Last Sunday night I went to hear a J Street director speak in Cape Cod, in a community with many Jews, and I kept looking around the room for ones I knew from my childhood summers. Only one—and afterward I had a fight with my mother about the issue. Which is really all I’ve asked for, a battle inside the Jewish family over Zionism. I will get to the fight with my mama before long but meantime it is important to relate what Steven Krubiner, the young well-spoken J Street man had to say. For it speaks to the backwardness of the American Jewish community on the Israel/Palestine issue and underlines a theme here, we Jews fell in love with Zionism some time ago and it will take a long time to break up the romance, and it is very hard to make any progress if the conversation is only inside the Jewish community. No, we Jews must open our ears to the likes of Ali Abunimah and John Mearsheimer and Andrew Sullivan.
Krubiner’s message was the urgency of the U.S. pushing Israel to come to the two-state solution. The only way Obama will do so is if he feels political able, and the only way he will feel that political comfort is if the Jewish community doesn’t abandon Congress and the president over the issue. So Krubiner’s talk was directed at Jews: The hour is getting late, this is an existential crisis for the Jewish state, and you must allow Obama to pressure Israel or Israel is lost.
To make headway with his presumed Jewish audience, Krubiner began in a place of love and fear. He told us that he had been taught to love Israel as part of his Jewish identity – like all other Jews, he said and reader, I did not projectile vomit—and had not even realized there was a conflict over there till his 7th grade social studies teacher was killed in a bombing in Israel, evidently in the early 90s, and this had jarred him. Then Krubiner had helped lead a tour of Jewish communities in Europe and realized there were no thriving Jewish communities, they had been wiped out, an experience that convinced him that Israel was necessary for Jews. After college he had defied his parents to move to Israel. Again, not my storyline, nor the storyline of most American Jews. Zionism calls on a conservative impulse in the Jewish soul.
Krubiner is a liberal, surely thinks of himself as a liberal, but his messaging was very conservative. As I noted earlier here, he never talked about the occupation and didn’t mention settlements until the Q-and-A. Settlements isn’t J Street’s agenda. There was a lot of unpleasant demographic talk. If we make a 6 percent land swap, the state of Israel will go to 86 percent Jewish (yes, and what about the Palestinians dealt out of Israel into a Palestinian state, on ethnic transfer terms, will they dig that?). Or: If you put a GPS device on everyone in Jerusalem and made the Palestinian dots green and the Israeli ones blue, you would find that it’s very “clean,” Jews move around in West Jerusalem and Palestinians stay in East Jerusalem.
Mr. Clean! Not for me!
Krubiner said, "Ideally, especially for American and Israeli Jews they would want... all of the land... of Israel," from the river to the sea. But they can’t have that without either sacrificing democracy or giving up the idea of a Jewish state. And therefore because J Street is “unconditionally” for a Jewish state in Israel, we must give up the land so that the inevitable Palestinian majority will have a place to go.
The revelation in these statements is that Krubiner is doing outreach to a very conservative community. You can talk all you like about secular Jews, but American Jews believe in a way that can only be called religious (because most have never seen the West Bank) in their right to the “Land of Israel.” And so when asked about settlements, Krubiner was somewhat apologetic about J Street’s backbone moment of February, when it criticized Obama for voting against the U.N. Security Council’s resolution opposing Israeli settlements. Yes, our position didn’t play very well in the Jewish community, Krubiner said. I.e., this community is behind the times, and it is driving policy.
Now as I have pointed out earlier, Krubiner is a smart guy who gets the story. He knows that the occupation is destroying Palestinian souls, as he stated in the one-on-one by the lectern after the speech. And when a questioner asked about democracy without regard to race in Israel and Palestine, Krubiner acknowledged that democracy was a virtuous thing, but he then said that it would take a “sad rollercoaster of violence” to get us to that place. A legitimate point of view of course. Though not in itself a justification for slavery. Remember: an American rollercoaster of violence, the Civil War, is justified historically on that basis, it was worth it to end slavery.
But generally speaking, Krubiner was addressing Jewish fears. He said that the longer we wait on the two state solution, the more frustrated Palestinians will come round to the view that we can just wait the Jews out, we will be the majority in this land in a few years, and “we’ll have the whole state to ourselves.”
I don’t know about that. I am not opposed to partition, but I don’t think that Palestinians want the whole place to themselves. The one-staters in our community want a democracy for the people who were born in that place--and for the people whose grandparents were born there. By playing the fear card, I think Krubiner is trying to get Jews off their butts and energize them politically.
Why doesn’t J Street take its teachings to a non-Jewish audience and try and energize them? The reasons are several. A, the Jewish community is where the Democratic money is and J Street is playing a Washington insider game, B, If you are a Zionist, well, you don’t fully trust the goyim with your fate-- so how can you work with them, it goes against the Zionist understanding… C, And how could you trust American non-Jewish liberals anyway? The non-Jewish audience as soon as they become informed will question the right of Jews to have a Jewish state in a land that is not historically ours and at a time when Jews are way safer in the west and there are Jim Crow conditions across the West Bank and a ghetto in Gaza.
On the other hand, the problem for J Street in working inside the Jewish community is, their views are to the right of Atilla the hun. You can’t even talk about settlements. Krubiner made a point of bashing the neocons, saying they had driven policy in this area, so evidently neoconservative has high negatives even for Jews. But it’s not like liberal Jews are all that much better.
I want to conclude on the secular point. We grew up thinking that we were secular Jews. That’s the big category of Jewish cultural life: east coast secular Jews. But as Krubiner proves, there is a large percentage of secular Jews who believe in a religious idea: our right to the West Bank. Ed Koch believes it, it’s why he’s savaging Obama. David Mamet believes it, he doesn't want to give an inch. We have the right to the Land of Israel. An idea we read in a book with leather covers and God inside, for which we have no evidence. A year or so back I heard that peace processor Aaron David Miller was speaking at a synagogue in Cleveland and said we have to give up the land and the rabbi said, But God gave us that land. Joke was on Miller.
I am saying that intolerant religious attitudes on Israel/Palestine are deeply embedded in the Jewish community. So what progressive would want to move policy forward by working only in that community? It would be like trying to wage the battle for abortion back in the 80s by organizing in the Catholic church. Or waging the battle for women’s lib by organizing in the Muslim community, which tends to be very traditional. All these communities can be moved on these religious questions. But it requires an outside force.
excellent excellent post. it reminded me yesterday of my conversation with eee when i responded to him that it was the whole american community i wanted to talk to, not just the jewish zionist community that made a difference.
phil, i want to know about the spat w/your mother! you said you would get to ‘before long’, i thought you meant at the end of the post. no fair.
In the Battle Of Algiers, at one point the French lieutenant colonel of paratroopers who is sent to restore order to Algiers tells the French press corps that ultimately it all boils down to, “They want us to leave, but we don’t want to leave.” And his follow-up question targeting all the humanistic questions leveled at him regarding how France was handling the Arabs, is, “Do you want us to leave? If not, then you must live with the consequences.”
The film does a good job of showing both state terrorism and resistance terrorism–and its moral/ethical cost on all those involved on either side of the conflict.
So my question is an American one: Are Americans willing to live with the cost of the I-P conflict to themselves? Clearly the bulk of the Jewish Americans are. We won’t know how Americans as a whole feel about it until they get the facts. There’s the rub.
During the entire film a question always on the minds of the conflict participants was, would the UN intervene beyond mouthing peace platitudes?
The Algerians thought that history was on their side. They turned out to be right. So, where is history going now regarding the I-P conflict and the USA’s singularly romantic hand (admittedly bribed) in it– in a world currently with only one super power that has no realistic interest in favoring Israel?
Will the USA join Israel in its Massada complex? The combo of Christian guilt and end-timing may well decide for us all. Michelle Bachmann is a contender.
The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri), 1966, NR, 121 minutes
One of the most influential films in the history of political cinema, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers focuses on the events of 1957, a key year in Algeria’s struggle for independence from France. Shot in the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film vividly re-creates the tumultuous Algerian uprising against the occupying French. The violence soon escalates on both sides in this war drama that’s still astonishingly relevant.
Netflix availability: DVD (Blu-ray from 8/9/11)
NETFLIX LISTING – link to movies.netflix.com
Battle of Algiers trailer (VIDEO, 02:16) – link to youtube.com
Yes, the French Lt Col of Paratroopers tells the French the bottom line when he is pestered with questions about inhumane French tactics seeking to bring order to Algiers: ” We want to stay here; they don’t want us here–if you want us to stay, you must live with the consequences.”
what sticks most in my mind in that film was the ending, in which, after the last resistance leader had been captured & it looked like the french army had won, suddenly, the streets of algiers are filled with celebrating people, rising up to take back their country. And yes, the same phenomenum is about to take place in palestine. Count on it!
Here is my post the other day on the “israeli’s threaten to cut off water…..etc if PA declares a state.” (along with the firs reply from our friend eee)
Me:
I know what Im gonna do, Im gonna write a book that says I am from somewhere in Massachusetts, and I was chosen by some arbitrary man in the sky as his “chosen person.” In the book, Im gonna mention that the man in the sky gave me exclusive rights to this land and therefore my descendants (no matter how distant) have exclusive rights as well. I bet in a few thousand years, I can parlay this book into a plush pad on Beacon Hill…….
Why would anyone care what your book says, you ask? I havent figured that part out yet…..
Reply
eee July 28, 2011 at 3:10 pm
You are a little late, check out “manifest destiny”.
But as to why Jews can immigrate to Israel, the answer is simple, that is the law of the land. It is not related to any book. If you don’t like this law, you can try convincing Israelis to change it. Or you can attempt to use violence. It is up to you.
Thanks Phil for supporting my argument. Cheers!!
- Dan
And what argument is that Dan? I am second generation born in Israel. I own my house for the very same reason you own yours; I have a deed that will stand up in court. I am an atheist Jew and clearly do not think there is any legal value to what is written in religious texts, they certainly do not determine land ownership. But what you fail to realize is that you have the same exact reasoning for owning your property as I do, a document granted by the authorities of the state you live in. We are exactly in the same situation.
eee wrote:
I am an atheist Jew.
Ummm, yea, I dont know what to say to that….that doesnt compute with me.
You may own your home like anyone else, what I am saying is that you feel justified in owning that home, and in colonizing the west bank because of religious reasons.
“But as Krubiner proves, there is a large percentage of secular Jews who believe in a religious idea: our right to the West Bank. Ed Koch believes it, it’s why he’s savaging Obama. David Mamet believes it, he doesn’t want to give an inch. We have the right to the Land of Israel. An idea we read in a book with leather covers and God inside, for which we have no evidence. A year or so back I heard that peace processor Aaron David Miller was speaking at a synagogue in Cleveland and said we have to give up the land and the rabbi said, But God gave us that land. Joke was on Miller.”
What I am mocking is the idea that a book written thousands of years ago, that is meaningless to many (including you apparently) should be used as justification to the type of enterprise israeli’s are engaged in
Dan,
You should first of all get used to the idea that Zionism is a SECULAR movement. Many of its founders were atheists and communists. It is based on 19th European nationalism, not on any religious writings.
About half the Jews in Israel are secular. In fact, Israeli Jews are more secular than Americans. One can feel attachment to the land, not because of religious feelings but because of nationalistic feelings or just because you grew up there.
I feel justified in owning my home because Israel is the land I was born in and because I have a deed to my house and I feel part of the Jewish nation. And this is the motivation of most Israelis. I do not live in the West Bank. Yes, there are religiously motivated people in Israel also and the settler movement is led by them. But using them to deny the right to the land to ALL Israelis is just absurd.
what ‘right to the land’ eee? i thought you said you were secular?
Annie,
The legal right that is exactly the same as that you have in the US.
so zionism is a secular movement created by people who consider themselves ” a nation” based on their shared religion….hmm. interesting.
zionism has no religious basis? its not the “national liberation movement of the jewish people?” this is so messed up, i really dont know where to begin. Judaism is a religion right? or did that change? Im still not sure how you can be jewish and secular(or an atheist as you say you are) . Can you be a “secular catholic?” I wouldnt think so…
Dan,
What you call “religion” are the customs of our tribe. You can be part of the tribe even if you do not follow the customs. Many Jews have self determined themselves as a nation. I am part of the Jewish nation but also an atheist. That does not mean I do not know how to pray because I do know the customs of my tribe and its history. By the way, the reason you need 10 Jews to pray is because prayer is a community activity and in fact is a replacement for what was done at the Temple.
You do understand the Phil is also a non-religious Jew?
Whoa! This is amazing.
“Athiest Jew?” That is like saying “Atheist Catholic, or Atheist Christian. How about simply of Jewish background and culture?
But wait you qualify it by saying the customs of our tribe. …Many Jews have self determined themselves as a nation. I am part of the Jewish nation…
Now don’t get mad but this rings of all the Ayrian Nation Schnizzola.
I have no idea about Phil’s self identity or religiosity, but you claim yourself to be of some imaginary Jewish Tribe and Nation. (Why bring others into your rants?)
Are you serious or is this a parody on Fascism?
eee :
“The legal right that is exactly the same as that you have in the US.”
++++ Sure, as everywhere in the world. Problem here is what land and where ? Borders are located ?
Before you answer read this :
link to danielpipes.org
Gives some historical backround.
Tell me eeee
Do they do title searches on property conveyances in Israel as required in other countries?
If so, what does the title search show on your house…who does the first recorded ownership go back to. A title search of prior ownership should show who first inhabited a piece of land and how control of that land was conveyed to others and how it was converted into a actual ‘deed’ to another even if no previous deed was recorded originally…even if it was unclaimed land…some authority would have had to convert it to deedable ownership.
There were only about 400,000 Jews in Palestine when the UN created Israel so you need to produce chain of ownership to show that every single previous owner of the land of your house is on actually “bought” the ‘land’ from every other previous owner going all the way back to the first know inhabit of that piece of land.
The UN didn’t create Israel with accompanying deeds to Israel from Palestine owners of land. So unless you can trace the land your house is on to the first ever inhabitant and prove it was legally sold and purchased thru every change of hands all the way to your ownership your deed would be worthless…. by standard property laws in 99% in of the world countries.
Yea, I know Phil considers himself a non-religious Jew – but I think he would say he’s non observant rather than an atheist….
So the “customs” of the tribe dont need to be followed by its members…..sure. Sounds like a pretty progressive tribe. And this “custom” based tribe determined themselves to be a nation….but this “nation” is not “religiously” based even though the nations religion says it is,
So, the way Im scoring this is – according to eee, judaism (or the religion of the jewish people/tribe/nation) is only one of the “customs” that bonds Jews. But you dont need to be jewish to be a Jew. Jews can also declare themselves to be a nation at any time. (What about splinter cells? Can one group of Jews “self determine” that they are a seperate Jewish nation? ) Shit man, I think I want to be Jewish……….but maybe I already am
Ellen,
Racism is to deny the Jewish people the right of self determination. And at least those of us living in Israel have self determined ourselves as a nation. If you don’t like it, that is your problem. I am a secular Jew, part of the Jewish nation and there are millions like me.
Ellen, the latter. Ayrian Nation Schnizzola. Good one. I call it the Mercury Mentality. Try stabbing mercury. . . .
3Xe,
There you go again…..moving the target and the subject, twisting and turning. The Hasbarisms are pathetic, exposing you as a parroting racist, putting people into imaginary boxes of tribal “identity.”
You talk about your Tribe and Ayrian…opps Jewish.. Nations. A nation is an abstract, something quite modern.
A modern Democratic nation does not define itself by ideas of race and religion. One that does, would be denying others who are not of the “Tribe” their self determination.
No one is denying you, Israelis and those who identify themselves as Jewish anything, and your talk about “self determination” is a hollow platitudes repeated over and over.
You have exposed yourself to be a complete and dangerous nationalistic racist. We know where that mindset leads.
Sorry, Ellen (and Dan)…but it helps to separate issues.
1. Atheist Jews…if that does not compute, I think maybe you don’t know enough about Jews? As a catholic myself…it is entirely different. All forms of Christianity are based on religious faith…faith is not a requirement for a Jew. Unless I am mistaken…when Phil describes himself as a “secular Jew”…he is saying the same thing.
2. Home ownership…I have to come down on eee’s side here; he is no more responsible for Palestinian dispossession…than you or I of native Americans. I don’t see how it can be logically otherwise.
3. Fascism…this term is tossed around so often on this site it is beginning to have as little meaning as antisemitism. eee’s use of the term tribe strikes me as conventional…Phil has also used it many times. Hardly different than me describing myself as ethnically Italian. I AM ethnically Italian…saying so does not make me a fascist (in spite of my fascist pedigree, so to speak…I think we paisanos invented fascism…)
Don,
If faith is not a requirement to be “a member of the tribe” as our friend eee might put it, than what your saying is that anyone who has converted to judaism is not jewish. Sammy Davis Jr. is very upset right now. Your basically giving the absolutist line, that anyone who doesnt descend from a woman present at (dont jump on me if i get this wrong) mount sinai when charlton heston came down with the ten commandments…isnt that the hardline standard?
Don.
“I have to come down on eee’s side here; he is no more responsible for Palestinian dispossession…than you or I of native Americans. I don’t see how it can be logically otherwise”
Let me help with the logic. Native American Indians are no longer being usurped. Palestinian dispossession is still happening. eee supports it.
Israeli civil law is invalid in “territories occupied”. For post ’67 read UNSC Res 1860. For post 1948 to ’67, read the UN Charter Chapt XI (to which Israel was obliged from the time of it’s declaration). Read the Israeli Government statement to the UNSC 22nd May 1948. Read the e.g., British recognition and UNSC Resolutions pertaining to the matter
eee July 29, 2011 at 3:03 pm
“Racism is to deny the Jewish people “
We are not a race. There are Chinese Jews, Japanese Jews, even Inuit Jews.
“And at least those of us living in Israel have self determined ourselves as a nation. “
‘living in Israel’ being the operative words. Living in illegally acquired and illegally annexed territories is NOT living in Israel. Your ‘real estate’ deeds are not a right to ‘territory’.
eee July 29, 2011 at 1:08 pm
“Zionism is a SECULAR movement”
Israel is not “THE STATE OF ISRAEL ….; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel;”
“One can feel attachment to the land”
Go ahead, however if it is not legally recognized as Israeli land, be prepared to be a Palestinian Jew.
Don (5.:22 pm)
1. The Jewish tribe died out as a entity thousands of years ago. Judaism also became a faith based evangelical movement (albeit briefly for only almost two centuries) in the early antiquity in competition for political and social influence as the Roman Empire was weakening. (You might want to read “The Monotheists: The Peoples of God,” by Peters )
Judaism is of many people. Look around the world we find those of the Jewish religion and religious culture everywhere.
You have bought the brainwashing nonsense of a special Jewish tribal identity. (Did you ever ask yourself, for example, why there are cultural divisions between what we call Sephardic — Arab Jews through the ME, North Africa and Spain –and Northern European Jews.
2. While eee is not personally responsible for dispossession, the Israeli state has obligations to those it dispossessed through cruel means for the benefit of it’s citizens, who claim themselves to be of “the Tribe.”
Just as the US had and still has obligations to indigenous peoples. (There are many presidents where the US government and even private enterprise — such as railroads — have had to pay significant compensation. ) Israel is not facing this truth and the price of this may end in it’s own self destruction over time.
eee sounds like the Spaniards hitting the shores of what is now Florida in the 15th century with their Notaries to make the land grab and executions of the natives “legal.”
3. I do not use that word “fascism” lightly, as it is an ugly sentiment. Ideas of Nations built on singular self-defined groups is an essence of fascistic thought. eee and others have shown themselves to be such.
As Mussolini himself wrote, The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State.
link to fordham.edu
eee has also expressed exactly this sentiment in his support of the ideas of a “Jewish Nation,” making all other groups relative and subordinate to this idea of State.
The exertion of Zionist fascism bestows upon him and others great benefit and advantage at the expense of those not of the “Tribe.”
As our buddy Benito said Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, …
Sound just like the Zionist language for “Jewish Self Determination.”
Yes, eee has shown himself to be a Fascist.
Opps! “a faith based evangelical movement…” must read
Proselytizing movement.
And “precedents” not presidents.
apologies
Be all things to all people…so no one can pin you down.
NICE ELLEN.
Couldnt have put it better myself – (and I was trying) haha.
“Let me help with the logic. Native American Indians are no longer being usurped. Palestinian dispossession is still happening. eee supports it.”
This is your own opinion. Define your terms. What on earth do you mean by “usurped”? Oppression takes other forms than the stealing of land (your web site is most impressive, but on this topic you are dead wrong).
Let me explain YOUR (and others) logic as far as Native Americans are concerned, and how YOUR logic applies to Israel.
What you are saying is…if enough time goes by…the injustice cannot be undone…and therefore is irrelevant.
Ergo…Israel has just to wait long enough…and their issues with Palestinians will be irrelevant.
This is essentially what almost everyone here is saying about “the analogy between native American and Palestinian dispossession”.
In my opinion, this is morally absurd. And it is THIS (your) argument, that in fact lends credence to the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians.
No one gets justice in this world. No one. And in general, yes, injustice, once committed, cannot be undone. But it is the attitude of moral superiority here that annoys me. Not to mention the absurd logic.
I’ll say this again…why don’t you (and others who so casually dismiss native Americans) explore some native American web discussion groups…and try your theory on them? You are highly sensitive to teh opinions (and rightly so) of Palestinians. THEY NEED A VOICE, no?
What gives you, or anyone else here, to speak on behalf of native Americans? And that is, in fact, what you are doing.
Don
“This is your own opinion. “
It is the opinion of the UNSC. I gave links to primary sources
“What on earth do you mean by “usurped”? “
“usurped”
“Oppression takes other forms than the stealing of land “
Didn’t write about ‘oppression’ . Would you like me to?
“What you are saying is…”
Er, no. My words are precisely and only what I wrote.
“Ergo…etc ..etc ..etc.”
Based on your own words, not mine…
“In my opinion, this is morally absurd.”
Indeed. But it’s based on YOUR own words, not mine…
Nothing gives credence to Israel or any other state failing to adhere to the UN Charter (UN Members), Customary International Law (all states) and the Conventions they have ratified.
“And it is THIS (your) argument”
Well, no. It’s YOUR argument.
“why don’t you (and others who so casually dismiss native Americans) explore some native American web discussion groups…”
A) I have not dismissed the Native Americans, merely pointed out a glaring fault in “logic”. B) Many Native American homes demolished/evictions lately in the USA? When was the last time an American Native was not allowed to return to America after having studied over seas? Are Native Americans not allowed to travel between the different states in America? Can Palestinians freely travel between Gaza and the West Bank?
“What gives you, or anyone else here, to speak on behalf of native Americans? “
Mmmm … someone else brought the subject into play…. ’tweren’t me.
“But what you fail to realize is that you have the same exact reasoning for owning your property as I do, a document granted by the authorities of the state you live in. We are exactly in the same situation.”
Wrong. (And here I’m assuming that you believe that Dan is in the USA, so this is nothing more than you demonstrating the filthy genocide-envy common among you Zios.) It’s not the same situation, at all, because the crimes which the Jews committed in giving you your supposed deed were done in the near past amd the individuals from whom you people stole the land — the victims of Zionist predation — are still alive or their heirs are readily available.
Woody,
You are wrong of course. Israeli law says nothing about the factors you state, neither does US law. And my deed is a “supposed deed” only in your imagination. Please come challenge it in court and find out for yourself.
LOL. No, I’m not wrong. There is a real difference in that, in the US, we know the whites stole the land, but the person from whom it was stolen are either dead or their identities are lost to history. In Israel, of course, the victims of the theft that you and your ancestors committed are still with us, and can identify the exact property which was stolen from them
Now, you are right that those factors don’t amount to anything in US law or the law of your Zionist Entity, but then again, I never claimed that they did. The purpose of law in colonial governments like that of the Zionists is to put a patina of legality on grand theft.
And, yes, your supposed deed probably would stand up in courts run by Zionist Jews (oh, and maybe a token Druze.) Those courts are no less tools of the occupation than are the boots you use to kick old ladies or the white phosphorus you use to burn Palestinians babies.
“And my deed is a “supposed deed” only in your imagination. Please come challenge it in court and find out for yourself.”
You are so insecure, “eee” and it shows. I don’t need your stinkin’ deeds; anywhere I hang my head is home.
Once again, I do not understand this line of reasoning, Woody. You are saying injustice, if committed “long enough ago”…somehow is no longer relevant? (near past as opposed to …paster past?…I am starting to sound like Richard).
This is a morally insufficient argument…as the vast majority of native Americans would tell us…
So here is my question, Woody…why is it necessary to absolve ourselves of our moral legacy…many native Americans still live on reservations. Your argument below is simply too convenient to be credible. Sort of a “oops…tsk tsk…too bad about that…but nothing to be done about it now”.
I am not saying these things to justify the way the state of israel treats Palestinians. But to
Precisely the opposite, actually. Were we Americans to acknowledge the continuing responsibilty…and actually do something about it…would make our criticism far more persuasive (though that should certainly not be the motivation to do so).
This issue comes up again and again (native Americans),..and it is always dismissed. It is quite hypocritical, in my opinion. And if some of you would take the time to engage with native Americans on some of their web sites…you would quickly get an earful, so to speak, that you would not quickly forget.
many native Americans do not dismiss it…how can they? It is still going on.
I agree with that. It obvious to me that the US as a country does ‘owe’ the native Indians and the blacks we enslaved.
Civil rights paid off some debt to black Americans, but we haven’t gone back and owned up to what we owe the Indian descendents.
It’s mind boggling that we pay all these billions to Israel for the Jews, who we actually owe nothing to, and ignore the poeple America really does have a debt to.
Orwellian.
Yeah well Nazi “law” turned Jewish property over the same way Israeli “law” turns Palestinian property over. Let’s see your claims hold up in Nuremburg’s courts, eee.
eee
My parents had a home in Jerusalem and other property in Palestine until 1948. The “deed” and the KEYS are still in family possession. Somehow Israeli Law doesn’t recognize our deed. PEEESSS
It doesn’t matter. Just because colonialism is not in fashion, does NOT mean we have to sit around and accept Zionist colonialism.
I say ‘accept’ because someone can disagree but accept something indirectly or directly in spite of said beliefs. ‘Accept’ is action.
And people will not sit around and forget about the Palestinians because you, Don, think Israelis have a right to steal from others (no doubt, because they are Jewish).
You apply this disgusting, twisted, moral logic to the Israelis while the Palestinians are simply an after-thought. Your sympathy, strangely resides with the colonizer? The occupier? The one doing the stealing?
I’m not really surprised actually.
Don July 29, 2011 at 5:35 pm
The acquisition of territory by force/war was illegal under Customary International Law by at least the time the USA LEGALLY annexed parts of Mexico, through holding a referendum amongst the legitimate MEXICAN citizens of the territories to be annexed. It’s called self determination. A principle held by the League of Nations and now the UN. Well before Israel obliged itself to adhere to Customary International Law (by Declaration May 15th 1948)
The US, UK, Spain, Portuguese, Dutch and other colonistas were instrumental in writing the laws encompassing self determination because of their past behaviours.
The UN Charter and Conventions after WW2 were based in part on what preceded from the LoN and on the atrocities visited upon folk by the Nazis and the subsequent horrors of that war. They’re the Laws Israel is obliged to. Same as all UN Member States.
Why do you think the UNSC condemned Israel’s annexation of the Golan and East Jerusalem? For fun?
Perhaps you think if the USA addresses the American Indian problem, Israel will end occupation, illegal settlements, illegal annexation, illegal acquisition of territory by war? Take it’s illegal settlers and withdraw to Israel? What a good idea, kill two birds with one stone.
Alas, lad, this isn’t about the Native American Indians. Nice of you to be so concerned. Odd place to express it.
Oh…The USA is acting within the sovereign extent of the USA.
Israel is not.
Read the UN charter. It’s interesting.
“Once again, I do not understand this line of reasoning, Woody. You are saying injustice, if committed ‘long enough ago’…somehow is no longer relevant?”
No, I am making no such statement.
I was merely making an observation about which distinguishes US history and Israeli history on account of the fact that eee has repeatedly demonstrated what can only be described as “genocide envy” specifically entailing the argument that because modern Americans are beneficiaries of the genocidal acts against Native Americans that Israeli Jews should be permitted to commit similar acts and gain similar advantages from Palestinians. (That is why he included “US law” in his post, I believe.)
The only point I was making was to point out the only saving grace regarding the unjust and immoral treatments of Native Americans, compared to the Israeli situation is the fact that in Israel, in many cases, the true holders of the title to the land are known and want the return of what is theirs and the Israelis just spit in their face.
The situation in the US is clearly a travesty, but we don’t have that.
“So here is my question, Woody…why is it necessary to absolve ourselves of our moral legacy…many native Americans still live on reservations.”
It’s not and we shouldn’t. I think that Americans would be well advised to seriously search and understand what our true history and true moral legacy is, both at home and in the world and then beg forgiveness for those we’ve harmed and work to make true amends for our past immorality. The first people who should receive that attention are, of course, Native Americans and African Americans.
“Your argument below is simply too convenient to be credible. Sort of a ‘oops…tsk tsk…too bad about that…but nothing to be done about it now’.”
That was not my argument, at all, and if I was unclear, I hope this post has cleared up my position.
“Precisely the opposite, actually. Were we Americans to acknowledge the continuing responsibilty…and actually do something about it…would make our criticism far more persuasive (though that should certainly not be the motivation to do so).”
I agree completely.
a document granted by the authorities of the state you live in.
speaking of documents what do you think of this one?
is there something about the prophets of israel i should know about or am i to assume ‘freedom, justice and peace’ means what most people think it means. so what’s with this “document granted by the authorities of the state you live in”, you you respect all of them or just the ones that serve your purpose?
Annie,
What does “freedom” in the context of the US constitution mean if the writers of this constitution held slaves? Words seldom have meaning out of some explicit or implicit context. Many Jews see the prophets of the old testament as social activists preaching for equality, justice, temperance etc. That is the context given by the great document you quote.
Keep hating America, eee, and sooner or later America will hate Israel right back.
“Many Jews see the prophets of the old testament as social activists preaching for equality,”
And as an atheist, you believe implicitly in the existence and the accurately recorded words of the prophets, huh, “eee”?
I own my house for the very same reason you own yours; I have a deed that will stand up in court.
So did the Palestinians your ancestors stole the land from. The guy who owns the land under Ben Gurion Airport still has his. It’s been in his family for centuries.
You going to honor that?
MRW,
What do I have to do with honoring deeds? The guy who claims to own Ben-Gurion should try asserting the deed in an Israeli court. He will likely lose because the land was appropriated by the state of Israel in 1948. I know you don’t like that law but it still stands.
eee: I have a deed that will stand up in court. That would be an Israeli court then? Problem solved by circular reasoning. (By the way, eee, to this day art works are “returned” to 2nd or 3rd generation “relatives” who claim that the art was stolen during Nazi regime even if it was sold. Don’t sit too sure on “your” floor).
eguard,
Circular reasoning? Why? It is only circular for those who deny the validity of Israeli law and courts. I do not, therefore from my point of view the argument is solid.
It is so easy to point at the occasional piece of art returned. How about the real estate owned by the 3-4 million Polish Jews before WWII, the value of which is probably 1 million times the art returned? Will that ever be returned? No.
Phil,
Several comments. Your justification for the bloodshed needed for the one state solution using the American civil war is fine except for one thing. You are not planning to shed any of your blood to reach that result. Accepting the risk of harm to oneself is different from endorsing that others takes those risks. Another issue of course is that this bloodshed may lead to worsening the situation for Palestinians as violence has done in the past.
What is wrong with Israeli Arab cities or villages being made part of the Palestinian state? Moving borders is not ethnic cleansing as long as none of their property rights will be compromised.
There is one point I am confused about. In your post concerning the Daily Kos you mention that your mission is to change the views of the Jewish community (to stop its love affair with Zionism):
“It is that love affair that I am doing all I can to end, for the sake of America, for the sake of the Jews, and also, by the way, for the sake of the people who are invisible to DailyKos– the Palestinians. ”
Now you seem to say that only working outside the Jewish community will lead to results because Jews are unlikely to change their minds. Could you clarify?
“You are not planning to shed any of your blood to reach that result.”
Americans have been bleeding for decades on behalf of Israelis (not to mention being their direct victims), so if a few Israelis shedding their blood will make Americans safer, then it sounds like you owe us.
“What is wrong with Israeli Arab cities or villages being made part of the Palestinian state? Moving borders is not ethnic cleansing as long as none of their property rights will be compromised.”
It is impossible for border-movement-style ethnic cleaning (and it is ethnic cleansing regardless) to NOT compromise property rights. “Property rights” encompasses much, much more than simply ownership. This is, like, first-grade level ecnomics, here. Sheesh.
Woody,
It is very possible for border movement to improve property rights, for example if zoning laws are less restrictive in the Palestinian state. Of course it is possible not to compromise property rights when moving borders. Were property rights compromised when the border between East and West Germany was moved? This is a very similar situation.
Were property rights compromised when the border between East and West Germany was moved?
The border wasn’t MOVED it was REMOVED. Your examples are getting more and more ludicrous, unless of course you are advocating that the borders between Israel and Palestine be removed and all residents regardless of ethnicity, religion, or tribal affiliation be made full citizens with equal rights to all. Because that’s what happened when Germany re-unified.
eee
“This is a very similar situation”
Twaddle.
Neither Russia or the US /allies illegally claimed any part of Germany as their own as Israel does with its illegal acquisition of the Palestinian territories.
Furthermore, ‘real estate’ ownership is not the same as ‘territory’. E.g., Japanese and Chinese individuals, corporations and even state companies own real estate in Australia. Japan and China have no territorial rights in Australia.
The arguments you present are stupid propaganda. Written for stupid people to perpetuate. Either you’re stupid for swallowing them. (one reason for your persistent and bizarre twaddle) or you are simply a propagandist, a useful idiot, (another reason for your persistent and bizarre twaddle)
>> It is impossible for border-movement-style ethnic cleaning (and it is ethnic cleansing regardless) to NOT compromise property rights.
It also flies entirely in the face of self-determination. All Israelis get to self-determine as Israelis…unless Jewish Israelis move borders and turn non-Jewish Israelis into non-Israelis.
Where is RW? He needs to set eee straight on this matter.
Now you seem to say that only working outside the Jewish community will lead to results because Jews are unlikely to change their minds. Could you clarify?
eee, is this going to be another thread like yesterday where you spammed the whole thing asking the same question repeatedly and just couldn’t grasp anyone’s answer to you?
perhaps you could review this a few times before asking what about this needs ‘clarifying’. maybe the answer is right there all along.
Annie,
If Phil plans to change Jewish views of Zionism by going outside the community, that is not what he said in his previous post. It clearly read that he wanted to influence mainly inside the Jewish community. It looks as if Phil has not made a decision about this yet.
why does he have to make a decision eee?
Annie,
He doesn’t have to make decision, where did I state he had to? I was just pointing out a fact.
a fact?
It looks as if Phil has not made a decision about this yet.
there is no ‘fact’ wrt a decision yet. because that implies a decision is required, implied or inevitable, that the circumstance itself requires one or the other, it doesn’t. is this is your idea of factual?
go take a breather.
Annie, only Manichean responses permitted, per eee.
Annie,
The “yet” just leaves open the possibility he will make a decision in the future.
would that be like ‘it is a FACT eee has not made a decision to screw the pooch YET.’
The “yet” just leaves open the possibility he will make a decision in the future.
re: MWR’s request “the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness.”
screwing the pooch being in the material world of darkness.
The outside community is already involved.
Where do you think the bulk of criticism of Israel around the world is coming from?
From the time I have followed Phil I believe he use to think that Jews talking to Jews could change I/P…if I am reading him correctly now, he no longer thinks that alone will do it.
I don’t either.
Annie,
I was discussing two viable options that Phil himself discusses. So the “yet” is appropriate.
Nice skills/full quiver.
Don’t you Zionists realize how insane racist and evil you come across to the outside world? Coloreds and Indians from 1950 to 1983 were denied the vote in South Africa(Blacks had been denied the vote even before then). Then the racist regime decided they could have a vote after all but to a separate “parliament” from white people but were these people consulted about this? How magnanimous of us whites, Afrikaners thought, we give the vote to the Indians and Coloreds and “self determination” to Blacks in separate “states” and they turn it down, how ungrateful of them! The Zionist plan is much the same bankrupt racist policy of the defunct Apartheid state, not for nothing was Israel the biggest supporter of Pretoria even offering to sell them nuclear weapons technology at one point.
Give the Arabs self determination in a toothless “parliament” in a “state” whilst the Zionist state keeps sovereignty over water, airspace, defense foreign policy and the currency just like the fake bantustans the South Africans tried to fool the rest of the world in believing were independent nations. But nobody is buying it apart from Zionists and their supporters so who do you think you are fooling?
Petersz,
When we see the Palestinian state, maybe your criticism would be justified. But if the state is based on the Clinton Parameters, it is clear that both the US and Europe would disagree with your description.
Who cares about the Clinton Parameters? Israel clearly doesn’t. The United States has walked away from them. I think after Norway, Europe couldn’t care less about them, either.
>> What is wrong with Israeli Arab cities or villages being made part of the Palestinian state? Moving borders is not ethnic cleansing as long as none of their property rights will be compromised.
Great! Let’s move borders so that all of Jerusalem is made part of the Palestinian state. After all, as long as no property rights are compromised, it’s not ethnic cleansing and you’re fine with that.
Eljay,
If that is the agreement reached by negotiations, I will be fine with that. Why wouldn’t Palestinians want to be part of the Palestinian state that they negotiated?
>> Why wouldn’t Palestinians want to be part of the Palestinian state that they negotiated?
Who said anything about Palestinians? You said Israelis. If non-Jewish Israelis want to remain in Israel, Israel has no right to “carve them out” of Israel and strip them of their citizenship in order to preserve the supremacist status of Jews in Israel.
Great! Let’s move borders so that all of Jerusalem is made part of the Palestinian state. After all, as long as no property rights are compromised, it’s not ethnic cleansing and you’re fine with that.
Even better idea, why not allow Israel to annex all the homes and property of Jews in the United States, and make them all citizens of Israel (instead of just potential citizens). Of course there will have to be borders and checkpoints and such whenever those Jews have to cross over into US territory to go to their jobs or out shopping or to visit friends, but, hey, no one’s property rights would be compromised, right? How could anyone complain?
Listen eee , your talk of deeds and property is absurd . Probably 70% or more of the deeds in Israel aren’t worth the paper they are written on.
This is how most Israelis got their homes and property.
Israeli law created by Israel to seize property of those Arabs and others Israel forced off their land and out of Palestine and Israel.
I use to think all zionist were deliberate liars but now I am convinced a lot of you are just ignorant sponges for whatever hasbara you are fed.
Document
link to unispal.un.org
Source: Israel 14 March 1950
No. 20
ABSENTEES’ PROPERTY LAW, 5710-1950*
1. In this Law –
(a) “property” includes immovable arid movable property, moneys, a vested or contingent right in property, goodwill and any right in a body of persons or in its management;
(b) “absentee” means –
(1) a person who, at any time during the period between the 16th Kislev, 5708 (29th November, 1947) and the day on which a declaration is published, under section 9(d) of the Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948(1), that the state of emergency declared by the Provisional Council of State on the 10th Iyar, 5708 (19th May, 1948)(2) has ceased to exist, was a legal owner of any property situated in the area of Israel or enjoyed or held it, whether by himself or through another, and who, at any time during the said period –
(i) was a national or citizen of the Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, SaudiArabia, Trans-Jordan, Iraq or the Yemen, or
(ii) was in one of these countries or in any part of Palestine outside the area of Israel, or
(iii) was a Palestinian citizen and left his ordinary place of residence in Palestine
(a) for a place outside Palestine before the 27th Av, 5708 (1st September, 1948); or
(b) for a place in Palestine held at the time by forces which sought to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel or which fought against it after its establishment;
(2) a body of persons which, at any time during the period specified in paragraph (1), was a legal owner of any property situated in the area of Israel or enjoyed or held such property, whether by itself or through another, and all the members, partners, shareholders, directors or managers of which are absentees within the meaning of paragraph (1), or the management of the business of which is otherwise decisively controlled by such absentees, or all the capital of which is in the hands of such absentees;
(c) “Palestinian citizen” means a person who, on the 16th Kislev, 5708 (29th November, 1947) or thereafter, was a Palestinian citizen according to the provisions of the Palestinian Citizenship Orders, 1925-1941, Consolidated(3), and includes a Palestinian resident who, on the said day or thereafter, had no nationality or citizenship or whose nationality or citizenship was undefined or unclear;
(d) “body of persons” means a body constituted in or outside Palestine, incorporated or unincorporated, registered or unregistered, and includes a company, partnership, cooperative society, society under the Law of Societies of the 29th Rajab, 1327 (3rd August, 1909) and any other juridical person and any institution owning property;
(e) “absentees’ property” means property the legal owner of which, at any time during the period between the 16th Kislev, 5708 (29th November, 1947) and the day on which a declaration is published, under section 9(d) of the Law and Administration Ordinance, 5708-1948, that the state of emergency by the Provisional Council of State on the 10th Iyar, 5708 (19th May 1948), has ceased to exist, was an absentee, or which, at any time as aforesaid, an absentee held or enjoyed, whether by himself or through another; but it does not include movable property held by an absentee and exempt from attachment or seizure under section 3 of the Civil Procedure Ordinance, 1938(4);
(f) “vested property” means property vested in the Custodian under this Law;
(g) “held property” means vested property actually held by the Custodian, and includes property acquired in exchange for vested property;
(h) “released property” means property released under section 28;
(i) “area of Israel” means the area in which the law of the State of Israel applies;
(j) “bill” means a bill of exchange, a cheque, a promissory note or any other negotiable instrument.
Custodian of
Absentees’
Property. 2.
(a) The Minister of Finance shall appoint, by order published in Reshumot, a Custodianship Council for Absentees’ Property, and shall designate one of its members to be the chairman of the Council. The chairman of the Council shall be called the Custodian.
(b) The Custodian may bring an action and institute any other legal proceeding against any person and be a plaintiff, defendant or otherwise a party in any legal proceeding.
(c) The Custodian is entitled to be represented in any legal proceeding by the Attorney-General or his representative.
(d) When the Custodian ceases to hold office, his functions, powers, rights ,and duties shall automatically pass to the Minister of Finance; when another person is appointed Custodian, the said functions, powers, rights and duties shall automatically pass to him, and so on from Custodian to Custodian.
Appointment
of Inspectors,
agents and
employees. 3.
(a) The Custodian may, with the written approval of the Minister of Finance, appoint inspectors of absentees’ property and delegate to any of them any of his powers, except the power to appoint inspectors. A notice of the appointment and scope of powers of every inspector shall be published by the Custodian in Reshumot.
(b) The Custodian may appoint agents for the management of held property on his behalf and may fix and pay their remuneration.
(c) The Custodian may appoint officials and other employees, whose status shall be the same as that of other State employees.
Vesting of
absentees’
property in
Custodian. 4.
(a) Subject to the provisions of this Law –
(1) all absentees’ property is hereby vested in the Custodian as from the day of publication of his appointment or the day on which it became absentees’ property, whichever is the later date;
(2), every right an absentee had in any property shall pass automatically to the Custodian at the time of the vesting of the property; and the status of the Custodian shall be the same as was that of the owner of the property.
(b) The proceeds of vested property shall be dealt with like the vested property yielding the proceeds.
(c) Vested property –
(1) shall remain vested property so long as it has not become released property under section 28 or ceased to be absentees’ property under section 27;
(2) may be taken over by the Custodian wherever he may find it.
(d) Where the Custodian has acquired any property which was not absentees’ property at the time of the acquisition, in exchange for vested property, the acquired property shall become held property and shall be dealt with as was the property in exchange for which it was acquired.
Identity of
absentee
unknown. 5. The fact that the identity of an absentee is unknown shall not prevent his property from being absentees’ property, vested property, held property or released property.
Handing over
Property to
Custodian. 6.
(a) A person who has in his possession any absentees’ property is bound to hand it over to the Custodian.
(b) A person who has a debt to, or any other obligation towards an absentee shall pay such debt or discharge such obligation to the Custodian.
Care of held
property,
expenses and
investments. 7.
(a) The Custodian shall take care of held property, either himself or through others having his consent.
(b) The Custodian may, himself or through others having his written consent, incur any expenses and make any investments necessary for the care, maintenance, repair or development of held property or for other similar purposes.
Absentees’
businesses. 8.
(a) The Custodian may carry on the management of a business on behalf of an absentee, whether or not he indicates that the business is managed by the Custodian, but he shall always have the right to sell or lease the whole or a part of the business, and –
(1) if it is the business of an individual – to liquidate it;
(2) if it is the business of a partnership all the partners of which are shareholders of which are absentees, or of a cooperative society all the members of which are absentees – to wind up the partnership, company or cooperative society by order published in Reshumot.
(b) Where the Custodian has published a winding-up order under subsection (a)(2), the winding up shall be conducted –
(1) in the case of a partnership or company – as if the winding-up order had been made by a competent court in accordance with part V of the Partnership Ordinance(5) or in accordance With part VI of the Companies Ordinance(6), as the case may be;
(2) in the case of a cooperative society – as if the winding-up order had been made by the Registrar of Cooperative Societies in accordance with section 47 of the Cooperative Societies Ordinance(7),
and in every case as if the Custodian had been appointed as a liquidator not replaceable by another liquidator
American,
You write:
“Probably 70% or more of the deeds in Israel aren’t worth the paper they are written on.”
This is of course false. A deed is worthless only if it is not respected by a court. And Israeli deeds are respected. It is very simple to see if a deed is worthless. Just try contesting one and see how far you go. Look, you may not like how Israelis came to own the land previously owned by Palestinian refugees but that does not make the deeds worthless. In fact real estate in Israel is at an all time high and these deeds are very valuable.
“Look, you may not like how Israelis came to own the land previously owned by Palestinian refugees but that does not make the deeds worthless. ”
I have to come to the conclusion eee that you are blathering just to be blathering.
The Palestines weren’t “refugees” when they owned the land…Israel made them refugees and then took their land.
Since you refuse to pay attention or address any of the facts people give you try this instead if you want to talk someone….1-800- Rent- a- Brain.
American,
No one is denying that Israel denied the return of the Palestinian refugees at the end of the 47-48 war and changed the ownership of their land. We are discussing the question whether the deeds to this land held by Israelis is worthless. And of course, they are not worthless because these deeds cost a lot of money if you want to purchase them and they are recognized by Israeli courts. As usual you are mixing two issues together.
It is just plain false that these deeds are worthless.
They’re only valid under Israeli Civil Law IN Israel. “OUTSIDE OF” Israel, in “territories occupied” and in territories illegally “acquired” by war and illegal annexation, Israeli civil law is invalid, not worth the paper it is written on.
Thanks, American, for that comment on the absentee property.
“I use to think all zionist were deliberate liars but now I am convinced a lot of you are just ignorant sponges for whatever hasbara you are fed.”
Well, to think they were all one or the other would verge on anti-Semitic, wouldn’t it? I think there’s enough of both to go around. Seems like a second-generation Israeli would be in a position to enjoy the benefits of being in both groups.
Yea, I was working on a outline of all the different kinds of Jewish positions and all the different kinds of zionist and all the different kinds of anti zionist so I could establish some kind of identification system to use when we talk about we, us, them and those regarding Israel but Staples ran out of legal pads so I have to wait till they get another truck load to finish it.
“I use to think all zionist were deliberate liars but now I am convinced a lot of you are just ignorant sponges for whatever hasbara you are fed.”
Welcome to our planet. You just described most humans, most of the time. Nothing religion or ethnicity specific about the “condition”.
Good post.
Its amazing to me how the ‘demographic talk’ can be thrown around so casually. If asked I’m sure they’d all agree that segregating people based on race is wrong….but they are oblivious when they call for it in Israel.
Okay, now that “eee” has explained his whole “atheist Jew” schtick while simultaneously endorsing the ideas of Zionism, all to disguise his basic outlook, (which is might makes right) can we just agree that he is both insane and not very smart, and be done with it?
I must admit, I felt my first pang of pity and sympathy for “eee” in this comment thread. When he said ‘I am a second-generation Israeli’, my heart went out to him. “You poor deluded son-of-a-bitch, they really screwed you over” I couldn’t help thinking. But that’s the way I am, you know, just dripping compassion, all the time.
Right, keep dreaming.
link to en.wikipedia.org
I don’t see what the Wikipedia entry on Jewish Atheism has to do with it. I still feel sorry for you. You’ve been screwed, badly, and it bothers me that anybody, let alone Jews, would do that to their own children.
But at any rate, if you want to argue that God has nothing to do with it, and your interest in Zionism is simply that of retaining what you perceive to be yours, I wholeheartedly agree. You poor chump.
I found a more appropriate entry, actually.
I am realy disturbed by this guy called Woody Tanaka: why is he always talking about “we” and “you”? Who is “we”? Anyway..
What eee wants to say to you: there are millions of jews living there. It is a fact. They will not, I repeat, not go away. The have not only just deed, but families, friends, history, they live there. You cannot turn time back.
And eee, what the others try to explain to you: no, we do not want a second Algeria, but we want a second South Afrika. Hopefuly…
thanks schmok
“but we want a second South Afrika. Hopefuly…”
Schmok, are you saying that apartheid South Africa should be a model for Israel? I can’t be reading that right, can I?
“You cannot turn time back.”
Unless, of course, the time you want to go back to happens to tickle the fancy of those who adhere to a 19th Century British Public School boy’s Biblical Geography?
No. But in the past and even today some leftist supported a liberation by war and not by peace. So I personaly want to avoid any bloodshed on both sides. It is enough! So not how Algeria and the french occupation endet but how South Africa ended is a model for Israel. One- or Two-State-Solution is another question.
He means the current version, not the first version.
Schmok, so, if you don’t want Algeria as a model, but instead, S Africa, may we assume you are all for BDS campaign since that’s basically what made the former apartheid S African regime cave?
If not, then you favor no non-violent method of gaining a semblence of power for the Palestinians, but rather the current totally imbalanced “peace process” which never results in peace, just more Israeli settlements. In short, then you give little choice but another battle of Algiers.
Maybe you are right. But this is a complete different question and a different debate.
Okay, I did read it wrong, and I’m glad I was wrong.
“You cannot turn time back”
The zionist did.
The people whose land you took had family, friends and history there also.
The thing is, every almost single thing zionist say to defend their position is pure hypocrisy.
What eee wants to say to you: there are millions of jews living there. It is a fact. They will not, I repeat, not go away. The have not only just deed, but families, friends, history, they live there.
No, what eee is saying is that might makes right. He expects the Palestinians to go away so he can live out his life without having to look at them or deal with them.
“They have not only just deed, but families, friends, history, they live there. ” That applies to Palestinians, too, but its not a reality that eee feels he should give a sh*t about. Israel (and by that he means Jewish Israelis) get to call the shots, because might makes right.
You’d think that he wouldn’t have gone on about his grandmother who lost her home in Poland during WWII, because might makes right, and the new owners had deeds, and friends and family and it was all legal at the time. But then as usual eee is all about privileging Jewish Israelis. Something done to Jews that he would condemn suddenly becomes A-OK as long as its Jewish Israelis doing it to Palestinians.
“He expects the Palestinians to go away so he can live out his life without having to look at them or deal with them.”
Or asking for their house and property back.
This post demonstrates once again how essential MondoWeiss is. It cannot be emphasized enough–and yet, rarely is– that J Street’s bottom line is almost indistinguishable from AIPAC’s.
Yep. It is to give the appearance of giving a place for Jewish dissent, but keeping them all in a corral and under control.
Religious language tends to crop up in this discussion but I’m not sure that Zionism in general or in its claim to the West Bank is essentially religious in that it cannot be stated except in religious language.
Zionism is the belief that the Holy Land is for the Jews – more precisely, the belief that the right to a share of sovereignty in what many call the Holy Land belongs by natural right to all and only those people who are Jewish and to others (since there is no intention to be unnecessarily brutal) by the generosity of the true heirs to be shown by renouncing subsets of the land or by enfranchising some who are not Jewish.
I’ve often offered a definition along these lines – I’d still be interested to see a different one.
Evidently, it is not intended to exercise generosity by excluding the whole West Bank from the Holy Land.
Zionism is not religious, even in its application to the West Bank, in the sense of being impossible to state without appeal to God’s will. To me it seems quite easy to state, though impossible to justify by any argument at all, so that everything that flows solely from it is morally mistaken. If someone says ‘God wills it!’ I would not believe that – why should I? If someone says ‘It follows from normal conceptions of human rights’ I would like to see the argument.
As to self-determination, of which we often hear, I’m never aware of how it is defined or conceived by those who appeal to it. I’ve never seen a persuasive statement of this alleged right in any context.
Isn’t it more this way?
Zionism is at first a nationalistic liberation movement. And in it’s logic a nationalism needs: a country and traditions. So they discussed several places they would try to establish an jewish state. That Palestine was chosen had strategic and tactical circumstances: a jewish homeland without palestine makes no sense, because you need something what connects you to the ground. Otherwise people would not hold on to the land. Of course there are different factions: some, who would give up the Westbank, some who don’t. Even some of the non-religous zionists want to sweep the Westbank because of security reasons.
A key reason Palestine was chosen was that the Zionists had chosen to latch onto Great Britain’s coat-tails to achieve their dream (Balfour addressed a big banker, Lord Rothschild for good reason–quid pro quo), and the original choice in Africa was nixed by English settlers there at the time, who did not want an influx of Jews and made that clear to the royal highnesses back home. There were no Brit settlers in Palestine, just mostly the native Arabs.
So is the definition of Zionism the belief that Jewish people should be liberated?
Schmok,
I can’t make sense of your position because it doesn’t begin at the beginning of Jewish people or Judaism. You say:
“Zionism is at first a nationalistic liberation movement. And in it’s logic a nationalism needs: a country and traditions. So they discussed several places they would try to establish an jewish state. That Palestine was chosen had strategic and tactical circumstances: a jewish homeland without palestine makes no sense, because you need something what connects you to the ground.”
Zionism was and is a “nationalist” movement, that much is true.
But this is the same faulty proposition that Jews are a specific “people” instead of a specific ‘religion’. And that these specific people were somehow a “nation” even though they had no specific nation and were scattered thruout many ethnics and nations.
What it appears Zionism actually did was take Herzl’s original ‘separation” movement for Jews and resurrect the ‘Tribal” aspect in ancient history of nations, countries, or enclaves being ‘held’ by different tribes. And since the Jewish tribe, among many other tribes, once had a “Kingdom” in Palestine for a short period in history and was ousted out like many other tribes—they decided to go back and claim that was to be the modern “Nation’ of the Jews.
Bascially it turns time back 3000 years to when nomadic tribes established and lost their holdings thru conquest and turns what was a ‘religous tribe’, which is how most tribes were divided then, by religion, into a ‘nation of people’. And it does this by some magical mixture of Jewish maternal heritage, mixed with secular, mixed with religion, mixed with some idea of ethnic and genes although there are dozens of different ethnics in Juadism.
It’s a construct, a fabrication, a hodgepodge of what was a religion and ancient religious ‘tribe’ into some kind of ‘definitive ‘Peoplehood’ that should comprise a ‘Nation’.
We can call Israelis who ‘now’ live in the state of Israel ‘nationals’ but before Israel there was no ‘Nation of Jews’ except in the mind and imaginations of the Zionist and those who subscribed to the idea.
What Israel and zionism most represents is the recreation of ancient Tribalism. The world see nations as made up of people who live within it. For zionist it is the opposite, for them “certain people’ make up a nation and those ‘certain people are a Nation regardless of which nation they actually reside in’ with Israel being their Mothership.
The main claims of Zionism for Jews being a Nation of People and therefore entitled to a nation of their own doesn’t make sense historically, scientifically, logically or any other way.
I sincerely doubt that were it not for the holocaust and the seperaterist anti semitism theory and the supremist Jews who then promoted zionism that Israel would exist or operate as it does today. Zionism likely would have faded or taken some more benign form for the Jews who wanted to maintain their seperation to preserve or protect their tribe, that would have fit into societies and the world without conflict.
The “self deterimination” meme is also a construct…and a hypocriscy in which zionist claim it for themselves and deny to others like Palestine.
The way zionist use self determination in ‘the Collective’ is more like Hitler’s self determining the nation of Germany for Germans as an Aryan nation free to determine what Germans could seize and do for the greater glory of the Ayran people and their nation.
Looking for a set definition that is agreed to and used by all will never happen.
It only takes one charismatic Rabbi or politician and we have a new definition cobbled together to fit what that person needs to keep his flock in control and what they want to achieve.
Well, that seems to me to make it all the more important that we say what we mean by using the term and take notice if other people are avoiding difficulties by skipping between definitions, a common enough trick.
Charismatics (on all sides, I suppose) are likely to use value-laden definitions – ‘the totally justified claim to Palestine’ etc. If people are inserting values into their definitions we should make sure that this manoeuvre is noticed. Value-laden definitions are not meaningless but they risk having no real thing answering to them – no relevant ‘justified claim’ may exist.
Amen to that CigarGod.
“The legal right that is exactly the same as that you have in the US”
Really???
Well, damn, I’d sure like to steal my neighbor’s upper 40 acres. Trouble is, these bastards in the local government would refuse to give me a deed if I was to swipe the degenerate heathen’s land.
I don’t get what the problem is, because they ain’t white folk.
Don’t have that problem, do you, eee???
(Pretty much your rationale, isn’t it?)
Aren’t you lucky to live in a society that has a government that just as despicably unprincipled as you are!!!!
Citizen:
“So my question is an American one: Are Americans willing to live with the cost of the I-P conflict to themselves? Clearly the bulk of the Jewish Americans are. We won’t know how Americans as a whole feel about it until they get the facts. There’s the rub.”
Will Americans as a whole be willing to pay the price for blindly supporting Israel if they understand the real costs? NO! But understanding the facts about how expensive and damaging our support for Israel has been, and continues to be, entails uprooting powerful myths about the ‘special relationship’. Fortunately, a more accurate picture of I/P is starting emerge and Americans as a whole are noticing. Zionists would like to maintain their lock on US/Israel policy. However, they’re starting to learn that the bottomless pit of cash, arms, diplomatic support, and entitlement is something non-Jewish Americans are starting to question (i.e. Jimmy Carter, Walt and Mearshiemer, Gen. Patreus). Zionists no longer have the luxury of a behind-closed-doors conversation about what the US should do about I/P. Those days are over. The stakes for America are too high.
Come on: they know it, you can read it everywhere how much the US supports Israel. The US supports Israel not because of a dubious lobby (even the tobacco lobby is bigger). The US supports Israel because they share the same security reasons in the Middle East. And at the moment the US detects an Arab Spring and a lot of other trouble. So they want Israel to be more calm. And Israel? They say (just watch Bibis speech in front of the Congress): The US and Israel belong together. We have given up our sovereignty because we are addicted to your help. But we know better than you whats good for our shared security: Israel has to be a strong state with huge a deterrence capacity.
The tobacco lobby is not even close in power to AIPAC et al; I don’t see cartons of Israel First cigarets being forced to show warnings, let alone graphics of the cost of US Israel First policy to the American inhalers of Ziocaine. Why, they are not even shuttled off to a small space outside the US work building. Instead, Ziocaine is a prescribed medicine for all their ills. The US and Israel belong together? Please. The divorce papers are rightfully in (slow) process. Perhaps we need a Norwegian process server? Since that crazy guy screwed that up, how about an Icelandic process server?
The US free blank cash and diplomatic check to Israel undermines US security to the max. There’s a bill in congress now to cut all aid to & recognition of the Palestinians if they don’t quit going to the UN to get recogniton as a state. The proposed bill specifies that this is to be even if it puts US security in direct jeopardy. The usual suspects are pushing the bill.
The US wants to kill Arab villages down to the women and children if that’s what it takes to have grass lawns and swimming pools in the Middle East?
I think you don’t understand what Americans really want right now. We would actually rather have job security than country clubs, Jewish-only or otherwise, in the Holy Land.
Um,um,um… you are so far off Schomk from the real public opinion.
You should take more to heart the comments you can see by the average public on articles published about Israel in main stream press when they allow comments. And on the net, particulary on sites that don’t even concentrate on Israel specifically like mondo does.
If you believe the oft repeated zionist claims about how Americans suppport Israel you don’t understand they that are what we call, whistling thru the graveyard, of the turning tide of American opinion on Israel.
It’s all quite irrelevant to the legal status of territory/borders. It’s just more useless twaddle.
Israel described itself and it’s legal sovereign extent May 15th 1948. It was recognized and accepted into the UN based on Israeli Government statements as to the extent of Israeli sovereignty as a separate entity to Palestine.
Israel is acting outside of it’s legal sovereign extent. The US veto vote allows Israel to ignore the law. It is actually as simple as “get the hell outta Palestine”
Were J Street worth anything, it would be trying to educate Jewish folk as to the actual legal status of Israeli sovereignty. Instead it looks for alternative excuses and justifications in Jewish attitudes towards the I/P issue, doing nothing of any actual value. NIL. ZIP. NADA. NOUGHT.
J Street is a part of the problem. A condiment to the land grubbing religious nuttery of the present unconstitutional Jewish State.
So Krubiner did a tour of Jewish communities in Europe and realized there were no thriving Jewish communities, they had been wiped out, an experience that convinced him that Israel was necessary for Jews.
Also, dear reader, such Jewish communities do not exist because the Jews who could populate them are assimilated. The word that Zionists fear.
Yes, assimilated by gas chambers, dude.
Oh, and were there gas chambers in Spain? Gas chambers in Great Britian or Ireland? Wow, I guess those Scandinavian countries must have had gas chambers too!
Yes, you are right. Beside this: look at Germany or France, they have huge communities. Well organized. But yes, maybe you are right, I do not know the communities in the countrys he wrote very well. My answer was a bit polmic.
“Wow, I guess those Scandinavian countries must have had gas chambers too!”
Shalom, have a nice time in Scandanavia, but stay the hell out of the saunas!
Then Krubiner had helped lead a tour of Jewish communities in Europe and realized there were no thriving Jewish communities, they had been wiped out, an experience that convinced him that Israel was necessary for Jews.
I presume he meant Eastern Europe (there are many thriving Jewish communities in Western Europe), and if he went to the former countries of the USSR, failed to consider the effect that Israel itself has had on the mass emigration of Jews.
The argument would appear to be the same old Zionist propaganda – apparently much more effective on the older generation. Israel is necessary because of the future Holocaust, because anti-Semitism is eternal, and because if we don’t look after ourselves no one else will.
The reason that Krubiner needed to go to [Eastern] Europe to discover this is that the thriving (and even not-so-thriving) Jewish communities of North America simply don’t convey that idea. Jews and Judaism are alive and well in the United States. Ironically, the non-thriving or non-existent communities Krubiner visited don’t convey that idea either. They are all about the past Holocaust, not the future. Does J Street or Krubiner have any convincing arguments about the inevitably of anti-Semitism and the real danger of a future Holocaust, beyond the fact that there are hardly any Jews left in Lublin?
It is very interesting to see the trends emerging here.
The anti-Zionists claim that Jewish identity is the religious one with no national background. Yet, in every country of the world people identify themselves as Jewish regardless of their active practice of Jewish religious rituals. Another point conviniently omitted by the opponents of Israel that every nation in this world was build based on mix of religion, land and social rituals characteristic to that particular part of the world. Everybody accepts that but when it comes to Jews- oh no, they are not eligible for the same criteria. And that is the part of modern Antisemitic retorics and people here are the voice of it. Do you realize that a large part of Jewish customs, traditions and yes, religious rituals emerged in that part of the world, being Israel. By denying that you look as ignorant as your accusations of Israel racism and apartheid. Once again the conflict here is about national self-determination at particular part of the land, and not about religious beliefs.
The land is what defines both Jewish and Palestinian people, and you here lack the consistency of your arguments- granting those rights only to the Palestinians and dismissing them from Jewish inhabitants of Israel.
P.S. Moderators, the use of abusive language is extremely one-sided and biased here.
dimadok, the historical matrix involved in building the nations in other parts of the world have never included a gap of a few thousand years. That’s unique to the Zionist enterprise now known as the state of Israel.
Hence it is invalid?
First, there is a continuous Jewish presence in Israel, during this period.
Second, Jews throughout the millennium have maintained the rituals reflecting the daily and annual routines of their ancestors in land of Israel.
And I completely agree with you that the combination of these factors make the Zionist enterprise unique among the nations, although our perspectives regarding its future are opposite.
I maintain the ideals of Jewish nation building as equal to every other nation in the world, and here people require for us to subdue to their demands, granting the nation rights to our opponents, BEFORE implementing our own. It is not about the race or religion- it never was. It is about self-determination and national aspirations of Jews.
Phil and others like him have internal conflict, which puts them in uncomfortable place of having to choose and I feel sorry for him. Accepting yourself as a Jew and your history, which was written before you , including ALL parts of it, is the way of being a better Jewish person. Inventing some sort of novel ideals of the new Jewishness with abrupt dismissal of the history of your people are clear signs of such internal conflict. History is a funny thing-it has a tendency to repeat itself, especially when it comes to Jews such as Phil, which went on changing the world, eventually understanding that they will always be regarded first as a Jew and only then as the person of ideals.
Hey, there’s a continuous jewish presence in Iceland, even if it’s not enough Jews to hold a decent prayer session. How do you bootstrap that to saying Zionist nationalism was just like any other nationalism in history?
Does every white person have a right to land in Africa because the human race originated there by scientific consensus?
Well I would not claim Iceland-just because it’s so cold there….
Now back the subject-Jewish self-identification and everyday traditions are inseparable from the land of Israel, as for the Iceland Jews just live there same as in US or elsewhere.
You can identify all you want, that does not make your claim to a piece of land legitimate.
It just means you’ve found a way to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, past – present – future.
Oh lord. More nonsense.
But o.k…..Indians and white anglo saxon christian settlers have had a ‘continous presence’ in America since America’s time began…so Jews, Hindus, blah,blah blah, everyone else get out. I am self determing we be a American Indian and Christian WASP nation.
Makes perfect zio sense.
Please, they live there. What you do: you repeat history. I don’t care if they have a legitimate right or not: jewish and non-jewish people live there. And they have to live together. Dot. You can critisize the idea of a nation, critisize the idea of a state, but to take the Israeli people and say: you are too late. All the nations, who invented (!) themselves have a right, but you don’t, because you don’t exist 100 or 200 years but just 60, is nonsense. In just this small piece I aggree when some people say Israel is singled out. They are right, because what Israel does in 1 year, the US and the West do the same on one day. Like Finkelstein said in a lecture (and he was completely right) to Gaza: for example the embargo is exactly the same th US did with Iraque for 10 years. And they did it even more strictly: more than one million people did in these more than ten years.
Every process of creating a state is bloody. It was bloody everywhere, where nations were created. Take a close look at Britain. Or the Balkan.
Thank you.
Criticism of the U.S. well taken. This argument that other nations created their states in a bloody manner makes it right for Israel to use force and mass murder to create itself seems a little specious. Nazi Germany used force and mass murder to create itself as an Aryan nation – while the scope of the crime was much larger, the motives are similar – to purify the land of the unwanted ethnic groups (purify is a term used by Ben Gurion to describe emptying the land of the Palestinian Arabs. )
The Palestinian Arab refugees are the native people of what’s now Israel. Israel does not have the right to exist as a state that denies the native people their rights to inhabit and be citizens of it. Self-determination as claimed by zionists is yet another orwellian language twisting, there is no right of self-determination that says an immigrant group (in this case zionists) can go to another land, expel the natives and deny them self-determination. Zionism, first and foremost, is a colonial movement. Self-determination applies to colonized people, not colonials – self-determination is a claim by colonized people to be free of rule by a colonial power, to rule themselves.
As far as whether eee can keep his house, I don’t know whether he bought it knowing it was stolen or on stolen land, or even if it was stolen. Assuming it was, the fact that a deed to stolen land stands up up in an Israeli court just proves Israel is an apartheid state, as the thefts that stand up seem to only be thefts from Palestinian Arabs. However, I’m sure some negotiation can allow him to keep it, e.g., provide the original owner or their heirs an equivalent house, probably he should pay rent for the time he’s lived in it as well.
“eventually understanding that they will always be regarded first as a Jew and only then as the person of ideals.”
And dimadok neatly confesses his own anti-Semitism.
dimadok :
“The anti-Zionists claim that Jewish identity is the religious one with no national background. Yet, in every country of the world people identify themselves as Jewish regardless of their active practice of Jewish religious rituals.”
++++ So, long story short, are jews as “race” then ?
“Another point conviniently omitted by the opponents of Israel that every nation in this world was build based on mix of religion, land and social rituals characteristic to that particular part of the world. Everybody accepts that but when it comes to Jews- oh no, they are not eligible for the same criteria.”
++++ You dont know what you are talking about really ?
“And that is the part of modern Antisemitic retorics and people here are the voice of it.”
++++ That “antisemitism” label has been installed into your head very deep ? Did that education start as young age ?
“Do you realize that a large part of Jewish customs, traditions and yes, religious rituals emerged in that part of the world, being Israel.”
++++ Our major religion ( christianity ), with customs with it etc, are from that area. So can we call now that area as our own also ?
“By denying that you look as ignorant as your accusations of Israel racism and apartheid.”
++++ So, can we draw conclusion from your statement that its jewish tradition to occupy and steal land. But we are antisemites when we say it ?
“Once again the conflict here is about national self-determination at particular part of the land, and not about religious beliefs.”
++++ At least you get something right. GJ
“The land is what defines both Jewish and Palestinian people, and you here lack the consistency of your arguments- granting those rights only to the Palestinians and dismissing them from Jewish inhabitants of Israel.”
++++ Oh no, quite opposite to what your hasbara teachers has told to you. Its Israel that deny that same right from palestinians. Tell us, what rights in Israel has palestinians managed to dismiss ? Because majority of citizens in Israel are still jewish, right ? But you dont see any contradiction in you message ?
I shall respond to only two concrete remarks of yours, since the rest is just an emotional response without any constructivism in it.
Yes, I and my immediate family have experienced first-hand antisemitism, beginning from the early age. And no, Jews are not the race but national identity.
“Yes, I and my immediate family have experienced first-hand antisemitism, beginning from the early age”
Thats the wonderful aspect of being a jew such as yourself, eh, dimeadozen? Any criticism can simply be chalked up to “anti-semitism”. Its easy to be God’s chosen ones when you’ve convinced yourselves that all of humanity has forsaken you.
Personally, I think its bullshit. What I don’t understand is why so many Jews, particularly in Israel, are engaging in behaviours that actually nurture VERY REAL anti-semitism. Its almost like a self destructive collective pursuit of societal suicide. When Israel has hated itself out of existence, will people like you pride themselves in the role they played in pulling the trigger?
So it is my fault then, that people scorn me as being Jewish? It is wonderful argument you make. And another thing-please do not put your words and interpretations to thing others say. I responded to the question as of young age experience of the antisemitism. Do you really believe that there was no antisemitism before the creation of Israel, or just wasn’t as justified as now? Please make a clear cut respond so I would understand who I am dealing with.
Do you intentionally misread people so you can satisfy your narcissism?
Who is occupying who? Who is colonizing? You are. It’s Palestinians who are losing everything, to Jews whose only claim to the land is that they are Jewish.
Self-determination belongs to people of a land, not to religions.
Jews live all over the world. Jews who may have never set foot in ‘the Land of Israel’ whereas Palestinian Arabs have been living on that land continuously for hundreds of years.
You want Jews (or rather, ZIONIST Jews) to have claim to other countries as citizens, and also a Jewish country-club in the Middle East, while you get rid of the Palestinians in your way.
If someone came to my home, and told me I had to leave because he was Jewish and God promised the land to him, or that 3000 years ago, his distant ancestor lived there (which he can’t prove) – then I’d be pissed too.
In fact, the Palestinians have been amazingly patient with Jewish nationalism. The logic of Jewish nationalism combines religious extremism and racial discrimination, since Jews are a ethno-religious group no doubt.
And it is Islamophobia that is the hatred of choice. It’s Arabs whose countries are under attack by the West. Whose countries are occupied by the West and the dictators the West favors.
You are so self-centered, that you actually think you’re a victim in spite of the ability to get away with murder, diplomatic immunity from the world’s only superpower, and support of the mainstream media and popular culture. Disgusting.
Point being, it ALWAYS comes back to anti-semitism with people like you.
“So it is my fault then, that people scorn me as being Jewish?”
No, that was not my argument. Truth is, I question the veracity of your claim. I strongly doubt you have been subjected the the degree of “scorn” that you lay claim to.
You might ask how I can make that assertion when I do not know you or your history. The answer, really, is quite simple. I have seen the accusation of “anti-semitism” so consistently mis-applied and overused as a rebuttal to criticism that the accusation no longer has any teeth.
Simply, it is no longer a credible argument. And it is particularly unbelievable when offered by someone such as yourself; A jew who can apparently find no fault with Israeli policy, no matter how egregious or atrocious. When unable to defend policy, you go on auto-pilot, applying the timeworn excuse of eternal victimhood.
Even the simple act of pointing out the policies and actions that Israel commits to that actually SOW anti-semitism becomes an argument that you point the accusing finger at, and use this feckless and timeworn tactic of rebuttal that has become completely and utterly defanged.
Yes, very real anti-semitism exists, PARTICULATRLY amongst the Palestinians. And yes, there are many jews in Israel working diligently to EARN that kind of hatred. And the numbers are increasing. Its suicide, on a national level. And you are part of the PROBLEM, not part of the solution.
“I shall respond to only two concrete remarks of yours, since the rest is just an emotional response without any constructivism in it.”
++++ Or would you say honestly that you dont know what to say.
“Yes, I and my immediate family have experienced first-hand antisemitism, beginning from the early age.”
++++ Ahha, so sad to hear. And since then you have seen antisemitism everywhere ? Judge and jury same time.
“And no, Jews are not the race but national identity.”
++++ I see. So Israeli arabs also have that jewish national identity ?
“Yes, I and my immediate family have experienced first-hand antisemitism, beginning from the early age”
Tell us what anti semitism you have experienced.
“So it is my fault then, that people scorn me as being Jewish? It is wonderful argument you make.”
Actually, dimeadozen, if you read my comment, I state it is your BEHAVIOUR, not your jewishness, that is sowing hatred. You are merely creating a strawman with your assertion. You attribute an argument to me that I am not making.
The “Jewishness” only becomes part of the equation because you perform these behaviours while singing the praises for a “Jewish State”. When you dump white phosphorous on civilians, or flood an orchard with raw sewage, or fire on a farmer attempting to plant his field, you do so while loudly proclaiming your own Jewishness,, the Jewishness of your state, and even God’s sanction for your actions BECAUSE of your jewishness.
Then, after dumping the sewage, or dropping the white phosphorous, or targeting the farmer, or stealing his land, you proclaim, “Look, they hate Jews!!!!”
Well, uh…….
What age should I start from?
Well, by all means start with early childhood, when you didn’t have a clue what anti-semitism was, except, of course, when your parents first implanted this catch-all rebuttal to all manner of criticism.
Oh come on. It’s enough now. Of course jewish people suffer antisemitic hate even today. It’s not just an invention to immunize oneself against critizism. That jews are not killed with shovels anymore does not mean that a lot of people do not have a lot of anti-semitic shit in their heads. And sometimes the same logic like in anti-semitism is today used against muslim people, too. You are ignorant. Of course there are zionists who uses the guilt and the destruction of the European jews. Or who are cynical in using the smear of anti-semitism to bring forward their goals. But: Do you really want to deny racism?
Of course I do not deny racism, or anti-semitism. But I do deny the power of the accusation, due to its mis-use and false application. These jackasses using it to attack the critics of Israel, whether they deserve it or not, have robbed the accusation of its credibility. Very rarely have I seen the accusation leveled with any honesty. And, when warranted, more often than not, even the critics of Israel, (who have been wrongly maligned by this false accusation) are the first to raise dissent in the face of TRUE anti-semitism.
You don’t see this dimeadozen jackass coming to Phil’s defense over this Daily Kos flap, do you? eee???? Hophni??? Fred??? So, are they using this “anti-semitism” catchall defense against Phil’s opinions merely by their silence? Do YOU think Phil is anti-semitic? And, if not, aren’t you tacitly agreeing with with my contention that this accusation is misused and incredible coming from someone like dimeadozen??
Fascists like you, would indeed like to charge people with thought-crime.
And if Israel is only repeating history, then why don’t you explain to the Palestinians losing their way of life; their lands; their homes; their resources – the Palestinians being humiliated everyday by the IDF and by the settlers – the Palestinians whose friends and family die at the hands of Israel at a rate of 5 to 1…
That they are simply the Native Americans, and like the Native Americans, they will virtually disappear and/or lose everything, but most of all – their dignity.
Tell them that.
Hear that guys? We should not fight for Palestinian rights, in the modern-era, with our modern set of morals and international laws/norms, etc. because poor poor Israel wants to keep colonizing land just like Western nations used to do.
Man, thanks Schmok – here I thought we were fighting a worthy cause for justice!
We should be fighting for Israel’s right to be as racist and criminal as previous colonial States!
Those Palestinians are just so insensitive. How dare they be upset at their own ethnic cleansing, right?
At the moment you are fighting a ghost. You call me facist just because I do not aggree with everything what is writen in the comments? Just because I critisize some of the comments you think: he belongs to the “other side”. Stop thinking of black and white. There are many colours.
I wouldn’t pass the judgement very quickly as for my personal experiences of the antisemitic remarks and offenses, as I do not pass about yours. It is true that the term has been misused many times here nut also the terms such as “apartheid”, ‘zio-nazis”, “Jewish fascism”, “concentration camps” and “racism=zionism”. Now to satisfy your curiosity I was only 5 years old when kids in my neighborhood called me “Jewish dirt bag” and “zhid”, treating to beat me up, when I asked my parents what it meant they explained that we were Jews and that’s how people try to offend us.
Are you happy now? Or shall I tell you stories about my parents, their parents, my wife and her family. Mind you all of that happened at last half of the 20 century and we ALL are secular people, who never practiced Jewish traditional life, having no cultural differences form the people who called me those names.
No – I’m calling you a fascist for the fascist remarks you make.
Address my argument instead of commenting about the style of commenting.
It’s not surprising that every single – EVERY SINGLE – counter-argument that your political type (dishonest, Zionist) comes up with is ‘blah blah antisemitism blah blah’.
It makes me think, if the roles were reversed and Palestinians were the ones forcing Israelis to demolish their own homes then pay them (the Palestinians). Or Palestinians were colonizing Israeli land. Or Palestinians were killing Israeli children at a ratio of TEN TO ONE and civilians at a ratio of FIVE TO ONE – - – - – - how would you react?
I mean, as it is – people like you say we should not care about this issue because their are worse issues. You downplay Palestinian suffering which is vastly more in scope and frequency than Israeli suffering (and the reasons are not exotic; Israel is the aggressor and occupier) – while emphasizing Israeli suffering.
Suicide bombs! Hamas charter! Antisemitism!
All pale in comparison to what Palestinians endure, physically and in terms of the savage assault on their identity in our media, our culture and the collectively the assault on their existence (as “in spite of the Zionist dream[...]those pesky Palestinians”).
What does ANY of that have to do with the occupation? With the colonization? With the Nakba and with the vastly disproportionate suffering of the Palestinian people and the crimes they ENDURE from Zionism?
Are you going to justify it all from your biographical experiences?
I’ve endured racism too. Being dark-skinned, I’ve even been insulted with racist slurs pertaining to Arabs! People are so racist, they skip my actual background and go straight for the Arab identity.
I would never use it as a justification to STEAL though. Or to wreak havoc on another people for a dream of a Jewish paradise in the desert.
There are people living on this land you covet. They were the majority, in population, in land and property ownership – by comparison.
And the only way Israel came to being was through GETTING RID OF THEM. It’s still doing it, that is the urgency that informs my opposition.
Once again, who cares what YOU – a petty racist, nationalist – think about BDS.
When people blow up civilians and claim they do it in the name of resistance, your arguments can be used there as well. All those thing I never said that they did not happened, and yes there are many cases where the response is harsh and disproportional, from my perspective the majority of the IDF responses are justified and follow the rules of engagement as provided to the soldiers.
“So it is my fault then, that people scorn me as being Jewish?”
Really hate to break it to you, but I doubt that has a whole lot to do with it. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re just a first-class schmuck?
Can you explain to me how “secular” Jews can have a “God-given” right to land that supersedes international law and human rights conventions? Go ahead and explain that one to us.
Jewish religious texts a far more complicated than just the Torah itself and when you consider the historic connection between Jews an land of Israel, you may want to include Talmud (Mishna and Gemara) and the rest of the text by Rashi, Ramban and Rambam for starters. These books deal with everyday aspects of Jewish life and its connection with the land of Israel.
Just read something in wikipedia or else.
So, you’re saying that your proof of “secular Jewish” life can be found… in… thousand year old religious texts, huh?
dimadok, virtually everyone who got Zionism off the ground in the early 20th century had little use for the Torah or the Mishna. Just about every major Zionist leader you can name: Herzl, Nordau, Ruppin, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion… abandoned traditional Judaism and detested religious Jews.
So I tend to glaze over while someone goes on and on about rituals and scripture, conveniently sweeping away the baggage of the Zionist movement itself. The reasons for the above mentioned seeking a Jewish state had little to do with Jewish tradition and everything to do with their internalizing and self-applying anti-semitism. Their primary motivation was to transform Jews into their own version of the Aryan superman as they absolutely bought into the stereotype of the weak, craven diaspora Jew. In fact, when you read an examination of the administrative practices of Ruppin’s Palestine Office, saving them from persecution wasn’t a goal anymore than obeying that 120 mitzvot that can only be obeyed in the aretz.
Yet you have omitted Rav Kook, Rav Kalischer and the “Mizrachi” movement founded in Vilna, by Rav Reines.
There are streets named after them and their names stand as equal to these of Hertzl, Ben-Gurion etc. Secular Zionists were extremely diverse group, ranging from capitalistic views to extremist communists (adoring Stalin for example). These people had and still do completely opposite views as for the SOCIAL structure of the Israel as a state, but share one COMMON trait as for the need to maintain it as the homeland for all Jews, regardless of the religious views and social background. And that is IMHO the key fact to support the Israel.
And I’m supposed to care about a street named after Rav Kook because…? There’s a street in Tel Aviv named after Chaim Arlosoroff. How many in primary school know he negotiated the Haavara agreement? And that was a more significant development in creating Israel than anything a rabbi might have done before 1948.
You can count the WZO delegates who conceived “Israel” as a homeland for Jews regardless of background on one fist. Herzl, Nordau and Pinsker conceived the Jewish homeland as a dumping ground for the unwashed eastern masses and below men of (German) culture. Ruppin and Aharon Eisenberg (Founder of Rechovot) considered the Yemeni Jews as a labor source to displace the local Palestinians and do the menial work Ashkenazim were too highly-paid for.
Put it another way, you can’t keep pulling out these cheap rationalizations for Israel and put them before someone who’s done some homework expecting it to take.
the land is what defines jewish people?
wrong, because here in america us jews have been doing great, individually & coillectively, and were doing so before the u.n. partitioned palestine
as for self-determination – not on someone else’s land!
as for jewish traditons, for some reason you’re leaving out the modern tradition of always siding with the oppressed, never with the oppressor, even(make that especially) when the oppressor happens to be a co-religionist. And everyone in the world except zionsists knows who’s the oppressor* in the i/p conflict.
*hint, the people who pulled off the one about a land without a people for a people without a land
Okay, what all these Zionists, and many anti-Zionists cannot seem to comprehend (or refuse to comprehend) is that for hundreds of years whether or not your were a Jew, and how Jews should live was not a decision Jews got to make. Anotherwords, Zionists tell us that Jews lived in ghettoes because they wanted to.
one of the zionist’s worst fear is that jews will wander outside the confines of “safe” discourse on the i/p issue & speak to “others”. This was driven home to me in a conversation I had with a then close friend upon returning home from the ’82 u.s.-backed israeli war upon lebanon & speaking publicly on what I had witnessed -
“your name came up at a b’nai b’rith meeting”
“what, on their list of self-hating jews?”
“yes”
“did you mention that you knew me?’
“are you kidding?”
ROTFLMAO
The anti-Zionists claim that Jewish identity is the religious one with no national background. Yet, in every country of the world people identify themselves as Jewish regardless of their active practice of Jewish religious rituals.
Let’s say this another way:
The anti-Catholics claim that Catholic identity is the religious one with no national background. Yet, in every country of the world people identify themselves as Catholic regardless of their active practice of Catholic religious rituals.
Wouldn’t it be insane to claim that Catholicism has a land based national background in what is now Palestine and that those who identify themselves as Catholic have a claim to the region.
Get it?
Ellen,
The Jews are a nation. Get over it. Nothing you say or do can change that. The Jews are not a race. A nation is different than a race. Think of Kevin Costner’s character becoming part of the Sioux nation in Dancing With Wolves even though he is from a different race.
Your denial of this in the face of what millions of Jews believe is getting you nowhere. Judaism is not Catholicism and your analogy does not hold. The main difference is how Catholics define themselves.
Hey eee….sorry to wake you up, but there are no races.
Are you a nation like the “Aryan nation,” eee? Fascinating. And ironic.
Millions of people can believe that we live on Jupiter, that wouldn’t make their belief any more rational, eee.
Jews are not a nation. There are Jews who live outside of Israel, who have never set foot in Israel.
There is an Israeli nation, that continually steals land from others to expand its borders.
There is no Jewish nation, in spite of what you and your type profess.
And yet I identify myself as Jewish and mind you by the society as well, REGARDLESS whether I actively practice Judaism or not. As for the Catholicism its rituals are connected to the first Christians and their places, regardless whether they are located in Israel or elsewhere. Rome, Lourdes, Santiago de Compostella etc. are the examples of that. Actually it would interesting to me to learn at least one Catholic ritual directly related to land of Israel, and not to the Jesus himself.
As for the remark “Get it?”-
“It is not fitting, when one is in God’s service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.”
Francis of Assisi
“No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.”
Francis of Assisi
Nice point, Dimadok..and nice quotes. I am a Catholic who is rather found of Francis of Assisi…though also aware of how easily we Catholics forget that part about “no one is to be called an enemy”.
LOL! So your argument boils down to “Israel for Jews ONLY!”
My argument is that only with connection between the land of Israel and Jews we can survive as the viable nation.
dimadok July 30, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Odd we survived 3,000 years without the ‘land of Israel’. We survived, not by stealing other folks land or being liars and cheats on behalf of the Historic Jewish Homeland, but by living BY the basic tenets Judaism.
Now, the ‘land of Israel’ is ONLY the land within Israel’s actual, recognized legal sovereign extent. As declared May15th 1948, confirmed by the Israeli Government May 22nd 1948.
Until the Zionist Federation made it clear that a Jewish state was the aim, Jews could have live anywhere in Palestine. (they did in fact for 3,000 years) Herzl could have lived anywhere in Palestine during his life time. Oddly, he chose not to. Now he’s buried outside of the ‘Land of Israel’, in what remains of the Provisional State of Palestine, which is rather ironic.
Never once in the entire history of Palestine has it been free of occupation in some form or another, preventing effective independence. There has never once been an opportunity.
It’s the Jewish Federation / Israelis who have missed opportunity after opportunity to live in all of Palestine
We get it—-they don’t. Won’t get it.
It’s magic….can’t question magic.
LOL
And the very first Christians (or who were later to be refereed to as Christians) were…..Jews!
And many Christian rituals (especially Catholic) have roots in Jewish rituals. Starting with communion…. the sharing of unleavened bread at the time of Passover.
I could go on.
if my words, “get it ” were understood as a snark, please accept my apology.
It was meant to break through the wall you had built on this thread, and in response to your use labels, (such as Anti-Zionist) creating divisions among people, the purpose of which is to prevent or hinder dialogue and make a “chilling look.”
It is true that they originate as Jewish rituals but ALL are related to Jesus ( body and blood for the communion ) and not to the land of Israel. As for the Passover it is celebration of freedom from the Egypt first and only then relates to the land of Israel.
I really would like to see Catholic or Christian ritual related to the land itself and not what has occurred there.
But,but but….Israel doesn’t like Christians..except maybe the christian zionist who want to build a Disneyland in Israel.
link to pbs.org
Once again I have to repeat myself- there is a conflict between the aspirations to statehood and I support Israel and Palestinian Christians support the Palestinian side. Therefore the conflict is not between the Judaism vs Christianity.
Early Christian practice was to return to Jerusalem on Pentecost (where we get the modern name Pentecostal because of the speaking in tongues in Acts 2). Modern Christian practice is to have Pentecost on the liturgical calendar seven weeks after Easter. The Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 16:8 said he would stay in Ephesus until Pentecost marking the festival as important to Christians, even those in Greece. The Christian nuance over Shavuot was all nations were to gather in Jerusalem. Shavuot was also the day to bring Bikkurim to the Temple. They were to bring in the Seven Species of the Land of Israel in order to praise God. See Deut. 8:6-8:
As we can see bringing in the first fruits of harvest is, uh, quite tied to the land. Note also that Peter considered himself a Jew. Note how Peter uses Joel to expand the concept of Judaism to all nations and genders, indeed to all who call upon the name of the Lord.
Acts 2:
Interesting, but now it is maintained as Christian ritual?
I’d put it in a slightly different way, Ellen.
I don’t think that anti-Catholics (like Thomas Hobbes) think of Catholicism as purely a religion with no political element. Rather on the contrary, they tend to think that Catholicism makes a claim to universal and unlimited sovereignty – perhaps in the quaint, though slightly terrifying, style of the eleventh century Dictatus Papae, ‘all princes should kiss the Pope’s feet’. Teachings like those of the Dictatus (authentically Catholic or not) represent an element both of continuity and of breach with Judaism, as does the Eucharist. Instead of but also in authentic succession to the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of the World.
This idea is originally of religious character, though it is just about possible for people like Maurras, who were Catholic – ultra-Catholic politically – to be unbelievers on the religious plane. They had non-religious reasons for treating claims that had originally been made in religious terms as if they were true for certain practical purposes. People like Maurras would not be recognised as Catholic by everyone. Which is an example of the fact that self-ascription of a certain status is not infallible or beyond question.
When people self-ascribe themselves to a Jewish nation regardless of religion there might be some interest in knowing on what grounds the ascription is made and indeed what a nation is supposed to be. Are nations things made up of all who claim to be part of them?
MHughes, Catholicism, or early Christianity became institutionalized and politicized. It filled the political vacuum. After all, the Roman Catholic Church, perfected this in adopting the Emperor Diocletian’s model of bureaucratic organizations … ergo, Diocese, Parishes, etc., taking on political structures even with Popes as Kings.
So of course, it took on a political, human, institutional element.
Maybe the Coptic Christians are the most “pure Christians” remaining who never mixed state and kings with a god centered spirituality.
As for talk of “nation,” etc: 2000 years ago people did not think or even conceive of the world as we do today. But instead wrote in sweeping metaphors and symbols for larger meaning. (Heck almost no one could even read, so the brain ticked a bit differently. ) The entire idea of “nation” 2000 years ago has no resemblance to our modern understanding of that word.
So asking what rituals relate to the land “itself” instead of Jesus shows little understanding symbolism of ritual. And that the universal symbolism of, for example, “That all nations were to gather in Jerusalem for Shavout. ” was a Universal early Christian ritual connected to a place, land — and that it was a great a spiritual metaphor of something much bigger.
But this idea of a Universality (as richb’s quote from Acts 2 shows) of a people over a Tribal self understanding was the big break in Judaism, leading to Christianity.
Then it got all messed up with institutions, governments, lands and ideas of earthly things. Sort of like Zionism.
I was expecting this responses to focus on Shavuot- however there is a huge piece of Jewish traditional life that you are missing. For example significant part of the Kashrut laws were formulated specifically to be maintained initially at the land of Israel. Every holiday not only the Shavuot are connected to Jerusalem and the Temple in it. In fact modern Jewish life and traditions are formed due to the adaptation of the laws for living in diaspora. Here were is the greatness of the rabbinical thought which emerged after the dispersal of Jews from the land of Israel. Modern philosophy is the direct beneficiary of it.
dimadok :
” dispersal of Jews from the land of Israel”
++++ How and when did this dispersal happened ?
link to en.wikipedia.org
I would particularly pay attention to the pre-Roman exile since it was a basis for the Iraqi Jewish community which existed almost for 2500 years till they were kicked out of the country.
link to en.wikipedia.org
“I would particularly pay attention to the pre-Roman exile”
++++ Pre-Roman exile ? And from link which you give :
“The Jewish community of Babylon included Ezra the scribe, whose return to Judea was associated with significant changes in Jewish ritual observance.”
So some part of jewish tribe travelled back to Judea. Which mean that part of them decided to stay in Babylon, while rest travelled back to Judea. And when part decided stay, it is not right terminology to use word “exile”.
“since it was a basis for the Iraqi Jewish community which existed almost for 2500 years till they were kicked out of the country.”
++++ Were they really ? Ever heard Professor Avi Shlaim have you ? Iraqi jew, who said that nobody forced them out of Iraq. And who has also said that he havent seen so far any credible scholar made study about jewish out kicking from Iraq.
So when jews were kicked out from palestine then ? Can you give some light to this issue ?
Probably one of the better studies on the Jewish flight from Iraq is ‘The Other Exodus’ by Moshe Gat. It can be partly read on Google. These are some notes I took from the sub-heading, “Iraq, Israel and the Zionist Underground”:
“No evidence that Iraqi govt. took action against Jews not members of the underground (p. 55); Brits and US report 36 Jews arrested in Nov., 4 women, not 2000 as Israel claimed;
On 1 Nov., state dept. said to press only Jews who violated Iraqi law were arrested, and in smaller numbers than reported; NYT 2.11.49
Brits saw Iraqi govt. tolerant to Jewish minority and were acting restrained under the circumstances; maintaining law & order to prevent a repetition of July 1941; Israel was charging Iraq with persecution; ”
—
So either Israel over-exaggerated the persecution of Iraqi Jews or the US and Britain had an interest in downplaying it. These are both likely scenarios.
You didn’t include the reason how the ended up in Babylon at first place. Let this on your conscience, since using partial facts in the argument has been always the strong side here.
As for “kicking” the Jews out of Palestine let us look further in our reading comprehension class , under the Roman empire.
So you take for a fact statement from one person, one State department release for 1949 (I didn’t realize that State Department bears much credibility here till now), and wait, wait-there it is: the final party with full objective response, the one and only the Brits!
Now it makes perfect sense to me- how I was blinded by the Zionist propaganda machine and thank you for the eye-opening experience….
Quote from the book by Moshe Gat:
“there was no connection between the bomb-throwing incidents and the departure of the Jews.”
From another review of the book:
Roughly 120,000 Jews lived in Iraq, (the census of 1920 listed 87,000, the census of 1947, 118,000), making up some 3 percent of the overall population, most of them in the major cities of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul. They were shortly to suffer the oppression spearheaded by nationalistic forces, whose leaders included the British-appointed Jerusalem Mufti, Hajj Amin el-Husseini.
The Mufti arrived in Iraq in 1939 and his hatred made no distinction between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. At the same time, anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda began to infiltrate Iraq, at the instigation of Fritz Grobba, the charge d’affairs at the German Consulate from October 1932, who purchased a major daily newspaper. Nazi propaganda penetrated deeply into the society also thanks to the pre-existing predilection to Jew-hatred in the Islamic society at large.
This led to the October 1941 farhud, or pogrom, in which 180 Jews were murdered in the course of two days–including women, children and the elderly–and several hundred others were severely injured. Property damage amounted to several hundred thousand pounds sterling.
I think I get a bit tedious in recommending the Oxford History of the Biblical World, a fairly conservative text, on the question of depopulations and repopulations of the Holy Land in biblical times. It seems to me quite clear that these events never involved total or near-total population replacement and that the idea of people and population is always ambiguous because of the mixture of religious and what we might call ‘genetic’ considerations in determining what was a ‘people’. See p. 128 (Lawrence Stager) for the Conquest, p. 290 (Mary Joan Winn Leith) for the Babylonian Captivity and p.422 (Barbara Geller – any relation to Pam?) for the Roman period.
My mind is full, far too full in fact, of old things.
One does not acquire political rights which can be accepted apart from religion by holding religious services or citing texts that expound a certain theological position, unless the theological writing conveys or can be connected to moral principles that are powerful enough to be accepted as a matter of reason or ‘natural light’.
“You didn’t include the reason how the ended up in Babylon at first place.”
++++ I just assume that we know how….
” Let this on your conscience, since using partial facts in the argument has been always the strong side here.”
++++ Late Biblical history and the Babylonian exile
Three times during the 6th century BCE, the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. These three separate occasions are mentioned (Jeremiah 52:28-30). The first was in the time of Jehoiachin in 597 BCE, when, in retaliation for a refusal to pay tribute, the temple of Jerusalem was partially despoiled and a number of the leading citizens removed (Daniel 5:1-5). After eleven years, in the reign of Zedekiah — who had been enthroned by Nebuchadnezzar, a fresh revolt of the Judaeans took place, perhaps encouraged by the close proximity of the Egyptian army. The city was razed to the ground, and a further deportation ensued.[6] Finally, five years later, Jeremiah records a third captivity. After the overthrow of Babylonia by the Persians, Cyrus gave the Jews permission to return to their native land (537 BCE), and more than forty thousand are said to have availed themselves of the privilege. (See Jehoiakim; Ezra; Nehemiah.)
The earliest accounts of the Jews exiled to Babylonia are furnished only by scanty biblical details; certain sources seek to supply this deficiency from the realms of legend and tradition. Thus, the so-called “Small Chronicle” (Seder Olam Zutta) endeavors to preserve historic continuity by providing a genealogy of the exilarchs (“Reshe Galuta”) back to King Jeconiah; indeed, Jeconiah himself is made an exilarch. The “Small Chronicle’s” statement, that Zerubbabel returned to Judea in the Greek period, can of course not be regarded as historical. Certainly, the descendants of the Davidic house occupied an exalted position among their brethren in Babylonia, as they did at that period in Palestine. During the Maccabean revolt, these Judean descendants of the royal house had emigrated to Babylonia.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Lets not forget that it was YOU who brought this link up. And when Babylonians took jews to captivity in few occasions, some part of them desided to stay in Babylon. And as your link tells, few migrated to Babylon during Maccabean revolt. So, what i am partial facts im taking here ?
“As for “kicking” the Jews out of Palestine let us look further in our reading comprehension class , under the Roman empire.”
++++ It is very videly known, that Romas didnt have such a habit at all. Anywhere. At any time. Oh, and reading from our own given link again, we can find one strange part :
“Dispersion of the Jews in the Roman Empire
Experts dismiss the popular notion that the Jews were expelled or exiled from Palestine in the 1st century AD, in particular that this would have been a sudden event. The myth of exile from Palestine receives only minimal treatment in serious Jewish historical scholarship.[2]”
link to en.wikipedia.org
Shlomo Sand -really??
Perhaps we all are Khazars and should go back to Crimea and south Ukraine?
dim, would you mind copy pasting what you are referencing, i’m trying to follow and not seeing the sands reference. thanks
Lets not forget that it was YOU who brought this link up.
mig, this is a common diversion tactic. maybe dim doesn’t want to discuss a J Street official saying American Jews ‘ideally’ want the whole ‘land of Israel’. maybe he wants to talk about shlomo sands.
dimadok :
“Shlomo Sand -really??”
++++ Maybe you should tell us. Your link.
But there is more. Usually heard explanation has been that jewish community left voluntarily/forced from palestine after last Bar Kokhba revolt in the year around 135. Now we enter some strange phenomenon. IF most of the jewish population was forced/voluntarily left palestine after that event, something happened later on. Because in the year 351, jewish population in palestine managed somehow to raise another revolt in palestine, namely Jewish revolt against Gallus 351-352.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Next revolt started in palestine 484 – 572, called Samaritan Revolts.
Samaritans rebelled again in 495 under the rule of emperor Anastasius I, reoccupying Mount Gerizim, which was subsequently reconquered by the Byzantine governor of Edessa, Procopius.
Third Samaritan Revolt year 529.
Fourth Samaritan Revolt
Another revolt erupted in 555 (or 556), with further consequences in 572. In these occasions the Jews and the Samaritans seem to have made common cause, beginning their rebellion in Caesaria, early in the month of July. They fell upon the Christians in the city, killing many of them, after which they attacked and plundered the churches. The rebellion appears to have spread as far as Bethlehem, where the Church of the Nativity was burned. The sources state that either 100,000 or 120,000 Samaritans were butchered in the aftermath of the rebellion. Many were tortured and others were driven int exile. However, it might be considered an exaggeration, as the punishment of the Samaritans seems to have been limited to those in the district of Caesaria and they were not yet subdued by Byzantine Emperors.
Aftermath
The situation of Samaritans further worsened with the failure of Jewish revolt against Heraclius and slaughter of Jewish population in 629. The Samaritan faith was outlawed and from a population of nearly a million, the Samaritan community dwindled to near extinction.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Continued : Jewish revolt against Heraclius
The Revolt against Heraclius was a Jewish insurrection against the Byzantine Empire across Levant, coming to the aid of the Persian during Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628. The revolt began with the Battle of Antioch (613), culminating with the conquest of Jerusalem in 614 by Persian and Jewish forces and establishment of Jewish autonomy. The revolt ended with departure of the Persian troops and an eventual surrender of Jewish rebels to Byzantines in the year 625 (or 628).
During an early stage of Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628, Khosrau II decided on a tactical move to establish a military alliance with the Jewish population of the Sassanid Empire, with a promise to re-establish Jewish rule over the Land of Israel (Palaestina province of Byzantine Empire at that time).[1] Following Khosrau II’s pact with Nehemiah, son of Jewish Exilarch, a Jewish army, about 20,000 strong, was recruited in Persia and was put in march together with Persian troops towards the Levant.
Following the victory in Antioch, joint Sassanid-Jewish army, commanded by Shahrbaraz, arrived to Palaestina and conquered Caesaria. Nehemiah’s Jewish troops and the Persians, commanded by Shahrbaraz, were joined by Benjamin of Tiberias (according to Jewish sources – a man of immense wealth), who enlisted and armed additional soldiers from Tiberias, Nazareth and the mountain cities of Galilee and together they marched on Jerusalem. Later, they were joined by the Jews of the southern parts of the country and supported by a band of Arabs, the united forces took Jerusalem on July, 614, after a 20 day siege.
The Sassanid Jewish Commonwealth
Though there are limited sources on what happened in the following years,[2] it appears Jews were given permission to run the city and they effectively did so for the next five years. The Jews of Jerusalem gained complete control over the city, and much of Judea and Galilee became an autonomous Jewish province of the Sassanid Empire. At the time 150,000 Jews were living in 43 settlements throughout the newly liberated territory.
According to Jewish sources, after the conquest of Jerusalem, Nehemiah ben Hushiel had been appointed the ruler of Jerusalem. He began the work of making arrangements of the rebuilding of the Temple, and sorting out genealogies to established a new High Priesthood. Approximately five years later the Persians gave control of the province to the Christians,[3] as their troops left in an act, seen by Jews as betrayal.
link to en.wikipedia.org
I could continue this, how later when crusaders arrived, jewish and muslim population fought against raiding crusaders, defending side by side example Jerusalem. Where crusaders collected muslims to mosques, jews to their synagogues, and set them on fire. Burning them alive.
link to al-bushra.org
“Perhaps we all are Khazars and should go back to Crimea and south Ukraine?”
++++ Perhaps you should stop spreading such a idiotic suggestions. Isnt there been enough evictions and forced cleansing allready in that area and in the world in general ? State of Israel exits, and thats fine. States are not some on/off things, which start to exits and then they are dismantled. Start giving some rights to palestinians, which has been given to you as equal terms, this mess should stop here and for good. So you can start to live in peace, which you deserve as also palestinians, and we can continue our wolderful journey as human beings.
You know the last two sentences of that post were my commentary, right? You are comprehending them in the opposite way they were written. I think Britain supported removing Iraq’s Jews. Iraq’s economy was owned by Anglo-Iranian/BP until the Qassim coup.
The Farhud took place the day after the British reoccupied Iraq.
I appreciate your knowledge, it is a shame though that you did not supply this line of arguments to the commenters denying continous Jewish presence in land of Israel. My remark of Khazars was to point to the views of Shlomo Sand, whos book is cited by your as Reference 2.
And as for ethnic cleansing – the truth is at the eyes of the beholder. When property is sold by the Arab owners, even in the middle of Arab neighborhood , to the Jewish hands it is still regarded as cleansing here. There is no Palestinian state and haven’t been so far, so the civil laws and military laws are followed according to the Israeli standard at the territories under Israeli jurisdiction including area C.
Also please refrain from using words such as “idiotic ” – you may look at my posts and find nothing of a kind.
dimadok :
“I appreciate your knowledge, it is a shame though that you did not supply this line of arguments to the commenters denying continous Jewish presence in land of Israel.”
++++ Because i, i might be wrong on this, thought that most of the readers and writers here can and will read this also. So i didnt want to add the same story several different topics. And there was no “land of israel” in 2000 years. Now is, and thats different story.
“And as for ethnic cleansing – the truth is at the eyes of the beholder. When property is sold by the Arab owners, even in the middle of Arab neighborhood , to the Jewish hands it is still regarded as cleansing here.”
++++ It is not something that can be labelled as ethnic cleansing. When property has been sold, needed papers filled, its quite legal.
” There is no Palestinian state and haven’t been so far, so the civil laws and military laws are followed according to the Israeli standard at the territories under Israeli jurisdiction including area C.”
++++ Wrong. There should not be military law in force in first place. Look what british occupiers did in time. And also Interim agreement.
From military to civil administration
Following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920, the military administration was replaced by a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner.
link to en.wikipedia.org
link to mideastweb.org
“Also please refrain from using words such as “idiotic ” – you may look at my posts and find nothing of a kind.”
++++ “”"“Perhaps we all are Khazars and should go back to Crimea and south Ukraine?””"”
Thats what i meant. Enough this stuff. And this is pointed to everyone. As everybody knows really.
dimadok :
” continous Jewish presence”
++++ Sorry, i allmost forgot that part. Well, what i have studied, shows that this is quite accurate. I use word “quite” with caution, because we really dont have knowledge what was situation for real during that time. But what percentage of population was jewish, we just simply dont know. What has been acknowledged by scholars, that majority of population turned to christianity. And later to Islam. But here also exact figures are at best just assumptions.
And sum up all of this, lets study some genes :
link to rense.com
Also from my previous post :
link to al-bushra.org
And, when you “I appreciate your knowledge”, i thank you very much. But i cant take credit for that. Reason for this is that nothing in this we cant be sure to any direction. Everything is at best some sort of estimate. History is just that funny beast which moves all the time, we get better information, or leads us sometimes to total dead end and leaves us even more puzzled.
Genetics are very interesting science- to respond to this article first, read this please
link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
And that link to en.wikipedia.org
(A more consistent model of A69 distribution is either a subsequent migration from West Africa, supported by A36 and HLA DR3-DQ2. The higher levels in the Gaza Palestinians supports this hypothesis)
You see I am a scientist ,particularly biologist, the article is offensive to my scientific integrity, since the samples were small and analysis had major flaws in it.
Same author has established that Macedonians are not related to Greeks , rather than to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people.
Cheer up -it is a new day, and we all have a lots to learn.
dimadok, the science articles you hotlink regarding drawing broad conclusions with political ramifications from genetic observations, or embedding such conclusions within a scientific article, constitute a point well taken here. The first article adds too the dimension of inadequate or misleading translation of scientific articles from one language to the to the other, and what are the editorial safegards, etc.
I assume everybody here knows that when the science of genetics is linked to political issues, including the psuedo-science of history, secular or biblical, the scientists participating in the seminal scientific findings will find themselves in a pragmatically testy situation. So what’s your point beyond these observations, other than you feel it is necessary to link the jewish people uniquely to the land of Israel in an unbroken line from ancient history?
Do the Palestinians require such linkeage? If not, why not? And does that tell us anything about the comparative linkeage as between the two sets of people?
dimadok :
“You see I am a scientist ,particularly biologist, the article is offensive to my scientific integrity, since the samples were small and analysis had major flaws in it.”
++++ Thats nice. Lovely indeed.
Antonio Arnaiz-Villena is a Spanish immunologist noted for his research into the genetic history of ethnic groups and fringe linguistic hypotheses. Arnaiz-Villena was president of Spain’s National Society of Immunology from 1991 to 1995. He has written more than 300 papers in immunology and human and bird population genetics.[1][2] He is Head of the Department of Microbiology I (Immunology) at the Complutense University of Madrid[3] and at Hospital 12 de Octubre [4], pages 15 and 18. He has been invited to give lectures in The French Academy of Sciences (College de France) [5] and The Royal Society (London
Jews and Palestinians
Arnaiz-Villena’s research was internationally reported following the publication of a paper on the genetic history of Jews and Palestinians, which he co-authored in the journal Human Immunology in 2001.[4] [7] This became controversial because of its assertions about the origins of the Palestine-Israeli conflict. Following strong criticism, it was withdrawn from the journal and deleted from the scientific archive.[4][5][6] Also, academics who had already received a copy of the journal were urged to “physically remove” the article pages in a move that had no precedent in research publishing.[7] The comments about Arab-Israeli conflicts were described as “extreme political writing”, which included claims that Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon lived in “concentration camps”. Arnaiz-Villena was removed from the journal’s editorial board.[8]
The decision was met with opposition from several academics. Andrew Goffey, a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University, England, observing that “it was conceded that the article had not been removed on the basis of its scientific evidence,” failed to find anything offensive in the paper. Several scientists wrote to the publishers to support Arnaiz-Villena and to protest their heavy-handedness. One of them said: “If Arnaiz-Villena had found evidence that Jewish people were genetically very special, instead of ordinary, you can be sure no one would have objected to the phrases he used in his article. This is a very sad business.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Next, where without a doubt, you find something F****d up also :
link to pnas.org
And this :
link to cell.com
Also this :
link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
And here :
link to foundationstone.com.au
Rest of, you can surely debate then in scientific circles. And tell HIM what a sloppy job he has done. Here is email adress :
link to chopo.pntic.mec.es
All the Best and good luck !
mig, nicely done!
Top Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis
By Juan Cole
03/23/2010
“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that “Jerusalem is not a settlement.” He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today.” He said, “Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.” He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.
Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.
So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.
1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers’ country in the occupied territory. Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.”
~~~~~~~~~
Click on link below for the rest /other 9 reasons:
link to juancole.com
“commenters denying continous Jewish presence in land of Israel. ”
Who is denying their ‘presence”? But…a mere ‘presence” does not a claim to ownership make. Arabs, Muslims, Christians also had had a “presence”. With Christians and Jews always having been the minority presence as far back as you care to go.
And just for miscellaneous info concerning Palestine pre 1948….the British Census of Palestine in 1935 reported 583,000 Muslims Arabs, 62,000 Christian Arabs and 28,000 Jews.
I like to direct you to the Cambridge Editions which are book bound factual records and documents from the British National Archives:
link to archiveeditions.co.uk
1838–1967
Minorities in the Middle East: Druze Communities 1840–1974
ISBN (13) 978-1-84097-165-1 4 volumes, 2,000 pages
Minorities in the Middle East: Jewish Communities in Arab Countries 1841–1974
ISBN (13) 978-1-84097-120-0 6 volumes, 3,870 pages m
Minorities in the Middle East: Muslim Minorities in Arab Countries 1843–1973
ISBN (13) 978-1-84097-180-4 4 volumes, 2,400 pages
Minorities in the Middle East: Religious Communities in Jerusalem 1843–1974
ISBN (13) 978-1-84097-125-5
And one in particular:
Zionist Movement and the Foundation of Israel 1839–1972, The
ISBN (13) 978-1-84097-050-0
If you go to the site you can click on the various editions to get an example of the documents included to see what might interest you.
There are also some editions of documents and reports on Arabia going back to the 1600′s in which you can find references to minorities and religions.
One thing I have noticed about most pro zionist is they rely on zionist sources for their history. It doesn’t always match the facts.
continous Jewish presence in land of Israel
this talkin pt is like the endless cash cow that keeps providing milk from here til doomsday. i’m like ‘so f’ing what’. it’s as if we’re supposed to grasp the idea this tiny population of jews were holding a place in line for centuries for millions of people? if i was camping in line all night to buy star war tickets or something and the person in front of me decided to let 100 of their friends cut in line the minute the box office opened i’d be doubly pissed and so would the thousand people in back of me. nobody gets to act like that. ‘but i had continuous presence in line!’ who uses this kind of logic, anywhere? but it gets repeated so often they think it becomes more logical as time wears on. it doesn’t.