Anodder One of Those Thar Survey Thinga-ma-bobs!
11.30.03 (11:45 pm) [edit]THREE THINGS THAT SCARE ME:
[x] Death.
[x] Terrorism.
[x] Bees.
THREE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME LAUGH:
[x] Me.
[x] Mike.
[x] Sean.
THREE THINGS I LOVE:
[x] myself
[x] Mike.
[x] my cat.
THREE THINGS I HATE:
[x] Terrorists.
[x] Antisemites.
[x] Hitting my funny-bone on something.
THREE THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND:
[x] Weird, self-deprecating mentalities.
[x] Why they can't just give me my dang degree.
[x] Toejam.
THREE THINGS ON MY DESK:
[x] A fuzzy stuffed bunny.
[x] My computer.
[x] My Chumash (Bible).
THREE THINGS I'M DOING RIGHT NOW:
[x] Lookin' at the friggin' monitor.
[x] Filling out a survey.
[x] Scratching myself.
THREE THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE:
[x] Get married.
[x] Go to Isreal.
[x] Paint something truly beautiful.
THREE THINGS I CAN DO:
[x] Draw.
[x] Write.
[x] Make people laugh.
THREE THINGS I CAN'T DO:
[x] The splits.
[x] Not procrastinate.
[x] Drink legally in the US (YET!).
THREE BEVERAGES YOU DRINK REGULARLY:
[x] Nekkid juice.
[x] Cranberry juice.
[x] Chocolate soy milk.
------------RIGHT NOW------------
* Wearing: Sweat shirt and jeans skirt.
* I'm feeling: Hungry.
* Eating: Nothing.
* Drinking: Nothing.
* Thinking about: Stuff that pisses me off.
* Listening to: The music in my head.
* Talking to: My dad.
------------IN THE LAST 24 HRS------------
* Cried: Nope. I never cry.
* Worn a skirt: I always wear a skirt.
* Met someone new: Nope.
* Cleaned your room: No, but I probably should.
* Done laundry: No.
* Driven a car: Yes, I went to the store and then I got gas.
------------DO YOU BELIEVE IN------------
* Yourself: Yes.
* Your friends: Most of them.
* Santa Claus: No, I'm Jewish.
* Tooth Fairy: No.
* Angels: Yes.
* Ghosts: No.
* UFO's: Nope.
------------FRIENDS AND LIFE------------
* Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend: Yesh.
* Like anyone?: Yes, my boyfriend.
* Who have you known the longest of your friends: Adina.
* When you cried the most: When I was born, I'm guessing.
* What is the best feeling in the world: Driving 70-80mph on an empty freeway and not getting a ticket.
* Worst Feeling: Stepping on a goddamn bee.
* Who sent this to you: I got this off of someone else's blog.
[boxers or briefs?] Breifs.
[plaid or striped?] Plaid.
[scream or scream2 or scream3?] No!
[ska or punk?] Punk
[salt or pepper?] Pepper.
[okay, ok, or o.k.?] k.
[bright colors or dark colors?] Dark.
[tic-tacs or certs?] How about brushing your dang teeth once in a while!
[sunshine or rain?] Rain.
[rain or snow?] Snow.
[sun or moon?] Moon.
[silver or gold?] Gold.
[silk, cotton, or flannel sheets?] Flannel is cotton.
[preps or freaks?] Um, real people.
[popcorn-with or w/out butter?] With; and some sugar too!
[ketchup, mayo, mustard, or relish?] All of the above!
[shampoo+conditioner in one or separate?] Seperate.
*if you were _______, what would you be?*
[an animal] Tigress.
[a fruit] Strawberry.
[a color] Dark red. Like a ruby translucent colour.
[a bug] Roach-- I'll be here long after you!
*short answer*
[are you smart?] Yes.
[do you like onions?] Love 'em!
[what instruments can you play?] I used to play the violin.
[what words do you overuse?] *&%@!
[do you like to fingerpaint?] YESH!
[do you sleep with socks on?] When it's really cold.
[are you ticklish?] Yes, but I'm not telling where.
[are you shy?] Not the slightest.
[do you talk to yourself?] Always.
[is your house 1, 2, or 3 stories] 1: It's an appt.
[do you have a basement or an attic?] Noo.
[did you go to preschool?] Yep.
[are you a morning person?] Hell no. I'm the origional child of the night.
The Wall.
11.30.03 (3:32 pm) [edit]Recently, I've heard a couple people, not just on tblog, comparing the Berlin wall to the wall that is going up in Israel to keep the terrorists out.
Among my first thoughts was, "Isn't that silly."
For one thing, it's also insulting because that takes the wild assumption that Israel is just being paranoid. I think the dead civilian men, women and children who have suffered at the hands of suicide/homocide bombers can speak for themselves on that one. . .Oh wait. They can't. They were killed...
O_o
If anything, lets compair it to the Great Wall of China, designed to keep invading Mongols out. That sounds more credible for obvious reasons. But even that comparison is still unjust.
I never hear the statement makers coming fourth with evidence to back up their 'Berlin wall claim'--nothing to the point. Just repeated nonsense that beats around the bush or dodges it entirely.
While we're at it, why don't we compair the wall in Israel to the pink floyd album. C'mon! They all have the word "wall" in them! That's about as close as any of them get to eachother.
I've wrote my feelings on the wall in the past, but I'd like to share some more new insight.
First off, I highly doubt that this wall will be perminent. On the contrary, Sharon has hinted to it's use no longer being necissary after the negotiations are finnished and everyone's got what they want out of the deals. Furthermore, he's said that these are not perminent borders. So everyone can just cool their jets on that account.
Also, this wall actually helps the peace plan.
"WHAT? What's this you say Tigress?! You're insane."
Just hear me out:
In the past, our history has shown us that during every peace talk the Palestinians had this extra card that they'd pull if things didn't go exactly their way (ie. their wish for Israel proper to be dismantled legally doesn't come true). They always claimed to the American prestident that was involved and the rest of the world that they didn't have this card, but Israel knew that they did. What was this thing that they used as an instrument?
Eight letters: Violence.
After which Israel would be forced to retaliate and the problems would erupt all over again. With this peace talk and the 'Road map' it will be different. Why? Because this time, they can't just run in and kill people during negotiations and start another vicious cycle. This [u]temporary[/u] wall keeps it safe for both Israeli and Palestinian.
If Hamas can't get through and spoil everything for the good Palestinian civilians who deserve their own space, then most likely talks will be productive.
Once talks are finished and a resolution is met, a real border can be decided on and created.
So next time we hear someone repeating such nonsense as "The wall in Israel is just another Berlin wall," lets think logically here rather than just repeating usless nonsenseical rhetoric as if we are parrots begging for crackers.
Much love.
New Pulse Poll!
11.29.03 (10:43 pm) [edit]I've updated my pulse poll on the right side of my blog. Unfortunatly, in the process I lost the data. So, if you already voted before I updated it, please vote again! If you havn't voted yet, leave your opinion! :)
Thanks to all participants!
:)
A NewsWeek interview with Ariel Sharon.
11.29.03 (7:28 pm) [edit]What does the REAL Sharon say?
------------------------- -------
[i]by Lally Weymouth[/i]
[b]Weymouth: What is your assessment of Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, also known as Abu Ala?[/b]
Sharon: Abu Ala is a politician, and he's clever. I believe he will be able to maneuver better than former prime minister Abu Mazen. The latter hed to leave his post for two reasons: Arafat undermined him. And instead of acting against the terrorist organizations, he tried to make deals with them.
[b]Will Abu Ala act differently?[/b]
According to what he says, the answer is no, but here, declarations should not be taken seriously. Only performance counts. I would like very much to move the process foreward. It should be implemented in three stages. The first should be a full cessation of terror. Then Israel will recognize a Palestinian state...without final borders. If relations develop, the third stage will be where final borders are decided upon. One thing that is very important is that all the security forces, many of which are involved in terror, come under the full control of the prime minister and that Yasir Arafat be removed from any position of influence.
[b]Have you talked to Abu Ala since he became prime minister?[/b]
No, but we have been in contact at a lower level.
[b]Do you plan to meet him soon?[/b]
I don't have any problem meeting him. I've known him for many years.
[b] Israelis appear to want a way out of the conflict. Can you give them hope?[/b]
I want to solve the problem. IN order to take hard decisions, you must have a wide consensus. The left cannot have that. I can do that.
[b] Why don't you leave the settlement of Nesarim in Gaza as a gesture of your intentions?[/b]
You ask about hope. I also want to see hope. But my hope is that the bloodshed will stop--that Jews will be able to lice a normal life in their homeland. There are others who think that making concessions create hope.
[b]Is leaving Nezarim one of the painful concessions you've spoken about?[/b]
I've said I'm going to make painful compromises. I don't know if this will be one of them.
[b]Suppose Abu Ala reaches a ceasefire with the extremist groups and then asks Israel to stop assassinating extremist leaders?[/b]
If terror stops, there is no reason for Israel to make targeted interceptions.
[b]Why don't you dismantle the illegal outposts?[/b]
We have done so but [can't complete this] in a short time.
[b]The US government says that for every one that goes down, another one goes up.[/b]
We still have quite a number of them; some were built many years ago under illegal procedures. We gave instructions to try to do [something about them] as soon as possible.
[b]Are you willing to stop building the fence which the US says goes into Palestinian territory and not along the '67 border?[/b]
It is a means to stop terrorist infiltration into the center of Israel--to make it harder to send suicide[/homocide] bombers into Israel. But this fence is not a political fence. [Its location] doesn't represent the border between us and the Palestinians.
[b]Why do you have to build it so far in Palestinain areas?[/b]
I am ready for the United States to reduce the loan guarantees it makes to Israel by the amount it estimates [Israel] has spent beyond the Green Line. *
American Jewish Committee Denounces British Award to Cartoonist
11.27.03 (1:35 am) [edit]I know I'm on vacation for Thanksgiving, but I had to share this article I read today. As well as my disgust.
This is outragious as the climb of Antisemitism rises and worsens in our time.
------------------------- -
[b]American Jewish Committee Denounces British Award to Cartoonist
Wed Nov 26, 5:16 PM ET
[i]To: National Desk
Contact: Kenneth Bandler of the American Jewish Committee, 212-891-6771[/i][/b]
NEW YORK, Nov. 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Jewish Committee today denounced the British Political Cartoon Society's decision to give a first-place award to a cartoonist who published an anti-Semitic cartoon in The Independent earlier this year.
Dave Brown's cartoon shows Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eating the head of a Palestinian baby. "This image conjures up some of the most vile stereotypes imaginable," said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris.
"Not only should this grotesque cartoon never have been honored, but it should never have been published in the first place by The Independent. It is not about legitimate political criticism. It is all about incitement against a people," Harris said.
Coincidentally, as the cartoonist was honored, an Israeli hospital received a week-old Iraqi infant who will undergo an operation to correct a congenital heart defect.
"Ironically, if Saddam was still in power, this infant would never have had the opportunity to fly to Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Sharon, where Jewish doctors will do everything possible to save the Iraqi child's life," Harris said.
http://www.usnewswire.com/" title="http://www.usnewswire.com/" target="_blank"http://www.usnewswire.com/
-0-
/© 2003 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/
The Ever Weekly D'var Torah--> I'm early this week because I will be away for Thanksgiving!
11.25.03 (3:39 am) [edit]I have two D'vrei Torah for you this week. Just think of it as an extra holiday treat with desert. :wink:
[b]This week's Torah portion is Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9).
D'var Torah #1 for Toldot:[/b]
Parshat Toldot tells the story of Yaakov (Jacob) and Esav, two brothers that couldn't be any more different. When their father Yitzchok (Isaac) decides that it's time to bless his two sons, Yaakov ends up getting the better of the two blessings.
In comparing the two blessings, though, the Chafetz Chaim (who's picture is on the left side of my blog under the Israeli flag) points out a very interesting observation: When Yaakov gets the blessing, the Torah says "And may God give you of the dew of the heavens and of the fatness of the earth" (27:28). However, when Esav gets his blessing, Yitzchok says "Behold, of the fatness of the earth shall be your dwelling and of the dew of the heavens from above" (27:39).
Why was the order of the fatness and the dew reversed?
The Chafetz Chaim explains that since Yaakov preferred the spiritual to the physical, his blessing came from heaven (dew) to earth (fatness of the earth). On the other hand, since Esav valued the physical more, his blessing was customized to his desires by focusing on the physical first.
Although that's a nice explanation, there's a much deeper lesson to be learned from it!
Because Yaakov focused on heaven and the chain of where things come from, he realized that he's being GIVEN of the dew of the heavens, which produces the fatness of the earth, and consequently thanked the source: God! Contrarily, as the verse adds, Esav's fatness was simply his "dwelling", as if it were there all along, with no connection to where it came from. Yaakov was blessed with the ability to see beyond what was in front of him, and, therefore, appreciated it (and God) more.
We too are given that same opportunity every day. And all we have to do is stop and think about what we have (as opposed to what we don't have), and where it REALLY came from! Only then will we ever truly be content, fulfilled, and most importantly, blessed!
[b]D'var Torah #2 for Toldot:[/b]
In this week’s Parsha, Toldot, the theme revolves around families.
There are many things one can learn about raising children, and dealing with one’s family, just by reading this Parsha. But there’s one very interesting Passuk (sentance), which tells us that although Esav was a murderer, Yitzchok loved Esav because Esav hunted for him, while Rivka loved Yaakov. The obvious question is...how can Yitzchok love Esav if he was really evil? Didn’t he realize?
Well, the Torah knew we’d ask, so it tells us that it was because Esav gave Yitzchok food, and respected him. The Lekach Tov (one of many commentaries) explains that Yitzchak knew that Esav was evil, but the fact that Esav showed him respect proved that there was still hope for him, which is why Yitzchok loved him. That insight into a person is something few people have mastered, but if you look closer into the exact wording of the Passuk, you’ll even an even deeper insight into our nature as humans!
When the Passuk says that Yitzchok loved Esav, it uses past tense, yet when describing Rivka’s love it does so in present tense. It’s no coincidence that Yitzchok’s love was based on something tangible and was short-lived - this is proven when Yitzchok gives Yaakov the Brachot (blessings) although according to most commentaries he knew that it was Yaakov - while Rivka’s love is pure and everlasting!
The Torah is teaching us a very important lesson about love:
When we love someone, it MUST be unconditional, or it won’t last. We love our families for that reason. We need look at people for who they are, and not for what they have to offer us, or what they’ve done or haven’t done for us lately, because basing our love on any one aspect will only spoil it. The same applies for loving God. We can’t love Hashem (God) just when things are good, but must constantly work on loving God for what He is, and what He stands for, for He will stand when all else fails or falls!
On that note, have a happy Thanksgiving and, for those of us observing, have an enlightening, restful, and meaingful Shabbos! :wink:
Some Quizzes
11.24.03 (6:11 pm) [edit]Um, I guess so. . .
You are naturally born with a gift, whether it be
poetry, writing or song. You love beauty and
creativity, and usually are highly intelligent.
Others view you as mysterious and dreamy, yet
also bold since you hold firm in your beliefs.
What Type of Soul Do You Have ?
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Damn right I respect myself!
Romantic movie! You probably won't star in a porno
anytime soon. You seem to be really into the
whole "love" thing...romantic sex
with perfumed sheets and candles all over the
place. You're probably a hopeless romantic. You
value sex and respect your partner too much to
do anything like porn. AWWWWWW! <3>
What kind of porno would you star in?
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Athena
?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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your asshole.
What swear word are you?
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You represent... desire.
You sure are motivated. You have a definite knack
for getting what you want. You always put your
own interests before those of others, and you
almost always find youself being satisfied.
Though you have determination, try some
compassion. Putting others first occassionally
can get you even more satisfying relationships.
What feeling do you represent?
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You are smart and sexy!
Which Ultimate Beautiful Woman are You?
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You should be dating an Aries.
21 March - 19 April
This person is a leader, very energetic, always
helping others to achieve their dreams. Though
at times, Aries can be be bossy, jealous, and
selfish, this ram enjoys sexy new challenges in
bed!
What Zodiac Sign Are You Attracted To?
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You know so much about the nightmare before
christmas. You must research and study it as
much as I do. I have loved this movie since I
was a kid and studied it very hard.
Congratulations.Please Please Please vote for
my quiz if you do i will vote for one of your
quizzes.
XxThe Best and Most Challenging Quiz of The Nightmare Before ChristmasxX
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LEIBERMAN EXCLUDED? UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11.24.03 (5:17 pm) [edit]*Thanks to SamAdams for bringing this to my attention!
This just in! From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usl...,1282,-3426165,00.html
The Guardian UK reports: Sen. Joe Lieberman wants to debate after all. And he's crying foul at the Democratic National Committee for excluding him from a presidential faceoff Monday.
The Connecticut senator, who is not competing in Iowa's caucuses, had rejected an invitation to attend the Des Moines debate sponsored by the DNC. Eight other candidates had agreed to attend.
Later, Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and John Kerry of Massachusetts said they could not be here because the Senate is debating a GOP-backed Medicare bill they both oppose. The DNC agreed to allow them to participate by satellite from a Washington studio. Two television screens will show Edwards and Kerry on stage, alongside six rivals who will be there in person.
Lieberman, who also opposes the Medicare bill, asked to participate by satellite as well. The DNC consulted with the other campaigns, at least two of which said he should not be allowed to take part.
------------------------- ----------------
Someone's head should roll for this great injustice!
I'd say the same if they did this to Sharpton or Clark.
[b]UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!![/b ]
Joe Leiberman
11.24.03 (4:44 pm) [edit]Well, now. . .
As I sit here in front of my TV, watching the "aftershow" from the Democratic debates on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, I am infuriated.
Why?
Well, Matthews is sitting there with Joe Leiberman, presidential hopefull.
I watched the debates. Joe Leiberman wasn't on those debates. The hopefuls who couldn't be there were on Max Headrum like TV sets via satellite. [b]WHERE WAS JOE LEIBERMAN?[/b]
Well, as I see now on Chris Matthews' show (as America is told by Leiberman), Joe Leiberman was told, on the phone, by some big witg of the Democratic party, that he could not come to this debate. Why? No real answer was given.
[b]UNACCEPTABLE![/b]
Again, the other candidates who were undable to make it in person were given satellite. [b]WHERE WAS JOE LEIBERMAN?[/b]
Leiberman was unable to make it because he was voting for some other issues elsware. He had to be in that place. But he was completely able and willing to be there via satellite like the others in similar situations.
[b]WHY WAS LEIBERMAN EXCLUDED?![/b]
I want answers. We, as citizens, deserve answers!
*Granted, just to make things clear, I am a Republican. I can not vote in the Democratic primaries just like any other Republican.
And, yes, I am Jewish.
Does that mean in any way that, if Joe Leiberman is voted to go up against Bush in the Presidential Election, I will vote for him? No. If I vote for him, it will not be because he is Jewish. On the contrary, it is wrong to vote for someone or NOT vote for someone based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or creed. We should vote on ability to do the job. Those other things are mute.
BUT...
I still want to know, [b]WHY WAS JOE LEIBERMAN EXCLUDED?![/b]
Anyone have any ideas?
One of those dang questionaire thingies. . . I suppose it was only a matter of time. :p
11.24.03 (2:01 am) [edit]- Name: RedTigress, just for privacy issues
-- Birthdate: April 19, 1983
-- Current Location: San Diego, CA
-- Eye Color: Green
-- Hair Color: very Red
-- Height: 5'3''
-- Weight: 117-120
-- Righty or Lefty: Leftalicious!
Describe...
-- Your heritage: I am but an Irish Jew.
-- The shoes you wore today: Fuzzy slippers
-- Your hair: Down. Then wet and down.
-- Your eyes: Um, yes. I wore those too.
-- Your weakness: Dark chocolate--cake, brownies, candies, fudge! OMG! I went to baskin robbins and I had their Mississippi Mud ice cream (chocolate with fudge swirls and chunks of browny) with extra hot fudge on top and nuts!!! That's love, baby!
-- Your fears: Bees, death, terrorism, failure.
-- Your perfect pizza: Lots of parmisan cheese! And maybe a little bit of the anchovies too--They're good, okay!!!
-- Goal you'd like to achieve: Get the heck out of school.
Tell...
-- Your most overused phrase on AIM: "hehe"
-- Your thoughts first waking up: "I have to pee"
-- Your best physical feature: My hair.
-- Your bedtime: I am not held down by your silly "bedtime." HA! I laugh!
-- Your greatest accomplishment: Erm, let me get back to you. It's in the works.
-- Your most missed memory: Hmmmm. . . that ice cream thing I talked about a little bit ago up there?
You prefer...
-- Pepsi or Coke: BerryBlast naked juice. Mmmmmm.
-- McDonald's or Burger King: I eat kosher.
-- Single or group dates: Just me and the bf on the couch.
-- Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Definatly Nestea.
-- Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate! Hello?
-- Cappuccino or coffee: coffee is gross. Gimme some Irish hot chocolate and I'm good to go! ;p
Do you...?
-- Smoke: No.
-- Weed: Yuk.
-- Cuss: When necissary.
-- Sing well: So I've been told.
-- Have a crush(es): One
-- Who are they: My boyfriend.
-- Do you think you've been in love: Yes.
-- Want to go to college: Want to? No. But I do it any way.
-- Like high school: It was good... good that it's long over!
-- Want to get married: Oh my, yes.
-- Type w/ your fingers on the right keys: I type 90wpm, u tell me.
-- Believe in yourself: Yesh.
-- Get motion sickness: Oh yes! Ungh!
-- Think you're attractive: Why do you think I'm called the fiery hot timale?
-- Think you're a health freak: Nope. I like stuff good an' fried.
-- Get along with your parents: For the most part.
-- Like thunderstorms: YES!!!!
-- Play an instrument: No. I used to be into the violin.
Have you ever...
-- Played a game that required removal of clothing?: Once.
-- If so, was it mixed company: What does that mean?
-- Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: I'm pretty good at holding my liquor. I get really smashed rarely.
-- Been caught "doing something": What the?!?
-- Been called a tease: So I've been told.
-- Gotten beaten up: Once. But usually I do the beating.
-- Shoplifted: No, that's terrible.
-- If so, did you get caught: N/A
-- Changed who you were to fit in: Who does that? Loser.
The future...
-- Age you hope to be married: Soon.
-- Numbers and Names of Children: I'd like to have four. That's my limit really. I'm thinking of Ariel. Not sure about girls names though. I kinda want girls more, but it ain't up to me.
-- Describe your Dream Wedding: Gordious. Very classy.
-- How do you want to die: Sleeping.
-- Where you want to go to college: I'm in college.
-- What do you want to be when you grow up: A teacher or a historian.
-- What country would you most like to visit: ISRAEL!
-- Opposite sex (or the same?): I like men.
-- Best eye color? Brown.
-- Best hair color? Black.
-- Short or long I have long hair. I like my boyfriends to be short, but not too short.
-- Best height: I like my hight. I don't date guys under 6ft.
-- Best weight: Um, I don't care as long as you be lookin' good.
-- Best articles of clothing: Suits.
-- Best first date location: We had coffee and a move. Worked for us. ::shrugs::
-- Best first kiss location: I prefer not to kiss and tell.
-- Number of girls I have kissed in my life: Yuck.
-- Number of girls you have made out with: see above.
-- Number of girlfriends you've had: I have best friends. O_o
-- Number of boys I have kissed: A few.
-- Number of boys you have made out with: I don't really like to kiss and tell!!!
-- Number of boyfriends you've had: 8.
-- Number of drugs taken illegally: Drugs are for fools. I'm high on life.
-- Number of people I could trust with my life: numero uno: My bf.
-- Number of CDs that I own: Oh gosh. Um. . .(goes to count). . .60ish?
-- Number of piercing: 2, one on each ear.
-- Number of tattoos: tatoos are disgusting.
-- Number of scars on my body: too many.
-- Number of things in my past that I regret: Live today, regret nothing!
Yaaaaay!!!!
Women?
11.23.03 (6:14 pm) [edit][i]by Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.[/i]
"It once happened that a pious man married a pious woman, and they did not produce children. They said, "We are of no use to the Holy One, Blessed be He," and they arose and divorced each other. The man went and married a wicked woman, and she made him wicked, while the woman went and married a wicked man, and she made him righeous. This proves that all depends on the woman." -- Genesis Rabbah 17:7
So with this in mind, how is it possible that Gordon B. Dhal and Enrico Moretti, experts in "econometrics" from the University of California at Berkely, came up with the finding that says parents seem to favor boys?
They found that in every decade since the 1940s, couples with girls divorced more than those with boys. Specifically, they found that couples with an only child that was a girl were 6% more likely to divorce than parents of a single boy. For those parents of two girls versus two boys, the percentage gap rose to 8%, 10% for families of three girls and 13% for families of four girls.
Other research data suggests taht families of bous put more money into their homes (about $600 per year), fathers incread their work load by two hours when boys are born compared to less than one hour when girls are born, thereby increasing income, and for the last 60 years, 33.7% of families whose first four children were girls had a fifth child, while 31.5% of families who start with four boys kept trying to have another child.
While there are probably many explanations for this finding, one thing is clear: parents seem to have a preference for boys. The findings are not huge, according to the researchers, "but they are not trivial."
Now this study must be understood against the backdrop of another current study, this one done by the FBI. They learned that in 2002, the most recent year data has been collected, while there has been a slight increase in serious crime, less than one-tenth of 1%, there has been a 14% increase since 1993 in the number of women being arrested.
Specifically, men account for the vast majority, 77%, of adults arrested for murder, rape, theft, robbery, burglary, aggrevated assault and vehicle theft. Women are gaining ground, with 1.9 million arrested in 2002 representing 23%. Over the last decade, arrests of women have risen nearly 25%.
Kenneth Land, a professor of sociology at the esteemed Duke University, noted this rise in women being arrested to "social changes over the past 30 years in which more women have netered the work force and generally have achieved a status on par with men."
Have we lost our minds? Parents favor boys, and we see women's association with serious crime growing significantly and it's because they entered the work force? Professor Land has not kept up with his Judaic studies, it seems.
Judaism teaches us a great deal about how to treat women, and it sure does not include favoring boys over women, or associating them with serious crime. Why do we insist on listening and uncritically believing nonesense such as this, as if we are deaf? Why do we not turn to Judaic studies to see what our heritage teaches us before we believe secular professors? Why do we send our children into this world with half an education, completely unequipped to fall back on analytic, incisive way of thinking? Why do we slap each other on the back when our children are accepted into secular universities with little ability to delve into what our heritage teaches us about life? Why do we so readily believe a sociologist but not a rabbi? Why do we believe a professor of Jewish studies but not a sage?
We have lost our minds.
In Judaism, women are presented as "figures of great moral strength during periods of crisis" according to Moshe Meiselman, author of tge required reading, "Jewish Woman in Jewish Law."
Only Isaac, born to an educated by Sarah, was fit to carry on Abraham's work. Abraham raised seven other sons, none of whom became his spiritual heirs. They did not grow up in Sarah's home.
Rebecca helped Isaac evaluate Esau's true character and acted in a morally courageous manner, preserving the future of the Jewish people.
Leah and Rachel stood up to the test of creating a proper environment for Jacob within the negative atmosphere of Laban's home -- so much so that the 12 children of Jacob all became the foundation pillars on which the Jewish nation was born.
The moral courage of the midwives in the desert; the wives who kept redemption alive when the men were going to give up; Miriam prevailing on Amram not to destroy the Jewish people when he was so frustrated bearing children in Egypt; the women at Mt. Sinai who refused to participate in the making of the calf; and the faith of the women in the face of reports of the Spies, all point to one uniform picture. The picture of women in Judaism is one of "moral strength and determination that survives periods of crisis and provides the foundation upon which the Jewish home can be built," according to Meiselman.
In Judaism, parents do not favor boys over girls. In Judaism we do not see women succombing to the moral decay of society. Instead, we believe what our sages and rabbis have taught for thousands of years. "EAch generation is redeemed because of the righteous women of the generation."
When families are imbued with an understanding of what Judaism teaches about women, boys are not preferred over girls. The girl you are raising is the soul of the Jewish future, the one who will determine her future family's spiritual direction. It is up to you to send her into this world ready to assume a legacy -- Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel's, or Britney, Madonna, or Beyonce's.
Sharon Floats Plan for Israel Settlements
11.23.03 (5:10 pm) [edit]Story at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
[b]Sharon Floats Plan for Israel Settlements
Sun Nov 23, 5:36 AM ET [/b]
[i]By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, Associated Press Writer [/i]
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is floating a plan to draw a border with the Palestinians and dismantle small Israeli settlements if there is no progress on a U.S.-led peace plan, newspapers reported Sunday.
The plan was leaked at a time when Sharon faces growing criticism at home. Several former security chiefs have said he is stalling on renewing peace talks because he wants to avoid making concessions and his support is slipping.
Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot daily that he would present his new plan soon. "I just wanted the Israeli public to know that its prime minister has not stopped thinking about how to get out of the impasse with the Palestinians," he told the newspaper.
The plan, as published in the major Israeli dailies, would kick in if efforts to resume implementation of the "road map" peace plan fails.
In that case, Israel would draw its own border — along the West Bank security barrier currently under construction to keep out Palestinian militants — and uproot a few small settlements, the newspapers said. Some of the settlers would be moved to the Negev Desert and others to larger settlement blocs in the West Bank. Israel would also withdraw from Palestinian towns and release some Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinian officials were skeptical. "I hope that these declarations are not intended for public relations as Sharon suffers an internal crisis," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
Sharon's ideas were floated at a time of renewed attempts to break the deadlock over the road map, which envisions Palestinian statehood by 2005.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and Sharon are to meet soon, though no date has been set, and Palestinian militant groups are to hold talks in Cairo next week on halting attacks on Israelis. Expectations are high that the militants, who have killed hundreds of Israelis in the past three years, will agree to stop violence.
Qureia wants to take an internal truce agreement to a summit with Sharon, and win Israel's promise to reciprocate by halting military operations. Palestinian negotiators have prepared a document that lists Israeli and Palestinian obligations under the road map and would be approved by the two leaders in a summit. Qureia has said there is no point to hold a summit if there are no results.
As part of the road map, Israel must dismantle dozens of illegal settlement outposts and freeze settlement expansion. It must also declare that it is ending "violence against Palestinians everywhere."
Israel has removed a few settlement outposts, most of which have been rebuilt, and construction in veteran settlements continues.
Israel has so far refused to promise to halt military operations, saying the road map requires that Palestinian security forces begin dismantling armed groups.
However, Israeli officials have hinted they might not insist on a full crackdown in the first phase of a truce. Qureia and other Palestinian leaders have said they will not use force against the militants for fear of igniting internal fighting.
Sharon, meanwhile, met with four senior Cabinet ministers before Sunday's full Cabinet session to brief them on contacts with the Palestinians.
Hardline Cabinet ministers threatened to quit the government if settlements are uprooted. The Haaretz daily speculated that 19 settlements could be evacuated unilaterally, and other reports mentioned the isolated enclave of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip as one of those to be removed first.
"The removal of existing settlements will force us to immediately leave the government," said Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hawkish National Union party.
Sharon told Yediot he did not expect a coalition crisis. "In the end, I have to preserve the government's unity. I see no threat at the moment to the government's existence," he said.
The settlements have been one of the biggest obstacle to a peace deal.
Palestinians demand all 220,000 Jewish residents be removed from the land. However, successive Israeli governments have found it difficult to make such a commitment, especially since settlers have significant political power and many of them view the West Bank as their biblical birthright.
In his interview with Yediot, Sharon said unilateral steps would be taken with Israel's security in mind. "I have been thinking for some time about unilateral steps that will make things easier on Israel and will secure its interests — without answering the question of whether it is also good for the Palestinians," he said.
------------------------- ----
So much for Sharon being the murderous evil leader. He's truly trying. There's more evidence to suggest that it is not his intent to perform genocide against the Palestinians than this. I just felt this was a very good example.
Read up more on Sharon.
Militants Condemn Symbolic Peace Accord
11.22.03 (8:27 pm) [edit]Story at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
Sat Nov 22, 6:02 AM ET
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Islamic militant leader has condemned a symbolic Mideast peace deal, branding the Palestinians who helped negotiate it as traitors for making compromises with their Israeli counterparts.
The test treaty, known as the "Geneva Accord," envisions a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Jerusalem. The agreement's backers have been circulating the 50-page document by mail and publicizing it in the media to build grass-roots support among Israelis and Palestinians exhausted by three years of violence.
They hope the plan, negotiated by prominent former officials from both sides, could become the basis for official negotiations, though it does not have the backing of Israeli or Palestinian governments.
In Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp, about 4,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters, some wearing black hoods and holding up hand grenades, protested against the agreement Friday. Others burned banners with the names of various peace accords with Israel.
"Those behind this document should be brought to trial because no one authorized them to talk on behalf of the Palestinian people and to betray us with this document," Nizar Riayan, a Hamas leader, told the crowd. "God willing, we are not going to give up our rights over our holy land."
Riayan called the Palestinian negotiators traitors. The demonstrators were particularly angry because the plan makes no mention of the "right of return" of 4 million war refugees and their descendants to homes in what is now Israel.
Hamas, which along with other militant groups has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks, rejects the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East and is opposed to any Palestinian efforts to make peace with Israel.
However, Hamas and 12 other Palestinian factions have agreed to attend truce talks in Cairo starting Dec. 2, and said they would consider halting attacks on Israelis if Israel stops military strikes.
Israeli government officials have been strongly critical of the Geneva Accord, calling its negotiators irresponsible and naive. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) has given support to the effort, but has said he won't officially endorse it unless the Israeli government does.
The plan is to be officially launched Dec. 1 in Geneva.
Israel's Channel Two TV reported Friday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might begin next summer to dismantle several Jewish settlements built on land Palestinians want for a future state. The report did not cite any source for the information.
In a speech Thursday, Sharon said he was considering going ahead with some unilateral steps toward the Palestinians, but did not elaborate.
Also Friday, about 200,000 Palestinians gathered at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, a disputed hilltop shrine in Jerusalem's Old City, to mark the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.
Prayers went peacefully, but soldiers manning checkpoints in the West Bank refused to allow many Palestinians to make the trek to Jerusalem, setting off angry shouting matches.
At the edge of Bethlehem, soldiers blocked a road with jeeps and stopped a crowd of about 400 Palestinians from passing a checkpoint to make the six-mile journey north to Jerusalem.
The worshippers taunted soldiers and tried to hop coils of barbed wire laid across the road. Others unrolled prayer rugs in neat rows and bowed in the direction of the holy city of Mecca. A commander at the checkpoint cited alerts of possible terror attacks as the reason for barring the Palestinians from passing the roadblock.
The Jerusalem site is also holy to Jews as the place where the two biblical Temples stood before they were destroyed by invading armies. For Muslims, tradition says the site marks the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven.
------------------------- -
Jihadists don't want peace. They want distruction of the Jewish people and devistation of the Palestinians. They are the ones to blame for this madness!
The Face of Tragedy
11.22.03 (7:55 pm) [edit]I thought it would be appropriate to post this photo that I clipped from my local paper.
On a side note; this all wasn't big news until the international consolates were targeted soon after. The consolate bombings still remain to be "big news" as this all has just sort of faded away. . .
These are the faces of those touched by the explosions of two synagogues in Turkey that killed 24 and wounded at least 300:
[image]RedTigress_1153057 979.gif[/image]
Caption reads: "[b]A picture of Anette Rubenstein Talu was placed at her desk in Istanbul's Bilgi school yesterday. The 8-year-old was killed in Saturdays' bombing of the Beth Israel synagogue[/b]"--[i]Associ ated press[/i]
For those of you who are of the opinion to just push this of as a reason for the US to drop the Jewish state: look at that picture and tell me she (and the others) deserved it and/or terrorism is not our problem.
This is the plague of our time. Welcome to the real world.
60% Double Creme.
11.21.03 (2:54 am) [edit]I would just like to take this moment to make known the glory and wonderment that is cheese.
Garlic & herb rondele' wisconsin 60% double creme glorious cheese!
Life is good!
God bless cheese!
:P
More on Nazi Antisemitism.
11.20.03 (7:03 pm) [edit]Prior to racial antisemitism, antisemites had assumed that Jews who abandoned Judaism and adopted the antisemites' values and identity could fully assimilate and become non-Jews. Antisemitic Christians believed that Jews could really become Christians; the secular nationalists expected the Jews to abandon their national identity and identify only with the nation in which they lived; and the Left demanded that Jews give up their particularism and become universalists.
To Hitler, however, all attempts to solve the Jewish Problem through conversion or assimilation were futile. No matter what new identity a Jew might assume, he carries subversive Jewish values with him and merely uses his new guise as a Christian, or Marxist, or German to spread his values. As Hitler put it, "the Jews speak German, but they think Jewish."
Apparently no Nazi ever stopped to question how a race could be defined by something as unbiological as ideas and traits of character. Hitler himself is reported as having told his intimate associate, Hermann Raushning: "I know perfectly well that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as a race. As a politician I need a conception which enables the order which has hitherto existed on a historic basis to be abolished and an entirely new order enforced and given an intellectual basis. And for this purpose the conception of a race serves me well" (Hermann Raushning, [i]Hitler Speaks[/i] [London: T Butterworth, 1939], p.229).
Yet, this notion typified Nazi thinking about Jews. On August 23, 1936, SS-Obersharfuher Schroder, Eichmann's superior at the time, issued a statement typical of Nazi thinking: "Wherever [the Jew] tries to transmit his work, his influence and his world outlook to the non Jewish world, he discharges it in hostile ideologies, as we find in Liberalism . . . in Marxism, and not least in Christianity. These ideologies then accord with a broader concept of the Jewish mentality."
To cite one other example: [i]Schwarze Korps[/i], the official publication of the SS, reported in its May 15, 1935, issue: "The assimilationist minded Jews deny their race, and insist on their loyalty to Germany or claim to be Christians, because they have been baptized, in order to subvert National-Socialist principles."
Hitler and the Nazis had to account for the extraordinary fact that Jews have fixed "traits of character." Only race could explain this phenomenon. Once this was understood, the age-old solution to the Jewish challenge, converting the Jews to the majority identity, became utterly untenable. If you want to rid the world of the Jews' "hostile ideologies," then you must physically rid the world of the Jews. The Nazi conclusion was as rationally thought out as the means they ultimately adopted for implementing it. Every other solution had been tried and had failed; the Nazis would implement the "Final Solution."
Nazi Antisemitism
11.20.03 (5:15 pm) [edit]Perhaps no understanding of an antisemitic ideology is so widely held and unchallenged as that which ascribes Nazi antisemitism to racism. The Nazis, so the belief goes, were racists and therefore hated Jews and all other "non-Aryans."
History and reason, however, point to a very different understanding of Nazi antisemitism. The Nazis were indeed racists when they claimed the inferiority of "non-Aryan races" (though who was "non-Aryan" had little to do with race, and much to do with politics--they did not, for example, racially denigrate Japanese or Arabs, both Nazi allies). But Nazi antisemitism under the heading of racism is another mistaken endeavor to dejudaize Jew-hatred.
The commonly accepted view of Nazi antisemitism as an expression of racism must be questioned on two scores. First, and most basic, why did the Nazis label the Jews a race? There are Jews of every race, and since anyone of any race can become a Jew, Jews can hardly constitute a race. The entire racial claim, therefore, needs explanation. Why did the Nazis need it? After all, thousands of years of pre-Nazi antisemitism needed no racial basis to hate the Jews.
Second, if racism was the basis of Nazis' worldview, why did their hatred focus on the Jews to the virtual exclusion of all other "races" --including the Gypsies, who though murdered en masse were, quite unlike the Jews, incidental to the Nazi worldview and not the objects of genocide? And if race was the issue, why did the Nazis show such fondness for that other Semitic "race," the Arabs?
In holding the simplistic view that the Nazis hated Jews because of racism, we once again commit the fundamental error (wishful thinking?) of other modern explanations of antisemitism: we dejudaize it. In this instance it seems perfectly logical to do so: the Nazis hated "non-Aryans"; the Jews were "non-Aryans"; therefore, the Nazis hated the Jews. Yet, the Jews were the only "non-Aryans" whom the Nazis attempted to annihilate, and antisemitism, not anti-non-Aryanism, was the essence of Nazism.
It was not because of racism that Nazis hated Jews but rather because of their hatred of Jews that the Nazis utilized racist arguments. The Jew-hatred came first. A racial basis for Jew-hatred was needed to explain the once new belief of Nazi antisemitism. Whereas former antisemites believed that a Jew could change and become like them, Hitler and other Nazis denied this possibility. Once a Jew, always a Jew. As Hitler wrote in [i]Mein Kampf[/i], "In his new language [the Jew] will express the old ideas; his inner nature has not changed . . . the Jew . . . can speak a thousand languages and nevertheless remains a Jew. His traits of character have remained the same. . . . It is always the same Jew." According to Hitler, the Jews seek to dominate the non-Jewish world through various instruments: Christianity, Marxism, socialism, capitalism, democracy. All are products of Jews and their values, no matter what their non-Jewish guises are.
Hitler viewed himself as insightful and courageous enough to conclude what previous antisemites had either not realized or shirked from concluding. A Jew cannot become a non-Jew any more than a black man can become white; the Jews' permanent "traits of character" render them a "race." Therefore any campaign directed against Jews must be directed against all of them no matter what the non-Jewish religious or national identity they hold. Their non-Jewish identity is irrelevant; they remain Jews because they have fixed characteristics that only members of a race possess. These fixed characteristics are alien to Jewish ideas.
Nazi antisemitism was before all else hatred of the Jewish character, not hatred of the Jews' "non-Aryan" blood. It was, like all other forms of antisemitism, hatred of the challenges posed by Jews and Jewish values. This Jewish challenge formed the basis of Nazi beliefs that humankind's ultimate conflict is between the Jews and the Aryans, and that only one of them could survive.
By Hitler's own account in [i]Mein Kumpf[/i], he was first an antisemite, not a racist. His innovation was to amalgamate the two and develop a new program to solve the "Jewish Problem" once and for all. Only racial antisemitism could correctly understand and deal with the Jewish Problem. All other forms of antisemitism were in error.
Two stores from my local paper.
11.20.03 (2:02 am) [edit]And the terror continues. . .
[b][u]24th Victim of Bombing Found in Synagogue Rubble in Turkey[/u][/b]
[i]by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Knight Ridder News Service[/i]
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Investigators uncovered the remains of a 24th victim and a tattered Pakistani passport amid the rubble of two synagoges attacked by suicide bombers over the weekend, Turkish authorities said yesterday.
The body, discovered at the site of the first blast by an Israeli dissaster team working with Turkish rescue workers, was identified by Israel Army Radio as that of Anna Rubinstein, 85. Her 8-year-old granddaughter, Anette Rubinstein Talu, also was killed in the Saturday attack during Sabbath services at Beth Israel synagogue.
The discovery raised the death toll to 24 for the twin bombings, which occurred roughly two minutes and three miles apart. Turkish officials were investigating claims of responsibility that link Osama BinLaden's operatives to the attack.
Investigators could not determine the identity of the bearer of the Pakistani passport because the identification number was largely illegible, and Istanbul police officer said.
It was not clear whether the passport's owner was linkedto the bombing.
Investingators also were scrutinizing a tattered Turkish passport they recovered, the official said.
Despite the discovery of the Pakistani passport, investigatores' top suspects are two missing Turks. Police identified them as Azad Ekinci of Bingol province in southeastern Turkey and Mesut Cabuk, whose hometown was not available.
The semi-official Anatolia news agency said Ekinci's brother was being brought to Istanbul for questioning.
He has told police that his identity papers, which were used to register one of the pickups used in the attacks, were stolen, the agency reported.
DNA tests were being conducted to confirm the bombers' identities, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Investigators were trying to determine whether one of the men was the driver of a covered pickup videotaped by a security camera outside the Neve Shalom synagogue seconds before the blast there. Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu told the daily newspaper, Vatan.
[b][u]Turkish Jews' Feelings of Being Outsiders Linger[/u][/b]
[i]by Burt Herman
Associated Press[/i]
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- To Turkish friends, he's Halim Yesil, a salesman in the computer business. To Jewish friends, he's Chaim Levy, whose family ties in Turkey run back five centuries, when his ancestors fled the Spanish Inquisition.
Jews have been welcomed here by sultans and presidents, but the anxiety of being in a Muslim country has always lingered. Saturdays’ twin truck bombings of Istanbul synagogues, which killed 24 people and wounded more than 300, only reinforced the feelings of some Turkish Jews of being outsiders.
Jews here already were on edge after murders in August and October of two members of their faith -- a dentist and a businessman.
Neither case was believed linked to Saturday’s attacks.
There are about 24,000 Jews in Turkey, with 22,000 living in Istanbul, said community spokesman Selvyo Ovadya. However, many believe the population might be smaller.
Yesil’s guarded attitude about his Jewish name relfects the guarded nature of the community’s institutions.
Near the Neve Shalom synagogue, one of those targeted Saturday, lies the office of the cheif rabbi -- who goes by the title Hahambashi, a fusion of the Hebrew word for “wise man” and Turkish for “cheif.”
There are no signs on the red building, and only the Turkish red-and-white flag with its Islamic crecent flies outside.
A nearby Jewish museum has no signs to guide tourists, with only a menorah in a darkened gift shop window hinting at what is inside.
The (now) Weekly D'var Torah = Words of Torah
11.20.03 (12:28 am) [edit]This week's Parsha (chapter) is Chaye Sarah (Genesis 23:1-25:18).
Parshat Chaye Sara tells of the death Sara, and how Avraham
(Abraham) had to buy the plot of land to bury her in. Following that chapter, the Torah tells us of Avraham ordering his servant, Eliezer, to find a wife for Yitzchok (Isaac), Avraham’s son.
The introduction to the new chapter describing Eliezer’s quest begins with a seemingly strange statement. It says that “Avraham was old, getting along in years, and God blessed Avraham with everything. And Avraham told his servant...to find a wife for Yitzchok” (24:1)
Why do we have to know that Avraham was getting old right between these two apparently unrelated stories or Sarah dying and Eliezer search for Yitzchak’s wife? And if Avraham was blessed with everything, why does the very next Passuk(sentance) tell us that he had to find his son a wife? He obviously DIDN’T have everything!
The Ramban (Nachmonodes) helps us by explaining that when he lost his wife, Avraham realized that he was getting old, and wanted to make sure he found a wife for his son before he died. Although this doesn’t seem to answer our questions, it just might: Avraham
realized that he was getting older, and it was BECAUSE he was
blessed with everything that he now had to move onto the next
step of investing in the future by finding his son a wife.
The same applies in our lives: We’re often so busy with our own
lives that we fail to think of the future. We’re busy earning
livings, planning vacations, going to school, and taking care
of our families, which are all true necessities. Our Parsha is
showing us the natural progression of our lives, and how one
decision we make leads to another, and eventually turns from
“what to do” to “what we’ve done”.
Every single decision we make can have a long-term effect on our lives, and it’s up to us to realize that every challenge is potentially life-altering. As we get on in years, if we stay focused on our goals in life when faced with little decisions, those little decisions will turn
out to be one big happy, productive, blessed and meaningful life!
For those of you observing, have a good and restful Sabbath!
Soros
11.19.03 (8:52 pm) [edit]It has recently come to my attention that George Soros has been the subject of much discussion, around tblog and around the world.
Recently, as SamAdams and WinstonSmtith brought to my attention, the GOP site put up an article about him of antisemitic proportions (check site SamAdams' blog here: http://samadams.tblog.com for article and other information pertaining to this article).
THIS IN INEXCUSABLE and will not be tolerated. How vile to present such a low blow?
JamesYerian also brought to my attention some facts about Soros himself whom is a non-Jewish Jew. This individual buys into a nasty stereotype of the "greedy Jew who owns [or wishes to own] the world." He also is anti-Israel and, essentially, anti-Jewish. (check JamesYerian's blog here: http://jamesyerian.tblog.com for that information.) This, too, is UNACCEPTABLE.
I have reasearched on my own to confirm all of these claims.
However, it is my opinion that, just because he is anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and INCREDIBLY selfish, does not give the right for the GOP to post an antisemitic article. On the contrary, this individual's actions and that ridiculous article both strive for the same result, fundamentally: The destruction of the Jewish people.
Let us not confust the issues.
It is not my intent to defend Mr. Soros. No. He is quite guilty in my eyes. BUT the GOP is very guilty for such slander. For, fundamentally, such actions are perverse, disgusting, and anti-American. As a republican, myself, I am incredibly disgusted by such conduct unbecoming.
And as I've stated before, character assassination is cowardly. But if you are going to try to do so, do not feed hatred by making such comments or indorse them--and publish it for the world to see, no less! If you feel you must attack something, rather than his character, attack the actions of the person, not his heritage and, essentially, those who share this heritage.
That is more cowardly and wrong than anything. Especially right now, considering the antisemitic tinge our world is turning the colour of.
Scientists discover new type of living whale.
11.19.03 (4:59 pm) [edit]Very cool!
LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese scientists have identified a new species of living baleen whale after examining the skeletons of several specimens caught in the 1970s.
Shiro Wada and researchers at the National Research Institute of Fisheries Science in Yokohama said the specimens resembled fin whales although they were smaller.
But after examining their DNA, the shape of their skull and the baleen plates they use to filter plankton from the water they were convinced the specimens were a new species.
The comparison "separated them from all known baleen whale species," Wada said in a report published in the science journal Nature on Wednesday.
The researchers also separated other similar types of baleen whales -- Bryde's whale and Eden's whale -- into two distinct species.
Baleen whales have no teeth and use the baleen plates that hang down from the roof of their mouths to gather food.
New Scientist magazine described the research as a stunning find and said it reinforces how little is known about the world's fauna, including its greatest mammals.
"We are in the midst of a major rethink about what constitutes a species, and where the boundaries lie between them," the magazine said in its latest issue.
Reuters
Nov 19 2003 2:17PM
D'var Torah = Words of Torah
11.19.03 (4:48 pm) [edit]For a little bit of a change, I'd like to offer up a D'var Torah (which means words of Torah, basically a piece with commentary) to my readers. Enjoy and much Hatzluchah!
Parshat(chapter) Vayeira(Genesis 18:1-22:24) contains a theme that isn't apparent to the casual observer. The Parsha starts with Avraham sitting on the third day after being circumcised (which is the most painful day), on the hottest day, and he's looking out for
visitors to serve. Three angels appear, and he runs to feed
and clean them.
Needless to say, Avraham was never expected
to have been so kind, especially to angels, who didn't even
need the food he gave them. Then, later in the Parsha in a
seemingly unrelated story, Avraham tries to save Sedom from
being destroyed, claiming that there might be a few righteous
people still left in the city. Avraham asks that justice then
be used, and that the city be spared. Justice?? A whole city
of evil people should be saved because of as few as 10
righteous people is justice?
The answer is that because Avraham did more than he had to
in hosting guests and being kind to strangers, it WOULD have
been justice for G-d to save Sedom for him! Although his argument wasn't strong enough for Sedom in the end, Avraham's argument was still valid, and was good enough to save Lot and his daughters.
The same applies to us! The Torah is full of rules of equality...
do unto others what you would have done to you...love your neighbor as you love yourself.... the rules of giving charity to those less fortunate.... even the rules of paying back things you stole are based on restoring equality.
The same rules apply to our relationship with God. We can do what we have to do, and get the reward we deserve. OR, we can look for ways to do MORE, and get reward far beyond that which we merely deserve. In every relationship, finding a way to do more is what shows our love and builds the relationship, and our relationship with G-d deserves no less!
Two Israelis Killed by Palestinian Ambush
11.19.03 (2:25 am) [edit]Story at http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
[b][u]Two Israelis Killed by Palestinian Ambush[/u][/b]
[b]Tue Nov 18, 3:52 AM ET[/b]
[i]By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer[/i]
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian gunman, his rifle wrapped in a prayer mat, walked to a West Bank checkpoint and killed two Israelis at close range Tuesday, just a day after both sides hinted a progress toward a truce and a quick Israel-Palestinian summit.
In the Gaza Strip, troops raided a refugee camp, setting off a gun battle that wounded nine Palestinians, one critically.
It was not clear whether the renewed fighting would jeopardize Egyptian-led truce efforts. Egypt proposes that Israel halt military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and that Palestinian militant groups stop attacks on Israelis.
In the past, Israel has rejected such proposals, saying it would only stop military strikes if Palestinian security forces crack down on armed groups. However, the Egyptian mediator, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, said Monday he has received positive signals from Israeli officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would meet his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qureia, "in the coming days." It would be their first summit meeting since Qureia, widely known as Abu Ala, took office more than a month ago.
In Tuesday's shooting, a Palestinian attacker, his rifle wrapped in a prayer mat, walked toward a West Bank checkpoint and opened fire, killed one Israeli and critically wounding a second who died en route to the hospital. Soldiers fired at the assailant who sped away in a get-away car, security officials said.
Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said a truce would only work if the Palestinian security forces are serious about stopping such attacks.
"We want to give Abu Ala credit if he is honest about stopping attacks," Lapid told Israel Army Radio. "What happened this morning places doubt on this honesty ... Right now it looks like talks about a cease-fire are premature."
Sufian Abu Zaideh, a Palestinian Authority official, said the Palestinians are working hard for a truce. "We are striving for a situation in which there won't be attacks and there won't be occupation, there won't be Israeli pain and there won't be Palestinian pain," he told the radio.
Tuesday's shooting was the first deadly attack on Israelis since Oct. 24 when Palestinians killed three soldiers guarding a Gaza settlement. During the same period, 25 Palestinians were killed by troops, including armed men, but also eight minors.
Israel had pulled troops out of the town of Bethlehem and nearby Palestinian villages south of Jerusalem in July as part of a previous ceasefire agreement. It was not immediately clear if troops would now re-enter those area.
In Gaza, 25 Israeli tanks drove into the Rafah refugee camp before dawn, firing as they advanced and drawing return fire from local gunmen, said a resident, Ahmed Abu Gezer.
Soldiers also took over several houses, set up rooftop sniper positions and searched the area with dogs, residents said. Loud explosions were heard, and the army said five explosives were thrown at soldiers who returned fire.
The army did not say what the aim of the raid was. However, Rafah has been targeted repeatedly, with troops searching for weapons smuggling tunnels.
Hospital officials said nine people wounded, including one who was in critical condition with a bullet to the head. The injured ranged in age from 12 to 35.
Truce efforts intensified Monday, with a visit by Suleiman, the Egyptian mediator. Suleiman invited leaders of Palestinian militant groups to Cairo next week for truce talks. Suleiman told Palestinian leaders he found Israeli officials to be receptive to his proposals, said Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath.
"He (Suleiman) did say that there is an opportunity that must be taken advantage of. There is a positive atmosphere and a new language," Shaath said. "He told us that he is optimistic."
The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot said Tuesday the Israeli military has already suspended targeted killings of Palestinian militants, a practice that has sparked revenge attacks in the past.
Qureia has said he wants to work out the terms of a truce before meeting with Sharon. The Israeli leader met with Qureia's predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas, four times, but Palestinians complained that there were few concrete results. Abbas resigned Sept. 6 in frustration with Israel and because of turf battles with Arafat, creating a vacuum that was filled only when Qureia's Cabinet was installed Nov. 12.
The Palestinians also demand that Israel remove roadblocks and other restrictions that have crippled Palestinian life during the conflict. Israel says the barriers are necessary to keep attackers away.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator with Israel, said no date has been set for a summit. "This meeting needs to be well prepared," he said, "but we are not against meeting with Sharon."
In Rome, Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin said the meeting could possibly come next week, although nothing had yet been arranged. "There's no problem on our part," he said. "The other side asked for some time."
An earlier truce halted most violence for six weeks in the summer but collapsed amid Palestinian bombing attacks and Israeli military operations, stalling peace efforts.
Israel Proposes Council to Fight Anti-Semitism
11.19.03 (2:09 am) [edit]This came from: http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
[b][u]Israel Proposes Council to Fight Anti-Semitism[/u][/b]
[b]Mon Nov 17, 3:40 PM ET[/b]
[i]By John Chalmers[/i]
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Monday anti-Semitism was creeping back into Europe and he would propose setting up a joint ministerial council with the European Union to fight it off.
"Unfortunately, recently we...noticed that some signals of anti-Semitism are back in Europe," Shalom told Reuters in an interview before meeting European Union foreign ministers.
"I would like to ask all of them tonight to form a ministerial council of Europe and Israel that will fight together against this phenomenon of anti-Semitism. I believe that we should do it immediately."
Charges of anti-Semitism were fueled this month when a controversial opinion poll carried out by the EU's executive, the European Commission, found that more Europeans see Israel as a threat to world peace than any other country.
While Shalom met his EU counterparts in Brussels, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flew to Rome to enlist the bloc's current president, Italy, in stemming what he calls a rise in European anti-Semitism.
Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin described Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as "a staunch fighter against anti-Semitism, and therefore I think he will be open to our complaints and also to action that can be taken in Europe to stop this."
Berlusconi met the head of the European Jewish Congress, Cobi Benatoff, in Milan Monday ahead of the prime minister's talks with Sharon.
BERLUSCONI TO RAISE EU AWARENESS
Berlusconi's office said Benatoff had expressed concern about what he said were new forms of anti-Semitism in Europe. The prime minister replied that the Italian EU presidency would work to further raise awareness among its European partners over this (anti-Semitic) phenomenon.
Shalom told Jewish leaders last week that foreign criticism of Israel's "right to use force to defend itself" in its conflict with the Palestinians stemmed from a new type of anti-Semitism that effectively denied Israel's "birthright to exist."
He said Monday that for many years it appeared to Israel that Europe "had a very pro-Palestinian attitude."
"Finally it looks that we have now better relations between the government of the state of Israel and the governments of the members of the EU. And I believe that if we...see that they are more balanced, they will play a key role in the peace process."
Some EU officials are concerned however at what they see as a tendency to stigmatise legitimate criticism of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians as anti-Semitic.
In Paris, President Jacques Chirac chaired urgent top-level ministerial talks on fighting anti-Semitism in France after the firebombing of a Jewish school in a Paris suburb.
Synagogues and Jewish schools have been attacked repeatedly in recent years, violence authorities link to poor Muslim youths enraged by Israel's tough policies against Palestinian unrest.
ATTACK ON A JEW IS AN ATTACK ON FRANCE
"Whoever attacks a Jew in France must understand they are attacking the whole of France," Chirac told reporters after calling the emergency meeting.
His conservative government also announced a $7 billion urban regeneration project targeting the poor ghettos of French cities where racial tensions often spill over into violence.
In Brussels, Shalom said the EU and Israel should work together to educate young people about the history of the persecution of the Jews in Europe during World War II, only a few decades ago.
"All the free world, those countries who share the same values of democracy, of freedom, of rule of law, should fight against this phenomena of racism, anti-Semitism and terrorism," he said. "If we will be united, we will prevail."
------------------------- -----
It's about friggin' time. We shall see what happens when words turn into actions.
Comments?
Turkey Says Foreign Terrorists May Be Behind Suicide Blasts
11.18.03 (1:29 am) [edit]To view this story and more, check out this http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
[b][u]Turkey Says Foreign Terrorists May Be Behind Suicide Blasts[/u][/b]
[b]Mon Nov 17, 8:53 AM ET[/b]
[b][i]By CRAIG S. SMITH (The New York Times)[/i][/b]
ISTANBUL, Nov. 16 An obscure terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda took responsibility on Sunday for the twin truck bombings at two synagogues that killed 23 people and wounded more than 300 here on Saturday. Turkish officials said they had evidence that suicide drivers had carried out the blasts.
The claim of responsibility was conveyed by Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, a London-based Arabic newspaper, in an interview with the Arabic satellite station Al Jazeera. Mr. Atwan said the terrorist group, known as the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, had made the claim by e-mail. The group has been linked with Al Qaeda in the past.
The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in Iraq in recent months, notably the Aug. 19 truck bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters and the Oct. 12 car bombing outside a Baghdad hotel used by the Iraqi Governing Council, according to Arabic-language news accounts monitored by the BBC. The group also has claimed responsibility for acts outside Iraq in which no clear evidence of a Qaeda link has been established, including the Aug. 5 bombing in Indonesia, and even the blackouts this summer in the United States and Britain.
While it was impossible Sunday night to confirm any role by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades in the synagogue attacks, the speedy claim of responsibility by a non-Turkish group supported the contention by Turkish officials that the bombings were the work of foreign terrorists, possibly from Al Qaeda, rather than any homegrown organization.
"Our determination to fight terrorism in the international arena continues because this event has international links," the country's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Sunday. Government officials could not be reached for comment after the Jazeera report.
Earlier Sunday, government officials said the blasts appeared to be suicide attacks using identical Isuzu pickup trucks. According to Turkish television, security cameras at the Beth Israel synagogue in the city's Silsi district captured a truck slowing down in front of the synagogue and a policeman approaching to speed it along before it exploded. The policeman died in the blast.
The two trucks exploded about two minutes and three miles apart, shattering the fronts of the Neve Shalom synagogue, Istanbul's largest and the site of two previous attacks, and the Beth Israel synagogue.
Many people believe the attacks were meant as a warning to Turkey not to continue developing ties with Israel or to integrate further with the West. They worry that Turkey's role as a geopolitical bridge between East and West could draw more violence its way, threatening a economic recovery after decades of ruinous inflation and high unemployment.
"During the cold war threat of Soviet expansion, Germany was on the front line, but now Turkey is the contact point for a number of threats faced by the West," said Ilter Turan, professor of political science at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
Since its creation from the remains of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey has looked to the West for support in building a modern, secular society on a Western model. But it has also tried to maintain good relations with fellow Muslim countries. It is a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It wants to join the European Union, and it was the first Muslim country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, in 1949.
That position has put it at odds with both sides over the years, most recently with radical Islamic groups who blame it for abolishing the caliphate, or Islamic theocracy, that had existed in some form since the death of the Prophet Muhammad until 1924. Many of the world's most notorious Islamist groups, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to tiny Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, from Hizb ut-Tahrir in Europe to the global Qaeda network have made restoration of the caliphate their goal.
Turkey's relations with Israel have exacerbated those tensions. The two countries' relations include military cooperation and the sharing of intelligence about radical Islamic groups operating in the region. The Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, arrived in Istanbul on Sunday to tour the blast sites and to show his country's solidarity with Turkey.
"It was a terrorist attack carried out by extremists who don't want to see countries share values of freedom, law, and values of friendship and cooperation," Mr. Shalom said. Israeli intelligence agencies are helping with the investigation.
Some people saw the attacks as a consequence of instability in Iraq. Most Turks opposed the American-led invasion largely because they feared that a war would spread violence throughout the region. As a result, the government resisted Washington's requests earlier this year to allow American troops to enter Iraq from Turkey, despite a huge financial incentive. Last month, Turkey offered to send troops to Iraq, then reversed the decision weeks later. "Whenever there is trouble in Iraq, it has some repercussions on Turkey," said Ismail Cem, a former foreign minister and the leader of the social-democratic New Turkey Party. "This is exactly what happened in previous gulf war."
Violence in Turkey flared after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and terrorist incidents in the country have increased threefold since the American-led invasion of Iraq in March, Mr. Cem said.
Late Sunday, the scenes of both blasts were illuminated with eerie white light as cleanup crews removed twisted metal and investigators combed the wreckage. Members of Israel's disaster response group, known as ZAKA Rescue and Recovery, had arrived earlier to collect human remains. Sixty-six of the 303 people wounded remained hospitalized, though only a few were reported to be in critical condition.
Sabbath morning services were under way in both houses of worship as well as a bar mitzvah in one. Turkish news reports said, however, that most of the dead were Muslims killed in the narrow street outside the Beth Israel synagogue.
The Anatolian Agency, Turkey's state press service, reported that tissue retrieved from the truck used in one of the explosions belonged to someone of Arab ethnicity and that the bombs were made from a mixture of ammonium nitrate and oil. A director of the national police's criminal evidence office in Istanbul, however, said there had been no conclusive determinations made so far.
Political commentators said the bombings were unlikely to push the government back from cooperation with the West or to coerce the governing Justice and Development Party to return to its Islamist roots. The party was formed by former members of the conservative Islamic Virtue Party three years ago.
Mr. Turan said the governing party would probably distance itself further from conservative Islamic groups to assure a nervous population of its commitment to secular government.
Sharon to Urge Berlusconi to Defend Israel in EU
11.17.03 (3:53 pm) [edit]You can find this story and more at http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
[u][b]Sharon to Urge Berlusconi to Defend Israel in EU[/b][/u]
[b]Mon Nov 17, 3:51 AM ET[/b]
[b][i]By Megan Goldin[/i][/b]
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flew to Rome on Monday to enlist Italy's help in fending off European Union criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians and help stem what he calls a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe.
Sharon will urge Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, to water down a pending EU condemnation of Israel's West Bank security barrier and its snubbing of EU Middle East envoy Marc Otte.
Sharon, traveling to Italy two days after at least 23 people were killed in twin bomb attacks on synagogues in Istanbul, will also be lobbying for Italian support against a perceived upsurge of anti-Semitism.
"(Berlusconi) is a staunch fighter against anti-Semitism and therefore I think he will be open to our complaints and also to action that can be taken in Europe to stop this," Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said.
Israel, stinging from a EU poll that found a majority of its citizens saw the Jewish state as the greatest threat to world peace, accuses many EU members of favoring the Palestinians.
But Sharon has a warm relationship with fellow right-winger Berlusconi, under whom Italy has become a solid ally of Israel despite strong EU criticism of Israeli military action to quell a three-year-old Palestinian uprising.
"Italy headed by Berlusconi has proven to be a very loyal and staunch friend of Israel in a Europe that is not so friendly to Israel to say the least," a senior Israeli official said.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom also planned to put forth Israel's case at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. "I think the Europeans are ready to go the distance to bring about a change in the tone of their politics," Shalom said on Sunday during a visit to the Istanbul bombing site.
[b]ITALY DEFENDS ISRAEL[/b]
Italy has defended Israel against a resolution set to be issued by the EU later this week in which it will be slammed for erecting a West Bank barrier that Israeli leaders say is meant to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of Israeli cities.
Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini put Italy at odds with the resolution and was censured by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana when he called construction of the barrier an act of self-defense.
The barrier is controversial since part of it is going up on occupied land and isolating tens of thousands of Palestinian inhabitants. The United States has criticized the project for appearing to seize land and pre-empt a final peace accord.
With an eye to Europe, Sharon told Jewish leaders last week that foreign criticism of Israel's "right to use force to defend itself" stemmed from a new type of anti-Semitism that effectively denied Israel's "birthright to exist."
In Italy, Sharon will reiterate his argument that the EU's role in Middle East diplomacy will be limited as long as its members press for economic sanctions against Israel and issue statements against its policies, officials said.
"There needs to be a more balanced European policy to Israel if they want to play a more constructive role," Gissin said.
The EU has been riled by Israel's cold shoulder toward Otte after he met Palestinian President Yasser Arafat two months ago. Israel and the United States accuse Arafat of fomenting "terrorism." He denies such charges.
Britney REVEALED!
11.17.03 (12:25 am) [edit]I thought I'd take a break from political commentary for a slight moment to share this site with you:
http://www.kingpixel.com/britney/" title="http://www.kingpixel.com/britney/" target="_blank"http://www.kingpixel.com/brit...
It's Britney 'revealed.' ::giggles::
Enjoy!
Commentary by Ya'acov Liberman
11.16.03 (6:56 pm) [edit]This was in my local newspaper.
[b]Palestinian state: perpetuation of a fraud[/b]
[i]by Ya'acov Liberman[/i]
One of the greatest international frauds of historic significance is the concept that the Arab population of former Palestine must have a state of their own--one more Arab state in the Middle East arena.
This seed of this fraudulent concept was planted within the walls of Whitehall in London. The British Empire was always seeking terms and pledges with which to lure and dominate foreign lands and millions of subjects under its imperial yoke. One of those lands was Israel, also known as Palestine, the territory Britain conquered from the Turks, during WWI.
This land, biblically recognized as the Land of Abraham and Jacob, was sparsely populated by Jews who stubbornly remained through the centuries. The Arab populations consisted mainly of Bedouin nomads looking for pasturage and available food.
Not until the advent of the Balfour Declaration, wherein the Jews of the world were promised a "National Home in Palestine," did the Arabs as much as dream of creating another Arabic state on that territory.
With the growth of political Zionism, the reality of a Jewish sate developed to an extent where it began to seriously threaten the mandate and thus the British domination of Palestine.
Typical of their underhanded political ploys, the British helped to create a competing movement among the Arabs, with the aim of counteracting Zionist appeals on an international scale.
In those days, whereas the Jews bought land in Palestine from Arab farmers and landowners, in order to cultivate and build, the Arabs of Palestine, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, were engaged in sporadic terror and sabotage against the Jewish pioneers and their property. It was at no time a movement dedicated to building an Arab state. Rather, it was -- much as it remains today--a movement to promote destruction of Jewish life in the Land of Israel.
The British did not stop at instilling enmity between the Arab and Jewish populations. In fact, they actively assisted in the educating the Arabs to resist Jewish efforts to erect kibitzes, settlements, villages and cities.
During the Second World War, the British effort to provoke and assist Arab negation of the Jewish homeland became painfully obvious. In contravention to the Balfour Declaration and in the midst of Hitler's annihilation campaign against European Jewry, the Colonial Office instituted edicts (White Papers) that closed the doors of Palestine to all Jews escaping the horrors of the Holocaust.
And this continued after the war was won and Hitler was defeated. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from death camps attempted to sail to Palestine on small crafts at obvious risks to their lives. When they reached the shores of Israel, the powerful British navy would intercept them and blow the boats to smithereens, then incarcerate the survivors in camps on Crete and Cyprus.
In the meantime, the cause of Zionism began to attract attention of American politicians and the public. The awe-inspiring battles of the Hebrew underground became consistent reminders to the free world that time had finally come for the creation of a Jewish state.
By then the British had been badly humiliated by the courageous efforts of Israeli forces of resistance, as well as by the pointed finger of world opinion. As a result, they had no alternative but to accept a UN resolution to end the mandate and accept the creation of a Jewish state.
However, the British Foreign Office had another weapon with which to undermine such a state and make it vulnerable to Arab insurgence: Division of the mandated territory into two states, Jewish and Arab (Trans-Jordan, in the meantime, was arbitrarily chopped off from the mandated territory and a "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" created under the rule of King Abdullah).
The idea of dividing Palestine into two states was subsequently embraced by UN and incorporated into its "Partition of Palestine" resolution. In practical terms, this resolution did not get further than the files of UN archives. It was totally rejected by Arabs themselves, claiming their right to the entire land of Israel. Thus, following the announcement of creation of Jewish state, Arabs of Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq went to war, attacking the newborn Jewish state on the day it was born.
In spite of the fact that this war waged against Israel was an unprovoked aggression, the UN stood idly by, demanding ceasefires, disallowing armaments to reach the embattled Jewish state and continuing to insist on a myth called "the State of Palestine."
What we are not discussing here is the initial geographical designs of the proposed partitions of mandated Palestine. This is a subject for a separate piece. Suffice it to say that Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv), Beer Shava, Eilat, Ramale and many other cities of today's State of Israel were assigned to become part of the Arab Palestinian state.
After failing to annihilate the State of Israel and "throw the Jews into the sea," the aggressive Arab coalition signed an armistice agreement with the Jewish state on the Island of Rhodes. In spite of this, the Arab aggressors continued to consider themselves in a sate of war with the infidel and vowed to remove it from the face of the Earth.
The interesting lesson to be learned from this blatant aggression is the fact that the victors placed no demands on the losers, the frustrated aggressors did not sue for peace, and the UN and all its members did not raise a finger to condemn this classical contravention of its charter.
In the meantime, Gaza remained occupied by the Egyptians, while the so-called West Bank remained in the hands of the Kingdom of Jordan. Jerusalem was divided with the Old City also remaining in Jordanian hands.
During the ensuing negotiations, no word was spoken on behalf of an independent Palestinian State. It was now clear to all concerned, that no such entity could exist independently. Even the Palestinians themselves were content to be ruled by the Egyptians in Gaza and by the Jordanians on the West Bank. There existed no dominance by their Arab brothers.
It was not until 1967, almost 20 years after the War of Independence, when Egyptian President Abdul Gamel Nasser provoked and led an Arab coalition to once again attempt to destroy the Jewish state, that we began to hear about an independent Palestinian state.
Indeed, it was only after the Arabs' total defeat that their tactics changed course. Having lost their hold on Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the Egyptians and the Jordanians gave up their rights to those lands in favor of the Future Palestinian entity. In the meantime, they continued to emphatically reject Israel's existence and declared their determination to annihilate the Jewish nation.
This, then, was the time hen the official birth of the international fraud called "the Palestinian state" took place. It is to the discredit of the world at large and, to no lesser extent, to the Labor government of Israel, that they all "recognized" the "need" for a Palestinian state and were ready to supplement it with territories liberated by Israel during the Six Day War!
In spite of Arab enmity, aggression and constant terrorist activity, Israelis as a whole were ready to accept the view that the Arab Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank deserve self-government and a measure of independence.
As a result, Menachem Begin, the first prime minister of the Likud party, during his successful peace negotiations with Anwar Sadat, the new President of Egypt, offered Palestinian Arabs a status of autonomy.
This was 1978. Much has transpired between then and now. The virus of anti-Israeli hate has spread wildly through the entire Arab-Palestinian community. Murder and suicide became the cherished weapons of a large part of the Muslim Middle East. In such conditions, even autonomy cannot be immediately considered as a viable solution to the present crisis. And this will certainly remain the case until Arab terror is eliminated entirely.
In the meantime, Israel finds itself once again in a state of war.
Those who suggest Palestinian independence at this time are simply perpetuating the fraud brought about by a coalition of forces bent on Israel's destruction.
The sooner we Jews and our friends in America realize this, the nearer the time will come for a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.
Paris Hilton.
11.14.03 (2:29 am) [edit]The name on everyone's lips and the body on everyone's illegally downloaded quicktime screen. That's right, I'm talking about good ol' Paris, the worthless richie brat that frolics naked in French hotels and has it filmed. Am I too harsh? Well, maybe. Would I be upset if it was anyone else's sex tape? Slightly, but not as much as now. Why is that?
Thing is, she's a waste of space. Now you're thinking, "Oh, Tigress is just jealous. She wishes she were as stinkin' loaded and hedonistic as Paris." I gotta tell you, not really. Granted, if I were of her monetary status, a rich heiress to a multibillion dollar company, I'd not waste my power on $2,000 nail jobs or toga parties in the Hamptons. No, I'd try and benefit society better. "Gimme a break, you're so full of shit, Tigress!" you say? Really, no. I see tons of celebs contributing to the world in one way or another.
Take Dave Matthews, for example (we'll use him because I know a lot about him). He's a very talented musician, in case you haven't heard of him. He makes crazy sums of money. Sure, he keeps some for himself, improves the living standards of his wife and twin daughters, but what does he do with the rest of it? He gives it to charity. That's right folks, charity. How does he justify it? He once said, "With all that I make, I'd be the most selfish, horrible, awful son-of-a-bitch who ever walked the earth. I enjoy my life and comfort while babies starve to death outside."
Now lets get back to our abortion poster child, Paris Hilton. Let's see, she has NO talent. She doesn't even make any kind of art to reach out to people (Like DMB's music). She was BORN into her wealth and has never worked a day in her miserable little pointless life. She spends all her family money on herself, usually on things to make her "prettier." And, lastly and most recently known to the public, she spends disgusting amounts of money to go have sex with someone in a French hotel and then has it filmed. Not only HAS it filmed, but is willing and eager to do so.
What a waste of humanity.
"But now wait a second, Tigress. What the hell do you do that helps the world so greatly?" Well, I volunteered to help the shelters when the fire struck SoCal a few weeks ago. I helped feed many displaced families. What else do I do? I volunteer at the local pet shelter with the sick animals. What else? When there's a real need, I try and get out and be there and do what I can. Would I still do it if I were a rich heiress to a large hotel chain? In a heartbeat.
As you can see, I have a lot of contempt for her and her selfish foolishness.
Oh and how convenient that this sex tape comes out right before the premier of her new reality TV show (yet another attestment to her uselessness--a REALITY TV SHOW--but that's another blog subject, entirely). She and her family claim that it was not her who leaked the tape, but her ex-boyfriend, of whom is also featured in this prize-winning piece of footage.
There's two possibilities for the reason why this tape has surfaced. Either the above mentioned, or her boyfriend is trying to make a buck.
I kinda am hoping its the latter. Why? Because I think she deserves the embarrassment, if she's capable of feeling as much. Think about it. She's this frightful load of richie garbage that is careless with everything and especially her body. Dumbass princess' tape leaks out and then how does she feel. I hope she's embarrassed. I hope this showed her what a loser she is and perhaps that she should change some of her behavior and start acting like a person.
I hope so.
That is why I advocate that everyone run to your closest computer and start web searching. Enjoy Paris' only contribution to the world. It may be worth something someday, being so rare and all.
Let's hear what you think. What do you think of this Paris Hilton nonsense?
Some interesting demographics. . .
11.13.03 (2:01 pm) [edit]I was goofin' around on the interent and I found this great site nationmaster.com . It shows demographics of everything from around the world. Pretty neat. So I searched and found this demographic below. It's the top 100 countries that have the most Jews per capita. There was a map included on the results too. Check it out in full here: http://nationmaster.com/graph... . I was astounded to know that Gibraltar even had any Jews, let alone the 3rd most per capita. I was not surprised one bit that Iraq has zero per capita.
Facinating.
Enjoy!
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Graph: Religion: Top 100 Jews (per capita)
(In order of)
[b]Country Description Amount[/b]
1. Israel 803.88 per 1000 people
2. Monaco 31.26 per 1000 people
3. Gibraltar 21.65 per 1000 people
4. United States 20.67 per 1000 people
5. Canada 11.28 per 1000 people
6. France 10.04 per 1000 people
7. Uruguay 9.6 per 1000 people
8. Ukraine 8.27 per 1000 people
9. Hungary 7.94 per 1000 people
10. Moldova 6.77 per 1000 people
11. Argentina 6.61 per 1000 people
12. Latvia 6.34 per 1000 people
13. Belarus 5.81 per 1000 people
14. Australia 5.12 per 1000 people
15. United Kingdom 5.02 per 1000 people
16. Belgium 3.89 per 1000 people
17. Azerbaijan 3.85 per 1000 people
18. Russia 3.79 per 1000 people
19. Georgia 3.43 per 1000 people
20. Virgin Islands 3.24 per 1000 people
21. Switzerland 2.47 per 1000 people
22. Panama 2.43 per 1000 people
23. South Africa 2.43 per 1000 people
24. Estonia 2.12 per 1000 people
25. Sweden 2.03 per 1000 people
26. Netherlands 1.87 per 1000 people
27. Netherlands Antilles 1.87 per 1000 people
28. Lithuania 1.67 per 1000 people
29. Denmark 1.49 per 1000 people
30. Venezuela 1.44 per 1000 people
31. Uzbekistan 1.37 per 1000 people
32. Luxembourg 1.34 per 1000 people
33. New Zealand 1.28 per 1000 people
34. Austria 1.22 per 1000 people
35. Slovakia 1.11 per 1000 people
36. Chile 0.97 per 1000 people
37. Kyrgyzstan 0.93 per 1000 people
38. Kazakhstan 0.9 per 1000 people
39. Puerto Rico 0.76 per 1000 people
40. Brazil 0.74 per 1000 people
41. Germany 0.72 per 1000 people
42. Bahamas, The 0.67 per 1000 people
43. Costa Rica 0.65 per 1000 people
44. Romania 0.63 per 1000 people
45. Italy 0.61 per 1000 people
46. Czech Republic 0.58 per 1000 people
47. Greece 0.47 per 1000 people
48. Suriname 0.46 per 1000 people
49. Croatia 0.46 per 1000 people
50. Bulgaria 0.39 per 1000 people
51. Mexico 0.39 per 1000 people
52. Iran 0.38 per 1000 people
53. Turkey 0.37 per 1000 people
54. Spain 0.35 per 1000 people
55. Hong Kong 0.34 per 1000 people
56. Norway 0.33 per 1000 people
57. Tajikistan 0.27 per 1000 people
58. Ireland 0.26 per 1000 people
59. Turkmenistan 0.26 per 1000 people
60. Morocco 0.24 per 1000 people
61. Finland 0.23 per 1000 people
62. Poland 0.21 per 1000 people
63. Paraguay 0.2 per 1000 people
64. Tunisia 0.2 per 1000 people
65. Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.15 per 1000 people
66. Colombia 0.14 per 1000 people
67. Jamaica 0.11 per 1000 people
68. Peru 0.11 per 1000 people
69. Guatemala 0.09 per 1000 people
70. Portugal 0.09 per 1000 people
71. Cuba 0.09 per 1000 people
72. Zimbabwe 0.08 per 1000 people
73. Ecuador 0.07 per 1000 people
74. Singapore 0.07 per 1000 people
75. Armenia 0.06 per 1000 people
76. Bolivia 0.04 per 1000 people
77. Yemen 0.04 per 1000 people
78. Dominican Republic 0.03 per 1000 people
79. El Salvador 0.02 per 1000 people
80. Japan 0.02 per 1000 people
81. Syria 0.01 per 1000 people
82. Kenya 0.01 per 1000 people
83. Ethiopia 0.01 per 1000 people
84. India 0.01 per 1000 people
85. Iraq 0 per 1000 people
86. Thailand 0 per 1000 people
87. Korea, South 0 per 1000 people
88. Philippines 0 per 1000 people
Total 14.26 million
Weighted Avg 4.19 per 1000 people
Source: World Jewish Congress (WJC), 1998 at Nation Master dot com
Reality check: Another misconception cleared up.
11.13.03 (2:33 am) [edit]Misconception: Jerusalem is as holy to Muslims as it is to Jews.
Truth/B'Emes: At the Camp David conference in the summer of 2000, Chairman Arafat told President Clinton that Palestinian archaeologists could prove that there had never been a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This statement alone, a flagrant lie, should have been the immediate indication that Arafat had no intention of reaching an agreement with Israel at Camp David. (People who wish to make peace don't start a meeting by denying the most basic truths about their opponent's history.)
The Temple Mount has been the leading Jewish holy site since shortly after it came under Jewish sovereignty during the reign of Kind David more than three thousand years ago, and sixteen hundred years before Islam came into existence.
Arafat's statement about Jerusalem is part of a widespread Arab campaign to deny the Jews' historical connection to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem in particular. For example, [i]Al-Hayat Al Jadida[/i], the PA newspaper, quoted on Oct. 15, 2000, the statement of Sheik Ikrama Sabri, the mufti of Jerusalem (the highest Islamic religious official in that city): "There is not a single stone in Palestine that proves the [historical] Jewish existence [in the land]."
In fact, ever since King David captured Jerusalem around 1000 B.C.E., the city has been the Jewish people's spiritual capital at all times, and political capital during the three periods when the Jews had a state (for four hundred years after King David, during the time of the Second Temple, and since 1948). No other country or religion over the last three thousand years has ever claimed Jerusalem as a capital or as its most important city. Perhaps that is why Winston Churchill argued as early as 1955: "You ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it was they who made it famous."
In contrast to Judaism, Islam claims Jerusalem as its THIRD holiest city. But even that claim exaggerates Jerusalem's significance to Muslims. After all, the city was never regarded as particularly important to Muslims when it was under Muslim rule; it became so only when it came under Jewish rule. For example, between 1948 and 1967, Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and treated the city, as did the rest of the Arab world, as a backwater. During the nineteen years Jordan controlled Jerusalem, only one Arab leader, King Hassan of Morocco, ever visited there.
Jerusalem is mentioned 667 times in the Torah; it is never mentioned in to Koran. Later Islamic teachings, formulated after the death of Muhammad, claimed that he had ascended to heaven from Jerusalem. After the Arab world conquered the territory that comprises Israel during the seventh century, Arab rulers erected two mosques on the site of what had once been the Jewish temple. Aside from these mosques, one of which is the Dome of the Rock (from where Muhammad's ascent to heaven is said to have occurred), there are no other sites of major significance to Islam in Jerusalem (unlike the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which, in the words of the late British historian Christopher Sykes, "are holy places containing holy sites").
It is widely known that Jerusalem is holy to the Jews, but many people believe that the Jews abandoned Jerusalem until the rise of Zionism. Like many other anti-Israel claims, this, too, is false. Jews have been the largest religious group in Jerusalem since at least 1844 (when the first generally accurate census was conducted). At the time, Jews outnumbered Muslims by 40% (7,120 to an estimated 5,000) and were almost twice as large as the Christian community (which numbered 3,390). In all the years since, and in nine succeeding censuses, the Jews have always been the largest group residing there, and the majority since 1864. As of 2000, Jerusalem contained 439,600 Jews, almost 197,000 Muslims, and 14,200 Christians.
Jerusalem's holiness in Jewish life is apparent in many ways. When ever Jews pray, they face Jerusalem (In contrast, when Muslims pray, they face Mecca). The city is mentioned in all three of the Jewish daily prayer services. The Western Wall is the holiest site in Jewish life, where both secular and religious Jews go to pray and insert written petitions to God in the Wall's crevices. For thousands of years, Jews have commemorated, with the fast day of Tisha B'Av (the ninth day of the month of Av in the Jewish calendar), the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., and the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. Throughout history, Jews have arranged to have earth from Israel, particularly from Jerusalem, poured into their graves when they die. In addition, the smashing of glass at the conclusion of every Jewish wedding is meant to remind all those present of the verse from Psalms: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand fail" (Psalms 137:5).
For these reasons, the attempt by Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat, by the PA's highest religious official in Jerusalem, and by the Arab press to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is as preposterous as it is mendacious. Unfortunately, the blood libel, [i]The Protocols of the Elders of Zion[/i], and the Islamist claim that Jews knew in advance about the 9-11 terrorist attacks on America and therefore four thousand Jewish workers stayed home that day make it clear that, to those who hate Jews, truth is also their enemy.
I guess Red really does run right through me.
11.13.03 (1:18 am) [edit]Hehe.
! You are Most Like A Ruby !
Passionate, in control - and very sexy. You tend to
be more dominant, and people long to possess your
wild nature. People find you fun, and a real live
wire.
You're most like a Ruby because people simply can't
take their eyes away from you - your bright
captivating
nature draws people to you.
Congratulations ... You're the sparkly fun gem
everybody craves.
?? Which Precious Gem Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
An Important Public Safety Notice!
11.12.03 (4:16 pm) [edit]I saw this on blondie's blog and had to post it here too. It's [b][i]very scarey.[/i][/b]
A Woman stopped at a pay-at-the-pump gas station to get gas. Once she filled her gas tank after paying at the pump and started to leave, the attendant inside came over the speaker. He told her that something happened with her card and that she needed to come inside to pay.
The lady was confused because the transaction showed complete andapproved. She told him that and was getting ready to leave but the attendant once again urged her to come in to pay or else. She proceeded to go inside and started arguing with the attendant about his threat.
He told her to calm down and listen carefully: He told her that while she was pumping gas, a guy slipped into the back seat of her car onthe other side and he had called the police. She immediately became scared and looked out there in time to see her car door open and the guy slip out.
The report is that the new gang initiation thing is to bring back a woman's body part. One way they are doing this is crawling under girls/women's cars while they're pumping gas or at grocery stores in the night time. Then they are cutting the lady's ankles to disable them in order to kidnap them, kill and dismember them.
The other way is slipping into unattended cars and kidnapping the women to kill and dismember them.
Please pass this on to other women, young and old alike. Be extra careful going to and from your car at night. If at all possible, don't go alone!
This is real!!The message:
1. ALWAYS lock your car doors, even if you're gone for just a second.
2. Check underneath your car when approaching it for reentry, and check in the back before getting in.
3. Always be aware of your surroundings and other individuals in your general vicinity, particularly at night!
Send this to many girls so your friend will not be the next one.
Thanks,
Barbara BakerSecretary Directorate of Training
U.S. Army Military Police School(573) 563-8043
TELL EVERY WOMAN YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS!
Yet Another BIG Middle East Misconception.
11.11.03 (8:05 pm) [edit]Here it is: Palestinians turned to violence against Israel out of desperation
Truth/B'Emes: If the issue were desperation, then why would the Palestinians have turned against Israel after it offered to create a Palestinian state on more than 95% of the West Bank and Gaza? And why would they have launched a campaign of suicide/homocide bombings--in which over six hundred Israelis (with thousands more targeted), the large majority of them civilians, including children, have been murdered--during the time of the most dovish, most accommodating government (that of Prime Minister Ehud Barak) in Israel's history?
The answer is self-evident. As Palestinian polls repeatedly revealed, the great majority of Palestinians, like their leadership, seek to destroy Israel, not settle for a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state. As Sheik Ibrahim Madhi declared on the Palestinian Authority's national television (August 7, 2001): "In several years, Allah willing, we will enter Jerusalem as conquerors. To Haifa as conquerors, to Ashkelon as conquerors."
Despite the aim of most Palestinians and many other Arabs of destroying Israel, it is assumed among many in the West that the suicide/homocide bombings in Israel are driven by desperation and hopelessness, not antisemitism and religious extremism. As Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, expressed it: "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are never going to make progress."
To some of Israel's harshest critics, Arab "desperation" is seen not only as understandable, but acceptable and, for some, even praiseworthy. Juergen Moelleman, an official of Germany's Free Democrats, speaking about Palestinian terrorism, declared: "I would resist too and use force to do so. . .no just in my country, but in the aggressor's country as well." Claire Rayner, president of the British Humanist Association, stated in April 2002 that the idea of Israel as a Jewish homeland was "a load of crap," and therefore there was nothing wrong with targeting Israeli restaurants and buses: "If you treat a group of people the way Palestinians have been treated, they will use the only weapon they have, which is their individual lives."
The ultimate statement of defense for the "suicide" killers was provided by Jose Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel laureate in literature: "We can compare what is happening in the Palestinian territories with Auschwitz."
Aside from the fact that resistance fighters in far more desperate circumstances than the Palestinians (who actually enjoy more rights than did Arabs in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Syria, Lybia, and other countries) have not targeted civilians (e.g., anti-Nazi resistance fighters), it is clear from the families of the terrorists themselves that what drives the terrorists is religious passion. In the dozens of interviews with mothers of "suicide" bombers, one never hears mention of poverty. Rather, as one proud mother characteristically put it:
"I am a compassionate mother to my children. Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr's death for the sake of Allah. . .Jihad is a religious obligation incumbent upon us, and we must carry it out. I sacrificed Muhammad as part of my obligation. This is an easy thing. There is no disagreement [among religious scholars] on such matters. The happiness in this world is an incomplete happiness, eternal happiness is life in the world to come, through martyrdom. Allah be praised, my son has attained this happiness. . .I prayed from the depths of my hear that Allah would cause the success of his operation. I asked Allah to give me 10 [Israelis] for Muhammad, and Allah granted my request and Muhammad made his dream come true, killing 10 Israeli settlers and soldiers. Our God honored him even more in that there were many Israelis wounded. [When his brothers informed me of his martyrdom], I began to cry 'Allah is the greatest,' and prayed and thanked Allah for the success of the operation. I began to utter cries of joy and we declared that we were happy. The young people began to fire into the air out of joy over the success of his operation, as this is what we had hoped for him."
Likewise, the nineteen terrorists who murdered some three thousand Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, came from affluent, in most cases particularly affluent, backgrounds. Fifteen, after all, were Saudis.
What [i]has[/i] motivated Palestinian and other Islamic terrorists has not been despair but hope and religious fervor. It is the hope of heavenly reward for extending the territory of Islam and doing Allah's will. It is the belief that murdering Jews (and Americans) is a virtuous act, a belief that has been continually propounded in Palestinian mosques and on the Palestinian Authority's national television station. For example, on Oct. 14, 2000, the PA broadcast a sermon by Sheik Ahmed Abu Halabiya that declared: "Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them." On another PA broadcast (Aug. 7, 2001) Sheik Ibrahim Madhi declared: "The Koran is very clear on this. The greatest enemies of the Islamic nation are the Jews, may Allah fight them . . . Whoever can fight them with his weapons, should go out; whoever can fight them with a sword or knife, should go out."
Islamic terrorists murder and maim Jews because of ideology. They believe it is God's will to do so. Only Westerners trained to believe that evil always comes from desperate socioeconomic circumstances believe otherwise.
Lie: Israel illegally occupies the West Bank.
11.11.03 (4:12 pm) [edit]Truth/B'Emes: Israel captured the West Bank during the Six-Day War of 1967, a war of SELF-DEFENSE. In the days preceding the war, Hafiz al-Assad, the Syrian defense minister and later president, declared: "I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." A week later, on May 27,1967, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt proclaimed: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel." Three days after Nasser's speech, Jordan, which ruled over the West Bank, signed a defense pact with Eguyt to join in a war explicitly aimed at destroying Israel.
Knowing that it would have to fight against both Egypt and Syria, and desperate to avoid going to war on a third front, Israel sent a message to Jordan's king Hussein assuring him that tit would make no move against Jordan unless Jordan attacked Israel first. Shortly after the war began, the kingm told by Nasser that the Arabs were winning, ordered his army to begin shelling Israel. It was only then that Israel fought back and took control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Does Israel then have a legal, if not moral, obligation to return the West Bank?
No. Although Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan, Jordan itself had no right to this land. King Hussein's grandfather, King Abdullah, had occupied the West Bank during the Arab war to destroy Israel in 1948. After the war's conclusion, Abdullah annexed this territory to Jordan, an act that only two countries, Pakistan and England, recognized as legal. In the eyes of the rest of the world, Jordan had no legal claim to the West Bank. As Stephen Schwebel, the former head of the International Court of Justice in Hague, wrote in 1970 regarding Israel's case: "Where the prior holder of territory had seized the territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes t he territory in the lawful exercise of SELF-DEFENSE has, against that prior holder, better title."
In Nov. 1947, when the United Nations passed a partition plan, it designated the West Bank as part of what was to comprise a Palestinian state. However, the Arab residents of the West Bank, along with the rest of the Arab world, rejected the UN plan (because it also allotted land for a Jewish state). Moreover, during the nineteen years the West Bank was under Jordanian rule, both the Arab world and the residents of the WB made not effort to establish a Palestinian state there.
For these and other reasons U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright announced in March 1994: "We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 War as occupied Palestinian territory."
Now, what about the argument that Israel has no right to the WB in light of UN Security Resolution 242, which Israel accepted and which demands that Israel return land it captured during the Six-Day War? In truth, the UN resolution spoke of Israel's rerurning "territories" captured during the war. The resolution deliberatly omitted the words "all the" territories, or even "the" territories. This omission was specifically intended to emphasize that Israel was not obligated to return [i]all[/i] the territory it had captured. As Lord Caradon, Britain's then ambassador to the UN, explained: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and arificial."
Another clause in the resolution called for "the acknowledgement of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundries free from threats or acts of force." To this day, these conditions essential to the resolution, remain unmet. Israel does not yet enjoy anything close to "secure and recognized boarders." Therefore, to call these territories "occupied," as notes William Safire, the Pulitzer Prize-winning culumnists, "reaveals a prejudice against Israel's right to what are supposed to be 'secure' defensible borders" ([i]New York Times[/i], March 25, 2002).
Because of a long-standing anti-Israel campaign conducted by Arab propagandists, it is widely believed in the West today that Israel has flouted Resolution 242's demand that it return the territories captured in 1967. Yet if one actually reads the resolution, it becomes apparant that its primary concern is a call for peace and for recognition of Israel's right to exist; and that only once that has occurred is Israel obliged to return much, but not all, of the captured territory. Resolution 242 was expressly meant to be implemented as part of a negotiated solution between the parties. There was never an expectation that Israel should withdraw from the teritories [i]prior[/i] to the signing of peace agreements.
Dr. Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, notes: "It would be far more accurate to describe the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as 'disputed territories' to which both Israelis and Palestinians have claims."
It is rarely noted that, as of 2000, Israel had arranged for 97% of the Palestinian population in the WB and Gaza to live under Palestinian jurisdiction.
Finally, given that Israel does not occupy the WB immorally or illegally, does it follow that Israel should hold on to all this land forever? Again the answer is no. I believe that Israel should help establish a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and on much of the WB, but ONLY after it is clear the the Palestinian state will:
*Accept in word (i.e., in what Arab leaders say to their people in Arabic, and not what they say to Westerners in English) and deed Israel's right to exist;
*Relinquish Palestinian claims to any part of Israel;
*End its dissemination of antisemitic hate;
*Settle the refugee problem without "resettlement" in Israel;
*Stop terrorism against Israel and severely punish those who plan or perpetrate it.
Until then, Israel has the moral, legal, and commonsensical right to maintain control over the West Bank. To give it up without these conditions being met is potentially suicidal--which is why Israel's enemies insist that it do so.
The Power of Winter
11.11.03 (2:49 pm) [edit]
You're Most Like The Season Winter ...
You're often depicted as the cold, distant season.
But you're incredibly intelligent, mature and
Independant. You have an air of power around
you - and that can sometimes scare people off.
You're complex, and get hurt easily - so you
rarely let people in if you can help it. You
can be somewhat of a loner, but just as easily
you could be the leader of many. You Tend to be
negative, and hard to relate to, but you give
off a relaxed image despite being insecure -
and secretly many people long to be like you,
not knowing how deep the Winter season really
is.
Well done... You're the most inspirational of
seasons :)
?? Which Season Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
Blaming Jews 101
11.11.03 (1:13 pm) [edit]My thanks to JamesYerian for bringing this excellent article to my attention!!! :)
Blaming Jews 101
By Edward Alexander
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 11, 2003
"There is a great temptation to explain away the intrinsically incredible means of liberal rationalizations. In each one of us, there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense." -- Hannah Arendt (1)
In the Winter-Spring 2003 issue of Salmagundi, Berkeley professor Martin Jay argues that Jews themselves are "causing" the "new" anti-Semitism. Chief among these perfidious Jews, he names Ariel Sharon, the "fanatic settlers" (22) and also the American Jews who question the infallibility of the New York Times and National Public Radio. ("Ariel Sharon and the Rise of the New Anti-Semitism".) (5)
Unlike the late Edward Said (of whom he writes with oily sycophancy), Jay does not deny the existence of a resurgent anti-Semitism. On the other hand, he, in effect, dismisses its manifestations -- vandalized synagogues and cemeteries, "tipping over a tombstone in a graveyard in Marseilles or burning Torahs in a temple on Long Island [as] payback for atrocities [my emphasis] committed by Israeli settlers." (14). At the same time, he ignores its more serious expressions: stabbings, shootings, murder—all of which have been unleashed against Jews in Europe, as well as in Israel. "The actions of contemporary Jews," Jay concludes, "are somehow connected with the upsurge of anti-Semitism around the globe" (21), and it would be foolish to suppose that "the victims are in no way involved in unleashing the animosities they suffer" (17).
The academic boycotters of Israeli universities and the professorial advocates of suicide bombing are in the front lines of the defense of terror, which is the very essence of Palestinian nationalism.2 But they themselves are supported by a rearguard of fellow travelers, a far more numerous academic group whose defining characteristic is not fanaticism but time-serving timorousness.
In the Thirties, "fellow travelers" usually referred to the intellectual friends of Communism (a subject well analyzed in David Caute's book on the subject3), although both Hitler and Stalin tried to attract people from America and Britain who served their purposes in the conviction that they were engaged in a noble cause.
At the moment, the favorite cause of peregrinating political tourists is the Palestinian movement,4 and the reason why fellow travelers favor this most barbaric of all movements of "national liberation" is that its adversaries are Jews. Jews are always a tempting target because of their ridiculously small numbers (currently 997 out of every 1000 people in the world are not Jews) and their image as avaricious corrupters of the young, thieves, agents of Satan, conspiring human devils and Zionist imperialists. As a representative example of the academic fellow-traveler in the ongoing campaign to depict Israel as the devil's own experiment station, Martin Jay is exemplary.
Although Jay's main concern is the (supposedly) "new" anti-Semitism, his heavy reliance on the thesis of Albert Lindemann's unsavory book, Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (1998). He suggests that he believes political anti-Semitism, from its inception in the nineteenth century, has been in large part the responsibility of the Jews themselves. Lindemann's book argued not merely that Jews had "social interactions" (a favorite euphemism of Jay's) with their persecutors but were responsible for the hatreds that eventually consumed them in Europe; anti-Semitism was, wherever and whenever it flared up, a response to Jewish misbehavior.
According to Lindemann, the Romanians had been subjected to "mean-spirited denigration" of their country by Jews, and so it was reasonable for Romania's elite to conclude that "making life difficult" for the country's Jewish inhabitants, "legally or otherwise, was a "justifiable policy." His abstruse research into Russian history also revealed to him that whatever anti-Semitism existed there was "hardly a hatred without palpable or understandable cause." The 1903 Kishinev pogrom, Lindemann grudgingly admitted, did occur but was a relatively minor affair in numbers killed and wounded, which the Jews, with typical "hyperbole and mendacity," exaggerated in order to attract sympathy and money; it was a major affair only because it revealed "a rising Jewish combativeness." (As for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Lindemann apparently never heard of it, for it goes unmentioned in his nearly fifty pages on Russia.) In Germany, Jews (especially the historian Heinrich Graetz), were guilty of a "steady stream of insults and withering criticism...directed at Germans"; by contrast, Hitler (who published Mein Kampf in 1925-27) was a "moderate" on the Jewish question prior to the mid-1930s; besides, "nearly everywhere Hitler looked at the end of the war, there were Jews who corresponded to anti-Semitic imagery." In addition to being degenerate, ugly, dirty, tribalist, racist, crooked, and sexually immoral, the Jews, as depicted by Lindemann, further infuriated their Gentile neighbors by speaking Yiddish: "a nasal, whining, and crippled ghetto tongue."6
Although Jay is by no means in full agreement with Lindemann's thesis (as he is with that of an even cruder polemic by Paul Breines called Tough Jews7), he is intensely grateful to this courageous pioneer for breaking a "taboo" (18) on the "difficult question about the Jewish role in causing anti-Semitism," for putting it "on the table." (21) (Readers familiar with this dismal topic will be disappointed to learn that neither Lindemann nor his admirer Jay is able to explain the "Jewish role" in causing the belief, widespread among Christian theologians from St. Augustine through the seventeenth century, that Jewish males menstruate.) This is a remarkable statement to come from a historian. Washington Irving's Rip van Winkle lost touch with history for twenty years while he slept; Jay's dogmatic slumber seems to have lasted 36 years, since 1967, when the brief post-World War II relaxation of anti-Semitism came to an end.
A brief history lesson is in order here. At the end of the second World War, old-fashioned anti-Semites grudgingly recognized that the Holocaust had given anti-Semitism a bad name, that perhaps the time was right for a temporary respite in the ideological war against the Jews. But in 1967, the Jews in Israel had the misfortune to win the war that was unleashed against them by Gamal Nasser, who had proclaimed—in a locution very much akin to Jay's style of reasoning—that "Israel's existence is itself an aggression."
After their defeat, the Arabs reversed their rhetoric from "Right" to "Left," de-emphasizing their ambition to "turn the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood" and instead blaming "the Middle East conflict" on the Jews themselves for denying the Palestinians a state (something that, of course, the Arabs could have given them any time during the nineteen years that they were entirely in control of the disputed territories of "the West Bank"). Since that time what Jay calls the "difficult question about the Jewish role in causing anti-Semitism" has not only been "on the table"; it has provided a royal feast for such heavy feeders as Alexander Cockburn, Desmond Tutu, Michael Lerner, the aforementioned Said, Patrick Buchanan, Noam Chomsky, most of the Israeli Left, and scores of other scribblers. Indeed, the New York Times, which during World War II did its best to conceal the fact that Jews were being murdered en masse, now admits they are being murdered, but blames them for, in Jay-speak, "unleashing the animosities they suffer."
The particular form given by nearly all these forerunners of Lindemann is, of course, blatant reversal of cause and effect in taking for granted that it is Israeli occupation that leads to Arab hatred and aggression, when every normally attentive sixth-grader knows that it is Arab hatred and aggression that lead to Israeli occupation. Jay is very fierce not with Lindemann for regurgitating every anti-Semitic slander dredged up from the bad dreams of Christendom but with Lindemann's "overheated" (18) critics (in Commentary, in the American Historical Review, in Midstream). In the same manner, his outrage about suicide bombings is not against the bombers or their instructors and financiers but against "American Jewish panic" (23) and "Israeli toughness" (23) in reacting to them and so perpetuating (no cliche is too stale and stupid for Jay) "the spiral of violence" (23).
Just as Jay insinuates some mild criticism of Lindemann, he also "qualifies" every now and then his insistence that the Jews themselves are to blame for anti-Semitism, but always in a way that only serves to make his core argument all the more gross and flagrant. "Acknowledging this fact [that the Jewish victims are "involved in unleashing" hatred on themselves] is not 'blaming the victim,' an overly simple formula that prevents asking hard and sometimes awkward questions, but rather understanding that social interactions are never as neat as moral oppositions of good and evil." (17)
Like most liberals, Jay cannot credit the existence of the full evil of the world. "In the case of the Arab war against the Jewish state," Ruth Wisse has observed, "obscuring Arab intentions requires identifying Jews as the cause of the conflict. The notion of Jewish responsibility for Arab rejectionism is almost irresistibly attractive to liberals, because the truth otherwise seems so bleak."8 Although Jay tries to twist Hannah Arendt's well-known criticism of Sartre's foolish argument that the Jews survived in exile thanks to gentile persecution into an endorsement of his own foolish argument about Jewish responsibility for that persecution, he is himself a classic case of what Arendt called the wheedling voice of "common sense" that lurks inside every liberal, explaining away the "intrinsically incredible,"9 such as the fact that a people would choose to define itself entirely by its dedication to the destruction of another people.
For the benefit of Jay (and others) in bondage to the liberal dogma that "social interactions are never as neat as moral oppositions of good and evil," and at the risk of violating decorum, I should like here to quote from the description by a physicist (Dr. Pekka Sinervo of the University of Toronto) of what happens when a conventional bomb is exploded in a contained space, such as a city bus travelling through downtown Jerusalem: "A person sitting nearby would feel, momentarily, a shock wave slamming into his or her body, with an 'overpressure' of 300,000 pounds. Such a blast would crush the chest, rupture liver, spleen, heart and lungs, melt eyes, pull organs away from surrounding tissue, separate hands from arms and feet from legs. Bodies would fly through the air or be impaled on the jagged edges of crumpled metal and broken glass."10 These are among the little "animosities," the "social interactions" that Martin Jay says Israelis, including (one assumes) the schoolchildren who usually fill these buses, have brought upon themselves. Jay does take note of the suicide bombers, brainwashed teenage Arab versions of the Hitler Youth, by administering a little slap on the wrist to tearful Esau: "To be fair, the Palestinian leadership that encourages or winks at suicide bombers shows no less counter-productive stupidity [than Sharon taking action against suicide bombers]." (23) (The flabby syntax matches the fatuous moral equation.) Thus does Jay's labored distinction between "causation" and "legitimation" (17) or between blaming the Jewish victims and making them responsible for anti-Semitic aggression, turn out to be a distinction without a difference. "Tout comprendre" as the French say, c'est tout pardonner."
But pointing out Jay's shoddy history, Orwellian logic, and addiction to worn-out cliches about settlements and "occupied territories" does not quite bring us to the quick of this ulcer. Matthew Arnold used to say that there is such a thing as conscience in intellectual affairs. An examination of the tainted character of Jay's documentation, his "evidence," reveals an intellectual conscience almost totally atrophied; for there is hardly a single reference in the essay to recent events in intifada II (the Oslo War, that is) or the many responses to it that is not unreliable, deceptive, false.
The essay starts with a reference to the "occupation of Jenin" (12), which always lurks in the background of Jay's ominous albeit vague allusions to Sharon's "heavy-handed" policies and actions (23) and "bulldozer mentality" (22). The April 2002, reoccupation of Jenin touched a raw nerve in both the academic Israel-haters alluded to above (their boycott of Israeli universities and research institutes, mainly a British operation, went into high gear at this point) and their fellow travelers. As always with Jay, cause and effect are reversed, as if the actions of firefighters were to be blamed for the depredations of arsonists. The Israeli "incursion" into Jenin, for example, is treated by people like Jay as if it had nothing whatever to do with the series of suicide bombings, culminating with the Passover massacre that immediately preceded it.
Jenin was reoccupied in April 2002, after the suicide bombing massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover evening, March 27. Jenin was the base of the terrorist infrastructure: most of the bombers were "educated" in Jenin, worked in Jenin, trained in Jenin, or passed through Jenin to be "blessed" before going out to kill Jews. Of some 100 terrorists who carried out suicide bombings between October 2000 and April 2002, 23 were sent directly from Jenin. Prior to the Passover slaughter the supposedly tough Sharon had done little more in response to the almost daily murder of Israeli citizens than make blustery speeches and then turn the other cheek, or bulldoze or bomb empty buildings belonging to the Palestinian Authority. He had seemed far more inclined to the Christian precept "Resist Not Evil" than were the putatively "Christian" ministers of Europe who were excoriating him for that "bulldozer mentality." (It does not require a powerful imagination to guess how France or Germany or America would deal with a "Jenin" that dispatched murderers to butcher French or German or American citizens on a daily basis. Of one thing we can be sure: there would have been no bulldozers for Mr. Jay to complain of and also no 23 dead Israeli soldiers in Jenin, because the terrorist headquarters would have been obliterated by aerial bombing—and there really might have been not 50 dead Palestinians [most of them fighters] in Jenin but the "genocide of thousands," the "Jeningrad" trumpeted by Jay's favorite news media.)
Thirty Jews were killed and 140 injured at the Netanya seder table, a desecration of a holy place as flagrant as any in recent memory. But Jay's compassion is reserved for the victims of real "atrocities," such as "the cruel and vindictive destruction of the venerable olive groves under the pretext that they were hiding places for snipers" (24). Pretext? On October 30, 2002, Israel Radio reported that the terrorist who murdered two girls, ages 1 and 14, and also a woman in Hermesh exploited the olive trees that reach up to the community located between Mevo Dotan and Baka al-Gharbiya some six kilometers west of the Green Line in northern Samaria. The trees had indeed provided cover that made it possible for the killer first to reconnoiter the area in advance—as an olive harvester—and then to slip under the fence to do his murderous work.
Jay's congenital inability to report anything accurately is also apparent in his allusion to Adam Shapiro, offered as an instance of the atrocities visited by American Jews on people whose only sin is "criticism of Israeli policies" (22). He identifies Shapiro as "the idealistic...American Jewish peace activist" (22). Whatever Shapiro is, he is not a peace activist; he is a Yasser Arafat activist. A leader of the International Solidarity Movement founded by his wife, Huwaida Arraf, his "idealism" consisted of offering himself as a human shield (also breakfast companion) for Arafat in Ramallah, in the hope of making it easier for the arch-terrorist to murder Jewish children with impunity. His "criticism of Israeli policies" consisted of celebrating "suicide operations" as "noble" and urging that violence is a necessity of "Palestinian resistance."
One might expect that Jay would do better in reporting on Jewish misdeeds that "cause" the release of untidy emotions in anti-Semites when these misdeeds occur right under his nose, so to speak. But in fact the most egregious example of deceptive reporting in his essay is his account of an event on his own campus: the Univesity of California at Berkeley. It reads as follows: "When literally thousands of emails and withdrawals of substantial alumni donations to the University of California at Berkeley followed the disclosure that a course description for an English class...endorsed the Palestinian position, it becomes abundantly clear how concerted the effort has become to punish dissenters from Sharon's heavy-handed policies"(22-23). And here is the description (not provided by Jay, needless to add) of that course, offered by one Snehal Shingavi:
"The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance: Since the inception of the intifada in September 2000, Palestinians have been fighting for their right to exist. The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, an occupation that has been ongoing since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance. This class will examine the history of the Palestinian resistance...in order to produce an understanding of the intifada and to develop a coherent political analysis of the situation. This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination. Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections."
For Jay, this polemical balderdash is nothing more than "dissent" from the policies of Sharon, who is not even mentioned in the description. The real culprit in Jay's eyes is not the puffed-up insurrectionary who conceived this obscene travesty of "an English class," but the people who have the temerity to criticize it. And somehow he knows that, in a state where millions of people consider themselves to be "conservative thinkers," all the objectors were Jews.11
Coming to the defense of Jews and Israel has never been an exercise for the faint-hearted; and to do so in a place like Berkeley, where mob rule prevented Benjamin Netanhayu (in September 2000) from giving a lecture in the city, and where cadres of Arab and leftist students can shut down campus buildings and disrupt final exams whenever the anti-Israel fit is upon them, may even require a special degree of courage. Jews who assign responsibility for anti-Jewish aggression to Jewish misbehavior not only save themselves from the unpleasant and often dangerous task of coming to the defense of the Jews under attack but also retain the delightful charms of good conscience. Hitler's professors (to borrow the title of Max Weinreich's famous book of 194612) were the first to make anti-Semitism both academically respectable and complicit in murder. They have now been succeeded by Arafat's professors: not only the boycotters, not only the advocates of suicide bombings, but also the fellow travelers like Martin Jay.
NOTES
1. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism,3 vols. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951), III, p. 138.
2. See Edward Alexander, "The Academic Boycott of Israel: Back to 1933?" Jerusalem Post, 3 January 2003; "Evil Educators Defend the Indefensible,"Jerusalem Post, 10 January 2003; and ""Suicide Bombing 101," American Spectator June/July 2001, pp. 28-30.
3. David Caute, The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
4. Martin Peretz, "Traveling With Bad Companions," Los Angeles Times, 23 June 2003.
5. Subsequent page references to Martin Jay's essay will be in parentheses in the text.
6. Albert Lindemann, Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 308, 311, 291, 140-41, 496, 54.
7. Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (New York: Basic Books, 1990).
8. Ruth R. Wisse, If I Am Not for Myself...The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 138.
9. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, III, p. 138.
10. Quoted in Rosie DiManno, "Unlike Victims, Bomber Died without Pain," Toronto Star, June 19, 2002.
11. In a well-hidden place, n. 33, Jay acknowledges that "some of the outcry" about the course had to do with its last sentence telling Conservative thinkers to get lost; but he is confident that "the main reason for the response was the content of the course" (p. 28). Another Berkeley faculty member, who teaches in the English department, has provided me with the following description of the incident, which may be instructive:
"I don't think that any chairman would dare disallow such a class on political grounds for fear of PC [Political Correctness] extortion. Of course, the crucial point—that such a class has nothing to do with English—doesn't even enter the picture since so many English composition classes have been politicized...that it's hard to imagine an English chair eager to defend the teaching of grammar and logic. Hence, the brazenness of the instructor who wrote that course description: without the statement that conservatives were not welcome (which is discriminatory), the pedagogy and politics of the course would have been unassailable in the current climate.
One thing I distinctly remember with regard to the Palestinian composition class incident was that it coincided with a very loud anti-Israel rally—louder than the anti-war demonstration last week."
12. Max Weinreich, Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Hitler's Crimes Against the Jewish People (New York: YIVO, 1946).
Edward Alexander's most recent books are Irving Howe—Socialist, Critic, Jew (Indiana University Press, 1998) and Classical Liberalism and the Jewish Tradition (Transaction Publishers, 2002).
This is hilarious!
11.11.03 (2:00 am) [edit]I was roaming around tblog and this was a link on someone's blog-- http://www.maleb.cjb.net
Hehehe, I had to laugh!
I think this is true for the real Britney Spears also!
Enjoy!
Now for some quizzes. . .
You are Trinity, from "The Matrix."
Strong, beautiful- you epitomize the ultimate
heroine.
What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
You have a dominant kiss- you take charge and make
sure your partner can feel it! Done artfully,
it can be very satisfactory if he/she is into
you playing the dominant role MEORW!
What kind of kiss are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Why I am not a Christian
11.11.03 (1:37 am) [edit]
Recently, someone told me that Jesus was the Messiah and king of the Jews.
Being Jewish, I thought to myself, "The Jewish Messiah? The Jewish king? I don't remember accepting him as such. I don't remember the whole of Judaism accepting him either. In fact, we're still waiting for our Messiah. We're still waiting for our king. What the heck!?"
And then I told the person, "He's not my king. He's not my messiah. Mine hasn't come yet. If you think he's YOUR messiah, if you think he's YOUR king, enjoy. I think you're wrong, but enjoy. Just don't tell me he's MY king and messiah. That, he ain't."
And here is why. . .
Traditional Christian claims about Jesus' divinity rest on the virgin birth, his resurrection, his Davidic lineage (suggesting that he is the Messiah predicted in the Torah), and the miracles he performed during his lifetime. These claims have varying levels of verifiability.
Some Christian claims, like those of other religions, are objectively unverifiable, resting on the testimony of only one person. For example, nobody but Jesus' mother, Mary, could have known if he were really the product of a virgin birth.
Regarding the resurrection, former president of the Catholic Biblical Association Raymond E. Brown admits that "the New Testament does not make claim that anyone saw the resurrection," and therefore "the reality of the bodily resurrection hinges on the missing body or the empty tomb and, above all, on the calidity of the experiences of those who claimed they saw Jesus risen." According to Christian tradition, all twelve disciples and Mary Magdalene saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion, and "the apostles" saw Jesus ascend into the heaven at the conclusion of his earthly mission.
The difficulty with these post-resurrectional appearances is that the Gospels offer controdictory accounts of them. Luke, John, and the Marcan Appendix imply that Jesus appeared only in Jerusalem, while Matthew and Mark say Jesus appeared only in Galilee. Brown also notes these controdictions: "The Jerusalem accounts leave little or no room for subsequent appearances in Galilee," he writes, while "the Galilean accounts seem to rule out prior Jerusalem appearances." Disconcertingly, spokesmen for the Catholic Church do not cite any ancient oral tradition that might harmonize these contradictions. Brown, in an essay carrying the approbation of the Catholic Church's Pontifical Biblical Commission, confesses that apostles living in different cities probably "adopted to the respective local setting the tradition of a basic appearance to the twelve"
As to Jesus' Davidic (and therefore messianic) lineage, conflicting reports of Jesus' geneology weaken traditional Christian claims. As the table below indicates, Matthew and Luke disagree even on who Jesus' paternal grandfather was, let alone earlier ancestors. Moreover, Matthew explicitly declares that only 28 generations seperated Jesus from King David (1:17), but Luke's list shows a 43 generation seperation. In an essay endorsed by the Archbishop of Milan, Catholic theologian John P. Meier admits that these genealogies are "of questionable historicity."
In addition, if Jesus were indeed the product of a virgin birth, then he would not share in his father's alleged Davidic ancestry at all. As a result, Mary would have to provide Jesus with his Davidic pedigree--a possibility not mentioned anywhere in the Christian Bible.
[u][b] Jesus' Genealogy According to Two Christian Gospels[/b][/u]
[b][i]Matthew 1:6-16[/i][/b]
King David
Soloman
Rehoboam
Abijah
Asa
Jehoshaphat
Joram
Uzziah
Jotham
Ahaz
Hezekiah
Manasseh
Amon
Josiah
Jechoniah
Shealtiel
Zerubbabel
Abuid
Eliakim
Azor
Zadok
Achim
Eliud
Eleazar
Matthan
Jacob
Joseph
Jesus
[b][i]Luke 3:23-38[/i][/b]
King David
Nathan
Mattatha
Menna
Melea
Eliakim
Jonim
Joseph
Judah
Symeon
Levi
Matthat
Jorim
Eliezer
Jesus
Er
Elmadam
Cosam
Addi
Melchi
Neri
Shealtiel
Zerubbabel
Rhesa
Joanan
Joda
Josech
Semein
Mattathias
Maath
Naggai
Esli
Nahum
Amos
Mattathias
Joseph
Jannai
Melchi
Levi
Matthat
Heli
Joseph
Jesus
Christianity's credibility derives mostly from its descriptions of the miracles Jesus performed. For instance, "the disciples" saw Jesus walk on the Sea of Galilee. The text fails to mention who the disciples were, or how many of them were present, but, given the plural referance, there must have been at least two or as many as all twelve. Also, three disciples (Peter, James, and John) witnessed Elijah and Moses materialize, confer with Jesus, and then disappear again.
As religions go, this is impressive. While most religions could be launched by a single swindler, egotist, or lunatic, more than a dozen people would have had to conspire to launch these miracle stories. Because, historically, would-be religious leaders have had difficulty forming (let along maintaining) conspiracies that size--as evidenced by the dearth of movements wherein more than two or three living individuals claim to have experienced anything miraculous--the story of Christianity's founding stands apart as unusually credible.
One might argue that Christianity has an even more solid basis. Many times "a crowd" saw Jesus heal the disables, blind, and insane. (See, for example, Mark 2:12, 8:24-5, and 5:15.) Christian sources also describe how Jesus fed "as many as five thousand men" with only five loaves of bread. These claims, however, do not do much to buttress Christian credibility since the NT fails to name any of the individuals involved in these mass marvels. How could anyone dispute the veracity of an even with only [i]unnamed[/i] witnesses? Skeptics could always be appeased; early promoters of Christianity could simply explain, "There were as many as five thousand witnesses, and someday you will probably meet one!" Credible claims must explicitly name individuals or groups who can be approached for confirmation.
Moreover, for three reasons, even the stories of miracles attested to by explicitly named apostles do not provide Christianity with an indestructable foundation:
1. However rare it might be, it is [i]possible[/i] for 12 people to conspire. The apostles might have exaggerated or fabricated their claims.
2. Even if all the stories about Jesus were true, none of them would prove that he was the messiah, let alone God. The Torah describes how the Jewish prophet Elisha poured a vast amount of oil from a tiny vial (parallel to Jesus' multiplication of the loaves); how Elisha (like Jesus) revived the dead; and how the Jewish prophet Elijah (again, like Jesus) ascended to heaven alive. Yet the Torah and its adherents never entertained the possibility that Elisha or Elijah was the messiah or God. To the contrary, the Torah even predicts the coming of false prophets who will perform real miracles and warns Jewry not to follow anyone who tries to dissuade them from observing the Torah's precepts. The performance of miracles only proves that someon can perform miracles--nothing more.
3. Christianity may have been launched years after all these events supposedly took place. One or several promulgators of the Christian Bible could have created these stories and passed them off on people who never met the witnesses or even the witnesses' decendants, and who therefore had no way of verifying or disproving the accounts. Indeed, the Catholic Church itself claims both that Paul wrote more than half the books included in the NT and that Paul met Jesus for the first time in a vision more than three decades after the crucifixion. According to Brown, Chruch doctrine affirms that "No one of the four evangelists was himself an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus."
Thus, while Christianity presents a more solid story than most religions, even its basis is impeachable.
Why Jew-Hatred Is Unique
11.10.03 (6:05 pm) [edit]Hatred of the Jews has been humanity's greatest hatred. While hatred of other groups has always existed, no hatred has been as universal, as deep, or as permanent as antisemitism. The Jews have been objects of hatred in pagan, religious, and secular societies. Fascists have accused them of being Communists, and Communists have branded them capitalists. Jews who live in non-Jewish societies have been accused of having dual loyalties, while Jews who live in the Jewish State have been condemned as "racists." Poor Jews are bullied, and rich Jews are resented. Jews have been branded as both rootless cosmopolitans and ethnic chauvinists. Jews who assimilate have been called a "fifth column," while those who stay together spark hatred for remaining separate. Hundreds of millions of people have believed (and in the Arab world many still do) that Jews drink the blood of non-Jews, that they cause plagues and poison wells, that they secretly plot to conquer the world, and that they murdered God.
The [i]universality[/i] of antisemitism is attested to by innumerable facts, the most dramatic being that Jews have been expelled from so many of the European and Arab societies in which they have resided. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306 and 1394, Hungary between 1349 and 1360, Austria in 1421, numerous localities in Germany between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Lithuania in 1445 and 1495, Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1497, and Bohemia and Moravia in 1744-45. Between the fifteenth century and 1772, Jews were not allowed into Russia; when finally admitted there, they were restricted to one area, the Pale of Settlement. Between 1948 and 1967, nearly all the Jews of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen fled these countries, fearing for their lives.
The [i]depth[/i] of antisemitism is evidenced by the frequency with which hostility against Jews has gone far beyond discrimination and erupted into sustained violence. In most societies in which Jews have lived, they have at some time been subjected to beatings, torture, and murder solely because they were Jewish. In the Russian Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mass beatings and murders of Jews were so common that a word, [i]pogrom[/i], was coined to describe such incidents. And these pogroms were viewed by their antisemitic perpetrators as being of such significance that they were equated with the saving of Russia.
On a number of occasions even beating and murdering Jewish communities was not deemed sufficient. Antisemitic passions have run so deep that only the actual annihilation of the Jewish people could solve what came to be called by antisemites as the "Jewish Problem." The basic source of ancient Jewish history, the Bible, depicts two attempts to destroy the Jewish people, that by Pharaoh and the Egyptians (Exodus 1:15-22) and that of Haman and the Persians (Book of Esther). While it is true that the historicity of these biblical accounts has not been proven or disproven by nonbiblical sources, few would dispute the supposition that in ancient times attempts were made to destroy the Jews. Indeed, the first recorded reference to Jews in non-Jewish sources, the Mernephta stele, written by an Egyptian king about 1220 B.C.E., states, "Israel is no more."
Jewish writings from the earliest times until the present are replete with references to attempts by non-Jews to destroy the Jewish people. Psalm 83:5 describes the enemies of the Jews as proponents of genocide: "Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the Name of Israel may no more be remembered." Just how precarious Jews have viewed their survival is reflected in a statement from the ancient, and annually recited, Passover Haggadah; "In every generation they rise against us in order to annihilate us."
On three occasion during the last 350 years, annihilation campaigns have been waged against the Jews: the Chmelnitzky massacres in eastern Europe in 1648-49, the Nazi German destruction of Jews throughout Europe between 1939 and 1945, and the attempt to eradicate the Jewish State by its enemies.
For various reasons, the Chmelnitzky massacres are today not well known among Jews and are virtually unknown among non-Jews; perhaps the Holocaust tends to overshadow all previous Jewish suffering. Yet, without denying the unique aspects of the Nazi Holocaust, there are a number of significant similarities between it and the Chmelnitzky massacres. In both instances, all Jews, including infants, were targeted for murder; the general populaces nearly always joined in the attacks; and the torture and degradation of Jews were an integral part of the murderers' procedures. These characteristics are evidenced by the following contemporaneous description of a typical Chmelnitzky massacre:
"Some of [the Jews] had their skins flayed off them and their flesh was flung to the dogs. The hands and feet of others were cut off and they were flung into the roadway where carts ran over them and they were trodden underfoot by horse...And many were buried alive. Children were slaughtered in their mothers' bosoms and many children were torn apart like fish. They ripped up the bellies of pregnant women, took out the unborn children, and flung them in their faces. They tore open the bellies of some of them and placed a living cat within the belly and left them alive thus, first cutting of their hands so that they should not be able to take the living cat out of the belly...and there was never an unnatural death in the world that they did not inflict upon them" (N. Hanover, [i]Yevin Mezulah[/i], pp31-32, cited in H. H. Ben-Sasson et al., [i]A History of the Jewish People[/i], p 656).
The [i]permanence[/i] (as well as depth) of antisemitism is attested to by the obsessive attention given to the "Jewish Problem" by antisemites throughout history. At one time or another nearly every major country that has had a large Jewish population has regarded this group, which never constituted more than a small percentage of its population, as an enemy. To the Roman Empire in the first century, the European Christian world for over fifteen centuries, the Nazi Reich, the Soviet Union, and to the Arabs and much of the Muslim world, the Jews have been or are regarded as an insufferable threat.
Jews have been perceived as so dangerous that even after their expulsion or destruction, hatred and fear of them remain. The depiction of Jews as ritual murderers of young Christian children in Chaucer's "Prioress's Tale" in [i]The Canterbury Tales[/i] one hundred years after all Jews had been expelled from England attests to the durability of antisemitism. So does the characterization of Jews as usurers who wish to collect their interest in flesh in Shakespeare's [i]The Merchant of Venice[/i], three hundred years after the Jews' expulsion. A more recent example was Poland in 1968, when for months the greatest issue for Polish radio, television, and newspapers was the "Unmasking of Zionists in Poland." Of the thirty-three million citizens of Poland in 1968, the Jews numbered about twenty thousand or less than one-fifteenth of 1%.
How are the universality, depth, and permanence of antisemitism to be explained? Why such hatred and fear of a people who never constituted more than a small minority among those who most hated and feared them? Why, nearly always and nearly everywhere, the Jews?
Many answers have been offered by scholars. These include, most commonly, economic factors, the need for scapegoats, ethnic hatred, zenophobia, resentment of Jewish affluence and professional success, and religious bigotry. But ultimately these answers do not explain antisemitism; they only explain what factors have [i]exacerbated[/i] it and caused it to erupt in a given circumstance. None accounts for the universality, depth, and persistence of antisemitism. In fact, I have encountered virtually no study of this phenomenon that even attempts to offer a universal explanation of Jew-hatred. Nearly every study of antisemitism consists almost solely of historical narrative, thus seeming to indicate that no universal reason for antisemitism exists.
I reject this approach. To ignore or deny that there is an ultimate cause for antisemitism contradicts both common sense and history. Antisemitism has existed too long, and in too many disparate cultures, to ignore the problem of ultimate cause and/or to claim that new or indigenous factors are responsible every time it erupts. Factors specific to a given society help account for the manner or time in which antisemitism erupts. But they do not explain its genesis--why antisemitism at all??? To cite but one example: the depressed economy of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s helps to explain why Nazis hated Jews, let alone why they wanted to murder every Jew. Economic depressions do not explain gas chambers.
The very consistency of the passions Jews have aroused demands a consistent explanation. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, medieval and many modern Christians and Muslims, and Nazis and Communists have perhaps only one thing in common: they have all, at some point counted the Jews as their enemy, often their greatest enemy. Why?
Among Jews, this question has been posed only in the modern era. Until the modern age, Jews never asked, "Why us?" They knew why. Throughout their history, Jews have regarded Jew-hatred as an inevitable consequence of their Jewishness. Contrary to modern understandings of antisemitism, the age-old Jewish understanding of antisemitism does posit a universal explanation for Jew-hatred: Judaism, meaning the Jews' God, laws, peoplehood, and claim to be chosen. The historical record, as we shall show, confirms the traditional Jewish view that the Jews were hated because of Jewish factors. Modern attempts to dejudaize Jew-hatred, to attribute it to economic, social, and political factors, and universalize it into merely another instance of bigotry, are as opposed to the facts of Jewish history as they are to the historical Jewish understanding of antisemitism.
Antisemites have not hated Jews because Jews are affluent--poor Jews have always been as hated; or strong--weak Jews have simply invited antisemitic bullies; or because Jews may have unpleasant personalities--genocide is not personality-generated; or because ruling classes focus worker discontent onto Jews--precapitalist and noncapitalist societies such as the former Soviet Union, other Communist states, and various Third World countries, have been considerably more antisemitic than capitalist societies. Antisemites have hated Jews because Jews are Jewish. Christian antisemites ceased hating rich Jews when they became Christians. Muslim antisemites embrace Jews who convert to Islam. The same has held true for virtually all other antisemites except the Nazis.
What about Judaism has provoked anti-Jewish hostility? There are four answers:
1. For thousands of years Judaism has consisted of four components: God, Torah, Israel, and Chosenness; that is, the God introduced by the Jews, Jewish laws, Jewish peoplehood, and the belief that the Jews are God's chosen people. Jews' allegiance to any of these components has been a major source of antisemitism because it not only rendered the Jew an outsider, but more important, it has often been regarded by non-Jews as challenging the validity of their god(s), law(s), national allegiance, and/or national worth.
By affirming what they considered to be the one and only God of all humankind, thereby implying illegitimacy to everyone else's gods, the Jews entered history--and have often been since--at war with other people's most cherished beliefs. The antisemites also hated the Jews because the Jews lived by their own all-encompassing set of laws. And because the Jews also asserted their own national identity, Jews intensified antisemitic passions among those who viewed this identity as threatening their own nationalism.
2. As if the above were not enough, Judaism has also held from the earliest times that the Jews were chosen by God to achieve this mission of bringing the world to God and His moral law (i.e., ethical monotheism). This doctrine of the Jews' divine election has been major cause for antisemitism.
3. From its earliest days, the raison d'etre of Judaism has been to change the world for the better (in the words of an ancient Jewish prayer recited daily, "to repair the world under the rule of God."). This attempt to change the world, to challenge the gods, religious or secular, of the societies around them, and to make moral demands upon others (even when not done expressly in the name of Judaism) has constantly been a source of tension.
4. As a result of the Jews' commitment to Judaism, they have led higher-quality lives than their non-Jewish neighbors in almost every society where they have lived. For example, Jews have nearly always been better educated; Jewish family life has usually been more stable; Jews aided one another more than their non-Jewish neighbors aided each other; and Jewish men have been less likely to become drunk, beat their wives, or abandon their children. As a result of these factors, the quality of life of the average Jew, no matter how poor, was higher than that of a comparable non-Jew in the same society. This higher quality of life among Jews, which directly results from Judaism, has, as one would expect, provoked profound envy and hostility among many non-Jews.
Since Judaism is the root cause of antisemitism, Jews, [i]unlike victims of racial or ethnic prejudice[/i], could in almost every instance of antisemitism, except Nazism, escape persecution. For thousands of years and until today, Jews who abandoned their Jewish identity and assumed the majority's religious and national identity were no longer persecuted (There is one apparent exception to this rule, the Marranos and Conversos of Spain. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Jews who converted to Christianity in Spain were not easily accepted into Catholic society. But this was overwhelmingly due to the circumstances of the Jews' conversions. The Christian hierarchy was reluctant to accept these Jewish converts as genuine Christians because it knew that they had converted under threats of expulsion or death, and therefore the sincerity of the Jews' Christianity was questioned).
For these reasons, Jews have always regarded antisemitism as a response, however immoral, to Judaism. Thus, most Jews until the modern era, and most religious Jews to this day, would describe Jews murdered by antisemites not as victims of ethnic prejudice but as having died [i]al kiddush hashem[/i], that is, as martyrs sanctifying the name of God before the world.
What is Antisemitism?
11.10.03 (3:41 am) [edit]Recently, I was asked, "How do you define antisemitism?"
Well, let me tell you. . .
[b]Antisemitism: The Hatred of Judaism and Ethical Monotheism[/b]
Judaism consists of four components: God, Torah (laws and teachings), Israel (Jewish nationhood), and Choseness. Throughout Jewish history, the Jews' affirmation of one of more of these components has challenged, even threatened, the gods, laws, and cultures of non-Jews among whom the Jews have lived.
It is because of the hatred of these components that a hatred for Jewish people has arisen and grown.
The name for that hatred: Antisemitism.
The French Socialists.
11.10.03 (1:40 am) [edit]As promised, here is the next chapter of all this. After this entry, I may take a brief hiatus and tackle a different topic for a bit. We shall see.
As I've stated before, this is not a broad-brushed painting of all French Socialists. On the contrary, non of these entries are. I'm simply writing about what went on with SOME of the members of the group that I am addressing.
[b]The French Socialists[/b]
Had socialist antisemitism been promulgated on the Left only by Karl Marx and his followers, it would have ceased serious problems for Jews. But some of the other founders of socialism, the French socialists, were even more anti-Jewish than Marx.
George Lichtheim, one of the foremost twentieth-century historians of socialism, has emphasized the relevance of French socialism to subsequent leftist antisemitism, since France "was the cradle of the socialist movement where socialism developed a full generation before it developed in Germany." Lichtheim documented how from its beginning, in the early 1800s, French socialism was hostile to Jews.
Charles Fourier, one of the two founders of French socialism, regarded the Jews as "parasites, merchants, usurers," whose emancipation he termed "the most shameful of all recent vices of society."
Henri de Saint-Simon, the other founder of French socialism, was sympathetic to Jews, acknowledging that the socialist mission was a form of messianism derived from them. Unfortunately, as Lichtheim documents, in the French socialist community, the antisemitism of Fourier triumphed over the philo-semitism of Saint-Simon.
In the decades after the Fourier and Saint-Simon, strong anti-Jewish views were expressed by three leading French socialists: Alphonse Toussenel, Pierre Leroux, and Pierre Joseph Proudhon.
In 1845, Toussenel published [i]Les Juifs, rois de l'epoque (The Jews: Kings of the Epoch)[/i], which was favourably reviewed by much of the socialist press. In this essay, he developed the theme of "the cosmopolitan Jew....Europe is subject to the domination of Israel. This universal domination, of which so many conquerors have dreamed, the Jews have in their hands." Similar ideas were later expressed by Proudhon. The belief in Jewish world domination was spread during the twentieth-century through [i]The Protocols of the Elders of Zion[/i], and used by the Nazis as a justification for genocide. This mythical world view was first introduced into the West's consciousness not by racists, Fascists, or Nazi, but rather by socialists in the ninteenth-century France.
Pierre Leroux, creator of the term "socialism," identified the Jews with despised capitalism, and regarded them as the incarnation of [i]mammon[/i], who lived by exploiting others. Leroux, a religious Christian, saw but one solution to the "Jewish Problem" --the conversion of all Jews to Christianity.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, one of the most important theorists of early socialism, expressed his antisemitism in his public writings in a "moderate" manner, and in a more extreme form in his journals, which were published posthumously.
In the journals of this great socialist, we find Nazi-like sentiments regarding the Jews. In December 1847, he outlined a program for the disappearance of Jewry: "This race poisons everything by meddling everywhere without ever joining itself to another people. Demand their expulsion from France, with the exception of individuals married to Frenchwomen. Abolish the synagogues: don't admit them to any kind of employment, pursue finally the abolition of this cult...The Jew is the enemy of the human race. One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it....By fire or fusion or by expulsion, the Jew must disapear....What the peoples of the middle ages hated by instinct I hate upon reflection, and irrevocably."
It is no wonder that Proudhon's disciples justified the Russian pogroms. As Lichtheim notes: "Four years after [Proudhon's] death, in 1869, his pupil George Duchene...[declared]: 'Citizens, when you hear it said that in a notoriously barbarous country [Russia] the population treats the Jews roughly, do not believe one treacherous word. What you have is simply a case of honest people chasing rascals, usurers, and exploiters of labor.'"
Against this backdrop, the indifference of socialists to the fate of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer falsely accused by the French government of having spied for Germany, becomes explicable. One might have expected that French socialists, who were hostile toward the government, church, and military (all three of which led the attack on Dreyfus), would have risen to his defense. But Dreyfus was a Jew. For this reason alone, the French socialist press (Jan 28, 1898) published a manifesto calling for "non-participation in the Dreyfus Affair on the grounds that while the reaction wishes to exploit the conviction of one Jew to disqualify all Jews, Jewish capitalists would use the rehabilitation of a single Jew to wash out 'all the sins of Israel.'"
Among the manifesto's signatories were the leading socialists of the age, including Alexandre Millerand, Marcel Sembat, Jules Guesde, and Jean Jaures. When the socialists did subsequently take a stand on the Dreyfus case, they made a point of declaring that the Jewish aspect of the antisemitic affair was irrelevant.
Thus, the French socialists, with the exception of Saint-Simon and a very few others, propounded antisemitism from the beginning. In 1947, the historian Zosa Szajkowski concluded his painstakingly researched article, "The Jewish Saint-Simonians and Socialist Anti-Semitism in France," by noting that try as he might, he could not find a single word on behalf of Jews in the whole French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920.
Leftist Antisemitism.
11.06.03 (4:25 pm) [edit]I will deliver [i]Leftist Antisemitism[/i] in sections, starting with Marxism.
Marxism and Socialism, like Christianity and Islam, were born with Jew-hatred. Their two main ideological sources, Marx and the early French socialists, developed antisemitic ideas that have characterized much of the Left to this day.
[b]Karl Marx[/b]
The father of Marxist ideologies, Karl Marx, was born in the German city of Trier in 1818. Though descended on both parents' sides from a long line of distinguished rabbis, Marx was baptized a Lutheran when he was six years old. His father, who had converted to Christianity before Karl's birth in order to continue practicing law (forbidden to Jews by new Prussian laws), baptized his children so that they would not suffer from antisemitism. It was into this self-denying, antisemitic world that Karl Marx was born.
Given this background, it is not surprising that one of Marx's first major essays was on [i]The Jewish Question[/i]. He ostensibly wrote the piece as a response to the philosopher Bruno Bauer's article, "The Jewish Question," in which Bauer virulently attacked the Jews and Judaism, and argued against emancipation for the Jews until they abandon their "exclusive religion, morality and customs."
Marx, though critical of Bauer's conclusions, not only did not question Bauer's antisemitism, he actually outdid Bauer in antisemitic vituperation. He criticized Bauer for primarily attacking religious Jews, when all who identify as Jews should be attacked: "Not only in the Pentateuch [Torah] and in the Talmud, but also in present-day society we find the essence of the modern Jew." As the historian Robert Wistrich notes, "Marx's hatred was therefore focused not [only] against Bruno Bauer's 'Sabbath-Jew' but rather against contemporary Jewry."
[i]On The Jewish Question[/i] is filled with hatred of Jews and Judaism so extreme that at times it sinks to Nazi-like Jew-hatred: "What is the secular cult of the Jew? [i]Haggling.[/i] What is his secular god? [i]Money[/i]. Well then! Emancipation from [i]haggling[/i] and [i]money[/i], from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our time." "Money is the jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may stand."
In the closing passages of [i]On The Jewish Question[/i], Marx goes so far as to identify the emancipation of humanity with the abolition of Judaism.
The stark antisemitism of [i]On The Jewish Question[/i] has always proved an embarrassment to Jewish socialists who retained a Jewish identity. For over a hundred years after its writing, Jewish socialists, who translated almost all of Marx's writings into Yiddish and Hebrew, refrained from translating Marx's only essay devoted exclusively to the Jewish question.
Other Marxists, however, have been only too pleased to translate and learn from Marx's Jew-hating essay. In 1963, for example, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, then under Communist rule, published [i]Judaism Without Embellishment[/i] by Trofim K. Kichko, who liberally quoted from [i]On The Jewish Question[/i]. The book was so antisemitic that international protests forced the Soviet government to withdraw it from circulation.
Adolf Hitler, too, claimed to have learned from Marx's essay: "It is quite enough that the scientific knowledge of the danger of Judaism is gradually deepened and that every individual on the basis of knowledge begins to eliminate the Jew within himself, and I am very much afraid that this beautiful thought originates from non other than a Jew."
Nor was the Jew-hatred in [i]On The Jewish Question[/i] an exception to Marx's views on the Jews. His subsequent writings about Jews, even working-class ones, remained uniformly contemptuous. For example, Marx described the impoverished Jewish refugees from Poland in Germany as "this filthiest of all races, [who] only perhaps by its passion for greedy gain could be related to [the Jewish capitalists of] Frankfort." The April 29, 1849, issue of [i]Neue Rheinische Zeitung[/i], which Marx then edited, accused Polish Jews of robbing churches, burning villages, and beating defenseless Poles to death--charges that were "outrageous slanders against a people who lived in daily dread of the very crimes they were accused of" (Geltman, pp24-25 "On Socialist Anti-Semitism").
A contemporary reader of Marx would conclude that wealthy capitalist Jews destroy society and that poorer Jews are too uncivilized to enter it.
Marx even dredged up the ancient libel of Manetho, who had described the Jews' exodus from Egypt as "the expulsion of a 'people of lepers' headed by an Egyptian priest named Moses." And in the 1850s, Marx ridiculed those who fought for the right of Baron Lionel Rothschild to take the seat that he had won in the British House of Commons: "It is doubtful whether the British people will be very much pleased by extending electoral rights to a Jewish usurer."
In keeping with his policy, of antagonism toward both rich and poor Jews, Marx ignored the plight of Jewish workers, though they lived near him in London. Likewise, he never commented on the pogroms that swept though Russia in 1881, though he often wrote on behalf of victims of oppression. Throughout his life, Marx identified Jews and Judaism with all that he hated in capitalism.
The historian Edmund Silberner has noted two negative influences of Marx's anti-Jewish writings. They provoked and strengthened anti-Jewish prejudices among Christian Marxists, and they alienated Jewish Marxists from the Jewish people. The latter was evidenced most dramatically in 1891, when Abraham Cahan, later the editor of the Yiddish [i]Forward[/i] but then a delegate to the Second Socialist International in Brussels, urged that body to condemn Europe's increasing antisemitism. To Cahan's shock, [i]both the Jewish and non-Jewish delegates opposed a resolution condemning antisemitism[/i]. According to the socialists, the one answer to antisemitism was for all Jews to cease being Jews and to adopt the antisemites' (in this case, a socialist) identity. Thus, the final resolution of the Second International condemned "anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic [i.e., Jewish] outbursts as one of the means by which the capitalist class and reactionary governments seek to divert the socialist movement and divide the workers." The socialists thereby nullified opposition to antisemitism by equating it with Judaism, and by seeing both as enemies of socialism.
*Next, the French Socialists!
Islamic Antisemitism
11.06.03 (12:53 am) [edit]Islam was the 2nd religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. For as while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity.
At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.
[b]Muhammad And The Jews[/b]
Like Christianity's. Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-à-vis Judaism.
When Islam was born in the 7th century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as God was called in Judaism and later in Islam.
During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goiten noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears personal responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasize, from Israel."
The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the Book of Moses was revealed...This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure in the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.
The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary'...Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).
Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substituted Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrus: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols" (5:3). The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.
Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jew's founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.
Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luthor...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.
The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.
One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis.
Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superseding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism and Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians are rendering absurd the prophet's claims that he was superseding Jesus."
Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.
For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was ever more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goiten concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."
As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the NT, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. These writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to Jews.
In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah...Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).
Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed to them" (4:160).
Third, Muhammad Charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.
Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they" (9:30).
These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.
One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because the disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for t heir disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day.
In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing out prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and in this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this."
Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had--and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.
Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.
As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of Muslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.
No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of [i]dhimmis[/i] (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet, the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.
Reply To a recent Request.
11.04.03 (4:47 pm) [edit]Recently, I was privatly asked to find sources showing Christian antisemitism. It is my belief that the NT itself has an anti-Jew bias. [u]This is not to say all practicing Christians are anti-semites[/u], rather, it is to point out some things that I find questionable. On the contrary, today there are many good people who are followers of the Christian faith. I am not pointing fingers at individuals, rather, I'm just bringing concerns about some doctrines themselves to light. NO PRACCTICING INDIVIDUAL IS BEING BLAMED FOR THE WRONGDOINGS OF THEIR PREDICESSORS! I envite anyone reading this to please feel free to, kindly, correct my confusion.
[b]Questionable Laws in Catholicism:[/b]
Jews not allowed to hold public office, Synod of Clermont, 535.
Jews not allowed to show themselves in the street during Passion Week, Third Synod of Orleans, 538.
Burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books, 12th Synod of Toledo, 681.
Christians not permitted to patronize Jewish doctors, Trulanic Synod, 692.
Jews obligated to pay taxes for the support of the church to the same extent of Christians, Synod of Gerona, 1078.
The marking of Jewish clothes with a badge, Fourth Lateran Council, Cannon 68 (copied from Islamic legislation that had decreed that Christians wear blue belts and Jews, yellow belts).
Christians not permitted to attend Jewish ceremonies, Synod of Vienna, 1267.
Compulsory ghettos, Synod of Breslau, 1267.
Christians not permitted to sell or rent real estate to Jews, Synod of Ofen, 1279.
Jews not permitted to obtain academic degrees, Council of Basel, Sessio XIX.
In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council accepted the doctrine of transubstantiation as official church dogma. This dogma asserted that the wafer used at the Mass was miraculously transformed into the body of Jesus; the wafer was to be regarded not as a symbolic representation of Jesus, but as his actual body. Just how literally Christians accepted this teaching is exemplified in the writings of a leading preacher of the thirteenth century, Berthold of Regensburg. He explained that Christ, though present in the wafer, does not allow himself to be seen in it, for "who would like to bite off the little head, or the little hands, or the little feet of a little child?"
Antisemitic usage of the doctrine of transubstantiation soon let to the torture and murder of thousands of Jews. Since, Jesus becomes present through the wafer, the reasoning went, would not the Jews who had once crucified him with to torture and kill him again? In 1243, only twenty-eight years after the Fourth Lateran Council, the first accusation of "host desecration" occurred in Berlitz, near Berlin. The city's entire Jewish community was burned alive for allegedly torturing a wafer.
[b]The founders[/b] of Christianity felt that they were confronted with a terrible fact--the Jews, merely by continuing to be Jewish, threatened the very legitimacy of the church. If Judaism remained valid, they believed, then Christianity was invalid. Therein lie the origins of Christian antisemitism.
The church fathers had to deal with this Jewish challenge, and they did so in a most logical manner. Since the existence of hte Jews and Judaism challenged the legitimacy of the Church, the church had to deny the legitimacy of the Jews and Judaism. The church would now be Israel; and Israel would be discredited.
To that end the early church promulgated a number of doctrines that theologically invalidated the Jews' continuing existence. These doctrines were given the greatest possible significance, divine authentication, by being placed in the Christian Bible and by often being attributed to Jesus himself. In this way, for Christian antisemites, the NT canonized antisemitism.
The NT did not depict the Crucifixion as the Roman execution it was, nor did it merely discredit the Jews' theological arguments against the divine claims made for Jesus. Rather, the Jews (of the time, as most Christians today understand it; the Jews [i]always[/i] for Christian antisemites), not just their arguments, were discredited. Thus it is to bear responsibilty for that crime: "Let his blood be on our heads and the heads of our children," the Jews are reported to have announced (Matthew 27:25).
Now it is critical to note that many Christians, especially American Christians for centuries and modern Christians elsewehere today, have shown that a believing Christian need not read various passages in the NT in an antisemitic way. For example, many Christians regard the Jews who are negatively depicted in the NT as symbolizing all of sinning humanity. Nevertheless, for most of Christian history, various NT portrayals of the Jews did lead to great Jew-hatred.
The portrayal of the Jews' eternal responsibility for the Crucifixion gave rise to the most oft-repeated Christian accusation against the Jews and the greatest source of Christian Jew-hatred: every Jew in every age is a "Christ-killer." This charge gave legitimacy to the brutalizing of the Jews for more than 1,500 years in Christian Europe.
And the charge of deicide, as destructive as it was, gave birth to other, equally antisemitic libels.
The Church Fathers
Among the most admired and beloved figures in church history is St. John Chrysostom, whose Greek name translates as St. John the Golden Mouthed. The nineeth-century Protestant cleric R.S. Storrs called him "one of the most eloquent preachers who ever since apostolic times have brought to men the divine tidings of truth and love." Storrs's contemporary, the great Catholic theologin John Henry Cardinal Newman, described Chrysostom as a "bright, cheerful, gentle soul, a sensitive heart. . .all this elevated, refined, transformed by the touch of heaven--such was St. John Chrysostom."
Chrysostom's warmth did not extend to the Jews: "They know only one thing," he said, "to satisfy their stomachs, to get drunk, to kill."
"The synagogue," according to Chrysostom, "is worse than a brothel... It is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts...a criminal assembly of Jews...a place of meetings for the assassins of Christ...the refuge of devils." When some Christians argued that synagogues were entitled to a degree of respect if only because they contain the writings of Moses and the Prophets, Chrysostom objected. The fact that synagogues contain holy books is yet another reason to despise the Jews; they recognize the holy books as holy, but obstinatly refuse to accept or understand their true Christian meaning. Clearly then, they are of the Devil as the Gospels of John declares.
When Chrysostom learned that some Christians in Antioch were continuing to maintain cordial relations with Jews, he denounced them: "The Jews have assasinated the Son of God! How dare you...associate with this nation of assassins and hangmen!"
Perhaps Chrysostom's most significant contribution to antisemitism was his theological justification for violence against Jews. He argued that when Christians beat and murder Jews, it is divinely sanctioned: "It was men, say the Jews, who brought these misfortunes upon us, not God. On the contrary, it was in fact God who brought them about. If you attribute them to men, reflect again that, even supposing men had dared, they would not have had the power to accomplish them, unless it had been God's will." Concerning such justifications of Jewish suffering, the Catholic historian Malcom Hay has noted trhat "such logic would justify the German race murderers. St. Chrysostom could have preached a powerful sermon beside the mass [Jewish] grave at Dubno [Poland]. He could have explained that a revengeful God had chastised the little Jewish boy who had tried to keep back his tears so that the Germans would not see that he was afraid; and the little baby, and the Jewish family who all went down into the pit... [Chrysostom's thinking] would have been useful to the defense at Nuremberg."
At about the same time St. John Chrysostom was reviling the Jews of Antioch, St. Ambrose, to this day revered as among the greatest of the church fathers, was bishop of Milan. During his term as bishop, as bishop in Mesopotamia (in 388) he instigated the burning of a synagogue. The Roman emperor, Theodosius the Great (379-95), ordered the bishop to pay for the rebuilding of the synagogue. Upon learning of this, St. Ambrose wrote a letter of protest to Theodosius, which the emperor ignored.
A short time later, the emperor attended a church service officiated by Ambrose. The biship refused to perform the Mass unless the emporor assured him that the order to rebuild the synagogue would be rescinded. "There is no adequate cause for such a commotion," Ambrose told Theodosius, "that the people should be so severely punished for the burning of a building; and much less since it is the burning of a synagogue, a home of unbelief, a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly, which God Himself has condemned." This time, Ambrose's protest was successful, and a precedent sought by this fourth-century church father was established: if Christians destroy a synagogue, the Jews are to pay for its rebuilding.
*Next up, Islamic anti-semitism.
A nice quote I thought was cute.
11.04.03 (2:11 am) [edit]"Democracy is a form of government that subsitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." -George Bernard Shaw
It couldn't be truer at my school. Sometimes I'm kinda glad that many of them are not registerred! :twisted:
Tomorrow is election day. Don't foget to vote!
School Newspaper Update
11.03.03 (4:28 pm) [edit]The below article was sent in another letter to the editor of my school newspaper to further the point of my origional letter.
The paper didn't come out this week as it was scheduled, I'm guessing because of the recent fires around here and school being closed.
I still have yet to hear [u][i]any[/i][/u] response from that odious publication.
I'll continue to keep everyone posted to new developments with that whole shpeil.
Feel free to enjoy the article below! :D
Israel Outraged at 'Peace Threat' EU Poll
11.03.03 (4:10 pm) [edit]Mon Nov 3, 3:17 PM ET
By Robin Pomeroy
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Israel expressed outrage at a European Commission opinion poll Monday that suggested more European Union citizens see Israel as a threat to world peace than any other country including Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Commission President Romano Prodi, visiting New York, said he was concerned at the findings and acknowledged they may indicate deeper anti-Semitic prejudice in Europe.
Israel said the survey, in which 59 percent of those polled said the country was a menace, revealed a "hidden agenda" by those asking the question -- the EU executive.
"They have put the Jewish state below the level of the worst pariah states and terror organizations," Israel's mission to the EU said in a statement.
"We are not only sad but outraged. Not at European citizens but at those who are responsible for forming public opinion."
It said the poll reflected the impact of distorted media coverage of the Middle East conflict and served to "promote a hidden agenda of those who draft the questions in a way that will suit their political ends."
Prodi stressed that the Eurobarometer survey did not reflect the views or policy of the European Commission.
"They point to the continued existence of a bias that must be condemned out of hand. To the extent that this may indicate a deeper, more general prejudice against the Jewish world, our repugnance is even more radical," he declared.
A Commission spokesman earlier played down the result as just one finding among many in a survey on Iraq and world peace.
"It is not our role or our policy to interpret each opinion poll or to base our policy on it," spokesman Gerassimos Thomas told the Commission's daily news briefing.
The question did not mention the Palestinians because it only referred to states, he said.
He insisted the questions were set by low-level officials, not the Commission's political leaders or external relations directorate.
It was one of 60 surveys the Commission carries out every year seeking the views of the EU's 375 million citizens on everything from the euro to EU enlargement.
UNITED STATES SECOND
Around 500 people in each EU country were asked whether they considered 14 listed countries as threats to world peace.
Close behind Israel came the United States, Iran and North Korea, each with 53 percent. Respondents were allowed to pick more than one country.
Fifty-two percent said Iraq was a threat, 50 percent said Afghanistan was. The other countries -- Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Russia and Somalia -- scored less than 50 percent.
Israel's minister for diaspora affairs and Jerusalem, Natan Sharansky, said the survey showed that "behind the 'political' criticism of Israel lies nothing other than pure anti-Semitism."
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said the poll was "conducted in an irresponsible manner and distorts reality," but rejected assertions it proved European anti-Semitism.
"There's no comparing the amount of media exposure Israel gets in Europe in comparison to Iran or North Korea. The images broadcast from here have an impact but we should not get excited about it," Haaretz daily quoted Shalom as saying.
Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said the findings were due to a "leading question" and did not reflect the EU's position.
"Foreign Minister Franco Frattini...expresses surprise and disappointment at the distorted message that emerges from the EU poll," a statement issued by his ministry said.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based Jewish rights group, said the survey "shows that anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within European society" and Israel should draw the only conclusion possible and exclude the EU and its members from any future Middle East peace process. (Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Jerusalem and Shasta Darlington in Rome)
------------------------- ---
Comments?
A Religious Gov.
11.03.03 (2:59 pm) [edit][i]If a government exceeds its bounds, such as when it tells people what they can eat, or what music they can listen to, it is no longer enforcing rights. It is using the only method it can- force -to promote ideas or infringe upon liberties. It is violating the rights of the people. If it does so a lot, it is a moral necessity of the people to revolt. The level of toleration is up to the people.[/i]
Israel's gov. doesn't tell people what they can and can't eat. It doesn't tell them what music they can and can't listen to. It doesn't even force other faiths to follow Judaism. Accomidations are made for other faiths. For example, the annual pilgramage, the stations of the cross, are freely practiced by Christian pilgrams. Currently, there is a resriction of some sort on intermarriage. Ok. This will most likely be removed eventually.
[i]When the government and religion intermingle, you are witnessing the intermingling of force and faith. There are two possibilities, and in a nation with multiple beliefs, they often happen at the same time, to different religions. One is that the faith will gain the power of force, making it difficult for others to practice their beliefs freely. The other is that the government will use the power of force against religion, once again making it difficult for others to practice their beliefs freely. For example, I do not believe in Christianity, but I am FORCED to donate money to the printing of Christian slogans on millions of little green handbills.[/i]
Isreal does not engadge in a force of faith. That is something Christian gov.'s have done in the past, but it isn't characteristic of Judaism.
Furthermore, religious icons are not on Israeli Shkalim (their form of currancy).
You can still have a religious gov. that isn't guistapo-esk just like you can have a non-religous gov. that is guistapo-esk (as we have seen in history--ie Communism, Nazism).
:idea: The problem isn't religious or non-religious gov.'s. The real problem is curruption and bad ideals.
The Israel issue.
11.03.03 (12:03 am) [edit]Yea, amazing what you can do on a Sunday when you have no obligations! Very good debate thus far!
We agree on many of our ideas. We disagree on others. Sorry, I was a little confused. Sometimes, like the NaziTV Radio Guy blog thingie (of which I enjoy because it is SO funny), things are satiricle or sarcastic. I wasn't completely aware or sure of whether you really were a Rev. and all of that other stuff or not.
I see no problem with Religion playing a critical role in gov. I think that when Judaism is followed correctly, it is an excellent religion to use in gov. Sometimes Israel strays from it's light. The Torah is just a blueprint for good conduct and success as a good human being. It's what you choose to do with that knowledge as a thinking, rational person that defines a rightous person or not (and so on).
I don't think Israel is violating the rights of the Palestinians as much as we are made to think these days. I'm pretty skeptical to the anti-Jew bias of the media. I also think that once they have their own place, things will be mighty interesting over there, if they actually acheive it.
I, too, have a problem with "blind faith." I think that you should always question things and make intelligent decisions as far as your own doctrine is concerned. That's why I kinda chose to be Jewish. Not that I wasn't Jewish by birth, but I chose to be more observant/religious.
You make some excellent points.
Reply to: Israel's situation no surprise.
11.02.03 (6:53 pm) [edit]Ok, therealsparticus007. Here we go. . .
[i]But the principles that America was founded upon, the Declaration of Independence, are continually being brought to fruit. Our ideal is freedom and justice for all. The Israel State's ideal is a new Jewish kingdom.[/i]
I'm sorry, but I see nothing wrong with Israel being the JEWISH state. The Arabs have ALL of the land surrounding Israel in the middle east. Israel is a little less the size of New Jersey. Is it that much of a thorn in everyone's side to have a place for Israel where they have THEIR OWN rules? You're gonna have to go and tell those countries that they can't be officially Muslim either then and that their rules must be non-racist "non-religiously based" just like the US.
[i]Although the Puritans were among the first whites in a few of the areas that were among the first to ratify the constitution, they did not found the United States. If they had, then our Constitution would found us as a Christian nation, and our flag might have a cross on it.[/i]
I think the issue your making is more anti-religion than anything. Why don't you see anything wrong with Saudi Arabia who's official religion is Islam, I'm not exactly sure. So now you're saying that any country shouldn't be allowed to have an official religion? That's not really fair either.
[i] The ideals of a free nation are different than the ideals of Israel today.[/i]
Really. Hmm. Well Israel is the only country in the Middle east that supports full rights for Women and GAYS. Maybe they're not YOUR ideal of a free nation. I'll say it again; no country is 100% kosher, but you can't hold Israel as a complete bad guy.
[i]Some do. Our founding fathers did not. We are not founded upon Christian ideals. The point of this nation is not to provide a homeland for Christians. [/i]
I beg to differ that America wasn't founded on Christian ideals. I do think a more acceptable way of putting it is America was founded on Judeo-Christian ideals. We'll just have to disagree on that
[i]Under our constitution, the government has to keep its distance from religion. It would never be allowed to regulate marriages between people of different religious groups.[/i]
I'm very sorry but, Israel isn't America. Israel's knesset voted for that law and it was passed. Israel operates on a religion-based gov. Israel chose to do that. That's no one's business to judge like it's no one's business here who anyone marries. If the people wish to change it, they eventually will.
[i]In Israel, people of minority religions have trouble becoming citizens, and when they are, are treated second-class.[/i]
If they feel they've been treated poorly, why bother trying to become a citizen? They are getting their own country by 2005 if they restrain Hamas well enough. If their true goal is independance and their own soverign state, then they'll behave and work towards that instead of letting Hamas kill babies in busses.
[i]I am a member of the ACLU, and I work at a cafeteria so I can help pay to get things like that cross down. You no longer have to swear on the Bible in court, by the way. I'm not sure what you mean by 'main religion.' If you mean official religion, then, no America for one, has no official religion. Judaism is the official religion of Israel. They do not respect the religious rights of minorities. The founding of their nation was explicitly to benefit JEWS. [/i]
No, you don't HAVE to swear on the Bible in court. Perhaps I should have better made that clear. They still bring it out to you in some states and you do have the right to refuse to swear on it.
The people of Israel ARE the minority. Jews make up .000001% of the world's population. For centuries they were restricted and mistreated. Now they want to keep a peice of land where they can live how they wish to and worship their religion. From an anti-religion standpoint I guess that's terrible.
There is nothing wrong with a nation for Jews. If you're gonna try and sit there and tell me that the US, England, and Most of Europe are not Christian nations; that the Arab nations aren't Muslim nations set up to benefit Muslims, then you must take me for something I am not. Every country has a main religion. Not necissarily an official religion in some cases, but a religion that has largest influence. Israel is the Jewish state where Jews (whom especially wouldn't have ANY rights anywhere else in the middle east and only recently have rights in Europe--post WWII) have their place.
[i]That is the racism inherent in much of the anti-terrorist camp, both here and in Israel. You assume all Arabs are terrorists. "Oh no, don't give the Arabs rights- they'll just blow us up!"[/i]
I never said that. What I am saying is (and this is my opinion) that many of the Arabs wish to anihilate Israel and the Jewish people. Those who are of that persuasion don't belong in Israel.
[i]Not every Arab is a terrorist. Even if every single Arab on the face of the planet were a blood-thirsty terrorist, it would not justify race-based policies. Deny terrorists citizenship, not Arabs.[/i]
I never said that they all are terrorists. "So many of them..." was what I said. Where you got "All of them...," I have no idea. Please don't try and make [b]me[/b] out to be the racist I am not. Terrorists should be denied citizenship. Peaceful people should be allowed in. We agree on something.
[i]Why are they lashing out? Is it because a bunch of people from Europe dance over to a piece of land, declare it a nation for Jews, not Arabs, and impose religious and race-based laws? Or is it just because they're jerks?
There's a difference between taking proper percautions and being a racist.[/i]
So basically you are saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, aren't you? That's unfortunate. I think that Israel and the Arab world should co-exist side by side, without fued, each having their own laws and customs and respecting eachother's space. Oh well.
You're right, there is a difference between taking proper percautions and being racist. Some people just can't tell the difference.
[i]It makes their policies racist. Not all Americans are dumbasses, but our policies are to ban pot and invade Iraq.[/i]
Pot and Iraq are two different issues than this. Just because Israel wants to be doesn't make them racist. It doesn't make their polocies racist. I do find that a little arogant, your statement.
[i]Well, neither do the Arabs. If you were forbidden by law to live with the person you had exchanged sacred vows with, and loved more than anything else, you would want to stage some form of protest as well. I'm not saying suicide-bombing is a good thing; I'm just saying its the inevitable outgrowth of discrimination.[/i]
So then they should stage a [b]non-violent[/b] protest.
[i]Poor kid, having to make religious decisions on his own.[/i]
Actually, that is a very hard thing for young children to do. It [b]can[/b] turn into a power struggle for affections between the parents for the child. I came from a household like that. This is why I feel the way I do. Basically, this is a debate between a religious person and a non-religious person that really won't be solved, I guess.
[i]Islam, Christianity and Judaism are hardly opposites. They're just subtle variations on a common theme- blind belief, self-sacrifice, and mind-numbing rituals. The opposite of that would be rational freethinking, your life as an end in itself, and living without fear.[/i]
See, that statement right there is false. Most likely because you came from a Christian background (I'm guessing) which has coloured your view of what religions stand for, hindering [i]all[/i] religion in a negative light. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are very opposite. Judaism doesn't accept Jesus, Christianity says that Jesus was Lord and savior, Islam says he was just a prophet and Allah is Lord. That is just one example. There are many, MANY more ways these religions controdict eachother that I'm not even going to go into at this moment because it'd take us all day.
It's also arrogant of you to tell me that because I'm religious I'm not a free thinker. I'm a little insulted by that, you must understand.
[i]Yes, terrorism is a real problem. But it is not one that justifies giving the government police powers, it is not one that justifies race-based profiling and registration, it is not one that justifies knee-jerk denial of citizenship to the huddled masses yearning to breath free, and it is not one that justifies trading our constitutional protections for a pretended safety.
Terrorism is always going to be a threat. Instead of imposing Draconian measures that will ultimatly not stop any committed terrorists, we should instead try and figure out why exactly the terrorists are bombing us. Stop and listen to their evil diatribe. They hate us because we bomb their countries and fund their opponents. Can anyone come up with a solution to that? I know! Invade Iraq and support Israel![/i]
Again, you are confusing the issues. Iraq's invasion had nothing to do with terrorism.
It is the terrorists that are the racists, if you ask me. On the tapes from Bin Laden, for example, we all listened to why "they" hate us. It is because we are non-muslim.
I also see no problem with racial profiling. If the suspect looks like an Arab, then Arabs should be detianed and questioned. Just like if a suspect is Caucasion, those who fit his discription should be detained and questioned.
Obviously, we are not going to agree on many of these theological issues. I think I was trying to be pretty fair here. You seem to like to view things in the black & white. Maybe I'm wrong on that, but it's only an observation.
Forgive me if I have offended.
Israel.
11.02.03 (2:58 pm) [edit]Ok, therealsparticus007, here's what I have to say :)
[i]Wow, hooray for token representatives. Israel is similar to South African apartheid, or Reconstructionist South US. The explicit reason for the creation of the state of Israel was not to protect individual rights, like America's was, but to give a 'homeland' to persons who happened to be of semetic descent. [/i]
The purpose of America was what now? No one was allowed to vote except for white, male landowners in the beginning. The Puritans sailed in search of religious freedom; something they were not getting in England. In the words of Yoda, "Parallels, I see." How long did it take for America to allow blacks and women to vote? All I'm saying is, no country's actions are 100% kosher. The ideal can not be acheived overnight either.
[i]Not a theocracy? They have the Star of David on their flag! Next thing I know you'll be saying that Iran is religiously tolerant! [/i]
That's not what I said. I said Israel isn't a racist entity.
Furthermore, you can take Jews away from Judaism, but you can't take Judaism away from the Jews. Israel is the Jewish state. There is a Jewish symbol on the Jewish flag. You mean to tell me that Christians in America don't consider the US to be a Christian country??
Why does everyone get off of work for Christmas but not Chanukah or Rhamadan?? At work and school, I'm always given a hard time when I ask for Rosh HaShonnah off. I was once told by my former boss that, "You people have too many damn holidays. You'll be here bright and early that day or else." (I subsequently gave my two weeks notice because I was made to choose between having a job, or being able to practice my religion and celebrate my holiday--Yes, I later sued.)
In the town I live in, there is a cross on a mountain that is public land, owned by the city. In the US, when you are sworn in as a witness in court, you are to put your hand on the Holy Bible (the Christian Bible) and the other on your heart. My point is, every country of peoples has a main religion. Christianity is the ruling religion in America, Judaism is for Israel.
[i]If it were not for the UN, Arabs would have even fewer rights in Israel. They can vote, but do they have equal rights? No. Now, I'm no friend of the Palestinians either. I think they're worse than the State of Israel. They target innocent civilians, which is murder, while the Israelis often go out of their way to only hit military and political targets.[/i]
Ah, but you see, they have fewer rights in Israel because they are not citizens. They didn't even apply for citizenship. So many of them attack and maim or fund the attacking and maiming or teach to attack and maim that they have no time to apply for citizenship. They don't want to be citizens of a country they wish to anihilate the people of, they'd rather spend time perfecting ways to destroy it.
You've got it backwards. It isn't Israel restricts them so they lash out, it's they lash out so Israel restricts them in order to keep things safe for citizens. That's common sense. I would rather take proper precautions, knowing someone is out to kill me, than to just allow them to come and get me. To think otherwise is just naive.
[i]But they are racists. Civil disobedience (which is not happening) would be understandable on the part of the Palestinians. Racial profiling is the norm in Israel. There is enforced segregation. Palestinians are all but forbidden to marry Isralies. Read the article.[/i]
That doesn't make the whole of Israel racist. I don't agree with that policy being law. However, I don't think that Muslims should marry Jews. I don't think any religions should mix. This is not because of race reasons, but rather, because of theological reasons. Race doesn't enter into the equation. You can't raise a child in a home that is conflicted. Islam and Judaism are conflicting beliefs. So are Judaism and Christianity, Christianity and Islam and so on. All three of these are opposites to eachother. A child raised in a home like that will experience what I like to call "spiritual unrest." The child isn't sure what to believe and rejects all moral ideals, ultimatly. It confuses them also because it turns into, "well, if i'm Jewish, that means I love mommy more. If I'm Muslim, that means I love daddy more." No child should be put in a position to have to choose between parents. That's just the opinion of one person though.
[i]Arabs are thrown out of their homes with the random shiftings of the laws. Only Arabs who agree to be forced spies for the State of Israel are allowed 'staying permits.' It is nearly impossible for an Arab to become an Israeli citizen. [/i]
I don't think that is accurate. I'd like to see a source on that please.
[i]Israel is today what the United States was in the Civil War era, and may become again if we continue our over-reaction to the 2001 hijackings.[/i]
What has America truly done that constitutes as overreaction? Terrorism is a problem that is real. To deny that truth is also to be naive.
A Religious Point Rebuffed.
11.02.03 (2:03 pm) [edit](In reference to the Article about Mel Gibson's the 'The Passion')
"[i]JamesYerian 10.31.03 [6:02 pm] (PST)
The Rabbi is wrong. While we need to know that the history of the Jews, it amazes me that so many think they know what Catholicism is.
The crucifixion, Jesus' willing sacrifice to open up the way for mankind's salvation, is THE central part of Catholic worship.
That central act of Christ's sacrifice makes all the things that Christ is known for-- his message of love, his teachings-- authoratative. This man died when he didn't have to. (The consequences of sin is death)
I sympathize with the Jewish caution on this movie, but I also sympathize with the plight of Catholics to simply tell the truth. "The Jews" did not crucify Jesus-- and by that I mean they don't deserve blanket blame.
This is not an argument Mel Gibson makes.
But Jesus was Jewish. He is their messiah. And he was rejected by the religious hierarch at the time (though not by all of them). Why is it that the Jews can be controversial in telling the truth about their right to their own land but Christians can't be about the passion of Christ?
Those who want to see something sinister in the movie will do so anyway. Any movie made about Christ's passion in today's culture could be seen anti-semitic.
I disagree with the Rabbi and Red Tigress on this. Christ's passion wasn't anti-semitic, it was tragic. It doesn't condemn the Jews, but condemns mankind.
Need proof? Jesus told his disciples to convert the world, not just the Jews.
The Jewish community should respect the Christian community and understand and respect its history. Christians shouldn't believe myths about Jews-- and Jews shouldn't believe myths about Christians.
If they do, it's because they want to. Truth is Truth."[/i]
[b]I see where you are comming from. However, there are things in this statement that cannot be ignored. *[i]This is just a friendly debate[/i].*[/b]
1. I have a question. Are you a Catholic?
2. How could Jesus have died when he didn't have to and yet still his existance's purpose was to redeem? I do not follow that logic.
3. True, the Jews didn't crucify Jesus nor do they deserve the blame. From accounts by those who have viewed the movie we know that in this movie the Jews are portrayed as "Christ killers" because they show Jewish soldiers riding out to arrest Jesus. Even the Christian Bible's account of this very moment in the story documents that it was the Roman soldiers that rode out to arrest them. There in lyes the problem. Mr. Gibson claims to have made a movie of historical accuracy. How can a movie claim to have historical accuracy when it portrays a story fabricated, and coincidentally, not in favour of the Jews?
4. Jesus was Jewish, however, he is NOT our Messiah. Judaism never accepted Jesus as the Messiah for many reasons. It is our belief that the Messiah has yet to come. Furthermore, the claims that he is the "son of God," the virgin birth, along with the claim that he is the Messiah are rejected all the more because that is not the criteria for a Messiah. The messiah we are waiting for will be a man, not a son of God. There is no such thing as a virgin birth, as far as we are concerned. Those concepts were attributes of pagan religions incorperated into Christianity in order to give it more appeal to would-be converts.
5. Christians can be controversial in the telling of the Passion of Christ. We don't like it being at our expense. The Jewish right to Israel doesn't claim that the Christians killed Moses or something. Jews never hunted down Christians and burned down their homes and murdered their children in the name of the right to our land.
6. We could debate for hours on how antisemitic the Christian bible is to begin with, but we won't go there. Let me just say that it isn't like we see something antisemitic that isn't truly there.
7. Jesus may not have told his deciples to convert anyone. I doubt that he thought he would spark a new religion that would be the greatest murderer of his own people of all time. Christians like to try to convert Jews because it is, I'm guessing, seen as some kind of great acomplishment when acheived. Speaking as someone who has had this tried on her, I think I'm pretty accurate on that. Jews are quite unwilling to convert to any other religion because of their great, unchanging, belief in God. Why else durring the Spanish Inquisition would the threat be to convert or die and many of us chose death?
Truth is truth. You are correct.
*On a final note, Jesus' teachings of love and devotion to God are nothing new. Those are imbeded in Judaism.
