Well, cjunk, I'll accept, with hesitation, all of your definitions on 'moderate Muslim' except the first one, where 'a moderate Muslim believes that Israel has a right to exist'.

I don't think that this, a political opinion, has any place whatsoever in a religious opinion.

I happen to accept that Israel has a right to exist. I also happen to reject Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, its settlements, its refusal to compensate, its treatment of Palestinians, including its refusal to accept that Palestine has a 'right to exist', its rejection of the very possibility of a Palestinian people..and so on. Since I'm an atheist, then, these beliefs are not based in any religion - and I think you are completely wrong to tie the view of Israel into a religion.

Is it a definition of the Christian religion that 'Israel has a right to exist'? Hindu? Buddhist? etc?

The reason that I say that I'll accept your definitions 'with hesitation' is because they have little to do with the religion but instead, are social and political beliefs. Now, as I've frequently said, Islam is primarily a social and political mode, justified as a religion, but, in order to modernize it, you must focus on the religious axioms.

To me, a moderate Muslim would be one who acknowledged that the religious texts and rules of Islam were open to human interpretation and thus, amenable to change. That's the most important. You've left this out.

It's important because it puts the power of the identity of the religion back into the hands of the people rather than into a metaphysical force. And it's important because it focuses on the rightful use of reason rather than the current Islamic rejection of reason.

I refer you to an interesting journal issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, on Debating Modern Islam. Vol 22, Summer 2005, No. 3. Really some excellent articles by Muslims, on modernizing their religion and opening its texts to interpretation.

Then, socially and politically, a moderate Muslim would indeed, as you point out, insist on a separation of church and state, accept the civic nature of modern governance, accept the industrial mode of the equivalence of men and women, and accept the global reality of differences of belief. These are not religious dictums but sociopolitical beliefs.

Islam has been an isolate sociopolitical entity until WWII and it simply hasn't modernized itself; that's why there is such conflict in the ME - between a 7th century tribal sociopolitical mode and the necessity to modernize to fit into the global industrial world.

A first step has to be to open its ideological base (which happens to be defined as a religion) up to 'interpretation' rather than passive acceptance. That - is what is important.

you will notice that although this interview is dated, the western MSM have yet to run with the story or give this lady and folks who think like her any air time. not unlike the Danish MP in excile in the US. She can't even get protection.

That's a very interesting definition of moderation, and the interview is indeed fascinating. I would have to quibble with one point:

"- believes that terrorism is NOT justified; ever"

I abhor terrorism as much as anyone, but I do believe it is justifiable in the most extreme circumstances. It is simply that Palestinian or Mohammedan "grievances" come nowhere close to justifying 911, suicide bombings, intifadas, Black Septembrist hijackings or any of their other atrocities.

The interviewee's point regarding the political ideology of Islam is well taken. The exploitation of Islam for political or expansionist military purposes has a long and bloody history. See Peter Hopkirk, Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, for a detailed examination of the German and Turkish attempts to use jihad in the conquest of British India and Tsarist Transcaspia in World War I. The same events form the background to the novel Greenmantle, by John Buchan (a.k.a. Lord Tweedsmuir, the bloke who signed our declaration of war on Nazi Germany).

Ahmadinejad is in the news again for using an "Islamic" celebration to again call for the destruction of Israel, or at least its reconstitution in Europe or Alaska:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1191257230393&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

If it's good enough for the goose:

Manama wants to expel foreign workers after six years

Manama (AsiaNews) - Gulf States might end up expelling foreigner workers after six years if a proposal being put forwards by Bahrain is accepted. The Bahrain Labour Minister Majeed al-Alawi has denied however that he intends to present it to the next Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) meeting scheduled for Doha (Qatar) in December. If implemented it would affect an estimated 13 million expatriate workers living in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

“The majority of foreign manpower in the region comes from different cultural and social backgrounds that cannot assimilate or adapt to the local cultures,” al-Alawi told the Gulf Daily News in an interview. “In some areas of the Gulf, you can’t tell whether you are in an Arab Muslim country or in an Asian district. We can’t call this diversity and no nation on earth could accept the erosion of its culture on its own land,” he said.

Has any Islamophobitard in the history of the internet ever made a FACT BASED argument against Islam?

Because I and others have posted data which clearly shows that they are doing pretty well in Canada, better than white people I would argue.

Anyway, if you don't have data you're just wanking with opinions. Let's see some science. Here, I'll get the ball rolling:

-Muslims have the highest birthrate in Canada by religion. By Darwinian standards they are "winning" and we are "losing". I can't see how they are inferior to us when we are aborting ourselves out of existence.

-A higher percentage of Canadian Muslims have Master's degrees than Canadian Catholics.

-30 percent of males aged 20-30 who immigrate to Canada leave Canada within 5 years.

I agree with CJunk - Islam will have moderated when it has accepted the right of Jews to sovereign in their state. Israel did not "steal the land" and neither is it a "brutal occupier". Islam must get over its problem with Jews - then it will have moderated (if you check out the Koran tho, it might not be Islam anymore)

from today's Jerusalem Post:

"Millions of Iranians attended nationwide rallies Friday in support of the Palestinians, while the country's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel's continued existence was an "insult to human dignity."

"The creation, continued existence and unlimited (Western) support for this regime is an insult to human dignity," Ahmadinejad said. "The occupation of Palestine is not limited to one land. The Zionist issue is now a global issue."

Ahmadinejad's remarks came as millions of Iranians held rallies across Iran to protest Israel's continued control of Jerusalem.

The demonstrations for "Al-Quds Day" - Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem - also spilled over into anti-American protests because of US support for Israel.

In the capital Teheran, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets as they chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." Some protesters also burned American and Israeli flags."

Andrew: "better than white people I would argue"

What do "white people" have to do with this? We are talking religion and socio/political modes of being and thinking.

I happen to accept that Israel has a right to exist. I also happen to reject Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, its settlements, its refusal to compensate, its treatment of Palestinians, including its refusal to accept that Palestine has a 'right to exist', its rejection of the very possibility of a Palestinian people..and so on.

ET, your assertions are incorrect. Israel is not occupying "palestinian lands." Israel bought the lands from the effendi and Turks, this is indisputable. Also you have spoils of war form 1967. The lands that were sold to the Jews were desolate malaria infested swamplands and other blights. This is well documented and there are many pictures of Jews draining the swamps.

When the UN offered the partition of Israel the Jews accepted it and the Arabs refused and vowed to "push the Jews into the sea", which led to the Israelis destroying half a dozen Arab armies that amassed on her border ready to invade. It is not the Jews that have not accepted the palestinians right to exist, it is the other way around as you should well know. Arabs are treated better by Jews than by their own brethren. Arabs can vote in Israel but not in Arab nations. Arabs have more rights in Israel than any other Arab land.

As far as the term "palestinian", all Jews, Arabs, Druze and others were referred to as "palestinians." The Jerusalem Post used to be called the Palestinian Post.

"Then in 70 C.E. (nearly 2000 years ago), it was the Roman Empire's turn to march through ancient Israel and destroy the SECOND Jewish Temple, slaughtering or driving out much of its Jewish population. Many Jews left on their own because conditions for life were made unbearable in many respects... yet thousands upon thousands stayed and rebelled on for centuries in order to once again rebuild a Jewish Nation in this Holy Land.

Over 3250 years, various Peoples, Religions and Empires marched through Jerusalem, Israel's ancient capital. The region was successively ruled by the Hebrews [Jews], Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Maccabeans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Egyptians, the Crusaders, Mamelukes, the Turks (who indifferently governed the backward, neglected territory from the 16th century until the British drove them out during World War I) and then once again by the Jews in 1948. None bothered, nor were they in the least bit inclined, to build a Nation of their own... EXCEPT the Jews!"

For those interested in the truth......

http://www.masada2000.org/

Has any Islamophobitard in the history of the internet ever made a FACT BASED argument against Islam?

Take a look at the backward Muslim nations you moron. Women are stoned to death for showing a little ankle, girls have their throats cut for bringing "shame" upon a family, homosexuals and dissidents are executed, school children are decapitaed, etc. What contributions have Muslims made to the world other than barbarity and perfecting the homicide belt?

Muslims have committed more than 8,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11/01. I'm sure you'll write that off as just cultural differences.

“The Muslim Ummah, or the Islamic world, he [Musharraf] said was presently living in darkness.

"Today we are the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most un-enlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race," he told the delegates.

President Musharraf then made a comparison of the economic growth in Islamic countries with some developed countries.

While the collective Gross National Product of the all Muslim countries stands at $1,200bn, that of Germany alone is $2,500bn and that of Japan $5,500bn.

He said one of the main reasons for this disparity was that none of the Muslim countries had ever paid any attention to educational and scientific development.

He asked the countries participating in the conference to concentrate on scientific and technological development in order to compete with the developed world.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1824455.stm

“Islam is Not a Religion of Pacifists”, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 1942

“Islam’s jihad is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviation, plunder, repression, and cruelty. The war waged by [non-Islamic] conquerors, however, aims at promoting lust and animal pleasures. They care not if whole countries are wiped out and many families left homeless. But those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under [God’s law]…..”

“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does that mean that Muslim should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill the [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!”

“There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”

Plain as day, from the head of the snake. Now, look at the events of recent times and of today. The Islamic mission is being accelerated with full knowledge the “witless” will not see or hear or believe this evil agenda. The events and facts in just the last 2 weeks alone bears this out, where leaders and government in the UK are not only, NOT acknowledging the enemy, but are proposing one should not use the word Islam or muslim when discussing jihad or terror, and there are those smart people running around, shamelessly, trying to figure out what the connection is between Islam and terror. And these are educated people who hold the public trust. Even Bush, leader of the most powerful nation on earth, thinks Islam is a religion of peace.

This witless, self denial will kill civilization as we know it, if we let it. Khomeini was un-ambigous on this and we missed it and are still missing it, bowed in shamless apology, grovelling, of all things to a bunch of fanatics and even worse, grovelling to, and appeasing the fanatics with a hidden, undetectable, loathing, hatred of the west. Someone, I forget who, said these muslims amoungst you, would smile brightly at you with a hate filled heart.

We must convince our fellow citizens and leaders, ISLAM is the problem and it’s not a crime, nor hateful, nor bigotry, nor racism when self preservation is required from those who would subdue or kill you, to speak out, vehemently! It is none of these things to call evil, evil no matter what the lefty dhimmis think. Someday they WILL admit they were wrong.

Islam has been around for a long time. Lately though, something seemed to trigger the fanatics into action.

Was it the most powerful man in the world being seduced in the oval office by an everyday girl ?

A women, who some fundamentalists think should not even go to school, should remained covered up until her "boss" says it is ok, should not be in public with a none relative male.

Let alone have the American President wrapped around her little finger.

Is this what really drove al Queda and Islam nuts ? They both came to a head about the same time :)

As promised, undeniable proof that the Quran was solely conceived by Mohammad, for his benefit alone, and that allah is a complete fabrication:

islamreview.com/articles/PROPHETS_BIOGRAPHY_FROM_QURANIC_AYAS.shtml

well, apollyon, I've been through these arguments before - and I'll maintain my points.

i reject every one of your points. Israel did not purchase the land from Turkey; the land wasn't state or public land but private property owned by individuals. Your claim is not 'indisputable'. I equally reject your 'spoils of war' argument; after all, this was not done by the Allies in Europe or elsewhere.
I also reject your opinion that the land was all swampland - which it wasn't. This is equivalent to what I consider other mythic beliefs, such as the Myth of the Empty Land (no-one was living there); the Myth of Incompetence (the people weren't farming it properly); the Myth of First Footprint (whoever was there first 1,000 years ago claims it forever and ever...and so on.

I've been through this argument many times on this blog - and, I have yet to be convinced by any counter arguments. I maintain my point; Israel's occupation of Palestinian farms and lands, their refusal to compensate, their rejection of the right of these people to the lands which they had bought and paid taxes on; their post 1948 rejection that the Palestinians owned the land unless they farmed the land (and this had to be visible from the air); and their refusal to allow that farmer to return to do so...on and on...

By the way, your statement that only if you establish a 'nation' to you 'own the land' is invalid. The concept of a 'nation' only emerges in human society when the population reaches a certain size. Nations emerged in the West, for example, in the 9th, 10th etc centuries, moving beyond the previous 'feudal fiefdoms' and amalgamating into large political entities. That requires a larger population and a market economy. Before that - there's no such thing as a nation.

But - this argument is not germane to this thread. The key point is that I'm saying that 'recognition of Israel' has no valid inclusion in a religion. It is a political not religious statement.

And, my point about the 'moderate Muslim' is exactly as Wafa Sultan points out- he/she has to accept that the axioms can be 'interpreted' or changed. That is, indeed, a transformation.

ET, how can you say Israel does not refuse to accept Palestinian right to statehood. Where have you been the last 20 years. Arafat was given everything he asked for, except the "right of return" of Palestinians in Israel, thus overhwhelming Jewish state of Israel - do you think they have this right to dictate to Israel who emigrates there? At Camp David, Arafat walked out, went back home and started the Intafadah. C'mon get real ET, get the binders off. Israel is not perfect by any means, and yes have made mistakes, but they've had a gun pointed at their head ever since they became a country.

The Palestinian question demonstrates the contradiction within Islam - we hear lots of talk about two state solution, but frankly Muslim leaders in ME want to keep this issue alive, to have a "grievance" against Israel.

Whenever this subject comes up, Arab apologists launch immediately into their grievances against Israel, as if everybody else is innocent - they are not. Here's a thought, accept Israel, don't attack them, then there can be peace - not before. Why is the onus on Israel alone?

Frankly, the same goes for Islamist attacks on West. They tell us how much they hate the infidel Americans, how they oppress them, are too powerful, then they attack!

ET, I'm surprised by your poor judgement on this issue. You need to rethink what you are saying. Whether or not these views are based on religion is wholly irrelevant, there is no separation of Church and State in the ME.

"Has any Islamophobitard in the history of the internet ever made a FACT BASED argument against Islam?"

The moonbat poseur reveals himself.

Fjordman: Islam, the Greeks and the Scientific Revolution, part 1,2 & 3

jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/018190.php

Taht's a remarkable interview with Wafa Sultan. She's exactly right. The Muslim people have been isolated for 1400 years. The post WWII era opened up those lands and people to the western world.

But, a people living within a 7th c tribalism, a peasant economy, within an ideology developed by a pastoral nomadic economy as a reaction to the spread of agricultural settlements in the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries - are in no position to adapt to the modern world.

Their reactive ideology to preserve their pastoral nomadism was militant against others, and totalitarian in control over their own people - to prevent both assimilation, emigration and loss of land and people. Their 'religious' definition of this ideology meant that it was beyond change.

And, the Islamic rejection of reason - as pointed out - meant that science, the individual as intellectual agent, etc - had no place in the Islamic world. Therefore, Islam has set itself up as illequipped to adapt, change, modernize.

Wafa Sultan is right; they have isolated themselves from questions.

The same situation happened in the West in the 11th c. I won't go into the fight to open up the ideology of christianity and the sociopolitical mores to questions and individual doubt - but, it took time, effort, and more time and effort.

The same thing has to be done in Islam. As Sultan pointed out - it needs the West to 'crack open' its isolation and cemented-laden axioms.

That's why the West has to confront their beliefs, reject them, insist that the West won't adapt, ie, won't give up the use of reason, questions, the separation of church and state and so on.

Irwin Daisy: good stuff as usual.

Apollyon: I'm adding you to my "pay attention to what this guy writes" list.

Pay no attention to ET - she's off her rocker on this issue. Always has been, always will be. Her views are very "Palestinian" - facts can't persuade her.

Apollyon, the Masada 2000 website looks like an excellent resource. I for one was not aware of it.

Another very useful reference tool on Israel and the Arabs is Myths and Facts Online:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mftoc.html

"-A higher percentage of Canadian Muslims have Master's degrees than Canadian Catholics."

Only if you ignor the fact that a fair percentage of Canadian muslims immigrated to Canader and as such would probably have higher education levels where as most Caltholic Canadians probably grew up in the bushes outside of Chicoutimi, Quebec or Bugtussle, Saskatchewan where a higher (formal) level of education is not a requirement. Nice try Andrew but it don't float.

(Don't let my name fool you!) Srirituality deals with believing in the "unknown." AKA forming an image of what you concieve as "Spirit," and hoping to form a relationship with that form of "your" conception of a Higher Power.
If at a later date you are intelligent enough to record your "spiritual experience," and sell your idea to an audience, you've got yourself a religious movement. The more demons and angels you've got, the more your story will sell!! Hard to fathom?? Not really

I would be curious if by this definition there are ANY moderate Muslims (even in Canada), and if so, what percentage? Certainly not a majority

no, shamrock, the Oslo accord was not 'statehood' or 'nationhood'; it was municipal govt. The boundaries, resources, airspace, foreign affairs etc, all remained in the control of Israel. Again, municipal govt is not national govt.

Israel has the right to define its 'immigrants', you say. I agree; but the people who were living that land base in homes and farms that they had legal title to, could hardly be defined as 'emigrating to Israel'.

Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been lifted and abused by the Islamic fascist conflict. The islamic fascists have used this as a 'reason' for their violence against the West. This externalization of violence is in lieu of violence WITHIN the Muslim world - between those forces that wish to remain primitive and tribal, and the necessity to modernize. The violence and fighting must take place within the Muslim world; they have to deal with this internal conflict. As Sultan pointed out.

And most Arab states don't give a damn about Palestinians.

I don't agree with you that the only reason Israel attacks Palestinians is because they attack Israel. That's a bit too mechanical. You are ignoring the need for land and resources of Israel; they want the land of the West Bank, its waters and resources (water, by the way, which they forbid the Palestinians to use for irrigation; the Pal. can only use water for personal use, while the settlements can irrigate the fields). you are also ignoring the treatment by Israel of the Palestinians - the bulldozing of homes, the forbidden access to farms, etc. If you push a people against the wall, they'll fight back. Then, to claim that they are 'evil' because they fight back and are filled with hate - that's ridiculous.

shamrock - I don't get your point about separation of church and state in the ME; I'm aware of the power of the orthodox in Israel, and Islam most certainly combines the two - but this has nothing to do with the Israel-Palestinian situation.
Have you ever heard of the 1948, 49 Law of Acquisition of Absentee Property? The 1949 Emergency REgulations for Uncultivated Lands? The definition of uncultivated? The inability of the refugee from returning to cultivate that land?

So, I'll stand by all my facts on this conflict.

ET, you can reject the facts of the matter if you wish but that doesn't make your view true, or even remotely close to the truth. The effendi sold Jews swamplands [this is not to imply solely swamplands], which is irrefutable. The Jews drained these swamp lands and built kibbutz’s, this is indisputable. In 1878 the Jews bought the Hullah marshes, they bought the Hadera swamp, from the Turks who owned much land. This land was not sold to Jews out of good nature, it was sold because the Arabs/Turks believed the Jews could do nothing with the land and thought they were taking advantage of them. It is the Jews that got agriculture to grow in a wasteland, it is Jews who toiled the soil and it is Jews that have built the nation of Israel into what it is today. In 1867 the Ottomans gave the Jews even more access in purchasing lands. The British issued White Paper for two reasons, 1) to stop Jewish migration back home and 2) to stop all Jewish purchasing of lands. The British issued this decree to appease the Arabs and the rabid Jew hating Mufti who was Hitler's puppet and organized many pogroms.

ET, I must say you are incredibly misinformed on the history of Israel and the region. You like to claim that Palestinians had their land stolen, do you have any such concerns for Jews who had their lands stolen all throughout the ME and were expelled as well? Are you aware that Israel took in hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian and Iraqi Jews? What have the palestinians muslim brethren ever done for them other than exploit them as a mechanism to bash Israel?

By the way, your statement that only if you establish a 'nation' to you 'own the land' is invalid. The concept of a 'nation' only emerges in human society when the population reaches a certain size.

And what is that size and who determines it? Are you aware the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Hebrew and are two thousand years old? Jews have occupied the land of Israel since time immemorial; if anyone has tried to steal lands it is the Arabs and the countless marauders that came through the region over millennia. Are you aware that Syria and Egypt were Christian nations at one time? How did they become Islamic nations? By the sword, that’s how, yet you expect everyone to believe it was the Evil Jooos™ that took the lands from the peaceful muslims.

And most Arab states don't give a damn about Palestinians.

Here we agree.

I don't agree with you that the only reason Israel attacks Palestinians is because they attack Israel. That's a bit too mechanical.

You must be joking. Yeah, the Jews are the aggressors. Really, do you believe this nonsense? Of all the conflicts around the globe they are almost without exception muslims that cannot get along with their neighbors or host countries. But somehow the palestinians are immune to this islamic behavior; when these palestinians walk into pizzerias and on busses and blow themselves up killing Jewish women and children how do you rationalize this in your mind, by blaming Jews?

OK, ET, let the war continue, along with international terrorism. There is no solution in your approach. Israel is not going to cede sovereignty or land, or anything else, to its enemies, fixated on her destruction. Period. No international law niceties will change that. You don't get my point about separation of church and state in ME - these states are theocracies, where religious leaders are also political leaders.

BTW, Israel has offered to put in infrastructure in "refugee camps" time and time again, and been refused.

Maybe when you and others stop whining about big, bad Israel, and finally accept the dire threat against their homeland. They have been attacked time and time again, but oh its about Israel not willing to step aside in West Bank, to make itself completely vulnerable to attack. Israel has used doctrine of unilateral withdrawal, and all we get is nitpicking, and more attacks.

Do you want peace in that region? Islamism not relevant to Palestinian conflict with Israel (hint: Hamas and Hezbollah use exactly same tactics as Taliban, Iraqui insurgents)

When I hear opinions like I've heard from thoughtful people like you, I am sure there is no hope for peace in Israel/Palestine. Anyway, just my opinion, Israel will defeat all comers anyway - it is foretold, as many say.

Hirsi Ali, a recent interview::

Hirsi Ali: ...There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don't all follow the rules of Islam, but there's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There's nothing moderate about it.

Exactly.

Later in the interview, the Reason interviewer points out that she's in favor of civil liberties, but would appear to deny them fully to Muslims in the West. She responds by saying that to save civil liberties, you have to restrict them on those who would take them away from everyone. She even goes so far as to say that all Muslims schools should be closed down in the US. She says that the Western constitutions that allow freedom of religion are products of the Enlightenment, and were written at a time when no one could have conceived of the jihadi threat. She says passing constitutional restrictions on Muslims is going to happen because the problem of Islamic extremism is not going to go away, and in fact is going to get worse -- though sensibly, she acknowledges at length that there are some pretty strong reasons why America doesn't have the same problem as Europe (e.g., Muslim immigrants to America want to assimilate, there's not a welfare system for them to grow dependent on, white guilt is different in the US, etc.).

She concludes that the West's arrogance is its own worst enemy "because in the West there's this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway." And, she says, this mistaken notion that if we "indulge and appease and condone," everything will work out in the end.
"The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger."

---------------------------

Given some comments here, this needs repeating:

"because in the West there's this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway."

"The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger."

Are you listening ET?

--------------------------------

And,

Fear of fanatical Islamists prompted Ayaan Hirsi Ali to leave the Netherlands, her adopted home, and now she has been forced to return. Paying for her bodyguards in the United States is too expensive for the Dutch government -- what a disgrace.

There are exactly five people that the Dutch government has to protect against death threats from radical Islamists.

This sort of protection is expensive. Society bears the costs because freedom of opinion, a cornerstone of our culture, is on the line. The extremists, for their part, are prepared to risk their own lives to kill those under government protection.

The costs of protection are completely disproportionate to the outcome: the continued existence of our values and norms.

Sorry for the large cut-and-paste, but I think it rounds out one of Apollyon's points:
--------------
In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.

Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.

I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.

There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.

What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?

When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.

The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."

In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.

Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."

Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.

Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.

In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.

All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.

Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.

Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.

Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.

==========
Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (www.jimena-justice.org). E-mail us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

ET, what did the palestinians do once they were given Gaza? They ransacked it and started shooting rockets into Israel from there, some landing into schools. I know this doesn't concern you, you'll chalk it up as myth being the truth seeker you are.

Thank you Mississauga Matt, that's an excellent article. I have several books to recommend on the subject if anyone is interested.

Please, this has been a good discussion for the most part, part I and part II. We need to stay away from the Israel issue, as it detracts from the main concern.

We need a rational and defensible strategy for protecting our society from the primitivism and violence of Islam. This is not a race issue and not a nation issue, other than for the nation of Canada.

It is an issue of ideology. 30 years ago we were comfortable stating, in public and as a matter of public policy that the ideology of communism was flawed and that we were at war with it. We had communists here, but did not put them in camps, did not execute them, but neither did we shelter them and support them. They had their little marches, and their rooms in the university, but the papers and society at large saw through the foolishness of this ideology.

If a group of people had been to come to Canada with the stated intent of overthrowing our democracy and replacing it wiht Soviet Communism, they would have been shown the door.

We won that war, although its seeds are still partially poisoning us. Many of those we fought against are now using the Islam thing to try to get payback.

However, IMHO the "ideology" discussion is the pathway to success here. We need to label the Islamic ideology of theocratic rule, sexual discrimination, violent struggle, and contempt for non-muslm, as unacceptable to this society. We need to make it clear that these ideas are rejected, and those who espouse them are going to be ejected. Crap like the stuff in that Somali mosque web site should not be tolerated. We need to make people who come to Canada sign an oath that they will live by these rules, and those who break them will be deported.

We also need to allow much longer periods of time between entry to Canada and granting of citizenship and the right to bring over family members. Family unification has been a one way road to welfare in Europe.

Lori: Agreed ... let's nix the Israel debate, and stick to the topic.

Who ... what ... is a moderate ... and does it matter anyway?

Honestly, to me it doesn't matter about moderate or not. I'd keep them all out, and it's up to Islam to demonstrate that its adherents is worthy to enter our land. I'd keep them all out until they demonstrate this by deed and by word.

But politically, this is not a position that would survive in the current social climate. People are still of stupid idealistic notions that have become exploited by those who wish to do us harm.

So, I am willing to compromise, since anything is better than the current suicidal policies.

We need to find a way to frame and have the debate in a way that is acceptable to a significant number of Canadians. Right now the media and lefties are having little or no trouble blocking a serious discussion on this issue by simply pointing to the ravings of a few individuals and using them to discredit any serious discussion.

Let's look at a couple of facts. 1) Israel was a child of the UN that fought to exist against all odds. 2) Egypt and Jordan governed Palestine before Israel was created. 3) Arafat was an Egyptian and not a Palestinian and was a communist first and a Muslim by necessity. 4) Palestinian issue was not a problem before Al Qaida; before that Israel was the problem, so the Palestinian issue is a red herring. From this we can also conclude that here is a pecking order amongst Arabs and at the bottom are the Palestinians. That’s why the other Arab countries don’t want Palestinian refugees. Egypt having a massive wall between itself and the Gaza Strip further evidences this.

What this lady is saying is true. Muslims have been feuding for centuries among themselves and much of it revolves around the role of the clerics. Christianity went through that over the centuries and we evolved to the power of the clerics over our everyday life being severely deminished. Most of it was as a result of the science and new technologies and discoveries. All of which happened as Europe opened up its eyes to the world and learned of other faiths and what they can offer Christianity.

apollyon - the structure of 'nation' is linked to population size, which is linked to economic mode and didn't appear until the 10th or so century. Before, you had 'cities' and territories but not a 'nation'.

I also don't accept 'First Footprint' as a legitimate definer of ownership. If that were the case, then Canada, US, Australia etc, couldn't exist as such but would by rights belong to the indigeneous peoples.

You are merging the fight between Israel-Palestine and Islamic fascism. I think that's a serious error; they are two absolutely different things. Hamas and Hezbollah are Islamic fascist fronts, funded by Iran - and are an example of this merger. They functionally act to refocus the Islamic world on the vital changes the Muslims have to make within their own ideology and mode of life - into a West-Vs-Muslims agenda.

irwin daisy - I've been saying all along that the West must reject multiculturalism, must reject Islamic demands that we behave like them. I've also been saying all along that Islamic fascism has nothing to do with Israel-Palestine. So, since I have been saying both these things as long as you've been reading this blog - what's your point?

I don't accept your view that because the Arabs expelled the Jews, then, the Israeli expelling of the Palestinians is OK.

I also find it puzzling that the state of Israel, its policies, its history, its agenda, are almost a religious axiom, immune to dissent and critique. That is the problem with Islam - its refusal to allow its axioms to be questioned.

lori- I fully agree with your points. What has prevented Canadians from criticizing and rejecting Islamic demands is Trudeau's Charter and its multiculturalism. This is a policy that legally sets up group rights as privileged over individual rights. The groups, moreover, are defined by hereditary classification - ethnicity, religious, linguistic.

This law of multiculturalism effectively shut up Canadians. And, particularly, in Ontario - the centre of immigration for Canada. The fact that Islam is essentially a social and political mode, protected from questions and change, by defining this behaviour as a religion - means that when we critique any beliefs or behaviour, we are rapidly accused of 'racism', bigotry and the like.

We have to keep voicing our objections, however, and insist that our civic rule is non-negotiable and that if they wish to immigrate to our country, they must accept our basic rules. This is being done elsewhere in the West - but it's going to have to be, as Sultan pointed out, repeated and repeated and repeated. The Muslim world has to, itself, change itself. But, as she said - we have to keep pounding on their cement walls and insisting that they do so.

Lori: I'd settle for limited Muslim immigration from a variety of countries. As long the cultural groups are diverse and small, enclaves won't form ... and it's enclaves based not only on Islam, but on regional similarity, that I'm concerned about. I don't want' "little" Syria or "little" Indonesia in my back yard ... not until there's been a transformation in Islam.

Case in point. A woman I know who is an executive; is very outgoing, is very talented, is very educated; is about to get married into an arranged marriage. Her new husband will come to Canada as a result, and she is going to put on the hijab ... which she's never worn, and is going to embrace the more conservative ways of her husband. It's as if she's lost her brains ... yet she's going to do it because she believes in Islam. She's been here since she was a small child ... go figure.

A rare case you say ... look to Europe then decide.

"Crap like the stuff in that Somali mosque web site should not be tolerated."

Encouraged, I guess, by Kathy's posts on the subject, I am finding khalidmosque.com to be infinitely fascinating. It’s a must read to see the unbelievable kookiness we’re up against.

Examples:

- I lose my wudoo' when I am praying and when reading Qur'aan, by breaking wind either with a noise or with just a smell.
- I have a question about sleeping on your belly....why is it haraam sleeping on your belly?
- I hope that you can provide me with a scientific answer – if such knowledge is available – about the saheeh hadeeth about drinking camel’s urine.
- In Islam, what is Ruling on joking?
- Is it allowed for me to uncover my hand only in front of my brother-in-law?
- Are there airports and airplanes in Paradise?
- What is Meaning of the word Pokemon ?
- Can i get married to my cousin who is 1 and a half year younger than me? She is my mom's brother's daughter. i really love her.

ET says:

"I've been saying all along that the West must reject multiculturalism, must reject Islamic demands that we behave like them."

Why should Israel accept Islamic demands that Jews live as dhimmis?
Israel is fighting the same battle as the rest of the West.
Until the West recognizes this, and tells the Islamic world that they must get over their obsession/fixation with Jews, Islam will never moderate.

no, ex-liberal, the ME is not asking Jews to live as 'dhimmis' and the Israel-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with the basic infrastructural problem within Islam.

Islam, as I've said many times, is a sociopolitical mode, sealed against change by defining it as a religion - that emerged within the 6th-7th c as an obvious economic reaction to the takeover of its pastoral land requirements by Christian agricultural settlements. A pastoral economy requires a large land base, with a lot of left fallow for regeneration. The Islamic axioms are obviously those of a pastoral economy - and one whose land base is under siege.

The remarkable thing is - a 7th c. economy and ideology 'froze'. I can't think of a comparison. Not even the peasant economy in China set itself up as immune to reason, to doubt, to questions. It's quite a remarkable act - to freeze the mind of a people. So, it has been effectively trapped and unable to free itself.

Christianity, as an ideology, began as an economic perspective of 'everyone who is different can still get along and work with each other as neighbours'. It was an open religion, but was taken over by a political authority, the church, for centuries.

This authority rejected the right of reason for the peasants, and channelled the right to reason of its priestly class within certain non-disputable political axioms (peasants can't read, can't reason outside of peasant concerns), but, left man with his reason...eg..the great works of the scholastics. However, the economy required innovation - and also had to get the economy off the local farm - so, the reformation enabled that.

But Islam has, remarkably, remained frozen. Until after WWII and the discovery, by the West, of oil. Islam, however, has no science, no technology and has had to rely on the west to extract and manufacture its oil. And frankly, every other technology it uses. But, Islamic countries can't afford for their populations to remain frozen; they must modernize.

What is happening - is that the ME is going through cataclysmic changes - fighting these changes - but going through them. And the Muslims moving to the West are finding that they can remain intellectually frozen. They can get jobs in the West, can get education, can get welfare if they want - and - can remain intellectually and morally frozen.
That's because of our multiculturalism.

As Sultan says - we can't allow it; we have to pound on their cement walls, and refuse to allow them to change us.

I also don't accept 'First Footprint' as a legitimate definer of ownership. If that were the case, then Canada, US, Australia etc, couldn't exist as such but would by rights belong to the indigeneous peoples.

I know we’ve taken the thread on a tangent but it is relevant to the subject.

ET, you seem like a decent person and I enjoyed your comments on other threads. I am extremely surprised someone of your intelligence holds the false views you do on the subject at hand. Jews have a claim to the land on many levels. Jews were there long before the Arabs came and Judaism predated Islam by many centuries. Jesus, a Jew, was born in Israel. We have been there since the very beginning and have fought off the heathens for millenia, only recently with great success.

Based on your quote do you view Canadians and Americans as occupiers?

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909901.html

A teeny step in the right direction? France wants immigrants bringing in "family" members to prove that they are really relatives using DNA tests.

Not a single data point to counter my claim that Muslims are more successful than white people in Canada?

Show me a 15 year old white girl and a 15 year old Muslim girl and the Muslim girl will make more money, have more children, have a better marriage and a better family, have better manners and attitude, and overall live a better and more productive life than the typical 15 year old white Canadian girl. Same goes for boys too.

In light of the fact that the Muslims are beating the pants off us *on our own turf at our own game* it is simply absurd to criticize Islam and its followers. We need to get our act together and the people who ignore this fact and hide this fact are causing more damage to western civilization than the 9-11 hijackers ever did.

Yup ET you have it all figured out - Jews living in the "democratic state of Palestine" would have equal rights before the law, and surely wouldn't be expected to live as dhimmis. I'm sure they would be safe and sound and allowed to vote - oh I forgot, the "Palestinians" and their supporters think that it is reasonable to insist that Judea and Samaria be Judenrein - free of Jews.

Appolyon and Miss. Matt, thanks for your posts. I have been perplexed by ET's position on Israel for a couple of years now. She usually just dismisses me. Her analysis is very Marxist - based on economics and materialism.

I still agree with CJunk - number one order of business for Islam to moderate is for Muslims to get over their sick obsession with Jews. Islam will moderate when it takes down the Dome of the Rock as recognition that they just built it there because that is the site of the two Jewish Temples.

andrew, the reason there is no data claim that Muslims are 'more successful than white people' in Canada is because your variables are invalid.

Muslim is a religion, not a skin colour. You can be a Muslim and have a black, brown or white skin colour. Equally, you can be a Christian and have a black, brown or white skin colour. Or a Jew - can be black, brown or white in skin colour.

To try to set up a correlation - and are you even going so far as to make the invalid claim that correlation implies causality?--to try to set up a correlation with such invalid variables means that is is, right from the start, unanswerable.

Lori- yes, I saw that French rule; I think they are absolutely right to do that.

apollyon - Judaism predated Christianity as well. So what? My point is that 'First Footprint', as I term it, doesn't legitimize eternal ownership. Human beings have wandered over, settled, and moved away from, multiple land bases since they moved out of Africa. Does that mean that if a group were in one area and moved away for whatever reasons, that their descendants, no matter whether 'direct' or vastly indirect - have the right to claim ownership of that land for all time? I absolutely don't accept that.

Therefore, since I don't accept that, then, I don't claim that Canada and America are occupying N. America.

But,if I were to use your argument, you would have to define the true owners of this N. American land, as the indigeneous peoples - just as you claim that the true owners of Israel are, now, the Jewish people because they were there, like the indigeneous peoples, a 'long time ago'.

When I am referring to Israeli occupation, I refer to the lands of the West Bank and Gaza.

As far as Israel was concerned, it ought to have paid valid and full compensation for the lands and homes of the Palestinians. I refer you to the 1949 Knesset act 'Emergency Regulations relative to property of absentees', the 1949, 'law of acquisition of absentee property; the definition of refugees as 'absent'; the impossibility of a refugee from returning to his land; the acts of the Custodian..etc, etc. I'm sure you are aware of all of this - which effectively rejected any compensation and simply acted as land grabs.

A teeny step in the right direction? France wants immigrants bringing in "family" members to prove that they are really relatives using DNA tests.

Lori, France is not looking good, despite their half hearted measures. They seem destined to be a nation of burqas and mosques. This time it will be the islamists marching down the Champs Elysées.

The fact of the matter is the more muslims we allow into the country the more backward they all become.

Their purpose is to achieve critical mass in order to take over an area and then a country from within, like parasites. Take Dearborn, for example. Pamphlets were recently placed on cars in a parking lot commanding the death of Christians and Jews and all who don't accept allah and his messenger.

As they grow in numbers they become bolder, the false 'peace' pretense is dropped and they revert to their normal savage mode.

"Show me a 15 year old white girl and a 15 year old Muslim girl and the Muslim girl will make more money, have more children, have a better marriage and a better family, have better manners and attitude, and overall live a better and more productive life than the typical 15 year old white Canadian girl. Same goes for boys too."

Moonbats like the idiot who made the above statement are slowing down the inevetable process towards an immigration ban and laws being changed to reduce the Islamic threat. BTW, if muslim immigration continues, that 15 year old muslim girl won't have a future. Instead, perhaps an early death.

You know who worries me as much as crazy Muslims? You guys. You all have a lot in common. You should get together... you'd probably like each other

Did the idiot bell go off in the idiot cave? Who invited 'John' to comment?

The simple fact of the matter is that there are a number of quarters in the ME that have wholus bolus adopted the policy of 'VERNICHTUNG' or extermination. Al Qaeda would be among the more virulent proponents of this policy.

Hence the frequent cries of "Death to Israel" or "Death to the USA" and the recurrent themes of "Zionism".

This is just a recasting of the old policy of 'lebensraum'. If only Israel is destroyed, or as Dr. Ahmadinejad put it, 'wiped off the map'; then there will be peace. Thus we have the policy of "Judenrein" or Jewish free being reinvoked as they should now all move to Europe or Alaska (during the NS period they floated the idea Jews should all be deported to Madagascar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

Recall if you will the lebensraum policies of the Anschluss of Austria, Sudetenland of Czechslovakia, invasion of Poland, etc. then Germany will finally take its rightful place in the world. This has its analogues in the previous wars with Iraq though they were largely unsuccessful with much blood shed on both sides.

In short, peace will only occur once all other enemies have been liquidated. This is simply the secular playbook adopted from Adolf and recast in a religious wrapper. In a word, it is the twisting of religious expression to fascism. You will be put to the sword because you are not like me, come what may. Become like us or die.

Hence the offers of Dr. Ahadinejad to the USA to 'reject Satan' and convert to Islam.

The rest is simply buying time until they are ready to pursue, not the internal jihad of self-improvement, but rather the external jihad when a 'pure Islam' will rule over all.

To cut and parry through all the anthropological and historical discussions this, is like "Deutschland" or rather "(Islam)Uber Alles".

Western politicians can dither and doddle all they want, it won't make a whit of difference to those who are buying into the "My version of Islam is purer, than yours."

The fratricidal disputes between various subsets of Islamic fascism are akin to Adolf's secular version of the "Night of the Long Knives" or "my version of National Socialism is purer than yours."

The proponents of Islamic fascism need a new playbook. This has all been attempted before and it was a decidedly ugly affair.

What Dr. Ahmadinejad has failed to explain is why is the 'success' of Iran is dependent on 'wiping Israel off the map'.

Recall his statements that this was a sixty year old 'problem', ie 1948 formation of Israel.

This might be described as a severe case of "schadenfreude". (Joy at other's misfortune.)

If indeed Dr. Ahmadinejad is sincere in his desire to avoid a new Holocaust one might employ a new speech writer as the current one is somewhat 'thinly veiled'.

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht BGS, PDP, CFP

Commander in Chief

Frankenstein Battalion

2nd Squadron: Ulanen-(Lancers) Regiment Großherzog Friedrich von Baden (Rheinisches) Nr.7 (Saarbrucken)

Knecht Rupprecht Division

Hans Corps

1st Saint Nicolaas Army

Army Group “True North”

RE: Palestine and Israel

1. An equal amount of Jews were expelled from Arab regions as Arabs from Israel.

This should take the wind out of the sails of the "but the Refugee Camps" arguement. Jews lived in concentration and death camps before fighting for their own country.

2. The Israelis keep winning the wars.

The only way to maintain sovereignty over an area is to defend it with the military. Israel has done this efficiently and effectively.

3. No one was anywhere first.

The first footprint argument is pointless. Things are as they are now. Expelling or killing the Jooz so that the Palestinians may return to 'their' land is retarded. I would argue that anyone who believes this is retarded.

4. Anti Israel and Antisemitism is the same thing.

Saying you hate a nation is saying you hate those who live in that nation. It's easy for people to hate Israel because there has been a history of people hating the Jewish for millenia.

5. How will destroying (or censuring) Israel make the world a better place?

For real. I want to know.

Yeah good point John. Just a minute, my bomb vest is getting a bit tight. I notice you have something in common with Islamist killers - you're both total idiots.

When I am referring to Israeli occupation, I refer to the lands of the West Bank and Gaza.

You do realize Gaza was given to the paleostinians. There were Jews in the west bank long before Arabs and the paleostinians have a home on the east bank- Jordan. When you refer to occupation you have no idea what you're talking about.

Does that mean that if a group were in one area and moved away for whatever reasons, that their descendants, no matter whether 'direct' or vastly indirect - have the right to claim ownership of that land for all time? I absolutely don't accept that.

First off Jews have always been within Israel including during all the occupations. Secondly, Jews bought the vast majority of the land which you are wholly ignorant of. You didn't even realize the Turks owned much of the land nor were you even aware of the business relationship between the Jews and the effendi. I dare to say you hadn't heard of the Grand Mufti until I mentioned it and Matt's article mentioned him, although by his name al-Husseini. On what grounds do you claim that the land belongs to the Arabs?

Your arguments are rooted in emotion, no facts whatsoever.

Not that this is the greatest indicator of success, but in Mississauga there are numerous newly-built houses of worship (note to downtown Toronto metrosexuals: religion isn't on the wane; come to the 'burbs and see it in action). To my knowledge there is only one large mosque/Islamic compound, that being the ISNA site at the QEW and Erin Mills Parkway.

The ISNA of course have been identified as unidicted co-conspirators in the U.S. government's investigation of the Holy Land Foundation, and allegedly receive funding from Saudi Arabia (the Catholics, God bless 'em, plunked a school down right next to them).

Aside from that I only know of one other purpose-built mosque, while the rest reside in out of the way industrial buildings.

Contrast that with the Copts, who after having suffered at the hands of Muslims, have come to Canada I would guess in roughly the same time-frame and have built a rather massive church and compound on Eglinton. They also have this rather curious new church on Dundas that is attached to a pharmacy (!).

Their numbers are significantly smaller but their output appears to be equal.

Even though there are a lot of Muslims in Mississauga, it's hard to detect any external signs of success; there are a few grocery stores and shawarma shops. That's about it. Same thing in Toronto - shawarma seems to be the extent of it.

ET says:

"I refer you to the 1949 Knesset act 'Emergency Regulations relative to property of absentees', the 1949, 'law of acquisition of absentee property; the definition of refugees as 'absent'; the impossibility of a refugee from returning to his land; the acts of the Custodian..etc, etc."

Oh I see, after its war of Independence, Israel should have just let the people who were trying to destroy them back in to live among them - yup I'm sure that would work out splendidly.

"A parallel can be drawn to the time of the American Revolution, during which many colonists who were loyal to England fled to Canada. The British wanted the newly formed republic to allow the loyalists to return to claim their property. Benjamin Franklin rejected this suggestion in a letter to Richard Oswald, the British negotiator, dated November 26, 1782:

Your ministers require that we should receive again into our bosom those who have been our bitterest enemies and restore their properties who have destroyed ours: and this while the wounds they have given us are still bleeding!"

After the 1948 war, Israel did make a substantial repatriation offer during these negotiations. The government said it would accept 100,000 refugees in a general settlement of the problem. Israel hoped that each Arab state would make a similar commitment. This offer was rejected.

On April 1, 1950, the Arab League adopted a resolution forbidding its members from negotiating with Israel.

The Israeli government was not indifferent to the plight of the refugees; an ordinance was passed creating a Custodian of Abandoned Property "to prevent unlawful occupation of empty houses and business premises, to administer ownerless property, and also to secure tilling of deserted fields, and save the crops...."47

The implied danger of repatriation did not prevent Israel from allowing some refugees to return and offering to take back a substantial number as a condition for signing a peace treaty. In 1949, Israel offered to allow families that had been separated during the war to return, to release refugee accounts frozen in Israeli banks (eventually released in 1953), to pay compensation for abandoned lands and to repatriate 100,000 refugees.48

The Arabs rejected all the Israeli compromises. They were unwilling to take any action that might be construed as recognition of Israel. They made repatriation a precondition for negotiations, something Israel rejected. The result was the confinement of the refugees in camps.

Despite the position taken by the Arab states, Israel did release the Arab refugees' blocked bank accounts, which totaled more than $10 million, paid thousands of claimants cash compensation and granted thousands of acres as alternative holdings.

While Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance, Palestinians received millions of dollars through UNRWA. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel nearly $3 million. The total Arab pledges amounted to approximately $600,000. For the first 20 years, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the funds, while the Arab states continued to contribute a tiny fraction. Israel donated more funds to UNRWA than most Arab states. The Saudis did not match Israel's contribution until 1973; Kuwait and Libya, not until 1980. As recently as 1994, Israel gave more to UNRWA than all Arab countries except Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco.

Andrew,

The reason why Muslim Canadians are better educated than Roman Catholic Canadians is that Muslim Canadians had to prove their worth to our immigration board to be allowed in the country. The Catholics on the other hand are "modern indigenous", meaning they are second, third, 4th and 5th generation Canadians, not required to prove their worth.

I think it's telling that no one ever speaks of how great Palestinians are, only how terrible the Jews are.

You GO Apollyon. ET is mostly terrific but has the wrong narrative here. A testament to the virtuosity of Arab propaganda.

ET: There has never been any compensation for the 850,000 or so Jewish refugees from Arab lands -- who lost everything. The number is greater than the "Palestinian" refugees.

You are technically incorrect in describing the WB and Gaza as occupied lands. More like No Mans Lands. Israel took it in defence against 5 Arab aggressor countries AND no peace was established. And also most curioulsy, perhaps for the first time in history, the victor sued for Peace -- unsuccessfully.

As to your sentamentalism about "occupation" curious how the invented people, the "Palestinians" had no issue with Egypt's occupation of Gaza and Jordan's occupation of the West Bank post 1948.

I believe this is right:
In world history land taken in a defensive war is considered the property of the victor. If I'm not mistaken, only in the case of Israel has the UN made a resolution making possession of land taken in a defensive war illegal.

You know who worries me as much as crazy Muslims? You guys. You all have a lot in common. You should get together... you'd probably like each other.

Yeah, we both breathe air and drink water, we're almost indistinguishable.

Ex-liberal, Mississauga Matt, Jon, Hans, Shamrock, Irwin, Me No Dhimmi, and others, as a Jew I thank you for fighting the propaganda. I will give ET the benefit of the doubt and say he/she is arguing in good faith, the problem is, he/she has no knowledge of the region or the chronology, just regurgitated arab propaganda.

The paleostinians have paved the path for the jihadists; lets not forget arafat is the godfather of airplane hijackings. The paleostinians have shown the world that terrorism pays; Al Qaeda has taken note. As the paleostinians say; “From the Jordan to the sea”, which translates as they want all of Israel with the Jews pushed into the sea. Then you have the muslim saying of “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”, which translates as first we’ll kill the Jews and then we’ll kill the Christians. ET, you seem to recognize muslim barbarity throughout the ME but in Israel you have this cognitive dissonance as to believe the paleostinians are somehow above this Islamic madness. Ironically the paleostinians are some of the more depraved jihadists.

John:

The thread topic, Dr. Wafa Sultan, practicing muslim.
Do you consider her remarks racist or "islamophobic"?
sda for linking to the interview?

Discuss. Here's your chance.

apollyon - Judaism predated Christianity as well.

It matters because it shows you how long the Jews have been there; over 5,000 years. It matters because it seems your unsubstantiated claim that Jews "stole arab lands" is rooted in the fact that Arabs were, in your warantless opinion, there first. Who did the Arabs steal their land from? Would you care to prove that arabs somehow bought the land from the Jews who were there long before them?

There is no shame in being wrong, there is shame in choosing to be willfully ignorant because the reality doesn't sit well with your preconceived notions.

"The reason why Muslim Canadians are better educated than Roman Catholic Canadians is that Muslim Canadians had to prove their worth to our immigration board to be allowed in the country."

Thank you, Captain Axiomatic. Why do you hate science? Surely if you aren't just wanking you have some data to actually disprove what I am saying rather than spewing the obvious, so let's see it.

Better yet, why don't you Islamophobitards pool your money together and hire a smart person to make an argument on your behalf, because you have been found wanting. Seriously, don't just blurt out hatred, let's see some freaking numbers for once.

And not emo-numbers like 911 and 2,997, I want to see applied science showing that AS COMPARED TO OTHER IMMIGRANT GROUPS AND ACTUAL CANADIANS it can reasonably be argued that Muslims should be banned from immigrating to Canada.

Personally I would like to see a 5 year immigration freeze. Hardcore enough for you? It's just the stupidity of singling out Muslims that offends me.

Kind of trying to get back on topic. What no one has asked or answered here in the rush to embrace "moderate Islam" is "why should Islam moderate?". The west represents everything Islam views as evil. We brag of sexual freedom the Muslim calls it sexual deviancy and a great evil. We boast of our wealth and the Muslim calls it crass commercialism where the only reason you didn't sell your mother is because its against the law. We boast of our schools and universities and the muslim laughs at our naivity for not understanding the foolishness of what is being taught. We boast of the emancipation of women and the muslim laughs at our hypersexualized culture. Point of fact is that Islam will not moderate to meet our standards because our standards are evil in the mind of the Muslim. All our wishing and wanting isn't going to moderate Islam. The best the west can hope for is every muslim who lives in the west fails to pracice the core beliefs of his religion and every muslim living in muslim lands fails to launch an attack on western lands.

Andrew,

Please show me where I was Islamophobic. Also, you asked the question about Catholics, muslims and education first. Show me how my axiom is wrong.

I don't support any immigration ban. I do support selecting the best and brightest to replace our best and brightest (who all move to the States where taxes are lower).

I could make up imaginary numbers but I'd rather let you prove to everyone that you're retarded. How many Muslims lived in Canada before we introduced qualification based immigration reform? Maybe we should play the game of "Why is my doctor a muslim?"

"Not a single data point to counter my claim that Muslims are more successful than white people in Canada?"

No single date point can explain my love of cupcakes. If you don't feel like an idiot maybe you should check your pulse.

Andrew,

Please show me where I was Islamophobic. Also, you asked the question about Catholics, muslims and education first. Show me how my axiom is wrong.

I don't support any immigration ban. I do support selecting the best and brightest to replace our best and brightest (who all move to the States where taxes are lower).

I could make up imaginary numbers but I'd rather let you prove to everyone that you're retarded. How many Muslims lived in Canada before we introduced qualification based immigration reform? Maybe we should play the game of "Why is my doctor a muslim?"

"Not a single data point to counter my claim that Muslims are more successful than white people in Canada?"

Not a single date point to counter my claim that I love cupcakes. If you don't feel like an idiot maybe you should check your pulse.

That was a major ass-whupping you laid on ET there, ex-liberal. Good job.

It is imperative to reject the Arab narrative on the subject, for it is a lie.

That was a major ass-whupping you laid on ET there, ex-liberal. Good job.
It is imperative to reject the Arab narrative on the subject, for it is a lie.
Posted by: Mississauga Matt at October 5, 2007 6:42 PM

Thanks MM. I missed ex-Liberal's ass-whupping at 5:40 pm. Splendid. In fact I'm copying this to my ammo file on the subject.

And yes, "for it is a lie". Amen. BIG LIE.

apollyon - I'm standing by my claim that 'First Footstep' is an invalid claim for land ownership. The fact that Jews have 'always lived there' doesn't mean that they have the right to take over the homes and farms of Palestinians who have legal title to those homes/farms.

After all, to use your argument, that would mean that natives in N. America, who have 'always lived here' would have legal right to this nation and all homes and farms.

ex-liberal; that's ridiculous. An analysis based on economics is not a Marxist analysis! What nonsense. All people must live within an economy; does that mean that any and all analysis of their basic subsidence is Marxist? Don't you know what a Marxist analysis implies??? [ a class conflict, a linear historical progression to utopian non-ownership..etc.etc.[

Islamic fascism is an ideology that has externalized the situation in Islam and the ME. Rather than facing the problem of political tribalism, Islamic fascism posits a utopian system...etc.etc I've defined political tribalism and Islamic fascism so mny times I won't repeat it. Obviously - most of you have ignored the outlines.

To state that because Jews were expelled from Arab lands justifies expelling Palestinians, without compension - is ethically and morally untenable.

Criticism of Israel is not equivalent to anti-semitism.

No, the 1948- regulations about the property of 'Absentees' can't be defined as 'preventing them from attacking us'. After all, these Palestinians had fled Israel; they hadn't attacked anyone, and there was no proof that they would if allowed to return. Of course, since a basic axiom of Israel is a Jewish majority population, then, it is obvious they wouldn't be allowed to return.

But, ethically, morally - the right thing for Israel to do - would have been to have paid compensation!!!!

Heck - even the land grabs by the Europeans in N. America - the vast treaties over land and resources - were compensatory, no matter how trivial the amounts were to our modern eyes.

no, apollyon, your claim that the Jews bought all the land from the Turks and Grand Mufti (and of course I've heard the name; I'm not quite as ignorant as you think)...the homes and farms owned by the Palestinians were not bought.

Joe - why should Islam moderate? It has no choice. In the ME, it HAS to moderate. It has to enable its people to THINK, to do their own technological devts and not rely on foreigners; it has to enable its people to move into science. And, it has to move out of political tribalism, which empowers an elite tribe and reduces the rest of the population to 'serfs'.

This mode of non-thought and uninvovlement in the economic, and political actions of the society may have been viable in smaller populations, but the ME populations have grown too large to disempower the vast majority of their citizens. And, these people have become urban rather than rural. They have to develop an ideology that permits the population to think, to question, to explore...rather than to sit passively and let a few authoritarian leaders make all the deicision.

Then, the ME must move into industrialism; It can't rely on one resource, oil, extracted by the technology of foreigners - and simply subsidize its population from this revenue. It must enable its people to industrialize, develop industries, services, etc.

It must enable the devt of education, universities and science. That means that it must free its population from its old patriarchal lifestyle, it must consider the genders equal, educate women...on and on.

In the ME, they have no choice. They must move out of the 7th c. and into the modern industrial world. That also means that they must move into democracy - to empower the whole population rather than just one elite tribe. The ME must permit the devt of a middle class - who are free to think, work, innovate.

They will; they are fighting against it. Islamic fascism is an attempt to retain political tribalism. But - they have no choice. It will come.

The problem is, that the 'old way' is being exported as a cultural system, into the West. So, we have massive immigration into the West, where they live within an industrial economy, BUT, maintain their 7th c. mindset. And demand that we accomodate this mindset - of gender inequality, of sharia law, etc, etc. We must refuse.

no, apollyon, your claim that the Jews bought all the land from the Turks and Grand Mufti (and of course I've heard the name; I'm not quite as ignorant as you think)...the homes and farms owned by the Palestinians were not bought.

What farms did the Arabs have? They weren't allowed to own land for the most part, it was owned by the Effendi/Turks.

ET, you simply do not know what you're talking about. I just read a post of yours on another thread and it was excellent. I have no idea how you reconcile your views.

"Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in 1867, shortly before the commencement of modern Jewish resettlement, and described it as “a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent, mournful expanse… A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.” According to the careful population figures of the Ottoman Empire, in 1882 (at the very beginning of the modern, organized Jewish immigration back to the ancestral home), the total population of land between the Jordan and the Sea was less than 250,000 – in an area that today supports ten million people, Israelis and Palestinians.

The resettlement of the sparsely populated Holy Land by the descendants of its ancient inhabitants, however, did not take place solely in the modern era. Throughout Jewish history, waves of returnees came back to the sacred soil of their ancestors. In the 8th and 9th centuries, A.D., Jewish immigrants re-established major communities in Jerusalem and Tiberias; by the 11th Century, they had built new communities in Jaffa, Ashkelon, Caesarea and Rafah. In the 16th Century, more Jewish immigrants developed the famous center of mysticism in Safed and beginning in the 1700’s religious scholars and pilgrims intensely repopulated Jerusalem.

The Jewish connection to Israel, in other words, remained impassioned and unbroken for some three thousand years, while the British connection with North American began only in 1607 (with Jamestown) and 1620 (with the Pilgrims at Plymouth). No European settlers to the New World claimed an ancient connection to the land they discovered, developed, and gradually populated. Moreover, the Native Americans who preceded them came to the Western Hemisphere across the land bridge from Asia at the very latest some 13,000 years before the White Men arrived, while the Arabs appeared in Israel for the first time in the 7th Century."

ET: Did you read ex-Liberals post at 5:40pm. It demolishes your compensation argument.

But ET is correct that the Jews bought the land from private persons -- often at highly inflated prices that the Arabs found amusing.

And it is true that the Zionists held the fallacious understanding that it was "a land without a people for a people without a land".

BUT, they bought the land, didn't steal it, or pilfer it as a friend tried to claim today.

AND they definitely did not harbour a plan to eject the Arabs.

Both of which are the principal lies that pro-Arab leftists have swallowed.

After all, these Palestinians had fled Israel; they hadn't attacked anyone, and there was no proof that they would if allowed to return.

ET, let me tell you why they left. When the British made "palestine" a UN problem and the UN decided to partition Israel the Arabs vowed to kill all the Jews the day this went into effect. They told the paleostinians to leave for the borders while they kill all the Jews and then allow the Arabs to return to confiscate Jews homes and businesses. The Arab armies prepared to crush the Jews but surprise, surprise, the Jews, outnumbered and equipped, beat the crap out of the Arab armies. Again, you have said nothing about the approx 1 million Jews purged from their homes and lands throughout the ME.

From the Book From Time Immemorial:

Prior to the 1948 war Arab leaders invited Arabs in Israel to leave and come to the borders while the Arab armies destroy the Jews. The Arabs were convinced it would be a slaughter, and told the Arabs in Israel to flee at once; it was to be in their best interest. The Arabs obviously had it backwards on who would get slaughtered.

According to a report by the Arab sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut had these findings: "The majority of Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier".

Estimates range from 430,000 to 650,000 of Arabs who fled Israel due to Arab propaganda.

In 1958, former director of UNRWA Ralph Galloway declared angrily while in Jordan: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die."

Arab leader King Hussein 1960: "Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner....They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal".

I don't think ET actually reads my post so here is some more information (available at CAMERA and Myths and Facts).

• Arabs refused Israel's 1949 offer to unconditionally admit 100,000 Palestinians

As a goodwill gesture during the Lausanne negotiations in 1949, Israel offered to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees prior to any discussion of the refugee question. The Arab states, who had refused even to negotiate face-to-face with the Israelis, turned down the offer because it implicitly recognized Israel's existence.

Despite this, on humanitarian grounds Israel has since the 1950's allowed more than 50,000 refugees to return to Israel under a family reunification program, and between 1967 and 1993 allowed a further 75,000 to return to the West Bank or Gaza. Since the beginning of the Oslo process Israel has allowed another 90,000 Palestinians to gain residence in PA-controlled territory.

• Israeli compensation to Arabs who lost property

Arabs who lost property in Israel are eligible to file for compensation from Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property. As of the end of 1993, a total of 14,692 claims had been filed, claims were settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Sheckels) had been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land had been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.

Thanks MM, me-no-dhimmi, Apollyon, Jon, Hans and everyone else who challenges ET on her position. She is well respected here and thus other readers who do not know so much on this subject may take up her erroneous view. I say that she is "Marxist" because she boils the whole thing down to materialism (their land was stolen, etc) - but I maintain that it is an ideological problem within Islam - Islam will never be moderate until it can accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

I too am Jewish and will not be silent while people tell lies about Jews and Israel. I have seen and heard ET's perspectives from many relatives and friends who basically take the standard leftist position: "it's our fault"

ET's perspectives from many relatives and friends who basically take the standard leftist position: "it's our fault"

Ex-liberal, many in the West particularly those on the left suffer from White Guilt, the American liberals have a chronic case of this pitiful mindset.

I too am Jewish.......ex-liberal

Shabbat Shalom.

ET: Read ex-liberal's 5:40pm post. And the new one at 7:29pm.

Splendid work ex-liberal. I am not a Jew but feel the same way about Israel as I did at age 18 in the summer of 1967 and remain mystified as to how the world, which then cheered, turned.

I believe I now understand how that happened. Arab propaganda (Nazi- taught), the finest propaganda in world history. Bar none. And of course The Euro-Arab dialogue so exquisitely documented by the amazing Bat Ye'or.

ET, usually a logical and wise commentator, seems wilfully blind on this issue. It is somewhat disturbing to me.

Somewhere along the way I read that the Pals, on a per capita basis, have received more funds than did western Europeans under the Marshall Plan.

Given that, the compensation outlined above, the fuel, water, electricity, jobs, etc that Israel provides, the Pals have been amply compensated.

ET,

I have not added to this palestinian (BTW, I like paleostinian, very appropriate) argument on this thread, despite your earlier claim. Now I must. There is no such thing as the Palestinians as they define themselves now. It is an historical fraud. Do you really believe the ballooning population of those so-called arabs who claim to be Palestinians actually are? If so, you disapoint me.

Despite the fact we don't agree on everything, you have always exhibited a great ability to reasor. However, on this point you are glaringly wrong. Todays so-called Palestinians are the modern day exemplars of terrorism, by the book, otherwise called the Quran. Compare them to others who have a legitimate claim to lands such as the Tibetans. There is no comparison. Oscar Wilde said, "The first sign of genius is contradiction." Given the historical evidence against your claim, perhaps you should consider changing your wrong-headed POV.

"It matters because it shows you how long the Jews have been there; over 5,000 years. It matters because it seems your unsubstantiated claim that Jews "stole arab lands" is rooted in the fact that Arabs were, in your warantless opinion, there first. Who did the Arabs steal their land from? Would you care to prove that arabs somehow bought the land from the Jews who were there long before them?"

The ten tribes of Israel were established there around 2000 BC, no? The Jews represent two tribes - Judah and Benjamin, with a sprinkling of the priestly cast - the Levites thrown in.

The 'Arabs' were nothing more than tribal nomads up to the time of Mo. To call most of the people in the mideast Arab is a major historically lie. In fact, take a look at the statuary and mummies in Cairo and elsewhere from the earlier Egyptian kingdoms. Red and blonde hair, painted blue eyes. Hardly Arab, unless they were into hair dying and colored contact lenses. Medes, Hittites, Assyrians, Phonecians, etc. the fertile crescent was a mix of Semetic and Indo-European people. Even the original east Indians venture a claim on 'Abrahm-Abraham' as nomenclature of the title 'Bramah.'

Apollyon,

While I am not Jewish, I sympathize with the J-Team. The reasons are pretty simple. I feel guilty for centuries of European antisemitism. I am afraid of a middle east without a democratic and pro American influence. I also think girls firing guns is pretty hot (Thanks IDF!).

From what I can tell, the only reasons for the support of Palestinians over Israelis in North America are antisemitism and the bleeding-heart knee jerk response to cheer for the underdog (I know that there are 250 Million Arabs to 10 Million Jews, but the Arabs are still underdogs in this one).

As we've all argued, "we were here first" isn't a valid argument, it's cyclical and impossible to prove without belief. Why do the Palestinians lack the solidarity of other Arab nations? If their neighbours do not appreciate them, why should I?

Posted by: Apollyon at October 5, 2007 7:15 PM

That article was written by [I believe] Michael Medved and can be found at Townhall; the url is too long to post.

I'd like to repeat Mar Twains comment from a trip to "palestine" in 1867.....

“a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent, mournful expanse… A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.”

Actually, I'm not a leftist; I'm conservative, which means, in most semantic terminology, 'right'. And I don't suffer from 'white guilt'.

I maintain my points. I've read all posts - and I disagree with the conclusion that no individual owned land in Palestine - that it was all state land; and that valid compensation was paid.

I also disagree with the definition of Marxism- I'm not sure what YOU mean by 'materialism', but, if one is talking about land and farms and homes, then, these are obviously 'material', but such a discussion doesn't make that 'materialism' or Marxism! What an invalid definition!

The only thing we might agree on, is that the Arab States themselves had no interest in the Palestinians - considering them for the most part, illiterate peasants. I absolutely agree with your quotes, apollyon.

I don't see why the Arab States should accept the Palestinians as citizens.

Why only 100,000 of the 700,000 refugees? How would they have been selected in this 'goodwill gesture'?

50,000+ refugess have returned? From the original 700,000? About 2 and 1/2 million dollars settled? For about 15,000 claims? That's about $166 per claim. That's rather similar to the Canadian treaties we made with the natives, which bought huge tracts of land for a new suit for the chief every five years, and $5 per person. Was the replacement land similar in arable productivity, in location etc?

No, I'm not a leftist, not a marxist (again, how could you define 'marxism' in such a manner). Not an anti-semite. And I fully accept Israel's 'right to exist'. But - not for any First Footprint reason. Nor for the mythic argument (Mark Twain example) of 'Incompetent use of the Land'. Nor because the Land was Empty. Nor for 'Might Makes Right'. Nor for 'God Gave Us the Land'. I accept it for pragmatic reasons. They are there.

Just as the English had to accept William The Conquerer. And the English had to accept the US Revolution. And the natives had to accept colonization. And Europe and its nations are..because they are. I acknowledge the reality of the events.

BUT - that doesn't mean that the people who were living there for centuries, should be flung away without compensation. Should be treated in a 'tu quoque fashion (You didn't compensate the Jews you threw out, so we won't compensate the Palestinians we threw out). The reality is that Israel doesn't want them in Israel because that would negate the Jewish majority. Fine. Then compensate them. And at a decent evaluation.

Jon,

"Why do the Palestinians lack the solidarity of other Arab nations?"

The so-called Palestinians are doing a very nice job for the ummah as agitators. Support defeats the 'victimization' purpose.

As far as 'belief' is concerned, check the facts - archeology. In fact, the Jews never left.

The Arabs create deserts. The Jews cultivated and made rich a barren land. If it's in the bitch it's in the pups. An old Yiddish saying.

Jon, you nailed it. You’re an honorary member of the Evil Zionist Cabal as are the other good people here, even ET.

To deny the Jews their God given right to their inheritance from God, the land they inhabited for millennia, lacks any merit. There is no land on earth -in the history of mankind -inhabited by a people with greater ties to it than the Jews with their land of Eretz Israel. It was written millennia ago and so it has been. We have watched empires dominate and crumble while persecuting us all throughout, the Romans, Ottomans, Greeks are all but a footnote in history yet we live on and strive.

“When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours, do not be afraid of them, because the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, will be with you. 2 When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. 3 He shall say: "Hear, O Israel, today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not be terrified or give way to panic before them. 4 For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory."

"In the ME, it HAS to moderate"

Oh? Why? Because we think they need to modernize?

hahahahahaha

If your belief system has lasted for 1400 years and you are more than satisfied with it why change it?

The point is we think we see a reason for them to moderate they don't.

I can tell a drunk all the advantages of being sober but he will still buy another beer. I can tell a swinger all the advantages of being chaste but he will still participate in the next orgy. I can show a Mormon that Joseph Smith didn’t accurately translate the papyri but he will still go to temple next time there is a gathering. You can argue with John Cross about CO2 driven AGW but he still won’t change his mind.

It is the same with Islam, you can cross your fingers, eyes, toes, legs and hope to die all you want but Islam is not going to moderate. There is a spiritual appeal, unknown to base beings aka atheists, that draws a certain type of person to Islam and that type of person seeks the rigours of the religion not the appearances of the religion. If they wanted superficiality they would have been educated atheists long time ago.

They are seeking something profound in their lives to which in fact they can dedicate their lives. That seeking the profound is what is driving what we refer to as the Islamofascits. We look on the outside and see a bunch of nutbars that seem to be lacking the brains God gave a goose but that is not the case. In fact many are highly educated highly skilled people who have discovered that there is more to life than getting up each morning and going to work. They know that there is more to life than the clothes on their back and the food in their belly. They know that there is more to life than their latest or next scronk . They are trying to develop their spirituality by following an ancient teaching that has stood them and their society in good stead. In fact they would say that if there is any ill in their society it is because that society is not following that ancient teaching close enough.

As a Christian I would say that their desire is right but the teaching they are following is wrong. However I will never say that they must modify their belief to suit my desires. I need to show them a better way to achieve the same spiritual end.

Well said Joe.

This topic has been hijacked by the "Israel thing".

SDA is a great blog, but there are times a moderator would have been helpful.

Trying, again, to turn to the issue at hand... let's deal with the "muslims more successful than Canadians" issue.

Define more successful. Yes, there are a lot of Muslim doctors. Where are they from?

1) Iran, which despite the problems with the Shah, was almost part of the Western world prior the the Islamic revolution. They are refugees who represented the best and brightest of that land, but have abandoned it. They are not a threat to our future.

2) The gulf states. They come here to learn medicine and are supposed to go back, but a number have stayed. They are the best and the brightest of those countries, sent here for that reason. They are usually the most worldly in their student group.

3) A significant number of physicians from India and Pakistan came a number of years ago who also were highly educated and have done well here.

If these were typical of the Muslims coming Canada routinely these days, there would be no concern. The problem is that they are not. A more typical entrant is from Somalia, relatively uneducated or not at all educated, entering as a refugee, barely english speaking, and incapable of integrating quickly or successfully. THey head straight for their local mosque/community, and have their head filled with contempt for Canada and Western ideas.

I think that's the root of the problem.

Lori,

I think you killed the debate. You're right, it is off topic.

Moderates are correctly called backsliders or apostates by devout muslims. The fact of the matter is that most who call themselves Christian are not devout either.

Oddly enough, I've met several people from Iran who call themselves Persian. A complete break from the conquering ideological virus? I'd like to think so.

"Show me a 15 year old white girl and a 15 year old Muslim girl and the Muslim girl will make more money, have more children, have a better marriage and a better family, have better manners and attitude, and overall live a better and more productive life than the typical 15 year old white Canadian girl. Same goes for boys too." by Andrew

Bull Crap!!!

Many Irans harbor a deep resentment towards Islam, which they regard as a primitive ideology that conquered their more advanced society (Persia) by force over a thousand years ago.

Apollyon .... Great to meet you!

OMMAG, it is my pleasure. Also apologies for contributing to the threadjack. The blog I frequent we occasionally threadjack on the very first post, most of us are decent enough to wait till the second post.

Irwin daisy - the Jewish settlers brought European technology, agricultural and industrial tactics and political mode - to an area that was being economically and socially run within a non-industrial, peasant agriculture.

It has nothing to do with 'hereditary' intellect, but with the knowledge base of Europe that was brought to Israel, by the Jewish settlers. Kindly remember that the ME was NOT operating in a modern industrial mode - but in a mode that Europe, with its rich arable lands, had long moved out of.

No, joe, the reason that the Arab States need to modernize, is because their political structure, which is tribalism, is the root cause of Islamic fascism. Why is it the cause? Because political systems, economic systems, etc, are almost 'organically tied' to their demographics or population size. And that is tied to their economy.

When your population reaches a certain size - and it can only do that because of your economic capacity to support that size, your political system must 'work with' that population size.

So, after WWII, with the rise of the oil economy- and remember, this oil production was achieved by western science and technology, but, it enabled a certain 'redistribution' of income to the population. The ME populations rose exponentially afterwards - and became urban rather than rural. This requires, and I mean that word, a different mode of sociopolitical organization.

The Islamic belief system may have lasted for 1400 years - but its sociopolitical rules are no longer viable. They are dysfunctional in a modern urban and industrial society. Those rules reject reason, reject individualism, reject all the characteristics of a middle class.

And the industrial economy requires a middle class - a class of people who are flexible in their ability to relocate, who can move from job to job, who sell their labour and their thoughts. etc..

The old tribal islamic society had no middle class, but, an industrial economy requires one. So- the old ideology HAS to change.

I agree with you, joe, that the Islamic fascist is searching for a deep 'connection'; that's the basis for all utopian ideologies - and that includes fascism as well as communism. But, Islamic fascism has developed because the Islamic ME nations and their tribal political mode, rejected enabling the people to feel connected and empowered in the devt of their own country.

Lori - yes, Iranians do have a robust scientific community. They are, by the way, not Arabs but Persians. And that is making for an interesting scenario in the ME - because Iran has imperialist ambitions in the ME - and the Arab States most certainly don't want a Persian state to take over that area.

One of the brightest minds in the area of complexity, who lives in the USA now, is a Persian, ie, from Iran - the originator of 'fuzzy logic' - which is now a famous concept in complexity theory. In contrast - the scientific work among the Arab nations is almost nil.

ET,

Against overwhelming facts and correct argument, you retain your certainty. I respect that. However, you're starting to sound muslim.

"It has nothing to do with 'hereditary' intellect, but with the knowledge base of Europe that was brought to Israel, by the Jewish settlers. Kindly remember that the ME was NOT operating in a modern industrial mode - but in a mode that Europe, with its rich arable lands, had long moved out of."

Agreed. It has nothing to do with intellect. It has everything to do with how intellect was intimidated by fear, while knowledge iwas pilfered and culture annihilated.

For the muslim mind, there is no truth or invention outside of the Quran. Either that or the knowledge was originally a muslim invention, or more likely a lie sent from satan. Check the presiding cleric's statements regarding the destruction of the library at Alexandria.

Prior to the ME being conquered by a permanently frozen and patently conterfiet belief that became an ideology and holy writ, it was a veritable microwave for fully baked ideas. Many great cultures that we owe much of our knowledge to thrived there. Including the original 12 tribes of Israel.

The knowledge was brought back and the land functioned again, despite islam..

Rather than, "conterfiet belief", I shoud say a murderously narcistic conterfiet belief. Mohammad = Allah.

A fanatical muslim spews hate,wants to take over the world and is ready and willing to kill for his beliefs. A moderate muslim sits back and says"that wasn't me". It is like living with Pickton,knowing something very wrong is going down,but because your hands are not bloody,it should not reflect on your character. That is bullshit.

Mississauga Matt said:
Somewhere along the way I read that the Pals, on a per capita basis, have received more funds than did western Europeans under the Marshall Plan.
Heh, I read that only recently myself. It makes further minced meat of ET's "compensation" fantasy. In fact I've come to the conclusion that UN "terror welfare" and western guilt-tinged jizya has allowed this issue to fester decades past when it should have been resolved. Put another way: with all the jizya, the incentive structure favours the continuing jihad. And it IS jihad. JIHAD.

Shamrock: I completely agree with your comment on the usually most excellent ET being wilfully blind on this subject and I too find it disturbing. ET is a good measure of the sheer virtuosity of Arab-Nazi propaganda.

And I totally disagree that this conversation is "off topic". It isn't. Israel is not the cause of Muslim outrage: it is a symptom. A symptom of Islamic Jew-hatred that is foundational to Islam buttressed by massive failure in the Islamic world -- failure the adolescent Arab populace can't own.

Wafa Sultan says this without discussing Israel specifically. But it's not off topic -- at all.

Oh, and what exactly is Ahmadinejad's issue with Israel anyway? They're not even Arabs. What exactly is their grievance? Rhetorical question. Grievance schmievance!

ET: Despite the rhetoric, you do NOT in actuality support Israel's right to exist. You seem to favour the "right of return" (even for following generations) which would destroy Israel, and you favour a two-state solution, which they pretend to want for Western ears, but don't. They wan't, as explained many times before, the annihilation of Israel and Jews. They want a judenrein Middle East. Period.

ET: How do I know this? THEY TELL US over and over and over again.

Off the off topic: one thing I find bewildering with the Muslims is how they have migrated to the West in the 10s of millions but can't abide 5 million Jews living in the their midst.

Ah, yes: migration = welfare = jizya. Done.

me no dhimmi - I think you'll have to accept what I say about my own beliefs, rather than you defining what you think my beliefs are.

I've always maintained that Israel has the right to exist. I don't accept as valid reasons for this right any notion of 'First Footprint', or all of the other reasons I've outlined and rejected (Might, God, Name etc). After all, each of them invalidates the situation in other nations elsewhere in the world. Israel exists; it was set up as a political entity by the UN. Period.

I also maintain that one cannot even for a second pretend that the land was uninhabited, was uncultivated, was not legally owned by individuals - and that these people who lost their property, ought to be compensated, at a viable market value. No argument made here or elsewhere has shown me that this is an incorrect view. AND, that they ought to be able to develop their own state in the lands set aside by that same UN for them. And that doesn't mean the Oslo Accord with its municipal governance.

The monies sent for the maintenance of the Palestinian refugees is not compensation for these lost lands but is maintenance of the by now millions of refugees; it doesn't get to them as individuals, it doesn't permit them to set up new homes and businesses elsewhere (and we all know that a great deal of it is taken within Arafat and Fatah's corruption).

I also absolutely maintain that Islamic fascism would have emerged EVEN IF ISRAEL NEVER EXISTED. The existence of Israel is a current smokescreen for Islamic fascism. The real reason for that fascism - and I've written about it numerous times, is the dysfunctional sociopolitical structure of the ME arab states. You and others may incorrectly call this a marxist analysis (what nonsense); it has nothing to do with marxism.

It is an analysis that states that the political system of the ME after WWII became totally alienated from the requirements of the changing economic system and population base. You cannot have a tribal political system in a population in the multimillions and in an industrial economy. It won't work; it's disastrous. I've taught this theory for over 20 years - and I know the 'synchronic structural fit' of societies. You can't mix up systems.

But the Islamic Arab world maintained this 7th tribal infrastructure after WWII moved their economy into industrialism; after the population base exploded; after the switch from rural to urban. It's been a disaster - and that isolation of the massive population from political, economic and social power - led to the rise of a utopian ideology - Islamic fascism.

Israel's existence had nothing to do with this fascism; it would have happened anyway - because of that dysfunctional structure. BUT - the tribal powers, who are trying to prevent the rise of a middle class (and resultant democracy) are using Israel as a 'front' to battle their own people, to keep their own people focused not on their own lack of power in their own country - but on the Evil West and Evil Israel. It is vital that Islamic fascism be reduced to a peripheral segment by enabling a robust and democratic middle class to develop in the ME. [Utopian ideologies always exist; the trick is to marginalize them].

Islamic fascism's use of Israel as a cover is rather similar to the Liberal use of anti-Americanism in Canada. It diverts the issues from bad Liberal govt..Again, the Arab States consider the Palestinians the 'lowest of the low'; they don't give a damn about them; they are using them to enable the Is-Pal. situation as a front to maintain their own tribal dictatorships. That includes Iran's pathological president.

My views have nothing to do with 'arab-nazi' propaganda, but with those basic issues I've outlined above. The land wasn't empty; the homes and farms were legally owned; and - compensation ought to be paid. Period.

The fact that the Arab states are disinterested in Palestine, that Arafat most certainly didn't want a Palestinian state (which would turf him from power) aren't relevant to my simple base points.
The fact that Israel wants a majority Jewish population - it's none of my business. However, I find the settlements an aberration and violation of any stated desire for peace. And I know perfectly well, that a lot of settlers treat the Palestinians as 'animals' and violate their lands and farms. I also know that a lot of Israeli would like the situation resolved - and a two-state solution developed.

Those are my points. They aren't trivial, they aren't anti-semitic; they aren't uninformed. And I stand by them.

In response to an earlier posting by ET

"The ME populations rose exponentially afterwards -and became urban rather than rural. This requires, and I mean that word, a different mode of sociopolitical organization."

So because a Muslim moves from the country to the city he will abandon his faith? Did anyone tell bin Laden that? How about those two doctors in Scotland? Were they urban or rural raised? How about the ones who flew the aircraft on 9/11.

"The old tribal Islamic society had no middle class, but, an industrial economy requires one. So- the old ideology HAS to change".

Your thought is in error if in fact the ME doesn't want an industrial society. After all an industrial society is NOT the be all end all just as a middle class is not something to be sought after for its own sake. What we see now as 'middle class' here in the west is simply a passing phase of a fast fading, baseless, narcissistic culture that we happen to live in and so we think it is best.

"But, Islamic fascism has developed because the Islamic ME nations and their tribal political mode, rejected enabling the people to feel connected and empowered in the devt of their own country."

Wrong again. The Islamofascist is not some disempowered discarded buttwipe cast aside by an uncaring society. Most in fact are rich, well educated and have the ears of kings and presidents. You and I should be so connected.

What I see coming from you are the thoughts a urban, white middle class atheist academic who thinks that given the right set of circumstances everyone will think just as you do. Kind of reminds me of the old joke about the guy who spoke English loudly and slowly so the native American could understand him.

You see I was raised a non-Christian in an upper middle class home with both parents. I graduated top of my class and went on to university studying to be an engineer and was very proud of my atheism.

I married a wonderful woman and soon we began having children. One day I woke up and realized that if this was all there was to life I wasn't interested. I didn't know where to go but I knew I must go. I drove for a time and then even more distraught I began to walk across the bald prairie. Despairing even farther I found a small white rock protruding from the native grasses and kneeling beside it I encountered someone I didn't know existed. I encountered Jesus Christ.

I found a Church that actually believed in Jesus and began a frantic study of all I could find about Christianity. One Sunday several years later as I sat in the pew listening to the old preacher's sermon I heard my name being called. The old pastor was calling me to minister. I gave up my chosen profession and began to preach to the down and out in a small Canadian urban centre. Later I moved on and to this date have worked planting four Churches in Western Canada. I'm relating this to you not to puff myself up but rather to point out to you that like Christianity Islam is not some culturally dependant philosophy Like me who follows Christianity those who fervently follow Islam are not a bunch of rural rubes.

However one thing I have noticed in the life God has led me through is that society and societal norms are not defining in and of themselves. They are in constant flux My great grandparents homesteaded in Alberta before Alberta existed as a province and were deeply religious. They took their pacifist Christianity from Germany to Russia to Romania to Turkey to the US and finally to Canada planting churches as they went. Yet I, separated from them by culture, education, and even being an urbanite realize that abiding faith such as they had and now I have transcends circumstances and societies. The core beliefs of an abiding faith are not altered by economics or societal norms. I can read authors dead for nearly two millennia and can viscerally understand the faith they express in their writing. The writings of St Paul and St Augustine are not the mental meanderings of a demented man they are as real and as true today as they were when they were first quilled. Their thoughts and experiences are as fresh to me as if we were sitting down to lunch together discussing today’s weather. Their culture is far different from mine and their life experiences are so completely different yet we share a commonality that is nigh on impossible to explain.

I suspect the same is true for the Islamist that seeks the overthrow of our western culture. He has a connection to Islam that economics and culture can not shake. He knows that for 1400 years Islam has been trying to overtake the world and if he plays only a bit part in the advancement of that cause then he will be satisfied that indeed he has done the will of Allah. That, at the core is what this conflict is all about. Its not economics. Its not culture. Its not a lack of middle class or education or ….

It’s the fact that grown, intelligent, educated men have decided to shun the trappings of a materialistic world in order to gain in the spiritual realm. Most Muslims are not like these men. They go through life fully immersed in the local culture. They don’t read the Qur’an they don’t ever go to mosque on a regular basis. Their relationship to Islam is kind of like having a team to cheer for. They may not follow the tenets of the faith with great gusto but when a super Muslim like bin Laden strikes fear in the infidel’s heart they are the first in line to boast of the faith they do not follow.

Unfortunately for the secular west there is no real defence against militant Islam. Having relegated all religion to the scrap heap the western intellectuals have left themselves defenceless in the face of a virulent plague of death and destruction. The old rubes keep being trotted out, poverty, social injustice, economic disparity etc etc etc and the Islamist smiles to himself knowing that a culture that will not defend eternal norms in itself will never stand against a determined enemy. The wholesale adoption of sexual immorality(adultery, divorce, homosexuality), theft ( redistribution of wealth), murder (abortion) all trumpeted by our western elites as great breakthroughs in societal evolution are all the enticements an Islamist needs to realize the culture that espouses them will fall because it lacks the moral integrity to stand against a determined foe.

My apologies to all for taking so much space.

God Bless

wow, you guys are still at it - yay
Shabbat Shalom to you Apollyon

ET, what don't you get about the Arabs refused to negotiate. They said NO to the UN partition plan of 1947. They gave the three famous NOs after the 6 day war. They could be celebrating the 60th anniversary of their statehood but they said NO.

This is not OT to this thread. If the discussion is how will Islam moderate or can Islam moderate, then I maintain that Islam must come to terms with the fact that it reworked the Bible and then said that the Jews lied in their book. Islam must recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel to become moderate - you can tell if a Muslim is moderate by what he/she thinks about Israel.

Now this is OT
Historical materialism as an explanatory system has been expanded and refined by thousands of academic studies since Marx’s death.The fundamental proposition of historical materialism can be summed up in a sentence: "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness."

It is not "having their land stolen"/ie. social existence that determines their consciousness, it is their consciensness/ie. Koran/Islam that determines their existence (the Joos are evil)

Joe, thanks for sharing your insights. I too grew up intellectualized into believing that religion was nothing more than fairy tales. then when I realized I would have to decide whether to give my kids their Jewish heritage, I began to read the Bible with adult eyes, and with the commentaries of the sages. I began to see that everything that I thought was lame, was actually not lame at all and that the story was continuing every day.
tommorrow morning we start the yearly reading again - In the beginning (Parshat Breisheit)

ex-liberal
May God give light to your minds as you read.

Peace my brother

Ex-liberal,

For religious moderation in religion it is necessary to take the book of faith with a grain of salt. It is necessary to understand that the torah/bible/koran/Mahayana/Book of the Dead is an exciting transcription of the oral history of a place and time. If God dripped out of every word in these books how is it possible that there are contradictions?
Did God make mistakes writing his holy book(s)?
Is it God's will that one faith destroys another? One People destroy another? If God is perfect, how does war exist? What's the point of praying for the Canadiens to win tomorrow when I know that there will be an offsetting prayer from a leafs fan?
Understanding that the holy books were written 1400-5000 years ago should be a quick indicator that they are not necessarily the best guiding light. Think about it this way: Your parents aren't very good with computers, and your kids are. You could say that there are things learned in the newer generation that were never learned by older generations. Did grandpa ever figure out how to use the microwave? I don't think so, so it'd be better not to take his advice on living a modern life as absolute truth. There are no absolutes. Everything, including God, needs to be seen in shades of gray.

Jon

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

St Paul in writing in his first letter to the Corinthian Church. NIV translation

"I also absolutely maintain that Islamic fascism would have emerged EVEN IF ISRAEL NEVER EXISTED. The existence of Israel is a current smokescreen for Islamic fascism"

Caps lose arguments. ET, you're blinded by your own petard. Stick your fingers into your eyes and clear the gunk. Islam cannot exist without the Pentateuch. It can't exist without Christ.

The problem with your mode of thinking is that you can't consider the metaphysical (or even history, for that matter) in order to arive at wisdom. It's a harsh trap you're in. Do you at least know the story of Abraham and his legitimate and illegitamate sons?

We are living the story.

If God is perfect, how does war exist?

Jon, I think some of us project our sensibilities onto God to attempt to understand; we will not. The Old Testament tells of a fire and brimstone God; war is unfortunately part of the human experience. I believe God wants to see the triumph of the human spirit against all trials and tribulations; through these events we can come closer to God. Science will also ultimately bring us closer to God.

Great post Joe.

Apollyon

Thank you

May God bless you, this restful day, with peace beyond understanding.

there is no such thing as a moderate muslim. it would be apostacy. islam must be over all. it cannot coexist with other faiths or a secular society. please don't give turkey as an example, the time frame is too short and things are going to change there. read the koran. a true believer will never be moderate.

I hate to add anything to a 100+ post debate of the origins of the middle east, but its too bad the topic was so badly hijacked, because its NOTHING to do with Israel (and all of your discussions are quite immaterial to the thread intent).

And that was: the relativistic nature of a definition of "moderate", and that the west's definition of "moderate" is contextually very different from that of Islam's believers, and the further corollary that the WEST has a problem with "moderate Islam", because the WEST doesn't understand "moderation" the way ME Islamists do.

The thread wasn't about history lessons, it was about East-West relativism, history be damned, which IMO, is a far more serious and pressing concern.

It is interesting that the main response to my socioeconomic analysis of a situation - is a religious response. That's similar to the Islamic fundamentalist response to questions about 'why do you do what you do'? They too explain their behaviour as based within religion. I think this is a totally inadequate explanation.

Ideological or purely theoretical analyses can't dominate reality; the scholastics eventually had to learn that basic fact and were sidelined. Reality has its own ways of refusing to be ignored - and reality is material. It is also reason (logical organization). On these two basics, material existence and reason - I stand by my arguments.

The claims that because I deal with the economy, then I am a Marxist - are nonsense. Is every Winner of the Nobel Economic Prize a Marxist???

Joe - you obviously don't know anything about the difference in social structure between a population that is urban and one that is rural. The two forms of social organization require a different social, economic and political organization. You don't know this.

And no, one doesn't 'choose' to industrialize or not. It depends on the size of the population. In this era, the ME states have no choice but to industrialize. And industrialism requires a middle class. You don't know any of this infrastructure. You think it's all 'choice'; it isn't. Population size is related to the economic mode. Political structure is related to them both.

irwin daisy - I am well-versed in history - and reasonably in metaphysics (I'm a fan of Aristotle and Peirce); that's why I repeat - in CAPS - that ISLAMIC FASCISM WOULD EXIST EVEN WITHOUT THE EXISTENCE OF ISRAEL. The two are unrelated to each other. Islamic fascism is directly related to a dysfunctional economic-political structure of tribalism.

Joe- I'm not a fan of Augustine; I'm sure you are aware how much better Maximus' argument is in the Arian-Athanasian debate. Augustine just rants. But then, I'm in favour of the Arian argument.

So- none of us are going to agree with each other. I guess that's where it stands.

Skip,
Trying to discuss moderation in Islam without talking about Israel is like trying to figure out why your dog got hit by a car, without looking at the street. There's a reason why many discussions of moderate Islam turn to Israel... A MODERATE WOULDN'T APPROVE THE SUICIDE BOMBING OF ANOTHER COUNTRY. A moderate knows that "truth" is better if you add salt.

Apollyon,
I have a hard time believe that just because there was war in the Old Testament, it means that God approved of it. That was essentially my point earlier. To take the bible at face value is to accept that it is divine. If it was divine there would be no room for translation or contradiction.

You are all missing the point entirely, and that is, there is a fundamental difference in the definition of "moderate", as is currently understood in the West, for religious, cultural, and technological reasons, and that of the Islamist world. The historical roots are irrelevant. What matters is that the difference exists, and the societal outcome of the difference is significant. What matters is that the West has a lay definition of "moderate" which is NOT consistenT with the Islamist's lay definition of "moderate". Therein lies the rub.

The historical roots of the Middle East are totally irrelevant. They are only rationalizations for the difference, and espousing them ad nauseum, do not alter the chasm that exists in the lay beliefs of the genral public on both sides of the chasm. This is not a discussion for eggheads; it speaks to the core beliefs of the masses.

If God is perfect, why is there war?

Two answers. God gives us free will, and we are far from perfect ourselves.

For the atheist types, the question may be: if nature is perfect, why is there war? Same answer, though.

skip- I disagree; I think the historical roots of the mode of belief, 'moderation' are vitally important.

The West went through a socioeconomic and political transformation from the medieval peasant agriculture based around the manor, to a large scale agricultural market economy - with a concomitant rise in population. This required a different sociopolitical organization - ie, a middel class.
The ME didn't approach this era until post WWII; its 'feudal system' is fighting the required change to a modern economy (market/industrial) and political system (middle class/democracy).

The historical realities are vital in understanding. If you don't know this history of both areas, then you are reduced to explaining the conceptual differences as due to 'religion' or 'ideology' or 'culture'. Wrong.

shamrock - I am, as you know, an atheist. Your basic assumption of a priori perfection - a Platonist Ideal (I dislike Platonism!) is disputable. Nature isn't 'perfect'. No spatiotemporal reality is perfect.

I suggest you check out the difference between Formal and Informal Properties (Godel). The Formal is a pure abstraction, never materialized; it is 'perfect' because it is never 'actual'; it is aspatial and atemporal.. But all of life is material or 'Informal', ie, spatiotemporally formed, and therefore, it never fully represents the Formal Idea.

Furthermore, all of life is dynamic, it is interactive. That requires imbalance of energy content/power/mass etc. This imbalance enables interaction (a bowl of homogeneous jello doesn't interact). So - inequality is basic to life. Most of the time the interactions are collaborative, but, when the imbalance becomes too great, the interaction can be violent.

ET wrote
“It is interesting that the main response to my socioeconomic analysis of a situation - is a religious response. That's similar to the Islamic fundamentalist response to questions about 'why do you do what you do'? They too explain their behaviour as based within religion. I think this is a totally inadequate explanation.”

Did you ever think that the reason we keep going back to religion is because Islam is a religion? Or that the reason that your analysis is not given great credence is because your socioeconomic analysis is based on your apparently unshakable belief that socioeconomics is The God before which all other gods must bow? I call that kind or theory a doughnut theory. Kinda sugary sweet dough but there is a gaping hole in the middle.

What I and a good number of other posters have been trying seemingly in vain is to get through to you that there are reasons far beyond socioeconomic ones for the ways people to behave towards each other. There are things beyond socioeconomics that span centuries, societies and cultures and have a for greater impact on society than socioeconomics. The Jewish culture spanning thousands of years practiced, believed, held as highest truth a source of wisdom and inspiration where ever it is practiced in the world.

The Jewish tradition’s greatest offspring Christianity modifying cultures and socioeconomics throughout the world. From the slums of Nairobi to poshest neighbourhoods in New York, London, Paris even under the cruellest dictators and most repressive communist regimes Christianity has spread and continues to play a vital roll in the kind of society people live in.

The same with Islam. The answers if offers, I disagree with, but to the people who adhere to it do so not because of socioeconomics but because it offers them a hope for the future beyond the here and now. It offers a way to live a live that is holy and spiritual. If offers them a way to organize and govern their society. The society it produces is not one I would choose to live in but then again I am a Christian and not a Muslim.

Finally before you accuse me of not understanding socioeconomics why don’t you try to attend a faithful church for a year or two and come to an understanding of religion. If your heritage is Jewish I would suggest you might feel more closely aligned with a synagogue. Go there for a year or two and make an honest effort to discover the real mover and shaker of this world His own creation of which you and I are just tiny threads in His great story line.

God bless

I have a hard time believe that just because there was war in the Old Testament, it means that God approved of it.

Jon, not only did God condone war He demanded that the children of Eretz Israel destroy its enemies. I am by no means a biblical scholar and would defer to Joe for more in-depth analysis, but again I think good people like yourself project your kind sensibilities onto God, almost giving Him a grandfatherly image. As a Jew I’ve been asked many times to reconcile how God could have chosen the Jews as His people yet inflicted them with unspeakable hardship, persecution and genocide. I can not begin to understand God’s plan but what I can say is that I have always believed, from birth, and my faith is unshakable against all odds. The human experience wasn't designed to be painless and void of hardship; with good comes evil, with day comes night; through conflict and difficulties is where the human spirit can soar. I’m having difficulty articulating my thoughts, hope that didn’t sound too much like a ramble.

A passage I really like……..

Deuteronomy 20:1-4

“When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours, do not be afraid of them, because the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, will be with you. 2 When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. 3 He shall say: "Hear, O Israel, today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not be terrified or give way to panic before them. 4 For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory."

Wow ! What a thread. Makes it easy to understand how religious wars start. My belief is better than your belief. Prove it. Impossible --- it's a belief. Same goes for AGW belief.

Fundamentaly flawed alright. The fanatical ones have extreme jealousy of our western ways and so bombed one of it's symbol --- with our planes. But partied before hand in Las Vegas. What's wrong with this picture ?? And why the western underground movement giving them a pass ?? Why do the moderates not stand up ?? Same reason we are reluctant to come forward at a crime scene ? Hassel once involved --- justice system more geared to helping the perpetraitor than the victim. Witnesses may have to 'lay low' when the perpetraitor gets off.

joe, thank you for your kind and sincere words; I appreciate them, but, my answer is 'No'.

I do not accept the notion of a Metaphysical Intentionality, ie, God.

What bothered me about the fact that most posters resorted to religious claims of justification of action in the ME, is that both sides are making that claim! Both sides claim: 'God gave ME the land'; God chose US;' etc. This, to me, is irrational and against the tenets of reason.

I am an atheist; I do not accept any concept of an essentialist or a priori metaphysicalAgent-of-Intentionality. I have been called many names because of this. I'm told that because I reject God, then, I am incapable of morality. What an ignorant statement - to conclude that a human being cannot think and reason to a moral existence, but must rely on an external authority to tell them the difference between right and wrong.

I'm told that because I'm an atheist, I must be a communist. [Notice how on this thread, I'm accused of being a Marxist, because I base my analysis on the economic structure of a society! That ignorant statement thus means that ALL economists, including ALL who won the Nobel in Economics, are Marxists!] And of course, I'm constantly told that I'm a 'leftist' because these same people assume the direct correlation between 'socialism' and 'atheism'. Again, they are wrong.

What these comments have in common, is that they reject the notion of Reason in our world. I refer you to Pope Benedict's excellent speech, known as the Regensburg speech of Sept 12/06. In it, he says that "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature" and he notes that for the Muslim, 'God's will is transcendent and not bound up with "any of our categories, even that of rationality".

Benedict's focus on the essential nature of Reason - is quite frankly, very Aristotelian. [Although he rejects Duns Scotus in favour of Augustine and Aquinas; and I prefer Duns Scotus to the latter two- who are both Platonists.]

And this focus on Reason, is where I locate myself. Not in any transcendent Agent of Intentionality. But in a certainty that the natural world operates within Reason. That is, the organizational properties that we see in the chemical, physical, and biological realms are all just that -organized, systemic, interactive, according to Developing Rules of Interaction and Stability. This is the work of Reason. The Universe is a result of Reason. But not God.

I acknowledge the same work of Reason in the organization of societies. That is, a society can be understood almost as an organism. A population living in a marginal ecology can only support itself by hunting/gathering. It will organize itself - by the Six Systems of Social Organization [economic, political, legal, family, educational, religious] in a particular way.

A population living in a richer environment can develop an economy that will support a larger population. Its Six Systems must be structured very differently. ...and so on. That's why I say that the ME nations have no choice but to become industrial. Their populations are too large for any other economic mode.

Notice also that Benedict rejects the isolation of reason to science, to the empirically verifiable - a Platonic view. And he rejects Kant's isolation of reason from 'faith'.

I consider the statements made by many on this thread, about the validity of Israel due to the word of God, as issues of faith, a faith isolated from Reason. One has to ask 'what is faith'? It is only a belief that the Universe is, indeed, a continuous act of Reason.

No agent of intentionality, no God who chooses land for a people, no determined future. Just a continuous organization of energy/matter according to the basic Reasoning or logical ordering principles of matter. That's all. Among the most complex species, homo sapiens, our capacity to articulate this Reasoning, means that we are responsible for our behaviour to others. Therefore, we can't say that we 'go to war' because 'God wills it'; or 'God gave us the Land'. We, ourselves, must justify our actions within basic ethical and moral standards.

So- thank you for your suggestion and its good intentions, but, I will have to refuse it.

Apollyon,

I am aware of the scriptural history (I was a former youth group leader, and I dated a religious studies/Islam/International Relations Student for 5 years), but I had a watershed moment when I was younger about belief. I am rational, that's why I'm an engineer, and that's why I had to divorce myself from the idea of a god.

I was also a youth exchange student to Thailand during high school. I figured out that if I actually believed the things I professed to believe as a youth group leader, those who were kind and caring to me would go to hell. They had knowledge of Jesus, but would not pray in his name as a means to get to God. They were nice people, but doomed to hell.

The other thing that coalesced in my mind when I was overseas (I was only 17), was that I'd never seen any evidence of god. By this point I was thinking like a scientist.

Problem: How does one know God?
Hypothesis: Act well and follow his instruction.
Material: The good book, some close friends.
Method: Prayer and the golden rule.
Observation: Starvation, genocide, terrorism, war, murder, rape, honour killings.
Conclusions: No god.
Application: Religion is a placebo (in my mind). It helps people bring themselves through a terrible life of starvation and serfdom by convincing them that there is something better after this life.

I'm now what you could call a post-theist. I'm already in heaven. It's not perfect, but comparatively speaking I have it pretty good and I'm not relying on the afterlife to make up for sacrifices in this life.

You are welcome ET except I would add that you are not being very scientific in your approach. Rejecting something because I reject the very idea of it is a bit silly don't you think? After all the essence of science is experimentation to prove or disprove a theory. Rosy O'Donnel says fire doesn't melt steel. As I scientist I would take and put steel into a hot fire and see if the steel melts. Rosy is wrong and I just proved it. I tell you that there is a God in whom we live and breath and have our being. Prove me wrong. If you are a better scientist than Rosy O'Donnel prove me wrong but don't simply dismiss what I am saying based on your own strongly held prejudices and preconceptions. From my own expeience I can say that in my former loud and proud atheism I was nothing more than an opinionated hack. I had nothing to back up my firmly held beliefs because I had never opened myself to possibility that there is ........

God Bless

Shabbat Shalom to Apollyon and ex-liberal too.

(I have a high regard for ET, but, on this issue, I do not agree at all.)

ET:

Afterthought/loose-ends: In the matter of compensation: it is the party responsible for damages which is legally/ethically expected to mitigate these damages with compensation. However, Israel simply did not cause the refugee crisis: the Arab countries did. I gather that after 1948 the Arabs of Palestine were angrier with the Arab countries than they were with Israel.
Also, please remember that the Arabs of Palestine were actively discouraged by the Arab countries from filing claims: because to do so would constitute tacit acceptance of the State of Israel.

CAPS - that ISLAMIC FASCISM WOULD EXIST EVEN WITHOUT THE EXISTENCE OF ISRAEL. The two are unrelated to each other.
I agree with the CAPS part but not with the lower case. This is a logical error on your part. the two are vitally related. The hatred of Jews is foundational to the Koran and pre-dated Israel, but the desire for the destruction of Israel is this reality manifest in the real world.

Finally, this whole conflict was never a "nationalist movement". The invented people -- the "Palestinians" (remember the word came into existence only after the Six-Day War in 1967) never ever had national aspirations. They stuck with the Ottomans to the bitter end; they had no issue with Egypt's occupation of Gaza after 1948 and no issue with Jordan's occupation of the West Bank.

The invention of the "Palestinian people" was a brilliant propaganda coup which re-framed the conflict from Israel/David vs. Arabia/Goliath, TO "Palestinians"/David vs. Israel/neo-colonialist/zionist/neo-nazi Goliath vs. Arabia/David.
With help from the Nazis. And I gather the PLO was actually put together by the Soviet Union.

Finally as mentioned in long-ago threads, the fatal flaw in your position is your wilfull and disturbing blindness/deafness to one cold stark undeniable reality, which is this: both the good-cop-terrorists of Fatah and the bad-cop-terrorists of Hamas make it perfectly plain (especially in Arabic) -- and have never strayed from this position -- that they desire a single state in the whole area of Palestine with Jews as dhimmis to be persecuted and reduced to zero over time. Just as the last Jew has left Kosovo.

Finally, and again: the Arabs don't want a two-state solution; they feign this for Western consumption. They want a SINGLE STATE and a judenrein ME. Your stubborn, pigheaded insistence on this mirage actually bolsters the islamofacists making you an unwitting party to the destruction of Israel.

me no dhimmi. As usual, I disagree with you.

I disagree that it was only the Arab countries that caused the refugee crisis and that Israel was 'guilt free'. I think that Israel was heavily involved in getting the Palestinians out of their homes and farms; remember, they wanted a Jewish majority. So- we disagree on this point.

Agreed - the Arab countries discouraged the Palestinians from filing for compensation, because that would acknowledge no 'right of return'. But, Israel's 1948-50 Knesset Laws were geared to preventing any return and any claims to land ownership (Absentee Laws).

Disagree. As I've said, Islamic fascism would exist and emerged, without Israel. Its cause is political tribalism in the Arab States. They are USING the Israeli existence as a cover to export their fascism. So, rather than the arab people turning against their tribal leaders, they are diverted to 'hate the west and Israel'.

The word 'Palestine' did not come into existence in 1967; it was in existence for centuries, and indeed, the British used it - and even had a stamp with the term on it. But, trying to state that a nation can't be legitimate unless it had the same name from the 'beginning of time' is an invalid argument.

Agreed - the Palestinians didn't, during the Ottoman era, have nationalist aspirations; they were content to live in their homes and farms under Ottoman and British mandates. They were not, however, content to be expelled from these same homes and farms to set up a nation, in which they were not welcome by virtue of their religion.
Since they were expelled - the notion of a homeland for them became relevant.

Disagree - I disagree; the Palestinians do want a two state solution. Don't merge all Arabs together. The Arab States of Iran, SA, Jordan, Egypt, etc don't give a damn about the Palestinians. I'm talking only about the Palestinians.

I am neither a pig nor pigheaded. Nor am I an Islamic fascist. I could critique your stubborness, your refusal to acknowledge that the land was NOT empty (as you've previously implied); that the land was NOT improperly farmed; that God didn't give it to any 'chosen people'. and so on. So- we'll have to continue to disagree.

joe - No, there's no way that a physical being can prove or disprove the existence of a metaphysical being.

Therefore, comparing the testing of fire melting steel is an invalid analogy. Both fire and steel are physical realities and can interact directly with each other.

'God' is not a physical reality, and again, no physical reality can affirm/deny the existence of a metaphysical reality. It's not in the realm of science (see Karl Popper on that).

So- 'testing' whether/not there is a god, is not a scientific act. And, I've long ago studied the various theoretical arguments, whether from Anselm's' a priori ontology, Aquinas' Five a posteriori arguments, and so on and the arguments pro and con.

They are logically fascinating - but - I remain an atheist. and, by atheist, I don't mean a relativist or positivist; I am Aristotelian and believe in Universals as Real, as well as Particulars. But, there is no metaphysical agent of intentionality in my world view.

ET:

I never said the word "Palestine" was invented, only the concept of a "Palestinian people" as commonly used today. If I thought it was of any use I could probably find a bunch of Arab elite quotes on this matter. I remain of the view that there was no "Palestinian people". No distinct language, culture, religion, art, national aspirations. Again, the word "Palestinians" (not Palestine) was INVENTED post 1967. Before that it was merely Arabs. For the propaganda reasons already discussed.

As others have mentioned, I'm sure, the Jerusalem Post used to be the Palestinian Post, the Jerusalem Symphony the Palestinian Symphony. A Jewish military group (name escapes me) included the name Palestinian.

I never said the "land was empty". Ever. In fact, the Zionists themselves recognized the error of their belief that they were "a people without a land, coming to a land without a people". But it also true that the Zionists had no intention, contra Benny Morris and the New Historians, of ejecting Arabs. That is simply not ture. That's a slander.

And as other have pointed out, I'm sure, there ARE 1,000,000 Arabs in Israel enjoying the best human rights regime in the entire ME, including even members of the Knesset.

Alan Dershowitz, in this The Case for Israel, makes a good point: today it's almost impossible to know the exact make-up of the refugees, Jewish or Arab. Many of the Arab elites left early; definitely a sizeable portion of the refugees were urged to "step aside" to allow the slaughter to proceed in order to return for the loot later; and YES, we agree, a certain portion were "pushed from their homes". This is a fact. But be realistic ET please: the Arab countries were the aggressors here and, repeating, these so-called "Palestinians" were Arabs. You can imagine the mortal fear of the Jews. Please remember Haj Amin Al-Hussein, the "Palestinian" Hitler, the 1936 Arab revolt, the pogroms, his Nazi radio addresses, his complicity in the European genocide and full intention to visit one upon the Jews of Palestine after the expected victory.

You've got to get out of your head (c'mon, you know this is a occupational hazard) and try to put yourself on the ground here and see how the so-called "Palestinians" would be perceived during this 5 Arab country onslaught. Imagine the chaos, the existential fear.

The expulsion of enemy people is a common result of war, we both know this. Again, I hold to my view that THE CAUSE of the refugee crisis, including the necessary expulsion, was the ARAB INVASIONS.

OK I'll make this concession: perhaps the people themselves -- if it was at all possible to divine this -- want done with this, want a two state solution. Perhaps. But that matters not one whit, ET. When I make this claim I refer to the people who count: the Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, elites who decide these matters. But also remember, they elected Hamas. Oh, I know, I know, they were less corrupt and would get the garbage collected on time, etc.

But I sincerely doubt it!

Gaza? What happened?
Israel's world-beater high-tech Greenhouse. Left intact, not destroyed in spite. The possible basis for some kind of real economy. Destroyed by the barbarians.

Finally: restating, "The Palestinians", meaning the politicians, are not seeking a two-state solution except perhaps as a launching ground for the final push. Neither Fatah nor Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist. Nothing good can happen until that changes.

Me No Dhimmi, excellent points

"they wanted a Jewish majority" - ET states this in many of her posts and I don't get why this is so bad - oh those mean old nasty Jews don't want to live as dhimmis anymore - how dare they want a Jewish state where everyone is equal before the law (check out the decisions of the Israel Supreme Court). hmm, the Arabs/Muslims have something like 22 states where they are the majority and surely do not have state holidays for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, etc. The French have France, the Germans have Germany, the Italians have Italy, how dare those Jews presume that on that teeny tiny plot of land where their history is writ large (Jerusalem, Hebron, Jerico, Bethleham, Shechem, BeerSheva, etc)they should be sovereign? How dare those Jews want Judea? I'm sure ET does not want to live in a Muslim majority country where she is a dhimmi. Oh and not that it would matter to you, but I'm certain if I had more time I could find the large amount of evidence that shows that in Haifa and other places where lots of Arabs lived, in 1947 before the war broke out, ews drove around asking their Arab neighbours not to flee.

"But, Israel's 1948-50 Knesset Laws were geared to preventing any return and any claims to land ownership (Absentee Laws)."
as I said before sort of like the Americans did not want British Loyalists back after their war of Independence. Again how dare those Jews not let their sworn enemies live among them? No wonder they suicide themselves, right ET?

ET you are making the assumption that God is metaphysical and therefore can not be proven. I'm telling you just as people for thousands of years have been telling you that God not only exists but He wants to have a relationship with you! Prove me wrong. Prove that endless list of witnesses are all wrong. Don't sit back and read some highbrow's dissertation on the existential necessity of Reason. We can all read the philosophers and we can all reach out own reasons for not reaching out to what we think doesn’t exist. That’s not the point.

When I was studying to be an engineer I came across a complex mathematical formula that proved it was impossible for anything to go faster than the speed of sound. At that time I was playing around with the Air Reserves and came to know quite a few fighter pilots. At that time they were flying the CF-104 Starfighters. These pilots all assured me that they could fly the “104” faster than the speed of sound. One of my friends was a test pilot and he told me that on one occasion he was clocked on radar doing 23 miles ( close to 40 km) a minute. Now who was I to believe. I had never flown faster than the speed of sound. The little airplanes I flew didn’t go much over 150 miles an hour and the math I had seen Proved these jet jockeys were liars. Watching the aircraft on radar and hearing the sonic boom convinced me that my pet theory was indeed wrong.

Back to you are you going to be a better scientist and do the experiment or are you going to do a highbrow version of Rosy O‘Donnel?

I am rational, that's why I'm an engineer, and that's why I had to divorce myself from the idea of a god.

Jon, I have several engineers in my family and
they all believe in God. Einstein believed in God. Some of the greatest scientists have believed in God. Renowned atheists such as Anthony Flew now believe in God because of technological advancements in research [in his case primarily DNA].

I myself am not an engineer but I am a successful business owner. The fact that you're an engineer has nothing to do with whether there is a God. The ultimate engineer is God.

was that I'd never seen any evidence of god.

God is all around us. You will never see God and the last people He would show himself to are those that demand to see Him and then they'll believe. It doesn't work that way. God doesn't need to prove Himself to any of us, we need to prove ourselves to Him.

Sounds like you have some interesting stories.

By this point I was thinking like a scientist.

Science and God are not mutually exclusive, that's what liberals wound have you believe. Through science we will come closer to God.

“Any halfwit can jump up and down denouncing God, but for a half-century professor Anthony Flew has been considered probably the number one living intellectual proponent of religious skepticism and atheism. If Madalyn Murray O'Hair had ever actually engaged in logical debate about atheism, it would have most likely been Anthony Flew's books she'd have read to bone up.

Now at age 81, Flew says he believes in some kind of God. Basically, over some period of time he's come to accept the "design" argument that says that there's simply too much complexity in DNA for life to have developed without some kind of intelligent guidance.

I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.

That's still a long way from being a Christian, or believing in an afterlife. He would describe himself as a "deist," the same religious generalization prefered by Thomas Jefferson.

I'm not going so far as express positive belief in something that I don't understand like this, but I'm sympathetic to the underlying point. That is, fumbling Darwinian evolution really doesn't seem like a realistic explanation of the complexities of a human DNA.”

~~~~~~~~~

"British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England."

Regarding the word “Palestine”……..

“The name Palestine refers to a region of the eastern Mediterranean coast from the sea to the Jordan valley and from the southern Negev desert to the Galilee lake region in the north. The word itself derives from "Plesheth", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". Plesheth, (root palash) was a general term meaning rolling or migratory. This referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea. The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They did not speak Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs.

The Philistines reached the southern coast of Israel in several waves. One group arrived in the pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they came into conflict with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Another group, coming from Crete after being repulsed from an attempted invasion of Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area, where they founded five settlements (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat). In the Persian and Greek periods, foreign settlers - chiefly from the Mediterranean islands - overran the Philistine districts.

From the fifth century BC, following the historian Herodotus, Greeks called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean "the Philistine Syria" using the Greek language form of the name. In AD 135, after putting down the Bar Kochba revolt, the second major Jewish revolt against Rome, the Emperor Hadrian wanted to blot out the name of the Roman "Provincia Judaea" and so renamed it "Provincia Syria Palaestina", the Latin version of the Greek name and the first use of the name as an administrative unit. The name "Provincia Syria Palaestina" was later shortened to Palaestina, from which the modern, anglicized "Palestine" is derived.

This remained the situation until the end of the fourth century, when in the wake of a general imperial reorganization Palestine became three Palestines: First, Second, and Third. This configuration is believed to have persisted into the seventh century, the time of the Persian and Muslim conquests.

The Christian Crusaders employed the word Palestine to refer to the general region of the "three Palestines." After the fall of the crusader kingdom, Palestine was no longer an official designation. The name, however, continued to be used informally for the lands on both sides of the Jordan River. The Ottoman Turks, who were non-Arabs but religious Muslims, ruled the area for 400 years (1517-1917). Under Ottoman rule, the Palestine region was attached administratively to the province of Damascus and ruled from Istanbul. The name Palestine was revived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and applied to the territory in this region that was placed under the British Mandate for Palestine.

The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Roman "Palaestina". Quoting Golda Meir:

The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity. [In an article by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, November 25, 1995]”

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_name_origin.php

Do you know what is rather disturbing about this discussion? It's the vehemence of the exhortation to me, that I must, absolutely must, believe in god. That I must not be an atheist.

Joe - your comparing me to Rosie O'Donnell, with her stupid remarks about steel-fire, because I don't believe in god - is really quite offensive. The reality or non-reality of the existence of god can't be compared to the simple physical properties of steel and its behaviour when heated.
I'm not stupid; I've analyzed the situation, and I've made my decision. I'd appreciate some respect for that decision.

Fundamental Muslims treat my decision with the same rejection as you people are treating it. That is, my view is rejected as unacceptable and I am treated as someone who is ignorant and unscientific (Joe) or someone, a 'halfwit', who rejects Truth but who will eventually see Truth (Apollyon).

I, myself, haven't chastized any of you, for your belief in god, haven't denigrated your rationality, your capacity to come to a decision. Therefore, I'd appreciate the same courtesy.

I have made my choice; I think it's up to you people to respect it. You have made your choice; I respect it. But, I have no wish to convert you, and expect you to show me the same courtesy.

ET, that term “halfwit” was used by the author I quoted, I wouldn’t apply that term to you or Jon. The author, imao, is referring to those who haven’t thought out the subject or done any reading on the matter [both sides] but reflexively deny the existence of God because He hasn’t shown himself to these narcissistic individuals.

In fact, I support ET in her comments re: God, in whom I don't believe either, and nor do I believe that morals depend on a belief in God.
As to "God's chosen people" -- that phrase is seriously counter-productive in today's great debate on the Arab-Israel conflict and Israel's just cause.

ex-liberal, yes, it is true that the mayor of Haifa begged the Arabs to hold fast. I know this happened, but am not certain it was Haifa.

The thing in the debate is to avoid theology altogether. Keep it secular. Dershowitz also asks us to apply some kind of statute of limitations on grievances if we are to get anywhere. But yes, OK to provide as much historical data as possible to counter a central plank in the jihad propaganda that Jews have no connection to the land. Read Dore Gold's "Fight for Jerusalem" for superb coverage of this issue.

The Jews had a just claim. They did not steal the land. They did not pre-plan an expulsion. They offered compensation tho, I argue, they had no moral obligation to do so. They have never been the aggressor. They have desperately sought peace. They are not to blame for the refugee crisis. They fought a defensive war against huge odds and Arabs in the area left of their own volitiion, but were also expelled -- which is a just action in a just defensive war.

AND, given its existenially precarious position since 1948 I maintain that Israel is a light onto the world -- the planet's greatest democracy.

As to "God's chosen people" -- that phrase is seriously counter-productive in today's great debate on the Arab-Israel conflict and Israel's just cause.

Me No Dhimmi, Arabs don't deny this reality of the Bible. Muslims consider Moses, Abraham and Jesus to be prophets. As far as I'm concerned Jews remarkable history against all validates the title.

***against all [odds] validates the title.

AND, given its existenially precarious position since 1948 I maintain that Israel is a light onto the world -- the planet's greatest democracy.

Me No Dhimmi, I appreciate your comments.

Israeli politics is unfortunately very splintered; like the joke goes, two Jews will give you three opinions. But Israel is undoubtedly a light unto the world.

As far as I'm concerned Jews remarkable history against all [odds] validates the title.

Let me also add that no group of people has contributed more to humanity in the history of the world.

.....I maintain that Israel is a light onto the world ......

From Encarta..........

"A third major concept in Judaism is that of the covenant (berith), or contractual agreement, between God and the Jewish people. According to tradition, the God of creation entered into a special relationship with the Jewish people at Sinai. They would acknowledge God as their sole ultimate king and legislator, agreeing to obey his laws; God, in turn, would acknowledge Israel as his particular people and be especially mindful of them. Both biblical authors and later Jewish tradition view this covenant in a universal context. Only after successive failures to establish a covenant with rebellious humanity did God turn to a particular segment of it. Israel is to be a “kingdom of priests,” and the ideal social order that it establishes in accordance with the divine laws is to be a model for the human race. Israel thus stands between God and humanity, representing each to the other.

The idea of the covenant also determines the way in which both nature and history traditionally have been viewed in Judaism. Israel’s well-being is seen to depend on obedience to God’s commandments. Both natural and historical events that befall Israel are interpreted as emanating from God and as influenced by Israel’s religious behavior. A direct causal connection is thus made between human behavior and human destiny. This perspective intensifies the problem of theodicy (God’s justice) in Judaism, because the historical experience of both individuals and the Jewish people has frequently been one of suffering.

Much Jewish religious thought, from the biblical Book of Job onward, has been preoccupied with the problem of affirming justice and meaning in the face of apparent injustice. In time, the problem was mitigated by the belief that virtue and obedience ultimately would be rewarded and sin punished by divine judgment after death, thereby redressing inequities in this world. The indignities of foreign domination and forced exile from the land of Israel suffered by the Jewish people also would be redressed at the end of time, when God would send his Messiah (mashiah, “one anointed” with oil as a king), a scion of the royal house of David, to redeem the Jews and restore them to sovereignty in their land."

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761556154/Judaism.html

The Jews wrote the bible. Therefore they wrote their own history but what do I know. All religion is based on 10% fact the rest is dogma and made up as they went. This was done to keep the people under the thumbs of the powers that be.
There is no such thing as a chosen people. Jews wrote this about themselves and no one questions it. If they do they are branded anti jewish. It's all a load of crap.

Apollyon writes, "Let me also add that no group of people [Jews] has contributed more to humanity in the history of the world."

Of course, the foundation of the West is JUDEO-Christian. That's a fact. However, I think a case could be made that Christians, as a group, despite their lapses, have also contributed a huge amount to the world. Besides being the foundation of education, medicine (hospitals), democracy, the arts, etc., in the West, which group seems to appear at the site of disasters anywhere in the world, whatever the religion of the victims, to give aid and comfort?

While most religions corral time, treasure, and talent for their own, Christians are outward looking as well and tend to give much away to non Christians.

I'm not disputing the immense importance of the Jewish people: I believe--as revealed by God, not themselves, as ok4ua implies--that the Jews are, indeed, God's chosen people. Actually, the book, The Gifts of the Jews, by Thomas Cahill, does, indeed, attribute much of the "good" of the West to the worldview of the Jews. So, perhaps, Apollyon, you are right!

(ok4ua, your ignorant, crass, and unpleasant sneers are most unwelcome. If you have a point to make, please dignify it with some evidence of clear thinking and good will.)

Ok4ua
I would agree that your comments would be “ignorant, crass, and unpleasant sneers” and very “unwelcome” to anyone with a narrow view and understanding of religious history. (Excluding snobbish arrogance of course). The “only my opinion counts” basis of all fundamentalisms that the legitimately sane world has been left to deal with should not deter your opinions. I mean this in good will.

..., I think a case could be made that Christians, as a group, despite their lapses, have also contributed a huge amount to the world.

It's undeniable, lookout.

The Jews wrote the bible. Therefore they wrote their own history but what do I know.

Apparently nothing; the rest of your comment is pure gibberish.

ok4ua, wrote, "There is no such thing as a chosen people. Jews wrote this about themselves and no one [sic]
questions it. If they do they are branded anti jewish [sic]. It's all [sic] a load of crap."

And, according to Knight 99, I'M narrow minded if I think this screed, including the factual and grammatical errors, is "ignorant, crass, and unpleasant"? (Notice that I didn't "sic" ok4ua's opinions. I don't agree but it's a free country.)

ok4ua has a right to his/her opinions and, yes, has a right to make "ignorant, crass, and unpleasant" comments. However, doing so hardly enhances either this person's argument or welcome at this site.

That said, I have no problem with Apollyon's riposte to ok4ua, which that person richly deserves. (People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.)

Apollyon, as you may have surmised, I have a very high regard for the Jewish people--in the words of John Paul II, Christians' "older brothers and sisters in faith". Thank you for your comment.