A Frequency too High for Human Ears to Hear…, Part II

You can find Part One, HERE.

When we place God or Yahweh in a box and His creation, all people groups, ethnicity, race, culture, religion, language, or nationality of a peoples in boxes with labels and listen to what Hollywood productions and politicians tell us about people groups, we too live in a bubble or a box.

We left off discussing the death of Jesus/Yeshua and how blood has a frequency.

Before the crucifixion of Messiah… “The crowd responded with this statement, “His blood be on us and on our children.”

Did this come forth in 70 A.D.?

According to Barnes’ Commentary, over a million people perished during the siege. Thousands died from famine, thousands succumbed to disease, and many were killed by the sword. Their blood flowed down the streets like water. Josephus, Jewish Historian, noted that it (Being blood) even extinguished fires in the city. Many individuals were crucified, enduring the same punishment that they had inflicted on the Messiah. The number of those crucified was so high that, according to Josephus, they had to stop crucifying people because there was no more room for crosses and no more crosses available for the men.

If you turn on the news today, you will see reports of killings happening all over the world. Men fight over land, religion, and global power. MLK stated, “Our nation was born in genocide.”  He was right.

While researching the Amalekites, I stumbled upon a native American, his people too were called Amalek, wild beast, and savages.

Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa is a member of the Pezihuta Zizi community. He has studied the role that the Bible played on the genocide, land theft, and religious suppression of Native American people generally, and of Dakota people in Minnesota specifically. His book, “The Great Evil: Genocide, the Bible, and Indigenous Peoples,” describes how Bible verses were used to justify not only exterminating the Dakota, but also to rationalize the stealing of Dakota homelands and to forcibly remove the Dakota from their ancient homelands. Dr. Mato Nunpa coined that the state of Minnesota, Mni Sota Makoce, means “land where the waters reflect the skies.”

Continuing with Dr. Nunpa:

 “Our site of origin is where the Minnesota river meets the Mississippi river, near the present day Twin Cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis. Most Indigenous peoples have their own origin stories. And their sites of origin are not in Europe or in Africa or the Middle East or in Asia, but here in the Indigenous hemisphere now known as the Americas. And of course we, the Dakota people, like to say: “We were not only the first peoples here, but we were always here, from the beginning, from the mists of time.” 

Governor Alexander Ramsey’s statement which he said many times in public, “Extermination or removal,” referring to the Dakota people. Ramsey even said this to the Minnesota State Legislature. Ramsey was a genocider, a perpetrator of genocide. Or consider Jane Swisshelm’s comments, editor of the St. Cloud Visitor, regarding the Dakota people: “Exterminate the wild beasts and kill the lazy vermin.” Her comment regarding vermin foreshadowed Hitler and Himmler by 70 years plus in the Nazi’s genocidal attitude toward the Jews, characterizing them as vermin. Also, her description of the Dakota people as wild beasts dehumanized the Dakota people, my people. When one dehumanizes a group it is then easy to say and do bad things to them. Lastly, General John Pope, who was stationed in St. Paul, said he would utterly exterminate the Dakota people, even if it took a year. 

These statements advocate genocide and, as a result, many genocidal acts were perpetrated, which included but not limited to the forced marches, the two concentration camps at Fort Snelling and at Mankato, the mass executions, the forcible removals, the bounties placed on Dakota scalps, residential boarding schools, and dozens upon dozens of crimes against humanity advocated and perpetrated by the governor, the state of Minnesota and the Euro Minnesotan citizenry. 

Dr. Nunpa mentioned verses used against him and his people. From the King James Version, Genesis 12: 6, 7, that was used involves the notions of the promised land, chosen people and Canaan.

What is genocide? It is a pretty new word…

genocide(n.)

1944, apparently coined by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) in his work “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe” [p.19], in reference to Nazi extermination of Jews, literally “killing a tribe,” from Greek genos “race, kind”

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. [Lemkin]

Here is a list of genocides to research in your own time if interested:

The Genocide in Darfur

The Rwandan Genocide

The Killing Fields: The Cambodian Genocide

Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution

The Holocaust

What causes Genocide?

Armenians were termed “tubercular microbes” and a local politician asked rhetorically “isn’t it the duty of a doctor to destroy these microbes?” (Balakian 2008: 160). Hitler spoke of the “Jewish virus” and that “by eliminating the pest, [he would] do humanity a service” (Bauman 1989: 71). Not only medical terms were used to justify the killings. Gardening metaphors can also be found. In Rwanda, the chopping up of Tutsi men was called “bush clearing” and slaughtering women and children was labelled as “pulling out the roots of the bad weeds” (Prunier 1997: 142). [1]

Blood…we are told not to eat meat with blood in it because life is in the blood. We skip watching the news channels with blood in it and wars. “It’s too awful to look at” we say, or we call it fake news, propaganda. We too, use Bible verses for everything we stand for, and some have taken it upon themselves to use the Bible verses to describe people as needing to be so far removed from the earth that even the memory of them is blotted out forever. The verse some quote is not actually translated correctly and it also promotes genocide.  Jewish studies at Duke University explore how these verses came to be and how they were used and translated often in error:

As scholars of antiquity, we read texts carefully and try to recreate their most original form and meaning. Our scholarly training may suggest a very different understanding of the texts in Exodus and Deuteronomy. As noted above, both insist unequivocally (5) on blotting out the memory of Amalek. The Hebrew word used for “memory” is, in its consonantal form, זכר. This word is homonymic: זכר I means “memory,” (6) and זכר II, means “male.” The vowels of the text will usually determine the word’s correct translation. These vowel points were inserted into biblical texts only in the second half of the first millennium CE (7); they represent longstanding oral traditions, but are not always accurate. Perhaps the more original text was זְכַר, the likely construct form of זָכָר, “male” (from זכר II), (8) and mandated killing Amalekite adult males—namely the soldiers. This is certainly feasible because the Hebrew verb מחה/י (“blot out”) found in both the Exodus and Deuteronomy texts is used elsewhere to refer to killing people (9). It may thus be appropriate to understand this verse as unrelated to “memory,” but mandating killing all the (adult) males of Amalek.[2]

Back to placing people in boxes along with the Creator of life…what happens when we get to know people, whether Indian, or Cambodian, Japanese or Palestinian? What happens when we erase fear and religion that is tainted and try to see a human standing in all their glory before us? I am asking you Dear Readers to do just that.

I want to share a painting or two by one of the artists killed in Palestine. I could share stories concerning the Jewish hostages, but I think most of my readers are familiar with those stories. I wanted to share the words and paintings of human souls who are not Jewish, but Palestinians.

 Artist Heba Zagout vibrant paintings of Jerusalem’s holy sites and Palestinian women wearing beautiful ornate gowns will be remembered. After sharing a video with many paintings, the 39 year old mother was killed with two of her children, Adam and Mahmoud (Name meaning worthy of praise), in an Israeli air strike. Her husband and two other children survived.

Her artwork is quite lovely… beautiful trees and gardens, women and Jerusalem.

Our next artist’s name was Dorgham Qareqa, 28, and he was a great fan of Van Gogh. An Israeli attack on 4 March killed the Palestinian artist along with his wife, siblings and 13 members of his extended family.

“Qareqa was a multi-talented artist skilled in handicrafts, visual arts, applied arts, blacksmithing and painting. “He created an art community wherever he went,” said Yasmin Jarba, a Palestinian artist and colleague of Dorgham, who now resides in Italy.

“He would teach children how to paint – even if there were no materials, he would use colored mud, and sticks as paint brushes. He would form a group and teach them how to dance the dabka. He even organized plays for them.”

Jarba collaborated with Qareqa, with the help of Italy’s charity organizations, to set up a mobile cinema for the children to screen cartoons and funny movies, helping them heal from the constant suffering.

‘Dorgham’s loss will leave a deep pain in our hearts, but his memories and his work will remain alive in all of us’

– Mohammed al-Haj​​​, Palestinian artist

Here are three lovely poems written by what some through ignorance would call Philistine, an Amalekite, or a wild beast. Two of the poets are no longer living, but their words live on:

By Dan Sheehan

One of my dreams is for my books and my writings to travel the world, for my pen to have wings so that no unstamped passport or visa rejection can hold it back. 

Another dream of mine is to have a small family, to have a little son who looks like me and to tell him a bedtime story as I rock him in my arms.

“Some parents in Gaza have resorted to writing their children’s names on their legs to help identify them should either they or the children be killed.”

Write my name on my leg, Mama

Use the black permanent marker

with the ink that doesn’t bleed

if it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt

if it’s exposed to heat

Write my name on my leg, Mama

Make the lines thick and clear

and add your special flourishes

so I can take comfort in seeing

my mama’s handwriting when I go to sleep

Write my name on my leg, Mama

and on the legs of my sisters and brothers

This way we will belong together

This way we will be known

as your children

Write my name on my leg, Mama

and please write your name

and Baba’s name on your legs, too

so we will be remembered

as a family

Write my name on my leg, Mama

Don’t add any numbers 

like when I was born or the address of our home

I don’t want the world to list me as a number

I have a name and I am not a number

Write my name on my leg, Mama

When the bomb hits our house

When the walls crush our skulls and bones

our legs will tell our story, how

there was nowhere for us to run

© Zeina Azzam

By Refaat Alareer, If I Must Die:

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself—

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale.

If I Must Die

We all will die. We will die with our regrets, our triumphs, our family members who choose to visit. We will die with our dreams, our stories, our wrinkled skin, and our faded eyes. We will die. Some die running and screaming. Some die and their blood is drained neatly by a mortician, others blood is soaked into the earth, the concrete, and splattered on the skies.

Nothing has changed. Blood continues to cry out—wars still rage. Weapons of destruction are not gardening tools designed for nurturing the earth. Our planet is in distress, suffering from the consequences of bloodshed.

Story after story, parable after parable, Jesus (Yeshua) speaks of the theme of bloodshed. Men stand before the Master Rabbi as He teaches them, holding up a mirror with each story reflecting their own lives. Consider the bloodshed in the next story:

“A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a wine vat, and built a watchtower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.

2At harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard. 3But they seized the servant, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.

4Then he sent them another servant, and they struck him over the head and treated him shamefully.

5He sent still another, and this one they killed.

He sent many others; some they beat and others they killed.

6Finally, having one beloved son, he sent him to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

7But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8So they seized the son, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

9What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10Have you never read this Scripture:

‘The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone.

11This is from the Lord,

and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

When our Messiah speaks, He confirms that Jerusalem was a dangerous place for a prophet:

“But I must continue my journey today, tomorrow, and the day after, for it is not fitting for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem.”

Elliot’s Commentary, “Jerusalem had made the SLAUGHTER of the prophets a special prerogative, a monopoly…”

“Yerushalayim, Yerushalayim, (Jerusalem) killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to her! How often I wished to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not!”

Is our Messiah still weeping over Jerusalem? I believe so. The rivers of blood in the land are crying out—the blood of hostages and Palestinians alike. A month has passed since Israel imposed a complete blockade on vital humanitarian aid and supplies entering Gaza, including food, water, electricity, fuel and medicines. The amount of babies and women and children dead is atrocious. Today, more Jewish men and women, including Rabbis are standing with freedom for Palestine. I leave you with the words of a holocaust survivor:

Sources:https://www.pioneer.org/blogs/compass-stories/the-great-evil-christianity-the-bible-and-the-native-american-genocide/

[1] https://jewishstudies.duke.edu/news/destroying-amalek