Re: Straight from someone who lived it
~ Re-forwarded by Prince Emeka Onyeso.
REFLECTING A GENERALLY BACKWARD IGBO ATTITUDE TO FOREIGN RELIGIONS INCLUDING THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN ISSUE.
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*IGBO ATTITUDES TO RELIGION MUST EMULATE OTHERS IN THE WORLD, AND BE TRADITIONAL, CIVILIZATIONAL, SECULAR AND PATRIOTIC.* Igbo should extol their own religious and other traditions, and not become a ground for emptying the archaic leftovers of external faith disputes.
*Mixing truths with bundles of lies like the illiterate lady condemning the Palestinians in toto and extolling the Israeli state in toto, would solve nothing in the world.*
Thanks greatly, distinguished Prince Emeka Onyesoh, eminent author and publicist, and well-known Igbo patriot from the great Nri extraction. While we agree with many of the things you write, this Forwarding whose contents you seemingly commended could be an exception for some of us your admirers, blaming everything on the Arabs, maybe also moslems, and nothing on Israeli bad behaviour.
We too love Israel in part sympathy with the historical injustices against them, but the best lover offers good advice. It is said that only one who loves you would tell you that your mouth is smelling. That is the honest advice that the Israeli state of today is not listening to until she joins to destroy the world.
Based on the sponsored atrocities of caliphatist Fulani moslems in Nigeria, the first inclination of Igbo and other christians towards Palestine might be a wrongful transfer of dislike to other moslems, a generalization that should be resisted, for, there are Yoruba, few Igbo, Niger Delta, Middle Belt moslems who are not interested in joining the Fulani for perpetrating those atrocities, making each situation in the world a sort of case-study.
~ The well-worn blackmail of “anti-semitism” frequently launched by Israel on whoever cautions them against the genocide in Gaza, is no more working even in the US and Western Europe in which it was the easiest hypocrisy to destroy peaceful countries like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and so on.
~ The Igbo must beware being more christian than other christians in the world, more catholic than the Pope, more anglican than the English and Archbishop of Canterbury, more jewish than the Jews, and wiser than the United Nations and the whole world that have developed a common position on Palestine, even up to the Security Council; such a religious mentality is not godly mentality, and would lead the Igbo nowhere beyond where an intellectual slave mentality that cannot hurt a fly would lead any foolish peoples (hopefully not Igbo) to, a precursor to cultural atrophy already dumped by other nations.
If free, maybe go to church or mosque or temple or local shrine (secret abodes of many christian, moslem elites), pray and sing, tithe, etc provided that you are aware that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is not superior to the God of the great Nri Kings and ancestors, not greater than the God of Indians, Chinese, Yoruba, Fulani, Vietnamese, etc. And, as you pray and tithe, also contribute to community levies, and oppose the desecration of non-human sacrificing community idols, shrines, festivals, traditions, masquerades, for there is a constitutional ministry and departments devoted to preserving those great items of culture and tourism, a UNESCO charged for protecting them, and villagers that do not particularly fancy your God and the hypocrisies (not you, pls) pertaining to his worship.
Neither Nigeria nor any of her nationalities should necessarily be a christian, moslem or buddhist “country,” none of which protected or would in future protect anyone. The only universal protection lies in the secular state, in which devotees of foreign religions respect the local cultures and traditions, with none interfering with the political society. *A society cleavaged by religion is a society led by demonic characters who use religion to divide, exploit and oppress their peoples.* Pls, read the latest report by the globally acclaimed InterSociety, led by our own worthy son, Emeka Umeagbalasi.
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~ Arabs, Jews, are from the same father, we are told, so no need for hatred between them.
~ In the course of time each line evolved a different God and religion from the other, with each one claiming their own was superior.
~ Based on the supremacist controversies, they started contesting for the land and territory violently snatched by Abraham their common ancestor, Isaac and Jacob from other tribes. It is wrong for the lady to claim that land is not the major issue in the dispute. Even issues contested in the air would eventually come back to land and territory for settlement.
~ The wars associated with these claims and counter-claims have resulted into expulsions and counter-expulsions, with none being particularly civilized actions.
~ The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) claiming the land today on the basis of what each person’s God told them forget that there were people living there already by grace of their own God before Abraham started to fairly or unfairly claim that his own God transfered ownership of the land to him. Those original owners of the land are now totally ethnically cleansed or/and subjugated by the later-day Jewish, Arab/Palestinian, etc arrivals disputing between them over who best should seize what in truth practically belonged to other people/s.
~ Since Abrahamic and Roman times, each side, both Ishmael and Isaac lines had been perpetrating terrorism against the other one. Foreign imperialist powers, including series of Roman Governors, have been knocking their heads together in a divide-and-rule to control that vital global crossroad from Japan to the Silk Road (now Belt-and-Road) across Africa, Europe and Greenland, to the Americas, linking through Alaska unto the great Russian empire. Palestine/Middle East has therefore since antiquity been a zone of contest between powers.
~ This latest round of contests, wars and terrorisms started with the albeit normal human desire of millions of exiled and persecuted Jews in various countries to found either a new national home for the Jews where they would be able to take care of themselves, or alternatively the “original one” in today’s Palestine.
~ Because of the influence of Theodor Herzel and other Zionists on British Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur Balfour, he authored a 1917 Balfour Declaration to found the new home in Israel instead of Africa or elsewhere.
~ The violent manner of implementation of this goal, the British sponsored or condoned terrorism against Palestinians, the extermination, ethnic-cleansing, and forced expulsion of the local Palestinian populations to impose the new Israeli state, sowed the seeds of many Israeli-Arab wars and the continuing tragedies against Gaza and West Bank.
~ In part because of the murder of millions of Jews and Gypsies under Hitler Germany the whole world was in sympathy for a state of their own for the Jews, and so, pretended lack of knowledge or interest of the unparalled atrocities that Israel was visiting on the Palestinian populations. But, gradually the world started paying attentions.
~ The lady was openly lying, claiming that Israel is a democratic state. Citizenship and rights are not equal between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel; Gaza has been a large prison yard since 1948, with no one free to go out or in without tight Israeli permission. Such an apartheid system of “democracy” among the Jews and enslavement for Palestinians some of who daily troop into Israel as factotums in slave labour, all within the same country, is a strange and curious idea of democracy.
The brainwashed and ill-informed lady claimed the Arabs have refused to invest in or develop Gaza – how can they do so when Israel knows that external investment would give Gaza freedom and global access and therefore prevents it? How would rich Arab states bring development to a supposed West Bank Palestine being illegally pulled down and handed over to Israeli settlers with American and West European monies to build new houses? Gaza and West Bank children are routinely arrested, charged and sentenced for “crimes” they are not up to and without legal representation; Palestinians are shot at will by settlers and official security forces, given several life sentences, and reports have it that if any dies in prison his carcass is not returned to his family for honourable burial until the dead body completes the long sentences; unprintable human rights abuses are widely reported against Palestinian women and children; food and water supply, electricity, education, jobs, everything is tightly controlled against Gaza and West Bank; in West Bank families and children are being expelled from their homes, rendered homeless and the property assigned to new Israeli settlers; Israel had almost 10,000 innocent Palestinians in jail on trumped-up charges at the time of the unfortunate October 07 incident, and would release someone in a prisoner “exchange” only to almost immediately re-arrest him/her in revised, re-invented or supplementary charges.
~ The post-1948 Israel refuses to act towards the Palestinians as a beneficiary of global sympathy, extending to them at least the normal treatments that human beings created by God deserve. Hence the all-round international condemnations against Israel, while Nigerian, especially Igbo “christians” haul more support for Israeli atrocities.
~ The world wisely condemned the October 07 terrorist act against Israel not because mankind knew not that it was an unnecessarily desperate act of revenge by the Hamas, but because they know that two wrongs do not make right. Terrorism has been correctly defined as “a premeditated attack against non-belligerent targets;” the civilian men, women and children that Israel is wiping out in Gaza are non-belligerent targets; if Israel wants to eradicate Hamas it can combe house-to-house in the small narrow strip and get at those that are soldiers by proven effective means of legitimate interrogations, instead of killing and/or expelling 2.3 million people in order to eradicate no more than maybe 15,000 or so Hamas fighters.
~ The Israeli government and President Donald Trump, with conniving European powers in a satanic wish-list, wanting to eliminate and empty Gaza and West Bank of the Palestinians, destroy Libya, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and others perceived to be on their way to this Israeli expansion to the Euphrates River, are pursuing a wrong course that can lead to a devastating world war. Terrible wars are sparked by merely “minor” incidents. Supposing while bombing Iran China exploits the opportunity to attack Taiwan? They also know that Russia has a defence treaty with Iran, but acting so arrogantly and recklessly that a Russia they tied down with a thoughtless Zelensky, could do nothing to help Iran? Trump says he desires peace in the world, destroyed the JCPOA+ and countless other treaties meant to secure that peace, dictates that Iran enters into new negotiations in secret for arm-twisting, and would bomb the misbehaviour out of an independent Iran if she refuses to surrender their soveregnity. War is in the air and might spread and be catastrophic. As usual, no one would be in doubt that it is the Western imperialist powers that are determined to ignite such a global calamity for no just reasons whatsoever.
~ Are Arab/islamic states helping matters? Not at all. Once you help imperialism you destroy yourself and peoples. Western imperialism demands total surrender to their bad logic, never your own opinion on anything. So, the best policy is to always stand your ground and let them decide whether or not to deal with you on respectful terms. Despite their military inferiority, the day the Arabs genuinely unite for Palestine, suspend all diplomatic relations with all governments aiding and abetting Israel, that day the world would back them and the West would be isolated and weakened. But they are too corrupt, compromised and disunited to even imagine such a simple “radical” move.
~ Is Israel all wrong and Palestinians all right? Not at all. The October 07 had already been condemned; we’ve also cited Arab disunity and mutual betrayals; also inability to exact serious demands from the US; these are all terrible weaknesses of the Arabs that facilitate their continued humiliation by Israel.
~ SOLUTIONS: A number of solutions has been profferred, but none is better or more correct than the *TWO-STATES SOLUTION OF THE UNO:* one state for the Jews, one for the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank . . . Now the prescribed solution is getting more and more impossible to happen given the American and European aided and abetted extermination of the Gaza and West Bank Palestinians.
~ Nevertheless, the black race, including Nigerians should continue urging Israel to end the genocide, stop the criminal starvation as weapon of war policy by permitting food, water, tents and medicines enter Gaza; end the unprovoked elimination of West Bank Palestinians, seek peace with neighbours, reciprocate the global sympathy for the Jews with a civilized attitude to the Palestinians, and redirect the acclaimed Jewish ingenuity to peaceful ends instead of forever wars.
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TO THE IGBO FANATICS OF CHRISTIANITY:
The Igbo cannot be more christian than the white imperialists who brought them christianity; more christian than the Jews who till today follow a different religion and deny Christ as saviour, supportive of hunger and starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinians when all mankind have condemned it as a big crime against humanity; and ignoring the series of the UN and other global Resolutions to peace in the Middle East favouring a Palestinian homeland living side-by-side at peace with the state of Israel.
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Lies and falsehood are being used to kill and destroy Nigerians, and being used in the Arab/islamic world to slso oppress the Arabs, moslems, and sometimes also innocent Jews. Condemn evil even if perpetrated against your “enemy,” because either it was your turn before or might be your turn next time around.
Yasser Arafat had high regards for Nnamdi Azikiwe, a close friend of his because of Zik’s support for the Palestinian cause. Zik, a previous Benjamin, was christian but didn’t hang it around his neck for all to see and take note of, because till death the Owelle honoured African culture and religion and respected religious diversity. Akanu Ibiam returned his christian-like “honours” to the Queen when he became frustrated with their hypocrisy. But our equally well-beloved Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, filled with youthful exuberance and Oxford degree, kept an initially very sympathetic visiting Soviet Ambassador for hours without welcome or courtesy because he wanted to impress the West that he was one with them as fellow “Christians,” with nothing to do with the atheist communists, making an unwelcomed, ignored, hungry and frustrated Ambassador of such a mighty power on earth that was there to do for Ojukwu whatever he wanted, to fly back to Lagos and immediately inform his government to switch sides because “those people (Igbo/East) are not serious for freedom” – and the result was what happened.
Britain, the West, Vatican, Canterbury, were on the side of the islamic caliphate in Nigeria, all supporting the scortched earth elimination of christian Igbo populations. Don’t tell anybody that World Council of Churches and Caritas tried to smuggle in food via a risky air route, an infinitesimal percentage of what they scooped from Igboland/East in centuries of unequal relationships. And, were the Reliefs a better alternative to mounting a campaign for their governments to immediately stop the armaments and advisers poured in to wipe out the Igbo/Easterners? So, it’s only naiveté that makes anyone dream that religion leads him/her anywhere in international politics
*Therefore, Igbo should take it easy with foreign religions and their God or gods.* Igbo preexisted christianity and hopefully would continue to exist with or without any foreign religion/s. Mao Zedong told the Chinese to emulate what other races do: *Seek truth from within if you are to survive!* China is today a global power outsmarting the West, but the Igbo that entered the iron age and manufactured metal objects thousands of years before most Europeans, and mastered the science of rocketry between 1967 and 70, including inertial guidance that leads to targeted space and other destinations, at a time that only about 6 or so countries (US, USSR, UK, France, Germany, China) in the world had clearly attained that level, is degenerating into religion, with some people cursing others persuading them away from the cultural suicide as atheists who oppose God, falsely equating opposition to religious ideology to opposition to freedom of belief. The Mao advice applied by all great countries and races is the path that the Igbo should lead Nigerians to follow, if they have the opportunity to lead any time in future. That way of *a modern democratic secular state of equal laws and equal applications nationwide,* not the deceitfully redefined counterfeit of “multi-religious state,” is the only route to the survival of all groups of Nigerians as viable civilizational units, good for the Igbo and good for everyone.
TO ALL NIGERIANS:
*Therefore, support Israel’s right to security based on relevant UN and Security Council Resolutions, and also support the Palestinian right to self-determination on the basis of the same Resolutions. Remember, that what you say or choose any time, like supporting injustice because it hurts the other person, can be used or cited against you the next time even in Nigeria!*
Thanks greatly, our great and good friend, distinguished Prince Emeka Onyeso of the historical Nri ancient Kingdom.
O. Igwe.
April 07, 2025.
