Globe and Mail | May 07, 2002 | Orest Slepokura

By OREST SLEPOKURA

Toronto Globe and Mail | May 7, 2002 - Print Edition, Page A18

Strathmore, Alta. -- Spider Robinson (Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition -- May 6, 2002) decries "Pius X's quiet complicity in the Holocaust." A quiet complicity indeed, given that Pope Pius X died on the eve of the First World War.

Were ironic reminders needed, the Old Testament contains many passages in which God unabashedly demands genocide, enslavement and wholesale dispossession for Israel's enemies. Via such hoary, grisly texts as Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges and Kings, we have been bred to one of the most brutal war mythologies of all time.

In fact, the very prototype for the Muslim suicide bomber is the Jewish hero Samson, who, it is said, killed thousands of bystanders after he levelled the pillars of the building to which he was bound. The Old Testament exults (Judges 16:30): "Those he killed at his death outnumbered those he killed in his life."

________

Note: I "dedicate" this item to my Portuguese friend, AM, in Lisbon.