Friday 10th of January 2025

justifying the murder of children....

CARTOON FROM 2008....

The Israelis’ “rights” to Palestine are based on the gift of the Promised Land by Yahweh. It is curious that even in this radically secular country that is France, this claim is taken seriously. But we are used to considering the Bible as a sacred reference, and there are probably still many people who believe that it is the oldest text of humanity, even though it is more recent than the Iliad, and that it takes up many myths told in Akkadian texts (such as the story of Uta-Napišti, who became Noah) two millennia earlier!

 Elisha, the children and the bears and the justification of extermination in the Bible.

 

BY Rosa LLORENS

 

But, above all, it is now established that the Bible, alongside the borrowed myths, is a set of propaganda texts aimed at justifying the imperialist enterprises of the Hebrews and consolidating the (ancient, but now modern) State of Israel, around the belief in the unique and tribal god Yahweh. It is therefore not surprising that the Bible is imbued with a barbaric warrior spirit, where the Other is systematically doomed to extermination (the American colonists understood well that this was the most effective strategy to ensure possession of the conquered territories).

We should therefore not look for spirituality there – peaceful at least: biblical “spirituality” is rather of the order of a mafia complicity between a family (the Jewish people) and its leader (God). On the contrary, the cruel passages (whose horror is masked by habit, and by soothing symbolic interpretations) are innumerable.

This is the case of what we could call the fable of Elisha, the children and the bears.

Agatha Christie, as a good Anglican, knew the Bible like the back of her hand and, although very conformist, she raised some interesting hares, like, in The Halloween Crime (The Pumpkin Festival), 1969, the story of Jael and Sisera (Jael, the psychopath with the hammer), or, in Is Murder Easy? (1939), that of Elisha.

This last novel features a vain self-made man, Lord Whitfield (yes, a self-made man, because in England for a long time titles of nobility simply rewarded wealth), convinced that God protects him and punishes his enemies: "My enemies, my detractors are thrown to the ground and exterminated!" This biblical language refers precisely to the story of Elisha: "Remember the children who mocked Elijah: the bears came and devoured them" (although a good Anglican, Agatha Christie makes a mistake: it is not Elijah that is being referred to, but his successor, Elisha): in the same way, Lord Whitfield notes with satisfaction, an insolent little boy who had mocked him died shortly afterwards.

His interlocutor is a little put out: "I have always found that this was excessive vindictiveness". Agatha Christie, of course, will not say more: her style is more humorous notations than indignant denunciations. But she expresses well the discomfort that one feels when reading this passage from Kings, II, 2, 23-25 ​​(ecumenical translation of the Bible, 1972):

"As he [Elisha] was going up the road, some children came out of the city and mocked him, saying: "Go ahead, shorn! Go ahead!" He turned, looked at them and cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of these children to pieces." And Elisha continued calmly on his way...

But what is more astonishing and shocking than the story itself is the commentary made on it by a denominational site, Lueur, un éclairer sur la foi. "This text seems [my emphasis] to tell us something shocking and incomprehensible in our conception of a God of grace." The author pretends to believe that the God of the Bible is the same as the one of the Gospel, while the first, far from being merciful, breathes only vengeance - which invalidates the entire demonstration that follows. But it is instructive to follow precisely the sophistic arguments by which he strives to justify Elisha and to contest the excessive nature of his vindictiveness (or that of God).

1) Elisha has just assumed the heavy burden of prophet (God's spokesperson), so he must still assert himself and gain respect: having 42 children killed is an infallible recipe for that!

2) the term “children” can also refer to “young people” or “young men”; “it can therefore refer to adolescents or young adults”. The same bad faith was at work again recently (today, after the massacres of babies and children in Gaza, it is of course not possible, impossible to describe as “young adults” the very small shrouds that we have seen in so many images): a Palestinian victim of 12 or 13 years old was referred to in the media as a “young man”, a (rare) Jewish victim of the same age as a “child”.

3) The insult “bald” (Lueur does not use the ecumenical translation) is very serious: Elisha could “see in it a questioning of his divine investiture [...] It is a complete rejection, ultimately, of God as well as of his servant. » We will now hesitate to use the expression "three bald and one shorn", which is diabolical in essence!

4) psychological justification now, and appeal to universal common sense in the traditional Chatmite tone of priests: "Like the majority of people, Elisha does not accept that we mock him and even less God and the Spirit that rests on him".

5) finally, argument of authority: the punishment may seem excessive, but: "after all, it corresponds to the punishments provided for by the Law (Leviticus 26 22: "I will send against you the animals of the fields, which will deprive you of your children"). Stronger than the sharia: if you do not respect me, I will have your children devoured by wild beasts! This punishment is in fact intended for idolaters, who erect statues to pagan gods, but 3) took care to assimilate the mockery against Elisha to a denial of God.

But perhaps all these arguments risk appearing specious, unconvincing. So the author changes his tune. Elisha’s responsibility is contained in one word: “curse,” and God’s cruelty in a second: “tear”; the author will therefore engage in a lexical examination of the corresponding Hebrew terms (that is, play on words).

– qalal is “translated in various ways and often by despise (qualal)” (not knowing Hebrew, I cannot appreciate the role of this passage from “qalal” to “qualal”). Elisha does not get angry, he does not curse, he “despises”; he lets God “make visible the curse in which they have put themselves [!] by rejecting God.” And the author pulls out another biblical quote:

“He will bring back their iniquity on them. He will destroy them by their wickedness.” (Psalms, 94, 23).
So it is not God who kills the “young adults”, nor Elisha, nor even the bears, or the she-bears (according to the ecumenical translation), it is their own wickedness! In a way, they committed suicide.

- baqa is also “translated in various ways”: to pass through, to disperse, to make a passage, to split; the troop of “young men” is therefore “dispersed”, their cowardice (to join forces against a single man) is highlighted, they are “humiliated” - but not mistreated.
Remarkable inversion of the burden: it is the victims who are blamed!

The author ends his demonstration with a nice antiphrasis, which denies exactly and lucidly what he has just done: "Without wanting to force the texts to stick to religious and exegetical a priori, is this not more in agreement with a God of grace but who belittles mockers?"

Unfortunately, the career of the kind Elisha ends with a last prophecy where he orders the new king Joash: "You will strike Aram in Afek until extermination", Kings II, 13, 17 (Aram designates Syria).

 And to conclude, in a rather worrying way: "Let us walk like Elisha!"  The story itself is edifying: the massacre of 42 children is presented in the Bible as proof of the sacred character of Elisha, and reinforces his good conscience. But Lueur's exegesis is just as much: it is the same rhetoric that allows Israel's crimes to be justified and the horror of the current massacres to be erased. https://www.legrandsoir.info/elisee-les-enfants-et-les-ours-et-la-justification-de-l-extermination-dans-la-bible.html\ TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR.... 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME ISRAHELL.

 

 

ethnic cleansing....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl_dwfFir6g

INTERVIEW: Erasing Palestine from the map

 

People in Gaza are suffering the worst conditions in the world. Four major cities razed and 90% of the population ethnically cleansed. As the west walks past the bodies on the other side of the street

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME ISRAHELL.

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqf9Ngniyp0

Israeli Women Have ZERO Sympathy For Children Of Gaza!