Comments | fpb: In these dark days for Israel, we might as well remind the President of the United States...

fpb

In these dark days for Israel, we might as well remind the President of the United States...

Mar 28, 2010 07:25

...and the tyrants of Tehran and associated places, that people have thought of it before. This is a poem by GK Chesterton (yes, he who made bad jokes about Jews - believe it or not):

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chesterton, jews, israel, poem

Comments 6

amonseuldesir March 28 2010, 07:47:55 UTC

I like the pathos of this poem (pathos in the old, primary meaning of the term), but I must add - sadly- that much of the darkness, as you rightly call it, that befalls Israel, is due to Israel itself. Political prudence and foresight was never, never, part of Jewish genius (if there is such a thing at all): one has only to read the second book of Kings, or Josephus, to realize it.

fpb March 28 2010, 08:27:11 UTC

Whatever may have been the case in the past, you must not blame Israel for its woes in the present. No country has made a greater effort to have some peace; the fact is however that only armed force keeps its neighbours away from its throat, as in 1948 and 1967. The boundaries of, shall we say, a certain religion, are conflict areas everywhere, with war either open or simmering: in West and East Africa, in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in central Asia and the sub-continent, and wherever they are settled in numbers. Israel is not any guilties than the Christians of Nigeria, the Pandits of Kasshmir, or the Greeks of Anatolia.

Whooops! fpb March 28 2010, 08:29:47 UTC

Last line: ".... Israel is not any guiltieR than..."

Re: Whooops! amonseuldesir March 28 2010, 08:36:12 UTC

You are right - so what, still guilt is ever-present in my (Jewish, I am not ashamed to say it) heart.

Thread 5

thefish30 March 28 2010, 17:07:06 UTC

This brought tears to my eyes.