Re - Easter, Christianity, and antisemitism (to be assumed: anyone who hates Jesus is an anti-Semite)
cornelius...@gmail.com
Another golden opportunity to wander near and far.
# Star article: Easter, Christianity, and antisemitism
He who feels it knows.
Bob Dylan : When you're lost in the rain in Juarez, and it's Easter time too
Funnily enough (not funny) every time I meet a Jew-ish person - accidentally in the street, which is not often, here in Stockholm, and I look at him / her - pierce him / her kindly with my innocent benevolent look, before I can even greet a peaceful, tender- loving and compassionate “Shalom” I have already heard him or her telling me, blurting out as if in protest, as if being accused, “They want to wipe us out” - ”they” of course, referring to the Palestinians / Arabs, as some kind of pre-emptive default position, justifying Israel’s genocidal response. Indeed, isn’t it that miscreant Benjamin Netanyahu aided and abetted by his comrade-in-arms partner-in-crime, Sleepy Joe Biden, the genocidal maniac that’s wiping out the Palestinians?
If Joe Biden gets re-elected, I’ll eat my hat. I promise. Ditto if Netanyahu gets re-elected. They are both losers. Biden’s going to lose because of Netanyahu, Biden has already lost in Ukraine, because of Zelensky, and because he knows that he has lost there, he wants to divert the arms supply to his buddies in Tel Aviv. It’s big business and the US weapons manufacturers are making a killing in profits. Hallelujah and glory be to the genocidal, so-called Military-Industrial Complex.
First they ( the Jews) wipe out Jesus - “Christ killers “ a popular anti-Semitic trope that has gained currency and been in the ascendancy throughout the ages, hand-in-hand with The Blood Libel, then Jesus’s malevolent Hitler comes along, wipes out 66% of the Jews in Europe, and now just as the Gringos wiped out the native Americans, so too the Jewish guests in Palestine are wiping out the indigenous Palestinians in the land where they - not tourists or Ashkenazi immigrants, belong !
Isn’t that supposed to increase antisemitism? Can Netanyahu & his crew fight and defeat the whole world, take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them? Forever?
In early sixties Sierra Leone of the last century or “Israel-Leone”, as my friend from Morocco (more rocco for the Moors - also labelled “Othello’s Countrymen” ) especially when he’s feeling a little loco, usually names the country every time he sees me. He thinks that I don’t know that when he says “Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh” and adds, “my Brother from Israeleone” - he think that I don’t know, I don’t understand or I don’t notice that being as sarcastic as he can be, this his funny “Israeleone” business is nothing short of microaggression and ill-concealed antisemitism, all rolled into one, even if he’d not be the first one to tell me that 97% of Israel’s European immigrants to Palestine don't have Semitic blood , merely adding more fuel to the anti-Semitic fire, because these days with the ongoing carnage and genocide in Gaza, the microaggression must have increased exponentially into passionate, belligerent antisemitism, anti-Zionism ,anti- Israelism and anti-anything Jewish. In short the pages of RADIO ISLAM have to be updated , on a daily basis…
Israel - Sierra Leone relations
I can certify from memory because I was there, and Professor Google can also confirm that an Israeli firm built the Sierra Leone House of Parliament , maybe, in the hope of establishing democracy in the country….
Well, you can call her Sierra or “Shierra Leone” as ( language interference , the Temne people, including former President Ernest O’ Bai Koroma usually pronounce the name of the Realm of the Free or you may think fondly of her as “ Israel-Leone “ as I’m sure, Lev Leviev, the world’s greatest diamond cutter often does (fondly), but getting back to the point, on Good Friday in Sierra Leone back in the day, this was the song’s refrain as various ragamuffin youth gangs would move around in the city, carrying effigies of Judas, singing boisterously and waving the canes with which they intend to do the beating
“Judas die done tiday
We go bury am tomarra”
Judas - of course, and in the history of the world, there’s only one Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus. The refrain of the song translates
“ Today we’re going to beat Judas to death
And bury his carcass tomorrow”
All of which only goes to show how long Christian missionaries in obedience to the Great Commission have been active in that realm of the free.
Judas of course is coterminous with the word traitor and is the chief symbol and personification of the Jews who till this day reject Jesus and the idea of him being God’s only begotten son and Messiah.
Just around this time, Easter coinciding with the end of Ramadan, in Sierra Leone, there was usually an all night event known as the Lantern Parade - something in the spirit of the carnival in Brazil -minus the dancing queens
The only kind of anti-Semitism - if you can call it that - that I ever heard in Sierra Leone, was that Jews had big noses and loved money exceedingly -Juadas’30pieces of silver being often quoted as undeniable testimony (almost wrote test-i-money - and , as everywhere else in the international English Language community, Pharisee ( in Sierra Leone Creole/ Krio, often abbreviated to “fari” means hypocrite. And here you find the Devil’s Dictionary definition: HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
Please, let’s turn to another aspect of this matter we’re discussing: In the famous words of Derek Walcott,
“I’m just a red nigger who loves the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” ( The Schooner Flight)
It’s “ I had a sound colonial education” and the unbreakable self-confidence that alter ego has in common with DW ,resonates with Walcott, so that I can say on behalf of myself and the contemporaries of my acquaintance back then , I’m thinking of people like my former neighbour Michael Clinton currently practising law in Ghana and all my friends and classmates, 1958-65 , somehow, in early sixties Sierra Leone of the last century I’d say that among my eighteen-year-old contemporaries - the image, person and persona of the New Testament's Judas has been fused, not only in the imagination, with Shakespeare's Shylock, portrayed so unforgettably in “ The Merchant of Venice” as the personification of the contemporary Jew (Einstein , a pious exception), to the extent that just the other day Baba Kadiri was holding forth about Shylock demanding his “pound of flesh” - as a result of which tendency some of the Jewish authorities, gatekeepers such as The Anti-Defamation League might want to hold William Shakespeare responsible for inadvertently at least promoting antisemitism in the colonial education system in West Africa - so that in contemporary,21st century discourse we have Baba Kadiri citing Shylock's demand “a pound of flesh”
How does all of the above impact the Africa vote at the General Assembly of the United Nations, concerning Israel’s ethnic cleansing and land stealing?
It’s a good question. As Malcolm X asserted, ”That’s a good religion”
Chidi Anthony Opara
These are some of the questions that have been in my mind to which I have not found any answers.
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Institute Of Information Management Africa Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Editorial Adviser At News Updates.
More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
Happy Easter !
The Eastern Orthodox Church ( Ethiopia, Russia, Ukraine etc) will be celebrating “Christ is Risen” on the 5th of May . Of course you are looking forward to when your Pope Francis or a future Pope will announce from the Vatican or The Jerusalem Patriarchate will announce that Jesus is back in town for the final showdown - Armageddon - the final Holocaust, “ the divine obliteration of God's enemies”.
I can assure you that Muslims are also looking forward to this event - but before that, Dajjal has to rear his ugly head and some of the faithful will have to go through The Great Tribulation…
In the meantime, for months now, both Pope Francis and Justin Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury, have been desperately calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, but who is listening ?
Pope Francis calls for ceasefire (his call is apparently falling on the tone and stone deaf ears of Genocide Joe the Roman Catholic.
Is Chidi the Roman Catholic surprised about Joe Biden’s recalcitrance?
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust is still a very sensitive subject
Justin Welby calls for ceasefire but is David Cameron listening ?
In Israel so far the ultra orthodox don't do military service (they think that only they are the genuine Torah scholars and that if they are decimated -or -God forbid - completely wiped out at the war front or the next Holocaust, there will be no Torah scholars left, you see? So they think that it’s the efulefu Jews and the zombie that should go and kill and die for them (so the ultra orthodox are like the Brahmin in ancient India - the Israeli warmongers who make a carrier in the military are the equivalent of the Kshatriya caste, and of course from the point of view of the “Torah scholars” and the wannabe-great-Torah-Scholar, the efulefu are the equivalent of our people known as the the Dalits, that’s why you had Israel’s Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef saying what he said about Hurricane Katrine ( punishment for Bush supporting Sharon’s evacuation of Gaza, divine punishment:
“There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, because there isn’t enough Torah study… black people reside there (in New Orleans). Blacks will study the Torah? (God said) let’s bring a tsunami and drown them…Hundreds of thousands remained homeless. Tens of thousands have been killed. All of this because they have no God” (Israel’s late Chief Sephardic Rabbi Ovadia Yosef )
Geographically situated where she is, very soon, Israel's position is going to be “stand firm or feed worm” - and he who has been showing no mercy will receive no mercy. There are Muslims avidly looking forward to the fulfilment of this expectation: Hadith :The Final Battle Between Jews and Muslims :
"The last hour won't come before the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them so Jews will hide behind rocks and trees. Then the rocks and tree will call: oh Muslim, oh servant of God! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
Some poetic words of consolation to Chidi : When He Returns ( according to Zimmerman )
Now to the heart of your questions beginning with whether or not our grasp is “ as deep as it should be?” You'd like it to be deeper than the bottomless pit?
These are the sorts of questions that you should be asking people like Victor Okafor or his luminary , the most voluble Professor P.L.O. Lumumba…BTW, until today I thought that his initials PLO stood for Palestine Liberation Organization…
You could also looka here
Since you like country music, I'd say that it’s even deeper than it should be:
“Southern California, that's as blue as a boy can be
Blue as the deep blue sea
Won't you listen to me now?
I need your golden-gated cities
Just like a hole in the head
Just like a hole in my head
I'm free
I do believe that I'm heading home
Hey, mister, can't you see?
I'm 'bout as dry as a bone
I think I'll spend some time alone
Unless you've found a way of squeezin' water from a stone”
( Hey Mister, That's Me up on the Jukebox)
Since you like country music , I'm wondering how you relate to Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter?
But back to your question, since it’s good words that you want let’s start with the fact that the bible myths have caught some peoples ’infantile imagination, and we won't let go - maybe until the resurrection or after the “ day of Judgement “ when some people will be extinguished in the lake of fire, forever. In the meanwhile I invite you to contemplate this Hamas position, enshrined in the first paragraph Article 11 of the Hamas Charter :
“ The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?”
I guess that - after starvation as a weapon of war, as is currently being perpetrated on the hapless people of Gaza, Biafrans would take a similar position if Lord Balfour or in this case the UK’s Lord Cameron, countenancing all of Igboland as a “no man’s land” arrogated to himself the authority to hand over all of Yorubaland or a part of Uganda to some ragtag diaspora Igbo Jews ,the idea behind the granting of being the idea of “a people without a land for a land without a people” We don’t have to look for exact equivalences to to render the project, preposterous….
You words : “UK and France, like US treating Israel with kid gloves” because ( a) UK and France, and US are majority Christian countries still mired in the idea of “the holy land”, their geopolitical background being the Crusades and what the neocons habitually refer to “Old Europe” is still living in the shadow of the Holocaust with unabsolved guilt feeling about what happened to six million European Jews. Most of the Jewish people who live outside of today’s Israel live in UK and France, and US ,i.e. if Biden & Trump, Sunak & Macron want to get themselves re-elected they cannot afford to antagonise the Jews in their countries, always a force to reckon with in their various constituencies. The Evangelicals in the US are currently delirious with regular propaganda about the red heifer because the past ten years or so rumourmill has been announcing that the red heifer has been found and dear Chidi and other credulous believers the red heifer supposedly heralds the commencement of the construction of the Third Temple - and as far as the US evangelicals are concerned the third temple is the precursor to the immediate return of God’sonly begotten son to this planet as a result of which the genocidal son of a bitch, the warmongering members of his war cabinet, the armies of the gay, all the Sodom & the Gomoorah of Tel Aviv, the paedophile rabbis, the atheists ,will all be saved and thereby join the one great big happy family of
“Why is China and Russia always looking the other way anytime Israel exhibits some rascality?”
China and Russia are not looking the other way - not exactly. Have they been “looking the other way” at the UN Security Council? Don’t forget, China and Russia occupy the same land mass as Israel and the Arabs
And from a powerful poet like you “rascality” is very mild word with which to describe Israel's atrocities
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cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
# Take a good look at Israel’s location on the world map
# Ask you Bible Scholar if the Holocaust was prophesied and if so,exactly where ?
# Christianity itself would disappear if - God forbid - Israel were to be obliterated, as that would nullify so much of the prophecies being currently propagated by, not least of all the hope-filled evangelicals. So, at all costs those who claim Judeo-Christian foundations to their civilization will do everything possible to at least maintain Israel on life support , at least until, if ever, the antiChrist teaches them a lesson. In the meantime, every once on a while there's some spurious rumour emanating from Israel, that “The Messiah is here” ( The Jewish Mashiach
There’s a long list of people who have claimed to be the Messiah
# This business about the red Heifer and the building of the third temple is quite serious you know ( although I have some difficulty imagining the diamond cutters from New York City in their business suits performing animal sacrifices ( a pleasing aroma ) in the temple to be
About the red heifer, as I have explained here I attended a Torah class at the Chabad House at Wimbledon on Thursday, 2nd July, 1998 and listened to the most fascinating exposition of Parshat Chukat by Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov. It was absolutely brilliant.
# We ought not underestimate the power of religion / religious belief, religious zeal…
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi:
Another riddle in the dilemma:
Looking for the rabbi
I found Augustine
Chidi
in a nutshell
I’m asking you
the centre of gravity
is it Jerusalem or Mecca
the qibla?
This is not a riddle,
but it’s certainly a dilemma
if it’s true that the al-Aqsa Mosque
is standing
where
the holy temple
once stood
until the
Romans
took it
down
The dilemma:
the Jews
want
to build the third temple
(His Divine Majesty’s Holy
residence
down
here
(on mother earth.
So you were made
to believe God
is
every
where?
but from the Temple people’s point of view
Al-Aqsa
is
standing
in the way.
Kabir asks in poem 2 :
“But when deep inside you there is a loaded gun,
How can you have God?”