Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that they failed in all the wars since 1948 shows that there is a supernatural hand at work.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
quote:Ayn Rand quotes herself on this issue.
You'll both be quoting Ayn Rand next.
quote:Her comments were the typical rationale for imperialism, ie. the Palestinians are all primitive savages, and the Israelis are beacons of civilization, developing the area from scratch.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Is there any summary of her comments? Not being able to see a youtube. I am hearing locally what appears to wrong comparison to indigenous people's land rights and apartheid.
This BDS thing seems to come up as univ students get passionate.
quote:If you are concerned about facts, why did you link to pure rhetoric?
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Missed my link:
The proper response to the BDS movement is not censure, but facts.
quote:So, you suggest that the Palestinians should shut up until the West decides to stop supporting the Saudis/Bahrain etc?
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The problem with the focus on Israel is that it negects all the other countries in the region. Tell me one which behaves itself.
quote:This effectively amounts to the same thing; the reality is that everyone has to pick the cause they wish to work on; and as was said above a significant number of the campaigners are also involved in things like CAAT. [and incidentally, where was your thread opposing the settler movement? Which at least has the power of the regions largest army behind it.]
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
No. I am suggesting that it is unreasonable to criticise Israel and advocate actions against it, unless there is balance of criticism and actions against the other countries in the region.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Israel does not represent a fulfillment of prophecy, does not a enjoy a divine exceptionalism to do what it likes, is not perfect, and is not immune from criticism.
It is, however, in the context of the ME, a beleaguered outpost of pluralist, liberal democratic civilization surrounded by corruption, obscurantism, fanaticism and theocracy - not to mention an openly declared determination to annihilate it and its people.
quote:These two ideas, posted by two different shipmates, would seem to be at odds with each other. The first posits an Israel that is "pluralist", the latter suggests that having too many non-Jews in Israel would "destroy" it.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I also don't think the "right of return" and related simple minded ideas are realistic at all. It might sound fair, but not realistic. It would destroy the state of Israel.
quote:So it's ok for Israel to be racist because it's not (very) homophobic? Some interesting logic there.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Anyone who is perplexed about the issue of pluralism, Israel, and its neighbours, might like to ask themselves the question as to which country in the ME it would be safest for them to identify publicly as gay.
quote:This is like arguing that it was better to be a woman in 1970s USSR than in 1970s Afghanistan, therefore the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was okay.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Anyone who is perplexed about the issue of pluralism, Israel, and its neighbours, might like to ask themselves the question as to which country in the ME it would be safest for them to identify publicly as gay.
quote:Only if you ignore every other conceivable factor in the equation.
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:This is like arguing that it was better to be a woman in 1970s USSR than in 1970s Afghanistan, therefore the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was okay.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Anyone who is perplexed about the issue of pluralism, Israel, and its neighbours, might like to ask themselves the question as to which country in the ME it would be safest for them to identify publicly as gay.
quote:First Israel is not racist, and secondly, anyone with the slightest genuine interest in racism would be concentrating on the treatment of Jews in other ME countries, and the anti-Semitism of the West's media and academe.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So it's ok for Israel to be racist
quote:unless you're an Arab whether Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian or whatever.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:First Israel is not racist,
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So it's ok for Israel to be racist
quote:Racism elsewhere does not preclude opposing the deliberate cruelty of the current Israeli government against Palestinians, including the theft of what little remains of their territory. That's what BDS tries to do, although if Western media was truly anti-Semitic, the BDS campaign would be doing far better.
and secondly, anyone with the slightest genuine interest in racism would be concentrating on the treatment of Jews in other ME countries, and the anti-Semitism of the West's media and academe.
quote:Amen to that. I tune out the clueless self-righteousness that characterises any discussion of Israel and Palestine in Ireland.
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Far too much time and energy is spent on discerning who is more right. If everyone spent even half the time and energy on bringing something constructive to the table we'd already be much further down the road.
I always loath these debates about who is right and who is wrong and who is more evil and who is more righteous. I lived through that kind of bullshit as a child during the troubles in Northern Ireland and guess what; not one single, solitary point won in any of those stupid arguments ever contributed anything to peace.
quote:If there's a huge lobby defending anti-Semitism I've missed it. Western media is notoriously pro-Israel, so it's hard to see where you're building an allegation of generalised anti-Semitism.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:First Israel is not racist, and secondly, anyone with the slightest genuine interest in racism would be concentrating on the treatment of Jews in other ME countries, and the anti-Semitism of the West's media and academe.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So it's ok for Israel to be racist
quote:That's ok then - we'll arbitrarily decide tomorrow that people who haven't lived in the land you live on for nearly a thousand years are entitled to it and move you out, bulldoze your home, delegitimise your state, force you to go to live in an open-air prison and make your life uncomfortable.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Given that Jews have lived in the land for millennia and have every right to be there; that their nation has every right to existence and security; that there was a realistic attempt to exterminate them within living memory; and that they are currently surrounded by lunatics who would like to exterminate them on racial and religious grounds, it is unbelievable what an open, liberal and progressive society Israel is.
quote:Who took the censuses?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Until 1539 the Jewish population of Palestine was 3%, by 1690 it dropped to 1%, it took until 1947 for it to double to one third from the 1931 figure. Christians outnumbered Jews until 1900.
quote:Which isn't really disputed by anyone. Indeed, all of the Palestinian groups have called for negotiation with Israel based on the 1967 green line, and the only reason that hasn't happened is that the Israeli state wants to continue expanding illegally into occupied Palestinian Territory.
Originally posted by Callan:
The thing is we are where we are. There isn't a viable prospect of a peace deal for the region which doesn't involve the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
quote:All of them? Really?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Which isn't really disputed by anyone. Indeed, all of the Palestinian groups have called for negotiation with Israel based on the 1967 green line, and the only reason that hasn't happened is that the Israeli state wants to continue expanding illegally into occupied Palestinian Territory.
Originally posted by Callan:
The thing is we are where we are. There isn't a viable prospect of a peace deal for the region which doesn't involve the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
quote:Tax collectors are always good at that sort of thing. The Ottoman registers are superbly detailed.
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:Who took the censuses?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Until 1539 the Jewish population of Palestine was 3%, by 1690 it dropped to 1%, it took until 1947 for it to double to one third from the 1931 figure. Christians outnumbered Jews until 1900.
Moo
quote:Well Fatah and Hamas have both got de-facto policies of recognising the existence of Israel as a state within the 1967 borders.
Originally posted by Callan:
All of them? Really?
quote:Isn't that going to be the case for any state created by terrorist action and the expulsion of the bulk of the native population?
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Isn't it true that the only thing that has brought any form of "recognition" for Israel is from the neighbouring countries is that they have been defeated in wars?
quote:And Israel still operates the Ottoman Millet system, whereby religion determines the civil laws regarding "property and civil rights" that apply. Israel does not have one universal civil law for everyone. And this is how the Law of Return works, as it only applies to the Jewish Millet.
Originally posted by Martin60:
This is instituonal racism by Israel.
quote:Do the Ottoman registers cover 1539 and 1690?
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Tax collectors are always good at that sort of thing. The Ottoman registers are superbly detailed.
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:Who took the censuses?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Until 1539 the Jewish population of Palestine was 3%, by 1690 it dropped to 1%, it took until 1947 for it to double to one third from the 1931 figure. Christians outnumbered Jews until 1900.
Moo
quote:No. That doesn't work. Israel was created by international law by the UN. Only to be promptly attacked by all of the countries around it. How many of these wars does it take to learn to pre-empt attacks? Then it negotiated with the willing and maintained threats against the unwilling. Which it continues to do. Because this is the only thing thus far that has resulted in any form of security. I'm not saying it's all well, right and good. But saying it is the facts as it seems Israel understands them. Does this mean that it should hold on to the captured territories? Probably not. But the history makes it understandable.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:Isn't that going to be the case for any state created by terrorist action and the expulsion of the bulk of the native population?
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Isn't it true that the only thing that has brought any form of "recognition" for Israel is from the neighbouring countries is that they have been defeated in wars?
quote:And that doesn't work because it ignores that the land was not created out of nowhere and it ignores the lying and manipulation that preceded it.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
[qb] No. That doesn't work. Israel was created by international law by the UN.
quote:This is the ridiculous redirect people make when confronted with Israel's bad behaviour.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
So UN resolutions should be set aside? What would you have the Jewish people to do? Do you want a state along the lines of Lebanon where they divided up government along religious lines? Where do you want them to go?
quote:The ME country most likely to start WWIII is Iran.
Originally posted by Martin60:
if Israel starts WWIII
quote:You really should read up on stuff before spouting here. There have been numerous UN resolutions about Israeli encroachment into Palestinian land, and the original UN plan was one of partition, with Israel getting about 50% of the land.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
So UN resolutions should be set aside? What would you have the Jewish people to do? Do you want a state along the lines of Lebanon where they divided up government along religious lines? Where do you want them to go?
quote:Israel not only has nuclear weapons already, it also has a habit of stealing land from neighbours and engaging in ongoing military skirmishes with them.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The ME country most likely to start WWIII is Iran.
Big country to the east of Israel - you possibly haven't heard of it, because although its human rights record is infinitely worse than Israel's, it receives only a fraction of the negative attention from trendy-lefty Westerners, because its people are not Jewish.
It is rabidly anti-Israel, and developing nuclear weapons.
quote:What a pathetic caricature. I expect better of you. Oh no, sorry, you're not Callan. Iran's history - do you know ANYTHING about that? - makes her vastly sympathetic. I'd recommend Shah of Shahs for a start by Ryszard Kapuściński. Ohhhhhh, sorry, he was a communist and therefore invalid.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:The ME country most likely to start WWIII is Iran.
Originally posted by Martin60:
if Israel starts WWIII
Big country to the east of Israel - you possibly haven't heard of it, because although its human rights record is infinitely worse than Israel's, it receives only a fraction of the negative attention from trendy-lefty Westerners, because its people are not Jewish.
It is rabidly anti-Israel, and developing nuclear weapons.
quote:Callan. Air bursts. No collateral. Even in your own back yard. Gaza. West Bank. Further, ground zero baby. Especially on ALL the oil fields, refineries and ports.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Israel not only has nuclear weapons already, it also has a habit of stealing land from neighbours and engaging in ongoing military skirmishes with them.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The ME country most likely to start WWIII is Iran.
Big country to the east of Israel - you possibly haven't heard of it, because although its human rights record is infinitely worse than Israel's, it receives only a fraction of the negative attention from trendy-lefty Westerners, because its people are not Jewish.
It is rabidly anti-Israel, and developing nuclear weapons.
I can't see them starting WW3, because they are so small that a nuke strike on one of their neighbours is likely to completely destroy them as well.
...
quote:You might want to calm down and address the people you're quoting rather than the imaginary posts that only exist in your mind.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Callan. Air bursts. No collateral. Even in your own back yard. Gaza. West Bank. Further, ground zero baby. Especially on ALL the oil fields, refineries and ports.
quote:The Lebanon solution is better than some. I think there are two real choices. One is to facilitate Palestinian independence in the West Bank and Gaza based on the 1967 borders. The second is to go the whole hog and absorb the territories, creating a single pluralist state and granting citizenship to all Palestinians and allowing a right of return equally to Palestinians and Jews on the same basis, with constitutional protections in place to protect the rights of both. Either way, the theft of land via settlement construction since 1967 has to stop and be reversed.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
So UN resolutions should be set aside? What would you have the Jewish people to do? Do you want a state along the lines of Lebanon where they divided up government along religious lines? Where do you want them to go?
quote:You called?
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Callan. Air bursts. No collateral. Even in your own back yard. Gaza. West Bank. Further, ground zero baby. Especially on ALL the oil fields, refineries and ports.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Israel not only has nuclear weapons already, it also has a habit of stealing land from neighbours and engaging in ongoing military skirmishes with them.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The ME country most likely to start WWIII is Iran.
Big country to the east of Israel - you possibly haven't heard of it, because although its human rights record is infinitely worse than Israel's, it receives only a fraction of the negative attention from trendy-lefty Westerners, because its people are not Jewish.
It is rabidly anti-Israel, and developing nuclear weapons.
I can't see them starting WW3, because they are so small that a nuke strike on one of their neighbours is likely to completely destroy them as well.
...
quote:Oh Pleeeze!...
Originally posted by Martin60:
Israel has NOTHING to fear from anyone. Apart from the people she has displaced from the lie of 'the empty land'.
quote:Sort of like not be a pluralistic free democracy who provides an oasis of sane government, safety and infrastructure in a wilderness of Islamic fundamentalist insanity?..to All racial groups?
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Did I say the Israelis should now be disposed? No. They should stop being shitty to the other people who also live there. [/QB]
quote:If publicly describing Jews as vermin and calling for the destruction of Israel is your idea of sympathy, it would be fascinating to know what you would view as antipathy.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Iran's history makes her vastly sympathetic.
quote:Not yet.
Iran has no nukes
quote:Phew, that's a relief.
Israel has NOTHING to fear from anyone.
quote:As I said, you obviously know nothing, less than absolutely nothing at all in fact about the history of Iran. The happy generation of 10,000 days of Israel's creation - primus inter pares at least, with the US & UK - and sustaining of the King of Kings with the angelic Savak that made Iran a paradise ... for Israel. Cold war collateral I'm sure.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:If publicly describing Jews as vermin and calling for the destruction of Israel is your idea of sympathy, it would be fascinating to know what you would view as antipathy.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Iran's history makes her vastly sympathetic.
Tough love, obviously.
quote:Not yet.
Iran has no nukes
quote:Phew, that's a relief.
Israel has NOTHING to fear from anyone.
All that anti-Israel rhetoric and terrorism was clearly invented and disseminated by another one of those fiendish plots on the part of international Jewry.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was right after all.
quote:The straw soldiers always march when anyone dares to criticise Israel. They are the only army the fauxrighteous have.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Oh, FFS. Put the straw back in the barn where it belongs.
quote:The whole Middle East has ALWAYS regarded Israel as a carbuncle on its ass. The only thing different is they are not currently in a position to action their loathing.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Of course, there are threats from militants within the occupied territories. Probably the most significant being attacks on settlers or soldiers in the territories, and rockets fired into Israel. Though, to a large extent, this is a threat of Israel's own making, a direct consequence of the policy of settlement and impoverishment of Palestinians. That is a threat that nuclear weapons, or advanced conventional military, is unable to counter.
But, beyond that, what threat faces Israel? Jordan and Egypt are at peace with Israel, and gain nothing from a conflict. Lebanon is recovering from a mess they were left in with their civil war, and as for Syria ... well, if there is any state that can be called Syria at the moment it's no threat to anyone. And, we've run out of neighbours to threaten Israel.
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that they failed in all the wars since 1948 shows that there is a supernatural hand at work.
quote:Can' t tell you how sad that makes me.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that they failed in all the wars since 1948 shows that there is a supernatural hand at work.
quote:It isn't laughing at your Christianity, but at the ridiculousness of your claim.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Can' t tell you how sad that makes me.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that they failed in all the wars since 1948 shows that there is a supernatural hand at work.
quote:Just replace "Boxer-Henry point-four-five caliber" with "US supplied military technology". Plus, military commanders with a very good grasp of tactics and strategy.
Sgt. Bourne: Sir, sentries report the Zulus have gone. All of them! It's a miracle.
Lt. Chard: If it's a miracle, Colour Sergeant, it's a short chamber Boxer-Henry point-four-five caliber miracle.
Sgt. Bourne: And a bayonet, sir, with some guts behind it.
quote:Can you imagine how sad it makes me that you seem to think God smiles on people taking other people's countries away from them and settling in them?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Can' t tell you how sad that makes me.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that they failed in all the wars since 1948 shows that there is a supernatural hand at work.
quote:And who annexed the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the 1948 War? Who attacked Israel the morning after it declared its independence?
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The state of Israel doesn't hide the fact that it has, for a long time, occupied territory that is rightfully part of other nations. That is not right. Control of the Golan Heights has been returned to Syria, southern Lebanon to Lebanon, Sinai to Egypt. But, that still leaves the West Bank (part of the original Palestinian mandate, briefly controlled by Jordan) and Gaza.
quote:And this just shows another way that the issues are discounted. First they try to argue that 1000 year old land claims are perfectly legitimate. Next they try to say that the Palestinians are not a nation of people and so can talk a load of crap about "the Arabs".
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
And who annexed the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the 1948 War? Who attacked Israel the morning after it declared its independence?
The situation has cooled down markedly over the past 30 or so years. But it wasn't all that long ago that the state of Israel was surrounded by other states that wanted to wipe it off the map.
None of which means Israel shouldn't be criticized. But the situation is much more complicated than "mean Israel, poor Arabs."
quote:I don't know about Indigenous reserves or reservations, so I can't compare them.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Could we see a Palestinian nation that isn't a country? Not all nations are countries. Like all of the First Nations* have government and control somewhere between city/province(state) for their Reserve** lands and services to their people depending on situation. The Palestinians being fully independent along the lines of a country is probably not feasible because of terrorism, unacceptability to Israel for security reasons. They might get there in the future. -- though wasn't the Palestinian Authority the failed attempt at this? Mightn't another go be in order. Because just declaring a country for Palestinians isn't going to be a starting point.
quote:If people were trying to blow up our kids by shooting rockets at their schools, we would surely just get over it and move on.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
rockets fired into Israel.
quote:Sure, Iran's leadership has expressed approval of obliterating Israel. and is developing nuclear weapons, but Iran is not literally a neighbour, being separated from Israel by a few countries, so once again we have those Jews overreacting.
But, beyond that, what threat faces Israel?
quote:Please show me the occasion when bombs went off in London that we punished and imprisoned millions of people who had nothing to do with it.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
If people were trying to blow up our kids by shooting rockets at their schools, we would surely just get over it and move on.
But those bloody Jews are so notoriously touchy!
quote:Iran and Israel are sabre rattling. But this has bog all to do with the Palestinian issue.
Sure, Iran's leadership has expressed approval of obliterating Israel. and is developing nuclear weapons, but Iran is not literally a neighbour, being separated from Israel by a few countries, so once again we have those Jews overreacting.
quote:As I recall it was a former President of Iran, who is no longer in office, and the translation of the remarks was hotly disputed at the time.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Sure, Iran's leadership has expressed approval of obliterating Israel. and is developing nuclear weapons, but Iran is not literally a neighbour, being separated from Israel by a few countries, so once again we have those Jews overreacting.
quote:Joan Peters' book "From Time Immemorial" carries the central thesis, never disproved that 'Palestians ' were 19 century immigrants from mainly the North and we're both Jew and Arab. The Palestinian brigade in the war were Jewish. The Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper. Mr Cheesy's version of history is the bullshit here. The founder of the PLO Ahmad Al Shaqueiri actually told the UN at one point that the 'Palestinians' were Jews only to change his mind a couple of years later and claim the tile Palestinian for Arabs. IMV there ARE no occupied territories. After 3 wars of aggression the Israelis would be insane to give up the Golan and create a platform from which they could have more bombs lobbed at them. The PA is fucking Hamas terrorist pricks who regularly use their own people as human shields. If I was Netanyahu I'd be building a wall too. Joel 3 settles the ownership of the land by the way. God clearly says that HE owns it.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Why isn't a sovereign state of Palestine a starting point? Reservations were a travesty of justice when perpetrated on the First Nations of North America, just as the Bantustans were on the native population of South Africa.
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Joan Peters' book "From Time Immemorial" carries the central thesis, never disproved that 'Palestians ' were 19 century immigrants from mainly the North and were both Jew and Arab. The Palestinian brigade in the war were Jewish. The Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper. There was a Jewish 'Palestinian' symphony orchestra. Mr Cheesy's version of history is the bullshit here. The founder of the PLO Ahmad Al Shaqueiri actually told the UN at one point that the 'Palestinians' were Jews only to change his mind a couple of years later and claim the tile Palestinian for Arabs. IMV there ARE no occupied territories. After 3 wars of aggression the Israelis would be insane to give up the Golan and create a platform from which they could have more bombs lobbed at them. The PA is just Hamas terrorists who regularly use their own people as human shields. If I was Netanyahu I'd be building a wall too. Joel 3 settles the ownership of the land by the way. God clearly says that HE owns it.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Why isn't a sovereign state of Palestine a starting point? Reservations were a travesty of justice when perpetrated on the First Nations of North America, just as the Bantustans were on the native population of South Africa.
quote:Let's just swap Jew for Arab in an alternative history.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Joan Peters' book "From Time Immemorial" carries the central thesis, never disproved that 'Palestians ' were 19 century immigrants from mainly the North and we're both Jew and Arab. The Palestinian brigade in the war were Jewish. The Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper. Mr Cheesy's version of history is the bullshit here. The founder of the PLO Ahmad Al Shaqueiri actually told the UN at one point that the 'Palestinians' were Jews only to change his mind a couple of years later and claim the tile Palestinian for Arabs. IMV there ARE no occupied territories. After 3 wars of aggression the Israelis would be insane to give up the Golan and create a platform from which they could have more bombs lobbed at them. The PA is fucking Hamas terrorist pricks who regularly use their own people as human shields. If I was Netanyahu I'd be building a wall too. Joel 3 settles the ownership of the land by the way. God clearly says that HE owns it.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Why isn't a sovereign state of Palestine a starting point? Reservations were a travesty of justice when perpetrated on the First Nations of North America, just as the Bantustans were on the native population of South Africa.
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:It isn't laughing at your Christianity, but at the ridiculousness of your claim.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Can' t tell you how sad that makes me.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The fact that they failed in all the wars since 1948 shows that there is a supernatural hand at work.
Israel is safe because of massive support from America.
quote:Yes BUT lilBuddha, Alan, that's HOW God did it. Like how the Naiads make streams work with fluid dynamics.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It's reminiscent of the end of the film Zulu.quote:Just replace "Boxer-Henry point-four-five caliber" with "US supplied military technology". Plus, military commanders with a very good grasp of tactics and strategy.
Sgt. Bourne: Sir, sentries report the Zulus have gone. All of them! It's a miracle.
Lt. Chard: If it's a miracle, Colour Sergeant, it's a short chamber Boxer-Henry point-four-five caliber miracle.
Sgt. Bourne: And a bayonet, sir, with some guts behind it.
quote:It's not a starting point to have a Palestinian country because it isn't safe for Israel. It hasn't been safe since 1948. Still isn't. It might be in the future. But no, it is not a starting point.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Why isn't a sovereign state of Palestine a starting point? Reservations were a travesty of justice when perpetrated on the First Nations of North America, just as the Bantustans were on the native population of South Africa.
quote:If someone turfed you off your land, and told you, "You can't go back to your home, even though your family have lived there for multiple generations" and then gleefully told you "But you can go to another land, right next door, and that's your new home." How would you feel?
How is it that Jordan isn't considered the Palestinian state, and that is the basis of 2 state solution: Israel and Jordan? No doubt there are some reasons for this, but are they good ones? [/QB]
quote:Um, I think you'll find that we were already occupying the Island of Ireland at that point and had been doing so since the reign of the first Plantagenet King. Which was, rather, the entire point of the Easter Rising. Incidentally two million people died as a result of the Irish potato famine and another million were displaced. British people really have no business lecturing Israelis about how they treat their neighbours based on their own conduct in Ireland. It's like Donald Trump complaining Bill Clinton is an adulterer.
Cheesy, you're clearly forgetting how we responded to the Easter Uprising by occupying the Irish Free State,
quote:M8, you're not helping. There's a case to be made for Israel as a Jewish state but this ain't it.
oan Peters' book "From Time Immemorial" carries the central thesis, never disproved that 'Palestians ' were 19 century immigrants from mainly the North and were both Jew and Arab. The Palestinian brigade in the war were Jewish. The Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper. There was a Jewish 'Palestinian' symphony orchestra. Mr Cheesy's version of history is the bullshit here. The founder of the PLO Ahmad Al Shaqueiri actually told the UN at one point that the 'Palestinians' were Jews only to change his mind a couple of years later and claim the tile Palestinian for Arabs. IMV there ARE no occupied territories. After 3 wars of aggression the Israelis would be insane to give up the Golan and create a platform from which they could have more bombs lobbed at them. The PA is just Hamas terrorists who regularly use their own people as human shields. If I was Netanyahu I'd be building a wall too. Joel 3 settles the ownership of the land by the way. God clearly says that HE owns it.
quote:Having an Israeli state clearly isn't safe for Palestinians, so presumably that shouldn't be a starting point either.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:It's not a starting point to have a Palestinian country because it isn't safe for Israel. It hasn't been safe since 1948. Still isn't. It might be in the future. But no, it is not a starting point.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Why isn't a sovereign state of Palestine a starting point? Reservations were a travesty of justice when perpetrated on the First Nations of North America, just as the Bantustans were on the native population of South Africa.
quote:While I have not had this experience personally, my grandfather's family did. He was born in 1892. He was chased out of East Prussia after WW1 (the corridor to the Baltic part that Hitler went to war over in 1939). The family home and farm were given to Polish people. I've been to the site.
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
quote:If someone turfed you off your land, and told you, "You can't go back to your home, even though your family have lived there for multiple generations" and then gleefully told you "But you can go to another land, right next door, and that's your new home." How would you feel? [/QB]
How is it that Jordan isn't considered the Palestinian state, and that is the basis of 2 state solution: Israel and Jordan? No doubt there are some reasons for this, but are they good ones?
quote:Please show me when a people like the Jews have had a very efficient system of genocide perpetrated against them within living memory, set up a state to protect themselves on land where they have lived for millennia, bent over backward to accommodate in as liberal and democratic milieu as possible other inhabitants who contain an element who want to exterminate them, and have then had supercilious, judgmental outsiders in safe countries not only condemn them for not getting everything perfect in the conditions of their tenuous existence, but engage in obscene sophistry to justify rocket (sorry, peashooter) attacks on their children.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Please show me the occasion when bombs went off in London that we punished and imprisoned millions of people who had nothing to do with it.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
If people were trying to blow up our kids by shooting rockets at their schools, we would surely just get over it and move on.
But those bloody Jews are so notoriously touchy!
You can't. It's bullshit.
By the same logic the Palestinians are perfectly justified in killing as many Jews as they can due to the asymmetrical war which pits a nuclear power against a few militants with peashooters and the overwhelming losses that the Palestinians have taken in this conflict compared to the Israelis.
Get a grip.
quote:You're assuming that anti-Semites think and act rationally.
And Israel and Iran could hardly trade any serious nuclear weaponry without destroying themselves anyway.
quote:Which has absolutely sod-all to do with Merkavas driving round Gaza city. Sure, the Palestinians launch rockets into Israeli territory, but they are a pinprick compared to the bombardment and blockade that Israel applies. If Israel allowed the Palestinian Authority to have some authority it might even become more democratic, but while the Likudniks want to drive anyone who isn't an Israeli Jew into the sea, that won't happen.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I don't think this has to do with morality. It has to do with safety. A few more liberal democracies in the region would help.
quote:People who are actually right can be boringly inconvenient.I quite agree, if they don't live up to one's current version of reality. She was ad homenimed, and criticised for style and contextualisation of her sources by Finklestein and co but the central theis was not debunked. Even Wiki says so.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Joan Peters book was boringly debunked and taken apart about two decades ago. Almost nobody seriously considers that to be an authority worth quoting today.
quote:If safety were the main concern, they would reduce the poor treatment of the Palestinians because that fuels tensions.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I don't think this has to do with morality. It has to do with safety. A few more liberal democracies in the region would help.
quote:Spoken like a British Imperial official about Ireland in 1916. The Palestinian right to self-determination is not up for negotiation.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
As far as I understand, there is received wisdom that a group negotiates better from a power position. Israel seems to think that giving tidbits to Palestinians has endangered its safety. Perhaps it is merely a correlation and not causation. The Palestinians could aspire for a non-independent nation I think, closer to the French-Québecois nation within Canada than the Ukrainian nation within Russia. Full independence for Palestians would be seen as a base for exremists. Which does seem the experience.
quote:Actually, on this occasion even Wikipedia is considerably more nuanced than your reading of it:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Even Wiki says so.
quote:Though, with the exceptions of a small number of Jewish families who had lived in Palestine for centuries, the vast majority of Jews in Israel had not lived in Israel for millennia - their parents and grandparents had come to Israel from Europe (where their families had lived for centuries, approaching a couple of millennia), and other parts of the world, within the second half of the 20th century.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
on land where they have lived for millennia [/QB]
quote:Not Britis. . From the outside that looks like 2 isolated countries without a host of adjoining countries wanting to destroy England, ie Wales and Scotland were on England's side. And othet European countries didn't have an opinion and didn't take action. Of course Palestinians can have their own country. When it is safe to do so.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:Spoken like a British Imperial official about Ireland in 1916. The Palestinian right to self-determination is not up for negotiation.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
As far as I understand, there is received wisdom that a group negotiates better from a power position. Israel seems to think that giving tidbits to Palestinians has endangered its safety. Perhaps it is merely a correlation and not causation. The Palestinians could aspire for a non-independent nation I think, closer to the French-Québecois nation within Canada than the Ukrainian nation within Russia. Full independence for Palestians would be seen as a base for exremists. Which does seem the experience.
quote:In1948 after statehood was declared, Arabs were urged to get out by radio and other media by The Arab powers surrounding the new state of Israel as they were about to be swept into the Mediterranean with all the Jews if they stayed. The grant to Israel was 13percent of what they were originally promised, The Jews wanted them to stay and some did. Lots of Arabs are Israeli citizens and are fully participating. The fact that the surrounding powers failed spectacularly in their military efforts resulted in the so called occupation. If the Arab powers had accepted the 1948 decision then so would have Israel.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:Though, with the exceptions of a small number of Jewish families who had lived in Palestine for centuries, the vast majority of Jews in Israel had not lived in Israel for millennia - their parents and grandparents had come to Israel from Europe (where their families had lived for centuries, approaching a couple of millennia), and other parts of the world, within the second half of the 20th century. [/QB]
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
on land where they have lived for millennia
quote:True, but please quote where Peters is said to be debunked? The central Thesis is not refuted and very generally this concerns the so called antiquity of the so called Palestinian people who were in fact 19 century Arab and Jewish immigrants. There has always been a Jewish presence in what is now Israel. The PLO under Shaqueriri deliberately kept the refugee camps operational rather than rehoming so they could continue generating hate vs Israel. Most of these Arabs now called Palestinians had fled the war. They were not kicked out by The Jews but asked to stay.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:Actually, on this occasion even Wikipedia is considerably more nuanced than your reading of it:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Even Wiki says so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Time_Immemorial#Response_to_reception
quote:and a salient point:
Anthony Lewis, in an opinion piece for The New York Times compared American and Israeli responses to the book:
Israelis have not gushed over the book as some Americans have. Perhaps that is because they know the reality of the Palestinians' existence, as great Zionists of the past knew. Perhaps it is because most understand the danger of trying to deny a people identity. As Professor Porath says, 'Neither historiography nor the Zionist cause itself gains anything from mythologizing history
quote:So, yeah.
Writing for The New Yorker in 2011, David Remnick described the book as "an ideological tract disguised as history", "propaganda" and "pseudo-scholarship". He stated that while the book was a commercial success and had been praised by a number of writers and critics, it had been thoroughly discredited by Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath along with many others. He points out that even some right wing critics who had originally favoured the book later accepted the flaws in its scholarship.[
quote:I'm sorry but this is just wrong. I haven't got time to look up chapter and verse now but suffice it to say the removal of Palestinians from 'strategic' areas during the 1948 war was Israeli policy. Population transfers in order to build up an ethnically homogenous nation state were regarded as being morally acceptable then in a way they are not now as any German national whose ancestors lived in the Sudetenland or what is now Western Poland will tell you.
In1948 after statehood was declared, Arabs were urged to get out by radio and other media by The Arab powers surrounding the new state of Israel as they were about to be swept into the Mediterranean with all the Jews if they stayed. The grant to Israel was 13percent of what they were originally promised, The Jews wanted them to stay and some did.
quote:This, of course, was after the Stern Gang and others had carried out a campaign of murder against British troops. Let's not forget that Prime Minister Shamir was a member of the Stern Gang, and that Prime Minister Begin was a member of the slightly less violent Likud.
Originally posted by Jamat:
The first was thir shameless desertion in1948. The whole world fully expected Israel to be blitzed and would not have mourned the fact. God however, is prophetically regathering his original Abrahamic people as he said he'd do in so many places in the Old T. There is indeed none so blind as those who will not see as stated above.
quote:I agree with Callan on the non-existence of TARDISes, but 'setting up a state to protect themselves' in territory that contains 'an element who want to exterminate them' seems to me a plan with a rather obvious flaw in it ...
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Please show me when a people like the Jews have had a very efficient system of genocide perpetrated against them within living memory, set up a state to protect themselves on land where they have lived for millennia, bent over backward to accommodate in as liberal and democratic milieu as possible other inhabitants who contain an element who want to exterminate them, and have then had supercilious, judgmental outsiders in safe countries not only condemn them for not getting everything perfect in the conditions of their tenuous existence, but engage in obscene sophistry to justify rocket (sorry, peashooter) attacks on their children.
quote:Yes, their numbers in their homeland had been thinned over the centuries through persecutions and expulsions.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:Though, with the exceptions of a small number of Jewish families who had lived in Palestine for centuries, the vast majority of Jews in Israel had not lived in Israel for millennia - their parents and grandparents had come to Israel from Europe (where their families had lived for centuries, approaching a couple of millennia), and other parts of the world, within the second half of the 20th century. [/QB]
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
on land where they have lived for millennia
quote:After 1800 years, it wasn't theirs (and 'they' didn't exist any more than my more recent Irish and possibly Spanish, Jewish, Scots and German ancestors do) to occupy. It was already occupied. But you knew that.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Yes, their numbers in their homeland had been thinned over the centuries through persecutions and expulsions.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:Though, with the exceptions of a small number of Jewish families who had lived in Palestine for centuries, the vast majority of Jews in Israel had not lived in Israel for millennia - their parents and grandparents had come to Israel from Europe (where their families had lived for centuries, approaching a couple of millennia), and other parts of the world, within the second half of the 20th century.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
on land where they have lived for millennia
Being Jews, however, they had no doubt brought it on themselves and deserved it.
Very uppity of them, therefore, to presume to re-occupy their own territory. [/QB]
quote:I never even suggested such a thing.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Being Jews, however, they had no doubt brought it on themselves and deserved it.
Very uppity of them, therefore, to presume to re-occupy their own territory.
quote:Did those 2 steps mean that there was less accuracy in the shots they fired?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Begin was Irgun which murdered Britons and Arabs equally effectively. It was two steps removed from Likud.
quote:Utter drivel. Peter's book has been debunked by showing that her use of sources was sloppy, out of context and sometimes downright dishonest.
Originally posted by Jamat:
True, but please quote where Peters is said to be debunked? The central Thesis is not refuted
quote:This kind of bollocks is typical of the crap that passes as sensible discussion of Israel/Palestine but would be totally incomprehensible and laughable if spoken about almost anywhere else.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Yes, their numbers in their homeland had been thinned over the centuries through persecutions and expulsions.
Being Jews, however, they had no doubt brought it on themselves and deserved it.
Very uppity of them, therefore, to presume to re-occupy their own territory.
quote:They weren't fired by Likud which wouldn't exist for another 27 years.
Originally posted by Gee D:
quote:Did those 2 steps mean that there was less accuracy in the shots they fired?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Begin was Irgun which murdered Britons and Arabs equally effectively. It was two steps removed from Likud.
quote:Because god didn't want them to live in Europe.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote:America has the greatest number of Jews outside the Middle East and a lot of Jews in Israel came from America. Wouldn't it have made sense to make the Promised Land in the USA? Upstate New York for example?
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:Because god didn't want them to live in Europe.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
quote:I believe that David Duke has suggested that as a solution.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:America has the greatest number of Jews outside the Middle East and a lot of Jews in Israel came from America. Wouldn't it have made sense to make the Promised Land in the USA? Upstate New York for example?
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:Because god didn't want them to live in Europe.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
quote:Well, that's one route to Godwin, I suppose.
Originally posted by Callan:
I believe that David Duke has suggested that as a solution.
quote:What a bizarre analogy.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But nobody would seriously suggest that the Jews of York (never mind some other random Jews hundreds of years later who no connection at all with it) somehow have a claim due to their land ownership before the massacre of 1190.
quote:But buying current revisionism that lionises the so called Palestinians and demonises the Israelis who do not discriminate regarding cultures has an even more obvious flaw.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Again, finding 'refuge' in a place where 'the ethos is to liquidate or expel all the land's inhabitants' seems to me a plan with an obvious flaw in it ...
quote:That's a very odd way to interpret the available facts. To suggest that the Jews "held onto" the land during the Fatimid Caliphate, during the post-Crusader kingdoms, during the British Mandate etc is quite a stretch.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
What a bizarre analogy.
The issue is not properties which Jews might have held in other countries, but in the land where they began as a nation thousands of years ago, and have held onto by their fingernails ever since despite all attempts to totally dislodge them.
quote:First, that's not any kind of logical reasoning.
Given the recent Holocaust, they had and have every right to find refuge in what is historically their own country
quote:That's got almost nothing to do with anything. The early Zionists were looking for land around the world to build their homeland and were not particularly bothered about a return to the ME. It was only the development of religious fundamentalism - particularly Christian Zionism, bizarrely - which pushed them to attempt to do it around Jerusalem. And it was only the support of the USA in terms of long term funding (again linked to religious fundamentalism) which meant that this was even vaguely a feasible idea.
If the Jews had gone along with the ethos of the rest f the ME they would have liquidated or expelled all the land's inhabitants, instead of which they have made every effort commensurate with their security and existence to treat non-Jews fairly.
quote:If you read above you'll find that I've already argued that the 1967 Israel is a reality, a fact that almost everyone has said they will accept. That's not to say that I agree with the way it was set up, but is to say that it is now obviously a reality.
In return they receive non-stop damnation from safe outsiders for not committing national suicide.
That sort of unctuous moralism is not only bollocks and crap, but downright revolting.
quote:Read Joel 3 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
quote:Humbug. I don't believe you know what you're talking about.
Originally posted by Jamat:
But buying current revisionism that lionises the so called Palestinians and demonises the Israelis who do not discriminate regarding cultures has an even more obvious flaw.
Remember that in 1948 the Arabs were told by their own authorities to leave or suffer the same fate of the Jews (being annihilated and 68 % of them did so with no pressure from Israel. )
quote:Nothing to do with anything.
The fact that the land vacated was taken after that war is also true but remember the land granted Israel was a postage stamp compared to that used for the creation of Jordan. It took until 1967 for Shaqueriri to finally hijack the term Palestinian for the Arab refugees. Before that the term suggested Jews.
quote:I was actually thinking of that fool Dershowitz, who thinks things are the way he says they are simply because he says them and then attacks people who know more than he does with nothing but bluster.
Mr Cheesy, am I to understand you are calling me a fool? I am shocked sir! This is not the place. My seconds will call on you.Pistols or swords? May the hosts be with you!
quote:I guess you must realise that there are a large number of religious Jews who despise Christian Zionists and believe that they're being hijacked by a religion that they don't believe in, right?
Originally posted by Jamat:
Read Joel 3 .. The word of the Lord.
Many many prophecies predict it. Jesus cannot return till Israel calls him back in antithesis to the way they once rejected him.
See also Zechariah 9-12.
quote:Proving once again what you don't know about the actual history.
That's got almost nothing to do with anything. The early Zionists were looking for land around the world to build their homeland and were not particularly bothered about a return to the ME. It was only the development of religious fundamentalism - particularly Christian Zionism, bizarrely - which pushed them to attempt to do it around Jerusalem. And it was only the support of the USA in terms of long term funding (again linked to religious fundamentalism) which meant that this was even vaguely a feasible idea.
quote:Read Malachi 6:8 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Read Joel 3 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
Many many prophecies predict it. Jesus cannot return till Israel calls him back in antithesis to the way they once rejected him.
See also Zechariah 9-12.
quote:Bullshit. Uganda proposed by Hurzl in 1903, Baron Hirsch proposed Argentina in 1891, the Yiddish Oblast in the Soviet Union in the 1940s, the Alaskan Slattery proposal in for European refugees in the 1940s and so on.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Proving once again what you don't know about the actual history.
The Balfour agreement, Dreyfus affair, gun cotton, Hertzl, Weizmann. There was nowhere but Israel that was ever a real option to Zionists and it was the UN in 1948 not anything at all to do with the USA that created Israel having inherited the problem from the League of Nations who inherited it from the Brits.
quote:Bullshit.
Christian Zionism if it existed at all back then was certainly not a factor! the huge Jewish community in the US threw their weight into it of course but most of them even now are virulently anti Christian.
quote:You are just delusional.
Incidentally, the USA tried their best to betray Israel in the 6 day war. There was a communications ship, the USS Liberty that was strafed by Israel as they were intercepting info from Israel and passing it on to Egypt.
quote:My view is that most populations are in their current location for reasons that aren't very honourable, and there's very little we can profitably do about it. But one can't simultaneously claim that Israel is necessary as a safe place against persecution, *and also* that it is so dangerous that all the restrictions on Palestinian freedom are justified and proportional.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:But buying current revisionism that lionises the so called Palestinians and demonises the Israelis who do not discriminate regarding cultures has an even more obvious flaw.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Again, finding 'refuge' in a place where 'the ethos is to liquidate or expel all the land's inhabitants' seems to me a plan with an obvious flaw in it ...
quote:Really? That was the most treacherous thing the US could do? I find that hard to believe. I'm sure that if they had put their minds to it, the US could have thought of some action far more damaging than that!
Originally posted by Jamat:
Incidentally, the USA tried their best to betray Israel in the 6 day war. There was a communications ship, the USS Liberty that was strafed by Israel as they were intercepting info from Israel and passing it on to Egypt.
quote:Yes, I tend not to argue about it now, as there is so little common ground. It ends up as a series of competing slogans and versions of history.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It seems this thread is an intersection between parallel universes, each with very different histories.
quote:.. and conspiracy theories.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Incidentally, the USA tried their best to betray Israel in the 6 day war. There was a communications ship, the USS Liberty that was strafed by Israel as they were intercepting info from Israel and passing it on to Egypt.
quote:Of course they have. The US was as usual trying to play both sides. The Israelis need to stay on side with the US. The Jewish lobby in the US vs the holy oil sources. Fuckwits all.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:Really? That was the most treacherous thing the US could do? I find that hard to believe. I'm sure that if they had put their minds to it, the US could have thought of some action far more damaging than that!
Originally posted by Jamat:
Incidentally, the USA tried their best to betray Israel in the 6 day war. There was a communications ship, the USS Liberty that was strafed by Israel as they were intercepting info from Israel and passing it on to Egypt.
US support for Israel before and after the incident, in addition to the Israeli payments of compensation, suggests that the official Israeli explanation for the incident (that the Israeli's mistook the Liberty for an Egyptian ship) is more likely. Or do you think the Israeli's have been lying about the whole thing for all these years?
quote:For one fleeting moment I thought we might have a sensible conversation. Sigh. I am NOT BTW a Christian Zionist any more than you are a NewAge post modern Christian.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Read Malachi 6:8 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Read Joel 3 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
Many many prophecies predict it. Jesus cannot return till Israel calls him back in antithesis to the way they once rejected him.
See also Zechariah 9-12.
All prophecy was fulfilled for and in Christ, not by any criteria that withstand the paradigm shift that began with the Renaissance of course. It worked for Him, which is all that was necessary. All of the yearning of the Exile was rewarded peacefully despite the violence of civilizations rising and falling around the Jews. Once the cradle for the Incarnation had done its job, history took over. The inertia of that single cycle story (with echoes in the patriarch myths even back to Adam) warps us to this day, it framed Jesus' prophecies recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, amplified in Revelation. The heresy of Zionism including Christian is an inevitable part of that.
Jesus returned in you. He has no body now but you. What are you doing with it?
quote:Which was true of practically everywhere in the world with the the possible exception of Antarctica.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The problem with Israel/Palestine is that there was already a significant and well established community living there.
quote:I am quite sure that you have no right whatsoever to pontificate against the Jews' creation of a safe haven after WWII unless you experienced the Holocaust or lost family in it.
I'm not sure you're really in a position to talk about it.
quote:For the fourth time: if Israel is so safe and secure, why the need to take extreme measures against the Palestinians?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
But Jews had a right to a safe and secure homeland
quote:I see. So your quoting approvingly from wikipedia upthread was perfectly acceptable, whereas my linking to a wikipedia page about facts that are not in dispute - the 1948 partition plan - isn't acceptable.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Of course they have. The US was as usual trying to play both sides. The Israelis need to stay on side with the US. The Jewish lobby in the US vs the holy oil sources. Fuckwits all.
If you get all your history from Wki Mr Cheesy that explains a lot.
quote:Ah, yes why not muddy the discussion with a ridiculous rhetorical device.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I am quite sure that you have no right whatsoever to pontificate against the Jews' creation of a safe haven after WWII unless you experienced the Holocaust or lost family in it.
quote:Well I suppose if nobody else is going to attempt an answer..
Originally posted by Ricardus:
For the fourth time: if Israel is so safe and secure, why the need to take extreme measures against the Palestinians?
quote:There is no sense on your side, only a looking down the telescope from the wrong end, trying to make your invincibly ignorant interpretation of the bible fit the modern world.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:For one fleeting moment I thought we might have a sensible conversation. Sigh. I am NOT BTW a Christian Zionist any more than you are a NewAge post modern Christian.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Read Malachi 6:8 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Read Joel 3 .. The word of the Lord.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Why does God want the Jews to live in the Levant?
Many many prophecies predict it. Jesus cannot return till Israel calls him back in antithesis to the way they once rejected him.
See also Zechariah 9-12.
All prophecy was fulfilled for and in Christ, not by any criteria that withstand the paradigm shift that began with the Renaissance of course. It worked for Him, which is all that was necessary. All of the yearning of the Exile was rewarded peacefully despite the violence of civilizations rising and falling around the Jews. Once the cradle for the Incarnation had done its job, history took over. The inertia of that single cycle story (with echoes in the patriarch myths even back to Adam) warps us to this day, it framed Jesus' prophecies recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, amplified in Revelation. The heresy of Zionism including Christian is an inevitable part of that.
Jesus returned in you. He has no body now but you. What are you doing with it?
quote:Which doesn't really resolve the problem - What About The Poor Buggers Already Living There? The answer from you and Jamat appears to be "fuck them; God cares about the Jews." Neither you nor your God seem to give a shit about them. No-one, anywhere, has the right to any kind of land, home or other, that is taken from other people.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Which was true of practically everywhere in the world with the the possible exception of Antarctica.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The problem with Israel/Palestine is that there was already a significant and well established community living there.
But Jews had a right to a safe and secure homeland, and Israel was the obvious ideal because they had a millenia-old historical claim to it.
quote:Don't you dare try to use emotional blackmail to shut up your opponents. That sort of bullshit belongs in the Hot Place.
quote:I am quite sure that you have no right whatsoever to pontificate against the Jews' creation of a safe haven after WWII unless you experienced the Holocaust or lost family in it.
I'm not sure you're really in a position to talk about it.
quote:I'm not sure I'd trust John Loftus over Wikipedia (which is all this evidence of yours amounts to).
Originally posted by Jamat:
If you get all your history from Wki Mr Cheesy that explains a lot.
quote:Why do Jews have such a right?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
But Jews had a right to a safe and secure homeland,
quote:By that logic, presumably, unless we experienced the Nakba or have lived under the occupation we're not allowed to criticise the Palestinian struggle for self-determination?
I am quite sure that you have no right whatsoever to pontificate against the Jews' creation of a safe haven after WWII unless you experienced the Holocaust or lost family in it.
quote:Zionism isn't about Jewish national self-determination for practitioners of the Jewish religion. It's about national self-determination for members of an ethnicity. Most of the early generation of Zionists were atheists. The argument, set forth by Theodor Herzl in 'The Jewish State', in the light of the Dreyfus affair was that Jews would never be fully accepted as citizens of their respective countries. It doesn't take very much imagination to see how this looked rather plausible in 1948. It looks less plausible now, given that there hasn't been a pogrom or mass expulsion of Jews since that date but, again, I can see why this might look more plausible to a Gentile than to a Jew of Mitteleuropean descent.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:Why do Jews have such a right?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
But Jews had a right to a safe and secure homeland,
Of course Jews (and, for that matter, everyone else) has a right to a safe and secure home. But, why should that be an exclusively (or, even majority) Jewish nation state? No one is calling for Buddhists or Jainists to have their own nation, and we're fighting a war to prevent the establishment of an Islamic State. Why should the Jews be a special case?
And, I don't think "because of the Holocaust" is an adequate answer. Yes, the Holocaust was undeniably one of the worst (if not the worst) crimes against humanity and a terrible event. Yes, those who survived (both who lived through the horrors and who managed to flee to other countries) deserve our compassion and some form of compensation - at the very least the return of their property where possible. Yes, we need to take every step possible to ensure that Jews (and other minorities) can live safe, secure and prosperous lives free from the threat of any form of persecution, whereever they live. But, that does not require a Jewish state.
quote:Then, the same argument based on ethnicity would also apply to other ethnic groups. Why, then, is there no nation for the Kurds? Or, why did we get so het up about Serbs and Croats wanting to form their own ethnic states out of the breakup of Yugoslavia? Why is there no ethnic state for aboriginal Australians, or Native Americans within the US? Or Basques in Spain? Why is the case for Scottish independence based on residence in Scotland rather than ethnicity?
Originally posted by Callan:
Zionism isn't about Jewish national self-determination for practitioners of the Jewish religion. It's about national self-determination for members of an ethnicity.
quote:Indeed, we need to work from where we are rather than where we think we should be. Which certainly includes a recognition of the state of Israel - though, there may still be grounds for discussion of the borders of that state.
In any event there is, now, an Israeli state whose citizens are every bit as entitled to national self-determination as anyone else, including, of course the Palestinians.
quote:The short answer to that is that not all national movements are successful and not all ethnic groups self-identify as nations and not all members of nations believe that their nation ought to be an independent nation state. We treat Israeli Jews the same way as we treat Poles, Slovaks or Indians, who successfully established nation states in the twentieth century, and differently to, say, Bretons, Kashmiris and Kurds, who didn't. There is an incoherence to the Zionist project but it's an incoherence common to all nationalisms. Humans aren't divisible into convenient homogenous ethnic blocs in the way that most nationalists postulate.
Then, the same argument based on ethnicity would also apply to other ethnic groups. Why, then, is there no nation for the Kurds? Or, why did we get so het up about Serbs and Croats wanting to form their own ethnic states out of the breakup of Yugoslavia? Why is there no ethnic state for aboriginal Australians, or Native Americans within the US? Or Basques in Spain? Why is the case for Scottish independence based on residence in Scotland rather than ethnicity?
So, again, why are the Jews considered different from other ethnic groups? Why do they require a nation state, when we deny that to other ethnic groups?
quote:Wait, why would the Israelis need to stay on side with the US? Just a few days ago, you assured us Israeli success in war shows that a supernatural hand is at work.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Of course they have. The US was as usual trying to play both sides. The Israelis need to stay on side with the US. The Jewish lobby in the US vs the holy oil sources.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:Really? That was the most treacherous thing the US could do? I find that hard to believe. I'm sure that if they had put their minds to it, the US could have thought of some action far more damaging than that!
Originally posted by Jamat:
Incidentally, the USA tried their best to betray Israel in the 6 day war. There was a communications ship, the USS Liberty that was strafed by Israel as they were intercepting info from Israel and passing it on to Egypt.
US support for Israel before and after the incident, in addition to the Israeli payments of compensation, suggests that the official Israeli explanation for the incident (that the Israeli's mistook the Liberty for an Egyptian ship) is more likely. Or do you think the Israeli's have been lying about the whole thing for all these years?
quote:Who, the Israelis and the Jewish lobby in the US?
Fuckwits all.
quote:N.B. I'm not Mr Cheesy. But Wikipedia is often a useful compendium of published sources - and I note that you haven't yet told us how you come by your explanation of the Liberty incident, and why your source should be considered more authoritative than others.
If you get all your history from Wki Mr Cheesy that explains a lot.
quote:That doesn't really alter the fact that there was a massive influx of Jewish settlers after 1882 or that large numbers of the people who had also been living there for centuries found themselves dispossesed in 1948 - as indeed were many Jews living in Arab countries.
Everyone here is ignoring the large number of Jews already living in what is now Israel before the Balfour Declaration. There is a widespread misconception that "the disapora" meant the Jews disappeared from that part of the world and only reappeared when some jewish people began to buy land there in the 19th century but that is simply not true; my own Jewish relatives lived in Hebron and Gaza for generations, having arrived in Gaza after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187.
quote:That's not really helpful in a discussion about Israel and Palestine where the key question is how to secure peace and find a way to reconcile the aspiration of both parties to national self-determination. Lot's of rich people own property in other countries but we don't really regard it as salient to questions of sovereignty. If large numbers of Russian oligarchs buy up property in Mayfair, it wouldn't follow that Mayfair was an indissoluble part of the Russian Motherland. Nor, I think, would most of us accept that the sovereignty of our own country could be bought and sold by financial transactions between wealthy foreigners.
As for ownership of the land, much of the land that was bought by the first returning Jewish settlers in the 19th century was not owned by 'Palestinians' but was the property of absentee landlords, frequently high-placed civil servants of the Ottoman Empire, who lived in places like Istanbul and Cairo. For example, all of the land purchases made by Moses Montefiore were from Ottoman landowners, including the site of the agricultural school in 1855 and his famous windmill. Later on land was sold to Jews by arab landowners who lived in what is now Israel-Palestine - at first mainly land they believed was worthless because it lacked water.
quote:What large number that NOBODY is ignoring?
Originally posted by L'organist:
Everyone here is ignoring the large number of Jews already living in what is now Israel before the Balfour Declaration. There is a widespread misconception that "the disapora" meant the Jews disappeared from that part of the world and only reappeared when some jewish people began to buy land there in the 19th century but that is simply not true; my own Jewish relatives lived in Hebron and Gaza for generations, having arrived in Gaza after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187.
As for ownership of the land, much of the land that was bought by the first returning Jewish settlers in the 19th century was not owned by 'Palestinians' but was the property of absentee landlords, frequently high-placed civil servants of the Ottoman Empire, who lived in places like Istanbul and Cairo. For example, all of the land purchases made by Moses Montefiore were from Ottoman landowners, including the site of the agricultural school in 1855 and his famous windmill. Later on land was sold to Jews by arab landowners who lived in what is now Israel-Palestine - at first mainly land they believed was worthless because it lacked water.
Much of the land from early private purchases is now in what is designated as 'Palestinian' territory and no compensation has been offered to reimburse Jewish owners for their land.
As for a boycott: I presume all the people on here calling for one are consistent and so do not use any of the retail chains founded by and owned by Jewish families? If so I can only applaud your fortitude since this will mean you won't be using
- Selfridges
- Dixons, PC World, Currys
- Tesco
- most catalogue companies, including Marisota, House of Bath & SimplyBe
- any Gor-Ray / perma-press
- jewellery from Ernest Jones, H Samuel, Leslie Davis in the UK; Kay Jewelers or Jared Superstores in the US
If you decide to limit yourself to anything from an Israeli-owned company stay fit and well because you won't be able to turn to Ibruprofen branded products; OK, so you don't get a headache but what about Copaxone- the main drug for MS worldwide or Alizet for Parkinsons? All developed and owned by Israel's largest pharmaceutical company Teva.
The only people to gain anything from this childish BDS movement against Israel are the activists who promote it who achieve a transitory fame: they're certainly not helping anyone in the middle-east of whatever faith.
quote:I guess calling someone a fool and delusional and challenging someone to a duel is pretty even tempered. So what you are saying is:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
hosting/
Given the subject material, this thread's been amazingly even-tempered so far. Let's keep it that way.
/hosting
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
quote:Better than having NO interpretation at all. Perhaps you could tell me what you think Joel 3 suggests or Zechariah chs 9-12?
Martin 60: invincibly ignorant interpretation
quote:It is an insoluble problem though because whatever the Israelis give up, it will never be enough for the Islamists to whom the country called Israel is an affront by its very existence. Interestingly, when Arafat signed a peace deal with the white house as a broker, he was pretty quick to distance himself from it to his own supporters. If he hadn't he would probably have been assassinated.
That's not really helpful in a discussion about Israel and Palestine where the key question is how to secure peace and find a way to reconcile the aspiration of both parties to national self-determination.
quote:If they enjoy such divine protection, why would the Israelis have to lie about the Liberty incident?
Originally posted by Jamat:
God is saying here that if you @#** with Israel, he will do the same with you.
quote:I know that the USA have supported Israel and long may it continue. When Truman recognised the State of Israel it was against the advice of his cabinet.
Dave W: Wait, why would the Israelis need to stay on side with the US? Just a few days ago, you assured us Israeli success in war shows that a supernatural hand is at work.
Is God not enough now? They need both God and the US government?
quote:And centuries of persecution and the Holocaust. What, did God have a senior moment for a couple of millennia?
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:If they enjoy such divine protection, why would the Israelis have to lie about the Liberty incident?
Originally posted by Jamat:
God is saying here that if you @#** with Israel, he will do the same with you.
quote:FFS! What DO you think I am saying? Certainly not that God endorses everything about current Israel; Certainly, that their preservation is a miracle,ie there is a divine purpose in their preservation and reestablishment as a nation on the original real estate.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:And centuries of persecution and the Holocaust. What, did God have a senior moment for a couple of millennia?
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:If they enjoy such divine protection, why would the Israelis have to lie about the Liberty incident?
Originally posted by Jamat:
God is saying here that if you @#** with Israel, he will do the same with you.
quote:None of this makes any sense to me. Israel enjoys divine protection, yet it is desperate for US support? The US supports Israel, but would happily sacrifice it? What does "holy oil" have to do with anything? It's not any holier to the US than to any other country, and the US doesn't pay any more or less than it would if it didn't support Israel.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:I know that the USA have supported Israel and long may it continue. When Truman recognised the State of Israel it was against the advice of his cabinet.
Dave W: Wait, why would the Israelis need to stay on side with the US? Just a few days ago, you assured us Israeli success in war shows that a supernatural hand is at work.
Is God not enough now? They need both God and the US government?
The USA is on a tightrope in that they want the holy oil and they would happily sacrifice Israel if they could.
quote:For most of that time it was pretty obviously not the land of Israel - hence the big to-do over the founding of the state in 1948. And proclaiming that your success in war is a sign of God's favor is giving some rather obvious hostages to fortune - not to mention raising the uncomfortable question of why God had apparently been on break for the previous 2000 years, and especially the previous 20.
I do think God has both established and protected Israel nonetheless. The FACT of Israel is IMV a sign of his objective existence. That they are not a God recognising society I also know. My conviction is based in the scriptural promise that he would discipline but not destroy them and when the time was right return them to the land of Israel that has been just that for at least 3000 years.
quote:So we're not supposed to use Wikipedia, we're just supposed to trust whatever Google dredges up?
Re Wiki? yes it is a compendium of information but certainly not unbiased as of course nothing is and certainly not some truth statement about anything.
Re my source on The Liberty, google it. here It is an ongoing issue but think about why a US communications state of the art vessel is attacked by Israel while parked off the coast in 1967? AND the aircraft carrier Saratoga sent fighters to its aid but the White House called them back?
quote:They do not have such a right. The exist quite simply because of God's mandate to Abraham. The land is God's, God gave it to the Jews; God punished the Jews in 585BC for idolatry with expulsion from the land. God in his power and providence in many prophecies said he would restore them to the land God has done and is doing just that. The end is not yet. The current diaspora has not fully ended of course but in the mid 19th century any such restoration looked totally impossible yet there were prophetic scholars even then such as Sir Robert Anderson who wrote 'The Coming Prince' who predicted on the basis of scripture, precisely what we are seeing today. There is no merit whatsoever in the Israeli state. The merit is that God said what he would do before he did it and he's doing it.
Alan Cresswell: Why do Jews have such a right?
quote:OK, let's try that question again.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:They do not have such a right. The exist quite simply because of God's mandate to Abraham. The land is God's, God gave it to the Jews; God punished the Jews in 585BC for idolatry with expulsion from the land. God in his power and providence in many prophecies said he would restore them to the land God has done and is doing just that. The end is not yet. The current diaspora has not fully ended of course but in the mid 19th century any such restoration looked totally impossible yet there were prophetic scholars even then such as Sir Robert Anderson who wrote 'The Coming Prince' who predicted on the basis of scripture, precisely what we are seeing today. There is no merit whatsoever in the Israeli state. The merit is that God said what he would do before he did it and he's doing it.
Alan Cresswell: Why do Jews have such a right?
quote:The answer of course is that nothing would compel them. However something did in 1948. What was that something that 'compelled' the UN to do something that they have vainly tried to condemn ever since?
Allan Cresswell:
Without recourse to a novel and minority interpretation of Christian Scriptures, why do Jews have such a right? What argument would compel secular governments to accept that the Jews have the right to a homeland - a right those same secular (post-war) governments consistently deny to other religious and ethnic group? [/QB]
quote:Emotional blackmail be fucked.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Don't you dare try to use emotional blackmail to shut up your opponents.
quote:Love to.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Better than having NO interpretation at all. Perhaps you could tell me what you think Joel 3 suggests or Zechariah chs 9-12?
Martin 60: invincibly ignorant interpretation
Don't worry about Malachi 6:8 We would both agree on that.
Seriously, Martin, calling people ignorant just cos you disagree is just bad manners. I'd be happy to have a coffee some time if you ever visit NZ.
quote:What about current Israel suspends the laws of physics?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:FFS! What DO you think I am saying? Certainly not that God endorses everything about current Israel; Certainly, that their preservation is a miracle,ie there is a divine purpose in their preservation and reestablishment as a nation on the original real estate.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:And centuries of persecution and the Holocaust. What, did God have a senior moment for a couple of millennia?
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:If they enjoy such divine protection, why would the Israelis have to lie about the Liberty incident?
Originally posted by Jamat:
God is saying here that if you @#** with Israel, he will do the same with you.
quote:Bullshit. I criticise Israel because of the fucking awful things it makes Palestinian citizens endure. Like so many people who trumpet their support for Israel, you say that it's not above criticism but them level insinuations of anti-Semitism of anyone who actually dares to do so.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Emotional blackmail be fucked.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Don't you dare try to use emotional blackmail to shut up your opponents.
As I pointed out very early in this thread (because I know from experience the kneejerk way in which all Christian supporters of Israel get smeared as dispensational premillenial Zionists) Israel does not enjoy divine sanction to do what it likes, and some of its actions are of legitimate concern to both outsiders and its own citizens.
What IS intolerable is criticism which comes from those who are thoughtlessly jumping on a fashionable bandwagon, and who ignore Israel's millennia-old connection with the land, the Jews' imperative need for a defensible homeland after the Holocaust, the ongoing threats which it faces from anti-Semitic elements within and without, and its outstanding (while far from perfect) human rights record when compared to other countries of the ME.
The problem of Israel's exceptionalism lies not with Israel's friends, but with its critics, who apply criteria to it which they do not apply to other countries.
quote:The holocaust. Plainly and simply the horror of the treatment of millions of innocent people. I guess working people to death, cremating people alive, torturing children, making lamps of their flesh was God's glorious plan to get Israel "back" to the Jews.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:The answer of course is that nothing would compel them. However something did in 1948. What was that something that 'compelled' the UN to do something that they have vainly tried to condemn ever since?
Allan Cresswell:
Without recourse to a novel and minority interpretation of Christian Scriptures, why do Jews have such a right? What argument would compel secular governments to accept that the Jews have the right to a homeland - a right those same secular (post-war) governments consistently deny to other religious and ethnic group?
quote:Why not?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:The answer of course is that nothing would compel them.
Allan Cresswell:
Without recourse to a novel and minority interpretation of Christian Scriptures, why do Jews have such a right? What argument would compel secular governments to accept that the Jews have the right to a homeland - a right those same secular (post-war) governments consistently deny to other religious and ethnic group?
quote:The Holocaust, oil, British, American, French, Russian imperialism (Russia must have had plans to turn Israel in to a communist dictatorship using Jewish socialists and communists, is it did for Iran with Iranian ones which it successfully generically carried out in seven European countries).
However something did in 1948.
quote:The Holocaust, oil, British, American, French, Russian imperialism (Russia must have had plans to turn Israel in to a communist dictatorship using Jewish socialists and communists, is it did for Iran with Iranian ones which it successfully generically carried out in seven European countries alone).
What was that something that 'compelled' the UN to do something that they have vainly tried to condemn ever since?
quote:What's that 2,600 year old Exilic 'prophecy' that was fulfilled within a century got to do with the Holocaust, oil, British, American, French, Russian imperialism (Russia must have had plans to turn Israel in to a communist dictatorship using Jewish socialists and communists, is it did for Iran with Iranian ones which it successfully generically carried out in seven European countries)?
Perhaps you could tell me also what Ezekiel meant in ch 36:4 when he said:
"For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land"..the majority opinion if you will. [/QB]
quote:I'm sure all those posters are now thoroughly rebuked and corrected.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
What IS intolerable is criticism which comes from those who are thoughtlessly jumping on a fashionable bandwagon,
quote:Well, this is definitely a criterion nobody applies to any other country.
and who ignore Israel's millennia-old connection with the land,
quote:I think we are now on the fifth time of asking.
the Jews' imperative need for a defensible homeland after the Holocaust, the ongoing threats which it faces from anti-Semitic elements within and without,
quote:'Having a better human rights record than Saudi Arabia' isn't exactly setting the bar very high.
and its outstanding (while far from perfect) human rights record when compared to other countries of the ME.
quote:Nope. But at least two people on this thread seem to be saying Israel should.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Why does any country?
quote:Awesome counting, Ricardus!
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I think we are now on the fifth time of asking.
quote:Dares?
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
you say that it's not above criticism but them level insinuations of anti-Semitism of anyone who actually dares to do so.
quote:How about trying to answer the question in the link?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Awesome counting, Ricardus!
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I think we are now on the fifth time of asking.
How about trying for double figures?
quote:Better than some, worse than others. But not deserving of any special exemption. And this thread is about Israel, not those other countries.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Israel is the same as all the rest. Not different.
quote:Why? They are not the same thing at all. It is an convenient charge for Israel apologists to make so they do not need to defend wrongs, but it is not always "with good reason". And there are positions other than pro and anti Zionist. There is the position that most people on this tread appear to take that Israel existing is a settled question even though some question the method of its creation.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
At the same time, while statements such as, "I'm not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist" can be true, they tend to set off the same warning bells as, "Of course, I'm not a racist, but.....", and with good reason.
quote:Whereas "I'm not against criticising Israel, but..." sets off rather the same warning bells with regard to anti-Palestinian racism. Said racism, incidentally, was the reason the great powers of the late 40s thought they could give divvy up Palestine how they chose and give huge chunks of it to white colonists: they didn't give two short shits about the native population. Same pattern as colonial exploitation everywhere. Remember that this was the era of the White Australia policy, residential schools in Canada and the US, the last gasps of Empire in the UK. The UN at this time was dominated by the Americas and Western Europe, having evolved from the victorious allies of WW2.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
At the same time, while statements such as, "I'm not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist" can be true, they tend to set off the same warning bells as, "Of course, I'm not a racist, but.....", and with good reason.
quote:It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against. They were pawns , kept in camps for political purposes. In the 1950s Syria was appealing for labour. They would have been given free land. They were not allowed to go. It is the Islamic agenda that is using what happened in 1948 viz the flight of 600K Arabs at the behest of their own authorities to avoid the coming Jihad. In fact more than that number of Jewish refugees (about 850K)fled Arab countries to Israel at the same time. These were expelled mostly penniless from Muslim countries. The UN has never passed a resolution condemning that.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:For the fourth time: if Israel is so safe and secure, why the need to take extreme measures against the Palestinians?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
But Jews had a right to a safe and secure homeland
quote:I'm sorry, that's so far from being true that you're now on some different planet.
Originally posted by Jamat:
It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against.
quote:Palestinian refugees are political footballs in Lebanon and Syria - and to some extent in Jordan - but that's got almost nothing to do with the way that the Israeli military policies treat Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
They were pawns , kept in camps for political purposes. In the 1950s Syria was appealing for labour. They would have been given free land. They were not allowed to go. It is the Islamic agenda that is using what happened in 1948 viz the flight of 600K Arabs at the behest of their own authorities to avoid the coming Jihad. In fact more than that number of Jewish refugees (about 850K)fled Arab countries to Israel at the same time. These were expelled mostly penniless from Muslim countries. The UN has never passed a resolution condemning that.
quote:And your justification for using the dysphemism 'FFS' derived from 'FGS' is?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against. They were pawns , kept in camps for political purposes. In the 1950s Syria was appealing for labour. They would have been given free land. They were not allowed to go. It is the Islamic agenda that is using what happened in 1948 viz the flight of 600K Arabs at the behest of their own authorities to avoid the coming Jihad. In fact more than that number of Jewish refugees (about 850K)fled Arab countries to Israel at the same time. These were expelled mostly penniless from Muslim countries. The UN has never passed a resolution condemning that.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:For the fourth time: if Israel is so safe and secure, why the need to take extreme measures against the Palestinians?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
But Jews had a right to a safe and secure homeland
quote:Are you saying that the wall, military checkpoints, drone patrols, the Gaza blockade, and occasional bombing runs don't happen?
Originally posted by Jamat:
It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against.
quote:The same unreason and utter failure to acknowledge it, as in Jamat's interpretation of my calling his interpretation invincibly ignorant as calling him, ad hominem, invincibly ignorant, will prevail. I submit.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Irrelevant?
quote:No but whatever military actions are taken are not directed vs Palestinians but terrorism.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:Are you saying that the wall, military checkpoints, drone patrols, the Gaza blockade, and occasional bombing runs don't happen?
Originally posted by Jamat:
It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against.
quote:Maybe the Israelis should just let the rockets fall freely among their citizens including the many Arabs who are Israeli citizens. That would be a plan..might even solve the problem. Maybe they should let the suicide bombers through to blow up buses..an even better plan.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:I'm sorry, that's so far from being true that you're now on some different planet.
Originally posted by Jamat:
It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against.
quote:Palestinian refugees are political footballs in Lebanon and Syria - and to some extent in Jordan - but that's got almost nothing to do with the way that the Israeli military policies treat Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
They were pawns , kept in camps for political purposes. In the 1950s Syria was appealing for labour. They would have been given free land. They were not allowed to go. It is the Islamic agenda that is using what happened in 1948 viz the flight of 600K Arabs at the behest of their own authorities to avoid the coming Jihad. In fact more than that number of Jewish refugees (about 850K)fled Arab countries to Israel at the same time. These were expelled mostly penniless from Muslim countries. The UN has never passed a resolution condemning that.
To say that grave violations of human rights are not occurring in the West Bank and Gaza as a direct result of Israeli government policy is a lie.
quote:Sorry, was trying to say shouldn't have said it. FFS that is.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
That gets a pass as a cross-post, Jamat. Just.
quote:Clearly not.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Maybe the Israelis should just let the rockets fall freely among their citizens including the many Arabs who are Israeli citizens. That would be a plan..might even solve the problem. Maybe they should let the suicide bombers through to blow up buses..an even better plan.
quote:Nobody is denying that rockets are falling, though.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Maybe the Israelis should just let the rockets fall freely among their citizens including the many Arabs who are Israeli citizens. That would be a plan..might even solve the problem. Maybe they should let the suicide bombers through to blow up buses..an even better plan.
quote:But their effects are felt across all Palestinians. If you want to argue that Israel is such a dangerous place that no other measures are possible to guarantee its citizens' safety then go ahead, but in doing so you will be tearing to shreds Kaplan Corday's claim that Israel is necessary or exceptional as a safe haven for Jews.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:No but whatever military actions are taken are not directed vs Palestinians but terrorism.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:Are you saying that the wall, military checkpoints, drone patrols, the Gaza blockade, and occasional bombing runs don't happen?
Originally posted by Jamat:
It's not the Palestinians that measures are taken against.
Martin 60. Yes, you are correct.
quote:I think the argument over the method of Israel's creation is still 'live', insofar as AIUI the territorial claims on which Israel will not budge for the sake of peace are East Jerusalem and some of the illegal settlements. If one accepts the rationale behind Israel's creation - that is, the reoccupation of the ancestral Jewish homeland - then it is justifiable that these places should be Israeli. (AIUI the West Bank has historically *more* of a claim to being the Jewish homeland than much of the coastal section.) If one merely accepts the status quo then there is no real merit to Israel's claims.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There is the position that most people on this tread appear to take that Israel existing is a settled question even though some question the method of its creation.
quote:Meh, I don't know - some recent comments from the top of Israel's military-political class suggests that there is some space for discussion about the settlements.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I think the argument over the method of Israel's creation is still 'live', insofar as AIUI the territorial claims on which Israel will not budge for the sake of peace are East Jerusalem and some of the illegal settlements. If one accepts the rationale behind Israel's creation - that is, the reoccupation of the ancestral Jewish homeland - then it is justifiable that these places should be Israeli. (AIUI the West Bank has historically *more* of a claim to being the Jewish homeland than much of the coastal section.) If one merely accepts the status quo then there is no real merit to Israel's claims.
quote:You make the point. Israel is surrounded by hostile countries.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Better than some, worse than others. But not deserving of any special exemption. And this thread is about Israel, not those other countries.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Israel is the same as all the rest. Not different.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Jamat.
I'm most impressed at your unqualified repentance. You don't have to apologize to me my friend. On the contrary I have to apologize to you as I didn't think you would respond.
The next step in the rehabilitation of your reasoning would be for you to accept that my calling your interpretation invincibly ignorant is not ad hominem within the rules of Purgatory.
That would blow me away.
quote:Host Hat On
Posted by Barnabas62 before the above post:
Storm Warning
I've been keeping a pretty close eye on this thread and wish to make two clarifications.
1. We distinguish between "that is a bullshit argument" (allowable under C3) and "you are a bullshitter for making it" (not allowable).
2. We also distinguish between energetic ongoing disagreements and personality conflicts (C4). If there is personality conflict in play, take it to Hell, stop playing it out in a Purgatory thread.
If you don't like our distinctions, take the rulings to the Styx.
With that out of the way, please calm down. Some of you are very close to being named, under either C3 or C4 or both. And avoid either implicit criticism of a ruling - or junior hosting - as well. Either will also get you named.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
quote:And yet we are talking about the abuse they do within the borders they claim.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
You make the point. Israel is surrounded by hostile countries.
quote:So, the Palestinians were not there, but they still inflicted this violence? The people who did the most damage to Jews live thousands of miles from the contested areas. The overwhelming majority of people occupying Israel came from other places with a 2 millennia gap of persecution by anyone anywhere close to the region.
I suppose we could argue that the Palestinians are paying for 2 millennia of violence against Jews.
quote:Jews and Palestinians are not Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
anti-Palestinian racism.
quote:Reference for this would be interesting please.
you're suggesting that the daily injustices that Palestinians put up with - including, for example, the confiscation of their land for "security purposes" which suddenly and miraculously becomes a settlement, the restriction of access to water, the dumping of raw sewage from an illegal settlement onto a neighbouring village field, the arbitrary hours of waiting at checkpoints for no apparent reason, the "administrative detention" of thousands of people for years in jail on no charge - doesn't happen. That's plainly a lie.
These things are well documented. And even ex commanders of the Israel Defence Force (of all people) are saying that they are counter-productive.
quote:If you think I am going to collude in a discussion which trivialises the Holocaust by suggesting that Jews should not have subsequently sought a safe haven because anti-Semitic elements would attack it, you're dreaming.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:How about trying to answer the question in the link?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Awesome counting, Ricardus!
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I think we are now on the fifth time of asking.
How about trying for double figures?
quote:No, the nation the Palestinians are faced with that has sympathies with attempted genocide and has repeatedly practiced ethnic cleansing already has nuclear capabilities. Genocide isn't just the killing of people, it's the attempt to erase their cultural existence and history too (as Jamat has been attempting in this thread). The IDF is as much a terrorist group as Hamas and ultimately responsible for more death and destruction.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Jews and Palestinians are not Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
anti-Palestinian racism.
Palestinians have never been the targets of genuine racism which manifested itself quite recently in a very serious project to exterminate them, and they are not faced now with terrorist groups and nations (one of which is acquiring nuclear capabilities) who sympathise with that attempted genocide.
quote:I think you just did ...
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
If you think I am going to collude in a discussion which trivialises the Holocaust by suggesting that Jews should not have subsequently sought a safe haven because anti-Semitic elements would attack it, you're dreaming.
quote:No one in this thread has trivialised the holocaust. Throwing up the holocaust whenever Israel's actions are criticised is difficult to classify as anything but a smokescreen.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
]If you think I am going to collude in a discussion which trivialises the Holocaust by suggesting that Jews should not have subsequently sought a safe haven because anti-Semitic elements would attack it, you're dreaming.
quote:I think "smokescreen" is probably a poor choice of terminology in this context.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
No one in this thread has trivialised the holocaust. Throwing up the holocaust whenever Israel's actions are criticised is difficult to classify as anything but a smokescreen.
quote:The West Bank "security barrier" is built primarily on Palestinian land. Even if there is some kind of justification in terms of security, there is no need to build it on their land. This is everything about a land grab, almost nothing about security.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Another Major Terror Plot Exposed INN News Oct 20th
It has been cleared for publication that a terror ring that had been planning a mass terror attack at an event hall in southern Israel has been arrested.
quote:No it's not. That is pareidolia.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:I think "smokescreen" is probably a poor choice of terminology in this context.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
No one in this thread has trivialised the holocaust. Throwing up the holocaust whenever Israel's actions are criticised is difficult to classify as anything but a smokescreen.
quote:Maybe best applied to post modern delusions.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:No it's not. That is pareidolia.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:I think "smokescreen" is probably a poor choice of terminology in this context.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
No one in this thread has trivialised the holocaust. Throwing up the holocaust whenever Israel's actions are criticised is difficult to classify as anything but a smokescreen.
quote:Dogwhistles which attempt to equate Jews with Nazis are obscene and anti-Semitic.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
the nation the Palestinians are faced with that has sympathies with attempted genocide
quote:Though, when the Israeli government pursues policies with clear similarities to those of the German government between 1933-45 then the irony of that should be mentioned.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Dogwhistles which attempt to equate Jews with Nazis are obscene and anti-Semitic.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
the nation the Palestinians are faced with that has sympathies with attempted genocide
quote:The Nazis aren't the only ones in history to commit genocide, you know. The comparisons I've drawn in this thread have been with the behaviour of other colonial regimes towards the native populations. The closest comparison, while not perfect, is apartheid South Africa.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Dogwhistles which attempt to equate Jews with Nazis are obscene and anti-Semitic.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
the nation the Palestinians are faced with that has sympathies with attempted genocide
quote:This. It's hard to know without asking them, but I suspect the wariness among Palestinians of independence is partly due to the fear that they'll still be vulnerable to Israeli attacks and controls if they're not protected by another power in the region. The final status of Palestine is, in any case, a matter for the Palestinian people as a matter of national self-determination. It is not something to be imposed either by Israel or any other nation.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Jamat, quick responses to your two points.
1. Just because some members of the PA act like jerks doesn't mean that the Israeli government have any justification for acting like even bigger jerks.
2. If the western proposal does not have support on the ground, then I have no problem with ditching that in favour of a proposal with support on the ground. The important thing is that both sides work towards a solution that works for them. Which seems to be a very difficult proposition when one side continues to build settlements in occupied territory and arbitrarily arrest people, and when the other side continues to shelter a small minority of people who commit acts of violence.
quote:I'm for the Jewish people having a safe homeland. I also think that *everyone* there should be safe.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Though, when the Israeli government pursues policies with clear similarities to those of the German government between 1933-45 then the irony of that should be mentioned.
quote:As you know, pareidolia means seeing patterns which aren't there. Postmodernism identifies them, strips them away as far as it can, although, of course, that is logically impossible as the observer's share is enculturated in every word and thought. You are objecting to there being observers' shares - narratives, stories, stuff we make up - as they are what we bring to all that we observe. You are objecting to perceptual reality.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Maybe best applied to post modern delusions.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:No it's not. That is pareidolia.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:I think "smokescreen" is probably a poor choice of terminology in this context.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
No one in this thread has trivialised the holocaust. Throwing up the holocaust whenever Israel's actions are criticised is difficult to classify as anything but a smokescreen.
quote:I don't think it should, because the two situations aren't equivalent and any comparison will just make people angry to no beneficial effect and probably smother any genuine point that you want to make.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Though, when the Israeli government pursues policies with clear similarities to those of the German government between 1933-45 then the irony of that should be mentioned.
quote:The problem with 'two sides to every story' arguments is that Israel and Palestine are not currently in the same place, as it were. Hamas is a designated terrorist organisation, Gaza is effectively under siege, Palestine is criss-crossed with a wall and military checkpoints, and the Palestinian Authority is prevented from carrying out most of the functions of an effective government. Israel on the other hand is able to function as a sovereign independent nation.
Originally posted by Jamat:
mr cheesy: there are two sides to all this ranting. The info onegets is definitely influenced by where one gets it. To post a litany of abuses like that is a tad one sided.
quote:Given that a fair chunk of Jewish people are offended by the use of the term "Holocaust", I was simply suggesting that it was best to steer clear of things that could be read uncharitably as a reference to mass crematoria.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Trying to be offended by the use of the entirely appropriate word smokescreen in the context of the Holocaust being used to justify Israeli abuse of power is utterly spurious and paranoid. The word smokescreen is two steps removed from closer association with the word holocaust by one of the former's conjoined elements.
quote:Do you really mean "the use", or just "some uses"? (I doubt many Jews are offended by all those holocaust museums, including one in Israel.)
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Given that a fair chunk of Jewish people are offended by the use of the term "Holocaust" [snip]
quote:I really do not think it is a "fair chunk" given that it is part of the official name of museums and memorials around the world. See my reply to Ricardus as to why the link to what is perceived as offencive about the word is tenuous.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Given that a fair chunk of Jewish people are offended by the use of the term "Holocaust",
quote:There was not even the slightest connection when I wrote that. I think it more offencive to use the Shoah as a cover for the maltreatment of other people.
I was simply suggesting that it was best to steer clear of things that could be read uncharitably as a reference to mass crematoria.
quote:Within your link it states that the word was used to describe non-ritual mass killings of people before the Shoah.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
The issue AIUI is that a holocaust is a burnt offering (and is used in that sense in some translations of the Bible).
Wikipedia article here on the name of the Holocaust.
quote:You might want to research Israeli exploitation of cheap Palestinian labour a bit more. Plus, a significant proportion of Jewish Israeli immigrants (not that the racist state allows much of any other kind) have come from countries that are perfectly safe for Jews, including the UK and US. They move for a mix of religious, ideological and economic reasons and many maintain dual citizenship.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The apartheid comparison is off. There was no slavery. The Dutch had no history in the land. The Israelis have never been interested in a servile population. The Dutch settlers had a home base country. This is also why the colonial comparison is off generally. Colonists have the possibility of returning to where they came from.
quote:Nope, that's totally wrong as many visitors from South Africa have attested.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The apartheid comparison is off. There was no slavery. The Dutch had no history in the land. The Israelis have never been interested in a servile population. The Dutch settlers had a home base country. This is also why the colonial comparison is off generally. Colonists have the possibility of returning to where they came from.
quote:My understanding is that the Boers are descended mostly from immigrants to Cape Town in the 17th and 18th centuries so by the 20th century when apartheid was established they really didn't have a home country to return to and had been established in at least part of the land for 200 years. Afrikaans is distinct from standard Dutch (apparently much more distinct than standard American English from standard British English). They also of course had their own stories about why they were entitled to the land.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The apartheid comparison is off. There was no slavery. The Dutch had no history in the land. The Israelis have never been interested in a servile population. The Dutch settlers had a home base country. This is also why the colonial comparison is off generally. Colonists have the possibility of returning to where they came from.
quote:Martin did not say it, I did.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Martin, you need to stop typing and start listening: calling something a smokescreen is fairly obviously offensive - even unintentionally - in the context of the holocaust in 1930s Germany when so many people ended up as ash and smoke.
To say that in the context of Israel is to suggest (to some ears) that the issues are directly linked to the holocaust.
Stop muddying the issue - either you meant it in your usual impenetrable cryptic style as some kind of subtle knowing kick out at the Jews, or you didn't mean it and it was unintentional.
Either way, stop digging and start apologising. Using that phrase is fairly obviously the wrong thing to say in this context.
quote:He didn't say "some", he said "a fair chunk".
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I've no opinion on whether the term Holocaust actually *is* offensive. I was just pointing out that Arethosemyfeet is correct to say that some Jews find it so.
quote:I don't know what the problem is here: smokescreen has unfortunate connotations in the context of the Jewish Holocaust. If you don't mean to be offensive, how about stop trying to defend the use of this phrase.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Martin did not say it, I did.
I don't think that the term should be obviously offencive as it is a common term used to denote obfuscation.
quote:Suggesting that the Shoah - the serious attempt to physically exterminate you as a people - is not an adequate reason to set up your own nation, in a land to which you have an ancient historical claim, and, moreover, not a reason to defend it against surrounding enemies who actually sympathise with the aims of the Shoah, is manifestly NOT to trivialise it.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Bringing the Shoah into it - either to suggest Israel is entitled to take measures that wouldn't seem proportionate for any other country or to suggest that Israelis should know better - really is trivialising the Shoah, IMO.
quote:Don't think anybody here said this.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Suggesting that the Shoah - the serious attempt to physically exterminate you as a people - is not an adequate reason to set up your own nation,
quote:THis is in contention because they are not the only ones with claim to the land. It isn't right to dispossess people simply because they did not have as bad an experience.
in a land to which you have an ancient historical claim,
quote:This is ridiculous. A country is judged by what they do, regardless of whether or not other countries do worse. Would you excuse someone who punched you simply because someone else kicked another person?
Suggesting that mistakes which Israel might have made in dealing with its non-Jewish population while desperately trying to maintain human rights principles which are by far the best in the region, are morally equivalent to the Shoah, not only trivialises the Shoah, but is inexcusably stupid and wicked.
quote:Supposing for the sake of argument that the Shoah made the creation of the state of Israel necessary. Are there any measures taken by the Israelis against the Palestinians that are in your view justified, but which wouldn't be justified if the Shoah hadn't happened?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Suggesting that the Shoah - the serious attempt to physically exterminate you as a people - is not an adequate reason to set up your own nation, in a land to which you have an ancient historical claim, and, moreover, not a reason to defend it against surrounding enemies who actually sympathise with the aims of the Shoah, is manifestly NOT to trivialise it.
quote:To be fair I've come close to saying this. But my argument isn't about whether setting up a Jewish state in response to the Shoah is morally justified or not, it's that I don't see how setting up such a state in a way that creates a bunch more enemies is, on a purely pragmatic level, likely to achieve its stated aim.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Don't think anybody here said this.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Suggesting that the Shoah - the serious attempt to physically exterminate you as a people - is not an adequate reason to set up your own nation,
quote:from Haaretz
“In 1986, 30 years after the massacre, Shalom Ofer, one of the convicted soldiers, said in an interview to Ha’ir: ‘We were like the Germans. They stopped trucks, took the Jews off and shot them. What we did is the same. We were obeying orders like a German soldier during the war, when he was ordered to slaughter Jews.'
quote:I have never come across any reference to any Jews being offended by the term Holocaust except when it's used for other events. And I've been round the block. Googling reveals nothing.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
When I read, upthread, that some Jews avoid the term "Holocaust", and I remembered that it was an OT sacrifice*, I wondered if they hate the term *because* of the sacrificial connection...like it is saying that Jews had been sacrificed to God.
Makes sense, IMHO.
(IIRC, a very interesting one where the priest *hurls* the sacrifice at God.)
quote:It doesn't feel like you are trying very hard because I found several googling for a minute.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I have never come across any reference to any Jews being offended by the term Holocaust except when it's used for other events. And I've been round the block. Googling reveals nothing.
quote:Where in your "I found several" link do you see evidence that Jews find the term "holocaust" offensive? (I agree with you, though, that you don't have to try hard to find evidence of fringe opinions on the internet!)
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:It doesn't feel like you are trying very hard because I found several googling for a minute.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I have never come across any reference to any Jews being offended by the term Holocaust except when it's used for other events. And I've been round the block. Googling reveals nothing.
quote:It is mate. Show me any historical, mainstream, broadsheet, Guardian level, BBC, even John Pilger level claim.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:It doesn't feel like you are trying very hard because I found several googling for a minute.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I have never come across any reference to any Jews being offended by the term Holocaust except when it's used for other events. And I've been round the block. Googling reveals nothing.
The fact that you've been around the block is clearly not a particularly useful measure in this regard.
quote:A commentator in the Jerusalem Post writes:
The biblical word Shoah (which has been used to mean “destruction” since the Middle Ages) became the standard Hebrew term for the murder of European Jewry as early as the early 1940s. The word Holocaust, which came into use in the 1950s as the corresponding term, originally meant a sacrifice burnt entirely on the altar. The selection of these two words with religious origins reflects recognition of the unprecedented nature and magnitude of the events. Many understand Holocaust as a general term for the crimes and horrors perpetrated by the Nazis; others go even farther and use it to encompass other acts of mass murder as well. Consequently, we consider it important to use the Hebrew word Shoah with regard to the murder of and persecution of European Jewry in other languages as well. Various interpretations of these historical events have given rise to several other terms with different shades of meaning: destruction (used in Raul Hilberg’s book), catastrophe (in use mainly in the research literature in Soviet Russia), and khurbn (destruction) and gezerot tash–tashah (the decrees of 1939–1945( (Used in ultra-orthodox communities).
quote:from a film review in the NY Times:
Amir and I wish to make one point very clear lest some of the readers here may take offence with our stance. We are not proud that our Jewish people were the target of such heinous crimes as committed by the Nazis and their collaborators. We do, however, believe that the growing number of groups religious, ethnic and other, who adopt the term “Holocaust” in order to describe crimes carried out against them, is unmerited and somewhat disrespectful towards the facts.
<snip>
Personally, I am not in favor of the choice of term. The reason is twofold. The first is that I do not see the Jewish victims of the Nazi killing machine as a “sacrifice”, or a “burnt offering.” Sacrifice for what? Burnt offering for what? I am still searching for the answer.
Secondly, as before, I keep wondering why we, Jews, need to choose Hellenistic/heathen terms to describe what is unique to us only. For me, therefore, there is only one word to describe that ghastly episode in my people’s history. It is the Hebrew word “Shoah.
quote:Etc and so on.
Mr. Lanzmann also argues that “Shoah” is not really a documentary, and that “Holocaust” is “a completely improper name” to describe the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews during World War II.
<snip>
“This was by no means a holocaust,” he said during a recent visit to New York, noting that the literal meaning of the word refers to a burnt offering to a god. “To reach God 1.5 million Jewish children have been offered? The name is important, and one doesn’t say ‘Holocaust’ in Europe. This was a catastrophe, a disaster, and in Hebrew that is shoah.”
quote:Two of your three new examples provide no support for the notion that the term should be considered offensive. I see no reason to believe that view is a "fairly pervasive" one. To my mind, use of the term by the Chief Rabbi of Israel, in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, in the names of a plethora of Holocaust museums, and in the self-appellation of Yad Vashem all suggest that such a view is really quite rare.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
One doesn't have to agree with all of these people expressing the same idea to understand that it is a fairly pervasive one.
quote:I am interested neither in lecturing Israel's Jews, nor indulging in tutorial- room hypotheticals with what, for them, are very real and urgent ongoing issues.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Are there any measures taken by the Israelis against the Palestinians that are in your view justified, but which wouldn't be justified if the Shoah hadn't happened?
quote:A better place for this discussion.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:I am interested neither in lecturing Israel's Jews, nor indulging in tutorial- room hypotheticals with what, for them, are very real and urgent ongoing issues.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Are there any measures taken by the Israelis against the Palestinians that are in your view justified, but which wouldn't be justified if the Shoah hadn't happened?
quote:And the evidence for the latter concern is?
Originally posted by Golden Key:
quote:I'm for the Jewish people having a safe homeland. I also think that *everyone* there should be safe.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Though, when the Israeli government pursues policies with clear similarities to those of the German government between 1933-45 then the irony of that should be mentioned.
And, much as I hate to say it, I do sometimes worry that they're considering The Palestinian Question.
quote:Except that Israel is settled mostly by people not directly affected by the event which created the country.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There have been some interesting psychological analyses of Israeli racism, along the lines of the oppressed yearning to oppress, or the victim becoming the tyrant. Interesting, but impossible to prove, I would think. But some victims of abuse tend to abuse others, as a means of re-enactment.
quote:Is it? I've spent my working life encouraging abused people not to re-enact their abuse. It's hard work, as it's quite tempting to reverse roles.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Except that Israel is settled mostly by people not directly affected by the event which created the country.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There have been some interesting psychological analyses of Israeli racism, along the lines of the oppressed yearning to oppress, or the victim becoming the tyrant. Interesting, but impossible to prove, I would think. But some victims of abuse tend to abuse others, as a means of re-enactment.
Except that having been abused is a reason, but not an excuse to abuse others.
I am not saying you are trying to excuse such behaviour, but the line of reasoning you use often is.
quote:Most of the earliest citizens of Israel were Mitteleuropean Jews. They were either survivors of the holocaust or got out earlier. Of the ones who got out earlier pretty much all of them would have left behind families and communities which were exterminated. The exception would have been the small number of Jews indigenous to Palestine, with a semi-exception for the Jews driven out of the Arab lands in retaliation for the expulsion of the Palestinians. Hence, the self-identity of Israel as a community gathered together as a response to anti-semitism.
Except that Israel is settled mostly by people not directly affected by the event which created the country.
quote:One that massively, fairly compensates the Palestinians for an alien invasion and the irreversible formation of an alien state, all by the UN.
"Rationally, some sort of settlement which works for both peoples is a good idea,
quote:Aye, we've all done it.
emotionally, a sense of being a beleaguered community who, in the final analysis, can only depend on themselves
-
hardly, it may be added, a view without historical basis
-
quote:Israel will not. We must. It's the only emotionally intelligent thing to do. The West must ransom Israeli security = Palestinians blood and our own with tribute, compensation to the Palestinians. There are twelve million. $10K each per year: $120 Bn. The 4.4 million in Gaza and the West Bank at least: $44 Bn. Roughly a quarter of Israel's per capita GDP. They currently get 8% of that if that.
tends not to incline one to look for internationally backed peace processes as a guarantee of safety and freedom."
quote:The problem is that the conflation is both reasonable and unreasonable at the same time. Whether we like it or not, Jews and the country they inhabit in the middle east is special. And is more special than other countries within the history of the world. And The Meme which inspires other nations, whether the shining city on a hill, Jerusalam in this fair land, the march of the Boers, the new Rome in Moscow, and the search for various Holy Grails.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Can I also add, by the way, how interesting it is that those more inclined to support Israel have a tendency to conflate Israeli with Jew?
My argument is not with Jews. It is with Israel.
And they make veiled accusations of anti-Semitism whilst they are conflating the two. Indeed, one is inclined to think the conflating is intentional to enable them to flog the anti-semitism line against Israel's critics.
quote:I think it's a red herring in the context of a thread which is about consumer boycotts in response to perceived current-day Israeli abuses.
Originally posted by Callan:
Incidentally, I don't think that the Holocaust is the red herring in this debate that others think it is.
quote:Golly, yes.
Originally posted by Callan:
you'd have to be the late Yasser Arafat to wish the cause of Israel to be left to the tender mercies of Kaplan Corday
quote:I fixed your post.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Golly, yes.
Originally posted by Callan:
you'd have to be the late Yasser Arafat to wish the cause of Israel to be left to the tender mercies of Kaplan Corday
Good point.
Old Yasser would have been euphoric hearing someone defend Israel's right to existence and security badly.
quote:Me too.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:I fixed your post.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Golly, yes.
Originally posted by Callan:
you'd have to be the late Yasser Arafat to wish the cause of Israel to be left to the tender mercies of ... Kaplan Corday
Good point.
Old Yasser would have been euphoric hearing someone defend Israel's right to existence and security badly.
quote:From the New York Times, December 8, 1988:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Golly, yes.
Originally posted by Callan:
you'd have to be the late Yasser Arafat to wish the cause of Israel to be left to the tender mercies of Kaplan Corday
Good point.
Old Yasser would have been euphoric hearing someone defend Israel's right to existence and security.
quote:Seems like it doesn't matter if you try to be conciliatory or not, if the people you're trying to reconcile with want to push you into the Med.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7— Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
As you know, pareidolia means seeing patterns which aren't there. Postmodernism identifies them, strips them away as far as it can, although, of course, that is logically impossible as the observer's share is enculturated in every word and thought. You are objecting to there being observers' shares - narratives, stories, stuff we make up - as they are what we bring to all that we observe. You are objecting to perceptual reality.
Using postmodern deconstruction is the most powerful tool for identifying inescapable pareidolia in textual analysis.
Seeing the modern world in two and a half thousand year old texts is extreme pareidolia.
quote:No. Whatever that is.
In your HO perhaps.
quote:Objective reality is denied by reality. By physics. The only alternative to which is magic. What behaviour am I excusing and what moral absolutes am I divorced from?
To me, having considered the PM view carefully, the denial of objective reality because of the inability to dissociate from a set of preconceptions is a mere ploy that excuses behaviour and divorces it from moral absolutes.
quote:What has this vague nonsense got to do with anything?
All moral choices become subject to circumstance and pretty well anything can be said to be justified depending on circumstances.
quote:I don't see the connection. At all. What other thing? All metanarratives are human creations by definition, all stories that claim to be true, to contain truth, above which metarratives are created too. We invent everything we think, say and do. We make it all up. As a Christian I have one clear exception.
The other thing is the way you can use it to say all metanarratives are human creations and all truth stories are in fact fictions we invent as we need them. This is a lie that will land you in confusion. It plays into the hands of atheists.
quote:They are a denial of perceptual reality.
I am not in any way denying the fallibility of perceptual reality as you assert. I simply believe we have a ruler to measure it by. The scriptures.
quote:A universal trope.
My view of Scriptural texts sees prophecy as God reaching into time. Objectivity is ensured by his predictions that are measurable against history.
one eg is the incarnation. Isaiah said a virgin would conceive and 600 or so years later a virgin did.
quote:Why are you ignoring so much of the historicity of the Bible?
Another example is the many predictions in the OT that God would restore the Jews to their original real estate promised to Abraham..precisely what we have historically seen since 1948 and mightily in spite of world opinion. The UN has turned flips to undo Israel. Five wars against superior forces have been won by them. QED. We cannot explain the survival of the Jew apart from the supernatural intervention of a sovereign God.
quote:What will your answer be?
The Bible talks a lot about judgement and it is certainly not a popular idea these days. But what if one day after this life when we all all stand before him we have to answer for the culture of denial?
quote:It's more nuanced than that. The PLO was marginalized at the time. It was operating out of Tunisia. It could only gain any entry to talks brokered by the USA if it accepted the UN resolution #242 which recognized Israel's right to exist. The PLO or Jordan was going to lead the talks, and Arafat didn't want the PLO to become irrelevant if Jordan represented the Palestinians. So Arafat negotiated with the USA for wording that might satisfy America. The 1985 prior PLO statement didn't quite measure up. Once the PLO accepted the resolution, Israel's right to exist and renounced terrorism, the USA went forward to facilitate talks, knowing that it had forced the issue with Arafat. The PLO however didn't behave as it as promised. The USA didn't denounce this, but Israel did.
Originally posted by mousethief:
From the New York Times, December 8, 1988:
quote:Seems like it doesn't matter if you try to be conciliatory or not, if the people you're trying to reconcile with want to push you into the Med.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7— Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States.
quote:From the New York Times, December 8, 1988:
Originally posted by mousethief:
]
quote:How cynical of Israel to doubt the word of someone with such a record of ethics and integrity.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7— Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States. [/QUOTE
quote:Unfortunately, you don't get to make peace with people of ethics and integrity. You get to make it between your enemy and yourself.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:From the New York Times, December 8, 1988:
Originally posted by mousethief:
]
quote:How cynical of Israel to doubt the word of someone with such a record of ethics and integrity.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7— Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States. [/QUOTE
quote:Not sure whom you are talking about here.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Seems like it doesn't matter if you try to be conciliatory or not, if the people you're trying to reconcile with want to push you into the Med.
quote:Israel just wants to push the native non-Jewish population of Palestine across the Jordan.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Not sure whom you are talking about here.
It was Israel's opponents who first talked about pushing the Jews into the sea.
quote:Wise to mention also that he was on the Arabic Radio stations pretty soon after assuring his followers that he was only buying time, using a strategic lie for advantage justified by Muhummad, that in fact their would be no peace EVER with the Jewish state.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:From the New York Times, December 8, 1988:
Originally posted by mousethief:
]
quote:How cynical of Israel to doubt the word of someone with such a record of ethics and integrity.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7— Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States. [/QUOTE
quote:Perhaps you forgot Isaiah 7:14
Martin 60: there is no mention of a virgin giving birth in Isaiah of course.
quote:You're not sure that the Palestinians were driven out of their land, to ghettos by the sea, by aliens alienated and driven from the West? And after that expressed the desire for that to be reversed?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Not sure whom you are talking about here.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Seems like it doesn't matter if you try to be conciliatory or not, if the people you're trying to reconcile with want to push you into the Med.
It was Israel's opponents who first talked about pushing the Jews into the sea.
quote:I didn't realise that Isaiah was Anglic! Wow, over two thousand years before Early Modern English existed.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Wise to mention also that he was on the Arabic Radio stations pretty soon after assuring his followers that he was only buying time, using a strategic lie for advantage justified by Muhummad, that in fact their would be no peace EVER with the Jewish state.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:From the New York Times, December 8, 1988:
Originally posted by mousethief:
]
quote:How cynical of Israel to doubt the word of someone with such a record of ethics and integrity.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7— Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States. [/QUOTE
quote:Perhaps you forgot Isaiah 7:14
Martin 60: there is no mention of a virgin giving birth in Isaiah of course.
"A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel."
Incidentally, as this is a tangent I will not be posting further on it.
quote:Millennia? Really? And what about the Palestinians? They lived there too for millennia and a couple thousand years more than the most of the Jewish folks who moved back in the 1940's. Modern Israel is an artificial state just like Iraq, Iran and most of the Middle East that was set up by the Brits to keep things all tidy and organized over there. And most of Israel's problems have been caused by their own actions from the first time the Zionists started moving in under the Ottomans. Killing innocent civilians, stealing homes, farms and businesses, bulldozing villages, you name it. And you wonder why they throw stones and make raids? They are contained on reservations like America did her Indians and then wonder why they fight back? Israel has never treated anyone who wasn't Jewish as an equal partner in building their country. And that includes white Christians from around the world. They like you no more than they do the Palestinians, they just get in more trouble when they are open about it, unlike the way they can be the Palestinians...Christian or Muslim.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:That's ok then - we'll arbitrarily decide tomorrow that people who haven't lived in the land you live on for nearly a thousand years are entitled to it and move you out, bulldoze your home, delegitimise your state, force you to go to live in an open-air prison and make your life uncomfortable.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Given that Jews have lived in the land for millennia and have every right to be there; that their nation has every right to existence and security; that there was a realistic attempt to exterminate them within living memory; and that they are currently surrounded by lunatics who would like to exterminate them on racial and religious grounds, it is unbelievable what an open, liberal and progressive society Israel is.
And then we'll see if you want to call that state you never asked for a liberal democracy.
quote:To the Jew the sign of a supernatural birth goes back to that of Isaac. To a human, it goes to Genesis 3.
Martin 60:
I didn't realise that Isaiah was Anglic! Wow, over two thousand years before Early Modern English existed.
If he'd have been Hebraic, he'd have used the word 'betulah' for virgin wouldn't he?
Isaiah 7 describes a prophecy for King Ahaz in 753 BC. The writer of The Gospel of Matthew took the liberty of arrogating that for the purposes of validating the Incarnation myth, using standards that no modern person possibly could, that are not acceptable in any modern discourse for the past 400 years. Even pre-modern, pre-scientific, pre-Enlightenment thinkers like Aquinas couldn't use such utterly outmoded 'reasoning'.
The past is another country. They do things differently there. It's IMPOSSIBLE even to visit.
The use of methods we have all long since evolved beyond in the educated West in all other discourses, to justify present abuse, is completely irrational, utterly invalid, as bizarre as witchcraft.
quote:And any road, I'd be wary of any attitude that accepts it's fine to ride roughshod over normal standards of justice, decency and law because of religiously founded considerations. Does God not care about the Palestinian people? Has he got it in for them? Does God say that it's ever OK to turf people off their land and claim it for your own?
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The particular example of the fulfillment of prophesy of the young woman/virgin giving birth is, of course, irrelevant to the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.
Much more relevant would be the prophecies relating to the return of the Jewish people to the land. Since these were all given in the context of the Exile in Babylon, the question is why would anyone think they hadn't been fulfilled with Ezra and Nehemiah?
quote:Agreed.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The particular example of the fulfillment of prophesy of the young woman/virgin giving birth is, of course, irrelevant to the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.
quote:Er ...
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:And any road, I'd be wary of any attitude that accepts it's fine to ride roughshod over normal standards of justice, decency and law because of religiously founded considerations. Does God not care about the Palestinian people? Has he got it in for them? Does God say that it's ever OK to turf people off their land and claim it for your own?
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The particular example of the fulfillment of prophesy of the young woman/virgin giving birth is, of course, irrelevant to the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.
Much more relevant would be the prophecies relating to the return of the Jewish people to the land. Since these were all given in the context of the Exile in Babylon, the question is why would anyone think they hadn't been fulfilled with Ezra and Nehemiah?
quote:Quite. Prophecy is a matter of interpretation. "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal", less so.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:And any road, I'd be wary of any attitude that accepts it's fine to ride roughshod over normal standards of justice, decency and law because of religiously founded considerations. Does God not care about the Palestinian people? Has he got it in for them? Does God say that it's ever OK to turf people off their land and claim it for your own?
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The particular example of the fulfillment of prophesy of the young woman/virgin giving birth is, of course, irrelevant to the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.
Much more relevant would be the prophecies relating to the return of the Jewish people to the land. Since these were all given in the context of the Exile in Babylon, the question is why would anyone think they hadn't been fulfilled with Ezra and Nehemiah?
quote:Even my former cultic fellowship acknowledged the almost total historicity of the prophets. But it claimed 'duality' and more. It claimed that there were aspects of the prophecies that were messianic of Jesus' incarnation and return, in particular:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The particular example of the fulfillment of prophesy of the young woman/virgin giving birth is, of course, irrelevant to the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.
Much more relevant would be the prophecies relating to the return of the Jewish people to the land. Since these were all given in the context of the Exile in Babylon, the question is why would anyone think they hadn't been fulfilled with Ezra and Nehemiah?
quote:Including getting themselves targeted for genocide in order to further their insidious global agenda
Originally posted by teddybear:
And most of Israel's problems have been caused by their own actions from the first time the Zionists started moving in under the Ottomans.
quote:Well, we've always known that Jews are two-faced and duplicitous and out to exploit Christians.
Israel has never treated anyone who wasn't Jewish as an equal partner in building their country. And that includes white Christians from around the world. They like you no more than they do the Palestinians, they just get in more trouble when they are open about it
quote:Uh, yes. In the OT, God tells/orders the Jewish people to kill all the people of certain places (kids included), and move on in. That's one reason many people hate the OT image of God, and religion in general.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Does God say that it's ever OK to turf people off their land and claim it for your own?
quote:Indeed. This is one of many reasons that people who take these passages at face value worry me - if they'll swallow that moral repugnancy, what else are they willing to accept if someone persuades them it's God's plan?
Originally posted by Golden Key:
{H/As: Don't know if this is considered part of the forbidden tangent. Sorry, if so.}
quote:Uh, yes. In the OT, God tells/orders the Jewish people to kill all the people of certain places (kids included), and move on in. That's one reason many people hate the OT image of God, and religion in general.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Does God say that it's ever OK to turf people off their land and claim it for your own?
quote:I think SL brings up some interesting points here, albeit in his own inimitable style.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
So basically, should Israel exist?
<SNIP>
In contrast, both Jews who have accepted Jesus by faith, and Gentiles who are also adopted children of Abraham through faith in Jesus, are logically entitled to the land. But paradoxically, precisely by that faith they have entered into a wider and deeper – not to mention eternal – blessing of which the physical land was only a symbol/picture/down-payment; and so Christians (of whatever ethnicity), though entitled to the land, don't need it. And indeed in the present could not lay claim to the land without contradicting the kind of kingdom Jesus told them to form, a kingdom not limited to one land but comprising all believers globally....
The above is a summary of stuff found all over the NT but particularly in the Epistle to the Hebrews....
quote:The question where that does become relevant is that of whether Christians should support the state of Israel. And, IMO, Steve is correct - there is no Scriptural basis for Christians to support a religious basis for the existance of the state of Israel, in that we believe that the Old Covenant (including the government of a piece of land) has been superceded by a New Covenant in Christ.
Originally posted by Callan:
Most of the protagonists in this particular dispute aren't Christian. So arguments about the correct interpretation of the New Testament aren't going to get us very far.
quote:As far as I can make out, those (usually very conservative Evangelicals) who support Israel to the extent of donating large sums to build settlements are doing so because they believe Jews in the Promised Land will bring the Second Coming.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The question where that does become relevant is that of whether Christians should support the state of Israel. And, IMO, Steve is correct - there is no Scriptural basis for Christians to support a religious basis for the existance of the state of Israel, in that we believe that the Old Covenant (including the government of a piece of land) has been superceded by a New Covenant in Christ.
Other arguments for the existance of the state of Israel that don't boil down to "it was promised to Abraham and his descendents" could, of course, be relevant to whether Christians should support Israel.
quote:From where I'm standing, God has spoken and he doesn't want any 'particular group to take residence in a particular place'... especially when their doing so threatens the peace of the world....
If God wants a particular group to take residence in a particular place, let him speak up now.
quote:Your first line here is untrue. This post -exilic prophecy was not fulfilled in the return from Babylon. Relatively few Jews uprooted themselves to return at that time. The prophecies of return to the land have to apply beyond that. There are others in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and elsewhere that state God would return Jews en masse to the land of Israel (formerly Canaan, never Palestine).
Martin 60: What's that 2,600 year old Exilic 'prophecy' that was fulfilled within a century got to do with the Holocaust, oil, British,....
quote:This is confused from the start and gets worse. What post -exilic (sic) prophecy are you talking about?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Your first line here is untrue. This post -exilic prophecy was not fulfilled in the return from Babylon. Relatively few Jews uprooted themselves to return at that time. The prophecies of return to the land have to apply beyond that. There are others in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and elsewhere that state God would return Jews en masse to the land of Israel (formerly Canaan, never Palestine).
Martin 60: What's that 2,600 year old Exilic 'prophecy' that was fulfilled within a century got to do with the Holocaust, oil, British,....
The historical event we witness in our day is in no way a justification of Israel as a nation, it is an evidence of an objective real and factual God if you care to accept it.
You cannot explain it as an international twinge of conscience about allowing the holocaust. The Brits for instance had no such twinge in their cynical withdrawal and active assistance to the Arab forces in 1948.
It is and was an illogical and since, much regretted, anomalous action by the UN that they have been trying to reverse ever since. Something over 130 resolutions of the UN have been directed against Israel. I think it shows that God exists and he has a stake in world affairs. So much for post modernism.
God,in the Bible,says he would restore Israel in the original land
The world hates Jews who have always been marginalised.
God has done what he said using the world.
Ergo, God exists.
quote:Two things;
Until that happens in a thousand years, what do WE do?
quote:That's not post-exilic.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Ezekiel 36:24 written by Ezekiel after he was exiled.
quote:How?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60;
quote:Two things;
Until that happens in a thousand years, what do WE do?
1) We preach the gospel to all, including Jews who clearly need it.
2) We get our NT interpretation right so as not to make things worse....
quote:Almost everything except the fact that Britain, America, Russia, France and many other north European, their satellite and client states forced an alien presence in the Arab world and need to compensate the victims of that, to minimize future burnt offerings of redemptive violence.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I have read about Joan Peters, and few have anything good to say about From Time Immemorial. The current Israeli government think it's the bees knees, because it is in line with their policy.
Israel and Palestine is a subject about which almost everything is subjective, and this book is no exception.
quote:Not for the first time - previously it was in relation to Islam - mr cheesy is using this strange idea that Christians discussing in this case Judaism are talking about a 'different religion'.
There is a level of crazy cognitive dissonance whereby some Christians assert things about Christianity and being "born again" and yet at the same time believe in prophesies relating to a different religion and being in the land. To that extent I agree with Steve.
On the other hand, what he says is also exhibiting a level of crazy cognitive dissonance. Jews are not Christians. Using an understanding of Christianity which relegates Judaism-without-Jesus as being wrong, and therefore that Jews are not entitled to the land of Israel is pretty bonkers.
quote:You haven' t read it. She has, in there a huge base of documentary evidence including personal testimony, of the ejection of Jews from all Arab lands, the confiscation of their property and The obvious inflation of numbers of Arabs that fled Israel in 1948 and were subsequently kept in camps to use as political fodder for the purpose of inflaming world opinion against Israel. I read on Wikipedia that she was c riticised for misusing sources. If so I fail to see how she has misrepresented people when in many cases she quotes them verbatim
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I have read about Joan Peters, and few have anything good to say about From Time Immemorial. The current Israeli government think it's the bees knees, because it is in line with their policy.
Israel and Palestine is a subject about which almost everything is subjective, and this book is no exception.
quote:So Jewish Christians ARE entitled to Arab land?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'll come back later (possibly now Monday) on some of the issues here. But for now I want to deal with this....
by mr cheesy;
quote:Not for the first time - previously it was in relation to Islam - mr cheesy is using this strange idea that Christians discussing in this case Judaism are talking about a 'different religion'.
There is a level of crazy cognitive dissonance whereby some Christians assert things about Christianity and being "born again" and yet at the same time believe in prophesies relating to a different religion and being in the land. To that extent I agree with Steve.
On the other hand, what he says is also exhibiting a level of crazy cognitive dissonance. Jews are not Christians. Using an understanding of Christianity which relegates Judaism-without-Jesus as being wrong, and therefore that Jews are not entitled to the land of Israel is pretty bonkers.
What's strange about it is this....
Christianity and Buddhism are different religions
Christianity and Hinduism are different religions
Christianity and Japanese Shinto are different religions
Christianity and Scientology are different religions
And I could go on to list a few more where Christianity has almost nothing in common with the other religion in question except that the adherents are human....
This is not quite so in the case of Judaism/Christianity/Islam (and one could include some other 'derivatives' like Mormonism or Christian Science). Judaism, Christianity and Islam are deeply entwined and interconnected.
Jesus was a Jew; far from claiming to set up a 'different religion' he claimed that his teachings were a follow-through/completion/fulfilment of Judaism.
He also claimed to be the 'Messiah, that is the 'anointed king of the Jews' as a descendant of King David, fulfilling a role promised by the God of Israel in prophecies of the Old Testament. He fulfilled that role in a fashion slightly differently to the typical expectations of 1st Century CE Jews, but nevertheless, that is who he claimed to be.
And in addition, he claimed, and it was a major reason for his crucifixion on a charge of 'blasphemy', that he was also an incarnation of the God of the Jews.
There is obviously an argument to be had concerning whether this is a valid position. But basically IF CHRISTIANITY IS TRUE, it is definitely NOT a different religion to Judaism.
And if so, there is no 'cognitive dissonance' in Christians basing ideas on OT teachings, as Jesus himself and his apostles, the heralds of his message, very much did. Again, you can argue that a particular case is mistaken - but not for a dissonance that applies in general to Christians doing that.
I'd argue that the application which sees Jews as somehow even after Jesus continuing as before with an unchanged relationship to the land is misguided, precisely because it ignores the difference Jesus makes to the situation - but I'd also argue that there will, if Christianity is true, be a valid interpretation of those prophecies in Christian terms.
Likewise the interpretation I offer is not a 'cognitive dissonance' because of any idea that Judaism and Christianity are 'different religions'; I'm simply following through the logic of who Jesus claims to be and the difference that makes.
IF CHRISTIANITY IS TRUE then Jews who don't accept Jesus as Messiah, who don't accept the teachings of their own God in incarnate-as-human form, have stepped outside the true fulfilment of their religion and have gone off down a side-turning. They have rejected, from a Christian viewpoint, the necessary conditions of the covenant on which their entitlement to the land depends, while those who follow Jesus - regardless of ethnic origin - are within the covenant - Jews and Gentiles 'joint-heirs' as Paul explains in several places.
A Christian who does not recognise this aspect of Christian belief - ah, now there we can see very real and deep 'cognitive dissonance'.....
quote:ALL Christians are theoretically entitled to the land of Israel - but would be very much "missing the point" if they actually claimed it .... Not to mention some practical problems, given the number of Christians in the world...!!
So Jewish Christians ARE entitled to Arab land?
quote:Before he died, the late King Hussein changed the line of succession, so that his military son was next in line. I wonder what he knew, or suspected.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Eg king Hussein of Jordan said in 1960:
"Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestinian problem in an irresponsible manner..They have used the Palestinian people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal."
quote:Are you with Steve Langton on this imperialist, Islamophobic, unchristian, anti-Christian nonsense Gamaliel?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60
quote:ALL Christians are theoretically entitled to the land of Israel - but would be very much "missing the point" if they actually claimed it .... Not to mention some practical problems, given the number of Christians in the world...!!
So Jewish Christians ARE entitled to Arab land?
As I said above, Christians have the deeper eternal beyond-this-world reality of which the land for Israel was only a shadow.
quote:Don't forget this indisputable fact, this categorical truth. And that even the second and third rate hermeneutics used by Jesus and the New Testament writers respectively, because that's all they knew, doesn't approach the fourth rate (which is generous if you insist on the lack of minimal scholarship of claiming that Ezekiel 36:24 - dated up to 571 BCE - is a post-exilic prophecy; that puts it into the fifth rate) hermeneutic of making exilic prophecy, fulfilled by the post-exile of 539 BCE, arbitrarily apply to 1948 geopolitical abuse.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's not post-exilic.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Ezekiel 36:24 written by Ezekiel after he was exiled.
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In what sense?
I am with SL in terms of seeing the physical land of Israel and issues around its ownership as a secondary concern in the 'my kingdom is not of this world' sense.
I'm not with him on some of the detail.
I thought I'd made that clear.
quote:I don't think I would accept any of that characterisation of my position - where did that come from?
Are you with Steve Langton on this imperialist, Islamophobic, unchristian, anti-Christian nonsense Gamaliel?
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
ALL Christians are theoretically entitled to the land of Israel
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
quote:Did nobody notice the rather big "BUT" which immediately followed?
Probably this bit
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
ALL Christians are theoretically entitled to the land of Israel
[Paranoid]
quote:Yeah Gamaliel, I get a lot of that🙂
Gamaliel :
Jamat, the idea that God somehow brought about the demise of the British Empire because of its behaviour in 1948 is one of the most crass and reductionist cause and effect views of history I gave encountered.
quote:Don't worry Steve Langton,( illegitimus non carborundum..Don't let the bastards get you down)
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60
quote:I don't think I would accept any of that characterisation of my position - where did that come from?
Are you with Steve Langton on this imperialist, Islamophobic, unchristian, anti-Christian nonsense Gamaliel?
quote:Which amounts to saying you know more than Jesus did.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Jamat
quote:Don't forget this indisputable fact, this categorical truth. And that even the second and third rate hermeneutics used by Jesus and the New Testament writers respectively, because that's all they knew, doesn't approach the fourth rate (which is generous if you insist on the lack of minimal scholarship of claiming that Ezekiel 36:24 - dated up to 571 BCE - is a post-exilic prophecy; that puts it into the fifth rate) hermeneutic of making exilic prophecy, fulfilled by the post-exile of 539 BCE, arbitrarily apply to 1948 geopolitical abuse.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's not post-exilic.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Ezekiel 36:24 written by Ezekiel after he was exiled.
quote:Of course I do. He promised we would do greater things than Him. Our hermeneutic is such.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Which amounts to saying you know more than Jesus did.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Jamat
quote:Don't forget this indisputable fact, this categorical truth. And that even the second and third rate hermeneutics used by Jesus and the New Testament writers respectively, because that's all they knew, doesn't approach the fourth rate (which is generous if you insist on the lack of minimal scholarship of claiming that Ezekiel 36:24 - dated up to 571 BCE - is a post-exilic prophecy; that puts it into the fifth rate) hermeneutic of making exilic prophecy, fulfilled by the post-exile of 539 BCE, arbitrarily apply to 1948 geopolitical abuse.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's not post-exilic.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Ezekiel 36:24 written by Ezekiel after he was exiled.
"Professing to be wise.."
quote:Jamat, I need to be convinced that the same God who, in Jesus, said "My kingdom is not of this world" is also, in the same post-Jesus era, wanting Jews to operate Israel as very much a 'kingdom of this world'.
You gotta remember that Christianity and God and all that stuff needs to be accessible to us cretins..the ones that believe Matthew's hermeneutics about the incarnation. "Unless you become as little children etc"
quote:Why not both and instead of either or?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Sorry, while compiling that one I missed the post about Isaiah 11.....
A quick reaction is that I'd see the fulfilment NOT in the return of Israel to the land literally, but in the 'remnant' Paul sees in Romans as having faith in Jesus, and in an ultimate saving of 'all Israel' foretold by Paul in Romans 11/25-6 - Jews saved by (re)incorporation into God's holy nation the Church (I Pet). See Heb 11/16 and 12/22....
quote:Rubbish in rubbish out. Your premises determine your conclusion and in your case they are impenetrable. I mean your post modern world view. ISTM you are so influenced by perceived abuses from fundamentalists that the baby is down the plug hole.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Logic is remorseless isn't it? Hard to beat. One can always pretend it's not there I suppose. Ignore it. But my parents were married prior to my conception, thank you.
And DO I acknowledge your gracious acknowledgement of your being wrong in your fifth rate hermeneutic.
quote:Yes. That is what deductive logic IS.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Your premises determine your conclusion
quote:Yes, but it is not clear how what follows in your post contradicts this entitlement of Christians, be it theoretical or otherwise, to the land.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Eutychus;
quote:Did nobody notice the rather big "BUT" which immediately followed?
Probably this bit
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
ALL Christians are theoretically entitled to the land of Israel
[Paranoid]
quote:With this I agree entirely.
Originally posted by Jamat:
To me unregenerate Israel is still an international flag.
quote:First of all, you don't get to determine what I believe. Thanks all the same, but you have zero authority as a marker of Christian belief for me.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
A Christian who does not recognise this aspect of Christian belief - ah, now there we can see very real and deep 'cognitive dissonance'.....
quote:Remember, I am contemptuously described around here as a literalist. I mean simply that God has created/enabled/providentially secured a politically unlikely and yet very obvious international signal through the very existence of a nation called Israel, thus drawing attention to himself. I think it was Mark Twain who when asked how he knew God existed, casually replied "The Jew." and that was in the 19th century.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Jamat--
What do you mean by "international flag", please? Thx.
quote:Which ISTM means the whole OT is probably out for you or you simply do not have a belief system that includes it at all. I doubt Steve gives a rats ass about your views and I'd be surprised if anyone else does either. I do not read him as trying to impose his views unless you interpret having a different opinion to yours is doing that. We all tend to argue passionately but is that not the norm?
Mr Cheesy:
For your information, I reject this Theology of the Land, and I reject all Theologies of the Land. I don't believe any land "belongs" to anyone on the basis that the deity has given it to them. Mainly because that idea is in stark contrast to the New Testament Jesus.
quote:You forgot to add in your opinion or are you speaking ex cathedra? I know quite a few Christians outside this little pond that have not yet started a crusade yet consider current Israel prophetically significant. Of course they do not all agree as to how.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Oh, well forget what I said, then.
I thought you meant the nation state of Israel was nothing more than an international flag.
It's precisely when one starts to make the leap from this kind of contemporary entity to biblical promises to superficially similar but fundamentally different entities that things go awry. Or at least that is the lesson of history.
quote:I can't understand the postmodern worldview for you. Its Copernican premises are too simple compared with your Ptolemaic ones obviously. Which is an insult to Ptolemy, his reasoning was based on one false premise.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Rubbish in rubbish out. Your premises determine your conclusion and in your case they are impenetrable. I mean your post modern world view. ISTM you are so influenced by perceived abuses from fundamentalists that the baby is down the plug hole.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Logic is remorseless isn't it? Hard to beat. One can always pretend it's not there I suppose. Ignore it. But my parents were married prior to my conception, thank you.
And DO I acknowledge your gracious acknowledgement of your being wrong in your fifth rate hermeneutic.
quote:Don't you start on this nonsense.
Originally posted by Jamat:
You forgot to add in your opinion or are you speaking ex cathedra?
quote:There are plenty of ways to lend undue importance to current Israel that fall short of starting a crusade, and you know it.
I know quite a few Christians outside this little pond that have not yet started a crusade yet consider current Israel prophetically significant. Of course they do not all agree as to how.
quote:There is a difference in arguing passionately and trying to tell other people what they should - or do believe - when they're telling you that they don't.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Which ISTM means the whole OT is probably out for you or you simply do not have a belief system that includes it at all. I doubt Steve gives a rats ass about your views and I'd be surprised if anyone else does either. I do not read him as trying to impose his views unless you interpret having a different opinion to yours is doing that. We all tend to argue passionately but is that not the norm?
quote:I think that's utter bunk.
The New Testament Jesus was certainly concerned with the land. "Jerusalem Jerusalem how often I wanted to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not. Now, your house is left unto you desolate" There is also the "one stone shall not be left upon another" reference in Matthew 24. And you shall not see me again until you say
" Baruch haba beshem adonai".(Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord). IOW Jesus has promised to return to the land when its inhabitants call him back.
quote:And... there it is. The root of this is anti-Catholic Protestantism.
Of course, you can feel free to reject theologies of the land or create,as many do, theologies that do not include the land but to do that you have to allegorise and spiritualise and ignore much scripture as Augustine did and the Catholics do.
quote:Martin I do get post modernism and it's insights. They are considerable but not the last word. The reader is empowered by the attention drawn to his/ her preconceptions and contingencies. IMV this is trumped by scripture. God reaches into time and objectively says "I AM"
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:I can't understand the postmodern worldview for you. Its Copernican premises are too simple compared with your Ptolemaic ones obviously. Which is an insult to Ptolemy, his reasoning was based on one false premise.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Rubbish in rubbish out. Your premises determine your conclusion and in your case they are impenetrable. I mean your post modern world view. ISTM you are so influenced by perceived abuses from fundamentalists that the baby is down the plug hole.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Logic is remorseless isn't it? Hard to beat. One can always pretend it's not there I suppose. Ignore it. But my parents were married prior to my conception, thank you.
And DO I acknowledge your gracious acknowledgement of your being wrong in your fifth rate hermeneutic.
You justify the massive geopolitical abuse of Zionism perpetrated by the world on the Arab people as God's will based on a counterfactual declaration that no one else on Earth asserts, that no one believes, including you, because it is impossible, that Ezekiel 36:24 is contextually post-exilic. You have to 'believe' that so that the return from exile doesn't fulfil it and that at last the 1948 show can be abused to fill that void you, most postmodernly, have made up.
quote:Well most of that works for me.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:Don't you start on this nonsense.
Originally posted by Jamat:
You forgot to add in your opinion or are you speaking ex cathedra?
quote:There are plenty of ways to lend undue importance to current Israel that fall short of starting a crusade, and you know it.
I know quite a few Christians outside this little pond that have not yet started a crusade yet consider current Israel prophetically significant. Of course they do not all agree as to how.
I stand by my contention that the lesson of history is that identifying contemporaneous geopolitical entites with biblical ones is a practice that has failed repeatedly. It is also a singularly egocentric view of history since it assumes (as has every other failed prophet of the past) that our age is the subject of these prophecies.
I grew up hearing stuff like, Jesus absolutely had to come back by 1982 at the latest as a result of the foundation of Israel in 1948. I couldn't work out that maths even at the time, but I'm through with that kind of bullshit.
quote:Never said that did I?
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's easy Eutychus. All you HAVE to believe is that Ezekiel 36:24 is contextually post-exilic so that the return from exile can't fulfil it. Like HAVING to pretend that Isaiah 8 doesn't fulfil Isaiah 7.
quote:Yes you did:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Never said that did I?
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's easy Eutychus. All you HAVE to believe is that Ezekiel 36:24 is contextually post-exilic so that the return from exile can't fulfil it. Like HAVING to pretend that Isaiah 8 doesn't fulfil Isaiah 7.
quote:Remember now?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Your first line here is untrue. This post -exilic prophecy was not fulfilled in the return from Babylon.
Martin 60: What's that 2,600 year old Exilic 'prophecy' that was fulfilled within a century got to do with the Holocaust, oil, British,....
quote:Yes you did:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Never said that did I?
Originally posted by Jamat:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Martin60:
It's easy Eutychus. All you HAVE to believe is that Ezekiel 36:24 is contextually post-exilic so that the return from exile can't fulfil it. Like HAVING to pretend that Isaiah 8 doesn't fulfil Isaiah 7.
quote:Remember now? [/QujUOTE]
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Your first line here is untrue. This post -exilic prophecy was not fulfilled in the return from Babylon.
Martin 60: What's that 2,600 year old Exilic 'prophecy' that was fulfilled within a century got to do with the Holocaust, oil, British,....
quote:Undoubtedly true but does it preclude the possibility that God is providentially at work here? You see looking at lots of " I will return you" scriptures in the OT suggests to me he is. To me it is not about anyone's rights but whether God is showing himself. The kingdom is certainly spiritual but there is a thread of future kingdom "All the earth will be filled with my glory" etc.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Late Great Planet Earth is absolutely typical, in my view, of the hasty identification of contemporary nation states with biblical entities.
Contemporary Israel might attract attention in that it's situated in the same (general) area as the promised land was, but there are enough discrepancies, non sequiturs, and nasty results of pursuing "Israel has a right to the land" thinking to give me serious pause before going any further. Starting with "my kingdom is not of this world", moving on to deconstruct dispensationalism, and so on.
I think it's far more likely, especially given the outcomes, that Israel exploits some Christians' pro-Israel sympathies than that God is somehow fufilling OT prophecy through it.
quote:I'm going to assume that you will accept the standard approach to prophecy that the purpose is to provide hope, reassurance and incentive to the original hearers that they may repent of their sins, trust in God, and live out lives of obedience. Where that prophecy looks forward (and, most prophecy addresses the clear present not the future) it does so as either a warning of failure to be obedient to the message or of hope for that original audience. The "you will return" prophecies certainly fall into that category - pre-Exile warning "change or you will be scattered among the nations, but I will bring you back" or Exilic "remain faithful and you will return to the land I promised".
Originally posted by Jamat:
You see looking at lots of " I will return you" scriptures in the OT suggests to me he is. To me it is not about anyone's rights but whether God is showing himself. The kingdom is certainly spiritual but there is a thread of future kingdom "All the earth will be filled with my glory" etc.
quote:They're your posts, you decide.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Not sure what part of that is relevant.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Yes you did:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Never said that did I?
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's easy Eutychus. All you HAVE to believe is that Ezekiel 36:24 is contextually post-exilic so that the return from exile can't fulfil it. Like HAVING to pretend that Isaiah 8 doesn't fulfil Isaiah 7. [/qb]
quote:Remember now?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Your first line here is untrue. This post -exilic prophecy was not fulfilled in the return from Babylon.
Martin 60: What's that 2,600 year old Exilic 'prophecy' that was fulfilled within a century got to do with the Holocaust, oil, British,....
quote:There we are.
That EZE is not post exilic?
quote:An excellent start.
Certainly true. apologies.
quote:A regression. I presume you intended that as a question.
That the return prophecies are not fulfilled fully.
quote:Why?
Well, I do believe that they extend further than the end of the captivity period.
quote:So Ezekiel 36 was completely fulfilled from 32 years just like Isaiah 7 was completely fulfilled within 2 years and 1 chapter.
I was focused on Is 7 and 8. I never said the Is 7:14 was irrelevant to the birth in Is 8 though.
quote:As the exception doesn't exist, then that is the case.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
In a bit of an attempt to clarify after some rather scattered sniping....
1) As far as I can see, there is no justification for a Jewish state of Israel except in the notion of God's covenant promises through Abraham. Without that, the Jews are in exactly the position of other long-displaced peoples - e.g., the Anglo-Saxons or the Celts - who can realistically have no special claim over their ancestral lands against those who now live in those lands.
quote:No it doesn't.
2) What should be the Christian reaction to this claim? And to answer that involves looking into the NT teachings about the 'transition' from Old to New Testament and what is said of the place of Jews in the New Covenant.
quote:The Ten Command Old Covenant is dead, there is no land entitlement for anyone.
3) In the NT portrayal it is Christians - Jew and Gentile together now that Jesus has 'broken down the wall of separation' between them - who are God's people, God's holy nation, kingdom of priests etc. Christians are 'in continuity' with the OT and its promises; those who reject the Divine Messiah Jesus have stepped outside that continuity - by God's grace they are not cast off altogether, but they have no covenant rights. They are not therefore entitled to 'The Land' even though they are ethnic Jews.
quote:No it isn't.
4) As "God's holy nation" it is if anything Christians who are entitled to 'The Land';
quote:As you agree.
but there are all kinds of other factors in Christianity which make it massively inappropriate for Christians to make such a claim in this world - we are happy to await a fulfilment in the "New heavens and new earth' after Judgement Day. In the meantime we get on with enjoying the greater blessings we have through Jesus, and with expanding his 'kingdom not of this world' by seeking converts throughout the world, ourselves living as citizens of the kingdom of heaven in exile/diaspora.
quote:Correct.
How do we interpret the current existence of a Jewish state of Israel?
A) NOT as a fulfilment of the OT covenant.
quote:Correct.
B) NOT therefore as something we are obliged to support regardless of other issues like how ethically the state of Israel behaves in other ways.
quote:Incorrect. It has NOTHING to do with God. There is no other possibility.
C) Clearly as an act of Divine Providence. But we might disagree with Zionists about the purpose of it. Among other possibilities we might consider the idea that God has allowed this as a kind of "Have the Land so you can find out how unsatisfactory it actually is, so that you will look beyond it to the heavenly Zion brought to you through Jesus as your Messiah/King".
quote:Who's job is it to sanction Israel? Who's job is it to compensate the Arabs for the imperialist crime of forcing aliens on their land?
D) Israel is a fact - even if an arguably undesirable fact. It is a threat to world peace. We need to develop Christian approaches to that based on the NT teaching; and at the heart of that, the simple idea that the true fulfilment of the Covenant is through Jesus.... It's not our job to 'sanction' Israel - but it is our job to treat Israel and its activities critically (in the best sense of the word) and respond in a measured way.
quote:Trouble is, the Abrahamic covenant does exist and as interpreted by many Jews without the new covenant brought by Jesus, it leads those Jews to believe they are entitled to 'the Land'. And of course that is not acceptable to non-Jews in particular the Arabs displaced and otherwise affected by the existence of Israel.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:As the exception doesn't exist, then that is the case.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
In a bit of an attempt to clarify after some rather scattered sniping....
1) As far as I can see, there is no justification for a Jewish state of Israel except in the notion of God's covenant promises through Abraham. Without that, the Jews are in exactly the position of other long-displaced peoples - e.g., the Anglo-Saxons or the Celts - who can realistically have no special claim over their ancestral lands against those who now live in those lands.
quote:
quote:No it doesn't.
2) What should be the Christian reaction to this claim? And to answer that involves looking into the NT teachings about the 'transition' from Old to New Testament and what is said of the place of Jews in the New Covenant.
quote:(slight re-punctuation of my original to make for easier reading without affecting the meaning)
quote:The Ten Command Old Covenant is dead, there is no land entitlement for anyone.
3) In the NT portrayal it is Christians - Jew and Gentile together now that Jesus has 'broken down the wall of separation' between them - who are God's people, God's holy nation, kingdom of priests etc.
Christians are 'in continuity' with the OT and its promises; those who reject the Divine Messiah Jesus have stepped outside that continuity - by God's grace they are not cast off altogether, but they have no covenant rights. They are not therefore entitled to 'The Land' even though they are ethnic Jews.
quote:As co-heirs of the Abrahamic covenant with the faithful Jews, Yes it is! I think maybe you jumped in a bit quickly with that flat denial here, without seeing how my following statements affect the point...?
quote:No it isn't.
4) As "God's holy nation" it is if anything Christians who are entitled to 'The Land';
quote:
quote:As you agree.
but there are all kinds of other factors in Christianity which make it massively inappropriate for Christians to make such a claim in this world - we are happy to await a fulfilment in the "New heavens and new earth' after Judgement Day. In the meantime we get on with enjoying the greater blessings we have through Jesus, and with expanding his 'kingdom not of this world' by seeking converts throughout the world, ourselves living as citizens of the kingdom of heaven in exile/diaspora.
quote:Correct.
How do we interpret the current existence of a Jewish state of Israel?
A) NOT as a fulfilment of the OT covenant.
quote:Correct.
B) NOT therefore as something we are obliged to support regardless of other issues like how ethically the state of Israel behaves in other ways.
quote:Incorrect. It has NOTHING to do with God. There is no other possibility.
C) Clearly as an act of Divine Providence. But we might disagree with Zionists about the purpose of it. Among other possibilities we might consider the idea that God has allowed this as a kind of "Have the Land so you can find out how unsatisfactory it actually is, so that you will look beyond it to the heavenly Zion brought to you through Jesus as your Messiah/King".
quote:Who's job is it to sanction Israel? Who's job is it to compensate the Arabs for the imperialist crime of forcing aliens on their land? [/QUOTE]
D) Israel is a fact - even if an arguably undesirable fact. It is a threat to world peace. We need to develop Christian approaches to that based on the NT teaching; and at the heart of that, the simple idea that the true fulfilment of the Covenant is through Jesus.... It's not our job to 'sanction' Israel - but it is our job to treat Israel and its activities critically (in the best sense of the word) and respond in a measured way.
quote:Let me get this straight.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The Abrahamic Covenant is actually the more important one here, the one which initially includes the promise of 'The Land' and is the one the NT specifically says Christians are heirs to (...)
As "God's holy nation" it is if anything Christians who are entitled to 'The Land'
(...)
As co-heirs of the Abrahamic covenant with the faithful Jews, Yes it is!
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
quote:Christians are heirs to the whole blessing. Logically that includes "the Land". And logically, Jews who are NOT Christians are outside the covenant, due to their breach of faith, and are not entitled - they don't fulfil the basic condition.
You think that as heirs to the Abrahamic Covenant, Christians are heirs to "The Land"? My mind is boggled: and even more so because of your Anabaptist tendencies.
quote:I'm actually kind of agreeing with you. But being woolly about where that bit of Jewish desert fits in, and how seriously we take God's promises about it, can potentially have awkward consequences, which in the view I've put are not left hanging to cause trouble.
Its territory is the human and post-human cosmos. Not a bit of Arab desert.
quote:appears to me, specifically the words "no place", to be in complete contradiction to your earlier assertions:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
if you understand the Church as fully in continuity with the OT people of God, you also understand that there is no place for a resumption of a state of Israel in 'kingdom of this world' form in the present age.
quote:Meanwhile...
The Abrahamic Covenant is actually the more important one here, the one which initially includes the promise of 'The Land' and is the one the NT specifically says Christians are heirs to
(...)
As "God's holy nation" it is if anything Christians who are entitled to 'The Land'
quote:Precisely. So there should be no special treatment of the state of Israel compared to its neighbours (or indeed anybody else) on allegedly Scriptural territorial grounds.
Israel is not totally 'cast off'; but their future is to be saved through their Messianic/Davidic/Divine King Jesus, like other Christians. The state of Israel is not in a special position from a Christian viewpoint.
quote:It's called pruning Steve. Cut all the dross, the confusion, the deadwood off. Shear that wool. In fact have a shit, shave, shower AND haircut. K.I.S.S. You know the drill.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60
quote:I'm actually kind of agreeing with you. But being woolly about where that bit of Jewish desert fits in, and how seriously we take God's promises about it, can potentially have awkward consequences, which in the view I've put are not left hanging to cause trouble.
Its territory is the human and post-human cosmos. Not a bit of Arab desert.
quote:How so? Did you miss the rather important qualification 'in kingdom of this world form'?
appears to me, specifically the words "no place", to be in complete contradiction to your earlier assertions:
quote:That we are agreed on - just I've tied up a loose end by registering the way that, since Jesus, the promises apply to the Church rather than to an ethnic Jewish nation.
So there should be no special treatment of the state of Israel compared to its neighbours (or indeed anybody else) on allegedly Scriptural territorial grounds.
quote:Is not making stuff up what a post modernist is obligated to do? The problem comes ISTM when you have to start believing it.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Stop making shit up.
quote:In a nutshell, dispensationalism was the idea, popularised by JN Darby and widely disseminated in the Schofield Bible, that God operates in different "economies" in different "dispensations" corresponding to various covenants.
Originally posted by Jamat:
I am unsure just what a dispensationalist is though I have an idea of what a dispensation is.
quote:The crucial question behind all this is whether throughout history God has more than one plan of salvation.
Regarding covenants, ISTM that if you consider the covenants God made throughout the OT, from Abraham on, they were all with the Jews.
quote:You are arguing against the whole of Romans, in which Paul, as in Galatians, points out that God's covenant with Abraham predates both Israel and the Law and is by faith. In Romans 11 both Jew and Gentile are grafted into the tree; granted the Jews have some historic and cultural advantages - recipients of the Law, an understanding of the culture from which the Messiah came - but they are accepted on the same basis as the Gentiles and indeed all the nations.
The bottom line ISTM is that the church has no covenant but partakes in the Jewish ones (Abrahamic and New.
quote:Even if you believe God's promise to "natural Israel" to have a literal fulfilment, you still have to argue, beyond some not-quite-accurate-coincidences, how this is supposed to apply to a secular state which shows every sign of co-opting Old Testament scripture for its own highly secular and political ends.
Regarding the real estate, the land, I cannot see that God ever promises it to the church, only to natural Israel. Extreme Zionism seems to me to make the mistake of confusing the two.
quote:Essentially it will happen - as I've said a few times above - in the 'new heavens and new earth when everything is restored and renewed after the day of judgement. Christians - regardless of Jewish or Gentile origin - simply do not need the land in the present, and are busy instead in spreading the Kingdom of God by leading people to faith in Jesus.
It sounds to me as if you think it's merely suspended until such time as it might actually physically happen, even if not via present-day Israel.
quote:Perhaps Isaiah 61:2
Martin 60: Got anything vaguely like that anywhere? Anything not fulfilled poetically, symbolically, spiritually in Christ?
Give us a story Jamat, go on. I'm disappointed that you haven't chosen better ones, ones that even I entertain. Let's see if you can discern them. Or do I have to provide them for you?
quote:My understanding is that the Hebrews are castigated for unbelief. The law in other words was a standard of righteousness and the sacrifice system existed to temporarily cover sin but justification is and has always been by faith. Heb 3:12 The issue was an evil heart of unbelief.
Eutychus: In other words, whether when God said to the Jews of the law "the man who does these things shall live by them" he actually meant it, or whether all God's people in covenants old and new are saved by grace through faith
quote:I thought that is what I said. There is indeed no other basis of acceptance that Christ, whether Jew or Gentile. Paul nevertheless distinguishes between the two. Gentile believers need not be circumcised for instance but he did circumcise Jewish ones.
You are arguing against the whole of Romans, in which Paul, as in Galatians, points out that God's covenant with Abraham predates both Israel and the Law and is by faith. In Romans 11 both Jew and Gentile are grafted into the tree; granted the Jews have some historic and cultural advantages - recipients of the Law, an understanding of the culture from which the Messiah came - but they are accepted on the same basis as the Gentiles and indeed all the nations.
quote:I think this is explained In Ezekiel where there seems to be evidence for a regathering in unbelief. The purpose of this is to call out a remnant who will accept the Messiah. Eze 36:24-27 They are to be gathered into the land from all the nations and THERE a new heart is to be given to them.
Even if you believe God's promise to "natural Israel" to have a literal fulfilment, you still have to argue, beyond some not-quite-accurate-coincidences, how this is supposed to apply to a secular state which shows every sign of co-opting Old Testament scripture for its own highly secular and political ends.
quote:Ezekiel also posits a 'kingdom' temple. This differs in dimensions from Solomon's so is obviously a different one. Not the one that is said to be rebuilt before the end of this age. That teaching is based in Daniel's prophecy of the abomination of desolation in the holy place that Jesus spoke of in Matt 24. I do have some issues with that teaching though as I cannot figure how there could be a holy place in an OT style temple when Jesus fulfilled temple worship in his death. However, restoration to the land in unbelief is explained in the passage I cited above from Ezekiel and also in Ezekiel 20:34-37. God is gathering them to deal with them regarding their rejection of the Messiah, Jesus.
You also have to explain the point of this restoration to the land. Dispensationalists believe the Temple will be rebuilt and at least some of them believe the system of sacrifices will be reinstated after the "parenthesis" of the Church age.
quote:So you think there will be nation states and geopolitics an' all in this new heavens and new earth where the saints of the Lamb are, as one of their defining features, from every tribe, tongue, and race?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Essentially it will happen - as I've said a few times above - in the 'new heavens and new earth when everything is restored and renewed after the day of judgement.
quote:Did you miss the bit where Paul says he wishes the Judaisers went the whole way and cut it all off?
Originally posted by Jamat:
Gentile believers need not be circumcised for instance but he did circumcise Jewish ones.
quote:It's hard to be patient this morning, but I will try.
Originally posted by Jamat:
By the way, is it really necessary to post like a patronising tosser? I thought better of you.
quote:That's nothing then. Gar nichts. Rien. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Perhaps Isaiah 61:2
Martin 60: Got anything vaguely like that anywhere? Anything not fulfilled poetically, symbolically, spiritually in Christ?
Give us a story Jamat, go on. I'm disappointed that you haven't chosen better ones, ones that even I entertain. Let's see if you can discern them. Or do I have to provide them for you?
The acceptable year of the Lord is indeed upon us but where is the day of vengeance?
By the way, is it really necessary to post like a patronising tosser? I thought better of you.
quote:Fair comment. I apologise.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
quote:It's hard to be patient this morning, but I will try.
Originally posted by Jamat:
By the way, is it really necessary to post like a patronising tosser? I thought better of you.
Acceptable under Commandment 3.
"That was a stupid and patronising post."
Not Acceptable under Commandment 3.
"That was posted by a patronising stupid person."
Jamat
That was a Commandment 3 violation. Stop it here. Your option is to take it to Hell. Or you can take me to the Styx. Here, we criticise posts, not people.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
quote:source
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped to reach "new heights" in relations with Mr Trump, who he described as "a true friend of the state of Israel" (...)
Earlier hard line Jewish Home party leader and Education Minister Naftali Bennett said the notion of a Palestinian state was over after Donald Trump's win.
"Trump's victory is an opportunity for Israel to immediately retract the notion of a Palestinian state in the centre of the country, which would hurt our security and just cause," he said.
"This is the position of the president-elect... The era of a Palestinian state is over."
quote:No that is something. The day of the Lord's vengeance is omitted when Jesus quoted it in the gospel so that suggests to me it will happen, as the first part of the prophecy did but at a future date. ie as you asked something stated in prophecy but not yet fulfilled.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's nothing then. Gar nichts. Rien. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Perhaps Isaiah 61:2
Martin 60: Got anything vaguely like that anywhere? Anything not fulfilled poetically, symbolically, spiritually in Christ?
Give us a story Jamat, go on. I'm disappointed that you haven't chosen better ones, ones that even I entertain. Let's see if you can discern them. Or do I have to provide them for you?
The acceptable year of the Lord is indeed upon us but where is the day of vengeance?
quote:How staggeringly Ptolemaic. A baroque geocentric orrery with bells and whistles.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:My understanding is that the Hebrews are castigated for unbelief. The law in other words was a standard of righteousness and the sacrifice system existed to temporarily cover sin but justification is and has always been by faith. Heb 3:12 The issue was an evil heart of unbelief.
Eutychus: In other words, whether when God said to the Jews of the law "the man who does these things shall live by them" he actually meant it, or whether all God's people in covenants old and new are saved by grace through faith
quote:I thought that is what I said. There is indeed no other basis of acceptance that Christ, whether Jew or Gentile. Paul nevertheless distinguishes between the two. Gentile believers need not be circumcised for instance but he did circumcise Jewish ones.
You are arguing against the whole of Romans, in which Paul, as in Galatians, points out that God's covenant with Abraham predates both Israel and the Law and is by faith. In Romans 11 both Jew and Gentile are grafted into the tree; granted the Jews have some historic and cultural advantages - recipients of the Law, an understanding of the culture from which the Messiah came - but they are accepted on the same basis as the Gentiles and indeed all the nations.
quote:I think this is explained In Ezekiel where there seems to be evidence for a regathering in unbelief. The purpose of this is to call out a remnant who will accept the Messiah. Eze 36:24-27 They are to be gathered into the land from all the nations and THERE a new heart is to be given to them.
Even if you believe God's promise to "natural Israel" to have a literal fulfilment, you still have to argue, beyond some not-quite-accurate-coincidences, how this is supposed to apply to a secular state which shows every sign of co-opting Old Testament scripture for its own highly secular and political ends.
quote:Ezekiel also posits a 'kingdom' temple. This differs in dimensions from Solomon's so is obviously a different one. Not the one that is said to be rebuilt before the end of this age. That teaching is based in Daniel's prophecy of the abomination of desolation in the holy place that Jesus spoke of in Matt 24. I do have some issues with that teaching though as I cannot figure how there could be a holy place in an OT style temple when Jesus fulfilled temple worship in his death. However, restoration to the land in unbelief is explained in the passage I cited above from Ezekiel and also in Ezekiel 20:34-37. God is gathering them to deal with them regarding their rejection of the Messiah, Jesus.
You also have to explain the point of this restoration to the land. Dispensationalists believe the Temple will be rebuilt and at least some of them believe the system of sacrifices will be reinstated after the "parenthesis" of the Church age.
quote:But that is the point. He did not go further because.?..the second part of that verse was for a future time, for his second coming. No lucky dip involved. He knew the OT better than you or I. Remember the contrasting messiahs in the OT; the suffering one and the reigning one? One messiah with two comings is the only way to solve it or are you wanting now to tell me you do not believe in the second coming?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Ahhhh. The dog that didn't bark in the night eh?
Luke 4
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Isaiah 61
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
The difference is Jamat, that Jesus DELIBERATELY didn't go further in His lucky dip in to the only relevant literary resource He had (He'd have been familiar with all sorts of Greco-Roman and other nonsense of course) for a far more straightforward reason.
quote:As I understand it, unlike some of its competitor religions Christianity does not regard the physical world as evil or irrelevant, but as a good thing created by God, albeit in the present disrupted in various ways by the effects of sin.
So you think there will be nation states and geopolitics an' all in this new heavens and new earth where the saints of the Lamb are, as one of their defining features, from every tribe, tongue, and race?
Do think the population of Israel will be 144,000? [Paranoid]
quote:Martin 60 that is an astounding post because it implies a superiority of world view that can only be assumed to be an attempt to belittle. I treat your post modernism with respect because it is obvious you deeply hold it. Is the same courtesy that far beneath you?
How staggeringly Ptolemaic. A baroque geocentric orrery with bells and whistles.
quote:Mate. Stop. Making. Stuff. Up.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Martin 60 that is an astounding post because it implies a superiority of world view that can only be assumed to be an attempt to belittle. I treat your post modernism with respect because it is obvious you deeply hold it. Is the same courtesy that far beneath you?
How staggeringly Ptolemaic. A baroque geocentric orrery with bells and whistles.
quote:Am not doing the name calling here. I think we're done.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Mate. Stop. Making. Stuff. Up.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Martin 60 that is an astounding post because it implies a superiority of world view that can only be assumed to be an attempt to belittle. I treat your post modernism with respect because it is obvious you deeply hold it. Is the same courtesy that far beneath you?
How staggeringly Ptolemaic. A baroque geocentric orrery with bells and whistles.
quote:I don't have any quarrel with that, and have just finished a teaching session on Revelation for which Hendriksen is one of my works of reference.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
A renewed/glorified form of physical existence would appear to be an important part of the afterlife. Of course I don't pretend to know every detail of how that will work - but I do see it as a way various promises will be fulfilled in eternity....
quote:He didn't go further because there was no further to go.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:But that is the point. He did not go further because.?..the second part of that verse was for a future time, for his second coming. No lucky dip involved. He knew the OT better than you or I. Remember the contrasting messiahs in the OT; the suffering one and the reigning one? One messiah with two comings is the only way to solve it or are you wanting now to tell me you do not believe in the second coming?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Ahhhh. The dog that didn't bark in the night eh?
Luke 4
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Isaiah 61
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
The difference is Jamat, that Jesus DELIBERATELY didn't go further in His lucky dip in to the only relevant literary resource He had (He'd have been familiar with all sorts of Greco-Roman and other nonsense of course) for a far more straightforward reason.
quote:Let me see if I can unpack this constructively.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Am not doing the name calling here. I think we're done.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Mate. Stop. Making. Stuff. Up.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Martin 60 that is an astounding post because it implies a superiority of world view that can only be assumed to be an attempt to belittle. I treat your post modernism with respect because it is obvious you deeply hold it. Is the same courtesy that far beneath you?
How staggeringly Ptolemaic. A baroque geocentric orrery with bells and whistles.
What a pity. Apologies to hosts for letting this get personal.
quote:If you hadn't already worked out that my answer is no, EMPHATICALLY, then I worry - I'm certain I'm not being that opaque. On the contrary it has been my continuous theme here that the modern state of Israel is ill-conceived and unscriptural, and does not deserve and should not receive special treatment from Christians. How did you fail to notice that????
I still think you're hedging your bets on present-day Israel and its relationship to anything eschatalogical. Should it get special treatment from Christians compared to its neighbours? Yes or no?
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quote:You express that more than anyone else mr cheesy, to my lateral, orthogonal approach. My response to Alan was generally too complex I realise. Jamat understands me perfectly.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'd just like to say that even being generous, it is hard to understand what you are on about Martin in most of the posts in this thread. I think Jamat has done pretty well in responding to you at all given your opaqueness.
quote:What he is clear about is that the physical land has squat to do with the church but it still begs the question of the extent and application of the promise to Abraham.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
However, where you're not clear to my mind, despite all of the above, is on whether you see God's OT promises to Israel regarding 'the Land' (as in a geographical territory, whether on this earth or on a "new earth") as being still valid (even if only as an option not to be exercised by any right-thinking Christian in favour of a "heavenly" inheritance).
quote:Abraham's understanding is irrelevant. There are no Ptolemaic complexities.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:What he is clear about is that the physical land has squat to do with the church but it still begs the question of the extent and application of the promise to Abraham.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
However, where you're not clear to my mind, despite all of the above, is on whether you see God's OT promises to Israel regarding 'the Land' (as in a geographical territory, whether on this earth or on a "new earth") as being still valid (even if only as an option not to be exercised by any right-thinking Christian in favour of a "heavenly" inheritance).
To me the land was promised and sealed with the sign of circumcision to Abraham and his seed forever. Now to many 'replacement' theologians, that suggests an ongoing inheritance of a spiritual blessing to the church as Abraham's New Testament heirs. However, I cannot see Abraham understanding it that way. There still IMV has to be a specifically Jewish inheritance as well if the scriptures are to be fully fulfilled.
quote:So by what authority is that true?
Originally posted by Martin60:Abraham's understanding is irrelevant. There are no Ptolemaic complexities. ]
quote:The authority of meaning. Of sense.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:So by what authority is that true?
Originally posted by Martin60:Abraham's understanding is irrelevant. There are no Ptolemaic complexities. ]
ISTM that how Abraham understood God is very important since if he misunderstood him and God knew,(how could he not,) that means God misled Abraham.
quote:Well the exact point of that escapes me. What is God's purpose in retaining a national as well as a spiritual people? I do not know. Biblically, I think he does so as taught by Romans 9-11. There Paul seems to suggest God's purpose is about demonstrating his objective reality, through his judgement of and restoration of the Jews, a point rejected by anyone with preterist tendencies. God seems to biblically speaking hold that piece of real estate as important in the unfolding of his purposes eschatologically. There seems to be no way you can consistently interpret the Bible as saying anything else. however, as to his reason for doing it that way, I do not think we are told that.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Jamat I would still like to know what the land is for.
quote:Well in that case, I would think twice before backing Israeli policy in Israel when it is quite clearly so oppressive, isolationist, belligerent, and generally unchristian.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Well the exact point of that escapes me.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Jamat I would still like to know what the land is for.
quote:What "all Israel" means is hotly debated. Even if you think it means "Jews", how do you define a Jew? Through the mother's line? Through the father's line? Is intermarriage allowed? Why?
Biblically, I think he does so as taught by Romans 9-11.
quote:Ethnic Jews (however defined) being saved is unrelated to restoration of the land if you believe they are saved on the same basis as everyone else (which is what Paul argues in Romans 4, for instance).
There Paul seems to suggest God's purpose is about demonstrating his objective reality, through his judgement of and restoration of the Jews, a point rejected by anyone with preterist tendencies.
quote:The problem is that the Bible quite clearly says some quite opposite things (for instance, 'the Jerusalem from above is our mother').
God seems to biblically speaking hold that piece of real estate as important in the unfolding of his purposes eschatologically. There seems to be no way you can consistently interpret the Bible as saying anything else.
quote:But consistent yes. In what other stystematic theology is it possible to fit all the pieces of the jig saw together.
rather a mad one
quote:Which is more important, Scripture or a systematic theology?
Originally posted by Jamat:
In what other stystematic theology is it possible to fit all the pieces of the jig saw together.
quote:And doctrinaire five-point Calvinism.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Heath Robinson type monsters like dispensationalism.
quote:Right. The filter you use then is something else that is essentially what it suits the reader? Preterism? Covenant theology? The point is that every one accuses everyone else of eisigesis and there is more heat than light.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:And doctrinaire five-point Calvinism.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Heath Robinson type monsters like dispensationalism.
quote:Quick answer;
Does the church replace Israel? Is Israel expanded to include the church? Does the modern state of Israel have any significance to biblical prophecy? One side of this argument often seems to lead to antisemitism the other side to supporting Israel right or wrong. Discuss.
quote:Ah, but the devil is in the detail (I notice you skip lightly over all my detailed objections so far).
Originally posted by Jamat:
Dispensationalism in its extreme form is not what I think but certainly you do not have to do mental flips to see the major divisions
quote:Christ to...Mohammed? I have chatted with plenty of Muslims who explain their beliefs precisely thus.
Creation to flood, flood to Abraham, Abraham to Moses, Moses to Christ, Christ to..
One way of looking at it is that God is progressively revealing truth. Each era builds on the next.
quote:I think you'd get the adherents of covenant theology and NCT saying the same of their own systems tbh.
Originally posted by Jamat:
But consistent yes. In what other stystematic theology is it possible to fit all the pieces of the jig saw together.
quote:Apart from the maps (and the Gospel of St. Luke in the other direction, for some reason) that is pretty much the Marcionite view of the Canon of Scripture. Which is, to say the least, ironic.
Those aren't exactly minor changes to Christian understanding. As a preacher once put it (not entirely fairly), so far as the Age of Grace is concerned, "what you are left with is a few letters from Paul, the front and back covers and the maps."
quote:Unsure why I need to know WHY God chooses to do anything or why this is a gaping hole.
As far as Israel goes, you admit that the "exact point" of what the restored land is for "escapes" you.
Don't you think the ethos and practice of contemporary Israel with regard to its neighbours, and how unchristian that appears to be, should deservedly challenge your theoretical systematic theology, particularly in view of that gaping hole in it
quote:Your interpretation is that God is going to restore Israel to a piece of physical land.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Unsure why I need to know WHY God chooses to do anything or why this is a gaping hole.
quote:Assuming for the sake of the argument that God does indeed promise an eschatalogical return of ethnic Israel to the physical land, what makes you so sure that the current state of Israel is part of that eschatological process and not simply a hiccup in history?
I do not approve of all Israeli policy but when they concern the threats to its existence, its response to unprovoked aggression, its response to manifestly biased UN pronouncements and its concern with safety for its citizens then yes, wouldn't you?
quote:Well, you could argue from Matt 24 as futurists do, that a huge period of unrest will preface the second coming which will need the Jews to be in Israel. If you argue all was fulfilled in AD 70 and AD133, you still haven't seen the second coming so there is a future aspect to it all.
But if I did accept that in this instance, I wouldn't expect what I also saw as being the outworking of those plans (the current state of Israel) to be so manifestly unjust and contrary to the ethos of the NT. (I'm no expert on the Middle East, but I find the unilateral land grabs and settlement-building unacceptable and without justification).
quote:As Hamlet said "The rest is silence" ? Somehow, I cannot see this as true for you.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I sat with my gob open there for a moment, not smacked, but about to say something. And I couldn't. This is a first. Words fail me.
quote:I don't believe everything Jesus said in Mt 24 was fulfilled in the past, but there is a lot of clear blue water between that position and identifying contemporary developments in Israel as the end-time fulfilment of the rest.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Well, you could argue from Matt 24 as futurists do, that a huge period of unrest will preface the second coming which will need the Jews to be in Israel. If you argue all was fulfilled in AD 70 and AD133, you still haven't seen the second coming so there is a future aspect to it all.
quote:I don't think I was setting out a 'two-state solution'. If anything it is a major part of the problem that in Jewish eyes 'the Land' is effectively indivisible.
To me the two-state solution to the problem as Steve Langton sets it out...
quote:Excuse Me? But perhaps you were just born with one foot in your mouth.
Gamaliel: Yes, and where Steve Langton's views on this are more attractive than those expressed by Jamat on this issue is that they don't involve condoning any form of violence or terrorism.
quote:Can we please not use the word 'Jewish' as a synonym for Greater Israeli Nationalist.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Eutychus;
quote:I don't think I was setting out a 'two-state solution'. If anything it is a major part of the problem that in Jewish eyes 'the Land' is effectively indivisible.
To me the two-state solution to the problem as Steve Langton sets it out...
quote:Did even Abraham acquire the land legally? He was given it by God but did so by dispossessing those already living there, no mention of compensation.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The move for Jewish return to the Land was always rather mixed - part religious, part secular; part warlike, part prepared to acquire land legally and so on. Trouble is there are enough who want the indivisible Land solution that even a majority of others probably can't win that one....
quote:Fair enough; I think you'll see that I did in fact modify my point in a subsequent post responding to Gamaliel, recognising that not all Jews see things quite that way. "In the eyes of many Jews..." would probably have been better.
Can we please not use the word 'Jewish' as a synonym for Greater Israeli Nationalist.
quote:I'm not sure that anyone back then acquired land 'legally' in any sense we would recognise. In the 'to and fro' of 'Forte Mayne' (lit., 'Strong hand') in those days God intervened to displace people who in his eyes no longer deserved to be there, and replace them by Abraham's people. And it is basically because of the long term consequences of that divine act that we now ask questions about 'legality' which back then wouldn't have meant much....
Did even Abraham acquire the land legally? He was given it by God but did so by dispossessing those already living there, no mention of compensation.
quote:Only a world view or two. You have obviously totally swallowed the anti Israel agenda perpetrated by the popular media.
Gamaliel: Am I missing something?
quote:Let me draw the boundary yet again.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Excuse Me? But perhaps you were just born with one foot in your mouth.
Gamaliel: Yes, and where Steve Langton's views on this are more attractive than those expressed by Jamat on this issue is that they don't involve condoning any form of violence or terrorism.
quote:Acknowledged. I apologise to Gamaliel here and have commented in Styx
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
quote:Let me draw the boundary yet again.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Excuse Me? But perhaps you were just born with one foot in your mouth.
Gamaliel: Yes, and where Steve Langton's views on this are more attractive than those expressed by Jamat on this issue is that they don't involve condoning any form of violence or terrorism.
An assertion that a post or posts involve condoning violence is legitimate under Commandment 3.
A suggestion that a Shipmate may have been born verbally clumsy is a general criticism of character, akin to saying "perhaps you were just born stupid". It is however perfectly legitimate to ask a Shipmate to post evidence to support any critical assertion.
Gamaliel, Jamat
Drop this whole foot in mouth thing immediately or take it to Hell.
Jamat
Final warning. You must recalibrate your understanding of the Commmandment 3 boundary.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
quote:By endorsing the creation of the Israeli state (as opposed to accepting its current existence) you, by definition, condone terrorism.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:Only a world view or two. You have obviously totally swallowed the anti Israel agenda perpetrated by the popular media.
Gamaliel: Am I missing something?
FYI, I do not nor have ever condoned terror.
quote:I can't see that this solves anything. A Palestinian family with financial compensation might have more shekels, but unless the roads are open, there are shops with products to buy, unless he has a passport that everyone recognises and the right of movement - he's still not much better off.
Originally posted by Martin60:
The only way they can be lifted out is by compensating them where they are.
quote:Wrong. You said
Originally posted by Martin60:
True. Not a reason not to do it. It's the start of compensation for the loss of all those things.
quote:And now you're saying it is just a token payment which cannot actually hope to compensate them for the loss.
The only way they can be lifted out is by compensating them where they are.
quote:$1,000 is not a large amount of money in the West Bank and will not solve many problems. It is worth more in Gaza but one can't eat dollars, so it makes very little difference to lives there either.
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's a large amount of cash. The initial proposal would double Gazan income. But I'll leave the brilliant solution to you and your many more words mr cheesy.
quote:The Portland Trust identified 5 sectors, of which I think IT is really the only viable one long-term.
Originally posted by Martin60:
The Occupation can't end for the foreseeable future. What can one invest in in Palestine?
quote:They already are sharing the "water love" big time:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Crossed in the post. So we can't ignore the bas... Israelis.
quote:What would be really useful is if you read the contents of the link before you posted it. Because it doesn't say what you say it says.
Originally posted by Jamat:
However, something you may not have heard is that there are terrorist set fires all over Israel ATM so they probably need quite a lot of that water.
Wiki Fires in Israel.
quote:Fair comment. I have a source from a friend in Israel which stated that the fires were set by terror groups. It was not the wiki link, which is pretty neutral on that score. It is :
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:What would be really useful is if you read the contents of the link before you posted it. Because it doesn't say what you say it says.
Originally posted by Jamat:
However, something you may not have heard is that there are terrorist set fires all over Israel ATM so they probably need quite a lot of that water.
Wiki Fires in Israel.
Now, what inference should I take from that?
quote:I suspect it means the authorities don't know, but, it is useful to have a villain at hand to blame.
Originally posted by mousethief:
In other words, they weren't acts of terror.
quote:Yeah, bullshit.
Originally posted by Jamat:
They already are sharing the "water love" big time:
quote:That may or may not be terrorist related (somehow I think it is pretty unlikely to be related to Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza) but has absolutely nothing to do with the practice of using water access as a form of control in the occupied Palestinian territories.
However, something you may not have heard is that there are terrorist set fires all over Israel ATM so they probably need quite a lot of that water.
Wiki Fires in Israel.
quote:Israeli view
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Yeah, bullshit.
Originally posted by Jamat:
They already are sharing the "water love" big time:
Israel has extracted 80% more than the Oslo allocation and Gaza) but has absolutely nothing to do with the practice of using water access as a form of control in the occupied Palestinian territories.
quote:This is breathtaking provarication. The military occupying power in the area agreed to a short-term management process of the water resources and used this as a reason to take far more than it was allocated into the indefinite future.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well yes, and whatever our view of the rights and wrongs, it's hardly surprising that the Palestinians might be inclined to use the water issue as a bargaining counter. The Israelis would probably do the same if the boot was on the other foot.
quote:It isn't messy, it is perfectly straightforward. It is only messy if you think a first-world population is entitled to unilaterally decide to impose water restrictions on people they've determined do not deserve it.
The tussle over water is simply one more symptom of the current messy state of affairs. That isn't to demonise the Israelis, nor to make out that all the Palestinians are whiter-than-white ... but it is to suggest that, hard as it will inevitably be, there is still a need to press for some kind of diplomatic solution and to find compromises.
quote:Certainly easier to state plainly ignorant things on bulletin boards than to actually take the time to understand the issues - particularly when one has a habit of deciding that sitting-on-the-fence is the answer to everything.
Easier said than done, of course.
quote:It reminds me of all the "can Arafat control his people?" stuff we used to hear after Oslo. The point being that there was no way on earth Arafat could control anyone when his people were being completely shafted by the worsening deal unfolding even if he had access to highly resourced security forces.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The Israeli military destroy sewage treatment works and restrict Palestinian water infrastructure. It can't then in all honesty complain that the Palestinian community is taking a potable water handout and only in return giving sewage.
quote:Yes. But there are many more ways to kill and make your life miserable if you are a Palestinian than if you are Israeli.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm not suggesting it is symmetrical. Where did you get that idea from?
But violence is violence.
If you are killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber you are just as dead as if you were shelled or bombed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
quote:The difference is that Jamat is not trying to argue a position of reasonableness using logic, but one of religious obligation. Thus it is not possible to tilt his position arguing from the law, human rights or other shared base positions, because he/she doesn't accept that they are in any way comparable to the religious obligation.
Jamat was cross and indignant when I suggested that this take on these things leads to the justification of violence.
quote:See above. If you are occupied, you are entitled to attempt to overthrow the occupier.
I might make the same suggestion in your direction. Violence by the Israeli authorities is always wrong, but violence from the oppressed Palestinians isn't morally wrong, simply counter-productive ...
How does that work?
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quote:The UN acknowledges the West Bank and Gaza to be occupied Palestinian land. The 1948 UN declaration on Israel was of partition, etc and so on. If in 1948 Israel was accepted by the world community, by the same token it also acknowledged the Palestinian rights to the land outside the green line (which, incidentally, includes all of Jerusalem, which has never been accepted as being Israel by the UN.)
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The comparison with a putative Nazi invasion of the UK is not an exact one. Ok, there wasn't a UN back then but I doubt very much whether the international community at that time would have recognised a German occupation of the UK.
Whether we like it or not, some 161 out of 192 UN member states recognise Israel's right to exist.
quote:You might find it helpful to go back and read this thread as we have already covered this in great detail.
Hence my argument that some kind of two-state solution - however difficult - must be the ideal to strive for.
What are the alternatives?
The eradication of the State of Israel after nearly 70 years?
quote:Very good. I've been that clocked geezer.
Originally posted by mdijon:
It may not be tactics Martin, it may be they just don't have the resources to do anything else. A bit like some clocked geezer of employing the tactic of hitting the deck to avoid further constructive engagement.
quote:That's utter shite. Contrary to whatever bollocks you think might or might not be true from the Israeli government, it might pay you to listen a bit more to the left in Israel and what they're reporting about the fires. For example that the Palestinian Authority sent fire trucks to help with the fight in Northern Israel (receiving precious little acknowledgement for this) and that there is no evidence whatsoever that they were the cause of the fires.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I'd be the first to argue that Israel is using every method that a Western power can get away with in this situation and a few more besides, but the Palestinians are using the only tactics that the weak can in such a conflict, apart from terrorism (which includes the economic in about half the arson behind about half the wildfires): not looking like they are co-operating with their oppressors to their own actual immediate benefit for the sake of suffering more acutely under the oppressor, including not drilling legally AND drilling illegally and massive pollution. That is standard revolutionary warfare. Lowest level economic terrorism against your own side.
quote:Not sure why you'd assume this. Your view seems to be totally that the poor Palestinians are under oppression. Mine is really that after 5 wars to eradicate them, the Israelis are running scared of terrorism particularly with Hamas running the left Bank. Do you consider the Water report I posted above to be Israeli propaganda? If it is even half true then there is a lemming mentality to the Arab leadership that makes them impervious to negotiation so the only answer is the wall.
Mr Cheesy:The difference is that Jamat is not trying to argue a position of reasonableness using logic, but one of religious obligation. Thus it is not possible to tilt his position arguing from the law, human rights or other shared base positions, because he/she doesn't accept that they are in any way comparable to the religious obligation.
quote:I think a truer word was never writ.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I generally believe all things are concurrently paradoxically true mr cheesy.
quote:That's the view of the UN (y'know that organisation you say validates the existence of Israel as a state) and every other international body. I said it is an occupation because it is an occupation.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Not sure why you'd assume this. Your view seems to be totally that the poor Palestinians are under oppression.
quote:Then you're not in any kind of factual universe.
Mine is really that after 5 wars to eradicate them, the Israelis are running scared of terrorism particularly with Hamas running the left Bank.
quote:Yes. The West Bank water crisis is for Palestinians only.
Do you consider the Water report I posted above to be Israeli propaganda?
quote:Yeah, whatever.
If it is even half true then there is a lemming mentality to the Arab leadership that makes them impervious to negotiation so the only answer is the wall.
quote:Your position is a disgusting political view dressed up as religion which says that the usual standards of fair-play, negotiation, human rights and so on don't apply to a population that inhabits a region that figures in your end-time eschatology.
Regarding the religious issue, my view is not that the Israelis have God given rights to impose whatever restrictions they like or that they are always justified in their policies that impose control. It is that though they are very much an unbelieving people as a nation, God, for his own purpose, because he has said so in scripture, is regathering them for a 'last days' sort out.
quote:Which is really saying you have made up your mind on this issue and that settles it. You have imbibed and accepted the version of the story that satisfies left leaning liberal propensities because of apparent or real injustices you have witnessed or Palestinian stories you have chosen to believe.
No I don't believe in your Israel government propaganda. I believe what I've seen with my own eyes.
quote:No it is to say that I believe what I've seen and heard together with reports from respected groups such as the World Bank, Amnesty International, B'tselem and the UN over the oppressor and their Christian lackeys who think that they're clever because they can post crap on bulletin boards.
Originally posted by Jamat:
Which is really saying you have made up your mind on this issue and that settles it. You have imbibed and accepted the version of the story that satisfies left leaning liberal propensities because of apparent or real injustices you have witnessed or Palestinian stories you have chosen to believe.
quote:This comment is not clever. Remain civil or take it to Hell.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
their Christian lackeys who think that they're clever because they can post crap on bulletin boards.
quote:I will grant you 1948 and 1967. I dare say a case could be made for 1973 but I wouldn't be inclined to believe it very strongly. But 1981 and 2006? Do give over! If you are seriously trying to claim that the two invasions of Lebanon were to prevent a war of extermination, you might as well go the whole hog and chuck in the Suez crisis for good measure!
Mine is really that after 5 wars to eradicate them, the Israelis are running scared of terrorism particularly with Hamas running the left Bank.
quote:Given that there's less than 200km from Haifa to the Gaza strip, I'd imagine that there's a fair bit of interaction.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Furthermore, it is entirely possible that the situation looks completely different from Haifa, given that a very large number of Israelis in the North have absolutely no interaction with the occupation other than a few years in military service.
That they have a certain view is in no sense evidence that there isn't an occupation nor that there isn't a water conflict.
quote:There really isn't. People from Gaza can't travel to Haifa, and those from Haifa have no reason to travel to Gaza.
Originally posted by Gee D:
Given that there's less than 200km from Haifa to the Gaza strip, I'd imagine that there's a fair bit of interaction.
quote:Except that the post I was answering was not talking of the civilian population of Gaza but of Israeli military.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:There really isn't. People from Gaza can't travel to Haifa, and those from Haifa have no reason to travel to Gaza.
Originally posted by Gee D:
Given that there's less than 200km from Haifa to the Gaza strip, I'd imagine that there's a fair bit of interaction.
quote:The point is substantially the same. If you are a settler or live in parts of Jersualem, you see the military on the streets all the time. You can't really help but be reminded that you live in the midst of a conflict.
Originally posted by Gee D:
Except that the post I was answering was not talking of the civilian population of Gaza but of Israeli military.
quote:This is implying you know more about the situation than those that live there. Israel is the only genuine democratic state in that part of the world where basic freedoms and infrastructures of life are available. I know of one bloke whose son studied law but then joined the IDF and was in constant danger as part of a tank crew. His Dad went nearly spare. It seems to me your view is based on what you think you know and your strong sense of justice. I respect that view but as I said, have awareness from Israeli Christians who see things very differently. The terrorism threat is very real to them and perhaps the jury is out on the recent fires but, that many? In that short a Time? Go figure. Has to be arson.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Israel is a very compartmentalised and macho society. I've heard it said that many refuse to talk about their military service even to their own families - which isn't a great surprise when their experience of the military has amounted to pointing a large gun at a granny.
If anything, the experience of serving in the Israeli military strengthens the popular view of things, where few in military service see the realities of Palestinian life in the occupied Territories, those that do only see a tiny snapshot and there is no encouragement to see the bigger picture and the majority of people in the IDF and military police are bored teenagers pushed into doing ridiculous things.
quote:Not including any Palestinian Christians I presume? Depressing how the evangelical narrative provides no sympathy for them.
Originally posted by Jamat:
...Israeli Christians...
quote:By which I MEANT believers in the messiah who live in Israel. They could be any nationality. My contact is aNZer. Feel free to be depressed if you like. The bloke who cuts what's left of my hair is called Mo and comes from Jordan. He is a good chap and if a Christian would indeed be my brother.
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:Not including any Palestinian Christians I presume? Depressing how the evangelical narrative provides no sympathy for them.
Originally posted by Jamat:
...Israeli Christians...
quote:What about the ones who live under Israeli occupation in the Occupied Territories? Do you extend to them?
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:By which I MEANT believers in the messiah who live in Israel.
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:Not including any Palestinian Christians I presume? Depressing how the evangelical narrative provides no sympathy for them.
Originally posted by Jamat:
...Israeli Christians...
quote:What sort of pathetic rhetorical purpose is served by talking about "large" guns?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
pointing a large gun at a granny.
quote:What sort of pathetic parent-child response is served by talking about what sort of pathetic rhetorical purpose is served by talking about "large" guns? Which talk was amusing. Reminds one of Mars Attacks!
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:What sort of pathetic rhetorical purpose is served by talking about "large" guns?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
pointing a large gun at a granny.
The real issue as regards Israel consists of rockets (any size) pointed at Jewish kids, and the growing possibility of nuclear devices (any size) being pointed at Israel's Jews in general by genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics.
quote:Haven't you considered that disproportionate violence against Palestinians is just the kind of thing that could push a genocidal anti-Semitic lunatic over the edge?
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:What sort of pathetic rhetorical purpose is served by talking about "large" guns?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
pointing a large gun at a granny.
The real issue as regards Israel consists of rockets (any size) pointed at Jewish kids, and the growing possibility of nuclear devices (any size) being pointed at Israel's Jews in general by genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics.
quote:Anti-Semites don't need the excuse of violence against Palestinians, "disproportionate" or otherwise.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Haven't you considered that disproportionate violence against Palestinians is just the kind of thing that could push a genocidal anti-Semitic lunatic over the edge?
quote:My bad.
Originally posted by Martin60:
nuclear devices (any size) being pointed at Israel's Jews in general by genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics which doesn't endanger Israel's Arabs and other ethnic minorities?
quote:So far there is more evidence of the Israeli lunatics being genocidal than the Iranian ones. And the Israeli ones already have nukes.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:My bad.
Originally posted by Martin60:
nuclear devices (any size) being pointed at Israel's Jews in general by genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics which doesn't endanger Israel's Arabs and other ethnic minorities?
I'd forgotten that the genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics in Iran would promptly abandon the pursuit of their aims once they realised there was the slightest danger of collateral damage to non-Jews - especially to Sunni Muslims and Christians.
quote:Excellently elucidated, it's win-win-win for the GALI who get to kill some of all they incandescently loathe, some of whom are gay too, win-win-win-win, just in starting WWIII, guaranteeing their total delicious immolation by the Gay-Jew-Sunni-Christian infidels 400 nuke response (more than the Soviet buckets of instant sunshine targeted to the UK) in fiery self sacrifice that is soooooo worth it for tea and virgins forever.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:My bad.
Originally posted by Martin60:
nuclear devices (any size) being pointed at Israel's Jews in general by genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics which doesn't endanger Israel's Arabs and other ethnic minorities?
I'd forgotten that the genocidal, anti-Semitic lunatics in Iran would promptly abandon the pursuit of their aims once they realised there was the slightest danger of collateral damage to non-Jews - especially to Sunni Muslims and Christians.
quote:To vilify Jews as genocidal is at best obscene and untrue, and at worst neo-Nazi.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So far there is more evidence of the Israeli lunatics being genocidal than the Iranian ones.
quote:Thank goodness that if anyone in the ME has nuclear weapons, it is the Jews and not the Islamofascists.
And the Israeli ones already have nukes.
quote:To vilify Iranians as genocidal on the basis of how many Jews or anyone else they've killed on a bad day whilst not vilifying Jews more so for all of their Palestinian victims is worthy of vilification: you will be vilified as you vilify.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:To vilify Jews as genocidal is at best obscene and untrue, and at worst neo-Nazi.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So far there is more evidence of the Israeli lunatics being genocidal than the Iranian ones.
quote:Thank goodness that if anyone in the ME has nuclear weapons, it is the Jews and not the Islamofascists.
And the Israeli ones already have nukes.
quote:I was fairly clearly aiming at the Israeli lunatics, of whom there are many, but not Jews in general. Your attempt to conflate Israel and Jews and use that as a shield against criticism is noted. And yes, Israelis and their allies have attempted genocide against the Palestinians, if not by outright slaughter (though it's done that plenty of times) then by attempting to erase their existence as a people, as has been seen in this thread.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:To vilify Jews as genocidal is at best obscene and untrue, and at worst neo-Nazi.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So far there is more evidence of the Israeli lunatics being genocidal than the Iranian ones.
quote:Thank goodness that if anyone in the ME has nuclear weapons, it is the Jews and not the Islamofascists.
And the Israeli ones already have nukes.
quote:Perhaps everyone should now take a moments silence to ponder that.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:To vilify Iranians as genocidal on the basis of how many Jews or anyone else they've killed on a bad day whilst not vilifying Jews more so for all of their Palestinian victims is worthy of vilification: you will be vilified as you vilify.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:To vilify Jews as genocidal is at best obscene and untrue, and at worst neo-Nazi.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
So far there is more evidence of the Israeli lunatics being genocidal than the Iranian ones.
quote:Thank goodness that if anyone in the ME has nuclear weapons, it is the Jews and not the Islamofascists.
And the Israeli ones already have nukes.
quote:What other things do you suppose you know "of course" that aren't so?
Originally posted by Jamat:
You know of course that no Jew can set foot in Iran, no Christian can build a church there it is illegal to own a bible I'm told and if I'm woman I'm locked away under a thick blanket with eye slits.
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:What other things do you suppose you know "of course" that aren't so?
Originally posted by Jamat:
You know of course that no Jew can set foot in Iran, no Christian can build a church there it is illegal to own a bible I'm told and if I'm woman I'm locked away under a thick blanket with eye slits.
quote:It's a revelation. That any survive really. That guy must do really good take outs to survive.
n country after country, Christians are driven out, Jews are pushed into Israel, groups like Yazidis are targeted by the self-declared Islamic State, Sunni Muslims push out Shiites and Shiites push out Sunnis.
It's an attack on the fantastic religious diversity that has distinguished the Middle East for millennia. The Jews in Iran are daily resisting that trend.
quote:As well you might be, considering that less than two hours ago you thought that ("of course") no Jew could set foot in Iran.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:What other things do you suppose you know "of course" that aren't so?
Originally posted by Jamat:
You know of course that no Jew can set foot in Iran, no Christian can build a church there it is illegal to own a bible I'm told and if I'm woman I'm locked away under a thick blanket with eye slits.quote:It's a revelation. That any survive really. That guy must do really good take outs to survive.
n country after country, Christians are driven out, Jews are pushed into Israel, groups like Yazidis are targeted by the self-declared Islamic State, Sunni Muslims push out Shiites and Shiites push out Sunnis.
It's an attack on the fantastic religious diversity that has distinguished the Middle East for millennia. The Jews in Iran are daily resisting that trend.
2 dozen worshippers?
So many?
I'm gob smacked!
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
You know of course that no Jew can set foot in Iran, no Christian can build a church there it is illegal to own a bible I'm told and if I'm woman I'm locked away under a thick blanket with eye slits.
quote:Its all true, I grovel.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:As well you might be, considering that less than two hours ago you thought that ("of course") no Jew could set foot in Iran.
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:What other things do you suppose you know "of course" that aren't so?
Originally posted by Jamat:
You know of course that no Jew can set foot in Iran, no Christian can build a church there it is illegal to own a bible I'm told and if I'm woman I'm locked away under a thick blanket with eye slits.quote:It's a revelation. That any survive really. That guy must do really good take outs to survive.
n country after country, Christians are driven out, Jews are pushed into Israel, groups like Yazidis are targeted by the self-declared Islamic State, Sunni Muslims push out Shiites and Shiites push out Sunnis.
It's an attack on the fantastic religious diversity that has distinguished the Middle East for millennia. The Jews in Iran are daily resisting that trend.
2 dozen worshippers?
So many?
I'm gob smacked!
Any doubts about it being illegal to own a bible there?
quote:Its OK. I buy health pills from a Muslim and get hair cut by another. One has not yet poisoned me and the other hasn't yet cut off my ear. However, Here in NZ of all outposts we had an anti Jewish, and seemingly anti everything tirade from the local Islamic preacher (peace be upon him)that actually got on the local news. You can't blame people for fear.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Without wanting to pick on you, Jamat, this does illustrate the problem of Islamophobia rather well - all Muslims of whatever stripe get lumped together and the worst extremes of each get combined into some sort of Sharia Mecha-Muslim. Iran and Saudi Arabia get on about as well as Spain and England did circa 1570 and for similar reasons. They both have unpleasant regimes we'd all be glad to see replaced with something better, but Saudi Arabia is in a different league to Iran when it comes to oppression.
quote:Bullshit.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Israelis and their allies have attempted genocide against the Palestinians, if not by outright slaughter (though it's done that plenty of times) then by attempting to erase their existence as a people
quote:Bullshit again.
you're accusing Muslims of being genocidal, and the accusation of Islamofascism has been a favourite of neo-Nazis throughout the western world
quote:I would go as far as to say it is a minority of Iranians who support the Islamist leadership, and the current direction of travel under Rouhani is in a more moderate direction. His difficulty is that there is still a rabid Supreme Leader (who no-one votes for) and the President can't do all that he wants.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The Muslims I know have included Iranian immigrants whom I helped to learn English, and who despised the Iranian Islamist leadership from which they had escaped.
quote:I would go as far as to say it is a minority of Iranians who support the Islamist leadership, and the current direction of travel under Rouhani is in a more moderate direction. His difficulty is that there is still a rabid Supreme Leader (who no-one votes for) and the President can't do all that he wants.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The Muslims I know have included Iranian immigrants whom I helped to learn English, and who despised the Iranian Islamist leadership from which they had escaped.
