Dear Tony - sorry for the length. I lack your wonderful eloquence but love writing too much!
Many thanks for this link. Thank you for your generosity, once more with your contribution to a wonderful day and another excellent best man's speech.
My own thoughts from our enjoyable chat on Friday evening:
Did I hear you say on Friday that you don't consider Jerusalem to be any more holy than any other city? From the latest book I'm re-reading, Jeremy Bowen's 'The Making of the Modern Middle East', God is at the heart of all the horrors by the three monotheistic faiths in the unHoly Land. But my god, the Jew, Jesus, and His life and teaching shows a better Way which is universally ignored and, in practice, ridiculed .
On page 44 Bowen wrote, "What happens in Jerusalem ... always starts with God, with power, possession and loss following close behind." The three great Abrahamic faiths have fought over the city for the best part of two thousand years. The Muslims have had it for nearly all of the last 1400 years, and the Jews/Christians since 1948 with more land added after the Six Day War of 1967.
On Radio 4's 'Sunday' this morning, I heard that "many" prominent Israeli right wing nationalists are wanting their third Jewish Temple to be rebuilt on the site of Islam's holiest site in Jerusalem - Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque (ibid p51). Yet a further example of the unholy nature of Abrahamic religion and the utter impossibility of non-violence, compromise and tolerance to feature amongst the believers in God!
Jeremy Bowen wrote that Jerusalem has changed hands violently 37 times, quoting an Israeli General. All three Children of Abraham have had control over it at different times, as have many different empires. The sound of sanctity, however, was drowned out by the noise of war and death since 1945.
Since the Judeo-Christian West, led by Britain and France excusing themselves from their Mandate responsibilities, we (with the Americans) have helped to fund the Jews/Zionist attacks from 1945 and the many wars of aggression from 1948 to the present day. Only the Jews and Christians were rewarded with our friend and ally, Israel being allowed to keep, settle and occupy the lands they have taken in war. Everything is done to ensure international law is excused if it is to our advantage - the aggressor is rewarded if it is us powerful lot doing the aggression!
In Jerusalem, God is held hostage by three world faiths to bring mayhem, murder and many hundreds of thousands slaughtered since the unfortunate/foolish/biased 1917 Balfour Declaration from a Christian nation, to delight and encourage the Jews. We were already halfway there, of course, with Christian believers sharing the Jewish Scriptures. It has brought God into disrepute for me. Even ridiculed, as here:
The Bible, in too many parts, shows God commanding killings and even the sword taken to suckling babies and their mums in 1 Samuel 15 v 3 (my 1964 RSV but modern translations put it less starkly). Israel's War Cabinet now uses such texts, which you never find in the Quran, to justify acts of aggression, slaughter and genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Judea and Samaria. This is outrageous and totally unacceptable. I think the Bible needs a re-edit in light of the men of violence in the two most powerful faiths weaponising their Scriptures. God's Bible has His commands to slaughter being used instead of His Son's life and teaching. A teaching and practice followed by a handful - like St Francis of Assisi and the Muslim boxer, Mohammed Ali going to prison instead of going to Vietnam to join in the mass slaughter there!
BTW, Jesus' talk of taking the sword could hardly have meant a literal taking the sword to kill and maim.
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