Posted by panch from inet-gto-aztecas-2-fddi5-0-0.uninet.net.mx (148.233.135.74) on Monday, March 17, 2003 at 2:18PM :
It's time to tackle the Big One. The really terrible and awful thing charged against the Assyrians by the bible...not the word of any god you'd want to know, just the product of one bunch of particularly bloody Hebrews in Jerusalem who were roundly hated by their brethren and returned the compliment full measure.
First though, and on reflection, one of the things that strikes you about the Assyrians was they declared war on other people, not their own brothers and sisters and certainly not for vagaries over religious doctrine, as the Jews never tired of doing. Unlike Yahwe, the father of Jesus...Ashur was not a jealous god, he was not an envious god, he could accept other gods and their people too. It stood to reason that those who followed such a god would be tolerant and accepting of differences between people. It's as if the Hebrews wanted desperately to be like the Assyrians...make war against someone...conquer someone...have an empire for more than a week...erect buildings that could later be found...but, since they couldn't, they decided the next best thing was to to attack each other, tear down each other's buildings, rip open each other's pregnant wives, enslave each other and, of course, kill their firstborn at the first sign of real trouble.
While the authors of "The Bible and the Ancient Near East" cannot clean up the bloodshed, treachery and hooliganisms in the bible, they do the next best thing...they ascribe this dreadful behavior to the dictates of their lord and hold the Hebrews themselves blameless...not responsible..much as the Old Coot himself thinks nothing of killing human beans, even though he made them, "in his image", and deliberately too...if you can imagine such a thing. Out of desperation and to salvage something from this endless and dismal tale they congratulate the Hebrews for at least being "honest" about their depredations, of coming right out and owning up to every stinking one...a strange sort of praise, but then there wasn't much that was praiseworthy in their bible world...that was of their own making. It would have been far more worthy of praise had they not been the kind of people who had these sorts of things to be, "honest about".
While them Hebrews litterally got away with murder because, "their god told them to"...this is how the Assyrians are condemned for much the same thing..."Brutality was justified from the Assyrian viewpoint on religious grounds. The god Assur had willed that his country and his king should achieve world domination; and all other gods, kings, and peoples had to be subservient to Assur's will. Any resistance meant rebellion against the great god and was put down with condign severity." You could easily replace "Ashur" with "Yahwe" and "Assyrian" with "Hebrew" and you'd have "praiseworthy" and even "devout" behavior...when a Jew does it.
Is it just me or does that quote not reek?
The atrocities committed by the Hebrews against their own people and others, when they had the chance...seem in every instance to be far worse than anything laid at the feet of the followers of Ashur. Rebellion was a special case...rebellion meant potential catastrophe and was dealt with harshly. Had the Hebrews controlled anyone whom they could have placed in a position to rebel, we might hear more of their need to put down rebellion as well...but, as they were more often the rebels...naturally they didn't appreciate the treatment they got...the treatment they deserved as rebels...the treatment they would have loved to have had occasion to inflict on anybody. Instead they killed men, women and children of their own tribes for being "rebels to Yahwe"...for daring to believe as they wished...follow their own conscience ...something that bothered or threatened no one...or shouldn't have had those people been at all sane. Warfare is rough business...but war made against your own people...and for differences in religous doctrine?
I think we would all have been far better off had the way of Ashur predominated over the bloody ways of Yahwe...but then civilization is a fragile thing...Barbarism can thrive anywhere and for longer periods of time and the religion of Yahwe was primarily sanctified barbarism. One shouldn't forget that it was one of the daughters of Judaism that committed the most horendous crime of all against the Jews...Christianity...and that this was merely a continuation of the wars and hatred Jews have been inflicting on each other since them old days. Don't these people LIKE themselves?
The most grevious charge made against the Assyrians, the "Big One", was that they transplanted populations and put still others in place of the exiles...hear our overworked authors tell it, "Tiglathpileser also put into greater effect than had ever been known before, the efficacious but cruel policy of transplanting conquered populations. This did not mean simply exiling people from their homeland; it meant also putting other exiles from distant areas into the evacuated territory so that there would be no continuity between the old population and the new. Moreover, any hope the old population might have to return would be shattered by the presence of the new population that would forbid their homecoming."
You have to think about this one...and it merits some thought because of all the charges brought against us this one has been blindly taken at Jew value...even by us. Now fixing it so there would be..."no continuity between the old population and the new"...was precisely the point. It wasn't because they were wantonly cruel that the Assyrians did this... or because they liked the idea of ripping people away from their homes just for the hell of it. Especially when you take into account that it was the Hebrews who were the likliest candidates for this sort of treatment because you couldn't leave two Jew cities alone but they'd declare a holy war against each other and take to reforming and ripping open women...if you considered the alternatives and the kind of people you were dealing with, it was a humane approach and a boon to everyone living around them squabbling Hebrews. In most cases the Assyrians took the Jews to somewhere far better, which would have been almost ANYWHERE away from that haven of sheepshit...as can be seen by how many of them "got lost" in Assyria and later in Babylon and didn't want to return. Besides which the entire population was never removed, only a portion.
When the Jews conquered Moab they didn't transplant anybody...they didn't have enough goat turds for themselves and they didn't rule over any other dung hill they could stick the Moabites on and yet they too were concerned about pacifying them so, in true Yahwistic fashion, they killed two thirds of the Moabites, in cold blood...they "transported" them alright and to a place it would also be "dificult" to come back from.
If you'd have been alive back then you'd have wanted to transplant those Hebrews too (Hell even THEY were staying up nights trying to find new ways and excuses to kill each other)...get them away from each other so that those who worshipped Baal or Milcolm or Molech could live somewhere in peace, away from the Yahwists who were determined to "reform" their brethren to death if need be. Good sense, good management and common human decency would dictate such a policy...especially if you didn't want to follow the frightful example set by the Hebrews and just kill captive populations outright...which was hardly a kind thing to do and not very smart either because what's the point of an empty empire? All you do is a clear a path to your own door.
This line by the authors deserves some special attention..."Moreover, any hope the old population might have to return would be shattered by the presence of the new population that would forbid their homecoming". Obviously the authors have forgotten how Joshua managed to find homes for the returning exiles...who exiled themselves to begin with because there wasn't enough dry grass in Jerusalem to keep goats alive let alone the lord's "Chosen". Killing the inhabitants of a village and moving in was never a problem for the Hebrews before...especially if their god, "told them to." You know...this god sounds more and more like a Gang leader or Mafia Don the more you examine him...maybe that's why people don't really "study" these whoredoms and murders...just committ them to memory and teach them to their unoffending children.
Where's there any precedent or possibility, or even a strong desire for peace in the dismal history of these three sisters from hell? And, contrary to your own prejudices, the most bloody of them all has been Christianity...which shouldn't come as a surprise because of the three of them Christianity has the best sounding spokesperson. Moses is hard to take seriously, he was old and hairy as well as hoary...and Muhammad was saint and general so you can't be sure which weapon he'd use. Only Jesus..."meek and mild" could be put to work to pull the wool over people's eyes so that those who profit by it can get away with the most outrageous brutality and crimes.
No one is suggesting kindness, decency and love be gotten rid of...quite the contrary...it is this fanaticism, this insistance that god spoke the truth, the real truth "ONLY TO ME" that's killing us. Christianity and the crucifixion of Christ are said to be prime examples of "sacrifice"...by which is meant sacrificing something dear for the sake of the one you love. The ancient Assyrians knew all about sacrifice...all about working long and hard to build a magnificent civilization to bequeath their children. What they DIDN'T know about and wouldn't have tolerated for a minute, was the idea that if things went badly...if the city or house or wealth you wanted to leave your children was seriously jeopardized..perhaps because as the king or parents and adults you were negligent or improvident or just plain dumb...you took the kid you were supposedly sacrificing it all for...and sacrificed HIM.
A parent's or a God's fuck-up, in Assyria, was not made up for by killing an innocent child. If God got the world wrong...if a king screwed up...if parents were neglectful...in Assyria THEY would be held accountable (when Ashur "failed" the Assyrians they didn't take it out on themselves or their children...they took it out on HIM). Not in Sheepshitland...down there you dealt with the problems you'd created or couldn't solve by "sacrificing" (let's stop horsing around..."cold blooded murder" is a REAL word for "sacrifice" in the bible world) what was dearest to you...putting to death the LEAST accountable...the MOST innocent and TRULY blameless thing you could find...a dear son. That is the bloody example Yahwe set us...that is what makes Christianity tick and rumble and roar...not love, or kindness which many people have and have had and will have, who never heard of Jesus and don't want to.
And this...this "sacrifice as love"...when you sacrifice the CHILD and not your own ass...this is Jew stuff...it never, ever was Assyrian and it will never be. You can see now with Aprim, Jatou, Jizzoo and Gumby how this Jew thing permeates their "patriotic" feelings for BetNahrain...the land so "dear" to them even the ruins of Ashur make them weep. And what is their solution...what is their "policy" but pure Jew crap? Bomb it...attack it...burn it, starve it, SACRIFICE it if you must, because WE fucked up! Show your love by killing it and the people...never, under any circumstances settle the issue the way it obviously has to be if peace is ever to come there...Iraq is Assyria, it is what remains of Assyria and Babylon and Sumer and Akkad and Mari etc...the people of Iraq are all descended from those civilizations...in ways and degrees we can never hope to settle and don't matter a rat's ass unless eternal turmoil and upheaval is what you want. If peace and love and security is the issue, and not revenge...accept the fact that Iraq is Muslim...that it has been that way for 1300 years, that it's just another religion, no better or worse than any other, that murder, the murder of children is a WHOLE lot worse... accept it or else, in the grand tradition of Fanaticism...nothing short of total annihilation is going to satisfy these religious types... and we're moving closer every day.
Christians have been able to live and work in peace in Iraq even before the influx of refugees from Iran in 1918. Today Tariq Aziz is high in government and other postitions are held by Christians. If the point is to maintain ones private faith...to pray to your god in security...there is no problem. The problems come when this knot of zealous, pissed-as-hell Christians provoke retaliation deliberately...while pretending to be merely "exercising their religious rights". Any person in the United States can get his ass thrown in jail by practising religion in illegal ways...like robbing a bank "for god". Jails in America are stuffed to bursting with Christians...is each and every one of them there because of his religious beliefs? Perhaps Muslims will be soon...as Japanese Americans were once jailed because of their ancestry. These things happen and the the way to fix them is to FIX THEM...to take the long hard road and make accomodations and compromises...(someting no devotee of Yahwe can afford to do), like Tariq Aziz and others have done...like Muslims in America have to do...like Jews always had to do. But not this...not this calling down guns and bombs and death to a country you "love" because you want to "save" it...get it to see "the truth"...sacrifice it even, if you must...because it is SO dear.
This way madness...and a whole lot of death...lies. These Assrin policies come from boys mostly...boys whose Mamas were convinced they had a champion on their hands...who put themselves and their daughters to work polishing the little tyke's balls all his life so that he thinks nothing of "demanding" a country too...something his Mama would give him in a minute, "why not the United Nations"?
note: Sometimes footnotes are as pungent as regular text. You'll recall how the authors tell us that "tiny Israel" discovered truth in history...how they among all the nations wrote "real" history..."historiography" (which sounds this much like "hysteria") and not oriental mish mash. Here's how they describe a discrepancy in the name, just the name, of one Jew..."The later author of Chronicles, aparently unable to entertain the idea of a non-Isrelite with a Yahwistic name, modified Joram's name to the more pagan-souding Hadoram (1 Chronicles 18:10)"...so much for truth in advertising. You suppose they "modified" anything else?
note: Kitty Benjamin was involved years ago in ferrying back Iraqi nationals and their offspring to Iraq because Saddam wanted to lure back the talented ones who had fled...to show them how good life was in Iraq...to offer them jobs and convince them to come back and build the country...build the entire region...something that scared the shit out of Uncle Sam and Aunt Golda. And of course all expenses were paid by the government. The program was suspended when war broke out between Iraq/Iran and the United States. Kitty told me that some of our devout patrots created unnecessary problems by filling out paperwork in "patrot" style. One day she was called in to see someone in Iraqi Immigration who was handling visas for the visitors...who shook his head in dismay and showed her some of the visa appications...now mind you the government of Iraq is footing the bill. Many of our dimmer bulbs had put down "Assyria" as place of birth...and "Assyria" as destination. Can you imagine as Italian putting down "Roman Empire" for city of birth?
Yeah, yeah, I know...THE WORLD OWES US...cause we're too fucking stupid to take care of our own.
-- panch
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