phillyfan26
Blue Crack Supplier
- Joined
- May 7, 2006
- Messages
- 30,343
I found this interesting, don't know how accurate it is:
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God, I wish you were banned.
I found this interesting, don't know how accurate it is:
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.God, I wish you were banned.
You should watch out with that authoritarian streak.God, I wish you were banned.
Gaza Attacks Israel
That would make a good thread topic.
Haven't you read this thread?
I take it you didn't because if you did, would've seen both sides of the issue. You would also see that Israel is not so innocent in this case.
You think driving out all Palestinians out their homes is the solution?!
Why do you think that way?
Oh my God.
I'm not even going to bother.
Because the Palestinians did not come from out of nowhere. They didn't suddenly just appear. They were living on present day Israeli lands for hundreds of years, until the Israelis drove them out by breaking international laws.
They did have a country of their own. It was part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Put the Bible down and read a history book. But likely, you won't due to your bias.
What answer? What answer are you talking about?
I get the impression you only want to hear what you want to hear. Not just in this thread, but all others.
And I didn't give you "orders." I am not ordering you around. I'm simply suggesting you broaden your mind.
So, because they might never had their own country, they don't deserve their own?
You're missing my point. Again, you are hearing only what you want to hear.
I asked, because the Palestinians might not have had their country, they do not deserve their own?
Please answer.
Yes, Israel is the country constantly firing rockets and vowing to drive their enemies into the sea.
The final solution
OK, good. Because before you said:
Now, are you saying that Arab countries should give Israel's right to exist? Because for the record, I agree both sides need their own countries to stop this madness.
Since all 22 Arab League countries have endorsed the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which entails full diplomatic recognition of Israel in exchange for the negotiated establishment of a Palestinian state based on Israel's withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders, I don't understand what you're getting at here.I agree, they do deserve their own country.
"A good question for all the Arab countries that surround Israel."
The no reply, from the Arab countries, is the problem.
The Americans will demand that Israel avoid creating new facts on the ground that may burden achieving an agreement in the future. Toward this end, the U.S. administration is preparing to put heavy pressure on the new government to freeze all settlement construction and keep its promises to lift roadblocks. A freeze on settlement activity will be a higher priority than removing illegal outposts...
Measures the Obama administration is likely will be to cut the equivalent sum of the latest investments in settlements from the remaining budget for U.S. guaranteed loans, approximately $1.3 billion out of a total of $10 billion that the U.S. made available to Israel for it to absorb immigrants from the former Soviet Union....
Senator Mitchell's team will include experts who are familiar with the subject of the settlements and the ways in which Israel has avoided meeting its obligations for years.
Depending on what the State Department decides, this might have significant impact on both Livni's and Netanyahu's decisions in attempting to form a coalition over the next couple weeks--particularly since Lieberman has let it be known that he seeks the Foreign or Defense Minister post as part of any coalition deal (Netanyahu reportedly counteroffered Lieberman the finance portfolio instead...even though Lieberman is currently under investigation by the Finance Ministry for fraud, money laundering and breach of trust).Meanwhile the State Department is evaluating the implication of reports that MK Avigdor Lieberman, head of Yisrael Beiteinu, was a member of the extreme right group Kach. It appears on a State Department list of terrorist organizations. If the Obama administration confirms the report that appeared last week in Haaretz, and which was not denied by Lieberman, the Yisrael Beiteinu leader may not be granted a visa to enter the U.S. The close cooperation between Israel and the U.S. on matters of strategy, defense, economics, commerce, tourism and transportation means that ministers charged with relevant portfolios often visit the United States.
A new MK, Michael Ben-Ari of the National Union [Ichud Leumi], confirmed that he had been a member of Kach while it was headed by Meir Kahane and may face similar restrictions.
How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate MagazineAn Army of Extremists
How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers.
Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.
I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army "chaplain" in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as "the enemies of Israel." Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defense Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively—if rather alarmingly—the man of God replied, "Germans." There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi's exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General's Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich's support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army's behalf.
The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a "political" statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It's not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:
Moses, Eleazer the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, "You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord's community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every young woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man."
Moses and Eleazar the priest go on to issue some complex instructions about the ritual cleansings that must be practiced after this exhausting massacre has been completed.
Now, it's common to hear people say, when this infamous passage and others like it come up, that it's not intended to be "taken literally." One also often hears the excuse that some wicked things are done "in the name of" religion, as if the wicked things were somehow the result of a misinterpretation. But the nationalist rabbis who prepare Israeli soldiers for their mission seem to think that this book might be the word of God, in which case the only misinterpretation would be the failure to take it literally. (I hate to break it to you, but the people who think that God's will is revealed in scripture are known as "religious." Those who do not think so must try to find another name for themselves.)
Possibly you remember Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the man who in February 1994 unslung his weapon and killed more than two dozen worshippers at the mosque in Hebron. He had been a physician in the Israeli army and had first attracted attention by saying that he would refuse to treat non-Jews on the Sabbath. Now read Ethan Bronner's report in the March 22 New York Times about the preachments of the Israeli army's latest chief rabbi, a West Bank settler named Avichai Rontzski who also holds the rank of brigadier general. He has "said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath … is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred." Those of us who follow these things recognize that statement as one of the leading indicators of a truly determined racist and fundamentalist. Yet it comes not this time in the garb of a homicidal lone-wolf nut bag but in the full uniform and accoutrement of a general and a high priest: Moses and Eleazar combined. The latest news, according to Bronner, is that the Israeli Defense Ministry has felt compelled to reprimand Rontzski for "a rabbinal edict against showing the enemy mercy" that was distributed in booklet form to men and women in uniform (see Numbers 31:13-18, above).
Peering over the horrible pile of Palestinian civilian casualties that has immediately resulted, it's fairly easy to see where this is going in the medium-to-longer term. The zealot settlers and their clerical accomplices are establishing an army within the army so that one day, if it is ever decided to disband or evacuate the colonial settlements, there will be enough officers and soldiers, stiffened by enough rabbis and enough extremist sermons, to refuse to obey the order. Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs. The dress rehearsals for this have already taken place, with the religious excuses given for Baruch Goldstein's rampage and the Talmudic evasions concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Once considered highly extreme, such biblical exegeses are moving ever closer to the mainstream. It's high time the United States cut off any financial support for Israel that can be used even indirectly for settler activity, not just because such colonization constitutes a theft of another people's land but also because our Constitution absolutely forbids us to spend public money on the establishment of any religion.