ZGram - 6/3/2002 - "... their service to the Faceless Destroyer."

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - 6/3/2002

June 4, 2002

My then-young mother, who had no reason to be fond of Jews since she 
held them responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution that tore Czarist 
Russia apart and slaughtered many of her kin, would tell me now and 
then as I grew up: 

"So-and-so is a Jew, but he is a GOOD Jew..." as if she needed to 
stress a necessary qualifier. 

I always think of her when I think of Israel Shamir who, in my book, 
is also a good Jew.  I knew few Jews I would describe as "good", but 
Shamir qualifies. 

Whenever I see one of his articles, my linguistically sensitive heart 
skips a beat.  I wish I could write as he does and think as he does - 
and more than once I wished I had his courage.

Here he is, yet one more time, for everyone's elucidation:

[START]

St Barbara of Aboud

By Israel Shamir

"Aboud is one of the prettiest Palestinian villages, strongly 
reminiscent of Tuscany. Its time-mellowed stone houses grow on the 
gentle hills. Vine climbs up their balconies, leafy fig trees provide 
shadow to its streets. The prosperity of this well-established 
village is seen in the spaciousness of the mansions, in the 
meticulously clean roads. The old men sit in a small and shady, 
walled enclosure, on the stone benches, like the aldermen of Ithaca 
gathered by young Telemachus. That is the biblical 'gate of the 
city', or a diwan. Kids bring them coffee and fresh fruits. Local 
people are not the refugees of Gaza and Deheishe; here, as in a time 
warp, one can see the Holy Land as it should and could be.

Three millennia old Aboud received the faith of Christ from Christ 
himself, says the local tradition, and there is the church ready to 
prove it, one of the oldest on earth, built in the days of 
Constantine in the 4th century, or maybe even older, as some 
archaeologists claim. The church is a dainty thing, carefully 
restored and well taken care of. The Byzantine capitals of its 
columns bear the image of cross and palm branches. They recently 
discovered a plaque in old Aramaic script immured in the southern 
wall of the church.

Aboud has more than one church: there is a Catholic, a Greek Orthodox 
and an American-built Church of God. There is also a new mosque, as 
Christians and Muslims of the Holy Land live together in great 
harmony. On December 17th all of them, the Muslims and the 
Christians, go to venerate the village patron saint, St Barbara. She 
was a local girl who fell in love with a young Christian and was 
baptized. It happened in the rough days of Roman emperor Diocletian, 
and she was martyred in the persecutions. The ruins of the oldest 
Byzantine church of St Barbara are still seen on a hill a mile away 
from the village. At the foothill, there is her burial cave, and 
there the peasants lit their candles and ask their wishes to be 
fulfilled".

I wrote these lines above almost a year ago, when the Israeli army 
began its campaign of devastation in the hills of Western Samaria. 
Now, on 31 of May, they dynamited St Barbara, a rare relic of 
Christian past of the Holy Land. It was one of these bittersweet 
ruins of churches that still attract worshippers, together with St 
Anne of Safurie and Emmaus of Latrun. I do not know whether the 
sappers were the same soldiers who for proverbial forty days and 
forty nights, from Catholic to Orthodox Easter besieged the Nativity 
and whether they said the prescribed by Shulkhan Aruch blessing, 
Blessed you are, God of Israel, the Prince of the World, Who destroys 
the temples of Goyyim. I have no doubt this destruction is connected 
with Bethlehem siege: it passed so quietly, with so little attention, 
that it would be strange not to continue.

Illumination of St Barbara from Breviary of Martin of Aragon

My friend Miriam from New York, a wonderful person and a friend of 
Palestine, wrote to me, "I intuit that you are writing a piece about 
this example of replacing the Judaic paradigm of revenge for the 
Christian one of sacrifice and redemption=8A but don't. That's not what 
it's about - it's about destroying everything meaningful".

=46or a change, I am going to agree with Miriam. It is true, the Jews 
can't stop trying to undo Christianity. Our worst enemy is the 
Church, wrote Freud, and Gretz the historian seconded, Christianity 
must be destroyed. It is better to serve Hitler than Christ, 
concluded the most prominent modern Jewish Israeli theologian. One 
can quote hundreds of such one-liners, but Miriam is still right: 
they indeed destroy everything meaningful.

Not only churches. In nearby Nablus, they destroyed the Green Mosque, 
the oldest extant building, build above the cave where Jacob lamented 
his lost son Joseph. One of the great shrines of Palestine, 
contemporary with St Barbara, it was a Byzantine church, and later 
served as a Samaritan synagogue, the centre of worship for local 
Israelites-not-Jews. Samaritan priests pointed it out to me. A holy 
place is always attended in the Holy Land, and it again was converted 
to a church and beautified by Queen Melisende, the pious flirt and 
the builder of the Holy Sepulchre. It reverted to a mosque eight 
hundred years ago, when the cathedrals of Chartres and K=F6ln were 
erected. The mosque celebrated its fifteen hundred years anniversary, 
when an Israeli tank ravaged it. Just to show their impartiality, 
they also bombed St Philip Episcopal church in Nablus and put under 
curfew St Luke Hospital.

Some traditional old-fashioned anti-Semite would see it as a sign of 
hatred to Gentiles in toto. But Miriam is right. They destroy 
everything. In Jerusalem there was a great spring, the biggest spring 
of Highlands. It gave birth to Jerusalem, and it is the reason for 
the city's existence. It has a plethora of names: Gihon (in the 
Bible), Ein Sittna Miriam, after the Virgin, Ein Silwan, as the 
nearby village.

Many events are connected with this living spring. King David's 
soldiers climbed up its pier, Jesus healed blind men at its pool, 
King Hezekiah bored a half-kilometre long tunnel to keep its waters 
within the walls, away from the reach of Assyrian army. It is forever 
venerated, and an old mosque stands at its lower exit. Many times in 
the hot days of July I waded breast-deep the tunnel's cool length, 
drinking its sweet water and biding time to emerge at the fig tree 
above broken Roman columns of the pool.

Then, over a year ago, Ehud Olmert, self-styled 'Mayor' of Jerusalem, 
the great destroyer of Palestinian homes, seized the spring. He 
locked the entrance, put a Russian guard, a few soldiers, and 
transferred it lock, stock and barrel to settlers. The Palestinians 
were not allowed to approach it anymore. Nowadays, the Gihon spring 
is dead. Instead of pure water, sewage of the city flows by its tall 
tunnel. It joined many other springs of Palestine. Some were fenced, 
others covered with concrete, some eliminated by pumping stations, 
and others poisoned by sewage, all killed by the Jews.

I hear voice, Oh no, say: Zionists! I would, but it seems unfair to 
the Jewish people abroad. They work so hard, they demonstrate in 
support of Israel everywhere from Brussels to San Francisco, they 
collect funds for Israeli soldiers, they sue everybody who supports 
Palestine, they keep news about blown up Byzantine churches out of 
your newspapers - don't you think they deserve to be considered as 
full-blown partners in the Zionist enterprise?

- "They make life so miserable that the Palestinians will leave", 
wrote ever-so rational Miriam. Here I tend to disagree. A year ago, I 
saw just outside the village of Aboud two giant American-built 
Caterpillar bulldozers slowly devouring the olive trees. "They were 
huge, covered from every side by armour plates. They appeared 
impregnable, like moving fortresses. They towered above the landscape 
as the mechanical monsters of Evil Empire attacking Ewocks". That is 
their purpose: to destroy. Not just churches, not only mosques, but 
everything alive, from olive to spring, as their service to the 
=46aceless Destroyer.

A few days ago, the lady wife and guiding light of Conrad Black, 
Barbara Amiel, whined, "People present the Jews and Israel as Evil 
Empire". Well, dear Ms Amiel, Israel and the Jews are not the Evil 
Empire, but they will do, until real Evil Empire will show up.

=3D

P.S. As an anticlimax, I propose to my readers to calculate the ratio 
of Jewish influence in their newspaper, as follows: divide the 
coverage of a synagogue wall being dirtied with graffiti (in square 
inches) by the coverage of the venerable Byzantine church of St 
Barbara destruction (in square inches).  Just to remind you: a ratio 
with denominator zero equals infinity.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles 
can be found on the site 
<http://www.israelshamir.net/>www.israelshamir.net In order to 
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<mailto:info@israelshamir.net>info@israelshamir.net No copyright for 
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=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D