Lessons of Handshake (E)

LESSONS OF HANDSHAKE

The funeral of Pope John Paul II, on April 8, 2005, brought together the single largest gathering of heads of state in human history. The Pope had shaken many hands on many lands.

Owing to a nation-by-nation alphabetical protocol-seating at Pope John Paul's funeral, Moshe Katzav, President of Israel, found himself next to Mohammad Khatami, President of Iran, and guess what (!!!) : they were both born in the 1940's, just two years apart, in the same town, in IRAN: Yazd.
Photo: Katzav next to Khatami and King Abdullah of Jordan (back)

'Katsav said he and Khatami conversed about Yazd. "The two of us were born in the same region in Iran, two years apart," Katsav was quoted as saying, he spoke in his native Farsi to Khatami about their common city of birth. "The president of Iran extended his hand to me, I shook it and told him in Farsi, 'May peace be upon you,"' Katsav said.

[But] returning to Iran, Khatami denied shaking Katsav's hand. "These allegations are false like other allegations made by Israeli media and I have not had any meeting with any one from the Zionist regime," the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Khatami as saying. The Pope shook the hands of many.'

Yazd (or Yezd), is one of the most ancient and historic cities in human history, capital of Yazd Province in Iran and a centre of Zoroastrian culture, the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the Iranian prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), arguably the most influential monotheistic religion in history.

The Achaemenid Empire was a dynasty in the ancient Persian Empire with high cultural and economical achievements during its highest power. Cyrus the Great (Old Persian: Kuruš, modern Persian: Kourosh; ca. 576 or 590 BC — July 529 BC), also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty. As the ruler of the Persians, from approximately 559 BC, he conquered the Medes and unified the two separate Iranian kingdoms. He then expanded beyond the Iranian plateau, conquering most of Southwest Asia to create the largest empire the world had yet seen. He is perhaps most remembered for restoring the exiled Jews to Jerusalem. In the Bible (Tanakh), he is known as simply Koresh. A good example of his religious policy is his treatment of the Jews in Babylon. The Bible records that a remnant of the Jewish population returned to the Promised Land from Babylon, following an edict from Cyrus to rebuild the temple. This edict is fully reproduced in the Book of Ezra. As a result of Cyrus' policies, the Jews honored him as a dignified and righteous king. He is the only Gentile ( goy) to be designated as a messiah, a divinely-appointed king, in the Tanakh.
http://rosetta.reltech.org/ECanon/search.php?qry=Ezra+1-2

The Persian Empire, which had lasted for 200 years, finally collapsed with the invasion of Alexander in the fourth century BC. The Parthians, who were of Iranian origin, ended the rule of Alexander's successors in the second century BC. They considered themselves heirs to the Achaemenid Empire and chose Zoroastrianism as the official religion. Today, following centuries of islamisation started by the prophet Mohammed then millitarisation and dictatorships, Zoroastrians account for about 0.07 percent, Jews for about 0.05 percent, Muslims over 99 percent of the population. About 5,000 individuals out of the 30,000 Zoroastrians residing in Iran live in Yazd province, in the cities of Yazd, Taft and Ardakan.

Recent photo Zoroastrian Temple in Yazd:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Ateshkadeh_yazd.jpg

Images of Zoroastrianism in Iran, today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_zoroastrians_in_iran/html/1.stm

The so called "World's First Charter of Human Rights", the "Cyrus Cylinder" held today in the British Museum and a copy at the United Nations Security Council, was created by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire:

Text of the Cyrus Cylinder (translated):
http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/hakhamaneshian/Cyrus-the-great/cyrus_cylinder_complete.htm

Image of the Cyrus Cylinder:
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/goto?id=OBJ4931

Xenophon's historical text on the life of Cyrus the Great:
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/xenophon/cyropaedia_xenophon_book1.php

Shirin Ebadi - Nobel Peace Prize 2003 lecture:

"I am an Iranian. A descendent of Cyrus The Great. The very emperor who proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2500 years ago that "... he would not reign over the people if they did not wish it." And [he] promised not to force any person to change his religion and faith and guaranteed freedom for all. The Charter of Cyrus The Great is one of the most important documents that should be studied in the history of human rights." -
http://nobelprize.org/cgi-bin/print?from=/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2003/ebadi-lecture-e.html

Faravahar believed to be a depiction of a Farvashi, or Guardian Spirit, is one of the best known symbols of the Zoroastrian religion:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Faravahar.png

derived from the winged sun symbol of ancient Egypt:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Winged_sun_sharpe.png

Nazi Germany used a similar symbol.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/mauth13.html

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that "must be wiped out from the world" - Ahmadinejad. Iran's now president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has recently written a letter to Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany , in which he calls "Zionism the greatest enemy of mankind", here it is:

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506060558

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Another handshake lesson, from Hungary's most recent history

Interestingly, Yazd has only one sister town today, called Jászberény (yaas-be-reign), in the center of Europe, in Hungary. Jászberény is believed to be the burial place of Attila the Hun (405-453) who was the final and most powerful king of the Huns. He reigned over what was then Europe's largest empire and during his rule, Attila was among the direst enemies of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire.

The town was named after the Jász or Jassic people, a nomadic tribe of Iranian descent that settled in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 13th century. They had been chased by the Mongol-Tatars and admitted by the Hungarian king Béla the IVth, hoping that they would assist him in fighting against a Mongol-Tatar invasion. Bela IV is greatly respected in Hungary and commonly known as "the second founder" of the kingdom.

In 1239, Hungarian King Béla IV contacted Pope Gregory IX to request and secure the living conditions for Jews, documented in the 1251 Jewish Privilage Charter - revoked and reinforced by kings for hundreds of years to follow. There is evidence that Jews had been living in Roman controlled towns of Hungary such as Pannonia and Savaria since the 2nd and 3rd centuries, they were either the offspring of tradesmen from Rome or descendants of captured and enslaved Jewish fighters and women servants purchased and brought back by Roman Legion commanders from missions to Judea controlled by the dishonest and cruel Roman Emperor Hadrian, who crushed the Bar Kokhba Revolt (131-135 C.E.), starved, then decimated or enslaved the Jewish population, exiled them even to Africa.

Jews continued to live and at times even thrive and prosper in the area that was to become first the Kingdom of Hungary, centuries later part of the Ottoman Empire, then the Habsburg Empire called Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, until the 20th century. Following the defeat in WWI, there was a short-lived communist regime (crushed) and from 1920 onwards, anti-semitic and racist legislation discriminating against Jews was ratified in Hungary. Right wing domestic political dominance and Hitler's Nazi pressure gradually outweighed attempts to save the country's over 800,000 strong Jewish population and eventually led to stronger anti-Jewish laws. The crime of genocide against the Jews was committed, murdering 600,000 people. Widowed and orphaned, survivors returned home from a concentration camp, from a prisoner of war (POW) camp (as labor batallions joined the troops), or from a ghetto. Death and lifethreat came in many forms and shapes, as did survivals.

Following the defeat of WWII, there began a long-lived communist regime that came to power in 1949, giving hope of an egalitarian life to many leftist Jews, just like 30 years before that. Like the 20,000 Jews, many more Hungarians left around the time of the October 23 uprising 50 years ago. Those who stayed and survived the crackdown years that followed the crushing of this revolution by the Soviet Union, lived through the Kádár János era, into the 60's the 70's and the 80's, that have been referred to by many as the "goulash communism". Since the declaration of the Republic in 1990, democratic Hungary has had 3 presidents.


Earlier this year, on March 15, National Commemoration Day for the crushed Revolution of 1848, there was an uncanny similarity to the handshake issue between the Middle-Eastern presidents when current Hungarian President László Sólyom refused to shake hands with ex-central-bank-deputy János Fekete, a widely respected and internationally quoted financial expert who had worked hard to maintain the country's "red" economic balance in the "black" for many years ("fekete" means "black" in Hungarian).

Today, Mr. Fekete is still actively working for the benefit of his native land, though well over the age of 80. A tough man, he is a survivor. A survivor on the square: a survivor of WWII, a survivor of murderous anti-semitism, a survivor of slavelabour and of forced war-combat on the minefields of the Eastern-Front and a survivor of communism.

The President's refusal to shake hands with a man who had been through all that and not only survived but excelled for the good of his fellow countrymen sends the worst possible message to millions of people: a big "no" to health and welfare, a "no" to education and tolerance, a "no" to civilization and democracy and a thumb-up-go-ahead-shameless "yes" to anti-semitism, to anarchy, a definite "yes" to violence and social unrest - all this in a year that is supposed to be devoted to solemn remembering.

This outragous incident took place inside the Hungarian Parliament, at a highly monitored and live broadcasted reception, with formal protocols for handing out each one of those many prestigious awards that convey the highest possible recognition of merit by the state in Hungary. Just few weeks before a heated election campaign, the incident created a nationwide public outcry on all levels of society, from butchers to bankers, mostly but not exclusively, condemning the President. Mr. Sólyom ("sólyom" means "hawk" in Hungarian) had previously served for years as a leading judge in Hungary's highest order: its Constitutional Court.

- by Gergely Földvári

A brief history of Iran - courtesy of the United Nations:
http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/48e8c4842766b8d0c125696c00542b62?Opendocument

For a summary of the history of Jews in Hungary - courtesy of Naftali Kraus:
http://www.porges.net/JewishHistoryOfHungary.html

Gondolatok a diszkrécióról (H)

"Thoughts about Discretion"

[To sum it up for non-Hungarian speakers, the point made here is twofold: the terror victim's Father whose e-mail triggered the posting, is strongly "biased" or "involved" and thus should not come out to internationally and publically condemn the filmmaker; furthermore, I assert that the condemning or even the judging of an internationally acclaimed artist's long forgotten and trivial actions by his long loyal and supportive audiance is arguably just as out-of-place, or in other words, it is very "indiscreet". This point implicitly alludes to the recent distasteful unveiling of Oscar Award winning filmdirector István Szabó's forced and otherwise completely harmless collaboration with the communist regime, many years ago, while at univeristy.]

Ma reggel az alábbi elgondolkodtató üzenetet kaptam. Bár a kérdéses filmet még nem láttam, okom van elfogadni és megérteni az üzenet írójának érzéseit és gondolatait, továbbá feltételezem, hogy nem, vagy legalább is félre értette az alkotás mondandóját. Talán nem kellett volna megnéznie, hiszen sebe mély, s ha hegedesedik is a felszínen, legbelül gyógyulatlan és lehet, hogy örökre az is marad. A sebesülteket pedig visszaküldik a hátországba...

Elvonatkoztatva a konkrét filmtől, az üzenet és a 37. Filmszemlét megelőző, nyilvánosan tárgyalt dolgok mégis elindítottak egy gondolatot bennem, a diszkrécióról, amelynek rövid kifejtését és egy történeti illusztrációját alább megtalálod, ha érdekel...

-------Original Message-------

Date: 02/06/06 23:43:44

Subject: Please help distribute the article about "Paradise now" winning the Golden Globe

----------------------------------------------

Last night the Palestinian movie "Paradise Now" won the Golden Globe award. The movie shows the route that two young Palestinians take to become suicide murderers, up until the minute they board a bus in Tel Aviv filled with children.

The movie looks professional. It was made with great attention to detail, but it is extremely dangerous – not only to the Middle East, but to the whole world.

My son Asaf, almost 17 years old, was a high school student in the eleventh grade who loved computer science. One day after school he boarded a bus home, as usual. Along the way, a suicide murderer from Hebron, 21 years old, a computer science student at the Hebron Polytechnic, exploded on the bus.

17 people were killed, 9 of them school children aged 18 or less. My son Asaf was killed on spot.

I watched the movie "Paradise Now" trying to understand what it is trying to say, what message it carries? That the murderer is human? He is not. That he has doubts? He has none. After all, he is willing to kill himself along with his victims. That the Israelis are to blame for this brutal killing? Are the Israelis to blame for the Twin Towers in New York, the night club in Indonesia, the hotel in Egypt, the shop in Turkey, the restaurant in Morocco or in Tunis, the hotel in Jordan, the underground in London, the train in Spain? And the list goes on and on.

What makes this movie award-worthy? Would the people that awarded this movie the Golden Globe do the same if the movie was about young people from Saudi Arabia who learn how to fly airplanes in the USA and then use Islamic rituals to prepare themselves for their holy mission, crashing their airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York City? Would this movie get an award then?

This movie tries to say that suicide murder is legitimate when you feel you have exhausted all other means. But a suicide murderer who boards a bus kills 15 or 20 innocent people, so how about a suicide murderer who walks into a city with a biological bomb and kills 10,000 people or 100,000 people? Is that still legitimate? Where does one draw the line?

I believe that the world should draw the line at one person. The killing of even one person is not legitimate. My son was almost 17 years old, he loved surfing, he loved loud music. Now he is gone because a suicide murderer decided it's legitimate to blow himself up on a crowded bus.

Granting an award to this kind of movie gives the filmmakers a seal of approval to hide behind. Now they can say that the world sees suicide bombing as legitimate. By ignoring the film's message and the implications of this message, those that chose to award this film a prize have become part of the evil chain of terror and accomplices to the next suicide murders – whether they kill 17 people or 17,000 people.

Name: Yossi Zur

Phone: +972-54-4248912

Email: Yossi@blondi.co.il

Web: www.Blondi.co.il

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Gondolatok a diszkrécióról

Jézus keresztrefeszítésének vagy Kossuth és Márai szabadkőművességének, Kádár politikájának, nagyszüleink, szüleink, barátaink diszkréten kezelt tetteinek nem elvonatkoztatott, hanem tényállásszerűen kitálalt és kitárgyalt kérdéseiről, az utókornak - főleg jó pár évtized vagy század elmúltával - úgy tűnik szokása könyvet szerkeszteni, filmet rendezni, operát komponálni, színdarabot írni, cikket publikálni, egyesek szerint még egyházakat és hadseregeket alapítani is.

Mindez, azt hiszem, valami szabadság féleség.

Ezzel szemben indiszkréten és hangosan kiértékelni, megítélni és főleg megítéltetni ilyen jellegű kérdéseket, szerintem szigorúan nem az illető szüleinek, gyermekeinek és rokonainak, de nem is szeretőjének, hű követőinek, hálás diákjainak, lelkes közönségének, megérintett olvasóinak és nézőinek, valamint egyes esetekben egy gazdag és remélhetően még bővülő életmű haszonélvezőinek, ha úgy tetszik, letéteményeseinek kellene.

Ők mindannyian érintettek és elfogultak - ezt illene némi alázattal tiszteletben tartani, nem?

Engem legalább is nagyszüleim, szüleim, más szeretteim és oktatóim tanításai, továbbá Erasmus, Mozart, Zweig, József, Bartók, Doctorow, Bergman, Spielberg, Szabó és mások művei, valamint utoljára és elsősorban a saját, eddigi életem, hitem és lelkiismeretem erre tanítottak. Úgy hiszem ez nem holmi művészi, újságírói, törvényalkotói vagy közszereplői etika, hanem puszta emberség, azon belül is diszkréció kérdése.

A műkritika, mondjuk az előadás másnapján jelenik meg, jó esetben az érintett közösséghez, a megérintett közönséhez tartozó, írói minőségében el-, és befogadott ember véleményének formájában. De ki hallott már ember-, és valláskritikusról? Én nem. Ezt a műfajt rosszmájú pletykaként, esetleg kibeszélésként ugyan igen, de el egyáltalán nem ismerem.

Vajon ki hangoztatja széles körben és indiszkréten egyes politikusok, közéleti emberek, művészek, rokonok, barátok, kollégák, szomszédok vagy épp idegenek személyiségéről alkotott, általában nem szilárd alapokon nyugvó véleményét? Ki mesélgeti itt-ott legvadabb szexuális fantáziáit, aprób és nagyobb törvényszegéseit, szeretteit bántó, agresszív magatartását?

Én ugyan nem, de hallottam, hogy nagyon sokan igen, méghozzá a gyóntatófülkékben. Azok a papok, akik a hívőket feloldozzák bűneik, indiszkrécióik és üszkösödő lelkiismeretük terhei alól, e világon legalább is, csupán egyházi esküjük és az adott honállam törvényeinek betartása, nem pedig rendőrségi, állambiztonsági, szabadkőműves, vagy szenvedélyeikkel kapcsolatos ügyeik és más, "diszkrét" jellegű tevékenységeik alapján ítéltetnek meg.

Ha ez nem így lenne, akkor szerintem nem maradna más nekünk a világban, csak a már ismert zavar és zűr (lsd. alábbi idézet).

Földvári Gergely

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Sir Martin Gilbert történész, Sir Winston Churchill életrajzkutatójának egy 1998-ban publikált előadásából:

"A Polish priest was approached by a Catholic woman in his town and she came to see him in the privacy of the confessional. She said that she had at home a Jewish child, who had been given to her by its parents who had been murdered. She had looked after this child since 1942. It was now 1946 or 1947 and she asked the priest whether she could bring the child up as a Catholic.

The priest said "What did the parents wish?" and she said that their very last wish before they left, before they were taken away and murdered, was that the child should be told at some point that it was a Jewish child, and should then be allowed to determine its own religious future.

The priest said "Well then, you must follow the wishes of the parents. Although it is clear that it is going to be very painful and difficult for you, because the parents do not exist and the child has no memory, except of you and your Catholic upbringing."

I wrote a number of times to this priest because I wanted to publish this story in my general history of the Holocaust, to ask him if he could confirm this story. I finally got a letter from a senior member of his secretariat, to inform me that he could be excommunicated were he to reveal what had passed in the confessional. As the priest was the present Pope [the late John Paul II - FG], I did not feel that I -- a Jewish historian -- could be responsible for his excommunication!"