I have a tremendous heart for the Israel and the Jewish people. I often read the bible and see that the Jews were ALMOST annihilated over and over again. It just seems that history is repetitive no matter how hard we try to prevent it. Israel has outlived many of its enemies that God said he would abolish. I firmly believe it is a supernatural existence to have lived through these many atrocities and still flourish. With saying that, we all know the horrors of the Holocaust. This isn't the first time a nation has tried to kill all the Jews. We just see it as the only one we truly know of because it happened only 60-70 years ago. I see it happening again. We have countless Anti-Semetic Holocaust Deniers. President Mahmoud Amadinejad has claimed that the Holocaust never happened yet he speaks of 'wiping Israel off the map". Are we reading in between the lines here? Radical Islam wants to destroy the Jewish people so that would be considered a Holocaust. On November 16, 2006 he said "Israel is destined for destruction and will soon disappear." If the Jewish people have not been destroyed by the weapons of man what makes this megalomaniac think he can? It's bad enough the small state of Israel is surrounded by her enemies on all sides. Israel is going to go through struggles these next few years but irregardless, I still stand with Israel.
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It says in the bible, that Israel will prevail.
it always seems like when God blesses people, those people have hard times, but always prosper.
the jews will never be defeated. look at the very small nation's history, and how many attacks they've had, and they still haven't been crushed.
they are truly blessed.
That man is just crazy... he pobably read the bible.
1) Zionism is not the same as Judaism. I refuse to be associated with those Jewish Nazis.
2) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is full of talk and uses that hype to take his people's minds off of more pressing issues like how he's completely screwing the Iranian economy.
3) If you look at the history of Israel, it's hardly a worthy cause.
4) "Irregardless" is not a word.
Pick your argument.
--Mike
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Jewish Nazis? Wow, that's quite an ignorant statement.
Zionism calls for a peaceful nation-state of the Jewish people to live in peace in the region. Zionism = Jewish self-determination. The Jews are a nation. Israel is their ancestral homeland. Most Zionist Jews support the creation of a Palestinian nation-state alongside Israel. This is not Nazism. It doesn't even have anything to do with religion. It's an ideology of national freedom.
Tom
For the record, embryowassup is Jewish. He is against Zionism. Thus, he doesn't want to be associated with the Zionists just because he's Jewish.
And the Jews are not currently a nation. There is a predominantly Jewish nation--Israel--but not all Jews live there. There are still millions that live in the US and other countries around the world. They are a race, yes, but not a nation.
~C
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Nazism = Ethnic self-determination - a nation-state working for the state based on a shared ethnicity. How does this differ from Zionism?
--Mike
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Um, you may be confusing Nazism with just nationalism. They are different ideologies. For a nation that is not free in its homeland, national liberation is a legitimate right; after all, these people just want to have what so many other nations already enjoy. The Kurdish people have a national movement; the various Arab peoples had them; the Chechnyans have one; the Basques do, too. Zionism was a liberation movement - its aim was/is to reestablish a Jewish national home in Israel, and to give the Jews the ability to control their own destiny. The world is made up of nation-states, and Zionists want Jews to be put on an equal level with other peoples by having their own sovereign homeland. And it's not only that, either. The Jews, throughout most of their existence in the Diaspora, have been repeatedly persecuted, hounded, and murdered. There may be periods of quiet, but Jew-hatred inevitably resurfaced. When the Jews have a homeland, a refuge and a place to call their own, it ensures the survival of the Jewish people and acts as a buffer against antisemitism and genocide. If Israel had been around during the Holocaust, 6 million Jews wouldn't have been killed. The Jews, traditionally seen as weak and homeless (you may recall the "Wandering Jew"), now have a homeland and an army to ensure national survival.
Nazism's manifesto was centered around hate and scapegoating; Zionism's main tenets are based on humanism - the power of the people to build their own land and society. If you consider Israel to be a Nazi-like state, I guess you think the same about modern Spain, Japan, Ireland, Russia, Armenia, Egypt - in fact, every country in the world except a few (notably the US, Canada, Australia) remains a nation-state. Many countries retain a law similar to Israel's Law of Return, where people whose ethnic origins are from that country may gain citizenship (ex: Greece, India, France, even Germany) - does that make them Nazi?
And by the way, the Jews are a nation. Anyone who's read the nearly 4,000-year history of the Jewish people can attest to the fact that they, probably more than any other people on earth, embody the definition of nation and national survival. The Jews had on-again, off-again independent political life in Israel for about a thousand years, a few times being conquered by ancient imperialists who exiled some of the Jews from their homeland. The final, largest exile came in the year 70 CE, when the Romans kicked most of the remaining Jews out of Judea. Nevertheless, throughout 2,000 years of diaspora, the Jews have maintained a presence in their homeland and have preserved the ancient culture of their nation. The rebirth of Israel was a triumph not only for the Jews, but for all those who value multiculturalism and freedom for all peoples.
Tom
The one thing you overlook when discussing the Kurds, Chechens, and Basques is that they were already living and had been living in the places where they are attempting to declare sovereignty. The Zionists did no such thing. They moved from Europe in mass expecting to start a nation in a foreign land. They didn't try to establish intentional communities in Europe.
Also, if Israel is so important to the Zionist cause, then why was it among three (or more) places where the Zionists wanted to establish a Jewish homeland (the other two were Argentina and what was then Uganda but is now Kenya)?
--Mike
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I thought one of the other ones was Ethiopia. And weren't there a lot of anti-semites in Argentina? I might have my facts wrong.
I'm going back to Africa
I don't know about anti-semites, but there are a hell of a lot of Jews there.
After WWII, the US offered up part of Texas to be the Jewish homeland. They could be launching rockets into Mexico right now!
--Mike
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I didn't know we offered part of Texas to be a Jewish homeland. Texas could be quite different.
I didn't know you were Jewish, Mike.
Jews retained a presence in their historic homeland for thousands of years. Yes, they were expelled every few hundred years from some areas, and yes, many were murdered by the Crusaders and in massacres by the Arabs or Turks at various times, but they nonetheless remained in varying numbers in the territory called Palestine. Yes, the Chechens and Kurds live on their land, but so did the Jews who wanted statehood. Is it the Jews' own fault that a vast majority of them were exiled from their own land by the Roman Empire? They retained a physical and cultural connection to their homeland throughout all their years in exile. And the Jews who moved from Europe were anything but accepted as "Europeans". They were always considered outsiders, whether it was because of the majority's religious beliefs, or racial theories, or xenophobia. Jews were massacred, contained in ghettos, forced to take up unwanted professions. They wanted to be free, to be able to choose their own destiny in their own land. Why would they try to set up a state in a foreign land, especially in Europe, where they so obviously did not fit in?
And about the proposals for Argentina and Kenya:
Some Zionist advocates just wanted to achieve a Jewish state as soon as possible, to allow Jews to develop and save them from antisemitism. The Uganda proposal was made by the British empire, and some "territorialists", as they were called, supported creating an interim Jewish state there, since it was easier to achieve at the time. However, a majority of Zionists (and I would include myself in this group) saw this as illegitimate and would only stand for the cultivation of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. I would be very wary of a Jewish state anywhere else, as THAT would in fact be more of an actual colonialist project, since the Jews had no connection whatsoever to Uganda.
What you have to realize is that there is no monolithic definition of Zionism, and there are and were many different Zionist groups that intensely disagreed with each other. But the basic definition that became accepted over time was that it was a liberation movement for the Jewish people, aiming to create an independent Jewish state and society in the land of Israel.
Tom
But these weren't the Jews looking to start a nation of Israel. As I said before, quit lumping all Jews in with the Zionists. They're not the same, and I refuse to be associated with those Nazis.
So they're perceived as outsiders. How, then, would it be different to set up intentional communities where they were already living (i.e., Europe) than setting them up in a foreign land (i.e., Palestine)? Besides of course, the necessity in moving a native group of people off of their land for the purpose of the latter.
Need I point out the irony of this statement?
--Mike
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Palestine was never a nation. Yes, there were some Arabs living on the land. Yes, I recognize that now, after almost half a century of the concept of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Arabs deserve a homeland (alongside Israel). And yes, I (along with most Zionists back when Israel was created) would have been able to live with an Arab state alongside a Jewish state in Palestine/Israel. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and I'm sure it was much more the fault of the Arab leaders rather than the Palestinian Arabs as a whole.
Returning to my primary point: Palestine was never a nation. It was ruled by various empires for about two thousand years. The last semblance of an independent state in the territory was that of the Jews, who had lived there for about 1500 years until the vast majority were made refugees by the Romans. Afterwards, Palestine was successively ruled by the Byzantine Empire, then, after Arab conquest in 638, by the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, then the Seljuk Turks, then for some time by the Crusaders, then back to the Arabs under the Ayyubids, then the Mamluks, then the Ottomans, and then the British. Multiple times during these years, there were Jewish revolts that tried to reestablish Jewish independence in the land. However, all of them were crushed, and Jews were massacred and exiled again and again. NEVER since the independent Jewish/Hebrew times, was there any kind of national culture present in the land. Palestine was always populated and dominated by "outsiders". The Jews, on the other hand, had ancient but surviving cultural, historic, ancestral, and national bonds to the land.
Furthermore, the Jews, unlike the ruling empires, did not arrive to exploit the resident Arabs or rule over them. They didn't come to incorporate Palestine into some sort of empire; they bought and settled land from Arab landowners, developing it and building a new society from the bottom up. In fact, due to Zionist economic stimulus, Arab immigration to Palestine actually increased dramatically during the early 20th Century. Even Revisionist Zionists did not advocate removal of the Arabs; rather, Zionists hoped to be able to cooperate with the Arabs. When Jewish-Arab tensions began to rise (much of this was actually due to imperialist British actions), violence on both sides began to occur. Yes, during the 1948 war, there was a displacement of Palestinian Arabs. However, even so, it would be disputed as to whether this was the primary fault of the Jews, or of the Arab leadership which refused to accept a compromise solution and then encouraged a "temporary" exodus, promising the refugees that they would get their homes back once the Jews were driven into the sea.
But let me ask you a question: why have people focused so intently on the Palestinian refugee problem, while ignoring much more dramatic population shifts? In the 20th Century, there were up to 135 million refugees. About 700,000 of those were Palestinian Arabs. How about the Greek-Turkish population exchange, which involved having over 2 million people forcibly leave their homes? How about the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim lands? How about the 11 million Hindus and Muslims involved in the population transfer that formed India and Pakistan? The problem is that the Arab nations have abused the Palestinians, striving to keep them homeless as a weapon against Israel. Other refugee problems were much worse, but the world dealt with them by accepting and naturalizing refugees. The Palestinians have been abused, but some would argue that their Arab brethren (and the rest of the world, which sure likes to blame things on the Jews) are actually more responsible for their current struggles than the Jews are.
And finally, about the distinction you made between the Jews already living in Palestine and the arriving Zionists: once again, throughout the ages, Jews tried to reestablish their independence in their homeland, but the ruling imperial powers would subsequently crush any rebellion, ending most of these efforts with massacres and expulsions. Zionism had a lot of influence from what was happening in Europe at the time - ideas about self-determination, collective movements, etc. However, it incorporated those into an old idea of Jewish nationalism, an idea which had been present ever since the ancient kingdoms of Israel. Many of the Jews living in Palestine before the Zionist movement began were religious, and some were just non-Zionist. Some religious Jews still to this day prefer to pray rather than actively achieve things. Nevertheless, Jews from Palestine, as well as Jews from around the Middle East (including Yemen and Egypt) arrived during the Zionist times to help in building a homeland.
I thought Ahmadinejad's argument was that of 'why should we focus on the destruction of 6 million Jews, when over 30 million others died during the war?' Maybe I'm mistaken...
I agree with Mike, though I have a different opinion of Israel. Not all Jews reside in Israel, so it's not accurate to lump them all together.
Besides, if they're right, we're within 250 years of the end of the world anyway... at least, as we know it.
~C
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I have to agree with Mike completely. Don't lump Zionism and Judaism in the same category. That's a tactic people use to silence anti-Zionists because it makes them look like anti-semitics. Many Jews (and people who aren't racist) would be insulted by that. And who cares what the Bible says about "God's chosen people"? That doesn't give Zionists the right to do whatever they please.
I'm going back to Africa
Martin Luther King, Jr: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism.”
Tom
That's rhetoric. An appeal to authority. An informal fallicy in which the person attempts to argue a point by referring to a source of high regard, but not necessarily expertise in the issue.
I'm a Jew. I hate Zionism. It's nationalism. It's socialism. It's national socialism. It's nazism. It spits on the graves of those 6 million (give or take the Russians' share) who died at the hands of the Third Reich.
--Mike
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When I was younger, my grandmother told me something. She said how back when she was a girl, before the State of Israel was founded, a Jew walking down the street in her hometown in Ukraine would be spat at. The whole world looked down on Jews. They were seen as weak and considered subhuman in many parts of Europe (and some parts of the Middle East as well). Europeans would get their exercise by raiding Jewish areas during pogroms, massacring Jews and destroying their property. During World War 2, they murdered 6 MILLION of us. Many populations of Europe collaborated with the Germans in digging ravines, then lining up tens of thousands of Jews and gunning them all down in one fell swoop. In Odessa, the Romanian Fascists and the Nazis gathered the Jews into the town square, drenched them in gasoline, and then burned them. And I don't have to tell you about the death camps...
Let me ask you a question: after such experiences (this was the culmination of thousands of years of persecution), how could you deny the need for a Jewish homeland? The Jews could never again trust the Europeans; they needed a home of their own, their historic national home: Israel. Had Israel been around, there would be no Holocaust. Now that Israel is there, the Jews cannot be spat at in the street anymore. They have a nation. They have an army. They can defend themselves. That is the chief argument, in my opinion, for a Jewish state.
I support a two-state solution. But I also support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland and a refuge of the Jewish People.
Tom
Do you believe that there was a need for a black homeland in the late 1800s/early 1900s? No, of course you wouldn't because we've seen how they rose up and proven that they were people deserving of the same rights that ever other person enjoys. Why on earth is it that zionists support expatriotization rather than a civil rights movement?
The existence of non-existence of Israel has nothing to do with the holocaust. The holocaust was an effect of the mass inflation and debt that the German government (and people) were facing. The creation of Israel has solved nothing in the world, just like the creation of Liberia for the freed blacks did nothing to solve the problem of slavery and subsequent bigotry they faced.
--Mike
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Wow, so you're just writing off Jew-hatred as a consequence of German economic ills? This kind of rationalizing seems to give a sense of legitimacy to scapegoating and genocide. How do you make a jump from "We have economic problems" to "Kill the Jews" ? Antisemitism was around for thousands of years. The Holocaust showed the extent to which Jew-hatred could go.
With Israel around, 6 million Jews would not have been slaughtered. They would have had a refuge and an army to defend themselves rather than be hounded and treated like animals.
I responded to the African question in my other post.
Tom
No, what I'm saying is Israel wouldn't have solved anything. Hitler's original plan was to rout out (aus rotten) the Jews, not exterminate them. Thus, Israel would have been what Hitler would have wanted - national socialism. Divided nation-states with increased efficiency because everyone within the state was the same race.
--Mike
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This maybe a little off topic but... How are people who are jewish classified as a race and not religion?
Judaism is a religion. But you can be Jewish without following Judaism, by being born (traditionally) to a Jewish mother. The Ashkenazi Jews (the ones from North and Western Europe, predominantly) have one of the highest incidents of not only breast cancer in women (having a high predominance of BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes), but also Tay-Sachs syndrome. Much higher than the rest of the white population. Why? Because they tended to marry within their small group, traditionally. It is also very difficult to convert to Judaism, and so those who were born Jewish were typically the eligible ones for marriage. Ever see Fiddler on the Roof?
~C
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The Jewish religion is the religion of the Jewish People/nation. The Jews are an ancient nation with their roots in Israel/Palestine, and they were around back in the times when every nation had its own religion (ancient Egypt had its gods, as did the ancient Romans and Greeks and Assyrians and Phoenicians, etc.). The difference is that the Jewish nation survived, unlike the others.
You don't have to believe in the creation myths in order to be a Jew. A fairly high percentage (possibly a majority) of Jews consider themselves "Just Jewish", ie not religious but still ethnically Jewish and a part of the Jewish people. There is a Jewish secular and Jewish national culture, as well as a Jewish religious culture. If you're a Jew, you can also celebrate Judaism from a secular humanistic point of view - as the ancient culture of the Jewish people.
Tom
Please stop trying to educate me (and the Jews on this thread) on Judaism and Jewishness. I'm doing perfectly fine on my own, thanks.
EDIT: Ok, I realize that came out a little harsher than I meant it. I apologize... I'm just a little tense right now.
~C
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Uh, Hinduism? Celtic Paganism? The multitudinous indigenous religions of Africa? This Jewish supremacy business really has to stop.
--Mike
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I'm not trying to advocate "Jewish supremacy". I'm trying to explain the story of the Jews, to put them on equal footing with other nations of the world. And by the way, maybe you didn't read my examples, but out of the ones I provided, the Jews are the only ones that still share the same homeland, same language, same culture, and same ethical texts as they did 3,000 years ago. Also, I've never heard of a distinct "Hindu Nation" before modern India, though I'm sure you were referring to the numerous kingdoms that existed in the region before the Common Era. Also, I know that Celtic Paganism existed, but it's not exactly too prevalent among the Irish today. So I'm not sure what you mean with that.
Anyway, none of that is even relevant. What I'm trying to get across is that the Jews are an ancient people that has reestablished an independent state in its ancestral homeland.
Tom
India has existed in the Ganges river delta for over 5000 years. They too have the same texts that they had at the beginning of their religion. If you're going to have qualms with the various kingdoms of India, you should look back at the apocrypha and remind yourself that Israel was a succession of kingdoms as well (David, Solomon, the Judges, Herod...). Don't forget about the various divisions that those kingdoms faced as well.
And for the love of God, there is no such thing as an "ancestral homeland". That's like expecting black people to be able to go back to Nigeria or Cameroon and be accepted as citizens of those respective countries. I mean, if you want to talk ancestral rights, then you may as well give the land back to the Canaanites.
--Mike
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Do the Canaanite people, the Canaanite culture, still exist? Have they survived over these thousands of years? No. If they had, maybe I would support their rights to the land (although I would still support a division to give the Jews part of it - since they also have national links to it).
There is such thing as ancestral homeland. When a culture does not assimilate into its surroundings, when it retains a national discourse and cohesion throughout thousands of years - even in its Diaspora - it retains the connection to its ancestral homeland. The Jewish nation, the Jewish people, originated in Canaan/Israel/Palestine. It is their ANCESTRAL HOMELAND. There has been an understanding of Jewish peoplehood ever since the exile began. Israel was always the Jews' homeland.
This is different than the African Americans. They were stolen from various nations, from various areas, from various cultures. Yes, they were also exiled from their lands. And those who enslaved them wiped out much of the Africans' sense of their own cultural and ancestral origins. Thus, African Americans in the US, for example, have over the years synthesized their various original cultures, along with the dominating European and American cultures of their oppressors, to fit in with the distinct African American experience. Their "homeland" is the United States, since they retain very little actual connection to their original roots. The whites committed the ultimate crime against the Africans they enslaved: they erased their sense of identity and culture. They forced their own religion and ways of life upon their slaves, and thus also enslaved the blacks into an artificial white culture. This is an immense tragedy in the history of the world.
So, once again, I would like to restate that from where I stand, there is definitely such a thing as an ancestral homeland. Nations, cultures, peoples are all born and develop in a certain land area. The Jewish and African American experiences differ in that the Jews retained their customs, cultural traditions, and connection to their homeland. The blacks were spoonfed a synthetic culture while the whites erased their indigenous African cultures. Thus, their only way to a better life was through civil rights in their adopted homeland.
I believe in civil rights. I also believe in national rights. I do not support national separatism - I support national self-determination. Nation-states are still the dominant political structure in the world. Just because I support Israel does not mean I think that all Jews must live there. However, I consider it to be the greatest factor in preserving modern Jewish identity among Jews worldwide. It is there to defend them and gives them a place to call home.
And those who enslaved them wiped out much of the Africans' sense of their own cultural and ancestral origins. Thus, African Americans in the US, for example, have over the years synthesized their various original cultures, along with the dominating European and American cultures of their oppressors, to fit in with the distinct African American experience.
You know, there was a movement back in the... 70's, I think, when a bunch of African Americans went back to Africa, and there was a huge movement to identify more with the African culture...
~C
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I would totally support the efforts of African Americans to try to rediscover some of their ancestors' indigenous cultures. At the same time, African Americans have formed a distinct ethnic and cultural group based on their experiences in the New World.
Tom
Yes, and are you aware that in Germany before the Holocaust, there were countless Jews that identified more with the Germans than they did the Jews? When they started getting persecuted, they reverted back to religious traditions, because that is what they were taught to do. There's also two completely separate cultural lines of Jewish people: the Ashkenazi Jews who faced the Holocaust head on, and the Sephardi Jews, who were mainly from Southern Europe and thus didn't face the same persecution. The two groups have some pretty different traditions (especially concerning holidays like Pesach (Passover)). Just because they're all Jews doesn't mean they have the same traditions, just like the Puritans and the Mormons have some different traditions, even though both are sects of Christianity. Or the Southerners have different traditions from the Northerners, even though they're all Americans. I could go on...
~C
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I am aware of the German Jews, who were quite integrated into society until the dawn of Nazism. But the Holocaust showed the Jews that they also needed to have a homeland - even if they didn't live there and became integrated into their host Diaspora cultures - because in Europe, antisemitism was always there to make horror come out of even the best of times.
"When they started getting persecuted, they reverted back to religious traditions, because that is what they were taught to do. "
I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. The Holocaust actually caused more Jews to lose their faith in a "god" than any other event in Jewish history. But those Jews were and are still Jews, and probably identified much more strongly as such than before the Holocaust. Jewishness is not an exclusively religious identity, it's an ethnic and national one.
I understand that you're trying to "educate" me about Jews, but let me quote one of your previous posts: "Please stop trying to educate me (and the Jews on this thread) on Judaism and Jewishness. I'm doing perfectly fine on my own, thanks."
If I don't have a right to "educate" you about my people's history, why do you? I'm not sure if you're Jewish, but I am and I'm quite aware of the different ethnic and cultural subgroups within worldwide Jewry. I am personally descended from both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, and I understand the cultural differences that different Jewish communities acquired based on their distinct Diaspora experiences. That's one thing that makes Israel and the Jews so great - that they have preserved their culture, but also been able to incorporate cultural aspects from all around the world into their lifestyles. However, the very fact that Jews have been able to preserve their ancient culture during millenia of dispersion and exile is amazing in and of itself.
And by the way, Sephardi populations most definitely suffered during WW2. From Sephardim living in Europe (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10006079) to Mizrahim in North Africa and the Middle East (http://www.alfassa.com/blog/2007/11/the-holocaust-affected-jews-in.html). The Mufti of Palestine trained Bosnian Muslim and Arab Nazi brigades to act against Jews. In Iraq, there was even a pro-Nazi rebellion. In North Africa, Jews were persecuted, sent to slave labor camps, and murdered.
And remember, the Holocaust was just the culmination of thousands of years of antisemitic bigotry. This hatred was probably strongest in Europe, but was prevalent among the Arab and Muslim world as well.
Tom
The concentration camps came relatively late in the persecution of Jews in the years leading up to and during WWII. Pretty sure they didn't start losing faith in god before they started getting killed, because it was just like all the other persecutions faced throughout the ages. Instead, they did turn back to their religion and traditions. It was only late in the war that they started breaking away from traditions and actually stood up against their persecutors as a group (via the ghetto uprisings). Take a history class on the Holocaust. I did.
Your comment above (the one above the comment you quoted) did nothing to add to my comment. My comments to you are adding something to yours, things you aren't considering in the discussion.
~C
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"My comments to you are adding something to yours, things you aren't considering in the discussion."
I'd say that's quite subjective. In fact, if you have the right to say that, I'd equally claim that my posts are helping you view the "bigger picture", since they are bringing in new information that you either have not considered or have just ignored.
Your statement about Jews turning to religion at first, but leaving it later, is totally irrelevant to our discussion. I don't care if you've taken a class on the Holocaust - I've taken several, in addition to having relatives and friends who are survivors. Anyway, I'm not even really sure what this discussion has devolved to.
I don't want to make this a personal argument or anything, even though I have no idea who you really are. I don't know about you, but I'm much cooler with a fact-based, intellectual discussion than an accusatory dispute.
Tom