Babylon

Baghdad Burning, 22-10-2007
een gevluchte Irakese vrouw in Syrie

The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too... Welcome to the building.”

Zie ook: Gilad Atzmon en het Tribalisme

The Mother of all Pretexts
Uri Avnery - 13/10/2007

WHY WAS the Zionist movement in need of excuses to justify the way it treated the Palestinian people? At its birth, it was an idealistic movement. It laid great weight on its moral basis. Not just in order to convince the world, but above all in order to set its own conscience at rest... But this idealistic movement aimed at settling in a country inhabited by another people. How to bridge this contradiction between its sublime ideals and the fact that their realization necessitated the expulsion of the people of the land?

Only one of the Founding Fathers of the Zionist movement was courageous enough to call a spade a spade... We are white settlers colonizing the land of the native people, he said, and there is no chance whatsoever that the natives will resign themselves to this voluntarily. They will resist violently, like all the native peoples in the European colonies. Therefore we need an "Iron Wall" to protect the Zionist enterprise.

Most Zionists were not prepared to accept this force-oriented approach. They searched fervently for a moral justification they could live with.
Thus started the long quest for justifications - with each pretext supplanting the previous one, according to the changing spiritual fashions in the world.

World War II came to an end, to be followed by the 1948 war. Half of the vanquished Palestinian people became refugees...
It may be asked: why were the refugees not allowed to come back to their homes once the war was over? Well, it was they who in 1947 rejected the UN partition plan and started the war. If because of this they lost 78% of their country, they have only themselves to blame.
Then came the Cold War. We were, of course, on the side of the "Free World", while the great Arab leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, got his weapons from the Soviet bloc... It was quite clear: No use talking with the Arabs, because they support Communist tyranny.
But the Soviet bloc collapsed. "The terrorist organization called PLO", as Menachem Begin used to call it, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo agreement. A new justification had to be found for our unwillingness to give back the occupied territories to the Palestinian people.

The salvation came from America: a professor named Samuel Huntington wrote a book about the "Clash of Civilizations". And so we found the mother of all pretexts.
THE ARCH-ENEMY, according to this theory, is Islam. Western Civilization, Judeo-Christian, liberal, democratic, tolerant, is under attack from the Islamic monster, fanatical, terrorist, murderous.

Professor Huntington was not thinking about us in particular. His task was to satisfy a peculiar American craving: the American empire always needs a virtual, world-embracing enemy, a single enemy which includes all the opponents of the United States around the world....

When the Communist empire collapsed, America was suddenly left without a world-wide enemy. This vacuum has now been filled by the Muslims-Terrorists...
Thus the American world view rearranged itself: a good world (Western Civilization) and a bad world (Islamic civilization). Diplomats still take care to make a distinction between "radical Islamists" and "moderate Muslims", but that is only for appearances' sake. Between ourselves, we know of course that they are all Osama bin Ladens. They are all the same.

The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is no longer a conflict between the Zionist movement, which came to settle in this country, and the Palestinian people, which inhabited it. No, it has been from the very beginning a part of a world-wide struggle which does not stem from our aspirations and actions. The assault of terrorist Islam on the Western world did not start because of us. Our conscience can be entirely clean - we are among the good guys of this world.

IN HIS book "Der Judenstaat", Theodor Herzl, the official Israeli "Prophet of the State", prophesied this development, too.
This is what he wrote in 1896: "For Europe we shall constitute (in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as a vanguard of culture against barbarism."

Herzl was thinking of a metaphoric wall, but in the meantime we have put up a very real one. For many, this is not just a Separation Wall between Israel and Palestine. It is a part of the world-wide wall between the West and Islam, the front-line of the Clash of Civilizations...
Beyond the wall there are a billion terrorists, multitudes of blood-thirsty Muslims, who have only one desire in life: to throw us into the sea, simply because we are Jews, part of Judeo-Christian Civilization.

And what is left to us to do - to cry or to laugh?

Gush Shalom Website

Awaiting justice

Amid continual massacres perpetrated by the US occupation and its local allies, millions of Iraqis have fled their homes. From Damascus and Amman, Amanda Noureddine reports on the exodus

Since the US and UK forces invaded Iraq in 2003, an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes, the majority in the last two years.
Up to two million are estimated to have sought refuge outside Iraq, while the remainder has been displaced within the country. The exodus is the largest the region has witnessed since the Palestinian Nakba. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the flight of Iraqis continues at a rate of 60,000 per month.

IRAQIS SEEK REFUGE: With much of the West turned into forbidden ground, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who have left their country since the invasion have sought refuge in neighbouring Arab states, namely Syria, Jordan, and to a far lesser but still significant extent, Egypt and Lebanon.
Syria has received by far the highest number of Iraqis, with current estimates running to approximately 1.5 million. According to UNHCR figures released August 2007, between 500,000 and 750,000 Iraqis are estimated to have fled to Jordan. Figures for Egypt are less clear...

It is impossible to estimate how many Iraqis still in Iraq may yet need to seek safety for their families away from the occupation and away from Iraq. The manner in which the occupation has sought to distort the composition of the Iraqi nation, causing the displacement of well over one sixth of Iraq's population, and principally its middle class, followed by predictable moves to trap the rest, as if to punish them for holding on, appears telling of US intent in Iraq.

WHAT COMES NEXT? According to AI, greater international commitment is required to improve the situation of Iraq's refugees. The AI report adds that existing pledges for assistance to governments hosting Iraqis must urgently be honoured. But beyond basic survival, it is not easy to determine the best way forward for Iraqi refugees barring the end of the US occupation...

It is telling that the states that led and participated in the illegal invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq publicly cited human rights as one of their pretexts while their actions amount to genocide, not only in the figure of one million Iraqis dead, but in the creation of the largest refugee crisis the region has seen since the establishment of Israel.
Just as the Nakba was essential to the attempted destruction of Palestine, the Iraqi refugee explosion is an integral part of the attempted destruction of the Iraqi nation.

Amanda Noureddine, Al-Ahram Weekly, 16-24 october 2007

Holocaust en Secularisering

Een feit is dat Iran geen vrede wil met een Israel dat geleid wordt door mensen die via het zionisme het door de Islam afgewezen Ezra-istische groepsegoïsme verdedigen. Iran stelt zich zeer principieel op door te stellen dat geen afstand gedaan mag worden van het rechtvaardigheidsbeginsel, hetgeen betekent dat men die mensen steunt die bereid zijn 'een rechtvaardige oorlog' te voeren, een oorlog die zionisten daarom antisemitisch en nazistisch noemen omdat ze de heilig verklaarde joodse groepsidentiteit bedreigen.

Over die heiligverklaring en het verlies van de eigen identiteit gaan de volgende tekstfragmenten die van de website JUDAISM ONLINE zijn gehaald. Hierin wordt joden gewezen op de bijbels-goddelijke opdracht die de joden als 'heilig volk' gekregen hebben, een opdracht die heel duidelijk wordt gekoppeld aan de schriftgeleerde EZRA, die volgens mensen die bereid zijn de geschiedenis op een rationele wijze te bestuderen gezien wordt als de echte stichter van wat wij nu 'het jodendom' noemen.

1. IN LOVE WITH A NON-JEW

Vragen:

Dear Rabbi, I am in love with a Catholic woman. I want to marry her. She loves me as much but religious beliefs are getting in the way. Please tell me what I should do, my parents say "no way." Help.

Dear Rabbi, I’m getting married in October to a girl who is not Jewish (she is Hindu, born in India) and we’re having a difficult time finding a Rabbi who will marry us. Why is this? And do you have any recommendations for Rabbis that would consider performing the ceremony. It’s important to me and my family that we are married by a Rabbi. Thanks.

Antwoord:

For Jews, "marrying within the faith" isn't a cultural preference or prejudice. Rather, it is one the commandments G-d gave us at Mount Sinai. A Jew who marries a non-Jew transgresses a Torah prohibition.

The practice of not "intermarrying" is in fact one of the oldest features of Judaism. It dates back to Abraham telling Eliezer, his servant, not to find a wife for his son from the Canaanites. It continues with Isaac's command to his son Jacob not to marry the "daughters of the land." The practice is mentioned in the Bible as a legal prohibition, and is also part of the covenant that Ezra the scribe had the Jews make when they rebuilt the Temple after the Babylonian Exile.

In all the above cases the underlying idea of the prohibition seems to be ideological. As Jews, we have a unique identity that is connected to our purpose in the world. We are the "chosen people." We were chosen to propagate the ethical monotheism of Judaism. In the words of Leo Tolstoy:

"The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religious. The Jew is the pioneer of liberty. The Jew is the pioneer of civilization. The Jew is the emblem of eternity."

We were chosen as a permanent protest group against idolatry and immorality. Intermarriage is therefore antithetical to the Jewish purpose and to the Jewish identity.

Can we prove that we are chosen? Do we have evidence? Yes. In a brief look at history we can see the antiquity, survival and impact of the Jewish people as unique and remarkable. I don't think that I can put it better than Mark Twain, in his famous description of Jewish history, "An Essay Concerning the Jews":

"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of...
The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other nations pass, but he remains..."

Intermarriage is a betrayal of our task and of our "choseness." It is also a guarantee against Jewish continuity.
Being Jewish isn't a cultural affiliation or a tradition. It's being part of the Chosen People. (Judaism Online)

Dat het traditonele denken in Amerika, dat in het Midden-Oosten de rol van joods-zionistische inquisiteur aan het spelen is (oorlog voeren met de vijanden van het bedreigde volk), steeds minder aanhang heeft binnen een wereld die conservatieven 'de joodse gemeenschap' noemen blijkt uit het citaat hieronder, een tekstfragment dat het zwaarbeladen begrip 'holocaust' koppelt aan het doodgewone, alledaagse verschijnsel van ontkerkelijking en secularisering:

2. INTERMARRIAGE STATISTICS

"Our grandparents prayed for a melting pot. What they got instead was a meltdown!" Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald

As the year 2000 fast approaches, North America's Jewish population faces a disturbing set of trends that threatens the viability of Judaism on this continent in the next century -- The J2K (Jewish 2000) Problem. Unlike the persecution that the Jewish people have endured by the hands of others for over 3,000 years, Jews on this continent now face a "silent holocaust" stemming from within their very own communities and their very own households.

Today, of the approximately 6 million Jews in the United States, about 2 out of 3, either do not identify themselves Jewishly or maintain an affiliation with a synagogue. This staggering portrait of American Jewish life is perpetuated by a host of disturbing national trends, including a quickly growing rate of Jewish intermarriage, an extraordinary low birth rate, and a sharp increase in the number of children being raised as non-Jews.

In the past, Jews rallied together around a core of religious and ethnic traditions, such as synagogue affiliation, lighting of Shabbat candles and giving charity to Jewish institutions. These practices were first learned in the home and were enhanced over a lifetime of familial and communal interaction.

However today, North America's Jewish population has experienced an internal breakdown of both the family unit and the concept of community, that have unified the Jewish people for so long. As these ancient practices and rituals disappear, so do the number of Jewish people on this continent who consider themselves Jewish. So powerful is this meltdown of Jewish life, that Judaism in America, as we have known it for the last 300 years, will likely cease to exist in the new millennium. (Judaism Online)

Is A Vote For Rudy A Vote For War?
By Patrick J. Buchanan - 10 november 2007

While FDR talked to Stalin, Ike and JFK to Khrushchev, and Nixon to Mao, Rudy would not talk to any "enemies bent on our destruction or those who cannot deliver on their agreements." Would he be even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute? Answers Rudy, "America shouldn't be even-handed in dealing with ... an elected democracy ... and a group of terrorists."

If Rudy rivals McCain as the hawk's hawk in the Republican race, the foreign policy advisers he has signed up make the Vulcans of Bush look like Howard Zinn and Ramsey Clark. Arnaud de Borchgrave titled his column about them "Dogs of War."

Larijani: "management based on negotiations and logic"
Tehran Times Political Desk

Addressing a students meeting at Isfahan University of Technology, Larijani said, “Iran has reached a good level in nuclear technology due to its steadfastness and today their (Western) theorists say they should accept that Iran has gained access to nuclear technology,” ISNA news agency reported.
The former chief nuclear negotiator said International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has repeatedly said that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and has even endorsed a confirmation by experts that Iran is many years away from being able to develop an atomic bomb even if it wished.
He added that the country requires a strategic management and a strategic management does not contradict a management based on negotiations and logic.

“We should have a logical management according to the Islamic principles and being logical is not in contrast with being revolutionary,” Larijani observed. (Teheran Times, 28-11-2007)

Zoroaster en de Sjia

De iraanse SJIA is in zekere zin een elitaire afwijking van het populistisch ingestelde Islamitische denken dat door de profeet Mohammed werd uitgedragen. Je zou kunnen stellen dat de SJIA op een heimelijke wijze heeft geprobeerd het priestergebonden Zoroastrisme in te bouwen in een Islamitische cultuur die in diepste wezen de wijand is van elke vorm van theocratisch of hogepriesterlijk denken (in de Koran worden mensen die priesters aanbidden - dus boven God plaatsen - vervloekt).
Die afkeer van 'de hogepriester' maakt deel uit van het Arabische denken dat altijd een combinatie is geweest van (tribaal) anarchisme en leiderschapsvererering. De leider is binnen het Arabische denken geen fascistische Messiasfiguur die het volk zijn wil oplegt, maar een eenheid scheppende ordeschepper die Arabische waarden als trots, gastvijheid, gemoedelijkheid en verlangen naar grootheid uitstraalt (waarden die astrologisch gezien bij het dierenriemteken LEEUW behoren).
Het spreekt vanzelf dat de oproep van Larijani om te kiezen voor een beleid dat gericht is op diplomatie en logisch (doordacht) handelen uitstekend aansluit bij Arabisch denken dat bereid is elk conflict via diplomatie op te lossen (mits de tegenstander het principe van de gelijkheid accepteert - respecteren van Arabische trots), zodat je kunt stellen dat zijn afwijzing van het revolutionair Messiaanse denken (dat geneigd is op een starre wijze vast te blijven houden aan tot dogma uitgeroepen principes) een daad is die een bevestiging is van het door Saddam Hussein verdedigde Arabische wijsheidsdenken (over alles valt met iedereen te praten).
Saddam Hussein was een vijand van zowel het theocratisch-Messiaanse machtsdenken van Israel als dat van Iran. De 8-jaar durende oorlog met Iran zou nooit hebben plaatsgevonden wanneer Khomeini zich had gedistantieerd van de revolutionair-utopische golf van hysterie die grote groepen jongeren het hoofd op hol bracht. Samen met Saddam Hussein had hij kunnen werken aan de economische ontwikkeling van de regio, waar hij nu verantwoordelijk moet worden gesteld voor het scheppen van chaos, ellende en verdriet (juist door Messianisme - samenwerken met het verketterde Messiaanse Zionisme - boven logica en wijsheid te plaatsen).
Pleiten voor diplomatie en logica betekent het ontkennen van starre, op vroomheid gebaseerde, dogmatiek. Een nuchter, pragmatisch en logisch denkend mens kan niets - maar dan ook helemaal niets - beginnen met vroomheid. Vroomheid is een eigenschap die hoort bij vrome mensen. Maar niet iedereen wordt geboren als 'vroom' mens. Het zou wijs, verstandig en logisch zijn wanneer vrome mensen in Iran dat zouden willen inzien. Want met dat inzicht zouden ze kunnen terugkeren naar die vorm van Zoroastrisme die in het evangelie wordt genoemd: het magisch-realistische wijsheidsdenken, dat de geboorte van spirituele bevrijding (gesymboliseerd door het kind Jezus) mogelijk maakt.

Zie ook: De wijzen uit het Oosten

Khatami to U.S.: Let's talk directly without preconditions

TEHRAN (Christian Science Monitor)- Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi are among several key Iranian public figures saying that only direct, unconditional talks with the U.S. can ease spiraling tensions.

Mr. Khatami – the reformist cleric who was twice elected in landslide victories – and Ms. Ebadi – a human rights lawyer who just launched a National Peace Council – are suggesting that hard-liners in the U.S. and Iran should no longer dictate the terms of division. One Iranian analyst says: It's time to call the bluff on both sides – and talk.
""The solution is for both sides to resort to logic, refrain from provocative rhetoric, and put the emphasis on negotiations,"" Khatami told the Monitor. ""We have no choice but to overcome misunderstandings that mostly stem from the meddling of the U.S. (in the Middle East) and its wrong policies in Iran,"" said Khatami. ""We can find common interests in the region and the world. And we can also avoid actions that would be damaging to both sides.""

Khatami and Ebadi echo the sentiments of many Iranians – including some in the conservative government – who prefer dialogue and detente with the U.S. to brinksmanship, though hard-line factions often undermine such efforts.

""Attacking Iraq was beyond international rules, and (the U.S.) should not make the same mistake regarding Iran,"" said Ebadi . ""Both governments (Iran and the U.S.) should change their dialogue, bring down their rhetoric and reduce tensions.""
The framework for a ""grand bargain"" that would have addressed all outstanding issues emerged in spring 2003 with a two-page fax from Tehran to Washington. The offer was ignored by a U.S. administration emboldened by the swift fall of Saddam Hussein.

""There is no country that has more common interests with America than Iran,"" says Sadegh Kharazi, the former Iranian ambassador to France who helped draft the offer. ""We still have our (anti-U.S.) revolutionary slogans, but we are not looking for confrontation,"" he adds." (Teheran Times 2-12-2007)

Iran's vredesaanbod in 2003
Huffington Post februari 2007

The Swiss ambassador to Iran informed U.S. officials in 2003 that an Iranian proposal for comprehensive talks with the United States had been reviewed and approved by Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then-President Mohammad Khatami and then-foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi, according to a copy of the cover letter to the Iranian document.

Kessler goes further into the details of the Iranian proposal which was carried by a Swiss emissary:

"I got the clear impression that there is a strong will of the (Iranian) regime to tackle the problem with the U.S. now and to try it with this initiative," wrote Tim Guldimann, the ambassador, in a cover letter that was faxed to the State Department in May 2003. Guldimann attached a one-page Iranian document labeled "Roadmap" that listed U.S. and Iranian aims for potential negotiations, putting on the table such issues as an end to Iran's support for anti-Israeli militants, action against terrorist groups on Iranian soil and acceptance of Israel's right to exist.
The cover letter, which had not previously been disclosed, was provided by a source who felt its contents were mischaracterized by State Department officials. Switzerland serves as a diplomatic channel for communications between Tehran and Washington because the two countries broke off relations after the 1979 seizure of U.S. embassy personnel.

Guldimann's two-page fax prompted a debate among foreign-policy professionals on whether the Bush administration missed an opportunity four years ago to strike a "grand bargain" with Iran at a time when Washington appeared at the height of its power after the invasion of Iraq and Iran had not mastered uranium enrichment. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was questioned about the document on Capitol Hill last week. She said she did not recall seeing it when she was national security adviser. "I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing," she said. (Huffington Post 13-2-2007)

Despite Knowledge That Iran Halted Nuke Program,
White House Continued To Warn Of False Threat

“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. … The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” [Cheney, 10/21/07]

“The problem is Iran, and Iran has not stepped back from trying to pursue a nuclear weapon, and — or reprocessing and enriching uranium, which would lead to a nuclear weapon.” [White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, 10/26/07]

“We talked about Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the sake of peace.” [Bush, 11/7/07]

“We are convinced that they are developing nuclear weapons.” [Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, 11/13/07]

thinkprogress.org, 3-12-2007

Uit de website van de CIA:

"The proportion of the economy devoted to the development of weapons of mass destruction remains a contentious issue with leading Western nations." (CIA-The World Factbook)

"Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for women and girls trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude; according to foreign observers, women and girls are trafficked to Pakistan, Turkey, the Persian Gulf, and Europe for sexual exploitation, while boys from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are trafficked through Iran en route to Persian Gulf states where they are ultimately forced to work as camel jockeys, beggars, or laborers; Afghan women and girls are trafficked to the country for forced marriages and sexual exploitation; women and children are also trafficked internally for the purposes of forced marriage, sexual exploitation, and involuntary servitude." (CIA-World Factbook)

Wie bovenstaande beschuldigingen leest gaat onwillekweurig twijfelen aan het vermogen van de Amerikaanse Inlichtingendienst eerlijke en objectieve informatie ('facts') te verstrekken. Juist de strenge sexuele moraal is voor veel critici van de Islamitische staat Iran een reden te pleiten voor liberalisering.

UK press overtly negative towards Iran, survey finds
Teheran Times, 5 december 2007

Het is altijd de functie geweest van propaganda een tegenstander zwart te maken. Waarom de ander een vijand is wordt meestal verzwegen. In het geval van Iran wordt domweg verzwegen dat de leiding van Iran NIET positief staat tegenover de ZIONISTISCHE STAAT Israel. Net als het Irak van Saddam Hussein wil Iran met iedereen praten, behalve met mensen die eisen dat moslims het zionisme 'goed' en 'rechtvaardig' vinden.
De val van Saddam Hussein (wiens laatste woorden waren dat je op moet passen voor Perzie) moet gezien worden als een omwenteling die in feite een keuze was voor de Iraanse theocratie: men werkte samen met een door Iran gesteunde partij die de Islamitische Revolutie in Irak nastreefde, de seculiere Baath-eenheids-partij werd ontbonden (verboden zelfs!) en de verkiezingen werden op een autoritaire wijze beinvloed - via een Fatwah -door de geestelijke leider van Irak, die een Iraanse ayatollah is. Het is daarom een beetje kinderachtig dat theocratische denken tot 'het grote kwaad' uit te roepen, wanneer je er zelf voor gekozen hebt. De enige zinvolle daad die je kunt stellen is toegeven dat je als Westerse, democratische mogendheid iedereen die anti-Zionistisch is van het democratische toneel wilt verwijderen.

Iran 'on the verge' of normalizing ties with Egypt
(Xinhua - Updated: 2008-01-28 19:20)

"Iran and Egypt's relationship is going ahead in a natural way, " Mottaki said, without specifying when the ties would be resumed.
Iran and Egypt currently only have interest sections in each other country after Iran cut the ties in 1980 in protest against Egypt's recognition of Israel.
Tehran was also furious after Egypt granted asylum to the last Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was dethroned in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. The shah was interred in a mausoleum in the Al-Rifa'i mosque in Cairo.

Een van de belangrijkste kenmerken van de Iraanse revolutie in het jaar 1979 was de keuze voor het anti-Messiaanse principe van de wraak. Astrologisch gezien behoort dit antirationele en altijd tegen het recht gerichte principe bij het teken Schorpioen, dat in zijn negatieve gedaante gesymboliseerd wordt door een SLANG - die op zijn beurt een verwijzing is naar de oud-Perzische antigod AHRIMAN (op de afbeelding hiernaast afgebeeld als een Leeuw die omstrengeld wordt door een Slang).
Ook het zionisme is gebaseerd op het oud-testamentische 'oog-om-oog-principe', dat teruggevoerd kan worden naar een oud-testamentische antigod (de god der wrake) die niemand naast zich duldt.