.Finally, there's the matter of the faith Mel Gibson inherited from that father — his so-called traditional Catholicism. Without making a tedious detour into the fetid theological swamp in which this movement was spawned, it should be clear to anybody who looks that it involves a lot more than simple nostalgia for the Latin Mass. Spend 15 minutes with literature of the independent traditionalists — like Gibson father and son — or their more organized brethren in the Societies of St. Pius X or St. Pius V and what jumps out at you is a pervasive, actually obsessive antagonism toward Jews and Judaism. Moreover, traditional Catholicism's American variants all are infected to one degree or another with the ideas of the Jew-baiting Boston Jesuit Leonard Feeney, who was excommunicated by Pope Pius XII. Yet the commentators and clergy who applauded "The Passion of the Christ" treated Gibson's traditionalism as a kind of minor eccentricity — sort of like a guy still holding onto his eight-track tapes.How involved in this movement is Mel Gibson?
This was posted on a leading independent traditionalist website this week: "Mel Gibson may have a personal drinking problem, but he sure puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to his deep traditional Catholic Faith. The World Faith Foundation, a nonprofit corporation, of which Gibson is a principal benefactor, has purchased a church complex in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, for $750,000. The existing church will be converted into a traditional Catholic Church, which will serve as a regional center for the Traditional Latin Mass and Sacraments … WFF had already purchased a ranch-style house earlier in 2006 for $315,000. An independent traditional Catholic congregation, St. Michael the Archangel, pastored by an independent priest, will move … to the new location…. The producer-director's father, Hutton Gibson, a traditional Catholic writer and publisher associated with the WFF, has already moved to the Greenburg area to oversee the complex for the foundation."The writer goes on to point out that Gibson spent $5 million to build a similar traditionalist church near his home in Malibu.So why was all this ignored — or worse, dismissed — when so many conservative commentators and clergy were busily putting their collective imprimatur on Gibson's "Passion"?
Mel Gibson’s Fault (Editorian in The Tablet of Aug 12)
So many people have been quick to flog Mel Gibson for recently falling off the wagon and uttering intemperate words about Jews that we wonder what really is going on here.
Isn’t this the same man who brought us the wonderful meditation-film, The Passion of the Christ? Can we really believe that a person of such faith would say such things as he is reported to have said?
Then again, there are those who will never forgive Mel Gibson for producing The Passion with all its glorious and rich imagery of the Christian faith. The popularly acclaimed film certainly was not a favorite among Hollywood types who would rather point to the failures and misdeed of Church leaders.
Mel Gibson deserves a break and a supporting hand so that he never goes anywhere near alcohol again.
Which means that M. Gibson may be an anti-Semite but shouldn’t be bargging about that when he is drunk.
On Aug. 8, 2006, Al-Jazeera TV aired footage of a press conference with Gen. Hamid Gul. At the conference, Gul, who headed Pakistan’s Inter-service intelligence Directorate from 1987-89 and who, according to the Washington Times, was termed Pakistan’s “most dangerous man” by an internal CIA assessment, told reporters that “every Israeli leader has said that Pakistan is their number one enemy,” and quoted Mel Gibson, stating that “the Jews caused all the wars.”
According to an August 7, 2008 UPI article, general Gul, who is “known for pro-Taliban and pro-Al-Qaeda views, told the media that the United States would attack Syria and Iran next October, and that Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, was the only Islamic country that could use its nuclear capability to defeat Israel’s designs. Obviously, a few years later, professors Mearsheimer and Walt will write another article claiming that is was the Israel Lobby which pushed the US into these wars and Mel Gibson in another drunken bout will confirm that.
The Pope never read The Satanic verses?
"In May 1999, during an audience granted to three Muslims at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II bowed to the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and kissed it” (Christian News, Oct. 18, 1999, p. 16). The three Muslims were the Shiite Imam of Khadum mosque, the Sunni president of the Iraqi Islamic Bank, and a representative of the Iraqi ministry of religion. The photo of the gesture has been shown repeatedly on Iraqi television. . . The gesture was meant to show that the Pope shared The Muslim contempt for the Hebrew Bible.
On March 29, 2006 a man who faced the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity was secretly flown to Italy, where he was granted asylum under round-the-clock protection by the government. In other words, he preferred to kiss the New Testament rather than the Holy Qur’an. During Pope John Paul II’s pontificate it was Italy’s ambassador to Riyadh who converted to Islam.
Let me remind here that the far-right Danish People’s Party postulated banning the Qur’an in Denmark because of some 200 verses that are to encourage violence. Their wish was granted, partially, in the form of the now world-famous Muhammad Cartoons.
Al Jazeera’s chief Islamist televangelist, Yussuf al-Qaradawi (an Egyptian preacher, who is also a friend of Ken Livingston, the mayor of London) was also ken to issue a “fatwa” to light the fuse. He then mobilized his network of Muslim Brotherhood militants in Europe to attack the cartoons and claim, falsely, that images were not allowed in Islam and that the Danish paper had violated “an absolute principle of The Only True Faith.”
The fight between Denmark and its detractors is not between the West and Islam. It is between democracy and a global fascist movement masquerading as religion. A friendship with a mufti obliges, so it came as no surprise that Mayor Ken Livingstone writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper said Israel was engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and said the Israeli prime minister should be imprisoned. Livingstone denied accusations that he is anti-Semitic, but added that the Israeli government has over dramatized anti-Semitic incidents in Europe to suggest that Jews face discrimination. Who could expect anything else from a British aristocrat after the Nazi ideologue A. Rosenberg had extolled the “aristocratic principle of nature,” which translates into the policy of not imposing taxes on the richest upper class. Recall that the Queen of the Mean L. Helmsey once declared that the rich people don’t pay taxes.
In the wake of a furor over the wearing of a Nazi uniform to a costume party by Britain’s Prince Harry, the country’s Princess Michael of Kent has angered Jewish groups over a newspaper interview in which she attributed the media outcry surrounding the event to the “structure of its ownership – a comment seen as an anti-Semitic accusation of a Jewish media conspiracy. The Austrian-born princess is the daughter of a World War II-era Nazi party member and SS officer.
Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi on Al-Jazeera on April 10, 2006: "There are Signs That Allah Will Grant Islam Victory in Europe;" Europe & the U.S. "Should Agree to Become Islamic... or Else Declare War on the Muslims:"
"The so-called Old Testament and New Testament are neither Old Testament nor New Testament - because both testaments were superseded, and they are forged. They were written by hand hundreds of years after Jesus."
"In the Bible there are things that are inappropriate for both Jesus and Moses. If we want to mend the state of humanity, and live in a global village, because of the globalization, we must search for the true Bible, because the Bible that exists today is a forgery. Today's Bible does not mention Muhammad, whereas our Lord's Bible mentions Muhammad repeatedly."
"We must search for the Gospel of Barnabas*, of St. Barnabas, because this is the true gospel."
"This gospel explicitly mentions that Muhammad would come after Jesus."
* A Renaissance forgery, The Gospel of Barnabas was discovered in the beginning of the 18th century by the Prussian councilor J.F. Cramer, who had acquired the only known Italian manuscript in Amsterdam. The introduction of the Spanish printed version of the book tells us how a friar named Fra Marino had found the Gospel in the library of Pope Sixtus V, at a moment when the Holy Father had taken a little nap. The friar is said to have been so impressed by the reading that he converted to Islam.
The teaching of The Gospel of Barnabas appears with full evidence in the passage where Jesus tells his disciples about the Creation and the Fall. When Adam is created, he sees a writing in the air with the Islamic confession: “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God” (Chapter 39) Jesus tells James (Chapter 43) that the Messiah descends not from Isaac, as the Jews believe, but from Ishmael, from whom the only true Messiah – Mohammed – will descend. Accordingly, it is not Isaac but Ishmael whom Abraham was ordered to sacrifice (Wouldn’t that explain the willingness of Palestinian parents to sacrifice their children as living bomb?). Finally, Jesus declares that he has seen Mohammed in a vision and cries out: “O Mohammed, God be with thee, and may he make me worthy to untie thy shoelaces, for obtaining this I shall be a great prophet and holy one of God” (Chapter 44)
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in India, used The Gospel of Barnabas as early as 1899, eight years before its publication. When the Oxford edition appeared in 1907, it was supported by those involved with the Cairo periodical al-Manar, which published the first edition in Arabic in 1908. Many new editions have followed, and the Gospel of Barnabas is till important as ever in the Arab world and in the Islamic mission in the West. In the Islamic Cultural Center in London there is always an impressive stock of this Gospel in English, intended for free distribution. Now they added to this stack a mountain of the Israel Lobby by two leftist professors. They are true theologians of liberation made in USA. Hezbollah’s TV station is also called Al-Manar. Among other things Al Manar programs present the blood libel – the medieval canard that caused so much bloodshed against the Jews.
France’s highest administrative court ordered the operatives of the French satellite, Eutelsat, to stop beaming Al Manar, the popular Arab-language channel run by the Hezbollah militia out of Lebanon, which transmits anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Israeli broadcasts.
The delay by the court reflects the delicate nature of the impending ruling after a yearlong campaign by the French government to shut down Al Manar because of its anti-Semitic and racist reports and support of violence. It broadcast a report claiming that Israel for years had spread H.I.V. the virus that causes AIDS, and other diseases throughout the Arab world. Reflect, in the context of this propaganda of hate, on Y. Arafat’s last trip to Paris. His picture evoking that of dying Rock Hudson was supposed to prove that he was, indeed, infected with H.I.V. virus, of course, by the Mossad and not as result of his innumerable homosexual acts.
Al Manar is available in dozens of countries around the world through a network of international satellite providers. It is broadcast in Europe via Eutelsat, based in Paris, as part of package of nine channels put out by Arabsat, based in Saudi Arabia.
It is even available in the United States, despite the fact that Hezbollah has been listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization since 1997. (NYT, December 14, 2004)
The pope and the Koran or behind the electoral victory of Hamas
During Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to the Holy Land which lasted from March 21 till March 26, 2000 protesting Jews were holding posters that read: "Pius XII – Hitler's Pope, John Paul II – Hamas' Pope." You can see these scenes in the newly released Polish film about this pilgrimage entitled The Double Promised Land.
Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office. One report, however, provides important clues to his current thinking.Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, recounted on the Hugh Hewitt Show the details of a seminar he attended with the pope in September 2005 on Islam. Participants heard about the ideas of Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani-born liberal theologian (1919-88) who held that if Muslims thoroughly reinterpret the Koran, Islam can modernize. He urged a focus on the principles behind Koranic legislation such as jihad, cutting off thieves’ hands, or permitting polygyny, in order to modify these customs to fit today’s needs. When Muslims do this, he concluded, they can prosper and live harmoniously with non-Muslims.Pope Benedict reacted strongly to this argument. He has been leading such annual seminars since 1977 but always lets others speak first, waiting until the end to comment. But hearing about Fazlur Rahman’s analysis, Fr. Fessio’s recalled with surprise, the pope could not contain himself:This is the first time I recall where he made an immediate statement. And I’m still struck by it, how powerful it was…[T]he Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there’s a fundamental problem with that [analysis] because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Muhammad, but it’s an eternal word.
It’s not Muhammad’s word. It’s there for eternity the way it is. There’s no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it.This basic difference, Pope Benedict continued, makes Islam unlike Christianity and Judaism. In the latter two religions, “God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it’s the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He’s used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world.” Jews and Christians “can take what’s good” in their traditions and mold it. There is, in other words, “an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.”
I remember that the library of the Oriental Institute of the Carcow University where I was studying at first Arabic and then Hebrew possessed hundreds of copies of brick-like Qura’ans printed by the Wehrmacht presses during WWII with the purpose of being distributed among the Mulism population of the Soviet Union. The Nazis did not print the Bible which was derided by Hitler as “Jewish folklore and therefore contemptible nonsense.”
In the past, the Iranian President Ahmedinejad denied that the Holocaust ever took place. In the letter to U.S. President Bush, he claims there is no justification for the creation of Israel, even if 6 million Jews were killed. He also blasts Bush for U.S. support of Israel, saying there’s no justification for the Jewish state’s existence.
Prof. H.Bloom in his latest book JESUS AND YAHWEH. THE NAMES DIVINE (Riverhead Books. New York 2005p. 196) wrote: Exodus 15:3 magnificently intones, “YHWH is a Man of War, the Lord is His name.” YHWH reveals himself to the embattled legions of Joshua, Moses’ general, as a man in order to sanctify and to strengthen an Israel embattled then, through the ages, right now, and doubtless forever to come, since all the road maps are illusory traps that offer only suicide to the state of Israel. One reflects that even such suicide would not appease the rapaciousness of French and other European anti-Semitism, which contrives to survive even the ebbing-away of European Christianity.
Jesus describes his mission in similar military terms: “I am come to set the world on fire; and what can I wish if it were already started…Suppose ye that I came here to establish peace. Not peace I tell you, but rather discord…” (Lk. 12:49-51)
The perpetuators of the Pax Romana held that only a universal monarch could ensure the peace necessary for the earthly well-being of mankind. Romans idolized their sun emperors, even worshiped them as gods; at least one quarter of the population of the empire was enslaved. Interestingly, the walls of the Augustean Temple of Peace (Ara Pacis Augustae) were adorned with swastikas. Accordingly the Holy Spirit of the Diocese of Arras has the shape of swastika.
Proclaiming one’s prowess and denigrating the enemy’s has been the norm through millennia of Egyptian wall paintings. Greek vases, Arabic poetry, Chinese drawings. English ballads, and Russian theater. Why have combatants now reversed this age-old and universal pattern, downplaying their own prowess and promoting the enemy’s? Battlefield superiority used to be the goal, now it is assumed before a shot is fired. Victory used to be the goal, now it’s peace (www.danielpipes.org/article/3849 and www.danielpipes.org/blog/653)
Not Another Peace Processor
Israel would be immeasurably better off if the word “peace” were banished from all publication as an obscenity. If you strive for peace, you get war. If you prosecute a war successfully and then just shut up and stop whimpering about peace demand terms that favor you, you will get respect. If the Arabs think they will win, they have to take diplomacy seriously. How many years more experience do you need, General, before you learn this? Or are you just angling for a political job?
Michal, USA (07.18.06)
Lebanese Christians’ Hope Dashed
The Prophet Muhammad said, "War is deception” -al-Bukhari, al-Jami al Sahih
With the war in Lebanon, the Vatican’s Middle East policies under Pope Benedict XVI have come into clearer focus. To the surprise of some, they look just like the policies of Pope John Paul II.
Pope Benedict’ hartfelt pleas to stop the carnage have echoed the dramatic appeals of Pope John Paul during times of Mideast conflict: “Our eyes are filled with chilling images of people’s bodies – especially children’s – torn apart,” Pope Benedict said. “I want to repeat that nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood, no matter which side does it..”
In private talks, Vatican officials have asked that the US government use its influence with Israel to bring an immediate halt to hostilities.
To the Israelis, the Vatican has made it clear that it views its military offensive in Lebanon as a disproportionate use of force. Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican, Opded Ben-Hur, has made counterarguments.
“I say two things: first, that the proportion is to the amount of threat, and (Hezbollah) is putting the north of Israel, a million people, under the threat of missiles,” Ben-Hur told the Catholic News Service in an interview.
Secondly, what is the right proportion? Give it to me. What is it, 10 to five? One to one? One hundred to 1,000? There is no such thing,” he said.
Vatican officials are taking pains to emphasize several other points of diplomats:
New efforts are needed to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which is seen at the Vatican as the ultimate cause and context of the current problems in Lebanon. A resolution of the Palestinian question will come only through bilateral negotiations, not by solutions imposed by Israel, Vatican officials say. (The Tablet, Aug. 12, 06).
The Bush administration recalled its ambassador to Syria on 15 February, 2005 to protest what it sees as Syria’s link to the murder of the former prime minister of Lebanon, as violent anti-Syrian protests erupted in Beirut and several other Lebanese cities. (NYT, Feb. 16, 2005)
Iran, Syria team up to ward off threats – Iran and Syria, who both are facing pressure from the U.S. said on Feb. 16 they formed a united front to confront possible threat against them. Mohammed Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president met Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji al-Otari.
Russia said Feb. 16 that it is negotiating the sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Syria but insisted they couldn’t be used as shoulder-fired weapons, an apparent bid to assuage U.S. and Israeli concerns they might fall into the hands of terrorists. (amNew York, Feb. 17, 2005)
Arab leaders ended a two-day summit conference in Algiers on Wednesday, March 23, 2005. Support was given to Syria against “foreign intervention” meaning pressure from the United States and France. At the same time they dismissed Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria to pull out of Lebanon and for the militant Shiite group Hezbollah to be disarmed.
About 51 out of every 100 people in Lebanon are Christians, and the other 49 are Moslem. The Christian population is divided into more than ten different sects. The largest single group is that of the Maronite Christians, who make up almost a third of the total population. The Maronites are descended from the Christian Arabs who lived in Lebanon before the Moslems. Their church is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. The Moslems are divided between the Sunni, or orthodox Moslems, and several sects, including the Shiites. The Druses are another Moslem sect, not friendly to Shiites.
Heil Hezbolla!
On Aug. 24, 1943, with Germany facing defeat in the Second World War, H. Himmler was appointed Reich minister of the interior, and now, with the S.S, constituted a separate military force (exactly like Hezbollah in Lebanon!), he was able to eject some of the leading generals who objected to his encroachments upon the authority of the army command (Enc. Americana, 1954, entry Himmler). The same nazi trick was behind the electoral victory of Hamas
Every once in a while, a photographic image emerges which captures the very essence of a major international issue. It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, the power of the underlying problem suddenly becomes eminently clear.
One such photo (see attached) now appears on the website of Time magazine where young kids in a Hezbolla scouting troop are shown pledging to die for the cause while raising their hands in the air in a chillingly-familiar salute.
Coincidence? I doubt it. Hezbollah leaders are knowledgeable enough to understand the meaning of that pose, which was burned into the memory of the Jewish people, and that of the entire world, some six decades ago in the heart of Europe.
Hezbollah is not just “an Islamic militant group that operates in southern Lebanon” with Iranian sponsorship. Combining Islamic fanaticism with a modern anti-Semitic ideology derived from the Catholic Church and Nazism, with a media which spreads that ideology worldwide, and with a mass base and virtual state control of Lebanon, Hezbollah stands for the destruction of world Jewry and the creation of a world Islamofascist state, modeled on Iran.
Lebanese Expatriates Condemn Syria, Iran; and Praise Israel 00:26 Jul 26, '06 / 1 Av 5766by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
Many Lebanese expatriate groups have roundly condemned the Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. Some of them are also calling for Israel to press ahead in its military campaign.
The Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC), a coalition of organizations in Canada, has released a statement laying out its vision of what measures should be endorsed by the world community at an international conference on the ongoing warfare in Lebanon. The conference is to be held in Rome on Wednesday, pursuant to a recommendation issued by the United Nations Security Council on July 21, 2006. Among the measures the LCCC is recommending are the dispatch of international combat forces to Lebanon, armed with the full authority and sufficient firepower to implement all clauses of UN resolution 1559. This would include the to mission to "disarm the Hezbollah group and the Palestinian organizations, and prevent and intercept the transfer of weapons to them from Iran and Syria." Another agenda item the LCCC called for is "a resolution by the United Nations condemning Syria and Iran, holding them responsible for the escalation leading to the catastrophe that has befallen Lebanon, and making them liable for the damages incurred by the Lebanese people and the costs of reconstruction...." LCCC also seeks to establish an international commission of inquiry "mandated with the task of determining Hezbollah's legal responsibility for the events leading to the cycle of violence inflicted on Lebanon today...."The LCCC also warned all Lebanese against "the deceitful calls aiming at surrendering to the will of the fundamentalist Hezbollah group and the dictates of its financiers and sponsors in Damascus and Tehran.... To remain silent over their crimes or to turn a blind eye to their practices, violations and threats is itself an act of treason to the nation and an unforgivable crime." In addition to the LCCC, the press release was endorsed by eleven Lebanese groups from the USA, Europe and Lebanon itself. The LCCC represents the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation, the Canadian Lebanese Free Patriotic Movement (FPM-Canada), the Phoenician Club of Mississauga (PCOM), the Canadian Phoenician Community Services Club (CPCSC), the Canadian Lebanese Christian Heritage Club (CLCHC), the World Lebanese Cultural Union-Canadian Chapter.
The Lebanese Foundation for Peace (LFP), an international organization of Lebanese Christians, issued a press release last week that called upon Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation." The LFP also said that "thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora" are "willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism," with the logistical support of Israel. In an interview with Israel National Radio's Tovia Singer, former South Lebanese Army officer, and leader of the Guardians of the Cedars militia, Etienne Sakr ("Abu Arz") called on Israel to press ahead until victory in its offensive against the Hezbollah. He said that, while Lebanon can be rebuilt, Israel must not allow the Islamist elements in the country to survive the war. To do so, he said, would repeat the mistake of the 2000 IDF withdrawal from Southern Lebanon. At the time, speaking before the Knesset, Sakr charged that Israel had "made heroes out of Hezbollah."Another well-known expatriate Lebanese individual calling for Israel to win the war in Lebanon is Brigitte Gabriel, founder of the American Congress for Truth, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating radical Islamic fundamentalism in the West. She compared the current destruction in Lebanon to a painful operation aimed at removing a cancerous growth, which will hopefully release Lebanon from the "hijackers" - Iran and Syria. To that end, Gabriel said, the roots of the Islamist movement in Lebanon must be completely destroyed.
In an interview with Canadian Christianity.com, LCCC head Elias Bejjani, a Maronite Catholic, said that Israel "had no choice but to act, if you understand their situation and point of view." Furthermore, he said, "I'm not sure Israel is targeting civilians. Hezbollah moves from one neighbourhood to another. According to reports we have heard from Christian villages in south Lebanon, Hezbollah come into the villages and fire their rockets; then they run away. And these villages pay the price."
Thank You, Israel
by Brigitte GabrielJuly 17, 2006
For the millions of Christian Lebanese driven out of our homeland, "Thank you, Israel" is the sentiment echoing from around the world. The Lebanese Foundation for Peace, an international group of Lebanese Christians, made the following statement in a press release to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert concerning the latest Israeli attacks against Hezbollah:
We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation.
Their statement continues,
On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we ask you to open the doors of Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport to thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism. We ask you for support, facilitation and logistics in order to win this struggle and achieve together the same objectives: Peace and Security for Lebanon and Israel and our future generations to come.
The once-dominant Lebanese Christians - responsible for giving the world "the Paris of the Middle East", as Lebanon used to be known - were killed, massacred, driven out of their homes and scattered around the world as radical Islam declared its holy war in the 1970s and took hold of the country. They voice an opinion that they, and Israel, have formed through personal experience, which is now belatedly being discovered by the rest of the world.
Read the Papal appeals for establishing of Palestinian state in this political context. Hamas’ popes frighten the Lebanese Christians to death. I wonder, will the Lebanese Christian stay affiliated with the Roman Church after the most recent betrayal of their cause by that church? Spreading anti-Semitism all over the world is still the priority of the Vatican.
Poles for Israel Friday, August 18, 2006
The Popes of Eurabia
Policy behind the Passion of Christ
“When the ancient Hellenic culture was in decline, it found support in the Roman government. Rome defended the upper class against proletarian outbursts, and in defense of the Hellenes, Rome crushed the Jews and other Easterners, who challenged Hellenism in Cyprus, Egypt, Syria, and Cyrenaica. Likewise Rome occasionally persecuted the Christians. (Enc. Americana, entry Hellenism)
Historian Robert Wolfe explains: “The Romans and their Greek allies killed something like 2 or 3 million Jews during this period out of a total Jewish population of approximately 7 million within the boundaries of the so-called ‘Roman Empire.’ The total number of Jewish casualties reported by Josephus for the ‘First Jewish War’ add up approximately 1,300,000. The Roman historian Dio Cassius states that 580,000 Jews were killed during the ‘Second Jewish War.’ Historians estimate that many hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the Romans and Greeks during the ‘Diaspora Revolt’ of 115-17 CE. There were close to 1 million Jews in Egypt alone at the start of this period, yet hardly any remaining by the end of the 2nd c. CE. The large Jewish communities in Syria and Turkey were likewise decimated…By the end of the 2nd c. CE, only 750,000 Jews remained in Judah, home of something like 4 million Jews prior to the Roman onslaught.
The developing anti-Semitic nature of Christianity perfectly reflects the hardening attitudes of the western Empire to the Jews. By the early 4th century Eusebius was describing with relish how the destruction of Jerusalem was God’s punishment on the Jews for the murder of his son. At the end of the 4th century St. John Chrysostom was preaching that demons dwelt in synagogue and in the souls of Jews, and St. Augustine was writing in a treatise Against the Jews:” You in your parents killed Christ.” In 412 Cyril became Patriarch of Alexandria and one of his first acts was to incite the monks to pillage and expel from the city the wealthy Jewish community some 40,000 strong. Similarly, they expelled them from their Holy Land and Jesus’ crucifixion was the justification of the robbery of their homeland. During the 5th century the Emperors safeguarded the survival of the Jewish communities, but as second-class citizens, “in order that they might serve as a living testimony to the Christian interpretation of the scriptures and to the victory of the Catholic Church.”
The Traitor who became the “First Pope”
And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. – Lk 22:34. Now Peter sat without in palace: and a damsel came unto him saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the crock crew. – Mt. 27:69-74
And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon’s, greatly wandering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. (Acts 3:12-15). Well, he identified Jesus’ god with the God of the Hebrew Bible. And, please note, this “Prince of life” was raised from the dead by YHWH i.e. the God of the Bible.
The following is a portion of the discussion of the death of Jesus found in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a:
“On the eve of Passover Jesus was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, “He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favor let him come forward and plead on his behalf.” But since nothing was brought forward in his favor, he was hanged on the eve of Passover. Ulla retorted: Do you suppose he was one for whom a defense could be made? Was he not a mesith (enticer), concerning whom Scripture says, ‘Neither shall thou spare nor shall thou conceal him?’” With Jesus, however, it was different, for he was connected with the government” i.e. with the Herodian dynasty.
You see, Peter, the beloved disciple of Jesus had the opportunity to come forward and plead on Jesus’ behalf. Instead he had chosen to deny him and so to condemn him to death. Had he any moral right to reproach the Jews? He had admitted “through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:17). But his denial did not come ‘through ignorance’ (See, Mt 16:13-19)! And yet he had the nerve to say, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out…” Acts 3:19
Crucifixion according to the apocryphal Gospel of Peter
The final pages of this gospel were discovered in 1886 in the grave of a Christian monk in Egypt. The text begins in the middle of a passage with the statement that “None of the Jews washed his hands, neither did Herod nor any of his judges. As they did not wish to wash, Pilate got up. Evidently, the preceding passage narrated the story, otherwise known only from Matthew, of Pilate’s washing his hands at Jesus’ trial (Mt. 27:24). In Peter’s account, however, the emphasis is not on Pilate, who is throughout portrayed as innocent of Jesus’ death, but on Herod, the king of the Jews, and on the Jewish leaders who collaborated with him. They do not wash their hands – that is, they are seen as guilty for Jesus’ blood. In the next verse, it is Herod who orders Jesus to be taken out and crucified.
Pilate commands the soldiers to silence, but only after reminding the Jewish leaders that Jesus’ crucifixion was indeed their fault, not his. Christian anti-Judaism began to assert itself with particular vigor. One by-product of this heightened animosity is that Christians began to exonerate Pilate for Jesus’ death and to blame Jews, indeed, all Jews, more and more. In the Gospel of Peter, it is Jews who actually do the dirty work of crucifying Jesus. Later, they regret it, and explicitly express their fears that Jerusalem will now be destroyed as a result of their actions.
Ecumenism in Hatred
Special Dispatch-Egypt/Antisemitism Documentation Project August 18, 2006No. 1255The Mufti of Egypt: The True Face of the Blood-Sucking Hebrew Entity has Been Exposed To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD125506
In an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram, Egyptian Mufti Sheikh Dr. 'Ali Gum'a expressed his support of the resistance in Lebanon and stated that the lies of the "Hebrew entity" expose "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers... who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood." The ancient Christian accusation that ‘The Jews Murdered Jesus’ has become a standard widespread cliché in Arab anti-Semitic discourse. One example: Y. Arafat’s adviser Bassam Abu Sharif, writing in the London-based Saudi daily Al Sharq al-Awsat, referred to the Virgin Mary statue that was damaged by Israeli fire during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He wrote: “The sad smile of the Virgin Mary as she shields her son, the Messiah, did not prevent the soldiers of the Israeli occupation from taking up positions to shoot at the face of this Palestinian angel (i.e. Jesus) and murder the smile so as to murder throughout 2.000 years.
July 23, 2000 – “Eternal struggle”: The Palestinian Authority Television program “Good Morning Jerusalem” features an artist with a painting of Jesus between two Israeli soldiers. The artist tells the viewing audience: “Our struggle today against the Other is an eternal struggle: one can say that it began 2,000 years ago and it continues until today. I portray this with the figure of Jesus who came to the world with the gospel of justice, and the Other Side did what they did to him, and the Palestinian demands the same justice, and deal with us the same way.”
July 24, 2000 – “Jewish murderers”: The official Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah publishes an article in its issue headlined, “Nazareth: The City Where the Jews Murdered the First Palestinian of Her Sons.” The article declares: “Nazareth became famous as the place where Jesus grew up…The Jews tried to attack the city many times in order to disperse the people of Nazareth and uproot them, just as they obliterated many Arab villages…The forces of the Zionist occupation did not succeed in altering the face of the Palestinian Nazareth, and that she did not forget and will not forget her first son that the Jews betrayed and handed him over to the Roman emperor, and persisted until he was taken out to be killed.”
John Paul II’s visit to Syria in 2001 was supposed to amplify this anti-Jewish hate propaganda. In Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Assad welcomed the Pope with an anti-Israeli spleen-buster that veered irrationally from contemporary Middle East politics to ancient but still vibrant anti-Semitism. The Israelis, the second-generation dictator said, tortured and killed innocent Palestinians. He suggested Christians and Muslims join forces not only against the Jewish state, but against Judaism itself – the people “who try to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ.” This repetition of historic anti-Semitism – the Jew as the Christ killer – is something of a modern innovation for Islamic countries, maybe the one Western development they have adopted with alacrity. Interestingly enough, according to the teaching of the Koran Jesus never died on the cross but was taken up into heaven uninjured! President’s of Syria outburst was to convince the world that Pope John Paul II rejected the theological reform of Vatican II and joined the neo-Nazi movement advanced by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and in in the USA by actor M. Gibson and his father. They were counterparts of Nasrallah in Lebanon. Interestingly, in 1988 when Secretary of State Shultz frantically sought to establish political contacts with PLO’s fuehrer Y. Arafat, Archbishop Lefebvre had ordained four bishops and 16 of his followers as priests. Excommunication of the “rebel archbishop” notwithstanding, Card. Ratzinger visited Lefebvre’s seminary.
The Pope’s Thumbs Up For Gibson’s ‘Passion’
“Mel Gibson’s The Passion gets a thumbs-up from the Pope,” was the jolly image conjured by a headline over Peggy Noonan’s column for the Wall Street Journal Web site as she relayed the happy news this Christmas season” on Dec. 17. In Ms. Noonan’s view, the pope’s blessing was likely to settle the controversy over a movie that Jewish and Christian critics alike have faulted for its potential to reignite the charge of deicide against the Jews. It was also perfectly timed to boost the bookings of a movie scheduled to open nationally on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday. Gibson’s film was to justify the destruction of the state of Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian state, exactly like in the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Jewish hope dashed
The reaction of Jews to the publication of The Gospel of Judas is understandable. There was a bit of pathos in the prominence given in Israel to the publication of the Gospel of Judas. The story appeared prominently on the front page of Ha’aretz. Prominent radio talk shows interviewed leading experts and asked time and again, would the revelation work to end the religious basis of anti-Semitism? Ira Sharkansky, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem concluded his article for the Jerusalem Post not without bitterness: “We should hope for the best in the continuing efforts of the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian leaders to accept Jews as something other than Christ killers.” But it may be that the cartoonist of Ha’aretz got the story better than the serious writer of the front-page article. He pictures two worried fathers of the Church, with one of them saying, That Judah is again causing problems. Indeed.
Agenzia Giornalistica Italia reported on April 13:
Vatican: Pope banishes Judas’ Gospel
The Vatican, by word of Pope Ratzinger, grants the recently surfaced Judas’ Gospel no credit with regards to its apocryphal claims that Judas betrayed Jesus in compliance with the latter’s own requests. According to the Pope Judas freely chose to betray Jesus “an open rejection of God’s love”. Judas according to Ratzinger “viewed Jesus in terms of power and success his only real interests lied with his power and success, there was no love involved. He was a greedy man: money was more important than communion with Jesus; money came before God and his love.” According to the Pope it was due to these traits that led Judas to “turn liar, two-faced indifferent to the truth,” “losing any sense of God,” “turning hard, incapable of converting, of being the prodigal son, hence throwing away a spent existence.” (http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=)
Such outbursts contrast strongly with the church’s non-condemnation of Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie, The Passion of the Christ, which outraged many Jews and theologically conscious Christians with its near-pornographic violence and emphasis on scriptural passages blaming Jews for the death of Jesus. Nothing is so sure of itself as fanaticism.
Well, Rev. Ioannes Rakhman of the Jakarta Theologiocal Seminary when asked by The Jakarta Post’s Evi Mariani:
Can we say these findings indicate progress? answered:
“If the findings manage to shift the prevailing beliefs and Christianity is ready to face that, we can say Christianity is growing more mature. Openness to various findings is clearly one indicator of maturity and progress in a human being.” (www.thejakartapost.com/misc/)
Some Bible experts have claimed Judas’ traditional portrayal as a sinister villain has helped foster anti-Semitism through the ages. In medieval plays and paintings, Judas is portrayed with a hooked nose and exaggerated Semitic features. This Christian visual propaganda matches or even surpasses in many cases the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Nazi Der Stuermer.
Because the Judas story has been the direct cause of the death of millions of Jews at the hands of faithful Christians it should be kept in mind that it is a shameful history based on a preposterous fabrication, which distorts the truth about Jews in the time of Jesus. Sadly, Vatican Council II notwithstanding, armies of Christian “soldiers” continue to march to the ancient drumbeat broadcast from the Vatican.
According to the Gospel of John, contrary to Jesus’ repeated prophecy, Judas did not betray him with a kiss. Jesus simply asked the soldiers who were they looking for. On having been told “Jesus of Nazareth” he readily acknowledged his identity without being kissed by Judas! (John 18:7-8) Judas’ kiss was redundant because Jesus himself said that he could have been arrested any day he taught in the Temple: “Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. (Mt 26:55). These words of Jesus are repeated by the remaining three evangelists. There is no such unanimous report from four evangelists regarding Judas’s offer to betray Jesus. Two evangelists: Mark and Matthew confirm that Judas offered to betray Jesus but the two remaining: Luke and John don’t blame Judas for such an offer! In other words, the guilt of Judas was not proven “beyond reasonable doubt” by the canonical gospels. After two thousand years he fully deserves the principle of “presumed innocent until proven guilty” to be applied to him. Especially after publication of “his” Gospel which, therefore, deserves the title The Gospel of Rehabilitation.
The Timing of the Papal Attack on the Gospel of Judas tells a lot
The papal attack on The Gospel of Judas came on Thursday April 13. On Sunday April 16, in his first Easter message as pontiff, Pope Benedict urged nations to use diplomacy to defuse nuclear crises and prayed that Palestinians would one day have their own state alongside Israel. The timing of his prayer, on the day closing the traditional Passion week when the anti-Semitic feelings of the Christians run exceedingly high, was chosen to achieve the maximum effect. (The Arab historian Philip Hitti testified in 1946 before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not).
In harmony with this Papal prayer in Rome Greek bishops dismissed Gospel of Judas as “Zionist conspiracy” designed to cause scandal.
You see, in the Darfur region, Arab militias and African Christian rebels have fought for nearly three years, with the Arab militias forcing out Sudanese, Christian farmers in a campaign of rape, killing and arson that the United States has labeled genocide. Yet, the Pope did not even mention the word “autonomy” for these people.
Let me remind in this context that the Roman Church is capable of singing Te Deum over a massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of blessing Muslim swords drawn to slaughter orthodox Christians in the Balkans and elsewhere.
A Mexican bishop has said that the Vatican is still refusing to allow him to ordain permanent deacons from the indigenous populations in his diocese in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquival of San Cristobal de las Casas also said that he has been told to stop his formation programs for candidates to the permanent diaconate. The Vatican fears that the ordinations are part of a plan to develop an autonomous local church for the ordination of married priests, he said. (The Tablet Apr. 15, 2006)
According to Bernard Lewis, an eminent authority, “The word Palestine does not occur in the Old Testament…Palestine does not occur in the New Testament or The Qur’an at all.”
The official adoption of the name Palestine in Roman usage to designate the territories of the former Jewish principality of Judea seems to date after the suppression of the great Jewish revolt of bar-Kokhba in the year 135 C.E…It would seem that the name Judea was abolished…and the country renamed Palestine or Syria Palestina, with the … intention of obliterating its historic Jewish identity. The earlier name did not entirely disappear, and as late as the 4th century C.C. we still find a Christian author, Epiphanius, referring to “Palestine, that is, Judea.”
Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel ... -- Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of
its Executive Council, Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977
And that’s what the so-called peace process is all about, never ending war until the final destruction of the Jewish state.
When Th. Herzl approached Pope Pius X in Jan 1904, seeking his assistance for the Zionist venture, the pope dismissed him with these words: “We cannot favor this movement. The Jews did not recognize Jesus, our Lord, and we therefore cannot recognize the Jewish people. If you come to Palestine and settle your people there we will be ready with priests and churches to baptize you.” And Card. Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, was sufficiently cooperative with Pius XII’s anti-Semitic policy, to advise the Curia against Jewish transportation to Palestine, which might challenge “Christian possession of the exceedingly profitable Holy Places. That’s why six million had to die! No pope throughout centuries has ever prayed that the Jews would one day have their own state alongside “Palestine”. On the contrary, it was mostly the Catholic priests who incited the Christian mob to pogroms and to complete isolation of the Jews inside their ghettos. Is not the fence that Israel built along its border a result of the perennial Roman ghettoization policy vis-à-vis the Jews?
Well, Pope John Paul II in his relentless pursuit of Palestinian statehood met with “martyrdom seeking” terrorist fuehrer Y. Arafat 14 times, thus turning Palestinians into the Vatican’s new “chosen people”, which was the core of the Roman policy of hate towards the Jews. The anti-Semitic mob applauded. John Paul II’s mad monk Father T. Rydzyk through his radio and TV stations promoted the Stuermer’s-like anti-Semitic propaganda even though it is against the Polish law. But in Poland the “Polish” Pope and his henchmen were and still are above the law. This sole fact adequately mirrors the Vatican obsession with and fear of the Jewish state. Because, the furious opposition of the Vatican notwithstanding, the Jewish people received, after centuries of dispersion, their Promised Land back; as the God of the Bible had promised them:
“Even if you are dispersed to the ends of the heavens, from there will YHWH your God gather you and from there will He take you up. And YHWH your God will bring you to the Land which your ancestors have inherited and you shall inherit it. And He will do well by you, and make you more numerous than your ancestors.” (Dt.30:4,5)
And the prophet Jeremiah said the same:
“The days are coming,” declares YHWH, “when men will no longer say, ‘as surely as the Lord lives who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but they will say, ‘as surely as YHWH lives who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the North and out of all the countries where he banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land that I gave to their forefathers…Then they will know that my name is YHWH.” Jer. 16:14-16, 21). No human effort can thwart God’s purpose.
In 1849, after reading passages like Jeremiah 16, a Bible student wrote the following words:
“There is … a …restoration of the Jews before the manifestation (i.e. return of Jesus)… The…colonization of Palestine will be on purely political principles; and the Jewish colonists will return in unbelief of the Messianship of Jesus, and of the truth as it is in him.” (John Thomas, Elpis Israel) (See, GladTidings, no. 1423)
The writer of these words clearly expected the Jews to return to Israel, or Palestine, as it was then known. He did not claim to be a prophet, he merely stated what the Bible had clearly said would happen. Note that he wrote these words almost one hundred years before the advance of the Zionist movement.
In 1938 Father Denis Fahey, professor of philosophy (like K. Wojtyla) published the booklet entitled, The Rulers of Russia that received imprimatur of Jeremias, Episcopus Waterfordensis and Lismorensis. And here is the most revealing paragraph of this booklet: “A step to be taken to undo the naturalism of the French Revolution and, at the same time, prevent onslaughts on the Jews, is to withdraw citizenship of other states from all of them and limit them to citizenship of one state, their own. That state must not be Palestine…” The imprimatur meant that it was a statement of the official Church policy. And that explains why the Vatican for so long period of time after WWII did not recognize Jewish statehood established in 1948.
This fact scares the Vatican hierarchs even more than the empty churches in Europe and in this country. Because, the fact that the Biblical prophecy came true and Pope Piux X’s “prophecy” about baptizing the Jews in Israel turned out a hollow promise to the Christian World proves beyond any doubt that the attempt at attributing to Jesus the powers and personality of God who created the Heavens and the earth can be viewed now as a useless comedy played by the Roman Church with mankind, as, after all, Jesus’ mission ranks scarcely less than a complete failure.
From the outset, Gibson was clear that the principal sources for his retelling of the crucifixion story were the Gospel of Matthew, the most problematic of the four Christian passion narratives, and the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century nun and mystic who recorded her anti-Semitic "visions" of Jesus' arrest and execution. The filmmaker, in fact, reportedly keeps a relic of the nun.Then there was Gibson's repeated refusal to disavow the views of his father and spiritual mentor, Hutton Gibson, a notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, who cheerfully shares public platforms with unrepentant neo-fascists like the odious Willis Carto. No one can demand that another person repudiate their father, but it's perfectly possible to say, "I love my father, but I don't agree with his ideas." Somehow, Gibson's refusal to do that never bothered "The Passion's" fans.Finally, there's the matter of the faith Mel Gibson inherited from that father — his so-called traditional Catholicism. Without making a tedious detour into the fetid theological swamp in which this movement was spawned, it should be clear to anybody who looks that it involves a lot more than simple nostalgia for the Latin Mass. Spend 15 minutes with literature of the independent traditionalists — like Gibson father and son — or their more organized brethren in the Societies of St. Pius X or St. Pius V and what jumps out at you is a pervasive, actually obsessive antagonism toward Jews and Judaism. Moreover, traditional Catholicism's American variants all are infected to one degree or another with the ideas of the Jew-baiting Boston Jesuit Leonard Feeney, who was excommunicated by Pope Pius XII. Yet the commentators and clergy who applauded "The Passion of the Christ" treated Gibson's traditionalism as a kind of minor eccentricity — sort of like a guy still holding onto his eight-track tapes.How involved in this movement is Mel Gibson?
This was posted on a leading independent traditionalist website this week: "Mel Gibson may have a personal drinking problem, but he sure puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to his deep traditional Catholic Faith. The World Faith Foundation, a nonprofit corporation, of which Gibson is a principal benefactor, has purchased a church complex in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, for $750,000. The existing church will be converted into a traditional Catholic Church, which will serve as a regional center for the Traditional Latin Mass and Sacraments … WFF had already purchased a ranch-style house earlier in 2006 for $315,000. An independent traditional Catholic congregation, St. Michael the Archangel, pastored by an independent priest, will move … to the new location…. The producer-director's father, Hutton Gibson, a traditional Catholic writer and publisher associated with the WFF, has already moved to the Greenburg area to oversee the complex for the foundation."The writer goes on to point out that Gibson spent $5 million to build a similar traditionalist church near his home in Malibu.So why was all this ignored — or worse, dismissed — when so many conservative commentators and clergy were busily putting their collective imprimatur on Gibson's "Passion"?
Mel Gibson’s Fault (Editorian in The Tablet of Aug 12)
So many people have been quick to flog Mel Gibson for recently falling off the wagon and uttering intemperate words about Jews that we wonder what really is going on here.
Isn’t this the same man who brought us the wonderful meditation-film, The Passion of the Christ? Can we really believe that a person of such faith would say such things as he is reported to have said?
Then again, there are those who will never forgive Mel Gibson for producing The Passion with all its glorious and rich imagery of the Christian faith. The popularly acclaimed film certainly was not a favorite among Hollywood types who would rather point to the failures and misdeed of Church leaders.
Mel Gibson deserves a break and a supporting hand so that he never goes anywhere near alcohol again.
Which means that M. Gibson may be an anti-Semite but shouldn’t be bargging about that when he is drunk.
On Aug. 8, 2006, Al-Jazeera TV aired footage of a press conference with Gen. Hamid Gul. At the conference, Gul, who headed Pakistan’s Inter-service intelligence Directorate from 1987-89 and who, according to the Washington Times, was termed Pakistan’s “most dangerous man” by an internal CIA assessment, told reporters that “every Israeli leader has said that Pakistan is their number one enemy,” and quoted Mel Gibson, stating that “the Jews caused all the wars.”
According to an August 7, 2008 UPI article, general Gul, who is “known for pro-Taliban and pro-Al-Qaeda views, told the media that the United States would attack Syria and Iran next October, and that Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, was the only Islamic country that could use its nuclear capability to defeat Israel’s designs. Obviously, a few years later, professors Mearsheimer and Walt will write another article claiming that is was the Israel Lobby which pushed the US into these wars and Mel Gibson in another drunken bout will confirm that.
The Pope never read The Satanic verses?
"In May 1999, during an audience granted to three Muslims at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II bowed to the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and kissed it” (Christian News, Oct. 18, 1999, p. 16). The three Muslims were the Shiite Imam of Khadum mosque, the Sunni president of the Iraqi Islamic Bank, and a representative of the Iraqi ministry of religion. The photo of the gesture has been shown repeatedly on Iraqi television. . . The gesture was meant to show that the Pope shared The Muslim contempt for the Hebrew Bible.
On March 29, 2006 a man who faced the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity was secretly flown to Italy, where he was granted asylum under round-the-clock protection by the government. In other words, he preferred to kiss the New Testament rather than the Holy Qur’an. During Pope John Paul II’s pontificate it was Italy’s ambassador to Riyadh who converted to Islam.
Let me remind here that the far-right Danish People’s Party postulated banning the Qur’an in Denmark because of some 200 verses that are to encourage violence. Their wish was granted, partially, in the form of the now world-famous Muhammad Cartoons.
Al Jazeera’s chief Islamist televangelist, Yussuf al-Qaradawi (an Egyptian preacher, who is also a friend of Ken Livingston, the mayor of London) was also ken to issue a “fatwa” to light the fuse. He then mobilized his network of Muslim Brotherhood militants in Europe to attack the cartoons and claim, falsely, that images were not allowed in Islam and that the Danish paper had violated “an absolute principle of The Only True Faith.”
The fight between Denmark and its detractors is not between the West and Islam. It is between democracy and a global fascist movement masquerading as religion. A friendship with a mufti obliges, so it came as no surprise that Mayor Ken Livingstone writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper said Israel was engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and said the Israeli prime minister should be imprisoned. Livingstone denied accusations that he is anti-Semitic, but added that the Israeli government has over dramatized anti-Semitic incidents in Europe to suggest that Jews face discrimination. Who could expect anything else from a British aristocrat after the Nazi ideologue A. Rosenberg had extolled the “aristocratic principle of nature,” which translates into the policy of not imposing taxes on the richest upper class. Recall that the Queen of the Mean L. Helmsey once declared that the rich people don’t pay taxes.
In the wake of a furor over the wearing of a Nazi uniform to a costume party by Britain’s Prince Harry, the country’s Princess Michael of Kent has angered Jewish groups over a newspaper interview in which she attributed the media outcry surrounding the event to the “structure of its ownership – a comment seen as an anti-Semitic accusation of a Jewish media conspiracy. The Austrian-born princess is the daughter of a World War II-era Nazi party member and SS officer.
Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi on Al-Jazeera on April 10, 2006: "There are Signs That Allah Will Grant Islam Victory in Europe;" Europe & the U.S. "Should Agree to Become Islamic... or Else Declare War on the Muslims:"
"The so-called Old Testament and New Testament are neither Old Testament nor New Testament - because both testaments were superseded, and they are forged. They were written by hand hundreds of years after Jesus."
"In the Bible there are things that are inappropriate for both Jesus and Moses. If we want to mend the state of humanity, and live in a global village, because of the globalization, we must search for the true Bible, because the Bible that exists today is a forgery. Today's Bible does not mention Muhammad, whereas our Lord's Bible mentions Muhammad repeatedly."
"We must search for the Gospel of Barnabas*, of St. Barnabas, because this is the true gospel."
"This gospel explicitly mentions that Muhammad would come after Jesus."
* A Renaissance forgery, The Gospel of Barnabas was discovered in the beginning of the 18th century by the Prussian councilor J.F. Cramer, who had acquired the only known Italian manuscript in Amsterdam. The introduction of the Spanish printed version of the book tells us how a friar named Fra Marino had found the Gospel in the library of Pope Sixtus V, at a moment when the Holy Father had taken a little nap. The friar is said to have been so impressed by the reading that he converted to Islam.
The teaching of The Gospel of Barnabas appears with full evidence in the passage where Jesus tells his disciples about the Creation and the Fall. When Adam is created, he sees a writing in the air with the Islamic confession: “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God” (Chapter 39) Jesus tells James (Chapter 43) that the Messiah descends not from Isaac, as the Jews believe, but from Ishmael, from whom the only true Messiah – Mohammed – will descend. Accordingly, it is not Isaac but Ishmael whom Abraham was ordered to sacrifice (Wouldn’t that explain the willingness of Palestinian parents to sacrifice their children as living bomb?). Finally, Jesus declares that he has seen Mohammed in a vision and cries out: “O Mohammed, God be with thee, and may he make me worthy to untie thy shoelaces, for obtaining this I shall be a great prophet and holy one of God” (Chapter 44)
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in India, used The Gospel of Barnabas as early as 1899, eight years before its publication. When the Oxford edition appeared in 1907, it was supported by those involved with the Cairo periodical al-Manar, which published the first edition in Arabic in 1908. Many new editions have followed, and the Gospel of Barnabas is till important as ever in the Arab world and in the Islamic mission in the West. In the Islamic Cultural Center in London there is always an impressive stock of this Gospel in English, intended for free distribution. Now they added to this stack a mountain of the Israel Lobby by two leftist professors. They are true theologians of liberation made in USA. Hezbollah’s TV station is also called Al-Manar. Among other things Al Manar programs present the blood libel – the medieval canard that caused so much bloodshed against the Jews.
France’s highest administrative court ordered the operatives of the French satellite, Eutelsat, to stop beaming Al Manar, the popular Arab-language channel run by the Hezbollah militia out of Lebanon, which transmits anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Israeli broadcasts.
The delay by the court reflects the delicate nature of the impending ruling after a yearlong campaign by the French government to shut down Al Manar because of its anti-Semitic and racist reports and support of violence. It broadcast a report claiming that Israel for years had spread H.I.V. the virus that causes AIDS, and other diseases throughout the Arab world. Reflect, in the context of this propaganda of hate, on Y. Arafat’s last trip to Paris. His picture evoking that of dying Rock Hudson was supposed to prove that he was, indeed, infected with H.I.V. virus, of course, by the Mossad and not as result of his innumerable homosexual acts.
Al Manar is available in dozens of countries around the world through a network of international satellite providers. It is broadcast in Europe via Eutelsat, based in Paris, as part of package of nine channels put out by Arabsat, based in Saudi Arabia.
It is even available in the United States, despite the fact that Hezbollah has been listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization since 1997. (NYT, December 14, 2004)
The pope and the Koran or behind the electoral victory of Hamas
During Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to the Holy Land which lasted from March 21 till March 26, 2000 protesting Jews were holding posters that read: "Pius XII – Hitler's Pope, John Paul II – Hamas' Pope." You can see these scenes in the newly released Polish film about this pilgrimage entitled The Double Promised Land.
Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office. One report, however, provides important clues to his current thinking.Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, recounted on the Hugh Hewitt Show the details of a seminar he attended with the pope in September 2005 on Islam. Participants heard about the ideas of Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani-born liberal theologian (1919-88) who held that if Muslims thoroughly reinterpret the Koran, Islam can modernize. He urged a focus on the principles behind Koranic legislation such as jihad, cutting off thieves’ hands, or permitting polygyny, in order to modify these customs to fit today’s needs. When Muslims do this, he concluded, they can prosper and live harmoniously with non-Muslims.Pope Benedict reacted strongly to this argument. He has been leading such annual seminars since 1977 but always lets others speak first, waiting until the end to comment. But hearing about Fazlur Rahman’s analysis, Fr. Fessio’s recalled with surprise, the pope could not contain himself:This is the first time I recall where he made an immediate statement. And I’m still struck by it, how powerful it was…[T]he Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there’s a fundamental problem with that [analysis] because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Muhammad, but it’s an eternal word.
It’s not Muhammad’s word. It’s there for eternity the way it is. There’s no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it.This basic difference, Pope Benedict continued, makes Islam unlike Christianity and Judaism. In the latter two religions, “God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it’s the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He’s used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world.” Jews and Christians “can take what’s good” in their traditions and mold it. There is, in other words, “an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.”
I remember that the library of the Oriental Institute of the Carcow University where I was studying at first Arabic and then Hebrew possessed hundreds of copies of brick-like Qura’ans printed by the Wehrmacht presses during WWII with the purpose of being distributed among the Mulism population of the Soviet Union. The Nazis did not print the Bible which was derided by Hitler as “Jewish folklore and therefore contemptible nonsense.”
In the past, the Iranian President Ahmedinejad denied that the Holocaust ever took place. In the letter to U.S. President Bush, he claims there is no justification for the creation of Israel, even if 6 million Jews were killed. He also blasts Bush for U.S. support of Israel, saying there’s no justification for the Jewish state’s existence.
Prof. H.Bloom in his latest book JESUS AND YAHWEH. THE NAMES DIVINE (Riverhead Books. New York 2005p. 196) wrote: Exodus 15:3 magnificently intones, “YHWH is a Man of War, the Lord is His name.” YHWH reveals himself to the embattled legions of Joshua, Moses’ general, as a man in order to sanctify and to strengthen an Israel embattled then, through the ages, right now, and doubtless forever to come, since all the road maps are illusory traps that offer only suicide to the state of Israel. One reflects that even such suicide would not appease the rapaciousness of French and other European anti-Semitism, which contrives to survive even the ebbing-away of European Christianity.
Jesus describes his mission in similar military terms: “I am come to set the world on fire; and what can I wish if it were already started…Suppose ye that I came here to establish peace. Not peace I tell you, but rather discord…” (Lk. 12:49-51)
The perpetuators of the Pax Romana held that only a universal monarch could ensure the peace necessary for the earthly well-being of mankind. Romans idolized their sun emperors, even worshiped them as gods; at least one quarter of the population of the empire was enslaved. Interestingly, the walls of the Augustean Temple of Peace (Ara Pacis Augustae) were adorned with swastikas. Accordingly the Holy Spirit of the Diocese of Arras has the shape of swastika.
Proclaiming one’s prowess and denigrating the enemy’s has been the norm through millennia of Egyptian wall paintings. Greek vases, Arabic poetry, Chinese drawings. English ballads, and Russian theater. Why have combatants now reversed this age-old and universal pattern, downplaying their own prowess and promoting the enemy’s? Battlefield superiority used to be the goal, now it is assumed before a shot is fired. Victory used to be the goal, now it’s peace (www.danielpipes.org/article/3849 and www.danielpipes.org/blog/653)
Not Another Peace Processor
Israel would be immeasurably better off if the word “peace” were banished from all publication as an obscenity. If you strive for peace, you get war. If you prosecute a war successfully and then just shut up and stop whimpering about peace demand terms that favor you, you will get respect. If the Arabs think they will win, they have to take diplomacy seriously. How many years more experience do you need, General, before you learn this? Or are you just angling for a political job?
Michal, USA (07.18.06)
Lebanese Christians’ Hope Dashed
The Prophet Muhammad said, "War is deception” -al-Bukhari, al-Jami al Sahih
With the war in Lebanon, the Vatican’s Middle East policies under Pope Benedict XVI have come into clearer focus. To the surprise of some, they look just like the policies of Pope John Paul II.
Pope Benedict’ hartfelt pleas to stop the carnage have echoed the dramatic appeals of Pope John Paul during times of Mideast conflict: “Our eyes are filled with chilling images of people’s bodies – especially children’s – torn apart,” Pope Benedict said. “I want to repeat that nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood, no matter which side does it..”
In private talks, Vatican officials have asked that the US government use its influence with Israel to bring an immediate halt to hostilities.
To the Israelis, the Vatican has made it clear that it views its military offensive in Lebanon as a disproportionate use of force. Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican, Opded Ben-Hur, has made counterarguments.
“I say two things: first, that the proportion is to the amount of threat, and (Hezbollah) is putting the north of Israel, a million people, under the threat of missiles,” Ben-Hur told the Catholic News Service in an interview.
Secondly, what is the right proportion? Give it to me. What is it, 10 to five? One to one? One hundred to 1,000? There is no such thing,” he said.
Vatican officials are taking pains to emphasize several other points of diplomats:
New efforts are needed to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which is seen at the Vatican as the ultimate cause and context of the current problems in Lebanon. A resolution of the Palestinian question will come only through bilateral negotiations, not by solutions imposed by Israel, Vatican officials say. (The Tablet, Aug. 12, 06).
The Bush administration recalled its ambassador to Syria on 15 February, 2005 to protest what it sees as Syria’s link to the murder of the former prime minister of Lebanon, as violent anti-Syrian protests erupted in Beirut and several other Lebanese cities. (NYT, Feb. 16, 2005)
Iran, Syria team up to ward off threats – Iran and Syria, who both are facing pressure from the U.S. said on Feb. 16 they formed a united front to confront possible threat against them. Mohammed Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president met Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji al-Otari.
Russia said Feb. 16 that it is negotiating the sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Syria but insisted they couldn’t be used as shoulder-fired weapons, an apparent bid to assuage U.S. and Israeli concerns they might fall into the hands of terrorists. (amNew York, Feb. 17, 2005)
Arab leaders ended a two-day summit conference in Algiers on Wednesday, March 23, 2005. Support was given to Syria against “foreign intervention” meaning pressure from the United States and France. At the same time they dismissed Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria to pull out of Lebanon and for the militant Shiite group Hezbollah to be disarmed.
About 51 out of every 100 people in Lebanon are Christians, and the other 49 are Moslem. The Christian population is divided into more than ten different sects. The largest single group is that of the Maronite Christians, who make up almost a third of the total population. The Maronites are descended from the Christian Arabs who lived in Lebanon before the Moslems. Their church is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. The Moslems are divided between the Sunni, or orthodox Moslems, and several sects, including the Shiites. The Druses are another Moslem sect, not friendly to Shiites.
Heil Hezbolla!
On Aug. 24, 1943, with Germany facing defeat in the Second World War, H. Himmler was appointed Reich minister of the interior, and now, with the S.S, constituted a separate military force (exactly like Hezbollah in Lebanon!), he was able to eject some of the leading generals who objected to his encroachments upon the authority of the army command (Enc. Americana, 1954, entry Himmler). The same nazi trick was behind the electoral victory of Hamas
Every once in a while, a photographic image emerges which captures the very essence of a major international issue. It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, the power of the underlying problem suddenly becomes eminently clear.
One such photo (see attached) now appears on the website of Time magazine where young kids in a Hezbolla scouting troop are shown pledging to die for the cause while raising their hands in the air in a chillingly-familiar salute.
Coincidence? I doubt it. Hezbollah leaders are knowledgeable enough to understand the meaning of that pose, which was burned into the memory of the Jewish people, and that of the entire world, some six decades ago in the heart of Europe.
Hezbollah is not just “an Islamic militant group that operates in southern Lebanon” with Iranian sponsorship. Combining Islamic fanaticism with a modern anti-Semitic ideology derived from the Catholic Church and Nazism, with a media which spreads that ideology worldwide, and with a mass base and virtual state control of Lebanon, Hezbollah stands for the destruction of world Jewry and the creation of a world Islamofascist state, modeled on Iran.
Lebanese Expatriates Condemn Syria, Iran; and Praise Israel 00:26 Jul 26, '06 / 1 Av 5766by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
Many Lebanese expatriate groups have roundly condemned the Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. Some of them are also calling for Israel to press ahead in its military campaign.
The Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC), a coalition of organizations in Canada, has released a statement laying out its vision of what measures should be endorsed by the world community at an international conference on the ongoing warfare in Lebanon. The conference is to be held in Rome on Wednesday, pursuant to a recommendation issued by the United Nations Security Council on July 21, 2006. Among the measures the LCCC is recommending are the dispatch of international combat forces to Lebanon, armed with the full authority and sufficient firepower to implement all clauses of UN resolution 1559. This would include the to mission to "disarm the Hezbollah group and the Palestinian organizations, and prevent and intercept the transfer of weapons to them from Iran and Syria." Another agenda item the LCCC called for is "a resolution by the United Nations condemning Syria and Iran, holding them responsible for the escalation leading to the catastrophe that has befallen Lebanon, and making them liable for the damages incurred by the Lebanese people and the costs of reconstruction...." LCCC also seeks to establish an international commission of inquiry "mandated with the task of determining Hezbollah's legal responsibility for the events leading to the cycle of violence inflicted on Lebanon today...."The LCCC also warned all Lebanese against "the deceitful calls aiming at surrendering to the will of the fundamentalist Hezbollah group and the dictates of its financiers and sponsors in Damascus and Tehran.... To remain silent over their crimes or to turn a blind eye to their practices, violations and threats is itself an act of treason to the nation and an unforgivable crime." In addition to the LCCC, the press release was endorsed by eleven Lebanese groups from the USA, Europe and Lebanon itself. The LCCC represents the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation, the Canadian Lebanese Free Patriotic Movement (FPM-Canada), the Phoenician Club of Mississauga (PCOM), the Canadian Phoenician Community Services Club (CPCSC), the Canadian Lebanese Christian Heritage Club (CLCHC), the World Lebanese Cultural Union-Canadian Chapter.
The Lebanese Foundation for Peace (LFP), an international organization of Lebanese Christians, issued a press release last week that called upon Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation." The LFP also said that "thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora" are "willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism," with the logistical support of Israel. In an interview with Israel National Radio's Tovia Singer, former South Lebanese Army officer, and leader of the Guardians of the Cedars militia, Etienne Sakr ("Abu Arz") called on Israel to press ahead until victory in its offensive against the Hezbollah. He said that, while Lebanon can be rebuilt, Israel must not allow the Islamist elements in the country to survive the war. To do so, he said, would repeat the mistake of the 2000 IDF withdrawal from Southern Lebanon. At the time, speaking before the Knesset, Sakr charged that Israel had "made heroes out of Hezbollah."Another well-known expatriate Lebanese individual calling for Israel to win the war in Lebanon is Brigitte Gabriel, founder of the American Congress for Truth, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating radical Islamic fundamentalism in the West. She compared the current destruction in Lebanon to a painful operation aimed at removing a cancerous growth, which will hopefully release Lebanon from the "hijackers" - Iran and Syria. To that end, Gabriel said, the roots of the Islamist movement in Lebanon must be completely destroyed.
In an interview with Canadian Christianity.com, LCCC head Elias Bejjani, a Maronite Catholic, said that Israel "had no choice but to act, if you understand their situation and point of view." Furthermore, he said, "I'm not sure Israel is targeting civilians. Hezbollah moves from one neighbourhood to another. According to reports we have heard from Christian villages in south Lebanon, Hezbollah come into the villages and fire their rockets; then they run away. And these villages pay the price."
Thank You, Israel
by Brigitte GabrielJuly 17, 2006
For the millions of Christian Lebanese driven out of our homeland, "Thank you, Israel" is the sentiment echoing from around the world. The Lebanese Foundation for Peace, an international group of Lebanese Christians, made the following statement in a press release to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert concerning the latest Israeli attacks against Hezbollah:
We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation.
Their statement continues,
On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we ask you to open the doors of Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport to thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism. We ask you for support, facilitation and logistics in order to win this struggle and achieve together the same objectives: Peace and Security for Lebanon and Israel and our future generations to come.
The once-dominant Lebanese Christians - responsible for giving the world "the Paris of the Middle East", as Lebanon used to be known - were killed, massacred, driven out of their homes and scattered around the world as radical Islam declared its holy war in the 1970s and took hold of the country. They voice an opinion that they, and Israel, have formed through personal experience, which is now belatedly being discovered by the rest of the world.
Read the Papal appeals for establishing of Palestinian state in this political context. Hamas’ popes frighten the Lebanese Christians to death. I wonder, will the Lebanese Christian stay affiliated with the Roman Church after the most recent betrayal of their cause by that church? Spreading anti-Semitism all over the world is still the priority of the Vatican.
Poles for Israel Friday, August 18, 2006
posted by Roman Pytel at 10:13 AM
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