OUR LADY OF SORROW (A collection of spiritual essays by Israel Shamir) Introduction Sit comfortably, put your glass down. Check your response: What statement would annoy you most: a. your mother is a whore, b. Christ never existed and Resurrection is a myth, c. Jews have too much power in the US. If you consider 'C', you have a problem. Even worse, you are a part of the problem. For a long while, it was the problem of Palestine, but since then, the Second Intifada, a confrontation of Native Palestinians with the Jewish state grew into the World War Three. Many developments in politics, art, culture, and religion – not only the war in the Holy Land and in the Middle East, but decline of Christianity, rise of the Right, advent of Globalisation are parts of the same problem. The war in Palestine can be terminated today by granting full equality of its Jewish and non-Jewish residents. Somehow this solution is not even discussed. The author would love to make a celebratory presentation of wonderful achievements of Jews, if it would cause them to embrace their Palestinian neighbours. However, this way was tried and failed spectacularly. In the author’s eyes, the Jewish hubris is the main obstacle to the solution, and that is why these essays are deconstructing Jewishness, trying to undermine all possible reasons for the hubris. This could be painful reading for his Jewish brothers and sisters intoxicated with success and trapped by mantra of Jewish martyrdom. But the Jewish exclusiveness has to be exorcised, in order to integrate Jews into the family of nations. Hubris was considered the worst of sins by the ancient Greeks, and it always lead to fateful consequences. An example of hubris is furnished by a prominent modern Jewish scholar and editor of Talmud, Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, who described Christianity as ‘simplified Judaism, adapted to the childish minds of Gentiles’. Smugness of Jewish positive assessment of their contribution to mankind calls for a cold shower, provided by a grandson of a Rabbi, Karl Marx, who wrote: ‘Christianity is the sublime Judaist thought, while Judaism is a sordid utilitarian application of Christianity’. The author prefers the ruling of Rabbi Marx, as it offers a way to deconstruct the Jewish state and to integrate the descendents of Jews in their new homeland and elsewhere. It is a story of love as well. I (let’s leave this neutral ‘author’ aside) am deeply in love with the Holy Land, its meagre streams and olive trees, and with its people, the native and 1 adoptive Palestinians. This land is still able to connect Man and Spirit by virtue of its ancient shrines and unique nature. The ongoing destruction of the Holy Land would create a point of no return for mankind and signify Man’s total enslavement by the forces of domination. By saving the Holy Land, we shall save the world. Israel Shamir Jaffa 2 Part One. In Palestine Our Lady of Sorrow [This was written after Israeli invasion of Bethlehem, in March 2002]. In the Upper church of Annunciation in Nazareth, there is a striking collection of images, the homage of artists to Mary: in a setting of blue-and-golden flowers, a dainty Virgin in a colourful kimono holds her child in ceremonial Japanese royal robes; a naïve Gothic face of Madonna, transferred from French Cluniac illuminations; a Chinese Queen of Heaven carved of precious wood by Formosa devotees; a richly inlaid Cuban statue of Virgen del Cobre; a Polish Black Madonna; a tender face of the Byzantine Mother of God, and a modernist, steely Madonna from the United States all look from the walls of the church and unite us in one human family. There is hardly an image in the world as universal and poignant as that of the Virgin and the Child. Wherever you go, from Santiago de Compostella in the far west of Spain to the golden domes of Russia, from frozen Uppsala in Sweden to Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, you will find this adorable face. The best artists depicted her compassionate features, her love for her child and her sorrow. Botticelli painted her with a pomegranate and among the Kings of the East; Michelangelo and Rafael, Cimabue and Titian, van der Weyden and Fra Filippo Lippi were inspired by her image. This unique mix of a young girl and mother, of vulnerability and protection, of admiration and love, formed the spiritual and inspirational base of our civilisation. She appeared to a Mexican peasant, and her flower-covered image arrested the strife and united Native Americans and Spaniards in one nation. She gave her rosary to Saint Dominic and a letter to Portuguese kids in Fatima. Prophet Muhammad saved and cherished her icon found in the Mecca shrine, writes Maxim Rodinson. She appeared to a wealthy Jewish banker Alphonse Ratisbonne, and he took orders and built the convent of the Sisters of Zion in En Karim. A Palestinian Muslim in a refugee camp of Lebanon preserved the image he took from his native Galilee, tells Elias Khoury in his novel Bab Al-Shams (recently translated into Hebrew by Moshe Hakham and edited by Anton Shammas). Syrian astronauts asked for her protection in the shrine of Seidnaya before their flight on the Soviet space shuttle1. In medieval legends, the Jews were often perceived as enemies of the Virgin. The Talmud refers to her in most blasphemous and hostile way. A certain column-stump on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa marks the place of a legendary attack of Jews on her person, while in Antioch in 592, Jews were found despoiling her image. These are old tales. And now some new facts. This week in Bethlehem, a Jew shelled the Virgin. A Jewish soldier in the formidable tank 3 Merkava-3, constructed according to US technology at US taxpayer’s expense fired a shell from a distance of fifty yards at the statue of the Madonna a-top the Holy Family church in the Nativity town. The Virgin lost an arm, and her pretty face was disfigured. She became one of a hundred Palestinian women shot by the Jews in the present outburst of war. This seemingly unnecessary act of vandalism could not have been an accidental shot. No terrorist hid behind her gentle figure on the pinnacle of the hospital church. At fifty yards, you make no mistake. It could have been orders; it could have been a spontaneous expression of feelings by a Jewish fanatic. Our world rewinds full speed back into the Dark Ages, and as Israel rekindled traditional Jewish hostile rejection of Christianity, it can not be excluded. Whatever it was meant to be, that shrapnel-shot became the most recent check of the mind-control system: will this sacrilege become widely known? And will it stir the hearts of Christendom? It remained unknown, for Christendom did not respond to the siege of the Nativity as much as Muslims did at the Jewish fundamentalists’ sacrilege at Haram a-Sharif. The doubly- negative result of the check probably confirmed the greatest hopes of its initiators. The world mass media, from New York to Moscow via Paris and London, has been secured in the grip of philosemites; not a squeak gets out unless authorised. The current Israeli invasion of Ramallah and Bethlehem was covered under the heading ‘Sharon looks for peace’. The UN resolution equalized the aggressors and their victims, sotto voce. The Western mainstream media dropped a blanket of silence on the cries from the Holy Land. Alexander Cockburn writes this week: “It’s supposedly the third rail in journalism even to have a discussion of how much Jews control the media. Jude Wanniski remarked last week in his daily "Memo on the Margin" in his Web newsletter Supply Side Investor that it was certainly true to say that the Jews control discussion of Israel in the media here”2. 4 Indeed, the story was reported by Reuters and this dreadful picture was taken by an AP photographer. It was available to the world media. Still, no important newspaper or magazine printed it. Instead, they published stories of Christian anti-Semitism. The conscience of the West suffers a mirror vision of the Middle East. Terrorist actions have been perpetrated by Jews against Palestinians, but the very name ‘Palestinians’ came to epitomise terrorism. Palestinians are facing holocaust; Jewish soldiers are printing numbers on their foreheads and forearms, separating men from women and sending them into concentration camps, but Jewish holocaust-memorials spread like mushrooms. Israel and the US disregard the international law, but their adversaries are branded ‘rogue nations’3. While Palestinian towns are invaded by Israeli tanks, the Wall Street Journal publishes an article Israel under Siege by the illegal ‘Mayor’ of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert. Churches are shelled, Gospel books burnt, Christians persecuted by the Jews in Palestine, but it is Christian anti-Semitism that worries news editors and churchmen. The accusation of anti-Semitism became the blood libel of our days. Or was it always? In the Merchant of Venice, Shylock complained of Gentile hatred, though it is he who hated, and the others disproved of his loan-sharking practices. Instead of cutting the loan rate, he preferred to cut Antonio’s flesh, and hide behind his claims of discrimination. If Shakespeare’s Portia had our modern attitude, she would rather let Shylock have his pound of flesh than stop him and be accused of anti-Semitism. Probably in such a spirit, the guardians of the public conscience decided to spike or play down the sacrilege in Bethlehem.