THE SUMMIT TIMES

TST, Vol. 9, Issue No. 26/2002
 

Easter Offensive -2
by Israel Shamir

The war in Palestine became a part of the global war between followers and deniers of Christ. It is not an accident that at the same time, the Virgin in Bethlehem was shelled[i] by Jewish tanks; in the US and elsewhere, the Jewish-dominated media[ii] began a vicious smear campaign against Catholic clergy; while in France, a film Amen denigrating the late Pope Pius came to cinemas. Suggestively, the Cross on the movie's posters turns into Nazi swastika.

I

Wait - a reader proclaims. The Virgin was indeed shelled at fifty yards, but do not get carried away. The media just reported real or alleged sexual transgressions committed recently by Catholic priests in a few countries. That is the duty of the press.

While report of every single misdeed may be true or not, their grouping lies in the eye of the beholder, i.e. the media. The media grouped the events into a single tendency, by picking separate events and creating a world-wide conspiracy of the priests to abuse children, a par with the blood libel of old. While they did it to priests, they carefully avoid doing it to the Nation of Priests. We read of 'the wave of priests' rapes", but we never read of 'Jewish financial machinations.' In such a case, there are 'separate misdeeds of separate persons who happened to be Jews.' For instance, a small item in NY Times reported on alleged conspiracy between Goldman, Saks investment bankers and Robert Maxwell. These Jewish tycoons joined forces and swindled thousand English employees of Maxwell's media empire. The workers lost their pension funds; Goldman and Maxwell pocketed the cash and shipped a share of it to Israel. While giving the facts, the NY Times avoided a reference to the perpetrators' Jewishness. This praiseworthy political correctness is dropped when it comes to the Church.

The present crisis in Zimbabwe provides another example. The media reported at length about the attempted framing of the opposition leader into an assassination plot against the president Mr Robert Mugabe, but the personality standing behind the plot and/or the frame-up remained unknown. Very few papers, among them a British weekly, the Economist, told its readers that it was an Israeli officer who claimed expertise on political assassinations. But the Economist avoided bringing up a long line of politicians who were kidnapped and/or assassinated by Jews and Israelis. Among them we would find not only old cases of a German ambassador in Paris in 1938, or attempt at Lenin's life in 1918, or assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944, and the UN Swedish envoy Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, but fresh cases of kidnapping and assassination of the Moroccan opposition leader Ben Barka and a failed kidnapping attempt of a Nigerian minister in 1970s. The list of assassinated Palestinians would be too long for the article. Still, the newspapers did not write 'Jews again at assassination games,' rightly avoiding generalisations. It is just for the clergy the generalising headline implying that 'priests are paedophiles' was found suitable. Thus, the Jewish-dominated media continues its struggle against the church, by applying double standard to misbehaving priests and misbehaving Jews.

II

The factual side of Pope Pius controversy was described many times: accusations of Mad Goldhagen, reduction of Goldhagen's arguments by Norman Finkelstein, many articles pro and contra, make it unnecessary to enter the subject. It is enough to say that during WWII, the NY Times praised Pius for being the only major figure in Europe who was not silent about racial persecution: "a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent."

The attack on the Pope fits too neatly into general anti-Christian rant of the Jewish Hollywood, where Christianity is typically portrayed as evil. 'For example, in the film Monsignor (1982), a Catholic priest commits every imaginable sin, including the seduction of a glamorous nun and then is involved in her death. In Agnes of God (1985), a disturbed young nun gives birth in a convent, murders her baby, and then flushes the tiny, bloody corpse down the toilet. There are also many subtle anti-Christian scenes in Hollywood films, such as when the director Rob Reiner repeatedly focuses on the tiny gold crosses worn by Kathy Bates, the sadistic villain in Misery[iii].

"Hollywood has portrayed Christians as sexually rigid, devil worshipping cultists, disturbed, hypocritical, fanatical, psychotic, dishonest, murder suspects, Bible quoting Nazis, slick hucksters, deranged preachers etc", wrote J.W.Cones[iv], while Joe Sobran rightly concluded, "Pius XII isn't Goldhagen's ultimate target; Christianity is."

Here again, one is rather worried by lack of response. Instead of discussing whether the Pope spoke loud enough about the Jewish holocaust, why we do not discuss and do not see movies about active involvement of leading Rabbis with the current Palestinian holocaust? Lubavitcher Rabbi did not keep quiet, but called to genocide, and his call was supported by dozens of Rabbis in an ad in Haaretz. Why a poster with the Star of David and Swastika would be condemned by the US senate, while Cross and Swastika poster is displayed on the streets? Why Vatican lawyers do not activate 'hate legislation' of Europe against its creators?

III

 The Church's desire for peace was misinterpreted by the supporters of the Jewish idea. After the Pope, while in the Holy Land, said the Catholic Church "is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place," the Washington Post's London correspondent T. R. Reid called the Church to scrap the Passion narrative, or re-write it totally. This call was repeated by a Conrad Black newspaper, Boston Globe columnist. But the media just repeats what some Christian clergy say. Richard Harries, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford and chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, told The Times, "I would far rather people come to belief in the living God through Judaism than have no spiritual home at all".

I am not too surprised. The councils and other dialog groups between Jews and Christians became an arena of fierce competition: who is more pro-Jewish of the two.[v] There is no reciprocity. While the Bishop practically calls his flock to renounce Christ, Israeli Parliament (Knesset) debates the Zvili&Gafni Bill proposing up to a year of jail for quoting the New Testament or even referring to Christ and Christianity in a positive way, let alone joining the Church. The Christian clergy, who gave up Christ and preferred the Jewish paradigm, should contemplate the words of Christ: 'You are the salt of the world, but if salt loses its saltiness, it is thrown away'. They are not needed, as Rabbis would manage without them as well.

IV

Nothing attracts as much as success, and these are years of spectacular success for the Jewish paradigm. More Holocaust museums were built, stronger became the US support for Israel. In 1956, a Jew in the US earned as much as a Christian, and the US could order Israeli troops to leave Sinai. Now the average income of a Jewish community member became twice that of a WASP, and the US administration obediently jumps the loop for Sharon.

'Is it good for the Jews?' was the standard question of my grandmother. A radical Jewish kid, I rejected this question, saying, 'What is good for everybody is good for Jews as well.' My grandmother was not so sure. Now I am not so sure myself. It seems the trends and interests of the people and of the corporate Jews diverge again, after a hundred year long interlude. After all, traditionally 'the Jews' sided with the king against the people.

While 'the Jews' made this U-turn, there are many Jews who remained with the people, against corporate Jewry. They are our wonderful comrades in arms. Finkelstein and Chomsky, to name just a few, supplied excellent weapons for the people in the war of ideas. Our situation is not unique. Many Whites in South Africa choose to be for the people, not just for Whites. Many aristocrats choose to be for the people, not just for their class. Many Americans struggled against America during the Vietnam War. Now it is our turn to be 'against our own people', with the people and for the people.

______________________________
[i] See my article "Our Lady of Sorrow"
[ii] See http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/Preface.htm
[iii] Medved, M. (1992/1993). Hollywood Vs. America. New York: Harperperennial Library.
[iv] Cones, J. W. (1997). What's really going on in Hollywood. www.mecfilms.com/FIRM/whats.htm
[v] see Russian Israeli Christian thinker Sergey Balandin, http://www.galanet.net/~balandin/ -- review of The Dialog compendium (ed. Helen Frey) http://school.ort.spb.ru/library/torah/shoa/dialog-00.htm

* Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles can be found on the site www.israelshamir.net
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© Copyright 2002 by Andrzej M. Salski