"It Wasn't Muslims"

[jlaw172364]

We can end this thread, as it seems to more or less have played itself out.

We're obviously both free to think what we want to think, if you think that my arguments were "indecent and immoral," well then, maybe you chose to deliberately misunderstand them. I didn't hear anyone say a word about Palestinian atrocities against Israelis.

My favorite though was the "inhuman" line, though. See, that's just it; the "bad" guys are just as inhuman, or human as the "good" guys. Humans kill each other and frequently try to claim that the act was good while others claim the act was evil. I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this point. The Nazis thought it was good to kill Jews and Allies, and the Allies thought it was good to kill Nazis. One of the first FPS games was a game where one killed Nazis. Nazis are the stock villain that people can kill in their imaginations guilt-lessly, or through watching a film or playing a game. They're evil, inhuman, and completely demonized. But this was EXACTLY how the Nazis viewed the Jews; stock villains to be cut down like video-game characters. The demonization of the enemy is as old as civilization.

When you're arguing and discussing against 5 people over a period of 4 days, it gets easy to lose track over who is making what statements, and since language is inherently ambiguous, I can make reasonable assumptions and inferences about what people really think; and I think it's pretty clear people have done the same with me.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything; I'm just putting what I think out there.

Well, no hard feelings I hope.

[OP ED]

wolfenstein rules.

[OP ED]

sorry i forgot about you for a moment.

We can end this thread, as it seems to more or less have played itself out.

really? i hadn't even gotten warmed up yet.

[as evidenced by the fact that this thread is still here]

We're obviously both free to think what we want to think, if you think that my arguments were "indecent and immoral," well then, maybe you chose to deliberately misunderstand them. I didn't hear anyone say a word about Palestinian atrocities against Israelis.

what?
...attrocities where? when? how? [sometimes why?]

My favorite though was the "inhuman" line, though. See, that's just it; the "bad" guys are just as inhuman, or human as the "good" guys. Humans kill each other and frequently try to claim that the act was good while others claim the act was evil. I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this point. The Nazis thought it was good to kill Jews and Allies, and the Allies thought it was good to kill Nazis. One of the first FPS games was a game where one killed Nazis. Nazis are the stock villain that people can kill in their imaginations guilt-lessly, or through watching a film or playing a game. They're evil, inhuman, and completely demonized. But this was EXACTLY how the Nazis viewed the Jews; stock villains to be cut down like video-game characters. The demonization of the enemy is as old as civilization.

Nazis make great bad guys. All my favorite episodes of all my favorite shows had nazis in them.

really though, i think the nazis are mostly irrelevant to this topic, as much as i'm fascinated by the obviousness of their banality. They've been gone for decades. I'm more interested in problems i can actually have an impact on. For example, a significant portion of Israel's aggressions have been paid for with donations from MY government. Now yes, there was trading with nazis too, but that was, y'know, like half a century before i was born and stuff so there isn't much i can do to complain about it considering even most of our senators aren't THAT old...

When you're arguing and discussing against 5 people over a period of 4 days, it gets easy to lose track over who is making what statements, and since language is inherently ambiguous, I can make reasonable assumptions and inferences about what people really think; and I think it's pretty clear people have done the same with me.

i have no idea what you think. All i've seen so far is you complaining about people who take issue with war crimes. That doesn't make sense to me, and none of your arguments so far seem to address the huge strains any attempt at logic must endure to justify such apathy in the face of an ongoing and extremely one-sided attrocity.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything; I'm just putting what I think out there.

well, geez, i am. if your arguments aren't intended to convince anyone of anything, might i ask what you're doing?

[other than entertaining me when there is nothing on TV]

Well, no hard feelings I hope.

i can only speak for myself, but no hard feelings from me. i'd have to understand your position in order to be offended by it.

[OP ED]

For the record, wrt my previous post before the previous post...

I prefer the hidden bonus nazi levels of Doom II. There is just something that tickles me in all the right places about using science fictional space age weaponry to eradicate obsolete villains. Nothing so priceless as the look on their uppity aryan faces when the goose stepping bastards round the corner bellowing "Schutzstaffel!" and are promptly liquefied by controlled bursts from a plasma rifle.

[Wolfenstein 3D was eventually banned in Germany, despite being very obviously not pro-nazi]

[jlaw172364]

Several points:

1. There are no "war crimes;" war is one big crime-fest. The concept of a war crime is something victors or the strong invent to place themselves above the losers or the weak. The U.S. reduced 90% of Japanese metropolitan areas to 90% rubble with its bombing campaigns, not to mention the nukes. They targeted civilians because their efforts fuel the war machine. In "Fog of War," the Errol Morris documentary, McNamara makes it pretty clear that he thinks that he and the Allied high command would all have been hung for war crime should they have lost. His stance was, "Was it moral for us not to [basically kick the crap out of them if it meant saving our own people's lives?" When you're actually responsible for fighting a war, you tend to think in pretty ruthless terms. In any conflict, initially, there is often more or less the same casualties on both sides, until one side starts to win. At the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the casualties were even because it was a series of massacres on both sides. In the first war, when Israel declared independence, the Israelis almost lost and took a lot of casualties. Throughout the remainder of the conflict, the Palestinians have taken more casualties and have lived under harsher conditions. The Israelis have the mindset that if they ease up, they'll embolden the Palestinians and then they'll start losing. But if they eliminate the Palestinians, then they're no better than Nazis in the eyes of the world. So they keep this low-to-mid-grade conflict going to maintain a balance of power.

2. I would argue that in many ways, the Nazis still exist. The whole racial supremacy thing may still be on the back burner at the moment, but fascism and neo-fascism or whatever are alive, well, and governing Europe and the U.S. Look at what's going on in Italy with Berlusconi and the gypsies. Many of the Nazis escaped, set up shop in the U.S. and S. America. Their policies, under one guise or another, still appeal to ruling classes, although it is not in vogue to say so openly. Fascism is just a word. One could have it and call it communism or democracy. Fascism as a brand is definitely radioactive though, but still around as a policy.

3. It is definitely frustrating to have to subsidize policies one detests; for me it would be virtually everything military. I don't think we should send tax-payer subsidized military aid to Israel, or to anyone. But the U.S. views itself as an empire, and it feeds all sides to all conflicts to keep its vassals and enemies weak. It gave aid to Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi, Palestine, etc. etc. etc. But as the quote related to Maxim goes, you get rich selling things to people with which they cut their throats.

[OP ED]

1. there most certainly ARE war crimes. whether or not any law recognizes or enforces them is irrelevant.
I'm not even close to being a pacifist. i have no issue with war as a thing-in-itself [which it doesn't exist as, btw] and can make any number of hypothetical cases wherein armed violence is perhaps even preferable to other forms of politcs.

citing McNamara as an authority on anything doesn't get you very many points with me. He wasn't even good at total war. which, as the name implies, is a fairly straightforward concept and hard to fuck up.

also international treaties designed to prevent this scale of bloodshed didn't exist yet, so it would be difficult to hold people who lived and acted before them to these standards.

[holding people who are acting yesterday, today and tomorrow responsible is a different matter entirely, and i frankly find your unwillingness to consider this a viable option to be extremely suspect, at best]

2. neo nazis are irrelevant to this discussion insofar as the Palestinians are concerned. there are plenty of dipshits to go around. most of them are not my concern at present or are likely to be regarded in roughly the same manner by myself and my seeming allies according to their works.

[Not all fascists are created equal]


3. indeed. so why not try to stop it from happening?

[orz]

@Orz

Well, I'm not sure if the Nazis were the worst ever, but blah blah blah blah

You're kidding me. You're still seriously responding to my posts? Did you even read them?

[OP ED]

[orz]

wolfenstein rules.

wolfenstein rules.

wolfenstein rules.

wolfenstein rules.

[OP ED]

"hold your fire till you can see the superior blue of their eyes..."

[AlicetheKurious]

jlaw172364 said:

But I don't think that anyone on this particular thread seriously believes Israel = Nazi Germany; I think people on this thread have been exposed to evidence of Israeli brutality against Palestinians, somewhat out of context, and are expressing their outrage in a somewhat understandably strident manner, as in "Israel = Nazi Germany" or "Israel = illegal rogue state," or "Israel stole Palestinian land."

I think it is fair to say that Israel employs police state tactics that some factions of the global community rhetorically declare to be illegal, but which are no different from police state tactics seen in other police states.

I think it is also fair to say that Israel acquired some land through legitimate purchase, although at the expense of Palestinian tenants, some land through conquest, and in addition, is neglecting the fact that extremists are taking measures that eventually result on the further erosion of Palestinian territories. I think this last phenomenon is the most problematic, and I think extremely harsh measures need to be taken to prevent it.

''The inequalities in our society, the fact that we have no constitution or bill of rights, the failure to recognize universal values, human rights, and the possibility that other people may have the same national rights as we have--all this stems out of ideological decisions taken at the very early stages of the Zionist project.''

- Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, author of The Myths of Israel


Well, it's true that Israel doesn't "equal" Nazi Germany -- but then, what "equals" what? That said, the only way to dismiss the striking similarities between zionism and nazism is to ignore their shared philosophical origins, the racist writings of the most influential zionists, and how these racist views were manifested in the state that they established.


According to [Raphael Falk, a professor emeritus of genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem], the question of the biological essence of Jewish existence was part and parcel of the realization of the Zionist idea from the beginning. Dr. Arthur Ruppin, head of the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization, which purchased lands and established various kinds of settlements, presented the eugenic idea as one of the goals of Zionism. He was convinced that the Jews possessed a biological uniqueness and that settling them in Palestine was vital in order to preserve this.

- Link

Jewish psychiatrists in Israel were not the only ones who tried to distinguish between the science of eugenics, which they held to be useful, and the Nazis' application of it. What set the local experts apart was that they actually studied the foundations of the theory in Germany before immigrating to Palestine, directly from the scientists who supported using eugenics to forcibly sterilize mentally ill and physically disabled Germans - and subsequently to justify their murder. Within a few years, the German scientists were using the same justification for killing Jews.

Many of the Jewish psychiatrists subscribed to their German colleagues' conception of the Jews as a race, relying on the theory that was developed in Europe, says Zalashik. However, upon their arrival in Palestine, they encountered Jews of different types and began to distinguish between the race of European Jews, and that of the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern and North African origin).

Thus, for example, psychiatrist Avraham Rabinovich, who worked in the Ezrat Nashim facility in Jerusalem and later managed a mental institution in Bnei Brak, drew a distinction in his patient reports from 1921-1928 between the general population, and Jews of Bukharan, Georgian and Persian descent, whom he referred to as "primitive races."...

The views of these psychiatrists meshed with the goals of the Zionist movement, which at the time propounded a policy of selective immigration.

"Eugenics was a part of the national philosophy of most of [the local] psychiatrists," says Zalashik. "The theory was that a healthy nation was needed in order to fulfill the Zionist vision in Israel. There was a powerful economic aspect to this view of things - the idea being to prevent people who were perceived as a burden on society from bringing children into the world. And homosexuals and frigid women also fell into this category."

Link


These Nazi-inspired eugenic theories were far more than just theories; they led directly to genocidal practices, not only against the indigenous Palestinians, but also against "inferior" strains of Jews, most infamously through the deliberate exposure of 100,000 Mizrahi, or Arab Jewish children, to fatal levels of radiation during the 1950s:

...only Sephardi children received the x-rays: "I was in class and the men came to take us on a tour. They asked our names. The Ashkenazi children were told to return to their seats. The dark children were put on the bus."

The film presents a historian who first gives a potted history of the eugenics movement. In a later sound bite, he declares that the ringworm operation was a eugenics program aimed at weeding out the perceived weak strains of society. The Moroccan lady is back on the screen. "It was a Holocaust, a Sephardi Holocaust. And what I want to know is why no one stood up to stop it."

David Deri, on film and then as a panel member, relates the frustration he encountered when trying to find his childhood medical records. "All I wanted to know was what they did to me. I wanted to know who authorized it. I wanted to trace the chain of command. But the Health Ministry told me my records were missing." Boaz Lev, the Health Ministry's spokesman chimes in: "Almost all the records were burned in a fire."

Link


As part of their endeavor to "cleanse" Palestine in order to grab more lebensraum for Jewish colonists, apparently the Israelis have been experimenting with various weapons, including "new" poison gasses against Palestinian civilians since 2001. For a report on the use of this "tactic" in the late 1990s up to 2001, see The Israeli poison gas attacks


Some of the most prominent zionists of the 1930s recognized that the two "race" nationalisms, zionism and nazism, complemented and completed each other:

Excerpts from Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner, quoted in an excellent essay here:

"...Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group.."

- letter from the Zionist Federation to the Nazis in 1933

This acknowledgment led to the zionists' collaboration with the nazi project to eliminate the Jewish presence in Germany, on condition that the Jews be forced to emigrate to Palestine, to set up their own racist enclave there.

To be a Good Zionist one must be Somewhat of an Anti-Semite: Although blut was a recurrent theme in pre-Holocaust Zionist literature, it was not as central to its message as boden. As long as America's shores remained open, Europe's Jews asked: if anti-Semitism could not be fought on its home ground, why should they not just follow the crowd to America? The Zionist response was double-barrelled: anti-Semitism would accompany the Jews wherever they went and, what was more, it was the Jews who had created anti-Semitism by their own characteristics. The root cause of anti-Semitism, Zionists insisted, was the Jews' exile existence. Jews lived parasitically off their 'hosts'."

These tenets combined were known as 'shelilat ha'galut (the Negation of the Diaspora),and were held by the entire spectrum of Zionists who varied only on matters of detail. They were argued vigorously in the Zionist press, where the distinctive quality of many articles was their hostility to the entire Jewish people. Anyone reading these pieces without knowing their source would have automatically assumed that they came from the Anti-Semitic press. The Weltanschauung of the youth organization Hashomer Hatzair (Young Watchmen), originally composed in 1917, but republished again as late as 1936, was typical of these effusions: The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both pysically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline. (pp 22-23)

Similarly, in 1935 an American Ben Frommer, a writer for the ultra-right Zionist-Revisionists, could declare of no less than 16 million of his fellow Jews that: The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and neurotic. Those professional Jews who, wounded to the quick, indignantly deny this truth are the greatest enemies of their race, for they thereby lead them to search for false solutions, or at most palliatives. (p. 23)

And: In 1925 the most vehement protagonist of total abstentionism, Jacob Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive Encyclopedia Judaica, laid down the full implications of the Zionist approach to anti-Semitism: If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity. Instead of establishing societies for defense against antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights. (p. 30)


Both zionism and nazism are rooted, not only on eugenics and colonialist theories of 'racial purity', but on the dream of re-creating a mythological Golden Age that existed thousands of years ago, before the race became corrupted by intermingling with other, inferior races.

Like other national movements in Europe, which sought out a splendid Golden Age, through which they invented a heroic past - for example, classical Greece or the Teutonic tribes - to prove they have existed since the beginnings of history, so, too, the first buds of Jewish nationalism blossomed in the direction of the strong light that has its source in the mythical Kingdom of David.

- Shlomo Sand, Israeli historian


In yet another echo of its Nazi teachers, Israel is the only remaining state that does not equate citizenship with nationality, but grants or deprives its own citizens of rights according to whether or not they are Jewish. Imagine the outcry if the U.S., Canada or any European country decided to do the same!

Then of course the obvious parallels would be drawn between such a policy and those of the Nazis.

If any country on earth did to Jews one fraction of what Israel has done and continues to do to the Palestinians, the ADL and all the zionist minions would not hesitate to call such practices "Nazi". And they'd be right. Because a Nazi is, as a Nazi does. Such things as guilt and innocence should not be judged according to racist standards, nor should a state that is founded on nazi principles and engages in nazi practices be legitimized by whether its designated Master Race is "Aryan", "Jewish" or whatever.

[jlaw172364]

[BTW - I found it difficult to write this post, I kept digressing, so I've deleted chunks of text. Grrrr...]

@Alice

It is a perverse irony that people who obsess about "racial" purity due to the matrialineal succession were victimized by people also obsessed with race theory.

Whereas the Jews believed that your mother determined whether or not you were Jewish by blood, [I read it was because with the prevalence of rape, cuckholding, etc., one could never be sure who one's father was, but one could ALWAYS be sure who one's mother was, provided she did not promptly give you up for adoption.] the Nazis held that the father was the one that determined your ethnicity. I found that inversion fascinating.

Judaism doesn't go around converting people, forcibly or otherwise. One can convert, but there is little to no evangelical practices. You either come to it on your own, or not at all. However, this creates pressures to preserve the tribe by intra-tribal marriage. This creates a whole series of problems, but it does avoid the whole "covert or die" mentality that Christianity and Islam held for centuries, and which lurk on the back burner, waiting to be reintroduced.

If you cannot exist by spreading your ways to every last individual by varying degrees of coercion, you have to rely on different methods. Otherwise you will cease to exist. The Jewish, dare I say, "elders" undertake certain stratagems to preserve Judaism, since it only exists in strength if their are multitudes of Jews to preserve it. Evangelical religions don't have to worry in the same way about preserving their numbers enough to preserve their culture, because they are free to go around converting people. At another point in Jewish history, things were different, but that's another story.

The issue of their being racism in Zionism and Judaism? Of course there is racism in it, the same as their is racism in an idea of any maintaining an ethnic identity. People talk all the time of the English race, or the Irish race, or the Japanese race. Sure one, can reformulate race into more politically correct terms like "people" "group" "ethnicity" and so on, but the fact remains that people are trying to preserve a certain type of group with certain traditions, cultural practices, etc. You have just is much racism coming out of other cultures. In fact, it's really all nauseatingly similar. I prefer the term ethnocentrist, but whatever. If you read their stuff, they always extol the virtues of their people, talk up their cultural practices, make them seem unique. On the other side of the coin, they put other groups and peoples. They often place a premium on military accomplishment, advances in science, which of course feed military accomplishment, wealth, which also feeds military accomplishment, etc. It all seems geared toward trying to "prove" that their people is more vital than another. It's like a survival pattern of reification to intimidate outgroups and raise confidence in the ingroup.

And then there are people who go even further and pathologize it to the point of actually despising the outgroup and masturbatorily raving about the virtues of the ingroup.

I used to think it would be impossible for Jews and African Americans to be racist, because as victims of racism, they would automatically know that it was wrong, and would violently eschew it. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are racists of every stripe, and yes, there's a racist streak to Israel and Zionism.

But as I've said before, there is a racist strain that runs through every modern nation state. The U.S. has been a festering cauldron of racism; only economic prosperity, or the hope thereof, keeps its more racist tendencies in check, in my opinion.

I also don't believe it to be the dominant streak, although I believe it is more at the forefront than I would like. Whenever there is a violent conflict between two distinct peoples, it is only natural, although not desirable, that a significant percentage of them think of each other in racist terms, or at least that's been the pattern. During WWII, you had the Yanks, the Frogs, the Krauts, Ivan, the Japs, etc. You don't think the Palestinians are just as racist vis-a-vis the Israelis as the Israelis are toward them? They almost certainly are. They did not react favorably when they noticed increasing numbers of Jews moving to the territory now occupied by Israel/Palestine.

The Jewish people are a mythical people. So are the Nazis. So are every people, race, sub-group. All of these collective identities were artificially created to some degree, for various purposes. So what? They constituents of these groups believe in them enough to make them real. People believe in America, they believe they are Americans, so America exists. If Americans perceive an existential threat, tangible or otherwise, they react to it.

The Jews faced an existential threat; in fact, they've faced many existential threats, for thousands of years. An existential threat will often make one cling firmer to the threatened identity, something group leaders cannot be unaware of, as they often manufacture threats where none exist in peaceful times, to keep people non-complacent.

This history is real. Jews have a shared real history; they also have shared myths. History, mythic or otherwise, is often reinterpreted strategically to meet the demands of the present and the future. People debate over the rightness of this, but it all comes down to matter of choice.

If you talk to any individual in of these groups, often you will find an affinity for members of their tribe and perhaps a mild dislike, fear, or distrust for members of out-groups. But forget nations and so-called races; people will polarize and balkanize over mere cultural tastes. Hippies, punks, beatniks, preppies, emo kids, will all form little tribes and then hate on each other. Does anyone recall the story about how all the Mexican subgroups united against the emo kids and called for their . . . . I think it went as far as collective death. That seems to have blown over though; good thing they had no attention span.

The people's mentioned above don't have Israel or the Zionist problem because their land disputes have more or less been settled for the moment. Sure you have Basque separatists, persecuted Gypsies, animosity between various groups within the UK, but nothing as seemingly extreme as what goes on in Israel/Palestine.

I also would add that the Jews/Israel don't threat the Palestinians, or anyone else for that matter, with the whole "covert or die" prospect, which is something people from evangelical religions often forget. There is no ministry of Jews working around the clock to convert the heathens. Now, one can argue that, "why, how dare they be so elitist in their thinking," but nobody will prevent you from converting to Judaism; sure some Jews may look askance, but individuals serious about conversion will be welcomed into the fold if they are sincere in their efforts. The Jews aren't interested in destroying the Palestinians by converting them to Judaism or killing them. So one can be thankful for that at least, in the same way one could be thankful that Muslims tolerated other people's of the book, while smiting or converting the polytheists.

Well, this post turned out pretty disorganized.

By the way, it seems that the Sri Lankan government finally "ended" their "civil war" by eliminating the Tamil opposition.

[Penguin]

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticl ... srael.html

Fresh Rift Seen Over New Israeli Conversion Rules
(May 20 2009)

Leading Masorti Rabbi Andy Sacks: “Who knows more about the convert — the rabbi or an Interior Ministry clerk?”

by Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — In a potentially divisive flare-up in the ongoing Who is a Jew struggle, Israel’s Interior Ministry is poised to institute new, stricter guidelines for diaspora converts wishing to immigrate to Israel, The Jewish Week has learned.


According to the new guidelines, spelled out in a two-page draft document in the works since 2005, potential converts from all religious streams seeking to make aliyah must study Judaism a minimum of 350 hours in “a recognized” Jewish community.

They must also spend a total of 18 months in the community where they are converting (at least nine months following the conversion), in order to prove their sincere commitment to Judaism.

Until now, the ministry has never dictated the number of hours a convert must study.

The 18-month requirement is six months longer than the ministry’s long-standing criterion, which the Supreme Court deemed illegal in 2005.


Converts who do not want to wait the full nine months after conversion will be allowed to come to Israel but will not be granted citizenship until they can prove they are Jewish — often a long and complicated process with no guarantee of success. They will receive no health insurance or other benefits in the interim.

Although non-Jews are permitted to live in Israel with their Jewish Israeli spouse, they will not be granted citizenship unless their conversion is recognized by the Interior Ministry or they can prove they have one Jewish grandparent. Righteous Gentiles are the exception.

Finally, the guidelines — which are retroactive, according to sources — automatically refuse citizenship to anyone whose visa application to Israel was rejected in the past for any reason.

The new guidelines apparently are, in part, an effort to prevent non-Jewish foreign workers who reside in Israel from converting quickly in Jewish communities overseas, and then declare aliyah.

A decision by the Justice Ministry to approve the new guidelines is expected in the next few weeks, according to those close to the situation. Members of the committee that drew up the guidelines say the timing of the new rules is no accident. They say the Interior Ministry, currently headed by Kadima’s Meir Sheetrit, is trying to implement the new protocols before a new ministry head is named, after the recent national elections and shakeup of the government.

It is believed that the number of converts who seek to make aliyah annually is in the hundreds.

The new Israeli government protocols, viewed by The Jewish Week, have been so carefully guarded that even the ministry’s spokeswoman said she was unaware of them.
Critics say the new requirements cut to the very heart of the most contentious issue between Israeli and diaspora Jews: Who is a Jew?

Opponents say the Interior Ministry will strip diaspora Jewry of its right to decide who is eligible to convert and what a conversion should entail, much the same way Israel’s Orthodox Chief Rabbinate has successfully imposed its stringent standards on Orthodox conversions in North America. ....

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Artic ... .aspx/8138

Judaism's Positive Approach to Converts
The laws relating to Jewish converts are amongst the most
astounding laws in the Torah. Despite all of the criticism directed at the Jewish people on the grounds that Judaism is racist, the Torah teaches us that any non-Jew who truly and earnestly seeks to join the Jewish people may do so.

The wretched Germans ruled out the possibility of allowing non-Germans to join their shallow race. Even Jews who had assimilated and converted to Christianity were viewed as Jewish in the eyes of the racist Nazis. This, however, is not the way pf Judaism. Rather, any non-Jew who wishes to join us may do so according to Jewish law.

It is true that we are "racists," but we are racists in the positive sense of the word. We feel an obligation to rectify creation, as Rabbi Menashe of Iliya would say, "So long as even a single worm in the crevice of a stone is discomforted, the redemption has not arrived." As Jews, our most natural desire is that all people be blessed with happiness and we are forever working to better the world.

The horrid Nazi racists, on the other hand, who considered themselves "the chosen people," understood chosenness in an impure and negative sense. They believed that they deserve the best of everything and that everybody must serve them and work for them. We Jews, however, are inherently compassionate. We even show compassion to our adversaries.

Therefore, if a German or an Arab should seek to join the Jewish people, even if he is the son of a fierce anti-Semite, we shall accept him and love him like any other Jew. Moreover, we shall love him even more than other Jews, in keeping with the commandment to "love the convert, for you too were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991063.html

Jewish converts are pawns in religious sector power struggle

Many converts say that in addition to feeling despised by the ultra-Orthodox public, they also feel betrayed by the establishment, following the Supreme Rabbinical Court ruling to annul thousands of conversions that had been performed in Israel since 1999. They complain it has left many converts hanging in the balance and thrown into question the fates of those currently undergoing conversion.

"It's an empty show," said one conversion tutor from the north, who would identify herself only as Ahuva. "They had this conference to tell us that they are there for us, but they don't have an awful lot to back their pretty words with." She complained the conversions crisis was detrimental for the conversion seminars.

"We're feeling through the fog of battle. No one really knows where we're heading," Ahuva went on to say. "Those who created this crisis never thought about what was going to become of these people, they didn't stop to think about the consequences of their decisions. Currently, it's affecting three groups of people - those who are currently in the process of converting, those who have already converted and those who are contemplating converting."

http://www.half-jewish.net/israel.html

STATE & RELIGION NOT SEPARATE IN ISRAEL

In Israel the adult children and other descendants of intermarriage may become secular Israeli Jewish citizens. They pay taxes, serve in the army, etc.

But status as a "Jew" in Israel is also under the official state control of the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate. This control of Jewish identity in Israel is shared with the Israeli government.

Adult children and other descendants of intermarriage who have grown up in countries where there is some legal separation of the church and the state should understand that Israel is very different.

ORTHODOX JUDAISM SPONSORED BY ISRAELI STATE

Orthodoxy is the only fully-recognized form of Judaism in Israel.

Only Orthodox rituals (marriages, conversions, burials) -- whether performed in Israel or elsewhere, such as the United States -- are fully recognized as legal by the Israeli government.

http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/avnery_3_23_09/print

The judicial debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted in Israel.

It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him in Israel if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a "hostile" Arab country.

The Arab citizens of Israel belong to hamulas (clans) which extend beyond the borders of the state. Arabs generally marry within the hamula. This is an ancient custom, deeply rooted in their culture, probably originating in the desire to keep the family property together. In the Bible, Isaac married his cousin, Rebecca.

The "Green Line," which was fixed arbitrarily by the events of the 1948 war, divides families. One village found itself in Israel, the next remained outside the new state, the hamula lives in both. The Nakba also created a large Palestinian diaspora.

A male Arab citizen in Israel who desires to marry a woman of his hamula will often find her in the West Bank or in a refugee camp in Lebanon or Syria. The woman will generally join her husband and be taken in by his family. In theory, her husband could join her in Ramallah, but the standard of living there is much lower, and all his life – family, work, studies – is centered in Israel. Because of the large difference in the standard of living, a man in the occupied territories who marries a woman in Israel will also usually join her and receive Israeli citizenship, leaving behind his former life.

It is hard to know how many Palestinians, male and female, have come to Israel during the 41 years of occupation and become Israeli citizens this way. One government office speaks of twenty thousand, another of more than a hundred thousand. Whatever the number, the Knesset has enacted an (officially "temporary") law to put an end to this movement.

As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who are naturalized in Israel could be "terrorists." True, no statistics have ever been published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a "security" assertion need evidence to prove it?

[AlicetheKurious]

jlaw172364 wrote:

The issue of their being racism in Zionism and Judaism? Of course there is racism in it, the same as their is racism in an idea of any maintaining an ethnic identity. People talk all the time of the English race, or the Irish race, or the Japanese race.

Like all zionists, you deliberately conflate ("equATE") between Judaism and zionism, in order to obscure the fact that they are no more identical than being a German necessitates being a nazi.

Yes, racism can be found among all kinds of people. Human nature being what it is, there is no group that is free of individuals who feel generalized hostility towards others who are different from themselves. It doesn't even have to be 'racism' as such -- there is no qualitative difference between a class snob, a male supremacist, a xenophobe, a homophobe and a racist. They all spring from a failure to empathize or identify with an "other", however that "other" is defined, that can lead people to dehumanize, or even demonize entire categories of people as a threat to themselves.

I used to think it would be impossible for Jews and African Americans to be racist, because as victims of racism, they would automatically know that it was wrong, and would violently eschew it.

Jews and African Americans, being human, are no more immune from this sort of thing than anybody else. As long as people feel frightened and insecure, they will seek to identify the source of danger. Racism results when that source is perceived as other people, rather than structural flaws in a system that pits groups of people against each other.

Racism perpetuates these dysfunctional systems by channeling people's fear and anger safely onto each other and away from any fundamental changes that would transform the "zero-sum game" paradigm into a "variable sum-game". In the zero-sum game paradigm, your safety and dignity and freedom are seen as prizes to be won at the expense of someone else's; my gain is your loss, and vice versa. In the variable-sum game paradigm, which is far more useful and practical, not to mention moral, my safety and dignity and freedom can only be guaranteed when yours are, and when we've replaced the system itself with one that protects and defends all our rights.

As I said before, no group of people is invulnerable, and therefore in all groups (however these are defined) there will always be individuals who succumb to the seductive lure of racism or similar mental and emotional traps. However, there is a big difference between racist feelings or beliefs, no matter how prevalent, and a "national" ideology that legitimizes, exploits, and promotes racism among one group so that they can be mobilized to oppress, ethnically "cleanse" or even exterminate others.

Zionism is precisely such an ideology, in precisely the same way that nazism was, not surprisingly given their identical roots in 19th century European pseudo-scientific and pseudo-moral justifications for colonial looting and murder as a manichean struggle between 'light' and 'darkness' or between "superior" and "inferior" races. Furthermore, zionism, like nazism, and like the White supremacism of apartheid, gave rise to a state with the military and legal apparatus to enforce its hideous values, with predictably horrendous results.

jlaw172364, you are clearly very invested in the zero-sum game paradigm that legitimizes zionist racism and links the very survival of 'the Jewish people' with their capacity to commit war crimes with impunity. Unfortunately, such models reinforce themselves by creating self-fulfilling prophecies. People who commit atrocities, even if they are driven by a misguided belief that such atrocities will empower them paradoxically create more and deeper hostility, in turn reinforcing their sense of an existential war of "us" against "them". Committing horrible crimes in the name of the Jewish people is a strategy that seems to deliberately promote anti-semitism for the benefit of the zionist state, but at the expense of ordinary Jews, at least in the long-term.

Certainly zionism is not the first racist ideology to use victimization as a theme. Due to a number of historical circumstances, Hitler and the nazis were able to exploit the powerful (and justifiable) German feelings of victimization after WWI and the Versailles Treaty. It's dangerous to pretend that Versailles did not represent a grave injustice, and that it did not lead to widespread starvation and terrible suffering among ordinary Germans, because it leads to a false belief that Germans are somehow different from the rest of us.

To the extent that we recognize our own psychological and emotional vulnerability to clever and flattering racist manipulations, we become capable of seeing through them. The contrary is also true: to the extent that we believe that somehow we are immune, we become easier to seduce. Zionism is not different in any significant way from other forms of racism, except for perhaps one: while other, similar ideologies tended to be very blatant about their supremacist views and objectives, zionism has managed to cloak its leitmotif of a ruthless and powerful Jewish Master Race by also portraying Jews as the perpetual, eternal, archetypal victims of racism -- regardless of time or place or circumstance.

By your unquestioned acceptance of the zionist terms of reference, in every one of your posts you have manifested this bizarre dichotomy, portraying "the Jews" as 'predatory' in one breath, then accusing others of 'antisemitism' the next. Such passionate attachment to an ideology that promotes so much cognitive and moral dissonance is frankly very unhealthy. I sense (maybe I'm wrong) that you're quite young still, and that you're not quite as convinced as you make out. Like c2w, I bear you no ill will, but I do hope that this thread has given you a chance to learn a bit more about what you've been defending and perhaps reexamine its moral implications, not only for the world, but for the role you choose to play within that world.