“In the contemporary world, the world of human rights, when you call a person a right-winger, this is the first step toward his or her delegitimization. “
Fiamma Nirenstein;
The Left blessed the Jews as the victim “par excellence,” always a great partner in the struggle for the rights of the weak against the wicked. In return for being coddled, published, filmed, considered artists, intellectuals and moral judges, Jews, even during the Soviet anti-Semitic persecutions, gave the Left moral support and invited it to cry with them at Holocaust memorials. Today the game is clearly over. The left has proved itself the real cradle of contemporary anti-Semitism.
Read the whole thing.
And for the umpteenth time, I differentiate between the Israeli-Palestinian situation and Islamic fascism.
True ET, but they don’t!
But not just islamic fascism — nazism too: Mein Kampf is hugely popular in the region. Hitler is adored.
While it’s true that they often under-stressed the Islamic jihad, it has always been the driving force of Arab rejectionism.
Arafat was widely thought to be a kind of secular marxist-stalinist, but in Arabic, to Arab audiences, he regularly used the language of Islam. For example, during the Oslo “peace” racket, he told his interlocutors that any deal should be seen as a modern Treaty of Hudaibiya.
See a post above in which sections of the Hamas charter were quoted. Hamas is telling you, for the umteenth time, that Islam is the thing.
Even if a “deal” were done, ET, it will be broken. You’ll hate me for saying this, but Arabs, like the communists, simply don’t honour their agreements with infidels. Ever. This too, I know, with unassailable certainty!
Both Fatah AND Hamas will need to be destroyed root and branch for peace to ever arrive. But like yourself, the West’s elites persist in the liberal fantasy of making terrorist groups peace partners.
And, as I’ve said, for the umpteenth time, there is NO difference between Fatah and Hamas when it comes to the desired destruction of Israel and the anihilation of Jews.
Yes, yes, I know the reductionist simplicity annoys and offends you, but reality tends to do this!
Actually ex-lib I believe the forgive and move on philosophy is choosing the Western tradition as opposed to the ‘eye for an eye’ tradition so prevalent in the Middle East.
“there is NO difference between Fatah and Hamas” [by Me No Dhimmi]
Other than slow jihad vs. fast jihad.
while virtue and lookout are dancing!!!!!!!!
in thier new song reader tipes side tonight!
we leave a miniut those old dancer alone
may be i have chance to put one more puzzle to public to find solution to isreali area
puzzle here is
real hate and abuse and crime there
can you trust criminal witness and words easy!!
i can not easy trust any criminal
killer in that region easy
since most them are keep
killing cannot be trustable
source of people we can bleive their side of thier story
new fight
no respect to chrismas holdiy
this jewish in isreali start new fight
to stop the peace talk
to kill identify hasam again
this isreali also as danger as hamas are
i can see differnce between them!
why did hamas did start shooting
few days after cease fired was expire
is something is missing here
Israeli military officials said Hamas militants fired more than 65 rockets into southern Israel on Wednesday — four days after a cease-fire officially ended.
://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/24/israel.rockets/index.html
every body can start this shooting first
or can be isreali who knows!!
to blame to hamas to identify their place to kill hamas too
isreali play game here
first said free
then identify
them they they kill them
and then sai
oh i siad we can not give the land back yet
this is game and conpiracy over a 40 years
://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1228728241255
all peace talk is BS for isreali only to identify
the leader and then start
like september 11
taht BUSH and isreali started to
to blame to muslim
now this attack
does not look like Hamas attack in start with
and
next is
even if Hasam start why or what they want
why isreali do not follow the law
and do not let thier land back
how many years they must talk
thos BS isreali to ” stop it”
and give their land back
I love people who have blogs but do not have the courage to display who they are. They have ZERO credibility with me. They can do, say & write what ever they want with impunity. Dr. Dawg is but another example of a growing number of cowards on blogs seeking 15 minutes of fame at the expense of the facts. “Dawg” (how fitting a name) seems to have taken this issue quite personally which leads me to believe he may have a connection to the incident.
I know only that Hamas has been lobbing rockets into Israel, unless we know the whole story about what is going on, all comments including those from MSM are pure speculation. Cowards like “Dr. Dawg” are the real criminals here! Someone should take this deceitful coward to task!
What a crime the death of any innocent person is, regardless of gender, race or religion.
I urge everyone to make a short comment in his or her post referencing what you think of this idiot “Dr. Dawg”!
No, let’s not. Life is too short to drink bad wine.
[quote]Again, don’t mix up Islamic fascism into this; it’s a 19th phenomenon emerging as a result of dysfunctional industrialization in the ME.[/quote]
ET,
There you go again… Why do you assume that it was “Dysfunctional” rather than “Intentional”
Anti-semitics are not now, or where not in the past, all in the ME!
Et; re Israel returning the West Bank lands, that’s between Israel and Jordan. The Arabs living there have no right to claim any other citizenship.
If you truly believe your supposition then you’d also agree that the US should return land taken from Mexico? Same basic set of facts.
I received a disheartening phone call from a longtime friend of mine this evening. He’s 43, a high-school teacher, and a non-practicing Muslim.
But he wanted to tell me about the terrible things he saw on TV this evening. In his words, it involved “Poor Palestinians throwing rocks” vs. “Israeli fighter jets killing hundreds & hundreds”.
This appears to be the picture being painted by the MSM.
I tried to point out some other things to him such as the 20+ mile rockets that have been fired into Israel for some time, such as Iran fighting a proxy war through Hamas, etc. but it was all to no avail. The power of the MSM is just too strong.
://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/12/28/lklv.hancocks.israeli.strike.cnn
://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/28/gaza.israel.international.reaction/index.html
if politician in isreal and palestine
could not stop this war for 40 years so far
let’s people stop this
cold blodded murder under any name
normal ordinaly in all world will stop
isreal now
give their land of muslim back today
this is human right to live not die
they treat them like animals
any more
doing criminal act is not accepted under any more excuse from anybody
people in world ready to change and enforce law
Wherever I am, I stand with Israel.
From 2001 to 2005, Hamas and the rest of the Gazan rocket firers insisted their attacks were provoked by the presence of 7,000 Israeli settlers within the borders of Gaza. Remove them and the attacks would stop, the Palestinians promised.
But the Israeli army removed the settlers and the rocket attacks escalated. Nearly two-thirds of the attacks on Sderot have occurred since. Without Israelis inside Gaza to fire on, the terrorists have turned their firepower on the next nearest Jews.
I believe the same will happen once the settlers are removed from the West Bank. What did we see happen in Gaza on the road to democracy? A civil war between Hamas and Fatah. A real example of how these people would act in their own state.
The muslim propaganda is working on all cylinders as the MSM is against Israel and the growing hordes of muslims here in Canada and the West are starting their marches. Several friends have commented that they didn’t think there were so many muslims here! How long before we see our own “youths” starting carBQs?
ET, when the Palestinians have their own state what will happen as it is a tiny piece of land, split into two tiny parts with a huge exploding population (oops,bad choice of words), no jobs, violent uneducated people, still being taught to hate the Jews and two opposing political factions. Somehow this doesn’t sound like a good base for a new state but what could go wrong.
My view has always been that you can see how much the Palestinians want peace by how they raise their children and how they treat each other. With the non-stop indoctrination of their children to hate the jews (in children shows on television and in schools), the way they let their kids throw stones at Israeli outposts or deliberately get in the middle of firefights, and the way they killed each other in the Hamas vs. Fatah clash, shows me that they do not care of peace. I could care less about how they feel “threatened” by Israeli settlements. It’s no excuse for that kind of behavior to their own people.
If they’re not willing to live with each other, or take care of their kids and raise them with some values, then why would people believe they can live peacefully with Israel?
Israel, surrounded by enemies can pursue only one Peace Policy.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
It works
Robert W
That is unfortunate. It is true…but so what. This isnt about ensuring some kind of equivalent result, but that is the narrative that is tried and true, David vs Goliath, ironically enough.
This too shall pass, Israel looks like they have this one well planned and are executing it well, so far. If this degrades Hamas’ capabilities significantly then the goal has been acheived.
Remember Hamas refused to extend the cease fire, so they shouldnt be so shocked when the cease fire ends. Israel probably has a day maybe two more until it starts to look like an unecessary pummelling. One hopes they no longer have such a target rich environment.
The question is are they going to invade by ground, my suspicion is the tanks and troops at the border are a feint and a ruse to force Hamas into their defensive positions, lets the Israeli’s see where they are and what the “order of battle” such as it is from Hamas, might be.
It might also be to see what communication and cooperation there is between Hamas and any outsiders, Iran, Hezbo, the Syrians. I think Hamas is finding itself a little isolated and ineffectual.
While Gaza and Hamas are the easier of the two, Hezbo and Hamas, it just might make Hamas think twice and it might undercut Hamas enough to put fatah back in power in Gaza. If thats the case then Israel might find itself with a single opponent that it can cut a deal with again….the strength and content of that deal are of course totally specualtive, but I beleive that is the Israeli’s ultimate hope…the alternative is never ending and increasingly dangerous warfare.
joe – your ‘forgive and move on’ is naive, because unlike your Welsh example, Israel cannot accept the Palestinians as citizens because its mandate is to retain a Jewish majority population. And no, N. America and all the other lands you list are not ‘occupied’ because the people now living in them are in sovereign control of their own governance. That is not the case with Palestinians who are not in sovereign control of their own national governance.
me no dhimmi – no, I don’t consider a terrorist group amenable to negotiation, and when I refer to the Palestinians I am not referring to the Fatah/Hamas fascism. And I don’t accept reductionist analyses of All Arabs break their word and so on.
philip g. shaw – when I refer to dysfunctional industrialism, I mean developing an industrial style economy while not also changing the political, legal and social systems to ones that work within this industrial structure. These social systems (economic, political, legal, social) all have to operate in the same mode. The ME problem is that they allowed an industrial style economy in, built by Western technology since the Arab world rejected science…but..these nations didn’t change their political, legal and social systems. These systems remained TRIBAL rather than INDUSTRIAL and that, in my view, is the basic cause of Islamic fascism. This destabilizing infrastructure where your basic system operates in one mode and your other key systems operate in a pre-industrial mode…is what I mean by ‘dysfunctional’.
No, anyone who tries to hide the reality of the Palestinian existence by redefining them as ‘actually they are Jordanians’ is wrong, and Jordan most definitely does not want them and has never wanted them – even before Israel was created. Such a perspective is akin to saying to blacks..’well, you are really African and so you should return there’; or to the many Scots living in parts of Quebec..’you really aren’t Quebecois’..and so on. Peoples migrate over centuries, and become embedded in their new niches. You can’t define a people as a product only of an assumed, and I mean assumed, original land.
dave, I disagree with you. The removal of the settlements in Gaza didn’t enable a sovereign governance there, and you are ignoring the crippling economic sanctions put on Gaza over the last two years by Israel which reduced that area to extreme poverty reliant almost entirely on foreign aid. Hamas then was moved into a situation where, as the elected government of that area, it had to ‘do something to show resistance’ (the rockets)even in such a no-win situation.
Therefore, I repeat my view, that Israel has to stop its expanding settlement of the West Bank, remove the settlers – and don’t ignore that these settlers are militant and fundamentalist on their own and firmly believe that the Palestinians are ‘scum’ and have no right to the land. Don’t assume that bias and hatred exists on only one side.
Israel has to announce its agreement to a Palestinian state made up of the full West Bank.
This has to be a legal Motion, sanctioned by their legislature.
It has to openly treat the Palestinians as, not scum or terrorists, but as people..and acknowledge that terrorism(Islamic fascism)is not identical with the Palestinians but that it exists and that Israel will continue to fight terrorism. That is, it has to insert a wedge into the islamic fascist strategy of using the Palestinians to advance their fascism.
I don’t know if I am clear on this; there are two separate ‘agendas’. One is the Palestinian reality, their existence as a people (no, they are not Jordanian), their UN sanctioned agreement to have their own state, their desire for such, their reality as without such a state and without being citizens of any state.
Islamic fascism is a completely, totally different reality. It would exist even if there were no Israel and no Palestinians. Its cause is the dysfunctional infrastructure of the ME nations which moved their economy into industrialism but left their political, legal and social systems trapped in an 8th century tribalism.
Then, Israel has to remove the settlers. This is more difficult than articulating, clearly, the different conflicts: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over land; and the Islamic fascist conflict over rulership. This process – would be vicious and violent for the settlers have no intention of leaving.
Then, Israel and other nations would have to help Palestine set up a democratic infrastructure – as was done in Iraq. And the other realm, the Islamic fascist realm, would fight this. Islamic fascism does NOT want a Palestinian state to exist; it wants the situation to remain the same for it affords a very handy ‘flytrap’ to inflame emotions, draw idealistic youth to The Cause, draw leftist idealists in the Western World to not criticize Islamism and its fascist agendas. No, Islamic fascism – which, again, is totally different from the I-P situation – wants NO PEACE in this region.
Then, because of the ‘two land bases’ allotted by the UN to Palestine, it is obvious that the new Palestinian state would be closely, economically, aligned with Israel. Israel has to enable and encourage this. This would actually expand the democratic and economic robustness of that total land area in the ME. Again, the Islamic fascists don’t want democracy and a middle class industrialism in their area; they’d fight it.
Vitruvius – what do the Palestinians have to do? Not easy – they have to see that Israel means its word this time – and they can’t see that until the West Bank is free of settlers, and the wall is down. So, the first move is, frankly, that of Israel. Once that first step is taken, then, I think that they’d move to elect a governance amenable to setting up not only a democratic state but one with close economic ties to Israel.
This could have been done 50 years ago; that was the time for it. Now – Islamic fascism has emerged and it will do everything to prevent a Palestinian state, to prevent democracy, to prevent the Palestinians from having their own life and from having peace. Again- don’t merge the two; Palestinian desire for a state and Islamic fascism are two different things, have two different causes, and enabling the first won’t stop the second.
Greetings, all. The Phantom returns after a nice holiday from all this sordid nonsense.
Dr. Dawg’s comments are entirely predictable. It makes perfect sense that a man who supports and actively promotes Communism would be on-side with Hamas. Communism which killed 100 million in the last century and still kills in N. Korea, China and Cuba today, and Hamas which flings missiles blindly into populated areas hoping to kill -anyone-. And usually failing to do so, thankfully. Killers all. Hamas just sucks at it compared to the hard core Commies is about the only difference.
In short, Dr. Dawg is a moral pervert. Therefore one can predict he will talk up whatever side of any issue is the most disgusting, immoral and deserving of eradication. That’s why he likes unions.
What I find interesting about this latest round of Hamas attacks is the coverage. As the article makes clear, and as I’ve been noticing myself, every time a Jew gets killed its no big deal. MSM only cover it when little kids get the chop, they don’t even mention soldiers dying.
I contrast this insouciance toward Jewish casualties with the MSM body count ticker Canadian soldiers get in Afghanistan.
Then there’s the descriptions. My favorite was the air strike that nailed 200 Hamas guys at one whack. If a Canadian Forces CF-18 killed 200 Taliban guys by nailing them with precision bombing in the middle of a town, where they were using the townspeople as human shields, that would be a remarkable feat of arms. Big coverage and big kudos would be arranged.
An IDF jet did that earlier this week. It was described in the papers as an “attack on a Hamas military training school, where a graduation ceremony was taking place”. “Young men in uniform were lying dead in the courtyard.” One presumes this was the Hamas Art History graduation.
Clearly, this is nuts. It is propaganda aimed at destroying Israel, and Europe really doesn’t get a damned thing out of it.
I’ve been thinking about that a little bit. If you look at all the crazy sh1t the EuroLeft believes, from global warming to animal rights to post modern Communism, its all anti-human. Self loathing, in other words. They love anything that shows how bad they are. They hate America because America always wins, America is proud, America shines.
The Israelis are hated by the Muslims because they aren’t Muslim, which is as it has always been. If you stuck a bunch of Inuit guys there the Muslims would hate them instead.
For that matter they hate the Palestinians. Muslims are equal opportunity that way. The only “aid” the Palestinians get out of Egypt and Syria is they are allowed to buy weapons and etc. If they have money.
If every Palestinian starved tomorrow morning zero food aid would flow from the Muslim states. Because they HATE the Palestinians and consider them to be scum. Just ask an Egyptian, they’ll tell you.
But this does not explain why the European Left hates the Jews. I think its because the Jews are Europeans, and they are -successful-. Hamas is loved because they are a bunch of sad-sack dimwits who line up 200 men in a courtyard for the enemy to kill with one airstrike. They are loved because they can’t feed their own population despite UN aid and the unceasing efforts of ISRAEL to civilize them. They are loved because they make glorified spud guns out of irrigation pipe and launch primitive explosives into Jewish towns. They are loved because they hate Europeans.
Israel is hated because they are Europeans who win. They win like Americans. They win against the desert, they win against Hamas, they win against Egypt and Syria and the Saudis and Iraq and Iran. They -always- win.
Israel is a little European island in the middle of the Muslims. All around them is poverty and tyranny, in Israel is prosperity and freedom. The EuroLeft hates that. They want to see it destroyed just as they want to see all of traditional Europe destroyed, to be replaced by some kind of crushing Soviet dystopia where humans die and the land is given back to Gaia.
ET, I’ve been reading your comments and I agree with you about the source of the problem. Israel is a little island of Western civilization in the midst of a sea of waring tribes.
You can see it still happening in Iraq, where the Kurds, the Suni and the Shia all hate each other’s guts, and all three of them hate the Turks, and all four of those hate the Arabs, and etc. Waring tribes.
Where I differ from you is what is to be done about this state of affairs. There are really only two things that one can do, in principle. One can fight, or one can pack up and leave.
Israel is the one and only Jewish state on Earth, they don’t have the luxury of packing up and leaving. Therefore they can only fight.
If they fight, they have to win. The tribes aren’t going to merely conquer them and live in the territory with them. The tribes will kill them all. That’s what tribes do.
In fighting then, again you have two and only two options. Offense and defense. In offense you take the fight to the enemy and kill them, invest their land and run the survivors off. In defense you build a wall and shoot anyone who comes over the top.
Israel has historically chosen defense, and this has been fairly successful for them. No Muslim army has managed to take land from them and hold it. When the borders of Israel move, its due to UN negotiations after Israel has beaten whoever attacked them.
Currently they have a problem with Hamas and Hezbolah lobbing rockets over their wall. Once more, there are two choices. Either ignore it or sally forth and fight. Israel choses to fight, and they will quite obviously win.
Ultimately the choices that face Israel is who they want inside their wall with them, and should they move the wall. Do they relinquish control of the West Bank and Gaza to their enemies, or do they conquer and invest those areas and build the wall at those new borders?
The tribes have easier choices, I’m sure you’ll agree. Should we fight the scary Jews this week or leave them alone? Are we feeling lucky?
Go Israel. Finish the job this time. I am sick and tired of people moaning about the poor Palestinians. How about the poor Israelis who are being constantly bombarded by a bunch of thugs. I am sorry for the children on both sides, but Israel has to do something to defend themselves.
Well, unfortunately the Jewish people are only the first group of people to be forced by the left wing socialist to walk the plank off of the evil ship Jolly Roger.
I can think of at least two other groups that will surely be swimming in shark infested waters in order to make way for the left’s “neo-allies”.
Yes, it’s true. Those Socialists love to hate.
Truly a match made in Hell.
phantom – no, Israel can’t incorporate the West Bank and Gaza territory and population into Israel because its national mandate is to retain a Jewish majority. If it incorporated those two territories and their populations as citizens, then Israel would no longer have a majority Jewish population.
The notion held by some to ‘get rid of all the Palestinians’ by shipping them off to ‘some other Arab nation’ such as Egypt or Jordan ignores that All Arabs are not alike; they are tribal, they are sect based, they are not all ‘M&Ms from one package’.
Jordan, for example, rejected Palestinians in 1988. If a Jordanian, for instance, took out a Palestinian travel document, he’d lose his Jordanian citizenship. Instantly. And Palestinians are not eligible for Jordanian citizenship. Indeed, Palestinians don’t have any citizenship; they only have Palestinian Authority travel documents.
So, I don’t think that ‘defense’ is the only option for Israel, since there are TWO problems. One, is the Palestinian land and nationhood problem. The other is Islamic fascism and as I’ve said, the two are not related in origin. Islamic fascism would have emerged in the ME whether or not Israel ever existed; its causes are strictly within the internal infrastructure of the Arab States.
I think that Israel has to enable a Palestinian state to emerge. This would have been easier 50 years ago, but, it is the only option that I can see even now. That means – remove the settlers and the wall, assist in setting up a democratic state and, link the Palestinian state, economically, to Israel..because of the territorial reality of close ties.
The key problem to this reality now, is not the generation-embedded anger and hatred of the Palestinians vs Israel; frankly, that could vanish in a decade. And even the Israeli settlers, with their fundamentalist views which won’t change..well, they are not the majority in Israel. The key problem is that other reality, Islamic fascism – and I maintain that Islamic fascism does NOT want a Palestinian state. They’ll do everything to prevent it.
Islamic fascism, as I’ve said, emerged in the 19th c in the ME states due to their dysfunctional industrial economy linked to a tribal political/social/legal structure. Such a setup is disastrous and has led to fascism.
Exporting this fascism to the West, ie, locating the cause of low incomes, lack of popular control over their own government etc..locating this CAUSE as external, ie the Evil West..rather than internal ..the tribal totalitarian control…was handy, because it removed the anger against the ME tribal dictatorships and focused it on the West. The West has now begun to fight back ..and has moved the conflict back into the ME states which is where it should be.
BUT – a second tactic of moving this anger at their own tribal governments…and moving the anger instead to anger against Israel..this has increased as the anger against the West is met with strong rejection by the West.
In my view, Islamic fascism doesn’t give a hoot about Palestinians, who are deemed the ‘lowest of the low’ among the Arab hierarchies. But, it’s an extremely useful tool to deflect internal anger against one’s own totalitarian governments to an external zone.
Plus, Islamic fascism doesn’t want to see Arab democracies in the ME; after all, their own governments are anti-democratic, they are totalitarian tribalisms. Iraq is a thorn in the flesh so to speak, and an important thorn, to slowly deconstruct this tribalism ‘from the inside’.
I think that IF Israel were to take bold, active steps to enable a Palestinian state – and this would involve fighting its own settlers and fighting Islamic terrorism…but if it were to do this, then democracy in the ME would have TWO nodes – Palestine and Iraq…and these two situations would further disable the disastrous tribalism of the area.
But instead, Israel expands those settlements! It puts in ruinous economic sanctions against Gaza and the West Bank; it builds walls around and through Palestinian fields. And, it doesn’t separate the fascist rejection of democracy from the Palestinian desire for a homeland.
It’s an extremely difficult situation, because the two sides are not ‘two’ but more complex. There’s the fact that the Palestinians can’t be Israeli citizens; but they also can’t be ‘swallowed’ by any other Arab nation; and yet they were set up by the UN to have their own sovereign nation. There’s the fact of the settlers and the angry occupied Palestinians. There’s also the fact that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians want a two-state solution. And now, there’s the fact of Islamic fascism which does NOT want a Palestinian democratic state.
The only solution that I can see, is the one outlined above – Israel has to operate on two fronts: one,is to enable a Palestinian state; and two, to fight Islamic fascism which will try to prevent this. AND, to somehow make this Great Divide clear, loud and public to the international world.
From Ace of Spades HQ
“It’s been said before but it is worth repeating a thousand times: if Hamas, Hezbollah, and most of the Arab states (and Iran) laid down their weapons tomorrow and forgot about their plans to dissolve Israel, there would be peace in the Middle East. The Israelis could forget about the fences and the Palestinians might one day have something approximating a Western standard of living. On the other hand, if Israel laid down its weapons tomorrow, the country would be utterly annihilated, the Israelis killed to the last man, woman, and child.”
~Gabriel Malor
I’d like to add that Israel could wipe out all of it’s enemies in the Disputed Territories and Lebanon right now but doesn’t. If Israel’s enemies held the same military advantage that Israel does, all Israeli Jews would be massacred. One only has to look at pictures of Muslim terrorists using women and children as human shields to know who holds the moral high ground in the Middle East.
Canada, the U.S., or any Western Power wouldn’t put up with rocket bombardments and suicide bomber attacks for a single day without invading and punishing the territory that the attacks were launched from.
I noticed on Fox & Friends this morning that the reporter took a decidedly one-sided look at the war reporting on the Israeli barrage but passing over quickly the ongoing shelling from Gaza that lead up to it. Israel should flatten the Palestinians and push out their boundaries to the extent possible. No matter what they do, the Israeli’s will be condemned in the media. So, take advantage of it now.
this one is for Joe:
an “eye for an eye” is actually about monetary compensation, not physical retaliation. This is how Judaism has always interpreted it. Let the punishment meet the crime – if a person causes another to loose an eye, he can not be killed for that. You could read for days on this subject – here is one link:
http://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/Biblequestions/eyeforeye.htm
The law of equivalency was an attempt to limit the extent of a punishment and to discourage cruelty. The principle of this legislation is one of equivalency; that is to say, the punishment should correspond to the crime and should be limited to the one involved in the injury (Deut. 19:18-21).
This law was a rejection of family feuds and the spirit of revenge that led the injured party to uncontrolled attacks against the culprit and the members of his or her family (cf. Gen. 4:23). The punishment was required to fit the crime, a principle still used in modern jurisprudence. I must add that in the Bible this law was applied equally to all members of society (Lev. 24:22), while in Mesopotamia it was limited to crimes against society’s “important” people.
Israel does not have the luxury of forgiving and forgetting in their neighbourhood – otherwise, as others have stated so clearly, they will “forgive and forget” themselves right out of existence. G-d does not require that you do not fight for your own survival.
T. E. Lawrence: As long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe they will be a little people, a silly people, barbarous and cruel.
ET, as usual I bow down to your brilliance but could you answer my previous question.
When the Palestinians have their own state what will happen as it is a tiny piece of land, split into two tiny parts with a huge exploding population (oops,bad choice of words), no jobs, violent uneducated people, still being taught to hate the Jews and two main opposing political factions? Somehow this doesn’t sound like a good base for a new state yet you want Israel to tear down its defensive wall and now be exposed to its former suicide bombers.
ET – optimism is one thing…childish naïveté is another!
“…the generation-embedded anger and hatred of the Palestinians …could vanish in a decade.”
Snort! If the Palestinians forsook Mohammed for Christ, perhaps. Barring that, peace will be a long time coming, and no concession of the Israelis will bring it about, excepting their complete disappearance. Your pronouncements on this subject (they are scarcely arguments) convince only those who wish to believe that Israeli oppression of Palestinians excuses the depraved behaviour of the latter.
“Islamic fascism…emerged in the 19th c … due to their dysfunctional industrial economy linked to a tribal political/social/legal structure.”
Drop the label, focus on the behaviour: Since Islam’s beginning, there have always been populations enjoying its imprimatur that have condoned and/or prescribed such treatment of the non-Muslim.
I hope to email you later to discuss your inversion of economy and religion.
The T. E. Lawrence quote is compelling. He loved those people.
On the other hand, to reinforce how little has changed in that neck of the woods over the last 200 years, read this book; it is fantastic:
Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King, 2004.
You’re welcome.
“Israel should flatten the Palestinians and push out their boundaries to the extent possible.”
Which would make them, what? No better than the Nazis. Yup. Nazis. If they don’t like being compared to those assh*les… maybe they should stop acting like them.
How hard is it to acknowledge that the Palestinians have a legitimate right to be angry? They have been displaced from their homes by an expansionist state that doesn’t welcome them as equals.
You guys freak when somebody opens a falafel hut in your neighbourhood. Imagine if an immigrant group moved into Canada, proceeded to ethnically cleanse their neighbourhoods, and then set up an apartheid state.
The vast, vast majority of so-called liberals support Israel, but they want to see the Palestinians give at least some of their country back. It’s only fair, and it’s the only way to stop the bloodshed.
If the Israelis want radical Palestinians to stop the shelling, then they have to stop their radical settlers from stealing Palestinian land.
islamic jihad squared. the world nor israel will have peace as long as there are followers of the prophet, the koran, the hadiths and other islamic teaching. the end. period.
I think we are agreeing on the same point ex liberal. I interpret the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 as don’t seek revenge, better to be wronged than to resort to evil.
That being said I can not bring myself to “pick sides” when people are destroying one another. I refuse to be drawn in to some long litany of grievances ancient, past, present or future. Until BOTH sides agree to get along there shall be war. Until BOTH sides respect each others right to exist there shall be conflict.
As a Christian I support Israel’s existence and agree that it has the right to self defense. At the same time my most fervent prayer is that BOTH parties stop killing each other. For that to happen there is only one way. Its called forgiveness.
BTW I would suggest that you lay aside your commentary for a bit and actually read the Old Covenant. You will soon discover that ‘Eye for an eye, Tooth for a tooth’ meant exactly that.
I agree that as in most instances the aggrieved parties settled their conflicts with an exchange of money but that does not mean that Law did not provide for other means of retribution.
tenebris – I disagree with your insertion of ideology or religion as primal cause. I maintain that the primal cause is the economy, ie, how do we get enough to live, to provide shelter, to enable us to survive in health. That’s basic.
And yes, I do believe that if the Palestinians had control of their own land, the hatred would vanish in a decade.
Islam and Islamic fascism are two competely different perspectives. I personally believe that Islam as an ideology emerged in the 7th c as a reaction to the expanding land base control of the Byzantine/Christian peoples. With the Roman infrastructure of roads, money, writing, trade connections, this area was economically moving into settled agricultural economies, trading with each other. This interactive economy, in my view, was the basis for the development of the Christian religion.
The Christian religion is one of collaboration, acceptance of one’s neighbours, a separation of church and state (Caesar..etc). Perfect for an expanding economy that focused on interactive trade, stable and expanding agriculturalism etc.
Islam, in my view, is an ideology based around a completely different economy – pastoral nomadic. Note the references in it to cattle, sheep, goats. This is an economy that is nomadic, that requires a large land base but with a lot of the land vacant (to replenish) while the herds are led from pasture to pasture. Also, the primacy of the male, the rigid repression of women (found where the men are away for weeks at a time)..it all points to a pastoral nomadic economy. As for religion, Islam takes most of its views on that from Judaism.
An interesting thing about judaism is the importance of women, for Judaism is matrilineal; you ‘inherit’ the religion filiation from the women’s side not the male side. That tells me that these people were not pastoralists but had some kind of ‘garden economy’.
At any rate, I believe that Islam emerged as a militant social and political (not religious) ideology to fight against the encroachment of their land base by expanding agricultural Christian settlements. Defining it as a religion moved its political system out of the capacity to change…and then it moved into basic militarism.
Can it change as a religion? I think so, for any ideology, which is after all, made by man, can be changed by man. If you read various articles by Islamic scholars, they are arguing for an ‘interpretation’ of Islam rather than a dogmatic following of it. There are lots of such articles.
Islamic fascism is completely different; it emerged in the 19th c – and I’ve explained why.
dave – sorry, I thought I answered your question when I said that a sovereign Palestinian state would have to be economically linked to the economy of Israel – not only because of that geographic split (and after all, Alaska and Hawaii are split from the mainland USA)..but because both would be democracies and thus have a middle class.
They too could be celebrating 60 years of statehood”
“On November 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly by a two-thirds vote (33 to 13 with Britain and nine others abstaining) passed Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish community of Palestine jubilantly accepted partition despite the small size and strategic vulnerability of the proposed state. Not only were Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip not included, but also Jerusalem, most of the Galilee in the North and parts of the Negev desert in the South were excluded. The Arab national movement in Palestine, as well as all the Arab states, angrily rejected partition. They demanded the entire country for themselves and threatened to resist partition by force. Had they accepted the U.N. proposal in 1947, the independent Palestinian Arab state, covering an area much larger than the West Bank and Gaza, would have been created along with Israel. Instead, they launched a war to destroy the nascent Jewish state.”
Joe, it may not be Christian tradition to read the commentaries/Oral Torah/Talmud, but it is definitely Jewish tradition. In fact, for Jews, the Written Torah cannot be understood without the Oral Torah. It probably does not fit the picture of the “harsh cruel Old Testament” but there no evidence of “eye for eye” ever having been carried out literally by Jewish courts.
ET,
“Islamic fascism, as I’ve said, emerged in the 19th c in the ME states due to their dysfunctional industrial economy linked to a tribal political/social/legal structure. Such a setup is disastrous and has led to fascism.”
This is pure rubbish. It frankly doesn’t matter what you’ve said, or think. History completely disagrees with you. You should give your head a shake.
First of all, let’s look at what Merriam/Webster has to say:
Fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
Here is a snippet from a Stratfor mail today:
Throughout the discussion in this thread I’ve been asking for a viable plan, because I don’t have one. No one has, in my opinion, produced such a plan; I now think that’s because no such plan can be produced, for the reasons explained by Stratfor.
“At any rate, I believe that Islam emerged as a militant social and political (not religious) ideology to fight against the encroachment of their land base by expanding agricultural Christian settlements. Defining it as a religion moved its political system out of the capacity to change…and then it moved into basic militarism.”
Patricia Crone rubbish again. What land? The infertile desert? I’ve asked you before to prove this. Prove that Roman, or Byzantine Christians were encroaching into Arabia. Certainly the Quran, Hadiths and Sira don’t agree with you. Neither does any scholar, other than the one mentioned.
The religion of Mahomet was an imperial war ideology. Nothing more. He looted, stole, pillaged and raped his way out of the desert, stealing up to three quarters of formerly Christian lands. But stealing wasn’t good enough for these monsters. Entire cultures, including their art, knowledge and language had to be wiped out, in order for alien Arabic cultural imperialism to prevail.
This has not changed to the present day. Look at the enclaves they are creating throughout the west. Not to mention passive, cultural and legal jihad tactics in order to establish special supremacist status.
Why have all the Christians mostly fled from Lebanon, a formerly predominately Christian country? Palestine? Southern Thailand? Malaysia? Etc., Etc.
“Encroachment of their land base.” A monstrous lie!
Well ex liberal I guess you and I are just going to (I hope) peacefully disagree. To say that the lex talionis was never applied in Jewish law because an Adventist commentator said it was never allied is a wee tad of a stretch of the imagination. Not to mention which I never constrained the application of the lex talionis to Israel. In fact it was written in the Code of Hammurabi and is also in the Koran.
Now I don’t know about you but I do pray for peace in the Middle East. Blessed are the peace makers and all that you know. I also try not to pick fights with people who are on my side. Luke 9:50.
In closing, because I have taken up too much of Kate’s bandwidth, I say, “Without forgiveness there can never be peace”!
“Had they accepted the U.N. proposal in 1947, the independent Palestinian Arab state, covering an area much larger than the West Bank and Gaza, would have been created along with Israel. Instead, they launched a war to destroy the nascent Jewish state.”
So basically, you guys don’t like the U.N. telling you what to do in your country, but Arabs should have to listen to the U.N. when it tells them that they have to make room for hundreds of thousands of European refugees.
If they’d made plans to create a new Israel in Alberta, you guys would be goosestepping down to Canadian Tire to buy up all the ammo faster than you could say “global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the liberal media”.
Look, Israel needs to be secure, but denying the Palestinians justice isn’t going to secure it. Israel needs to admit they’ve kind of been land-grabbing douchebags, and step up with compensation. And by compensation, I don’t mean more rabid Jewish settlers.
John,
With the defeat of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, the ME was divided up amongst the Allies. It was later partitioned off into the countries that exist today. The proposed Palestinian and Jewish states were, in the later stages, part of this.
There were few in Palestine at the time. There certainly weren’t any so-called ‘Palestinians,’ other than perhaps the original Jews, who first called themselves by that title. The land was mostly a waste land, later irrigated and made fertile by immigrant Jews.
Most of the present day Arabs, Syrians, etc., only calling themselves ‘Palestinians,’ since the ’60’s, immigrated into the area much later, after the land became workable.
The current myth of the ‘Palestinians’ is mostly false.
“So basically, you guys don’t like the U.N. telling you what to do in your country, but Arabs should have to listen to the U.N. when it tells them that they have to make room for hundreds of thousands of European refugees.”
What an imbecilic line of “thought”. Arabs didn’t rule that piece of land anyway. The only question was how it was going to be split up. “Palestinians” got two states, but that wasn’t enough for those assholes.
Palestinians need to admit they’ve been murderous fanatic terrorist douchebags, accept the fact that Israel will not fulfill their wet dreams and allow itself to be wiped off the map, and step into the 21st century, where maintaining ceasefire doesn’t mean lobbing rockets across their border. Then they wouldn’t get their precious EU-funded bomb-making universities destroyed.
Vitruvius: December 29, 2008 4:59 PM
That’s an excellent addition to the debate. Thanks.
As ex-liberal pointed out above — something I suspect a lot of people don’t know, or have forgotten — the original 1947 post-partition state of Israel EXCLUDED Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Jerusalem, and parts of the Negev, etc. And as events proved, that state was simply not defensible — not viable. And YET, the Arabs were not satisfied with their state, which was at least contiguous, and contained all these areas.
And ET, as to your argument about importantce of economics over islamic ideology, you would do well to research economic statistics for the “Palestinians” post 1967 — a veritable golden age economically. You need also to reflect on what Hamas did with that world-beating high-tech greenhouse Israel left INTACT when retreating from the Gaza strip.
As Vitruvius has argued the “Palestinians” are not rational players.
You’re right Vitruvius: There is NO solution to the problem in the box within which it is currently perceived. Clearly TWO states are just not viable.
Clearly, the answer is for the “world community” to destroy Fatah/PLO/Hamas, provide ample financial incentives for the “Palestinians” to vacate Gaza/Judea/Samaria and re-locate to other Arab countries like Jordan and Egypt. Problem is tho that with the thorough islamization they have undergone starting with Arafat (Israel’s nuttiest idea!) they are considered poison by countries trying to maintain their good old secular dictatorships.
And UNWRA needs to be shut down. The UN has deliberately inflamed this conflict through sustaining the open sores of “refugee” camps over 60 years in order to undermine Israel. If I’m not mistaken, this is the only “refugee” problem which had its own UN agency.
nope, irwin daisy, I don’t agree with you. You see, what is missing from your analysis, which is focused only on an ideology, is any reason for such an ideology to emerge and become dominant among so many people. You don’t explain that. Ideologies don’t ‘float in the air’; if they do they dissipate like fog. An ideology emerges FROM the economic/political structure – and you utterly ignore this basic infrastructure.
With regard to fascism, what is missing in your dictionary definition is an understanding of its utopianism, and its description of that utopia. In fascism, as differentiated from the other utopian ideologies of socialism and communism, the ‘pure ideal’ is found in the past, when The People were in supreme control. Islamic fascism seeks to restore this assumed era of purity.
No, it didn’t originate in the 7th c; Islam did but not fascist Islamism. I suggest you read a few books on the subject of both fascism and Al Qaeda. Wright’s The Looming Tower outlines Al Qaeda’s history from the 18th c. Fascist studies are, of course, enormous – Paxton, and Eatwell are good.
I repeat my analysis that Islam, as an economic, political and social ideology emerged in the ME because of encroaching agricultural expansion – and that area was not, at the time, as barren as it is now. No, my views are not ‘a monstrous lie’. You don’t understand anything about societal structures and how the population must be grounded, first, in the land base.
Again, an ideology such as you outline, ungrounded in any economic or political infrastructure – existing only ‘as itself’ simply doesn’t occur. ALL ideologies that move into a larger population, ie, larger than a few dozen cult members, MUST have some functional ground within an economic and political agenda. Your narrow view that Islam only exists as an idea to war and steal doesn’t explain WHY it exists as such. And no peoples operate only to ‘war and steal’. Your view is superficial and without merit.
Yes, there were ‘Palestinians’ in the disputed area in 1948. Your claim, irwin daisy, that there were very few, and the people who were there were primarily Jewish is historically inaccurate. The population under the British mandate was about 700,000 and was primarily NOT Jewish, but was Palestinian – and was called such by the British. No, they didn’t immigrate into the area; they had been there for centuries, even though you consider that the land was ’empty’ until 1948. It wasn’t; that’s the myth of the empty land, as untenable as the myth of ‘first footstep gets the land’.
Nor was the land a ‘wasteland’, for it supported those 700,000 quite well. You don’t understand the nature of a non-industrial sustenance horticultural and small animal grazing economy. It doesn’t require irrigation, for the sheep, goats, olive trees, dates and vegetables sufficient to sustain local villages don’t require irrigation.
The Jewish settlers were primarily from Europe, which had moved into an industrial agriculturalism about 100 years ago, and therefore, they brought these new technologies and strategies with them – irrigation, large scale mass production of food, etc.
Your bias is obvious, irwin daisy, and all I suggest is that you be aware of the differences between a non-industrial peasant agriculturalism and an industrial market agriculturalism.
Yes, vitruvius, the UN plan of ‘two nations’ side by side was indeed, an almost insane suggestion. But, since the situation exists, ie, that there IS a population in Israel that is majority Jewish and there IS a population in Palestine that is majority Muslim – and that these people originally came from the land base that is now Israel…what does one do? Since Israel will not accept them as citizens, and neither will any Arab nation – and they themselves don’t want to be shipped off, like we ship our Inuit off to Davis Island…then, what does one do? My suggestion is two Nations, each sovereign up to a point…but economically entwined.
I don’t think, ET, that your suggestion is viable, certainly not
at this time, perhaps not for quite some time, perhaps never.
“What an imbecilic line of “thought”. Arabs didn’t rule that piece of land anyway. The only question was how it was going to be split up. “Palestinians” got two states, but that wasn’t enough for those assholes.”
It’s not about “ruling”. It’s about the fact that millions of people were already living there when the U.N., having come to the realization that nobody wanted millions of Jewish refugees on their own doorstep, decided to carve out a new homeland for them. The people already living there got scared and pissed, as would anyone in their shoes.
As it turns out, they were right to be scared, because many of the people who showed up were fanatically dedicated to the creation of an expansionist Jewish state that basically says you have to be a Jew if you want to hold any position of power. (And frankly, I can see their point… if I’d just escaped a deathcamp, I’d be thinking the same thing)
What I don’t know about this conflict could fill a room, and that goes the same for everyone here. To be perfectly honest, these two groups deserve each other. They’re all behaving like savages, with neither side showing the compassion and leadership to move past this bullshit. Frankly their chances of long term survival are not all that hot, because they’re too focused on trying to grab everything they want, and not at all about what the other needs.
ET – Asserting an economic primacy to conflict is very “American” 🙂
Look, you make a not unreasonable assumption, all else being equal. The problem is, all else is NOT equal. We have here two distinct groups of people with almost 4000 years of antagonism, a family feud writ large. You appear blind to the pure unreasonableness of simple hatred. The dislike of Montague for Capulet is but the penumbra of the loathing of Arab for Jew, and this tragedy plays out with particularly poignancy. All actions are now interpreted as an excuse to stoke the fires of hatred. But, to argue that there is a middle course between the Scylla of Zionism and the Charybdis of Hamas begs the question. Indeed, the assertion itself is perverse.
The parameters of the solution are quite simple, its implementation, however, is obscure.
Aye, Tenebris, between Scylla and Charybdis.
“nope, irwin daisy, I don’t agree with you. You see, what is missing from your analysis, which is focused only on an ideology, is any reason for such an ideology to emerge and become dominant among so many people. You don’t explain that. Ideologies don’t ‘float in the air’; if they do they dissipate like fog. An ideology emerges FROM the economic/political structure – and you utterly ignore this basic infrastructure.”
When Mohammad preached during the Mecca years, it was mainly passive, arrogantly and ridiculously claiming (given that he was not Jewish) that he had been visited by Gabriel with the correct Abrahamic gospel.
This was rejected out of hand. He had perhaps 50 converts, mostly family and friends. It was only after his exile to Medina that he became militant and a caravan pirate. During this period, he developed a huge following by promising booty, slaves, rape and pillage. Not to mention, heavenly graft for fighting and dying in his/Allah’s cause. This is how his ideology became dominant. Good old fashioned greed, avarice and, most importantly, lust. And it still works.
He did not fight against Christendom, at first. He fought and won against other indigenous tribes, whether Jewish or Arabian, in his home land. He forced the Jewish tribes out, or slaughtered them. Still to this day, Jews are not allowed to set foot in Saudi Arabia.
The supremacist expansion of Islam proceeded from there, refining all the political, judiciary, war and social trappings that it boasts now.
“With regard to fascism, what is missing in your dictionary definition is an understanding of its utopianism, and its description of that utopia”
Islamic utopia is what it’s all about. Not just reliving the past Caliphates, but forcing the entire world to submit to Allah. This is the Islamic mission, from the outset. The entire world is already Allah’s, they are simply reclaiming it. Not to mention the 72 raisons and other materialist stuff waiting for them in Islamic paradise.
“No, it didn’t originate in the 7th c; Islam did but not fascist Islamism.”
Boy, you’re stubborn. I have proven history disagrees with you, over and over. Do you want more evidence?
“And no peoples operate only to ‘war and steal’. Your view is superficial and without merit.”
What else do they do? What have they ever done? What have they accomplished? And please, don’t give me the so-called golden years of Andalusia. That’s been debunked.
“Yes, there were ‘Palestinians’ in the disputed area in 1948. Your claim, irwin daisy, that there were very few, and the people who were there were primarily Jewish is historically inaccurate. The population under the British mandate was about 700,000 and was primarily NOT Jewish, but was Palestinian”
Really? Once again, history and Sir Winston Churchill disagrees with you.
Michael Medved writes:
“First of all, it’s not true in any sense that the modern Jewish State ever supplanted or destroyed an existing nation of “Palestine.” From the time of definitive destruction of the ancient Jewish commonwealth in 70 A.D., the land that comprises the current State of Israel never enjoyed independent existence but, rather, passed back and forth among competing world empires – Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Mamaluke, Ottoman and British. Over the course of more than 1,800 years, no nation with the name “Palestine” appeared on any maps, anywhere.”
What there had been, and what enchanted spirits such as Sir Winston’s so thoroughly, however, was a slow but steady resettlement of the Holy Land over the centuries by Jewish immigrants who, by their own industry and ingenuity, were transforming a veritable wasteland into a prosperous community. As Sir Winston detailed in his White Paper of June 1922:
“During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one fourth are farmers or workers upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its needs. It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity. This community, then, with its town and country population, its political, religious, and social organizations, its own language, its own customs, its own life, has in fact “national” characteristics.”
Again, in 1939, before the British House of Commons Sir Winston related:
“Yesterday the Minister responsible descanted eloquently in glowing passages upon the magnificent work which the Jewish colonists have done. They have made the desert bloom. They have started a score of thriving industries, he said. They have founded a great city on the barren shore. They have harnessed the Jordan and spread its electricity throughout the land.”
But surely, all this Zionist prosperity came at the expense of the Arab Palestinians? In fact, quite the opposite is true, as Sir Winston pointed out:
“So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population.”
This fact is confirmed by many sources, including the Zionism and Israel Encyclopedic Dictionary whose excellent analysis of the Arab Revolt in Palestine states that by 1937:
“Palestine contained more Arabs than ever before in its history, and they enjoyed a higher standard of living than ever before…”
BUT (here’s where things start getting ugly)…
“…but they could only be supported as long as they were dependent on the economic activity of the Jewish minority and the investments of the Zionist movement. At the same time, the Arabs of Palestine insisted that this Jewish minority was dispossessing them and tried to rid themselves of the Jews and the Zionist enterprise. The Arabs would say that they had been impoverished by Zionist “dispossession,” but in fact they enjoyed a higher standard of living and faster economic growth than their neighbors in Syria, Jordan or Egypt.”
But of course, ideological and inbred hate ruined it for them.
ET, I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said, “The first sign of genius is contradiction.” You might give up, when you’ve been proven wrong, once in a while. Your position is untenable.
Oh, and one more thing, ET – You say “[t]he Christian religion is one of collaboration, acceptance of one’s neighbours, a separation of church and state (Caesar..etc). Perfect for an expanding economy that focused on interactive trade, stable and expanding agriculturalism etc.”
No. Absolutely. Not.
Not only are these not the core of this religion, they are not even correct in corollary. Christianity accentuates unity in diversity, not collaboration; the refusal to bind the neighbour’s conscience, not acceptance; overcoming the world, not ceding autonomy to the state.
tenebris – what can I say but ‘rubbish’ to your claim that stating that an economic analysis is ‘American’. It’s basic societal analysis.
People, believe it or not, don’t exist on air, either the hot air from words or from the benign smiles of Zeus. As material realities, humans must materially sustain themselves, provide shelter for themselves, maintain their health. That’s the economy’s task.
I disagree that 4,000 years of hatred between Jew and Muslim means ‘no change’, because Jews and Muslims CAN get along quite well when they are working together in the West. And even in the ME.
Emotional ideas are not genetic. I absolutely disagree that because one is a Jew, one must hate Muslims, and vice versa.
John, there weren’t several million people living in the area in 1948. There were, however, over a million. The 1931 census, gave about 1.3 million in all of Palestine, with about 7-800,000 Muslims in the area that would become Israel and about 65,000 Jews in the same area. Figures are difficult because census was unreliable.
A good study is triple w dot mideastweb dot org slash palpol dot htm
Sorry about the wording but I tend to get sent to the corner when I put in a link.
The study also debunks the myth of ‘all those Arabs immigrated into Israel when they thought it would be formed, as well as the myth of The Empty Land of 1948.
“The dislike of Montague for Capulet is but the penumbra of the loathing of Arab for Jew, and this tragedy plays out with particularly poignancy.”
Quite right, Tenebris.
I believe Islam, in the early years anyhow, was also called Hagarism.
In many ways, it’s the fight of the illegitimate heir against the legitimate.
Look at Eid, for example. The replacement on the alter of the rightful son. It’s a blood feud.
ET: That 65,000 figure for Jews is surely way low.
ex-liberal?
BTW, you conceded to Vitruvius that it was “insane” for the UN to create two states there in 1947. And yet, you continue to insist on a two-state solution today which must surely be even more insane considering that both territories are now terrorist encampments whose only goal is the destruction of Israel.