Zionism

[Benjamin Ekman]

Dear forum,

I just recently bought a book by Father Epraim (the then Abbot of Philotheou on Mont Athos) called "A call from the Holy Monutain". I was greatly disturbed by one comment and would like to get anyones comments. He writes: "It is well known that the devil-instigated Zionism is coordinating two insiduos operations both within and without the Church aspiring to one and the same; to destroy the fortress know as Orthodoxy." Then he goes on to say that "Papists, Protestants, Jehovah Witness, Freemasons, Unionists, Eumenists and any other 'root of bittreness'... shall give their power and strength unto the beast. These shall make with the Lamb." Later on he refers to the Protocols of Zion as if they were an historical fact.

I know that Fr. Ephraim has been controversial in the States. But how can he claim such blatantly anti-semitic statements? How can a monk who lives for and with Christ be so cold and prejudiced?

Isn't it a bit far fetched to believe that the Jews are conspiring to take over the world and destroy Orthodoxy? Are these views condoned by the Church?

Can someone point me into the direction of Orthodox hierarchy or theologians who argue otherwise? Thank you for ANY help.

In Christ,
Benjamin

[Daniel Jeandet]

Im sorry, I would discuss this, but Owen blew several holes in my bullet proof conspiracy vest http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

[Edward Henderson]

Dear Benjamin,

This is a weakness Orthodox Christian people have, especially in the "old country". Living in Russia, I see all sorts of literature distributed about "Jewish-Masonic Conspiracies" to destroy Russia. In America, we tend to be at the other end, portraying the Jews as being incapable of doing any wrong. The reality is that the Jews have suffered a great deal. The collumnation of this suffering was during the Nazi Holocaust when millions suffered and died. They continued to suffer injustices in the Soviet Union. Really, the only place where they have had freedom has been America and they have thrived there because of their strong sense of community and work ethic. I remember in school as a child, the Jewish kids were always the top of the class because their parents had the highest expectations for them.

At the same time, we have to distinguish between anti-semitism and anti-zionism. Zionism is the movement to establish Israel, the Jewish state. This occured in 1948. Often those who criticize Israeli policy, especially with regards to the Palestinians (many of whom are Orthodox Christians), are labelled anti-semitic. It is a sad irony that those who have suffered so much now cause suffering to Palestians. That does not justify acts of terrorism on the part of Islamic militants. But, the reality is that only a Jew can be elegible for Israeli citizenship. That means that a Palestian,born in what is now Israel has less right to citizenship that some Jew born in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Also, the Israeli government has often interfered with the affairs of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. It seems to me that the Zionists want a state where the Jews constitute the upper strata of society and the Palestians the lower. The whole issue is so complex, volumes have been written on this matter and we could debate these issues until the end of time. So, I do not think the Jews are trying the take over the world and the Church certainly never taught that. I do think, they have an agenda in Israel/Palestine (as they should), but that agenda usually is the better deal for the Jews than for the other people who have been living there for centuries.

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Benjamin, Daniel, Edward

Please bear with me for a rather lengthy comment, to which I invite you and others to respond freely. I agree with Daniel that anti-semitic conspiracy theories do abound in the Orthodox Church (as they probably also do in other churches, Protestant and Roman Catholic). As an Orthodox Christian of part-Jewish descent, it is very distressing for me to see paperback copies of the "Protocols of Zion" being sold next to icons and to the lives of the saints in local bookshops here in Cyprus. I have even heard anti-semitic remarks made by an Athonite elder on cassette. And the degree of unconscious antisemitism in "Christian" society and even amongst otherwise good and pious people is even higher in my opinion.

I don't think there is an easy way out of this. Antisemitism has a historical foundation in Christianity, due to gross misinterpretation of the gospels and writings of the fathers, and due to the uneasy birth of Christianity out of Judaism. Antisemitic Christians tend to overlook the simple fact that our Lord Himself was Jewish according to the flesh. It was not "the Jews" who crucified Him, but the religious and secular authorities of the country where He preached the coming of the Kingdom. And the crowd, which glorified Him on Monday and sent Him to His death (but also, unbeknownst to them, to His Resurrection) on Friday, the Romans and the Sanhedrin, all these people are us, all of us, not a particular race or ethnic or -yes- religious grouping.

Edward is also correct in pointing out that a difference exists between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. The whole situation of Israel, which I visited last year, is a very complex one, requiring careful, prayerful steps forward. If some Israelis, who may be labelled "Zionist" do want a divided society and are inflicting on others what the Nazis did to them (although it must be said, the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews in concentration camps is not the same as what is going on in Israel), even they must be understood. Look at Israel on the map. It is a small country surrounded by the whole of Islamic Arabia. If some Jews get a bit paranoid about this, I think its understandable, however wrong.

The idea that Jews are trying to take over the world, and being assisted by Masons and Ecumenists, is simply insulting to the suffering Jewish people. The "protocols of Zion", as far as I know, were written up by the Russian police in the 19th century at a convenient historical moment when a suitable scapegoat was needed.

I wish to point out that, as an Orthodox Christian I have made my choice and I do believe that Judaism, on purely religious grounds, is not for me, although I nevertheless feel deep love and respect for my Jewish ancestry from Abraham onwards. This is the way my life has turned out, and I am happy. But I refuse to condemn Jews, Buddhists, Muslims or anybody else for not seeing the beauty and Truth of our Lord, or for being unable to embrace it fully due to their own allegiance to their traditions. The whole issue is too complex to be dealt with either by condemnation or instigating hatred, emotions so hostile to the love of Christ.

Finally, if this is part of Fr Ephraim's "teaching", then it does not allow this humble sinner to condemn him, any more than the other Athonite elder I mentioned. Perhaps even saints can be wrong in some things (I'm not suggesting of course that the people we are talking about are saints, but that they could be - nobody knows that about anyone, only the historical experience of the whole church will finally tell, many years after their bodily death - and still nevertheless be imperfect in some things. Perfection is dynamic, not static). I don't know anything about Fr Ephraim, except that even on this website a lot of heat seems to have been generated by his reputation (which again proves nothing).

ICXC
Byron

[Herman Blaydoe]

Even those we call saints were subject to imperfections, misjudgements and some bad calls. Infallibility is not a requirement in our church.

[Janine]

If what you've written, Byron, about Fr. Ephraim is true, it has nothing to do with a criticism of Israeli Occupation policy on human rights grounds.

There is a difference between a uniter and a divider. I keep reading things over and over again that collectively condemn groups of people in some narrow-minded way.

The best of Orthodoxy does the opposite: recognizes truth wherever it is found as part of Logos - does not scathingly attack whole groups of people in some narrow-minded bigoted way that encourages us to simply hate other people of various "groups." I frankly cannot understand attacks against ecumenism; right now there is important Orthodox participation in the World Council of Churches, and the Middle East Council of Churches and other ecumenically-minded groups (like the Catholic Near East Welfare) are doing important work trying to protect the rights of the Christian churches in Israel and under Israeli Occupation. Their ecumenism at this time is extremely important for all Christians all over the Middle East.

It is the work of Christians to be sympathetic to others, not to demonize them. In Greece's history one can be particularly proud of the role the Archbishop of Athens played in saving many Jews from the Nazi Occupation by issuing false baptism certificates - protecting people *without* forcing them to convert.

There is a lot to criticize Israel for - and it has to do with the same sort of bigoted, narrow-minded behavior, not to do with some sort of vague conspiracy against the whole of Orthodoxy. In Jerusalem all the Christian churches are having problems, especially the Gk. Orthodox Patriarch, with the Israeli govt. but not because of some Zionist conspiracy against the whole of the Church but rather because there are those who want to drive out all non-Jews from Jerusalem and its surroundings. The actions especially of some Yeshiva students in Jerusalem recently are particularly violent and reprehensible, but those too have been condemned in parts of the Israeli press. Furthermore many Church workers (of various denominations) are doing work to help the poor who are naturally among the Palestinian population, and for this reason the Israeli government is also giving them a hard time with visas, etc.

I read a bit of the beginning of Fr. Ephraim's book on amazon.com and frankly disliked what I read, at least in the pages available on the web, for reasons having nothing to do with comments about Zionism.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Let me say that I agree with the sentiments expressed so far in regards to anti-semitism and Orthodoxy. I also had a shocking encounter with 'The Protocols' in 1986, which was lying on a display table of Orthodox literature, when I visited a certain Athonite monastery while on the Holy Mt. When I returned to the Simonos Petros where I was being hosted & asked about this I was told that it was important to understand the cultural context (or words to that effect). During my trip in Greece I had already encountered a level of anti-semitism among the Orthodox that was very difficult to take. Since that time I have continued to mull over what I encountered then. Increasingly I feel how wrong any type of racism is, especially if we claim to be Christian & Orthodox. But it is striking how often one can encounter this even among us in the 'educated west'.

I think one reason for such anti-semitism (apart from passion) is that it can in an unthinking way coincide with a 'traditional criticism of the west'. For the Orthodox anti-semite, Jews represent the cosmopolitan liberal who is deviously destroying all that is sacred about society. The fantasy in this is too much to go into here but one major short-coming already referred to above I think, is that according to the Gospel it is we who have sinned aginst what is sacred; it is we who are most to blame for distorting our society. In any case in societies in eastern Europe (already with a long history of anti-semitism and little of liberalism) there is a tension with western European liberal values (including North American) that seem threatening to the cultural-religious survival of these countries.

Some other brief points. Many of us (both east & west) are deeply affected by the recent doctrine of race. Many scholars are coming to question whether such a concept has any objective reality at all & of whether it is of any use except as a generality. It should be obvious to all by now why the classic racist teaching that genetic make-up determines moral character is deeply flawed. But the fact is that many still accept this & are influenced by it. It peppers our every day speech & way we think about people.

Also- it is now known that the Protocols were not the work of the Russian secret police (Okhranka). Rather they were a reworking of French, German & Russian anti-semitic tracts by various Russians at the end of the 19th & early 20th c. usually through various journals or in pamphlet form. In the recent book: How Russia Shaped the Modern World, the chapter on anti-semitism is tellingly entitled: Destroying the Agents of Modernity.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Owen Jones]

Eric Voegelin destroys the race idea in his book Race and State, which got him in trouble with the Gestapo. He barely escaped in, I think, 1938.

[Owen Jones]

There are fierce debates within Isreal on every topic, including what it means to be a Jew. According to many, if you do not live in Isreal, you are not Jewish.

But the bottom line is that every Isreali is concerned about total extermination. The history of modern Zionism is complex, but it goes back to the 19th Century, and has absolutely nothing to do with religious Jewry. It was a desire to create a completely egalitarian, socialist model state, completely secularized. Nobody believes that anymore, and Isreal is searching for a reason for being. If it were truly a Zionist state, you would have a restoration of some kind of Davidic Kingship. Ironically, anti-semitic feeling in Europe stems, in part, from when Christians were barred from being able to loan money at interest. The Christian monarchs needed to be able to borrow huge sums (their family treasuries were the national treasuries), and the only people permitted to do that by law were Jews. So naturally Jewish banking families gained not only great economic power but also political power. Anti-monarchical radicalism spilled over into anti-Jewish feelings, and pro-monarchical factions noted that many of Europe's socialist propagandists were secular Jewish "intellectuals." So you could not imagine a scenario that would have angered virtually every faction in Europe. The further irony is that Christian "traditionalists" have more in common with Jewish "traditionalists," in response to "modernist" ideologies. An additional irony is the complete U-turn among conservative American protestants in the last thirty years, who have gone from being vaguely anti-Semitic, to being very pro-Isreal, pro-Likud, pro-Zionism, due to the influence of apocalyptic and pre-millenarian sentiments in conservative protestant circles.

The ethnic divisiveness and zenophobia in Orthodoxy is nothing less than a scandal and a catastrophe of great proportions. That does not mean that the alternative should be liberal ecumenism.

Orthodoxy has yet to develop a kind of paradigm of holiness that accounts for the fact that there is no Christian ecumenical Empire.

[Janine]

Hi Fr. Raphael:


I think one reason for such anti-semitism (apart from passion) is that it can in an unthinking way coincide with a 'traditional criticism of the west'. For the Orthodox anti-semite, Jews represent the cosmopolitan liberal who is deviously destroying all that is sacred about society

Actually this may have something to do with other countries, but I don't think it's true of Greece. Among all countries under Nazi occupation, more Jews survived in Greece than elsewhere, primarily due to more help from the native population (and notably the Archbishop of Athens, as I've written before, who saved thousands of people from the Nazis). Jewish communities lived as minority groups in Greece since ancient times (when many Jews became Hellenized and some Greeks adopted Judaism - remember Christ's speaking to groups of Greeks) and were never subject to the kind of persecution they endured in Western Europe. In fact there's an encyclical from the Ecum Pat in the 15th cent (I think it was) against crimes against the Jewish population (there were problems reported from one city in Crete - which may or may not have been under Venetian rule at the time, I'd have to look it up), which he labeled slander and a sin (to blame people for the crucifixion of Christ who had nothing to do with the actual event).

Greece's traditional cosmopolitan character of its large cities is part of its culture going back to ancient times. I'd say that prejudice may even come from the idea that minority groups which stay closed unto themselves can represent the opposite of that spirit of cosmopolitanism in its traditional sense specifically within Greek culture & history, and for this reason might be looked at with suspicion or dislike. Quite honestly, Athos was itself a place closed off from the majority of the society - it doesn't represent the whole population, no matter how much that opinion may disgruntle some people :-) It also doesn't help that Israel is allied with Turkey - and that prominent Israelis make statements supportive of both present day Turkish policy and the Ottoman Empire, even denying, for example, the Armenian genocide as a genocide.

[M. Rallis]

If the Orthodox Church is indeed the "New Israel", then to be a faithful child of Abraham today, is to be an Orthodox Christian. To be just a Jew, today, seems to be an active denial of the Trinitarian God, of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Is this an anti-semitic statement?

[Owen Jones]

I would say it is an anti-Semitic statement, and essentially pointless, but potentially very negative in its impact. The idea that a person who is born a Jew, into a Jewish family, who identifies himself as a Jew, to say that such a person is in a state of active denial of the Trinitarian God, seems to me to be a very pretentious statement. One can say that, prophetically, Judaism is in denial of the Trinity, and it may be an accurate theological generalization, but the problem is that such a position is inevitably personalized, and becomes destructive. There is also something Providential, I should think, about the Jewish idea. Also, the practical question: do you honestly think that conversion will result by condeming people for being in a state of active denial against the Trinity? No, one is more likely to get a negative reaction to that approach, as well as feeding and promoting the baser instincts of others.

[M. Rallis]

Good point, Owen, that simply to be born into a Jewish family does indeed not imply any thing in terms of active denial of the Trinity. I agree, and would further say, that simply being born into a Jewish family does imply that that person to me is my brother, neighbor, and in a sense, an Icon to me of my Lord. So, if the above statement is amended by replacing "To be just a Jew", with "Current Judaic Theology", do we still have an anti-semitic statement?

[Owen Jones]

I don't think it is theologically sound or correct to say that Jews are in a state of denial of Christ, any more than anyone else is. Jewish theology is not based on a denial of Christ. So, yes, I would say to characterize Jews or Judaism in terms of denial of Christ is an anti-Semitic statement. And in fact the prophetic aspect of our theology says that the Jews had to deny Christ for his mission to be fulfilled. (But even then it has to be narrowed to the Pharisees) In another sense, do we sit around condemning Adam for forcing us into a state of sin? No, we understand his role "objectively" in God's economy. The spiritual teaching of Christ is that he did not come to change the law one jot or tittle. He came not to condemn but to save. And his message was that when we turn religion into a curse and a yoke around people's necks, we condemn ourselves in the eyes of God, and certainly Christians have historically committed the same mistake of Phariseeism. Orthodoxy, especially in Russia, and Catholicism in Europe, and later Protestantism, all have much to atone for and repent of in the persecution and mass murder of Jews. The worst progrom against Jews ever was a matter of state policy in the Russian Empire, ostensibly an Orthodox Christian empire. To invite Jews to enjoy the fruits of the Spirit is another matter, but Jews historically have been pretty resistant to conversion to Christianity, and to create a theology that demands Jewish conversion as part of some Christian eschatology has, historically, only led to disaster.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Janine,

From my two times in Greece I would say that anti-semitism is quite prevalent as throughout much of eastern Europe. This is not to say that it is the majority of people but it is nevertheless quite noticable especially among some of the more pious simple folk (monastics included).

In any case there is no profitable point to be made by who is or is not an anti-semite. The original point of this thread was (almost like a question) is there anti-semitism present among our Orthodox people. To which if we are honest with ourselves the answer is "yes". But it is of no profit for us to make this a justification for condemning certain individuals or a people. After all besides it being just a piece of information of what use is it?

So it seems more useful to move from the general observation about anti-semitism to asking what is behind the anti-semitism we see among ourselves. Even criticism is an act of charity among us for it gives us no joy to condemn or embarrass anyone by name & we normally will not do it in public. If we have problems with some individual we can bring this to our priest or spiritual father in private.

So here we just discuss the problems we face in general terms- and try to see how their problem is my problem. Otherwise the danger is that the tone of what we are discussing changes into that of one person condemning someone which in turn leads to someone else defending them.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Janine]

On the other hand, some statements about the historical Jesus from individual Rabbis at the time of the release of the film The Passion of the Christ were pretty ridiculous, and some downright heinous. There are even books written claiming Jesus was amassing a secret army, etc etc. etc.

I also have discomfort with the statement that Christ had to be rejected for his mission to be fulfilled (so somehow those who knowingly rejected Him were not really responsible? were not really rejecting Him?) It's like saying that Jesus was crucified because it was prophecied, rather than the other way around. If this was so cut-and-dried, he would not have wept over Jerusalem's rejection of him Luke13:31-35 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2013:31-35#en-NIV-25546) Obviously he knew he was going to be killed, but it's not clear to me that the world had to reject Him - or especially, as it's put here, that his success depended on anybody's reaction to him at all. Up to the end He was praying to God that it not be so, (let this cup pass from my lips..) The fulfillment of his mission was purely and simply in His acceptance to do the will of the Father (...but nevertheless thy will be done)

I'd consider, more, that the workings of the Holy Spirit are alive in our world, and we should more seriously consider rejection of the Spirit in each of us as our focus.

Father Raphael, you write:
This is not to say that it is the majority of people but it is nevertheless quite noticable especially among some of the more pious simple folk

Well, there are many, many pious Orthodox in Greece besides the simple (especially if you use the word pious to mean "faithful" and not in its more pejorative sense)... It really depends on how well you know the country overall & the society and who you meet. I would say that some of the statements I have read (both directly from writings of the person in question and things attributed to movements, etc) taken together seem consistently to me to indicate a charismatic appeal specifically to undereducated and poor people (as signs of great piety or holiness), and that is sad. And characteristic of more than one charismatic I've been familiar with (including those who are non-Christian), but certainly not of the truly saintly and inspiring. This was the conclusion I had drawn before I read about these anti-Semitic statements.

[Janine]

In partial answer to your original question, Benjamin:
Can someone point me into the direction of Orthodox hierarchy or theologians who argue otherwise?

I direct you here:

"An Orthodox Reflection on Truth & Tolerance" (http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8075.asp) by Rev. Dr. George C. Papademetriou

[M. Rallis]

"And in fact the prophetic aspect of our theology says that the Jews had to deny Christ for his mission to be fulfilled"

And the Jews who accepted our Lord as the incarnate Logos, the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, and suffered martyrdom in His Name, did they, in exercizing their free-will in such a manner, not help to show us all the way towards salvation? Our churches are full of the Icons of Holy Saints who were Jewish by race, and joined themselves to Christ as the fulfillment of God's promise to them. Our very form of Liturgical worship is in many ways founded on, and a continuation of, the Jewish temple worship at the time of our Lord's incarnation. So, in many ways, both historically and spiritually the good news of our salvation was passed through the first Jewish saints, and from them to us, all the other nations of the world. I see more of the fulfillment of the prophetic aspect of our theology in the lives of these Jewish Orthodox Christian Saints.


"Jewish theology is not based on a denial of Christ. So, yes, I would say to characterize Jews or Judaism in terms of denial of Christ is an anti-Semitic statement."

And maybe you're right, that current Jewish theology in not in denial about Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Trinity. But how about the appearance of Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor when our Lord appeared in his Uncreated Glory. I'm guessing not many current Rabbi's can swallow that one.

And still, God loves each of us equally, as we should each other. Just like the rain doesn't fall on the field of a Greek and stop when it comes to the field of a Jew, neither should our love in Christ for our fellow man, our brother, our neighbor, be anything other than constant.

[Owen Jones]

I don't see where this is leading. Of course Rabbis don't accept Jesus as the Christ. If they did, they would not be rabbis. You are either stating what is obvious to anyone, or you are trying to build a foundation for some kind of personal case against Jews. For what reason? What purpose does this serve in your mind?

[M. Rallis]

Owen, I'm sorry if I lead you to believe than I'm building a foundation for a personal case against Jews. I have no such agenda and beg your forgiveness.

I was trying to explore what is anti-semitism, and what is the current relationship of the New Israel, the Orthodox Church, and the descendants of the Old Israel as to their current theology.

In my mind, this was the only purpose.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Anti-semitism



Byron Jack Gaist

“Edward is also correct in pointing out that a difference exists between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. The whole situation of Israel, which I visited last year, is a very complex one, requiring careful, prayerful steps forward. If some Israelis, who may be labelled "Zionist" do want a divided society and are inflicting on others what the Nazis did to them (although it must be said, the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews in concentration camps is not the same as what is going on in Israel), even they must be understood. Look at Israel on the map. It is a small country surrounded by the whole of Islamic Arabia. If some Jews get a bit paranoid about this, I think its understandable, however wrong.”

Byron, I can only comment on my own experience and feelings. I was always sympathetic to the Jews as a people, especially because of what happened to them during WWII. It’s easy however to forget that millions of other people were murdered by the Nazis in their concentration camps - why aren’t these millions of people given the same amount of publicity as that of the Jewish victims?

While my feelings about what happened during WWII to the Jews have not changed, I am not at all sympathetic to present-day Jews in Israel. You ask us to look at Israel on the map – perhaps it would also be helpful for us to study just how the state of Israel came into being and what has happened to the Palestine people since that time. Not wanting to start a political discussion I will stop here.

Concerning anti-Semitism amongst Orthodox Christians : can any group of people or any country for that matter say that it is absolutely free of prejudice?

Fr Raphael Vereshack says that anti-Semitism in Greece “ is nevertheless quite noticeable especially among some of the more pious simple folk (monastics included).”

A “pious, simple” person might think along these lines : “ The Jews crucified our Lord, therefore they deserve our contempt. Mr. Zotos is my neighbour and he’s a Jew but he’s a good person. I wouldn’t invite him to go to church with me (not that he would accept) but I would invite him and his family to my house and I would accept him as a friend and would help him if he needed my help. All Greeks are Greeks first and Orthodox, Protestant or Jewish second.” Fr. Raphael, this is the way just about all Greeks think and act and that’s why this country helped so many Greek Jews during WWII. Compare Greece’s behaviour with that of other countries and you will see that we have a right to be proud of ourselves as a nation (as have many other countries of course). People in all countries and of all faiths are both good and bad and they act accordingly. What we do as individuals is what counts and not what specific books, newspapers and TV channels would have us believe because the people behind them are following their own agendas or obeying the instructions of special interest groups.

Present-day prejudice : I admit that there have been some isolated acts of anti-Semitic behaviour in the last few years but this is a reaction to Israel and it’s actions rather than prejudice against the Jews themselves. The recent US State Department statement concerning the burning of Judas during the Christmas celebrations in Greece is not even worth commenting on - these traditions have lost their racist character and are merely part of the festivities during this particular period – sort of like the celebration of Halloween in the US which is certainly different from the original devil worship it started out as.

“The Jews crucified our Lord”

Janine’s comment : “On the other hand, some statements about the historical Jesus from individual Rabbis at the time of the release of the film The Passion of the Christ were pretty ridiculous, and some downright heinous.”

Anyone who reads the bible knows that Jesus was a Jew as he or she knows that the Jewish leadership at that time forced the Romans to crucify him. What was the point of protesting a film that depicts the events in the New Testament accurately? What’s the next step? Rewriting the bible?

Janine, thank you for the link you posted.

Michael Rallis says it best when he says “And still, God loves each of us equally, as we should each other. Just like the rain doesn't fall on the field of a Greek and stop when it comes to the field of a Jew, neither should our love in Christ for our fellow man, our brother, our neighbor, be anything other than constant.”

I totally agree with the above statement but believe that this should work both ways. For both Christian and Jew and for both Israeli and Palestinian. Is it logical for the Jews to expect tolerance when they themselves are intolerant?

Effie

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Effie,

Is it logical for the Jews to expect tolerance when they themselves are intolerant?

I'm afraid the Christian answer, at least as I see it (correct me if you feel otherwise, I'm not saying this to be smart or make you look naive), is yes. Yes for all people, not just the Jews. I don't know you from Eve Effie, and have liked much of what I've read in your postings so far. So I really don't want to criticise you personally, but I'm afraid much of what you've written in your last post is a remider to me of the sort of attitudes I do encounter in the Greek world, and yes, among otherwise simple and good non-Jews eveywhere. I'm writing personally because I'm personally moved by everyone's posts and your own, but also because I want to show you that I'm not just defending a set of opinions - this is my life experience (which is of course no more or less valid than your own).

Unfortunately Greek (and Cypriot) people are frequently both consciously and unconsciously antisemitic, as I stated in my post above. Please bear with me as I explain what I mean. You write:

"A “pious, simple” person might think along these lines : “ The Jews crucified our Lord, therefore they deserve our contempt. Mr. Zotos is my neighbour and he’s a Jew but he’s a good person. I wouldn’t invite him to go to church with me (not that he would accept) but I would invite him and his family to my house and I would accept him as a friend and would help him if he needed my help. All Greeks are Greeks first and Orthodox, Protestant or Jewish second.” "

How would you feel towards your pious and simple Greek neighbour if you were Mr Zotos and you sensed this was his attitude towards you? You know he blames you for killing his God, but he feels that nevertheless he is obliged to be generous towards you as a fellow-Greek, to invite you to his house and accept you as a friend, and would help you if you needed his help. Nevertheless, an unspoken obstacle exists between you. The I-Thou relationship of soul-to-soul is forever blocked. There is an underlying feeling that, in the highest and best that this life has to offer, in the Church which is the center of the Orthodox heart, you are neither invited, nor deemed likely to accept such an invitation.

If you were Mr Zotos, how would you feel? Might you perhaps be tempted to see your pious and simple neighbour as a reasonable and good enough chap? Probably, yes. Would you feel able to take him into your bosom, and would you feel embraced by him in turn? Would the warmth of divine friendship characterise your relationship, or would you be tempted to view one another with polite tolerance, but never ultimately meet?

And I dare to say that the pious and simple neighbour of Mr Zotos is one of the better people (of course, not the best or the saints) Greece has to offer to its Jewish community. I won't even discuss the black-clad old lady in the supermarket across the street from my parental home who called my Dad a "Jew" because he asked a customer to turn off his noisy car engine. She is just one example.

I hasten to qualify, to add that I love and respect Greek people, culture and my Greek ancestry as I do the Jewish line. It would be as nonsensical to reject all Greeks because of the behaviour of a few, as it would to reject Christianity because some of us sin, or Jews and Jewish culture because a group of them, at some point in history, condemned the God of Love.

I hope my post, which I'm rushing a bit because I have to leave my computer, has not hurt or caused offence. I write in the spirit of reconciliation and love, grateful to have fellow-monachosnet Christians (and non-) to discuss issues that really matter.

ICXC
Byron

[Owen Jones]

Regarding the film, The Passion of Christ, would that Orthodoxy had any public voices that anyone listened to, we would have offered at least a mild critique of the film as being theologically unbalanced. I have not seen the film for that reason, however I would not be surprised if there were a Jewish reaction. I don't begrudge some of the Jewish reaction that I heard about. But most of that came from secular jews. Traditionalist religious Jews did not condemn the film, and actually praised its production as a significant cultural fact. I tried to make the point in an earlier post, that Jews are united only when it comes to their survival. Everything else among Jews is up for grabs, even including the definition of a Jew. So to be sweepingly critical of jews is, ipso facto, anti-semitic.

regarding the Palestine issue, the Jews stole it fair and square and the defeated Arabs ought to suck it up and deal with it, just as we had to do in the Confederacy.

[Janine]

Owen, there was both plenty of Orthodox commentary at the time of the film, and plenty of condemnation from traditional religious Jews and rabbis. There were newspaper reports of both widely reported at the time. Do a simple google search and you will find both from newspapers at the time.

Your point of view on the rights of Palestinians is very sadly against international law and all bodies concerned with human rights, including the bodies and charters that created the state of Israel in the first place. This is a matter of record. Most especially the constant violation of peoples rights under Occupation is a matter of international law such as the Geneva Convention and laws passed after the Second World War in response to Nazi Occupation practices. Sauce for the goose, etc.

As for survival, we are told we in the United States need vast amounts of nuclear weapons for our survival, that we needed to attack Iraq for our survival. Survival is a tricky thing. Some people thought they needed to crucify Christ for their survival too, once upon a time. There are plenty of other people: Armenians, Rwandans, etc. who have survived genocide and yet do not feel they need to do the same to assure their survival. As Christians it is our first job to recognize how fear works in us to create false, hostile, murderous intentions; and recognize when they trample on the rights of "the Samaritans." Especially when we wish our rights to be respected. Many Jews were murdered throughout Western Europe for "survival" too -- people claimed they were responsible for plague. This "fear for survival" has excused massive hostility based on prejudice throughout history and we should never accept it no matter who practices it. Even the Nazis claimed they were only instituting genocidal murderous practices to assure the survival of their "race" and their country. These policies for "survival" are threatening the Palestinian population but most specifically the survival of the Christian community in the region who directly because of Occupation policy have dwindled to a tiny percentage over the past 30 years to the point where the relgious community is now concerned that all the religious sites will simply become "museums." It is the Christian community that is the hardest hit and most threatened of all because of Israeli policies in response to fear for "survival." Of course there are also plenty of Israelis who recognize that it is the policies themselves that create more danger for Israelis than anything else and that the policies are completely unnecessary, besides illegal.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all, it seems somewhat strange to me that in this whole discussion, little has been said about the aspect of Zionism that actually has any direct bearing on the Christian life; namely, so-called 'Christian Zionism', or the widespread belief that the formation and establishment of 'Zion' is part of the prophetically-anticipated historical antecedent to the second coming (parousia) of Christ. Zionism as a strictly Jewish movement has little Christian relevance, save perhaps for the humanitarian issues raised by its implementation, with which all -- Christians and non-Christians alike -- ought to be concerned. But 'Christian Zionism' is a distinctly Christian concept, an 'in-house' concern, if such language be appropriate. Here we have grounds for a genuine discussion, for 'Christian Zionism' is vastly prevalent in many circles, especially in the United States (but also in many other parts of the world), and is of direct theological consequence on one's understanding of Church, of Christ, of redemption, of history -- the list goes on.

INXC, Matthew

[Owen Jones]

I have failed to make my point clear. Jews are united only on issues regarding their survival (leaving aside the issue for a minute as to what that means). My point was not about the issue of survival, but about generalizing regarding Jews. Their is considerable difference of opinion in Isreal and throughout Judaism worl-wide about what it means to be Jewish, about the correct Israli policy, on theological matters, etc. etc., so it is just as misleading to lump all Jews together as representing one point of view, as it is to lump all Christians together. That was my only point.

But since the subject has been raised, let's talk about fear. Some fear is legitimate. If terrorists could get hold of a nuclear weapon, does anyone doubt they would use it in the U.S.? Anyone? If anything, Americans have been beset by a complacency that has prevented pre-emptive action for a long time. A legitimate fear was lacking. Israelis have a legitimate fear of total destruction. they have had the power destroy massive numbers of Arabs and have restrained using that power.

The UN record on Palestine and world-wide is one of supporting and encouraging terrorist states, so they have no credibility on the issue.

Historically, both the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the chief Jewish Rabbi of Jerusalem signed off on the institution of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine at the treaty of Paris following World War I. Britain overstayed its mandate established by the League of Nations and neither became reality. The impetus of the Nazis, and the large number of homeless European Jews, became the catalyst for a Jewish insurrection against the British mandate after WWII. When the British withdrew, the Isrealis declared their own state, and were immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab countries. Had the Arabs been willing to work with the Isrealis and the UN at the time, instead of pledging to the destruction of Isreal, we could have seen an independent Arab Palestinian state decades ago. Isreal has weathered three surprise attacks against it by surrounding Arab countries over the decades. It could easily have responded in kind by, for example, driving its army into Gaza and forcing all of the people there into Egypt. Egypt doesn't want them. Gaza could easily become a quasi-independent province of Egypt, but Egypt doesn't want them. Transjordan was initially seen as the independent Palestinian state, but after the Palestinians in Jordan tried to overthrow the Monarchy, they were thrown out of the country.

Are the Isrealis saints? Of course not. I was shocked that Sharon could become PM. He is personally responsible for deliberately inciting Arabs into violence. His policy historically has been to drive all Arabs out, first from Jerusalem, then from the West Bank, by buying up their property, and using the army to protect settlers. It is an incindiary policy, deliberately designed to foment conflict. While I would be a Likud party member were I an Isreali, Sharon's policies have been a disaster. But when the peace party was in control, they gave up considerable concessions for a Palestinian state, and Arafat said no. Because he wanted nothing short of the destruction is Isreal, and if he made peace, he would no longer be relevant. He could no longer siphon billions away from foreign aid and put it into his Swiss bank accounts.

What is really appalling is the high moral tone of the Europeans who do nothing, and expect America to solve all of their Balkan and Middle East problems for them, while condemning us at the same time. And now we see a rise of anti-semitism among the left in Europe and in the U.S., because the Palestinians have been designated as an opporessed minority (Arabs who live in Israel, many of whom are citizens and can vote have more rights than Arabs in any other Arab country), and what the Isrealis are doing to protect themselves from terrorism, right or wrong, is compared to Nazism. Grotesque.

[Owen Jones]

Regarding Matthew's comment, I agree, and am sorry for getting the discussion into politics. An amazing transformation has taken place in American protestantism over the last thirty years. The vast majority of American protestants have adopted a panoply of interrelated theories regarding pre-millenarian dispensationalism which says that the final pre-apocalypse event will take place in Isreal, and this has led conservative protestants in the U.S. to become the strongest, most vocal supporters of Isreal in the world. This from a group that was largely seen as anti-semitic as recently as the 1970's. Likud party members regularly speak at conservative Christian events in the U.S., and are close to Christian protestant leaders.

[Janine]

While this is not a political forum, I have to say that your ideas on politics, Owen, I find sadly mistaken. I will not go into great detail, but will make brief comment on a couple of issues: you write The UN record on Palestine and world-wide is one of supporting and encouraging terrorist states, so they have no credibility on the issue First of all I think this is sheer nonsense. Secondly, as to Sharon's history, it is far more bloody than you portray. He, throughout his career has been responsible for military actions against unarmed refugees, both within Israel and in Lebanon. I think, honestly, there is prejudice in the way we view such things when we gloss them over. And I won't go into it any further.

Nobody has the right to commit murder and destroy an entire society of people in the name of their "survival." This is mythical nonsense to cover greed (a new claim to yet more land in East Jerusalem is now troubling to the US State Dept, for example). And again I'd stress there are worldwide bodies of law, courts, etc. whose job it is to rule on such things, and human rights organizations who've documented it all. There is no country above humanitarian laws; and as Christians I should hope we view no people above biblical standards of justice and mercy. Furthermore, as far as Taba is concerned, the idea that Arafat merely said "no" is also a myth and has been disproved even in Israeli scholarly circles -- his team came back with a counter offer at Taba. It was Barak who said "no."

If one side has a right to survival, so does the other. As Christians we are to see them all as equals, I think.

On to Christian Zionism -- sadly even those who do not endorse this idea theologically are influenced by the politics of the groups who push for this - there is a history in the US of influence of ideas of "the elect" which is somehow above normal law. I for one feel the idea is completely instigated for political reasons of domestic power within the US and some Christian groups who have sought that domstic political power with great zeal. Theologicaly it is an important question to be addressed and has been addressed in various ecumenical circles. The Evangelical Lutheran Bishop of Jerusalem has called for an address of this issue and asked for it to be labeled publicly a heresy.

(Message edited by Janine on 30 January, 2005)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Effie,

Without a shade of a doubt there are those among our people who truly or to the best of their ability put into practise the words of our Lord, to, "love thy neighbour as thyself." And this goes for all cultures in all ages.

But sometimes we must also acknowledge the darker side, acknowledging that not only have we not treated others as our neighbour but we have also stood by watching as others mistreated our neighbour. Perhaps in fact we must always be aware of our failure in this regard & the horrors which it has led to in our times. Otherwise we drift off into complacency & unwittingly open the door to evil.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Janine]

This reminds me of a 2003 encyclical written by Archbishop Demetrios on the anniversary of OXI day in Greece. That's October 28, 1940, when Greece, despite being hopelessly weaker, "issued a resounding “No” - “OXI” - to the dark forces of Fascism" as Archbishop Demetrios puts it, first to Mussolini and later the Nazis, unlike some other European countries. Their resistance changed the course of the war as it delayed Hitler from invading Russia in Spring when he wanted to, and of course there was fierce resistance over the next four years of brutal occupation and hardship, as well as terrible reprisals for that resistance. Archbishop Demetrios writes of how "we have a particular responsibility to say “No” to bigotry, fanaticism and violence, to follow the footsteps of our forebears, and to cultivate courage within our hearts we may need to say no to."

I think it's another response in regard to Benjamin's question from an Orthodox hierarchical source, and also an example from history of how we need to look to ourselves and situations where we may passively support policies of injustice against weak and demonized minorities, wherever they may be found, when they are subject, for example, to things like collective punishments. Surely Fr. Raphael is right when he says we should look to our own behavior today in this context. It stands to reason that this would especially those of us in the most powerful (and democratic!) country in the world, who are in a far more comfortable position to do this than the Greeks of 1940 were. Well worth reading on this timely subject.

Encyclical Of Archbishop Demetrios For October 28/Oxi Day (http://www.goarch.org/en/news/NewsDetail.asp?id=1001)

[Maximos Darnley]

As much as I would like to enter the discussion about Zionism and Israel I think it's been well covered. I'm more concerned about what's addressed in Owen's most recent posting.

Why have the vast majority of American Protestants adopted the view that the final pre-apocalypse event will take place in Israel, as Owen observes? What has inspired them to take this path? In Australia there are also signs of this, often associated with the growth of Charismatic fundamental Protestantism .

Recently while I was in Greece someone asked me why I thought there had been a rise in this form of religion in Australia. My reply was that it's associated with the rapid growth of suburbs and the resulting lack of social and cultural cohesiveness and infrastructure. I also identified economic pressures on families and the instant and glamorous packaging of religion using personalities and pop music as elements, but of course this was an off the cuff answer.

I'd be very interested in what people have to say about it.

Archbishop Demetrios made some very concentrated and useful comments. I heartily endorse the need for uncompromising support and a wholehearted defense of what is just, true, noble, and free.

In recent years I've travelled in Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and the USA. Many people that I've met would share the views of Archbishop Demetrios.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Byron, I certainly made myself seem anti-Semitic, didn’t I? I used to post on this forum about a year ago but decided that the Internet was taking up too much of my time so I had a break from it – I unfortunately don’t seem to have too much will power.

Byron, I do have negative feelings against the state of Israel and their actions in Palestine. I do not have any feelings at all towards Jews as people as far as I am able to discern. I have examined my thoughts and feelings as honestly as I am capable of and am confident that I am being truthful.

In my example of the imaginary Mr. Zotos, I tried to put myself in the place of those same people that you referred to in your message and it seemed to me that that is how they would have thought during the Second World War.

I knew some Jewish families in Australia when I was growing up and they were neither better nor worse than others. I have never believed that a person’s religion has anything to do with our feelings about that person.

Byron you write :

“There is an underlying feeling that, in the highest and best that this life has to offer, in the Church which is the center of the Orthodox heart, you are neither invited, nor deemed likely to accept such an invitation.”

Byron, what person actively belonging to the Jewish faith would invite you to his synagogue? (unless for a special event of some kind that friends would be invited to). The Orthodox church is open to everyone but would your aim in asking him to your Church be to show love or to convert him? Jews don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah so what would your Jewish friend be doing exactly in church? If your purpose was to convert him, wouldn’t that be an appalling lack of respect towards the person you call friend? God is One, whatever your religion and I think that that’s why each religion deserves our respect.

I like to look at life with as much realism as I can but, unfortunately, there is sometimes a difference between theories and their practice in our everyday lives.

What I wanted to emphasize with my example is that even though some people might have negative theoretical feelings against Jews because of what they were taught in Church, their actions show that they are capable of loving their neighbours whatever their religion.

I have no personal example to put forth except for one that my mother told me about.

She grew up in the city of Kozani in northern Greece – which is where I live now. Kozani was a small town then and had only a minimal Jewish population. During the German occupation two young girls – seamstress apprentices and Jewish, were doused with petrol and set alight outside the town limits. No Greeks were present but this horrible event quickly became known. There wasn’t much the Greek population could do openly because as you might have read the Germans took heavy retribution for each and every act of rebellion but they managed to show their outrage in the only way possible. Father Justinian (I think that’s his name – he was Metropolitan of Florina until recently I think) was preaching against the Germans every chance he got and the Greeks had been forbidden to go to his sermon (at night he hid in the cellars of various houses the little time he spent in Kozani). After what happened to these two young Jewish girls the Greeks of this town crossed the German lines preventing them from attending this courageous man’s sermon and at the risk of their lives listened to what he was saying. This might not seem like much but whole families attended this sermon and to face up to the German guns was not easy. The Germans backed off because they didn’t want to cause even more trouble.
They wiped out whole villages all over Greece but wiping out a whole town at that particular time must not have been on their agenda.

Byron, our actions mean as much as our feelings – just imagine how easy it would have been for these simple Greek Orthodox people to just shrug their shoulders and say “so what” regarding the murder of these two Jewish girls.

Byron, regarding your comment :” I hope my post, which I'm rushing a bit because I have to leave my computer, has not hurt or caused offence. I write in the spirit of reconciliation and love, grateful to have fellow-monachosnet Christians (and non-) to discuss issues that really matter.:

No offence taken and, I hope, none given. I’m just sorry I was so unclear in my first post. I like discussing various religious subjects on Monarchos. Net because I am forced to think clearly about my beliefs and am then better able to define them. Thank you.

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

Reply to Father Raphael


“Dear Effie,

Without a shade of a doubt there are those among our people who truly or to the best of their ability put into practise the words of our Lord, to, "love thy neighbour as thyself." And this goes for all cultures in all ages.
But sometimes we must also acknowledge the darker side, acknowledging that not only have we not treated others as our neighbour but we have also stood by watching as others mistreated our neighbour. Perhaps in fact we must always be aware of our failure in this regard & the horrors which it has led to in our times. Otherwise we drift off into complacency & unwittingly open the door to evil.
In Christ- Fr Raphael”

I agree completely, Father Raphael. We must always act but, pray God, we never find ourselves in such a situation because then we would truly know ourselves and whether what we believe is real or just a lot of sugary words that we use to raise our self-esteem.

Thank you for replying. I have read some of your posts and have found them very helpful.

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

Janine, I don’t like to get into political discussions on this forum because I did it in the past and truly regret it. I agree with the things you have written but don’t want to try and change other people’s political beliefs.

Janine, one book that I found really good concerning the true events of what happened in Palestine in 1948 is “O Jerusalem” by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (1972). These two journalists have done a tremendous job of presenting the facts without bias. The huge bibliography included in this book is also very useful if you want to further your knowledge. It’s so easy to just accept what we are told – I always like to read official accounts of what really happened. These two authors have also included transcripts of United States Department of State cables between Washington and the US Consul General, the US mission to the United Nations…. Etc. ( 1947 – 8.) Very, very interesting!

Effie

janine, one more thing. I watched "The Passion of Christ" on DVD and have to admit I was deeply moved. I thought Mel Gibson accurately dramatised what is written in the New Testament but I would have to see the film again to be really sure.

Effie

[Andrew Williams]

I thought that the following statistics of the numbers and percentages of Jews killed by country in Europe might be relevant:

* Poland: 3 million (- 91 per cent)
* Soviet Union: 1.1 million (- 36 per cent)
* Hungary: 569,000 (- 69 per cent)
* Romania: 287,000 (- 47 per cent)
* Lithuania: 143,000 (- 85 per cent)
* Germany: 141,500 (- 25 per cent)
* Netherlands: 100,000 (- 71 per cent)
* Bohemia/Moravia: 78,150 (- 66 per cent)
* France: 77,320 (- 22 per cent)
* Latvia: 71,500 (- 78 per cent)
* Slovakia: 71,000 (- 80 per cent)
* Greece: 67,000 (- 87 per cent)
* Yugoslavia: 63,300 (- 81 per cent)
* Austria: 50,000 (- 27 per cent)
* Belgium: 28,900 (- 44 per cent)
* Italy: 7,680 (- 17 per cent)
* Estonia: 2,000 (- 44 per cent)
* Luxembourg: 1,950 (- 56 per cent)
* Norway: 762 (- 45 per cent)
* Denmark: 60 (- 0.7 per cent)
* Finland: 7 (- 0.3 per cent)
(From an article in the Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/25/ueuropejews.xml))

Certainly the casual anti-semitism I have sometimes seen in E. Europe is shocking, as is the casual racism I've seen particularly in Russia and America, though no culture I know is free of it. I imagine, with no personal experience of the Middle East, that the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians feeds on a similar sort of prejudice, whatever the political rights and wrongs of the case. But on a lesser scale, all of these kinds of prejudice be deeply upsetting - even when it comes to groups within Orthodoxy which can often be deeply suspicious of each other and more willing to repeat rumours about the negative in another group than to actually meet people within that group and find out that they are just more fallen humans like all of us, a mixture of good and evil.

Speaking as a European, Owen, I would like to say that I neither desire nor expect America to sort out the problems in either the Balkans or the Middle East, and I'm not quite sure of the purpose of that comment.

With regard to Janine's comment about looking to ourselves, there is another interesting editorial comment in the Telegraph (http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/01/23/dl2301.xml) about the modern western feeling of immense superiority to the Nazis which can blind us to the evils of our own culture.

(Sorry, Matthew, this isn't exactly all about Zionism, is it?)

[Janine]

In my opinion the rise in Christian Zionism can be attributed purely to the drive for domestic political power by certain evangelical groups within the US, perhaps most notably exemplified by televangelists Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson. An alliance with AIPAC, the most powerful political lobbying group in Wash DC, has been far more beneficial in terms of political clout than the so-called Christian Coalition had on its own. From a history of the groups & population in question, there has always been an appeal of some elite group and its superiority to others. And a lot of prejudice against groups seen as somehow 'threatening' to the prevailing ideology. This is one more 'program' taht fits that pattern.

As for the statistics, its interesting to note that where resistance to the Nazis was minimal fewer Jews seem to have been killed, compared to countries where resistance was fierce and the local populations also suffered great losses over the long haul of occupation. In Greece, though, this has to be broken up by area of Occupation force to get an accurate picture. Athens, for example, was quite different from other areas like Thessaloniki. In Thessaloniki there was a huge Jewish population (majority of the city) and it was highly ghettoized by its own organization near Synagogue, etc. so they were unfortunately easy targets. In Athens there was a completely different story -- people were far more assimilated as part of the general Greek population, were not ghettoized and that coupled with help from local Church and Civic and academic leaders helped to save a great deal more of the population than in other areas of occupation.

[Anthony]

Janine's post on OXI day reminds me also of a beautiful poem by Kavafis in a similar vein on Thermopylae (which I once translated for a friend though I have now lost it).

I lived for many years in Greece, and while I don't claim any special insight because of this, I would say that Fr. Raphael is spot-on, both in his description of the problem of anti-semitism there and his insistence on the need for vigilance everywhere. No country can be sure that it will not be the next realization of fascism.

[Janine]

It's interesting that Greece has every single imaginable political party (and more) of the widest possible political spectrum running in elections. This is part of democracy. The fascists get maybe 2 percent nationwide. Of course you never know what external power might be interested in sponsoring a dictatorship :-) and there we come home in our *own* responsibility for vigilance again

I saw in the news yesterday that in Germany right now there are big concerns about a fascist party.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Could the alliance between certain Evangelicals & Zionists be based on the drift of both towards neo-conservative views?

A number of decades ago Isreal was much more openly liberal in its values, not only in terms of how Labour was a popular party with very popular prime ministers, but also in its social views. Israeli values as with much of the west at the time were liberal values of tolerance, etc. But again as in the west which has seen the rise of neo-conservatism there has been a noticable hardening of views in Israel. Note that it is especially among Evangelical Christians that one finds this neo-conservativism. So although surprising at first sight the new alliance between conservative Evangelical Christians & right-wing Israelis (mostly Zionist) perhaps is at least partly based on common political visions.

One thing to remember is that very often Israeli society is a mirror of western, especially American, society. Seen from this perspective, "so-called 'Christian Zionism', or the widespread belief that the formation and establishment of 'Zion' is part of the prophetically-anticipated historical antecedent to the second coming (parousia) of Christ" that Matthew refers to could be a kind of neo-conservative chiliasm that not surprisingly is played out in Jerusalem.

Thanks Effie for the story about the two Jewish girls murdered by the Nazis- it was most moving & shows that good example for all of us. The acts of resistance among the Greek people must have taken extraordinary courage & faith considering the well known brutality of the Nazi regime in Greece. I have heard that Bulgaria (including the Patriarch) also resisted the extermination of its Jews in like manner.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Janine]

One thing that you have to consider in this question is why is the vision of Zion one that does not include religious minorities or the right of return for refugees? This is the crux of the matter I think. Is it not possible to have a vision of Zion without it being an ethnocracy or theocracy? Why could it not just as well be a sort of modern democratic state that includes equal rights for all?

[Owen Jones]

This may sound like carping, but "neo-conservatism" refers to a particularly small but influential group of former Democrats who are foreign policy experts who have rejected the McGovernite school of American foreign relations. Some are Jewish, some are not. A number of them hail from the graduate school in politics at Claremont College in California, where the late Leo Strauss (a secular Jew) was very prominent and influential.

It has nothing to do with American Christian fundamentalists or pentacostals or evangelicals.

John Locke formulated the modern notion of liberal tolerance, by reducing Christianity to a moral decency movement, and rejecting most of the history of Christian theology, and rejecting the traditional Christian anthropolgy with the idea of a new man who has a self-contained consciousness and moral consience. Liberalism and totalitarianism share the same intellectual roots, and of course there is nothing as intolerant today as liberalism.

As I noted earlier, Isreal was not founded on religious Zionism, but rather a utopian socialist ideal. Nobody believes in that any more, and so Isreal switches back and forth between Labor and Likud, just as Britain and the U.S. switch back and forth between center-right and left-wing party governance. The vast majority of people in Israel are thoroughly secularized, but the hard core religious minority is increasingly influential, often as a power broker in the Knesset. Parenthetically, there are fringe movements in Isreal such as Kaballa that are probably far more influential than is publicly known or even imagined.

Regarding the right of return and rights of minorities, there are probably more rights according minorities in Isreal than in any other Middle Eastern state. In fact, there is a general panic in Isreal over demographics. Arab Israeli citizens, which number a couple of million, have a much higher birth rate. That is why Israel is constantly putting pressure on Jews to "return" to Israel, and will pay for it. The many tens of thousands of Arabs displaced from the towns and homes by the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 must also be seen in context to the many tens of thousands of Jews who had ancient roots in Arab lands and have been forced out.

It is patently obvious that thugish dictators throughout the Arab world constantly harp against Israel as a means of distraction in order to continue the opporession and impoverishment of their own peoples. Israel's existence is actually quite a boon to these regimes. Without Israel to blame, they would have to deal with their own domestic discontent.

I see no evidence that the growth of apocalyptic and millennarian fervor among American Protestants was a staged event. Jewish organizations in Israel were very skeptical about Christian overtures and very slow to engage in any dialogue with the likes of Falwell. The impact of decades of cable religious TV and of books such as those produced by the LeHaye's cannot be underestimated.

As for the motivation, there is a wave of alienation among conservative Christian believers in the U.S. over the immorality of our society and this tends to fuel extreme theological expectations as a solution. Also, there is something mystical about having turned the corner on another millennium, which fuels millennarian speculation. This seems to be more than just a strictly religious impluse, since many millions of people world-wide have adopted a secular version of apocalyptic, in the form of the global warming scam.

[Father Anthony]

Fr. Raphael Vereshack wrote:


Could the alliance between certain Evangelicals & Zionists be based on the drift of both towards neo-conservative views?

Perhaps Fr. Raphael would kindly provide us with a concise definition of his use of "neo-conservative" in this thread, and how that might differ from the political conservatism that relates to social and fiscal policies of government. I suggest this because the term "neo-conservativism" is frequently used as a buzz-word to attack political conservatives who hold conservative social and fiscal views, and is not infrequently misused.

Fr. Anthony

[Janine]

Personally I don't think there's an excuse for any supremacist system of values, and my religious values teach me that (see the encyclical from Archbishop Demetrios, as one example). This is the way I see Christian Zionism, besides its obvious roots domestically in the US and its leaders' devoted drive for domestic political power. All of these things translate into completely secular activities having no real theological foundation besides what is distorted from particular bible passages taken out of context of the bible as a whole and especially the gospels.

Regarding the right of return and rights of minorities, there are probably more rights according minorities in Isreal than in any other Middle Eastern state
Losing your home or having your home and all rights taken away from you is not really a better deal than elsewhere. And Israeli Arabs with full citizenship are still second-class citizens in many ways in terms of education, social services, opportunities, property ownership, etc. In a self-proclaimed democracy one doesn't expect that rights apply to one group more than others.

The expulsion of Jewish communities from some Arab countries came as a response to Israeli policies -- that doesn't excuse it. But neither is it excused therefore the other way around.

Without Israel to blame, they would have to deal with their own domestic discontent.
Various democratic movements in Arab countries have been put down with complicity by pro-Israel forces -- if these countries were truly democratic, do you really think they'd necessarily approve of the way Israel has treated the Palestinians? The fundamentalist movements are also a response, unfortunately, to corruption.

Liberalism and totalitarianism share the same intellectual roots, and of course there is nothing as intolerant today as liberalism Whoo boy that's more extreme than even the fascist dictators used to say in Greece, although along the same lines. Is this part of the Nazism is socialism thing?

the global warming scam I think I'm beginning to get the drifthttp://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

In that case you must really not like our "green Patriarch" very much:

September 1, 2002 Encyclical of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (http://www.patriarchate.org/official_documents/756.html)

[Anthony]

Some interesting points in the last few posts that I would like to take up. Sorry if the resulting post is rather long and disjointed.

"I saw in the news yesterday that in Germany right now there are big concerns about a fascist party." (Janine)

That's right, one of the right wing parties interrupted the minute's silence for Auschwitz and walked out. The public prosecutor is trying to see if there is a way of prosecuting them for incitement.

Germany at the moment is in a state of transition for many reasons, and one comes across a number of historical revisionists even in the universities. There is also, for obvious reasons, a particularly acute consciousness of Nazism and a widespread political will to resist it. I think of a friend of mine here, a history student, who, ever since an elderly relative of his denied the holocaust, has made it I could almost say his life's work to study the war on the Eastern front and document the Nazi atrocities. Thus I have a lot of hope, though nobody can be complacent.

"Seen from this perspective, "so-called 'Christian Zionism', or the widespread belief that the formation and establishment of 'Zion' is part of the prophetically-anticipated historical antecedent to the second coming (parousia) of Christ that Matthew refers to could be a kind of neo-conservative chiliasm that not surprisingly is played out in Jerusalem." (Fr Raphael)

I have a query about this chiliasm, probably from a position of ignorance. I read in a talk by Fr. Seraphim Rose that this association of chiliasm with the reestablishment of Jewish rule in Palestine is connected in Orthodox interpretations of prophecy with the rule of Antichrist rather than the Parousia as such. Is this the case?

"John Locke formulated the modern notion of liberal tolerance, by reducing Christianity to a moral decency movement, and rejecting most of the history of Christian theology, and rejecting the traditional Christian anthropolgy with the idea of a new man who has a self-contained consciousness and moral consience. Liberalism and totalitarianism share the same intellectual roots, and of course there is nothing as intolerant
today as liberalism." (Owen Jones)

This may be true about John Locke, but I think there is another important strand in the early development of English liberalism, which is the unwitting role played by Calvinism. Essentially they rediscovered the truth that the law of God is higher than the law of the state, and although their narrow interpretation of the Law of God didn't really catch on, the insight that the state itself is (or ought to be) subject to law somehow stuck. And although Locke may have provided the rationalization for liberalism, I think it was this insight that provided a lot of the dynamic. I like to contrast it with the "liberalism" of the French Revolution, which identifies the voice of the people with the voice of God, and has normally led to totalitarianism. I am not trying to make purely political points here, but to think about the Orthodox assessment of liberalism as a political philosophy, which I think has to treat it as a multi-faceted thing.

"The acts of resistance among the Greek people must have taken extraordinary courage & faith considering the well known brutality of the Nazi regime in Greece. I have heard that Bulgaria (including the Patriarch) also resisted the extermination of its Jews in like manner." (Fr Raphael)

As I have heard the story from Israeli friends and colleagues, the Bulgarians played a particularly heroic role in this respect, and the Jews have not forgotten it. They are more ambivalent about the Greeks in general, although they honour the many individuals who helped them. This may or may not be fair - I am just reporting it. The Bulgarians were also very brutal in the parts of Greece they occupied, which is another story.

[Janine]

Dear Anthony, as just a note -- a lot of the current positions on various regimes during the war is also influenced by general policy toward modern day Turkey and positive views about the Ottoman Empire. It should also be noted that Bulgaria was officially an ally of Nazi Germany from March 1941 to September 1944.

[Anthony]

Dear Janine - that was also in my mind, though I didn't want to make my note longer than it already was.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Fr Anthony,
Christ is in our midst.

You asked,


"Perhaps Fr. Raphael would kindly provide us with a concise definition of his use of "neo-conservative" in this thread, and how that might differ from the political conservatism that relates to social and fiscal policies of government. I suggest this because the term "neo-conservativism" is frequently used as a buzz-word to attack political conservatives who hold conservative social and fiscal views, and is not infrequently misused."

I speak from my experience as a Canadian who has been around more or less consciously since the late 1950s. In Canada & other British Commonwealth countries Conservative up until recently generally meant those who favour the preservation of traditional values; this often included an idea of a hierarchical society including support for a constitutional monarchy; & the idea that government has a positive & necessary role to play in society. An example of a conservative of this type was Winston Churchill who actually was responsable for the formulation of many of the present day social programs in Great Britain. For him the negative term 'socialist' meant government interference in the private economic sphere although even here he was not shy of interventionism at times. When it came to government intervention in society (everything from pensions to workman's compensation) he was most favourable with the difference that his rationale for this would sound a bit patronising nowadays.

Recently however there has been a great change within conservatism so that a number of these core values such as an implicit trust in government's positive role have almost been reversed. In Canada & other countries with similar political histories this has led to a rift in the Conservative Party- one part being the old style who in the meantime have become more liberal(in Canada these are called Red Tories) while the newer way of thinking is called by different names- new conservative, neo-conservative, etc. Until recently (for about 10 years) there were two separate political parties in Canada representing these two at times conflicting political visions.

Of course America has its own unique history & so does its history of conservatism. An American once told me that (Nelson?) Rockefeller represented the older conservative tradition in the USA- what we would call a Red Tory.

I hope this is helpful.
In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Owen Jones]

You're right. I don't.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Regarding from above:


"Seen from this perspective, "so-called 'Christian Zionism', or the widespread belief that the formation and establishment of 'Zion' is part of the prophetically-anticipated historical antecedent to the second coming (parousia) of Christ that Matthew refers to could be a kind of neo-conservative chiliasm that not surprisingly is played out in Jerusalem."

I'm not sure it is clear that in my post from which this quote came everything up until the words "that Matthew refers to" is actually from the post of Matthew S not me. So I can't take any credit for a thought well expressed.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Benjamin Ekman]

Thank you all for all your replies to my initial question. A lot of ground has been covered and it is very interesting to listen to your conversation about these issues. I guess I'm still a little puzzled as to WHY there is widespread anti-semitism in e.g. Russian Orthodoxy. The Protocols of Zion are widespread and accepted there. And if it is true that it is even sold on Mt. Athos, that's confusing. I am a serious inquirer into Orthodoxy and this issue threw me off a little. I attend a (mostly convert) Antiochian Orthodox parish. My parents live in Israel so I guess I am a little extra sensitive to this issue. What I started thinking was: What is the state of World-wide Orthodoxy? Are tendencies like the one I encountered in Fr. Ephrem common? Is American Orthodoxy a totally different thing from say the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, where the patriarch is very political and ethnically minded. Should a person journey towards Orthodoxy in spite of the condition of the Church, or should I expect to discover that even the hierarchy of the Old World are indeed faithful and spiritual pastors of their respective churches. I understand that there is no way to generalize about "the state of teh Church". But any reflections by people in Orthodox countries would be a blessing to this pilgrim (maybe in a new thread).

IN XC, Benjamin

[Effie Ganatsios]

Janine's comment :"As for the statistics, its interesting to note that where resistance to the Nazis was minimal fewer Jews seem to have been killed, compared to countries where resistance was fierce and the local populations also suffered great losses over the long haul of occupation. "

Janine, I asked my husband about the Jews in Greece today and he told me that most Greek Jews live in Thessaloniki which has always had a high Jewish population. As you mentioned it was relatively easy for the German nazis to round these people up and send them to concentration camps in other countries. He told me that a lot of Christian Greeks were also sent to Germany.

We have one right-wing party in Greece and it's percentage of the national vote steadily increases every election. This phenomenon is apparent in other European countries and is said to be the result of the local populations resentment of the huge immigrant waves that have engulfed Europe the last 10 years. In Greece we have a terrible problem with the Albanians who are mostly Muslim. I have watched this right-wing party's TV channel (it would be interesting to find out just who is financing them) and the truth is that I have seen commercials for books that are about "The Zionist Conspiracy". I have never seen such books in churches as mentioned by a couple of other posters.

Effie

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Effie,

Thank you for having taken the time to reflect on my posting and respond to me and others on this thread. If you also, as I see, have taken the trouble to discuss this with your spouse, to me that suggests you are really thinking about this, and I personally value people who think with sincerity.

I have also, I´m glad to say, not yet seen a copy of the "Protocols" sold in an actual church (my local church sells books just outside the entrance to the narthex. Sadly however, I have seen it sold in bookshops and seen anti-semitic literature linking Jews with the Masons and Theosophists sold in a monastery.

Your story with the two young Jewish seamstresses set alight outside the town by Nazi soldiers is the sort of event that remains etched in Jewish collective memory. I think there is probably no Jewish person, or child of a Jewish person, who does not suffer from some form of post-traumatic syndrome as a result of WWII. The same probably goes for everyone else whose family has perished in a war or violent situation. Here in Cyprus, memories of the Turkish invasion of 1974 are still fresh, although the political climate is changing as a result of our entry into Europe.

Nevertheless, to return to our discussion, I was left with the feeling from your previous post that you had not understood my main point when I talked about the psychological barriers that exist between "Mr Zotos" and his Greek neighbour! When I wrote that "There is an underlying feeling that, in the highest and best that this life has to offer, in the Church which is the center of the Orthodox heart, you are neither invited, nor deemed likely to accept such an invitation”, I should have perhaps indicated that I was not really talking about literally inviting Mr Zotos to church on Sunday, or being invited by him to synagogue. I wasn´t talking about surreptitiously attempting to convert Mr Zotos (you are quite right, that would be patronising at best, although of course sincere theological dialogue is in my opinion a beautiful and important thing with all faiths). I was really using the church as a metaphor, to show perhaps that, for me, love is not love if it doesn´t reach the whole person and if doesn´t emerge from the center of the heart. You might have sensed this in your own life experience at times.

It seems to me that when your fellow human beings are being killed in inhuman and cruel ways right outside your town, a courageous act of defiance of the perpetrators of these crimes is a very good thing. It also seems to me that those Greek Christians (I don´t want to doubt the possibility that such existed, though I haven´t heard these important stories) who followed the Jews to the concentration camps were really loving their brothers from their hearts, and dying for Jesus.

Have you seen the film "Amen" by Costa Gavras? It is about the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church during the atrocities of WWII. In it one clearly sees the contrast between the Pope of the time, who remained silent (unlike Father Justinian), and a young, truly idealistic Catholic priest who joins the Jews to the gas chambers wearing a yellow star on his jacket. I think the young priest was the real Christian, and received a martyr´s death.

Thank you Effie for providing me with the opportunity to also think about this, although it has been upsetting me for two or three days.

Janine, I´m sorry to say this in a raw way, but I feel some of your posts have shown an indifference towards the plight of the Jews in this century, and suggest to me that you have some anger towards the Jews and Israel. It is not that I agree with everything Jews or Israelis or the Israeli government does - on the contrary, I am critical of many things going on. But I do feel that you are reluctant to admit that the Greeks or even the Greek Orthodox Church (as a human organisation, not as the Body of Christ) could do anything wrong, or neglect to do something right.

Thank you all for your posts, and Benjamin, don´t give up the search. Orthodoxy is beautiful and precious, there is treasure buried in the field, and there is room for Jews and all the children of God in it.

ICXC
Byron

[Owen Jones]

Dear Benjamin,

Objectively, Orthodoxy world-wide is in a state of serious disrepair accompanied by hope and expectation following the fall of Marxist states. There are some signs of interest in the inner spiritual life as one travels around and observes and listens. But generally speaking, the last 500 years have not been good to Orthodoxy. I am not speaking in terms of myself being the standard to which one should conform. I dare say my faith is a bit too philosophical to ever demonstrate a holy example. But they are out there if you wish to go searching around. True Orthodoxy, IMHO, is an attitude of mind, as much if not more than a set of doctrines or a beautiful worship, although all of that is important.

[Andrew Williams]

I guess I'm still a little puzzled as to WHY there is widespread anti-semitism in e.g. Russian Orthodoxy.

I would say (having lived in Russia on and off for about 8 years) that there is no more anti-semitism within the Church than there is in Russian society at large, so I think it would be difficult to suggest that it was directly related to Russia's being an 'Orthodox country'. Russia is in fact still largely a pagan country with an Orthodox heritage, in my opinion: there is a strong desire to recover a sense of Orthodoxy, but there is also still a strong, though seriously weakening, tradition of atheism, a lot of superstition and an openness to all forms of spirituality, both positive and negative. You may be able to argue that the Church hasn't adequately combated this or other forms of racism; I don't feel qualified to say.

I have seen examples of similar anti-semitism in other 'non-Orthodox' countries in Eastern Europe too; so I think the explanation for this lies at least partly elsewhere.

[Janine]

Hi Byron, you write:


But I do feel that you are reluctant to admit that the Greeks or even the Greek Orthodox Church (as a human organisation, not as the Body of Christ) could do anything wrong, or neglect to do something right.

I am sorry that you feel that way. But perhaps it is just my response to a blanket characterization of the entire church or an entire population as anti-Semitic, particularly when it comes to the events of WWII. I think it's important to recognize that people risked their lives -- especially the academic, ecclesiastic & political leaders -- to save thousands of Jews at that time. I am sorry that you see this as somehow reluctant to admit any fault.

But let me ask you -- does not the same situation apply to Palestinians who suffer collective punishments and housing demolitions in terms of helping out people who are different from yourself who suffer injustice? Do you feel a call to help such people? I do not compare the whole of the Nazi holocaust to what is happening to the Palestinians. But I say it is a real, live situation today in which an entire people suffer great injustice. There are many Israelis who try to help Palestinians -- organizations such as Rabbis for Human Rights (http://www.rhr.israel.net/), for example, among others, do tremendous risk-taking work for their fellow human beings in the name of the Jewish religion. Isn't it fair to put someone in the same place and ask the same question? Jesus was asked "who is my neighbor?" and told the story of the Good Samaritan in response. This is everybody's responsibility to anybody who suffers unjust violence, myself included, yourself included. There are no special victims. Myself included, yourself included.

I feel that not to acknowledge such people who help others - such as Rabbis for Human Rights - is wrong. Below I include a copy of a letter sent by Archbishop Damaskinos and various Greek intellectuals protesting to government authorities the treatment of Greek Jews. Are you aware of this? I should hope anyone would be who wishes to speak of this era in Greek history.

Protest by Archbishop Damaskinos and Greek Intellectualsagainst the Persecution of Greek Jewry (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:zbzQyqpENqIJ:www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%2520Word%2520-%25205114.pdf+archbishop+damaskinos&hl=en) It's from the Shoah Research Center at the School for Holocaust Studies.

I think such things should be acknowledged, as they have been, obviously by people whose jobs whose it is to research what happened during that time. I'm sorry if you feel that pointing these things out means that one is simply glossing over what happened in WWII or a reluctance to admit fault -- but really painting the whole population with a brush of indifference is wrong when it is applied to Greece. Especially when you compare it with what happened in many other countries.

Perhaps it's just that I know many, many Greeks from Athens who are relatively well educated and well-off and my circle of friends includes a lot of Greek Jews. In my husband's family I have never ever heard anti-Semitic remarks and the social circle includes Jewish families, schoolmates, etc. as close friends. I would never consider for a moment that any of them would take such things as the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' as anything but lunacy propagated by fanatics. So I have a perspective on Greece that does not include experience with the type of anti-Semitism described here. I am also familiar with widespread suffering during the war. Surely you are aware of Christian Greeks who opposed the Nazis and also went to Concentration Camps. There was a huge partisan resistance all through the war and many non-Jewish Greeks were sent to concentration camps. There's a famous play, performed all over the world - with music by Theodorakis - called "Mauthausen" written by one such Greek about his life in the concentration camp of Mauthausen. The man has given a lot of interviews on his life and experiences in the camp. Nobody glosses over what happened to the Jews, or others. If you take the subject seriously and if you have researched it as I have then you must know that characterizing the whole of the Greek population along these lines, especially regarding overall behavior in WWII, is mistaken. And FWIW I consider study of the Nazi era something quite important in terms of understanding human nature and our propensity for all kinds of evil. But it's a problem that is not only about one group of people who were victimized -- it's a problem with many facets and many people's and especially about human nature. In my opinion, the crucifixion of Christ exemplifies the same sad characteristics of human nature and mob behavior, and the important responsibility of all individuals to God's standards of justice, mercy and love.

I also am from an Armenian background. My grandparents are all survivors of genocide in Turkey, on both sides. They were from the areas that were totally decimated and population eliminated. They were all orphaned and their parents killed in horrific ways, and this is true of the whole community I grew up in. As a descendent of genocide survivors I have a different perspective than most people. I do not excuse persecution by my own people of others in response to a need for survival. If I have high standards for my own people then I have them for others, too. Nobody gets a pass from me on this subject, which is related to my whole understanding of what it means to be a Christian. When you speak of things "etched in memory" then you have to understand that you are not the only one who knows about such memories. And for what it's worth, while I understand your horror, it's important to remember they were not committed by fellow Greeks. My grandmother was forced to watch her father tortured to death, my other grandfather watched 10 of his family members killed. I grew up with witness stories of starvation on long marches, of pregnant women and children bayonetted, of rivers literally red with blood and wholesale mass-murder and massacre. Nobody in my community was without such memories. It just may be there are some people who have experiences and sympathies closer to home than you think and are trying to tell you something important. I know what total genocide is. My grandmother and her mother survived because they were hidden in the basement of a Turkish widow of a general for two years until they could escape to Syria. For the many courageous Greeks who helped people in a similar situation I feel it's important to speak up.

My people were a persecuted and racially despised minority where they came from, and finally their populatin exterminated. Perhaps that gives me sympathy for those facing similar hatred and contempt, even if they are unpopular victims. I see this as the responsibility for all people, particularly those like me whose families have experienced such persecution, and the responsibility for myself as a Christian. You're right, injustice like that makes me angry, no matter who the victims are - nobody deserves such things, and nobody has the right to commit them. I hope my background from such a minority would make it imperative that I feel such sympathy for others who are despised in this way. I should hope I would have been just as angry and vocal in the name of persecuted Jews if I had been alive in the 30s and 40s. It has also made me a student of the persecution of the Nazi era and individual response to it, particularly in a country like Greece.

[Daniel Jeandet]

I dont know if I buy onto the anti-semitic thing. I have no opinion on it, conspiracies are like scientific theories, not meant to be believed in. It could be possible to take over the world if you had control of its currency, or its corporations. But no worries if you are living in the most free and democratic country in the world, as America has been described in this thread. If its proof of irrational hatred or racism to merely state an opinion about one racial group, like when Owen said - "So, yes, I would say to characterize Jews or Judaism in terms of denial of Christ is an anti-Semitic statement" what do we say about this story, that is happening today:

Iraqis Can't Save Seed

By Bud Landry
1-19-5

"U.S. Declares Iraqis Can't Save See," by David Deschesne

According to Order 81, paragraph 66 -[B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/ or jail time.

This is the freedom that comes with the American form of democracy?

http://magic-city-news.com/article_2812.shtml

That kind of operation requires the support of banks and loaned money, and that is why conspiracies develop. Can it really be called an accident? People beleive in jewish/freemason conspiracies and people believe in arab/moslem conspiracies, one kind is okay, fair and square theft, government endorsed, the other steals all the debate and time of the intellectuals, since conspiracies are so ridiculous. We talk about what is right or wrong in the world and who is responsible as if we have uni degrees in the history of the next couple of hours, thanks to the stupid television and newspapers, owned by the same corporations who "own seeds" and enable democratic freedom by inventing valium aerosols for use on democracy resistent peoples who were never prevented by thier overthrown goverment from arming themselves against it. The conspiracy, I fear, is as dull as it is effective, not like the entertaining triangle of doom (zionism, vatican, freemason) or the scary axis of evil threatening our freedom to have the correct opinions on race and mental health while they OWN DNA. Like dostoyevsky said about the world ending in a big yawn. Just have the correct opinion on anti-semetism and we are in the clear, nothing evil or tyranical could be going on if no-one is persecuting them, yes?

[Janine]

PS Byron, if you really want to hear me get angry and criticize the church, then get me started on Archbishop Christodoulos... but I don't think anybody would really want to listen to what I would have to say on that subject, especially right at the moment... although I have mentioned elsewhere my opposition to his stand that religion should be indicated on identity cards and my support of the Ecumenical Patriarch in opposing this. The government of Greece opposed it as well -- and that subject is directly related to what we are discussing here.

If you think no Greek ever criticizes his government or his country then you don't know Greece very well http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif But I do think it's important to be both fair and accurate, especially when talking about the war, and after, for that matter. All of the things I am talking about have been well documented - you can read about them at the Jewish Virtual Library and other sources as I have. And note what they have to say about post-war Greece as well. For example, after the war. In 1944, for example, the government of George Papandreou was the first European government to return Jewish properties that had been confiscated during the war.

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Hi Janine,

One of the things I find most depressing about people who have experienced violence and abuse, is that often they have run out of mercy, rather than running over with it. I'm extremely sorry and disturbed about what Turkey did to the Armenian people, a heinous crime against humanity which Turkey has even until recently been denying. I find the subsequent denial particularly hard to stomach. As someone with an Armenian heritage yourself, and all the awful family experiences you described, you ought to understand what genocide means and how much it hurts, for generations.

Did I claim &#34;special victim&#34; status for the Jewish people? Didn&#39;t I clearly state that there is much in Israeli policy I am opposed to? Did I tar the entire population of Greece with the &#34;brush of indifference&#34; in any of my posts? I&#39;m very sorry if I gave this impression, but that is emphatically <u>not</u> what I think or believe. I was simply saying that I feel an indifference and anger towards Israel and the Jews coming from <u>you</u>, not an entire population.

I have not been speaking specifically about the ethical record of Greece during WWII &#40;which is a mixed picture with 87% of Greek Jewry disappearing after WWII&#41; but about attitudes I have encountered here in Cyprus &#40;which anyway is a bit different historically from Greece, but attitudes are similar&#41; today, which incidentally I don&#39;t think are worse in Cyprus or Greece than anywhere else. Nevertheless, I stand corrected as regards some Greek Christians, such as Archibishop Damaskinos and others who risked their lives for their fellow Greek Jews. Thank you for making me look into this more.

You write &#34;It just may be there are some people who have experiences and sympathies closer to home than you think and are trying to tell you something important&#34;. What are you trying to tell me? Why don&#39;t you just say it? The following website may explain why I feel that there are some latent feelings or attitudes in yourself which may also benefit from a little introspection, and yes - willingness to admit faults where these do exist &#40;for a very balanced and fair recent report, European Monitoring Centre On Racism and Xenophobia (http://eumc.eu.int/eumc/as/PDF04/AS-Country-EL-PDF04.pdf)&#41;.
On latent antisemitism : Antisemitism and Antizionism (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Anti-Semitism_&_Anti-Zionism.html)

One area we do agree on: human nature and its potential for evil. So I suggest we both avoid absolutism and defensiveness, and admit that things are never black-and-white. Some Greeks were good to the Jews in WWII and are good to others today, some not; same goes for Jews, Armenians, Palestinians, everyone. As your brother in Christ I would like to say that I hope peace and greater understanding is the fruit of this discussion for both of us, not just more entrenched positions.

ICXC
Byron

[Janine]

Hi again, Byron. Please bear with me in the following long message &#40;so I avoid posting frequent messages&#41;.

Some of the things you write to me have me absolutely confused. In what way have I personally expressed some form of anti-Semitism? That is what I understand you to be saying now. I read the report you referred me to - I find it very peculiar that you would do so. Do you think I engage in activities mentioned there? I don&#39;t deface cemeteries, I don&#39;t engage in conspiracy theories mentioned there &#40;which I have denounced here already as ludicrous&#41;, I don&#39;t proclaim some crazy theory about Jews being prewarned about the World Trade Center attack. But the subject of Israeli policy and Christian Zionism came up in this discussion completely separate from discussion of anti-Semitism in Greece, and I was responding to Owen about that. Does that mean I mix up Jewish people as a whole with Israeli policies? No, it doesn&#39;t &#40;that&#39;s partly why I mention Rabbis for Human Rights&#41;. I don&#39;t even confuse the whole of Israeli population with total support for such policies and I went out of my way several times to clearly indicate that.

Nor do I categorically denounce Zionism as a whole movement or Israel as an entity. In fact, in discussing Christian Zionism &#40;and the topic of this thread&#41; I went out of my way to make the point - to ask - why should it be necessary for a Zionist vision not to include a sort of universal statehood with equal rights for all minorities and all people living in it, as well as a safe haven for Jews. That is, why can this not be a possible vision? That was a serious question. It should be quite obvious that I do not think that some form of &#34;exclusivity&#34; is necessarily the only vision possible for Zionism. And it&#39;s one shared by quite a few respectable Israelis and Jews around the world.

I do think it&#39;s easy to say that more Greeks should have done something without putting oneself in their place. First of all it doesn&#39;t acknowledge the relatively many who risked their lives -- not just public leaders but also Christian families who hid Jews, the history of which apparently you are unaware. Also I have to tell you that the history of Greece and Cyprus are quite different, and I don&#39;t think that you can assume that attitudes are the same. As to percentages of Jews killed in Greece, I have already said, and any studies of the Nazis in Greece will tell you, that the decimation of the population in Thessaloniki - where those high statistics come from - is related far more to the organization of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki and the German actions there than of the actions of local Greeks - and especially one must see what happened centrally in Athens, as well as various other areas &#40;like Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos (http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/gallery/pg22/pg9/pg22903.html), for example&#41;. There are wide studies on all of these historical questions that are ongoing, by serious students of these atrocities. And that is also related to questions about attitudes in the Church historically. I don&#39;t say that anti-Semitism doesn&#39;t exist or hasn&#39;t existed at all, but all of these things are highly pertinent to Benjamin&#39;s initial question.

And, my bigger point, which I thought was clear, is that persecutions of whole groups of people go on today. Compare the response of people today willing to defend persecuted minorities when you ask why people did not risk their lives to save others. I seem to see this lack of response around me all the time in my own country, as long as the minority is unpopular in some way. And other people have made this point as well.

All of us can benefit from introspection, but why is it repeatedly brought up that there must be some personal problem involved here instead of simply refuting the factual things I&#39;ve said? This seems to be a pattern I&#39;ve encountered. All I&#39;m saying, as one descendant of genocide survivors, is that we all have the need to look to ourselves for how we treat or actively defend others in this position. And that applies to the policies of Israel as well. That is not a secret message, nor an unfair one.

And for what it&#39;s worth, I disagree with the statement that to criticize Israel or Israeli policies is de-facto a form of racism. Israel is a country, not a race of people. I would make the same criticisms of the same policies appearing anywhere in the world. I will say it again, I don&#39;t support supremacist values anywhere or from anyone. Perhaps it is more important to me as an American that prejudicial attitudes that excuse illegalities toward Palestinians are so prevalent in my country &#40;the US&#41; and go without ever being examined publicly.

Thank you for your sympathy regarding the Armenian genocide -- I was not in any way implying that you would be unsympathetic about this. However, I can tell you that Shimon Peres on a visit to Turkey made a public proclamation that the Armenian massacres were &#34;not a real genocide.&#34; It is an unfortunate side to the policies of Israel in its alliance with Turkey. Armenian representatives were also excluded from attending a worldwide conference in Israel on genocide. &#40;This attitude toward the Armenian genocide it must be noted has been denounced by some Israeli academics.&#41; Also the Armenian population of Jerusalem, despite never participating in any kind of terrorism or attacks against the state of Israel, also suffers from second-class status regarding property ownership, etc. and are subject to the same collective treatments and hardship, property seizures, etc. Can I criticise this without being an anti-Semite? I think these policies are unfair and unwise. I in no way associate you or &#34;worldwide Jewry&#34; in this statement. I criticize a policy as prejudiced in its roots. As to specifics, recently the Armenian archbishop &#40;I think it was&#41; was attacked by some yeshiva students in Jerusalem during a religious procession, his cross was broken and he was spat upon. You can read about it in here an article from Christianity today: Spitting on God&#39;s Image (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/012/2.17.html) This was also condemned in various parts of the Israeli press &#40;notably in Ha&#39;aretz&#41; as I have said before - but it does indicate a kind of prejudice that is a problem - which prejudice and bigotry was noted by an Israeli newspaper, not something I concluded or invented by myself. It was also publcly protested to the government by the Armenian Archdiocese. Again, I mentioned this only in response to the discussion that came up about Israel, not about Greece. They&#39;re two different subjects and you&#39;re right to say they are not confused. But the subject of our own attitudes toward minorities - and our public defense of their rights - is a common subject. Nor was I accusing you personally of anything of these things! I hope it did not seem that way; and if so, then I must apologize for that if I contributed to that impression. I am sorry if you see stating such things as somehow insensitive. I think where sensitivity is called upon regarding treatment of minorities and active protection of their rights it just applies all around.

You write: I was simply saying that I feel an indifference and anger towards Israel and the Jews coming from you, not an entire population
My motivation to make such a study of these events can hardly come from indifference or anger toward &#34;israel and the Jews.&#34; On the contrary, all of my life I have identified with the Jews as victims of such persecution and genocide as we have a shared history. What I may be more accurately said is disappointed that these policies I have noted hurt others collectively. I also do not like the hypocrisy that I hear from those who would excuse outright demonization and hatred of a whole group of people that I hear so often in my country -- I learned this was wrong because I learned it was so wrong that the Jews were treated this way. It is in that example that I learn that it is wrong to treat others this way and most importantly that it&#39;s up to me to say something about it even if people are going to hate me for it because I am not speaking about people who are recognized as quite as human as the rest of us. And please note I say nor think nor have implied none of these things about you personally.

I also happen to think that the Palestinian problem just gives fuel to people like Bin Laden and the Islamic fundamentalists like him. In this I would agree with Owen. For this reason as well I think it is imperative that it be honestly examined and fairly resolved.

I&#39;m sorry you think I&#39;ve been prejudicial, but if you think that criticizing policy means being racist then I&#39;m afraid I will have to disagree. If you think that calling on others who&#39;ve been persecuted to also have sympathy for those under persecution is racist then I also have to disagree. As to the specifics mentioned in the report you refer me to, I have not said, done, nor supported any of the things mentioned there. And I must say again, I&#39;m not claiming that the empirical Palestinian sitution is somehow the &#34;same&#34; as events of the Nazi holocaust.

By the way I should make it clear that I was born and raised in the US and live there still, have never lived permanently in Greece, none of my ancestors are from Greece or of Greek heritage. I have visited Greece perhaps 30 times over the past 27 years or so so I feel I know it or at least a part of it fairly well as my husband is from Athens.

All I can do is repeat your question to me and ask you to be more specific, if you want to. I will gladly hear you out. But that report does not indicate anything about what I think or say. I am making a deliberate effort to take no offense at any implication that it does. Let me also say that in this discussion I have not just been addressing my posts to you personally but to all the wide variety of opinions here, including for example the idea that these policies are somehow necessary for survival, as well as general statements about attitudes in Greece & during WWII, which were subjects under discussion in this thread.

And I agree with what you say about a kind of collective post-traumatic stress disorder in genocide survivors and more particularly in their descendants. I think that&#39;s an important thing to study and has not been well-enough documented among various populations and their different circumstances, including world acknoweldgement or denial, restitution, etc. and the effects of these various experiences on the different populations.

As for &#34;entrenched positions&#34; I have made no statements about personal character or motive, and I will not respond in kind by doing so now.

I&#39;ve been very long-winded, I apologize all.
Effie -- thanks for your post. I think you&#39;re talking about a party called LAOS. They got less than 3 percent in the last national election for parliament in March, but I think later won one Euro seat with a former deputy that got thrown out of ND. I haven&#39;t seen their TV channel, but I bet it&#39;s about as crazy as the guy I saw on one channel taking phone calls, reading tarot cards and dressed as a Hindu. He would say &#34;Opa!&#34; every time he turned over another tarot card. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif I&#39;m amazed very time I come to Athens there are new huge groups of immigrants from different countries, especially from Africa. Apparently these people are fitting in though &#40;unlike the problems with a very large illegal Albanian population&#41;. I think you&#39;re right--that party gets its votes from opposition to the Albanian immigrants.


&#40;Message edited by Janine on 02 February, 2005&#41;

[Janine]

PS Byron -- if you want to discuss some personal matter more deeply then I welcome you to message me privately and we can save everybody else the burden of having to read it all http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

[Effie Ganatsios]

A link between the rise of anti-Semitism and the Middle East conflict in Europe.





Alerted early in 2002 by worrying news on anti-Semitic incidents in some Member States the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia &#40;EUMC&#41; decided to commission a report on “Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU” covering the first half of 2002……
This wave of anti-Semitism started with the “Al-Aqsa-Intifada” in October 2000 and was fuelled by the conflict in the Middle East and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11September 2001 , which triggered off a fierce debate on the causes of radical Islamic terrorism.

During the first half of 2002 the rise of anti-Semitism reached a climax in the period between the end of March and mid-May, running parallel to the escalation of the Middle East conflict, whereas factors which usually determine the frequency of anti-Semitic incidents in the respective countries, such as the strength and the degree of mobilisation extremist far-right parties and groups can generate, have not played the decisive role.

In the months following the monitoring period the sometimes heated discussions about the Middle East conflict in the public sphere and the media died down and the number of incidents decreased. In countries like Denmark, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland there are only a few or no incidents known for the period after July 2002.

In some Member States like Belgium, France and Sweden anti-Semitic incidents, including violent attacks and threatening phone calls, increased again in September and October, but not that much as in the period monitored. Anti-Semitic leaflets, hate mail and phone calls were also reported for Germany and the United Kingdom.

This leads to the conclusion that the increase in anti-Semitic attacks was in this case set off by the events in the Middle East, a foreign event that however exerted a varying impact on the individual Member States…………”

The full report can be found here :
C_R_I_F Conseil Representatif des Institutions juives de France3.htm

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

The state of Israel, Zionism, and racism.

In my opinion, there is nothing anti-semitic in opposing Israeli actions in Palestine. &#40;What is anti-semitic is the behaviour in the above report - Jews in Europe should not be held responsible for Israel&#39;s actions&#41;. Why is any criticism of Israel immediately labelled racist? Isn’t that in itself an inverted form of racism? And isn’t Israel taking advantage of the sympathetic feelings engendered by the Jewish Holocaust by immediately labelling anyone who opposes it’s policies as anti-Semitic and racist? Zionism is a political movement that resulted in the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine.. Am I an anti-Semitic because I disagree totally with the way Israel conducts itself – am I even an anti-Zionist? I am not opposed to the state of Israel but to its actions. Bush is a what? I’m not sure how to define him exactly. Fundamentalist Christian? I am also opposed to him – does that make me anti-Christian? Golda Meir once said that there were no Palestinians. What exactly did she mean? She was obviously aware that small groups of Jews had always existed in Palestine, assumedly she also knew that the Arabs had always lived there. Was she aware of how tolerant the Moslem rulers were towards the Jews in sharp contrast to the Christians in both Europe and Palestine? .

At the time of the Balfour Declaration &#40;1917&#41;, which one of the posters mentioned , the Arab population of Palestine was 92%. The exact wording in this Declaration concerning Israel was : “ His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It also contained a very important condition that everyone seems to ignore when referring to it : that the development of a Jewish national home did not prejudice “the civil and religious beliefs of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” I don’t think any objective person can claim that this has happened in Palestine.


It is arrogant interference in the internal politics of other countries, that has always sown the seeds of future conflicts. The Balfour Declaration had always been regarded by the Arabs as an act of imperialism by Britain, a mortgaging of a land to which it had no rightful claim, and without any effort to consult the Arab occupants of that land.

The Arab viewpoint in 1947 - 1948 was that “crimes against the Jewish race were committed by the Christian nations of Europe, not those of Islam”, and it was therefore right that the countries responsible for what happened to the Jews should also have to pay the price. Is it any wonder that these people have reacted they way they have.

Israel today has nuclear weapons, it receives the bulk of American foreign aid in various guises, it does not hesitate to use it’s military power to extend it’s borders, and it has the worst record of UN infringements of any other country in the world, protected by the US veto each time it is reprimanded by the UN.

Zionism as far as Israel is concerned has nothing to do with religion as far as I am aware – although one of the definitions of the word Zion itself is given in the Oxford dictionary as “the Christian Church”.

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

Father Raphael, while it is true that Bulgaria protected it’s Jews, it was not so lenient with the Greek Jews in occupied Greece. Greece was divided into 3 occcupied zones – German, Italian and Bulgarian – overall control was of course in the hands of the Germans.

Bulgaria had control of Thrace and 11.000 Greek Jews were sent to the death camps – only 2.000 came back. The Italians, God bless them, were the ones who would not obey the German commands regarding the Jews and until 1943 the Jews in southern Greece, including Athens, were protected. After Italy surrendered to the Allies, the Germans took over the Italian occupied zone and the Jews who had not fled to safety &#40;hidden in Greek homes, Orthodox monasteries and convents, or protected by false identity papers issued by the Greek police&#41; were sent to Auschwitz.

I wanted to mention the courageous fighting spirit of the Greek Jews. At the time of WWII German propaganda would have the world believe that Jews were cowards and didn’t fight – this was proven wrong in Warsaw but even before that in Greece and perhaps other countries. The first Greek officer to fall in battle &#40;on the Albanian front&#41; was a Jew and he was honoured as a national hero by the then fascist dictator of Greece – Metaxas, who, despite his facism, didn’t hesitate to go to war with Italy and Germany. Jewish and Arab Palestinians also fought with the Greek resistance army – something that is rarely referred to. They came to Greece in 1941 with the British Expeditionary Force – they were volunteers and part of engineer and sapper units and were not allowed to bear arms by the British because of political reasons. These Palestinians were abandoned on the beach of Kalamata in the retreat &#40;as were thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops on the beaches of Crete&#41; and those not captured fought the German army alongside both the Greek and Yugoslav Resistance armies in the mountains of Greece and Yugoslavia.

I apologize for all these details but I believe strongly that we have a duty to remember those who have died so that we today may live in the manner in which we do. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the rubbish that we are subjected to each day by the media. It’s important to remember that in the not so distant past people lived and died according to their beliefs. Most of us - if we go by what is considered &#34;important&#34; on TV - seem to spend our time thinking about really important issues such as Britney Spears last CD or Jennifer Lopez&#39;s various relationships.

Effie

[Janine]

I believe strongly that we have a duty to remember those who have died so that we today may live in the manner in which we do....etc

Absolutely, Effie. When you write of Crete you remind me of travelling through the island by car about 25 years ago. I was very young and one day asked someone why half the villages I travelled through looked &#34;new.&#34; I was told of how the Nazis had wiped out so many villages, killing all the men and burning the village because one of them had shot at a Nazi officer or they had committed some other form of resistance.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Christian Zionism &#40;I don&#39;t know how accurate this term is but I&#39;m using it because others have already done so&#41;.

I found this on http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/readings/messiah/conversion.shtml

&#34;
The forthcoming conversion of the Hebrew nation to Christ &#34;



&#34;.........In the last 30-40 years there have appeared signs of the beginning of the rebirth of faith in Christ among Jews. In a whole row of large cities in the USA, missionary centers of Jewish Christians have appeared, teaching among their brothers by blood faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is very interesting and enlightening to familiarize oneself with their brochures and books on religious themes. It is apparent that the compilers of these brochures distinctly understand the Holy Scriptures and the Old Testament Jewish religion. They explain the predictions of the prophets about the Messiah and about His blessed Kingdom clearly and convincingly.

Currently, throughout the world, there are nearly 200 Messianic Jewish congregations — Christian Jews that observe their national customs. In telephone books, their communities appear under the rubric — Jewish Messianic. The following are Jewish Christian societies that are in existence: Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, the Fellowship of Jewish Congregations, International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues, Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, Jews for Jesus, The Chosen People, American Board of Mission to the Jews, and others. In confessing to the cardinal Christian dogmas, members of these congregations strive to preserve their national identity and continue to observe ancient Jewish holidays and customs, like the Sabbath &#40;Saturday&#41;, circumcision, Pascha &#40;Passover&#41;, and others.&#34;

The full article, and others, can be found at the link I posted.

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

Christian Zionism

Another good link : I&#39;ve downloaded the articles but haven&#39;t had a chance to read them yet. The little I read seems very interesting.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4960.htm

Effie

[Janine]

Hi Effie, here&#39;s a fairly short encyclopedia article defining Christian Zionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism). It&#39;s different than what&#39;s described above as it&#39;s more geared toward the physical establishment of Greater Israel as the necessary pretext for Apocalyse.

As an interesting related note, I&#39;ve met some religious Jews who don&#39;t accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel because it was not founded by the Messiah.

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Hello again Janine, Effie, everyone.

Thank you for your posts Janine. Despite my having made an effort to separate antisemitism from antizionism or legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, you seem to have got the impression that I &#40;or the links I provided in my last post&#41; say that all criticism of Israeli policy is antisemitic, but that&#39;s not the case. I think I&#39;m going to take a brief break from this discussion, but before I do so I want you to know I am sorry if I gave the impression that I was criticizing you personally or implying by posting the report on antisemitism in Greece that you would perpetrate antisemitic acts! How can I criticize you when I don&#39;t know you anyway?! I was only trying to point out that attitudes - anyone&#39;s attitudes, yours, mine, can sometimes be founded on prejudice and misunderstanding; sadly, even without us realising. There is much in your last post I do agree with, and I think we may have just got some wires crossed on some points. But the invitation to continue this discussion on a personal email basis is also extended to you, to keep the rest from nodding off while reading our postshttp://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif!

Re Christian Zionism: I have the impression that it&#39;s unorthodox to state specific times and places for the signs of the Second Coming. Can anyone tell me if this is the case? I think the Orthodox Church does not officially condone statements of this sort, since He will come &#34;like a thief&#34;, nobody knows when &#40;or where&#41;. Could the Orthodox Church support a protestant doctrine about Christian Zionism through its own theology?

[M.C. Steenberg]

Thank you to Effie and Janine for the links above,

That to the article on Orthodoxphotos.com (http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/readings/messiah/conversion.shtml) is not properly a text on Christian Zionism, but rather on a certain hope for further conversions to Christianity through so-called &#39;Messianic Judaism&#39;, or the belief that Jesus is the Messiah of the Jewish faith and the &#40;Christian&#41; desire to convert current Jews to such a belief.

The article on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism) seems to me actually a very good general introduction to Christian Zionism proper. And while it does demonstrate certain political links with the movement, particularly in its American manifestation, it also makes clear that the movement itself is based on a certain kind of reading of OT and Apocalyptic prophecy. That reading often goes with certain political mindsets, but not always. I have been horrified to hear it taught in Orthodox scriptural study groups, once attentions turned to various of the prophets.

INXC, Matthew

[Owen Jones]

If one is going to criticize Isreal, but at least be sound, accurate, and rational. The following statement simply is not rational:

Israel today has nuclear weapons, it receives the bulk of American foreign aid in various guises, it does not hesitate to use it’s military power to extend it’s borders, and it has the worst record of UN infringements of any other country in the world, protected by the US veto each time it is reprimanded by the UN.

It fails to point out that Isreal has expanded its borders only after being attacked. Strategically, the Golan Heights are so significant that they may never under any circumnstances withdraw from Golan. But they only occupied it after being attacked by Syria and coming very close to being overcome by Syrian tanks. Same with the East Bank. Isreal invaded Lebanon after they got tired of rocker barrages being sent into Israeli towns from Souther Lebanon. The invasion was a disaster in many ways, but guess what? There aren&#39;t any more rocket attacks into Israel. That Israel receives &#34;the bulk&#34; of U.S. foreign aid seems to irrelevant to me. I&#39;m not certain this is true in any case. Egypt gets a huge amount of our foreign aid as well. The UN loves to condemn Isreal in mindless resolutions that are promoted by free, democratic states like Lybia and Syria. This is one of the measures that demonstrates the lack of any moral credibility on the part of the UN. A UN condemnation is virtually a badge of honor for Israel, since the UN is so corrupt.

The Balfour Declaration is not the only historical document regarding the founding of the Jewish state. Palestinians repeatedly had a chance for an Arab Palestinian state and have blown it every time.

I&#39;ve yet to hear any comment to the extent that the Palestinian Arabs have ever done anything wrong, have ever committed crimes or mistakes, or that they bear any responsibility for their own problems.

[Janine]

Hi again, Byron. Thank you very much for your kind reply to me. I think you're right that we got our wires crossed or something! You write:


I was only trying to point out that attitudes - anyone's attitudes, yours, mine, can sometimes be founded on prejudice and misunderstanding; sadly, even without us realising

You're surely right, and this is of course as true about me as anyone else -- there are always all kinds of ways in which we need to be vigilant and in which we may not even realize there are things we need to take a look at and change. I guess that's the process of metanoia/theosis in a nutshell too! I also find it totally understandable that when we're dealing with a subject that is much more than just merely painful, it could create hurt even when not intended - especially with my overly active typing fingers which I know can get to be a drag through sheer volume on a painful subject! And if that's the case, then I apologize for what was not intended.

You also say:


I have the impression that it's unorthodox to state specific times and places for the signs of the Second Coming

I think that's right. Certainly that's what Christ said to us, no? That even he didn't know when all of these things would happen. Mark 13:32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

I would be interested in discussing more fully the subject of Apokalypse. It's so pertinent to what we're talking about in some way. I once read an essay by Thomas Merton on the subject that I thought was pretty wonderful. (If I can find it I'll post a link for comment.) Matthew, perhaps you could point me in some useful directions, or at least I would appreciate your comments in discussing this subject in its relevance to Christian Zionism. Isn't it true that we live now in the eschatological time? I mean since Christ died we've been in the eschatological time and it's our job to be "vigilant" (in yet another sense something akin to what Byron was talking about). We need nepsis because "we know not that hour."

Is there a particular Father one would recommend to start reading for commentary on Apokalypse?

[Janine]

Regarding Christian Zionism, not all Evangelicals in the US support this. One of the biggest problems with Christian Zionism is its lack of even-handedness and totally uncritical support of all policies of Israel -- especially regarding settlement and expansion of &#34;Greater Israel&#34; even when they create hardship or injustice. And in addition, the Christian Zionists are implacably opposed to any peace process and actively campaign politically to discourage the US administration from engaging in any peace process for the MidEast and Israel/Palestine.

Here&#39;s an excerpt from a letter written by dozens of prominent American Evangelicals to President Bush who criticize Christian Zionism:

&#34;Mr. President, the American evangelical community is not a monolithic bloc in full and firm support of present Israeli policy. Significant numbers of American evangelicals reject the way some have distorted biblical passages as their rationale for uncritical support for every policy and action of the Israeli government instead of judging all actions – of both Israelis and Palestinians – on the basis of biblical standards of justice. The great Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, declared in the Old Testament that God calls all nations and all people to do justice one to another, and to protect the oppressed, the alien, the fatherless and the widow.&#34;

Full text of the letter here:
Evangelical Christians and Israel/Palestine (http://www.cmep.org/letters/2002Jul12.htm)

&#40;Message edited by Janine on 02 February, 2005&#41;

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thanks Effie for the information about Bulgaria. It's always interesting to read the details of what is a complicated picture.

About the various reports about anti-semitism in Greece (provided in yesterday's links.) I thought that the reaction to the Twin Towers tragedy showed something similiar to what I experienced in my travels to Greece & to the attitudes one also encounters in other eastern European countries. To cut to the chase- my feeling is that these are basically the unthought-out gut reactions to the threat perceived in westernisation. This is a question high on the agenda of all countries in eastern Europe, especially those of Orthodox heritage like Russia & countries of the former Soviet Union. For many the response is a deepening of Faith in the Church or a renewed interest in the distinct culture of one's country- all of which may entail a critical attitude to 'the west'. But none of this necessarily involves anything really racist or chauvinist. There are those however who in a more confused or unthinking way react to westernisation and it is precisely among such people as these that one can encounter racist attitudes often accompanied by certainty of 'Jewish-Masonic' plots. In more recent times this has been combined with a very critical attitude towards America (especialy after the bombing of Serbia by NATO) so that America is often described as the center of the "western Jewish-Masonic plot". The point here I think is that this is really just a confused & misguided reaction to the real problem of westernisation. And as to why anti-semitism comes into the mix- it is not that such people are necessarily anti-semitic in their personal attitudes. It is rather that since the birth of modern racialist anti-semitism the Jew has been seen as the symbolic enemy of native national culture with all the sacred aspects of life that the nation embodies. In other words for the anti-semite the Jew is the ultimate 'cosmopolitan' whose internationalism & implicit liberalism make him 'the enemy in our midst.'

Of course most of this is a confused fantasy but it is fantasy with a powerful force of attraction on many levels. The idea of the 'enemy in our midst' has strong emotional resonance because the enemy is seen as being secretive & devious. He is the 'secret enemy' who is burrowing away at all that is good & sacred in our society. Conversely those in the know about this secret see themselves as guardians of what is sacred, almost like gnostic Knights of the Round Table or martyrs for the cause since they know that even many of their own people will think that what they say is crazy or wrong. All of this is the soil from which The Protocols springs and it shows why it continues to resonate in our times. Although it may not play a great role in a country like Greece it does often play a noticeable role in countries like Russia that are struggling to find themselves amidst ongoing westernisation.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

PS to my last post. It occured to me while writing that one reason that America has been brought into the Jewish-Masonic plot is precisely because it seems to represent a &#39;cosmopolitan&#39; destructive force to sacred national culture. Seen this way &#39;America&#39; is actually identical to the definition of what makes &#39;the Jew&#39;, and &#39;the Mason&#39; so feared & threatening. Rather than justified criticisms of America or the west one can see here something more in the nature of a defensive myth. This could also partly explain what drives the new ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.
Fr Raphael

[Owen Jones]

Dear Fr.

In identifying the problem of myth, you have hit the target. This is why discussions that are deemed to be based on &#34;objective historical fact&#34; are usually fruitless. There is always the myth to contend with. There is no history without myth. There is no objective consciousness of things, apart from myth. That is the means by which consciousness is ordered &#40;or disordered&#41;.

[Janine]

Hello again, Fr. Raphael -- as you say, I think what you are talking about may have a lot to do with Russia &#40;I have never been there so I don&#39;t know&#41; but as far as Greece goes the picture historically is different as are its experiences.

As to &#34;Western values&#34; Greece and its history is rather the root of Western values, and has been seen as such in the West for a long time via Philhellenism and reverence for classics studies; also for example this is seen in the Western support of its independence from Turkey by people like Lord Byron.

Greece has unfortunately experienced quite a bit of intervention in its domestic affairs from inception as an independent state, from varios European countries &#40;like the royal family and its history&#41; and in more recent decades via its ally the US - most notably culminating in the US sponsored dictatorship from &#39;67-&#39;74. Cypriots are also quite familiar with this sort of intervention in the history of Cyprus and the invasion by Turkey. That is a different sort of reality. While Greece has been a longterm member of NATO it often feels overlooked and in fact violated &#40;even literally regarding airspace in recent months&#41; by favoritism toward Turkey, and tolerance of the abuse of rights of Greeks in Turkey - especially as regards the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its seminary. And all of this &#34;tolerance&#34; of non-Western ideas of governance is seen merely as an obstacle to true dialogue between Greece and Turkey and the betterment of relations. FWIW I think there are many Turks who wish for change too, and these people in many cases have suffered for decades as political prisoners and victims of repression.

Cyprus of course has had its own struggle with independence and non-alignment and interference in its affairs in recent decades - especially during the time of Archbishop Makarios. Many suspect that the US covertly indicated support the far right forces that tried to make the coup that led to the Turkish invasion. And when Greece, under the dictatorship &#40;allies of the US&#41; tried to send help during the invasion they were prevented from doing so by the US Sixth fleet. That is but one example of recent memory.

Of course you are right regarding Orthodoxy--but antipathy with regard to religious values has historically been perceived more regarding the Catholic countries of Europe and their history even extending to the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

In terms of Israeli policies, there is quite a bit of support for the legitimate rights of Palestinians -- not for the practice of violence against Israeli or Jewish civilians, however. I think this comes from sympathy for people under occupation, something Greece has a long history of fighting out from under. Freedom -- in the most Western sense possible -- is a very dear commodity to every Greek, no matter what part of the political spectrum they&#39;re from. The fact that NATO seems to favor both Turkey and its ally Israel I think only contributes to the picture.

In this context of the very Western sense of &#34;freedom&#34; Greece sees its problems of dialogue with Turkey and the US&#39; role in this as violating those traditional Western values -- where basic concepts such as human rights of minorities under a constitution are overlooked as important or significant. This has only been an obstacle to dialogue, and the US is seen as contributing to this, in violation of &#34;Western values&#34; because it chooses to overlook such &#34;modern&#34; Western concepts involving basic freedom, equality and human rights when it comes to relations with Turkey.

Again, in Cyprus for example I think &#40;and Byron could of course comment more fully than I can&#41; that an agreement would have been quite possible and desireable among the Greek population, but Turkey was allowed to continually up the stakes after initial agreement until the final terms of negotiation was simply impossible for people to accept. And furthermore, I think it&#39;s widely perceived that the Turkish Cypriot population has only suffered from this invasion by Turkey and its subsequent tolerance in US policy of a completely undemocratic regime. Frankly, I have nothing but the greatest pity for Cypriot Turks and their situation.

The history of Russia is of course something very significant and important and I think needs to be looked at very closely to understand the roots of this thinking. I know very little about it, but it seems to me you are probably right on the money regarding the fears people have about losing their culture in some permanent sense. I don&#39;t think you can separate out the terrible problems right now with too much lack of regulation in all the former Soviet Republics, lack of protection of consumers such as regulatory law in the US has developed, and the resulting chaos and corruption people have to deal with on a daily basis. I also feel that my country could have done far better in assisting Russia and other former Soviet Republics in adopting capitalist economies by helping them to implement regulatory policies, such as was done for Germany and Japan after WW II, instead of simply giving them a &#34;free for all&#34; marketplace where so many average people have become victims of various frauds, bankruptcies and lack of security, etc. not to mention widespread corruption.

Of course I am open to correction and input from others who have better knowledge of these things than I...

&#40;Message edited by Janine on 02 February, 2005&#41;

[Janine]

PS Of course I think if we are talking about &#42;Athos&#42; in particular &#40;and to get back to our original question Father Ephraim in particular&#41; I cannot comment. I am talking about Greece as a whole and in general, and my understanding of the position of Ecum. Pat. Bartholomew, for example, on the need for bettering relations with Turkey and how &#34;modernization&#34; and more &#34;Western values&#34; &#40;such as are possible through negotiation with the EC&#41; would help that.

[Janine]

PPS Fr. Raphael &#40;sorry for so many messages again, I&#39;ll try to keep it down in future&#41;

I think what you say about &#34;Western values&#34; applies, however, very well to the idea of the crass commercialism of the type Effie was talking about - especially via television, breakdown in social or family relations and alienation and most especially the perception of a harsh or &#34;uncaring society&#34; people have of the US. That also goes for general levels of crime and violence. I think these things are seen more as a breakdown of true values and a kind of form of anarchy and lack of civilization. I would not be surprised if the same perspective were also found in other parts of Western Europe.

And I think you&#39;re absolutely correct that this is also a root concern that is found in a lot of the fundamentalism in the Muslim world. In that respect I can somewhat sympathize even if I disagree with their method &#40;not just talking about violence and militancy but in all kinds of ways&#41;. It strikes me many times in visiting other countries that where in the US people sort of understand they need to have a skepticism and personal discernment about the marketplace and its commercial values, other countries - like right now China for example - can seem even more vulnerable to consumerism in some ways and lap up US popular culture and all its various &#34;images&#34; and &#34;commodities&#34; more unquestioningly and undiscerningly regarding the latest craze than we generally do. That might be just an illusion of more experience with it, but nevertheless it&#39;s a common perception among say descendants of immigrants who travel to their ethnic country of origin.

I think that drive for materialism also a concern for religion of every faith.

&#40;Message edited by Janine on 02 February, 2005&#41;

[Janine]

This came to me in email today. It is the speech given by the foreign minister of Armenia at the Auschwitz memorial ceremonies this week. I thought it was pertinent to what we&#39;ve discussed here, so people might be interested in it.


Statement of H. E. Vartan Oskanian
Minister of Foreign Affairs Republic of Armenia
At the 28th Special Session on the 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps New York, January 24, 2005
Mr. President

Your Excellencies

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the people and government of Armenia, and as a descendant of genocide survivors, I feel compelled to be here today, to join other survivors and descendants, of both victims and perpetrators, to take part in this commemoration. I am also duty-bound to urge us all to confront more effectively the threat of genocide anywhere, at any time, regardless of cost and political discomfort.

The liberation of Auschwitz is, indeed, cause for commemorative celebration. However, in this commemoration, with each uttering of the name Auschwitz, we are forced to reflect: to look back, look around, look deep, look at the other, but also look inward, at ourselves.

After 9/11 and reacting to the unusually high number of victims of a singular event, an editorialist proclaimed &#34;We are all Americans&#34;. Sympathy, solidarity, anxiety, and indignation bound us together. How much more intense our feelings about Auschwitz and the singularity of its horror, its synonymity with the technology of death-making, its eerily ordinary commitment to efficiency, to pragmatic, effective, result-oriented administration.

After Auschwitz, we are all Jews, we are all Gypsies, we are all unfit, deviant and undesirable, for someone, somewhere. After Auschwitz, the conscience of man cannot remain the same. Man&#39;s inhumanity to men, to women, to children, and to the elderly, is no longer a concept in search of a name, an image, a description. Auschwitz lends its malefic aura to all the Auschwitzes of history, our collective history, both before and after.

In the 20th century alone, with its 15 genocides, the victims have their own names for places of infamy. What the French call &#39;les lieux infames de memoire&#39; are everywhere. Places of horror, slaughter, of massacre, of the indiscriminate killing of all those who have belonged to a segment, a category, an ethnic group, a race or a religion. For Armenians, it is the desert of Deir-El-Zor, for Cambodians they are the killing fields, for the children of the 21st century, it is Darfur. For the Jews and Poles and for a whole generation of us growing up after The War, it is Auschwitz.

Mr. President,

Just as we all were, or are, or might be victims, we all were or are or might also be guilty. It is only through the engagement of those who have seen and done the unimaginable, and who have had the dignity, the grace, the sensitivity, the decency and courage to acknowledge wrongdoing, that we may achieve the requisite collective political will and its expression.

This is not as naïve, unrealistic, idealistic as some might wish to label it, perhaps in order to dismiss it. Genocide is not about individuals who act insanely, do evil, commit crimes, perpetrate irrevocable wrongs. Genocide is the undertaking of a state apparatus, which must, by definition, act coherently, pragmatically, with structure and organization.

Thus, this is not a plea to reform human beings, but an appeal to take conscious account of the role of our national institutions and international institutions must play to insure that no one can expect to enjoy impunity.

After Auschwitz one would expect that no one any longer has a right to turn a blind eye or a deaf ear. As an Armenian, I know that a blind eye, a deaf ear and a muted tongue perpetuate the wounds. It is a memory of suffering unrelieved by strong condemnation and unequivocal recognition. The catharsis that the victims deserve, which societies require in order to heal and move forward together, obligates us here at the UN, and in the international community, to be witness, to call things by their name, to remove the veil of obfuscation, of double standards, of political expediency.

Mr. Chairman,

Following the Tsunami-provoked disaster, we have become painfully aware of a paradox. On the one hand, multilateral assistance efforts were massive, swift, generous and without discrimination. But, when compared and contrasted with today&#39;s other major tragedy, in Africa, it is plain that for Darfur, formal and ritual condemnation has not been followed by any dissuasive action against the perpetrators.

The difference with the Tsunami, of course, was that there were no perpetrators. No one wielded the sword, pulled the trigger or pushed the button that released the gas.

Recognizing the victims and acknowledging them is also to recognize that there are perpetrators. But this is absolutely not the same as actually naming them, shaming them, dissuading or warning them, isolating or punishing them.

If these observations signal a certain naiveté that overlooks the enduring structures of our political and security interests, then, on this occasion, when we have gathered to commemorate this horrible event, then allow me this one question: if not here and now, then where and when?

Mr. Chairman,

The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, who has been quoted here, admonished us to remember the past, or be condemned to repeat it. This admonition has significance for me personally, because the destruction of my people, whose fate in some way impinged upon the fate of the Jews of Europe, should have been viewed more widely seen as a warning of things to come.

Jews and Armenians are linked forever by Hitler. &#34;Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?&#34; said Adolf Hitler, days before he entered Poland.

Hitler&#39;s cynical remembrance of Armenians is prominently displayed in the Holocaust Memorial in Washington because it is profound commentary about the crucial role of third parties in genocide prevention and remembrance. Genocide is the manifestation of the break in the covenant that governments have with their peoples. Therefore, it is third parties who become crucial actors in genocide prevention, humanitarian assistance and genocide remembrance.

We are commemorating today, because the Soviet troops marched into Auschwitz 60 years ago. I am here today because the Arabs provided sanctuary to Armenian deportees 90 years ago.

Third parties, indeed, can make the difference between life and death. Their rejection of the behaviors and policies which are neither in anyone&#39;s national interest nor in humanity&#39;s international interest, is of immense moral and political value.

What neighbors, well-wishers, the international community can&#39;t accomplish, is the transcending and reconciling which the parties must do for themselves. The victims, first, must exhibit the dignity, capacity and willingness to move on, and the perpetrators, first and last, must summon the deep force of humanity and goodness and must overcome the memory of the inner evil which had already prevailed, and must renounce the deed, its intent, its consequences, its architects and executors.

Auschwitz signifies the worst of hate, of indifference, of dehumanization. Remembrance of Auschwitz and its purpose, however abhorrent, is a vital step to making real the phrase &#34;Never Again&#34;.

Thank you.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Dear Byron, you write :


“It also seems to me that those Greek Christians (I don&#180;t want to doubt the possibility that such existed, though I haven&#180;t heard these important stories) who followed the Jews to the concentration camps were really loving their brothers from their hearts, and dying for Jesus.”

Byron, I have not heard or read of any Christian Greeks following the Jews voluntarily to the concentration camps – that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen just that I don’t happen to know of it. The Christian Greeks I referred to were arrested and sent to Germany and Poland. Not all of them were sent to the concentration camps, a large percentage were forced to work in Germany’s factories. Very few came back. I have read accounts that state that the 6.000.000 Jewish victims that perished in the Holocaust did not all die in the concentration camps. 6 million is the overall number of Jewish victims that perished during this war.

Byron, I am becoming really depressed with all this information. We base our opinions on what we have heard, what we have read, and really, we can only pick up a thread here, another there. Like wisps of smoke that rise from the past into the present but disappear as soon as we try to hold on to them. As I said in another post it’s important that we never forget the atrocities of the past, but so many atrocities have been committed – and are still being committed - by so many different groups of people down the ages, it sometimes seems to me that the whole human race is doomed. That’s why I feel that the faith we have in God and Jesus Christ is so important – in fact, the most important thing in life. It’s the only thing that gives us a ray of hope that perhaps a time will come when man will stop destroying himself and the world he lives in and live as he was meant to live.

Effie

[Janine]

Dear Benjamin,

I wanted to write something directly to you, because it occurred to me that probably, in my long discussion on so many things, I still have not been very helpful to you. So I am going to write to you just from my own experience and opinion, and not claim that I represent Orthodoxy as a whole or anything like that.

I think it&#39;s important to remember that in the Trinity we know God as love -- that is the three Persons who empty into each other are Love -- they are relationship. God is Love.

Likewise when you have questions and troubling experiences like the one you describe, I say look to your heart. That place that is the &#34;center beyond yourself&#34; is where God is in relationship to you, where Christ has His icon of you, where you are in Christ. And find what you understand as loving from that, and follow that. The Holy Spirit gives us discernment - we are expected to be discerning about who we follow, what we read, what we hear. Go to your heart, your true center. In your prayer, ask for discernment.

Remember that all people are products of their environment and their circumstances, that none of us is finished, that we are all one way or another in a process. What you may understand today you may alter yourself completely to a different perspective in the future. Likewise people may be doing their best and still have the marks - the logismoi - we all do of a fallen world. And in that we again need discernment even about spiritual teachers.

I have to say that in my experience among Greeks, the culture is so strong in a built in skeptism about authority -- any authority -- that I can&#39;t believe it was not also a part of the context for all the Fathers that we are to view with discernment our fellow fallible human beings. We don&#39;t have a doctrine of infallibility when it comes to individual human beings. This is the way, again in my experience, the average member of the Greek &#40;and Armenian for that matter&#41; laity will view authority figures in the church as well: with an understanding that one always needs discernment. A love for Christ, a love for the church as a whole timeless entity, for the Fathers and for God -- but with discernment when it comes to even the church&#39;s individual authority figures in our lives. People might not like hearing that, but anyway that&#39;s my cultural experience and I&#39;ll bet it goes back to the ancients and was always a given as part of the cultural context of the Church and its Fathers. In Orthodoxy I personally am certain of one thing: that we are expected to use our whole selves, our minds, our intelligence, our hearts, etc.

I know of one book that I enjoyed very much that describes Athonite spirituality in a marvelous approachable way, in my opinion. It is by a Cypriot-American author named Kyriakos Markides and it&#39;s called Mountain of Silence.

Here is the webpage at Amazon.com:
The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385500920/qid=1107411875/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_1/102-8498924-5897720?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

It more or less describes a monk from Athos and his teachings and his life. It&#39;s a fairly popular book.

Regarding &#34;Protocols&#34; from what I understand these ideas have had a long political history, evolving from one country to another. They got taken up during the era of the Russian revolution and also reflected the thinking that many left-wing activists, backers and intellectuals of the time were Jewish. I understand there was even an article by a rather young Winton Churchill about this. I don&#39;t say this to excuse anything, just to explain the possible influence and the times.

As a convert, it&#39;s important to know that God has His icon for you that involves your whole, full self, all of your identity, all of your experience. It is all precious and important. Follow the transformation - the theosis journey - that God has for you through prayer and the &#34;mind in the heart&#34; and let Christ teach you what you need and where you need to go. That includes what to read, who to study, etc etc. The journey is not easy or simple: we have a complex world to deal with, we are not expected to be simpletons about it. We always have choices to make that teach us something. I&#39;m sure that the answers will all be there for you. The Spirit in my opinion never lets down a sincere seeker. God will answer you in His relationship with you - and you will find worthwhile teachers of the past or the present with whom you will find in your heart also part of that spiritually loving relationship. Let that love guide you as to what or who is right for you. That&#39;s just my opinion, I don&#39;t pretend to speak for the whole church. And you have my prayers, too.

Peace & Love,
Janine

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Janine, I agree heartily with your remarks to our enquiring friend Benjamin.

Effie, your description of &#34;wisps of smoke&#34; of history being grasped at but never posessed is very beautiful and, it seems to me, right. Although we have a scientific responsibility to study and write about history, the &#34;story&#34; aspect is inescapable, and each religion, culture, ethnicity, country, nation, indeed each and every one of us individually has a different and uniquely true story to tell. It is what Owen was talking about: that what matters is not just the &#34;facts&#34;, but the &#34;myth&#34; underlying each set of facts.

You are also quite right that here, as Christians struggling to remain close to our Lord, we have a distinct advantage. We know, every time we say &#34;Thy Will be done&#34;, that ultimately it is He who makes the decisions in his infinite wisdom. All that is expected of us is to love Him in return, not to lose sight of His unbounded and unconfused perfect goodness. That´s not very easy, speaking as one who is constantly missing the mark for this ideal.

ICXC
Byron

[Effie Ganatsios]

Reply to Owen Jones’ message.


“If one is going to criticize Isreal, but at least be sound, accurate, and rational. The following statement simply is not rational:”

Owen, why be uncivil? To misquote John Kennedy – civility is not weakness.

Not one of my statements was inaccurate or irrational. It is your right to disagree with me, but it might be a good idea to look up the relevant information – especially that concerning US aid and the US veto - before posting belittling comments.

God bless you Owen, and please, I don’t want to continue this discussion with you.

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

Reply to Janine’s post nos. 104 and 106

Janine, you explain certain things much more clearly than I am capable of.

What a terrific speech, Janine and so true. I posted my reply to Byron before reading your post and it’s strange that I was also thinking about the many atrocities that have been committed by so many different groups. H. E. Vartan Oskanian refers to the fact that these acts could not have been committed without the compliance of the state apparatus of each particular country.

I especially liked this paragraph :


“Just as we all were, or are, or might be victims, we all were or are or might also be guilty. It is only through the engagement of those who have seen and done the unimaginable, and who have had the dignity, the grace, the sensitivity, the decency and courage to acknowledge wrongdoing, that we may achieve the requisite collective political will and its expression.”

The above fits in I think with what we have been saying all along.

Another paragraph :


“The catharsis that the victims deserve, which societies require in order to heal and move forward together, obligates us here at the UN, and in the international community, to be witness, to call things by their name, to remove the veil of obfuscation, of double standards, of political expediency. “

The Armenian genocide is largely ignored or even unknown by most people. Another coincidence : last night I watched a documentary about Armenia on TV. It was very interesting and while I was watching it I couldn’t help but think of all the terrible things you had posted about what was done to these people.

Effie

[Owen Jones]

Well, this just confirms my experience with trying to debate with leftists. They say they want open debate, but as soon as someone stands up to them, they get their feelings hurt, they say no more debate. Criticizing Israel and the United States unremittingly, without mentioning the problem of terrorism, without mentioning the hate-filled campaigns against Israel and America that is well organized and funded by Islamic extremists, that teach young Palestinian Arab children that Jews are animals and that Israel should be destroyed, and that something called the West is responsible for all of the problems in Islamic states, that we are the &#34;Great Satan,&#34; that fatwahs against innocent civilians are valid religious and political motivations, without even mentioning these social pathologies and making it sound like American and Israeli imperialism are solely responsible for the problems in the world -- that is irrational, and I stand by my statement.

I fear that sometimes Christian charity toward the oppressed and downtrodden is hopelessly mixed up with a modernist ideology that justifies resentment. Anti-semitism in the world today seems to be inextricably tied in with this ideology of resentment, in which anyone who is successful and strong must have gained that success through exploitation and oppression. This becomes a justification for terror. Everyone in the world has a grievance of one sort or another. If we magnify our grievances into an ideology, that means everyone would have the right to become a terrorist. Which is irrational.

The problem is that nation-states cannot be held to a Christian standard regarding violence. Only persons. A nation-state, when attacked or threatened, has a duty to defend itself. Violence is an unfortunate but necessary tool that has to be used sometimes to restrain uncivilized people. And pre-emptive violence could often be the most effective tool, since it can be used with more restraint than later, when retaliation is typically more extreme.

By any rational yardstick, the Israeli and U.S. response to terrorist attacks has been measured and restrained, compared to the power that could be unleashed. Also, America has gone to great pains, to ridiculous lengths in the opinion of some, to not criticize Islam, but to restrict its war to the idea that terrorism is an aberration of Islam. I wonder. Organized terrorism, as pioneered by the French and perfected by the Soviets, is usually engineered by middle-class &#34;intellectuals&#34; who are alienated and who project that alienation on the world, and use inflammatory rhetoric to convince the poor that that through violent revolution they will become free and powerful and prosperous. There is never a case in which revolution has helped the people that it claims to help. It has only done more damage to them. And yet the idea persists that violent revolution is justified in cases where people are poor or oppressed, usually an argument made by people who are safely away from the conflict, sipping lattes in a cafe somewhere.

[Janine]

Well, this just confirms my experience with trying to debate with leftists. They say they want open debate, but as soon as someone stands up to them, they get their feelings hurt, they say no more debate.

Well, I think that&#39;s ridiculous. And I agree with Effie. Just calling her &#34;irrational&#34; was not a real argument of any kind, and not worth replying to.

On the one hand you justify overwhelming violence by states &#40;which by the way has been condemned by various church leaders, for example, including Orthodox, in the Mid East&#41; -- as if it&#39;s okay because we don&#39;t nuke all Moslems or something - and at the same time you vilify lefties for their violence &#34;while they sip lattes&#34;. So we&#39;ve just got a load of stereotypes here, yet again. And for what it&#39;s worth, you don&#39;t know anything about Effie and her personal politics, only that she objects to injustice and violence against innocents. Your post is full of stereotypes and none of those things can even be responded to reasonably anyway. I don&#39;t know why you&#39;re so angry, but it has nothing to do with Effie. Effie is right, Owen, the &#34;arguments&#34; you make are not designed for dialogue. They beg the question with fallacy that can&#39;t be responded to because it&#39;s all emotion anyway.

It&#39;s elementary that no &#34;bad action&#34; on someone else&#39;s part justifies &#34;bad action&#34; on another. It&#39;s elementary that just because we don&#39;t use an entire nuclear arsenal on innocent civilians doesn&#39;t mean bunker busters or carpet bombing or any number of violent actions &#40;like collective punishments or extrajudicial assassination or prison torture&#41; are justified. This is all nonsense and not real argument. You can deride the UN all you want but it doesn&#39;t stand to reason that you&#39;re somehow denying the merits of every single UN resolution that Israel has violated&#40;and for what it&#39;s worth, no nation on earth has violated more&#41; because the UN is somehow &#34;evil&#34; as a concept or collective whole, when at the same time for example violent action in Iraq is justified by President Bush by saying that Iraq violated UN resolutions. It just doesn&#39;t wash. And then of course all violence must have the &#34;French&#34; or the &#34;Soviets&#34; somewhere in there too. And somehow this has something to do with Effie? Or me? It&#39;s your arguments that are not reasonable, not Effie&#39;s. She&#39;s right, they can&#39;t really be responded to except to point out the classic fallacies they contain. If I had two cents worth of brains, I&#39;d say what Effie did. Unfortunately, I hate bombastic belligerance and you really are over the top in responding to Effie that way.

This method of &#34;argument&#34; is the &#34;How long have you been beating your wife?&#34; style. Somehow Soviets, French, lefties, terrorists, Islamic jihadists, etc are al lumped together with Effie or me! Or anything we&#39;ve said! How does that compute? It&#39;s certainly not &#34;standing up&#34; to anything. It&#39;s not even a real argument. It&#39;s just the usual kind of thing you can read all over the world that is simply designed to shut down all criticism, period. It&#39;s all ad hominem.

These are the kinds of things that always make this subject degenerate into red hot meltdown instead of discussion. She was right not to respond. Hopefully I&#39;ll learn to follow her example myself.

&#34;Blessed are the peacemakers&#34; Now, there&#39;s an inflammatory statement if I ever heard one.



&#40;Message edited by Janine on 04 February, 2005&#41;

[Owen Jones]

The reason why Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other nation is that UN morality is very selective, and because the deck is stacked against Israel in the UN. When you have Libya as the head of the UN commission on human rights, it should tell us something. There are a number of countries in the UN that are pledged to Israel&#39;s total destruction, and they are able to intimidate European countries, because these countries have huge numbers of Moslem immigrants who are very restive, and because Arab nations control Europe&#39;s oil supply. And UN ideology is overwhelmingly leftist, which supports the irrational notion that if a nation is poor, it must be because free, prosperous nations must have made them that way through exploitation. The tyrannical leaders of Moslem states conveniently use anti-Israeli propaganda to divert the attention of their citizens against their own civil rights abuses. But when do you ever see a UN condemnation of Syria, or Iran, or Libya, or Egypt, or Cuba, for being corrupt, tyrannical, un-democratic? What if George Bush would appear at the UN podium with a pistol strapped to his side? Can you imagine the condemnation? And yet it was not only OK for Arafat to do so, but people made him into a romantic hero. The myth of the Jenin massacre is a perfect example of this double standard.

If this is not an irrational state of affairs, I don&#39;t know what is.

The subject being anti-semitism, I see a lot of it in the UN, dressed up as moral outrage against injustices toward the Palestinians, without any balance. There isn&#39;t a country in Europe that is not responsible for some terrible injustice in its past history toward other nations or peoples. With some of them, you don&#39;t have to go back very far at all. Which makes all of these moral condemnations of Israel, and the U.S.&#39;s war against Muslim terrorists all the more ludicrous. Where is the praise in the court of world opinion for America having freed 40 million people from tyranny, with relatively small damage and loss of life, and removing the safe havens of terrorists, without any desire for exploitation or occupation? The best chance for peace in the region is not more UN condemnations against Israel, but more freedom in Arab lands. I would think that that would be something that all Christians would applaud. Because of a lack of sane, level-headedness on these issues, I can only surmise that some irrational anti-Semitism is at the root of a lot of this sentiment.

[Janine]

Owen, I almost have to laugh, but I won't. First of all, you don't reply to what I've said at all. Secondly, the UN votes and passes resolutions only via a majority of all nations in the world who are members. One nation like Libya (who's our new ally in the war on Islamic terrorism, btw, haven't you heard?) cannot pass a resolution. And even if the whole body of the UN passes a resolution -- that is all the voting nations of the world -- it can still be vetoed by the Security Council, just *one* of its members. Of which the US is one. So, UN resolutions pass huge hurdles of voting and veto prerogatives before they're passed. This is a straw man argument. If you really want to examine the particular resolutions and the particular violations, then maybe we'd be discussing an issue, IMO anyway. Plus, UN resolutions are matters of international law, not moral judgments.

I'm not saying in a black and white sense that the UN is perfect; I'd hardly say that about anything. But specific examinations about international law and specific actions are what are real discussion or argument.

As for praise to the US for its actions over the past decades, action in WWII, etc etc etc I really don't see a lack of it. And that has nothing to do with the possibility that we can be wrong. Or Israel. Or anybody. One person's "sin" does not erase another's. If you've done something really good as well, it doesn't mean that what was wrong is then right. We're all responsible for whatever we do. This is yet another fallacy. It all depends on the specific action, etc. The UN also was part of establishing Israel as a country, by the way, wasn't it?

Besides, even if you agree that helping one country to become more free is a good goal, it doesn't mean you don't condemn what you see as making others less free, or taking away their rights, or creating suffering and injustice, etc. It also doesn't necessarily mean that the methods of doing so aren't also up for question - whether they really achieve that goal or simply create more hardship of the kind one states one wants to avoid. It's not a black and white choice; maybe it's *both* things that are important. Besides, this juxtaposition makes no sense anyway because the rights of the Palestinians have to do with the freedom in the first place.

And all of the above has to do with international law. A UN resolution becomes international law by definition. Violations of the rights of civilians under occupation are a matter of Geneva Convention and other international laws passed after WWII - and the US led the way in this as well as in establishing the UN in the first place.

Anyway, I still don't think this has a lot to do with Effie

[Antonios Spartan]

We must never forget that we are all sinners. We all harbor &#34;terrorism&#34; within us. I don&#39;t agree with violence, and I really do believe there is always a peaceful way out if BOTH sides want peace as their primary goal. The UN, US, EU, or any other organization created by man has inherent weakness and sinfulness in it. Above all, however, in my view, those Arab states which propagate &#39;holy war&#39; against the &#39;infidels&#39; and blame Israel and the US for their deficiencies and struggles, while at the same time trying to establish a culture of Islamic fundamentalism that devalues human freedom,- I believe that is the greater of the evil and the most immenent threat to the human state.

As a Christian, the most I can do is pray for everyone, especially those Islamic fundamentalist and terrorists who by virtue of what they believe and how they act have ignorantly strayed from God and have to answer before His judgement seat.


A worthless and wretched sinner,
Antonios

[Owen Jones]

The fact that countries like Libya and Syria can sponsor innumerable anti-Israeli resolutions in the UN and get a majority to vote for them merely proves the lack of moral credibility of the UN. The UN has no enforcement powers over any of their resolutions, so the idea that a UN resolution becomes international law is a bit of a stretch. IN the case of Iraq, the UN resolutions empowered member states to enforce the resolutions. America and Britain and a few other countries chose to do so. There were several UN resolutions empowering member states to do what Britain and the U.S. did in Iraq. Now it is obvious to everyone why the UN opposed the last resolution that the U.S. and Britain offered -- they were being payed off by Saddam Hussein, as were the Russians and the French.

And does anyone believe that American military forces would be in Afghanistan and Iraq without 9/11? Bush ran on a traditional republican isolationist foreign policy, for which he was roundly criticised at the time by the moral abiters. Apparently it is OK to attack Serbia, which had never done anything to the U.S., without UN approval, because Europe needed someone else to do its dirty work, and apparently it&#39;s OK to create a situation in Kosovo that was far worse as a result, but heaven forbid the U.S. responds when it is attacked.

One should also explode the myth that, in the Israeli-Arab conflict, both sides want peace. It is far more complicated than that. Surely the official PLO position has been the destruction of Israel through violent means. Israel easily has within its military power the means to destroy all of the people in Baza, or drive them all into Egypt if they cared to. But the whole world would be against them, and they are also more civilized than that. But if there were another all out attack on Israel, the only country that would be willing and able to come to its rescue would be the U.S. There are so many double standards regarding Israel too mention. In any case, it is very difficult to know what a &#34;Christian&#34; solution might be to the problem. So the real task I think for Christians is to avoid ideological baggage when addressing the problem, and not get Christian sentiment confused with ideology.

[Daniel Jeandet]

This thread is typical of todays endless and pointless wasting of the intelligent people&#39;s time and energy searching desparately for an explanation of the world situation that assumes no widespread, longterm conspiracy. If people stopped pretending they had some magical formula that disproved global conspiracy, they would not rush to expound and defend their pre-prepared alternative explanation for how things got this way in our world, and they might actually do something about it, like stop listening to experts in what cannot be true.

Its interesting that no-one wanted to discuss the story I posted about it now being illegal for Iraqis to save thier own seeds. Clearly, a group of people conspired to profit from the Iraq invasion. The television isnt trumpeting this story as a perfect example of the new democracy America has &#34;fair and square&#34; forced on Iraq. Why not?

Lets talk about some actual examples of possible conspiracies and try to learn something new instead of fighting over the boring UN and IDF.

[Janine]

Owen, I think perhaps your arguments avoid examination of specific UN resolutions because your characterization of them would not hold up. Unless every country in the world is somehow duped by some mysterious force I can't see how your characterization is valid. And in any case, an examination of the laws violated would put an end to that.

It seems to me that ideology is really exemplified in the "one side or the other" rhetoric that I'm quite familiar with, have already described, and find totally distasteful and deliberately disingenuous. Of course it fools a lot of well-meaning people.

As to the whole world: those UN resolutions can't be passed without the whole of the UN and its constituency. (Why do I waste my breath?) You appear to be unaware of this. As for the PLO, the whole destruction of Israel was not what was agreed to when the Palestinians officially recognized the state of Israel and agreed only to 22 percent of its former country, nor what was happening when they participated at Oslo, at Camp David, at Taba, etc. This is more rhetoric designed to disrupt a peace process. Israel continues to violate even its own laws with regard to some of the expanding settlements, btw. Settlers terrorize civilians in order to drive them off their land; it happens every day and all the time. Children are harassed for simply trying to attend school. Even priests and nuns are hindred in travel and in the course of their work and worship. And it's not just the UN that says so -- there are plenty of Christian agencies - including those administered & participated in by Orthodox churches - and US AID for that matter trying to help the Palestinians, the majority of whom now live in overwhelming poverty thanks to current occupation conditions. Even the US State Dept is demonized by those who say similar things to you in the US because they try to support a peace process. Dropping bombs and missiles on civilians to carry out illegal targetted assassination without trials is also terrorism; demolishing houses illegally, killing civilians in the process -- none of these things has any more merit than any terrorist bomb. The rest of the world does not accept that these things are necessary for survival. They're illegal by definition under international law. But you seem to be unaware of that - or worse, you keep ignore it to make inflammatory and misleading statements about Syria & Libya somehow pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, or something. You talk about "attacks" on the country of Israel but the Palestinians have no country at all, no army at all, and yet are attacked militarily every day with overwhelming violence. The number of Palestinian civilians killed during the present intifada is four times greater than Israeli civilians -- and that is in a population of 1/4 the size of Israel. The suffering of one side is disproportionate to the other, and the military action of one side is far, far greater than the other. No matter how much either of us will condemn terrorism, that does not excuse state sponsored violence that is every bit as destructive of innocent people and their lives, or moreso in some empirical sense. But I know that makes no difference to you. You support one side. I don't -- I only see human beings on both sides, and I do not support a supremacist ideology such as that found in Christian Zionism.

BTW, I live in New York, close to the site of the World Trade Center. After the attack, it's fair to say that in my neighborhood people were overwhelmingly against responding with warfare that would hurt or kill more innocent civilians. Many of us don't feel any safer than before because of war, in fact less so. And Iraq never had anything to do with the attack on the World Trade Center anyway. Are we all just terrorist supporters to you then? I think we have far more experience of it than you do. And as long as one side is suffering unjustly the violence will not stop. The trick is to look to our own actions and try to conform to our own rhetoric - to walk the walk of supporting freedom of all people, and human rights everywhere.

Frankly, I think we've really driven this conversation far off topic. The rhetoric is always the same and it always evades the reality of how people have to live in how many rights we consider basic to all people are violated every day. I don't consider this a holy war, except in the sense that I consider all human beings as equals, and I think Christ does to. As a Christian it's my job to understand who the Samaritans are and what my responsibility is to my neighbor, including sympathy and help for the poor and homeless, widows and orphans. Even when they're Samaritans.

[Janine]

Daniel:


This thread is typical of todays endless and pointless wasting of the intelligent people's time

In general I agree with you. And I think you're right to bring up the actuality of what's happening in Iraq, and people who seem to be invisible when we talk about their rights.

[Owen Jones]

The official position of the PLO in English for international consumption is one thing, what is said and published in Arabic and taught to school children is just the opposite.

I hold no brief for or against Israel. I don&#39;t have a horse in that race. What really is shocking to me is that the world is so full of injustice, of tyranny, of suppression of minority rights, of mass murder, in North Korea, Cuba, China, the former Iraq, Iran, in Zimbabwe, just to name a few of the most obvious, that with all of that going on, there is so much focus on Israeli injustice. I think one reason is that many of these unjust regimes claim the &#34;progressivist&#34; mantel and so one progressivist will never criticize another progressivist, and thereby justify their horrors, or look the other way, and the other reason is that Israel is comparatively isolated and an easy target. Add to that the historical European anti-semitism and you have fuel to the fire. The fact is that the Palestinian Arabs are not poor because of Israel. They are being exploited by their own leaders who want them to maintain a refugee status because it is out of that resentment that they derive their political power over them, and their influence in the world. Arabs have the capacity to become just as prosperous as the Israelis, if they would just adopt a different consciousness. They lost four wars against Israel. They ought to quit fighting. It has gained them nothing. The Confederacy lost a war with the Federal U.S. government. It impoverished the South for a hundred years. one out of 5 adult males were killed, property was destroyed or confiscated, the wealthiest towns and counties in the country were reduced to abject poverty. But the South lost, end of story. No point in fighting the same losing war over and over again. Yet I know people in the South who still resent it and want the South to secede again! It&#39;s time to move on for these people. They will never get anything through terrorism. The fact that Israel has killed more terrorists than the terrorists have killed Israelis is simply a factor of the Israelis being better at warfare.

The U.S. killed millions of Japanese after their attacks on the U.S. in Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines, and part of the problem was that there was absolute intransigence on the part of the Japanese, no evidence whatsoever that they were willing to do anything other than fight to the very last man, woman and child. And it was either killing millions of Japanese, or suffering a million casualties invading the Japanese homeland. The fact that we killed more Japanese than they killed Americans does not make America the aggressor!

There are a lot of what if&#39;s in the Israeli-Arab conflict, but the fact is that both the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine were promised their own respective states at the Treaty of Paris after World War I, that everyone knew it would involve dislocations, but both sides signed off on it. After WWII the Jews decided to fight for it and won. Was Truman wrong to have recognized Israel as a state? All of his advisors told him not to, there was nothing in U.S. interests for doing so, but he did the right thing.

The Israelis are smart, and they have often sucked the U.S. into their conflict, and most Americans and American Presidents have resented it, but forced to deal with it, and tried their best to deal an even hand, even with the obivously deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. The U.S. taxpayers for years sent billions of dollars to support the Arab Palestinians. Where did the money go? It mostly went to buy guns and into Swiss bank accounts. Until the Palestinian Arabs quit blaming Israel for their problems and begin to take responsibility for their own plight, and their own future, nothing good will happen. This is true in every man&#39;s personal life. Everyone has suffered some injustice, some slight, some abuse in life. If we spent all of our time complaining and whining about that, we would all live in a state of desperation, anger, resentment, and self-impoverishment. In fact, isn&#39;t that one of the big criticisms of the Jews, that they are always citing 3,000 years of persecution?

And every nation and every people can find some source of resentment if they go back far enough in their history. I am Welsh. The Welsh have been invaded by the Romans, the Saxons, the Normans, the English, and if you go to Wales today you will find a huge number of people there who have steeped themselves in resentment and fail to see that their own happiness is in their own hands, yet they want reparations for past insults. The world is full of displaced persons who are waiting for someone else to fix some past injustice, and the result is that they are locked into their old resentments and spirit of revenge and they are hopelessly locked in their past. Then there are people suffering terribly today, but it is politically incorrect to go to their defense. There are people in prison in Cuba and China for worshipping something other than the state. Nobody cares. It just makes no sense that Israel would be the object of so many UN resolutions, when there are at least twenty other countries in the world guilty of far worse. When was the last UN resolution condemning Cuba, or China, or Zimbabwe for human rights violations?

In the case of China, they are probably going to start a war with Taiwan, the U.S. is going to get sucked into it, and guess who everyone in the world is going to blame? The U.S.

[Janine]

Owen, the thing is, that broad-brush thing of "it's all their own fault" flies in the face of a real examination of a situation. It's what enables collective punishments and every form of "collective" thinking. There are too many generalizations that are just as bad when made for one side as the other. I won't bother to be specific again about the actual conditions of the Palestinians, I already did this. The extreme poverty is caused by the blockade that results from current conditions, and the fact that there is no right of return for refugees.

It's a canard that the UN only focuses on Israel. The UN has had special relationship to these territories since Israel was formed because the UN was involved in its formation since its inception. They have to deal with these problems.

In the case of China, the US has constantly ignored human rights problems in China since Bush Sr. was President during the Tien-An Men uprising.

In the end, you are simply ignoring the suffering of innocent people -- suffering that could be resolved easily if negotiations were honored instead of stakes constantly upped after agreement. Like, for example, the illegal expansion of settlements.

All I see is a great willingness to ignore unnecessary suffering.

[Owen Jones]

By the way, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that Saddam was involved, either directly or indirectly, in both attacks on the World Trade Center. He broke all of the cease fire agreements after the first Gulf War. He was shooting at U.S. planes. He refused to respond to demands that he provide information on our POW, the coalition practiced huge restraint in not going after Saddam during the first Gulf War, and he took advantage of that, he used the oil for food program to build more palaces, buy more weapons, and put money in Swiss bank accounts, he gave money to terrorists, he gave safe haven to terrorists and provided them with training, he used the western press to his advantage to make it sound like he was the victim, and there is no question in my mind that if he had been able to get the sanctions lifted, he would have restarted his nuclear program. And where do you think the terrorists would go in order to get a nuclear weapon that they could use to incinerate New York? Does anyone doubt that Bin Laden would use a nuclear weapon against the U.S. if he could get his hands on one?

The main thing I regret is that we are fighting a secular war against Islamic fascism, and not a true holy war. The plan is to turn Iraq into a liberal secular state, which obviously is a recipe for cultural suicide. Much better to restore the Islamic monarchy which was the legitimate government overthrown in a violent coup by the Baathists &#40;Nazis&#41; in 1958. But alas, I live in a secular country.

[Janine]

By the way, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that Saddam was involved, either directly or indirectly, in both attacks on the World Trade Center.

Even the Bush administration denies this.

Owen, all of your positions are those voiced by the Israeli far-right and the neocons (including the plans for a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq such as the type they envisioned before they were forced to dump Chalabi). Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia, being busted up into its disparate religious and ethnic groups, with the Shiites now holding the upper hand (which was the plan for the Hashemites anyway). The Baathists weren't Nazis, they were Arab nationalists and they were the enemies of Islamic fundamentalism. You're condemning secularists (Baathists) and supporting Islamists while at the same time crying for a "holy war." I've read all of this stuff from the neocon far right.

You can scare me all you want about Bin Laden. Until the true injustices are resolved that help him get support you're doing nothing to take the wind out of his sails. War has not fixed the problem; by all accounts it's making things worse. I hope the Iraqis get their democratic state. I really can't see a conflict between wanting to stop the Bin Ladens of the world and addressing injustices of an occupied people who were always a mixed community of both Christians and Moslems. All these hardline policies have only helped Hamas and other extremist organizations. In 2000, before the intifada, Hamas had lost their power because the Palestinians had real hope that negotiations would work, that compromise had truly created a possible solution to their future. Why does war exclude addressing injustices, anyway? That's more fallacy.

Corruption might be a problem, and I don't disagree. But current circumstances of total anarchy and destruction of infrastructure only help the corrupt. And Sharon has been under the corruption microscope himself by the way.

And I don't believe in Crusades. We Orthodox have had enough of them already. Under the Baathists in Iraq, btw, Orthodox and other Christian communities did well. In Syria they are also a minority that has relative protection. I can't say I have the same positive outlook for their future anymore. I think all these policies will have the same effect the Crusades did - we are wiping out the native Middle East Christian communities.

[Owen Jones]

The Israelis can&#39;t allow millions of Arabs to come into Israel. They just can&#39;t. The expectation of a &#34;right of return&#34; is nonsense. It is part of the whole unrealistic expectations game. There can be peace with Israel, if the terrorism stops, and if the Palestinians elect some honest leadership. I&#39;m not blaming the victim. All I am asking for is a realistic plan to go forward from here. Terrorism, demanding the destruction of Israel, and the so-called &#34;right of return&#34; will not accomplish anything. Look, the Israelis got control of the West bank after a surprise attack by three surrounding nations almost destroyed the coutry. The fact that they are even willing to negotiate away the West Bank is a minor miracle. Another surprise tank attack launched from the West Bank could cut Israel in half in a matter of a couple of hours. There is much controversy in Israel itself about settlements, but most of the Israelis have been willing to negotiate land for peace for quite a while. The blockades and the more recent wall are a response to terrorist attacks. Any country would do the same thing, maybe more, to secure its borders.

As for the Baathists, if the Baathists are not a Nazi party, then the Nazi party was not a Nazi party. The Baath party was founded by the Nazis as a way to spread their influence throughout the region and to defeat the British hold on it. After the Nazis fell from power, the Soviets took their place. Much of the problems in the Arab world are the direct result of Soviet influence over a period of 40 years. Saddam was a great admirer of both Hitler and Stalin.

If Iraq breaks up into three ethnic states, so what? It&#39;s better than having Saddam in power. But I see no evidence of that happening just yet.

I don&#39;t defend U.S. policy toward China. We never should have allowed China to replace Taiwan on the Security Council. But the question is, why are there so many UN resolutions condemning Israel, and none condemning Cuba, China, Zimbabwe? Other than anti-semtism? Can someone answer that question for me?

[Janine]

I&#39;m beginning to think this is really a pointless dialogue, and I&#39;m sorry for boring everyone, but I&#39;ll try one more time.

All I am asking for is a realistic plan to go forward from here. Terrorism, demanding the destruction of Israel, and the so-called &#34;right of return&#34; will not accomplish anything And I&#39;m surprised you haven&#39;t noticed, but nobody here has suggested that terrorism or the destruction of Israel is a solution. &#40;But maybe I should not be surprised by now that you present the argument this way as if it&#39;s all that&#39;s been proposed!&#41;

Actually what&#39;s been happening &#40;at least with regard to the Palestinians&#41; is &#34;your plan&#34; and it&#39;s obviously not working. The thing that really worked was negotiation. And all I did was counter your argument that somehow the Arabs were responsible for refugee status and poverty among Palestinians. It&#39;s nonsense. for the last time, there are international laws governing the conduct of Occupation powers. That has nothing to do with UN resolutions. Israel is violating those laws of conduct toward civilians. The rest of those you name are not conducting such an occupation at the moment, and they weren&#39;t established territorially via the UN either.

As for the lack of resolutions -- isn&#39;t the US capable of sponsoring resolutions too? And frankly, I doubt that you know all the resolutions regarding other countries or for that matter, the details of the ones pertinent to Israel and the rights of the Palestinians.

The Baath party was founded by the Nazis as a way to spread their influence throughout the region and to defeat the British hold on it

I suggest you study the Ba&#39;ath party a little more closely via sources outside of the far right wing neocon voices. The British Occupation was already being fought by the early Ba&#39;athist precursors during WW One.

Here&#39;s an article from Wikipedia, for example:
Ba&#39;ath party,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba&#39;ath_Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Party)

Pay especial attention to this section:
Ba&#39;ath Party Origins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Party#Origins)

As I said, in countries like Syria & Iraq, the Christian minorities have generally thrived as prosperous middle class professionals.

The problem with the &#34;results&#34; in Iraq is that all that is happening is increasing strife and internecine violence, including greater and greater insurgent militant activity. This is what happens on the road to Yugoslavia, where people formerly lived together in some sort of relative peace, and now the country is going the way of civil war. I hope it doesn&#39;t turn into another Afghanistan with all signs of civilization demolished. They once had a first world infrastructure and a prosperous middle class, universities, health care, etc. I hope they get the peace and democracy they deserve.

I already wrote several times that the UN has had a special role to play in the governing of the Palestinian territories, but you don&#39;t want to hear it. And your inference still does nothing to disprove the merits of any of those resolutions.

If you want to learn more about the UN role and WHY it&#39;s involved with Israel/Palestine, I suggest you start with this UN webpage:
UN History of the Palestine Problem (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/ngo/history.html)

Pay very careful attention to this sentence:
In 1947, Great Britain in frustration turned the problem over to the United Nations

And none of this argument has done a thing to touch on the injustice that people suffer under which is completely unecessary and easily solved. I consider most of these arguments beside the point, really.

Or maybe it&#39;s just the whole world as represented by the UN wants to put fluoride in our water and destroy our precious bodily fluids! http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/rofl.gif

&#40;Message edited by Janine on 04 February, 2005&#41;

[Janine]

PS to everybody--

PEACE!!!

Pray for this wretched situation in the Holy Land

People I talk to who live there or come back from there, both Israeli and Palestinian (most Palestinians that I know are Christian and their towns around Bethlehem have suffered enormously from Occupation in the past few years) say the same thing: The situation is just a MESS.

[Owen Jones]

The Southern States in the U.S. are, likewise, occupied territories, by your definition. The Confederate States, a sovereign nation, fired on a Federal Fort, Ft. Sumter. The result was an invasion of the Confederacy by the North, followed by annexation, economic devastation that was part of military policy to make sure that the South could not recover for a hundred years, removal of voting rights for white Southernors, prohibition of any public gatherings, and an influx of carpet baggers who swindled poor southernors out of their land. The the only difference is that the injustice was on a far more massive scale, and it happened a hundred and fifty years ago, instead of 50 years ago. Why shouldn&#39;t all of the same arguments hold? Why shouldn&#39;t there be UN resolutions requiring the U.S. to return destroyed or expropriated properties and give the South its rightful sovereign independence? Why shouldn&#39;t Southerners be justified in carrying out terrorist attacks against the Yankees? Same thing.

[Janine]

Owen, the Palestinian territories are Occupied Territories by everybody's official definition worldwide, including Israel's.

The same arguments don't hold because the South acknowledged itself as part of the United States. Should we start from Dredd Scott or the attempt to force Northern states to return slaves to their Southern owners? The secession of the South? What on earth for???

And really, this discussion is finished because I keep hearing arguments from you as if I'm promoting or justifying or supporting terrorism. That's enough.

To be honest, Owen, I think you're very angry. So angry you don't want to acknowledge others' suffering. I don't know why, and I'm certainly not immune to such anger myself, but I really don't think this conversation is helpful or on topic. I think you, like me too, often, I admit, seem to need to discuss this for some reason, but I'm not the real target of your anger and these arguments don't make real sense... There is perhaps some great pain at the root of this. Maybe you give me pause to think that the Christian Zionist support so prevalent in the South has something to do with the Civil War; all I know is it reminds me of previous ideas and movements in various forms. Maybe it has more to do with the civil rights movement, who knows. At any rate, your opinions aren't isolated in the US and these types of arguments circulate widely. I'm sorry if this sounds insulting - I'm trying to be honest and considerate as I can, and I'm sorry if I'm wrong. As I said, before, I wish you peace.

[Owen Jones]

What I am saying is that it is time for the Palestinians to admit defeat and to try to work with their conquerers, instead of living in this dream world that Israel will be destroyed, or that they will all be able to get all of their old property back. Southerners surrendered when they knew they were whipped.

As for the Palestinian refugees, they have had plenty of time to either move and assimilate elsewhere, or else improve their economic and political status where they are. But the Arab world doesn&#39;t want that. They want to promote a continued festering of conditions so that they can divert attention away from their own restive populations. And aren&#39;t there other refugee populations that deserve notice? There are one million Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. alone. Many more in other Asian countries. And hundreds of thousands died trying to flee. Where are the UN resolutions against Vietnam? And there are close to a million Cuban refugees in the U.S. What about their right of return to a free country that would restore their property and give them voting rights? Where are the UN resolutions against Cuba. The list goes on and on and on. Ethnic cleansing against Tibet, in Zimbabwe, etc. The U.S. State Department estimates that there are 175 million migrants in the world who live in some place other than their home country, many of whom were forced out because of civil war, oppression, etc. Let&#39;s just be fair in terms of who we condemn.

As for the 1947 Partition, there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides for its failure. It probably was an invitation to violence on both sides, the way it was drawn up. I am quite sure that if the Jews had not attacked the Arabs first, then they would have been attacked. It&#39;s just that the Jews were more unified, better organized and better equipped. As I said, they stole the land fair and square and have fought four wars to keep it, so it&#39;s time for people to face reality and cut as good a deal as they can get.

[Janine]

I'm sorry you never heard of Oslo or Camp David or Taba or any of the negotiations the Palestinians have participated in or the Quartet Roadmap that they continue to ask the Israelis to participate in even today and immediately since Abbas became PM, but not for want of my trying! Somehow Sharon isn't interested.. what a surprise! There have even extra-governmental negotiations recently - see Geneva Accords. I already mentioned the 22% of former Palestine Arafat agreed to when he officially recognized the state of Israel, but that doesn't square with the "official line" of the past couple of years of seige and blockade. And of course international law or even previous agreements not to expand don't apply for you, so that's out too! Do you expect that Israel will give all the Palestinians in the territories full citizenship? Could that be a reason why they haven't been annexed yet? Or will they just remain in some sort of special apartheid semi-slavery status without rights forever? Now there's a nostalgic thought, eh?! Maybe that's the connection I was looking for. And it will just be "their fault" if they don't move away to some other country, won't it?

Your unshakeable unquestioning assertion of faith in violence, coercion, material power, weaponry, money, technology, sheer force, the justice of warfare as a way to solve problems and complete disregard for all modern law and human rights and negotiation in good faith, and especially for unecessary suffering, should really teaches me something somehow. Those are all things that Jesus' life speaks against to me. I guess that's what keeps me replying.

Like I said. Enough.

I leave you with the words of a Prophet:

Micah 3:
9 Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.
10 They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Reply to Daniel's post:

Daniel, since reading your message I've been researching this subject because it seemed so impossible. What has happened is that the US (Brennan (sp?) ) has ruled that Iraqi's need a license to buy their seeds for their yearly crops - this ruling has been linked to patent rights etc. but apparently also includes seeds that have been developed by the Iraqi farmers themselves over the ages. Buy from us or starve?

Monsanto (again sp.? - sorry, but I haven't time to check the spelling of these words) has sued quite a few farmers in the US concerning it's patented seeds but apparently the ruling in Iraqi goes a lot beyond what this company and others like it have ever attempted to do in their own country.

Am I becoming paranoid? Shades of George Orwell. Last night on TV I was astounded to hear a US general publicly state that "killing was fun" - this is the kind of he-man bragging these army types engage in amongst themselves but to actually have the nerve to say it publicly - and be cheered for it by the audience - is something else. The next wonderful piece of news was that the US army was testing those little robot killing machines they have developed. Perhaps we should all just start to build an ark or something because something vile is definitely developing....... as I said I think I'm becoming paranoid.

Daniel, there is a movement in the US called the seed-keepers. Seed is wealth and independence - when a rural family keeps it's seed from year to year it can't be controlled. I have a large garden and I can tell you that these large companies have programmed some of the hybrid vegetable varieties not to reproduce - they produce seeds but you can't use them. This has been happening the last 10 years or so. We try to use our own seeds for tomatoes etc. but the days are long past where the seeds of every vegetable in your garden could be used. The sad thing is that many delicious local varieties have been lost because people have been buying their seeds each year from companies.

The above is a lot different though from an occupation army forcing an entire country to conform to rules that are not acceptable in its own country.

Effie

[Daniel forgot his password]

Here is a link to the seeds article.

http://www.rense.com/general62/seeds.htm

I was afraid to post the link before because the Jeff Rense site runs alot of stuff on Zionism, revisionism etc. Then I found this in another article:

&#34;A recent newswire report indicated that 60% of American teens were in favor of more government control of the news. This is a shocking indicator of effective mind control through propaganda amongst a group that is ordinarily rebellious, and it portends greater acceptance to authoritarian constraints through legislation such as the Patriot Act, and a significant erosion of our youths&#39; expectations for liberty.&#34;

full article -

http://www.goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=17991

[Janine]

Regarding seeds: there is a problem with this where it has happened in other countries, especially developing countries. The hybrids would assure that some of the crop would survive if there were attacks by a pest or disease that would focus on one part of the crop. With all the seeds uniform, now the whole of the crop is lost. This is a disaster for poor farmers, especially in less developed countries.

I can tell you that that it&#39;s probably likely that the man who talked about enjoying killing considers himself a good Christian doing his duty. Justice and mercy seem to me noticeably absent in this way of thinking about war and religion.

Here is an authoritative Orthodox perspective:

The &#34;Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence&#34; has caused us to reflect on the links between &#34;religion and violence.&#34; In the Judeo-Christian tradition, violence is notably absent in the creation story, yet present in the journey of the Hebrew people. Orthodoxy provides a non-violent alternative to western Christianity’s atonement theology based on Christ as sacrificial scapegoat by an incarnational soteriology in which Christ shares our mortal human nature, restoring it through His death on the Cross and His resurrection. Violence is clearly a part of our sinful, fallen condition. While disagreements may exist as to whether it is permissible, much less necessary, to limit violence through violent means, such means can never be viewed as a &#34;good.&#34; There is no just war theology in the Orthodox Tradition.

While love of one’s homeland is a positive value, nationalism or ethnophyletism is destructive when it rejects pluralism, i.e.,&#34;when it fails to acknowledge, or deliberately ignores the distinctiveness of others&#34; &#40;Tsetsis&#41;. Phyletism may be characterized as the idolization of national loyalty, which is not authentic to Orthodox tradition, but rather reflects the manipulation of the Church by the State. While the Orthodox Churches condemned phyletism in 1872, &#34;nationalism remains one of the central problems of the Church,&#34; in the words of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. Ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing caused by excessive nationalism must be condemned by all people of faith. Violence against one nation in order to &#34;save&#34; another nation sets us against Christ by applying the same logic used to crucify Christ. The Church’s rejection of ethnophyletism, as Metropolitan John of Korca noted, is based on Orthodox theological anthropology, which sees the image of God in all persons, and on an incarnational soteriology, which proclaims that Christ died for all.

from
The Orthodox Churches in Pluralistic World - Holy Cross Seminary 2002 (http://www.goarch.org/en/special/hchc_conference/presentations/report.asp)


&#40;Message edited by Janine on 05 February, 2005&#41;

[Owen Jones]

The very idea that there would be An Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence spells the end of the Church. This is nthing but gnostic psychobabble, typical of the Episcopal Church USA but not worthy of any sound Orthodox Christian to waste his time with. There will always be war, violence, poverty, oppression, injustice, as long as there is a world. The Church has never had a doctrine which says that a nation, when attacked, should turn the other cheek. The Church has never wasted its time appointing commissions and conducting studies and holding workships to eliminate violence, until certain Orthodox leaders and &#34;thinkers&#34; started to make their peace with Western liberalism. Any Orthodox Christian as recently as 100 years ago would just chuckle at such an absurdity. And while it may be true that the Church does not have a formalized, spelled out just war doctrine, as in the Latin Church, to say that Orthodoxy does not have any tradition of supporting just wars is just simply not true. If they didn&#39;t, we would all be praying today to Allah.

I am not so morally superior in my attitude as to condemn the general who said he enjoyed killing the enemy. He didn&#39;t say he enjoyed killing just anybody. He enjoyed killing when there was a certain justice to it. Thank God for such warriors. Without them several of the people on this forum would be goosestepping and informing on their friends and parents to the secret police.

Again, it is a gnostic inversion of Christian truth to insist that personal piety be imposed on a nation. There is a strong tradition within Christianity of pacifism at the personal level, stemming from the call to forgiveness of all evil done to oneself, but it is not hard doctrine. There have been monks who took arms to defend Athos from pirates, there have been Christians in the Roman pagan army since the earliest of times, and let&#39;s not forget imperial expansion by Orthodox Christian armies by force. Let&#39;s not forget the peoples and nations who have gained their liberty by force of arms. We should not be so quick to condemn each and every act of violence in the world, whilst sitting atop our own ivory towers. We do not have the right to condemn millions of people to slavery and torture for the sake of a blanket condemnation of any and all violence.

AS for Zionism, I am not a Zionist, I am not a defender of Zionism, never said I was, never said I defended injustices committed by Zionists, and personally I believe that Israelis would have been far better off emigrating to the U.S. than creating their own nation, which is not based on Zionism in the traditional sense, but which was founded on the ideals of utopian socialism. There are some more traditional elements in Judaism that argue quite strongly that Israel, as presently constituted, should not be described as Zionist. I am simply questioning two things: why the double standard applied to Israel vs. the many dozens of tyrannies throughout the world who are responsible for far worse injustices; and the fact that there are plenty enough injustices on both sides to go around. And the history of the Arab Israeli conflict is far more complicated than advocates for either side which to portray it.

[Janine]

Like I said, I trust the authoritative voices like the hierarchs and theologians noted. 1700 years is a lot of tradition, a lot of survival. A lot of wisdom. Just because it has Tradition does not mean it is anachronistic. This is a misunderstanding of Orthodoxy. Unforunately it seems to be a common assumption in many people who come from different traditions and a Western orientation to relgious evolution. Orthodoxy is transcendent, not time-bound; there is freedom in its theological truths and values because they can applied and adapted to changes in world history and power through time. And must continue to do so to assure its survival. Truths are transcendent, the external reality of the world is always changing and we will always need to understand how to act under new circumstances and each new situation. The two shouldn't be confused. And every situation must be viewed with clear attention, not confusing the past events with the present or generalizations about one type of event being the same as another.

[Owen Jones]

They have the tradition wrong, Janine, and Orthodoxy has a very strong tradition of opposing hierarchs who do not represent the tradition. At a Church in Moscow not too long ago, the priest took it upon himself to invite an Episcopal priestess into the sanctuary during the liturgy. The faithful boycotted the parish until the priest was forced to issue an apology. There is no tradition of absolute unquestioning obedience to hierarchs in Orthodoxy. It is of particular concern when hierarchs or others who pose as theologians to impose a particular ideological agenda on the faithful, usually done quite subtly with much high-toned language, but hard to catch if one is not on one&#39;s toes. It is hard to see how one can derive a particular political/economic/social agenda from the Gospel. The Gospel has been used to justify Empire, absolutism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, war, pacifism, you name it. The Empire even went so far as to try to govern with a triumverate, in order to replicate the doctrine of the Trinity as the standard for politics. Needless to say, it didn&#39;t work out very well.

Piety does not excuse one from the demands of reason when it comes to worldly affairs. A Christian in a position of political influence and power must practice virtue and restraint in his decision-making, but also weigh conflicting interests and conflicting goods, and restrain himself from the temptation to impose a Christian idealism that is right for persons, families and small communities which would be suicidal for a nation or society. There is, indeed, afterall, a Christian taboo against suicide. A nation cannot enter into a suicide pact as a means to gain Christian nobility. For a nation to announce that it would never, under any circumanstances, engage in violence would be morally irresponsible and would invite more violence. A Christian society with an army, used judiciously, is a far more likely deterrant to violence. Christian Britain ruled the waves through its far-flung navy and the 19th Century was a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity throughout the world as a result. Switzerland, blessed by its geography, was also not invaded by the Nazis, because every Swiss male was a trained/armed warrior and the Nazis who salivated over the prospect of confiscating Swiss wealth, knew that they would have to commit 50 divisions to take the country, and even then there was doubt as to their prospects for success.

Another note, an acedmician who teaches in a school and writes books and articles is not necessarily a &#34;theologian,&#34; probably isn&#39;t in fact according to our tradition. A theologian is one who has acquired prophetic gifts through a charism that, while granted by the Spirit, is also acquired through deep prayer and asceticism. Just because some guy has a Phd in theology doesn&#39;t mean he&#39;s a theologian.

[Janine]

Owen, I frankly think it is you who have it wrong. The people you claim don't understand Orthodoxy are John Chryssavgis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop Demetrios and universally respected theologians -- yes theologians -- from Holy Cross and other theological schools in the US, Greece, and around the world who participated in that conference; all of whom are highly authoritative and widely- and well-respected voices of Orthodoxy. It is you who have over-generalized and confused so many issues here that I spent yesterday elaborating endlessly, and which I'm not going to bother to detangle now. These individuals are venerated and recognized around the world and by their laity and fellow heirarchs. I am very well-acquainted with those who think they represent Tradition and are in fact out of step with it, and am glad that so many of them have been dealt with intelligently by the Church as a whole. If you have read some of my posts in this forum, you would have read that I don't believe in following anyone "blindly" either. Neither, however, do I believe Orthodoxy is a specifically anachronistic refuge from 'modernism'. This is a mischaracterization and misunderstanding. In many ways it is more 'modern' than Western denominations because it has adhered to its apophatic tradition and refrained from legalism. Legalism, in my opinion, can rear its head in many forms that are new to us and its spirit is still not Orthodox.

As to your talk of equating suicide with what was said at that conference, it only serves as an example of confused thinking and lack of understanding what's even been posted here as excerpts. Frankly, I think that you have something to learn from them, if only you would pay attention to what's actually being said, and how it's actually being applied, and avoid imaginative generalizations and catastrophic thinking that justifies every violence and aggression in the name of exaggerated fears of survival. In the practice of nepsis that is one of the first ways of thinking we have to recognize.

[Owen Jones]

Please tell me how the Church intends to elimnate violence in the world. Let&#39;s be specific.

[Janine]

Owen, why don't you read that web page I referred you to? That was a conference specifically for Orthodox orientation and contribution regarding the "Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence". Please note: the word "eliminate" was never used. That's one of your conclusions and characterisations.

Here's another Orthodox reference you can read by one of the participants in the conference:

Violence and the Christian Theology by Rev. Dr. Emmanuel Clapsis (http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8565.asp)

[Janine]

Here&#39;s the link again to the conference, in case you have trouble locating it. The conference was titled &#34;The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralistic World.&#34;

The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralistic World (http://www.goarch.org/en/special/hchc_conference/presentations/report.asp)

Are we on a new topic yet, by the way? or does it matter?

[Owen Jones]

I&#39;ve read the materials on the two links, and it is total, unmitigated nonsense. The term &#34;realized eschatology,&#34; just to take one case in point, has been around for a long time in the WCC and especially the Episcopal Church, and it is, as I have characterized it before, gnostic psychobabble. The theory of violence espoused has nothing to do with the Christian tradition&#39;s explanation, which means the remedies are all going to be faulty. On the other hand, if you were intentionally desirous of destroying the Orthodox Church worldwide, i.e., to follow the path of the Episcopal Church and the Church of England, then by all means embrace all of this nonsense enthusiastically.

[Owen Jones]

The idea that globalism and pluralism are somehow brand new phenomenon that require some kind of new religious consciousness to grasp and to respond to represents a type of gnostic arrogance regarding history, and the Church&#39;s role in history.

[M A Jackson-Roberts]

Well, the combination of Dr Condoleeza Rice&#39;s whirlwind tour and the &#40;welcome&#41; passing over of Yasser Arafat, with a new regime now in place in the Palestine Authority, at least offer some hopeful prospect of progression in the Middle East imbroglio, for which much thanks.

seeker

[Scott Pierson]

this is a weakness Orthodox Christian people have, especially in the "old country". Living in Russia, I see all sorts of literature distributed about "Jewish-Masonic Conspiracies" to destroy Russia

Technically wouldnt propagating a religion that claims Christ was a false prophet and the son of a prostitute and roman solider in itself be a conspiracy against Truth (Christ) and His Church. I tend to think that people confuse opposition to (Talmudic) Judaism (and the ideology/worldviews propagated by those adhering to modern Judaism) with hatred of a race of people ( Anti Semitism). I'm not trying to deny that their are REAL antisemites in the Church I just think you should give people the benefit of the doubt... Many of those supposed "Anti Semites" who speak out strongly against Judaism and the plans of those following the religion would most likely love for Jews to become Christians and would consider them just as good as any other Christian. Followers of modern Judaism tend to support states and cultures that are either secular or based on Judaism it only makes sense.. but it does work against the Church none the less and in that sense it IS conspiracy against the Church. The same is true with followers of Islam, Atheism , etc. Many people like to label our God bearing Fathers as Jew hating bigots (especially ST Chrysostem) but they are not. Neither are the REAL elders who happen to warn people of the danger of the "Jewish" worldview. Sure we should stand up against the real anti-semites in the Church but I think we need to be real careful before we pin that label on someone just because they talk of "Jewish - Masonic Conspiricys" . EVERY FALSE RELIGION (that is every religion other then Orthodox Christianity) CONSPIRES AGAINST THE TRUTH (CHRIST)!

*Modern Judaism is a false religion. Modern Judaism is to the Faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob what Mormonism (or insert any other heresy here) is to the faith of Christ. Talmudic Judaism is simply the continuation of the faith of the Pharasiess and scribes.

I know posting this might make some people angry and thats really not what I'm trying to do. Nor am I trying to imply that people born of Jewish descent are bad people ( St Paul calls them blessed!**) or that people who practice the false religion itself are even consciously promoting evil. I just want to point out the (to me at least ) obvious fact that the two worldviews (being in opposition) do conspire against eachother. If one person dedicated their life to teaching that 1+1=2 and another person to the idea that it really came out to 3 they would be conspiring against each others actions.

I think some of the misunderstanding comes from the vauge term "Jew" itself. It can mean a person born of certain stock (related to the tribes of Israel) , or people who practice a certain religion.


**Not to mention the fact that Christ himself was of the tribe of Judah.

[Vasiliki D.]

New Question in addition to this theme:

Should we perhaps revise the Old Testament because I perceive that God is very anti-semitic towards the people of Israel :P

Just a thought ....

[C. Christoph]

Dear forum,

I just recently bought a book by Father Epraim (the then Abbot of Philotheou on Mont Athos) called "A call from the Holy Monutain". I was greatly disturbed by one comment and would like to get anyones comments. He writes: "It is well known that the devil-instigated Zionism is coordinating two insiduos operations both within and without the Church aspiring to one and the same; to destroy the fortress know as Orthodoxy." Then he goes on to say that "Papists, Protestants, Jehovah Witness, Freemasons, Unionists, Eumenists and any other 'root of bittreness'... shall give their power and strength unto the beast. These shall make with the Lamb." Later on he refers to the Protocols of Zion as if they were an historical fact.

I know that Fr. Ephraim has been controversial in the States. But how can he claim such blatantly anti-semitic statements? How can a monk who lives for and with Christ be so cold and prejudiced?

Isn't it a bit far fetched to believe that the Jews are conspiring to take over the world and destroy Orthodoxy? Are these views condoned by the Church?


In Christ,
Benjamin

I found this on the endnotes of an article on an extremely well researched (non -Christian) site about the real, yet, covert politics of this world (http://www.isgp.eu/introduction.htm)

About Zionism: To people who were just as ignorant as me, that's not an Arab reference to Jews, but to anyone who wants the Jews to migrate back to Israel before God apparently gave his permission. Many consider it the opposite of Judaism, including many Jews. The problem, however, is that anyone who criticizes the Zionist movement (including the state of Israel) is immediately labeled an 'anti-semite' or even a nazi. That has to do with the fact that the Zionist movement is controlled by an oligarchy of criminal globalists

However, I also (as a greek orthodox) always instinctively (before reading up about it) understood the term zionist (as far back as I can remember) as simply "Anyone who is expecting the Antichrist as the Messiah -because he doesn't accept Christ as the Messiah".

As far as that quote from Father Efraim goes, I was surprised to find indirect support on it at this site

[C. Christoph]

To clarify :

i think that typical traditional orthodox understanding of the word zionist (and probably how father Ephraim understands the term zionism) is:
"anyone who is still awaiting the messiah"
this generally implies a worldly messiah since the true Saviour was crucified for our Salvation and that (according to Saint Paul) will always be a scandal and a folly to this world

This obviously encompasses a huge gamut from various new age globalists to many jehovas witnesses, a (hopefully small) number of Jews and certainly the most active pursuers of this new "messiah" Talmudic or satanic top level freemasons.

[Ilaria]

I would suggest that we have to try to read the words of the fathers of Mount Athos or from other orthodox gardens, merely in the light of the New Testament, as they were written and not in view of our modern, diplomatic approach, as we are now taught by our modern "civilization" (which, according to fr Sophrony is a culture of falling from God oriented society)
who can imagine that a monk from mount Athos, even controversial supposed to be, would call to hate and such? I think that, if we try to read him in the spirit of the Bible, the father is just giving an warning; and this is the orthodox way; never call for hate, but for watchfulness, which a father is obliged to do for his flock.

1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

Is St John, the love apostle, calling here for hate??
so, why filling pages with the history of jews repressions - theirs to other people and vice versa - which were worldly, political issues - when the fathers try to lead us to the 'not of this world" vision, according to the Bible.

[Isa Almisry]

To clarify :

i think that typical traditional orthodox understanding of the word zionist (and probably how father Ephraim understands the term zionism) is:
"anyone who is still awaiting the messiah"
this generally implies a worldly messiah since the true Saviour was crucified for our Salvation and that (according to Saint Paul) will always be a scandal and a folly to this world

This obviously encompasses a huge gamut from various new age globalists to many jehovas witnesses, a (hopefully small) number of Jews and certainly the most active pursuers of this new "messiah" Talmudic or satanic top level freemasons.

It would also include an idea that the physical land remains Israel, and not the Church, and that Abraham's descendants who are not baptized (amazingly Christianity is the only religion you can't be and Jewish at the same time, including atheism, which most Zionists are) are the inheritors of the Promise to our Father Abraham. Also, that the interpretation of the OT, or rather the Masoretic Tanakh, of the scribes and Pharisees is authoritative, not that of the Apostles (or the Septuagint).

[Margaret S.]

(amazingly Christianity is the only religion you can't be and Jewish at the same time, including atheism, which most Zionists are)

Aren't you confusing ethnicity and belief? Someone simply born into a Jewish family can choose any religion they like, including Christianity, and someone who is practicing Judaism can't. I don't know about the synagogues in your area but the one here would take a very dim view of members of the congregation announcing they were Muslims or Taoists or whatever.

Regards
Margaret
in Edinburgh

[C. Christoph]

Aren't you confusing ethnicity and belief? Someone simply born into a Jewish family can choose any religion they like, including Christianity, and someone who is practicing Judaism can't.

Regards
Margaret
in Edinburgh

For semantics sake, it is worth remembering that (unfortunately) the majority of people will use the word Jew both for someone of Jewish blood -even if he is a christian orthodox - as well as for a Judaist (a word almost non existent - it is asking me for a spelling check now that I am typing!)

[Isa Almisry]

Aren't you confusing ethnicity and belief? Someone simply born into a Jewish family can choose any religion they like, including Christianity, and someone who is practicing Judaism can't. I don't know about the synagogues in your area but the one here would take a very dim view of members of the congregation announcing they were Muslims or Taoists or whatever.

Regards
Margaret
in Edinburgh

I had a roomate who claimed to be Jewish and Taoist, and because of my mother's mother's family, innumerable Jews have told me "Oh, so you are really a Jew."

I'm not the one who is confused.

[Andrew]

Aren't you confusing ethnicity and belief? Someone simply born into a Jewish family can choose any religion they like, including Christianity, and someone who is practicing Judaism can't. I don't know about the synagogues in your area but the one here would take a very dim view of members of the congregation announcing they were Muslims or Taoists or whatever.

Regards
Margaret
in Edinburgh

Within the Jewish culture there has been a long debate about this issue, and it basically has come down to the fact that if your mother is a Jew, you are a Jew (a minority of liberal Jews dispute this and say that if your father is a Jew and your mother isn't, you can claim to be a Jew). You can be an atheist, a Buddhist, or whatever, but you are still considered a Jew. However, many no longer consider someone a Jew if they are a Christian... religious Jews do not think it is a good thing that there are Jews who do not practice the Jewish religion, but they still consider them to be Jews. Judaism is a religion, and the Jewish people are a cultural/ethnic group.

And within the Jewish culture, to complicate things, there is the distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, and then from there the various levels and styles of religious (or irreligious) observation. The Sephardic Jews are mainly descended from the Jewish diaspora after AD 70, whereas the Ashkenazi are mainly descended from the Khazar converts to Judaism from around 1000 AD. The leaders of Zionism are predominantly secular Ashkenazi - and I think that there has never been a Sephardic head of state of the Zionist occupation government in Palestine, but I could be wrong. Someone please elaborate upon/correct me on this.

Anyways, to the majority of Jews, it's "Once a Jew, Always a Jew" - except if you become a Christian! But even then, a good amount of Jews will still consider the Christian to be a Jew.

[Owen Jones]

One of the interesting phenomena in the Levant is the way in which ethnicity trumps everything else. For example, Arab Christians side with Arab Muslims against Israel, even though one would think that perhaps, given the history, and theology, it would be just the opposite. One of the more curious theological developments in America is the way in which many Protestants have gone from being anti-Jewish to being very pro-Jewish and Zionistic in the last generation, to the point of arguing that it is the duty of every Christian to support Israel. This is based on dispensationalist theology.

Meanwhile, modern Zionism was not a theological concept at all. It was a theory espoused by European Jews for the creation of a modern Jewish state that would be the first purely socialist society. It was believed that the Jews would be a kind of socialist vanguard. Virtually no one in Israel believes in socialism anymore, of course, and so it has morphed into a quasi-theological concept, with Orthodox Jews believing in one thing, and secular Jews interpreting it in a different way. But in both cases, they make the case that you are not a Jew at all unless you live in Israel. But it is still required that American Jews send their money to Israel, even though they are not really Jewish!

Meanwhile, many American Jews believe that America is the true Promised Land, because it is the only case in history in which Jews have not really been persecuted. Discrimination, yes. But outright persecution, no.

Since history is far from over, one wonders where all of this is heading. Israel and Judaism hold a unique place in world history, and in our theology, yet today. Although it seems that Orthodoxy today has little to say about it that is constructive. If everyone in the Levant were to convert to the True Faith, problem solved!

[Scott Pierson]

I wanted to retract some of what I said in this forum a few years ago. If a person is quoting the Protocols as if it were a factual document it is fairly safe to say they have a problem with anti-semitism. Having done a small amount of examination of the medieval and modern Jewish faith I've found a lot of wisdom and areas of agreement with Christinaity and I think my previous understanding of it was a little too harsh to say the least.


Protestants have gone from being anti-Jewish to being very pro-Jewish and Zionistic in the last generation, to the point of arguing that it is the duty of every Christian to support Israel.That was a strange transformation. I believe it has something to do with newly created understandings of prophecy that they connect with the modern state of Israel. It's always scary when people think there is some sort of divine command to serve the perceived interests of a state or nation . People can start putting the interests of one select group ( the "good guys") before the well being and interests of humanity and creation as a whole when they do that. It's easy to throw out compassion and rational thought when one views global politics in that manner. instead of looking at the situation in Palestine in a compassionate and logical manner they automatically view it in black and white terms because they are under the impression that God told them to always take the side of the Israelis. I remember Pat Robertson saying for example that he would always support Israel no matter what. Sounds like something a fascist would say about their own country.

[J. K. Amra]

Joel 3:2
I will also gather all nations,
And bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;
And I will enter into judgment with them there
On account of My people, My heritage Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations;
They have also divided up My land.

Isaiah 34:8-9
For it is the day of the LORD’s vengeance,
The year of recompense for the cause of ZION.


Islam was prophecied in the Bible ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thMGCNBOWgQ ), the one thing that I actually agree on with Protestantists is Zionism and the support of Israel and the Jewish people.

[Scott Pierson]

Islam was prophecied in the Bible ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thMGCNBOWgQ ), the one thing that I actually agree on with Protestantists is Zionism and the support of Israel and the Jewish people.


I can empathize with the need to support the Jewish people (and all people for that matter) but isn't the Church the Israel of God and not a modern nation state in the Middle East ?

[J. K. Amra]

I can empathize with the need to support the Jewish people (and all people for that matter) but isn't the Church the Israel of God and not a modern nation state in the Middle East ?

Hi Scott, as far as my knowledge goes (which is very little), I think it it can go both ways, depending on which Church you are refferring to, Christian Church or Jewish people?

Its obvious from those verses that the division of Israel-

(especially Jerusalem, seeing as how the Muslims are currently occupying the Temple Mount [and, not to get too off subject concerning prophecy, the third and final Jewish temple is already being considered for establishment, fulfilling the Scriptures])

-is strongly against what God wants, and obviously something that Satan is trying to accomplish (and has, with his own religion), the division of Israel results in the division of Jewish people, Jewish people have been divided for a really long time, but where Jewish people are united, there result is an area which is known as the nation of Israel.

I also believe that it can be interpreted as the Church being the Israel of God, I think you are referring to Galatians 6:16 which says:

"And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God." ? I'm not sure.

But these verses are specifically speaking about "my people" being "scaterred among the nations", "Israel", and "land", I think the message is pretty obvious. I don't think that if these verses (Joel and Isaiah) were reffering to a Church, they'd specifically contain the word "land" in them, with what I believe to be a reference to a physical formation of land, Israel.

"On account of My people, My heritage Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations; They have also divided up My land."

[M.C. Steenberg]

Scott is absolutely right: certainly from the point of view of those Fathers who considered these things, 'Israel' in the prophecies of Israel is the Church. It is a great error of thought to confuse this with the modern nation-state called Israel.

... though we've probably done this topic rather to death, unless someone has new thoughts on the patristic testimony.

INXC, Dcn Matthew