Easter Offensive 1
By Israel
Shamir
The war in Palestine has become a global war between
followers and deniers of Christ.
I
“Here in Palestine, Jesus is again walking the Via Dolorosa.
Palestinians are being crucified. Palestine has become one huge
Golgotha”, wrote Canon Naim Ateek of Jerusalem Anglican Church a
year ago. This parallel between the Passion of Christ and the
present onslaught of the Jewish state on the human rights in
Palestine and elsewhere caused a great controversy; supporters and
deniers jousted for a few months[i].
His words became even more relevant now, as during this year
the suffering of Palestinians grew immensely. Just before the
Easter, Sharon’s government began what careful Kofi Annan described
as a ‘conventional war’ with jets, tanks and helicopters against
defenceless civilian population. Two thousand years ago, only people
of Jerusalem were present, while Christ was rushed to Golgotha. Now,
in the global village of 21st century, the whole mankind
became a witness of this tragic and lasting event. We all stand on
the sidewalk of Via Dolorosa. The fateful question, ‘whether this
man should be crucified’, applies to all of us. If we stop the
execution, we shall change history.
The adversary acutely feels the fatefulness of the struggle.
That is why 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[ii] by Jewish
tanks; in the US and elsewhere, the Jewish-dominated media[iii] 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.
Christendom made a grave mistake by unilaterally abandoning
ideological struggle against the Jewish paradigm. One should make a
clear distinction between Jews as persons, and the Jewish paradigm
as ideology. Jews are just human, and deserve to be treated and
accepted as human. The Jewish paradigm should be confronted and
counteracted. Two important issues were confused: the question of
external relations, human and civil rights, human dignity on one
side and ideological difference and variance, on the other side.
They can, and should be treated separately.
Christianity and Judaism offer two different, indeed opposing
approaches. Their struggle is a natural competition. At first sight,
the two sister-faiths are similar; both celebrate at Easter/Pesach
their accepted sacrifice by a narration, the liturgy of Passion for
Christians and the family narrative of Haggadah for Jews. But at the
second thought, they could not differ more. Passion is a story of
supreme self-sacrifice of the Chosen one for the sake of universal
salvation, the Haggadah is a story of sacrificing the enemies and
salvation of the Chosen ones. At Easter, Christians celebrate
resurrection of one who sacrificed himself for us. It is affirmation
of altruism to the highest degree. Jewish Passover has an opposite
idea: it is our salvation and their death. Egyptians and the people
of Canaan should be sacrificed, so we would live better, that is the
Passover idea, the affirmation of national egoism.
It is not a pure scholastic dispute, but a question of praxis
as well. Since the rise of the Jewish paradigm, the prosperous
nations sacrifice the poor nations so they would live even better.
The growing poverty of the Third World is the proof of it. Look at
the figures. Between 1960 and 1980 per capita income in Latin
America grew 73%, and in Africa, 34%. During the period of ‘economic
liberalization’, or the rise of Jewish paradigm, 1980 to 2000, that
growth plummeted to 7% in Latin America and in Africa it went into
reverse - minus 23%.[iv]
This paradigm does not stop at the border; it works in the
‘core country’, in the US, as well. There, the rich sacrifice the
less affluent so they would live even better. A new study,
Divergent Paths[v], proved that
ninety percent of young workers in the US now doing worse than they
would have 20 years ago. Since 1980, only a small percentage of
Americans improved their lot, while for the rest, the perspectives
of ‘upward mobility’ are gloomy. In the best ally of the US, in
Britain, the figures are even worse. Both these countries have now
poorly educated youth and inefficient health care. In the same
period of time, rich people became richer by far, tells the study;
while the Jewish community’s average income became twice that of
Gentile American.
In Israel, an average Jew has eight times the income of a
Gentile. Nowhere the praxis of Easter/Passover dispute is obvious as
much as in Palestine. When the Jews came to Palestine, they were
quite poor. The British administration enacted a local statute
allowing building only of stone in Jerusalem. Stone was expensive,
Jews were poor, and the statute was described as ‘anti-Semitic’. In
1948, the Gentiles’ stone mansions of Jerusalem were confiscated and
given to Jews, while the legal owners were pushed into refugee
camps. They languish in poverty so we can live
better.
In the bare hills around al Halil/Hebron, Palestinian
villagers have no water, and their flocks die near dried-up spring.
The spring water goes by a pipe into the swimming pool of a Jewish
settlement. It is also a realisation of the maxim, ‘let them die, if
we can live better’. Using the Passover idea, the Talmud
rules[vi] on priority for
drawing water at a well, “need of a Jew to do his laundry takes
precedence over the lives of Gentiles”. It is implemented in real
life, in real time, in Israel.
Theology is ideology, and there is no place for ideological
compromise between these opposing paradigms. The perceived
difference between the twain was stated by the sides as follows. A
prominent modern Jewish scholar and editor of Talmud, Rabbi Adin
Steinzaltz described Christianity as ‘simplified Judaism, adapted to
the childish minds of Gentiles’. On the other hand, a grandson of a
Rabbi, Karl Marx, wrote: ‘Christianity is the sublime Judaist
thought, while Judaism is a sordid utilitarian application of
Christianity’.
Now, in these days, we should decide what to celebrate – the
altruism of Easter or egoism of Passover. I would conclude with the
marvellous words of Robert Leverant, “What the Jews are doing to the
Palestinians is abominable. To participate in a service where the
Jews are going to say “we are victims” is beyond my ability to
stomach”.
[iv] April 30, 2001 Democracy and the
Quebec Summit,
Murray Dobbin,
National Post
[v] Co-authors of the book are Martina Morris,
a University of Washington professor of
sociology and statistics, Annette Bernhardt, senior research
associate at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison; Mark Handcock, professor of statistics and
sociology at the University of Washington; and Marc Scott, assistant
professor of educational statistics at New York
University. The research was funded by
the Russell Sage Foundation and the Rockefeller
Foundation.
[vi] Tosefta Baba Metzia 11:33-36