Planet ISKCON

Bhagavatam class in Romania. (English)

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The violence against the Jews of France, which has escalated as feelings have boiled over against the war in Gaza, is shocking and terrifying.

A mob of mainly Muslim demonstrators in Paris, reportedly armed with knives, axes and iron bars and chanting “Death to the Jews,” tried on Sunday to storm the Don Isaac Abarvanel Synagogue within which nearly 200 congregants were praying for the safety of Israel.

The attackers were kept at bay by members of Jewish defense organizations. A French Jewish journalist said: “Thank God they were there, because the protesters had murder on their minds and it took awhile before police reinforcements arrived.”

The previous day, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a synagogue at Aulnay-sous-Bois, a Parisian suburb. At Asnieres, another suburb, the police said a Muslim mob of 300 gathered in front of the synagogue and shouted anti-Israel slogans. A firebomb was hurled at a synagogue in Belleville. A Middle Eastern man shot pepper spray at the face of a 17-year-old Jewish girl on a Paris street shouting: “Dirty Jewess, inshallah you will die.”

Muslim attacks on French Jews long predate the current hostilities in Gaza. Earlier this year, a 59-year-old Jew was beaten up on a Paris street by three North African men who screamed “Dirty Jew’ and scrawled a swastika on his chest.

In 2006, Ilan Halimi, a young Parisian Jew, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered. In 2012, a radicalized Muslim murdered a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse.

Muslim attacks on Jews are spiraling across Europe. In May, four Jews were killed in an attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels; the suspect, another radicalized French Muslim, was said by the Belgian state prosecutor to have confessed to the attack “against Jews.” In Sweden, Jews have been driven out of the city of Malmo by Muslim attacks, harassment and intimidation.

All this goes virtually unreported by mainstream Western media. Street protests are routinely described as “anti-Israel.”

Everyone is therefore missing the big story: the tsunami of anti-Jewish hatred rolling across Europe. In Paris and elsewhere, the always paper-thin “anti-Zionist but not anti-Jew” excuse has been stripped away.

“Death to the Jews” is the cry that resounds through the Middle East. Nazi images demonizing Jews pour out of the Arab and Muslim world. The Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which alleged that the Jews formed a conspiracy to take over the world, is widely published and believed as historical fact. Iran’s leadership claims the Jews are trying to destroy Islam. Islamist ideologues from Syed Qutb to Osama bin Laden, Hamas and beyond have taught millions of Muslims that the Jews are behind all the ills of the world.

Palestinian society is suffused by this lunacy.

Palestinian Media Watch reports that the “moderate” Palestinian Authority presents Jews as inherently treacherous, corrupt, deceitful and unfaithful. Forgeries and fiction masquerading as history are used to document and support the libel that Judaism is in essence racist and evil. Jews are said to be planning and executing heinous crimes, including burning Palestinians in ovens, murder, using prisoners for Nazi-like experiments and more.

A few days ago, Yahya Rabah of the Fatah Leadership Committee in Gaza was but the latest Arab to recycle the medieval blood libel when he wrote in the official PA daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida that the “Jewish God” demands Jews offer sacrifices during Passover in the form of matza “made from the blood of our children.”

Last year, a PA TV show for children taught them that the devil and the Jews were on the same side. Earlier his month, Al-Hayat al-Jadida wrote that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “confirms the Talmud’s teachings, [according to which] killing others – the insects (gentiles) – is a good thing.”

It is astounding that neither the media nor any Western leader has sounded the alarm over this epidemic anti-Jewish madness in the Islamic world. But neither political nor cultural leaders want to join up the dots.

Partly this is due to the cultural confusion over “Islamophobia” and third world-ism. But mainly it is because anti-Semitism is now the prejudice that dare not speak its name. It’s the big one, the crime of crimes, the knockout blow. If the Muslim world is driven by anti-Semitism, all the excuses being used by Western leaders to appease that world and limit the push-back against it are invalidated.

It would mean it is being fueled by something which is utterly immune to reason or negotiation. So it would mean there could be no half-measures against it. It would have to be identified as a source of evil in the world and utterly defeated.

But of course, that hardly sits with the dominant Western narrative that says the Palestinians are entitled to a state and that Israel is to blame for the conflict. So the Jew-hatred pouring out of the Islamic world is simply ignored.

Worse, all those in the West who trumpet their progressive support for the “oppressed” Palestinians are thus tacitly supporting this frenzied anti-Semitism.

The Palestinian strategy is to efface Jewish history altogether: denying or destroying the historic evidence of the biblical Jewish Kingdom of Judea, obscuring the Jews’ unique right to settle what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza enshrined in treaty obligation in the 1920s by the international community, and inverting the Holocaust to claim that Israel is committing genocide. When London demonstrators and British intellectuals declare that Israelis are the new Nazis, colonizing land to which they have no historic connection and which they have stolen from the Palestinians, they make themselves accessories to an infernal creed which is inciting violence and murder against Jews.

Anti-Jewish hatred is not just directed against Israel and the Jews of Europe. It is fueling the Islamic war against the West. It is often said that the Jews are the “canary in the mine.”

Those who turn against the Jews in their own societies invariably deal a death blow to those societies themselves.

Written by Melanie Phillips

Attending Krishna’s Image: Caitanya Vaisnava Murti-seva as Devotional Truth  by ISKCON scholar and guru Krishna Kshetra Das (Kenneth R. Valpey) discusses how the ancient historical tradition was brought from India to countries all over the world. It shows how it has taken firm root today in both India and the West

How to understand that according to the scriptures Maharaja Ugrasena had over 100,000 times more bodyguards than the entire present population of the earth planet? The Vaishnava acharyas have given a number of interesting answers.

This Sat. July 19, starting at 11:00 AM in front of Rupanuga and Vani’s house, the New Vrindaban Country Ratha Yatra Parade will begin!

Bring your offerings of sweets for Their Lordships by 10:30 AM, to be offered  right at the cart along the route.

And, as They do every year as a special added feature, for those of you fortunate enough to live along the parade route, bring a love offering from your house, and Their Lordships will stop at your door to accept your offering!

Jaya Jagannatha!  Jaya Baladeva!  Jaya Subhadra!

On July 13th, the American Nick Mom TV Channel featured 7 year old Gauri, daughter of Bal Gopal Das and Lalita Sundari Dasi, residents of ISKCON New Dwaraka Dham, Los Angeles. The television show called Take Me To Your Mother was exploring how different children from all walks of life celebrated their birthdays.

HG Jananivas Prabhu at ISKCON Mayapur Published on Jul 11, 2014
2014 07 03 Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 05 18 33

Researchers are finding more and more evidence to the suggest that the unique combination of fatty acids found in coconut oil can have profound positive impacts on overall health.

The Greek scholar, Pythagoras lived over 2,500 years ago and ate a fleshless diet, called the "Pythagorean diet" until the word vegetarian became popular in the late 1800s.

After 20 years of turmoil and angry debate, on Monday (July 14) the General Synod of the Church of England said “yes” to women bishops.

BY SANTI VARDHANA CAITANYA DASA

JOHOR BHARU - After three days battle, Bhakta Vignesh Lal, 36 years old, succumbed to Denggi after multiple organ failure and internal bleeding. 

He was well trained by Adi Purusa Krishna Prabhu, together with many other youth boys of his age, and he was one of the most cheerful and humble amongst them.

He was always dedicated to serve Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON movement, Ratha Yatra festivals by helping in Ratha decorations etc. He also started the Sri Radhastami Festival in Teluk Intan and it has been going strong ever since. I was fortunate to have his association during the 2 or 3 years he lived with me in Penang Island more than 13 years ago.

He leaves behind his parents, brother and sisters. He was a bachelor.

Funeral prayers will be conducted by Narasimha Prabhu at his sister's house:(No 4, Jalan Cempaka 6, Taman Cempaka, 68000 Ampang, Kuala Lumpur) at 1.30 p.m.

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Hearse will leave the house at 2.30 p.m. and cremation will be at Loke Yew, Hindu Cremation ground at 3.30 p.m.(Most saddening, Para Brahma Prabhu was supposed to conduct the ceremony but his brother just left body in an accident at 12 a.m.

BY ADI PURUSA DASA

ADELAIDE - The passing away of Lal comes as a big shock to all of us. I still remember Lal as a young boy in school uniform marching into my clinic with his friend enquiring about Krishna Consciousness. I used to send them to the back room where I had books, magazines, posters etc which would interest them. Lal was so inquisitive about Krishna Consciousness that he had tons of questions which I patiently answered. He was bubbly in nature and was always eager to participate in devotional activities.

There was not much support from his family for his enthusiasm (except his mother) but we were always there for him. A large group of boys and girls had joined ISKCON then and being young were a boisterous lot. Like a responsible father I had been strict and was ever ready to discipline them much to their dislike.

Years later the whole gang would descend into our house yearly for Deepavali reminiscing old times. Often re-enacting past episodes they would imitate and ridicule my chastisements. There will be thunderous laughter all around going late into the night. All of them are doing fairly well in their own fields though not involved directly in ISKCON activities. They have the highest respect for ISKCON and thankful to it for having guided them in the formative years. Most importantly they have genuine love for HH Jayapataka Swami ever ready to serve him when summoned.

Lal, my dear son, you are now safely in the arms of Lord Krishna and may the Lord protect you always. We will always remember the good times we had with you and consider it our great fortune to have associated with you.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt condolences to his family members, mentors and friends.

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 16 April 2014, Durban, South Africa, Srimad Bhagavatam 1.7.34)

Transcribed by Radhadyuti dd

The first and foremost quality of the brahminical order is kṣamā or forgiveness. This is the beginning of tolerance. See, external tolerance will not do.  One can act very tolerant but if internally one cannot forgive then internally one is burning with fire and burning with anger. So forgiveness is the foundation of tolerance, like the tolerance of a brahmana.

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, April 2010, Radhadesh, Belgium, Lecture)

The spiritual master is the representative of Krsna. As a representative, what power do you really have? Krsna has the real power. He is omniscient. He is omnipotent. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. He can do anything! But his representative, what can his representative do? Only so much or so little…

The representative, in a way, can only desire. The one thing the spiritual master cannot do is force! But, if only he could, he would for sure! (laughter)

If it was possible to force people in to Krsna consciousness, oh boy, we will have a field day, but it is not like that! It is a voluntary process. The spiritual master really can only desire, desire that his disciples somehow or other take advantage of this very rare opportunity! It is what Srila Prabhupad used to say, “You had so many lifetimes and in so many lifetimes, you did what you want! Now, please give this one  to me! Just give me one lifetime! Just one!”

ISKCON News is happy to report that at 6.35 AM on Saturday, July 12th, 2014, a new member was born into the ISKCON News family. Our staff writer Madhava Smullen and his wife Manjari Smullen are now the proud parents of Ambika, a beautiful, healthy baby girl. 

The Bhagavatam class has been recorded in Kishinev, Moldova on July 15th, 2014.

As the situation in Eastern Ukraine escalates and the number of devotee refugees seeking help increases, the worldwide ISKCON community shows an outpouring of support.