Jonah

When God came to Jonah, urging him to go to Nineveh to cry out “against it, because its wickedness had risen to [His] presence,” such was the wickedness of the sins committed by its inhabitants. In the prophetic tradition, the mission of the messenger of God was to produce repentance that would be followed by divine forgiveness.

What is happening today in this same region of the world refers to another kind of evil in the form of Islamic terrorists. They are embedded in the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, acronym ISIL in English. With iron fist and fire they seek to impose their cruel interpretation of Islamic Sharia on the people of this region. For them, the presence of other religions is unforgivable.

ISIL supports the following three pillars of intolerance towards other religions: forced abandonment of homes and possessions, conversion or execution, and violent killings of men and raping of women. Any other religious worship that opposes their belief system immediately becomes the subject to these forms of terror.

When Mausoleum of Jonah was destroyed a few weeks ago, we watched the beginning of what was to be the systematic persecution of Christians, Yazidis and Shiite Muslims.

Note that this Christian population is one of the oldest in the world, being composed of a few hundred thousand people. Their exodus is already over 100,000 believers as they flee their homes from death and violence. Even worse is the fate of the Yazidi community, whose religion is of monotheistic origin and formed by a syncretism between Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. However, their relation to Islam doesn’t matter because they fall under the heading of “infidels” who should be exterminated. The Yazidi population fled to the mountains and dozens of children have been killed, while 40,000 adults are without water and food and on the brink of death.

We should observe the fact that Mausoleum of Jonah was the object of desecration precisely because Jews, Christians and Muslims alike revere the prophet Jonah. In the Bible, God appears to Nineveh as magnanimous and benevolent to the people of Nineveh, which gives this book it’s particularly ecumenical significance.

This type of benevolence is intolerable for Islamic Terrorist. Whoever doesn’t follow their precepts becomes an infidel. Christians, Jews, Yazidis and Muslims of other orientations are all considered infidels. Nothing much different from what was observed in Afghanistan when the Taliban also destroyed beautiful Buddhist sculptures that were considered heretical.

Nothing much different than the Hamas Charter which teaches the extermination of the Jews from the face of the earth and the persecution of Christians. The trunk is the same, the difference lies in the branches that have developed according to the peculiarities of each region. Al Queda, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and ISIL are just branches of the same doctrine all having their roots in the cult of death and violence.

In some cases, the death cult not only manifests itself in the systematic murder of unbelievers, including women and children, but the education of their own children in the hatred of “infidels” and the sacrifice of “martyrdom.” The reading of the Hamas Covenant in this context could be very illustrative for political leftists. It would be interesting if these who defended the terrorist incorporated these “death threats” in their own party programs. They would at least be being consistent instead of propagating the lies of Terror.

Particularly eloquent are the statistics that are presented in the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. More than 1,800 people have died there, allegedly by “indiscriminate” attacks by Israel. It is interesting that the sources used are the Ministry of Health of Hamas and the UN in the region! So we can assess that it’s Hamas itself that provides the figures that are simply transmitted by news agencies. These agencies should know better that the manipulation of the truth is the specialty of Hamas. The lie itself is the Terror’s instrument of domination.

The same goes for the UN without any credibility in the region. Three schools – must be others – have been discovered to be missile shelters, as reported by an employee of the organization itself. A UN clinic was built with explosives inside the walls to be detonated when the Israeli soldiers entered. Consequently, three lost their lives in this explosion.

Note the way the statistics are presented to produce the perception that the Israeli military targets civilians. Following this reasoning, we would have the bizarre and hilarious conclusion that Hamas fighters would not have died or perhaps even existed. In this contexts Israel would be fighting windmills!

Israel estimates that around 50% of the dead are Hamas members. Much of the civilian deaths came about because they were human shields. Terrorists are hiding in shelters, tunnels, and sacrifice their own civilians to martyrdom. If Israel had civilians as its target, it would not be fighting for land, which specifically seeks to avoid civilian casualties. Israel would be devastating the cities as was the practice during World War II. The BBC and the New York Times are now producing a general revision of these statistics showing their inconsistency and reduced credibility.

Incidentally, a Manual of Terror was recently discovered in which Hamas recognizes the legitimate use of human shields and questions the moral character of the Israelis who while preserving civilians put their own soldiers at risk. They themselves have become objects of Terror.

The Islamic Army of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) when compared to Hamas have a merit of consistency and, somehow, “honesty”. ISIL clearly seeks to convert or execute infidels (Christians, Yazidis and Shia), while the organization of Gaza are hypocrites, seeking to abuse the good faith of non-Jewish Westerners, although of course still seeing them as Christians. They play the part of “victims” while covertly acting as agents of terror and intolerance.