Posted on 08/12/2006 1:09:21 PM PDT by GMMAC
Christians are Jews' best friends
Toronto Sun
Sat, August 12, 2006
By MICHAEL COREN
One of the most difficult things about spending time in Israel is returning home, as I did two weeks ago. As dangerous as life might be in the Jewish state at the moment, daily existence is layered in significance. Then it's back to North America, where the trivial is made to seem profound.
I refer to Mel Gibson's drunken stupidity when he made various repugnant comments about Jewish people. As a Roman Catholic with three Jewish grandparents, and someone who worries every day about the Israel I love, this seems so very unimportant. Gibson was, of course, obnoxious and owes the Jewish community an apology.
Which is precisely what he gave within hours of his arrest. A gracious, genuine and heartfelt apology. Contrition, regret, a promise to learn from his mistakes and put matters right.
Good people, Jew and Gentile alike, accepted this and saw it as an opportunity to move forward. Others decided to exploit the situation and use Gibson's lapse to bash him and his religion. This, they claimed, proved that he is an anti-Semite and that his movie, The Passion of the Christ, was anti-Semitic as well.
Not so. The Passion was the story of the death of Yeshua, Son of Miriam. A Jewish man and a Jewish mother. It is anti-Semitic only to those who are anti-Semites themselves or see anti-Semitism everywhere and anywhere.
As for Gibson hating Jews, this is denied by all of those who know him best, including Jewish people. One stupid comment does not make the man anti-Semitic, any more than one comment in support of Jews necessarily makes a person pro-Jewish.
Something needs to be said clearly and loudly. Conservative, faithful Christians, Catholic and evangelical alike, are the best friends Jews and Israel have. Goodness, in some places they are the only friends Jews and Israel have.
If we want to see authentic hatred and bigotry, we only need to read the newspapers and watch television. There, one finds daily venom against Christianity from the mainstream and the most vitriolic contempt from the fringes. Even government gets involved, prosecuting believers for speaking their mind -- or simply having a mind that thinks differently about moral issues than the liberal and aggressively secular establishment.
It's part of the grand double standard that informs our lives. A double standard that was most noticeable in the amount of time and space devoted to Gibson's moments of foolishness versus the media's apparent self-censorship in the case of Naveed Afzal Haq.
Who's he?
Therein lies the point.
This American Muslim is charged in one of the worst racist attacks in recent history. Police allege that he walked into the Jewish Federation office in Seattle on July 28 and shot six women, one of them heavily pregnant. One of the victims died, three are still in critical condition.
The gunman reportedly announced that he was angry at Israel, before opening fire on the 18 Jewish charity workers who were present. Afzal Haq's lawyer has indicated he may have been on medication for bipolar disorder. Police have laid murder charges but are not pursuing the case as a hate crime.
Not only has the case received limited coverage in major newspapers, but even Jewish groups and publications have generally devoted far more time and space to Mel Gibson than to this anti-Semitic slaughter.
One can only wonder what would have happened if the suspect had been a Christian. Our priorities and our judgment today are so slurred and so politically correct that it makes one, well, passionate. Good luck Mel, good luck.
Now you are extrapolating things that were not in anyway contained in the original argument. You asked for examples here:
---" During the past 2000 years, when Christians weren't persecuting Jews, we were their best friends - and with friends like us, who needed enemies..."
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What are you referring to, be specific.---
I provided them. That was all. You don't like it for some reason. That's too bad.
Huh? What are you talking about. I did not reference the Jewish population in the U.S. nor whether or not the U.S. is a proudly Christian nation...
What does any of that have to do with the price of wheat in China???
What specifically did I say that seems to have confused you or to which you would like clarification??
---why not post some data on Jews being disproportionally represented among the perpetrators of the Ukrainian holocaust?
As I stated earlier "... there's definitely blood on both side's hands ..." - why not just leave it at that?---
I'm still waiting for your documentation of these things.
---Multiple comments, consisting of thousands of characters, are self-evidently not a reasonable response to a single request to merely "be specific". ---
It is certainly reasonable when the request covers a period of 2000 years. There was a lot of persecution over a long period of time. You ridicule the website.
Do you ridicule the history?
---No you misunderstand. You've made it clear that you don't think Israel needs any supporters and I'm encouraging you to get your movement going to cut our aid. ---
Show me where I did that! You are creating things out of thin air!
Before I depart this happy company, let me just say this about Mel. What disturbs me about the whole affair is that the damage caused by his comments was not to Jews, but to himself and his reputation.
His apologies are not intended to heal the harm that he has done to Jews, but rather to heal the harm he has done to his own reputation. As such, all the continuing blather just strikes me as desperate self-serving pabulum.
Good day!
---I think a good point has been made though. If Christians are such terrible people who did all these terrible things to the Jews Israel should stop seeking aid from us and stand on her own two feet.---
Some best friends you guys turned out to be! :^)
"Some best friends you guys turned out to be! :^)"
________________________________
I think you made it very clear you don't want any friends.
"Latching onto my passing reference to the Ukrainian holocaust while ignoring a similar one to St. Stephen indicates you are disingenuous while refusing to concede past wrongs went both ways marks you as a zealot."
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It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
Amen! Christians know their relationship to the Jews. :o)
She had a near-death experience--- not the "bright white light & Jesus" kind, but the "honey, I don't seem to be able to hold things" kind. Took months to get a diagnosis, and a plate in her neck to fix it- a disc had vanished at C-5, and without surgery? Death, or quadraplegia. She's OK now, but her once astounding singing voice ( soprano, alto, tenor, and bass-- rare in man or woman ) never came back after the surgery.
The induction into the Temple's Sisterhood is another interesting story... while it seemed to come out of the blue, after many years of service, here's what really happened...
She was in Wal-Mart one day, when a cry of distress arose from behind a display, she zips around it to see what the problem was, and lo! there is one of the Temple's few young women ( it is a small, and mostly older, congregation ) at her wit's end with her new baby.
She had just recently given birth, and was having a general-purpose "bad day," the screaming baby being only part of it, but she needed someone to hold her baby for a moment while she collected herself.
We don't ( can't ) have children, but Miss E is one of those rare people who seems to exert a nearly-mystical calming effect on small children, animals, and old folks, and when she took the baby, it settled right down...
( On the other hand, it may have been pure shock- Momma was short and dark, Miss E is a six-foot, blonde, eagle-faced Aryan superwoman-- 100% German, and looks it... )
And the next week, the Sisterhood called her, and asked "would you like to join?"
And since I'm throwing out more personal information than usual, I might as well add this: That surgery I mentioned was supposed to take less than an hour, but complications arose, and it went well over three hours- and since I have some medical training and am well aware of all the things that can go wrong, it was not a happy time.
Father Bob Reese, who she had worked for over ten years, was kind enough to keep me company during that time, and among the many things we discussed was how much her work at the Temple meant to her, how she liked the Rabbis and the congregation, and how much she had learned about her own religion by studying Judaism.
And he said something to me that has stuck with me to this day- perhaps because I agree with it so strongly-- he said,
"You know, I don't think it ( the differences between Christianity and Judaism ) makes a bit of difference- to God."
I agree with that.
Glad to hear your wife is OK now.
Well, there's nothing like getting so close to the Pearly Gates that you can hear the flap of asbestos wings ( one of my Dad's sarcastic jibes ) to make a couple appreciate each other a little better. She swears it's payback for my nearly bleeding to death on her a week after we got married...
You nearly bled to death?
Luckily, she got me to the ER in time.
Got close enough to the Pearly Gates that I could smell the brimstone...
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