Shameless

If you had been inclined to think The Australian's Easter editorial of 20/3/08, TIME OF CELEBRATION: Easter's mysteries offer insight and happiness, was going to be about, well, Easter and its significance, you'd have been greatly mistaken. Some excerpts:-

"As Cardinal George Pell reminds Australians today, Jesus Christ was a Jewish man...He lived amid political strife in the Middle East. Brutality was rife and forgiveness rare. Gathering with his disciples for the Jewish Passover the night before he died...that final Passover supper cemented a Judeo-Christian tradition that has shaped humanity, and more often than not been an influence for good."

"This week, 2 Palestinians stabbed an Israeli man through the head at the entrance to Jerusalem's Old City. A few days before, Hamas, the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip, danced in jubilation over the slaughter of 8 young Jewish students at a Jerusalem seminary. A few weeks earlier, Israel and Hamas exchanged rocket fire that killed more than 130 Palestinians, including several dozen children, and 4 Israelis. If the region where Christ walked is to achieve sustainable peace in coming decades, or even the next century, a strong spirit of forgiveness and magnanimity will be required by all involved, backed by generous support and encouragement from friends and allies. Often, all this seems as improbable as the resurrection is to a sceptic. Occasionally, however, the world enjoys a glimpse of the level of long-term goodwill that would be required. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 60th anniversary visit to Israel this week represented a triumph of goodness over evil. In a nation of 7 million, including 250,000 Holocaust survivors and millions of their children and grandchildren, it was a high point of history. In 1945, it would have been unimaginable. The now-solid friendship between the Jewish state and Germany could not have developed without generosity in the hearts of both peoples, and Germany facing up to its duty to make reparation and atonement for its murder of 6 million Jews. It did, it sought pardon, and it was forgiven. The distance travelled is an example of how the darkest and most bitter relationships can be transformed through the light of goodness. No less a commitment would be required to secure Middle East peace, based on a fair and sustainable two-state solution. But unless militant Islamic regimes come to terms with Israel's legitimate right to exist in its ancient homeland, the world will look back in another 60 years and grieve for thousands more lives lost and more opportunities for peace squandered."

And if you had been inclined to think that a letter in The Australian 0f 19/3/08 on the subject of Tibet was really going to be about, well, Tibet and its struggle for freedom, you'd also have been very much mistaken:-

"Tibetans have suffered the most brutal of occupations and oppression of their human rights. And yet they have never resorted to blowing themselves up or murdering Chinese schoolchildren. Why is it, then, Palestinians and Islamist groups - who have used suicide bombings - appear to attract so much more attention from so-called human rights activists who have barely a word to say about far worse examples of oppression in the Arab and communist world. The Chinese Government must be grateful they aren't Jewish." Gary Slezak, Chatswood, NSW

Shameless.

[At the risk of giving Gazza a bad case of cognitive dissonance, I wonder what he'd make of the Israeli Haredi fanatic who gave a messianic* Jewish boy from the West Bank settlement of Ariel a Purim gift - which exploded in his face. (* Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah) See Haaretz, 25/3/08]