[Editor’s Note: FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT – A Future Israeli-Palestinian Thrust to Trust]
Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love
“I hear the whispering of many – terror on every side! – But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.'” (Psalm 31: 6-18).
I have come to Yad Vashem to pay homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially of their human dignity, were murdered in the Holocaust. More than half a century has passed, but the memories remain.
How can we fail to heed their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its scale.
We wish to remember. But we want to remember for a purpose, namely to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for the millions of innocent victims of Nazism.
How could humankind have such utter antipathy toward humanity? Because he had reached the point of contempt for God!
Only a Godless ideology could plan and carry out the extermination of a whole people.
That is why the Psalms, and the entire Bible, though well aware of the human capacity for evil, also proclaim that sin will not have the last word.
Out of the depths of pain and sorrow, the believer’s heart cries out: “I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.'” (Psalm 31:14).
Jews and Christians share an immense spiritual patrimony, flowing from God’s self-revelation. Our religious teachings and our spiritual experience demand that we overcome evil with good. We remember, but not with any desire for vengeance or as an incentive to hatred. For us, to remember is to pray for peace and justice and to commit ourselves to their cause.
Only a world at peace, with justice for all, can avoid repeating the mistakes and terrible crimes of the past.
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Destroy Your Enemies by Becoming Friends *
What if the Israelis rediscover themselves and build the Zion (a place where God lives) of my parents’ dreams, a heaven on earth, Zion belonging to all of Abraham’s descendants, all of God’s children, the God of all humanity? In this light, they can and will destroy their enemies by becoming friends with all the give and take to make and keep the friendship? The collective memory of NEVER AGAIN, the Israeli credo so genetically encoded in their collective history, can be changed from “we will fight to the end if we must …” to “do what’s right.” (Israel’s Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Yair Golan)
Serendipitously, on May 4th, 2016, the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, General Golan spoke at Israel’s Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies. Ori Nir from Americans for Peace Now reported: “He called for national introspection” and evoked a dark time in the history of the Jewish people and riveted his listeners to engage in soul-searching. Every European, Germans in particular, can relate to the words uttered by General Golan as he compassionately addressed the Israeli people everywhere:
“The Holocaust must lead us to a deep reflection on the responsibilities of leadership and on the quality of society.
It must lead us to think thoroughly about how we – here and now – treat the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, and those similar to them.
The Holocaust must lead us to think about our public life, and even more so, it must direct all those who can—not just those who want—to bear public responsibility.
Because if there is something that scares us about the memory of the Holocaust, it is identifying nauseating processes that occurred in Europe in general and Germany in particular, 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding evidence of their presence here among us, today, in 2016 [Editor’s note: Sunday, May 16th, 2021].
For there is nothing easier than hating the alien. Nothing is painless and simpler than provoking anxiety and horror.
Nothing is easier and simpler than brutalization, jadedness, and self-righteousness.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, it is appropriate to discuss our ability to uproot from our midst signs of intolerance, signs of violence, and self-destruction on the path toward moral deterioration.“ 1
*1 van Kempen, Abraham A. Christian Zionism … Enraptured Around a Golden Calf – 2nd Edition: Evangelicals Rediscovering New Testament Revelations, Chapter 4, Sub-section 22: (p. 221-222). Fast Pencil Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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John Paul II continues:
The Church, motivated by the Gospel and law of truth and love and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place. The Church rejects racism in any form as a denial of the image of the Creator inherent in every human being (Genesis 1:26).
In this place of solemn remembrance, I fervently pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the twentieth century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews [and Muslims].
Let us build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feelings among Christians or anti-Christian sentiment among Jews [and anti-Muslim feelings among Christians and Jews and vice versa]. Instead, let us mutually respect those who adore the one Creator and Lord and look to Abraham as our common father in faith.
The world must heed the warning that comes to us from the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Here at Yad Vashem, the memory lives on and burns itself onto our souls. It makes us cry out:
6-13 I hate all this silly religion,
but you, God, I trust.
I’m leaping and singing in the circle of your love;
you saw my pain,
you disarmed my tormentors,
You didn’t leave me in their clutches
But gave me room to breathe.
Be kind to me, God—
I’m in deep, deep trouble again.
I’ve cried my eyes out;
I feel hollow inside.
My life leaks away, groan by groan;
my years fade out in sighs.
My troubles have worn me out,
turned my bones to powder.
To my enemies I’m a monster;
The neighbors ridicule me.
My friends are horrified;
They cross the street to avoid me.
They want to blot me from memory,
forget me like a corpse in a grave,
Discard me like a broken dish in the trash.
The street-talk gossip has me
“criminally insane”!
Behind locked doors, they plot
How to ruin me for good.
14-18 Desperate, I throw myself on you:
You are my God!
Hour by hour, I place my days in your hand,
Safe from the hands out to get me.
Warm me, your servant, with a smile;
Save me because you love me.
Don’t embarrass me by not showing up;
I’ve given you plenty of notice.
Embarrass the wicked, stand them up,
leave them stupidly shaking their heads
As they drift down to hell.
Gag those loudmouthed liars
who heckle me, your follower,
with jeers and catcalls (Psalm 31: 6-18 The Message Translation)
Read more: ‘Can we afford not to have reconciliation?’ by Safi Kaskas
Read more: ‘Zionism: Striving in the Path of God … to Reign with Righteousness and Justice,’ by Abraham A. van Kempen
Read more: ‘Revisiting the Prophetic Ideals of Justice,’ by Abraham A. van Kempen
The Papal Message is excerpted from:
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