“The Jewish people”

[NadirGP]

Nadir,

It's one thing to write about this from a worldly perspective, but when you list the saints and what they wrote as if they are hating the Jews then you are out of line. They spoke out for the sake of truth, but not with hatred. How can God accept them as saints if they have hatred in their hearts? That's the first thing that keeps us far from God. They were writing or speaking in their time, but we read it in our time and it's a different effect. You need to read it in the context of what was happening at the time. That's the problem with people who try to interpret writings with their own views, their interpretations are always wrong.

And this thread is for Orthodox discussions, not political polemics. If you're looking for a sympathetic ear of hatred then it doesn't belong in these threads.

joasia,

I posted what the Church Fathers say about the Jews, just as they come in print in the books and from the internet. There is no hatred there, as you said there is, nor is in myself. You read them – and me - wrongly, because you are projecting on the Fathers of Church what is not there.

As I said, I do see that you are reading the Holy Fathers incorrectly. Their writings and sayings are not meant to support your attack on Jews. They were meant to wake people up to the truth of Jesus Christ as the Saviour (Messiah) for our salvation.

Joasia,

I am not attacking the Jews. I am presenting merely what some prominent public Jews said about their own people. Are you familiar with their writing or you just dismissing them outright because their writings are not politically correct?
As for my reading incorrectly the Father of the Church, that is only your opinion.

[NadirGP]

If someone is especially troubled by the controversy over, What is the Orthodox Christian response to the "Jewish Question," as it concerns the reading of what Saint John Chrysostom has written in the mid-300s, I can recommend as a good primer the book:

John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the late 4th Century, by Robert L. Wilken.

I have this book because I was concerned about many of the things I had read by the likes of David Duke, Israel Shahak, Diana Spingola, etc.

If someone is truly a sincere seeker of truth, they will not excuse themselves from taking the trouble to order this book and read it. Otherwise by their lethargy towards purchasing this book they show themselves to simply want to protect their misguided and pre-determined belief that St. John Chrysostom's statements on the Jews validate the modern proponents of the idea that all Jews are supremacists that think we are "cattle that exist to serve them," and if there get to be too many goys then we will just "cull the herd" by arranging a few profitable wars via false flag terror attack operations like 911 to off a few tens of millions of them.

NadirGP will enjoy reading this well written book that puts these statements of St John Chrysostomos into much needed perspective.

By God's mercy,
Symeon

Symeon,

Thank you for your suggestion.
The lowest point, Nadir

How do we distinguish truth from lies?
The truth does not need protection!

[NadirGP]

locked?

I have no quarrel with you, Nadir. The objections I have are to the articles you link. You say they are the truth, but you have no proof that they are. These people, whether they are Jewish or not, have their own axes to grind and many of them have been thoroughly discredited.

Lydia,

I have plenty of documentation to back up my writing. I hardly ever present any document without verifying first their sources and soundness. On the other hand, if you can establish what I am presenting here is not the truth then I will apologise and ask for forgiveness.

"He who knows nothing is nearer to the truth
than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." Thomas Jefferson

[NadirGP]

Instalment 7

I started reading Israel Shamir’s articles round the 9/11 period. I recall when 23 year old peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003 when she was crushed by a bulldozer on the Gaza Strip. Israel Shamir wrote the following article, The Maid and the Ogre.

[Excerpt]

A dreadful monster assaults the city, kills its brave defenders, and advances to devour the citizens. At the last moment, a young maiden demurely walks forward to meet the monster. Her very sight, the sight of feminine innocence, vulnerability, spirituality, certainty of the right cause, stops the ogre in its tracks. The beast suffers her to tie her belt to his mighty neck and walks away, tamed. It is the story of St Genevieve and of other beautiful and virtuous saints; a part and parcel of human heritage, and the subject of many gorgeous tapestries and paintings.
[See: http://www.israelshamir.net/English/maidandogre.htm]

I truly was captivated by his prose and more so for his love of the Palestinian people. He really writes with charm. Thus anyone who wants to know about Palestine and its people, struggling in a hostile environment in present day Israel, would do well to acquaint themselves with his writing.

From Shamir’s website:

But Palestine, its sad history and enchanting landscape remained his most important subject. His views were summed up in The Pine and the Olive, the story of Palestine/Israel, published in 1988 and republished in 2004, and became a cult book among the readers. The second Palestinian Intifada turned Shamir to his highly political and poetic pieces centred on Palestine.

Israel Adam Shamir is a leading Russian Israeli writer, is a champion of the "One Man, One Vote, One State" solution seeking to unite Palestine & Israel in one democratic state. Shamir's work and that of his contributors speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians seeking an end to the bloodshed, true democracy and lasting peace. http://www.israelshamir.net/

[Excerpts only]

Shamir is Russian-born Jew who converted to Orthodox Christianity.
[…]
Israel Shamir (Russian: Исраэль Шамир) (born 1947), also known by the name Jöran Jermas and Adam Ermash, is a Swedish writer and journalist. He is a commentator on Arab - Israeli relations and Jewish culture. Originally from Novosibirsk, Siberia, Shamir moved to Israel in 1969. He says that he served in the 1973 war, after which he took up journalism and writing.

Shamir writes about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish people, and has published a number of books that have been translated into several languages; the French edition of Flowers of Galilee (2004) was banned for a time in France over allegations of antisemitism. Shamir has been accused of antisemitism and Holocaust denial charges Shamir has rejected. [See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Shamir]

[Excerpt]

As the battle for Palestine spilled over into Iraq, Shamir wrote more about the deeper, philosophical and theological meaning of the war. In 2004 he was received in the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem and Holy Land , being baptised Adam by Archbishop Theodosius Attalla Hanna. Shamir (60) lives in Jaffa and spends much time in Moscow and Stockholm ; he is father of three sons. http://www.israelshamir.net/Biography.htm

[Excerpts only]

My interview with the most famous writer in Israel Adam Israel Shamir

Cherif Ismail: We Arabs know the Jews - for thousands of years - and we see them as every reason of absolute evil in this world and they were the causes of the collapse of some Islamic countries of old, are you agreed with me on this?

Israel Shamir: If we accept this view uncritically, we’d think that Jews are the only source of danger and will be taken in by a non-Jewish cheat. That is why one should always look at the bottom line first.

In Madame Bovary by Flaubert, a French usurer cheats Emma telling her not to worry for he is not a Jew. He indeed is not a Jew by blood and faith, but every usurer is as bad as the worst Jew, and eventually she learns of it hard way.

Nowadays there are so many non-Jews, pureblood Arabs, who betrayed their brethren and joined with imperialism and with Israel. Jews would not be able to cause so much suffering to the people of Gaza without support of the Egyptian regime. In France, Fadela Amara crossed the lines completely: she is for Israel, and for her, the Nazi persecutions of Jews are more important than suffering of non-Jews, even of her own Algerian people. Alas, many Palestinians also joined with the enemy of their people, and they work for CIA and Mossad and Shabak. So the key question, the bottom line is - submission to or rebellion against the Empire. An Arab who supports Israel and the US is as bad as the worst Jew. http://www.alterinfo.net/My-interview-w ... 32810.html

[Lydia]

Well, if you really believe all this anti-semetic hatred, and that the Jews are plotting to kill or enslave all the Goyim, don't you think you should start to think about the salvation of your soul?
As True Orthodox Christians, we believe that Roman Catholics are heretics, and that their mysteries(sacraments) are without the Grace of God.
Nadir, you have found a place where you can learn about the True Church. Take the opportunity to renounce the Roman Catholic Church and its heretical doctrines which separate you from The Living God.
Come, my brother, leave the world behind and all its plots and be baptized into the True Church. We welcome you with open arms.

[NadirGP]

Well, if you really believe all this anti-semetic hatred, and that the Jews are plotting to kill or enslave all the Goyim, don't you think you should start to think about the salvation of your soul?
As True Orthodox Christians, we believe that Roman Catholics are heretics, and that their mysteries(sacraments) are without the Grace of God.
Nadir, you have found a place where you can learn about the True Church. Take the opportunity to renounce the Roman Catholic Church and its heretical doctrines which separate you from The Living God.
Come, my brother, leave the world behind and all its plots and be baptized into the True Church. We welcome you with open arms.

Lydia,
I appreciate your concern, but it is not the topic of this thread.

[NadirGP]

Instalment 8

I just received this invaluable document from a friend and I could not resist presenting it to the readers of this forum. I have read ongoing documentation on history of the State of Israel and grievances of Palestinians but no one as good as this one, “ideology versus truth and reason”, by Simon Schama.

According to Wikipidia Simon Schama is the son of Jewish parents with roots in Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey, Schama was born in London. In the mid-1940s, the family moved to Southend-on-Sea in Essex before moving back to London. Schama writes of this period in the Introduction to Landscape & Memory (pp. 3–4) [See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Schama]

In “Ideology versus truth and reason,” by Simon Schama, we read the following.

[Excerpts only:]

In the third part of his BBC history documentary The Story of the Jews Simon Schama announced “I am a Zionist and quite unapologetic about it.” That honest but blunt admission advises us that when the subject of Israel/Palestine is under discussion, whatever opinion or evidence Schama may contribute to it will be constrained within a self-confessed commitment to a political ideology. Political Zionism began as a secular ideology that has since been embraced by some religious Jews and Christians and by many politicians, especially in Europe and the United States. Unfortunately, the Zionism that captivated Western politicians is so far removed from rational thought that its true purpose has had to be disguised through deceit and the use of what one of Zionism's co-founders called “circumlocution”. In reality, the Zionist enterprise has resulted in a period of over 65 years of gross violations of international humanitarian law and untold human suffering.

Great power politics – the Balfour Declaration
While Israel's self-declared 1948 Declaration of Independence is generally held to be the Zionist state's founding document, the military power and international diplomacy that made that possible depended upon the earlier Balfour Declaration of 1917. Zionists themselves point to the Balfour Declaration when justifying Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The ideological intentions behind the Balfour Declaration have led inevitably and predictably to Zionist domination over the whole of historic Palestine and beyond. Leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel, the Zionist enterprise manifested itself in violence and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Zionist terrorists. These crimes became the foundation for the militaristic psychology that epitomises the Zionist state today and which led more recently to the infamous Operation Cast Lead massacre in the Gaza Strip.

[…]
Partition
The 1948 UN Partition Plan gave 56% of mandatory Palestine to Israel, regardless of the indigenous people’s objections, true to the Balfour Declaration's view that the Zionist enterprise was of “far profounder import” than “the desires and prejudices” of the native people. But no matter whether they live in Palestine or Israel, Palestinians find themselves discriminated against. In the occupied territories they are subject to Israeli military law, and within Israel itself they are discriminated against as taxpayers and denied the services to which they are entitled. In both areas, Palestinians suffer frequent Israeli Army home invasions and the destruction of dwellings that are subject to a discriminatory permit system. Needless to say, Jewish Israeli homes are never invaded or destroyed.

Discrimination
Israel's Law of Return specifies that its benefits belong only to Jews. The Zionist state offers no rational argument or evidence to justify how it is that any Jewish person from anywhere in the world, and who may have had no former connection with the state of Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories, can possibly have a right to 'return' to either. Yet Israel denies the Palestinian Right of Return for ethnically-cleansed Palestinians (UN General Assembly Resolution 3236).

[…]
(Shabtai Teveth, p.5-6) Yet in 1936 Ben-Gurion expressed his true feelings when he told the Mapai Party that, “A Jewish state would encourage peace,” because, with it, the Jew would “become a force, and the Arabs respect force.” He went on to say, “these days it is not right but might which prevails. It is more important to have force than justice on one's side.” There, plainly stated, is the fundamental divide between Zionism and the rest of humanity.

[…]
Zionism in practice
Arthur Balfour's prejudice led him to contemptuously refer to the Palestinian people merely as “the present inhabitants of the country” but it was an Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, who took the contempt to its logical conclusion. Quoted in the Sunday Times (15 June 1969) and The Washington Post (16 June 1969) she said: “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”
[….]
Blowing away the myth
In the final episode of The Story of the Jews Schama told his audience “I don't live in Israel”. With that simple admission Schama blew away completely the Zionist myth that only in a Jewish state could Jews live safely. Here was a person living outside Israel, being afforded the privilege of putting the Zionist case with the help of one of the world's most powerful and influential broadcasters, the British tax-payer-funded BBC, whose main responsibility is to provide impartial public service broadcasting.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1310/S ... reason.htm