Yeah, I'm used to it by now, but it's still annoying.
People here don't actually read much, nor do they glean much out of what little they do read. The idea that people might actually try to get news from other parts of the world is pretty foreign in the country of the New York Times.
However, I need to point out something. The idiots in your churches who tell you that Israel is our 'friend' (based on some kind of Bible ideas), are misleading you.
Let's look at those 'biblical' concepts a little closer. Yes, they are in the second diaspora, and this seems to be with cause. If you recall, the reason that they were thrown out of the mid-east in the first place (by the Romans, as the Egyptians and Babylonians only borrowed them for a while) was PRECISELY because they couldn't get along (constantly fighting).
The temple that they lost WAS NOTHING LIKE A CHURCH. People wax poetic about the idea of "God's Third Temple" but never consider what is planned for that building.
It's not like the Jews hang out there and sing songs about how great God is, yano?
They want to butcher animals and give the blood and fatty parts to God on a big pyre.
Now, how 'familiar' is that form of worship to you? Ever really considered how totally fucked up the goal here is? I bet that it won't ever come to pass (too many Jewish PETA members).
With that end in mind, one must also consider the path to the goal.
In the Bible (the Xian version) it's quite clear (if you are a dispensationalist) that the J-man will be re-arriving and setting up the Kingdom of God in Jerusalem. And WHAT is his plan for the Jews? Well, it's the 'Lake of Fire' for them, remember? If they are really our 'friends' what kind of 'friends' are WE?
In fact, that point (that this 'Israel' was NOT set up by the Messiah/Mosiach, but by the UN) is one of the reasons that many of the Hassidic Jewish community in NYC (yano, they guys with the sideburns?) reject Israel as an abomination. For more info, see:
In fact, the photo from the main page of the last site is just precious:
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December 28, 2008: Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews joined 1500 people in New York City marching in protest of the bombings and massacre in Gaza. |
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I bet some whacked-out Israeli rabbi declares them a bunch of mosers.
And in spite of the fact that the UN created the problem (by setting Israel up to start with) WE don't let them fix it (we veto everything bad about Israel, like we just did again). And people here wonder why the rest of the world hates us. Hmm.
So, we have a bunch of people sent in by an authority of questionable ability to re-take land that their forefathers took by force (repeatedly). They have a religious goal, and they believe that their actions are 'blessed by God' (though the most they'll say is 'G-d').
If you recall, these are the same people who convinced the former landowners (the Caananites) of their good will, converted them, and then slaughtered them.
It's not like their track record is very good. No 'Gandhi' coming out of that community, as far as I can tell. The one they did produce they killed (and did so for religious grounds, if you recall, though they had to pretend he sought political power to get the Romans to do it for them).
So, when they got 'Israel' in the nineteen forties, the idea that they might repeat this behavior should have been pretty much a solid bet. In fact, if you recall, a GREAT many of them had just escaped incarceration in the worst of all possible circumstances (so they were prepped, 'trained' you might even say--and by the same guys that WE used to set up that handy little torture academy, the former '
School of the Americas'). Really, if you are going to need a bunch of psychopath shrinks, the Germans do the best work (
historically).
There are a number of initial
atrocities that the original Israelis perpetrated upon the Arab population in order that they would run away. Once they were safely over the border, the Israelis closed the border, and haven't let them back in since.
BTW, here's the actual 'map' (as the
UN defined vs. the way it is currently):
Or didn't you ever wonder why the Palestinians, if they were in their own country, were 'refugees'?
They are refugees because they are the legitimate landowners of many 'Israeli' properties (some with deeds going back as far as the Byzantine Empire).
The Israelis, since G-d told them it was ok, just basically stole these people's land.
Kind of like we did with the Indians.
And Gaza is kind of like the Reservation.
Anyway, they are a bunch of nutjobs. They don't have what other people might consider 'ethics' since their ethics is based first and foremost on a basic subdivision of the world into two types of people, 'human beings' (Jews) and 'goyim' (animals with human form).
At least our religious nutjobs over here don't go THAT far. I think that the
godhatesfags.com site gets close, but I don't believe that there's any underlying 'permission' to kill the unbelievers the same way that the whackos over in the middle-east do (not like the Jews are alone in this extremism).
We don't pay attention to the details as a nation. We get caught up in the presentation. We expect a blockbuster whenever we get any 'news'.
As a result, we get a lot of blockbuster news.
We need to really re-think this. I mean, if we are so big on helping these people, why isn't there a 'build the third temple' committee, or a red-heifer contest (gotta have the
magic cow to please G-d, He's picky).
If God really had 'chosen' them, he would have given them vowels so that they could have known to eat shellfish in the months with 'O' in it, instead of just telling them 'no'.
Not to be picking on them (actually, of all the home-temple concepts, I like theirs the best), but REALLY, somebody has to point these things out.
No, you're not 'chosen' (picked on a lot, but I don't see God doing most of that), at least, not anymore so than any of His others. He likes them all. And (apparently) He enjoys variety.
Apparently, He really enjoys comedy of the absurd, which is why he made so many morons.
He also seems to really enjoy belief, in almost every form. He made so MANY, yano?
On the level of unbelievable things that a group of people believe, I'd have to say that many of the extreme concepts of Judaism are simply ridiculous. Of course, the extreme ends of MOST religions are pretty funny, if you consider them. I mean, Catholics think that Joseph married Mary and never had sex with her, and Xians in general actually believe that a human being came into existence with half of his DNA (the part that mom COULDN'T provide, given that he was male) provided somehow by God.
When you consider it, the idea that Mohammed (PBUH) was born circumcised is pretty tame.
Of course, killing your daughter because she has a boyfriend is pretty lame. That takes either a whole lot of faith, or just really hating your daughter.
Some people just use religion as an excuse to do what they'd love to do anyway (terrorize and hurt people and make them live in fear). Some people use it as an excuse to take what they want anyway (other people's property, usually). Some people simply use it in order to make other people do their will.
Very few people use religion for it's actual purpose (to know and love God and get closer to Him).
It's a hard call. I don't think the Israelis are our 'friends' (or if they are, they express it pretty weirdly). Jews in general are no more weird than any other religion, but Israelis are not a religion, they are a nation, and they are a nation (apparently) full of some of the nastiest people on earth, without souls that have capacity for compassion.
I mean, they've violated more UN resolutions than any other country. They have waged a war of occupation since 1967 (remember, Jerusalem is NOT theirs, it's a UN free zone, or should be), and simply taken land that was supposed to have been 'neutral' prior to that. They have put people off their family's ancestral land simply because they were Arab, and kept them and those families ancestral refugees since the forties.
They have secretly acquired nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and have not signed any treaties regulating them.
And it appears that a number of the incidents that have gotten them positive media attention have been
staged, while a number of the negative incidents have been misrepresented.
Oh, and that annoying little bit about how the Israeli (likely Mossad) company near the WTC had their employees told not to come to work the morning of 9/11.
Odigo says workers were warned of attack
Two employees of Odigo, Inc., an Israeli company, receive warnings of an imminent attack in New York City about two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Odigo, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies, has its headquarters two blocks from the WTC.
The Odigo Research and Development offices where the warnings were received are located in Herzliyya, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Israeli security and the FBI were notified immediately after the 9/11 attacks began. The two employees claim not to know who sent the warnings.
"Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. [Alex] Diamandis [Odigo vice president of sales and marketing] said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message." Ha'aretz, 26 September 2001
Regardless of what kinds of things one might think, one can't 'think' that the Israelis didn't start this recent round of fighting (since they did, and we have it on record that while we were preoccupied with the election results they were battering Palestine to set it up for the big incursion after a few rockets were fired back in retaliation for their breaking the truce).
Now, you need to consider their goals here. The first and foremost is to get the Palestinians to leave. You might think otherwise, but that's the actual bottom-line. They can't incorporate that territory while the Palestinians still stay there (since incorporation of that population would lead to an Arab majority). All they can do is 'occupy' it, and slowly wheedle the population down.
Perhaps it's slipped your mind, but one of the 'big' news items a while back was that the 'settlers' were being evicted.
You might not have gathered what that meant. 'Settlers' are people who are empowered by the government to take land which didn't belong to them and start using it. A great deal of 'Israel' is actually 'Palestine' (yard by yard). That's one of the issues with the 'Wall' (that it's WAY over on the Palestine side).
If you give anyone 'carte blanche' to use at whimsey, they WILL (duh!).
This country has had our 'blessings' since it's inception.
We have ignored their brutal slaughter of the native population for the entire time.
It's time to pay attention. These people are NOT our friends. Even being associated with them risks our being tarred with the same brush (not hard, given that many of the items currently being shot at people over there are of US manufacture).
Our 'friends' should be the people across the world who want peaceful resolutions to problems. That's how we used to think of ourselves.
Of course, that was a delusion, but it was at least a pleasant delusion. We should try that one again. It's a lot nicer than 'carrying a big stick' (or a mushroom cloud).
I said somewhat below that I stopped thinking anyone else was REMOTELY like me.
When I hear things like this happen, I go and research it myself because I'm curious, and I'M SURE THAT THE PRESS LIES TO ME.
Like they are doing right now (this morning's news) talking about how the Israeli 'response' is justified.
If you hit someone, and break their nose, and they hit you back, and you hit them back, your hitting them back is logically a 'response', but to call what you did anything other than 'starting a fight' is logically incorrect.
It requires leaving out the whole part about how you hit them first.
This situation just sucks, but moreover, it sucks the most for US, because we are being dragged along with a bunch of religious nutjobs who think that G-d is going to give them ALL OF THE WORLD (over time).
I kid you not. Look into internal Israeli politics, and you will see that I'm not even beginning to stretch the truth the SLIGHTEST bit.
They even have their own kind of 'fatwah' (extrajudicial religious killing), just like the Muslims.
Orthodox Judaism in all its forms and democracy do not mix. There is no better proof of that assertion than what Rabbi...
...Yisrael Rozen just did.
Ynet reports:
Rabbi accuses Peace Now of grave sin
Yisrael Rozen writes article blaming left-wing organization for tale-bearing. Quoting Maimonides, he says punishment for such behavior is death; Peace Now head threatens to press charges
By Kobi Nahshoni
Rabbi Yisrael Rozen, head of the orthodox-affiliated, non-profit Zomet Institute, has expressed perhaps the most strident censure possible in Judaism for Peace Now activists, who are fighting to uproot settlers from the Migron settlement.
"Such tale-bearing is known in Hebrew as 'moser' (informer)... Individuals who have sunk to this lowest level of behavior were despised and shunned (in Jewish tradition). They are considered worse than
heretics or apostates," wrote the rabbi in an article published in "Shabbat BeShabbato", a leaflet distributed in Israeli synagogues weekly.
Rozen wrote that, according to halacha (Jewish law) the punishment of such tale-bearing was death.
The rabbi quoted Maimonides, who wrote "a person who turns over a Jewish person or his property to Gentiles is a moser and has no part in the world to come... It is permissible to execute the moser even today when there is no capital punishment... it is permissible to kill the moser before he informs... If he has been told not to inform and insists on informing, then he who executes the moser first has great merit."
However, he immediately followed this statement with a warning against taking the law into one's own hands, stating that "the trial of capital offenses is the office of the court and it is not the duty of individuals to implement this particular halacha."
Here's an
article about whether or not it's ok (religiously) for Jews to testify about other Jews in American courts (not all votes are for testifying).
It's not a *new* thing, either (they were this bloodthirsty, even PRE-9/11).
Israeli rabbis call for killing the Arabs
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 7/28/2001
The Israeli rabbi Munir Lao haled the killing of Palestinian children and youth by the Israeli settlers. He explained that the Jewish ethnic group supports and backs the killing of the Palestinians.
Earlier the Israeli rabbi Ovadia Youssef described the Arabs as snakes that should be killed. He said:" The Palestinians should be killed especially in Jerusalem because they are like ants and when the Masiah (Christ ) comes he will disperse the Arabs."
Now, of course, I'm not talking about ALL of anyone here, certainly not Judaism as a religion on the whole, or even Israel as a whole.
But there ARE a significant number of religious nutjobs over there who need to be dealt with, and dealt with correctly (as in telling them that if G-d is going to provide for them, He damn well better get his ass down here and do it, since if it's up to us, we won't be providing the same services in the same fashion).
When it really comes down to it, we SUBSIDIZE this whole country (ever looked at our 'foreign aid' packages? There's only one of note). They--THEY have health insurance. They have a positive cash-flow. They have more arms per capita than ALMOST any other nation on earth (we do surpass them on that, but there are few others).
Really, peace only comes through understanding. There is a significant number of the population of Israel who don't have that capacity, since they don't actually view the 'ants' as partners, but pests.