'Anti-Zionism and the Death of Tragedy'

Dear Howard

Are my comments, below anti-Israel propaganda?

QUOTES FROM YOUR SCRIPT:

"A tragedy of two rights; a tragedy of two wrongs."

Common man: "Easily swayed by simple narrative.  Quick to feel but slow to comprehend.  Lacking knowledge and power of imagination and the description fits those choric marches that go on filing through our cities, himming (what was this word that you said, please Howard?  Presumably, 'continuing'?) the prejudice that hasn't changed for millennia.  Defaming in the name of anti-racism the most racially defamed people in history.  This is to take nothing from the acute agonies suffered by Palestinians over the years of this cruel conflict.  But tragedy teaches you can have affliction without a villain."  Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson is saying that there is no villain in this 73-year-old conflict and is, therefore, playing down, in fact ignoring the disproportionate response of the Israelis in killing 2,200 Palestinians in 2014 and a further 250 in 2021.

Is not Israel more of the villain in having, but not using, the power and authority to end the war that the Palestinians do not have as the subjugated people?

Are we, in the rich and powerful West, hopelessly compromised and guilty, too for our very own 'member' of our tribe and group, is Israel?  We refuse to condemn her disproportionate and, I think, barbaric behaviour because she is part of us - lock stock and barrel!  And, our side lacks the imagination to try a different method to stop the Hamas rockets and incendiary balloons.

Howard is revealing that he has no insight into how Palestinians see things because he is giving both sides equality - both right, both wrong, both victims and both villains!  That is true but, it does not go far enough, by a mile, to address the problem, the conflict, the war that our side, Israel and the West, has more responsibility for than Hamas.

He seems to be saying, don't use Zionism or Zionist.  I'm saying: or, perhaps don't call Palestinians as terrorists or, Hamas members/fighters/people as terrorists.  Both sides use these shorthand labels.  Both sides are victims, both sides villains.  But, the problem is hatred, leading to revenge, leading to violence.  The Gandhi way was successful but he arose when the timing was on his side, in the twilight of the Raj.

How can both sides be the Good Samaritan to the other?

How can both 'heap coals of fire on his head'?

In addition, are both sides behaving like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke story (chapter 15)?

BOTH SIDES USING THE SAME TACTIC, here:

Fire fighters often fight a fire with fire. They set controlled fires in front of a wildfire hoping to burn up the fuel source so the wildfire has nothing left to burn.

The phrase "fight fire with fire" is also used to reflect the idea that you use the same tactics to fight people who attack you.

For example, some people suggest we should fight terrorists using the same tactics they use, fighting fire with fire.

And it's like a bully at school picking on people. Someone may say, "We have to fight fire with fire," suggesting they use the same tactics against the bully he's using against them.

Christians Fight Fire with Fire
Paul says that a godly response toward an enemy "will heap coals of fire on his head" (Rom. 12:20, NKJ).

So as Christians, we fight fire with fire. But our fire is different from that used by our enemies.

Our Fire is Goodness
Paul says, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:20-21, NKJ).

When we respond to an enemy with goodness, it heaps coals of burning fire on his head. We fight fire with fire.

Goodness cuts our enemy to the quick, and hurts him more than merely retaliating with the same bad behavior he's shown us.

As a result, our enemy will respond in one of two ways. He'll see the error of his way and repent. Or he'll be inflamed and continue to mistreat us.

from: https://m.biblestudyguide.org/articles/fight/fight-fire-with-fire.htm

Best wishes, to you Howard.  And thank you.

Can the Good Samaritan story be applied to the Israeli-Palestinian bad neighbours?

Posted bcc to the select few. For your edification, elucidation and education but delete if not impressed!

VERY BAD NEIGHBOURS indeed!

Trauma for Israel with 4,500 rockets from Gaza, said Prof Gerald Steinberg.  Presenter, Matt Frei drily observed, “I was in Gaza and it was traumatic to see 12 storey apartment blocks reduced to one storey with entire families dying within them.”

Gerald was on LBC radio last Thursday morning, 3 June.  He was eloquent, self-assured, easily able to demolish every pertinent point put to him.  Above all, he shared the State of Israel's comfortable stance of sitting pretty with Israel and the rich West in the dominant, all-powerful position as top dog.  In other words, nothing has changed in 73 years of the endless cycle of asymmetric warfare and death for one side only (not quite).  And they don’t want anything to change.  An inability to live in justice and peace with their neighbour because they always come out of it best - indeed victorious with their neighbour vanquished.

However, it reminds me of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Hatred between Jews and Samaritans lasted for 800 years.  The present hatred between Jews and Palestinians has only lasted 73 years.  In the story, Jesus, a Jew told a story putting his own side down and making the hero, shockingly, his 'nation's' very worst enemy - a Samaritan!

Could the Jewish Jesus be speaking to both sides today, especially to his own tribe and tongue?  Wanting his own people to be good neighbours like the Samaritan and NOT like the robbers easily beating up the man of whom we know nothing.  But, could the man stand for any victim of war, of aggression, of environmental degradation and of man’s inhumanity to man?  Could the beaten-up man even stand for the Gazans who are losing out, big time with nothing ever being done to stop their slaughter and loss of human decency, dignity and of land?

Can Israel change from robbing the Gazans and Palestinians of everything, even life itself for some, to becoming more like the Good Samaritan?

Can the Big Powerful Wealthy Magnificent Seven, actually be the G7 Good Samaritan to sort out the seven decades of stalemate, injustice, oppression and loss of land for the People With Nothing - and nothing to lose?

If you want to understand a smidgeon of the world's most fraught and intractable dispute for 73 years, listen to LBC Catch Up on Global Player. Thursday 3 June with Matt Frei for the last one hour. The app counts down from 0:55:48. A decent, dispassionate, unemotional debate between a professor and a bookseller! Brilliant stuff.

"You're going to have to share the real estate ... you're not going to get rid of each other ... you have to find a way of accommodating, of co-existence ... or, you are all doomed." Matt Frei on 3 June 2021

Israel, Palestine, Gaza and the Good Samaritan

Israel and the West should be like the good Samaritan but instead are they like the priest, or the Levite, or the robber, or the victim, or none of the above?

So many Christian believers support right-wing leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu with their total inability to understand that perhaps a little understanding, conciliation and sharing of land and resources might be a  very good idea.  From all of them, we just see more of the same hatred, fear and the trotting out of, 'Well, our enemies want to wipe us off the face of the earth, so we are in no way going to let them do that because we will wipe them off the face of the earth, first!'  Extraordinary!

The state of Israel and their Christian supporters, really do think that Hamas, Fatah, and the Arabs will drive them into the sea unless they do expand their settlements into the Occupied Territories on the West Bank.  They think that unless they do fight and kill even more ferociously than the Arabs, it is they who will have their state overthrown.

Hamas does want to replace Israel with an Islamic state but this is so far-fetched it should not be given so much credence by Israel.  Both sides must compromise and learn to live in peaceful co-existence.  Instead, the people with so much are after even more and, the people with so little get even less.  Exactly what Jesus once said!

The Jewish rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth showed the way forward in his story of the Good Samaritan.  In modern dress, my pastor once told me that he thought that Israel could be seen as the robber and the Palestinians as the man beaten up.  In the story, the hero is the enemy of the Jews, for 800 years and the two official Jewish leaders are put in a very bad light indeed - a story told by one of their own Jews!  But, the story is all about loving your neighbour, loving your enemy and being generous to a complete stranger and, possibly, your nation's (or tribe's) traditional enemy for 800 years.

The lessons for today are so obvious!  But so very difficult.  Hence, we perish as fools rather than living as brothers of one human family.

Israel has the LOT; their neighbour has NOTHING!

Every effort to quell the upstarts for 73 years has failed.  It shows that taking land by force is not a good idea.  It comes back to haunt you for 73 years.

"If you have to keep going to make sure, ("to restore calm" as Netanyahu has said today) so that stuff doesn't happen again, why does it keep happening again?" Democratic Congressman Andy Levin from Michigan.  "There is no ultimate victory against terrorism.  You have to end the ground that it grew in", he said on 17 May 2021.

All that is left is to try sharing, even land as equally as possible, and as being as nice as the 'wicked', 'nasty' Good Samaritan in the most amazing story I have ever read in Luke 10!  The enemy turned out to be the true friend by being humane, compassionate and generous.  And, to a complete stranger of whom we know nothing and whose race (but not that of the two passers-by!) was completely immaterial to the storyteller from Nazareth ("a self-hating Jew" say some Jews, of some of their more conciliatory compatriots).

Both lots are children of Abraham who have fallen out, big time, over a misnamed Holy Land.

Revenge is so sweet.  The hostile environment lasted 800 years between Jews and Samaritans.  Less than 80, so far, between the top, Judeo-Christian world and the rest of poor, heaving humanity at the bottom of the Palestinian pile.

to Liam Byrne MP

Dear Liam

As a man of good conscience, will you please act to right the wrong of x suspension?

She is definitely not antisemitic.  The charge of antisemitism has been used by the opponents of Labour to get at pro-Palestinian voters, like me who love Israel and all Jews but, who are distressed by the behaviour of the State of Israel towards their neighbours for very many decades.  The story of the Good Samaritan comes to mind.

In modern dress, that would be the Good Palestinian as the hero of the parable in helping a Jew.  A story told by a Jew against his own tribe/people/faith!!  An astonishing parable told by Rabbi Jesus, the JC of Nazareth; just like another JC - of Islington North, this time, who comes to mind.  Read the story in Luke's Gospel, chapter 10.

Please get x reinstated and I will vote for you as my second choice, after the Green Party candidate who will be my first choice on the 6 May.  If you don't succeed, I will vote for Andy as my second choice.  And, I'm a declared Independent candidate who wants no-one to vote for him!  See below.

Very best wishes in getting x reinstated and you might get another success.  Certainly, my vote.

The Good Samaritan/Hamas/Hezbollah/Islamic State. Or, the extremely Good Baddie!

The Good Samaritan/Hamas/Hezbollah/Islamic State.  Or, the extremely Good Baddie!

When it comes to the Good Samaritan, Jonathan, Jesus in my opinion, is saying love your enemies, if you must have an enemy; think of others, even other nations, as better than yourself and even better than your own nation.  In this story, Jesus was being constructively critical of his own authorities and also showing how to be positive, constructive and helpful.  A lesson, individually and as a nation, we are not exactly excelling at!  Hence, last century was the most destructive and violent in the history of humanity. Courtesy of?

Jesus had the knack of singling out for praise the most unexpected people. No wonder he was called the friend of tax collectors and sinners and rather badly upset the powers that be of His day!

"UK council refused to host Palestinian event over antisemitism fears" Guardian 3 Aug 2019

"Officials at a London council that refused to host a charity event in aid of Palestinian children did not tell the organisers the decision was based on fears their criticism of Israel could breach antisemitism guidelines, internal emails have revealed.

The exchanges among officials at Tower Hamlets council also reveal they thought the event should be turned down, in part because of the row over antisemitism in the Labour party."

​The State of Israel, and certainly the Jewish people, are seen by many evangelical Christians as God's Chosen People.  It cements further the closeness of Christians with the Jewish people.  It therefore, behoves both ​Jews and Christians to follow the example of the Good Samaritan in the story that Jesus told as part of His teaching on how we are to get on with one another.  Jesus told the story against His own Jewish religious leaders, put them in a very poor light and put on a pedestal the wonderful example of a member of their 600 year old enemy.  Jesus' teaching in the story was all about loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us and praying for our persecutors.  In today's climate of the new antisemitism, this story must be seen as anti-Semitic.  And, I as the person who has written this is, most definitely, anti-Semitic.  I have been told as much by the now Independent, former Labour MP, Ian Austin in an e-mail from him.

It could be seen as being disloyal to one's country and our Western ways of dealing with other countries that are not part of the West.  Israel is part of the West and, therefore, criticism of its violence, coercion, crushing and marginalising of Gazans must be seen as hatred of one's own side.  Criticism of one's own side could well be seen as treachery.  It is certainly called anti-Semitism in today's climate, in order to maintain solidarity with unfortunate Western ways of working.

Jesus' non violence towards the hated occupiers of His time might also be seen as disloyalty towards His compatriots' ways of force and hatred towards them.  Jews/Christians as God's Chosen People means that when they resort to obvious un-Christ like practices, they must be called out or, you yourself risk the charge of collusion or agreement with what is wrong. But then you must also accept, with good grace, the label of anti-Semite.

MELANIE PHILLIPS' EXAMPLES OF ANTI-SEMITISM:

(the Moral Maze,  BBC Radio 4, 24 July 2019)

Don't sacrifice our children and young people

I would add, don't let us sacrifice our children and young people in any kind of war.  The West has been too ready to wage war - N America with guns and, germs interpreted as God wiping out the native, first inhabitants.  The American Civil War that killed more Americans than died in any subsequent  war, I have heard!  But 58,000 died in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  The War that ended the peace in W Europe and that led to our side, our very own nation involved in killing in every single year up to the present, since at least 1914.  Only in one year, in 1968, has a member of the British armed forces not been killed somewhere around the world.  A most disgraceful track record!

Our great friend and ally killing children and young people in Gaza in asymmetric warfare to avoid conflict resolution, conciliation, compromise and any loss of land in Judea and Samaria.  Here, my Good Samaritan/Bad Jew story from the Master Jewish storyteller Himself, comes in.  But that is all wishy washy, left wing, loony liberal rubbish.  And very anti-Semitic!

Fresh light on the story of the Good Samaritan

It seems that in the time of Jesus, the Jews and Samaritans had hated each other for 600 years.  "The Samaritans were descendants of the surviving Israelites of the northern kingdom who intermarried with the newly imported alien population after the fall of Samaria in 722 BC."  (The Lion Handbook to the Bible, p 497)  The Jews saw them as a heretical sect, especially after they built their own temple on Mt Gerizim.  Perhaps, the final straw of rejection and disdain.  It was a Jewish king who destroyed this temple in 128 BC.  Yet, the Jews and Samaritans had so much in common.  The believed and worshipped the same God and both accepted the Torah, the first five books of the Bible as their authority.  Both waited the coming of a prophet like Moses - the Messiah.

Do the people of Israel have a new set of Samaritans to hate?  The Palestinians or the Gazans or Hamas or the Iranians, perhaps?
Or, Jeremy Corbyn - the JC of Islington North instead of the JC of Nazareth?
Just as the Jews longed for a Messiah to overthrow their Roman rulers 2000 years ago, is the boot on the other foot today in that part of the holy land that the state of Israel has designs on - Judea and Samaria?
In other words, do the Palestinians, in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria, regard their Israeli occupiers in the same way that the Jews, 2000 years ago, regarded their Roman occupiers?
Is the state of Israel the new Rome for the people in the internationally recognised Occupied Territories, that many Jews and Christians call Judea and Samaria?
Is raising these questions so indicative of the new anti-Semitism on the Left in the UK today?

For 600 years, the people of Israel regarded the Samaritans as their enemy.  Yet, the Israelities had so much in common with this Jewish sect.  For the next 1900 years, the Jews were dispersed and, then in more recent centuries they were the subject of enmity from the West and from the Western Christian Church.  From 1948, the Jews regarded some Arabs, many Muslims, all Palestinians, every Gazan, Hamas en bloc and, the nation of Iran - all as their enemies.

When it comes to the Luke 10 story or parable of the Good Samaritan, is it acceptable to ask if Jesus the Jew was being deliberately provocative or even disloyal to his compatriots in putting his own religious leaders in such a poor light and, to cap it all, to put their enemy as the hero - the hated Samaritan?

He seems to have  been putting himself and his fellow Jews down and putting their enemies, the Samaritans on a pedestal to be admired.  Or, is there no significance in Jesus choosing a Samaritan as the hero?

Or, was Jesus giving an example of what it means, practically, to love your enemies, to do good to those who hate you, to bless those who curse you and to pray for your persecutors?

The story in modern dress
For the Judaeo-Christian nations today, is a modern day Samaritan, our 70 year old traditional enemy, Russia?  But we Westerners would call them the Bad Samaritan, of course but Jesus would see some good in the Russians and put one Russian in a story to put them in a good light.  Or is politicising the parables of Jesus unacceptable, for they are meant for personal, private holiness by individual, born again believers?

Or, does the West view the Robbers in the story as wicked Russia beating up our allies like Ukraine and occupying Crimea?

The 89 year old Father of my church and retired leader has wondered if the State of Israel is behaving as the robbers beating up the poor defenceless Gazans.  The 2014 July/August war killed over 2200 including about 500 children and the 2018 boundary protests killed over 140 Gazans and one Israeli soldier.

Who would you class as a modern day, walk on by, do nothing, priest and levite in the story?
Were we the priest and levite in knowing but doing nothing to save the Jews, the Roma and all the other minorities and outcasts in the 1930s and 40s in Nazi ruled Germany?

"And who is my neighbour?"
The shocking thing about this story is that we are being told that our neighbour is Hamas, Hezbollah, the suicide bomber, the terrorist, the Gazan and the Palestinian.  Our neighbour is our enemy to whom we are to do good.  But, never, the enemy is our neighbour!  Unfortunately, Israel has made enemies of some neighbours by giving nothing and wanting more.  Yet, it has made peace treaties with two of its neighbours - Egypt and Jordan.

David Mitchell on bombing Syria (extract)

Hilary Benn has quite a robust interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In his version, the Samaritan doesn’t just help the traveller who’s been mugged, he volunteers to seek out and blow the living crap out of the poor chap’s assailants, despite the obvious practical difficulties of knowing who they are and tracking them down. This is the Good Samaritan as played by Charles Bronson. But to do anything less, the shadow foreign secretary apparently believes – as revealed when he quoted the parable while urging his fellow MPs to bomb Syria last week — would be to “walk by on the other side of the road”.

Benn’s claim that only by releasing explosives over another large section of the Middle East are we truly respecting Jesus’s exhortation to love our neighbour as ourselves was the most ingenious piece of rhetoric in what has been quite the rhetorical purple patch for British politics.

Benn’s speech was full of gems, calling Isis (or IS or Isil or Daesh – there are almost as many words for it as there are for shagging) “fascists”. “They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt… They hold our democracy… in contempt… And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil.” Close your eyes and feel those Churchillian rhythms.

But Hilary didn’t have the monopoly on portentous utterances. Alan Johnson said there was “a real and present danger”. Another Labour MP, Dan Jarvis declared “there is still a dignity in uniting with our allies in common cause against a common enemy in defence of our common humanity”, a phrase he might have saved for when the House of Commons votes on a motion to fight back against the Martians.

David Cameron started the week saying that “the decision to take military action is one of the most serious a prime minister can make” – you could just sense how much he was looking forward to it – and the burden of seriousness seemed to lift pretty quickly as, by Tuesday, he was referring to those who opposed military action as “terrorist sympathisers”. And, after the Commons debate had gone the government’s way, Philip Hammond, like an ageing and kindly gunslinger, declared “Britain is safer tonight”.

It’s like they’re jostling to make soundbites worthy of the trailer for a Jack Ryan movie. It’s all serious and stirring, but also inappropriately slightly fun. Frankie Boyle summed up my misgivings when he tweeted about Wednesday’s Commons debate: “Kind of disturbed by the palpable excitement in parliament. The truth is our politicians like wars because they make them feel important".

I know that’s not true of all our politicians – and even when it is, it doesn’t mean they’d start a war for that reason alone. But the parliamentary atmosphere slightly reminded me of an occasion when I was helping install the set and lighting for a theatre show and someone started playing the soundtrack to Crimson Tide through the speakers. Suddenly everyone’s behaviour changed: it now felt like we were heroically erecting the set “against the odds”. Everything felt cheesily dramatic. In a similar way, I think some MPs were seduced by the dramatic beat of a war debate, and it’s ironic that Frankie Boyle was the one to point out that that’s in rather bad taste.

This isn’t to say that I think bombing Syria is the wrong course of action to take. I honestly have no idea. We’re already bombing Iraq (as usual), which I’d actually sort of forgotten but it does make bombing Syria as well seem like less of a big deal. The question, I suppose, is whether we can kill people who hate us at a faster rate than we make other people hate us by killing so many people. And I don’t know the answer to that.

By the way, I realise that the MPs who spoke against military action were probably only less melodramatic in their language because, when advocating appeasement or diplomacy, you have a much less rich rhetorical heritage to draw on. There’s no “Let’s stay out of the breach for now and really commit to the peace process” speech in Henry V.

The truth is that it may be impossible to know the best thing to do. There are situations when military action is disastrously counterproductive and situations when failing to intervene stores up trouble for later. It’ll be a long time before we know for sure which type this one is. Which is why the tone with which our deliberations are conducted might be quite important.

It’s an over-expressed, but often fair, criticism of modern politics that it’s all about style over substance – it’s all spin and we don’t focus on what should actually be done. Well, this issue is an exception: we are focusing on what should be done, but the spin has been rather neglected. And that’s a problem. The politicians need to be worrying less about whether bombing Syria will do any good (which nobody knows) and more on how they’re coming across. Because currently they’re coming across as people enjoying, and buoyed up by, the trappings and exercise of power. And that won’t do.

Tim Farron:
Said he would vote for air strikes on Syria.  But he also said, If we were being asked to bomb Syria, I would vote 'No'.  But this is not a case of just bombing but of standing with UN and international community to do what is right.  Quoted UN reso 2249.