Ongoing
When four Jewish youths desecrated Christian graves and others spray-painted that “Jesus is a monkey,” these were not isolated incidences but part of an ongoing process of eradicating Christianity from the Holy Land. They are manifestations of a politicised religious tradition that Orthodox rabbis proudly trace back to the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. As Dr Israel Shahak has shown, the fanatical hatred against goyim and Christianity is intrinsic to certain types of Judaism, which have much influence in both Israel and among Diaspora Jewry.[22] As noted above, a habitual sign of hatred that the influential Orthodox Jews show towards Christians continues to be spitting. In 2011 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported:
Clergymen in the Armenian Church in Jerusalem say they are victims of harassment, from senior cardinals to priesthood students; when they do complain, the police don’t usually find the perpetrators.
Ultra-Orthodox young men curse and spit at Christian clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City as a matter of routine. In most cases the clergymen ignore the attacks, but sometimes they strike back. Last week the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court quashed the indictment against an Armenian priesthood student who had punched the man who spat at him.
Johannes Martarsian was walking in the Old City in May 2008 when a young ultra-Orthodox Jew spat at him. Maratersian punched the spitter in the face, making him bleed, and was charged for assault. But Judge Dov Pollock, who unexpectedly annulled the indictment, wrote in his verdict that “putting the defendant on trial for a single blow at a man who spat at his face, after suffering the degradation of being spat on for years while walking around in his church robes is a fundamental contravention of the principles of justice and decency.” When Narek Garabedian came to Israel to study in the Armenian Seminary in Jerusalem half a year ago, he did not expect the insults, curses and spitting he would be subjected to daily by ultra-Orthodox Jews in the streets of the Old City.
…Other clergymen in the Armenian Church in Jerusalem say they are all victims of harassment, from the senior cardinals to the priesthood students. Mostly they ignore these incidents. When they do complain, the police don’t usually find the perpetrators. The Greek Patriarchy’s clergymen have been cursed and spat on by ultra-Orthodox men in the street for many years. “They walk past me and spit,” says Father Gabriel Bador, 78, a senior priest in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. “Mostly I ignore it, but it’s difficult.” … “It happens a lot,” says Archbishop Aristarchos, the chief secretary of the patriarchate. “You walk down the street and suddenly they spit at you for no reason. I admit sometimes it makes me furious, but we have been taught to restrain ourselves, so I do so.”
…A few weeks ago four ultra-Orthodox men spat at clergymen in the funeral procession of Father Alberto of the Armenian Church. “They came in a pack, out of nowhere,” said Father Goosan. “I know there are fanatical Haredi groups that don’t represent the general public but it’s still enraging. It all begins with education. It’s the responsibility of these men’s yeshiva heads to teach them not to behave this way,” he says.[23]
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
Perhaps Father Goosan is being facetious; he surely knows that it is precisely such contempt for Christians that is taught in the yeshiva. Ultra-Orthodox Jews do not recognize goyim as being fully human. While Reform Jews do not follow such teachings, Orthodoxy, as Shahak showed in his Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, is a major political force. The ultra-Orthodox do not attempt to obscure the true teachings of the Talmud, while other Jewish apologists attempt to obfuscate the anti-Gentile and anti-Christian passages, claiming that these are “anti-Semitic” forgeries, or that they are taken out of context, or outdated.[24] While Shahak showed in both is books on Judaism that the allegations in regard to Talmudic hatred are indeed correct, and moreover form the basis of influential political sentiments in Israel, Evelyn Kaye, from the perspective of a Jewish woman raised in an ultra-Orthodox community, confirms the anti-Gentile and anti-Christian fanaticism of Orthodox Judaism, and also shows that while the West’s a attention is drawn to the repression of women (both real and imagined) in Islamic states, the role of women under Orthodox Judaism is analogous.[25]
When Rabbi Yosef, leader of the Sephardic Jews in Israel, and founder of the Shas Party, died in October, his funeral attracted 700,000 mourners. While this bizarre figure seemed to be from another time, Israel’s leaders paid tribute to him. The New York Times reported:
Under Rabbi Yosef’s leadership, Shas became a major player in governing coalitions, and Israeli leaders of all stripes made pilgrimages to his home in Jerusalem seeking his support. As a Sephardic Torah scholar and arbiter of Halakha, or Jewish law, he was often described by followers as “the greatest of the generation.” In 1970, he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for rabbinical literature.[26]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The Jewish people have lost one of the wisest men of this generation. Rabbi Ovadia was a giant in Torah and Jewish law and a teacher for tens of thousands.” Israeli President Shimon Peres said he had been at the rabbi’s bedside hours before his death. “When I pressed his hand, I felt I was touching history, and when I kissed his head, it was as though I kissed the very greatness of Israel.” The Rabbi’s curses were directed at Ariel Sharon when he announced plans to withdraw from Gaza; and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2010 he called on God to strike “these Ishmaelites and Palestinians with a plague, these evil haters of Israel.”
In 2010 Rabbi Yosef was reported in the media on his views regarding non-Jews, which reflect the true character of Orthodox Judaism despite the disingenuous efforts of apologists to claim otherwise. Reporting on one of his weekly, televised, Saturday night sermons the JTA reported that Yosef said:
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat,” he said to some laughter. “With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant. That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”[27]
Such frankness as to actual Orthodox teachings drew embarrassed criticism from mainstream Jewish lobbyists such as the American Jewish Committee, who prefer to embrace their agendas behind the façade of “human rights,” and to portray Israel as a bastion of “democracy” among religious fanatics. Just who the religious fanatics are in the region occasionally and passingly comes to light in the mainstream Western media when incidents take place such as the vandalism of graves or the passing of Rabbi Yosef. While everyone should have the liberty to worship as they choose, the question becomes something more when that worship takes on a sociopathic character and more so when it impacts upon an entire region and even the entire world.
References
1. “Church Target,” Dominion Post, Wellington, New Zealand, October 10, 2013.
2. Daniel Estrin, “Attack on Jerusalem Graves Unnerves Christians,” Associated Press, October 9, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/attack-jerusalem-graves-unnerves-christians
3. Koran, Surah LXXXV, al-Buruj.
For a present -day Islamic account see “Dhu Nuwas and the Najan Massacre,” Islamic Research Foundation International, http://www.irfi.org/articles4/articles_5001_6000/dhu%20nuwas%20and%20the%20najran%20massacrehtml.htm
It is notable that Zionists and Jewish lobbyists cannot even tolerate the mention of Najran. On a recent BBC2 documentary about the frankincense trail, a complaint was made by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the BBC because the Najran holocaust was briefly alluded to. Is this “Najran Holocaust Denial”?
4. Estimates of the death rate vary.
5. William Mulligan, “The Martyrs of Najran,” Catholic Near East Magazine, Fall 1977, http://www.cnewa.org/default.aspx?ID=101&pagetypeID=4&sitecode=us&pageno=1
6. Statement of the Committee of the Christian Union of Palestine, (representing the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate, Latin Patriarchate, Greek Catholic Patriarchate, and the Latin Parishes of the Holy Land), Jerusalem, May 31, 1948.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Hon. Issa Nakhleh, Jews Eradicating Christianity from the Holy Land (New York: Palestine Arab Delegation, ca. 1970).
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Statement of the Committee of the Christian Union of Palestine, op. cit.
16. Hon. Issa Nakhleh, op. cit.
17. Ibid., 10.
18. Ibid., 11.
19. Ibid., 8.
20. Ibid.
21. Archbishop Diodoros of Hierapolis, April 14, 1970.
22. Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (London: Pluto Press, 1994); Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 1999).
23. Oz Rosenberg, Haaretz, November 4, 2011 http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/ultra-orthodox-spitting-attacks-on-old-city-clergymen-becoming-daily-1.393669
24. See for example David I Kertzer, Unholy War: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (London: Pan Books, 2003), 140.
25. Evelyn Kaye, The Hole in the Sheet: A Modern Woman Looks at Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism (Seaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart Inc., 1987.
26. Isabel Kershner, “Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Spiritual Leader of Israel’s Sephardic Jews, Dies at 93,” The New York Times, October 7, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/world/middleeast/rabbi-ovadia-yosef-influential-spiritual-leader-in-israel-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
27. Marcy Oster, “ Sephardi leader Yosef: Non-Jews Exist to Serve Jews,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 18, 2010, http://www.jta.org/2010/10/18/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/sephardi-leader-yosef-non-jews-exist-to-serve-jews
