Anti-Semites? Who, Us?

[elSicomoro]

I was referring to tw as a windbag, not OC.

Good to see that Radar is still way out of touch with reality...then again, he does live in the Los Angeles area...

The University of Haifa...yeah, that does say a lot. The guy is over the top...melodramatic!

[tw]

Originally Posted by sycamore

I was referring to tw as a windbag, not OC.

No, you were just proving to the world that your emotions routinely override your brain. You demonstrate what I criticize some of doing. How some respond because their emotions are more important than logical thought. Thank you for demonstrating my point.

[elSicomoro]

Originally Posted by tw

No, you were just proving to the world that your emotions routinely override your brain. You demonstrate what I criticize some of doing. How some respond because their emotions are more important than logical thought. Thank you for demonstrating my point.

You've only proven that you're a moron. When you get back to reality, let me know.

[Torrere]

Notice that Radar quotes an article which puts words in the mouthes of it's opposition.

Jaguar reprimands Radar, stating "The point is Radar, if one wants to put words into the mouth of their opposition it isn't hard, nor is it clever."

Immediately thereafter, Radar launches into a paragraph of hyperbole, putting words into the mouthes of his opposition.

Ironic, isn't it?

[elSicomoro]

"It's like raaaaaainnnnnnn on your wedding day..."

[Carbonated_Brains]

Torrere, I'd gladly support your statement, but then you'd just say "well gosh, I'm a ninny-livered guano-pirate with a propensity for elf buggery" and the conversation would further devolve into what you would call "crooken semantics and curried lambskins", whilst babbling incoherently.

I think that proves that I'm right.

[Skunks]

I have a paper on The Awakening that I need to crap out in the next hour and a half, but I was reading an <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0198810784/qid=1106073268/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-1987600-2352128?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">interesting book</a> about the life of Muhammad last night, and there was an offhand comment about the troubles of the middle east.

Essentially, before Islam came around, the desert was populated by nomadic tribes. They didn't have a code of ethics, or any sense of morality; they had honor, and a firm grasp of "what goes around, comes around." Murder was prevented within the tribe by the absolute rule of the chief/mob justice against anybody who can't settle a scuffle properly. Murder between tribes was kept in relative check by limited proximity and blood debts--the whole Hammurabi "eye for an eye" thing. If you killed a member of another tribe, you could count on that tribe killing parts of your tribe.

So the guy's saying something or other about how this works into the intricate politics of Muhammad's career, particularly about the idea of paying tribute for protection (wherein a more powerful group is honorbound to perform the retribution-killings for you, allowing an ethnic or religious or just smaller tribe to pay a modest sum for relatively violence-free living), and he offhandedly notes that part of the troubles in the middle east today is that this system has been removed and not been replaced. We have these countries, which were sort of arbitrarily grouped without much regard for ethnic groups or history (etc) by the colonists, and they're somehow supposed to be kept in check by the western higher authority of a punitive law enforcement agency. Except because that's antithetical to their traditional approach to life, they can't make it work well for them. And in the mean time there's no effective system.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but it struck me as an interesting take on the problem. That maybe the "progress" we're bringing (e.g. western ideas of justice) is actually a step backwards, because it's removed a perhaps less "sanitized" if functional system without putting in place any effective alternative. Which is of course a very broad statement that anybody could have come up with ("oh, yeah, the middle east is fucked up"), so I'm not sure why I'm posting it.

But it's a very interesting, and remarkably secular, book about the early history of Islam.

(it should be noted that my geographic sense of the middle east is very, very vague, and I'm sort of lumping it all together as one big mess. And that I really didn't read anything in this thread aside from the first half of the first post, and a few nuggets of vitriol in the middle.)

[tw]

Originally Posted by Skunks

... but I was reading an interesting book about the life of Muhammad last night, and there was an offhand comment about the troubles of the middle east. ....

But it's a very interesting, and remarkably secular, book about the early history of Islam.

Can it explain or predict, for example, an Islam world contempt of the book Satanic Verses? Does it deal with the historic Islamic tolerance of other religions verses the extremist (Muslim Brotherhood) concept of religious purity?

[Roosta]

Quote:
Oh yeah, and you still haven't answered the question. You're very good at not answering questions, then smokescreening to a side issue.

So, what did everybody have for supper last night?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Raw flesh. :hafucking

[Radar]

Sorry, but the very few self-hating Jews who are anti-Zionism don't speak for the other 90%+ who do support it. Zionism is Jewish.

Who gave Israel the right to settle on that land? The rightful owners....the UK in 1948, and Israel won more land in 1967 when they were attacked without cause. If you claim the UK didn't legitimately own the land because it was taken by force, then we'd have to go back until someone didn't own the land by force which was when Israel owned it!

The Palestinians were squatters, and NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER owned a single square inch of land before 1948. The rightful owner of land does have the right to force out squatters, even if those squatters have built buildings.

Israel hasn't stolen any land ever.

[mdease]

Originally Posted by Radar

Sorry, but the very few self-hating Jews who are anti-Zionism don't speak for the other 90%+ who do support it. Zionism is Jewish.

Who gave Israel the right to settle on that land? The rightful owners....the UK in 1948, and Israel won more land in 1967 when they were attacked without cause. If you claim the UK didn't legitimately own the land because it was taken by force, then we'd have to go back until someone didn't own the land by force which was when Israel owned it!

The Palestinians were squatters, and NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER owned a single square inch of land before 1948. The rightful owner of land does have the right to force out squatters, even if those squatters have built buildings.

Israel hasn't stolen any land ever.

So I take it the exile from Egypt, which brought the Israelis to the present day Israel, and led to the subsequent conquest of the surronding nations, isn't taking land from a different owner? What my point here is, who decided that the Israelis had the right to take the land away from the original settlers of that land? The land they currently occupied was settled by other people before they got there, they fought and killed them for that land.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by mdease

So I take it the exile from Egypt, which brought the Israelis to the present day Israel, and led to the subsequent conquest of the surronding nations, isn't taking land from a different owner? What my point here is, who decided that the Israelis had the right to take the land away from the original settlers of that land? The land they currently occupied was settled by other people before they got there, they fought and killed them for
that land.

To discuss the issue based on the Old Testament requires a contextual basis. We have to know who was in the space we now call Israel to determine whether or not Moses' people "conquered" anything or simply came home.

Abraham had been born in Ur Kasdim in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq) then moved with his father to Haran (today's northern Syria/southern Turkey) and that is where he got the instruction to go to Canaan, the Promised Land, which will become the Land of Israel.

God said to Abram: "Go from your land ... to the land that I will show you." (Genesis 12:1)

This is a key statement and the promise is repeated several times.
For example:

On that day, God made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." (Genesis 15:18-21)

"And I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your temporary residence, all the land of Canaan as an eternal possession and I will be a God to them." (Genesis 17:8)

See map below for an idea of how big of an area "from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates" is.

If the Bible is a book of theology for the Jews, why not begin with the creation of the Jewish nation and go immediately to the story of Exodus. That's when the Jews become a nation, get the Torah, and go into the land.

And Rashi answers, quoting an ancient oral tradition that in the future, the nations of the world will say "you are thieves" to the Jewish people. You have stolen the land from the Canaanite tribes. So God begins the Bible here at the creation of the universe to tell the world: "I am the Creator of the Universe. Everything is mine. I choose to give the Land of Israel to the Jewish people."

CLAIMS OF CONQUEST

Every other nation in the world bases its claim to its land on conquest. A people came (for example, the English or the Spanish) conquered the indigenous people (for example, the Indians) took the land, settled it, and called it by a new name (for example, United States of America). "Might makes right" is the historical claim of almost all nations in history.

However, the Jewish people base their claim on God's promise. It is a moral claim because God is God and God is by definition truth, and God is by definition morality. God gave the Jewish people the Land of Israel. Without that, the only claim the modern State of Israel can make is it is stronger and was able to take the land from the Arabs.

This is a very important thing, and essential for the State of Israel -- which is not a religious state and often far removed from Jewish values -- to realize that the Bible gives the Jews a moral claim.

Indeed, the early founding fathers of the modern state, even if they were not religious, were deeply steeped in the realization of Biblical heritage of the Jewish people and their connection to the land. Ben Gurion had an appreciation of the necessity of anchoring a modern, even secular Israeli state in Judaism and Jewish tradition.

Before Sarah conceives God tells Abraham:

"Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him as an eternal covenant to his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael ... I have bless him and I will make him fruitful and will increase him exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish My covenant with Isaac who Sarah will bear to you at this time next year." (Genesis 17:19-21)

So Isaac is the person who will carry on the mission of Abraham, the mission of the Jews.

When Isaac is old, he decides to give each of his sons a blessing, and, of course, he wants to give an extra-special blessing to the first-born, Esau.

When a great man like an Isaac makes a blessing, that blessing affects spiritual forces and becomes a reality.

Although Esau doesn't really want the blessing of the first-born with all the responsibility to carry on his father's mission, he does want the blessing of wealth and power which goes along with it. But Rebecca realizes that the blessing has to go to Jacob as he is the one who is willing and able to change the world in the manner of Abraham.

So while Esau is off hunting to catch something for his father's dinner so he'll bless him, what does Rebecca do? She covers Jacob's arms with a goat skin so they will feel hairy like Esau's. And Isaac, who is blind, is fooled.

THE SYMBOLS

It's a mistake to read the Bible stories on a simplistic, first-grade Sunday school level. This is not the story of some old, blind man who's confused by his wife and son. There are very profound things going on here.

When Isaac encounters Jacob pretending to be Esau, he remarks:

"The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." (Genesis 27:22)

This is because the voice symbolizes the power of the intellect, and the hands symbolize the power of action, of might and of sword.

Esau, who embodies the power of might and sword, will, through his descendants, give rise to the Roman Empire or "Edom" as the Bible calls it.

Now Rebecca, realizing that Esau's resentment will only grow until he going to want to kill his brother, sends Jacob away. She tells him to go to Haran where she tells Jacob to take a wife.

Jacob turns up penniless on his uncle's doorstep and falls in love with his cousin Rachel. He wants to marry her but Laban insists he work seven years for her hand. At the end of the seven years, Laban substitutes Rachel's older sister Leah and demands Jacob work another seven years to get Rachel. In the end, Jacob winds up with four wives -- Leah, Rachel, and their handmaidens Zilpah and Bilhah and he has 12 sons and 1 daughter.

Unlike previous generations, all the sons are going to be totally dedicated to the mission.

Jacob then realizes that he has to go back to the Land of Israel because he has a mission. Just as Abraham knew that this was the only place where Jewish potential could be realized, so too Jacob realizes that this is the only place to be. So he gathers up all his belongings and he heads back.

And then Jacob has Joseph.

To begin with, Joseph has a key position in the family as a result of his being the long-awaited first child of Jacob's favorite wife. His father seems to be showing him a considerable amount of favoritism -- he buys him a special coat -- and this engenders jealousy from his brothers.

They contemplate killing him, but instead they sell him into slavery. They take his fancy coat, smear it with goat's blood and present it to Jacob as if Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

Then Joseph becomes Viceroy of the Pharoah, and the 7 years of plenty are follwed by 7 years of famine.

Meanwhile, the famine hits. And it doesn't just affect Egypt but the entire ancient Middle East, and Egypt -- thanks to Joseph's foresight -- is the only place that has storehouses of grain.

Jacob sends the brothers shopping. But he keeps Benjamin, Joseph's full brother and the only surviving child of his favorite wife Rachel, at home, because he does not want to risk losing him.

The brothers arrive to Egypt. They bow before the Viceroy, not realizing that this is their long-lost brother whom they had sold into slavery. After all, Joseph dresses like an Egyptian, walks like an Egyptian, talks like an Egyptian.

DIVINE PLAN

And then Joseph makes what is clearly one of the most significant statements in terms of understanding Jewish history:

"Now do not worry, and do not be angry with yourselves that you sold me here, for it was to preserve life that God sent me before you. For it is two years that there has been famine in the land; and for another five years there will be no plowing or harvest. God sent me here before you to insure your survival in the land to keep you alive for a great deliverance. It was not you that sent me here, but God and he made me as a father to Pharaoh and master of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt."(Genesis 45:5-8)

He [Joseph] sends word back to his father, and Jacob is overjoyed. He thought his son has been dead for all these years. And they have a dramatic reunion. All of Egypt comes out to see the Viceroy's family. And they are all bowing to Joseph in fulfillment of the prophecy.

Then the Pharaoh invites the whole family to come live in Egypt. And they do. The Bible says that 70 individuals entered Egypt consisting of Jacob, his 12 sons, their wives and children. The proto-Jewish nation arrived in Egypt.

So you can see that prior to the Jews arrival in Egypt, they were the ones who "occupied", farmed, shepherded, basically, "owned" the land outside of egypt, to the east.

To be continued....

[mdease]

Wow... Thats quite a bit of evidence. I wonder if Radar will read all that.

[OnyxCougar]

So Jacob and his family (70 people) move to Egypt.

Then the Pharaoh invites the whole family to come live in Egypt. And they do. The Bible says that 70 individuals entered Egypt consisting of Jacob, his 12 sons, their wives and children. The proto-Jewish nation arrived in Egypt.

Then Moses was born and 10 plagues strike Egypt. Pharoah lets Moses' people go, and they flee.

A NATION IS BORN

At Mount Sinai the Jewish people become a nation. Again, this is a unique event which says a lot about the Jewish people. What's so unique about it?

Well, consider how the French became "the French." Did they all wake up one morning to collectively decide they liked white wine and blue cheese and they were going to speak French? No. It was a long process. As with every other nation, this process involved a people living in a specific geographic area for an extended period of time and evolving a common language and a common culture born of a shared historical experience. Eventually, this people developed a political entity and government (with a king at its head) and they defined their boundaries, flew a flag, minted coins and called themselves France.

We become a nation under the most adverse conditions designed to erase any cultural or historical identity.

For Jews the process of becoming a nation started outside their national homeland -- in fact while in bondage and under the most adverse conditions designed to erase any cultural or historical identity. Jews did not become a nation by pledging allegiance to the State of Israel. A scraggly band of escaped slaves became a nation standing at the foot of Mount Sinai and saying to God: "We will do and we will listen" -- that is, pledging to fulfill the commandments of the Torah and with time to understand the mission that came with it.

That's how the Jews became the Nation of Israel.

Then Moses comes down with the first set of tablets, sees all the golden calf business, and stomps back up the mountain (Rosh Chodesh). He returns to with the second set of tablets (Yom Kippur). The instructions for the Ark are given.

This sanctuary -- which was readily dis-assembled and assembled -- the Jews carried around in the wanderings in the desert for 40 years. Then, when they came into the land of Israel they assembled it in four different locations. After David became king and made Jerusalem his capital, he planned to build a permanent structure just outside the city, atop Mount Moriah where Abraham had offered Isaac as a sacrifice to God and where Jacob had dreamt of a ladder to heaven. But he never got to do it.

At this juncture in time, the Jewish people have experienced a national revelation. They've been given the Torah, and built the sanctuary for God to dwell among them. Now they are ready to enter the Promised Land.

After year at Mount Sinai, the Jewish people pack up their portable sanctuary and come to the borders of the Land of Israel. They should have entered the land at this point, but somebody said, "Wait a minute, let's scout out the land." So they select 12 "scouts" or "spies" -- one from each of the 12 tribes -- and send them in to do some reconnaissance work.

These 12 spies spend 40 days scouting out the land and they come back with a huge cluster of grapes saying, "You all see the size of these grapes? You should see the size of the people who eat them. They are giants! No way we can beat them. We may as well go back to Egypt."

Only two of the spies dissent from this report: Joshua ben Nun, who is Moses' chief student, and Caleb ben Yefuna from the tribe of Judah. But the Jewish people accept the majority report of the spies. The people break down in tears at the news and refuse to budge. Moses is absolutely horrified and God is very angry. He issue two decrees of punishment:

1. God tells the Jews that because they displayed this lack of faith after He had brought them so far, they are doomed to wander in the desert for 40 years until the entire adult male population had died off. (The women, who always carried the standard of faith in Judaism, didn't listen to the spies and lived to go into the land.)

1. God tells the Jews that because they cried on this day for no good reason, they will cry on this day in history for some very good reasons.

The Jews wander for 40 years.

So after 40 years of trying to lead this unruly group, Moses loses his temper for one moment. "You rebels!" he shouts. And instead of speaking to the rock as he was commanded to do, he hits it.

And God says to Moses, "Because you don't believe in Me, you're not going to go into the Land of Israel with the Jewish people."

The Book of Joshua begins:

And it was after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, "Moses my servant has died and now arise and cross the River Jordan. You and all this nation go to the land which I give the Children of Israel. Every place on which the soles of your feet will tread I have given to you, as I have spoken to Moses. No man shall stand up before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so shall I be with you. I will not weaken my grasp on you nor will I abandon you. Just be strong and very courageous to observe and do in accordance with all the Torah that Moses my servant has commanded you. Therefore, do not stray right or left in order that you will succeed in wherever you go."

The Book of Joshua describes the conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel during a very significant period of Jewish history. There is no single power ruling the land, rather it is dotted with many fortified city-states.

At this time the so-called Promised Land is bounded by the Egyptian empire to the south and the Assyrian empire to the north. But it is not ruled by either of them. In fact, there is no one power ruling this section of land, rather it is settled by seven Canaanite tribes who inhabit 31 fortified city-states scattered all over the map, each ruled by its own "king."

(Jericho is one of these city-states, so is Ai, so is Jerusalem, where Canaanite tribesmen called Jebusites dwell.)

Before they enter the land, the Jewish people send an envoy to the Canaanites with the message, "God, the Creator of the Universe has promised this land to our forefathers. We are now here to claim our inheritance, and we ask you to leave peacefully."

Needless to say most of the Canaanites don't. (Only one tribe does the right thing and gets out.)

Meanwhile, Joshua has clear instructions from God that if the Canaanites don't get out, the Jews must wipe them out, because if they remain in the land they are going to corrupt the Jews. It is made clear that the Canaanites are extremely immoral and idolatrous people and the Jews cannot live with them as neighbors.

The people go into the land and they fight a series of battles. The first is the battle of Jericho, the entrance to the heartland of Canaan.

The Jews move on to the next city-state, a place called Ai.

Despite many difficulties on the way, the Israelites do finally lay claim to the Promised Land but their life there is far from calm, particularly after Joshua dies. The Bible relates that they had only themselves to blame:

And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord ... and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers ... and he gave them over into the hands of their enemies." (Judges 2:8-14)

The highly self-critical nature of this passage is typical of others which make the Hebrew Bible a unique document -- a holy book of a people, but also relating the sinful history of this people. It has been said that if the Hebrew Bible was not written by the Jews, it must have been written by anti-Semites.

There is no question that the criticism of the Jews in the Bible is hyper-criticism, but there are two reasons why the slightest offense by a small group of people is condemned so strongly:

As noted above, every Jew is responsible for every other Jew, and what one does reflects on all. It's such an obvious point in the moral history of the world that as soon as you tolerate something, it becomes bearable, and before long it will become common.

Therefore, here God is driving home an important point to the Jews: You're on a very high spiritual level. If you tolerate even small indiscretions by a few, eventually these few are going to pollute the nation.

Indeed, this is eventually what does happen, but before it does the Jews enjoy a honeymoon period in the land known as the Time of Judges.

So mdease is correct, in that the people fleeing from Egypt, after wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years, DID go to the land of their forefathers and CONQUER it - took it from the Canaanites.

Never say never, Radar.

Now, this, to me, has absolutely NO bearing on 1946 onward. It just addresses mdease's comment about the old testament.

Source Material:
Source: http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishh...mised_Land.asp