On this very day, almost 20 centuries ago, Jesus, a man who said love your enemies, was put to death in Jerusalem. It was a criminal act engineered by a Roman governor as well as Jewish collaborators on the Sanhedrin. And while Jesus, to be sure, had a large number of followers, his execution seems to have been much approved of by a fairly good-sized crowd on hand that day, a crowd that probably was representative of a significant percentage of the population. As I argued in two recent posts (see here and here ), Jewish racism, the very same racism we see in Israel today spewing forth from a number of rabbis, played a significant role in these events.
Jesus’ message was one of peace and equality amongst all peoples and nations, and his telling of certain parables, particularly that of the Good Samaritan, would have riled sensibilities and aroused to fury those convinced of Jewish “chosenness.” Such people yearned not for a prince of peace, but a warrior-messiah, a “king of the Jews,” who would conquer and destroy their enemies and turn the Gentile nations into their “footstools,” as Psalm 99 so niftily puts it. The teachings of this Galilean, and particularly those teachings given voice in the Sermon on the Mount and the Good Samaritan parable, would have been viewed contemptuously by these nationalist and staunchly segregationist Jews, some of whom preached that a Jew became defiled by the mere act of entering a Gentile’s house. Other aspects of Jewish law (the so-called “oral law” that Jesus denounced) reinforced this same sense of superiority and separateness. For instance, if a knife had been handled by a Gentile it had to be reground, while pottery vessels touched by Gentile lips were disposed of.
What it boils down to is this: as Jesus went about speaking to the crowds, he encountered Jews with “ears to hear,” and who very much were able to detect the melisma of sublime bliss in the flow of his words; these Jews, in many cases, became his followers. Others, however, grew into his most vociferous enemies. And as the videos below show, today, some 20 centuries later, there are still Jews who detest this Holy Man and everything he stood for.
Mannerly Israeli settlers pay a courtesy call...
A warm sense of humor...
Zionist hospitality and tolerance for other religions...
Jesus portrayed on late night Israeli TV...
Crucifixion comedy...
The right to mock--"because we are Jews"
Jesus finally defended--on Al Manar, a Lebanese TV station operated by Hezbollah...
The same Al Manar report, with English subtitles...
Muslim girl says, "I love Jesus."
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It is time for American Christians, who make up 80 percent of the U.S. population, to wake up and realize who their real friends are in the Middle East, and to come to understand that our friends, most assuredly, are NOT the Israelis.
Peace with justice!
End aid to Israel!
Christians and Muslims unite!
It is also time American Christians began giving some serious thought to the following…
A question that begs to be asked:
The territory into which I’m about to venture normally, here in America, will get you branded an “anti-Semite” in a heartbeat, with the resultant side effects that that customarily entails (the “Helen Thomas” treatment, job loss, being shunned from polite society, etc.). But given claims over Palestine asserted by Zionists with no previous connection to the land, based upon Old Testament narratives about conversations between God and Moses purported to have taken place more than 3,000 years ago—claims which we hear made to the point of redundancy and which have resulted in bloodshed for the last 60-plus years—it becomes a legitimate question to ask. No. Scratch that. With Palestinians dying on an almost daily basis, with our own country embroiled in multiple wars in the Middle East and North Africa, hostilities all being fought, coincidentally, against Israel’s enemies, this is a question which begs, which literally cries out to be asked. The question is this:
If God gave “the land of Israel” to the Jews—and once again we hear this claim made over and over—what happened? Why did God allow the Jews to be crushed by the Romans in 70 A.D. and again in 135 A.D.? Is it possible the Jews may have done something to offend God, and if so, what, pray tell, might it have been? Following the defeat of 135 A.D., a good many Jews remained on the land (and later converted to Islam), but the “Jewish homeland” at that time went out of existence. It remained out of existence all the way up until the year 1948—a time span of more than 18 centuries. How is it God would have allowed the Jews to suffer such a debacle?
To borrow a somewhat crude but applicable modern day colloquialism, “they must have f#@ked up really big time.”
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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