An act of kitsch, camp taste welded to a bizarre form of performance art. By any esthetic measure it could be seen as an ethically depraved act. Even a criminal act that wills a form of radical evil. There is a degree of perversity here, a kind of showmanship down a slippery slope to emotional decadence that inevitably turns the spectator into a sort of voyeur of something of something inexorably bordering on the perverse. Just another day in the Holy Land. They say a young country is a “process”. But. Face it. Israel is racist, excessive and violent; towards others and even more towards its own. But that doesn’t make one an anti-semite, anti Israel, or the more insidious self-hater. Its a fact.
First the warm up comic to prepare the crowd for the Wild Man of Borneo, Samaria division: …Government spokesman Mark Regev said, “We totally deplore this behavior and condemn it outright. This action stands in complete contrast to our values and our traditions. Israel is a tolerant society…. ”
MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union), a member of the Israeli parliament tore up a copy of the New Testament and threw it in the trash, an act that was apparently caught on camera….
—This begs the question: What exactly is self-hating (or anti-Semitic) in such a position? Is honoring the humanistic values many Jews were taught at synagogue a betrayal of their Jewish roots? Is caring about another people synonymous with hatred? Is learning about a painful subject likewise symptomatic of hatred? Isn’t thirst for knowledge a hallmark of Judaism and isn’t it fundamental to solving problems? If criticism of deliberate violations of international law expresses hatred, what does turning one’s back on the suffering of millions express?—Read More:http://www.richardforer.com/2012/07/hiding-behind-accusations-of-jewish-self-hatred-and-anti-semitism-to-avoid-looking-in-the-mirror/
Ben Ari and several other Knesset members received by mail on Monday a copy of the New Testament, sent by the Bible Society in Israel, an organization that distributes religious books. In the letter sent with the book, director of the Christian organization Victor Kalisher wrote that the new edition “sheds light on the Holy Scriptures and helps understand them.”…
—Iranian authorities began to systematically seize and destroy Bibles after a Shiite cleric issued an urgent warning about the spread of Christianity.
Authorities in northwestern Iran seized 6,500 Bibles, according to the Iranian Christian news organization Mohabat News, which quotes an official as saying of the seizure that “all religions are strengthening their power to confront Islam; otherwise, what does this huge number of Bibles mean?” The agency has reported several other recent incidents of Bibles and other Christian literature being seized and sometimes publicly burned.
Mohabat reports that the government-connected cleric, Ayatollah Hadi Jahangosha, warned of “the spread of Christianity among our youth,” pointing to burgeoning satellite programming, literature, and religious articles promoting the Western tradition.
“Everyone in society should feel responsibility in this matter and play his or her role in spreading of pure Islam and fight false and distorted cultures,” the news agency quotes him as saying.
Read more on Newsmax.com: Iran Launches Bible-burning Campaign
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Read More:http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/iran-bible-burning-christians/2011/08/26/id/408824 image:http://www.danse-macabre.net/22-danse-macabre.htm
“We hope the book will help you and illuminate your way,” Kalisher furter wrote.
However, while most MK’s chose to ignore the book or return it to its sender, the rightist lawmaker chose to term the book a “provocation,” tore it up into shreds and then threw it out.
“This abominable book (the New Testament) galvanized the murder of millions of Jews during the Inquisition and during auto da fe instances,” Ben Ari said adding that “Sending the book to MK’s is a provocation. There is no doubt that this book and all it represents belongs in the garbage can of history.” Read More:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4257174,00.html
—Now if Levin really wants to fret about the politicization of abortion and Judaism, I’m inviting him to fly to Wichita, Kansas. Just mere miles from the spot where Dr. George Tiller was shot in 1993 as well as the church where he was assassinated during Sunday morning services in 2009, evangelical pastors are building a full-sized exact replica of the Western Wall as part of The International Pro-Life Memorial and National Life Center.
The activists view the Western Wall as the embodiment of remembering Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. Now they want the wall, which they refer to by another of its names – the Wailing Wall, to memorialize the death of some 60 million fetuses killed by abortion.—Read More:http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/106512/jews-abortion-and-wichitas-wailing-wall
Ben Ari’s act is also perplexing from the point of view of Maimonides, who granted a messianic role to Christianity, and Islam as part of the messianic hope. To him, Christianity was a heresy, but nonetheless when faced with conversion or the sword, not worth being a martyr since it represented monotheism and as a religion, not able to compromise god’s plan, no matter how inscrutable it seemed to Maimonides. The tactic during Maimonides dicey times, and his texts were burned and disdained by large segments of a fearful Judaism itself , was to set apart Moses in order to somewhat carefully and strategically reduce the prophetic aspirations of Mohammed and Jesus. The former he regarded as a pathological and clinically
ane, a total illiterate, but nonetheless the prophet of a faith that was non-idolatrous.To Maimonides ( Rambam) in spite of his less than stellar rating of the vision of Mohammed and Jesus, he still realized that because of Christianity and Islam, Gentiles had become used to discussing divine commandments, even if they misunderstand and applied them incorrectly. But, said Maimonides, after the real and genuine King Messiah appears, succeeds, is exalted, and is lifted up, they will understand that they had been misled, and therefore would all “adopt the true religion,” true being a religion of commandments correctly understood. Who knows what he would have thought of Jews for Jesus, Reform and Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionists, or even the rampant individualism and industry that followed the Reformation. I would imagine an affinity with Erasmus but Martin Luther not so kindly thought of as figure of redemption.
Maimonides, thought it permissible to teach the commandments to Christians , but not to Muslims, …
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…The use of the Western Wall by anti-abortion activists appears to be something new. But national anti-abortion groups have long likened abortions in America to a holocaust, or compared it to the Holocaust, to make their point. In 2007 Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee talked about the “holocaust of liberalized abortion” in a speech to the Family Research Council’s Value Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. In his anti-abortion video “180,” released in 2011, Australian filmmaker Ray Comfort told one young woman who questioned his views, “Hitler declared Jews as non-humans and that’s what you’re saying when you say that’s not a baby until three months.” Earlier this year, an email newsletter from Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz informed his constituents that “Hitler was pro-choice.”
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/159240/replica-of-western-wall-planned-in-kansas/?p=all#ixzz20yhap4D4
…The Hamas government announced that the three men were executed by hanging early Tuesday after being convicted of murder….Since the beginning of the year, Hamas has executed six Palestinians. Altogether, Hamas has executed 14 since it seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Most of the Palestinians who were executed were found guilty of murder and collaboration with Israel….
—With respect, the point is, I think, that although Christianity and Islam are not true, they have played a part in the Divine scheme for the redemption of the whole of humanity by spreading some sort of ethical monotheism involving an albeit incorrect idea of Messiah, Torah and Mitzvot. Although Islam and Christianity are part of the overall process leading to the redemption their imperfect ethical monotheism will be rectified through the adoption of the seven laws.
Mesora: We cannot suggest that G-d desired Christianity to arise. G-d desires no other religion than Judaism. G-d knew the future, and foresaw all future religions, that would arise. Nonetheless, He publicly instructed man in only one religion – Judaism.
Maimonides does not indicate that G-d desired Christianity’s existence. This is clearly in direct opposition to G-d’s Torah. All Maimonides says is that G-d’s plan will not be altered by the rise of other religions. The fact that Christianity spread the Mitzvos, is not equivalent to saying G-d desires Christianity from the outset. The spread of Christianity may have brought about awareness, but a false one at that, and one that all nations will ultimately see as false, as the quote says, “…immediately they all will retract and will know that fallacy they inherited from their fathers, and that their prophets and fathers caused them to err.” Look at Maimonides’ opening words: “…Can there be a greater stumbling block than this (Christianity)? Also, “and this (one, i.e., Jesus) caused the Jews to be destroyed by the sword, and scattered their remnants and humbled them, and exchanged the Torah, and caused the majority of the world to err to serve a god other than the Lord. Christianity was pure evil.
What is preferable; that Christianity would never had existed, or actual history? G-d’s will is the former, and your quote states this openly.
However, now that Christianity exists, Maimonides indicates it cannot compromise G-d’s plan: … We cannot fathom G-d’s plan. Maimonides admits he fails to comprehend a positive goal in the spread of Christianity, but it can in no way compromise G-d’s ultimate plan, as these events were not thwarted by G-d. A negative may be utilized for a positive. But Christianity remains a negative. —Read More:http://www.mesora.org/Christianity-Messiah.htm
Attorney-General Muhammad Abed defended the executions as legal, noting that the convicts were given the right to appeal against the death sentences. He also pointed out that the Hamas government had recently approved the execution of the three men, whose names were not released.
One of the executed men was found guilty of murdering a female relative, a second was convicted of murdering his cousin, while a third had confessed to killing a man after stealing his mobile phone. Read More:http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=277861
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