Guess who did not come

By Israel Shamir

When President Bush visited the Middle East, all the high and mighty flocked to him, Jew and Arab alike. Princes presented him with their priceless swords, presidents and prime ministers drank every word out of his lips, bishops and imams beamed their smiles upon the ruler. They knew why he had flown all over half a planet, this man who is not given to foreign trips. Tel Aviv and New York craved more blood and ruins, and Iraq was already bled white. Now Iran has to be bombed, and Bush came to muster a new coalition of the willing to partake in its destruction. In order to provide a respite, Israel made a hecatomb in his honour - some fifty Palestinians were slaughtered and wounded, and upon their blood Bush confirmed America’s unlimited support of the Jewish state.

Among the dead, there was Hussam, the second son of Mahmud Zahar, the former Foreign Minister of Palestine. Our sincere condolences to him: his elder son was murdered by Jews four years ago in an attempt to assassinate the father, and now the second son has heroically died, defending Gaza from the invader. But the disparity of forces is too great: fifteen fighters were killed, proving that Gaza is still defenceless, still weaponless, still at mercy of the merciless enemy. This disparity may lure Israelis into carrying out their plan of retaking Gaza.

As the dead and wounded of Gaza were carried to the mosque, George Bush preached to the Arabs how wonderful Israel -- this beacon of light and democracy in the Middle East -- is, and he pushed his message of war with Iran deeper and deeper down their throats. He wants to bomb Teheran and Shiraz before the end of his term. This was demanded by his Israeli hosts, and George is always ready to do whatever they ask.

And the Arab leaders listened, and presented him with horses, and overloaded tables with food. There never was a more shameful surrender than this one. After seeing the Arab leaders with Bush, one wants apologise to Marshal Petain for having been so harshly treated.

“From the standpoint of the local populations, the spectacle of their hereditary rulers literally rolling out the red carpet for -- and hanging heavy gold chains representing their countries' highest honours around the neck of -- the man widely viewed as the worst enemy in living memory of Arabs, Muslims and Islam itself, the man who is already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims and who appears eager to kill more, can hardly enhance the respect in which these rulers are held,” wrote the perceptive John Whitbeck.

 

One Arab spiritual leader refused the dishonouring honour, declined the invitation and the photo-op. This was Archbishop Theodosius Atallah Hanna, the highest-ranking Palestinian hierarch in the old great Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem and Holy Land, the community whose first bishop was James, brother of Jesus. Archbishop refused to come to the Bethlehem Church of the Nativity when other bishops met with the man of blood. This noble and daring act saved the honour of the Arabs. Sometimes, one man can do it. Thus, one lieutenant saved the honour of the Czech army in 1938 when he, single-handed and armed with a standard handgun, opened fire on the invading German Army tanks. Archbishop Theodosius followed the example set by his elder fellow churchman, the Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Church, who also had refused to meet with the American President while he visited Greece. These princes of the church rejected the warmonger, as the Prince of Peace taught. They also destroyed the lie of a Conflict of Civilisations; these Christians are for peace and against war, and here all sincere people are united, whether they are Muslims or Christians.

 

Jews are different

 

“And Jews! Please add the Jews”, I hear voices crying. I’d love to, but the Jewish spiritual leaders do not agree. They are for war and bloodshed, if it's goys’ blood to be shed. The Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yona Metzger, thanked President Bush for his invasion of Iraq with its 200,000 dead. “I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq”, Metzger told Bush, reported Jerusalem Post. Yona Metzger is not some old Jew out of touch with the modern world. I met him recently: tall, elegant, handsome, exquisitely dressed; his tall hat could cause the envy of a London dandy. Prince, yes, but Prince of Darkness and War.

Metzger knows what is good for Jews, though it has nothing to do with the wishes of ordinary Jews: the Ukrainian President unveiled a monument to a Nazi leader who killed umpteen Jews, he openly adores the Ukrainian SS, yet Metzger blessed him, for he is about to bring the Ukraine into NATO. The President of Belarus said that Jews do not keep their streets tidy; Metzger attacked him like a Rottweiler, because Lukashenko does not privatise national assets. Metzger is a symbol of the full integration of Jews into US imperialism as its special propaganda corps. And he was elevated by Jewish-managed CBS to rank among “the 12 most influential religious figures in the world”, together with the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

There is much talk of a huge difference between aggressive Ashkenazis and peaceful Sephardis, but reality disproves it. If a Sephardic leader speaks well of Islam, like rabbi Haim Ovadia of Los Angeles did in his essay The Bridge with Islam which was spread by the Internet as  good news, you may be sure he does it in order to attack the Christian faith. Indeed he says that he is “a Jew of Islam”, and refers to Muslim tolerance only to mention in the same breath “the Crusades, Saint Bartholomew's day massacre and the Inquisition”; further on he smears St. Francis of Assisi and the Church for daring to claim, even nowadays, that “the Lord Christ is the only true god”. Should Christians say that He is just one of many true gods, in order to satisfy the good rabbi?

Actually, the Sephardic spiritual leaders are as keen on war and death as their Ashkenazi brethren. Former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef called the Arabs “snakes” and “Amalek” who should be exterminated like vermin. “It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable”, he said.  Kill them all, there is no need to distinguish between warriors and non-belligerents, wrote  former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. There is no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians, for all civilians of Gaza are collectively guilty, he said, taking a leaf from the Old Testament. His guiding light was the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34): two titular ancestors of the Jews massacred all the inhabitants of this city (present day Nablus) after tricking them into becoming circumcised. His conclusion – carpet bombing is the best.

He also called upon Bush to do the Jews’ will because this is God’s will: “The Jewish nation is eternal, and forever remembers those that have aided it throughout history, as well as those that have done it harm. Please let your name go down in history as a president who aided the Jewish nation, who worked alongside God and not against him,” wrote the rabbi. And the Jews’ will is forever the killing of some inconvenient goy, or a million of them.

As for remembering favours, you may ask the Brits. Their leaders, Balfour and Lloyd George, believed in this mumbo-jumbo. And they shed the blood of their soldiers, conquered Palestine, squashed native resistance, allowed Jews to come in, trained their army, and when they had completed this work and were waiting for the promised gratitude, they were bombed, knifed, burned, hanged and humiliated in hundred ways. Read more about Jewish gratitude with respect to the Brits: I wrote about it in Prince Charming, but you’ll find it even in that most Zionist of all books, The Exodus by Leon Uris. The facts are still the same.

Some cultures indeed value debt repayment. Such are the Japanese. They enjoy paying their debts. In 1905, Jewish American bankers gave the Japanese generals a generous loan to rearm their military and beat the Russians. In return, in the 1930s, the Japanese gave visas to every Jew who applied for it. But Jews have no such sentimental tradition. They say: you borrow somebody else’s money, but give away your own; you borrow for a while, but give away for good. Or, even easier: only cowards pay debts -- including the debt of gratitude. Anyway “aiding the Jewish nation”, in Rabbi Eliyahu’s words, is a sacred duty for a goy, and where there is duty, no debt is incurred.

If you still doubt this, go ask the South Lebanese Army soldiers – they were dropped like a hot brick when it suited Israel. Ask the Poles who permitted the biggest Jewish colony ever to settle and prosper in their borders, only to be forever branded as “vicious antisemites”. But enough of this.   

It’s dangerous to say “peace”, for one may be attacked by more extreme Jews. Olmert is not much of a peacenik. He devastated Lebanon, starves Gaza and kills civilians there on a daily basis. If he mentions the word “peace”, it’s in order to mislead, as so many Israeli politicians have done before him. And even then, Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, a Khabad leader, called him “the terrible traitor, who should be hanged”. Yitzhak Rabin was not much of peacenik either. He ordered the breaking of the arms and legs of Palestinian children; he brought Fatah from Tunis in order to suppress the Intifada without the mild limitations of the Israeli Supreme Court. Still he was assassinated by a Jewish religious fanatic.

Alas, this proves as little as the title of ‘antisemite”. Some Jews called Sharon, Rabin, Olmert - ‘antisemites’. Likewise, there are Jews who would consider Rabbi Kahane a peacenik and a traitor!  But beyond this virtual reality, there are still no Israelis close to power who would go for a peace acceptable to Palestinians.