From China: Letter to Hamas, Gaza
"You have freedom, according to which a person may profess, think, write, read, talk everything he wants, participate in the affairs of the government. Europeans have nothing like this."
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“The Chinese people, who have suffered so much from the immoral, crudely egoistic, and avaricious cruelty of the European peoples, have up to the present replied to all the violence committed against them with a majestic and wise composure, and have preferred patience in the struggle against force. I speak of the Chinese people and not of their government.” — Leo Tolstoy to Ku Hung-ming, 1857-1928, a Malaysia-born (Penang) Chinese who was for 12 years in Edinburgh and Leipzig universities. After which, he went to China where he served the last decades of Qing then post-Qing interim governments in varied official capacities including education. He died a destitute.
The text below is a redacted version of a hardly known letter, c.1900, from Leo Tolstoy to China, via a Chinese official, named unknown. Tolstoy’s motivation came when Russia, along with nine European nations, plundered China and sacked Beijing, Anglo-Saxons and French leading the marauding White pack.
In borrowing the letter, actual title ‘To Chinese people from a Christian’, I simply replaced the word Chinese with Palestine and, with apologies to Leo Tolstoy, also removed his authorship.
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To Hamas & the People of Gaza, Palestine
From the Nation of the Chinese who, too, suffered for a century at the hands of the European race
Armed people who call themselves
ChristiansJews now commit the greatest villainy among you. Don't believe them: they arenot Christiansbut a gang of the most horrific, unscrupulous thieves, who continually robbed and are robbing, torturing, perverting, and destroying bodies and souls of all working people, nine-tenths of the population in Europe and America, and now are wishing to seize you, rob, conquer, and most importantly, corrupt, because without the corruption of the peoples which they torture, this small gang of thugs wouldn’t rule over millions.These people have no right to call themselves
Christians, because all of their teaching, not only has nothing to do withChristianity[the Bible] but directly opposite and hostile to it. The main law is the recognition that all people are brothers, [it] is doing for others what you want those people to do to you.Christianity forbids not only killing, but anger, cursing; not only adultery, but anything that incites it; forbids an oath, countering violence with violence; instructs to love enemies. But the gang of thugs, now dominating the world, calling itself Christian, builds its whole authority on murder, asserts adultery, oath, requires retribution, and regards the whole world as the enemies and increasingly arms themselves against the enemies.
People of this gang began to appear among you long time ago, offering you their wares and their wild faith, which they called Christianity. But when your people wanted to kick them out, they came with arms and killed yours and snatched from them what they needed. That’s how it continued for already several centuries; and, not because you become different, and only because their greed have increased, lately they became more and more dare to attack you, went further and further into your land and captured the lands inhabited by you.
Port Arthur [Lushunkou 旅順口, Liaoning, where in a single November day, 1894, 4,000 were slaughtered], Kiochau [Qingdao?], Vejhajvej[?], etc.This their audacity provoked in some of you the desire to protect yourself from them by the same actions as those they used against you. And they needed only this, and the horrible, brutal massacre began: killings, devastations, desecrations, executions, which are carried out now among you.
This is all terrible, but the worse of all is that what takes place now among you, there is a danger that they would subvert and pervert you in the same way as they enslaved and corrupted people of our world in Europe and America, by shielding from them the teachings of truth that does people good, and, making of them weak, powerless and satisfied with their slavery slaves, serving as a tool of providing animal pleasures for the crude gang of thugs.
The risk you’re facing, is that once you get infected, on one hand, by the charm of the military force, based on murder, preached and demonstrated by the gang of thugs, and, on the other hand – by the charm of childish amenities and glitz of that what they call culture, you’ll fall behind from the wise teachings of your leaders,
the great Confucius,teaching the true virtue and means of achieving it by internal efforts, and unnoticeably for yourselves you will forfeit your virtues – diligence, peacefulness, respect, and will fall under the same terrible influence, sneaking into the in most curves of the human soul, under which current European people are deteriorating and withering.You have true freedom
(if by chance you will fall under the attacks of mandarin and its officials, this would be an exception), according to which a person may profess, think, write, read, talk everything he wants, participate in the affairs of the government, knowing and professing that the Chinese Emperor is a son of heaven and has the power because he is wise and righteous, and that if he was not such, the obligation of all his subordinates would be to change him. Europeans have nothing like this.
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