Watched an interview on Canada's CBC last night with a high profile Israeli official who, somewhat reasonably, threw some cold water on the proverbial "two-state solution". He pointed out that even Arab pollsters had found a 85% support among Palestinians for the atrocities Hamas had perpetrated on Oct 7. Rather "unrealistic" to think that that solution could ever work in the face of that without some restrictions and changes in mentality.
However, Deuteronomy 13 & 14:
"13 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee."
See, this is why I ain't no fan of nobody's dogma. My people invented this nonsense and then Christianity and Islam ran with it. "Begin as one means to go on" can have very bad repercussions.
Nevertheless my people do have an actual ethnic origin homeland and that's true regardless of fairy stories later created to forge a national identity.
Amen to your point about dogma. Largely mine in my recent "Spergy Letter Project" -- largely the reason for the collapse of Islamic civilization in the 11th century and why Muslim societies are, in general, such basket cases. And for the close call Western Civilization had with the Catholic Church and Galileo.
Though, as I argued, that favouring of dogma, of articles of faith, over reason is ubiquitous even in secular or atheist camps. For example, not to belabor a point, the rather "dogmatic" insistence that "sex is immutable!!11!!" 🙄 and that everyone is either male or female from conception to death ... 😉🙂
But certainly agree on ethnic origin homeland, though leaving it more or less "vacant" for some 2000 years might be seen as somewhat "problematic". I remember reading a quip by Canada's own Mordecai Richler -- a Jew himself and author of several books on the topic -- to the effect that the Jews were a "stiff-necked bunch". May have some bearing on the issue ...
It was never vacant. There's never not been a Jewish presence in the region for all of recorded history though extremely reduced because of all that dragging off in chains business. An absence of political control is not an absence of living breathing people.
But I expect there's also been a not-insignificant presence of Arabs and other non-Jews there over the same period. Netanyahu is making the same "river to the sea" claim as are many Palestinians ... Some reason to consider, "a pox on both your houses" ...
Yes, it certainly has been an over-trafficked neighborhood from the beginning of time.
And certainly elections always have consequences, and the Israeli political system requiring every coalition to have stinking bedfellows has led to exactly where the Israelis are now. A pox particularly on Netanyahu and his facilitators.
Israel's problem from the beginning was allowing theocratic control of civil life and giving an overabundance of oxygen to the religious lunatic parties.
Amen to that, and particularly to "theocratic control". Reminds me of the movie Masada with Peter O'Toole which featured the theocrats objecting to serving on the front lines.
No, of course not. Dawkins' "The God Delusion" has several pages of quotes of parables and themes from the Bible which have provided a basis for much of Western literature.
And Philip Wylie quite reasonably argued that there's much in the Bible that is "profound psychology and exquisite logic".
The trick is separating wheat and chaff -- another Biblical concept of more than passing utility.
Actually no. For example ‘eye for an eye’ is interpreted in oral law as the monetary value of the eye. Etc. there are countless examples. Lots of weird biblical stuff never really happened. Capital punishment was hard to enact becusse of the need for two witnesses to a murder. Who murders when there are two witnesses?
All of religious legalism--in Judaism, Christianity and Islam--is the relentless attempt to justify unjustifiable dogmas and make them seem less ridiculous.
Well that made me smile. But I respectfully disagree at least about Judaism because I have more knowledge there. The oral law was to make it a living religion and a coherent daily practice. Maybe it seems obscure and weird now. But the oral law tried to define (with lots of disagreement) what actual Jewish practice was. Yes it got very nit picky. But don’t miss the point or ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’ to quote a cliche.
It's a bad baby. There are no good cults. In my view we should keep the food and the Yiddishisms (and comparable vernacularisms of the Sephardim and Mizrahim) and dump the nonsense.
I find the Israelis to be more honest than most. Perfect? No one is perfect.
I'd recommend that you write a history of Palestine, hitting the high points. How did the West Bank come to be? I recall the King of Jordan disavowing Jordanian sovereignty over the region. It was simply too unruly and unreasonable to be governed.
But the British manufactured royalty for their purposes from the lineages most useful to their purposes and the now-Jordanian monarchy understands perfectly well upon what lines loyalty is drawn in that culture.
People screaming about Palestinian cities like Hebron in the West Bank apparently do not know about historical shrines like the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. The real estate transactions pertaining to them go back considerably earlier than, say, 75 years.
The great religious appropriators are the Muslims. The Dome of the Rock? Literally on top of Judaism’s most holy site. And their greatest chutzpah is to deny any Jewish history there at all.
This is done to various Tombs like Rachel’s tombs etc. now if they said these are holy places and recognized Jewish origin that would be another matter.
The daughter religions repudiated the mother's way of thinking but could never quite cut the umbilical cord though fer damn sure they tried.
Islam's holy books include the Torah, the Psalms and the "Scrolls of Abraham and Moses" plus the Gospels.
Both Christianity and Islam say, essentially, "yeah sure, you were right as far as it went but we came to supersede what was said before and finish the job of revelation."
It's a cousins' war and will never end. As we see with the Western Enlightenment, that enlightening lasts only so long before people want themselves some real old-fashioned cult thinking. Hence "born an oppressor" and "women can have penises too." Secularism just don't taste as good on the tongue as becoming a true believer, no matter what the belief in question might be.
There was a time when Islam was the keeper of knowledge for the Old World. Sometime during Western Europe's medieval ages Islam abandoned study of anything but rote memorization of Koranic verses.
I see a parallel to the US today. The mindless hordes are repeating slogans and NYT headlines rather than thinking. From the River to the Sea? Give me a fucking break.
I'm with you. Find it really odd this obsession with/against 'zionism'. I'm not Jewish, or a follower of any religion, but see nothing wrong with Jews wanting their own state, and that state being non-secular. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Go, Israel.
Well, I do see an important difference between a culturally Jewish nation-state with a majority of its citizens ethnicly Jewish and the imposition of religiously-based laws on a modern nation-state. I'm very strongly opposed to the political power of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel and how they are equal in craziness to the fundamentalist Islamists exemplified by Hamas.
Totally off topic, but is that an apple doll in your profile pic!?😯🙂
Ha no. It's a papier mache witch I made years ago and she's peering out from a Holgate "Old Woman in a Shoe" wooden toy I've had since I was little.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/155604591806
I am waiting for the day that the Lion will lay down with the Lamb, either in this life or the next. Of course I am not holding my breath.
Human nature precludes that. And the Afterwards is always, I think, full of surprises.
For sure!
End of days.
Watched an interview on Canada's CBC last night with a high profile Israeli official who, somewhat reasonably, threw some cold water on the proverbial "two-state solution". He pointed out that even Arab pollsters had found a 85% support among Palestinians for the atrocities Hamas had perpetrated on Oct 7. Rather "unrealistic" to think that that solution could ever work in the face of that without some restrictions and changes in mentality.
However, Deuteronomy 13 & 14:
"13 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee."
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2020&version=KJV
The Jews seem not immune to perpetrating genocide when the shoe is on the other foot.
Though I see that Book also has some restrictions on women wearing men's clothes so it's not all bad ... 😉🙂
See, this is why I ain't no fan of nobody's dogma. My people invented this nonsense and then Christianity and Islam ran with it. "Begin as one means to go on" can have very bad repercussions.
Nevertheless my people do have an actual ethnic origin homeland and that's true regardless of fairy stories later created to forge a national identity.
Amen to your point about dogma. Largely mine in my recent "Spergy Letter Project" -- largely the reason for the collapse of Islamic civilization in the 11th century and why Muslim societies are, in general, such basket cases. And for the close call Western Civilization had with the Catholic Church and Galileo.
Though, as I argued, that favouring of dogma, of articles of faith, over reason is ubiquitous even in secular or atheist camps. For example, not to belabor a point, the rather "dogmatic" insistence that "sex is immutable!!11!!" 🙄 and that everyone is either male or female from conception to death ... 😉🙂
But certainly agree on ethnic origin homeland, though leaving it more or less "vacant" for some 2000 years might be seen as somewhat "problematic". I remember reading a quip by Canada's own Mordecai Richler -- a Jew himself and author of several books on the topic -- to the effect that the Jews were a "stiff-necked bunch". May have some bearing on the issue ...
It was never vacant. There's never not been a Jewish presence in the region for all of recorded history though extremely reduced because of all that dragging off in chains business. An absence of political control is not an absence of living breathing people.
Why I said, "more or less vacant" ... 😉🙂
But I expect there's also been a not-insignificant presence of Arabs and other non-Jews there over the same period. Netanyahu is making the same "river to the sea" claim as are many Palestinians ... Some reason to consider, "a pox on both your houses" ...
Yes, it certainly has been an over-trafficked neighborhood from the beginning of time.
And certainly elections always have consequences, and the Israeli political system requiring every coalition to have stinking bedfellows has led to exactly where the Israelis are now. A pox particularly on Netanyahu and his facilitators.
Israel's problem from the beginning was allowing theocratic control of civil life and giving an overabundance of oxygen to the religious lunatic parties.
And a parliamentary system allowing garbage parties to be in a coalition.
Amen to that, and particularly to "theocratic control". Reminds me of the movie Masada with Peter O'Toole which featured the theocrats objecting to serving on the front lines.
You think that there is nothing in Judaism except that biblical quote?
No, of course not. Dawkins' "The God Delusion" has several pages of quotes of parables and themes from the Bible which have provided a basis for much of Western literature.
And Philip Wylie quite reasonably argued that there's much in the Bible that is "profound psychology and exquisite logic".
The trick is separating wheat and chaff -- another Biblical concept of more than passing utility.
Another trick is recognizing metaphorical concepts and refraining from applying them literally.
Yes of course!
The problem of course is that fundamentalists of all religions have failed to employ it.
Exactly. Part and parcel of my pun, of sorts, on The Clergy Letter Project:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/the-spergy-letter-project
https://www.theclergyletterproject.org/
The core of Judaism is God as real estate mogul with a preferred group as his prime clients.
Actually no. For example ‘eye for an eye’ is interpreted in oral law as the monetary value of the eye. Etc. there are countless examples. Lots of weird biblical stuff never really happened. Capital punishment was hard to enact becusse of the need for two witnesses to a murder. Who murders when there are two witnesses?
All of religious legalism--in Judaism, Christianity and Islam--is the relentless attempt to justify unjustifiable dogmas and make them seem less ridiculous.
Well that made me smile. But I respectfully disagree at least about Judaism because I have more knowledge there. The oral law was to make it a living religion and a coherent daily practice. Maybe it seems obscure and weird now. But the oral law tried to define (with lots of disagreement) what actual Jewish practice was. Yes it got very nit picky. But don’t miss the point or ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’ to quote a cliche.
I don't think you have more knowledge here.
It's a bad baby. There are no good cults. In my view we should keep the food and the Yiddishisms (and comparable vernacularisms of the Sephardim and Mizrahim) and dump the nonsense.
I was referring to the Oral law which supersedes the 5 Books of Moses in terms of what really is Jewish practice.
The Oral Law is basically "let's find a way to justify the really awful bits."
I find the Israelis to be more honest than most. Perfect? No one is perfect.
I'd recommend that you write a history of Palestine, hitting the high points. How did the West Bank come to be? I recall the King of Jordan disavowing Jordanian sovereignty over the region. It was simply too unruly and unreasonable to be governed.
A historian I'm not.
But the British manufactured royalty for their purposes from the lineages most useful to their purposes and the now-Jordanian monarchy understands perfectly well upon what lines loyalty is drawn in that culture.
People screaming about Palestinian cities like Hebron in the West Bank apparently do not know about historical shrines like the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. The real estate transactions pertaining to them go back considerably earlier than, say, 75 years.
The great religious appropriators are the Muslims. The Dome of the Rock? Literally on top of Judaism’s most holy site. And their greatest chutzpah is to deny any Jewish history there at all.
This is done to various Tombs like Rachel’s tombs etc. now if they said these are holy places and recognized Jewish origin that would be another matter.
The daughter religions repudiated the mother's way of thinking but could never quite cut the umbilical cord though fer damn sure they tried.
Islam's holy books include the Torah, the Psalms and the "Scrolls of Abraham and Moses" plus the Gospels.
Both Christianity and Islam say, essentially, "yeah sure, you were right as far as it went but we came to supersede what was said before and finish the job of revelation."
It's a cousins' war and will never end. As we see with the Western Enlightenment, that enlightening lasts only so long before people want themselves some real old-fashioned cult thinking. Hence "born an oppressor" and "women can have penises too." Secularism just don't taste as good on the tongue as becoming a true believer, no matter what the belief in question might be.
There was a time when Islam was the keeper of knowledge for the Old World. Sometime during Western Europe's medieval ages Islam abandoned study of anything but rote memorization of Koranic verses.
I see a parallel to the US today. The mindless hordes are repeating slogans and NYT headlines rather than thinking. From the River to the Sea? Give me a fucking break.
Think of where we all might be if Ferdinand and Isabella hadn't kicked the Jews and Muslims out of Spain. That Golden Age tarnished and crumbled away.
I'm with you. Find it really odd this obsession with/against 'zionism'. I'm not Jewish, or a follower of any religion, but see nothing wrong with Jews wanting their own state, and that state being non-secular. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Go, Israel.
Well, I do see an important difference between a culturally Jewish nation-state with a majority of its citizens ethnicly Jewish and the imposition of religiously-based laws on a modern nation-state. I'm very strongly opposed to the political power of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel and how they are equal in craziness to the fundamentalist Islamists exemplified by Hamas.