I get a shocking email from a member of my extended family

by on February 3, 2009 50
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The other day a member of my extended family sent out the email at the bottom of this post to every other member of the family: "It's our land, by Benjamin Netanyahu."
I was shocked. I sent a note back on the spot to all the other members of the family saying I had traced my genetics to Kazakhstan so I wanted to move back there, but I needed numbers.
I regret being flip. I wished I'd been direct and sincere, and said that it was racialist theories like this that stand in the way of there ever being peace in the holy land, or for the country I love, the United States.
I'm still shocked because I didn't think anyone in my family would take this stuff seriously, but they do. My family are liberal Democrats, and scientists. There were a bunch of scientists on the list that the email came from originally, to my family. The racial politics of the email underscore a big theme of mine: that neoconservatives weren't outliers in the Jewish community. They are a wing, yes, but they are not seen as extreme. The neocon interventionists of the last 15 years represent strong parochial, ethnocentric Zionist attitudes inside the American Jewish community. That's why when the neocons plotted the Iraq war and lo and behold it came to pass (thru a variety of circumstances) the liberal Jewish community never really turned on them. They blamed Bush. That was the single-gunman theory of the Iraq war.
Long before Iraq and Gaza exposed the vicious character of parochialism in my own community, I was uncomfortable with these attitudes inside the Jewish community. They played a part in my marrying out. After the Holocaust, we were all implicated in the question, Is it good for the Jews? I understand how it happened; but the consequences were tragic. Norman Mailer was eloquent on this theme: Hitler's bitterest posthumous achievement was to flood Jewish life with "cheap religious patriotism" and the sole concern, Is it good for the Jews? He said this in an interview with The American Conservative, and thereby anticipated the moment that this magazine started by Pat Buchanan would take the high ground in American life on the Gaza slaughter.
Because alas, my shocking email came from the soul of Jewish life, from the besieged, dehumanized, belligerent, and victimized soul that Israeli sociologists have lately described. There are many reasons I married my wife, but one reason is that these attitudes were suffocating to me; and there was not a scintilla of them in her background, and I wanted that fresh breeze. I know that I am only part of a larger trend; and yet I feel grateful for the relief my wife's culture brought me on this score, like landing on a beach.
62 percent of Jews under 35 are marrying out in part because parochialism is driving them out. I don't want the end of the Jews. I grew up loving my Jewishness and these days I am finding plenty company in Jewish life for my humanitarian beliefs. I want to play a part in reforming attitudes formed by the Holocaust. Because, if you read this email ascribed to Netanyahu, you will understand how dangerous they are.
(Phil Weiss)

It's our land...By: Benjamin Netanyahu Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview and was asked about Israel 's occupation of Arab lands. His response was "It's our land". The reporter (CNN or the like) was stunned - read below "It's our land..." It's important information since we don't get fair and accurate reporting from the media and facts tend to get lost in the jumble of daily events. "Crash Course on the Arab Israeli Conflict." Here are overlooked facts in the current &n bsp; Middle East situation. These were compiled by a Christian university professor: BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY.... ( It takes just 1.5 minutes to read!!!! ) It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew and non-Jew -- it doesn't matter. 1. Nationhood and Jerusalem . Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, Two thousand years before the rise of Islam. 2. Arab refugee s in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel . 3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. 4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years. 5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem , they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit. 6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures.Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. 7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem . Mohammed never came to Jerusalem . 8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem . Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem . 9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leaveIsrael by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews . Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. 10 The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. 11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same. 12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own 20 people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel , a country no larger than the state of New Jersey . 13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won. 14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel . Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them. 15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths. 16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel . 17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel . 18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. 19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives . 20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be. What will we tell our grandchildren about we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference? START NOW- Send this to 18 other people you know and ask them to send it to eighteen others, Jew and non-Jew--it doesn't really matter.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in American Jewish Community, Beyondoweiss, Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East

{ 50 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. 5 dancing shlomos says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:28 am

    another shocking letter, this from germany via the great israel shamir:

    From: Reinhard Heuschneider
    Dösingerried 19
    94259 Kirchberg bei Regen (Bayerischer Wald)
    Bayern (Bavaria)

    To: Frau Charlotte Knobloch
    President of the Central Jewish Committee of Germany
    "Leo-Baeck-Haus"
    Tucholskystraß e 9
    10117 Berlin – Mitte

    December 2, 2008

    Grüß Gott, Frau Knobloch!

    As a passionate Bavarian fancier of baked trout, I beg your assistance in finding a solution to a slippery question that could be decisive for my physical, psychical and political well being.

    Perhaps you, as president of the most powerful Jewish organization in Germany , are asking yourself: "What could the subject of baked trout possibly have to do with me?”

    The answer is: quite a lot.

    Baked trout has become a historical controversy of the first water,
    an issue with which the historiography of a twelve year epoch in our national history must stand or fall.

    Perhaps you are now asking: what could have triggered such a controversy?

    It has to do with Belgian television.

    In a popular VRT (Flemish Broadcasting System) program, TV chef Jeroen Meus describes and prepares favorite dishes of well-known persons past and present.

    As he was preparing a feature on "Trout in Butter Sauce,” a favorite dish of Adolf Hitler at his former "Eagle’s Nest” near Berchtestegaden, however, he was prohibited from doing so by Jewish protesters.

    According to the Jewish magazine Joods Actueel, mentioning the fact that that Hitler liked baked trout would tend to "depict the dictator Hitler as an ordinary person and understate his evil nature.”

    As if having his TV feature cancelled were not enough, the famous chef had travelled all the way to Bavaria to catch an authentic trout from the authentic stream.

    All his effort and expense for naught!

    Until recently I, like most Bavarians, subscribed to the official version of history (even without the input of the Jewish Central Committee) to the effect that Hitler’s favorite dish was chewing the carpet, without butter sauce.

    Now I am thankful to have been instructed otherwise by the revisionist culinary insight of Mr. Jeroen Meus.

    As I admitted at the beginning of this letter, I too love trout in butter sauce, specifically racially pure Bavarian rainbow trout, as must be obvious since I am Bavarian myself.

    Furthermore I have always believed the butter in the butter sauce should be the better Bavarian butter.

    Now, against the ever-darkening historical background, am I still allowed to prefer such culinary delights?

    And (in case this remark should somehow get past the culinary censors) am I allowed to brown the butter sauce to a truly brown and nutty colour, or would it be more correct politically to terminate the browning before the brown-butter sauce is quite brown?

    What is your advice on this burning issue?

    It is no secret that our all-purpose Section 130 of the Penal Code allows for no margin of error in protecting us from the consequences of incorrect political and politico-culinary tendencies.

    That is the reason why I am addressing myself to you, in the strictest confidence.

    I had considered addressing my letter to Frau Zypries, the Minister of Justice, but then I said to myself: "Why waste time beating around the bush? Why not go directly to the highest political authority in Germany ?”

    In impatient anticipation of your highly esteemed response,

    I remain, most respectfully yours,

    Reinhard Heuschneider

  2. Suzanne says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Phil, have you actually done a DNA test on your genetic makeup?

    Or have you bought the white supremacist "science" (hahaha) about Khazar Jews wholesale?

    As for Bibi…I find it pretty depressing that the Palestinians have blown every chance they've had to build a sovereign state and live in peace next to Israel.

    That window of opportunity has arguably been brought to a close if he gets in (and he will)

    Looks like whatever happens next will be irreversible. Sad.

  3. MJ Rosenberg says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Phil, my wife was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany to Polish Jews who survived the holocaust. She spoke only Yiddish until she went to kindergarten.
    But no one in her "survivor" family holds the idiotic views of that relative of yours.
    Where did they spend WW2? Long Island?

    I don't see these people as "besieged, dehumanized, belligerent, and victimized souls." Okay, they may be "besieged, dehumanized, belligerent, and victimized" but considerably less than the haters down south who spat on little black kids trying to get into school. Did they deserve our sympathy? I mean, losing the civil war was a psychic blow.

  4. Rowan says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:32 am

    5 dancing shlomos. what can i say.

    regarding that article on Mailer, I picked this remark from 1978 out, as a proxy answer to the question I have twice asked Phil, about Mailer and JHVH:

    We spoke of many things, including his Jewish upbringing, his grandfather who was a rabbi and his distance from the faith — though he had never written anything negative about Judaism, as he had promised his mother he would not. He was at heart "the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn."

  5. MM says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:42 am

    I for one applaud your derision, Phil, as utterly appropriate zing. No person has an unlimited supply of patience, understanding, and good faith–why not save these for those deserving them?

  6. Todd says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:45 am

    "I know that I am only part of a larger trend; and yet I feel grateful for the relief my wife's culture brought me on this score, like landing on a beach."

    Unfortunately, the stifling culture you tried to escape is combining with some of the worst elements of our own culture, and is closing in on all of us.

  7. Mohammad says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:50 am

    Suzanne is cpying my hahaha. Suzanne come up with your own way of making sense. Another thought. Suzanne is a man robot.

  8. MM says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:50 am

    Suzanne, where exactly do you think Ashkenazi Jews come from, ethnically and historically?

    And what you think of Dr. Shlomo Sand's recent book, How and Why the Jewish People was Invented?

    I look forward to hearing your expertise on these questions. You're obviously quite a scholar of Jewish history. Please, put these "scientists" and "doctors" in their places.

  9. Tommy says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:51 am

    European Jews are probably more closely related to Kazakhs than Israelites, and Palestinians may very well be the closest direct descendants of Israelites. However, Mr. Netanyahu only wants to go back to 1312 BC. Other nations existed prior to the Israelite one at that location. The Israelites killed them, using the ideology of their religion to justify and glorify their behavior, just as the Israelis do now.

  10. samuelburke says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:52 am

    http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/alterman

    Take, for example, Foxman's recent attack on Bill Moyers (a longstanding friend and occasional supporter of my work). When Moyers broadcast a less than laudatory commentary about Israel's Gaza invasion, Foxman accused the veteran journalist and liberal icon of–I kid you not–"moral equivalency, racism, historical revisionism, and indifference to terrorism." (You can read it online, together with Moyers's response.) The incident says far more about Foxman than Moyers. As M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum observed, Moyers "is one of the most admired figures in America. This attack will harm not at all. It will, in fact, enhance his reputation just as Ed Murrow's was enhanced by the attacks on him during the McCarthy era." Still, it is demonstrative of the maximalist Manichaean mindset that characterizes so much of American Jewish officialdom. Among Moyers's myriad sins, says Foxman, was his "ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel, claiming that checkpoints, the security fence, and the Gaza operation are tactics of humiliation rather than counter-terrorism." Now really: is it so hard to imagine that the checkpoints, security fence and Gaza operations are tactics of both humiliation and counter-terrorism? Where, exactly, would be the contradiction?

  11. Joe Schick says:
    February 3, 2009 at 11:53 am

    I believe this item was not actually written by Netanyahu. In any event, I received this e-mail around seven years ago; I guess it took a while to get to Phil.

  12. Richard Witty says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    There are some truths in the tirade. Best to take the time to determine which they are, which are false, and which are partially true.

    "These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be. What will we tell our grandchildren about we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference?"

    This a VERY GOOD question. The irony for the left, left-right and Zionist right, is the best answer isn't likely to be the one that each infers from that question.

    The best answer is LIVE and LET LIVE.

    Even the term "our" has multiple meanings. The meaning in your e-mail was the negative one. There is another meaning of the term "our", or "my" which is very different from the meaning of exclusive property. "The land is "mine"".

    The second meaning is that the land and/or time is "dear", affectionate. "You are "my" dear friend". "This time is "our" history". Its possible to use ONLY the second meaning of "my" or "our", or even to intentionally hear that when others speak it.

    They may be angry when your follow-up is to join in loving the land, loving the community, while their perspective revolves around owning the land.

  13. Todd says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    "I don't see these people as "besieged, dehumanized, belligerent, and victimized souls." Okay, they may be "besieged, dehumanized, belligerent, and victimized" but considerably less than the haters down south who spat on little black kids trying to get into school. Did they deserve our sympathy? I mean, losing the civil war was a psychic blow."

    I reject the comparisons between the South and Israel, but your point is interesting. Reconstruction probably harmed race relations as much as any debate about slavery before the war, or the war itself. Few people want to point it out, but black rule during Reconstruction was a disaster that was bound to cause trouble later. Add the almost rigged poverty that was the result of the war for generations of southerners afterward, and segregation and white supremacy in the South were far more understandable than discrimination and eugenics were in the North.

    I don't agree with a second-class status for any native-born citizen born to legal parents, but even men like Hosea Williams admitted that lots of agitation went into getting people mad enough to spit at children.

  14. Judy says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    Phil, I think someone is pulling your chain.

    No one with an education past 8th grade can beleive that nonsense!

  15. samuelburke says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    whom the Gods wish to humble they make insane first.

    israel is insane and unfortunately for us here in the u.s we are right there with them.

  16. Suzanne says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    "I believe this item was not actually written by Netanyahu. In any event, I received this e-mail around seven years ago; I guess it took a while to get to Phil."

    Ouch! Wonder which one of his "buddies" here recirculated it.

  17. Suzanne says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    I'm a woman, Mohammad, and would never be mistaken for anything else.

    However, I do see I'm pushing your buttons BIG TIME. So I welcome the jabs. :-)

  18. Rowan says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    This claim is exceptionally easy to disprove:

    15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

  19. MM says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    I don't know about Jordan, Rowan, but the sheer absurdity of the second claim makes me tend to doubt the first.

  20. 5 dancing shlomos says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    all together:

    israevil has no right to exist – anywhere. we love and support hamas. hamas is not terrorist. israevil and its servant, amurderka, are the terrorists. god bless hezbollah. the iranians are sane. israevil and its lovers are minds diseased and the disease is passed generation to generation.

    repeat.

    march to the dept of delusion (dod/pentagon) and throw shoes. well, congress, treasury, white house, all are dod.

  21. MM says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Looks like Suzanne's not talking to me anymore, either. I've heard it said I have that effect on robots.

  22. MM says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    I even asked Chris Berel recently if I could join his team but he's ignoring me, too.

    Rowan, I take back what I said about you not being as bad-ass as H.L. Mencken and having a secret crush on Phil and JHVH. Will you be my friend? Even a heartless, hateful anti-Semite like me can't make it alone you know.

  23. Citizen says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    I see we're in for WW3 sometime after N gets elected ,for sure, otherwise, still reasonably certain. It will be nice to watch the average American so deeply in debt, with ever more debt on the horizon
    (but not the banksters, who remain in control), and with the Iraqi occupation bulging under his or thin belt, and with Obama hurtling head first into
    the mountainous graveyard of superpowers, Afghanistan, yes, nice-entertaining even, to watch the average American watch the inevitable attack on Iran after the set up charade of diplomacy.

    In that context, even the average ignorant American family will
    eventually wake up. When they have no home, no job, and their kids of both sexes have been conscripted in the revitalized military draft…

    Israel First!

    Follow that tip of the spear headed for you and your children for generations to come, even as it has been slicing the air over your lungs for scores of years, you USA tools.

    That's what it will take to open the Average Americans eyes.
    Then, of course, it will be too late.

    Who cares? America will pass into the dustbin of history, the great
    humanitarian state experiment will dissolve.

    Back to the future.

  24. 5 dancing shlomos says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    of course nutnyahoo said this. he and many other loons have said this and have repeated it many times. mr nuthinhayoo also said, "we can lie better and more frequently than others can tell the truth. our gifts to the world are: hate, envy, deception, greed, and lies. goyim oyim us for these gifts."

    come out today and lie
    play a lie
    give a lie
    spin a lie
    spoon a lie
    twist a lie
    put a lie
    lay a lie
    turn a lie
    our god is the lie
    we are our god
    we are the lie
    believe us

  25. roGER says:
    February 3, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    Just to echo what others have said, the e-mail is certainly NOT the work of Benjamin Netanyahu.

    It's been floating around the Internet for several years now; its depressing how popular it remains.

  26. 5 dancing shlomos says:
    February 3, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    punkatoxic bill (kristol) has seen his master shadow – adipostic nutnyahooo. 12 more years of war for jews.

  27. Suzanne says:
    February 3, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    MM–arguing with you about Jewish genetics and the Khazar myth is the same as arguing with a creationist about evolution and the Adam & Eve myth.

    I have no interest in arguing with sub-intelligent boneheads.

  28. 5ds says:
    February 3, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    when the repetition of lies stop, internet appearances will end.

  29. chris berel says:
    February 3, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    There I went and married my palestinian schiksa godess, and believe it or not, converted. I just can't get away from those Jews.

  30. Sam says:
    February 3, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    >> MM–arguing with you about Jewish genetics and the Khazar myth is the same as arguing with a creationist about evolution and the Adam & Eve myth.

    I have no interest in arguing with sub-intelligent boneheads. <<

    Suzanne, if you have no interest in arguing with "sub-intellegent boneheads" then what about arguing with one of your fellow tribesmen? He's a professor of history at Tel Aviv University. What follows is a snip from an interview with Haaretz

    [ps - Chris and I are going to go out, get whipped up, find some puppies and smash their whining yaps against some rocks. This to buck up the sagging Israeli resolve, what with the emergence of these Israeli peace groups at all. Would you like to join us?]

    [From Haaretz:]

    01/01/2008
    Shattering a 'national mythology'
    By Ofri Ilani
    Tags: Palestinians

    Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people over the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few Israelis have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century C.E., united a number of Berber tribes and pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that the reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born, sometime around the 6th century C.E.

    According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish – and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem – is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.

    In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century).

    Clip. Read entire article here:

    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

  31. LeaNder says:
    February 3, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    Ouch! Wonder which one of his "buddies" here recirculated it.

    what a silly comment.

  32. Tommy says:
    February 3, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    Suzanne does not want to argue with Arthur Koestler. Few did.

  33. Kathy says:
    February 3, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    Man's inhumanity to man. When will it ever end? As I see it, telling lies that the MSM will run with has risen to an art form. I now "investigate" each and every "news" story I hear or read in the MSM.

  34. MM says:
    February 3, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    Tommy is talking abou The Thirteenth Tribe, but speaking of Koestler, here's the NY Times' review of Thieves in the Night, his book about Zionism.

    Quite interesting to note to whom the term "terrorist" refers in this 1946 review.

    And then there's this passage, which essentializes Zionist willful ignorance:

    (from Thieves in the Night)

    "I wish my Arabic was as good as yours," said Joseph [the Zionist protagonist]. "What was the old Sheikh explaining so solemnly?"

    "He explained that every nation has the right to live according to its own fashion, right or wrong, without outside interference. He explained that money corrupts, fertilizers stink and tractors make a noise, all of which he dislikes."

    "And what did you answer?"

    "Nothing."

    "But you saw his point?"

    "We cannot afford to see the other man's point."

  35. Vera Beaudin Saeedpour says:
    February 3, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    "I know that I am only part of a larger trend; and yet I feel grateful for the relief my wife's culture brought me on this score, like landing on a beach."

    Ah, Philip,

    I too married into other cultures: my first husband is a Christian of French-Canadian descent; my second husband was a Muslim Kurd from Iran. But unlike you, I landed not on a beach, I landed on alien planets, learning from the school of hard knocks that it is much easier to take the boys out of the farms than to take the farms out of the boys. And that goes for girls as well. Not until I read Genesis, in a language I could understand, did I learn that it doesn't say God created Jews, it says "God created man…" Only then did I begin to consider that socialization, not genes, not faith, is the culprit, that my husbands were as much its products as I. Only then did I reason that the world doesn't need a new weapons, the world needs a change of mind.

  36. Shirin says:
    February 3, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    Sigh! Aside from the fact that we have all heard this before, and it contains numerous inaccuracies and plenty of outright lies, every single point, true or not, is completely irrelevant.

    I could take the time to comment on each point and why it is irrelevant, and correct each of the lies and inaccuracies, but for what purpose? It is a parody of itself – kind of like those e-mails that were going around during the campaign saying things like Obama is a Muslim, Muslims hate pets, therefore if Obama is elected he will force Americans to get rid of their pets. Not one part of that is true, and yet actual adults were reading that rubbish, and sending it around to other adults, who read it and sent it, and so on and so on. I know, because the mother of one of my colleagues is a right wing racist wacko, and she was forever sending that stuff to him.

    I DO have to comment on one of the bits of nonsense, though, because it is downright funny:

    "Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem."

    As virtually everyone in the world knows, Muslims do not pray with their backs toward anything. They pray facing Mecca. Whether their backs are toward Jerusalem or not depends entirely on their geographic location at the time.

    What a lot of people do not know is that in the beginning the direction for prayer actually WAS Jerusalem, Jerusalem being the place where Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is said to have submitted to God. When it comes to establishing a claim, that little factoid is as irrelevant as is every single point in that e-mail, but it's kind of interesting for other reasons.

  37. chris berel says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    Not until I read Genesis, in a language I could understand, did I learn that it doesn't say God created Jews, it says "God created man…"

    Posted by: Vera Beaudin Saeedpour

    Exactly what version of Genesis did you read whereupon it read "God created Jews"?

  38. Suzanne says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    Leander wrote: "what a silly comment"

    Apologies, just trying to fit in a little better with the asinine mutterings of the anti-Jew crew. I'll stick to my regular coherent and rational observations for now on. :-)

  39. chris berel says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    What a lot of people do not know is that in the beginning the direction for prayer actually WAS Jerusalem,…
    Posted by: Shirin

    Everyone I know, knows it. They also know that like Luthor, Mohammed got pissed when the Jews he was trying to convert showed him up to be a nutcase. Then he started praying to an idol in Mecca. Big black stone, as I recall.

  40. juz thinkin' says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    it's amazing how chris and Suzanne always show up at exactly the same times. What are the chances of that?

  41. Shirin says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    " the Palestinians have blown every chance they've had to build a sovereign state and live in peace next to Israel."

    Pure bull. The Palestinians have made numerous good faith efforts at resolving the conflict, including relinquishing their claims to land within pre-1967 Israel. Israel, on the other hand, has shown nothing but bad faith, including using the deception of the Oslo Accords to escalate their land grab and colonization in the OPT.

  42. MRW. says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    Suzanne.

    Or have you bought the white supremacist "science" (hahaha) about Khazar Jews wholesale?

    White supremacist science? !?

    This, from Israel's Arutz Sheva, last September: Found: Ancient Capital of 'Jewish' Khazar Kingdom by Ze'ev Ben-Yechiel
    link to israelnationalnews.com
    />

    The Jewish University in Moscow and the Russian Jewish Congress helped finance the excavations, which took place during the summer in various locations throughout the region in which the discovery was made.

  43. MRW. says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:39 pm

    Mr. Netanyahu only wants to go back to 1312 BC

    How would Mr.Netanyahu know? The Old Testament was written around 200 BC in Alexandria Egypt. All claims and stories in it about what happened in 1312 BC hold as much sway as someone sitting down now and claiming to give a verbatim account of what happened at some place on earth in 900 AD.

    It is a glorious game of Simon Says.

  44. MRW. says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:43 pm

    Kathy….smart woman:

    As I see it, telling lies that the MSM will run with has risen to an art form. I now "investigate" each and every "news" story I hear or read in the MSM.

    And you have to hold your nose here to jump over the trolls. :-)

  45. MRW. says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Suzanne…the ignoramus

    MM–arguing with you about Jewish genetics and the Khazar myth is the same as arguing with a creationist about evolution and the Adam & Eve myth.
    I have no interest in arguing with sub-intelligent boneheads.

    Then argue with your own people:

    References to a Jewish kingdom of Khazars are numerous in rabbinic literature from the Middle Ages and later. Among them is the famous tale by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevy, related in his celebrated 12th-century work The Kuzari. The book recounts a lengthy conversation between a certain Khazar king and an unnamed Jewish "wise man", where the latter's brilliant exposition on the essence of Torah compels the king to join the Jewish people.

    Among other Jewish sources supporting the Jewish identity of the Khazars is a letter written by the medieval Jewish writer Avraham ibn Daud, who reported meeting rabbinical students from Khazar in Toledo, Spain in the mid-12th century. The well-renowned Schechter Letter recounts a different version of the conversion of the Khazar king, and mentions Benjamin ben Menachem as a Khazar king. Saadia Gaon, considered by many to be the greatest rabbi of his generation in the 10th century, also spoke favorably of the Khazars in his writings.

  46. John Lewis-Dickerson says:
    February 3, 2009 at 4:37 pm

    FROM PHIL, ABOVE – Norman Mailer was eloquent on this theme: Hitler's bitterest posthumous achievement was to flood Jewish life with "cheap religious patriotism" and the sole concern, Is it good for the Jews?

    ME: "Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority." — Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorisms

  47. chris berel says:
    February 3, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Genetically, it has been proven that the Khazar influence is no more than 5%. That could account for MRW's racist attitude.

  48. MRW. says:
    February 3, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    Mr. Berel.

    Birobidzhan A Jewish autonomous homeland actually existed in 1928.
    link to youtube.com
    />

    In 1928, Jews from across the Soviet Union traveled to the Russian Far East. They were trying to build themselves a promised land. They brought their families, set up schools and created a community there. It took years of hard work but finally they built a capital city. Its called Birobidzhan. Find out more about Russias Jewish autonomous region from James Brown on RT.

  49. MRW. says:
    February 3, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Mr. Berel.

    Genetically, it has been proven that the Khazar influence is no more than 5%.

    Prove it. You're talking out of your ass. I say you're not a geneticist, and I say you dont have access to the latest research which is only being done now as a result of advances in DNA research.

  50. chris berel says:
    February 3, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    Thank you for the information. And your point?

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