THE STUMBLING BLOCK
How the Passion of the Christ
may help
bring Peace to the Middle East
By Israel Shamir
In the Return of the King, the
Oscar-studded film based on the Tolkien’s fantasy, there is a
touching and inspiring moment: at the lowest ebb of struggle, when
the Sauron hordes pour in through the breached gates of Gondor,
horns announce the arrival of the relieving force. Rohan is coming,
and the looting Orks retreat from the City in disarray.
Such a rescue force came to the embattled people
of the Middle East in the unexpected form of a film. This inspired
creation of Mel Gibson broke the dangerous and immoral alliance
between devout American Christians and their Jewish shepherds. Mel
Gibson and his The Passion of Christ
may well have advanced the cause of justice and peace in Palestine
more than we could possibly dream of. Incidentally, he succeeded in
undermining the most dangerous heresy in the long history of
Christianity: the right-wing Evangelicals’ infatuation with Jews and
Zionism. Now it is the time to recognise this victory and enjoy its
fruits.
The Jewish establishment and its willing subjects
carried out a perilous policy of encouraging the Clash of
Civilisations, embodied in ideological and US military warfare
against the Third World. For this reason, they promoted the concept
of a ‘Judaeo-Christian’ Civilisation at war with the Muslims, with
the ‘Red-Brown’ Russians, with the French and with traditional
societies and forces. Mel Gibson and his powerful film opened the
Second Front of this great struggle within the powerbase of the
enemy -- in the US -- by exposing the lie at the very foundation of
the Judaeo-Christian myth.
As St Paul prophesied, Christ turned out to be
the “stumbling block” for the Jewish advance. The Jewish leaders
thought they secured the US, and that they could safely proceed with
this war elsewhere. Their second target was Islam, the Middle East –
their battleground, and the trophy was to be the holiest shrine of
Islam in Jerusalem: the Dome of the Rock, with the blazing golden
letters inscribed by the Umayyad Caliphs that proclaim “Blessed
is Jesus Christ, Blessed is the Day of His Nativity, and Blessed is
the Day of His Resurrection.”
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Zionists formed an alliance with the misled
Christian Conservatives, and the US troops took over Iraq and
Afghanistan, while supporting the Israeli offensive against the
native Palestinians in the Holy Land. Then came Mel Gibson, and
their alliance fell apart. Thus, Christ indeed was our secret weapon
against the Zionist takeover. I felt it for long time; ever since on
Easter 2001 I referred to His Passion in context of Palestinian
suffering, just to be immediately frozen out by mainstream Jewish
pro-peace groups. Let us raise the banner of Christ, for it causes
split amongst our adversaries.
Professor Patrick McNally wrote that the
Judeo-Nazis repeated the error of German Nazis; they became
over-extended by opening the Second Front. They could not help: they
attacked Gibson and the American Christians, though their support
was necessary for the Middle East takeover.
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Sidney Blumenthal, an American Zionist Jew and a
former senior adviser to President Clinton, wrote in the Guardian:
‘The neocons and the theocons (conservative Christians) were bound
together for different reasons: the neocons by foreign policy (read:
support of Israel), the theocons by their continuing fundamentalist
revolt against modernity (for modernity read: neo-liberalism). Enter
Mel Gibson, sprinkling holy gasoline on the fires and blowing up the
cultural contradictions of American conservatism.’
It frightened Jews, concludes Blumenthal, and therefore Bush must
go.
In Israel, this understanding came first. Gershom
Gorenberg wrote in the Jerusalem Report:
“Post-9/11, the "conflict of
civilizations" is often taken for granted; it supposedly pits the
"Judeo-Christian" world against Muslims. That mood, along with the
Intifada, has fertilized an alliance twinning Israeli right-wingers
and some U.S. Jewish leaders with conservative Christians. The
Passion should sober people up.
“By attacking The Passion,
Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League helped to publicize
it. I don’t think they had a better option. To ignore a film in
which Pilate is a softy and the Jews cry for Jesus’ blood would be
equivalent to pleading "no contest" to the West’s oldest calumny.
But the Passion affair underlines the absurdity of the
romance between Jewish groups (including the ADL) and the Christian
Right.
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Gershom Gorenberg is right. This alliance of
Christ-loving American Conservatives and Christ-hating Jewish
leadership was absurd from the beginning. The Christians in the US,
as elsewhere, belong to the traditional all-embracing faith of love
to the poor and downtrodden. The Jewish establishment subscribes to
the faith which is good for the rich and powerful Chosen People,
whether Jews or godless Mammon worshippers. Their alliance was a
peculiar quirk of history that brought mankind to the edge of the
abyss.
As a last, bizarre stroke of this alliance, on
March 5th, 2004, the Arab-bashing Pat Robertson appealed on his
blasphemously-named ‘Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)’ to the
American Christians to join with Jews this year to celebrate the
Festival of Purim. Those who answer his call will celebrate together
with hundreds of followers and admirers of a fundamentalist American
Jew, Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered dozens of worshippers in the
city of Abraham, Hebron on Purim in 1994. His burial place in
Kiriyat Arba is the location for Purim celebrations for many Israeli
Jews, reported a Jerusalem weekly Kol HaIr on March 5, 2004.
It is probably the least-likely festival for a Christian to
celebrate together with Jews. By his call, Robertson plainly
presented his anti-Christian credentials. His enmity is not reserved
for the Muslims only: Robertson also attacked Russia and accused
this Christian nation of plotting the "gassing of Jews and Jewish
children" – which is a horrible blood libel against a country that
has a Jewish Prime Minister. But his support for Zionist atrocities
in Palestine would suffice for the viewers of Gibson’s film to
reject Robertson and his preaching of hate.TOP
God knows, there are other Christian forces, and
the enthusiastic welcome received by Gibson’s film proves that they
are the real majority. The Reverend Charles Carlson of
www.whtt.org runs Project Straight Gate, which speaks
against the war in Iraq and Palestine. On a recent pro-life
demonstration they called upon their fellow-Americans to care about
lives of Iraqi and Palestinian children as much as for the unborn
children of America. Their signs read “Innocent Blood on Our Hands,
Iraq - Gaza”, and “Choose Peace, not War”. They called upon “fellow
Christ-followers to oppose successive slaughter in the Middle East.
Americans are now among the victims of the war almost every day.
But even when none of 'ours' are killed, they are being fashioned
into assassins and brutal occupiers, which is not what most
Christ-followers should desire for their children.”
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Gibson's film expresses forebodings of the Second
Coming. It brings greater awakening into Christian hearts in the
Lent; it restores the almost-forgotten tradition of Passion Plays;
it separates the lambs from the goats. Not only have Abe Foxman of
ADL and Mervin Hier of Wiesenthal Centre exposed their hostility to
Christ, but crypto-Zionist Michael Lerner of Tikkun sent his
disciples to give away anti-Christian leaflets at the movie
theatres. Lerner began as a peace-seeker, but soon turned out to be
a Zionist Trojan horse in the peace camp.
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On the other side, Mark Bruzonsky of MER, a
longtime friend of Palestine, condemned the Jewish establishment’s
attempt “to relentlessly crucify Gibson for trying to tell the story
as he knows it, or rather as he believes it, [as] in itself a kind
of intellectual and political blasphemy. Rather Gibson should be
thanked for standing his ground, making his movie, telling his
story, and making us all ponder and think and feel... whether Jew,
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist... or just plain human.” Our
friend Gilad Atzmon published a strong essay supporting Gibson,
while brave Jeff Blankfort of California wrote that it confirms the
reality of Jewish control over Hollywood.
Indeed, this film unveiled the anti-Christian
intentions of American Jewry. The New York Times reported
that ‘the chairmen of major studios said they would avoid working
with Mr. Gibson because of The Passion of the Christ. One of
them explained: "It doesn't matter what I say. It'll matter what I
do. I will do something. I won't hire him. I won't support anything
he's part of.”
Because they run Hollywood it is not strange that
America produces anti-Christian films seeping with hatred for the
poor, downtrodden, un-Chosen people, be it American rednecks or
Arabs, Russians or Latin Americans. The US newspapers, too, gave
vast coverage to the hostile positions of Jews on the subject of
The Passion,
showing an incredible bias well known to us friends of Palestine.
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Their fear and loathing shows that this film can
change America; and therefore it can change the world. American
Christians can recognise the urgent need to free their media from
the deadly grip of Christ’s enemies. They can attune their policies
towards Christ, share their worldly goods with the needy, return
their sons from overseas wars, turn their mighty arms industry into
ploughshare makers to feed the hungry; reject Mammon; promote
spirituality and be a good neighbour to all nations of the Earth.
Let them remember: The
Passion of Christ is not a millennia-old event: even today, as I
write, it is the funds and weapons sent by the US are helping the
Jews to crucify Palestine. They besiege the Nativity town of
Bethlehem and plot to destroy the Dome of the Rock with its
benedictions of Christ. The horrors of The
Passion presented by Mel Gibson are inflicted daily on the
captive Palestinians. They are killed by the hundreds, tortured by
the thousands and starved by the millions. People who support or
ignore this persecution will never be able to wash their hands of
their blood.
The nearest few months will show whether the
American Conservative Christians care for Christ; whether they are
an independent political power at all, or just an alibi-providing
Gentile front for the Jewish policies; whether the only political
swing possible in the US is that between pro-Likud Bush and
pro-Labour Kerry. It is the time for Americans to regain their lost
independence. But for that, they will need a miracle.
The PaRDeS, a new long essay by Israel Shamir is available to donors
or active contributors of this list just for asking. Send an email
to
Shamir@home.se
with subject ‘pardes’ to receive the PDF file.
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Responses to the
PaRDeS:
From Nancy Horn, Pennsylvania:
Dear Israel Adam,
I am reeling, with
horror at the subject matter and awe at what you have done with it,
the depth and breadth not only of your knowledge but, far more
important, your brilliance.
While I adore the
elegiac prose you cannot NOT use when describing Palestine, and had
thought nothing could surpass Galilee Flowers, I think -- no, I KNOW
-- you have done so with this one.
You have not only seen
with greater clarity and depth the very things we have noticed, you
have explained their interconnectedness with this abhorrent whole.
My deepest
congratulations to you on the production of a really superb,
monumental treatment of our world and what ails us.
Thank you, Shamir, for
making sense of things.
Nancy
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From Hans Olav Brendberg, Norway:
PaRDeS is a tour de force through your main themes.
From Gerald Jugant, France
With the reading of PaRDeS, I feel the spirit of Simone Weil, but in
a way even more conscious and obvious, you belong to the great
tradition of the Jewish mystic teaching, the Cabbala. Undoubtedly
you attempt to revive this very old, mainly lost, wisdom of
humanity, who has as a base the golden age, the original paradise,
the very old time of the man in harmony with nature and its own
nature.
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FUNDAMENTALISM ON FILM Jerusalem Report (Israel) March 8, 2004
Issue
New Film May Harm Gibson's Career, By SHARON WAXMAN. New York
Times - 26 Feb 2004.
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