Osho answers a question by Tom Robbins regarding the creation of Israel and the resulting conflicts
And at the end of the first world war Britain and America, both Christian countries, played the most ugly game against the Jews…. Jews are one of the races which have suffered most. Of course, they have their part and their contribution in their suffering. They have suffered most because they were the first to claim, “We are the chosen people of God, and it is our basic right to rule over the world. Other human beings are inferior human beings.”
Because this idea irritated everybody, without exception, Jews have been continually murdered, butchered. Adolf Hitler alone killed six million Jews, and it goes on…. But the ultimate meanness has been committed by America and England – and even Jews could not understand the strategy.
After the second world war, the American and British forces were in control of Jerusalem, where the rock is, and the small country of Israel which had never before been in existence. For many centuries Mohammedans had lived there; it was part of the country of Palestine. But after the second world war, Jerusalem and Palestine were under the control of American and British forces, and America played the ugliest politics that you can conceive. It created, under an armed force, a new nation for the Jews. It called the new nation Israel, for the Jews.
It had not been in existence for many centuries. Once it had been a land for the Jews, in the days of Moses, then it was lost to Mohammedans for centuries. Christians had been trying to recover it but they could not, neither were the Jews successful – they could not be! Only six percent of the land belonged to the Jews and ninety-four percent of the land belonged to the Mohammedans. How can you make Israel a sovereign nation? But under pressure of arms they managed to create a new land. It was great strategy, and perhaps nobody else has pointed it out….
I find myself standing alone in many situations; sometimes I think I should not unnecessarily bother about things when nobody is even thinking about them.
My understanding is that America and Britain conspired to create the Jewish state so that now Jews will be in trouble for eternity. This is a very sophisticated diplomacy. And the Jews were happy; they thought that America and England were helping them, that they were favorable to them, that they were giving them the homeland for which they had been hankering for centuries.
And America had killed two birds with one stone. In America, Jews are among the richest people, so they have great power over the American congress. They have a lobby of their own, and because politicians depend on contributions from rich people for their elections, they cannot avoid the Jews. They cannot ignore them; their presence is too important – they have cash money. So this was a good chance to have their money contributed to American politicians.
The American politicians managed to create the state of Israel for the Jews, but the state was forcibly imposed on the Mohammedans. Now, they cannot tolerate it – Mohammedans are very fascist, and this insult they cannot tolerate – so there is continuous war.
Israel has to purchase war materials from America, and American Jews continuously have to send millions of dollars for the survival of Israel. In this way, America has destroyed more Jews than Adolf Hitler – and has created not just a single-blow slaughter, but a continuous situation that will go on and on for centuries till not a single Jew is alive in Israel.
And any day the American politicians can pull out their support.
[…] I am the one-person majority who wants to say to the world that this is cunning politics. America and England are not favorable to the Jews, and the proof for it is that the Vatican pope has not accepted Israel as a sovereign nation; they have not given their recognition.¹ So on the one hand Christianity gives no recognition to the nation; on the other hand they created the nation in a place where they are surrounded from all sides by Mohammedans, and they will be killed and crushed.
Just for crucifying one man, Jesus, for two thousand years millions of innocent Jews have been crucified – just as Jesus was innocent but killed by his contemporaries. Now these people, after two thousand years, have nothing to do with those people who crucified Jesus. But they are being tortured in Russia, they are being tortured in Germany; they have been tortured everywhere, wherever they have been. And now Israel is the ultimate strategy: they will keep being tortured for eternity until Israel disappears again.
So I have given my answer to Tom Robbins, because he is going to write a book and he wants my opinion. I know he must be surprised, because nobody has ever said this, that Israel is a strategy of Christian politics to destroy Jews – not directly, but by creating a situation so that Mohammedans can do the job and Christians can keep their mask that they have been so helpful, even to the enemies. They have followed Jesus’ philosophy: Love your enemies. They have been pouring money and help in the form of outdated arms – armaments which are of no use, which have to be thrown out, either into the ocean, or in Israel.
And at the same time American Jews go on helping American politicians because they are helping Israel. So the American politicians exploit their money, they exploit their support.
Just by chance, yesterday when I dictated my letter to Tom Robbins, I received the message… We were fighting in the Supreme Court of Oregon to prove that our commune in Oregon had been destroyed absolutely illegally, and that the government had taken control of the land without any reason or rhyme. And we have won the case in the Supreme Court: the Supreme Court has specifically made it clear that the government has been absolutely illegal in restricting the use of the commune’s land, its other properties. So now it is again in our hands.
I have said to Tom Robbins that my suggestion is that if you want to help the Jews, Oregon should be given to them as a new Israel. Move the Jews from Israel and give Israel to the Mohammedans; it belongs to them, it is ugly to keep their land.
And as for me and my people, we offer our commune land as a beginning. It is enough for at least one hundred thousand people. We give all our assets – all our houses, hotels, roads, dams, fields – everything that we have in Rancho Rajneesh we give them as a friendly gesture, without taking any money for it, with the condition that Rancho Rajneesh should be the capital of the new Israel.
And let America show its real face. If they want to help them… half of the state of Oregon is already owned by the federal government, and it is very sparsely populated so there is no problem. Half the land already belongs to the federal government; give that land to the Jews.
And Jews are in a new trouble in Israel. There were a few Jews who have remained in Israel forever, since the days of Moses, so they are very orthodox – utterly orthodox. They have not seen the outside world, they are still four thousand years back; their mind is of that type. The second layer has come from European countries. That layer is a little different, because it is no longer so orthodox. It has seen the developed countries of the twentieth century; it has forgotten all the old traditional ways. And the third layer, which has completely forgotten what Judaism is, has come from America.
Now they are fighting amongst themselves. Full-scale riots are going on in Israel amongst the Jews themselves. Mohammedans are killing them from all around, and Jews are killing other Jews because the orthodox Jews say to the European and American Jews, “Go back! You are no longer Jews.”
For small reasons… for example, on the sabbath every week, the orthodox Jews stop working by the evening on Friday. They want the new Jews who have come from Europe and America to close their discos, their restaurants, their movie houses, on Friday night. They cannot conceive it. I have heard:
Three rabbis were talking about whose synagogue was the most advanced. One rabbi said, “Of course it is my synagogue. We allow smoking inside the synagogue; we allow drinking, drugs, anything, in the name of God.”
The second rabbi said, “That’s nothing, forget all about it. You are still old-fashioned. These things we have been allowing for centuries. We allow you even to bring your girlfriends; we don’t even ask whether the woman is your wife or not. Bring your girlfriends; the synagogue is just a religious kind of movie theater where you will not find people with their wives. If they have to be with their wives, then what is wrong with their house?”
Those movie houses… and do you know why it becomes dark? It is not for the film, it is because so many stories go on inside the movie hall. All those stories are possible only in darkness.
So the second rabbi said, “We allow girlfriends and dancing, and if people want to make love, they can even make love. We ignore it, we don’t create any interference.”
The third rabbi said, “You are both idiots. You don’t know. In our synagogue we are living in the twenty-first century.”
They said, “What more can you do?”
He said, “What more? On our synagogue there is a signboard: ‘On Jewish holidays the synagogue is closed.'”
This is the ultimate form of religiousness!
So those three layers of Jews are cutting each other’s heads.
My suggestion is not just to make a joke of American help; I mean it! I am sending the message to Israel: “You enter into the commune; let that be your beginning. And tell the American government – and you have every right to ask because you have been giving all those politicians money, they are all paid servants to you – that you want a New Israel in the New World.”
And why bother about a rock? Make a beautiful Temple of Solomon again! The new is always better than the old. Why should you bother? Do you think religion is like wine, that the old is better than the new? Don’t condemn religion that way. Just fresh, new, with modern architecture – make a great temple, the greatest in the world. Once it was the greatest temple in the world, but why unnecessarily get into trouble which cannot end? – there is no possible way.
And then you will know America’s real face. Then you will know how friendly they are to Israel and how friendly they are to the Jews. They are fundamentalist Christians. Ronald Reagan is a fascist Christian; he will not allow it. This will be a good test of their friendship.
I don’t believe in any religion, but I certainly believe that people should not be put into unnecessary misery, slaughter, massacre, every day trembling with fear. And now it has become much more dangerous, because Jews are fighting with Jews, and Mohammedans from all around have become terrorists; they are destroying in every possible way the very foundation of the Jewish state. And just see: the Vatican has not even given formal recognition to the sovereignty of the state of Israel; that shows the real Christian mind.
But this is our world. Perhaps my people are the only people who are free from chains. God is your chain, religions are your chains; the idea of sin, the idea of virtue are your chains.
Freedom consists in a single thing, and that is your awareness. Act out of awareness and you will be acting out of freedom – and without interfering in somebody else’s freedom. Freedom knows how to respect others’ freedom.
You don’t have to do anything, Dharmesh, to attain freedom. It is already there within you. Just drop the chains.
And those chains are such that you have started loving them; you have become accustomed to them. It will be a little painful to depart from your miseries, a little painful to depart from your old sufferings, familiar friends, and enter into a new area of freedom, awareness. But except that, there is no hope for humanity.
All that is needed is just a little intelligence. You have been deprived even of that.
And the pope is angry with me, the shankaracharyas are angry with me, the imams are angry with me, for the simple reason that I want you to be intelligent. They want you to be absolutely fools, idiots, retarded, so you can be enslaved, tortured, harassed, sacrificed, and you will not revolt against it.
Paddy goes into a pub one day and sees a very well-dressed man sitting in the corner. But what he notices most are his beautiful shoes. So he goes over and asks about them and the man tells him they are crocodile shoes.
But Paddy has never heard of a crocodile, so he goes over to his friends and asks them. They tell him that it is a very dangerous animal that lives in the swamps of the Amazon jungle.
Paddy is determined to have a pair of these shoes, so he sells his house, his car and his wife, and sets off for South America. Once he is there he eventually finds a man with a boat, who is willing to take him up the Amazon.
After many weeks they reach the heart of the jungle and Paddy sees a crocodile, swimming around in the swamp. So he immediately dives in and has a terrific fight with the beast. They are thrashing about in the water for over an hour until, tired and bleeding, Paddy manages to haul the dead crocodile into the boat.
With his last strength, Paddy turns the crocodile over onto its back, takes one look at it and shrieks: “My God! It has got no shoes on!”
Osho, The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Ch 15, Q 3 (excerpt)
¹ Note by Osho News: Full and formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the Holy See were established in 1993. They were preceded, however, by almost a century of contacts and diplomatic activity, not to mention almost two millennia of Catholic-Jewish encounters that at times were far from harmonious.
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