In 1995, in the wake of the Ligonier SOCBA meeting of Nov-Dec 1994 which saw such a can of worms opened up -- I beg anyone who may be reading this without being au courant regarding this and succeeding related events to please do their own research! I say this because it is important that everyone understand on their own and be ready to accordingly act responsibly. Only thus can the practice of conciliar accountability replace the prevailing, and ruinously destructive, torpor of self-pity coupled with blame of others, so that the entire Church – as also our predominantly Christian society which the Church informs – may again breathe, giving hope that soon she may come to breathe with both her lungs, as Pope john Paul hoped and prayed with such fervor.
As the turmoil succeeding Ligonier swirled, I was in Washington DC, specifically to make a request to the Apostolic Delegation for some kind of pass to an appearances of Pope John Paul II – whom I had appealed to for help in response to actions within Orthodox Communion sparked by Ligonier, and who was, by the time of his visit to the US to make a major address to the UN, my very good friend, even soul-mate. It was the feast of Pokrov, so I prayed the Liturgy in the OCA primatial Cathedral of St. Nicholas, which is a short distance across Massachusetts Ave. from the Delegation.
That was when our Holy Mother Protectress gave me what at the time seemed an incomprehensible prayer to God: “Let the Pope become Orthodox, through the prayers of Herbert, for the sake of Bishop Paul.” The prayer rolled out in my head, and as it ended, the magnificent Cathedral choir intoned the three glorious Alleluias following Communion. At the time I was assured that the prayer was indeed from her, inasmuch as I could not understand the meaning – yet it was not possible for me to question or reject the prayer. And, indeed, the meaning has unfolded over the years as events have ensued in accord with it.
These events have intensified of late, as we have moved closer to the feast, which falls on October 1 – the most dramatic, of course, being Yuriy’s remarkable visit from St. Seraphim Sarov, who blessed Yuriy’s before his struggle with the toothless boar!
Today the feast of Pokrov is upon us! I accordingly made a special effort to discern how we are being guided. Just in passing, I will note that as a child I never liked such things as riddles, treasure hunt games, and the like, because I delighted in learning, but it seemed pointless to me to tax my mind figuring out a puzzle with no point beyond just being a puzzle! But with God matters are different altogether, He has even been referred to as the Cloud of Unknowing, this being a fulsome unknowing, pregnant with that meaning which is His unbounded love for us, which therefore can only bring incredible joy and gladness, such that every single one of the martyrs delighted, and sang as if enchanted, in the very midst of the super human sufferings they endured.
We see something of this in Yuriy’s account of his dream:
”Father Seraphim covered me with his stole and blessed me as during confession. At that moment I felt something that no words can describe and I felt the grass under my feet began to brighten up, and the light was surrounding my feet (I could not see anything else as I was covered and was looking at the ground). After that I got up and went to wrestle with a toothless boar (go figure why and it was a huge animal too).”
So we ask: what huge toothless boar is to be so easily wrestled with today? You will recall how, when I mentioned in my memo “Who’s afraid of a toothless boar?” I began with a piece on how Bibi (I don’t dare use his last name after that experience!) was upset by Clinton's comments about Israeli Russians – and for 2 days I couldn’t send that e-mail, either by attaching it or by copying and pasting it into the e-mail itself, until I just on a whim changed Bibi’s last name to Bibi – and then that e-mail sent instantly, simultaneously with the original! Israeli Prime Minister Bibi (or some very powerful associate of his – whoever that might be …….) must be veeery worried to have an alert out on his name that works that effectively!
As I searched for related data, I was sufficiently impressed with the UN address of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and accompanying circumstances to create a file on him. I will share the address with you, and a few significant tid-bits I picked up.
For starters: Here we are Friday and the speech was last Tuesday – and still there is no available transcript of the entire speech – or anything even anything close to such, and including the many interrelated points our friend Avigdor touched upon, definitely he has a brilliant mind with a far-ranging grasp of the relevant issues.
The New York Times included a video of the speech which I reluctantly watched as I find such videos usually of poor quality. NOT this one! Neither does the Foreign Minister mumble anything at all – his English is lightly accented, but articulated with the remarkable clarity of a trained actor or orator! I kid you not! Listen and you will see what I mean, here is the url:
Video of a speech by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/parsing-the-israeli-foreign-ministers-u-n-speech/
NYTimes September 29, 2010
Parsing the Israeli Foreign Minister’s U.N. Speech
By ROBERT MACKEY
As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar reported, on Tuesday Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, used an address to the United Nations General Assembly to directly contradict his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by saying that peace with the Palestinians “could take a few decades” to achieve, rather than one year. [The time element was actually not the salient point, I would say. More Importantly, Lieberman cuts through this “one big sappy – woops! I meant happy!! -- worldwide family” mentality to make the point that different people with different mores can quite legitimately object to being coerce into living together. I will just mention in passing that in the wake of US desegregation, many affluent blacks today prefer to live in affluent black neighborhoods.]
Mr. Lieberman also told delegates that the fundamental framework for a Palestinian state on the West Bank land occupied by Israel since 1967 should be abandoned. Instead, he suggested, “the guiding principle for a final status agreement” should be the “exchange of populated territory.” The foreign minister, who leads Israel’s third-largest party and lives in a West Bank settlement himself, explained that he was not talking about expelling Israel’s Arab population, or evacuating Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land, “but rather about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.”
After Mr. Lieberman finished his speech, his remarks were quickly disowned by the prime minister’s office, even though they were made during Israel’s official contribution to this year’s U.N. debate. The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Kim Ghattas, pointed out how puzzling all this was, writing on Twitter, “Netanyahu says speech by Avigdor Lieberman at U.N. not official Israel policy. I thought Lieberman was the foreign minister.”
To get a sense of how unusual Mr. Lieberman’s comments were, imagine what Americans would be saying if his counterpart, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stood up at the U.N. and said that the Obama administration’s policy of imposing sanctions on Iran was useless and military strikes would be a better idea.
On Wednesday, observers across the Middle East were still asking themselves what it might mean for the peace talks to have Israel’s foreign minister appear at the United Nations and effectively denounce the whole process.
Writing in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, Yossi Verter suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s credibility had been undermined by his coalition partner: Israel has had good foreign ministers and bad ones, and some who were simply forgettable. But never before has it had a foreign minister who exploited his position on the world’s most prestigious stage to recite his party’s platform as if he were at some party function in the boonies. Never before has it had a foreign minister who viewed this bastion of international diplomacy as the proper place to scorn and ridicule his prime minister, even as the latter is confronting a suspicious and skeptical world over the peace process….
Today, all the world’s leaders must be asking themselves: If Netanyahu can’t even tell his foreign minister, ‘either present my policies or shut up,’ what is he capable of doing?
In another Haaretz column, Aluf Benn agreed, writing:
During the past few weeks, Netanyahu invested a great deal of effort in trying to convince the leaders of the world that he is serious about peace with the Palestinians. He asked them to ignore the resumption of settlement construction, and convinced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not to quit the negotiations.
Now comes Lieberman, Israel’s most senior diplomat, and tells all those leaders that… Netanyahu is faking. Even worse: the foreign minister is implying that Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is merely cover for the expulsion of Arab citizens.
Shlomo Mula, a member of Israel’s opposition Kadima party told the Israeli site Ynet News, “the foreign minister is throwing out ludicrous ideas that contradict the policies of the current government. It seems as if Israel has two prime ministers and it is not clear which one the nation should believe.”
The Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai attributed Mr. Lieberman’s “shameless” attempt to undermine Mr. Netanyahu to “his ideological desire to torpedo the negotiations with the Palestinians and his political aspiration to position himself as the genuine leader of Israel’s rightist camp.” He also suggested that the speech had played into the hands of Israel’s enemies, writing:
The foreign minister undermined Israel’s image as a democratic, enlightened state when he presented his audience with the proposal to get rid of some of the country’s Arab citizens via “territorial and population tradeoffs.” It doesn’t matter at all whether such proposal is indeed being considered in Jerusalem seriously or whether it only exists in Lieberman’s head. The very fact that a government minister presents such idea at a binding international forum turns this notion into a powerful weapon at the hands of the significant camp striving to delegitimize the State of Israel.
Mr. Ben-Yishai added:
Lieberman granted a diplomatic victory to Mahmoud Abbas on a silver platter. Lieberman’s words at the UN merely confirm the Palestinian president’s claim that he is suspicious of the intentions of Israelis who speak about two states for two people, but in fact refer to yet another interim agreement that would reinforce the existing situation with mild changes (most of them in Israel’s favor) on the ground.
In an interview with Bloomberg News, Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian negotiator, said that the foreign minister’s speech had undermined Israel’s credibility. “He provided a very, very clear reason for all our skepticism,” Mr. Shaath said.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, defended his boss, writing:
I think Foreign Minister Lieberman’s speech was one of the best I have heard. It was a speech with great vision, wisdom and courage. Maybe some people are afraid of the truth, but Mr. Lieberman was showing to the world a mirror through which realities in the world, and especially the Middle East, could be seen clearly.
In an editorial headlined, “Lieberman’s Vision Is a Reality,” Jamil K. Mroue, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Beirut’s Daily Star, endorsed the view that Israel’s foreign minister is being more honest about his government’s approach than its prime minister. He wrote:
Anyone with access to the internet — and now those with an iPhone thanks to a new application from Americans for Peace Now, which allows you to see a continuously updated map of settlement construction in the West Bank — should be able to see that it is Lieberman’s plan which bears most resemblance to reality.
There are now close to 500,000 [settlers] in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land occupied since 1967. Large settlements stretch eastward, dissecting the West Bank and separating the north from the south. These settlements are built on the most arable land, with the greatest access to water, and are criss-crossed by settler-only roads. Outside of the military-protected settlements, Palestinian’s movement is severely restricted as they are forced to negotiate a mass of checkpoints and diversions.
These are what are commonly referred to as “the facts on the ground.” And so it is confusing to hear Netanyahu’s office say that Lieberman’s views are “unhelpful,” or even dangerous, because it is precisely his viewpoint that has prevailed throughout successive governments for the past 50 years. The Israeli government portrays settlement construction as an inevitable force, one that is hard to control even if it wanted to. The reality is that settlers are actively encouraged to build in the West Bank, attracted by subsidies and financial benefits from the government….
It is always the case that actions speak louder than words. Anyone with a desire to distinguish between the words of the Netanyahu administration, and the reality its actions, should take a look at a map of settlements in the West Bank. Herein lies the Israeli government’s true vision for a Palestinian state, and it is Lieberman’s version, not the one that Netanyahu claims to support, that we see.
As the turmoil succeeding Ligonier swirled, I was in Washington DC, specifically to make a request to the Apostolic Delegation for some kind of pass to an appearances of Pope John Paul II – whom I had appealed to for help in response to actions within Orthodox Communion sparked by Ligonier, and who was, by the time of his visit to the US to make a major address to the UN, my very good friend, even soul-mate. It was the feast of Pokrov, so I prayed the Liturgy in the OCA primatial Cathedral of St. Nicholas, which is a short distance across Massachusetts Ave. from the Delegation.
That was when our Holy Mother Protectress gave me what at the time seemed an incomprehensible prayer to God: “Let the Pope become Orthodox, through the prayers of Herbert, for the sake of Bishop Paul.” The prayer rolled out in my head, and as it ended, the magnificent Cathedral choir intoned the three glorious Alleluias following Communion. At the time I was assured that the prayer was indeed from her, inasmuch as I could not understand the meaning – yet it was not possible for me to question or reject the prayer. And, indeed, the meaning has unfolded over the years as events have ensued in accord with it.
These events have intensified of late, as we have moved closer to the feast, which falls on October 1 – the most dramatic, of course, being Yuriy’s remarkable visit from St. Seraphim Sarov, who blessed Yuriy’s before his struggle with the toothless boar!
Today the feast of Pokrov is upon us! I accordingly made a special effort to discern how we are being guided. Just in passing, I will note that as a child I never liked such things as riddles, treasure hunt games, and the like, because I delighted in learning, but it seemed pointless to me to tax my mind figuring out a puzzle with no point beyond just being a puzzle! But with God matters are different altogether, He has even been referred to as the Cloud of Unknowing, this being a fulsome unknowing, pregnant with that meaning which is His unbounded love for us, which therefore can only bring incredible joy and gladness, such that every single one of the martyrs delighted, and sang as if enchanted, in the very midst of the super human sufferings they endured.
We see something of this in Yuriy’s account of his dream:
”Father Seraphim covered me with his stole and blessed me as during confession. At that moment I felt something that no words can describe and I felt the grass under my feet began to brighten up, and the light was surrounding my feet (I could not see anything else as I was covered and was looking at the ground). After that I got up and went to wrestle with a toothless boar (go figure why and it was a huge animal too).”
So we ask: what huge toothless boar is to be so easily wrestled with today? You will recall how, when I mentioned in my memo “Who’s afraid of a toothless boar?” I began with a piece on how Bibi (I don’t dare use his last name after that experience!) was upset by Clinton's comments about Israeli Russians – and for 2 days I couldn’t send that e-mail, either by attaching it or by copying and pasting it into the e-mail itself, until I just on a whim changed Bibi’s last name to Bibi – and then that e-mail sent instantly, simultaneously with the original! Israeli Prime Minister Bibi (or some very powerful associate of his – whoever that might be …….) must be veeery worried to have an alert out on his name that works that effectively!
As I searched for related data, I was sufficiently impressed with the UN address of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and accompanying circumstances to create a file on him. I will share the address with you, and a few significant tid-bits I picked up.
For starters: Here we are Friday and the speech was last Tuesday – and still there is no available transcript of the entire speech – or anything even anything close to such, and including the many interrelated points our friend Avigdor touched upon, definitely he has a brilliant mind with a far-ranging grasp of the relevant issues.
The New York Times included a video of the speech which I reluctantly watched as I find such videos usually of poor quality. NOT this one! Neither does the Foreign Minister mumble anything at all – his English is lightly accented, but articulated with the remarkable clarity of a trained actor or orator! I kid you not! Listen and you will see what I mean, here is the url:
Video of a speech by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/parsing-the-israeli-foreign-ministers-u-n-speech/
NYTimes September 29, 2010
Parsing the Israeli Foreign Minister’s U.N. Speech
By ROBERT MACKEY
As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar reported, on Tuesday Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, used an address to the United Nations General Assembly to directly contradict his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by saying that peace with the Palestinians “could take a few decades” to achieve, rather than one year. [The time element was actually not the salient point, I would say. More Importantly, Lieberman cuts through this “one big sappy – woops! I meant happy!! -- worldwide family” mentality to make the point that different people with different mores can quite legitimately object to being coerce into living together. I will just mention in passing that in the wake of US desegregation, many affluent blacks today prefer to live in affluent black neighborhoods.]
Mr. Lieberman also told delegates that the fundamental framework for a Palestinian state on the West Bank land occupied by Israel since 1967 should be abandoned. Instead, he suggested, “the guiding principle for a final status agreement” should be the “exchange of populated territory.” The foreign minister, who leads Israel’s third-largest party and lives in a West Bank settlement himself, explained that he was not talking about expelling Israel’s Arab population, or evacuating Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land, “but rather about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.”
After Mr. Lieberman finished his speech, his remarks were quickly disowned by the prime minister’s office, even though they were made during Israel’s official contribution to this year’s U.N. debate. The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Kim Ghattas, pointed out how puzzling all this was, writing on Twitter, “Netanyahu says speech by Avigdor Lieberman at U.N. not official Israel policy. I thought Lieberman was the foreign minister.”
To get a sense of how unusual Mr. Lieberman’s comments were, imagine what Americans would be saying if his counterpart, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stood up at the U.N. and said that the Obama administration’s policy of imposing sanctions on Iran was useless and military strikes would be a better idea.
On Wednesday, observers across the Middle East were still asking themselves what it might mean for the peace talks to have Israel’s foreign minister appear at the United Nations and effectively denounce the whole process.
Writing in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, Yossi Verter suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s credibility had been undermined by his coalition partner: Israel has had good foreign ministers and bad ones, and some who were simply forgettable. But never before has it had a foreign minister who exploited his position on the world’s most prestigious stage to recite his party’s platform as if he were at some party function in the boonies. Never before has it had a foreign minister who viewed this bastion of international diplomacy as the proper place to scorn and ridicule his prime minister, even as the latter is confronting a suspicious and skeptical world over the peace process….
Today, all the world’s leaders must be asking themselves: If Netanyahu can’t even tell his foreign minister, ‘either present my policies or shut up,’ what is he capable of doing?
In another Haaretz column, Aluf Benn agreed, writing:
During the past few weeks, Netanyahu invested a great deal of effort in trying to convince the leaders of the world that he is serious about peace with the Palestinians. He asked them to ignore the resumption of settlement construction, and convinced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not to quit the negotiations.
Now comes Lieberman, Israel’s most senior diplomat, and tells all those leaders that… Netanyahu is faking. Even worse: the foreign minister is implying that Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is merely cover for the expulsion of Arab citizens.
Shlomo Mula, a member of Israel’s opposition Kadima party told the Israeli site Ynet News, “the foreign minister is throwing out ludicrous ideas that contradict the policies of the current government. It seems as if Israel has two prime ministers and it is not clear which one the nation should believe.”
The Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai attributed Mr. Lieberman’s “shameless” attempt to undermine Mr. Netanyahu to “his ideological desire to torpedo the negotiations with the Palestinians and his political aspiration to position himself as the genuine leader of Israel’s rightist camp.” He also suggested that the speech had played into the hands of Israel’s enemies, writing:
The foreign minister undermined Israel’s image as a democratic, enlightened state when he presented his audience with the proposal to get rid of some of the country’s Arab citizens via “territorial and population tradeoffs.” It doesn’t matter at all whether such proposal is indeed being considered in Jerusalem seriously or whether it only exists in Lieberman’s head. The very fact that a government minister presents such idea at a binding international forum turns this notion into a powerful weapon at the hands of the significant camp striving to delegitimize the State of Israel.
Mr. Ben-Yishai added:
Lieberman granted a diplomatic victory to Mahmoud Abbas on a silver platter. Lieberman’s words at the UN merely confirm the Palestinian president’s claim that he is suspicious of the intentions of Israelis who speak about two states for two people, but in fact refer to yet another interim agreement that would reinforce the existing situation with mild changes (most of them in Israel’s favor) on the ground.
In an interview with Bloomberg News, Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian negotiator, said that the foreign minister’s speech had undermined Israel’s credibility. “He provided a very, very clear reason for all our skepticism,” Mr. Shaath said.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, defended his boss, writing:
I think Foreign Minister Lieberman’s speech was one of the best I have heard. It was a speech with great vision, wisdom and courage. Maybe some people are afraid of the truth, but Mr. Lieberman was showing to the world a mirror through which realities in the world, and especially the Middle East, could be seen clearly.
In an editorial headlined, “Lieberman’s Vision Is a Reality,” Jamil K. Mroue, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Beirut’s Daily Star, endorsed the view that Israel’s foreign minister is being more honest about his government’s approach than its prime minister. He wrote:
Anyone with access to the internet — and now those with an iPhone thanks to a new application from Americans for Peace Now, which allows you to see a continuously updated map of settlement construction in the West Bank — should be able to see that it is Lieberman’s plan which bears most resemblance to reality.
There are now close to 500,000 [settlers] in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land occupied since 1967. Large settlements stretch eastward, dissecting the West Bank and separating the north from the south. These settlements are built on the most arable land, with the greatest access to water, and are criss-crossed by settler-only roads. Outside of the military-protected settlements, Palestinian’s movement is severely restricted as they are forced to negotiate a mass of checkpoints and diversions.
These are what are commonly referred to as “the facts on the ground.” And so it is confusing to hear Netanyahu’s office say that Lieberman’s views are “unhelpful,” or even dangerous, because it is precisely his viewpoint that has prevailed throughout successive governments for the past 50 years. The Israeli government portrays settlement construction as an inevitable force, one that is hard to control even if it wanted to. The reality is that settlers are actively encouraged to build in the West Bank, attracted by subsidies and financial benefits from the government….
It is always the case that actions speak louder than words. Anyone with a desire to distinguish between the words of the Netanyahu administration, and the reality its actions, should take a look at a map of settlements in the West Bank. Herein lies the Israeli government’s true vision for a Palestinian state, and it is Lieberman’s version, not the one that Netanyahu claims to support, that we see.