Falola proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as

[Toyin Falola]

https://tribuneonlineng.com/falola-proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as-autonomous-disciplines-in-african-varsities/

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[Michael Afolayan]

Cool write-up, Ojogbon-Agba TF! 

My own concern is that as long as the word "Witchcraft" is called up, it would always provoke protest and rejection in the average modern mind. Among the older Yoruba, they are thinking of the Atinga (also called Alatinga) of the early 1950s, a movement that mobilized a witch-hunt (literally and figuratively) and mimicked the 17th century America's Salem Witch-hunt. An alternative concept might be something like "Esoteric (or even Exoteric) Science" and that would include Kingship and Ifa studies as well.

Just thinking loud here!

MOA

On Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 01:04:44 AM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

https://tribuneonlineng.com/falola-proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as-autonomous-disciplines-in-african-varsities/

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[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Some of us are looking forward with avid interest and hoping that this matter will be further discussed this evening at The Toyin Falola Interviews: A Conversation with Baba Elebuibon, Sunday, December 3, 2023

In this post-colonial age, taking into consideration the idea that “charity begins at home” and, understandably, also taking into consideration all the academic and Afrocentric brouhaha about the teaching of so-called indigenous African knowledge, closely allied with the use of indigenous mother tongues as a necessary adjunct to “the decolonisation” process, and the African-i-zation of knowledge (systems?) Ojogbon Toyin Falola’s ostensibly radical proposal for  “the establishment of African kinship studies, Ifa studies, and witchcraft studies as autonomous disciplines in African universities” should come as no surprise.

The only element of surprise here is that post-E. E. Evans-Pritchard, post-Meyer Fortes and post the likes of Jack Goody ( I attended a seminar he conducted in Ghana in 1970) - it’s surprising that indeed there are not already many independent departments of anthropology with subheads such as “ Witchcraft”, “ Wizardry”  “African Occult Sciences” etc flourishing and making their voices heard (and felt) in the mêlée of what is subsumed under the grand illusion of this nomenclature: Sacred Scriptures “ // Sacred Texts 

The Church of England, that bastion of Christianity and the various Pentecostal pastors in the United Kingdom have probably still not objected to The University of Exeter newly offering a master's degree in magic and occult science, but, bearing in mind that when Pope Benedict ( Benedictus Erectus) visited Africa, his main concern was that “Africa, had to cure itself of witchcraft and the practices of magic” ( Papal Bull) it should be clear that apart from the Church of Rome, the Pentecostal Pastors of Nigeria will probably be the next to raise their beautiful heads in protest that their main African enemies and the enemies of The Holy Spirit, namely Witchcraft, wizardry, and the devil’s occult sciences should be legitimised and dignified by being officially studied at Nigerian Universities. 

Another question hanging in the air is, just who is going to be teaching these courses in witchcraft, wizardry and the dark, magical arts?

Adept Witches, wizards and magicians, or just theoreticians and dabblers in these secret arts?

And what kinds of degrees are going to be offered in these disciplines: PhD in Witchcraft and Occult Sciences? M.Sc Witchology?

Perhaps not such a bad idea after all - some time ago, my friend Jörgen I Eriksson did a  review of Rabbi Gershon Winkler's book,“ Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism”. In which he identifies Moshe Rabbeinu with Shamanism, that the Prophet Moses was a veritable shaman 

It should be interesting to hear what Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju has to pontificate on these matters…

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Beautiful ideas.

They could be integrated into a broad ranging strategy for exploring endogenous African cognitive systems, an expansion from Falola's programmatic essay of theory and praxis " Ritual Archives", itself a concretization  of the vision presented in his "Pluriversalism" if I got the title right and other essays of his on epistemic decolonization. 

These could in turn be correlated with Abiola Irele's " The African Scholar", another programmatic essay in the  theory and praxis of African epistemic decolonization which draws from the Yoruba world view as "Ritual Archives" does.

Such works could in turn be correlated with efforts in epistemic decolonization in  non-Western contexts such as those of South American scholars and those in Western contexts, such as the work of Fritjof Capra and the scholarship in Western esotericism from the breakthrough by Frances Yates to it's consolidation in Isaac Newton scholarship to the decisive institutionalization of the study of Western esotericism from earlier years in the University of Paris, represented by the work of Antoine Faivre to the consolidation at the University of Amsterdam defined by  the work of Wouter Hanegraaf and his associates, such as Kuku von Stuckrad, a progression in the study of Western esotericism summed up in Hermes in the Academy, likely edited by Haanegraaf.

Such a broad  ranging contextualization of  Falola's suggestion on kingship, Ifa and witchcraft as autonomous subjects of study in African universities, capable of yielding both foundational study and the highest levels of exploration helps situate the idea as part of a broader drive towards decolonizing the globally dominant  Western  academy , a decolonization process emerging from beyond and within Western culture, directed at the reworking of the disciplinary consensus arrived at in Western thought with the crystallization of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, a decolonization process looking to non-Western cultures as well as to marginalized aspects of Western culture in order to arrive at both an expansion in subjects of study and, to a lesser degree, how scholarship is conducted within the armbit of the dominance of the critical use of the intellect as the defining quality of Western academia.

Such a mapping of immediate and broader affiliations of the Falola suggestion further helps to concretize what might otherwise be nebulous  outside such contextualization.

Further giving shape to this rich suggestion, moving it further from.the abstract to the concrete, is the need to define the epistemic strategies, the methods employed in these studies.

This is particularly critical since Ifa and witchcraft are understood to involve both theory and practice.

Will the academic student be engaged in the study and practice of these systems?

Will the student, therefore, be like a Christian seminarian or theological student, trained in both the theology, philosophy and practice of Christian discipleship?

Will the student combine theory and practice as seems evident in the study of myth, cosmology and the sacred at Canterbury Christ Church University in England, driven by the work of Angela Voss  and her collaborators or Susan Greenwood' s earlier program on shamanism at the University of Sussex?

Such approaches to Ifa study are already evident in online courses and perhaps at Wande Abimbola's Ifa Heritage university,if I recall the name correctly.

Or is the student approaching the study purely from the angle of externalist investigation, without practising the system, as has been achieved with particular success in the dominant approach to the study of Western esotericism represented by the Amsterdam school and as Gershom Scholem spectacularly achieved in his birthing of the academic study of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem?

Or will the purely academic study prevail in the university while the same teachers are available to conduct teaching in  practice and theory  outside academic contexts as is done by such scholars of Hinduism as Mark Dyzkowski, unlike such scholars as his predecessor Alexis Sanderson, whose work, fundamental to the field, seems restricted to purely academic contexts?

These questions are particularly strategic in relation to the study of witchcraft in African contexts.

Witchcraft belief in Africa corresponds to the pre-modern era of Western witchcraft beliefs-largely superstitious,  it's info driven largely by unverified ideas, non-textualized, unrepresented by definitive bodies of practitioners, lacking a solid construct of theory and practice and their interrelationships, non-historical- lacking a sense of development across time and space, and not even enjoying the status of an esoteric discipline, which can be identified to exist in a manner enabling the mapping of it's ideational and practical coordinates, but this info largely concealed but accessible through initiation into a privileged body of knowers, as is evident with African esoteric systems, better known as secret societies, from the Yoruba Ogboni to the Cross River Ekpe to it's descendant the Cuban Abakua to many others in Africa.

Modern Western witchcraft is the opposite of all those characterizations.

The study of witchcraft belief in Africa, a more fitting title to me than the Study of African Witchcraft or The Study of Witchcraft in Africa seems adequately addressed by anthropological and other studies such as Evans Pritchard's work.

Does witchcraft, as a practice, as different from a belief in it's existence, actually exist in Africa?

I think that question remains open even though I have not read such a work as Hallen and Sodipo's Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, in which the authors are described as interviewing onisegun, herbalists in Yoruba culture, who, in this case, also described themselves as aje, a category sharing aspects of both pre-modern and modern aspects of Western witchcraft beliefs.

Looking thorough Teresa Washington's very rich Aje in Africans Literature and other accounts of aje, what I see are accounts of belief in aje, not evidence of their existence represented, for example, by self identification by practitioners and correlations between such self identifications and ideas about such figures.

The one person I know who has tried to develop a practical spirituality, in terms of theory and practice, using Yoruba Iyami Aje beliefs is Mercedes Morgana Bonilla/ Reyes but she seems to have discontinued her efforts on account of claims of plagiarizing Washington's work and claiming non-existing affiliations with Yoruba aje.

Osemwegie Ebohon, a famous figure in Benin/Edo spirituality, has long described himself as a witch, and has developed a rich spiritual practice within an elaborate shrine and artistic complex, the Ebohon Cultural Centre in Benin.

How. many more of such people exist in Africa?

On the basis of such figures as Ebohon and Mercedes, is it realistic to refer to a body of people who self describe as witches in the African sense, a self description of sufficient coherence to constitute a spirituality?

Nigeria has an Association of Witches and Wizards but they are known largely, if not wholly, for making political statements, and are not associated with orientations towards sharing ideas about theory and practice of witchcraft, as with  such highly reflexive practitioners as have emerged in the West since Gerald Gardner's founding of Wicca and the framework constructed by Mercedes.

Perhaps the first question should be finding out if witches exist in the African context, perhaps beginning by discussing with people such as Ebohon and the members of the Nigerian Association of Witches and Wizards.

Having established the parameters of study in terms of subject and method, what is being studied and how it is s to

be studied, one can then proceed to the details of the subject.

Kingship, witchcraft and Ifa, in the Yoruba world view and the related Benin/Edo contexts are grounded in ideas of mediation between spirit and matter, with Ifa, a definitive discipline, witchcraft,a body of beliefs rather than a discipline, and kingship all being approaches to mediating between the unknown and unseen world of spirit and the better understood human, terrestrial world.

This understanding is dramatized in works of art, visual and verbal art being strategic in the expression of these ideas.

To Be Continued

.

On Sun, Dec 3, 2023, 1:04 AM Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

https://tribuneonlineng.com/falola-proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as-autonomous-disciplines-in-african-varsities/

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Very promising 

On Sun, Dec 3, 2023, 1:04 AM Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

https://tribuneonlineng.com/falola-proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as-autonomous-disciplines-in-african-varsities/

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[Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth]

I agree with Prof Afolayan.why not call it yoruba science  or Ik indigenous science?

On Sunday, December 3, 2023, 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Cool write-up, Ojogbon-Agba TF! 

My own concern is that as long as the word "Witchcraft" is called up, it would always provoke protest and rejection in the average modern mind. Among the older Yoruba, they are thinking of the Atinga (also called Alatinga) of the early 1950s, a movement that mobilized a witch-hunt (literally and figuratively) and mimicked the 17th century America's Salem Witch-hunt. An alternative concept might be something like "Esoteric (or even Exoteric) Science" and that would include Kingship and Ifa studies as well.

Just thinking loud here!

MOA

On Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 01:04:44 AM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

https://tribuneonlineng.com/falola-proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as-autonomous-disciplines-in-african-varsities/

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali:

Amazing: Decoding Gnosticism: Secrets of a Heretical Christian Belief

In this forum which espouses freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of ideas, and freedom to think without borders or boundaries, Adepoju has the right to defend himself and the right to remain silent. 

Just glancing through the host of Western academic references that Adepoju makes in this thread, starting with a populariser such as Fritjof Capra (we, the so-called “ seekers” of those days, all read his The Tao of Physics when it came out in 1975, and before that, Gopi Krishna’s Kundalini). I think that Adepju would be well suited to churn out a book or two - or three, about comparative Witchcraft/ spiritualities etc, not necessarily rigorously academic like Moshe Idel or Gershom Scholem or indeed Martin Buber  - but since it takes circa 9 (nine) years training to be a certified Babalawo - if you have the calling, I envisage Toyin Adepoju, churning out a couple of books like one of his idols, who he didn't mention in this thread, another populariser, one Dion Fortune.

A tentative trajectory that I can humbly imagine mapping out for Adepoju is that after qualifying as a Babalawo he could then take the light to the Diaspora West, like Vivekananda, or Paramahansa Yogananda. Nine years is a short time -some people have been on the Sufi Path for over 34 years …and N.B - the further you go the greater the temptations…as the Pentecostals know it's Spiritual Warfare 

Priceless: THE SECRET OF SECRETS - by Hadrat Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani interpreted by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al Jerrari al Halveti

Yesterday, Baba was brilliant and effulgent. It was a very satisfying evening and (freedom to think), I thought that Adepoju was at least going to ask our most fascinating, truly erudite, polite and humble BABA ELEBUIBON // Araba Chief Ifayemi Elebuibon a question about Ifa Divination, Wicca, Witchcraft, apprenticeship to a Babalawo, pantheism, etc, ad nauseam, Adepoju’s hobby horse, but for reasons best known to himself he didn’t. So many people asked some of the questions that I had in mind and perhaps that was also true for Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju. I was thrilled to hear Baba say, “Babalawo is a mender of the broken world”, at which point I thought, Tikkun Olam -  the opposite of the ongoing Satanic genocidal “military operations'' in besieged Gaza and I guess that Satanyahu’s conscience and consciousness is being heavily weighed down by the historical figure of the 6,000,000 bodies that perished in the Shoah and relatively speaking, thinking what is a loss of 100,000 other people by comparison, all in the name of the end justifies the means. By the way, I have refrained from commenting further on the ongoing carnage in Gaza in this forum because, my French being so bad, in the name of Shalom, I wouldn’t like to tango most disagreeably and dangerously, in a no-holds-barred, all-out war of words on the opposite side  of e.g. Professor Harrow. 

Shuffering & Shmiling, as Sweet Baby James complained,

“ I’ve come a long way from anywhere like Heaven, to this town your town”

And that’s exactly the kind of problem that I foresee and anticipate with the idea of dear Adepoju teaching the Witchcraft course anywhere in Nigeria or North Africa, Somalia, Mauritania or Sudan, where I’m sure that peer pressure would trump curiosity and exactly zero number of Muslims would sign up to take a course on Witchcraft by either a practitioner wizard/ witch or a theoretician, since, supposedly, actively promoting witchcraft or its scientific study in any shape or form is anathema to the spirit of the dominant religions practised in 21st-century missionary Africa, including Nigeria. And it should be the same problem with the other half of Nigeria, the Christians who have read the Bible which condemns witchcraft and wherein it is written,” A witch shall not live” 

On the other hand, exorcism is a necessary healer because before Jesus’ day, and after,  “demon-possession” has been a mental health problem that needs medical attention

On Mon, 4 Dec 2023 at 04:37, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:

Well since it is largely Adepoju’s

idea, let him teach the Witchcraft 

course. 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Falola proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as

 

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

dear cornelius, i don’t think there is any difference in our position on gaza. I deplore what hamas did, it was an atrocity. I deplore that they had decided that unleashing israel’s response would be worth the price of what they hoped to gain.

But most of all, netanyahu and his government have earned the opprobrium of practically the entire world. His brutality and butchering of the people of gaza can never be forgiven. And like the stupidity of hamas’s violence, this violence in return promises to ensure palestinian and arab hostility for years to come. At the least it has awakened the demon of antisemitism around the world.

Those who believe that might makes right, that bludgeoning your enemy ensures their subordination, have a lesson to learn here from palestinian resistance

Ken

Kenneth Harrow

517 803 8839

Emeritus Professor of English, Michigan State University

Harrow@msu/edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 4, 2023 7:37:32 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Cc: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Falola proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAFYPD-SB2pp2Aq4n%2B_X7sfyArK%2Bh1X3Sb10zbj02Xrt%2BtpBwmg%40mail.gmail.com.

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Dear  Kenneth ,

I'll be replying to you a little later, but for now you could check this out , it's an interview with Ziv Nevo Kulman, Israel's ambassador to Sweden ( automated translation) :

https://www.dn.se/varlden/israels-ambassador-falska-anklagelser-om-folkmord-i-gaza/

Israel's ambassador: False accusations of genocide in Gaza

Updated yesterday 09:59 Published yesterday 06:12
The threat image against Israel's ambassador is strong. Therefore, the interview is not conducted inside the Israeli embassy.
The threat image against Israel's ambassador is strong. Therefore, the interview is not done inside the Israeli embassy. Photo: Johannes Äng
Israel feels Sweden's support, says ambassador Ziv Nevo Kulman. At the same time, he is concerned about waving Hamas flags and slogans about "crushing Zionism".

- I am a proud Zionist. Not allowing Swedish Jews to use that word means taking a part of their identity away from them, says Ziv Nevo Kulman.

Nothing is as usual for Ziv Nevo Kulman since October 7. Normally, Israel's ambassador reads Swedish regularly, he has meetings and exchanges that deal with culture, business and community. He had a great love for Abba. The favorite used to be "Super trouper".

Now everything is about the war.

- The first thing I saw that morning was that Hamas rockets had reached all the way to where my parents live, north of Tel Aviv, says Ziv Nevo Kulman.

Hamas' terrorist attack in October shook the world and took the Israeli defense to bed. Many questions remain to be answered about how it could happen.

Perhaps one of the biggest is how Hamas was able to grow so strong.

- Many Israelis ask that question and it is probably one of the things we will investigate the minute this war is over. How could that happen? How could our defense fail like that?

More than a hundred Israelis are still being held hostage by Hamas. “There are no good decisions. There are only difficult decisions," says the Israeli ambassador.
More than a hundred Israelis are still being held hostage by Hamas. “There are no good decisions. There are only difficult decisions," says the Israeli ambassador.

What mistakes has Israel made that has benefited Hamas?

- Obviously mistakes have been made. We are an open, transparent society and we will investigate these mistakes. One thing I can say, I can't use the word "mistake", because it's not the right word. But one thing happened that we have to remember right now when we are in the middle of a hostage negotiation process and that is to say: yes, the Hamas leader was imprisoned in Israel.

Ziv Nevo Kulman refers to Yahya Sinwar, who was sentenced to four life terms for the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians in 1989. He was one of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. Some years later he was named leader of Hamas in Gaza and is considered one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attack.

- He murdered people. He is a very dangerous person. We knew it. But we released him to get a soldier, a single soldier, Gilad Shalit. Now we face the same dilemma. We must eradicate Hamas, but we must also bring home our hostages.

The far-right politician and the Minister of Police Itamar Ben-Gvir has used the very release of Sinwar as an argument against the hostage agreement that Israel concluded with Hamas. Ben-Gvir has threatened to leave the government in protest because, according to him, the agreement could mean that history will repeat itself - that Hamas will be strengthened and attack again. Previously, Ben-Gvir could have brought down the government. But in October, Israel installed an emergency government with a war cabinet backed by opposition leader Benny Gantz and his National Unity party. As long as Gantz supports Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir is not a wave master and his argument has thus become suspended in the air.

But Kulman is on the same track.

- The Palestinians we release are involved in terrorism, they are convicted of terrorism or of having planned it, says Ziv Nevo Kulman.

The flag is always on the lapel of the jacket. Ziv Nevo Kulman is concerned that after October 7, Israel no longer feels like the guarantor of Jewish security that many with him saw the state as before.
The flag is always on the lapel of the jacket. Ziv Nevo Kulman is concerned that after October 7, Israel no longer feels like the guarantor of Jewish security that many with him saw the state as before. Photo: Johannes Äng
Is everyone really doomed? I have seen the list of Palestinian prisoners and it included 14-year-old stone throwers who appear to have been arrested, but not convicted.

- These were people who were involved in violence in one way or another. You cannot compare them with people in the Israeli hostages who were kidnapped from their own beds.

At the beginning of November, the Israeli ambassador told Aftonbladet that "a ceasefire now is the same as letting Hamas continue to rule Gaza". Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the same thing repeatedly, before Israel suddenly accepted the agreement negotiated by Qatar and the United States. When DN meets Ziv Nevo Kulman, there is still a ceasefire.

What's the difference now?

- This is not a truce, it is a break. The minute the exchange is over, we will return to the goal of eliminating Hamas' military capabilities.

There are those who say that you can kill a person, but not an idea. Is it possible to eradicate Hamas?

- We are trying and we cannot give up now. The world cannot give up now. If Israel gives up, we give up the idea of ​​a free world capable of protecting its values, its borders, its civilians. This will not stop at Israel, Israel is only on the front line.

According to Israeli calculations obtained by Ziv Nevo Kulman, 3,500 Hamas men have so far been killed in the fighting in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Hamas-run health authorities inside Gaza put the total death toll at 15,000, including thousands of children. Few international observers doubt these death tolls.

How do you justify that thousands of children have been killed in Israeli attacks?

- I mourn all the loss of civilian life. But it must be remembered that we are not deliberately targeting children and civilians. That is a big difference compared to Hamas. If our enemy is using civilians as human shields then these are legitimate targets under the laws of war.

But Israel still has a great responsibility, says the ambassador.

- We do everything we can to minimize their suffering. We are warning them, we have told them to move to the southern parts of Gaza. But the one responsible for the Palestinian suffering in Gaza is Hamas. We didn't want this war.

Ziv Nevo Kulman believes that the day after the war is far away. He doesn't really know what will happen with Gaza at the moment - but he is thinking about whether the US and Qatar, which mediates between Israel and Hamas, can be helpful during a transition period.
Ziv Nevo Kulman believes that the day after the war is far away. He doesn't really know what will happen with Gaza at the moment - but he is thinking about whether the US and Qatar, which mediates between Israel and Hamas, can be helpful during a transition period. 

A seven-year-old girl here in Stockholm recently told me that 20 people from her family, including her grandmother and several cousins, have so far been killed in Gaza. How would you explain to a child that this had to happen?

- It is difficult to explain war to children. The girl or her family probably already know very well what it means to live under a military regime, the people of Gaza have suffered under a brutal military regime since 2007. They cannot open their mouths and say anything about Hamas, even now that Hamas has caused them such havoc. It's hard to explain to a child, but I think many Palestinians see what Hamas has done to them.

- It was the same when the US had to fight IS in places like Mosul. Was it nice? No, it wasn't nice. Fighting terror is not nice. Terror is not nice. The world is not a nice place. It is very difficult to explain this to children. But my heart aches for them.

The pictures from inside Gaza have caused enormous reactions. From the pro-Palestinian side, Israel is accused of genocide, a charge that has been supported by the Israeli historian Raz Segal.

- We don't kill everyone in Gaza. Accusations that Israel is committing genocide are completely false. Unfortunately, civilians fall in between, but it is not systematic. It is not a deliberate killing of a people, says Ziv Nevo Kulman.

He generally thinks that the Swedes have supported Israel since Black Saturday in October. All party leaders were quick to condemn the Hamas terror attack and outside the Israeli embassy, ​​flowers have flowed in non-stop.

- It wasn't just politicians who showed their support, it was entrepreneurs and ordinary Swedes. It felt like everyone really understood what we were going through.

Demonstration till stöd för Palestina den 14 oktober på Sergels torg i Stockholm.Image 1 of 2
Demonstration in support of Palestine on October 14 at Sergels Torg in Stockholm. Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
Image 2 of 2
A man wrapped in the Israeli flag during a demonstration in Stockholm on October 15. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Does it still feel that way?

- Yes, by and large I still think the public understands Israel's side. It has become more complicated since the war started, but I would say that there is currently a greater understanding of Israel in Sweden than there was say ten, fifteen years ago.

At the same time, Ambassador Kulman has not avoided seeing the large demonstrations for the Palestinian side. He has heard the slogans. "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free." "Crush Zionism."

– Those who shout like that want to erase my homeland. They don't want a peaceful solution. I have also read, including in your paper, accusations of how Israel was actually attacking its own. The Palestinian ambassador who said Israel may have allowed this to happen to have an excuse to start a war. These are terrible accusations.

What does the word "Zionist" mean to you?

- Zionism is our right to have our own state. I am a proud Zionist. I would think that most Jews in Sweden are proud Zionists. They are proud Swedes, proud Jews and most of them are proud Zionists. Not allowing Swedish Jews to use that word means taking a part of their identity away from them and in a way forcing them to hide.

In the 90s, Ziv Nevo Kulman came to Sweden for the first time thanks to his love for the band Abba. The experience made him apply for the ambassador position when it was announced and move to Stockholm in the fall of 2021. The ambassador still listens to music, but currently more to "the calm songs".

- Right now the favorite is probably "The winner takes it all".

Fakta.Ziv Nevo Kulman
Born: In Tel Aviv 1969.

Education: Bachelor's degree in art history and a master's degree from the interdisciplinary art program at Tel Aviv University.

Occupation: Began his service at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1995. Was cultural attaché in Tokyo 1999–2003 and in Paris 2008–2012. Deputy Ambassador in Prague 2006–2008 and Consul General in Montreal 2014–2017. The post in Stockholm is Kulman's first as ambassador.

Other: Has been involved as a volunteer in the educational program at the "Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance".

Fakta.Sionismen

Zionism began as a political endeavor to bring about the return of the Jews to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. Zion, a mountain stronghold in Jerusalem, had during the Jews' dispersal from AD 70 to symbolize the Jews' longing to return. During the 19th century, a Jewish nationalism, with its own Jewish state as its goal, also began to develop in Europe. The proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948 was a victory for Zionism. Within Zionism there are now several different currents, but the foundation is still about the right of Jews to their own national state.

Source: NE, DN

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Shalom !

Dear Kenneth & Everybody, 

Daily, the tragedy is unfolding on the world stage, right before us :

At this very moment, twenty-one ( 21) hospitals in Gaza have ceased to function and the remaining three hospitals in Gaza are currently all on life support after Israeli Bombardment 

Al Jazeera 

Palestinian Newspapers

Daily Alert 

George Galloway : Israel,  Gaza, the West Bank

Humza Yousaf (the First Minister of Scotland) also weighing in on Gaza 

Rabbi Yaron Reuven on Israel at war

Nobody, not even OIC, Uncle Sam, Russia, China, the Arab League, Iran, or the voodoo priests can stop the carnage. 

Where in history can one find an equivalent of Hamas' initial declaration of war on the 7th of October? Well, I suppose one could imagine the new Mau Mau, the current leader of Boko Haram or Islamic State/ al-Qaeda, throwing down the gauntlet by leading the commando unit of an expeditionary force to Rishi Sunak’s Merry England to convert the infidels there or to punish them for the past sins of colonialism and oppression and  - God forbid - as a first stage of the surprise attack summarily slaughtering circa 1,400 English men, women and children including about 300 of those who were celebrating with some music at the Glastonbury festival, early one Sabbath morning, when they should have been at temples and synagogues dancing with the Torah and praying - as a result of which default the expeditionary force of JIHADISTS, were able to kidnap a further 260 British and assorted subjects as ransom booty, all of this causing His Majesty King Charles III, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Sir Winston Churchill Jnr ) to see red.

I suppose that in the name of due legal process, the initial reaction of His Majesty Charles III, the UK’s Military Chief, and Prime Minister Sunak would have been to see to it that an International warrant order for the arrest of the miscreants responsible for the massacres and kidnappings should be issued without any further delay and just a little later, after Parliament had been convened for an emergency session Lord Whoever it is would be doing what Lord Goldsmith did in December 2002 after which Britain was officially at war again, this time, post the Falkland Islands, against Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction….

These days, in our current state of exasperation, sorrow, rage, and toothless impotence, how does one navigate with a clear conscience and without committing the kinds of verbal violence/ atrocities that would be infractions of lashon hara, and Leviticus 19:15 ?

Anyway, you have spoken for many and said it all, so succinctly. 

Unfortunately, the genie is now out of the bottle: defying every norm of International Law, the Geneva Convention etc, the overwhelming brutality/ inhumanity of Israel’s military response to Israel’s own 911/Hamas’ October 7 has, as you say, “awakened the demon of antisemitism around the world”, including the wakening of the demon at American University campuses. I think that at the street level, the level of hatred / antiSemitism/ anti-Israel and anti-Zionism is being grossly underestimated  - I get that impression reading an interview with Israel's Ambassador to Stockholm, in yesterday’s Dagens Nyheter; In which he seems to be swimming in a pool of ignorance in  a fool's paradise talking about the alleged democratic and Human Rights values that Israel supposedly shares with our Sweden:  

https://www-dn-se.translate.goog/varlden/israels-ambassador-falska-anklagelser-om-folkmord-i-gaza/?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Moving on to equally urgent matters, since “Justice delayed is justice denied”, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are happy to note that presumed innocent unless proven guilty, even as his corruption trial resumes, Israel's embattled Prime Minister Netanyahu obviously subscribes to something other than Pirkei Avot, namely the Machiavelian principle that “It is better to be feared than to be loved if one cannot be both.”  In his case, he is hated by his enemies at home and abroad ( of course the hatred that his foreign enemies harbour for him he shrugs off as “antisemitism” as if but for ”antisemitism” everybody would love him. I’m sure that if he were to be tried at an Islamic Sharia Court or an International Islamic Tribunal he would be found guilty of crimes against humanity and summarily executed, hanged like Eichmann or Eli Cohen

It doesn’t look like it's the case of the silent majority in Israel of world Jewry that’s in tandem with the views you’ve just expressed here,in the USA - Africa Dialogue Series. I suppose that if you were to express the same kind of views in some Zionist no-nonsense homeland security forum - God forbid -  you too would be summarily executed like Mansur Al-Hallaj ( by disciples of  Israel's  21st bloodthirsty zealots such as Herzi Halevi and the mealy-mouthed Itamar Ben-Gvir and their cohorts, or excommunicated, like Baruch Spinoza 

The 2nd World war started with the invasion of Poland and W. H.Auden cooked up September 1, 1939, shortly thereafter, and long before the Holocaust was fully underway  

The import of “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” has been milked for all it’s worth since that statement was first made and now that we are at the edge of the abyss in Gaza and on the brink of kickstarting the third world war, the religiously much hyped coming  Battle of Armageddon which has the evangelical preachers and some of the Nigerian pastors foaming at the mouth with anticipation - first they want to help ensure that the way is clear for the Temple Institute and other like-minded apocalyptic enthusiasts to start building the Third Temple, after which they believe Jesus will return from heaven to save those who believe… 

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

# Of relevance : Breaking with America: Jonathan Pollard and Rabbi David Bar-Hayim

https://www.google.com/search?q=Machon+Shilo+%3A+War

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Tomorrow is another day 

Norman Finkelstein (political scientist) weighs in on Israel and the Palestinians 

Noam Chomsky on Israel and the Palestinians

Scott Ritter on Israel and the Palestinians

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

"We want to destroy Hamas.

But it's forbidden for us to address why Hamas attacked us on Oct. 7.

Some say we were attacked bcs we have been attacking the Palestinians for decades even as we kept them in a prison, with access of anything into the prison controlled by us.

But references to "occupation" and " genocide" are not allowed among us and our friends.

Thus we are permitted to massacre Palestinians, after all, are the Palestinians not part of the Hamas structure, as one US lawmaker puts it, people taught to hate us unreasonably, and is the Hamas physical structure not part of the infrastructure of Gaza, above and below ground? Can Hamas be eliminated without destroying those physical structures?

Thus, we proceed, agents of light against agents of darkness"

As the colonialist, Judaeo-Christian/Western supremacist/ Western governments ( except for such examples as Spain and Ireland and the tentative Marcron of France) but rejected by the majority of Western people's outside their govt, sponsored massacre proceeds, the world watches.

Thanks

Toyin

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thanks for these links Cornelius 

On Tue, Dec 5, 2023, 11:36 PM cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=359942403086845&set=a.190282430052844

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFhLXNtpBzM&list=WL&index=98&t=13s

The Antichrist is a Man Chosen by Satan and God Will Destroy Him

What is racism? This is what racism is: Some people want to deny other people the right to actualize the belief that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You who also do not belong to the non-reading generation must have read Lewis Nkosi’s  Rhythms of Violence

He who feels it knows. It’s not a coincidence that South Africa is one of the most vehement critics of what they deem to be Israeli Apartheid Policies.

Here in this free speech zone, is the most direct response to what you just posted, because it is the basis of all the claims being made by even Zionism’s ethnic atheists, that “God gave us the land”, the emphasis of course on the God in question being their “God” and not the one ( I almost wrote “ the penis”/ phallus”) found in the so-called New Testament (the basis of Dutch Reformed Theology, from which the Apartheid practitioners (predators) derived the brilliant idea that without any preconditions of the type we find in Chapter 28 of  Deuteronomy, in the name of The Great Civilizing Commission their God had given them all of South Africa as an eternal heirloom, and of course, it was ostensibly not the God that we have in the Vedas, or the Mahabharata or the Ifa corpus about Olodumare 

And so we have the fundamental basis of religious exceptionalism, arrogance and intolerance as defined by the Devil's Dictionary: https://thedevilsdictionary.com/s.html#SCRI_

So, here is the story of Zvi Mazel and the pool of blood which is really about Zvi Mazel, Israel’s former ambassador to Sweden ( Mossad's point man) who during his tenure, on the wintry evening of January 15, 2004, at an art exhibition, with his own bare hands, violently destroyed a work of art captioned Snow White and the Madness of Truth that portrayed the plight of Palestinians at the merciless blood-letting hands of the bloodthirsty …

This is a fact: He who cannot listen to legitimate criticism from a friend is the kind of person who is a sucker for flattery 

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[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Al Jazeera

In the West Bank Gun permits are being issued to Settlers

The al-Aqsa mosque is at the international epicentre of the very serious trouble that’s brewing

This is being written In anticipation of getting embroiled in the usual, inevitable little tittle-tattle about the religious dimensions of the Israel-Palestine imbroglio which is now at at its peak genocidal stage even before the war expands and some of the other heavyweight players in the region such as 

# Syria-Russia, 

# Hezbollah-Iran (the latest news is that (1) Russia is currently deploying troops along the Syria-Israel border and (2) today Thursday, Russia’s Putin was busy hosting Iran’s Raisi 

and maybe

despite the Erdogan family being said to have certain business relations with Israel if Israel’s Yahoo should run out of luck,

# Erdogan and NATO’s Türkiye who are also committed to The Palestinian Cause 

might chip in with their considerable military resources which could leave Uncle Joe & NATO in a quandary, since in very practical terms the NATO motto is more in the region of “All for one and one for all”

Like that old cowboy logo of the Wild West days 

it’s ”shoot first and ask questions later”

it’s no time for time wasting reflection,

it’s a matter of Spontaneous Combustion

and in the eventuality, that Türkiye has no other choice than to attack Israel, the realpolitik meaning could be that NATO is morally, duty-bound to commit to inflicting maximum damage on the new Middle East enemy that the Arab & Persian media loves to vilify as the “Zionist entity” - a possible way out of this could be that Joe Biden might want to cross the rubicon or the Dead Sea by inviting his good friend Netanyahu to join NATO, a proposition that Erdogan could consider as anathema…

And the Arab League? Rumour has it that some of them are dragging their feet about the Gaza & Palestine issue because they are afraid of having significant amounts of dollars that they have stashed in American banks, FROZEN, and so their jury is still out,  thinking more than twice before making what they fear could be the wrong move because, “Dollar Akbar!”, according to the New Testament, as Jesus said, “ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”

Anyway, from the very beginning, all I wanted today was that of course the religious dimension to the conflict is at the heart of the matter. I have been checking out what Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi has been saying lately, shooting from the hip as usual, and BTW, questions such as “ Did Moses exist ?” don’t really matter. For the Evangelicals in the United States ( and probably in Nigeria too) what matters is  what they believe in as Replacement Theology - that they are “the real Israel” and much more than that what also matters is Islamic convictions about The Final Revelation and Islam’s Supersessionist mission in this world of men and jinns 

And then finally, there are the various end/ eschatologies according to Judaism (still said to be waiting for Mashiach, the Christian Fold awaiting the return of Jesus, and of course Imam Mahdi - alaihi salaam who will finish off Dajjal /The antiChrist 

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

“Nobody, not even OIC, Uncle Sam, 

Russia, China, the Arab League, Iran, or the 

voodoo priests can stop the carnage.”

Cornelius 

True, Cornelius.

There is no rules- based order right 

now, no proportional dispensation 

of  justice, and no guardrails - 

no honest brokers. What we have 

is a colossal dystopian infrastructure 

of nepotism, anarchy and

revenge, of biblical proportions, where

innocent babies are slaughtered, and

their small heads thrown against the

rocks - and where poison gas is  replaced 

by white phosphorus and depleted 

uranium, in a historic tragedy.

A man commits in-your-face and 

transparent genocide before the

cameras; engages in collective 

punishment of non- combatant

civilians, while denying them

adequate food, water and shelter; 

obliterates 17,000 people to date, 

half of whom are innocent babes; buries

thousands under the rubble, and 

forces others to walk from Jericho

to Berlin-  but Blinking Biden

pussyfoots around, and taps him on

the shoulder. He then puts his

hands in his pockets,  and whistles 

past the rapidly expanding  graveyard. 

No wonder that Venezuela’s Maduro

has chosen this moment of 

total disorder to illegally seize

Guyana’s mineral rich Essequibo

region, with the hope that this

would make up for years of U.S

sanctions and his expropriated 

gold in the British Treasury.

A colossal provocative error of

judgement, on his part, though.

 He has created numerous enemies

 on his borders, and Uncle Sam will not 

whistle past this one.

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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Sent: Thursday, December 7, 2023 4:00 PM

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Falola proposes-kingship-ifa-witchcraft-studies-as

 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Gloria in Excelsis Emeagwali,

It was meant to be a question, and that sentence should have read;  “Nobody, not even OIC, Uncle Sam, 

Russia, China, the Arab League, Iran, or the voodoo priests can stop the carnage?”

Otherwise, 

I fully agree with everything that you’ve said herein 

I’d like to add to it and here’s a good place to begin :

Quran: 2 :74: “Even then your hearts became hardened like a rock or even harder, for from some rocks gush rivers, others split, spilling water, while others are humbled in awe of Allah. And Allah is never unaware of what you do.”

For the latest disasters because of hardened hearts let’s check out  Al Jazeera 

Some other valuable English language expressions:

“Unless you've found a way of squeezing water from a stone”

“Is your heart made out of stone, or is it lime, or is it just solid rock?” -

The last question addressed to some of the Bani Israel remains unanswered. 

I was in Nigeria, back in 1983 when Bob Dylan the self-confessed Zionist put out the album INFIDELS, and one of the songs was “Neighbourhood Bully”

It’s now something of The Tables Turned, i.e. the times they are a-changin' alright. and the times have changed somewhat but not the lyrical contents of  Neighbourhood Bully”  - with the emphasis on the word bully  or the lyrics of this one: Masters of War 

I just checked what Mr Dylan has to say about the war in Gaza.

To my chagrin, there are a few people like him who at this time are lying low and not saying anything, when methinks that they should be saying something, since “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing”, and to that end I like to invoke the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza which in the name of Sinat Chinam, more or less directly led to the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and the emphasis here is on Bar Kamtza’s reasoning: “Since the Rabbis were sitting there and did not stop him, this shows that they agreed with him. I will go and inform against them to the government.” ("The government” in those days being Rome’s Colonial authorities. The rest is history.

Today, I ask what are the rabbis saying about the butchering that’s taking place in Gaza, considering that silence in the face of the evil that's taking place in Gaza could be regarded as being tantamount to complicity 

There’s this little poem, Man’s Inhumanity to Man by Robert Burns which is of relevance in this little discussion of heart matters, more specifically, Gaza, and the illustrated meaning of man’s inhumanity to man that we see daily being displayed by the so-called “children of God”: Gaza: man's Inhumanity to man

It’s easy-peasy, they may call it “antisemitism” if they like, as if it’s a part of the tale of the three wise monkeys with the long tails:  "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

A few days ago I called someone who now turns out to be an extremist right-wing Zionist (over the years there had been strong indications of his right-wing tendencies  - that’s where his heart is  - to the right of his chest - but on this occasion, he clearly went overboard  - I phoned him because I thought that possibly he was at the war front in Gaza, but when he answered the phone he was somewhere else in Europe but said that his brother is at the war front - as a sniper -  taking out the enemy from a safe distance. I agonised about the death toll in Gaza the result of the indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of people in refugee camps, hospitals, mosques, and schools, the indiscriminate destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, and the most heartbreaking of all, cold-blooded murder: the wanton decimation of civilian lives - to date, the more than 18,000 Gazans killed so far, 8,697 children and 4,410 women killed, 70% of them children, women, the elderly, and an untold number of  Gazans still buried under the rubble.

In response to my concerns, talking through his ass, he started remonstrating about those that he says are “ pretending to be Jews”  - he must have surely been talking about people like himself of course, and the Almighty knows which Jews have both circumcisions, namely the circumcision of the flesh and the circumcision of the heart and one intuits the latter from Bahya ibn Paquda’s magnum opus Duties of the Heart 

I told him that I didn’t believe that Hamas had been beheading children or raping Israeli women  - at which point he hung up. So I sent him this :

I’d just like to add that right now the saddest thing for Uncle Sam who has just vetoed a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, is that wittingly or unwittingly Uncle Sam is thereby driving the Muslim fold and many more of mankind into the loving arms of China..

Things don't seem to be going swimmingly for Zelensky either 

For our perusal: Information Clearing House and Global Research 

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

“where

innocent babies are slaughtered, and

their small heads thrown against the

Rocks…”

Reminiscent of some of the kinot read on Tisha B’Av, enough to make even the most stony-hearted weep uncontrollably…

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Chapter 3 of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language is priceless for putting flesh on Falola's suggestion of a study of kingship, Ifa and witchcraft.

The connections are incidentally richly developed by Abiodun in relation to Yoruba culture.

Thanks

Toyin.