Jiminy Cricket Goes off on a Crusade against the Jews -- Jimmy Carter Encourages Hatred of and Attacks on Israel

UPDATING at bottom

אמר רב הונא א"ר רב יהושוע בן לוי
כל שהוא רחמן על אכזרים לסוף נעשה אכזר על רחמנים
Those who are merciful to the cruel end up by being cruel to the merciful
[ילקוט שמעוני שמואל א רמז קכא ד"ה Yalqut Shim`oni]

It seems that some ghosts from the past can't seem to do the decent thing and leave us alone after all the damage they did previously. Jimmy Carter is like a ghostly leech. He almost always seems to turn up when he can do ill. He may have been an albatross in a previous incarnation. He continues to spew his soft and mushy, sweet-smelling yet toxic potion for solving all international problems. These solutions usually boil down to doing what the epigraph above talks about. Be merciful to the cruel and everything will be OK. Or sometimes he may falsify a situation, such as his latest stage appearance in which he claims that Israel is an apartheid state. Coming from someone from the Old South whose family was active in the KuKluxKlan and supported the American version of apartheid, the jimcrow system, you might think he speaks as an authority. On the other hand, the Klan hated Jews as well as Blacks, as attested by the lynching of Leo Frank in Carter's home state of Georgia. Maybe Carter would like to shift any sense of guilt he has over black slavery and jimcrow on to those whom it is still --or is again-- acceptable to hate, the Jews, the Ultimate Other of Western culture, although I hesitate to imply that Carter is a man of culture in any way. Further, by smearing Israel as he does, maybe Carter is following in the Nazis' footsteps by attributing guilt to Jews for horrendous crimes, without having significant proof or justification, except for a mood of Jew-hatred that has been assiduously cultivated since the 1967 Six Day War, especially among that manipulated body of public opinion called the Left.

To be sure, Carter himself wants to enforce a certain apartheid or separation or ethnic cleansing or ghettoization on Jews by preventing them from living across the 1949 Israel-Transjordan armistice line [the Green Line] in areas that were in the heart of ancient Israel, in the heart of the Jewish homeland. These areas --called "West Bank" by Carter's ilk-- were recognized in international law at the San Remo Conference in 1920 as part of the Jewish National Home, later endorsed by the League of Nations [1922] which entrusted Britain with a mandate for administering the Jewish National Home in "palestine" [the Western name for the country, not traditionally used by either Jews or Arabs]. Carter's powerful urge to exclude Jews from living over the Green Line is a sort of racist exclusion. Of course, he conceals the real nature of his drive under a thin semantic coating which depicts his racism as anti-racism.

Incidentally, when Carter was running to be nominated as Democratic presidential candidate in 1976, his campaign staff declared him to be in favor of "ethnic purity." This happened in Pennsylvania where --in Philadelphia-- there was a controversy about letting Black people move into a new housing project in a white neighborhood [the Whitman Park affair]. Now, winning the Pennsylvania Democratic primary was considered vital for whoever wanted the Democratic nomination. Especially for those who wanted to stop Henry "Scoop" Jackson [who was pro-Israel by the way]. Carter or his campaign handlers apparently decided that there were more white folks among Pennsylvania registered Democratic voters who opposed letting Blacks into Whitman Park than there were Whites or Blacks who wanted to allow Blacks to live there. So the day before the election --or maybe election day itself-- a small item appeared on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer (owned at the time by the Knight-Ridder chain). The item said that Carter had announced that he favored "ethnic purity." This was interpreted to mean that Carter opposed letting Blacks move into the Whitman Park project. So Carter won the primary and then won the Democratic nomination, and then --to the whole world's great sorrow-- Carter was elected president, bringing along his national insecurity advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Under Zbig's guidance, Carter pressured Israel --before, during, and after Camp David-- to give in to Egyptian demands regarding territory in the Sinai. Zbig also saw to it that Khomeini was allowed to become ruler of Iran in 1979. This was justified on the grounds that the Shah abused civil rights. No doubt he did, but only a fool or ignoramus would have thought that Khomeini could be better, given the bigotry of his views, plainly stated in several books that he had published. Khomeini had openly declared his intention to impose Shari`ah law on Iran. Now, only an ignoramus does not know that Shari`ah law places all non-Muslims in a state of social inferiority, subject to both regular humiliation and economic exploitation in the form of the jizyah and kharaj, and other taxes and exactions that Muslim states force the non-Muslim [dhimmi] to pay. Yet, unofficial mouthpieces for the US government, Ramsey Clark, chairman of the National Advisory Board of the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], and The Nation magazine, both urged American support for and recognition of the new Iranian regime. The Nation wrote in a front page editorial that a man drawing up a new constitution for Khomeini's Iran had "impeccable civil libertarian credentials." Clark went so far as to express anger at American Jews for not supporting recognition of the Khomeini regime. By the way, the fellow drawing up the new civil libertarian constitution was later eliminated in a purge. But Ramsey Clark, like Carter, is still around today, still supporting and arguing the cause of Muslim tyrants in the name of civil liberties, and related blah blah.

Now, Khomeini and his followers instituted a strict Islamic regime in Iran, heedless of what Westerners might consider human rights. That is one of Jiminy Cricket's achievements. He also handled Khomeini's assault on US personnel stationed in Iran [the Iran hostage crisis] in such a way that the American people felt humiliated. We could also thank Carter for the Hizbullah, which Khomeini could not have set up if he --Khomeini-- had not been allowed to take power in Iran previously. Despite everything that Carter and Zbig and Ramsey Clark and other US officials did to help the Khomeini regime take power in Iran, Khomeini's successors, now led by Ahmadinejad, are not grateful. They blame America for almost everything wrong in the world.

On a lighter note, Carter was notorious in times long past for confessing in Playboy magazine [or some such glossy rag] that, despite being married, "I have lusted after women." He probably wasn't the first man to lust after women, if we may call Carter a man. Anyhow, Clinton was more discreet. Another of Carter's gems was uttered after he beat a rabbit to death with a rowboat oar or canoe paddle. It was "a killer rabbit," Carter claimed in self-justification.

After leaving office, Carter set up the Carter Center in Atlanta as a base for political intervention worldwide. He was out of the White House, but the world wasn't going to get rid of him so easily. The Carter Center sent agents and money to various places throughout the world, to advance the Carter political program, the Carter Vision if you like. To cover expenses for all of his ungood works, Carter accepted contributions from, inter alia, the Bank for Credit and Commerce International, a Muslim-run outfit that later went bankrupt due to unsound banking practices. Meanwhile, some jokesters called it the Bank of Crooks and Conmen International. LeMonde reported in the fall of 1992 that the Carter Center got 10 million dollars from BCCI. The main owners of BCCI were the Shaykh of Abu Dhabi and the government of Abu Dhabi [just about the same thing]. Among the beneficiaries of the Carter Center was an outfit operating in Israel called B'tselem, meaning in the image, referring to the Biblical phrase: Man was created in the image of God. Sounds beautiful, doesn't it?

B'tselem operated in favor of civil rights in Judea-Samaria-Gaza, but only for the civil rights of Arabs in those places. Maybe only Arabs, not Jews, were created in God's image. B'tselem specialized in defending Arabs who had attacked Jews. They once publicly claimed to defend the human/civil rights of Jews too in the Judea-Samaria-Gaza areas. However, there were cases where the human rights of Jews living in Judea-Samaria and Gaza were apparently violated by Israeli police, yet B'tselem did not in fact defend the human rights of these persons. So much for the universality of human rights. This brings us back to Carter's belief in "ethnic purity," at least for the purpose of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary in 1976. It seems that he indeed does believe in ethnic purity for the Judea-Samaria and Gaza areas, what he might call "West Bank" and Gaza. He wants Jews excluded from those areas. The German Nazis, by the way, called that policy Judenrein. The South African Afrikaaners called a similar policy apartheid. With such company, one might think that Carter is racist towards Jews. Like his forefathers in the KuKluxKlan.

UPDATING ON CARTER'S JUDEOPHOBIA here by Julia Gorin.
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Coming: the follies of peace, Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron in the 19th century, Britain support for the Arabs in 1948, etc.

More on Peace, Pacifism, Peace Processes, etc.

The only peace produced by the Arab-Israeli Peace Process is Peace of Mind for Judeophobes.
Eliyahu m'Tsiyon

Qui se fait brebis le loup le mange
[Whoever acts like a sheep gets eaten by the wolf]
French saying

Peace is a problematic concept. Yes, it's great. But it's subjective. One guy's peace is another guy's oppression, even "colonial oppression." What does it mean? How is it achieved or obtained? The Roman Temple of Peace [Templum Paci] was a monument to the Roman victory over the Jews in the year 70 CE, when the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman legions and their various auxiliary forces, including Arabs. The so-called Temple of Peace became the depository for most of the more visually interesting loot. On the Brandenburg Gate overlooking main streets in Berlin was a statue of the Goddess of Peace, and few would accuse the Germans as a people of being excessively peaceful. Indeed, the statue was probably put there by Kaiser Wilhelm's government, that continued the warlike empire-building of the Prussian tradition. Ought we to add that the Arab-Muslim culture, based on Islam, is warlike, that the Arabs generally believe in war as a positive principle? Islam mandates war [jihad] on parts of the world ruled by unbelievers [infidels = kufar] until the whole world is ruled by Islam. Indeed, in Iraq Sunni Arab Muslims are slaughtering Shi`ite Arab Muslims, whereas in Algeria, Sunni Arabs have slaughtered up to 150,000 fellow Sunni Arabs since 1991 whose Islam was not deemed sufficiently pure. Yet, President Bush calls Islam "a religion of peace."

Irrational cults that modern man believed had practically vanished from the earth, believing himself and his fellows rational, are now in resurgence. Mass slaughter is actually accepted and "understood" or rationalized by political and moral fools in all three worlds that fashionable 1950s and 1960s sociology, political science, and journalism had divided the world into. Yet, there is a true worldwide proliferation or globalization of foolish and/or hideous pro-mass murder political sects. From Manhattan to Mecca to Moscow the bloodthirsty [practicing or vicarious] caterwaul to each other like cats in heat, as a pack of pro-"civil liberties," pro-"peace" zombies in New York throng at the courthouse, defending the right of terrorist attorney Lynne Stewart to pass messages of terrorism incitement to comrades of the jailed blind sheik, `Umar Abdul-Rahman, previously involved in the assassination of Sadat, anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, the assassination of Rabbi Me'ir Kahane, and the first Twin Towers bombing in 1993. A French weekly reported that `Abdul-Rahman issued a ruling in Muslim law, a fatwa, allowing Muslims to slaughter fellow Muslims deemed insufficiently Islamic. But peace and civil liberties must be served.

Meanwhile, self-styled peace movements provide pretexts for war while the so-called intellectuals are just as stupefied, in the main, as they were while World War Two was approaching. However, at least one published author did notice some of what was happening. Marco Santagata, a prize-winning Italian novelist, told the award ceremony:

Today, we are witnessing the resurgence of mentalities and ideologies that we believed to have been overcome. I am thinking about the wars of religion. We believed that Enlightenment rationality had definitively foreclosed certain phenomena. Yet, on the other hand. . . [at the 2003 Premio Campiello ceremony in Venice, La Repubblica, 9-14-2003]

The award ceremony organizers, in order to express a wish for peace ["to send a message of peace to the world"], maybe deceiving even themselves, invited Israeli novelist Me'ir Shalev and Arab "palestinian" poet, Ahmed Dahbour, to be interviewed on stage. The illusions of the late 1930s are alive again, alive and well and kicking us hard.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of barbarian bloodshed, leaders of the superpowers have been meeting, ostensibly for the sake of peace. An American editor puckishly observed:

Barely a week from now, moreover, the two great leaders of the two great super powers, Mr Gorbachov and Mr Reagan, will meet at a summit to lift the hopes of the world's five billion souls for peace, prosperity, and only small nuclear wars.
[Alan Abelson, editor of Barron's Weekly, 11-30-1987]

The crack about "only small nuclear wars" seems to be moving towards fulfillment, as the governments of the civilized lands of the advanced progressive West, the USA and the EU, plus China and Gorbachov's successor, Vladimir Putin, tyrannical Autocrat of Russia, facilitate acquisition of advanced weapons, nuclear materials, and attainment of a nuclear bomb by the Islamic fanatics of Iran. Yes, Virginia, Uncle Sam too is helping --indeed offering assistance to-- Iran to obtain weapons and the Bomb. How prophetic Alan Abelson was in 1987!!
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Coming: more on peace and its absurdities, war as peace, etc., plus Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, and so on. Keep in touch.

Figaro Mocks Muhammad -- We're Back in the Eighteenth Century

Muslims worldwide have demonstrated repeatedly in this year 2006 that they oppose freedom of speech if it is used to insult Islam, the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, the Quran or anything Muslim. Indeed, they oppose freedom of speech for any criticism of the above whatsoever, howeve truthful it may be. A group of Muslim states proclaimed the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights in 1981 at UNESCO. Later, in 1990, the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers --representing the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] got together in Cairo to endorse the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which was meant to nullify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights voted on by the UN General Assembly in 1948, as well as to cancel out other international human rights conventions. The Cairo Declaration, for instance, places Shari`ah law above human rights considerations. Now, it is notorious that Shari`ah law places non-Muslims in an inferior position to Muslims, and in fact under Shari`ah, non-Muslims are deprived of many rights. Even Muslims are deprived of certain recognized rights, according to Shari`ah.

Many have noted the irony that, whereas the pope quoted a long-dead Byzantine emperor [Manuel Paleologos] saying that Islam was not peaceful, was violent, destructive etc., Muslims worldwide protested the pope's speech precisely by being violent. Christians and Christian institutions were attacked in many places, mainly but not only in Muslim-ruled lands, although most Christians are not Roman Catholic and are in no way subject to the pope. Greek Orthodox chuches were attacked in Gaza, an Assyrian Christian was murdered in Iraq, a nun in Somalia [who was acting as a nurse for Muslims], etc.

This Islamic intolerance for any questioning or criticism of Islam, let alone mockery, however mild, was known long ago. Beaumarchais, author of The Marriage of Figaro, put some such mild mockery into the mouth of his comic hero 200 years ago. Most likely, this play could not be produced today in Paris or Brussels or Marseilles. Here is part of the offending passage:

FIGARO: Because you are a great lord, you think you are a great genius!. . . Nobility, fortune, rank, positions, all that makes you so proud! What have you done for so many goods? You took the trouble to be born and nothing more. For the rest, you are a rather ordinary man! While I. . . lost in the dark crowd, had to deploy science and calculation merely to survive. . .
. . . Is there anything more bizarre than my destiny? Son of I-don't-know-who, stolen by bandits, raised in their morality, I got disgusted and wanted to follow an honest career; and everywhere I have been rejected! I learned chemistry, pharmacy, surgery, and all the prestige of a great lord can scarcely put a veterinarian's lancet in my hand! Tired of making sick beasts unhappy, and in order to take up an opposite kind of trade, I threw myself recklessly into the theater. . . I stitched up a comedy on the morals of the harem. As a Spanish author, I thought I could mock Muhammad without a care. Instantaneously, an envoy. . . from where I don't know, was complaining that I offended by my verses against the Sublime Porte [Ottoman imperial court], Persia, part of the peninsula of India, all of Egypt, the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers [Barbary pirate ports at that time], and Morocco. And right away, my comedy was put to the fire in order to please the Muhammadan princes, not one of whom --I believe-- knows how to read, and who harshly strike our shoulder blades, calling us: Christian dogs. Not being able to degrade my mind, they took revenge by ill-treating it. . . printed foolishnesses only have importance in places where they are restricted; that, without the freedom to find fault, there is no really flattering praise; and only petty people fear little writings. . . Tired of feeding an obscure boarder, they put me out on the street; and because one must dine, since one is no longer in prison, I sharpened my pen again and asked everyone involved in such matters. I was told that during my economical restful retreat, a system of liberty in the sale of productions had been established in Madrid which even extended to press productions and that, provided that I did not speak in my writings about government, religion, politics, morality, nor about people in positions. . . nor about the Opera, nor about other spectacles, nor about anyone who insists on anything, I could print everything freely, under the inspection of two or three censors. In order to take advantage of this sweet liberty, I announced a periodical publication, and, believing that I was not competing with anyone else on his own ground, I called it Useless Journal. . . I saw a thousand poor devils with rags of their own rising up against me. I was suppressed and again I was without a job! Despair took hold of me. . .

FIGARO: Est-il rien de plus bizarre que ma destinée ? Fils de je ne sais pas qui, volé par des bandits, élevé dans leurs moeurs, je m'en dégoûté et veux courir une carrière honnête ; et partout je suis repoussé ! J'apprends la chimie, la pharmacie, la chirurgie, et tout le crédit d'un grand seigneur peut à peine me mettre à la main une lancette vétérinaire ! Las d'attrister des bêtes malades, et pour faire un métier contraire, je me jette à corps perdu dans le théâtre : . . . Je broche une comédie dans les moeurs du sérail. Auteur espagnol, je crois pouvoir y fronder Mahomet sans scrupule : à l'instant un envoyé. . . de je ne sais où se plaint que j'offense dans mes vers la Sublime-Porte, la Perse, une partie de la presqu'île de l'Inde, toute l'Egypte, les royaumes de Barca, de Tripoli, de Tunis, d'Alger et de Maroc : et voilà ma comédie flambée, pour plaire aux princes mahométans, dont pas un, je crois, ne sait lire, et qui nous meurtrissent l'omoplate, en nous disant : chiens de chrétiens. Ne pouvant avilir l'esprit, on se venge en le maltraitant. . . les sottises imprimées n'ont d'importance qu'aux lieux où l'on en gêne le cours; que, sans la liberté de blâmer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur ; et qu'il n'y a que les petits hommes qui redoutent les petits écrits. . . Las de nourrir un obscur pensionnaire, on me met un jour dans la rue ; et comme il faut dîner, quoiqu'on ne soit plus en prison, je taille encore ma plume, et demande à chacun de quoi il est question : on me dit que, pendant ma retraite économique, il s'est établi dans Madrid un système de liberté sur la vente des productions, qui s'étend même à celles de la presse ; et que, pourvu que je ne parle en mes écrits ni de l'autorité, ni du culte, ni de la politique, ni de la morale, ni des gens en place, ni des corps en crédit, ni de l'Opéra, ni des autres spectacles, ni de personne qui tienne à quelque chose, je puis tout imprimer librement, sous l'inspection de deux ou trois censeurs. Pour profiter de cette douce liberté, j'annonce un écrit périodique, et, croyant n'aller sur les brisées d'aucun autre, je le nomme Journal inutile. Pou-ou ! je vois s'élever contre moi mille pauvres diables à la feuille, on me supprime, et me voilà derechef sans emploi ! Le désespoir m'allait saisir. . .

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais [1732-1799], Le Mariage de Figaro (V, 3) [1784]

I saw part of this passage first in the daily LeFigaro, a newspaper named after our hero, in an op ed column, probably by Ivan Rioufol. LeFigaro today does not have the moral courage of Beaumarchais. It recently ran an op ed column by a philosophy teacher named Robert Redeker. He honestly wrote that Islam was a religion of violence. Duh. Rather than contest that assessment rationally and factually, Muslims the world over threatened Redeker and the paper with . . . violence. While Redeker has had to go into hiding, the paper's editor apologized to the world's Muslims. It was all a mistake he said. So it seems like poor Figaro is back where he started. He's out in the cold looking for a livelihood, or ought we say that Robert Redeker is hiding [with his family] in order to preserve his life. Not so funny. I'd rather read a play by Beaumarchais. The trouble is that what Beaumarchais joked about in the 18th century is all too real in the 21st.

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Coming: more on the foibles of peace and peace processes, more on Jews in Jerusalem, on Jews in Hebron in the 19th century, etc.

Gems of Peace and Pacifism -- Allusions to the Real World

The alliance of the most fervent pacifists with the very soldiers of a warrior society Jean-Paul Sartre

This was one of Sartre's comments on the pacifists who sympathized with Hitler and his Nazis, and thereby helped to bring about the Second World War [September 1939] and the Fall of France to the Nazis [1940], some even going on to serve in the Vichy government for the sake of peace. For more on peace movements [and the source of the above quote], see here. Today, self-styled pacifists collaborate with mass murderers and even with jihad warriors who have an explicitly bellicose and war-mongering ideology/religion. What else is Israel's "Peace Now Movement"?
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Just as Rome, the capital of a great empire, had a Temple of Peace, so Berlin, capital of warlike Prussia and --after German unification-- of the German empire, the Second Reich, had a statue of the Goddess of Peace. This was a greenish statue on top of the Brandenburg Gate.

A curious quote turned up in an article on the Peace Temple in Rome in the archeology and history magazine, Histoire et Archeologie, 4/84 #82 [1982]

The Peace Temple closed the Jewish Question for the West, at least from the territorial aspect.

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"Agenda for Peace" -- a UN report published while the Egyptian, Boutros Boutros Ghali was UN secretary-general-- 1993 [see Jerusalem Post en Francais, 4(14-20] 1993]-- listed 48 hot spots around the world. The UN intervened in certain of these conflicts through "peace-keeping forces" made up of 80,000 troops, including UNIFIL, UNDOF, etc. Now, despite all of these wonderful troops heroically fighting for peace, the world still has wars. How come? By the way, some UN troops operating in central Africa have been accused of pedophilia, working through pimps --or acting as pimps-- for young girls among the local population that they had supposedly been sent to protect, etc.
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KARL MARX FORESAW A RACE WAR
If Germany succeeds in taking --Marx wrote--

"French territory, there will then only remain two courses of action open to her. She must at all risks become the avowed tool of Russian aggrandizement, or, after some short respite, make again ready for another 'defensive' war, not one of those new-fangled 'localized' wars, but a war of races -- a war with the combined Sclavonian [Slavic] and Roman [French, Spanish, Italian, etc] races." [After Sedan- Second Manifesto of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association on the Franco-Prussian War, 9-9-1870].

Note that Marx writes in terms of races, rather than classes. Although by race he probably means ethnic groups rather than literally referring to biological races.

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Mark Twain is unforgivable. How can we trust this extremist. Look at what awful things he said!

If we had less statesmanship, we could get along with fewer battleships. [Forbes 4 November 1985]

PEACE PROCESSES

". . . embracing the peace process is the surest way to ensure [that] war will never end."
[London Times, 7-14-2000; summarized by J Rosenblum in Jerusalem Post shortly afterwards]

This quote is owed to Michael Gove. Can we honestly deny that the Arab-Israeli "peace process" has brought about more bloodshed, at least between Israel and the "palestinian" Arabs than prevailed beforehand?

THE FATUITY OF WARRIORS FOR PEACE & DOING GOOD
When a NATO warplane sent to Kossovo, allegedly to protect "innocent" ethnic Albanian civilians from "brutal" Serbs, bombarded a convoy of ethnic Albanian civilians fleeing Kossovo, killing about 65-70 of them, the NATO spokesman expressed his regrets. One Jamie Shea, speaking in a thick and authentic Scottish burr [accent], put it this way [4-15-1999]:

The poilet dropped the bombs in gude faith

It would have been too much to expect this incident to have been remembered during the recent Israel-Hizbullah mini-war, when a group of civilians was allegedly killed in the village of Kana in Lebanon by an Israeli bomb.
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Coming: more on Peace, more on Jews in Jerusalem, Jews in Hebron, Figaro challenges the Grand Turk, etc.

What Happened to the Temple Menorah after the Hurban?

The Peace Temple [Templum Paci] in Rome was not the end of the Menorah's wanderings. This temple was one of the most grandiose in Rome [see Italian description below]. Built in the year 75 CE, the great nave in the middle had eight Corinthian columns. The building is believed to have been 300 feet by 200 feet.

The Vandals, a Germanic tribe who had migrated through Gaul [today France] and Spain to North Africa, were the next usurpers of the Menorah. They attacked Rome [452 CE], looted the Peace Temple, and brought the Menorah --with other loot-- to their capital of Carthage, now in ruins. Then, the army of the Eastern Roman Empire --usually called the Byzantine Empire-- conquered Carthage [534 CE] led by its outstanding general Belisarius. He took the Menorah and other Temple loot back to his capital, Constantinople [today Istanbul, called in Hebrew Kusta], then ruled by Justinian. There too the Menorah was carried in a victory procession, as in Rome some 460 years before. The Menorah was deposited in the palace compound of the emperors in Kusta.

Then, according to Procopius, a Jew connected to the court warned the officials that the presence of the Menorah and other Jewish holy objects in Rome had brought disaster to the Romans, and likewise its presence in Carthage had done the same for the Vandals. He said that it would be right that they be placed in the Land where King Solomon had set them up. Supposedly, Justinian then ordered that they be transferred to one of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem. If the Menorah and other Jewish holy objects were deposited in one of the Jerusalem churches, then it is likely --according to Yohanan Levi-- that they were looted by the Persians in their invasion of 614.

However, Levi seems not to take into account that the Persians at the time were allied with the Jews living in Israel --still a substantial population at that time. The Jews would have been extremely eager to have the Menorah and the other objects restored to them. Levi considers that the guardians of the church depository of the Jewish objects might have buried or otherwise hidden them from the Persians. The church where Levi thinks they were placed was destroyed by an earthquake at the end of the 8th century and not rebuilt [the Arab rulers did not allow rebuilding of destroyed religious buildings of dhimmis, non-Muslims; this prohibition was --and is-- part of the dhimma]. It is conjectured that this church was located facing the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. Hence, Levi conjectures, the holy objects might be located under the rubble of the church's ruins. Levi died an untimely death in 1945. Since the 1967 Six Day War, that area has been excavated without the holy objects of the Temple turning up.

Nevertheless, the 10th century Byzantine emperor, Constantinos Porphyrogennitos, reported that the Menorah was kept in the imperial palace and was lit on the occasion of holiday processions. A seventh century Jewish midrash reported that some of the holy Temple objects were kept in the House of Julian, a library built by the scholarly emperor Julian ["the Apostate"] in the palace compound [see Levi]. Maybe the Byzantine court kept the Menorah there too. Levi says that Titus looted two golden Menorahs from the Jerusalem Temple, according to Josephus. He considers the possibility that two menorahs were brought to Carthage and from there to Kusta, and that Justinian sent one to Jerusalem and kept the other in Kusta in the imperial palace compound [fn 11]. Levi goes on to speculate that the menorah that stayed in Kusta was looted by the Crusaders and Venetians in 1204, together with other valuable objects from the palace. If so, the objects looted in 1204 in Kusta may have been melted down for their simple worth as gold.

The depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome is the model for the menorah on official Israeli documents. There are other models of what the Menorah looked like. These are found on ancient Jewish coins, for example, plus stone carvings, mosaic floors, and paintings in ancient synagogues in Israel and elsewhere, on ornamented glassware, amulets, seals, rings, etc. Representations of the Menorah are also found on Jewish sarcophagi and ossuaries, and in the Jewish catacombs of Rome [see "Menorah," Encyclopedia Judaica, vol 11]. Of course, all models have seven branches for seven lights and these branches are on a vertical plane.

Here is a description in Italian of the "Peace Temple" in Rome built by the Flavians. According to this description, the "Peace Temple" contained loot from Judea [IVDAEA] besides the objects looted from the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Templum Paci AEternae Sacrum

Questo fu certamente uno de' più grandiosi Templi dell'antica Roma, edificato nell'anno di nostra salute 75. dall'Imperator Vespasiano, e arricchito di molte Statue, non che delle Spoglie della soggiogata Giudea, e specialmente del Tempio di Gerusalemme. Vien chiamato questo Edificio da Erodiano = Opus cunctorum tota Urbe maximum.

Si vuole, che questo Edificio sia stato elevato sulle rovine del Portico della Casa aurea di Nerone; e v'è chi non crede, che questo fosse il Tempio della Pace, ma bensì il Tablinum del Palazzo de' Cesari. Non restano, che trè Arconi con pochi altri ruderi, da' quali s'inferisce, ch'era lungo circa a 300., e largo intorno a 200. piedi. Al davanti doveva esservi un Portico che abbracciava tutta la larghezza dell'Edificio.

La gran Navata di mezzo avea otto colonne corintie. . . [per di pi`u]

References:
"Le Temple de la Paix a Rome," Histoire et Archeologie no. 82 (4/1984)
Johanan Levi, גורלם של כלי הקודש אחר חורבן הבית השני in עולמות נפגשים (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute 1969).
"Menorah," Encyclopedia Judaica, vol 11
Procopius, The War of the Goths.
______. The War of the Vandals.
GA Williamson, "Introduction" to Procopius' The Secret History.
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Coming: more on peace, Jews in Jerusalem, etc.