As F-16's again bomb cities of Palestine, and young men again sacrifice their lives and the lives of others, Martin Indyk, writing in the New York Times, proclaims that the 'Violence is worsening'. The BBC and CNN reports, like a Greek chorus, echo Indyk with their reports of 'Violence in Palestine'. The White House issues another plea to 'break the cycle of Violence'. This faceless and causeless 'Violence' should probably be capitalized, as the 'Wrath' in the first line of Iliad. This eternal poem begins with a call to 'sing the Wrath of Achilles'. In Homer's world the Wrath (or Fury, War, Love, Hope) was a condition personified. Nowadays, we tend to see an angry Achilles or a violent husband, rather than Wrath or Violence per se. Unless, the abuser is the Jewish state. In which case, we revert to the Homeric concept of Violence as an independent being, rather then a man-made action. People seriously discuss, how to 'deal with' Violence in order to bring Peace.

In the real world, Violence is not like the weather. Somebody does it, and we can usually identify the patch of clouds responsible for the rain. So it was, that when the 'Mitchell' process was invoked and the daily quota of killed slowly crawled down, the Jewish supremacists replayed the provocative visit of Sharon to the Haram a-Sharif by laying the cornerstone of the Third Temple.

Immediately after the cornerstone provocation, Israel followed up with a wave of assassinations in Nablus, Ramallah and elsewhere, trying to get Palestinians to respond in kind. It seems to be a pattern. Last September, after Sharon's visit to Haram a-Sharif, Israeli Border Police murdered seven worshippers in the Jerusalem mosque and ushered in the second Intifada. Sharon's assassins did not stop murders until a suicide bomber obliged by responding.

It is no coincidence. Israel wants the Palestinian uprising to go on. Israel wants not peace, but low intensity conflict. A war with Palestinians allows the Israeli leaders to keep their heterogeneous communities together, away from each other's throat. What is more important, the war allows the Jewish leaders over the world to continue their arduous task of reviving World Jewry, a medieval run-down construct. That is why it makes no sense to speak against 'Violence' and for 'Peace'. As long as the supremacist Jewish state exists, it will ensure violence and avoid peace.

The recent assassinations also had the intent of covering up the cornerstone provocation under a heap of corpses. The meaning of this obscure ceremony was further obscured by the mainstream media, and all references to it mysteriously vaporised. For instance, Reuters reported on August 3, 2001: 'Israeli police stormed the TempleMount, revered by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif,after Palestinians threw stones at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall below'.

Why, all of a sudden, did Palestinians begin to stone Jews? The cornerstone story was omitted, and the average American or European was left with the impression that the 'wild' Muslims attacked peaceful worshipping Jews just out of spite. On this count, the unanimity of the English-language media was horrifying. The BBC, once more objective than American networks, closed the gap. They also reported of 'Israeli soldiers who entered the mosques responding to the Muslim stone throwers', moving a reference to the cornerstone to the end of the item. It now appears that the airing of the BBC documentary on Sharon was a singular act of courage that will not soon be repeated.

As for the American networks, their coverage continues to be consistent. They market the Israeli line without hesitation. That is why we shall revisit the details of the strange, already forgotten story of the cornerstone. This was not your average Israeli provocation. It brought to mind the black magic incantations of Pulsa diNura, the cabbalistic formula used on the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. In 1995, the Israeli media covered a gathering of the important Cabbalists who invoked evil spirits and beseeched them to extinguish the Prime Minister's life. Soon afterwards, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish religious fanatic. An organizer of the Pulsa diNura ceremony was tried by Israeli court of law and sent to jail, for incitement to murder. You do not have to believe in black magic in order to understand the logic of the judge.

In order to comprehend the idea of the cornerstone laying, imagine: you wake up one beautiful Sunday morning in your suburban home, have your coffee and proceed to your church. There you encounter a commotion. ,In front of the church, a band of men, well protected by armed soldiers and police, are busy installing a huge billboard saying 'On this place, a synagogue will be erected in 2001'. On the background, there is the roar of bulldozer engines and the amplified voice of a Rabbi blessing the new synagogue. You would probably feel as hysterical as the hero of the Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy. Supplant your parish church by St Peter or the Holy Sepulchre, and you will understand the feelings of Jerusalemites.

Though the Temple Mount Loyalists, the group that performed this magic ceremony, is tiny and hardly mainstream, one can't say that about the body that gave them the green light. Overruling the police' objection, the Supreme Court, the highest Jewish legal authority, permitted them to do their act on an auspicious date, the 9^th day of the Moon month of Ab, with all its mystic meaning. All the might of the Jewish state, including thousands of policemen and army, was mobilized to allow the ceremony to take place. That is why one can compare the pithy Loyalist band with the sharp thin end of the dental pick in the hands of a dentist, pushing it far inside the tooth, in order to check whether the nerve is dead.

The results of this painful examination were unambiguous. The nerve was apparently alive, and the quick mobilization of the Palestinians forced the Jews to re-route the Loyalists' procession. The ceremony took place outside the Old City, a little earlier than planned. It lasted for a few minutes, and the stone was returned to its usual place, in the deep protective shadow of the US Consulate. This push of the pick caused sharp pain and the predictable response of the Jerusalemites, and afterwards, the vicious attack of the police on the believers in the mosque. What was the reason of all the trouble? Why did the Palestinian kids dare to confront the Border Police, famous for their brutality? Why was the cornerstone so important?

Many Jews and their Christian-Zionist allies believe the precious beauty of Haram a-Sharif, the 7^th century mosques of Jerusalem should be destroyed and on their ruins, a Jewish temple should be erected. Why should this be done? people provide different explanations, historical and eschatological. It is not for some historical justice, or for the purpose of prayer, as traditional Judaism forbade all interaction with the Mountain of the Lord. Some mystically inclined Jews believe this act will make Jewish domination of the world total and irreversible. This belief is not an exclusive domain of kooks and freaks, nor even of Zionists only, but rather a widespread conviction.

The mainstream media of the West usually presents the conflict in terms of Muslims vs. Jews. But the conflict as seen by these Jews, is Jews vs. Gentiles. In their minds, the Temple Mount is a magic Ring of Power, one they should assume when the time is right. As the Ring in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (the British professor was a very learned man), it should bring forth the Messiah. For the Jewish mystics, this Messiah is not the Christian Messiah. In thei,r book, the Messiah is not a gentle Jesus with a message for all mankind. Their Messiah would forever enslave the nations of the earth and make the Chosen people the masters of the universe. Their Messiah, Lord Enslaver of the Peoples of Earth, is the Antichrist of prophecies.

As the digits of millennia jump from 1 to 2 on the meter of our Cosmic Cabby, apocalyptic thoughts come into otherwise sane heads. This is not the first time some Jews dream of world domination and of the eternal kingdom of Antichrist. Only now, they have in their possession nuclear weapons, the latest jets and battleships, huge wealth, the blind support of the US, tens of millions of willing 'Christian Zionist' slaves, and a broad web of tame and docile international media.

It is not mystics only. Ten years ago, a leading Israeli journalist, Nahum Barnea, wrote in Yediot Aharonot: 'For decades the Jews tried hard to refute the myth (of Jewish domination of the world and of enslavement of Gentiles) treating it as a morbid manifestation of anti-Semitism. Now some Jews even believe it'. The late Jewish thinker, Israel Shahak commented: 'The ruling Likud party (let alone the extreme right-wing) genuinely believes in the myth'.

The leading Israeli daily, Haaretz reported that Sharon, like Barak before him, sneaks out to visit the wizards of Cabbala for advice. It is all quite fashionable; Cabbala schools, courses and shops drew their net over the Jewish state. The Holy Land turns into a Waste Land according to their guidelines. This is not a matter of chance. Cabbala is ascribed to the first century mystic Simeon b. Yohai, whose best known maxim reads, 'Smash the head of the best of snakes, kill the best of Gentiles'.

This archaic model of domination, genocide and enslavement calls for archaic religious content. Many Israelis sense the re-emergence of the ancient spirit of hate and dominance. The weekend supplement of Haaretz published a short story of an American president who tried to disobey the orders of the Cabbalists and was removed by his subordinates. The Jews are destined to rule the world, preached Rabbi Leichtman, a leading Cabbalist, in a long article printed in Vesti, a Russian-Israeli paper. In the chat rooms of the Israeli Internet, one can find more heady stuff. They quote an old poem by Uri Zvi Greenberg, a late Hebrew poet, who called for extermination of the Gentiles. Greenberg did not limit himself to Palestinians, like the late Menachem Begin, nor only to Arabs, like the highest spiritual authority in Israel, Rabbi Obadiah Joseph. The extermination of Edom, a traditional code word for European and American Gentiles, appears as a plausible option in the feverish minds of Cabbala followers.

This feeling spills into the Jewish diaspora. In the heart of the US, in Atlanta, there was, a recent debate in the Jewish Community Centre in presence of the Israeli Consul, a Jewish businessman, a prominent Atlanta rabbi and a NY Times reporter. An observer wrote to me, 'I was struck mostly by the comments of the rabbi. While claiming to be a non-Zionist, he declared (we have him on tape) that the ultimate reason for creating Israel, as he interprets it, is to become the world's controller of power and wealth. Jews will eventually overthrow world governments and be assigned positions to lead the world. This, he felt, will occur in a short number of years'.

At the other end of the world, in Russia, a Jewish follower of Sharon's own ultra-Nationalist Jabotinsky movement, 'Eliezer Dacevich-Voronel', who described himself as a Jewish University Professor, composed a poem: 'We, the Chosen Ones, are united by hatred to the slave tribes that rose, dethroned our ancestors and rejected our God. Once you knew of your place in the world, a swine must stay in its sty. You revolted, and forced us to serve you, but now your end is nigh. We are your masters. You are our slaves. This is God's design. Soon our sun will rise again, and the slaves would not dare to look at it. And then, the Lord of My People will appear in Heaven, while we, the dozen of dozen thousands (i.e. 144,000) of Chosen Ones will sit it the great amphitheatre and watch the miserable columns of souls crawling into their paradise. By God's will, we shall name it Auschwitz'.

They even speak of genetically re-constructing the King of the Antichrist. The brilliant maverick, Dr Avi Ben Abraham, seems to be the man behind the project. This unusual man recently returned to Israel after some years in California, where he worked on a Star Trek-like Deep Freeze project for very wealthy Jews. Loaded with money, Ben Abraham built a palace in Caesarea on the seashore of Mediterranean, some 50 km north of Tel Aviv, and contacted the Italian genetic expert, Dr Severino Antinori. Ben Abraham, who received his doctor of medicine degree at the unheard of age of 18, hinted at his plans in an interview with Haaretz. A few days ago, his project received some benign attention from The New York Daily News, the newspaper of Mortimer Zuckerman, a Jewish supremacist billionaire and the head of Conference of Jewish American Organisations.

The men of hate and vengeance are ready to seize the magic ring of power, the Temple Mount, to enforce and perpetuate the rule of the Antichrist. But it can not be done by brute force, due to a medieval prohibition, Issur Homah. A premature action could backfire. A Jewish religious leader from Brooklyn, Lubavitcher Rebbe, was considered by his disciples a potential Messiah, and that is why he never ever came to the Holy Land. He did not feel himself ready for the trial of forces. Meanwhile, the children of Palestine, brothers of Faris Ode, nephews of Christ keep these religious fanatics at bay. Now, Sharon and his band of mad believers try their hand by snatching the Orient House, a Husseini mansion in Jerusalem. If this is allowed, to quietly pass, it will make for one more step to the Ring of Power.

The soul-searching Russian writer, Eugene Zamyatin, composed a short fable of Gospel quality. It is a story of a man who decided to build a temple, but had no money. He waylaid a merchant on the highway, tortured him to death, extracted a lot of cash and built the temple. He invited a Bishop and many priests and ordinary folks, but in a short time they left the church: the place stank of murder. One can not build the temple on the blood of innocents. An elder contemporary of Zamyatin, a Jewish thinker from Odessa, the 'spiritual Zionist' Ahad HaAm, put it in simple and beautiful words:

- If this be the Messiah, I do not wish to see his coming.

This article, as all writings of Israel Shamir, may be freely distributed in the Internet, but hard copy publications must ask permission. Responses and requests: [email protected]