266 'Peace' Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs

'Peace' Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs

"Going Biblical" refers to the Genocide of indigenous Palestinians in the Book of Joshua: http://mailstar.net/guthridge.html

Note the meaning of "Peace" in Judaism.

(1) US ambassador to Israel listens to call for genocide
(2) Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs
(3) Bob Dylan's Jewish Influence
(4) Smearing the Pope - NYT rehashes old scandals for Easter
(5) Vatican  asks NYT to stop its 'attack mode'
(6) Vatican hints at NYT/Jewish vendetta against Church
(7) Holy War of Words: The Vatican vs. the NYT
(8) Russian Muslims, including Chechens & Mufti, condemn train attacks - Shamir

(1) US ambassador to Israel listens to call for genocide

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 04.04.2010 11:13 AM

US ambassador to Israel listens to call for genocide from rabbis' 'peace congress'

Tuesday, 05 January 2010 20:53 

Hank Berger

http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/9302-news-us-ambassador-to-israel-listens-to-call-for-genocide-from-rabbis-peace-congress.html

Arutz Sheva ('Channel Seven'), an Israeli media network that runs Israel National News (INN), reported that on Dec. 30, 2009, a rabbinical "congress for peace" proposed to U.S. Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as "the Biblical approach to the dispute over the Land of Israel," in the name of "the Divine will" .[1] --

Gil Ronen reported that "The ambassador was visibly moved." --

"Rabbi Dov Lior, the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, said: 'G-d gave the U.S. the power and influence to affect the rest of the world and supporting Israel is the key to America's success.'" --

NOTE: Why should a U.S. Ambassador listen patiently to the ravings of this fanatical group? -- Its director, Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, said in 2005 that "Katrina is a consequence of the destructionof [Gaza's] Gush Katif [slate of Jewish communities] with America's urging and encouragement." -- COMMENT: Occasionally, the genocidal character of the God of the Bible is recognized, but for all too many believers it is a bridge too far. -- Gerald Hiestand, pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel in the Chicago suburbs and executive director of the Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology, wrote in 2005: "I was teaching through the book of Judges a number of years ago when one of my students rightly observed that the Jewish conquest of Canaan was, in fact, nothing short of a God-ordained genocide. So appalling was this thought to my student that he left the group and never returned. But what was perhaps the most troubling thing to me was that none of my other students really seemed to grasp the significance of the discussion. --

Our God is a God of genocide." -- Today, most Israelis seem to be similarly unable to "grasp the significance of the discussion," and through a variety of factors -- the Israel lobby, Christian Zionism, and the myth of American exceptionalism among them -- the United States seems also unable to "grasp the significance of the discussion." ...

(2) Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs

By Gil Ronen

Published: 12/30/09, 8:44 PM / Last Update: 12/30/09, 8:58 PM

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135283

(IsraelNN.com) A delegation of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace (RCP) met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mr. James Cunningham, today and called for a reassessment of the entire U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Israelis and Palestinians. The rabbis told Ambassador Cunningham that it was time to try the Biblical approach to the dispute over the Land of Israel.

"The past 17 years have proven without a shadow of a doubt that every square inch ceded by Israel to the Palestinians was transformed into a platform of hatred and terrorism," RCP Director Rabbi Avrohom Shmuel Lewin told the ambassador. "In other words, the 'land for peace' formula in the Israel-Palestinian context, besides being a formula that goes against the Divine will, is ineffective, obsolete, and an exercise in futility. Most of all it is a dangerous policy that only leads to bloodshed and instability in the region and harms vital American interests in the region as well," Lewin said.

'Land for peace doesn't work'

The delegation was headed by Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, Chairman of the RCP, who is also the Rabbi of Central Tel Aviv where the U.S. embassy is located. Rabbi Gerlitzky presented the ambassador with the Halachic (Jewish legal) ruling signed by over 350 prominent rabbis in Israel that it is forbidden to give up even one inch of territory controlled by Israel today because it will bring bloodshed and instability to the region.

"In the name of the overwhelming majority of rabbis in Israel," he said, "we request of you, Mr. Ambassador, to convey our Halachic message to President Barack Obama that it is time for a complete reversal and reassessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The 'land for peace' policy never worked and harms U.S. interests in the region and the world at large."

The ambassador was visibly moved by Rabbi Sholom Gold, a leading rabbi in Jerusalem, who described the suffering that the Jewish People have endured ever since the implementation of the Oslo Accords and the agreements that followed. "It's all a play of words, there is no peace process," he said. "From the day that we started conceding and withdrawing we did not have one day of rest and peace. Why should our enemies want to make peace with us when they see that with terrorism they get what they want? Even the U.S., Israel's supposedly best friend, sides with them in demanding a freeze and evacuation of settlements. Is the triumph of Arab terror one of American interests?" Gold asked.

Going Biblical

Rabbi Dov Lior, the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, said: "G-d gave the U.S. the power and influence to affect the rest of the world and supporting Israel is the key to America's success."

Ambassador Cunningham told the rabbis that he does not see how the problem can be solved "without taking into consideration the Palestinians," to which Rabbi Gold remarked: "Ever since we started taking the Palestinians into consideration the situation only worsened."

The ambassador asked the rabbis, "So what is your solution to the problem?"

Rabbi Gerlitzky replied: "You must switch the entire approach to the situation. We all believe in the Holy Bible and up until now we tried every formula except for that which is delineated in the Bible. Let's try it and who knows, Mr. Ambassador, maybe this is your defining moment, that G-d Almighty has placed you in this capacity in order to precipitate a new course which will bring a true peace to the entire region."

(3) Bob Dylan's Jewish Influence

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 04.04.2010 10:28 AM

With God On His Side

A new book explores Bob Dylan’s Jewish inspiration and prophetic voice.

Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national/god_his_side

Bob Dylan showed up in Greenwich Village in 1960 dissembling tall tales of who he was, riding in as a mystic, mythic, out of the American West, one of Woody's children, raised by Bessie Smith or Mother Goose, now you see him, now you don't, born in a dustbowl or on the Burlington Northern, a never-ending kaleidoscope of biographical masquerade.

And yet, no great American singer-songwriter was such a child of the Jewish 20th century. He may have been Woody's child, but he was Anne Frank's ornery brother who didn't think people were good at heart: "You've got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend." He came out of the chute singing "Talkin' Hava Negilah Blues" (introduced by Dylan as "a foreign song I learned in Utah"), making a half-dozen song and poem references to Hitler or the Holocaust, singing, "We forgave the Germans ... though they murdered six million in the ovens," somehow becoming a star in the process.

This was not the stuff of Tin Pan Alley, let alone Top 40; Holocaust talk was hardly heard in public, let alone sold on the Columbia Records label.

Dylan later studied art with Sholom Aleichem's son, Norman Raeben, whom Dylan credits with influencing his poetry. Dylan named his music publishing company, "Ram's Horn Music," and said, "I am a Jew. It touches my poetry, my life, in ways I can't describe." And yet Dylan's Jewishness has rarely, if ever, been written about at length.

Even in his memoir "Chronicles Volume 1" (the name of a book in the Hebrew Bible), Dylan devotes several pages to how he was influenced by Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson, but almost nothing about how his poetry and images were influenced by Judaism and Jewish texts. Over time, however, he admits that the political, countercultural interpretations of his lyrics bothered him: "Whatever the counterculture was, I'd seen enough of it. I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest. ... I'd have to send out deviating signals ... create some different impressions. ... I went to Jerusalem, got myself photographed at the Western Wall wearing a skullcap. The image was transmitted worldwide instantly and quickly all the great rags changed me overnight into a Zionist. This helped a little."

And that's just about all he'd say. Feeling protective, wounded, Dylan then retreats, to write least about what he loves most, almost nothing about his children, his parents, his religion and religious inspirations.

Now, almost 50 years into Dylan's career, someone finally explores the last of these.

Now, almost 50 years into Dylan's career, it finally has, in Seth Rogovoy's fascinating new book, "Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet" (Scribner). Rogovoy, author of "The Essential Klezmer," documents Dylan's Jewish inspirations, lyrics directly echoing Isaiah ("All Along the Watchtower"); Leviticus ("I Pity the Poor Immigrant"); the Shabbat table ("Forever Young" is based on the Friday night blessing given to children); to "New Morning," based on the daily service; "Time Out of Mind" (the Yom Kippur service); to the Talmud ("Idiot Wind" is based on an extended riff by Resh Lakish on sin and "ruach shtuss," ruach meaning both wind and breathing, "Idiot wind, it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe").

Other writers have picked up on Dylan's Jewish influences before, in smaller pieces. Allen Ginsberg described Dylan's vocal technique on "One More Cup of Coffee," as a "voice lifts in Hebraic cantillation never before heard in U.S. song," and, indeed, it does sound like Dylan is layning Torah.

When Ronnie Gilbert of The Weavers once introduced him at a folk festival, "And here he is ... take him, you know him, he's yours," Dylan recoiled, he wrote in his memoir, "What a crazy thing to say. As far as I knew, I didn't belong to anybody, then or now. ... I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of. I'd left my hometown only ten years earlier..."

In that hometown, Hibbing, Minn., his parents kept a kosher home; his mother was president of the local Hadassah; his father was president of the local B'nai Brith; his great-grandfather (who didn't die until Dylan was 20) regularly put on tefillin; Dylan lived in the Jewish fraternity house at the University of Minnesota, and spent summers in Camp Herzl, a religious Zionist camp, just two years before he was singing in New York.

When Dylan lived in upstate Woodstock, his mother said he always kept a Bible on a shtender, the Yiddish word for a personal bookstand, commonplace in old shuls, used for holding a siddur and Bible.
Those "hometown" years left Dylan with several lifelong Orthodox friends, who sometimes went on tour with him, and a Jewish mother who helped bring him back to his roots after a two-album detour into Christianity 30 years ago. Dylan's Christian interest was seemingly driven by a romantic relationship with one of his African-American Christian back-up singers, after Dylan divorced the Jewish wife with whom he raised five children, several of whom were given Israeli bar mitzvahs, with one daughter known to be Orthodox as an adult.

As Rogovoy tells it, Dylan's mother persuaded him "to visit his boyhood friend, Howard Rutman," a dentist, "under the guise of his needing to get his teeth cleaned. As an old friend from Camp Herzl days ... Rutman was one of the few people in the world able to confront Dylan directly. ... While examining Dylan's mouth he supposedly pointed to a cross Dylan was wearing around his neck, and asked him, `Bob, what's up with this? .... Bob, you're Jewish."

Rutman, writes Rogovoy, who is Orthodox, "invited Dylan to his house for dinner. Dylan brought his girlfriend at the time and wound up incredibly embarrassed by the manner in which she carried on about Jesus to Rutman and his wife, who were having no truck with such talk."

Dylan's Christian period clearly ended with "Infidels," without question the most right-wing Jewish album ever made by a popular singer. It was an album, writes Rogovoy, that had The Village Voice calling Dylan "the William F. Buckley of rock and roll."

Dylan, himself, wrote in "Chronicles," "My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody."

Rogovoy calls the centerpiece of "Infidels," a tune called "Neighborhood Bully," a "drippingly sarcastic overview of Jewish history and persecution through the lens of contemporary Zionism, a strongly nationalistic identification with the Jewish peoplehood. The song is saying that Judaism and Jewish nationalism are one and the same, which is a very sophisticated point of view."

As Dylan sings of Israel: "Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized/ Old women condemned him, said he should apologize/ Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad/ The bombs were meant for him, he was supposed to feel bad/ Neighborhood bully."

Elsewhere on that album, he took a further swipe at Israel's critics: "You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace."

For quite some time, writes Rogovoy, the lead guitarists in his road band would introduce "All Along The Watchtower" with "a snippet" of the theme from the movie "Exodus," thereby further associating a Dylan song "with contemporary Jewish nationalism."

Dylan has appeared on Chabad telethons, calling Chabad "my favorite organization in the whole world." He may have changed his name from Zimmerman to Dylan, but he never changed his Jewish name — Shabtai Zisel Ben-Avraham — with which he gets called to the Torah in Chabad shuls.

Not all of Rogovoy's claims are completely convincing. He has Dylan's "Tombstone Blues," referring to Samson and the jawbone, as a "freewheeling riff on Judges 15," without mentioning that "Samson and Delilah," was already a classic song by Reverend Gary Davis, and went all the way back to "If I Had My Way (I Would Tear This Old Building Down)" by Blind Willie Johnson in the 1920s. One doesn't have to be Jewish to influenced by the Hebrew Bible.

Nevertheless, Rogovoy includes this gem: Dylan gives a shout-out in "Tombstone Blues" to the 1949 movie "Samson and Delilah" that was based on the 1930 novel, "Judge And Fool," also known as "Samson The Nazarite"; it was written by Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Irgun, and the political mentor to Menachem Begin, and what is now Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Jabotinsky," notes Rogovoy, "also co-wrote the treatment that was eventually turned into the film script."

Only a story about Dylan can get Jabotinsky together with Blind Willie Johnson, and that says it all.

(4) Smearing the Pope - NYT rehashes old scandals for Easter

Smearing the Pope

The Times fudged the facts

By WILLIAM J. LEVADA

Last Updated: 3:52 AM, April 2, 2010

Posted: 1:15 AM, April 2, 2010

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/smearing_the_pope_WLAa6OkxL4np2pRjhUZyON

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following are excerpts from a statement by Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

I AM not proud of America's newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a para gon of fairness.

[Monday's] Times presents both a lengthy article by Laurie Goodstein ("Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest") and an accompanying editorial in which the editors call the article a "disturbing report" as a basis for their own charges against the pope. Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness.

REUTERS

{caption} Maligned by The New York Times: Pope Benedict waves to the faithful. {end}

In her lead paragraph, Goodstein relies on what she describes as "newly unearthed files" to point out what the Vatican (i.e. then-Cardinal Ratzinger and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) did not do -- "defrock Father Murphy." Breaking news, apparently.

Only after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, "not only was never tried or disciplined by the church's own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims."

But in paragraph 13, commenting on a statement of Father Lombardi (the Vatican spokesman) that church law does not prohibit anyone from reporting cases of abuse to civil authorities, Goodstein writes, "He did not address why that had never happened in this case." Did she forget, or did her editors not read, what she wrote in paragraph nine about Murphy getting "a pass from the police and prosecutors"? By her own account, it seems clear that criminal authorities had been notified, most probably by the victims and their families.

Goodstein's account bounces back and forth as if there were not some 20-plus years intervening between reports in the 1960s and '70s to the Archdiocese and local police, and Archbishop Weakland's appeal for help to the Vatican in 1996. Why? Because the point of the article is not about failures on the part of church and civil authorities to act properly at the time.

Looking back, I agree that Father Murphy deserved to be dismissed from the clerical state for his egregious criminal behavior, which would normally have resulted from a canonical trial. The point of Goodstein's article, however, is to attribute the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of to diocesan decisions at the time.

(5) Vatican  asks NYT to stop its 'attack mode'

Vatican slams NYT reports

Top official defends Pope, asks newspaper to stop its 'attack mode'

Apr 2, 2010

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_509662.html

VATICAN CITY: The Vatican has attacked The New York Times for its coverage of the sexual abuse of children by priests, rejecting accusations that Pope Benedict had mishandled a series of abuse cases before he was elected.

Signalling it had decided to take the gloves off in its reaction to coverage of sexual abuse, the Vatican issued a statement taking issue with both its news articles and editorial commentaries. 'I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on,' said the statement written by Cardinal William Levada, who succeeded the Pope as head of the Vatican's doctrinal body in 2005.

The Vatican has denied any cover-up in the abuse of 200 deaf boys in the United States by Reverend Lawrence Murphy from the 1950s to the 1960s. The church has also had to confront in recent days a new spate of abuse claims across Europe.

The New York Times had reported last week that the Vatican and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, were warned about Reverend Murphy but he was not defrocked.

Cardinal Levada's rebuttal was that the paper wrongly used the case to find fault in the Pope's handling of abuse cases. The newspaper's main story on the abuse scandal and an editorial was 'deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness', he said.

He focused in particular on an article describing failed efforts by Wisconsin church officials to persuade the Vatican to defrock Reverend Murphy. The then Cardinal Ratzinger was head of the Vatican's doctrinal office when the case was referred there in 1996.

(6) Vatican hints at NYT/Jewish vendetta against Church

Attacks on Pope over child abuse scandal are ‘akin to anti-Semitism’

Richard Owen in Rome and Roger Boyes in Berlin  

April 2, 2010

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7086143.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

The Pope’s preacher today likened recent attacks on the pontiff over the Catholic sex abuse scandal to the “most shameful acts of anti-Semitism”.

The controversial intervention by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, came as one Catholic leader attempted to draw a line under the affair.

In Germany Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, said that the Church had committed serious mistakes and done too little to help the victims of priestly abuse.

“The caring responsibility towards the victims was insufficient in the past because of our own disappointment at the painful failure of the perpetrators, and out of a falsely understood concern for the standing of the church," he said.

But in Rome, as the Pope prepares to make a major address to the world for Easter Sunday, the Vatican is fighting back.

Father Cantalamessa, noting that this year the Jewish festival of Passover and Easter fell during the same week, said that Jews throughout history had been the victims of “collective violence” and drew a comparison with current attacks on the Church over the scandal.

Speaking during a ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica commemorating Christ’s Passion, he read to the congregation, which included the Pope, part of a letter that he had received from an unidentified Jewish friend, who said that he was following “with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the Pope and all the faithful of the whole world”.

“The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,” Father Cantalamessa said his friend wrote to him.

In the sermon he referred to the sexual abuse of children by clergy, saying: “Unfortunately, not a few elements of the clergy are stained by the violence.” But Father Cantalamessa said that he did not want to dwell on the abuse of children, saying: “There is sufficient talk outside of here.”

The Vatican later distanced itself from Father Cantalamessa's remarks. Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope's spokesman, said Father Cantalamessa's remarks were “not the official position of the Church” and the papal preacher had not been speaking “as a Vatican official”.

... the Vatican has also launched a counter-attack against the media for its reporting of the sex abuse scandal.

Cardinal Angelo Scola, the patriarch of Venice, said that the Pope was the victim of “deceitful accusations.”

Monsignor Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, said that the Pope was “suffering some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob and scourging at the pillar as did Jesus”.

He said: “Truth and falsehood are scandalously mingled in the New York Times reconstructions. You begin to wonder, is there an agenda of bias here?”

However, David Clohessy, head of The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said: “It is, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, deceitful and unhealthy to try to shift focus away from child sex crimes and cover-ups and onto the alleged motives of journalists.” The New York Times said that none of its reports had been factually rebutted.

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(7) Holy War of Words: The Vatican vs. the NYT

By Dylan Stableford

Published: April 02, 2010

http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/holy-war-words-vatican-vs-new-york-times-15917

Somebody call Dan Brown. The tête-à-tête between the New York Times and the Vatican is boiling over.

A spokesperson for the New York Times defended the paper’s reporting late Thursday, after a top Vatican official unleashed a rather harsh rant against the paper for its “disturbing” coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of sexual abuse cases.

“We stand by that reporting,” Times spokesperson Diane McNulty said.

In an article posted on the Vatican site (which, by the way, sucks in Firefox), Cardinal William J. Levada rails against the Times for a pair of articles – one news, the other editorial.

“Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness that Americans have every right and expectation to find in their major media reporting,” Levada wrote.

In his 2,400-word essay, Levada (pictured, about to burn the Times) defends the Pope, criticizes the Times’ “usual bias,” and even calls out Maureen Dowd by name: “As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See’s tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times’s subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd’s silly parroting of Goodstein’s ‘disturbing report.’”

Levada added: “I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.”

“The allegations of abuse within the Catholic Church are a serious subject, as the Vatican has acknowledged on many occasions,” McNulty said. “Any role the current pope may have played in responding to those allegations over the years is a significant aspect of this story.”

The aggressive tone of the Vatican’s defense may sound out-of-character, but as Politico notes, the church has been known to attack media elsewhere:

“John L. Allen Jr., a senior correspondent at the National Catholic Reporter and considered one of the top reporters on the beat, said over e-mail that the Vatican recently responded to a scandal in Italy by conspiring “to smear an Italian Catholic journalist by leaking fake documents suggesting he was involved in a gay affair.”

“Vatican spokespersons blasted the Italian media for irresponsible reporting,” Allen continued. “The only reason Americans think this is exceptional is that because this time it’s an American news outlet!"

(8) Russian Muslims, including Chechens & Mufti, condemn train attacks - Shamir

From: Israel Shamir <adam@israelshamir.net> Date: 04.04.2010 01:54 PM
Subject: [shamireaders] Christ is Risen

Christ is Risen, my dear friend!

I am now in Moscow, which once again became a holy city, with hundreds of churches, all full of worshippers in their holiday attire. They stand now inside and outside the edifices, holding lit candles, preparing themselves to the glorious moment, a few minutes after midnight, when the priests will call out Christ is Risen, and the congregation will reply with Verily He is Risen. Huge cross-street boards announce that Christ is Risen, blissfully unaware of political correctness limitations.

I came here from the Holy Land, which is also a wonderful place for Easter, but Moscow has something that even Jerusalem has not got: totality of experience. Here it is the feast for everybody, by everybody. Happiness is celebrating Christmas in the West, and Easter in the East. That is because the West stresses human nature of Christ, the East prefers his divine nature. Try and do it next year, or any other year, until voracious modernity will swallow the last glimpse of spirit.

I have been invited to speak on the Russian TV, announcing my belief that there is no confrontation between Christianity and Islam, though enemies of both faiths try to create it. Political problems are just that – political, and not theological. And in the political sphere, Palestine is a powerful uniting knot. Yes, we want Palestine to be saved, but its suffering is not in vain if it keeps our friends united and our enemies in disarray. Without Palestine, it would be much easier to unleash Christians upon Muslims, Shias upon Sunnis, Russians against Chinese and Arabs against Iranians. This is the Christ-nature of Palestine and its fate.

I came to Moscow when she suffered the bomb attack. By God, Russians are different: there was a very responsible, calm and compassionate coverage, none of hysterical frenzy we are accustomed to in Israel – or in America. They tried to keep repercussions down to minimum; though security is beefed up in anticipation of possible follow-up, but the city remained calm.

This calm gives the lie to rumours spread by the usual suspects that the explosions were somehow orchestrated by local forces keen to suppress citizens’ liberties. In Israel, or in America such explosions would be utilized by the state to unleash their fury on defenceless Gaza or Afghanistan, to attack and profile Muslims, to bring in new laws muzzling people by Patriot acts. Nothing of this sort happens in Russia. The civil rights are not infringed. The attacks were meant to undermine the position of the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is responsible for general security. Their second objective was to facilitate Russian vote against Iran. These goals point out the guiding hand: it is surely to be found well beyond Caucasus Mountains.

I’ve met today with Russian Muslims, including the Mufti; all of them condemn the acts, all of them stress that it was not in their interests. The Mufti correctly said that the Russian Muslims have no single will; they are not united on any question; things done by people who happen to be Muslims are not done because they are Muslims. Likewise, IRA bombings were not done because the Irish nationalists were Catholic.

Some of our friends refer to Chechen plight. No doubt, the first Chechen war was a crime perpetrated by the West’s appointee Boris Yeltsin. But this is past long gone. Now Chechens have all the rights, the Chechens in Moscow are a highly visible and prosperous community, with a status that Palestinians would be extremely lucky to achieve. Now there is no reason for confrontation, and there is every reason for healing. Alas, some of the Chechen rebels joined the path of CIA stooges of al-Qaeda. It is better to give up on them like we gave up on Tamil Tigers.

Much in our world depends on Russia. Together with China, she can save Iran and the Middle East. Russian anti-Putin dissidents led by Kasparov and Bonner call to distance Russia from China, to support the West against Iran, and stand by Israel against Palestine. There is a place for dissent; much of internal Russian politics are in shambles, the gap between the rich and the poor is too big; income tax stands at ridiculous 12%, neoliberalism is still alive and kicking. But one should be cautious and support the right (meaning the left) sort of dissent. 

We are going through a very important and tricky patch; this is a wrong time to relax and wait-and-see; this is the time to act, to act for peace. Not a fake peace of surrender, but the true peace of victory. Its best example is the Christ’s victory over Death.