Israel Shahak, when he researched Jewish history over the last 2000 years, was in his book " Jewish Religion Jewish History" describing a pattern, .
Jews have been both in Muslim and in Christian society outsiders, who sometimes had been isolated by decree of some political authority, most often however they have isolated themselves and walled themselves in, so that the lower class Jews had little contact to their Christian or Muslim neighbour. The contacts the upper class had with gentiles was one of hostile business dealings at least towards the lower classes of the gentiles.
Most often those upper class Jews worked as some kind of middle men between the king or other aristocratic rulers and the peasant and artisan population. They were very good tax collectors, even in times when the peasants had problems paying. They also became monopoly money lenders, since the taking of interests was forbidden in Christian and Muslim society. In both professions they put a lot of hardship on the gentile peasants. And when the pressure became unbearable, riots and progroms occured.
And then the whole Jewish community was attacked not only the oppressors.
And I think, that the ordinary Jews who had not done anything to hurt the gentiles, most often had never even had direct contact with them, didn´t even know what hit them.
They were probably told that the gentiles had gone crazy like gentiles normally do once in a while.
One other pattern was, that when the Jewish upper class had a very good contact to the ruling king, the gentile aristrocracy had very little to say. However when this aristocracy became stronger, they pushed the king or the Church to get rid of the Jews, because the Jews were in direct competition with them for power at the court.
This time the Jews were forced to leave the country, leaving their homes and most of their possessions.
And again the ordinary Jews did not know what hit them.
And so hostility and distrust grew with every of those occations. And so besides certain attitudes in the Talmud it was also those memories of past abuses which made Jews even less ready to show compassion in their dealings with their gentile neighbours.
And there was hostility and distrust on both sides over and over again.
Israel Shahak took the Nazi persecution of Jews out of this pattern. And he thought that modern antisemitism has totally different quality from that of earlier years, since it is far more racist.
Maybe this is right in one way, since in older times Jews were allowed to fully integrate into gentile society, if they converted honestly.
The differences were religious not racist.
But if you overlook the racist aspect, a similar pattern seems to be visible in the beginning of the 20.century as well.
In the Balfour declaration the head of the Rothschild family got the promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, if he could get the Americans to join the war against Germany on the British.
Maybe the Americans would have joined anyway for their own reasons. But one way or the other the Germans believed that their defeat was the fault of the Jews.
The heavy reparation payments were pressed unto Germany and the ordinary people suffered. The only ones who actually profited were banks which were in a good part in Jewish hands. The anger of big parts of German middle class, who had lost their life savings grew. The industrial class saw the Jewish banking elite a direct encroachment on their own business and so they helped Hitler with his radical antisemitic rhetoric come to power, so he could ban the Jews from business and public life as he had promised.
And so the hate propaganda campaign began which then led to terrible Jewish suffering. And once again the ordinary Jewish had no idea what hit them.
They had been well integrated in all parts of German society and lived as equals and very often as friends with their German neighbours. They sure that the Hitler times would blow over and things would return to normal, that they didn´t even leave the country when their citizen rights were taken and they had to suffer all kind of discriminations.
And the cynical Zionists who instigated the whole affair and profited from it to the boot, were telling each other, that "one cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews of Europe" and did nothing whatsoever to save the European Jews. Instead they sometimes even sabotaged efforts to help Jews to emmigrate from Europe, efforts made by compationate gentiles in other countries.
After the war, they treated the survivors with disdain. And when it suited them, they lit fire under the paranoia caused by this terrible trauma.
And thanks to those cynics, many ordinary Jews who had been liberated from the ghetto after the Enlightenment are isolating themselves again behind psychological walls and in the case of Israel the walls are physical, isolating themselves in fear and deep distrust against gentiles.
And the way it looks like with the Neocons in Washington and the Likudniks in Israel pushing for a new round of the vicious circle by oppressing Palestinians to the edge of absolute despair, destroying other Arab societies and through their expansive warmongering the American military and the American economy at the same time.
But we do no longer live in the middle ages, the ghetto is no longer obligatory and information can flow freely.
For their own sake, ordinary Jews have to break this vicious circle. They have to distance themselves from leaders who show just as much contempt for their Jewish brothers and sisters as they show for gentiles.
Those leaders are either dumb enough to have not learned anything from history or they are just so full of themselves, so full of hybris, that they think they can get away with anything.
But so many ordinary Jews have been integrated in the societies of all the countries they live in, except in Palestine.
Ordinary Jews work in many humanitarian causes. They have universal ethics which they share with their gentile neighbours and they have friendly relationships with them.
Ordinary Jews do not need to protect criminals who call themselves the leaders of Jewish society.
They have to realize that their safety does not lie with those warmongering zynics, who have already brainwashed the Israelis into committing terrible crimes.
Their safety lies with us, their brothers and sisters in humanity.
They have to denounce Zionism and the belief that gentiles cannot be trusted.
They have to realize that the golden rule, which is also part of the OT, applies towards everybody in absolute the same. Only this way we can live in peace with each other.
The vicious circle can be broken, there still is time, but it´s running out soon.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Trauma, Healing and History
From Avigail Abarbanel´s website:
Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora feel traumatized, but it´s not only the atrocities and murders the Nazis committed against Jews, which make up this trauma.
The trauma goes back far longer, a trauma of thousands of years. There were progroms and Jewish communities have been over and over again driven out of the places were they had settled.
The Jewish narrative goes like this:
Ever so often gentiles get inflicted by some kind of insanity and start persecuting Jews. And the only thing Jewish people can do to prevent this kind of crazy persecution is to become stronger and more powerful than their gentile neighbours.
This is the reasoning behind Israel´s constantly growing military expenditure.
This is the reasoning behind the denial of Israel to give equal rights to Palestinians as to Jews and the denial of the right to return.
In these American court-movies you can sometimes hear from the prosecution, when the councill for the defendant in a murder trial asks his client under oath about his or her problematic relationship with the victim: "Objections! We are not here to put the victim on trial!"
In German court TV shows you never hear this kind of objection, and I really think it is a pretty stupid one. Of course, the court needs to hear what happens before the crime, what were the motive, what were the reasons. Only then judge and jury can decide, if it was premeditated murder out of greed or maybe manslaughter out of some other reasons. The deed is never justified, to be sure, but the circumstances should determine how high the sentence should be, and they can tell the court if the perpetrator can be rehabilitated one day or not and if the perpetrator is likely to commit a similar crime again.
So, if take this analogy to Palestine, then we can see, that Palestinians have been the victims from the day the Zionist project was conceived. You can read in Zionist lterature itself, how even the early Zionist showed disdain for the indigenious population of Palestine, you can read about mistreatment of Palestinian workers, of misappropiation of property, about the driving of peasants from land they had cultivated for many generations after it was bought from absentee owners and other examples of mistreatment. There were many instances of violence against Palestinian towns and villages already before the foundation of the state of Israel.
When Palestinians fought back, they had good reasons for it.
After the terrible atrocities of 1948, the reasons became even better, and still better after the occupation of the West-Banks and Gaza. And these are the reasons for Palestinian suicide bombings and other violent acts of resistance against an oppressive power.
Seeing the history of the conflict, it´s clear, who are the victims here.
And it´s just as clear, that the Palestinians did not cause the Jewish trauma.
Some victims, like abused children are innocent, and the reason for their victimization does not lie in them, but some place else.
But then, some former victims, like in this case the Jewish Israelis, become perpetrators who victimize others. Ms Abarbanel says, because they have not healed their trauma.
But how do you heal a trauma? As a professional therapist Ms Abarbanel has probably other answers to this than I as a lay person have.
I think a trauma only can heal, when you can overcome the fear that the traumatic event might happen again any time.
As a victim of abuse the worst feeling is the one of helplessness, of being unable to stop it. You try to find strategies to prevent further abuse and find safety. And you base those strategies on the information you have.
But when your information is false, your strategy will be wrong.
If you believe that the reasons for your victimization is the mental illness of your aggressor, it makes sense to contain this aggressor, because what else can you do against a mental illness.
But if there are other reasons like, if you have provoked the aggressor, it makes a lot more sense to stop the provocation.
In the case of the Jewish trauma it is necassary to put the victim on trial, for the victim´s sake.
Only if the patterns leading to progroms and other prosecutions historically are brought out into the open, the vicious circle can be broken, fear can be banned, hatred and the compulsion to senselessly beat around in retaliation on those, who never were responsible for the trauma, can be overcome.
Truth is important, so very important.
Truth can heal a trauma.
I believe that( ) Jewish Israelis will never be happy (even if there were no Palestinians left — God forbid) and that is because they have done nothing to heal their own trauma and are spending their entire life going around in circles and acting it out on others.........
.......Abusers hide the truth not only from others but also from themselves. They do so by telling themselves that they are the real victims. They wholeheartedly believe that because of their suffering they are justified in everything they inflict on their victims. They are often successful in eliciting sympathy from others and it is usually the victim that is left isolated....
Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora feel traumatized, but it´s not only the atrocities and murders the Nazis committed against Jews, which make up this trauma.
The trauma goes back far longer, a trauma of thousands of years. There were progroms and Jewish communities have been over and over again driven out of the places were they had settled.
The Jewish narrative goes like this:
Ever so often gentiles get inflicted by some kind of insanity and start persecuting Jews. And the only thing Jewish people can do to prevent this kind of crazy persecution is to become stronger and more powerful than their gentile neighbours.
This is the reasoning behind Israel´s constantly growing military expenditure.
This is the reasoning behind the denial of Israel to give equal rights to Palestinians as to Jews and the denial of the right to return.
In these American court-movies you can sometimes hear from the prosecution, when the councill for the defendant in a murder trial asks his client under oath about his or her problematic relationship with the victim: "Objections! We are not here to put the victim on trial!"
In German court TV shows you never hear this kind of objection, and I really think it is a pretty stupid one. Of course, the court needs to hear what happens before the crime, what were the motive, what were the reasons. Only then judge and jury can decide, if it was premeditated murder out of greed or maybe manslaughter out of some other reasons. The deed is never justified, to be sure, but the circumstances should determine how high the sentence should be, and they can tell the court if the perpetrator can be rehabilitated one day or not and if the perpetrator is likely to commit a similar crime again.
So, if take this analogy to Palestine, then we can see, that Palestinians have been the victims from the day the Zionist project was conceived. You can read in Zionist lterature itself, how even the early Zionist showed disdain for the indigenious population of Palestine, you can read about mistreatment of Palestinian workers, of misappropiation of property, about the driving of peasants from land they had cultivated for many generations after it was bought from absentee owners and other examples of mistreatment. There were many instances of violence against Palestinian towns and villages already before the foundation of the state of Israel.
When Palestinians fought back, they had good reasons for it.
After the terrible atrocities of 1948, the reasons became even better, and still better after the occupation of the West-Banks and Gaza. And these are the reasons for Palestinian suicide bombings and other violent acts of resistance against an oppressive power.
Seeing the history of the conflict, it´s clear, who are the victims here.
And it´s just as clear, that the Palestinians did not cause the Jewish trauma.
Some victims, like abused children are innocent, and the reason for their victimization does not lie in them, but some place else.
But then, some former victims, like in this case the Jewish Israelis, become perpetrators who victimize others. Ms Abarbanel says, because they have not healed their trauma.
But how do you heal a trauma? As a professional therapist Ms Abarbanel has probably other answers to this than I as a lay person have.
I think a trauma only can heal, when you can overcome the fear that the traumatic event might happen again any time.
As a victim of abuse the worst feeling is the one of helplessness, of being unable to stop it. You try to find strategies to prevent further abuse and find safety. And you base those strategies on the information you have.
But when your information is false, your strategy will be wrong.
If you believe that the reasons for your victimization is the mental illness of your aggressor, it makes sense to contain this aggressor, because what else can you do against a mental illness.
But if there are other reasons like, if you have provoked the aggressor, it makes a lot more sense to stop the provocation.
In the case of the Jewish trauma it is necassary to put the victim on trial, for the victim´s sake.
Only if the patterns leading to progroms and other prosecutions historically are brought out into the open, the vicious circle can be broken, fear can be banned, hatred and the compulsion to senselessly beat around in retaliation on those, who never were responsible for the trauma, can be overcome.
Truth is important, so very important.
Truth can heal a trauma.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Differences and Strategy
Thinking about the ethnic cleansing of Germans from areas which belong now to Russia, Poland and Tschekoslovakia there seem to be some similarities to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from large parts of Palestine.
But there are also differences:
Germany had just lost a war, which the German government had started and in which the German army and special units had committed terrible atrocities against the peoples whose country they were occupying.
While the first years after the war were difficult and hard on all Germans, especially on the refugees and deportees, after those years, when the country was rebuilt and economy grew, everybody became integretated in the process, including the people who had been driven out of East-Prussia, Schlesia and the Sudetenland. There also were paid some compensation money by the German government.
Because of all this, the acceptance of historical guilt, the economic integration and the policy of compensation, most of the younger generation of those people from former German areas accepted the loss and so did the next generations.
Nowadays there are extremely few people who actually even think about a return of these areas to Germany or of a return of Germans to these areas.
Policies were totally different in Palestine:
Palestinians had only defended their own land, homes and property and had never invaded other people´s countries or committed atrocities against them.
So, of course, they never had the feeling of being at least partly at fault for their predicament.
The refugees were never compensated for their loss, instead even their long history of living in Palestine for thousands of years was flatly denied.
The refugees never were integrated into the population of the countries which had taken them in, but many still have to live in seperate areas, refugee camps. They are often discriminated against and in some places have no legal rights or even legal passports to travel at will.
Worst of all, however, is the fact that the ethnic cleansing, the driving of people off their property and the destruction of their homes and the killing of people has not stopped and is still an ungoing process.
If the German people would have to live under similar conditions, they would never have accepted the situtiation either, historical guilt or not.
The question is, was there a chance or even is there still a chance, that Palestinians could or can accept their losses.
I recently read excerpts from the diary of Moshe Sharett, a Israeli prime minister in 1954 and 55. In there Sharett contemplated on an agreement with neighbouring Arab countries and even on matters of compensation, but his efforts were sabotaged by the hardliners Ben Gurion and others.
This made me think, that possibly in the 1950s there was a time, when there could have been made a compromise between a Zionist Israel, the Palestinian people and the neighbouring Arab countries.
Sure, compensations could never have made up for what was lost in homes, land and human life, but it would have helped the Palestinians to start a new life away from home. Compensations could have given the Palestinian economy within the rest of Palestine and in the neighboring countries a boost and would have helped Palestinians to establish themselves there.
For Israel it would not have been too hard to make those compensations really substantial. By making peace treaties with both the Palestinians and other Arab nations, Israel could have spent far less on military expenditure, so that part of German compensations and American aid could have been diverted to compensation for the Palestinians.
But then, when I tried to google those diary excerpts again, I found some other excerpts and they made me doubt, that there ever was a possiblity of compromise for the Palestinian people with Zionism.
On the Al-Bushra website of Arab American Roman Catholics I found this article about the Moshe Sharett diaries:
Here is an excerpt:
Sharett then adds his own comments:
"The conclusions from Dayan's words are clear: This state has no international worries, no economic problems. THE QUESTION OF PEACE IS NON-EXISTENT. IT must calculate its steps narrow-mindedly AND LIVE ON ITS SWORD. It must see the sword as the main, if not the only instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Towards this end it may, no, IT MUST, INVENT DANGERS AND TO DO THIS IT MUST ADOPT THE METHOD OF PROVOCATION AND REVENGE....and above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally GET RID OF OUR TROUBLES AND ACQUIRE OUR SPACE...Ben Gurion himself said it would be worth while to pay an Arab a million pounds to start a war."
Of course these diary entries are taken out of context, so that it is not quite clear to me, if Sharett did actually share the same opinions as Dayan or Ben Gurion or if he just interpreted their words. But since Sharret was only in power for a couple of years and everybody else in the Zionist movement seems to have been against even minimal compromises, his real opinion didn´t make a real difference one way or the other.
It seems quite obvious to me now, that even then, there never was a chance for compromise with Zionism.
The Zionist ideology does not allow for compromise, it only wants to overcome all obstacles towards its goals by the ruthless use of military power and by deceit.
But then, while Zionism surely has its roots in the "Jewish exceptualism-chosen people-eternal victim" narrative, I think we still have to make a difference between the opposition to Zionism and the opposition to Judaism or the Jewish people.
Just as you have to make a difference between the Nazi ideology and the German people, although the Nazi ideology does have its roots in some part of German culture.
And this is not just a matter of mushy heart, humanitarian, liberal thought. It´s a matter of strategy.
Here is another excerpt from the al-bushra article:
I agree with their view on this.
Zionism is an ideology built on fear and distrust of gentiles. Somebody like Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli with a 100% Jewish background, might be able to do a total critizism of Judaism without doing harm. If non-Jewish persons do this, it might become counterproductive to their cause. Open hostility towards the Jewish People per se or the insistance that Judaism has no right to exist, will feed into those feelings of fear and distrust against the rest of the world and reinforce this Jewish national paranoia.
I don´t think, there is much hope to convert Ariel Sharon or other extremists away from Zionism, but I do think, it is possible with most of the ordinary Jewish people in the diaspora and even in Israel.
I think it is necessary to to find the words which make it quite clear, that the Zionist ideology is unacceptable to us, but that we still reach out in friendship to the Jewish people.
I know, that it sounds unfair, that we should tiptoe around the Jewish people, a people who is overrepresented in the media and in the economic, political and academic upper classes of western society. And given the terrible atrocities committed in Palestine and by proxy in Iraq and other places, it sounds even more unfair.
But then, only a minority of Israelis or diaspora Jews is personally responsible for those crimes. For most the only guilt they bear is the silence and failure to oppose those crimes. If we do not seperate between the Zionist ideology and the Jewish people, Zionism´s hold on ordinary Jews will become even stronger. The false believe, that Zionism is in the long run the only way of survival for individual Jews or the Jewish people, will be strengthened. Fear and paranoia can strangle logical thought and ordinary compassion for the suffering of others.
And this special paranoia is so dangerous exactly because the Jewish people are over-represented in the media and other influencial professions.
There needs to be a strategy to counter the paranoia.
But there are also differences:
Germany had just lost a war, which the German government had started and in which the German army and special units had committed terrible atrocities against the peoples whose country they were occupying.
While the first years after the war were difficult and hard on all Germans, especially on the refugees and deportees, after those years, when the country was rebuilt and economy grew, everybody became integretated in the process, including the people who had been driven out of East-Prussia, Schlesia and the Sudetenland. There also were paid some compensation money by the German government.
Because of all this, the acceptance of historical guilt, the economic integration and the policy of compensation, most of the younger generation of those people from former German areas accepted the loss and so did the next generations.
Nowadays there are extremely few people who actually even think about a return of these areas to Germany or of a return of Germans to these areas.
Policies were totally different in Palestine:
Palestinians had only defended their own land, homes and property and had never invaded other people´s countries or committed atrocities against them.
So, of course, they never had the feeling of being at least partly at fault for their predicament.
The refugees were never compensated for their loss, instead even their long history of living in Palestine for thousands of years was flatly denied.
The refugees never were integrated into the population of the countries which had taken them in, but many still have to live in seperate areas, refugee camps. They are often discriminated against and in some places have no legal rights or even legal passports to travel at will.
Worst of all, however, is the fact that the ethnic cleansing, the driving of people off their property and the destruction of their homes and the killing of people has not stopped and is still an ungoing process.
If the German people would have to live under similar conditions, they would never have accepted the situtiation either, historical guilt or not.
The question is, was there a chance or even is there still a chance, that Palestinians could or can accept their losses.
I recently read excerpts from the diary of Moshe Sharett, a Israeli prime minister in 1954 and 55. In there Sharett contemplated on an agreement with neighbouring Arab countries and even on matters of compensation, but his efforts were sabotaged by the hardliners Ben Gurion and others.
This made me think, that possibly in the 1950s there was a time, when there could have been made a compromise between a Zionist Israel, the Palestinian people and the neighbouring Arab countries.
Sure, compensations could never have made up for what was lost in homes, land and human life, but it would have helped the Palestinians to start a new life away from home. Compensations could have given the Palestinian economy within the rest of Palestine and in the neighboring countries a boost and would have helped Palestinians to establish themselves there.
For Israel it would not have been too hard to make those compensations really substantial. By making peace treaties with both the Palestinians and other Arab nations, Israel could have spent far less on military expenditure, so that part of German compensations and American aid could have been diverted to compensation for the Palestinians.
But then, when I tried to google those diary excerpts again, I found some other excerpts and they made me doubt, that there ever was a possiblity of compromise for the Palestinian people with Zionism.
On the Al-Bushra website of Arab American Roman Catholics I found this article about the Moshe Sharett diaries:
Here is an excerpt:
Sharett's diary, for 5/26/55 records the thinking of some of those who orchestrated Israeli attitudes and also influenced world opinion. The principal spokesman for the opponents of the possible peace was Dayan. And the diary reports:
"We do not need (Dayan said) a security pact with the U.S., such a pact will only constitute an obstacle for us. We face no danger at all of an Arab advantage of force for the next 8-10 years. Even if they receive massive military aid from the west, we shall maintain our military superiority thanks to an infinitely greater capacity to assimilate new armaments. The security pact will only handcuff us and deny us freedom of actrion, and this is what we need in the coming years. Reprisal raids which we couldn't carry out if we were tied to a security pact are our vital lymph. First (the reprisal raids) make it imperative for the Arabgoernmentsto tkae strong measures to protect the borders. Second, AND THAT'S THE MAIN THING, THEY MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO MAINTAIN A HIGH LEVEL OF TENSION AMONG OUR POPULATION AND THE ARMY. Without these actions we would cease to be a combative people and WITHOUT THE DISCIPLINE OF A COMBATIVE PEOPLE WE ARE LOST....We will have to cry out that the Negev is in danger SO THAT ANGRY MEN WILL GO THERE."
Sharett then adds his own comments:
"The conclusions from Dayan's words are clear: This state has no international worries, no economic problems. THE QUESTION OF PEACE IS NON-EXISTENT. IT must calculate its steps narrow-mindedly AND LIVE ON ITS SWORD. It must see the sword as the main, if not the only instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Towards this end it may, no, IT MUST, INVENT DANGERS AND TO DO THIS IT MUST ADOPT THE METHOD OF PROVOCATION AND REVENGE....and above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally GET RID OF OUR TROUBLES AND ACQUIRE OUR SPACE...Ben Gurion himself said it would be worth while to pay an Arab a million pounds to start a war."
Of course these diary entries are taken out of context, so that it is not quite clear to me, if Sharett did actually share the same opinions as Dayan or Ben Gurion or if he just interpreted their words. But since Sharret was only in power for a couple of years and everybody else in the Zionist movement seems to have been against even minimal compromises, his real opinion didn´t make a real difference one way or the other.
It seems quite obvious to me now, that even then, there never was a chance for compromise with Zionism.
The Zionist ideology does not allow for compromise, it only wants to overcome all obstacles towards its goals by the ruthless use of military power and by deceit.
But then, while Zionism surely has its roots in the "Jewish exceptualism-chosen people-eternal victim" narrative, I think we still have to make a difference between the opposition to Zionism and the opposition to Judaism or the Jewish people.
Just as you have to make a difference between the Nazi ideology and the German people, although the Nazi ideology does have its roots in some part of German culture.
And this is not just a matter of mushy heart, humanitarian, liberal thought. It´s a matter of strategy.
Here is another excerpt from the al-bushra article:
The eternal, Zionist dialectic again! If the people are not obsessed with fear, create conditions to frighten them. If there are no visible enemies - create them! Ignore any hand outstretched in friendship, for the friendship CAN DISSOLVE THE IDEOLOGY.
I agree with their view on this.
Zionism is an ideology built on fear and distrust of gentiles. Somebody like Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli with a 100% Jewish background, might be able to do a total critizism of Judaism without doing harm. If non-Jewish persons do this, it might become counterproductive to their cause. Open hostility towards the Jewish People per se or the insistance that Judaism has no right to exist, will feed into those feelings of fear and distrust against the rest of the world and reinforce this Jewish national paranoia.
I don´t think, there is much hope to convert Ariel Sharon or other extremists away from Zionism, but I do think, it is possible with most of the ordinary Jewish people in the diaspora and even in Israel.
I think it is necessary to to find the words which make it quite clear, that the Zionist ideology is unacceptable to us, but that we still reach out in friendship to the Jewish people.
I know, that it sounds unfair, that we should tiptoe around the Jewish people, a people who is overrepresented in the media and in the economic, political and academic upper classes of western society. And given the terrible atrocities committed in Palestine and by proxy in Iraq and other places, it sounds even more unfair.
But then, only a minority of Israelis or diaspora Jews is personally responsible for those crimes. For most the only guilt they bear is the silence and failure to oppose those crimes. If we do not seperate between the Zionist ideology and the Jewish people, Zionism´s hold on ordinary Jews will become even stronger. The false believe, that Zionism is in the long run the only way of survival for individual Jews or the Jewish people, will be strengthened. Fear and paranoia can strangle logical thought and ordinary compassion for the suffering of others.
And this special paranoia is so dangerous exactly because the Jewish people are over-represented in the media and other influencial professions.
There needs to be a strategy to counter the paranoia.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Non-Violence
According to international law the struggle of the Palestinians against Israeli occupation is legal. According to Church doctrine it would probably constitute a "just war".
So nobody has the right to criticize Palestinians for a militant struggle.
So what I´m doing now, is asking hyopthetical questions as some kind of personal brain-storming.
The question is, what is strategically the best course.
When I talk about "loving the enemy", it for sure cannot mean to accept abuses against Palestinians silently, because actually this is not really love.
For the Israeli Jews, by acting inhumane, they are destroying part of their humanity through these actions and hurt their eternal souls. And quite obviously is, that Israelis, through the acceptance of brutalizing Palestinians, are more and more starting to brutalize each other as well. After having committed untold crimes against other human beings, people just don´t come home and live a normal life. The same happens to many American veterans. They come home and become violent towards family or neighbours. If you love them, you try to stop their self-destructive behaviour.
So non-violence in my opinion cannot be passive, it must be very active and demanding; in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who led the civil rights movement as a movement for joining hands in common humanity. Justice for him did not mean seeking revenge, although, considering the really horrendous crimes white Americans had committed against the people abducted from their African homes and also against their descendents, a call for revenge might be understandable. But to demand an eye for an eye would make everyone blind in the end.
So "loving" means most often: forgiving - and allowing a new start for a relationship between people. But it cannot mean to allow injustice to continue.
The non-violent civil-rights movement worked, but when King was killed, not all goals were reached.
Racism had not been overcome in all aspects of life.
There still was, for instance, alot of economic discrimination.
And racism had not been overcome in everybody´s mind.
And recently, looking at the ever increasing prison population of predominantly non-white people and at the disenfrenchment of African Americans at the voting polls, there even seems to be a back slide.
So the question is would an exclusive non-violent movement like this work in Palestine?
There are many differences in the situation.
The civil-rights movement, seemed to have an enormous positive media coverage in the USA.
Mainline media throughout the western world would not cover a Palestinian movement in the same positive way. There are so many non-violent demonstrations already going on against the "Wall", and the international media takes rather little notice of them.
Would the coverage of alternative media and the work of activist make up for the lack of positive mainline media attention?
The growing effort by Zionist groups to censor pro-Palestinian voices on campus in the US seems to indicate that Israel is afraid of their influence.
Another difference to the American civil rights movement would be the ruthlessness Israeli forces already show against non-violent demonstrations and other actions, even using poisoned gas. American police could by far not risk the same ruthlessness against demonstrators. The degree of ruthlessness risked depends naturally on the public attention paid to it.
And there again, can international activists help focus enough attention on Israel´s behaviour to influence her against state terrorist acts?
Can the mainline media be forced to pay attention?
Another question is of course, if it is possible, that all Palestinian organisations could come to agree on the same short time and long time goals. A big coordinated non-violent effort over a long time would need to put up concrete demands, which have to be fulfilled.
One thing is for sure, Sharon wouldn´t like Palestinian non-violence.
Zionist Israel does everything to portray Palestinians as aggressors and herself as just answering the violence. It is quite obvious that Sharon deliberately tries to provoke violence whenever Palestinian groups try to negotiate a seize fire. And when violence then comes forth, Sharon escalates his terror. Although on a lower level Israeli terror, while not reported in mainline media, is on going constantly.
And I´m convinced, that some attacks credited to some or other Palestinian group are actually Mossad black ops (like the suicide-bombing where more than 50 people died, but nearly all of them foreigners,since it went off in quarters of town, where only guest workers live). There have been documented instances of such tactics against other Arab people before, like against Egypt in the Lavon affair, whose perpetrators actually have recently received some medals or so.
(I´d say, a real chutzpah, since their victims were partly Americans. How can they dare to anger and humiliate the Americans so publicly, when they so very much depend on American financial and military help? Well, it looks as if Israel can get away with anything because of her influence on the media.)
So an organized non-violent movement would actually have each and every single Palestinian group to agree upon non-violence, to counter any possible Mossad false flags.
Violent groups can act on their own with all their own goals. However, non-violence as a main strategy needs to be coordinated.
Is this actually possible? And would it work?
One other probable strategic reason for Israel in killing Palestinian leaders is, besides provoking violence, also to kill off possible popular coordinators in non-violent strategies.
Israel, of course, would not give in one iota on its own. Only the international community could force Israel to make real concessions. But would the West do this?
How much publicity is needed so that western sympathizers could put enough pressure on their own government?
How far would Israel go to prevent being pressurized?
What tactic would she use?
How much influence does she have on western countries?
Is there any way to counteract Israel´s tactics?
One thing is sure. Non-violence is a powerful tool.
The enemy is using it. In the majority of cases in the recent years, where
governments were overthrown and replaced by American puppets, it was done by non-violent means. American sponsered NGOs were using youth-groups or student movements, paying a few instigators and using the others´ enthusiasm for democratic changes in bringing to pass an American agenda, which really isn´t interested in democracy, just in looting the place for corporate interests.
It happened for instance in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. It was tried unsuccessfully in Lebanon and Venezuela. And they are still trying it in Iran. However, the Neocons in the Pentagon opt rather for a military campaign there and in Syria,since the Likudniks in Israel think a new government in Iran and Syria wouldn´t be safe enough. They want Iran and Syria destroyed and cut into tyni pieces.
So non-violent strategy is not just an idea of a few other worldly Christian, or in case of Mahatma Ghandi Hindu, dreamers. It needs however far more consistency and coordination than violent tactics. And it only works in combination with lots of public attention.
So nobody has the right to criticize Palestinians for a militant struggle.
So what I´m doing now, is asking hyopthetical questions as some kind of personal brain-storming.
The question is, what is strategically the best course.
When I talk about "loving the enemy", it for sure cannot mean to accept abuses against Palestinians silently, because actually this is not really love.
For the Israeli Jews, by acting inhumane, they are destroying part of their humanity through these actions and hurt their eternal souls. And quite obviously is, that Israelis, through the acceptance of brutalizing Palestinians, are more and more starting to brutalize each other as well. After having committed untold crimes against other human beings, people just don´t come home and live a normal life. The same happens to many American veterans. They come home and become violent towards family or neighbours. If you love them, you try to stop their self-destructive behaviour.
So non-violence in my opinion cannot be passive, it must be very active and demanding; in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who led the civil rights movement as a movement for joining hands in common humanity. Justice for him did not mean seeking revenge, although, considering the really horrendous crimes white Americans had committed against the people abducted from their African homes and also against their descendents, a call for revenge might be understandable. But to demand an eye for an eye would make everyone blind in the end.
So "loving" means most often: forgiving - and allowing a new start for a relationship between people. But it cannot mean to allow injustice to continue.
The non-violent civil-rights movement worked, but when King was killed, not all goals were reached.
Racism had not been overcome in all aspects of life.
There still was, for instance, alot of economic discrimination.
And racism had not been overcome in everybody´s mind.
And recently, looking at the ever increasing prison population of predominantly non-white people and at the disenfrenchment of African Americans at the voting polls, there even seems to be a back slide.
So the question is would an exclusive non-violent movement like this work in Palestine?
There are many differences in the situation.
The civil-rights movement, seemed to have an enormous positive media coverage in the USA.
Mainline media throughout the western world would not cover a Palestinian movement in the same positive way. There are so many non-violent demonstrations already going on against the "Wall", and the international media takes rather little notice of them.
Would the coverage of alternative media and the work of activist make up for the lack of positive mainline media attention?
The growing effort by Zionist groups to censor pro-Palestinian voices on campus in the US seems to indicate that Israel is afraid of their influence.
Another difference to the American civil rights movement would be the ruthlessness Israeli forces already show against non-violent demonstrations and other actions, even using poisoned gas. American police could by far not risk the same ruthlessness against demonstrators. The degree of ruthlessness risked depends naturally on the public attention paid to it.
And there again, can international activists help focus enough attention on Israel´s behaviour to influence her against state terrorist acts?
Can the mainline media be forced to pay attention?
Another question is of course, if it is possible, that all Palestinian organisations could come to agree on the same short time and long time goals. A big coordinated non-violent effort over a long time would need to put up concrete demands, which have to be fulfilled.
One thing is for sure, Sharon wouldn´t like Palestinian non-violence.
Zionist Israel does everything to portray Palestinians as aggressors and herself as just answering the violence. It is quite obvious that Sharon deliberately tries to provoke violence whenever Palestinian groups try to negotiate a seize fire. And when violence then comes forth, Sharon escalates his terror. Although on a lower level Israeli terror, while not reported in mainline media, is on going constantly.
And I´m convinced, that some attacks credited to some or other Palestinian group are actually Mossad black ops (like the suicide-bombing where more than 50 people died, but nearly all of them foreigners,since it went off in quarters of town, where only guest workers live). There have been documented instances of such tactics against other Arab people before, like against Egypt in the Lavon affair, whose perpetrators actually have recently received some medals or so.
(I´d say, a real chutzpah, since their victims were partly Americans. How can they dare to anger and humiliate the Americans so publicly, when they so very much depend on American financial and military help? Well, it looks as if Israel can get away with anything because of her influence on the media.)
So an organized non-violent movement would actually have each and every single Palestinian group to agree upon non-violence, to counter any possible Mossad false flags.
Violent groups can act on their own with all their own goals. However, non-violence as a main strategy needs to be coordinated.
Is this actually possible? And would it work?
One other probable strategic reason for Israel in killing Palestinian leaders is, besides provoking violence, also to kill off possible popular coordinators in non-violent strategies.
Israel, of course, would not give in one iota on its own. Only the international community could force Israel to make real concessions. But would the West do this?
How much publicity is needed so that western sympathizers could put enough pressure on their own government?
How far would Israel go to prevent being pressurized?
What tactic would she use?
How much influence does she have on western countries?
Is there any way to counteract Israel´s tactics?
One thing is sure. Non-violence is a powerful tool.
The enemy is using it. In the majority of cases in the recent years, where
governments were overthrown and replaced by American puppets, it was done by non-violent means. American sponsered NGOs were using youth-groups or student movements, paying a few instigators and using the others´ enthusiasm for democratic changes in bringing to pass an American agenda, which really isn´t interested in democracy, just in looting the place for corporate interests.
It happened for instance in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. It was tried unsuccessfully in Lebanon and Venezuela. And they are still trying it in Iran. However, the Neocons in the Pentagon opt rather for a military campaign there and in Syria,since the Likudniks in Israel think a new government in Iran and Syria wouldn´t be safe enough. They want Iran and Syria destroyed and cut into tyni pieces.
So non-violent strategy is not just an idea of a few other worldly Christian, or in case of Mahatma Ghandi Hindu, dreamers. It needs however far more consistency and coordination than violent tactics. And it only works in combination with lots of public attention.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Anger and Fear
Many people in the pro-Palestine movements have witnessed Zionist atrocities up close, others have friends who have been hurt. I can understand, when criticize me for too much philosemitism.
It´s so much easier for me, who has never been touched directly by all the cruelty inflicted in the name of Zionism, to have a concilatory attitude towards Jews.
If I´d ever been hurt personally I quite likely would be a loud raving anti-semite. But if this should ever happen to me, I hope that people would realize, that those ravings would just be a reaction on being hurt and would weigh the things I have said and written before as my more accurate attitude.
For I believe, that reaching out to the Jewish people is not only a religious duty for a Christian, it is also a very important tactic in the struggle for peace.
Gilad Azmon and Israel Shamir believe that Jews need to give up their identity of being Jewish in order to reconcile with the rest of humanity. I have not subscribed to Shamir's newsletter, although I read it regurlarly, because I believe that to demand from Jews to give up their Jewish identity will probably not work.
A feeling of identity is such an important psychological factor wihtin a person, it´s for many people next to impossible to give it up.
I didn´t realize before I started living permanently here in Iceland, how important my German identity is for me. And I´m definitly not one who keeps yelling: I´m proud to be a German. That´s considered a Neo-nazi attitude.
I have lived here for so many years, I could apply for Icelandic citizenship, but I haven't done it yet because until recently I thought I would loose my German one.
There would be a lot less historical baggage and sometimes negative attitude to carry, if I could identify as an Icelander, but I just can´t. For better or worse I´m German.
The same is true for my religion. In my late teens I went from the Catholic to another church, because I was turned off by the insincerity and the liberal sexual attitudes of my catholic peers and fell for the promise of a more family oriented church with no drinking, smoking and more strict sexual rules.
With time I realized, that I couldn´t stand the Old Testamentarian attitude and the America centeredness of that church, but I would have stayed anyway for the sake of family and friends, found some niche for me somehow, but I didn´t because I couldn´t find any spirituality there.
I finally realized why I couldn´t find it, when I went back to the Catholic church: I had missed the rituals most and foremost. I do not believe, that only Catholics go to heaven, or only Christians or only religious people, but I do believe that I myself go to heaven as a Catholic or not at all, for my spirituality I only can find in the Catholic church.
Of course not everybody is like me and there are many who can find a new national identity or spirituality outside their childhood faith, but nevertheless there are for sure a lot of people who can´t.
Jewish national identity is not bound to national borders, but still it is a traditional national identity. And many Jews have a religious identity as well, but this does not mean, that they have to indentify with all the ancient precepts. There are quite a lot of different attitudes to what it means to be a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu.
So I think, for a Jew to reconcile with the rest of the world does not necessarily mean he has to give up Jewish identity, he could reconcile with Jewish history instead.
Avigail Abarbanel writes on her blog, that the Jewish people is traumatized and that this is what lies mostly behind the Zionist atrocities.
Of course most Jews living today have not lived through Nazi persecution themselves. It is not what has them traumatized, rather what was told to them about this persecution together with other instances of persecution in history is traumatizing Jews.
And again its not the historical events, but the perception of those historical events, what traumatizes Jews.
Into this perception belongs the belief, that the Jewish people has been the most persecuted in the world and that they are in danger of persecution all the time.And so, very often when Jews perceive that gentiles are angry at some Jews even for quite legitimite reason that trauma comes up. Trauma, that´s true for Jews and for Gentiles, makes normally decent people act, talk and think irrational. For decent people to justify Zionist injustice and brutality in any way, is irrational.
Many people within the pro-Palestine movement feel angry when they hear about another act of Zionist oppression and murder. And because there are so many Jews who justify Zionism, this anger is sometimes directed at Jews per se. And its natural, that people get angry, when somebody they care for is hurt so badly. And the members of the pro-Palestine movements have all started to care deeply for the Palestinian people, even if they are not Palestinian themselves.
The trouble is, that Jews, who are conditioned by this certain perception of history, will perceive this anger as hatred, as unreasonable anti-semitism and react with an even closer bond to Zionism.
Anger is in my opinion counterproductiv, if you want to break this bond.
"Love your enemy" is actually a method to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles to peace.
You keep on trying to get the enemy to reciprocate your love, even if it takes a long time.
On the other hand I do not think, that it is productive to accept and even promote a distorted perception of history, in order to make Jewish people trust you.
It quite obviously does not work. At the memoration of the Ausschwitz liberation, the whole UN was singing, or at least listening to, the Israeli national anthem, in spite of there having died many people from many other nations as well, and Israel had not even existed at the time. It was as if everybody was agreeing to that Jews, represented by Israel were the only victims of Nazi brutality. And still Zionist does not trust gentiles and feel constantly threatened.
"And they will know the truth, and the truth shall make them free."
The cause for Jewish trauma, persecution-complex or mass-paranoia, however you will call it, is a misconception of history. And this has to be overcome.
And yes, when you start to attack Jewish history, most Jews will perceive it as attack on the Jewish people, since national history is often tied to identity and yes, they will react with anger or fear.
But there is just no way around it. And in the long run one doesn´t have to loose one´s identity when one accepts a more accurate and less sanitized version of one´s people´s history.
We Germans had to do it, and we can live with it.
And for me personally it means to not only stifle anger when it comes up in me, but to do my best to actually overcome it and overcome fear as well.
For yes, of course I´m afraid. I fear, that Zionist pressure on the American government for war in behalf of Israel will lead to an unlimited world-war. But fear is just as big a hinderance for a peaceful world as anger is.
Racism is just another word for xenophobia (fear of strangers), antisemitism another one for judeophobia (fear of Jews) and there is no word for what Zionists feel for non-Jews, but you can call it Gentile-phobia.
It´s so much easier for me, who has never been touched directly by all the cruelty inflicted in the name of Zionism, to have a concilatory attitude towards Jews.
If I´d ever been hurt personally I quite likely would be a loud raving anti-semite. But if this should ever happen to me, I hope that people would realize, that those ravings would just be a reaction on being hurt and would weigh the things I have said and written before as my more accurate attitude.
For I believe, that reaching out to the Jewish people is not only a religious duty for a Christian, it is also a very important tactic in the struggle for peace.
Gilad Azmon and Israel Shamir believe that Jews need to give up their identity of being Jewish in order to reconcile with the rest of humanity. I have not subscribed to Shamir's newsletter, although I read it regurlarly, because I believe that to demand from Jews to give up their Jewish identity will probably not work.
A feeling of identity is such an important psychological factor wihtin a person, it´s for many people next to impossible to give it up.
I didn´t realize before I started living permanently here in Iceland, how important my German identity is for me. And I´m definitly not one who keeps yelling: I´m proud to be a German. That´s considered a Neo-nazi attitude.
I have lived here for so many years, I could apply for Icelandic citizenship, but I haven't done it yet because until recently I thought I would loose my German one.
There would be a lot less historical baggage and sometimes negative attitude to carry, if I could identify as an Icelander, but I just can´t. For better or worse I´m German.
The same is true for my religion. In my late teens I went from the Catholic to another church, because I was turned off by the insincerity and the liberal sexual attitudes of my catholic peers and fell for the promise of a more family oriented church with no drinking, smoking and more strict sexual rules.
With time I realized, that I couldn´t stand the Old Testamentarian attitude and the America centeredness of that church, but I would have stayed anyway for the sake of family and friends, found some niche for me somehow, but I didn´t because I couldn´t find any spirituality there.
I finally realized why I couldn´t find it, when I went back to the Catholic church: I had missed the rituals most and foremost. I do not believe, that only Catholics go to heaven, or only Christians or only religious people, but I do believe that I myself go to heaven as a Catholic or not at all, for my spirituality I only can find in the Catholic church.
Of course not everybody is like me and there are many who can find a new national identity or spirituality outside their childhood faith, but nevertheless there are for sure a lot of people who can´t.
Jewish national identity is not bound to national borders, but still it is a traditional national identity. And many Jews have a religious identity as well, but this does not mean, that they have to indentify with all the ancient precepts. There are quite a lot of different attitudes to what it means to be a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu.
So I think, for a Jew to reconcile with the rest of the world does not necessarily mean he has to give up Jewish identity, he could reconcile with Jewish history instead.
Avigail Abarbanel writes on her blog, that the Jewish people is traumatized and that this is what lies mostly behind the Zionist atrocities.
Of course most Jews living today have not lived through Nazi persecution themselves. It is not what has them traumatized, rather what was told to them about this persecution together with other instances of persecution in history is traumatizing Jews.
And again its not the historical events, but the perception of those historical events, what traumatizes Jews.
Into this perception belongs the belief, that the Jewish people has been the most persecuted in the world and that they are in danger of persecution all the time.And so, very often when Jews perceive that gentiles are angry at some Jews even for quite legitimite reason that trauma comes up. Trauma, that´s true for Jews and for Gentiles, makes normally decent people act, talk and think irrational. For decent people to justify Zionist injustice and brutality in any way, is irrational.
Many people within the pro-Palestine movement feel angry when they hear about another act of Zionist oppression and murder. And because there are so many Jews who justify Zionism, this anger is sometimes directed at Jews per se. And its natural, that people get angry, when somebody they care for is hurt so badly. And the members of the pro-Palestine movements have all started to care deeply for the Palestinian people, even if they are not Palestinian themselves.
The trouble is, that Jews, who are conditioned by this certain perception of history, will perceive this anger as hatred, as unreasonable anti-semitism and react with an even closer bond to Zionism.
Anger is in my opinion counterproductiv, if you want to break this bond.
"Love your enemy" is actually a method to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles to peace.
You keep on trying to get the enemy to reciprocate your love, even if it takes a long time.
On the other hand I do not think, that it is productive to accept and even promote a distorted perception of history, in order to make Jewish people trust you.
It quite obviously does not work. At the memoration of the Ausschwitz liberation, the whole UN was singing, or at least listening to, the Israeli national anthem, in spite of there having died many people from many other nations as well, and Israel had not even existed at the time. It was as if everybody was agreeing to that Jews, represented by Israel were the only victims of Nazi brutality. And still Zionist does not trust gentiles and feel constantly threatened.
"And they will know the truth, and the truth shall make them free."
The cause for Jewish trauma, persecution-complex or mass-paranoia, however you will call it, is a misconception of history. And this has to be overcome.
And yes, when you start to attack Jewish history, most Jews will perceive it as attack on the Jewish people, since national history is often tied to identity and yes, they will react with anger or fear.
But there is just no way around it. And in the long run one doesn´t have to loose one´s identity when one accepts a more accurate and less sanitized version of one´s people´s history.
We Germans had to do it, and we can live with it.
And for me personally it means to not only stifle anger when it comes up in me, but to do my best to actually overcome it and overcome fear as well.
For yes, of course I´m afraid. I fear, that Zionist pressure on the American government for war in behalf of Israel will lead to an unlimited world-war. But fear is just as big a hinderance for a peaceful world as anger is.
Racism is just another word for xenophobia (fear of strangers), antisemitism another one for judeophobia (fear of Jews) and there is no word for what Zionists feel for non-Jews, but you can call it Gentile-phobia.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Make It Personal
The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.
I don´t remember where I read this quote, but I know, it is true.
We humans are social beings. We are created to live in groups and relate to each other. We can feel empathy for each other, even feel each others emotional pain. Some neurologists say that there are devices in our brains,neural patterns, for feeling empathy.
But we are also emotionally limited. We cannot feel for people we do not know. So when people get hurt or killed some place far away from us, people we never met, we never heard about on the other side of the world, our intellectual knowledge may tell us about the injustice being done to them. But intellectual knowledge is just not enough to act on it, to give up some comfort and conveniences for those who suffer injustice, we need emotional knowledge, we need to feel.
But then for us humans there are other ways of getting to know a person than seeing him or her face to face. We can see his picture, listen to her story told by others or watch a documentary on TV.
A few weeks ago there was a short documentary in a news-magazine on German TV about the Gaza withdrawal plans of Sharon. We saw an elderly Jewish couple who lived in one of those Gaza settlements. They had lost their daughter in an attack a few years back. Her daughter was buried in the cemetary of the settlement. We were told that in Jewish religion it was impossible to exhume bodies and bring them to another cemetary. We watched the mother going to the cemetary mourning for their daughter. She said she would never leave the settlement voluntarily.
Then the moderator of the news-show told us, that it was indeed difficult, the Gaza disengagement. Injustices would been done no matter what happened.
It would have worked on me, if I had not known better.
It would have worked,
if I had not known about the security zones around those illegal settlements, where Palestinians are shot at sight, when they came close,
if I had not known about the stealing of farm-land and water in a densely populated area, where Palestians went hungry and had to scrimp with water while Israeli settlers lived in luxury,
if I had not known about the little boy who was shot close to one of those security zones while trying to catch birds to sell on the market because his family was poor and needed the money.
I did not feel sorry for this elderly couple, I did not feel them to be justified for their attitude, but I would have, if I hadn´t known better.
The media can form opinions in the way they show an issue, in the way whose plight they show and whose they leave out. We need to see the faces of those who have suffered, we need to hear their stories. We need to get to know them.
Often even fictional stories told in movies or TV-shows can bring a point across.
Yesterday I watched a show from the TV-series "Without a Trace":
Here an old man went missing, a Peter Dusek. He had been a juror in a murder trial.As the story unravels we find out, that Dusek had recognized one of the witnesses of the trial,a Max Reinhard a former Gestapo officer who had lived in the US under a false name. During the war Reinhard had searched out Jews who lived in hiding with non-jewish families. Reinhard went up to children of the towns he was searching through to persuade them to become informers on their families or their neighbours. Peter Dusek was one of those children. He lived in the same apartment building as the family who were hiding Greta´s family. Greta was Peter´s friend, but he became an informer. He was maybe twelf years old. After Peter had recognized Max Reinhard, he went to Greta, who had survived Auschwitz and gave her a painting, her family had owned and Peter had taken into custody after their deportation. He also told her the truth of what he had done 60 years ago as a child, hoping for forgiveness, but he didn´t get it. So Peter Dusek went to Max Reinhard and turned him over to a Mossad agent, who was able to abduct him to Israel. In the end a policewoman said, that justice sometimes takes a long time.
Only a year ago I would have liked the show about fictional Greta, Peter Dusek and Max Reinhard, glad that justice was done in the end.
A year ago I knew so very little about the people of Palestine and of course I did not know anything about Ahmed Salah.
I read about him on Umkhalil`s blog. He lives in Al-Kahder village near the west bank city of Bethlehem. He is 14 years old.
Ahmed was wounded in the back and the chest. It happened last Wednesday.
Maybe Ahmed really didn´t see who threw the stones, but knowing the kids of the village, he probably knew anyway or he could have guessed. He knew he would be arrested when he didn´t collaborate. He probably had heard what happens to Palestinians in Israeli jails.
He did not become an informer.
Ahmed Salah´s story, the story of his family, his friends and his village would make a great movie.
Why doesn´t anybody make one?
I don´t remember where I read this quote, but I know, it is true.
We humans are social beings. We are created to live in groups and relate to each other. We can feel empathy for each other, even feel each others emotional pain. Some neurologists say that there are devices in our brains,neural patterns, for feeling empathy.
But we are also emotionally limited. We cannot feel for people we do not know. So when people get hurt or killed some place far away from us, people we never met, we never heard about on the other side of the world, our intellectual knowledge may tell us about the injustice being done to them. But intellectual knowledge is just not enough to act on it, to give up some comfort and conveniences for those who suffer injustice, we need emotional knowledge, we need to feel.
But then for us humans there are other ways of getting to know a person than seeing him or her face to face. We can see his picture, listen to her story told by others or watch a documentary on TV.
A few weeks ago there was a short documentary in a news-magazine on German TV about the Gaza withdrawal plans of Sharon. We saw an elderly Jewish couple who lived in one of those Gaza settlements. They had lost their daughter in an attack a few years back. Her daughter was buried in the cemetary of the settlement. We were told that in Jewish religion it was impossible to exhume bodies and bring them to another cemetary. We watched the mother going to the cemetary mourning for their daughter. She said she would never leave the settlement voluntarily.
Then the moderator of the news-show told us, that it was indeed difficult, the Gaza disengagement. Injustices would been done no matter what happened.
It would have worked on me, if I had not known better.
It would have worked,
if I had not known about the security zones around those illegal settlements, where Palestinians are shot at sight, when they came close,
if I had not known about the stealing of farm-land and water in a densely populated area, where Palestians went hungry and had to scrimp with water while Israeli settlers lived in luxury,
if I had not known about the little boy who was shot close to one of those security zones while trying to catch birds to sell on the market because his family was poor and needed the money.
I did not feel sorry for this elderly couple, I did not feel them to be justified for their attitude, but I would have, if I hadn´t known better.
The media can form opinions in the way they show an issue, in the way whose plight they show and whose they leave out. We need to see the faces of those who have suffered, we need to hear their stories. We need to get to know them.
Often even fictional stories told in movies or TV-shows can bring a point across.
Yesterday I watched a show from the TV-series "Without a Trace":
Here an old man went missing, a Peter Dusek. He had been a juror in a murder trial.As the story unravels we find out, that Dusek had recognized one of the witnesses of the trial,a Max Reinhard a former Gestapo officer who had lived in the US under a false name. During the war Reinhard had searched out Jews who lived in hiding with non-jewish families. Reinhard went up to children of the towns he was searching through to persuade them to become informers on their families or their neighbours. Peter Dusek was one of those children. He lived in the same apartment building as the family who were hiding Greta´s family. Greta was Peter´s friend, but he became an informer. He was maybe twelf years old. After Peter had recognized Max Reinhard, he went to Greta, who had survived Auschwitz and gave her a painting, her family had owned and Peter had taken into custody after their deportation. He also told her the truth of what he had done 60 years ago as a child, hoping for forgiveness, but he didn´t get it. So Peter Dusek went to Max Reinhard and turned him over to a Mossad agent, who was able to abduct him to Israel. In the end a policewoman said, that justice sometimes takes a long time.
Only a year ago I would have liked the show about fictional Greta, Peter Dusek and Max Reinhard, glad that justice was done in the end.
A year ago I knew so very little about the people of Palestine and of course I did not know anything about Ahmed Salah.
I read about him on Umkhalil`s blog. He lives in Al-Kahder village near the west bank city of Bethlehem. He is 14 years old.
(Ahmed)Salah(...),told reporters that soldiers arrested him from inside a grocery shop, took him to the nearby Road 60, and asked him to lead them to the homes of three teens who earlier had thrown stones at traveling Israeli vehicles.
"I told them I saw no stone throwers," Salah said.
Yet, soldiers took Salah to his home, searched the place and asked him to call his father. When the father, Taha Salah arrived, a soldier told him that his son threw stones at them. Taha then slapped his son on the face, but the officer told him that his son did not throw stones, but that they wanted him to lead them to the homes of three teens who had thrown stones at soldiers.
Salah told his father that he didn't see anyone throwing stones at soldiers, but soldiers didn't believe him and strongly pushed him and his father.
"I told them that you say my son didn't throw stones, leave him alone. You have no right to force him to lead you to the homes of other villagers" the father said.
One soldier pushed the father once more and warned him that if Ahmed refused to lead them to the homes of alleged stone throwers, they were going to arrest him.
"I told them to do what they want, and asked Ahmed to step out of the military Jeep. Ahmed jumped out and started to run towards our home. At this point, two soldiers started chasing Ahmed, a third soldier fired at him from few meters' distance," the father said.
"I jumped off the Jeep and ran towards home. I heard shooting and felt something penetrating my body. I fell on the ground besides the fence of my home, and woke up in the hospital," (Ahmed) Salah said.
Ahmed was wounded in the back and the chest. It happened last Wednesday.
Maybe Ahmed really didn´t see who threw the stones, but knowing the kids of the village, he probably knew anyway or he could have guessed. He knew he would be arrested when he didn´t collaborate. He probably had heard what happens to Palestinians in Israeli jails.
He did not become an informer.
Ahmed Salah´s story, the story of his family, his friends and his village would make a great movie.
Why doesn´t anybody make one?
To Be Chosen
In Christian and Jewish Theology the Jewish People is chosen by God.
In Christian Theology it was chosen to bring forth the Messiah of the world,Jesus Christ, God incarnate, Son of Man and Son of God.
In Jewish theology the Jewish people was and will always be specially chosen by God.
But what does that mean?
It could mean that the Jewish people is seperated and superior to all other peoples of the earth. Some Jews believe this, many others don´t.
Christian monks and nuns believe that they were chosen by God for special tasks, like praying for the souls of their fellowmen or serving the poor and the destitute.
Catholic priests believe they are chosen by God to perform the rites of the Sacraments in order to serve the Christian community.
The orthodox Jews of Naturei Karta believe, that the people of Israel was chosen to perform the acts of the law, and so serving all human kind and bring the light of God to the world.
Chosen to serve is a good way of feeling chosen.
By serving you heal yourself and you heal others.
There was a time, when I thought the most urgent reform the Catholic Church should make should be to throw out the Old Testament.
And I still can´t read it or listen to it without a few cramps in my stomach. People tell me,I must learn to read it in a different way. But I just can´t overlook the violence and, what I consider, injustices. I only can tell myself, that probably those parts were not inspired.
But I´ve come to the conclusion that there must be a reason, why Jesus, who created a religion of the most egalitarian principles for all mankind, was chosen to be born inside the nation who already was the most alienated from the rest of mankind.
Simon Jones argues on his blog in the post "We are all Jews now", that in our capitalist society whose motor is the taking of interest, which before was a Jewish privilige, we all have become alienated from each other and from nature. And we all need to heal from this alienation.
But healing, I think, is a spiritual task. We need ourselves to be healed and help others to heal.
So when our late Pope John Paul and our current Pope Benedict talk to the Jewish people they are trying to heal Jewish alienation from us Christians and from the world by using what Jesus has taught us: "Love your enemy, love those who curse and abuse you."
Maybe you believe the Jewish people must heal themselves. I think they can´t, due to mass-paranoia through misconceptions of history.
The main-tool the Zionist leadership uses to keep the Jewish people in line of their Zionist goals, is fear.
The Catholic church tells the Jewish people:
You do not need to be afraid of us!
You are our brothers and sisters, we do not wish you harm.
At the same time the Catholic church opposes globalized capitalism, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and wars against the Muslim world obviously fought in behalf of Israel.
This opposition has caused rather vicious attacks by the Zionist dominated media of the US. The child-abuse scandal is, in my opinion, just an overblowing by the media of a few isolated real incidences, with a lot of bandwagon cases, when it was clear how much money can be made out of those accusations. And while the Church did allow herself to be blackmailed for money, she did not give up in her opposition to war and exploitation of the developing world.
While the Church has probably no illusions about changing the minds of the leadership of Zionism, she does still actively reach out to the ordinary Jews. There is a psychological aspect in it: If you touch somebody, who is angry at you for whatever reason, in a friendly, non-threatening way, it is very likely that his anger will recede.
So, I do not believe, that the Jewish religion is beyond redemption and that the Jewish people can only be healed by mass-conversation to Christianity.
Healing lies in facing uncomfortable historical and present truths.
Healing lies in overcoming fear and mistrust.
Healing lies in accepting universal rights.
Healing lies in universal love for all mankind alike.
Healing lies in the interpretation of being chosen:
To feel chosen not for being superior in any way but, like the Jews of Naturei Karta, to feel chosen to serve for the universal good of all human kind.
And since we in the west are actually "all Jews now", we have to heal in just the same way, so war, oppression and exploitation will finally be a thing of the past.
In Christian Theology it was chosen to bring forth the Messiah of the world,Jesus Christ, God incarnate, Son of Man and Son of God.
In Jewish theology the Jewish people was and will always be specially chosen by God.
But what does that mean?
It could mean that the Jewish people is seperated and superior to all other peoples of the earth. Some Jews believe this, many others don´t.
Christian monks and nuns believe that they were chosen by God for special tasks, like praying for the souls of their fellowmen or serving the poor and the destitute.
Catholic priests believe they are chosen by God to perform the rites of the Sacraments in order to serve the Christian community.
The orthodox Jews of Naturei Karta believe, that the people of Israel was chosen to perform the acts of the law, and so serving all human kind and bring the light of God to the world.
Chosen to serve is a good way of feeling chosen.
By serving you heal yourself and you heal others.
There was a time, when I thought the most urgent reform the Catholic Church should make should be to throw out the Old Testament.
And I still can´t read it or listen to it without a few cramps in my stomach. People tell me,I must learn to read it in a different way. But I just can´t overlook the violence and, what I consider, injustices. I only can tell myself, that probably those parts were not inspired.
But I´ve come to the conclusion that there must be a reason, why Jesus, who created a religion of the most egalitarian principles for all mankind, was chosen to be born inside the nation who already was the most alienated from the rest of mankind.
Simon Jones argues on his blog in the post "We are all Jews now", that in our capitalist society whose motor is the taking of interest, which before was a Jewish privilige, we all have become alienated from each other and from nature. And we all need to heal from this alienation.
But healing, I think, is a spiritual task. We need ourselves to be healed and help others to heal.
So when our late Pope John Paul and our current Pope Benedict talk to the Jewish people they are trying to heal Jewish alienation from us Christians and from the world by using what Jesus has taught us: "Love your enemy, love those who curse and abuse you."
Maybe you believe the Jewish people must heal themselves. I think they can´t, due to mass-paranoia through misconceptions of history.
The main-tool the Zionist leadership uses to keep the Jewish people in line of their Zionist goals, is fear.
The Catholic church tells the Jewish people:
You do not need to be afraid of us!
You are our brothers and sisters, we do not wish you harm.
At the same time the Catholic church opposes globalized capitalism, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and wars against the Muslim world obviously fought in behalf of Israel.
This opposition has caused rather vicious attacks by the Zionist dominated media of the US. The child-abuse scandal is, in my opinion, just an overblowing by the media of a few isolated real incidences, with a lot of bandwagon cases, when it was clear how much money can be made out of those accusations. And while the Church did allow herself to be blackmailed for money, she did not give up in her opposition to war and exploitation of the developing world.
While the Church has probably no illusions about changing the minds of the leadership of Zionism, she does still actively reach out to the ordinary Jews. There is a psychological aspect in it: If you touch somebody, who is angry at you for whatever reason, in a friendly, non-threatening way, it is very likely that his anger will recede.
So, I do not believe, that the Jewish religion is beyond redemption and that the Jewish people can only be healed by mass-conversation to Christianity.
Healing lies in facing uncomfortable historical and present truths.
Healing lies in overcoming fear and mistrust.
Healing lies in accepting universal rights.
Healing lies in universal love for all mankind alike.
Healing lies in the interpretation of being chosen:
To feel chosen not for being superior in any way but, like the Jews of Naturei Karta, to feel chosen to serve for the universal good of all human kind.
And since we in the west are actually "all Jews now", we have to heal in just the same way, so war, oppression and exploitation will finally be a thing of the past.
Monday, May 02, 2005
"Die Kinder von Izieu"
"Die Kinder von Izieu" is a song by Reinhard Mey, my favourite German composer, singer and songwriter. It used to be also one of my favourite songs.
I listened often to it and taught it to my children.
The song is about a group of 44 Jewish children between the ages of 4 to 17 years, who in 1944 were hiding from the Nazis in a house in Izieu in the mountains above the Rhone valley in France.
The song gives us the names of some of those children like Elie, Sami, Max und Sarah. It tells us that Joseph painted landscapes with horses, Theodore liked to feed the chickens and the cows, Liliane could write like a poet and Raoul would sing all day long. The song also tells us, that these children were betrayed to Germans. On the Thursday before Easter, the day of Getsemane, they were picked up by trucks, sent to Auschwitz in a train and that none of them escaped the murderers.
This song made me see those children in my mind, even though they died years before I was born. The song let me feel their hopes and then their fear, their pain and their despair.
Those children were real human beings, with names and a life history, who suffered because of the Nazi ideology of racism and racial superiority. And they were victims of war against the ethical values of humanity.
To remember those children, meant for me, that never, never again should children be murdered for such ideologies.
We should do everything to work against racism.
We should become a society that shows respect for all human beings, a society that shows respect for differences of religion and culture, a society that sees the value of every human being as absolute, to protect his dignity as the maxime of all political acts, just as our constitution, the "Grundgesetz" states.
This is what the rememberence of those real children symbolized for me.
But then, not very long ago, I found out that remembering the murderous atrocities of Nazi-Germany meant something a whole lot different for Zionists.
Zionists do not see those atrocities as acts of racism and an ideology of superiority, they see them exclusively as acts directed against the Jewish people per se. For them those atrocities show what they thought all along, that gentiles are inflicted with the uncurable decease of Anti-Semitism, a murderous insanity which can break out without warning erverywhere, and that all Gentiles are a potentially lethal danger for Jews.
Some Zionists use those Nazi atrocities as a justification for their own atrocities against other people, other children. They do not object racism or an ideology of "Übermenschentum". They believe in that same ideology in a value system where the Jewish race is on top.
Some Zionists do not see the children of Izieu, with their names and their history. They do not see Elie, Sami, Max, Sarah, Joseph, Theodore, Liane and Raoul. They see numbers adding up, the higher, the better, sacrificed for an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, for
So, no longer do I sing the song "Die Kinder von Izieu", but I still remember those children and I cry for them, as I cry for all those other Kinder:
The Armenian Kinder of Turkey in 1915,
the Ukrainian Kinder in 1932,
the Chinese Kinder of Nanking in 1937,
the English Kinder of London and Coventry in 1941,
the Tschek Kinder of Lidice in 1942,
the Polish Kinder of Volhynia in 1943,
the German Kinder of Hamburg in 1943 and of Dresden in 1945,
the Japanese Kinder of Tokyo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945,
the South African Kinder of Sharpeville in 1960,
the Vietnames Kinder of My Lai in 1968,
the Indian Kinder of Killevanamani in 1969,
the El Salvadoran Kinder of El Mozote in 1981,
the Nicaraguan Kinder of El Juste in 1987,
the Rwandan Kinder of Kigali in 1994,
the Chechnyan Kinder of Grozny in 2000,
the Russian Kinder of Beslan in 2004,
the Darfur Kinder of Sudan in 2004
and the Iraqi Kinder of Fallujah in 2005.
I cry for the children of wars against humanity.
I cry for the children shot, bombed, burned, or starved to death or humiliated, beaten, maimed, imprisoned, tortured and raped because some grown-ups believe themselves or their race or their people or their class as more deserving of life and the treasures of the earth than others.
And I cry for the Kinder of Palestine,
the Kinder of Deir Yassin in 1948,
the Kinder of Qibya in 1953,
the Kinder of Kafr Qasim in 1956,
the Kinder of Sabra and Shatila 1982,
the Kinder of Hebron in 1994,
the Kinder of Jenin in 2002.
I cry for Shayma Al Masri, 4 years old, killed together with her brother Arafat and three neighbour children Mohammed, Bara and Aziza on March 4, 2002 in a failed Israeli assassination attack.
I cry for Raghda Adnan Al-Assar, 10 years old, struck in the head by Israeli fire while sitting at her desk in UNRWA’s Elementary C Girl’s School in Khan Younis camp on September 10,2004
I cry for Imam Al-Hams, 13 years old, killed on her way to school when she came too close I to a check point and an Israeli officer empied his weapon into her, on October 5, 2004.
I cry for Rajeh Ghaben, 10 years old, killed by Israeli shells together with his brothers Jaber and Mohammed and his cousins Hani, Mohammed and Bassam, while he was picking strawberrys on his family’s fields in northern Gaza on January 4, 2005.
I cry for Nouran Iyad Dib killed by an Israeli sniper during recess in her school in Rafah on January 31, 2005
I cry for Ashraf Moussa, 14 years old, and his friends Hassan and Khaled who were killed when they played soccer in a field in Rafah on April 9, 2005
And in my heart and in my mind those children are there, together, on exactly the same place as the children of Izieu.
And I see them when I close my eyes and hear Reinhard Mey sing in the end:
I listened often to it and taught it to my children.
The song is about a group of 44 Jewish children between the ages of 4 to 17 years, who in 1944 were hiding from the Nazis in a house in Izieu in the mountains above the Rhone valley in France.
The song gives us the names of some of those children like Elie, Sami, Max und Sarah. It tells us that Joseph painted landscapes with horses, Theodore liked to feed the chickens and the cows, Liliane could write like a poet and Raoul would sing all day long. The song also tells us, that these children were betrayed to Germans. On the Thursday before Easter, the day of Getsemane, they were picked up by trucks, sent to Auschwitz in a train and that none of them escaped the murderers.
This song made me see those children in my mind, even though they died years before I was born. The song let me feel their hopes and then their fear, their pain and their despair.
Those children were real human beings, with names and a life history, who suffered because of the Nazi ideology of racism and racial superiority. And they were victims of war against the ethical values of humanity.
To remember those children, meant for me, that never, never again should children be murdered for such ideologies.
We should do everything to work against racism.
We should become a society that shows respect for all human beings, a society that shows respect for differences of religion and culture, a society that sees the value of every human being as absolute, to protect his dignity as the maxime of all political acts, just as our constitution, the "Grundgesetz" states.
This is what the rememberence of those real children symbolized for me.
But then, not very long ago, I found out that remembering the murderous atrocities of Nazi-Germany meant something a whole lot different for Zionists.
Zionists do not see those atrocities as acts of racism and an ideology of superiority, they see them exclusively as acts directed against the Jewish people per se. For them those atrocities show what they thought all along, that gentiles are inflicted with the uncurable decease of Anti-Semitism, a murderous insanity which can break out without warning erverywhere, and that all Gentiles are a potentially lethal danger for Jews.
Some Zionists use those Nazi atrocities as a justification for their own atrocities against other people, other children. They do not object racism or an ideology of "Übermenschentum". They believe in that same ideology in a value system where the Jewish race is on top.
Some Zionists do not see the children of Izieu, with their names and their history. They do not see Elie, Sami, Max, Sarah, Joseph, Theodore, Liane and Raoul. They see numbers adding up, the higher, the better, sacrificed for an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, for
"One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe",said Izaak Greenbaum -- head of Jewish Agency Rescue Committee February 18, 1943.
So, no longer do I sing the song "Die Kinder von Izieu", but I still remember those children and I cry for them, as I cry for all those other Kinder:
The Armenian Kinder of Turkey in 1915,
the Ukrainian Kinder in 1932,
the Chinese Kinder of Nanking in 1937,
the English Kinder of London and Coventry in 1941,
the Tschek Kinder of Lidice in 1942,
the Polish Kinder of Volhynia in 1943,
the German Kinder of Hamburg in 1943 and of Dresden in 1945,
the Japanese Kinder of Tokyo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945,
the South African Kinder of Sharpeville in 1960,
the Vietnames Kinder of My Lai in 1968,
the Indian Kinder of Killevanamani in 1969,
the El Salvadoran Kinder of El Mozote in 1981,
the Nicaraguan Kinder of El Juste in 1987,
the Rwandan Kinder of Kigali in 1994,
the Chechnyan Kinder of Grozny in 2000,
the Russian Kinder of Beslan in 2004,
the Darfur Kinder of Sudan in 2004
and the Iraqi Kinder of Fallujah in 2005.
I cry for the children of wars against humanity.
I cry for the children shot, bombed, burned, or starved to death or humiliated, beaten, maimed, imprisoned, tortured and raped because some grown-ups believe themselves or their race or their people or their class as more deserving of life and the treasures of the earth than others.
And I cry for the Kinder of Palestine,
the Kinder of Deir Yassin in 1948,
the Kinder of Qibya in 1953,
the Kinder of Kafr Qasim in 1956,
the Kinder of Sabra and Shatila 1982,
the Kinder of Hebron in 1994,
the Kinder of Jenin in 2002.
I cry for Shayma Al Masri, 4 years old, killed together with her brother Arafat and three neighbour children Mohammed, Bara and Aziza on March 4, 2002 in a failed Israeli assassination attack.
I cry for Raghda Adnan Al-Assar, 10 years old, struck in the head by Israeli fire while sitting at her desk in UNRWA’s Elementary C Girl’s School in Khan Younis camp on September 10,2004
I cry for Imam Al-Hams, 13 years old, killed on her way to school when she came too close I to a check point and an Israeli officer empied his weapon into her, on October 5, 2004.
I cry for Rajeh Ghaben, 10 years old, killed by Israeli shells together with his brothers Jaber and Mohammed and his cousins Hani, Mohammed and Bassam, while he was picking strawberrys on his family’s fields in northern Gaza on January 4, 2005.
I cry for Nouran Iyad Dib killed by an Israeli sniper during recess in her school in Rafah on January 31, 2005
I cry for Ashraf Moussa, 14 years old, and his friends Hassan and Khaled who were killed when they played soccer in a field in Rafah on April 9, 2005
And in my heart and in my mind those children are there, together, on exactly the same place as the children of Izieu.
And I see them when I close my eyes and hear Reinhard Mey sing in the end:
"..I talk and I sing
And if necessary I scream
So that our children
Will know who they´ve been….
They were just like them,
Like all children everywhere…
Die Kinder von Izieu
Above the Rhone valley there."
Friday, April 29, 2005
The New Pope
It´s a bit of patriotic pride, I guess, and yes, I am happy that the new Pope Benedict XVI is former Cardinal Ratzinger.
They say, he is a reactionary just like the former Pope John Paul II was a reactionary. It depends what you call a reactionary in my opinion. I read the former Pope´s messages on peace and on poverty and they sure didn´t sound reactionary to me. But yes, there are those views about sexuality, feminism and liberation theology. I´ll get into those topics in another post.
Here I would like to let Pope Benedict talk for himself, with my own thoughts attached.
On April 25, 2005, after talking to representatives of the Eastern Christian churches, he talked to those of other faiths:
The above quote made it it quite clear, that the catholic Church will not support any kind of modern "Crusade" or "Fight of Civilisations". By emphasizing especially the dialog and the building of bridges between Muslims and Christians you can be sure that this was not just a diplomatic meaningless gesture, but he was making a point.
Cantrast this "bridge building speech" to Bush´s "fire speech" at his inauguration.
Peace as a duty for all those who profess to belong to religious traditions, is an obvious counter towards Bush and his followers of Christian and Jewish Zionists.
By the way in an interview Bush gave after the last Pope´s funeral he said:
"I think John Paul II will have a clear legacy of peace, compassion..."
This for sure is the opposite legacy of what Bush himself will have.
Here are excerpts from Pope Benedicts inauguration homely:
Talking about the "pallium" which would be placed upon his shoulders as a liturgical symbol, symbolizing both the "yoke of Christ" and the "lost sheep" he said:
Yes, the Pope does see the salvation of men more in the spiritual than in the political realm, however by using the words "the powers of exploitation and destruction" he also shows critical inside into the reasons for the miserable state the world is in right now.
The Pope puts love as the opposite of power. And I think he is right. The world cannot be got off the destructive path, it is on right now, by just another power struggle.
We have seen, that in China and the Soviet Union a violent power struggle towards the supposedly humanistic and universalist goal the Marxist ideas represented has brought on in both countries and their satellites immense suffering for exactly those people who should have profited, the poor, the peasants.
And in both countries when the governments reversed to capitalistic goals, for the majority nothing of the idealist mindset of universalism was left.
An ideology based on power struggle is just not capable of creating an altruistic mindset neither in its adherents nor in the people they want to convert.
A philosophy however, based on the idea of unconditional love, even love of enemy, is far more likely to change the attitude of the surrounding society towards universalism and egitalism in the long run.
And this is where God´s patience comes in: Change doesn´t come suddenly it takes time. The Church herself, after she had become state-religion for the Roman Empire, took far more than a thousand years to change herself from a political to a moral authority. And this is where the strength of religion lies, in ethics.
Human progress must lie in human ethics, it cannot lie in human power of some over others, no matter who those some are. History has shown us, that power corrupts men - nearly all of them.
They say, he is a reactionary just like the former Pope John Paul II was a reactionary. It depends what you call a reactionary in my opinion. I read the former Pope´s messages on peace and on poverty and they sure didn´t sound reactionary to me. But yes, there are those views about sexuality, feminism and liberation theology. I´ll get into those topics in another post.
Here I would like to let Pope Benedict talk for himself, with my own thoughts attached.
On April 25, 2005, after talking to representatives of the Eastern Christian churches, he talked to those of other faiths:
I turn now to you, dear friends from different religious traditions," said the Holy Father in English, "and I thank you sincerely for your presence at the solemn inauguration of my pontificate. ... I am particularly grateful for the presence in our midst of members of the Muslim community, and I express my appreciation for the growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians, both at the local and international level. I assure you that the Church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions, in order to seek the true good of every person and of society as a whole.
The world in which we live is often marked by conflicts, violence and war, but it earnestly longs for peace, peace which is above all a gift from God, peace for which we must pray without ceasing. Yet peace is also a duty to which all peoples must be committed, especially those who profess to belong to religious traditions. Our efforts to come together and foster dialogue are a valuable contribution to building peace on solid foundations."
Benedict XVI concluded by inviting all present "to become together artisans of peace, of a reciprocal commitment to understanding, respect and love." -V.I.S.
The above quote made it it quite clear, that the catholic Church will not support any kind of modern "Crusade" or "Fight of Civilisations". By emphasizing especially the dialog and the building of bridges between Muslims and Christians you can be sure that this was not just a diplomatic meaningless gesture, but he was making a point.
Cantrast this "bridge building speech" to Bush´s "fire speech" at his inauguration.
Peace as a duty for all those who profess to belong to religious traditions, is an obvious counter towards Bush and his followers of Christian and Jewish Zionists.
By the way in an interview Bush gave after the last Pope´s funeral he said:
"I think John Paul II will have a clear legacy of peace, compassion..."
This for sure is the opposite legacy of what Bush himself will have.
Here are excerpts from Pope Benedicts inauguration homely:
Talking about the "pallium" which would be placed upon his shoulders as a liturgical symbol, symbolizing both the "yoke of Christ" and the "lost sheep" he said:
"The symbolism of the pallium is even more concrete: the lamb's wool is meant to represent the lost, sick or weak sheep which the shepherd places on his shoulders and carries to the waters of life. For the Fathers of the Church, the parable of the lost sheep, which the shepherd seeks in the desert, was an image of the mystery of Christ and the Church. The human race - every one of us - is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way.
The Son of God will not let this happen; He cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a condition.
He leaps to his feet and abandons the glory of heaven, in order to go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the Cross. He takes it upon His shoulders and carries our humanity;
He carries us all -
He is the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.
What the pallium indicates first and foremost is that we are all carried by Christ. But at the same time it invites us to carry one another. Hence the pallium becomes a symbol of the shepherd's mission, of which the second reading and the Gospel speak. The pastor must be inspired by Christ's holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth's treasures no longer serve to build God's garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction. The Church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.
The symbol of the lamb also has a deeper meaning. In the ancient Near East, it was customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their people. This was an image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like sheep, which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished.
When the shepherd of all humanity, the living God, Himself became a lamb, He stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how He reveals Himself to be the true shepherd: 'I am the Good Shepherd . . . I lay down my life for the sheep,' Jesus says of Himself (Jn 10:14ff). It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God's sign: He Himself is love.
How often we wish that God would make show Himself stronger, that He would strike decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God's patience. And yet, we need His patience. God, Who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified Him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man...."
Yes, the Pope does see the salvation of men more in the spiritual than in the political realm, however by using the words "the powers of exploitation and destruction" he also shows critical inside into the reasons for the miserable state the world is in right now.
The Pope puts love as the opposite of power. And I think he is right. The world cannot be got off the destructive path, it is on right now, by just another power struggle.
We have seen, that in China and the Soviet Union a violent power struggle towards the supposedly humanistic and universalist goal the Marxist ideas represented has brought on in both countries and their satellites immense suffering for exactly those people who should have profited, the poor, the peasants.
And in both countries when the governments reversed to capitalistic goals, for the majority nothing of the idealist mindset of universalism was left.
An ideology based on power struggle is just not capable of creating an altruistic mindset neither in its adherents nor in the people they want to convert.
A philosophy however, based on the idea of unconditional love, even love of enemy, is far more likely to change the attitude of the surrounding society towards universalism and egitalism in the long run.
And this is where God´s patience comes in: Change doesn´t come suddenly it takes time. The Church herself, after she had become state-religion for the Roman Empire, took far more than a thousand years to change herself from a political to a moral authority. And this is where the strength of religion lies, in ethics.
Human progress must lie in human ethics, it cannot lie in human power of some over others, no matter who those some are. History has shown us, that power corrupts men - nearly all of them.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Cut Backs and Paranoia
OPEN YOUR EYES AND SEE
AND THEN
SCREAM WITH ME
Steve Maich from the Canadian publication MACLEANS writes puts up the question "Is America going broke". In an interview David Walker the Comptroller General of the United States explains, that
If these cut-downs and tax-raises are not done, then in a few years debts will rise to such a height, that the basics, like education, environmental programs and the legal system can no longer be afforded.
National Security is mentioned fleetingly, but military spending it never even was taken seriously into account as having to be cut down as well.
Right now the United Stated spends more money on weapons and "intelligence" than all other countries of the whole world combined and still a cut down in this is not considered a serious option in an extremely serious fiscal crisis?
Even just cutting down military costs by half would probably get the US out of debts in a short time.
Are those economists blind or why don’t they consider this option?
Maybe it’s just American paranoia, believing, that if America cannot threaten the whole world with destruction at the same time, all countries of the world will combine, attack and destroy America.
Maybe it is also the realisation that America has committed so many heinous crimes against humanity in the last few decades that the rest of the world will want revenge.
America projects its own crimes on the rest of the world and hates the rest of the world for them and therefore fears the world in a paranoid way.
America, even secular America, is totally Old-Testamentarian. Founded both on Puritan ethics and on Secular Supremacism, America does not believe in repentance through apologizing and forgiveness.
In this American believe salvation does not come by regretting what was done wrong, repenting and doing better from now on.
In this paranoid believe system salvation comes by faith alone, faith not in the humble, suffering redeemer, who identifies himself with the poor, humble and suffering of the world, not in the Prince of Peace but in the King of Power and Might.
And so while more and more starving its own people at home, especially the poor, the old and the weak, in selfaggrandizement America is showing the outside world the face of a mighty blood-thirsty warrior.
But paranoia is extremely bad for your health and self-aggrandizement is bad for your relationships. In the end, paranoid fears could become self-fulfilling prophecies.
AND THEN
SCREAM WITH ME
Steve Maich from the Canadian publication MACLEANS writes puts up the question "Is America going broke". In an interview David Walker the Comptroller General of the United States explains, that
that plush North American lifestyle to which we've all grown accustomed has been bought on credit, and the bill is rapidly nearing its due date. If the United States can't find a way to pay up, the results will spill beyond national borders, spreading economic misery far and wideAnd this way to "pay up" would have to be by raising taxes and cut down on spending:
Walker stresses the need to make "tough decisions," and none will be tougher than tackling the runaway costs of providing health-care coverage for the elderly and the poor. Health spending in the U.S. is projected to jump 63 per cent by 2010, and to continue rising even faster after that. Most analysts agree that, at some point, the government must find a way to clamp down on those costs, yet any cuts in coverage are sure to raise an outcry from the swelling ranks of senior citizens -- a highly influential voting bloc.
Academics have proposed such reforms as a national retail sales tax, a luxury tax and a rollback of all tax cuts enacted since 2001. Others are calling for increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service to catch tax cheaters. Many insist there must be increases to Medicare premiums, as well as massive cutbacks in a wide range of social programs.
If these cut-downs and tax-raises are not done, then in a few years debts will rise to such a height, that the basics, like education, environmental programs and the legal system can no longer be afforded.
National Security is mentioned fleetingly, but military spending it never even was taken seriously into account as having to be cut down as well.
Right now the United Stated spends more money on weapons and "intelligence" than all other countries of the whole world combined and still a cut down in this is not considered a serious option in an extremely serious fiscal crisis?
Even just cutting down military costs by half would probably get the US out of debts in a short time.
Are those economists blind or why don’t they consider this option?
Maybe it’s just American paranoia, believing, that if America cannot threaten the whole world with destruction at the same time, all countries of the world will combine, attack and destroy America.
Maybe it is also the realisation that America has committed so many heinous crimes against humanity in the last few decades that the rest of the world will want revenge.
America projects its own crimes on the rest of the world and hates the rest of the world for them and therefore fears the world in a paranoid way.
America, even secular America, is totally Old-Testamentarian. Founded both on Puritan ethics and on Secular Supremacism, America does not believe in repentance through apologizing and forgiveness.
In this American believe salvation does not come by regretting what was done wrong, repenting and doing better from now on.
In this paranoid believe system salvation comes by faith alone, faith not in the humble, suffering redeemer, who identifies himself with the poor, humble and suffering of the world, not in the Prince of Peace but in the King of Power and Might.
And so while more and more starving its own people at home, especially the poor, the old and the weak, in selfaggrandizement America is showing the outside world the face of a mighty blood-thirsty warrior.
But paranoia is extremely bad for your health and self-aggrandizement is bad for your relationships. In the end, paranoid fears could become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
I´m an Alien
I no longer fit into any box. I used to see myself as a socialist. I don’t any more. I used to see myself as progressive of leftist. I don’t any more. But I haven’t changed course and become a conservative all of a sudden, neither in the American nor in the more benign German sense.
Umkahlil comments in her blog about the "liberal bloggers" who complained of not being invited to the press-party, when so many conservatives were. But when she checked out their blogs, she couldn’t even find one pro-Palestinian article in March from all the list of those "liberal" bloggers.
Those "liberals" were totally blind to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
In the same way I could not even find one single article by so-called progressives who could see, that there was enough evidence in Schiavo case to point to a mercy-killing not of a "brain-dead" woman but of a severely handicapped but awake woman, whose life was declared "unworthy" to live, something the Nazis have done to thousands of people.
In the same way I see the German liberals and progressives being satisfied with the ban of women wearing a headscarf teaching in public schools or working in other public services, since according to their logic those women are either oppressed by their families or they are potential terrorists or married to potential terrorists.
So by banning women from working they are trying to liberate them?
I never was a feminist, but when I read progressive stuff, it seems to me, that feminism is a main prerequisite of being a progressive and in nearly all cases, atheism as well. However feminism nowadays means no longer to fight for equal rights in politics, in the family and at the working place, no, it means most and foremost and over all the fight for "female reproduction rights" or just plain pro-choice or still more plain pro-abortion.
Not agreeing on this issue means a woman is self-hating and reactionary. It’s not even possible to discuss the matter, arguments, even scientific arguments are not allowed to be raised. End of discussion, Punkt, basta.
And then what about my religious opinions? Most people in my parish came from countries with far more conservative Catholicism than I. Theologically I do not always agree with them. I can’t read the bible literally, but I see much symbolism in it.
However I do believe in the central points of the Creed, the divinity of Christ, his suffering and death for the sins of the world, his resurrection, the promise of eternal life for us and Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.
But then most German Catholics do no longer believe this either. And those you hear about in the news are all for reforming the Church by turning her upside down.
For sure I wouldn’t mind a few minor changes, but in these so very dangerous times for the Church to get into an inside battle, dancing around her own navel is in my opinion not only self-defeating but out right irresponsible. Should the Church to be changed into something the small but vociferous middle-European liberal Catholics want against more than 90% of her practicing membership in times where we are on the edge of a new world-war?
And so I pray with my whole heart, please, God, let the next Pope be a conservative but not a Zionist. But the German liberal Catholics will tell me, so you want the Pope to be a Jew-hating Inquisitor?
No, I’d say, I just want his main work be not changing the Church from the inside but strengthening her message of peace and justice towards the poor of the world. Let the next Pope also become an ambassador between the world’s cultures and religions, a peace maker, a true pontifex, a builder of bridges.
But the liberals won’t listen to any explanations, they never do. They call me conservative, they call me reactionary, they call me self-hating, and they call me anti-Semitic.
I’m none of those things.
I’m Erlenda, I’m an alien.
Umkahlil comments in her blog about the "liberal bloggers" who complained of not being invited to the press-party, when so many conservatives were. But when she checked out their blogs, she couldn’t even find one pro-Palestinian article in March from all the list of those "liberal" bloggers.
Those "liberals" were totally blind to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
In the same way I could not even find one single article by so-called progressives who could see, that there was enough evidence in Schiavo case to point to a mercy-killing not of a "brain-dead" woman but of a severely handicapped but awake woman, whose life was declared "unworthy" to live, something the Nazis have done to thousands of people.
In the same way I see the German liberals and progressives being satisfied with the ban of women wearing a headscarf teaching in public schools or working in other public services, since according to their logic those women are either oppressed by their families or they are potential terrorists or married to potential terrorists.
So by banning women from working they are trying to liberate them?
I never was a feminist, but when I read progressive stuff, it seems to me, that feminism is a main prerequisite of being a progressive and in nearly all cases, atheism as well. However feminism nowadays means no longer to fight for equal rights in politics, in the family and at the working place, no, it means most and foremost and over all the fight for "female reproduction rights" or just plain pro-choice or still more plain pro-abortion.
Not agreeing on this issue means a woman is self-hating and reactionary. It’s not even possible to discuss the matter, arguments, even scientific arguments are not allowed to be raised. End of discussion, Punkt, basta.
And then what about my religious opinions? Most people in my parish came from countries with far more conservative Catholicism than I. Theologically I do not always agree with them. I can’t read the bible literally, but I see much symbolism in it.
However I do believe in the central points of the Creed, the divinity of Christ, his suffering and death for the sins of the world, his resurrection, the promise of eternal life for us and Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.
But then most German Catholics do no longer believe this either. And those you hear about in the news are all for reforming the Church by turning her upside down.
For sure I wouldn’t mind a few minor changes, but in these so very dangerous times for the Church to get into an inside battle, dancing around her own navel is in my opinion not only self-defeating but out right irresponsible. Should the Church to be changed into something the small but vociferous middle-European liberal Catholics want against more than 90% of her practicing membership in times where we are on the edge of a new world-war?
And so I pray with my whole heart, please, God, let the next Pope be a conservative but not a Zionist. But the German liberal Catholics will tell me, so you want the Pope to be a Jew-hating Inquisitor?
No, I’d say, I just want his main work be not changing the Church from the inside but strengthening her message of peace and justice towards the poor of the world. Let the next Pope also become an ambassador between the world’s cultures and religions, a peace maker, a true pontifex, a builder of bridges.
But the liberals won’t listen to any explanations, they never do. They call me conservative, they call me reactionary, they call me self-hating, and they call me anti-Semitic.
I’m none of those things.
I’m Erlenda, I’m an alien.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
I Would Want to Live
Some of you disagree with me on the case of Terri Schiavo, comparing it to cases, when terminally ill patients, often under excruciating pain, wanted to not prolong their suffering needlessly or, when brain-dead people were taking off life-support machines.
There is, in my opinion, a difference between pulling a plug and taking somebody, who cannot protest, off his or her food and water.
A person dying of cancer under a lot of pain very often wishes to end this pain by overmedication on pain relief-medication, and I truly understand and would respect his or her wishes.
And, if I should have to suffer from terminal cancer, I would most probably choose myself to use as much pain-relief as possible, even if it would shorten my life-span.
But the case of Terri Schiavo is different. She was not terminally ill, she did not suffer from excruciating pain, and she had not left any will saying, that she would rather die than live in a semi-awake condition.
The accusations against her husband did not come from the media, but they came from her brother, who lived at the same apartment-complex and from her best friend, who told her parents that Terri was contemplating leaving her husband because of emotional and physical abuse.
These accusation were made years before Michael Schiavo went to court for ending Terri´s life, years before all the media attention. These accusations were made, when Terri´s parents wanted to gain custody over their daughter because Michael had refused to let her give rehabilitating therapy and antibiotic medication in two cases when Terri contracted an infection. These testamonies were not allowed into court by judge Greer.
I find Terri´s family and her best friend more believable than her husband.
The way she became isolated more and more from her family of origin and her former friends, together with other forms of control of her, does seem rather typical for an abusiv relationship.
I also find the testamonies of nurses and doctors, who say that Terri is reacting towards her family and even trying to communicate, quite believable.
Most of these testamonies were not allowed into court, which is in my opinion an abuse of justice.
And as I said, both the religious right and the Republicans jumped on the Terri band-wagon for their own political reasons and only after the parents had created enough publicity so they would find it worth it.And having the "wrong" people support Terri does not take away from the fact, that killing a handicapped person just because somebody is saying her life is worthless, is morally wrong. And it will, just like in Hitlers times, lead to more and more mercy-killings. Nowadays you call it lack of life-quality, when then it was called "lebensunwertes Leben" (life not worthy of living).
I think, to kill somebody because he or she is not seen as productive enough for capitalist society, is the end of civilization and the beginning of what Marx called barbary. Of course with these wars for profit we are already in the middle of a barbarian age. The killing of Terri Schiavo is just one more symptom.
To think about it, more people were getting killed in the last century and now in the beginning of the new one by wars and economic oppression than in any other age of humanity.
And in Germany, still one of the richest countries of the world with not yet as much poverty as you can see in the United States, just of few weaks ago, the leader of the junior Free Democrats said, "die Alten sollten den Löffel abgeben" (old people should drop down and die), because they are a drain on the system. And then some reporter on a follow-up, could find quite a few young people on the street with exactly the same opinion.
The retirement system might have some financial flaws and it might be in need for reform, like asking for a bit more solidarity from the rich, who nowadays can totally opt out of the system in Germany, or from the corporations who make billions of profits with a small work-force and therefore pay next to nothing into the social-system.But the young in Germany rather think, the best way would be for the elderly to just drop down dead.
We are a society of self-centeredness run amok.
Which means, we are on the way to self-destruction, because we can no longer empathize with one another.
As I pointed out in "Religion and Politics", altruism has been an important survival tool for humanity. The strength of the human species has allways been in cooperation far more than in in competition.
Caring for the sick has made society more compassionate, more tolerant towards differances and also more capable to find cures for healing, which improved survival rates for everybody.
And so, while not being able to care for themselves, handicapped people like Terri are still able to change society for the better, just by their very existance.
Thinking about Terri, I thought about what I would feel, if I ever came into her condition. While I´m rather sure, that she is indeed awake, I do not know, how capable she is of reflecting on her condition. If she is just dreaming most of the time, are her dreams making her life worth while?
Sometimes between dreaming and waking I feel most alife and most happy. And while I never can share those dreams, for they vanish, the minute I´m fully awake, I still can feel that there was something there, worth to have been lived through.
But what, if Terri actually can think, like us. The way she is laughing at jokes and closing her eyes at prayers, opening them again when prayer is finished, suggests, that she might be able to think but unable to speak, like some people who have a stroke.
There she lies incapable to communicate her thoughts.
If it was me, would I feel incarcerated into a personal hell?
I´ve done a lot of thinking during the last few years myself and most often was unable to communicate my thoughts with others, partly because I have a problem expressing myself verbally, partly because those around me aren´t too interested in my thoughts. And still, when I think about it, then I feel that every thought was worth it, even if only for me alone.
I believe in a higher purpose to life and in spiritual growth, personal and for the community.
And yes, even living in a world of dreams and thoughts all by myself, all alone, if I was Terri, I would want to live.
There is, in my opinion, a difference between pulling a plug and taking somebody, who cannot protest, off his or her food and water.
A person dying of cancer under a lot of pain very often wishes to end this pain by overmedication on pain relief-medication, and I truly understand and would respect his or her wishes.
And, if I should have to suffer from terminal cancer, I would most probably choose myself to use as much pain-relief as possible, even if it would shorten my life-span.
But the case of Terri Schiavo is different. She was not terminally ill, she did not suffer from excruciating pain, and she had not left any will saying, that she would rather die than live in a semi-awake condition.
The accusations against her husband did not come from the media, but they came from her brother, who lived at the same apartment-complex and from her best friend, who told her parents that Terri was contemplating leaving her husband because of emotional and physical abuse.
These accusation were made years before Michael Schiavo went to court for ending Terri´s life, years before all the media attention. These accusations were made, when Terri´s parents wanted to gain custody over their daughter because Michael had refused to let her give rehabilitating therapy and antibiotic medication in two cases when Terri contracted an infection. These testamonies were not allowed into court by judge Greer.
I find Terri´s family and her best friend more believable than her husband.
The way she became isolated more and more from her family of origin and her former friends, together with other forms of control of her, does seem rather typical for an abusiv relationship.
I also find the testamonies of nurses and doctors, who say that Terri is reacting towards her family and even trying to communicate, quite believable.
Most of these testamonies were not allowed into court, which is in my opinion an abuse of justice.
And as I said, both the religious right and the Republicans jumped on the Terri band-wagon for their own political reasons and only after the parents had created enough publicity so they would find it worth it.And having the "wrong" people support Terri does not take away from the fact, that killing a handicapped person just because somebody is saying her life is worthless, is morally wrong. And it will, just like in Hitlers times, lead to more and more mercy-killings. Nowadays you call it lack of life-quality, when then it was called "lebensunwertes Leben" (life not worthy of living).
I think, to kill somebody because he or she is not seen as productive enough for capitalist society, is the end of civilization and the beginning of what Marx called barbary. Of course with these wars for profit we are already in the middle of a barbarian age. The killing of Terri Schiavo is just one more symptom.
To think about it, more people were getting killed in the last century and now in the beginning of the new one by wars and economic oppression than in any other age of humanity.
And in Germany, still one of the richest countries of the world with not yet as much poverty as you can see in the United States, just of few weaks ago, the leader of the junior Free Democrats said, "die Alten sollten den Löffel abgeben" (old people should drop down and die), because they are a drain on the system. And then some reporter on a follow-up, could find quite a few young people on the street with exactly the same opinion.
The retirement system might have some financial flaws and it might be in need for reform, like asking for a bit more solidarity from the rich, who nowadays can totally opt out of the system in Germany, or from the corporations who make billions of profits with a small work-force and therefore pay next to nothing into the social-system.But the young in Germany rather think, the best way would be for the elderly to just drop down dead.
We are a society of self-centeredness run amok.
Which means, we are on the way to self-destruction, because we can no longer empathize with one another.
As I pointed out in "Religion and Politics", altruism has been an important survival tool for humanity. The strength of the human species has allways been in cooperation far more than in in competition.
Caring for the sick has made society more compassionate, more tolerant towards differances and also more capable to find cures for healing, which improved survival rates for everybody.
And so, while not being able to care for themselves, handicapped people like Terri are still able to change society for the better, just by their very existance.
Thinking about Terri, I thought about what I would feel, if I ever came into her condition. While I´m rather sure, that she is indeed awake, I do not know, how capable she is of reflecting on her condition. If she is just dreaming most of the time, are her dreams making her life worth while?
Sometimes between dreaming and waking I feel most alife and most happy. And while I never can share those dreams, for they vanish, the minute I´m fully awake, I still can feel that there was something there, worth to have been lived through.
But what, if Terri actually can think, like us. The way she is laughing at jokes and closing her eyes at prayers, opening them again when prayer is finished, suggests, that she might be able to think but unable to speak, like some people who have a stroke.
There she lies incapable to communicate her thoughts.
If it was me, would I feel incarcerated into a personal hell?
I´ve done a lot of thinking during the last few years myself and most often was unable to communicate my thoughts with others, partly because I have a problem expressing myself verbally, partly because those around me aren´t too interested in my thoughts. And still, when I think about it, then I feel that every thought was worth it, even if only for me alone.
I believe in a higher purpose to life and in spiritual growth, personal and for the community.
And yes, even living in a world of dreams and thoughts all by myself, all alone, if I was Terri, I would want to live.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Why Progressives Should Help to Save Terry Schiavo´s Life
Terri Schiavo, a severely handicapped woman is sentenced to death by dehydration by Florida judge George Greer.
Her husband Michael Schiavo claims that Terri has told him before the incident which had caused her disability that she did not wish to live, if she should ever fall into a coma. Terri’s parents, however, say, Terri would never have expressed such an opinion.
The husband’s lawyers and medical experts claim, that Terri is in a constant vegetative state, a waking coma, where sounds and movements she makes are just involuntary reflexes.
Other experts however agree with the opinion of Terry Schiavo´s parents, that Terry is awake and reacting to and interacting with other people especially family members.
Dr. William Hammesfahr, an highly decorated expert, who had worked with many patients like Terri states plainly, that she is not in a coma, with appropriate therapy her condition could improve to the point, that she gets part of her mobility back in one arm and one hand up to the point, that she can transfer herself from her wheelchair into her bed.
There are also dozens of eye-witness accounts about how Terri reacts to people and also to music, together with Video-evidence which, in my opinion, present convincing evidence, that Terri Schiavo is not comatose.
Terri’s parents and brother brought up allegations that Michael Schiavo was an emotionally and physically abusive husband and that Terri had planned divorce shortly before she became ill and that he therefore was not an appropriate guardian for his wife.
Feminists should note that while these allegations could be a desperate try to change the custody situation by Terri´s parents, it seems more than likely that they are true, since they mainly come from Terri’s best friend. She claims she had helped Terri to make plans for divorce. Some of Michael Schiavo´s behaviour, corrobated by other people, like the urge to control and monitor his wife’s every movement point to an abusive relationship.
No wife should be left in the guardianship of an abusive husband when she due to illness is no longer able to protect herself.
But there is still another level to this:
Nazi Germany had a policy of terminating so-called "unworthy life", meaning the killing of retarded or mentally ill or of severely physically handicapped patients. In order to get the German people to agree with this policy, they produced propaganda films which depicted the life of handicapped or mentally ill people as a living hell. Then they asked the audience to have compassion on those unfortunate creatures and support putting them out of their misery.
The political reasoning behind this was of course not in any way compassion, it was Eugenics and getting rid of useless eaters.
The case of Terri Schiavo, who is not in any terrible pain, nor is she dying, nor is she with all likelihood in a comatose state, could become a case of precedence for just such a policy. And it could have a meaning for the current situation in Iraq or in wars that are still planned. And in this way to think about and fight for this one single handicapped person Terri Schiavo, is not a distraction from fighting to save the many people currently and in the future in danger of being killed by aggressive wars.
Many American soldiers come home from this war in body bags, far more however come home severely injured, some of them with brain-damage. If Terri Schiavo, who is most probably not comatose, is declared in coma and she is no longer declared to be worthy to receive life-saving care or treatment, the same thing will eventually happen to many brain-damaged veterans, if they are unable to talk clearly or control their movements precisely.
They will be declared comatose and the army will deny them financial support for their necessary care or treatment. The families of those Veterans are most often too poor to pay for medical treatment themselves and while they might clearly see that their loved one is responsive to them and not comatose, they will be financially unable to go through court-proceedings to prove their case - court-proceedings, which they could quite likely loose as you can see in the case of Terri Schiavo.
You might say that it was Jeb Bush, who saved Terri last time at the eleventh hour, portraying himself as her guardian angel. But he did not come in on his own. It was only pressure from his potential religious voters, which made him intercede.
And yes right now there are mostly right-wing religious groups supporting the survival of Terri; however these groups did not come right away to the help of the Schindlers, the parents of Terri, when they asked for their support. It was only after the Schindlers had succeeded to get enough media coverage on their own and therefore public sympathy, about 2 years back, when those groups jumped on the band-wagon. Right now Republican politicians are reacting on pressure by their religious base, while the so-called "liberal" media is calling for Terri’s death.
But remember, the "liberal" media was and still is cheer-leading for the Iraq-war and now saying, that no matter the terrible casualties on both sides, the torture and the poisoning of the whole country with thousands of Nagasaki bombs worth of radiation with depleted uranium, the "democratic" elections in Iraq make it all worth it.
What about the ACLU, who is also calling for Terri Schiavo to be "humanly” dehydrated to death?
There we come into the private area of our own psychology. Often, when we look at someone like Terri Schiavo, we do actually not see her, as the unique single human being she is; instead we see only our own worst fears reflected there is this wheelchair or this bed.
When people look at Terri they think or even say aloud:” I would never want to live like this.”
But what they actually mean by it is, that they never want to become like Terri Schiavo. And this is true, there is not a living soul in the world, except maybe someone who is presently tortured, who wants to become like Terri Schiavo. Who would want to loose so many of ones abilities and freedoms?
But then, if you ever would come into the same situation as Terri is in right now, you would want to live. People, who become physically but not mentally handicapped through an accident or an illness, are far more likely to become so severely depressed, that they wish themselves dead, than people with mental damage to their brain. The latter usually ready to accept their condition and take life as it comes. They feel sad, when they are neglected, and enjoy life, when there are people around who care for them.
Many of them live in their own world, which is slightly different from ours. But a loving relative or an empathetic care-giver can enter their world and function as a kind of an ambassador from our world to theirs, so that their world becomes brighter and they can live with the restrictions our world puts on them.
However, it has occurred to me, that Terri Schiavo might be far less mentally handicapped than it seems at first glance.
In an affidavit a nurse states, that when a priest was praying with her, Terri reacted, by trying to be quiet and closing her eyes during the prayer, opening them again afterwards. And then, after the prayer, when that priest was joking with her, she laughed appreciatively.
For a person to understand the abstract principle of prayer means, that she can understand her environment quite well.
But then, you never know, what understanding a handicapped person, who is unable to talk, really has. An appropriate reaction in a social situation is always a sign for a good grasp on reality.
I once worked with a lady, who in the last stages of the Alzheimer-decease. She was no longer able to talk or walk or feed herself. But we noticed that she, a former music-teacher, still calmed down and seemed to be more happy and content when she could listen to music-tapes. But then I noticed that when I tried to sing to her old well-known fold-songs myself, she started to move slightly and make melodic sounds, at times it was just like she was trying to hold the tune with me. And then, one day, after I finished a song, this lady, who had never spoken a single understandable word in over a year, now softly uttered two of the most beautiful words in the world:"Thank you"
Her husband Michael Schiavo claims that Terri has told him before the incident which had caused her disability that she did not wish to live, if she should ever fall into a coma. Terri’s parents, however, say, Terri would never have expressed such an opinion.
The husband’s lawyers and medical experts claim, that Terri is in a constant vegetative state, a waking coma, where sounds and movements she makes are just involuntary reflexes.
Other experts however agree with the opinion of Terry Schiavo´s parents, that Terry is awake and reacting to and interacting with other people especially family members.
Dr. William Hammesfahr, an highly decorated expert, who had worked with many patients like Terri states plainly, that she is not in a coma, with appropriate therapy her condition could improve to the point, that she gets part of her mobility back in one arm and one hand up to the point, that she can transfer herself from her wheelchair into her bed.
There are also dozens of eye-witness accounts about how Terri reacts to people and also to music, together with Video-evidence which, in my opinion, present convincing evidence, that Terri Schiavo is not comatose.
Terri’s parents and brother brought up allegations that Michael Schiavo was an emotionally and physically abusive husband and that Terri had planned divorce shortly before she became ill and that he therefore was not an appropriate guardian for his wife.
Feminists should note that while these allegations could be a desperate try to change the custody situation by Terri´s parents, it seems more than likely that they are true, since they mainly come from Terri’s best friend. She claims she had helped Terri to make plans for divorce. Some of Michael Schiavo´s behaviour, corrobated by other people, like the urge to control and monitor his wife’s every movement point to an abusive relationship.
No wife should be left in the guardianship of an abusive husband when she due to illness is no longer able to protect herself.
But there is still another level to this:
Nazi Germany had a policy of terminating so-called "unworthy life", meaning the killing of retarded or mentally ill or of severely physically handicapped patients. In order to get the German people to agree with this policy, they produced propaganda films which depicted the life of handicapped or mentally ill people as a living hell. Then they asked the audience to have compassion on those unfortunate creatures and support putting them out of their misery.
The political reasoning behind this was of course not in any way compassion, it was Eugenics and getting rid of useless eaters.
The case of Terri Schiavo, who is not in any terrible pain, nor is she dying, nor is she with all likelihood in a comatose state, could become a case of precedence for just such a policy. And it could have a meaning for the current situation in Iraq or in wars that are still planned. And in this way to think about and fight for this one single handicapped person Terri Schiavo, is not a distraction from fighting to save the many people currently and in the future in danger of being killed by aggressive wars.
Many American soldiers come home from this war in body bags, far more however come home severely injured, some of them with brain-damage. If Terri Schiavo, who is most probably not comatose, is declared in coma and she is no longer declared to be worthy to receive life-saving care or treatment, the same thing will eventually happen to many brain-damaged veterans, if they are unable to talk clearly or control their movements precisely.
They will be declared comatose and the army will deny them financial support for their necessary care or treatment. The families of those Veterans are most often too poor to pay for medical treatment themselves and while they might clearly see that their loved one is responsive to them and not comatose, they will be financially unable to go through court-proceedings to prove their case - court-proceedings, which they could quite likely loose as you can see in the case of Terri Schiavo.
You might say that it was Jeb Bush, who saved Terri last time at the eleventh hour, portraying himself as her guardian angel. But he did not come in on his own. It was only pressure from his potential religious voters, which made him intercede.
And yes right now there are mostly right-wing religious groups supporting the survival of Terri; however these groups did not come right away to the help of the Schindlers, the parents of Terri, when they asked for their support. It was only after the Schindlers had succeeded to get enough media coverage on their own and therefore public sympathy, about 2 years back, when those groups jumped on the band-wagon. Right now Republican politicians are reacting on pressure by their religious base, while the so-called "liberal" media is calling for Terri’s death.
But remember, the "liberal" media was and still is cheer-leading for the Iraq-war and now saying, that no matter the terrible casualties on both sides, the torture and the poisoning of the whole country with thousands of Nagasaki bombs worth of radiation with depleted uranium, the "democratic" elections in Iraq make it all worth it.
What about the ACLU, who is also calling for Terri Schiavo to be "humanly” dehydrated to death?
There we come into the private area of our own psychology. Often, when we look at someone like Terri Schiavo, we do actually not see her, as the unique single human being she is; instead we see only our own worst fears reflected there is this wheelchair or this bed.
When people look at Terri they think or even say aloud:” I would never want to live like this.”
But what they actually mean by it is, that they never want to become like Terri Schiavo. And this is true, there is not a living soul in the world, except maybe someone who is presently tortured, who wants to become like Terri Schiavo. Who would want to loose so many of ones abilities and freedoms?
But then, if you ever would come into the same situation as Terri is in right now, you would want to live. People, who become physically but not mentally handicapped through an accident or an illness, are far more likely to become so severely depressed, that they wish themselves dead, than people with mental damage to their brain. The latter usually ready to accept their condition and take life as it comes. They feel sad, when they are neglected, and enjoy life, when there are people around who care for them.
Many of them live in their own world, which is slightly different from ours. But a loving relative or an empathetic care-giver can enter their world and function as a kind of an ambassador from our world to theirs, so that their world becomes brighter and they can live with the restrictions our world puts on them.
However, it has occurred to me, that Terri Schiavo might be far less mentally handicapped than it seems at first glance.
In an affidavit a nurse states, that when a priest was praying with her, Terri reacted, by trying to be quiet and closing her eyes during the prayer, opening them again afterwards. And then, after the prayer, when that priest was joking with her, she laughed appreciatively.
For a person to understand the abstract principle of prayer means, that she can understand her environment quite well.
But then, you never know, what understanding a handicapped person, who is unable to talk, really has. An appropriate reaction in a social situation is always a sign for a good grasp on reality.
I once worked with a lady, who in the last stages of the Alzheimer-decease. She was no longer able to talk or walk or feed herself. But we noticed that she, a former music-teacher, still calmed down and seemed to be more happy and content when she could listen to music-tapes. But then I noticed that when I tried to sing to her old well-known fold-songs myself, she started to move slightly and make melodic sounds, at times it was just like she was trying to hold the tune with me. And then, one day, after I finished a song, this lady, who had never spoken a single understandable word in over a year, now softly uttered two of the most beautiful words in the world:"Thank you"
Friday, February 25, 2005
Bush´s "Freedom" in Mainz
OPEN YOUR EYES AND SEE
AND THEN
SCREAM WITH ME
The WSW-site describes the extra-ordinary security measures the German city of Mainz had to put up with during the Bush-visit:
"In advance of Wednesday, February 23, a virtual state of emergency is being imposed in the Rhine-Main area, one of the most heavily populated regions of Germany.
Four motorways are being completely closed, rail travel restricted, navigation of the rivers Rhine and Main halted, schools and local offices closed down. The historical center of the city of Mainz will be totally blocked off. Helicopters will fly overhead, while the city is besieged by police units and snipers.
The rerouting of traffic and closure of the main routes between Frankfurt airport and Mainz will force tens of thousands of employees in the region, including workers at the huge Opel auto works at Rüsselsheim, to change shifts or take a day’s holiday.
Air space over Frankfurt airport is to be closed for nearly an hour. All private airplanes within a radius of 60 kilometres from Mainz are to be grounded for the entire day. For the first time ever, fighter planes of the German Air Force will be on standby to take off and attack in the event of any disturbance of air space.
US snipers will be posted on balconies and roofs along the route from the airport to Mainz and its city centre—this in a country that normally forbids foreign security forces, even bodyguards, from carrying weapons in public. Days in advance, US Secret Service agents have been surveying the region, and huge armoured cars, helicopters and hundreds of American “specialists” have been flown in.
A high security wall has been erected in the Mainz city centre around the historic cathedral, the castle, the regional parliament, the state chancellery and the world famous Gutenberg Museum. The city centre has been criss-crossed with barricades and placed under the control of armed policemen. Thousands of residents and those working in the city centre can leave or gain access only on foot, after showing their IDs. The central link over the Rhine to Wiesbaden, the Theodor Heuss bridge, is to be totally closed, even for pedestrians.
Some 1,300 gully and manhole covers have been welded shut, while free-standing mail boxes, garbage cans, electrical connection boxes, and even bicycles have been removed. City residents have been expressly forbidden from going onto their balconies or looking out an open window. They have been banned from parking their cars either in the street or in their own garages. Many garages have been sealed. The police have warned that they will break into and tow away all vehicles found in the restricted area beginning early Tuesday morning.
Garbage disposal and road cleaning will be halted on Wednesday. The university hospital, including its emergency ward, has been vacated and is being kept free for possible emergency use. Other hospitals have organised onsite overnight accommodation to make sure physicians, anaesthetists and nursing staff can be available for work."
In an interview on public TV German chancellor Schröder explained, in kind of a backhand way, that those measures were ordered by the Americans. He said, that if we want a visitor like this, we have to do the kind of security the Americans ask us to. And then he repeated himself that of course, the American president is very welcome in Germany and therefore we had to comply with American security demands.
Maybe he was speaking for himself, but my guess would be, that at least in the Mainz area, close to a hundred percent of the population were opposed to this visit, after it became clear what kind of paranoid measures the population would have to endure, and in which all the people of Mainz were treated as potentially highly dangerous terrorists.
Maybe the whole thing was good for us. For now we could see, what kind of freedom, Bush and Co actually have in mind for the rest of the world.
Protest-signs at a demonstration, very far outside of Bush’s view, spelled it out: "Bush, we don’t want your "freedom".
Although I doubt, that this incident alone will be a permanent wake-up call, it could be one drop in a barrel that will eventually overflow.
Sure is, that the German government cannot afford to take active part in the Iraq-war or any future wars without risking the population going on the barricades.
Of course, a stunt like 9/11 could be pulled off in Germany. But then, there were at least 20% of the German population, who already knew by last year, that percentage probably has grown in the last year.
If something like 9/11 would happen in Germany, the people who blaming America would soon be the majority. It is not so hard for the one person in five, who already knows, to inform the other 4.
The Bush-people have shown, how paranoid afraid they are of the German people. Only guilt can produce such a big paranoia.
And the Germans have seen, how insane the Bush-administration is, close up with their own eyes.
AND THEN
SCREAM WITH ME
The WSW-site describes the extra-ordinary security measures the German city of Mainz had to put up with during the Bush-visit:
"In advance of Wednesday, February 23, a virtual state of emergency is being imposed in the Rhine-Main area, one of the most heavily populated regions of Germany.
Four motorways are being completely closed, rail travel restricted, navigation of the rivers Rhine and Main halted, schools and local offices closed down. The historical center of the city of Mainz will be totally blocked off. Helicopters will fly overhead, while the city is besieged by police units and snipers.
The rerouting of traffic and closure of the main routes between Frankfurt airport and Mainz will force tens of thousands of employees in the region, including workers at the huge Opel auto works at Rüsselsheim, to change shifts or take a day’s holiday.
Air space over Frankfurt airport is to be closed for nearly an hour. All private airplanes within a radius of 60 kilometres from Mainz are to be grounded for the entire day. For the first time ever, fighter planes of the German Air Force will be on standby to take off and attack in the event of any disturbance of air space.
US snipers will be posted on balconies and roofs along the route from the airport to Mainz and its city centre—this in a country that normally forbids foreign security forces, even bodyguards, from carrying weapons in public. Days in advance, US Secret Service agents have been surveying the region, and huge armoured cars, helicopters and hundreds of American “specialists” have been flown in.
A high security wall has been erected in the Mainz city centre around the historic cathedral, the castle, the regional parliament, the state chancellery and the world famous Gutenberg Museum. The city centre has been criss-crossed with barricades and placed under the control of armed policemen. Thousands of residents and those working in the city centre can leave or gain access only on foot, after showing their IDs. The central link over the Rhine to Wiesbaden, the Theodor Heuss bridge, is to be totally closed, even for pedestrians.
Some 1,300 gully and manhole covers have been welded shut, while free-standing mail boxes, garbage cans, electrical connection boxes, and even bicycles have been removed. City residents have been expressly forbidden from going onto their balconies or looking out an open window. They have been banned from parking their cars either in the street or in their own garages. Many garages have been sealed. The police have warned that they will break into and tow away all vehicles found in the restricted area beginning early Tuesday morning.
Garbage disposal and road cleaning will be halted on Wednesday. The university hospital, including its emergency ward, has been vacated and is being kept free for possible emergency use. Other hospitals have organised onsite overnight accommodation to make sure physicians, anaesthetists and nursing staff can be available for work."
In an interview on public TV German chancellor Schröder explained, in kind of a backhand way, that those measures were ordered by the Americans. He said, that if we want a visitor like this, we have to do the kind of security the Americans ask us to. And then he repeated himself that of course, the American president is very welcome in Germany and therefore we had to comply with American security demands.
Maybe he was speaking for himself, but my guess would be, that at least in the Mainz area, close to a hundred percent of the population were opposed to this visit, after it became clear what kind of paranoid measures the population would have to endure, and in which all the people of Mainz were treated as potentially highly dangerous terrorists.
Maybe the whole thing was good for us. For now we could see, what kind of freedom, Bush and Co actually have in mind for the rest of the world.
Protest-signs at a demonstration, very far outside of Bush’s view, spelled it out: "Bush, we don’t want your "freedom".
Although I doubt, that this incident alone will be a permanent wake-up call, it could be one drop in a barrel that will eventually overflow.
Sure is, that the German government cannot afford to take active part in the Iraq-war or any future wars without risking the population going on the barricades.
Of course, a stunt like 9/11 could be pulled off in Germany. But then, there were at least 20% of the German population, who already knew by last year, that percentage probably has grown in the last year.
If something like 9/11 would happen in Germany, the people who blaming America would soon be the majority. It is not so hard for the one person in five, who already knows, to inform the other 4.
The Bush-people have shown, how paranoid afraid they are of the German people. Only guilt can produce such a big paranoia.
And the Germans have seen, how insane the Bush-administration is, close up with their own eyes.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Nathan, the Wise
Atheists, the Marxist kind or the others, tell us they built their philosophy on the Enlightenment. They tell us, they are the rational ones, and we, the religious people are the non-rational.
They tell us, that religion is responsible for war and warmongering. The left-wingers tell us that behind Hitler’s philosophy were Christianity.
It seems to me, that they are twisting history just as right-wingers do.
Fact is: Hitler many times denounced Christianity as weak and not fit for German nationalism. Many hundreds of priests and pastors were incarcerated in concentration camps. And many died there together with communists, socialists, peace-activists and other political prisoners.
The philosophical foundation of Nazism was Nietzsche, just as it is the foundation for Social Darwinism.
The non-religious streams of the Enlightenment have brought us Marx and Nietzsche. But there were religious streams as well. And they brought us for instance Mendelssohn and Lessing, German born, all of them.
Neither religion nor atheism per se is responsible for wars and oppression, but philosophies from either can be used to inflict unending pain and misery on other people.
There were hateful anti-Semitic writers in Germany, preparing the way for Hitler, but there were others as well, who had a deep respect for Judaism and the Jewish people. One of them was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Born in 1729, he was the son of a Lutheran minister and he became a very good friend of Moses Mendelssohn, working on joint writings and projects. In 1779, two years before his death, Lessing finished his last work, the theater-play “Nathan, the Wise”. It is said, that the character of Nathan was based on his friend Mendelssohn.
I loved this play, when I had to read it as a kid in school. And I still believe, it is the best thing German literature has ever come up with.
It culminates in a very old parable, the parable of the ring, but Lessing has changed it just a tiny bit, and in doing this, he put a new enlightened interpretation into it:
Nathan, the wise, is an old Jewish merchant living at the times of the crusades in Jerusalem, whose family, his wife and seven sons had been killed by Christians many years ago. After that, he had wandered around in total despair, hopelessness and burning hatred, until he found a tiny orphan baby, a Christian girl.
He took her in and raised her as his own daughter, never even telling her otherwise.
One day, when he comes home from a business journey, he finds out, that his house had caught fire, but a knight templar had rescued his foster-daughter. Nathan tries to contact this young crusader to thank him, but is rejected by him. The young man is full of bitterness, he is the only one left of his order in muslimic Jerusalem, since the Sultan had all the other crusaders killed, but spared the life of this one, because he resembled so much the beloved younger brother of the Sultan, who had disappeared a long time ago. Nathan makes another attempt of talking to the Knight Templar and finally wins his trust.
In the meantime, the Sultan is in financial trouble and asks for Nathan to come to his palest and give him a loan. While there, Nathan is asked by the Sultan, what in his opinion is the right religion. Nathan answers him with the parable of the ring.
In the end the young knight templar finds out through a piece of jewelry, that the daughter of Nathan, the Jew, is in reality his, the Christian crusader’s, sister, and the Sultan finds out, that the young Christian is actually his brother’s son.
In this way Lessing, of course, implies the close relationship between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
And this is the parable of the ring:
Many years ago, there was a man who owned a beautiful and very precious ring. Embedded in it was a stone with magic powers. It could make the bearer, who was confident in it is power, become beloved by God and every man around him. So the owner of the ring commanded, that it would stay in the family forever and always be given on towards the most beloved son of the next generation. But then, in one generation, the father had three sons, he loved all alike. Whenever, he was alone with one of them, he felt, that he loved this one best and promised him the ring. So, he had promised the ring to all three of his sons, when he finally knew, that his end was near. Not wanting to disappoint any of them, he had a jeweler make two exact copies of the ring, so close to the original, that even the father couldn’t tell the difference and he gave one ring to each of his sons.
After the father’s death, each of the sons claimed to be the father’s most beloved, the owner of the true ring and the leader of the family. They went to court hating each other, each taking an oath of what the father had said to him. Not wanting to blame the father, each one accused his brothers of fraud.
The judge responded, that the bearer of the real ring should be discerned by the powers it is magic stone gave him of being loved by the others. But, the judge decided, since each brother only loved himself, the real ring must have been lost, and all three of the rings were imitations to hide the loss.
“And”, the judge added, “if you don’t want my advice instead of my decision, then go now!
My advice however is this:
You take the thing totally as it is. If each of you has his ring from his father. So should each of you believe that his ring, is the real one.
Possibly the father no longer wanted to allow the tyranny of the one ring in his house, and sure is, that he loved you all and loved you all alike, by not lowering down two of you, to elevate one.
So go, and let each one of you imitate his love, that was free of prejudice!
So compete with one another every day, to let the powers of the stone come to light,
In gentleness of character, congeniality of heart and deepest devotion to God.
And when in your children’s children, the powers of the stone will show,
Then, in a thousand thousand years, I invite you back here to this chair.
And then, a wiser man than I will sit on it and will decide.
Now go!”
So said the humble judge.
They tell us, that religion is responsible for war and warmongering. The left-wingers tell us that behind Hitler’s philosophy were Christianity.
It seems to me, that they are twisting history just as right-wingers do.
Fact is: Hitler many times denounced Christianity as weak and not fit for German nationalism. Many hundreds of priests and pastors were incarcerated in concentration camps. And many died there together with communists, socialists, peace-activists and other political prisoners.
The philosophical foundation of Nazism was Nietzsche, just as it is the foundation for Social Darwinism.
The non-religious streams of the Enlightenment have brought us Marx and Nietzsche. But there were religious streams as well. And they brought us for instance Mendelssohn and Lessing, German born, all of them.
Neither religion nor atheism per se is responsible for wars and oppression, but philosophies from either can be used to inflict unending pain and misery on other people.
There were hateful anti-Semitic writers in Germany, preparing the way for Hitler, but there were others as well, who had a deep respect for Judaism and the Jewish people. One of them was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Born in 1729, he was the son of a Lutheran minister and he became a very good friend of Moses Mendelssohn, working on joint writings and projects. In 1779, two years before his death, Lessing finished his last work, the theater-play “Nathan, the Wise”. It is said, that the character of Nathan was based on his friend Mendelssohn.
I loved this play, when I had to read it as a kid in school. And I still believe, it is the best thing German literature has ever come up with.
It culminates in a very old parable, the parable of the ring, but Lessing has changed it just a tiny bit, and in doing this, he put a new enlightened interpretation into it:
Nathan, the wise, is an old Jewish merchant living at the times of the crusades in Jerusalem, whose family, his wife and seven sons had been killed by Christians many years ago. After that, he had wandered around in total despair, hopelessness and burning hatred, until he found a tiny orphan baby, a Christian girl.
He took her in and raised her as his own daughter, never even telling her otherwise.
One day, when he comes home from a business journey, he finds out, that his house had caught fire, but a knight templar had rescued his foster-daughter. Nathan tries to contact this young crusader to thank him, but is rejected by him. The young man is full of bitterness, he is the only one left of his order in muslimic Jerusalem, since the Sultan had all the other crusaders killed, but spared the life of this one, because he resembled so much the beloved younger brother of the Sultan, who had disappeared a long time ago. Nathan makes another attempt of talking to the Knight Templar and finally wins his trust.
In the meantime, the Sultan is in financial trouble and asks for Nathan to come to his palest and give him a loan. While there, Nathan is asked by the Sultan, what in his opinion is the right religion. Nathan answers him with the parable of the ring.
In the end the young knight templar finds out through a piece of jewelry, that the daughter of Nathan, the Jew, is in reality his, the Christian crusader’s, sister, and the Sultan finds out, that the young Christian is actually his brother’s son.
In this way Lessing, of course, implies the close relationship between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
And this is the parable of the ring:
Many years ago, there was a man who owned a beautiful and very precious ring. Embedded in it was a stone with magic powers. It could make the bearer, who was confident in it is power, become beloved by God and every man around him. So the owner of the ring commanded, that it would stay in the family forever and always be given on towards the most beloved son of the next generation. But then, in one generation, the father had three sons, he loved all alike. Whenever, he was alone with one of them, he felt, that he loved this one best and promised him the ring. So, he had promised the ring to all three of his sons, when he finally knew, that his end was near. Not wanting to disappoint any of them, he had a jeweler make two exact copies of the ring, so close to the original, that even the father couldn’t tell the difference and he gave one ring to each of his sons.
After the father’s death, each of the sons claimed to be the father’s most beloved, the owner of the true ring and the leader of the family. They went to court hating each other, each taking an oath of what the father had said to him. Not wanting to blame the father, each one accused his brothers of fraud.
The judge responded, that the bearer of the real ring should be discerned by the powers it is magic stone gave him of being loved by the others. But, the judge decided, since each brother only loved himself, the real ring must have been lost, and all three of the rings were imitations to hide the loss.
“And”, the judge added, “if you don’t want my advice instead of my decision, then go now!
My advice however is this:
You take the thing totally as it is. If each of you has his ring from his father. So should each of you believe that his ring, is the real one.
Possibly the father no longer wanted to allow the tyranny of the one ring in his house, and sure is, that he loved you all and loved you all alike, by not lowering down two of you, to elevate one.
So go, and let each one of you imitate his love, that was free of prejudice!
So compete with one another every day, to let the powers of the stone come to light,
In gentleness of character, congeniality of heart and deepest devotion to God.
And when in your children’s children, the powers of the stone will show,
Then, in a thousand thousand years, I invite you back here to this chair.
And then, a wiser man than I will sit on it and will decide.
Now go!”
So said the humble judge.
Inauguration differences
Jeff Wells quotes in his blog from January 20,2004, part of the inauguration speech of Jimmy Carter:
"You have given me a great responsibility--to stay close to you, to be worthy of you, and to exemplify what you are. Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes...............
We have learned that "more" is not necessarily "better," that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems. We cannot afford to do everything, nor can we afford to lack boldness as we meet the future. So, together, in a spirit of individual sacrifice for the common good, we must simply do our best........"
Can anybody see the difference in attitude to the Bush-people? I can and those quotes made me cry.
Carter is, or at least at those times was, a true Christian. Humility and the ability to see oneself as person with limits and failures is a true Christian trait. He even is an Evangelical. So they have gone a long way too; in the direction to the dark side, of course.
What I heard from Bush and Cheney today made me cry, too. But this time in frustration, anger and desperation.
And, yes fear.
And I thought I have gotten over it, gotten cynical enough for these times.
So Israel will attack Iran, Iran will retaliate, America will protect Israel, and we German cowards will finally stand strong at the side of our beloved Big Brother Nation walking with them into sundown or into the "clash of civilizations", slaughtering Muslims abroad, probably incarcerating our own.
(One CDU opposition leader, the speaker for foreign politics, already expressed his sympathy for the American cause in Iran. And those dirt bags from the CDU will probably lead the government after the next elections.)
And I am praying for a miracle.
Nothing short of a miracle can stop this unprecedented slaughter ahead of us. If this will be a World War as the Neocons are planning, more people will be killed than in the last one.
When I saw the face of Bush looking at me from the newspaper front-page this morning, I thought about "the banality of evil".
Yes, I know, evil is a word the intellectual call Manichean. So what?
I say it loud:
Bush is the front man of a government of pure and unadulterated evil:
Mass murderers, war criminals, criminals against humanity and planners of mass-genocide.
And our mass-media journalists are either accomplices in those crimes, or cowards and turncoats with no backbone and so are most western politicians.
"You have given me a great responsibility--to stay close to you, to be worthy of you, and to exemplify what you are. Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes...............
We have learned that "more" is not necessarily "better," that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems. We cannot afford to do everything, nor can we afford to lack boldness as we meet the future. So, together, in a spirit of individual sacrifice for the common good, we must simply do our best........"
Can anybody see the difference in attitude to the Bush-people? I can and those quotes made me cry.
Carter is, or at least at those times was, a true Christian. Humility and the ability to see oneself as person with limits and failures is a true Christian trait. He even is an Evangelical. So they have gone a long way too; in the direction to the dark side, of course.
What I heard from Bush and Cheney today made me cry, too. But this time in frustration, anger and desperation.
And, yes fear.
And I thought I have gotten over it, gotten cynical enough for these times.
So Israel will attack Iran, Iran will retaliate, America will protect Israel, and we German cowards will finally stand strong at the side of our beloved Big Brother Nation walking with them into sundown or into the "clash of civilizations", slaughtering Muslims abroad, probably incarcerating our own.
(One CDU opposition leader, the speaker for foreign politics, already expressed his sympathy for the American cause in Iran. And those dirt bags from the CDU will probably lead the government after the next elections.)
And I am praying for a miracle.
Nothing short of a miracle can stop this unprecedented slaughter ahead of us. If this will be a World War as the Neocons are planning, more people will be killed than in the last one.
When I saw the face of Bush looking at me from the newspaper front-page this morning, I thought about "the banality of evil".
Yes, I know, evil is a word the intellectual call Manichean. So what?
I say it loud:
Bush is the front man of a government of pure and unadulterated evil:
Mass murderers, war criminals, criminals against humanity and planners of mass-genocide.
And our mass-media journalists are either accomplices in those crimes, or cowards and turncoats with no backbone and so are most western politicians.
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