To the List:
Some would think the following article represents courage. I believe that
it represents a provocation on the part of the Moslems who seen not to
believe that anyone else is around but themselves and that no history is
valid but their own. Everything seems to bend to their sacred sites and
their history. "Build a sacred site wherever you want and the rest of the
"second class" or as they put it the "Demi-religious" traditions of the
world are less when compared to your desires." One could make a case for
the poor Palestinians locked in refugee camps for 60 years however one must
remember the 3 and 1/2 Million Jews who were pushed and washed across the
face of Europe with impunity in the 19th and early 20th centuries with
little care on the part of the "real citizens" of the nations who used and
then ejected them. No one has sent these Palestinians further than a
hundred miles from their starting point. The Jewish groups that I am
familiar with are more than willing to do commerce with them if they will
cooperate. That was not the case with the Europeans and the Jews fifty
years before Israel.
We've seen such things here in our Sacred places with the Christians doing
the same. It was not respect but an act of provocation and Alpha
Dominance. In our Sacred Places: Bear Butte, Devils Tower, Echota are all
lost to the spiritual traditions of the dominant population. But I cannot
complain about that and inconsistantly turn my head when it returns to them
in such a dangerous place as the Middle East. Does it seem like the
Moslems are respecting Christianity and the Christian's holy places? If
the Moslems or the Christians or the Jews give no respect then what do they
deserve respect for? (One might say the same to the Christians who allow
mountain hikers to hike through sacred Sundances at Devil's Tower.)
Well, it's the principle of the thing. You have to start somewhere and
working out the principle of respect for each other's most precious Historic
places is essential. It may be courageous for a Jew to write in a Jewish
Newspaper or for a peace group to go against the grain of Judiasm but the
Moslem community here in the U.S. is pretty solid in its Anti-Jewish stance.
I have never heard a Moslem speaker speak out for Jews to be able to rebuild
the Temple on the Temple Mount. He would probably be killed if he did.
I for one believe that the Jews have a right to their holy places, when
they are the oldest in that place. What do you think the Christians would
do if oil was discovered under Golgotha or Bethlehem? What would the
Moslems do if the Shamanic people who discovered the sacred stone of Mecca
were able to ask for it back? Everyone is vulnerable and wisdom goes
wanting in this world of chaos and craziness masquerading as spirituality.
Considering the response of the Moslem world to the one writer who has
spoken out briefly, Salman Rushdie, and the general hatred for Art either
painted or sculpted one could make an interesting case for all of this stuff
on September 11th being about destroying the "Idolatrers" who spent the
night all night on September 10 on the upper floor of the WTC completing
their Art projects. Paranoid? Of course but isn't it all? It's all
cuckoo and there is no bravery, only insanity. Every time I hear that
there are one Billion plus of any religion in the world, including the
economic religions, it scares me to death.
REH
January 10, 2002
Mosque Near Christian Shrine Is Blocked by Israeli Officials
By JOEL GREENBERG
ERUSALEM, Jan. 9 - The Israeli government decided today to halt construction
of a mosque next to the main Christian shrine in Nazareth, a project that
has drawn protests from the Vatican and Christian leaders here and abroad.
The decision threatened to reignite a dispute over the site that has led to
violence between Muslims and Christians in Nazareth, and was raised by
President Bush at a meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last year.
Mr. Sharon's security cabinet decided to stop the building of the mosque,
and named Natan Sharansky, the housing minister, to head a committee of
ministers to recommend an alternate site within two weeks.
"This has been a cause for continuous friction," an Israeli official said.
"We don't want to shove it down the throat of the Christians. The effort is
to come up with an alternate proposal that will be carried out with the
consent of both sides."
Muslim leaders vowed that the mosque would go up at the site despite the
government's decision. "The government is bending to the pressure of the
Vatican, the pope and Bush," said Salman Abu Ahmad, the leader of the
Islamic Movement in Nazareth. "The mosque will be built."
Work on the mosque, whose construction was approved by the previous Israeli
government in 1999, began several weeks ago outside the Basilica of the
Annunciation on the site revered by Christians as the place where the angel
Gabriel foretold the birth of Jesus.
Muslims venerate the area as the site of the tomb of Shihab al-Din, a nephew
of Saladin, the commander of the Muslim army that captured Jerusalem from
the crusaders in the 12th century.
The campaign to build the mosque symbolized the growing assertiveness of the
Muslim majority in Nazareth, an Israeli Arab city of 70,000. After months of
Muslim demonstrations at the site, violent street clashes between Muslims
and Christians erupted in Nazareth in Easter 1999.
The government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak later approved construction of a
mosque in part of the area outside the church, but the dispute continued to
fester. As a cornerstone for the mosque was laid in November 1999, all
churches in the Holy Land closed in protest for two days and local Christian
officials warned that a Millennium visit by Pope John Paul II was in
jeopardy. However the visit ultimately went ahead as planned.
Construction at the site began several weeks ago, prompting renewed protests
from local church leaders and some Christian groups in the United States.
The Vatican said in November that construction of the mosque would "put this
holy place in a permanent state of siege."
However the work proceeded despite the lack of a formal building permit and
in defiance of a court order. Mr. Abu Ahmad accused the government of
deliberately delaying the permit process.
"The pope won't dictate to us, Bush won't dictate to us, and Sharon won't
dictate to us," he said. "We will not give up our holy places."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
----- Original Message -----
From: Christoph Reuss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 10:33 AM
Subject: Re: An example of courage
> Brian McAndrews wrote:
> > I admire David Grossman's courage to speak his truth in the midst of
such
> > hatred and fear.
>
> An example of even more courage is the peace group Gush Shalom (recipient
> of this year's Alternative Peace Nobel Prize) which regularly publishes
> some juicy political ads in Ha'aretz -- such as the following.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
>
> _____Gush Shalom ad published in Haaretz, December 28, 2001______
>
> "DER STURMER" IN THE KNESSET
>
> Minister Danny Naveh has thrown a stink bomb in the
> Knesset. He alleged that Arafat's Muslim soldiers raped
> Christian girls in Bethlehem, an allegation reminiscent
> of the style of Der Sturmer, the German paper that
> mixed anti-Semitic incitement with pornography.
>
> Before that, Minister Benny Eilon, writing in the
> settlers' paper, advocated the expulsion ("transfer") of
> the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
>
> Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in a popular television
> program, called for the expulsion of Israel's Arab
> citizens.
>
> These are not "wild plants" or "marginal elements".
> These proposals were made by Cabinet Ministers. They
> are accepted as a legitimate part of the public
> discourse, without protest or condemnation. Neither
> the President nor the Prime Minister has distanced
> himself from them. The Attorney General, too, is silent.
>
> This is a corruption of the State of Israel, a threat to its
> democratic foundations, a degeneration of the political
> system, a psychological preparation for horrible war crimes.
>
> Gush Shalom,
> Help us with donations to
> P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033,
> Phone 972-3-5221732.
> http://www.gush-shalom.org
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
> _____________Uri Avnery's Column 29.12.01: "If I Were Mofaz"_____________
>
> If I were Shaul Mofaz, I would by now be very worried indeed. In Belgium,
> Ariel Sharon is standing trial for his part in the Sabra and Shatila
events
> of 19 years ago. At first, he treated this as a joke. No more. Now he is
> spending a fortune (of our money) on this trial.
> The prosecution argues that Sharon, then Israel's Minister of Defense,
> being responsible for occupied Beirut, allowed a bunch of notorious
> murderers into the camps of defenseless refugees, where they
> indiscriminately killed men and women, old people and children. The
Israeli
> Commission of Inquiry ordered his dismissal and charged him with "indirect
> responsibility". The Belgian prosecutors are trying to charge him with
> direct responsibility.
> Perhaps the trial will be abandoned, perhaps Sharon will be found not
> guilty. But if he is found guilty, an international warrant may be issued
> for his arrest and he will be liable to be arrested the moment he sets
foot
> in Europe.
> This is only a beginning. The international campaign against war crimes is
> progressing rapidly. A permanent International Court for war crimes is
> going to be set up. After Belgium, other countries will enact laws for the
> trial of foreign war criminals in their courts. The definition of war
> crimes will be widened, and so will the cooperation between states,
> especially in Europe.
> The trial of an acting head of government for alleged war crimes committed
> 19 years ago is an important precedent. No less important is the decision
> handed down this week by the Israeli Supreme Court, denying Ehud Yatom the
> right to hold any important security position. Yatom murdered two bound
> prisoners in cold blood, with his own hands. This happened 17 years ago,
> when he was a high-ranking officer of the Shin-Beth security service. He
> maintained in his defense that he had only followed orders and acted
> according to existing "norms" (terrible words for a Jewish ear). At the
> time he had requested and received a pardon, thus practically admitting to
> the despicable deed.
> (This was part of the infamous 1984 "bus line 300 affair", the kidnapping
> of a bus by four unarmed Palestinian youngsters. Two were killed when the
> bus was stormed, the other two murdered after capture. Haolam Hazeh
> magazine, whose editor I was at the time, played a leading role in
> uncovering the crime.)
> This coming summer, Shaul Mofaz is about to be relieved. That will be the
> end of his military career. Or will it?
> In one, five or twenty years, somebody may get up and sue Mofaz in The
> Hague, Brussels or anywhere else for acts committed under his command. For
> example: the "liquidations".
> If this happens, Mofaz will have to explain to foreign judges why he
> initiated and ordered the murder of Palestinian personalities, including
> political figures. The prosecutors will probably argue that these were
> executions without trial, in which Mofaz and his officers served
> simultaneously as prosecutors, judges and hangmen.
> The same goes for the so-called "ascertaining killing" (viduh harigah in
> Hebrew), meaning the killing of helpless wounded enemies. Over this
> contemptible act there flies the "black flag", even under Israeli law.
> During the Mofaz's term of command (and even before) this has become the
> norm.
> Anyone who obeys such instructions (see Ehud Yatom) fulfils a "manifestly
> illegal order", meaning an order which any sane person, as primitive as he
> may be, knows is illegal. (So defined by Judge Benjamin Halevy, presiding
> over the Court Martial, in his famous "black flag" judgment condemning the
> perpetuators of the 1956 Kufr Kassem massacre). It follows that the risk
of
> prosecution hovers over many officers and soldiers, from general to simple
> private, who gave or executed such an order.
> If anybody believes that this is an abstract danger, something merely
> theoretical or academic, he may sooner or later find out that he was sadly
> mistaken. The day may not be far off when an officer who commanded a
> "liquidation" action, the helicopter pilot who executed it, the lieutenant
> who ordered an "ascertaining killing" act and the simple soldier who did
it
> -- are all in constant fear when going abroad. And if the Israeli laws
> change when a different kind of government comes to power, as will surely
> happen one of these days, they will live in fear even in Israel.
> Please remember: There is no time-limit. A grandfather playing with his
> grandchildren may be prosecuted for war crimes he committed when a
> youngster. And there is no exemption because of grade -- the sword of
> justice may descend equally on a private soldier and on the Minister of
> Defense.
> The triangle responsible at present for everything happening in the
> occupied territories -- Shaul Mofaz, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Ariel Sharon
> -- would be well advised to have a good look at the photos of Slobodan
> Milosevic in The Hague. Not long ago he was an omnipotent ruler, who could
> by a wink of his eyes authorize the murder of thousands of men (including
> young boys) or the rape of thousands of women (including young girls). Now
> he is in The Hague.
> The way there may be shorter than it seems.
>
>
